Detectivefail
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There was a point in time after I initially completed the 3ds remake of Ocarina of Time when I was fascinated with Zelda and was clamoring for more. However, there was a problem, I was a kid who only got money on a few occasions throughout the year. Because of this inconvenience, it took me a pretty long while before I finally got to purchase most of them, but by that time, the Zelda craze I had was long gone so I didn't get far into playing them. Now that I've finally beaten Wind Waker, all I can say is I wish I played this sooner.
In terms of visuals, Wind Waker is a game that I personally don't think needed too much of an improvement as it still looks a lot more presentable than og OoT and MM partly in thanks to its cartoonish art style. Even with that in mind, the remake was still successful in improving how the game looks since it looks more beautiful than ever in HD.
For the most part, it's your typical 3d Zelda which pretty much entails that you will be exploring the overworld doing quests, venturing through dungeons, and solving puzzles. There is one key difference though and that is how you explore the overworld, sailing. It may not always be the most convenient way of traveling as you will have to change the direction of the wind multiple times, but exploring the seas is a fresh take for Zelda that I still enjoyed. The dungeons in the game were pretty enjoyable and filled with plenty of puzzles that while not absurdly difficult or cryptic will still kick your noggin into gear. Another thing that I wanted to point out is how quickly you go from each dungeon. While I did enjoy exploring around Hyrule in OoT and doing certain tasks before exploring dungeons, I still appreciated that you pretty much just go from one dungeon to the next until a certain infamous part of the game.
The Triforce quest while significantly toned down in this version based on what I've read was still an annoyance. Having to find the Triforce charts adds a repetitive step in getting the Triforce pieces and having Tingle decipher the Triforce charts is not cheap and also makes the quest more bothersome. The reduced amount of 3 charts to find and as a result, the fewer amount of times you have to visit the weird fairy-obsessed man, luckily only makes the whole quest slightly annoying. I can't imagine what it was like in the GameCube version knowing you have to find 8 charts and spend a ridiculous amount of rupees to decipher them all.
Triforce quest aside, its a fantastic Zelda game, GameCube game, and an even more fantastic Wii U game.
In terms of visuals, Wind Waker is a game that I personally don't think needed too much of an improvement as it still looks a lot more presentable than og OoT and MM partly in thanks to its cartoonish art style. Even with that in mind, the remake was still successful in improving how the game looks since it looks more beautiful than ever in HD.
For the most part, it's your typical 3d Zelda which pretty much entails that you will be exploring the overworld doing quests, venturing through dungeons, and solving puzzles. There is one key difference though and that is how you explore the overworld, sailing. It may not always be the most convenient way of traveling as you will have to change the direction of the wind multiple times, but exploring the seas is a fresh take for Zelda that I still enjoyed. The dungeons in the game were pretty enjoyable and filled with plenty of puzzles that while not absurdly difficult or cryptic will still kick your noggin into gear. Another thing that I wanted to point out is how quickly you go from each dungeon. While I did enjoy exploring around Hyrule in OoT and doing certain tasks before exploring dungeons, I still appreciated that you pretty much just go from one dungeon to the next until a certain infamous part of the game.
The Triforce quest while significantly toned down in this version based on what I've read was still an annoyance. Having to find the Triforce charts adds a repetitive step in getting the Triforce pieces and having Tingle decipher the Triforce charts is not cheap and also makes the quest more bothersome. The reduced amount of 3 charts to find and as a result, the fewer amount of times you have to visit the weird fairy-obsessed man, luckily only makes the whole quest slightly annoying. I can't imagine what it was like in the GameCube version knowing you have to find 8 charts and spend a ridiculous amount of rupees to decipher them all.
Triforce quest aside, its a fantastic Zelda game, GameCube game, and an even more fantastic Wii U game.
Silent Hill
1999
(Note: The following is the blurb I wrote for Silent Hill as part of user Pangburn's epic "Sight and Sound Poll"-style project where he essentially established Backloggd's definitive canon. Can't say enough good things about that massive undertaking and the work he put in - and for making me write this. Despite SH being my own "canon" favorite game for, I don't know, fifteen years or something now, I've never written about it. I find it extremely difficult to articulate its qualities - which in my mental laziness I feel like should be totally self-evident - and it's effected me in such a strongly and weirdly personal way that I don't feel I have the vocabulary to describe it. But I do love it, and he knew that, and despite me initially demurring like a chickenshit, he got me to stand up and be counted for this absolutely beyond-godlike classic. So, since I don't know that I'll ever find my way to writing more about it outside of passionate defenses and references in random comments, I figured I should repurpose it here, for posterity. Anyway.)
Building further on the steady development of its progenitors SWEET HOME, ALONE IN THE DARK, and RESIDENT EVIL, Silent Hill expanded the scope of video game horror both outward and inward. Rather than a mansion or series of interconnected buildings, it gave players a sprawling, fully three-dimensional town full of terrors to explore, yet focused on assaulting them mainly with their own fear of the unknown, clouding the story, characters, monsters, and environments in metaphor and dream logic, keeping them submerged in an oppressive sense of dread that made opening any new door genuinely unnerving. The aesthetic - essentially unmatched on the PlayStation - married Japanese sensibilities with the nightmarish imagery of its developers' favorite western horror media, and created a dark and atmospheric, crisp yet deliberately obscured look and sound that threw the doors open wide for a whole subgenre of J-Horror games that would follow. Silent Hill's project and effect on the player can be understood through its most indelible image, one that continues to define scary video games to this day - a normal person alone on an abandoned city street, faced with an enveloping gray fog ahead, crippled by the fear of taking even one step farther into it.
Building further on the steady development of its progenitors SWEET HOME, ALONE IN THE DARK, and RESIDENT EVIL, Silent Hill expanded the scope of video game horror both outward and inward. Rather than a mansion or series of interconnected buildings, it gave players a sprawling, fully three-dimensional town full of terrors to explore, yet focused on assaulting them mainly with their own fear of the unknown, clouding the story, characters, monsters, and environments in metaphor and dream logic, keeping them submerged in an oppressive sense of dread that made opening any new door genuinely unnerving. The aesthetic - essentially unmatched on the PlayStation - married Japanese sensibilities with the nightmarish imagery of its developers' favorite western horror media, and created a dark and atmospheric, crisp yet deliberately obscured look and sound that threw the doors open wide for a whole subgenre of J-Horror games that would follow. Silent Hill's project and effect on the player can be understood through its most indelible image, one that continues to define scary video games to this day - a normal person alone on an abandoned city street, faced with an enveloping gray fog ahead, crippled by the fear of taking even one step farther into it.
It starts generically, a decent enough guided experience that doesn’t really showcase why this is as good as it is. And then you have an open expanse and secrets to find. The exploration and discovery is the highlight here: strong level design and great manoeuvrability making this a blast.
It’s compulsively playable, always giving new a cool new thing or wonderful locations to uncover. It also has a brilliant 3D map — a rarity. Secrets are mostly pointless cosmetics but these are goofy fun and the act of discovery is the real joy.
It still could be tighter and there’s some feature bloat — though it’s so optional it can feel additive. Side characters are fun but the core narrative does very little. A perfunctory final twist is the definition of underbaked. Clearly, Respawn had a lot of gameplay ideas for a sequel, just not really any narrative ones.
It’s compulsively playable, always giving new a cool new thing or wonderful locations to uncover. It also has a brilliant 3D map — a rarity. Secrets are mostly pointless cosmetics but these are goofy fun and the act of discovery is the real joy.
It still could be tighter and there’s some feature bloat — though it’s so optional it can feel additive. Side characters are fun but the core narrative does very little. A perfunctory final twist is the definition of underbaked. Clearly, Respawn had a lot of gameplay ideas for a sequel, just not really any narrative ones.
Guns, Gore & Cannoli
2015
Guns, Gore & Cannoli is a 2D shooter platformer game. I could say that's what "Contra" should be to stay relevant today. It's not as frenetic and challenging as the old classic, but it's still enjoyable.
The gameplay is perfect for what it intends to do. There are a lot of things happening at the same time on your screen, and you have to manage to kill your enemies while avoiding being hit. You'll face zombies that hurt you when they get close and humans that will shoot at you.
The story is a bit crazy, mixing zombies and the Mafia. I'm pretty sure the developers didn't intend for it to be the focus here, but it's kind of funny in some events.
The art is really good. It's a cartoon design that matches pretty well with the vibe of the game.
Guns, Gore & Cannoli is a fun game. It's short but worth every Penny. I think you should give it a chance if you find it at a good price.
The gameplay is perfect for what it intends to do. There are a lot of things happening at the same time on your screen, and you have to manage to kill your enemies while avoiding being hit. You'll face zombies that hurt you when they get close and humans that will shoot at you.
The story is a bit crazy, mixing zombies and the Mafia. I'm pretty sure the developers didn't intend for it to be the focus here, but it's kind of funny in some events.
The art is really good. It's a cartoon design that matches pretty well with the vibe of the game.
Guns, Gore & Cannoli is a fun game. It's short but worth every Penny. I think you should give it a chance if you find it at a good price.
Death Stranding
2019
Puts you in the role of post-apocalyptic mailman as you ferry packages to and fro across a ruined America that's been brought to life by gorgeous photorealistic graphics. It's a long, arduous process that's made difficult by the weight of your cargo taking a toll on your balance and stability, as well as the path forward being rife with obstacles like highwaymen, destructive rainfall, supernatural entities, and even the terrain itself. While new items and features are introduced at a steady pace to ensure things get easier as you progress, traveling across the vast, empty expanses for miles on end doesn't necessarily become any more exciting. As a result, this is very much one of those love it or hate it kind of things.
I can see the game being a tedious slog for some and a straight shot of melatonin for others. There is an audience for this though. Personally, I was enamored with the story, themes, and overall originality of the mechanics. I enjoyed the sense of serenity that came from the slow-paced traversal so much that I was actually bothered whenever action would take center stage. I had no problem with the various enemy camps spread across the gargantuan map as I could deal or not deal with those as I saw fit. However, at several points you're forced into boss battles and the coverless third-person shooter system makes them more of a chore than anything. I was impressed with the scale of each encounter, but the game is definitely at its worst whenever guns are involved.
