First review of 2024 baby! What a first game to start the year. I first played this back in 2019 and absolutely loved it. I beat all of the chapters, both A and B sides but never did any of the C sides nor did I get all the strawberries. This playthrough I did tho and man it felt good. Before I get into that let me talk about why this game is so great.

Why don't I just get right into the story first. When I first played, I remember being blown away by the story and absolutely loving it. While I do still think it's good, there was something bothering me throughout and it may just be a me thing. Theo, he's not a bad character but why all the mentions of selfies and his social media 😭. I hate to say it but it was really taking me out of the story at points. It was definitely the biggest issue I had when replaying this. Otherwise though, the Madeline side of the story is really good. I like how anyone that plays this game can at least relate to her need to overcome her personal demons and I think the fact they made it so she accepts them for what they are instead of just trying to bury them completely, I like that execution way more. They portrayed anxiety and depression super well and I think that's the game's strongest aspect when it come's to story.

The soundtrack is pretty solid, tho I remember loving it back then which I wouldn't say I love it now. Don't get me wrong, it's good and there are some standout tracks in certain chapters but I didn't like it as much as I did in 2019 I think. Maybe it was because I was more focused on playing the game and didn't pay attention to the music too much this time around? I also maybe wasn't a fan of the voices they gave the characters. Idk some of the time I found it kinda annoying which is a shame.

As for some of the biggest positives, the game is amazing visually. The pixel art is pretty much perfect the whole way through and the backgrounds in some of these chapters are breathtaking. Golden Ridge I think was the standout especially, it was gorgeous.

Now we come to my favorite part of the game, the gameplay. This is easily one of the most fun 2D platformers I've ever played. It's just so polished and the level design is so good. One of my favorite things was just finding all the secrets, there's a ton of them whether it's hidden strawberries or crystal hearts or B side tapes or even that one hidden indie game screen I somehow found by doing the wavedash (that was insane) they're all really fun to find. I also really love just how many different techniques you can perform. A lot of them aren't explained until late late game or not even at all and they can really break the game sometimes, it's awesome. Celeste is also extremely difficult I'm sure you know. Indeed, some of the later levels in the base game can get super duper hard. The B sides and C sides especially, some of those were nuts. As I said, I did everything in the base game...everything except for the golden strawberries. I got the one in chapter 1 A side but that was it. They just don't feel too worth it since it's not new content...just surviving an entire chapter without dying which isn't too fun imo. As for the hardest part of the base game, that hands down has to go to Chapter 7 Side C. Jesus Christ that last fucking screen took me 3 hours in-game time and exactly 1152 deaths. None of the other chapters came close to that many deaths and you know what, I'm so glad I did it. I'll never do it again mind you, but I told myself that if I did it...I'd bump this game to a 9. So for now that's what I'll do tho I may bump it down to an 8.5 who knows.

I do have some issues that are more a me thing but this game is super fun and definitely a top tier indie in my book.

Oh and as for farewell...yes I'll be doing that next and yes I am very scared. I got up to the point where you're required to wavedash back in 2019 and then quit. I've heard it's extremely brutal in the 2nd half so I'm nervous but I will persevere boys. Wish me luck!

And to think, I thought I was done with Celeste this month. I heard this got released yesterday, and it's free, so I had to go and play it. For only being made in a week, this is very impressive. Celeste transitions surprisingly well into 3D. You lose your upward dash in this game but everything else is here. Yes even your grab which I stupidly didn't realize was a thing until 2/3rds into my playthrough. Once I did, it definitely clicked way more since I was infinitely wall-jumping to do stuff before I learned grabbing was part of her moveset. I really like the implementation of the camera and it having a big part with the various puzzles. The early 3D atmosphere was also really nice. It never got crazy difficult like Celeste but what was here was fun. It's only like an hour long so there really isn't much content, but this could be a good stepping stone into something greater. Either way, fun game..just wish it was longer.

Also, I got all 30 strawberries, that last cassette tape under Badeline was definitely the hardest part of the game but it was very cool.

Thank you @Eggsandwhich for recommending I play this after my month of NieR. Also a shoutout to @ptcremisi cuz he loves this game too. I'm happy to say, despite some issues I had that do hold it back from me rating it higher, I really enjoyed this game a lot.

Though tbh, at first I wasn't really enjoying it all too much. The beginning cutscene really got me interested but by the time I got to the first level in the game, I started noticing issues I had. First off, I don't think the first level is that great of an introduction. I found the level design to be too simple and it's definitely my least favorite stage in the game. That plus some other issues I had while playing, really didn't help my engagement. I found the combat just okay, it got the job done but it wasn't great. The platforming too could be a little wonky. I found the ledge grab really inconsistent (tho I got used to it later on). The figments were hard to see a lot of the time and they seemed like they'd be quite annoying. It also didn't help that I played this on my PS2 and it ran poorly a lot of the time and even rarely slowed to a crawl. That combination of things, plus the poor intro level, it just wasn't doing it for me. Also later on, you start to fight bosses. While it's cool to find out how to beat them, they're often not that fun mechanically because of the clunky combat and are usually too easy on top of that.

As I played on tho, a lot of these issues were lessened a bunch cuz I blew them out of proportion. Because of this, I learned to really love the fantastic things in this game. Probably my absolutely favorite aspect would be just the game concept as a whole. Going into people's minds is just so awesome, and they really utilize it to it's fullest. Your collectibles are absolutely brilliant. Figments of your imagination, emotional baggage, cobwebs (in your head). It's just all so good and really makes the world feel so well thought out. Like the health pickups are literally called mental health, that's amazing!

The other best thing this game has going for it are the quirky/funny moments and it's memorable cast. I couldn't even count just how many times this game made me chuckle, it's so weird and I love it. It really felt like a Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon show from the early 2000's which is great because that's the era I grew up with. Feels like the love child of Billy and Mandy and Invader Zim if I'm being real. As for the cast of characters, most of kids were whatever (tho I did like Dogen and Lili) but the main cast of Psychonauts were all great. I do wish they had more screen time, because in the 2nd half due to certain events they're mostly absent, but what we do get is great. Also, a shoutout to Raz himself, what a great protagonist. He's so quirky and sassy yet likeable.

At first I was a bit iffy on the camp setting but once I explored the overworld, I really enjoyed it. It feels a bit nostalgic for some reason, and I never even went to camp as a kid. I also think the overworld had overall better level design than the actual levels. The levels are cooler and more out there than the camp setting but the level design is more linear, while the camp is more open and explorable which is fun.

Another thing I enjoyed were the Psi badges. While I wouldn't say most of them were super fun to actually use, a lot of them were used on puzzles throughout the game and are just cool conceptually. I will say though, levitation is an absolute blast and is easily the best badge in the game. Glad you get it early on because from then on, I used it all the time.

Idk why I thought this was a kids game all this time (I probably would've loved this as a teenager) but it definitely isn't considering they cuss throughout the game and the game can get pretty dark. Seriously, some of the mental illness stuff can get pretty realistic even if there is a goofy undertone, but it's still handled with tact. The vaults are another collectable in the game and they hold some of the darkest shit I swear. Milla's hidden vault 😢. But I really love how they flesh out each character even more.

I said the figments were annoying because they're hard to see, and while that is still a criticism of mine, they weren't annoying enough to the extent I didn't want to get them all. So I went and 100%ed the game and that was mostly hassle free. Some stray figments here and there and some of the milkman's conspiracy gave me trouble but that's about it.

So overall, while the actual gameplay is usually just acceptable to subpar, the charm this game has with it's cast of characters, it's quirky humor and just the awesome concept of going into people's minds won me over. This game is flawed but really enjoyable. I'm giving this a 7.5 rn only because the sequel seems to fix the gameplay issues I had. From what I've heard, 2 starts off right where 1 ended and that's just so cool I can't wait. Anyways, on to my Secret Santa game next...Metroid Prime 2!

7.5/10

     'Those great, beautiful ships, rocking silently on the calm waters, with their idle and wistful sails, are they not telling us in a silent language — when will we depart for happiness?'
     – Charles Baudelaire, Fusées, VIII, 1887 (personal translation).

One of the most difficult issues in fantasy studies is to define its contours and, by extension, its relationship to reality. In her seminal study, Fantasy: The literature of subversion (1981), Rosemary Jackson points out that fantasy violates the conventions and rules of our reality and: 'threatens to subvert rules and conventions taken to be normative [and] disturb "rules" of artistic representation and literature’s reproduction of the "real"' [1]. The capacity for deviation that speculative fiction offers is both an opportunity and a danger. Jackson points out that this subversive potential does not mean that fantasy or the fantastic are genres that always aim for social progressivism. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the pulp tradition was steeped in racist, homophobic and misogynist tropes that exerted a lasting influence on fiction throughout the late twentieth century and to this day.

     The misogynist issue in Western-style fantasy

Many authors hide behind these historical precedents to conceal a conservative discourse. The existence of multiple races allows for the perpetuation of social oppression, and while female characters have generally become more active in recent decades, they continue to fit into old-fashioned stereotypes [2]. The Final Fantasy series is part of this dynamic and has always oscillated between these major themes of fantasy fiction, notably by offering a regular comparison between magic and technological modernity, nature and industry, good and evil, humanity and divinity. These dichotomies are relatively common and allow the story to touch on issues such as capitalist exploitation and the use of natural resources. However, the representation of other topics remains disastrous: Final Fantasy XIV (2010) is especially characterised by deep-seated racism and sexism, the latter partially masked by the presence of strong female characters in positions of power.

It is hard to say whether these precautions were taken to appeal to a particular audience, but it is clear that Final Fantasy XVI ignores all these concerns and plunges into the most outrageous archaism, piling on misogynistic scenes wherever possible, supposedly justified by the harshness of European medieval society. Excuses of this kind obscure the real issues. The player follows the story of Clive Rosfield, drawn into a quest for revenge after the Phoenix Gate incident, which spells the end of the Duchy of Rosaria. Miraculously reunited with his childhood friend Jill Warrick, he joins Cid's group, determined to change the situation of the Bearers – magic-capable individuals enslaved across the continent. Final Fantasy XVI is therefore a tale of free will and independence, pitting the dark nature of the world against the purity of Cid and Clive's ideals.

To create this atmosphere, as well as the division between good and evil, the title makes extensive use of violence, sex and sexual violence as narrative drivers. Lenise Prater explains that Fiona McIntosh's Percheron trilogy (2005) constructs: 'a series of juxtapositions between good and evil [...] through the representation of sexual violence' [3]. The same processes are at work in Final Fantasy XVI, from the very first narrative arc of the adventure, where Benedikta is cast as the archetypal femme fatale, ready to use her body to manipulate her rivals: the character is constantly brought back to her status as a woman, and it is the threat of sexual violence that cements her development – Annabella is constructed in a similar way. Final Fantasy XVI revels in the dichotomy between whores and innocent virgins. Despite the Western aesthetic of the title, Jill is no more than a yamato nadeshiko who is constantly sidelined by the game. She mostly serves as a narrative device to advance the plot, through her multiple visits to the infirmary or because she is kidnapped by Clive's enemies. The title denies her any agency, and her nuanced fragility is only hinted at in a few sentences before being brushed aside: it takes almost thirty hours of gameplay before Clive explicitly asks her how she is, despite her constant concern for the protagonist's anxieties.

     A case for centrism and laissez-faire

This conservative portrayal is echoed in the discourse on the Bearers. The game is moderately critical of slavery on the continent and fails to make it a structural issue for Clive, who always remains somewhat detached from the problem. This issue is structurally embedded in the way the player interacts with the world, as they are extremely passive in relation to the events portrayed in the story. While the player is aware of the political manipulations taking place in Storm, they cannot act on them directly; Clive is blindly thrown into the fray and the situation is simply resolved in a battle that depoliticises the social stakes. Similarly, the Seals donated by certain NPCs guarantee Clive's reputation in the community in a highly artificial way, removing any roughness from the interactions. Clive fights to free the Bearers because he inherits this mission from his father and Cid, but this task seems disembodied throughout the game.

Beyond the main quest, the side quests are particularly lacklustre and do little to deepen the world-building. Because they can be accessed at any point in the game, Final Fantasy XVI chooses to exclude companions from them. They simply disappear from the cutscenes and thus have no chance to react to the world around them. Since the intention is to establish Clive as an ideologically good, open and self-governing character, all side quests are resolved by Clive's ideological concessions or miraculous unifications in the face of artificially created danger, without the slightest contradiction from any of the other main characters. Only in the final stretch does someone point out Clive's hypocrisy and domineering power over Jill, but the scene is quickly swept away by the return of Gav, the comic relief of the group.

Final Fantasy XVI is more concerned with shocking, melodramatic or cathartic platitudes than with radical denunciations of inequality and oppression. Worse, these shocking scenes do not even make the world dynamic, so poor is the structure of the narrative. Two problems stand out. Firstly, the interweaving of high-intensity sequences with slower passages: instead of building up the world through genuine slice-of-life sequences, the game multiplies banalities that the player has already understood for several dozen hours. The temporality of the story is also incoherent. Clive seems to cross the continent in a matter of hours, while his rivals remain completely passive. The confrontation between the Sanbreque Empire and the Dhalmekian Republic is characterised by irrational stagnation and passivity, allowing Clive to strike unhindered. The Twins always remain static, despite long ellipses in time.

     A hollow and meaningless experience

Perhaps Final Fantasy XVI should not be taken so literally, but rather accepted as the nekketsu it becomes in the second half of the game. Such an interpretation would be acceptable if the game did not take itself so seriously. However, as in Final Fantasy XIV, the writing wallows in a very uncomfortable theatrical heaviness – which the actors generally manage to save from disaster – as if clumsily mimicking the drama of Shakespeare's historical plays. However, Clive's disillusioned, self-deprecating, borderline comic character breaks up this fiction. Some characters work well, playing up their theatrical nature, such as Cid or Lord Byron, but they are quickly relegated to the background or an essentially comic role.

The shifts in tone and pacing detract from the development of the narrative, which cannot be saved by a few flashes of brilliance. The aetheric floods seem to have been imagined as a reflection of nuclear risks, highlighting the danger of Japan's post-Fukushima energy crutch, but in the end they are only used as a narrative expedient to create danger where the plot needs it. The pinnacle of dishonesty and disrespect for a title that centres its discourse on human free will lies in the choice of names for the NPC fillers. In the pure tradition of Final Fantasy XIV, they include puns and comical alliterations ('Broom-Bearer') that strip them of all substance and reduce them to ridicule. In the second half of the game, a little girl is introduced as a character of some narrative importance, but the title does not even bother to give her a name or address her living conditions.

