LukeGirard
BACKER
If MGR had good gameplay it would be the coolest game ever made
By all accounts this is a game I should probably detest, and in a lot of ways I definitely do, but there's something to this trainwreck that I can't help but admire.
Following in the painful trend of disregarding unique elements of the original in favor of later game's features and throwing in what's "hip" at the time, Twin Snakes opts to sand down any potential challenge the original had by making it play similar to Sons of Liberty, featuring first person aiming, hanging on ledges, lockers, and the dreaded M9 tranquillizer gun. All of this adds up to an experience that not only fails to add to the original in any meaningful way, but also runs the risk of ruining the perception of the original for future generations.
Having said that, at some point these changes boiled over in my mind and morphed the game into something completely new. Something funny?
I'm sure we're all aware of the "so bad it's good" label that gets thrown around for the consumption of art. People of all cultures and tastes are able to spin great enjoyment from the worst of the worst. Something like The Room immediately springs to mind as art that fails in almost every meaningful way the author was trying to accomplish, but has garnered a cult following that enjoys it dearly, presumably either to make fun of it or display adoration for the confidence and passion that went into it. I think games are harder to attain this status, as a level of interaction is required that isn't present in other mediums (from a distance a game like Devil May Cry 2 might be astonishing, but you couldn't pay me to play that game again) and as a result the "worst games ever made" usually just transform into a lesson for future designers to learn from and little else.
As you could probably imagine, I don't feel comfortable staking the claim that Twin Snakes is "so bad it's good" or nearly any other game in existence for that matter. Instead I've found a way to justify the game in my mind different from the one I've just described: I'd like to make the bold assertion that Twin Snakes shines not in spite of it's flanderization of the original, but because of it. Twin Snakes, with all the asinine gameplay additions and tacky Matrix-adjacent cutscene direction, doubles back on itself and becomes a parody of the original in a way I've never seen before.
It might sound hypocritical of me to hold up this disaster as a shining beacon of joy while talking down on other remakes that, for all intents and purposes, adjust the game in more "tasteful" ways (I'm not the biggest fan of the Shadow of the Colossus remake, but the only thing that actually changed in the process was the graphical overhaul, the game design itself remains near untouched) but hear me out on this. How many games do you know of, whether it be a remake or original title, can actually claim to be a genuine parody of something? I don't fully know why this game checks all the right boxes in my mind, but when I see Snake backflip to avoid a sniper shot only to flip his own rifle into the air like a skateboard and spin around before making a shot at his target, it feels like fireworks go off in my brain.
Given this admittedly-nebulous write up and my overall rating of the game, it's very possible this all comes across as the ramblings of an insane person, but that's what it feels like to sit down and experience the game.
Despite my best efforts I can't succinctly pin down my thoughts on this game. I expected to come in here and quickly describe it as a parody and little else, but as it tends to do, Twin Snakes managed to tangle itself in my mind and I can't get it out. In one moment I loathe all the additions to gameplay, but in the next I recall the quote on the back of the box stating that this was "the way it was always meant to be played" and I can't help but laugh.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a nut that I can't seem to break open, but this new way of thinking about it has certainly made it crack. Split between two ends of the remake spectrum, it lands with the eloquence of a plane crash as a game I simultaneously can't stand but also adore. We may never see another game like it if in being honest. I don't have a final mic dropping statement on Twin Snakes as it's a piece of art that I constantly shuffle between two states of mind on, but hopefully if you've played the game yourself you understand the origin of my meandering around the point. I'd never in a million years want this game to replace the original in the public consciousness, but I think I'd hate just as much for this car crash to fade from our memory.
Following in the painful trend of disregarding unique elements of the original in favor of later game's features and throwing in what's "hip" at the time, Twin Snakes opts to sand down any potential challenge the original had by making it play similar to Sons of Liberty, featuring first person aiming, hanging on ledges, lockers, and the dreaded M9 tranquillizer gun. All of this adds up to an experience that not only fails to add to the original in any meaningful way, but also runs the risk of ruining the perception of the original for future generations.
Having said that, at some point these changes boiled over in my mind and morphed the game into something completely new. Something funny?
I'm sure we're all aware of the "so bad it's good" label that gets thrown around for the consumption of art. People of all cultures and tastes are able to spin great enjoyment from the worst of the worst. Something like The Room immediately springs to mind as art that fails in almost every meaningful way the author was trying to accomplish, but has garnered a cult following that enjoys it dearly, presumably either to make fun of it or display adoration for the confidence and passion that went into it. I think games are harder to attain this status, as a level of interaction is required that isn't present in other mediums (from a distance a game like Devil May Cry 2 might be astonishing, but you couldn't pay me to play that game again) and as a result the "worst games ever made" usually just transform into a lesson for future designers to learn from and little else.
As you could probably imagine, I don't feel comfortable staking the claim that Twin Snakes is "so bad it's good" or nearly any other game in existence for that matter. Instead I've found a way to justify the game in my mind different from the one I've just described: I'd like to make the bold assertion that Twin Snakes shines not in spite of it's flanderization of the original, but because of it. Twin Snakes, with all the asinine gameplay additions and tacky Matrix-adjacent cutscene direction, doubles back on itself and becomes a parody of the original in a way I've never seen before.
It might sound hypocritical of me to hold up this disaster as a shining beacon of joy while talking down on other remakes that, for all intents and purposes, adjust the game in more "tasteful" ways (I'm not the biggest fan of the Shadow of the Colossus remake, but the only thing that actually changed in the process was the graphical overhaul, the game design itself remains near untouched) but hear me out on this. How many games do you know of, whether it be a remake or original title, can actually claim to be a genuine parody of something? I don't fully know why this game checks all the right boxes in my mind, but when I see Snake backflip to avoid a sniper shot only to flip his own rifle into the air like a skateboard and spin around before making a shot at his target, it feels like fireworks go off in my brain.
Given this admittedly-nebulous write up and my overall rating of the game, it's very possible this all comes across as the ramblings of an insane person, but that's what it feels like to sit down and experience the game.
Despite my best efforts I can't succinctly pin down my thoughts on this game. I expected to come in here and quickly describe it as a parody and little else, but as it tends to do, Twin Snakes managed to tangle itself in my mind and I can't get it out. In one moment I loathe all the additions to gameplay, but in the next I recall the quote on the back of the box stating that this was "the way it was always meant to be played" and I can't help but laugh.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a nut that I can't seem to break open, but this new way of thinking about it has certainly made it crack. Split between two ends of the remake spectrum, it lands with the eloquence of a plane crash as a game I simultaneously can't stand but also adore. We may never see another game like it if in being honest. I don't have a final mic dropping statement on Twin Snakes as it's a piece of art that I constantly shuffle between two states of mind on, but hopefully if you've played the game yourself you understand the origin of my meandering around the point. I'd never in a million years want this game to replace the original in the public consciousness, but I think I'd hate just as much for this car crash to fade from our memory.
DISCLAIMER: this review will spoil both the original game and official remake for Metroid II. If you're unfamiliar with how either play out, I'd strongly recommend playing the original first, and then the remake.
