If you thought that the hidden-cat-like games were thriving this year, wait until you see how the introspective-cooking genre did this year; we got a ton of them and the ones I played were bangers!... Sure, I might just have played two, but still!

There's a sweetness to Venba that feels distant and incredibly familiar both at the same time: the elements that comprise its story aren’t anything new, these beats and themes have been seen time and time again in a myriad of ways, but what makes this little tale so special is how it uses all off them to create something unique, so deeply personal, like a delicious meal which contains ingredients time and time again, but prepared in such a way it forms its own special flavor… or like tasting food that now only persists in your childhood memories.

I’m completely alien to Tamil culture, a statement which I sadly could repeat when talking about many others, and I was raised in the land my family and ancestors were born, and yet nothing is lost on me; far more capable and intelligent people than me have talked about this in great length, but the globalization and specifically the ‘’Americanization’’ of the west is a sight that bears terrible results in the long run; instead of different cultures interacting with one another and understanding each other’s traditions and evolving and changing together, we see how little by little everything changes into not an unification, but to a macroculture of sorts imposed by multinationals and enterprises in every facet of the day to day life, only taking what sees of value and implementing it while treating the rest as lesser or nothing more that a novelty to look at and treat as a toy, like a hoarding dragon burning everything on its wake but adding the shiny stuff he finds to its pile. Venba doesn’t analyze these problems directly, but it speaks about its consequences through the life of a immigrant Indian family in Canada. Kavin neglects its culture not because he doesn’t care, not because he likes that his schoolmates call him Kevin, but because he’s terrified at the idea of being cast away by his peers and society because of it, he’s deeply scared of presenting himself as ‘’odd’’, as something that doesn’t fit, something alien. That sentiment persists through adulthood, only now its peers treat his past which he couldn’t really never connect as something ‘’neat’’, a cool thing to put on TV that’s aesthetically pleasing, something that can only exist on its vacuum, being judged while expected to be nice to look at. The moment Kavin finally reconnects with his mother and what he didn’t want to face is beautiful for many reasons, but one of them is that is an act of defiance and perseverance, and even if he doesn’t know everything about his roots, it doesn’t matter, he’s learning, he’s improving what came before and completing it, all through just having a nice cooking session with his mother, and that’s just… beautiful, there isn’t any other way to put it.

Preparing said dishes isn’t nothing really complicated or actually involved, but it manages to make it feel like it; you aren’t merely clicking and dragging on sone stuff, you are deciphering and learning ways to prepare plates of Venba’s past, seeing her remember in what order everything is needed to be done until everything is second nature to her, and it’s appetizing as it is cathartic. The game has achievements for making everything perfect, but also for screwing up, and I cannot think of another way of showing what this is all about beyond the game itself; it doesn’t matter if you fumble de bag, you are cooking, you are learning, and maybe you’ll do that mistake 4 times more but it doesn’t matter, ‘cause it’s still fun and fulfilling… and that’s what brought back memories.

I was originally gonna make fun of a moment that reminded me of that scene in Ratatouille (you know the one) but then I realized how insincere and condescending I sounded, ‘cause it’s also a moment I myself have experienced, the memory of my parents, my mother, my father, showing my how to prepare food, how to make desserts that to this day I cherish, but some that I haven’t tasted since then. Venba is not only a story about culture and its loss, it also can be seen about family and bonds, about sharing the little moments, both good and bad, and of ultimately you yourself deciding what you want to do or who you want to be, but your true loved one being always there during the whole process. It’s about regrets, the regrets of Venba, the regrets of Paavalan, and the regrets of Kavin, and the hardships of them all.

A stroll through the steam reviews shows just how many people have connected to this story, many driven to tears, to remember their past and their lives, reflected through this little 90 minute experience. I myself connected to it in a different way, and I just look at Venba wishing it sometimes was a bit slower, that it took the time to explore certain ideas, because I really wanted to see more, to experience more passages of this fragmented story, to see this family’s life, both in its happy and sad times.

And still, in just seven chapters, Venba makes me relish the past, my own memories, and it’s simple worth being seen, worth being valued… and why nor, worth crying for.

This year, over here a staggering amount of kids and even teenagers celebrated Halloween during the 31 of October and 1st of November, effectively making the festivity that would usually take place in Galicia during those days, Samain, completely ignored, and with it, its specific plates and traditions. As I said, at the end, everyone is free to choose what they wish to do, what they wish to celebrate it, and I’m not villainizing this fact whatsoever… but I want to truly appreciate those that still kept the tradition because they truly wanted too, because they really like it, because they consider it a part of themselves, and that goes for everyone in the world, of every country, of every culture.

That isn’t something to be ashamed of.

That’s something to be celebrated unlike any other thing.

Why yes, I know of A Hat in Time, also known as the second-best Hat based 3D platformer released on October of 2017 ever made!

In spite of my repeated claims of love towards the 3D platforming genre, I would lie if I said I played every single one of the so called classics—I’ve yet to touch a single one released on the PSX that isn’t Medievil and play any of the 3D Rayman games—, but beyond that lack of experience with older titles on my end, the main reason I haven’t actually sat down and played more regularly newly released 3D platformers is because… there aren’t many to choose from. It's a game landscape somewhat rejected by most bigger studios, which tend to see the concept of platforming in a 3D space the concept or base for a bigger game in another genre rather that it’s own, and at this point, it has become somewhat of a special occurrence when two major titles of the genre release withing the same yea, hell, we are already lucky if at least one does.

With all that said, it’d be impossible to categorize the genre as as ‘’dead’’, not by a long shot; the indie scene is doing gods-work for that to be a remote possibility, and now-a-days, I kinda associate it with that scene, not that I think of it as a smaller or more niche genre than what it once was, on contraire, it’s a vibrant, more personal and passionate landscape, the ‘’people’s games’’ so to speak, and I think that particular spark that each developer both what makes so many people feel like they are gambling

A Hat in Time released on a very interesting year for the genre, not necessarily the best or worst, but it certainly had variety, with released from big publishers and small teams, of majestic quality and of pretty big disappointments, and it’s in this year which was probably the most full the genre ever had during the past decade, in the month where the band new 3D Mario game released, it’s where despite it all, A Hat in Time shines.

I can’t really tell what the game is going for exactly visually and tonally, but whatever it is, keep it coming ‘cause it works. If I had to compare it to something, I guess the best thing would be the sometimes referred as ‘’double A’’ games of the sixth and seventh generation. Those character models than can look rough and sometimes even clipping into each other but are so cartoony and full of life that is more than worth it, that humor that should tonally clash with the cutesy vibe but instead it works to a tea, the incredibly silly storyline that finds ways to be memorable… It’s not the prettiest nor the the funniest game out there, but it still exceeds at those areas, with some parts and scenarios looking kind of beautiful or selling completely the spooky or silly vibe, and with jokes that in any other context would make you wonder ‘’how did they get away with this?’’ with how deranged and good they can get.

It can sometimes feel all over the place, like pieces of different puzzles that somehow fit, which I’m inclined to believe it was intentional with how the rest of the is. There are four different worlds divided in four chapters, and when playing through ‘’Mafia Town’’—ignore for a moment that is quite possibly the singles best idea for a first world to ever be thought of— I thought I knew what this was going for, a Sungine/64 like game, with big open levels you can explore that change a little bit every time you go to a different mission, or ‘’act’’ as they are known in this game. And I mean, yeah, all worlds are divided into acts you must beat before facing the final boss of each world, and there are some extra challenges you can find that reward you with a Time Piece that are VERY Sunshine inspired with what quite possibly is one of the most relaxing tunes I’ve ever heard, but aside of that… you better be prepared from some chaos!

You got everything you could possibly dream of: two birds (one of whom may or may not be racist towards penguins) competing to get a movie award once again after years of rivalry and you being thrown into the mix to help both and give the victory to one of them, a spirit infested contract based spooky forest that has both one of the most intense moments I’ve lived in any 3D Platformer ever and a fight against a haunted toilet, and a free roam mountain top stage that is the only of its kind in the base game. There ain’t much consistency here, and that can actually work; it made each of this random ass places and these weird mafia mobs, birds, ghosts and goats that inhabit it all the more endearing. Everything that has to do with Snatcher or the Conductor and DJ Groove is gold I swear to god, their whole chapters being centered around them and the movie sets or deals they out Hat Kit through made them even more memorable than they would already have been… AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH THEY GOT SICK AS HELL THEMES WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

The music in this game also doesn’t make any sense, but not because it’s absurd or inconsistent, but because it’s too fire; it’s a constant blessing to the ears, with either bombastic and exhilarating themes or the most calming and fitting sounds to ever be thought while jumping and diving. I already linked two completely different yet amazing songs, and I could fill this review with even more, this is one of my favorite overall OSTs I’ve heard in a while, there’s a reason so many people use all the Chapter 2 songs to put in the background and Your Contract has Expired blew up years back, it’s too good to pass up.

The lands of A Hat in Time are plagued by charisma and charm, the only thing that would make them better would be being able to traverse th- OH WAIT YEAH! Hat Kid’s move set is actually pretty deceiving; it seems pretty in both theory and practice, it’s just a double jump, a dive and an attack button, but it actually that allow for super fluid and creative movement, and that make it even more rewarding to pull it off. Even when you are not tested with a mini challenge to earn an item or pons, it’s always a fun time to bring the movement to tis limits; you are almost invited to skip sections and reach certain parts in a way the game didn’t plan to, either through pure movement prowess or intelligent use of the hats (Fast hat and Fox-mask my beloveds…).

Getting any kind of reward, be it a Time Piece or something like a Badge or cosmetic change, feels fulfilling not only because the process of getting it is fun and unique, but also you most likely gained something else along the way, like reading a fun story as it unfolds… if that story had a bit of an annoying camera.

As much as I love how A Hat in Time nails the creativity and fun actor, there’s always a thing or two that puts a sour taste in my mouth. At best they are annoying decisions that really don’t make much sense, like blocking certain acts behind a pong-wall or making the grappling hook a badge instead of a direct upgrade, they both don’t seem like that big of a deals, but the former is incredibly inconsistent (and this time not a good way) and it only serves to take away your pongs at random intervals, which is something I simply do not understand when it’s limited to the first two chapters and when there’s already so many stuff to spend off and losing that money on something because the game said feels unwarranted; and the latter is… it’s just a bit dumb I think? The grappling hook becomes an integral part of your set once you get it, and practically all of the following challenges require you to use it or, at the very least, make traversal much more natural and fun, so from that point on you’ll essentially only have two badge slots since one will always be dedicated to it, and I personally think that incorporating to the roster of Hat Kid’s permanent tools would have made MUCH more sense.

But still, those things don’t necessarily worsen the experience… others very much do tho! You are never in full control of the camera, which is fine since it has clearly been thought out to work better in more open spaces and in those instances is buttery smooth, but then there are moments like Chapter 2’s Act 2, which is a super fun stealth mission focused on gathering clues while exploring a train, that I’s absolutely true, but is in those moments where the camera’s weaknesses shine bright, making it impossible to really know what’s ahead or even where you need to go, since your main hat will always point to your final current objective and nor the place you need to go first (which is another can of worms of its own), and moments like this are scattered through the game and make me wish they did something similar to how it is in Vanessa’s Manor or Chapter 4’s windmill. As it stands, is a looming annoyance that pops out here and there, just how the attacking dive can be a pain in the ass to know at which height you need to be for it to work, or how the checkpoint system can screw you off at a moment’s notice if you fall in the wrong place, or how the can get surprisingly buggy or sometimes say ‘’NO’’ to the strategy you wanted to do with random invisible walls, or how- I think I’m gonna leave it there to be honest…

It's a congregation of decisions and dumb mistakes that pile up and can sometimes make segments feel a lil’ bit like you are doing a to-do-list, which is funny ‘cause in Chapter 3 you do exactly that except it really doesn’t feel like it! It was during Subcon Forest that I begin to get suspicious but in Alpine Skyline I felt it was confirmed; most of these problems were most likely originated in early development, ‘cause A Hat in Time, even with this mistakes on its back, just keeps getting a better. Mafia Town is not a bad introduction and I do like it in some ways, but also presents some problems and structure the other chapters don’t have, like incredibly simplistic boss fights, having to repeat some sections or getting lost through the map to find sometimes, or secrets that aren’t that fun to get; it works but it’s hard not to look at it as the weakest of the bunch, and hell, I’d say the Mafia are funnier in the following chapters and on the ship than in their own town!