Meanwhile, the action sequences prove to be particularly hollow. The choreography in the first few hours is quite ingenious, highlighting Clive's agility with complex movements and rather creative camera angles. As the title progresses, this aspect is abandoned in favour of fights that drag on and resort to nekketsu clichés. The duel against Titan lasts forty minutes and is a miserable succession of attacks around the stone tentacles. Final Fantasy XVI even has the audacity to end the battle not with the obvious cinematic climax, but with a dull and particularly unpleasant aerial sequence. Subsequent encounters also drag on for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate a genuine – if futile – mastery of the lightning engine.

     Ergonomics, gameplay and fluidity

While Final Fantasy XVI boasts detailed environments at first glance, the facade quickly cracks. The early areas are indeed highly detailed, to the point of drowning the player in detail – navigating through the thick vegetation is quite difficult, forcing the player to use Torgal to progress – but the quality deteriorates as the game progresses. The dense environments disappear in favour of vast open areas that struggle to convey the majesty of the world. Although the cities visible on the horizon are beautiful backdrops, they fail to radiate materially onto their surroundings, which then become mere abstractions. Moreover, Clive's movement is extremely sluggish: even getting on his chocobo is an unpleasant task that constantly interrupts the fluidity of the action, while the player is condemned to an extraordinary passivity in order to get from one place to another.

In the Hideaway, this impression is reinforced by Clive's inability to sprint: in the second half of the game, getting to the backyard is a gruelling chore. The magic of this cocoon quickly vanishes, as the various characters keep repeating themselves and are only mediocrely animated. Despite the detailed scenery, the game borrows all its animations from Final Fantasy XIV, giving a very artificial tone to the discussions. The Hideaway is less a place where the player can comfortably catch up with their favourite NPCs, and more a burdensome obligation to access NPCs, side quests and the hunt board – requiring the player to physically go there to see the location of elite monsters, a design mistake that even Final Fantasy XIV avoided.

The enjoyment of the combat system is left to the player and their experience of other character-action games, but it is absurd that the player has to wait at least twenty hours to finally be given a modicum of flexibility in their attack options: Final Fantasy XVI justifies its unique protagonist with a deep combat system that encourages the creation of diverse builds, but this philosophy is only appropriate in a New Game+ where all powers are unlocked from the start. In a first playthrough, the player must suffer from an impressive slowness, to the point where the Story Mode becomes an obvious option. The title here echoes the recent problem of Shadowbringers (2019) and especially Endwalker (2021), which first designs its battles with the Extreme and Savage versions, before cutting out the most difficult sections for the Normal versions – the result is a sense of incompleteness that is particularly damaging when combined with the very slowly evolving combat system.

It is difficult to place Final Fantasy XVI in the landscape of modern Japanese video games, so awkward is it in every way. With the title still in its cycle of artificial marketing in preparation for the DLCs, one can only speculate as to the reasons for these failings. Perhaps the lack of coherence can be explained by the fractured development team working on two major games, and the highly eclectic nature of the directors brought together by Naoki Yoshida. His design philosophy is particularly well suited to an MMO, but Final Fantasy XVI suffers greatly from it: the endless succession of side quests involving the Hideaway characters just before the final battle is incomprehensible, as if the game had remembered that it needed to conclude. Hiroshi Takai and Kazutoyo Maehiro's narrative vision is a series of shocking, empty, meaningless scenes: players of Heavensward (2015) had the opportunity to suffer from Ysayle's portrayal, and it is surprising that Final Fantasy XVI does even worse, a standard-bearer for passive misogyny in modern fantasy. That Jill's theme becomes 'My Star' and denies her any agency in the game's final moments is particularly painful and aptly sums up the title.

__________
[1] Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The literature of subversion, Routledge, London, 2005 [1981], p. 14.
[2] On the topic, see for example Peter Bebergal (ed.), Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons, Strange Attractor Press, London, 2021. In the afterword, Ann VanderMeer discusses the conservative roots of pulp fantasy and of the historical TTRPG.
[3] Lenise Prater, 'Monstrous Fantasies: Reinforcing Rape Culture in Fiona McIntosh's Fantasy Novels', in Hecate, vol. 39, no. 1-2, 2014.

Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he touches flowers? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mystical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance.

I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by tushing flowes all day, but he exhibits theory by stating "Lets-a go!" Keep it up, baby!

When Mario leaves his place of safety to grab a flowey, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.

In his video last year regarding context sensitivity, Matthewmatosis opens by describing Ghost Trick as entirely context-sensitive: the main action button ("trick") always performs a different action depending on the item possessed. However, he points this out as an exception to the trend of heavy context-sensitivity weighing down modern titles, because simply put, Ghost Trick uses context-sensitivity not as a crutch, but as its core. It never seems to suffer from fuzzy context: the game not only gives you plenty of safe time to experiment with set-pieces leading up to timed sequences (since untimed traversal to the victim is every bit a puzzle in itself), but also briefly describes the single "trick" of each object possessed to give players an idea of how to progress. Furthermore, Ghost Trick's difficulty hits a perfect sweet-spot: it doesn't feel free because traversal and manipulating objects to your advantage require a good degree of planning and experimentation, but failure also never feels too punishing because other characters and the environment are great at providing thoughtful feedback upon failure, so the player isn't just banging their head against a wall via quick restarts at built-in checkpoints.

Essentially, it's like playing the ancestor of Return of the Obra Dinn but with a time loop mechanic attached. The objective remains simple (travel back to four minutes before death to avert fate), but how to achieve said objective is always completely dictated by your surroundings. As a result, it naturally iterates upon its basic structure to create more unconventional scenarios: soon you're not just manipulating objects for traversal and foiling assassins, you're also solving locked room mysteries, or traveling to different environments to save victims from elsewhere, or diving into deaths within deaths to avert multiple fates at a time. Through all of this, Ghost Trick understands one of the key strengths of video games: creating virtual playgrounds of experimentation unsaddled by the limitations of time to reward players through the joy of discovery. The player is constantly surprised time and time again not only from unexpected object interactions, but also from how the narrative weaves in and out of death sequences to create suspenseful moments. It's a minor miracle in itself that the story never jumps the shark: the gameplay mechanics remain firmly consistent alongside its lore, and every plot thread is neatly wrapped up by the end of the game after a series of subtly foreshadowed twists. Combine this marrying of storytelling and gameplay with expressive animations, a colorful and very personable cast, an understated yet powerful soundtrack, and a great mix of humor and emotional moments, and you get what is perhaps the most cohesive title in the DS library.

It's rather poetic that a game which looked simple on the outside provided such an intricate exercise for Shu Takumi to prove that he was no one-trick pony. I'm grateful that Ghost Trick has finally been ported to modern systems for a whole new audience to lose their minds over this, for it's a masterpiece that everyone owes to themselves to check out. At the end of the day, nothing feels quite as cathartic as miraculously changing destiny in the face of inevitable death.

After getting my Switch on launch along with Breath of the Wild, I was excited to see what games the console would have in the future. I bought Master Blaster Zero and eventually The Binding of Isaac for the third time, but a month and a half later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. Now look, this may be a rerelease and all but it was for a portable console. Mario Kart 8 was great but I could only play it at home and with a game like Mario Kart, its more fun to play it on the go with friends. When this came out, I was nearing the end of my Junior year in High School. Let me tell you, me and my friends played this all the time during the span of the rest of my high school experience. We played it in lunch, we played it in study hall, we even played it in class whether it was sneaking it or just when we had free time. This was THE Switch game to play when it came to my friend group alongside Jackbox Party Pack 3. It's just a ton of fun and while I said it was a rerelease, it's not just a lazy port. They not only included the DLC tracks, but they also added some new characters and revamped the battle mode.

I said the character selection was a bit lacking in the original game but the ones they added here are all good. Bowser Jr, King Boo and Dry Bones are all good additions that were in past games. The completely brand-new addition tho is Inkling Girl/Boy. Now, I was a huge Splatoon 1 fan before this so I was hyped when they were added. I mained them a lot when I first played and honestly, they're a perfect crossover addition just cuz Splatoon was originally supposed to be a Mario game which I found funny. This isn't even getting into the characters they added from the booster course pass. Most of those are also great, tho I haven't used them myself since I don't own the booster courses. If you do though, easily the best roster in the series.

The other thing they fixed of course is the battle mode. Easily the worst part of the original game and the worst battle mode I've played, it's really good here. Not as good as Mario Kart DS since there's still no option to have it be elimination rules, however you're not forced into teams like Wii and there's a whopping 5 modes this time around. Balloon battle and coin runners are classics of course. Shine thief makes a return and it's also pretty fun here. Bob-omb blast apparently originated from Double Dash and that's also fun tho definitely the most chaotic of the bunch. The brand new mode this time around is renegade roundup and its basically cops and robbers. Pretty fun mode as well but the real reason these are all actually fun is they gave us battle courses again THANK GOD. The old courses are great and some of the new courses are awesome too like Urchin Underpass. Love to see a little Splatoon representation since it didn't get a race track.

So there you go, the character selection was expanded and while not my favorite battle mode, the battle mode was made actually fun again. The only other thing they added, and they added it 5 years after deluxe came out, are the booster courses. Now I don't own them but my good friend Quent has the expansion pass so along with him and my friend wheatie, we played a bunch of online races for this review and I was able to play pretty much all the courses I wanted to. I didn't play them all but I can see the course quality varies greatly. You have some really half assed tracks and then you have really great ones like Yoshi's Island or SNES Bowser's Castle. A lot of the returning ones are Wii courses which is a plus too. Obviously most of these are just straight up ported from Tour and the visuals on a lot of them are pretty unacceptable compared to the base game but, if you don't care about then then the value of 48 tracks for $25 is great. That's basically 50 cents a track plus the added characters. Not only that but they added the ability to choose custom items, plus a music player in the main menu.

With the slightly better character roster and the MUCH better battle mode, I can say this is definitely THE definite Mario Kart. Though I may end up liking Wii a tad bit more now due to it's wacky physics. Either way, definitely a must have as a Switch owner and as a Mario Kart fan.

Well, that's the end of the Mario Kart marathon everyone unless I end up actually playing Tour lol. Been playing Persona 3 FES this whole time alongside these games and I'm in December now so I think I'm nearing the end of it, stay tuned for that review!

Back in 2017, I bought this game alongside the Digital Devil Saga duology and Vagrant Story. I happened to find it at a convention and knowing I had just played Automata that year and loved that, I figured I'd pick it up. I honestly didn't even know there was a NieR game before Automata at the time, so I was pretty surprised. I started playing it, got up to seafront and had no idea how to fish and then promptly dropped it. Fast-forward to 2021, I see that a remake of the version with Brother NieR was releasing soon and I decided to go back and actually beat this game. I play through the entirety of it (besides ending D) and thought it was great, though I did have some issues with it that held it back from me loving it more than Automata. Fast-forward again to this year, I had planned to replay Automata for a while now and decided that November would be the month to do so. Before that though, I decided I wanted to replay Gestalt and see if I ended up liking it more now. Well seeing my updated rating, I'm sure you can see how I felt. This game is honestly not objectively perfect but it does certain things so well and I love it so much, that I can't give it anything less than a 10/10.

So the thing people like about NieR the most is the story. When I played it in 2021, I thought the story was good but overrated. I also somehow missed the gestalt documents at the end of the game, so that plus appreciating the story as a whole a lot more, made me realize it really is peak. A big part of the story being amazing too, are the different endings you can get. Ending A is great but the game really comes together when you go through route B. Some things get revealed to you at the end of Route A, and so there's a bunch of little changes in Route B that flip your perspective on what was going on and I just love it. You're basically replaying the 2nd half of the game all over again but because of all those little changes, I had no issue with it. There's also ending C and D and the route for those is basically the exact same as B, only the ending changes. The endings for those are great (especially ending D, holy shit does that ending feel impactful) however I can see how it would get tedious for someone playing considering it's pretty much all of the same content as route B. Either way, the story is just fantastic I think and definitely better than I once thought.

Though, the story is not actually my favorite aspect of the game. My favorite aspect is the main cast. Honestly may be my favorite cast in any game ever tbh, I love all of the main 4 so much and think they complement each other perfectly.
Weiss and Kaine are always throwing insults at each other, Weiss is always complaining about NieR's tendency to just help someone no matter what, Emil has a great affection towards NieR as seen later in the game, Emil and Kaine get along well because they both see themselves as outcasts...there's a lot of different character dynamics going on and when it's all 4 of them together they just make the perfect JRPG team imo.

The other big thing I absolutely loved was the OST. When I initially beat the game, I realized that the OST was really good but as time passed, I kept coming back to certain songs. I was listening to Gestalt's soundtrack more than Automata's and now that I've beaten it again, I can confidently say I 100% like it more than Automata. It's honestly just perfect and probably in my like top 3 Game OST's ever now. Stand out songs for me are Grandma, Emil Karma and it's other variant, Song of the Ancients, Shadowlord and more. The music is just top tier.

Another thing I really love is the gameplay changes that happen throughout the game. Besides your normal combat, there's also little sections that change things up. There's several 2D sections throughout, there's a forest area that plays out like a Visual Novel, the first visit to Emil's Mansion is basically Resident Evil with its semi-spookiness and fixed camera angles, Emil's Mansion's basement gives you this top down view that plays like Diablo, not to mention most of the bosses area bullet hells. There's just a lot of variety in the gameplay and really makes the game feel fresh.

Speaking of the core gameplay though, let's talk about the combat and the other "flaws" I see this game having. The combat...compared to more flashier, fast paced action games is lackluster. I remember it was a big issue to me when I initially played the game, but honestly it grew on me a bunch and I learned to enjoy it now. I don't think the game ever really needed super flashy complex combat and so I think it gets the job done. Plus there's something I enjoy about how chunky the combat can feel, idk I said the same thing about Yakuza 1 and the same thing applies here too.

My other biggest issue back then, and this was purely just a me thing, was I didn't like the world and it's aesthetic nearly as much as Automata's. The post-apocalyptic world in that game was my absolute favorite aspect when I played, and so to go from that to this was disappointing back then. I still much prefer Automata's world but I honestly do enjoy Gestalt's now. It's far from my favorite gaming world, though I also don't play it for that so it also gets the job done I think.

