1993
kirby's dream land already had a strong aesthetic, but adventure is just on a whole other level. the game's wide variety of colour palettes are all striking; vivid sunsets, dreamlike castles in the clouds, highly stylised pastel spacescapes, they're not only impressive on a technical level befitting a game at the end of the NES' life cycle, but they also evoke a surprising amount of ambience, giving its myriad locales a lot of character
the game generally has a remarkable sense of place, i really like how the world map is not so much a menu like in a lot of its contemporaries but more of a mini-stage that uses the same mechanical language as the rest of the game, the backdrops of the level entrances have a sort of theatre set look to them that serves as an abstraction of what that level will feature, and where it exists in relation to the other levels which is an incredibly cool idea, i particularly like how butter building's hub world is entirely vertical, giving the impression of climbing one big tower that i don't think would quite come across otherwise
all this is to say nothing of the levels themselves, which are so eager to wow you with their amount of visual themes its astonishing, the first level of grape garden for instance starts in a sort of cloudy castle area, then goes to a purple-y starry sky, and then an icy aurora borealis area, all in like under two minutes. dream land 1 was great at this too but i find it even more impressive here considering how adventure goes even harder on the detail and variety, in a much longer game to boot
the level design is very simple, more focused on enemies and stage hazards than platforming and not very challenging, but it's just very comfy as a result and as i said before never sticking with one thing too long, the stages are all very short too and while a much fuller feeling game than its predessor, the game can be comfortably beaten in one sitting, it's a game that burns bright and fast and doesn't let its simple gameplay wear thin, and if you have any passing knowledge about this series at all then you probably don't even need me to tell you what a welcome addition copy abilities are in complimenting all of this
if i were to gripe about something it would probably be that the extra mode is a little disappointing compared to dream land's which increased the difficulty by changing enemy placements and behaviours to be far more dangerous, and also introducing new enemy types altogether which made the game feel very fresh and really enhanced the game for me. adventure merely lowers your max health and doesn't allow you to save, which is far less interesting and the latter of which was a non-factor considering that i was playing the game on my 3DS that i could just put into sleep mode
otherwise though kirby's adventure is a delight, beautiful art and animation, amazing music, fun and cozy gameplay, all jam-packed into a lovely little two-hour adventure. so fluff up your pillow, for tonight dream land will sleep well~
the game generally has a remarkable sense of place, i really like how the world map is not so much a menu like in a lot of its contemporaries but more of a mini-stage that uses the same mechanical language as the rest of the game, the backdrops of the level entrances have a sort of theatre set look to them that serves as an abstraction of what that level will feature, and where it exists in relation to the other levels which is an incredibly cool idea, i particularly like how butter building's hub world is entirely vertical, giving the impression of climbing one big tower that i don't think would quite come across otherwise
all this is to say nothing of the levels themselves, which are so eager to wow you with their amount of visual themes its astonishing, the first level of grape garden for instance starts in a sort of cloudy castle area, then goes to a purple-y starry sky, and then an icy aurora borealis area, all in like under two minutes. dream land 1 was great at this too but i find it even more impressive here considering how adventure goes even harder on the detail and variety, in a much longer game to boot
the level design is very simple, more focused on enemies and stage hazards than platforming and not very challenging, but it's just very comfy as a result and as i said before never sticking with one thing too long, the stages are all very short too and while a much fuller feeling game than its predessor, the game can be comfortably beaten in one sitting, it's a game that burns bright and fast and doesn't let its simple gameplay wear thin, and if you have any passing knowledge about this series at all then you probably don't even need me to tell you what a welcome addition copy abilities are in complimenting all of this
if i were to gripe about something it would probably be that the extra mode is a little disappointing compared to dream land's which increased the difficulty by changing enemy placements and behaviours to be far more dangerous, and also introducing new enemy types altogether which made the game feel very fresh and really enhanced the game for me. adventure merely lowers your max health and doesn't allow you to save, which is far less interesting and the latter of which was a non-factor considering that i was playing the game on my 3DS that i could just put into sleep mode
otherwise though kirby's adventure is a delight, beautiful art and animation, amazing music, fun and cozy gameplay, all jam-packed into a lovely little two-hour adventure. so fluff up your pillow, for tonight dream land will sleep well~
god forbid women do anything
2023
This review contains spoilers
i went into this expecting to at least have a reasonably fun time being a big sonic fan, but i was bored by the second zone. for me personally it's not enough for sonic to just stop remixing levels from older games, i want to see some genuinely cool and creative locations, stuff like the best of sonic mania gave me a glimpse of such as press garden or titanic monarch. everything in sonic superstars however is just so incredibly pedestrian, from the stage design, to the level gimmicks, to the aesthetics; seaside level, jungle level, kinda cloudy temple level, pinball casino level, desert level, ice level, grey factory level for the finale, and so on. all of it serviceable more or less, but I was left feeling quite hollow, i was kinda on autopilot for most of it which is why i don't really have much to say
even when the game gets a tiny bit more original such as a city made of gold (which reuses the pinball elements from an earlier level but yk) the backgrounds are so basic and scant on detail that they lack any sense of place. golden capital, the level in question's background had an obscenely exaggerated depth of field effect smeared over it that i got suspicious, and turning it off revealed a barren, frankly abhorrent vista of textureless mountains and grass that looks like a first draft of what the general landscape was going to look like, but it seems there was only time to just blur all that out and call it a day.
the game's art style is quite similar to classic sonic's levels in sonic generations, and let's just say that comparing those visuals, and especially the backgrounds to that twelve-year-old game wouldn't exactly be favourable. generations would also make better use of its camera, which would tilt or zoom to emphasise certain moments to great effect, but superstars' is almost entirely static, and generally feels a bit too zoomed-in and claustrophobic to give me a good grasp of my surroundings
the music similarly disappoints, being neither catchy and hummable nor atmospheric in my opinion. a couple of the songs are okay but it mostly sounded like generic background noise to me, and i wasn't thrilled to hear the sonic 4 styled instrumentation being present in like half of the entire soundtrack, the game's worst song being the boss theme, which is a bland yet simultaneously annoying ten second loop that you will spend minutes at a time listening to at very frequent intervals, because of the way the bosses work now
while i found most of the stages themselves quite bland, occasionally annoying, but ultimately inoffensive, the boss fights made sure to stamp out any sort of goodwill i had left for them. rather than being conducive to speedrunning like other classic sonic games are by allowing you to be proactive and do damage at all times, sonic superstars forces you to wait around and dodge attacks while the boss hangs out in the background or is inexplicably invincible until the game gives you an opportunity to hit them one time, and the cycle begins anew.
the player's skill dictates the pace of a fight to a much lesser degree now, there'll be some moments where you can sneak an extra hit by like bouncing one of their attacks back at them or something, but this is still extremely limiting. you're still mostly just dodging attacks, which is far less engaging than dodging AND going on the offensive, there's also a lot of cases where the boss just kinda stares at you for a bit and does nothing which always really got on my nerves like please just hurry the fuck up fang i hate you. sonic has had some iffy bosses like this in the past don't get me wrong, but here basically ALL of them are iffy, the only one i can think of that works more traditionally is that fight against that big piggy bank guy who sucks up your rings (which is an idea just lifted from sonic advance 3 but whatever)
these encounters are filled with so much dead air that they end up usually being longer than the actual levels they're a part of, just like four straight minutes of that stupid song that loops after ten seconds while you sit there twiddling your thumbs like a nob, and when you die to something stupid, like the various instant-kill attacks they start chucking in there as the game goes on it hurts more than ever because of the amount of nothing you have to sit through all over again. this is shit, and turns an otherwise perfectly mediocre game into a slog.
the game is lacking in polish in some quite significant ways too, when i got to that cyber level in trip's story, the effect where you're turned into a little minecraft guy was completely broken every time i jumped, displaying her regular jump animation but frozen in place wrapped around her minecraft body, which was quite disturbing. latching onto a wall in this new form would leave her stuck in place, unable to move, or do anything other than pause the game. i was softlocked twice before opting to just trying to do the level without using her signature ability that the level design was changed to accommodate
this corrected itself later in the level, expect now my double jump wasn't working, she'd do the animation for it but wouldn't gain any extra height or anything, which needless to say made the shitty boss fight of that levels a lot more difficult
the story also just felt unfinished, like i don't need a particularly gripping narrative or anything for this type of game but it was bizarre how much basic context was just left completely missing; everything about trip being being forced to work for eggman and then being able to turn into a dragon so she's like all strong now and can join the good guys and like what eggman's plan with her even was can all kinda be inferred i suppose from what we do get, but it's weird how it's paced like you play levels and then something important will just kinda happen without fanfare and you just sorta have to go along with it so it's hard to feel anything from it other than just 'okay'.
