Cute! Wallace & Gromit is one of those things where I don't think about it a whole lot, but when I do, I remember just how much I like it. A video game hits a real sweet spot for me, then, particularly a tried-but-true 3D platformer.

The game definitely gets what it means to do Wallace & Gromit in the context of a video game. You play as Gromit and not Wallace; Wallace's contributions are in the inventions and weapons (all food-based, naturally) and in trying but largely failing to be part of the action pieces. There's very little dialogue, with most vocal lines delivered by an unsupportive narrator and Wallace monologuing to Gromit. Feathers McGraw - the penguin from "The Wrong Trousers" - is back, with the game's story acting as a sequel to his debut short. There are throwaway nods to the shorts scattered throughout, like the box of "Meatabix" (completely missed that pun as a kid). And as a cute legacy nod, animal designs are reused from "Creature Comforts" where applicable.

There's also a motif throughout of the game sneaking in nods to other video games. It's all on the sly, so don't expect any big parodic send-ups like you'd see out of Conker or Asterix. But if you're paying attention, you'll catch that the first room of the Panda enclosure is specifically homaging Metal Gear Solid, down to the sight gag involving Mei Ling's Codec number, and the Penguin enclosure boss fight being an Asteroids nod, down to the ice floes having the distinct wedge missing like the original Asteroids. It's my favorite type of reference humor, where they're made unobtrusively, and the game maintains its integrity even if you don't get it.

Like, they have a gorilla throwing barrels - the single most stock "I'm referencing a video game" joke you see in media. But it doesn't feel trite because the gorilla throwing the barrel isn't underlined by the text of the work; it's just part of the tapestry of the game world. It makes sense for the gorilla to throw barrels in the context of the narrative: Feathers has enslaved the other zoo animals to do his bidding and perform menial tasks; mindlessly chucking barrels as an ambiguous part of some machine is right in line with that. Does it matter if it's a reference? Nah, but that just makes it a cute shout-out.

I'll say the game's rarely interesting as a platformer. Platformers tend to be the safest genre you can develop in, and I don't think Project Zoo offers anything unique to the formula outside its theming. The weapons are cute but invite unfavorable comparisons with Ratchet & Clank. Gromit has a decently robust moveset, including an analogue to Mario's side somersault, but most of his moves feel stiff; Gromit definitely jumps more like an Ice Climber than a Plumber. That extended sequence in the Zebra Enclosure(?) is fun, though; running on an endless track through the belly of a great machine makes for a very Aardman set piece. But notice how it leans more on weapon-puzzles than platforming challenges?

Okay, but, like, speaking of that machine, you're spending the whole run trying to keep a cute baby polar bear with glasses from getting hurt. And if you fail, you have to watch the poor little guy get hurt and keel over! It's so heartbreaking!

Alright, alright. If you're looking for more Wallace & Gromit, this game will fit the bill nicely. If you're just looking for a 3D platformer, you could do better. But it ain't bad, and between its short length and solid variety of mechanics and set pieces, it shouldn't have trouble holding your interest.

Very interesting experience, but I would consider this more of an Early Access game. It’s fairly short right now, having completed it in 3 hours, however the developer has promised future content later in 2024. A LOT of bugs, though for the most part I was able to get through the game on Steam Deck. But as a concept, I think it’s terrific. The 2D Zelda dungeon style adventure is very well thought out and feels really good to play. The style then switches to an Undertale-inspired turn-based combat during the big boss battles. The little mini-games during the bosses are neat, but I think they need some fine-tuning. Definitely something great there, I’d love to see an established dev (like Yacht Club) offer to help and really polish this up and provide funding to expand on what’s there so far.

