Back in 2022 I played Breath Of The Wild again for the first time in years to see if it held up; and I was worried it wouldn't. Breath Of The Wild was a game so magical to me that; even when I played it for the first time in 2019 spoiled on a lot of the game's biggest surprises (dragons, Yiga Clan encounters, the whole setpiece around Gerudo Town) it still had me completely awestruck. Of course, a lot of these things work on the condition that they are a surprise, right? It was miraculous enough that I found myself so floored by the game first time around whilst knowing so many of its tricks beforehand, so it surely didn't stand a chance a second time, right?

WRONG

Even on a repeat playthrough; when you think you know everything that's coming I think this game still fucking bangs, and what a testament to its quality. Because - sure, you know about the dragons and Yiga Clan encounters and blood moons and whatnot but unlike most open-world games, Breath Of The Wild is also fun to play and traverse on a very fundamental level. Gliding across the world on your glider is fun, and increasingly rewarding as you upgrade your stamina over time! Finding inventive ways up and over huge physical cliffs and structures through climbing is fun! "Cheesing" multiple puzzles and traversal obstacles with stamina-increasing food items or magnesis-enabled shenanigans or whatever the hell else you can come up with is fun!

This game when it comes down to it in a kinetic sense is just fun in the purest way, and you don't need to be completely unspoiled on everything to have fun with it; especially when on repeat playthroughs you can do things in a different order and engage with things as much or as little as you want before you go and choose to wrap the game up yourself. Breath Of The Wild in my mind fixes almost every design issue open-world games had previously in one fell swoop, it's remarkable. Obnoxious waypoints? Gone. Lame traversal and repetitive open world? Absolutely not. Constantly repeated content for the sake of filling the game up artifically? I mean, kinda - but not really! Anything the game repeats from overworld bosses to shrines to towers in particular, it almost always experiments with quite significantly throughout the game and plays on your expectations! You think you know what a tower is and how to approach it in this game, and then Breath Of The Wild hits you with one surrounded by quicksand, covered in corruption or even a particularly huge one in the desert that practically requires you to scale a makeshift fortress that runs up the side of it. Every time you think you've got this game figured out, it innovates on its own ideas and throws you a curveball. I fucking love it.

There is no such thing as a perfect game, this I hope is something we've all accepted by now. Breath Of The Wild as such, is not a perfect game. I stand by the game's weapon durability system as something that forces you to try new stuff and innovate and not get comfortable spamming the same busted options over and over again; but yeah, it certainly could stand to give the player a way of actually fixing weapons with in-game materials. Voice acting is lame across the board, the story and ending are subpar, the Gerudos don't want to have sex with me and so on.

But all of it pales in comparison to what an achievement this game is. For what was pretty much Nintendo's first attempt at an open-world game like this, certainly on this scale, I don't know what else can be said. It's as close to an objectively good game as you can get. Even playing it a second time around knowing almost everything there was to see, I was still loving every minute of it. Fucking masterpiece

Tears of the Kingdom puts me in the rather unconfortable position of having to be the party pooper even through, when you get down to it, I enjoyed the game quite a lot.

I don't mind that people like the game, but.....highest rated game on this site? 10s on every big website? Come on.

This game is hugely flawed, and honnestly, not even really an improvement on Breath of the Wild. The non linearity is nowhere near as well as done. The tutorial is pretty long and dosent actually give you everything you need to explore the world properly (paraglider, autobuild). Main Quests regularly come off as weird if you do stuff early like getting the master sword. Getting to the final boss is now uber unfriendly to speedrunners. The story is just clearing up loose threads from BOTW like, what happened to Ganondorf.

I didnt think i'd mind the reuse of the map, but I actually did. BOTW's appeal was discovering an uncharted world, kinda like Zelda 1. Thats just not gonna have the same appeal the second time around. Yakuza games get away with it because not only is the story of most of these games much stronger than TOTK, traversal isnt a core of Yakuza's gameplay, while it absolutely is for Zelda, so you cant help but feel the reuse of the same map when youre going tower to tower to discover the entire map.

The zonai tech is a really cool mechanic for those creative people, the same people who love using redstone in Minecraft, but I am not a creative person, and to be fair, the game largely lets you off easy on the things you need to create so that people like me can enjoy the game. But that so means that people like me will be largely ignoring the main thing setting this game apart from BOTW.

So what is good about TOTK then?

The main quest honnestly. The dungeons were pretty good, people say they still arent on par with classic zelda dungeons, and I disagree, sure, theyre not on par with the excellent selections in the adult section of OOT and of TP, but theyre good enough and make great use of TOTK's mechanics to provide good challenges. I wish there were more, so thats a good sign. Ganondorf is absolutely fantastic is this, he is menacing and the fight with him is the right kind of hard. Side characters are enjoyable and memorable, the world feels lived in. All in all, its a fun world to be in, even if it is a rethread.

