Can lightning strike in the same place twice? Of course, it can, and it often depends on the elevation of the place or objects that it’s striking. Why then is this question a common myth and or rhetorical question that people ask? It’s because lightning is an ambiguous force in which its effectiveness of it on the collective human consciousness relies on the random nature that lightning is perceived to have. No one would scurry indoors if lightning was a creature of habit, striking the same place over and over like that piece of land owed it money. I bring this up because it seems like Danish game developer Playdead was anticipating the same level of effectiveness by striking the same place twice with their lightning which was Limbo. Instead of making a sequel, Playdead followed up their 2010 indie hit with a spiritual successor called Inside. I make no exaggerated claim here that Inside is the same game as Limbo. I understand that indie developers may not have the big-budget, glossy attributes that triple-A developers have. Still, they at least have the ability to produce something discernible from their previous outputs. Inside is the same foreboding, linear odyssey of ambiguity crafted as a 2D puzzle platformer that Limbo was. The only difference is Inside has a crisper frame rate thanks to next-generation technology, and it has a less monochrome color pallet. I’d lambaste Playdead for releasing the same game twice, but there is something crucial to Inside that doesn’t make it a carbon copy of Limbo. Instead of diverting from the gameplay of Limbo to make Inside discernible from it, they’ve added more depth to the narrative to try to make something more substantial.


The uncanny resemblance Inside has to Limbo starts to become apparent from the beginning scene. A young boy in a red shirt sans glowing eyes is running around in the woods with an aura of panic and unease. The environment doesn’t look as alien and hostile as the one from Limbo, but the player will soon learn not to come to conclusions like this upon first impressions. A few yards into the forest, the kid comes across two guys talking to each other near a generator. The kid will briskly jump off of a ledge and snap a twig in the process. One of the men hears this and turns on a flashlight. If the player is caught in the flashlight’s reach, the men run after the boy and subdue him, and the player can’t do anything to escape their grasp resulting in a “death.”

Further into the forest, a dog will chase the boy down while barking violently and gnashing its razor-sharp teeth. If any of these dogs catch the boy, they’ll tear out what appears to be his trachea in a bloody mauling that signals the kid's obvious doom. Any of these things that are most likely familiar to the player would’ve been refreshing in Limbo but are far more threatening than anything in that game here. Inside is practically a stealth game in this regard. I claimed in my review of Limbo that it was not a horror game like everybody described it, but I would make somewhat of a case for Inside. I believe that all effective horror media needs to have some grounding in something that resembles reality. The world of Limbo was far too ethereal to hold any substantial weight in the realm of reality. The monochrome visuals and the ambiguity of everything in the game made it feel too much like a dream. As they say, a dream no longer becomes scary once the person wakes up. Inside is far more grounded thanks to the more realistic, albeit depleted-looking, world the protagonist finds themselves in. The environments in Inside are a little more domesticated and familiar to the player than the ones with the unvarying visuals presented in Limbo. The setting of Inside has a looming aura of oppression that gives the game its tension. The land that makes up this setting looks like it’s been sucked dry, almost like the mist that permeates this land is the exhaust from the tailpipe of the domineering machine that runs this place. Either the boy is a native of this land, or he’s on the outskirts of somewhere completely without hope, trying to find his way out or find aid. The horror here is not a naturalistic one where the land is inherently dangerous but rather a man-made terror with sentience. There’s something more harrowing about horror with an agenda rather than an environment that is just meant to be visually spooky.

Before I get ahead of myself trying to decipher the experience of Inside, I can’t properly review a game without even slightly discussing its gameplay, even if it’s a minute detail. As I’ve said, Inside and Limbo aren’t merely two games made by the same company. Inside is practically a carbon copy of Playdead’s last title in terms of gameplay. The player will run on a 2D axis sequentially with little interruption besides the platformer puzzles that add a hint of zest to the player’s journey. The platforming is minimal, and the player will most likely fail many times attempting to do these before they succeed. The description I just gave for Inside’s gameplay could easily be the one for Limbos, but there are a few differences. Inside feels much more lenient with its checkpoints and individual puzzles than its predecessor. After dying during a puzzle in Limbo, the game would take the player back into action without giving them a chance to prepare themselves. Inside, on the other hand, lets the player prepare for the challenge, which feels much better than the game propelling the player to their imminent dooms. Inside has fewer sections in which the player has to act fast before something kills them, but the few moments where these come to play are much better executed. Inside adds a few new features like controlling a submarine with a propulsion mechanic, swimming, and controlling a mass of flesh with its physics. One gameplay feature that is essential to the core of Inside’s vague narrative is the mind control feature. Limbo had a mind-controlling slug that would latch onto the player and control their movement, but Inside has turned this into a bonafide mechanic. The protagonist will latch their heads onto a mechanism hanging from the ceiling at many points in the game. This will trigger one of the innocuous, slouching pale people the protagonist encounters in swarms throughout the game who controls almost exactly like the protagonist.

Why is a mind control mechanic so pertinent to Inside? Because it highlights the core themes of conformity that the game conveys in its narrative. Discussing fascism concerning Inside’s “story” is relevant because the dystopian themes are readily present. However, merely dissecting the game and coming to fascism as a conclusion is scratching the surface. Inside makes the player consider what the ultimate goal of fascism is, and that is conformity to an extreme degree. The colors in the world of Inside are dismal and murky, but the comparatively vibrant red shirt of the protagonist stands out. This red shirt is a subtle symbol the protagonist wears to represent his role as someone in this society who is different. He’s a beacon of hope for this world and a reflection of how this world used to be before it fell to an unknown oppressive entity. The fact that the protagonist is a child might also have some semblance. All of the mindless drones that walk without any autonomy are bigger than the protagonist, so I’m assuming that they are all adults. Perhaps the conformity presented in Inside is a comment on the capitalist machine we all venture into as adults? Either or, there is an imperative on individualism and how government control seeks to eliminate it because they see it as a threat. I can’t think of any better way the game illustrates this other than the protagonist walking in unison with the zombified underlings, being punished for falling slightly out of line with their movements.

There is a standout portion in the climax of the game that is far more notable than the scene I just described. The protagonist will venture to what looks like a scientific facility with people in lab coats scrambling around a dim building with high ceilings. The protagonist will come across a pressurized rocket which turns out to be a trap. The protagonist gets sucked into an aquarium with a large group of people in lab coats observing him. The propulsion of the rocket engine has stripped the protagonist of his clothes, leaving him stark naked without his red shirt. In the center of this aquarium is a giant mound of flesh with various appendages held still in the water. Once the protagonist frees this abomination, he morphs into the mound, and now the player controls it. This odious mass of people breaks through the glass of its watery cell and wreaks havoc on the lab while the men in lab coats run away screaming. As the player tries their best to control this sentient blob, its journey breaks open a wooden barrier which causes it to tumble violently down the mountainside and come to a complete halt at a misty lakefront. This change of pace from playing as the boy was a total shock for me and probably for most who played this game. Suddenly, the player is manning the blob from Akira and demolishing everything around it while still maintaining the core gameplay the same. The blob even squishes a guy into a pulp and wears his blood like tribal paint (one of my favorite moments in the game, by the way). It’s a fun way to change up the gameplay after playing as the boy for so long. It’s also something that completely deviates from Limbo. Playing as this blob isn’t just for shock value but carries weight in Inside’s themes of conformity. What better way to illustrate people without their individuality as a giant globule of flesh? From the observation of it from the people in lab coats, this blob was a procedural experiment conducted to test the extremes of keeping people as a collective unit without any kind of volition. This collective is also the force that brings down their oppressors. This is something the kid couldn’t do on his own, so perhaps the game is suggesting that one must sacrifice individuality for a greater cause? It’s an ironic case of playing devil’s advocate to keep theories afloat for the player. As far as the ending is concerned, many people argue that it’s bleak. However, I feel as if the blob ending up at the bottom of a mountain on a beachside signifies that all of these people have broken free from their captors, albeit under less-than-ideal circumstances. Whatever Playdead was attempting to convey, this result from a heart-pounding climax is the perfect way to end the game.

Normally, I’d be completely underwhelmed and apathetic about a game that does not attempt to deviate from a previous one. Playdead saved a lot of money on Inside because it functions the same way as Limbo. It has the same gameplay, vague narrative, and artfully bleak undertones that I liked about their previous game. The thing is, I already experienced all of those things with Limbo. While playing through Inside, I couldn’t help but constantly compare the game to Limbo and try to figure out if the logical reason why I was enjoying Inside was simply that I liked Limbo to begin with. After playing through Inside again, I’ve realized that this might be a case of Limbo being a prototype for Inside. The substance of Inside compared to Limbo far exceeds it and left a bigger impression on me. My emotions dropped just like the blob did off the cliff and resonated with me more than the seemingly cyclical loop of Limbo. Playdead made the same goddamn game, and it managed to be slightly better than the previous one. As of writing this, Playdead has not released a third game. Don’t get too confident, guys. You can only get away with repeating yourselves once.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Twenty is an awkward age for everyone, especially for an American. You’re two years into adulthood, and this is the first formal year graduating from your teenage years to your twenties. Being two decades old should feel like a milestone with perks, but it doesn’t. The milestone American ages are 18 and 21 for obvious reasons, 21 being the watershed age of adulthood with every other subsequent age flatlining in importance until 30 or arguably 25. Turning twenty means nothing essentially other than you aren’t technically a teenager anymore but are you more of an adult now than you were when you turned 18? It certainly depends. Despite two whole years of experience in either college, the real world, or some mix of both, two years either seems like an eternity since high school or seems just like yesterday. The latter of the two will even attempt to preserve their high school legacy and or be stuck in a state of whimsical nostalgia for their recent teenage years.

Nevertheless, twenty is an adult in the eyes of the law despite one’s personal experiences two years after high school. Because of this, twenty isn’t an ideal age for a coming-of-age story. By the age of twenty, the age that people come to has already come full circle. The stories that revolve around people in their early 20s are either entirely based on the college experience or completely removed from the same introspective adolescent stories that make up the coming-of-age genre. When I was twenty, I certainly felt different than I did in high school, but I didn’t exactly feel like an adult. I simply felt like a kid tackling a few new responsibilities with a more unfocused sense of direction. Is this what being a young adult is supposed to be like? I feel that the age of twenty feeling like less of a concrete year in one’s adulthood is a generational thing that has come about in the millennial/zoomer generations. We are a stilted group due to economic recession and technical alienation. Because of this, turning twenty is a piddly fizz to rocket off into adulthood, and all the twenty-year-olds can still be subject to the coming-of-age story. Night in the Woods is an artful, honest depiction of a coming-of-age story that resonates with the estranged twenty-year-olds of the 21st century.

Night in the Woods stars Mae Borowski, a twenty-year-old anthropomorphic feline returning to her hometown after dropping out of university. She takes a long trek through the woods on her way home after being abandoned at the bus station by her parents. Along the way, she contemplatively reminisces about the changes and familiarities in her hometown of Possum Springs since she’s been gone. The day after, she gallivants throughout the town to find that most of the townsfolk are wary of her return. Mae has a bad reputation for something she did years ago, but not one person in town explicitly says what Mae did to draw all of this collective ire from her neighbors. She reconvenes with Gregg, a friend from high school who is excited to see her. Both of them meet up for band practice with Gregg’s boyfriend Angus and Bea, another of Mae’s friends from long ago that doesn’t seem to be thrilled to see Mae again. After eating mediocre pizza in a diner, the gang encounters a severed arm on the sidewalk. This event is the catalyst to the mystery plot that makes up the core progression of the game’s narrative. Mae uses her time back in Possum Springs to uncover the mystery behind the arm while rekindling her relationships with her hometown friends.

The first thing that grabbed my attention about Night in the Woods was its peculiar animated graphics. The game has a visual styling that reminds me of a plethora of children’s storybooks I was exposed to at a very young age. Which ones? I can’t quite say, but that particular style of illustration was prominent enough during my impressionable years for Night in the Woods to remind me of it several years later. The most essential features of this illustrative style are the lack of pronounced outlines, minimalistic designs, a lurid but consistent color pallet, and the paper-thin aesthetic that highlights the game’s signature style. All the characters in Night in the Woods are animals that run the gamut of the animal kingdom. The denizens of Possum Springs range from canines, felines, bears, birds, reptiles, etc. The game, however, doesn’t reference the fact that all of these characters are different animals. The only instance it’s even hinted at in the game is when Mae finds a ball of yarn on a bulletin board, calling its placement here “condescending” while simultaneously playing with it. Non-anthropomorphic cats and rats are seen in the streets, and Mae’s neighbor’s dogs bark at her when she’s walking on telephone wires. Night in the Woods was never meant to be Zootopia for the young-adult demographic. The fact that the characters are animals is superfluous to their characterization and the story. This choice was likely due to cartoonish animals fitting the aesthetic style better than jagged, flesh-colored figures meant to resemble real people. Night in the Woods is also very dialogue-intensive, as most graphic adventure games are, but there isn’t a single line of voice acting between any of the characters besides some slight grunts that Mae sometimes makes. The lack of voice acting in a game like this might deter some players, but I think it aids the minimalist presentation. The presentation of Night in the Woods is both charming and inviting, and I haven’t seen anything quite like it in a video game.

Night in the Woods is a graphic adventure game, a genre that fits its minimalist design like a glove. Yet, the game feels much less stilted than most other games in the graphic adventure genre. Mae is a wily lass who traverses through the hilly streets and the steep wooded areas of Possum Springs by leaping to great heights and using her catlike sense of balance to walk on electrical wires to reach the tops of buildings and other foundations. A 2D platformer influence is implemented here with enough nuance to maintain its core as a graphic adventure game. Night in the Woods takes many instances to distract from its graphic adventure foundation. The game will often spontaneously break out into minigames. Most of these minigames involve an incredibly small task, usually with an unfamiliar first-person POV shot. These range from grabbing a piece of pizza off of a plate, stealthily stealing a pretzel from a vendor, feeding that stolen pretzel to a family of rats, to Mae electrocuting herself trying to ring up Angus and Gregg’s apartment. These instances are so simple and mundane that it’s difficult to apply the minigame label to them. They still appeal to them because they provide just enough to smooth out the pacing of the already minimalistic gameplay. Some other gameplay varieties Night in the Woods implements are much more involved, like the rhythm-based minigame where Mae plays the bass. She’ll get together with her friends for band practice, and a Guitar-Hero-like rhythm sequence happens. It’s acceptable to bomb here because Mae herself doesn’t know any of these songs coming into practice. This is a good thing because one song called “Pumpkin Head Guy” is quite a doozy. While most of these occurrences are fleeting, they break up the mundanity of the base game enough to the point where it doesn’t get stale.

Being mundane is usually associated with negative connotations, but this is not entirely the case with Night in the Woods. A humdrum sense of directionlessness is a core staple of the game's narrative. It took me more time than I am willing to admit to understand that reveling in the directionlessness was what gave the game its substance. Every day, Mae wakes up and frolics through the fix to six different sections of town. Progress in the game is made through hanging out with either Gregg or Bea, and afterward, Mae goes to bed and has an interactive, surrealistic dream to cap off the day. During my first playthrough, I’d have Mae make a beeline to Gregg at the Snack Falcon without stopping to smell any of Possum Spring’s proverbial roses. I’m not sure why I was so impatient with this game during my first playthrough. Upon my second playthrough, I spent much more time exploring the town and found something magical in every corner. I visited Mae’s mom every day at the church and watched TV with Mae’s dad enough times to uncover the tooth in the basement. I went on an adventure to an island of garbage and brought back some more things to decorate Mae’s room. I spent time with Germ and Lori, and the final hang-out with Germ at his house was wonderful. Of course, doing all the extra stuff the game offers will make any game more substantial, but my surprise was that doing all of this unlocked more dialogue sequences during the base game that I hadn’t seen before. What I initially thought to be tedium that distracted me from the progression seemed to aid the experience. The side content adding a hefty amount to the narrative was like Persona, but I wish I had this insight upon my first playthrough. Exploring all that Possum Spring offers enhances the experience to the point where I enjoyed it more than hanging out with Mae’s close friends.

The game I initially expected Night in the Woods to be similar to was Life is Strange, another graphic adventure game that I have a love-hate relationship with. Besides sharing the same overall game genre (except that Life is Strange is a triple-A game), both games revolve around a young adult female protagonist rekindling lost friendships, jotting down her experiences in a notebook, mature themes that coincide with a coming-of-age tale, and some supernatural elements sprinkled into the narrative. I came into Night in the Woods expecting the same cringe-inducing dialogue and lack of self-awareness that made Life Is Strange a riot, even though it was unintentional on the developers' part. After playing through the first act of Night in the Woods, I thought the “youthful” dialogue and the hipster-latent vibe would make for an indie, minimalist Life is Strange. The result was that I ended up appreciated the depth of these characters and their relationships with one another genuinely. Night in the Woods succeeds where Life is Strange doesn’t because the characters of the former aren’t portrayed like caricatures. For being a bunch of flat, anthropomorphic creatures, the main characters in Night in the Woods manage to feel more personable than the human characters of Life is Strange.

Mae is a much more likable protagonist than Max Caulfield because there is a sense of self-awareness in her character. Mae’s flaws are very apparent. She’s irresponsible, rudderless, immature, and has a pension for committing some misdemeanors for fun. These flaws might point to some fundamental defect relating to the main character, but she is still likable because all characters admonish her for these flaws. When the character presents many flaws at the beginning, it opens up a lot of room for character progression. Mae has a not-so-stellar reputation in her town because of an incident that occurred when she was much younger. The reason why Mae committed that heinous act years ago and the reason why she dropped out of college is due to a dissociative disorder that stems from the anxiety of growing up and eventual death. She felt alienated from everyone at college because they were doing adult things. Mae yearned for the nostalgia of a carefree youth that could be achieved by revisiting her hometown. She soon learns through the game that all of these things are inevitable, and she must acclimate to them to have a fulfilling life Mae is also funnier, livelier, and much more charismatic than the brooding, introspective Max Caulfield, which certainly aids her role as a protagonist.

Mae’s relationships with her friends are much more substantial than Max’s with hers. Of course, portraying a better friendship than the one between Max and Chloe isn’t exactly raising the bar, but Night in the Woods achieves this nonetheless. Bea, Gregg, and Angus are Mae’s three closest friends in the game, and spending time with each of them is the core of the narrative. Angus is only somewhat related to Gregg because Mae knows him from being Gregg’s boyfriend, so most of the time with him is connected to Gregg’s story. There are only so many days to spend with either Bea or Gregg to maximize their character arc, so the game incentivizes a second playthrough. If you can only fit one playthrough of Night in the Woods into your busy schedule, I recommend prioritizing Bea over Gregg. Gregg is delighted to see Mae when she comes back to town, but Bea can barely tolerate Mae’s presence. Bea and Mae’s strained friendship is alleviated through the player spending time with her, making her arc feel earned by the end of the game. The player will sense that something happened between Mae and Bea at the end even if they prioritized Gregg, but jumping to the end without seeing Bea in the beginning, feels uneven. Bea works at the Ol’ Pickaxe, the finest hardware store in Possum Springs. Her mother died some time ago, and her father is in a mental and physical decline, leaving her in an unfortunate position of doing all of the providing for her family. She resents Mae for her immaturity and her constant pursuit of capturing child-like nostalgia. During her hangouts, Mae does some mischievous things for Bea’s entertainment, and Bea gets a chance to let her guard down for a minute. Mae doesn’t put Bea in any danger or take her on some shady affairs as an accomplice like another certain duo of young women from a similar game (I’ll give you a hint: one of them has blue hair) The penultimate moment in Bea’s arc comes when they go to an out-of-town college party, and Mae does not make any effort to hide the fact that she isn’t a student there. It’s revealed that Bea comes to these parties and poses as a student to get somewhat of a college experience away from her wearisome life. Bea tells Mae that she envies her for getting a chance to escape the monotony of Possum Springs by going to college and taking it for granted. Once Bea’s arc is complete, Bea and Mae reach a mutual understanding, and their friendship seems secure again. It’s a poignant arc between two characters with different outlooks that converge nicely by the end.

It’s not to say that Gregg’s arc isn’t enjoyable, but he’s a little too much like Mae. Gregg is also immature and impulsive and yearns for his rowdy past. He has a job like Bea, but he spends most of his time there goofing off, putting cups over his ears to amuse himself. When Mae comes to town, she becomes a vehicle for Gregg to indulge his destructive side. They have knife fights, beat-up old cars, steal parts of old animatronics, etc. All of this is fun for both of them, but it turns out that Mae is a bad influence on Gregg. Gregg has been trying to grow out of his old, rambunctious ways, and he has his rock of a boyfriend, Angus, to aid him in his personal growth. Part of me wishes that Angus was a third primary friend to progress through the game with, but I suppose it wouldn’t make sense considering Mae is only acquainted with Angus through Gregg and isn’t an old childhood friend. It’s a shame that Angus only has any real volume in Gregg’s arc as late as the end of it. Mae, Gregg, and Angus all take a trip to a distant donut shop, and they both reveal to Mae that they will be leaving Possum Springs soon. Naturally, this upsets Mae, but Angus makes Gregg put his foot down and tell Mae that he wants to literally and metaphorically leave Possum Springs behind. This scene is a wake-up call to Mae in that even her partner in crime (or “crimes” as they both refer to it as an inside joke) has moved on and stopped chasing the nostalgia dragon. While Bea’s arc is a gradual ascension, the finale of Gregg’s arc is a gut punch. I wish there was a more subtle progression to this scene involving Angus.

I say that the relationships between Mae and her friends are the core of the game’s narrative, but the game would beg to differ. I mentioned before that Night in the Woods also has supernatural elements interwoven into the plot, like Life is Strange. These elements are relatively cohesive, but only to a certain extent. If the player has forgotten about the arm after a while, it gains some relevance at the end of act 2. During the “Harfest” Possum Springs hold every Halloween, Mae witnesses a kidnapping and follows the mysterious figure to the edge of town but cannot stop him. She thinks he’s a ghost for some reason and then takes Bea, Gregg, and Angus on trips to research ghosts on three separate trips (the player can only do two of them). During the events of whichever trip the player chooses, the “ghost” ambushes Mae and her friends. They follow it to the edge of town, where they witness a murder scene with many people dressed up like the “ghost.” These shadowy figures chase Mae down and wound her to the point where she’s comatose for some time. The next night after Mae recovers, they go back to the edge of town into the old mine, where the cult of figures explains that they meet down here to make human sacrifices to an eldritch god who, in turn, offers prosperity to Possum Springs. Mae believes that this divine being is the one she’s been dreaming about and is the cause of her dissociation problems. The cult explains that they snatch up the delinquents, junkies, low lives, and overall refuse of the town under the mindset that sacrificing them is putting them to good use. This explains what happened to Casey, a friend of Gregg’s that went missing some time ago. After refusing the cult’s offer to take their places in satisfying the being, a rather peevish member attempts to kill them because Gregg shot him with a crossbow arrow earlier. He plummets down the mine’s elevator, leaving every cult member to die in the mine by proxy.