The online component makes the journey a little less lonely. You won't get to actually interact with another person, but structures built by other players will appear in your world to act as helping hands. Coming across a bridge or zip-line someone left behind not only makes your trek less of a hassle, but also allows you to feel strangely connected to individuals you'll never see. These random acts of kindness inspired me to not take up my own placed ladders or climbing ropes after using them with the hopes that they might prove useful to anybody else came that way next. Sweetening all of this is the "likes" system which allows you to award others with bonus experience points at the touch of a button whenever they've built something that's pleased you. Seeing that somebody not only used a road or safe house I crafted, but saw fit to reward me for it always brought a smile to my face. It's easily the best multiplayer experience I've ever had.
This is another meticulously crafted work of singular vision from the biggest auteur in the gaming industry. It transported me back to the PS2 era where you could find titles like Mr. Mosquito and Katamari Damacy that were entirely their own unique things. Because of this I believe Kojima delivered on his boasts of having created a completely new genre. I've certainly never played anything like this before. It's the kind of radical experimentation we need nowadays, even if the end results always end up being this divisive. While I definitely have a high affinity for the game I must admit not everyone will be as enthralled with it as I was. So despite the high score I'm giving it my ultimate recommendation is that you find a way to try it before you buy or even rent it in order to make sure it's for you.
9/10
I can see the game being a tedious slog for some and a straight shot of melatonin for others. There is an audience for this though. Personally, I was enamored with the story, themes, and overall originality of the mechanics. I enjoyed the sense of serenity that came from the slow-paced traversal so much that I was actually bothered whenever action would take center stage. I had no problem with the various enemy camps spread across the gargantuan map as I could deal or not deal with those as I saw fit. However, at several points you're forced into boss battles and the coverless third-person shooter system makes them more of a chore than anything. I was impressed with the scale of each encounter, but the game is definitely at its worst whenever guns are involved.
The online component makes the journey a little less lonely. You won't get to actually interact with another person, but structures built by other players will appear in your world to act as helping hands. Coming across a bridge or zip-line someone left behind not only makes your trek less of a hassle, but also allows you to feel strangely connected to individuals you'll never see. These random acts of kindness inspired me to not take up my own placed ladders or climbing ropes after using them with the hopes that they might prove useful to anybody else came that way next. Sweetening all of this is the "likes" system which allows you to award others with bonus experience points at the touch of a button whenever they've built something that's pleased you. Seeing that somebody not only used a road or safe house I crafted, but saw fit to reward me for it always brought a smile to my face. It's easily the best multiplayer experience I've ever had.
This is another meticulously crafted work of singular vision from the biggest auteur in the gaming industry. It transported me back to the PS2 era where you could find titles like Mr. Mosquito and Katamari Damacy that were entirely their own unique things. Because of this I believe Kojima delivered on his boasts of having created a completely new genre. I've certainly never played anything like this before. It's the kind of radical experimentation we need nowadays, even if the end results always end up being this divisive. While I definitely have a high affinity for the game I must admit not everyone will be as enthralled with it as I was. So despite the high score I'm giving it my ultimate recommendation is that you find a way to try it before you buy or even rent it in order to make sure it's for you.
9/10
It's been a while since I've beaten a VN game or even played one that I really enjoyed, but I got one in Witch on the Holy Night. It's an enhanced port of a game that came out about a decade ago. The concept was actually made before even Type-Moon was created so it's a pretty old story. I'm not too big on Type-Moon myself, but have experienced a few Fate and other related series anime so I'm not a complete beginner. My few exposure to the Aoko Aozaki character had piqued my interest (Melty Blood) so having a VN based on her origin story was captivating.
The story overall was quite engaging and despite how it seemed, there weren't many actual battles in it. The few that were there were developed pretty well and extensive. There's probably more "slow" parts to it, but surprisingly, I wasn't bored by them. I guess it helps that there's a lot of comedy spread around. While I think many of the science/magecraft/magic stuff explanations were eye rolling worthy, I guess I bought into them to care and follow.
The three main characters were great and were developed well. The explosive and fiery, Aoko, the quiet cool aristocratic, Alice, and the very kind fish out of water, Soujyuro. I thought I wasn't going to like Soujyuro much, but his lack of common sense from living his entire life in the mountains really made for great comedic moments. The chemistry between the three were interesting and I looked forward to see how they would develop across the game. The supporting characters were great too and had more focus than I'd expected.
The story is linear though which I didn't mind. No branching paths or even dialogue options except for a special small segment of the game. The game would've benefit from a glossary of sorts since there's a ton of terms just thrown out at you.
A few highlights of the game are the art direction and presentation. The scenes are very dynamic and consists of many back to back CG shots instead of the standard character talking portraits that you see in many typical VN games. While there are no fully animated scenes, it does make use of some sort of pseudo animation (like flash animation) to make many scenes come more alive. The battle scenes really benefited from this.
Music is well done particularly the tracks that played during the battles. They enhanced the intensity even more.
The game took me about 20 hours to clear which is of decent length, but not too long that it becomes a drag to read through.
Overall, I'd really like to see a direct sequel someday. The trio are too good to leave as is.
The story overall was quite engaging and despite how it seemed, there weren't many actual battles in it. The few that were there were developed pretty well and extensive. There's probably more "slow" parts to it, but surprisingly, I wasn't bored by them. I guess it helps that there's a lot of comedy spread around. While I think many of the science/magecraft/magic stuff explanations were eye rolling worthy, I guess I bought into them to care and follow.
The three main characters were great and were developed well. The explosive and fiery, Aoko, the quiet cool aristocratic, Alice, and the very kind fish out of water, Soujyuro. I thought I wasn't going to like Soujyuro much, but his lack of common sense from living his entire life in the mountains really made for great comedic moments. The chemistry between the three were interesting and I looked forward to see how they would develop across the game. The supporting characters were great too and had more focus than I'd expected.
The story is linear though which I didn't mind. No branching paths or even dialogue options except for a special small segment of the game. The game would've benefit from a glossary of sorts since there's a ton of terms just thrown out at you.
A few highlights of the game are the art direction and presentation. The scenes are very dynamic and consists of many back to back CG shots instead of the standard character talking portraits that you see in many typical VN games. While there are no fully animated scenes, it does make use of some sort of pseudo animation (like flash animation) to make many scenes come more alive. The battle scenes really benefited from this.
Music is well done particularly the tracks that played during the battles. They enhanced the intensity even more.
The game took me about 20 hours to clear which is of decent length, but not too long that it becomes a drag to read through.
Overall, I'd really like to see a direct sequel someday. The trio are too good to leave as is.
Star Fox Adventures
2002
For most of my Star Fox Adventures playthrough I didn’t feel like reviewing it. I definitively look upon it more fondly than most, but even then, I didn’t think I would have much to add to the discourse.
The starting hours of Star Fox Adventures were a blast, with very few hick-ups. I really enjoyed the gameplay-loop of finding a Gatekeeper making it able for me to get to a dungeon, finding a SpellStone which makes me able to find a Krazoa Spirit and then finding a SpellStone and so on.
Gameplaywise Star Fox Adventures brought with it an eerie feeling of familiarity.
Now I’ve never been interested in the mainline games, as I’m not big into on-rail- or any kind of shooter, so this feeling took me a while to understand, but after thinking about it for a while Star Fox Adventures really felt like a proto-Kameo, which makes more and more sense the longer I think about it.
You visit pretty much the same settings in both games, the combat system can feel similar at points (though not as fleshed out here) and these are only a few of the similarities between both games, which makes sense as it’s mostly the same people working on them.
Now unfortunately this game really takes a dive in the final stretch and starts decreasing in quality around the half-way point, which is around when you have seen all Dinosaur Planet has to offer and must start backtracking. They probably had to rush the game out, considering it came out a day before Microsoft announced its acquisition of Rare and it shows.
You will have to revisit old dungeons, which repeat their previous puzzles, but a little harder, one of the Gatekeepers is just a random guy and it all accumulates (slight naming spoiler for this 21-year-old game) Dragon Rock.
Dragon Rock is the worst thing any game has ever made me suffer through and this isn’t meant as some kind of metaphor, no! It is the worst part of any game I’ve ever had the displeasure of going through and me beating it should only show you how much I liked the rest of the game before it. I should probably say that at least some of my criticism of this part of the game is partly made worse by my controller being a bit overresponsive and having a few blind spots, both of which only becoming a problem when I had to do more precise movements.
Dragon Rock doesn’t start of all to bad. You had to shoot at some turrets using the Fire Blaster, which might be the wort controlling thing conceivable, but it isn’t too bad.
After a bit you get told to save a HIghTop and this is where it all falls apart and I started to embark on a journey. This funny little guy is trapped by four fire-blaster-targets, two in the back, two more to the front, symmetrical to the HighTop in the middle. It is your task to shoot all of these 4 points within around 10 seconds. When I got to this part of the game my in-game timer showed ~15 hours.
This task doesn’t sound too bad after all, but let’s talk a bit more about the Fire Blaster.
First of the Y-Axis is inverted, which at least for me didn’t mesh well with quick thinking, the controls are already overresponsive, which only got worse with my controller, the targets are far away enough to make it really hard to exactly line up your shots and if you miss the HighTop will start stomping and shake the screen, making you miss more and making him stomp more. He is also a big moving hitbox, sometimes blocking the targets.
Now the worst aspects of the Fire Blaster. When you stop moving the cursor it will snap back to the middle of the screen and when you want to turn forget it. Fox will accelerate in a way I don’t yet fully understand and then snaps back to some position like 3 screens away. The only way to kind of understand where your camera ends up is to look at the map, which has its own problems.
