Terraria When You're Near

About an hour ago, my review of PC-to-consoles indie hit Terraria went live on GamesRadar. You should go read it.

All done? Then let's discuss.

Terraria was a very tricky game to review. Most games that I'm given to write about are very straightforward, and generally either downloadable for PSN/ XBLA or the mid- to low-tier releases that staff writers can't get to, meaning most stuff that I get is on the short side. It's actually a pretty good setup, since I don't always have a ton of time to play through 40 hours of something over the span of a week. But I will if I have to, and even large-scale games like Skyrim typically have a critical path that is easy enough to follow through that I can at least see the end of, well, something. None of that describes Terraria.

It was, basically, a directionless game by design where you could alter the entirety of the environment as you see fit. The Guide NPC is usually floating around to offer you tips about summoning and killing bosses if you want them, but they're fairly vague on the outset. Worse, my Guide got killed during the first night in the game because I didn't realize that I needed to build him a house. So there I was, digging holes for the sake of digging holes, hoping against hope that I would just stumble across something that made me want to keep playing. The first several hours, then, were about as exciting as spectating a staring contest. I wasn't exactly baffled, but I didn't know what to make of any of it.

This is when I decided to replay Symphony of the Night.

First, this is something I never, ever do. If someone is paying me to play a video game for them and relay my thoughts, I keep pretty well focused on the task until I'm comfortable enough to make honest judgment calls. For whatever reason, I found that I needed a sort of basis of comparison against which to make those judgements, and SotN was the clearest example of great explorative platform gameplay that I could think of at the time. Plus, I can finish the map at 200%+ in a little less than 5 hours (give or take the rate of the Crissaegrim drop), so after a long evening or day with Terraria I could pop in SotN for an hour or so for both refreshment and cleansing after aimless wandering.

You would think, then, that since I'm replaying one of my all-time favorite games while playing something else that it might taint my view of the new game. At first, it actually did. As I played more and more of Terraria, and did a little research here and there, it actually turned into the other way around. SotN gave me the perspective that I needed to start focusing my thoughts, and keyed me into Terraria's greatest strength.

Be with me here: In true "Metroidvania" style, there is a lot to see and explore, but it will always be walled off to you with breadcrumbs leading the way to your next objective. You'll do everything you possible can (outside of level grinding in SotN's case, but even this gives diminished returns) which will drop your progress to a halt. Eventually, Alucard will come to a point where he can't do anything other than squat and fight enemies or find the next unexplored location. In Terraria, almost every location (other than the sky) is able to be explored right from the start, so the impetus for advancing the game is based on mood and whim and not necessity. In fact, "advancing the game" is sort of a secondary concept, and while I kind of knew to expect that when I started, it took a long time for it to sink in. It was Be Here Now to its fullest.

Eventually, I did find ways for "advancement," and by then, I had put at least 10 hours into it, and over the course of the days that I had left I put in at least another 10 more, more focused and determined but purposely loose. I didn't have to do anything, but once I found it, the path to "conclusion" was there if I wanted walk it. And by all accounts, I didn't even come close to that quasi-end point.

I stand by my score for the review, and the criticisms I've made for its systems and mechanics. But I'm completely smitten with Terraria. I even clocked in a few more hours of it last night, long after write up to GamesRadar was gone from my desktop. Thankfully, I had the Shmoos to give me an extra hand.

In The Shmood

Over the weekend, I decided to sit down and blast through Symphony of the Night for what might be the 10th time. This, even with all of the other work I was doing, is always a refreshing change of pace from everything I might have going on; it's comfort food to me. In fact, you could probably put it in my top 5 (or maybe 10) favorite games of all time if I was forced to make a list.

I'm not going to sit here and gush over it (though it's ludicrous to me that people that like video games haven't played it), but what makes it such a great experience is how densely packed it is. Subtle and explicit throwbacks to the original Castlevania games are what usually make me smile most, but the little things like the white bird sprite in the Outer Wall --something that has no meaning to the game, but it is an animated object that is only onscreen for less than 5 seconds-- show that the development team went through an awful lot to make this the masterpiece that it was.

So packed is SotN that even I, after numerous times through it, don't even pick up on the most obvious allusions. My new favorite? How each enemy found in the Inverted Library is named for a character in the  Wizard of Oz. How I never noticed that the entire place is only populated by Lions, Scare Crows, and Tin Men baffles me. However, the one foe that isn't from the noggin of Frank L. Baum in the IL, and arguably one of the most important mobs in the game for the fact that it drops a weapon that practically breaks it in half, is the Shmoo. A Li'l Abner Shmoo, just redesigned. That goes pretty far back and fairly obscure, even for a group of very
talented game designers in Japan.

Hats off to you guys 16 years later.

Some great stuff is coming in the next few weeks, and we'll talk a little more about Symphony of the Night in the next day or two. I imagine that you're already buckled up for the thrill ride, but you know, just in case...

Goodbye, Milo

Yesterday, a fantastic story of the life and death of Milo, the Xbox Kinect sort-of-a-game-but-not-really tech demo seen at 2009's Microsoft E3 press conference, was published on Polygon. As an artifact of the brief moments when new technology pushed down the walls to show further possibilities, Milo made the world think that Microsoft, through Kinect, was going to give the world something that they never knew they always wanted: a synthetic friend.

But the article, written be 1UP alum and Polygon features ninja Matt Leone, cracked the mirrors and busted the smoke machine to reveal that underneath it all, there was a game to be had with Milo (and his canine buddy Kate), and not simply an imaginary friend whom takes shape on your television. Not that it's entirely Lionhead's fault, after all, since it's a Microsoft-owned games studio that, you know, makes games. It turns out that using the camera and microphone saddled withing Kinect, Milo would turn the mirror back on you as the player represented his imaginary friend that would be taken on a trip (at least, in one iteration of the unreleased curio) through his everyday life and kinship with Kate. A Twilight Zone mystery was afoot, and the on-rails adventure would end as you, Milo, and Kate uncover who or what was killing sheep in the rural home that Milo had just moved to, kick starting his loneliness which ultimately, to him, spawns you. It actually sounds cool. But it's still a game.

I actually read this story with a small sliver or sadness. Milo, from what anybody could infer (because there was so little about it that was factually known) , was a program that one could speak to, and it would remember the conversation. When you walk into a room, Milo would know who you are and say hello to you. Draw him a picture, and he'll know what it is. You could ask him how his day was, and he would give you an answer (however empty that might actually be). Milo was our Commander Data, or as close to it as artificial intelligence could take us.