It's pretty easy to separate remakes into two distinct categories: those that are supplementary to the original (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Twin Snakes) and those that are replacements to the original (Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus). I tend to be more apprehensive towards the latter, but that's not to say it can't be done well. With the right team at the helm (usually including the original designers) it's possible to create something truly special that polishes the original's shortcomings and reinvents what it represented without the constraints of it's era. I haven't played the Resident Evil Remake, but from what I'm told it's the best example of a game that repaints the original while still capturing the spirit and soul present in the PlayStation version.
Having said that, most replacement remakes tend to stumble over themselves and create a product that doesn't really do justice to the source material in any way. Samus Returns is no different.
Looking at it in a vaccum, it's a standard Metroid adventure. Many areas tend to blend into one another and the stop-and-start nature of combat got old quickly, but a lot of it is pretty familiar and comfortable if you're familiar with the series. Looking at it in the context of the source material is where it really starts to fall apart in my eyes.
Much of the charm of Return of Samus was how cramped and stressful the whole journey was. The first game presented a complete mirror of the Zelda series that felt both swashbuckling and mysterious with it's alien world while still feeling like an adventure. It's sequel, by comparison, wasn't nearly as pleasant and leaned more into a psudo-horror atmosphere. You were tasked with exterminating an entire alien race, and the game quite fittingly was upsetting to trek through. Traversing the caves of SR388 always felt tense, the limited visibility meant you never knew what was around every corner, and the Metroid encounters were a mad scramble to stay alive more than anything. Nothing about it felt triumphant. While repetitive towards the end, each subsequent Metroid encounter would eventually feel as if you're just filling a quota, like you're just clocking in for a drab job only to slog through the day and clock out. It was interesting to see Samus not only get tasked with commiting genocide on an alien planet, but for it to be presented without any of the energy you might expect. And yet, in one final subversive gesture, it doesn't end on a sour note. Samus comes across a Metroid hatchling, and instead of greeting it with hostility, she changes her tone and takes it back to the federation. One would expect a game like this to end in bombast, yet the player gets a moment of quiet relief. The mission was over, there was no need for any more violence or conflict. The galaxy was at peace.
Presumably in an effort to modernize the game and have it fall more in line with other popular titles, the official Metroid II remake manages to sand down nearly all distinct elements of the GameBoy classic and create a game that hardly resembles that which it's trying to replicate. It seems as though every change made in Samus Returns was made to make everything bigger, better, and louder. In place of pitch black dour caves you have brightly lit neon crystal formations, enemies are more aggressive promoting the use of your new parry action to make combat feel more "engaging", the list of changes is pretty massive and it'd be boring to just list them all. Instead, I think it'd be valuable to mention how these changes all fit together. In other words, each step in the remake progress was logical.
Newer games are expected to be bigger so they made the map bigger, and by extension added an actual map to track your progress. The lack of any map in the original is a big sticking point for many, but what makes it work is how you only needed to keep a small chunk of the map in your mind at any time, once you finish an area you can move on and never look back. It created a dizzying feeling while exploring, but the excellent layout and sprite designs guaranteed the player should never be lost for too long. Now that the world is massive, it'd be ridiculous to force the player to track it all in their brain, so the map makes some amount of sense. It just comes at a cost of the rewarding feeling players got by picking apart the world completely on their own.
More pressingly, the huge world greatly effects the thrill of hunting Metroids. In the original, not only could they spring up at any moment, but encounters never felt gamey for lack of a better term. Fights could take place in sand pits, cramped caves, or anywhere for that matter. They never felt like video game combat arenas, so the whole journey felt natural. The heart sinking feeling of finding a Metroid never lost it's spark since you never knew when they'd appear. Naturally, SR opts into a dedicated radar that beeps like a metal detector as you approach a Metroid removing the thrill of discovery, and every fight takes place in one of a handful of deliberately designed sterile arenas.
None of these elements stand up to the scrappy yet elegant design of the original, but the biggest blunder has got to be the overall tone and feel of the game. As I mentioned earlier, hunting Metroids in the original rarely felt fun. It was a nerve-wracking crawl through claustrophobic caves and generally just felt miserable. The remake instead wants the player to feel as cool as posible while shredding this world to pieces. Samus's parry is the most immediate example of this cheap pop of energy, but the series first of Cutscenes That Wrestle Control From The Player to Show You Something Sick Nasty From Samus is the most obnoxious. Walking into an unknown area and having control taken from me is the quickest way to let me know I'm in absolutely no danger, and anything that happens is bound to be awesome. Because nothing screams genocide like Samus backflipping off of an alien as she shoots it to death.
Not even the beautiful ending leaves unscathed, what used to be a calm reflective escape to your ship is now an action packed sprint through every basic enemy in the game's roster followed by the most embarrassing form of fanservice in the game, a brand new final boss against the most iconic villain of the series, Ridley. Of course the game with the most subversive ending had to end with bombast, that's what they always intended for with the classic violence free ending right?
The cherry on top is the baby Metroid itself, once a symbol of hope to strategically shift the tone before the end is now relegated to a key for item collection right after the Queen Metroid encounter, but before the final boss, leading to the most frustrating item cleanup in the series.
I recognize most of this write up has been me whining about why the remake fails when stacked up against the original, and while that may seem sloppy and unfair, it's only natural given the fact that they share a title. Samus Returns was meant to be a cozy return to form for the series, and in many ways it accomplished that goal. It's nice to see a series come back in a familiar setting after lying dormant for a decade, but that's never what the original was meant to be. It was a brand new adventure that didn't have to follow an arbitrary ruleset laid in place by the series legacy, it was an interesting sequel to a groundbreaking title and nothing else. These days people don't look fondly on Return of Samus, so this could have been a perfect opportunity for Mercury Steam to show the world what made the original so special in their own Resident Evil Remake moment. Instead what we got was a safe installment that proudly wears the series on its sleeve, but holds no reverence for the game that bore the title of Metroid II.
It's pretty easy to separate remakes into two distinct categories: those that are supplementary to the original (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Twin Snakes) and those that are replacements to the original (Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus). I tend to be more apprehensive towards the latter, but that's not to say it can't be done well. With the right team at the helm (usually including the original designers) it's possible to create something truly special that polishes the original's shortcomings and reinvents what it represented without the constraints of it's era. I haven't played the Resident Evil Remake, but from what I'm told it's the best example of a game that repaints the original while still capturing the spirit and soul present in the PlayStation version.
Having said that, most replacement remakes tend to stumble over themselves and create a product that doesn't really do justice to the source material in any way. Samus Returns is no different.
Looking at it in a vaccum, it's a standard Metroid adventure. Many areas tend to blend into one another and the stop-and-start nature of combat got old quickly, but a lot of it is pretty familiar and comfortable if you're familiar with the series. Looking at it in the context of the source material is where it really starts to fall apart in my eyes.