I tried for around 1 hour, when I got there on April 30th, to do it the intended way, but had to give up and started to investigate if I were the only person with troubles here and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t. Look at any comment-section of this part of the game and you will find complaints.
Not too long after I found positions on both the right and the left, where I can hit two targets by only looking further up. The one on the left is more finnicky as the target on the back-left is more towards the middle than its right counterpart.
I tried it using this knowledge for 2 more hours and went to bed after, thinking about giving up, or spending a lot of money to buy a more or less new first party controller, which was when I had an idea.
Why didn’t I try creating consistent set ups using visual cues to hit the targets, so I would only have to turn to said point, aim up and shoot.
On the next day I found out, that the soot-detailing could be used for such a set-up and the ledge get-up can be used to always shoot from the same position.
Using my amateur picture-editing skills I created my first consistent set up tutorial. After printing it out I noticed that I forgot one crucial point, the turning. As I said I was kind of able to look at the map, but this wasn’t by any means optimal. This set-up was also way to slow. This whole process took me another 3 hours.
Then I had another idea, the position on the right. I had written it off, as I couldn’t make it possible to always stand on the same position, but then I had another idea after looking at my stack of transparent paper. I think you know where this is going.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t ever able to draw out a 1:1 copy of the map, and I now could only use it to know where I had to shoot to hit the other two targets, but it was better than nothing. I tried this method for around 2 and a half hours, it was still to slow and hell to set up after using all your energy and having to run out of the building to replenish.
After 5 and a half hours of trying and failing miserably at what should be an easy task I reconsidered quitting and thought to myself that I might as well go for the whole 6 hour mark. My next strategy was to do it the intended way, but to shoot from the position I tried before, rather than the middle and to my own surprise I got it, not very confidently, but still. I think I just missed the 6-hour mark. But it wasn’t over yet, because what followed was a 3-minute long auto-scroller, which if you fail it you must free the HighTop again.
I luckily did it first try and saved a dozen times.
Dragon Rock doesn’t get much better after. Luckily I found out, through watching the speedrun of the game, to see if you could skip the part somehow, that you can skip a lot of the next by lining up Fox with a line on the wall, looking a bit to the left and throwing the barrel through the wall.
What follows is another (uncapped) auto-scroller and what many say is the actual hardest part of the game, even without a non-assuming third party Wave-Bird-Controller making you struggle even more.
This time I bit the bullet and got myself a controller with turbo-functionality as my fingers started to hurt after not too long.
This is Dragon Rock. I only completed it to finish a game I had thoroughly enjoyed before it and was it worth it? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. The only thing you might be missing is the best Krazoa-Spirit task after the most lackluster Krazoa-shrine.
I should also mention that my game crashed at the final boss, setting me back half an hour, as the game apparently ceased to auto-safe after big, ingame events.
A lot of people have already talked a lot about the let’s say “interesting” final confrontation with General Scales. I personally think it would’ve helped a lot as now the last two boss fights are on-rail shooters which is a really undercooked mechanic, which is only there to remind you that you are playing STARFOX Adventures.
At the end of the day, I still enjoyed most of Star Fox Adventures, but I will never replay it completely. The TV my Gamecube is hooked up on will now forever tell the tale of Dragon Rock with its glue residue.
Play it on an emulator with some kind of Fire Blaster fix, if that exists.
The starting hours of Star Fox Adventures were a blast, with very few hick-ups. I really enjoyed the gameplay-loop of finding a Gatekeeper making it able for me to get to a dungeon, finding a SpellStone which makes me able to find a Krazoa Spirit and then finding a SpellStone and so on.
Gameplaywise Star Fox Adventures brought with it an eerie feeling of familiarity.
Now I’ve never been interested in the mainline games, as I’m not big into on-rail- or any kind of shooter, so this feeling took me a while to understand, but after thinking about it for a while Star Fox Adventures really felt like a proto-Kameo, which makes more and more sense the longer I think about it.
You visit pretty much the same settings in both games, the combat system can feel similar at points (though not as fleshed out here) and these are only a few of the similarities between both games, which makes sense as it’s mostly the same people working on them.
Now unfortunately this game really takes a dive in the final stretch and starts decreasing in quality around the half-way point, which is around when you have seen all Dinosaur Planet has to offer and must start backtracking. They probably had to rush the game out, considering it came out a day before Microsoft announced its acquisition of Rare and it shows.
You will have to revisit old dungeons, which repeat their previous puzzles, but a little harder, one of the Gatekeepers is just a random guy and it all accumulates (slight naming spoiler for this 21-year-old game) Dragon Rock.
Dragon Rock is the worst thing any game has ever made me suffer through and this isn’t meant as some kind of metaphor, no! It is the worst part of any game I’ve ever had the displeasure of going through and me beating it should only show you how much I liked the rest of the game before it. I should probably say that at least some of my criticism of this part of the game is partly made worse by my controller being a bit overresponsive and having a few blind spots, both of which only becoming a problem when I had to do more precise movements.
Dragon Rock doesn’t start of all to bad. You had to shoot at some turrets using the Fire Blaster, which might be the wort controlling thing conceivable, but it isn’t too bad.
After a bit you get told to save a HIghTop and this is where it all falls apart and I started to embark on a journey. This funny little guy is trapped by four fire-blaster-targets, two in the back, two more to the front, symmetrical to the HighTop in the middle. It is your task to shoot all of these 4 points within around 10 seconds. When I got to this part of the game my in-game timer showed ~15 hours.
This task doesn’t sound too bad after all, but let’s talk a bit more about the Fire Blaster.
First of the Y-Axis is inverted, which at least for me didn’t mesh well with quick thinking, the controls are already overresponsive, which only got worse with my controller, the targets are far away enough to make it really hard to exactly line up your shots and if you miss the HighTop will start stomping and shake the screen, making you miss more and making him stomp more. He is also a big moving hitbox, sometimes blocking the targets.
Now the worst aspects of the Fire Blaster. When you stop moving the cursor it will snap back to the middle of the screen and when you want to turn forget it. Fox will accelerate in a way I don’t yet fully understand and then snaps back to some position like 3 screens away. The only way to kind of understand where your camera ends up is to look at the map, which has its own problems.
I tried for around 1 hour, when I got there on April 30th, to do it the intended way, but had to give up and started to investigate if I were the only person with troubles here and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t. Look at any comment-section of this part of the game and you will find complaints.
Not too long after I found positions on both the right and the left, where I can hit two targets by only looking further up. The one on the left is more finnicky as the target on the back-left is more towards the middle than its right counterpart.
I tried it using this knowledge for 2 more hours and went to bed after, thinking about giving up, or spending a lot of money to buy a more or less new first party controller, which was when I had an idea.
Why didn’t I try creating consistent set ups using visual cues to hit the targets, so I would only have to turn to said point, aim up and shoot.
On the next day I found out, that the soot-detailing could be used for such a set-up and the ledge get-up can be used to always shoot from the same position.
Using my amateur picture-editing skills I created my first consistent set up tutorial. After printing it out I noticed that I forgot one crucial point, the turning. As I said I was kind of able to look at the map, but this wasn’t by any means optimal. This set-up was also way to slow. This whole process took me another 3 hours.
Then I had another idea, the position on the right. I had written it off, as I couldn’t make it possible to always stand on the same position, but then I had another idea after looking at my stack of transparent paper. I think you know where this is going.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t ever able to draw out a 1:1 copy of the map, and I now could only use it to know where I had to shoot to hit the other two targets, but it was better than nothing. I tried this method for around 2 and a half hours, it was still to slow and hell to set up after using all your energy and having to run out of the building to replenish.
After 5 and a half hours of trying and failing miserably at what should be an easy task I reconsidered quitting and thought to myself that I might as well go for the whole 6 hour mark. My next strategy was to do it the intended way, but to shoot from the position I tried before, rather than the middle and to my own surprise I got it, not very confidently, but still. I think I just missed the 6-hour mark. But it wasn’t over yet, because what followed was a 3-minute long auto-scroller, which if you fail it you must free the HighTop again.
I luckily did it first try and saved a dozen times.
Dragon Rock doesn’t get much better after. Luckily I found out, through watching the speedrun of the game, to see if you could skip the part somehow, that you can skip a lot of the next by lining up Fox with a line on the wall, looking a bit to the left and throwing the barrel through the wall.
What follows is another (uncapped) auto-scroller and what many say is the actual hardest part of the game, even without a non-assuming third party Wave-Bird-Controller making you struggle even more.
This time I bit the bullet and got myself a controller with turbo-functionality as my fingers started to hurt after not too long.
This is Dragon Rock. I only completed it to finish a game I had thoroughly enjoyed before it and was it worth it? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. The only thing you might be missing is the best Krazoa-Spirit task after the most lackluster Krazoa-shrine.
I should also mention that my game crashed at the final boss, setting me back half an hour, as the game apparently ceased to auto-safe after big, ingame events.
A lot of people have already talked a lot about the let’s say “interesting” final confrontation with General Scales. I personally think it would’ve helped a lot as now the last two boss fights are on-rail shooters which is a really undercooked mechanic, which is only there to remind you that you are playing STARFOX Adventures.
At the end of the day, I still enjoyed most of Star Fox Adventures, but I will never replay it completely. The TV my Gamecube is hooked up on will now forever tell the tale of Dragon Rock with its glue residue.
Play it on an emulator with some kind of Fire Blaster fix, if that exists.
Final Fantasy III
2021
The best of the Pixel Remasters thus far, only dragged down in my eyes by its final dungeon and boss gauntlet.
The pacing of Final Fantasy III was noticeably better than its other NES counterparts, aforementioned grindy final dungeon aside. The progression and job systems were neat, although I do feel the job system left a little to be desired, with some jobs being almost required to beat bosses and others being next to useless.
The story didn’t feel quite as focused as the second game, and in some ways it’s more generic, but it was expansive and featured more memorable characters. It definitely helps that said characters are recurring and don’t all drag down your party in combat until they die in the narrative.
