I should pull back a bit and say hi, if only to show how fucking polite I am.  Today, I am looking at Kamiko, a $5 Nintendo eShop title that looks way more promising than it actually is. I say that because personally, at first glance, I was very excited to try it out.  From the trailer, you can see exactly what they were going for.  That being the kind of action-adventure gameplay that you would find in the 2-D Zelda games or Secret of Mana.

You play as one of three shrine maidens, or Kamiko, and can run through the four levels of the game with each of them.  One wields a sword, one a bow, and one can throw her shield like a boomerang and attack with a dagger.  The reason why you are given these weapons doesn’t matter.  Hell, the game doesn’t even seem to care enough to give you specifics.  There is evil in the world, it’s being a dick, and you should really do something about it, girl… don’t you think.

The first thing you’ll noticed when you’re dropped into the game is that… it’s fun.  Well, depending on which character you pick, it’s fun.  The blue sword chick (that’s all you are going to get out of me.  Having played the game, the story, names and places don’t matter.  Feel free to tell me how irresponsible it is for a reviewer to not care about a game’s story, and I will go right ahead and forward your comments to the game’s developer.)  *Ahem* The blue sword chick is a blast… almost to the point that you’d think the game was made around her, and the other characters we’re placed into Blue Lady’s custom playground.

That’s not to say that the other characters aren’t fun or interesting when you pick them.  On my first playthrough, I choose Red, the girl with the boomerang and dagger, because I wanted both range and close combat weapons.  It’s challenging but mostly enjoyable.  Her play style consists of throwing the boomerang, or mirror as it is called, at the enemies.  Then you move to a place where other baddies are between you and your weapon so it can cut through them on its way home. It is pretty satisfying, if at the very least it takes a second to master.  Steer clear of the bow and arrow maiden though. Trust me.

But now, let us dive a little deeper and get a bit more existential, as we ask the question, “Why?”  Certainly, in the game’s narrative, there’s a reason.  Bad is bad, good is good. Kill all monsters and such.  However, we aren’t characters in this world and know that there are game design reasons for why we are wasting enemies.  Enter “SP”, or “mana” if you will.  SP doesn’t always stand for the same thing in every game, and I’m not sure what it means in Kamiko.  I just referred to it as Mana cause that’s how I roll.  Mana is required to clear the four shrines in each level. After that is completed, the boss door is unlocked.

When I first saw Kamiko’s trailer, the thing that put me over the edge and left me wanting to play it was the kill streak counter in the corner of the screen.  I love games like They Bleed Pixels or Viewtiful Joe, where the more enemies you dispatch without getting hurt or taking too long, the higher your score multiplier goes.  The higher my score goes, the bigger my nerd chub gets.  They are directly proportional.  Kamiko, however, funnels this kill streak not into hard… very hard… numbers, but into your SP.

In Kamiko, the higher your kill streak, the more Mana you are rewarded per kill.  You need Mana to unlock certain doors and chests in the levels, so, for that reason, the enemies of an area will always respawn.  They want you to never run out and to always be able to get a good kill streak going.

The problem with this system is you don’t need a lot of Mana to accomplish your goals in a level.  Each character has one super move that uses it, but, other than that, Mana has no use outside level progression. This is where the game starts to feel like an example of annoying, 80’s retrograde, rental fodder. Just a padded out, piece of garbage. But stick with me dear viewer, and we will get there.

Everytime you walk through an area that you have previously cleared of enemies, it repopulates.  And what’s even more infuriating, is that the places the enemies respawn are completely random.  Sure, the same type and number of enemies show up, but, except for a couple of specific instances, they pop in stochastically.

Each level has a mechanic where the game tasks you with carrying an orb, while remaining untouched, to a pedestal somewhere in the level. You can’t run or defend yourself, or you will drop the object and must restart. Naturally you’ll end up backtracking through areas that you’ve already cleared.  That’s when the bad spirits pop in out of nowhere as you try to dodge them.  If you get hit, the orb drops to the floor and you start over.  In the first couple levels, this is not much of a problem.  The distance you travel is short, and the enemies are dumb and do not give chase, instead just bouncing around as you attempt to avoid them.  It is in later levels where completing the puzzles feels like a matter of luck. I found myself thinking, “If I can make it through these five or six rooms and only have one or two spirits respawn right next to me, I might be able to make this work.”  This is not a thought you want your game design to evoke.  In fact, you do not want your player to be thinking at all about your level design.  You want them to become engrossed in your world, not to have them muse about your failings as a programmer after dying for the 15^th time on the same obstacle.

