When is a game remake too faithful?

I’ve been playing through Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal, a PS4 (and PC) remake of a several-year-old 3DS game. The action has been adapted from a 2.5D sidescrolling brawler to a full 3D one, with many tweaks and improvements to the combat and of course the graphics. The story structure and content are identical, which makes it a weird nostalgic mind trip to actually play. That’s mostly a good thing. But despite featuring easily the best combat the series has ever had, it still has one of the worst boss fights I’ve ever seen.

Late-game spoilers follow, but nothing I’d expect to ruin the game for anyone.

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It still boggles my mind that the Switch has a dedicated screenshot button but no way to take high-quality screenshots.

I understand wanting to avoid the case where a kid quickly fills up their small memory card with huge image files and then can’t download more games or save their progress and doesn’t understand why. It seems totally reasonable to me to take 720p compressed JPG screenshots by default. But why not put in the option to take full resolution PNG screenshots for those of us with more space? I’ve got a 400 GB memory card in there; let me use it!

How do you respect the value of shareable play artifacts enough to constrain the hardware with a dedicated button, but then not provide an option to make good use of it? This is a lot like the compromised mechanics I spoke of before, and I can’t help but notice it’s Nintendo again.

PS4 defaults to JPG screenshots but provides an option to save higher-quality PNGs instead. This reason by itself is why I play cross-platform AAA titles on PS4 instead of Switch. If Switch gave me this ability, I’d happily play them there instead.

I’ve started Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal and I’m not sure what to make of it yet, but it definitely has some wonderful little touches that suggest it’s a labor of love and not a cash-in and engine test on the way to Senran Kagura 7EVEN. Here’s my favorite example.

There’s new portrait art for each character, as is standard for a new installment in this series. But you can actually choose per character whether to use the new portrait or one from the original Senran Kagura Burst era.

I like this a lot, and have made use of it since I tend to prefer the old art to the new art. But on top of that - there’s absolutely no need for a feature like this, and it actually undercuts the new art that they’ve spent time and money on. Putting this in anyway is a sign of respect for the series and its longtime fans. It’s a good thing to see.

Since I recently posted the original Dr. P as implemented in City of Heroes, I realized it was time to make the new Dr. P in a similar way. City of Heroes is tragically dead, but Champions Online is still going, so here’s Docprof’s modern look as implemented there!

Kirby’s Adventure is coming to the Switch NES thingy! I have been waiting for this since the Switch NES thingy was announced. So this also seems like a good time to muse briefly on why it’s still my favorite Kirby game: the Copy Abilities.

Back in Kirby’s Adventure, each enemy would literally give Kirby one ability. This meant that they were situational, easy to remember, activated with a dedicated button, and you’d learn to use them well. It was exciting to run into new enemies doing things you hadn’t seen before, because it meant you’d get a brand-new ability to experiment with.

In modern Kirby titles, it’s more like each enemy gives Kirby a form with several abilities activated various ways, making them harder to learn and remember (even the pause screen explanations now take up multiple pages). They’re also less distinctive, as there’s a ton of mechanical overlap between ability sets. It never really feels like it matters which ability set you have, so finding new enemy types isn’t exciting.

It’s less about playing with different tools, learning which are good for which situations, and learning to use them well - it’s more about just grabbing any old enemy to power up, and at best picking your favorite flavor of ability set. And I find I get bored with that pretty quickly.

In the opening movie of Justice League: Heroes, Batman gets called to deal with a robot attack. Superman shows up too, and Batman curtly informs him that he didn’t ask for help. Superman gallantly says, “Well, since I’m here anyway,” and joins in the fight.

When gameplay started, I chose to play as Batman, leaving Superman to the partner AI. As I tried to experiment with attacks and learn the controls as well as the enemy behavior patterns, Superman just waltzed up to the robots and destroyed them.

Never has a game so rapidly, thoroughly, and unintentionally created empathy for the player character.

There are basically three things I get out of video games: chill, story, and action.

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A Pixel Poppers dress in Style Savvy: Styling Star. I hope this franchise makes it to Switch too!

Games with self-insert developer avatar characters who make jokes about how since they’re the developers they are much more powerful than you are like someone inviting you to their house and in the middle of you having a good time they suddenly make a joke about how it’s their house so they could totally throw you out if they wanted and could call the police if you didn’t like it.

I’ve released my very first game, Detectivania! You play as a master detective who keeps forgetting how to investigate mysteries!

It’s a Twine game, playable in your browser, and it’s about half an hour long. You can play it on Pixel Poppers or on Itch.io.

Making it was a great learning opportunity, and I also published a… postmortem? Making of? A dev blog post about it, discussing the goals, challenges, and lessons learned along the way.

I’m really excited. Planning on doing a bunch of these in 2019. This is just the first. :)