A small thing that I adored about Final Fantasy III was the focus on the airships. The Invincible in particular acting as a mobile home base was just what the doctor ordered. I love that crap. The increased map size (or at least perceived size) combined with the different airships made it more of an adventure for me. In a similar vein, I liked the gimmicky dungeons with different minor mechanics like shrinking or turning into frogs. They didn’t overstay their welcome.
A real shame the original NES/Famicom version didn’t make it to the States, because it’s solid, and I think better than the first two games.
The pacing of Final Fantasy III was noticeably better than its other NES counterparts, aforementioned grindy final dungeon aside. The progression and job systems were neat, although I do feel the job system left a little to be desired, with some jobs being almost required to beat bosses and others being next to useless.
The story didn’t feel quite as focused as the second game, and in some ways it’s more generic, but it was expansive and featured more memorable characters. It definitely helps that said characters are recurring and don’t all drag down your party in combat until they die in the narrative.
A small thing that I adored about Final Fantasy III was the focus on the airships. The Invincible in particular acting as a mobile home base was just what the doctor ordered. I love that crap. The increased map size (or at least perceived size) combined with the different airships made it more of an adventure for me. In a similar vein, I liked the gimmicky dungeons with different minor mechanics like shrinking or turning into frogs. They didn’t overstay their welcome.
A real shame the original NES/Famicom version didn’t make it to the States, because it’s solid, and I think better than the first two games.
Content warning for discussions of futility in death and suicide/self-harm.
A waste of time.
A lot of games are about death. I won’t get all Philosophy 101 on you and say that Pac-Man fleeing from ghosts is a Freudian metaphor for pursuing Eros and avoiding Thanatos, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that death is everywhere in games. It’s primarily a narrative device — death is inherently ripe for drama as the last thing any of us will ever experience, meaning it can be played as heroic, sad, joyful, angry, honestly however you’d like — but it’s rarer for death to be a mechanical focus. Puzzlers like Karoshi and 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself do task the player with actively seeking out death, but these are predominantly played for laughs; most people who play these titles won’t get much out of them beyond a grossed-out laugh at making a salaryman drop a safe on his own head or making an office worker swing a stapler into his face, respectively.
Player death is usually a consequence for some sort of failure; the amount of allowed mistakes finally reaching a critical threshold where the only remaining option is to punish the player by killing them. You’d have a hard time listing games where this isn’t the case, especially if you weren’t allowed to look outside of what’s popular. The top hundred games for sale right now likely all feature the constant, looming threat of player death as a fail state, setting aside the use of death as a narrative element that many titles also lean upon.
Death is everywhere in games.
The Stillness of the Wind is not about death. It’s about dying.
This is a deceptive title, though it really makes no effort to be. Every store page that this game is on practically tells you what’s going to happen before you’ve even purchased it: the tagline is “a quiet game of life and loss”, and you should immediately be able to figure out where this story ends the second you load in and you’re playing as a lonely, hobbling old woman on a goat farm. Even with as much warning as you could possibly be given — too much warning, one could argue — Stillness of the Wind doesn’t portray everything as doomed from the word go. In fact, you’ll likely be overburdened with the sheer amount of things that need to be taken care of. Mechanically speaking, this is really no different from any standard farming simulator game, only with the pace cranked way, way down to compensate for the fact that you’re playing as a lady in her twilight years.
You’ll start off milking goats, making cheese, collecting eggs, sowing seeds, foraging around for trinkets and mushrooms. It isn’t long before the mailman-slash-merchant comes around that you get introduced to the bartering system, where you can stock up on all sorts of required materials. Your goats need hay, so you can trade a half dozen eggs for a couple bales; wolves are whispered to be lurking around, so you can pick up a few shotgun shells to scare them off; he’ll even bring around a billy goat during breeding season that you can borrow for a night to make your goats have kids, ensuring the farm can keep a stable population. There’s so much to do that establishing a consistent routine can be a little tricky, and it won’t be long before you’re eating meager meals of eggs and tomatoes to sustain digging a couple of extra farming plots after the sun has gone down.
But it’s all a facade. Without a word of warning, the shadows start getting longer earlier in the day. The time you have to work shrinks. More wolves come. Your chickens stop laying, and then they start dying. The goats stop eating. Letters stop coming. You run out of seeds to plant. Your crops dry up. The mailman’s inventory dwindles to little more than a bale or two of hay. Your cheese turns black and inedible on the shelf. You’re always tired, no matter how much you sleep. You begin to walk with a limp, and then you degrade into a slow shuffle. The kids won’t be weaned off of milk, but their mothers will be too starved to provide them or you with any. You have nightmares. Your family, far away, suffer. What mail you get tells of a world far away that’s falling apart. You can no longer sustain yourself, but there’s nobody else around to help.
It isn’t long before there’s nothing left, and you see how much of a farce this all was. Your final nightmare brings you to nothing more than rows and rows of scarcely-marked graves, lined up beneath a dark sun. Hundreds upon hundreds of crosses planted into dirt mounds trail along the horizon and stretch themselves beneath the frame. Too many dead bodies all in one spot. More than there should ever be. You wake before you’ve seen them all. It’s impossible to tell how many more there were. Powerful winds blow, grey-green clouds blotting out the sun and casting you in darkness during your final days. The goats — if any have survived — are scared. The wind and rain never stop. There’s nothing left to do. No crops to water, no milk to churn, no mushrooms to forage, no eggs to collect, nothing you could barter for. The mailman arrives with a final letter to let you know that your daughter will try to get to you through the storm.
She doesn’t make it. You never see anyone again.
Winter comes. Everything freezes. What hasn’t died yet now perishes. You are not spared this fate. You walk back inside and quietly fade away.
It’s an exhausting game. Once your mechanics start being stripped from you, beginning with the shorter days, you start to realize just how much time you’re wasting. Unmilked goats could have made cheese. Uncollected eggs disappear. Unwatered plants die. You have to choose what to focus on to the neglect of everything else, and none of it even matters in the end. It’s an outstanding bit of narrative harmony.
I won’t go as far as to say that I think farming simulators needed something like this — a slow piece that examines the futility of establishing routines and grinding to get the maximum amount of bartering materials and collectible trinkets — but I’m glad that this can exist alongside them. Stillness of the Wind hardly feels like a contrast to something like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley; rather, it’s a complimentary material that showcases the inevitable death and decay waiting for them at their ends.
My only complaint really lies in the world-building that’s established here, because it feels to me as though it leans too much into the supernatural. The talk of lunar colonies and inter-planetary travel certainly surprised me at first glance, but didn’t feel as though they detracted from the story. The discussions about how entire towns have vanished into thin air and mysterious, unending carnivals that draw in unsuspecting people did feel a bit at-odds with what was being presented, though. It was a distraction that the game didn’t need, and it hurts what is otherwise an exceptionally grounded narrative.
At the end, though, when there’s nothing you can do besides sit next to the mailbox and wait for a delivery that never comes, it’s easy to want to let go. All of this is so tiring, and so futile. There’s no point in clinging to it, because there’s scarcely anything left to cling to. As Nic Pizzolatto wrote for True Detective, it’s a relief to realize that you don’t have to hold on so tight. You can just let it slip away, and make your peace with it.
I didn’t.
But it’s not really up to me, anyway.
A waste of time.
A lot of games are about death. I won’t get all Philosophy 101 on you and say that Pac-Man fleeing from ghosts is a Freudian metaphor for pursuing Eros and avoiding Thanatos, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that death is everywhere in games. It’s primarily a narrative device — death is inherently ripe for drama as the last thing any of us will ever experience, meaning it can be played as heroic, sad, joyful, angry, honestly however you’d like — but it’s rarer for death to be a mechanical focus. Puzzlers like Karoshi and 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself do task the player with actively seeking out death, but these are predominantly played for laughs; most people who play these titles won’t get much out of them beyond a grossed-out laugh at making a salaryman drop a safe on his own head or making an office worker swing a stapler into his face, respectively.
Player death is usually a consequence for some sort of failure; the amount of allowed mistakes finally reaching a critical threshold where the only remaining option is to punish the player by killing them. You’d have a hard time listing games where this isn’t the case, especially if you weren’t allowed to look outside of what’s popular. The top hundred games for sale right now likely all feature the constant, looming threat of player death as a fail state, setting aside the use of death as a narrative element that many titles also lean upon.
Death is everywhere in games.
The Stillness of the Wind is not about death. It’s about dying.
This is a deceptive title, though it really makes no effort to be. Every store page that this game is on practically tells you what’s going to happen before you’ve even purchased it: the tagline is “a quiet game of life and loss”, and you should immediately be able to figure out where this story ends the second you load in and you’re playing as a lonely, hobbling old woman on a goat farm. Even with as much warning as you could possibly be given — too much warning, one could argue — Stillness of the Wind doesn’t portray everything as doomed from the word go. In fact, you’ll likely be overburdened with the sheer amount of things that need to be taken care of. Mechanically speaking, this is really no different from any standard farming simulator game, only with the pace cranked way, way down to compensate for the fact that you’re playing as a lady in her twilight years.
You’ll start off milking goats, making cheese, collecting eggs, sowing seeds, foraging around for trinkets and mushrooms. It isn’t long before the mailman-slash-merchant comes around that you get introduced to the bartering system, where you can stock up on all sorts of required materials. Your goats need hay, so you can trade a half dozen eggs for a couple bales; wolves are whispered to be lurking around, so you can pick up a few shotgun shells to scare them off; he’ll even bring around a billy goat during breeding season that you can borrow for a night to make your goats have kids, ensuring the farm can keep a stable population. There’s so much to do that establishing a consistent routine can be a little tricky, and it won’t be long before you’re eating meager meals of eggs and tomatoes to sustain digging a couple of extra farming plots after the sun has gone down.