A couple small issues I did actually have with the game this time around were the bloom effects in some areas and the Exp system. I think the bloom in seafront and the fog effect in the northern plains can look kinda ugly at times, I'm sure that's probably fixed in the remake so that's really only a Gestalt issue. I also disliked how if Kaine or Emil got the finishing blow on a normal enemy, you missed out on any Exp. I hope that got changed in the remake because it can kind stink when playing here. I can also see why people would dislike all the backtracking, hell I was getting a bit burnt out myself going for ending C and D lol. But overall, I think the backtracking to old areas isn't as bad as people say. The area you go back through the most is the junk heap and even then, that area isn't too long and has banger music so I had no problem going through it several times.

Last time I played, I only did a few of the side quests that were needed to get every weapon for the latter endings. This time around, I did every single one...and while they could get very fetch-questy, I enjoyed them overall. A lot of the time there's some voiced Weiss/NieR dialogue that makes the entire quest worth it imo. The best quests overall were I Facade I thought. Most of those were very memorable, alongside the lighthouse lady ones of course.

I did also get a chunk of the trophies I was missing before, the big one being the Lunar Tear one. That definitely took a bit of effort on my part but once I finally got it, it was pretty satisfying. I still have the speedrun trophy and the weapon upgrade trophies to get so maybe I'll do those on my next replay who knows.

So yeah, is the game perfect? As I pointed out, there are some issues I can see others having and there are even some things I still wasn't a fan of in this game. But the absolutely peak story and especially peak cast and OST, just makes me want to give it a 10 and that's what I'll do for the time being. The game has a lot of heart and I think it's worth playing if you haven't already.

Anyways, next is Automata and it's been even longer since I last played that so I'm hyped to see if I'll still love it as much as I did six years ago!


Also sorry if this review is incoherent at all, writing this at 3 AM randomly lole.

Back in September of 2023, I decided to replay both Banjo games to see how much I still liked them. It had been around 10 years since I had played Kazooie since then, and 4 years since I'd last played Tooie, so I was excited to dive into both games. Well, as it turns out, I loved replaying both so much I decided to replay them directly after. I very rarely do that, so I just knew I had to bump both games to a 10. Well, after my whole review purge, I decided to replay these once again and rereview them all over again. Only 7 months later after playing them both twice before, I'm a madman I know (haha you won't get this reference because those reviews are now deleted). Anyways, just like before...I had a blast replaying Kazooie and consider it one of the best N64 games ever.

The first thing I'll get into are the controls and Banjo-Kazooie's moveset in general. I honestly think this game controls masterfully, Banjo and Kazooie have such a varied move set that flows well with each of the levels. The talon trot is a must in every level as it let's you go through each area that much faster. With the c buttons, it's also really easy to remember how to perform it too. In fact, I haven't played the game on anything but the N64 itself, but idk how I'd feel about playing it on another controller just cuz I find the N64 controller fits it perfectly lol. Besides the talon trot, you also have a roll attack, rat-a-tat rap which is an aerial move, golden feathers which you can use to turn invincible as long as you have them, red feathers which you can use to fly (and the flight in this game is more satisfying than Mario 64), the beak bomb which is an attack you can use while flying and more. All of this you unlock gradually while playing and is all used plenty through-out the game. You also have two power-ups that let you either traverse unsafe ground (wading boots) and the speedy shoes which, as the name implies, let's you go fast. Even the swimming in this game is pretty nice once you know how to use it. I've seen some people say it's awful because it's so clunky. Which, if you're not holding the R button then yeah totally, but if you are it's very nice and smooth as you have a breast-stroke and a paddle you can perform depending on what you need.

The game itself is incredibly charming, both aesthetically and comically. The world's all look lovely and is just full of that N64 Rare ware charm. When playing through a world, you would be hard pressed to not see a pair of googily eyes on an enemy or even the items (when the item explanation first pops up) and for how lighthearted this game is, it very much fits. That's not to say the dialogue is all light-hearted. It's not as dark as Tooie obviously but they still put in a couple of dirty jokes hear and there. The dialogue itself, while not nearly as funny as Tooie imo, its witty enough especially Gruntilda's dialogue.

Going into Gruntilda and her lair in general, both are fantastic. The lair is a tightly designed hub world that is super memorable, not just because of it being compact in size and easy to traverse, but because the whole way through Grunty insults you and eggs you on. Kazooie has way less dialogue than Tooie, and Grunty herself I find more menacing in that game, but when it comes to her insulting rhymes...they're easily the most memorable pieces of dialogue in the game. Even on this most recent playthrough, I was still hearing rhymes I've never heard before. Really makes me wonder just how many there are in total lol.

When it comes to the worlds themselves, they are excellent tightly designed levels just like Grunty's lair was. Mumbo's Mountain is the worst one imo, and that's just because of how small it is...which makes a ton of sense because it's the first world. All the rest are very enjoyable, with some of my favorites being Freezezey Peak, Clanker's Cavern and Click Clock Wood. Now you might be saying to yourselves, Clankers Cavern? Yeah, idk why but it might've been my favorite world this time around. I honestly don't have an issue with the swimming portions, I love the track that plays in it and the dank grimey atmosphere I find wonderful (which makes sense because I love Tooie and it has a lot of that). It feels like one of the more unique world settings next to Rusty Bucket Bay. Speaking of Rusty Bucket Bay, it has the infamous engine room area and yeah that's still my least favorite part pf the game. It's not TOO bad if you do that part right away, but I still died like 5 times this playthrough. I also died to Click Clock Wood very stupidly, those two levels even now can still get me as they're easily the two hardest in the game. Going back to the engine room tho, the reason it's so hated is because it's the only world with an instant death pit. In the N64 version, instant death means you lose all your notes as the game tracks a total note score in this version rather than keeping your notes when you die like in the Xbox version. This is also a small gripe I have, but only in these last two levels because I pretty much never die in any of the earlier ones.

The music in this game was done by Grant Kirkhope and he's absolutely legendary. He has a very distinct bouncy style to his music and it absolutely fits here with how goofy this game is. My favorite tracks in the game would have to be Rusty Bucket Bay, Spiral Mountain, Clanker's Cavern, and The Final Battle. The entire soundtrack is wonderfully though, and I especially love Grant's use of dynamic music. His work on Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, and DK64 show he's a big fan of it and it's perfect in these types of games.

Once you beat every single world, and have obtained enough notes and jiggies to progress, you enter Grunty's Furnace Fun. This is basically a giant quiz show that puts your knowledge to the test. It's very goofy and fitting for the type of game Banjo Kazooie is. The questions consist of listening to the voice of a character or song of a level and guessing who/what it is, random trivia, playing a mini-game from the main levels or a Grunty question. The grunty questions consist of trivia about Grunty herself that you must know to answer. To find these out in-game, you must hunt down her sister Brentilda, who is hidden in specific areas of the lair. You might think, meh I'll just look the answers to these online. But they're randomized per playthrough so you simply cannot do that. Luckily, with the joker card which let's you skip 2 spaces on the board, you can bypass these if you weren't able to find Brentilda. Same with the instant death skull spaces which are usually just a basic trivia question, but still are very nerve-wracking. After you get to the end of the board, you get a hilarious joke where Grunty makes her escape by forcing credits on you. After that though, it's actually time to fight her.

Before you fight Grunty, depending on how many collectables you have gotten, you can unlock consumable refills and even double health. Once you've gotten what you need, it's time fight Gruntilda herself. The final battle may honestly be in my top 20 fights ever, it's super good. It tests you on many of your moves you've learned through out the game and it has a killer boss theme to boot (as you know with my favorite songs portion). The end of it is super satisfying too, with the Jinjonator being summoned to defeat her. If there's any one thing I love more than Tooie, it's this final boss and cutscene. The Hag-1 is a fine enough final boss for that game, but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's final fight.

All in all, I'm glad I replayed this once again as it's still amazing and still one of my favorite games ever. Back in September, I stated I might love Tooie even more for the things it improved on and its expanded worlds, and yeah I probably do in the end. However, Kazooie has its own strengths , some even over Tooie's and it's still a must play as an N64 fan. Next up though is Tooie, and I simply cannot wait to replay it so look forward to that review coming soon!!

At this point, I feel like I’ve been playing Journey for half of my life. I’ve played through underwater Journey, forest Journey, air Journey, space Journey, cat Journey, and even boring Journey. Yet upon my yearly ascent in the original Journey on New Year’s Day, I find myself just as floored as when I first picked it up years ago, in spite of clone after clone exhausting my goodwill. What exactly then, is present in the original’s realized game design philosophy that every other spiritual successor has found themselves bereft of?

To answer this question, I want you to imagine a world where Journey doesn’t exist. A world where the formula to indie developers meant something more than just mindlessly tilting up on the left joystick to walk towards the next checkpoint while some narrator waxed poetic in the background. Before Journey, before Flower even, the closest ancestor we had was Ico. Fumito Ueda described his game as an execution of “boy meets girl,” and what it boiled down to was a minimalist adventure game with some puzzles cleverly disguised as platforming and timing segments. Occasionally, you also whack a few shadows while protecting and pulling your female companion Yorda through vast and still castle ruins. It wasn’t a perfect game by any means; the combat was frankly tedious, Yorda lacked much of an identity outside of pointing at objects of interest/opening doors/getting kidnapped, and at the end of the day, there really wasn’t much in the way of a balanced and developed relationship when the player was calling all the shots, but it was still the start of something beautiful. It wasn’t mechanically complex or esoteric in any fashion, but it was different. It was different, and it felt dangerous.

This write-up is not intended to be a critique of Ico, nor is it meant to imply that games proceeding Team Ico's philosophy of “design by subtraction” have since been inferior. Rather, I bring up Ico in particular, because there seems to be this general perception that minimalism results in a crippling lack of mechanical depth. That is, many seem to believe that discarding and minimizing a game’s various elements results in a dearth of tangible mechanics or imagery to cling onto, and thus appears to result in an empty and vacuous experience with little to justify further replays or deeper dives. To me though, this line of thought fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of addition by subtraction. It was never about creating mechanically deep systems with limitless possibilities like an immersive sim or a sandbox. Rather, the philosophy aimed to remove excess layers that distracted from the game’s “more realistic feeling of presence”, such as removing optional bosses and landmarks in Shadow of the Colossus or reducing enemy types in Ico to just a single design. In fairness, the goal wasn't just to remove extraneous elements that made something feel overly “gamey,” but also to marry mechanics in a way where the invisible layer of intended design never made itself too apparent (i.e. hiding the user interface in Shadow of the Colossus outside of fights). It was not just addition by subtraction; it was also addition through illusion.

To that end, I firmly believe that Journey is the best Team Ico game that Fumito Ueda never directed. Journey’s design philosophy was not necessarily revolutionary for its time, considering its predecessors in the forms of Flower and Ico, nor was its ultimate goal of reaching a final destination via walking/jumping/flying mechanics particularly exemplary. What was exemplary was its level of care and precision in how it implemented said minimalist design philosophy. Every time I play through Journey, I pick up more subtle details through its fusion of audio-visual presentation and gameplay that seemed so clear and intuitive that I had taken their presence for granted. There are the obvious strengths, like how Journey wordlessly conveys your path forward by keeping the shining peak of the mountain visible at all times while outside, or how it uses consistent visual language through cloth creatures and strips to demarcate safe zones where the player can recharge their scarf. But there’s more beneath the surface; what about the game's sneaky introduction to the sand-sliding mechanic from the introductory dune so it’s no longer unfamiliar during the exhilarating and committal descent, or how there’s a section of the underground that’s filled with these scarf jellyfish tinted in blue allowing you to remain in flight that evokes the feeling of being underwater, foreshadowing the next section as a tower ascension where the player must continually breach the surface to “swim” and escape? Sure, everyone knows about how the bitter cold disempowers the player by slowing their movement and lowering the scarf’s energy gauge, but I usually don’t hear about how strong winds can chip away at the scarf’s capacity itself or how it reduces the volume and area of effect of your shouts, making it far more difficult to restore your energy gauge from the growing frostbite.

There’s also the overlooked audio aspect of Journey. Granted, everyone loves to discuss the soundtrack’s thematics, like how the final chord of Journey’s motif never resolves a single time in any track until the end of Apotheosis or for that matter, how all the instruments are never fully present until that final ascent, when the entire orchestra finally comes together as one only to slowly fall away as the player and the world fade away. Yet, the sound design regarding Journey’s implementation of said soundtrack often goes underappreciated. Again, there are plenty of clear strengths that have been widely discussed, such as the punctuated stillness of the desert dunes providing room for the piddle paddle of the player’s footsteps amongst the vast desert winds and eventually swelling into triumphant bursts of adventure. But again, there are little subtleties that speak to the soundtrack’s interactivity, like how the backing drum during the aforementioned underwater section gives the track the impression of being muted and seamlessly drops this filter once the player breaches the surface, or how the player’s shouts are always in the key of the backing track’s scale, meaning that the introduced notes remain within the game’s tonality. It’s these little things that further round out Journey’s experience; the music is so seamlessly woven in that it takes a discerning ear to pick out every specific detail, in such a way where it feels like the soundtrack is organically supplementing every memorable moment of the game.

Of course, it’s not enough to just handle the basics well, even if there’s a master’s touch present to carefully disguise these additions so silently. As I mentioned before, popular works need compelling hooks to draw in an audience, but they also need an element of danger to keep that audience engaged. In the case of Journey, Thatgamecompany tackles this through their stealth multiplayer. This is where Journey easily outclasses its successors and may in fact, even have one-upped Ico. If Ico’s main limitation was a lack of autonomy for any non-player characters, then Journey circumvents this problem entirely by replacing the AI with real players instead. The loose implementation adds a catch: nothing in the game aside from the final completion screen listing your companion(s)’ name(s) ever hints on this, and not once is the player given instructions or suggestions on how to interact with said players. The only obvious mechanical incentive from cooperating with other players is the ability to recharge one another’s scarves via proximity/shouts, and there’s no consequence to merely abandoning random players or quitting in the middle of a session. It’s what makes this multiplayer so compelling; many times you’ll find other players just wandering about by themselves, despawning, or quickly rushing ahead without care towards your presence. There’s no guarantee that they’ll cooperate… which makes that one instance where they do that much more memorable. In this sense, I think Jenova Chen and his team solved two problems at once: the aforementioned challenge of granting outside elements a degree of realism, and his own personal challenge of creating a minimalist environment where players had no incentives to act in bad faith despite never having any major incentives to cooperate either, resulting in seemingly organic interactions.