Much of the charm of Return of Samus was how cramped and stressful the whole journey was. The first game presented a complete mirror of the Zelda series that felt both swashbuckling and mysterious with it's alien world while still feeling like an adventure. It's sequel, by comparison, wasn't nearly as pleasant and leaned more into a psudo-horror atmosphere. You were tasked with exterminating an entire alien race, and the game quite fittingly was upsetting to trek through. Traversing the caves of SR388 always felt tense, the limited visibility meant you never knew what was around every corner, and the Metroid encounters were a mad scramble to stay alive more than anything. Nothing about it felt triumphant. While repetitive towards the end, each subsequent Metroid encounter would eventually feel as if you're just filling a quota, like you're just clocking in for a drab job only to slog through the day and clock out. It was interesting to see Samus not only get tasked with commiting genocide on an alien planet, but for it to be presented without any of the energy you might expect. And yet, in one final subversive gesture, it doesn't end on a sour note. Samus comes across a Metroid hatchling, and instead of greeting it with hostility, she changes her tone and takes it back to the federation. One would expect a game like this to end in bombast, yet the player gets a moment of quiet relief. The mission was over, there was no need for any more violence or conflict. The galaxy was at peace.
Presumably in an effort to modernize the game and have it fall more in line with other popular titles, the official Metroid II remake manages to sand down nearly all distinct elements of the GameBoy classic and create a game that hardly resembles that which it's trying to replicate. It seems as though every change made in Samus Returns was made to make everything bigger, better, and louder. In place of pitch black dour caves you have brightly lit neon crystal formations, enemies are more aggressive promoting the use of your new parry action to make combat feel more "engaging", the list of changes is pretty massive and it'd be boring to just list them all. Instead, I think it'd be valuable to mention how these changes all fit together. In other words, each step in the remake progress was logical.
Newer games are expected to be bigger so they made the map bigger, and by extension added an actual map to track your progress. The lack of any map in the original is a big sticking point for many, but what makes it work is how you only needed to keep a small chunk of the map in your mind at any time, once you finish an area you can move on and never look back. It created a dizzying feeling while exploring, but the excellent layout and sprite designs guaranteed the player should never be lost for too long. Now that the world is massive, it'd be ridiculous to force the player to track it all in their brain, so the map makes some amount of sense. It just comes at a cost of the rewarding feeling players got by picking apart the world completely on their own.
More pressingly, the huge world greatly effects the thrill of hunting Metroids. In the original, not only could they spring up at any moment, but encounters never felt gamey for lack of a better term. Fights could take place in sand pits, cramped caves, or anywhere for that matter. They never felt like video game combat arenas, so the whole journey felt natural. The heart sinking feeling of finding a Metroid never lost it's spark since you never knew when they'd appear. Naturally, SR opts into a dedicated radar that beeps like a metal detector as you approach a Metroid removing the thrill of discovery, and every fight takes place in one of a handful of deliberately designed sterile arenas.
None of these elements stand up to the scrappy yet elegant design of the original, but the biggest blunder has got to be the overall tone and feel of the game. As I mentioned earlier, hunting Metroids in the original rarely felt fun. It was a nerve-wracking crawl through claustrophobic caves and generally just felt miserable. The remake instead wants the player to feel as cool as posible while shredding this world to pieces. Samus's parry is the most immediate example of this cheap pop of energy, but the series first of Cutscenes That Wrestle Control From The Player to Show You Something Sick Nasty From Samus is the most obnoxious. Walking into an unknown area and having control taken from me is the quickest way to let me know I'm in absolutely no danger, and anything that happens is bound to be awesome. Because nothing screams genocide like Samus backflipping off of an alien as she shoots it to death.
Not even the beautiful ending leaves unscathed, what used to be a calm reflective escape to your ship is now an action packed sprint through every basic enemy in the game's roster followed by the most embarrassing form of fanservice in the game, a brand new final boss against the most iconic villain of the series, Ridley. Of course the game with the most subversive ending had to end with bombast, that's what they always intended for with the classic violence free ending right?
The cherry on top is the baby Metroid itself, once a symbol of hope to strategically shift the tone before the end is now relegated to a key for item collection right after the Queen Metroid encounter, but before the final boss, leading to the most frustrating item cleanup in the series.
I recognize most of this write up has been me whining about why the remake fails when stacked up against the original, and while that may seem sloppy and unfair, it's only natural given the fact that they share a title. Samus Returns was meant to be a cozy return to form for the series, and in many ways it accomplished that goal. It's nice to see a series come back in a familiar setting after lying dormant for a decade, but that's never what the original was meant to be. It was a brand new adventure that didn't have to follow an arbitrary ruleset laid in place by the series legacy, it was an interesting sequel to a groundbreaking title and nothing else. These days people don't look fondly on Return of Samus, so this could have been a perfect opportunity for Mercury Steam to show the world what made the original so special in their own Resident Evil Remake moment. Instead what we got was a safe installment that proudly wears the series on its sleeve, but holds no reverence for the game that bore the title of Metroid II.
2009
In my short time on this platform I've noticed that a not-insignificant portion of FromSoft fans tend to look back on Demon's Souls as nothing but a stepping stone to Dark Souls, and while DeS certainly laid the groundwork for a new sub-genre of adventure games that future titles would learn from, I don't think it's fair to sweep it under the rug as nothing but a prototype.
Something we tend to hear about in games criticism is the idea of conventional design. For example, a platformer that teaches a concept in a safe environment and tests your knowledge on the concept incrementally will likely be heralded as an example of good game design. It doesn't have to be a platformer, every genre under the sun tends to have games that follow what's expected, and more often than not those games see success over those that break the mold. This makes sense to a certain degree, something comfortable to the consumer is clearly a safe investment, odds are they'll be more satisfied with their purchase in the short term, etc. The fallacy here, of course, is the implication that the best games only stem from those that don't take risks, but looking at the most successful games of all time night trick you into believing this. Market trends continue to worm their way into every corner of the medium, allowing for higher profits for the higher ups at big companies leading to more disposable experiences (quick aside, but this is a big reason why i tend to be more cynical towards remakes these days. it's more profitable to take a classic title and reshape it to better fit in with modern standards rather than just preserve the art as it once was).
This is why a game like Demon's Souls slipping through the cracks is all the more fascinating to me. Back in an era where most devs fell into formulaic trappings that some would follow for the next decade, DeS not only made it to shelves in the tangled abrasive state it was in, but actually managed to resonate with it's playerbase. What other game was cool with you missing massive pieces of lore right before the final boss? What do you mean other players can join my world and punish me for successfully regaining my humanity? Even today, Demon's Souls was able to capture my attention in how it was somehow able to tie all these disparate gameplay elements together cohesively.
Now, it'd be foolish of me to write any piece on a Miyazaki-directed title without bringing up the difficulty, but to those of us who've played DeS, the way the game expects mastery from the player is more thoughtful than you might be led to believe. If there's one slice of the game that exemplifies this well, it's gotta be the cycle between soul form and human form. Starting the game with half your health slashed might be devastating to a first-time player, but it will surely teach them one thing: patience. After the player has carefully navigated the first level and taken down their first boss, they're rewarded with their humanity, but only for a fleeting moment. Since they know that this only lasts as long as they can handle, it will make them more cautious of traps and upcoming dangers, as the punishment for death will be severe. But even though they may lose their humanity in the moment, the reward for pushing through can't be understated. It's a brilliant little loop of design that not only keeps the player engaged throughout, but expertly threads the game's depressing mood and theming into the core gameplay. It's gameplay ideas like this that are so insane when stacked up against the larger gaming landscape, but the team behind the project had faith and passion in what they were creating, any potential accolades were secondary to the game itself.
