I have this propensity to never play games a second time, even the ones I love. It serves me well more often than not, because I greatly value backlog exploration and sheer variety over mechanical or scholarly mastery of any specific title. Where it bites me in the wahooey, however, is in largely skill-oriented titles like character action games, ones that demand keen attentiveness and willingness to retain and juggle knowledge of systems macro and micro. For as much as I love these games for their absolutely unbridled pomp and the hot-blooded verve that courses thru em - I know I’m not going to get the most out of them, I just don’t have that kind of attention. Bayonetta 1 is astoundingly good, but it’s a game I essentially Bronze Trophied my way through, and only watched .webms of people going sicko online for. I only knew what dodge offset WAS when I hit the last level, when it was too late for me 😔.
Bayorigins: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature is just a nice little scrimblo that forces a more steady pace with its longer runtime and focus on action adventure & metroidvania-lite elements. There is a more sensical focus on the storytelling here than in the mainline entries, exemplified through its presentation style of a children’s picturebook narrated by a granny. It’s all just nice, the visual direction is utterly astounding, and is the most blown away I’ve been by sheer artistry in a videogame in a very long time, the shader programmers were spinning in their chairs like the tasmanian devil on this one. With the combat being a touch more of a tertiary focus on the title than the rest, it allows itself time to slowly blossom through the course of the runtime with a steadily increasing amount of abilities, roadblocks and enemy gimmicks - and while there are no post-battle ranking screens to have Stone trophies nip at my heels, it felt immensely satisfying to sense myself mastering it under a more forgiving piecemeal delivery. It’s actually a little impressive how intuitive this control scheme becomes after an awkward starting period; forcing the player to control two separate characters by splitting the controller inputs down the middle. With its smart application within certain story beats, I became more than sold on the way this plays, kinda love it. For all these reasons, it's my favourite Bayonetta game. This is the warmest I’ve felt for a Platinum title since Wonderful 101, and while it doesn’t reach the same heights, it’s a miraculously good little spinoff to patch over my confidence in the studio that Bayo3 had dented.

A game that manages to perfectly blend the survival horror formula that Resident Evil popularised with something resembling what was - at the time - the future of the third-person genre. Every aspect of it is designed to ramp up the tension and keep you in this sweet spot of just about surviving the horrors by the skin of your arse. There's a reason the controls are like that, the guns feel like that, the enemies react like that, the music sounds like that... EVERYTHING is geared towards making you feel like the game is constantly turning the screw, and, thanks to the adaptive dificulty, it usually fucking is.

A masterpiece, no doubt about it.

Sorry, I'm not a massive Fusion fan. I'm one of those folk who takes issue with the segmented structure, chasing after destination points, and the constant consultation with the commander. I've also got problems with the security clearance upgrades that don't fundamentally add to Samus's abilities, how scattershot some of the mandatory secret entrances are, and how much the level design seems to suffer by the point you fight Nightmare, which I don't really see get brought up as much.

They were overwhelmingly irritating sore spots on my first playthrough, and they gave me pause about the idea of coming back for a second run, but they didn't bother me nearly as much on the Switch. I was able to appreciate the rest of it more. I think Samus's eventual subordination towards "Adam" rounds out the arc that was retroactively introduced in Other M (by worse storytellers) quite nicely. Super Metroid is easily my favourite game in the series, but I can see how Fusion would serve as a more welcoming entry point for new players, and might lead them to go back afterwards. The music often comes off as corny, and soured me to the whole idea of the X Parasite, but seeing how thrillingly that stuff gets paid off in Dread warmed me to it. I never took much stock in the appeal of Metroid's continuity before Dread, but I think it benefits some of the patchier games that surround it.

Since this was my second time through, I took a more casual approach, allowing use of the Switch Online rewind feature whenever I felt like it, which mellowed a lot of the frustration I had last time, but I don't think I really needed it. I think I just hadn't found enough health upgrades on the first go. It's not nearly as rough if you look for them. The segmented structure often means you're locked off from backtracking, though, so you'd better just be thorough on your first time through each location.

Looking forward to Zero Mission, because I liked that far more. I'm just a little worried it might not outshine Fusion quite as much next time.

Cleansed by the surf, a body washes ashore on a deserted beach. Nameless, this soul awakens, eyes gleaming with the will to live, and for all things worth living for.

This was my first full playthrough of the game since maybe 2013, and the first time I’ve tackled the expansion content added to the Dark Arisen release. Game still rocks my world. Something of a Capcom dream team coming together to create a moving Frazetta artwork. Hideaki Itsuno’s combat direction acumen and some Monhun crew in the wings to reign the madness into a more grounded dark fantasy action game with a keen eye for resource management & an iconique soundtrack. An excitable exploration of pure western fantasy through the Japanese lens akin to Record of Lodoss War.

I really do just think it’s special. Every excursion through the world or a dungeon is speckled with emergent Moments that can only come around because the systems the game is built on offer a wealth of synergies and expressive means of interactivity. The regularity with which Dragon’s Dogma punctuates an excursion with sick as hell moments that steal your breath, as well as pure slapstick comedy, it almost rivals a particularly haphazard TTRPG campaign. It pays to take note of enemy AI behaviors and exploits, because your pawns will learn as you do and take actions that repeatedly surprise - when I started picking throwing loose enemies into the wider horde in order to more easily deal AoE damage, I noticed my pawn starting to do it for me and I felt like a proud dad.

The world of Gransys is almost my platonic ideal open-world RPG setting. With transportation options limited, the relatively small scale of the map itself is made to feel gargantuan, aided by the density to which it is decorated with places of interest and rewards for clambering up suspicious nooks. Questing requires planning so careful that even a journey down a road must be approached with trepidation. All with thanks to the game’s downright brutal day-night cycle with realistic lighting, you enter a pitch black forest with only your lantern and the reflection of the starving beastly eyes peering at you through the shrubbery. It was impressive in 2012, and remains so to this very day imo!!! I’ll never ever in my life forget the way I shot out of my chair because I turned on my lantern in the pitch black, to reveal the face of a gargantuan chimera winding up a punch.

Dark Arisen offers a locale with something of a megadungeon populated by new enemies and threats. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had with the game occurred within those dingy stone walls. It feels almost like a Bloody Palace mode so you can unleash your classbuilding prowess on the increasingly monstrous beasties thrown your way. End boss was some pure “ah, so this is why games exist” affirmation, too.

…But, it’s undeniably as half-baked as the rest of the game itself. Dragon’s Dogma feels about as unfinished as I’d dejectedly expect anything that comes across as a double-A passion project to be. Brimming with brave creative flourishes, but lacking in a certain star power to really let it raise the bar. I don’t want to beat the dead horse and lament the concepts on the cutting room floor, but it’s fairly noticeable that the game suffers from an enemy and location variety deficit. The implementation of the Pawn system is downright amazing, but so peculiar with miniscule blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details that they don’t have much of a cohesive bigger picture place in the game, and come across as a patchwork solution to a botched multiplayer mode. The quests are fairly rote in and of themselves, and the characters - while I love their antiquated Tolkienist dialogue style, are all flat and unmemorable. Even the classes themselves, which I’d still say are near-enough goated as far as fantasy action games are concerned, could do with a little more in the way of skill diversity. Bitterblack Isle itself feels like at most five unique rooms repeated a handful of times.

Still, don’t wanna be a downer. Dragon’s Dogma is amazing, scratches such a specific itch that I can only thank The Maker that it even exists in the way it does at all. Didn't mention the story at all, not sure how I'd tackle it honestly - thematically rich and insanely well executed. Grigori gets me weak at the knees, man. How the fuck is this game getting a sequel, nothing I like is ever allowed to do that.

Data File-
//defragmented
[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023

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XENOGLYPH I
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“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
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“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
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XENOGLYPH III
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“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
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[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
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XENOGLYPH IV
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“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]

True enough, a game I wholeheartedly consider to be a watertight little marvel was graced with a sequel that promises bigger and better - and in their attempt to deliver, it begins to burst at the seams. There was a certain elegance to the way the Okomotive, the main mode of transport in FAR: Lone Sails, was designed. In the context clarity for which every function and dial coexists with the rest of the machine and how breezy it felt to dart around its internals. Much of that game’s appeal was in the ease with which you could Zombie Mode it, stringing together repeated steam release speed boosts while spinning all the other managerial plates thrown your way, all with enough spare time to enjoy the journey you’re making.

FAR: Changing Tides trades the Benz for the boat, with an interesting inversion of the previous title’s control scheme, and a very different internal routine you’ll have to learn and adapt to as an increasing amount of plates demand to be spinned. I’m all for a spot of intentioned friction in my games, but it felt as though I was struggling with the control scheme more often than the barge itself. Changing Tides’ doesn’t let you hold on to the momentum you build for very long before you need to grind to a halt, it’s a very harsh stop-and-start routine you have to rigidly follow. My main source of disappointment is in how I felt as though I stared at my vehicle’s gauges and switches for far longer than the stunning environments rolling by, bumping around its cramped internals and trying to nurture any semblance of speed I built. All of this is a thorn in the side of a game that deserves to be absorbed into. It pains me to hear a wonderful piece of background score coming to an end before I can reach the finale of a setpiece or chapter. There's a lot of strained silence in stretches of Changing Tides that smack less of Muted Immersion and more that I’m Fucking Up Somewhere. This kind of lack of clarity tends to extend to the puzzle the segments that break up the boat trips, I’m somewhat in disbelief at how often they’d place items or levers behind obstructing pieces of geometry.

