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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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DWD Reviews: A Brush with Oblivion Or Is Everyone Blind and Stupid? (Commission by WeirdKev27)

Well this was a mixed bag if I ever saw one. Taking a break from the Ride, since Kev commissioned this during my still going black friday sale, seriously 3 bucks for episode commissions get after it, I thought this would be pretty good.. good villain with a good gimmick. Could be intresting. I didn’t count on EVERYONE but Honker, Gosalyn and Splatter Phoenix themselves daring to be stupid. I mean my god in god we trust, this one was frustrating. I WANTED to like it for it’s brilliant qualities but the main plot is so frustrating, Let’s discuss shall we? First off WHY Kev commissioned this one. He was waiting till I did Quackerjack and Bushroot but he decided to do it early because sale prices. See this is a BONUS chapter in “March to Justice Ducks”. It’s very thinly associated with it, but honestly had I had the idea myself I would’ve gladly done this and I thank Kev for it. See Tad Stones regretted putting Negaduck in the fearsome five. It’s not that Negs is a bad character.. it’s the opposite. Being such a dynamic and interesting one.. meant he overshadowed the other four to the point they didn’t get as much of a chance to shine. So in hindsight, had he had the chance to do it all over again he would’ve put Splatter Phoenix here in there instead. And I’m incllined to agree: as the comics show, Quackerjack could’ve been the leader easy and if not him Megavolt, but neither would’ve overpowered the others. That being said the five we did get are great, and the dynamic is fine, but I can’t fault him for wanting them to be equals instead of minons.

And honestly , and getting to one of the episodes strengths, Splatter Phoenix IS a thoroughly awesome villain with a unique and interesting power. In short she’s an experimental artist who through her experimenting, created a paint brush that can bring paintings to life and control them as well as allow her to travel in and out of them. She’s voiced here by Dani Staahl, who i’ve never heard of but is terrific. And shockingly, she’s voiced by a rather sizeable voice next time with Andrea Martin of SCTV fame. And if your wondering if i’m going to cover her other appearance you are extremely correct, just probably further down the line or for another commission. But her powers are used REALLY creatively by the episode, having her and Darkwing and Co run through various abstract art I can’t really name outside of the salvador dahli piece at the end because I don’t know art. That being said, it still looks utterly gorgeous and while I can’t name most of the pieces or the artists behind them, the wiki does say most are pastiches. They are recognizable though and it does look utterly stunning from a cubist piece to the dahli finale to Gosalyn’s dinosaur picture seen above. Each style is unique, crisp and beautifully animated and they and splatter are the saving grace of the episode. These sequences are some of the best i’ve seen from the show and, especially for a low budget 90′s kids show even a disney one, are REALLY impressive and would be even today. And her attidue helps. While her gimmick is simple, she talks in intellectual art speak most of the time, it’s funny enough to enjoy. Plus, it weirdly does things for me and I don’t know how to respond to that so let’s move on.

My shame aside, you may be wondering two things then: Why I don’t like this episode, and why i’m not covering it my usual style. Well the answer to both is otherwise.. this episode is REALLY damn obnoxious. Splatter takes up enough to make it watchable.. but the main spine of the episode not only pisses me off in a very specific way, as it follows a story trope I CANNOT stand, but in a general way it’s just frustrating and REALLY dumb. The basic premise is it’s children’s art night at the musem, with the kids various paintings being displayed, so naturally The Mallards and the Muddlefoots are both there, with Honker having painted a painting within a painting and Gosalyn having painted a horrifing but neat dinosaur piece. It’s then.. the plot starts and my patience evaporates. Honker spots Splatter in a painting and spots her comit a theft but no one belivies him. They belivie it wasn’t him, because he dosen’t have the target on him, but his parents think he’s making stuff up and so does Drake. Or in other words...

