On a scale of one to ten, how “mature” is the first-person shooter genre of video games? Actually, I’ll just revert this question into a rhetorical one because it would seem obvious to anyone that FPS games are inherently mature given the content of the genre. Any game where the player has a stacked arsenal of firearms strapped to their belts is bound to foster a bevy of bloody chaos. Even for those few FPS games deemed tamer by the ESRB where the player can’t splatter the walls with the insides of their enemies like a messy canvas, I can’t name a single FPS game with a rating less severe than “T” for teen. One game could potentially swap the bullets with NERF darts or some kind of liquid substance like water or paint, but where’s the vicarious thrill in that? Video games are the only outlet in which mowing down people and creatures with full rounds of piercing bullets and blowing them to smithereens with explosives is considered morally permissible in society (unless you want to join the army), and that’s probably the primary reason for their success. While the bloodshed and immersive gun-toting perspective the first-person angle provide certainly solidifies the FPS genre’s maturity in the graphical sense, there is another facet to the spectrum of maturity that might be in contention. FPS games are graphic, but are they sophisticated? The genre obviously isn’t intended for children, but statistics will point out that most of the FPS landscape is dominated by those younger than its intended demographic. I’m speaking about something of a “high-brow” FPS experience, a game that approaches the tropes of the genre with a more methodical, atmospheric, and cinematically-paced direction as opposed to the guerilla, high-octane masculine wish-fulfillment games like Doom and Duke Nukem portrayed. The first FPS game that elevated the FPS genre into its proverbial puberty, if you will, was Half-Life, the debut title from widely acclaimed American developer Valve.

I should probably interject and claim that Half-Life was not an “alternative” FPS game that appealed to the PC gaming hipsters while alienating the casual crowd that was usually satiated by the standard gung-ho FPS games. Half-Life was well received by practically everyone under the sun because it was still a tried and true FPS game. In fact, Half-Life’s beta form was a modded experiment, using the iconic multiplayer FPS game Quake as its mechanical template. Still, Half-Life was arguably the most innovative FPS game of the early 3D era after the genre’s basic foundation was established in the generation prior, and I’m surprised Valve’s ambitions didn’t turn anyone off at the time. Half-Life was truly a game changer not only for the FPS genre but for gaming in general, as games from genres outside of the FPS also took note of Half-Life’s sprinklings of pure genius. If I were to compare Half-Life to another work outside of the gaming medium with the same kind of impact, it would probably be Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 film debut Breathless. The seminal French New Wave film took the rulebook of filmmaking and burned it to a crisp, and Godard reshaped the medium of film from the smoldering ashes of tradition that was forever lost when he ignited the pages. All the while, Breathless still offered a simple story so as to not mystify the audience too swiftly with all of the radical rule-breaking they were witnessing. Half-Life follows something of a similar effect as the game is easily recognizable as an FPS game on the surface, but they’ll soon notice the askew details interwoven in the fabric of the game. As one could probably guess, Half-Life’s legacy is cemented by its visionary attributes that several future titles would emulate, making it a game held in the highest of respects by the gaming zeitgeist. However, Half-Life is turning a quarter of a century old this year and it's a game from the earliest of 3D eras, so I unfortunately have to bring its overall quality into contention with the dreaded “great for its time” assessment usually accompanied by an ellipsis. I hate to judge this legendary title by the liver spots it sprouted over time, but I’m not sure Half-Life can entirely coast by now with its landmark accomplishments.

Immediately, the player will notice Half-Life’s most innovative contribution to gaming in the opening sequence. Half-Life’s video game equivalent to Godard’s advent of jump cuts is the seamless cutscenes. In most video games, cutscenes are implemented as breaks from the gameplay to interpose exposition in a cinematic display. In an era where cutscenes were becoming more commonplace thanks to gaming technology now competently rendering something akin to reality like film, albeit in textures resembling claymation, Half-Life was not satisfied with conforming to this prevalent trend. Personally, I don’t mind cutscenes in video games as long as they are of a tasteful length and aren’t used as opportunities to substitute gameplay as film clips with little interactivity. Perhaps Valve was dissuaded after witnessing the self-indulgently long cutscenes seen in Metal Gear Solid released that same year and adamantly declared that video games should not stray away from their interactive nature. The opening “tram sequence” where our protagonist, the faceless theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, is being escorted through the entrance of the Black Mesa research facility. While riding on the tram suspended over a magnetic rail, the player has free reign of camera control that can point Gordon’s first-person perspective towards any of the sights along the way to the main entrance. Once tardy Mr. Freeman finally makes his arrival through the security gates, his fellow scientists instruct him to find the HEV suit and make his way down to the testing chamber. Normally, a cutscene would direct the player through the process of directing Freeman toward his main objective because it’s pure exposition with no trace of action to gamify, and the opening on the tram would be scrapped entirely for being unnecessary. Most likely, cutscenes would interrupt the gameplay any time a scientist or security guard would speak to Gordon or the player would watch a lengthy cutscene detailing the descent from the entrance to the test room because the “action” doesn’t occur until after this objective is completed. Allowing the player to keep control of Gordon during these sections as if the action never ceases feels more organic in terms of mirroring gameplay with real-life autonomy. It almost exposes the superficial aspects of implementing cutscenes with automatically generated results in an interactive medium. Of course, the ability to act freely at all times allows the player to act like a lunatic in down times when their gaming skills aren’t needed. In this context, Gordon can dick around the facility for as long as the player wishes, running around like a sugar-addled child and popping a scientist's meal by pressing the popcorn button on the microwave too many times. Half-Life is arguably the prime culprit in causing a sense of “ludonarrative dissonance” in gaming, but the game was made at a time when non-gamer critics were apathetic about the medium and didn’t come up with rhetoric in an attempt to sabotage its credibility.

During the experiment in Black Mesa’s chambers, Half-Life truly loosens the chain of exposition as all hell breaks loose. Or, at least in Half-Life’s context, hell is the convergence with another dimension light years away. An accident occurs during the test when Gordon pushes a space crystal into the concentrated energy field in the test chamber’s center, which becomes dangerously unstable. This mistake creates a phenomenon the scientists refer to as a “resonance cascade,” which acts as a one-way portal to Earth from an alien world called “Xen.” If the explosion from the reaction didn’t kill everyone with the laboratory crashing down on them as collateral, then the hostile creatures from Xen will be sure to make quick work of them. Panicking in a situation that is seemingly hopeless, Gordon has to fight his way to the surface with his Black Mesa peers and pray that some kind of organization like the military comes to their rescue. The catalyst event in Half-Life is such tonal whiplash from the mundane office environment, and it catapults the player to a point of no return.

Throughout the duration of the game, Half-Life subtly exposes itself as a horror game. The game isn’t classified as one by most because it doesn’t fit the traditional definition of one, probably due to the genre being redefined in the vein of survival horror at the time thanks to Resident Evil. Surely, the content of Half-Life would be reasonably described as horrific. The state of New Mexico is a very inspired choice of setting for the Black Mesa compound, for the “Land of Enchantment” used to be associated with conspiratorial oddities like UFOs and radiated creatures before a certain television series shifted that to crystal meth production. Everything fucked up in New Mexico seems to only be affirmed by unreliable word of mouth, and that is exactly what the scenario in Black Mesa seems like something like a future urban legend. On top of climbing to the surface, Gordon and the others have to contend with Xen’s eclectic ecosystem of creatures, who all seem to have acquired a taste for human flesh. Every enemy the portal has provided is completely unique and takes some time to learn how to dispatch them upon frequent encounters. However, it’s not how they approach Gordon that makes them terrifying, rather; it’s what they do to the defenseless scientists. “Head Crabs” get their nickname from attaching themselves to the heads of their prey after they’ve paralyzed them, controlling the host in a zombified state. The look of how gnarled and decayed the host body is in such a short amount of time matched with their agonizing cries makes this enemy a shocking encounter. Barnacles are stationary predators that act like venus fly traps, letting down their sticky, rope-like tongues to unsuspecting victims and hoisting them up to liquefy them like a bioorganic blender, leaving the bone remnants as cleanly as a barbeque feast. Sometimes, the enemies lurking in air vents and between the crevices in the walls reduce the scientists to a bloody pulp, a testament to the theory that the fear of the unknown is more frightening than what is seen. Eventually, the military does arrive, but the player should save their hallelujahs. Instead of lending a helping hand, these padded, meathead sons-a-bitches are ordered to exterminate every last Black Mesa employee as a drastic means of covering up the resonance cascade incident. It’s like a darker depiction of jocks picking on the nerds, or picking off in this context. Even with their combat training and weapons, the military men will also succumb to the same grizzly fates at the hands of the aliens as the scientists did. All hope seems to be lost in Half-Life, and the constant visceral encounters make the feeling of doom more impending.

Yet, Half-Life never really exudes the same aura of spookiness as most horror games do. Half-Life’s atmosphere is more cold and mechanical if anything. Most of the game takes place inside Black Mesa’s walls and before the facility ran rampant with extraterrestrials, this was a place of business. Black Mesa was a professional environment that looks like the archetypal corporate building, reveling in sterility. Once chaos ensues, the destitute state of Black Mesa’s interior is like a fracture of bureaucratic stability. It would feel liberating if Gordon’s life wasn’t at stake because of what reduced Black Mesa to this, or if he wasn’t wedged between multiple layers of the Earth’s crust. Between the detritus of machines littered around the corridors of Black Mesa and the sublevel layers of earth the facility exists under like an inward skyscraper, Half-Life exudes a dreadful sense of claustrophobia that seems insurmountable to escape. Music is used very sparsely in the game, so the soundscape is the minimalist static of broken machinery matched with the tapping of Gordon’s footsteps. Half-Life gives off the feeling of being alone, even though many NPC scientists and security guards are scattered about trying to survive. The fear stems from feeling like Gordon is left to his own defenses in this grueling trek to freedom.

This ascent to the surface also feels quite extensive because of how Half-Life is paced. Half-Life’s progression is more linear than its FPS contemporaries, with the seamless nature of its presentation making the ascent to the surface an uninterrupted excursion with the occasional loading break. It’s a far cry from the tailor-made, individual levels that divide FPS games like Doom. Yet, the journey does not feel like a straight dash to the finish line. The way Half-Life is constructed is that while progression is technically a long stretch between points A and B, several intersecting routes put an array of decimal points to get to the destination. Half-Life’s story is organized into chapters, and the start of each chapter introduces something new or strictly has a core level motif. For example, “Blast Pit” is the circuitous extermination process of three sharp tentacles protruding from the exit point, and Gordon must turn the power back on in three separate pathways to expunge it. “Residue Processing” sees Gordon reclaiming all of his weapons after being bushwhacked in the dark by the military and sent to a garbage compactor like in the first Star Wars movie. Actually, describing Half-Life’s chapters as organized implies they are of equal division in length, and this is certainly not the case. Some chapters are brief while some are prolonged to the point of wondering when it’s going to end, and this pattern (or lack thereof) persists across the entire game. I much prefer the shorter chapters because the gimmick or theme of some of the longer ones tends to overstay their welcome. “On a Rail'' is an excruciatingly long chapter involving traveling with an electric rail car to the end of the line just so Gordon can be lifted along one elevator after a certain point. Considering how many times Gordon has to stop and prudently run across the tracks, it seems like we’re escorting the rail car rather than vice versa. Isn’t that ass-backward? “Surface Tension” sounds like the apex point of the game’s narrative, but it is rather the midway point where the game’s difficulty curve ratchets up exponentially. Snipers located in elusive corners annihilate Gordon at every waking moment along with new armored alien species with projectile weapons to contend with. Did I mention there is an attack helicopter to duck and cover from unless Gordon has a specific weapon on his person? After completing this grueling expedition around the surface world, the chapter made me feel as bruised and battered as Gordon probably did. I have no qualms with the shorter chapters.

As par for the course in an FPS game, Half-Life grants Gordon an abundance of weapons at his disposal. Gordon starts with the standard weapons seen across most FPS games such as a pistol, submachine gun, and shotgun to name a few, but his arsenal quickly extends to the point that it gets ridiculous (in a good way). Ammunition for the .357 magnum is scant, so one should conserve this powerful handgun for strong singular enemies. The crossbow is the only weapon that operates while Gordon is underwater, and it still impales enemies on dry land just as effectively. Explosives ranging from grenades, trigger-operated C4, and a rocket launcher, to trip mines will blow the enemy to bits if the player can use them accurately. The submachine gun even has an alternative grenade launcher with its own ammunition, and it's by far my favorite weapon in the game. The Tau Cannon and Gluon Gun are juggernaut weapons that are powerful enough to evaporate anything it targets. If the revolver kicks like a mule, these weapons kick like an oncoming car. The developers even get creative with providing some foreign imports from Xen that the aliens have foolishly left lying around. The grotesque, phallic-looking Hornet Gun unleashes the angry insects in spurts of eight, and it’s the only gun that replenishes its own ammo. Gordon can wrangle up these nasty, man-eating bugs called Snarks and sic them on his enemies (provided they don’t chew him up beforehand). Ammunition for most of these weapons is plentiful as it can be found by breaking open boxes with Gordon’s trusty crowbar. Not only is this the weapon people associate Gordon Freeman with, but it’s the first melee weapon in a first-person shooter with its own use besides a last resort of defensive for when you’ve exhausted your ammunition.

While I appreciate the sweep of weapons and the ingenuity of the alien variety, I’d appreciate them more if all of them were practical. Naturally, some weapons aren’t going to be as powerful as others, but this isn’t the issue. The default controls for Half-Life are inverted because it was popular at the time for god knows why. If they weren’t inverted, the shooting controls still require a near-perfect amount of precision. I don’t know how many times a headcrab got an opportunity to launch at me like a tarantula because I had to take an inordinate amount of time to aim at the damn thing. This is why I recommend teaming up with the security guards, who I endearingly and non-canonically refer to as “Security Steve,” that can take care of the headcrabs early in the game when Gordon is limited to a pistol and the crowbar. After that, “Security Steve” is no match for the military or the alien grunts, and Gordon will still have to line his sights precisely while they pelt him with bullets. Even when aiming correctly, some weapons are pitiful against enemies. One would think a rocket launcher would be in the same league as the other juggernaut weapons, yet it always seemed to bounce off of any tanks or attack helicopters I’d fire a missile at. The shotgun is the worst of both worlds as it seems to deal a tepid amount of damage AND it barely does anything at point-blank range if the cursor doesn’t reach the enemy. It’s a fucking shotgun for Christ's sake! The reason why I love the grenade launcher is because it’s effective and I don’t have to take Adderall to ensure an accurate shot.

If the weapons are anything to go by, Half-Life is often a finicky experience. Why then did the developers feel the need to incorporate platformer sections? Jumping in FPS games tends to be trivial, yet there are so many in Half-Life that you’d think Gordon was donning a pair of overalls and red clothing underneath instead of a hazmat suit. Since we can’t see Gordon, perhaps it really is Mario that Black Mesa assigned to conduct their experiments. Honestly, Mario would fare better in this situation than Gordon because not only is he a schmuck, he’s a frail nerd. Playing as someone who is physically less-than-capable compared to the superhuman hunks overflowing with testosterone seen across most FPS games is admirably subversive. Still, this does mean that Gordon is subject to receiving more quantifiable pain than the average video game hero. Health is fortunately plentiful on the field in first-aid cases and in dispensers that inject up to half of the total health. While replenishing health is opportune, this is only due to the fact that it can be diminished quickly. Armor is less common and unless Gordon has at least a bit of it, his health can drop to zero in a heartbeat. I blame the military’s grenade launchers and the Vortigaunts Sith Lord lightning firing at all angles. With enemies, I learned to approach every new corridor with caution, and I managed to surpass them relatively intact. However, some sections that require platforming seem to punish the player severely. Hopping onto boxes, leaping onto ladders, and bouncing onto high platforms with those alien trampolines still tend to damage Gordon even if the player executes these athletic feats competently. FPS games and platformers were not ready to wed in holy matrimony, and Half-Life is indicative of this statement.

Half-Life is hard if all of my evidence didn’t make that clear enough. Because Half-Life is hard, it’s important to save often, and I can’t stress this enough. Half-Life’s loading screens are strictly the game buffering and do not factor as checkpoints. The player has the freedom to save at any point they wish in the pause menu, either printing their progress permanently or making something of a checkpoint with a “quick save.” As convenient as this sounds, being in the midst of action can make the player overlook saving. When they finally die, they can be resurrected so long before that point that it feels like a severe punishment more for carelessness than anything else. I tended to save at points where Gordon was at his healthiest, an opportune way to start anew if circumstances didn’t pan out. Eventually, as the game became harder, I started to abuse this feature out of paranoia more than anything, and playing the game didn’t feel organic. I guess this criticism could apply to the number of more modern titles with manual save features overall, and Half-Life is most likely the game that pioneered them. Regular checkpoints are just fine, thank you.

Gordon popping his head above the underground bunker to reach his goal of seeing sunlight again was only a secondhand task. The alien forces become so overwhelmingly pugnacious that the military surrenders and counts their losses. After this, the scientists decide to hit the aliens where it really hurts by sending Gordon to their home of Xen via another portal. That’s right; it’s time for Gordon to return the favor to these pussbuckets. The first glimpse of Xen is extraordinary. Gordon finds himself on a floating rock in what seems like the barren outer limits of space. The spacious, almost measureless setting here is the antithesis of the confined corners of the man-made setting of Black Mesa, and the aurora glimmering all around is gorgeous. The only drawback to this astral wonder is that the few chapters on Xen are not constructed like the ones in Black Mesa. The developers use the portal devices to teleport Gordon around the place, and the progression isn't as smooth. The gameplay here is tweaked a bit as resources are scarce because having them strewn about the place wouldn’t make sense. There are shallow bodies of water with healing properties that cannot be quenchable, which is pretty neat. Overall, it’s a nice change of pace for the end of the game, but it isn’t as effective as the Black Mesa environment in terms of tone.

Surprisingly, the motherland of Xen is also when the game decides to unload a few boss battles on the player. The first truly tenacious foe in Half-Life is Gonarch, a space arachnid that can spit acid, ram Gordon with its solid cranium, and birth infant head crabs from the giant sac dangling from its body. Obviously, this conspicuous part of its anatomy is its weak spot, so it isn't much trouble to subdue. Nihilanth, on the other hand, is the most roundabout final boss battle I’ve faced in a while. This alien demigod that looks like an unborn fetus is slow enough to efficiently telegraph his attacks, but he’s got a few interesting tricks up his sleeves. Oftentimes, he’ll unleash a green orb that teleports Gordon to four different areas, and Gordon must find his way back to the arena. These four areas are also the only opportunities to restock on health and ammo, so I recommend intentionally stepping in front of them even if trailing back can be distracting. Shooting his head enough times to the point where it splits open is when Gordon can unleash a killing blow on the beast and end things, but the continual hike up to reach him at eye level using those godforsaken trampolines and getting a bullseye on his brain is exhausting. This boss took more than a half-hour to beat, and the tedium severely grated on me.

Eventually, as the Xen leader falls, it is no time to celebrate. The final scene of Half-Life introduces its most interesting character: the G-Man. This elusive man who looks like an administrative official with his sharp suit and briefcase appears around the corners of Black Mesa throughout the game, and the player might miss him in their peripheral vision. Whether or not the player caught a glimpse of this debonair stranger during the game, he formally makes his acquaintance to Gordon and congratulates him on his accomplishment. However, what occurred at Black Mesa is not water under the bridge now. The G-Man offers Gordon an ultimatum, as he is to accept an ambiguous position from his employers or face the wrath of more Xen creatures with no means of defense. Exiting the tram from the beginning to a green portal will signal the former while ignoring him will teleport Gordon among hundreds of Xen grunts. G-Man isn’t only perplexing because of his transient demeanor, but of what he represents at the end. It seems to be that the events of the game have made such a negative impact that Black Mesa has doomed the earth. Is G-Man God making an appearance at the end of times, assigning Gordon as some agent of the impending apocalypse? Whichever conclusion the player might come to, the fact that the developers robbed the player of a happy ending after withstanding so much is a stride in narrative-driven games. Suddenly, video games didn’t seem so much like a source of happy escapism achieved through the player’s accomplishments.

Half-Life is remarkably impressive. Valve took no time in evolving as an exceptional video game developer, for they already concocted a masterpiece from the get-go. That is, Half-Life is a masterpiece on paper. The game attempted so many revolutionary mechanics like the seamless cutscenes and uninterrupted progression with that harmonious mechanic, and it worked so fluidly. It was more mature than most video games, much less ones in the FPS genre because it wasn’t afraid to convey an adventure that exuded a bleak atmosphere in a bleak setting that all culminated into a bleak ending. Only films at that time dared to leave the audience drained to that extent, but it shouldn’t have done so with some of the awkward mechanics that did not mesh well with the game’s more exemplary attributes. Half-Life is a strong enough blueprint for the FPS genre moving further than anything. Still, the game is an effective work of art, and that’s a landmark quality it continues to retain.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Outside a Bag of Milk. Again, the loop-de-loop title of this game bewilders me. Of course, that might be the game’s intention. “Milk Outside” is the sequel to solo indie developer Nikita Kryukov’s 2020 psychological horror story “Milk Inside,” the harrowing tale of a girl purchasing the eponymous bag of milk from her local market. Why was this simple errand such a daunting escapade? I can’t say with complete certainty, but the protagonist's point of view is rather askew, to say the least. Actually, one reason why we might not know why Milk’s protagonist sees the world in the contorted way she does is that “Milk Inside” was too brief to deconstruct. One could play the game in the time it takes to ride the subway or take a shit, and its short run time was probably not to capitalize on the fleeting attention spans of modern gamers. “Milk Inside” was far too ephemeral of an experience for the psychological dread conveyed through its presentation to resonate with the player. It presented a striking atmosphere with its audio and visuals, but it left the player’s consciousness as quickly as a shooting star. “Milk Outside” is a vital opportunity to extrapolate on its predecessor's hidden depth that did not get a chance to unfold in being curt.

Even though “Milk Outside” seems like a case of the developer releasing their game in its full form after exposing us to its beta test, “Milk Outside” does not fall under the hard reboot territory. “Milk Outside” is a sequel in the traditional sense of being set after the events of the previous title, with the disturbed girl from the first game returning home after completing her task of obtaining the bag of milk. The player is reminded of the events of the previous game immediately as they are showcased in the opening cutscene, displayed with full-fledged animation that must’ve blown a sizable chunk out of Kryukov’s budget. Once the game begins, the protagonist is victimized by a group of haunting shadows, spurred by her delusional thoughts that a corpse might be rotting away in her apartment. After one mental apparition closes, another one opens in the form of a blank-faced figure greeting her at the door who resembles the ghastly form of the archetypal “sleep paralysis demon.” The chilling figure sinks its icy claws into the protagonist as punishment for drinking milk, and the sensation of pain and discomfort the protagonist describes at this moment is quite graphic. I’m not sure what the significance of this creature is and why it’s insistent that the protagonist become lactose intolerant. However, what is clear to me from this introduction is that “Milk Outside” blazes over the previous game with a remarkable presentation. The animation is surprisingly refined and the contrasting black and red colors make the scene in the doorway truly terrifying.

Once the protagonist enters her room, the frantic atmosphere begins to wane and become tranquil like she’s arrived at her safe haven. It’s here where the player gets a clear view of the protagonist after receiving a few glimpses of her eyes in a hazy purple glow from “Milk Inside’s” point of reference. She’s a pale girl with messy brown hair, a baggy T-shirt, and an overall timid, haggard demeanor. Her overall wearisome presence is exactly what the player might’ve pictured her from the constant episodes of torment we’ve experienced with her. I think being able to see the protagonist from a third-person perspective here marks an evolution from the first game. Now that we’ve seen the level of dissonance she sees the world with, separating our view from hers can be essential to her growth and our better understanding of the character.

This shift is important because the player’s role is once again talking the protagonist through the events like her imaginary friend or omniscient, sentient presence that breaks the fourth wall. Before the protagonist can fall into her medication-induced sleep for the night, the player must help her collect six fireflies that have been scattered around her room. It’s here where the developer decides to gamify the visual novel foundation, with the protagonist overtly describing the objective as “being a character in a point-and-click adventure game.” Each object found in her room potentially houses one of the glowing insects, and the protagonist shares an anecdote about each item that gives her more personality. For some reason, the game will freeze if they select the vent, and the protagonist will insinuate that you’re trying to escape. For one, an air vent is a perfectly logical palace to look for bugs and secondly, is freezing the game with this selection a punishment from the game? I didn’t know I was playing fucking Minesweeper.

The game didn’t need more interactivity to spruce up the experience, but one thing that collecting the fireflies does is coincide with the ending. The player can choose to quit at any time, and the number of fireflies collected will determine the course. The ending is a dream sequence that occurs once the protagonist falls asleep, and her mind conjures up a plethora of possibilities. If the player collects all of the fireflies on their first playthrough, a younger version of the protagonist will escort a young boy through the process of purchasing milk from the same store seen in the first game, which also has its share of complications. Collecting all of the fireflies while skipping some of the cutscenes will see the protagonist’s face contorted at an assortment of unnatural angles. Half-assing the firefly collecting process will net endings that involve the protagonist descending a winding, never-ending staircase and failing to hold onto anything in a dark, expanding room. After each of these, the protagonist wakes in fright and bursts into tears. As traumatizing as they might be for the protagonist, the multiple endings were exactly what I wished “Milk Inside” would do with the variety of player options. I am absolutely satisfied.

Still, I feel like I don’t have a firm grasp on the substance of “Milk Outside” because so much has been put on my plate. Perhaps the malevolent figure at the beginning is a personified form of the protagonist's mother’s overbearingness and how it affected her personal development. Maybe the fireflies placing themselves on her personal items reflect how some things in her life still give her light and joy despite her condition. Every dream could represent a faction of her mental illness or display some unresolved trauma directly connected to it. It’s not a jumbled mess, but it takes some time to process the experience as a whole. Unlike “Milk Inside,” “Milk Outside” presents enough substance to make it worth pondering over.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I did not grow up with the Mario & Luigi series. Actually, it feels as if the series was adjacent to my early development years as a gamer, but I had yet to play any of them prior to this review. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the first game in the series, was receiving tons of critical acclaim the same year I was thoroughly exposed to the world of gaming, so I was well aware of its impact. My best friend growing up heralded Superstar Saga as the “quintessential Mario experience,” or at least that’s the same sentiment expressed more eloquently than as the seven/eight-year-old he was at the time. Being an ecstatic enthusiast of the Paper Mario games as a child naturally should’ve correlated to an interest in playing the Mario & Luigi games but somehow, the opportunity slipped through the cracks. Why was I relatively indifferent to Mario & Luigi? It’s not as if I selectively chose to only play the Paper Mario games as an act of silly reverence, as many fans even tend to umbrella both series as the collective of Mario RPG spinoffs. I suppose my surprising indifference to Mario & Luigi was due to the fact that the games were exclusively on handheld hardware. My optimal way of playing a video game was to sit in front of the television with a controller and bask in its comparatively more enveloping glow, and that’s still the case to this day as an adult. I owned a Game Boy Advance growing up (the SP model to be precise) and mainly used it as a Pokemon machine because Pokemon Silver was the only game I had for the Game Boy Color. Whether it was due to some undiagnosed trauma (or autism) that impeded me from playing Superstar Saga at its prime, I’m happy to report that I’ve made up for lost time. I had high expectations for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga after what is now decades of hype, and the game has delivered on them splendidly.

Still, I can’t help but compare Mario & Luigi to Paper Mario. Both series are spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG on the SNES, sharing the same JRPG genetic code that separates it from the mainline series of platformers. Also, each Mario RPG, regardless of the specific series, uses the narrative-intensive genre as a vehicle to expand the world and characters of the Mario universe. The direction to achieve this sense of amplification tends to verge into the subversive territory. The first Paper Mario game was only slightly off-beat, as it told the traditional Mario story of Mario saving a kidnapped Peach from Bowser once again with more dialogue, exposition, and other patches of irregular elements that the developers couldn’t possibly squeeze into a mainline Mario game. The Paper Mario series would become more irreverent as the series progressed, but Mario & Luigi came out of the gate swinging a toolkit of monkey wrenches at Super Mario’s foundation. To increase their allegiance to the Mushroom Kingdom, the neighboring BeanBean Kingdom sends esteemed ambassadors to Peach’s Castle to offer her a generous token. However, that generous gesture is actually a cloud of noxious smoke, as the meeting has been intercepted by the devious BeanBean witch Cackletta, disguised with her right-hand crony Fawful. One would expect the gas to knock Peach out so these fiends can easily carry her off to whatever vessel they arrived in and fly off with her in their captivity, but that would be too orthodox for a Mario conflict premise. Instead, the booby trap kidnaps Peach’s voice, rendering her deprived manner of speech to take the form of jagged characters that drop out of the text bubble and literally explode like bombs. Bowser, in his regular routine of capturing Peach, finds her unstable communication to be a hefty inconvenience, so he joins the Mario Bros. on their quest to retrieve the voice and return it to its rightful owner. From the beginning of their valiant adventure, Fawful attacks them on an airship, and the fallout of his ambush leaves Bowser separated from Mario and Luigi. So much for that solid truce between Mario and his usual arch-nemesis. Still, the fact that this cooperative pact was made at all is rather extraordinary. Cackletta’s goal in using Peach’s voice is to activate the “Beanstar,” a mythical artifact in the BeanBean Kingdom that is said to grant the wishes of someone pure, hence why Peach’s voice is needed. One might point out that the Beanstar is the same as the Star Rod from Paper Mario, but this kind of magical with an all-powerful allure has been used as a standard Macguffin for a number of Nintendo’s IPs (the Star Rod from Kirby, the Triforce, etc.). As I’ve said before regarding Paper Mario’s pension for slight irreverence, the low bar that the mainline series sets make the smallest sort of deviation a fresh change of pace. In Superstar Saga, the rule book for a Mario story almost gets tossed out of the window entirely, which is a wonderful sign of things to come to keep one’s interest piqued. Also, the start of the adventure is spurred by the player as Toad rushes to Mario and Luigi’s house to warn them that the princess is in danger, and Toad gets an unsavory glimpse at Mario’s Italian sausage while he’s in the shower. C’mon, any Mario game where the player can control Toad, the most notable NPC in gaming, for a brief period has got to have some wild tricks up its sleeves.

Up until the Gamecube era, setting a Mario title outside the confines of the Mushroom Kingdom was considered a revolutionary prospect. Super Mario Sunshine marked the first mainline Mario game that dared to plant Mario past the parameters of Peach’s royal country, but the vacation premise sort of implied that this setting was merely a temporary digression. Paper Mario would revel in placing Mario in settings beyond the realm of franchise normalcy, but his first outing as a quirky, two-dimensional arts and crafts project kept him secured in the Mushroom Kingdom’s domain in order to use the JRPG format to expand on the typical Mario story. In the case of the BeanBean Kingdom where the brothers find themselves in Superstar Saga, it’s difficult to say whether or not this protein-rich province is all that different from their normal stomping grounds. BeanBean Kingdom shares many parallels to the fungal neighbors of an unknown directional point of reference. The land where the musical fruit roams has a topographical eclecticism that seems to rival the Mushroom Kingdom’s imperialistic endeavors. BeanBean’s land elevations range from the waterfall-filled apexes of Hoo-Hoo Mountain, the wildly ungroomed wilderness of Chucklehuck Woods, to the sandy shores of the beaches located around the kingdom’s eastern coastline.

While the BeanBean Kingdom can compete with the Mushroom Kingdom’s varied array of destination spots, BeanBean Kingdom decided to take a divergent route for its infrastructure. Nowhere on BeanBean’s map is there a hub for our heroes to relax and briefly wind down in, taking off their leather boots to scrape the blood and guts of every Goomba and Koopa Troopa they’ve stomped on. BeanBean’s capital located in the center of the realm is the hotspot for purchasing items and overalls that are somehow stocked abundantly for both Mario and Luigi’s convenience. BeanBean’s capital even features a cafe where Mario and Luigi can make a smattering of exotic coffee blends made from the various beans littered beneath the grounds of the kingdom, and these earthy concoctions are tested by the eccentric scientist E. Gadd from Luigi’s Mansion back when Nintendo attempted to keep this character relevant. Alas, the capital does not exude the same atmosphere of a hub like Toad Town, the coziest of hubs located outside the grounds of Peach’s Castle in Paper Mario. Firstly, Mario and Luigi only become acquainted with the capital area after fully exploring two other areas. Secondly, the fact that the capital looks as bombed out as the aftermath of intercontinental Europe following WWII does not make the player feel safe and sound. In fact, the state of BeanBean’s capital becomes more shell-shocked as the game progresses. Lastly, the brothers do not return here after every mini-climactic point on their quest like Mario did upon returning from Toad Town’s branching pathways. It took me longer to realize this than I’m willing to admit, but the developers were not trying to replicate Toad Town on a handheld device. Rather, BeanBean Kingdom shares a striking resemblance to Hyrule, specifically the rendition of Zelda’s kingdom from A Link to the Past. BeanBean’s capital is located at the core of the nation like Zelda’s castle estate, signifying that it’s comparable to a nucleus in both stature and its literal position. The field area outside of the castle’s perimeter can be construed as an “overworld” due to its relatively neutral terrain with a plethora of secrets to be found that will net the brothers some upgrades and goodies if they search diligently. All the while, the areas of interest like dungeon-esque HooHoo University and the Yoshi Theater, whose patrons are all the colorful, gluttonous dinosaurs, never feel as if they are removed from the rest of the map. Returning from an area outside the grassy BeanBean plain doesn’t emit a wash of sentimentalism like it usually does with the less coalesced districts that stem from Toad Town. Zelda’s world design influence works wonders for Superstar Saga because it's a top-down game, an inherent commonality with A Link to the Past as opposed to any other Mario RPG. Overall, the design decisions are fluid and aid in differentiating Superstar Saga from the other Mario RPG series.

I suppose another reason why Superstar Saga’s world feels more topsy-turvy is that its pacing is so erratic. Comparing Superstar Saga to Paper Mario at this point makes me sound like a broken record, but the way both Mario RPGs structure their narratives is the prime contrasting factor between these two franchises. Paper Mario organizes its narratives by dividing its subsections into chapters that focus on a singular area with its own sub-narrative that comes back around to the overarching plot after solving the conflict of the subplot and obtaining the game’s primary MacGuffin. Superstar Saga, on the other hand, will have the brothers running ragged with how jumbled their quest trajectory is. Fortunately, the location of the objective is clearly displayed on the game’s map in the pause menu with a soaring red flag marker. Thank the lord for this because I’d be totally lost without it. Once they reach the objective point, which usually leads to traversing around an area outside of the BeanBean overworld, the path from point A to B is fairly clear. All the brothers have to contend with along their way is a series of puzzles that impede their progress. Before then, Mario and Luigi will zigzag around BeanBean’s overworld like a couple flies hovering around a dead body.

Though I prefer the more episodic story structure seen in Paper Mario, I think the more spontaneously assigned objectives in Superstar Saga greatly complement the game’s humor. Paper Mario may have its chuckle-worthy moments, but Superstar Saga revels in wackiness. I’ve often compared Mario to silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin, and their famous mustaches are only a mere fraction of that comparison. Both Nintendo’s mascot and the tramp share a certain blue-collar charm to them, a loveable scamp portraying someone of a low common denominator status that is more than the sum of their parts (ie. a chubby plumber and a homeless man respectively). That, and tumbling down a series of platforms in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine is vaguely reminiscent of the slapstick comedy that Chaplin helped popularize in film, which in the Mario context is as funny as it is frustrating. Superstar Saga’s inherent RPG mechanics negate the possibility of dooming Mario with slipping into oblivion, so the Chaplin-esque influence stems from his other comedic attributes. Charles Martinet’s voice he provides for Mario (and less notably Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi as well) is one of the most recognizable voice roles in gaming. Still, it’s not like the recording studios at Nintendo have ever challenged Martinet with any Mario monologue similar to channeling Daniel Day-Lewis. Mario is a simple character that works perfectly with catchphrases, yelping, and vaguely Italian gibberish. However, all of the instances where all of these vocalizations are uttered mostly coincide with specific controls like jumping and being hit. In Superstar Saga, Mario's (and Luigi’s) utterances carry them through the events of the game as they react to the dialogue from the other characters as the most physically expressive they’ve ever been, fully encapsulating that silent comedy influence they’ve always had. The brothers are always gaping their mouths in shock in times of peril, clumsily running into walls, and looking dazed after being impacted with something blunt. Who says pixels can’t render emotions as well as 3D can?

Mario and Luigi aren’t the only Mushroom Kingdom mainstays joining them on their quest through the BeanBean Kingdom. Bowser and Peach are requisite for any Mario adventure in some capacity, and the way that they are integrated into Superstar Saga is indicative of the game’s level of subversiveness. Using the game’s introduction as evidence, Bowser is no longer held up in his palace waiting for Mario to beat him into submission. From the smidge of dialogue Bowser spouts, this game’s depiction of the Koopa King is the lovably buffoonish one we know from Paper Mario. However, Bowser mostly spends his time in Superstar Saga being the brunt of physical abuse and emasculation. After his airship crashes, his unfortunate luck leads him to fall into a cannon that conveniently fits his bulky, hard-shelled frame as he gets blasted to no man’s land. Upon seeing him again, Bowser is donning a blue mask as the neutered bitch sidekick of a BeanBean thief named Popple (his Luigi, if you will). While the introduction will have the player believe that Peach’s voice is a captured surrogate for her body, the game presents a twist to the player that reveals Peach is entirely unharmed. Supposedly, Peach’s guards knew of Cackletta’s duplicity beforehand, so they swapped her with a fake Peach to thwart their plans. This fraud is revealed to be Birdo, the Mushroom Kingdom’s favorite flirty, bow-wearing bisexual who is rarely integrated into any mainline Mario titles. Peach is actually available in some sections of the game, even if a big chunk of her screen time involves escorting her through the desert in the most infuriating part of the game. Bowser’s bastard Koopalings returns after a decade-long hiatus, and the brothers fight each of them individually. If dusting off older characters and putting them in the limelight again is a part of Superstar Saga’s subversiveness, it’s a welcome change of pace from the mainline series.

Of course, the fact that Superstar Saga is set in an unexplored kingdom means that there is a whole new cast of characters to get acquainted with, and they’re all delightful. Among the slew of green, Toad-like NPCs around the BeanBean Kingdom are the monarchs that they serve, and they’ll be cooperating with Mario to stop Cackletta from potentially taking over the world with the Beanstar’s power. We are introduced to BeanBean’s queen as a hostile boss battle, but this is only due to a parasite that the brothers then have to eradicate from her stomach with the digestive powers of a special kind of Chuckola Cola. After that, the Rubenesque ruler and her assistant aid Mario in directing him on the right path. Her son, Prince Peasley, decides to butt into the brothers' business on the field, waving his poncey blonde hair with a cocky smirk expected of someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Even in a game where Mario and Luigi are constantly fumbling over each other, Peasley is still the comic relief. Superstar Saga’s recurring villains are especially exemplary because they exude so much personality. Cackletta is aptly named because her defining feature is that witchy laugh of hers, usually at the expense of Mario and Luigi’s or something/someone else good and moral. However, I find her diabolical nature to be a bit cliche in the supreme antagonist role she fulfills. The true highlight villain in Superstar Saga is Fawful, Cackletta’s right-hand man in her evil operations. He doesn’t subvert too much from the henchman trope seen across all media, but this beady little bean has one quirk that makes everyone adore him. Whenever Fawful speaks, his speech is rife with so many grammatical errors and malapropisms that it's reminiscent of the dialogue from Zero Wing. How lines like “I HAVE FURY,” “at last, my entrance, with drama!” and his insult “fink-rat” haven’t been immortalized in the pop culture lexicon unlike “all your base are belong to us” is a mystery. Every warped line uttered by Fawful is pure gold.

