DizzySkullKid19
Some days I just feel totally braindead, and too tired to dive into a 70 hour JRPG with complex mechanics and more text than, uh... Anna Karenina. Those are the days I pop up Mario Kart.
Now, I will admit, my Mario Kart experience is pretty much limited to Mario Kart 8, 7, and DS; also having experienced some of the Wii game at parties and such, however.
I do know what I love about Mario Kart though, and that is the interactive environments (all the different shortcuts, things that pop up on stage, and the like), and in general just a ton of possibilities and learnable skills that make getting better at the game fun. Hell, even the times I lose in Mario Kart (which have been frequent recently, since I'm pretty rusty), I still have a lot of fun. The adrenaline rush of all the shells being thrown, all the karts being bumped, and the acceleration to the finish line all add up to one of the best competitive/multiplayer game series. When I was younger, my sibling said that "there was always a way back in Mario Kart" (or something like that). Meaning that even if you get into 7th place on lap 2, anything could happen and you could very likely get into 1st place in lap three. This ability for comebacks is really what makes these games shine, in my opinion.
I think the problem with Super Circuit is that it foregoes a lot of the aforementioned things - yet, I can't find a reason to blame it for doing so. Mario Kart on the GBA seems like a tough enough thing to attain. Still, a lot of sacrifices were made for this goal.
The tracks are kind of boring, is my first critique. To explain: I think while the idea of having a static backdrop and a pseudo 3D track is kind of what most GBA kart racers opt for, I also think it kind of takes away a real sense of exploration of these tracks. A sense of landmarks. Luckily, there are environmental obstacles and little graphics scattered about in a lot of the stages, such as Snow Land with all it's penguins. However, it never really breaks up the monotony of the stages.
Of course, I can't imagine any way they wouldn't have static backdrops and integrated some kind of pseudo 3D onto the GBA (kind of like some games did). This would likely not turn out well.
Yet, the theming of the levels was kind of bland - in other games we get stuff such as theme parks, cruise ships, and generally atmospheric areas to explore. I think the problem is this game opted more for "enviroments": swamp, sky, etc. which are kind of basic and not as fun to explore - since they are environments without landmarks or places to go.
Drifting is also kind of miserable, though I can't blame this game in particular, since the F-zero GBA games also control miserably in this way. Maybe (probably) I'm bad at the game, but it is a complete bump-fest and boy is there no sense of sticking to the ground or generally of being able to drift around corners smoothly. In fact, I found my strategy was always to slow my kart when going around corners. This was probably the basic Mario Kart strat before drifting came into play, but still, I don' like it :( (it's probably a me issue).
Super Circuit was a game that I found had kind of a blandness, even a loneliness to it. It definitely doesn't pop out at you, and while a lot of this can be attributed to the inherent difficulties of trying to put a Mario Kart game on the GBA, I think the game can take some responsibility for what seems like a rushed game without much intrigue as far as level theming, fun mechanics and the like go. It is fun, don't get me wrong. I do not want to be too hard on it, but it's just not my first pick for Mario Kart, although I can see myself playing it to wind down.
Now, I will admit, my Mario Kart experience is pretty much limited to Mario Kart 8, 7, and DS; also having experienced some of the Wii game at parties and such, however.
I do know what I love about Mario Kart though, and that is the interactive environments (all the different shortcuts, things that pop up on stage, and the like), and in general just a ton of possibilities and learnable skills that make getting better at the game fun. Hell, even the times I lose in Mario Kart (which have been frequent recently, since I'm pretty rusty), I still have a lot of fun. The adrenaline rush of all the shells being thrown, all the karts being bumped, and the acceleration to the finish line all add up to one of the best competitive/multiplayer game series. When I was younger, my sibling said that "there was always a way back in Mario Kart" (or something like that). Meaning that even if you get into 7th place on lap 2, anything could happen and you could very likely get into 1st place in lap three. This ability for comebacks is really what makes these games shine, in my opinion.
I think the problem with Super Circuit is that it foregoes a lot of the aforementioned things - yet, I can't find a reason to blame it for doing so. Mario Kart on the GBA seems like a tough enough thing to attain. Still, a lot of sacrifices were made for this goal.
The tracks are kind of boring, is my first critique. To explain: I think while the idea of having a static backdrop and a pseudo 3D track is kind of what most GBA kart racers opt for, I also think it kind of takes away a real sense of exploration of these tracks. A sense of landmarks. Luckily, there are environmental obstacles and little graphics scattered about in a lot of the stages, such as Snow Land with all it's penguins. However, it never really breaks up the monotony of the stages.
Of course, I can't imagine any way they wouldn't have static backdrops and integrated some kind of pseudo 3D onto the GBA (kind of like some games did). This would likely not turn out well.
Yet, the theming of the levels was kind of bland - in other games we get stuff such as theme parks, cruise ships, and generally atmospheric areas to explore. I think the problem is this game opted more for "enviroments": swamp, sky, etc. which are kind of basic and not as fun to explore - since they are environments without landmarks or places to go.
Drifting is also kind of miserable, though I can't blame this game in particular, since the F-zero GBA games also control miserably in this way. Maybe (probably) I'm bad at the game, but it is a complete bump-fest and boy is there no sense of sticking to the ground or generally of being able to drift around corners smoothly. In fact, I found my strategy was always to slow my kart when going around corners. This was probably the basic Mario Kart strat before drifting came into play, but still, I don' like it :( (it's probably a me issue).
Super Circuit was a game that I found had kind of a blandness, even a loneliness to it. It definitely doesn't pop out at you, and while a lot of this can be attributed to the inherent difficulties of trying to put a Mario Kart game on the GBA, I think the game can take some responsibility for what seems like a rushed game without much intrigue as far as level theming, fun mechanics and the like go. It is fun, don't get me wrong. I do not want to be too hard on it, but it's just not my first pick for Mario Kart, although I can see myself playing it to wind down.
1997
Very much an interesting experiment in the style of games like Lack of Love. The soundtrack itself was supervised by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamato (according to a Japanese website.) The music was composed by Takuma Sato, who deserves to be more well known, as the soundtrack to this game is something that would not be foreign to the most ambient, relaxing moments of Donkey Kong Country.
I think Ryuichi Sakamato might have taken from this game in his experience directing L.O.L, and the similarities do not start only with the music, but with the main idea of the game itself: helping animals. It's one of those "Symbiosis Simulators". It's an interesting balance here between semi-realistic animals (like a pretty realistic Axolotl) and crazy, somewhat far off surrealist creatures which only resemble their counterparts.
We have a huge cow with, uh, 8 udders which have the potential to hurt you (I'll spare you the details). This is the same cow that is represented by the cool boxart. There is a black rabbit, that looks like something out of Lack of Love, with it's minimalistic, polka-dot design riff on the form of a real rabbit. The whole game oscillates on the spectrum of realism, and more often then not it goes towards the unreal, surrealistic side. It's an uncanny valley where it feels just real enough, however.
The spaces you walk around in are surprisingly expansive. Granted, they are literally just prerendered backdrops that you walk through (albeit beautiful ones). However, based on where you walk forward in said backdrops, you will be led to different parts of the environment. The environments are all biomes, and you get there by typing in a 3-string word on a pillar at the start of the game. The biomes are aquatic, subterranean (kind of deserts and caves), a lush forest-like area, and the literal last area of the game. You can spawn in any of these, as it is mostly random.
Now, to the main gimmick of the game, which is a kind of proto-Scribblenauts idea where you can type in any verb, and your avatar (the weird squiggly spiraled golden triangle guy) will perform the action. You need to type in the right verbs to help the animals. Sometimes, it's simple, other times its frustrating. Even at the very beginning of the game, I was stuck. In my frustration, I typed in "go", and finally a kind of 'movement board' appeared which allows you to move in various directions in the game, and I was shocked. In a good way, rest assured. I felt like a magician (though it was the game doing the heavy lifting).
Luckily, there is a really in-depth analysis and walkthrough on youtube by a user named Dilan. Mad props to him for his and his friends determination in not only emailing people involved but pushing through and helping people complete the game.
I'm shelving it, but please know that I will finish this aesthetically wonderful and mythologically/spiritually rich game (even if the mythology is nooot very reflective of actual
Mayan belief systems).
I think Ryuichi Sakamato might have taken from this game in his experience directing L.O.L, and the similarities do not start only with the music, but with the main idea of the game itself: helping animals. It's one of those "Symbiosis Simulators". It's an interesting balance here between semi-realistic animals (like a pretty realistic Axolotl) and crazy, somewhat far off surrealist creatures which only resemble their counterparts.
We have a huge cow with, uh, 8 udders which have the potential to hurt you (I'll spare you the details). This is the same cow that is represented by the cool boxart. There is a black rabbit, that looks like something out of Lack of Love, with it's minimalistic, polka-dot design riff on the form of a real rabbit. The whole game oscillates on the spectrum of realism, and more often then not it goes towards the unreal, surrealistic side. It's an uncanny valley where it feels just real enough, however.
The spaces you walk around in are surprisingly expansive. Granted, they are literally just prerendered backdrops that you walk through (albeit beautiful ones). However, based on where you walk forward in said backdrops, you will be led to different parts of the environment. The environments are all biomes, and you get there by typing in a 3-string word on a pillar at the start of the game. The biomes are aquatic, subterranean (kind of deserts and caves), a lush forest-like area, and the literal last area of the game. You can spawn in any of these, as it is mostly random.
Now, to the main gimmick of the game, which is a kind of proto-Scribblenauts idea where you can type in any verb, and your avatar (the weird squiggly spiraled golden triangle guy) will perform the action. You need to type in the right verbs to help the animals. Sometimes, it's simple, other times its frustrating. Even at the very beginning of the game, I was stuck. In my frustration, I typed in "go", and finally a kind of 'movement board' appeared which allows you to move in various directions in the game, and I was shocked. In a good way, rest assured. I felt like a magician (though it was the game doing the heavy lifting).
