Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden won me over with its understated characters, music, atmospherics and earthiness, whilst Outcast: A New Beginning featured incredible traversal mechanics and lore, and now Dragon’s Dogma 2 – and out of the three, this is the title that I, by far, have the strongest history with – comes blazing out of the gate with its main strengths being in how much it embraces and excels at being a video game, completely nailing combat mechanics and explosive, immediate gameplay.
It’s a game that is a pleasure to write about, and I feel like I could just list all of my in-game experiences to get my point across because there are so many personal stories to tell, all through a design sentiment that eschews seriousness to put fun and gameplay at the absolute fore.
It’s a slight change of pace here, from the many forked branches of horror through to a visual compendium focused on the much beloved fan favourite Nintendo 64, whether through many a blistering, thumb-stick breaking multiplayer session of Goldeneye, marvelling at Mario in 3D, or zooming across Hyrule Fields in Zelda, there are millions of memories out there that began with that trusty trident controller in-hand.
Thus, when I caught wind of this new entry in the franchise- pseudo-reboot, pseudo-revising, pseudo-revisiting pseudo-sequel – call it what you want – I was glad to discover that I feel that this I finally the most complete, accessible, and wonderful way to know the story of the impossibly named ‘Cutter Slade’, and appreciate the full scale of the dev’s vision. A vision set into motion almost thirty years ago.
The first two of which come from the same developer, Deep Shadows, a company that seem to have moved into hidden object and mobile titles, which is a shame, as they have real character and craft. If each game mentioned here had more time and money invested, they would be classics still talked of today.
Originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000 and eventually ported to the PS2 (and beyond), Game Arts’ Grandia II was a more mature affair than the 1997 prequel, and featured a lot of the returning original staff – including Noriyuki Iwadare, the composer of all three main Grandia games. The game told the story of Ryudo, a mercenary of wobbly morals who gets tasked with a seemingly simple escort mission that evolves into a grand(ia) adventure.
The game begins with a short prologue that sets the scene; a couple exist in a world where people are becoming ‘empty’, which is to say they slowly lose their memories, before becoming ghostly, wandering figures that ‘haunt’ the city. Whilst the female is the main character of the prologue, the narrative soon focuses on the male, who begins in a forest cabin and must make his way through the city to find out what has happened to his partner, before his memories completely elude him and he becomes one of the empty.
As a collector of video games – as well as a reviewer of them – in my 40’s, I’ve seen a lot of genres come and go, get a new lease of life, get revisited, outmoded, souped-up, etc. and the one genre that burns me to the core most of all, seemingly swept aside by technological issues and the passage of time – is the lightgun genre.
Whether you were introduced to the genre through Duck Hunt on the NES, Point Blank on the PS1, House of the Dead on the Dreamcast, or Silent Scope, LA Machineguns, Time Crisis, or Beastbusters in the arcade, the chances are that you have some pretty strong memories bouncing around your noggin that involve that most shooty-shootiest of gaming genres (I also just remembered the Toejam and Earl Menacer game! What a multi-cart that was!), and they are fading away into the most distant past, as CRT TVs become harder and harder to get.
Quite frankly, unless you are a collector of video games and accessories from a bygone era, the most recent recollections that you’ll have would be of fiddling about with the incredibly tediously thin cable that came with the Nintendo Wii sensor as you tried to get it balanced on top of your TV without knocking it off, yanking the cord out of the delicate sensor, or just strangling yourself to death out of sheer frustration – which often seemed the most practical option.