A game that once i started it made me feel a total respect towards the silent hill team, even more after the first one.

When i started Silent Hill 2, i was left with an annoyed taste because of the whole apartments area, because it was so so so confusing for me, it didn't give me justice, i was about to actually drop the game, but i choose to be patient, and damn how happy i am for making this decision.
Such a beautiful, mysterious, tragic, eerie and depressing game. Filled with beautiful yet depressing scenery, amazing puzzles, flawless characters that i can say with no doubt i prefer more than the ones in silent hill 1, even though SH1 for me is also, flawless, cool combat, even though sometimes very very picky and risky, cool enemies, amazing bosses, fantastic soundtrack, good voice acting (for me, at least, it did set up the right atmosphere), and overall an amazing experience.
You can totally see how this game takes itself so seriously yet you have things like UFO ending and DOG endings, it's like back then the developers just knew how to keep the players busy and interested in playing the game multiple times only to get an avchievement, and I so so so so respect that.
This game just tutned out to be something way more amazing than i thought it would be.
Playing it on stream maybe made me look dumb, but in the end I had to much fun with it.

(Also i cried a bit when Mary was reading the poem in the ending, the voice acting is SO FUCKING GOOD, god, it actually made me tear up and feel even more depressed(

I’ll confess: I’ve never beaten a single Zelda game in my life. Sure, I grew up a Nintendo kid playing almost nothing but Mario and Pokemon, but for some reason I never really felt enticed to give Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed series a serious shot. I’ve tried out the opening hours of Wind Waker (something that I desperately need to finish one of these days) and have played plenty of scattered hours of Ocarina of Time at a friend’s house, and yet it wasn’t enough considering the series has eluded me until now. So, it felt like a solid challenge to cap off 2023, given my recent run with time loop adventure games… and that poyfuh recommended the game to me over a year ago. It took a while to muster up the commitment, but I finally got there! Feel free to take my readings here with a grain of salt given my lack of nostalgia for Zelda, but hopefully I can bring something different to the table by focusing on what impact it had upon a relative newcomer.

For lack of better words, The Legend of Zelda is an adventure game series. Maybe the adventure game series. Quite a few good friends and users I closely follow have commented about how Zelda is really a mish-mosh of different genres, which in essence forms the adventure game. Innuendo Studios has defined this as “games that tell stories using puzzles,” though this is a very loose definition as both narratives and puzzles take many different forms. Essentially, the genre has become a blanket term that has come to incorporate many different types of games. Zelda, as the platonic encapsulation of adventure games, has as a result, come to include many different types of genre-specific gameplay in one cohesive product. To sum this up, here’s a bit that I’ve jokingly brought up with friends: every game is basically Zelda, because Zelda is basically every game.

What I’m trying to say here, is that Majora’s Mask, much like the rest of Zelda, is not so much about any one single game mechanic so much as the coalescence of them all. No one particular element is going to stand out as exceptional because many games before and after have surpassed them, but the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Much like how a classic adventure game is a fusion of different game mechanics, Majora’s Mask focuses on the intersection of different narratives and activities to evoke “the adventurer’s spirit.” It’s very easy to be critical of specific mechanics and ideas presented within the game in isolation (and I absolutely will be due to my point of reference), but they nevertheless come together to create a game unlike any other.

I suppose the easiest way to explain the premise of Majora’s Mask is to describe it as a cross between a metroidvania (item/ability gating) and a mystroidvania (knowledge gating). The time loop facilitates both of these aspects: as Link repeats the three-day cycle to gather information regarding Termina’s workings, he also gains new key items (both classic Zelda tools like the Hookshot and masks to wear/transform), learns new songs for his ocarina, and gains access to new areas and allies that can further aid his progress. The pressing issue then, is that Majora’s Mask doesn’t fully lean into the strengths of either genre.

Majora’s Mask feels underwhelming when compared to traditional metroidvanias, because key items feel underutilized. Much of this is due to the lock-and-key nature of the puzzles. Classic Zelda games focused on items with multiple facets via both dealing damage in fights and traversal/exploration: one classic example is the hookshot, which can let Link grapple up towards wooden surfaces/chests while also acting as a ranged weapon capable of pulling items and enemies towards him. However, Majora’s Mask focuses on the collection of masks as the vast majority of key items, and most are used for one exact situation (i.e. Don Gero’s mask lets you talk to frogs) and nothing else. Additionally, the masks aren’t very balanced in terms of utility, as some masks are useless once obtained (i.e. the Troupe Leader’s mask) while some are so conventionally strong that you’ll be constantly relying upon them (i.e. the Bunny Hood increases Link’s running speed and agility, so it’s a godsend for general traversal and boss fights).

On the other hand, Majora’s Mask also feels a little lacking as a mystroidvania, because there’s relatively little observation involved when compared to similar titles. The Bomber’s Notebook is your main tool is your main tool to keep track of everyone’s schedules across the three-day time loop, but it’s a bit limited in scope. There’s only twenty inhabitants recorded with schedules, and of those twenty, at least a fourth of them can be stamped as resolved by simply speaking to them once at the right time with the right item/mask. In fact, there’s only two side-questlines that force Link to commit to strict and specific time limits across the three-day cycle (Kafei and the main Romani Ranch quest). As a result, completing the Bomber’s Notebook is surprisingly straightforward, and usually doesn’t require more than one iteration of the time loop to follow and solve each case, given that Link has the appropriate items on hand when necessary.

That's not to say that the time loop is a net negative in the scope of Majora’s Mask, but rather that in comparison to other time loop games since then, it doesn’t capitalize as much in its execution. For example, there is very little usage of the time loop in regards to its four main dungeons. As Scamsley has pointed out, the presence of a time loop should lend naturally to speedrunning (via both knowledge gating to clear the dungeon faster with skips and ability-gating to use obtained items for shortcuts), but this is more or less made redundant by beating the dungeon’s boss, as the game is content giving you a direct teleport to refight dungeon bosses in subsequent resets instead. Additionally, almost all of the time-sensitive content is located within Clock Town; while it’s quite satisfying figuring out how schedules play out in the main hub, it feels like a squandered opportunity to not include enough specifically timed events elsewhere to fully utilize the three-day cycle. The presence of owl statues throughout the map sort of speaks to this; rather than have the player spend time traversing on foot and potentially stumble upon other time sensitive events, the developers would prefer for players to jump to whatever destinations they had in mind as to avoid wasting time in areas where these time-sensitive quests didn’t exist.