There was a lot of reflection after I had finished reading it. Do I actually want to have something like this in my life? Do any of us? I really don't now. While those might be larger philosophical fear-of-technology worries that don't actually keep me awake at night, I can say that the potential for something like a Milo to exist was very exciting when I first saw him streaming through the air on an internet that is too magical to to properly grasp if you thought too hard about it four years ago. Did I care about Kinect? Not really; I cared about the fact that technology was poised for a watershed moment in human interaction, and whether that interaction may actually dehumanize us as a whole. I didn't know what to make of it then. Now, I'm let down that it, as an game, was going to take me from the beginning, middle, and ending of a small virtual boy's story about him and his dog.

Maybe I'm just sad that it was going to be safe. Maybe that doesn't make me so afraid of technology, anyway.

Wait, Back Up

Some last minute freelance work just sort of crept up on me last night, so I won't have the time today that I thought to get more ideas down. Still, I'd like to take a second to tell you (and me, I guess) about some of the things that I want to do here. The first is to talk about games, which should be obvious. I kinda like 'em. Not only more than just tribute to old stuff and awareness of the new, but also to expand upon some other work I see around the internet and to extrapolate further information from the work that I've been doing myself because, well, a lot of that stuff has to be short. 2,000 words on the internet may as well be a Victor Hugo novel.

One of the industries spawned from gaming that I love almost as much as gaming itself is its ever-evolving criticism and journalism. I think there are very unique ways to look at the hows/whys/whens of game development and equally unique people that ask those questions. I think its important to chronicle the history of not only games themselves but also the industries that surround it. While criticism and journalism are certainly not the same thing, neither can they be mutually exclusive. Occasionally there will be criticism on this site, but rarely journalism. That's not what I'm building. But criticizing the journalism isn't the point, either (people have done that). I like seeing how they both tick as much as I love finding out how potentially great projects fall apart. To me, these are worth exploring.

I know that sounds a little vague, but that's kind of the point, too. There are personal projects I want to work on, and turning an eye on the games writers and their work is part of that. But probably not the only part. Let's be honest, I still want to tell you that the world needs to let go of their hate for The Battle of Olympus. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Fight For The Future

It's time to move on. Simple as that.

For those of you whom have looked at more than one post on this blog over the past few years, you've probably surmised a few key things. Firstly, dorkcollective may have started as such, but in no way has it been a "collective" since maybe its first month as a blog. Nothing against the other writers, but they've moved on to do other things and live separate lives, and that sort of pulls the rug out underneath any collectivity that people go for with this stuff. So the title, at least the title, had to change for this site to make any semblance of sense.

But that was just a jumping off point. The second thing you may have gleaned from this space over time was that it was sort of a dumping ground for other work that I was trying to do around the vast internets, and because of it, was never upheld to any standard of timing or responsibility. When the mood would tickle me, I would write something or, more accurately, migrate other things from other blogs over here. Since it was mainly for writing about games, and still probably is, this worked just fine. But I, like my errant "previous writers" have also moved on. There's a lot more to say and lot more to do these days, even though a lot of what you would find on here is probably going to be games related. But it can't --and won't-- be only that. While it seems pretty obvious from what I've just said that we won't be altering the course too much, the helm's going to turn a little bit more than it used to.

So here we are again at a kind of Post Zero. The old stuff will still be archived, the name might change again (I was thinking of "B Attacks," but I actually think that it would make a better name for a feminist gaming site. That is neither a joke or a dig at feminism), and things will be prettier when I can find time to make it that way. But the blog that we originally tried to create so many years ago about three people posting games, beer, and other whatnot had its impetus in personal growth. That won't change. This site needed more than a shot in the arm, it needed to be absolutely resuscitated. It needed something.

So let's do something, yeah?

The Path of Radiant After Markets

Since having recently finished Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones in preparation for playing Awakening -- like the good Nintendo Ambassador that I am -- I found myself very taken with the game. It being the first one that I've played to completion because I'm something of a philistine, I finally see how the FE faithful have become such a ravenous audience. If anything, the love/ hate relationship that I formed with Sacred Stones brought me back to the first time I went through Demon's Souls, and by that I mean that when I finally delivered the killing blow to the last boss and watched the credits roll, I felt like I had been through some shit. Since Demon's Souls has seem deep sentimental meaning to me, this is praise (if you can call it that) that I try not to heap on to a game very often.

Naturally, I started doing research into the other localized Fire Emblem games, and was caught by a fair amount of surprise. After taking a quick look on eBay, it seems that Path of Radiance, the series' first and only GameCube release, has catapulted in price over the years. I clearly remember its release when I was working in retail, and I have routinely seen it in used shops and shows as the years have gone on, but it seems as thought I've completely lost track of its status as a collectable over the years. The $75 that this example auction is calling for right now caused me some serious sticker shock. The other entries into the series, the GBA Fire Emblem, Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon for DS, and the Wii release Radiant Dawn, all command close to full retail price for their respective consoles, too. Clearly, the community around these games hangs on to them for dear life.

Is this hike in price caused.by the recent release of Awakening? I'm going to speculate so, since most of these games are still fairly common. Are they worth investing in to pad out a back log of games I'll probably never get through? I'm sure you all have some thoughts on that, but for close to a c-note it's looking more likely that these games are just going to be curiosities to me rather than actual life experiences. Then again, St. Patrick's Day is on Sunday, and I've made some costly eBay decisions before when I was not so sound of mind.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Revisited

Now a few days removed from finishing Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate, I can see where some of its criticisms have come from. Mechanically, the game is kind of an uneven mess. I’ve mentioned before that the combo-heavy combat like this doesn’t work so well on a 2D plane. Once you start to rev up your moves, your basically locked in place where other monsters can swarm around you; whereas with a z-axis on a 3-dimensional plane, you have more options in regard to movement in case an enemy digs in a blocks attacks or the plodding of your own swings causes other foes to try to get cheap shots. Here, it’s either roll forward or roll back, and can often times lead to enemy disengagement (which means you have to start all of your fighting processes over, making battles a drag) or you’ve just put yourself in harm’s way because of other monsters that have boxed you in. The addition of rolling in and out of the plane, like in 3D games like God of War or the Devil May Cry series, eliminates those issues by virtue of space. A nice try, but again, Bloodrayne: Betrayal proved that this didn’t work the first time, and it sure is busted here.

