Let's Play MegaShigi
0IMPORTANT NOTE: Please read the video description. I only realized afterward that I had more to say about the game than I could ad-lib, so I wrote it in here.
Well, here's an unexpected project. This is MegaShigi, a 1-level Mega Man-esque game made as a birthday present last year for Laura Shigihara, who is a music composer, video game developer, and singer/songwriter. Notably, she composed the soundtrack for Plants vs. Zombies, or at least the first one; I'm not sure about the sequel and spin-offs. She also made the story-based game Rakuen. This game was brought to my attention during a stream that she did on Saturday, so I decided to try it, and I felt like it would be best to do a blind run of it. I'm not counting this as a regular Let's Play, though, because it's only a single video. It's about an avatar of Laura herself as she goes through a Mega Man-like level and fights the villain at the end. Being a blind run, this did have some problems, partly with my playing but also with the setup...I didn't have the right combination of screen recorder and game settings, so I had to crop the video later (and also forgot to turn my phone off). Oh well, I suppose.
On the whole, this game is pretty okay. My biggest complaint with it is that the controls are not customizable, meaning I pretty much had to use a controller adapter. (Someday, maybe I'll figure out how to use a PS4 controller on PC games outside of Steam...that would be nice.) The level design actually seems quite decent, and the boss was fair enough once I got used to it. I actually wish that there were a more substantial game here; it honestly seems rather a waste to program the engine, compose the music, draw the sprites, and all that for only one level. I wouldn't say no to the creators actually making a full-length game out of it. Most of the humor and references left me confused, but that's just because I haven't been on many of Laura's streams, so it feels like one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. I didn't really think about the plot too much while playing the game, but in retrospect, the theme/metaphor of being "the light" for others is actually pretty cute.
In any case, this was an interesting little game to try. I kind of want to look into more of the other stuff that Laura's worked on now. I'll probably look into Rakuen at some point; I have no idea what the Bayonetta Scale rating for it would be, but it could be interesting. Laura seems like a really cool and nice person, and I hope that she keeps doing what she's been doing: writing music, singing, making games, interacting with her fans, and all.