On top of all of this is a general clunkiness that exists between many of the game’s various systems. There’s just enough quality-of-life to where the game feels thoughtful for its time, but also plenty of wasted time here and there that made me wonder if the developers could have gone a little further. The sheer number of key items in the menu is a huge culprit; with only three key item slots accessible at any time (and the ocarina/three transformation masks constantly taking up slots), the player is constantly roaming through the four menu screens to select the appropriate item for each situation, and it’s made worse because most items are used once and then immediately replaced as a stream of inventory puzzles. There’s also a ton of downtime from having to watch the same cutscenes over and over even if you’ve seen them in previous loops, and from being subjected to the same non-skippable Song of Soaring animation every time you teleport to an owl statue. At the very least, you can skip the mask transformations once viewed for the first time. Parsing through the three-day cycle can also be a bit annoying; the Song of Double Time does at least let you skip a full twelve hours ahead to the start of each day/night cycle, but oftentimes the timed events in question begin at midnight or midday, meaning that you’ll have to wait around for a few in-game hours since the Song of Double Time plants you at 6 AM/PM. Finally, I think it’s an interesting idea resetting the player’s rupee and general ammo count (i.e. bombs, arrows, Deku Nuts, etc) with each new loop while allowing the player to farm pre-existing Rupee chests that have been opened in previous cycles. However, while there is a bank that allows the player to store Rupees between loops, there’s no item storage facility to stockpile ammo between loops, meaning that the player will likely spend a few minutes at the start of each loop whacking bushes and enemies for basic resources (or at least eat into the player’s account to buy supplies at shops, if they don’t spend time farming chests for the Rupees instead).

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when trying to judge Majora’s Mask against today’s standards of what we consider a “good” adventure game. I do have other scattered complaints, such as boss fights being generally underwhelming (I might have legitimately spent more time fighting dungeon mini-bosses than the four main masked bosses themselves), certain tedious side-games like the RNG-heavy Dampé grave digging or the Goron race with rubber-banding AI, a few overused mini-bosses such as having to fight Wizzrobe six different times, and how outside of the Stone Temple, mask abilities are never satisfyingly blended together in puzzles/quests. The cherry on top of all this is the presence of the Stone Mask, which I’d say is a bit too good since it lets you completely ignore most dungeon enemies. That in itself made me question the quality of that one forced stealth section in Great Bay; if the optimal solution is to wear a mask which lets you outright ignore the entire system, then should it even exist? Even from the perspective of someone who’s never cleared a Zelda game before, I find myself nodding in agreement when others claim that Majora’s Mask shows its age a bit more than Ocarina of Time.

But that’s not really why we play Zelda games, right? Despite the clunkiness of some mechanics and the many areas of potential improvement, many of us are willing to sit through and accept these flaws because the general experience is the selling point. The obvious argument to be made is that while plenty of MM’s mechanics feel undercooked, the actual mechanism of gameplay is constantly shifting about to suit the specific context. In a sense, Majora’s Mask can be viewed as an antecedent to the modern possession game: the basic control scheme remains the same regardless of the mask worn, but the functionality of the basic control scheme differs. This allows the game to stick to a grounded and consistent formula even though Link’s toolkit is constantly evolving on the fly, and while there are occasional moments of jank from certain side-games, most are over in a flash and still contribute positively towards the final goal of gaining enough knowledge and utility to prevent the impending crisis.

Essentially, many of the previously mentioned shortcomings end up inverting in on themselves. While Majora’s Mask has plenty of rough edges due to its rushed development and heavy re-use of assets, it’s these rough edges that lend so much towards its personality. I love how absolutely absurd and deranged the writing becomes, and the adventure game structure lets Majora’s Mask take complete advantage of the situation. One minute you’re tracking down a circus performer so he can spill his life story about joining an animal troupe since humans are also animals, then the next minute you’re fending off these zombie lantern alien ghosts with searchlight eyes so they don’t kidnap your new friend and her cows before the sun rises. The seeming lack of focus with the constant barrage of minigames and side-quests keeps the player constantly guessing what the next twist of events will bring, and the game is more than happy to ask rather than answer questions.

The backing time loop connecting all of these events together is really what drives the message home. Even though it’s absolutely tedious having to watch the same cutscenes over and over again, nothing illustrates the plight of Termina more starkly than forcing players to endlessly relive the day’s events and realizing that they are the only chance this world stands at reaching a new timeline. The ending credits bring such a gratifying emotional rush because the game deliberately withholds any semblance of permanent catharsis until you finally break through. You can’t help everyone in a single time loop, and they will never be free of their troubles until the moon stops falling. Until then, they’ll be hopelessly repeating the same tasks three days at a time, waiting for the dawn of a new day that will never come.

At the end of the day, I could keep finding things to nitpick about Majora’s Mask, but I also can’t imagine the game without these shortcomings since they form an integral part of the game’s identity. The masks might be glorified gimmicks, but they’re fantastic symbolism that are forever carried with you upon your journey even as time is constantly erased, and ultimately strengthen the adventure game aspect by assigning you new tasks to peruse. The time loop might not be fully utilized outside of Clock Town and contain extended gaps of waiting to get to important events, but it’s the forced repetition of the three-day cycle’s events that enforces the gravity of the situation upon the player. Individual characters aside from Skull Kid might not have the fleshed-out backgrounds that I had hoped for, but it’s a non-issue when Majora’s Mask is ultimately the story of Termina itself, formed from the intersecting schedules of all the different characters and elements at play. Separately, I think all of these elements are easily picked apart, but meshed together, they contribute to this pervasive nightmare of abject misery where even in the face of imminent death, fleeting moments of joy and comfort are enough to humanize the fantastical elements of Termina and keep the player moving forward towards a better future.

The story of and surrounding Majora’s Mask fascinates me, especially when learning that director Eiji Aonuma has since expressed regrets regarding its development. I and many others, however, see nothing to be ashamed of with their final product. If anything, Majora’s Mask is classic Nintendo at its core: instead of making a product that was visibly better than its competition, the developers took a chance and sought out to make something that was visibly different. The Wii is often cited as the most prevalent example of this “blue ocean strategy," though I firmly believe that Majora’s Mask was Nintendo’s first notable crack at it. Having to follow-up a game considered by many as the greatest of all time with an even shorter development period was a daunting ask, but as far I’m concerned, they absolutely succeeded. It doesn’t matter that other time loop adventure games have since outclassed their grandfather; there’s simply nothing like Majora’s Mask, and I doubt there ever will be.