That doesn’t hold a candle to the fact that most fights are partitioned off which drags any momentum you might have for exploration (at least the first time you’re in an area. Return trips don’t unnecessarily block you from proceeding) to a halt. I get that MercurySteam really wanted to find a way to blend Lords of Shadow with Metroidvania, but forcing players to stop in their tracks so they can fight a few enemies with their hack battle system is both boring and broken. It also robs players of choice. In exploration-heavy games like this (tries to be), you really don’t have to fight much of anything if you don’t want to, other than bosses. Sure, it makes sense that you would so you can build levels to make these eventual boss-walls easier to conquer, but they’re not necessary. What’s important in the post-Symphony of the Night games is that you mill around the environment to either find the next location to explore, obstacle to overcome, or secret to uncover, not delivering beatdowns to skeletons. In those games, you can decide if you want to grind for levels/gear/souls or to uncover your next destination, and these can be mutually exclusive. Not in Mirror of Fate where it’s enter into hallway, stop and fight, look around, stop and fight, enter next hallway. That got old fast.

The last problem worth pointing out is that this game had no teeth. In the early Castlevania games, which Jeremy Parish took great pains to point out, are designed around Belmont movement flaws. They struck that balance that everyone wants between tough and fair. Part of the reason that it, and most other games, is that difficulty was based on risks and penalties for dying. You only had a set amount of lives, and if you didn’t complete your objective, well, tough cookies. The post-Symphony games updated this to a more RPG stance in that if you died, you’d be placed back at your last save. In Mirror of Fate, the game is auto-saving constantly. Enter a room, find an item, open a chest, hit a cut scene and the little icon at the bottom right of the screen will blink to remind you that your safety net is clearly underneath you, so go ahead and mess up as much as you want. Forget the common complaints about how easy and compartmentalized the boss fights are, the real problem with the balance of this game is that the auto save took risk out of the equation altogether, making for some weak sauce. There’s no reason not to finish this game as long as you keep playing. Earlier Castlevanias? No such luck.

But this game wasn’t the butt smear that certain corners of the intertron are calling it, either. Of the last several games bearing the name, I think that this one has some of the most consistent art direction since the NES era. While I’ll agree that dungeons and caves eventually look a little same-y, I find the tone consistent in lighting and mood, which is something that a lot of the other games just didn’t do. For as much as the audiovisual experience this series gets so much attention, it has always created a sort of cognitive dissonance between levels. Think about going from the Outer Wall in Symphony of the Night to the Library. The muted color tones and string-heavy music jerk into brightly colored décor and a harpsichord. Individually, they’re both brilliant. One right after the next is still jarring to me. It isn’t always like this. The bleak aesthetic of the Abandoned Mine a little later followed by the Catacombs is the perfect example of how everything fits together which is something that I’m guessing MercurySteam wanted to recapture with specific sections of Mirror of Fate, especially since the Catacombs is very platform-heavy.

I didn’t find the plot convoluted, though, which might make me a minority. In fact, I thought that the way MercurySteam reconciled strands of the previous continuity’s lore and brought them together was pretty agreeable. I’m probably going to SPOIL some things for you if you care (though you probably shouldn’t), but making Trevor into Alucard makes a hell of a lot more sense than in the previous continuity. Be with me for a second; Dracula, whom is the corporeal Prince of Darkness, decides to put aside being the World’s Ultimate Evil Satan figure for a brief moment so he could fall in love with a human woman named Lisa and knock her up. Then he goes back to be the World’s Ultimate Evil. This is pretty close to the dumbest origin I’ve ever heard, because brief lapses in defining character traits are about as clever as a fart joke. If you need further proof I have some Red Kryptonite for you. Though probably equally hackneyed, the idea of Gabriel Belmont having a secret son spirited away from him at birth and turned into a vampire later to save his life is a teensy bit more plausible. There certainly was a feeling of anticlimax after Mirror of Fate ended, but it did a fine enough job squeezing Trevor/Alucard and Simon into a continuity that doesn’t really need them to begin with. Which should be good enough, but I know for most people probably isn’t, so I’ll go ahead and drop it.

It’s an ok game, I guess. I’m a little let down that I threw forty clams at it when it only took a couple of sit-downs to finish, but I knew that coming in so shame on me. I still have some hopes for Lords of Shadow 2, but a whole lot less out of Konami if further handheld games in this series follow this same format. Points go to MercurySteam for trying something a little different from all things IGA, but not enough for me to place it among the better games in the franchise.

Freelancer Blues Part 3

Here we are at the third installment of our aesthetically-unappealing-on-purpose look at the highs and lows of trying to write about games for gelt. I hope that you have a six pack handy, because today is all about sadness, horror, and maybe reading a blog while you're drunk (if you read slowly).

MYTH-SQUASHING REALITY OF THE DAY

You need to have a job.

There.

It doesn't have to be a high-paying job, or even a full-time job, really, but a job is a job, and if you're writing for a gaming website or two, then an actual, stable stream of income outside of that is pretty important, especially if this is the only thing keeping your gas turned on. Let's say that you turn out to be a pretty good writer. You've gotten a fair enough amount of experience and have put together a half-decent set of samples that you've parlayed into a relationship at Gaming Site A (because calling it Gaming Site X implies that it should be snowboarding). This means that they are paying you a flat rate for each individual piece that you write. This is just an example, but think they're giving you about $150/ article if you're writing a feature or review, though that might vary depending on the size of the feature, the work involved, and necessary research (there are pretty similar criteria for reviews). Let's do some simple math: if you score one article per week (which is pretty darn good sometimes), that's roughly $600-750 a month depending on the month, what the site needs, and if you're reliable and fast. That's a pretty good chunk of change all things considered, but how much is your rent? You're food? Are you paying for internet, or do you have to live in a coffee shop, and even then, that's a couple bucks here and there for their mediocre dark roast so they don't kick you out. Do you have roommates? Insurance? Other things that your parents are really concerned about and you, maybe not so much?

The consistency of the work you're getting is going to turn out to be monumentally important. HORROR STORY: Remember my friend Brian? Good guy, great writer. He used to be one of the news guys for a larger site when they were relying on freelancers to publish a certain amount of articles a day. It wasn't great cash, but it was consistent, and with the other work that Brian was pulling in, he could make ends meet (Brian also has a wife and newborn, by the way). All of a sudden, the website did some rejiggering with their staff and he wasn't on the news anymore. This severely threw a wrench into Brian's day-to-day affairs and what he was bringing in every month. Brian wound up being ok, he had other freelance clients to fall back on (Bonus ProTip: diversify your clients if you can swing it), but there isn't an umbrella in the world that will cover you when the shit comes down. Editors will come and go, and this might change your relationship with a company. My advice is to at least try to work at this coffee shop you've been playing Phantasy Star II in. You'll be making tips and keeping yourself fed with their day-old bagels, and if anything, they won't kick you out when you've been sitting there for five hours mooching their free wi-fi.

