DeemonAndGames
A dude that loves games and sometimes plays them.
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GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
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THE ROOMBA!!
Playing this just after beating and trying out what Seal the Deal had to offer gives the biggest whiplash imaginable, and not just because the reasons you may be thinking of; yes, opinions on Seal the Deal are widly mixed and Nyakuza Metro seems to be regarded as amazing pretty consistently, but those matters are still subjective all things considered, and I won’t ignore the many fans the former DLC has.
No, what I mean is that after playing such an expansion so focused on fixed objectives and more concised tasks, jumping onto the trains of Nyakuza Metro is like playing a completely different game, and a pretty rad one at that.
Alpine Peaks had already experimented with the idea of Free Roam, and if you read my review on the original game, you’ll know that I really, really love that area A TON, so one of the DLCs exploring that idea again was pretty exciting, but even tho both chapters are open in nature, the metro couldn’t be more different, and I mean that in every sense of the world.
These cat-infested tunnels feel… alive, moreso than any of the previous chapters ever did. Both chapters 1 and 4 introduced more open areas with defined sections you could access at any moment or order, but neither the world itself nor the characters and enemies that inhabit could escape that feeling of ‘’playground’’, of existing simply for you to have cool stuff to jump and dive over. Admittedly, Alpine Peaks (my beloved) came the closes to breaking this with its amazing sense of scale and design, but it still felt a bit gamified, like this was still a place that existed first and foremost to have platforming challenges, which is the objective of any platformer don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t fully succeed in making you forget that, which seemed to be what it was going for.
Nyakuza Metro doesn’t fail, and in fact, it goes above and beyond everything I could have ever expected. The neon lights of the underground are striking from the very first moment you arrive, and if it wasn’t made clear by the far more fluent animations of the Empress and her goons, then everything else will make you realize just how insane of an upgrade everything has received. Food stands and restaurants and every corner, groups of cats gathering together and having conversations you can overhear through out the chaos and movement, trains carried by the tails of huge cats and light the way with their eyes, vacuum cleaners that mix the bouncing platforms and paint mechanic from previous chapters to amazing results, the many side paths or stops you can take and the huge amount of new cosmetics and badges you can purchase… it gives the the metro a feeling of sense and place, one that allows it to feel like a natural space that is, in all honestly, pretty impressive with how pretty and creative it can get, both with new ideas and previous ones.
It makes you feel like a mouse in a crowded kitchen, somewhere you shouldn’t be, yet you manage to find a path. As you hear cats complaining about the complications of the metro system and how hard is to get around, you find unconventional ways that lead you to unexpected paths, it doesn’t feel like someone planned an obstacle course for you to get through, it feels like you are going against the tides and making progress in probably not-so-legal ways. For a platformer to accomplish this while also giving you actually fun challenges is a monumental task, but here they make it look so easy; I never thought running through railways and jumping over electric flyers could be so fun, and yet, here we are! And even in the moments where it feels more like a usual platforming venture, it never feels that striking visual look and it always does something intelligent of fun with its gameplay, like putting the time-stopping hat to much better use than the base game ever did or sections like the electricity ball gauntlet.
It's honestly impressive how well it’s pulled off, how such a cool idea is realized while almost never losing the fun factor… and its exactly why it saddens me a bit that they didn’t go harder with it or explored areas of its potential it clearly had. The metro is divided into colored sections, each with barriers you can unlock by buying the respective ticket and with its time pieces, which an amazing way to go about it… but the fundamental way the time pieces work clashes with the ‘’you gotta open the metro for yourself!’’ idea. Sure, you may grab the ticket before the second or main time piece and that may make getting to the next a liiittle easier, but usually, but the time you get it… there won’t be much left to do in the area, and that goes for every single section. Sure, you can get the stickers and buy badges, and while is fun to grab those little extras, they are a side thing that don’t really impact thing much, and you’ll need money (and probably also farm it, which you know… not fun) for the badges either way, so opening the metro partially or even completely doesn’t make the actual main objective any more satisfying, and in fact you’ll probably won’t interact with it much, which is a huge bummer, ‘cause if they made you to not teleport every time you get a time piece on this one or at least near the entrance of the color area you are on, it would go a long way into actually using the connected nature of the metro, because how it is right now, it isn’t that far off with how Chapter 4 handled it, which worked really well there… but not so much here.