It's certainly a humble beginning, a charming onje no doubt, but one that pales in every department with what come next; Battle of the Birds is a super cool set of more linear challenges with and creative sets that gets brought down a bit by some strange decisions (needing to go Chapter 3 before being able to finish breaks the pace completely for me) and the fact that main point of the whole chapter doesn’t really play into much with the final fight except for some model swapping, which doesn’t change the fact that the Conductor/DJ Groove fight is incredible, I just wish it had a little bit more meaning beside DJ Groove getting too cocky or the Conductor being a petty bastard. Subcon Forest is where the true magic happens, the contract system doesn’t really play into much, but it justifies the act system way more, and the area itself hits the spot with its spooky looks as different sections, and has my two favorite fights in the entire game and my favorite level, so yeah, hard not to love it. And then… there’s Alpine Skyline, I’ll say right now that I thing its finale its pretty annoying and doesn’t really play into the potential of the area, but aside from that, this is the highest peak of the game for me, there’s no contest. Maybe I like too much this style of semi open world divided into more linear challenges, but I’m sorry, this area has it all; a killer setting and design, the most fun platforming obstacle courses in the game, a completely free roam experience that feels open even when you are following a set path, and the lighting system to mark you finished treasure hunting in a certain sections it’s a simple yet genius touch I wished other parts of the game had.

A Hat in Time is a testament to improvement, at how a game can get even better as it goes along and end on a higher note than it ended with, but even more than that… is an ode to fun. You can sit down in a ton of places just to admire the scenery, you can do certain emotes that don’t affect the game at all but are just fun to use, you can screw around the main space ship and find random secrets like Hat Kid’s hideout and learn about her thoughts after each completed act. Things that if they weren’t there I wouldn’t have complained, but now I can’t imagine the game without them, and it’s filled to the brim. It’s an experience made out of love that ‘s hidden even in the most obscure corner, a love visible even in he rougher edges, a love that’s shared by so, so many.

A Hat in Time is ‘’the people’s game’’, the workshop is put at the front of the main menu and mods and the community work are baked into the game itself, a celebrated effort that’s only there because the has managed to inspire even 6 years later, and I can sit all day and complain all I want, but that’s always gonna be there, and people finding ways to be in this crazy-ass mafia filled world just a little longer is wonderful to see, and understandable; A Hat in Time is charming, it’s fun, to point of being contagious, you could even say it made me feel the normal amount of empty inside, maybe even less.

It's a game that says ‘’Get lost!’’ to grumpiness, and I for one join it in its chant! I’ll be back real soon to seal more deals and explore the metro, that’s for sure, how could I say no to more of this kind of 3D platforming playfulness?

One of the rooms in this game has the shape of a heart and is full of capybaras, and if that doesn’t prove to you that this is the clear GOTY of the year of the decade of forever so far then I don’t know what will.

Despite being a highly anticipated game for me, probably one of this year’s releases that excited me the most this year… I had no fucking clue what Animal Well really was. By that I don’t mean that ‘’I didn’t know what to expect’’, there have been a ton of games I didn’t have expectations of what they would be prior to playing them, but at least I had a small idea what they were about, their mechanics, and overall ideas. But with Animal Well, I had no clue about how it could even play like.

It was supposed to be a Metroidvania? Is it Puzzle-Platformer? Or perhaps an immersive-atmospheric experience? Maybe a highly experimental take on open spaces and secret finding? I didn’t really know before I hit ‘’start game’’ to be honest, and yet, even before that point there was something that called me, that fascinated me. This world of blues and greens seen through the lenses of an old CRTV is an aesthetic I didn’t know I missed this much, or maybe is that it’s done so effectively here; the surround sound and flickering lights that accompany such abandoned yet beautiful looking structures and the nature that melds perfectly with it… I don’t know, it reminisces of feelings and memories I don’t think I can properly put into words, but still filled me with a desire to explore this rabbit hole.

Well, I finally played it, and I have finally found the answer to all of those questions that once plagued me:…

…Yes.

Animal Wells is an experience that feels like it takes inspiration from a million different places and ideas, and yet it molds them together to create something unlike any other game I can think of; is the idea that surrounds the ‘’Metroidvania’’ genre distilled in its purest form, yet it’s far from being simple.

The well is a place of few words; none of the areas have a proper name, there are no NPCs to chat with, and it’s not like the small slime-like creature we play as has a mouth to begin with. The only text present is one found in menus, small one-word prompts, and the name of the items, and that’s more than enough… because the rest speaks for itself. Each area and the animals that live in them chant a different song, each room a part of a puzzle of their own; I didn’t know for them to have a name for places to stand out vividly in my mind, like the Lake of the Cranes, or the Giant Bat’s Cave, or even smaller locations like the Peacock’s Palace or the Disc’s Shrine. The world of Animal Well may be quiet, but everything speaks volumes, like visting an abandoned virtual zoo: every encounter with a new-found critter, whether friendly or aggressive, every new interaction like distracting dogs using the disc, or every major tense moment like running away from the Ghost… Cat? Dog? I actually don’t know which of the two is supposed to be, nor do I need to know that the entire sequence and puzzle is an amazing highlight and super satisfying to overcome completely on your own… No wait, that’s also the rest of the game!

Managing to create a world that feels so well thought-out and designed so every puzzle feels intuitive, while at the same time offering such fun to use and multi-purpose items that can break open the game completely and taking ALL THAT into account is honestly worth getting up and applauding. The Bubble Wand is the clear star of the show for me; being able to create temporary platforms is already a game changer, especially when pairing it with fans and wind currents, but then you realize you can ‘bubble hop’, as I like to call it, by pressing the action and jump button both at the same time and completely bypassing many parts and sections that otherwise would have required other actions, and best thing is that even if it seems that it breaks the game at times, the dev clearly accounted for it since some rooms have passages too thin for you to maneuver or create bubbles or even animals like hummingbirds that immediately pop them once you make one. I normally wouldn’t like when a game makes a tool completely useless for the sake of a puzzle, but in here it makes total sense and balances out the moments were you make out your own path with pre-designed puzzles this amazing, and it’s not like that’s the only tool that lets you get creative anyway.

The moment you get any item, about two seconds is all you need to realize the possibilities it can offer, yet, as in the rest of the caverns, nothing is ever spelled out; you yourself and your own imagination and problem-solving are the ones that need to overcome the challenges this wildlife imposes; I’ve never felt so rewarded in such a long time than when using the Yo-Yo effectively, learning the code to fast travel to the main hub with the animal faces —which remind me of a certain game, I think it starter with ‘’Super’’ and ended with ‘’2’’… can’t put a finger on it tho—, or skipping completely the Ostrich escape sequence and its puzzles, near the bowels of the map, by using the Spring, Yo-Yo and myself. It honestly comes really close to feeling like the levels in Mosa Lina, now that I think about: you have incredibly useful tools that serve a clear purpose, but ones you can also use whichever way you like to, only with the difference that Animal Well is an already built, profoundly engaging and interesting world, and using all this arsenal while interacting with the animal and the curse that seems to affect the well is amazing, and little things like fall or water damage aren’t taken into account to incentivize and reward experimentation even more than it would have otherwise.

If I had to point out a flaw, and one that may honestly be a ‘’only me’’ thing, is the inconsistency with how it handles some switches and shortcuts. While I get and really enjoy some gauntlets of puzzles, he fact some of them reset, like the ‘’On and Off’’ switches, reset every time you teleport or get out of a room, just makes things a tad more annoying, in contrast to how the yellow door switches stay activated even if you don’t press them all or die, which makes other rooms kind of a joke and strips them from the tension found in the boss encounters, for example. I understand that this won’t be that big of a deal for many people, but when the rest of the game is so impeccably designed and each room amounts to so much, these little annoyances are noticeable.

A game that otherwise… I still don’t think I can say I've come close to experiencing all of it. In a way, it’s kinda interesting to have played this so close after beating Fez for the first time, because while both of those games have a similar sense of wonder and are brimming with secrets, that game created its mysteries through the tools you can find within a same room and code-finding through a fragmented world , while Animal Well is an ecosystem on its own, with the complete freedom that entails. Even after finding out what dwelled at the bottom of the well, it's insane how much there’s for me to find, not only the Eggs, but I’m convinced there are things that I haven’t even seen yet, and I know for sure that there are far more items than it seemed at first.

At this point, it shouldn’t be a secret that one of the things I love the most in games, or in any form of art for that matter, is when they give so much food for thought, letting the imagination run wild and feel so massive and grand even if their locations are small; Animal Well is only a 30 MB game, and it’s the perfect representation of all this, the wild desire to explore, to have fun, and to fear the unknown, even when it's scary as all hell.

I’m obsessed with Animal Well, and its ambience, roars, and silence speak to me in a way few games do, and I’m happy to see that’s a sentiment already being shared by so many people.

Shout out to small rural towns overtaken by an evil or dark presence that corrupts them or brings hellish creatures. Gotta be one of my favorite genders.




Deemon, the incompetent reviewer, started off his write-off with one of his usual jokes, so unfunny that one might wonder if he was doing it on purpose or if he really has such poor comedy taste. He was trying to hide the fact that he really didn’t know where to start; the path to take might seem clear, but like the streets and forest of Bright Falls, it’s more deceiving than it may look at first, like a maze that’s also a downward spiral.

Deemon pondered, searching for a way to salvage the review, desperately trying to find out which step he should take, what words he should use. He sighed. He decided to let the words write themselves, to let out all the thoughts that had formed while the darkness and light of the town surrounded Alan Wake. He surrendered himself to the unknown, one that might be already written after all… Though he knows he had to talk about the music for sure, that selection of bangers had to be celebrated somehow.




Ambition almost killed Alan Wake, in more ways than one. I mean, I may not know much about Remedy Studios, in fact, it is the very first game of theirs I have ever played and beaten, but I do know the story of Bright Falls and how it was initially going to be something else, an open world of sorts, something that didn’t quite work, as it seems. Translating an already crafted open world into a linear style of game is such a monumental task that if I were in that predicament, I’d have considered outright scrapping everything and starting from zero, but that probably wasn’t even a realistic option for the team to begin with.

But that’s not even what I’m specifically referring to. Alan Wake, the game, the package, the copy made out of code and specific sections, is riddled with hiccups and bumps; it’s filled with padding, sections of trees and mist than don’t offer much aside from one or two manuscripts pages and combat sections that can feel overbearing at times, the remnants of its troubled production remain in aspects such as the barren areas and driving sections that don’t have much of a place and are so frustrating to playthrough even if you ignore any cars I just wish they were taken out —tho it’s kind of cute how it also uses the same light mechanic as the rest of the game—,  the encounters with the Taken or the groups of mad crows often lack imagination and enemy variety or don’t jam very well with how the camera works in the case of the camera, and at one point I just kept thinking how much the experience would have benefited if some sections were repurposed in different ways or outright removed.

