LoneSpeedsterDX
2010
I can't tell whether the many Vs represent the ridiculous amount of spikes everywhere, or if they represent someone slamming down on a keyboard because they got frustrated
fun game tho :)
fun game tho :)
The follow-up second DLC part is thankfully a much-improved experience from The Teal Mask in just about every way. Well, every way except performance, but I've already harped endlessly about that so best not to dwell on it too long again for this review as I have a lot to say about...everything.
I think an unsung element that this DLC provides is one that the base game had been sorely lacking: post-game content. While, yes, not having much of any post-game content in the base game and forcing you to pay money to get what was missing is pretty scummy, the amount of stuff to do with this expansion is ABSURD. Like, forget all the new Pokémon to catch, that all kind of comes with the territory (though I am delighted that my homie Rowlett and by extension, Decidueye got in): you can customize your Pokeball throwing style, the style of the club room you're in, you have a variety of new emotes to equip, Miraidon can fly around freely now instead of being restricted with that heavy glide, you can craft an absurd amount of any Pokeball you want, you have loads of rematches with nearly every important character from the main story, you have tons of Legendary Pokémon to hunt, and there’s even this hilarious sync feature which allows you to control the Pokémon you have in your possession. I don’t fully understand how it works, and I don’t care. I got to be a Dudunsparce for a little while. It’s all I ever really wanted. It’s not even just fully relegated to Blueberry Academy either: there are a lot of side missions that open up back on Paldea; whether it’s becoming a makeshift tutor for Team Star bosses or being able to access the dorm rooms of your best buddies!! Again, I don’t appreciate all this good bonus post-game content being put in the DLC of all places, but I guess I’m glad it’s here at all.
As for the main portion of the DLC itself, it was pretty enjoyable! Blueberry Academy is a much bigger area than Kitakami which is a plus. It’s also a pretty interesting locale aesthetic-wise with the whole area submerged underwater and the different biomes segmented by colorful futuristic blocks. The main gimmick here is that every battle you have with trainers or the elite 4 are double battles now. Speaking of the Elite 4, GEEZ LOUISE. I’m glad I just ended up sticking with my regular story team because these are by far the most challenging battles in the entirety of Violet. All of their Pokémon are in the low to mid 80s and they’re all a fully fleshed-out competitive team, complete with ability and moveset synergy with each other and every one of them holds a competitive-focused item like assault vest or life orb. Admittedly Kieran is still a bit of a pushover compared to everyone else but it was still a lot of fun having to THINK about my strategy during battles for a change.
As I ended up hoping, the story of Kieran and Carmine wrapped up pretty nicely, with Kieran especially getting a nice character arc. Part 1 kind of left on a sour note but Part 2 does help to tie everything back together. I still don’t think either of them is anywhere near as strong as your friend group back on Paldea, but I still ended up liking the events of the story for what they were. I also liked the new characters introduced and the Elite 4. Amarys was the weakest of the group but I still ended up liking her anyway. Going back to Area Zero was a treat as I expected and the new music that accompanies this area was sublime. I didn’t care that much about the new Tera type even if it was pretty and flashy, but the Terapagos boss fight was very cool.
But in reality, what managed to bring a huge smile to my face was the epilogue Mochi Mayhem, the side story featuring the new mythical Pokémon Pecharunt. Before I delve into my inevitable rambling, I was quite surprised to find out how lengthy this mythical event turned out to be. Previously, mythical story events would barely last over a few minutes or so, maybe consisting of one or two battles at most during it. This beefy event is over an hour long, and while it isn’t difficult per se, I was just so incredibly happy I got to hang out with my buddies again. Right when Arven asked if he could hang out at your place, and then you go over to see that Nemona and Penny tagged along anyway, everything just felt right. I went on and on about how much I adored the friend group in this game, how they all clashed yet bounced off of each other in believable ways, and how each of them formed a different connection to you for various reasons. This mythical event genuinely makes it feel like they never actually went anywhere. I especially loved how when Kieran sent a letter to my character, Arven ended up getting humorously jealous that she made a new best friend (and thankfully this jealousy doesn’t drag on and isn’t serious either way). But that’s just it though: these characters are just so well-written and are so incredibly likable. I haven’t made this big of an attachment to many other characters of this caliber in a long long time, and jumping the gun a bit but once they inevitably move on to Gen 10 and stop making content for this game, I’ll be incredibly sad.
Not JUST sad because we won’t be seeing these characters again (at least in the context of what this game has to offer), but also because it sucks that no matter how much the game has going for it, Pokémon Violet will only be remembered for what it currently is: a blatantly unfinished, buggy, disaster of a game. Every good element the game has is buried under the mountains of problems it has that still TO THIS DAY never once got addressed. It isn’t a Switch issue, and it certainly isn’t remotely in an acceptable state: it’s entirely the fault of TPC for rushing this game out to market to coincide with all the merchandise and card games and toys and everything else. Maybe someday it will get a remaster or will be patched to look and run better on the Switch 2 or whatever. I genuinely want more people to give this game another chance. Yes, it’s inexcusable that it was released in this state, but this game, problems and all has offered me one of the most unforgettable experiences I’ve ever had playing a game. I even went out of my way to fully complete the original Paldea Pokedex. Even now I made 3 more new save files on different Switch user profiles (with the same character design I made in my original save file, she’s cute lmao), to relive that same feeling I had playing again. Meeting these characters again, experiencing the story again, and becoming best friends again. I don’t know what the next generation holds, but while they may not be able to recreate lightning in a bottle with the story and characters, if they can come within even swinging distance while taking their freaking time on letting the game remain in the oven, I think I’ll be more than satisfied.
As it turns out, even the greatest treasures are full of rust.
I think an unsung element that this DLC provides is one that the base game had been sorely lacking: post-game content. While, yes, not having much of any post-game content in the base game and forcing you to pay money to get what was missing is pretty scummy, the amount of stuff to do with this expansion is ABSURD. Like, forget all the new Pokémon to catch, that all kind of comes with the territory (though I am delighted that my homie Rowlett and by extension, Decidueye got in): you can customize your Pokeball throwing style, the style of the club room you're in, you have a variety of new emotes to equip, Miraidon can fly around freely now instead of being restricted with that heavy glide, you can craft an absurd amount of any Pokeball you want, you have loads of rematches with nearly every important character from the main story, you have tons of Legendary Pokémon to hunt, and there’s even this hilarious sync feature which allows you to control the Pokémon you have in your possession. I don’t fully understand how it works, and I don’t care. I got to be a Dudunsparce for a little while. It’s all I ever really wanted. It’s not even just fully relegated to Blueberry Academy either: there are a lot of side missions that open up back on Paldea; whether it’s becoming a makeshift tutor for Team Star bosses or being able to access the dorm rooms of your best buddies!! Again, I don’t appreciate all this good bonus post-game content being put in the DLC of all places, but I guess I’m glad it’s here at all.
As for the main portion of the DLC itself, it was pretty enjoyable! Blueberry Academy is a much bigger area than Kitakami which is a plus. It’s also a pretty interesting locale aesthetic-wise with the whole area submerged underwater and the different biomes segmented by colorful futuristic blocks. The main gimmick here is that every battle you have with trainers or the elite 4 are double battles now. Speaking of the Elite 4, GEEZ LOUISE. I’m glad I just ended up sticking with my regular story team because these are by far the most challenging battles in the entirety of Violet. All of their Pokémon are in the low to mid 80s and they’re all a fully fleshed-out competitive team, complete with ability and moveset synergy with each other and every one of them holds a competitive-focused item like assault vest or life orb. Admittedly Kieran is still a bit of a pushover compared to everyone else but it was still a lot of fun having to THINK about my strategy during battles for a change.
As I ended up hoping, the story of Kieran and Carmine wrapped up pretty nicely, with Kieran especially getting a nice character arc. Part 1 kind of left on a sour note but Part 2 does help to tie everything back together. I still don’t think either of them is anywhere near as strong as your friend group back on Paldea, but I still ended up liking the events of the story for what they were. I also liked the new characters introduced and the Elite 4. Amarys was the weakest of the group but I still ended up liking her anyway. Going back to Area Zero was a treat as I expected and the new music that accompanies this area was sublime. I didn’t care that much about the new Tera type even if it was pretty and flashy, but the Terapagos boss fight was very cool.
But in reality, what managed to bring a huge smile to my face was the epilogue Mochi Mayhem, the side story featuring the new mythical Pokémon Pecharunt. Before I delve into my inevitable rambling, I was quite surprised to find out how lengthy this mythical event turned out to be. Previously, mythical story events would barely last over a few minutes or so, maybe consisting of one or two battles at most during it. This beefy event is over an hour long, and while it isn’t difficult per se, I was just so incredibly happy I got to hang out with my buddies again. Right when Arven asked if he could hang out at your place, and then you go over to see that Nemona and Penny tagged along anyway, everything just felt right. I went on and on about how much I adored the friend group in this game, how they all clashed yet bounced off of each other in believable ways, and how each of them formed a different connection to you for various reasons. This mythical event genuinely makes it feel like they never actually went anywhere. I especially loved how when Kieran sent a letter to my character, Arven ended up getting humorously jealous that she made a new best friend (and thankfully this jealousy doesn’t drag on and isn’t serious either way). But that’s just it though: these characters are just so well-written and are so incredibly likable. I haven’t made this big of an attachment to many other characters of this caliber in a long long time, and jumping the gun a bit but once they inevitably move on to Gen 10 and stop making content for this game, I’ll be incredibly sad.
Not JUST sad because we won’t be seeing these characters again (at least in the context of what this game has to offer), but also because it sucks that no matter how much the game has going for it, Pokémon Violet will only be remembered for what it currently is: a blatantly unfinished, buggy, disaster of a game. Every good element the game has is buried under the mountains of problems it has that still TO THIS DAY never once got addressed. It isn’t a Switch issue, and it certainly isn’t remotely in an acceptable state: it’s entirely the fault of TPC for rushing this game out to market to coincide with all the merchandise and card games and toys and everything else. Maybe someday it will get a remaster or will be patched to look and run better on the Switch 2 or whatever. I genuinely want more people to give this game another chance. Yes, it’s inexcusable that it was released in this state, but this game, problems and all has offered me one of the most unforgettable experiences I’ve ever had playing a game. I even went out of my way to fully complete the original Paldea Pokedex. Even now I made 3 more new save files on different Switch user profiles (with the same character design I made in my original save file, she’s cute lmao), to relive that same feeling I had playing again. Meeting these characters again, experiencing the story again, and becoming best friends again. I don’t know what the next generation holds, but while they may not be able to recreate lightning in a bottle with the story and characters, if they can come within even swinging distance while taking their freaking time on letting the game remain in the oven, I think I’ll be more than satisfied.
As it turns out, even the greatest treasures are full of rust.
Got the game via a friend’s recommendation. I put off playing it for a while as I generally had games I was more interested in that I wanted to get to, but seeing as how he finished a game I recommended, it was only natural I would return the favor.
This is my first experience with a Remedy entertainment title. Right off the bat what caught me off guard was the world building. I started out kinda uninvested with what was going on (though not outright bored or anything), but the more I delved into the world, my surroundings, the pieces and bits of written and visual material, the more I started to get sucked in. It’s very much like SCP in that way, which funny enough this game takes HEAVY inspiration from. The game in general has a very eerie and unnerving atmosphere; sterile corporate office spaces splattered in blood and filled with floating bodies hovering above you, with the ambience consisting of loud chanting of bizarre incoherent phrases; don’t even get me started on those freaking Threshold Kids video tapes. I do understand that at the end of the day, it is trying to be more of an action game above all else, but personally I think it would be really cool if they leaned even harder into the horror aspect of this game (what can I say, I like me a spooky atmosphere). Despite this I also love when the game goes off the walls surreal and isn’t afraid to have a lot of fun with itself; whether it’s the Dr Darling music video, the optional movie camera mission in one of the DLC expansions, and ESPECIALLY the Ashtray maze.
And in terms of being an action game, it’s incredibly solid. 3rd person gunplay mixed with Psychokinetic abilities. These powers are all shared on the same energy bar so it requires some consideration of resource management to use effectively. Honestly in hindsight it makes something Silver’s gameplay in Sonic 2006 look even more sad than it already is. Despite how incredibly strong the psychic powers are (especially when you upgrade them), the game never felt repetitive for me despite how much I typically relied on them. This is helped in good part to the enemy variety (there are a lot of enemies that avoid the objects you throw at them) and the different amount of powers you have at your disposal, like the ability to mind control weakened enemies which ended up being a lifesaver in many hectic circumstances, especially when I nabbed the upgrade that allowed you to take control of heavy hitting big boy enemies. There’s also a lot of subtle yet conscious design decisions in how the environments are constructed and how you can maneuver around them freely as a makeshift combat arena. I also appreciate how every part of the environment is destructible which is not only technically very impressive, but also helps with your psychokinesis powers, as even with no objects around to pick up you can still yoink a chunk off the nearest concrete wall or staircase and use it just as well.
Exploration sadly isn’t anywhere near as satisfying. There are a lot of hidden chests to find around the bureau but they all contain the same exact things: crafting materials and mods. You equip mods to either yourself to boost your abilities via random perks, or to your different gun forms to basically do the same thing. I’m just gonna outright say it: the randomized loot system was a mistake. I don’t feel anything when I find a chest hidden off in the corner because my reward is the same “-20% energy reduction on using dash” fluff; it just doesn’t feel gratifying to obtain. Half of the mods I had in my inventory are just cluttered incremental upgrades to aspects I didn’t even care to be improved much. It would’ve been much more satisfying to just ditch the mod system and make it a simple upgrade chart like what they do with your abilities. I feel a better sense of satisfaction coming across a lore document or video tape or something I can read up on instead of the same generic RPG stat boosting mods with different forms of rarities on them that I’ve seen in every single other 3rd person action game to date. The boss fights in this game aren’t the most graceful (at least, the little you manage to fight anyway there’s so few of them) and some (particularly in the DLCs) are just outright terrible. The ending also feels pretty anticlimactic and abrupt, not even a final boss or anything. Just a final enemy gauntlet and all of a sudden the game just kinda ends.
Still though, it says a lot that after the game ended I went out of my way to see so much more of what the game had to offer. I wasn’t initially invested when I started playing, but after the credits rolled, I can go as far to say that I’m stoked for the upcoming sequel and what they can do with this concept.
(Also if we can get these guys to create a standalone Silver the Hedgehog game that would be great 😊 👍)
————————————
So some personal thoughts here: this one review took a while to get out. And subsequently it also took a lot out of me. Idk, I feel like I’m starting to get burnout on making Backloggd reviews. It happened to a friend of mine a while back and I don’t think my level of burn out is on quite the same level as his was per say, my ADHD is making it extremely hard to get anything going. The worst part about this is that I LOVE putting my thoughts on a game in a detailed format like this, but I’m so behind on so many different games and I just don’t have the drive to do these as often. Maybe school has something to do with it, maybe not. I don’t really know anymore. I don’t really want to take a break as that essentially feels like what I’ve BEEN doing all this time, but I wish I could push on and keep making more as easily as I used to and I hope others that feel or have felt the same way can relate to my situation.
This is my first experience with a Remedy entertainment title. Right off the bat what caught me off guard was the world building. I started out kinda uninvested with what was going on (though not outright bored or anything), but the more I delved into the world, my surroundings, the pieces and bits of written and visual material, the more I started to get sucked in. It’s very much like SCP in that way, which funny enough this game takes HEAVY inspiration from. The game in general has a very eerie and unnerving atmosphere; sterile corporate office spaces splattered in blood and filled with floating bodies hovering above you, with the ambience consisting of loud chanting of bizarre incoherent phrases; don’t even get me started on those freaking Threshold Kids video tapes. I do understand that at the end of the day, it is trying to be more of an action game above all else, but personally I think it would be really cool if they leaned even harder into the horror aspect of this game (what can I say, I like me a spooky atmosphere). Despite this I also love when the game goes off the walls surreal and isn’t afraid to have a lot of fun with itself; whether it’s the Dr Darling music video, the optional movie camera mission in one of the DLC expansions, and ESPECIALLY the Ashtray maze.
And in terms of being an action game, it’s incredibly solid. 3rd person gunplay mixed with Psychokinetic abilities. These powers are all shared on the same energy bar so it requires some consideration of resource management to use effectively. Honestly in hindsight it makes something Silver’s gameplay in Sonic 2006 look even more sad than it already is. Despite how incredibly strong the psychic powers are (especially when you upgrade them), the game never felt repetitive for me despite how much I typically relied on them. This is helped in good part to the enemy variety (there are a lot of enemies that avoid the objects you throw at them) and the different amount of powers you have at your disposal, like the ability to mind control weakened enemies which ended up being a lifesaver in many hectic circumstances, especially when I nabbed the upgrade that allowed you to take control of heavy hitting big boy enemies. There’s also a lot of subtle yet conscious design decisions in how the environments are constructed and how you can maneuver around them freely as a makeshift combat arena. I also appreciate how every part of the environment is destructible which is not only technically very impressive, but also helps with your psychokinesis powers, as even with no objects around to pick up you can still yoink a chunk off the nearest concrete wall or staircase and use it just as well.
Exploration sadly isn’t anywhere near as satisfying. There are a lot of hidden chests to find around the bureau but they all contain the same exact things: crafting materials and mods. You equip mods to either yourself to boost your abilities via random perks, or to your different gun forms to basically do the same thing. I’m just gonna outright say it: the randomized loot system was a mistake. I don’t feel anything when I find a chest hidden off in the corner because my reward is the same “-20% energy reduction on using dash” fluff; it just doesn’t feel gratifying to obtain. Half of the mods I had in my inventory are just cluttered incremental upgrades to aspects I didn’t even care to be improved much. It would’ve been much more satisfying to just ditch the mod system and make it a simple upgrade chart like what they do with your abilities. I feel a better sense of satisfaction coming across a lore document or video tape or something I can read up on instead of the same generic RPG stat boosting mods with different forms of rarities on them that I’ve seen in every single other 3rd person action game to date. The boss fights in this game aren’t the most graceful (at least, the little you manage to fight anyway there’s so few of them) and some (particularly in the DLCs) are just outright terrible. The ending also feels pretty anticlimactic and abrupt, not even a final boss or anything. Just a final enemy gauntlet and all of a sudden the game just kinda ends.
Still though, it says a lot that after the game ended I went out of my way to see so much more of what the game had to offer. I wasn’t initially invested when I started playing, but after the credits rolled, I can go as far to say that I’m stoked for the upcoming sequel and what they can do with this concept.
(Also if we can get these guys to create a standalone Silver the Hedgehog game that would be great 😊 👍)
————————————
So some personal thoughts here: this one review took a while to get out. And subsequently it also took a lot out of me. Idk, I feel like I’m starting to get burnout on making Backloggd reviews. It happened to a friend of mine a while back and I don’t think my level of burn out is on quite the same level as his was per say, my ADHD is making it extremely hard to get anything going. The worst part about this is that I LOVE putting my thoughts on a game in a detailed format like this, but I’m so behind on so many different games and I just don’t have the drive to do these as often. Maybe school has something to do with it, maybe not. I don’t really know anymore. I don’t really want to take a break as that essentially feels like what I’ve BEEN doing all this time, but I wish I could push on and keep making more as easily as I used to and I hope others that feel or have felt the same way can relate to my situation.
Gotta say, the way he leaps off of rooftops and flips backward to face the camera before falling into a head-first dive is just full of the exaggerated swagger of a black teen. It gives me goosebumps every time he does it.
Yeah, what'd you expect here? Wasn't a fan of the first one much at all so the extremely similar DLC-expansion-sequel-thing wasn't gonna win me over either. I do think that this game is...very marginally somewhat better than the first one at least. And no it certainly isn't in the gameplay department that's for sure LOL.
To put it bluntly, Miles is just Peter but better. He has nearly every single ability that Peter has (traversal, stealth, combat, you name it) except now he also has access to Venom powers and invisibility powers. It admittedly took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the venom bar and the instant takedown QTE meter were on separate resources so they aren't a replacement for it. You build up a meter while in combat and when the meter is full, you get a powered up version of an already existing move (punch, launcher, web zip, ground slam), pretty much all of them are a massive AOE effect (though the punch needs to be upgraded to be AOE) and enemies affected take more damage. You even get a final Venom attack that's essentially just Chaos Blast from Shadow the Hedgehog, a massive AOE explosion that ALSO fully restores your health at the cost of 3 bars. While stimulating on a spectacle level, my problem with these abilities is that they don't really do anything to add depth or nuance to the combat, but only exist to make the already easy game even easier. Like, aside from the sword and shield enemies, in what situation would you NOT use these techniques whenever you can? They're easy to build up, they make enemies drop like flies, they make the brute enemies a complete joke, and there's no sense of multitasking or risk or reward factor to these abilities. The only satisfaction I can muster from using them is looking at the pretty sparkly particle effects and watching enemies get blasted helplessly across the room. There's also a bit of overlap with these abilities as well. The Venom Punch and Venom Dash seem way too similar to each other, it's just that the dash has a larger range, AOE damage from the start, AND you can get a free Venom Launch from it which is ALSO AOE. Like, what exactly is the tradeoff here? Less damage? Not from what I could see anyway. Other than that, combat is identical to the first game, still horrendously one-sided in your favor with or without venom powers purely by launching enemies in the air and air combo-ing them to death. Not much has changed in that department. You can use a couple of Venom powers during traversal but neither of them feel like a significant enough speed or height increase to justify using while swinging. I mean I'll use them when I can but it feels like at that point I'm more so using them out of obligation rather than anything else.
Stealth sections are made slightly better and worse at the same time. Better in the sense that after clearing a stealth section you don't have to fight more waves of goons already alerted to your presence anyway, and on top of that there's no MJ section equivalent in this game either! However, I feel like there are even fewer stakes involved in these sections with the addition of the cloaking ability. No punishment if you get spotted because even if you do you can disappear at will and wait for the AI to start looking for you again. These two mechanics SOUNDED cool on paper but don't amount to anything in-game aside from just making everything a lot easier.
No, you wanna know what ever so slightly tipped this game's enjoyment over the first for me? First is the story. I know, kinda sounds crazy. I didn't really connect much at all to the story of the first game, but I feel like this one having more of a focus on Miles and his friendship with Ganke, on top of the many different people in his life (Gloria, Phin, his mom, etc) leads to me caring more about these cast of characters. It's not great or anything, I don't think this was a particularly groundbreaking story and at points, the writing can be extremely forced and hamfisted (like when Rhino starts egging on the Tinkerer about her trauma for...reasons I guess?) but y'know what? It was nice for what it was. I also like Miles' personality showing through his Spider-Man abilities, the way he twists and turns in off-the-wall show-offy ways when doing tricks and when web swinging adds just that much flair that makes it a tiny bit more fun to swing around than if I were playing as Peter for example. I also like the Underground as a faction PURELY for their cool purple coloring to their weaponry and gear. Again, nothing major on any of these points, but hey. I'll take what I can get from this series.
