QCF: Toki

n somewhat of an ironic twist, one of the fondest memories I have with video games from my childhood isn’t a video game that I played on my television, but a show that I watched on my television about video games. As the 16-bit boom kicked off the nineties, Nickelodeon debuted Nick Arcade—a new game show that embraced the gimmickry of its video aesthetic with the grace of cat walking along a floor made of bubble-wrap.

While the show has only gotten hokier with age, it was vital for a Challenge segment that showcased some of the hottest new games in action on my television screen, something no issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly or GamePro could ever do, and one of those games was Toki: Going Ape Spit.

In a climate that was undeniably overwhelmed with action-platformers, Toki managed to stand out from all of the other classics that were lined up for the show with its bizarrely unattractive, yet colorfully sharp visuals, and surprisingly delicate balance of action and strategy for an arcade shooter. Decades later, the lumbering primate has suddenly slouched his way back into 2018 with a remastered remake of the arcade classic that mostly considered to be vaporware at this point, until the development of it was taken over, and then released by a French developer and publisher Microïds.

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QCF: The Legend of Korra

hen it comes to licensed properties, it’s safe to say that video game adaptions have come a long way since the dark ages of the LJN published trash all those years ago.

I mean, there’s Telltale’s work on the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, Warner Bros’ Shadows of Mordor and Batman Arkham Knight, and lest we not forget; Ubisoft’s swan dive to publish the unexpectedly amazing South Park: The Stick of Truth…I could go on. The point I’m making here is that license games are steadily scrubbing away the nasty stigma that’s plagued them for so long, and it’s really nice.

However, there’s are still the occasional exceptions to the recent trend, ones that falls victim to all those familiar offenses that irrevocably render their once promising future as a video game into nothing more than a hot bag of shit that even a purist fan of the property couldn’t love.

In a painful twist of fate though, the software in question that’s guilty of all these cardinal sins may also just be one of the most unexpected disappointments to have surfaced in 2014 to begin with. Renowned for their exemplary work within the Action genre, Platinum Games were handed the reins to Nickelodeon’s Legend of Korra; and in spite of all of the resources, talent, and enmities the famed Japanese team had at their disposal—the finished product they’ve released may easily just be the worst title the studio has ever developed.

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