Suffficed to say, it's very cathartic to see a game like Demon's Souls make an impact despite not even the publishers and higher ups at Sony believing in it. Even though Dark Souls was the game that changed the world in a more significant way, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did had Demon's Souls been adjusted to better fit in with the industry. Is it a game that can stumble over its own ideas occasionally? Sure. Are there clearly rough edges that slipped past QA that wouldn't have existed if the team had more experience? Absolutely. But we need more games that are willing to bend conventions and see what they can get away with. We need more rule breakers like Hidetaka Miyazaki that care about creating meaningful experiences above all else. Though even if all creativity was drained from humanity tomorrow and we only got slop for the rest of our existence, at least that wouldn't wash away the diamond in the rough that came to life against all odds.
Simply put, few games have managed to capture my soul quite as much as this, and that's probably the highest praise I can give.
Something we tend to hear about in games criticism is the idea of conventional design. For example, a platformer that teaches a concept in a safe environment and tests your knowledge on the concept incrementally will likely be heralded as an example of good game design. It doesn't have to be a platformer, every genre under the sun tends to have games that follow what's expected, and more often than not those games see success over those that break the mold. This makes sense to a certain degree, something comfortable to the consumer is clearly a safe investment, odds are they'll be more satisfied with their purchase in the short term, etc. The fallacy here, of course, is the implication that the best games only stem from those that don't take risks, but looking at the most successful games of all time night trick you into believing this. Market trends continue to worm their way into every corner of the medium, allowing for higher profits for the higher ups at big companies leading to more disposable experiences (quick aside, but this is a big reason why i tend to be more cynical towards remakes these days. it's more profitable to take a classic title and reshape it to better fit in with modern standards rather than just preserve the art as it once was).
This is why a game like Demon's Souls slipping through the cracks is all the more fascinating to me. Back in an era where most devs fell into formulaic trappings that some would follow for the next decade, DeS not only made it to shelves in the tangled abrasive state it was in, but actually managed to resonate with it's playerbase. What other game was cool with you missing massive pieces of lore right before the final boss? What do you mean other players can join my world and punish me for successfully regaining my humanity? Even today, Demon's Souls was able to capture my attention in how it was somehow able to tie all these disparate gameplay elements together cohesively.
Now, it'd be foolish of me to write any piece on a Miyazaki-directed title without bringing up the difficulty, but to those of us who've played DeS, the way the game expects mastery from the player is more thoughtful than you might be led to believe. If there's one slice of the game that exemplifies this well, it's gotta be the cycle between soul form and human form. Starting the game with half your health slashed might be devastating to a first-time player, but it will surely teach them one thing: patience. After the player has carefully navigated the first level and taken down their first boss, they're rewarded with their humanity, but only for a fleeting moment. Since they know that this only lasts as long as they can handle, it will make them more cautious of traps and upcoming dangers, as the punishment for death will be severe. But even though they may lose their humanity in the moment, the reward for pushing through can't be understated. It's a brilliant little loop of design that not only keeps the player engaged throughout, but expertly threads the game's depressing mood and theming into the core gameplay. It's gameplay ideas like this that are so insane when stacked up against the larger gaming landscape, but the team behind the project had faith and passion in what they were creating, any potential accolades were secondary to the game itself.
Suffficed to say, it's very cathartic to see a game like Demon's Souls make an impact despite not even the publishers and higher ups at Sony believing in it. Even though Dark Souls was the game that changed the world in a more significant way, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did had Demon's Souls been adjusted to better fit in with the industry. Is it a game that can stumble over its own ideas occasionally? Sure. Are there clearly rough edges that slipped past QA that wouldn't have existed if the team had more experience? Absolutely. But we need more games that are willing to bend conventions and see what they can get away with. We need more rule breakers like Hidetaka Miyazaki that care about creating meaningful experiences above all else. Though even if all creativity was drained from humanity tomorrow and we only got slop for the rest of our existence, at least that wouldn't wash away the diamond in the rough that came to life against all odds.
Simply put, few games have managed to capture my soul quite as much as this, and that's probably the highest praise I can give.
1986
Recommended by Dr. Delicious on this list.
The end of last year was quite a hectic and stressful one for me, but having something I could easily pick up for 15 minutes on a lunch break or in-between other tasks to forget about the world around me was quite a comforting thing. Outrun's vibe is so electrifying and immediate, you boot up the game, pop in a credit, and just go. It was just the thing I needed to clear my mind of all the baggage I've had weighing on me lately. I've heard many complain that the game is over far too quickly, but I suspect this is either due to them looking at the game in relation to other more conventional lap-based racers, or just an admission that they don't have a firm grasp of the game's mechanics yet (completely understandable for a game designed to be played in short bursts with the pressure of a strict time limit, but unfortunate nonetheless)
I kinda knew going in that the game would fulfill my need for something comfy to slip into if I had the time, but I was pleasantly surprised by how neatly the game's mechanics would tie the whole experience together for me.
Simplifying the joy of driving a sports car down to the bare essentials not only widens the appeal of Outrun to everyone, but also trickles down into the moment-to-moment gameplay and creates a truly exhilarating experience in a way I wasn't expecting. The push-pull between the gear system and the absurdly strict timer is a particular highlight for me, having to choose whether or not to switch into the low gear for sharp turns or risk crashing is engaging enough on its own, but speed being the top priority encourages the player to make high risk maneuvers at every turn and always keeps the game from becoming dull.
To the game's detriment, there's not exactly much room for expression here (something I tend to crave in most games) but once the player gets to a point of mastery with the mechanics, that honestly ceases to matter. As soon as you cross the hurdle of learning when to shift gears, how to weave through traffic, or how to complete each route, the game comes full circle and morphs back into what made it so appealing to me in the first place. The track begins to melt away, and all that fills your focus is the horizon up ahead.
Life moves too quickly to focus on the past, so just buckle up and take life one turn at a time.
The end of last year was quite a hectic and stressful one for me, but having something I could easily pick up for 15 minutes on a lunch break or in-between other tasks to forget about the world around me was quite a comforting thing. Outrun's vibe is so electrifying and immediate, you boot up the game, pop in a credit, and just go. It was just the thing I needed to clear my mind of all the baggage I've had weighing on me lately. I've heard many complain that the game is over far too quickly, but I suspect this is either due to them looking at the game in relation to other more conventional lap-based racers, or just an admission that they don't have a firm grasp of the game's mechanics yet (completely understandable for a game designed to be played in short bursts with the pressure of a strict time limit, but unfortunate nonetheless)
I kinda knew going in that the game would fulfill my need for something comfy to slip into if I had the time, but I was pleasantly surprised by how neatly the game's mechanics would tie the whole experience together for me.
Simplifying the joy of driving a sports car down to the bare essentials not only widens the appeal of Outrun to everyone, but also trickles down into the moment-to-moment gameplay and creates a truly exhilarating experience in a way I wasn't expecting. The push-pull between the gear system and the absurdly strict timer is a particular highlight for me, having to choose whether or not to switch into the low gear for sharp turns or risk crashing is engaging enough on its own, but speed being the top priority encourages the player to make high risk maneuvers at every turn and always keeps the game from becoming dull.