For the love of god though, please go and do the Uncle Aaron side quest so you can listen to the beat he makes at the end, it's unironically one of the goofiest things I've heard in a game.
Yeah, what'd you expect here? Wasn't a fan of the first one much at all so the extremely similar DLC-expansion-sequel-thing wasn't gonna win me over either. I do think that this game is...very marginally somewhat better than the first one at least. And no it certainly isn't in the gameplay department that's for sure LOL.
To put it bluntly, Miles is just Peter but better. He has nearly every single ability that Peter has (traversal, stealth, combat, you name it) except now he also has access to Venom powers and invisibility powers. It admittedly took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the venom bar and the instant takedown QTE meter were on separate resources so they aren't a replacement for it. You build up a meter while in combat and when the meter is full, you get a powered up version of an already existing move (punch, launcher, web zip, ground slam), pretty much all of them are a massive AOE effect (though the punch needs to be upgraded to be AOE) and enemies affected take more damage. You even get a final Venom attack that's essentially just Chaos Blast from Shadow the Hedgehog, a massive AOE explosion that ALSO fully restores your health at the cost of 3 bars. While stimulating on a spectacle level, my problem with these abilities is that they don't really do anything to add depth or nuance to the combat, but only exist to make the already easy game even easier. Like, aside from the sword and shield enemies, in what situation would you NOT use these techniques whenever you can? They're easy to build up, they make enemies drop like flies, they make the brute enemies a complete joke, and there's no sense of multitasking or risk or reward factor to these abilities. The only satisfaction I can muster from using them is looking at the pretty sparkly particle effects and watching enemies get blasted helplessly across the room. There's also a bit of overlap with these abilities as well. The Venom Punch and Venom Dash seem way too similar to each other, it's just that the dash has a larger range, AOE damage from the start, AND you can get a free Venom Launch from it which is ALSO AOE. Like, what exactly is the tradeoff here? Less damage? Not from what I could see anyway. Other than that, combat is identical to the first game, still horrendously one-sided in your favor with or without venom powers purely by launching enemies in the air and air combo-ing them to death. Not much has changed in that department. You can use a couple of Venom powers during traversal but neither of them feel like a significant enough speed or height increase to justify using while swinging. I mean I'll use them when I can but it feels like at that point I'm more so using them out of obligation rather than anything else.
Stealth sections are made slightly better and worse at the same time. Better in the sense that after clearing a stealth section you don't have to fight more waves of goons already alerted to your presence anyway, and on top of that there's no MJ section equivalent in this game either! However, I feel like there are even fewer stakes involved in these sections with the addition of the cloaking ability. No punishment if you get spotted because even if you do you can disappear at will and wait for the AI to start looking for you again. These two mechanics SOUNDED cool on paper but don't amount to anything in-game aside from just making everything a lot easier.
No, you wanna know what ever so slightly tipped this game's enjoyment over the first for me? First is the story. I know, kinda sounds crazy. I didn't really connect much at all to the story of the first game, but I feel like this one having more of a focus on Miles and his friendship with Ganke, on top of the many different people in his life (Gloria, Phin, his mom, etc) leads to me caring more about these cast of characters. It's not great or anything, I don't think this was a particularly groundbreaking story and at points, the writing can be extremely forced and hamfisted (like when Rhino starts egging on the Tinkerer about her trauma for...reasons I guess?) but y'know what? It was nice for what it was. I also like Miles' personality showing through his Spider-Man abilities, the way he twists and turns in off-the-wall show-offy ways when doing tricks and when web swinging adds just that much flair that makes it a tiny bit more fun to swing around than if I were playing as Peter for example. I also like the Underground as a faction PURELY for their cool purple coloring to their weaponry and gear. Again, nothing major on any of these points, but hey. I'll take what I can get from this series.
For the love of god though, please go and do the Uncle Aaron side quest so you can listen to the beat he makes at the end, it's unironically one of the goofiest things I've heard in a game.
2023
The people stating that this is better than Frontiers are on massive copium I'm sorry LOL.
Hardlight's newest mobile endeavor is indeed an ambitious title for a mobile game. A fully 3D platforming-focused Sonic game is something I'm kind of surprised hasn't already been attempted at this point...though considering most of Hardlight's other titles are more simple pick-up-and-play arcade-y high score-based affairs, it's easy to see why this hasn't been attempted before. I've seen a lot of backlash against this game being Apple Arcade exclusive, and while I do agree that offering the title to more people that can play it is a good thing to do, those asking for a legitimate console port...guys, c'mon...it's a mobile game.
Should start there before I talk about anything else I suppose. Sonic Dream Team is a mobile game at its core and it is fundamentally hindered by being an experience crafted for mobile. What do I mean by this you may ask? Imagine a typical 3D Boost game (the kind that's roughly similar to Frontiers, Colors, Gens, etc) except with a pathetically weak boost, no airboost, no stomp or slide, no wall jumping, and a free camera that fights against you most of the time. That's Sonic Dream Team. It's a boost game but worse. The only things it has going for it movement-wise are the ridiculous range on the homing attack and uh...slope jumping I guess. That's really about it. It's still kinda fun to play on a basic level but like, would I rather play this if I pitted it against any of the other boost games besides Unleashed and Forces? Absolutely not lmao. Seriously, the lack of a stomp really hurts this game more than it should. Precise platforming is a chore because you don't have an effective way to stop quickly enough. And I know they couldn't add these elements in because, again, it's a mobile game. Everything needs to be extremely simple otherwise your fingers would become a pretzel trying to chain all of these different actions together. I played on a controller during my playthrough, and while it is...marginally better than using the touch screen, it only further reminded me of how much lesser this game is than the other boost titles, but I digress. You can also play as multiple different characters but their unique attributes aren't anything to write home about. Amy and Sonic can lightspeed dash, Tails and Cream can fly with a clunky feeling stamina meter, and Knuckles and Rouge can glide (heavily nerfed and plummets like a rock) and climb walls. You can also swap characters on the fly once you've unlocked them but doing so requires you to come to a complete standstill halting the pace of the stage completely. What's worse is that this is even mandatory for specific acts to complete them.
Despite this, the main levels (I'm talking like, the first stage of the act with the red rings and the blue coins) can be pretty fun and well-designed, once you get the task of “collect 3 keys to progress” taken care of anyway. I particularly had a lot of fun with Ego City and the final couple of acts with Nightmare Maze. Scrambled Shores is...fine as a starting level, does what it needs to do. Dream Factory is...also fine. Aesthetically it looked too much like Sweet Mountain and the most interesting aspect it has to offer is rising and lowering platforms. Wooo. Much like Secret Rings (and because, again, it's a mobile game), Dream Team has multiple missions within each act offering various objectives, from time trials to checkpoint gate races. These wildly vary in terms of actual quality. The "get the dream orb" challenges are pretty good. They typically involve completing a satisfying platforming obstacle gauntlet challenge to get a single dream orb. Short, sweet, and to the point. The time trials and the checkpoint gate races are mainly just an excuse to play the same level again with a slightly different goal. The crystal hunt missions are just bad. I don't have anything positive to say about them. Imagine bumbling around a giant closed-off maze looking for a set number of trinkets. It's about as exhilarating as it sounds. The game at least looks pretty nice for a mobile game and the animated intro is fantastic. The animated cutscenes are surprisingly really REALLY impressive and invoke an expressive fluid style of animation we haven't seen since...geez, Rise of Lyric on the Wii U. The problem is that there are only like, 5 cutscenes in the game and the rest of the game's story presentation is in comic book slide show mode with voice over. Hearing Michelle Ruff as Cream again was kinda jarring but I guess it's mainly due to how long she's been from this character. Sadly I don't have much to say on the soundtrack aside from the main theme and the final boss theme. It's fine I guess, nothing terrible to listen to but it just feels like background noise a lot of the time.
Again, for a mobile game, it's pretty interesting and a good step for Hardlight to develop something truly special; but as is, I dunno if I'd ever want to go back to it instead of replaying the dozens of other Sonic games I already have a lot of fun with. Such is the mobile curse.
Hardlight's newest mobile endeavor is indeed an ambitious title for a mobile game. A fully 3D platforming-focused Sonic game is something I'm kind of surprised hasn't already been attempted at this point...though considering most of Hardlight's other titles are more simple pick-up-and-play arcade-y high score-based affairs, it's easy to see why this hasn't been attempted before. I've seen a lot of backlash against this game being Apple Arcade exclusive, and while I do agree that offering the title to more people that can play it is a good thing to do, those asking for a legitimate console port...guys, c'mon...it's a mobile game.
Should start there before I talk about anything else I suppose. Sonic Dream Team is a mobile game at its core and it is fundamentally hindered by being an experience crafted for mobile. What do I mean by this you may ask? Imagine a typical 3D Boost game (the kind that's roughly similar to Frontiers, Colors, Gens, etc) except with a pathetically weak boost, no airboost, no stomp or slide, no wall jumping, and a free camera that fights against you most of the time. That's Sonic Dream Team. It's a boost game but worse. The only things it has going for it movement-wise are the ridiculous range on the homing attack and uh...slope jumping I guess. That's really about it. It's still kinda fun to play on a basic level but like, would I rather play this if I pitted it against any of the other boost games besides Unleashed and Forces? Absolutely not lmao. Seriously, the lack of a stomp really hurts this game more than it should. Precise platforming is a chore because you don't have an effective way to stop quickly enough. And I know they couldn't add these elements in because, again, it's a mobile game. Everything needs to be extremely simple otherwise your fingers would become a pretzel trying to chain all of these different actions together. I played on a controller during my playthrough, and while it is...marginally better than using the touch screen, it only further reminded me of how much lesser this game is than the other boost titles, but I digress. You can also play as multiple different characters but their unique attributes aren't anything to write home about. Amy and Sonic can lightspeed dash, Tails and Cream can fly with a clunky feeling stamina meter, and Knuckles and Rouge can glide (heavily nerfed and plummets like a rock) and climb walls. You can also swap characters on the fly once you've unlocked them but doing so requires you to come to a complete standstill halting the pace of the stage completely. What's worse is that this is even mandatory for specific acts to complete them.
Despite this, the main levels (I'm talking like, the first stage of the act with the red rings and the blue coins) can be pretty fun and well-designed, once you get the task of “collect 3 keys to progress” taken care of anyway. I particularly had a lot of fun with Ego City and the final couple of acts with Nightmare Maze. Scrambled Shores is...fine as a starting level, does what it needs to do. Dream Factory is...also fine. Aesthetically it looked too much like Sweet Mountain and the most interesting aspect it has to offer is rising and lowering platforms. Wooo. Much like Secret Rings (and because, again, it's a mobile game), Dream Team has multiple missions within each act offering various objectives, from time trials to checkpoint gate races. These wildly vary in terms of actual quality. The "get the dream orb" challenges are pretty good. They typically involve completing a satisfying platforming obstacle gauntlet challenge to get a single dream orb. Short, sweet, and to the point. The time trials and the checkpoint gate races are mainly just an excuse to play the same level again with a slightly different goal. The crystal hunt missions are just bad. I don't have anything positive to say about them. Imagine bumbling around a giant closed-off maze looking for a set number of trinkets. It's about as exhilarating as it sounds. The game at least looks pretty nice for a mobile game and the animated intro is fantastic. The animated cutscenes are surprisingly really REALLY impressive and invoke an expressive fluid style of animation we haven't seen since...geez, Rise of Lyric on the Wii U. The problem is that there are only like, 5 cutscenes in the game and the rest of the game's story presentation is in comic book slide show mode with voice over. Hearing Michelle Ruff as Cream again was kinda jarring but I guess it's mainly due to how long she's been from this character. Sadly I don't have much to say on the soundtrack aside from the main theme and the final boss theme. It's fine I guess, nothing terrible to listen to but it just feels like background noise a lot of the time.
