Undertale (Part 4)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

(Even though I think I made myself clear so far, it bears repeating that this review has major spoilers for the game’s two most important routes. Tread lightly. Oh, and spoiler alert, the ship sinks at the end of Titanic.)

(The text isn't normally darker, I just suck at taking screen caps.)

Walking into Hotland for the first time, we see guards keeping the path locked from humans - not realizing we’re one. Phew, is it me or it’s getting hot in here?

Ah,, finally someone helpful around here!

Nearby, we have a boat that can take us to earlier areas such as Waterfall or Snowdin. The building west, however, is a laboratory and the home of Alphys, the royal scientist. She’s a real ball of anxiety, stress and nerves, that lizard woman. Almost like me, except I’m not trapped underground. And also I am not crazy over anime. Just video games… er… in hindsight my situation ain’t all that better. I’m sad now.

Alphys explains that she was following the child’s journey through the land of the monsters, and has begun rooting for them. Unfortunately, Alphys is also the creator of an entertainment robot named Mettaton, who was modified to be able to fight humans. Except in trying to remove those features, she amplified them instead, and now her robot is trying to kill us! Whoa! I thought only Asgore was allowed to try and kill me! …Wait.

I'm more partial to "Fuzzy Pushover", but what do I know.

As if on cue, Mettaton shows up busting from the wall dramatically, and fights the human child. Except it’s not a normal fight. It’s a QUIZ SHOW! A battle begins, and you move your heart around in the rectangular area during Mettaton’s turn to pick the answer. That's... really clever! Eventually the questions become completely unfair (and Mettaton attacks you each time you pick wrong), but one question eventually becomes about Alphys’ favorite anime/game franchise, Mew Mew Kissy Cutie, and she absolutely has to answer that one for us. After which, Mettaton asks a question embarrassing Alphys, and then he leaves. Till we meet again!

Before we leave the lab, Alphys upgrades our super-old phone into a better model with texting and Internet connectivity, and then lets us go on our jolly way. From this point onwards, Alphys will often call to help you, and sometimes you’ll get notifications from her on social media.

A LOT of notifications.

At least, when Navi bothers you in Ocarina of Time, she's
supposed to have a point.

Like, all the time.

And you have to stop to read that pop-up dialogue box when it appears.

Sigh.

And even when there are puzzles, she’s not helping that much, sometimes being a bother instead.

Destroy the enemy ship, move the
boxes out of the way. Simple.

So yeah, Hotland is a combination of four things: Hot hot hot puzzles, a bit of a maze of elevators on the way to the area’s Core, encounters with Mettaton playing TV show host while trying to kill you, and Alphys constantly calling you or dropping social media notifications. Each one of them would be fine, but all four combined make this an area I really didn’t like the first time I played. It was a maze, it had tough enemies, all the Mettaton encounters were funny but filler, and Alphys came across as a video game helper as annoying as Omochao to the power of Navi. Thankfully, this time, I knew what to do somewhat, so navigating the area was easier.

We have to solve puzzles to open doors on the way. Also, we’re finally told why monsters are so obsessed with puzzles: The logic is that an army of attacking humans would be forced to go through them and get considerably slowed down while the monsters evacuate… somewhere. Where, I don’t know, they’re supposed to be trapped and helpless underground already. I guess they’re better off never stating it, so that a sufficiently-determined and murderous human never hears it and, thus, can’t find that location.

Not a great boss fight, but imaginative enough I guess.

One of the more notable elements of Hotland is Not Sorry, a bonus boss put into the game as a Kickstarter backer reward. He can be found only if you get to his area precisely on 8:00 PM, on October 10^th (which may require changing your computer’s set date and hour). He’s an awkward, panicky artist dragon who keeps trying to show you his art, only for it to hurt you instead. There’s isn’t much to do to fight him, but 11 turns into the fight he calls it off anyway.