As hair-brained as this supernatural element is to the narrative, it somewhat fits the theme of longing and an inability to let go of the past. Mae and her friends are all “grown-ups” by a normal definition, but it’s almost ironic how the older adults also long for the glory days. Possum Springs has been subject to biblical flooding, economic recession, and a steady decline in population over the years. The locals who were around for this time of prosperity yearn for those days to come back, but each year makes it seem utterly hopeless. The sacrificial rituals they conduct remind me of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. They believe performing these acts will magically bring them hope because any logical solution will not aid them in the long run. It’s not even clear if the beast they make sacrifices to even exists, but they’d like to believe that it does as a beacon of hope. Either way, they still throw people down a mineshaft to their deaths. This aspect of the supernatural element is fine, but what irks me about it is how it relates to Mae and her problems. It feels incredibly unnecessary to incorporate a supernatural element into Mae’s arc as the game was doing a fine job progressing it through organic relationships with her friends. After putting the cult to their dooms, Mae sends a touchy group message online, claiming that by vanquishing them, her dissociation is gone. Forgive me, but I don’t see any real correlation. If Mae’s dissociation is fixed, why doesn’t it seem that way in the epilogue? Mae gallivants around town per usual without any point of newfound clarity. Shouldn’t her arc conclude with her accepting the inevitability of growing up and starting her road to maturity like her friends? The whole eldritch being manipulating her mind seems like just another immature excuse.

After my second playthrough of Night in the Woods, I came to appreciate the game for more than just its quirky presentation. It feels like a very personal game to any young adult who is feeling dissociated from their peers and society’s shortcomings. As I’m writing this, I can honestly say that I might be feeling this as a young millennial/zoomer who feels a bit left behind, and I guarantee I’m not the only one who does. The game does have its flaws about the somewhat mundane progression, the shoehorned supernatural elements, and forcing the player to play twice to get a scope of the full story. In saying this, I’m still glad I played this game again because I started to cherish everything the game had to offer. It’s a unique coming-of-age tale that I’m glad was developed in the video game medium.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

In the inevitable wake of another console generation, the new guard is objectively supposed to be better than the old one, right? Why spend time and resources making a new product if it doesn’t outshine the old one in every way possible? That was the impetus for Nintendo’s SNES console, essentially acting as an NES 2.0 that blew the previous system out of the water in every fathomable way possible. Comparing and contrasting the features between both the NES and SNES seeing where each system stacks up with one another would prove to be futile. Think of it like this; when playing the NES console, anything one might notice about the NES from the graphics, control, hardware, etc., the SNES surpasses it in every single category without question. It’s like debating the evolutionary stature between primates and man, and I don’t think I have to spell out which one the SNES is in this metaphor.

Many familiar Nintendo franchises that made their debuts on the NES jumped over to the SNES with flying colors. While many aspects of these franchise's entries on the SNES are better than their previous outputs on the NES, is it to a degree where the NES titles are rendered unplayable by comparison? I’ve claimed that Super Mario World is the ultimate 2D Mario title, but some aspects are unique to Super Mario Bros. 3 that still hold my attention. A Link to the Past is a more realized version of the NES Legend of Zelda, but this makes the game a long slog at times and makes me appreciate the simplicity of the NES game. All of these NES games retain a certain level of quality even if their sequels are flashier and are presented on a larger scope. The one SNES sequel to an NES game that does significantly improve upon every single aspect of its predecessor to the point where the previous game is rendered obsolete is Super Metroid. Super Metroid dwarfs the NES Metroid so much that it turned it into a speck of insignificant dust.

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the first Metroid game on the NES. I felt as if the developers of the first Metroid bit off a bit more than they could chew, and the teeth of the minimal, 8-bit NES system were the equivalent of trying to chew a filet with crooked dentures. The NES simply could not deliver on the ambitious heights that Nintendo wished for the first Metroid, resulting in an inadvertently obtuse and tedious experience that grated on every one of my senses. A new console generation not only expands upon the successes of the previous one but also breathes new life into a franchise by giving it a stark advantage with the new hardware. A Link to the Past is arguably what Nintendo wanted the first Zelda game to be but was beset by the limitations of the NES’s hardware. Don’t quote me, but from what I can tell, the same prerogative was put in place for Super Metroid. The soft-reboot imperative of the SNES was put on full display with Super Metroid. The game may be a soft reboot of the NES Metroid by definition, but it feels more like a rock-hard, turbo reboot as far as I’m concerned.

Super Metroid is tangentially a soft reboot in the eyes of the eagerly creative Metroid fan such as I. More technically, it’s a direct sequel that carries on the plots of the NES Metroid and Metroid II on the Gameboy. Samus receives a distress call from the facility that she brought the baby Metroid to be experimented on in the last game. Once she arrives, she finds all of the scientists dead in the remnants of a shocking massacre. She finds the familiar space pirate Ridley with a tube that houses the baby Metroid, clutching it with his extraterrestrial talons. Samus fights Ridley for the baby Metroid, but he escapes and initiates a destruction sequence for the entire lab. Samus scurries away from the facility and follows Ridley to the planet Zebes to pursue the baby Metroid. While Super Metroid primarily acts as a revamped, fully realized version of the NES Metroid with next-generation hardware supporting it, Super Metroid is not without its level of ambition. The 16-bit era was still a time before video game narratives could deliver on the same caliber as a film. Yet, Super Metroid does astounding things with its presentation despite the limitations of the SNES’s hardware. The game opens with a relieving line about the last Metroid being in captivity. It’s the only spoken line of dialogue in the game, and it sounds decent considering it’s being uttered on a 16-bit system. The slideshow with text that recaps the series thus far is neat, but the real groundbreaking moment comes before the title screen. A terrestrial setting with dim lighting and eerie music pans back and forth to set the scene of the aftermath of slaughtering the scientists. The scene sets an aura of mystery and terror that directly contradicts the claim presented on the beginning screen. A pang of dread fills the player with this ghastly scene without the use of dialogue, showing that the mission the player will find themselves on will be a hectic one. Super Metroid will use this masterful “show, don’t tell” type of narrative in its presentation at many points in the game that are just as effective as the one in the beginning cutscene.

The one saving grace of the NES Metroid was its ability to convey the isolation of an alien planet with its graphics. Minimalism is a legitimate art form, but the type of minimalism the first Metroid conveyed was a coincidental factor of the primitive NES hardware. Intentional minimalism is one thing, but I have a feeling the effectiveness of the first Metroid’s atmosphere was entirely due to dumb luck. A new console generation naturally comes with an enhanced set of graphics, and I’ll take the frills of aesthetic progress over blocky pixels with sheer delight. What the developers did in the graphics department of Super Metroid was craft something that seems like what the first game intended to be. The biggest overall improvement is being able to discern the difference between each section of a given area, so the player no longer feels hopelessly lost and confused due to the fault of the graphics. The long corridors are rendered well enough that the player can see the crags between the earth and the vegetation budding from the soil. The insectoid aliens that crawl around these corridors are more discernible and no longer blend in with the foreground like camouflage. The more futuristic, robotic-looking sections are now full setpieces of space-age architecture. The HR Giger influence finally shows here with these sections. Norfair looks like the player has traveled to the center of Zebes, and the lava looks like a menacing hazard that seems about as uninviting as humanly possible. The graphical improvements that Super Metroid makes to the familiar areas of the first game are too numerous to fully detail. If it looks similar to the areas of the first Metroid, then it’s been revitalized to an exceptional degree.

The question is: is the atmosphere in Metroid still effective? Yes, but it conveys a different feeling. I’d say that Super Metroid exudes an aura, not of isolation but one of claustrophobia. As Samus deviates further from the wetlands of Crateria, the player becomes increasingly uncomfortable with every new area they venture to. The starting area of Crateria is hospitable enough to carry Samus’s ship for the game's duration. It can be used as a reference to where everything else on Zebes is located. Small alien creatures roam about along the walls and can be dispatched without any problem. Taking the elevator down to Brinstar will introduce the player to an area with two bizarre vegetation types. One is green and has engulfed the area in vines and pronounced green brambles. The other vegetation on Brinstar has a queer-looking, pink aesthetic that looks very delicate. These areas look more distinctive than the wetlands above and exude an alien ambiance. The depths of Brinstar feel very open, but The apex of this claustrophobic feeling are Norfair and Maridia, the two furthest places from Crateria and the most alien of the areas of Zebes. Norfair is so hostile that Samus needs a suit upgrade to traverse even the slightest bit of ground here. The atmosphere here is sulfurous, and the omnipresent threat of the stinging lava adds to the overall threat of this place. The depths of Norfair house some of the steepest hazards and the toughest enemies in the game. Maridia achieves a sense of claustrophobia through alternate means. Half of this area takes place in an underwater cavern, and the other half is like a celestial freezer where the chills seem just as severe as the heat on Norfair. The sense of claustrophobia is achieved by how dangerous and unfriendly the areas become the further Samus strays from the starting point. The tension becomes more and more palpable the further Samus descends into Zebes, making it seem harder to breathe.

All of the areas that make up Zebes are also superbly designed. I mentioned that the first Metroid was akin to a “proto-Metroidvania game.” Still, Super Metroid is the first proper Metroidvania game that all of the other games in the genre take inspiration from. The first Metroid has a design initiative like the first Zelda, which encouraged the player to explore to get lost. Super Metroid, on the other hand, encourages the player to explore until they get stuck. The design philosophy of the Metroidvania subgenre is that there are obstacles around every corner that can be solved with solutions that will seem obvious to the player. If they don’t seem obvious enough, the player is missing something vital to progression and will have to come back later when they find that easy solution. The player will search every route they can until they find a path that’s manageable to traverse through, logically pointing to that path as the intended point of progression. An example of this in Super Metroid is needing a suit upgrade to cross into Norfair. Unless the player is as dense as this area’s atmosphere, they might get the impression that they aren’t intended to be here yet when Samus’s life energy plummets quicker than a skydiving anvil. The player also can’t go back up to the vegetation area of Brinstar, so one might conclude to check around the Brinstar area closer to Norfair. They’ll fight Kraid and gain the Varia Suit, which allows them to withstand the atmosphere of Norfair. Once the player gains the speed booster, they can blow open the series of rocks located next to Samus’s ship on Crateria. Soon after, they’ll come across a room flooded with water where Samus can’t jump to cross the tall beam in the center. There’s a series of peculiar-looking cubes aligned up top that might indicate some importance in getting across the water, and the player has to locate this upgrade somewhere else. The beauty of the Metroidvania level design established here is that the player truly can’t get lost. For any obstacle that the player comes across, the solution is either in plain sight or the player will have to return at a later time. The player will always have at least one clear progression route, even if the first one they come across can’t be accessed quite yet. The design method always assures that the player will never halt to a complete stop and interrupt the flow of gameplay. It’s also satisfying to uncover an area that was obstructed once the player has the means to traverse it. The first Metroid relied too much on the ethos of Zelda, and the enclosed passageways that made up Metroid’s framework did not translate well with seamless exploration. The innovative design of Super Metroid puts up enough parameters without making the game seem restricted. It strikes a perfect compromise that works well with Super Metroid’s oppressive yet curious atmosphere.

It also helps that there have been many quality-of-life improvements to Super Metroid. The first Metroid would have benefited greatly from a save function, but the technology wasn’t readily available then. Save features became second nature in the 16-but era, so Super Metroid having one is no surprise. At least three rooms in each area of Super Metroid are reserved for a place for the player to save. Despite the violent waves that emit from the saving chamber, each room feels like a comfy place of respite from the hostility of the alien planet. Super Metroid also builds upon some of the features from Metroid II, namely the charging and ammo stations. Like the save rooms, these cozier locations appear off the side at least three times in every major game area. Visiting these places will replenish either Samus’s health or her ammunition, a sizable convenience compared to stocking up on both by grinding off weaker enemies in the first game. The only inconvenient aspect is that both the save rooms and recharge rooms aren’t always close to one another, making the player trek across the area if they don’t feel like camping next to one of those tubes with the insect enemies for five minutes to grind for health. I assume the developers thought incorporating both into one room might have made the game too easy, and the repressive feeling of withstanding the harsh elements of Zebes could’ve faltered. As it is, I never found too much difficulty in this regard, but the convenience would’ve been nice. Without a doubt, the most convenient quality of life improvement Super Metroid gives us is a map. Pieces of an area’s map will be uncovered as Samus explores, but the entire map will be revealed once Samus finds a map station situated like a charging/save station. The absence of a map in the first Metroid was the most frustrating aspect of that game. I understand that the intention was to make the player feel alone and helpless, like they were lost in space, but all it was doing was frustrating me beyond belief. The map makes sure that the player is never really lost and can always be used as a point of reference to where they have not visited yet. The inclusion of a map was the factor that made Super Metroid playable, and it has become an essential feature for every Metroidvania game that followed.

The advanced hardware of the SNES also gives way to making Samus feel much more capable. The iconic Nintendo heroine could finally showcase the full potential of her bounty-hunting prowess. Samus here feels much less stilted and far more acrobatic than her more pixelated, 8-bit self. Fundamentally, Samus’s controls and moves aren’t much different than they were on the NES. Samus can still squeeze into a ball, jump to heights to the point where she hits the ceiling, and execute multiple somersaults with the same questionable gravity. The differences Super Metroid makes to Samus are relatively minute, but they make a world of difference in the game. The most essential improvement upon Samus from a gameplay standpoint is the ability to aim at a 45-degree angle. While playing the first Metroid, I often had difficulties dealing with airborne enemies, especially ones that swooped down on Samus from above. I wished for a way to deal with flying enemies in a more indirect manner that didn’t force me to gamble with Samus’s health. Shooting manually from an angle that doesn’t require Samus to be directly under the enemy or parallel to it keeps the player at a manageable distance. I commented in my review of the first Metroid that the player seemingly had to exploit the game to progress or gain access to a vital item which I thought expected too much from the player. All of the items in Super Metroid can be obtained through logical means that seem like a natural course of progression. The player never has to perform feats beyond themselves in Super Metroid…unless they want to. The developers were in such a comfortable place with Samus’s control scheme that they secretly implemented a wall jump ability. Samus can either bounce between two parallel surfaces or off the same surface as another means to access high places. Executing the wall jump can be quite finicky, so practice makes perfect. Mastering this secret move can allow the player to blow through entire sections of the game and manipulate the natural progression of the game. Forcing the player to perform obtuse tasks is one thing, but allowing more advanced players to exploit the malleable design of Super Metroid adds a whole level of depth and control.

Samus is also made much more capable due to the extensive arsenal Super Metroid provides. All of the items from the first game return here, along with a plethora of more powerful additions to the already established items like the super missiles and power bombs. New items like the gravity suit and space jump experiment with Samus’s movement, progressively making her more fluid with each new power-up. The grapple beam allows Samus to get across gaps, and the spring ball conveniently allows Samus to bounce in ball form without needing to be propelled upward by a piddly bomb. New offensive features like the charge and plasma beam stack onto the familiar ice beam to make the default beam a force to be reckoned with while the spazer beam increases its accuracy. A new item that combines the innovation of Samus’s movement and unforeseen power is the speed booster which allows Samus to run at inhuman speeds, obliterating everything in her way (provided the path is long enough to build up speed). In the first Metroid, every new power-up Samus obtained made the player feel less helpless. The player went from being subdued in seconds to exploring the depths of Zebes with marginal ease. The additions Super Metroid makes to Samus’s arsenal make players feel like they can conquer anything on this alien planet. It’s the only proper way to feel while playing as the badass, one-woman space army that is Samus Aran.

The fluid controls and high-octane weaponry still don’t render Super Metroid an effortless excursion. These features simply give the player a means of dealing with the harsh conditions of Zebes, namely the enemies. Overall, the enemies here are much less relentless than the more pixelated ones that made up the first game. The space creatures here act more naturally in their home environment, with fewer per screen. The game compensates with the hostile space pirates that appear in every area and some enemies in the late game that can deal some serious damage. While the enemies of the first Metroid defended their hive like a swarm of angry bees, the bosses did not deal with Samus with the same passion and rancor. Like everything else in Super Metroid, the once pitiful, munchkin-sized Ridley and Kraid have been revamped as the intimidating, otherworldly behemoths they deserve to be. Kraid’s encounter has him bursting through the arena with Samus scaling a series of platforms just to meet Kraid at an adequate angle. The first Ridley encounter shows the space dragon in a more menacing light, but the scope this scene sets makes him even more formidable. His second encounter at the end of the game is the ultimate arc coming full circle. While the player finally has the necessary assets to deal with Ridley, the player will pump so much ammunition into him and still merely survive by the skin of their teeth. Super Metroid also offers a few new bosses with their Zebes strongholds. Phantoon is a giant ugly space testicle that is the bane of my existence due to one attack that I’m not entirely sure is avoidable. The well-known exploit in Draygon’s fight is another excellent case of the gameplay’s malleable initiative. The standout boss of Super Metroid for me is Crocomire, a sub-boss sandwiched in the fiery crevices of Norfair. The player has to unload enough missiles into his dopy mouth to push him into the lava. Once the player succeeds, he wails and cries as the flesh from his bones dissolves quicker than saliva on cotton candy. The outcome of this fight was so shocking and disturbing that I started to feel a tad remorseful.

A small room that borders Ridley’s second fight arena unveils a shocking revelation: the Metroid that was in captivity has broken free from its capsule. Samus then treks back to a corridor in Crateria and unlocks the route to the final area of Tourian. Immediately, this section should signal a dreadful sense of deja vu for anyone who has played the first Metroid. Samus will descend through misty, space-age vestibules using the ice beam to defend herself from an ambush of metroids. One of the metroids she encounters proves to be too sizable to vanquish, and it nearly kills her. Through flashbacks, it’s revealed that this is the Metroid from the capsule. It spares Samus because it remembers when Samus saved it during the events of Metroid II. The sense of deja vu will continue when Samus is confronted with an all-too-familiar setup of a long room consisting of blasters and bouncing energy ovals with a giant brain on the other end protected by a glass casing and rows of flesh tubes. The player may notice that this event is much easier this time, but this isn’t because Super Metroid is going soft on them. Blasting through Mother Brain’s forces like before only reveals her final form: a monstrous, bipedal creature with the stature of a T-rex. After unloading rounds of (super) missiles at Mother Brain, she unleashes a rainbow-colored ray of energy that the player must have enough health to withstand. All seems grim when Mother Brain charges another beam to finish Samus off, but the friendly Metroid from before stops this in the nick of time. Mother Brain kills the Metroid, but not before it harnesses its energy to Samus in the form of the hyper beam. Samus lays into Mother Brain with her new ability with a vengeance and defeats the foul beast, but not before Samus has to escape Zebes due to a countdown signaling its destruction yet again. Words cannot describe this final fight between Samus and Mother Brain, and I mean that quite literally. There is not a single line of spoken dialogue throughout this encounter, but the game proves it doesn’t need to be concise and emotionally impactful. The masterful presentation that piqued the interest of every player at the beginning comes in full form again, providing one of the best endings of the 16-bit era.

Explaining how Super Metroid is an improvement to the first Metroid is a rather trivial affair. This isn’t because the game has no merit as a soft reboot or a sequel. It’s QUITE the contrary. It’s simply because Super Metroid eclipses the first Metroid (and Metroid II) in every single fathomable regard that listing each improvement would be a waste of time. This is what I realized while writing this review. I could’ve simplified every example I gave for the sake of brevity and done something else with my life. It would’ve proved as effective as stating my points. What did Nintendo do to craft what is a prime example of a perfect sequel? In essence, not much. It’s the same space-age, horror-inspired game with a claustrophobic setting meant to convey feelings of isolation. Secrets can be found by meticulously searching, Zebes is still crawling with hostile creatures, and Samus is still utterly alone. I suppose all the first Metroid needed was another breath of life on a superior console to fully realize its potential. Super Metroid was the game Nintendo wanted to make but was bogged down by 8-bit hardware. They also had the gift of hindsight for Metroid’s second wind on a console. They used it effectively by buffing out the scratches and expanding on the first game as an exceptional sequel should. If not for the overarching plots between the first three Metroid games, I’d declare the first two games obsolete and champion Super Metroid as the first proper entry in the franchise. Metroid took the gold over Mario and Zelda this time.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I love the internet. Well, I love the internet most of the time. Certain people who lack self-awareness and project their unresolved trauma make the internet insufferable sometimes, but that’s a discussion for another day on a completely different platform. Despite my reasons for why I love the internet, the initial purpose of it was to bring people together from all over the world and break language barriers. In the years that the internet has been steeped with a seemingly endless amount of porn and cat videos, this core tenant of the internet still holds value to this day. Emulation has always tapped into the vital essence of the internet, erecting a bridge between the west and the video game motherland of Japan for those games that didn’t quite make that journey overseas. The internet provides easy access to these games that would’ve been forgotten in time, condemned to obscurity due to the lack of being internationally available. Admittedly, there are probably a metric ton of games that should’ve been left in the vaults of their Japanese homeland. Still, some games have achieved national notoriety and a second wind of popularity. I can’t think of a better example of this than Mother 3, the sequel to the cult classic game Earthbound. Through emulation, Mother 3 has not only gained more critical acclaim than its widely celebrated predecessor, but it has steadily garnered a reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time.

The amount of praise Mother 3 has received strictly through emulation is utterly baffling. I was not being the slightest bit hyperbolic when I stated that Mother 3 has been placed in the same ranks among giants of the video game medium. Every online video game outlet I’ve seen consistently places Mother 3 at the top of the charts, whether based on critic scores or an aggregate average. IGN even placed it at #60 in a list of the top 125 Nintendo games of all time, a mid-way compromise that at least acknowledged Mother’s 3 existence in a mainstream gaming publication. Considering all of the acclaims Mother 3 has received, it’s getting difficult to ignore. That’s the ironic thing about Mother 3’s newfound notoriety: emulation has raised it above the clouds and into the bright light of overwhelming adulation, but emulation also keeps this game in the dark. Emulation is still a relatively contentious issue in the realm of gaming. Mother 3 was only released in Japan, so gamers in the west didn’t have any other choice than to resort to piracy. The stigmatization behind emulation seems to have dissipated over the years, and some industry leaders have given up trying to enforce rules against emulation. Nintendo, on the other hand, will get medieval on the asses of anyone who dares to infringe upon their intellectual properties. Writing a review on the contents of Mother 3 as an English-speaking westerner is, in a way incriminating myself, so I plead the fifth on how I managed to play it. If you know, you know. Why then is Nintendo insisting on relegating one of their finest outings to their home country? Why are they forcing players to stoop to flirting with the thresholds of legality just to play a video game? There is no way Nintendo isn’t aware of the infamous “localize Mother 3” chant, a sentiment echoed so vociferously that even Terry fucking Crews joined in as a free celebrity endorsement. Nintendo knows there is a demand, but why aren’t they supplying? One common assessment of the situation is that Mother 3 still wouldn’t succeed in the west because the content is too “high brow” for western audiences. Earthbound initially tanked in the west, and Nintendo isn’t going to the trouble to reproduce another inevitable cult classic. There’s also the issue of the risque content of Mother 3 that might draw some ire in the west. With all of this in mind, perhaps it’s better to leave the game.

