This series will take a look back at video games that have hit a significant milestone in time – be it release date, end of service date, and more – and talk about what works and what doesn’t work in the game through a modern 2024 viewpoint. While this column will not be nearly as regularly published as Cooking Eorzea (my FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed cooking column), I will try to do new installments decently often.

First up? Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII.

Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII was the capstone action-RPG to the FINAL FANTASY XIII trilogy that first kicked off on North American shores in March 2010. With this final entry released on Feb 11, 2014 – 10 years ago this week – in North America, I wanted to take a look back to this oft-forgotten sequel SQUARE ENIX game and talk about what worked and what didn’t work with it through my modern-day eyes.

To put my experience with Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII out there: I started the game back in early Nov 2015, and I finished it up in the latter part of Feb 2016. I completed all the side quests that I could on a single playthrough, defeated the ultimate enemy fight, and completed the main storyline. Since that time, I have been obsessed with the OST, and I listen to it quite often in my day-to-day life. In writing this column, I re-watched a lot of cutscenes for the game, reviewed the official player’s guide, and thought back at conversations that I’ve had with friends as I was originally exploring this title.

Finally: all opinions are, obviously, my own.

So, with all that said, let’s start off with…

The Schemata System
(AKA Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII’s Class System)

Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII’s biggest strength, both at launch and now in 2024, is the Schemata class system. While only Lightning is playable in this game, the player was allowed to set three different Schemata classes for her at a time and flip between them with a press of the L1/LB and R1/RB buttons. What made the Schemata system so cool though was that almost all of the classes were able to be bought from NPC stores scattered throughout the game, and they all played differently and slotted into different gameplay roles. You could further customize each Schema by equipping one weapon, one shield, two accessories, one adornment, and up to four abilities!

This turned each Schema into pretty much whatever you wanted it to be, and there was no real top-tier end-all-be-all layout but instead you could adapt the different jobs to fit in the roles that you needed them to be. If you wanted to be a ‘tank’ class that can handle magic, then so be it. If you want to be a healer who can also deal serious damage, then have at it!

This element of Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII is something that I’ve honestly wanted to see replicated in other FINAL FANTASY games, but to no avail. More customization is always a good thing, and I loved being able to set up my party however I wish with the Schemata system. It is a very fresh system, even in today’s video game landscape.

Lightning’s Return: FINAL FANTASY XIII’s Story Set-Up (Even If The Plot Didn’t Quite Land)

I love the story setup for Lightning’s Return: FINAL FANTASY XIII.

Lightning, blaming herself for Serah dying at the end of FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, puts herself in an endless sleep she describes ‘as dark as death’ as she dreams of a day where she can bring her beloved sibling back. Lightning is awoken by God, and she is told that the world will end in 13 days. God bestows upon her the title of Savior and tells her that she has to save as many souls as she can in the time that remains before Chaos consumes all. Lightning strikes a deal: If she plays the role of Savior and keeps the world going for 13 more days, then her reward is a ‘Miracle.’

That ‘Miracle’? Serah will get to live again.

To carry out Lightning’s mission, God reverted Hope back to the child form he had in FINAL FANTASY XIII and placed him in command of the Ark- Cocoon’s remnants.  Hope turns out to be the one who told Lightning about God’s plan to build a brand-new world and about God’s offer to bring Serah back. They both acknowledge what a cruel bargain it is by God to make. And if all this wasn’t enough, both Lightning and Hope realize they no longer have the ability to feel emotions anymore.

Hope then reveals that 500 years have passed since Chaos was unleashed to consume the world, and it nearly succeeded in drowning the planet. What is left of the world is now called Nova Chrysalia. With all that destruction also came another kind of horror: immortality. No one, not even children, can grow older, and there is no more new life born. Instead, everyone waits around for violence, accidents, and sickness to eventually claim them. One. By. One.

As we play through Lighting Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII, we see everyone else’s story get setup.

Vanille, awaking a few years before Lightning does, believes that God is punishing her and she is willing to sacrifice herself to save the dead from suffering further in Chaos. Fang has lost Vanille to the Order of Salvation cult and now lives outside of what passes for ‘modern society.’ Sazh spends his time trying to find his son’s soul in a desperate search that has destroyed his upbeat personality. And Noel? He has become a murderous vigilante who believes he has to kill Lightning. Finally, there is Snow. Unable to get past his grief from Serah’s death, he presides over a never-ending party in a brilliantly glowing city called Yusnaan. He has held this role for centuries, and he now wishes to simply die.

Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII is a bright, colorful, beautiful game that is also absolutely depressing to play in the most wonderful way possible. Each of the characters are wrapped up in a deep ocean of sadness, and all of their stories intersect repeatedly as those 13 days left pass. So many RPGs always present a world of happiness and hope at the start of the game, and Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII does not give you that. Instead, the stakes are clear: Thirteen days, and the world ends. Thirteen days, and you might get what you want and bring Serah back to life. Thirteen days to undo centuries of unhappiness that shackle everyone of Nova Chrysalia.

I was immediately hooked by all of this, as I haven’t played a FINAL FANTASY game that felt this hopeless since FINAL FANTASY XIV Online 1.0 when you knew that Dalamud was going to come down from the sky with the end of the Seventh Umbral Era.

Unfortunately, the story’s execution did not quite live up to the set up for each of the characters – and for Nova Chrysalia – at the game’s start. I don’t want to spoil that for anyone who might want to pick up this game after reading this, after all. The plot fell kind of flat for me in the third act, and I found myself not really caring about some of the main plot threads that led up to that. I unfortunately blame the writing more than anything for this, but I am still in love with the game overall. It isn’t a bad game by any means storywise – just didn’t feel as satisfying as I would hope it to be.

But the world’s setting, and the awful deal that Lightning strikes to save Serah? is insanely memorable and it is a perfect way to start off the conclusion to the FINAL FANTASY XIII trilogy. And the story concepts still work, even now in 2024.

The Amazing, Powerful, Almost-Perfect Soundtrack

Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII does not have a theme song like pretty much every other modern FINAL FANTASY game does. Instead, the three composers for the game (Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, and Mitsuto Suzuki) used Blinded by Light as a reoccurring theme throughout the game. The original soundtrack (‘OST’) was released across four discs, and it runs for just a bit more than five hours. The only track I did not care for on the OST is the very, very jarring Fang’s Theme ~A False Leader~, which sounds like a steel mill singalong – complete with swinging hammers on anvils – before switching over to a soft bridge and then back to the hammers on anvils again. It simply isn’t great.

For me, the standout piece is Lightning’s Theme- A Distant Glimmer by Masashi Hamauzu. It starts with just a piano, and then it just continually builds up from a simple, sad theme into an overlapping strings and piano composition with a lot of joy in it. Music can communicate so much about a character, and Lightning’s Theme- A Distant Glimmer truly paints Lightning as a character who starts with no hope and happiness before she begins to find herself again throughout Lighting Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII.

I truly believe that Lightning’s Theme- A Distant Glimmer would be perfect for a video game concert such as A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY, and I will never fail to suggest its inclusion among other series greats like Aerith’s Theme and Sarutabaruta. This soundtrack still is an amazing listen, even in 2024, and should not be slept on.

Chronostatis, Eradia, and the Divisiveness of Those
Gameplay Mechanics

The in-game time management system – Chronostatis and Eradia – are probably what people think about the most whenever they talk about Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII, and with good reason as it is the single most divisive element of the game.

To set up the lore: God will awake after 13 days. When that happens, this world will be done for and he will make a new world to replace it. There is nothing that can prevent this from happening on a set timetable. That is, other than Lighting offering up her life force in bits and pieces to push that deadline back by stopping time. Hope calls this life energy Eradia – but it is tracked as Energy Points (or ‘EP’) in the game.

Each in-game day lasts for one real life hour. That means that an in-game hour lasts for two-and-a-half minutes, and that a minute on Nova Chrsyalis lasts only two-and-a-half real-life seconds. In other words, time moves very, very fast in Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII. You can stop it by spending a single EP to pause time for 30 in-game minutes, which equates to a minute and 15 real-life seconds.

You can replenish EP most easily by killing enemies in the world. Unfortunately, there are only a finite number of enemies out in the world, and so you cannot just kill indiscriminately, as you’ll end up using up the best way to replenish EP during each in-game day. So, you have to balance how quickly and often you kill enemies in the game.

Finally, certain NPCs and quests are locked behind certain times of the day. If you miss the time window for an event, then you can’t do it for that day.

What all of this means is that Chronostatis and tracking the in-game passage of time takes over everything else if you want to complete the game in a single 13-day cycle. I actually used the schedule laid out in the official player’s guide – alongside the internet – in order to make it happen, and I was constantly obsessing over time and making sure I hit areas when I needed to in order to get all of the story beats (which you have to absolutely do in a single run-in order to properly finish the game) and all of the side quests done in one go.

The completionist in me disliked it then, and I dislike it even more now as it is one of the most stressful gameplay experiences I’ve ever had. Even when I was deep into the game and it was clear I was going to finish Lighting Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII in one go, I was still stressing about making my ‘appointments.’ If you want to play video games to just relax and have fun, then Chronostatis will really damper that for you. If you are a completionist like I am, then Chronostatis will drive you insane.

Tick, tick, tick. Time is constantly slipping away, and it feels like I can never do enough at all. And yes, I know that if I don’t manage to save everyone and complete all the story beats in a timely manner, then I will get a second chance in a sorta ‘new game plus’ that carries all my stuff over. But I really just want to do it all in one go, anyway.

I really think do that Chronostatis was innovative, but it simply is too divisive to be a series mainstay – especially in 2024 – and it is what will turn people off to the game.

And there you have it!

These are my thoughts on Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII, and what worked – and what didn’t – while looking at it through the eyes of someone a decade post-North American release. Ultimately, Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII is a game that still brings a lot of enjoyable value in 2024, if you can get past the Chronostatis and Eradia/EP gameplay system.

When A Retrospective Look returns next, I will be talking at what worked-and-didn’t-work for BABYLON’S FALL. (Yep, I played this game before end-of-service.)

Please look forward to it!

Did you play Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII?

What do you think about Lightning’s final adventure? Did you love the music like I did, and does it all hold up well in a 2024 perspective?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Retrospective Look- Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII In 2024 appeared first on oprainfall.

A demo is now out for Granblue Fantasy Relink for the PS4 and PS5. Unfortunately, there isn’t one set to be released for Steam at this time. The demo will feature three different modes which include tutorial, story, and quest mode. Quest mode will let you choose between eleven different characters and lets you play cooperatively online. Additionally, you can earn rewards in the story and quest modes which will carry on to the full release.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink will be released on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on February 1.

SOURCE: Press Release

The post Granblue Fantasy: Relink Demo Now Available appeared first on oprainfall.

At DragonCon 2023, I sat down with Dino Andrade and Connor Andrade. A father and son pair who has a great variety of experience as voice talents – even competing for roles on occasion – they have voiced everything from various Marvel and DC properties to assorted anime shows and movies and even to a brand-new podcast called Jump Leads. I participated in a two-journalist panel to talk with both of them about their careers, their experiences at DragonCon, and more.

You can check out Dino and Connor Andrade at their official website. You can also follow Dino Andrade at his official X account.

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H., and I am with Operation Rainfall.

Downtown Hott Radio: I am Walil Archer, nice to meet you. I’m getting some behind the scenes [filming]. 

OR: Do you mind briefly introducing yourselves?

Dino Andrade: My name is Dino Andrade, I’ve been a voice actor since the mid-’80s. Probably what I’m best known for is numerous characters in World of Warcraft – High Tinker Mekkatorque, Professor Putricide, Fungalmancer Glop – I’ve been part of Warcraft for 14, 15 years now. And I’m also the Scarecrow from Batman: Arkham Asylum, Speedy Gonzalez for the new Looney Tunes, I’ve been Pop from Rice Krispies [imitates Pop] “Snap, Crackle, Pop! Rice Krispies!” I’ve done radio, campaigns for the Los Angeles Dodges [and] Delta Airlines – I’ve been at this for quite a while.

And this is my son, Connor. Connor is Baby Grizzly for We Baby Bears for Cartoon Network. He’s also been Toddler Groot for Marvel – for Spider-Man: Maximum Venom. He’s been on The Casagrandes, and he premiered in an independent feature called Samsam where he played a Martian by the name of Sweat Pea. I was a villain in that movie, the Marthial – so we worked together on [Connor’s] first thing, and that was pretty cool.

Connor Andrade voiced Baby Grizz in Wee Baby Bears for two seasons.

OR: In a 2013 Comikaze interview with Fanversation, you said that you are “someone who is both Meisner trained and trained at the Groundlings” and that you’re “very improv oriented.” The Groundlings are known for their improv, sketch comedy, and live performances since 1974, and the Meisner acting technique focuses on the actor engaging with their acting partner.

A lot of times with voice acting though, it is just you in the booth and you’re responding with pre-written lines to another person’s pre-recorded lines as you also try to match mouth flaps on the screen. Does your background with the Groundlings and the Meisner Technique apply also to voice acting, and if so, how have you utilized it in your career?

DA: ABSOLUTELY it does! [laughs] When talking about matching lip flaps – you’re talking about dubbing, like working on anime or live action dubbing, so on. Oftentimes, what is written on the page for the dubbing, when we go to actually record it, it doesn’t actually match all of the lip flap. And so we’ve got to very, very quickly come up with a different line, different read, add words, subtract words, etcetera. And that’s where that training comes in, because you have to think on the spot and you can’t just be sitting there going “Ahhh, umm, I don’t knowwwww, I didn’t have time to prep this.” You have to be able to come up with stuff – we can be really collaborative.

When it’s not dubbing, and you’re doing original animation, it is extremely helpful, because you never know what you’re going to wind up doing on the fly. For example, if you’re working on video games, you’re often not given the script in advance. So you don’t really know what you’re recording until you get into the booth, and you won’t have time to prepare – you have to do what my good friend Dave Fennoy said, what he calls ‘instant acting.’ So improvisational techniques and all that work that all the Meiser – all of that comes to a head, all of that comes right in there, and so, yes: absolutely. Absolutely.

A lot of Meisner’s based upon what they call the ‘magic as if,’ where you perform something as if this or as if this, and so on. Those things get you from A to Z very quickly, so when voiceover – we’re oftentimes flying by the seat of your pants that it is, oh boy, so helpful. So Meisner, Groundlings – all of that was huge, huge for me.

