#licensed game

Did you know M&Ms made a Wii platformer? Did you know they left massive visible seams in the level geometry and didn't bother to finish the game? Did you know I am now an M&M? Click here for a free ipaed.

I got every RetroAchievement in Breakin' Da Rules because why not, I wished I could do it.

Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu tabletop game has had a weird space in video games, in that it has barely had a space at all. For as popular as Lovecraft style horror is among so many horror games, the big main thing born from that mythos has only popped up a handful of times. They began with the point and click series, tripped up with the overly ambitious and confused Dark Corners of the Earth, then sort of retreated into some mobile games mostly forgotten. The first promising bit of news in a decade came when Frogwares was announced to be working on a Call of Cthulhu game, but they ended up dropping the project and using their work to make a new game alongside a new business partner, resulting in The Sinking City. That licensed game ended up being picked up by Cyanide Studio, a middle market mainstay mostly known for a lot of biking games, odd licensed games, and helping out with a RPG franchise alongside Spiders. This brings us to 2018, where the game finally released as a first major attempt in a video game to try and use the mechanics of the source material and translate them to a single player experience.

- Recieved mixed reviews but was remembered for being fun, if not very buggy.

- Howard is the playable character (obviously).

- Main gameplay is similar to Yakuza or the Sopranos licensed game.

- You have to constantly skip dialogue or else you lose.

- The main menu is displayed in front of the “inside of the gem” shots. When you select your save slot, the background transitions into Howie’s colonoscopy, then you’re dumped into the game.

- The hub is Howard’s shop. The game starts you here every time, even if you save in a different location.

- You look into the opal to save the game/make checkpoints (so when KG has it, you gotta do those levels in one go).

- Collect memorabilia rings and bootleg Rolexes for health, collect gold Furbys for extra lives. Lose all lives and your save data is deleted.

- There’s a button to "observe" items in the environment and make comments, a la Silent Hill or Life Is Strange, but every comment is more or less the same. Like, you can look at items in your store, but every time Howard just says "I love my store" or some lazy shit.

- If you talk to LaKeith Stanfeild when he’s hanging at the shop, he gives you tips and tricks on upcoming levels.

- There are separate “wife” and “mistress” meters that need to maintain equilibrium.

- The game begins with an Ethiopia cutscene (unskippable).

- Mini game: find the fish with the opal buried in it.

- There are puzzle segments (a la Bioshock) where you have to fix the doors.

- Optional mini game (hoop shots) can be played when visiting KG during practice.

- Boss fight with The Weekend. During said boss fight, the first verse and the chorus of Swimming Pools play on loop.

- Bug: Saving your game before the difficult Weeknd boss fight makes it impossible to perform the required finisher and soft locks your game.

- During the Passover level, it’s possible to talk with members of Howard’s family to receive world building dialogue.

- Minigame: save Howard’s glasses. This game is intentionally unbeatable and can be skipped.

- Minigame: save Howard’s fish via claw game controls. Once again, winning this game is optional, but much easier than the glasses game.

- During the big Celtics game, you get to play as KG and the game turns into an NBA Jam clone with Howard providing obnoxious commentary.

- Ending minigame: you play as Howard’s fleeting consciousness flying through space while L’amour Toujours plays. This has a time limit (the length of the song) and after it runs out, Howard fades away into the cold, empty reaches of space. After finishing the minigame, an alternate “galaxy” skin for Howard is now unlocked in future replays.

- Debt is treated like a collectible item in the game, and your total debt is displayed before the end credits.

- Beating story mode unlocks “arcade mode” where a small handful of the various minigames can be replayed.

It’s weird that in the year 2020 there’s a full fledged remake of Spongebob SquarePants Battle For Bikini Bottom, a cult classic platformer from 2003.  It’s weirder still that that full fledged remake is really good.  Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated only just came out yesterday, and I’ve only really put in about an hour of my time into it, but I just had to write something about it because I still can’t believe it happened at all, let alone pulled itself off this well!

Before I begin with the game itself though I guess I should provide a little context for the game itself.  Battle for Bikini Bottom was a game that released in 2003 to little fanfare, but to a very appreciative kid me.  It was a game I rented off the shelf of the local Blockbuster because, at that point, licensed games still seemed like a safe quality bet for my limited time allotted for playing the PS2, and surprisngly, it was incredible!  It’s a very basic collect-a-thon platformer, but it really brought the world of Spongebob to life with tons of fun references and levels based directly on important locations from the show!

They didn’t have to go this vibrant, but they did that for us.

This remake retains all of that, and even kicks the fun references up a notch, not to mention a basic collect-a-thon platformer is a more than welcome diversion from the ultra serious games we often get at this point.  The game plays almost exactly the same, but the graphics and art design have been given stunning new detail in a way that, even though I saw screenshots before, I didn’t expect to hit as hard as it does.  The first level, Jellyfish Fields, is a far cry from the PS2 era series of flat, green platforms we’re just left to assume is a vibrant field.  Now we have all sorts of visual effects that highlight the colorful world, new graphical touches like “realistic” looking grass, and more detail than ever in the silly obstacles in your path. THQ Nordic really did not have to go this hard on this game.  They genuinely could have just brought all the old assets up to 1080p and I think most people would have bought this thing up for the sweet hit of Nostalgia.  They really went above and beyond in bringing this old cult classic into the modern day though, and if this is the standard by which they’re going to be digging into their absurdly vast library of old IP, then please, for all that is good in the world, remake Timesplitters Future Perfect!

Random Screenshot Of The Day:

Sorry, I know that was a break from WoW again!  But I just had to get some of my early impressions of Spongebob onto this blog!  Please enjoy this teaser image of Blades Edge Mountains.  More like WoW, The Edge.

Stray Notes:

- No Spoilers, but I just got a certain point in Last Of Us Part 2 and I get it now, I get what people meant when they said this game gets hard to play....holy hell people.  They go hard in this video game.