I mean.. nothing about this works. I’d get skepticism in a normal setting, and this was produced earlier in the series though as for where your guess is as good as mine, but.. this is a world where appliances were brought to life, a water dog publicly ransomed the cities water suply, and and an evil toymaker raised hell, not to mention the bat based pizza theft. A woman running in and out of a painting SHOULD NOT be that farfetched but no everyone just assumes the kid is lying and dosen’t bother asking why. Including Drake.. everyone else.. fine, Herb’s a moron and we’ll get to him in a second. But Drake has fought so much weird shit at this point, you’d THINK he’d think it was a supervillian and not just honker lying. You’d think but no. Thankfully he finds out pretty quick, so he’s more tolerable but it still hurts my head that he’s this stubborn.

But as I just hinted at.. Herb and Binkie are worse as they repeadtly think their son is a liar and ground him over it... even though they KNOW Honker dosen’t lie, Gosalyn admits he can’t and admits she’s failed to teach him, and then instead of you know believing their kid, blame Gos for it, which amount's to absolutley nothing so why have this plot point! All it did was make me hate herb as much as Drake does.. I mean if he’s this terrible a parent and this dense that rather than believe his own kid didn’t do the impossible or wasn’t covering for a thief that his friend taught him how to lie, no wonder Drake can’t stand him. The voice dosen’t help, as normally it’s tolerable but it’s extra loud and extra insufferable this episode. It just makes already insufferable scnees worse.

But the crowner for moron of this episode is the curator, who repadtly, when seeing Honker there, blames him for the thefts, and at one point when he tries to enter a painting HAS A CHILD ARRESTED. He has a small child, who couldn’t of possibly taken any of this.. arrested. Now granted one of the paintings is destroyed.. but the can wasn’t left behind by splatter phoenix. So he had a 10 year old arrested... on charges of propety destrictuion? What.. why would he do this? WHy would his parents belivie this/ WHY. it’s agonizingly dumb. It hurts.. it hurts and I understandably didn’t want to go on loop with this asshole. But that’s what the episode feels like and it only gets broken because Splatter outright tells the curator so she can ransom mona lisa’s mouth! GAH.

But yeah that’s our big setpiece, as Splatter carriers mona’s annoying mouth around through some cool set pieces. We also get a neat bit earlier of Gosalyn stuck in a piccaso, which looks really damn neat and also really painful. And apparently she can leave because drake enters? I dunno, it’s not the dumbest thing about this episode. We do get the curator catching Darkwing tryign to take the painting.. which not only has him actually blamed with a crime resonably for the first time since the pilot, but is clever and gets a good line out of the deal. And that brings me to another reason the episode is so frustrating: so much of the plot is just dropped threads. The Waddlemeyers don’t want honker around gosalyn. Goes nowhere. Gosalyn is trapped in a painting,. Resolved pretty easily. Darkwing might take the fall for this GOES NOWHERE. MY SANITY. GOES AWAY.

Finally.. I just don’t like this stock plot. The “Character is telling the truth but no one belivies them”. it CAN be done well. Amphibia did this plot well in season 1 and Gravity Falls used it well as it was revealed Stan DOES know, he just was playing dumb. It can be done right.. it’s just more often than not a kid is put through hell for something they have on control over by some asshole adult or some other kid. or an adult is put through it. I’ve never enjoyed this sort of Michigan J Frog bullshit, and never will. And here it’s an innocent, honest, good kid being sent to JAIL breifly for .. telling the truth. With no reward. Just nope episode over. fuck this episode.

So before we wrap, the finale, which again is pretty good. Honker finds one of Splatter’s brushes, uses it to restore Darking and Co and it’s pretty cleve.r. then it gets dumb again with Darkwing escorting pheonix away and the muddlefoots finally beliving their son after mona lisa’s smile tells them he isn’t a liar.. okay whatever we’re done.

FINAL. THOUGHTS.

This episode is split down the middle :It’s half a good episode, wtih great sequences, great jokes and great use of classic art.. and half GOD MAKE IT STOP AGGRIVATION. It’s easily the worst darkwing i’ve seen so far, and yet SITLL has stuff worth watching it for. The painting sequences are still some of the shows best.. it’s jsut saddled with a plot I hate and that aggrivates me. This was not good, and i’ve seen much better and hopefully Splatter’s other appearance is less aggravating. we will see eventually. Till then, there’s always another rainbow.