To the game's detriment, there's not exactly much room for expression here (something I tend to crave in most games) but once the player gets to a point of mastery with the mechanics, that honestly ceases to matter. As soon as you cross the hurdle of learning when to shift gears, how to weave through traffic, or how to complete each route, the game comes full circle and morphs back into what made it so appealing to me in the first place. The track begins to melt away, and all that fills your focus is the horizon up ahead.
Life moves too quickly to focus on the past, so just buckle up and take life one turn at a time.
As the start of a new mascot platforming series launching around the turn of the millennium, one might assume Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus would stand as nothing but a sloppy first step for a long abandoned IP, but I was delighted to realize this assumption of mine was misguided, at least for the most part. In an effort to make a title that stood out from other games released for the PS2 in 2002, as well as potentially compete with the competition on Nintendo's platform, Sucker Punch aimed to make a platformer that played as smoothly as the aesthetic it was draped under. Setting the game around a globe-trotting adventure following the escapades of a sneaky Raccoon and his fellow band of misfits was already a recipe for success as far as I was concerned, but managed to be elevated even further by its gameplay.
Following in the approach of its narrative, Sly Cooper leans into a more adventure oriented design philosophy when it comes to its various locales, focussing less on gamey platforming playgrounds and more on the feeling of scavenging through organic feeling levels and environments. One of my favorite elements to the game is absolutely the levels themselves, once you reach a new level, there's basically no breaks until you complete the objective at hand, which more often than not tasks the player with collecting a few trinkets that tie into the level itself in some way. While I could have gone without Sly’s disembodied head being scattered throughout levels to give you more lives, I love how the game goes out of its way to make some of its more gamey elements feel a bit more diegetic. You’re not breaking boxes to fill an imaginary quota or collecting Stars to bring power to a castle, you’re collecting keys to open locks or finding pages of Sly’s family handbook to unlock more abilities focussed on the art of thievery. The platforming is pretty basic compared to other games of its ilk, but these little elements go a long way towards making the experience stand out from the crowd.
Thankfully, even while traversal isn’t necessarily taxing, Sucker Punch added just enough flourishes to Sly’s kit to make progression feel smooth and satisfying for the entire runtime of the game. Through the use of a single multi-purpose stealth button, Sly is able to interact with the world around him in practically any way you see fit to sneak by undetected. Hiding along walls, climbing up poles, sneaking on overhead wires, you name it. Everything lends further credence to the idea that you’re a master thief sticking your nose in spots you're not supposed to.
Unfortunately, the game’s design cohesion is not completely airtight. My statement earlier on the levels feeling organic is only partially true. While it's correct that each individual section is laid out in a way that makes it feel like a more believable place, each area is generally connected to a central hub that splits off into segmented levels through Super Mario 64-esque portals where the game warps you to a new section of the map. Sadly this is an element to the experience I can’t say I’m fond of. It may feel pedantic to rag on something as small as this, but when the rest of the experience goes out of its way to feel organic in its pacing and progression, it makes something like this stand out pretty hard. I tend not to care about it in something as whimsical as SM64, but I suppose I expected something more, forward thinking(?) for a game with a world as confident and grounded as this (ironic given the fact that the leads are anthropomorphized animals scouring the globe for the missing pages of a book)
The strength of the level design also tends to get lost when you’re stuck performing arduous mini-games that are clearly only there to extend the runtime or occasionally give Sly’s fellow thieves something to do on the field. It was a bit of a shame to see such a colorful cast of characters mostly swept to the side in place of the admittedly fun and charismatic Sly. It makes me wish there were a version of this group where overcoming obstacles felt more like a collaborative effort, rather than Sly doing everything himself and dragging his friends along
I could go on about smaller nitpicks like the mostly forgettable bosses or other teeny world-breaking elements, but on the whole I greatly enjoyed my time with this. Despite my issues with how it all ties together, a strong foundation was clearly laid with this game and I don’t think that should go overlooked. All it would take is some rethinking of the level structure, some extra polish on the objectives, and maybe a better balance between the cast, and I think you'd have a game that truly makes the thief motif shine. (I wonder what a game like that would look like 🗿)
Following in the approach of its narrative, Sly Cooper leans into a more adventure oriented design philosophy when it comes to its various locales, focussing less on gamey platforming playgrounds and more on the feeling of scavenging through organic feeling levels and environments. One of my favorite elements to the game is absolutely the levels themselves, once you reach a new level, there's basically no breaks until you complete the objective at hand, which more often than not tasks the player with collecting a few trinkets that tie into the level itself in some way. While I could have gone without Sly’s disembodied head being scattered throughout levels to give you more lives, I love how the game goes out of its way to make some of its more gamey elements feel a bit more diegetic. You’re not breaking boxes to fill an imaginary quota or collecting Stars to bring power to a castle, you’re collecting keys to open locks or finding pages of Sly’s family handbook to unlock more abilities focussed on the art of thievery. The platforming is pretty basic compared to other games of its ilk, but these little elements go a long way towards making the experience stand out from the crowd.
Thankfully, even while traversal isn’t necessarily taxing, Sucker Punch added just enough flourishes to Sly’s kit to make progression feel smooth and satisfying for the entire runtime of the game. Through the use of a single multi-purpose stealth button, Sly is able to interact with the world around him in practically any way you see fit to sneak by undetected. Hiding along walls, climbing up poles, sneaking on overhead wires, you name it. Everything lends further credence to the idea that you’re a master thief sticking your nose in spots you're not supposed to.
Unfortunately, the game’s design cohesion is not completely airtight. My statement earlier on the levels feeling organic is only partially true. While it's correct that each individual section is laid out in a way that makes it feel like a more believable place, each area is generally connected to a central hub that splits off into segmented levels through Super Mario 64-esque portals where the game warps you to a new section of the map. Sadly this is an element to the experience I can’t say I’m fond of. It may feel pedantic to rag on something as small as this, but when the rest of the experience goes out of its way to feel organic in its pacing and progression, it makes something like this stand out pretty hard. I tend not to care about it in something as whimsical as SM64, but I suppose I expected something more, forward thinking(?) for a game with a world as confident and grounded as this (ironic given the fact that the leads are anthropomorphized animals scouring the globe for the missing pages of a book)
The strength of the level design also tends to get lost when you’re stuck performing arduous mini-games that are clearly only there to extend the runtime or occasionally give Sly’s fellow thieves something to do on the field. It was a bit of a shame to see such a colorful cast of characters mostly swept to the side in place of the admittedly fun and charismatic Sly. It makes me wish there were a version of this group where overcoming obstacles felt more like a collaborative effort, rather than Sly doing everything himself and dragging his friends along
I could go on about smaller nitpicks like the mostly forgettable bosses or other teeny world-breaking elements, but on the whole I greatly enjoyed my time with this. Despite my issues with how it all ties together, a strong foundation was clearly laid with this game and I don’t think that should go overlooked. All it would take is some rethinking of the level structure, some extra polish on the objectives, and maybe a better balance between the cast, and I think you'd have a game that truly makes the thief motif shine. (I wonder what a game like that would look like 🗿)
2017
how early is too early for me to call my shot on the quality of something? i'm not asking this to be facetious, i'm genuinely curious. the reason i ask is that i highly doubt the quality of rain world will falter from my current point in the game. i'm only about say, 3 or 4 hours in? and it's already one of the most impressive games i've played in my life. every frame has been filled with such grace and beauty, while every interaction with the world and it's ecosystem has been lung-crushingly tense at best and downright terrifying at worst. it's chewed me up and spit me out over and over again, but i keep coming back to push through the brutal struggle. if that's not a sign of a special game, i don't know what is.
after i finish the game i may make a vein attempt to write something more formal about it, and by extension probably remove this journal entry to clean up my page a little. for the time being i can only speak for my experience through the first few levels, but if this section is indicative of the quality of the game as a whole, I suspect i'll comfortably be able to call this a masterpiece.
after i finish the game i may make a vein attempt to write something more formal about it, and by extension probably remove this journal entry to clean up my page a little. for the time being i can only speak for my experience through the first few levels, but if this section is indicative of the quality of the game as a whole, I suspect i'll comfortably be able to call this a masterpiece.
