The legend of Battle Garegga

Some games maintain an aura of silent legend without receiving significant critical praise. Battle Garegga, a 1996 scrolling shooter by Raizing/8ing, has retained that legendary reputation for twenty years.

Few outside the hardcore shoot-em-up scene have heard of it: If Gradius is the scrolling shooter bible, then Battle Garegga is its Necronomicon. Devoted fans speak with equal reverence about the game as they do about its mad author, Shinobu Yagawa. Every moment of Battle Garegga feels distinctly planned, as Yagawa’s phantom hands pull players this way and that.

Battle Garegga has style. While the visual design itself is a bit murky, the game’s aesthetic dodges tropes that modern shoot-em-ups fall prey to. Many players have lamented that traditional shoot-em-up “spaceships and warplanes” aesthetic has been replaced by cute anime girls in an appeal to anime pop culture. Not so here.

Battle Garegga veers instead toward a neo-WW2 aesthetic, a world of dehumanization, mass industry, and bleak factory landscapes punctuated by bright explosions. If that were all, Battle Garegga would fall victim to the same bland realism that plagues many modern titles. What’s interesting is that the game also has a strong fantasy component, feeling like an understated steampunk world.

This nod towards the unrealistic is no surprise, considering Raizing/8ing’s previous game, Kingdom Grand Prix, was high fantasy, a rarity for the genre. Many of the boss designs in Battle Garegga are absurdist industrial monstrosities, such as the spherical fortress MadBall, or the arms-akimbo Junkey Monkey. Battle Garegga is gritty and industrial, yes. But thoughtlessly realistic it is not.

This is underscored by the selection of playable characters. Four of them are fighter planes, but the other four (secret) characters return from Kingdom Grand Prix. They are, in order: a warrior, a sorceress, a samurai dragon, and a necromancer. I cannot stress how much their inclusion adds to the game. The latent steampunk trappings would amount to little without the ability to fly through as the samurai dragon Miyamoto or necromancer Bornham. Each character has their own playing style, able to be subtly altered for speed, size, and color by pressing a different button during character selection.

Equally important is the soundtrack. I have very little to say about it that won’t be immediately apparent upon listening. It’s energetic, upbeat, intense, varied. And its one of the few videogame sountracks that’s completely listenable outside of the game it’s featured in. Battle Garegga, in my mind, is defined by its music.

I think the jewel in Battle Garegga’s crown, though, is that it’s also a very intuitive game. Yes, Battle Garegga’s systems are complex, with seemingly limitless depths to be exploited. But on a surface level, Battle Garegga asks you to do two things: Shoot enemies and collect point medals. These are very satisfying, very primal videogame objectives.

And there’s a whole lot to shoot. One could almost call that Shinobu Yagawa’s calling card. Other programmers will usher enemies in from one side and then the other in an orderly fashion; from the very first second of gameplay, Battle Garegga gives you plenty of targets and a frenetic sense of disorganization. There are massive explosions, and too many enemies to initially keep track of. Items are constantly filling the screen; players must race to collect what they need. Even without worrying about deeper systems, Battle Garegga feels rich, considered, and sufficiently overwhelming.

Battle Garegga rewards players at every skill level. Certainly it’s a difficult game. The new PS4 port, courtesy of M2, does a lot to mitigate this difficulty through alternate modes and settings. If you’ve never played Battle Garegga, or if you’ve only dabbled in it as I have, I encourage you to try it in MAME, or create a Japanese PS4 account in order to download it. After all, this is the sort of game that could keep you going for twenty years.

A treatise on the bloody hunt

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Shields are for dullards and old men. The Kirkhammer does good work for a man of strength, the Saw for the rest of us who are, perhaps, more precise in our swing. What old tortoise would hide behind iron shield while the blood of his wife and babe were supped upon by the beasts of the hunt? Only my father; soulful but bloodless, and rightfully dead.

———

It is wise for a man and woman to stay inside to burn incense on nights when the moon shines red, if they can stand such close company with one another while all manner of creature screech and bray and fornicate lustfully outside; indeed, they may make a ball of this and don masks, and, pretending to be beasts themselves, engage in all manner of licentious acts. But you and I do not stay inside on nights of the hunt, in fact we cannot, because we are both hunter and hunted, and such idleness does not suit us. Our place is out in the streets, in the forests and hills, where the true act of consummation occurs.

———

Yharnam is beautiful, Old Yharnam doubly so. The sun sets orange against the black spires; mosses and grasses grow out of stone bridges, verdant forests which rise from the city’s cracks. Yharnam winds in on itself; it reluctantly gives up its secrets, which are these: Bodies become bonfires, blood is the most intoxicating spirit, and the hounds eat as well as anyone.