When you see an art style like this, it immediately feels like there's so much potential to the game. This game clearly seems inspired by Mother/Undertale/Zelda with a dash of Celeste. It looks great and has a cool vibe… but gosh, these games need to cool it on not giving you a real enemy encounter for an hour+ into playing it. The game promises turn-based rpg battles but it appears to only be for boss battles and the two that you experience in the first hour are both scripted for you to lose/not do anything effective. It gave a very bad first impression. Once I got to a real boss battle, lo and behold they aren't turn based battles at all, they're Undertaleish battles where the screen gets very small and you have to dodge enemies like you do in the overworld for 5 seconds. It's not really turn based, though it has you 'miss' attacks a lot making these battles last a long time. It also has you repeating the same overworld puzzles the only difference is that it shrinks everything down to a postage-stamp sized square. If you're steam linking onto your phone like I was, it's not really playable at that screen size. I had to switch devices to finish the game which is not the best user experience.

There are zeldish battles and puzzles in the overworld which are not bad but you are funneled into them quite linearly and you have to finish their very specific tasks to progress, which kinda that messes a bit with the game’s pacing if you miss something minor. The puzzles aren't bad, but it doesn't really go beyond anything too basic. Still not the worst part of the game.

I’ve been in the mood for what this game promises, but it’s running into the same the pitfalls that something like Eastward or Sea of Stars ran into. It’s not bad, but it feels very incomplete and more like an imitation than a game trying to do its own thing. Learning that it’s basically early access without saying it’s early access and it’s “part 1 of an episodic series” has me a little extra cynical about it. This game feels like it needs to find its own voice and focus more on making a system that works internally rather than just being a pastiche of things it likes from other games.

Ah

I really needed that.

Hard to be cynical, hard to analyze what I needed emotionally in the moment. Something to plug a hole I didn't realize was bothering me. Sometimes the verisimilitude of a hike that I can't currently get right now is the best medicine for my mental state. The lighthearted soul of something really warm, uplifting that makes my heart soar. I cried to very small, very clearly crafted, earnest messages. I wandered, I explored, I went to the ends of the island and back, and I got something to remember this day forever.

Thank you for the gentle reminder to look forward head high.

Suggested by Phantom. Thank you

The concept of “wholesome” media is a complicated one and it’s an idea that I feel like people are turning against. Sometimes I think I might be one of them. It makes sense how the trend would emerge. After a lengthy decade of edgy sad dads in Prestige Games, it was inevitable that trends would flip to something more chill and friendly. And so you get things like Wholesome Directs, which seem to be filled with announcements for twenty identical farming games starring animals. These games are so focused on being sweet and cozy that it’s hard not feel like there’s no meat on the bone. That in its pursuit of being “wholesome”, the text ultimately ends up feeling hollow.

So what’s needed for the “wholesome” media to work? It’s possible that this is a primarily American problem. I don’t think that there’s a lot of mainstream American media that focuses on providing a restorative vibe. The ones that are intended to be affirming tend to feel very… white. I understand why people assume Ted Lasso is just about white people hugging, but I think it’s a disservice to how that show understands the idea of narrative catharsis. You build flawed characters which realistic problems and you make your end goal the catharsis of them choosing self-improvement. It’s a fulfilling show because it makes the journey feel earned. Video games are highly centered around catharsis. Taunting players or dangling new things just out of reach.

A Short Hike is about a young girl climbing a mountain. There’s no real larger plot or narrative. There’s no dramatic secret waiting around the corner, it’s not as emotionally weighty as Celeste, it’s just about a climb up the mountain.

The catharsis in A Short Hike emerges from the small ways the player improves. The mountain contains numerous hidden sidequests. A man’s lost watch. A painter working on his masterpiece. A woman searching for her lucky headband. Cute little conversations and simple little anxieties. No one’s in any particular rush, they’re just sitting with this minor problems that give them emotional discomfort. You fix these problems, and you get a little better at climbing the mountain. You’re rewarded with stamina upgrades, which let you explore more things around the island. You took chosen to help someone and your life got easier. You earned more exploration, more gorgeous visuals, more chill music. You’ve earned the Catharsis. The spectacle of the game is in the quiet intimacy. Drifting in the wind for longer and longer stretches of time. The catharsis is more opportunities to relax. To play. To climb.

