Celebrating 20 Years of Rez

One of my favorite games of all time

In honor of Rez’ 20th anniversary, a repost of something I wrote about it for a Facebook group.

The world wasn’t ready for Rez.

In 2001 with CRTs maxing out at 480p, no one was getting the optimal experience, and even then it probably wouldn’t have been a smashing success coming out on the tail end of the Dreamcast era. It’s a miracle it even came stateside at all – albeit in a PS2 port and without the infamous “trance vibrator”. Rez ended up being Tetsuya Mizaguchi’s last original product for Sega before he decamped to Q Entertainment (his final would be a sequel to Space Channel 5). By all means it should’ve been a weird footnote among the many weird footnotes of that era when Sega was throwing everything at the wall, knowing the end was near. Somehow it managed to get two separate ports and an extra level in the form of Area X (which, sidenote, contains the first official work from Tetris Effect composers Hydelic. It is the platonic ideal of EDM), not to mention a spiritual successor in the form of Child of Eden, made during the Kinect Frenzy of motion gaming. In more ways than one it’s the perfect VR game; it’s certainly the one I think of first if I were to demonstrate it to someone.

The gimmick of it all is that everything you do is tied to a sound in someway: the numbers tick up as you highlight enemies, and shots fire off bloops and tones as they make contact. Locking on to the maximum 8 causes a chorus to sound when you release. Handclaps sound if nothing is targeted. A voice counts down every time you hit the node and the music shifts into the next phase, building as if in a rave. A ship times its shots so that when they release they sound like percussive elements.

Describing Rez to the uninitiated is a bit of a struggle – which perhaps speaks to how Sega clearly didn’t know how to advertise it. Most people describe it as a rhythm game but that’s not entirely accurate. Broadly speaking, it’s a rail shooter: you control an on-screen cursor as a wireframe avatar floats through surreal landscapes, holding down X and moving the left stick to lock on to objects on-screen. Releasing X fires up to 8 shots at enemies on screen. Powerups come in the form of blue spheres that add life, and red spheres that allow you to automatically target everything on screen. Each layer level (as its called) is broken up with a Network Node in the form of a cube you must first break off of, then target with 8 shots.

Unlike a rhythm game where everything is mapped to a specific moment and missing penalizes you, every shot you make stays on beat no matter how late you are targeting or in what order. Rez’ goal is that of synesthesia, like many of Mizaguchi’s other games (Lumines, Tetris Effect). Enemies explode into bursts of color, into hieroglyphics or tigers and lions. They fly by on small bikes, the paths making lines that spiral across your vision. In the background, statues beat in time with the music as does your avatar. More than anything Rez is an ultimate expression of aesthetic art, every action you take heightening the confusion of the senses and pushing you further into a hypnotic state.

Of course, there is a story to Rez but you could be forgiven for not noticing it. The short version is that in the future, an advanced AI named Eden has a mental breakdown due to information overload, threatening the world. You play the hacker that’s sent in to try to free her, battling enemies and taking down bosses in the form of firewalls and security systems that attempt to protect her. While the overall story of world peace and metaphors of life may not pop up until the final level, the hacking motif is all over the game: enemies you target scroll down on the left side with. Getting a new form causes “File system: updated” to sound in a robotic voice. Targeting the cube is called “cracking password”, with the phrase “Security Breached” circling you. In no way is it realistic but it fits in with the charm. It’s like someone decided to make a game out of the hacking sequences in Neuromancer, something you can actually simulate in VR mode with a headset. It’s a more optimistic vision of computer hacking, a very early 2000’s view that’s only got more charming as time goes on.

The best expression of this synesthesia is in Area 1, with the track “Buggie Running Beeps” by Sega in house sound designer Keiichi Sugiyama. It builds like a rave, starting with a droning tone and moving into slow beats before it explodes into a full on party. Elsewhere, tracks like Area 4’s “Rock Is Sponge” from Joujouka nervously drill on until suddenly guitars kick in as you’re flying through an arena, chasing after a running man made out of cubes, a truly mind blowing moment. Area 5’s Fear Is The Mind Killer from Adam Freeland and Coldcut brilliantly matches the title phrase to enemies, speaking the title as you shoot them. Describing Rez in words is honestly rather useless. You have to experience it for yourself, controller vibrating in time, to really get the sensation.

Deltarune: Chapter 2 Review

This might be your daddy’s Undertale

Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me right back in. To be honest I’d kind of forgotten about Deltarune. Well… not forgotten exactly, but it wasn’t anywhere near the top of my brainspace (which is completely occupied by Final Fantasy XIV nowadays). So thanks a lot Toby, because now I’m right back to wanting every episode injected into my veins. If Chapter 1 was cautiously feeling out a new space and warning people expecting Undertale 2, Chapter 2 settles into its new environment by embracing the things we’ve come to expect from Undertale: namely branching paths, insanely deep content, and instantly memorable characters. Fox’s ambition has grown, and with it so has his team.

Simply put, it’s a blast all around.

The number one reason is thanks to The Queen, this chapter’s main antagonist after the previous King (who honestly, I remember almost nothing about). She currently reigns over Cyber World – aka, the Library’s computer lab in the “real world” – and wants to take over the rest of it because it would be fun. I don’t know how he did it but every single line of hers is funny, just pure dlight every time she shows up. Chapter 1 wasn’t lacking for humor, but 2 feels like Fox and co have gotten fully comfortable in this new universe enough to lock on to that particular style of irreverence unique to Undertale. It doesn’t feel like a course correction from the former’s more dour and mundane tone; rather, like the rest of this chapter it’s an expansion of scope and returning to the things that made him so beloved.