MANAGE YOUR TIME. THIS IS NOT AN OPTION.

This might sound completely contradictory to what I just told you about keeping steady work in- and out of the games writing bidness, but once you start getting down with reviews and features on the regular you will soon struggle with this as I (and many others) have. I'll cut to the chase: You're not going to have a lot of time to turn around an article after it has been offered to you by an editor. The most you might get is about 4 days (more or less) to put together a feature if the place you're writing for is thinking ahead with their content plans (and that's pretty generous in some instances). That's kind of a lot of time, but that can depend on your situation. Let's say you have a 25-page slide show that you need to write 75-100 words apiece for, plus finding all of the art for them, resizing them and/or Photoshopping or GIMPing something for them (plus intro and extro slides), and this assumes that your editors have given the list of games to you and not relied on you to think them up yourself (and then send them prior to writing for approval). If you did this and nothing but this, then it might take you a few hours or even a day to kind of pound something out. The rest of us have a lot of other stuff going on, so they have to compartmentalize and prioritize their time a little differently.

With reviews, sites want to publish their thoughts on something as close as humanly possible to the release of the game that they can pull off. Sure, sometimes this works and other times it doesn't, but getting things finished, and finished correctly, at a deadline is what they're hiring you to do. That means that if you're getting a review, you have to drop everything that you're doing and begin inhaling whatever they sent you. This can be very stressful. Most of the time, it's only about 2-3 days between getting a download code and having the work published, so you have to be not only quick on your feet, but also decisive with your judgments. But a lot of times, that even gets thrown out the window depending on the game. When you are offered a random twin-stick shooter exclusive for XBLA or something like DLC for Skyrim, that potentially pedestrian twin-stick shooter is going to be a hell of a lot easier to soak up and accurately review in the time you'll be allotted. But I know, you really want to review Skyrim DLC. We'll come back to that.

I have a full-time job, and there have been plenty of times that my lunch hour is taken up sitting in front of my laptop either transcribing notes and forming them into complete thoughts or screwing around on Google Images trying to get art together because the ftp password that came with press credentials isn't working and I can't get pictures for an article. There have been times where I do this during the day, play games at night to review, and then repeat the process until it's done. It ain't always like this, but it happens. One more thing: It might be tempting to try to do some of this stuff at work, but try to be disciplined with it. No need to screw it up with the people that might be paying for your insurance, whether you like the gig or not.

This brings up the subject of playing games for enjoyment, which you will want to do. Well, I can't tell you what you should and shouldn't do with your free time, but trying to squeeze all of this stuff together -- writing your articles, playing shitty games for review (we'll come back to this, too), proofing, making more contacts, living an actual life -- it can get a little difficult sometimes to just, well, play games that you want to play. Way back when on an episode of the Oddcast, Chris Plante pretty much came right out and said that it doesn't happen very often if you’re trying to be a good writer. The more you do this, and the more the work comes in, the more you might find that he's right.

To sum up, don't quit your day job. For real. I hope you can get to a point where you're turning down work because you're over cooked with what you have, or that you're just been offered a staff writing gig at your favorite shop. Until then, though, keep this as a really great hobby, and just do good work.

ENOUGH PREACHING

I promised terror, and terror I will bring. Here are some brief anecdotes of things that happened whether they could have been avoided or not.

- Remember when I told you not to pack your bags so you could make it in New York? Well, this might be the most practical advice I can give you because I once met a guy that, yes, packed up his shit because he had a job at Game Site A in a city far from where he was. He got there, unpacked his stuff, and was downsized within three months. Most of the time you can't see this coming, but still. Be careful, man.

- You are hired to write something for someone, and it will almost never be something of profound interest to you, in my experience. Maybe you have a really great article in mind about the state of achievement in games, or how gamers themselves stereotype each other based on what games they're playing. Tough cookies. Give us 10 slides about Lara Croft's chest. Yes, you write for hire, not always for art.

- When you are writing something on the internet, you must prepare for a certain decimation of your ego. Brian has done articles for sites that were very large, had a copious research component, and paid kind of lousy when all things were said and done. His real reward were the 4 people out of around maybe 70 that commented on the article he wrote (that wasn't even his idea) that didn't call him an idiot, a bad writer, or a thousand times worse. The thing with the internet is that everyone has a voice, and they will use it to yell at you no matter how well-intentioned you are. From Brian's own [typed] lips: "internet commenters exist to a) point out every last typo, b) pull up some obscure fact that invalidates yours, or c) generally make you feel that the article you wrote kills puppies." I can site more articles than you have the time or patience to digest as proof. Thicken your skin, son.

- My first routinely-paying work was doing news for a site that expected you to find something online, pitch it to them, and then turn it around to them in less than 30 minutes. It was a great learning experience, and I still keep in touch with the editor. The bad thing is that this guy was fired about 8 months or so after I started. They kept the same schedule for news, but started giving it only to certain freelancers without pitching, and they did this without really telling anybody. This was their call, and while I was a little let down that I wasn't in on the plan, I had to remember that I was still working for hire, so I didn't really need to be. Surprise, doing news was a thing of the past.

- I've visited the home offices of one larger site in the past, and it was creepily silent. These places are not club houses where everyone's playing Halo. This is a business.

- Putting up with shitty assignments will reward you with getting exactly what you want when you want it, but very rarely.

- Editors are really, really busy. As such, they don't have a ton of time to give you feedback or offer you constructive criticism. When they do, sponge it all in.

- On the flip side, other editors will pass your work around the office to give everyone a read and then send you thoughts via Google document or maybe even a .doc file. Chances are, that masterpiece you wrote just got brutalized by someone. Try not to take it personally. If errors are particularly eggregious, you might make a short apology after you do the rewrites, but just do the rewrites quickly and correctly if you have that chance.

- Of the above two examples, the worst thing in the world is when a writing team will take your work and rewrite it to put in their own humor or attempt to "fix" things. I made a large slide show for a site once that was supposed to be funny, but the editors clearly didn't get the jokes that I was making. After sending it back to me for some rewrites, they went ahead and did their own share of rewriting while completely restructuring the slide show. Some jokes fell flat because of their new placement, others made absolutely no sense because of retooling, while others had added text to slides that made them...icky. My name was attached to this, so I was a bit furious, but there really isn't anything I could do. Either I complain and risk loosing them as a client or hope that the article gets burried as soon as possible. Thankfully, the latter happened.