In this timeline, Mother 3 is better off as a heavily pirated cult classic than it could’ve been. Mother 3 was initially intended to be released as an N64 game. Its earliest development period saw a game with blocky graphics and a fully rendered 3D environment. Mother 3 would be the series leap into 3D like Mario and Zelda before it, but developing a 3D JRPG onto a cartridge-based system would be an incredibly ambitious undertaking. There’s a reason why there were only a few made during the system’s lifespan. The project depended on the success of the 64DD, an add-on to the N64 that played discs. Needless to say, the failure of this peripheral resulted in a 3D Mother game never seeing the light of day, and I say good riddance. A 3D Mother game on the N64 would’ve been a colossal bomb that would’ve killed the series on sight. Thankfully, the developers decided to continue the production of Mother 3 for the handheld GBA system. The more primitive handheld console offered pixelated graphics for Mother 3 that were only slightly more advanced than Earthbound’s were on the SNES. This, however, seemed to be for the game’s benefit as the more pixelated graphics better maintained Mother’s quirky charm and absurd sense of humor, becoming an idiosyncratic style for the series. One might think it’s disappointing enough that this grand title is only legally available in Japan. Still, I’d rather have that than Nintendo potentially murdering the series with their stubborn initiative to render everything in 3D during the N64 era.

This means that the GBA hardware makes Mother 3 all the more like Earthbound. Mother 3 carries on the same warm sprite animation, minimal combat system, and weird, absurd sense of humor under the scope of a “domestic JRPG”. Mother 3 has everything everyone loved about Earthbound, and I’m someone who was beguiled by all of these aspects. However, I was initially apprehensive about diving into Mother 3 because of all the things about Earthbound that I found vexing and unamusing. I am thrilled to report that while Mother 3 may resemble Earthbound in a myriad of ways, it does not feel like Earthbound, or at least made me feel as embittered as Earthbound often did. Every aspect of Earthbound that irked me has been completely reworked in Mother 3 to make for a substantially more enjoyable experience.

One of my major grievances regarding Earthbound’s gameplay stemmed from the stiff penalty for dying and the lack of convenient places to heal. After dying in Earthbound, Ness would be fully revived, but his partners would still be in a state of lifeless purgatory, floating behind Ness like a morbid reminder of his failures. Ness would have to travel to a hospital and pay to revive his teammates like a bail bond. Ness then has to stay at a hotel to replenish his PP, which also costs a pretty penny. This whole process is such an ordeal that one can easily forget what they were doing or the obstacle that caused them to die in the first place. Hospitals and hotels are generally placed in urban areas, so the travel time between the place of death and the nearest city can be the most monotonous part of the restoration process. An alternative healing method is the “instant revitalization devices”, but I could count how many there are in the game on one hand. Earthbound probably force this circuitous escapade on the player because of the game’s emphasis on humdrum modern life and its many facets, like going to a hospital when someone is ill. Without spoiling its themes or story, Mother 3 does away with the medical system of Earthbound and streamlines this whole system with a simple, traditional Japanese method of physical therapy: hot springs. All the player has to do is sit in one of these for 5-10 seconds, and their health and PP are revitalized. These hot springs are also located everywhere, so the player should never feel too weary about being low on health and vigor. I’m not sure how accurate the abundance of the hot springs is because I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ll gladly take the convenience. Dying in battle will also take the player back to the last save point with all of their health and PP restored. All of these conveniences almost make me take my health for granted, and I am relieved that the developers opted for these instead of the old system from Earthbound.

Dying occurred often in Earthbound because the enemies were feral than starved timberwolves. The enemies would also tend to run in packs like the animal mentioned above. Encountering enemies in the overworld of Earthbound became so overwhelming that I dreaded combat after a while. In most JRPGs, the game will give the player an option to escape from battle. Earthbound has this option, but I swear it only worked about a fifth of the time. The other option was to run past enemies to avoid battle encounters, but this was yet another thing that the developers merely teased the player with. Ness and his friends couldn’t run, so they were defenseless sloths against the wild cheetah. The skip sandwich item lets the player move quicker, but only for a pitifully short amount of time. The slight burst of energy doesn’t even provide enough speed to bypass most enemies, and this is also considering that enemies are found in tight corners as well. Adversely, Mother 3’s combat and overworld enemies are much more manageable. Enemies will never appear in more than three groups, and they move toward the player at a less ferocious speed. There are still some enemies with frantic movement patterns on the field, but they never dart in the player’s direction upon seeing them. Mother 3 gives the player that much-needed run option, and it’s incredibly refreshing to have. It may not be quick enough to divert past everything, but it beats getting dogpiled. Even when combat is imminent, I never grew tired of it. It’s the same minimal combat from Earthbound with the rolling health meter and lack of character movement. The main difference is the inclusion of a rhythm mechanic during a battle that allows the player to earn extra hits on an enemy by pressing a button with the background song’s tempo. This can benefit the player greatly from a combat standpoint, but executing it takes quite a bit of skill and practice. I never got the hang of it as I mashed the A button like it was a double-kick drum, but I still appreciate the added level of kinetic involvement.

As for improving upon Earthbound’s godawful inventory system, Mother 3 shifts all of the items deemed “essential” like maps and one-time-use tools to a key section with an infinite amount of space. I still found myself overstocked on items among all four of my party members in Mother 3, but not to the extent of cursing the game under my breath. Item management was still comparably refreshing compared to what it was in Earthbound, and all it took was an obvious change. The player will still buy items one at a time, but there wasn’t an overly eager store clerk that would insist on asking me if I wanted to purchase the item I selected. Items descriptions are also easily found in both the store menu and in the player’s storage roster. As for the extra storage for unwanted items, the player no longer has to use a phone to call a service just to pick up three measly things. A homeless-looking man known as “Item Deposit Guy” will happily store up to at least twenty items, and he can be found in most places. The whole system is wrapped up neatly, and I couldn’t be happier.

Streamlining the tedious aspects of Earthbound seems to be a prevalent thing in Mother 3. Another convenience that is just as widely available in the game is save frogs. As the namesake implies, these helpful little critters will save your progress. Sometime in the middle of the game, these frogs also double as an ATM that saves money from battling enemies. The Earthbound equivalent of both of these separate aspects was Ness calling his dad to save the game and using an ATM to hold or withdraw money. In Earthbound, I didn’t mind this so much because both phones and ATMs were both located in the general vicinity of each other. If Ness and company weren’t near a town, the game would fashion a random object like a phone to call Dad so as not to inconvenience the player (and the game gets away with it because it’s Earthbound). My gripe with this feature in Earthbound had more to do with Dad’s extra commentary that followed each save that Dad never bothered to change up after a hundred goddamn saves. Fortunately, the frogs are not related to the player and won’t try to haphazardly rekindle any familial bonds via long-distance calls. They are all business and give their regards to the next frog the player meets. I never minded that the ATM was separate from the save feature in Earthbound, but I never knew that combining them with a series of amphibians was what the series needed. Also, the color variation of frogs the player encounters is too precious.

In my review of Earthbound, I listed off my favorite oddities in the game that had me grinning from ear to ear. I could probably do the same for Mother 3, but I feel as if doing so would be a disservice to the game’s solid narrative. Earthbound established a loose adventure arc from the beginning that never really deviated from the main course. It was a surrealistic odyssey that used its quest plot as a base while incorporating several wacky occurrences. I could simply list a selection of these moments from Earthbound in no particular order because they didn’t fit along with a stark narrative structure. Mother 3’s story, on the other hand, is a tale of epic proportions divided by eight chapters. The game still retains a silly, absurd sense of humor, but these events are supported by a more enhanced narrative. During these eight chapters, Mother 3 explores themes of grief, loss of innocence, fascism, the toxic nature of capitalism, the birth and death of civilization, and course, motherhood. It’s interactive War and Peace being played on a pixelated handheld console.

Those who haven’t played Mother 3 might still be familiar with the character of Lucas, mainly through his inclusion in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. One might assume that he’s the central protagonist of Mother 3, but they’d only be half correct. The player doesn’t get a chance to play as Lucas until the fourth chapter. The first three chapters of Mother 3 act as a prologue that establishes the world, its characters, and the central conflict. The first three acts are also presented in a non-linear fashion that focuses on the perspectives of three different playable characters surrounding events that occurred around the same time ala Pulp Fiction.

Mother 3’s story certainly does not begin with a slow burn of exposition. It establishes every aspect the player is not initially familiar with, like its setting and characters, while providing a consistently entertaining structure. It's beginning also establishes that Mother 3 does not pull any punches with its gut-wrenching moments. The player can choose the names of a mom, dad, two sons, and their pet dog. The characters here are the pinnacle of a nuclear family dynamic, living in a cozy cottage home in the countryside to top it off. These people live simple, happy lives without any trace of dissension. Even the massive dinosaur-like creatures the Dragos peacefully coexist with these people without any inkling of carnivorous intent. The boys of this family even roughhouse with the Dragos as if they were neighborhood kids. Everything is as ideal as can be until the night the mother of this family encounters a strange object floating overhead. Everything changes the night the pigmasks attack. An explosion off the mountain path causes a wildfire and the father of the family, Flint, rushes up the mountain in a panic to save his family. He gets distracted along the way and has to rescue some of his fellow villagers from burning to death in a fire. Once he saves them, the townsfolk of Tazmily aid him in rescuing his two sons, Lucas and Claus. His boys are safe and sound, but Flint receives the cataclysmic news that his wife has been slain by a Drago. Hearing this causes Flint to take out his heavy emotions on the townsfolk, resulting in him being taken into custody. When he leaves his temporary cell, he gets news that his son Claus has taken it upon himself to avenge his mother by killing a Drago. Flint and his father-in-law Alec look for Claus to stop him, but Claus is nowhere to be found.

It’s almost as if the game purposefully lulls the player into a sense of comfort to just pull the rug out from under them in Mother 3’s first chapter. The tone of the tranquil mountainside that the characters live in is so comfortable that it's almost adorable. All the player needs here is a brief, five-minute introduction to their uncomplicated lives and set up the chaos surrounding the invasion to catapult the player into the action. It’s an effective juxtaposition of tone that makes the player care for the well-being of these characters they were just introduced to. Establishing all of the supporting characters is done very cleverly in that it uses the predicament of the wildfire to get all of them involved because the situation affects all of them. The setup here organically makes the town and its denizens as established characters without having the player go around and talk to them like a normal JRPG would. Regarding the reveal of Hinawa’s death, if this is the event that catalyzes the plot, then the game’s story is at some seriously high stakes. Flint’s devastation after hearing the news is palpable, and the scene where he physically lashes out at his neighbors to cope with the loss of his wife is such a visceral scene. The fact that Flint’s crisis is only prolonged by his son going missing emits such a sympathetic reaction to Flint and his entire family. This shellshock of an introduction may have run the risk of Mother 3’s narrative peaking here, but fortunately, the story maintains its quality.


Chapter 2 is a change of pace along with a change of a playable character. The player will be in control of Duster, a thief who aided Flint in his rescue mission, as he explores the famed Oshoe Castle looking for an artifact that resides in its walls. The inhabitants of this abandoned Tazmily relic are ghosts who spend their days having parties that consist of eating fanciful food, drinking wine, and playing ragtime piano. After confronting a pompous ghost posing as a classical composer, Duster brings back what he thinks is the artifact to his elderly father and fellow thief, Wess. Wess chastises Duster for retrieving the wrong thing and accompanies him back to Osohe Castle to find the true artifact. They return to Osohe Castle to find that pigmasks have ransacked the place looking for the same artifact. Only Wess knows its true location as he wiggles his ass in a dance that unlocks the secret doorway. They find a spunky pink-haired girl named Kumatora, that Wess seems to be acquainted. All three recover the artifact and swim through the perilous moat around the castle to escape from the pigmasks. They wash up on the shore where Duster is accused of stealing something from one of the townspeople.

Overall, the second chapter does not deliver the same impact as the first. This is a chapter of exposition in which the goal is to recover an item whose relevance isn’t revealed until the very last chapter. I guess the more important point of exposition in this chapter is the involvement of Duster and Kumatora, two of the four central party characters in the game. Playing as Duster is nice, but it presents a gripe I have with the game. I don’t understand why the developers felt the current playable character in the front line of action needed to be silent when the player is controlling them. We’ve seen Duster speak before in the first chapter, and he speaks plenty of times as a party member in the following chapters. It doesn’t make sense that Duster is silent here, especially when Wess is berating him. I can understand Boney and Salsa not speaking because they are animals, but the speechless human characters have no excuse. I could maybe understand Lucas being silent because of his central protagonist role and his timid character trait, but he even speaks before he’s playable. It’s an awkward crack in a game with some solid character foundation. The one standout point of this chapter is the rise in difficulty as Mr. Passion and the Oh-So Snake are the first roadblocks for me.

By now, the player will get an impression that the villains of Mother 3 are impeccably strong aspects of the narrative. The pigmasks are imperialistic fascist scumbags that are accompanied by a bombastic theme that even resembles Ride of the Valkyries. They uproot the sleepy town of Tazmily without care and adulterate their wildlife, turning them into abominable chimeras. After the events of the first chapter, any player with a conscience will have a seething contempt for these guys. Upon talking to any of these pigmasks, however, they all seem to be bumbling oafs in uniform like the Stormtroopers from Star Wars. One can assume that there must be someone of higher intellect pulling the strings, and chapter 3 introduces us to someone in charge. Fassad has become one of my favorite video game villains because he is delightfully despicable. Throughout the third chapter, he ventures through a desert to get to Tazmily with a monkey named Salsa that he’s keeping as a slave. Salsa has to comply with Fassad because the pigmasks have Salsa’s monkey girlfriend captive. That, and Fassad has implanted a remote-controlled shock collar on Salsa that he always keeps at arm's length. The player controls Salsa for the entirety of the chapter, enduring the brunt of Fassad’s cruelty. Fassad constantly berates Salsa, starves him, and shocks the living hell out of the poor monkey, seemingly just for yucks. There’s a task in the middle of the chapter in which Fassad has Salsa delivering happy boxes to the people of Tazmily and warns Salsa that he’ll get shocked if he takes too long. No matter how long the player takes, Salsa will still get shocked. Fassad is such an unscrupulous bastard, and the point where Salsa is liberated from his captor at the end of the chapter is such a cathartic moment. This might be my favorite chapter.

Chapter 4 was when I noticed a heavy emphasis on the themes of capitalism. Three years pass after the events of the first three chapters, and much has changed in Tazmily. The once rustic village has transformed into an industrialized Americana town similar to something like Onett from Earthbound. The “happy boxes” Fassad has planted in everyone's homes keep the townspeople under a state of sedation. A good number of them have blue-collar jobs working in the mines with the Clayman, and their nightly reward is to get liquored up at Club Titiboo and listen to a live band play. All the elderly people are forced to live in a dilapidated nursing home, and Fassad preaches the gospel in the center of town like the patron saint of Tazmily. Most people seem content with the changes in Tazmily. Still, several houses of some vocal dissenters against the changes were annihilated by lightning strikes. As effective as Hinawa’s death was in the first chapter, I found myself moved by Tazmily’s transformation by the start of chapter 4. All the capitalistic changes brought to Tazmily, like the need for commerce and vapid distractions like the TVs (sorry, “happy boxes”), are quite disillusioning. Tazmily didn’t even have a method of currency before the pigmasks arrived, and their jail was a glorified time-out cell because no one in town did anything that warranted anything more severe than that. Mayberry wishes it could be as ideal as Tazmilly. It’s upsetting to see such a happy community transform into a jaded mirror of modern society. This probably wouldn’t have been as effective if the first three chapters didn’t introduce this place so efficiently. The player empathizes with the town itself as a character.

Chapter 4 is also where the narrative fully takes off, and Lucas becomes the protagonist from here on out. He’s a little taller, wiser, and braver than before, but the tragic loss of his mother still looms over him like a dark cloud. He takes his dog Boney and ventures across town along the train tracks to assemble a squadron to take down the pigmasks. He hears of a bass player who plays at Club Titiboo who bears such a strong resemblance to Duster that it must be him. To get to Club Titiboo, Lucas and Boney both have to earn a ticket like everyone else and endure the new bureaucratic labor force of Tazmily by working in the mines. He also encounters Kumatora at Club Titiboo, disguised as a waitress named Violet. The bassist of the DCMC is an amnesiac Duster in a poofy wig who comes along with Lucas and the others despite not being sure of his past. Duster leads them to uncover the precious artifact from the second chapter, which has a power that makes Duster regain his memories. The main goal of chapter 5 with all four main party members is to take down the Thunder Tower, a monumental building eclipsing Tazmily that is the cause of so many destroyed homes in Tazmily. The gang climbs the tower and dismantles the tall terror of Tazmily, causing a frantic countdown to an explosion. Fassad tries to take the only means of escaping the tower but slips off the tower by tripping on one of his banana peels. By using the trusty rope snake, Lucas and company attempt to cling onto the ladder hanging from the helicopter. The rope snake gets slippery, which causes everyone to fall, but not before they get a glimpse of the true pigmask leader. The brief chapter 6 finds Lucas and Boney falling in a lovely field of sunflowers where Lucas has a fleeting apparition of Hinawa before falling further down into a haystack. Chapter 6 serves as a nice intermission between the climactic end of the fifth chapter and the two longer final chapters. Whether the field of flowers is real or a nice accompaniment to Lucas’s vision is vague enough that it can be up to self-interpretation.

Let me summarize my opinions of the fourth and fifth chapters of Mother 3 by discussing the group dynamic between Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and Boney. By chapter 4, the player will be used to switching between a roulette of different characters. The ability to play as Lucas locks the player into a sole main, playable character. These two chapters are Lucas assembling his gang of psychic adventurers like Ness before him. The advantage that Mother 3 has over Earthbound is that the player is already familiar with all of Lucas’s party members and has gained a small amount of battle experience with each of them. It’s obvious that by the beginning that Lucas is the weakest of the four due to not having battled until this point. Still, the player should accumulate enough experience as Lucas and Boney on the way to Club Titiboo to contend with Kumatora and Duster. Setting up these characters in the first three chapters is a refreshing change of pace from Ness having to grind for experience with a new partner at a significantly lower level than he is. Assembling these characters as a team is also much more organic than the partners of Earthbound joining Ness by happenstance. As a team in battle, the four main fighters of Mother 3 are a much more capable team than the four from Earthbound. They have the same general dynamic but are much more functional in their roles. Like Ness, Lucas has a special role as the leading party member with unique PK abilities. Kumatora is in Paula’s position as the offensive powerhouse with the elemental PK powers. Neither Duster nor Boney has PK powers, making it seem like the game has stuck the player with TWO Jeffs, but this is not the case. Duster can use his thief tools to debuff the enemy and cause status effects without using PP. As for Boney, he can identify the enemies' weaknesses by sniffing them, similar to Jeff’s spy ability. Boney is also the quickest of the bunch, giving him the first turn over everyone else. Because of this, it’s important to stock healing items with Boney. As for Poo, Mother 3 proved that the team didn’t need a psychic wildcard with much less experience than the others. His special Starstorm ability is shifted to Kumatora.

Chapter 7 of Mother 3 is the one most like Earthbound because it’s essentially the plot of Earthbound crammed into one long chapter. The Magypsies tell Lucas of a harrowing prophecy involving seven needles and an ancient dragon. The Magypsies tell that the world they exist in lies on the back of a dragon, and their role in this area is to protect the seven needles that keep the dragon at bay. The pigmasks are on a mission to pull those seven needles, awakening the dragon and making it their subservient puppet. This will signal the grim end of the world, but alternately, a person who is pure of heart can also pull the needles and save the world. Lucas and his friends venture across the land in a race to pull the needles and keep the world from imminent destruction. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s also the point where the narrative of Mother 3 falters a bit. I didn’t mind the loose adventure narrative in Earthbound, but it’s a shame that Mother 3’s solid story regresses as late as the second to last chapter after such a consistently strong narrative flow. Chapter 7 is a long trek of humorous, madcap occurrences on their way to each needle. I felt like listing a series of highlights detailing the wackiness for Mother 3 like I did for Earthbound was inappropriate, but this chapter is an exception. Lucas and Boney make their way to the pigmask’s chimera lab, where a demon with a gaping mouth and a bird on its head, referred to as the “ultimate chimera,” wreaks havoc on the pigmasks and the scientists. Navigating this creature turns the game into a tense, survival horror segment. The gang will ride a horse, coffee table hybrid down to Saturn Valley (yes, that same one from Earthbound), where the pigmasks are interrogating the Mr. Saturns and Duster with a frightbot that tortures them by telling scary stories. This portion of the game was the funniest, in my opinion. The gang walks underwater to get to a nearby island, making out with a series of Mermen that supply them oxygen. Once they get to the island, everyone except Boney eats a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and hallucinates visions of their loved ones admonishing them. The surprising part about the quest for the needles is that the masked man in the helicopter from earlier gets to three of the needles before Lucas does, tying the score up and making the race to pull the last needle incredibly tense.

Chapter 7 also heavily features the main point of contention that keeps Mother 3 from being released internationally. In a game with animal cruelty and drug trips, the Magypsies are the icing on the controversy cake. The Magypsies are a group of very flamboyant beings who, despite having feminine names and dressing like women, look very masculine behind all that makeup and posh clothing. They also talk like Big Gay Al from South Park, and their speaking text practically uses heart symbols as punctuation. It’s pretty obvious that the Magypsies are a group of trans-gendered women, and they are depicted in a less-than-savory manner here. The Magypsies are walking, talking stereotypes of the gay/trans community. They are literally the personification of the “fairy” slur commonly used against gay people. Some people argue that the Magypsies are great characters because their dialogue is fun and their roles in the main story are interesting, myself included. Subtly learning that Fassad is a Magypsie that betrayed his kind was one of the most intriguing moments of the game for me. However, there is one scene in the game involving the Magypsies that even offended me. In the fourth chapter, Lucas approaches a hot spring where the Magypsy Ionia is bathing. Ionia senses a potential for psychic powers in Lucas and goes through a sort of process where the screen goes dark, and Ionia is saying things like “don’t struggle!” and “just endure it for a little bit!”. Ionia is dipping Lucas’s head under the water like he’s being baptized, but my smut-addled American mind ran to different conclusions. What else am I expected to think when the screen goes black with two naked guys in a hot tub, and Ionia says something like that? The stereotype that all gay men are also pedophiles is one of the most heinous ones to uphold, and it’s no wonder why Nintendo won’t touch this game with a ten-foot pole.