OR: I want to follow-up on your video game work.

You voiced the Scarecrow in 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. One of the most interesting parts of the development process, as Paul Dini – the game’s writer discussed in a 2009 interview with the Telegraph – was that Rocksteady knew within five minutes of their first development meeting that they wanted to use voice talent from Batman: The Animated Series to reprise various roles. You also said in a September 2015 interview with 91.8 The Fan that you auditioned for the Scarecrow and the Joker, and that they were specifically looking for someone who could do Mark Hamill’s Joker.

When you tried to book this job – and even when you were actively recording the lines – did Rocksteady also want you to imitate the Scarecrow from B: TAS? How did you find your own version of the Scarecrow for this game?

DA: I was not asked to match what was done in the series. I was just given the audition copy, and an image of what the Scarecrow looked like. The concept of the Scarecrow for me came out of that image – it was like, it was basically acting from the outside in. It was like putting on a costume and seeing how I felt with the costume. And what it was, was seeing the gloves, and seeing the needles coming out of the gloves. And when I looked at that, I just imagined what it would be like if those needles went into my hands and through the arms and across the chest – this kind of rictus band.

As I began to feel that, I began to get [slowly transitions into the Scarecrow’s voice as he stands, leaning forward with his arms outstretched at an angle behind him] an idea of what it was the voice would sound like. And that was where I found it. [goes back to his normal voice] And in fact, most of the game was recorded with me in this position. They actually had to re-mike me, because that’s how I felt it. So, it was all about a feeling that I got, that came from the photo that was sent, the picture that the design arc of the Scarecrow.

OR: One of my favorite roles by you is when you voiced God of Used Book Markets in The Night is Short, Walk On Girl and when you explain how all books are interconnected. Can you talk a bit about your experience with that movie? Did you ever get to meet Tomihiko Morimi, the author of the original book?

DA: I did not. I did not, because that was recorded during the height of the pandemic, and so it was recorded from my home studio.

So, I basically had the English director, Stephanie Sheh – on a screen, via Zoom, and I’m recording from home. And all I could see were just my scenes. And let me tell you: That sequence, because I’m saying all these titles in rapid fire with Japanese names, in order, we had to write all the names phonetically as opposed to trying to get me to understand how to say, because it was just too fast. So, everything was spelled phonetically for me, because that sequence, I’m like: ‘This connects to that, this connects to this, this connects to that, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’

And that just took forever to record, and we just went line by line by line to get the timing. Because, of course, being anime, I’m also having to match the lip flaps. So it’s not just a matter of saying it quickly and as if I knew what I was saying, it’s also got to fit in that space.

And that was, boy – that was, Ooooof. [laughs] I am very proud of that. When we played back the finished thing, wow!

“But DragonCon is about us geeks. And that’s what I love about it. It is our Halloween, our Mardi Gras, it’s us celebrating us.”

OR: You voiced additional Bidoof in last year’s Pokemon short, Bidoof’s Big Stand. What was the booking process like? After all, Bidoofs can only say their name.

DA: Bidoof!

It’s funny, those are things that are a little past my time. For people who don’t know, this keeps you young. I am two weeks away from 60 – [Connor’s] siblings are all in their 30s, I was born September 16, 1963 when The Outer Limits premiered. So, these were not characters from my childhood, right? The characters from my childhood were things like Gumby. I grew up a disciple of Ron Sterling and Gene Rodenberry and Ray Bradberry, and these folx. So, when I got the audition copy, there was no nerves on my part of ‘Oh my god, this huge franchise! I need to be part of it!’

It was just something I knew my kid knows what it is, but I’m just going to create the character as I see. And when I saw [Connor imitates Bidoof] Bidoof, Bidoof! [goes back to normal voice] – exactly – and it wasn’t until after I did it that people went ‘Oh my God!’ and I didn’t know, I just approached it as an actor as I would approach anything. I suppose it is like that for Star Trek – if I got this thing on Star Trek, I’d be going ‘Oh my God!’ you know. I just approached it as an actor and looked at the little character, and thought ‘[w]hat might this sound like?’ and did it. It was only until later that people were like ‘[d]o you know what this is?!” [and I replied] “Not really?” And I was like “Ohhhhh! That’s cool! Yeah, I have heard of that, I know what that is.”

Dino Andrade voiced additional Bidoof in Bidoof’s Big Stand.

OR: [Connor], I have a question for you.

Connor Andrade: I didn’t do it!

OR: Your dad posted on X, previously known as Twitter, that you’ve beaten him out for voice acting gigs. What’s that like for you?

CA: I have?

DA: It was Wee Baby Bears, son. Remember? They did the kids and they opened it up to adults – so we were both reading for Grizz.

CA: That was all – 2018? 2020?

OR: 2020, I think.

CA: 2020 – I barely remember that, I mean, when I think of Wee Baby Bears, I think of going into the booth. My vague memory of being there with the audition company was [deadpan voice] ‘Another audition, yay.’ [returns to normal voice] not expecting to get it for two years. I totally forgot that dad had read for it and doing it with adults at all. I had no idea.

DA: You had to understand that when we hit the pandemic, we were essentially out of work for only a couple of weeks before studios realized ‘Wait a moment, for animation, that can all be done from home.’ These animators had computer stations at home – there are actors who have studios at home. And we were one of those actors who had a full studio at home. So all the sudden, we were just inundated with auditions for everything, because we could work. It was just that blur of ‘[h]ey, there’s this show son, we’re reading for the same part! Haha, good luck!’

CA: And now I’m on the show for two years! Sadly, there is no season three.

DA: It doesn’t look like it.

CA: Warner Brothers did the whole thing – and no season three.

DA: Maybe they’ll change their minds, but we’ll find out. The point is: It was all part of a blur, and it was a lot of joking, you know, as we’re going in and out of our booth at home. ‘Look, we’re reading for the same thing! Ha ha ha.’ But there was no ‘Darn it! Or HA HA!’ It was just a day in the life.

OR: Question for both of you – we are here on Sunday of DragonCon 2023. What has your DragonCon experience been like for this year so far? I know for you [Dino], this is not your first DragonCon.

DA: No, this is about my 15th. I was coming to DragonCon for at least five years before I was ever invited as a guest – because this is my favorite convention. I love DragonCon. I’ve also been to San Diego Comic Con many, many times. But it’s a completely different environment. San Diego Comic Con is about the shows, about the movies, about the books, about the comics – about all of those things that we geeks are into. But DragonCon is about us geeks. And that’s what I love about it. It is our Halloween, our Mardi Gras, it’s us celebrating us. And that’s what I love about it, because I think of myself as a geek who made it, right? I grew up loving great works of imagination, I loved science fiction and fantasy – I wanted to be part of it. And now I am, and have been for quite a long time.

But this is [Connor’s] first! So, go head, tell them what you think about DragonCon?

CA: [My] first time going on a plane, never been on a plane before! But since this was Georgia, and we’re in California, we had to hop onto a tube and go ‘[w]heeeee!’ up in the air. Get off the plane, we’re in Atlanta and I’m ‘[t]his doesn’t feel different?’ And the weather happens, and it’s raining and we’re inside a cloud in our hotel room.

The con itself – way more different costumes, there’s someone dressed up as Clippy from Microsoft, if you’ve never seen that.

DA: What was the giant pink thing you saw?

CA: Yeah! Kirby! There was a giant, inflatable, fluffy Kirby. It was hilarious. You could hug it, it was fluffy but inflatable, so you could squish it. The main atrium thing of the Marriott – it’s amazing. I wish I could have been there when the carpet was still there. The Walk of Fame – we were on the Walk of Fame in a booth. People walked by, you can wave to people and say ‘[h]ello, cool costume!’ It was fun. Everything is in different buildings, which I am not used to. The googly eyes are everywhere, which is funny. It’s very unique, very different. I really like how different and big it is. It is bigger than Comic Con.

OR: To wrap up the interview – I see you’re wearing a Jump Leads shirt. What can you tell us about that?

DA: Jump Leads is a comedy sci-fi podcast. It is an original story – Season One runs six episodes, and it is something that I co-produce with a gentleman by the name of Ben Paddon, who also wrote the episodes and stars in them. I also am a cast member through almost all but one episode. Connor’s also in the show. I also directed a number of the episodes – I directed episodes one, two, and six.

And this is just something that we did out of our love of science fiction and comedy, and wanted to create our own content. So, we made it [and] we’re very, very proud of it. People can go to JumpLeads.zone or anywhere podcasts are available. And we’re currently working on Season Two. It’s very funny, it’s good stuff.

OR: Any idea when we should expect Season Two?

DA: It’s actually being written right now. So, we’re probably not going to start recording until towards the end of this year or the beginning of next. Because, we don’t have any corporate overlords saying: ‘[g]et it done NOW!’ So we’re really taking our time to do a great job with the writing. But it’s something we’re very, very proud of. We’ve gotten great responses to it. And it’s just a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

Jump Leads!

CA: Yeah!

OR: Thank you very much, I appreciate it!

What are your favorite roles of Dino and Connor Andrade?

Have you given Jump Leads a try yet?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post DragonCon 2023 INTERVIEW: Dino Andrade and Connor Andrade appeared first on oprainfall.

If there is one takeaway from The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks this past Sunday, it is this: Geoff Keighley knows how to pull off a well-oiled show that fits within a time limit. There was very little downtime during the two-hour concert, it was clear that the concert was incredibly well-rehearsed, and I loved every moment of this celebration of 10 years for The Game Awards.

First, The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks could not have picked a better venue than the Hollywood Bowl. I viewed the concert in the pool circle, but I purposefully walked up to the very back of the venue before and after the show and I found that it was a great view no matter where you were. The acoustics from where I was up front was admittedly very great, and you can see the iconic Hollywood sign in the background from the very top of the bowl. It is the spot in Los Angeles to see a concert outside of possibly the Microsoft Theater in downtown L.A., and it is certainly the most iconic place to be.

The producer and host of The Game Awards and The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks, Geoff Keighley, opened the concert by saying that this was “[s]uch a special night for me”. You could feel a real, honest, charisma radiating from him as he introduced each upcoming musical selection in an extremely-well rehearsed and scripted bit of dialogue. Amazingly, Mr. Keighley pulled off the tricky balancing act of not overstaying his welcome at any given point while also setting up the next suite or single to be performed or guest to be welcomed to the stage, and he did not overshadow the various guest appearances or the Los Angeles Philharmonic itself.

There were 15 different suites and singles performed during The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks, and almost all of them were from recent titles such as God of War: Ragnarök, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, and just-released titles such as FINAL FANTASY XVI and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.  The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks even flexed the strength of its popularity and success by playing music from two un-released games: a debut suite from Starfield and the main title track from Spider-Man 2. There were only a handful of older games  represented at the show: Diablo II and Diablo III as part of the Diablo IV suite, and a suite from The Last of Us. If you played video games at all, chances are there was something that you recognized being played during the concert.

No matter what game The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks wanted to present music from, the concert made sure to have the defining version of that music played. For example, Hades had the vocal track In the Blood, and the concert had Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett, who sang the original track, perform live. Eivør, a vocalist from God of War: Ragnarök, sang as part of that game’s suite. Finally, Gustavo Santaolalla himself came onto the stage to perform part of the melody (and a solo!) for the music he composed from The Last of Us. Every moment performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic honestly felt a bit like magic, and they really showed off just how much the music in video games are art.

The most intriguing part of the show, for me, was the video accompaniments for each of the 15 of the 15 pieces performed, as the Ten-Year Theme for The Game Awards had fireworks to view overhead instead. Mr. Keighley informed the audience throughout the show that the studios were the ones who came up with the suites, and it was intriguing to see how each studio approached the video accompaniment. On one end, Riot Games created a League of Legends and Arcane suite with an accompanying video that contained plot content from Arcane mashed up with videos from LoL competitions and video game cutscenes. On the far other side of things, Naughty Dog’s suite for The Last of Us was only accompanied by panoramas of various locations in the game that gave nothing away if you haven’t played the series. Having attended a wide variety of video game concerts over the years, I found myself loving how each studio created its own ‘voice’ in how to set up the video musical accompaniment. The wide variety of styles also ensured that I would never get bored or know quite what to expect when a new game was about to be performed.

Of course, then there is Jack Black and Tenacious D. I have never seen Tenacious D perform before, but the first half of the The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks was capped off by Tenacious D coming on stage and performing their new-single Video Games. Tenacious D absolutely owned every bit of that stage they were on. I had never heard the song before, but it definitely was a lot of fun to listen to. The real shock of the night, for me, was when Jack Black returned at the very end of the show to perform the single Peaches from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. This song, which peaked at number 56 on the US Billboard Hot 100, had Jack Black performing in a full Bowser outfit and singing his absolute heart out with a grand piano accompanying him. It was amazing, it was ridiculous, and it was literally everything I wanted to see at The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks.

It was also, unfortunately, the only musical representation that Nintendo-exclusive titles had at the show. All of the various pieces performed came from games that were exclusive to or cross-platform on the PlayStation, Xbox, or PC platforms. While some games such as Hades are available to play on the Nintendo Switch, I was quite surprised that there were no suites from Nintendo-exclusives such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Super Mario Odyssey that were played. I do not know if this was Nintendo simply refusing to permit scores from their games being played or if this was a decision by The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks to not include Nintendo-exclusive music, but their absence was definitely felt by me until Peaches was performed by Jack Black and it felt like Nintendo was finally represented in some way at the very end of the show.

As Geoff Keighley said right before the Ten-Year Theme was performed, “[t]his has been so incredible.” And honestly? He wasn’t wrong. The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks is one of my favorite video game concerts that I have ever been to, and I cannot wait to see what The Game Awards has planned next. If there was just more Nintendo-exclusive content, this concert would have been an easy perfect score. However, it is due to the amount of high-quality games and performances present, plus the conclusive performance of Peaches, that it almost completely makes up for it.

If you did not get to go, then you truly missed out on something special. Personally, I want some version of The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks to become a yearly thing, as I would definitely attend again, and I encourage anyone who can to attend whenever another show is hopefully put on.