Perhaps it is cheating to state that this spontaneous element is what gives Journey a step-up over its peers, but I also can’t deny that this same feature is exactly what lends the game its identity. It’s hard to provide drastically different experiences for focused single player games after all; no matter how much Fumito Ueda may have insisted that he was inspired by emergent gameplay mechanics and player autonomy to allow for more diverse experiences, there remains an upper limit upon how far those experiences can unravel. However, Thatgamecompany’s take upon the “single-player odyssey” alongside the game’s cyclical nature and short runtime means that Journey is a far more replayable experience while remaining every bit as compelling as its competition. Even after multiple trips up the summit, I continue to be amazed by the thoughtfulness shown to me by other players. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen down the temple from being blown away by the wind, only for my companion to jump down with me, or how many trips through the blizzard were spent slowly trudging together mashing my shout, just like strangers on a cold winter’s night huddling together for warmth while shouting cries of encouragement to take one more step forward. In essence, Journey didn't need an intricate or elaborate story told with fanciful cutscenes and voice-acting; it simply needed to provide a backbone with no other contradicting elements, allowing players to form their own stories by experiencing the game on their own terms.

Journey isn’t mechanically rich or wildly innovative in terms of its scope, but it doesn’t have to be. Rather, it’s a deceptively simple yet meticulous and thoughtfully different approach upon a respected design philosophy, which aimed to further refine said formula by whittling down any elements that detracted from the game’s constructed sense of reality. Similarly, it doesn't feel the need to present a grandiose narrative, instead stripping away any specific contextual layers as to allow players to create memorable experiences with no conflicting moments in-between. I should be sick of this formula after tackling so many misguided copycats, and I can't deny that I was afraid to label yet another old favorite as propped up by nostalgia. Thankfully, my fears have been assuaged. I keep waiting for the day where I’ll finally be content putting this down forever… but that day has yet to come. I was not the first adventurer to embark upon this pilgrimage, nor will I be the last. Maybe I just need to get over my cynicism and accept that there was never anything to be cynical of to begin with. I’m sure more developers will continue to lazily carbon copy one of my favorites until the end of time, but that doesn’t mean the good times have to end.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Happy new year, and here’s to another journey around the sun.

I missed out on a lot of platformers after the fifth generation of video game consoles. Never owned a PlayStation 2 at the time. Thus, IP's such as Sly and Ratchet alongside a certain J. series. Were some franchises I never played. In order to rectify such a mistake. I decided to play another Naughty Dog(ND) platformer except in a 3D open-world environment. with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the first time.

Gone are the restricted side-scrolling segments we were forced to endure in Crash Bandicoot 1 and disconnected world through warping in 2 and 3. Jak feels like a natural evolution from the studio's PS1 days and wickedly refreshing with a narrative starting with an act of disobedience. Against the elders' warnings, the protagonists travel to a forbidden island. There the two witness mysterious figures who are sinisterly planning some horrible deed using dark eco and precursor artifacts. Knowing this is well above their usual tomfoolery the duo try to leave. However, before sneakily trying to leave the island... they were ambushed! The events that follow from here have the titular characters embark on a vital quest to fulfill for the elder, any side-missions to complete, and uncover what dastardly plans those two figures were plotting.

The world design is richly goofy. But has a certain serious aesthetic I like. To the extent I was venturing off the beaten path considerably to see what secrets lay in store for me. I bravely ventured into a diverse amount of biomes: A jungle with an old ruin, murky swamp, underwater laboratory, volcano with a spider-cavern, and a snowy peak, with huge snowballs rolling down a path to riding a hoverbike on racing segments and one larger zone to go ham. Reminded me heavily of Spyro using a skateboard. Seems ND was a fan of that and devised their take on a particular basin. Battled a wide assortment of foes from goofy but deadly frogs, drill enemies, shield dudes, not cute at all blue jumping rabbits, long centipedes, and the good old regular animals, but naughty dogified in every biome. Worms, bats, spiders, rats. You name it! Sooner or later they shall appear! Heck faced quite a bit of environmental hazards from falling to my death, being shot by smog, lava deaths, or shocked to a crisp. Not quite quicksand but quickmud. Encountered spiked traps, and spiked logs swaying from trees, and overcame countless jumping sections within. Not too hard and not too easy thankfully. Didn’t see much if any copy paste from the enemy design or world design. Everything was consistently varied and the final zone itself proved a serviceable final act.

Concerning the gameplay loop. I would say it’s consistently fun from the beginning until the very end credits. The open world without any loading aside from using fast travel when you need to is a plus. Allowing anyone to venture as far as they can within reason. The plot will stop you from venturing further until you accrue enough power cells. A collectible item and usually one that stops you from exploring more biomes until they reach a certain number. Didn’t have trouble getting these since I was already forgetting about the main quest to complete some side missions offered by NPCs here. Individuals who look similar to J-man. Although, he doesn’t look like a regular human. To me, he seems like a cross between a mad scientist trying to combine an elf and a human resulting in a humanoid with long ears and inheriting an athletic body to boot. Tasks can range from moving bulls into a pen, pushing an egg, doing a favor for a future mayor, or a fishing dude in a mini-game. I enjoyed finishing these day-to-day jobs since a majority are elderly. Didn’t feel right to leave them to their struggle. And I didn’t mind giving a helping hand for a power cell after the job was done. Thus, my reward felt adequate for my services rendered. Aside from the cells, you can also come across other collectible precursor orbs. Think of these like the apples from the Crash series you’ll often find on the paths, tucked away around the corner, nooks or crannies. Except, you can amass over a hundred to trade them in for a cell. Additionally, scout flies are in special boxes you need to slam into to release the flies. Gather seven of these spread throughout any major level to be awarded a cell. Kinda thankful they're here, so the player doesn’t amass orbs all day ya know?

Furthermore, the world has a varied amount of colored eco. These differ from absorbing orbs changing the gameplay formula in fun ways. They're a temporary power-up granting our main characters a wide array of elemental passives. Blue charges our dudes to move faster, jump a bit farther, and make it so easier to absorb collectibles nearby like a magnet. Red strengthens attacks and invincibility against exploding crates. Plus, a nice interactivity emerges when enemies die. Leaving off green residue for their remains. Once we accrue enough scraps, up to fifty to restore a ⅓ of our health points. In total, we have three health bars. And no finite life stacks to keep track of. Die and you respawn at a nearby point of a large level. Didn’t find too much trouble with re-spawning. They were fine for me. And the inclusion of colored eco’s is gratifying to add spice to the experience. An extra edge in both combat and traversal.

Usually, platformers(broadly speaking) offer some enticing gameplay to differentiate themselves from others in the same genre. To various degrees of enjoyment. Have you noticed other games conduct themselves around their mechanics through level design, encounter's and etc. Below are several examples I pulled from my limited experience in the genre.

- Ape Escape using the analog stick ingeniously. Left stick for movement. Right stick for your gadgets.
- Trine used the stick to coordinate with your allies. The thief can shoot a bow & arrow and a grapple hook in any possible direction when applicable, the knight can block enemies with his shield in any direction, and the wizard can conjure different objects by drawing to help them overcome obstacles or fall on unsuspecting enemies.
- Super Mario 64’s long jump, triple jump, wall jump combined with grabbing, kicking, running, swimming, crouching and etc. proved to be a simple, yet effective formula to endorse player freedom in the whole world.
- Pac-Man World’s shift from the classic game into a 3D landscape works oh so well. Heck P-man can interact with objects, solve puzzles and use new abilities!
- Spyro & Crash's basic movesets were frequently used and tested in various large levels from a hub to straightforward linear segments. Overcoming multiple obstacles both vertical and horizontal. Calling back once again if it ain't broke, don't fix it with sequels largely staying true to the same moves.
- Mirror's Edge smooth parkour capabilities lends itself well into the whole level design employing minimal visual aid to your destination.

Aside from the slew of other platformers. And returning back to Jak. Story-wise I felt the narrative had a stop-and-go momentum. Perhaps owing to the fact, that I completed sidequests along the way while not truly investing in the adventure, making the pacing slow to a crawl. However, the beats in the narrative were like a slow burn in a good way. I think this could be intentional to convey an absence of agency from an immediate save-the-world aspect vs. uncovering a devious plot. Allowing player freedom vs. player urgency to flourish for the former rather than the latter. As someone who adores freedom a great deal in games, such an aspect appealed to me greatly. I don’t like being rushed. Therefore Jak 1 succeeds at least for me in creating a freshly wacky fun world to navigate and a decent story. Unreasonable to expect a masterpiece in the first entry of a new franchise. However, the attempt to do so is noteworthy.

As someone familiar with several PS1 games in the same genre. Although, not an expert or veteran, I was pleasantly surprised how Naughty Dog did not regress in the sixth console generation and boldly made a new IP direction to positive acclaim. Back in the day, I felt plenty of rigidness in their earlier works in how levels were constructed and punishing in a way. Jumping on scaffolding, but hold up we got countless traps, and obstacles to drop us dead. Sure I could use Aku-Aku help, but hey it sucks having to redo a segment ‘x’ amount of times. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Crash series to the point I replayed them in the remastered trilogy. By comparison, Precursor Legacy in my opinion eliminates the rigidity in favoring a more open-freedom in gameplay and combat. The power to go anywhere you physically can is a compelling motivation to fulfill a wanderlust. Exploring what is on the horizon and saying “Oh I can go there.” Busting my athletic skills to their limit. Fluidity at work too. Where I didn’t experience much clunkiness from controlling J & D as one character. Weighty animations from his spin-to-win moves felt satisfying. The long almost Falcon punch from a select Nintendo IP has an immensely awesome feel to wham enemies. Uppercutting and ground slams extend the combat capability of our heroes. Blessing us, a nice reactivity to enemies dying.

Concerning my feelings on platforming. I was initially apprehensive due to the fact I am super horrible at managing timing, and the right jump distance, and easily frustrated if I have to restart a whole level after almost completing a dungeon/level. So after seeing the end credits and witnessing the 100% mark. I couldn’t believe I had the patience and perseverance to keep going. Perhaps owing to the fact the re-spawning mechanic and save system felt very generous, not punishing with ease to let players keep trying. The former mechanic felt quick and would make the duo spawn near the start of a level or a certain point within a zone. Usually after overcoming a major obstacle. The latter on the system feels very safe. In addition to saving at any time. Whenever our main character receives a cell, an autosave will occur. Considering there are over a hundred of these to collect I didn’t find much trouble losing progress upon dying or returning to the original point of death.

I usually die plenty in the Bandicoot games far more in the first and second. Consequently, I was holding my breath and mentally strengthening my willpower if I encountered similar levels of difficulty. To my sheer delight, most if not all platforming levels, sections, and areas are relatively easy to medium in challenging. Some examples I came across were: jumping on dais floating above water and above in mountainous regions. Sometimes moving while the water below is filled with electricity. Falling and rotating in some respects. Camera shifting to a traditional side-scrolling segment. Navigating through falling debris, snowballs, and slides while avoiding exploding crates. Maneuvering through a section to unlock switches, and levers and thus unlocking a new path. Add in timers to complete a task and you may have to think of an optimal route to beat the clock. Trick players into venturing into a dark room and force them to utilize unconventional crystal lights to persevere. Combine these elements in a lesser manner during riding segments and you have a recipe that tastes better as you eat more of the dish. With an excellent difficulty curve for beginners and a nice incline for enthusiasts looking for a challenge to master every level by acquiring everything.

Despite the praise I’ve been sprouting, I do have some mixed feelings. Not a positive or a negative, but some concerns I had during my playthrough I think should be important to note.

In the beginning, I had trouble adjusting to the inverted controls for the camera. But, ultimately got used to the control scheme as an hour or two passed. I felt meaningful collectibles were lacking in rewards. Could be a better incentive to introduce various extensions to temporary powers, permanent move sets, or classic increasing the player with more health would work wonders. Furthermore, I think having a timer for different eco uses is weird. I had to rush constantly to gather new types to utilize during combat. I propose a different alternative. Make the gathered amounts a stock type. Depleting when in use and able to switch between different types when the situation calls for it. Also, I didn’t know there was a secret ending upon gathering everything possible only to reveal a pretty underwhelming scene in the end. Therefore, going for 100% can be a chore in some respects since the collecting aspect doesn't seem to affect the overall gameplay by rewarding the player to search for them. Lastly, the game has a weird texture pop-in. Some textures in the far distance have muddy paint adorned. But upon closer inspection would magically reveal the appropriate textures. And I couldn’t help but feel the game dipped at times. Wonder if there is a definitive version out there to play the series… Well lo and behold OpenGOAL does. A fanmade PC port to play the series with higher fidelity. Currently, at the time this review was published, the team is working on Jak II. Here’s a comparison video I. Am. Amazed. At the difference in quality. While internally slapping myself why I didn’t start the first game with OG’s version. As a result, I recommend checking out the version differences from PS2, PS3, PS4, and unofficial PC port. And select the best one depending on your preference.

Ultimately, despite some minor mixed feelings I had. The overwhelming positives outweigh the concerns by a great deal. Jak’s seamless goofy yet serious, open world is a refreshing 3D experience without being too difficult and not too easy to deter newcomers and veterans. Resulting in a nice curve of challenge in approaching cool-level design. A solid fun gameplay loop kept my interest for a long while and doesn’t overstay their welcome by having enough of their own identity. Distinct from the Bandicoot days. Temporary elemental passives provide a nice spice to the movesets and offer interesting resolutions to tackle both enemies and obstacles. A decent story with a great sense of freedom brings a bright smile to my face constantly. Bringing relief with a generous save system and a painless re-spawn mechanic. Heck, your ottsel companion will incentivize the player upon dying with various quotes. “Don't worry, I'll avenge you! Not...!” “Hey, Jak! Can I, uh... have your insect collection?” Yeah… Oddly motivating.