#commission #darkwing duck #drake mallard #splatter phoenix #gosalyn mallard #honker muddlefoot #herb muddlefoot #a brush with oblivion

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billiamthies · 7 years

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Yooka Laylee Review

Yooka Laylee see's the return of the classic 3D "collectathon," but how does the genre hold up?

Crowd funded games have created a sort of distrust between creators and players. There seems to be a narrative that Kickstarted games will be bad or may not come out at all. Of course everyone ignores Shovel Knight, because that game is just a beautiful miracle.

Some creators may have the vision of a game, but not the practicality to manage a budget and a creative team. Kickstarter has even contributed to misconceptions about how much games cost and what is necessary to complete them. A game like Yooka Laylee did not cost Playtonic 2 million to make. The money raised on Kickstarter was just a portion of its budget. Unlike many kickstarters, Yooka Laylee is a game that was completed well within the vision of the creators. Yooka Laylee’s creative team was built around veterans of Rare: a company who was best known for being a second party developer for Nintendo. Rare’s legacy was defined in the days of the Nintendo 64: Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and Donkey Kong 64 were all solid 3D platformers with collecting and exploring at the heart of the gameplay. They were able to stick out amongst the crowd through Rare’s unique style and sense of humor.

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When Microsoft bought rare, many creators felt that the company held them back creatively. All of Rare’s major IPs were either mistreated or ignored completely. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts was released in 2007 and felt like nothing more than a slap in the face in the face to the fans. Not only did it ditch the gameplay style the series developed through two games, but it even had the nerve to say that “players don’t want that kind of game anymore.” Yooka Laylee is a newer game developed by Playtonic, which aims to recapture the feeling and tone that many of Rare’s classic games had. But, does this genre hold any relevance in this day in age?

Personal Story:

To say I grew up with the Rare library of games would be an overstatement. I rented Banjo Kazooie from Blockbuster and I played Donkey Kong 64 with my cousin, but they were never games I had a major attachment to. I enjoyed them, they just weren’t defining games of my childhood. Though, I have to admit I was excited for Yooka Laylee. Clearly this was a passion project for Playtonic and the successful Kickstarter campaign showed fans were excited for a return to the “Buddy” collect-athon. I popped in Yooka Laylee for the first time a few weeks ago and it felt like all of the elements were there. The art style: these characters would fit perfectly in line in the Rare world, the dialog: the fourth wall breaking, filthy humor of Rare is still in tact, the annoying voices, the collectables, the characters. The game truly looks the part of a Nintendo 64-era Rare game. The only thing is that the Nintendo 64 wouldn’t be able to do is create these huge worlds. At its heart Yooka Laylee is Banjo Threeie or Donkey Kong 65.

The Story:

Yooka Laylee stars Yooka, a chameleon and Laylee, a bat.

The game’s villain is Capital B, the CEO of Hivory Towers.

Capital B has a plan to take over the world which involves him stealing all of the world’s books; Yooka and Laylee travel to the headquarters to collect pagies and quills: they use the pagies to unlock more locations and the quills to unlock new abilities. Along the way they’re joined by a wide cast of characters like Trowzer, a snake (its a penis joke), and Dr. Puzz an alien who can help Yooka and Laylee take on weird transformations, including an apparently sexy plant. Yooka Laylee controls just like Banjo Kazooie, complete with terrible swimming mechanics and a sometimes confusing camera. The moves Yooka and Laylee learn eventually help them to overcome knew challenges. Yooka can swallow different kinds of fruits to spit up different attacks and Laylee can help the two glide around or uncover hidden objects with Sonar. Many of the challenges require these skills and as you get through the game you use them to solve simple puzzles to collect pagies.

By collecting pagies and exploring Hivory Towers, secrets are discovered and new areas become open. There are discoveries to be made everywhere, with hidden quills and missions to be found in every corner of the game. There is absolutely no guidance, it is up to you to find everything and anything.