Review Score
Overall

Were you able to attend The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks? What was your favorite performance?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post REVIEW: The Game Awards 10-Year Concert with Fireworks appeared first on oprainfall.

You can see tour dates and buy tickets for upcoming performances of CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert here.

You can also find out more about La Fée Sauvage on their official website.

CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert is, more than anything else, an amazing concert to attend. If you’re a fan of the FINAL FANTASY series, even casually, you will recognize a lot of the music being played during this show. The two pianists (yes, there were two) put on an amazing performance by syncing up the video presented on the screen while making sure their hearts were clearly invested in pulling off highly-emotional compositions for the audience. That said, there are some odd choices made by SQUARE ENIX and La Fée Sauvage that do detract from the performance and serve somewhat as a distraction during the show. All in all, CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert is genuinely a concert for FINAL FANTASY fans that should not be missed.

“Both pianists were emotionally and physically invested in their performance, and I was in awe while watching them perform complex scores from the venerable FINAL FANTASY franchise.”

First, the music: I attended the early evening performance of CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert on March 3, 2023 in San Francisco, and there was a total of 23 pieces played. The concert was clearly geared towards people who started playing the series starting with FINAL FANTASY VII, and it had a special emphasis on music from FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in the second half of the performance. For me, this was not surprising as FINAL FANTASY only truly entered mainstream gaming after the beginning of the PlayStation era, and so it makes sense that SQUARE ENIX and La Fée Sauvage would want to create a show aimed at that audience. This concert played all the ’hits’ from other FINAL FANTASY concerts such as Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY or A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY. For example: you’re going to hear Ronfaure (FINAL FANTASY XI Online); you’re going to hear To Zanarkand (FINAL FANTASY X); and you’re definitely going to hear Aerith’s Theme (FINAL FANTASY VII). All of these classic pieces were all extremely well arranged and very recognizable even if there wasn’t a full or small backing orchestra playing.

The concert hall itself was a small, intimate setting that was not unlike the concert I attended in Berkley, California for A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY. There was only one seating level, and there were not a TON of seats available in the theatre. This had the dual purpose of both letting everyone have a good view of the pianists and the stage while also creating a much more ‘cozy’ feeling. I do not know if this is simply a feature of where I am currently seeing FINAL FANTASY concerts in Northern California or if this is how these shows are now put on, but I honestly love this change from the massive theaters that I had previously attended SQUARE ENIX concerts in before. You could also hear the sea gulls from outside during the performance, and it added a bit of local ‘flavor’ to it that made me really wish Fisherman’s Horizon (FINAL FANTASY VIII) had made the final setlist.

The first half of CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert took place over roughly 45 minutes with 11 pieces played, and the remainder took place after a 15-minute intermission. After the intermission, the pianist was changed out for the last half of the concert. Once the second part was completed, both pianists then alternated playing an encore performance. Each musical piece was introduced with the title of the FINAL FANTASY game that it came from before being played against a video from that particular game that either was directly taken from the part of the game where that score was first played or through a montage that showed off the game in general. The video pieces were continually intercut back-and-forth with live clips of the pianist playing the song, either from the keyboard itself or a waist-up view of the performance. Interestingly, the clips from the NES and Super NES-era FINAL FANTASY titles seemed to be taken from the FINAL FANTASY PIXEL REMASTER versions of those games. This was a bit unexpected for me, as I had played those games on various original Nintendo/PlayStation One platforms they were published on for North America, and I have not yet picked up these newest retro re-releases.

The pianists were the clear star of the show. As various FINAL FANTASY cutscenes and gameplay swirled on the screen overhead, the performers would frequently lean into the keyboard or lean back while playing, depending on the intensity of the piece. Both pianists were emotionally and physically invested in their performance, and I was in awe while watching them perform complex scores from the venerable FINAL FANTASY franchise. There was no ‘phoning it in’ for this show by either performer, and I was constantly pulled away from watching the cutscenes projected on the screen to focus on their actual playing, as it was completely enchanting. The pianists were not afraid to demand the audience’s attention to make sure that this was a concert for FINAL FANTASY fans and that they were the ones who were making it happen.

What was most interesting for me was how many arrangements were presented for the ‘sung’ themes for FINAL FANTASY games. There were piano versions for Eyes On Me (FINAL FANTASY VIII), Melodies of Life (FINAL FANTASY IX), Kiss Me Good-Bye (FINAL FANTASY XII), FINAL FANTASY XIII- The Promise (FINAL FANTASY XIII); and Answers (FINAL FANTASY XIV Online) was featured as one of the encores. I have listened to all of these pieces before as part of various CD collections, and I was able to mentally track the lyrics for each song in my head in time with the live performance. The piano really ‘sung’ the melody notes for Eyes on Me and Melodies of Life in such a way that it made both songs sparkle and stand on their own. For fans who do know all of the lyrics, La Fée Sauvage and SQUARE ENIX occasionally synced the video clips and live piano performances up with the imagined-lyrics in such a way to make the piano-melodied lyrics fit perfectly with what is happening on screen. I am being a little vague on purpose here, as I think it was simply one of the most magical parts of the entire show and I do not want to spoil it for anyone else. But trust me: you will gasp like I did when you see and hear it.

My favorite two pieces, were, by far, A New Horizon- Tavnazian Archipelago (FINAL FANTASY XI Online: The Chains of Promathia) and Valse di Fantastica (FINAL FANTASY XV). It is no secret that FINAL FANTASY XI Online is my favorite FINAL FANTASY title. This particular song was played perfectly, and I felt myself drawn into so many memories of struggling through that expansion and discovering the beauty of the Marquisate of Tavnazia while the story of Prishe and Selh’teus played out for the fate of Vana’diel. Valse di Fantastica was one of the pieces that I openly voiced during the intermission would be played. I loved Altissia in FINAL FANTASY XV- enough so that I actually visited it’s inspiration, Venice, and wrote about it in as a travelog– and the encore performance for that song against the game’s story perfectly closed out the night.

I have, so far, talked about a lot of positives for CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE : FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert and that is because it truly was a great show. That said, there were some disappointing and odd choices for this performance.

First and foremost, for a concert that opens with a montage of all the mainline FINAL FANTASY games through FINAL FANTASY XV, there were no stand-alone pieces for FINAL FANTASY I, FINAL FANTASY II, or FINAL FANTASY III. I was really hoping to hear The Rebel Army (FINAL FANTASY II) or The Crystal Tower (FINAL FANTASY III), both of which are truly iconic songs from those games and which are perfectly suited for the piano. There was also no love for the various FINAL FANTASY spin-off titles. For example, the song Sunset Path from Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII is one of the most beautiful compositions in the entire franchise and it is easily adaptable for the piano. While SQUARE ENIX is finally giving some love to the MMORPG expansions for FINAL FANTASY XI Online and FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in their mainline concert series, it is truly a tragedy that these spin-off and sequel titles are still ignored.

“CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE : FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert is a concert that I don’t think you should miss if you’re looking to hear your favorite FINAL FANTASY compositions in a new way.”

All of the pieces in CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert, with the exception of Mambo de Chocobo (FINAL FANTASY V) that closed out the first half of the show, comprise a very somber setlist. Some of the FINAL FANTASY series’ more light-hearted pieces, such as Jesters of the Moon (FINAL FANTASY IX), Costa del Sol (FINAL FANTASY VII), or Ride On (FINAL FANTASY VIII), would have been great to sprinkle in from time to time to break up the heavy mood. I do recognize, however, that this would have resulted in some fairly deep cuts being performance that more casual FINAL FANTASY fans would not have recognized. Even though this is a show that played almost all of the classic and modern ‘hits’ that people want to hear live, with the possible exception of Aria Di Mezzo Carattere (FINAL FANTASY VI), and that not everything can fit into a two-hour block, I still would have liked a bit more tonal variety.

The part of CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert that bothered me the most, and the part that some of the audience around me had issues with too, was that there was no opening or closing remarks during the show. In fact, the two pianists were not introduced to the audience whatsoever. For a show that placed such an emphasis on the pianists’ performances to the point where their playing was constantly intercutting the cutscenes on the video, it would have been nice to know who they were. This strange choice of not acknowledging the performers had the unintended effect of somewhat reducing them both, despite their clear reverence for the series’ music, to being performance props. I have been reviewing video game concerts since 2017, and this is the first time this has happened. I don’t know if it was only for this particular San Francisco show or if that is a reoccurring event for CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert, but failing to identity and recognize the sole performers for the show that is so intricately intertwined within the shown cinematics is inexcusable.

There were a couple more odd things that I noticed that are worth mentioning. The only merchandise sold at this show was a three-disc CD piano-arrangement album titled Piano Opera FINAL FANTASY I-IX. You could only buy this album in cash, and I was a little surprised that they didn’t have any other merch, such as a themed tote bag, a themed T-shirt, or even generic character keychains or music boxes from the various games that are already being sold in the online SQUARE ENIX Store. The other odd aspect was that this was, in a lot of ways, a ‘spoiler-free’ performance for the games. You don’t see the pivotal moment of what happens to certain characters in FINAL FANTASY X, FINAL FANTASY VII, FINAL FANTASY XV, etc. Instead, you just see the direct before and after of it with that little bit just cut out. What this does is that it slightly lessens the emotional ‘punch’ that you know is inevitably coming in the piece because of what happened in the game. The only reason that I could figure is that this is intentional by La Fée Sauvage and SQUARE ENIX to not spoil the various games for people who may not have picked up those FINAL FANTASY titles yet to play through.

Finally, I wish we could have gotten a ‘sneak peek’ musical performance from the upcoming newest release in the series, FINAL FANTASY XVI. It would have been the perfect way to cap off the night, though I totally understand why SQUARE ENIX didn’t include that game within the setlist.

CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE : FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert is a concert that I don’t think you should miss if you’re looking to hear your favorite FINAL FANTASY compositions in a new way. The final score that I am giving this concert is one that I honestly thought a lot about before scoring, and it is definitely one of the hardest that I have had to give so far. The quality of the pianists is just so good, and the song selection is so amazing, that it does overpower any other issues I had with the show besides not introducing the performers to the audience. I ultimately had a wonderful time going, and I will gladly wait for the next FINAL FANTASY concert series to be announced.

Review Score
Overall

You can see tour dates and buy tickets for upcoming performances of CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert here.

Ticket was purchased by the reviewer.

Have you been to see CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert? 

What was your favorite FINAL FANTASY composition played?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post REVIEW: CRYSTALLINE RESONANCE: FINAL FANTASY Piano Concert appeared first on oprainfall.

Dragon Con, with all of its many themed tracks that range from puppetry to urban fantasy and filk, has something for everyone to enjoy. At this year’s convention (which had 65,000 attendees), one of the most well-known voice actors in the video game industry, Nolan North, stopped on by to sign autographs and participate in panel discussions. If you aren’t quite aware of who he is, then all you need to know is that he not only voices Ghost in the Destiny series and Nathan Drake in the Uncharted games, but he also played Dr. Chris Ramsey on Port Charles for the show’s entire run.

On one of the last days of this year’s con, I (along with reporters from Culture Slate and The Direct), caught up with Nolan North to talk about his lengthy career in the acting and voice acting industries, his foray into voicing the Uncharted audiobook adaptation, and what he thinks about his first visit to Dragon Con.

You can follow Nolan North over on Instagram, on Twitter, and on TikTok. 

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Nolan North: Hi, it’s September 4th, 2022, interview: Nolan North. Take One. There is no take two. [laughs]

Operation Rainfall: You took over the role of Ghost from Peter Dinklage in Destiny: The Taken King expansion. Can you talk a little bit what it was like recording new dialogue and re-recording old dialogue for a role that Bungie publicly disclosed that they recast not due to Mr. Dinklage’s performance but due to availability? Were you expected to approach the role like how Mr. Dinklage had [previously] voiced it?

Nolan North: It was [a] very, very interesting set of circumstances. It was the only time that I had been called for what they said was a ‘paid audition,’ which is like an actor’s dream. There is no such thing- they actually brought me in, but they didn’t tell me when I went in there that they were looking to recast the role. They just wanted to work on this character, this AI character. I had no real previous knowledge of Ghost and Destiny very much, even though my youngest played the game incessantly. I went in and said, ‘My son plays Destiny, what are we doing?’ They said, ‘We’re just talking about this character, and we’re trying to find this voice.’ And we were talking about it, and I had no idea. So, I went ahead, and we finally found a voice that worked [imitates Ghost’s voice] and we got down to it and we were sitting here in this kind of area. 

And at the end of it, they said ‘thank you, and now we are going to tell you what is going on.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ They said that if this goes forward and is approved, this is going to replace Peter Dinklage. And I was like ‘Oh, is that who does Ghost?’ And they said ‘Yeah.’ And I literally remember going ‘How does he do that? He’s in Northern Ireland shooting.’ They go ‘It’s kind of why you’re here. And the internet and everyone is all ‘Oh, because of his performance.’ Peter Dinklage is a brilliant actor, but if you’ve ever been to Northern Ireland, it is full of sheep, grass, and wind. It’s really, really hard- I’ve been in Belfast one time, and I had a driver taking me around, and he drove a lot of the people from Game of Thrones. Some of them would be picked up at 2:30, 3 in the morning to drive three hours to the location where they would have to sit in a makeup chair for another 3-5 hours. You just can’t get things done, because this is my bread and butter, sometimes Bungie will call and [say that] we have to pick up some lines by Friday. It is just not going to happen with Peter and the schedule he had at the time.

It wasn’t anything having to do with anybody’s performance; I was happy to step in. I did not- this is the good news- the scary thing is that after we did Taken King and it was received really well, I was like ‘Great, I’ll be happy to go on.’ And they were like, ‘Next, we’re going to actually have you’ – they set up a bunch of sessions- ‘to go back and replace his dialogue.’ I’m 51 years old, and I had no idea that that could be done. I was like ‘There’s a disc, and the voices on the disc when you put it in-’ and they were like ‘It’s a live game.’ I said, ‘Are you telling me that you can replace-?’, and they said ‘Yeah, you’re going to record all of the lines and then one day, on a Friday, we’re going to update the system and he’s out and you’re in.’ And all I could think about was ‘Hang on kids, welcome to Uncharted starring Peter Dinklage as Nathan Drake someday.’ And he’s going to be like [imitates Peter Dinklage] ‘Hey, I’ve got your back.’