But it’s all a facade. Without a word of warning, the shadows start getting longer earlier in the day. The time you have to work shrinks. More wolves come. Your chickens stop laying, and then they start dying. The goats stop eating. Letters stop coming. You run out of seeds to plant. Your crops dry up. The mailman’s inventory dwindles to little more than a bale or two of hay. Your cheese turns black and inedible on the shelf. You’re always tired, no matter how much you sleep. You begin to walk with a limp, and then you degrade into a slow shuffle. The kids won’t be weaned off of milk, but their mothers will be too starved to provide them or you with any. You have nightmares. Your family, far away, suffer. What mail you get tells of a world far away that’s falling apart. You can no longer sustain yourself, but there’s nobody else around to help.
It isn’t long before there’s nothing left, and you see how much of a farce this all was. Your final nightmare brings you to nothing more than rows and rows of scarcely-marked graves, lined up beneath a dark sun. Hundreds upon hundreds of crosses planted into dirt mounds trail along the horizon and stretch themselves beneath the frame. Too many dead bodies all in one spot. More than there should ever be. You wake before you’ve seen them all. It’s impossible to tell how many more there were. Powerful winds blow, grey-green clouds blotting out the sun and casting you in darkness during your final days. The goats — if any have survived — are scared. The wind and rain never stop. There’s nothing left to do. No crops to water, no milk to churn, no mushrooms to forage, no eggs to collect, nothing you could barter for. The mailman arrives with a final letter to let you know that your daughter will try to get to you through the storm.
She doesn’t make it. You never see anyone again.
Winter comes. Everything freezes. What hasn’t died yet now perishes. You are not spared this fate. You walk back inside and quietly fade away.
It’s an exhausting game. Once your mechanics start being stripped from you, beginning with the shorter days, you start to realize just how much time you’re wasting. Unmilked goats could have made cheese. Uncollected eggs disappear. Unwatered plants die. You have to choose what to focus on to the neglect of everything else, and none of it even matters in the end. It’s an outstanding bit of narrative harmony.
I won’t go as far as to say that I think farming simulators needed something like this — a slow piece that examines the futility of establishing routines and grinding to get the maximum amount of bartering materials and collectible trinkets — but I’m glad that this can exist alongside them. Stillness of the Wind hardly feels like a contrast to something like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley; rather, it’s a complimentary material that showcases the inevitable death and decay waiting for them at their ends.
My only complaint really lies in the world-building that’s established here, because it feels to me as though it leans too much into the supernatural. The talk of lunar colonies and inter-planetary travel certainly surprised me at first glance, but didn’t feel as though they detracted from the story. The discussions about how entire towns have vanished into thin air and mysterious, unending carnivals that draw in unsuspecting people did feel a bit at-odds with what was being presented, though. It was a distraction that the game didn’t need, and it hurts what is otherwise an exceptionally grounded narrative.
At the end, though, when there’s nothing you can do besides sit next to the mailbox and wait for a delivery that never comes, it’s easy to want to let go. All of this is so tiring, and so futile. There’s no point in clinging to it, because there’s scarcely anything left to cling to. As Nic Pizzolatto wrote for True Detective, it’s a relief to realize that you don’t have to hold on so tight. You can just let it slip away, and make your peace with it.
I didn’t.
But it’s not really up to me, anyway.
It's a remastered collection of two of the best platformers ever created, so you can't really go wrong. But is it the definitive way to play Klonoa? Well, as for the second game... maybe. Honestly, it's been a long while now since I played the PS2 original, much as I cherish it. The way I see it though, this version of the first game lacks a little something of the original. Call it 'soul' perhaps. All the cutscenes in this collection are all rendered in-game. That means that the beautiful FMV sequences of the first game have been redone using the less expressive in-game character models, and as such a lot of the emotional impact has been lost. The infamously gut-wrenching ending of Klonoa 1 loses a lot of its power in the Reverie Series, and because of this, the PS1 original remains king in my opinion.
There's also some fuckery going on with the audio mix. The glorious music is offensively low in the mix, while the vocal samples of the original games have been included, resulting in some aural discordance. Music and SFX sounds crisp, but in cutscenes the characters' voices are incredibly tinny. It's quite distracting.
This is still a must play for any Klonoa fan though. Or even just platforming fans in general. Buy this so that we can be blessed with Klonoa 3 in the future.
There's also some fuckery going on with the audio mix. The glorious music is offensively low in the mix, while the vocal samples of the original games have been included, resulting in some aural discordance. Music and SFX sounds crisp, but in cutscenes the characters' voices are incredibly tinny. It's quite distracting.
This is still a must play for any Klonoa fan though. Or even just platforming fans in general. Buy this so that we can be blessed with Klonoa 3 in the future.
Regardless of how you feel about Atari, it's really hard to deny that this is an extremely well made compilation.
This compilation provides a lot more than even the most prominent companies (looking at you, Nintendo and Super Mario 3D All-Stars) manage to provide in their compilations. Not only do you have the standard Atari 2600 and Arcade games of course, but there's also a lot from Atari's lesser known systems such as the Lynx, 800 computers and Jaguar being represented and preserved here. Sure, the games themselves can be pretty hit-or-miss, but it's still nice seeing many of these more obscure titles getting preserved and made accessible on modern systems (besides, being hit or miss is honestly par for the course for Atari lmao).
But that isn't even to mention that, alongside all the games here, it also comes with a lot of documentation of the company's history - including interviews with developers, advertisements, cover art, in-house memos, and so on - which truly pays tribute to Atari's history especially as the company that basically laid the foundations for gaming as an industry now. There's also some recreated versions of Atari's classic games which... is honestly more of a novelty than anything but still a neat addition nonetheless.
This ultimately serves as a really good celebration of Atari as a company between the preservation of many of their titles, from their more well known 2600 and arcade games to their lesser known games, as well as the documentation of their history.
If you have even a passing interest in Atari and their history, this is definitely a must-buy imo.
This compilation provides a lot more than even the most prominent companies (looking at you, Nintendo and Super Mario 3D All-Stars) manage to provide in their compilations. Not only do you have the standard Atari 2600 and Arcade games of course, but there's also a lot from Atari's lesser known systems such as the Lynx, 800 computers and Jaguar being represented and preserved here. Sure, the games themselves can be pretty hit-or-miss, but it's still nice seeing many of these more obscure titles getting preserved and made accessible on modern systems (besides, being hit or miss is honestly par for the course for Atari lmao).
But that isn't even to mention that, alongside all the games here, it also comes with a lot of documentation of the company's history - including interviews with developers, advertisements, cover art, in-house memos, and so on - which truly pays tribute to Atari's history especially as the company that basically laid the foundations for gaming as an industry now. There's also some recreated versions of Atari's classic games which... is honestly more of a novelty than anything but still a neat addition nonetheless.
This ultimately serves as a really good celebration of Atari as a company between the preservation of many of their titles, from their more well known 2600 and arcade games to their lesser known games, as well as the documentation of their history.
If you have even a passing interest in Atari and their history, this is definitely a must-buy imo.
Nice that new people will be able to experience this cool series. Combining the first two games is nice. I just wish it was a NEW game but whatever.
The new art style offends me. This series didn't need this sleek, Vtuber animation style. It makes the overall presentation look more generic.
I don't regret my purchase but I'd rather play the DS games.
The new art style offends me. This series didn't need this sleek, Vtuber animation style. It makes the overall presentation look more generic.
I don't regret my purchase but I'd rather play the DS games.
Aw man, this is gonna be my longest review and hottest take in a while. When I was a kid I played the first few missions of the original Advance Wars on emulator and remember thinking it was really cool! Well, either I didn't get far enough in to see the flaws or I was just too young to have developed my critical thinking skills because damn - Advance Wars kinda sucks!
Let me be upfront here; nothing that WayForward have done with this as a remake is even remotely a problem - in fact it's about the only stuff I like about the game. The UI and menus are gorgeous, character models and animations are full of personality and the remixed music is great too. No - I don't love the vomit-green colour of the grass and in-game textures, but I find that people who complain about a remake's visuals are often among the most insufferable people in the world and I don't wanna be lumped in with them, I'll get over it, we've got bigger fish to fry.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a very faithful remake of the original Advance Wars 1&2 and that might be the problem because what I've realised upon revisiting these games is that they are - in my opinion very fundamentally flawed! I'm about halfway through Advance Wars 2 right now and it's just starting to feel like a total slog that I'm not sure I'll finish.
Advance Wars' AI is dumb as a box of rocks. I'm playing on "Classic" (the more difficult) mode and find that the AI never reacts to you having a unit nearing the objective. You can have an infantry unit on literally the space next to the HQ you need to capture to win the match, and they still send their units off to fight your other guys halfway across the map. Only when you begin the active process of capturing an objective does that unit become a target, which is very exploitable because you can just send infantry/mech units in to capture an objective as a decoy, knowing they'll die and then send all your tanks and other guys round the ensuing chaos to win the game. The enemy AI will also frequently attack your units with sub-optimal units. Case in point: I've just had the enemy attack my battle copter with 2 separate tanks (which are highly ineffective against battle copters), get completely destroyed on the counter-attack and THEN after letting their tanks take completely unnecessary damage, send in their anti-air unit which was IN RANGE THE WHOLE TIME to one-shot my battle copter after the fact???
Advance Wars hones in on the strategy elements moreso than its Intelligent Systems-counterpart Fire Emblem - yet you rarely ever feel like you won a match through genuine strategy, instead you feel like you won because the AI kept being fucking stupid. And yet - despite the AI being so dumb, battles - especially ones later in the game take AGES. Fire Emblem I'd say never lets its chapters take upwards of an hour or so on average, it has a pretty clean curve. Battles in Advance Wars start off at a pretty fair Fire Emblem-length, and yet they snowball like you would not believe to the point that the final battle of Advance Wars 1 took me 5 hours. This shit goes from feeling like Fire Emblem to Civilization real quick, it's astonishing how quickly the average battle length spirals out of control, and this didn't take me 5 hours because I had to keep resetting or anything! I don't know if I was doing something hugely wrong but I was only playing the game in the way that made sense and yeah, I did win! But it took me 5 HOURS!
