Evoland

Evoland is an enjoyable and creative game that takes the player on a “Brief History of the Universe”, the universe that is gaming. For those of us who pretty much crawled from our mother's womb and grabbed a Nintendo controller, the nostalgia factor alone is enough to entice us old skoolers to revisit the ghosts of graphics past. There is also a lesson to be learned here for the younger generation as well. You see, we all grew up listening to the tedious (and mostly exaggerated) woes of our parents who filled our heads with endless stories of having to walk to school in the snow four miles each way (sometimes in shoes that were a size too small, the story varied) or about actually having to go outside to play (the ozone layer was thicker back then) and blah, blah, blah. Now, finally, our generation has a suitable counterpart to these gripes. The gamers of this era need to know of the suffering that we endured at the hands of terrible graphics, mind-numbing load times and of course cut scenes that were impossible to skip through. The very early stages of this game is like watching the video game console at birth. Yes, the graphics are sketchy, yes, the music is unappealing, but when this stuff first came out it was a triumph. It's reminiscent of looking at pictures of yourself taken during your freshman year of high school; at the time you thought that hyper-color shirt was the best. Times change. However, you still have it saved in a box in your attic because, really, it's a part of you now. So it goes with the games you originally came to know and cherish. Evoland has so many references to many of my first loves and was a sentimental trip down memory lane. Overall, I would compare this to a tribute album of JRPG's greatest hits Volume I.

Now, rest assured the graphics, EU, and soundtrack quickly improve for those of you who are too good to go back. I'll explain as we go how they accomplish this.