I had no idea that you could do that in a live game! That you could take years of a performance over different games and one day someone can go ‘Nyah! Let’s do something different.’ Terrifying technology, and it keeps me on my toes to try to do the best that I can. But it’s been a blessing, and I think Peter’s okay with it because he’s doing just fine, so I am glad for Peter’s success because it is one of the few times that you’ve replaced an actor because they are becoming too successful to continue the job because they’re not available. So, cheers to Peter.

Culture Slate: So, here’s a weird one for you- when you were filming Port Charles, what was your favorite episode?

Nolan North: So, you do know that we did over 250 episodes over five years? *laughs* 

First of all, it’s been nice here at Dragon Con- Port Charles was very successful on the East Coast. I’ve been up in New England, New York, Philadelphia, in the Atlantic area or down in Tampa- wherever I go, people go ‘I remember you in Port Charles!’ Sometimes, they bring up a picture from when I was 26 years old, and I go ‘What happened to me?!’

What was my favorite episode…

There was an episode with Eddie Albert Jr. that I did. He played Charles Heston’s son in the original movie Midway, and I was a big fan of the movie and I couldn’t believe I was working with him. And he played the girl’s father- he was Doctor Devlin, a big, famous surgeon. But I got to work with him one-on-one, and we were both kind of shady characters. And just working opposite him was a lot of fun. There honestly so many memories from that show that it is hard to just pick one.

Culture Slate: That’s totally understandable- my grandmother used to watch it all the time when I was a kid, so I figured that I had to give something back to her.

Nolan North: You know, my grandmother was a big fan of soap operas, and I remember when I was coming home one time- I never had aspirations to be an actor- and I was coming home one time to watch Tom and Jerry or some cartoon I wanted to watch, and she was watching her stories. And I said, ‘These are stupid’, and she said ‘Don’t knock them, you’re going to be on one of these someday. Watch.’ And her name is Hazel- we used to call her ‘Witch Hazel’- and I was like ‘No I’m not, I’m going to be a baseball player.’ She said ‘Nope, you’re going to be on one of these and you’re going to take care of that Roman character for me. He’s a bad guy.’ [OR Note: Roman Brady was a character on Days of Our Lives.] And I got a laugh. 

Years later, Roman was played by a guy named Wayne Northrup. When I got to Port Charles, the dressing rooms went down by alphabetical order- Julie Pinson, Nolan North, and right next to me was Wayne Northrup. He was on the show, I think he played Rex…something. I don’t remember. [OR Note: Rex Stanton.]

“But it was a blast, and that’s where I found [Nathan’s] voice [for the Uncharted audio book]. I just wanted to go a little younger, honor that Tom was playing in his twenties- he is in his twenties.”

The Direct: Uncharted 4 used to be a very different game, and you’ve spoken on record about some of the things that were different. One of them was how Cutter used to have a big role. He was one of my favorite characters in [Uncharted] 3, and when I got to what was released, Cutter wasn’t in it at all. I was wondering if you could shed any more light on what Cutter is doing.

Nolan North: So you know, we only got so far in the game, but there was a big heist. I don’t know if I am supposed to talk about it, but the franchise is kind of shutdown, but there is really no controversy or big story or big drama. The only thing I remember- Graham McTavish, who plays Cutter- a dear, dear friend of mine. It was some of the funniest stuff that I have ever been in and in what Graham did. And Graham was a very gruff exterior. He plays really tough characters and preachers and saint of killers and outlanders. He’s now the head of the guard in the new House of Dragons. He’s a sweetheart though, funny, smart, and so, so funny.

All I remember is there was- we had done some stuff, we had mo-capped everything, and it was a big heist scene that they actually had in Uncharted 4. But it just played out differently. And Cutter in the scene- all I remember- I am sorry to be vague, but Cutter insisted that he would be in disguise. They were terrible, I don’t know if it was a nose or he had teeth. He’s just talking very funny, and we couldn’t get through the scene. Remember, this isn’t just VO but full body motion capture and we’re doing it just like a film. And we couldn’t get through it. And I do remember one line where he turned to Sully. He says ‘Do you want a disguise?’ and he goes “No!”. [Then he goes] ‘How about a ‘mustáge’?’. [Sully] goes ‘I have a ‘mustáge’.” And he paused, and Graham goes ‘You want a better one?’ And I just remember it was that kind of humor- it was a little more of a caper, that kind of pulp. It was funny. That’s what I remember. And you should know- Graham McTavish was [Zoran] Lazarević in Uncharted 2. He and I became so close that Amy Hannig wrote him as Cutter for Uncharted 3, and that was one of the reasons. So I like to tell Graham that if it wasn’t for me being such a kind, good-hearted person taking on his friendship then it wouldn’t have happened. And he tells me [imitating McTavish’s Cutter] that ‘I’m an idiot.’ 

That’s another great line that he did in Uncharted 3– When they’re going through and he [is supposed to go] ‘Lead on, McDuff’, he goes ‘It’s ‘Lay on, McDuff’. We had written it as ‘Lead on’, and he goes ‘It’s Lay on, McDuff.’ And we go ‘What?’ And he goes ‘It’s lay on- shut up.’ And we get through the squeezing through of this thing, and when we get out I kind of adlib ‘Who’s McDuff?’ And we thought ‘Haha.’ We finish the scene, and Graham just stopped, looked, [and said] ‘Is there no bottom to your ignorance?’ And Amy’s over there laughing, ‘Yeah, that’s in.’ People sometimes think we’ve done all kind of improv. Amy wrote 95 percent of it or more, she wrote it all. But every now and then, we throw something out and sometimes it made it into that: ‘Who’s McDuff?’ ‘Is there no bottom to your ignorance?’ Just said it, it’s one of my funniest. I told you I would give you short answers!

Operation Rainfall: You voiced the 2022 audiobook of the Uncharted movie. What was it like voicing the written adaptation of Tom Holland’s adaptation of a character you’ve been bringing to life since 2007, and how did you end up finding the voice you ended up using for Nate? It’s not quite like the voice from the games, and it’s not quite like Tom Holland’s [voice].

Nolan North: That’s kind of interesting- you noticed that. 

Operation Rainfall: I bought the audiobook.

Nolan North: It’s better than the movie. *laughs* You know, the one thing is- it’s always those people [who are like] ‘Did you read the book? The book’s better than the movie.’ It does go a little deeper though, there’s more time. When I did my cameo and went to Barcelona- we did the cameo for the film, and they were planning publicity and what they were going to do around it. And then they called me, and they said they wanted me to do the audio[book] version. And I was ‘Yeah, that’d be cool. I’d want to do that, that’d be fun.’ Mostly because I wanted [imitates Antonio Banderas] to do my Antonio Banderas- which I did. And doing a lot of female Australian [accents]. 

But it was interesting, because the audiobook has so much more time- it’s Moncada’s father, you understand why [Santiago] kills him. But Moncada has two scenes: you meet him and then you kill him in the movie. And I was ‘Oh no, that doesn’t make sense’, because you find out what he was doing, and it just goes a little more in depth. It was very rewarding, and I had never seen the script. They offered me, when I did the cameo, to see the script and I said ‘Nope, I want my popcorn and I want to see it for the first time. I don’t want that.’ And then they hired me to do the book, and I’m like ‘Oh! Well, I know what’s going to happen.’

Funniest part about reading that novel- the novelization- was doing my own cameo. It was the first time that I realized ‘Well, it made the film’- number one, there’s never a guarantee. But I wanted to do Nate, but all I did was just my voice. But I just placed it [imitates Nate in the audiobook] a little higher, a little younger- ‘Sully, what are we doing?’. So, rather than [imitates Nate in the game series] ‘No, no no. Oh, crap. No no no! Oh crap!’ So it was somewhere, just- first of all, when you’re doing that many different voices like Chloe and Moncada, and I kind of want to do my- because I grew up in New England near Boston, my mom’s from Boston- so I kind of knew Wahlberg and what he was doing, that kind of do him with a little bit of an edge to it for Sully, [imitates Mark Wahlberg] ‘because everyone wants’ to do [Richard] McGonagle, but you can’t do that Sully. But it was a blast, it was hard though. Hats off to people who read books, because there’s an engineer listening going ‘Let’s stop for a second, take a break, because you start to drone when you’re reading the story.’ 

But it was a blast, and that’s where I found the voice. I just wanted to go a little younger, honor that Tom was playing in his 20s- he is in his 20s. And fortunately, I can just get up there a little higher, and it’s my voice, but if you ever want to go higher in your register [then] take a deep breath and just talk. Because that’s where you stay higher, and when you let it go, you can relax, and you can be lower. If you want to impress a girl- [lowers his vocal register humorously] then stay down low. 

Culture Slate: What made you make the decision to go from a visual medium like television/film to voice acting, mostly, in video games and novelizations?

Nolan North: I had children, I needed to pay for them. I was doing theatre in New York, and I moved to LA. I did Port Charles– that was my first real job. I did little things here and there, but that was my first series regular for five years. And not even five seasons, it’s five years because those shows shoot year-round. And every day, five days a week- it was crazy. So, when that ended, you do a CSI Miami and do JAG. I did Big Love and Six Feet Under for HBO. And just little bit parts. And every actor thinks ‘Well, I’ll just jump on the next big series, and I’ll be on my way! I’ll get my Law & Order, I’m going to do this.’ And those things don’t happen. In the meantime, I do have a family. And Jon Lindstrom actually, who was Kevin in Port Charles, friend of mine said ‘You know, you always used to make us laugh at those voices. You should talk to my voice over agent.’ And I did, and [I] signed on with her. She was my agent up until she just retired a few months back, and I’m still with that company that we were at. 

I never- I always did both. I did seven seasons of Pretty Little Liar, I just got so busy, and it just started to snowball. It’s so much fun, and it’s rewarding. On camera stuff, I am what I look like. But I can be anything in voice over. I can be Nathan Drake, I can be Viking Beaver in Breadwinners for Nickelodeon, I am Blaze in [Blaze and the] Monster Machines, I can be Superman or Superboy or Green Lantern or whatever I’ve done- [imitates Deadpool] ‘Deadpool, let’s go baby’. All these different characters- and it’s just so much fun. So, I leaned into it. And especially with kids, I had friends who would do series and I kind of be a bit envious until I realized that they were in Atlanta or Toronto or New York or Vancouver. Six, seven months, missing birthdays and different things. I was home at night for dinner. I didn’t miss soccer games or football or plays that my kids did. It was important to me- and I remember that I was offered a show that shot out of state, it was just a guest star. It was not going to be a career builder, and I remember thinking ‘I’m going to go down there for a week and lose money, whereas if I work these three days here’- I was booked like a Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I’ll never forget this- ‘I’ll make three times what I would doing that show for a week.’ And I went ‘Well, that just doesn’t make sense, and I would miss different things.’ I’d miss soccer practice, ballgames. I just made that decision. And now that they’re in college and they’re older, I’ve actually started doing more of that again.

And just opening myself to- I did a great independent film we shot last year. I don’t know where it’s going to go, but it’s a great script, no money, shot up in Michigan, but it was a great script and great people to work with, and I was happy to do it. I like doing all that stuff, but that’s why I leaned into [voice acting], and now I kind of look back and I’m trying to find the next thing. I am at a great point of my career where, you know, I don’t need anything. It’s ‘What fulfills me?’ My thing, and this is for any business- I want to work with people that are friends of mine, people I like, and take roles that are challenging and interesting, and find something that’s fun. Or something terrible that pays me a fortune- let’s do that too! ‘Here’s a terrible show, but we’ll pay you too much money.’ That’ll do it for one season, and we’ll all go to the Caribbean! Who wants to go to Cayman [Islands]? Arms up!

“It’s a blast, and if you haven’t- anybody who is listening- never experienced Dragon Con, put it on your bucket list. It’s something to behold.”

The Direct: Uncharted is obviously one of your biggest things, but then more recently, you did The Avengers. So, I wanted to ask- what was your difference in experience [between] those two games, and also those two projects got very different reactions from fans. How does a positive reaction or a really negative [one] play into your experience with the part?

Nolan North: Doesn’t affect my experience at all, is the short answer for that. My experience is before the game even comes out. The difference between the two is that Nathan Drake is the lead character, not only am I doing all the scenes but I’m doing all the motion capture work. The running, jumping through fire, rolling, shooting- every game set move, I’m doing that. I’m in everything. With Avengers– love playing Tony Stark, Iron Man. I mean, how cool is that? We used to joke ‘Oh, it’s Nathan Drake in Mach 4.’ It was a different character, a different kind of style. But it was an ensemble cast. So, it’s like being Iron Man- Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man or in The Avengers. It’s a different dynamic when you’re sharing it with everybody else. A lot of fun on set to be working with Troy [Baker], Travis [Willingham], Jeff [Schine], Laura [Bailey], and everybody. It was a blast, but it just [is] different. You don’t feel as much responsibility like you’re the main guy, you know. A little more time for goofing around.

And I think the reaction had nothing to do with performances or anything. From what I understand, and I’m not knocking anybody, they had a lot of problems with the mechanics of the game. And that’s what I’ve read. It’s not an indictment of the studio or anything, it’s what I’ve read. I think what happens is people have to understand- I could go out and give the best performance of my life. If the game isn’t a good game, no one’s going to play it. You can give a great performance in a bad movie, and people will go ‘Ah, the movie sucked, but wasn’t Philip Seymour Hoffman amazing in that?’, whatever. In a game, it’s a game first. As actors, we got to put our ego aside and go ‘The game has to be good.’

The one exception, in my knowledge, was Deadpool. It has simple mechanics and fights and everything, but it was so funny and ridiculous. And they just- people didn’t even realize it, they wrote a song that was supposed to be in it called F U Legal. And it wasn’t ‘F’. And it was literally to their legal team who kept saying ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ And Deadpool did this whole song and dance number, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. And the guys who wrote that were hysterical. 

The Direct: Did you sing it?