trip literally has a story dedicated to her but it's just almost entirely identical to the main campaign and you don't actually learn anything about her, and it does like the thing where an egg robo is the villain like when you play as knuckles in sonic 3, but then it suddenly becomes about fang and his giant robot at the last second and it's like 'okay'.
then you get a last story where a dragon comes out of the sea and goes rahhh and you gotta fight it i guess and it's this game's token super sonic boss battle except it's designed like all the other bosses in the game, where there's a load of waiting around and does a load of attacks, except you're super sonic so its attacks just don't do anything to you. the whole point of these is that you're invincible, but your rings are ticking down like a timer and you have to focus on getting rings and usually catching up to something, the attacks slow you down which is bad, but in this case you're not being slowed down at all, you're not catching up to anything bro's hanging out in the background what's the point of this you're just going left and right and getting rings, it only matters in the brief window where it does one particular attack that makes it vulnerable, and hey guess what the whole affair takes like ten agonising minutes when you know what to do, if say, you don't know what to do because the mechanics of the fight are so poorly conveyed and you die trying to figure out what to do, then be prepared to sit through the entire thing from the beginning all over again, it's actually a little insane how bad it is
this is the first time i've played a new sonic game since forces came out and ruined christmas for sixteen year old for me, i never stopped being a fan of the series or anything but i was no longer interested in obsessing over it and following all the hype cycles and new releases and went on to try so many new things as i got older instead of just playing the same six or seven sonic games over and over as i did as a teen. if this game is anything to go by, i'd say i made the right call; it still feels very much like the series i left
even when the game gets a tiny bit more original such as a city made of gold (which reuses the pinball elements from an earlier level but yk) the backgrounds are so basic and scant on detail that they lack any sense of place. golden capital, the level in question's background had an obscenely exaggerated depth of field effect smeared over it that i got suspicious, and turning it off revealed a barren, frankly abhorrent vista of textureless mountains and grass that looks like a first draft of what the general landscape was going to look like, but it seems there was only time to just blur all that out and call it a day.
the game's art style is quite similar to classic sonic's levels in sonic generations, and let's just say that comparing those visuals, and especially the backgrounds to that twelve-year-old game wouldn't exactly be favourable. generations would also make better use of its camera, which would tilt or zoom to emphasise certain moments to great effect, but superstars' is almost entirely static, and generally feels a bit too zoomed-in and claustrophobic to give me a good grasp of my surroundings
the music similarly disappoints, being neither catchy and hummable nor atmospheric in my opinion. a couple of the songs are okay but it mostly sounded like generic background noise to me, and i wasn't thrilled to hear the sonic 4 styled instrumentation being present in like half of the entire soundtrack, the game's worst song being the boss theme, which is a bland yet simultaneously annoying ten second loop that you will spend minutes at a time listening to at very frequent intervals, because of the way the bosses work now
while i found most of the stages themselves quite bland, occasionally annoying, but ultimately inoffensive, the boss fights made sure to stamp out any sort of goodwill i had left for them. rather than being conducive to speedrunning like other classic sonic games are by allowing you to be proactive and do damage at all times, sonic superstars forces you to wait around and dodge attacks while the boss hangs out in the background or is inexplicably invincible until the game gives you an opportunity to hit them one time, and the cycle begins anew.
the player's skill dictates the pace of a fight to a much lesser degree now, there'll be some moments where you can sneak an extra hit by like bouncing one of their attacks back at them or something, but this is still extremely limiting. you're still mostly just dodging attacks, which is far less engaging than dodging AND going on the offensive, there's also a lot of cases where the boss just kinda stares at you for a bit and does nothing which always really got on my nerves like please just hurry the fuck up fang i hate you. sonic has had some iffy bosses like this in the past don't get me wrong, but here basically ALL of them are iffy, the only one i can think of that works more traditionally is that fight against that big piggy bank guy who sucks up your rings (which is an idea just lifted from sonic advance 3 but whatever)
these encounters are filled with so much dead air that they end up usually being longer than the actual levels they're a part of, just like four straight minutes of that stupid song that loops after ten seconds while you sit there twiddling your thumbs like a nob, and when you die to something stupid, like the various instant-kill attacks they start chucking in there as the game goes on it hurts more than ever because of the amount of nothing you have to sit through all over again. this is shit, and turns an otherwise perfectly mediocre game into a slog.
the game is lacking in polish in some quite significant ways too, when i got to that cyber level in trip's story, the effect where you're turned into a little minecraft guy was completely broken every time i jumped, displaying her regular jump animation but frozen in place wrapped around her minecraft body, which was quite disturbing. latching onto a wall in this new form would leave her stuck in place, unable to move, or do anything other than pause the game. i was softlocked twice before opting to just trying to do the level without using her signature ability that the level design was changed to accommodate
this corrected itself later in the level, expect now my double jump wasn't working, she'd do the animation for it but wouldn't gain any extra height or anything, which needless to say made the shitty boss fight of that levels a lot more difficult
the story also just felt unfinished, like i don't need a particularly gripping narrative or anything for this type of game but it was bizarre how much basic context was just left completely missing; everything about trip being being forced to work for eggman and then being able to turn into a dragon so she's like all strong now and can join the good guys and like what eggman's plan with her even was can all kinda be inferred i suppose from what we do get, but it's weird how it's paced like you play levels and then something important will just kinda happen without fanfare and you just sorta have to go along with it so it's hard to feel anything from it other than just 'okay'.
trip literally has a story dedicated to her but it's just almost entirely identical to the main campaign and you don't actually learn anything about her, and it does like the thing where an egg robo is the villain like when you play as knuckles in sonic 3, but then it suddenly becomes about fang and his giant robot at the last second and it's like 'okay'.
then you get a last story where a dragon comes out of the sea and goes rahhh and you gotta fight it i guess and it's this game's token super sonic boss battle except it's designed like all the other bosses in the game, where there's a load of waiting around and does a load of attacks, except you're super sonic so its attacks just don't do anything to you. the whole point of these is that you're invincible, but your rings are ticking down like a timer and you have to focus on getting rings and usually catching up to something, the attacks slow you down which is bad, but in this case you're not being slowed down at all, you're not catching up to anything bro's hanging out in the background what's the point of this you're just going left and right and getting rings, it only matters in the brief window where it does one particular attack that makes it vulnerable, and hey guess what the whole affair takes like ten agonising minutes when you know what to do, if say, you don't know what to do because the mechanics of the fight are so poorly conveyed and you die trying to figure out what to do, then be prepared to sit through the entire thing from the beginning all over again, it's actually a little insane how bad it is
this is the first time i've played a new sonic game since forces came out and ruined christmas for sixteen year old for me, i never stopped being a fan of the series or anything but i was no longer interested in obsessing over it and following all the hype cycles and new releases and went on to try so many new things as i got older instead of just playing the same six or seven sonic games over and over as i did as a teen. if this game is anything to go by, i'd say i made the right call; it still feels very much like the series i left
2016
nah i can't tell you anything about it dude you just gotta play it, you'll see why dude
2006
This review contains spoilers
with longer games, after a first playthrough, it tends to be harder to retain everything that happened even just immediately afterwards. there's a lot of games where i'll remember some big moments and then go 'oh yeahhhhh' when i come back to them later
so what really struck me about earthbound was how i could more or less list its entire sequence of events in chronological order, the pacing is quite relaxed but none of it feels like filler, there's a lot put into making ever segment something that stands out, the definitive game about some scrunklies going on an adventure
mother 3 retains this quality and then some, now with marked chapters that have names, and perspectives from different playable characters, particularly at the start of the game, chapter 1 makes such an impression juxtaposing lucas' introduction being a calm and typical day playing with his brother, with his father and the people of tazmily village dealing with a forest fire in the middle of the night, it's such a unique way to introduce the game's characters and the tragedy that befalls flint afterwards is so unexpected given the way game started out just an hour before. deftly balancing all sorts of light and dark tones has always been one of my favourite qualities of the series, and mother 3 might be the very best at it. there are instances where the game's humour crops up at inappropriate times, such as the funeral near the start having a load of puns on the headstones there, and i generally don't find it as funny as the first two games, but it also evokes some of the most euphoric joy and deep sadness in me out of all three games, and also most other games for that matter
there are so many parts of this game i know will be etched into my mind forever, chapter 3 starring salsa the monkey would be an amazing short story on its own, my favourite part of it is how in the combat, you're very weak on your own, and rely upon your abusive owner to get by in a situation that he's put you in, the way that dynamic comes across organically through gameplay is just really cool. i also love the part where you have to deliver the boxes, you have to find the recipients' houses yourself, and everyone other than them that you talk to sort of turn their nose up and want nothing to do with you, you're promised a reward of a 'luxury banana' if you can deliver them in under 20 minutes or something, and whether you achieve that or not, you're denied it once you return, and fassad proceeds to take one bite out of it and throw it away, it's great stuff and serves as a microcosm of the kind of place tazmily village is about to become
lucas never quite fit in, and still doesn't after the town he grew up in becomes a dystopian hellhole. (you have to pay for stuff) after losing his mother and brother, and growing distant from his father as a result, he's completely reliant upon himself (and his dog) and isn't led astray like the rest of tazmily, which ends up making him the hero, along with the rest of his band of misfits, a tomboyish false princess, and a handicapped thief
this theme of outsiders saving the world continues with the characters known as the magypsies, but they aren't nearly as successful at supporting it and are definitely my least favourite aspect of the game, with their designs and personalities all being based on stereotypes of crossdressers, and quite a few poor taste jokes made at their expense which can also come across as transphobic. as a trans woman myself i wasn't terribly offended personally but i was rolling my eyes at quite a few parts and it's probably the only caveat i'd mention when recommending the game
you experience firsthand the horrible mundanity the residents of tazmily now endure, with a day of backbreaking labour, pushing people molded from clay to go get electrocuted back to life after effectively dying from exhaustion, then being sent right back to work, and going to club titiboo at the end of the day which the workers seem to be addicted to, and then you go on to break into various facilities belonging to the pigmasks and discover the horrible experiments that are being conducted, the ones you see most often are animals being taken apart and combined with parts of other animals or machinery to make chimeras, under the juvenile premise that animals are boring and they're being made much more AWESOME now, and once you eventually you meet the man at the very top, you'll find that he views people in the same way
after you take a 'break' with a more traditional video game quest of finding the seven needles, returning to the now abandoned tazmily village, and then later being chauffeured to the nightmare that is new pork city becomes even more of a whiplash, and you discover that the source of all this is an old man, with the mind of a small, spoilt child, with all the time in the world and everything he could ever want, now acting only out of nihilistic boredom, the way this is all built up to and paid off is absolutely incredible, the final chapter of this game is simply just one of the best in a video game
i won't spoil any more of the ending than that, mostly because it's 1am and i'm very tired and feel like i'm rambling, but also because it'd probably be pointless anyway; the experience of playing it is far beyond the scope of any words i could write, mother 3 is every bit the game i was always told it was, and i'm very glad to have finally played it and count it amongst some of my absolute favourites
so what really struck me about earthbound was how i could more or less list its entire sequence of events in chronological order, the pacing is quite relaxed but none of it feels like filler, there's a lot put into making ever segment something that stands out, the definitive game about some scrunklies going on an adventure
mother 3 retains this quality and then some, now with marked chapters that have names, and perspectives from different playable characters, particularly at the start of the game, chapter 1 makes such an impression juxtaposing lucas' introduction being a calm and typical day playing with his brother, with his father and the people of tazmily village dealing with a forest fire in the middle of the night, it's such a unique way to introduce the game's characters and the tragedy that befalls flint afterwards is so unexpected given the way game started out just an hour before. deftly balancing all sorts of light and dark tones has always been one of my favourite qualities of the series, and mother 3 might be the very best at it. there are instances where the game's humour crops up at inappropriate times, such as the funeral near the start having a load of puns on the headstones there, and i generally don't find it as funny as the first two games, but it also evokes some of the most euphoric joy and deep sadness in me out of all three games, and also most other games for that matter
there are so many parts of this game i know will be etched into my mind forever, chapter 3 starring salsa the monkey would be an amazing short story on its own, my favourite part of it is how in the combat, you're very weak on your own, and rely upon your abusive owner to get by in a situation that he's put you in, the way that dynamic comes across organically through gameplay is just really cool. i also love the part where you have to deliver the boxes, you have to find the recipients' houses yourself, and everyone other than them that you talk to sort of turn their nose up and want nothing to do with you, you're promised a reward of a 'luxury banana' if you can deliver them in under 20 minutes or something, and whether you achieve that or not, you're denied it once you return, and fassad proceeds to take one bite out of it and throw it away, it's great stuff and serves as a microcosm of the kind of place tazmily village is about to become
lucas never quite fit in, and still doesn't after the town he grew up in becomes a dystopian hellhole. (you have to pay for stuff) after losing his mother and brother, and growing distant from his father as a result, he's completely reliant upon himself (and his dog) and isn't led astray like the rest of tazmily, which ends up making him the hero, along with the rest of his band of misfits, a tomboyish false princess, and a handicapped thief
this theme of outsiders saving the world continues with the characters known as the magypsies, but they aren't nearly as successful at supporting it and are definitely my least favourite aspect of the game, with their designs and personalities all being based on stereotypes of crossdressers, and quite a few poor taste jokes made at their expense which can also come across as transphobic. as a trans woman myself i wasn't terribly offended personally but i was rolling my eyes at quite a few parts and it's probably the only caveat i'd mention when recommending the game
you experience firsthand the horrible mundanity the residents of tazmily now endure, with a day of backbreaking labour, pushing people molded from clay to go get electrocuted back to life after effectively dying from exhaustion, then being sent right back to work, and going to club titiboo at the end of the day which the workers seem to be addicted to, and then you go on to break into various facilities belonging to the pigmasks and discover the horrible experiments that are being conducted, the ones you see most often are animals being taken apart and combined with parts of other animals or machinery to make chimeras, under the juvenile premise that animals are boring and they're being made much more AWESOME now, and once you eventually you meet the man at the very top, you'll find that he views people in the same way
after you take a 'break' with a more traditional video game quest of finding the seven needles, returning to the now abandoned tazmily village, and then later being chauffeured to the nightmare that is new pork city becomes even more of a whiplash, and you discover that the source of all this is an old man, with the mind of a small, spoilt child, with all the time in the world and everything he could ever want, now acting only out of nihilistic boredom, the way this is all built up to and paid off is absolutely incredible, the final chapter of this game is simply just one of the best in a video game
i won't spoil any more of the ending than that, mostly because it's 1am and i'm very tired and feel like i'm rambling, but also because it'd probably be pointless anyway; the experience of playing it is far beyond the scope of any words i could write, mother 3 is every bit the game i was always told it was, and i'm very glad to have finally played it and count it amongst some of my absolute favourites
knowing nothing about pocket mirror going in, what drew me in most about it was its structure; your only sort of objective to begin with is to remember who you are, and with no idea how to go about that other than just pressing on through its dreamscapes, this allows the game to seemingly do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, varying wildly in tones and aesthetics and objectives, you'll start out in some sort of dungeon then emerge upstairs to a spooky hallway that ends in a tea party, with a ballroom right next door. You'll spend one minute in a gingerbread dollhouse and the next in an old creaky manor. The tone can change wildly between individual rooms, effortlessly ping-ponging between silly and whimsical, to dark and foreboding, to quiet and calm, to occasionally horrifying, without ever feeling inconsistent, the juxtaposition is always effective given the context of the game; who can you trust? what's going on? what will happen next?
this isn't to say pocket mirror is just a load of nonsense, it's all very deliberate, but the game keeps you at arms length as to what's really happening and leaves you to interpret all sorts of notes and riddles and pictures and poetry to understand it. a first playthrough will likely be very confusing, as it was for me, and this lent the game this absolutely engrossing atmosphere that felt akin to a very long nightmare, the game does have a structure to it but that only really becomes clear in hindsight, there's not really like a sort of hub area that you return to nor do you really revisit places you've already been, and as i said before only really the vague goal of rediscovering your identity, so the whole game just has this feel of venturing deeper and deeper and not looking back, no idea what will what happen next, and whether what happens next will be pleasant or not, i was on the edge of my seat despite not really understanding what was happening, and my first playthrough felt unlike anything i've really experienced before
that's not to say it was perfect, pocket mirror's gameplay consists entirely of exploration and puzzle solving, there's no combat or anything of the sort, so the only way the game is really able to raise the stakes and kill you is with death traps, such as getting a puzzle wrong, picking the wrong dialogue option, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What trivialises this whole system is the bountiful save points around every corner. if you die, unless you forgot to save, you will usually be seconds away from the spot you died once you reload.
now this does have an upside of encouraging curious players such as myself who want to see what happens in every alternate scenario, there are even multiple achievements for getting a game over in various ways, there are also some situations where an outcome is just completely unpredictable and having to be sent back a long way because of something like that could be quite frustrating. However, the downside of this approach is that it does distance you a little from the character you're playing as, you won't value your life in the same way she does and really think situations through in the way you would if you were really in the character's shoes because there's never really anything to lose is there? this system also encourages trial and error with the puzzles, i really like some of them and enjoyed figuring them out but some are just absolutely baffling and have very strange logic, at least to me, and the worst part is that i still don't understand some of them even now i know the answer, i don't have to because i could very easily go through all the options one by one until i got it right if i got stuck
i was also very let down by the ending, it felt super rushed and didn't feel like much of a culmination of anything really, nor did come with a sort of 'aha!' moment i was expecting where the story finally made sense and everything clicked into place, instead it just kinda ended and then it kicked me into a new game plus
i was bewildered and a little miffed, but after looking it up it turns out i'd gotten the bad ending, and there were four others i could get, i also read into what the game was really about and, i don't want to spoil it (as i want this review to also be a recommendation of the game) the game does elude to it very well and i probably would've figured it out eventually had i just thought about it long enough
over the last week i've now played pocket mirror five times, and done pretty much everything there is to do in it, and god did i love every second of it, this has become such a comfort game for me
going back in and experiencing everything with the knowledge i had made me appreciate the game more and more the more i played it, the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous and every little room feels bespoke and dense with detail, the music is genuinely some of the best i've ever heard, it is consistently pitch perfect of matching the tone of every beat of the journey, and as i said before there are a lot of tones, it is so absolutely crucial to the game's atmosphere and even listening to soundtrack outside of the game i choke up at some of the pieces just because they're so striking
i won't delve too deep into the story, but just something about the way it's told and paced is absolutely captivating to me, and actively trying to interpret all sorts of meanings in the game's dialogue and everything is very fun, you don't spend that much time with any of the characters as it's quite a short game, and i think their dialogue can be quite repetitive, but i ended up really caring about all of them anyway. the way your character ends up relating to them and what happens as a result is really beautiful, and covers topics seen very rarely in media, or at least discussed in such a respectful and sympathetic manner.
that being said though it's important to note that while i did do a little research into the topic the game is mainly about, i'm certainly not an expert, i would love to hear from people more qualified than i am what they think of the game's portrayal of it, especially if they feel it's being misrepresented, but from what i gather on my own the game's intentions are good and it's very tasteful
pocket mirror is one of those games where you just feel the love and passion the people behind it had while they were making it, and it's infectious. as i said it's become a huge comfort for me and any game where i can play it five times in a row is probably doing something right. i was overall mixed on the game's other endings, i definitely liked some more than others, but they all felt a little abrupt to me, but luckily i'm a completionist, meaning i unlocked everything in the extras menu, and i will say the stuff in there could not be more perfect to me and gave me a warm, fuzzy sense of closure, a perfect reminder of the love i have for this game overpowering all of its issues. fuck you it's game of the year
this isn't to say pocket mirror is just a load of nonsense, it's all very deliberate, but the game keeps you at arms length as to what's really happening and leaves you to interpret all sorts of notes and riddles and pictures and poetry to understand it. a first playthrough will likely be very confusing, as it was for me, and this lent the game this absolutely engrossing atmosphere that felt akin to a very long nightmare, the game does have a structure to it but that only really becomes clear in hindsight, there's not really like a sort of hub area that you return to nor do you really revisit places you've already been, and as i said before only really the vague goal of rediscovering your identity, so the whole game just has this feel of venturing deeper and deeper and not looking back, no idea what will what happen next, and whether what happens next will be pleasant or not, i was on the edge of my seat despite not really understanding what was happening, and my first playthrough felt unlike anything i've really experienced before
that's not to say it was perfect, pocket mirror's gameplay consists entirely of exploration and puzzle solving, there's no combat or anything of the sort, so the only way the game is really able to raise the stakes and kill you is with death traps, such as getting a puzzle wrong, picking the wrong dialogue option, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What trivialises this whole system is the bountiful save points around every corner. if you die, unless you forgot to save, you will usually be seconds away from the spot you died once you reload.
now this does have an upside of encouraging curious players such as myself who want to see what happens in every alternate scenario, there are even multiple achievements for getting a game over in various ways, there are also some situations where an outcome is just completely unpredictable and having to be sent back a long way because of something like that could be quite frustrating. However, the downside of this approach is that it does distance you a little from the character you're playing as, you won't value your life in the same way she does and really think situations through in the way you would if you were really in the character's shoes because there's never really anything to lose is there? this system also encourages trial and error with the puzzles, i really like some of them and enjoyed figuring them out but some are just absolutely baffling and have very strange logic, at least to me, and the worst part is that i still don't understand some of them even now i know the answer, i don't have to because i could very easily go through all the options one by one until i got it right if i got stuck
i was also very let down by the ending, it felt super rushed and didn't feel like much of a culmination of anything really, nor did come with a sort of 'aha!' moment i was expecting where the story finally made sense and everything clicked into place, instead it just kinda ended and then it kicked me into a new game plus
i was bewildered and a little miffed, but after looking it up it turns out i'd gotten the bad ending, and there were four others i could get, i also read into what the game was really about and, i don't want to spoil it (as i want this review to also be a recommendation of the game) the game does elude to it very well and i probably would've figured it out eventually had i just thought about it long enough
over the last week i've now played pocket mirror five times, and done pretty much everything there is to do in it, and god did i love every second of it, this has become such a comfort game for me
going back in and experiencing everything with the knowledge i had made me appreciate the game more and more the more i played it, the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous and every little room feels bespoke and dense with detail, the music is genuinely some of the best i've ever heard, it is consistently pitch perfect of matching the tone of every beat of the journey, and as i said before there are a lot of tones, it is so absolutely crucial to the game's atmosphere and even listening to soundtrack outside of the game i choke up at some of the pieces just because they're so striking
i won't delve too deep into the story, but just something about the way it's told and paced is absolutely captivating to me, and actively trying to interpret all sorts of meanings in the game's dialogue and everything is very fun, you don't spend that much time with any of the characters as it's quite a short game, and i think their dialogue can be quite repetitive, but i ended up really caring about all of them anyway. the way your character ends up relating to them and what happens as a result is really beautiful, and covers topics seen very rarely in media, or at least discussed in such a respectful and sympathetic manner.
that being said though it's important to note that while i did do a little research into the topic the game is mainly about, i'm certainly not an expert, i would love to hear from people more qualified than i am what they think of the game's portrayal of it, especially if they feel it's being misrepresented, but from what i gather on my own the game's intentions are good and it's very tasteful
pocket mirror is one of those games where you just feel the love and passion the people behind it had while they were making it, and it's infectious. as i said it's become a huge comfort for me and any game where i can play it five times in a row is probably doing something right. i was overall mixed on the game's other endings, i definitely liked some more than others, but they all felt a little abrupt to me, but luckily i'm a completionist, meaning i unlocked everything in the extras menu, and i will say the stuff in there could not be more perfect to me and gave me a warm, fuzzy sense of closure, a perfect reminder of the love i have for this game overpowering all of its issues. fuck you it's game of the year
2008
self-assured and effortless, nights is an absolute joy to play in its purity
this game has me caring more about high scores and leaderboards than any other just because memorising the level layouts and gliding ever so slightly more gracefully as you replay, maximising efficiency to just about cram one more lap in is just so exhilarating and addictive in itself; it's so simple to pick up and play but leaves you with such a high skill ceiling to work towards
its visuals and music are also just wonderful and nail the inviting yet ethereal atmosphere of being in a dream, further incentivising replays since nightopia is simply just such a nice place to exist in
nights is a short game, but burns bright for its entire duration, and it's one that i see myself returning to many more times and only growing more fond of, we really need more games like this i think
this game has me caring more about high scores and leaderboards than any other just because memorising the level layouts and gliding ever so slightly more gracefully as you replay, maximising efficiency to just about cram one more lap in is just so exhilarating and addictive in itself; it's so simple to pick up and play but leaves you with such a high skill ceiling to work towards
its visuals and music are also just wonderful and nail the inviting yet ethereal atmosphere of being in a dream, further incentivising replays since nightopia is simply just such a nice place to exist in
nights is a short game, but burns bright for its entire duration, and it's one that i see myself returning to many more times and only growing more fond of, we really need more games like this i think
1994
it's always the best games that leave me unable to collect my thoughts, i'm still kinda absorbing it all rn but yeah this is one of the best games ever i think
i've played enough games in my life that something that's merely there to pass the time doesn't really interest me anymore, when i play a game i want it to really grab me with something, be it unique and engaging mechanics or interesting storytelling, just something that'll stick out my memory and make me go 'yeah!! that thing!!'
another thing i really value in a game is replay value, i generally enjoy diving deep into the games i'm interested in so that of course often leads to me wanted to do multiple full playthroughs, so i appreciate games that create adventures that retain their appeal in some form not just on the first time, but the sixth
so when i play a game like resident evil village where i spend the first ten minutes holding forward to put a baby to sleep, or holding forward to like walk through a load of snow before anything actually happens i'm not just bored, i'm thinking, 'oh, i will have to do this every time' and the game has moments like this so frequently and is so disgustingly average otherwise that i could only stomach the one playthrough, and with that, a large part of its staying power in my memory is eviscerated
the game's structure is similar to 7's, in that you meet a group of koopalings who all go off to their individual castles and you go to each one of them and kill them, this time to collect 1 out of 4 thingies to get you to the endgame, and also similarly to 7 they are by the numbers facsimiles of resident evil levels where you collect items and kind of solve puzzles and piece together the whole map and blah blah blah it's fine, it's serviceable, but not once was there anything that like wowed me or made me feel much or anything really, i'd like to be able to critique them further but i honestly don't remember that much about these areas aside from their general aesthetic, which i suppose is a step up from 7's one-two punch of 'brown house, grey boat'
there's one setpiece in house beneviento (generally my favourite area) that i found actually rather unsettling, but i knew after finishing it that it would never scare me again, there's hardly a gameplay element to it and it would be reduced to a glorified cutscene on a hypothetical second playthrough unfortunately
the dlc campaign, shadows of rose which i also played, has a different setpiece at this point that kind of blew me away honestly, as it wasn't just something creepy and unique within the series (to my knowledge) but also challenging to the point that i actually failed it the first time, and the second time was an incredibly close call, it actually had me panicked because i, the player, had to survive this part, i felt in sync with the character on screen in a way i've rarely felt playing 7 or 8, as i usually feel like an outsider watching the character trying to survive
i don't want to spoil what happens in the segment just in case, but it's something to do with manikins
these games are far too much of a reassuring prescence in what are meant to be horror games, coddling me and making sure i'm impressed and not too uncomfortable, wrestling control away from constantly so something scary can happen to ethan or rose in my stead, someone will jump on me and starting like eating my face or something and it'll be awkward because idk if this is just a cutscene and the game is proceeding as intended, or if i actually fucked up half the time, i'll be mashing one of the face buttons when something like this happens (probably a habit i picked up from resident evil 4) and then the little 'skip cutscene?' thing will appear in the corner and i'm like oh okay i'll just get comfy then
there's also a lot of segments that are railroaded to the point that they may as well be cutscenes, with the fish guy's area being a particularly bad offender, it all just feels so phony, the hand of the designer is so visible at all times i never just get lost in the world i'm meant to be in
i also think that the RE engine's bend towards realism just makes the games look incredibly bland and samey, everything's kinda lit realistically and all the environments are just kinda, normal looking, it feels like there's not really any interesting composition or focal points or any sort of mood to like anything i'm looking at, all this supposedly impressive detail all blurs together and washes over me and i'm really sick of how these games look, especially considering the very first games in the series still impress me with how well they're presented
i'd really like these games as well as devil may cry to move away from this kind of style personally, maybe then we won't have to rely so much on yellow paint to make things you can interact with visible
this review is probably very messy and i apologise if it sounds dismissive, just playing this back to back with 7 was very disappointing as this direction the series is going right now really isn't my cup of tea, it feels like we're resting on the series' laurels a bit, combat that get the job done, exploration that gets the job done, and a lot of showy, flashy setpieces and nods to older games that i like much more
i'm just always left feeling a bit empty after an experience like this, when i think about resident evil village in the future, will any memories of my experience come flooding back? what will get me talking about it and recommending it to my friends? what is so special about it that i'll end up with that itch, that drive to experience it all over again and return to its world for years to come? it's always a bit of a shame when i don't have an answer
another thing i really value in a game is replay value, i generally enjoy diving deep into the games i'm interested in so that of course often leads to me wanted to do multiple full playthroughs, so i appreciate games that create adventures that retain their appeal in some form not just on the first time, but the sixth
so when i play a game like resident evil village where i spend the first ten minutes holding forward to put a baby to sleep, or holding forward to like walk through a load of snow before anything actually happens i'm not just bored, i'm thinking, 'oh, i will have to do this every time' and the game has moments like this so frequently and is so disgustingly average otherwise that i could only stomach the one playthrough, and with that, a large part of its staying power in my memory is eviscerated
the game's structure is similar to 7's, in that you meet a group of koopalings who all go off to their individual castles and you go to each one of them and kill them, this time to collect 1 out of 4 thingies to get you to the endgame, and also similarly to 7 they are by the numbers facsimiles of resident evil levels where you collect items and kind of solve puzzles and piece together the whole map and blah blah blah it's fine, it's serviceable, but not once was there anything that like wowed me or made me feel much or anything really, i'd like to be able to critique them further but i honestly don't remember that much about these areas aside from their general aesthetic, which i suppose is a step up from 7's one-two punch of 'brown house, grey boat'
there's one setpiece in house beneviento (generally my favourite area) that i found actually rather unsettling, but i knew after finishing it that it would never scare me again, there's hardly a gameplay element to it and it would be reduced to a glorified cutscene on a hypothetical second playthrough unfortunately
the dlc campaign, shadows of rose which i also played, has a different setpiece at this point that kind of blew me away honestly, as it wasn't just something creepy and unique within the series (to my knowledge) but also challenging to the point that i actually failed it the first time, and the second time was an incredibly close call, it actually had me panicked because i, the player, had to survive this part, i felt in sync with the character on screen in a way i've rarely felt playing 7 or 8, as i usually feel like an outsider watching the character trying to survive
i don't want to spoil what happens in the segment just in case, but it's something to do with manikins
these games are far too much of a reassuring prescence in what are meant to be horror games, coddling me and making sure i'm impressed and not too uncomfortable, wrestling control away from constantly so something scary can happen to ethan or rose in my stead, someone will jump on me and starting like eating my face or something and it'll be awkward because idk if this is just a cutscene and the game is proceeding as intended, or if i actually fucked up half the time, i'll be mashing one of the face buttons when something like this happens (probably a habit i picked up from resident evil 4) and then the little 'skip cutscene?' thing will appear in the corner and i'm like oh okay i'll just get comfy then
there's also a lot of segments that are railroaded to the point that they may as well be cutscenes, with the fish guy's area being a particularly bad offender, it all just feels so phony, the hand of the designer is so visible at all times i never just get lost in the world i'm meant to be in
i also think that the RE engine's bend towards realism just makes the games look incredibly bland and samey, everything's kinda lit realistically and all the environments are just kinda, normal looking, it feels like there's not really any interesting composition or focal points or any sort of mood to like anything i'm looking at, all this supposedly impressive detail all blurs together and washes over me and i'm really sick of how these games look, especially considering the very first games in the series still impress me with how well they're presented
i'd really like these games as well as devil may cry to move away from this kind of style personally, maybe then we won't have to rely so much on yellow paint to make things you can interact with visible
this review is probably very messy and i apologise if it sounds dismissive, just playing this back to back with 7 was very disappointing as this direction the series is going right now really isn't my cup of tea, it feels like we're resting on the series' laurels a bit, combat that get the job done, exploration that gets the job done, and a lot of showy, flashy setpieces and nods to older games that i like much more
i'm just always left feeling a bit empty after an experience like this, when i think about resident evil village in the future, will any memories of my experience come flooding back? what will get me talking about it and recommending it to my friends? what is so special about it that i'll end up with that itch, that drive to experience it all over again and return to its world for years to come? it's always a bit of a shame when i don't have an answer
2003
