Great Genre Crossovers in Gaming History - Volume One

Introducing the start of a new series of articles on SPC. Some games blur the line between pre-established genres, combining two or more to create one incredibly impressive game. They're the types of genre combinations that shouldn't work, but by some miracle, they actually do work. These following five games are what kick off this brand-new article series on SPC: Great Genre Crossovers in Gaming History. Essentially two different tastes they go together well, such as pineapple and pizza (search your feelings, you know it to be true), these games combine two genres with great results! After you've checked out SPC's freshman class of games with great genre combinations, let everyone know which games you'd like to see in future installments!

RPG/Fitness - Ring Fit Adventure (NSW)

A game that has helped many Nintendo Switch owners not only find a means to regularly exercise during the pandemic but also have fun while doing so, Ring Fit Adventure is our first game in Great Genre Crossovers in Gaming History. Cleverly combining the joy of playing an RPG with the feat of working out, Ring Fit Adventure keeps players motivated and moving throughout its lengthy story mode. Using a combo of the Ring Fit ring where one Joy-Con rests and a strap that goes around your leg where the other Joy-Con sits, you perform myriad movement and exercises to not only move along the vibrant vistas and paths of the game, but also to perform attacks on enemies in the turn-based battles. 

Different exercises work different parts of your body, whether it be squats for your legs or planks for your abs. Each exercise has its own attack power, its own range of attack, and a cooldown period before it can be used again. The better you perform each rep of a given exercise, the more damage you deliver onto a foe. When it comes time to defend, you best keep those abs firm and ready to engage the enemy's advances! 

With so many fitness games, including Nintendo's own Wii Fit, I found myself losing motivation rather quickly. With Ring Fit Adventure, the line between exercise and game is blurred so well. It's easy to forget when you're making progress in the story and playing for fun that you're also becoming healthier bit by bit. Between the adventure aspect of the game, the turn-based battles, the earning of experience, the gaining of levels, and unlocking new skills via the skill tree, Ring Fit Adventure successfully blends two different tastes together--the RPG and the fitness game--to craft one magnificent fitness package. 

RPG/Rhythm - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (3DS, iOS)

Picking up where Ring Fit Adventure left off, we have another game that combines an RPG with a different genre. This time around it's the rhythm game genre and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. Taking some of the greatest music in video games and mixing it with rhythm-based battles and gameplay makes for marvelous combination. All of the pieces of the RPG are present here: earning experience, leveling up your characters, and even item drops. This is mixed with rhythm-based gameplay coming in a variety of forms, such as side-scrolling Field music, Battle music, and Event music. Either type of scene you play, you're in for touch screen-centered tapping, touching, holding, and sliding of the stylus to hit every beat. Theatrhythm would receive two sequels as a franchise, such as Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call (pretty much making the original game almost redundant in some ways) and the Japanese-only Theatrhythm Dragon Quest. Recently, the Kingdom Hearts series got its own take on the Theatrhythm formula with Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, essentially a Theatrhythm game in everything but its name.  

Platformer/Rhythm - Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat (GCN, Wii)

Never one to rest on its laurels, Nintendo opted to innovate in a big way in the GameCube era with its main monkey Donkey Kong. Not only did the GameCube receive not just one but two rhythm games using a special bongo drum controller with Donkey Konga 1 and 2, but it also saw a brand-new 2D platforming adventure as well. Donkey Kong; Jungle Beat featured Nintendo's great ape running, jumping, and launching himself through colorful fruit-themed worlds, with every action performed by hitting the bongo controller itself. Smacking either the left or right bongo drum of the controller moves DK in that respective direction while hitting both drums at once causes DK to leap into the air. Meanwhile, either clapping or hitting the rim of the controller results in a powerful shockwave attack to be unleashed. This combo of controls could be used to perform some truly insane stunts in levels. 

Not simply a platformer that you run and jump through levels, you can also do so with style and flair, taking on Jungle Beat like a score attack platformer, too. By collecting bananas, gathering beats, and increasing your combo multiplier by performing stunts in midair, you can rack up insane scores, which really showcases how excellently crafted and complex the level designs are. It's something you might not notice if you're just casually going through levels. Then, there are the boss battles, which put DK in either platforming contests against big bosses or one-on-one Punch-Out!!-like duels with fellow simian opponents. 

Donkey Kong; Jungle Beat would go on to receive a Wii entry that completely replaced the bongos of the GameCube original with motion controls. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk served as your left and right hand respectively, as if you were using drumsticks. Though not as enjoyable to play as the GameCube version, it's a competent port all the same, and for someone who lives with other people, it's at least a less obnoxious version of a game to hear for them!

