Kurt Of Cambridge

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! Complicated feelings abound for me when I think of my experiences with the original Castlevania . I find it enticing and alluring in its presentation. Its mechanics are at the bedrock of the action-platformer genre, deftly riding the line between challenging and accessible. The monster designs, the hero's design, the sound work, the colour scheme - all of it excels at what it sets out to do. BUT ! I'm very much in the camp of players who don't enjoy being deliberately screwed over by infuriating design decisions in otherwise excellent games. And it saddens me to declare Castlevania as one such game - it really does tread into the realm of unfair one too many times for my liking, despite the surrounding experience being so promising. For the uninitiated: Castlevania puts you into the boots of Simon Belmont, a monster killer who ventures into Dracula's castle to face off against the infamous vampire himself. Armed with only a whip (albeit on...

Looks alright. Per the trailer, it appears we're getting an anime-esque variant of the usual "Belmont goes to face Dracula and his minions" narrative. Visually, it's certainly in line with the style and direction of the games post- Symphony of the Night as defined by long-time series artist Ayami Kojima. I'm a bit mixed on the look if I'm being honest. I appreciate how this particular take on dark fantasy iconography has come to define the Castlevania series (at least in part), and it's possible that in motion the style really works, but I'm more drawn to the classic "80s animation by way of Gothic and Universal horror" approach that was present in the earliest games' artwork. That style, after all, gave us the glorious beefcake barbarian badass that was Simon Belmont. Still, as a tease of things to come, it works. I'm intrigued to see what they're gonna do with the material, I get a sense that they really do care abou...

  I am not the world’s biggest Mega Man fan. Far from it; it took this past year and pain-staking effort on my part to even complete Mega Man 2, much less truly “get” the appeal. I grasp the fundamentals, I can appreciate the retro-futuristic aesthetic at play and the chiptune soundtracks are genuinely delightful. By all counts, I should have been onboard with the series AGES ago. And yet, it’s taken more than twelve months to become appreciative of the tense joys and thrills that Mega Man has to offer. Maybe it was the extreme difficulty that was typical of the era. Maybe it was the lack of in-game documentation on which Master Weapons affected which bosses. Or maybe it was that bullshit Yellow Devil boss in the first game. Nevertheless, here I am, having played through 2-and-three-quarters of the original 3 Mega Man games, ready to at last express my thoughts and feelings on them. (For reference: I played the 3DS version of the Mega Man Legacy Collection, which combines...

Thanks to my Patreon supporter and friend, Mark Aguirre, who is currently donating $5 to aid in the production of this and other written works by me. If you'd like to see more from the KURT OF CAMBRIDGE brand, please consider contributing to my Patreon yourself. I’ll be upfront in saying if someone came up and pitched Outlast to me, I’d be more than a little weary. See, while horror in gaming has seen years of experimentation and development enough to be given the benefit of the doubt, the idea of exploitative horror - i.e. horror stories predicated on using existing social issues or prejudices as an excuse to engage in wanton scenes of violence, bloodletting and other “extreme” concepts - is not as well-developed or as ingrained into game canon. Thus, a game where the core pitch seems to be “Let’s throw players into an asylum gone mad, sprinkle in some torture porn and inhumane experiments, and see what happens” is one that would catch me off-guard, to say the least. For...

  Hello to all the fans I may or may not have! SO... it's been a fucking while, huh? Time, money, and personal issues made it less than convenient to keep up posts on this here blog, much as I wanted to expand into new and untested waters.  I wish it weren't the case, I'm sorry to have not kept up updates of some kind, but I hope that you'll still take the time to read this post (and, indeed, the forthcoming material which I'm about to discuss). I just put up a Patreon page that I urge you to consider checking out and maybe contributing to if at all possible - it helps ease my personal troubles AND enables me to do more with this blog and the KURT OF CAMBRIDGE brand as a whole.  Even if you aren't able to contribute, I'd ask that - should my material past and future resonate with you to any degree - you think about sharing said Patreon with your friends, family and assorted acquaintances.  Every little bit helps, after all. Regardless, I'm p...

Yep, it’s that time again. Introducing Kurt Pitches… , the series where I put forth my own idea of how this or that project should be developed. Be it a film sequel, a hypothetical game idea, or the entire restructuring of a franchise, this is where I toss out my carefully concocted pitch for success. Today’s subject in question: the much loved, long-in-hiatus Star Wars Rogue Squadron series. BACKGROUND From 1998 through to 2003, developer Factor 5 was tasked with the creation of the Rogue Squadron trilogy of flight combat games, set in the Star Wars universe but largely taking place before & concurrently with the events of the Original Trilogy (at that time LucasFilm and their game development subsidiary LucasArts were leery about games based directly on the films’ events). On the whole the trilogy is beloved by fans and critics alike - despite the third game declining a bit in quality in strikingly similar fashion to Star Fox Assault - which in the present has lead to...

Hello again. So, as teased last time, we’re glancing behind the curtain at one of Call of Duty’s most front-and-center characters who - despite that publicity - hasn’t quite received the critical analysis I feel he deserves. For today we’re talking about Captain John Price, of the British Special Air Service. Let’s move out. Price has been this kind of quietly looming presence in the series since its inception. He doesn’t always have the spotlight, but when he does show up it’s usually memorable and definitely liable to include gunfire and/or explosions. Though he did originally show up in the first Call of Duty game - set in World War II, in case you missed it - Captain Price was somewhat of a bit player, an extra NPC who provided covering fire during a handful of missions, chatted with you a bit and ultimately sacrificed himself during one of the later missions. His role was beefed up a bit for the partially-set-in-Africa sequel, but it would only be in the Modern Warfar...