SteamWorld Dig 2

And now for an extremely biased write up about a game I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. When I went to PAX East earlier this year I met Julius Goldberg who is the Community Manager  at Image & Form. Him and I had a 5-10 minute long conversation about games, life, and everything else. He was the nicest person I’ve ever met and left a last impact on me. When I got up to the booth to actually play the game I met Marco Podda, Publishing & Project Manager, who saw me waiting in line for awhile and asked me if I was ready to play. I had told him about watching others before me and demo footage of the level I was about to play and of my past history with the SteamWorld series of games and how excited I was to finally get to play the game with my own two hands. While standing in line and talking to Julius I was able to get my Indiebox copy of the first SteamWorld dig signed by the two gentlemen. If you two guys ever read this I’d like to thank you for your kindness and care, the world needs more people like you. Now that we having my gushing out of the way let’s talk about the game and if it lived up to my lofty expectations.

SteamWorld Dig 2 takes places after the first game where that game’s hero Rusty goes missing at the end. We pick up the story with Dorothy, a young steambot on a mission to find her friend Rusty. The gameplay loop is the same for the most part wherein you dig through mines collecting gems, going back up to town, selling your gems, then using your cash to purchase upgrades so you can stay in mines longer and stay safer down there. What really excited me was the new upgrade cog system for your tools. Along with many other secrets to be found in the game you can find cogs that can be added up and put into slots to give you bonuses such as a larger light radius, quicker pickaxe swings, and lots of other cool things. I’m not one to go out of my way to find secrets or 100% complete a game but I can absolutely see myself going back through and picking up things I had missed.

If I had to give one criticism it would be that the story beats felt the exact same as the last game. The last game was rather short and in the end it boils down to having to find 3 things in previous areas and destroying them. In this game the situation ends up being the same but the game is longer this time which is great. The game is also a metroidvania in a sense and not having played many of those types of games personally, I’m not sure if this is just a staple of the genre such as grinding in a JRPG or quick time events in a first person shooter. Having a sense of exploration and addictive loop made me look past the shortcomings of the story since a game like this I’m going to play for the gameplay anyways and not look for a long, tedious story.

SteamWorld Dig 2 was an absolute blast to play. I felt like every time I would tell myself “just one more time into the mines” I would end up playing for another 30 minutes and 10 more trips. Being on the Switch it was nice to be able to give myself more time to really explore every corner of the game world and see what I could find if I just went a little deeper. I’d like to thank Image & Form for making such a fun game to play and explore in.

Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle

On a slow day at work while I was watching the Ubisoft E3 conference and Mario+Rabbis Kingdom Battle was revealed so I sent out a hilarious tweet that “Nobody wants this #UbiE3”. Jesus Christ, Mike give stuff a chance. Moments after when Shigeru Miyamoto walked out on stage, the god damn creator of Mario, to give the rest of a kind of silent “this is going to be good” feeling I shut my Twitter app and watched the rest of the gameplay. Minutes after that I opened my Twitter app again and tweeted “I’m going to get this game aren’t I?”.

Kingdom Battle was the game none of us thought we wanted but ended up coming to grips with and from what I’ve seen have universally loved. While I’m not a huge fan of tactics games (I’m not one to think actions through before I do them) I loved the flow and gameplay of Kingdom Battle. I was able to slow myself down and tell myself, yes, you could do this one thing but if you do this first and then that, this you can clear the whole field of bad guys. I’m looking forward to delving into more strategy games soon and maybe I’ll learn to enjoy them more than I ever had. Sometimes you just need to slow down and take things one thought at a time.

The main thing that I think a lot of people were skeptical when the game was first leaked before official reveal was the addition of Ubisoft’s Rabbids characters. These guys were the minions before the minions and by golly do I loathe me some minions. Turns out, I was wrong again because every little noise these bastards made and stupids actions they did gave me a hearty chuckle more often than not. The world was fantastic as well blending the well known Mushroom Kingdom with the crazy antics of the Rabbids and made me want to explore beyond the linear walkways we were given..

In the end I was wrong (shocking). Don’t judge things before you see what they truly are. What I thought would be a stupid crossover that would maybe hit the low 70s on Metacritic because I didn't think two franchises could fit together ended up being one of my favorite games of the year. The difficulty did spike for me at the end but luckily there was an easy mode and for someone who doesn’t have time to waste on games that waste my time that thing was an amazing addition. I do hope the team behind this team gets another shot with the Mario IP because I’d love to see what they can do next. I’ve never played Super Mario RPG on the SNES so...maybe a remake would be cool?

Kamiko

When was the last time $5 got you something worthwhile that you felt was worth the price of entry? It certainly wasn’t that cheeseburger you had earlier or that super mocha frappuccino latte...thing. For $5 there was a game recently released on the Nintendo Switch called Kamiko. To be honest it’ll probably take me more time to write this review then it did to complete one of the four stages the games presents to you. Although short, I haven’t felt better about dropping a few bucks on something that gives me a short burst of fun and a surprisingly good time.

Kamiko is an action RPG with simple gameplay and a puzzle to solve here and there. You choose from one of three characters, more on those later, and go through four stages unlocking gates that have been sealed by demons. There isn’t an extremely deep plot with twists and turns but that’s to be expected in a game that took me 53 minutes and 9 seconds to complete with some minor head scratching on which way I needed to go next. You kill hordes of enemies to build up a combo meter and fill a gauge that allows you to unlock doors, open chests, and use special moves. Once you’ve broken the seals on the four gates throughout each level you’re then taken to the stage boss which usually goes as any video game boss usually does. Find the pattern of attacks then strike when your moment arrives, repeat three times, badaboom onto the next stage. After you’re done the campaign with one character you have two more characters to choose from, both with varying attack styles of the one you just played. The campaign is the same but it’s the different play styles that is supposed to bring you back for another play through.

One of the things I look for most in a game is style. Pixel art is among my favorites and Kamiko delivers on that. Along with a sweet soundtrack, that the developer has noted interest in releasing, it was a joy to play with a smooth framerate and having the music blast through my speakers both on the tv and in handheld mode. Enemy types are few and far between but with them being killed in less then a second with one or two attack swipes they’ll probably be the thing you pay the least attention to. Each of the four stages has a different environment and I was excited at the end of each to see what the next would look like.  

For such a cheap entry price I feel Kamiko is absolutely worth what it asks of the player for the amount of fun you’ll have. The game with undoubtedly be played by speedrunners as the game times you on each stage and overall but is perfect for pick up and play especially if you have 10 or 15 minutes before your bus arrives. The game is perfect on the Switch and I look forward to what the studio does in the future.