519 reviews liked by Hattori


When playing RDR2, the main comparison that kept popping into my head was with Shenmue. Its not a 1-to-1 comparison, but there are parallels that kept becoming more apparent the more I played it, and maybe serve to help explain why I didn't quite connect to RDR2 in the way that seemingly lots of people have. Superficially, they're both highly acclaimed open world games with very high production values, maybe even too high, given their famously insane development costs. They're both steeped in a sort of simulated immersive realism, with a scattershot approach to their mechanics providing a toybox for the player to experiment outside the critical path. They both borrow from other mediums for inspiration, namely film and television, and both outstayed their welcome with me. They both gesture at some rather grand ideas related to family, revenge, greed but never quite managed to emotionally connect in the way I think they wanted me to, though perhaps for quite different reasons. They both have stealth sections I wish weren't in the game.

On its own, RDR2 leaves me with pretty ambivalent feelings. The most obvious place to start is with the technical aspects. RDR2 is probably one of the most impressive technical achievements of the medium when it comes to photorealism. Especially as I start to learn more about photography and lighting in my own game dev career knowing all that goes into it, I could genuinely spend hours just standing in the middle of a field looking at the clouds and the beautifully rendered rays of sunlight. This is especially impressive because for the most part I'm really not that obsessed with this sort of thing as I think the average gamer is, considering the rave reviews it received aided in large part by this technical marvel. Really, I think photorealism is a fool's game, and later on I'll explain how RDR2 kinda proves me right in that sense, but its so disarmingly beautiful that I'll forgive its too high cost and relatively unimaginative art direction. As Joseph Stalin once said : "the boundless beauty of planet earth has an art direction all of its own".

As I walk through a meticulously researched, faithful recreation of NOT New Orleans full of fully modeled, textured and lit representatives of the era overhearing conversations in different languages, greeting strangers who I can at any point stick up and start a micro story of my own with a high speed chase with the law ending with me blowing them all up with dynamite, well I start to understand why people of 1998 would poop their pants when they realized they could open up their grandma's cupboard and pick up an orange and rotate freely about Ryo Hazuki's hands. I'm actually working on a game set in a similar-ish time period and a week or so ago I was struggling to figure out how to model a particular victorian street lamp, whose exact model I found in the game in one of the towns and went "ohh so thats how they did it". It was not even the last time I saw something in the game which I had done something similar to, which was pretty cool to see.

Spoilers for RDR2

The problem though, with the world of RDR2, is that I don't think it wants to BE an open world. I think maybe this type of thing made more sense in GTA, from 3 onwards where seemingly the campaign was there to both tutorialise all of the toys but also to provide a break from the unstructured mayhem to a more structured set of goals. This might work better when the sandbox is the focus, and the story mostly taking the piss with its tongue-in-cheek satirical tone. In RDR2 though, this structure is at odds with itself. For all the meticulously crafted, reactive playset being created here, it cannot be allowed to mess with the critical path on the one hand, with a lot of the games' progression gated off (like the guns) by story missions and conversely the story is undercut by the freedom allowed by the open world. It makes me feel as if every chapter was at one point supposed to be a contained open world section before moving to the next, but was simply stitched together into one big mess. "Here's Saint Denis Arthur, a monument to the current transition to industrialised capitalism and urbanisation in the wake of manifest destiny having been fully realized, this world of technological wonders contrasted with the poverty, pollution and discrimination of the Jim Crow era". "Yeah I know Dutch, I was here last week". A police chief greeted me in the game's epilogue and told me "Welcome to Town" even though I had just completed like 2 main story missions where he hired me to hunt a bounty.

There was a bit during the game's 2nd chapter (which is incidentally the chapter with the highest drop off in players on Steam on account of its length most likely) where I was getting inmersed in the camp, greeting the well realized colourful cast of characters interacting with each other when one of them said something along the lines of "well this sure beats being in those mountains" and "yeah it feels like we're getting back on our feet" and it stuck out to me because this was at a time where I was still doing sidequests and exploring for its own sake, added to the fact that this was a torturously long chapter of the game, it felt so incongruous. This is something you say when its been a week since we left the mountains, but it felt like it would have been like 3 months. Maybe this is just my own fucked up perception of time, but its hard not to notice how drawn out a lot of the chapters are. There is also the matter of the mission structure, which involves mostly riding back and forth with another character and then getting into a token shootout. Its almost comical considering how much of the narrative seems to focus on the grey morality of the gang and their seeming downward spiral from semi robin hood figures (criminals with a heart of gold maybe) into common thugs, when just in the cause of regular gameplay Arthur has killed enough people to populate a small country. Its another point at which the open world and missions clash, getting roped into a massacre in a mission leaves me with a massive bounty in a particular part of the map, but no worries, I can just pay off the bounty that came from me murdering 30 peoplein cold blood! Not the bounty from the inciting incident that kickstarts the game's plot mind you. It even undermines the thematic arc of the game of the days of the old west being over, the land now "tamed" (a nice detail being that there are several tourist attractions with the owners speaking of their clients from new york coming to "Experience the wild west" as the sanitized version of myth which was quickly capitalised upon by the likes of Buffalo Bill irl) with Arthur remarking that back in the old days one could simply escape trouble by moving to the next town, but in the logic of the bounty system, thats still the case! And for all that the gang is chased across america, this seems mostly to come from their continued attempts at killing and robbing people, rather than the law catching up with them all that much. The pinkertons show up once in a while but even then.