Luckily, there is a really in-depth analysis and walkthrough on youtube by a user named Dilan. Mad props to him for his and his friends determination in not only emailing people involved but pushing through and helping people complete the game.
I'm shelving it, but please know that I will finish this aesthetically wonderful and mythologically/spiritually rich game (even if the mythology is nooot very reflective of actual
Mayan belief systems).
If experimentation wasn't the norm in the Chibi-Robo series, then Park Patrol might've been the black sheep. Replace the action-adventurism of the original game where you explore an expansive house with environmental activism about managing a park... then add some fighting in there.
If Park Patrol can be compared to really anything, it must be the Animal Crossing series. A game about customization, management, and completionism of your park (as well as managing your 'money', which in this case is literally your power supply).
The main difference is Park Patrol does actually have a story in there. Without spoiling much, it is a pretty creative take on the ways we neglect our environment, and it doesn't hide it's honesty at parts, in that it doesn't just remain a fictional parable but also indicates that us in the real world have things we could be doing better. "Remember, Miasmo (the big bad) is lurking behind every exhaust pipe and smokestack, waiting in the shadows to make his return" or something like that as is said at the end of the game.
Essentially, the game fits the system of having different living toys (as is the norm in all Chibi-Robo games) who you become friends with. In this case, you have toys like a mascot for an American football team, one of the free rangers from the past game, and a stereotypically French marionette who wants to be freed from his strings, among other toys. I can safely say that all their designs were smart and creative, and they were all lovable characters with personality quirks of their own.
Basically, you recruit for them to work for you at the park. You pay them in "watts" (like I said, your power supply) to build structures, or terraform the land. Eventually, they run out of watts, so you have to recharge them, and each time you do they will advance a little in their own story. For example, the Free Ranger egg gets a new job after wishing for one (won't spoil what it is). They advance in their story by interacting with the other toys you have in your team, if they have power left.
The main thing of the game is basically growing flowers, which you do via giving them water (obv) and dancing along with a boombox (not so obv). The dancing part is a pretty cool system, but it was a little hard to figure out at first. I eventually got used to it. Basically, you have to spin the outer circle of the "record" that appears on screen and you have to do it at a certain constant speed. When you do that, you will get a score, if it's above 70 the plants will throw off seeds that multiply the number of flowers. After a certain amount of flowers are grown, the space they are on will turn green, and one of the objectives of the game is to turn the whole park green.
Now, I completed the main story and I still have not turned the whole park green (though I've turned most of it green). At first, it was a repetitive venture, with the assistant in this game, Chet (RIP Telly, in this game apparently) being kind of annoying and saying the same things over and over, with the same high pipsqueak voice. Sorry Chet, love you though.
The routine is going to feel very repetitive in this game at first. It basically goes like: plant flowers, get toys to do work for you, then when they are out of commission go back to town the recharge them. I'll give it to the game though, it does get much better with variety, and while not having "as much" to do as the original Chibi-Robo, there was still a lot to do. You get new park projects, like games you can build (a bowling game for example), and there is plenty to do in town as you can meet new toys over the course of the game.
I was really impressed with how well they managed to leave room for a story in a simulation/management game.
Oh yeah, the game has battles where you have to fend off "smoglings" (and later, "Smoglobs") from destroying your plants. This was kind of annoying because I could never get to the smoglings fast enough, and the only vehicle that I found easy to control was the bike (the car(s) are surprisingly hard to control).
Overall though, a surprisingly fun and addictive game. Frankly, I prefer it to Animal Crossing: Wild World as my favorite simulation game on the DS. While it might not be the feast that the other Chibi Robo games could be, namely the original and Okaeri!, it is still a very very worthy and smart game that did a lot of revolutionary stuff for a DS sim game.
If Park Patrol can be compared to really anything, it must be the Animal Crossing series. A game about customization, management, and completionism of your park (as well as managing your 'money', which in this case is literally your power supply).
The main difference is Park Patrol does actually have a story in there. Without spoiling much, it is a pretty creative take on the ways we neglect our environment, and it doesn't hide it's honesty at parts, in that it doesn't just remain a fictional parable but also indicates that us in the real world have things we could be doing better. "Remember, Miasmo (the big bad) is lurking behind every exhaust pipe and smokestack, waiting in the shadows to make his return" or something like that as is said at the end of the game.
Essentially, the game fits the system of having different living toys (as is the norm in all Chibi-Robo games) who you become friends with. In this case, you have toys like a mascot for an American football team, one of the free rangers from the past game, and a stereotypically French marionette who wants to be freed from his strings, among other toys. I can safely say that all their designs were smart and creative, and they were all lovable characters with personality quirks of their own.
Basically, you recruit for them to work for you at the park. You pay them in "watts" (like I said, your power supply) to build structures, or terraform the land. Eventually, they run out of watts, so you have to recharge them, and each time you do they will advance a little in their own story. For example, the Free Ranger egg gets a new job after wishing for one (won't spoil what it is). They advance in their story by interacting with the other toys you have in your team, if they have power left.
The main thing of the game is basically growing flowers, which you do via giving them water (obv) and dancing along with a boombox (not so obv). The dancing part is a pretty cool system, but it was a little hard to figure out at first. I eventually got used to it. Basically, you have to spin the outer circle of the "record" that appears on screen and you have to do it at a certain constant speed. When you do that, you will get a score, if it's above 70 the plants will throw off seeds that multiply the number of flowers. After a certain amount of flowers are grown, the space they are on will turn green, and one of the objectives of the game is to turn the whole park green.
Now, I completed the main story and I still have not turned the whole park green (though I've turned most of it green). At first, it was a repetitive venture, with the assistant in this game, Chet (RIP Telly, in this game apparently) being kind of annoying and saying the same things over and over, with the same high pipsqueak voice. Sorry Chet, love you though.
The routine is going to feel very repetitive in this game at first. It basically goes like: plant flowers, get toys to do work for you, then when they are out of commission go back to town the recharge them. I'll give it to the game though, it does get much better with variety, and while not having "as much" to do as the original Chibi-Robo, there was still a lot to do. You get new park projects, like games you can build (a bowling game for example), and there is plenty to do in town as you can meet new toys over the course of the game.
I was really impressed with how well they managed to leave room for a story in a simulation/management game.
Oh yeah, the game has battles where you have to fend off "smoglings" (and later, "Smoglobs") from destroying your plants. This was kind of annoying because I could never get to the smoglings fast enough, and the only vehicle that I found easy to control was the bike (the car(s) are surprisingly hard to control).
Overall though, a surprisingly fun and addictive game. Frankly, I prefer it to Animal Crossing: Wild World as my favorite simulation game on the DS. While it might not be the feast that the other Chibi Robo games could be, namely the original and Okaeri!, it is still a very very worthy and smart game that did a lot of revolutionary stuff for a DS sim game.
1996
Pretty interesting cooking RPG for the 3DO, that is extremely rare and expensive sadly. Couldn't get much out of it, since I didn't really follow what was happening (none of the dialogue is in text, it is all spoken). It moves at a very slow pace, to be frank, but it is interesting to see the lovely graphics and how far they could push the 3DO. You can literally talk to every NPC. It's also neat to see a game officially sponsored by Yukio Hattori, a professional celebrity chef in Japan. A fun and oft relaxing curio, with some really really actually difficult cooking segments, and some not so difficult (at least to where I got) RPG segments. Most of the game is gathering ingredients from the money you get from fights to make these recipes, which allow you to progress. I only really got like halfway through the second 'area'. Give it a try, it's definitely worthy of getting more attention, but you need the patience of a cat-herder to be able to power through if you don't know Japanese.
2016
This review contains spoilers
Incredible game, was this really a PS1 game originally? Have no idea how they managed this graphical finesse, as well as the killer soundtrack. Please check out the character artist of the game: Takashi Miyamoto. Also Masafumi Takada, the composer of Danganronpa fame.
You essentially play as a character, who, in the modern remakes, you are able to name. Your character is basically silent throughout the whole game, traumatized from his experience as Special Ops agent, and it's speculated in the game that he can't even speak as a result. So as a result, you are kind of everyone's doormat at the start, fulfilling peoples requests. Your coworkers don't wanna do a case? Well hey, let's just drop it on the new guy.
The other storyline has you playing as the journalist Tokio Morishima.
Slight spoiler:
The game seems to me to be centered around the theme of "manufacturing". How our upbringing is "manufactured" (in a literal sense as you will see), and how we cover this up by instead seeing the conditioned responses we have from our childhood as our own, free choices. There is also the obvious theme of "killing the past" from a lot of Suda's other games. Knowing everything we know, can we still move on? The shadows are still there, but let them explode into light, and let's show that we have a soul and are not what happens to us. Let's show this against all odds, against the world which puts us through soul-crushing institutionalism. It's interesting, there are some live-action segments in this game, one where you see young people glamorizing a serial killer, showing how our desire for freedom can become mutated into idolizing violent people.
I did the unusual route of playing Flower, Sun and Rain first, I found that playing this after wasn't such a bad thing after all. Granted, had I played this first, Flower, Sun, and Rain would've had much more "a-ha!" moments, but I also would've seen that game in a much heavier light. I enjoyed the seeming nonsense of that game not knowing that it actually did... make some sense. Let's just say that the "Silver" in this games title will make sense as you play the game.
Granted, The Silver Case is a game you probably are not going to understand in just one or two playthroughs. It is a game where you have to make sure you are following exactly everything that is occurring, and connecting some of the dots yourself. Hell, you might want to keep a notebook for this one. Even after you think you connected the dots though, this game will throw an insane twist at you, so you never figure it all out and the game is pretty mysterious.
One of the most intense mysteries in the video game medium, I would say. Before your Zero Escapes and Danganronpas, here we have an intense mystery thriller marred with sharp wit, and sharp commentary on how our current affairs (within the criminal justice system, the education system) can lead to disasters that we don't even see.
Be prepared for F-bombs from Kusabi every 2 seconds. Also there is a fun pop quiz around 1/3 of the game where you literally answer 100 questions of popular culture trivia. Not making this up.
I'm officially Suda-pilled.
You essentially play as a character, who, in the modern remakes, you are able to name. Your character is basically silent throughout the whole game, traumatized from his experience as Special Ops agent, and it's speculated in the game that he can't even speak as a result. So as a result, you are kind of everyone's doormat at the start, fulfilling peoples requests. Your coworkers don't wanna do a case? Well hey, let's just drop it on the new guy.
The other storyline has you playing as the journalist Tokio Morishima.
Slight spoiler:
The game seems to me to be centered around the theme of "manufacturing". How our upbringing is "manufactured" (in a literal sense as you will see), and how we cover this up by instead seeing the conditioned responses we have from our childhood as our own, free choices. There is also the obvious theme of "killing the past" from a lot of Suda's other games. Knowing everything we know, can we still move on? The shadows are still there, but let them explode into light, and let's show that we have a soul and are not what happens to us. Let's show this against all odds, against the world which puts us through soul-crushing institutionalism. It's interesting, there are some live-action segments in this game, one where you see young people glamorizing a serial killer, showing how our desire for freedom can become mutated into idolizing violent people.
I did the unusual route of playing Flower, Sun and Rain first, I found that playing this after wasn't such a bad thing after all. Granted, had I played this first, Flower, Sun, and Rain would've had much more "a-ha!" moments, but I also would've seen that game in a much heavier light. I enjoyed the seeming nonsense of that game not knowing that it actually did... make some sense. Let's just say that the "Silver" in this games title will make sense as you play the game.
Granted, The Silver Case is a game you probably are not going to understand in just one or two playthroughs. It is a game where you have to make sure you are following exactly everything that is occurring, and connecting some of the dots yourself. Hell, you might want to keep a notebook for this one. Even after you think you connected the dots though, this game will throw an insane twist at you, so you never figure it all out and the game is pretty mysterious.
One of the most intense mysteries in the video game medium, I would say. Before your Zero Escapes and Danganronpas, here we have an intense mystery thriller marred with sharp wit, and sharp commentary on how our current affairs (within the criminal justice system, the education system) can lead to disasters that we don't even see.
Be prepared for F-bombs from Kusabi every 2 seconds. Also there is a fun pop quiz around 1/3 of the game where you literally answer 100 questions of popular culture trivia. Not making this up.
I'm officially Suda-pilled.
2015
It seems few series are able to escape the curse of at least one of their (mainline) games being widely-regarded as stinky. In fact, I can only think of a few series who's (mainline) games have, for the most part, all garnered positive critical reception at launch - The Legend of Zelda, Kirby... and that might be it.
The two series mentioned are Nintendo's A-List celebs, their heavy hitters. When we look at the history of their more niche franchises: Chibi-Robo, 3D Metroid, Pikmin, we see a tendency for a rocky and non-linear design philosophy. Of course, it all boils down to sales. Chibi-Robo might as well be the poster boy for this experimentation - there is a relatively stable theme throughout all the games, but there is also the fact that only 2 Chibi-Robo games are really similar to each other; that is, Okaeri! Chibi Robo, and the original.
Starting with Park Patrol, after the relatively mediocre sales figures of the original (https://culturedvultures.com/history-chibi-robo-games/) the theory is that Nintendo wanted to find a new suit for it's newly recruited series. Enter Park Patrol, a more Animal Crossing-esque design approach where you manage a park... and it was only available at Walmart. Then one sequel later, that gives us more of the first game (perhaps even better), aaand it's never localized.
Chibi-Robo's fate seems to be a mix between Skip's relentless experimentation and creativity, and Nintendo's confusion on how to market it to a wider audience.
Fast forward past one more experimentation - an E-Shop exclusive photo capturing game that seemed like a strange mix between all the elements of the past Chibi-Robo games. The theory goes that a game later, Zip-Lash was Nintendo's last chance to make their series a hit. (source: https://www.perfectly-nintendo.com/chibi-robo-zip-lash-tanabe-talks-about-the-future-of-the-series-demo-available-in-japan/).
What we got was a complete 180 of what the series was before, a byproduct of the tendency of Nintendo's lesser known franchises to get weird, slightly gimmicky games (the Yoshi series being case in point). It seemed like a really desperate turnaround for the series, or maybe simply just a fun spin-off to get people interested? We'll probably never know. And, surprise... It's a mediocre 2D platformer.
Now, to be fair, I did enjoy this game. It was my first Chibi-Robo game that I went into knowing next to nothing about the series. Thankfully, I gave the rest of the games a try and they were more my style.
Essentially, the game plays a little like a puzzle platformer. Chibi-Robo's cord is now a lasso that he uses to attach to things, getting him to higher places than he could jumping. The plot is kind of unfocused - there is some alien invasion, add Chibi-Robo's environmental themes to get something about the Earth being polluted - and then the rest makes only a little sense. Now, it is fun at times. You are travelling across each continent of the Earth (confirming that Chibi-Robo takes place on earth?? lol) fighting different bosses. The platforming is only vaguely interesting, honestly. There are puzzles where you have to use your lasso-cord to hit a bunch of switches all at once (by ricocheting it), and these were the worst the game had to offer. The rest, was kind of just frankly easy.
For me, the fun of the game was actually in it's collectibles. I had the same joy in Pikmin 2, just seeing all these household objects in a weird context. In this case, it's candy like Pez dispensers. Also, it keeps the theme of the Chibi Robo series of having different living toys, and their designs are unique and creative.
So overall, I liked this game, but in the context of the Chibi-Robo series boy does it make me wonder what could've been. I got the Chibi-Robo amiibo to show for it, at least.
The two series mentioned are Nintendo's A-List celebs, their heavy hitters. When we look at the history of their more niche franchises: Chibi-Robo, 3D Metroid, Pikmin, we see a tendency for a rocky and non-linear design philosophy. Of course, it all boils down to sales. Chibi-Robo might as well be the poster boy for this experimentation - there is a relatively stable theme throughout all the games, but there is also the fact that only 2 Chibi-Robo games are really similar to each other; that is, Okaeri! Chibi Robo, and the original.
Starting with Park Patrol, after the relatively mediocre sales figures of the original (https://culturedvultures.com/history-chibi-robo-games/) the theory is that Nintendo wanted to find a new suit for it's newly recruited series. Enter Park Patrol, a more Animal Crossing-esque design approach where you manage a park... and it was only available at Walmart. Then one sequel later, that gives us more of the first game (perhaps even better), aaand it's never localized.
Chibi-Robo's fate seems to be a mix between Skip's relentless experimentation and creativity, and Nintendo's confusion on how to market it to a wider audience.
Fast forward past one more experimentation - an E-Shop exclusive photo capturing game that seemed like a strange mix between all the elements of the past Chibi-Robo games. The theory goes that a game later, Zip-Lash was Nintendo's last chance to make their series a hit. (source: https://www.perfectly-nintendo.com/chibi-robo-zip-lash-tanabe-talks-about-the-future-of-the-series-demo-available-in-japan/).
What we got was a complete 180 of what the series was before, a byproduct of the tendency of Nintendo's lesser known franchises to get weird, slightly gimmicky games (the Yoshi series being case in point). It seemed like a really desperate turnaround for the series, or maybe simply just a fun spin-off to get people interested? We'll probably never know. And, surprise... It's a mediocre 2D platformer.
Now, to be fair, I did enjoy this game. It was my first Chibi-Robo game that I went into knowing next to nothing about the series. Thankfully, I gave the rest of the games a try and they were more my style.
Essentially, the game plays a little like a puzzle platformer. Chibi-Robo's cord is now a lasso that he uses to attach to things, getting him to higher places than he could jumping. The plot is kind of unfocused - there is some alien invasion, add Chibi-Robo's environmental themes to get something about the Earth being polluted - and then the rest makes only a little sense. Now, it is fun at times. You are travelling across each continent of the Earth (confirming that Chibi-Robo takes place on earth?? lol) fighting different bosses. The platforming is only vaguely interesting, honestly. There are puzzles where you have to use your lasso-cord to hit a bunch of switches all at once (by ricocheting it), and these were the worst the game had to offer. The rest, was kind of just frankly easy.
For me, the fun of the game was actually in it's collectibles. I had the same joy in Pikmin 2, just seeing all these household objects in a weird context. In this case, it's candy like Pez dispensers. Also, it keeps the theme of the Chibi Robo series of having different living toys, and their designs are unique and creative.
So overall, I liked this game, but in the context of the Chibi-Robo series boy does it make me wonder what could've been. I got the Chibi-Robo amiibo to show for it, at least.
This review contains spoilers
I have no idea what I just played.
Equal parts oddly relaxing, confusing, and frustrating, Flower Sun and Rain really tries to confuse the player above all else. Most of the time, it's a funny confusion, but sometimes it flies way over my head.
I have to let this game sink in for a bit before I really understand what it's about. (Time for a music metaphor) It's kind of like atonal music - where they are throwing dissonant, unresolved chords at you all the time, without a real center or tonic, but still you have a sense of things progressing. It is literally maybe one of the only plots I can think of from a videogame that only works because it's confusing, because it's nonsensical. It works exactly because there is no stability - or just enough to make the nonsense appealing. Interesting too that this game references a lot of composers, mostly for the pleasant (but odd) familiarity of some of the remixed classical tunes. Still I see some parallels of the tone of this game and the works of Debussy, Ravel and the like. Using odd, yet dreamy and majestic harmonies. I would describe the tone of FSR as precisely an odd daydream.
Of course, the game itself is like if you melded Professor Layton with an odd (vaguely) Polynesian and Sinatra-age America vibe. The biggest comparison might be to a show like Hawaii 5-O, only much more postmodern and tongue in cheek. Now the puzzles can be bad. In particular, there are some puzzles that assume that you just take something for granted - in the latter of the game in particular, there is a series of puzzles about a radio. You have to look for a "memory radio station". So the guidebook (where you will look to solve most of the puzzles in this game) has a listing of a station where callers request the songs they want to be played - songs they have memories of. It didn't say anything of memories in the description of the station, so (my probably dumb) self couldn't make that leap of logic.
Yeah, the game also has a lot of walking back and forth, lots and lots of it.
Flower, Sun and Rain can be confusing and sometimes poorly designed. It operates purely on a seeming lack of ground, and is held up only by shocking the player at every turn.
Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't like my time with it. I love the DS version in particular, something so interesting about the grainy, DS-rendered graphics that complements the style of this game. While I think the game was a bit too tongue-in-cheek at points, I also was supremely relaxed by it, and found myself laughing a lot. Mondo is a very witty guy.
I loved this game for the time I spent with it, and I'm looking forward to replaying it! There is a loooot of walking though. It brings me to a good point: the way this game flaunts its faults. I've heard the Grasshopper crew wasn't exactly operating on a million dollar budget during this game. Still, bringing attention to the games faults with Fourth Wall breaks didn't exactly make them less obvious - for example "I can guess you have a lot of walking to do this chapter", or "why don't our 3D character models look like our 2D illustrations?". The game easily could have done without these fourth wall breaks, and it really kind of broke the immersion.
Still, I'm impressed at what the developers were able to do with what they had - I feel like this game could've been an interesting art film (in the best way possible). While it was silly most of the time, I had a hint of some serious themes of derealization, the ways people take advantage of each other, and questioning of ones self and identity. SPOILERS: (see the movie "The Truman Show" or "Synecdoche, New York")
Very lovely, and I usually don't play much of Suda 51's projects because the hyperviolence isn't my thing. I loved this one though. Give it a shot if you want something equally mind-destroying and relaxing.
Equal parts oddly relaxing, confusing, and frustrating, Flower Sun and Rain really tries to confuse the player above all else. Most of the time, it's a funny confusion, but sometimes it flies way over my head.
I have to let this game sink in for a bit before I really understand what it's about. (Time for a music metaphor) It's kind of like atonal music - where they are throwing dissonant, unresolved chords at you all the time, without a real center or tonic, but still you have a sense of things progressing. It is literally maybe one of the only plots I can think of from a videogame that only works because it's confusing, because it's nonsensical. It works exactly because there is no stability - or just enough to make the nonsense appealing. Interesting too that this game references a lot of composers, mostly for the pleasant (but odd) familiarity of some of the remixed classical tunes. Still I see some parallels of the tone of this game and the works of Debussy, Ravel and the like. Using odd, yet dreamy and majestic harmonies. I would describe the tone of FSR as precisely an odd daydream.
Of course, the game itself is like if you melded Professor Layton with an odd (vaguely) Polynesian and Sinatra-age America vibe. The biggest comparison might be to a show like Hawaii 5-O, only much more postmodern and tongue in cheek. Now the puzzles can be bad. In particular, there are some puzzles that assume that you just take something for granted - in the latter of the game in particular, there is a series of puzzles about a radio. You have to look for a "memory radio station". So the guidebook (where you will look to solve most of the puzzles in this game) has a listing of a station where callers request the songs they want to be played - songs they have memories of. It didn't say anything of memories in the description of the station, so (my probably dumb) self couldn't make that leap of logic.
Yeah, the game also has a lot of walking back and forth, lots and lots of it.
Flower, Sun and Rain can be confusing and sometimes poorly designed. It operates purely on a seeming lack of ground, and is held up only by shocking the player at every turn.
Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't like my time with it. I love the DS version in particular, something so interesting about the grainy, DS-rendered graphics that complements the style of this game. While I think the game was a bit too tongue-in-cheek at points, I also was supremely relaxed by it, and found myself laughing a lot. Mondo is a very witty guy.
I loved this game for the time I spent with it, and I'm looking forward to replaying it! There is a loooot of walking though. It brings me to a good point: the way this game flaunts its faults. I've heard the Grasshopper crew wasn't exactly operating on a million dollar budget during this game. Still, bringing attention to the games faults with Fourth Wall breaks didn't exactly make them less obvious - for example "I can guess you have a lot of walking to do this chapter", or "why don't our 3D character models look like our 2D illustrations?". The game easily could have done without these fourth wall breaks, and it really kind of broke the immersion.
Still, I'm impressed at what the developers were able to do with what they had - I feel like this game could've been an interesting art film (in the best way possible). While it was silly most of the time, I had a hint of some serious themes of derealization, the ways people take advantage of each other, and questioning of ones self and identity. SPOILERS: (see the movie "The Truman Show" or "Synecdoche, New York")
Very lovely, and I usually don't play much of Suda 51's projects because the hyperviolence isn't my thing. I loved this one though. Give it a shot if you want something equally mind-destroying and relaxing.
Probably my favorite post-Square, post Love-de-lic Akira Ueda involved project. Keeps the charming visual style of Contact while opting for a simpler adventure game with occasional boss fights and imho is all the better for it.
It matches up to be, along with "Houkago Shounen", the DS's version of Japanese summer vacation simulator type games (like Attack of the Friday Monsters for 3DS or Boku Natsu for Playstation)
Only issue is that the game is surprisingly short, when I got to the ending, I was surprised. I might have exclaimed "already?" Yeah, this game has 4 chapters and is only around about 5 hours if you only do the main story, I'd say. Still, there are sidequests in each chapter that add up to a replayable experience. You also unlock scenes by collecting people's tears each chapter (the gimmick the game centers around), and you get little scenes based on "pets", animals around town that you also unlock via tear collecting.
Really awesome third person pre-rendered graphics, odd but great music, and a weighty yet sentimental and nostalgic story of childhood. I honestly had no clue what was being said in the dialogue while playing it, and curbing my usually obsessive google translate attempts I just played through it without translating a bit of the dialogue. I did get a sense of the emotional weight of what was happening. It's a story of kids, their parents, and the sometimes misguided childhood desire for escape.
Really recommend this one.
It matches up to be, along with "Houkago Shounen", the DS's version of Japanese summer vacation simulator type games (like Attack of the Friday Monsters for 3DS or Boku Natsu for Playstation)
Only issue is that the game is surprisingly short, when I got to the ending, I was surprised. I might have exclaimed "already?" Yeah, this game has 4 chapters and is only around about 5 hours if you only do the main story, I'd say. Still, there are sidequests in each chapter that add up to a replayable experience. You also unlock scenes by collecting people's tears each chapter (the gimmick the game centers around), and you get little scenes based on "pets", animals around town that you also unlock via tear collecting.
Really awesome third person pre-rendered graphics, odd but great music, and a weighty yet sentimental and nostalgic story of childhood. I honestly had no clue what was being said in the dialogue while playing it, and curbing my usually obsessive google translate attempts I just played through it without translating a bit of the dialogue. I did get a sense of the emotional weight of what was happening. It's a story of kids, their parents, and the sometimes misguided childhood desire for escape.
Really recommend this one.
2007
One thing I'll admit: I included this game on a list of introductory adventure games without having completed it myself. That's my confession, and I really do feel like I should've got to this earlier.
We start the game with snapshots of the big city, but soon we are off to a tiny hotel in the desert of Nevada. A blank slate, a desert, or so it seems. Can we start over? Only after discovering our past once again.
I was so awe struck by this game. I ate it up, which is surprising because I'm in a slump with games right now. I admit, the puzzles did get tedious, one or two in particular (finding a tiny piece of chalk that I needed to make a pen legible). There's one other particularly annoying one that I forgot.
This is one of the most visually striking games on the DS. The book "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (a mouthful) describes it as being like the video to A-ha's "Take on Me", a comparison I cannot un-see. Yet it really works in the games favor. It's interesting, it's symbolic almost, to see the characters in monochrome, as if they are all stuck in the dark, toiling away until the end, but with hope of color.
Kyle is an interesting protagonist. He starts the game off as kind of a gruff a-hole. Yet, his dialogue is really well written, and he ends up being a very lovable protag. He "softens" up a little as the game goes on, and we get to love him in his cynicism yet real kindness when he is put to the test by peoples desperation. It's like watching someone grow empathy.
The music is amazing, also some T's Music people worked on this game (another game to add to the Reel Fishing legacy, if you know you know.)
The dialogue can be funny as hell, I'll leave you to experience it if you haven't already. Very witty and well written.
Also, I feel like they really captured the vibe of 70s America.
Sorry for this kind of skimmed review, I promise I will eventually play this again and say my thoughts in more detail.
Trust this tired reviewer, this game made me cry, and it's intensely real and personal. Give it a shot.
(My time with this game was about 11 hours 50 minutes, but since I admittedly used a walkthrough at parts, the realistic time would be around 13 hours I think.)
We start the game with snapshots of the big city, but soon we are off to a tiny hotel in the desert of Nevada. A blank slate, a desert, or so it seems. Can we start over? Only after discovering our past once again.
I was so awe struck by this game. I ate it up, which is surprising because I'm in a slump with games right now. I admit, the puzzles did get tedious, one or two in particular (finding a tiny piece of chalk that I needed to make a pen legible). There's one other particularly annoying one that I forgot.
This is one of the most visually striking games on the DS. The book "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (a mouthful) describes it as being like the video to A-ha's "Take on Me", a comparison I cannot un-see. Yet it really works in the games favor. It's interesting, it's symbolic almost, to see the characters in monochrome, as if they are all stuck in the dark, toiling away until the end, but with hope of color.
Kyle is an interesting protagonist. He starts the game off as kind of a gruff a-hole. Yet, his dialogue is really well written, and he ends up being a very lovable protag. He "softens" up a little as the game goes on, and we get to love him in his cynicism yet real kindness when he is put to the test by peoples desperation. It's like watching someone grow empathy.
The music is amazing, also some T's Music people worked on this game (another game to add to the Reel Fishing legacy, if you know you know.)
The dialogue can be funny as hell, I'll leave you to experience it if you haven't already. Very witty and well written.
Also, I feel like they really captured the vibe of 70s America.
Sorry for this kind of skimmed review, I promise I will eventually play this again and say my thoughts in more detail.
Trust this tired reviewer, this game made me cry, and it's intensely real and personal. Give it a shot.
(My time with this game was about 11 hours 50 minutes, but since I admittedly used a walkthrough at parts, the realistic time would be around 13 hours I think.)
Another one to the shelves.
Tao's Adventure starts with a bang, like the gun at the start of a cross country race, but it tapers off pretty fast as the game itself seems to get too tired to sustain it's initial pace pretty quickly. Of course, whether or not you get weary with this one depends on what you look for in games.
For example, I've noticed a lot of dungeon crawlers are what I would call "town and dungeon" games, games that have literally simply one (sometimes evolving) town and an assortment of dungeons (or in this game's case, simply one huge dungeon) that you get to (usually) not via an overworld but some travel interface. That was kind of a long winded explanation, but I think of games like Evolution 1 and 2 for the Dreamcast, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, as well as the Shiren and Torneko games. Ever Oasis for the 3DS could qualify as well if didn't break the last rule I set for not having an interconnected overworld.
What makes these "town and dungeon" games interesting kind of eludes me for now (it seems to me to be a minimalistic variation on the core of RPG's) , which seems why I couldn't enjoy Tao's Adventure. I have to do some more work studying this particular genre before I'm ready for this. It seems to me that I really had to enjoy the core gameplay loop, because the game was repetitive as Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill over and over, which could make sense from a ludonarrative perspective- Tao is trying relentlessly to (slight spoiler for the beginning of the game) find a cure for his whole town getting frozen to stone. The game does have some novelty throughout the relative stability - you get to know the characters, some of the locations are blocked off until you progress through the main tower dungeon, giving a sense of at least some progression and novel exploration.
Still, there was something overwhelmingly generic about the routine of this game. It didn't seem to know it's target audience very well at all, the "draw your spells" magic gimmick seems to be appealing to the younger magic and sorcery fad, Percy Jackson-esque enamored crowd. Yet the dungeon crawling is a bit too tedious and dare I say hardcore, harkening back to PS1 titles like Azure Dreams that many newcomers would not be acclimated to. If it had some sort of intrigue to it, like the dungeon maps varying a little bit aesthetically, bosses having an introductory cutscene (the bosses are literally just there) and a bunch of small detail work to make the game a bit more cinematic and adventurous, this would appeal more towards a wider audience.
Yet, it doesn't seem to really target anyone in particular except a few heavy dungeon-crawler aficionados who have exhausted most of their other possibilities. I respect this game and see what it was going for - but I'll have to come back to it.
Tao's Adventure starts with a bang, like the gun at the start of a cross country race, but it tapers off pretty fast as the game itself seems to get too tired to sustain it's initial pace pretty quickly. Of course, whether or not you get weary with this one depends on what you look for in games.
For example, I've noticed a lot of dungeon crawlers are what I would call "town and dungeon" games, games that have literally simply one (sometimes evolving) town and an assortment of dungeons (or in this game's case, simply one huge dungeon) that you get to (usually) not via an overworld but some travel interface. That was kind of a long winded explanation, but I think of games like Evolution 1 and 2 for the Dreamcast, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, as well as the Shiren and Torneko games. Ever Oasis for the 3DS could qualify as well if didn't break the last rule I set for not having an interconnected overworld.
What makes these "town and dungeon" games interesting kind of eludes me for now (it seems to me to be a minimalistic variation on the core of RPG's) , which seems why I couldn't enjoy Tao's Adventure. I have to do some more work studying this particular genre before I'm ready for this. It seems to me that I really had to enjoy the core gameplay loop, because the game was repetitive as Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill over and over, which could make sense from a ludonarrative perspective- Tao is trying relentlessly to (slight spoiler for the beginning of the game) find a cure for his whole town getting frozen to stone. The game does have some novelty throughout the relative stability - you get to know the characters, some of the locations are blocked off until you progress through the main tower dungeon, giving a sense of at least some progression and novel exploration.
Still, there was something overwhelmingly generic about the routine of this game. It didn't seem to know it's target audience very well at all, the "draw your spells" magic gimmick seems to be appealing to the younger magic and sorcery fad, Percy Jackson-esque enamored crowd. Yet the dungeon crawling is a bit too tedious and dare I say hardcore, harkening back to PS1 titles like Azure Dreams that many newcomers would not be acclimated to. If it had some sort of intrigue to it, like the dungeon maps varying a little bit aesthetically, bosses having an introductory cutscene (the bosses are literally just there) and a bunch of small detail work to make the game a bit more cinematic and adventurous, this would appeal more towards a wider audience.
Yet, it doesn't seem to really target anyone in particular except a few heavy dungeon-crawler aficionados who have exhausted most of their other possibilities. I respect this game and see what it was going for - but I'll have to come back to it.
2000
This review contains spoilers
This game echoes like a soft and compassionate war cry, asking to reconsider our Lack of Love.
"There is no comedy outside of what is strictly human. A landscape can be beautiful, graceful, sublime, insignificant or ugly; it will never be laughable. We will laugh at an animal, but because we will have surprised in it a human attitude or a human expression. We will laugh at a hat; but what we mock then is not the piece of felt or straw, it is the form that men have given it, it is the human caprice from which it has taken the mold. How has such an important fact, in its simplicity, not attracted the attention of philosophers? Many have defined man as “an animal who knows how to laugh”. They could just as well have defined it as an animal that makes people laugh, because if some other animal achieves this, or some inanimate object, it is by a resemblance to man, by the mark that man leaves on it or by the use that man makes of it"
- Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."
- Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
I wanted to start this review off with this quote from a French philosopher in his book on the comic, where he talks specifically about what it is we find funny and cute in non-human creatures. Admittedly, what I know of the book I have glanced from summaries, but it says most of it in the above quote: what we find funny in animals is the human pattern we have ordered upon them. Not that these patterns aren't real - the Fibonacci sequence for example is real and actually present among natural organisms such as plants, but we shouldn't take this as proof that humans can unlock the key to nature itself, a kind of colonialism over life itself, but rather that, in Bergson's radical conclusion, nature is one big march and that we are just one perspective in the middle of it, not above it. Like painting a still life that gets increasingly complex and abstract, say like a Cubist painting resembles the original scene it was based on, but the original scene is still there in the essence of the painting. The painting is abstract but always with immanence rather than transcendence, always a within and not an above. Point being: I think humans are within nature and just the next step from a march that was already there. The patterns and constellations we put on nature are real, but the stars were already there.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this myself - but let's take how this game constantly disorients your sense of space. For one, you start off as a very elementary organism, a little guy without eyes, almost like a jellyfish on land. You rise from the bottom of the sea, nearly being eaten by a fish. Soon after you arise, you see a creature just like yourself metamorphize into a larger creature. So you think: I want to do that.
When you do, after solving somewhat non-obvious puzzles (don't be ashamed to use a walkthrough), you get gifts from other creatures, and you can evolve into a black and white spotted little guy. In every game Kenichi Nishi has been involved in, you will see nods to his dog Tao, and while it's not apparent at first, the black and white spotted creature in their various increasingly dog-like transformations may be seen as this games nod to Tao. That's a neat little factoid as an aside.
Back to thinking of these evolutions: the very first time we evolve, we get an immediate change of scale. The whole first map is now relatively tiny, and the creatures that were imposing predators beforehand now are tiny little wimps (no offense to any of the animals in this game).
Games like Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap are often championed as games that provide an amazing sense of scale, but Lack of Love is often left out of the conversation. A few levels after the first, IIRC, you get on a river and eventually get thrown off what was the back of a huge turtle-like creature. What an amazing change! It's almost like with each iteration of our evolution, we are laughing at what came before (a nod to the quote at the beginning), because what we thought was the entire world was simply a miniscule diorama.
The sense of scale this game gives you provokes not only simply wonder, however, but a real sense of terror. Essentially, and slight spoilers ahead, the plot goes like this: Earth has become an overpopulated, overly competitive industrial hell where the livestock have essentially been dying due to the toxic chemicals around and such. As such, the worlds space program sends a robot named, if I remember correctly, Halumi, to scope out another livable planet and make it suitable for humans.
When we first encounter Halumi, we have already become significantly larger than the creature we first got off the back of. However, we still pale in comparison to the power and size of Halumi, and we don't even match the size of their foot. Soon, (SPOILER) Halumi sets off a device of sorts which bulldozes the entire land you are standing on, and you only barely survive to end up in a barren wasteland full of dead creatures.
Of course, there is a moral grey area here, because what were the humans supposed to do? Is the paradise they eventually try to set up at the end of the game better or worse than the eat-or-be-eaten world of the animals (although at least that was more natural, and maybe not as painful as we ascribe it to be?) It brings up serious moral questions about what is artificial and natural. Yet, throughout all of this, the message is clear, we cannot insert ourselves above the environment. Yet the game itself isn't triumphant in this conclusion until perhaps the end - isn't it sad to have to restart on another planet, and how do we save our own? Isn't the whole game of survival a sad affair that we would rather avoid?
There are no easy answers.
Yet there is humor in this game, which is why I brought up the initial quote. There is a stupid pun about the games title: LOL, and how the game does not inspire laughs. Yet, I find myself disagreeing. The type of comedy we see here is non-verbal. It's seeing, for example, some dragonfly like creatures in one area hold a footrace, because it's like seeing something we as humans do that we didn't expect to see among animals. Then there are creatures who play hide-and-seek, who take a nap with you, etc. It's full of these small bouts of humor. The character designs are not without their quirks either - both of the animals themselves and of the artificial robotic people. In the last area, there is a robotic baby who guides you through the first maze of a test you have to undergo in order to be seen as the most "intelligent" and worthy of the creatures around you. More on that later. There are also some silly looking penguin-like bird creatures in one of the later areas.
Is there hope not only in this game but for us? The game leads us to answer this question, it leaves it completely open. If it's not the best game on the Dreamcast (I would almost say it is), it is the most aesthetically unique and possibly thematically challenging games on the console (along with games like DeSpiria)
The game itself is not always well designed - in fact it can be sadistically designed, maybe on purpose. Puzzles use moon logic, and one of the worst puzzles is near the end, where you have to do whole rooms full of sliding block puzzles within a timer of like 2 minutes. It kind of sucks.
There's no shame in using a guide, once again. It feels like this game was almost made for a guide.
Your health in this game is basically represented by a green sphere, surrounded by rings. The more up-going rings you have (which you get by eating food or other creatures) the more your health increases, if you have a ring going down, beware because that will deplete your life and when the sphere is gone, you are dead.
It's interesting, looking at the people who developed this game on it's MobyGames page, notably the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, we see a lot of future Skip members, but not a lot of Vanpool people. I find that interesting, because I would say this games spiritual successor in gameplay is "Endonesia" for the PS2. A game with similar survival aspects - and similar, albeit a more complex communication system (this game has a different function mapped to each of the buttons of the Dreamcast's controller, Endonesia uses a complex system of communicating via emotions you get from the enviroment).
If you've read to the end, thank you so much. This is probably only my first draft of this review. Highly recommend this game, if there's ever a Dreamcast mini, this practically needs to be on there.
"There is no comedy outside of what is strictly human. A landscape can be beautiful, graceful, sublime, insignificant or ugly; it will never be laughable. We will laugh at an animal, but because we will have surprised in it a human attitude or a human expression. We will laugh at a hat; but what we mock then is not the piece of felt or straw, it is the form that men have given it, it is the human caprice from which it has taken the mold. How has such an important fact, in its simplicity, not attracted the attention of philosophers? Many have defined man as “an animal who knows how to laugh”. They could just as well have defined it as an animal that makes people laugh, because if some other animal achieves this, or some inanimate object, it is by a resemblance to man, by the mark that man leaves on it or by the use that man makes of it"
- Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."
- Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
I wanted to start this review off with this quote from a French philosopher in his book on the comic, where he talks specifically about what it is we find funny and cute in non-human creatures. Admittedly, what I know of the book I have glanced from summaries, but it says most of it in the above quote: what we find funny in animals is the human pattern we have ordered upon them. Not that these patterns aren't real - the Fibonacci sequence for example is real and actually present among natural organisms such as plants, but we shouldn't take this as proof that humans can unlock the key to nature itself, a kind of colonialism over life itself, but rather that, in Bergson's radical conclusion, nature is one big march and that we are just one perspective in the middle of it, not above it. Like painting a still life that gets increasingly complex and abstract, say like a Cubist painting resembles the original scene it was based on, but the original scene is still there in the essence of the painting. The painting is abstract but always with immanence rather than transcendence, always a within and not an above. Point being: I think humans are within nature and just the next step from a march that was already there. The patterns and constellations we put on nature are real, but the stars were already there.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this myself - but let's take how this game constantly disorients your sense of space. For one, you start off as a very elementary organism, a little guy without eyes, almost like a jellyfish on land. You rise from the bottom of the sea, nearly being eaten by a fish. Soon after you arise, you see a creature just like yourself metamorphize into a larger creature. So you think: I want to do that.
When you do, after solving somewhat non-obvious puzzles (don't be ashamed to use a walkthrough), you get gifts from other creatures, and you can evolve into a black and white spotted little guy. In every game Kenichi Nishi has been involved in, you will see nods to his dog Tao, and while it's not apparent at first, the black and white spotted creature in their various increasingly dog-like transformations may be seen as this games nod to Tao. That's a neat little factoid as an aside.
Back to thinking of these evolutions: the very first time we evolve, we get an immediate change of scale. The whole first map is now relatively tiny, and the creatures that were imposing predators beforehand now are tiny little wimps (no offense to any of the animals in this game).
Games like Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap are often championed as games that provide an amazing sense of scale, but Lack of Love is often left out of the conversation. A few levels after the first, IIRC, you get on a river and eventually get thrown off what was the back of a huge turtle-like creature. What an amazing change! It's almost like with each iteration of our evolution, we are laughing at what came before (a nod to the quote at the beginning), because what we thought was the entire world was simply a miniscule diorama.
The sense of scale this game gives you provokes not only simply wonder, however, but a real sense of terror. Essentially, and slight spoilers ahead, the plot goes like this: Earth has become an overpopulated, overly competitive industrial hell where the livestock have essentially been dying due to the toxic chemicals around and such. As such, the worlds space program sends a robot named, if I remember correctly, Halumi, to scope out another livable planet and make it suitable for humans.
When we first encounter Halumi, we have already become significantly larger than the creature we first got off the back of. However, we still pale in comparison to the power and size of Halumi, and we don't even match the size of their foot. Soon, (SPOILER) Halumi sets off a device of sorts which bulldozes the entire land you are standing on, and you only barely survive to end up in a barren wasteland full of dead creatures.
Of course, there is a moral grey area here, because what were the humans supposed to do? Is the paradise they eventually try to set up at the end of the game better or worse than the eat-or-be-eaten world of the animals (although at least that was more natural, and maybe not as painful as we ascribe it to be?) It brings up serious moral questions about what is artificial and natural. Yet, throughout all of this, the message is clear, we cannot insert ourselves above the environment. Yet the game itself isn't triumphant in this conclusion until perhaps the end - isn't it sad to have to restart on another planet, and how do we save our own? Isn't the whole game of survival a sad affair that we would rather avoid?
There are no easy answers.
Yet there is humor in this game, which is why I brought up the initial quote. There is a stupid pun about the games title: LOL, and how the game does not inspire laughs. Yet, I find myself disagreeing. The type of comedy we see here is non-verbal. It's seeing, for example, some dragonfly like creatures in one area hold a footrace, because it's like seeing something we as humans do that we didn't expect to see among animals. Then there are creatures who play hide-and-seek, who take a nap with you, etc. It's full of these small bouts of humor. The character designs are not without their quirks either - both of the animals themselves and of the artificial robotic people. In the last area, there is a robotic baby who guides you through the first maze of a test you have to undergo in order to be seen as the most "intelligent" and worthy of the creatures around you. More on that later. There are also some silly looking penguin-like bird creatures in one of the later areas.
Is there hope not only in this game but for us? The game leads us to answer this question, it leaves it completely open. If it's not the best game on the Dreamcast (I would almost say it is), it is the most aesthetically unique and possibly thematically challenging games on the console (along with games like DeSpiria)
The game itself is not always well designed - in fact it can be sadistically designed, maybe on purpose. Puzzles use moon logic, and one of the worst puzzles is near the end, where you have to do whole rooms full of sliding block puzzles within a timer of like 2 minutes. It kind of sucks.
There's no shame in using a guide, once again. It feels like this game was almost made for a guide.
Your health in this game is basically represented by a green sphere, surrounded by rings. The more up-going rings you have (which you get by eating food or other creatures) the more your health increases, if you have a ring going down, beware because that will deplete your life and when the sphere is gone, you are dead.
It's interesting, looking at the people who developed this game on it's MobyGames page, notably the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, we see a lot of future Skip members, but not a lot of Vanpool people. I find that interesting, because I would say this games spiritual successor in gameplay is "Endonesia" for the PS2. A game with similar survival aspects - and similar, albeit a more complex communication system (this game has a different function mapped to each of the buttons of the Dreamcast's controller, Endonesia uses a complex system of communicating via emotions you get from the enviroment).
If you've read to the end, thank you so much. This is probably only my first draft of this review. Highly recommend this game, if there's ever a Dreamcast mini, this practically needs to be on there.
This review contains spoilers
When I was a child, I prided myself on completing just about every 3D Zelda game... except for Majora's Mask. To protect my claim, I replaced the word "completed" with "played". The truth is that I did play Majora's Mask, but I didn't get very far at all. Something about it twisted my perception of Zelda as approachable, wondrous, and adventurous. Not that Majora's Mask lacks any of these things, but maybe the aforementioned adjectives could be replaced with: challenging, awe-inspiring, and complexly beautiful.
Even in the theme for Termina Field, we can hear traces of melancholy under the typical adventurous Zelda ritornello. Without getting heavy into music theory (I'm studying music as an aside) the theme starts off with the piccolo's rooster call, as it were, signaling dawn. The next section introduces strings, but with some falling suspended chords in the mix, which produces a really bittersweet effect, as if the morning is 'suspended', destined to fall to night.
Then the main theme kicks in, headed by strange, chromatic rolls on the marimba and strange doots on the brass instrument (euphonium or tuba, I'm too bad to tell). This is a really disquieting change, but soon the iconic main Zelda theme kicks in. Yet we know something is amiss in this adventure. Around 1:10 in the piece, the sense of adventure gives way to a sense of urgency, like everything is going to fall into chaos. That's my quick and amateur score analysis.
I think the music of Majora's Mask really encapsulates it's thematics more than words can even tell. Of course, there are other clues. From the very beginning, we are placed in a scene similar to the intro to Dante's Inferno, "I found myself in a dark wood". Child Link is on his vacation (more or less) from just having saved Hyrule in Ocarina of Time. Something is immediately wrong in this scenario. Epona, Link's horse for those not in the know, walks with slow steps. Link looks around anxiously. Then, we are treated to a reverse of Virgil to keep with the Inferno comparison, Skull Kid (who my username is named after, by the way) and he promptly robs Link of both his horse and his possessions. Next, Link goes into a cave, and like in Dante's epic, crosses over to a suspended bittersweet hell, Termina, after being turned into a (git gud) scrub from Skull Kid and being greeted by the very strange guide known as the Happy Mask Salesman. Link, as his child self, (not as the adapted and well-respected adult Link) must find himself in literally transformational situations via masks, which cause him different becomings. He finds these masks when he becomes woven up in others tales, or sidequests. It's almost to say that he can become the emotions embodied in the people of Termina's through a kind of sympathetic magic.
He is destined to live out these peoples tales, day by day, through these masks, with the time loop and all. For every 3 days the literal faced moon is destined to crash into Termina, and everyone in the town knows it. So we get a glimpse of all of their lives in their final days. In gameplay, this means we have day-and-night cycles. Not that these have never been done before (like in Shenmue) but they have never been done quite like Majora's Mask. The time loop adds an extra dimension not just in gameplay but in tone, because every day we are greeted by a familiar yet mysterious routine, and the more we investigate one character, like the postman, the more we put a telescope to their lives and see things we couldn't see on the surface. Due to the nature of the time loop, we can't see all of the characters lives at once, therefore we are left to investigate them one at a time, and after resetting using our "Song of Time" on our Ocarina, we can only live out their stories once again. It's almost if the entire town is stuck on a curse, and that we the hero our literally tasked with freeing everyone from death. The game ultimately ends on a note, that while happy, has a tinge of sadness to it. "We were supposed to die, now what do we do?"
Now, I've been talking mostly about the thematics of the game thus far. The game can be hard to complete without a guide though, especially since some of the sidequests can use moon logic.
Biggest tip: in this game the sword upgrades, sidequests, and collectibles are kind of required if you are going to have a semi-easy time. The masks because if you collect all of them you get a super powerful transformation at the end of the game, the sword upgrades because some of the mini-bosses are really difficult without them. One of the upgrades comes from collecting all the little fairies (I forgot what they were called) in (I think) the 3rd dungeon, so it's worth doing that, at least. The spider house quests in particular often lead to some upgrades, so they are worth doing for that reason. Also please get the song that slows down time, The Inverted Song of Time, details on how to get it here: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Inverted_Song_of_Time. It makes life a million times easier.
Overall, Majora's Mask is probably the most challenging and mysterious game Nintendo has made, probably ever I would hazard to say. There's an interesting interview here with Aonuma which says things better than I ever could (actually, there's a group of telling interviews about MM on this site): https://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-talks-about-the-creation-of-zelda-majoras-mask/.
It's quickly becoming a favorite Zelda game of mine for how oddly dreamlike, and bittersweetly comforting it is. It has plenty of Zelda humor and charm in it, but it is quiet and less pronounced. It's a game that wasn't scared to go into things like atonal music for themes such as the one for Southern Swamp. It is endlessly mysterious and has inspired countless interpretations, and countless video essays while still remaining esoteric and open to interpretation. It's honestly one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Thanks for reading.
Even in the theme for Termina Field, we can hear traces of melancholy under the typical adventurous Zelda ritornello. Without getting heavy into music theory (I'm studying music as an aside) the theme starts off with the piccolo's rooster call, as it were, signaling dawn. The next section introduces strings, but with some falling suspended chords in the mix, which produces a really bittersweet effect, as if the morning is 'suspended', destined to fall to night.
Then the main theme kicks in, headed by strange, chromatic rolls on the marimba and strange doots on the brass instrument (euphonium or tuba, I'm too bad to tell). This is a really disquieting change, but soon the iconic main Zelda theme kicks in. Yet we know something is amiss in this adventure. Around 1:10 in the piece, the sense of adventure gives way to a sense of urgency, like everything is going to fall into chaos. That's my quick and amateur score analysis.
I think the music of Majora's Mask really encapsulates it's thematics more than words can even tell. Of course, there are other clues. From the very beginning, we are placed in a scene similar to the intro to Dante's Inferno, "I found myself in a dark wood". Child Link is on his vacation (more or less) from just having saved Hyrule in Ocarina of Time. Something is immediately wrong in this scenario. Epona, Link's horse for those not in the know, walks with slow steps. Link looks around anxiously. Then, we are treated to a reverse of Virgil to keep with the Inferno comparison, Skull Kid (who my username is named after, by the way) and he promptly robs Link of both his horse and his possessions. Next, Link goes into a cave, and like in Dante's epic, crosses over to a suspended bittersweet hell, Termina, after being turned into a (git gud) scrub from Skull Kid and being greeted by the very strange guide known as the Happy Mask Salesman. Link, as his child self, (not as the adapted and well-respected adult Link) must find himself in literally transformational situations via masks, which cause him different becomings. He finds these masks when he becomes woven up in others tales, or sidequests. It's almost to say that he can become the emotions embodied in the people of Termina's through a kind of sympathetic magic.
He is destined to live out these peoples tales, day by day, through these masks, with the time loop and all. For every 3 days the literal faced moon is destined to crash into Termina, and everyone in the town knows it. So we get a glimpse of all of their lives in their final days. In gameplay, this means we have day-and-night cycles. Not that these have never been done before (like in Shenmue) but they have never been done quite like Majora's Mask. The time loop adds an extra dimension not just in gameplay but in tone, because every day we are greeted by a familiar yet mysterious routine, and the more we investigate one character, like the postman, the more we put a telescope to their lives and see things we couldn't see on the surface. Due to the nature of the time loop, we can't see all of the characters lives at once, therefore we are left to investigate them one at a time, and after resetting using our "Song of Time" on our Ocarina, we can only live out their stories once again. It's almost if the entire town is stuck on a curse, and that we the hero our literally tasked with freeing everyone from death. The game ultimately ends on a note, that while happy, has a tinge of sadness to it. "We were supposed to die, now what do we do?"
Now, I've been talking mostly about the thematics of the game thus far. The game can be hard to complete without a guide though, especially since some of the sidequests can use moon logic.
Biggest tip: in this game the sword upgrades, sidequests, and collectibles are kind of required if you are going to have a semi-easy time. The masks because if you collect all of them you get a super powerful transformation at the end of the game, the sword upgrades because some of the mini-bosses are really difficult without them. One of the upgrades comes from collecting all the little fairies (I forgot what they were called) in (I think) the 3rd dungeon, so it's worth doing that, at least. The spider house quests in particular often lead to some upgrades, so they are worth doing for that reason. Also please get the song that slows down time, The Inverted Song of Time, details on how to get it here: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Inverted_Song_of_Time. It makes life a million times easier.
Overall, Majora's Mask is probably the most challenging and mysterious game Nintendo has made, probably ever I would hazard to say. There's an interesting interview here with Aonuma which says things better than I ever could (actually, there's a group of telling interviews about MM on this site): https://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-talks-about-the-creation-of-zelda-majoras-mask/.
It's quickly becoming a favorite Zelda game of mine for how oddly dreamlike, and bittersweetly comforting it is. It has plenty of Zelda humor and charm in it, but it is quiet and less pronounced. It's a game that wasn't scared to go into things like atonal music for themes such as the one for Southern Swamp. It is endlessly mysterious and has inspired countless interpretations, and countless video essays while still remaining esoteric and open to interpretation. It's honestly one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Thanks for reading.
2001
Filler review, this time dropping a really interesting fact. Apparently, and you can fact check me on this, this game was scored by T's Music, who also worked on the score of frickin' OKAMI.
Now that's pretty cool, and it explains a lot of the epic sounds of this game.
I love the Reel Fishing series too, really relaxing fishing games, and this is probably the most relaxing on the dreamcast. I think comparing it to things like Sega Bass Fishing and the like is comparing apples to oranges, so I don't like how this is often put in competition with those games.
Kind of sad that they got rid of the aquarium, but I understand why, maybe for space limitations.
Now that's pretty cool, and it explains a lot of the epic sounds of this game.
I love the Reel Fishing series too, really relaxing fishing games, and this is probably the most relaxing on the dreamcast. I think comparing it to things like Sega Bass Fishing and the like is comparing apples to oranges, so I don't like how this is often put in competition with those games.
Kind of sad that they got rid of the aquarium, but I understand why, maybe for space limitations.
This may be a bold choice - but I want to say something about Disaster Report 4 before I'm even done with it.
This games genius comes from how it tries to portray something that, in my opinion, video game medium or perhaps I should say industry struggles to come to terms with - "social realism", an earnest portrayal of the actual conditions of suffering in a society.
Now, it may seem strange to declare Disaster Report 4 a depiction of a society, when it at surface value is a depiction of natural disaster and it's effects on a society. Yet, I see something even deeper here.
I'm sure a lot of us have endured natural disasters of some sort. For me, living on the coastline of America, said natural disasters were often hurricanes. At first, when I was doing some volunteering to help mitigate the impacts of such a disaster, I had the true idea that "it brought out the good in people". Only, at that time this idea was somewhat superficial.
Since, I found in this game that disasters not only bring about good faith in each other as human beings, but also show and X-ray of a society that causes people suffering. Here we can see people with their heads down, suffering from not only natural disasters but the kind of bureaucratic cushioning that tries to absorb the impact of the natural disasters, while human individuals are left in the dark. Take an example of a character in this game, a man from a poor family who moved to the city after getting a job offering, who made it through multiple stages of the interview process before the disaster hit. All of a sudden his suffering is at a boiling point - not only has he come to the city searching for a job so he can support his family, but that hope has ultimately collapsed and as a result left him collapsed. In the search for light and hope for his family, and in his total destitution and misery at his own perceived failure to do so, do we realize something - no corporate body will set him free from this, it's *ultimately the power of human love at it's simplest, love for the Other (A la Levinas's Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy) ) - that we come to understand how interdependent we are.
So the thesis that natural disasters "bring out the good in people" is not totally unfalse -
but we have to see the profundity of this good, that it's a good that has to happen through struggling in order to be 'pure good'.
There are multiple people in this game who's life situations are ultimately at maybe their bleakest, and this is ultimately where the 'social realism' of this game shines through.
This is amazing, because I think the game medium itself encourages a kind of detachment from our own bodies - an 'out-of-body' experience, our movement projected onto an avatar. In order to make gaming 'pleasant' many video game companies resort to thus providing fantastical worlds, these days, most likely "open" worlds where peoples desire for escape from the vicissitudes of everyday life is ultimately encouraged, as a trade off for their money. So the fact that a game like Disaster Report 4 is allowed to exist is amazing. You won't find much extremely pleasant in gameplay here, for good and bad reasons - one such reason is that you are dodging natural disasters, collapsing buildings. For those of us who have survived this thing - it is an unpleasant thought to see our very human avatar being killed by a falling steel building.
I'm sure Granzella themselves were very aware of this - they were planning to release the game a day before the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit (source: https://www.vgfacts.com/game/disasterreport4summermemories/), that caused at least 18,000 people to die (source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-2011-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami).
So knowing this, I think Granzella (who before the earthquake was known as Irem) must've known that the Disaster Report series could not stick to it's roots as simply a fictional disaster-flick inspired game (not to say the original games were without any weight, either though). Many people who had survived the disaster who would think to play this game would find such a representation bullshit at best, and insensitive at worst. Yet, in a stroke I consider genius, they had to imbue it with a serious humanistic weight. It's one of the most 'real' games that I've played all my life.
Play this, it should hit you like a lightning bolt.
This games genius comes from how it tries to portray something that, in my opinion, video game medium or perhaps I should say industry struggles to come to terms with - "social realism", an earnest portrayal of the actual conditions of suffering in a society.
Now, it may seem strange to declare Disaster Report 4 a depiction of a society, when it at surface value is a depiction of natural disaster and it's effects on a society. Yet, I see something even deeper here.
I'm sure a lot of us have endured natural disasters of some sort. For me, living on the coastline of America, said natural disasters were often hurricanes. At first, when I was doing some volunteering to help mitigate the impacts of such a disaster, I had the true idea that "it brought out the good in people". Only, at that time this idea was somewhat superficial.
Since, I found in this game that disasters not only bring about good faith in each other as human beings, but also show and X-ray of a society that causes people suffering. Here we can see people with their heads down, suffering from not only natural disasters but the kind of bureaucratic cushioning that tries to absorb the impact of the natural disasters, while human individuals are left in the dark. Take an example of a character in this game, a man from a poor family who moved to the city after getting a job offering, who made it through multiple stages of the interview process before the disaster hit. All of a sudden his suffering is at a boiling point - not only has he come to the city searching for a job so he can support his family, but that hope has ultimately collapsed and as a result left him collapsed. In the search for light and hope for his family, and in his total destitution and misery at his own perceived failure to do so, do we realize something - no corporate body will set him free from this, it's *ultimately the power of human love at it's simplest, love for the Other (A la Levinas's Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy) ) - that we come to understand how interdependent we are.
So the thesis that natural disasters "bring out the good in people" is not totally unfalse -
but we have to see the profundity of this good, that it's a good that has to happen through struggling in order to be 'pure good'.
There are multiple people in this game who's life situations are ultimately at maybe their bleakest, and this is ultimately where the 'social realism' of this game shines through.
This is amazing, because I think the game medium itself encourages a kind of detachment from our own bodies - an 'out-of-body' experience, our movement projected onto an avatar. In order to make gaming 'pleasant' many video game companies resort to thus providing fantastical worlds, these days, most likely "open" worlds where peoples desire for escape from the vicissitudes of everyday life is ultimately encouraged, as a trade off for their money. So the fact that a game like Disaster Report 4 is allowed to exist is amazing. You won't find much extremely pleasant in gameplay here, for good and bad reasons - one such reason is that you are dodging natural disasters, collapsing buildings. For those of us who have survived this thing - it is an unpleasant thought to see our very human avatar being killed by a falling steel building.
I'm sure Granzella themselves were very aware of this - they were planning to release the game a day before the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit (source: https://www.vgfacts.com/game/disasterreport4summermemories/), that caused at least 18,000 people to die (source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-2011-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami).
So knowing this, I think Granzella (who before the earthquake was known as Irem) must've known that the Disaster Report series could not stick to it's roots as simply a fictional disaster-flick inspired game (not to say the original games were without any weight, either though). Many people who had survived the disaster who would think to play this game would find such a representation bullshit at best, and insensitive at worst. Yet, in a stroke I consider genius, they had to imbue it with a serious humanistic weight. It's one of the most 'real' games that I've played all my life.
Play this, it should hit you like a lightning bolt.
(This game was too hard to rate, but if I did it would be 2.75 stars, just below 3 stars.)
Incredibly charming, but incredibly outmoded adventure game that's kind of hard to recommend without a guide.
Well, I'm not sure I've been starting 2024 off on a great foot game-wise, because I've shelved more games then I've actually completed, and for some reason I feel a kind of shame about it. I also want to say sorry to Hudson because my previous attempt with one of their games (Elemental Gimmick Gear) resulted in a similar shelving rather than completing due to mechanical issues within the game itself, although the atmosphere was breathtaking.
While I might not describe Princess Tomato's atmosphere as breathtaking, it did have a sort of quaint almost dreamy feel to it. Even the cover art, where the characters seem to be made of clay has an incredibly vintage feel to it, vegetable and fruit characters in semi-medievalist, fairy tale attire is an oddly comforting kind of surrealism.
Princess Tomato is one where I don't really know what went wrong - because you can say that a lot of it's gameplay is just bound up in the tropes of the early adventure games, part and parcel of a game around its era. The puzzles are just barely solvable without a guide, but I highly recommend using one anyway at parts.
So where do I put the blame? Frankly, I don't know. There was just something tiring here. If Princess Tomato is vintage, it's vintage, but with a slight musty smell. Some might like the smell of an old book for example, maybe because it "brings them back" (but not always). Anyway, I bring that up because I think for people who are nostalgic for this time of gaming and old text adventures (A la Portopia Serial Murder Case and maybe Shadowgate) the jank is almost a part of the fun nostalgic trip. It's a "you had to be there thing", that I think this game kind of suffers from.
To follow the less than perfect metaphor, the smell of an old book might be off putting, especially if one can tell it's pages are filled with labyrinth prose, winding plot threads and such. Not that Princess Tomato is at all a dense tome, but it does have a sense of confusion and you will be lost. There's a painful maze section, it drops you into combat with kind of no explanation on how to actually fight (you do it through rock paper scissors and then a guessing game, it's hard to explain). Then there is the insane amount of menu options: LOOK, CHECK (why aren't look and check the same thing?), FIGHT, PUNCH, etc. that makes me appreciate the sleek interfaces of the modern point-and-clicks.
Yet, like I said, it's quaint, humorous and has some banging chiptune. It's kind of a pick-your-poison with this and equally old text adventures (not that they are all abstrusely designed), where you have to kind of make a trade-off between charm and ease of play. If you have nostalgia for this kind of thing, this might not even faze you. I'm not sure how this game would even translate into a remake, though it would help to modernize it a bit at least graphics wise, although the graphics are charming in an 8-bit interface and look good on the NES (and according to Hardcore Gaming 101 it did get a remake for Japanese mobile phones).
Finally, believe it or not I actually played this game on my dreamcast, using an emulator, so the fact that I had to wait for my boot disc to load, after about 15 tries each time, didn't help with making me want to play it. I'll definitely give it another go... with a different setup.
Incredibly charming, but incredibly outmoded adventure game that's kind of hard to recommend without a guide.
Well, I'm not sure I've been starting 2024 off on a great foot game-wise, because I've shelved more games then I've actually completed, and for some reason I feel a kind of shame about it. I also want to say sorry to Hudson because my previous attempt with one of their games (Elemental Gimmick Gear) resulted in a similar shelving rather than completing due to mechanical issues within the game itself, although the atmosphere was breathtaking.
While I might not describe Princess Tomato's atmosphere as breathtaking, it did have a sort of quaint almost dreamy feel to it. Even the cover art, where the characters seem to be made of clay has an incredibly vintage feel to it, vegetable and fruit characters in semi-medievalist, fairy tale attire is an oddly comforting kind of surrealism.
Princess Tomato is one where I don't really know what went wrong - because you can say that a lot of it's gameplay is just bound up in the tropes of the early adventure games, part and parcel of a game around its era. The puzzles are just barely solvable without a guide, but I highly recommend using one anyway at parts.
So where do I put the blame? Frankly, I don't know. There was just something tiring here. If Princess Tomato is vintage, it's vintage, but with a slight musty smell. Some might like the smell of an old book for example, maybe because it "brings them back" (but not always). Anyway, I bring that up because I think for people who are nostalgic for this time of gaming and old text adventures (A la Portopia Serial Murder Case and maybe Shadowgate) the jank is almost a part of the fun nostalgic trip. It's a "you had to be there thing", that I think this game kind of suffers from.
To follow the less than perfect metaphor, the smell of an old book might be off putting, especially if one can tell it's pages are filled with labyrinth prose, winding plot threads and such. Not that Princess Tomato is at all a dense tome, but it does have a sense of confusion and you will be lost. There's a painful maze section, it drops you into combat with kind of no explanation on how to actually fight (you do it through rock paper scissors and then a guessing game, it's hard to explain). Then there is the insane amount of menu options: LOOK, CHECK (why aren't look and check the same thing?), FIGHT, PUNCH, etc. that makes me appreciate the sleek interfaces of the modern point-and-clicks.
Yet, like I said, it's quaint, humorous and has some banging chiptune. It's kind of a pick-your-poison with this and equally old text adventures (not that they are all abstrusely designed), where you have to kind of make a trade-off between charm and ease of play. If you have nostalgia for this kind of thing, this might not even faze you. I'm not sure how this game would even translate into a remake, though it would help to modernize it a bit at least graphics wise, although the graphics are charming in an 8-bit interface and look good on the NES (and according to Hardcore Gaming 101 it did get a remake for Japanese mobile phones).
Finally, believe it or not I actually played this game on my dreamcast, using an emulator, so the fact that I had to wait for my boot disc to load, after about 15 tries each time, didn't help with making me want to play it. I'll definitely give it another go... with a different setup.