- The games that you will get for review will be, for the most part, small-time. This, in no way, implies that you're writing about bad stuff, but places have in-house staff to review the Final Fantasies, BioShocks, and Mass Effects. When pitching to editors and asking for games to review, keep in mind the smaller and mid-tier games that come out as downloadables or for niche audiences. A lot of times, places don't have enough man power to get to that stuff.

- This was sort of my fault, but one time a game got announced to release on PSN two or three days before it actually dropped. I emailed the reviews editor for a site to see if I could write up the review for it right when the news broke, but he was out of the office. Thinking I was being pro-active, I sent a message to his managing editor explaining the situation and asking for the review. This person saw it my way and sent me a download code a day later (thankfully giving me until the day after the game's release as a deadline). Going over the original editor's head didn't do me any favors, though, as he proceeded to give me the cold shoulder for close to 8 months. I didn't get review work from this place again until he left for another opportunity.

- If you don't calmly remind certain places, you might not get paid for months at a time. I wish this wasn't the case, but always make sure that you send your invoices and your follow-up emails in a timely manner.

I hope this was helpful for, well, someone. I'm sure I'll remember a little tidbit that I left out and will blog about it when it comes to mind.

Thanks for reading the Long Stuff (because people hate the Long Stuff).

Freelancer Blues Part 2

Yesterday, I talked about the necessary first steps into trying to make money while writing about games. Notice that I could have dressed that up into saying something absurd like "first step into a larger world," or whatever, but I didn't. Frankly, that's bullshit. This immediately brings us to our first myth-crushing point of the (again picture-less) day:

THE WORLD IS SMALL (AND IT'S GETTING SMALLER)

Ok, yes, the internet is as mysterious as it is vast, and you can absolutely make a name for yourself writing for tons of smaller sites or getting your podcasts bandied about on reddit, but if we're talking about cash money, the stuff that buys you food and keeps your heat on, the world is shrinking. Yes, there are places that pay, but think of them as the Majors: IGN, Kotaku, Joystiq, Polygon, GamesRadar, Gamespot, VG24/7, Game Informer (and I don't even know if they publish freelance work. I'm really thinking no), and maybe Kill Screen to a lesser extent. There are probably more places, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind. For the most part, they publish a steady stream of good, easily-read (that's important) work, and they get their share of hits per day.

But, as we also observed yesterday, things change all the time. You know what my dream gig was? Working for 1Up...in 2008. The fact that I didn't turned out to be in my favor after we've seen what's happened to that site and many, many others over the course of the last five years or so. Jeremy Parish has now worked for three separate parent companies (and now back to the first). Future Publishing owns an awful lot of print and web publications and they have restructured more times than I can remember right now. One of those pubs was Nintendo Power, which we all know went poof a few months ago. See where I'm going with this?

So there really aren't that many places out there that will shell out for your work. Be patient, and be diligent about checking back to see if anyone's willing to pick up your work. Another myth that I'm going to crush is that staff writing jobs at these places are about as common as plutonium deposits in your back yard. Don't expect to score one of these things very easily, if ever. On that note:

ABOUT THAT 'WORKING FOR FREE' THING

I kept a MySpace blog for two years (I think more) about used games and collectability before getting set up with a couple of free sites. From there, I probably had two, maybe three articles posted at these places and thought that I had my black belt in games writing, so it was time to drop these fools that have lent me a hand and move on. This was a mistake.

It was over a year (closer to two) with the free sites when I finally found a place that would pay for work after doing free stuff for three or four years at that point with the blogs. I was starting to get resentful and discouraged. One of the free sites kept making promises about payments (though I was getting the occasional free game), but never came through. My ego's trajectory started from gratitude that I was being published, to "I'm too good for this place," to "why the hell can't I find work," to "maybe I'm just not that good of a writer" (which is still very probable). I'd like to tell you to try to just stay happy that you're getting published, but I'm not an idiot. At least try not to burn any bridges or piss off other writers you work with. Eventually, everybody might know each other in some capacity or another, remember?

ACTUALLY GETTING WORK

I'm going to be totally honest with you and say that I find this to be the hardest part. Once I had what I felt was a pretty decent set of samples, it was time for me to try to pass some around. If you're curious, I placed in two or three reviews (one game I loved, one I hated, and one that I thought was mediocre) to show some range, a news roundup article that I was doing at the time (I picked one that included what was happening at Infinity Ward when West and Zampella left to show how I covered Big News), and one feature article. If I were to do this over, I would probably put in more features, because many, many sites are going away from the boilerplate news/previews/reviews format in favor of feature-based content. But I knew at the time that my reviews were strong, and that's what I was most comfortable doing, so that's what I wanted to show. Other people might tell you different if you ask them, especially these days, but it worked for me.

Then, I started babysitting the internet. Seriously. Since I'm in the Midwest and there aren't a lot of events or shows that happen around me, I didn't have a lot of opportunities to meet people for some face-to-face time, but I'll come back to this in a second. Once a month or so, I would go to every site that I could think of and looked at hiring pages. Occasionally, some had open call-outs for good freelance work. I would type a brief, neat (both of which are monumentally important) intro and links to my published work and hoped for the best. Some places gave me nibbles, others didn't get back to me. One of them finally replied to the email and gave me a shot with a short news clip about Split/Second screen shots. It was the most slaved-over 150 words I have ever written.

Here's something else I've tried to very mixed (meaning, sort of lousy) results: contacting people directly. A lot of sites have their writers easily message-able or with their email address plainly displayed on their articles. I would try to find whomever the executive or managing editors were and directly send them inquiries. This has never, ever worked for me. You might get a different result, especially if you have a lot of published work under your belt. My advice, though, is just stay far enough away. These folks get an awful lot of these (Stephen Totilo, ME over at Kotaku, did an online Q/A in the a few months ago. Guess what a huge chunk of those questions were about?). Better to just leave them alone

Actually meeting people has turned into a pretty good approach for me, but only after I've had some stuff published so I could say, "I'm the guy that wrote ______ for _______." Once I had one contact, they could introduce me to other contacts, too, and this was a pretty big help. But once the door is open, it doesn't mean that the whole party is coming in. You have to be smart and diligent about making contacts and meeting people, and you can't just expect that more work is going to come your way just because you've gotten one story written for x site.