The final chapter begins with an invitation by limo. Lucas and company are cordially invited to the metropolis of New Pork City by its founder of unknown origin. It’s here where we learn who is pulling the strings behind the whole pigmask operation. The Japanese players who played Earthbound might already guess who this person is judging by the pigmasks' animal uniform. Still, the foreshadowing will be lost on any American player due to a mistranslated typo in the American version of Earthbound. Ness’s portly, shithead neighbor Porky Minch (or Pokey if you’re not Japanese) has accomplished quite a bit since sending a braggadocious letter to Ness at the end of Earthbound. Porky has accomplished the impossible and ventured throughout time and space by stealing Dr. Andonuts’s phase distorter, making him like a lovechild of Dr. Who and Eric Cartman.

Through a large part of spoken exposition from the beanstalk man who rang the Tazmily bell, Porky has settled down on the land that used to be his hometown one apocalypse ago and intends to have total dominance over everything with the dragon’s power. His biggest accomplishment thus far is the creation of New Pork City, a drab eyesore of a city that reflects Porky’s vanity-driven ego. NPC is modeled like an even gaudier version of EPCOT. At this point, everyone has vacated from Tazmily to NPC either from coercion or because their role in the town has been rendered obsolete. The cycle of turning this once pristine, uncomplicated world into a dystopian hellhole has come full circle, and everyone from Tazmily is now jaded to the point of no return. Porky is well aware of Lucas and his friends and their mission to pull the final needle. He wishes to see them at the top of his grand tower, but not before playing with them like toys. The run-up to Porky is an obstacle course of games where Porky makes up a new rule every second. Finally meeting the fat fuck is a surprise, to say the least. The eons Porky has spent traveling through space and time have taken a toll on him as he is now a decrepit albeit immortal old man kept in his familiar walker casing. His final brawl in the deep caverns of NPC plays out exactly like Earthbound, except this time Porky can’t be defeated. He gives up and traps himself in a robotic cocoon that Dr. Andonuts made for him, which he will spend for eternity. Despite being ancient, Porky is still the spoiled, bratty kid he was in Earthbound, which is probably a comment on the characteristics of real-life dictators. If Mother 3 has a cyclical nature with Earthbound as a reference, Porky is now the powerful force of corruption that Giygas was.

The Masked Man is now the impressionable youth with a lust for power that Porky was in Earthbound. According to Leder, Porky couldn’t accomplish his goal alone because he could not physically pull the needles. His pawn in this role is the Masked Man, who is none other than Lucas’s long-lost twin brother Claus. One could probably tell it was him behind the mask, but the more intriguing question is why. Porky was lucky enough to find Claus after the events of Hinawa dying, a low and vulnerable point for Claus. Porky fed into Claus’s newfound anger and manipulated it for his gain to the point where the old Claus is long gone and is now Porky’s machine. The final battle for the needle is Lucas and Claus, mono y mono on a dark battlefield. Knowing that the Masked Man is his brother, Lucas refuses to fight. Claus, on the other hand, unleashes all his power on Lucas.

Lucas must endure as much damage as possible while Hinawa’s distant voice tries to get through to Claus to make him stop. The fight against Giygas in Earthbound was uncomfortable because of how frantic it got. Still, the final fight here is equally as uncomfortable because of how heartbreaking it is seeing the two brothers fight. Claus even deals damage to Flint for good measure. After Hinawa’s voice gets through to Claus, he unmasks himself. He unleashes the most powerful lightning strike he can, knowing that Lucas will deflect it. He dies in Lucas’s arms. Lucas pulls the final needle and finds out the prophecy was wrong. The dragon awakes and causes an apocalyptic storm of meteors and earthquakes that destroys everything. A pitch-black screen with the word “end?” is the final thing the player sees before the credits. If the player moves around this screen, the characters of Mother 3 will tell the player that they survived and are all okay, but I remain skeptical.

This ending was not what I expected from Mother 3. Earthbound’s horror-inspired final boss was hectic, but his defeat resulted in a bittersweet ending that wrapped up the game nicely. Mother 3, on the other hand, concludes with an ending that made me feel like I got belted in the stomach with a baseball bat. The final encounter with Claus and his death was a poetic end to his arc, but it was hard to sit through. It is, however, the only possible way the game could’ve outshined Hinawa’s death at the beginning. The ambiguous ending with the aftermath of the apocalypse was a satisfying end, but it rubbed me the wrong way due to how bleak it was. I suppose it is to highlight a cyclical theme that Mother 3 details. The world got so lost in itself with Porky’s empirical corruption that may be a violent apocalypse to start anew. Perhaps this is what happened to the people before them, and there is some poetic beauty to their demise. As for the themes of motherhood that the series upholds, Mother 3 tackles these with an inversion to Earthbound. Motherhood in Earthbound was depicted as a symbol of purity that reminds every adult of where they came from and how it reflects the outside world. The themes of motherhood in Mother 3 are more overt due to Hinawa’s death being a catalyst to the arcs of both Lucas and Claus, but the themes reflect more strongly on Claus. Claus loses himself in his grief and confusion, and it takes Hinawa’s motherly influence to bring him back to his senses. His unmasking and sacrifice were a means to stop himself and an apology for his actions. His humanity is regained through this act, and motherhood is the pinnacle of humanity that helps him.

Mother 3 was everything I wanted in Earthbound and so much more. All of the strong aspects presented in Earthbound, like its irreverent sense of humor and unique battle mechanics, are here on full display. The huge difference is that Mother 3 utilizes these aspects, turning a game that I have a love/hate relationship with into a game that I grew to fully adore throughout my time playing it. Every tedious aspect that made Earthbound a chore to play at times is streamlined to make everything more convenient, making for a more enjoyable experience overall. The comical moments in Mother 3 are no longer random events but are organized in a story worthy of some video game equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize. It is somewhat unfortunate that the west still has to fight the good fight to get Nintendo to publish a localized version of their game. Still, it’s pretty apparent why they’d be apprehensive to do so, considering some of the content. I, on the other hand, say fuck it and emulate Mother 3. The masses should quiet their chants and topple down their signs and just appreciate Mother 3 in its unadulterated form. The fan translation of Mother 3 is fantastic, free of charge, and is the version we’ve all come to know and love. Nintendo usually reigns down on all emulated or modded versions of their games, but this fan translation has not been attacked since its inception. Perhaps Nintendo is letting this one slip because they want everyone to experience one of their greatest achievements without explicitly saying so. Even if the first Mother and Earthbound weren’t your fancy, everyone should experience Mother 3.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Mr. Gimmick! (or just Gimmick!) is a very difficult video game. During this era, it didn’t matter if the game was a gritty, urban beat-em-up like River City Ransom or a whimsical, fantasy-inspired game with chibi-looking characters like Bubble Bobble. Every single game on that 8-bit box would test both the might and patience of every player. Video games haven’t recently been inflated to a hefty $50-70 range because of realistic graphics and longer, cinematic narratives. They’ve always been that price, and the primitive hardware of the NES had to compensate by making these games hard as nails. It was the only way for players to get their money’s worth. Mr. Gimmick! falls under the latter of the two categories. Everything about this game is so damn sugar-sweet and cherubic that it’s almost sickening. Nowadays, a game that looks like this would be a facile affair to not offend the sensibilities of children. Despite how it looks, Mr. Gimmick! is just as punishing as any other game on the system.

The premise of Mr. Gimmick! is somewhere between The Brave Little Toaster and Toy Story. The main protagonist is a green plushie named Yumetaro (and not Mr. Gimmick, surprisingly), and he has just been gifted to a little girl for her birthday by her father. Yumetaro quickly becomes the little girl’s favorite toy which makes the other toys green with envy. They take out their feelings of jealousy on the little girl and warp her to another dimension. Yumetaro has to travel to this dimension and rescue his owner from the other toys. It’s kinda like if Woody convinced all of Andy’s toys to take Woody’s aggression out on Andy, and Buzz had to go out and save Andy.

The standout thing about Yumetaro is his method of attacking. He can jump in the air on platforms with a gaping, open-mouthed expression like any other character in a 2D platformer. Still, his way of defending himself from enemies is unlike anything else I’ve seen. To initiate an attack, the player must hold down the B button to materialize a star above Yumetaro’s head. Releasing this button will cause Yumetaro to launch the star as it ricochets off the walls. Yumetaro can even ride the star as it bounces precariously, but doing this is far too risky for a novice player like myself. This attack is certainly unique, but it comes with a slew of problems. Hitting anything with the star depends on the trajectory of where it bounces. Most enemies are about eye level to Yumetaro, so one would think that jumping over an enemy with a charged-up star would do the trick. What happens most of the time, however, is that the star has a habit of getting brushed off by enemies due to not being pinpoint accurate. The best strategy, especially with a group of enemies, is just to flail these stars erratically from a distance and hope that it hits some of them. I wish I could hold a star over Yumetaro’s head and damage enemies that land on it, but the developers thought ahead of that trick. Executing my strategy isn’t as easy as it sounds anyway because the player can’t make another star until the last one has fully dissipated. It also takes far too long to charge up a star, and this also includes the few other powers ups that Yumetaro has, like the bomb and the fireball. I wish there were more variations of this star attack, perhaps letting the player shoot tinier stars that do less damage. The rules regarding the star attack keep the player from exploiting the game, but there is a steep difficulty curve with using it.

The otherworldly dimension of Mr. Gimmick is just as adorable as its pudgy, green protagonist. The game takes place on a floating island with a diverse set of geographical locations, and the levels are divided between those locations. The first level is a candy-coated wonderworld with the bluest of skies and foregrounds that resemble Fruit Stripe bubble gum. The trees of the wooded level are the brightest green, and the flowing waterfalls have an alluring, aqua-blue sheen. The interior and exterior of the pirate ship level are a warm burgundy color, and the stone foundations of the ruins level have never made grey pixels look more appealing. Even the darker sections beneath the grounds of each level manage to be vibrant despite their darker lighting. The colors of Mr. Gimmick pop and sparkle more than most games I’ve seen on the NES. For a world that a little girl is taken into by force, it’s such an effervescent place.

This is what I would be saying if it weren’t for Mr. Gimmick’s difficulty level. I’ve commented on how difficult it is to adjust to Yumetaro’s distinctive offensive ability, but combating enemies is only a fraction of what Mr. Gimmick will throw at the player. The wondrous fantasy dimension of Mr. Gimmick is also a dangerous one, filled to the brim with bottomless holes, water hazards, and spike pits that pop poor Yumetaro with one touch. The controls in Mr. Gimmick! also tend to be a bit slippery, and I had many unfortunate missteps that resulted in instant death. Enemies tend to be placed on narrow platforms, and there are so many sudden hazards that drop from the ceilings that the player won’t anticipate unless they’ve already died from it. There is little room for error in this game. Mr. Gimmick! also implements an unusual health system. The player will start with only two units of health and will have to find two orange flasks in the level that increase Yumetaro’s maximum health by one unit per flask. The player’s maximum health will also be restarted after each level, so the arduous hunt for more health will never be fully relieved. Making players earn their maximum health at each level is pretty harsh if you ask me. The checkpoints are also of questionable convenience because some levels have more than others. Some of the checkpoints in the later levels are completely unfair. The only helpful perk the game gives the player is seven lives, but those will exhaust quickly knowing what the player is up against.

The bosses in Mr. Gimmick are all Yumetaro’s fellow stuffed associates that have taken the girl hostage. Many are just as physically cuddly as Yumetaro and are around his stature. There’s a pirate plushie with an eyepatch and cutlass, a baby bird hatches from an egg, and a wizard with a cloak, to name a few. Because they are around Yumetaro’s height, defeating them with the star up close and personal is not an easy tactic. The boss fights are a matter of knowing where to ricochet the star while avoiding their attacks which can be hectic at times. The most memorable boss is a black blob in a crane shooting a downward laser that fires more rapidly as the player hits it. Defeating this boss requires shooting a specific angle with the star, but that’s not what makes it memorable.

I remember this boss because there’s another after him without any respite or another checkpoint. This unfair endurance test almost made me want to give up. I was surprised that the game ended after defeating the cloaked plushie because the game felt very short, and Yumetaro didn’t rescue the girl. The credits rolled, and the game didn’t feel finished. That’s because this game has a secret ending with the real boss. The final boss that unlocks the true ending is an evil wizard who sheds his dark cloak after a few hits to reveal some guy in a fencing outfit. After defeating him, the girl is saved, and all the other toys are banished. How do I know what happens in the true ending? I watched a clip of it on Youtube. Unlocking the true ending here requires the player to find all of the secret items, all without continuing as well. Fuck that. That girl will starve to death in that sealed-off room, and I’m not going to go through the ludicrous lengths the game wants me to prevent that from happening.

Mr. Gimmick is an obscure hidden gem on the NES, and for good reason. It could be because the game was only released in Japan and Scandinavia, and it could also be because it came out at the end of the NES’s lifespan. No, Mr. Gimmick is a hidden gem because it has a niche appeal. It may seem accessible on the surface due to its adorable charm, but its difficulty makes it anything but. It goes beyond the standard level of NES hard with its rather demanding gameplay with Yumetaro’s star ability, and its little margin of error. It’s unique, but the appeal only extends to a certain level. Don’t be fooled by Mr. Gimmick’s charm. This game is a testament to the phrase “NES hard” in that even the cutest of 8-bit, 2D platformers will still have the player begging for mercy.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

There are a few questions that arise when discussing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the black sheep of the Zelda franchise. Is this game maligned on its own merits, or is it solely due to its inability to escape comparisons to the first Zelda game and all of the Zelda titles that followed? Is it because Zelda II takes the explorative elements that were the base of the first game and shifts them in a radically different direction? Is it because this game is so ball-bustlingly difficult that people chastise it out of spite? It could be a number of these, considering Zelda II’s contentious reputation. The Zelda franchise was still relatively new during the NES era, so developers could make radical changes to the foundation because there was only a little foundation to change. I’m sure the kids of 1987 couldn’t have cared less about the sequel to The Legend of Zelda being a 2D side scroller like they didn’t care about Mario pulling up turnips or Simon Belmont walking through a town in a pseudo RPG. These classic franchises were still in their infancy here, so experimentation was possible because the foundation that everyone was familiar with wasn’t established yet. Each of the games that followed these sequels deviated back to building upon the foundation of the first games like the second ones never existed. It was almost like the developers were apologizing for each franchise's second entry, like the experimentation was a massive fluke. Admittedly, I prefer Mario not to be an uncanny copy of an obscure Japanese game, and I much prefer Castlevania as a fast-paced action romp. I do not think Nintendo has to apologize profusely for Zelda II, or at least not to the point of having to secrete convincing crocodile tears. I might be in the minority, but I’ve always thought that Zelda II was an underrated entry to the Zelda franchise. In saying that, I fully understand why I’m in that minority. While I enjoy Zelda II, it’s still a brutal excursion that upholds all of the unforgiving characteristics of the NES era.

Zelda II might divert from the first title in terms of gameplay, but Zelda II’s plot continues the events from the end of the first game. Years have passed after Link defeated Ganon in the first game, and the land of Hyrule has been at peace for quite some time. A much older Link finds Zelda in a comatose state in the center of a palace. Link is informed that only the third Triforce of courage located in the Great Palace can resuscitate Zelda from her deep sleep. Before Link can obtain this triforce piece, he must venture to the other palaces and plant crystals inside head-shaped fixtures. While Ganon is no longer a looming threat, his followers run rampant throughout Hyrule and wish to kill Link and use his blood to resurrect the dark lord.

Immediately, the side-scroller direction Zelda II has taken becomes apparent to the player. The starting place is Zelda’s mausoleum, and roaming around this building is a trek from left to right without any deviation from a horizontal axis. Sidescrollers made up most of the NES library, so adjusting from the top-down view of the first game wouldn’t be too difficult for most players back in 1987. However, this changes as soon as the player exits the building to Hyrule Field. It’s revealed that the developers didn’t entirely scrap the top-down view of the first game but decided to implement it as an awkward hybrid with the sidescrolling. Hyrule Field is traversed with a top-down perspective and an icon of Link walking gingerly through green pastures and brown, earthy mountain peaks. The map looks drawn-on, and Link has a stiff range of movement, but the core of the awkwardness with this hybrid is how the game shifts between the two perspectives. The game will revert to being a 2D side scroller at any moment of action outside of the overworld. This includes entering a cave or dungeon or visiting one of the many towns. Enemies in the overworld constantly ambush Link, violently forcing the player to change perspectives in the blink of an eye. The transition is quite jarring and happens so often that it will annoy the player throughout the game. This doesn’t always mean conflict commences because the spry, black blobs bumrush the player. If the player manages to stay on a paved pathway, they will be transported to a field with pink soil without any of the enemies. The path does not conveniently span the entire map on a single trajectory, but it comes in handy in a few spots. If not for this, the already nauseating transitions would be much more infuriating.

Fortunately, the awkward overworld comes with a few new ideas that weren’t present in the first game. The most essential addition Zelda II includes are the various towns strewn about the map. Each of these towns is a respite from the chaotic onslaught of Ganon’s minions in the overworld. The towns are very quaint and unsophisticated, and the slow-moving, textbox dialogue of the townsfolk adds to the rustic charm. While the towns might vary in architecture and color scheme, they all serve the same few purposes. The process of healing one’s health and magic reminds us that Link is a grown-ass man now as he relieves himself by fornicating with the womenfolk in each town. A young woman invites him into her home to replenish his health, and an old woman lets him rest in her home to refill his magic, showing that Link is not picky. All right, the sexual implications are heavily inferred on my part, but what usually happens behind closed doors when a woman invites a man to her place? I rest my case. Other useful NPCs include a wizard that resides in a basement that grants Link a new magic power. The other NPCs are either recalcitrant or are hostile purple bats in disguise with the occasional entertaining town-dweller like the infamous “I am Error” guy. Overall, the various towns found all over the map are a worthy addition that Zelda II implements. These towns may have a cookie-cutter design and offer the same services, but their inclusion makes the world of Zelda II seem all the more spacious. These towns are what make the pixelated crayon-drawing of a world map even the slightest bit substantial.

The primary goal of traversing through the overworld is to uncover the seven dungeons just like in the first game. The obvious difference is that Link explores these dungeons in a 2D sidescroller, which makes for a completely different experience. The entrance of each dungeon is a long hallway of stone supported by a series of columns, showing Hyrule’s blue skies in the background. It’s a stark contrast to the dingy depths of the dungeons below which Link descends from an elevator. The dungeon design of the first Zelda title was an asymmetrical series of different paths that seldom lead to dead ends, only hidden entryways. Zelda II’s dungeon design gives the player a choice between left or right, which will most likely lead to a dead end. If the dead-end of the player’s choice doesn’t lead to the dungeon’s item or the boss, they must trek back and descend further into the dungeon via an elevator. Many paths will also lead to keys that unlock doors that further the player’s progress in the dungeon. Besides the tough enemies that litter each of these dungeons, the main point of contention I have with Zelda II’s dungeons is the lack of a map. The dungeons may be less labyrinthian than the ones from the first game, but the number of levels each has mixed with the unicolored graphics is a surefire way to get hopelessly lost. Running around in circles trying to find where I was supposed to go was about half the time in each dungeon.

The omission of a dungeon map is the least of any player’s problems in Zelda II. There is a gaming adage that relates to certain games being tough but fair, but Zelda II is anything but fair. I don’t know where to start listing how Zelda II bends the player over the knee and smacks them into submission. If the player finds themselves swarmed by enemies off the safe path, the number of foes and the difficulty of these foes vary. Sometimes Link will luck out and face some blobs, but will just as often face enemies with unpredictable attack patterns that can kill Link in seconds. There are even enemies that drain the player’s experience points if they get damaged by them, something vital to surviving in the game, as I’m sure everyone knows. This isn’t even a unique quirk for one enemy. Several enemy types like the jousting rodents, the floating graveyard eyes, the bonefish, etc. will deplete both the player’s health and their experience upon impact. Why don’t the developers just rip off the player’s pants and fuck them up the ass while they’re at it? Some of the enemies in the late game are erratic damage sponges like the blue darknuts and the rooster-like enemies in the last palace, and I do my best to avoid them. At this point in the game, the player still might stand a chance against them because they’ll have enough magic for shields, fire spells, and health regeneration if needed.

There is one section in the game that incorporates all of these agonizing aspects, and it’s not even close to being at the end of the game. The player won’t have the assistance of various magic powers when they have to endure Death Mountain, the steepest difficulty curve in any game I’ve ever played. Death Mountain might sound familiar to anyone who has played the first game because it’s the name of the last dungeon. This treacherous mountain path is a series of entrances and exits in Zelda II that will test the player’s navigation abilities. On top of figuring out the correct path to the end, Death Mountain features a number of these red and yellow bipedal reptilian creatures that come in orange and red. They may not steal experience points, but a mere couple of hits from their axes will smite Link in seconds. Above all else, the reason Death Mountain is such a painstaking affair is Zelda II’s penalty for death. Link gets three lives per continue, and whenever his lives run out, a red game over screen signals the return of Ganon with the evil boar laughing at the player. Whenever this happens, the player is revived at Zelda’s resting place and has to trek back to where they died. The first game did this whenever the player died in the overworld, but Zelda II forces the player to start from here even if they died in a dungeon which is frankly egregious. Not only is the long journey back tedious, but the player will most likely be battered due to the excessive swarms of enemies along the way. To make matters worse, the game resets the amount of experience gained during that session. It’s unfair, but the amount of contempt the developers show for player error is unnerving. Death Mountain is the gatekeeper of the player’s threshold of brutality that showcases all of Zelda II’s vexing elements, and it’s only after the very first dungeon. The developers were not fucking around.

The demanding presence of Zelda II backfired on the developers in one aspect, and that’s the bosses. Some of them are as lackluster as they were in the first Zelda, with bosses requiring only a few hits to defeat with obvious weak spots. The enemies in Zelda II are more difficult to deal with than most regular enemies, and I’d be less giddy about it if the game didn’t attempt to massacre me at every waking moment. The bosses that were designed with more attention and care are still easy, and that’s because the developers had a momentary lapse of judgment. What the developers didn’t catch in their mission to make Zelda II as punishing as humanly possible is that the game could be easily exploited. Some of these exploits are due to glitches, but many of the more organic ones can be used for a number of bosses. Carock can be defeated in seconds by using the deflecting spell and ducking in the corner. Many games have this boss, but it’s never the final boss. Despite the player being at a high level and with all of the magic spells, the Great Palace is just as arduous as Death Mountain is. It’s also the only place where the developers grant mercy to the player and provide a checkpoint if they get a game over. At the end of this grueling charade is Thunderbird, the only boss in this game that provides a substantial challenge. One would think this mighty bird would be the appropriate challenge to cap off this game, but there’s another one around the corner. Link approaches the Triforce to have his shadow rip away from him and start attacking him. Link’s shadow, infamously known as “Dark Link,” will mirror every move Link makes, making him an extreme version of all the shielded enemies the player has faced thus far. Dark Link will initially seem impenetrable, but a well-known exploit will turn a seemingly impossible boss into the easiest boss in the game. Ducking in the corner and flailing the sword wildly will eviscerate Dark Link. Even for those who feel like using this exploit is dishonorable, they still have to admit that taking down the final boss of this herculean game in a matter of seconds is hilarious.

Calling Zelda II: The Adventure of Link a flawed experience is an understatement. It’s a game whose reputation is entirely based on its myriad of flaws. One could wonder if this game would still be widely discussed today if it were not an entry in the enigmatic Zelda franchise. Since the days of the NES, the franchise has evolved and cemented a foundation that left the obtuse, strenuous direction that Zelda II established behind. All of the younger Zelda fans who did not grow up during this era (myself included) visit this game because they are fond of the series, but this results in their spirits being crushed into pixie dust. They might be turned off by the esoteric design, the savagery of the enemies, and the strict penalty of continuing. They give up without realizing that all of this is just indicative of this era of gaming. I choose not to disregard Zelda II as a glaring smudge on the franchise's legacy because I see it individually. I played this game after already playing through six other Zelda games and was too intimidated to play it due to its reputation. After biting the bullet and struggling with it immensely, the feeling I got after finishing it was powerful. I felt confident enough to take on any game possible, regardless of difficulty. Zelda II was the game that made me shed my fears of being brutalized by a video game, and now I yearn for that challenge. Because of this, Zelda II holds a special place for me, and I can’t say that about any other game, much less any other Zelda title.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

If I were to ask anyone what the pinnacle moment started the new millennium, it would not be when the ball dropped at midnight, New Year's Eve that began the year 2000. No, I think everyone would agree that the true moment that signaled that the previous century was gone and a new era was ushered in was on a sunny Tuesday morning on September 11th, 2001. This was the day the world was catapulted out of the 1990’s/past century into the modern age with a horrific wake-up call. Referencing 9/11 may be a dour and somewhat tasteless way to begin a review for a video game, but is it inappropriate considering the game in question is a Metal Gear Solid title? If the first Metal Gear Solid acted as a grim prediction of 21st-century politics and technology of unparalleled scope, then its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, is a depiction of a world that is simmering in the stew of 21st-century turmoil.

The shocking thing is that Metal Gear Solid 2 was completely developed before that unforgettable morning in mid-September when the world changed for the worse. It was released two months after 9/11, and the events that occurred were still rattling around in our shell-shocked minds. What better way to quell our trauma-induced discomfort than to play a video game that revels in political conspiracy, government espionage, or a group of terrorists housing weapons of mass destruction? What initially was the exciting next-gen release of an enormously acclaimed title on the PS1 suddenly became the most relevant piece of media to the first big political event of the 21st century. Most likely, this is a coincidence. Kojima can center the plot of his game around any number of conspiracies, and they might vaguely connect to 9/11. However, the fact that this game is set around New York City AND one of the central goals in the game is preventing a widespread tragedy in the city is a wild coincidence. Content involving the Statue of Liberty being destroyed had to be cut in post-production due to the events of 9/11. That’s spooky. Is Hideo Kojima that insightful about world relations, or is he a bonafide clairvoyant that we should reprimand for not using his extraordinary powers to prevent 9/11 from happening? Whichever it is, I wretch at the thought of giving him that much credit for either scenario. I get the impression from the content of Metal Gear Solid 2 that Kojima wants us to come to these conclusions, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a contentious entry to the franchise for several reasons, and a few of those reasons solidify my position in the camp that criticizes it.

For a game with a radical auteur direction, it’s still a sequel that has to establish a sense of familiarity for the player. The sequence that sets this sense of familiarity takes place on a stormy night on the George Washington Bridge that connects Manhattan and New Jersey. A hooded man walking on the bridge jumps off of it, supported by a bungee cord to break his fall. The man lands on a tanker anchored offshore and unsheathes his cloak to reveal the enigmatic Solid Snake. Otacon signals Snake with a codex call to brief Snake (and the player) on the mission. Otacon has gotten word from a reliable source that a new model of Metal Gear is being housed in the basement of this tanker. Instead of destroying the abominable machine, Snake has to merely descend to the bunker and take photos of Metal Gear as proof that it exists. This breezy operation goes awry when Russian mercenaries invade the tanker and kill all the marines on board. Snake must then do what he does best: retrieve proof of the new Metal Gear in the bunker while avoiding being seen on the way down.

One meta aspect of Metal Gear Solid 2 that also applies to its themes of burgeoning technology of the 21st century is that it was an early title on the PS2, Sony’s sequel to their trademark early 3D console released at the turn of the millennium. A new century/millennium meant there was progress to be made in gaming, and graphics are an obvious point of evolution. I can’t think of a finer point of graphical advancement than with Metal Gear Solid 2. MGS2 is fortunate enough to succeed in a game of the early 3D era, so the advanced piece of hardware will prove to be an inherent significant improvement. The codex calls feature 3D talking heads that look exactly like their 3D models outside of the calls. The mouths of the characters move while they are talking, a drastic improvement on the most awkward graphical aspect of the first game. These improvements greatly aid the cinematic qualities of the series, but they aren’t just impressive compared to the first game on the PS1. Metal Gear Solid 2 is arguably the best-looking game on the PS2, and I’m astounded that it came out as early as one year into the console’s lifespan. Everything from the characters, settings, and backgrounds practically looks real here. The foregrounds of Shadow Moses were a tad indiscernible due to the PS1’s limitations, but the dark, damp bunker Snake finds himself here looks clear as day with cascading rain effects for a hint of realism. Despite only a few aesthetic aspects that look dated now, MGS2 still holds an impressive graphical standard. It also helps that all of this is supported by one of the smoothest framerates on the console. Kojima’s mission with the first MGS was an attempt to make a blocky-looking game feel as cinematic as possible with precise direction. The technology offered only one console generation later allows Kojima to make something that fully meets his ambition.

The bunker mission essentially serves as an extensive tutorial to introduce Metal Gear Solid 2’s new mechanics and reacquaint players with the old ones. Stealth is still key to success, and Snake achieves this with the same sneaky tactics. He still crawls through tight vents, chokes out guards in his way, and hides under a cardboard box to avoid being detected. Overall, Snake’s tactics have not changed. What has changed is the ease of executing these stealthy missions for the player. For instance, holding the R1 button will activate a first-person mode with a free-range camera view. This is mostly used to make shooting more accurate, but the player can also survey the area more clearly with this extra perspective. One of Snake’s first weapons is an M9 that shoots tranquilizer darts instead of bullets, disposing of those nosy guards without warranting any unwanted attention. The player can now hide in lockers when evading the guards, which is much more effective than hiding under a box. The game adds a “caution” level on the alert meter after successfully evading the guards that involve increased security for an extended period. I recommend hiding in the lockers for this period. It may last for a long duration of time, but it beats facing the SWAT team of guards that ambush the player if they try to stay and fight. Cheeky Kojima even supplies a variety of lovely Asian girls in many lockers for your viewing pleasure. All of these changes, especially the first two I mentioned, are such a godsend that I could weep tears of joy.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and this sentiment involves some of the more negative changes Metal Gear Solid 2 makes. To access the radar for the area, the player must find a workstation and manually download the map. The workstations are fairly easy to spot, but having to do this makes it apparent that the developers don’t understand what the radar is for. Having a map of the area isn’t a convenient way to direct oneself around the room to get to the next one; it’s to navigate around the guards in the room without being spotted. I’d often alert the guards on my way to the workstation because I couldn’t see their line of sight. These workstations are also the only way the player can access the game’s options menu. I’m sure these workstations have some significance to the themes of technology MGS presents, but I can’t admire their depth when they are inconveniencing me. Another thing one might notice when Snake is low on health is that the remainder of his health turns a yellowish orange, and there is a blipping sound. This means that Snake is bleeding out, and his health will decline until he dies. That is unless he has a bandage in his inventory to patch up his wounds. The bleeding can also be cured with a ration. The number of rations in the field also greatly outnumbers the number of bandages, so it’s a wonder why bandages were introduced in the first place. As for the bleeding mechanic itself, it certainly gives the player more incentive to remain cautious. The only times where I was annoyed with the mechanic were during boss fights, instances where I had to involve myself with the enemy and take damage.

These negative changes are not the core reason I find fault with this game. Overall, complaining about them comes down to nitpicking more than anything else. The divisive factors that make Metal Gear Solid 2 are much meatier and egregious than a few minor discrepancies. The main one that everyone bellyaches about comes right after the tanker mission and wears out its welcome for most MGS fans. When I discussed the new game mechanics MGS2 offers, I used Snake as the playable character to reference every action. This is to be expected because Solid Snake is indeed the playable character in the tanker mission, all of the new features apply to the tanker mission, and he’s the face of the Metal Gear franchise. My big reveal is that I only referred to the new features that apply to Snake in the tanker mission to avoid spoilers. After Snake uploads the pictures of Metal Gear to the workstation, his egress is halted by Revolver Ocelot, who has betrayed his Russian comrades for his self-interest. One might not notice at first glance, but Ocelot has acquired a new arm after it was severed from his body by Gray Fox in the first game. This new appendage has a few drawbacks, however, as Ocelot becomes possessed by none other than Liquid Snake at random occurrences. Ocelot ostensibly took Liquid's arm and crudely applied it to himself, figuring Liquid wasn’t using it anymore because he was dead. Tough break, Ocelot. A possessed Ocelot murders the marine captain and capsizes the tanker, leaving everyone in a watery grave. Otacon bellows a classic “SSSNNAAAKKKEEE”, but there is no game over screen to follow as this scene was intentional. This scene may suggest a grim twist of fate for our hero, but some might question killing off Solid Snake and remain skeptical. One’s suspicions could be relieved in the next scene when good ol’ Roy Campbell is briefing a man with the codename Snake while swimming into a cargo bay. The skeptical feelings may return when the player notices that this Snake has blonde hair and doesn’t sound as gruff as usual. Colonel then changes this Snake’s codename to “Raiden” when it dawns on the player that Snake might be dead, and they’ll have to play as this guy for the rest of the game.

I’m more ambivalent towards Raiden than anything else. He draws a lot of ire from franchise fans, and it’s not surprising to see why. Is it hated for his pretty-boy looks and his confused, puppy-dog expressions? Is it due to his disturbingly wide, child-bearing hips protruding from his skin-tight bodysuit? No, it’s simply because many fans felt betrayed by having him as the central protagonist of MGS2 instead of Solid Snake, especially after playing as Snake at the beginning of the game. The familiarity Kojima established in the tanker mission was just a ruse to keep the player’s guard down and then pull the rug out from under them. It’s wise to always expect this kind of thing from such a subversive series, but I can imagine why it upset many people. I don’t mind Raiden because at least he isn’t a downgrade from Snake in terms of gameplay. Raiden’s range of movement is just as slick and acrobatic as Snake’s, arguably even more so because Raiden can do a catapult. All of the new features are translated to Raiden for the rest of the game as well, so the developers, fortunately, don’t leave the player hanging in the gameplay department.

Raiden is, however, a completely different character to Snake in terms of characterization. The player shifts from controlling a grizzled combat veteran with a weathered face of experience to a bright-eyed, clueless dork whose only experience in battle is VR training. Raiden is a rookie, and his mission here is a big step out of his comfort zone into the fray of real danger. While Raiden's lack of experience will not be a detriment to the player, especially if they’ve played the first game, the frame of the story will treat Raiden as if this is his first time walking. The Colonel claims he has confidence in Raiden, but this conflicts with his constant codex calls during the mission in which he acts like an overprotective parent teaching their child how to drive. The codex calls with the Colonel in the first game had some leeway for banter between him and Snake, establishing a genuine relationship between the two beyond their roles in the mission. The interactions between the Colonel and Raiden are all business, sacrificing any levity the first game had. Raiden doesn’t have the confidence to be glib on a mission.

The one person on this mission who does have a personal relationship with Raiden is his girlfriend, Rose. Yes, Raiden’s girlfriend monitors him, and her codex channel acts as the save feature. A resounding “Why?!” may resonate with everyone as to why she’s here, and I’m still wondering after finishing this game. It’s most likely to humanize the soldier to compensate for Raiden’s conversations with everyone else sounding so sterile, but their relationship delves into the most irritating humanization possible. Raiden and Rose are at the point in their relationship where one side feels alienated from the other and decide to have quarrels regarding their sense of emotional distance via the codex calls. She only refers to Raiden by his first name, and I’m astounded that the Colonel doesn’t scold her for doing so. Does anyone enjoy eavesdropping on the dispute between one of their friends and their significant other? No one does, and experiencing this is just as tiresome in a video game. I would call her to save my game and then get an earful about how “Jack” doesn’t cater to her needs anymore for five minutes. It makes me miss Mei Ling’s ancient Chinese proverbs.

Raiden’s mission is a classic hostage rescue affair on the high perches of the Big Shell decontamination facility located over the deep waters off the shores of New York City. Big Shell was erected here to clean up the residual oil from the capsized tanker a few years prior. Revolver Ocelot has returned to the crime scene with another gang of eccentric terrorists, and they’ve got some big named hostages as collateral. As a setting, Big Shell is a total deviation from the dark, Alaskan tundra that surrounded the base of Shadow Moses. The sun shines outside the facility, accompanied by the bluest of skies. There are constant sounds of seagulls squawking instead of the howling of timberwolves, and the waves of the ocean waters below crash against the facility. Don’t be misled by the seemingly less hostile atmosphere; the whole facility is swarming with guards, and the ciphers hover over the waters to catch Raiden with just their peripheral vision. The steep, balance-board rafters that make up the foundation of Big Shell’s outside sections are flimsy and will often result in Raiden falling to his untimely death. Because of these treacherous obstacles, it’s wise to know the facility's layout, and its design allows the player to do so easily. The Big Shell facility comprises two main cores with many struts circling it, connected by outdoor bridges. The struts are labeled with letters of the alphabet, with struts A-F circling the first core and G-M circling the second core. The entire map is well organized, and its cyclical nature allows for easy access to other areas of the map. The entire layout of Big Shell will become comfortably familiar to the player, and backtracking is so much more manageable as a result.

Gallivanting around Big Shell’s towering struts are the eccentric super-terrorists, a franchise staple. Revolver Ocelot is the one familiar face (with Liquid being the other familiar voice) out of them, but a whole new crop of baddies is here to replace the ones from FOXHOUND. Their squadron is referred to as Dead Cell, ironically a former anti-terrorist group that has gone radical ever since their original leader died years prior. A few Dead Cell members have perished since, but those active here are Fortune, Fatman, Vamp, and Solidus Snake. Fortune is a woman who shares similar physical characteristics with Storm from X-Men. She’s got long blonde hair, dark skin, and an energy rifle that’s as big as her. Her special ability is having any projectile weapon like bullets and missiles zoom past her like her body emitting an opposing polarity field. This is not a power she wears with honor, as it is a curse for her. Fortune is suffering from the grief of the deaths of her husband and her father (the marine commandant from the tanker mission) and feels as if she is cursed to not die like some kind of martyr. Fatman is a rotund albino man who specializes in demolition tools and rides around on roller skates. He betrays his fellow Dead Cell members by planting bombs around Big Shell to blow it up, and disposing of his bombs becomes a central objective during a large portion of the overall mission. Vamp is an androgynous man with long hair and fangs with supernatural powers relating to his vampiric presence. Like a vampire, Vamp cannot die, so defeating him numerous times in the game only deters him slightly. As one could imagine, all of the Dead Cell members make up the boss fights of the game, and fighting against the members of Dead Cell is much more underwhelming than the fights against FOXHOUND. The fight against Fortune is a stalling bout, and the core of Fatman’s fight is just freezing more bombs. The main fight against Vamp is challenging and has a loose fighting structure for the player to take advantage of, but this fight is ultimately mitigated by the fact that Vamp can’t be defeated. The most interesting Dead Cell member is Solidus Snake, but the fight against him on Big Shell is just a more erratic version of the chopper duel with Liquid in the first game. Dead Cell are as interesting as FOXHOUND as villains, but they fail to make for engaging bosses.

All this seems a tad much for a rookie like Raiden to handle on his own. Fortunately, some “new” faces come to aid Raiden in rescuing the hostages and taking down Dead Cell. During Raiden’s first encounter with Vamp, a man who has a strong resemblance to Snake saves Raiden from the bisexual beast. While this man could be Snake’s doppelganger, he claims his name's Pliskin (which already gives it away that he’s Snake if anyone is familiar with Kurt Russell’s character from Escape from New York, an obvious influence for the character of Solid Snake). Plisken aids Raiden by providing him aid during some boss battles, freezing Fatman’s bombs, and giving Raiden some pointers on how to survive on the field. There is also the demolitions expert Stillman assisting Raiden, but he dies early on from one of Fatman’s explosives. To no one's surprise, it is then revealed that Pliskin is Solid Snake, and he’s brought Otacon on the mission with him. Since the tanker incident, Snake and Otacon have been working together independently from the American government. Otacon is present on this mission for another reason, however, and it’s a personal one.

One of the hostages Dead Cell has taken is Otacon’s estranged step-sister Emma who Otacon playfully refers to as “E.E.” She’s an engineer working for Arsenal Gear who Raiden and Snake need to deactivate Arsenal with a virus. Physically, she’s as frangible as a flower and pitiful as a whimpering puppy. Rescuing her as Raiden is an exhausting escort mission where the player has to assist with EVERY obstacle along the way. During the portion where Raiden and Snake are sniping claymores and guards out of Emma’s path, Vamp pops out of the water and inflicts Emma with a fatal stab wound. They get her back to the core of Shell 1, where she dies in Otacon’s arms. This scene may seem contrived, but I started to choke up when Emma’s parrot mimicked Emma’s longing for Otacon, and he broke down. I never expected to have any emotional standing with Emma. Her helplessness during the escort mission made for one of the most infuriating parts of the game, but her death made it so impactful. It’s a seminal moment for Otacon as a character who, until now, was only another one of Snake’s aids. I stated that an awkward hiccup in the first game was Otacon attempting to sympathize with Snake’s loss of Meryl with his loss of Sniper Wolf, but his loss here makes up for that in spades. This arc with Emma would’ve been much more pertinent if she was involved with Shadow Moses in the first game instead of Big Shell here.

While Emma’s arc stands out to me and is a sizable chunk of the game, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the overarching story. It’s hard to tell what the meat of the story is because it’s a total mess. I’ve heard of A plots and B plots, but the overarching themes and story points in MGS2 run the gamut of the whole alphabet. MGS2 inflicts excruciatingly long swathes of exposition on the player during what seems like every single cutscene. Even the conversations between Raiden and Rose serve as long points of exposition about their relationship. The Emma arc is almost ruined with long elucidations regarding the GW project and Otacon’s soap-opera family life. The first game presented plenty to unpack, but the exposition was used sparingly compared to the amount presented here. I can’t even appreciate the odd moments of levity here like Raiden slipping in bird shit, Raiden getting groped by the president, and Snake and Otacon’s complicated bro-handshake because they are weighed down by the gunk of plots A through Zed. At least the main objective of freeing the hostages is the core arc here, right?

Nope. After Emma dies, the game kicks the complicated switch into high gear to mold the rest of the game. I’ll try to explain everything and wrap everything up into a semi-neat package. Think that Psycho Mantis was the biggest Metal Gear mind-fuck? It has nothing on the end of MGS2. Olga, the first boss from the tanker mission, aids Snake in capturing Raiden and taking him to Solidus and Ocelot, where he is held captive in a torture device similar to the one from the first game. Raiden escapes bare-ass naked, rendered helpless because both hands have to cover his ding-dong. He gets many strange codex calls from the Colonel and Rose, ranging from breaking the fourth wall to silly non-sequiturs. Something isn’t right here. Snake meets up with Raiden, gives him a katana, and explains that betraying him with Olga was a means to infiltrate the core of Arsenal. Snake and Raiden fight their way into the core, where Raiden then fights six versions of Metal Gear Ray in a cybernetic arena (it’s not as hard as it sounds). Solidus and Ocelot show up to provide yet another long stretch of exposition that explains Raiden’s backstory. Raiden was a child soldier in the 1980s known as “Jack the Ripper,” Solidus killed his parents and adopted him as a child. Metal Gear Arsenal loses control and crashes into New York City. Raiden and Solidus have a final fight on a New York landmark with dueling katana swords, and Raiden saves the day.

That’s a rough summary of what occurs at the end of MGS2, but it’s the underlying context that molds it (or does it?). The main antagonists of MGS2 are not Dead Cell or any other terrorist but a group called the Patriots. The president explains to Raiden that the Patriots are the ones who pull the strings of America, and he is merely a figurehead to assuage the general public. GW on Big Shell exists to keep the Patriots in power by providing fake information to the people of America. Revolver Ocelot is a Patriot agent who has a list of their names, and Solidus used to be the president who was pulling for the Patriots in the first game. He’s also another clone of Big Boss like Solid and Liquid. The whole game is a virtual simulation of the events of Shadow Moses fitted for a VR soldier like Raiden, explaining the cracks in the system at the end. Defeating Solidus at the end seems like our heroes are getting one step closer to eradicating the Patriots and their oppressive control. Still, Ocelot’s disc claims that all of these men have been dead for over a century. All of this is supposed to point to themes of personal autonomy for every individual.

The Psycho Mantis portion of MGS1 was a mind-fuck that pleasantly shocked and awed me for its innovation, but the more severe one here made my brain feel violated. A moderately complicated base plot regarding a hostage mission has imploded into a clusterfuck of ideas and subplots with no cohesion or integral structure between them. I forgot to mention Rose being a patriot double-agent and holding Olga’s child hostage, but I can’t incorporate those subplots smoothly just like Kojima couldn’t do it. There are many interesting and provocative themes here, like the manipulation of information and reality becoming less structured moving into the digital age. Still, these points are crushed under the weight of everything else the developers are trying to get through. Metal Gear Solid 2 is the video game equivalent of Infinite Jest or Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend. These are all works of art with interesting and unique spectacles marred by the influx of ideas and their multiple footnotes that the whole thing becomes indigestible. Some smug jackasses might argue that I’m not intelligent enough to “get it”, but you know what? The smartest way to interpret what’s being presented here is to analyze it and conclude that there is nothing to get. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that Kojima needs to undergo surgery to remove his head from his rectal cavity.

