Author: Game Infliction

Hey Unlocked listeners and readers, Stella Chung here again today to talk about how great games are! Specifically, I want to talk about how great remakes are in this current game market. I recently started playing Resident Evil 4 for the first time, thanks to the remake, and I posted about it on Twitter and got a callous reply about why I missed playing one of the greatest games of all time and what other games I didn’t play.

Growing up, we were extremely frugal. We immigrated to the States when I was a baby and we were very poor so we didn’t have a lot of disposable income to enjoy games. When we did stabilize financially I wasn’t allowed to play games since my parents really wanted me to focus on other “productive” extracurricular activities.

I was 20 years old, living on my own in college when I finally got my first console: the Xbox One. Even with a console, then getting a PC, I still couldn’t really afford a lot of the bigger games since I was working and going to college. When I took a break from school to full-time stream, I was able to get more games since it directly applied to my job.

But even so, I found myself wanting to keep up with modern games, not just go back to games I had missed. I wanted to keep up with the games that were coming out, talk to my friends about them, and play them on stream to share with others. I also just didn’t have the means to play older games I had missed since they were locked to consoles I didn’t own.

But so many remakes came out that I was able to snag and play to make up for missing the original game and I loved being able to enjoy it in a modern update. A lot of remakes really just restore the original game to look and feel like how we think we remember it to be. For example, I swear Banjo Kazooie looked exactly like how the remake did on my friend’s N64 as it does now on the Xbox with its remaster. But that’s how memory works and we want to remember the game being the best version it was when we were growing up and just in love with our favorite titles.

So being able to see the difference in the remakes of these games is pretty great to fuel nostalgia while also bringing up the experience to modern standards. I’m pretty sure if I had to deal with the old Resident Evil camera angles I would lose my mind now, so I’m very glad for the remakes. It just restores that memory while bringing it up to speed to current-day controls.

Also, I was able to experience DOOM by playing the 2016 release and realize how much I loved the world building and pure violence of that demon-filled universe through the modern remake. This spiked my interest to then look into the original DOOM classics and try them out on Steam. Then there’s the beautiful collection of Halo games that I would have never touched if it was not for the remastered bundle that I’m playing through now with my best friend from childhood.

I really want to talk about this, and I know I’ve discussed this on Unlocked but not to the extent I want to now. Because I wasn’t allowed to game when I was living with my parents, I really missed out on the prime gaming years. There’s a Korean word for it that perfectly describes how I feel about it but it doesn’t have a direct translation to English. 아쉽다 (ah-shib-da). The best translation for it that I could explain is feeling regret, as if it’s a shame, and just a general feeling of mourning all in one.

I am grateful that I am now working in a job where I can enjoy games and fuel my inner child but I look back on the years I was in high school, listening to my best friends talk about the latest Assassin’s Creed game and the developments in the Halo storyline while feeling left out and like I was missing something great. I remember my friends pulling their hoods over their heads pretending to be Ezio and not knowing what that was about. I basically got the gist of the stories by listening to them rant about the games they were playing.

I missed the golden years of Master Chief’s adventures and badassery and lived vicariously through my friends who played the series and told me about the latest developments. I would have fleeting moments to play for myself when I would go over to their houses to hang out and get a small taste of what they experienced and I felt slightly more included.

My best friend and I have since then grown and live very busy lives but he and I set aside some time to play the Halo: Master Chief Collection all the way from the first game. As soon as I booted it up I felt this feeling of wholeness as I saw this screen I remembered seeing on my friend’s consoles when I’d visit. When my best friend and I started playing from the start, he was able to share his favorite moments with me, finally, after all those years and play like it was the first time for him through me.

When we got to Halo 2 and entered the chapter where you play as The Arbiter, the bad guy, I was shocked and exclaimed at how cool this was and how I loved it. My friend burst out saying, “Yes! I was waiting for your reaction! That’s exactly what I said and this is so cool seeing you experience this for the first time.” It felt incredible since even modern games don’t tend to pull this move and, this part will sound cheesy but, I felt like my inner child was healing.

I know there are some video game enjoyers who claim something will never be as good as the original but as someone who missed them the first time around, I am grateful for remakes and remasters. I genuinely feel they are a great addition to current games being released. They allow gamers like me who just weren’t able to access them, to go back and enjoy them in a better, updated state.

If I could go and grab older consoles I missed and play the games I wasn’t able to growing up, I definitely would. But remakes and remasters make it easier so I don’t have to. And I know I’m not the only one who’s in a similar situation. Games are awesome and we should be able to enjoy them how we want and I am so grateful that remasters and remakes exist for the sake of letting players who enjoyed them in the past enjoy them again, and for new players to enjoy them for the first time.

It’s a great way to unify gamers and let us all discuss the same game and share stories on our experiences with them, whether it was from the original or the remake.