The imperfections of Alan Wake mostly come from this, factors outside of the game itself, of its story, but they still impact it negatively; I can’t scratch off the feeling of something being lost a bit when all of the boss enemies behave the exact same, the only thing that changes being the creepy lines they spat out and the character model. If the game wasn’t anything more than a series of levels where you shoot at things, then these issues would have rotted its pages…

…luckily, it has a dragon.

Wouldn’t it be funny if I started to praise the actual combat itself after spending two paragraphs criticizing some gameplay sections? Yeah, it would be hilarious! ... ANYWAYyeah I fucking adore the way Al controls. It occupies that same space as Simon from Castlevania, where how slow and imprecise it feels actually benefits the gameplay. You truly get the feeling Alan has never picked a gun in his life in any major capacity; he’s slow, clunky, imprecise, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The tense dance of using light to weaken the Taken and gen emptying the chambers of them, or hell, simply using a flare and trying to activate the closest generator, it’s a super straight-forward system, and I love it. It’s incredibly satisfying to come out of encounters on top, because even if there isn’t much scarcity in resources (even if you start off each chapter with nothing each time), they are still somewhat limited, especially the most powerful weapons, and little things like mashing X to reload faster or the camera panning out to warn you of nearby enemies are things I didn’t know I needed until now.

It would be a far cry to call it a survival horror, but it’s tense; it’s tense to try to manage the purge while a bulldozer is charging full speed at you; it’s tense to try to outspeed a force you cannot do nothing against; and Alan gets progressively more and more tired. I can make the argument that there should be less of it or at least more variety in what it offers enemy-wise, but nothing will take away from the fact that the core itself is some fantastic shit.

Like… there’s something about fighting against waves of enemies on stage while the sickest rock tune ever plays in the background and the lights and flames fill your eyes that I can only call ‘’fucking awesome’’.




Deemon knew that wasn’t just it. He could talk about flaws and shooting Taken all he wanted, but something else lied within the light. He ran into it.

‘’But there’s something else’’, he said




But there’s something else.

A story already written, touched by the darkness. Written already as a part of it before birth, its muse trying to corrupt it. An ending yet to be typed out.

I have never seen a videogame story that trusts so much that the player will be intrigued enough by it to stick with it and engage with it all the way through. The tale Alan Wake, Alice, Barry, Sarah, and the whole town get tangled into is not intriguing; it is fascinating. I have never felt such closure from getting answers to questions I never realized where there in the first place. From being pretty disappointed about how Nightingale and Mott had such a poor presence as antagonists to being in awe of how their actions fell into place after the truth of this unfortunate series of events was revealed. Alan Wake offers a hell of a mystery. Alan Wake solves it.

The pages of the manuscript are as essential as the cinematics and interactions, so many pieces of the puzzle fit, it’s almost like getting spoiled before something happens, which in a way is exactly what’s happening. At first, I felt pretty disappointed that this would be a jarring light vs darkness story mixed with a thriller. Then it ended up being a meta-narrative within its own meta-narrative. The fact they did that without it feeling overcomplicated or screwing it up is ovation worthy.

But I also feel a huge sense of admiration for the micro-stories at play; hearing and talking to the inhabitants of Bright Falls, listening to Maine’s night radio, the echoes of the Taken and stellar ambience sounds ringing through my ears, the fucking incredible Night Springs shorts that had me HOOKED... It was the little things scattered in the trees and buildings and the small talk that gave this spiraling world even more meaning.

It ends with the darkness hungry for more, just like me. I’ve seen people call Alan Wake ‘’the most 6/7 out of ten game I’ve ever played’’, and even though I do not sympathize with that statement at all because it feels reductive in any context, I kind of get what people mean by it. Alan Wake is profoundly flawed, but most of them do not come from the game itself, but rather from the complicated production it had to go through.  In the face of such adversity, I’ve never seen such confidence, such talent, or such a desire to tell a tale like this. Alan Wake isn’t just *a* story, there’s more to be written and read, but at the end of the day, it’s also its own story. And what a story it is.

Maybe this isn’t what the champion of light could have been if the circumstances were different, but the hardships cannot be avoided, and even after going through them, they really sold me on this novel.

Recommended by @ZapRowsdower (Thank you so much!)

We are still trying to find the key of eternal happiness when the answer has been right in front of us since 1993: using the shotgun in DOOM and one tapping every Imp you come across.

Today is one hell of a day for me huh? Not only it's the day I've FINALLY finished DOOM after multiple attempts at getting into it, not only this is my 150th review, which just saying it's fucking coo-coo crazy to me, can't believe I've written so many reviews on here in just a bit less than a year, but today also happens to be my birthday! So, today is the day, the stars align and my time it's right, it's time for me to shook the entire world with what I'm about to say, my opinion on DOOM will forever change the course of videogame discourse, so buckle up motherfuckers, 'cause this is it; Deemon's verdict on DOOM is..............









Yeah game good.


DOOM is, in a ton of ways, THE PC game, it's not only THE grand-father of the so called ''boomer-shooters'', but it's alsoTHE FPS; we now have the meme spawned by both the press and some players about how ''everything is Dark Souls'', but during the 90's, if your game was in first person, it was bound to get universally compared to DOOM in some capacity. It revolutionized the industry in such a way it's effects are still palpable to this very day, and it spawned a series that time and time again has caused discourse around it. Many people still put hundreds of hours replaying this game or trying many of the community made maps or levels, also known as WADs. It's a game that finds way to modernize itself while never truly changing, sporting level and enemy design that some of its contemporaries and even modern outputs could only dream of.

And here I am, 30 years later, 30 goddam years after it released, to talk about a game almost 10 years older than me. Out of all the games I've written about, this is the one that it feels comical to try to say something new, to add a new perspective to the conversation, because what’s left for me to say? What value can I contribute to the overall conversation around the legend of DOOM? The honest answer, being totally realistic, is… probably none, and while that may be discouraging… but that won’t stop me from trying to sing its praises and faults with my own voice!

And singing its praises I will, and to be honest, I lied. Game isn’t good. Game is FANTASTIC. DOOM’s approach to design is not to introduce as many elements as it can, to make very level distinct by making it have completely new stuff, but instead it focuses on only a bunch of elements and makes the absolute most out of them. You can count all the enemies with the two hands, including bosses, and yet, at no point the repetition settled in. Traversing this seemingly endless mazes, the variety on how challenges and encounters are designed is staggering; no two shoot-outs really feel the shame, and the seeing the non-stop moment that made Eternal so much fun for me being already present in 1993 made feel a certain feeling of happiness I really can’t describe. Kiting around enemies, dodging projectiles or running backwards from Pinkies while pumping bullets onto them produces that feeling of adrenaline so unique to DOOM. It isn’t scared to mess with you; new small rooms filles with enemies will open up after grabbing an item or activating a switch will open up out of nowhere, or maybe enemies will surprise you behind corners, right after open doors or hidden within darker areas, and it not only it never feels cheap or unfair, but also keeps you on your toes and makes it so certain sequences can be kinda scary and creepy, and make you doubt even the most innocent of empty rooms. But the greatness of the enemy placement only means something because of how fantastic the level themselves are: the three chapters have their own flare to own another and overarching elements, the first one for example is the one that introduces all the elements that will be explored upon in the next maps and focuses around shorter, more easy to navigate mazes, while the third one, Inferno, explores the limits of DOOM’s level structure and experiments upon that, one of the maps being a small sandbox.

Even beyond this chapter to chapter distinctions, no two levels feel the same; they all present an unique new perspective within the same ‘’find the correct color key’’ structure; they all feel like real places while at the same time being artificial enough to offer fun and weird- ass moments, and when you factor all the secrets, hidden weapons, power ups and the such, it compels you to look to each and every nook and cranny that the levels have to offer, and who knows, you may end up finding the wonderful BFG or a secret exit that might send you to an extra map. It’s all feels purposeful, natural and… kind of ethereal, the music manages work both as a perfect battle companion and as incredibly atmospheric background, like the grunts and sounds of demons heard across the walls. Those moments of quiet creepiness, like walking around the corpse filled rooms or seeing demons surrounding monuments to a greater superior being, blend with the non-stop weapon changing action and the 90’s dumb ‘’coolness’’ so well it still surprises me; a game that at the end of each chapter presents you with a overly stupid and cheesy ending text and basically makes you lose all your progress but still manages to be so fantastic and have so many more serious moments within gameplay, it’s a game unlike any other.

DOOM shys away from perfection: bosses feel unbalanced, like they Cyberdemon pretty much one-shoting you even at ‘’Hurt me plenty’’ difficulty, and even anti-climactic, like the final boss; some secrets feel too hidden and I think the backtracking, while mostly done excellently, in the final levels is too much and some of the exists should have been a bit clearer, and yet, despite this few gripes, I only walk away from this experience feeling a great sense of joy; DOOM is amazing, dumb in all the right ways and masterfully designed, everyone involved felt for this nothing but a great passion and work, and that it’s made clear through each pixel of this hellish lands. Such confidence emanates from this game that in a lot of ways, it feels like they already wanted to make a DOOM 2 in the future, and I only applaud them for it. Here I am, 30 years later, and having enjoyed this game as if it came out yesterday; Doom is indeed eternal, and even if some may not enjoy it, I think everyone should be compelled to at least try it. This is one of those games which I think everyone will feel completely differently towards, love it for different reasons, hate it for different reasons; maybe everything that has to be said about has already been told, but shouldn’t stop anyone from writing their own piece, from talking about it as if it was 1993 again. The magic of some games should forever relished, talked about, hell, some more flawed games also deserve discourse around them, both positive and negative. Because when everything is truly said, then there’s not much room for enjoyment or surprises, and those are the only things I felt during my playtime in the lunar bases and hell. What a Big Fucking Great Time…

And also, if it just so happens that today it’s also your birthday or it is at the time you are reading this… then happy birthday, and stay safe!

I really shouldn’t get Doom II

I really should be bothered, stressed, and highly frustrated by it.

It has some levels that should drive to pure rage, stuff that in any other context I should theoretically complain about.

And yet

I get it

I’ve spoken many times of the importance of Doom both as a space for community and player expression and the pivotal impact it had on the PC scene, and it still feel like I’ve only said understatements. A game that holds up so amazingly well decades later, with some of the most fascinating and fun levels ever put together, and with three episodes that each try to tackle not only different visuals and themes, but also each focuses on a completely different gameplay idea. All this to say that, yeah, I really like the funny killing demon game.

I think suffices to say that Doom II had some mad big shoes to fill, both now for new players like me and especially back then, and I gotta be completely serious here and say: I really didn’t think it could ever do it. Doom was and, in a way, still is an incredibly unique way so tightly designed, so puzzle-like like on its maze-like lay-outs, so calculated with how it decides when to throw curve-balls at you and pull-off novel enemy positioning; Episode 3,Inferno, felt like the final frontier in that regard, the ultimate exploration of the whack-ass and unexpected ideas you could pull off with Doom’s base, at least back then. And if ‘95’s E4 introduced in The Ultimate Doom is anything to go by, perhaps it’s a better idea to leave things as they are to not repeat a formula until it gets stale or expand it to extremes where it just breaks apart.