(The battle just before that also took about 3, so.)
Advance Wars is like rock, paper, scissors if there were 8 choices and 5 of those choices only interacted specifically with 4 of those other choices and the remaining choices had extremely niche and specific interactions with everything else and also there were terrain bonuses and special powers and over 50% of the game's maps threw this annoying ass fucking fog of war at you that further slowed the game's pace to a halt and also felt like it eliminated a lot of the strategy in the game and instead just had you fuckin firing blindly in the dark for half an hour trying to find the bastard-ass rocket unit that's been firing on you from 6 spaces away the whole time
It does not tell you what the opponent's CO power does when they use them on you, you only find out what they do once you play as them yourselves late into AW1 or 2 (when that knowledge has long stopped being useful) and it poorly communicates which unit is attacking you by frequently leaving the camera on the unit which has just moved while another unit is attacking you - frequently leaving me in moments of utter confusion where I could swear an artillery unit had just moved and attacked me in the same turn. It is a very complex game that never feels particularly deep. It never justifies just how many different units and niche interactions there are, partially because so many mechanics are exactly that - niche and forgettable and partially because you win almost every match by exploiting the dumbass AI!
Late in Advance Wars 1, when former enemy officer Eagle and literal child protagonist Andy are celebrating a victory, Eagle tells Andy they should "spar" again sometime.
...Spar...?
...What the fuck do you mean...Spar? When a helicopter bursts into flames and explodes with screaming men inside it, is he aware of what's happening? He does realise what war is and what it entails, right? Why is he suggesting "sparring" with the game's child protagonist as if sending men to their deaths in large-scale armed combat is a fucking anime training montage? Why does every Japanese game lately seem to have dialogue like this? Those are people, with guns and explosives, Eagle! You fucking freak! Why has everything gotta be so fucking anime all the time?? It's POISON!!! IT'S BRAINROT I TELL YOU!!! BRAINROT!!!!!!!!!
The world of Advance Wars is canonically called "Wars World". Clearly, the biggest loser in this review is me, who has written up this entirely-too-lengthy diatribe about a videogame where anime teens wage literal war against eachother in a place called "Wars World." Fucking Wars World. Genuinely, I can not stop thinking about the ramifications of a place called "Wars World" that seems to exist for the sole purpose of being a place where wars happen.
By the way - what's the deal with the voice acting? Like, it's fine don't get me wrong but why are characters only ever saying 30-40% of what's on-screen at most? I understand having a budget or time constraints but like, none of the VOs who got into their studios or whatever had the time at any point to just read all of the dialogue in any given textbox? This isn't like a Fire Emblem situation where they're using grunts or noises to actively convey the characters' emotions consistently because every character has like, 2 noises max and the lines/words that they do choose to read out I just find really weird! I don't know how else to describe it, you'd have to see it for yourself! It's just really weird what they did and did not record! The plot fucking sucks by the way! I played through the entire first game and still genuinely have no idea what happened! It's a mess and it feels like they barely even tried!
I'm really disappointed to return to Advance Wars and think it's actually pretty bad. I wanna reiterate that I don't think much of the fault lies with WayForward - who inject a lot of personality and charm into this thing, and just faithfully recreated what I think is a deeply flawed pair of games. I wanted to like it a lot more because I love its vibe and aesthetic but damn, I only have so much time on this beautiful green planet, bro. I can only spend so much of it exploiting AI and mashing through mid-map stalemates in fuckin Wars World for hours on end. I'm gonna go outside and see if I can get my ass ate
Let me be upfront here; nothing that WayForward have done with this as a remake is even remotely a problem - in fact it's about the only stuff I like about the game. The UI and menus are gorgeous, character models and animations are full of personality and the remixed music is great too. No - I don't love the vomit-green colour of the grass and in-game textures, but I find that people who complain about a remake's visuals are often among the most insufferable people in the world and I don't wanna be lumped in with them, I'll get over it, we've got bigger fish to fry.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a very faithful remake of the original Advance Wars 1&2 and that might be the problem because what I've realised upon revisiting these games is that they are - in my opinion very fundamentally flawed! I'm about halfway through Advance Wars 2 right now and it's just starting to feel like a total slog that I'm not sure I'll finish.
Advance Wars' AI is dumb as a box of rocks. I'm playing on "Classic" (the more difficult) mode and find that the AI never reacts to you having a unit nearing the objective. You can have an infantry unit on literally the space next to the HQ you need to capture to win the match, and they still send their units off to fight your other guys halfway across the map. Only when you begin the active process of capturing an objective does that unit become a target, which is very exploitable because you can just send infantry/mech units in to capture an objective as a decoy, knowing they'll die and then send all your tanks and other guys round the ensuing chaos to win the game. The enemy AI will also frequently attack your units with sub-optimal units. Case in point: I've just had the enemy attack my battle copter with 2 separate tanks (which are highly ineffective against battle copters), get completely destroyed on the counter-attack and THEN after letting their tanks take completely unnecessary damage, send in their anti-air unit which was IN RANGE THE WHOLE TIME to one-shot my battle copter after the fact???
Advance Wars hones in on the strategy elements moreso than its Intelligent Systems-counterpart Fire Emblem - yet you rarely ever feel like you won a match through genuine strategy, instead you feel like you won because the AI kept being fucking stupid. And yet - despite the AI being so dumb, battles - especially ones later in the game take AGES. Fire Emblem I'd say never lets its chapters take upwards of an hour or so on average, it has a pretty clean curve. Battles in Advance Wars start off at a pretty fair Fire Emblem-length, and yet they snowball like you would not believe to the point that the final battle of Advance Wars 1 took me 5 hours. This shit goes from feeling like Fire Emblem to Civilization real quick, it's astonishing how quickly the average battle length spirals out of control, and this didn't take me 5 hours because I had to keep resetting or anything! I don't know if I was doing something hugely wrong but I was only playing the game in the way that made sense and yeah, I did win! But it took me 5 HOURS!
(The battle just before that also took about 3, so.)
Advance Wars is like rock, paper, scissors if there were 8 choices and 5 of those choices only interacted specifically with 4 of those other choices and the remaining choices had extremely niche and specific interactions with everything else and also there were terrain bonuses and special powers and over 50% of the game's maps threw this annoying ass fucking fog of war at you that further slowed the game's pace to a halt and also felt like it eliminated a lot of the strategy in the game and instead just had you fuckin firing blindly in the dark for half an hour trying to find the bastard-ass rocket unit that's been firing on you from 6 spaces away the whole time
It does not tell you what the opponent's CO power does when they use them on you, you only find out what they do once you play as them yourselves late into AW1 or 2 (when that knowledge has long stopped being useful) and it poorly communicates which unit is attacking you by frequently leaving the camera on the unit which has just moved while another unit is attacking you - frequently leaving me in moments of utter confusion where I could swear an artillery unit had just moved and attacked me in the same turn. It is a very complex game that never feels particularly deep. It never justifies just how many different units and niche interactions there are, partially because so many mechanics are exactly that - niche and forgettable and partially because you win almost every match by exploiting the dumbass AI!
Late in Advance Wars 1, when former enemy officer Eagle and literal child protagonist Andy are celebrating a victory, Eagle tells Andy they should "spar" again sometime.
...Spar...?
...What the fuck do you mean...Spar? When a helicopter bursts into flames and explodes with screaming men inside it, is he aware of what's happening? He does realise what war is and what it entails, right? Why is he suggesting "sparring" with the game's child protagonist as if sending men to their deaths in large-scale armed combat is a fucking anime training montage? Why does every Japanese game lately seem to have dialogue like this? Those are people, with guns and explosives, Eagle! You fucking freak! Why has everything gotta be so fucking anime all the time?? It's POISON!!! IT'S BRAINROT I TELL YOU!!! BRAINROT!!!!!!!!!
The world of Advance Wars is canonically called "Wars World". Clearly, the biggest loser in this review is me, who has written up this entirely-too-lengthy diatribe about a videogame where anime teens wage literal war against eachother in a place called "Wars World." Fucking Wars World. Genuinely, I can not stop thinking about the ramifications of a place called "Wars World" that seems to exist for the sole purpose of being a place where wars happen.
By the way - what's the deal with the voice acting? Like, it's fine don't get me wrong but why are characters only ever saying 30-40% of what's on-screen at most? I understand having a budget or time constraints but like, none of the VOs who got into their studios or whatever had the time at any point to just read all of the dialogue in any given textbox? This isn't like a Fire Emblem situation where they're using grunts or noises to actively convey the characters' emotions consistently because every character has like, 2 noises max and the lines/words that they do choose to read out I just find really weird! I don't know how else to describe it, you'd have to see it for yourself! It's just really weird what they did and did not record! The plot fucking sucks by the way! I played through the entire first game and still genuinely have no idea what happened! It's a mess and it feels like they barely even tried!
I'm really disappointed to return to Advance Wars and think it's actually pretty bad. I wanna reiterate that I don't think much of the fault lies with WayForward - who inject a lot of personality and charm into this thing, and just faithfully recreated what I think is a deeply flawed pair of games. I wanted to like it a lot more because I love its vibe and aesthetic but damn, I only have so much time on this beautiful green planet, bro. I can only spend so much of it exploiting AI and mashing through mid-map stalemates in fuckin Wars World for hours on end. I'm gonna go outside and see if I can get my ass ate
The tagline for Ridley Scott’s Alien, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream,’ beyond being an indicator of what the movie is about (it’s a horror movie! in space!), also works as an ethos statement for the general genre of sci-fi horror. Having gone through… quite a bit of works in that vein over the past few months, a lot of what the genre tries to evoke is a sense of… wonder fueled by human technological advancement versus a fear of the unknown: humanity breaking through the frontier into a brave new world, only to find something far, far beyond comprehension on the other side — with themes of trying to understand the core of humanity as it faces against an existential threat. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is an ode to the sci-fi horror films of the 80s, particularly the works of John Carpenter, and… while it does harken to a lot of familiar tropes from its parent series — the end of the world, the fabled war between the forces of God against their demonic brethren, and a featureless player-insert choosing just how humanity continues on — blends these ideas with those proliferated in sci-fi horror in a way that feels… honestly seamless in how it’s portrayed, a change in tone and presentation that doesn’t sacrifice any of the core ideals that define what Shin Megami Tensei is about.