Nolan North: We did. I don’t remember, and I won’t, but it never made it into the game. And High Moon Studios was shut down the second that thing went gold. [OR Note: High Noon Studios is currently owned by Activision.] So I don’t know! I don’t know the ins and outs of the- I am hoping Marvel will let me- I want Marvel to let me do a Deadpool 2 game. I want to shoot it, I want to direct it, and I want to do it the same style as Uncharted. I want to do a very narrative-driven game, and hopefully get Ryan Reynolds to come in and do a cameo. 

Operation Rainfall: Real quick- what has your experience been like at Dragon Con this year?

Nolan North: Dragon Con has been amazing. It is- I’ve never really experienced it like this, it is an absolute party. There are so many people, and we did a great Twisted Toonz panel last night at 8 o’clock, and it was so much fun. I’ve had people coming up today saying ‘We were partying in our hotel room, and everybody quieted down. We were laughing and watching it in the hotel rooms.’ So, there is streaming up there, I didn’t know that. People who couldn’t make it down there, but we finished, and we had to walk through the hotel to the other hotel, and there’s just bridges and people everywhere, and it’s just packed. It is thumping music and you’re like ‘This is- the energy is like no other con that I’ve been at.’

And it makes me wish that I wasn’t here signing and doing stuff. Just put me in a Nathan Drake costume and let me run around- ‘You look just like him!’ ‘Yeah, I know right?’ And it’s so great after what we’ve gone through with the pandemic and everything to see people out, having a good time. Masked or unmasked, whatever, it’s just a party. I guessed it was over three hotels, and it’s over seven. Seven hotels.

I mean, and Saturday, Georgia’s playing Oregon, downtown Atlanta was hoppin’. I can only imagine what the people who live downtown, waking up one day, going ‘Ah, Chewbacca is out front of the building.’ ‘Oh my God, take your pills Laurie.’ It’s a blast, and if you haven’t- anybody who is listening- never experienced Dragon Con, put it on your bucket list. It’s something to behold.

Operation Rainfall/Culture Slate/The Direct: Thank you.

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

What is your favorite role that Nolan North has voiced or acted in? Are you planning on coming to Dragon Con next year?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW: Nolan North Talks Destiny, Uncharted, & Dragon Con appeared first on oprainfall.

Lince Works have released an 8 minute gameplay video for Aragami 2.

About the Game:

FROM DARKNESS THE SHADOW CLAN HAS RETURNED

You are one of the last elite warriors of your kin, the Aragami. Victims of a supernatural affliction which corrodes the body and devours the mind, the Aragami control Shadow Essence – a mystical power which grants the ability to control the shadows. With this power the Aragami carry out their tasks and quests – assignments made all along the valley to ensure the subsistence of the village and to free the Aragami enslaved by the invader armies. Aragami 2 is a third person stealth game where you play as an assassin with the power to control the shadows. Join the shadow clan and fight the invader armies to protect your people

You find 3′ too short and want to see more? We’ve got you covered! We also released an extended gameplay video for you to take a deeper dive into one of the missions in the game. No cheats, just 8 minutes of pure gameplay here:https://t.co/xtuBvbWZoZ

— Aragami 2 (@LinceWorks) June 12, 2021

Aragami 2 will release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC on September 17, 2021.

The post E3 2021: Aragami 2 – 8 Minute Gameplay Video Released appeared first on oprainfall.

Title	Chrono Trigger
Developer	Square
Publisher	Square
Original Release Date	JP: Mar 11, 1995 US: Aug 11, 1995
Genre	RPG
Platform	SNES, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Mobile, PC (Steam)

Chrono Trigger, just reading the name or saying it out loud causes within me a flood of wonderful memories and emotions. For so many of us, Chrono Trigger is the epitome of games. And calling it the greatest of all time, masterpiece, or similar are all completely founded. With its epic story, excellent gameplay, unforgettable soundtrack, and endearing cast of characters, this masterwork of Square is still outperforming and outshining modern releases in and outside the RPG genre.

The year is 1000 A.D and the Millennial Fair is in full swing. Our hero, Crono, and Marle, a young girl he unassumingly runs into, participate in the unveiling of his friend Lucca’s newest invention, a teleporter. As Marle tries it for herself, the machine reacts with her unique heirloom pendant, causing a portal in time to open and flinging her 400 years into the past. Without a moment’s hesitation, Crono takes the pendant and has Lucca send him back to rescue Marle. Little do any of them know that these events are the trigger to a cascade of many more happenings that will ultimately bring about the end of the world. With past, present, and future all in jeopardy, Crono and his friends set out on a journey through time, filled with fateful meetings, perilous struggles, and dire consequences, all in the hopes of ultimately saving humanity from its catastrophic fate.

The story of Chrono Trigger is still one of the most engaging I’ve ever experienced, impressively standing strong and even outshining competition for 25 years and counting. The overarching conflict of preventing the end of the world is full of depth and is only further strengthened by the subplots and individual struggles specific to certain times and particular characters. As for its theme of time travel, though it’s a familiar one, what continues to impress me is the aspect of its manipulation, something we as players get to participate in through our direct actions in the altering of history and events. That, to me, makes the experience truly immersive, as the triggering of said events is mostly done by player actions rather than narrative exposition. The story in its entirety is full of depth and detail, tying together plot, subplots, and character-driven conflicts to produce a thoroughly intriguing, utterly satisfying adventure from start to its ultimate end.

As for its characters, Chrono Trigger truly has one of the most memorable casts in gaming. Though they share certain traits and behaviors at times, each has their own distinct personality which shines through their dialogue, reasoning, and actions. Crono’s courage and will are always on display, and Marle’s outgoing, energetic style makes her incredibly charming. Lucca’s inquisitiveness and compassion; Frog’s drive and sense of loyalty; Ayla’s pure energy and fearlessness; Robo’s ability to encompass and convey the best of human traits and emotions; I could easily write a paragraph or two for each of them. And yet, the opportunity to interact and immerse ourselves into their lives is the real gift. It has been reason alone for my repeated plays over the years. Lastly, it’s always a treat to discover or rediscover a unique conversation or interaction based on the active party you have at the time. Those little details truly take the experience over the top. With its vivid, charismatic characters and the sheer depth and detail of its story, Chrono Trigger delivers a narrative of legendary proportions.

In addition to its fantastic story and its wonderful cast, Chrono Trigger features solid, engaging gameplay. The extensive main campaign and the numerous subquests that add depth, backstory, and the occasional combat advantage, all come together to create a genuinely captivating experience from start to finish. As for its main component, gameplay features turn-based combat with a unique technique system. Each character will learn a set of techniques similar to skills and spells, yet further depth comes in the form of paired and group techniques that can unleash serious damage to enemies. As each character possesses an elemental affinity, as well as a specific attack style, the sheer number of combinations is not only staggering, but incredibly imaginative. I always find myself awed by how the dual techs are inspired by their character’s style and, sometimes, even their personalities. Ayla’s dual techs in particular come to mind, as her straightforwardness and her brute strength are the typical factors of how her techs look and hit. The clever variety in techs, the elemental aspects of them, and the different ways they can hit groups of enemies all keep combat fresh and immersive.

Outside of combat, the RPG elements, such as leveling, keep fairly consistent with enemy growth for a well-balanced outcome. I find the degree of challenge optimal, never requiring excessive grinding, which results in a flowing play pace. The bosses, in particular, provide enough difficulty to require a proper strategy to defeat and, upon said defeat, I always feel that sense of satisfaction you want from a respectable challenge. And of course, using the variety of techs and discovering what works best only adds to the fun. Taken in its entirety, Chrono Trigger’s gameplay is timelessly superb. An amazing main campaign, a set of subquests that offer legitimate backstory, subplot, and purpose to them, and combat that offers a good bit of variation all harmonize for an incredibly fun, fully satisfying experience.

Finally, what ties all of this brilliance in story and gameplay together into one complete masterpiece are Chrono Trigger’s spectacular aesthetics. Visually, Chrono Trigger impresses with its bold styles, dramatic use of color, and its attention to detail, capturing and expressing the fantasy and magic of its diverse characters and time periods. The sprite work is incredible, with its details that bring life to heroes and enemies alike. Through animations, poses, and the like, the strength of Crono and Ayla, the enthusiasm of Marle, or the compassion of Lucca and Robo is palpable. It all further adds to their memorable personalities. The detail that went into the environments is also impressive, and I’m especially awed with the plays on light and dark coloring to convey the tones of the time periods and their locales, as well as events unfolding within. The brightness and large color palette of 1000 A.D pairs with the lively atmosphere of the Millennial Fair. Contrast that with the muted colors of 600 A.D., that speak of a kingdom in turmoil. As for boldness, I love the striking designs of 12000 B.C that overflow with imagination and mystique, telling of an existence both fantastic and fleeting. Or, the lush green, pristine world of 65,000,000 B.C. and how its saturated colors and untouched nature speak of a time before calamity. The bold designs of enemies, too, shine in their ability to instill ferocity and power. Lastly, I love the animations and the greater usage of Akira Toriyama’s designs and artwork in later versions of the game. His artistry takes the visuals to another level, further exalting the already impressive aesthetics.

As for the audio, the soundtrack of Chrono Trigger is nothing short of masterful. Every score is a pleasure to listen to all on its own, and each fits the person, place, and event they represent perfectly. They contribute to the tones and moods of the events onscreen so well that they allow for a degree of immersion rarely achieved. It’s amazing how well the themes for crucial fights and turning points instill such emotion. I still get hyped every time I hear Frog’s theme and get goose bumps when listening to Magus’ theme. Joy, sorrow, fear, danger, from devastation and loss to love and heartfelt reunions, the soundtrack perfectly encapsulates it all, stirring our emotions in the most profound of ways. The aesthetics are wonderful as visuals and audio together bring greater vividness to an already spectacular game.

Chrono Trigger is a timeless masterpiece. To overpraise it, an impossibility; to undervalue, a sin. With its fabled story of epic proportions, its delightfully memorable cast, its strong gameplay, and its remarkable aesthetics, Chrono Trigger will stand as the quintessential RPG and remain in the hearts of all it has touched. Crono, Marle, Lucca; how could I ever forget you.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by author

The post TBT REVIEW: Chrono Trigger appeared first on oprainfall.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 (aka AGDQ 2020) is more than just watching spikevegeta and Kungfufruitcup banter between Twitch steams of people demolishing video games as fast as possible to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation (which you can still donate to as well). In addition to the main streaming room, Games Done Quick has partnered with World 9 Gaming to both supply the video game equipment and CRT TVs needed to pull off an event of this magnitude, but also to run various gaming rooms that people can just drop in and play pretty much any game from any console generation when they aren’t watching the live AGDQ gameplay.

Last night, I caught up with Mike Frey and Stephen Sundeen, the co-owners of World 9 Gaming, to talk about working with Games Done Quick and this AGDQ, about the scope of their business, and what they are looking forward to as AGDQ 2020 starts to wind down.

You can check out Awesome Games Done Quick at their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitch.

 You can check out World 9 Gaming on Twitter, Twitch, and on Facebook.

Finally, you can find out more about the Prevent Cancer Foundation at their official website, on Facebook, on Twitter, on linkedin, on Pinterest, on Instagram, and on YouTube. And you should definitely go donate now.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H., and I am with Operation Rainfall and I am at AGDQ 2020. And I am here with?

Mike Frey [World 9 Gaming Co-Owner]: Mike Frey.

Stephen Sundeen [World 9 Gaming Co-Owner]: Stephen Sundeen.

OR: I am looking behind me at a huge collection of consoles. Could you tell us a little bit about what this is all about?

MF: Well, we’re World 9 Gaming. We partner with Games Done Quick for a lot of the behind the scenes equipment and logistics support. We bring in consoles, TVs, and other equipment- PCs and such, to support the event. The console side- we bring in retro and modern consoles for the attendees and runners to use. This event has a lot of people from out of town and around the world who can’t bring all the equipment they need to play all the games to practice and participate with the event. So we provide consoles and games for the attendees and runners to use at the event. As well as PCs. We set up all the TVs and run all the power, ethernet cables, and other tech equipment to support the event.

“We take care of as many elements as we can off of GDQ’s shoulders for things outside of the stream room.”

OR: About how many consoles do y’all have in total?

SS: I’ve lost count. *laughs* At least-

MF: One-hundred-and-fifty?

SS: Yeah, we’ve done events where we’ve set up over one-hundred-and-fifty stations. Not specifically this one, we do other conventions as well where we provide a ‘video game room’ that has over a hundred-and-fifty TVs set up for people to play that range from Atari up to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, [and] Nintendo Switch. So it definitely has grown almost exponentially throughout the years that we’ve done this.

OR: Y’all said you’re with World 9 Gaming. How long have y’all been doing this for?

MF: We’ve started doing events for World 9 Gaming in 2012, though we’ve been doing events, me personally with conventions, for fifteen years. And we’ve been involved with Games Done Quick for five years.

SS: I started volunteering with Mike and another friend of ours in 2009, and it was the three of us that started World 9 Gaming in 2012 and officially registered it in 2017, I believe. Our third partner just had life come up and decided that he wanted to step aside. So Mike and I bought his share of the company and took it over.

It all started, like Mike said, in Wisconsin doing local anime conventions and doing video game rooms of our own personal equipment. And over time, we just collected more and more of our own personal stuff and we [would] bring it to these events. It was getting a little bit hectic doing this with just volunteer hours and having to take time off of work in order to do that, so we decided to try to make a business out of it to try to cover the expenses of keeping the game library as up to date as possible and the consoles- purchasing the newest ones available. And yeah, it’s how we got to where we are.

OR: Do you supply all of these CRT TVs as well?

SS: A lot of them we do. I would say for this event specifically, Games Done Quick had a lot of them in their backlog. But we worked with them together to purchase a hundred TVs. It was a hotel that went out of business, so we purchased a hundred of their old TVs and then split them among Awesome Games Done Quick, which is where we are now, and Summer Games Done Quick, which happens in June.

MF: And the CRTs were the first thing we bought up that got us involved with Games Done Quick. Back in 2013, I think I saw and heard of AGDQ for the first time and watched it again in 2014 when they first hit a million [dollars raised], and World 9 was building up at that point and had a large arsenal of TVs. I sent a shot-in-the-dark e-mail saying that we love their event and if there was anything we could do for them. I talked about consoles, PCs, and CRTs. And they caught on that because, oh gosh, they were crowd sourcing and saying ‘anyone with a CRT please show up with it.’ But they didn’t have any kind of dedicated supply. So I rolled up with a U-Haul and had them cover my expenses with thirty to forty CRTs.

