Let's talk about the PlayStation.

There were two big promises when it came to the launch of the PSX. The first, and the main one, was 3D. The second: bigger. Bigger games, longer games, games with more game inside of them. And if you were into RPGs, still a nascent genre on consoles, like I was? Oh boy. Longer, stronger, packed to the brim. CDs were going to be a gamechanger for RPGs.

And they were. RPGs went from being 20-30 hours to 50-80. There were more locations, more mechanics, more systems. At first I was delighted. There was just so much more. And more. And even more. And that's when I truly began to understand: quality over quantity. Novelty over repetition. Meaningful mechanics over systems cruft.

For a while I fell out of love with RPGs, began to gravitate toward more mechanically-driven games. Still, I remember being a bit excited about Thousand Year Door. I also remember how that excitement faded, so much so that I passed on the game on launch. In fact, I avoided it for two decades, until the wheel landed on it.

You see, then and now, I could tell what Thousand-Year Door was: it was more.

Take a step back. Look at Seven Stars. Two giants, Square and Nintendo. Speaking roles for characters that had never spoken before, an expansive new world full of secrets and callbacks, a novel battle system, incredible music. And then Paper Mario: a new take on the same battle system, familiar but different with its addition of elevation and the wildly inventive paper mechanics. Neither game was perfect, but both were fresh, new.

But Thousand-Year Door? It's just Paper Mario +, stuffed to the brim with meaningless additions, plagued with beyond sub-par level design and absolutely endless backtracking, overflowing with effusive, shallow lore. So many parts of the game are utterly unnecessary. Trouble center side quests? At no point do you suffer for money or their paltry payouts. Stage hazards? Inconsequential at best, annoying slow downs more often. A slot machine that randomly happens and makes no difference in most cases. So many attack badges, all rendered utterly irrelevant by Shrink Stomp and the various defense and power up badges that make normal attacks one-shot enemies. Quick Change makes bosses trivial because you can simply hide with Vivian whenever you want. Lore is everywhere, but time-consuming due to Tattle, childish in its content. Cooking, with absolutely no need to ever do so. Point rewards in shops for items you neither want or need to buy or win. There's gambling. There's an arena. And so on.

All of which would be largely forgivable if the design of the game itself wasn't so unbelievably weak. Levels are largely flat and uninteresting, puzzles are simple, plots are short and mindless, battles require virtually zero attention. I died, once, to Cortez because I was both drunk and bored and didn't pick up on the bonepile mechanic soon enough. The final battles were, quite literally, just having Bobbery use his ultra move over and over while Mario did Spring Jump. Grodus never even managed to attack. My inventory was overflowing with powerful items I never even considered due to how unnecessary they were. I largely ignored star abilities because of their tedious minigames. And so on.

Nintendo was right to abandon this formula. Super Paper Mario next, followed by various new paper gimmicks. Coloring, stickers, the various implements of Origami King. Mario RPGs are at their best when they're doing something new, when they don't have the luxury of just building a hollow palace on a previously established foundation. I'll take innovation over repetition any day.

"This sure seems like Donkey Kong Country Returns" - guy who only plays Nintendo platformers.

This isn't Donkey Kong Country Returns. This is Rayman Origins Jr, and that is every bit the compliment it sounds like. From the ukelele-peppered soundtrack to the movement to the way secret areas are handled, it cribs hard and cribs well, and more power to it.

But the big thing about Hoobadventure is its heart. You can tell the designers love platformers, that they put real devotion into this game. The movement feels good, the core tail snap mechanic has a unique delay that makes for some very fun platforming and there's tons of big and small optional platforming challenges that highlight both. The real spice is in the remix levels. Only three of those, sadly, but they make it clear: this is a game for your little brother, but the designers could have made it so much more if the license didn't tie them down.

But that's fine. The game is short, easy enough, and knows both what it wants and what it needs to be. And what is that? A genuine hidden gem, a game most of us would never look at twice due to the license, but also one that was more than good enough to make me wonder if the studio's upcoming Smurfs game might follow suit. Guess we'll see.

Only facts: Road to Ballhalla is an excellent little challenge game with on-point aesthetics and, despite having no story or characters? Excellent writing.

Take the first two on faith. The ball rolls good, the challenges are both clever and fun, and the visuals are both easily read and perfectly suited.

And then the writing. It's… everywhere, really. Snippets on the floor. Death dialogue. Bits hidden in the menus. Odd gameplay-based back-and-forths between a player that communicates with movement and a developer who peppers them. But it's not that endless, oh-this-is-hard antagonism that you'd expect. There's apologies, kudos, tidbits in confirm/deny prompts. There's an entire level referencing Miss Marple. There's blatant placeholder text as a joke, a genuine surprise or two, a bit of snark and quite a bit of cheek. It elevates an already fun experience, leaves you genuinely looking for and forward to more writing in a game that is about absolutely nothing more than rolling a ball.