The story is set in some approximation of the present or the near future. Humanity is booming with unchecked prosperity when one day, a black-hole-esque growth comes out of the south pole and starts rapidly spreading across the surface of the Earth. With all attempts to research or halt it failing, the United Nations decides that they’re actually going to do something about the apocalyptic threat (the most sci-fi thing about this tbh) and send four teams into what they dub ‘The Schwarzwelt,’ each equipped with the most advanced technology humanity can offer. What they find, upon delving in, is a world of demons based on mythology, built off of humanity’s failings and fashioned after their sins. Three of the four teams are annihilated upon attempting to enter. The last — a ship called the Red Sprite — now faces impossible odds, having to push further and further into the Schwarzwelt, commune and battle with the angels and demons inside, and hope, maybe, that there’s a chance for humanity lying at the end of it.
It’s… a simple plot — one that almost feels episodic, in ways, as you solve problems, then find more problems to solve, then solve them, then find more problems — but it works, which is a lot of the game’s ethos with its writing. The crewmates of the Red Sprite… are mostly just one or two personality traits given a face and a name, but they’re written pretty well for that: they’re fun and likable and I always made sure to talk to all of them while I was on the ship just to see if their dialogue updated. What happens outside of the ship… the game doesn’t really hold back. It conveys the feeling of fighting the hopeless fight really well. Every single mission is this relentless push deeper and deeper into the Schwarzwelt, with no guarantee that you’ll reach your goal or make it back. A good amount of the strike team with you are basically red shirts — even if they get names there’s no guarantee whether they’ll make it through or become a demonstration for how dangerous the next area is. A good amount of the time you don’t even get the privilege of trying to advance your goals: some unprecedented disaster will happen to the crew and it’s up to you to prevent total wipeout. There are characters you meet who pretty obviously don’t have your best interests at heart, but you’ve got no option but to go along with them because you don’t have other options to go with. Throughout the game, you don’t even know whether going through the Schwarzwelt will actually save the Earth — your only choice is to try to progress and persevere and try and see if there truly is a way out. It’s simple (and this writeup excises some of the more spoilery things that happen) but it’s effective, and really works to make you feel the odds you’re going against on this mission.
Gameplay is kind of like… the edgy adult Pokemon game all those nerds on Reddit could only dream of. At its core, it's a monster collection RPG: the demons you fight are also the party members you recruit, whether you get them from a conversation minigame or by fusing other demons together. Unlike Pokemon, however, you can’t keep the same team through the whole game — demons can’t learn skills bar certain circumstances, and the exp requirements often make trying to level up your demons seriously grindy past their first few, requiring you to constantly iterate and fuse new demons to keep up with the arms race of the level curve. Shaking up your team is made more worth it by D-Sources — items you get via using a demon enough that lets you add its skills to any one demon you fuse in the future. There are also special fusions you can perform to get bosses or powerful demons unavailable regularly, which creates a fun, if sometimes drudgey hunt for whatever ingredients you need, made worth it by how strong and customisable these demons tend to be at the time you get them.
Team composition is consistently important, if less because of how specific encounters require specific strategies and more because of the game’s type chart. Each demon has its own elemental weaknesses and resistances, and in addition has its own alignment, one out of Law, Neutral, or Chaos. Should you find out what the given weakness of a demon is, and hit it, all demons matching your alignment will also strike it for more damage than they’d all do individually. This creates a challenge in team-building: both to create a crew that covers all elemental bases, but also to keep in mind alignments so that every demon on your team can take advantage of these co-op attacks. It’s simple — and from what I understand a lot more so than most other SMT games — but it's the right kind of grindy: addictive, but with enough depth and requirement for thought that it doesn’t feel shallow at all.
I also loved exploring the Schwarzwelt. It’s a first-person, grid-based set of dungeons, and ones that just seem to get larger and larger the more you explore them. By exploring — whether by progressing the story or by collecting materials off the ground — you gain these little ingredient materials called forma, and with forma you gain Sub-Apps, passive upgrades to yourself, little ways to alter your party, and, most importantly, ways to open gates, get past barriers, and allow you to explore even more of the Schwarzwelt. It almost feels like a metroidvania, in ways — upgrades you get allow you to access hidden parts of earlier areas, often containing their own challenges and giving rewards that… are either obsolete (whoops, should’ve come back here earlier) or give you something absolutely worth coming back for. Across the world, also, are sidequests you can seek out, encouraging you to explore more or do battle — either with tough opponents or tough restrictions. Your rewards are often material, and worth doing the quest for, but a lot of the virtue for me in doing them was just to enjoy the snippets of writing that go along with them — isolated episodes unrelated to the greater plot which often give the game an excuse to have some fun with its regular enemies and one-shot characters, in turn making the world of the Schwarzwelt feel so much more full.
I’d also like to shout out the way this rerelease handles its extra content. Oftentimes, when Atlus ports or updates one of their games, whatever new content is added is usually… contentious — Persona 4 Golden and Catherine Full Body, in particular, getting scrutiny for the way the new content and characters mesh/get in the way of the original narrative. Strange Journey, from what I understand, got that same criticism from gamers (for… some reason), which kind of surprises me because honestly the inclusion of a new dungeon in the Womb of Grief and the new endings felt totally smooth, mostly because of how it… doesn’t really overwrite the original game at all. The new dungeon, and the story content associated with it, is completely optional aside from when it’s initially shown to you (to the point where you can just ignore it and complete the game without touching it), but even beyond that… I honestly liked going through the new content?
Specifically, I kinda like how they used it as a way to iterate and address issues with the original 2009 release. I’m aware that there was pretty major criticism of the way the original release handled your alignment, and I like how the game addressed that with the new endings, both functioning as a continuation of the original game within the rerelease, and as a way to go for Law or Chaos without explicitly getting a bad ending. In addition, a lot of the extra sub-apps that you get from this dungeon seem to be quality-of-life improvements meant to help out with annoyances present in the original game: finding invisible floors or pitfalls, being able to find hidden doors without looking directly at them, etc. I… don’t think these should have been relegated to the bonus content — as that means someone who elects to skip it has a much rougher time with the main game — but it’s neat how this bonus content has been used to help address both story and gameplay concessions. Beyond that, though, even if you’ve never played the original, I still really enjoyed going through the Womb of Grief as a gameplay experience. It’s a dungeon that effectively expands with each new gadget you get in the main story and is host to some fun characters and some fairly tough challenges. I do question how much doing the Womb broke the balance of the main game — it seemed once I started I definitely stayed ahead of the curve level wise — buuuuuut that wasn’t particularly a dealbreaker for me, and I still felt the challenge was pretty appropriate even with the extra content added.
I do have complaints. While I was… surprisingly okay with how mean the game could get with its dungeon design I do wish it varied up in method more: the first teleporter maze was fun and cheeky, but I really started to get annoyed (and not in the intended way) when they appeared in basically every dungeon and eventually every dungeon floor afterwards. For as much emphasis as the game puts on mapping the Schwarzwelt the touchscreen features felt lacking compared to, say, Persona Q: I would’ve liked to draw my own map, especially when certain rooms made the auto-map not work. The previous two problems kind of get combined with some of the metroidvania elements — sometimes you’ll get an upgrade that solves a navigational issue but then… run into that exact same navigational issue and be told you need a better version of the upgrade you just got to get through this particular edition of the problem. Some of the final bosses straight up read your inputs in a way to limit your options and make entirely valid strategies arbitrarily invalid: I noticed one of them liked to open with a full-party magic blast, so I bred up something fast with a magic reflecting spell to get some extra damage in… and then every time I tried the boss decided that actually, they’d just use a different move (or even later, where I got hit with an immediate unavoidable OHKO move for daring to fight the boss a different way). I… okay maybe this one goes under ‘skill issue’ or ‘me problem’ but I also wish the game had an autosave? At multiple points I’d get unlucky, die… and then because I forgot to save manually I lost literal hours of progress in either sidequests or the main story, with getting back to the original point feeling like an utter slog. I get that this is a rerelease of a game in a particular design era for RPGs where autosave isn’t common, but… for a series like SMT where high difficulty and a low tolerance for mistakes, I do feel like actually dying should be more of a slap on the wrist than a major setback.
Other than that, though, I really enjoyed my time with Strange Journey! From a story that manages to blend the tropes of its parent series with that of a completely different genre, and with gameplay that’s… super addictive in how simple yet complex it is, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey really does a lot with a little, and, with the new content added in the Redux version, does a lot to improve upon the interesting, but flawed game it used to be. 8/10.
The story is set in some approximation of the present or the near future. Humanity is booming with unchecked prosperity when one day, a black-hole-esque growth comes out of the south pole and starts rapidly spreading across the surface of the Earth. With all attempts to research or halt it failing, the United Nations decides that they’re actually going to do something about the apocalyptic threat (the most sci-fi thing about this tbh) and send four teams into what they dub ‘The Schwarzwelt,’ each equipped with the most advanced technology humanity can offer. What they find, upon delving in, is a world of demons based on mythology, built off of humanity’s failings and fashioned after their sins. Three of the four teams are annihilated upon attempting to enter. The last — a ship called the Red Sprite — now faces impossible odds, having to push further and further into the Schwarzwelt, commune and battle with the angels and demons inside, and hope, maybe, that there’s a chance for humanity lying at the end of it.