Thing is, Doom II didn’t even came out in 95, hell, it didn’t release after Ultimate Doom. 1994, more specifically September of 1994, not even a full year after the original’s release, so little time that with the tools at their disposal and without as much as a Q&A department, the team had to test the maps manually, something which they didn’t even could really do properly; so little time that basically the entirety of the original’s base was reused, which led to some funky stuff like only one new weapon being added and one of the newly introduced enemies clearly being a recolored Hell Baron; so little time that the mere idea of wanting to make even more maps that those of the previous release should have spelled absolute disaster. Because, how in the living fuck do you pull it together? How could you expect to produce something that doesn’t feel more that a cobbled together expansion with such a time constraint? How do you make more Doom?

Doom II’s answer to that question is straightforward: you don’t

This not to say the game doesn’t pick up from where it left off, both in that it continues just after the rather disturbing ending of the original, and that everything you can do is lifted straight up from that original adventure; the game’s gonna look at you funny if you play this as your first rodeo, ‘cause it’s not gonna pull any punches, but if you did play the original, the buckle up my friend, hell is loose and it has brought a surprise or two with it.

Things already feel different from the very start, even in the small room of Entryway and the cramped passage-ways of Underhalls, something clearly has changed; you face the same enemies, your arsenal is formed by the same arms you got to meet in your first go around, and yet, the design feels tighter, everything feels faster; you dart around enemies, evading zombies and demons at every turn, they surprise you in unexpected ways, it demands speed of you. The original Doom was never a slower game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was more patience focused, more strategy based, and many of the situations that it created revolved around waiting and taking you’re your best shot or calmly thinking where to go after grabbing a key. In Hell of Earth I can count with the fingers of only one of my hands the moments I let go of the run button, and I say this as the highest form of compliment possible.

And it only keeps going: the super shotgun finally gets introduced, a weapon so good that the only complain I have with it is that it kind of makes the original shotgun obsolete; a fantastic closed range powerhouse that it feels like the developers where whispering ‘’now you gotta go IN’’ as they hand it to you; you also get your arsenal at a much steady and faster pace that in Doom, which is surprising considering that this time the Episode format is completely ditched: the levels go after one another, and unless you die or decide to reset, pistol-starting is now an option rather an obligation, and even then, if you do decide to do it, you can potentially regain most of your weapons even before being half-way done with a level; I myself accidentally pistol-started at Barrels of fun and I’ve never been so glad about a miss click in my life, it was so incredibly fun and exciting and tense even more that it would have been otherwise. Doom II also feels far less stingy with its ammo, in the past you may have switch an arm into another because you just couldn’t use it anymore, now it’s more a matter of ‘’ok, how do I deal with this bunch of fuckers?’’; battles start through ambushes, traps or encounters, and you need to quickly analyze the situation if you want to get through alive in less than a second… and that’s more than enough. Doom II may be cheecky with its enemy placement, but its never unfair, it always gives you enough time to either take cover or to think about what’s the better tool for a certain enemy or group: the rocket launcher may be the best option to geal with that group of Imps, but that Chain-gunner can eat through health in a matter of seconds, why not use the super shot gun on him first and on tap him while you dart around the fire-balls? That’s only a taste of the type of situations of Doom II puts you through, combats that should feel stressful and frustrating, but instead feel exciting and in occasions made me feel an adrenaline like no other; I swear I audibly gasped when I say that amount of enemies at the Suburbs, and I smiled and celebrated as I emerged victorious after dealing with them in a way not even I thought I could.

Levels only get more creative and expansive as they go, The Crusher (aptly named after its main attraction) shows how the rest of the game will play around verticality to create more interesting battles and explorations, as well as introduce unconventional ideas that you might not have expected to see in the previous entry, and that changes your mindset in a way you may not notice at first, but that will certainly will make you be on the look-out. Things that once would have been secrets now are required to be found to progress, it asks of you to be creative, to think outside the box and do what you never would have even conceived of doing. In one of the levels I was trapped, not knowing what to do, but then I noticed a wall with a texture that was extremely different from the rest. I thought that ‘’There’s no fucking way’’. I shoot it. The path opens. Time at time again, places like The Citadelor The Spirit World expect you a level of attention and imagination that the game lends itself to receive, an imagination you have and use to beat even the most seemingly confusing puzzles and mazes; you’ll need to check the map, you’ll need to run, you’ll need to brave, it’s through that that game will reward you, maybe with a Megacharge, maybe with the BFG, maybe with a secret level, who knows! I certainly can’t say for sure ‘cause I feel like I’ve left a ton to even be discovered!

And yeah, I didn’t meant to not use the world ‘’paces’’, more than ever in any of the Doom Episodes, the Hell on Earth maps feel like real parts of a world: expansive and open world urban locations overrun by demons, cultist temples created to stop your advances, old bastions taken and repurposes by the legions of hell to fight against you; even the more ‘’gamey’’ of levels, like Tricks and Traps! or Gotcha!, are excusable because they so fun and even funny that I cannot be mad at them, and as for the rest, they really sell you the idea that you are traversing and meeting your objectives little by little; the narrative has as much presence as the original game, but it has a much greater impact ‘cause not only the stakes are even higher, it also feels like you are progressing through a real story, and that this is a true war against the enemies that face you, new and old.

The game also realized the full potential of its older cast, like how both the Cyberdemon and Spider-Mastermind act much better as level obstacles to evade than actual bosses, and the new faces that arrive are simply incredible; I’ve genuinely never loved and hated an enemy in a videogame equally as I do the Arch-vile, seeing him generated dread in my body, but also made me smile at the opportunity to face such an interesting and unique enemy. The Pain Elementals, Hell Knights an Revenants are all incredible new comer that pile up on the ‘’NEVER STOP MOVING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD’’ mentality, and they are all incredibly memorable, especially the Mancubi, I already loved them in the new games, but hearing them scream their own name as they shoot double projectiles was so fucking memorable. And that final boss.. GOD, finally a Doom boss that requires EVERYTHING you learnt; ammo management, dealing with individual threads, resource usage and even aim, such a fantastic send off that isn’t just a ‘’spam BFG to win fest’’, this is simply outstanding, so fun, so imperfect in the best way imaginable.

If Doom was already a passion project, then Doom II is that even more deranged, more reckless, more… itself. Sandy, Romero and the team knew they could do a true glory fest, and they went even beyond that. Doom II is so experimental, so unique, so unquestionably goofy that I can’t stop gushing about it. It’s more than a blast to beginning to end, it’s a challenge that wants to have as much as fun as you do playing it, and tries out new stuff at each turn, and even those times it doesn’t stick, it keeps being memorable in the best way imaginable.

It's OG Doom at its most savage, at its most free and wild, and its most fun and creative, and I for one have fallen in love with it, and now I can totally see why so many others did too, why so many others keep its memory and spirit alive through .wads and crazy ideas through this one moreso than any other. It’s a game in a way made for itself, but also for everyone that loves Doom, for everyone that loves shooters, for everyone that loves untamed creativeness.

What a fucking magnificent way to start the year, an experience that goes beyond the sum of its parts, and adventure that builds something that evolves and subverts what it once was, the opposite of Hell on Earth.

Rebuilding Earth ought to be a lot more fun than ruining it was

Ah,Celeste, how much I missed being so bad at playing you...

The fact this was developed in little over a week makes me think that the team at Maddy Makes Games, on top of being masters at design, are capable of bending time and space. Fragments of the Mountain puts a beautiful bow tie to what was already an amazing 2D platformer and an outstanding story, a little treat that feels reminiscent of low poly platformers and the original Celeste itself.

Seeing this collection of memories of the mountain in 3D warms my heart and playing through this sort of open little world —that in retrospect really reminds me of the archipelagos in Bowser's Fury or if all of the Bowser Stages were placed around Tall Tall Mountain from Super Mario 64— is the definition of a blast. Madeline's move set lends itself perfectly to 3D, and even some new tricks are added that fit perfectly and really open up the potential for shmoving. Like yeah, going through the challenges normally is super fun, but it's even more fun to do a little bit of level-skipping and getting a strawberry you REALLY weren't supposed to, if a 3D platformer has those kinds of moments, then you know it's good...

Even at 64 too bits the challenge still feels the same, which at some points it can go a little bit against it since the control never feels as precise as its 2D counterpart, and as much as I love the tape levels and their Mario Sunchine sounding-ass theme, it sometimes feels like you either get the exact angle with the camera you need, or youa re completely screwed... wait a minute... it's exactly like Sunshine now that I think about it!

But what Fragments of the Mountain also has is the heart; never mind how lovably goofy Madeline and the rest of the returning cast look, but the dialogue (which to be honest I didn't expect to be any going in) between these lovable figments, the amazing Lena Raine's OST that brings me back to a childhood I never had and what's possibly the single most adorable Special Thanks section I've seen in my entire life make Celeste 64 far more than a simple tribute, and while it also isn't a full continuation, is amazing endnote that I hope to see one day followed up, and I'd love to see more of this tridimensional small world.

I got my ass kicked, yes, but I welcome it, it's good to have one last little adventure collecting strawberries, flying through feathers and collecting cassette tapes; it's a good final farewell to this mountain, before moving on...

So you are telling that not only has the Count tried to destroy an entire country multiple times employing the foulest, most monstrous forces ever conceived… but he’s also hoarding riches and making entire pools out of them Scrooge McDuck style? He really is a monster!

No but really, the fact that money can literally kill you is some next level commentary through gaming, Konami really was onto something back in the day…

Castlevania IV is… weird, and not because it differs a ton from its peers, but because of the complete opposite reason: the original NES/Famicon trilogy, as unabashedly hard and obtuse as it could get, was probably some of the most unique and impressive collection of games hat the 8-bit machine had to offer, but not only compared to other games, amongst themselves. For better and sometimes for the worse, each of the games are so distinct from each other at their core that if the team really wanted to, they could have created another two IPs, but they still feel deeply tied with one another and the connections, evolution and experimentation are what make them such an impressive trilogy. Even when Dracula’s Curse went back to a closer style of gameplay to that of the first one, it still felt different, but no matter what, it always felt like Castlevania. And hey, IV does feel like Castlevania too!

… and that’s about it…

Well, actually, even if it seems like I’m presenting that as a complete negative, that would imply this series isn’t the amazing bastion that is, and if even the first game in the series was already bringing the console it was on to its limits, Super Castlevania IV wasn’t going to break tradition: this game. Is. GORGEOUS. Some backgrounds aren’t the prettiest and some color selection stuck out to me as, to put it bluntly, pretty jarring, but I think that’s because the rest of the game establishes a standard that of the Mona Lisa. Simon and the foes he must face look flawlessly, perfectly horrifying, beautifully haunting, every single returning face is the most perfect translation into the 16 bit realm you could think of, and every new enemy fits with the crew like they’ve always been there. There’s a clear and palpable desire to make what wasn’t possible before, a wish to make the macabre feel alive coming being realized, make levels shift and spin in impossible ways, hearing the howls and growls of beasts as you make them fall, it’s uncanny in the best way imaginable. Even as someone who doesn’t really enjoy this OST compared to what previous outings had to offer, it offers that characteristic SNES ambience sounds that I enjoy and many people love, and for good reason.

Castlevania IV feels like the team behind it decided to make what they wished they could have done on their first go, and I mean, it’s meant to be a re-telling of that original adventure, but even beyond that, its otherworldly detail, its focus on ambience, its desire to be even bigger and greater, none of the stuff that IV does could have been done before… at least partially.

