Punch Quest

A Much-Needed Validation of iOS/Android Gaming

I often feel anger towards people whom I know to be smart describing something as ‘stupid’. Partially because most of my favorite things are stupid, but mostly because it’s a cheap and lazy way to communicate one’s opinion on something without having to spend a second thinking about why they don’t like whatever it is they don’t like. And that’s sad because when it comes to judging something’s worth, it’s not only important to look at what that something is, but also precisely what it aims at being. Without doing so, nothing could rationally be considered a success. Being successful is everything.

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Halo 4 Has 343 Problems and Cortana is Definitely One

Videogames were changed forever when Bungie released Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001.  In that seminal release, the world met Spartan II cyborg Master Chief as he is awakened from cryo sleep to fight against the alien Covenant.  We also met Cortana, the AI that would accompany Chief and become the voice in his ear as he fights. Among many of its revolutionary ideas was its holy trinity of combat that mapped guns, grenades and melee onto an intuitive control scheme that provided a deep and flexible options and allowed players access to large maps and vehicles.  As the series progressed, it implemented a suite of online features and pared down gameplay into tighter design.  At the end of Halo 3, Master Chief re-entered cryo sleep aboard the UNSC’s Forward Unto Dawn as it drifts aimlessly through space with Cortana watching over him. The trilogy complete, Bungie flexed their creative muscles on Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, two games that would expand the structure with new modes and matchmaking options.

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Dishonored: An Atmospheric Example of Stealth-Action Done Right.

When I try to make a concrete decision as to what my favorite game of all time is, the answer tends to change from day to day. More often than not, however, Bioshock is the first thing that comes to mind. My initial arrival in Rapture was a swift kick to the face, forever opening my eyes to how it feels to be in an atmosphere so thick I could taste it. Not since that precious moment so many years ago had I experienced a world so fully realized and enticing as presented in victorian Dunwall.

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Dark Souls ‘Artorias of the Abyss’ DLC

Why All We Needed Was More Dark Souls

If there even is a proper word for the confusing mixture of emotions I felt in the first 30 minutes of booting up the long-awaited add-on to last year’s utterly exhilarating Dark Souls, it’s not in my repertoire. What I do know, is I was immediately struck with a very profound childlike excitement that had me giddy, all due to the fact I was simply doing something new. Having spent well over 200 hours exploring the dense, beautiful and wholly unique world FromSoftware had granted me last year, I pretty much knew everything you could about Dark Souls proper. Every pressure-plate triggered trap, every well-hidden enemy, every nonsense attack a boss could throw at me. Every single obstacle the game could lay on me I had painfully experienced,  triumphantly overcome, and gloriously mastered.

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Hotline Miami: A Grotesquely Beautiful Critique on Violence Entertainment

Hotline Miami wants you to hurt people.

With its over saturated neon colors aesthetic and ambient synth rock, Dennaton Games title wants you to think of violent action flicks such as Scarface and Drive, films rebelling against their own perceived places in the world with blood, guns and brutality. It’s 1989, a time of VHS cassettes and answering machines.  When you check yours, you’re given a cryptic message with a location and a time.  You’re going there to kill everyone.

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Resident Evil 4’s Silent Tutorial

Fifteen minutes into Resident Evil 4, Shinji Mikami and his design team test your comprehension of the mechanics they’ve been invisibly teaching you since you selected ‘New Game’. Former rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy had just fought his way through the Ganado’s Village and now finds himself catching his breath on an old dingy farm. Stray slightly from the beaten path and you’ll find a radiant pearl necklace enticingly suspended above a barrel of putrid water, patiently waiting for you to find it. Retrieving this necklace is your test. You can’t just reach out and interact with it, so you draw your handgun and shoot it loose- and immediately fail as it falls directly into the barrel of sludge beneath. When you pull it from the filth, your inventory lists the item as ‘Dirty Pearl Pendant’, its picture a grimy mess. Looking back at the barrel, you notice the 2×4 propping up the lid, so you shoot that next and watch it create a cover. Since you didn’t learn the lesson before, you do now: Resident Evil 4 rewards tactical gunplay.

Let’s study the notes:

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Double Dragon Neon OST

The Dragon Uppercut to Your Girlfriend’s Stomach

Double Dragon Neon lands a first-frame hurricane kick to the junk with a virtuoso big-hair anthem that recaptures the lost spirit of the original ‘80’s arcade classic while reveling in the decade’s ridiculous excesses.  As if powered by compositions spawned by some ancient Chinese magic, Jake Kaufman runs to the right and punches dudes in the face with the confident bravado of an action movie hero.

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Mark of the Ninja

The stealth action genre has long been an echo chamber unto itself.  While many games have integrated its core ideas, its pure form hasn’t evolved much since Metal Gear 2 on the MSX.  It’s a genre that many critics have argued relies too heavily on trial-and-error, exists as puzzle games in action-game skin.  Mark of the Ninja shrugs these distinctions off while living inside them.  It’s a smart title that promotes a different kind of stealth: action not patience; the hunter, not the prey.

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Mass Effect 3 ‘Leviathan’ dlc

Mass Effect 2’s post-launch content was among the best examples of the practice this generation.  Not only did each flesh out the Mass Effect universe, they allowed custom built levels and their own cohesive story that could accentuate Shepard’s story while still existing outside of its confines.  Leviathan is the first such piece of content for Mass Effect 3 but that games controversial ending hangs heavily over this even before you embark on its mission.

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Jet Set Radio

Graffiti is art.  However, graffiti as an act of vandalism is a crime. 

Jet Set Radio is very nearly a complete metaphor for freedom. Smilebit accomplished the task by making its game small in scope and using every element of its design to construct a theme: it has a large, overbearing enemy in its fascist Tokyo-to and a graffiti mechanic that is an action-oriented, easily understood core concept that is itself a means to fight against the oppression.  It gives characters the tools to move deftly through the world to leave their mark. With the guidance of free-wheelin’ DJ Professor K and his pirate broadcast, the youth are rebelling in the heart of Tokyo-to and the pressure is boiling up from the underground.

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