But really, the best aspect of Superstar Saga’s lively character roster is the inclusion of Luigi. Luigi has always served a secondary role to Mario since his inception but somewhere along the line, Nintendo started to completely blow him to the wayside. Luigi hadn’t made as much as a cameo for the first two 3D mainline Mario titles, skipping two whole generations that would’ve been vital to his character. Luigi is only Mario’s housemate in Paper Mario, an NPC who stays home airing his grievances that he wasn't invited out to play. No wonder everyone thought Luigi’s Mansion was trifling material as Luigi’s first proper 3D introduction. Mario had gone solo, forgetting completely that his roots stemmed from sharing his billing with his brother. I jest at Luigi’s expense from time to time, but his frank omission from Mario’s mainline adventures on the N64 and GCN makes me sympathetic to him. Fortunately, for those Luigi fans who felt slighted at his absence, Superstar Saga makes certain that Mario doesn’t bogart the spotlight to the point where Luigi is shadowed in complete darkness. On top of actually having a consistent presence in the game, Superstar Saga marks a considerable point of evolution for Luigi. While Luigi was playable in Super Mario Bros. 1-3 and World, his design boiled down to “Green Mario” thanks to the primitive graphics. Seeing him side-by-side with his brother here shows a great distinction between them, as Luigi is clearly taller, slimmer, and has a thinner mustache. I also believe that this is the first time when Martinet gives Luigi a distinct vocal inflection, which is more nasal and pitched lower than Mario’s voice. More importantly than anything physical, Superstar Saga continues the timid persona Luidi exuded in Luigi’s Mansion as his prime characteristic. Mario is now the straight man to Luigi’s blubbering and pitiable demeanor, the Costello to his Abbot. It’s a strong dynamic between the two that has never been so pronounced in any previous Mario game. The game also seems to be aware of how prevalent ignoring Luigi is in the Mario universe, with characters not knowing his name and the fact that Luigi was originally going to stay behind as always in the beginning. All of us Luigi fans forgive you (for now), Nintendo.

Mario and Luigi’s discernable traits in terms of their personality and design is all fine and good, but the essential factor in this dynamic that defines the Mario & Luigi series is how they act on the field. Mario and Luigi are magnetized to each other throughout the game, switching between who is leading in front with the press of a button. When traversing through BeanBean’s overworld or one of its attractions, each brother has a distinctive set of skills that complement each other on a relatively equal pairing. Luigi leaps onto Mario’s back to propel both of them above high reaches, while Mario positions himself on Luigi’s shoulders like a totem pole to whirl across platforms for a brief period. Hammers, a Mario weapon that only seems to be compulsory for his RPG excursions, are given to both brothers to smash large, intrusive rocks on the field. The more interesting part is the brothers using the hammers on each other, with Luigi flattening Mario like a pancake to eke through small crevices and Mario returning the favor to Luigi by bonking him beneath the ground to creep under gates and such. Mario can also drink a copious amount of water to the point where he becomes engorged like Spongebob, and Luigi expunges all the excess water weight by making Mario spit it out with his hammer. An island oasis society off the coast teaches Luigi the power of electricity and Mario the power of fire without the usual flower attached to power orbs and light candles. Like with the hammers, the brothers can use their respective elemental powers on each other, with Luigi sticking Mario to him with static and Mario literally lighting a fire under Luigi’s ass. The brothers also use their field dynamic in a series of mini-games that range in both fun and challenge, with the most demanding being the barrel one conducted by what appears to be the skeletal remains of Donkey Kong (who can somehow talk). Luigi never feels secondary to Mario at any point.

The dynamic between Mario and Luigi also translates onto the battlefield. Superstar Saga’s initial approach to the battles borrows from Earthbound, with enemies on the field that can get an advantage over the player if they run at them from behind, or a counter advantage if Mario or Luigi attacks them first. Once a fight is engaged, Mario and Luigi run parallel to the enemy, with Mario always situated in the top left corner and Luigi at the bottom left. The brother’s selection of attacks mirrors that of Paper Mario’s, as a wheel presents the options to jump on an enemy or use the hammer to attack, with a timed pressing of their designated button to deal more damage. Badge points are still present, but here they take the form of “Bros. Attacks” that involve using both brothers in unison for an especially powerful maneuver. Executing one of these takes practice as the button timing requires steep precision. Speaking of steep precision, the true marvel of the RPG combat in the Mario & Luigi series is the defense mechanic. In every RPG, there is an inherent rule that the player will take some amount of damage from the opposing side, as little as it sometimes might be. In Superstar Saga, every attack from the opposition can be avoided by jumping over them and their projectiles or countered with the hammer. As revolutionary as this might seem, Mario and Luigi’s abilities to circumvent any hazards do not make Superstar Saga facile. Extreme practice and familiarity with enemies are needed to fully utilize this feature, and that is what makes the combat in Superstar Saga so invigorating. A JRPG that fosters a high-skill ceiling that doesn’t require grinding? The next thing you’ll tell me is that the US is going to elect the first openly gay president next year. Paper Mario made the typical RPG combat more fun and interactive, but Superstar Saga rockets that idea into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, constantly mitigating damage with dodging allows some boss battles to overstay their welcome at times.

Even if the player has the reflexes of a drunk sloth, the game doesn’t punish the player too harshly in combat. The difficulty curve in Superstar Saga is incredibly consistent, and the only time it wasn’t was upon encountering the goomba-tanooki crossbreeds in the field away from the objective. I’d like to say this is because the game is impeccably balanced, but I’m afraid this isn’t the case. Besides the frequent bombings on their capital, the BeanBean Kingdom is doing just fine and dandy considering their profusion of resources. Healing items such as mushrooms, nuts, syrups, and status-ailing herbs are so commonplace that my inventory was stocked in multiples of hundreds at some point. Failing to hop over an enemy’s attack in battle ultimately didn’t matter because I could always take a turn to heal and have the other brother work on the offensive. Even at a point where my items were thinning, BeanBean’s evidently booming economy allowed me to replenish all the items I expunged during battle without breaking the bank. I can’t criticize a Mario game too harshly for being too easy considering the overall accessible appeal of the franchise. Still, with the defense mechanics at hand, I wish the player could raise the stakes of error during battle.

Near the end, I guess my wish for Superstar Saga to become more challenging came true, even if it was unexpected. Upon seeing an unconscious Bowser, the spirit of a defeated Cackletta possesses Bowser and forms an unholy fusion of the two villains called Bowletta. Superstar Saga capitalized on what Bowser would look like with tits far before Bowsette but without ANY of the sex appeal. Somehow, fusing with Bowser’s body gives Cackletta control over Bowser’s castle, which is floating over BeanBean with Peach in captivity (of fucking course). Like most other Mario games, Bowser’s castle is the climactic end to the plumber's adventure. In Superstar Saga’s case, Bowser’s fiery domain also presents a difficulty spike as sharp as the ones on Bowser’s backside. Enemy attacks become heavily unpredictable to the point where avoiding them can be based entirely on luck alone, and the steroid versions of the Hammer Bros. hit like a tank with Magikoopas healing their already stocky health pools. I had not died up until this point in the game, and now I was carrying a defeated Mario or Luigi on the back of the conscious brother who was hanging on by a thread. Facing Cackletta in Bowser’s throne room was the most taxing boss fight in the game by a stark hundred miles. Her first form is a quick bout of damage output that will end quickly but once she dupes the brothers with a bomb and vacuums them into her stomach, the real final fight against her soul begins. I implore everyone reading this to time their fight against this giant phantom because I guarantee it will take more than fifteen minutes to defeat. Her attacks become fairly predictable through constant use, but the long process of revealing her weak point just for her to heal and obscure it from view approximately seven or more times makes for an endurance test guaranteed to make the player exhausted. I understand that the climax of any game should offer its pinnacle challenge, but the game pushes the player into the deep end after they’ve been doggy paddling in the shallow end all this time.

After playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the first time in the two decades I’ve observed it from a distance, my slight curiosity has blossomed into pure admiration. By using Paper Mario and a healthy dose of the top-down Zelda games as its inspiration, Superstar Saga crafts another exceptional Mario RPG that is as subversive as the other contemporary Mario subseries. Still, I still prefer Paper Mario, and that’s probably nostalgia blinding my perceptions. Now, I don’t know if I can earnestly compare the two because Superstar Saga deviates heavily enough to warrant completely different comparisons, almost like Superstar Saga isn’t just handheld Paper Mario after all. Superstar Saga is a wackier JRPG depiction of a Mario quest with the most engaging fight mechanics I've played in a JRPG. It's unfortunate that its genius level of innovation eventually blew up on the player in the end. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a whole different beast in itself, and that's what makes it so refreshing. Luigi finally gets his time to shine.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

With BioShock being a smashing success in gaming’s most seminal year of 2007, the prospect of a sequel was inevitable. However, from an artistic standpoint, it was argued that there was no stone unturned in Andrew Ryan’s idyllic, decayed dystopia of Rapture after the events of the first game. Via the perspective of Jack, the player scrounged about the drowned metropolis and uncovered the full extent of its biblical downfall and the context of Jack’s personal placement in the lore of its ghastly history. A substantial factor in the effectiveness of the sublime underwater setting was the sense of mystique that unraveled once the player progressed through its withered, neon-lit corridors. Jack was forced through the most circuitous means of exiting Rapture, hence why the player most likely should’ve gained a learned experience of the Rapture during the ordeal. Since we’ve already been given the grand tour of Rapture (albeit in the least welcoming way imaginable), why would 2K feel the need to grace us with yet another excursion around the city? Money: the short answer is money. Like any other acclaimed release, 2K wanted to take advantage of BioShock’s overwhelming commendation while the iron was still hot, even if releasing a sequel conflicted with the core of why everyone was commending the game. “BioShock is a work of art”, a summation of the game’s exceptional quality written so frequently that putting the conclusive blurb in quotes is meant to highlight its enigmatic ubiquity. While BioShock was not the first video game that featured plot twists and notable philosophical constructs interwoven in the fabric of its world and narrative ethos, it benefited greatly from being designed as a first-person shooter during the genesis point of the genre’s time in the commercial limelight. To the masses, BioShock was something of a high-brow FPS game, even if immersive sim veterans that played System Shock knew that the game was lacking in the gameplay depth department compared to its PC predecessor. Still, BioShock’s accolades were deserved on the merit of its world-building, lore, and storytelling, three aspects that a sequel usually fails to retain its impact because it uses all of the strengths of the first game as an easy crutch. The only way that BioShock 2 could prove its worth as a sequel is by offering an experience that was radically original, and it certainly didn’t do that.

Firstly, BioShock 2 fails to inspire any new sense of awe and intrigue because its setting is still Rapture. The sunken society already went through the rigor mortis process before Jack arrived, and his frenzied adventure through this corpse of a city abused its dilapidated foundation to the point where it’s unrecognizable. BioShock 2 revisits this dead metropolis with a similar sense of shamelessness as a necrophiliac, defiling all notions of a once marvelous spectacle for the sake of familiarity. However, the developers have pulled what Team Silent did for subsequent visitations to Silent Hill in that franchise's sequels to keep the freshness in using the same setting. BioShock 2 features a whole new slew of levels conveniently districted off from each area from the first game. We thought the ones from the first game provided a detailed crash course history into the lore of Rapture, but each area of BioShock 2 attempts to expound on the underwater civilization’s history even more. “Siren Alley” is Rapture’s red-light district and considering all the women of the night here are gnarly, gangly Splicers with most of their teeth and skin missing, it erases any arousal associated with its implications. The outer area of the Persephone district is a high-security prison to hold Rapture’s criminally insane and their political malcontents, while the exterior of the area is a hospital designated for those prisoners. “Fontaine Futuristics” is the heart of the first game’s main antagonist lucrative plasmid operation, and “Ryan Amusements” is a propagandist amusement park meant to deter Rapture’s children from the “horrifying” surface world while they take part in carnival merriment. In reality, this level I mentioned sounds more interesting on paper than it really is in execution. These new districts of Rapture comprise areas that have intriguing premises, but they lack the gravitas of those from the first game. Compare “Dionysus Park” to “Fort Frolic,” two areas with a similar connection to Rapture’s artistic endeavors, and the former falter on all fronts. Sander Cohen’s theatrical monument of his madness was a distinctive destination that encapsulated me and most others with its majestic, yet unnerving spectacle. Even for the other areas that weren’t as explicitly dominated by one of Rapture’s forsaken figures, their presence was still a driving force in the area they occupied. This area’s significance is explained by Sofia Lamb or Sinclair signaling in exposition to the player, which is the same for every other area in BioShock 2. The game’s progression is as tied down to further the story as a titanium anchor, and the fact that a one-way transit system is a vehicle to travel to these places without ever returning to the previous area. BioShock 2 doesn’t let the player breathe and let the oppressive atmosphere of Rapture weigh on them like the pressure of roaming around the ocean floor should feel. It’s a shame considering all of these new levels had the potential to be delved into more thoroughly.

BioShock 2 may take place years after the events of the first game, but the plot conflict the story is centered around was catalyzed a few years before Jack’s eventful plunge. BioShock 2’s protagonist is a Big Daddy, but not one of the lumbering, moaning tanks seen in the first game. “Delta” is a prototype Big Daddy that is taller and more limber than his bulkier counterparts, and his claim to fame is being the first of his kind to form a bond with a Little Sister as her violent protector. On New Year's Eve 1958, Delta is forced to provoke his wrath on a group of Splicers who thirst for the delectable ADAM that his Little Sister houses. During the scuffle, a stern-looking bespectacled lady somehow possesses the will to force this scuba-geared brute to submit to kill himself by shooting himself in the head with a pistol, with his Little Sister looking on in complete shock and horror. Nine years later, Delta reawakens from his decade-spanning coma from the power of another Little Sister, and his mission is to reunite with his original Little Sister by turning over every nook and cranny in Rapture.

The introduction sets the scene for the whole game effectively enough, but there is a Big Daddy-sized elephant in the room pertaining to the source of the game’s conflict. Sofia Lamb, BioShock 2’s main antagonist, is not simply Eleanor’s jilted mother saving her daughter from the twisted Little Sister system that besets so many of Rapture’s female youths. She’s as crucial a figure in Rapture’s history as Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine, or at least the game would have you believe she is. In fact, she’s been appointed the leader of Rapture after Jack bludgeoned its founder with a golf club and also ousted the competitor that led him to do so , so one can infer that she’s been lurking around Rapture’s flooded corners for quite some time. The game will have us convinced that Sofia Lamb didn’t need to make her presence in the first game due to her being irrelevant to the power struggle between Ryan and Fontaine, even if she managed to plant herself on the throne at her utmost convenience smoothly. However, in a game whose setting is given context through the lore journals of the figures that built and broke Rapture, one would think that a person among the essential elder statesmen would at least be mentioned once in the first game. Hell, the southern Sinclair and esteemed scientist Gil Alexander, two prominent characters in BioShock 2, are spoken of in the first game’s audio logs if one pays close attention. The developers obviously shoehorned in the game’s primary villain that they conjured up on the spot when a sequel was announced. Any character even whispered as a footnote in the first game could’ve been a suitable main antagonist, elucidating more on Rapture’s history that could have center-stage prominence in a sequel. As an antagonist regardless of her sudden appearance, Sofia Lamb in the position of the city’s ruler doesn’t evoke the same sense of omniscient dread as Andrew Ryan did. I guess a city formulated by philosophies of utilitarianism doesn’t spell out the same harrowing potential of Ryan’s objectivism.

Either that or BioShock’s atmosphere doesn’t exude the same feeling of overwhelming dread because playing as a Big Daddy compromises on that “stranger in a strange land” perspective that marked Jack’s adventure. Using Resident Evil as a prime example, controlling someone of a stronger disposition than the average Joe tends to reduce all of the horrors into cannon fodder for their eclectic arsenal. However, the player will find that playing as Delta isn’t too dissimilar to playing as Jack. The additional weight of a Big Daddy’s suit is not a gameplay detriment, and that fish-eye lens of the scuba helmet that clogged the player’s peripheral vision in that climactic section of the first game is only visible in the corners. The player has the option to remove any trace of the helmet from their view in the game’s menu. Many of the same weapons that Jack used to defend himself from the ADAM-addled Splicers return for Delta, but seemingly only the high-octane ones that blaze through enemies in seconds. The machine gun, the shotgun, and the explosive launcher cement their roles as the most effective tools of destruction. The crossbow has been refashioned as a spear gun with its own alternate ammo, and Big Daddy’s trademark industrial-strength arm drill has replaced the piddly wrench as the melee weapon. The only new and unique addition to the armed, steampunk collective is the Rivet Gun, which functions as a nail gun with the power to kill a gorilla if being shot at by the Rosy variant of Big Daddys from the first game didn’t already make that clear enough. If the surprisingly swift movement of playing as a Big Daddy doesn’t immerse the player into the role, the reduction of all the “wuss weapons” that Jack carried around, along with the redundant Chemical Thrower, will make the player feel practically impervious. My only wish is that the developers could’ve brainstormed some new plasmids to diversify the methods of Splicer murder. Adding only the Drill and Rivet Gun to the selection of weapons may seem sparse, but the developers didn’t even bother to implement new ones into the mix, and only omitted the handy “Sonic Boom” plasmid. The only smidge of difference is combining the “Enrage” and “Hypnotize Big Daddy” plasmids for a minute quality of life enhancement. Still, I surely thought that a Big Daddy would possess some unique plasmid types to use.

BioShock also brings many other quality-of-life improvements to the table that makes the gameplay much smoother and more accessible. If the game insists on wearing the first game’s identity like a heated space blanket, then the developers should at least improve on the first game’s nitpicks with the advantage of hindsight that comes with a direct sequel. While a Big Daddy does not have a varied range of new plasmids at his disposal, one thing he can do beyond Jack’s capabilities is dual-wield the plasmids and firearms in combat. Gone are the days of alternating between both arms, using the elemental forces as supplementary means of support to blasting enemies with a barrage of bullets and explosives. Charging up “Electro-Bolt '' or “Incinerate” to deal with a chain reaction like Delta is The Emperor from Star Wars or a fire-breathing dragon is satisfyingly deadly. Hacking the water-damaged machines scattered around Rapture only requires a reaction-time intensive mini-game, and accurately timing the compass needle on the blue and green bars will generously reward the player with free items along with the manual discount. Delta’s toolkit also comes with a remote hacking weapon that shoots a dart from a distance to trigger the hacking mini-game, which of course is convenient for dealing with security cameras and turrets. As someone who didn’t mind connecting the pipes in the first game, I still can’t deny that the simpler, streamlined approach that doesn’t completely halt the game’s pacing is objectively better. The research camera that took informative polaroids of enemies has been upgraded to the 20th century with a film camera that directs the targeted enemy for a short time and grades the player on their methods of disposal. Film in this camera also can’t be exhausted, so the player is no longer required to buy film at a dispensary. Quality of life improvements are indisputably the quintessential perk of BioShock 2, yet the developers still forgot to add any consequence to dying. The Vita-Chambers will continue to resurrect the player without even requiring a small fee for their troubles. The enemy that knocked the player to the ground will now have a small amount of their health replenished, but this can be easily reduced.

