Evoland 2 Is The Greatest Thing Since Tits!

This shit right here is why I love my job. These last few weeks haven't been kind to me when it comes to the quality of the games I chose to review. Take Submerged, for instance. It's little more than an interactive screensaver with zero gameplay, zero fun, a shit story and still there were a whole bunch of critics, who dished out insanely high review scores for that turd, because it's "art" and of course there is always some idiot who falls for that kind of shit. Just look at Dear Esther, Valiant Hearts, Gone Home... they all suck, but they're all "artsy" or they have some kind of "brave message", and somebody always pretends to be impressed, because they totally "get it" and the game is not for critics and yada, yada, yada, FUCK YOU. Pretentious morons.

There were less controversial, more obviously lousy games such as Alone in the Dark: Illumination, a multiplayer shooter, which requires you to stand in the light in order to make monsters vulnerable. Because every Alone in the fucking DARK game should be about cooperative gameplay in well-lit areas.

So thank you, thank you SO FUCKING MUCH, Shiro Games, for Evoland 2. Because it's, without exaggeration, the best damn game I've reviewed all year. By far. It's like a final exam in gaming. It's like all the games I've played in my childhood - Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Secret of Mana, Bomberman, Zelda, Final Fantasy, R-Type, Musha, Shining Force - all this stuff and so much more was just preparation. I've mastered those titles, loved them, breathed them. And Evoland 2 is where everything I've learned about those games is being put to the test. So. Fucking. AWESOME!

Imagine playing what looks and feels like a traditional JRPG, top-down visuals, sword'em up style gameplay you may know from Secret of Mana or the older Zelda games and then you walk into a boss baddie. And suddenly the perspective shifts, you see the characters from the side, there are life bars at the top end of the screen and an announcer goes: "Round 1! FIGHT!" No tutorial, no explanation, you get thrown right the fuck in there. I didn't even think when I tried a quarter circle forward, it just happened. Instinct. Muscle memory. It's what gamers do. Then I hit the punch button and the magic happened. Like, in my pants. Yes, it's that good "HADOKEN!" YES! Fucking hadoken!

But the game didn't leave me much time to celebrate, because suddenly I was in a Musha-style arcade shooter. Again, no explanation, no "use WASD to control your character and don't forget the power-ups" or any of that shit you get in every fucking game today like you're some kind of retard. Just instant action.

Now don't get the wrong impression here. This is still a classic JRPG more than anything else, so you talk to lots of NPCs, gather clues, try and figure out where to go and what to do next. There are some really challenging puzzles here. If you've never completed classic Zelda or Final Fantasy, then you're gonna need a walkthrough for this one. It's just that all the action on here isn't told in boring text boxes or crappy little cutscenes. Action sequences are games of their own.

Or Hearthstone. Sometimes they're just fucking Hearthstone.

And there's nothing quite like chasing down one of Evoland 2's major villains, cornering him, waiting for an epic showdown and the next second you're rocking it out on fucking Guitar Hero! Thpoilerth:

There is, of course, one little downside to this whole concept. At some point, you will inevitably bump into a mode of play you simply hate and/or suck at. In my case that was fucking Bejeweled. Fucking. Beweweled. I mastered the tactics stage, beat the platforming bits, completed all the beat'em up sections with ease, but goddamn Bejeweled broke me. I failed again and again, for a whole hour straight until Claire helped me. I had to ask my girlfriend for help. She crushed the bejeweled boss in a landslide victory. I don't have a fucking clue how people manage to figure out all these chain reactions and shit. I can't handle it.

Evoland 2 doesn't simply mimic those games. It doesn't rip off or imitate popular classics for a cheap laugh or to draw attention with screenshots and trailers. This stuff is deep. You want to pull a shoryuken in the Street Fighter segment, you pull a fucking shoryuken. It's in the fucking game! This is a love letter to some of the greatest games of all times. And at the same time, Evoland 2 tells an exciting, surprisingly serious story, which gives it an identity of its own. Evoland 2 isn't "that game, which imitates a million other games", it's just fucking Evoland 2. And that's genius.

Also WoW, Giger-Aliens, Mewtwo, Metroid, Mario, Sonic...

If you care about JRPGs only one bit, if you consider yourself a veteran gamer, if you feel any love for the games that come back to life in there, go do yourself a favour and fucking get it.

You might even run into some old friends.

In other news, Claire's stepdad is playing GTA on my old Xbox and apparently he's getting fucking good at it. I won't lie - I didn't see it coming, though I fucking love it.

He used to play the old Mario games many moons ago and I've seen him throwing cats on some crappy little flash games on the 'net. But he's never held a modern controller before. He has never played a 3D game. And when I plugged in the Xbox and showed him the tutorial it was all a bit much at first. Controlling a character AND the camera at the same time. Taking cover, switching characters, aiming, shooting, driving, triggers, so much new stuff!

I was fully expecting to come over there on the weekends to do things like rescue Jimmy off Michael's abducted yacht. But what do you know - he's doing it all by himself! So fucking cool. The guy is old enough to be my dad, he has zero experience with this kind of thing, but he's actually getting the hang of it and I'm sure he'll complete the whole thing. That whole thing about old dogs and new tricks? Bullshit. You're never too old.

-Cat