Take this as friendly advice: remember to BE COOL to other writers. I cannot say this enough. At one point, a guy sent me a PM on a message board because he'd seen some work that I had done, and it was totally out of the blue. It didn't turn into a ton of work or money, but it was still very welcome and downright flattering. I sort of paid this forward to another writer that I've read on other sites when I knew an editor that I occasionally work with was looking for more freelancers. I don't know if this person's picking up any work out of it (yet), but it can't hurt to help other people to ultimately help yourself.

Want to know what else you should never do? I'm going to out myself in some way by telling you that I've never been to PAX or E3, but I have been to other industry events (and I have certainly written coverage for both sitting with a laptop in a coffee shop, but not playing Phantasy Star II). I had a chance to shake hands with a few people from larger websites that I really wanted to meet and toss business cards around with. Most of them aren't there for that, though, they're there to work. It's totally cool if you introduce yourself and if you're at some after party and you see a couple of these cats around, then yeah, a "hey, I'm John, and I write for _____" is fine. Doing it during the day when they want to talk to developers and see alpha builds of games is a serious no no. If the time comes for you to be in their shoes, you would want it the same way. Also, make sure the business cards that the place your writing for has your correct email address on them. I once walked into a place a couple of years ago with a box of cards that were shipped to my hotel that had all kinds of bad info on them. This full box of useless crap sat in my room for two days when they should have been given to certain people.

COAST TO COAST

Here's something a little stupid about me. In college, I used to do freelance storyboards for the film majors, and I even took a crack at doing some independent comics for a second. Everyone I spoke to on the subject told me the same thing: If you want work in storyboarding, you have to go where the money is, and that meant Las Angeles. I wasn't so in love with it, and for a bunch of reasons unnecessary to explain, I did not move to LA. The games writing industry, in its way, isn't really that far removed from that. Future, IGN, and GameSpot are all located in San Francisco, and a ton of stuff has their roots in New York City. In fact, every time recently that Kotaku, for example, has put up cattle calls for part-timers it's for NY-based writers. While this isn't always the case for other large publications (Game Informer is in Minneapolis of all places, which, actually, is a much cooler town than you think) and the internet makes it doable if you live almost anywhere to work, full-time office kinds of work are basically on one coast or the other.

That doesn't mean pack your bags, sell your car, and plan on having dreams as your only income. But we'll talk about that and other horror stories tomorrow.

Have any questions about any of this stuff? I promise to be as brutally honest as I can within reason, so ask away.

Freelancer Blues Part 1

This is something I'm republishing here from an old 1UP.com blog. It's a little on the long side, so go get a beer. Before I begin, though, I have to mention something that Bob Mackey wrote in his farewell blog when it was announced that 1UP would be winding down: If you want to write about games, you should be doing it for yourself first. I thought this sort of went without saying, but it can't hurt to point it out again.

Anyway.

Ok, so writing about games. Wait, no, you want to talk about writing about games for money. Let's think about this for a second.

When this blog was just a bad idea that I tried to push out of my head early this morning, I knew that I should let it settle for a second before I started typing. These faux-"in the trenches" articles about writing for pay and how to break into it are usually pretty trite. I asked a friend of mine, another freelancer we'll call Brian, his opinion:

ME: This probably isn't a good idea, but I think I'm going to do a blog series about freelancing
Brian: Oh yeah? Hah...I'm guessing it won't all be rosy.
(We then went on to talk about poop schedules. Yes, seriously)

It won't. I've been freelancing for a couple of gaming sites on and off for the past four years and I've seen just as much bad as I've seen good, and I really haven't seen that much in the grand scheme of things. I don't want to scare you off from doing what you love for a little bit of cash, but it ain't as easy as sitting around with a laptop in a coffee shop and pouring your guts out over Phantasy Star II.
Still interested? Then in this series I'll offer the best advice I can from my own personal experiences: some general advice to start, meeting people and making contacts, and dealing with the pains and joys of working with people that have been in it a lot longer (and sometimes a hell of a lot less) than I have. I'll also throw in some bits about other friends of mine that freelance and some of the experiences they've had for comparison's sake.

A note before we move on: I'm going to make this as frank as possible without naming names and citing specific projects that I've worked on for whom. Again, I'm not going to complain about doing this; in fact, writing about games and getting paid for it is what just about everyone with an internet connection wants to do for a reason (because it's awesome), and this is one of the problems. This series is meant to give you both a reality check and some practical advice if this is something you really want to do.

Also, I'm not going to put in any stupid pictures of a typewriter or note pad or anything else that is a cliche "writer" thing. Just fair warning.

THINGS YOU'VE HEARD BEFORE THAT SOUND LIKE BAD ADVICE BUT ARE HONEST-TO-GOD TRUE

1: This is going to sound crass, but I've found it to be a cold reality: this shit is hard. It's difficult to get your work noticed (even if you're good, and I'm not talking about me), difficult to maintain relationships in such a changing niche market, and difficult to pay bills if you want this to be your only income. We'll get into all of these individually as the next few days ramble on.

2: Ever go to a gaming site when the editor is answering questions or listen to a podcast where your favorite writer/personality giving thoughts about this stuff? Yes, you have, and that means that you've also heard them tell you time and again that you need to keep writing constantly. Start a blog (like this one), get your thoughts down, do it often, and get comfortable writing. There is always a difference between natural talent and hard work, but how you treat both of them are equally important. Maybe you weren't the best student in your middle school English classes, or maybe you taught high school Language Arts. Yes, one sounds impressive compared to the other, but if the person giving students the rundown on Nathaniel Hawthorne isn't writing on the regular like guy that might fail their Scarlet Letter exam, then all of that skill that they think is innate will atrophy while the other person's growing. It doesn't matter what you write about when it all boils down to it (but routinely writing about games is kind of helpful), but you need to keep writing.

3: When I first decided that I wanted to write about games for dough, I asked a person that works for a very, very large gaming site for some hints on how to break in (whom was really cool about giving over some helpful advice. BONUS PROTIP: not everybody is). His best advice after #2 above: you need to read, and you need to read everything. Magazines, books, internet articles, the sports section, the financial reports, whatever you can get your hands on. You need to see how other writers write, and you need to notice the differences between the good stuff and the bad. This is mucho important, and more so than a lot of people think.

4: Persistence is key. Don't be a nag to people, but try not to get discouraged. You will be shot down for work more often than it will be offered to you by a landslide. Get used to that.