If you couldn’t infer from BioShock 2’s plot premise, the Little Sister and Big Daddy dynamic that the player had the option to entertain in the first game is front and center in the narrative. Despite his role as a Big Daddy, Delta is still faced with the same opportunities to free the young girls from the clutches of his peers or reduce them to nothing but their coveted cores similar to Jack. One core difference this optional mechanic presents as opposed to Jack is that Delta can adopt a Little Sister before exercising them and dropping them off at the pipelines in the walls, or at least if they are inclined not to harvest them. The Little Sister will adorably ride on Delta’s shoulder like a little girl would do with an adult parental figure, and it’s adorable. Still, I wish they would refer to me as “Mr. B” like all the other Big Daddys instead of “Daddy” because of the eerily kinky implications. Porn has done a number on my brain, I tell ya. More so than a prop or trophy, carrying around a Little Sister gives Delta the opportunity to gather more ADAM from a select number of corpses strewn across the map. The process mirrors that of the climactic point of the first game when Jack posed as a Big Daddy, with Splicers ambushing the poor girl and killing her on sight. However, this is much more manageable because the player can prepare before setting the Little sister down to go to work on the body. I consider this voluntary excursion to be another quality-of-life improvement because the game doesn’t punish me for my moral decision to save the Little Sisters, and the much-needed high quantity of ADAM for tonics and plasmids can be supplemented through this action.

The types of Splicers, along with the weapons, have been somewhat reduced. Apparently, this district of Rapture encompasses the territory of the Leadhead and Houdini Splicers, with the new addition of the hulked-out Brute Splicer to charge at Delta and throw debris at him. Alpha Series Big Daddys will appear later in the game as hostile enemy types without the accompaniment of a Little Sister, and they’re much less resilient than the advanced models we are used to fighting. Each of these enemies still invades the dank halls of Rapture’s remnants, but the variation is a little lacking. The one standout new enemy type that strikes fear in the hearts of the player as the Big Daddies do is the Big Sisters: the gender-swapped, lankier version of the Big Daddy. One of these deep-sea ladies kidnaps the Little Sister that resurrected Delta at the beginning, and confronting her is not a facile duel. In fact, I’d say that the Big Sisters are much more formidable foes than their male counterparts due to their lightning-fast agility along with hitting Delta like a Mack truck. After the first encounter with one, they’ll keep appearing after Delta saves every Little Sister in an area, signaled by a shriek so shrill that it blurs the screen. I don’t understand why the Big Sisters insist on attacking me after I liberate the Little Sisters from their possessed state of being, considering that they are adult versions of Little Sisters themselves. I never chose to harvest a single Little Sister in my playthrough, so perhaps they attack Delta whether or not he exhibits strong moral fiber. Maybe the Big Sister can’t help but be hysterical (that’s the game being sexist, not me).

Speaking of adult Little Sisters, the game’s plot really begins to unfold as soon as Eleanor makes her first contact with Delta after their ten-year-long hiatus. We learn of Delta’s origin as he was forced to become a Big Daddy when Andrew Ryan intercepted the suspicion that he was a spy from the surface world. The tip-off came from a Rapture lothario named Stanley Poole, who the player has the choice of killing or sparing out of forgiveness upon learning this revelation. It’s important to keep choices like these in mind because they directly affect the outcome of the six possible endings. Once Delta finally makes his way to Eleanor’s chamber, Sofia Lamb severs their bond by smothering Eleanor with a pillow, thus rendering Delta unconscious as a result. Eleanor sends another Little Sister to Delta’s rescue once again and after he regains consciousness. The duo reunites with Eleanor now donning the age-appropriate Big Sister outfit, and Delta can sic her on Splicers and the Alpha series Daddies with one of the only new plasmids that the game offers. Sinclair, the man who has been directing Delta towards the course of freedom, is transformed into a Big Daddy by Sofia Lamb and must be disposed of to stop Delta and Eleanor from using his escape pod. A tenacious Sofia Lamb floods the area and leaves Delta mortally wounded as a result. This final resolution in the narrative can ignite a myriad of different possibilities. As mentioned before, not only will saving the Little Sisters coincide with how the game resolves, but there are also three notable figures involved. Naturally, the bad ending in which a spurned Eleanor leaves with your powers out of spite occurs when you do nothing but harvest the Little Sisters. The good ending involves Eleanor preserving Delta’s consciousness for a lifelong bond between them, and the neutral ending is a more complicated mix of leaving Delta behind as he dies. The choices to spare the lives of Grace, Stanley, and Gil factor in whether or not Eleanor kills a drowning Sofia. The multitude of different outcomes depending on the player’s actions are far more intricate than the narrow few offered in the first game, so the stodgy critics no longer have to worry about dying of ludonarrative dysentery.

Ultimately, the substance of the plot in a BioShock game stands on pointing out the hypocrisy of the Rapture’s current leader as a scathing critique of a real-world philosophy. Sofia Lamb’s ideologies may not be as insane as Ryan’s, but she’s anything but benevolent. Her stern, schoolmarm iciness makes Nurse Ratched seem like a barrel of laughs. It’s the way that she conducts her means of utilitarianism that makes her a hypocrite. Actually, her views fall under the umbrella of a more severe ideology known as collectivism. Her whole prerogative for severing the ties between Eleanor and Delta was so she could keep Eleanor in close reach to use her as a machine for something referred to as “Utopia.” She finds nothing wrong with torturing Gil Alexander or Sinclair, or potentially killing her own daughter under the guise of her actions being for the good of the general population. It’s incredibly transparent that all she’s doing is for herself. Giving the Little Sisters their freedom as Delta infuriates her, for it exceeds her comprehension of a Big Daddy having his own free will to choose and allow the girls to escape the ADAM-driven hive mind that she desperately wishes to control. Even the antithesis of Ryan’s laissez-faire approach is shown to be the opposite side of the same coin, with one individual dominating over everyone else.

BioShock did not need a sequel, or at least it didn't from an artistic standpoint. BioShock 2 still sold like hotcakes because that is what the developers set out to do with their hot FPS trailblazer. I should lambaste BioShock 2 for merely existing as a product of capitalist opportunity, but I can’t criticize a game too harshly for its intentions. After all, every sequel is an inherent means to reap the benefits of popularity while they still can. BioShock 2’s problem is that the developers did an insultingly little amount to discern it from the first game. I’ve seen identical twins with more genetic variation than in BioShock 1 and 2. One could make the argument that Bioshock 2 is a better game from a mechanical standpoint, and I might be inclined to agree based on the number of admirable quality-of-life improvements. Still, I also can’t commend BioShock 2 for including these as its point of substance, for it’s all minuscule in the grand scheme of things. BioShock 2 couldn’t surpass the aesthetic and atmosphere, nor the gripping story of the first game, and that’s what made its predecessor a gigantic hit. Unfortunately, BioShock 2 cannot blossom under the shadow of the first BioShock, but it seems like it always wanted to be shadowed by it in the first place.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

There were plenty of reasons to be excited about the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo’s third 3D home console expressed that Nintendo was not interested in joining the rat race of making game graphics indiscernible from flesh and blood human beings in cinematic constructs like their competitors Sony and Microsoft. Instead, Nintendo decided to define its brand with stark innovation for yet another gaming generation. Either this decision was due to the company’s artistic integrity still burning like the eighth day of the lit menorah, or they hung up the towel on market domination after seeing how badly the PS2 and Xbox bulldozed the Gamecube in sales over the prior five-year period. While Nintendo was still willing to exceed gaming expectations, they were now careful not to alienate a considerably large portion of their audience like they did with their previous system. In fact, the Wii’s radical foundation served as a vessel to rope in large swathes of unlikely demographics who before the Wii wouldn’t be caught dead playing video games. The Wii’s signature motion controls were fluid, responsive, and surprisingly functional in emulating tons of peripheral objects. Grandparents everywhere were magnetized to Nintendo’s newest creation, seemingly making themselves unaware in their state of elatement that they once decried video games as the prime gateway for degeneracy and overall loserdom for their grandchildren’s generation. While not receiving as much flack for my hobby from my grandparents was a lovely aspect of the Wii’s appeal, the motion controls were not the console’s chief selling point for me. Whether or not the Wii was a console with a unique gimmick at its helm was ultimately superfluous to me. Since the Gamecube, I have purchased every subsequent Nintendo console on the basis of each of them releasing a new Super Smash Bros. title. When I flipped through the pages of the July 2006 issue of Nintendo Power reporting that year’s E3 coverage, the first glimpses of Super Smash Bros. Brawl struck a powerful chord of anticipation that I hadn't, not then or since, resonated as strongly with me with anything else.

I also had to hold that sense of anticipation for a long time after that because Nintendo kept blue-balling me with a series of delays. Brawl was granted a more lenient window of development time compared to Melee, much to the relief of creative director Masahiro Sakurai, who could’ve succumbed to a stress-induced aneurysm during the strenuous development cycle of the previous game. As much as I value the mental well-being of this brilliant man, pre-teen me still pouted and groaned at every announcement that Brawl was still in production. Finally, in early 2008, Sakurai added the finishing touches to his next masterwork, and voila: actually playing Brawl was a tangible prospect, and it was so close to me that I could taste it. Once my wistful dream became a reality after yearning patiently for two years, Brawl fully delivered on my wild expectations and became my cardinal game when I got a hankering for some Smash Bros for a lengthy stretch of time. I briefly returned to Melee on occasion, but Brawl simply offered more content to keep me enamored with it.

However, I seemed to be in the minority as others who waited for Brawl with bated breath absorbed the fresh lark of the new Smash Bros. experience on the Wii and quickly reverted back to permanently playing Melee, saying sayonara to Brawl indefinitely. You see Brawl is the first Smash Bros. entry that fans labeled as a regression in overall quality. The wonderful accident that was Melee inadvertently became the pinnacle of Smash Bros. fighting mechanics, much to the chagrin of Nintendo who wanted their collective IP kerfuffle to be as approachable as humanly possible. The less strained development time gave Sakurai the opportunity to shape Brawl into the Smash game that Nintendo wanted, which probably would’ve been an agreeable product if Melee hadn’t blown off the hinges of accessibility to give free rein for hardcore fighting game fans to flourish. Funny enough, Brawl’s legacy was legitimized via a now-defunct fan-made mod titled “Project M,” which is essentially Brawl with the mechanics of Melee. Since that mod was unsurprisingly eradicated by Nintendo, fans are simply content with Melee or any of the newer Smash titles since Brawl’s release. I find Brawl’s negative retroactive reputation to be unfair. Admittedly, Melee is the superior fighting game, but to claim that the franchise’s potential peaked at its second entry is ridiculous. At its core, the prerogative of Super Smash Bros. is to celebrate Nintendo as the most recognizable brand in the gaming industry. Because the company has a storied history and keeps releasing titles of IPs new and old between the years of each Smash Bros. game, Brawl’s obligation to chronicle Nintendo’s recent achievements still meant that the game inherently still had something to offer.

What better way to expound on the previous Smash Bros. title than to add more characters into the fray? At this point in the series, one could argue that Melee included all of the remaining essentials that should’ve been represented in the first game, plus a handful of esoteric relics and exclusive eastern characters thrown in to befuddle us, westerners. While every new inclusion to the Smash Bros. family is a blessing (except for Pichu), the types of characters in consideration tend to fall into a select number of categories. Firstly, there’s the matter of new prime protagonists to represent the IPs that have been created since the release of the last Smash Bros. title. Sadly, Olimar from Pikmin seems to be the only representative here from an IP that debuted on the Gamecube. Characters that emerged on the Gamecube from pre-existing franchises such as the westernized Fire Emblem protagonist Ike and Link’s cel-shaded self from The Wind Waker make their first appearance, but is this really all the Gamecube has to offer in terms of new IP representation? Personally, I’d be over the hill if I got the chance to whack Mario with the power cord of a proportionally-sized Chibi Robo, but I digress. Wario technically counts as a representative from the then-new WarioWare franchise, as his base look is his biker-clad outfit as opposed to his yellow and purple garb that mirrors Mario. Secondly, there’s the initiative to expand the presence of a franchise of a Smash veteran who’s been acting as a lone wolf up until now. Meta Knight and King Dedede are no-brainers from Kirby, Wolf from Star Fox fills in the much-needed presence of Nintendo’s antagonists in the roster, and how long can Donkey Kong go without having his little buddy Diddy Kong by his side (Fun fact: Diddy is also the first Smash character not to have been made by a Japanese developer. True shit)? Pokemon’s presence in the roster was already quite abundant, but the addition of a Pokemon Trainer plays with a loophole that lets the player shift between Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard on one character slot. Pokemon Nintendo evidently fumbled awkwardly around adding more characters from Metroid as their solution was to shift Samus from her distinguishing power suit to her exposed Zero Suit from Metroid: Zero Mission, whose skin-tight material leaves nothing to the imagination (but I’m not complaining!). Thirdly, the position of unearthed, obscure artifact joining the likes of Ice Climbers and Mr. Game and Watch is Pit and R.O.B., a protagonist from the NES who hadn’t been graced by Nintendo’s light since 1991 and a haphazard NES peripheral respectively. Lucas manages to fit every category simultaneously as the most recent character of the bunch at the time and the second character from the Mother series from a Japanese exclusive title that no one in the west is (legally) allowed to play. Tsk-tsk, Nintendo, you fucking tease. Brawl also marks the first Smash game to omit a few fighters from past titles, namely redundant clones such as Dr. Mario and Pichu. I guess Mewtwo and Young Link were replaced by Lucario and Toon Link as more updated representatives. I’m terribly sorry if Roy was your boy in Melee, though.

Already, the Brawl lineup of playable characters surpasses Melees in both quantity and quality. In addition to increasing the stacked roster by the three tenets, Brawl surpasses the potential of Melee’s cast of playable characters by adding a fourth category that really pumped everyone’s nads. For the first time in Smash Bros. history, third-party characters were assorted into the mix. This remarkable new privilege enraptured all of us eager Smash fans as the possibilities seemed extraordinary, but everyone’s expectations were at least reasonable back then. The two visitors to Nintendoland with VIP passes were Konami’s Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid and Sega’s blue wonder Sonic the Hedgehog. Finally, the fans of Nintendo and Sega could duke it out as their system of choice’s mascot and settle the score. In execution, however, these star-studded visitors weren’t treated with the same level of love by the developers as their own children. Snake’s projectile-latent moveset is more obtuse to operate than any other character’s, and Sonic repeating his classic spin dash for at least three attack variations is the epitome of undercooked. It’s a damn shame, but their novel place in the game is still welcome for obvious reasons.

If every Smash Bros. game is an updated exhibit of Nintendo’s growing lineage, then Brawl was sorely needed in this regard. It’s almost hard to believe that Brawl is a Wii game, or perhaps conversely, it’s hard to believe that Melee is a Gamecube game. Releasing at the Gamecube’s infancy meant that Melee could only chronicle all of the Nintendo releases before the console’s launch, with a few properties from fellow early releases like Luigi’s Mansion and Animal Crossing featured as trophies as “sneak previews.” An entire console generation had passed and then some between Melee and Brawl, so there was a plethora of material to include, even if Nintendo would have you believe that the “lukewarm reception” of the Gamecube era bankrupted the company. While the entire roster may not bolster the past six years accordingly, Brawl’s new stages carry the sense that much has happened since Melee’s release. The entire hub of Isle Delfino, Mario’s mishap-filled vacation destination from Sunshine, is fully displayed via a floating stage with platforms stopping periodically like the player is being given a grand tour. The eponymous setting from Luigi’s solo adventure is seated on a perilous peak as the characters fight in its murky mezzanines. A number of rooms are detailed exquisitely, and knocking at its support beams will make the eerie estate crumble like the house of Usher. Sailing on Tetra’s pirate ship in a cel-shaded sea and being interrupted by the stampede of King Bulbin on the Bridge of Eldin speak for both mainline Zelda games on the Gamecube, and the cylindrical stage of the tutorial boss from Metroid Prime makes a distinction from Prime to the other Metroid titles. The stage itself is kind of lame, however, with the grotesque Parasite Queen in the background as the stage while it occasionally flips.

Now that I mention it, Brawl has the most divisive batch of new stages out of all the Smash Bros. titles thus far. I’d consider “The Pirate Ship”, “Delfino Plaza”, and “Pictochat” to be some of the finest Nintendo-themed arenas for their characters to fight in, but too many of Brawl’s stages are egregiously designed in one way or another. The auto-scrolling of “Rumble Falls” is just another case of the maligned “Icicle Mountain” from Melee, and it’s not any better when the screen is scrolling horizontally in the depleted-looking World 1-1 replica of “Mushroomy Kingdom.” I’d be hard-pressed to refer to the loyal Donkey Kong arcade tribute “75m” and the psychedelic “Hanenbow” as stages because they lack any solid ground, and I’m an unapologetic Poke Floats defender. “New Pork City” takes the sprawling design aspect from the “Hyrule Temple” stage and bloats it to the point where the characters are microscopic under the scope of the dystopian city. Both Norfair and Spear Pillar have hazards that are far too deadly to dance around. No wonder everyone seems to love the simplistic aerial Animal Crossing town view stage “Smashville.” The only new stage that emulates a chaotic Smash stage well is “WarioWare Inc.” which integrates the random microgame lobby from the series with a Smash stage ingeniously.

Several people have already aired their grievances about Brawl's obvious shortcomings, so I’ll keep them brief. Yes, the combat is floatier and fosters defensive play to a fault. Also, I’m sure the person on the development team who conjured up the bafflingly ill-conceived tripping mechanic has been fired and tried for his crimes as harshly as the Nazis in Nuremberg. I share the same negative sentiments with both of these controversies, but my specific qualm that has gone unnoticed by most pertains to the items that were introduced. Adding new characters will always be acceptable, for the player can only play as one character at a time. However, in the case of adding more tools into the mix, the controlled chaos of combat oversteps its bounds. Running into a Bob-omb in Melee made everyone panic but now, Mario’s enemy is joined by the Smart Bomb from Star Fox, whose impact is more extensive than the blunt force of the walking explosive. Wrecking Crew’s hammer is also joined by its more bourgeois brother, the Golden Hammer, which comes with its own separate gag and jingle along with dealing far more damage. The Pokemon selection that appears has been updated to feature Pokemon from both Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl, and the number of legendary types with overpowered attacks has only been added onto to increase the likelihood of having to duck and cover from their deadliness. On top of the Pokeballs, a new item called an Assist Trophy appears in an opaque trophy stand to aid the player in battle when summoned. The only difference is that the figure that pops out could be a character from a number of franchises, such as the original iteration of Andross, Ness’s nerd friend Jeff, and even characters whose franchises aren’t represented in the roster like Isaac from Golden Sun. It’s a consolation prize to be featured in a Smash Bros. game despite their relative insignificance. Like the Pokeballs, many of these Assist Trophies are far too capable of doing massive damage, and I’m convinced some like the screen-dominating Nintendog and Mr. Resetti were included to troll the player. Not a great pitch for the new idea, Nintendo.

Among all of these new items used to blast Nintendo’s characters to kingdom come is the cherry on top of the chaos. Once or twice in battle, a floating Smash Bros. logo will materialize and float aimlessly around the stage, accompanied by the gasps of the audience to signify its immense power. Catching the logo and breaking it open will unlock a character’s “Final Smash,” a super move that deals an astronomical amount of damage when the player presses the B button. Some are a wide burst of energy like Mario’s inferno and Samus's cannon blast, others are controlled manually like the three Star Fox tanks and Wario’s stronger garlic-chomping alter ego, and some need precision like Link’s Triforce combo and Captain Falcon running you down with the Blue Falcon. Others such as Donkey Kong’s tepid jam band bongo playing and Luigi’s psychedelic dance feel like the developers slapped some of these onto the characters without any real consideration. My overall point with the new items, especially the Final Smash balls, is that the use of items can now give one player an unfair advantage over the other. One could argue that this was the same case for the items in the previous games and that discussing the items in a Smash Bros. game is superfluous because only scrubs keep them on. As someone who didn’t mind the items in small doses, the alarming rate of easy-to-obtain weapons of mass destruction is unfair. It's another mark of the developers making Smash Bros. more frivolous, but I’m never amused when I lose my winning lead to one of these damned things.