This is perhaps when some of the more grizzled readers might point out (and by “grizzled” I mean people in their 30’s and older) that this is a retro-style game.  Maybe they wanted to make it ridiculously hard to complete, because that is the way things were back then, particularly in Japan, where this game was programmed.  To that I say “bollocks”, because it’s fun to say, but also just because a game was hard does not mean it was poorly designed.  At the root of good retro games was the need for skill, ESPECIALLY in old arcade games.  You couldn’t just bash your head on it over and over.  You needed to finesse your way through the game.

Take Ninja Gaiden, a game so hard they should have just called it “Priapism”, however it was not luck that made it difficult.  Enemies always appeared in the same place; they were just awful bastards.  And when you ran out of lives?  Back to the start baby. The actual gameplay and level traversal however was extremely satisfying.  Kamiko missed this part.

A lot of times when you listen to modern developers talk about making retro style games of their youth, they mention how they want to consider everything we as an industry have learned over the past decades. Then they take those lessons and make a better experience for the player.  The only lesson I think Developer Skipmore took away was built in save points.  When you die, you go back to the last shrine you cleared.  If they wanted to be real old school dicks, then they would’ve put in extra lives, so you’d have to start the level again when you ran out.

All of this brings me to my main objection with the game. There are PLENTY of things the developers could have done differently to make it a more enjoyable experience.  The first one is simple but would change the whole feel of the game for the better: just let the player put the orb/key down.  Trekking all the way back to grab another after getting hit three pixels away from the end point is the most infuriating thing in this game.  Also, the orb sections wouldn’t be as difficult if the bad guys respawned in a predictable way.  It’s tough to give the game a pass when enemies pop in on top of you.  If the developers did that, or put a cap on how many baddies respawn in each level, this becomes less of an issue.

There is clearly a reason why Skipmore wanted enemies to always come back, and that’s because they are the only way to gain more SP. But the first level only requires a minimum of 500 SP points to complete.  Yes, there is your special move, but it takes way too long to activate and has no real use in combat.  If they were dead set on random respawns, then at least give the player more and varied attack options.  Something interesting to do with your SP while your character mows down evil spirits to rack up a high kill count.

The kill count itself is also a huge miss.  You need to put a god damn high score system in your retro inspired game.  Almost all old school games had score counters, whether it made sense or not (see Super Mario Bros.) This gives the player another reason to play your game over and over again.

And lastly, I want a map. I get lost. I’m not proud, but there, I said it.

If they had implemented maybe one or two of these functions, this game might have been a bit enjoyable, or somewhat endearing, especially to people who grew up in the era of these kinds of action adventure games.  As it stands, however, all it reminds me of is those throw away games, the kind that were difficult just to pan out the length. I really wanted to like Kamiko, and perhaps if I had only gone through it with the sword lady, I would have scored it higher.  She controls well, but playing with the other characters is when you begin to see just how slapped together this whole thing really is.  You might say that I’m just being a stingy bastard, but I’m not.  This game is $5, sure, and the music is pretty killer. Everything else just reeks of less than B-Tier quality, and that is why I can only give Kamiko a 4 out of 10.

In a stunning move that stunned no one, George Lucas, the brains behind some of the greatest screenplays of the 70’s and 80’s, tried once again to quell the rumors (or facts) that he had no idea what he was doing when he made Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III.  Perhaps the reason this was not shocking to anyone has to do with the fact that he has been saying this for years.

“It’s a film for 12 year olds,” Lucas declared at the 2017 Star Wars Celebration, as humanity’s collective unconscious let out an audible groan that filled the auditorium.

“Here’s what you should pay attention to,” he went on, now apparently addressing 12 year olds all over the world. “Friendships, loyalty, trust, doing the right thing.”

Fans were quick to point out that the Gungan character, and literal ass flap, Jar Jar Binks never exemplified any of these qualities and is in direct conflict with this statement.  Allegations that Binks was created and shoved into the plot of The Phantom Menace to sell merchandise have endured for years.  Many believe that of all the times Lucas could have decided to open old wounds, the biggest gathering of Star Wars fans and cast members was probably a stupid choice.