i don't like video games anymore
what at a first glance may seem like a return to its franchise's roots, is quickly hamstrung by adopting many design sensibilities of other modern AAA games
the opening at the guest house is a deadly combination of forced walking segments and unskippable cutscenes that make you mash a button or something occasionally to keep up a guise of interactivity. these not only harm the game's replayability, but even on a first playthrough the way they play out is quite stilted and hard to take seriously. between the limp animation and the abundance of cartoonish jumpscares, the only knot in my stomach was one of second-hand embarrassment
after a texas chainsaw massacre pastiche introducing our cast of villains, the main segment of the game begins, and this is where the game momentarily hooked me; jack baker is immediately intimidating, and being thrown into an unfamiliar environment with the looming threat of him coming to get you made me move with a lot more trepidation than usual, but after playing the game a little more i realised that jack's words were merely empty threats
if jack discovers you he'll chase you down and if he catches you, he does a bit of damage after which you can easily keep running, this combined with plentiful healing items and automatic checkpoints makes just going about your business and tanking the damage an all too inviting prospect, evaporating any and all fear or tension the game initially created
this is a major problem because the game hangs its hat on this one gimmick to make things interested because it has very little to offer otherwise. classic resident evil games are set in maze like maps that need to be slowly pieced together through puzzle solving and remembering points of interest and what goes where, the game's limited inventory and resources and well placed enemies adding another layer of strategy to navigation, saving your progress also being a limited resource in itself was always often a source a source of tension and relief as a resourceful player could go long stretches without their progress being locked in
meanwhile the house in resident evil 7 is like three floors right on top of each other that are all tiny and can be fully explored almost immediately, aside from jack being a mild nuisance (as you'll sometimes need to run in circles to shake him off to progress) the navigation lacks any sort of friction; aside from the basement, there are no other enemies, puzzles that almost solve themselves, unlimited saves and once again a mountain of resources around every corner. there is exactly one locked door that's more than a couple of rooms away from the key to it, which even then isn't too taxing, it just takes a quick trip down to the main room in the basement and there's the scorpion key, practically staring you in the face
to make matters worse, once you defeat jack in the basement, not only does he (obviously) stop chasing you, but all the other enemies, regardless if they've been killed or not, just magically vanish. the basement can very easily be tackled immediately, leaving you with a completely empty house, with a load of boring rooms with stuff to press A on in them
the rest of the game unfortunately follows a similar structure, the old house segment has an interesting gimmick with lots of hives blocking you which swarm you with bugs when approached, and you have to find the parts to build a flamethrower which has quite limited ammunition, meaning you have to pick and choose which hives are the most important to get rid of and make yourself a safe path through the house
except this isn't what happens at all, this segment is so short and the map is so tiny this concept barely has a chance to get off the ground. in other words, why would i even consider burning this hive when circumventing it takes seconds, this house is like six or seven tiny rooms total, and once again if the bugs do attack you they do far too little damage to become something to worry about. the biggest challenge here is noticing that you're supposed to crawl into a tiny fireplace behind one of the two mandatory hives which i didn't even know existed because it's so fucking dark all the time
marguerite has even less prescence than her husband, beginning her chase mere minutes before her boss fight and she won't leave her house for some reason, go out near the waterhouse and she'll just stand in the doorway cackling like a dumbass, one time i shot her in the head a few times to make her leave and she glitched out and ran back and forth up against a window before teleporting on top of me to do her janky animation where she knocks you over or whatever, it's impossible to take seriously
take away these poorly executed central gimmicks and you're left with more of the same; banal, unskippable cutscenes, shitty jumpscares, and the bare minimum for what could qualify as puzzles
lucas baker is the cheeky one with his house full of tricks, except his tricks are just like a load of tripwires and boxes that explode and boring shit like that. cheating his escape room is an enjoyable and clever sequence though, and i like that because there's a tape you can watch earlier that has someone solving it normally and getting killed, there's also an in-universe reason as to how ethan would know how to cheat it
after that's over though jack returns this time as a big blob with a silly voice that you have to defeat by shooting his fucking eyeball weak points, at it was this point that i felt myself fully checking out
the way enemies in general are handled is just terrible, mostly due to the fact that this game has literally one enemy type in it, just one (except for those bugs from earlier i guess) and it's just a pale imitation of the regenerators from resident evil 4. there are variants sure, some of them are a little bigger, some of them walk on all fours, but it's all basically the same sludgy lizard monsters the entire game, and flaccidly shooting their heads quickly gets tiresome
enemy variety is important for most games, and for horror games it's also just another tool to be scary, running into a new enemy you haven't seen before is inherently unnerving, you're not sure what they're capable of. returning to the spencer mansion in resident evil 1 and finding that the regular zombies have been replaced with these big lizard guys that run at you and rip you to shreds is terrifying, it imbues this previously conquered area with a whole new sense of life, a feeling resident evil 7 is never able to conjure up because you'll get to the end of the game and see the same enemy you've been seeing the whole game and you'll be like 'oh yeah those guys, nothing to worry about'.
the boss fights are equally terrible, they're overly long, overly scripted, and directed so badly it hurts. if i told you that there was a boss fight where two people fight with chainsaws like they're swords you might think that sounds pretty cool, but no it's just the most awkward looking janky shit you've ever seen it's just a headache if anything. also fuck that second fight with marguerite where she just leaves and hangs out somewhere off screen for what feels like minutes at a time that shit is so boring
anyway after all that is the fucking boat part which even people i've talked to who like the game seem to hate, because my god is it long and paced poorly. this is mostly due to the fact that you have to play through a boring extended flashback sequence on the boat, and then have to do a load more stuff in the same place again but now in the present where's it's like all dingy and old. i'd like to be able to be able to praise this segment as it's more of a challenge to piece together on a macro level than usual, due to its larger size and longer puzzle sequences, but it's just so dull regardless and i'm so tired of the game at this point that i just want it to be over, i suppose resident evil has never been known for its climaxes.
this area is where the game's story comes to a head, which i also find very dull. i don't think it's worth really going into too much but basically going with the 'little ghost girl who's evil because she was a biological experiment' thing they went with is so played out and presented in such a flat and uninteresting way with such nothing characters that it was hard for me to muster a single bone in my body to care about any of it. this is nothing new for resident evil but this game in particular wants so badly to be taken seriously that it's just miserable, especially when compared to something like resident evil 4 which is at least likeably cheesy.
the one bright spot of course being jack baker, who's an absolute delight any time he's on the screen, his manic energy is scary but mercifully also very funny, a perfect character for this franchise. i also think the scene near the end where jack like, contacts ethan from the afterlife or whatever while he's unconscious or whatever is quite effective. we get to see jack how he used to be before he was possessed; he's gentle, and speaks in a loving, fatherly tone, and is filled with remorse for the all the trouble he's inadvertently caused you. when he asks you to please save his family it's hard not to feel for the bakers, who were unfortunately swept up in all this.
the game unfortunately limps to the finish line though, with one more awkward stumble through the guest house as visions of your girlfriend with a chainsaw phase in and out of existence with sad music playing and it's just kind of silly, and the boss fight afterwards is more or less a bunch of cutscenes, not really worth mentioning
like i said at the start, resident evil 7 does seem like a return to the franchise's roots, a spooky house, puzzles to solve, inventory to manage, all the stuff you remember. but it's all surface level stuff, the things that made resident evil such an important staple in the survival horror genre are now severely stripped down, and you're just left with this generic, paper-thin, bottom of the barrel mush that's an absolutely mind-numbing slog to play, desperate to wrestle control away from you at every turn all for an endless barrage of cutscenes that all feel the same as each other or to hit you with a cheap jumpscare that can usually be seen coming from a mile away
what once frightened me, now bores me.
what once brought me satisfaction, now leaves me hollow.
and what should've been a glorious return to form, is anything but.