Again, for a mobile game, it's pretty interesting and a good step for Hardlight to develop something truly special; but as is, I dunno if I'd ever want to go back to it instead of replaying the dozens of other Sonic games I already have a lot of fun with. Such is the mobile curse.
2019
This is literally just Sonic Forces Speed Battle except they're in cars now.
I managed to get a free trial to Apple Arcade specifically to try out Sonic Dream Team. After finishing it I thought to myself, "Yeah might as well", and played a bit of Sonic Racing before I went and cancelled it. Good thing I decided to do this too, because...woof, this ain't much of a game I'll tell you that much.
I've already said it in the intro statement but Sonic Racing really is just Sonic Forces Speed Battle again. Only this time, you're in a car. You collect and upgrade your weapons through lootcrates or by the tickets you earn, you progress by racing and unlock new characters and tracks by gaining trophies (though for a huge chunk of the game you're facing nothing but bots), and the gameplay is very, VERY simple. It's a weird mishmash of a typical watered-down mobile racing game and trying to cram Team Sonic Racing's teamwork mechanics into an experience that cannot take advantage of it. Slipstreams, Skimboosts, Item Transferring, etc are not universal mechanics anymore; instead, they're single abilities given to individual characters you can add to your team. Even if you wanted to try and effectively support your allies like you could in TSR, you can't, because the AI in this game is genuinely dumb as rocks and the mechanics are too simplistic to be engaged with dynamically. As far as I'm aware, you can't even fire items backward. Not helping things is the track design being so laughably basic to accommodate for the fact that this is a mobile game.
This is better than Mario Kart Tour at least, but that's not exactly saying a whole lot now, is it?
I managed to get a free trial to Apple Arcade specifically to try out Sonic Dream Team. After finishing it I thought to myself, "Yeah might as well", and played a bit of Sonic Racing before I went and cancelled it. Good thing I decided to do this too, because...woof, this ain't much of a game I'll tell you that much.
I've already said it in the intro statement but Sonic Racing really is just Sonic Forces Speed Battle again. Only this time, you're in a car. You collect and upgrade your weapons through lootcrates or by the tickets you earn, you progress by racing and unlock new characters and tracks by gaining trophies (though for a huge chunk of the game you're facing nothing but bots), and the gameplay is very, VERY simple. It's a weird mishmash of a typical watered-down mobile racing game and trying to cram Team Sonic Racing's teamwork mechanics into an experience that cannot take advantage of it. Slipstreams, Skimboosts, Item Transferring, etc are not universal mechanics anymore; instead, they're single abilities given to individual characters you can add to your team. Even if you wanted to try and effectively support your allies like you could in TSR, you can't, because the AI in this game is genuinely dumb as rocks and the mechanics are too simplistic to be engaged with dynamically. As far as I'm aware, you can't even fire items backward. Not helping things is the track design being so laughably basic to accommodate for the fact that this is a mobile game.
This is better than Mario Kart Tour at least, but that's not exactly saying a whole lot now, is it?
Insomniac come up with substantial extra content that isn’t just recycled tired busywork challenge: impossible.
Jeez man what a complete and utter waste of time. I will say this; if you liked the original game (and I mean, REALLY liked it), then you’ll like this DLC, as it’s just…more of the original game. It has the same production values as the base game with all the really high quality cutscenes and whatnot so you’re not being skimped on that department. However, as someone who didn’t like the base game, having to play more of it in the most repetitive and unimaginative way isn’t exactly what I’m frothing at the mouth for. None of the stories were interesting (in fact I outright hated the first part with Black Cat) and all of the content presented is more of the same copy pasted open world schlock that I already hated in the first game. More enemy base assaults, more bland collectables to find, more challenge arenas, it’s like they’ve learned absolutely nothing and just went full steam ahead by doubling down. And it’s like this for every single DLC. Sure there are the introductions of like, 1 new enemy type per DLC part but apart from the kinda annoying brutes with miniguns none of them are anything to write home about either. The Screwball challenges have a somewhat interesting spin on them compared to the Taskmaster challenges but I swear the scoring thresholds change on a whim whenever they feel like it. One combat challenge had me get a perfect rank by stringing together a long continuous combo and using photobomb areas whenever I could, but another in part 2 demanded that I only KO people in photobomb sections to maximize score and it didn’t care about combo strings at all, or even if I took damage. Not to mention Screwball as a character is about as endearing as doing a cannonball dive onto a cactus. I swear to god if I have to hear her utter the phrase “photobomb!!!!!!!” one more time, I am personally going to develop an EMP that deletes Twitch off of the internet permanently.
This DLC in general is just exhausting to complete. Nothing interesting or worthwhile happens throughout any of it. Not exactly the best sign when the highlights of this entire package are the off camera phone conversations between Peter and Miles. And I know what you’re gonna say, “well why did you go ahead and play/beat the DLC if you didn’t like it?”. You know what? That’s a great question. I guess maybe it’s just very rare for me to abandon games I don’t like. I usually end up finishing everything I play no matter what.
Hearing Keith Silverstein as Hammerhead was very funny though. It’s literally just his Torbjörn voice except without the Swedish accent.
Jeez man what a complete and utter waste of time. I will say this; if you liked the original game (and I mean, REALLY liked it), then you’ll like this DLC, as it’s just…more of the original game. It has the same production values as the base game with all the really high quality cutscenes and whatnot so you’re not being skimped on that department. However, as someone who didn’t like the base game, having to play more of it in the most repetitive and unimaginative way isn’t exactly what I’m frothing at the mouth for. None of the stories were interesting (in fact I outright hated the first part with Black Cat) and all of the content presented is more of the same copy pasted open world schlock that I already hated in the first game. More enemy base assaults, more bland collectables to find, more challenge arenas, it’s like they’ve learned absolutely nothing and just went full steam ahead by doubling down. And it’s like this for every single DLC. Sure there are the introductions of like, 1 new enemy type per DLC part but apart from the kinda annoying brutes with miniguns none of them are anything to write home about either. The Screwball challenges have a somewhat interesting spin on them compared to the Taskmaster challenges but I swear the scoring thresholds change on a whim whenever they feel like it. One combat challenge had me get a perfect rank by stringing together a long continuous combo and using photobomb areas whenever I could, but another in part 2 demanded that I only KO people in photobomb sections to maximize score and it didn’t care about combo strings at all, or even if I took damage. Not to mention Screwball as a character is about as endearing as doing a cannonball dive onto a cactus. I swear to god if I have to hear her utter the phrase “photobomb!!!!!!!” one more time, I am personally going to develop an EMP that deletes Twitch off of the internet permanently.
This DLC in general is just exhausting to complete. Nothing interesting or worthwhile happens throughout any of it. Not exactly the best sign when the highlights of this entire package are the off camera phone conversations between Peter and Miles. And I know what you’re gonna say, “well why did you go ahead and play/beat the DLC if you didn’t like it?”. You know what? That’s a great question. I guess maybe it’s just very rare for me to abandon games I don’t like. I usually end up finishing everything I play no matter what.
Hearing Keith Silverstein as Hammerhead was very funny though. It’s literally just his Torbjörn voice except without the Swedish accent.
2022
Y'know, I think I finally figured out why I have this massive distaste for Fortnite and why I'll likely never truly get into it.
It starts by luring you with all these big events and crazy wacky crossovers. "WHOOA LOOK EVERYBODY, PETER GRIFFIN AND MIGUEL O'HARA ARE DOING THE CHUNGUS SHUFFLE, ISN'T THAT COOL AND WACKY?!?! COME AND JOIN THE PARTY!!!". You see all these characters from across various media coming together and doing silly dances. It's enticing, to say the least. Heck, The Weeknd got added in somehow, so I was already more tempted than ever to return...
...and then when you actually get to playing the game it's filled with some of the most splatty and unsatisfying gunplay I think I've ever seen in a multiplayer shooter and unlocking any cosmetics worth anything either takes an obscene amount of grinding or is locked by an actual paywall. Most of my victory royales came from hiding in remote corners and waiting for everyone else to finish killing each other before picking off the rest.
Can't say I'm not surprised I guess.
It starts by luring you with all these big events and crazy wacky crossovers. "WHOOA LOOK EVERYBODY, PETER GRIFFIN AND MIGUEL O'HARA ARE DOING THE CHUNGUS SHUFFLE, ISN'T THAT COOL AND WACKY?!?! COME AND JOIN THE PARTY!!!". You see all these characters from across various media coming together and doing silly dances. It's enticing, to say the least. Heck, The Weeknd got added in somehow, so I was already more tempted than ever to return...
...and then when you actually get to playing the game it's filled with some of the most splatty and unsatisfying gunplay I think I've ever seen in a multiplayer shooter and unlocking any cosmetics worth anything either takes an obscene amount of grinding or is locked by an actual paywall. Most of my victory royales came from hiding in remote corners and waiting for everyone else to finish killing each other before picking off the rest.
Can't say I'm not surprised I guess.
Those who know me will recognize how much I admire innovative and unique ideas in a game. I mean heck, look at what my favorite horror game of all time is and you’ll see what I mean. However, I feel there comes a point where the innovation isn’t enough to sustain an otherwise lackluster game, and thus that brings us to the topic of Spirit Camera.
For the record, I haven’t played a single Fatal Frame game. I know that this game is a spin-off of that series but outside of this title, I know nothing about Fatal Frame as a series. This is all I have to go off it. I have a vague understanding of the premise: you use a special camera to take pictures of the supernatural and fight off ghosts, but that’s all I know. This game in particular is entirely controlled by the 3DS’s camera. You use button controls for contextual actions but by and large, the camera is the main way you interact with the game. This game also comes with a special booklet with surprisingly high-quality illustrations and creepy artwork, and this book is needed for the game to work. Without the book, you can’t play the game. The main premise is that you interact with the book by using the 3DS camera to project images models and events in the real world, similar to the AR games you screwed around with for 5 minutes before never touching them again. Turning that into a horror game is a super creative idea, using the camera to make different creepy events unfold, solve different puzzles, and view pages in the book differently or more interactively.
In terms of combat, I don’t know how well this game translates Fatal Frame’s combat to the 3DS, but from my experience, it was fun enough. Tracking ghosts to build up power and releasing that built-up power right as they attacked for a strong counter was decently enjoyable…if a little clumsy. The combat, of course, uses the 3DS camera as your weapon, and the Ghosts are projected into your house. You essentially need to play this game like you play the special stages in the 3DS version of Sonic Lost World: by tilting and moving the system up and down and all around. It worked for what it was and that’s all I can say about it in the end. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly say the same for the game itself.
While the premise is very creative, this is way too technologically demanding of a title for the poor 3DS to handle. Perhaps soon with VR or something I can see this concept coming to fruition, but for a 2012 3DS title, it just wasn’t feasible at all. Like, yeah, it “works” on a surface level but it’s way too jank to be considered immersive by any stretch of the imagination. The book needs to be placed in an extremely well-lit room to even work, already ruining the sense of atmosphere it might’ve been going for, but even then, I’ve documented countless times where the 3DS failed to read the book or it struggled to trigger events outright because I wasn’t viewing it in the exact angle it wanted. That boss encounter with the hands felt outright broken with how the game wanted me to keep rotating the book to face them as they rotated unnaturally, and again this is ON TOP of the book frequently not being read by the 3DS while this fight occurred. This is why the regular camera fights work a lot better as they don’t rely on the book to work, but they’re still plagued by the 3DS’s camera being as sluggish and as dim as it is, and the fact that fighting supernatural demons in my bedroom with Sonic the Hedgehog posters and my sweet gaming PC and Xbox Series X setups in the background don’t capture the immersive atmosphere I think they were hoping for. The puzzles aren’t much to write home about, the most you do with these is tilting the book in a specific direction for the solution to work. Other than that, you use different lenses to view puzzles differently but the game tells you when to use them so they aren’t used in any creative way either. The game also kinda runs like crap, a part of it is because of the 3DS's camera not being very good at all but playing it feels fairly sluggish all things considered.
The campaign is also pathetically short. I managed to beat the main story mode in a couple of hours, and the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the main campaign. You do get a hard mode where Maya dresses in a different outfit and the ghosts you fight take and deal more damage. Still only takes around 1-2 hours to beat, and that’s IF you’re going for the optional collectibles the game pops up periodically. There are a couple of gimmicky photo filters where you can take a picture of your surroundings and it overlays a PNG of a creepy image. That’s about it. There are a couple of minigames to play with increasing difficulty modes but half of them are ripped straight out of the main campaign. There’s just not much content to keep you satisfied, and this is on top of the plethora of issues the main campaign already has. Again, cool idea and I love the effort that went into this little project so I’ll give it some brownie points for that, but was just too ambitious of an idea to be fully realized.
For the record, I haven’t played a single Fatal Frame game. I know that this game is a spin-off of that series but outside of this title, I know nothing about Fatal Frame as a series. This is all I have to go off it. I have a vague understanding of the premise: you use a special camera to take pictures of the supernatural and fight off ghosts, but that’s all I know. This game in particular is entirely controlled by the 3DS’s camera. You use button controls for contextual actions but by and large, the camera is the main way you interact with the game. This game also comes with a special booklet with surprisingly high-quality illustrations and creepy artwork, and this book is needed for the game to work. Without the book, you can’t play the game. The main premise is that you interact with the book by using the 3DS camera to project images models and events in the real world, similar to the AR games you screwed around with for 5 minutes before never touching them again. Turning that into a horror game is a super creative idea, using the camera to make different creepy events unfold, solve different puzzles, and view pages in the book differently or more interactively.
In terms of combat, I don’t know how well this game translates Fatal Frame’s combat to the 3DS, but from my experience, it was fun enough. Tracking ghosts to build up power and releasing that built-up power right as they attacked for a strong counter was decently enjoyable…if a little clumsy. The combat, of course, uses the 3DS camera as your weapon, and the Ghosts are projected into your house. You essentially need to play this game like you play the special stages in the 3DS version of Sonic Lost World: by tilting and moving the system up and down and all around. It worked for what it was and that’s all I can say about it in the end. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly say the same for the game itself.
While the premise is very creative, this is way too technologically demanding of a title for the poor 3DS to handle. Perhaps soon with VR or something I can see this concept coming to fruition, but for a 2012 3DS title, it just wasn’t feasible at all. Like, yeah, it “works” on a surface level but it’s way too jank to be considered immersive by any stretch of the imagination. The book needs to be placed in an extremely well-lit room to even work, already ruining the sense of atmosphere it might’ve been going for, but even then, I’ve documented countless times where the 3DS failed to read the book or it struggled to trigger events outright because I wasn’t viewing it in the exact angle it wanted. That boss encounter with the hands felt outright broken with how the game wanted me to keep rotating the book to face them as they rotated unnaturally, and again this is ON TOP of the book frequently not being read by the 3DS while this fight occurred. This is why the regular camera fights work a lot better as they don’t rely on the book to work, but they’re still plagued by the 3DS’s camera being as sluggish and as dim as it is, and the fact that fighting supernatural demons in my bedroom with Sonic the Hedgehog posters and my sweet gaming PC and Xbox Series X setups in the background don’t capture the immersive atmosphere I think they were hoping for. The puzzles aren’t much to write home about, the most you do with these is tilting the book in a specific direction for the solution to work. Other than that, you use different lenses to view puzzles differently but the game tells you when to use them so they aren’t used in any creative way either. The game also kinda runs like crap, a part of it is because of the 3DS's camera not being very good at all but playing it feels fairly sluggish all things considered.
The campaign is also pathetically short. I managed to beat the main story mode in a couple of hours, and the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the main campaign. You do get a hard mode where Maya dresses in a different outfit and the ghosts you fight take and deal more damage. Still only takes around 1-2 hours to beat, and that’s IF you’re going for the optional collectibles the game pops up periodically. There are a couple of gimmicky photo filters where you can take a picture of your surroundings and it overlays a PNG of a creepy image. That’s about it. There are a couple of minigames to play with increasing difficulty modes but half of them are ripped straight out of the main campaign. There’s just not much content to keep you satisfied, and this is on top of the plethora of issues the main campaign already has. Again, cool idea and I love the effort that went into this little project so I’ll give it some brownie points for that, but was just too ambitious of an idea to be fully realized.
2021
I overall forgot how fun this game is. Does it innovate or provide any crazy revelations for the platforming genre? Not really no, but it succeeds in two key areas: it's fun to play and it's very well designed. Mario 3D World is essentially what I'm looking for when I'm playing a Mario game; great course design that never overstays its welcome, fun level gimmicks, fun powerups, fantastic music, and in the Switch version the movement speed is cranked up to 11. Perhaps one could argue that the original Wii U courses weren't designed well for this speed increase but that just makes it all the more fun to sequence break stages and whatnot. This game also has a ridiculous amount of content packed into it with a plethora of extra stages to play after finishing the game, and a secret final level that's actually challenging (looking at you Odyssey). I'm not willing to 100% the entire game just yet as getting top of the flagpole with every single character in every stage sounds extremely tedious and repetitious so all green stars and stamps are good enough for me I guess.
Who knew that my favorite entry in the Mario franchise would be the one where he turns into a cat
Who knew that my favorite entry in the Mario franchise would be the one where he turns into a cat
2022
I'm gonna be real here, this game did not deserve to win Multiplayer game of the year 2022 at the Game Awards LOL.
Splatoon 3 is quite possibly the textbook definition of the term "going through the motions". A game purely content squeaking by doing the bare minimum, and somehow still fumbling even that. For those of you keeping score, we are currently on the third installment in the Splatoon franchise, and a particular installment that released on the lifespan of the exact same console that the second game did, and the multiplayer has not fundamentally changed or evolved in any meaningful way. Some of you might see this statement and retort "well what's the big deal? If it ain't broke, don't fix, right?", except no. There's a lot of aspects that Splatoon's multiplayer contained that ARE broke, and they aren't fixed at all from previous entries. Like, for instance, the map rotation system: only being allowed to play 2 maps every 2 hours. Not only is this mind numbingly repetitive, playing the same map (and for ranked gameplay, the same maps and modes) over and over and over again, but as I'll get into later on in the review, the maps themselves aren't even good to begin with. Even the Overwatch team ended up realizing that map pools are a bad idea and eventually did away with them altogether during Overwatch 2. Splatoon 3 currently has substantially less content in comparison and yet it still decides to...limit content at the same time? I genuinely don't get it. But that's not even the worst of it, no. The worst part of Splatoon 3's multiplayer is that it's so agonizingly SLOOOOOOOW. Not necessarily in terms of getting into and out of a match, these elements are fine. I'm talking purely progression, leveling up, getting new weapons, gear and clothing items. First off even if you've already played Splatoon 2 before (which the game does recognize if you have save data from that game or not and unlocks ranked mode early because of it), the game STILL insists on gatekeeping literally everything from you and pulls the "oh you need to be at least level 4 to get anything" garbage. Leveling up in any capacity, whether it be your player level or your catalogue level takes ages. If I need to play like 30+ matches back to back with a double XP buff activated from a snack ticket and I still haven't gotten from level 7 to 8 yet, that's a bit of a major problem. Progressing in any capacity in this game is a massive grind, an issue they still haven't really addressed since the first game. Even when you DO level up it doesn't really feel like you've accomplished anything, it feels like you've waded through a thick waist high swamp for about 3 hours, you get to the surface to grab a bit of candy as a reward, and afterwards you gotta do the whole wading game all over again. I wouldn't go so far as to label it as an endurance test, but man that's really what it feels like sometimes. 3 being a dated grind fest that barely feels any different than the other entries in any way shape or form would be one thing, but if you ask me it also managed to make multiplayer elements of the previous games even worse if you ask me. The matchmaking for instance is all types of borked. You either queue into matches were you absolutely stomp the enemy team, or you're the ones getting stomped. Those are the two extremes, no in between. It's basically been every single match. Turf war either feels too lethargic and easy or too sweaty and tryhard. On top of this, too many matches get canceled completely because someone disconnected last second immediately after a match started. I kid you not, 3 matches in a row were canceled because someone DC'd, further compounding the sluggish grindy progression system.
The worst offense out of all of what they changed, however, are the new maps. The map design in this game for whatever reason took a massive hit and pretty much 90% of them are the exact same in terms of design philosophy: linear hallways funneling everyone into the center where team fights typically break out. It's bad enough that the maps are all designed like straight shots with barely any room to add creative high ground opportunities or vertical structures (in fact half of the map areas are unable to be inked at all), but it's even worse that we're basically stuck with 2 of these maps at a time for 2 hours. I genuinely cannot think of a single aspect that Splatoon 3 added to improve the multiplayer experience outside of being able to practice your weapon in the lobby room. I legitimately was just not having fun with 3's incredibly lackluster multiplayer experience. Outside of multiplayer, Salmon Run is essentially unchanged, just with a few additional mini bosses. You do get an addition of a ton of new cosmetics to collect and equip, and the catalogue is the equivalent of a battle pass (though thankfully it's free with no option to pay for it). There's also a brand new card game that I must've played for a grand total of 5 times before never touching the thing again. Here's the thing: by the third game, you should have something that innovates and improves upon the previous products. Splatoon 3 doesn't really do anything to innovate and improve on what came before, instead content to cruise by not really doing much of anything. It's quite ironic, in fact, how much this game uses the term "fresh" despite nothing about this game containing anything of the sort. That is except for one thing of course: the campaign.
Yeah, I was as surprised as you were. The campaigns of the previous Splatoon games were a whole lot of nothing. Meandering excuses to give the games single player content and nothing else. It took until the Octo Expansion DLC for the single player to become something interesting. And wouldn't you know it, but the story mode of this game is a lot like Octo Expansion! I do like how it's a complete bait and switch too: it makes you think you're just playing a typical point A to point B level based campaign just like the previous 2 games, until after you face the first boss, the game completely pulls the rug out from under you and fully reveals the cards in its hand. It's a challenge based story mode with a variety of gimmicks and objectives for each stage, the hub worlds that hold these stages are filled with secret items and text logs for added lore, you even get a fully fledged skill tree! A lot of challenges were also crafted for a lot of the special weapons: for instance, that borderline useless Zipcaster special weapon in the multiplayer has challenges built around zipping from building to building in a snappy fashion, it's a lot of fun. The bosses could stand to be a bit better and the game kind of ends up lore dumping everything on you at the end when I felt it could've been more evenly spaced out, but I'm surprised at how much fun I had with Splatoon 3's campaign.
In a way, this is an interesting though unfortunate inverse of Splatoon 2; wheras that game had a mediocre forgettable single player campaign with a beefy and fun multiplayer, this game has a fun and inventive single player campaign with a sluggish dull overly grind-y multiplayer. Sucks that it had to leave the portion of Splatoon that by far has the most amount of content out for the wolves. Perhaps they'll finally start to improve and innovate the multiplayer when the inevitable 4th entry happens, because if they don't then I'll REALLY be in a state of utter dumbfounded shock. Or maybe I won't. Kind of hard to tell at this point.