On the surface, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX appears to be a pretty faithful remake of the original Blue and Red Rescue Team. It’s the same turn-based dungeon-crawler roguelike Pokemon battling translation that I had grew up with almost two decades ago, coupled with the same storyline and a rearranged orchestral version of the original’s DS soundtrack. Minus the lack of walkable Friend Areas, DX’s atmosphere and core gameplay mechanics seemed accurate to my previous experience of the original games at first, and thus it seemed like a forgone conclusion that I’d naturally enjoy the remake. However, the more I played through the game, the more things felt off.

Further investigation into DX’s inner workings revealed that while DX preserves the core formula of Blue Rescue Team’s structure and basic combat mechanics, much of the surrounding survival mechanics have actually been pulled from the latest iteration of PMD via Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS to “modernize” the mechanics as opposed to adapting mechanics from the original games in Red/Blue Rescue Team or the DS successors in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. I started noticing that in DX, the hunger mechanic felt much more prevalent; my Pokemon’s belly appeared to empty much more quickly than in the originals, and I found myself consuming an Apple every few minutes or so. There’s a variety of changes that contribute to this: the belly decreases by 1/7 of a point every action (instead of 1/10 for Blue and EoS), Max Ethers/Elixirs no longer restore BP, consuming berries & seeds only restore 2 BP as opposed to 5 in the originals, and so on. Similarly, Power Point (PP) management regarding move usage limits became far more grating in DX as opposed to the original. The obvious culprit is removing the standard attack that could be used at any time for a weaker strike that preserved PP (meaning players now have to utilize moves far more often), but to compensate for this, Spike Chunsoft had to supply the player with far more PP restoration items. However, instead of supplying them with Max Elixirs that fully restore PP for all moves used, the most common PP restoration item is now the Max Ether, which only restores PP for a single move. The optimal strategy then, is to spam the same move over and over again so you get the most bang for your buck out of using Max Ethers. Finally, weather feels much more intrusive in the remake as opposed to the originals, because DX removes the ability to naturally heal HP over time during sandstorms/hail if you’re not of a resistant type, meaning that you have to either pack a lot more Oran Berries or waste more time outside of damaging weather to heal up.

None of these changes would feel too problematic in isolation, but together, this results in DX overemphasizing its resource management in comparison to Blue Rescue Team or Explorers of Sky, meaning that overloading your toolbox with the necessary buffers or grinding in easier dungeons to stock up on said buffers is pretty much a given to succeed (especially when Apple/Sticky Traps in dungeons can further spoil your resources). I unfortunately find this shift in focus somewhat ill-fitting to a remake of Blue Rescue Team; while the structure and core gameplay remained the same, the circumstances dictating how the player had to interact with the structure changed, and thus it feels to me like the remake struggled to serve its intended purpose. Needless to say, I’m far more interested in the turn-based combat than the resource management of PMD, and DX felt far more imbalanced to where I felt like I was spending most of my time watching my health/PP/belly and menuing rather than focusing on the play-by-play.

In a broader sense, I’ve said before that Pokemon’s greatest weakness is the presence of excessive RNG and grinding. That’s not to say that these weaknesses were absent from PMD, but rather, PMD often prevailed in the face of bullshit RNG and grinding because of how the game’s structure and gameplay mechanics leaned into them. Once again though, for a remake that seemed faithful on the outside, DX regrettably makes changes that worsen the RNG and grinding to extents that were not necessarily present in the originals.

I’ll come right out and say that I’m not a fan of DX’s changes regarding team size and recruitment. Blue Rescue Team and EoS kept the max party size to four Pokemon at a time (with Blue only letting you bring in three Pokemon at a time while EoS let you bring four; if you wanted a fourth in Blue, it had to be recruited in the dungeon), but DX has a max party size of up to eight Pokemon despite only letting you bring in three recruited members. The short and thick of it is that these recruits are a necessary liability for successful runs. They’re a liability because you have to bring them back through the end of the dungeon run to permanently recruit them on your team (unlike the originals, which let you send them back immediately to base), but keeping them alive will naturally eat into your resources, and letting them faint once they’ve been temporarily recruited as a guest will cause enemy Pokemon to become “awakened” and pose an immediate threat via significant stat increases. It’s also extremely unwieldy to try and micromanage five guests at the same time, especially when you can’t give guest Pokemon exact move commands or control their tactics, and you’ll often find them getting attacked at the end of a single-file line in corridors, unable to lend a helping hand to fend off enemy ambushes. At the same time, these guests can be absolute godsends to runs: they often come with Rare Qualities that affect the entire team, such as Small Stomach (which lets you consume any seed/berry/apple and immediately fills the belly to max capacity) or Strike Back (which lowers the Attack and Special Attack stats of an enemy Pokemon, including bosses, that deals damage to your team). You can’t see what rare qualities an enemy Pokemon may have while fighting them, so it’s in your best interest to recruit as many guests as possible in hopes of getting more Rare Qualities to bolster your team. Essentially, this is yet another resource grind that’s present only in the remake. At best, getting the Rare Quality recruits you need is extremely time-consuming and luck-based, but at least lets you steamroll boss fights. At worst, not getting the Rare Quality recruits you need feels like an active detriment when you’re running low on supplies and the dungeon isn’t giving you the item drops you need to survive.