If you could have any game be remastered or remade, what would you pick? For me, if DICE could make a proper Mirror’s Edge remake of the original, I’d be absolutely set.

As a new parent, one of the things that I’m most looking forward to is being able to play games together with my son. This is just one of the reasons why Disney Illusion Island caught my attention right away as a game that looked like a blast to play with my family. A four player cooperative 2D platformer from Dlala Studios, developers of the recent Battletoads revival, Illusion Island seeks to combine the joy of traversal in a seamless, massive world with that signature Disney magic. After spending about 20 minutes with it, I found myself sufficiently charmed and left with the feeling that Dlala seems like its on the right track.

The setup for the adventure this time around is Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy all traveling to the titular Illusion Island under the impression that they’ve been invited by one another to a picnic. It turns out, the picnic was a lie, and those invites actually came from the Toku, a group of creatures in desperate need of heroes to save them. And so, with a little bit of cajoling (some needing more than others), Mickey and the gang agree to help the Toku by collecting three magical tomes scattered across the island.

And to be clear, the island is massive. Dlala CEO AJ Grand-Scrutton doesn’t like to use the term “Metroidvania” as a genre descriptor for Illusion Island, but it is impossible to ignore the influence that those games have had on the design of its world.

In his own words: “Look, it’d be silly of us to kind of pretend that there is not Metroidvania inspiring the structure of the game. It’s a big seamless world. You get to gates you can’t get past until you get an ability. In a lot of ways that’s Metroidvania 101,” said Grand-Scrutton. He continued, “I think the difference with ours is that we’re focused on the platforming aspect. This isn’t a combat game. This is a game about all the challenges you come across being resolved by a movement and abilities as opposed to fights. So I think that structurally we’re very inspired by Metroidvania, but I think our biggest influences are platformers – modern ones, and the ones we grew up with.”

Fortunately, that platforming feels really good. It’s super smooth, there’s just the right amount of floatiness to your jumps, and there’s a really great flow from the level design that allowed me to just go from place to place without even really thinking about it. Despite the large open-ended map, I felt naturally drawn by the design to where I needed to go.

Of course one of the most notable aspects of Illusion Island – and as I said at the beginning, the thing that drew me towards it – is the fact that the entire campaign is playable in four-player co-op. Grand-Scrutton said that they decided to make each character control the same because if you make one character faster, or one character jump farther, what naturally happens is that somebody feels like they’re getting left behind.

So they made it so that, fundamentally, every character plays the same, but each feels different thanks to each of their animation styles. “We use kind of a toy analogy in which we said that okay, if we view Minnie as a paper airplane, we view Goofy as a slinky, Donald as a slingshot, and Mickey as a bouncy ball. Then we animate it around that,” said Grand-Scrutton. “So it’s very strange because the reality is they’re all the same, but they all feel really different when you play as each of them. So it’s a really fun challenge to overcome.”

I only had the opportunity to play as Minnie, so I didn’t get to experience the feeling of the other characters myself, but one of the things that I really enjoyed was when I got the ability to use wall jumps. There was a fun cutscene where every character was granted their own item that represented the ability. Mickey got a pencil, Minnie got climbing gear, Goofy a fork, and Donald… a plunger. Seeing Donald’s reaction to his gift was a joy, and I imagine it’s going to be a recurring gag throughout the game that I very much look forward to seeing more of. It’s a joyous comedic tone that echoes the animated shows and movies we know these characters from so well. This is further reinforced by the art style which evokes that classic morning cartoon feel, but with a modern sheen.

My time with Illusion Island was brief, so I can’t really comment on many of the deeper mechanics beyond just jumps, double jumps, and wall jumps. I definitely got the impression that the game felt pretty easy, but that’s based on 20 minutes of play from literally the beginning of the game. I asked Grand-Strutton and Lead Designer Grant Allen what the target audience was that they were aiming for, and they told me that while it’s a family game, that doesn’t mean it’s a kid’s game.

“So the way we view it is: Us as platform fans who grew up as platform fans and are still platform fans can play this. It’s enjoyable and Grant and I can play it together and feel challenged. But then if I want to play it with my nieces and nephews, we’ve provided features such as being able to set both my nephews to have infinite health, and I can play with two hearts and still get the challenge. But I don’t have to worry about them suddenly fighting and beating me up because they keep dying all the time.”

As with any massive exploration-centric 2D platformer, discovery plays a huge role in Illusion Island, and you can expect to find plenty of collectibles in the form of Glimt – basically like coins that can be spent on a variety of unlocks – special cards called Tokuns, and much more.

I’d also be remiss not to mention the soundtrack, which nails the ambient soundtrack that you’d hear while walking around Disneyland. It’s absolutely delightful. And delightful is a good word to sum up my experience with Disney Illusion Island so far. If Dlala can evolve the mechanics in satisfying ways over the course of the adventure, Illusion Island has all the makings of a wonderful return for Mickey Mouse and friends to the world of 2D platforming.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit