Patreon Letter - 25th June 2018

Hey everyone, it's Jackson here with another Patreon Letter. Sorry for the little delay, we had three podcasts to record on Sunday! Thought it better to take the time with the letter after that was done, rather than kill myself on Saturday trying to get everything done. Anyway, I'm here now, and it is time to talk to you all about what really matters: it's time to talk about Tennis.

Mario Tennis Aces came out! I was extremely excited as I love me some video game Tennis and I love both RPG Story Modes in sports games and Good Online Multiplayer with friends. And Aces announced itself as having both, much to the excitement of the entire internet. 

Did it succeed? Well, in typical Nintendo fashion, it is somehow both a resounding success and monumental disaster. For every good decision made with one element of the game, a completely mystifying terrible decision has been made with another. The 1 v 1 tennis experience is sublime, with the addition of meter management and special power shots that make every match into an almost unbearably intense mind-game. And then the story mode is a series of mostly time attack challenges where one wrong move and you have to retry the entire five minute level again. Occasionally, if you are lucky, you will get to play a game of Mario Tennis.

Mario Tennis Aces is such a uniquely disappointing thing because when a big company releases a video game that is bad, we have been around the block enough to know that there exists a direct line between everything on the disc and a decision made by a corporation. Sonic Forces is a cool game but an utterly unfinished barely functional mess, and you know why because when you look at the credits there are more composers than programmers. It did not get the resources it needed because it was decided to put resources somewhere else.

I have seen Aces get a similar reaction, with people up in arms at the simplicity and length of the story mode, suggesting that this game must also have been rushed. And while none of us know what is going on inside of Nintendo, I think if you look a little closer at the game you can see that's probably not the case. The single player story mode is packed with traditional, bespoke Mario boss fights, except with a tennis twist. They have attack patterns with unique animations, they increase with complexity on each of the three phases, a lot of money and effort has been expended on creating something that would justify a campaign mode in a 1 v 1 sports game.

And it's nigh unplayable. It's the solution to the wrong problem. People just wanted a simple framing device for a series of matches to give some narrative and mechanical context to what would otherwise be a series of Tennis matches. People are here for the Tennis! And instead, the single player campaign has you dodging tornadoes for five minutes and if you mess up too much you have to start all over again, so you can beat the boss. It's disappointing, yes, but it's more just confusing as to how this happened at all.

Anyway. That is my take on the video game. Nintendo are an impenetrable black box of a company who have (compared to everyone else) infinite money and time to spend on creating these impossibly good feeling video games, only to often be completely derailed by a single, ridiculous decision that brings the whole thing crashing down. And you know what? same. It me.

Speaking of impenetrable companies with hilariously questionable decision making, I'm off to play some Final Fantasy. Be good, friends. I'll see you in two weeks.

-Jackson