Perhaps this resource grind would be more forgivable if the level scaling were up to par, but as it stands, I find enemy XP drops during the main game to be rather lacking. You’ll have to stick around and roam entire floors to sufficiently scale up with the enemy Pokemon level increases as the story progresses, and that’s often not the best idea when you’ve only got limited resources in your toolbox to manage HP/PP/BP and you’ll likely end up spotting the stairs before mapping out the entire floor. The best way then, is to train in Makuhita Dojo. This too, has been drastically altered from the original. Instead of challenge-room type and boss mazes, the dojo has been repurposed into a straight XP grindfest. You now have to spend limited tickets to defeat as many enemy Pokemon as you can in a real-time limit (i.e. a Bronze Dojo Ticket gives you 50 seconds of real time), and because experience is significantly multiplied both by the ticket itself (3x for Bronze, 5x for Silver, 7x for Gold) and by using super effective attacks, it’s simply too good to pass up considering the meager XP earnings from story dungeons. Unfortunately, this is also extremely tedious due to the time limits, as excess animations from randomly doubling attacks or outright missing attacks/failing to OHKO from random enemy buffs feels particularly punishing when Dojo tickets are a limited commodity that have to be scored as job rewards or randomly from dungeon treasure chests/mail. It also doesn’t help that the ticket allocation itself is not scaled: you’ll still be receiving Bronze tickets far into the post-game when you’ll likely need to use up 3 or more tickets to level-up, and you can only use one ticket at a time instead of stacking time limits. The result then, is that Makuhita’s dojo outright breaks the difficulty curve of the game: I found myself significantly overleveled during the main story using it, but after the significant difficulty spike during the post-game, it failed to provide much benefit for my main team since I was inundated with Bronze/Silver tickets and thus led to even more time spent grinding both in and outside of dungeons.

Gummis have also been reworked in DX, and are a slight improvement over the original, yet aren't completely rectified. Gummi grinding was likely the weakest aspect of the original games: you needed them to level up the IQ of each individual Pokemon for basic skills such as not stepping on visible traps and not using status moves on Pokemon that have already been statused. Fortunately, these IQ skills have been entirely removed and as a result the AI has been improved significantly: you no longer have to micromanage every single member of your team to avoid making silly mistakes, and in fact teammates can aid you subtly like positioning themselves to target ranged enemies or deviating slightly from the path to pick up floor objects so the leader doesn’t have to pick up every object themselves. That said, gummies still serve a purpose, because they provide random permanent stat boosts (invaluable when level-ups are often just a simple +1 to all stats) and they’re the only way to add/change Rare Qualities attached to your team members. Obtaining gummis is actually more obnoxious than even the original games, because just like Dojo Tickets, they can only be obtained via job rewards or found randomly in treasure chests, and you’ll often need to run through a few just to get the right Rare Quality for a specific team member (or a Rare Quality at all, because Rainbow Gummis are not guaranteed to give a Rare Quality). At least in the original games, you could obtain Gummis as random item drops on dungeon floors.

The above three changes basically represent a trend of changing aspects from the original in a way that left something to be desired, and lead me to believe that the remake is somewhat misguided. It’s quite confusing: sometimes there are obvious improvements, like expanding the toolbox capacity from 20 to 48 (carrying this from Explorers of Time/Darkness forward) and adding in all evolution lines for Pokemon from Generations 1-3 + bringing in new moves that have been added since Gen 8, but then sometimes the game feels far more punishing than difficult in a way that the original never did, like how fainting in dungeons now makes you lose all of your money and items (whereas you’d only lose half of your items in the DS originals and at least in EoS, only lose half of your money), so you really better hope you’ve got the resources to rescue yourself with a second team or someone online spots your request promptly.

What is more damning though, is that for as many things as they did change, there’s a lot of not great things about the original that I’d argue they should have changed/improved upon but didn’t (or at the very least, didn't improve upon enough), such as the aforementioned issue of gummi grinding Ironically, the qualities left in from the original are what led me to realize that Blue/Red Rescue Team are more flawed than I had originally remembered. For example, the original wasn’t great at pacing either (I found myself equally bored in the main-game at times, forced to grind during one particular story-heavy section where I was limited to my protagonist + partner), but I think it was more forgivable at the time given that it was the debut of the series and was greatly improved upon in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. DX feels far more egregious in context now that I have several points of comparison, for not fixing a lot of the grinding/RNG issues of the original (and in fact exacerbating a few of them) and transitioning the at-least involved main-story into an underwhelming post-game narrative, of which 80% can be summed up as “fight this powerful Pokemon because you can.” Take this with a grain of salt since my point of view is colored from extensively playing the original (albeit, almost a decade and a half ago), but I unfortunately found my time spent during the main story to be quite forgettable (as I breezed through the dungeons with little difficulty) and a good chunk of the post-game to be aggravatingly tedious while I scaled up my team to better deal with the far more competent foes and spongier bosses.

I suppose I did eventually come around on the post-game nevertheless, considering that at the time of writing I’ve now logged just over sixty hours on my save file. It’s a pity that it took hours of forgettable missions and grinding (instead of the game adequately scaling my gains throughout the story’s runtime) to get to that point and that my satisfaction was in spite of rather than as a result of the altered resource management (since these elements become minimal once you have the right Rare Qualities and a stockpile of Perfect Apples/Max Elixirs to throw at the problem), but a few of the game’s climatic dungeons really do bring out the best qualities of PMD’s gameplay. One dungeon that stands out is Meteor Cave: in it, you are constantly assaulted by infinite waves of different Deoxys forms that force you to consider the totality of your actions, considering each form has significantly stratified stats/moves that must be dealt with promptly before you run out of resources due to Pressure doubling your PP usage. In just twenty floors, this dungeon where you cannot be rescued challenged me in ways that Silver Trench couldn’t do in ninety-nine. This isn’t even my favorite dungeon in the game though: surprisingly, that title goes to Purity Forest. Considered by many to be the toughest dungeon in the game, Purity Forest drops you in with no items, no Poke, and only one team member, resetting your level to five and forcing you to fight and earn your way out to even hope to survive against fully evolved Pokemon by the end of your run. The caveat to my final hours savored in the game was that I had to slog through multiple other ninety-nine floor dungeons around the same time as tackling Purity Forest (and it doesn’t help that two of them, Wish Cave and Joyous Tower, are basically Purity Forest Jr since the only differences are that Wish Cave lets you bring items + teammates and Joyous Tower only lets you bring teammates), but ultimately, I can at least say I finished my run on a high note, even if I felt like my run was diluted somewhat by the lackluster pacing and never quite hit the perfect difficulty until the very end.

So the big question remains: do I recommend Rescue Team DX? While I ultimately got some enjoyment out of the game, I'm conflicted regarding its overall quality and lean towards no. All things considered, I don’t really know what audience this game appeals to or if it even excels in any particular category. Newbies will likely find this game too hard and too grindy during the main story, while veterans will likely find this game initially too easy and too grindy during the post-game. DX introduces enough quality-of-life changes, but it also doesn’t change certain exasperating elements from the original (or in some cases, outright fumbles the bag) and makes me question if the remake was necessary in the first place. The climactic gameplay, once the player gets past any resource and leveling barriers, is fantastic, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, is dragged down by a layer of RNG and grinding that often feels more tedious than challenging. Finally, I'd say that the story’s adequate given its time, but it can’t hold a candle to the emotional peaks reached by Explorers of Sky (due in part to Sky’s side stories).