I wouldn’t call the game ‘’derivative’’ as much as I’d call I ‘’inconsistent’’, one moment you are presented with a super cool new idea, like the reworked whip and its seemingly endless possible uses, and right after you realize that, aside from the fact you can hook and balance through certain levels which is amazing, this is just more of what was seen in Dracula’s Curse, except it’s not even close to being as fun or inspired. Many of the hazards and level ideas are entirely lifted from that of the last NES entry, and when they aren’t that, either it’s because they are either a minor spin on a preexisting idea, an actually super cool challenge or layout that only gets used once and then forgotten, or a very simplistic and/or dreadful thing to have to repeat over than over, and let me restate, the original trilogy wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of completely fair design, but one thing is to be a meanie with the player, and then there’s the boss rush before Dracula that’s in her which… that’s just evil, man…

The game takes a ton of ideas from the works that preceeded it without really having the same tact or mindful design as something like the Clockwork Tower in Dracula’s Curse had, and even if it has snippets of excellent, creative concepts that make up for pretty fun parts of levels, it doesn’t last long before we are back to ideas already seen or that don’t really work. Even the aforementioned new whip control, which I fucking love, aren’t really that compelling to use simply because, aside of some instances when being on ladders, hitting an enemy that’s on an upper platform or when being swarmed by birds, there aren’t really a ton of instances where using it feels fun or well-thought out. Enemies still behave like they did the last three times, the only exception being the bosses, who are easy to kill at best or obnoxious at worst, so it’s not like they are the best example, to be honest.

It tries to tell a story that was already told by expanding it, but its idea of expansion is grafting more levels onto it that tell a part of the story that wasn’t necessary on the original and that, without the path feature from III, feels tacked on and is only saved because of how some scattered levels like Stage IV are pretty memorable, and that’s the thing, it can be fun, it can be creative, and in some places and moments, it clearly is, but it seems afraid to stay out of the shadow of its older brothers.

Effects may be pretty and the sounds stunning, but IV doesn’t aspire to be anything more than yet another vampire vanquishing adventure, and so its destined to be stuck at the halfway point, one that needs to be compensated with instant deaths and immediate fail-states, ‘cause no matter what, the game has to be difficult, this is Castlevania after all, no matter the cost…

It still isn’t quite what I feared Dracula’s Curse was gonna be, but it isn’t far from it either… moon-walking on stairs in the best thing in any of these games tho!

I feel so sorry for all non-Spanish speakers who will never understand just how funny the name ‘’Señor Chirridos’’ is; like… is not a bad translation of Mr. Scratch by any means, but it’s so fucking funny and it surprises me even more they just didn’t keep the original name… but I’m so glad they didn’t.

If Alan Wake is the main TV series, then American Nightmare feels like a Halloween special, which seems to be exactly what they were going for. Despite the original game having such an open finale and this going directly after it, it doesn’t really build upon the pre-established narrative beyond Alan’s character and his conflict with his doppelgänger, and that’s fine! I’m totally up for a shorter, more fast-paced story in this world, and American Nightmare does have a super interesting premise.

I actually liked how the combat worked in the first game, so expanding on that with more weapons and enemies while using the backdrop of a Night Springs episode and introducing a time-loop is the kind of craziness I can get behind, and AM does succeed at creating more interesting combat encounters than the original game ever did… but doesn’t try to go for more than that despite its many opportunities.

It does show a promising start; the three main areas of Arizona are interesting and fun to go through and a perfect excuse to battle the Taken, getting more manuscript pages, see more of Mr. Scratch and the little interactions with each of the characters, while not as natural as any of the conversations with the fellas of Bright Falls, are pretty neat. With the addition of a couple of weapons and enemies, this feels like the kind of combat sections they wanted to make the first time around; they even took out the driving section! We are freed from this accursed blight!

And we even get to hear how Barry and the Old Gods of Asgard are doing, glad to know they are still putting out pure fire!

It’s a pretty good time, a simple one, but it has some cool moments, I really liked the battles, and overall is just an entertaining time!... and then the second loop begins.

I absolutely love the idea of time-loops as a gameplay system, getting to learn more of the world and levels and using that knowledge to do tasks way faster and m is the best, however, poorly implemented time-loops can turn into doing the exact same thing x amount of times only with a different objective or two and with some new enemies… guess what American Nightmare decides to do. Each time loop is shorter than the last one, but not because you actively take decisions that make things speed up, but because either what were multiple objectives is only one now or because a NPC did the thing way before you. It doesn’t help that the major set-pieces don’t change at all; watching the petrol extractor is a cool sequence, but not one I would have liked to go through three times, and no, putting rock songs, as good as hey sound, doesn’t make it different or better.

Going through the motions the first time was fine, but having to walk through the same rope two other times is a chore, even if gets shorter every time. Worst part is that they really could have given you more openness if they really wanted; the NPCs you encounter also remember the time loops and no matter what, you can only truly win at the end of the last one, so diving you more lenience on how you deal with things wouldn’t have really affected thing at all, and we have here is just an excuse to turn 3 levels into 9.

As the loops go on, more enemies get introduced, and… listen, I really do like the combat way more on here, and some of the new enemies are pretty interesting; the Taken that throws projectiles and explosives and the one that divides each time you shine light on him are super cool ideas from a gameplay-wise and as ideas on their own but the rest of them… in many ways they feel like a waste. The enemies that replace the birds from the original game are faster to deal with but just as annoying, the giants are bullet sponges with no interest move-sets on their own, and the spiders are cool story wise, since they apparently are not part of the Taken perse and instead are part of the Dark Place fauna, but they being just big spiders feels like a wasted opportunity to create something way more cool and alien, and alsoWHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE TO BE SPIDERS OH MY GOD-

American Nightmare doesn’t create challenges by throwing enemies with interesting sets of moves, it just throws at you guys that really know how to take damage or a ton of them at the same time, best exemplified on the Arcade mode. I do know and understand that this is a more gameplay-focused entry, but when in the main story you go through the same beats over and over with some minor alterations, and the arcade mode —which by the way, has some unique level themes that I would have preferred to see much more in the main story instead of going through the Observatory three times — is just Wake against waves of enemies and see what score you can get… at a certain point the game loses me, and it doesn’t pull from the creativeness that I know it has and can have to keep me glued to it.

The Taken stay completely silent, and the creepy charm that was found on hearing their grunts and lines amongst the trees is completely gone; the manuscript pages are way less interesting this time around, and the opportunity of this being based around and taking place in a Night Springs episode Alan wrote isn’t taken advantage of at any point, making for a way less interesting story, and use of the reality- bending pages.

In the end, the thing that really kept me more intrigued and wanting to see the game to the finale was, who else, Mr. Scratch himself. I enjoyed most of the villains in the original Alan Wake, but NONE feel like Mr. Scratch; the sound distorting every time Wake says his name, the way he taunts Alan and how he ENJOYS being the worst of him, a true monster all the way through, it’s a disturbing delight every time he’s on screen (literally) and the uneasiness he carries is one I didn’t expected to be done so well. I wished he and Alan had more opportunities to bounce each other, ‘cause every time they did it was a delight, and luckily it seems that American Nightmare isn’t that important to the overall Alan Wake narrative, so hopefully he didn’t kick the bucket, I’d love to see more of him…

There’s still that Alan Wake attention to detail and story in here, but it didn’t go as deep as it could have, and we have is a story that, while fun at times and with some cool extras and secrets, it still is what is: a Halloween special that doesn’t want to be a real successor or groundbreaking, but it also doesn’t take advantage of the potential it itself sets, and it can drag on at times… Still fun and funny at times, tho!

We’ll meet again, Champion of Light

I’ll see you soon, Herald of Darkness

The game being as flabbergasted at the fact 18-Volt is a nine year old as much as I was probably one of the most hilarious part of a game that quite literally made me smile and laugh every single moment I was playing it.

When making a game which its main premise is that it re-uses content from past entries, developers are faced when simple yet ever-present question: ''How in the all living hell do we make this worth it?''. Nostalgia and getting to re-experience past games or parts of them in brand new systems can be cool incentives, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they are strong ones; the content by itself it's nothing new, so why would we, as players, be interested on not only re-experiencing content that we have already played, but also pay for it?... Well, turns out WarioWare Gold found an answer, a trick...


The trick of haVING JIMMY T. ON THE GAME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LET'S-A FUCKING GOO, GETTIN' FIT AND FUNKY BABY!

The decision of playing the rest of the series beforehand was one of the best I could have ever made, because what would still be a fantastic game into an even more impressive one; even if a majority of WarioWare Gold is stuff we have already seen, it manages to make it feel new thanks to a collection of elements that span the entirety of the series plus a new barrage of brand-new content. Gold is the best celebration the series could have ever hoped for: 316 micro-games are nothing scoff at, overpassing even Twisted and its almost 230 fast paced minigames, but as I said before, most of these are micro-games already seen in previous entries, including twisted, so what makes this number shouldn't be so special... but then you see the selection, and then realize this is pure FIRE. Because there was so much to choose from, they picked the best and ONLY the best minigames on the entire series; in the past, with maybe the exception of Twisted there were a few amount of stinkers that were clearly lacking in quality compared to others, and even tho they only lasted a few seconds, in a game so fast paced as WarioWare that still leaves a huge impression. Not anymore: every single one if the crème de la crème, even the new ones, and so everyone may not be here, but that doesn't matter 'cause the best sure are. It even has a Rhythm Heaven minigame thrown in there, you can't make this up! That isn't even going into the Challenges, where we find the expected but always welcomed micro-game towers, plus some new stuff like the fantastic Wario Interrupts, but most of all, the return of Wario Watch and Sneaky Gamer, the former my favorite mode in ANY of the previous games and the latter being the best part of Game & Wario, and after playing, I completely understand why. Now that I think about it, the only games that might not get any kind of representation are Snapped and D.I.Y, which makes sense, one is a departure from the series focused on creating the games, and the other one is... well, is WarioWare Snapped. The rest tho? All gameplay styles come back, even the microphone, and the one game you expect to not see, Smooth Moves actually has a ton of representation, with a couple of minigames being adapted to be controlled in the twisted section; if you think about a thing of the series which there is a way it could be implemented here, then it is implemented here, and that effort for consistency is commendable.

Now, I know I said at the beginning that Gold was more than a simple collection… to then proceed to list things that are returning, but as I also said, is how it manages that returning stuff plus the never seen content what makes it so special, and regarding that new content… Am I the only one that loves how this game handles humor? Like, I adored how past games handled story and humor: as the gameplay itself, it’s pure chaos, incredibly light of dialogue and centered around the bat-shit insanity that plagues everyone. Gold takes a different approach, not only having a pretty more involved story, but actual dialogue, like, REALLY good dialogue; the jokes and on point, and even when some cut-scenes are longer than in previous games, it truly doesn’t feel like it like it did in Touched; it’s still fast-paced and entertaining, only now with sublime voiceovers (in fact the Spanish translation and dubbing is also pretty phenomenal) and mini-stories that are as crazy as ever, only now they connect to the Wario and Lulu cinematics, which, I know that Wario is loved by everyone, including me, but here, his mannerism, his voice-over, his interactions with Lulu and the cast, the way he simply IS, this is by far the best iteration of the character in not only the WarioWare series, but in the entirety of the Mario series as a whole, I love this greedy bastard to death and love him to see him be as dastardly as much to see him fail, they just nailed him here. And that sentiment goes for everyone else, character shine like never before and whereas in the past I only really care about Jimmy T. and maybe Orbulon, I now adore this group of weirdos in a way I didn’t really see coming, like, this game made me like Fronk and fucking Joe, how do you even accomplish that?! This, with the more non linear game you can tackle the different leagues and how Diamond City is shown, makes it one of the most different WarioWare games by far, but every change introduced makes sense and it’s welcomed, and other new additions, like the missions and the store, on top of ALL the other stuff, like small side content like the extra minigames (which includes a Pyoro one and I for one I’m the happiest person on earth right now) and the ability to dub the cutscenes… yeah, this might just be the biggest package in the entirety of the series while also being the most fun by a landslide.