As for Mettaton, he chimes in with parodies of a cooking show, a TV news report, and a classic musical where he dresses as a princess, and each time he finds a new way to try to kill you, yet each time you can thwart his plans, usually with your own smarts or with some help from Alphys or her phone, which is packed with gadgets.

Well that mini-game led to a great big pile of nothing.

Muffet has one of the msot epic attack sequences in the entire game.
See that on the right? It's nearly a full minute long.

Of course, there are noteworthy fights on the way still, such as the two male guards that you can defeat by making them admit their crushes to each other - awesome LGBTQ+ representation in this game, by the way - and, later… Muffet. Oh God, Muffet. You step into her webbed-up room and she accuses the human child to be too greedy to spend a few coins on the spiders’ bake sale, also accusing the child to be hateful to spiders just like many other humans. In the ensuing fight, which by the way is extremely tough, Muffet turns your Soul purple and traps it on lines, and in this fight you have to move the heart up and down to avoid the obstacles, instead of freely floating around the Bullet Hell square. Oh, and for added kicks, there is no Action you can do to quickly spare her - gotta wait long enough for an underling spider to show up with a note saying you personally haven’t hurt any spiders on the way to her lair. However! If you bought an item from the Spiders’ Bake Sale way back in the Ruins, kept it up to this point, and eat it in front of Muffet, the notice will arrive immediately afterwards, ending the fight much faster. And you get her respect for not only caring for spiders, but also giving money to their cause! Sheesh, there was a lot to say for this one.

On the other hand, her song “Spider Dance”, much like most other themes in the game, can be adapted into a kickass song.

Side-note: Caleb Hyles is awesome.

Oh! He knows Toriel! And she loves bad puns!

In the Mettaton fight that happens shortly afterwards, Alphys turns your soul yellow and upside-down, making it like a tiny ship that can shoot bullets at the enemy with Z. And one bullet is enough to make Mettaton go away again, allowing us to go further and reach a grand hotel at the end of Hotland. There, we can talk with Bratty and Catty, Alphys’ friends who speak like valley girls despite being, well, in the Underground. We can then also meet Sans, who takes us for dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. I’m skipping over it because my space to write is limited, but it’s a very heartfelt discussion.

Oh, for the record, the MTT Grand Resort was built in honor of Mettaton. Definitely not an ego trip though. Nah, it’s just a hotel with his name on it, it’s not like it’s a shrine, a cult of personality for an inflated ego! What’s next, Mettaton will try to become ruler of the Underworld? Good thing it’s a monarchy, not a democracy, or this could get bad.

Sorry, Metta - you're not my finale.

Past the hotel, we walk into the Core, an extremely hot place built like a high-tech factory of sorts. The place is fairly simple to explore, few encounters with enemies, few puzzles as well. Soon we reach a room with Mettaton in the center, and the entertainer locks the exits. He explains that Alphys had been manipulating everything behind the scenes in an attempt to look cool and heroic to the human child, but Mettaton has had enough of the charade and decides to try and take the human soul for himself, so that he can pass through the barrier and gain more fans in the human world.

If Bowie exists in the human world of Undertale, then I am
fairly certain Mettaton would do a tribute album to the guy.

Your original tricks don’t work on him, until you’re told to flip a switch on the robot. This… doesn’t turn him off - instead, it brings out his great form, Mettaton EX, who is… well… let’s say he looks about ready to sing Magic Dance or Ziggy Stardust at me, and let’s leave it at that. And how do you spare him? By playing along with the showman… bot… showmanbot, and making a showman of yourself, playing Heel to Mettaton’s Face, bragging against him… even innocuous actions like using items will boost the ratings of this televised battle.

Every time you reach a certain threshold of viewers, Mettaton will reveal his heart and you can shoot at it with Z, since your heart can do that thanks to Alphys in its yellow form. This will cause Mettaton’s limbs to blow off. Eventually, when you hit the threshold of 10,000 viewers (which can be either very easy or very difficult depending on the items you use - of note, the ratings must reach 12,000 if you don’t blow off his limbs) and then Mettaton realizes he can’t win. Besides, he is the only real celebrity the Underground has, he can’t leave his fans behind! He ends the fight after opening the phone lines and receiving loads of positive messages from fans… then his batteries run out, because the EX form requires too much energy.

