playing the sega saturn

I have felt like absolute shit all week, physically speaking. Just sick as a fucking dog, feeling all gross and shitty. As such, I've been keeping myself entertained in ways where I'm "off my feet" so to speak. No fighting games (gonna be so rusty at GG Strive when I get back into it), nothing super intense. Lots of RPGs and adventure games; stuff that I can play, but then also stop at a moments' notice if I need to sprint to the nearest toilet and puke my guts out.

Right about the same time I got this nasty stomach bug, I also got a somewhat less nasty bug to play some Sega Saturn games. Since it's Friday, and I got no clue what else to write about, I thought I would do my usual "here's some shit I played" posts.

Dragon Force

No, not the shitty band that every insufferable nerd couldn't shut the fuck up about from around 2002-2010. This is a really good strategy RPG that you've probably seen on every Top 10 Saturn games list, also maintained by insufferable nerds.

All that aside, Dragon Force is legitimately awesome. It's this game where you maintain your own kingdom, but the actual management aspects are so pared down as to be a negligible feature. Rather, the big, big, big feature is its battles. These large-scale clashes where up to 100 different character sprites swing their weapons and shoot arrows or magic at each other until they're dead. It's cool to see all these fairly detailed little dudes fighting it out, and then remembering that this is happening during a time where the Playstation (great system otherwise) couldn't even support the tag-team feature from X-Men vs Street Fighter. Saturn does what...Playsta-shan't?? I'll workshop that one a little more.

These battles are the one thing you always hear about when people talk about Dragon Force. This is because, honestly, there isn't a whole lot else. I mean, there's a story, which is pretty much bull shit filler to explain why you're a war hawk throwing a wall of bodies at everything until the entire country is under your rule. And there's also the previously mentioned "kingdom management," which is a glorified menu where you can level up your units, search for equippable items and new generals, and fortify your defenses so as to give yourself a bigger terrain advantage. Dragon Force is all about making numbers bigger, and having those big numbers fight other big numbers in spectacular fashion. Sometimes, a game only needs to do one thing, and Dragon Force does this one thing really well. Check it out if you're the kind of person who wants to try out a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, but your attention span gives up as soon as you reach the Policy menu.

 

Enemy Zero

Oh, this one was a heartbreaker. A horror game by mad genius Kenji Eno tends to be a winning formula. Enemy Zero is not one of those times, unfortunately.

An Alien-esque adventure/horror on a quiet spaceship? Cool. Really sleek, mid-90s PC CG art aesthetic? That's awesome. The alien intruders being invisible to the naked eye, and can only be detected through a sound-based motion tracker? Yeah, you've still got me.

The problem is not Enemy Zero being a slow-paced point-and-click with invisible enemies. No, the problem comes from the method of detecting them. That sound-based motion tracker. Here's the thing: the sound is not locational. The sound only gets louder and faster the closer you get to an enemy. You have no idea if it's to the left or the right, in front of you or behind. I think you can see what the problem is. It makes what little combat there is so much more of a drag than it needs to be. Doesn't help that the guns need to constantly be recharged. So if you shoot at something you think is there, and it's not? Feel free to go fuck yourself, and either die or run away and try to remember where the nearest recharge station is. It sucks, and it's a shame that I can't get into this one, as again, I think Kenji Eno was a criminally overlooked genius during his lifetime.

cg still looks cool, at least.

 

Policenauts

This game was the main reason why I felt like opening up Mednafen and messing around with Saturn stuff. Policenauts is one of those games I've wanted to like for so long, then I played the fan translation, and found myself hating it pretty quick. Pretty much all stemming from a small scene at the beginning of the game where the private eye main character, Johnathan, is commissioned by his ex-wife to find her missing husband. After telling her that he'll think about it, she leaves, and then is immediately killed by a car bomb. Johnathan sees the killer, and gets into a chase/gunfight with the guy. After the first shootout, you have to search the street to see where he ran off to. One of the places you can look at is a strip club across from Johnathan's office, which is full of "Biovestites," people who have gotten sex changes via genetic manipulation. "This city's full of 'em, unfortunately."

The fuck?

Like, dude, you have literally just been reintroduced to your wife, who you haven't seen since an accident left you drifting in outer space for 25 years. Before you can really even try to catch up, she's immediately and violently murdered, and you yourself are being shot at by her assailant. And after all that, the first thing on your mind is, "what's with all these goddamn trannies?" What kind of shit writing is that? Yeah here, let me complain about minorities after the love of my life has just been killed.

Well, it turns out that scene was a mistranslation, and didn't even exist in the original Japanese text, so I decided to play the updated fantranslation on the Saturn. Here's the new line:

Wow. Kind of amazing how one line can immediately fix years of not being 100% behind Hideo Kojima as a writer. Not that a protagonist being bigoted in some way is necessarily a terrible thing, or that Kojima would also subscribe to those same views, but the way that it was delivered sucked and left a bad taste in my mouth. If you're going to be transphobic, at least pick a more appropriate time than "literally being shot at by an assassin." Now it's just Johnathan matter of factly stating what that place is, not doing an Archie Bunker bit while standing over the body of his dead ex-wife.

With that out of the way, actually playing more than a few minutes of Policenauts, the game itself is mostly really good. It is a Kojima game in the vein of Japanese adventure games like Portopia, in that you are constantly clicking on the same stuff, over and over, until something new happens. It's more compelling than I'm making it sound. My only real issues with Policenauts are the shooting sequences being pretty bad, and feeling like the pacing is way off past the second act. Like, you're trying to solve this mystery, which of course leads into a bigger situation involving police corruption and the influence of major corporations, then all of a sudden, here are all the answers given to you immediately. Felt like Kojima was writing this story, when he was told the game's shipping date, and condensed the shit of the story in order to get it done. That's a shame.

yeah me too

Ultimately, Policenauts is still good, but I think that Snatcher, Kojima's previous game in a similar genre/style, is the better game. Snatcher got to the main point fairly quick, and didn't really lose steam along the way. Though credit to Policenauts for having a "fuck cops" message in 1994 (Saturn port came out in 1996). The only remotely "good" cop is the forgotten old man who is afraid of guns and is left in a basement to handle petty theft cases, while the rest of the force are money-hungry assholes with a love of military weaponry and an excuse to use them. Pretty true to the modern day, only without the lovable old man in a basement. And hey, it's now 100% less shitty about trans people, so that's gotta be good for something too, right?

I've been playing other Saturn games this week, but as I've already accomplished my weekly "write a thousand words just to say 'video games are good'" challenge, I'll leave it here. Play the Saturn, everyone. The games are great, and emulation is actually good now, as opposed to years back when it was a crap shoot getting Virtua Fighter to load up and not look like a blurry mess with bad sound, if it even loaded up at all. Maybe I can do some more Grandia. Maybe I can get serious about learning Japanese, so I can read some of the text in these games Bernie Stolar thought I wouldn't like, because that man is a fool. A disgrace to the name "Bernie."