5: This is the biggest eye-roll advice you'll probably read, but you need to be flexible. Burn this into your psyche now. The games-writing business (whether you want to be called a "games journalist," a "games blogger," or just a "games writer") is changing pretty dramatically and constantly. You need to be able to adapt to the needs of the people you're working for and diverse enough to find other work when what you were doing dries up. That last part also super sucks.
Now that we have some of the yes-I've-seen-these-bullshit-tips-before-get-to-the-actual-advice section, which you should probably re-read if that's your reaction, let's move on to some the first big practicality:

YOU NEED TO WRITE FOR FREE
I bet you've also heard about this little nugget in the past, too. "Hang on," you're thinking. "I have a journalism degree from the University of Iowa (or wherever). Why the eff should I be giving away these pearls for nothing with that kind of credential?"

People are already taking a shit on your ego because now you haven't done anything, just expected it to be done for you. Without a body of work to prove that you A) you know what you're talking about and B) you (and future editors) can cite your strengths and weaknesses then you just bought yourself a very expensive piece of paper from a very prestigious place that prints them. Am I saying that your high-profile degree is worthless? Absolutely not, but a lot of people that write regularly in the gaming press don't have backgrounds in journalism, or even, in some cases, anything related to the English language. While this might be changing as the years go on (again, because everybody and their dog wants to do this just like you), being a sound writer with a good portfolio of work can go a long way.

As I see it, there are two ways of doing this:

1: This, incidentally, is the route I have taken. Find a website that you enjoy that welcomes new writers. This doesn't mean places like 1Up, IGN, Kotaku, Joystiq, Polygon, GamesRadar, VG24/7 or just about anywhere else you might conjure up immediately off the top of your head. These folks are the big names, they pay, and everyone knows it so they're beating cats like you and me off with a stick. Smaller, more audience-specific places are a better start. Think spots that are specific to Nintendo exclusively, or are about nothing but retro games, or maybe one of the scoreboard sites. These places are doing the best they can with what they have, and most of the time they’re just happy to keep the lights on, so they need decent writers that can work for free. Find your specialty and run with it. Content is king on any website and even smaller places know that if they want people coming back, they have to post new stories. That's where you come in.

What you get out of the deal:

-Exposure first and foremost. This is important. When you can refer back to work that was published and can link to it, you're way ahead of a lot of other people. It's easy to form a body of work here, so as long as you know that this is your best reward (and it is), it's always worth it.

-More eyes on your work, meaning better editing than your brother, your significant other, your parents and other people that don't want to hurt you. This is your chance to grow, so soak it in as much as possible. I'm not saying that you have to agree with every edit that's made of your stuff, but you should definitely take it all seriously. Listen to your editors and hone this stuff.

-Become diverse. What I mean is that if you're writing for a place that isn't paying you, they're probably open to any kind of content that you can pound out, as long as it's good. Reviews are what everybody wants to do, which is fine, but make sure yours stand out. Try to do some news, too. A lot of sites, other than the bigger "blog"-types, are starting to shy away from doing regular industry news, but it's a good exercise to know news cycles, and to crank out small stories on a timer. This doesn't mean that you should try to publish things every 20-30 minutes like Kotaku or Polygon, so maybe pitch little weekly news round-ups to editors once you've proven you can work on a schedule and under a deadline. You should also go to an event, maybe even one with another writer for the site, and cover what you see. Editors for the site should give you some direction as to what kind of content they want from these things, and these can be previews of game builds that you see (just the facts, no opinions unless they ask for them), interviews with developers (which is a huge deal if you can do these at events. REMEMBER TO BRING A RECORDING DEVICE or get an app for you phone), or color commentary on your experiences there. A lot of events are invitation-only, but going to PAX or something is still a good place to start.

-Move up within their ranks. Sounds little dumb, but if they have some sort of hierarchy like Senior Writers and Assistant Editors this means that you might learn to use their CMS (content management system) to post articles. Really, what we use to blog on 1Up is also a CMS, too, so you already have some exposure, but other places have proprietary stuff that is good to learn just for diversity's sake. Also, you may get the opportunity to coach other writers. This is definitely not for everyone, but if you're down for looking at other people's work, you can sort of watchdog how you do things as well. That never hurts.

-Everyone wants to start with writing reviews, and that's fine, but just know that you're probably buying your own stuff before anyone starts coughing up download codes for things, but those may come. Getting free junk is way awesome, but just you have to remember that you are not working for the people that provide the site this stuff, you work for the people that are receiving it. If a game is good, say that it's good. If it's shit, don't be afraid to tell people this, even if you scored it for free and you're trying to be cool. Effectively writing about how something isn't good is as much a skill as saying that it is. Want to know what's really hard? Trying to convey how something's just "all right." Trust me on this, if you're writing for place with a 1-10 scale of reviewing and you've got a game that's a solid 6 at best, trying to straddle the line between praise and punishment is tougher than you think. DON'T BE AFFRAID TO ASK YOUR EDITORS FOR ADVICE.

-Meet people. Meet people, meet people, meet people. I can't stress this enough. Brian, the writer I mentioned above, is a really great friend that I met through writing for a free site. We trade freelance tips together, brainstorm ideas off each other when paying places want us to make lists, let each other proof things, the works. He also lives in Canada, so we don't get to see each other often, but that's the beauty of the Internet. The writers and editors for the places that you cut your teeth at could be your future editors, colleagues, and even friends. Start a friendly rivalry with another writer and see how both of your work grows. Keep in touch with the ones that you trust because you never know what tomorrow will bring. Go to events with some business cards (if you can get some) and shake some hands. We'll come back to this stuff later.

The flip side to all of this is that, well, things happen. Web sites restructure and sometimes forget to archive their previous content. Meaning, all of that writing that you've slaved over for nothing might be lost (this has legitimately happened to me) so you have even less to show for it. Also, you're doing this for a pat on the back and maybe the occasional free game or promo t-shirt. Fun in the moment, but that won't pay your gas bill. Still, there are serious benefits if you're willing to put in the time and ready to stick with it for a while.

2: Internships. If you're still in college and you are thinking of a career in games writing, this is something you should be thinking seriously about. Larger sites and their parent companies largely advertise their internship programs, especially in the summers between academic years. From what I understand, they tend to get competitive, so just know up front that there are an awful lot of folks out there thinking the same thing you are. Get to know what these people want to see if you can (strong portfolio, a decent resume, knowing that it's "video games" and not "videogames"). Write for your school paper or maybe a local free paper. Even if you think that people aren't reading it, you are growing your body of work, and experience is pretty important.

What are the potential benefits to this stuff? Honestly, I don't have firsthand knowledge of it, but other people that I know and have met have started their staff writing careers at one site or another because they interned first. Sorry that I can't be more specific, but the end result is what everyone wants, and if this is a way that you can logically get there, then start paying attention to hiring schedules and other information that turns up at the beginning or end of semesters. It can't hurt to try to inquire about these either, but, like everything else, don't be a dick to other writers. One email and maybe a follow up a week or two later is fine, but if they don't respond from that, then drop it. Chances are you'll see a similar sentence later on, too.