OR: So about how many games and consoles do you think you’ll be lending out across the entire week of AGDQ?

MF: We have probably about a thousand transactions across the week.

SS: And that’s not split half-and-half. Anyone that’s attending this event can rent out equipment. And they don’t pay anything for that. As partners for GDQ, we provide that service for their attendees. We just keep track of who borrows what. And it happens that we run twenty-four/seven throughout the week. There are probably eighteen, sixteen of us here.

MF: Twenty.

SS: Yeah, twenty- between staff and volunteers for World 9 specifically that run the room twenty-four hours a day.

MF: We take care of as many elements as we can off of GDQ’s shoulders for things outside of the stream room. A lot of the entertainment events- I bring my own personal boardgame collection for attendees to use- I coordinate all of the tournaments that attendees want to run. And I schedule consoles and games for races that people want to run. Setups for Smash Bros. tournaments and casual play. And other elements- anything happening outside of the stream room, so GDQ can focus on the stream.

OR: So I could just come in here at 2:30 AM, just borrow your Neo Geo, and go to town on Samurai Showdown?

SS: Absolutely.

OR: After this event, where are y’all going to be after AGDQ?

MF: The next event we’re likely doing is…

SS: I would say JoCo [Cruise] in March.

MF: So Johnathan Coulton runs a cruise in the Caribbean, and we provide a setup of twenty-five to thirty-five consoles for people on the ship to play. And we cruise around the Caribbean for a week with them. And after that, we have two events that we’re trying to work out the contract negotiations on: Anime Detour out of Minneapolis and Tekko out of Pittsburgh. We’ve worked with both of them before, they are both excellent events. Our biggest one of the year comes out after that, which is Anime Central in Chicago. That’s an anime con of about thirty-thousand attendees and we really go to town setting out everything. And at that event, we still rent out or let people borrow games to play, but like ninety-nine percent we just have out on the floor for people to walk up and play.

SS: That room, for comparison, it is probably six times the size of this room: a hundred-square-foot exhibit hall just for video games. And it’s not just us, we do the consoles and PCs, but there are five or six groups bringing in arcade machines for that event.

MF: Yeah, we don’t particularly directly subcontract with people for those anymore, but we do work with the conventions to bring in people to fill parts that we don’t have ourselves. We worked with GDQ to bring in Tokyo Attack! that has the more Japanese-style arcade machines on site. They brought one truck of machines here, and at Anime Central they bring five trucks worth there. And that’s just one provider. We bring in a classic [arcade] provider, we bring in a pinball provider, fighting cabinet provider. It really is an event where the scale of things is phenomenal.

“At conventions, it is a great time to break out and play the kind of multiplayer games that you don’t get to play at home as often.”

OR: You mentioned that you leave everything on the floor. Are you not worried about people stealing it or breaking it?

MF: We have some security measures- cages over the consoles. But the ones that we leave open for people to use, we just have consoles and controllers there and people check out games. So we make it as accessible as possible with enough deterrence and it usually works out.

SS: It is kind of amazing with how many years that we’ve been doing this with how much we haven’t had walk away. Which is a good thing. Kind of more than anything, we worry about things breaking down with age.

And so that kind of goes into what we do at this event, which is provide repairs of consoles for things that aren’t working. One of our guys that is volunteering with us is repairing, or at least attempting to, consoles that don’t work anymore. We also provide modification services for people that bring in consoles that additional chips had been developed for that can be soldered onto the motherboard to give it more functionality than it originally had. That kind of stuff- cleaning games that don’t work anymore, repairing controllers that don’t function as they used to, trying to work with whatever anyone needs and gets them back up and going.

OR: So I took a peek into the bins behind the counters a little bit ago, and I saw more PlayStation 2 controllers than I’ve ever seen before in my life. About how many of those controllers and Nintendo 64 controllers do you have?

MF: Thirty to forty, something in that range probably of each.

SS: I feel like we have almost upwards of sixty PlayStation 2 ones, but we use them for both PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 consoles. But we set up mostly PlayStation 2 consoles since they play both anyway. I don’t think we’ve been to an event where we have them all out on the floor at once.

MF: We get consoles from donations, all sorts of sources- thrift stores. PlayStation 2 is a really common one to find out in the wild. And there are six of them over on our shelf over there for us to take a look at this week, but they are low priority since we have another twelve sitting and ready to go. And they often come with controllers, cables, and games. It’s a great console, but doesn’t hit the floor as often these days.

OR: What would you say is your most requested game and console at the moment?

MF: Super Nintendo, by far here- it’s the most requested speedrunning console.

SS: It’s not the most requested here, but we usually have a bunch of Nintendo Switches that are set up for playing Smash Bros.

MF: And [Nintendo] 64s are popular at conventions as well, they have a lot of good multiplayer games. At conventions, it is a great time to break out and play the kind of multiplayer games that you don’t get to play at home as often.

OR: At this point, AGDQ has been running for a couple of days. Have you been able to catch any of the show and if so, what has been y’all’s favorite runs so far?

MF: I actually get to watch much less of the stream here when I got to enjoy it from home. I usually only get to watch when I’m in my hotel room these days during the event. As far as best runs so far that I got to actually watch: the first one that came to mind is probably something from the NES block on Tuesday. There’s the Ninja Gaiden race that a friend of mine participated in. The ones that I’m really looking forward to are on Friday and Saturday, like the Mario Maker race and the finale one- Super Metroid Impossible. I haven’t gotten to watch a full run from start to finish, let me put it that way. I’ve been too busy.

SS: Yeah, I have been able to enjoy the Zelda relay race between Zelda 1, 2, and 3 [OR NOTE: He is referencing how AGDQ titled The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past during that particular race]. That was amazing to watch, though I didn’t get to watch the whole thing. The Mega Man relay for Mega Man 4, 5, and 6– I am a huge Zelda and Mega Man fan myself, and I really love the classic Mario games and Metroid games too. So I’m really looking forward to the Metroid run. And the Zelda randomizer race that is coming up on Saturday. The Mario Maker level-relay race.

OR: Final question for both of you- they are doing a Super Metroid race later on this show. Save or kill the animals?

MF: Kill the animals, obviously.

SS: Kill the animals, save the frames.

OR: Thank you both very much.

And there you have it! Have you checked out a console/game from World 9 Gaming at this AGDQ or at a prior event?

What runs are you most excited about as AGDQ starts to wind down over the weekend?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post AGDQ 2020 INTERVIEW: World 9 Gaming appeared first on oprainfall.

Shovel Knight: Showdown is one of the last expansions to Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, and this one stands out as being a multiplayer focused fighting game rather than a 2D platformer. It still feels very similar and familiar since it’s also 2D, has mild platforming, controls basically the same, but the point of the game is of course very different.

The story takes a backseat in a game like this, but there still is one. A magic mirror sucks the various Shovel Knight characters into its weird dimension, they fight it out for one reason or another, and then defeat the mirror and go back to the regular world with the events of this game essentially never having occurred. Even though it doesn’t affect anything in series canon, its still an enjoyable story with the same fun writing that exists in Shovel Knight and its expansions.

One would not be entirely inaccurate to compare this game to Super Smash Bros. There’s a story mode where you take a character through various fights, occasionally with different themes. These can be 4 player free for alls, 2 vs 2 team matches, 1 vs 3 matches, matches against a horde of opponents that die in one hit, among other things. There’s even a mini-game where you have to destroy targets using your character’s unique moveset. The normal versus mode is probably where you’ll spend the most time if you’re playing this with friends, and you can customize game types to your exact preference.

To be totally accurate with this game, I think its better to say it’s much more Shovel Knight with a versus mode twist, rather than a fighting game in the style of Shovel Knight. Most of the mechanics work exactly how they did in Shovel Knight, but with some tweaks here and there. Each character has a life bar of only 4 pips. Every attack in the game does exactly one pip of damage, and after taking damage, you’re impervious to further damage for a couple seconds. This means you can’t just go to town on someone. Combos are definitely not a thing in this game, you’re basically just trying to land a single hit at a time, which is often harder than it sounds.

Characters only have a handful of attacks, what with there being only two attack buttons. Some attacks require holding the button to charge it up first, some attacks have directional inputs, but its a very simple system. You can come to grips with how a character plays in seconds. There’s no complicated inputs or executions to master here. As fighting games go, the barrier of entry here is very low. Your movesets are smaller even than your full movesets in the other expansions.

Unique to this game is a parry move, which negates any attack. The parry isn’t too good however, as it doesn’t give you a free hit. Your opponent can still move out of the way, or do their own parry. This is why its often hard to land an attack. Rushing in with no game plan means you’ll often just be shut down with the parry. The best way of attacking is to punish attacks that have a long recovery in which your opponent can’t parry. Many characters can also set up situations in which it’s difficult to parry attacks. With the game having basically no execution barrier, its entirely about outsmarting your opponent.

The two main game types are simply beating your opponent until they run out of lives, or stocks, if you’re used to Super Smash Bros. The other involves collecting gems that spawn around the map, and whoever has the most at the end of the round wins. Functionally these two aren’t too dissimilar, as defeating your opponent causes them to drop some of their gems. There’s plenty of ways to customize your matches too, the time limit, how many lives you have, you can even turn off items and stage hazards if you want a more pure versus experience. There’s also “cheat” options for fun things like making all attacks a one hit kill, making players giant, increasing jump height and run speed, among other things.

Speaking of items, most of them are just small little assists rather than anything that changes your moveset. The game being very simple, items just do their own thing, like a laser that automatically shoots periodically, or a pet that follows you and attacks others.

The story mode is where you’ll be spending probably most of your time if you want to unlock the full roster of characters and stages. Each character has their own story, though it basically just consists of a few cutscenes. Still, it has some charming dialogue. The story ends with, obviously, a boss fight. However given the boss fights in the rest of Shovel Knight and its expansions, I found this end boss fight to be pretty lacking. I won’t spoil what it is, but after the first time fighting it, I was pretty unimpressed. Especially because given the random nature of the fights in the story mode, it can generate fights that are more challenging. Though, I suppose not many people will play through this expecting fantastic boss fights.

If you don’t want to bother unlocking characters and just want the full roster immediately, there are some cheat codes you can enter to assist you. There’s a cheat that unlocks all characters temporarily, and won’t save your game after entering it. That way if you want to unlock everything the traditional way, you can still do that, and have everything for if you want to play with your friends. Or you can just unlock everything permanently. I don’t know if there will be Shovel Knight: Showdown tournaments, but if there are, then there’s no worries about having everything available.

It should be mentioned that there’s no online multiplayer here. Running multiplayer servers is probably beyond the scope of a small developer like Yacht Club, unfortunately. I wonder about the future of this game. I just don’t see a lot of folks playing this in the future, though I suppose I could be wrong.

Evaluating this game is pretty tricky. I certainly had fun with what I played. As far as being a versus mode of a much larger game, its a neat little novelty that some folks might play around with for a couple hours. As its own game? Hard to recommend, unless you maybe have a friend group of passionate Shovel Knight fans. Though in that case, I’d assume they would have Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove already, and thus this is just a free update. It’s $10 on its own, which certainly is a fair price. However, I’d say Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove at $40 is a better deal. With that you get Shovel Knight and three additional full campaigns, as well as Showdown. At that price, you’re basically getting Showdown as a free bonus.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Shovel Knight: Showdown appeared first on oprainfall.

Operation Rainfall was founded June 22, 2011 in order to push for the localization of a trilogy of Wii RPGs: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. Since successfully achieving our campaign goals, we have moved to covering the latest and greatest in video game and anime news. In celebration of the 2010 to 2019 decade ending, the staff put together a list of the top thirty-one best games that you simply cannot miss. In order to qualify for this list, the game had to:

1. Be released between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 in North America.
2. Obtain at least a plurality of votes from our staff.
3. Re-releases from this decade were allowed for consideration, if the new release was a substantive increase of content over the original. For example, 2012 Persona 4: Golden would qualify due to the heavy amount of substantive new content included in that re-release versus 2008’s original release, but the HD re-release of 2008’s God of War: Chains of Olympus as part of the 2011 God of War: Origins Collection would not due to the minimal increase of new content.

Our writers then came together, and each picked up several games that they have played and loved, and talked about why each of those games are one of the thirty-one best video games from this past decade in each of the pieces to follow. Furthermore, a special thank you to Brandon Rose for the featured logo image.

Before reading on, feel free to check out choices for 2010/2011, 2012/2013 , 2014/2015, and 2016/2017 first!

Our final list will be published over five days in order of release date, covering two years per article. Today’s article covers the decade’s final best five games that were released between the years 2018 and 2019.

2018

27) Celeste

Publisher: Matt Makes Games
Platform(s): Linux / macOS / PC / Nintendo Switch / PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
Release Date: January 25, 2018

Josh Speer says:

Celeste is one of those games you really have to experience for yourself. I remember being captivated by the old school art style when I first saw the Switch trailer, but didn’t really put much stock in the game at that point. Much, much later, I finally picked up Celeste, and was completely blown away. Not only was this a great indie game, it was one of the best of the decade.

Celeste is a very challenging platformer that still finds a way to feel fair. You play a young girl scaling a formidable mountain while dealing with her own emotional turmoil. Both narrative and gameplay are intricately intertwined, and by the time you make it to the top of the mountain, you’ll feel a rush of strong emotions. Or at least I did. This is a game that really spoke to me, and unlike most platformers, it’s packed with content. That is, assuming you’re willing to take life or death chances to find all Celeste has hidden away. A wonderful game, and one of my favorite indies of all time.

28) Mega Man 11

Publisher: Capcom
Platform(s): PC / PS4 / Nintendo Switch / Xbox One
Release Date: October 2, 2018

Justin Guillou says:

After the release of Mega Man 10 back in 2010, fans of Capcom’s long running series have waited for almost an entire decade for the next greatest adventure in the Mega Man universe, and Capcom finally delivered with Mega Man 11.