the opening at the guest house is a deadly combination of forced walking segments and unskippable cutscenes that make you mash a button or something occasionally to keep up a guise of interactivity. these not only harm the game's replayability, but even on a first playthrough the way they play out is quite stilted and hard to take seriously. between the limp animation and the abundance of cartoonish jumpscares, the only knot in my stomach was one of second-hand embarrassment
after a texas chainsaw massacre pastiche introducing our cast of villains, the main segment of the game begins, and this is where the game momentarily hooked me; jack baker is immediately intimidating, and being thrown into an unfamiliar environment with the looming threat of him coming to get you made me move with a lot more trepidation than usual, but after playing the game a little more i realised that jack's words were merely empty threats
if jack discovers you he'll chase you down and if he catches you, he does a bit of damage after which you can easily keep running, this combined with plentiful healing items and automatic checkpoints makes just going about your business and tanking the damage an all too inviting prospect, evaporating any and all fear or tension the game initially created
this is a major problem because the game hangs its hat on this one gimmick to make things interested because it has very little to offer otherwise. classic resident evil games are set in maze like maps that need to be slowly pieced together through puzzle solving and remembering points of interest and what goes where, the game's limited inventory and resources and well placed enemies adding another layer of strategy to navigation, saving your progress also being a limited resource in itself was always often a source a source of tension and relief as a resourceful player could go long stretches without their progress being locked in
meanwhile the house in resident evil 7 is like three floors right on top of each other that are all tiny and can be fully explored almost immediately, aside from jack being a mild nuisance (as you'll sometimes need to run in circles to shake him off to progress) the navigation lacks any sort of friction; aside from the basement, there are no other enemies, puzzles that almost solve themselves, unlimited saves and once again a mountain of resources around every corner. there is exactly one locked door that's more than a couple of rooms away from the key to it, which even then isn't too taxing, it just takes a quick trip down to the main room in the basement and there's the scorpion key, practically staring you in the face
to make matters worse, once you defeat jack in the basement, not only does he (obviously) stop chasing you, but all the other enemies, regardless if they've been killed or not, just magically vanish. the basement can very easily be tackled immediately, leaving you with a completely empty house, with a load of boring rooms with stuff to press A on in them
the rest of the game unfortunately follows a similar structure, the old house segment has an interesting gimmick with lots of hives blocking you which swarm you with bugs when approached, and you have to find the parts to build a flamethrower which has quite limited ammunition, meaning you have to pick and choose which hives are the most important to get rid of and make yourself a safe path through the house
except this isn't what happens at all, this segment is so short and the map is so tiny this concept barely has a chance to get off the ground. in other words, why would i even consider burning this hive when circumventing it takes seconds, this house is like six or seven tiny rooms total, and once again if the bugs do attack you they do far too little damage to become something to worry about. the biggest challenge here is noticing that you're supposed to crawl into a tiny fireplace behind one of the two mandatory hives which i didn't even know existed because it's so fucking dark all the time
marguerite has even less prescence than her husband, beginning her chase mere minutes before her boss fight and she won't leave her house for some reason, go out near the waterhouse and she'll just stand in the doorway cackling like a dumbass, one time i shot her in the head a few times to make her leave and she glitched out and ran back and forth up against a window before teleporting on top of me to do her janky animation where she knocks you over or whatever, it's impossible to take seriously
take away these poorly executed central gimmicks and you're left with more of the same; banal, unskippable cutscenes, shitty jumpscares, and the bare minimum for what could qualify as puzzles
lucas baker is the cheeky one with his house full of tricks, except his tricks are just like a load of tripwires and boxes that explode and boring shit like that. cheating his escape room is an enjoyable and clever sequence though, and i like that because there's a tape you can watch earlier that has someone solving it normally and getting killed, there's also an in-universe reason as to how ethan would know how to cheat it
after that's over though jack returns this time as a big blob with a silly voice that you have to defeat by shooting his fucking eyeball weak points, at it was this point that i felt myself fully checking out
the way enemies in general are handled is just terrible, mostly due to the fact that this game has literally one enemy type in it, just one (except for those bugs from earlier i guess) and it's just a pale imitation of the regenerators from resident evil 4. there are variants sure, some of them are a little bigger, some of them walk on all fours, but it's all basically the same sludgy lizard monsters the entire game, and flaccidly shooting their heads quickly gets tiresome
enemy variety is important for most games, and for horror games it's also just another tool to be scary, running into a new enemy you haven't seen before is inherently unnerving, you're not sure what they're capable of. returning to the spencer mansion in resident evil 1 and finding that the regular zombies have been replaced with these big lizard guys that run at you and rip you to shreds is terrifying, it imbues this previously conquered area with a whole new sense of life, a feeling resident evil 7 is never able to conjure up because you'll get to the end of the game and see the same enemy you've been seeing the whole game and you'll be like 'oh yeah those guys, nothing to worry about'.
the boss fights are equally terrible, they're overly long, overly scripted, and directed so badly it hurts. if i told you that there was a boss fight where two people fight with chainsaws like they're swords you might think that sounds pretty cool, but no it's just the most awkward looking janky shit you've ever seen it's just a headache if anything. also fuck that second fight with marguerite where she just leaves and hangs out somewhere off screen for what feels like minutes at a time that shit is so boring
anyway after all that is the fucking boat part which even people i've talked to who like the game seem to hate, because my god is it long and paced poorly. this is mostly due to the fact that you have to play through a boring extended flashback sequence on the boat, and then have to do a load more stuff in the same place again but now in the present where's it's like all dingy and old. i'd like to be able to be able to praise this segment as it's more of a challenge to piece together on a macro level than usual, due to its larger size and longer puzzle sequences, but it's just so dull regardless and i'm so tired of the game at this point that i just want it to be over, i suppose resident evil has never been known for its climaxes.
this area is where the game's story comes to a head, which i also find very dull. i don't think it's worth really going into too much but basically going with the 'little ghost girl who's evil because she was a biological experiment' thing they went with is so played out and presented in such a flat and uninteresting way with such nothing characters that it was hard for me to muster a single bone in my body to care about any of it. this is nothing new for resident evil but this game in particular wants so badly to be taken seriously that it's just miserable, especially when compared to something like resident evil 4 which is at least likeably cheesy.
the one bright spot of course being jack baker, who's an absolute delight any time he's on the screen, his manic energy is scary but mercifully also very funny, a perfect character for this franchise. i also think the scene near the end where jack like, contacts ethan from the afterlife or whatever while he's unconscious or whatever is quite effective. we get to see jack how he used to be before he was possessed; he's gentle, and speaks in a loving, fatherly tone, and is filled with remorse for the all the trouble he's inadvertently caused you. when he asks you to please save his family it's hard not to feel for the bakers, who were unfortunately swept up in all this.
the game unfortunately limps to the finish line though, with one more awkward stumble through the guest house as visions of your girlfriend with a chainsaw phase in and out of existence with sad music playing and it's just kind of silly, and the boss fight afterwards is more or less a bunch of cutscenes, not really worth mentioning
like i said at the start, resident evil 7 does seem like a return to the franchise's roots, a spooky house, puzzles to solve, inventory to manage, all the stuff you remember. but it's all surface level stuff, the things that made resident evil such an important staple in the survival horror genre are now severely stripped down, and you're just left with this generic, paper-thin, bottom of the barrel mush that's an absolutely mind-numbing slog to play, desperate to wrestle control away from you at every turn all for an endless barrage of cutscenes that all feel the same as each other or to hit you with a cheap jumpscare that can usually be seen coming from a mile away
what once frightened me, now bores me.
what once brought me satisfaction, now leaves me hollow.
and what should've been a glorious return to form, is anything but.