The game's story, whilst compelling, feels unsure of whether or not it wants a player, given how closely choreographed and railroaded the mission structures are. Much of the game feels like a designer trying to figure out how to cram in character dialogue whilst the player is actually doing something. Its another case where a game borrows so many cues from television that you start to wonder, what is the point of it all? Why make this and not just a season of HBO Presents : Arthur Morgan. What is it the game adds beyond the need to have token shootouts every 5 seconds, undermining the realism the game's systems and aesthetics are trying so hard to achieve? Well, for the most part the answer lies in the camp. If there is one thing that has kept me coming back to RDR2 for a whole 50 goddamned hours its the camp, the home base that the game is built around. The opportunities for roleplaying and really getting inmersed into this world, with a dozen or so well rounded, well realized characters interacting with the player and each other, catching glimpses of their lives and hopes and fears. Its great. As much as the game is far too long and the gameplay uninspired, the excellent dialogue and the roleplaying aspect where enough to keep me going to the finish line. So much so I reread Arthur's journal at the end and genuinely caught myself reading it in his particular cadence and voice in my head. He's a compelling character and if there had been more of the moments where Arthur interacts with Mary Linton, or walking around helping Rains Falls, maybe this would be the best game ever, but for everyone of those there are missions where you go a place and shoot a bunch of people, and another submission where a passerby begs you to help them and it involves riding on your horse for 10 minutes as they verbally explain their entire life's story and personality to you. Understandable that the quality of the game's writing would vary this much considering that by the look of the credits, more people worked on this game than on the Pyramids.

So much of the game's story feels like token, unfocused filler, a means to an end with the end being "Arthur gets closer to realising that Dutch is a complete fuckhead who doesn't know what he's doing". The Epilogue especially feels unnecessary except for perhaps the final confrontation but even then. I admit that I haven't played 1, but I am almost sure that all that bullshit in building the ranch and going clean and reconciling with Marston's wife ends with his wife and kid getting murdered within the first 15 minutes of that game. Its the prequel issue I suppose, like how much of BCS is spent on building the superlab even though its entire purpose is to exist for Walter to cook in and then destroy. At the end of it all though, I think the biggest failing for me is that after all that, despite Arthur Morgan's compelling character arc as he tries to do some good with what little time he has left, he died and I didn't really feel all that sad, nor did I cry, which is rather embarassing because I'm very easy to get to cry with sad stories. Added to that 6 hours of a goddamned epilogue have dampened even that. Idk man, Shenmue I felt disconnected to because I fundamentally couldn't really understand or relate to Ryo Hazuki or give much of a shit for his quest, but with RDR2 I just don't even know what to make of it. Maybe that's okay.

I am Generation 1’s strongest soldier.

- Small limited inventory makes you actually consider every item you pick up and I think that’s neat. Putting this one at the start to filter anyone who can’t stand the idea of someone defending gen 1 inventory management. But if you actually go through and check what items you need and what ones you don’t every so often you won’t often cap out on bag space and you’ll probably make a good bit of money from all the vitamins and TMs and other random stuff you don’t really need. It’s just another aspect of preparation, and it makes sense for prep to be important when setting out on an adventure.

- The region layout is fun, there’s just enough freedom to let you poke around in places where you don’t really belong. It’s probably a bit awkward to navigate for someone getting into it for the first time, but on the other hand the lack of explicit guidance or scripted events benefit the sense of freedom - both in the literal exploration of the region (though it is a little more railroaded than I remember early on), and thematically in allowing it to feel like your own journey (something I find important in a Pokemon game, where the core mechanic of catching and teambuilding leans heavily into individuality).

- The region thematically is probably the most compelling. It’s incredibly ‘raw’ - putting its warts fully on display and having 10 year old kids freely wander around in it all. Future games have your protagonist take on moustache-twirling supervillains whose plans are varying degrees of nonsense, whereas Team Rocket acts and operates very much how Yakuza organisations might do (limited knowledge of this admittedly), with parallels to real life such as the Game Corner acting as both a front for their operations as well as mirroring the legal loopholes real-life pachinko parlours use to evade gambling laws (social commentary, in *my* Pokemon game??). There’s so many cute, weird and uncomfortable little details there to pick up on that sell the workings of the region, no matter how weird, with a joyful yet disarming honesty. (One of the less serious, more entertaining things I picked up on was that the Fighting Dojo lost its gym status because they got the shit kicked out of them by the Psychic gym which, like, yeah of course they did! It’s funny, but it’s also an interesting look into how the world actually functions.)

- The game has the purest and most unfiltered vision of a 'complete' Pokemon experience. Filling the dex is heavily encouraged/mandatory (you wouldn’t use a map for Rock Tunnel, would you…….), though admittedly not handled with the most elegance, and in-game trades are much more frequent than later games, as well as being more desirable - there’s a good few Pokemon that are otherwise unobtainable, and in Yellow in particular you can just get a Machamp from an in-game trade! Though exploration and battling are clearly at the forefront, it puts much more emphasis on these other elements of Pokemon that would end up being eroded away over time. (Admittedly features like the GTS and Wonder Trade help keep trading alive, though those two definitely have their own issues)

- Barren movesets and HMs come together in a really strange way. Moveslots have the least value out of any Pokemon game in most cases because most of your options just aren’t that good, so you’ll be sticking to your few good ones. This makes HMs easier than ever to slot onto your team! You can have a slot taken by Flash or Cut or even Dig or Teleport for the whole game and you probably won’t feel it all that much! Not to mention that half the mandatory HMs - Surf and Strength - are actually just really good moves (more than half if you’re not using Flash, but you WOULDN’T use a map for Rock Tunnel, WOULD you???).

- When Pikachu faints it makes the most horrifying blood-curdling scream that a GB could ever produce and I think that’s awesome

Sure there are more than enough valid criticisms of these games and I still can’t blame anyone for not liking them. Someone in the 8th gym used tackle on me. Tackle! Like I don’t mind the limited movesets that much but I think that’s a bit excessive. But I think they tend to get weirdly overhated nowadays and for reasons that don’t really make much sense? Either complaining about very specific quirks and glitches (‘The AI is so bad!!’, I yell, as I intentionally send out a poison type to make Lorelei’s Dewgong spam Rest), or comparing them to later entries when they are not those later entries (limited movesets being a big one, I won’t fight tooth and nail to defend them but they really don’t feel as bad as you’d expect coming from, like, Gen 4 onwards). And I think there’s a lot of value in these silly little games that’s easy to overlook.

​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​ - ​🇹​​🇪​​🇦​​🇲​ ​🇫​​🇴​​🇷​​🇹​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ 2

​🇦​​🇱​​🇪​​🇷​​🇹​​🇸​ (1️)
​🇾​​🇴​​🇺​ ​🇭​​🇦​​🇻​​🇪​ ​🇳​​🇪​​🇼​ ​🇮​​🇹​​🇪​​🇲​​🇸​!

Recently I’ve become infatuated with the catalogue and timeline of Valve’s works, as someone who has arrived to the PC scene only recently, I’ve picked up their backlog of titles and have come to understand their legacy. Wherever that’s their genre making Half-Life that set forth what an immersive story should be, or the incredible case of Portal, and what I could argue as the definitive puzzle game. Even their more “lesser frontline” games such as Day of Defeat and older Counter Strike’s are fascinating enough where I feel intrigued to explore and delve in more. The success could be attributed to many things, like the Source engine being so perfect for the time as it was, or Valve’s near godlike worship in most online communities. Over the past few weeks however, one of these has stuck out to me as a work I would have never expected to love so much.

ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴀꜱᴜᴀʟ ᴍᴀᴛᴄʜ ɪꜱ ʀᴇᴀᴅʏ
ᴊᴏɪɴɪɴɢ ɪɴ 6...

Where can you really start with Team Fortress 2? A flagship of the Orange Box quickly becoming one of the longest supported games throughout it’s life, before falling into a limbo of uncertainty for it’s prevalent future. As someone new to playing, this was incredibly daunting, but soon enough you get into a rhythm of matches and matches and the outsider feeling isn’t really a problem. To delve into the gameplay, I believe they really nailed it right on the spot. Before the time of Overwatch and Paladins there were nine mercenaries, and wherever that the natural talent of Valve they’re really loveable. I initially thought these were just blank slates and that internet culture hypes these guys out more than they’re meant to be, but god dammit they're extravagant personalities really shine out. Scout is loud, often abrasive, Heavy is a sort of stupid yet secretively intellectual character, and the cartoonishly evilness of Medic’s science, to name only three. The reason why TF2 has stuck out so much over the 1.5ish decade course is that these jerk-offs really are individuals, which brings so much personality into the world.

🇽​​🇽​ꜱʜᴀᴅ0️ᴡᴡ0️1️​🇽​​🇽​ ︻デ═一 ɪʀᴜᴍᴀᴇ
​🇽​​🇽​ꜱʜᴀᴅ0️ᴡᴡ0️1​🇽​​🇽 🎯​ ​🇮​​🇸​ ​🇩​​🇴​​🇲​​🇮​​🇳​​🇦​​🇹​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​

Speaking of individuality, an almost genius idea that was maybe accidentally brought into the game was the customisation of the mercs.The mix-matching of weapons and weighing out the pros and cons gives you your own playstyle and how you play your matches. To name an example, my team was trying to push on Dustbowl, and were struggling to get it out of spawn. I had an idea and used the Eyelander and Chargin’ Targe for Demoman and successfully flanked most of the enemy team. Older players will probably roll my eyes and make a comment about subclasses, but I felt rewarded by the game for trying out something slightly unconventional.