TOTK is a fun junk food open world game, and the Zelda world it takes place in helps it a lot. But I admit, the overpraise the game recieved had left a sour taste in my mouth. As much as I love Zelda, I dont want it to get a free pass because of its legacy. And you know what, even through I think its very far from a masterpiece, I will look back positivly on Tears of the Kingdom, its okay to enjoy junk food once in a while.

Athens Dash: Starting off strong, a tour city track that feels completely unlike any other. Lots of ups and downs, some hazards, tight gaps, it's a varied track with an aesthetic not found elsewhere in the game. Only complaint about it is that certain laps can feel repetitive due to re-treading old areas in a way most city tracks avoid. 8.5/10.

Daisy Cruiser: Weirdly despite being one of my favourite Double Dash tracks I don't love it here (or in 7). It might have something to do with the pool now being part of the track instead of an obstacle, but I also just become way too aware of how little of the track is actually spent inside the ship. It's still fun, but where I would have given the track a strong 9.5 out of memory, I'm giving this one a 7.5/10.

Moonview Highway: Probably my favourite of the non-tour city tracks in the series (or maybe "traffic tracks" is a bet term). It just feels like it's missing just a little something beyond traffic to give it an extra identity though. Still, I enjoy it. 7.5/10.

Squeaky Clean Sprint: Here's the big one, the brand new track of the wave. I love this so much. It takes a micro machines-esque premise and utilises it perfectly, from the background elements to the terrain itself. Getting sucked down a drain pipe, a desk fan that blows you off course and an erupting toilet acting as a mid-air boost. I would definitely be down for more tracks that act as if the racers were tiny in real world settings. It might have "new course bias", but the thing about enjoyment is that it doesn't matter
why the enjoyment exists, the only thing that matters is that you enjoy it. 10/10.

Los Angeles Laps: Some parts feel too similar to the majority of tour tracks, but it has sections with its own identity, especially the oil fields in the final lap. 7/10.

Sunset Wilds: Probably my least favourite of the wave. Not at all bad (though they took out the actual sun setting mechanic?), and the mining Shy Guys are cool, but I feel like they didn't do enough with the terrain. Until the final turns it's all just a flat basic course. 6/10

Koopa Cape: Oh man... My favourite Wii track and it commit the sin of using the Mario Kart 7 version with the inferior pipe section :( Why would anyone want to play with crappy underwater physics in a half pipe instead of the rapid water-flowing section that ended up spinning electric wheels? It was so much cooler. Still a very fun track, but this version is a 9/10 instead of 10/10.

Vancouver Velocity: Very fun tour track. Might not standout quite as much in the aesthetics department as Athens, but it still has a ton of great set pieces for driving through, like suspended bridges and an ice rink. 9/10.

Also the 3 characters that were added were like 3 of my biggest wants (I didn't even expect Tour-only characters to be added, so Kamek is a huge plus).

Bro I went into this game expecting something okay and was so engrossed by everything that I played the whole game through in one 12-hour sitting, and I pretty much NEVER do that with games. The gameplay and plot go hand in hand with one another to keep me at the edge of my seat. Add the fun fourth-wall breaking moments like looking at the game box or switching the playstation controller and you have something that is incredibly immersive and something that's just plain special. Absolutely something worth playing, even if you aren't even a big fan of video games.

Mentiría si dijera que Metroid Prime no me ha parecido un muy buen juego y que me lo he zampado, PERO también es cierto que hay varias cosas que me han chirriado bastante a lo largo del juego, la mayoría en la recta final.

Lo bueno para empezar: Lo que consigue Retro Studios "portando" el género metroidvania a un FPS es digno de alabar ya que el resultado es increiblemente satisfactorio.
Por otro lado, la ambientación y los escenarios están muy bien, tal vez hay menos linealidad que en los títulos 2D y da la sensación de que es más fácil perderse, pero no es un contratiempo ni mucho menos.
La jugabilidad también está muy bien, pero aquí entra el primer detalle que no me ha gustado: la animación para activar/desactivar la morfoesfera. Está bien verla las primeras veces, pero cuando llevas 5h no deja de ser un estorbo constante. Otro detalle que tampoco me ha gustado es el mapa, está bien que sea 3D y puedas darle vueltas, pero no hubiese venido para nada mal que hubiese un modo 2D, para revisar de forma más rápida. El resto de factores jugables han estado bastante bien.

En cuanto a la historia: El lore de los Chozo e ir descubriendo poco a poco cada detalle mola mucho, pero es fácil perderte algunos documentos si no estás todo el rato usando el escáner. Luego, el hecho de que al final del juego te hagan recorrer todos los mapas de nuevo en busca de los artefactos restantes que no has encontrado a lo largo del juego cuando te los podrían haber pedido poco a poco me parece demencial, lo peor del juego de hecho. Los jefes finales si que están muy bien y me los he gozado, sobretodo el diseño del último jefe.