I knew I was gonna have fun, but MAN did this game make me happy; it made me feel rewarded for investing my time into this already amazing series, a love letter that even if released 1 year after the switch launched and doesn’t have a 3D option, I kind of really like that it’s on the 3DS? It still feels right a home, and hey, having two screens makes it possible to play Sneaky Gamer, so on that alone makes it worth it.

To me, Gold is the single best experience in the franchise, Twisted is to this day the best out the full-blown original games, but Gold fills me with such joy, is so fun, so consistently fucking amazing in almost every way, that I cannot for the life of me say it’s not my preferred game. I’m so glad I got to play this series in its entirety, and I’m so happy this is the send-off, or at least until Move It! releases, but until then, we found Wario peak…


…and you know, I could finish this review off with yet another Wario-related joke, but you know what? Nah, I’m good. For once, let the final note be how unironically great Wario is, and how this silly greedy garlic enjoyer, his crew and his dumb ass minigames can be so fantastic… holy hell, what a great franchise…

It's finally time for Mario to face his biggest enemy yet; not Bowser, not Bowser Jr., not the camera, not even the slopes... but the legal system.

Super Mario Sunshine is weird, yeah I know, what a daring statement, but I’m not referring about its presentation and ambience, I’m talking about how it manages to be an amazing and incredibly fun platformer that I would even go as far to say that holds in store some of the best parts in any 3D Mario period… and an absolute mess of a game with glaring flaws in both pacing and design that make it at various points flat out infuriating, frustrating and tedious. I’m baffled at how they screw up in some areas, ‘cause I really cannot stress enough how much of a home run is the good stuff in here.

Delfino Island and its locales amount to what it’s perhaps the best assortment of levels out of any Mario game, at least thematically that is. Peach’s Castle in 64 was a pretty good main hub, and the rest of the series followed suite and they all have fantastic central areas that hold up very well in their own regards (except Odyssey I guess, mainly ‘cause it really doesn’t have one), but none of them hold the candle to Delfino Plaza; not only it’s a fantastic starting point full of secrets and side-quests and a playground to experiment with the mechanics and F.L.U.D.D. as well as very neat introduction to the whole concept of shines and how the isle operates, but it also feels like central area, one where, even if you still have to use paintings and pipes to get to the levels, everything feels interconnected naturally. Being able to see other places from certain levels or the Delfino Plaza itself helps a lot on this regard, but what sells it all it’s how every place works together to form a strong thematic feeling; Mario games aren’t really that into having a particular theme, the only other exception maybe being Galaxy with its space setting, but Sunshine is just on a whole another world: the playful and whimsical nature of Pinna Park, the striking sunset and seemingly endless hotel rooms of Sirena Beach, the ancient and massive looks of Noki Bay… The concept of platforming across the different places in a tropical island was already good, but Sunshine uses this idea and takes it to its fullest potential. With the exception of maybe Pianta Village which fills a tad artificial and purely focused on the platforming challenges, every single one of the main areas are real places in which the inhabitants live or the tourists go visit or have fun, and it just so happens that they are fantastic places do some platforming; of course I’m not saying that there aren’t parts that don’t feel gamified, in fact there are a lot of subareas that are completely obstacle-course focused (we will get to those later), but in the moment to moment gameplay this immersion is only matched by a few other platformers, it’s creativeness it’s only paralleled by the joy-filled sounds and soundtrack, how well these places are designed and how fun it is to traverse them… ‘cause yeah I actually adore the movement and platforming in this game AND I SHALL DIE ON THIS HILL.

It's honestly shocking how despite limiting Mario’s base movement compared to the last entry and putting a focus on vertical movement, Super Mario Sunshine lends itself to be a joy to control using all the capabilities at your disposal to the maximum and being a ton of fun… or at least 50% of the game does… again, we will get to that later. F.L.U.D.D is obviously the star of the show; it’s completely unexpected and bonkers to focus the sequel to motherfucking Super Mario 64 on water and how to use it as a movement tool, but despite only being able to do a handful of things, this water tank trumpet looking-ass is a game changer. The squirt nozzle is a great way to expand of combat and making boss fights WAYYYYYYYYYY more interesting than they ever were, but it’s with the hover nozzle that the game goes insane; hovering in itself is a super cool ability, but in this game not only is mandatory to use it for certain sections, not only it is highly convenient and a life saver in multiple instances, it is what gives you the chance to break entire missions in half, having this tool makes you think outside the box and a ton of the fun of the game comes exactly from that. The missions themselves are also mostly fun (emphasis on mostly), some offer really cool platforming challenges as I said, but a ton of the levels do actual story progression within each of them, having small narratives that advance as you complete chapters and gain shines; it’s a really compelling way both gameplay and story wise to make me just keep playing chapters aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Shadow Mario stole F.L.U.D.D. … Uh-oh.

Yeah… the fludless levels are by far the most disliked part of the game by many, and while I do think there are some fun levels of this kind here and there… yeah no more often than not they are highly frustrating. It’s really strange to me that the developers decided for this to be such an important and mandatory part of the game considering how every single part of the experience is designed around having F.L.U.D.D., which includes the moments you don’t have the goddam thing. A lot of people say that it feels like Mario’s shoes are slippery or on soap, but I think that’s not exactly the problem: again, I think Mario itself controls pretty well, it’s move set is focused on verticality yeah, but by itself there’s not much problem with it… until you can’t hover, and that’s when you realize the physics on this game are atrocious. I swear whoever designed these sub-areas must have had a terrible day, not only there are some almost mean design aspects that make them overly difficult, but if Mario as much as touches a slope, that plumber is already dead. And ignoring the almost comical aspect of Mario letting himself be stolen by Bowser Jr. MULTIPLE times, it’s terrible how some of these sub-areas connect to the main mission; some do it fine enough, but in other’s you’ll be doing a totally normal and actually fun mission to then be immediately teleported to one of these with no reason at all and suffer! Isn’t that fun?!. All of them having the exact same song and visually similar doesn’t help in the slightest, and it juts results and a bunch of stuff that you really don’t want to do… and that’s something that not only affects these obstacle-courses.

Look, Sunshine isn’t the hardest game out there, and despite me not being the most skilled player out there, I actually didn’t find parts of it as other people said they would, hell, some stuff like the sand bird or the watermelon mission I managed to do them just fine! The problem with this game isn’t that its consistently hard, more.so that is consistently annoying. Even some of the missions that I’ve been praising can be a slog, they are just not fun and repetitive, and death meaning being booted back out and having to start from the very beginning is actually evil and an huge waste of time, considering how entering a levels takes a lot more than it did in 64. It’s made even more frustrating ‘cause you’ll be presented with a very cool and original level where you have to clean a huge eel’s teeth and is super fun and challenging, only to have to do one where you have to be thrown by Piantas with 0 aiming skills or having to traverse and overly long, boring and confusing maze; there’s no middle ground, the missions are either 10 out of 10 or a torture beyond human comprehension, and a lot would be remedied if the game just was more friendly in communicating what the hell you need to do; sometimes is clear as water, others, the way to progress is at the exact opposite plaxe from where the start of the level is (fuck you too Pianta Village!).

Progression is also kinda weird; the story is weirdly fast pace, with basically no spoken dialogue or cinematics after a certain boss fight and they disappear until the ending, and the way you obtain the nozzles and Yoshi is also really weird, the nozzles are fine I guess, but it’s weird that you only really unlock them for the main hub (and I believe they would work far better as permanent upgrades) , and that they are also pretty imbalanced, the rocket is WAYYYYY more useful than the other one that I only used like two times and don’t even remember the name. Yoshi is also kinda bizarre since you need to beat a specific mission for it you unlocked, but hey, it doesn’t really matter, after all, all 7 first chapters of every single level and mandatory, so it really that big of a deal!... Wait a second WHAT.

Look, I’m fine with tying the progression with the defeats of Shadow Mario instead with the Shines themselves, that idea at a base level isn’t bad, what IS bad is that because how it is made, shines serve absolutely no purpose unless you want to get 100% completion, which actively makes the already kinda frustrating coin and blue coin MULTIPLE shines even more pointless AND this teensy-little fact is NEVER told by the game EVER. WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS SUNSHINE, I WANT TO LOVE YOU SO BADLY.

Super Mario Sunshine it’s beyond flawed, and its missteps only become more and more apparent as the game goes on… but still, I have gained a huge fondness for it; at times it’s a fantastic experience, and I value it both for what it s and what it is not: it is a fantastic game with some of the best platforming in the series and incredible sense of style, and it is not just a sequel to Super Mario 64, it’s its own thing that would go on to define modern Mario and a lot of the design choices, like the pan out of the level and showing the objective and the more developed boss fights that , would go on to inspire future 3D Marios, and in that alone it has value, and plus, it’s still a damn good game. I think I’ll ponder over this one for a bit, but as of now I now clearly but even with flaws, it’s worth playing it and discover the surprises it has in store.

And now, officially, summer begins…

There’s a boldness in trying to stand toe to toe alongside the giants; Portal Revolution caught my attention the very moment I saw its trailer last year, and since then I’ve had my eye on it till the day on its release, and I got it easy, think about the people that were there from the beginning! Revolution has been in development for 8 years, a crazy amount of time for any game, let alone one made by fans a s a way to celebrate the series, tho in this case it makes sense when you really think about its intentions.

The most known and popular Portal and Portal 2 mods are all test chamber centered, by that I mean they don’t really venture in the aspects of the series aside of expanding on the puzzles; this is nor a jab nor a complaint in the slightest, in fact some innovate with the original concept in genius ways, and plus, it’s completely expected for them to shy away from the narrative department except for maybe a nod or two, because creating a new story in your fun little mod would be inserting yourself within Portal’s narrative, something not many would even consider as a possibility to do, because, how could they even attempt it?

The thing about Portal Revolution is that it does, it does not want to limit itself to just be a succession of puzzles one after the other, it wants to go further beyond that, it was to surprise you with its presentation and sequences beyond normal gameplay, it wants to have its own voice, one that can fit right with other two. And, listen, I’m not trying to imply or make a statement about how both of the Portal games’ narratives are unparalleled or a master class is videogame narrative —even if few games can say they have the ‘’part where he kills you’’—, they really aren’t the most impactful narratives in all of gaming, but what they are is both well executed and managing to feel important, especially in the first one, where the story melds perfectly with the gameplay, rather than being at the service of it and just an excuse for why are you shooting portals and going though puzzles. Portal is not simply a great series, it’s an excellent duology whose story is pretty much told and its gameplay basically perfected, and trying to add onto that is a herculean task that I don’t blame Valve for not wanting to take.

But Revolution doesn’t even come from Valve, it’s from a group of fans that really love the series and wanted to face all of this dilemmas, which is an even more scary prospect at that, because ironically enough, those that unabashedly love a certain work are the most prompt to make mistakes that those that recognize its successes as well as the flaws, and it’s through that mixture of both undying love for the originals and fear at failing to be lesser than them… that you get Revolution’s story line.