​🇩​​🇪​​🇦​​🇩​ ​🇸​​🇦​​🇱​​🇹​​🇾​​🇸​​🇴​​🇱​​🇩​​🇮​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ 🇫​​🇺​​🇨​​🇰​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇸​​🇹​​🇴​​🇵​ ​🇧​​🇪​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇦​​🇫​​🇰​

“Unconventional” suits this game a lot. The more time I spent in this game the more the rabbit hole of gamemode and maps opened up for me. Mann vs Machine, (if you ignore the prevalent toxicity surrounding the games) is one of my favourite PvE modes that could serve as its own game. The uniqueness of mix-matching the weapons and classes comes into fruition here as they bring forward the teamwork and communication side of TF2, and as long as you get great people it’s a lovely time. It gives a very hard to master approach, but I feel as if I’m learning and improving all the time. All of that is driven by the wondrous prize of an elusive Australium weapon, and although I cannot comment on it as much as I would like to, the market system and trading economy in this game is comprehensive and extensively deep. Community tabs, though a violent cesspool of mediocrity, are majoritively entertaining enough to check out. It’s interesting to see what the community can do with only the engine and game mechanics; you only need to take a quick look at rocket-jumping maps for how committed TF2’s players are willing to push the gameplay core.

(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!
(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!
(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!

Its’ cultural status breaks out of this too, as of its’ 16 year anniversary it has miraculously pulled through the lack of support that Valve has given it. It’s a shame, as issues like hacking and the rise of bots have troubled the community enough. But somehow, the perseverance and determination of TF2’s players has me in awe. The aspect of wanting to keep your playerbase together whilst managing to uptake the parts of the game that made it so interesting in the first place is maybe one of the reasons why I love this game so much. And I feel like I could go more into this game, but I’ve said enough. Maybe as I reach the high hour marks my thoughts and opinions will grow bitter, I’ll sour and become a TF2 vet, depressingly wandering and reminiscing on a game that once was. I’ll have joined a community of edgy teens, toxic tryhards, and AI bots insta-sniping me from across the map. But I’ll also be in a place of belonging, and acceptance in a weird time of the internet where maybe all I need from a game is to have fun.

For a game I only just know, this feels like home.
------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
​🇰​​🇮​​🇨​​🇰​ ​🇵​​🇱​​🇦​​🇾​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ ​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​? (​🇳​​🇴​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇦​​🇸​​🇴​​🇳​ ​🇬​​🇮​​🇻​​🇪​​🇳​)

​🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ ​🇫​1️ ​🇹​​🇴​ ​🇻​​🇴​​🇹​​🇪​ ​🇾​​🇪​​🇸​
​🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ ​🇫​2️ ​🇹​​🇴​ ​🇻​​🇴​​🇹​​🇪​ ​🇳​​🇴​

✓ 6️ ✖ 0️
------------------------------------------------------
​🇸​​🇦​​🇱​​🇹​​🇾​​🇸​​🇴​​🇱​​🇩​​🇮​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ ​🇫​1️
​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇫​1️
​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​⦂ ​🇼​​🇦​​🇮​​🇹​ ​🇼​​🇭​​🇦​​🇹​ ​🇳​​🇴​
​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​⦂ ​🇮​❜​🇲​ ​🇩​​🇴​​🇳​​🇪​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇻​​🇮​​🇪​​🇼​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​

​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​​🇪​​🇩​⦂
​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​⦂ ​🇨​​🇱​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇹​ ​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​.

I shouldn’t like this game. It’s a grindfest, there’s no rolling HP meter, and the dungeons are unnecessarily gigantic. It’s so archaic nobody in their right mind will play the official release all the way through. Hell, I put it down for a while before completion.

You know what though? Sometimes rough edges are part of the appeal. Even with the grinding, I found Mother to be a snappy and enjoyable experience. What takes one hour in this game takes two in the sequels and four in most other JRPGs. The rich music transcends the hardware limitations, delivering feelings ranging from whimsical adventure to creeping horror. This is a case where the 8-bit presentation enhances the experience. Exploring towns full of tiny, yet wacky character sprites, battling psychotic normalities against a black void, and getting lost in mazes of gray would have hit much less hard if there wasn’t so much open to interpretation.

Mother is a masterful use of crude graphics, empty space, and tonal shifts to turn the player into a kid wandering the unknown. I strongly disagree with the notion it’s not worth playing. EarthBound and Mother 3 are undoubtedly better balanced games and worth experiencing in their own right, but just like remodeling a 30-year old house, there was as much lost as there was gained during the transition.

This review contains spoilers

It’s not bad. Decent, even. Catch me on a nice day and I’ll tell ya it’s good! But as much as I enjoyed my time with Metroid: Dread (and I did enjoy it, mostly), I can’t help but feel like it plays things way too safe while also somehow fumbling a lot of the fundamentals. I think the clamoring for a new Metroid game may have overshadowed any priorities for what that game should be. Truthfully, the Metroid name has a lot of baggage. When I hear that name, I think of the NES original’s ambitious nonlinear structure, Return of Samus’s willingness to make you uncomfortable, Super’s masterful sense of immersion and player freedom, or Fusion’s total disruption of series tradition. Dread on the other hand is just… another Metroid. A fine Metroid, but there’s nothing here that really even attempts to be as innovative or transgressive as the 4 games it’s a sequel to, and that to me is the biggest disappointment here.