I’ve had it up to here (puts hand above head) with Hideo Kojima and his auteur vision. The first Metal Gear Solid tested the limits of what a cinematic narrative could accomplish in the early 3D era without going overboard, but Metal Gear Solid 2 bursts the seams of proper narrative structure. I’m not going to refer to the themes and story of this game as a “postmodern groundbreaker” like everyone else. Rather, it’s the result of a lapse of judgment, control, and self-awareness on Kojima’s part. Kojima’s plan to awe us with a 21st-century spectacle of conspiracy akin to 9/11 ultimately backfired. If it stuck with one theme, like the first game’s themes of genetics and their properties coinciding with one’s fate like the first game, I wouldn’t be so riled up. I’m still conflicted about how to perceive Metal Gear Solid 2. As a game, it’s better than the first one in every way. The new hardware granted Metal Gear Solid with smoother controls, more accessible features, and extraordinary presentation. Still, the fact that Kojima took all of these advantages and turned them into this makes it all the sadder. I cannot in good conscience put this piece of pretentious gobbledygook in higher regard than the first Metal Gear Solid, despite its high quality as a game.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

The Resident Evil series was in desperate need of a swift kick in the ass. The original three survival-horror games ran their course and made Resident Evil less effective, but the three action-horror games that followed eventually turned the franchise into a joke. The gaming landmark that was Resident Evil 4’s impact was sullied by two derivative successors who aped every aspect of Resident Evil 4 except for its sense of self-awareness. The tongue-in-cheek joke that Resident Evil 4 represented in the scope of the franchise had tumbled on itself, becoming that same joke in time. What was Capcom to do about their washed-up horror staple with many iconic titles under its belt? Was it time to hang up the Resident Evil IP and move on to greener pastures? They attempted this before, which gave birth to the also successful Devil May Cry series, so perhaps this was the right course of action. Like in the case of developing Resident Evil 4, someone at Capcom put their foot down and gave the series another chance. Resident Evil is that franchise at Capcom that refuses to die like an old man who returns after a series of strokes. Unlike that metaphorical old man, Resident Evil can be rebuilt to seem fresh again. What the developers generated with this strong persistence of faith for the franchise was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (because Resident Evil is known as Biohazard in its native Japan, the title is inverted to Biohazard 7: Resident Evil there which is cute), the biggest example of retreading the franchise has ever done. Capcom saw it better to demolish the building they erected instead of making a new addition to it, scraping up pieces of the wreckage to form something new. Resident Evil 7 makes such a grand departure from the familiarities of the series that one might not be able to recognize it as a Resident Evil game. If the changes in Resident Evil 4 were enough to upset and alienate the Resident Evil purists, then the stark deviation in RE7 is enough to make those purists wretch. While the changes Resident Evil 7 makes are more than obvious, it still retains the essence of a Resident Evil game in many ways.

To efficiently stray away from one’s foundation, it helps to take aspects from other sources of inspiration. Resident Evil 7 is anything but uninspired, taking influence from a plethora of horror media. The premise of Resident Evil 7, for example, borrows from its fellow renowned horror series Silent Hill, retaining that mutual swapping of ideas I’ve noticed between both franchises. Our protagonist Ethan Winters gets a peculiar video message from his wife Mia, who has been missing for over three years. Instead of heeding her wishes to forget about her for his own good, he drives out to her last known location to look for her. Sound familiar? Rather than Ethan traveling to the misty ghost town of Silent Hill, he ventures out to a series of houses on the most remote parts of the Louisiana bayou. The sun radiates on Ethan through the hanging branches of the cypress trees, but don’t be led astray by the sunny setting. The dilapidated house Ethan finds himself in does not absorb any of the light outside, making for an eerie search for Mia. To his surprise, Ethan finds Mia just hanging out in the dingiest-looking basement, seemingly unscathed. Mia, however, is not as unassuming as she initially seems as she reveals a newfound feral side akin to something of a meth head. She screams and gnarls her teeth at Ethan like a rabid dog and eviscerates Ethan’s hand with a chainsaw. Ethan tentatively shoots her to subdue her, seemingly disposing of his reason for being here in the first place. Ethan then gets knocked unconscious by a middle-aged man who is as malevolent as Mia and wakes up sitting at a dinner table held by restraints with the man and his family of cackling psychopaths under dim, horrific lighting.

Resident Evil 7’s other horror influences should seem readily apparent to anyone fan of the genre. Its southern location, daylight setting, and dinner table sequence should remind horror fans of the iconic proto-slasher film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The big difference here is that Capcom chose to set RE7 one state over from Texas to its more humid, swampier neighbor Louisiana. This is possible because Louisiana is associated with a more spooky, macabre culture, or perhaps setting the game in Texas would be TOO obvious. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre influence is obvious enough here to the point where it seems like it’s in tribute to the film. To their credit, the dingy, deteriorated country houses of backwoods Louisiana are a far cry from the comparatively foppish gothic mansions that make up the previous Resident Evil games. Even the third-world villages of RE4 look like a resort compared to the Baker properties. I don’t think this point of inspiration was just noticing that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a different tone and aesthetic from the zombie-outbreak-influenced Resident Evil games to redefine the series. It’s not as simple as that. The developers understood that the effectiveness of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was in its gritty minimalism and quasi-realism. Many people say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks like something of an old videotape they’d show in school due to its dirt-cheap budget. The film transcended the inevitable B-movie, grindhouse schlock it would’ve easily warranted by using its minimal budget to create a nightmare with tension so palpable that it could burst. People wondered for years if what they saw was documented footage of real psychopaths murdering teenagers, which stirred up a lot of controversies. By 2017, people weren’t as gullible, but that doesn’t stop Resident Evil 7 from being effectively creepy with the same sense of gritty minimalism. The previous Resident Evil games had spooky moments, but Resident Evil 7 is one of the scariest games I’ve ever played.

One might ask: how can a triple-A, eighth-generation game have any gritty and minimalistic qualities? Did the developers compromise the budget to make it look cheap and blow the rest of the money on coke? No, because Resident Evil 7 looks spectacular. The calamitous rooms of the Baker’s property are as immaculate as they are grotesque, a sublime contradiction that works wonders for the game’s aesthetic. The game also has a silky-smooth framerate to boot, a pleasing aspect expected from modern triple-A games. One might be skeptical how a game that has the frills of triple-A development succeeds in being dank, grimy, and retains a scare factor associated with gritty visuals. They might fail to understand that the crisper visual fidelity makes all of the filth of the set look even filthier. The player can discern the dusty nick nacks strewn about, the bloodstains on the furniture, and the strands of the supernatural mold that covers the house's walls. Eerie lighting is present throughout, which is quite effective at making every location even more creepy. The caveat is that sometimes the lighting is too dim, and it can be challenging to see. The player can’t even manually turn on the flashlight, most likely so the player can’t interfere with the game’s intended lighting. Unfortunately, I can’t get creeped out by the faint lighting when I keep bumping into walls on account of not being able to see. It doesn’t help that the game’s damage mechanic involves the screen getting smudged with blood splatter. It’s like driving at night without being able to clear off the windshield. The game would’ve only gotten away without being too much of a detriment on a triple-A budget in HD eighth-generation gaming.

Assisting the clear, albeit disgusting visuals of Resident Evil 7 are some new presentation mechanics never before seen in the franchise. These new mechanics are definitely influenced by games like Outlast, Soma, and other indie horror games that rose in popularity between RE7 and RE6. RE7 even occasionally borrows the videotape perspective from Outlast, but there are more substantial aspects of influence here. This new crop of popular horror titles deviated far from the cheesy, action-oriented horror romps that Resident Evil became known for after RE4. Their gameplay was minimal, there was a bevy of jump scares, and all of this was experienced through the eyes of the protagonist in a first-person view. These games signaled a changing of the guard with horror games, a much-needed change of pace. Resident Evil 7 followed suit and borrowed all of these elements, but it wasn’t to acclimate to trends or to provide jump scare material for Pewdiepie or Markiplier. Incorporating these minimal elements is a sign of self-reflection from the developers, realizing that the excessive nature of RE6 was its downfall. Resident Evil 7’s minimal tendencies are a reworking of the series just as much as the indie horror titles were a reworking of the horror genre itself.

The more minimal mechanics work wonders at making Resident Evil 7 an effective horror experience. The first-person perspective shift was a polarizing aspect for many Resident Evil veterans, but the game benefits greatly from it. Navigating through the tenebrous halls of the Baker property is much more tense and unnerving when the player has a restricted view of what could jump out at them at any time. This perspective also lets the player get a better look at the well-rendered details of the putrid setpieces, well supported by the HD graphics. The scare factor involved with this restricted perspective makes the player have to rely on the element of sound to survive. Music is absent through most of RE7, with door creaks, footsteps, and the sound of Ethan breathing setting a soundscape of creepy tension. This is until the player comes across something dangerous that a heart-pounding score will dynamically make an appearance. The music track will start way before the player knows exactly what lurks in the dark, acting like a sixth sense that signifies endangerment. When the fears become clear to the player, the first-person perspective makes them all the more terrifying. The game plays with jump scares and uses the first-person perspective to make them jarring and uncomfortable. Most of the time, they involve a member of the Baker family popping in on Ethan with their gnarly faces in full view. To keep them from seeming gimmicky and cheap like the effects of a 1950’s 3D movie, the game always prolongs the fright of the jump scare by making whatever jumps at the player a threat that the player must deal with accordingly. This happens on numerous occasions with several things, but the game’s pacing keeps all of these encounters effective.

Another page Resident Evil rips from the book Silent Hill includes a normal everyman as a protagonist. Instead of the hunky, boulder-punching, window-diving, super soldiers that make up S.T.A.R.S, Ethan Winters is just some schmuck like Harry Mason and James Sunderland before him. He’s a bit of a blank slate. He isn’t as ironically entertaining as, say, the overconfident one-man boy band soldier that is Leon S. Kennedy, but at least he isn’t as comically aloof as the protagonists of Silent Hill tend to be. His voice actor gives his character enough emotion, mostly with expletives given the situation, but not enough to where he ascends his faceless role (literally) as an everyman protagonist. It’s so the everyman player of the game can put themselves in the protagonist's shoes, and I’d sure be breathing heavily and dropping f-bombs at what Ethan is up against. This is only to a certain extent because Ethan endures too much physical abuse for a normal guy to withstand. Mia and the Baker family make Ethan their patsy. They sever his limbs, stab him with sharp objects, tear his flesh with their teeth and fingernails, and other means of maiming our poor, defenseless protagonist. I don’t think I have to say that Ethan only resists all of this pain due to video game magic, but all the horrifying cuts and bruises he gets through his journey are still effective. His role as a protagonist fixes Resident Evil’s awkward fallacy of expecting the game to still be scary while playing as a roided-out super-soldier. The player may not be able to endure the pain Ethan goes through, but his less-than-capable stature makes the horrors that happen to him all the more gruesome. This finally elicits a visceral reaction from the player that no previous game has ever caused.

This isn’t to say that Ethan is rendered defenseless against these horrors. The indie horror games that influenced RE7 to make players run from everything they encounter would’ve deviated too far from Resident Evil’s combat. Even the moodier, slower-paced first three games had the player shooting at the undead fairly often. Combat in the first three games forced players to use their limited resources. The action was a focal point of RE 4, 5, and 6, in which a larger number of foes in a short period was meant to overwhelm the player, and RE7 obviously does not emulate this. For a game that deviates greatly from every other entry in a long-running franchise, RE7’s approach to action ironically recalls the series' roots. Combat in RE7 is intended to be minimal as Ethan only has a handful of weapons at his disposal. The knife, handgun, shotgun, flamethrower, and grenade launcher encompass a wide range of firepower, but the ammunition for all these weapons is scarce. This is made even more so than in the first three games because the enemies do not drop supplies like the fans expect them to. The player has to strategize when to use their resources more wisely than in any other Resident Evil game. RE7 plays with the combination mechanic the series has upheld since the first game, but the different combinations are more restricted. Chem fluids are strewn about to combine with items to strengthen their properties, like combining different colors of herbs in the previous games. However, the player cannot stack green herbs on top of each other for a stronger health item. All items can only be mixed with a chem fluid, and some of them, like the gunpowder and fuel, cannot be used as ammo on their own. It can be frustrating to find a resource just to sandbag it in one’s inventory, especially since RE7 has reinstated the cramped inventory system from the first three games. Resident Evil 7 has found a way to surpass the scarceness of the first three games, making survival more urgent than ever.

Another aspect of RE7 that reminds me of the older titles is the area's layout. For a bunch of backwoods yokels, the Bakers own an astounding abundance of land. Their guest house in the tutorial is a microcosm of the main house, a way to illustrate the general design philosophy of each area in the game. The area that utilizes the old Resident Evil design to the fullest degree is the main house which comes right after the opening sequence. It’s the Spencer Mansion of the south: a circuitously built, labyrinthian building with several rooms per floor and a series of different keys to open all of them. The main house is so large that it gives the player the impression that the goal of escaping it will be the main objective for the entire game. Still, it’s only a fraction of it as Ethan escapes to visit the old house and the testing facility on the same property. As I’ve stated before in my review of the first Resident Evil game, I love the Metroidvania type of design each area of the game presents. The design is just as thrillingly intricate here as it was in the previous titles. What strikes me here is how alarmingly similar it is to the layout of the first RE game. The developers translate the spacious design of a gothic mansion into a more humdrum, southern household without the setting seeming awkward or contrived. They translated the grand scope of the classic haunted house by making the layout seem like modern people could live there, albeit while having it as the health department’s worst nightmare. The design aspect of the areas is impressively Resident Evil, ironic considering this game is supposed to deviate from it.

Roaming the halls of these ramshackle buildings is the main reason to be scared of them: the enemies. The common enemies seen around the premise are “molded”: dark, stringy beasts with razor-sharp teeth and a ravenous nature. Imagine the regenerators from RE4, but with a more amorphous body composed of veiny, fungal detritus. They are reanimated forms of the captured victims of the Baker family, regenerated by the abysmal conditions of their burial spots. There are three types of molded, but they all are defeated with the same precise methods involving headshots and with numerous knife swipes. The molded are pure nightmare fuel, but unfortunately, the initial scare factor involving these beasts runs thin due to their sole role as the only enemies in the game. The wasps surrounding the old house hardly count as enemies. The oversaturation of the molded results in too much familiarity to stay afraid of them, and potentially wasting ammo by killing them gets irritating.

Fortunately, the Baker family are the real stars of the show and eclipse the wearisome presence of the molded. The harrowing dinner sequence that introduces all of them gives the player a perfect sense of their family dynamic. They are all boisterous, foul-mouthed, deranged psychopaths who instill their morbid sense of merriment on their unfortunate guests. They all act individually, with their presence encompassing one of the three main areas of their property. The patriarchal head of the Baker family, Jack throws Ethan around the main house like a ragdoll, calling him a sissy with a delivery that sounds like it’s straight from Deliverance. He relentlessly stalks Ethan and jumps out at him from all corners, providing the best of the jump scares in the game. Ethan avoids the creepy Marguerite in a stealth section in the old house. I won’t spoil anything, but her boss fight is one of the most monstrous and harrowing bosses I’ve ever fought across all games. Lucas “Jigsaw” Baker mans the testing area and will put Ethan through a series of savage tests and games, making up his own rules to them as he goes. The Baker family are certainly entertaining and effectively scary as characters, but I wouldn’t say they are great “enemies” from a gaming standpoint. The illness that has beset all of the members of the Baker family has made them virtually indestructible, and Ethan can only deter them with his firepower instead of vanquishing them. That is until the game decides to suddenly make these impenetrable foes boss fights after running away from them for periods of time. Because of the seamless cutscenes, it’s hard to tell when the player is catapulted into a boss fight and should use their resources to bring them down. This confusion trapped me a couple of times, and I died as a result. I felt it was more because the game failed to provide clarity for me and less of a factor of my skill.



There is another member of the Baker family, but this one comes in peace. Zoe Baker, the family's daughter, assists Ethan by giving him pointers through a series of antiquated longline phones throughout the property. She has Ethan scrounge up ingredients for a serum that she believes will cure her, her family, and Mia of their supernatural ailments. Using this serum becomes a catalyst for the controversial last third of the game. After using one of the serums to defeat Jack’s abominable final form, Ethan can only use the other serum on either Mia or Zoe. Even though the canon choice is to pick Mia for obvious reasons, I chose Zoe because I was still a little miffed about what Mia did to my hand in the guest house. Whichever person you choose, most of the events of this portion remain the same. It is revealed that the cause of the sickness infecting the Bakers is due to someone named Eveline, a girl with supernatural powers and a wide malevolent streak. If the player chooses Zoe, she still dies when Eveline attacks them while rowing a boat on the water. Ethan is captured, and it’s up to Mia to rescue him. Through playing Mia in this portion, Mia probes the wreckage of a ship and her former role on it. Mia was part of the operation that created Eveline, and the tanker capsized en route to a containment unit. Mia saves Ethan from succumbing to the same fate as her, but the route I chose resulted in Ethan having to kill Mia. Ethan then takes a toxin from Eveline’s DNA through the salt mines to kill Eveline. Ethan comes full circle to the guest house and injects Eveline with the toxin. She then reverts to a form of an elderly woman, a familiar apparition that has appeared frequently in the game. She transforms into a giant monster Ethan takes out with a superweapon (not a trademark rocket launcher). A rescue helicopter comes with the pilot reminding everyone that this is a Resident Evil game, and Ethan either comforts a wounded Mia or introspectively ponders as he leaves the site of the Baker properties.

After being treated to the wonderful pacing of the first two-thirds of the game, all of that blows out of the window during the final section. The tanker and the salt mines can’t be expected to be as scary as any of the Baker’s properties, but salt mines feel like a scrapped area from one of the action-oriented games. The linear trek with tons of molded on the trail felt like the developers were rushed and had to half-ass the game's finale. What’s even more indicative of this is the final boss of Eveline. The mammoth-sized, hideous beast that Eveline transforms into results in an anticlimactic, borderline interactive cutscene. It’s the most unsatisfying way to cap off any game. While this last section is underwhelming in terms of gameplay, the story of Eveline and her role in this madness is still interesting. The sequence where a vision of Jack calmly giving Ethan support and claiming that his actions were not of his volition almost made me feel sympathy for him and his family, something I never expected after perilously running away from him all this time. They are just victims of circumstances under the control of an uncontrollable bioweapon in the shape of a little girl. Strangely enough, the game makes me feel sorry for Eveline too. She’s still a scared little girl with some serious abandonment issues, which is why she refers to Mia as her “mommy” and why she created the Baker family in her image. This is why she wants more guests to the Baker residence and crafts them in her image. All of this makes Eveline a villain with layers of substance. As for Eveline being an old woman, I can’t make heads or tails of that. Ultimately, I chose the wrong girl to cure as choosing Mia is the only logical route for the story and Ethan’s motivations. It didn’t affect the story's events too much, but I should’ve known better.

The long reflection regarding the status of the Resident Evil franchise turned out for the best. The developers slammed on the brakes and realized that if they kept making the same mistakes that resulted in repeating Resident Evil 6, they would’ve bankrupted the disputable king of horror franchises. Fortunately, there was a goldmine of inspiration at the helm of Resident Evil 7’s production to rework the series. Their influences seem to be evident: the gritty, humid aesthetic and atmosphere of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the videotape minimalism of horror games like Outlast. While these influences seem to deviate from the established tropes of the franchise on a surface level, the game makes a point to appease seasoned players by masterfully translating elements of classic Resident Evil like the area design and progression into the game. All of this culminates into an unrelenting nightmare of an experience. Even when the last third of the game crumbles, most of the game is still substantial enough to stick in the minds of the player. I imagine a handful of Resident Evil purists were dissuaded by many of the new elements presented here to reinvent the franchise. However, if they still decry Resident Evil 7 as an “improper” entry, they obviously haven’t taken the time to play it.

Play this game in VR if you dare.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Super Mario World on the SNES was a massive success as an early title for the 16-bit system. It quickly became one of the best-selling video games of all time, outselling the previous titles of the series by quite a substantial margin. It ushered in the new era of advanced gaming hardware with flying colors, and I’d be willing to bet that at least a fraction of its success was due to the inclusion of Yoshi. The adorable scamp won over everyone’s hearts as Mario’s disposable, reptilian steed in Super Mario World. Since his debut, the litmus test for an exceptional Mario game is whether or not Yoshi is present. Why do you think many people prefer Galaxy 2 over the first one? I’m convinced Yoshi’s influx of popularity was intentional on the part of Nintendo, using the cute, green dinosaur as a way to increase their sales margin. How else can you explain why Yoshi was featured on the front cover of Super Mario World? Mario usually doesn’t share the space of any box art, even when the plural title of Super Mario Bros. implies that there’s more than one brother with as much precedence in the game as Mario. Luigi’s immortal status as a secondary character was cemented by not appearing on the box art for four straight games, even when his namesake was in the title. Meanwhile, Yoshi is front and center with Mario in his debut. Nintendo ostensibly had high hopes for Yoshi and their ambitious goals to follow his likely success. Mach 1 of the Yoshi cultural takeover was Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island on the SNES, a sequel/prequel/spinoff of the first Super Mario World. While the game may seem like a direct sequel considering the number on the end of the title, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a stark deviation from mostly all the familiarities of Super Mario World, except Yoshi. This means that the sequel here feels like an entirely different experience, which comes with varying degrees of quality.

The only aspect of Super Mario World 2 that shares a commonality with the former World title is the setting of Yoshi’s Island. The remote, sunny land of the chubby-cheeked dinosaurs proved to be a stellar location that gave the first Super Mario World a certain brightness never before seen in a Mario game. The brightness displayed in the “sequel” isn’t after the events of Mario dismantling Bowser’s control over the island in the first game. Super Mario World 2 is a prequel filled with lore about the island’s role in the Mario universe and with Mario as a character. A stork loses both Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to a Magikoopa named Kamek on the way to being delivered to his parents, playing out the biggest white lie scenario that will amusingly affirm any child player’s theories about where babies come from. Kamek accidentally drops Baby Mario, and he briskly lands on the back of an unsuspecting Yoshi. The Yoshi and his tribe take it upon themselves to protect this infant from the Koopas and trek through the island to reunite Baby Mario with the stork and his brother.