Ya por último, la banda sonora no me ha gustado nada, la verdad, se me ha hecho repetitiva y pesada desde el primer momento y apenas he encontrado temas de mi gusto.

I was apprehensive about Resident Evil 4 getting a remake. After all, the original is still a great game that's easy to pick up and play today, and there are other Resident Evils - notably RE5 and Code Veronica - which would benefit more from a second pass. I understood the profit motive of doing this, but whether or not it would justify itself as a game I was a whole lot less certain of.

Well, damn, this must've been directed by Raylan Givens, because it's justified.

This isn't the Resident Evil 3 remake, which was patently reductive in its approach, gutting large chunks of gameplay and limiting Nemesis to scripted events. Rather, Resident Evil 4 builds on the source material in a way that feels very natural, and understandably so considering the "REmake series" shares more of its DNA with 2005's Resident Evil 4 than it does with the "classic" trilogy. Toe to tip, this feels like the better game to me, owed to the fact that Capcom has been refining the core design concepts and mechanics of the original for 18 years.

Much like the recent Resident Evil 2, it trades slow enemies, limited controls, and tight spaces for more fluid and kinetic gameplay. Make no mistake, I am not faulting these games for playing the way they do, I find their control schemes to be not only a product of their time but critical for crafting tension, and the larger design of those games was so carefully curated around how they control it's hard for me to imagine playing them any other way (I still use tank controls in the HD remaster of Resident Evil, for chrissakes.)

There's a stronger emphasis on movement, as Ganados are no longer prone to passively pointing and screaming at you. No, these Ganados have drank all their Powerade™ and they are coming for your ass, which means you'll need to be even more aware of your surroundings and constantly be on the move. There's a much greater expectation on interacting with your environment, especially during combat, and some of the ways you can turn the arena against your enemies is extremely satisfying. Especially if doing so results in an explosion, which are so abrupt and visceral in the amount of damage they do. The first time I shot a stick of dynamite out of a Ganado's hand and saw it immediately break them in half and fling their upper-body several feet away I shouted "oh FUCK" to absolutely no one.

Being able to actually hotswap weapons makes such a huge difference as well and is crucial to maintaining the pace and flow of combat. It got me thinking more strategically about which weapons I wanted to employ on the fly and even helped me weasel my way out of a few dicey situations. The combat knife has similarly been overhauled. Now more a defensive weapon, you can use the knife to push away an attacking Ganados at the expense of its durability, and you can even use it to parry enemy attacks when you're back into a corner or low on ammunition. Not that you'll be low on ammo often, it's every bit as abundant as it was in 2005 and you're now able to craft more ammo using gunpowder and "resources," although they're more likely to just eat up inventory space. Still, I think the remake's greatest strength is in the amount of options it gives you, and how its combat arenas are big playgrounds that can be freely approached.

Bosses and certain set pieces are also vastly improved. Salazar no longer stands still, swiping at you occasionally with broad, easily avoidable attacks. The mine cart segment is much more of a thrill ride (I do like thrill rides), requiring you to lean into turns and take out enemy mine carts rather than wait for Ganados to jump in for a claustrophobic firefight. Krauser's initial boss battle relies upon the expanded knife mechanics, which means you no longer get to watch the same cutscene like, five times until you have all the QTE's memorized. Puzzles are also much better. In the original game they were almost obligatory, downright insipid in places, but the remake makes them far more engaging and I actually think some of these might be among the best in the REmake series. However, I will mourn the loss of the gigantic animatronic Salazar, and although It was never Resident Evil 4's strongest encounter, I was hoping to see them actually do something with It rather than cut It.

One of the biggest points of contention seems to be Resident Evil 4's story and the way it handles its characters, with people complaining about a wide array of things from how it lacks a prerequisite amount of camp to characters not being attractive enough (???) And, again, I disagree with a lot of it. Leon is still a total himbo with a penchant for belting out corny one-liners, the only difference here is that a lot of them are spoken in the middle of combat. Which, personally, I find even funnier because it means he's saying stuff like "Oh, oops, I slipped" while administering a roundhouse to a Ganado's cranium with no one around. That's just for him. I don't know how anyone can hear the line "I'll give you a hole-y body" before skewering a guy and think this game lacks camp.