Platformer/Puzzle - Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (DS)

The Nintendo DS saw a tremendous amount of innovative games throughout its life. Even Electronic Arts, a company that isn't too well-known for reinventing the wheel and getting out of its comfort zone, delivered some truly creative titles on the Nintendo DS. One of these was a stellar 2D platformer with a unique puzzle-based twist, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure.

Using the DS's dual screens, the top screen served as a platformer. When enemies are dispatched by our good ol' tea-swigging chap Henry Hatsworth, they are in turn moved to the bottom screen, turned into puzzle blocks. As time progresses, the blocks on the bottom screen slowly climb upwards, and if they reach the top edge of the bottom screen, they will return to cause trouble on the top screen. Only through engaging with the bottom screen in true Panel de Pon/Puzzle League style by sliding and matching three or more similarly colored blocks together can these blocks be removed. In doing so, these defeated enemies turn into energy that fills part of Henry's Super Meter, and depending on the color of the removed blocks, these can either increase Henry's attack, restore some health, or cause an adverse reaction. 

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure delivered equal amounts charm and entertainment, as equal as the combination of platforming fun and puzzle-based goodness. If you missed out on the game, if you still have a device that can play said game, and can track a copy down, you should definitely take a glimpse at this utterly creative and unique adventure.

Action/Simulation - ActRaiser (SNES)

Our final game takes us way back, all the way to 1990 with the Super Nintendo cult classic and fan favorite ActRaiser. The game was innovative back when it released, and still to this day it's hard to find games similar to ActRaiser. Starting with a pair of humans and little else, the simulation portion of ActRaiser sees you planning roads, creating miracles, and doing your best in the role of "The Master" to provide as much prosperity as possible for your newly formed civilization. This is in between the much more action-focused running, jumping, and slaying monsters and other enemies in side-scrolling levels that bookend the sim aspects of the game. Looking at the two screenshots provided above might make one think they're from entirely different games. The fact that they're not only from the same title but also have two vastly different gameplay styles that work so well together just shows how much of an impressive game ActRaiser was in 1990 and how impressive ActRaiser remains over 30 years later.

Dragon Quest Builders (NSW, PS4, Vita) Review

We had a Clustertruck and then a ClusterPuck, and now we have a Dragon Ball FighterZ and a Dragon Quest Builders! The latter is the focus of this next review, a game available for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita.

If you build it, they will come.

Dragon Quest is a series that has dabbled in more genres than just its traditional RPG background. Dragon Quest Monsters took the series in a Pokemon-like direction, whereas something more recent like Dragon Quest Heroes brought the series forward into a Musou experience. Now, Dragon Quest as a series gets yet another spin-off, this time tinkering around in a world similar to Minecraft. While the ability to create what you desire with blocks is very much similar to Notch's creation, Dragon Quest's take on Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders, brings with it a story, RPG elements, and a structure to help players who need motivation to push on. Does Dragon Quest Builders create an architectural triumph, or does it create a condemned building instead?

Dragon Quest Builders begins with your builder--able to be slightly customized by gender, hair, and color options--waking up from a deep slumber inside a crypt. A voice calls out to the builder, telling him or her (for convenience's sake we'll just refer to the builder as a "he" from now on) of how the Dragonlord has corrupted the kingdom of Alefgard, blanketing it in darkness. Telling the builder how to escape from the crypt, this omnipresent voice summons a banner for the builder, asking him to plant it in the middle of what was the former grounds of a town. Through Dragon Quest Builders's four chapters, this is pretty much always how each begins. You take a banner and plant it in a new town. You also lose all of your items, materials, equipment, and health boosts after each chapter, but the game is designed in a way where that limitation not only doesn't harm the overall game but it makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

As soon as the feat of planting the banner in what is left of the first town of Dragon Quest Builders is accomplished, a nearby visitor sees the light shining from the banner and arrives at the encampment. As you play along through a given chapter, more and more visitors will show up, and they will make their home at your base. All of these characters have requests that need completing in order to progress in the adventure. Some task you with building rooms for them, some want you to collect a specific item for them, while others might want you to take down a certain enemy in the surrounding lands. You earn rewards for completing quests, and many of these are quite helpful, whether as health-restoring items, health-increasing items, or materials to assist in building various creations.

From small beginnings comes the little town that could.