It’s sometimes difficult to realize that Yoshi is not a singular character. Yoshi is a species of creature in the Mario universe, just like the Goombas and the Koopas. The Yoshi that hatches out of the eggs in Super Mario World is not the same one respawning after falling off the map. The thing that might throw people off in this regard is that these Yoshi's only come in green, their signature color that has become synonymous with the character. It’s much more apparent that Yoshi is a collective character here because we are introduced to a society of them that live on the island. Black, orange, red, green: the different complexions of the Yoshis run the gamut of a box of Crayola crayons. The radiant range of Yoshi skins is a perfect segway into discussing how vibrant this game is. Like the Yoshis that reside here, the island is a variegated slew of bright pigments with the aesthetic tone of a coloring book. Outlines of various things in the background like clouds, hills, and flowers look warbled to emulate the charm of crude animation. The graphics look like the developers colored in the pixel art with crayon, and this unlocks a previously unknown potential of what 16-bit graphics could look like. Everything in Super Mario World 2 looks so clear and vivacious. The crayon aesthetic was meant to make the game appear more juvenile, but the eye-candy visuals are just as appealing to an adult like myself.

The island world depicted here is much more linear this time around. The Yoshi’s journey is more of a straightaway route this time around as opposed to discovering the hidden areas of the island and uncovering Star Road in the first Super Mario World. Six main levels are divided into a menu with eight sublevels per world. The player navigates this menu like a level select and unlocks each sublevel in order until the end of the eighth sublevel when they move onto the next world. Sublevels on the menu come with individual pictures depicting a vague representation of what to expect from the level, like an enemy, and become colored in once the player completes them. For a game that looks so lively and flamboyant, this menu feels quite rigid. Super Mario World 2 is a much larger game than its predecessor, so I can imagine it would’ve been a struggle to replicate the world map of the former game and maintain some kind of geographical consistency per level. The menu here somewhat maintains the colorful brightness of the overall game, but the more streamlined approach to level selection does not match the vibrant tone of the game.

The overall structure of the individual levels is much more familiar. Despite the character change, Super Mario World 2 is another 2D platformer whose objective is to make it to the end of the level without losing every life given to the player. Whether or not the player has played the former game, Yoshi’s control scheme will still seem alien to any Super Mario veteran. Yoshi can jump as high as the Italian plumber, and he can dispose of enemies with his impressive hops as well. Yoshi can also flutter his legs for a short time, acting as a glide move. This makes Yoshi seemingly more agile and more capable than Mario, but it sadly makes him feel all the more slippery to control. At times, the game will offer segments where Yoshi can transform into a smattering of objects and vehicles, including a helicopter, mole, toy train, etc. Baby Mario even gets in on the action by running around with an invincibility star.

Any player of Super Mario World will already be familiar with Yoshi’s ravenous appetite, sticking and dragging other creatures with his tongue like a super mutant frog. Yoshi decides to save his calories this time as eating the numerous enemies on the island would be a waste of resources. Yoshi can either spit enemies out, knocking them into other enemies, or turn them into eggs to use as projectiles. The confusing aspect of Yoshi’s digestive system acting the same as their reproductive system aside, chucking these freshly hatched eggs is the central mechanic of both combat and getting past obstacles in the game. The player will be given a moving cursor that shows the trajectory of an egg and can aim more accurately by holding down a trigger button. The eggs can defeat most enemies on impact or knock some more stubborn enemies off of platforms. The eggs can also cause a chain reaction of damage by hitting several enemies into each other. Additionally, the eggs are thrown at objects either to gain collectibles or to pass obstacles. The egg mechanic is unique and certainly fits Yoshi, but I never found myself mastering it even near the end of the game. Having to defeat enemies with pinpoint accuracy conflicts with the quick-natured pace of the 2D platformer game. I only used the eggs when I had to, opting to swallow enemies instead.

Super Mario World 2 has an interesting concept of pacing for a Mario game. Aiming the eggs consistently interrupt movement, but the game is never in any hurry to get anywhere. One might notice the omission of a timer here, a mechanic in the previous Mario games that caused players to be wary of their pacing. In Super Mario World 2, players can take their sweet time in any of the levels, mostly to look for collectibles. In each level, there are 20 red coins, 30 stars, and five flowers to collect, and the player must thoroughly examine every crevice of the level to gather all of these things. The total amount of all three collectibles combined add up to a score out of 100 that is displayed on the opposite side of the level’s menu icon. I wish there was more of an incentive to collect them. The flowers tend to be in hard-to-reach places and hazardous spots that could result in death. Getting a bad score on a level might conjure up some PTSD from my school days, but that’s the extent of my motivation to collect everything. The lack of a timer lets the player relax as they collect everything, but the caveat is that many levels feel bloated. They extend past a certain run time that works for an individual 2D platformer level and become a bit of a slog. While the timer in previous Mario titles may have caused anxiety to many players, it at least keeps every level at a reasonable length.

The omission of a timer in the levels may also be due to the developers decreasing the overall difficulty. This game was designed with a very young demographic in mind, with the crayon-drawing aesthetic, an infant character at the center of the story, and a cutesy dinosaur as the game's protagonist as evidence. On top of having no timer, checkpoints are more common for the longer levels, and an abundance of coins are everywhere, so the player can easily stock up on extra lives. Super Mario World 2 isn’t an entirely facile experience, however. The primary source of difficulty here pertains to Baby Mario. The entirety of Super Mario World 2 is a glorified escort mission, a common method of gameplay that makes many gamers groan. Carrying Baby Mario through the island is the highest point of contention with this game, even for those who put the game in high regard. When Yoshi gets hit by anything, Baby Mario will detach from his back and float around in a bubble making an ear-piercing crying sound that’s excruciating enough to make someone play the entire game on mute. The sound of a baby crying is enough to strike dread and irritation in most people, and it’s a great motivation to get the player to catch him. However, Baby Mario's crying is not one of my main complaints. I’d like to think I’m a person with normal, human emotions who would react strongly to a baby crying as most non-sociopaths would. It’s grating, but not enough to heavily criticize the game for it. The problem is how lenient the game is with getting hit and losing Baby Mario. The game gives the player more than an ample amount of time to retrieve Baby Mario, and the time can be extended by collecting stars. If Yoshi gets hit while trying to recover Baby Mario, he is only slightly deterred. It would be one thing if having Baby Mario acted as damage insurance, but Yoshi can easily get back up and pop Baby Mario’s bubble after several hits. The only things that will instantly kill Yoshi are spikes, lava, and pits, with or without Baby Mario in his captivity. The whole charade of recapturing Baby Mario left me feeling a bit cheated. I’d be more inclined to keep Baby Mario safe if the penalty for losing him was more strict or the time limit was decreased. Getting hit several times and still recovering Baby Mario with ten whole seconds on the clock becomes disillusioning, and I never felt panicked due to my mistakes in this game.

The one aspect of Super Mario World 2 that triumphs over any preceding Mario game are the bosses. The two fiery, labyrinthian castles that divide each world will always conclude with a boss encounter. The start of each fight will place Yoshi against a common enemy, and Kamek will usually show up and sprinkle his magic to mutate that enemy to a more formidable size. The Mario series, until this point, had an unfortunate habit of repetitive boss fights with a reskinned enemy of a different name as if the player wasn’t bright enough to tell that they were padding the game. All of the bosses in Super Mario World 2 are unique from one another, offering an entirely different challenge for each encounter. Each of them also offers different methods of beating them. Some of my favorites are the tug-of-war match with the ghost pot, the giant, gooey amoeba with its heart as a weakness, and chucking eggs at a giant frog’s uvula from the inside of his throat. Not only are these bosses varied and exciting, but many of them expertly use the egg-throwing mechanic without breaking any pacing. While I cherish most of the bosses in this game for different reasons, the final battle against Baby Bowser is the real tour de force. The first phase against Baby Bowser is enclosed in his playpen as the spoiled brat tries to mount Yoshi with no regard for Yoshi’s personal space. Once Yoshi bats him off enough times, the second phase begins, as does the real meat of the final battle. Kamek once again interrupts the battle to use his Magikoopa dust on Baby Bowser, which results in him erupting through the foundation of the entire castle like the Hulk ripping through his shirt. A luminescent sunset setting is the backdrop of Yoshi facing the now gigantic, behemoth-sized Baby Bowser, who is now slowly closing in on Yoshi with ominous yellow eyes and a dastardly smirk on his face. Yoshi now has to lob eggs at seemingly insurmountable distances at Baby Bowser, all the while avoiding his fireballs and watching his step on the crumbling foundation. This is an intense final battle that throws all painless conventions the game had before out the window, testing the player’s abilities in every way. Not only is this boss the biggest standout battle in any Mario game thus far, but it’s still one of Nintendo’s greatest from their entire run as a video game developer.

I choose to see Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island not as a direct sequel to Super Mario World or any of the Super Mario games. Nintendo was intentionally executing something completely different here, putting Yoshi at the helm with a whole other smattering of new mechanics. The developers simply used the Mario brand and Yoshi’s island setting to support the jumpstart of a new IP. Considering the slew of Yoshi-centric spinoffs this game has inspired, Nintendo’s goal seems pretty obvious to me. As of writing this, I have not played any of those Yoshi games, but my experience with this game makes me apprehensive about playing any of the others. This title is considered the best Yoshi game by a large margin, and some even consider it better than Super Mario World. I’m not sure if it’s due to a difference in preferences, but I was consistently underwhelmed by this game. I much prefer the faster-paced direction of the mainline Mario series to the slower, easier direction presents here. Aspects like the art style and the boss fights are impressive, but it’s only enough to slightly beguile me with its puerile charm. Super Mario World 2 is different from the typical Mario experience, but it wasn’t the change-up I wanted.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

By 2005, the 3D platformer had been a popular staple in gaming for almost a decade.
The 3D platformer genre was a staple of the early 3D era, giving us countless landmark titles that shaped the mold of what these newfangled extra dimensions could do for gaming. Trends relating to genres usually only last for the duration of a single console generation. Still, the era of the 3D platformer was prolonged into the sixth generation with new IPs that took the foundation of those earlier games and created some of the best 3D platformers of all time (Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, etc.). 2005 marked the launch of the Xbox 360, and there was no way that this streak of relevance for the 3D platformer would extend to another generation. The games that defined the seventh generation were so far removed from the 3D platformers that I grew up playing that these games would be damned if they even included a jump button. As much as I clamor about the era of the 3D platformers and critique the games of the following generation, it was time to hang up the old hat and explore new horizons. Fortunately, the 3D platformer genre did not stagnate in quality, even in its twilight years. To avoid the eventual oversaturation of the genre, it needed one last hurrah to end its legacy, and that game was Psychonauts. In my eyes, Psychonauts was the game that served as both the creative peak and the bittersweet swansong of the initial 3D platformer era.

It’s too bad the general public did not realize this upon the release year of Psychonauts. The game was developed by Double Fine, a studio created by Tim Schaffer in the wake of leaving LucasArts. If you’re not familiar with this man by name, he’s the one responsible for the likes of the quirky point and clicks/graphic adventure titles such as Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango. The eccentric, kooky nature of Tim Schaffer’s titles tend to garner high critical acclaim but do not have the commercial marketability to sell well. Tim Schaffer is a video game auteur with an uncompromising direction, giving all of his titles a sense of character and foundation not typically seen by other developers. This consistent formula has, however, doomed every single Tim Schaffer property to cult status, and Psychonauts was no exception. Not even developing a game in the widely accessible 3D platformer genre could net poor Tim any financial success. As par for the course with Tim’s games, the public attention Psychonauts deserved came a little too late. This attention wasn’t too long after the game’s release, but another console generation had been born, and trends in gaming were changing. The impact of Psychonauts had always been, in retrospect, a shining example from a distant era, further cementing its status as a coda for the 3D platformer era instead of ushering in a new wave of them. There were likely plenty of 3D platformers released shortly after Psychonauts, so why have I bestowed the honor of being the genre’s crowning achievement on this game? Because Psychonauts proved that 3D platformers could still be fresh and invigorating after a decade. One might assume that gamers would have grown tired of jumping onto platforms and collecting a smattering of trinkets, but Psychonauts proved otherwise.

The premise of Psychonauts certainly hadn’t been done in any previous 3D platformer. A “psychonaut” is a supernatural agent of justice who uses its psychic powers on missions of great importance on an international scale. The plural form of the word refers to their agency as these missions require more than one powerful mind to accomplish. Before one becomes a psychonaut, the process happens as early as preadolescence at Whispering Rock: the cerebral, summer-camp cousin to Hogwarts. Judging from the attention-deficit wandering eyes and whimpering hysterics from the campers, none of these kids are cut out to be Psychonauts. That is until an eager boy with goggles named Raz infiltrates the campground by falling from the sky. Raz, in an ironic twist of fate, has run away from the circus to follow his dream of being a psychonaut but does not have permission to be here as the other campers. He impresses the psychonaut counselors with his passionate recitation of the camp pamphlet, but the bureaucratic rules still state that Raz must leave accordingly. The sole reason why he stays is that his parents live too far away to pick him up immediately. Until then, Raz must make the most of his short time at Whispering Rock and further prove himself worthy of becoming a psychonaut.

Psychonauts wasn’t fresh because it rewrote the rulebook on the standard 3D platformer. Rather, its freshness stems from the clever way it uses the genre's tropes. The levels of Psychonauts take place in the subconscious minds of the people around Whispering Rock, accessed through an Aldous Huxley-inspired door-shaped portal that attaches to their heads. 3D platformers tend to run the gamut of varied levels. A grass world, beach world, ice world, desert world, fire world, etc. are the staple combinations of a geographically inconsistent world meant to provide variety for the player. While the variety is present, this collective of levels tends to feel inorganic. Imagination is a realm of limitless possibilities, so Psychonauts can provide a myriad of different-level themes and designs without breaking any sense of topographical rationale. The range of creative levels is juxtaposed with the woodland area of Whispering Rock, the hub world of the game. Whispering Rock is a spacious, hilly forest area that feels quaint and cozy, an orthodox depiction of a kid’s summer camp. Its rustic atmosphere and warm coziness act perfectly as a hub world, despite the occasional psychic cougar and bear encounters and being difficult to navigate. The hub world has its own merits, but its effectiveness is in juxtaposition with the wild nature of the levels. A hub world should be a source of respite by design, and Psychonauts conveys this perfectly. Going back to the hub world after adventuring through someone’s mind for a while feels like waking up from a dream.

Common tropes regarding Raz’s abilities as a 3D platformer character are also translated into the narrative. Being that he’s a rogue circus performer, Raz is as acrobatic as a flying squirrel. More appropriately, he’s as agile as Mario or any other 3D platformer protagonist. Whenever Raz jumps on tightropes or swings from bars, it’s easy to see the influences from other 3D platformers. The factor that keeps Psychonauts from seeming derivative is the sharp writing that masks these tropes as new ideas. Raz can’t swim either, a handicap that has plagued many 3D platformer characters. Whenever he comes close to a body of water, a horrific, translucent hand pops up and pulls Raz into the drink. Raz explains that long ago, psychics cursed every member of his family to a watery death, which has passed on for generations. All gamers will know that having water as a hazard has been done to death, but Psychonauts manages to weave it into something more substantial.

Psychonauts is also a tried and true collection, a popular faction of the 3D platformer. Like with Raz’s platforming abilities, the developers have cleverly integrated the trope of collectibles with the narrative identity of the game. The collectibles inside the minds of everyone are taken right from popular psychological constructs and theories. Figments of their imagination are the most common collectible in each level; wispy, paper-thin fabrications floating around in a plethora of shapes and colors. Collecting these figments will progressively increase Raz’s level, and there is plenty to collect per level. Five different types of sobbing pieces of luggage represent someone’s emotional baggage (har har), and Raz has to find the correct tag for each of them. Finding all five in each will unlock concept art for the level. Mental cobwebs are strewn about in the harder-to-reach corners of each level. Their pink, sparkly hue makes them easy to spot, but Raz can’t collect them until he buys a cobweb duster from the camp store. My favorite collectible that doesn’t have a real psychological theory behind it is a vault. Hitting this quadrupedal safe will unlock the person's memories, which can be viewed like the slides of a Viewfinder. These charming illustrations always give the player much-needed insight into the history of the person’s mind they are adventuring through. Sometimes, they even explain any kind of cognitive dissonance the person might have. Collectables in most 3D platformers are mainly used to prolong the player’s time in a level. Still, every single collectible here directly involves the main objective of clearing the mental space of one’s mind.

To defend himself in the untethered psyches of his fellow man, Raz’s mind comes with an arsenal of every psychic power that any magician or psychotic lunatic has ever professed to have. These psychic powers are unlocked through earning merit badges as per the camp setting of Whispering Rock. Whether or not earning the merit badge means a camper has learned the move or is now allowed to use it whenever they please isn’t clear, but Raz will have to use them often for offense, defense, traversal, and solving puzzles. Marksmanship is the first badge that acts as a projectile weapon and is the most useful means of offense. Pyrokinesis sets enemy and wooden objects ablaze, and telekinesis allows Raz to form a giant hand in his mind to pick up and throw both enemies and objects. Psychic powers like the shield are used for defense, while powers like invisibility and clairvoyance are mostly used for puzzles The confusion power is lobbed at enemies like a smoke grenade to discombobulate them for a brief period. My favorite mental power is levitation in which Raz rides on a glowing ball of energy that boosts his speed and jumping ability. This move is always convenient and makes traversal all the more comfortable. Raz can also use a “psi-punch” move that doesn’t require a badge or ammo. I’m no expert on parapsychological phenomena, but I’m fairly certain that Raz’s eclectic array of powers covers all the bases.

All of these clever uses of platforming tropes relating to psychological theories and phenomena, unfortunately, cannot mask the fact that the gameplay of Psychonauts feels very unrefined. The hiccups of this game make it apparent that Tim Schaffer and his team were amateurs in developing for the 3D platformer genre. Raz’s movements while walking are relatively fluid, but the cracks are visibly shown whenever Raz has to do something more complicated than that. Raz often has to execute a pole swinging move for traversal, leaping from poles or tree branches near camp. Gaining momentum feels natural enough, but the time it takes to gain that momentum is a little too long for something intended to be quick. This platforming mechanic is taken right from Jak and Daxter, and pole swinging in that game is much smoother due to simply needing to time the jumps correctly with a consistent momentum. Vine swinging is also present in Psychonauts, and where Raz lands after jumping off a vine tends to be infuriatingly inaccurate. Grind rails from Sonic Adventure 2 appear in some of the mind levels, and Raz’s jumping transitions are about as smooth as a glass enema. The grind rails work in Sonic Adventure 2 due to speed being the primary focus, something that Double Fine failed to realize. Ledge grabbing only works sometimes, and any sort of precision jumping is difficult to execute. All of this is probably due to the less-than-stellar frame rate that limits the potential of movement.

Combat in Psychonauts also feels just as awkward. 3D platformers often have various enemies running around the levels to make the locations natural and provide some challenges. Double Fine probably felt obligated to implement common enemies because of this. The censors are a group of abstract concepts that work to expunge the mind of any “improper thoughts”, namely the invading Raz. They are personified as suited men with glasses and business haircuts. Their weapons of choice are clipboards and giant stamps with a negative mark on them, appropriate tools for the humorless cranial bureaucrats. They come in a few different forms, with some using their stamp as a projectile and beefy censors who deal considerable damage and are defensive powerhouses. Other than the censors, the only other recurring common enemy is walking bombs with vague, cat-like appearances that explode in Raz’s face at close range. The censors may come in a few varieties, but this doesn’t mean they don’t overstay their welcome. They appear from portals that never disappear, so expect a constant onslaught of them in certain areas. I’ve also found that the only clear means of offense against the censors is using the marksmanship badge, which can ricochet off every censor to clear the area. Using any other offensive merit badge like pyrokinesis or telekinesis is either too slow or hurts Raz. Raz can always use the psi-punch move, but each punch takes too long to wind in succession. Compare Raz’s punch to something like Sly Cooper’s swift cane swings, and the difference in performance is easy to see. Also, compare the number of effective weapons in Ratchet and Clank to the number of effective merit badges in Psychonauts. I’d love to mix and match Raz’s offensive powers, but the game doesn’t give the player any leeway to do this.

Psychonauts’ creativity and sharp writing compensate for their faulty gameplay. The world of Psychonauts is filled with quirky, oddball characters that uphold the Tim Schaffer standard of wackiness. The levelheaded (relatively speaking) center of this crazy world is Raz, our plucky pre-teen protagonist. I get the feeling everyone knows a kid like Raz to some extent. He’s the polite, type-A personality who does exceptionally well in school and is leagues more mature than most kids his age. The scout-like psychic camp of Whispering Rock is a perfect place to indulge his passions because Raz exemplifies the loyal, disciplined boy scout to a T. He’s an eager beaver who treats all of the bizarre things around him as curious discoveries. His determination and will make him a charismatic protagonist. In saying that, he’s probably the kid who reminds the teacher to collect the homework at the end of the day. He doesn’t exactly win over his fellow campers with his social skills.

Aiding Raz are the peculiar supporting characters that surround him at camp. Agents Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello are the two psychonaut elites with two contrasting personalities. They also might be an item, as a vault reel suggests. They are the two people Raz has to prove himself to so he can stay at Whispering Rock. They see a great deal of potential in him but still can’t permit him to stay without permission. Coach Oleander is the other psychonaut on the premise who walks human thumb with a serious Napoleon complex. Ford Cruller is the groundskeeper whose mind is so out of whack that he can’t remember who he is unless he’s in his underground hideout. Do not be misled by his geriatric quirks; he’s a highly respected psychonaut with one of the most powerful minds in the agency. He acts as the Yoda to Raz’s Luke by training his mind and offering help on the field via the smell of a bacon strip.
The other faction of supporting characters at Whispering Rock is Raz’s fellow campers. Lili is Raz’s no-nonsense love interest whose secret crush on Raz is hilariously revealed to the player because Raz is psychic and can read minds. Their playful boy-girl dynamic is adorable, and their relationship reveals more boyish tendencies from Raz. Dogen is Raz’s timid bunkmate with psychic powers so turbulent and unhinged that he must wear an aluminum hat to keep them under control. Bobby Zilch is the typical obnoxious camp bully with an even more typical little crony named Benny. These are the only campers who get some limelight in the story, as the others are relegated to the background. The only way that the player will get an insight into the rest of the campers is to explore the camp, and I highly recommend doing this. The player will get a glimpse of life at camp surrounding the activities of the rest of the kids. Raz gets to experience the strained friendship of Chops, and J.T. due to J.T.'s toxic relationship with Elka listens to the slow, incoherent ramblings from Vernon, and eavesdrops on a disturbing suicide pact between the enthusiastic duo of Clem and Crystal. The mundane activities of the campers may seem superfluous in the grand scheme of things, but it’s essential to get to know all of these kids due to the rising action of the plot.