Recommended by Dusty Vita on this list.
While Marvel vs. Capcom was an enchanting concoction of two disparate corners of pop culture that created a fighting game experience you couldn’t find anywhere else, Capcom vs. SNK 2 leans in the opposite direction and sets out to create the perfect mechanical marriage of the two without sacrificing any element that made them special to begin with. In fact, I’d argue that it does a more interesting job in combining the gameplay of the source material than any other crossover fighter I’ve played.
Like any good crossover, the roster is sure to satisfy basically every fan of the genre, but CVS2’s true claim to fame is it’s brilliant Groove System. By selecting one of six presets styled after Capcom and SNK respectively, the player is able to tweak the game’s feel to their liking by essentially adding and subtracting mechanics depending on the Groove. Do you like Third Strike and the exhilaration that parrying gave? Pick P-Groove! Do you yearn for MAX mode and the dizzying movement options that made King of Fighters so interesting? Try N-Groove! Are you someone like me who really enjoys the custom combo system of Street Fighter Alpha? A-Groove is the one for you. Each style also completely changes how your meter works, so in essence, you basically have 6 versions of every character in the roster that aren’t insignificantly different. With an insane number of options and even some amount of mechanical overlap between certain Grooves (for example, 3 of the 6 Grooves feature rolling as an option) There’s basically no chance the player can’t find something they’ll like.
Here’s the catch: for each team, you only get ONE Groove choice. This isn’t like MVC where each character gets their own assist that changes the composition of your team, you just get one. They could have easily opened the floodgates and let the player customize every single character to their liking, but this little restriction makes the act of building a team way more interesting to me. It’s a small yet significant way to nudge the player towards experimentation and makes the construction of each team feel meaningful. Without it, it’d be too easy to pick what feels comfortable and just assign each character a Groove that fits in with their original design.
Another small wrinkle in the team building process is the Ratio system, though this is something that works in the background compared to the immediate changes Grooves make. Before the start of the game you have the choice to customize the size of the team, with sizes ranging from 1 to 3 team members. In an effort to balance this, you’re also tasked with assigning the strength of each team member using 4 points, with each point making the character way stronger and tankier than before. As someone pretty new to the game, I can’t speak on the competitive viability of picking a small team size over a larger one, but like the Groove system, I suspect it just depends on the characters in question and the taste of the player.
The aesthetic of the game is probably the one element to the game that deserves the most “objective” scrutiny. It’s no secret that Capcom liked to reuse sprites from older arcade games for their insane crossover titles (not surprising given the size of these rosters) and while at it’s best some of the sprite styles blend together and help make the aesthetic cohesive, a lot of times it makes certain sides of the roster feel really out of place.
Outside of a few characters that clearly needed a graphical facelift, the whole vibe of the game is so cohesive that a few blemishes tend to fall by the wayside for me. Being a post-Y2K game, it’s no surprise that the whole package feels like an exercise of friendly competition more than a battle for glory. The televised tournament setting present throughout every aspect of the package ties the mood of the game together for me and calls back to the setup of The King of Fighters Tournaments present in that series very nicely.
While Capcom vs. SNK 2 is a game that admittedly doesn’t scratch all of the competitive itches I may be looking for in a fighting game, it feels so complete and confident in it’s execution that I can’t help but love everything that its going for. I think I’d go as far as to say that it's one of the best casual fighting games for this very reason. If it feels like this writeup feels more like a surface-level examination of the game’s features more than anything, it's because it nails everything a first timer would probably cling to upon trying the game, and that's why I find it so endearing.
It may not have the craziest combos of any crossover or the most consistent sprite work of the era, but it makes up for all of this by being one of the most accessible, inviting, and overall jovial packages in fighting games. It has something for everyone, and that might just be the trick to get more people into the genre I love so much. You don’t need to dumb down the mechanical breadth to appeal to a casual demographic, you just need to make a game that can make someone go “Wow, that game looks cool as hell, I should play that”.
While Marvel vs. Capcom was an enchanting concoction of two disparate corners of pop culture that created a fighting game experience you couldn’t find anywhere else, Capcom vs. SNK 2 leans in the opposite direction and sets out to create the perfect mechanical marriage of the two without sacrificing any element that made them special to begin with. In fact, I’d argue that it does a more interesting job in combining the gameplay of the source material than any other crossover fighter I’ve played.
Like any good crossover, the roster is sure to satisfy basically every fan of the genre, but CVS2’s true claim to fame is it’s brilliant Groove System. By selecting one of six presets styled after Capcom and SNK respectively, the player is able to tweak the game’s feel to their liking by essentially adding and subtracting mechanics depending on the Groove. Do you like Third Strike and the exhilaration that parrying gave? Pick P-Groove! Do you yearn for MAX mode and the dizzying movement options that made King of Fighters so interesting? Try N-Groove! Are you someone like me who really enjoys the custom combo system of Street Fighter Alpha? A-Groove is the one for you. Each style also completely changes how your meter works, so in essence, you basically have 6 versions of every character in the roster that aren’t insignificantly different. With an insane number of options and even some amount of mechanical overlap between certain Grooves (for example, 3 of the 6 Grooves feature rolling as an option) There’s basically no chance the player can’t find something they’ll like.
Here’s the catch: for each team, you only get ONE Groove choice. This isn’t like MVC where each character gets their own assist that changes the composition of your team, you just get one. They could have easily opened the floodgates and let the player customize every single character to their liking, but this little restriction makes the act of building a team way more interesting to me. It’s a small yet significant way to nudge the player towards experimentation and makes the construction of each team feel meaningful. Without it, it’d be too easy to pick what feels comfortable and just assign each character a Groove that fits in with their original design.
Another small wrinkle in the team building process is the Ratio system, though this is something that works in the background compared to the immediate changes Grooves make. Before the start of the game you have the choice to customize the size of the team, with sizes ranging from 1 to 3 team members. In an effort to balance this, you’re also tasked with assigning the strength of each team member using 4 points, with each point making the character way stronger and tankier than before. As someone pretty new to the game, I can’t speak on the competitive viability of picking a small team size over a larger one, but like the Groove system, I suspect it just depends on the characters in question and the taste of the player.
The aesthetic of the game is probably the one element to the game that deserves the most “objective” scrutiny. It’s no secret that Capcom liked to reuse sprites from older arcade games for their insane crossover titles (not surprising given the size of these rosters) and while at it’s best some of the sprite styles blend together and help make the aesthetic cohesive, a lot of times it makes certain sides of the roster feel really out of place.