Besides the standard brawling, if you will, is a bevy of extra content that supplements every Smash Bros. game. Classic Mode is still a random roulette of characters until the player reaches the apex point of Master Hand and possibly Crazy Hand, Event Matches set up scenarios with a specific context, and All-Star is a tense bout in defeating every playable character between rounds, now organized in series order instead of randomly like in Melee. A multitude of trophies is still curated in a menu, although the means of unlocking them take the form of a high-stakes minigame involving using the player’s accumulative total of coins as ammunition and shooting the trophies that appear on the board. Stickers act similarly to trophies as a catalog of Nintendo characters, but they are far less interesting. Target Test, Home-Run Contest, and Multi-Man Melee Brawl all return, but each is either a watered-down version of itself or adds nothing of value. Anything extra that Brawl adds to keep the player involved that wasn’t in Melee tends to be quite underwhelming. The Stage Maker feature sounds promising, but all it provides the player are the most rudimentary shapes and hazards possible. I bet Nintendo never figured that the player could still render a stage shaped entirely like a cock and balls with the little resources they gave them, which was bar none the most popular custom stage design. Masterpieces showcase a number of older Nintendo releases that involve the playable character’s past adventures, and it offers a solid selection of games. It seems cool while you’re in the moment until you realize that Nintendo isn’t going to give these games away for free, so they yank the player out of the demo faster than chewing gum loses its flavor. Why bother at that point?

All of these halfhearted modes that Brawl adds are fully compensated with one “extra mode” featured in Brawl that cements its legacy among its fellow Smash Bros. titles, and that’s the Adventure Mode, titled “The Subspace Emissary.” If I had to wager a guess, this colossal campaign was the reason why Brawl’s release date was frequently postponed. What was the amusing novelty of a crossover between Nintendo’s characters that shaped the identity of the series has transcended its place as a simplified fighting game into something of a cinematic, epic crusade with Nintendo’s characters at the helm.

It’s difficult to summarize the plot points of the Subspace Emissary’s story despite how grandiose a scale it sets itself on. This is mostly due to Nintendo’s characters persisting on the minimal yelps, cries, and squeals they all emit as opposed to spoken dialogue. Exposition throughout the whole campaign is expressed through mostly silent Peachisms (solving a skirmish with a cup of piping hot tea), Captain Falconisms (murdering a tribe of Pikmin in a flashy, cloddish manner), Warioisms (farting and picking his nose), etc. to further the plot. Still, I think I can detail the events eloquently enough to make sense of them. The villainous characters in Nintendo’s universe are executing a diabolical scheme to obliterate the world with an arsenal of black hole time bombs. Ganondorf and or Master Hand seem to be at the top of the excursions' villainous chain of command, overseeing the process from his dark domain. Meanwhile, other villains such as Bowser, King Dedede, and Wario are using a cannon whose arrow-shaped projectiles kill all of the Nintendo heroes that would stop their evil deeds, or at least immobilize them indefinitely into trophies and round them up. The first instance of this is when Meta Knight’s Battleship Halberd looms overheard and rains down the Plasmid grunts for Mario and Kirby to fight. A veiled figure called the Ancient Minister sets one bomb that engulfs the arena into a black void of nothing. Wario also uses the cannon on either Zelda or Peach as Kirby escapes with the one that survives. This conflict scene is essentially what occurs at each moment in the story, only with a different pairing of Nintendo characters (ie. Samus and Pikachu, Diddy Kong and Fox, Lucas and Pokemon Trainer, etc.) as all of the groups eventually rendezvous by circumstance. Also, each of the villains realizes how dumb this mission is and joins the rebellion. I can’t criticize the plot too harshly given the intrinsic flaws of a plot that involves all of these different characters interacting with each other. However, the sheer notion of all these characters interacting with each other in this context is also the campaign’s charm, even if it is fan service.

I love the Subspace Emissary or at least the overall execution of its gameplay. The 2D axis the series has always implemented for fighting translates into the beat em’ up/2D platformer as smoothly as slipping on a sock. Defeating the army of unique enemies never feels unnatural, but it does wear on the player after a while. The Subspace Emissary takes approximately ten hours to complete, and fighting the foes that the developers crafted for this campaign overstay their welcome after they halt progress to kick them into the dirt for the umpteenth time. Some call the Plasmids and their fellow allies in the evil army to be generic, but the large variety of them keeps their encounters relatively fresh. That being said, I’m not giving the same clemency to these levels. I’m not convinced that these levels all encompass a “Nintendoland” where all the characters reside. All the spirited and wondrous backdrops found across Nintendo’s library are subtracted into dull depictions that rely on the most base level of tropes to vaguely recreate something of a familiar Nintendo foreground. Even worse, the ending section, “The Great Maze,” is an amalgamation of every level that takes about half the length of the total campaign. It goes without saying that this section is a total slog.

Fortunately, a greater sense of inspiration in The Subspace Emissary is with its bosses. Unlike the unrecognizable legions of foot soldiers scattered around, most of the bosses will strike a sense of intimacy. Petey Piranha captures Peach and Zelda at the beginning, Porky (yes, his real cannon name) will bully Ness and Lucas in his spider mech, and Ridley will be fought twice in his normal form and his metal coat of armor from Metroid Prime. Is legendary Pokemon Rayquaza considered a “villain?” If not, the Loch Ness Monster Pokemon of the lake still makes for an engaging boss. I still like the bosses the developers made for the game because, like the others, they still offer a challenge with a diverse move set to learn and overcome. At the very end of the campaign, we learn that all the Nintendo villains were nothing but red herrings, and the vengeful God-Like being of Tabuu was pulling the proverbial strings. He displays his omnipotent might on everyone which makes him seem unbeatable. That is until Sonic the fucking Hedgehog pulls a Deus Ex Machina before he deals the final blow. I don’t care if this trope is contrived and stupid, this is the only way to introduce Sonic in his debut Smash title. Then, the player has to vanquish the malevolent force, and he’s no picnic. He’s a damage sponge with many unpredictable forms, one being a series of flashes that will kill the player on contact. Once he’s defeated, the land reverts to its normal state, signified by the shot of a shimmering sunset by a body of water.

We all need to stop pretending that Melee didn’t have any faults and that Brawl was a misguided sequel that couldn’t surpass “perfection.” Super Smash. Bros Brawl was a logical step in progress for a Smash Bros. sequel, and the mark of a successor in a series based on recounting the celebrated history of the most successful video game company of all time needs to up the ante. Nintendo’s attempts to craft a more casual experience by slightly altering the gameplay isn’t a big detractor (except for tripping. What the fuck were they thinking?) because it still reproduces the appeal of Smash Bros. However, Brawl might signal a point where it would’ve been wise to show restraint in the additions, and the more involved stages and lethal items should be subtracted the same as the clone characters were from the roster. As of now, Brawl is a unique outlier in the series because the ambitious Subspace Emissary campaign, or at least something of its caliber, wasn’t recreated for any of the future titles. As flawed as the campaign was, it still hits a zenith point of crossover potential that no other Smash game has recreated. Ideally, every subsequent Smash Bros. game is intended to be bigger and better than the previous ones but no matter how they augment future releases in terms of content, I will always return to Brawl, the black sheep of the series, for this reason.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Here’s a pressing question for all you gamers under the age of thirty: do you actively avoid playing games from the pre-3D era because of their lack of availability, or because their foundation is comparatively primitive, and therefore jarringly inaccessible? The reason can’t be because these games are locked in an archival vault, for they are commonly ported to modern platforms. It must be due to the prevailing notion that video games have an arbitrary expiration date. C’mon, fess up. I’m not saying everyone born after the early 90s shares these predilections, but there seems to be a widespread viewpoint among younger gamers that vilifies games that predate their own conception, especially those of the early pixelated 2D period released before the late 1990s. A sneering distaste for the classics isn’t as pervasive with films or music. Zoomers will attend theater screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey high as a kite and emphatically detail their “transcendental experience” to their peers with a Pulp Fiction poster in the background of their dorm rooms. No one is delusional enough to place the prequels or Disney Star Wars films over the immortal original trilogy regardless of their age. Maybe it’s because I spend too much time on the internet, but I’ve noticed that discovering older music artists via the world wide web is a more common practice among teenagers now than it was when I was in high school. Older video games, on the other hand, are treated with the same reaction of revulsion as if they were being forced to eat their brussels sprouts. Admittedly, as someone born in the early 3D era, many of the industry practices and comparatively primitive facets of game design can verge on being excruciating. I can count merely a handful of games that were released before I was born that are among my personal favorites, as there is only so much pain I can handle before my spirit shatters and I am in dire need of a relaxing bath with some chocolate ice cream for comfort. Conversely, there are plenty of those whose gaming prime was this jagged era, and the shift to 3D left them bewildered. They’ve assigned themselves to the role of gaming elder statesmen, whose repertoire is cryogenically frozen to the time before the medium became polygonal. After a certain point where the gaming industry reached a point of proficiency with 3D visuals to an almost cinematic extent, games that resembled those of the primeval pixelated years started popping out of the indie woodwork. One of the first breakout titles in this new wave of old-school revival games was Shovel Knight, a 2D side scroller that arguably bridged the generational gap of gamers.

Honestly, Shovel Knight’s mission was not to create perfect harmony between the two contrasting factions. The prerogative of Yacht Club Games was to convince the youngins in their Call of Duty Team Deathmatch lobbies to respect their elders, or at least respect the pioneering craftsmanship their elders laid out in the vein of a fresh IP. Even then, Shovel Knight didn’t have any of the desirable qualities that would’ve enticed these kids, as Shovel Knight is as willfully retro as a jukebox in an off-road diner. Shovel Knight audaciously traipses around with an 8-bit fur coat and pixelated platform boots to flaunt its influences. Its style is shameless, and its intentions are unmistakable. Shovel Knight could’ve fit comfortably in the vast NES library, and anyone who didn’t know any better would see the game and assume that a buried, obscure gem (probably a game that was once exclusive to Japan) has been dug up and ported to modern consoles. While only the most open-minded of adolescent gamers would give their attention to Shovel Knight, one would think that the champions of the old gaming guard would salivate at the prospect of a new game that encapsulates a bygone time that makes them comfortable enough to step out of their cocoon of nostalgia. However, Shovel Knight’s unabashed throwback identity could veer into being an 8-bit pastiche. The tropes and overall aesthetic of Shovel Knight are comprised of games that were over two decades old at the time, so the familiarities are sunken deep into the annals of video game history. Why would an “old school” gamer play Shovel Knight when they already have access to the hundreds of games that Shovel Knight liberally borrows from? Shovel Knight is like a Frankenstein’s monster composed of the decayed bits of gaming’s ancestors, but this statement doesn’t imply that Shovel Knight is derivative. Even though Shovel Knight is a remodel of a product that’s perceived to be “out of date,” decades of progress elevate its stature above its influences.

For those of you who have plenty of experience playing pixelated titles released before the fifth generation of gaming, you’ll attest to the fact that the visuals of the NES looked rough for more reasons than the 8-bit pixels. Not only did the chunky graphics resemble nothing akin to real life, but the fuzzy, static overlay of the cubical CRT TVs was also an unattractive visor that accompanied it. Sure, the use of CRT TVs persisted far into the 2000s, but the hazy drawbacks of the television technology were especially a discordant display in an era where objects and characters were rendered by rudimentary shapes and colors. Thankfully, the developers didn’t resort to that level of grating authenticity, as the general visual fidelity is up to par with the high-definition standards of current times. Unlike attempting to screen a real NES on an HDTV, Shovel Knight showcases the absolute apex of 8-bit pixel art. Color pallets unfeasible on the NES flourish beautifully in the characters and every trace of the scenery, and the subtleties in the sprite work retain a sense of refinement that keeps the lurid look of the game from overflowing and becoming a pixelated Argento film. Characters are expressive despite their intentionally simplistic physical features and there isn’t a single object that inadvertently gets muddled in with the contrasting colors making it indiscernible. One could argue that Shovel Knight’s visuals don’t accurately evoke those of the NES because it would be impossible to render something as proficiently striking on Nintendo’s first home console, and they’d technically be correct. My stance on this claim is that the revamped, NES-esque presentation gives the 8-bit graphics more credence as a legitimate visual style instead of being synonymous with graphical insufficiency.

Something else ubiquitous across the NES era was the designation of video game protagonists as mascots, charismatic characters to represent the brands of their companies. This practice made video games seem like a medium catered to children, but now it’s a quaint facet of a more innocent fetal age of gaming. The titular character Shovel Knight could’ve been believable as a plucky representative among the Captain N crowd, as enough personality oozes out of his pores to make his armor rust. Aesthetically, the cerulean warrior masterfully combines the ideal mascot balance of badass and adorable like the plethora of animals that were popular at the time, although the latter characteristic might be attributed to his dwarfish physical stature. Shovel Knight is noble, jolly, and ready to face any type of danger to protect and serve his kingdom. He’s the archetypal knight from medieval lore, powered by a strong sense of chivalry and divine duty. We never catch even a glimpse of what Shovel Knight looks like beneath his horned headpiece, but all of us can readily assume by his personality that he’s devilishly handsome with a twinkly smile that makes all the noblewomen swoon.

His choice of weapon, the shovel of his namesake, may seem like a handicap compared to the traditional sword and may imply that our hero is of lower class status in the kingdom’s caste than the average knight. That, or it's indicative of the modern indie circuits pension for wry quirkiness that would’ve escaped the audience of 8-bit gaming’s prime. Despite the weapon’s silliness, Shovel Knight proves that the shovel is mightier than the sword (this comparison doesn’t work the same way as the classic adage does). All of the kingdom’s evil is vanquished easily with the whack of our hero’s weird weapon of choice, and it's also very accommodating to Shovel Knight’s flexible range of movement. Shovel’s Knight’s basic attack with his weapon is a two-handed scoop that takes some elbow grease, but the true testament to Shovel Knight’s agile potency is the stabbing aerial move where he can deal damage to enemies by hopping on them similar to Scrooge McDuck’s move in the licensed NES classic DuckTales. The shovel’s shape also allows Shovel Knight to bat most projectiles Besides being the object his persona is associated with, Shovel Knight’s trusty gardening tool feels as natural and as deadly as the Master Sword or Simon Belmont’s whip. Speaking of which, Shovel Knight also has full access to an assortment of additional secondary items with a similar function to the ones in Castlevania. While the medieval setting may warrant these secondary weapons to also share a similar religious theme to Castlevania’s, Shovel Knight’s secondary weapons are non-secular tools referred to as relics. To supplement the shovel’s lack of projectile range that isn’t defensive, Shovel Knight can use items like the Flare Wand and Chaos Sphere to fling fire and ricocheting energy balls. The Dust Knuckles allow Shovel Knight to dig through the dirt, and the Phase Locket makes him invulnerable for a brief period. Like in Castlevania, these relics are activated by pressing up on the controller’s D-pad, and their use coincides with the amount of magic fuel that is easily collected on the field in blue magic sacks. Shovel Knight is smooth and incredibly capable, which is ideal for a 2D platformer protagonist.

As capable as Shovel Knight seems, he is but a shell of his former self. The enigmatic knight is actually past his glory days and isn’t as strong as he used to be. You see, Shovel Knight’s full potential has been split in half due to the disappearance of his partner, Shield Knight. Given the multiple contrasts of Shield Knight’s striking red and Shovel Knight’s deep blue, the offensiveness to her defensiveness, and their opposite gender roles, the “two halves of one whole” dynamic is apparent in their relationship. Unfortunately, their ties were severed by a cursed amulet that awakened the wicked Enchantress, the main antagonist of the game. With the power of the amulet, the Enchantress sealed Shield Knight in her dark, imposing Tower of Fate, leaving Shovel Knight in a crestfallen state of grief. Shovel Knight even dreams of her coming to her rescue every night as he sleeps by the fire, an interactive psychological facet of how losing her haunts him. The impetus that stimulated Shovel Knight out of his rut is the formation of the “Order of the No Quarter:” a coalition of rogue knights under the leadership of the Enchantress, who have used their position of power to corrupt the land and put its governable status at an imbalance. Shovel Knight’s comeback is a valiant quest for justice and to retrieve his life partner, and it’s going to be especially daunting as his first solo effort. At its center, Shovel Knight’s plot is not only the oldest of heroic narrative arcs, but it's also one of the most common premises in 8-bit video games (Mario, Zelda, etc.) However, the fact that Shovel Knight’s lack of confidence without his partner subverts the trope of the herculean savior who seems a little too capable on his quest to save a girl whose relationship with him isn’t entirely motivated by sex. It adds a layer of depth to the tired hero’s journey arc and the hero/damsel in distress roles.

Shovel Knight’s 8-bit influences step beyond the aspects of gameplay and aesthetics. I’ve briefly mentioned the tinges of Castlevania and DuckTales, but Shovel Knight’s inspiration stretches beyond only those few NES titles. Once Shovel Knight finishes the first stage, the map layout of the land will signify the extent of how much Shovel Knight scrounges up from the NES’s rich tapestry. The world map sees an icon of Shovel Knight moving around a series of lines that connect to the pronounced areas of interest. As Shovel Knight progresses on his quest, the ominous fog, most likely a byproduct of the Enchantress's toxic influence, blows eastward until her foreboding fortress is revealed. The next section of the map is unlocked in increments of three, subtly establishing a difficulty curve that comes with progress. Immediately, the map’s design should signal a sense of deja vu because it strongly resembles the way in which Super Mario Bros. 3’s individual worlds are structured. The differences between Shovel Knight and Super Mario Bros. 3’s maps are more than similarities in the visual department. Among the main levels across the map are places of interest that transport Shovel Knight to quaint little urban settlements reminiscent of the offroad towns from Zelda II. Instead of arriving at these old-world Burroughs to plunge his proverbial shovel into the town’s elegant wenches to restore his health and magic, Shovel Knight peruses the various wares to aid him on his mission. What else would the truckload of shiny jewelry that Shovel Knight finds in the levels be used for? Shovel Knight can pay to increase his magic at a witch’s cauldron, and increase the maximum capacity of his health by trading in a meal ticket to a cook seated next to the witch. A blacksmith situated the next town over can craft a colorful collection of armor, whose attributes are more varied than increasing general defense. Shovel Knight can finance the business aspirations of a group of entrepreneurs inside a hat store, and trade in music sheets to an excitable bard for a small sum of money. Neither the map nor the integration of village pit stops is wholly original, but the combination of both adds interest to Super Mario Bros. 3’s map, while the grid-based map adds a level of organization to the overworld in Zelda II.

Shovel Knight’s makeup is a tasteful mix of many NES games, but its primary influence is evidently Mega Man. Besides their armor sharing the same ocean hue, the blue bomber’s impact is seen in Shovel Knight's main level design. Like each Mega Man game, Shovel Knight’s levels are themed after elements relative to the coinciding boss that our hero faces at the end. Because the Knights are as an eclectic bunch as the Robot Masters of each Mega Man game, the player can expect the levels to exude the same amount of diversity in both the aesthetics and in level obstacles. The gothic stage of the Spectre Knight sees sections of total darkness with nothing but Shovel’s Knight silhouette as a visual frame of reference. The volcanic, underground caverns of Mole Knight’s stage have asymmetrical platforms made of igneous rock whose volatile properties ignite a chain reaction of decimation like a lit fuse which Shovel Knight must pay attention to. Some themes and their features like the underwater buoyancy test in Treasure Knight’s stage and the moving conveyor belt platforms in Tinker Knight’s stage are more directly taken from specific Mega Man stages, but Shovel Knight’s advantage of being on more powerful hardware allows these tropes to flesh out longer levels with more pronounced environments. Add the paused scrolling (with quicker frames) for good measure and Shovel Knight exudes the same standard of pulse-pounding action that made Mega Man so appealing.

The bosses themselves are also something Shovel Knight stripped from Mega Man’s notebook. Besides the way in which their encounters come across at the pinnacle of their themed levels, the fact that Shovel Knight shares the same title surname as they do makes the connection all too obvious. Similarly to how Shovel Knight’s advantages flesh out the levels, the same treatment is given to the bosses. At each boss encounters, Shovel Knight engages in a theatrical bout of venomous verbiage with them, biting his thumb at them with great contempt for their patronage of the evil Enchantress. Not ones to take Shovel’s Knight’s caustic tongue lightly, each knight acerbically responds in a myriad of ways. The King Knight is a foppish coward who usurped the throne of the land’s king to raise his entitled ego. The Propeller Knight is a romantic sky chaser with a vaguely French inflection. The Plague Knight can’t help but cackle with every sentence, and the fuzzy giant Polar Knight grunts at Shovel Knight with frost-bitten stoicism. There are also the bosses Shovel Knight faces on the map that is also brimming with personality, namely the Black Knight; a Protoman-type rival of Shovel Knight’s who is the Enchantress's most valued puppet. Their admirable level of character depth is also accentuated by more involved battles that include multiple phases. Mole Knight will burrow into every angle of dirt to catch Shovel Knight by surprise, while Spectre Knight will turn off the lights after a certain point to veil himself and his giant scythe. My favorite boss in this regard is Tinker Knight, who is the only boss whose multiple phases have two different health bars. The pathetic wrench tossing of the geeky shrimp is meant to lull the player into underestimating his might, as he brings out his colossal, cyberpunk mech as his second phase that could mirror one of the bosses from a section of dr. Wily’s castle. The knights of Shovel Knight are more fleshed out and interesting than the plain Robot Masters of Mega Man who vault over Mega Man’s head with their blank expressions.

Getting to the bosses shouldn’t be a taxing excursion, for Shovel Knight dials down the difficulty of a typical NES title to accommodate a modern audience. With standard damage, Shovel Knight’s health bar can take the brunt of most enemies' attacks with minimal knockback compared to the dramatism of Simon Belmont. The common casualties of bottomless pits and spikes that litter the screens of the hardest NES games are still here, but it’s the penalty leniency that separates Shovel Knight from its influences. Checkpoints are implemented regularly as reference points of progression, and all Shovel Knight loses upon dying is an amount of money subtracted from his total. The money is even represented by floating sacks of varying sizes and can be retrieved. To most NES enthusiasts, this soft penalty signals a lack of respect for the “NES hard” standard that made the early eras of gaming invigorating. Fortunately, I have good news for all of the detractors. The player can make Shovel Knight much harder by smashing the glass orb and claiming the treasure inside, sacrificing that checkpoint for the remainder of the level. The player has the choice to levy their skill and play accordingly, and it’s a brilliant trade-off.

Even for inexperienced players who would rather not take that risk, the difficulty curve eventually catches up to every player in the end finally approaching the Enchantress. Like Dr. Wily’s Castle, the witch’s towering domain serves as a climactic trek to the final boss with its own sublevels to exude the immense scale of the architecture. The Tower of Fate is also substantially harder than any of the knight’s levels, appropriately fitting for the finale of the game. Every section includes the hardest of level tropes seen across the previous levels such as the scaling ascension in Tinker Knight’s stage and the shadowy inflection of Spectre Knight’s. Shovel Knight fights a physically corrupted version of Black Knight, who is harder than any of the regular ones. In Mega Man tradition, there is also a boss gauntlet involving a randomized roulette of the other bosses in the scene of them sitting at a round table. Shovel Knight has the ability to fully heal between rounds, and is given a choice to save all the knights from plummeting to their untimely deaths. I chose to lend them a hand because I liked them as characters, something I would feel apathetic about if a crew of Robot Masters was in the same dire situation. The Enchantress fight that caps off the adventure involves working with Shield Knight to conquer her, and it’s here where their powerful relationship is put to the test in action other than a narrative component. Shield Knight ultimately sacrifices herself to save both Shovel Knight and Black Knight in his moment of clarity, which makes for a much more emotionally resonating ending than leaving destitute Dr. Wily on his knees.

Shovel Knight is the greatest NES game that was never released on the system. Even in the case of Super Mario Bros. 3, the undisputed champion of the era, Shovel Knight still blows it out of the water. I suppose it still isn’t fair to compare because Shovel Knight is sprinting on a path that was paved with a painstaking effort by its godfathers, and is wearing airtight tennis shoes as opposed to the uncomfortable wooden clogs that the others were forced to wear. If Shovel Knight doesn’t credit Mega Man, Zelda II, and Super Mario after it wins first prize, it should be booed and pelted by rotten tomatoes. Of course, Shovel Knight already showcases a heavy amount of respect and gratitude in the overall product. Shovel Knight is so tight, fluid, varied, pretty, and fun that I can’t imagine an older gamer sticking their nose up at it or a younger gamer having difficulties. Shovel Knight is not nostalgia bait because even with the thickest of rose-tinted glasses, any experience playing a game on the NES was never this solid.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I failed to mention this in my review of the first Mega Man but when I first played the blue bomber’s debut title, I didn’t like it. I am a child of the 2000s, which means I grew up accustomed to the frills that came with 3D gaming such as save features and reasonable difficulty curves. My earliest gaming experiences were the cumulative product of burgeoning change that made gaming smoother and more accessible for everyone, and this rate of progress has only become even more apparent since then. It’s not a cardinal rule that the parameters of one’s gaming repertoire should start at the base of when they started gaming to the current day, so why does playing games before one’s debut generation not come recommended by many? I’ve fervently argued that art and entertainment of yesteryears should be at least considered or at least respected by those whose existence came after the piece’s release date, for it can still retain its essentials that stand the test of time. However, my experience with the first Mega Man as a child tested my laurels and made me skeptical about the overall quality of “retro games.” That allurement of Mega Man’s that I alluded to struck me while reading about his classic titles in an issue of Nintendo Power sometime in the 2000s. The NES Mega Man titles still grabbed me with their promise of high-octane shooting action and tight platforming despite their primitiveness. What I didn’t anticipate was the game throttling me around like a rag doll, leaving me bruised and battered. Each of the Robot Master’s stages was uniquely punishing, and finally learning a comfortable sequential order to defeat them didn’t matter when I faced the sun-colored brick wall known as The Yellow Devil. Instead of throwing in a tear-soaked towel, something curious caught my eye about its sequel, Mega Man 2. Ironically, the optimal title in the classic Mega Man series for optimistic beginners is not the first title, as Mega Man 2 is considered by most to be the grand champion of the series. In just one following entry, the rudimentary snags that made the first Mega Man so excruciating were remedied to an exceptional degree.

On the surface, Mega Man 2 doesn’t improve on its rough template too much with considerable deviation. Our charismatic robot boy sees himself on another valiant quest to defeat the deranged Dr. Wily and his league of themed Robot Masters and save his futuristic world from total chaos. The key difference this time in relation to the first game is that Dr. Wily has cooked up this new batch of Robot Masters himself and there are eight of them instead of six. Once again, the player has the choice of routing Mega Man on a course of destroying the robotic menaces, while briskly being directed towards a sensible trajectory depending on the elemental powers Mega Man absorbs from them. Mega Man 2 is not a reboot disguised as a sequel like the Evil Deads of the world, but it is an indication that Mega Man has solidified a formula that will persist with each entry. The problem with the first Mega Man was obviously not a case of an ill-conceived idea falling apart at the seams. Mega Man needed some significant sanding down and refurbishing in order to bloom as the exemplary 2D platformer series on the NES. The effort to polish Mega Man was not a painstaking overhaul, but the slight improvements made a world of difference.

Unlike the three Super Mario games on the NES, the Mega Man series did not receive a new coat of pixelated paint with each new title. At first glance, Mega Man 2 is a carbon copy of the first game from an aesthetic standpoint. However, one can discern a substantial amount of detail by squinting at the graphical intricacies in the fine mineral textures in the pixels. This level of refinement is displayed as early as the game’s pre-menu introduction which sees a sprawling, futuristic metropolis in evening shade, with the deep color palette perfectly capturing the tone of the scene. Scrolling up the skyscraper sees Mega Man standing on its roof sans his helmet, and the wind of the high altitudes ruffles his black hair. It’s the most indelible image of the game and quite possibly the whole series, and it sets a precedent for how the game has improved upon Mega Man’s visuals. For one, Mega Man himself has been treated to a subtle hint of refinement that many might not catch. Mega Man’s pixelated outline is no longer as pronounced as an unplucked eyebrow, as it has been shaved down with an 8-bit thin razor. Along with the blue bomber, the foregrounds, and backgrounds of each stage look like they’ve been on the operating table in the year between Mega Man 1 and 2. They’ve been transformed to more appropriately fit the theme set around the specific Robot Master. Metal Man’s stage has a crop of rotating gears to set the scene of an industrial factory. Wood Man’s stage is an auburn color with a wavy, timbered texture to simulate venturing through the insides of an immensely-sized tree in the forest. The background of Flash Man’s stage is bright and glitzy, aptly enough for the Robot Master who resides in it, and the sweltering atmosphere of Heat Man’s stage radiates strongly off the red brick walls enough to make Mega Man sweat, (if he had those glands, anyways) as opposed to the stage of the warmth-themed Robot Master from the previous game. Stages in Mega Man 2 feel much more immersive thanks to the great strides in detail compared to the empty blue and black backgrounds and globular foregrounds of the stages in the foreground in the first game. Mega Man looking less like he has a thick layer of filth around him is also a bonus perk.

The overall level design in Mega Man 2 is as intricate as the visuals. In the first game, most of the levels were focused on precision platforming, whether they be trying to keep Mega Man’s footing over a pit of perilous spikes or falling into the abyss. While that’s still a prevalent aspect of Mega Man’s level structure here, the focal point of each stage in Mega Man 2 is also better centered around the theme of each Robot Master. Accompanying the clockwise rotation of the gears in Metal Man’s stage are conveyor belt platforms, a reasonable trope of factory settings that either accelerate or slacken Mega Man’s movement in the undesired direction. The urgency of Quick Man’s stage is highlighted by an infamous section involving a series of energy beams that jet out of every corner of the screen, disintegrating Mega Man on impact if they catch him. Many abhor this section because of the unpredictability of where the beams will appear and how rapidly they zoom out to blast Mega Man in the face from potentially anywhere. While I can understand their grievances, the tense reaction time needed to avoid the beams evokes the thrill of being chased. Once Mega Man plunges into the lake below the gorgeously roaring waterfall of Bubble Man’s stage, we learn that Dr. Light was insightful enough to equip Mega Man with a resistance to water. Even though his robotic pride and joy can withstand being submerged in the drink, Mega Man’s buoyancy is tested by the physics of his standard jump being manipulated. Acclimating to the rate of movement underwater and adjusting it to avoid the stinging, deadly-as-spikes sea urchins takes some time to master. Keeping afloat in Air Man’s stage is reminiscent of platforming challenges where Mega Man falls to oblivion in Mega Man 1, but the course of the cloud platforms and the drill barriers of the strange tiki heads is consistent and easier to learn. Reappearing block sections make their return in Heat Man’s stage, and their patterns are much less unhinged and demanding compared to the asymmetrical, almost avant-garde patterns seen in Ice Man’s stage. Inhibitors while climbing ladders in Crash Man’s stage don’t knock Mega Man down to the previous screen, and enemy placements can be detected far in advance before they pounce. Returning attributes to Mega Man’s stages have been made much more manageable, and the variety of the new attributes offer a fair challenge without seeming like irritating gimmicks.

If one couldn’t tell from their names or descriptions of their levels, the eight new Robot Masters are another ragtag crew with an eclectic range of physical differences. While these differences are apparent, the player must once again surmise a logical matching of their powers to inflict on one another like a more puzzling game of rock, paper, and scissors. The reasonable path in the first Mega Man game was based on elemental tropes like earth, wind, fire, and ice, but the characteristics of the Robot Masters in Mega Man 2 are less conspicuous. No, the rhyme scheme between Flash Man and Crash Man does not correlate with their weaknesses. The path to Dr. Wily that defeating all eight Robot Masters leads to involves more clever consideration. Examples include using Air Man’s multiple cyclones on Crash Man because turbulence can cause a crash, clogging up Air Man with Wood Man’s leaves like a jet turbine, and Flash Man stopping time to halt Quick Man’s speedy maneuvers. Or, you can do what everyone does and seek out Metal Man first, for his Metal Blade weapon is a force to be reckoned with. The projectile saw blade can be tossed in eight different directions, deals twice the damage of the standard blaster, and barely expends any amount of energy. Imposing it on most of the Robot Masters also tends to make the health bars plummet like the 1929 stock market. You know the old adage not to bring a knife to a gunfight? I have a new saying: do not bring any weapon against the Metal Blade, for you will be smote by its power. For those who do not revel in the almighty awesomeness of the Metal Blade, they tend to argue that the pervasive use of this item compromises on the utility of each weapon, but I was feeling too righteous and badass while using it to care. Besides, the other weapons have their own uses as well, whether it’s a matter of the game forcing it on the player or not.

Mega Man 2’s considerable leap in quality may boil down to the developers making the experience easier, which may draw some contempt from NES purists who might contest the game’s legacy and mock players like myself who couldn’t handle the consistent onslaught of torment the first game bestowed. Considering how abundant the amount of energy/health items and extra lives are on the field of Mega Man 2, their arguments aren’t baseless. However, I don’t think Mega Man 2 is a breezy cakewalk to Dr. Wily’s domain. I’ve already expressed that the challenges leading up to him in the Robot Master’s levels involve considerable skill to surpass. The developers have made a substantial effort to balance Mega Man’s difficulty by aiding the player through the rudimentary regulations of the NES era. A password system is instated instead of expecting the player to finish the game in one sitting, the most primitive form of saving progress that did not persist past the pixelated eras. Password systems at least put one’s progress into consideration, but writing down a jumble of codes on paper is not my idea of being accommodating. Because losing one’s progress is still a harsh reality in Mega Man 2, the developers offer a smattering of aid trinkets to keep the player in the fray. Among the excess of automatic replenishing items, Mega Man 2 sees the birth of the series staple Energy Tank, with no relation to the item of the same name from Metroid. Mega Man pops these cerulean cans as Popeye does to spinach, and they revitalize his health to its maximum capacity. Mega Man can carry up to a total of four at a time, and the precarious placements these tanks are placed in offer a risk-reward incentive. The awkward implementation of the “optional” Magnet Beam from the first game has been reconfigured into three support weapons, and each of them serves to mitigate the hazardous and or tedious sections of the game far more comfortably than their prototype. Dr. Light also rewards Mega Man with one of these support weapons after a certain number of slain Robot Masters, cementing their importance and assuring that Mega Man won’t be hopelessly stuck ahem. Mega Man’s developers aren’t rewriting the NES rulebook, but I appreciate that they’re willing to bend it a bit to express concern for the player’s well-being.

Unfortunately, good intentions ultimately fall flat when those performing those noble deeds don’t think things through. Once again, a Mega Man game eventually accelerates headfirst into an impervious wall. Actually, in this context, Mega Man 2’s impenetrable force is more like falling down a one-hundred-foot well. Also, this impediment occurs at Dr. Wily’s Castle, but at least it isn’t as early as the first section while crossing the fortress’s lawn. Up until the fourth section, Dr. Wily’s castle seems to have reduced its security measures. The first section greatly utilizes the three support items, and the dark arena with the sparse, airborne grounding in which Mega Man fights the dragon is tense enough that one slip will signal Mega Man’s doom. When the arena itself is the boss of the second section, it makes the player use the Metal Blade more shrewdly, and the third section allows the player to practice more underwater jumping. Then, the fourth section comes along to ruin everything. The boss that awaits Mega Man in the final stretch of the fourth section is not another cybernetic behemoth, but a series of five electrical domes situated along the walls parallel to the arena. These domes are impervious to everything in Mega Man’s arsenal except for the Crash Bomber, and nothing before this would’ve warranted using this weapon. Even if Mega Man’s Crash Bomber meter is full, his attempt to blow out all of these domes will most likely result in failure. The Crash Bomber can only be fired seven times, and four of the five domes are protected by Crash Bomber walls. Eight shots exceed the total energy capacity of the Crash Bomber, so the player must consider a more analytical strategy when destroying the domes, almost like a puzzle. However, it’s unlikely that the player will anticipate something this cerebral in an action-intensive 2D platformer, and considering an approach to this bizarre boss fight while the domes are also firing energy balls at Mega Man is disorienting. After the player is unprepared for this demanding duel, depleting all of the Crash Bomber’s energy gauge will result in a stalemate. Leaving Mega Man without any further recourse will ultimately force the player to restart the entire game, making all the progress up to this point all for naught. Regarding the fiddly circumstance surrounding the Magnet Beam, at least the player can die and come back fully prepared. Here, the player is left crestfallen in a void of defeat that takes drastic measures to escape. I don’t think the developers deliberately designed this boss to hornswoggle the player, for I can use the dozens of aids they implemented that were intended to help the player survive as evidence of their altruism. All this boss needed was some serious beta testing, and the fact that this remained overlooked is egregiously inexcusable.

The Dome boss dilemma could’ve been solved via the Energy Tanks replenishing both health and energy. In fact, this would’ve been a convenience at other points in the game, namely in the section that follows if the player managed to surpass the seemingly unsurpassable. Similarly to the first game, Mega Man will have to face a gauntlet of the eight Robot Masters, only the player somewhat has a choice of the order to tackle them in. The Crash Bomber isn’t necessary during this battle royale, as the designated Robot master Quick Man is the most vulnerable to the traditional blaster out of the eight. Even if the Dome boss taught the player a lesson in conservation, the Wily Boss that follows will make that a moot point. The energy of every weapon doesn’t replenish after completing a level, and guess which of Mega Man’s weapons Wily’s floating ship is weak to? The fucking Crash Bomber. Even though other weapons will deal damage to Dr. Wily’s aircraft, the barrage of undodgeable orbs from the airship's cannons make this a match of conflicting damage output that should ideally end sooner than later with the Crash Bomber. The final fight against Wily’s alien form which turns out to be an Oz routine is made into a facile joke with Bubble Man’s weapon, but what if the player expunged all of the weapon’s juice while fighting Heat Man? Not every weapon has the sustainability of the Metal Blade, you know. If the game isn’t going to grant the player a refuel item for the energy meter, then it should at least fully restock every weapon after the level is completed. Sounds reasonable, right?

It hurts how close Mega Man is to 2D platforming perfection. Forget for a second about the incredible strides the game makes to dwarf its predecessor in every conceivable fashion. Mega Man 2 is almost the golden standard of the NES library, ascending over its contemporaries by crafting a smoother, more accessible product that still provided a steep challenge that wouldn’t alienate the masochistic NES audience that took pride in playing games equivalent to eating a bowl of nails. To everyone’s dismay, that damned NES-era abrasiveness made another unceremonious appearance in Wily’s Castle, and a betrayal hasn’t cut as deep since Fredo fucked over Michael . Even the most seasoned NES enthusiasts find that particular section to be harsh. While Mega Man 2, unfortunately, exudes undesirable qualities that show the series needs more time baking in the kiln, I can still forgive the notorious point of no return that was inflicted upon me. You see, everything leading up to that point finally met my expectations for Mega Man that were almost dashed by the consistent punishment that the first game dealt. Mega Man 2’s well-ordered execution of the prevalent 2D platformer genre erased all narrow preconceptions I had for games released before my time. For that, I am eternally grateful.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Thank fucking God that there wasn’t a Metroid game on the N64. It might sound cruel and imperceptive to belittle the chronic anguish that Metroid fans felt during the franchise's eight-year hiatus after Super Metroid was released, for I don’t have a firsthand account of this period because I was born during the span of time. For those of you older than I who waited with a growing, uncomfortable anticipation just to be stood up by Nintendo, I sympathize with your grief. I must’ve felt like hell knowing that the ecstatic kid from that viral N64 video booted up Super Smash Bros. that Christmas Day and readily recognized every character in the starting roster from their individual N64 titles except for our beloved space-age heroine, and you couldn’t fault his ignorance. Despite the Metroid franchise taking a lap generation during such a crucial time in gaming history, I still defend my position that the near decade of inactivity proved to be for its benefit. Metroid’s gameplay is more difficult to translate to a 3D environment compared to Nintendo’s other properties. Castlevania defined Metroid’s idiosyncrasies with Symphony of the Night, giving credence to Metroid’s core design philosophy which is staunchly two-dimensional. Many transitions to 3D from franchises born in the pixelated era had to sacrifice a certain amount of detail in the environments in order to render the 3D competently. Compare the varied terrain and elaborate setpieces in A Link to the Past’s Hyrule Field to the echoey vacant one in Ocarina of Time. While subtracting the number of attributes in the foreground can still fundamentally work in Zelda, doing the same for Metroid would exponentially compromise its rich, intricate design to the point of total obliviation. If I had to guess, a 3D Metroid would be similar to the two 3D Castlevania games on the N64: 3D renderings that completely botched its 2D source material with awkward combat and a camera so wonky that it makes Super Mario 64’s Lakitu look like he has the cinematography prowess of an esteemed Hollywood director. To be fair, translating the Metroidvania genre in 3D is a tough task even in this day and age, with only a select few 3D games borrowing only a few assets without emulating the 2D genre to its full extent. Nintendo knew that Metroid was going to need a longer bout of consideration before they planted Samus in a 3D environment, and the eventual revelation came to fruition one generation later with the glorious Metroid Prime on the Gamecube.

Of course, we all know that Nintendo’s four-ported lunchbox was where all the 3D dreams went to die, or at least it was for all of those who were formally introduced to the dimension in the N64 era. After half a decade of buffing out the cracks of the three-dimensional realm, Nintendo decided to innovate even further in the second 3D generation with radical ideas that upset those who were used to the loyal 3D reimaginings of Nintendo’s staple series seen on the N64. Metroid’s major offense on the Gamecube was immediately absolved upon its release unlike the cases of The Wind Waker’s graphics or Super Mario Sunshine’s setting, but it did make many fans weary when it was announced. Nintendo’s heavily premeditated plan to efficiently translate Metroid into a 3D game was to develop it as a first-person shooter, something completely unorthodox that caught everyone off guard. Not only that but the game would be outsourced to an American developer called Retro Studios as their debut project. Considering the circumstances, the fans all figured that Nintendo should’ve released a shovel with Metroid Prime to bury Samus’s corpse alongside every fan’s collective hopes and wishes for their idealized first 3D Metroid experience. Such a grand responsibility in the hands of amateurs with an untested mechanic at the helm spelled emanate disaster for the Metroid franchise. Even though things looked bleak and uncertain, the finished product assuaged the skeptical fears of the masses. The modest group at Retro Studios executed Nintendo’s baffling ambitions for Metroid’s 3D debut extraordinarily without compromising on the traditional Metroid experience.

As I said before, my earliest gaming memories can only recall the successful impact that Metroid Prime had after it was released, and the recollections during the period of despair I only know from popular sentiments that have been chronicled for reference. As someone who wasn’t busy hyperventilating at the thought of Nintendo dooming the Metroid franchise at the time, I can express that Nintendo shipping the responsibility of developing Metroid Prime off to an American studio was always a brilliant idea. Think about it: every single notable first-person shooter before Metroid Prime’s creation (and to this very day) was developed and produced in the western world. For some reason, the immensely popular genre never made an impact on the industry titan that is Japan, making the first-person shooter as American as apple pie (with some examples from Europe as well). Truthfully, any renowned Japanese studio would’ve been as inexperienced in developing for the first-person shooter genre as Retro Studios was, so why not assign the duty to a group of Americans in which their second-amendment rights allow lead and gunpowder to flow through their bloodstreams? Perhaps people assumed that an American studio would bastardize Metroid by formulating the series as a crude, hyper-violent bloodbath where Samus wears nothing but a skimpy bikini, which I’m not sure is an unfair indictment of the FPS genre or American media as a whole. Fortunately, the game showcases the utmost respect the developers had for the source material and how they masterfully coalesced a 2D character into a 3D environment with FPS mechanics.

While Samus infiltrates the Space Pirate-operated Frigate Orpheon orbiting over the planet of Tallon IV, a series of force fields impede Samus from progressing any further past the outer gates of the facility. Four red buttons located on each corner of the force field’s boundaries imply that interacting with them will most likely manipulate the activeness of the shield, so shooting them with Samus’s distinctive blaster will switch them off. The ones at face level can be shot with a simple tap of the A button, while the two situated above Samus require more consideration from the player. By holding down the R trigger, the player can aim the blaster manually in a myriad of directions, and they’ll use this often to clear out overhead enemies that Samus will encounter throughout the game. However, it’s more likely that the player will embrace the option given to them on the opposing L trigger, which locks onto enemies and objects to ensure more accurate aiming. Holding down the L trigger will automatically lock onto anything significant in Samus’s peripheral range, which varies from enemies, objects, switches, and other points of interest. Deeper into the Frigate, the lock-on system is tested in combat with the defense turrets, a common enemy type in Metroid Prime whose stationary status makes for ideal practice fodder early on. The Parasite Queen, the game’s first boss, is the pinnacle of Metroid Prime’s test run with the combat as the player will shoot at the slimy beast through an exposed crevice as it’s suspended upward in its cylindrical chamber. Like Ocarina of Time before it, the lock-on mechanic is a helpful aid to ease the player into the transition between the familiar 2D combat and the radical shift of 3D.

For more robust enemies with legs and wings, the player will gain more perspective on Metroid Prime’s combat as soon as the surviving Space Pirates rear their ugly heads out of the shady corners of the station. Combat in Metroid Prime is ultimately more defense-oriented as the enemies are quick on their feet, and their rapid-fire projectiles will penetrate through Samus’s armor quickly until her energy tanks deplete and she screams in bloody terror upon dying, with her visor flashing off like an old television. Using the lock-on feature ensures that each shot from Samus’s blaster has an almost certain likelihood of hitting the enemies, so the player’s objective during combat is to dodge their array of firepower with the dash move. While locked on, the player can strafe from left to right with the swiftness of an intergalactic ninja, evading the barrage of energy bullets. Samus is more agile than the average FPS protagonist, compensating for the fact that the environment of a Metroid game doesn’t have as many foreground pieces to duck and cover behind. More so, Samus’s shrewd mobility can be attributed to the developers loyally translating Samus’s platforming origins in the FPS genre, as platformer characters tend to be more sprightly than the more action-oriented FPS protagonists, who usually only need to occasionally scale a more structured staircase while blowing away their enemies with shotgun blasts. Platforms are situated all around Tallon IV, with most of them fitting appropriately as an area’s rational architecture while others levitate over the ground with much less of a solid constructional bearing. Even when a certain section is littered with these types of platforms for convenient ascension, they never overstay their welcome and ruin the consistent overlay of the area. Overall, I’m glad that Tallon IV offers plenty of structures for Samus to jump onto because it’s a humbling reminder of the Metroid franchise's roots as a platformer. That shan’t be forgotten when translating Metroid’s gameplay despite the FPS frontier, and both elements complement each other superbly. The unlikely marriage of both here makes for something nuanced, efficiently streamlined, and as smooth as Samus’s legs right before she docks herself in her bulky space suit for the lengthy duration of a mission.

The FPS format does not forsake Samus’s gravity-defying jumping ability, but what about other aspects pertaining to Metroid’s identity? One of the core elements of Metroid often credited to its effectiveness is the franchise's atmosphere, the feeling of total isolation in a hostile habitat weighing down on the player to the point of palpable dread. As blazing fast as the pacing of many FPS games tends to be, the genre is not alien to titles with a more methodical direction that fosters something similar to Metroid’s oppressive ambiance. Half-Life and System Shock, the noteworthy FPS exceptions, probably owe their cold, pensive auras to the classic Metroids, and Metroid Prime dips back into this sphere of influence by borrowing the FPS mechanics of those games. It’s a wonder why the FPS genre isn’t characterized by deep immersion more often because the unique perspective it offers is incredibly intimate. Since its inception, gaming has made great strides in increasing its immersive elements, with several outlets such as character customizability and naming the protagonist as a few examples. Samus is already an established character with a canon name and backstory, so Metroid Prime cannot reduce her to a retrograde, faceless avatar to enhance the player’s immersion in this regard. The FPS vantage point rather allows us to better understand Samus’s surroundings by seeing them directly through the consciousness of the space-age bounty hunter.

As one would figure, Samus is a human being whose lungs cannot subsist off the oxygen-deprived extraterrestrial ecosystems she excavates, so her trusty space helmet provides both the protection and sustenance she needs. Thanks to the first-person view, we now see the game through Samus’s visor along with its various components. In each corner of the computerized interior details notable features such as Samus’s total health and number of energy tanks, the alternate visors in the bottom left corner, the various beams in the bottom right corner, the number of missiles at her disposal, a radar that signals if there are enemies in the vicinity, a danger meter, and a rudimentary outline of the location. Using Samus’s visor as an onscreen menu is a clever transitional aspect to the FPS genre that seems all too natural. In addition to the detail in the interior visor, the developers went the extra mile to showcase how external factors affect Samus’s visor as well. After the Frigate Orpheon in the introduction is demolished and crashes on the nearby planet of Tallon IV like a crude meteorite, Samus decides to follow suit, albeit with a more dignified entrance using her ship. She parks her vessel on a wetland area colloquially known as the “overworld” that shares the planet’s namesake. The constant rainfall endemic to this watery quagmire naturally cascades onto Samus, as not even the acuteness of the strafe move is swift enough to dodge the rain. The area’s ceaseless precipitation plinks and plops onto Samus’s visor like a car windshield and immerses the player in the scope of the environment. In Magmoor Caverns, burning steam jets out of the molten crust of the area, achieving the same effect as the Overworld’s rain even if its orange texture is reminiscent of Cheeto dust. Gunk spewed out from certain enemies will splatter on the visor, and the biting frost of Phendrana Drifts will obscure Samus’s vision like she’s been ensnared in a block of solid ice. The most impressive visual detail relating to the visor is that whenever the player shoots a burst of energy from Samus’s blaster at a wall, the reflecting light of the shot shows a flash of Samus’s baby-blue eyes from inside of the visor. The developers do their best to envelope the player as Samus and achieve this sensation with meticulous attention to detail.

Traditionally, the intended atmosphere conveyed in a Metroid game is exuded through the areas, either on their individual merits or as a collective. The feeling of discomforting dread is achieved through the game’s progression in that as the player digs deeper into the crevices of uncharted territory, curiosity will proverbially start to kill the cat that is Samus. Or, at least it will gradually dawn on her that her surroundings have become overwhelmingly perilous the further she strays away from her parked ship. In Super Metroid, scrolling down the two-dimensional map of Zebes from the zenith point of the ship almost simulates a literal descent into a harrowing rabbit hole with tinier swathes of respite as Samus continues to burrow. Progress in Metroid Prime couldn’t have been emulated the same way, as tunneling downward consistently in a 3D space would’ve oversimplified the area’s designs. Yet, Metroid Prime attempts to recreate something similar to Super Metroid’s sense of progression all the same, almost to an uncanny extent. Several parallels can be made between Crateria and the Tallon IV Overworld, as they’re both rainy groves marked as “safe zones'' due to their naturalistic environment and calming rate of enemy activity. The main difference is that the Overworld here is expanded to the scale of a fully-fledged area such as Brinstar or Maridia as opposed to the foyer with several branching staircases that was Crateria. Comparisons to Super Metroid’s levels are even clearer when Samus can access the flooded remains of the Frigate Orpheon, located conveniently along the path of the Overworld like the Wrecked Ship was in Crateria. I’m convinced that Magmoor Caverns exists to fill the lava pool level requisite in lieu of Norfair’s absence. Metroid Prime unintentionally flirts with 3D reboot territory by repeating a number of classic level tropes and broadening them to an admirable degree, but it might, unfortunately, indicate that Metroid might be a one-trick pony in how its areas are structured. However, the developers proved this to not be the case by integrating new areas with the traditional ones to still progress the game in a familiar manner.

Chozo Ruins is a sensible next step to the base of the Overworld because the increase in hostility is minuscule. Similarly to the Overworld, the Chozo Ruins are relatively sparse in enemy presence, but I wouldn’t describe the area as tranquil like the Overworld. The aura of stillness in the Chozo Ruins stems from the arid dearth of life in the sandy remnants of the once proud Chozo people. Overgrown, brambly vegetation covers the sublime architecture as scavengers roam the dunes looking for what little nourishment there still is. Chozo Ruins is the graveyard of a formally prosperous civilization and while the eeriness of the site might instill a sense of consternation, the dangers involved are appropriately tepid. Magmoor Caverns and Phendrana Drifts, the two following areas, showcase a particular relationship with each other relating to their elemental themes. As I expressed before, Magmoor Caverns is Tallon IV’s Norfair, only more linear and with a more literal sense of claustrophobia with its cramped corridors. The nearest elevator from the Chozo Ruins exit will take Samus to Phendrana, and the snow-covered winter wonderland seems like a stark contrast to the hellish cesspit of Magmoor where one misstep in the gushing flow of lava could fry Samus in seconds. At first glance, Phendrana seems as blissful as the Overworld, but the 3D space allows an area to district more distinct tropes into an area than seen in Super Metroid. The escalating sense of danger in Metroid Prime seems to be intertwined with the presence of the Space Pirates. Eventually, scrounging around Phendrana will lead Samus to the frigid laboratory where Metroids are housed for experimentation. The awe-inspiring atmosphere from outside drops like a rock as Samus plunges into a chilling facility swarming with Space Pirates. One could argue that the dread of this particular sector of Phendrana might stem from the pitch-black darkness of the second half, but I’d have to disagree using the last area of the game as evidence.

The Phazon Mines are the last area of Tallon IV that Samus encounters, and it’s the point of the game where the consistent difficulty curve rockets off to the moon. The challenge imbalance might be why this area feels so unnerving and if this is so, it’s because the Mines are the base of the Space Pirate’s operation and Samus has found herself in the heart of the hive. Every breed of Space Pirate is here to bushwhack Samus at every waking step, and the infamous trek from the crane site to the Power Bomb room is the epitome of an endurance test. Besides the rich Phazon material radiating in this area’s crust, the Mines are nothing but a barren crater. It’s unsettling how there is no organic life here, only the prevalent corruption of the Space Pirates. The Phazon Mines serve as the pinnacle of Samus’s journey to despair with the same creepy subtitles seen in Super Metroid.

Perhaps the most challenging task in orchestrating the intended progression is rendering the Metroidvania elements in this 3D environment. It’s hard to believe that there aren’t more translations of the traditional 2D Metroidvania tropes in more 3D games because Retro Studios makes the process look effortless. As layered and multifaceted as a Metroidvania’s design might seem, the specific crux of Metroid that cultivates the distinctive progression is simple: Samus gradually regains her misplaced powers. The introduction sequence teases the player with a select few of these powers before stripping them away when Samus is blown back by an explosion. Because the game gives the player a sample taste of Samus’s full capacity, retrieving the upgrades also serves as a great incentive to play through the game. Starting out on the field of Tallon IV, Samus’s arsenal is limited to her standard blaster and piddly single jump, so she is heavily restricted to a very finite range of ground. As par for the Metroidvania course, the few paths Samus can explore are illustrated clearly by the game, so the player shouldn’t find themselves hopelessly lost and confused. They can even use the 3D polygonal map of each area as a helpful reference. One complaint I often see regarding Metroid Prime’s treatment of the Metroidvania progression is that the game makes the objective too obvious by pinpointing it on the map. During the exploration process, a signal will beam onto Samus’s visor with a brief description of the objective and marking the area of interest with a question mark. While doing this might hold the player’s hand to some extent, I’ll excuse it because it ultimately doesn’t force the player to drop their freedom to explore and follow that particular path.

Once the player traverses through the mapped trajectory the game lays out for them, several returning items are translated to Metroid Prime for Samus’s further use in the new 3D environment. Missiles are now designated to their own button on the Gamecube’s controller and still serve as the best complimentary weapon to Samus’s blaster. The implementation of the other familiar power-ups seen in Metroid Prime are quite surprising in that the developers managed to implement them considering that they could’ve compromised on the FPS foundation. Samus’s inhuman flexibility returns with the Morph Ball and when Samus scrunches down to her supernatural fetal position, it’s the only instance where the player sees the game in third-person. Given that a first-person view of Samus rolling around would’ve made everyone bilious, the shift in perspective is reasonable and it manages to work harmoniously in contrast to the normal first-person viewpoint due to the limited array of Morph Ball functions. Morph Ball bombs and Power Bombs are still laid like chicken eggs to blow open cracked crevices, and the Grapple Beam is made possible via the trusty lock-on feature. Sadly, series staples like the Screwattack and the skill-based wall jump had to be scrapped, most likely because their utilization crossed the line of practicality that the others didn’t. Fortunately, the developers realized that Metroid’s 3D space allowed for newfound ingenuity with Samus’s abilities. Regarding the Morph Ball, it seems to be the upgrade most tinkered with for new methods of traversal. Jumping in Morph Ball mode with the spring is no longer an option, but the Morph Ball can boost with built-up inertia, which is mainly used in skill-intensive half-pipe sections to ascend Samus to heights incapable to reach even with the second rocket boot jump. The Spider Ball upgrade magnetizes Samus to a striped rail grid when she’s in the Morph Ball, which carries Samus along its track. Whether using these new upgrades in traversing the map or for retrieving health and missile expansions in obscure crevices, their implementations make for the most circuitous and engaging platform/puzzle sequences.

In previous Metroid titles, every subsequent beam upgrade Samus finds is intended to make the previous one obsolete. In Metroid Prime, the developers decided to incorporate every beam upgrade into a comprehensive arsenal of elements that Samus can alternate with the C-stick. Samus’s neutral Power Beam she begins her adventure with is not perceived as a puny little pea-shooter; rather, its quick release of energy bullet rounds is essential in dealing with groups of smaller enemies throughout the duration of the game. The energized Wave Beam stuns enemies and provides power to deprived energy circuits with a single blast. The fan-favorite Ice Beam returns as the optimal Metroid vanquisher, and the Plasma Beam disintegrates anything Samus shoots. Each beam, except for the Ice Beam, also has its distinctive Super Missile combination. The traditional one is used alongside the Power Beam while the Wavebuster operates as a destructive taser, and the Flamethrower power with the Plasma beam is pretty self-explanatory. The variety of the beams is also integrated into the Metroidvania progression with doors coinciding with a specific beam to shoot and enter. It adds a nifty layer of inhibiting progress, but I wish the door would revert to the standard blue color after being shot with the correlating beam once so I wouldn’t have to shuffle the beams constantly. Samus’s visors are also a vital aspect of Samus’s inventory as she acquires the heat-vision Thermal Visor that spots enemies in the dark and spotting terminals as well as the X-Ray Visor that unveils invisible platforms. The only upgrade that still stacks are the Power suits, as scrolling through multiple of these would be unnecessary. The question pertaining to Samus’s eclecticism here is if it’s an artistic direction from the developers or if 3D now allows for Samus’s tools to coexist. Either way, if the Metroid series insists on shuffling, it’s much less of a hassle here than in Super Metroid.