Building things in Dragon Quest Builders requires materials. Some are as simple as striking the earth around you to acquire blocks to make buildings and rooms in your town. Others are more involved, requiring a combination of materials to create one item, whether a completely new material, a piece of furniture, or what have you. Creations are made on special pieces of equipment like workstations, forges, cookfires, among others. Without one of these, you can't create anything from materials. You start off with the most basic of equipment to build creations with, and as you progress in chapters, you learn new recipes to build new inventions. 

These three doodads here are used to create specific material and furniture types.

You most likely won't always have the proper amount of materials for a given creation. This is where the grind rears its head in with Dragon Quest Builders. Sometimes you'll have to search, seek out, and find locations of a particular material and acquire as many as you can hold. Other times you won't even know where to find a particular material, so this means constantly moving from area to area searching high and low for your desired material, wherever it may be hiding. Early on, you can only hold so many materials and items at once. If you run out of space, you can't pick anything new up, and you'll have to "clean out your fridge"--cycle in and out items and materials from your on-hand inventory. Thankfully, in most chapters, you do get to build early on a chest that enables you to magically and automatically send excess items and materials inside it if your inventory is full. This is especially nice and convenient because you don't even have to go back to town to grab goods out of the chest. Instead, you can just select what you want from a menu while you travel.

The act of building itself isn't too complicated. When you get ready to place something down, such as blocks or a piece of furniture, a yellow cube will appear in front of your builder, showing where it will be placed upon hitting the build button. You can also press the shoulder buttons to set things a block higher or lower than where your builder is currently positioned. Another button keeps you looking forward, making it easy to place multiple things one after another in a row or column. While this is all well and good, when it comes down to tearing something down, it gets rather tedious--especially if you placed a room in a less-than-optimal location. This means if you don't like where you placed this giant room with loads of furniture in it, you'll have to take your sword, ax, or hammer and destroy it all and rebuilding it. At least that's how it works in the Story mode.

Placing blocks and objects in Dragon Quest Builders is mostly a pain-free experience.

Like the act of building, the act of fighting in Dragon Quest Builders is also uncomplicated, but in this case, it's to the game's detriment. All battles involve is running up to an enemy, striking them, and moving away in order to evade their own offensive. The problem with this is that most of the time I wouldn't take HP damage from an actual attack; I'd take damage from accidentally getting too close to the enemy and touching them, causing my builder to get hit. The hit boxes and collision detection in Dragon Quest Builders leave something to be desired. It makes for clunky, unsatisfying, occasionally frustrating combat. 

My, aren't YOU the looker!

And, combat is a focus apart from building things in Dragon Quest Builders. You need to fight enemies to gain exclusive materials that only they hold, you need to defend your town against enemies when they show up, and you need to take down foes to simply progress in the game. Thus, the faults of Dragon Quest Builders's simplistic and imprecise combat shine prevalent throughout the duration of the game since it's so frequent.

Taking more damage from running into enemies than them actually attacking
you isn't that uncommon an occurrence, unfortunately.

Outside of following along with the story and doing mandatory quests for the various visitors that arrive at your base in each chapter, there are also side quests and specific challenges to take on in an optional amount. Side quests are given from NPCs found in the wild, and the rewards are generally worth seeking them out and completing their tasks. As for challenges, there are five in each of the four chapters in Dragon Quest Builders. These have you doing the most with each chapter's areas--fully exploring them for secrets, venturing into optional areas of the game, and even one for each chapter where you must do a speed run to satisfying conditions. These chapter challenges award content within the much welcomed free-build mode of Dragon Quest Builders, named Terra Incognita, where there are limited rules, but the possibilities are limitless.

I'm going to grow me a radish as big as ye' head!

Dragon Quest Builders has a satisfying presentation with its world devised up voxels, lending to an old school, nostalgic, retro appearance. Characters are detailed well enough, though animations weren't too appealing to me. They were rather too basic. The third-person perspective used in the game works wonders when needing to survey the land outside, but when you enter into caverns or insanely cramped spaces, the camera does get a bit on the troublesome side. What isn't troublesome, however, is the multitude of musical remixes from past Dragon Quest games that will make any fan of the franchise smile. 

If you like the idea of Minecraft in theory, but need a little more direction in your games, then Dragon Quest Builders is more than a suitable alternative. In some regards, it's a bit more like ActRaiser than Minecraft. Regardless of which of these two games it's most similar to (and those two games are terrific company to be in), Dragon Quest Builders carves out its own niche, creating a highly enjoyable take on the franchise and another stellar spin-off for the series.

[SPC Says: B]