Of course, if there was more than one elebrity in the
Underground, maybe there'd be something else to watch then.

Anyway, this means we can finally leave Hotlands and the Core, and go to the King’s Castle. Alphys follows us for a bit longer though, trying to remain our friend through this… but I’m sorry, I need to keep moving forward… to Part 5.

New area: Hotland. Fire everywhere. Whatever. Gotta find our way through. I doubt we’ll see many folks, since they’re evacuating the place. And if anybody gets in my way… Hey, why is there a water cooler here?

And you? Are YOU going to fight me?
Come on, make me happy. Fight me.

A force field stops us from skipping steps. And that’s good, because we have to kill 40 enemies in this area. Hotland is a very large place. East, we walk into a lab, but it’s empty. Watching the video feed goes “It’s me, Chara”. I could have sworn that is NOT the name I gave this character. Further into the lab, we encounter a robot. That’s Mettaton, I think? Yeah, I remember him. He says that while we were slaughtering the monsters, Alphys was setting up an evacuation plan to get most monsters to safety. As for Mettaton, he says the world needs stars more than it needs death (original line says “corpses”), so he flees. Smart one. I’d flee from myself too instead of standing in my own way without putting up much of a fight.

Wait, if that monster is a rope on fire, why doesn't it
burn itself?

Past the lab, we venture further into Hotland. And, to the place’s credit, it actually has some pretty tough monsters. Pyrope is a highlight, as it will usually survive the first hit. Yet again, all the puzzles are deactivated. There’s no going through a series of lasers, no moving boxes to shoot an enemy ship. We also encounter two royal guards who decide to fight the child, but they’re killed very easily. Even more easily than Pyrope! What’s the point of having them as minibosses if they can’t even survive one blow?

Throughout the area, we also walk through bizarre sets like a kitchen or a prop castle, stuff that probably have a reason to exist in some alternate world, like planned scenes in a world where Mettaton plays with the human, but here? Nah. It’s the weirdest filler ever. The elevator has 4 possible destinations already, yet most of them are gated off by force fields. Dammit! There’s a bit of a spider bake sale, then another area where puzzles would normally have to be solved to move forward.

This kitchen isn't operational.
Shame. I was in the mood for a hot dog.

I just had a realization: This is fucking boring!

And! Down in one hit, yet again.

Oh, we’re moving into the room with the spiders and Muffet! That one is such a tough boss on the Pacifist Route! I hope she’s a moderate challenge here! She does the whole schtick with her spiders, calling the child a rotten ingredient that can be discarded, and the fight begins. And yet… with a single blow, off she goes yet again. Some supplementary material indicates that Muffet had a chance to trap the child in this room forever, blowing up the exit while she fled, but wanted to stay and fight the child so her spider babies wouldn’t be alone. And so, with her sacrifice, we can keep going without anything stopping us.

It just strengthens my point about the Genocide Route: You become too powerful, and despite multiple bosses on the way, very few of them pose any challenge. In fact, many of them don’t even fight you. They just… stand there. How’s this supposed to be fun? I’m… I’m not enjoying this. I only keep going because I can, because I want to experience this myself, and because I can then report on it.

Thsi is the most bizarrely badass line I have read in the
entire game.

We now reach the MTT Grand Resort, and as you can imagine, the place is empty. Even the alligator and alley cat in the alley are gone. We can get, for free, an empty gun and a cowboy hat, decent equipment. Hey, I wonder if those things belonged to one of the kids murdered in the King’s plan? Inside the resort, there’s almost no one to be seen. Well, aside from the Glamburger cashier guy, but he has the shop owner contractual unkillability. Leaving him alive is a crueler fate than killing him anyway.