Sometimes it’s hard for me not to go into a game like this with expectations about its intentions. Something that’s marketing itself aggressively as “sweet,” to its detriment. I think why a Short Hike works is that it never feels like it’s trying to evoke a single feeling. It’s not aggressively courting this idea of being “wholesome” or “pure.” And that’s because there’s a sincerity here. Just a genuine love for video games and a genuine love of the craft. And that passion and care speaks through every single aspect of the game’s production.

It’s the kind of game I just really needed at 4 am after failing to get to sleep.

In 2006, the first Silent Hill game was adapted into a feature film by French filmmaker Christopher Gans, and while it was an overall critical failure plagued by many of the same shortcomings that are seemingly inherent to the video game movie genre as a whole, what I found interesting was how many of the elements of the film seemed to foreshadow the eventual future of the franchise. The way the film utilized its source material was full of a passion for the series' style & sound, but failed to utilize any of the iconic iconography that it paraded around with any real substance; a frankly nonsensical and masturbatory worship of recognizable figures like Pyramid Head for audiences to point to and go "That's the thing from the one I like!", and a focus on the series' legacy instead of its influences that would lead to the cyclical repetition of the series' Greatest Hits without any thoughts for the future, and there is no better representation of this phenomena than Silent Hill: Homecoming.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is Silent Hill gone direct to video, a foreign pastiche akin to Spike Lee's "Oldboy" that's less 'psychological horror' and more 'creature feature', a story less interested in isolation and character studies and more in wisecracking black guys who go "Ah hell naaaah!" & "Shieeeeet!". It's a game more interested in letting our boot boy protagonist utilize his 'epic' military training to dodge roll & combo hordes of generic monsters rather than indulging in any feelings of powerlessness or vulnerability. It's a game that's afraid of ambiguity and subtlety, where the all-American hero has to cock his shotgun menacingly at monsters and walk into the sunset with his generic blonde love interest, where the abstract is downplayed for the concrete, so the main plot has to be about specific human error instead of any institutional trauma or individual failings. A game that can't bear to leave you alone, so humans are always a hair's breath away, whether it be the NPCs you're always encountering for cutscenes with dialogue wheel options to choose from, or the generic human cult members you face during the climax.

A story about a war veteran coming to Silent Hill was ripe with potential for symbolism and interesting stories to tell, and Homecoming does have its moments where its presentation almost reaches the heights of its predecessors, but in Homecoming's attempts to improve upon its foundations, it reveals it's true form: a vapid and misguided entry that doesn't have a single original idea in its bones. Unlike Team Silent's wide array of influences, stretching from Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment" to the art of Heironymous Bosch, Homecoming's only frame of reference is Silent Hill itself, a capitalistic ouroboros of concepts and ideas regurgitated wholesale to sell recognizability. Much of this game's imagery and backstory is lifted from the film, in a way that makes the whole experience feel like a game based on the film's mythos more than anything Team Silent established. Monsters like the Bubble Head Nurses and Pyramid Head are dolled up and wheeled out for the equivalent of a money shot, and even the plot itself is a simple retread of Silent Hill 2's in a misguided attempt to re-sell success, telling a story about grief & loss that's delivered in the language of a B-horror flick that's about as subtle as a brick to the dome.

But Homecoming's biggest failing is that even without the historic legacy of the Silent Hill brand dragging it down, it's just a fucking boring game. It's an utterly generic, buggy and tedious survival horror experience that's trapped in a Catch-22: A game that would never be published without the name of Silent Hill attached, but one who's greatest failings are due to being saddled with the legacy Silent Hill entails. A game trapped in a hell of its own creation made of Pyramid Head figurines and Bubble Head Nurse pin-up posters.