Sure, it's more grounded and tonally in-step with the other remakes, but it's still ridiculous. The original Resident Evil 4 was a pastiche of post-9/11 action movies, and I firmly believe that kind of satire wouldn't play as well today. It just doesn't have the same punch so far removed from the zenith of that style of filmmaking. However, I was surprised to find out how much of that energy was still present. Mike, your helicopter pilot, is somehow even more 2005-action-movie-dumbass than before, and a lot of notes and files are word-for-word, including the "Subject Analysis: Regenerador" document, which is one of my favorites across the entire franchise. Even Salazar's extremely clunky dialog about Leon being a player in his "script" is intact, which is amazing because it's so bad I would've thought if you had a second pass on any singular piece of dialog, that'd be it. Vocal performances are good overall, the guy they got to do the Merchant turns in one hell of an approximation of the original, and I love how Luis is a total slimeball in this. On the other hand, Ada sounds positively bored to be here, and Wesker is so lacking in smugness as to sound distressingly uninspired. If a Resident Evil 5 remake is in the cards, I am begging Capcom to find some way to get Peter Jessop back.

Now that we've gotten Resident Evil 4 out of the way, I am begging Capcom to remake Dino Crisis. Please, please do it, pleaes i need to see Regina's thighs just le tme at them i paid full price for this, i gave it a 4.5, i did everything you asked of me please

Like it or not, you can't deny the importance of the original Resident Evil 4, but one thing I did not agree with was the narrative that it was "perfect" and didn't need a remake. Yes, the original game is very good but it didn't exactly age very well in my opinion. And having finished the 2023 remake, I think it surpasses the quality of the original game, maintaing its essence while improving in every way. Just walking in this game feels very good, I played on PS5 and I could sense Leon's weight and feel every step. Shooting also feels very good, that feeling of pulling off a parry or a melee attack is amazingly satisfying. The addition of new puzzles and gameplay elements really pleased me, it's very fun to upgrade your weapons and explore to find treasures and items. The side contest appealed to my completionist side and I couldn't leave any sidequest behind. Ashley is amazing is this remake, I didn't like her that much in the original, but remake Ashley rocks! The story being more fleshed out is exacly what I expected from a remake. I want to replay this several times more in the future. And please give me that Separate Ways DLC. I wonder what Capcom will do with Resident Evil next.

This is not a perfect game. A good 60% of the shrines are not very good, the divine beasts all are really boring, the final boss is a bit underwhelming, the random yiga clan fights get really annoying after a while, etc etc. I could go on about the little nitpicky things that bother me about this game, but I dont care anymore. It may have bothered me at hour 10 of playing the game, but at hour 35 at the time of me beating the game for the first time, I feel nothing but pure joy. In fact I'm crying writing this right now because the epilogue rendition of the LOZ main theme decided to go so incredibly hard.

This is one of the most immersive worlds I've ever experienced, and one of very few where I can derive enjoyment just from running around doing literally nothing. Everything from the way the weather affects you based on your currently equipped item to how you move slower in certain terrain, everything is hand crafted to make this world feel as real as possible, and it works. Its clear where the vision of this game lies and with that idea in mind the game passes with flying colors. Its unmatched in its worldbuilding only really beaten by Shadow of the Colossus for me which I can barely compare because the vibe of the world in the 2 games are so drastically different.

The way the story is told here is also magnificent. Theres not much story actively happening, you spend most of your time piecing together what happened, figuring out what got the world to the state it is in. All 4 of the champions and especially the memories do such a good job of telling the story of what happened to Hyrule and I was wholely invested.

All in all, when a game is this good at doing what its setting out to do, I can set aside the few flaws it may have. Its such a drastically different experience for a Zelda game and an experience I've never had with pretty much any game. I may prefer the 2 N64 Zelda titles to this but this is pure mastery of the craft of game design right here and I'm kind of mad it took me so long for it to finally click for me. 10 out of fucking 10.

Ultimately, did I enjoy most of my hour or so I played with this game? I think I did. But also, I feel like I've already experienced everything the game has to offer. Will I come back to this regularly? Is there really a reason to? Well, I can't really say yes to either. Of course, every game is better with friends but that may only buy you another couple hours of enjoyment out of this. As far as I can tell only the first two very very short tutorial levels are developer made and everything else is user generated content. That's not entirely damning on its own but its clear from the level creator side of things the game is quite restrictive. There is only so many ways people can get creative with the same couple types of traps, enemies. There is an okay selection of blocks and textures but its not enough to stop levels from feeling the same, even when theyre as different as the game allows them to be. The core gameplay loop is enjoyable and every game with a grappling hook is a win but much like everything else, its not enough. What is there is fun but... there's nothing really there. Hopefully this gets supported more in the future, but its gonna need a lot of work to make me, and I suspect most people, wanna come back to it - even with it being a free PS Plus offering.