Then there’s the Core. That place looks so boring now. I mean, I’m sure it already didn’t have much of interest anyway, but this… yeah, meh. However, with no puzzles to impede your progression, and a quick way through the maze, you can reach the door leading out of Hotland and towards the King’s castle. But before that, make sure you’ve exhausted the kill count. There’s a bridge just before the end of the Core with many different enemies, including one that actually feels more like a boss than a lot of encounters seen so far.

Not pictured here: The boss-like enemy,

I already was. I played GTA after all.

We walk through and encounter Mettaton again, standing in our way. Hopefully his robot body isn’t too impervious to my attacks. The robot says that the child is not just a threat to monskerkind… but also mankind. Which makes sense, you don’t become a genocidal monster one day to get out of a single bad situation and lose that trait when you’re out of it. That’s how monsters are born. Um… the actual monsters, not folks who are monsters by species but not by attitude like all the folks underground… all the folks we’ve been slaughtering… why am I feeling bad all of a sudden?

Mettaton unleashes his newer form, Mettaton NEO, in an attempt to stall us while the monsters are evacuating the area. He becomes a bishônen android with a huge armor. And all he does is… block the way. For the record, he is the final threshold in a Genocide playthrough as, past him, there are no more random encounters, so if you didn’t exhaust the kill count in Hotland before getting to him, he sets you into the Neutral Route immediately.

And like I said, on Genocide, he only blocks the way, doesn’t attack, he just… waits for your moves. And guess what? Like most bosses before him, he goes down in one hit. For fuck’s sake! Okay, so his robot body uses up the batteries extremely quickly in this form, but seriously? One hit? Here’s how I believe this fight would have been better: Mettaton doesn’t attack, but blocks your way still, and takes a couple dozen hits to die. Boring fight, but a relatively long one, as Mettaton is genuinely blocking your way for a decent period of time, allowing Alphys to evacuate more monsters while you’re busy. How does that sound?

Alas, that’s not what we get. What we get instead is another boss killed ridiculously easily, then we get to the elevator and can go to the King’s castle.

In Part 5.

Undertale (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

(Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers!)

Well... That certainly is a waterfall.

Whoa, that knight is crazy! Cool magic though.

Waterfall area! This place starts off pretty calmly, with a few sweet puzzles to solve in order to cross watery gaps. However, we soon encounter Undyne. The helmeted knight waits on the side, away from the hero. When Papyrus shows up and admits to his (we presume) boss that he was unable to capture the human child. Yeah, big failure there, he befriended the child instead. That’s okay, Undyne is there to deal with that now. Problem is, that is one Hell of an aggressive knight. TOSSING SPEARS AT US? Holy wow! Calm down!

Phew, it was just for one screen. Welll that's better. The knight is there again later, but catches the Monster Kid accidentally.

Undertale (Part 2)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

(Reminder: MAJOR spoilers ahead.)

*long fart noise*
Well that was an overly-long gag.

Continuing on this road because I really like this idea of sparing people and defusing drama. We’re now in Snowdin Forest. Walking through, I could swear this place isn’t as empty as it looks. Reaching a bridge, we’re approached by a shadowy figure who asks for a handshake, and when we turn around to offer it we’re greeted by a big sloppy fart noise. Whoopie cushion in hand, huh? Normally they have a buzzer in there. I guess that would just be too mean. This is Sans (or rather, sans, as he says), and he’s a joker. I mean, you’re reading this on the Internet right now, so you have heard of Sans. Everyone has heard of Sans. He’s become kind of an overdone meme.

"On the off-chance that there's a human hidden there who's
the exact shape of the lamp?"

The skeleton states that he should be on watch to find humans, but he’s too lazy to do so. His brother Papyrus, however, is very dedicated to that task. Upon getting to an open area, Sans tells us to hide behind a conveniently-shaped lamp, which we do to go unnoticed as Papyrus shows up. He asks his brother if he’s seen any humans, which the bigger-boned one responds by the negative. After the taller skeleton leaves, we move forward but Sans says we should try to make Papyrus happy by showing up for the guy. He wants to see a human so much. …Sure, why not!