Stop me if you heard this before: a story about a woman is woken up by an orb-shaped hysteric robot in a room part of a giant infrastructure that is decaying and falling down with the promise of getting out if you help him, only for halfway through the adventure getting thrown into depths of the oldest parts of the facility traversing through its older and abandoned test chambers seeking to reach the top and becoming allies with another robot whose conscience was once part of a human, and reaching the original facility that’s now at the risk of collapsing because of the true intentions of the first robot you met and you and your new companion have to stop him to save the entire building and yourselves… also one of them may or may not have a British accent. First of all, wow, I’m surprised you didn’t stopped me, you sure you have played the original series before? And secondly… yeah, the game practically follows beat by beat Portal 2’s narrative, specially half-way through. It’s a real shame that hits doubly hard because even when these similarities where present from the very start, at first they felt more like interesting and even warranted parallelisms than anything else; there were a set of key differences that kept thing pretty exciting and that made this felt like a worthwhile pre-quel, one that isn’t necessary to get the story at full, but one that makes sense withing this world and this narrative, but then you encounter your first ‘’broken bridge’’, and you realize that this games that follows its inspiration even more than it seemed. Listen, I really like Portal 2… but not as much as the original Portal, not by a long shot; and it isn’t because it has a more expansive narrative, but because, unlike I said about its predecessor, it doesn’t feel like the story and gameplay work together, but instead that the story is constantly trying to find weird ways to throw you into puzzles; either by GlaDOS putting you through them because reasons I guess, Wheatley doing the same because… reasons, I guess, and then there’s Old Aperture, or as I like to call it, ‘’J.K. Simmons’ nonsensical puzzle hell’’. These moments aren’t enough to poison me in the slightest, but they represent a intrinsically problem with Portal 2’s design and how it messes with its own pace… and then Portal Revolution looks at it and says ‘’Wouldn’t be cool if I also did it? Yeah, it’d be pretty cool…’’

Roadblocks that just sorta… happen, diversions that don’t make any sense (fun fact, a chapter is fact named around said diversion!), and we even get to return to old Aperture for a much more random and nonsensical reason than ever before! It’s a moment that just happens because I guess it was cool in Portal 2 and hey, we gotta make you meet this important character and have two extra chapters before the finale somehow! At some point it just starts going through the motions and never stops from there, and I have to say, it certainly managed to remind me of Portal 2, but I’m not sure if it was for the reasons the team wanted. No joke, at some point a character just throws you into a chamber and says ‘’Well, you have to do this puzzle, why you ask?... Idk LMAO’’ and at first was pretty cute, but that moment definitively soured when the game said the same thing like another 5 times.

The roots of this insecurity also reach the dialogue a bit; I want go on a tangent for a second and praise the amazing work both VA’s put into their role and the effort behind the screenplay, everyone on board clearly wanted to make this as close to a official Portal experience it could get, and the professionality of both voice actors on their roles fits what you would say in an official game to a tea, and dialogue for the most part feels genuine and got a few smiles out of me!... However, there are still some weird oddities here and there; things like names like Black Mesa or Borealis thrown around just for fans to catch the reference instead to doing a meaningful connection or joke like in the originals, but worst of all is what they did to poor Stirling. I really liked the guy at first! Loved his introduction as a kind of more upbeat amicable GLaDOS that serves the same purpose as Wheatley, and I really enjoyed his attempts at comedy and impressions, but after a while, all of his character is… gone, and by the end of the game we are left with what I could only described as a ‘’Poor-man’s Wheatley’’. Also it has certain lines like ‘’It’s time we bring her back, isn’t it?’’ that made me roll my eyes so hard they went numb, I don’t know how else to describe it except by saying that. The second character is actually super cool tho! Don’t want to get much into spoiler territory concerning them since it’s introduced late into the adventure, but it’s super unique personality wise with what we’ve come to expect in this series but it fits naturally into the series mythos like a glove, I don’t mean it as a joke when I say I wished they were official and got even more screen time.

There seems to be this idea of ‘’If you want to make it again, you have to make it grander’’ that Portal 2 subconsciously introduced and that Revolution just decides to go on with for despite its own detriment: it never reaches the genius simplicity of the original, but also never manages the same level of wonder and surprise of Portal 2 setting wise, it’s stuck in this middle-valley, sandwiched between a monument of a game and another monument of a game, seemingly having nothing to compete with neither or lacking anything new to offer…seemingly.

Stefan Heinz, main developer behind Portal: Revolution, has stated that Portal: Revolution’s puzzle difficulty starts where Portal 2 stops, something that can be read on the game’s own Steam page, and while there’s truth in those words, when reading it you may arrive to the conclusion that it picks up from where it let off and completely expects you to have played the previous games, and even tho of course the fact that you’d play the original duology is the more sensical thing, Revolution acts as if it were a completely independent entry, and it does it with a mastery that simply awed me, and it never stopped from there. It slowly teaches you the basics little by little, and from there its uses them to unimaginable potentials; I never thought so much could be done being able to only shoot one portal, but Revolution shatters that conception and goes completely wild with it. I had so much fun in this chambers, so much joy experimenting until finally finding the insane solution, thinking outside the box in ways I could only expect from the original series and going even beyond that, using the ‘’going out of bounds’’ idea and never looking back, taking everything that was established and reaching new heights, presenting old concepts in a new life, and even introducing its own ideas like with the laser cubes, but it never gets stale, every idea and set of puzzles is used until it can’t give anything more, at which point it jumps onto next. I find the words to describe how amazingly these are designed complicated, not all are bangers, but most are, and it’s not just because they tried to make harder puzzles, it’s because they made puzzle that feel novel and creative. Also resolving them while the original compositions sound in the background is incredible, I linked one before and I really mean it, the new songs are all amazing.

But Portal Revolution is not just a collection of test chambers, it tries to be more than that, capping things off with a final boss fight, once that forces to repeat segments, that doesn’t pose much of a spectacle, and that feels derivative story-wise… honestly it’s sad to see how it perfectly fits the rest of the game’s story…Revolution wanted to be a lot, and calling it a failure is both a lie and a disservice, the fact this is even real is worth of praise, and the moments where it shines and where it’s puzzles really hit, it achieves peaks that face the originals, and I’d say in some cases even surpasses them, and that alone makes it worth a recommendation! If only it was more consistent in that regard, instead, I leave wishing it wasn’t so scared, that it didn’t love Portal 2 so much, that it kept innovating, that it yearned to be even more unique, because at the end, that’s the true spirit of Portal.

Also, the finale is really weird, aside of the kind of jarring final boss, it doesn’t feel like there’s a proper ending it just sorta—

Somewhere in a wheat field, a boy hugs his mother

I guess that one of the biggest compliments that I can give OneShot right of the bat is that it has seriously made me revaluate my opinions in other games that attempt to hit the same notes and have the same impact, so yeah, funnily enough, in a way it made me see the light.

OneShot isn't scared of showing what it is, from the moment Niko wakes up in that dark and dusty room, it lets you know in what kind of voyage you have set yourself and the child you control into, and from there it only becomes more and more magical.

While I wasn't aware of the specifics, I knew that this game would break the fourth wall in different ways, but whereas others use this narrative tool as a way to inject themselves into reality, creating a small sense of unease or even mock you as a player, this world literally calls you a god, everyone knows that you are in some king of outer plane, while only a few understanding fully the gravity of situation.

Puzzles will require you to break the bounds, both to think outside the box and to see beyond the window that encapsulates this broken land; this sadly leads to some parts of it being a little bit more confusing than they should: you may be unsure to what to do next or where to look, how to properly interact to some things or even find certain rooms and objects… but in a way that also helps the overall experience. You arrive the same way as Niko does: not knowing a fuck about this place, its people and its rules; you may have more power than anybody, but that doesn’t stop you from being confused. It’s through that confusion that you and Niko connect: you see his fears, his illusion, his confusion and his wonder, and alongside him you learn of these places, of this characters, and it’s all so… lovable. I believe that it’s genuinely impossible to hate this not cat person and the curious inhabitants of the different places you both come across, it’s impossible to not feel care towards all this poor people, trying to live their lives the best that they can, as well as to care for Niko, to feel the sadness of the fact that is he whom must bear such burden.

Grief, loss, hopelessness, defeat and inevitability are words that came throughout the little voyage and ones that I go back to define the experience as a whole; it’s an extremely sad game, and it never gives you clear answer of what might come next… but it also has this… comfort, I think it’s the best word. The interactions, locations and especially the fantastic soundtrack fill me with this feeling of nostalgia for a time I never got to live, for a place I never got to see on its prime; Niko also feels this nostalgia, and even though this pilgrimage may be scary for him at times, it also makes him smile, and it makes you smile and feel wonder too.

You both push forward, defying the improbable and answering the unanswerable.

Here, at the top of the tower, after the truth has been told and machine and author and powerless to do anything, a final decision remains.

And it’s hard, man.

Fuck FromSoftware and its games, this is the true most challenging part of any game, it will even make your eyes sweat- NO I’M NOT CRIYING YOU ARE CRIYING!

OneShot’s first run Is only comparable to the best experiences I’ve had in the entire medium, and it made me feel and care in a way I really thought it couldn’t. It’s a tale of victories and defeats, of unresolved finales and sweet conclusions, and one that will end in one way, but it’s up to you which it’ll be…

…But what if it hadn’t to be like that?

You even defy the core objective of the program, and what is left is one last pilgrimage to the tower, this time it will be different. I will be scarier. But it’s a risk worth taking. There may be hope for all. Or maybe there won’t.

I really don’t want to go into much detail about the ‘’Solstice’’ ending (nor the game as a whole) ‘cause I really think it’s worth experiencing it. I understand those how of it as redundant or that it detracted from the original experience, I myself thought it was counter-intuitive to do something like that in such a game… but once again, it surprised. It still retains what makes OneShot special, and more importantly, it expands on certain themes left in the air, themes world exploring. Themes about the living and the machine. How the line between the two is not as defined as we think… and how something ‘’fake’’ can be so, so real.

One Shot isn’t perfect, and I understand how some could see more flaws in it than I did, but… It ended being so special at so many levels I couldn’t even begin to re-tell it. It knows what is, but it’s also so much more, more than anyone could have ever thought it could ever be. It’s a bittersweet tale, one you may think is better off with a bittersweet ending, and you may be right…

But a happy ending is warranted, always…

Especially if it makes us smile.

During the whole Dracula bit I could feel my brain rotting away as I laughed my ass off at the absurdity of it all. I don't think a game ever made me feel like that and I very much doubt that any other will manage it going forward.