Hiding behind the claim that only children really understand his brilliant space opera has been Lucas’ M.O. for years, but has never really stood up to logic.  It’s as though he is claiming children have a more fine-tuned bullshit meter than adults do, and that his cinematic prequel trilogy passes with flying colors.

Whether it was defending how not racist the portrayal of Jar Jar Binks was by explaining that those claims were made by “people who’ve obviously never met a Jamaican…” (“How in the world you could take an orange amphibian and say that he’s a Jamaican? It’s completely absurd.”) in a 1999 interview with Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, or insinuating that the transition from practical to computer generated effects was very similar to the Renaissance Era move from fresco to oil on canvas paintings, this isn’t the first time this raving psychotic has made these sorts of delusional claims.

A sensible person might have made a rational argument, not an even more racist statement, or an attempt to impress people with his/her views of historic art movements, as exegetical as that interpretation may be.

At the heart of this argument, some Star Wars fans will point out, is that Mr. Lucas long ago lost the ability to successfully shepherd a movie from beginning to end. This point is backed up by multiple examples of video evidence. There are the films themselves and their emotionless, vacant dialogue that not even the most seasoned character actor could pull off.  One could also reference the hours of bonus material and special features that anyone could find on the Star Wars website during the production of the respective movies (and later on the DVD’s themselves), depicting a slothful Lucas making questionable, stream of consciousness decisions, while Rick Mcallum and the rest of the production team follow behind, applauding and taking turns telling his penis that it is still as virile as that of a young man’s.

Even still, many feel that the blame rests on some of the glaring casting decisions that documentary crews captured on video while covering the making of the prequels. The most poignant of these may have been his decision to cast then emotionless child actor Jake Lloyd in the pivotal role of young Anakin Skywalker.  Lucas has said before, 9n the aforementioned Newsnight interview, that he doesn’t care about money, yet, in the Episode I documentary, he is on the record saying that he cares about box office results and breaking records associated with them.  This may explain his decision to go with a star of a high profile Arnold Schwarzenegger movie over Devon Michael, a nine year old who was capable of actually emoting.

It is unclear as to why George Lucas decided that young viewers wanted to watch a puppet-like child deliver lines devoid of feeling, but, as he said, he purposefully made Star Wars for children and must know something about their sensibilities.  Perhaps he took into account the fact that studies show children do not begin to develop a sense of cognitive empathy until ages 5-8[i], and wanted someone they could relate to.

It has historically been hard to tell just how well Lucas believes his own explanation that Star Wars was always meant for children, but perhaps his latest comments on the 13^th of April go the furthest towards justifying what is perhaps the most hated actor/character of prequel trilogy.

Speaking once again on how he intended for Star Wars to speak to and teach the youth of the world important life lessons, he remarked, “You’re about to enter the real world. You’re moving away from your parents. You’re probably scared, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”  If this something that was always in the back of Lucas’ mind, this would be the strongest evidence for why Hayden Christensen played Anakin like a whiny, annoying, self-aggrandizing, teenage prick.

Was it George Lucas’ direction all along that brought out such an uninspired performance, or did discerning movie goers simply misunderstand Christensen’s subtle method acting?  Whichever it was, it is clear, if Lucas is to be believed, that only young children and pre-teens actually understood the subtext and undertones that the legendary filmmaker was going for.  This justification, however, does not explain Christensen’s monotonous delivery.  No one may ever know the reasoning behind that.

Taken at his word, even on blind faith, fans still point to one major hole in Lucas’ “rhetoric”.  Mainly that, 20 years earlier, he wrote/cast/produced some of the best, most lively, believable, charismatic and funny dialogue/actors/movies of all time.  If one hoped to simply pass off the original six Star Wars movies as something made exclusively for child-like hearts and minds, then why insult the latter generation of youngsters by not holding the prequels to the same standard.

There is the possibility that Lucas himself is full of shit and will never admit that the whole ordeal of Hollywood studio politics killed his love for the series back in the early 80’s, making it impossible for him to ever truly care about it ever again. To ever truly understand what it is about Star Wars movies that still draw in people of all ages.  If that were the case, it would make sense why he would pass off his greatest artistic achievement to a giant multi-national media conglomerate/empire.  But, as George said, don’t worry.  The prequels are the way they are because… children, and who are we to disagree.