A little later we see the two skeletons again, and Papyrus (eventually) realizes that we’re a human. Not the brightest bulb, this one, hm? He runs off to prepare puzzles for you to solve, because that’s how it’s supposed to go in video games I guess.

Undertale (Part 1)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

The OG killer enemy.

I love games with branching paths. Games where your choices matter. It’s like Schrödinger’s Plot: Two or more options, they’re all possible, and your actions determine which option you choose. You could argue even the most basic of games has millions of possibilities. In a way, even Super Mario Bros. branches off as soon as you meet a Goomba: You jump past it, stomp it, or get killed by it.

That part will never cease to amaze me.

You could also compare it to quantum superposition: Multiple states existing all at once, all happening at the same time, and as a result none of them is actually happening. …Quantum physics are a pain in the ass to explain. You might remember that concept best from the Rick and Morty episode “A Rickle in Time”. It may have also been a part of other stories, but it’s the best example I can think of. Not to shill a show I like, but… Hey! You try finding another story out there that utilizes a concept like quantum superposition! The only other example I can think of that somewhat applies is the movie Mr. Nobody, and that was just a mess!

Well, there is a reason I’m talking about this today, in my introduction to this review of Undertale: This is, after all, one of those games where your choices have larger ramifications in the long run. Your first actions will radically alter the course of the story. Don’t @ me about “But spoilers!” The game’s almost three years old now, and the fanbase has spoiled it all to Hell and back. To say that Undertale has multiple paths, the most prominent two being an all-pacifist option and an all-murderous one, is about as much a spoiler now as Vader being Luke’s dad or Rosebud being the name of a winter sled. Although, Undertale is more like one Pacifist route, one No Mercy route, and enough possible neutral paths between the two to fill an 8X8 grid, possibly even more.

But still, here’s my fair warning. If you haven’t played Undertale yet, or do not wish to read spoilers about the game, then you might want to skip this review. Come back in four weeks or so. Because I’m going in deep, and I will be revealing just about everything.

You’re staying? Good! Welcome to Planned All Along’s fifth year anniversary review, in which I am reviewing a Steam indie game! Felt like I needed to do something else than a Nintendo game for once, for the occasion.

Movie review: The Incredibles 2

Well I haven't posted here in a while... (Don't worry, the Undertale review is coming. Still working on it for release next month.)

Warning: While I tried to avoid them, this review may contains spoilers.

I don't recall posting about a lot of the films I went to see in theaters in the last year - I didn't write about Coco or Murder on the Orient Express, I didn't write about Deadpool 2... Eh, why not talk about this one.

So, Pixar brings to us The Incredibles 2, a sequel released about 14 years after the first film. Yet, it begins exactly where the first ended, with the rise of the Underminer from underground, the family putting on their masks and suits, and fighting the villain. Following this encounter, superheroes (no calling them simply Supers this time!) are at an all-time low in public opinion. The Parr family is taken out of trouble again by agent Rick Dicker, but find themselves in a worse situation than ever before... That is, until Winston Deavor, a superhero-loving billionnaire, calls them for a major pro-superhero Public Relations operation, an attempt to bring them back in the population's good graces. With the help of his gadgeteer sister Evelyn, he hopes to make Supers no longer illegal.

However, Mr. Incredible (Bob Parr, voiced by Craig T. Nelson) is the cause of the legislation that made superheroes illegal in the first place, and Frozone (Lucius Best, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) is still a tad too destructive as well. Thus, Helen Parr, AKA Elastigirl (voiced by Holly Hunter), is the one chosen for the operation. However, the attempt at good PR causes the appearance of a new supervillain called the Screenslaver, a hypnotist-type character using screens to control people... Meanwhile, Bob has to be the stay-at-home dad for the first time in forever, and his new tasks quickly overpower him. Not to mention Jack-Jack's powers (revealed at the end of Incredibles 1 and in the short film Jack-Jack Attack) are manifesting more and more, with the lack of control normal from a baby...