One alternate visor I glossed over has a particular use outside of traversal and or combat, and that’s the Scan Visor. On the left side of the D-Pad, a widescreen lens will come into view, and the scannable objects are represented by an orange indicator. Using this visor will list a bevy of information about whatever is scanned, which can include practically everything under Tallon IV’s sun. Samus can trace information about enemy properties, items, surfaces, etc. and compile encyclopedias worth of knowledge. The beauty of the Scan Visor is that besides the occasional elevator activation, using it to gather and store information is optional. This includes the nuggets of Chozo lore etched onto the walls of Tallon IV written in some sort of Sumerian-esque hieroglyphics that the Scan Visor automatically interprets upon scanning. The reason why learning about the world of Tallon IV and its history through the player’s wilful volition is that it allows the world-building through exploration to take center stage as it did in Super Metroid. 3D gaming allowed for more cinematic potential, but bloviating on the world’s context in Metroid Prime would’ve nauseatingly swelled the experience.

If one must know the central story of Metroid Prime that the game doesn’t overtly expound on, the Space Pirates have been adulterating the natural ecosystem of Tallon IV with their presence after the events of the first Metroid game. Yes, it appears that not only is Metroid Prime canon to the 2D games, but the series has also caught the timeline bug from The Legend of Zelda, so it’s even more relieving that the player isn’t forced to get caught up in the delirium with pointless exposition. They’ve been farming for a radioactive element called Phazon and using it to conduct madcap mutations on the wildlife of Tallon IV like a gang of Josef Mengeles, namely on the Metroids they fear. The Space Pirates' final goal is to unlock the eponymous Metroid Prime, the source of the toxic Phazon whose impact annihilated the Chozo people. However, it is locked behind twelve artifact keys located throughout Tallon IV, and Samus must retrieve them to destroy Metroid Prime before the Space Pirates get their grubby, maniacal mitts on it.

I’ll use this opportunity to segway into most people's biggest point of contention with Metroid Prime: constantly backtracking through the five areas of Tallon IV. Naturally, a genre that incentivizes exploration and unlocking paths that were once sealed up will involve a heavy roulette of revisitation, and it’s one of the many appeals of the Metroidvania genre. I don’t inherently find backtracking to be tedious but in the case of Metroid Prime’s final fetch quest, it exposes the design flaws of the game’s world. By this point in the game, Samus has acquired every upgrade possible, so she is free to traverse through any nook and cranny in Tallon IV. Ideally, having the ability to access anywhere on the map without complications should allow the player to breeze through sections with shortcuts, but this is seldom the case. It makes the player realize that Tallon IV is designed competently, but not conveniently. Artifacts are equally distributed in every area, including the far-off Phendrana Drifts. From a design standpoint, it makes sense to position this wintery cliff at the apex of the map. Still, the only connecting area on two stretches of the area is Magmoor Caverns, which seems to be the great median of Tallon IV due to having elevators to the three of four branching areas. The revelation that the hot, overlong hallway is a disappointing area started to dawn on me as well, as I intentionally walked through the lava out of impatience upon successive visitations. Also, revisiting Chozo Ruins is made infuriating by the constant goddamn ghost ambushes, so I recommend trekking through Chozo first to save yourself the migraine of their shrill shrieking. Overall, there are still silver linings to this last quest. The player can still sweep up any last expansions along the way. Compared to the appalling fetch quest from Wind Waker released the same year on the Gamecube which had zero redeeming qualities, the one presented here in Metroid Prime seems fine and dandy.

Besides the collecting of expansions throughout the game, the player should be well prepared to fight the title’s namesake at the core of the Impact Crater because the previous bosses have set a significant precedent. Bosses in Metroid Prime remind me less of the ones from Super Metroid and more from The Legend of Zelda because of the way they are dispatched like puzzles as opposed to inflicting rampant firepower on them. Samus’s eclectic arsenal somewhat mirrors Link’s inventory of items in that the intended method of destroying the titanic foes coincides with a specific upgrade that the player will have to solve and dig through their options to defeat the boss. Similarly to Zelda, the solution mostly relates to the recently obtained upgrades. Flaahgra, the direct source of the toxicity of the ruins, needs a combination of the Charge Shot and Morph Ball to defeat while multiple visors are needed for the rock monster Thardus and the burly Omega Pirate. After Ridley stalls Samus by flaunting his new metallic coat of armor, Samus finds herself at the Impact Crater, which strangely resembles the insides of a mouth from a creature so surreal that it’s indescribable. At the core of the crater lies Metroid Prime, and the two-phased boss fight will have Samus shuffling through her weapons and visors like a Las Vegas blackjack dealer. Unlike the Mother Brain fight in Super Metroid, there is no cinematics to bail out the player, as only a proficient understanding of the FPS mechanics and Samus’s arsenal will lead the player to victory. Once Samus conquers the beast’s vulnerable core, another point of innovation commences. Three possible endings will show, and they will depend on the player’s percentage rate of completion. Unfortunately, multiple endings do not work in a series with an overarching plot and protagonist. At least the game got the homage to the timed escape sequence out of the way at the beginning and decided not to use it again at the end, for it would become a tired cliche.

The initial anxieties revolving around Metroid’s launch into the third dimension were unfairly aggrandized to the point of cataclysmic hyperbole, even if some of Nintendo’s ambitions did sound outlandish. The funny thing is that the aspects of innovation planned for Metroid Prime were rightfully outlandish, yet Retro Studios managed to meet Nintendo’s standards and crafted something incredible. For the other 3D debuts in Nintendo’s library, certain restrictions were placed due to a lack of experience developing games in the realm of 3D to make the transitions feasible. Metroid Prime made no compromises and still delivered something beyond any 3D debut’s expectations. One would think there would understandably be cracks to fill for a first 3D outing, but the foundation of Metroid Prime is as solid as a steel skyscraper. Perhaps it’s a testament to the quality of the Gamecube compared to the N64. Still, the fact that Retro Studios crafted something of this caliber only using Super Metroid as a reference AND formulating it into an FPS game is bewildering. All the while, Retro Studios showcased an immense amount of respect for the series which translated into making the game feel as Metroidy as the previous titles. Retro Studios should be uttered in the breath as Orson Welles and Francis Ford Coppola, as they are examples of the rare, Haley's Comet occurrences of making a masterpiece on their first go-around.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I often imagine a scene in which a team of penguin-suited executives at Sega pace around a corporate office room, racking their brains on how to reinvigorate Sonic the Hedgehog’s status in the public eye. When the sun rises to signal the dawn of a new day, the exhausted executives decide in their haggard, caffeinated state to stick with the maligned 3D format, adding a new gimmick to the next game to discern it from the previous blunder that spurred this stress-inducing meeting in the first place. After playing a fair selection of games from Nintendo’s former industry rival, I’ve concluded that Sega’s failure can be attributed to an insistence on flaunting a shallow, superfluous style that negates a substance that allowed Nintendo’s titles to remain relevant past their initial buzz. I criticize Nintendo vociferously for their stringent 3D mandate during the N64 era, but Sega has become a worse offender in prolonging this charade. Sega never seems to realize that their insistence on rendering Sonic in the third dimension has further contributed to the mockery of their once beloved blue mascot, and this is coming from someone who would take a bullet to defend both Sonic Adventure titles. It’s simply a bad business decision to ignore that Sonic’s zealous fans all clamor for the classic 2D era that launched Sonic into superstardom, especially since 2D gaming has resurfaced in popularity for the modern gaming zeitgeist. Their dimensional hybrid anniversary title Sonic Generations, merely pussyfooted around the prospect of returning to Sonic’s roots, for 3D Sonic was still given more precedence over his older, quainter 2D counterpart instead of distributing an equal share of both eras. At this point, if Sega weren’t going to bless the deferred Sonic fans with another classic Sonic game, the solution was to make one themselves. Sonic Mania is the result of fans finally satiating their classic Sonic cravings, feeding themselves a lovely home-cooked meal after learning their mom’s old recipe instead of having food delivered.

To call Sonic Mania a long-awaited sequel to the classic Sonic titles is a bit of a misnomer. Instead of being a sequel in the traditional sense of the word, Sonic Mania is a remastered compilation of handpicked levels from the classic Sonic trilogy on the Genesis (plus Sonic CD, imprinting a mark the one Sega CD outlier has even deeper in the golden age of Sonic) with a fresh batch of original levels and composing them into a sequential narrative format that mirrors a concise Sonic title. Once the drooling mob of Sonic fans hears this, their panting anticipation may quickly shift to crestfallen disappointment. Sure, Sonic Mania is a loyal return to form, but to the extent where the game seems like a recycled mishmash of levels we’ve already played ad nauseam? What is Sega trying to pull here? Did they steal modded Sonic levels from the internet and hope their fans wouldn’t be the wiser of their acts of plagiarism? No, they didn’t. In fact, the Sonic origami that makes up Mania’s foundation is one of the most appealing aspects of the game. Christian Whitehead, the lead developer of Sonic Mania, is also notable for developing the mobile ports of the classic Sonic games, implementing the frills of gaming progress, such as save features and multiple characters for a modern audience. Whitehead’s initiative wasn’t only to expose a younger audience to the Sonic games that the older generations praise to the high heavens but to illustrate how simple it is to improve on these rusty relics just by adding the mechanisms these games were deprived of for a smoother experience. Once you research the main developer’s background and see his resume, you understand the mission of Sonic Mania. Perhaps instead of succeeding in the classic Sonic games, Mr. Whitehead is tasked to remedy the shortcomings of the entire era of classic Sonic as a condensed package, the ultimate refurbishing to convince the Sonic skeptics such as myself of his greatness. None of the golden era entries, despite the clear evolution with every subsequent game, ever fully won me over and made me renounce every Nintendo system I’ve ever owned. With the perk of decades worth of progress, maybe Sonic Mania will be the one to do the trick.

Rendering Sonic on the 2D axis once again, as seen in Sonic Generations, made for a satisfactory emulation of his bygone gameplay, but the graphics in 2D Sonic’s levels still shared the same polygonal textures as the Sonic modeled for the 3D environment. 2D Sonic’s graphics verged on the boundaries of the uncanny valley, so Sega’s attempt to recreate those 2D sensibilities never resonated with the classic Sonic fan. Everyone knows that classic Sonic was a pixelated mesh of blue and flesh-colored sprites, and Sonic Mania would be remiss if they adulterated the blue blur’s character design. Sonic looks precisely as he did long ago, and he’s adopted his brow-furrowing determined expression as opposed to the smarmy one from Sonic 3. When he spins dashes, Sonic still revs up and creates friction with his steady inertia, and when he reaches speeds that would make a velocity gun explode, his legs still oscillate wildly like he’s the Road Runner. The key difference in Sonia Mania is the heightened graphical sheen in the pixel art. Sonic, his friends, the levels, and the onscreen layouts, such as the ring and life counters, look so crisp that they make the player feel inclined to make that interjectional “aah” sound of refreshment. Another minute point of visual refinement is making Sonic more expressive. On top of his typical resting face and his shocked death animation we all know, Sonic’s range of gesticulation makes him seem as well animated as a cartoon character. Sonic looks up with more curiosity, he signals the need for speed by mimicking a gesture like he’s going to dart off in his idle animation, and the cutscene where Sonic shakes off a drop of chemical ooze seems like someone motion-captured their dog. The familiar pixelated aesthetic matched with this unfamiliar extent of motion reminds me of the various flash cartoons from Newgrounds, albeit with a much higher budget and without using the animation to make Sonic do and say dirty things.

It’s not only Sonic that looks more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but his friends as well. One of the tenants of renovation Whitehead consistently utilized in porting the classic Sonic games is retroactively adding Tails and Knuckles as playable characters, even if they didn’t exist when those games were published. Instead of hastily causing a severe rift in the Sonic timeline with blatant anachronisms, the impetus behind including Sonic’s oldest buddies in the fray for every port was to diversify the gameplay to achieve a different outcome. Like always, Tails can helicopter himself upwards with his twin back appendages, and Knuckles can glide and climb up walls along with other steep inclines. Tails can also regress back to his role as Sonic’s sycophantic sidekick that constantly drags behind him and mops up the bosses with invincible ease. Whether or not Sonic Mania features co-op and if they’ve granted the second player more of the spotlight with Tails has not been tested yet. On an individual basis, Sonic Mania designs each playable character’s campaign around their respective attributes instead of how the ports implemented them into levels designed for Sonic. Tails can still fly, but his rate of ascension has been reduced exponentially so as not to break the game for the more meager Sonic players to exploit. Knuckles' campaign exhibits slight differences in illustrating the story from his unique perspective, similar to how it was conveyed in Sonic & Knuckles. Alongside Sonic’s best buddies is a litany of forgotten figures from classic Sonic whose presence serves as tokens of fan service. During the boss encounters at the end of the second act of Mirage Saloon, Sonic faces off against a posse of characters that we haven’t seen since Sonic the Fighters in 1996. Sonic Mania’s DLC includes the ability to play as Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, two characters from a ‘90s Sonic arcade game so obscure that only the most seasoned of Sonic nerds will recognize them. One might argue that including too many characters compromises the simplicity of classic Sonic, for adding too many friends to the guest list in Sonic’s later years became a bloated clusterfuck. I assert that if the characters predate the Dreamcast, their presence in a Sonic game that recalls his prime is welcome. This wouldn’t be the case if a fishing section with Big the Cat or Shadow showed up with a 16-bit scowl. As for Amy, who debuted in Sonic CD, her absence here as the green-bloused, bow-wearing classic form escapes me.

More important than anything else that has been overhauled in Sonic Mania are the returning levels. The batch that Whitehead & company have rebrewed for the game is an eclectic mix from the classic Sonic lineup, ranging from fan favorites like Green Hill and Chemical Plant to befuddling picks like Oil Ocean and Lava Reef. All of the classic games are represented here with a fair balance of equality, except for only Green Hill acting as the sole representative from Sonic’s debut. I’d argue that the levels from that game were in the direst need of reevaluating, but perhaps they’re too misshapen to even humor an operation. Hydrocity Zone from Sonic 3 returns to represent Labyrinth Zone in spirit, a revitalized version of the original attempt to make a functioning underwater level after Labyrinth butchered it from Sonic’s start. The polished graphics make each level look splendid, but the developers decided to offer more than the same levels with better visual fidelity. The classic Sonic levels possess the same visuals, platforming tropes, and enemies as they always have, but their layouts have been reconstructed from the ground floor. Cheap deaths from the unyielding days of austere game design are eradicated entirely. That is unless you factor in the strict hitboxes whenever Sonic gets squished between two surfaces, which is still something to be cautious of. While playing the returning levels and reflecting on their original iterations, all of them feel consistently smoother and fitting for a game revolving around the element of speed. Their collective presence in one game has coalesced them all into the most agreeable design philosophy seen across classic Sonic, no matter which game they originated from. Not only that, but the added level gimmicks like the buoyant chemicals in Chemical Plant and the plant platforms in Stardust Speedway fit into the preexisting levels splendidly, as if they were afterthoughts that Sega wished they would have reverted back and added since they were released.

New levels in Sonic Mania are the minority, with a mere four, for rekindling the older levels naturally took higher precedence in a game that harkens back to Sonic’s heyday. If Sonic Mania ever has a direct sequel, I want the developers to fill it to the brim with their own creations because the few here are excellent. Each of the four is beaming with style and deeply encompasses Sonic’s design philosophy. Studiopolis may have been crafted in the 21st century, but its flashy, paparazzi pizzazz screams Sega Genesis. Press Garden is my favorite of the newcomers for its gorgeous, zen forest background setting that looks like a pixelated Jidaigeki film. The oddly named Mirage Saloon is themed after the desert plains of the wild west and all of the culture associated with it. Steam trains, ale barrels, ragtime piano keys, and a pistol that shoots Sonic across the map after it rotates like a duel all make up the foreground of this arid canyon of cacti. Mirage Saloon’s first act even features Tails soaring through the sky on his red biplane with Sonic seated on the helm. Instead of having the player contend with a reimagining of one of the original game’s final levels, the developers inflict their own creation, Titanic Monarch, on the player as the game’s climactic climb. Normally, I’d lambaste this level for its extensive length, precision-based platforming, and obtuse, borderline surreal design in the second act. However, all of this being unique to the game’s final level is a perfect peak for the game’s difficulty curve. If I didn’t know better, I probably couldn’t distinguish the new levels from the old ones because the new ones exude the same amount of care and polish as the returnees, impressively so for their first outings.

Bosses have never been Sonic’s strong suit, and not even the most ardent Sonic fans will argue against this point. Robotnik attempts to destroy Sonic with a roulette of untested gimmicks that all literally blow up in his face. Sonic Mania’s bosses are no different on the Robotnik spectrum, except for that neat little nod to Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine at the end of Chemical Plant. What interests me more than the bouts with the flying egg are the level-ending encounters with his robotic minions, for they are richer in variety. A cutscene in Green Hill Zone displays Sonic witnessing a meeting between Robotnik and his motley crew of colored robots, and each of these stocky androids serves as the mini-bosses in the first act of a level before Robotnik’s umpteenth attempt in the second act. One features Sonic running on a blue track at Mach speed, blowing back blue rockets at him while avoiding the red ones. Another is a samurai duel in the frosty woods of Press Garden and the magician robot veils himself as the aforementioned characters from Sonic’s past. The game also includes many creative boss fights that are not explicitly goons of Robotnik, such as the trash compactor and spring spider in Flying Battery and the leaping sandworm in Mirage Saloon. Some bosses are cheeky callbacks to classic Sonic bosses, such as the return of Metal Sonic and the Robotnik drill car and wrecking ball scaled down as toys for Chibi Sonic. My only complaint is that with the game’s more lenient ring collecting after being hit, the player can easily tank the damage the bosses dish out.

That being said, I’m not complaining that the game is too easy. I’ve suffered through so much unfairness in classic Sonic to do an ungrateful 180. A save feature is present and limitless continues, signifying that the Sega genie has granted all of my wishes for a less taxing, excruciating Sonic experience. The player doesn’t even need to partake in the special stages to earn extra lives and use Super Sonic as their inexhaustible juggernaut aid, or at least not in the traditional sense. The developers have evidently borrowed a bit from modern gaming tropes, as collecting all seven chaos emeralds will unlock the game’s final boss, the Egg Reverie. This revelatory completionist task incentivizes the player better than any classic Sonic game has, and even more surprisingly, the special stages are a joyous time. Finding the large golden rings in the levels will transport Sonic to a special stage that uses the UFO-catching template from Sonic CD and shifts it to a race. Sonic amplifies his speed with the blue orbs on the track and extends the time with rings. Not only are they fun, but they are the easiest to accomplish. I was prideful enough when the blue sphere stages netted me one Chaos Emerald in Sonic 3. This time, I am overjoyed to tell you that I collected all seven Chaos Emeralds in Sonic Mania. It’s an accomplishment I’ll print out and put next to my college degree.

By Jove, I think they’ve done it. I am in love with a classic Sonic game after the series has left me skeptical of its legacy. Am I now going to declare my newfound love for Sonic by sketching childish fanart of him and my own original hedgehog character, as well as sculpting plastic medallions of his visage? No, but now I can still appreciate and admire the depth and fluidity of classic Sonic’s level design more than I ever did. I now understand what the slightly older crowd, mostly my cousin, loved about classic Sonic, and those same people facilitated their love for it with this bundled tribute to the blue blur. With some love and polish, Sonic Mania has recreated what fans see behind their rose-tinted nostalgia glasses, validating their views and changing mine in the process.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com