Still for what it's worth I enjoyed my playthrough with the first installment. Chuckling in amusement at times at the silly things our heroes undergo. I'm looking forward to what awaits me in the franchise. Maybe I’ll dive into Daxter or Jak II next! Anyways! If you’re looking for an excellent platformer from the PS2 days. I recommend Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Watch how a young foolish duo starts their adventure with an act of disobedience. Tsk tsk. What a naughty d-

8.2/10

References & Additional Material:
Jak and Daxter - PS2 vs PS3 vs OpenGOAL Graphics Comparison
Jak & Daxter PS4 VS PS3 VS Vita VS PS2
Fifth generation of video game consoles
OpenGOAL Jak Project

Before I played Galaxy 2, I only ever really played crappy licensed games on my PS2 for the most part. I was a young kid at the time so I couldn't really gauge if a game was actually good or not, I just got a game based on a show/movie I liked and that was that. That all changed one day when I was scrolling on YouTube and stumbled upon Super Mario Galaxy 2. I can't even remember what I saw since it's been so long, but I remember instantly thinking "I NEED to play this". This was right before we were going on a trip to Ocean City Maryland and I knew my dad's friend who was going on the trip with us, was bringing his Wii. I go to my local movie rental store which also had video games and rented it. The trip lasted a week and while I really should've been having a ton of fun on the beach, I instead couldn't get enough of Galaxy 2. I was addicted. I think I got up to like world 4 before I had to return the game and I had to part ways with the Wii. I also remember getting a gaming magazine that focused on Galaxy 2. I also distinctly remember a game called "Ivy the Kiwi" being a big focus in it too. God, I wish I still had that thing. I lost it ages ago and can't remember the name of the magazine, and I've tried to look it up online many times to no avail. Anyways, after the whole trip, me and my brother got a Wii and I got Galaxy 1 as you know. A bit after that I remember renting the game again and then eventually getting it for Christmas that year (I think).
I eventually did beat it, but not 100%. I never completed the game until the summer of 2015, I don't know why it took me five years but when I finally did it, I was absolutely ecstatic. This game means a whole lot to me as it not only got me into non-licensed games but it really kicked off my love for gaming as a whole.

So let's start with the biggest elephant in the room, this game's story. Yes it's very lame that they retconned the first game and that the story in general is way more lame in general compared to 1. This is my biggest criticism besides the game not being quite as atmospheric/spacey as 1. It is the reason I think I do like 1 more now, but it really isn't a deal breaker to me. I think there's enough fun dialogue throughout the game for it to still have an above average story for a mainline Mario game. Still, not nearly as good as 1's which yeah is a bit of a bummer.

However, I think the game more than makes up for this by being so much fun and more fun than 1. While 1 had plenty of good galaxies, I did think having several samey ones (the beach and bee galaxies) when there's only 15 full length galaxies was a bit of a downside. Galaxy 2 however did something different. Instead of having a mini galaxy here and there, and having your main galaxies be 6 stars, here the full length ones have 3. Now while there is a good reason they did this, this also led to the game having more sized galaxies that are way more plentiful. This along with the fact the level design is way more straight forward and faster paced, makes the game more fun than 1 I think. It's up to preference of course and I still love both games approach to level design.

Another reason this game is a blast to play is the addition of Yoshi. You wouldn't think he'd add so much to the levels but he does. He's in a good amount of the galaxies and also in them are powerups for Yoshi to use. These were also a great addition and just add that extra bit of fun to the game. I like them all but my favorite was definitely the dash pepper just because it's used in the best of ways. Alongside Yoshi and his powerups are new powerups for Mario. The drill and boulder mushroom were both cool but the cloud flower? Absolutely my favorite powerup in any Mario game. It not only just gives Mario a very pleasant design to look at, it let's you create a maximum of three temporary cloud platforms to use which is just so much fun. They clearly knew it was gonna be the fan favorite since it's used in a ton of galaxies.

While I definitely like 1's soundtrack more now, 2's is also still amazing. It's funny, while the game isn't as atmospheric as 1, it may have the most atmospheric song between both games lol. That would of course be Cosmic Cove Galaxy which is hands down my favorite song in the game, which is fitting since it's also my favorite galaxy in the game. Some other songs I love are Sky Station GalaxyYoshi Star GalaxyStarshine Beach Galaxy and Wild Glide Galaxy. The game doesn't have as moody of an ost, it's more upbeat than 1 but it still has some moody tracks and is still amazing like 1. A good example of a moody track actually and a shoutout to this one is Slimy Spring Galaxy. They did not need to give a short galaxy like this such an otherworldly and atmospheric track but they did. I never really appreciated this galaxy when I first played the game but nowadays, I actually really love it. Again, while 2 doesn't have the same level of atmosphere as 1, it really does still have its moments.

I had a bit of an issue with the prankster comets in 1, not being the biggest fan of them since there's only 5 types (and one of the types barely gets used). This game improves on them I think. Instead of appearing randomly like in 1, you have to get a comet medal in each galaxy for them to appear. Once they do, they will never leave so you don't have to worry about getting them to appear again like in 1. There's also a better variety of challenges this time. You still have your speedrun comets, your daredevil comets, your purple coin comets. However, the cosmic Mario races have been replaced with cosmic clone comets. You now have a different type of speedrun where you have to collect clocks that give you 10 seconds each. You have comets where you have to kill a bunch of enemies in a period of time. These changes/additions, plus the comets not being color-coded anymore so you don't know what you're going to get until you go into the galaxy, just make them much more fun than in 1.

Another thing Galaxy 2 did better than 1 is the extra 120 stars. In 1, to get all 242 stars you have to play the exact same stars as Luigi and then your reward is two extra purple coin stars that I just never found good. In 2, you have 120 green stars to find. A lot of people don't like the addition of these and I never understood why. Sure you can say it's filler but they are brand new stars and they're usually placed in fun creative ways. They act as a sort of scavenger hunt for you to find and you can use the sound they make as a sign you're close to one. Sure, they're not quite as fun to get once you replay the game and know their locations. But a bunch of them still require more advanced techniques to get like triple jumps and stuff so I never found it tiresome to get them all even on this replay. And the reward you get is a fun challenging galaxy that blow's Galaxy 1's reward out of the water. Overall, I think it's a very good postgame and well worth doing it just for the Grandmaster Galaxy.

Just a couple of little changes I noticed between both games. The first is one I noticed all the way back in 2010 when I played both games. When you spin into a launch star in 1, there's like a little couple second delay until it activates. 2 fixes this issue and let's you activate it right away which is super nice. Something I noticed on this new playthrough is unlike 1, 2 doesn't let you spam the spin underwater. I don't know why I never notice this until now lol. I also think the automatic saving instead of giving you a prompt asking you to save is a nice addition in 2.

I love both Galaxy 1 and 2 so much, it really is hard to decide which I love more. While at this point, I'm sticking with 1, it really does flipflop back and forth a bunch for me. Chalk it up to me playing 2 before 1 maybe? Idk if I'd feel the same way if I played it way after 1 or something. Either way, I still feel the same way as I did with my 2022 replays. Play 1 for the much better story, better atmosphere and better OST. Play 2 for the better polished, all around more fun experience. The real answer though is to play both as they're both fantastic games.

Also my top 5 Galaxies now are Cosmic Cove Galaxy, Starshine Beach Galaxy, Slipsand Galaxy, Clockwork Ruins Galaxy, and Throwback Galaxy...among many others, there's just too many good ones in this game!

Before playing this game, the only 3D Sonic I ever played was Sonic Colors. And even then, a good chunk of that game was in 2D. So Adventure was my first fully 3D Sonic game ever. For years, I'd hear people say this game was broken beyond belief or just simple a "guilty pleasure" game that they enjoy despite being shit. While I did not love it like some people do, I can personally say I did not think the games were either of those things.

The game is broken up into 6 (technically 7 if you complete all other routes) character routes. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big the cat and Gamma respectively. Each of these characters play differently from each other, whether it's for better or worse, and even tho each playthrough varies in quality, I can at least commend how ambitious this is. Because in each character's playthrough, you get different cutscenes and also context for certain scenes that may not be explained in earlier playthroughs. As my friend Lemonstrade said, it's sort of similar to what Drakennier does which again is super cool conceptually, especially for a 1998 game.

But back to the actual characters, Sonic is the clear best one here. He has his spin dash, is of course the fastest in the game and also has a super fun aerial dash. I've heard people say the controls are bad in this game and I simply don't get that at all. Sonic, at least, feels simply perfect to control. The levels on the other hand, I can see people having issues with. I disagreed with the fact this game is broken beyond belief, but it definitely can be a bit broken if you're unlucky. I only glitched through the stage like 2 or 3 times, but the first time it happened was on the very first stage. That made me think the entire game would be broken, but it wasn't. Unless I got lucky, those claims, while still credible sometimes...are massively overblown. Besides that though, Sonic's stages while still fun, can feel incredibly janky just because of how fast he goes. It's hard to explain but if you've played the game you'd know, a lot of times the animations and your movement through levels can feel very unwieldly. It can be really hard to control sonic sometimes, and it often looks super awkward when looking back at it. Like I said it's hard to explain, and while I still had a ton of fun with his levels (just because he feels so good to controls) I can't help but think thee levels feel off. Again, this is mostly when you're at full speed going through loop de loops and shit. When it's slower sections you're going through, it's not an issue.

As for the other characters, they all have significantly less stages than Sonic. Tails has you racing against sonic, and with him being able to glide, you can take some seriously crazy shortcuts. The game itself even encourages this which I thought was pretty neat. Knuckles has you searching for three master emerald shards. It's basically a treasure hunt, with the emerald icons turning different colors depending on how close you are to them. These were alright, but story-wise I wasn't really a fan. Honestly thought his story would be more different from Sonic's than it was, not to mention the final Chaos fight was barely different from Sonic's (and Tails had a unique fight for his ending). Amy was probably my least favorite character to use. Her levels consisted of getting to the end like Sonic, while running away from one of Robotnik's robots. Problem is, while her hammer bounce is kinda cool, her moveset isn't nearly as fun as Sonic's yet her levels are still long like Sonic's (which isn't much of an issue with Tails and Knuckles). That plus, besides the one Gamma scene, her cutscenes were lame. Big the cat is the most contentious character by far, and honestly I didn't hate him. Yeah his cutscenes are super dumb and don't add much to the story. However his campaign is by far the shortest, and the fishing is actually really easy (and kinda fun) once you get the hang of it. Gamma is by far the best character next to Sonic. Not only are his stages fast paced, with you having to kill enemies quickly to get more time to your total. His story is actually significantly different compared to the others, and quite touching at that. If I had to rank each character's campaigns, I'd say Sonic>Gamma>Tails>Big>Knuckles>Amy.

To go to each actual level, you have to navigate the hubworld. For a 1998 game, it's not bad but it can feel somewhat empty I felt. Though, there are things to get that aren't just apart of the main story. There are some optional collectables and even some minigames you can play. There's also the chao garden which, I tried to get to work but since I was emulating the game, I suspected there was an add on I needed or something idk. But from the little I've heard, it does sound fun.

The story in general, does have its high points, like the aforementioned Gamma campaign and the ending is really nice. It's simple but effective. However, the actual voice acting is horribly stilted a lot of the time. It's not even a so bad it's good situation, it was just mediocre a lot of the time. That is, except for Robotnik who is super over the top but hilarious. Even despite the fact they reuse fight dialogue in actual scenes (which is jarring for sure) his dialogue is super duper memorable and easily the highlight. Something else that was memorable were some of the face animations, goddamn are they awful sometimes.

I didn't like LOVE the soundtrack like some people do, but it is quite nice overall. Very experimental which I appreciate a ton. My favorite songs were probably Red Skull Mountain, Welcome to Station Square and Egg Carrier: A Song That Keeps Us on the Move.

Once you complete all 6 character routes, you unlock the 7th and final one..Super Sonic. This is essentially just the final boss and some closure on the story, but it's definitely satisfying. You become Super Sonic, defeat Chaos's final form at supersonic speed, and in turn this cleanses Chaos of his evil as we find out he wasn't ever bad from the start. The closure on the whole Chao's and the past cutscenes was really nice. That along with Gamma's scenes ofc, easily the highlights of the story.

This game is definitely flawed in some ways, and Adventure 2 might improve on everything in this game idk. But I can officially say, this game is overall good and that Sonic had a good transition to 3D. Not everything works in this game, but I can acknowledge this game is full of heart.

May drop it down to a 6 cuz I was feeling like that for a good while but for now it's a 7.

Back in Junior High, I had this duo of friends who would not stop talking about Dark Souls whenever we were at our table at lunch. Dark Souls 2 had just come out and they were obsessed with it. This is the first time I ever even heard of Dark Souls, and with them always nerding out about it, it did intrigue me a bit. Fast forward to March 2017, I had just gotten a PS4 a couple months prior and I was itching to get into all these types of games I never did before. On a whim I decided to pickup both Dark Souls III and Bloodborne. Boy was that timing perfect, because the next day it snowed big time and it wouldn't let up for like an entire week so I was playing Dark Souls III nonstop. A couple weeks later I then moved on to Bloodborne. I love Dark Souls III, as you know from my reviews of that, but Bloodborne especially really captivated me. I ended up beating it months later during my thanksgiving break I think (sadly getting the bad ending and missing out on the final boss) and thought it was really great. Fast forward again to like March 2019 I think? I on a whim felt like playing Bloodborne again. I really sucked at first, struggling immensely with Gascoigne, but once I got the hang of it again, I honestly had an absolute blast and knew it would be one of my favorite games ever. The platinum and several playthroughs later, here we are and yeah it's back in my top 5 again.

The very first thing the drew me into the game, and I honestly think it's hands down the best aspect, is the Gothic-Horror Lovecraftian aesthetic and the art design as a whole. It's my absolute favorite aesthetic in any game next to Automata's post-apocalyptic world. That's like one of the main reason's I rate this game so highly tbh, it carry's so hard imo. From Central Yharnam, to Cathedral Ward and even something like Nightmare Frontier, I don't dislike any area's aesthetic. Cainhurst is the absolute highlight, just exploring a creepy gothic castle while it's snowing outside...hoo baby. Like even something like Byrgenwerth, which is absolutely tiny, is an area I like going to everytime because of the seaside aesthetics. Plus it's really lore important which is rad.

Speaking of lore and the story of the game, it's the absolute best in the Soulsborne series imo. It just makes the whole world feel so alive, first starting off with basic stuff like the hunt and then eventually delving into cosmic horror by the end. I was never too into Dark Souls lore ever but this game? Yeah I'm totally into it, the horror aspect just intrigues me way more.

Next in the combat and yeah it's a total blast. Instead of hiding behind a shield like in Dark Souls, you're totally defenseless and can only rely on your dodging skills. That may seem like it's tougher, and yeah it is but it rewards you for being super aggressive. The rally system allows you to get some HP back for a short time after being hit which means you can be more risky when fighting enemies. I just find this combat system way more fun than the souls games personally and is another reason why this is my favorite. To go along with the combat, you of course have the weapons. Unlike the souls games, Bloodborne has a much smaller batch of them but I think that's much in the games favor. Every weapon is viable and every weapon is memorable. That paired with the transformation mechanic, where if you press L1 you essentially have two weapons in one, just make these weapons the best ever imo. I usually use the kirk hammer, then Ludwig's Holy Blade and then maybe I switch it out for one of the DLC's weapons and yeah this playthrough was no different.