If anything, my time with DX has confirmed that I see modern Pokemon games far differently than I once did as a kid. Obvious statements aside, I find that I tend to view the newer Pokemon games (of the ones I’ve played anyways, as I only have a few hours in Sword/Shield and haven’t touched Scarlet/Violet) more as sandboxes than well-rounded experiences. Granted, it might be a little unfair to assign this to a remake of a 2005 DS/GBA game, and it doesn’t even sound like a significant issue at first given that I’m usually able to dig deep and find the player motivation to thoroughly approach games on their own terms. That said, I would also say that there was once a time where Pokemon games excelled in both world-building/atmosphere and gameplay (Explorers of Sky being the obvious candidate), and as such it’s hard to see DX as anything but a personal disappointment at best. Even so, it might not be my ideal experience, but I’m still glad that others were able to fully savor what DX brings to the table even if I’m stuck in the past reminiscing about the glory days of PMD, and that’s okay too.

I had a rough start with Hypnospace Outlaw. The opening hour led me to believe it was first and foremost anti-capitalist satire, and when the game resisted my actions made under this assumption, I was frustrated. The premise alone, sleep being commodified in the name of productivity, sounds dystopian. The tutorial introduces your role as an online moderator, which you perform by reporting violations such as copyright infringement and harassment. You’re told that, although you can submit a report once you meet the report quota, you can earn a cash prize for each violation reported beyond this quota. This immediately brought to mind a similar mechanic in Papers, Please, which incentivizes you to detain people whenever possible for a commission. Sure, in Hypnospace you’re only paid in hypnocoins which explicitly have no real-world value, and sure, there’s no backstory about how I have to feed and house my starving family, but come on! I went in expecting to have my morals pushed and was ready to wield (and abuse) my authority.

That’s not what Hypnospace Outlaw is.

While struggling to deal with the game’s second case, centering around harassment in the teen forum, I was forced to realize what Hypnospace Outlaw was actually trying to do. I’d found a lead about a site called “The Dumpster,” a mean-spirited blog making fun of lolcows. None of what was on that blog was outright harassment – reading between the lines it’s obviously meant to be demeaning and cruel, but the language is mild and inoffensive enough so that it’s following the letter but not the spirit of the law. That didn’t deter me, and I tried to report every single line of text on the site for harassment. But none of them actually stuck – I got told over and over again to stop sending false reports. “But how am I supposed to abuse my authority if the standards for what constitutes a violation are so high?” I thought. “It’s like I really am supposed to act like a regular moderator.”

After that point it stuck. I had been trying to shove square pegs into round holes, but once I realized my place in Hypnospace, I embraced it. I stopped looking at everything as a potential violation and started to lose myself in the different communities and subcultures found on the forums.

Hypnospace Outlaw is pure fun. It’s unrelentingly earnest and empathetic to the people inhabiting its fictional world, and my role as moderator is just a framing device to put me, the player, as a tourist into this world. It perfectly balances an absurd, almost cartoonist tone while still feeling entirely grounded. People are weird! When given complete freedom to express yourself in a judgement-free (or at least judgement-lite) zone, we’re all cringe and embarrassing!

In recent years I’ve been making an effort let myself enjoy things without shame. I’m only 20, so I wasn’t even alive when this game would have taken place, but it resonated with my journey with unrestricted internet access and how I portray myself online. I remember making a Tumblr account at 13 and over-decorating it to make it feel like my own space before feeling so ashamed at how “cringey” it all was that I deleted it before ever posting anything. Even today, I’m always terrified to post my own thoughts and opinions (like this review!) because putting it out into the world and having it be perceived, people forming ideas about me separate from how I view myself, is terrifying. Anything I put out into the world becomes a reflection of myself, and sincerity is terrifying! It’s so much easier to hide behind a veil of irony!

The people of Hypnospace, on the other hand, are so unabashedly themselves. Each and every person’s page is a sensory nightmare of conflicting colours, textures, sounds, and imagery. But it feels so personal and so earnest that I can’t help but smile anyway. That’s admirable, and something I want to work on myself.

It’s kind of funny then, how I went in expecting this to be mean-spirited and cynical, only for it to instead be a love letter to the internet and those that put a piece of themselves online. I don’t think I could have had this same conclusion if not for my faulty first impression of Hypnospace Outlaw.

At this point in time, Rare didn’t necessarily have the best track record when it came to their releases. Sure, they did have the Battletoads franchise, which mostly managed to have pretty solid games, and they had developed several other games that hold up relatively well, but most of the rest of the games that they have developed were either uninteresting, forgotten, or just straight up terrible. It was enough for them to stay in the business for as long as they had been, but not to the point where they could reach the same level of success and notoriety as other developers, like Capcom, Squaresoft, or Konami. That is, until they were approached by Nintendo who, after seeing what they could pull off with games on the SNES using pre-rendered graphics, decided to give them a shot at developing a brand new game in a similar style so they could compete with what games like Aladdin were doing on the Genesis. They were given the reigns to make a new game in the DK franchise, which, aside from the Game Boy game that had been released earlier in the year, hadn’t really seen any major attention in nearly a decade, and thus, Rare went on to not only make a new game to reintroduce DK to modern audiences, but to also completely re-invent the character and his world, changing both DK and Rare's reputation forever. This would result in what would become the start of one of the best sub-series that DK would ever be a part of, Donkey Kong Country.

I have had quite the history with the DKC series over the years, with my first proper introduction to the series being with DKC Returns back in 2010, when I was still a dumb kid, and I had no clue as to what a Super Nintendo or a Rareware was. Eventually, I would discover the wonders of what we refer to as “retro gaming”, and it would lead to me getting my hands on a SNES for myself, with this being one of the first games that I had ever gotten with the system. I don’t think I had ever heard of the game beforehand, so needless to say, I was excited to try it out, and naturally, I ended up loving it. So now that I am playing it again after all this time, I can say that it holds up extremely well, being pretty basic for a platformer, but having some of the best design, personality, and fun challenges from any platformer of this era, and it successfully managed to reinvent DK into what he would be to this day.