World design is once again Mercury Steam’s downfall. The linearity isn’t what bugs me –only 2 outta 7 games in this series truly dedicated themselves to the concept, if we’re being honest –but the way it’s implemented is pretty lame, I think. The map always spits you out exactly where you need to be, with any attempts to move off the beaten path usually met by dead ends. I never felt super connected to ZDR in the way I still do to Zebes or SR-388 or the BSL station, and I think it’s because the game never provides any incentive or really any opportunity to familiarize yourself with its layout. It doesn’t help that, while not as egregious as Samus Returns, the level design is still quite cramped and blocky. This doesn’t feel like a living, breathing world as much as a backdrop for a computer entertainment game. It’s also just a really obnoxious approach to building a Metroidvania, if you ask me. I decided to do some backtracking for items before the final boss, and had a pretty terrible time because so many of these screens are so tight and obstructive that they seem intentionally designed to hinder player traversal. The fact each major area is only connected by elevators and teleporters, each one equipped with their own lengthy, demotivating loading screen only makes things worse. And speaking of making things worse, the EMMI zones only serve to compound Dread’s issues with map design. The way each one has to gut whatever area it’s in to make room results in those areas feeling so much less cohesive. It doesn’t help that these zones each look identical, making a by all accounts very pretty and aesthetically diverse game feel visually samey in my head.

The EMMIs themselves also, uh, suck? I think these suck. Relegating each one to their own clearly-demarcated sections that you can freely walk in and out of immediately deprives them of any sense of oppressive spontaneity that something like the SA-X had. Then, once you actually get inside, it’s a formality. Either you effortlessly make it to the other side without hassle, or you get insta-killed immediately and respawn right outside the door. If these were more substantial sections with a little more leeway there might be interesting conflict here. But as is, I’m either gonna skate by mindlessly or I’m getting stuck repeating the same 10 seconds of gameplay over and over again, each loading screen killing the pace and my patience more and more. The omega cannon segments, a genuinely creative new idea, at least have some compelling puzzle design and an exciting flashiness to them. But for me they ultimately get really bogged down by an overly cumbersome control scheme and that same trial & error tedium. The EMMIs also lack any of the thematic resonance that made the SA-X or the Space Pirates of past games so memorable, which is like, the best part of these type of encounters??? I think even the devs get bored of these guys after a while, since they go largely absent from the mid-to-late game only for the final EMMI to be killed off unceremoniously in a cutscene. I dunno man, a big swing and a miss for me.

A lot of Metroid: Dread has this weird give-and-take to it. The power-ups are really cool and satisfying to use, but the way they’re implemented is shockingly unimaginative. Outside of a few optional missile tanks (the only optional collectible you’ll find 80% of the time), you’re mostly only using these upgrades as specialized keys for specialized doors, the grapple beam and ice missiles being the biggest offenders. Boss fights are fantastically frenetic, but so many of them are copy-and-pasted, particularly in the late game, that they lose a lot of their initial impact. I actually really like the attempt at a steeper difficulty, but while some challenges feel really tense and gratifying, others like the EMMIs just feel like banging your head against a wall until it cracks. The game is fucking stunning to look at, easily one of the best graphical showcases for the Switch, but the environments themselves are just kind of bland and forgettable to me. Outside of some novel Chozo structures, it all felt like more of the same caves, plant areas, waterworlds and Norfair clones I’m used to.

This review seems really mean and that’s because yeah, it is. But as I said at the start, I did enjoy my time here. For all that I think Dread gets wrong, I think it gets Samus very, very right. Her controls feel wonderfully agile, and the way she moves in cutscenes is just…so fucking cool like holy shit wow. While I don’t think her moveset here has as much depth as it did in Super or as much crunchiness as in Fusion/Zero Mission, I can’t deny how satisfying the simple act of moving and shooting is in Dread. This was the thing that really ruined Samus Returns for me, but fuck dude, even the counter and Aeion system don’t make me want to kill myself now! It’s a remarkably fun game to play considering how unremarkable so many of it’s design decisions are. And hey, as nitpicky as I can get here, I can’t deny how great the sense of spectacle is here. Sure it’s fanservice, but that Kraid fight had me a hootin’ and a hollerin’, and moments like that go a long way in the final analysis. I have a lot of grievances with Metroid Dread, but I don’t think it’s a bad game per se, and I’d easily recommend it to any aspiring Metroid fan. Just, y’know. Play the other ones first.

“But schlocky,” you cry, “Does all this redeem Mercury Steam for Samus Returns?” Hahaha absolutely not. Are you fucking kidding me? Have you read the articles about what they put their developers through? No way man. Burn that shit to the ground.

Red Dead Redemption 2, plays--often by itself with no input from the player--as a Shakespearean tragedy, haunted by the ghost of crunch, with far too many things to do for the sake of having things to do. The point of it all is cinematic realism--until, of course, it isn't.

Character writing, often so effusively praised, I found lacklustre; despite being one of the lynchpins of the narrative, Dutch's descent into despotism felt insincere as I never got the feeling he was a good leader to begin with, already prone to egoism and wild bouts of jealousy. Bar Arthur (who is fantastically written and acted) and John (significantly fleshed out from RDR1), the rest largely feel like archetypes; while they range from likeable to annoying, it's difficult to invest in or feel bad for them as the world they've constructed into collapses around them.

It's on the realism front I feel RDR2 is the most inconsistent. It's expected you travel from point A to point B manually, riding a horse and chatting with your compatriots about the latest ego trip fuelled plan which will definitely not fail this time, really--only for you to murder everyone in a mile radius, shooting cartoonishly except for when it's time to reload, which is done with agonising care. There's no punishment for lingering in towns which you killed damn near every person; no evidence that they've suffered a population loss for your murder spree.

Realism also fails in the fundamental disconnect between the near-infinite amount of things to do and the narrative. I could collect as much money as possible, donate it painstakingly to camp, upgrade tents and buy medicine--only to have to follow main story quest with the same beats: chat, press A, shoot, run away.

We are instructed, very carefully, over and over again, that things were Better Before and yet see no evidence of it. There is no evidence of nobility, of trying to marry the potentially unethical to immoral with the good; there is just murder, failed heists. Combined with the often varied dedication to realism, it's therefore difficult to invest in the narrative stakes. Are we being chased by the law? Or are we simply loitering in camp, a group large and conspicuous enough to undoubtedly be noticed by passers-by? It fails in that there's no impetus to propel the narrative forward until Arthur's had his fill of hunting and fishing and fossil finding and looting and side quests and train-robbing or train-catching and whatever else it is you'd like to do--often with your hand held by the UI--before you decide that there is a story and you probably should get back to it.

It was going onto one of those story missions that I realised I didn't want to continue any more; that the game had well and truly worn me out, and if I had to watch another beautifully rendered, wonderfully acted cinematic cutscene where I would be given eventual permission to press A at the end to get my horse to move, I wouldn't even be enjoying myself. I might pick it back up at a later date, but for the moment, I'm done.

Happy 2024!

Fantasy Zone MD's a great port of the original, and playing it side by side with Super on the same console really highlights the differences between the two. Never realized how heavily the feeling of bullet hell was evoked from the raw density of microscopic bullet waves - compared to Super, much more reserved and of its era but with larger hitboxes and less movable space. As always, M2's customization bells and whistles are greatly appreciated.

I guess my problem w/ this port is there's nothing new to see or do here? Hideki Konishi's other supported M2 port, Darius (and its upgrade, Extra) is this definitive version of a game whose quality varied greatly across ports: The 26 bosses, rebalances, and boss rush were all finally in one convenient spot. By contrast, Fantasy Zone is hardly different from any other versions you've played, and the portjob doesn't add any Genesis-y juice to its flavor. I would've preferred if they finally ported R Type Leo like they proposed in the past, or any other shmups that had been under-represented.

I mean, wow? I'm honestly not sure what else I can say.

I refrained from waxing poetic on Devil Daggers because I was afraid of betraying what the game is for me at its core. I found it refreshingly simple while still being sophisticated in execution, and while I have seen plenty of talented individuals who have spent countless hours polishing their play to a mirror sheen, it was never much more than a simple time-waster for me. An excellent one, but not the kind of game so remarkable as to keep me hooked the way some others of its ilk have.

So when I first saw a listing for Hyper Demon, I instinctively cocked an eyebrow. I wasn't really sold on the idea of a sequel or successor to Devil Daggers, if only because I wasn't sure what a new game could bring to the table that a sizeable update couldn't. At least, not without compromising what seemed to make Devil Daggers special in the first place. But I looked into it regardless.

Upon viewing various trailers and gameplay videos for Hyper Demon, I was... Confused. This was unquestionably the work of Devil Daggers' creator, and without doubt a re-iteration of that game's core concept. But what was I actually looking at? Somewhere in that swirling sea of pearlescent light was a player, doing... Things. And tried as I might, I just could not parse the action happening before my eyes. Where Devil Daggers had served as a strange sort of zen experience for me, I couldn't help but feel a tinge of anxiety seeing Hyper Demon in motion. It felt like setting George Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte next to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. If you were to describe the scenes depicted as laconically as possible, they might sound much the same, but a cursory examination of each painting makes it abundantly clear they're radically different in tone and theming. I was apprehensive as I pulled the trigger on Hyper Demon, feeling quite certain it wasn't going to appeal the same way as Sorath's maiden title.

And yeah, upon seeing the multi-part tutorial, those apprehensions were very much reinforced. The fact there was a tutorial at all was a bit of a surprise, but in progressing through them I started to realize just how different of a animal this game was going to be. All of these new movement mechanics, on top of the ways you interact with your enemies, demanded a lot more out of me than the simple strafe-jump-shoot fundamentals of the original.

After checking off each box, I proceeded to step into my first game and I was annihilated almost immediately. On repeated attempts, I found that while I might have been able to survive longer, that wasn't good enough anymore. My score would continue to tick down unless my demon-slaying skills impressed. I persevered for a few more runs, struggling to place anywhere north of 30 points, before I started to feel this strange tingling in my brain. That itching, sneaking sensation that I've become more intimately familiar with as time has gone on. Is this game just not for me? Was it the elegant simplicity of Devil Daggers that had hooked me the first time? Had Hyper Demon managed to overcomplicate what was, to me, the almost platonic ideal of first person shooters? I sat back in my chair for a second and thought about it. Then I set the game aside briefly and went back to watch the gameplay videos I'd seen before.

All of a sudden, everything was so clear. Even with the thirty minutes or so I'd spent with the game, I had been gifted enough insight to comprehend the true form of the beast. New ideas were already emerging on how I could improve upon my score and watch my name ascend the leaderboard at breakneck speed.

Hyper Demon manages to be a successor to Devil Daggers while also being its antithesis. Daggers wants you to survive, Demon wants you to perform. Daggers splashes bright reds against a dim and dreary backdrop, providing perfect contrast. Demon is a kaleidoscope of color and fear. Daggers pares down FPS gameplay to its barest aspects. Demon gives you swath of new tricks and rules, and then demands that you respect them.

The current world record for Devil Daggers is roughly twenty minutes.

The current world record run for Hyper Demon is like a minute and a half.

Huh.

At any rate, I'm going to need to spend some more time with it at some point because I have definitely not played enough to decide where it stands amongst other games in my mind. It's quite obvious that while both Devil Daggers and Hyper Demon seek the same goal, they go about achieving them in meaningfully different ways. But I felt the need to say now that even if it ends up not having quite the same appeal for me, I can still appreciate Hyper Demon for what it is: A feast for the senses that is definitely one of the coolest games I've seen in recent memory.

“Hey, you. Yeah, you, kid. C'mere a second. No no, don't walk away. I wanna show you something. Step out of the light for a sec. Just trust me. Nobody else with you, right? Okay, check this out. You're gonna love this.

You like swords? You seem like a kid who likes swords. How about magic? How about dragons? Ooh, I saw that glint in your eye. ‘Course you like dragons. Who doesn’t, am I right? Well, what if I told you that I had a game that has swords, and magic, and dragons. Sometimes all three at once. Eh? That got your interest?

Hey, where are you going?! What, you – you already have Skyrim? Who’s talking about Skyrim here, buddy? That’s so 2011. No, what I’ve got here is something fresh. Something unique. Todd Howard tells you that you can climb mountains? What if I told you that you can climb monsters? Cyclopes, and chimeras, and yeah, you bet yer ass you can climb the dragons too. Does Skyrim have greatswords? It does? Are those swords bigger than your character model? Can you heave those things overhead and swat griffons out of the sky with a single blow? Can you launch somebody else up onto the back of a golem using the flat of your blade like a lacrosse stick? Didn’t think so. You like castin’ spells? We got spells for days. We got fire spells, we got holy spells, we got healin’ spells. We got spells that let you shoot lasers, we got spells that let you conjure storms. We got spells that let you create orbs. I know you magey types like orbs. And what’s more, you can smack these orbs, and then even more orbs come out of them and they home in on enemies and obliterate ‘em. What’s not to love? Or maybe you’re the sneaky type? Maybe you’d rather have a bow and a couple of daggers instead? Put a feather between a bandit’s eyes on Tuesday and use an ogre as a pincushion on Friday? Gotcha covered, mate, don’t worry about it. Like NPCs? Plenty of ‘em. You can talk to ‘em, and maybe you can even woo one of ‘em. Like upgrades? Got a whole system for ya. Like dungeons? Dungeons for days! Weeks, even! And yeah, there’s even a story and stuff too. Plenty of loot, plenty of gear. Everything you could ever want. But you gotta buy soon. This deal ends the second I see a police cruiser stroll down the street. Who knows when you’ll get an opportunity like this again? Just twenty big ones. Ah, yes, an excellent bargain. Here you go, my friend. You’ll not regret it.

Now as you’re playin’ this game, you might notice some slight… Aberrations. Vagaries. Quirks. Maybe your travelin’ companions just won’t shut the hell up. Personally I find ‘em funny, but maybe hearin’ about the specifics of goblin slayin’ just doesn’t hit the same after the thirtieth time. You can toggle that off in a menu, no biggie. Hell, maybe you don’t want friends at all. Lone wolf type, eh? Well, just toss that hanger-on off the nearest cliff. He won’t bother you no more. I do recommend bringing at least one person along, though, cuz uh – you’re gonna need somebody to help carry all your junk around. And besides, they can actually be pretty handy in a scrap, provided you gear ‘em up and give them a stern talkin’ to every now and again. Now, the people you meet are gonna say a lot of stuff. Maybe some of it’s a bit weird, maybe some of it doesn’t make any sense. Just mash through the dialogue, you don’t need to know any of that anyways. I mean, unless you really wanna listen in. I won’t judge ya. Sometimes they can be pretty entertainin’. Just be careful, though. Some of them can get pretty clingy. Careful not to be too friendly with any lonely innkeepers. Be careful about accepting quests, too, especially those escort ones. They won’t be much fun if you don’t do some planning in advance, if you catch my drift. Eh, but what am I talkin’ your ear off for? You got a game to play. Get outta here, kid, go home.”

I really need to stop buying games from strangers in the Denny’s parking lot.

I mean, they were right. Dragon’s Dogma has a ton of positive qualities to it. There are in fact swords, and spells, and dragons, and when all three of those things are onscreen at once it can be terrifically exciting. Unlocking new busted-ass skills and trying them out on towering beasties, clambering to and fro trying to get at their vital bits, all while a triumphant orchestra urges me on… If there’s any one place that Dragon’s Dogma excels, it’s the spectacle of it. Gransys is beautiful and filled with idyllic locales that are stocked to the brim with nasties that want to pull you limb from limb. And that all turns on its head at night and the darkness becomes so thick you could bite it. Seriously, this is one of the few games I’ve played that actually makes night look like night and getting lost out in the woods without your lanterns is absolutely rattling. It’s just a shame the game doesn’t make better use of it (looking at you, Dark Souls II). The abilities available to you range from basic to completely gratuitous and it’s a rare instance where the flashy, devastating moves aren’t horrifically impractical if you know how to use them. There’s a bunch of fun gear to kit out yourself and your pawn with, and the upgrade system has some fun cheats built into it that let you skip the materials grind if you want. The pawn system is a great concept even if the execution is just a little poor, but being able to loan them out and have them learn from their travels is a fantastic idea. The soundtrack is excellent, and the characters can be fun when they’re not just confounding you with endless subplots. Even the base story itself – becoming immortal by having your heart stolen by a dragon who challenges you to retrieve it if you dare – is just so incredibly rad, like something straight out of an experimental metal album. If nothing else, I just like heading out to knock over another cyclops because I never get tired of watching them drop. I’d say Dragon’s Dogma is a guilty pleasure game for me, but I don’t feel guilty about it at all.

And yeah, like any game you might pick up from a seedy-looking merchant, it comes with its fair share of drawbacks. The story starts off strong, with the aforementioned run-in with the dragon providing a perfectly potent motivator. However, everything sandwiched between the opening and the credits feels remarkably aimless, with plenty of characters and concepts being introduced but never really amounting to much of anything. Still, the lore and worldbuilding is strong even where the writing otherwise falters, and if I may freely speak my mind, the ending of Dragon’s Dogma is one of the coolest I’ve ever experienced in a video game. The highest moments tend to be hampered by lots of questionable design choices with regards to mechanics, quests, level design, et cetera, et cetera… But I still had fun. I hear the phrase “diamond in the rough” tossed around with regards to games, but rarely ever do I feel it really suits what it’s applied to. Dragon’s Dogma absolutely is a diamond in the rough. It’s coarse and unpolished and awkward, but when it gleams, it shines. It’s just got such an earnest energy behind it that I can’t help but love it. It regularly goes on sale for dirt cheap so if any part of it looks like it could be your jam, I heavily recommend you give it a shot, even if only to gauge your interest in the upcoming sequel. Do I think there’s a chance that game could stumble as well? Absolutely. But with a foundation this strong, I really want to believe that a second try could be the charm.

Earlier in the year when starting to look at retro titles to play I randomly picked 99: the Last War an arcade title from 1985. The Team Crux after going bankrupt went onto form Toaplan the creators of Batsugun. This is a game I randomly chose from my backlog as a quick title to play between other things which also unknowingly happened to be Toaplan's final game before it went bankrupt in 1994. Many of the employees from there went to form the equally legendary CAVE continuing making arcade shoot 'em ups. CAVE's founding history when you go back through the chain like this is fascinating. A lot of their more famous output like DonPachi and Mushihimesama can find their roots in Batsugun often referred to by people as the first bullet-hell.

For the most part this is a pretty standard shoot 'em up, I mean no insult by that after all I'm looking at this from a view in 2023. I can imagine at the time it would have really been something nuts. You choose from several pilots that have normal attacks and bombs. Where Batsugun is semi interesting in it's design is in the weapon system. Boss and level design aside this is the core aspect of a shoot 'em up that they sink or swim with me personally and this one is pretty good. When enemies are killed you get experience points. Depending on the enemy depends on the points gained. A normal enemy might give +1 but the boss +100 for example. With enough points you can level up your ship up to three times which makes it's main gun more powerful. On top of this you can collect some base power ups to make your gun stronger. This means there is an incentive to play well to level your ship as quickly as possible and that dying isn't utterly punishing in response as you only need collect some power ups but will be fairly powerful regardless. Once you hit that point the incentive for killing for experience will then generate an extra bomb for you to collect. These bombs can be pretty vital for getting you out of situations where you are trapped by a plethora of bright bullets and no where to go. They will clear the section of the map as well as damage enemies at the same time adding some additional layer of strategy to it. Despite the weapon system making you feel like a boss hammering a barrage of bullets and electric lasers the game is far from a push over and at times can get quite hard especially with the bosses health pools and multiple weak points.

It's a fun system and it's backed up by some gorgeous art design, colourful flashy visuals, heavy action and massive bosses. Though I listed this as completing on the Saturn I actually played the arcade version and the Saturn version back to back. I actually preferred the more solid feel of the Saturn version but honestly both versions look and play great to me so whichever you prefer really. The Saturn version does have the Batsugun special Version included with it as a separate game. The special Version gives a shield to take a hit as well as multiple loops building challenge rather than just the straight 5 levels the original game had for those that had more. The Special Version was only semi released due to Toaplan going bankrupt so the Saturn Port was released by Gazelle with it included. Gazelle themselves were made up of Ex-Toaplan staff many of which went to work at CAVE after they closed doors themselves in 2002. All roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to CAVE more like.

So there you are, Batsugun. A great little game, the end of an era but the start of another and it's influence lives on.

+ Excellent art and colourful visuals.
+ Interesting RPG like level up system.
+ Challenging but fair in deaths' and abilities.