Just wanted to give my quick thoughts on this unfortunately disappointing game. Thanks for reading <3

Nancymeter - 57/100

With the announcement of Budokai Tenkaichi 4, I figured now would be the best time to go back and play the original three Tenkaichi games. I planned on doing this anyway because I have a ton of nostalgia for the PS2 era Dragon Ball games, having made a lot of friends over them while attending vocational school. I didn't come from the same background as many of my dorm mates, but if there was one thing we all had in common, it was smoking brown-ass weed that smelled like arsenic. Also, Dragon Ball. Everyone really liked Dragon Ball. Fond memories of "movie nights," watching Big Money Hustlas and Bojack Unbound while eating cheap Chinese food.

Naturally, anyone with a PS2 on campus probably had some combination of the Budokai and Tenkaichi games. I remember putting a lot of time into this and Tenkaichi 3 in particular. Boy... Tenkaichi 3. Now that's a game. I mean, it's also bad, I assume, but bad in a way that's still entertaining. At least I hope it is, because I was startled to find out just how rancid the first Tenkaichi was. It is so bad that if I had all seven dragon balls and wished for it to be a better game, Shenron would say it's not within his power.

If the Tenkaichi games are known for anything, it's their free-roaming 3D combat and absurdly large rosters. 64 characters! Granted, different forms and transformations are treated as their own roster entries, which means you have a lot of Gokus, but that's still impressive. You start to make sense of how they were able to get away with that, though, when you realize every character plays virtually the same. You have two specials, an ultimate, and a "favorite attack." Specials break down into one of four types: energy beams, physical rushes, self-destructions, and AOEs. So, while some characters have signature moves - like Goku's Kamehameha or Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon - in terms of function, they're pretty much all the same. This results in a lack of distinction, and as such, the roster really only amounts to a toybox full of action figures that you can smack against each other and not much else.

This also has the consequence of making battles incredibly samey. Your normal kicks and punches do an almost imperceptible amount of damage, requiring you to use your special attacks to make any real progress against your opponent's health bar. The easiest way to do that? Charge up and tap the triangle button, of course. The most efficient way to win any match is to just charge and pop off your special, then charge up again immediately after so you can fire off another as soon as they're up. There's nothing to encourage you to play the game differently other than your own personal desire to make it less rote, because it does nothing to reward you for engaging with it more than that. Run through each character's remarkably small list of moves and move on to the next one, because you've seen everything they can do. Ah, Majin Buu's Kamehameha is pink instead of blue. Mm. Fascinating. I wonder what would happen if I stripped the power cord of my PS2 and touched my tongue against the bare wire.

The story mode takes you through almost every battle featured in Dragon Ball Z, with a few What If modes and truncated runs through GT and some of the films (Tree of Might, World's Strongest, Lord Slug, and Dead Zone are notably absent.) There's a lot here, and since the core combat of Tenkaichi is so patently dull, completing each fight provides relief only in the same way crossing chores off a list does. Yes, I scrubbed the toilet and I beat Cell Jr. as Yamcha. To jazz things up, each battle will provide you with a single mission task necessary for clearing the stage. While most are simply "beat your opponent," you'll sometimes be hit with ones that require you to defeat them with a particular move, or to run the timer out. These suck. You have no clear indication of how much damage a particular move will do, so god help you if you need to use your ultimate but screw up and leave your opponent with a sliver of health. Guess you get to surrender and try again.

The absolute worst is having to time out your opponent, though. See, there's a lot of fights in Dragon Ball where the bad guy gets a huge power up and runs a clinic on whoever they're fighting, and since this game respects the canon, that means you're going to be going up against a lot of enemies you just cannot beat. Enjoy running away from them for about a minute to a minute-and-a-half! Or you could just keep them in an infinite combo, punching them a bunch then hitting them with a stunner before punching them again. Since you do basically no damage during this, you'll prevent them from dying (this results in you failing the mission) and keep them stunned long enough for you to survive. That might sound really tedious and, yes, you're right, it is.

I'll admit that all this pissing and moaning is a bit ridiculous. The only value in replaying the first two Tenkaichi games is in seeing how the series core mechanics were iterated on. I don't think anyone would tell you to play this and not just skip right to Tenkaichi 3. Hell, just play either of the Raging Blast games or the Xenoverses... Which, when I put it like that sure makes it seem like Tenkaichi never really went away to begin with. Weird. Probably best to not think about that too much.

Regardless, it's a shame that fighting operates on such a rudimentary level in Tenkaichi, because there's some potential in the way the game forces you to be considerate of and interact with its terrain that could allow for some more strategic fights, and there's something to be said for how the free-roaming control scheme immerses the player even further in the world of Dragon Ball, too. But uh, I'm afraid it's crap. Sorry, Goku!

Maybe it was due to the fact that I played the trilogy in a row but this one stuck out to me the least. The game fixed the save issue from the first two games (thank christ) and the game looks significantly better than the first two games visually, but idk something about this didn't click with me. The soundtrack is a lot different this time around and not as memorable. There's also like a freely explorable world map to pick your levels now which is cool. I honestly don't know why this game feels sauceless because clearly its solidly made. Give it a try and see if you can get what I mean or not.