The story is pretty simple, where the villainous King K. Rool steals Donkey Kong’s banana hoard with the help of his Kremlings, which makes DK very sad, so he then sets out with his nephew Diddy Kong to go beat them up and get his bananas back, which is a very silly premise, but one that fits perfectly for this series, and I am all here for it. The graphics are pretty good, not only having a pretty unique style for a SNES game at that point, but also holding up extremely well, with all of the different models for the characters, enemies, and bosses looking very charming, and the environments look just as great right alongside them, the music is fantastic, with there being plenty of different tracks that I still love to listen to to this day, such as the final boss theme, the theme for the first level, and my favorite track in the whole game, the underwater level theme (if I drowned IRL while this music played, I would be going out happy), the control is pretty great, with both DK and Diddy having the proper weight to them, and each action they can perform feels just right on a SNES controller, and the gameplay itself is pretty basic for the genre it takes on, but it still manages to be a solid experience all the way through, and I would rather a game be simple yet solid rather than experimental yet flawed.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Donkey Kong or Diddy Kong, go through many different worlds, each one containing their own set of levels that will challenge you in plenty of different ways, defeat many different enemies and Kremlings along the way while gathering plenty of bananas, collectibles, and power-ups to assist you on your way, find many of the other members of the Kong family such as Funky Kong, the coolest motherfucker on the planet, Candy Kong, the Kong who made a lot of kids question themselves when they were younger, and Cranky Kong, the Kong who resembled everybody’s grandparents in one way or another, who will each help you out in their own way (except for Cranky, who just says you suck and makes you depressed), and take on plenty of bosses that will prove to be quite the “challenge” to overcome to get your precious bananas back. A lot of it is pretty standard for a platformer, and some who aren’t new to the genre may question why you would bother playing it with plenty of other options out there, but not only does the graphical and musical style help give this game its own unique identity that holds up extremely well to this day, but it also still manages to be a fun game all on its own, with many ways it changes up the formula and keep you going.

For every single level in the game that you go through, there is always something new and exciting waiting for you, even if the changes may not be as big as others. You start out going through a pretty typical platformer level, nothing too exciting for you to see or do, but then you get to levels where you will be going through ancient temples, fighting different foes, finding different animal buddies that can help you take out enemies and give you more momentum, and there are even extreme cases of changing up the gameplay, such as levels where you are riding minecarts, ones where you are grabbing fuel for a conveyor belt you are riding on, and ones where you are turning on the lights to keep the Satan crocodiles from waking up. While some of these gimmicks are definitely preferable over others, each one is very fun to go through and experience, all while the game makes you think more and more about what to do in each situation, even if the goal is obvious.

What also helps keep this game fun and fresh throughout the entire journey would be in terms of its difficulty. For those of you who have played this game, you know it isn’t easy in the slightest, and while I wouldn’t say it is as hard as other platformers out there like Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden, there are still plenty of the moments where the game will test your skills in pretty extreme ways, such as with precarious platforming in plenty of levels, adding gimmicks like wind and barrels you need to shoot out of, timing your jumps on minecart segments effectively, and so many more examples. However, despite how hard it can be, it never feels unfair. There is always a chance for you to figure out what to do, how to overcome these challenges, whether it be through simple trial and error, or just by taking your time, and even if you do manage to fuck up and get a game over, if you have been using save points properly, then you shouldn’t be sent too far back to where it discourages you from continuing forward. Not to mention, it feels immensely rewarding whenever you do conquer some of the challenges in this game, managing to make it to the next save point so that you can press on towards whatever challenge may lie ahead.

For those of you wanting a little more out of your platformers though, fear not, because this game isn’t just a simple “run to the end and you win” kinda deal… or at least, it doesn’t have to be, anyway. Throughout each of the level, there are plenty of different bonus areas that you can access, each one giving you some kind of bonus, whether it be with extra lives, or even by sending you to this bonus area where you can collect all of these golden tokens as one of your animal buddies for even more extra lives! Not only do they help you prepare for the journey ahead, but each one does add to your percentage total, and it can even change the ending that you get if you manage to find everything… which isn’t much different then the normal ending, but it will keep Cranky Kong from complaining too much, fucking old-ass prick. They are pretty fun to go for, not just for the sake of completion, but they can be pretty tricky to find to, making you really look around every corner to see what walls or floors are breakable, and where else you could look just in case you end up missing something along the way.

So yeah, most of this game is a blast from start to finish, but there are some gripes that I have with it that do keep it from being a perfect game in my eyes. For one thing, the boss fights FUCKING SUCK, not because they are too hard, but moreso because they are uncreative and boring. Most of them consist of just bigger versions of enemies that you fight in the regular levels, with some of these even being repeated as the game goes on, and while some of them try to mix things up a bit, it’s only methods of doing so is by either giving you a different weak spot to hit, or just by taking on an enemy gauntlet, which isn’t exactly fun to deal with. The only good boss in the entire game is the final one against K. Rool, because not only does the foe you fight actually put up a fight, but the ways in which he does and when you can hit him is pretty creative, and it keeps you on your toes.

Secondly, while most of the elements in this game are pretty fair, and you can get through a lot of the challenges easily, there are some things that were put into this game that I am just not a fan of. There’s one example of this that sticks out to me as clear as day, and that is with one of the bonus areas that you find in Oil Drum Alley. Whenever you go into one of the other bonus levels in the stage and clear it out, you have to take the barrel that you get and throw it ABOVE the wall that you would normally hit in order to clear it out, which will grant you access to another bonus area you need to go through. If you don’t know about this on your first go, and you end up missing it, you cannot go back and try getting it again, making it so that, if you are going for 101% completion, you are FUCKED. That’s not necessarily that bad for those who just wanna go through the game normally, and I myself have never had this happen to me, but the fact that it can happen at all is pretty shitty, and I’d imagine there is at least one person out there who didn’t know about it, figured out what they was missing, and had their day ruined because of it.

Overall, despite the terrible bosses and some secrets having strict punishments for not finding them, the original DKC is still a fantastic game after almost 30 years, having very fun platforming challenges, wonderful visuals and music, and plenty of things to do for those that wanna go the extra mile that you usually wouldn’t go for in a platformer like this. I would highly recommend it for those who are fans of Donkey Kong, as well as those who love 2D platformers in the first place, because while this certainly isn’t my favorite game in the series, it is still one of the best platformers you can play on the SNES, and one that would launch an equally fantastic series that would continue to get installments for years to come…………. at least, until 2014, that is. Seriously, Nintendo, bring back Donkey Kong in a brand new game already! And maybe also try to bring back the Kremlings while you’re at it, too. That would be nice.

