This summer was supposed to be the Summer of Movies for me. I used to watch a ton of them. There was a period of three or four years where I saw at least one movie a week… in the theater! I have a pretty massive collection of DVD/Blu-Ray/4K discs, too. Last fall, taking advantage of the many sales throughout the season (as disappointing as they are, these days), I bought a bunch of movies I dubbed “summer movies” because they either took place in summer/hot climates or reminded me of the season for some reason or another. City Slickers, American Pie, Point Break, Wayne’s World, Backdraft (filmed in part just a few blocks from my childhood home!) — all on the list.
I’ve hardly watched any movies so far this summer. How am I supposed to make time with all these damnable video games coming out! Besides the games I recently finished below, I still want to play Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, Star Fox, Coffee Talk Tokyo, Directive 8020, a slew of visual novels/FMV games, the upcoming Halo: Campaign Evolved, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and let’s not even get started on September and beyond. Grand Theft Auto VI, Wolverine, Ace Combat 8, Star Wars: Galactic Racer… plus I just bought some retro games that I’m excited to play, most notably Resident Evil 2 for N64 which I’ve been looking for for a while. What’s a boy with a job and a needy cat to do? Play games that are in some vague way related to movies, I guess? Kind of? Like…
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
I have a limited history with Lego games. I’ve only played the original Lego Star Wars game, which was very fun and charming, despite its lack of challenge and slight jankiness. I’ve heard great things about the Lego Batman games and own them – I just haven’t gotten around to playing them yet. When I saw the trailer for Legacy of the Dark Knight, I was excited that it looked so similar to the Arkham games, in both combat and fan-service nods and references, but wary of the same difficulty woes. And, as expected, it was quite easy (even on the harder difficulties), but I still had a fun time.
I’m a huge Batman fan, which is a big part of my enjoyment of this game. The gameplay may not be robust and the difficulty may be low, but there are hundreds of nods to the Batman movies, characters, comics, and shows I grew up with. I liked other things when I was a kid, sure. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, GI Joe… but Batman was woven throughout my DNA, from sneakily skipping nap time to watch reruns of the old Batman TV show, to Tim Burton’s incredible movies, to the amazing animated series, I just knew that somewhere deep in my soul, I was Batman.
The Arkham games came much closer to allowing me to don the cowl and feel like Batman, but Legacy of the Dark Knight was a very fun romp through my many memories with the various iterations of the Bat. So many familiar faces, both friend and foe, the Batmobiles and suits (my favorites were the Black Lantern Batman and Vampire Batman), and Bat-Mite! Finally, Bat-Mite. I love that he breaks the fourth wall and comments about rarely being included in Batman stories, too. Reliving the opening of Arkham Asylum was also very cool, with Solomon Grundy and the little Arkham chime. It was details like this that kept me playing and smiling throughout. It’s not my ideal Batman game, and ultimately it just made me want a new Arkham game more than ever, but I had a good time with it.
007 First Light
My experience with the James Bond universe is not quite as deep. I did see a couple of Bond movies in the theater when I was a kid (GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies), and I was, like approximately 25% of all N64 owners, obsessed with GoldenEye 007, but besides checking out the latest (Daniel Craig) movies, I haven’t really kept up with the series all that much. I’ve tried a couple of the games that came after GoldenEye, but none of them really stood out. 007 First Light stands out. GoldenEye 007 was innovative and felt groundbreaking at the time, and I will always remember my time with it fondly, both single and multiplayer… but 007 First Light is on a different level. It genuinely feels like a new, modern Bond story, in writing, acting, and presentation.
I’d heard enough pre-release buzz to know First Light wouldn’t be quite as sandbox-y/emergent as IOI’s Hitman games, but there are certain levels/set pieces that still very much give you a host of fun, creative ways to take down enemies stealthily or otherwise. I was a bit concerned about the need to be given the “license to kill” before taking lethal action, but it turned out to be a non-issue. I was always happy to start levels covertly, and it wasn’t until some of the later, more urgent (feeling) levels that I felt a little more eager to just start popping headshots and moving on. Even in those levels, however, I went in feeling confident in my stealth skills, so I would quickly take out 3-4 guys stealthily before just popping out and taking shots at the remaining bad guys. It all felt very natural, fluid, and fun. Like semen. Just kidding! Sorry. Why do you let me get away with these kinds of jokes, jeez.
I also really enjoyed the espionage aspects, like eavesdropping on targets, collecting clues, and using gadgets to bypass security. The big, bombastic sets were also a blast, like running across a collapsing crane and driving a gigantic dump truck through enemies, barriers, and tons of scaffolding. And of course the femme fatale Bond girl was cunning, seductive, and badass. Would I have liked a tad more freedom/non-linear levels? Sure. But given my packed schedule lately, I actually appreciated how narrow some of the sections were, narratively. I had a great time with this game and hope IOI gets to make another.
The Legend of Kage
I should probably just make a Gaming Memories post about this game because my comments on the gameplay will be brief, but I don’t know that it would be all that compelling. I played this game on the NES when I was very young. It wasn’t an easy game, and I didn’t fully understand how to play it, but something about the ability to leap high into the sky, climb trees, and grab mysterious scrolls that would kill every enemy on screen fascinated my baby gamer mind. I rented it from Blockbuster, I’m sure, and then… I couldn’t find it again. The next time we’d gone back, it had been replaced by some other game. So it faded from memory until years later, when it emerged unprompted like an old school mate sending a friend request on social media. Problem was, I couldn’t remember the title. This was probably around 2000/2001, when search engines weren’t very powerful, so my futile searches for things like “NES game martial arts jumping grab orbs” didn’t turn up anything. I asked friends, people on message boards… nothing, at first. Eventually a friend (shout out joliet_jane) from an old forum I frequented, the Clock Crew, figured it out and I was able to track down an NES copy years later for $12.
I did play the NES cart when I got it. But, as mentioned, The Legend of Kage is not an easy game. Enemies are fast, you die with just one hit, meaning you basically have to anticipate when an enemy might pop on screen, or just fire shurikens blindly and hope for the best. Welp. At least I was able to take a stroll down memory lane. Then, just a couple weeks ago, what pops up in the PlayStation Store? The Console Archives version of The Legend of Kage. What a deep cut to show up on modern consoles, but with the added ability to save whenever, wherever, I was able to beat the game several times and scratch a very old game off my backlog. Nice. I will say, I would have given up again if it weren’t for the save feature. The gameplay is too twitchy and annoying for me to actually enjoy, but hey, a win is a win.
Mixtape
You know what? I’m just gonna say it. I’m sick of the “is it a game” discourse. Can we just start ignoring the trolls that are either very dumb and don’t know what a video game is or are just trying to get attention for their dumb, outdated takes? I don’t hear this discussion pop up when a new clicker or idle game comes out, but for some reason narrative “walking sims” always reignite this “debate.” It’s not a debate. More frustratingly, even people who like the game off-handedly engage in the discourse by saying something like “I don’t know if it’s a game, but I like it!” Shut up. It’s a game. Why am I so fired up about this subject? Besides the obvious, I think it’s because I’m haunted by the ghosts of teenage hormones, reawakened by this very nostalgic narrative adventure game.
Not everything in Mixtape is totally relatable to me, because these are specific, unique, well-written characters with their own lives and personalities. But there were enough tendrils of familiarity that I frequently felt the warm sting of nostalgia while playing. I didn’t skateboard when I was in high school, but I was the one in my friend group that made a decision to leave to start a different life. I never went to a raging, crowded party in the woods or broke into an old amusement park, but I did hit baseballs at odd hours with a friend and get harassed by cops for the crime of being a teenager in public. I wore wallet chains and made mixtapes, I snuck into abandoned houses and exploded a giant gumball machine by flipping it off. Okay, so I didn’t do that last thing, but I did have an awkward first kiss with potentially too much tongue. And it did, indeed, feel like I unlocked a trophy when it happened, as I did on my PS5.
And even when my own life experiences didn’t match up nicely with the game’s characters, I somehow still tapped into the vibe. Rolling down a suburban street, crisp, colorful leaves dancing around us, DEVO’s “That’s Good” providing the perfect backdrop. Mixtape has a solid story and well-written characters, but the soundtrack is the obvious star. It’s not like I love every track on its own, but every track does fit perfectly where it’s placed. The Smashing Pumpkins were the soundtrack to my teen years. When I saw them on the list of bands featured in the game, I thought “surely it’s ‘1979,’ the music video being a very, very Mixtape-esque story of teenage angst and freedom.’ Nope. It was “Love,” a deep cut from their Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album that I doubt many non-fans are familiar with. But I love it, and riding around angrily destroying things in my path as it played loudly around us was so fun. I’d never heard of “Yesterday’s Hero” by John Paul Young, but I was absolutely jamming to it as I scurried through yards, clambered over fences, and dodged dancers on the tops of school buses. Mixtape wasn’t very long, but I loved pretty much every minute of it.
A New Game Plus 