As I said, I really love the look of every area and that's not all, the actual areas are quite good for the most part. The beginning areas like Central Yharnam or Cathedral Ward are simply some of the best level-design wish because they're so interconnected with other areas. It's not quite Dark Souls 1 level of interconnectivity but it's really a nice change from something like Dark Souls 2 or even 3. By the end it does get more linear, but since the first half is well connected, I didn't have much of an issue with it. I think one of the most memorable moments is when you're all the way into the forbidden woods. You find this path down into a poison cave, you climb up a ladder and you end up at the very beginning of
central yharnam. You unlock the first gate you ever see when playing and I just think that's so cool. The game has several moments like this, like Yahar'Gul connecting to Old Yarhnam after you defeat Darkbeast Paarl, but no moment will be as good as the aformentioned Forbidden Woods interconnectivity.

Now on to the bosses, I think they're generally pretty great. Early game definitely has the more consistently good bosses, tho endgame definitely has some bangers like Gehrman and Martyr Logarius. The mid to end game definitely does have some not great bosses gameplay-wise, but some of them do have other aspects that make me not hate them. Witches of Hemwick is pathetically easy but the especially creepy atmosphere and semi-interesting way to defeat her, I really enjoyed. Plus she had one of my favorite songs in the game. Rom is somewhat annoying but at least has a beautiful area to fight her in. The one reborn is really easy too but I like the callback to Tower Knight. Celestial Emissary is um, yeah I can't really defend this one but it sure is a goofy boss. Micolash was probably my least favorite in the game before, and even tho I had a much better time with him this time, he still isn't great. What really makes up for it tho is he has hands down my favorite dialogue in the game, god it's so entertaining and goddamn whoever voiced him is amazing. The rest of the bosses I either like or love, and again even some of these I do like because of certain other aspects. I know a lot of the bosses aren't perfect but I'm surprised I never outright hated any of them, can't say the same for something like Bed of Chaos or Dragon God lole.

Don't really have much to say about the OST besides the fact it's great like most other souls games. My favorite tracks were the aforementioned Witches of Hemwick theme, the Cleric Beast theme, Micolash's theme, the hunter's dream theme and Gehrman's theme. Those were definitely the standout songs.

My take on the Chalice dungeons are they're a nice distraction from the base game but I probably won't play them again on future replay's. I only dived into them on that playthrough in 2019, and while they were cool they do get tedious if you're going for them all. It is nice how they have unique bosses in them, but yeah not super keen on them. Tho I never hated them like other people and I don't think they detract from the game because it feels more like a side thing which I'm fine with.

Before I end of my review, I just wanted to list off a couple issues with the game. Blood vials are obviously a big point of contention for some people and yeah it is annoying how you might have to eventually grind them if you run out, I never really had an issue with this personally. It's really easy to get them naturally and there's a really good early grinding spot right next to the first lamp in the game lol. Speaking of lamps, I guess people find it annoying how you have to warp back to the Hunter's Dream every time and then warp to another place from there? I guess it's a minor convenience but it never bothered me ever. Now this being 30 FPS is definitely jarring when going from games like Dark Souls III or Sekiro (I know I was taken aback when I came back to this after DS3) and while it would be so awesome if a remaster came out (please no remake dear god) I again never had a major issue with it. People saying it makes the game unplayable, I don't get you lol.

Anywho, this was another long ass review from me but I just absolutely adore this game despite some small flaws. It just gets even better with the DLC which I also beat this time around. Look out for that review very soon!

I honestly forget where I got this game, but I remember it was one of the first SNES games I ever played. The first was Super Mario World and I absolutely adored it. Because of that game, I got really into retro Nintendo games and some time after, I bought Yoshi's Island. Part of me thinks I bought this at my local flea market because it always reminded me of going there on the weekends. Yoshi's Island in general, is a big weekend game. I remember just playing it on my days off from school, and because of that it always gave off that vibe. Either way, I played through the game and loved it. I think since then, I only 100%ed it one other time or maybe not at all. So this was only, potentially, my 2nd time fully beating this game. I'm glad I did because just like Super Mario World, it's absolutely wonderful.

The most striking aspect of the game that you'll notice right away, is just how visually appealing it is. Its crayon-like artstyle is super pleasing to the eyes, and it also makes the most of the console and the newly created FX chip at the time. The FX chip was an add on to carts created by Argonaut Games (my beloved Croc developer). Basically, created to enhance the graphics of certain SNES games, and Yoshi's Island was one of the few games to use it. The FX chip, along with the wonderful artstyle, just gives the game this timeless look. Best looking game on the SNES imo, with Kirby's Dreamland 3 right behind it.

The gameplay itself is much more complicated than Mario World. In Yoshi's Island, you can run and jump and all that, but you can also create/throw eggs. Eating an enemy, and pressing down on the d-pad, let's you create eggs. These can be tossed at enemies and items and greatly enhances the regular Mario gameplay. You can have the eggs bounce off walls and based on the angle you threw it at, collect items you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. You can have eggs skip across water. You can have eggs reflect against or be obtained by certain enemies and then thrown/hit back at you to get collectables. The egg mechanic gets utilized super well. This along with the varied level design makes the game a blast. Cuz yeah, the level design is super good in this game and is always throwing new things at you. Whether its the fuzzy enemies that make the screen all trippy, to the ski slopes in world 5, to the temporary platforms that disappear if you jump on them too much. And that's not even getting into the Yoshi transformations which are all fun too. Never was I bored with any level. Frustrated though? Maybe a little.

This is a good segway into the other half of the gameplay I wanted to talk about, the 100% requirements. See, unlike Super Mario World, you don't just have to beat each and every level and get all secret exits. You have to get a score of 100 in each level. There are three collectables that contribute to a score. Red coins, flowers and Yoshi's health. You must get all 20 red coins, all 5 flowers and have 30 health by the end of a level to get a score of 100. Then you do this in each world, 6 times for the normal levels and two times for each boss level. Then you unlock a bonus game and a bonus level. So why is this frustrating to do? Well, first it depends on the level. The early levels aren't too bad but some of the later levels are quite hard. The red coins appear as normal coins (tho there is a redness to them that is quite visible) so these can be tricky to find. The flowers are very obvious, you just have to be sure to find them. They hide both of these kind of collectables in some devious places sometimes. Usually it's not too bad but rarely, even now after having played the game before, I had to look them up because they're obtuse. This is all fine and dandy but the real hard collectable is the health. It all depends on how easy the stage is and how often they give you health in the stage, but sometimes it can be super difficult to have 30 star points (that's what the game calls the health) by the end of the game. Especially in that last world, hoo boy did I have to use an star point item in almost every one of those levels.

That's another thing the game has, you can get items (and live) from minigames at the end of stages. When you jump through the goal, and the ring stops on one of the flowers you collected in the stage, you can play a minigame. Like I said, it can give you lives but more importantly items. Some of these items suck but 2 of them give you +10 and +20 star points respectively. Seeing as, as long as you're alive, your star count always goes back up to 10. You can get hit as much as you want, get to the end of a stage, and pop a +20 and have full star points before ending a stage. Getting these items can be quite hard depending on the minigame, but the match cards game makes it super easy to grind these items out. You can replay this minigame as much as you want with the world 4 bonus game, so as long as you can 100% that world, going back to 100% every other level will be that much easier if you suck. Overall, I think the collectables are fun to collect and 100%ing the game isn't that bad because of the item system. The game can just be somewhat devious with its hidden collectables and its difficulty near the end game (that world 5 bonus level can suck it) which is why I found it a bit frustrating at points and not as replayable as Mario World. However, once I remembered you could at least cheese the star points in the endgame, this issue lessened a bit.

Something else I really liked were the bosses. Honestly, they're not all winners but they're probably better than any 2D Mario game. They all take full advantage of Yoshi's move set and egg mechanics and are also a treat to the eyes since they're usually so flashy looking too. I can really commemorate how creative they got with them. Like one of them has you getting eating by a frog and throwing giant eggs at the frog from within its stomach. There's a boss where you must use the egg water bounce mechanic to defeat it (or you can defeat it by killing it before the fight even begins, and Kamek has his own unique dialogue for doing so, so it's not even an exploit...it's a cheeseable method the developers put in which is hilarious). Just unique bosses all around. Baby Bowser at the end is one of the best final bosses in the series too I'd say. It takes a little getting used to with the whole change in perspective but its badass nonetheless. Also, the ending after that is so very heartfelt and feels good every time, I love it.

One other thing I wanted to mention was the game's OST. It's incredibly hard to dislike it, it's so happy and upbeat a lot of the time. The entire soundtrack is awesome but my two favorite songs are the Athletic Theme and the Underground Theme. They're my most listened to songs in the entire ost, and the underground theme especially is my absolute favorite in the game. That one always spoke to me and it out of any song in the game, gave me that whole weekend feeling I talked about earlier. I really don't know why, but I love it.

I originally had this game at a 9, and even despite my small criticism of the collectables, I can't help but bump this to a 10. I'd say I love Super Mario World slightly more but this is one of my favorite games ever and my 2nd favorite SNES game now. It's amazing, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Go play it.

Super Mario Bros Wonder is an interesting case. After four New Super Mario Bros games and them not being super innovative compared to each other, 2D Mario had become stale. Were they bad games? No, they just didn't do anything special in the slightest. Now after 10+ years since the last NSMB game, we have the next big 2D Mario game, Mario Wonder. Does it do enough different from the NSMB series? Hell yeah it does! Am I totally in love with it and consider it peak 2D Mario like a lot of people have been feeling? Sadly no, it has several issues that really hold it back in my eyes. But it does do a lot right.

The biggest change from NSMB and one of the best aspects of this game is the changed art style. Gone is the very samey art style that was used in all the NSMB games. Now Mario and the gang are expressive as ever and really feel more like their more classic games. There's so many different animations for various moves and interactions with things, it's great. They even brought back Mario's hat moving up and down when he jumps from Mario World. There was clearly a lot of love put into the overall style of the game, definitely a much-needed change, I think.

Another really nice change is just the amount of new stuff they crammed into this game. This game is absolutely filled to the brim with brand new enemies and level gimmicks. There were some returning enemies ofc but like 80% of the enemies in this game were all brand new, and that's just awesome imo. And as for the level gimmicks, they tie into the new wonder flower which basically just throws all kinds of ideas at you. One level you may see singing piranha plants, another one you might see Mario turn into a spiked ball. There's even one where you ride this super cool dragon, man that was cool. The abundance of different ideas, even if they do get reused sometimes, is just very immense.

I also enjoyed the secrets this game had. It's definitely not as expansive as Mario World in that regard but finding the game's secrets were pretty fun. Especially since it unlocked the special world that you can access early on like Mario World, man that was cool. I'd say I enjoyed most of the worlds in this game actually besides World 3 (idk it was just lame) but besides that every world was pretty solid. My favorite world though had to been 4 just because I remember being really impressed with some of the levels there.

Badges were whatever. I didn't really use them most of the time because I felt they made the game easier depending on the badge. The badge levels tho were pretty cool even if a little short.

Alright time for the negatives, why I don't love this game as much as everyone else. One of the biggest issues I had was the difficulty curve. I honestly did not think this game had a good climb in difficulty. I found every world pretty easy for the most part up until the bowser levels, which amped it up a little bit. And then the final badge stage was actually decently tough. I found past games, even the NSMB games to have a much better difficulty curve. Speaking of that final badge stage, while I found that somewhat difficult (even if it did have 3 checkpoints in it, that and the final regular stage in the special world were nowhere near as hard as some of the final stages in some of the more recent Mario games. Found that somewhat disappointing along with the easier difficulty as a whole.

Another thing I didn't like were the lackluster bosses. Reusing Bowser Jr 4 times was just really lame imo. They got so creative with the levels and they end up doing that for the bosses? Man, that's just so much missed potential I think. Speaking of the final Bowser fight, it was alright? It was again easy but also felt uninspired. Like the first thing I thought of when I saw it was the final boss to DKCR. Idk, they could've done much better with it along with the bosses as a whole.

Something else that kinda irked me, while I do like how experimental a lot of the levels can be, a chunk of them just felt like filler. You have your regular levels, your little badge levels which is fine but then you have these break levels that sometimes take literally 5 seconds to beat. I'd much rather play actual full-length levels instead and a lot of the time I just said out loud "what was the point of that". Idk, I never hated any of them, again they just felt more like filler.

I guess one more little thing that annoyed me, and it ties into the easiness of the game, is the fact that when you collect those purple coins worth 10 and then die, you keep it even after dying. Star coins never worked like that in the NSMB games and it makes certain levels that would otherwise be pretty tough to 100%, super easy.

The talking flowers I'm neutral on. They can be kinda funny but they never made me hate them nor like them too much. They're just kind of there and don't disrupt the gameplay really.

Before ending the review tho, I will say after beating the final final badge level, that final badge you get is very awesome. I just love how weird the developers got with this game, that badge reminded me of that one song in We Love Katamari lol. Also the end credits to the game were really cool too.

In the end I did really enjoy this game and it's definitely a step-up from the NSMB games overall. However, it has enough issues imo that hold it back from being really great. I know that's a hot take, I'm not expecting a ton of people to agree with me but I'd take Mario World any day over this game personally. I'd put this game around on par with Mario 3 and 3D World methinks. Also speaking of Mario World, playing this made me wanna replay that so that's what I'm gonna do. Look out for that review next!

7.5/10

After hearing the news that the 3DS/Wii U's online services were shutting down, the first thing that popped in my head was replaying this game's online one last time.

Back in 2015, I remember seeing the trailer for this game and thinking it looked really cool. I never played an online shooter in my life, but this one actually interested me with its colorful art style and interesting concept. The day of release, I ask my dad if he could pick the game up on his way from work and when he came home, not only did he have the game..he had an Inkling Boy amiibo as well. That basically kickstarted my Amiibo addiction around that time but that's a story for another time. Anyways, I ended up enjoying Splatoon a ton. I remember the day after I got it, I had a relatives party to go to and I could only think about playing this game. This game consumed my whole summer, I loved it so much. Playing every Splatfest, seeing every update as they roll out, I was hooked for a couple months. Part of that is because I had no school of course, because once September arrived I didn't play this game nearly as much as before. Still, May-August 2015 was the summer of Splatoon and I'll never forget it.

Anyways, time to actually review the game lol. I think the most striking aspect is just how stylish this game is. From the different outfits you can wear, to the more experimental soundtrack, to the unique art styles that appear in the sunken scrolls. I've seen people compare this game to Jet Set Radio cuz of it's sort of counter culture type attitude and ofc its stylishness and appeal to the younger demographic and I can totally see it. It can be really influential playing this as a young lad, and it certainly worked for me.