Do not spend $60 on this game. I would hope they discounted it by now but I don't know.
Splatoon 3 is quite possibly the textbook definition of the term "going through the motions". A game purely content squeaking by doing the bare minimum, and somehow still fumbling even that. For those of you keeping score, we are currently on the third installment in the Splatoon franchise, and a particular installment that released on the lifespan of the exact same console that the second game did, and the multiplayer has not fundamentally changed or evolved in any meaningful way. Some of you might see this statement and retort "well what's the big deal? If it ain't broke, don't fix, right?", except no. There's a lot of aspects that Splatoon's multiplayer contained that ARE broke, and they aren't fixed at all from previous entries. Like, for instance, the map rotation system: only being allowed to play 2 maps every 2 hours. Not only is this mind numbingly repetitive, playing the same map (and for ranked gameplay, the same maps and modes) over and over and over again, but as I'll get into later on in the review, the maps themselves aren't even good to begin with. Even the Overwatch team ended up realizing that map pools are a bad idea and eventually did away with them altogether during Overwatch 2. Splatoon 3 currently has substantially less content in comparison and yet it still decides to...limit content at the same time? I genuinely don't get it. But that's not even the worst of it, no. The worst part of Splatoon 3's multiplayer is that it's so agonizingly SLOOOOOOOW. Not necessarily in terms of getting into and out of a match, these elements are fine. I'm talking purely progression, leveling up, getting new weapons, gear and clothing items. First off even if you've already played Splatoon 2 before (which the game does recognize if you have save data from that game or not and unlocks ranked mode early because of it), the game STILL insists on gatekeeping literally everything from you and pulls the "oh you need to be at least level 4 to get anything" garbage. Leveling up in any capacity, whether it be your player level or your catalogue level takes ages. If I need to play like 30+ matches back to back with a double XP buff activated from a snack ticket and I still haven't gotten from level 7 to 8 yet, that's a bit of a major problem. Progressing in any capacity in this game is a massive grind, an issue they still haven't really addressed since the first game. Even when you DO level up it doesn't really feel like you've accomplished anything, it feels like you've waded through a thick waist high swamp for about 3 hours, you get to the surface to grab a bit of candy as a reward, and afterwards you gotta do the whole wading game all over again. I wouldn't go so far as to label it as an endurance test, but man that's really what it feels like sometimes. 3 being a dated grind fest that barely feels any different than the other entries in any way shape or form would be one thing, but if you ask me it also managed to make multiplayer elements of the previous games even worse if you ask me. The matchmaking for instance is all types of borked. You either queue into matches were you absolutely stomp the enemy team, or you're the ones getting stomped. Those are the two extremes, no in between. It's basically been every single match. Turf war either feels too lethargic and easy or too sweaty and tryhard. On top of this, too many matches get canceled completely because someone disconnected last second immediately after a match started. I kid you not, 3 matches in a row were canceled because someone DC'd, further compounding the sluggish grindy progression system.
The worst offense out of all of what they changed, however, are the new maps. The map design in this game for whatever reason took a massive hit and pretty much 90% of them are the exact same in terms of design philosophy: linear hallways funneling everyone into the center where team fights typically break out. It's bad enough that the maps are all designed like straight shots with barely any room to add creative high ground opportunities or vertical structures (in fact half of the map areas are unable to be inked at all), but it's even worse that we're basically stuck with 2 of these maps at a time for 2 hours. I genuinely cannot think of a single aspect that Splatoon 3 added to improve the multiplayer experience outside of being able to practice your weapon in the lobby room. I legitimately was just not having fun with 3's incredibly lackluster multiplayer experience. Outside of multiplayer, Salmon Run is essentially unchanged, just with a few additional mini bosses. You do get an addition of a ton of new cosmetics to collect and equip, and the catalogue is the equivalent of a battle pass (though thankfully it's free with no option to pay for it). There's also a brand new card game that I must've played for a grand total of 5 times before never touching the thing again. Here's the thing: by the third game, you should have something that innovates and improves upon the previous products. Splatoon 3 doesn't really do anything to innovate and improve on what came before, instead content to cruise by not really doing much of anything. It's quite ironic, in fact, how much this game uses the term "fresh" despite nothing about this game containing anything of the sort. That is except for one thing of course: the campaign.
Yeah, I was as surprised as you were. The campaigns of the previous Splatoon games were a whole lot of nothing. Meandering excuses to give the games single player content and nothing else. It took until the Octo Expansion DLC for the single player to become something interesting. And wouldn't you know it, but the story mode of this game is a lot like Octo Expansion! I do like how it's a complete bait and switch too: it makes you think you're just playing a typical point A to point B level based campaign just like the previous 2 games, until after you face the first boss, the game completely pulls the rug out from under you and fully reveals the cards in its hand. It's a challenge based story mode with a variety of gimmicks and objectives for each stage, the hub worlds that hold these stages are filled with secret items and text logs for added lore, you even get a fully fledged skill tree! A lot of challenges were also crafted for a lot of the special weapons: for instance, that borderline useless Zipcaster special weapon in the multiplayer has challenges built around zipping from building to building in a snappy fashion, it's a lot of fun. The bosses could stand to be a bit better and the game kind of ends up lore dumping everything on you at the end when I felt it could've been more evenly spaced out, but I'm surprised at how much fun I had with Splatoon 3's campaign.
In a way, this is an interesting though unfortunate inverse of Splatoon 2; wheras that game had a mediocre forgettable single player campaign with a beefy and fun multiplayer, this game has a fun and inventive single player campaign with a sluggish dull overly grind-y multiplayer. Sucks that it had to leave the portion of Splatoon that by far has the most amount of content out for the wolves. Perhaps they'll finally start to improve and innovate the multiplayer when the inevitable 4th entry happens, because if they don't then I'll REALLY be in a state of utter dumbfounded shock. Or maybe I won't. Kind of hard to tell at this point.
Do not spend $60 on this game. I would hope they discounted it by now but I don't know.
2013
Playing this on my trip to Japan visiting SEGA's Joypolis is an experience I don't think I'll ever forget. And no, I'm not at all salty I got 6th place. W...why do you ask?
This review contains spoilers
Before I start this review I’m gonna go on a somewhat unrelated tangent: for the love of all that’s holy, do NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES buy anything digital from Best Buy. I am warning you now for your own sanity. Buy physical media there all you want, whatever, that’s well and good, but DO NOT buy any digital products from them whatsoever. So, here’s a fun story, just kidding it’s actually incredibly aggravating, but my sister got me the DLC for Pokémon violet for my birthday recently. She purchased the card from Best Buy and the receipt contained the online code to download said DLC, otherwise the card itself it a useless hunk of plastic. Here’s the thing though: she never got the code. Ever. It was never on the receipt and we checked her junk or spam in case it got lost somewhere: nothing. There was no code to be found anywhere, either on the receipt she received or in any section of her junk or spam email. So, I took this up with Best Buy and the best they could do is shrug their shoulders and go “Whoop, sorry! Nothin’ we can do about it!”. The card was effectively worthless. To make matters worse, we had to wait an entire MONTH for our bank to process a refund for the stupid thing. After the refund was processed, I decided to purchase the DLC myself using the same card my sister bought it on, this time making sure the receipt would be sent to my personal email so I have full control over viewing what comes in. I purchased the card, and…nothing. No receipt was even sent my way. Went to talk to Best Buy about this once again and once again they were all like “Whoop, sorry! Nothin’ we can do about it!”. I was flabbergasted. I eventually got so frustrated that I gave up and after refunding the product once again, I purchased the product from GameStop instead, and what do you know? They provided a PHYSICAL RECIEPT this time, and not only that, but the receipt HAD THE CODE PRINTED ON IT FRONT AND CENTER FIRST TRY!!!!!!! Who would’ve thought that would work huh? So yeah, don’t buy anything digital from Best Buy. Save yourselves the headache and just get any DLC from games like these from other local game stores, I’m begging you. Now that my tirade has gone on long enough, I guess it’s time to actually TALK about the DLC itself, yeah?
If you haven’t already read my Backloggd review of Pokémon Violet, I’ll give you a basic cliffnotes version. I still maintain that the game is fun and has the potential to be something truly great: The characters are outstanding. I still love all of your classmate friends Nemona, Penny and ESPECIALLY Arven and the relationship they all share with each other and the protagonist. The story is really well done, the game truly gives you the freedom to progress the way you want to progress, the new Pokémon are almost all winners, Terastallizing is quite possibly the best gimmick Pokémon has introduced thus far, the list goes on. There’s just one problem that compromises everything I just mentioned: the games are blatantly unfinished. They look like crap, run even worse and are filled to the brim with bugs and glitches. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that this is probably the one of the worst performing Switch games ever released, if not THE worst. Even worse is how this was sold at full price with a $60 tag in spite of all of this. With how shockingly awful the presentation is and how putrid the performance is, what should be some of the best games in the franchise get dragged down to the status of “pretty good with a HUGE asterisk at the end”, which is a damn shame. I’d still play this any day of the week over Sword and Shield and, heck, even Legends Arceus didn’t really do a whole lot for me after I beat it. But in its current state, no matter how much I sing its praises, I can’t recommend it to anyone with the amount of issues it has with that kind of price tag. The games were so unfinished and bug riddled that Nintendo themselves offered a public apology stating that they would eventually improve the game’s problems. However, despite this claim, here we are with the first official DLC release and…that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, to jump the gun here a bit, this DLC somehow, beyond all reasonable possibilities, performs even WORSE than the base game. I wish I were making this up; a huge chunk of my Violet playthrough felt like I was walking through molasses, sections constantly dipping under 20 fps and making the game essentially play in slow motion for most of it. In the Teal Mask however, it’s pretty much runs like this throughout THE ENTIRE DLC. I don’t think it ever once lets up or improves which is…admittedly pretty impressive. I didn’t think it was possible to make this game perform even worse but here we are I guess.
Anyway, on to the DLC contents itself. Sadly, to my disappointment, Nemona Penny and Arven are not in this DLC in any capacity which sucks. Hopefully they’ll be in the next part. For this field trip you get a bunch of no name personality-less NPC students to accompany you to the land of Kitakami, a region inspired by rural Japan. As someone who recently took a trip to Japan last summer, I appreciated what they were going for with this region and I did enjoy the land’s aesthetic. I also appreciated the new outfits that came with the DLC, the jinbei you wear is cute even if it kinda murdered my character’s hairstyle and I had to travel back to Paldea to restore her hair to what it originally was lol. The new outfits outside of that are limited but also pretty good. The main objective I would want out of a DLC expansion for Pokémon Violet, an objective I would set before playing this mind you, would be to create a brand-new experience while still retaining everything that was good about the base game: that being a great story, great characters, freedom to do whatever you want with a variety of things to do, and a ton of new Pokémon to catch. Unfortunately, this DLC just feels so much lesser than the base game in each of these individual areas. We’ll start with the new characters and story: we have 3 new characters, 2 being the “main” characters/rivals accompanying you with one being available in an optional side mission. The rivals you get are siblings Carmine and Kieran, students at the blueberry academy (which we’ll get to in the next part of the DLC) and natives to Kitakami. They were…fine, I guess. Carmine is the typical hotheaded jerk rival that eventually befriends you at the end, although she isn’t really rude or aggressive towards you per say, she’s more standoffish like Arven though on a higher level. She does have reasonings for why she is the way she is and eventually realizes the error of her ways. She was fine; the one thing I didn’t like about her was how…aggressive she is towards her little brother. Granted most of it feels like typical sibling bickering but there’s a lot of moments that feel downright kinda uncomfortable, both with her suddenly snapping and Kieran’s response afterwards. Speaking of Kieran, he started out pretty good. He’s this super shy socially awkward kid that slowly befriends and forms a bond with you with how outgoing you are, but eventually situations unfold that feel very forced, and he instead does a heel faced turn and becomes extremely jealous of you and super self-doubting of himself. Maybe these plot threads will tie up in the second part of the DLC but first impressions of these characters so far are not exactly the greatest. They aren’t Nemona Penny or Arven that’s for certain. Perrin was cool though. I liked her story and personality/backstory quite a bit, and her survey minigame was cute as well. That being said needing to catch 150 Pokémon to get to that point is more than a bit tedious, I only ended up doing so out of morbid curiosity.