The mid-two thousands and the early 2010’s could be considered the what I like to call ‘’RPG-Maker Horror-Narrative Golden Age’’; that’s not say that there haven’t been any games done with the variations of the engine since, games like Omori and even the Fear & Hunger duology quickly come to mind as two great examples of how recent RPG Maker made-in games can still bring something new to the table of the broader indie scene, but even those games are of an entirely different breed. Experimentation was the name of the game, even if there were your usual and classic RPG suspects, the most prolific games from that era are ones that broke de bounds of conventional RPG’s and explored different ways of telling a story beyond the limitations of the turned based combat structure. Sure, a ton (and I mean A TON) of low quality games spawned in this time with the hopes of jumping into the horror bandwagon, and some games are just plain tasteless and don’t really deserve being in the discussion, but even with this overabundance of low effort, the stars that explored the frontiers of narrative-focused gameplay, isometrical horror or just doing whatever they thought it was interesting: Yume Nikki (A game which also inspired an entire sub-genre of fan-games alone), Ib, OneShot, Mad Father and even more polarizing works like To the Moon are all examples of varying results of this; some noteworthy, some are a couple of the most important games of the whole millennial, and in cases like OneShot, some of my personal favorites. It’s also worth mentioning that around this time there was also the presence of ‘’comical/parody’’ games, most of these are generally products of their time and basically time capsules for memes and internet culture for all those years back. My point with this terrible info-dump is to say that it was up to each developer/s what to make, and how most of the best RPG Maker games focus on one thing at a time and thoroughly explore it, and the results mostly being phenomenal… anyway Space Funeral is a game were you kill ghosts by using old movies, the final boss questions the conditions of perfection and how that can tear minds apart, and a Djinn turns you into a fish…so yeah, it is a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit weird…

To be honest, and considering I just spat out the most boring Ted Talk possible about the RPG Maker indie scene, it’s only fair that I mentioned that Off (A game which I have yet to play) explored the base ideas of Space Funeral two years prior, that being focusing on bizarre world with and unconventional world and more involved combat compared to its contemporaries, but you see, the difference lies in that, whereas Off used its comedy and bizarreness as a more direct exploration of the fourth-wall and the relationship between protagonist and player, Space Funeral is just FUCKING BATSHIT CRAZY, to a level that I cannot make any funny remarks about it! Like, what I’m gonna say about the fact that you companion is a horse made with horse legs? It’s just a bunch of horse legs, I cannot make the absurd even more absurd! I CANNOT EVEN MAKE FUNNY PUNS WHEN THE MAKE ALREADY DOES THEM FOR ME, THIS GAME IS MY KRYPTONITE, I CANNOT STUPIDIY THE ALREADY DUMB OH GOD HELP M-

This game is, and looking at reviews from different places I’m glad that this notion is accepted, stupid, it’s an incredibly stupid game, so it might perplex you when I also say that this may be one of the most clever games I’ve played in all the year. It’s an unabashedly stupid piece of art, from the moment you open it is gross as it is beautifully dumb; a nonsensical world with no rhyme or reason, mind-boggling lay-outs and maps that have the colors of skunk vomit, characters that are as repulsive as they are comically sincere (seriously, everyone in this fucking game is so direct that reaches absurd levels, and I’m all in for it), the music ranges from pretty good sounding midis to absolute crazy tunes and possibly quite the scariest track I’ve heard in a while and sprite work that is either actually pretty cool and detailed or the most made-in-paint thing you’ll see in your life. It’s stupid… but the game perfectly knows it is. And by that I don’t mean that there’s a huge twist and it becomes super ‘’meta’’ and turns out the brain rot had a point, no, Space Funeral does tackle interesting themes and we’ll get to that, but from beginning to the very end, this game is non stop absurdity, even if it moments were it seems like there should be a more serious moment or the tone should shift, the game manages to still become a joke about itself: the fucking final boss has an incredibly interesting speech, and it decides it to end with the monument of a phrase that is ‘’Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven….. motherfuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!’’. You know that friend that sends you stupid unfunny memes but you both now they are stupid and that’s where the ironic hilarity comes from? Now imagine if that friend did LSD and also was Socrates. That is Space Funeral. A game so content with its own foolishness that you cannot do nothing but be marveled by it, so… itself, unlike anything there could be at the time, both script wise and visually, it is one of those RPG Maker games that decided to do whatever it wanted, but it went far beyond I could had possibly imagined. There’s a reason I opened this review talking about the Dracula bit, it’s the perfect mixture of funny and uncomfortable that Space Funeral pulls off so well time and time again, and it’s what makes it so distinct and what made me so incredibly sad that I didn’t play it sooner.

It's even unconventional on how it tackles its themes; I originally thought that this game would be about maybe grief, considering the title, the main character’s sprite and the abundance of skulls and coffins, but that couldn’t have been further away from the truth, and in fact you could argue that it mocks tackling that subject at a certain point! Instead, Space Funeral seems more interested on focusing on battling a criminal lord drawn in paint using Bibles, going to the CRAP store and catching elves, you know, your usual Space Funeral stuff, but it does show snippets of a larger theme in some spare moments, and it all culminates with the ending. Remember when I said that didn’t go ‘’meta’’ at any point? Well, that was both a truth and a lie. Space Funeral seems to seek to tackle not only what ‘’perfection’’ truly means and implies, but the relationship between a creator and its work. I don’t want to get too much into spoilers, but this game does leave on a very interesting note without fully breaking the fourth wall, and even if the result seems to be made better in other games and it feels like too little to late, it was something that I really wasn’t expecting, and hey, maybe the fact it feels rushed or a bit unfocused it’s the point, you never know with this game.

The only thing I have real issues is the combat, not because it’s bad, mind you, and in fact for a game that lasts an hour, it manages to make its encounters feel nuanced and impactful: there’s a huge number of options and skills, a lot of equipment you can find for both characters and it’s very rewarding to learn fast and defeat enemies with the tools the game gives you. However, it’s still a fairly easy game, which I normally wouldn’t have much of a problem with, but that and its short duration made it so there was never a real point where I felt like I needed to use all of my tools or think that strategically, aside from the usual defense drop or heal, and it’s a shame ‘cause the combat seems like a part of the game that was made with genuine intent to be more complex and interesting, but sadly it’s probably the most mind-numbing part about the whole thing.

But, if anything, I’m still ‘’mind-melted’’, Space Funeral reminds me of why I adore exploring weird yet fascinating worlds, and how absurdity and surrealism can make a work so incredibly enjoyable, funny, and even… lovely. That is a weird adjective to use with the game, but hey, the game itself is weird…

… so it kinda fits, huh?

Years of research and experimentation have led to this, to this very moment: the key of greatness, of peak 2D Funny Plumber doesn’t lie on the level design, power-ups or enemies, no, all along, what Mario needed was… A GRAPLING HOOK!

I say it back in my Super Mario World, and I’ll say it once again; despite my enormous love for the 2D Platforming genre, and despite my love for the Mario franchise as a whole, one which holds some of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the medium and has games that would easily place in my hypothetical favorites of all time list… I don’t really care about 2D Mario. Playing SMW this year, as well as the original Super Mario Bros., has helped a lot putting things into perspective for me; they are very good and sound games, they are well designed and each of them has a different interesting overarching idea and even sense of style (at least until the beginning of the New series that is), hell, three of its original outings are to this day considered pieces of media that shaped the industry and the way videogames as whole are made. Yet, while I find myself enjoying them, I hardly am able to actively care for them, they are competent experiences throughout but they never ‘’Wow!’’ me, they are more of a blueprint, an entry point of newcomers, which hey, I am a Kirby fan, being simple and easy isn’t a bother to me at all, but 2D Mario games, to me, never felt like they strived beyond that simple feeling of pick up and play, and even if it doesn’t harm them as experiences, I can’t say they are memorable; levels blend together and themings can get a bit repetitive, and with the modern New Super Mario Bros series this problems accentuate and even more arise. For me, the ‘’really good’’ Mario was found on the 3D experiences, the more creative, inspired and jaw-dropping adventures that surprise you with each entry and each new step taken within them, and I just kinda wished that Mario would eventually try to be more like others 2D-Platforming series like Kirby or Rayman, that had the courage to break the mold and be completely differet. And now you may be thinking that I got exactly what I was asking for, that Super Mario Bros Wonder is basically all of this, and that would be… wrong, partially at least, because you see… I was wrong.

The very fundamental core of each past 2D Mario is present here and more alive than ever, specially from the previous series; Mario and the gang feel as precise and fun as ever, but they pretty much feel like the one you would control in World moveset wise, the levels follow very similar beats to the New series with your usual suspects like the collectables and the secret exists and the overworld is an amalgam of what you would find both in SMW and 3D World. Nothing has actually changed, what you would expect from Mario is what you’ll find here, you even have a new collection of whacky power-ups, new mini-challenges and secretes galore! Mario Wonder is Mario… but it is as it’s absolute most creative, inspired, unhinged and fun, and that’s precisely what sets it apart, not that it’s a brand new spin on the formula, but that it feels like the best possible result you could get out of it.

The second level in this game would have been one of the last ones or a secret special stage in any of the previous games in the New series , but here it is, the second fucking level, one that goes absolutely whack, it’s hilarious and even has already some secrets, and that’s not Wonder only wanting to make a good first impression, no, it’s setting a precedent for the rest of the game. No two levels feel even close at being the same, your are constantly jumping between ideas, between the possibilities that the ‘’Wonder Flowers’’ can give, and the few times these are repeated is to get even more out of them. Wonder will only return to a precious concept if it can be even more wild with it or propose more interesting challenges, like those in the special world or the colosseums. It’s like a never-ending jovial carnival that has a different attraction at every corner: one moment you’ll be having a stroll through a park while collection coins, the next you’ll be jumping to the rhythm after entering a ninja party in a secret corner of a desert, all with such beautiful presentation I’m still in awe at it, the expressiveness and fluidity of every single element in this god-forsaken game is almost maddening, it’s so vibrant and colorful in all the right ways and I adore it; nothing is confusing, everything is immediately understandable and works to a tea, and the music… OH THE MUSIC! These games always manage to produce auditive dopamine and Wonder is yet another perfect example of it, such a varied and perfectly fitting soundtrack.

It's just so magical to see Mario this full of life, the Flower Kingdom’s locations are a sight to behold, both inside and out; they follow the usual themes that 2D-Mario has, but they make it look and work so different it’s hard to notice, half way through the game even opens up a bit which I really didn’t expect but that coupled with the open areas and the collectables makes for the most rewarding feeling of progression I’ve ever gotten out any of these experiences. The quantity of new enemies is titanic, each presenting a new idea, a new puzzle that depends entirely on themselves or around the mechanic the level itself introduces, and I really want to see theses faces again in the future, I love the new pack of goofballs so very much. The badges are really fun to get and while none of the main levels are really design around you using them, they are at times completely game-changing add-ons that invite you to experiment and let me tell ya, when you use the right badge at the right time and skip or even break the level, that is where the magic happens, and I wished it happened even more, even if letting the level do its thing with the wonder sections was always absolutely enough. I mean for criying out loud, Bowser, BOWSER has a ton pf personality on this one, moreso than in any previous 2D adventure and even some of the 3D games, and you know a Mario game is good when Bowser spits some facts.

Does it feel like I’m rambling a bit here? Well, that’s probably because I am! It seems borderline impossible to fully digest Wonder, maybe it’s because I tried to discover as much of it as possible and the sensory overload is kicking in, but I’m still flabbergasted that this game even exist as the way it does, that it was allowed to be made the way it was done, that it was permitted to be so daring while still managing to maintain the Mario spirit.

If I have to point a flaw, and I do, because I otherwise I’d be ignoring it, it’s how, for all its creativeness and the sheer fun it provides, both the castle and airship levels feel a tad… lesser, in comparison. Not that they are bad, not at all, in fact they also put a spin in the usual Bowser army thematic and looks quite good, love me some toxic metallic madness, but still, with a game that’s just experimentation upon experimentation, hilarity and fun on top of more of it, having levels that repeat the same ideas and even bosses (at least visually) feels really off, like they had to find a way to connect all of the amazing levels and made these using mostly previous concepts. This doesn’t not apply to the final set of levels tho, in fact, the final level may just be one of my favorites in the entire game, the best possible send off to the experience, what a show…

Wonder is… fuck it, I’m gonna say it, it’s wonderful; for a game that’s all gameplay, talking in depth about its ideas and level-design would be a massive spoiler, and that’s what makes it so amazing for it. It refuses to change its DNA, it’s very core, what makes it Mario, and instead celebrates it, celebrates what Mario games can be, what should be, and what now are. It’s bonkers, crazy, bananas if you will, in a ways it can feel like a huge departure, but here’s the thing, it took me 30 minutes for Luigi Elephant to become normal for me, and yet it never lost the charm nor the magic, it’s Mario, but at it’s best, at it’s most fun and well designed. It’s Mario being both what you would expect of it and shattering it, and that, that’s what makes it wonderful.

Also, I really don’t wanna spoil anything, but I just wanna say REJOICE BOO FANS, RISE UP AND REJOICE, THIS IS TRULY PEAK BOO MATERIAL WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO