nintendomain

This video game generation has been a renaissance for “Beat ‘em up” games. There have been incredible releases like: Streets of Rage 4, Shredder’s Revenge, and now Fading Afternoon. Fading Afternoon is an indie game made by Yeo who also brought you Friends of Ringo Ishikawa and Arrest of a Stone Buddha. Fading Afternoon is a beat em up with heart. Everything you do in the game has an effect on the overall story. The game begins with Seigi Maruyama getting released from prison. You take a trip back to your old Yakuza boss and the game gives you control after that. You get set up with a hotel room and some cash to start out with. The first night you wake up coughing up blood to let you know that Seigi doesn’t have much time left. Your life bar lets you know that as well since every thing you do, be it getting hit in the head with glass bottles or staying out drinking and smoking til you pass out will effect your life meter. It will get lower and lower as the time passes and eventually your credits will come. The time passes as a day and night cycle with each “day” representing a week. What you do with the time you have is what’s important. You can traverse the city by way of train and there are different dots that represent different locations controlled by different Yakuza families. You can engage these families in battle at any time. Engaging with them creates warzones that are indicated by a red circle around the dot representing the area. This is where a little strategy comes into play because you will have to defend any area with the red circle around it and if you end up failing and running out of red circles, you will get shot on the train and that is the end. If you die in this game there is no continuing, no reload save, nothing. You have to start all over again at the beginning so be careful what you do. At least on your next playthrough they let you skip the beginning week so you don’t have to read all the dialogue again. There are other activities that you can participate in aside from the regular gang beating activities and story elements that can come from these. For instance, I was going to a Hostess Club on the regular and eventually ran into the main characters ex wife working there and she broke a glass bottle over my head. This is just one small example of the various things you can find in the world of Fading Afternoon. I found myself thinking a lot about this game’s options and all the different ways the story can go. I can see myself playing it multiple times to try to find all the different endings and story parts. It’s impossible for you to get everything in the first run so there is a lot of replay value in this one. If you like your beat ‘em ups with more heart and thought involved, pick up this game now!

If you were to ask me which genre of games is sorely lacking on the Nintendo Switch I might say something like MMO games or sandbox style action games. I would have never thought to say Pirate Simulators. Aside from a couple of One Piece, Half Genie Hero, sea themed adventure, and party games. Pirates are not very well represented in the Nintendo Switch library. It's a good thing that HeroCraft answered the call and brought us the thing we needed yet never knew we wanted. The game is Under the Jolly Roger. Aside from Skies of Arcadia, Wind Waker, and One Piece games, I haven't had much experience with Pirate games. The first thing I noticed when I saw Under the Jolly Roger was the similarity to Sid Meier's Pirates with that old school PC Pirate RPG feel. It's like a real time strategy game with crew management and exploration. You can do a lot of things from raiding ships, stealing crew from other ships, changing alliances, fighting mystical sea creatures, and even some 3rd person combat. You can pilot your ship on an ancient pirate map or you can sail the whole thing in third person or first person view. The fact that you can do both is pretty damn impressive! All of this and it is a mere $19.99 So how does it play though? First off, the game starts rather abruptly by throwing you right into the action with no introduction or story. You have to figure out how to fight on the open seas with little advice from the poop deck. It took me awhile to figure out that you had to go to the nearest town to get the rest of the tutorial missions. There is a lot to unpack with this game and eventhough the tutorial runs through everything fairly quickly, it will still take a lot of time for you to figure everything out. There are still somethings that are either broken or I just can't figure out how to do them. Take for instance equipping ship jobs to a particular sailor, as you go through the game you find various sailors to join your party. You can assign specific named sailors to Masts, Fighters Reserve, or Gun Deck. As you go through the game you pick up more and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to equip them all. Even with multiples spots available I still could only assign the first one. This seems like just a small overlooked thing but I wish that there had been more testing on the game. I feel that if this game would have stayed in the cooker for a little bit longer we would have had a much better game. Thankfully the ship battles work really well, which is great since that is where you spend most of your time. Unfortunately moving the boat around is not as easy as you would think. For example you when you sail there is a blue wind pattern on the screen that you need to be in front of in order to move. If the wind is not in your favor, you move slow and sometimes not at all. It becomes incredibly tiresome when you are trying to chase a boat or collect the booty of a downed boat. I know this takes place in the 1700s but would it kill them to put a motor on the boat?(or a speed sale!) Make some of those sailors get out and paddle! It's stuff like this that make me wish that the game was more arcade like and less simulator. Verdict: There is a lot to love about Under the Jolly Roger and I would recommend it to most people looking for some exciting Piracy in their life. It's good, but with some shortcomings. The shortcoming being the wonky 3rd person fighting, lack of polish, and slow boating without the wind. If you think these things won't hinder your experience and your heart craves adventure, Then grab that virtual steering wheel, get out into the open ocean with the wind at your back load your cargo hold with booty, and check out this game. Just remember that there may be a few bumps in the wake of your pirate journey. Score 7/10