Spyro is a game deceptively unlike the other mascot/collectathon platformers of this era that I’ve played. It looks basically the same as any of those at a glance, but when I really got into it I found something decidedly more relaxed than I was expecting.

The hub worlds are really open, with very little to gate your progression and a lot of nooks and crannies if you care to explore them. It’s not functionally any different than, say, Mario or DK64, but there’s a chillness that permeates the experience in a way that feels singular to me.

This extends to the gameplay itself. You get all of spyro’s really limited moveset immediately, and the entire game is built around these four-ish verbs, which makes for a streamlined, simple approach to level design without necessarily sacrificing challenge in platforming. It’s a gentle curve but a rewarding one.

Enemies are simple to deal with and, for the most part, fairly sparsely placed, which I approve of given how limited the toolset for dealing with them is. That coupled with the way the game continues uninterrupted when you complete objectives creates a really nice, gentle atmosphere; the game feels like it emphasizes exploring these spaces and vibing to the cool music and colors. The feel is distinct and unexpected in the era of punchy platformer mascots doing the Dreamworks Face and taking out offensive advertisements in magazines.

Spyro himself reflects this, with his weird little dweeb voice and wide eyed respect for his elders, who seem like they should be doing this work once he frees them from their magical prisons? Oh well, they’re funny guys it’s fine.

This was all a surprise to me. Given insomniac’s whole vibe with early ratchet and clank and sunset overdrive before they got subsumed into the Hyper Generic AAA “Cinematic” Sony grinder, I did expect more 90s edge, more chaotic level design, more frantic beats. But I’m glad I got this instead. Spyro carves out a really chill space in the 90s mascot platformer market and I’m sincerely curious to see whether its two follow ups keep that energy going.

treasure in the royal tower is not the ending or the beginning of anything; it is only the fourth entry in a series that pumped out releases with factory conveyor belt-like regularity for fifteen years. and yet, this does feel in some ways like less of an elaboration and more of a culmination of the mechanical ideas that have been at play since the first game, while also introducing more sophisticated narrative elements that i understand will become the hallmark of this series in the future.

the hook for this one is that nancy is trapped during an inexplicable wisconsin blizzard while she's vacationing alone at a ski resort that also happens to inexplicably be a 250 year old french castle that was imported to the states shortly after marie antoinette's execution (this is an important detail) and god damn it you just know there's gonna end up being a mystery that will somehow involve all four of the other people living in this basically abandoned winter nightmare palace.

however, unlike the mansion from the previous entry, the only thing this castle is haunted by is its grumpy owner/proprietor, the one (1) interesting character in possibly the entire series so far since the first game. but he rules i really like this guy. he's the first person in any of these games to display any actual depth, his voice actor is clearly having a lot of fun, and even though the writing still isn't doing enough to lay convincing red herrings, this is a character i actually enjoy spending time with so i don't mind that he's so easy to read.

his story is also larger in scope than those of previous games. mystery in a haunted mansion also featured a location with a treasure hidden in a historically significant location and had you uncovering a backstory as part of a quest to uncover the situation, but this time that concept is intertwined directly with the modern day themes and narrative in a way that feels...misguided?

obviously the biggest thing is that this game is 1. going to bat super hard trying to rehabilitate the image of marie antoinette of all people in a way that betrays this game as the product of 90s liberal feminism that it is, 2. does it by making up fictional diaries and reasons for her to be much more sympathetic than we have reason to understand her to have been in life, and 3. thematically parallels the life of a character who i don't think is actually a good comparison to her for reasons of class that we'll get into in a bit.

SO, marie antoinette. it's touchy, right, because this is a hugely reviled historical figure, right? perhaps unfairly so, to some degree. but there are a lot of factors at play here: she was super young, sure, but she was also already part of that bourgeois culture, but at the same time she's a product of that culture, for better or worse. But she DID have power and she DID suck shit. But she A L S O already gets romanticized by modern culture a lot anyway? Maybe this was less true in 2001. I am not going to pretend to be an expert in any French revolutions.

But the game also compares her, someone who died young, with the owner of this castle where her secret treasure now resides, who was adopted into a life of wealth, got into a lot of trouble with the law and money and stuff, and was eventually disowned by his father at a young age. He never made amends with his father but now, as an older man himself he operates the castle as a lodge and haunts this space literally in the same way that antoinette's legacy does. at the end of the game you're able to give him closure with his father posthumously via some real nightmarish journals you find, and you give antoinette the same forgiveness via a book a character publishes that supposedly like, revolutionizes scholarship on this historical figure and makes this lady a millionaire and leads to a reevaluation of antoinette's popular character, like if she was in a fate/stay night after this in the nancy drew universe she'd be a bad bitch.

i just think it's weird to take a real life rich person who is at least partially responsible for real lasting harm to millions of people and equivocating that with a poor person you made up not handling being adopted well lol. seems like a weird way to play it. that's of course not how the game want you to read it but that is what is literally happening if you just like, look at these two people.

it's just a weird scenario that really begs the question of why make this about a real person? clearly the writing team at Her was capable of compelling historical stories and detailed journals about fictional scenarios - they had already done it! but as it is it leads me down a rabbit hole of political implications that just don't feel like they were thought through particularly well. i'm by no means knowledgeable about french history so i'm happy to be corrected about misconceptions i may have.

these aren't my only foibles with the writing here. there's one character who is on the same quest as you who has essentially ruined his whole life over it, and has a birthright to it, but literally at the first sign of resistance he just gets mad at you and quits despite having nothing to show for it and nowhere else to go and nothing to do because he can't leave the castle during a blizzard and a shambled life behind and ahead of him. even once you solve this problem he's SO MAD that if you try to get him back in on it he won't even talk to you, it's a crazy and big thread to just drop from the game.

and the villain is once again, extremely underwritten and unthreatening, perhaps the most comically of them all so far, so unserious and easily defeated that i wonder if the "confrontation" with them was a corporate mandate or something. (they do, however, refer to the mace they spray nancy with as "spicy devil villain venom" which like what the fuck that's so funny)

but for as stuck in my craw as these issues are, the strengths of these games remain strengths here, and they're getting stronger. puzzle design has consistently improved game to game, and it's at its best here, with no last minute bullshit of any kind, timer-runs-out-and-you-die sequences that actually rely on previous experiences instead of literal randomness, and clock/schedule based puzzles that are actually explained to you and make sense in the context of the world. the game overs you can get by forcing nancy to behave like a jackass are as numerous and funny as ever, and there is just enough bizarre inanity to remind you that this is still the world where somebody printed a rhyming riddle hinting to the identity of who killed a high school student onto the menu of the local diner.

the atmosphere rules too, with spooky castle shit and spooky rural wintery shit blending super well into a cocktail of Mild Claustrophobia that is quickly becoming the strongsuit of this dev team's place-setting skills.

despite my lengthy quibbles about the bigger ideas at play in this game, i do think basically every element of it is a marked improvement over previous installments, a real coming together and clicking into place of all the elements that Her was trying to make work in all of the previous games. the fact that there are bigger ideas at all indicates a willingness by the team to continue to push themselves further, and i'm more excited than ever to see how they do that next.

PREVIOUSLY: MESSAGE IN A HAUNTED MANSION
NEXT TIME: THE FINAL SCENE

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES

Sampling Malcolm X for your final boss theme is so fucking metal. The mind numbing bosses and some janky level design choices aside this is an amazing time. I love how exhilarating the platforming is here and Hideki Naganuma outdid himself with the soundtrack. The story was heartwarming too, if a little simple. Blaze's little character arc is very satisfying to watch and Sonic's little speech near the end was great. I do think some lines feel a little too directly translated but the emotions were there so I can let it slide. Peak Sonic.

I'm struggling to find the words to express my opinon on this game. To put it simply, this is the first game I've ever played and is something I've come back to over and over throughout my life. Needless to say, this game is important to me.

When I play this I see everything that makes Mario what it is. Everything here is amazing. While in some aspects, the gameplay can seem dated, I find it as just another part of the charm. Overall, this is an amazing platformer and tbh it's one of Mario's best games ever.

Pizza Tower is actually a character study. It's a study on a poor Italian pizza chef being pushed to his absolute limits and beyond. It's about a local business owner doing what he has to do to save his business from a corporate entity. It's about how the most unlikely of people can become the best of friends.
In all seriousness this game is just fun. It does exactly what it sets out to do and does it extremely well. It looks great with it's wild aesthetic that never fails to make giggle uncontrollably. It feels great to play. Admittedly the controls can take a bit of getting used to (Mainly with the mach mechanic and the super jumps), but once you get used to it works near perfectly. It sounds great. Any OST that pulls a Daft Punk reference is automatically amazing. This game really wears it's inspirations proudly on it's selves and manages to create something really special. I can not recommend this game enough.

So, Spongebob is back with a new game, and despite having not watched the show in a long while, I still kept some tabs on it here and there and even preordered it. I mean, it's THE Millennial and Gen Z icon after all, how could I not! But wait, something's off here. A strictly linear structure, forgoing the open-ended ethos? Prominent utilizations of gimmicks and minigame segments? A downscaled focus on optional knick-knacks, usually centering the maguffins on one item? Why, this isn't quite the (spiritual) successor to BfBB as I was led to believe, instead this is taking cues from the far, far inferior descendants Movie Game and Creature From The Krusty Krab! Oh, the hu-manatee! I kid, it's not that bad, but it could stand to be a little better.

Spongebob's doing a solo venture this time around, and he controls pretty adequately thankfully. Jumping and attacking is just as good as ever, turning's a little heavier than before but I got used to it, and ground pounding has never felt more satisfying and cartoony, and he has a new dodge ability that's quick to pull off and covers decent distance. That said, however, some of his returning and new moves are a little odd. The karate kick is pretty slick, having a nice flow and feel to it... when activated properly. When you press its button a little too early or a little too close to something, he sorta slowly glides across the way to it, which while not awful can be pretty annoying. The swing though, sucks shit, it's automated and super exaggerated about it, and turning is sluggish as hell. I've never come to regret seeing when a section uses it, but I sigh anyway since it could've been much better. You can use the Reef Blower to suck things up and fire it back at objects and enemies, and it's certainly a thing that exists considering you unlock it right at the final level. Tangentially, there's an unusual centering of combat here, with enemies having health bars capping out at about four, even the Duplicatotron/Spawner equivalent having them, and it's just as tedious as you'd expect with a limited attacking pool at your disposal even compared to BfBB and Movie Game due to only having the pounds, circling attack, a bubble move that'll trap enemies and can stun them once it pops, and a karate kick for the smaller foes. Even with ways to mitigate the waiting periods, I groaned each time I got placed onto a combat room spontaneously appearing with jolted pacing between it and the platforming. What helps to alleviate some of these woes is that the core of it is indeed surprisingly pretty well done. I dunno, while these levels have some spotty pacing and attributes attached from all I've said, I can't deny I had some fun just going through them when all the pieces clicked in, due to the feel again being adequate all around and how they're established just being fun to explore and complete. I mean, this game's Kelp Forest level is actually the best one unlike in BfBB, that's insane!

I mentioned the gimmicks and minigames, and speaking seriously here I gotta give props for how they wanted to implement them. How it works is that each world showcases them as its own little slice, that then gets transferred over onto the Bikini Bottom hub for one reason or another, and perhaps even for a quick segment in a later world. In Western Jellyfish Fields you can use a seahorse once obtaining the license to do so, in Prehistoric Kelp Forest you roll around on a rock to traverse past the lava below, Pirate-riddled Goo Lagoon has you hoisting up flags and utilizing the swings in order to go around and attain rep, etc. etc. I guess I'm a bit of a weirdo and don't entirely bemoan these sorts of things in 3D Platformers - you can blame Sonic and Sly Cooper for that - but I'll still call them out if they're not handled properly, which is unfortunately a bit of a case here. Controlling the seahorse doesn't have the best sense of weight and momentum, some of these minigames amount to simple button mashing like the flag hoists mentioned earlier, and listen, I know this is a kid-centric game and all, but when puzzles can have the solution written either scarcely tucked away (I destroyed the tikis in front of this for instance) or in plain sight, I gotta question the level of trust and forethought put on display. To its credit, I don't think these slumps are that frequent, and there were legit some shakeups I found pretty interesting and cool, like in Downtown Bikini Bottom playing around with movie stardom and filmmaking or the more whimsical approaches found in Medieval Sulfur Fields.

There's also criticisms I can't quite articulate well here, cause they can easily be lobbied onto BfBB and Movie Game. The abundant uses of voice lines? I mean, that's bad, but I also grew up with Spongebob exclaiming how sometimes pushing a simple button is the most satisfying (push, push, push push) in BfBB or Patrick talking about pain trains in Movie Game, so yea. References? I mean, this whole game is supposed to be a throwback, so it makes sense, plus it isn't the first Spongebob game to do such a thing. Lackluster boss fights? Yea, cause Robo-Sandy, Robo-Patrick, Dennis, and Flying Dutchman were such exhilarating foes. I suppose one frame I can pitch, excluding bosses, is that the frequency of them can be a bit much. Simply doing a glide has a high chance of Spongebob doing the Krusty Krab Pizza line, falling off a ledge has him talking about what a great friend Patrick is ad nauseum, I got sick of this and I'd like to think my patience for these things is pretty high. BfBB had just under three seasons worth of material to work off of when it released on Oct. 29th 2003, something its Rehydrated remake mostly stuck with outside a couple of meme stuff in illustrations and idle animations, and more specific instances had manually triggered Easter Eggs like the Rock Bottom bus, which CS also does. Alongside this, it has triple the amount to work under, yet not only does it pull from that same set, it outright showcases them more like with Fred "My Leg" Fish, Tom The CHOCOLATE Enthusiast, or even one minigame instance where the whole point is doing The Popular Meme Animations numerous times in a button mashing minigame, five separate times. It's jarring cause they can indeed do more lowkey inferences to the source or even put them under a new spin, like reusing Prawn as a boss Flying Dutchman has to face to get his groove back, or plastering the set of DBB with Handsome Squidward and Master Udon on the walls. A better balancing of this sort of thing was in order for sure, but hey, I got some laughs.

The biggest issue though, is the visual oddities and quirks. BfBB Rehydrated got some flack for this as well, and much like that game, I haven't gotten anything too nasty but I still faced hiccups regardless. Spongebob's body and wand disappearing, cutscenes jarringly stopping all of a sudden without my input, tikis sometimes floating when they should be falling down, weird boundary detection causing me to get hit, cutscenes not having any sort of sound or music cue making them feel weirdly empty, frankly rather befuddled over what's happening here considering they had nowhere near the same predicament as Rehydrated, a game that suffered from being shoved out the door despite its planned movie tie-in deal not coming through from Sponge On The Run's delayed premiere. It's understandable this is a budgeted release, which is why the standard cutscene animation reuse and more compact feel doesn't bother me so much, but that line of reasoning can only underline a game's woes for so long. The DLC practice is also a legitimate scam, from preordering or now paying 10 additional bucks, you get seven additional costumes to wear despite the fact they have no real difference in utility, the world-specific one takes up all the showcasing, and one of them is just outright the same thing as something already available. Considering how easy it is to stack up on jellies and doubloons, I sincerely have no real clue as to why these are separated from the pack, especially since if I recall, these were shown in trailers!

Honestly, the only reason I'm not too bitter is because at the end of the day, I'm way past the age demographic this is appealing to, even in their attempts to try and do so considering BfBB's popularity, but more importantly its a case that can rarely be replicated in the modern age. That game's quality and sheen was, if I may be so bold, a bit of a lightning in a bottle; it's not at all the first good licensed game, hell it could be argued it wasn't the first good one in the 6th Gen line, but it was one of the more faithful outings due to its usage of the source material concocting for a great experience fan or otherwise, as well as its shockingly intact polish and physicality, which landed itself as a mainstay for speedrunning enthusiasts. While you can expect that sort of thing for more high-maintenance studios such as Insomniac, that's not quite the case for AA-tier calibers like Purple Lamp. Don't get me wrong, I am not excusing these technical issues and my confusing state over them still remain, I'm just saying that I wasn't expecting the same level that came before irregardless of the fact. If kids are gonna grow up with this game, I'm genuinely thankful its at least a commendable effort, and not the shlock I had to face following up such as Movie Game and CfKK to reiterate, Truth Or Square, and especially Atlantis Squarepantis. Funny how people got mad over an IGN employee giving it a 5/10 though, like come on lol there's other type of people to get mad over if you wanna do so.

no schmovement + linear + cringe + ratio

Prime takes its series to new heights in atmosphere, environmental storytelling and polish, but also sacrifices a little too much of Super Metroid's sweaty energy and genius level design structure for my tastes. Morphballing over bumpy terrain, side-stepping around Space Pirates and double jumping between platforms is fun, but is it as fun as it could be when every room is a tiny self-contained box? It sucks ass how you can get the Ice Beam, see eight Ice Beam doors on your map and then realize that seven of them are dead ends.

The wide-eyed little gamer in me hopes Retro will take inspiration from more loosey-goosey schmovement sandbox FPS games like Quake, Titanfall 2 or Halo Infinite for Prime 4. As it stands though, I can appreciate this more rigid Ocarina of Time-style take on Metroid for what it is!