Outside of a few characters that clearly needed a graphical facelift, the whole vibe of the game is so cohesive that a few blemishes tend to fall by the wayside for me. Being a post-Y2K game, it’s no surprise that the whole package feels like an exercise of friendly competition more than a battle for glory. The televised tournament setting present throughout every aspect of the package ties the mood of the game together for me and calls back to the setup of The King of Fighters Tournaments present in that series very nicely.
While Capcom vs. SNK 2 is a game that admittedly doesn’t scratch all of the competitive itches I may be looking for in a fighting game, it feels so complete and confident in it’s execution that I can’t help but love everything that its going for. I think I’d go as far as to say that it's one of the best casual fighting games for this very reason. If it feels like this writeup feels more like a surface-level examination of the game’s features more than anything, it's because it nails everything a first timer would probably cling to upon trying the game, and that's why I find it so endearing.
It may not have the craziest combos of any crossover or the most consistent sprite work of the era, but it makes up for all of this by being one of the most accessible, inviting, and overall jovial packages in fighting games. It has something for everyone, and that might just be the trick to get more people into the genre I love so much. You don’t need to dumb down the mechanical breadth to appeal to a casual demographic, you just need to make a game that can make someone go “Wow, that game looks cool as hell, I should play that”.
Despite how my taste has evolved over time to prefer gamey-games rooted in arcade sensibilities, I still really struggle with sticking to many older arcade games. They're usually games that I'm able to appreciate and have fun with from time to time, but am always intimidated by in some way or another. Nevermind the fact that I've never been any good at them to begin with, being stuck in a never-ending loop of repetition to test my endurance has never been my preferred way to play (this may also be why I've been really into shmups lately to scratch my arcade itch, their difficulty is nigh impenetrable at the start, but after some practice, runs usually become 30 minutes to an hour at most). Even in more modern games that encourage score-chasing like Bayonetta, I love how inviting they tend to be to pick up for an afternoon and try to get the best rank on a level or two.
Now I don't want to be dishonest and say that none of this applies to old arcade games, that just wouldn't be true. Take the original Pac-Man for example: I can rarely get past the 6th level (let alone make it to the kill screen) without floundering and losing all my lives, but I'd be lying if I said the act of trying to beat my personal best wasn't invigorating. I understand the appeal of a game that can go on forever if you're skilled enough, I just personally lack the dexterity and mental fortitude to push my runs just that little bit longer for more than a few runs at a time. I think this is part of why Pac-Man Championship Edition is so innately appealing to me.
The most obvious change in Championship Edition is the addition of a hard-set time limit, something that undoubtedly changes the fundamental flow and pace of the game, but one that makes it easier to crack into for a more casual player like myself. It's way easier to justify starting a run of an arcade game when you know definitively that an end is in sight, and that it's easy to attain. In the case of CE, it means that each run becomes far more sharp and focused in the short-term, compared to the long-term goal of the vanilla game potentially being shot down and erased in a few quick mistakes. Aforementioned failure just feels better when runs aren't super draining.
More impressive is the way CE adapts and modernizes the original design document of Pac-Man without feeling like a completely different experience. Less pellets on screen at once that are compressed together means progress is snappier and less time is spent traversing through empty lanes, the ever evolving layout prevents runs from becoming tiresome and makes it harder to autopilot, and only refreshing one half of the maze at once means that players are forced to move back and forth constantly with meaningful intent. All of this under the pressure of a time limit and the ever-present yet obfuscated scaling speed of the game makes each run a frantic test of your ability to juggle a dozen different tasks at once. As a good example, in vanilla you may want to camp the maze and line up every ghost next to an Energizer to maximize your points, but in CE you don't have time to waste so you should frequently just take whatever chance you can get to use it. But if you ever do line everything up correctly it feels far more satisfying to achieve in a timely manner. Same goes for chaining energizers for a long ass combo, I don't think I've felt anything as electrifying as managing to gobble up 10 ghosts in a single combo in quite some time. Every little adjustment feels simultaneously tasteful to the original intent of the game while still acting as the perfect bullet point on an already arguably perfect game. How many games like this can you think of that only subtly iterate on the original and end up feeling definitive? That'd be like the 2D Mario games feeling conclusive after New Super Mario Bros. or something, I can't think of many examples where this has happened outside of this.
Despite being a little dry on content, Pac-Man Championship Edition is a game I can tell I'll be playing for a very long time, and might just be my first meaningful breakthrough into the original game. Nothing substantial was removed from the transition from vanilla to CE so skills acquired in one should theoretically carry over from one to the other for me. I think the sign of a truly masterful iteration is one that smooths out the original experience without completely invalidating it. One that feels modern while still keeping it's old soul in one piece. CE won't stop people from playing vanilla, hell it won't even stop Namco from continuing to make Pac-Man games, but as it stands, I think this is the most impressive mic-dropping moment in the gaming industry, and I don't foresee this being more than a once-in-a-generation moment.
Seriously though I have no clue why it doesn't at least include an optional endless mode, that alone would likely justify this as the definitive Pac-Man game and would genuinely make everybody happy. There's no reason it shouldn't be there. What the hell man. Port this to Steam so somebody can mod it in Namco!!!
edit: yeah so apparently this is getting ported to steam and new platforms in like a month and i had no idea lmao, y'all better buy it when it drops just saying
Now I don't want to be dishonest and say that none of this applies to old arcade games, that just wouldn't be true. Take the original Pac-Man for example: I can rarely get past the 6th level (let alone make it to the kill screen) without floundering and losing all my lives, but I'd be lying if I said the act of trying to beat my personal best wasn't invigorating. I understand the appeal of a game that can go on forever if you're skilled enough, I just personally lack the dexterity and mental fortitude to push my runs just that little bit longer for more than a few runs at a time. I think this is part of why Pac-Man Championship Edition is so innately appealing to me.
The most obvious change in Championship Edition is the addition of a hard-set time limit, something that undoubtedly changes the fundamental flow and pace of the game, but one that makes it easier to crack into for a more casual player like myself. It's way easier to justify starting a run of an arcade game when you know definitively that an end is in sight, and that it's easy to attain. In the case of CE, it means that each run becomes far more sharp and focused in the short-term, compared to the long-term goal of the vanilla game potentially being shot down and erased in a few quick mistakes. Aforementioned failure just feels better when runs aren't super draining.
More impressive is the way CE adapts and modernizes the original design document of Pac-Man without feeling like a completely different experience. Less pellets on screen at once that are compressed together means progress is snappier and less time is spent traversing through empty lanes, the ever evolving layout prevents runs from becoming tiresome and makes it harder to autopilot, and only refreshing one half of the maze at once means that players are forced to move back and forth constantly with meaningful intent. All of this under the pressure of a time limit and the ever-present yet obfuscated scaling speed of the game makes each run a frantic test of your ability to juggle a dozen different tasks at once. As a good example, in vanilla you may want to camp the maze and line up every ghost next to an Energizer to maximize your points, but in CE you don't have time to waste so you should frequently just take whatever chance you can get to use it. But if you ever do line everything up correctly it feels far more satisfying to achieve in a timely manner. Same goes for chaining energizers for a long ass combo, I don't think I've felt anything as electrifying as managing to gobble up 10 ghosts in a single combo in quite some time. Every little adjustment feels simultaneously tasteful to the original intent of the game while still acting as the perfect bullet point on an already arguably perfect game. How many games like this can you think of that only subtly iterate on the original and end up feeling definitive? That'd be like the 2D Mario games feeling conclusive after New Super Mario Bros. or something, I can't think of many examples where this has happened outside of this.