It’s… a simple plot — one that almost feels episodic, in ways, as you solve problems, then find more problems to solve, then solve them, then find more problems — but it works, which is a lot of the game’s ethos with its writing. The crewmates of the Red Sprite… are mostly just one or two personality traits given a face and a name, but they’re written pretty well for that: they’re fun and likable and I always made sure to talk to all of them while I was on the ship just to see if their dialogue updated. What happens outside of the ship… the game doesn’t really hold back. It conveys the feeling of fighting the hopeless fight really well. Every single mission is this relentless push deeper and deeper into the Schwarzwelt, with no guarantee that you’ll reach your goal or make it back. A good amount of the strike team with you are basically red shirts — even if they get names there’s no guarantee whether they’ll make it through or become a demonstration for how dangerous the next area is. A good amount of the time you don’t even get the privilege of trying to advance your goals: some unprecedented disaster will happen to the crew and it’s up to you to prevent total wipeout. There are characters you meet who pretty obviously don’t have your best interests at heart, but you’ve got no option but to go along with them because you don’t have other options to go with. Throughout the game, you don’t even know whether going through the Schwarzwelt will actually save the Earth — your only choice is to try to progress and persevere and try and see if there truly is a way out. It’s simple (and this writeup excises some of the more spoilery things that happen) but it’s effective, and really works to make you feel the odds you’re going against on this mission.
Gameplay is kind of like… the edgy adult Pokemon game all those nerds on Reddit could only dream of. At its core, it's a monster collection RPG: the demons you fight are also the party members you recruit, whether you get them from a conversation minigame or by fusing other demons together. Unlike Pokemon, however, you can’t keep the same team through the whole game — demons can’t learn skills bar certain circumstances, and the exp requirements often make trying to level up your demons seriously grindy past their first few, requiring you to constantly iterate and fuse new demons to keep up with the arms race of the level curve. Shaking up your team is made more worth it by D-Sources — items you get via using a demon enough that lets you add its skills to any one demon you fuse in the future. There are also special fusions you can perform to get bosses or powerful demons unavailable regularly, which creates a fun, if sometimes drudgey hunt for whatever ingredients you need, made worth it by how strong and customisable these demons tend to be at the time you get them.
Team composition is consistently important, if less because of how specific encounters require specific strategies and more because of the game’s type chart. Each demon has its own elemental weaknesses and resistances, and in addition has its own alignment, one out of Law, Neutral, or Chaos. Should you find out what the given weakness of a demon is, and hit it, all demons matching your alignment will also strike it for more damage than they’d all do individually. This creates a challenge in team-building: both to create a crew that covers all elemental bases, but also to keep in mind alignments so that every demon on your team can take advantage of these co-op attacks. It’s simple — and from what I understand a lot more so than most other SMT games — but it's the right kind of grindy: addictive, but with enough depth and requirement for thought that it doesn’t feel shallow at all.
I also loved exploring the Schwarzwelt. It’s a first-person, grid-based set of dungeons, and ones that just seem to get larger and larger the more you explore them. By exploring — whether by progressing the story or by collecting materials off the ground — you gain these little ingredient materials called forma, and with forma you gain Sub-Apps, passive upgrades to yourself, little ways to alter your party, and, most importantly, ways to open gates, get past barriers, and allow you to explore even more of the Schwarzwelt. It almost feels like a metroidvania, in ways — upgrades you get allow you to access hidden parts of earlier areas, often containing their own challenges and giving rewards that… are either obsolete (whoops, should’ve come back here earlier) or give you something absolutely worth coming back for. Across the world, also, are sidequests you can seek out, encouraging you to explore more or do battle — either with tough opponents or tough restrictions. Your rewards are often material, and worth doing the quest for, but a lot of the virtue for me in doing them was just to enjoy the snippets of writing that go along with them — isolated episodes unrelated to the greater plot which often give the game an excuse to have some fun with its regular enemies and one-shot characters, in turn making the world of the Schwarzwelt feel so much more full.
I’d also like to shout out the way this rerelease handles its extra content. Oftentimes, when Atlus ports or updates one of their games, whatever new content is added is usually… contentious — Persona 4 Golden and Catherine Full Body, in particular, getting scrutiny for the way the new content and characters mesh/get in the way of the original narrative. Strange Journey, from what I understand, got that same criticism from gamers (for… some reason), which kind of surprises me because honestly the inclusion of a new dungeon in the Womb of Grief and the new endings felt totally smooth, mostly because of how it… doesn’t really overwrite the original game at all. The new dungeon, and the story content associated with it, is completely optional aside from when it’s initially shown to you (to the point where you can just ignore it and complete the game without touching it), but even beyond that… I honestly liked going through the new content?
Specifically, I kinda like how they used it as a way to iterate and address issues with the original 2009 release. I’m aware that there was pretty major criticism of the way the original release handled your alignment, and I like how the game addressed that with the new endings, both functioning as a continuation of the original game within the rerelease, and as a way to go for Law or Chaos without explicitly getting a bad ending. In addition, a lot of the extra sub-apps that you get from this dungeon seem to be quality-of-life improvements meant to help out with annoyances present in the original game: finding invisible floors or pitfalls, being able to find hidden doors without looking directly at them, etc. I… don’t think these should have been relegated to the bonus content — as that means someone who elects to skip it has a much rougher time with the main game — but it’s neat how this bonus content has been used to help address both story and gameplay concessions. Beyond that, though, even if you’ve never played the original, I still really enjoyed going through the Womb of Grief as a gameplay experience. It’s a dungeon that effectively expands with each new gadget you get in the main story and is host to some fun characters and some fairly tough challenges. I do question how much doing the Womb broke the balance of the main game — it seemed once I started I definitely stayed ahead of the curve level wise — buuuuuut that wasn’t particularly a dealbreaker for me, and I still felt the challenge was pretty appropriate even with the extra content added.
I do have complaints. While I was… surprisingly okay with how mean the game could get with its dungeon design I do wish it varied up in method more: the first teleporter maze was fun and cheeky, but I really started to get annoyed (and not in the intended way) when they appeared in basically every dungeon and eventually every dungeon floor afterwards. For as much emphasis as the game puts on mapping the Schwarzwelt the touchscreen features felt lacking compared to, say, Persona Q: I would’ve liked to draw my own map, especially when certain rooms made the auto-map not work. The previous two problems kind of get combined with some of the metroidvania elements — sometimes you’ll get an upgrade that solves a navigational issue but then… run into that exact same navigational issue and be told you need a better version of the upgrade you just got to get through this particular edition of the problem. Some of the final bosses straight up read your inputs in a way to limit your options and make entirely valid strategies arbitrarily invalid: I noticed one of them liked to open with a full-party magic blast, so I bred up something fast with a magic reflecting spell to get some extra damage in… and then every time I tried the boss decided that actually, they’d just use a different move (or even later, where I got hit with an immediate unavoidable OHKO move for daring to fight the boss a different way). I… okay maybe this one goes under ‘skill issue’ or ‘me problem’ but I also wish the game had an autosave? At multiple points I’d get unlucky, die… and then because I forgot to save manually I lost literal hours of progress in either sidequests or the main story, with getting back to the original point feeling like an utter slog. I get that this is a rerelease of a game in a particular design era for RPGs where autosave isn’t common, but… for a series like SMT where high difficulty and a low tolerance for mistakes, I do feel like actually dying should be more of a slap on the wrist than a major setback.
Other than that, though, I really enjoyed my time with Strange Journey! From a story that manages to blend the tropes of its parent series with that of a completely different genre, and with gameplay that’s… super addictive in how simple yet complex it is, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey really does a lot with a little, and, with the new content added in the Redux version, does a lot to improve upon the interesting, but flawed game it used to be. 8/10.
Super Mario Sunshine
2002
picked this up again at the beginning of last month and have been pretty casually playing through it since. fr me this is clearly the best mario game, and as a heavy contender for my favourite game of all time. i’ll keep this brief as even though this is historically one of the lesser heralded mario games i'm sure everyone has already played it, but the movement in this game is simply unparalleled, the way that mario just flows through the environment is so (pardon the pun) fluid. once you get a master on using backflips, wall kicks, spin jumps, dives and slides mixed with the use of the FLUDD device it’s like a whole new world opens up for you filled with seemingly infinite possibilities. for me there’s really nothing more fun than just bounding around delfino plaza, spraying forward and then diving into the water on the ground to catch speed, jumping out of the slide onto an awning and bounding up onto a roof before back flipping into a hover to cut across the street and onto another roof, not even mario 64 or odyssey can make the player feel like that.
the game also just feels so lush, this world is divorced from a lot of the mario standards with few goombas, koopas, and bowser not even showing up until the very end, but these new environments just feel so well thought out and meticulous designed. unlike mario 64’s more abstract platforming challenges, each level here feels very specific with a real sense of place and understanding on how the people who inhabit it can actually use everything in it. this then makes the “secret” FLUDD-less stages stand out all the more, tough abstract gauntlets that rip the hover safety net away and leaving the player’s skill as the only thing stopping them from reaching their goal. overall the majority of the levels here are really well crafted and fun, with a couple exceptions (if i never have to play “secret of the village underside” again it’ll be too soon). while i love 64 and odyssey, and have a lot of fun with galaxy and 3d world, this will forever be the pinnacle of 3d platforming to me, nothing comes close to the sense of freedom you get with the tools at your disposal
the game also just feels so lush, this world is divorced from a lot of the mario standards with few goombas, koopas, and bowser not even showing up until the very end, but these new environments just feel so well thought out and meticulous designed. unlike mario 64’s more abstract platforming challenges, each level here feels very specific with a real sense of place and understanding on how the people who inhabit it can actually use everything in it. this then makes the “secret” FLUDD-less stages stand out all the more, tough abstract gauntlets that rip the hover safety net away and leaving the player’s skill as the only thing stopping them from reaching their goal. overall the majority of the levels here are really well crafted and fun, with a couple exceptions (if i never have to play “secret of the village underside” again it’ll be too soon). while i love 64 and odyssey, and have a lot of fun with galaxy and 3d world, this will forever be the pinnacle of 3d platforming to me, nothing comes close to the sense of freedom you get with the tools at your disposal