[i] McDonald, Nicole M., and Daniel S. Messinger. 2011. “The Development of Empathy: How, When, and Why.” pgs. 4-5

With the entire crew spending the entirety of the week playing Zelda on the Switch, we spend half the episode talking about that. The other half is spent chatting about games that are coming out in the next 3 months.

With the launch of the Nintendo Switch we are all just eager to talk about what we think of the system and what we are looking forward to with the announced indie games coming to it.

With less than a week away for the launch of Nintendo’s newest console, there is a lot for us to talk about including some major worries involving a hardware malfunction.

**Resident Evil 7 Spoilers 2:12 – 10:20**

After talking about what the crew has been playing this last week, we spend the second half of the episode chatting about the Zelda Season Pass and what we think about what was recently leaked about the Switch’s UI.

In this weeks episode we chat about how unsurprising it is that Gamestop force their employees into lying to their customers, E3 is going to be officially open to the public, and what we know about the Switch’s other big launch title.

Bryan’s brother joins us this week to talk about the lastest CS:GO tournament in Atlanta, we discuss what kind of impact Oculus losing half a billion dollars will have on gaming, and the first reported information for Nintendo’s online service for the Switch

Dean joins us again, this time to talk about his experience with Resident Evil 7, we chat about our thoughts of the EVO lineup, our hopes for the new partnership with Square-Enix and Marvel, and what we think about the recently announced games coming to the Nintendo Switch at launch.

In the second half of this weeks episode we talk about our thoughts on the latest Fire Emblem Direct and how we we feel about last week’s Switch Event now that the dust has settled.

For our first episode of 2017 our friend Warren talks about Halo 5 and Destiny, we discuss how we feel about Super Mario Run one month after it’s launch, Bryan’s thoughts on the Tomb Raider reboot, Pokemon GO gets brought up again for some reason, and Jeremy talks more about Let it Die. In the second half of the episode we chat about what games we are looking forward to the most in 2017.

For our last episode of 2016 we are looking ahead at what we expect to see in the next year. We also talk about how we feel about Super Mario Run now that we have had some time to play around with it and Jeremy discusses his feeling on Final Fantasy XV and the much talked about Chapter 13.

Note: there was some drinking involved with this episode, so we go off topic quite a bit.

Jeremy and Bryan have 2 guests over to chat about the last year of gaming.

It just wouldn’t be a true JAVG Podcast episode without us discussing more Nintendo Switch Rumors. Oh, and I guess the Last of Us sequel got announced.

We are back after taking a week off for Thanksgiving to chat about The Game Awards and the usual talking points.

Most of this episode is focused on a number of rumors/leaks about the Nintendo Switch from the credible sources that leaked all the info about the system that ended up being accurate.

Bryan talks about his experience playing PSVR and we discuss our thoughts on the newly released PS4 Pro and NES Classic

For our tenth episode, we spend most of the time talking about Nintendo (Big surprise.)

We talk about what we know with the Nintendo Switch one week after it’s big reveal, What we think of Bethesda’s new review policy and a few more PSVR games.

For this weeks episode, Bryan and Jeremy talk about their reactions to the recently announced Red Dead Redemption 2 and Jeremy talks about his first week with the Playstation VR.

Jeremy and Bryan spend some time discussing their reactions and hopes for the new Nintendo gaming platform, The Nintendo Switch.

This week we talk about how mods will be coming to Fallout and Skyrim for the PS4, people get reminded about another of Sony’s many lawsuits, and a new rumored leak about the NX that may tell us some new things.

Note: Sorry for the crackling sounds that happen periodically through this episode. We are looking in to a solution.

Starting a new format for the show, Jeremy and Bryan chat about VR with PSVR and the Oculus; Beyond Good and Evil 2 being once again in pre-production and a new Chinese-made gaming tablet that sounds an awful lot like the rumored NX.

Bryan and I get an entire episode to talk about what we think and hope Nintendo has in store for us with the NX

This week I am joined once again by Brian Auer to discuss the recent Playstation Meeting, the reveal of the PS4 Pro, how we feel about 4K gaming, and a few other topics.

In this episode, Bryan Auer joins in to discuss Super Mario Run and the potential for future Nintendo mobile games.

In this episode I am joined by Shane Everling of The Asylum Cerberus to discuss our love of the Metal Gear Franchise and what we think of the announcement of Metal Gear Survive.

For our first episode, I am joined by Garrett of Trash Talk Gamers to discuss the controversy and gameplay of No Man’s Sky