I don't think I will ever be able to forgive the West for robbing us of the Mado Monogatari series and its way more successful spin-off franchise , Puyo Puyo. While I will always have a nostalgic fondness for Mean Bean Machine (the first Puyo Puyo I experienced as a kid that weirdly tied a puzzle game with a cartoon whose dubious quality satiated my obsession with the blue blur at the time), the Arle gang and its mythological aesthetic were and always will be the perfect coat of paint to contextualize the absurd premise of competitive block puzzle gaming.

Thanks to the Sega Ages collection, it's now possible to experience Puyo Puyo translated in its glorious original form. Do you get much more out of it that you wouldn't by playing the untranslated version? Not really, besides some cute quips and banter that you can now understand at the start of each battle. But man, do these characters look and sound fantastic in 16 bit. Considering how the franchise would later evolve its presentation and gameplay, the original Puyo Puyo holds a certain quaintness and simplicity to it that makes it such a fun weird little title to revisit.

It's also a stark reminder of how a seemingly simple change to a concept can tremendously improve it and establish a formula for the rest of the series to iterate upon. This little change wouldn't happen until its revelatory sequel tho, Puyo Puyo Tsu, who introduced the ability to counter your opponents attacks, a mechanic the original Puyo Puyo lacked and would devolve every single battle into a "who is the quickest to make a combo that will fill the opponent's screen with a mountain of garbage puyos impossible to eliminate" match.

Better things would come for the Puyo Puyo series, but this is nice, isn't it?

https://youtu.be/FVe1Y6TcARc

Surface familiarity failing to capture the lightning in the bottle that was NMH1. Words I never expected to utter about a NMH game once again helmed by Suda, but this is the unfortunate reality. Retreaded old familiar ground and innumerous hollow callbacks fail to disguise the lack of purpose and intention in NMH3, giving us instead a sequel closer in tone to NMH2 than NMH1.

Grasshopper fails to effectively manage its visibly low budget, hurting the expressiveness and animation found in previous entries, hastily sidelining the promise of TSA’s cast, and glaringly omitting the presence of traditional pre-boss stages. This last point in particular being the biggest misstep of NMH3, especially when taking into consideration NMH1’s understanding of how illusive the videogame structure is, and how brilliantly it destroys it. Without it, NMH3 has no foundation on which to stand itself on and not even its admittedly entertaining combat can make the uncontextualized arenas feel like anything other than a very impressive tech demo.

Having sat with it for a while now, my conflicting thoughts have a very hard time reconciling with NMH3 and the reasons for its existence. At first glance, NMH3 seems intent on setting aside much of the unorthodox and incisive writing that characterizes NMH1 and TSA in favor of creating a no frills over the top action game built on its own terms and without the constraints and expectations of normal videogame production, that funnels its creativity and passion into much of the aesthetic and presentation that goes above and beyond anything ever seen in a videogame. Watching Travis and Bishop rave on about Takashi Miike, as any two ordinary college roommates would on any given Friday night about their favorite movie, it almost become easy to forgive NMH3’s more immediate failures and appreciate the personality and labor of love behind the development of such a disjointed mess of a game.

On the other hand, while I don’t entirely subscribe to the cynical interpretations of NMH3’s MCU framing of the plot and the social media and streaming services allusions, there is an underlying sense that permeates much of the experience of disinterest, bitterness and alienation in bringing Travis into a world that has long abandoned him. NMH3 is drenched in nostalgic infatuation with the old and the past in a way the previous entries weren’t, almost defiantly so, while also allowing itself to conform to this new reality of media consumption in a shrugging and indifferent manner. This contradiction is best exemplified with Travis trying to reconnect with an old retro game of his childhood, remastered for the modern age, in search of answers that are ultimately never given to him and soon reject his now unfamiliar presence. Travis’ senseless bloodlust is ultimately the same as it ever was, just upgraded and updated accordingly.

In a way, NMH3 represents a sort of alternate finale to the Kill the Past saga, frequently referencing characters and concepts from previous Suda works only to immediately discard them at the expense of the players in the know and closing the door with a plethora of unanswered questions, trapping Travis forever inside No More Heroes, now destined to relive in perpetuity the same bloody uncathartic plot, once a tragedy, now a farse, foolishly hanging on to a static past. It’s hard not to think of MGS4 when playing NMH3, but while it’s understandable why Kojima injected it with so much hostility and resentment towards the player, I fail to decipher why Suda would follow up on TSA’s optimistic catharsis with such a retread for Travis and the series in general. In contrast to MGS4’s tying of all the needless knots, NMH3 instead destroys the series by way of implosion, eating itself from inside out and leaving the remains for whoever is next.

And yet, in its finest hour, I’m left amazed and grinning at how NMH3 manages to bring all its messiness together at the end beautifully in a final showdown that simultaneously acts as a defying FU indictment against the industry that brought it into existence and as a sincere gratitude to the fans who allowed it to happen, one of the most uplifting punk statements worthy of the Grasshopper brand. Regardless of my thoughts here, I ultimately do not think Suda had the intention of pervading NMH3 with such negative emotions, and I do believe he genuinely wanted to make NMH3. The final product however leaves much to be desired, and its meta textual narrative does not make up for the lack of engagement I felt during the story and combat of NMH3. It’s a baffling and contradictory epilogue to TSA, and a weird janky victory lap for the series that has an endearing quaintness to it that makes it hard to hate on.

One thing I can say for certain tho, and that is this is the hardest in the mf paint a NMH soundtrack has ever gone, and you gonna be looking real silly arguing otherwise in the NMH3 discourse to come.

Long before Mercurystream made Metroid games they used to make Castlevania games. In 2010 rebooted and reinvented the Castlevania brand to be more in line with popular action games at the time like God of War. This is similar to 1997 where the Castlevania series was turned into an non-linear platformer with rpg elements following both the exploration and rpg trends of the ps1 era as tight and short 2D platformers fell out of favor during the previous generation. Castlevania had certainly experimented with non-linear exploration based gameplay before in Simon's Quest and vampire killer but it had also experimented with 3D action gameplay in Lament of Innocence.

As a God of War clone Lords of Shadow is competent but unambitious. You have your light and heavy attacks, QTE finishers, climbing, and light platforming. As the game goes on you unlock more varied combat options, but the low difficulty and ease of parries makes them mostly superfluous. The real strength here comes in the beauty and diversity put into the environments. Nearly every area has some unique twist as you travel through twisted forests, stark mountains, ancient ruins, gothic castles, and dead deserts. It really splits the difference between the more spooky and gothic look of classicvania with the gaudy interiors of SOTN. Really in the end Lords of Shadow doesn't end that much differently then SOTN. Both being radical gameplay shifts with functional but ultimately uninteresting gameplay carried mostly by excellent visual design. The difference being that SOTN with its sprite based graphics stands out infinitely more on the PS1 while Lords of Shadow blends in with the dearth of God of War clones. Despite this Lords of Shadow still stands out in its generation with its striking and high quality environmental design.