In each world there are a total of 25 pages and 200 quills to collect. These worlds are massive and can be expanded once enough pages are collected and exchanged. Pagies are collected through completing missions, and often missions are curated by different characters: Like Rex-o the 64 bit T-rex who owns an arcade machine, Klipto the mine cart, a racing cloud, and hey Shovel Knight!

Pages can also be found by completing ability based and skill based challenges. Once you figure locate an objective, none of the challenges are too complex, the true challenge that I found is finding out where to go. Despite there being such a high volume of collectables, they are certainly spread out far. In Yooka Laylee, stages are massive to the point where it almost feels like its an open world. Of course the levels are secluded from each other, but these levels are massive and can even be expanded. The problem is that to find or do anything you have to explore, the game gives you no direction at all. As a 3D Platformer, the exciting parts are the puzzle solving, the collecting, and well the platforming, but because the game is almost built like an open world, the exploration is less about finding hidden collectables and more about just finding something to do. You don’t explore to have fun to explore to find something fun.

In order to entice players to take that extra step and want to explore the world, you have to grip them first. Let’s go back to Mario 64...

Each level in that game had a pretty obvious first star to collect, this let you gain a pretty good familiarity with the level, and later you could explore and find secrets, but it had to grip you first.

At the start of Yooka Laylee, there is no incentive to explore because you’re not yet invested in the game. And once I became more invested it was less about looking around the level and continued to be about finding something to do. I think that comes with the fact that the world’s aren’t interesting: the characters are, but the world itself isn’t. I’m so tired of seeing the same themes in every platforming game I play, Ice, Tropics, Casino, Lava- its all the same. I would be less critical of the level themes if I didn’t spend so much time meandering. There’s no direction, there’s no urgency, and the insanely high number of quills and pagies to collect in every level makes everything you do find seem insignificant in the grand scheme of the game. I spent hours in the first level before I realized that I could move on to the second level, there were no notifications or indication that I’d be able to do so. I figured that I may have to complete the level and beat the boss before moving on, but still nothing. Locations get stale quickly and I think the oversized worlds could have done better if the expansions happened in multiple parts, instead of just one large expansion per world. Choosing your spawn point could help as well. Searching for objectives doesn't feel like exploring, but rather a quest to end a perpetual boredom, and that ultimately spoils the rest of the of experience.

The purchase of Rare by Microsoft prevented Rare from continuing to make 3D platformers, and with that we really saw the death of the collectathon genre. Everything about the genre was created through technical limitation: the Nintendo 64’s development started as a result of the Super Nintendo’s limitations; hub worlds connecting locations and multiple objectives within each level were both created to deal with hardware limitations. This genre has been ignored for nearly 20 years and because of that its had no time to evolve alongside new technology. The wisdom of the genre is significantly less than the capabilities of modern hardware, these giant levels are a natural step in the evolution of Rare produced games, but they never got a chance to get to the point for people to say “Whoa” thats too huge! Even though people have criticized their later games for that point exactly (Banjo Tooie/ Donkey Kong 64). Yooka Laylee would have benefitted by a faster paced more condensed world. Sure add secrets, secrets are fun, but a relationship between the player and the game needs to be earned, before players are invested enough to explore every inch of the world.

There’s a reason this genre has largely gone away. Gaming has evolved and now all sorts of genres have been created around concepts that were new when 3D was introduced. Tight and skill based platforming has largely seen a return to 2D and open world games have created massive places to explore. The genre was exciting when it was new, because 3D was a new dimension in gaming, but once that excitement died down 3D could no longer be a genre in itself. Yooka Laylee doesn't work because it didn’t focus on what was different about 3D collectathons verses modern games, instead it adapted the genre to modern gaming. A massive game with a massive world can be fun, but focusing on the “open world” took away form the platforming. That being said, I don’t think Yooka Laylee was a failure for Playtonic. It proved that the studio is competent and that they can replicate the Rare style. I look forward to seeing what they do in the future, but for now Yooka Laylee is going on the shelf.

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#Yooka Laylee #Gaming #Game Review #Billiam #Blog #GS #Videos

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