Ok, so that's a lot to digest for right now. The next one won't be as long, but we're going to get into some more personal experience in the next couple of days, so at least you can see what worked for me and what really, really didn't.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I’m roughly three hours into the idiotically named Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate, and I’m finding myself liking it. It has its problems, mostly dealing with some really suspect jumping mechanics that make me feel like I’m floating toward nothing in particular, but I’ve sort of wrapped my head as best I can around the combo-heavy battle system, even though it shouldn’t really exist in this form. If you can recall WayForward’s Bloodrayne: Betrayal then you can see the same problem; combo-intensive combat like this just isn’t supposed to exist on a 2D plane. It locks your character into place for unavoidable counter attacks from the enemy AI, and the player’s lack of mobility around an erased z-axis renders what should be agile characters very still and sometimes bizarrely inert.

Both of the above mentioned problems, along with an overall nonsensical plot that I haven’t quite made through myself, are the primary criticisms of the game. On the surface, Mirror of Fate was supposed to be a sort of marriage between Mercury Steam’s God of War-like Lords of Shadow and the traditional Symphony of the Night/ Metroidvania games of Castlevania’s more recent history (even though those aren’t even “traditional” in the true sense of the series, something I think people forget a little more than they should). So far it’s been pretty light on the world exploration, and fairly heavy on popping zombies into the air and yelling in a Scottish accent –both of which I kind of dig for the moment. But I’m not going to sit here and defend the game from its detractors. After only a little bit of time to fumble around with it, I’m not qualified yet. Instead I’m just going to say that I told you so.

Castlevania needed a reboot in the worst possible way. The games were becoming split into two very distinct but structurally similar categories: the 2D explorative sprite games a la Symphony and its lineage found on handheld systems and the 3D console games that tried to replicate the formula. The handhelds, while consistently good, were worn out. Playing them as they were released had become routine, you may as well have just bought one of them (by that I mean either Aria or Dawn of Sorrow, which were probably the best, even though Order of Ecclesia ended the subseries on a high note) and played it from scratch once a year. The console games were dry and lifeless. The locations were simply a handful of large rooms connected by corridors with a smattering of locked off areas that could be accessed if you were just a little more patient. They were confining and boring with 3D combo-driven combat that, at that point, was shown up handily by the contemporary God of War games. The stories were the worst kind of straw-grasping, basically giving any potential excuse for Dracula to be resurrected outside of the established “happens once every century” bullshit. The series didn’t need a stake in the heart, it needed to be taken behind the shed for a bullet to the head.

So we got a reboot, and a pretty good reboot. It didn’t check off all of the boxes to make it a masterpiece, but instead of going back to the exploration-equals-enjoyment chalkboard of previous games it decided to take an obvious if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em approach. It adopted the mechanics of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War. It dropped what had become very anime-inspired character traits and went for the gruff machismo of faux-realism western action games. It restarted the lore from zero, the primary focus of what makes any reboot work. Of course it couldn’t please everybody, nothing can.  Even though the franchise was finally making its way back around the Belmont family, it barely touched upon Dracula whatsoever (until the stinger ending). Exploration had taken a backseat almost completely, pushing for more of a level structure that the GoW games had established, making it feel claustrophobic for a series that had tried to identify itself with limited exploration for more than a decade. Folks lost their cool over this stuff, mostly the absolute ‘vania faithful unhappy with whatever direction the series would take if it wasn’t made by the guiding hand of Koji Igarashi, franchise overseer since post-Symphony of the Night.

So Konami and Mercury Steam relented, and what we wound up with is Mirror of Fate, a linear 2.5D platformer with a convoluted plot revolving around the old series three most beloved heroes (all according to its critics). If all of this is true, then this is exactly what we deserve, and both the publisher and developer should have stuck to their guns and left well enough alone. The point of a reboot is to start over, the wipe the slate clean. In Castlevania’s case, this meant eliminating its overbearing plot continuity, starting with new characters, and making different types –or perhaps subgenres – of games. By the simple act of greenlighting this game, Konami turned around and said “fine, if this is what you want, then this is what you get.” The team at Mercury Steam, clearly capable of making sound 3-dimensional action games, were confined into constructing something similar to Symphony’s quasi-open castle; something that the “linearity” detractors have pointed out they have no acuity for. The people that still work at Konami that have a background in this stuff have nothing to do with Mercury Steam, and even console or handheld action games at this point as they have been relegated to social game development for the Japanese market. Does this pardon the developer for making a somewhat limited framework? Not really, but if you take a step back to look at the level structure, it’s basically the same way that they handled it with Lords of Shadow; large, linear, and made to be re-explored with new equipment not because it’s necessary but because it’s worthwhile to see what’s around every corner. If it doesn’t hold up by the time I actually finish the game –and I will, it’s going to happen – then that’s fine as long as it’s not downright awful. But to poo poo on the game because it’s not built like nearly all previous handheld games since Circle of the Moon might be a little unfair given the circumstance.

The plot, though, is what’s really worth mentioning. Again, I’m not done and I haven’t seen everything. Some of the reviews I’ve read mention that there are actually four story threads instead of the three, the last of which involving another key character in the Castlevania lore. I’ve also read overwhelmingly that they, and the way they’re told, are straight up awful. To that, I say tough shit. There was no need to cram classic characters into Mercury Steam’s new continuity, but enthusiasts of the old franchise pissed and moaned about how they would be left behind and forgotten in favor of screaming meatheads. Part of me agrees with them, but not enough to justify making a video game for the sole purpose of appeasing these people. Simon, Trevor, or Alucard could have been left for further games in the proper Lords of Shadow console series and it would have worked just fine, but they weren’t even necessary for those, in my opinion. Art is both for the artist and the audience, but not beholden to either. If you wanted classic Castlevania characters in a handheld “exploration” game after a successful reboot of the franchise, then this is what you get, and if it’s bad, then this is what you deserve, because this is what you asked for.

There’s a lingering feeling within me that thinks Mercury Steam did this kitchen sink job on purpose to get it out of the way, to make room for the game they obviously want and are capable of making –this year’s Lords of Shadow console sequel. I’m not saying they intentionally made a game that’s terrible to shut people up, but I would get the fact that they wanted to be done with old characters so they could make way for the new, and therefore make this whole reboot thing actually work. So far, I even like it.