How things are right now, they would have felt much more justifiable if the story played a bigger role this time, but saldy, we only get snippets. The Empress is one of the coolest chapter ‘’villains’’ in the whole game, and the idea of the nyakuza as a whole is super cool, but sadly, aside of the initial presentation and one unique cinematic halfway, you always get a the same cinematic of the goons taking your piece and the Empress saying a new bit of dialogue, and honestly, considering how every single corner of the metro is filled with detail, even the random posters, the fact they main bads/allies don’t have much to say or do until the last mission is a huge bummer, and it double sucks, ‘cause that final mission is amazing!
It does what Chapter 4 and 6 tried to pulled off, except WAYYY better and WAYYY more enjoyable and fun, having one last run through the metro, dodging everything and everyone after the Empress outs a bounty for you is the coolest finale possible and the best possible built up for the final battle, a final battle that…. Doesn’t exist. Yeah, while I talked negatively about the last mission of Alpine Peak and Artic Cruise, them not having a final boss made complete sense, but this time the fact a final confrontation is also mission is the biggest hungover of the chapter. You could say the whole finale is the final boss, and I can kinda see it as that, but the whole time things seemed to be leading up to a fight that just didn’t happen, and it ultimately makes the very ending of the DLC pretty anticlimactic… tho maybe at that point, I’m just lamenting that this could have been greater than it already is.
Nyakuza Metro is an amazing final DLC, most of its problems residing in things carried over from the base game or just small, missed opportunities here and there, but ultimately, it’s a success, and nothing will take that away. Its time rift is a perfect example of it: it isn’t hard, especially when compared to the one from the last chapter, but its’ creative, it feels natural, it’s fun, just like the rest of the package, and when viewing it alone, it’s an incredible platforming experience, and probably the best chapter in the whole game.
The Nyakuza are so cool, I wish cats were real…
Despite the mixed to negative opinions I had heard, I really wanted to enjoy Seal the Deal, and specially everything that has to do with the newly introduced chapter. Cruises as an idea don’t get explored much in games for how fun they can actually be as a setting; call me a sucker for big-ass boats but what can I say, I do really like the idea of playing through big pools, giant malls, dining rooms and decks all in one place, that and some holiday vibes and you hit jackpot!
Through purely visual lenses, ‘’Artic Cruise’’ does succeed in that department; the vibes here are INMACULATE, nailing what a cruise should be and making it feel actually interconnected and pretty natural all things considered, and of course it’s really fun to see new faces and old friends and foes all together somewhere that isn’t the finale, and there are some funny as all hell interactions, especially with the Conductor and the Alpine Peaks inhabitants, and don’t even get me started with the seals that give the DLC half of its name. They can get a bit annoyingly cute at times, but they have some pretty nice and cute jokes to offer and bounce off Walrus Captain hilariously, I honestly wish he had a more dialogue through coms or at least more presence, ‘cause chatting with that grumpy seadog and seeing him react to his crew’s mess what a highlight of the entire thing.
Part of me wonders if that should have been the main focus of the main chapter, a big open level like Alpine Peaks, more focused on light exploration with some challenges limited to each of the cruise’s areas, or on the contrary, a more linear experience like Chapter 2 where you traverse the ship little by little; I’m not saying those ideas are the only ones that could have been done ore are ‘’definitive’’… but are certainly more focused than whatever we ended up getting.
What we have here are two different versions or what are basically fetch quests, and the other basically a mix of that with the last mission in Chapter 4… I do not like the last mission in chapter 4, and here they even re-used the same music and everything! I don’t think going around doing busy work or picking up stuff three different times was a particularly great idea in the first place, but it’s not like they did anything interesting with it: you just go around, picking up plates, broken shards or seals and bringing them to another place, and the only enjoyment that comes of from is the fun that comes from exploring the ship, one that rapidly fades when you noticed just how annoying it is to go through certain section different times or how the camera can get even more terrible than it did in the standalone game. The last mission is probably the most interesting since it changes things up the most layout wise, but it still doesn’t save it from being a backtracking fest or just simply uninteresting, and it just feels like an sped up finale for what it’s the shortest chapter in the game.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a chapter with only three missions (five if you count the other two extra time rift challenges, which are the most difficult in the game so far but still a bit underwhelming), but when in the base game you have 6 act chapters where you do something different in each, here having only three where you repeat the same dance in all of them feels… weird, not even lazy or dumb, just… really weird, and despite its brevity, it gets stale REAL quick.