The story also just kinda exists. Again, it’s mostly centered around Kieran, Carmine, and the local legends of Kitakami, how the legends aren’t “exactly as they appear”. And while it was fun to listen to them and to have revealed the true story of really happened, that’s really all that ends up happening in this entire story. The Loyal Three show up for a bit to cause trouble, they’re swiftly dealt with, and that’s about all that comes from it. The main bulk of the story is mostly dealing with Kieran’s shenanigans. Again, the second part will probably expand more on this plot point so it’s likely to be still ongoing but the first part didn’t really “hook” me so to speak. That wouldn’t be so bad if I felt that there was more stuff to do in the story but there just aren’t. The region of Kitakami is much much smaller than Paldea, which makes sense I suppose but I also feel there’s nowhere near as much to explore and experience with this region outside of the main campaign. There’s this one minigame you can play at the festival that I played once and didn’t really feel the need to play again. That’s really about it. Again, Perrin has a pretty neat side section but it’s fairly short and you need to grind 150 Pokédex entries in order to access it at all. There’s not really any new Pokémon to speak of outside of Ogrepon, who is pretty cool, and the Loyal Three, who are imo very bland, same-y and uninteresting in design. There are a lot of returning mons from previous gens, and while I do love me some Yanmega and Staraptor, there’s a reeeeeeally high amount of flying Pokémon hanging around Kitakami from my experience. So much so that for a bit, when I crafted a new team from scratch, 5/6 of my party consisted of nothing but part flying type Pokémon. Applin got a new evolution (not really something I care for since I don’t like the Pokémon in general or any of its evolutionary lineup) and Polteageist got a new regional form (I know it’s technically a separate species according to the Pokédex but still, eh. Not super invested in that lineup either). The music was really good at least, glad they kept to that tradition from Violet.
At the end of the day, I didn’t necessarily HATE my time with the Teal Mask DLC, I just wasn’t that impressed with what I managed to experience. It’s fine, but that’s really all I can say about it to be honest. It doesn’t play into the strengths the base game had, and the new stuff it accomplishes is, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly throughout this review, fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully the second part will offer more exciting content to delve into.
If you haven’t already read my Backloggd review of Pokémon Violet, I’ll give you a basic cliffnotes version. I still maintain that the game is fun and has the potential to be something truly great: The characters are outstanding. I still love all of your classmate friends Nemona, Penny and ESPECIALLY Arven and the relationship they all share with each other and the protagonist. The story is really well done, the game truly gives you the freedom to progress the way you want to progress, the new Pokémon are almost all winners, Terastallizing is quite possibly the best gimmick Pokémon has introduced thus far, the list goes on. There’s just one problem that compromises everything I just mentioned: the games are blatantly unfinished. They look like crap, run even worse and are filled to the brim with bugs and glitches. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that this is probably the one of the worst performing Switch games ever released, if not THE worst. Even worse is how this was sold at full price with a $60 tag in spite of all of this. With how shockingly awful the presentation is and how putrid the performance is, what should be some of the best games in the franchise get dragged down to the status of “pretty good with a HUGE asterisk at the end”, which is a damn shame. I’d still play this any day of the week over Sword and Shield and, heck, even Legends Arceus didn’t really do a whole lot for me after I beat it. But in its current state, no matter how much I sing its praises, I can’t recommend it to anyone with the amount of issues it has with that kind of price tag. The games were so unfinished and bug riddled that Nintendo themselves offered a public apology stating that they would eventually improve the game’s problems. However, despite this claim, here we are with the first official DLC release and…that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, to jump the gun here a bit, this DLC somehow, beyond all reasonable possibilities, performs even WORSE than the base game. I wish I were making this up; a huge chunk of my Violet playthrough felt like I was walking through molasses, sections constantly dipping under 20 fps and making the game essentially play in slow motion for most of it. In the Teal Mask however, it’s pretty much runs like this throughout THE ENTIRE DLC. I don’t think it ever once lets up or improves which is…admittedly pretty impressive. I didn’t think it was possible to make this game perform even worse but here we are I guess.
Anyway, on to the DLC contents itself. Sadly, to my disappointment, Nemona Penny and Arven are not in this DLC in any capacity which sucks. Hopefully they’ll be in the next part. For this field trip you get a bunch of no name personality-less NPC students to accompany you to the land of Kitakami, a region inspired by rural Japan. As someone who recently took a trip to Japan last summer, I appreciated what they were going for with this region and I did enjoy the land’s aesthetic. I also appreciated the new outfits that came with the DLC, the jinbei you wear is cute even if it kinda murdered my character’s hairstyle and I had to travel back to Paldea to restore her hair to what it originally was lol. The new outfits outside of that are limited but also pretty good. The main objective I would want out of a DLC expansion for Pokémon Violet, an objective I would set before playing this mind you, would be to create a brand-new experience while still retaining everything that was good about the base game: that being a great story, great characters, freedom to do whatever you want with a variety of things to do, and a ton of new Pokémon to catch. Unfortunately, this DLC just feels so much lesser than the base game in each of these individual areas. We’ll start with the new characters and story: we have 3 new characters, 2 being the “main” characters/rivals accompanying you with one being available in an optional side mission. The rivals you get are siblings Carmine and Kieran, students at the blueberry academy (which we’ll get to in the next part of the DLC) and natives to Kitakami. They were…fine, I guess. Carmine is the typical hotheaded jerk rival that eventually befriends you at the end, although she isn’t really rude or aggressive towards you per say, she’s more standoffish like Arven though on a higher level. She does have reasonings for why she is the way she is and eventually realizes the error of her ways. She was fine; the one thing I didn’t like about her was how…aggressive she is towards her little brother. Granted most of it feels like typical sibling bickering but there’s a lot of moments that feel downright kinda uncomfortable, both with her suddenly snapping and Kieran’s response afterwards. Speaking of Kieran, he started out pretty good. He’s this super shy socially awkward kid that slowly befriends and forms a bond with you with how outgoing you are, but eventually situations unfold that feel very forced, and he instead does a heel faced turn and becomes extremely jealous of you and super self-doubting of himself. Maybe these plot threads will tie up in the second part of the DLC but first impressions of these characters so far are not exactly the greatest. They aren’t Nemona Penny or Arven that’s for certain. Perrin was cool though. I liked her story and personality/backstory quite a bit, and her survey minigame was cute as well. That being said needing to catch 150 Pokémon to get to that point is more than a bit tedious, I only ended up doing so out of morbid curiosity.
The story also just kinda exists. Again, it’s mostly centered around Kieran, Carmine, and the local legends of Kitakami, how the legends aren’t “exactly as they appear”. And while it was fun to listen to them and to have revealed the true story of really happened, that’s really all that ends up happening in this entire story. The Loyal Three show up for a bit to cause trouble, they’re swiftly dealt with, and that’s about all that comes from it. The main bulk of the story is mostly dealing with Kieran’s shenanigans. Again, the second part will probably expand more on this plot point so it’s likely to be still ongoing but the first part didn’t really “hook” me so to speak. That wouldn’t be so bad if I felt that there was more stuff to do in the story but there just aren’t. The region of Kitakami is much much smaller than Paldea, which makes sense I suppose but I also feel there’s nowhere near as much to explore and experience with this region outside of the main campaign. There’s this one minigame you can play at the festival that I played once and didn’t really feel the need to play again. That’s really about it. Again, Perrin has a pretty neat side section but it’s fairly short and you need to grind 150 Pokédex entries in order to access it at all. There’s not really any new Pokémon to speak of outside of Ogrepon, who is pretty cool, and the Loyal Three, who are imo very bland, same-y and uninteresting in design. There are a lot of returning mons from previous gens, and while I do love me some Yanmega and Staraptor, there’s a reeeeeeally high amount of flying Pokémon hanging around Kitakami from my experience. So much so that for a bit, when I crafted a new team from scratch, 5/6 of my party consisted of nothing but part flying type Pokémon. Applin got a new evolution (not really something I care for since I don’t like the Pokémon in general or any of its evolutionary lineup) and Polteageist got a new regional form (I know it’s technically a separate species according to the Pokédex but still, eh. Not super invested in that lineup either). The music was really good at least, glad they kept to that tradition from Violet.
At the end of the day, I didn’t necessarily HATE my time with the Teal Mask DLC, I just wasn’t that impressed with what I managed to experience. It’s fine, but that’s really all I can say about it to be honest. It doesn’t play into the strengths the base game had, and the new stuff it accomplishes is, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly throughout this review, fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully the second part will offer more exciting content to delve into.
2016
I finally get it. I finally get why the ridiculous of Titanfall 2 fans won't shut up about this game. And keep in mind I only played the campaign, I haven't even touched the multiplayer.
Titanfall 2's campaign is one of the most creative and fun FPS campaigns I think I've ever played. The movement is fantastic (and I'm just talking base movement, I'm not even mentioning the ridiculous amount of speedrun tech out there) and the game hides secrets behind a plethora of platforming challenges involving wall running. Come to think of it there's a LOT of platforming in this FPS game which I'm all for. I dunno if it's sad or impressive that this game has much better platforming than a variety of actual platformers that I've played, particularly the earlier era of 3D platformers. You can take a guess which ones I'm mentioning. Sadly couldn't care less about the story as it was all sorts of bleh but that kinda gives them an excuse to go nuts with the level objectives and gimmicks. This game has some of the most creative and wickedly cool stage gimmicks I've seen in ANY game, let alone an FPS campaign; that time travel level legit had me geeking out throughout the entire stage. The environments you travel through are unique and often lead to some fun and varied design as well, whether it be a factory assembling houses with a conveyer taking you from arena to arena, or a construction site with cranes moving parts of the arenas you fight in. The giant Titans were fun but not really anything special: you get a bunch of them with different abilities and weapons and while it felt gratifying, I'd rather just stick with the mobile wall running soldier personally.
The only negative I can possibly give this game is that it requires an EA account to play on Steam and it legit harasses you every time you log into your PC. It's not quite pure malware, but considering it's EA it might as well be.
Titanfall 2's campaign is one of the most creative and fun FPS campaigns I think I've ever played. The movement is fantastic (and I'm just talking base movement, I'm not even mentioning the ridiculous amount of speedrun tech out there) and the game hides secrets behind a plethora of platforming challenges involving wall running. Come to think of it there's a LOT of platforming in this FPS game which I'm all for. I dunno if it's sad or impressive that this game has much better platforming than a variety of actual platformers that I've played, particularly the earlier era of 3D platformers. You can take a guess which ones I'm mentioning. Sadly couldn't care less about the story as it was all sorts of bleh but that kinda gives them an excuse to go nuts with the level objectives and gimmicks. This game has some of the most creative and wickedly cool stage gimmicks I've seen in ANY game, let alone an FPS campaign; that time travel level legit had me geeking out throughout the entire stage. The environments you travel through are unique and often lead to some fun and varied design as well, whether it be a factory assembling houses with a conveyer taking you from arena to arena, or a construction site with cranes moving parts of the arenas you fight in. The giant Titans were fun but not really anything special: you get a bunch of them with different abilities and weapons and while it felt gratifying, I'd rather just stick with the mobile wall running soldier personally.