Despite being a little dry on content, Pac-Man Championship Edition is a game I can tell I'll be playing for a very long time, and might just be my first meaningful breakthrough into the original game. Nothing substantial was removed from the transition from vanilla to CE so skills acquired in one should theoretically carry over from one to the other for me. I think the sign of a truly masterful iteration is one that smooths out the original experience without completely invalidating it. One that feels modern while still keeping it's old soul in one piece. CE won't stop people from playing vanilla, hell it won't even stop Namco from continuing to make Pac-Man games, but as it stands, I think this is the most impressive mic-dropping moment in the gaming industry, and I don't foresee this being more than a once-in-a-generation moment.
Seriously though I have no clue why it doesn't at least include an optional endless mode, that alone would likely justify this as the definitive Pac-Man game and would genuinely make everybody happy. There's no reason it shouldn't be there. What the hell man. Port this to Steam so somebody can mod it in Namco!!!
edit: yeah so apparently this is getting ported to steam and new platforms in like a month and i had no idea lmao, y'all better buy it when it drops just saying
2004
The 2003 Toyota Camry of Video Games
2021
Takes me back to the days of screwing around on school desktops trying to find something to play to pass the time while I was supposed to be working. Miniclip was usually my site of choice, and while it was reliable enough, it was usually filled to the brim with pages of crap to sift through. Occasionally though, you'd find that one diamond in the rough that feels like it was made by someone who, at some point in their life, probably dug through shovelware in the past looking for something fun to play. Someone who just wants to slip into something cozy for a bit and have a nice time.
Sadly, experiences like that are much harder to come by these days. Not only has Flash compatibility been scrubbed clean from modern internet browsers, but scrolling through community posted games looking for buried treasure on something like Steam to scratch that same itch has a bit of a stigma tied to it these days. Fundamentally, the process isn’t too dissimilar to the one in your old computer lab, but now that a price tag is usually involved on top of the responsibilities and time loss that come with adulthood, people don’t really want to bother anymore. Why would anyone want to sift through thousands of asset flip pieces of software when they can just download the latest Sony cinematic adventure?
I think the practicality of old browser games is mostly a thing of the past by now, but it seems as though that era will still live on, at least in spirit. At its core, The Ramp is just like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, with the caveat of being shrunken down to the size of a single screen from an isometric perspective. What does the game have on offer other than this? Nothing! If you’ve played THPS and have seen any footage of this game, you know exactly what to expect. It's more akin to a distraction than anything. I’m not familiar with the developers or their intent behind the game, but I suspect their goal was to create a simple pick up and play game not too dissimilar to the ones you might find on Miniclip or Nitrome. At its price on PC some players may scoff at such a package, and while it is admittedly a tough sell compared to most, I can’t help but adore how it recaptures the spirit of its contemporaries, whether it meant to or not.
Can't say this has too much staying power for me personally, as these days I'm usually looking for something with a bit more meat on it's bones, but I don't think it needs to. The Ramp exists in its own little virtual realm, somewhere between playing THPS and doing kickflips with physical Tech Decks on a coffee table. I wish there were more small games like this that are just comfortable being quaint little projects from passionate developers on the same wavelength as their players. It's a delightful little time capsule that takes me back to a simpler slice of time and space where games were past the point of being considered child’s playthings, while still holding onto a bit of that childish whimsy that came from playing with toys in your spare time.
Sadly, experiences like that are much harder to come by these days. Not only has Flash compatibility been scrubbed clean from modern internet browsers, but scrolling through community posted games looking for buried treasure on something like Steam to scratch that same itch has a bit of a stigma tied to it these days. Fundamentally, the process isn’t too dissimilar to the one in your old computer lab, but now that a price tag is usually involved on top of the responsibilities and time loss that come with adulthood, people don’t really want to bother anymore. Why would anyone want to sift through thousands of asset flip pieces of software when they can just download the latest Sony cinematic adventure?
I think the practicality of old browser games is mostly a thing of the past by now, but it seems as though that era will still live on, at least in spirit. At its core, The Ramp is just like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, with the caveat of being shrunken down to the size of a single screen from an isometric perspective. What does the game have on offer other than this? Nothing! If you’ve played THPS and have seen any footage of this game, you know exactly what to expect. It's more akin to a distraction than anything. I’m not familiar with the developers or their intent behind the game, but I suspect their goal was to create a simple pick up and play game not too dissimilar to the ones you might find on Miniclip or Nitrome. At its price on PC some players may scoff at such a package, and while it is admittedly a tough sell compared to most, I can’t help but adore how it recaptures the spirit of its contemporaries, whether it meant to or not.
Can't say this has too much staying power for me personally, as these days I'm usually looking for something with a bit more meat on it's bones, but I don't think it needs to. The Ramp exists in its own little virtual realm, somewhere between playing THPS and doing kickflips with physical Tech Decks on a coffee table. I wish there were more small games like this that are just comfortable being quaint little projects from passionate developers on the same wavelength as their players. It's a delightful little time capsule that takes me back to a simpler slice of time and space where games were past the point of being considered child’s playthings, while still holding onto a bit of that childish whimsy that came from playing with toys in your spare time.
2001
A profoundly misunderstood classic that manages to impresses when stacked up against other games of the time, and effortlessly clears most modern attempts at being a satisfying action game. Even beyond the innovation on display (nobody was doing it like Capcom back in the late 90's/early 2000's) I'm consistently swept off my feet at how enjoyable this game is, even after around 8 personal playthroughs and 21(!) years of further innovation and inspiration in the medium. Dante may be a tad heftier than your modern action protag, but it has the side-effect of forcing you to constantly stay glued to encounters in a way I haven't really seen before. You must consider every step you take and every action you make, it's electrifying. I don't have any ill will towards Itsuno for reinventing the series like he did --who wouldn't after being tasked with scraping together the scattered remains of the last title and still having it come out like crap-- but there's still something here that later entries still have yet to recapture for me. It may not have the glitz and glamor of it's many sequels, but what you get instead is one of the most well considered, tightly paced, and highly rewarding gaming experiences out there.
2000
I wish more games were like The Bouncer
is this really a win for klonoa? namco puppeteering his corpse with the prospect of future games that may not deliver or even get made? i'd rather this series die if this is the quality we can expect from it.
nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.
i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.
no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.
best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better
nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.
i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.
no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.
best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better
2001
the most common criticism i hear towards Gitaroo Man is in regards to it's difficulty, and where it really comes into play during the game's campaign. some say it happens in the 2nd half of the game, and few suggest that it gets challenging right at the start during stage 2. i reject this notion. no point of this game is nearly as challenging as the very end, as it's extremely difficult to play a fast paced rhythm game with tears in my eyes