Game #532

Like an early Inscription build expect the core mechanics aren't fun.

It's a short experience that pulls a few neat tricks but doesn't carry enough emotional weight to feel like it worth the slog.

I'm pretty sick of meta games shutting down on me, few games are doing something clever with it. I hope the upcoming sequel has something new to say.

"Devil May Cry's a Rockin, don't come a knockin baby yeah!"

So for a long time this was my favourite game ever and was the start of my solidification into a hardcore Capcom fan which has continued to this day. When this came out I was around 18 and a friend had bought it. We played it together and seeing a leather clad biker girl smash through a bar, a gothic castle and uppercutting a marionette with a sword then juggling it with dual wielding pistols was, at the time, the coolest thing ever. I knew this game inside and out speed running it, learning every move, or collecting over a million red orbs because I could. One weekend when I had the house to myself that same friend came and stayed over playing all night by setting up two PlayStation 2's next to two TVs so we could both play Devil May Cry on our own saves hunting S ranks until we had every one on every difficulty level including Dante Must Die. I loved it.

The thing is I'd never played a game like this before. It's roots starting as Resident Evil 4 before changing into it's own series are pretty evident in aspects of it's design. The gothic horror atmosphere slightly underlining it's occasionally camp and over the top exterior gelled for an extremely unique experience. I've seen a lot of reviews on here being pretty negative about it and you know what? I get it, I do. The static camera angle and controls built around it for people who having not played it during that era wouldn't care for or have the patience to learn would feel dated. The thing is though, the game is built around it fundamentally when you learn how to use it on it's terms. Enemies even off screen give audio attack cues, the controls are built around directions and angles in relation to the camera but are also designed for angle changes when you know how. It's a clever game for it's time and the mixture of basic exploration, puzzles and scattered battle arenas was just a fun mix as the game understands the importance of downtime.

It's also an impressive looking and sounding game. Remember this came out only a year after the PS2 launch and has these large levels, detailed character and enemy models and insane boss fights in which each feels like a real event to behold. I love the enemy designs such as shadow cats that launch spikes, incorporeal grim reapers and giant lava spiders. Though the boss fights do repeat they are such big spectacles and some of the hardest challenges in the game with some insane music. Speaking of which whilst the later soundtracks went a lot more metal with vocal tracks the original game has this mixture of gothic haunting melodies that could easily be in a horror game to sort of electronic rock tracks and just stands out a lot more from it's later sequels due to it.

Coming back to this in 2012 for the remaster and all the trophies then playing it again now and I still love it. Yes it's terribly cheesy with laughable lip synching, yes it's fixed camera can make the action feel unwieldly and yes it's probably one of those games you had to be there for....

....but it's the best Devil May Cry game though.

+ Horror and action roots mixed.
+ Combat and boss battles are exciting.
+ Great music and visuals.
+ Sometimes funny, sometimes intentionally.

- Fixed camera angle can take getting used to.

Introspective Memorial

For the past months, starting with The Silver Case I've been analyzing Suda51's work on detail to see where the fuzz is with him and his works in particular. A clear obsession over someone's work? Everyone has their favorites; Franchises, names, characters, writters, composers, designers, companies all in the name of familiarity under the sense of comfort. No one can deny that Suda51 has made a name for himself in the industry, starting off working with several other companies before creating "Grasshopper Manufacture" his very own company. Their motto is "Video Game Band, Punk is Not Dead" which to a lesser extent refers to the act of rebellion and to standout for themselves in a little confined group of people with a clear identity, tastes and ideas. It is easy to assume that is just clever wording for "it's not for everyone". You might be right, GHM games set themselves to built a loyal fanbase with their products. They do a great job at keeping consistency, different genres or not their DNA is still prevalent.

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is to a lesser extent a celebration of Grasshopper Manufacture and a introspective for Suda51 as a creator. It is a very personal title, a love letter to the indie scene and a message to the game industry I'd say. The game industry now can't sustain by itself, at least without making it obvious with predatory practices that directly affects the customer for the worst. Like Ouroboros, the game industry is eating itself up and is not growing as much as the people with money expect to. If anything, the indie scene has been growing and growing this last decade and that isn't a surprise knowing how most big productions turn out to be these days. There is a big sense of distrust amongst consumers, and everyday it seems to be getting worse. Grasshopper itself suffered through this during the best part of the 2010's, their "Dark Age" as I like to call it. Your EAs, Kadokawas, and some more that never got along well with the studio. After all that, Grasshopper shrinked to an indie sized studio and went up to create this game.

Travis Strikes Back is one of those titles that you would find in the Xbox Live Arcade or PSN Store for 20$, it kind of shows. But don't let that fool you, the Grasshopper DNA as I said before is pretty much present here and it is better than ever. Multiplayer hack and slash by day, visual novel by night. But again, underneath all of that is that powerful and personal message of unfullfiled dreams and successes that would end up carrying this company legacy. This is Travis's introspective as an assasin, climbing up the ranks to the top and enjoying what life has to offer after a hard day at work. You are already on the top, what's there to do now? How do you continue your legacy? Keep doing the same? Imrprove? Or start over? When you are lost, looking at your failures, achievements and getting to know yourself better to see what makes you, well, you is the best way to know where to head next. Travis's story hit a climax in No More Heroes 1, which asked that very same question. In Travis Strikes Back he looks back at fallen heroes, old men have already nothing to lose but their lives and this is where Travis's phillosophy shines through his speech. Not necessarily looking down on his enemies but giving his perspective on life and putting your work on the line. This is not the Travis we got to known in the first game, he has grown now, to be a wiser man. A perfect reflection to life experiences, Suda51 itself went hell and back to be where he's now and the same goes for Travis Touchdown. Aside from the main hack and slash game, we get a VN styled adventure which gives us further context of the story. Basically Travis in each scenario is searching for the "Death Balls" around the globe. As a celebration title, this game includes a lot of character from other GHM games such as Dan from Killer7, Sundance from F.S.R, Shirobayu from 25th Ward alongside others. More than anything they're cameos that don't impact much in the overall story and personally I see this just as a funny little gag.