The only negative I can possibly give this game is that it requires an EA account to play on Steam and it legit harasses you every time you log into your PC. It's not quite pure malware, but considering it's EA it might as well be.
2021
This review contains spoilers
How do you make me even slightly uninvested with a game about skating across Black Holes on the verge of eating entire civilizations? That's actually kind of impressive.
I always was curious about Solar Ash when I first saw footage of it but...come to think of it, maybe the footage I saw was more different than I remember it being. Actually sitting down to play it was certainly an experience. Mostly good but man does this game lose steam almost halfway through the game. I know it sounds like I'm being more harsh right out of the gate so it's best if I explain the premise. Solar Ash is a platformer where you complete little micro challenges around an open ended area, and completing all of them unlocks a giant titanic monster to fight as the area's boss. Rinse and repeat around like like 5-6 times (forgot exactly how many areas there were) and that's about all it has to offer. The platforming challenges center around this black sludge, and staying on it for too long causes it to heat up and incinerate you. You basically need to hit these syringes embedded in the sludge in a certain order as quickly as possible (as the sludge heating up is now on a timer as soon as you hit these) in order to complete a challenge. These black sludge syringes are also the exact same with the boss fights, you need to platform across their massive bodies hitting the syringes in sequential order 3 times in order to take it down. Despite being the main challenges (and by proxy the ONLY challenges this game has to offer), they are pretty fun. They have sort of a "made it by the skin of your teeth" kind of vibe; because the timing's often pretty tight it does feel satisfying to complete a challenge, especially on hard mode. The main problem is...this is all the game really has to offer. Don't misunderstand me, there are other THINGS to do in this game but they feel more incidental by comparison. The exploration either amounts to audio logs that are laughable to say the least, fragments of your crewmate’s suits, or other side quest objectives that mainly are just there for achievement fodder and that's about it. You do get a special ability for collecting all the parts of a suit but the abilities in question are negligible passive upgrades in different areas. Like for instance the powers you can get from these suits amount to "deal a bit more damage", "gain more currency" (particularly useless considering that the only thing you can buy with currency is your energy shield slots and I was already near maxed on shields when I found this suit.), "slightly lower cooldown on your boosters", etc. The platforming challenges are all the game really has to offer, and to give credit Rei actually controls fairly well. She can skate around these fluffy cloud floors, boost and double jump and (thankfully) has a ledge grab though sometimes that ledge grab hasn't been the most responsive to activate. She can also grind rails and grapple pull to nearby objects but these are more so contextual abilities. While she feels good to control and all, I dunno...nothing about this movement system really WOWS me. There's not really any room for creative expression with the abilities you have. You don't even get a wall run JSR style or anything which should've been a no brainer personally. The speed you gain isn't that great either, unless you enjoy mashing the boost button over and over again.
I think the worst thing about this movement system is that the environments weren't really accommodated for it. Sounds a bit weird to say that but hear me out: the platforming challenges THEMSELVES are built around Rei's movement and capabilities; the space that lies in BETWEEN these challenges are not. These areas just sort of...exist. The most you're gonna be doing in these cloud areas are, what else, mashing the boost button until you can get to the next platforming challenge. Nothing much happens here. You do have a sort of anti-gravity effect where you roam around an area contained within a sphere and one challenge could be on the other side of the sphere, but nothing creative or interesting is done with this system. This issue is even further compounded by certain later game areas being way WAY too big for their britches. The Mirrorsea area was just so dull and meandering because it took too long to get from point A to point B, and the constant toxic sludge made the controller rumble so violently for such a long frequency that I actively got sick of it and needed to turn down the rumble frequency in the settings, something I NEVER once do in a game. I might sound corny for saying this, but man Sonic Frontiers really did spoil me when it comes to more open-ended designed platformers. I could do a billion other things with Frontiers’ moveset, Spindashing and leaping over large chunks of terrain, rail launching, doing little tricks in the air, getting distracted by a huge variety of bite sized challenges or puzzles on the way to the challenge I was headed to anyway, whereas here I can just…mash boost and eventually head to my destination. That’s about it.
Man though, don’t even get me started on the story. I have never been more disconnected and uninvested with a game’s story than I have been with this game. None of the characters are interesting in the slightest, the dialogue borderlines both “bland” and “Marvel tier” (Rei’s AI companion does this whole thing where “beep boop haha I do not understand sarcasm or figure of speech talk I am a robot beep boop” multiple times). You have a story with a bleak environment and setting, remnants of civilizations torn apart by this monstrous black hole with environmentalist undertones, a message about, more or less, the denial of grief and refusing to change course even when the circumstances become more and more dire. An interesting concept if, again, the characters were more interesting than a plank of wood. I never once felt a connection to Rei or any of the Voidrunner members because their characterization and dialogue is just so bland and forgettable. And for that matter, if Echo was, all this time, a part of Rei being trapped by the endless cycle of the Starseed and she constantly knew what would keep happening every single time, then why didn’t she just…explain everything to Rei at the very beginning of the game? As far as I’m aware, there wasn't really anything stopping her from doing this. This game probably would’ve been over a lot faster if you didn’t speak cryptic trailer-ese and if you didn’t keep crushing Rei after every encounter. Just…saying.
Overall though while I did have fun with Solar Ash, I can’t help but feel like it’s lacking a lot of things. The platforming challenges, while fun, are pretty much all the game has to offer and the structure does get fairly repetitious after a while. The visuals are psychedelic, colorful and pretty, and I even think the idea of having the platforming be built around the remnants of lost civilizations consumed by the Black Hole is a really cool idea (Broken Capital in particular was a standout highlight imo), but the story is too uninteresting to make any of these areas truly worthwhile.
Also side note, but if one of your characters’ names is something along the lines of “Tarragon Danderpaws” I legitimately cannot take it seriously I’m sorry LMAO
I always was curious about Solar Ash when I first saw footage of it but...come to think of it, maybe the footage I saw was more different than I remember it being. Actually sitting down to play it was certainly an experience. Mostly good but man does this game lose steam almost halfway through the game. I know it sounds like I'm being more harsh right out of the gate so it's best if I explain the premise. Solar Ash is a platformer where you complete little micro challenges around an open ended area, and completing all of them unlocks a giant titanic monster to fight as the area's boss. Rinse and repeat around like like 5-6 times (forgot exactly how many areas there were) and that's about all it has to offer. The platforming challenges center around this black sludge, and staying on it for too long causes it to heat up and incinerate you. You basically need to hit these syringes embedded in the sludge in a certain order as quickly as possible (as the sludge heating up is now on a timer as soon as you hit these) in order to complete a challenge. These black sludge syringes are also the exact same with the boss fights, you need to platform across their massive bodies hitting the syringes in sequential order 3 times in order to take it down. Despite being the main challenges (and by proxy the ONLY challenges this game has to offer), they are pretty fun. They have sort of a "made it by the skin of your teeth" kind of vibe; because the timing's often pretty tight it does feel satisfying to complete a challenge, especially on hard mode. The main problem is...this is all the game really has to offer. Don't misunderstand me, there are other THINGS to do in this game but they feel more incidental by comparison. The exploration either amounts to audio logs that are laughable to say the least, fragments of your crewmate’s suits, or other side quest objectives that mainly are just there for achievement fodder and that's about it. You do get a special ability for collecting all the parts of a suit but the abilities in question are negligible passive upgrades in different areas. Like for instance the powers you can get from these suits amount to "deal a bit more damage", "gain more currency" (particularly useless considering that the only thing you can buy with currency is your energy shield slots and I was already near maxed on shields when I found this suit.), "slightly lower cooldown on your boosters", etc. The platforming challenges are all the game really has to offer, and to give credit Rei actually controls fairly well. She can skate around these fluffy cloud floors, boost and double jump and (thankfully) has a ledge grab though sometimes that ledge grab hasn't been the most responsive to activate. She can also grind rails and grapple pull to nearby objects but these are more so contextual abilities. While she feels good to control and all, I dunno...nothing about this movement system really WOWS me. There's not really any room for creative expression with the abilities you have. You don't even get a wall run JSR style or anything which should've been a no brainer personally. The speed you gain isn't that great either, unless you enjoy mashing the boost button over and over again.
I think the worst thing about this movement system is that the environments weren't really accommodated for it. Sounds a bit weird to say that but hear me out: the platforming challenges THEMSELVES are built around Rei's movement and capabilities; the space that lies in BETWEEN these challenges are not. These areas just sort of...exist. The most you're gonna be doing in these cloud areas are, what else, mashing the boost button until you can get to the next platforming challenge. Nothing much happens here. You do have a sort of anti-gravity effect where you roam around an area contained within a sphere and one challenge could be on the other side of the sphere, but nothing creative or interesting is done with this system. This issue is even further compounded by certain later game areas being way WAY too big for their britches. The Mirrorsea area was just so dull and meandering because it took too long to get from point A to point B, and the constant toxic sludge made the controller rumble so violently for such a long frequency that I actively got sick of it and needed to turn down the rumble frequency in the settings, something I NEVER once do in a game. I might sound corny for saying this, but man Sonic Frontiers really did spoil me when it comes to more open-ended designed platformers. I could do a billion other things with Frontiers’ moveset, Spindashing and leaping over large chunks of terrain, rail launching, doing little tricks in the air, getting distracted by a huge variety of bite sized challenges or puzzles on the way to the challenge I was headed to anyway, whereas here I can just…mash boost and eventually head to my destination. That’s about it.
Man though, don’t even get me started on the story. I have never been more disconnected and uninvested with a game’s story than I have been with this game. None of the characters are interesting in the slightest, the dialogue borderlines both “bland” and “Marvel tier” (Rei’s AI companion does this whole thing where “beep boop haha I do not understand sarcasm or figure of speech talk I am a robot beep boop” multiple times). You have a story with a bleak environment and setting, remnants of civilizations torn apart by this monstrous black hole with environmentalist undertones, a message about, more or less, the denial of grief and refusing to change course even when the circumstances become more and more dire. An interesting concept if, again, the characters were more interesting than a plank of wood. I never once felt a connection to Rei or any of the Voidrunner members because their characterization and dialogue is just so bland and forgettable. And for that matter, if Echo was, all this time, a part of Rei being trapped by the endless cycle of the Starseed and she constantly knew what would keep happening every single time, then why didn’t she just…explain everything to Rei at the very beginning of the game? As far as I’m aware, there wasn't really anything stopping her from doing this. This game probably would’ve been over a lot faster if you didn’t speak cryptic trailer-ese and if you didn’t keep crushing Rei after every encounter. Just…saying.
Overall though while I did have fun with Solar Ash, I can’t help but feel like it’s lacking a lot of things. The platforming challenges, while fun, are pretty much all the game has to offer and the structure does get fairly repetitious after a while. The visuals are psychedelic, colorful and pretty, and I even think the idea of having the platforming be built around the remnants of lost civilizations consumed by the Black Hole is a really cool idea (Broken Capital in particular was a standout highlight imo), but the story is too uninteresting to make any of these areas truly worthwhile.
Also side note, but if one of your characters’ names is something along the lines of “Tarragon Danderpaws” I legitimately cannot take it seriously I’m sorry LMAO