This game was everything a Mega Man fan could ask for and more. It had clever level design, fun weapons, memorable bosses and a distinct and unique graphical style that is sure to stand the test of time. There were even some new and welcome additions such as the Double Gear which could not only be very helpful to new players but added a whole new layer and depth to the gameplay that more advanced players can take advantage of. Despite the new additions, it still felt very retro. This was very much the same kind of side scrolling Mega Man game that many of us grew up playing. And there are plenty of bonus modes, challenges, difficulties and unlockables and even an alternate arranged soundtrack to keep you coming back for more. If you’ve never played a Mega Man game before but had even a passing interest in the series, I can’t think of a better entry point than Mega Man 11.

29) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: December 6, 2018

Marisa Alexander says:

One of gaming’s biggest crossovers is back and bigger than ever, especially how all characters returned. Super Smash Bros Ultimate saw the series hop from one generation to the next once more, this time with the ability to play at home or in portable mode thanks to the Switch. With brand new stages, Mii customization, new modes, and some help by Bandai Namco themselves to oversee balance for competitive fighting, the series was at its peak. It was both a great time to be a Smash fan and to get into the series.

Both fighter and stage presentation was absolutely marvelous, with a strange chaotic beauty amongst the fighting. Most characters were also exceptionally fun, allowing a niche for most people to settle on. With its abundance of rewards, the game had a wonderful staying power to its name, only further enhanced by DLC. Needless to say, this generation of Smash will be fondly remembered for a long time.

See our final two entries, from 2019- the final year in this decade- on the next page —->

The post Oprainfall’s Best Games of the Decade- Part Five: 2018-2019 appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve been a fan of Shovel Knight since the very beginning, so it’s somewhat bittersweet covering the final DLC for the first game, King of Cards. Though I didn’t personally cover Plague of Shadows for the site, I did cover Specter of Torment, and it goes without saying I’ve played through every major update to the game in my limited free time. The first DLC adventure was a tale of villainous romance, the second was a tale of loss and vengeance, and King of Cards is a tale of ascension. King Knight might seem the least interesting of the other playable members of the Order of No Quarter, but Yacht Club did a good job of making his adventure lively and varied. Put simply, King of Cards is huge, and though you don’t have to play through every level to beat it, even racing through the game as I did, it is a longer than average Shovel Knight game. The real question for me was – is this the best DLC adventure for Shovel Knight?

Though this won’t be news to any fan of the series, King Knight is a bit of an odd choice for his own story. He’s a bit of a narcissistic buffoon, and you never get the impression there’s much brain hidden behind that golden helm. However, I do applaud the way his story was woven. The tale is told with a mix of the offbeat humor from Plague of Shadows and combat that is a mix of elements from that campaign as well as Specter of Torment. The cards in the title refer to an up and coming card game in the realm called Joustus. Not only is it a hit, but it’s drawn people together to compete for the title of champion. King Knight is all about being recognized as the best, and sets out to win the tournament, defeat the 3 Joustus Judges and get the recognition he feels is long overdue. Along the way he’ll acquire a quirky entourage of allies, and their personalities were a highlight. There doesn’t initially seem to be much more to the plot than that, but I promise the wrinkle eventually reveals itself later in the game, and though not entirely unexpected, it did a good job of keeping things entertaining.

I will say now, if you came to King of Cards expecting the level of storytelling and nuance from Specter of Torment, you’ll be disappointed. This is a very different story, and to be fair, each of the DLC campaigns is quite distinct stylistically. With that said, I did hope that there’d be a bit more backstory to King Knight than we got. You do learn that he’s very immature, and possibly young as well. His mother plays a large role in the story, and his reactions to her indicate he’s a teenager or young adult. To put it simply, King Knight is a bit of an ass, though thankfully that ties into the humor I mentioned earlier. I just wish we knew a bit more about him, such as whether he found or made that golden armor, and how he trained rats to work for him. At the end of each stage, you’ll grab a golden hoop suspended by your flying rat minions, and they’ll carry you away. That’s far from typical rat behavior, and more than anything, I’m really curious how someone that lacks intellectual curiosity like King Knight had the patience and knowledge to teach such advanced skills to animals. Or how he built those tiny propeller harnesses. Having said all that, overall I did enjoy the story in King of Cards, even if it was more shallow than Specter Knight’s tale.

Though I’ve been (rightfully) talking some shit about King Knight, I will say that he has certain things going for him. For one, he’s quite powerful in that golden armor, and can move surprisingly fast. His main attack is a powerful shoulder bash, and when he connects with something, be it foe or wall, he’ll do a fancy aerial spin. This is actually another attack, and by landing on anything except flat ground, you’ll continue bouncing and damage any foes you stomp. As if that wasn’t enough, when you land on proper terrain while spinning, such as swinging lanterns, you’ll reset your bash, and be able to do it again. This makes King Knight quite powerful and very versatile in how he fights and platforms. Most stages make use of this mechanic to force you to smash into things just to get aerial, and then use your spin to maneuver around. Sure, he’s not as nimble as Specter Knight or as tricky as Plague Knight, but he is really comfortable in a sort of middle lane between the two. I grew to really enjoy how he played, and found he was especially effective against many of the games bosses. You encounter Specter Knight as a boss early in the game, and I literally beat him in less than a minute. Now, that’s not to say the bosses in King of Cards are all pushovers, they aren’t. It’s just a good indication of how powerful King Knight can be once you learn his mechanics.

One way King of Cards is different from the other DLC adventures is the overall number of stages. I beat the game as fast as I could, and only got through about half of them. Quite frankly, there’s a plethora of stages, though to compensate, most are quite a bit smaller. Many stages only have one checkpoint, and only a rare few have two. That’s not to say that this game is super easy. Yes, the stages are shorter, but given how aggressive King Knight’s controls are, and how easy it can be to fall into a pit or damage yourself charging into foes, it evens out pretty well. I did appreciate how foes give up a heart after taking enough damage, as this really helped keep me from dying more. And though these are shorter stages, you’re given incentive to take your time playing them with Merit Medals. There’s typically 3 in every stage, and these are your primary currency with which to acquire Heirlooms (powerful artifacts that provide new abilities). There’s tons of Heirlooms in the game, though my favorite was probably the Turn Coat, which lets you deflect projectiles back at foes.

You might be wondering what you spend your money on, and the simple answer is Joustus. Though you get a free starter deck pretty early, you’ll want to buy new cards, as well as buy back those you lost. See, every time you lose a match, your opponent gets one of your cards. Which might seem unfair, except that you can buy back duplicates, or win them back by beating them again. Additionally, if you need the help, you can buy Cheats that provide powerful effects during Joustus matches. I’m not ashamed to admit I ended up needing these Cheats regularly, and the reason is simple – I’m terrible at Joustus.

More Joustus on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Shovel Knight: King of Cards appeared first on oprainfall.

Operation Rainfall was founded June 22, 2011 in order to push for the localization of a trilogy of Wii RPGs: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. Since successfully achieving our campaign goals, we have moved to covering the latest and greatest in video game and anime news. In celebration of the 2010 to 2019 decade ending, the staff put together a list of the top thirty-one best games that you simply cannot miss. In order to qualify for this list, the game had to:

1. Be released between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 in North America.
2. Obtain at least a plurality of votes from our staff.
3. Re-releases from this decade were allowed for consideration, if the new release was a substantive increase of content over the original. For example, 2012 Persona 4: Golden would qualify due to the heavy amount of substantive new content included in that re-release versus 2008’s original release, but the HD re-release of 2008’s God of War: Chains of Olympus as part of the 2011 God of War: Origins Collection would not due to the minimal increase of new content.

Our writers then came together, and each picked up several games that they have played and loved, and talked about why each of those games are one of the thirty-one best video games from this past decade in each of the pieces to follow. Furthermore, a special thank you to Brandon Rose for the featured logo image.

Before reading on, feel free to check out choices for 2010/2011, 2012/2013 , and 2014/2015 first!

Our final list will be published over five days in order of release date, covering two years per article. Today’s article covers the decade’s best seven games that were released between the years 2016 and 2017.

2016

20) Persona 5

Publisher: Atlus USA
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 / PlayStation 4
Release Date: September 15, 2016

Patrick Aguda says:

Persona 5 takes place in Tokyo and follows the protagonist when he transfers to Shujin Academy after an event in his hometown changes his life drastically. The protagonist starts out as an outcast at the school, but after strange and supernatural events start to occur, he gets dragged into another dimension known as the Metaverse. Here, he discovers the power of Personas and learns of the work he can do with this newfound power. As time goes on, he gathers friends who share a similar goal in wanting to help change society, or change the hearts of those they find to be corrupt. The protagonist dons the codename ‘Joker’ and becomes the leader of these group of individuals known as the Phantom Thieves.

This game is the Persona series’ long-awaited entry on the PS4 and it was worth the wait. The game features beautiful cel-shaded graphics, an eye-catching UI and a nice recreation of Tokyo. It keeps the popular social simulation aspects introduced in Persona 3 and introduces a plethora of characters the protagonist can interact with and get to know. These confidants can offer the protagonist and his team special bonuses depending on their relationship rank. These bonuses can range from EXP sharing, to increased money gains, or even the ability to access new shops. The turn-based battle system returns and is still as solid as it was in previous entries. The music in the game is influenced heavily by jazz and sounds incredible. All the party members in the game are interesting and their confidant stories add much more depth to their characters. Persona 5 has excellent music, beautiful graphics, great characters, and solid turn-based gameplay. It is one of the best JRPG’s released this decade, and you’re doing yourself a great disservice if you haven’t tried it yet.

21) Titanfall 2

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms(s): PC / PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
Release Date: October 28, 2016

Walter P. says:

Released two years after its multiplayer focused predecessor, Titanfall 2 expanded on the setting from the original game. It focuses on Jack Cooper, a member of the Frontier Militia who participates in a failed attack on the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC). He comes across the Titan BT-7274 and the two learn to rely on each other as they face IMC forces including the Apex Predator mercenary group.

Titanfall 2 is gone of the best shooters from the last decade for the tweaks made to its multiplayer, but also for the campaign which shows more of the conflict between the Militia and IMC. Fighting while on foot is quick and when piloting a Titan you can feel their power. One of the highlights of the single player is the interactions between the Titan BT and Cooper which is said to have been inspired by buddy cop movies, along with some anime. One of the biggest downsides to the game is that the campaign is a bit short and it wouldn’t have hurt to see some more Cooper and BT working together. That being said, the adventure between the pilot and Titan is something worth experiencing.

See our 2017 winners on page 2 ->

The post Oprainfall’s Best Games of the Decade- Part Four: 2016-2017 appeared first on oprainfall.

Operation Rainfall was founded June 22, 2011 in order to push for the localization of a trilogy of Wii RPGs: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. Since successfully achieving our campaign goals, we have moved to covering the latest and greatest in video game and anime news. In celebration of the 2010 to 2019 decade ending, the staff put together a list of the top thirty-one best games that you simply cannot miss. In order to qualify for this list, the game had to:

1. Be released between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 in North America.
2. Obtain at least a plurality of votes from our staff.
3. Re-releases from this decade were allowed for consideration, if the new release was a substantive increase of content over the original. For example, 2012 Persona 4: Golden would qualify due to the heavy amount of substantive new content included in that re-release versus 2008’s original release, but the HD re-release of 2008’s God of War: Chains of Olympus as part of the 2011 God of War: Origins Collection would not due to the minimal increase of new content.

Our writers then came together, and each picked up several games that they have played and loved, and talked about why each of those games are one of the thirty-one best video games from this past decade in each of the pieces to follow. Furthermore, a special thank you to Brandon Rose for the featured logo image.

Before reading on, feel free to check out choices for 2010/2011 or our choices for 2012/2013 first!

Our final list will be published over five days in order of release date, covering two years per article. Today’s article covers the decade’s best five games that were released between the years 2014 and 2015.

2014

15) Mario Kart 8 / Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Publisher: Nintendo
Platform(s): Nintendo Wii U / Nintendo Switch
Release Date(s): May 30, 2014 / April 28, 2017

Quentin H. says:

Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have up to twelve (12) players competing at once across forty-eight (48) tracks in twelve (12) cups and across four (4) cc modes. In Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, there were thirty-six (36) characters to play as in total, and that total increased by five more in the 2017 Nintendo Switch release. In addition to all these racing cups and characters and modes, there was also a Battle Mode where people would fight each other online to see who can last the longest. While Mario Kart 8‘s Battle Mode was fairly lackluster, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe‘s Battle Mode gave players eight (8) areas to battle and destroy/collect coins/escape from jail (just go with it) in. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was a re-release of Mario Kart 8 with all of the DLC from the first entry thrown in alongside some new surprises.

Both of these games are some of the best multiplayer experiences that you are going to have across any platform at any time in gaming history. Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have an ease of accessibility so that anyone, from ages 8 to 88 can sit down, play a few races, and go anywhere from last place to first place (or vice versa!) in just a few moments with a well-timed Blue Shell. The courses themselves are varied, the graphics are beautiful, and it is easy to say “just one more race” to your friends while playing together on a rooftop or at a skateboard rink on the Nintendo Switch. The Battle Mode in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is also the best in the entire series, and the modes are varied enough and short enough in length that no one feels frustrated from not being in first for long. I honestly think that these joint titles are well-worth being some of the best multiplayer of this past decade.

16) Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS

Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: October 3, 2014

Marisa Alexander says:

During 2014, Nintendo released its new entry for Super Smash Bros. after massive amounts of hype, or dare we say, two new entries. Yes, even Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS gets some love. There was something marvelous back then about bringing one of the best games to play with friends on the go. It even had unique stages and an entire game mode all to itself. All in all, the 3DS version actually is able to stand toe to toe with its console counterpart.

Even on a lower resolution and weaker hardware, the models for the characters looked wonderful, fluid and easy to keep track of the action. Not to mention the game’s unique mode, Smash Run, was by far one of the most genius modes in a game to date. Running around a gigantic maze opening chests, finishing challenges, and defeating enemies to collect stat boosts to prepare for a grand final battle was a fantastic treat. Not to mention this version’s take on Classic mode just so happens to be one of the best Classic modes to date, granting this game practically immortal replay value.

Go to 2015 on Page 2 ->

The post Oprainfall’s Best Games of the Decade- Part Three: 2014-2015 appeared first on oprainfall.