Which brings us to the gameplay. I’ll be honest, it knocked me flat on my ass several times, just like Undertale did. So far Deltarune shares a similar problem in that there’s no real way to upgrade your stats for a pacifist run. Certain gear will give you little boosts like enhanced Graze time – and Graze itself provides a new dimension to the bullet hell segments that gives it a little bit of Bayonetta‘s Witch Time, in that putting yourself in danger is a genuine strategy. But when it gets hard, it gets hard, and not even towards the end. That being said, it’s fun as hell. The addition of 2 other party members expands ACTs, changing them from something you spam to strategic attacks all their own. Now you can balance everyone ACTing with having one act, maybe one heal, and then one spare to make things go faster. It’s a fantastic system, and within it are a bunch of different minigames; the whole thing has gotten a little more interactive, like parts where you have to avoid music bars hitting you as you traverse the world.

I’ve only played through it once, and I’m fairly certain I missed a lot of stuff, at least judging from online comments. From what I can tell, there’s an entire genocide route called Snowgrave where you don’t directly cause mass murder, instead forcing another party member to do it. Fox seems to be continuning on the theme of choice, or rather your lack of it. As of this posting, it hasn’t been datamined yet, so who knows what secrets are hiding. The game seems to be going in a much darker direction than Undertale, what with Kris losing control and whatnot, or even Spamton (who, it should go without saying, has an absolute banger of a theme song). Who even knows if your romance choices will play out and be respected? There’s also the fact that you’re collecting enemies like Pokemon, possibly for an army (another reason to keep you playing the battles). I truly have no idea how long Deltarune is going to take. But honestly, I’m excited to see the rest of where this crazy journey goes. I still can’t even fully wrap my head around the implications of theories, something which could be a detriment if more esoteric and hidden stuff starts becoming important. In any case, even if the completed product goes the way of Kentucky Route Zero and takes a decade, I feel like it could be something monumental. At the very least it’ll be funny.

Some Thoughts on YorHa: Dark Apocalypse

Perhaps Final Fantasy XIV raids should stick with Final Fantasy

I have a feeling Yoko Taro never particularly wanted to do the Nier crossover. I’m sure, going back through his statements, you could find some typically blunt thing saying that it was a cash grab or Square Enix told him to, yadda yadda yadda. And at the beginning of the raid series (which i came to late), that probably just sounded like Yoko being Yoko. After all, he was the director of Nier: Automata! This would be incredible.

Curiously, there seems to be some grumblings within the Final Fantasy XIV community over the raids as the final patch released and the story winds down. Namely, there’s the fact that the story doesn’t really have much of an ending, instead locking off the rest of it in a weekly quest series that gives you more logs which explain things. To be fair, much of Yoko Taro’s work has been somewhat ambiguous, or at least willing to seem disappointing at first glance (as some on Reddit have argued). And of course, the second and third parts of the raid were developed smack in the middle of COVID, which affected development all around and lead to a severe curtailing of priorities and content.

All that being said – the story is definitely one of the weaker elements of the raid overall, if perhaps not the biggest reason it’s fallen in esteem. For refreshment, the main plot follows twin dwarves Anogg and Konogg as they investigate the strange bunker near Komra, leading to all your favorite Nier: Automata characters showing up. It’s hard not to notice how much of it feels like a rehash of that game, down to Anogg losing his mind when his sister appears to be dead. Of course, there’s also the cheeky connection to Devola and Popola, the twins from that game and its prequel who end up sacrificing their lives at the end of Automata. In fact, much like the other raids FFXIV has done, there’s a ton of throwbacks all over the place to Automata, the better to directly advertise a Square Enix property. The problem is that they feel more like copy-pasted amalgamations of things people already played in those games, a bit haphazardly strung together.

It doesn’t help that the conclusion has been shunted off to weekly quests that involve fetch quests around the environments, rather than doing the raids like previous ones. Now, full disclosure, I have not completed these quests, nor have I read all the info provided in the collection. It all just seems like way too much at the time, and a stop gap to learning the conclusion. I’m sure they’ll provide some form of closure if I ever get to it. But all the other raids have concluded their stories once the quest cycle is over. Perhaps players expected the same here.

The final complaint I’ve noticed the most is how disconnected it feels overall, especially the way previous crossovers have been handled. There’s the recently begun FFXV one, for example, which basically consists of Noctis finding out how to get out of Eorzea. More appropriate is the Monster Hunter: World event, which gave us two duties in the form of The Great Hunt and its Extreme counterpart. Similarly, that was presented as something of a side show: not a trial required for the main story, but also not part of The Four Lords series either. It’s entirely self-contained, which, to be fair, the other alliance raids outside of The Crystal Tower have been. However, although they may not directly affect the story, they do still expand the lore of the world or tie back into Final Fantasy‘s history in some way or another. They also integrate themselves into Eorzea somewhat seamlessly, or at least try not to appear to inconspicuous.

YorHa doesn’t really do that. Instead, it really feels as if another game has invaded FFXIV, with a story that doesn’t do a great job of explaining who all these people are, why we should care, or what the impact on the world could be. I have no idea if Square Enix is gonna try this again for another alliance raid, and honestly I wouldn’t be opposed. I guess it’s really more a mismatch between creator and product, something that’s probably not gonna be thought of as highly in comparison to the old ones.