Speaking of the music, I've seen some individuals on this site specifically call it bad and I just don't see it. Sure, it's not everyone's cup of tea but the OST is really well done honestly. Splattack! is of course a classic and Ink Me Up brings me right back to participating in Splatfests all day. Those are my two favorites but the whole OST is great. I think Splatoon 2 is great and all and probably the objectively better game, but if there's anything I prefer more in 1, its the soundtrack.

The meat and potatoes of this game however is it's online matches. This game doesn't have as much content or modes as 2 (and god it was pretty barebones at launch I'll admit that) but it's still a ton of fun to play a match or two. I was able to play a couple turf war and ranked matches and they were still fun. I remember raging so hard whenever I would lose on ranked matches, I had issues lol. Still, I wish Urchin Underpass and Saltspray Rig were in future games, I miss em lol. Sadly couldn't play them during this last play session but I remember they were some of my favorites.

I did also replay the campaign, and it's still fun as it was back then. Sure, it's no octo expansion and probably worse than 2's, but I always enjoyed it personally. I don't know if it's weird to say but I kinda get Mario Galaxy vibes from it. Just going from section to section using the launchpads and seeing the really cool backgrounds in each level. Always got that vibe. It does get a bit formulaic having every 5th and 6th level be the same level type, however overall, I really enjoyed the single player. At least you can still play that even with the online off.

This game may have been a bit obsolete in the eyes of a lot of people once 2 and eventually 3 came out. However, 2 I never got into nearly as much so my memories of 1 really outshine it. It's not perfect but this game will always hold a special place in my heart and is one of the first things I think of when the year 2015 is brought up. Rest In Piece Splatoon 1 online and the 3DS/Wii U online in general, I loved you dearly.

When I first booted up Cuphead a few days ago, I was greeted with a brand-new title screen and song. It was for The Delicious Last Course and honestly, I like it a lot more than the new title screen. This was a sign of good things to come with the new DLC and I'm happy to say it's pretty great.

I actually used one of the new weapons a ton in my replay of the base game but crackshot really is amazing. It's basically chaser but better and it was my primary weapon in this DLC alongside charge shot. Converge and Twist-up were the other two new weapons and I wasn't really a fan of either so I barely used them. There were also some new charms that were added as well. Astral cookie let's you play as Ms. Chalice, the ghost that awards you your different supers in the base game. She can be kinda broken since she has 4 health, an invincible role and a dash that parries. I also found it kind of weird to use her so I used Cuphead for the most part. The divine relic is one you need to put a bit of work into. It starts as a broken relic which you can basically activate by defeating this weird secret graveyard boss. Once you do, you can start defeating other bosses to eventually turn it into the divine relic. While you do, all sorts of effects happen like starting at 1 HP, having your normal attack change constantly and having an in-consistent smoke bomb. Once you defeat enough bosses tho, you get the divine relic which can be incredibly OP if you're skilled enough. The changing normal attacks are still a thing, which is why you need to be skilled enough I said, but you get a normal smoke bomb, the axe parry move and you have an ability where you get health on your 1st, 3rd and 6th parry which can be crazy broken. The last charm is basically just that last parry effect on its own and its the one I stuck with throughout the DLC, it can make A and S ranks stupid easy to get.

Speaking of Ms. Chalice again, I did use her a lot in one area of the game. The king's leap is a series of parry challenges and she is super useful with her dash parry. This one one of my favorite parts of the DLC ngl, it was really fun. I even did The Gauntlet which has you doing all of the challenges in a row without a break in between. It wasn't too bad and the executioner was definitely my favorite of the bunch. Also the presentation of the castle and it looking like it's made out of clay was amazing.

Now onto the meat and potatoes once again, the bosses. Yeah, there's only bosses now and no Run and Gun stages. While I do prefer the bosses a bunch, with there only being 6 total this DLC just flies by and is one of my biggest criticisms tbh. Idk, I just wish this was a little longer because what's here is great, you can just beat it in no time is the problem. Anyways onto the bosses. It has some of the best bosses in the entire game and some alright ones. The Howling Aces was easily my least favorite when I first played and that was all because of the last phase where the screen rotates. It felt cheap at the time and I really did not like it but now after S ranking it (yes this is the one and only S rank I got funnily enough) if you turn your head and understand that the dog bowl color lets you know what they will do, it's not that bad. I'm still not the biggest fan of it tho. Esther Winchester was the only flying stage and I thought it was okay. I just found some of the later stages really annoying but again funnily enough, it was another one I was able to expert in the end. Mortimer Freeze and Glumstone the Giant I don't really have much to say besides they were both pretty good. I didn't expert either, Mortimer especially is a pain in the ass on expert. Chef Saltbaker was definitely one of the best in the game even though his fight can be a real bullet hell at times. The spectacle of it really did it for me and he was another one I didn't expert. I saved the best for last and while the fight is fun, the presentation alone made this my favorite. Moonshine Mob was easily my favorite fight just because it was so creative. It's a mob of bugs that all play a part in the fight. First off the announcer was different this time and it was one of the members of the mob which was great. The spider and the light bug were both fun and very expressive. The music is also sung by the light bug which is a nice touch. Then near the end of the fight, we find out the head of the mob was actually the announcer from the beginning..the snail. He's teaming up with an anteater which is so brilliant because you know he uses the anteater to scare or even kill other bugs. Then when you defeat the anteater there's a fucking fake knock out screen that can actually trip you up since I thought it was just a quirky little change up like the initial announcer was but the fact it's a fake out from the snail, it was the cherry on top of the already incredible presentation in this fight. Like I said, easily the best in this DLC and may even be the best in the game. This was another fight I was able to expert as well.

I got all trophies which only required me to S rank one boss so I didn't expert everything like I said. I just don't find expert mode too fun so I don't think it's a huge deal. Either way, great DLC overall. I think I do like the base game more just because this DLC was really short and I didn't love every boss here, but what was good was really damn good so I definitely recommend every Cuphead fan plays it.

Okay I swear my next review will be Chrono Trigger. I keep putting it off and I really got to get back to it 😭

So after playing Mario Wonder and generally enjoying it, I wanted to replay my favorite 2D Mario. I wanted to see if it was total nostalgia that was keeping me from not liking Mario Wonder as much as this and well maybe it still is? Either way, as I did with my other playthroughs, I had an absolute blast playing this and still consider it peak 2D Mario and one of my favorite platformers ever.

I think the main reason I really love it, is there's just so many secrets to find. There's 96 different exits in this game and like at least a third or more are secret exits. They're everywhere and they're really fun to find. Some of them can be quite tricky for newcomers, tho I've played this game so much that I know where everything is. Finding a secret exit in a normal level and then finding a secret exit in that secret level you just unlocked, man it's just so cool. Every single time I start a new playthrough, I always go to the star world really early, it's super fun.

I also love just how weird and wacky this game is, a lot of the stages can feel very dream like with how out there they are. In general the level design is very fresh and there's new ideas thrown out you even until the very end of the game. The game is also chock full of brand new enemies, even ones exclusive to this game that never returned to future titles.

The general gameplay is more slippery than Mario 3 and while some players may dislike this change, I enjoy it. It takes a little getting used to it at first but once it clicks, it feels great. It's more skill based but also never frustrating at least for me. I also think the game as a whole is never super frustrating (well maybe some of those special stages lol) but also never a walk in the park. I think this game has a perfect difficulty curve, it can get a bit challenging in certain levels near the middle and end. Though you could also easily get 99 1-UPs from that one level with the immense amount of Koopas lole.

I really love the OST, it's very simplistic with how it's just different renditions of the same song for most of it but it really works. I absolutely adore the end credits theme too. Another awesome thing this game did was give Mario a lot of personality. Whether it's his hat bobbing up and down when he jumps, to those really wacky cutscenes that play when you beat a castle, this game is full of personality.

Even though I've played this game many times, I still have trouble with it at certain points. I had a really rough time trying to get the secret exit for Cheese Bridge Yoshi-less, and then some of the special stages (specifically Tubular and Mondo) always give me a hard time. Some castle levels also trip me up sometimes too, I don't think this game is super easy like I've heard some people say idk.

So in the end, yeah it may just be nostalgia talking but I truly think this game is peak and definitely peak Mario, at least for me. I love this game so much man.

Well fuck. I'm not surprised that I liked Venba, but I am surprised I liked it this much.

It does feel a bit strange that it took this long for me to find a narrative-based cooking game; most of the cooking video games I've seen are either arcade-scoring style minigame collections (your Cooking Mamas), restaurant management titles like Cook, Serve, Delicious!, or sandboxes that felt so simple and structureless that they basically turned into meme simulators for me past the five minute mark. Conversely, Venba more closely resembles what I expect of my idealized cooking game: it emphasizes the puzzle-like qualities of cooking via mastering techniques at the right time (something that no other game I'm aware of has really capitalized upon) while also using cooking as a narrative vessel to impart past memories of learning/executing recipes and thoroughly exploring culture via the medium of the culinary arts. Granted, Venba's puzzles are easy enough to navigate but still aren't free, and that does wonders in aiding its lean towards storytelling: without spoiling too much, entire sections of recipes are often missing, and thus part of the fun is filling out the gaps as the player to "correct" the dishes. You won't get penalized unlike a restaurant sim though, and that's the fun of cooking! Sometimes, you just want to experiment a little and try out new techniques, and if you mess up, that's just kitchen learning in a nutshell.

What I wasn't expecting though, was just how deeply I resonated with the narrative. My immediate family and I are immigrants, and quite frankly, I've inquired a little here and there about what they've sacrificed to move to the US, but I clearly haven't asked enough. While I've never genuinely felt ashamed of my own culture, I've absolutely felt the pressure to "fit in" and in many cases, felt a bit of the old embarrassment rise up again from playing this game due to how disconnected I've often felt from my old home city versus having now lived in the states for a while. English isn't my first language, but it may as well have been now given my difficulties writing and sometimes speaking my old language, and losing my grasp of all these things that were once more familiar to me has always been a sore point in my life. This game is a reminder to me that even if I may have grown up in an entirely different world than my parents, they're still my family at the end of the day regardless of cultural differences and it's still my past; I might have had years slip by where I chose to remain intentionally apathetic to parts of my family's heritage, but that doesn't mean that I can't start catching up now to try and make up for lost ground.

The game is only about an hour long with just six recipes included (and a couple near the end are a bit too guided), but I'm willing to overlook its brevity because this experience is going to sit with me for a while: it almost feels like it was written for me at times. Definitely one of the best surprises to come out this year. Thank you for the meal, Venba. Think I'm gonna go call my parents now and tell them how much I've missed them.

While in the middle of my Cult of the Lamb playthrough, my power went out for 4 hours. In that time, I had nothing to do except go on my phone but eventually it died. I remembered my 3DS was fully charged and so I decided to look through my DS/3DS games to see if I can be productive and replay something I hadn't in a while. Decided on the original New Super Mario Bros, since I hadn't played the series in years. After playing through the first world, my power came back on not long after. Decided to continue replaying this even with the power back on so here we are.

The New Super Mario Bros games were not games I ever truly loved. Yes, by the time 2 and U came out, the series became super stale. But even with DS and Wii, I never found them amazing at all. Replaying DS, this seems to still be true for me. In fact, this may be my least favorite of the bunch, at least next to 2 for several different reasons. Even despite that however, it's still a fun time overall and worth coming back to for a certain addition I'll talk about later.

First thing you'll notice when playing the game, would be its graphics. Personally, I always thought the NSMB games had a fine enough artstyle tho I much prefer how the sprite-based games looked in the past. DS though is sadly the ugliest in the series now. It was certainly a marvel back then but nowadays, just looks kinda ugly a lot of the time compared to the other titles.

Level design-wise, the game has plenty of levels that actually are pretty memorable. The sewers level, the giant wiggler level, the pipe maze level, the fucking brutal 8-1 level with the birds. I wish more of the levels were memorable like these, since a large chunk can be forgettable but I was surprised just how many I ended up remembering. This game also added the star coin collectable and honestly, they can be a tremendous pain in this game. They don't hide them behind invisible walls like future game but some of them require a powerup from other levels or toad houses and it can be frustrating. Same with the secret exits (which came back from Mario World). Like a third of those require the aforementioned outside powerup and they're a pain. I do recommend going for 100% tho cuz once you beat the game, you can actually buy bottom screen skins with any star coins you have and I never knew this and it's awesome. Such a great reward for going out of your way to get them.

One more aspect of the gameplay I wanted to get into were the powerups. 80% of the game you'll be seeing the fire flower which is a good powerup of course. The other 20%, you'll see the three new ones (and the classic star I guess) and I gotta say they're not that great. The mega mushroom is a great concept and is fun to use but is barely in any levels naturally. The mini mushroom is also not used that much and I honestly never liked much just because it's so floaty. And the shell is just obnoxious since you start moving on your own the moment you hit top speed and you have to manually stop to get out of your shell. I'm sure it's super fun when speed running but alas, it just annoyed me more than anything. This is another thing I think future games did better, especially WIi, that one has a great selection of powerups.

I really don't have much to say about the soundtrack. It's alright at best I think and it doesn't help the 1-1 theme gets reused in Wii. I did actually like the map theme for world 7 though, something about that feels so nostalgic. This game is somewhat nostalgic to me since I remember seeing a classmate play this on field trip bus ride when I was 8 and thinking it looked so cool. Never ended up playing the main campaign until after I played the other 3 NSMB games but my memory of that bus ride is engrained in my memory, and part of me thinks that classmate was on world 7 that day which might explain why the song feels so nostalgic. Either way, besides that one song I really like, never cared for the game's ost sadly.

This is all fine and dandy, but the real reason I think someone should come back to this one is its multiplayer modes. Minigames are a blast to play, even if most of them are ported straight from 64 DS, but there are a couple new ones which is nice. I probably played these more than the actual game back in the day. The Mario vs Luigi mode was also a lot of fun back in the day too. The goal was to get the most stars and you could steal them from the opposite Mario brother. Was just really fun constantly screwing the other person over. Though I guess since (most of) the minigames are in 64 DS and future games had multiplayer in it's campaigns, these aren't amazing reasons to come back to NSMB DS specifically, but it's still a nice little package of multiplayer goodness overall.

Like I said, was never a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, and while this still rings true...I'd say this was still a fun time overall. Would be fun to replay them all but I'd have to spread them out considering how samey they are lol.