i think the moral of the story is wearefriends yes wearefriends
1996
a fun game overall, usually has a nice momentum to it if you're playing well and the simple stuff like breaking boxes and collecting wumpa fruit is very satisfying, the game looks really nice as well
the problem for me is that any% is a bit too easy and boring imo but 100%, while more interesting overall and sometimes a very satisfying challenge, can other times be exhausting due to kinda slippery controls and some very long levels with a lot of start-and-stop moments
the 100% ending is also a bit of an anti-climax but luckily i was kinda checked out by then anyway, still a good start to an epic series though
the problem for me is that any% is a bit too easy and boring imo but 100%, while more interesting overall and sometimes a very satisfying challenge, can other times be exhausting due to kinda slippery controls and some very long levels with a lot of start-and-stop moments
the 100% ending is also a bit of an anti-climax but luckily i was kinda checked out by then anyway, still a good start to an epic series though
you know for an order of evil knights you guys are REALLY MEAN
2016
while i think Rez Infinite is a perfectly well made score attack game that i overall enjoyed, i also have a host of issues with it that i think will prevent me from replaying it in the future
i quite strongly dislike the aesthetic first of all, it's got like a computery wire-framey thing going on and it's incredibly boring on my opinion, none of the background elements stick out and all the enemies are just kinda shapes with an eye with like other shapes attached to them, they don't really have like a clear identity to me
this goes for the bosses as well like i can't really tell what they're supposed to be nor do i really care, i do quite like the guy that like turns himself into different stuff made out of blocks like a snake and a big robot guy but even this idea feels a little played out
the music generally was also quite weak or in some cases just straight up annoying, like the stage 2 boss which is very whiny or the stage 4 boss that sounds like a load of monkeys fixing cars like it's soooooo full of itself omg like academy award search party over here
it is cool that shooting stuff like adds to the song though it does make it feel more satisfying
the gameplay is generally quite solid but it also feels a little limiting, i haven't played the Panzer Dragoon games yet but i've watched a friend play through them and are familiar with how they work, and apparently a lot of people who worked on those games also worked on Rez and this is a sort of spiritual successor to those games
in Panzer Dragoon you're able to make quick 90° turns and this adds another layer of challenge as you need to be more aware of threats coming from all sides, making for more dynamic and engaging play
Rez has camera changes too but rather than putting the onus on the player to execute them they happen automatically, which is not only far less interesting to me, but in places where you have a full range of motion, usually in boss fights, you have to make these slowwwww sweeping turns behind you when the guy you're shooting at suddenly zips behind you, which is one of those things that just doesn't feel good
this rears it's head especially in the stage new to Rez Infinite, Area X, which is far more open which makes navigation feel even more clunky and tank-like, though they did add a useful option to move backwards as well which helps, i assume it feels much better in VR which it seems clearly designed for but normal mode is kinda rough, it also has a weird issue where you have to tap A again to start aiming at stuff again every time a new section starts, where normally just keeping A held down is enough, which was mildly annoying and also killed my family
as well as being able to turn quickly, Panzer Dragoon also had a minimap to help keep track of threats coming from all sides but Rez has no such thing so the only way to check for stuff off camera is just to slowly turn around like a dork, probably opening yourself up to more danger in the meantime
the challenge of the game is also like in this weird place where sometimes it's incredibly easy and it feels like nothing is fighting back, to suddenly a million tiny pieces of shit are right in front of you and you don't know how they got there and you take like seven hits and die instantly which is infuriating
i keep harping on about the bosses but i really don't like them like what are they even doing especially the first two like the first one periodically will just shoot at nothing like an idiot and the second one has this stupid attack where he just keeps making these walls that come for you really slowly and you have to shoot four bits on them and it's like the easiest shit in the world but he just keeps doing it, they improve a bit after that but even then they still feel like they take too long and are too repetitive without enough really going on in them, with some very awkward streches of just nothing happening
i've also had the stage 4 boss like weirdly rubber-band to me and instantly doing damage without any of the wind-up because i was like beating him too quickly or something
a lot of the stages don't really stand apart from one another for me but i think the final area is fantastic, it has a distinct look, really cool music in the background that keeps building and keeps getting cooler, and even a little story going on about the universe or something that i admittedly didn't really care about but it's well told since it's just a couple of sentences each in the transitions between sections with like a cool background change
the stage also demonstrates how to do a boss rush well by having the rematches be much shorter than their first encounters, but also having new attack patterns and movement, so they still resemble their first forms but they feel like new fights, rather than being boring padding like boss rushes usually are
the final boss is a bit dull though and getting interrupted to watch an unskippable cutscene of a woman being rebuilt over and over throughout it, even in score attack mode, feels like needless pomp and circumstance and a case of mixed up priorities, the story just struck me as one of those things that wants to be all up in your face looking like it's saying something really deep but not actually saying anything at all, but it's possible i could be being close minded about it though but either way it failed to engage me personally, and feels a bit at odds with an hour long rail shooter you're meant to replay a bunch
this review is just a collection of stuff i've written at like 3am which is just things i was thinking about while playing the game and i fear i sound overly negative and whiny, but i really did enjoy myself, building the highest combos you can and memorising enemy patterns is inherently satisfying to me, even in the more uneventful sections there's always some stuff to shoot so i was never like bored bored
i liked the game enough to get all the achievements and spent a good deal of time in score attack mode just trying to perfect the first couple of levels, this along with some cute extra modes and unlockables mean there's enough hear to keep me occupied for hundreds of hours probably, but unfortunately, all those little issues i brought up really added up for me over time and i could start to tell that i'd had my fill
i had my fun, but my hyperfixation lies elsewhere
i quite strongly dislike the aesthetic first of all, it's got like a computery wire-framey thing going on and it's incredibly boring on my opinion, none of the background elements stick out and all the enemies are just kinda shapes with an eye with like other shapes attached to them, they don't really have like a clear identity to me
this goes for the bosses as well like i can't really tell what they're supposed to be nor do i really care, i do quite like the guy that like turns himself into different stuff made out of blocks like a snake and a big robot guy but even this idea feels a little played out
the music generally was also quite weak or in some cases just straight up annoying, like the stage 2 boss which is very whiny or the stage 4 boss that sounds like a load of monkeys fixing cars like it's soooooo full of itself omg like academy award search party over here
it is cool that shooting stuff like adds to the song though it does make it feel more satisfying
the gameplay is generally quite solid but it also feels a little limiting, i haven't played the Panzer Dragoon games yet but i've watched a friend play through them and are familiar with how they work, and apparently a lot of people who worked on those games also worked on Rez and this is a sort of spiritual successor to those games
in Panzer Dragoon you're able to make quick 90° turns and this adds another layer of challenge as you need to be more aware of threats coming from all sides, making for more dynamic and engaging play
Rez has camera changes too but rather than putting the onus on the player to execute them they happen automatically, which is not only far less interesting to me, but in places where you have a full range of motion, usually in boss fights, you have to make these slowwwww sweeping turns behind you when the guy you're shooting at suddenly zips behind you, which is one of those things that just doesn't feel good
this rears it's head especially in the stage new to Rez Infinite, Area X, which is far more open which makes navigation feel even more clunky and tank-like, though they did add a useful option to move backwards as well which helps, i assume it feels much better in VR which it seems clearly designed for but normal mode is kinda rough, it also has a weird issue where you have to tap A again to start aiming at stuff again every time a new section starts, where normally just keeping A held down is enough, which was mildly annoying and also killed my family
as well as being able to turn quickly, Panzer Dragoon also had a minimap to help keep track of threats coming from all sides but Rez has no such thing so the only way to check for stuff off camera is just to slowly turn around like a dork, probably opening yourself up to more danger in the meantime
the challenge of the game is also like in this weird place where sometimes it's incredibly easy and it feels like nothing is fighting back, to suddenly a million tiny pieces of shit are right in front of you and you don't know how they got there and you take like seven hits and die instantly which is infuriating
i keep harping on about the bosses but i really don't like them like what are they even doing especially the first two like the first one periodically will just shoot at nothing like an idiot and the second one has this stupid attack where he just keeps making these walls that come for you really slowly and you have to shoot four bits on them and it's like the easiest shit in the world but he just keeps doing it, they improve a bit after that but even then they still feel like they take too long and are too repetitive without enough really going on in them, with some very awkward streches of just nothing happening
i've also had the stage 4 boss like weirdly rubber-band to me and instantly doing damage without any of the wind-up because i was like beating him too quickly or something
a lot of the stages don't really stand apart from one another for me but i think the final area is fantastic, it has a distinct look, really cool music in the background that keeps building and keeps getting cooler, and even a little story going on about the universe or something that i admittedly didn't really care about but it's well told since it's just a couple of sentences each in the transitions between sections with like a cool background change
the stage also demonstrates how to do a boss rush well by having the rematches be much shorter than their first encounters, but also having new attack patterns and movement, so they still resemble their first forms but they feel like new fights, rather than being boring padding like boss rushes usually are
the final boss is a bit dull though and getting interrupted to watch an unskippable cutscene of a woman being rebuilt over and over throughout it, even in score attack mode, feels like needless pomp and circumstance and a case of mixed up priorities, the story just struck me as one of those things that wants to be all up in your face looking like it's saying something really deep but not actually saying anything at all, but it's possible i could be being close minded about it though but either way it failed to engage me personally, and feels a bit at odds with an hour long rail shooter you're meant to replay a bunch
this review is just a collection of stuff i've written at like 3am which is just things i was thinking about while playing the game and i fear i sound overly negative and whiny, but i really did enjoy myself, building the highest combos you can and memorising enemy patterns is inherently satisfying to me, even in the more uneventful sections there's always some stuff to shoot so i was never like bored bored
i liked the game enough to get all the achievements and spent a good deal of time in score attack mode just trying to perfect the first couple of levels, this along with some cute extra modes and unlockables mean there's enough hear to keep me occupied for hundreds of hours probably, but unfortunately, all those little issues i brought up really added up for me over time and i could start to tell that i'd had my fill
i had my fun, but my hyperfixation lies elsewhere