If there's one word that describes Xenoblade Chronicles, it's massive. It can be applied to its general run time (114 hours on my save file when I decided I had enough and deleted the game from the Switch), to its world (two huge titan mechas frozen mid-combat), to its level design attitude (it's like as if Todd Howard never lied to us--you truly can go there), number of side quests (about 450) or to its set of systems underlying most game mechanics (affinity is everything and everywhere). It might not be the most ambitious game I've ever played, but it's up there, and it originally being a Wii title is all the more stunning. But what makes it stand out to me is that all of its parts cohere into a complete functional experience.

Let me back up for a second. Xenoblade is a JRPG developed by Monolith Soft and is part of the unofficial "Xeno" franchise that includes Square's Xenogears (1998) and Namco-published Xenosaga (2002-2006). All titles conceptualized and written by the Monolith Soft president Tetsuya Takahashi, a noted mecha nerd and Nietzsche enjoyer. Xenogears was his first foray into game directing and is infamous for having a second disc that mostly has the characters monologuing as if in a VN. Pressed for time, Takahashi just couldn't agree to releasing the first disc as a separate game. He had to preserve his vision and ensure that the story had a chance of seeing completion at least in some form, hence the compromise. Add to it the fact Xenogears was only part 5 of 6 in a potential franchise with a narrative tracing a universe from its birth to decay, and, yeah, it kind of underdelivered, right? Despite becoming a cult classic, Xenogears never received a sequel and Takahashi left to form his own company, Monolith Soft, where he tried it all again with Xenogears, a multimedia project that was announced as a 6-part game series, later shortened down to 3. Extensive rewrites were made during development so that the story could wrap up in some way towards the end of that third game.

Finally, we have the Nintendo-backed Xenoblade, a title that is not as ambitious in its scale or themes as Takahashi's previous works, but is nonetheless impressive. And it's complete. Actually finished. No compromises. There's a part towards the 50 hour mark where the story reaches a climax and then transitions into Act 2. If the game ended there on a cliffhanger with a sequel to follow, it would've still worked. But it just keeps going for 30-40 hours more, until the story is complete. And it's particularly impressive, considering the game's design started out not with a story outline or a vision for a potential series, but with just a model of the game's world, the aforementioned titans, with everything else stemming from that point.

Here's the setup: the two titans are Bionis and Mechonis. Long ago they fought each other, and after trading fatal blows both died, and eventually on their corpses life sprung up. All kinds of biological flora and fauna on Bionis and machinery on Mechonis. For years the races of Bionis (mostly the humans, called Homs) have been fighting the invading Mechons, a massive army of death machines that have no demands or motives beyond wiping down the opposing life on Bionis. The Mechons are virtually invincible to Homs weapons, and the only thing that can fight against them is an ancient sword called the Monado that, however, demands a lot of power from its wielder. A young Homs named Shulk finds out that not only can he wield the Monado but that it also offers him visions of a possible future.

The premise is very simple, but it offers a truly unique perspective on the setting. Buddy, you are literally climbing a giant mecha. The other mecha is constantly there in the distance. If you look up at any point, you can see different parts of the mecha you are on. It rules. In fact, a lot of the game's early appeal is in the vistas it often presents to the player. The game's world is, quite frankly, gorgeous. Yes, it's blurry 720p (480p on the Wii), but its scale is rendered so beautifully and is only amplified by the environmental design and the music. There's a point still early on in the game where you come into a swamp area, and as the night sets in all the lifeless dry tree branches around you light up in blue hues as if they’re sprouting tiny firefly leaves, ether currents drift in the air making you feel like you're inside the aurora borealis, and one of the best tracks in the game starts playing--a melancholy violin-led tune gently introduced by a piano figure. And seeing that for the first time is damn close to a religious experience. The next area has a giant (truly enormous) waterfall in the background, and it provides a nice vista as you cross the bridge high above the river that flows from it. Except then you realize that the waterfall is not the background, that you can jump in the water and explore the islands and beaches there. Herein lies the downside to the level design--huge scale comes with a lot of empty space, and you're in for a lot of aimless swimming around that waterfall. Granted, there are a lot of fast travel points, but going through fields with not much of note is inevitable and will not be for everyone. In fact, the level design feels very much inspired by sprawling MMORPG maps, with some parts of each area being gated by high(er) level monsters.

Speaking of, monsters use old MMORPG aggro mechanics. Some will attack on sight, some will only be attracted by loud sounds (i.e. running), some only join in if you start attacking their friends. It's lifted straight out of something like FF XI, where a simple act of traversal between hubs could be a dangerous adventure. In this case you are just prevented from accessing certain areas early, but also occasionally a quest will push you into a cave full of giant lvl 80 spiders just to mess with you. Coming back to this world's scale, there's always something out there bigger and stronger than you. You're never truly safe, you have to deal with all the things roaming around.