It is as impactful as knowing you best friend deepest secret, explained by himself. All the frustrations, fears and getting to talk about what it is into on detail. What it believes, what wants to achieve, and mainly: personal goals for the future. It is not laid out to be a comprehensive documentary of the company or Suda51 itself, it is first and foremost a No More Heroes game. Though, it is without it's negatives mainly comming from the gameplay that can get old quickly. This isn't necessarily a problem since the game often goes back and forward with new gimmicks that break the main formula every now and then. Though I'd say I did felt this complain was completely valid on the last level.

All and all it is a solid action title, and a happy commemoration of Grasshopper Manufacture history. A happy reminder that even through they might have changed once or twice over the years, they still carry the soul of Punk.

Sometimes in life, when you strive to achieve something, but you keep failing at reaching that goal, you just gotta take a step back and realize… you will never reach that goal, and you should stop trying. Kind of a depressing reality, I know, but that was the reality I had to face when I tried to beat the original Puyo Puyo. It was a very simple puzzle game, one that many of us know and love, and one that I was able to get a handle of for a good couple of matches or so, until the game grabbed me by the wrist, threw me against the wall, and proceeded to crush all of my hopes and dreams while I could do nothing but watch and feel bad. It was somewhat discouraging, but hey, at the end of the day, I still managed to have a good time, and that’s all that matters. It just goes to show that, even if I do suck at something, I can still manage to have fun doing it (like reviewing things), so I figured I may as well go ahead and give the series another chance with Puyo Puyo 2- oh, wait, shit, fuck, bitch, tit, I’M SORRY… I meant Puyo Puyo Tsu… because Japan.

The idea of giving this game a proper review wasn’t something that I thought wouldn’t be necessary, and for those who aren’t familiar with it, upon first glance, you could see why. When you compare the two, this seems like it's just an update to the original and nothing more, not just in terms of graphics and style, but also in terms of gameplay, with very little changes made to the formula to make it seem like a proper evolution of the series. However, I then went ahead and did a little digging, and after playing it a bit more, I realized that there was more going on here then I realized. So, with these changes in mind, while I wouldn’t say this is a massive step-up in quality from the original, I would say that this is definitely the superior game of the two, and one that does manage to change up just enough to where it can be enjoyed by more due to the original’s limitations.

In many ways, it is practically identical to that of the original, having the same graphics and graphical style, having the same type of music, same control, same gameplay, basically if you have played Puyo Puyo 1, you have played Puyo Puyo 2 without even knowing it. The only real change is with the story, but even then, it is barely even noticeably different, as not only is it very similar to the original game’s plot, but it is a puzzle game, so nobody gives a shit about the plot! You are still just dropping goo guys down, matching them up, clearing them out when you match four of them at a time, and you can chain combos together to send loads of garbage over to your opponent and prove that you are the true ruler of this game. Any fan of Puyo Puyo can jump in and have a great time with it, as it still is pretty fun to play, and whenever you overcome a strong challenge, it does feel pretty good to pull off.

All of that is well and good, yes, but again, if you are unfamiliar with the game, you may just think it is Puyo Puyo 1 again, so why would you bother playing it over the original? Well, that would be because, for this game, several changes were made to the gameplay and the mechanics, which would not only become staple parts of the series, but would propel the series further into that spotlight where it comfortably sits now. The first of these new mechanics, known as “Offsetting”, makes it so that, whenever you clear out a set of Puyo, and you create clear Puyo to throw down onto your opponents screen, it can clear out any clear Puyo that your opponent had sent over to your side of the screen at that time. That way, you can prevent them from dumping tons of clear Puyo onto your side, and if you are fast enough, you can then send plenty of your own clear Puyo onto their side to screw them over. This, while not sounding like too much of a big change, is an incredible change to the formula, as it gives you the chance to keep yourself from being completely fucked over by opponents, while also not letting the gameplay get too easy to the point where it becomes boring… at least, for me anyway.

The second of these mechanics, known as “margin time”, makes it so that, as the match keeps going, the amount of clear Puyo that one can send to their opponent at a time increases, meaning that, if luck is in your favor, you can turn the tides on a match quickly and keep yourself in a calm, controllable state, while your opponent will be panicking, trying to figure out what to do to come back from what you did. Once again, this change isn’t anything too major, but it does help from keeping matches from going on forever, and again, when you are able to take proper advantage of these changes as the game goes along, it does feel pretty rewarding to do so. And finally, for certain versions of this game, there were several other modes that were made available to play on, such as a practice mode, and one that even allowed up to four player battles. While I myself don’t ever see myself ever trying to seek out these modes in this game, it is cool that that option does exist for those who are fans of the game.

Aside from all that though, there isn’t much I can say about this game that I haven’t already said back when I reviewed the original. It really is mostly just another Puyo Puyo game, and while there are brand new rules in place that make the matches in the game a little more bearable, it doesn’t really give much of an incentive for fans of the original to jump headfirst into it. But then again, from what I could gather, there really won’t be any major changes to the formula until Puyo Puyo 4, so really, I shouldn’t expect too much from these games anyway. They are still pretty fun regardless in the right circumstances, and I am glad that I still decided to give it a shot, even if I still completely suck at it.

Overall, despite a lack of major changes when compared to the original, Puyo Puyo 2 is pretty much a superior version of the original game, keeping the core fundamentals the same, while still being fun as ever, and adding just enough tiny changes to make the experience more preferable over the original any day of the week. I would recommend it for those who are huge Puyo Puyo fans, as well as those who are big puzzle game fans in general, but for everyone else, I would probably just stick to later titles in the series over this one. Although, even then, I’m not even sure I can say that this one is genuinely better then the original, because it never got its own version with Kirby in it. Any true fan of the series would know that that was where it peaked, and it has been downhill ever since.

Game #529

Some camp, melodrama and self-indulgent projection - it sure is a 1992 visual novel for teenagers. Afaik it's not the first of its kind, I think I played a few on Master System (and that's before considering how text adventure and point & click fit into this conversation), but the restraint of its visual elements respects the 'novel' aspect very well, setting the least intrusive flavor possible so the reader imagine the rest from context clues. That alone makes this a titanic progenitor in the genre, whereas I feel many prior games are glorified cutscenes and limit the breadth of their story to what they can tangibly render in the game environment. Very interesting. Thank you C_F for sharing and streaming this with the gang.