Psychonauts should give the player enough time to know every camper a little more organically, but the bizarre pacing of the first third of the game doesn’t allow them to. The “camp section” of the game is a series of three tutorial levels in the minds of Coach Oleander, Sasha, and Milla. Oleander’s war ground obstacle course teaches the player basic 3D platformer skills and has to be completed before they can look around the camp. The next day will have Raz darting to Sasha Nein’s lab for a tutorial on combat inside of Sasha’s methodically organized cube mind to reflect his stoic Germanness. Milla’s mind is a linear, gaudy disco-dance party straight out of the music video for Deee-Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart”, made to teach Raz the levitation move. Were all of these tutorial levels necessary? Each of them is at least different and gives the player some interesting insight into the machinations of these characters’ minds, but having three straight tutorial missions with no stake in the story gives the first third of the game a glacial pace. They should have supplemented this with a level that lets Raz interact with the rest of the campers, but the player has to unknowingly make an effort to do this on their own in the middle of Sasha and Milla’s levels.

Why is getting to know the campers so important? Because after these three levels, all of them are gone. The rising action occurs inside Raz’s subconscious, where he sees a mad doctor extract Dogen’s brain from the top of a tall tower that Raz cannot reach. Suddenly, all of the camper’s brains are missing, and Raz finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy. A sizable portion of the game involves Raz retrieving every child’s brain back to their respective bodies, and Raz will comment on who the brain belongs to upon finding it. If the player doesn’t take the time to get to know them, the impact of saving their brain is lost. It’s quickly revealed that Oleander is behind this and is collaborating with the creepy Dr. Loboto to extract the children’s brains to power tanks to take over the world. Lili is intact until the fabled monster of the lake takes her into the water. After Raz dukes it out with the lungfish, Raz enters its mind into a place called “Lungfishopolis,” where Raz is a giant, city-destroying monster in an ironic twist to show that the lungfish is just as afraid of Raz as Raz is of it. Raz learns that the Lungfish is a reasonable creature under Oleander’s spell to do his bidding. The first psychic venture into a mind without a hand-holding tutorial finally shifts the game into gear. Who doesn’t like to destroy buildings as a giant? More importantly, it’s the first level that delves into a poignant theme that Psychonauts delivers: the theme of empathizing with the mentally ill or understanding those who are different from you.

This theme persists for every remaining level of the game. The rising-action revolving around the Lungfish and the conspiracy was just a boost of momentum, but the asylum levels are when the game starts to show its stride. The lungfish takes Raz to an offshore island where a lofty, dilapidated asylum resides. Even though the asylum is in ruins, four patients roam the grounds. The minds of each of these patients serve as the levels of the asylum, and they all relate to different mental illnesses. Boyd, the security guard is an obsessive-compulsive, anxious, paranoid wreck whose mind is rife with conspiracy involving the elusive milkman. Gloria is a former stage starlet with bipolar disorder, and the duality of her moods is cleverly depicted by the comedy and tragedy masks from a theater at her level. Fred Bonaparte is a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the short emperor is the other voice of his multiple-personality disorder. Lastly, Edgar, the painter, is suffering from a serious creative block due to his depression from a traumatic event in his high school days. Raz must clear the minds of these lost souls with a therapeutic excavation of their psyche, acting as half Professor X and half Sigmund Freud. Helping these people will help him access the top of the tower guarded by the hostile inmate Crispin.

These four levels are the reason why I hold Psychonauts in such high regard. Double Fine may have been inexperienced in developing for the 3D platformer genre, but their esteemed pedigree in designing graphic adventure games shows here. The levels in Tim Schaffer’s previous games in the graphic adventure genre were designed with one main objective that was slowly unraveled through completing several smaller objectives, mainly relating to puzzles. For example, the main objective of “The Milkman Conspiracy” is to find the milkman somewhere on the level. Doing so requires many steps involving collecting a series of signs and objects that will unlock more of the area. The Dragnet-Esque secret agents will perceive Raz as something depending on what he’s holding, which will access an area (and result in some hilariously deadpan dialogue). The main objective of Gloria’s level is to get up to the rafters and fight Gloria’s inner critic. To do so, Raz has to match the right play with a series of potentially correct scenes. Fred’s level involves Raz helping him win against Napoleon in a board game based on the battle of Waterloo. Raz must perform a series of tasks to gain the support of more board pieces and then move the pieces to the enemy’s fortress. Edgar’s level is the most visually striking and the least fluid of the four. It would be the most linear as well if there wasn’t a giant bull constantly stampeding down the main pathway. Nevertheless, the main objective is to collect cards for Edgar to stack, all the while avoiding the charging bull. Each of these levels is unique in its own right, but they all maintain the same course of objectives that give them all a solid foundation. The open-level design in a game like Jak and Daxter would simply involve the player retrieving the main collectible in an unrestricted order. Psychonauts slightly confine the player comparatively, but progressively unraveling the layers of the level to the main objective is a sharper approach to this type of level design. The brilliant intricacy of the level design here was unparalleled to any other 3D platformer I’ve played.

I wish this degree of quality was maintained for the final act of the game. Raz climbs the asylum tower to find Lili in captivity. He also finds that Dr. Loboto is here with the brains of both Sasha and Milla in his lab. With the help of a gender-swapped Igor and her trusty turtle companion, they all break free and have a showdown with Oleander. Raz then has to dispose of Oleander’s final form, which is one of the tanks that he put his brain into. Through a cleverly executed trap involving brain sneezing powder, Raz’s brain mixes with Oleander’s and forms “The Meat Circus,”; the crossbreed of both psyches into one level. Many fans of the game are not particularly fond of this level, and I am one of them. They say that “The Meat Circus” is difficult, but I think the more appropriate word for it is irritating. Oleander’s psyche has manifested a traumatic childhood moment involving his butcher dad slaughtering a bunny, so the Oleander in the level is a child version of him. If I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed that Oleander’s childhood trauma stemmed from being constantly bullied or people telling him to shut his fucking piehole because that’s what I wanted to do to the annoying little squirt. I, unfortunately, couldn’t do this due to having to escort little Oleander through the circus. Escort missions are aggravating enough, but this mission is a race against the clock before the malformed bunny creatures kill Oleander. On the way to his location, little Oleander will be attacked constantly by these things, and every hit makes him eek out another line with the most shrill, maddening voice I’ve ever heard from a child character. Raz’s half of this abominable mix of psyches is his negative perception of the circus, so guess what this level is full of? Rope swings, beams, and other trapeze tricks galore, and the player has to do this to a great extent during this portion. The player also has to do these during the second half with the psychological manifestation of Raz’s dad. Still, the irritation I experienced during that section was nothing compared to the first half with child Oleander. This all culminates in Raz fighting a hybrid version of his dad and Oleander’s and reuniting with the real version of his dad, who is more understanding than Raz led him to be. Raz’s brain is restored, and Oleander somehow gets off scot-free. Sasha and Milla promote Raz to the role of a junior psychonaut as they are called on another important mission. The story here wraps up a little too nicely, and it’s made even worse that the climactic point of it was a level that included a bevy of the game’s worst aspects and none of what made the previous levels great.

Ironically, the game that I am heralding as the peak of the 3D platformer era isn’t up to par with the performance of many of its contemporaries. The second-wave 3D platformers of the sixth generation refined the formula to the point of near perfection, and Psychonauts falls too short of the standards set by the other games. Movement can be imprecise, the framerate is dodgy, and combat can be so awkward that it’s a wonder as to why they bothered putting enemies in the levels at all. Some of the levels in Psychonauts are some of the best I’ve ever played, but they are presented with strange pacing in a story that is shaky at best. The less said about “The Meat Circus,” the better. Normally I wouldn’t lavish a game with so many flaws with this amount of praise, but Psychonauts has too much substance to prattle on about its rough edges. The humor, creativity, characters, and depth that Psychonauts offers in its level design are extraordinary and make up for any shortcomings. Even the more lackluster levels (except for “The Meat Circus”) have a unique flair that I haven’t seen in any other 3D platformer. No game is perfect, and I’d gladly take Psychonauts any day over an uninspired collectathon with smoother gameplay. Psychonauts unlocked an unseen potential in the 3D platformer genre, an impressive feat considering the long-winded history of the genre by 2005. As it turned out, it did not prolong the genre’s relevance, but at least it was treated to a rich, tasty dessert before it was put to bed.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

The biggest problem with licensed video games is that the creators and writers of these properties are seldom present in their development. These people sign their brainchild off to a video game developer without overseeing the process, gleefully accepting the royalties without any concern about what the final product is. It’s like leaving your child in the custody of a foster home and getting alimony payments while your child is abused and neglected. It’s a crying shame. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the iconic animated series South Park, proverbially let various developers smack their brainchild around as a pimp does to a hoe. The South Park video games released during the early days of the show were some of the worst licensed games of all time. These three South Park titles spanned three different genres, and they each managed not to be anything more than painfully mediocre. The developers churned out the most half-assed, uninspired versions of an FPS, kart racer, and party game and slapped South Park’s face on it to increase the potential profit. These games put such a damper on the South Park brand that we didn’t see another video game adaptation for over a decade, not even during the show’s peak in the 2000s. Matt and Trey were ostensibly dissatisfied with letting those shoddy video games define the South Park name in gaming, so they figured the best way to make a quality product was to do it themselves. If the “6 Days to Air” documentary indicates, Matt and Trey are not ones to half-ass anything. The creators of South Park have been front and center in writing, voice acting, and the show's direction since its inception. Matt and Trey are also industry renaissance men who have been successful in many facets of entertainment mediums, so making a video game would not be a task beyond their element. What they produced with their impressive work ethic and their stark ambition was South Park: The Stick of Truth. This turn-based RPG fully encapsulated what makes for an exceptional licensed game that the others didn’t: an extravagant celebration of the show for the fans who have been watching it for decades under the guise of an RPG.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is also the first South Park video game to even remotely capture the art style of the show in the graphics. Gaming was going through the growing pains of rudimentary 3D graphics at the time the previous games were released, and these blocky shapes and textures resembled nothing of the paper-thin look of South Park. Ironically, it took almost eight generations of graphical progress in gaming to emulate the crude aesthetic of South Park, and the developers here pulled it off to an uncanny degree. During one of the cutscenes, any unknowing passerby would think that the player was simply watching an episode of the show. Once the cutscene ends, that same passerby would most likely be in awe and disbelief that this is a video game. The developers rendered the graphics to look EXACTLY like the show's animation. The character’s movement is also consistent with the show’s presentation, waddling with every step even when running. The presentation is perfect and will continue to be unless the show drastically alters its idiosyncratic animation style in the future.

A South Park turn-based RPG seemed a little unorthodox to me the year it was released. I was both a fan of the show and the turn-based RPG genre, but I couldn’t wrap my head around anything else but the novelty of such a combination. Were Matt and Trey doing this to radically deviate from the genres the previous South Park games attempted? Whatever their reasoning was, it made total sense to me when I started to play the game. The RPG and the open-world are non-interchangeable genres, but they do tend to overlap with one another on numerous occasions. Using the RPG’s tendency to put the player in a vast world with lenient parameters was perfect for South Park. The titular town is as essential a character as any of its denizens, and the RPG world design gives the player free rein to explore all of the town’s familiar sites. The player can walk down the strip with Tom’s Rhinoplasty seen behind the town sign in every show's intro. The player can visit many children’s houses and find a smattering of references relating to that character. The large width of Stark’s Pond can be determined from the player's perspective, and they can run down the narrow halls of South Park Elementary. Trey Parker expressed that they wanted the town of South Park in this game to feel like the towns in Earthbound: homey but intricately designed and exuding a “lived-in” feeling. Every building in the town of Earthbound, significant or not, can still be visited by the player to make the town feel homier. The Stick of Truth also does this, but it has the advantage of providing familiar buildings from a popular TV show that has been around for several years. After hearing Trey speak directly about Earthbound's influence on this game, it’s a wonder what other facets of Earthbound have influenced South Park. The show does revolve around a group of kids living in a podunk American town where strange, macabre things occur. There are too many parallels between Pokey and Cartman for it to be a simple coincidence.

The RPG gameplay and lore of The Stick of Truth are, however, influenced by more traditional fantasy tropes. The kids of South Park adhere to the divinities of more orthodox fantasy lore with a mix of their own rules, like Calvinball in Middle-Earth. Placing these characters in the context of an RPG isn’t a left-field concept for South Park either. One of the show’s most celebrated episodes is “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring,” where the boys roleplay as classes from fantasy lore while parodying the plot arc of the Lord of the Rings (in South Park fashion, the “ring” is a mixed-up porno movie that the boys unknowingly possess). The Stick of Truth has them playing the same game, but now it’s in an interactive medium. The main difference is that none of the kids from the show will be the focal point of the game. Instead, the player will play as the new kid who just moved into South Park, an avatar character that the player can fully customize. That South Park character creator that everyone on the internet used back in the 2000s can now be utilized for more than just a profile picture on Myspace. “The New Kid,” or “Douchebag” as Cartman dubs thee, is a character meant to portray the mute, blank-faced protagonist seen in most RPG games. Characters in the game make several points on how weird it is that the new kid never says anything, commenting on how awkward this trope is in practice as usual for the satirical masters at South Park. The rationale for this across all games is to aid the player’s immersion by letting them live vicariously through the vacant character. I think doing this works for most RPGs, and it works wonderfully here. Controlling an avatar character is the best way to implement the player into the world of South Park, something I’m certain fans of the show has always fantasized about.

Fear not, for the characters in the show are still playable characters in the game. Six of the central South Park boys serve as partner characters. Butters, Kenny, Jimmy, Stan, Kyle, and Cartman will follow behind the player’s lead one at a time per the player’s selection. They assist the player in battle and utter countless quips that fit their character, some of them being reused lines from the show. The South Park boys also have unique move sets suited for various battle situations: Butters and Kyle are heavy hitters that are most effective with strong common enemies, Kenny and Jimmy’s moves affect several characters at once, and Stan and Cartman's attacks do a ton of damage to singular enemies like bosses. They each have special moves that also serve as references from the show. Cartman’s “curse” move references the South Park movie. I chuckled at Butters turning into Professor Chaos and Jimmy playing the infamous “brown note” on a gigantic horn. Still, my favorite special move references the very first episode of South Park. Kyle’s “kick the baby” is a powerhouse move in which Kyle punts Ike at forces that shred the enemy’s defenses. The partners also have moved in the overworld for certain situations. Butters acts as a medic to heal NPCs, and Kenny shows his…tits as a distraction tactic. Putting the notable characters from the show in secondary support roles proved to be better than playing them in roulette like the FPS game on the N64. Instead, the roulette of these characters as party members plays a part in the blank-slate immersion of the avatar character. It feels far more alluring playing alongside these characters as an avatar for the same reason exploring the town does. My only gripe is that some party members get way more screen time than others. The game’s story is divided into three days, and the player starts with Butters and Kenny. Stan and Jimmy appear on the second day and Kyle and Cartman on the third. By then, most of the game is done, and I always feel a tad deprived of Kyle and Cartman. Because of this, I always save plenty of side quests for the third day.

The Stick of Truth gives us more South Park fan service than having the boys at their party. When The Stick of Truth was released, the series had been in the upper echelon of adult animation for over a decade. The town of South Park is more than just Tom’s Rhinoplasty and Stark’s Pond: it’s a town with a wacky history with even wackier characters that this game could not do the source material justice without including them. The game organizes them through a series of collectibles. Collecting Facebook friends is the main collectible in the game that gives the player incentive for the new kid to get acquainted with every familiar face in town. The player will friend his partners and the other boys playing the game, but he will extend his influence to many other factions in the town, such as the adults, the girls, the goth kids, etc. Friending every Christmas Critter is possible after finding a certain path in the woods. The new kid even gets acquainted with many prominent Canadians during a quest in an 8-bit, top-down depiction of their quaint, flatulent nation. Some characters are locked behind a side quest, like Al Gore and Mr. Kim, but the side quests in the game are just as enjoyable as the main ones. Chinpokomon can be found in the crevices of people’s living spaces, and the awesome jingle is played every time the player collects one. The miscellaneous junk is all nostalgia paraphernalia from the show like the Okama Gamesphere, the Antonio Banders love doll, Mr. Twig, etc. Gathering all of the friends and Chinpokomon never felt tedious or grating because it felt like a fan-service scavenger hunt just to see what they included. As far as fan service is concerned, the developers left no stone unturned. They even included a zombified Chef in a boss fight. I’m glad they included Chef in the game because a South Park game with many references wouldn’t feel complete without him. I wish it could’ve been done under better circumstances, but that’s not the game’s fault.

As for the combat regarding the main protagonist, the game gives the player plenty of options. Four class options are available at the start, three from archetypal fantasy lore, and the “jew” class is pure South Park. The warrior class is a strength build whose special moves are melee attacks, including Cartman’s favorite nut-kicking compromise: the “roshambo.” Mages use magic attacks with a bevy of elemental spells at their disposal. Thieves are stealthy and swift, and their move set is based on their quick mobility. Lastly, the “jew” is a wild-card class with many creatively funny abilities surrounding the religion like “Jew-Jitsu” and summoning a giant dreidel. Each class is assigned a melee weapon that fits their role (the thief has a dagger, the mage has a staff, etc.), but the player is free to customize their tools however they like. The weapons progressively get more deadly as the player’s level increases, starting with a cardboard sword to being able to purchase a real katana from Jimbo and Ned. Patches also allow elemental damage on all weapons that induce status effects on enemies. Farting moves are mostly used in the overworld to bypass obstacles, but they can also be used to great effect during battle to cause status ailments and cease charging attacks.

Customizability is a staple of any RPG, but it leads to a popular point of contention with The Stick of Truth. The game is consistently leaning on the easier side of things, but the lack of difficulty becomes a joke later in the game when the player is at their maximum level. Giving the player the ability to mix and match their builds allows them to exploit the most powerful weapons and items in the game. I sure did this. Stacking the bleed effects on my projectile weapons assured me that the enemies would bleed to death after only a few turns. Using my partner characters in battle was only a means to end the fight quicker. Before I became the strongest warrior in South Park, the game was already giving me a few too many perks. Health and PP are fully restored after every battle, making the tense moments of preserving one's health in most RPGs trivial. Items that restore health and PP are in hefty stock, and using them in battle does not count as a turn. Naturally, I used this advantage as well. The only time I died in the entire game was during the spaceship sequence because I was alone and didn’t have my gear. I breezed through The Stick of Truth which would normally vex me and cause me to criticize it fervently, but I’m giving this game a pass. Licensed games cater to fans of the source material, not gamers exclusively. If you are both a gamer and a fan of South Park like myself, then more power to you. I’d like to think I’ve accumulated somewhat of a gamer acumen through my years of playing them, so perhaps this game is harder for those South Park fans uninitiated with RPGs or video games. They wouldn’t know to take these advantages the game gives the player as I would. Judging from the Paper Mario influence in the RPG combat, the healing turns, and the automatic rejuvenation after battles, this game was intended to be an easier, streamlined version of the RPG genre for a casual audience. All I ask for in a licensed game is for the gameplay to be competent and represent the show’s history, and The Stick of Truth achieves this without question.

The Stick of Truth is also a dynamite South Park episode/movie. The game has so many funny moments that it would be hard to list them coherently here, but simply being funny isn’t the mark of an exceptional episode of South Park. The moments that we all discuss at the water coolers are the shocking moments that raised the bar for what’s allowed on TV. Instead of contending with the FCC as normal, The Stick of Truth has the privilege of testing the limits of the ESRB and its international equivalents. PEGI and the AC have a history of banning video games because of explicit content, and The Stick of Truth was a natural contender to provoke their wrath. The nazi zombies were an especially touchy subject for Europe for obvious reasons. The fight against the giant aborted nazi zombie fetus (yes, you heard me right) is an insanely offensive boss for too many reasons to count and one of the game's highlights. Farting on its corpse will net the player an achievement, and the “Too Far” title implies that’s where even Matt and Trey draw the line. Europe found fault with the abortion scene in the clinic, and both continents were revulsed at the nighttime alien probe sequence on the ship. I’m surprised the other nighttime sequence with the gnomes wasn’t censored due to having the pornographic background of the protagonist’s parents fucking while fighting the gnomes. Matt and Trey would ideally like their work to be uncensored, but they found a way to supplement these banned scenes like the smarmy bastards they are. Illustrations of a crying Michelangelo’s David and koala bear cover the screens during these provocative scenes for Europe and Australia, respectively. Passages describing what is supposed to be depicted here are shown with these images in a passive-aggressive, almost condescending tone. It’s almost as funny as the scenes themselves, but I can gloat as an American because I’d rather be treated to an unadulterated version of the game. After all of these years, it’s amazing how South Park thinks of ways to provoke the wrath of the censors.

The story itself could make for an exceptional show episode, but it decides to irk me like most modern South Park episodes. An aspect of modern South Park that I’m not particularly fond of is nameless government characters explaining the message or the underlying joke of an episode ad nauseam through stoic dialogue. The story was engaging as a roleplaying war over the stick of truth, but then they had to add a government conspiracy into the mix. An alien ship crash lands on the South Park Mall at the end of the first day, and government agents have built a facility around it and plan to blow up the town with a snuke (another reference from the show). Once all the factions have united against Clyde, they find that the snuke has been planted inside Mr. Slave at the top of Clyde’s towering fortress. Fans of the show are treated to a Lemmiwinks-inspired journey through the digestive system of Mr. Slave and disable the snuke. Defeating Clyde and saving the town should have signaled the end of the game, but the conspiracy plot had to creep its way back into the narrative for closure. There is a long exposition about the protagonist existing as a special being with powers that the government wants to harness and the power of the stick of truth. Kenny takes it, and his friends have to pry it from him in the final boss fight. The town is reverted to normal when the protagonist farts on Kenny’s balls. The plot of the story should’ve followed along with the gameplay initiative and kept things simple. I’m not amused when they do this in the show, and it’s no different here. The ending is then saved with a closing scene of Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and the protagonist dumping the stick into the lake with the town being rebuilt in the background after all of the chaos. They ask the protagonist what he wants to do now, and his only spoken line is, “screw you guys, I’m going home.” Amazing.

Reflecting on the piss-poor quality of the older South Park games, it’s a wonder how Matt and Trey gave those studios the affirmative to violate their property as they did. South Park is their life and the reason for their success, and they still put their blood, sweat, and tears into each episode from two decades onward. Those three ingredients should be in every licensed game, but it seems that Matt and Trey are the only ones who care enough to maintain the show's validity in other mediums. South Park: The Stick of Truth was a wonderful surprise for everyone when it was released. South Park fans were treated to their first legitimate interactive experience in the zany mountain town that used the tropes of the RPG genre to fully envelope the fans into the fabric of the show. The astounding amount of fan service makes any long-time viewer of the show giddy. While the gameplay and story aren’t perfect, a licensed game doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. These aspects are still lightyears ahead of what we usually expect from licensed titles. South Park: The Stick of Truth not only raised the bar for licensed games to follow, but it raised the bar for the series itself. Considering how long it’s around, that’s quite the feat.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com