But there's more. Take the combat, for example. You're exploring in a party of three. You can build your party out of anyone available at a given moment, but all the characters have a specific role to fulfill. Reyn is a tank. Dunban is also a tank, but an agility based one. Melia buffs and deals ether damage. Shulk deals physical damage and dispels enemy buffs, and so on. During combat you can use any of the abilities on your hotbar, and there's a cooldown period before you can use them again. Some attacks require you to be positioned in a specific way relative to the enemy. So basically you will have a rotation of abilities that will be influenced by your role, party synergy and enemy actions. Very much resembling a MMORPG here.

The quests also feel like those created for an MMO experience. Most of them are a simple "kill 5 wolves, bring 3 herbs" kind of affair. Some of the simpler ones will not even require you to hand in the quest when you're done. So here's the general loop: you enter a new hub, pick up all the question marks, go out and about and pick up shinies or kill marked monsters, complete some quests that way, go back to the hub to hand in the rest. Mindless? Yes. Boring? Depends on the area you're in. But I'm the kind of sicko that enjoyed exploration in FF XIV ARR, so I might not be the best person to ask.

You might wonder, if the quests are bad, why even do them? Well, they provide some exp and gold, but really you do them to build up your reputation in a given hub. In-game that's called affinity. Higher affinity unlocks more quests (including those that reward you with new skill trees), provides you with shop discounts and opens up more items for trading with NPCs. Please, bear with me. There's a map in this game that charts the relationships of every important NPC. All of them. They all have names, they are active during certain hours of the day, they have specific positions and scheduled routes. As you talk to everyone in a given town, they hint at their problems and worries or share observations about others. With this new information you can trigger additional dialogue from another NPC, and so on, until you unlock a related quest. The outcome of that quest might affect relationships between certain NPCs. Sometimes there's a good outcome and a bad outcome, sometimes both are valid. You might ruin someone's marriage or boost another person's career. Some quests are mutually exclusive for that reason. I think this is genuinely a very cool system that brings some life into these dummies, and it is used for a masterful gut punch towards the end of the game. But sadly, the system is underutilized. The scale is impressive, but grinding through a lot of it is a chore with next to no immediate reward, and I can see a lot of people getting annoyed by it and not engaging with it any further.

And then there's the party affinity, because you can build up relationships between all the playable characters as well. You can help them up when they’re down and encourage them during combat. You can initiate quests with them in party and hear the banter evolve as you get further down the relationship. You can gift the things you find in the overworld--everyone's got their likes and dislikes. And why do that? Well, some optional scenes are locked until you get to a certain affinity level between two characters. You can share additional passive skills between party members. And you get better results crafting gems--oh god, I forgot about crafting.

There's a lot of excess with these systems, I won't deny that. But it's very impressive how integrated they are into everything you do in a way that feels actually planned out in detail. Coming back to the first paragraph--these are complete meaningful systems. Grindy and underutilized, yes. But they don't feel like appendages to the rest of the gameplay. And I don't say that to congratulate Xenoblade on passing the low bar of being feature complete. The point is that this is the first time we got a Xeno title where the gameplay core and presentation match the ambition of its narrative.

And it's a good story. A wartime drama about being consumed by revenge and defying fate that's got some grit to its tone, yet manages to find some spots for levity and romance. The cast is strong, believable and brought to life by some of the best voice acting this side of FF XIV. And while it's not exactly earth shattering, the story is well presented and offers quite a few bold twists and turns. One of these occurs just a few hours in and served as a hook for me, and I wouldn't spoil it for anyone else. I can certainly see how Xenoblade could be a cherished identity forming experience for someone who played it young, like what I had with Kingdom Hearts. Even now the game's like crack to me (114 hours on that save file, may I remind you), and that's after forming an opinion on its flaws. It's comforting, it's engaging, and it won't leave my damn head.

This was great! The thing I love most about Kid Icarus: Uprising is its tone - the artstyle is such a perfect blend of cartoon and fantasy, the characters are all excellently voiced and the dialogue is often quite cringe but very intentionally so, the awkwardness of the characters is the joke and that's nice! It's very refreshing and earnest in the way that modern Marvel could only dream of

I do take issue with the controls in some places as I think most do. The dash really irritated me at times, anytime I wanted to initiate movement out of a walk I felt forced into a dash I didn't want to do which had me barrelling right into enemy fire or off a ledge more than I care for - and holding down the fire button as long as you do gives you some serious fatigue in your left index finger - especially when you need to release and tap it so much in the ground sections for dash shots. Generally I thought the flying sections were quite a lot better than the ground sections, which I enjoyed well enough but I think serve as proof that this game might've been a tad too ambitious for the 3DS given how weird the controls are.