When it comes to the Snatcher side of things, things get marginally better; it’s effectively remixed versions of past acts, and there are A TON of them, and they offer some cool rewards here and there, but it’s still pre-existing content with not that much changed, and unless you are a die hard fun of the game, I can’ imagine most people will get much out of it. Not a bad mode at all, it uses Snatcher in interesting ways and some of the extra challenges I got to play were really fun, but it’s still highly dependent on content that as already there and was already pretty good, but I needed to get a bit crazier or original to be something incredibly remarkable… new songs and the N64 costume are amazing tho.
Seal the Deal feels more like the cut content that didn’t make it into the full release being put out as it was left, which pains me to say ‘cause I don’t wanna ignore the effort that clearly went into it and the fun that can be found in some of its parts, but overall, I just get the sense of a huge missed opportunity, one that can’t get carried by contract making devils or funny lil’ sea mammals…
Tour de Pizza fucking COOKED.
It's almost heartwarming to see this realized: I still remember those first Pizza Tower demos on Twitter and Youtube and the Noise always being in the forefront, either as a boss of major part or them or an outright playable character. As we all know, in the final game he’s World 3’s final boss, not even the main antagonist of the game, tho that didn’t stop this psychotic gremlin from being charming as hell… but nah, I really wanted the fucker to be playable, and more than a year later, he’s here, to the dismay of all Italians.
I would have still felt satisfied if Noise felt less interesting or exciting to play as than Peppino, ‘cause I mean, it’s goddam Peppinno, but no, they just HAD to go all out and make a banger move set. I still don’t really know which of the two is my favorite, but that’s just a testIment of how fucking fun Noise is and how it accomplished what it’s going for: to make you feel that you aren’t playing as an overstressed cook, but as a goddam ANIMAL.
If Pepinno was the ‘’fight or flight’’ concept personified, then Noise is just the FIGHT, he cheats the game’s puzzles how many times necessary, he super jumps whenever he wants, he doesn’t need of Gustavo and Brick to save him, he’s got himself! Literally! Like there’s another one of him just becauseWHAT THE HELL IS THIS CHARACTER. And I mean, they gave him the sausage gatling, so at this point I’m pretty confident saying the game is finally whole, this is it chief, happiness has been found.
It taps once again into that sheer adrenaline burst that the first playthrough perfect, but in a completely unhinged way. Once you learn how everything about this mad lad works, everything clicks, the levels break open and the amount of tricks you’ll be performing are second nature: skate wall jumps, tornado spins into dives into jumps into more tornado spins, pizza crushers that demolish everything without much of a sweat and using it is super easy, and that’s not even mentioning how ALL extra mechanics, like the ghost transformation or the rocket, are completely changed to fit this rat brain’s way of acting, and it’s exciting to learn and glorious to master. They somehow found a way to make WAR harder yet more fun. HOW.
One would think that, since it isn’t a boss anymore, part of Noise’s completely unhinched persona would be lost in translation to playability, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. Some levels even change lay-outs to fit him better and be more fun, but at this point I think it was the Noise himself that changed the before entering to make his life easier. His animations, how all title cards just have different drawings of his face on top of the characters, his ‘’no thoughts’’ face each time he fights a boss and how he can DEMOLISH them with the bombs (whoever thought of that should get a raise, they are so fun to use), some new songs that I'm 99% sure are just the sounds that play inside of Noise's head, it’s INSANE, as it should and then some.
It's Pizza Tower, it obviously was gonna be insane and good, but this is next level from what I was expecting, and I’m so happy it’s here. Noise Mouse is real bois, just that justifies completely another playthrough of this game, having bomb combos and level variations is the cherry on top…
Still, huge missed opportunity to not have Noisette or any other bosses playable in the Gustavo and Brick sections, like yeah, more Noise is fun, but I just think that- Oh dear, no I didn’t mean to- OH GOD THERE ARE 100 NOISES SURROUNDING MY HOME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-