Operation Rainfall was founded June 22, 2011 in order to push for the localization of a trilogy of Wii RPGS: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. Since successfully achieving our campaign goals, we have moved to covering the latest and greatest in video game and anime news. In celebration of the 2010 to 2019 decade ending, the staff put together a list of the top thirty-one best games that you simply cannot miss. In order to qualify for this list, the game had to:

1. Be released between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 in North America.
2. Obtain at least a plurality of votes from our staff.
3. Re-releases from this decade were allowed for consideration, if the new release was a substantive increase of content over the original. For example, 2012 Persona 4: Golden would qualify due to the heavy amount of substantive new content included in that re-release versus 2008’s original release, but the HD re-release of 2008’s God of War: Chains of Olympus as part of the 2011 God of War: Origins Collection would not due to the minimal increase of new content.

Our writers then came together, and each picked up several games that they have played and loved, and talked about why each of those games are one of the thirty-one best video games from the past decade in each of the pieces to follow. Furthermore, a special thank you to Brandon Rose for the featured logo image.

You can check out yesterday’s best games-of-the-decade piece, covering the years 2010 and 2011, here. 

Our final list will be published over five days in order of release date, covering two years per article. Today’s article covers nine games that were released between the years 2012 and 2013.

2012

6) Kid Icarus Uprising

Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: March 22, 2012

Josh Speer says:

In retrospect, 2012 was a fantastic year for the Nintendo 3DS. Not only did we get totally new series like Bravely Default, we got returns to classics like Kid Icarus in Kid Icarus Uprising. Now, I freely admit I was not a fan of the original series Uprising is based off. And yet, Project Sora Co. Ltd. did such a phenomenal job of breathing new life into it, I couldn’t help but become a fan.

Split into aerial and land based chapters, Kid Icarus Uprising is a bombastic and experimental game that was totally unafraid to take chances. It featured lush 3D graphics, fantastic characters, better banter and very complex controls. This is a game that would hurt to play for too long, and actually came equipped with a stand to ease the burden on players’ hands. Despite all this, the varied stew of all the game’s influences made for a really unique experience. The only shame about Kid Icarus Uprising is that it didn’t get followed up with a sequel, or hell, even a remake on a large console. But even then, Kid Icarus Uprising is indisputably a one of a kind that amassed a cult following on the 3DS. Here’s hoping it’s not the last adventure of the decade involving Pit and company.

7) Xenoblade Chronicles

Publisher: Nintendo
Platform(s): Nintendo Wii / New Nintendo 3DS
Release Date(s): April 6, 2012

Drew D. says:

Xenoblade Chronicles holds a very special place in the hearts of all of us here at Operation Rainfall. 2011 saw opainfall’s inception as a localization campaign. JRPG fans in the West sounded off and in 2012, Nintendo responded with Xenoblade’s Western release.

Xenoblade Chronicles tells the story of Shulk, a seemingly mild-mannered teen, who is thrust into the endless conflict between his people, the Homs, and the Machina. After the Machina attack his home and murder his childhood friend, Fiora, Shulk takes possession of the Monado, the only weapon capable of defeating the Machina, and vows to end the Machina threat once and for all. What begins as a personal quest for vengeance soon evolves into a journey of discovery, as Shulk unravels the mysteries of the world, their existences, and their own personal meanings of life.

Xenoblade Chronicles stands out as one of the most remarkably complete games of the past decade and, arguably, of all time. Xenoblade’s accolades include a fantastic story, rich history, well developed characters, solid gameplay and battle system, loads of side-quests, a beautifully detailed world teeming with creativity and awe, and one of the most perfectly complementary soundtracks that flawlessly ties story, action, and visuals together. Xenoblade Chronicles is truly a gem, one that will remain at the top of our favorites list forever.

8) Journey

Publisher(s): Sony Interactive Entertainment / Annapurna Interactive
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 / PlayStation 4 / iOS / Windows
Release Date: March 13, 2012

Leah McDonald says:

Journey takes place in a vast desert and tasks the player with one simple goal: Reach the top of a distant mountain. That journey covers vast stretches of desert, subterranean ruins and snow-swept peaks as players advance using elegant gliding techniques, short bursts of flight, and simple communication between a random partner.

As thatgamecompany’s third game, Journey leans heavily into the company’s signature minimalist design, telling its story through environmental queues and sparse cutscenes depicting the history of the world in mural form. It’s up to the player to decide what story is being told, and what their journey to the mountain ultimately means. There is no dialogue or written text, and even player communication is done through abstract pings to one another. It’s a fantastic use of video games’ unique ability to tell stories through immersive and emergent gameplay, and showcases how interactive media can touch people and spark discussion in ways books and movies cannot. It’s obvious why this is one of our games of the decade.

9) Bravely Default: Flying Fairy

Publisher(s): Nintendo / SQUARE ENIX
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: October 11, 2012

Josh Speer says:

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy could have easily been a giant flop on SQUARE ENIX’s part. For one thing, it was them taking a chance on a new game with mechanics very much inspired by classic RPGs. Given SQUARE ENIX’s preference to make big, bold and new games, this was definitely a crapshoot. They also took a chance on a new studio, Silicon Studio. Yet despite all that, this 3DS exclusive was not only a massive success, it proved to gamers worldwide and SQUARE ENIX that people still have a yearning for classic RPGs.

That success was in large part due to how fresh Silicon Studio’s approach to storytelling was. Bravely Default did use old school mechanics, but in ways that were very novel. The give and take to the combat system encouraged players to take chances, and get rewarded accordingly. Plus there were tons of side quests to accomplish, classes to discover and lore to experience. And like any great RPG, Bravely Default had a great cast of memorable characters, perhaps none so much so as Edea. A wonderful and noteworthy adventure, and a definite contender for a best game of the decade.

10) Persona 4: Golden

Publisher: Atlus USA
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Release Date: November 20th, 2012

Jenae R. says:

Persona 4 Golden is the enhanced version of Persona 4. It’s still Persona 4 though, the overall story hasn’t changed. In this Persona title, the main character has moved to Inaba, a rural town where he will temporarily live with his uncle and young cousin. But not long after he arrives, people start turning up dead. He, along with his new friends, awaken their Personas and form their own investigation team to figure out what’s going on and try to save the citizens of their small town.

The go-to recommendation that gamers mention to new Vita owners is Persona 4 Golden. It is always stated as the best reason to own one and therefore, definitely deserves its spot on this list. When Persona 4 originally released on PlayStation 2, it wasn’t quite as packed with content as Persona 3 FES. Inaba is very much a small rural town and there’s only so much to do. This new re-release added a ton of content to the game. There’s a new character, a new town area to explore, a new dungeon, new music tracks and even an additional month to complete social links and sidequests. Plus, there’s obviously more story content to go with it too. Not only that, but there’s an extras section in the main menu with stuff added such as art slideshows and a music player to listen to the game’s soundtrack. Persona 4 Golden took what was a sort of empty and not as grand Persona game and made it so much better. Some of us who initially played it on PS2 came to love Persona 4 a lot more after playing Golden. Which is why it’s one of oprainfall’s games of the decade.

Head to 2013 on Page 2 ->

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The XSEED 15th Anniversary Sale is underway now. XSEED Games is celebrating 15 years of localizing and publishing PC and console titles, some of which we may not have gotten were it not for them. I first became familiar with them in the early days around the Wii era, when they brought some hidden gems to that console’s library, like Little King’s Story and Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. For their 15th anniversary sale, they are bringing big discounts to fans on a number of store fronts for both digital and physical releases in their catalog. Ken Berry, President & CEO of XSEED Games had this to say about the past 15 years:

“It’s been an amazing 15 years for us, filled with a lot of memorable games that we’ve been able to share with our awesome fans. From the start, it was critical that we serve the needs of the community, so I’m proud that throughout the years, we’ve maintained our mission of being focused on them, as our successes and growth comes from them. Here’s to many more years of sharing games we love.”

The press release says that throughout November they will be posting insights they’ve never shared before to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at what they do. These insights will be appearing on the XSEED Games social media channels. The XSEED 15th Anniversary Sale is running from October 31st through November 7th. Here is their rundown of the savings you can find on different stores:

Steam (Up to 75% off of most titles)

North American Nintendo eShop (Up to 50% off of most titles for 3DS and Switch)

North American PlayStation Store (Up to 75% off of most titles for PS Vita, PS3, and PS4)

XSEED Games Online Store (Physical releases up to $20 off, and Steam titles up to 75% off)

The post The XSEED 15th Anniversary Sale is on Now appeared first on oprainfall.

You know the drill. Playasia offers up Weekly Special each week featuring different titles for us to save some coin on. This week there are things like Joy-Con’s, BlazBlue, Final Fantasy, and more up for grabs.

Links are affiliate.

EASY GRIP FOR NINTENDO SWITCH JOY-CON (BLACK)
Gametech
Compatible with Nintendo Switch

List price: US$ 17.99
Special price: US$ 15.99*
You save: US$ 2.00 (11%)

BLAZBLUE: CENTRAL FICTION [SPECIAL EDITION] (MULTI-LANGUAGE)
H2 Interactive – Switch

List price: US$ 21.99
Special price: US$ 18.99*
You save: US$ 3.00 (14%)

ZELDA MUSOU: HYRULE ALL STARS DX
Nintendo – Switch

List price: US$ 34.99
Special price: US$ 22.99*
You save: US$ 12.00 (34%)

AEREA [COLLECTOR’S EDITION] PLAY EXCLUSIVES
Soedesco – PS4

List price: US$ 43.99
Special price: US$ 32.99*
You save: US$ 11.00 (25%)

FINAL FANTASY X-2 HD REMASTER [ENGLISH]
Square Enixn- PS Vita

List price: US$ 29.99
Special price: US$ 25.99*
You save: US$ 4.00 (13%)

METAL GEAR SOLID HD COLLECTION
Konami – PS3

List price: US$ 19.99
Special price: US$ 17.99*
You save: US$ 2.00 (10%)

MAD MAX
Warner Home Video Games – Xbox One

List price: US$ 19.99
Special price: US$ 15.99*
You save: US$ 4.00 (20%)

VALKYRIA CHRONICLES
Sega – PS3

List price: US$ 16.99
Special price: US$ 13.99*
You save: US$ 3.00 (18%)

The post Playasia Weekly Special feat. Final Fantasy, Zelda, and more appeared first on oprainfall.

Let’s see what Playasia has to offer this week with their Weekly Special. Don’t forget to let us know which title(s) you are picking up.

All links are affiliate.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: EXTREME VS (PLAYSTATION 3 THE BEST)
Bandai Entertainment – PS3

List price: US$ 33.99
Special price: US$ 12.99*
You save: US$ 21.00 (62%)

SENRAN KAGURA: PEACH BALL
Xseed Games – Switch

https://youtu.be/YBR075GOjSw

List price: US$ 44.99
Special price: US$ 35.99*
You save: US$ 9.00 (20%)

AMIIBO SUPER SMASH BROS. SERIES FIGURE (LINK) (RE-RUN)
Nintendo

List price: US$ 24.99
Special price: US$ 14.99*
You save: US$ 10.00 (40%)

THE WALKING DEAD: THE TELLTALE SERIES – A NEW FRONTIER
Warner Home Video Games – PS4

List price: US$ 22.99
Special price: US$ 11.99*
You save: US$ 11.00 (48%)

CONSTRUCTOR PLUS
System 3 – Switch

List price: US$ 32.99
Special price: US$ 25.99*
You save: US$ 7.00 (21%)

STATE OF MIND
Daedalic Entertainment

List price: US$ 49.99
Special price: US$ 25.99*
You save: US$ 24.00 (48%)

The post Playasia WEEKLY SPECIAL: Senran Kagura: Peach Ball, and More appeared first on oprainfall.

Yosuke Futami, the producer of the Sword Art Online video game series, has announced that the game series as a whole has reached 5 million sales. You can check out the sales figures of the console games below. Please note, sales figures for the 1st game Infinity Moment and the crossover game Accel World vs Sword Art Online: Millenium Twilight, were not revealed. The sales figures also do not split them up based on platform. The platforms the games launched for are in parentheses next to the title.

• Hollow Fragment (PS Vita, PS4, PC) – 1.2 Million
• Lost Song (PS4, PS3, PS Vita, PC) – 1.1 Million
• Hollow Realization (PS4, PS Vita, PC, Switch) – 1.2 Million
• Fatal Bullet (PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch) – 1 Million

The Sword Art Online games started with Infinity Moment which released in March 2013 for the PlayStation Portable. This game only released in Japan while future games in the series have seen global launches. The latest game in the series, Fatal Bullet, released in 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC with a Nintendo Switch release in 2019. A new game, Alicization Lycoris, is currently in development for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC and is set to launch in 2020.

The post Sword Art Online Video Game Series Sales Top 5 Million appeared first on oprainfall.

The Wall Street Journal continues to report on growing concerns surrounding Sony’s recent movement towards censorship of sexually explicit content on its platforms. While today’s article certainly isn’t the first we’ve seen on this subject, it does appear that Sony is showing no signs of backing down. At this point in time, Sony officials have confirmed that a new regulatory board exists within the company to examine new games being submitted for publishing. Along with this, they’ve also indicated that some within Sony’s executive leadership have grown concerned about the company’s global image due to the types of content that have historically been allowed on its platforms. Most notably, there appear to be concerns about sexual depictions of seemingly underage women. Among the factors then fueled these worries, the recent #MeToo movement and rise of gaming channels on sites like YouTube and Twitch are reportedly two of the largest. With the potential for Sony content to be showcased online for the whole world to see, it does make sense that they would take a closer look at its effect on the company image.

While this confirmation of changing policies may new, the effects of these changes most certainly aren’t. There has been no confirmation of when these internal changes first began, but over the past six months there have been a number of Japanese developers expressing displeasure with them. While initially aimed more towards foreign markets, Sony soon shifted gears and applied these standards to its domestic, Japanese market as well. Back in October, we heard as much from Japanese development studio Light. It remains to be seen if existing titles on the PS4, PS3, and Vita that released prior to these changes will be given more scrutiny going forward. What can be said is that these policies have gotten the gaming community as a whole talking about the concept of censorship. Only time will tell if these changes become a permanent part of Sony’s legacy as we head into the next generation of consoles.

SOURCE

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