Okay, so let's get some obvious points out of the way right now: 14 years of tech upgrades allow this movie to feel very different from the original. You can see the changes in the details, whether it's the characters' hair, the fabric they wear, and various other improvements that would be much more noticeable if watching both film back-to-back.

Second, yes, this story is about Helen Parr rising to the occasion and becoming the hero, in a plot very similar to that of the original movie, except with the parental roles reversed. So it's not entirely new of an idea, but the film definitely takes more time exploring this change of dynamic, how Helen deals with her role as a savior as a sort-of celebrity, and how Bob deals with raising three superpowered kids, with one going through heartache and the other showing off a new superpower every 5 minutes. (And for the record, Jack-Jack revealing his powers to his dad is not a spoiler - it made it into the first trailer.)

The story is well-written, each main character gets an interesting story arc, Edna Mode is there again and is a highlight again (of course she is!). I feel the villain is rather generic, as hypnotist supervillains have been done very often before. Though, honestly, this is a very good movie. It holds up as a sequel, expanding the mythos and the family dynamics shown in the first, and bringing an interesting conflict to boot. Although, I feel that the slice of life parts, with Bob trying his best as a house father, were almost more interesting, more unique than the action scenes. Nothing wrong with Helen being the one to kick ass this time, she does it in a magnificent way and, much like in the original, her powers are used in a variety of creative ways.

It's a great movie, but I do have more points of criticism.

Okay, so first, the biggest issue: The twist villain. In most of their CGI anmated movies of the last 6-7 years, Disney has employed the plot twist villain trope, and now we've come to expect it. As soon as a certain character showed up on the screen I went, "you wanna bet that's the bad guy?" It's a tired trope now, started with King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph (By the way, the sequel better not have that too!), to the true villain in Frozen, Big Hero 6, Coco, Zootopia... The secret villain, we're expecting it now, it's overdone. And the attempts at disguising the villain to keep us guessing don't work nearly as well as the writers hoped they would.

The film features a LOT of superheroes as well, many of them with interesting designs. There's a team of about six of them that is met partway into the film, as part of Helen's PR operation. They all seem somewhat interesting, and they probably could be if they were sufficiently developed, but the movie's 2-hour runtime doesn't allow them to get all that much screentime each for this to happen. The main one of the group, Voyd (a teenager capable of creating portals with her mind), gets more development and screentime, but still feels like an overused character archetype (the shy, awkward girl with potential, with an eye-hiding haircut - sounds quite a bit like Violet from Incredibles 1, no?). Even though she's advertised more than the others, it still feels like she doesn't get enough time to shine. Lots of missed opportunities.

Similarly, there was Tony Rydinger, Violet's love interest from the first movie, a guy at school who notices her at the track competition she attends because Dash is participating. Turns out, he sees her without her mask but in supersuit early on and has his memories of Violet erased. The film thus misses an opportunity to explore that dynamic, one that's been hinted at between Lucius and his wife (a Super married to, or dating, a non-Super). How would this develop between two teenagers? Maybe an Incredibles 3 will center around this... On the other hand, considering how much was going on already in Incredibles 2, I guess not having that extra side-plot is better.

Final critique, another major one: The Screenslaver uses a lot of black and white flashes in his hyponism tricks, a lot of strobe effects, sometimes filling up the entire screen. Worse even, these sequences can last anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes, as a full combat scene takes place in a room made entirely with screens projecting the strobe effects. If you're epileptic and you're having doubts, don't go watch this movie in theaters. If you fear it would affect you, cause you to go into a seizure, then skip this movie. Wait for the home media release. However, shame on Pixar for not knowing better. You'd think they would avoid doing stuff like that considering how often this sort of effect has led to epileptic people needing treatment. Seems that Porygon episode from Pokémon still isn't famous enough.

Oh, and as a final note, the short preceding Incredibles 2, titled Bao, is also very good.