The only roguelite I ever got into majorly was the Binding of Isaac. I played Hades and Returnal but while I thought those were fun, I never played them for too long unlike Isaac (I should get back to them though). Cult of the Lamb however is now the 2nd roguelite I've ever beaten a run of. Did I like it? Yeah I enjoyed myself but compared to something like the Binding of Isaac, this game's lacking a bit.

The first thing you'll notice about this game is it's not just a roguelite. It's also a management simulation type game. Basically, the times you won't be playing through the roguelite sections, you'll be working with your cult on a day to day basis. You have to make sure they're fed, make sure they have beds to sleep on, make sure to clean their literal shit as well as making them do tasks like harvesting crops or mining rocks and stuff. Also, since you're the leader of a cult, you can also perform rituals and sermons daily. At first I found this really refreshing and a nice break from the roguelite sections. Well, I'd say its the other way around as you'll be in this mode a lot more than the roguelite sections. While this part of the game is fun, it never gets super fleshed out at all and becomes a bit tiring in the endgame, at least for me. I will say, this part of the game did kinda freak me out with the depictions of cult behavior. Idk why honestly since I don't get freaked out by stuff like this usually but after a bit I got used to it.

In between these simulator parts are the roguelite sections. Compared to something like Isaac, these are not fleshed out at all. They're fun but in terms of content, there's not much here. You have a small assortment of weapons to choose from. They can have passive abilities but each type plays the exact same each time. You have a regular attack, then a strong attack which uses fervor as well as specials you can collect that also use fervor. Fervor is basically just like SP you can collect from enemies to perform these moves. You don't have much in terms of a move set and it pales in comparison to Isaac's many synergies. You can also get tarot cards and relics which both provide other upgrades or abilities but there aren't many of those either and I kept getting the same ones a lot of the time. The bosses are pretty fun I will say and while I didn't find this game hard really, some of the later bosses can be tricky. In the early game, I was having a blast with the simulator section and less fun with the roguelite section, but in the endgame, it was the opposite except the roguelite section was just fun rather than a blast.

I will say, probably the aspect that holds up the best is the art style. Despite some of the disturbing stuff you can do in this game, it never is that bad (despite me being creeped out at first) because of how cutesy everything looks. In general, it's just a really nice art style and everything looks really good, as long as it doesn't glitch out on you.

Yeah uh, I saw some people mentioning glitches and while they never bothered me, it is worth mentioning. I played the PS5 version and every time the start of a new day happened; the game would literally freeze for 5 seconds each time. You get used to it but the first time it happened I thought the game crashed lol. I also had an issue where followers would glitch out and work on something like a block or two away from where it should be so it looks like they're working on nothing which is distracting. Also had a glitch at the very end of the game where the floor texture would go from looking normal to being reflective like water. Idk if all this is just in the PS5 version but it all happened throughout my game and it's worth mentioning.

Overall, I enjoyed myself, but I wish a lot of the game was more fleshed out. The simulator and roguelite sections are fun but because they're trying to balance the two, neither feels super rewarding in the end. The fun concept, cute art style and really fun early game is what made me enjoy this game in the end. Just wish it was better overall. Also didn't bother with the platinum despite it seeming easy enough. Looks like it requires way more playtime than I'm up for lol.

I’ll confess: I’ve never beaten a single Zelda game in my life. Sure, I grew up a Nintendo kid playing almost nothing but Mario and Pokemon, but for some reason I never really felt enticed to give Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed series a serious shot. I’ve tried out the opening hours of Wind Waker (something that I desperately need to finish one of these days) and have played plenty of scattered hours of Ocarina of Time at a friend’s house, and yet it wasn’t enough considering the series has eluded me until now. So, it felt like a solid challenge to cap off 2023, given my recent run with time loop adventure games… and that poyfuh recommended the game to me over a year ago. It took a while to muster up the commitment, but I finally got there! Feel free to take my readings here with a grain of salt given my lack of nostalgia for Zelda, but hopefully I can bring something different to the table by focusing on what impact it had upon a relative newcomer.

For lack of better words, The Legend of Zelda is an adventure game series. Maybe the adventure game series. Quite a few good friends and users I closely follow have commented about how Zelda is really a mish-mosh of different genres, which in essence forms the adventure game. Innuendo Studios has defined this as “games that tell stories using puzzles,” though this is a very loose definition as both narratives and puzzles take many different forms. Essentially, the genre has become a blanket term that has come to incorporate many different types of games. Zelda, as the platonic encapsulation of adventure games, has as a result, come to include many different types of genre-specific gameplay in one cohesive product. To sum this up, here’s a bit that I’ve jokingly brought up with friends: every game is basically Zelda, because Zelda is basically every game.

What I’m trying to say here, is that Majora’s Mask, much like the rest of Zelda, is not so much about any one single game mechanic so much as the coalescence of them all. No one particular element is going to stand out as exceptional because many games before and after have surpassed them, but the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Much like how a classic adventure game is a fusion of different game mechanics, Majora’s Mask focuses on the intersection of different narratives and activities to evoke “the adventurer’s spirit.” It’s very easy to be critical of specific mechanics and ideas presented within the game in isolation (and I absolutely will be due to my point of reference), but they nevertheless come together to create a game unlike any other.

I suppose the easiest way to explain the premise of Majora’s Mask is to describe it as a cross between a metroidvania (item/ability gating) and a mystroidvania (knowledge gating). The time loop facilitates both of these aspects: as Link repeats the three-day cycle to gather information regarding Termina’s workings, he also gains new key items (both classic Zelda tools like the Hookshot and masks to wear/transform), learns new songs for his ocarina, and gains access to new areas and allies that can further aid his progress. The pressing issue then, is that Majora’s Mask doesn’t fully lean into the strengths of either genre.

Majora’s Mask feels underwhelming when compared to traditional metroidvanias, because key items feel underutilized. Much of this is due to the lock-and-key nature of the puzzles. Classic Zelda games focused on items with multiple facets via both dealing damage in fights and traversal/exploration: one classic example is the hookshot, which can let Link grapple up towards wooden surfaces/chests while also acting as a ranged weapon capable of pulling items and enemies towards him. However, Majora’s Mask focuses on the collection of masks as the vast majority of key items, and most are used for one exact situation (i.e. Don Gero’s mask lets you talk to frogs) and nothing else. Additionally, the masks aren’t very balanced in terms of utility, as some masks are useless once obtained (i.e. the Troupe Leader’s mask) while some are so conventionally strong that you’ll be constantly relying upon them (i.e. the Bunny Hood increases Link’s running speed and agility, so it’s a godsend for general traversal and boss fights).

On the other hand, Majora’s Mask also feels a little lacking as a mystroidvania, because there’s relatively little observation involved when compared to similar titles. The Bomber’s Notebook is your main tool is your main tool to keep track of everyone’s schedules across the three-day time loop, but it’s a bit limited in scope. There’s only twenty inhabitants recorded with schedules, and of those twenty, at least a fourth of them can be stamped as resolved by simply speaking to them once at the right time with the right item/mask. In fact, there’s only two side-questlines that force Link to commit to strict and specific time limits across the three-day cycle (Kafei and the main Romani Ranch quest). As a result, completing the Bomber’s Notebook is surprisingly straightforward, and usually doesn’t require more than one iteration of the time loop to follow and solve each case, given that Link has the appropriate items on hand when necessary.

That's not to say that the time loop is a net negative in the scope of Majora’s Mask, but rather that in comparison to other time loop games since then, it doesn’t capitalize as much in its execution. For example, there is very little usage of the time loop in regards to its four main dungeons. As Scamsley has pointed out, the presence of a time loop should lend naturally to speedrunning (via both knowledge gating to clear the dungeon faster with skips and ability-gating to use obtained items for shortcuts), but this is more or less made redundant by beating the dungeon’s boss, as the game is content giving you a direct teleport to refight dungeon bosses in subsequent resets instead. Additionally, almost all of the time-sensitive content is located within Clock Town; while it’s quite satisfying figuring out how schedules play out in the main hub, it feels like a squandered opportunity to not include enough specifically timed events elsewhere to fully utilize the three-day cycle. The presence of owl statues throughout the map sort of speaks to this; rather than have the player spend time traversing on foot and potentially stumble upon other time sensitive events, the developers would prefer for players to jump to whatever destinations they had in mind as to avoid wasting time in areas where these time-sensitive quests didn’t exist.

On top of all of this is a general clunkiness that exists between many of the game’s various systems. There’s just enough quality-of-life to where the game feels thoughtful for its time, but also plenty of wasted time here and there that made me wonder if the developers could have gone a little further. The sheer number of key items in the menu is a huge culprit; with only three key item slots accessible at any time (and the ocarina/three transformation masks constantly taking up slots), the player is constantly roaming through the four menu screens to select the appropriate item for each situation, and it’s made worse because most items are used once and then immediately replaced as a stream of inventory puzzles. There’s also a ton of downtime from having to watch the same cutscenes over and over even if you’ve seen them in previous loops, and from being subjected to the same non-skippable Song of Soaring animation every time you teleport to an owl statue. At the very least, you can skip the mask transformations once viewed for the first time. Parsing through the three-day cycle can also be a bit annoying; the Song of Double Time does at least let you skip a full twelve hours ahead to the start of each day/night cycle, but oftentimes the timed events in question begin at midnight or midday, meaning that you’ll have to wait around for a few in-game hours since the Song of Double Time plants you at 6 AM/PM. Finally, I think it’s an interesting idea resetting the player’s rupee and general ammo count (i.e. bombs, arrows, Deku Nuts, etc) with each new loop while allowing the player to farm pre-existing Rupee chests that have been opened in previous cycles. However, while there is a bank that allows the player to store Rupees between loops, there’s no item storage facility to stockpile ammo between loops, meaning that the player will likely spend a few minutes at the start of each loop whacking bushes and enemies for basic resources (or at least eat into the player’s account to buy supplies at shops, if they don’t spend time farming chests for the Rupees instead).

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when trying to judge Majora’s Mask against today’s standards of what we consider a “good” adventure game. I do have other scattered complaints, such as boss fights being generally underwhelming (I might have legitimately spent more time fighting dungeon mini-bosses than the four main masked bosses themselves), certain tedious side-games like the RNG-heavy Dampé grave digging or the Goron race with rubber-banding AI, a few overused mini-bosses such as having to fight Wizzrobe six different times, and how outside of the Stone Temple, mask abilities are never satisfyingly blended together in puzzles/quests. The cherry on top of all this is the presence of the Stone Mask, which I’d say is a bit too good since it lets you completely ignore most dungeon enemies. That in itself made me question the quality of that one forced stealth section in Great Bay; if the optimal solution is to wear a mask which lets you outright ignore the entire system, then should it even exist? Even from the perspective of someone who’s never cleared a Zelda game before, I find myself nodding in agreement when others claim that Majora’s Mask shows its age a bit more than Ocarina of Time.

But that’s not really why we play Zelda games, right? Despite the clunkiness of some mechanics and the many areas of potential improvement, many of us are willing to sit through and accept these flaws because the general experience is the selling point. The obvious argument to be made is that while plenty of MM’s mechanics feel undercooked, the actual mechanism of gameplay is constantly shifting about to suit the specific context. In a sense, Majora’s Mask can be viewed as an antecedent to the modern possession game: the basic control scheme remains the same regardless of the mask worn, but the functionality of the basic control scheme differs. This allows the game to stick to a grounded and consistent formula even though Link’s toolkit is constantly evolving on the fly, and while there are occasional moments of jank from certain side-games, most are over in a flash and still contribute positively towards the final goal of gaining enough knowledge and utility to prevent the impending crisis.

Essentially, many of the previously mentioned shortcomings end up inverting in on themselves. While Majora’s Mask has plenty of rough edges due to its rushed development and heavy re-use of assets, it’s these rough edges that lend so much towards its personality. I love how absolutely absurd and deranged the writing becomes, and the adventure game structure lets Majora’s Mask take complete advantage of the situation. One minute you’re tracking down a circus performer so he can spill his life story about joining an animal troupe since humans are also animals, then the next minute you’re fending off these zombie lantern alien ghosts with searchlight eyes so they don’t kidnap your new friend and her cows before the sun rises. The seeming lack of focus with the constant barrage of minigames and side-quests keeps the player constantly guessing what the next twist of events will bring, and the game is more than happy to ask rather than answer questions.

The backing time loop connecting all of these events together is really what drives the message home. Even though it’s absolutely tedious having to watch the same cutscenes over and over again, nothing illustrates the plight of Termina more starkly than forcing players to endlessly relive the day’s events and realizing that they are the only chance this world stands at reaching a new timeline. The ending credits bring such a gratifying emotional rush because the game deliberately withholds any semblance of permanent catharsis until you finally break through. You can’t help everyone in a single time loop, and they will never be free of their troubles until the moon stops falling. Until then, they’ll be hopelessly repeating the same tasks three days at a time, waiting for the dawn of a new day that will never come.

At the end of the day, I could keep finding things to nitpick about Majora’s Mask, but I also can’t imagine the game without these shortcomings since they form an integral part of the game’s identity. The masks might be glorified gimmicks, but they’re fantastic symbolism that are forever carried with you upon your journey even as time is constantly erased, and ultimately strengthen the adventure game aspect by assigning you new tasks to peruse. The time loop might not be fully utilized outside of Clock Town and contain extended gaps of waiting to get to important events, but it’s the forced repetition of the three-day cycle’s events that enforces the gravity of the situation upon the player. Individual characters aside from Skull Kid might not have the fleshed-out backgrounds that I had hoped for, but it’s a non-issue when Majora’s Mask is ultimately the story of Termina itself, formed from the intersecting schedules of all the different characters and elements at play. Separately, I think all of these elements are easily picked apart, but meshed together, they contribute to this pervasive nightmare of abject misery where even in the face of imminent death, fleeting moments of joy and comfort are enough to humanize the fantastical elements of Termina and keep the player moving forward towards a better future.

The story of and surrounding Majora’s Mask fascinates me, especially when learning that director Eiji Aonuma has since expressed regrets regarding its development. I and many others, however, see nothing to be ashamed of with their final product. If anything, Majora’s Mask is classic Nintendo at its core: instead of making a product that was visibly better than its competition, the developers took a chance and sought out to make something that was visibly different. The Wii is often cited as the most prevalent example of this “blue ocean strategy," though I firmly believe that Majora’s Mask was Nintendo’s first notable crack at it. Having to follow-up a game considered by many as the greatest of all time with an even shorter development period was a daunting ask, but as far I’m concerned, they absolutely succeeded. It doesn’t matter that other time loop adventure games have since outclassed their grandfather; there’s simply nothing like Majora’s Mask, and I doubt there ever will be.