I generally dreaded the ground sections a little bit, so I was thankful for when the game mixed it up - which it did a lot! There's a chapter where it's all flying, there's a chapter where the ground section is on a small platform where you have to defend some Centurions - it's cool! Though I noticed they don't really start mixing things up until the second half of the game? Like the first half of the game really follows the formula and I'd argue the game doesn't really stray from that much at all until the Aurum stuff (Pandora's Labyrinth Of Deceit aside.) (Also, kinda tangentially - is it just me or does the game not suddenly fly by in the second half? I coulda swore the first like, 15 chapters were way longer than the last 10 or so. Just me?)

Either way, I really enjoyed this. It's consistently creative, charming and earnest. It starts off well enough but just gets better over time, the game takes a big jump in quality once Hades takes over as the villain imo - and I have become such a simp for Palutena. I love her. She is so cheeky and mean. The way she constantly messes with Pit and crushes his self-esteem at every given opportunity? What a girlboss. I mean, couldn't be me but - please start an Onlyfans! I will throw cheese at it like you wouldn't believe

Btw it's crazy how many UI and game design elements were just lifted straight from this into future Smash Bros installments, I know Sakurai headed this project up too but like, wow! Damn! I didn't realise how like almost none of Smash's UI or menu elements were actually original at all! Weird!

Good game!

Didn't grow up with the Ratchet & Clank games the same way I did the other two major platforming icons of the Playstation 2 era as I was growing up. I've always respected the franchise, there is obviously a reason it had the most staying power of those other series, but I never felt super compelled to get my hands deep into the series until my friend gave me an excuse to do so.

Having played this one now in 2022, with a lot of platformers under their belt, you can see the growing pains of a new franchise getting its right footing. It is a clunky game, and unfortunately, even as someone who has grown to like clunk, I feel its in determent of the ideas it wants to bring to the table. The main gameplay draw of having these absurd and creative weapons to blast through enemies is really undermined by both a very poor camera system, and the glaring omission of a proper lock on. I think this does a lot to make the guns feel really unsatisfying to use in this game, and its a huge shame when there is such a huge toolbox at your fingertips that just never feels fun to use unless you're in a situation where you need to. Couple that with some early platforming bullshit with a pretty strict checkpoint system, and it can make it a bit frustrating to get into.

Obviously though, in spite of its glaring faults, there is more than enough to appreciate about this humble little start. For one, it is hard to understate what a fun duo these two are. Ratchet is an unhinged fairly selfish asshole in this entry, going the entire adventure essentially never changing from his grubby engineering clothes, and bickering along the way. Pair that with Clank, a very honest to a fault little robot, and you have the recipe for your standard buddy cop story, but it just works so very nicely for a platformer like this. Also, it cannot be understated how weird it is a now ginormous triple A franchise representing the Playstation brand, started out as this blunt anti-capitalist satire. The game isn't scathing per say, but the jabs they do make are just something you wouldn't expect from a series with this caliber now, certainly not with future entries in this series from what I am told. A huge shame because that part easily is my favourite thing about it. I got a huge chuckle anytime I got to see a new infomercial about Drek's increased colonization of the galaxy you travel.

And on a technical level, I think that galaxy in question is the most impressive thing on display here. All good platformers thrive on good gameplay and levels, and while I didn't enjoy the gunplay, controlling Ratchet is still very fun. Upgrading Clank with little gizmos is very cute, and hitting things with your oversized wrench is insanely satisfying. More importantly, I was very impressed with just how many levels, and big levels at that, were able to be put into this game. You do revisit some, but there are still around twenty unique planets, each with more than a fair share of tasks to do and secrets to discover, and I really enjoyed knowing the little ins and outs of each planet's little conundrums. It is the little things like that, that can make a platformer special, and I think this game does it very well.

Overall, a cute little romp. I think if I gotten the opportunity to have grown up with it the same way I did Jak or Sly, I would've loved it, but as an adult now, I enjoyed it. It is a clunky but cute little romp, and its anti-capitalist edge and snark give it a personality that I can still admire. Maybe someday I'll play the later PS2 sequels which I hear are special in their own little ways, or even some of the more modern entries.

It's an alright game. The sliding can be fun but the shooting itself is pretty meh. But that's kinda all the nice I have to say. The story goes past the so cheesy its good and is just kinda really awful and uninteresting. The visuals are uninspired and dull with the grey and browns that have plagued far too many shooters. It just doesnt really feel worth it to keep playing, having completed just about 2/5s of the game so far I can tell It's just gonna be worth more of the same. Maybe it wont be, and it sucks to give up on a game but, I just dont think life is long enough to waste any more time on it.

Shelved for the forseeable future: likely forever

Nancymeter - 51/100