———

The Forbidden Woods are tritely named, but what surprises I have found there! Men, pointing and jeering so that one wanders close in anger, men who’s heads, now the distance is closed, split lengthwise into a knot of vipers, undulating with parasitic glee. And the fungal myconid-men with their phallic sporecaps; I did eat their blue glowing flesh—it was not for me (being too tough and earthy), but I saw many more stars that night than exist in any sky, self-arranging into eldritch constellations of the faces I have seen in dreams.

———

Hunt boy, hunt! You should need no convincing, should it stir your soul.

Young girl, take up your knives and walk the streets at night; show me your bravura. I have met women who shame all the men of Yharnam with their finesse. Since birth you have been lectured on virtue and grace, and I see it in your well-mannered swing of Saw and Blade—beautiful efficiency, not a movement wasted.

———

Advice for aspiring hunters:

Only hunt if you feel the hunt braying inside you; wander out of your incensed home only as a caged beast, longing to be free. Otherwise, there is no shame in staying indoors on the night of the hunt; it is the only sensible thing to do.

Pick whichever tool gets you going, but do not underestimate the humble Saws. They have tricks for close and middle range, sweeping scythe-like over groups of enemies. Cleave generously but thoughtfully; they are classics for a reason.

Rely heavily on your blunderbuss, and learn to parry every twitch with a blast of silver that leaves your enemy dead or kneeling.

When you see something unknown, approach slowly and prepare to back away quickly.

Treat another hunter with more caution than you would any beast.

And, most importantly:

Run for those lanterns, boy.

———

I am not and have never been moved by matters of the Soul; save that idleness for grand Boletaria. Those who seek themselves in spiritual affairs strive toward mastery but never truly reach it. I prefer the present tense,  the Saw and skin,  the smell and sight of blood against the Yharnam moon—

The hunt itself, not the idle bragging of it.

I’m wall-nuts, baby, I’m a zombie brainslave

If I haven’t written about Garden Warfare, it’s because I was too busy playing it to un-death. In the throes of my addiction I was topping out at ten hours a day, only stopping when some dumb stupid idiot hacked the Playstation Network, leaving me to endlessly refresh the Ask Playstation twitter for details.

I really love Garden Warfare, then, providing as it does a meaningful alternative to endless near-future military shooters by… mostly imitating Team Fortress 2 instead. Marine zombologists teleport into battle with squealing dolphin shotguns, while gape-mawed Chompers’ tunnel underground and chomp opponents from below. Maps feature fun-first design, with pirate ships, party mansions, and gem mines replacing typical war-torn wastelands. There’s something wonderful and playful here that we’ve been lacking ever since Call of Duty recodified (and ruined) competitive shooters.

Indies have arrived

Amidst a scarcity of big budget games, indies are stealing the spotlight

Looking through my Playstation 4’s media bar last night, I noticed something strange: a complete absence of big-budget, publisher-backed titles. There was the Destiny beta, of course, but nothing truly substantial, nothing I’ve actually bought. In fact, the beep of an empty disc tray is something of a running joke in my house — of course there’s nothing in there; we don’t even own a physical disc for the system.

For me, that’s incredibly weird. I’m not a primary consumer of AAA big-budget titles, but neither do I consider myself an indie gamer. I’m not prone to playing navelgazing, experiential indie titles; instead, I play scrolling shooters, platformers, role-playing games, kart racers, and brawlers. Seeing that my library consisted of nothing but indies came as a real shock to me.

But that’s a defining core of this generation: the walls have broken down, and all of a sudden indies sit flush alongside mainstream titles. New distribution models are allowing indie developers a voice, and they’re making that voice heard.

PS4 review: TowerFall Ascension

Super Smash Towers Fall

The Playstation 4 just got its first great game in TowerFall Ascension, a riotously fun 4-player archery grudge match that’s near impossible to put down. Archers hop around multitiered platforming levels, firing arrows and dodging enemy shots. Conflicts can be snappy one-shot kills or back-and-forth dances between players; they end with calculated arc shots or lucky boot stomps or even suicides, as a player’s upturned arrow drops back to earth and onto their face.

TowerFall’s closest point of reference is Super Smash Bros with a touch of Spelunky. There are aerial platforms, fast-falls, bombable dirt clods, directional air-dodges, faux-retro graphics, platforming stomp attacks, and scads of items. It does for Smash Bros what Smash Bros did for the fighting genre, stripping it down and building it up again from an entirely new perspective.