Not without its flashes of brilliance, don’t get me wrong. When the going gets going, and you hit the supercharge, carving your ship through the cerulean nebula, I felt like I was driving a carmine dagger and dealing the killing blow to God. In a stunningly good final act, Changing Tides is genuinely host to one of the biggest sentimental sequel popoffs I’ve had since Shadow Moses in MGS4. I can forgive all matter of ooo clunkiness when a game makes me loudly exclaim “No Fucking Way”.

Come on a journey with me. Imagine this: 'Kirby doesn't exist'. Stop screaming. It's going to be alright.

Prior to 1992, that's how the world was. A horrible place. There was no established impression of what Kirby was, who he knew, or what he could do. A young team at HAL Laboratory had the opportunity to make a Game Boy platformer, and all was put right.

We don't know who Kirby is. There's just this one cartridge that you put in your Game Boy and love. Kirby's a funny little ball who walks around and does levels. He can kind of fly if he wants. He can do the standard running and jumping stuff, but that's up to you.

Kirby's Dream Land is a terrific thing for your Game Boy to do. It's what you want the screen to display and the speaker to amplify when you hold one of those devices in your hand. It's a game, sure, but it's something different - "a funny little game". It's presented with real affection and delight. Someone drew Kirby and said "that's our character", and everyone on the project made sure he was put into the perfect little game for him.

Viewed from this perspective, you don't take characters like Whispy Woods or King Dedede for granted. It's really great that Kirby is fighting a big tree or a pompous penguin in a boxing ring. You gain such appreciation for the later series standards when you embrace the context that justified their inception. Inhaling enemies has continued to be an important part of Kirby games, but in Dream Land it's all he has, and the surrounding design makes more sense as a result. Sucking up enemies and spitting them back out feels just like holding Koopa shells in Mario 3. An instant feeling of power that you hold over the screen in front of you. Excitement in a flash.

Kirby's Dream Land washes away all the prejudice of what a videogame should be. It takes no notice of the industry around it. It just exists as its own thing. It takes encouragement from Super Mario Bros, because by that point, the notion of scrolling levels filled with wandering enemies and obstacles was already agreed upon as the essence of what a videogame was. But it's a much more welcoming game, and it doesn't dismiss casual curiosity nearly as harshly. This is a game that learns from the developing industry of the eighties and turns their electronic experiments into something immediately appealing for a new generation.

Kirby's Dream Land is where I hope people start when first trying videogames. I'd never push it upon them, or sway them away from whatever flashy new thing first piqued their interest, but in my wildest dreams, this is the ideal. I'm so thankful that they made Kirby.

Fuck, that's disappointing.

Some people aren't obsessed with lightgun games. They played a few in arcades and stuff, but they never really got much out of the experience. Kinda fun, I guess - They probably played something like Ninja Assault.

Almost a how-to on making a boring lightgun shooter. Bunch of enemies that spawn in and fire tiny projectiles at you, that you have to strike down. Basically every enemy takes multiple hits, and your gunfire feels pathetic as a result. You're constantly firing. No sense of drama or tension. Just the act of following the moving targets until the next ones are presented in front of you. Total dogdirt sound design, too. PlayStation demo menu drum and bass that doesn't attempt to complement the action or setting. There's a results screen at the end of each level with a bit of samisen, but that's all you're getting.

Seeing that Namco logo on the front of an early PS2 lightgun shooter implies something, and it's not "boredom". This is from Now Production, who are a bit of a powerhouse outsourcing studio for lacklustre shite and bland ports. I can only speculate this is a Bill Murray/Garfield situation, where someone from Namco mistook them for WOW Entertainment.

It's not rubbish. There's a flaming kitsune boss, and that's kind of cool. The last boss turns into a floating head that flies into a bigger floating skull. It's not as good as that makes it sound, though. Passionless. You could do so much better. Don't you dare let this colour your impression of the genre.

General mix of nausea trying to see this on its own terms versus what the series means for me. I'm moreso feeling to judge towards the latter considering that the game is seeking to be more replacing than going in its own direction, albeit you can still buy the first game on any market for cheap, it's not that sunset, so maybe that's a little mean?

Regardless though, I got about to chapter 5 before I stopped. Then got increasingly upset about it. Positives first it's like, a more competent horror in terms of visual design and understanding of its gore and shock. Genuinely better at pacing its atmosphere than the original, which is something I didn't think I'd find myself saying. I think a lot of that is simply by the original's design, as they couldn't get as visceral with the lighting or do most of the effects presented here, and said lighting back then in gen 7 now looks significantly aged worse even within its context. Dead Space 2 sidelines this entirely by going for a way better fusion with its pocket city meets infection, but still, credit where it's due the devs here's very clearly first project with a game of this kind of tone is firing very well here.

Everything ends there though. The big massive elephant in the room is how Dead Space Remake plays. I think it'd be really really silly to not acknowledge that Dead Space by Clear Intent explicitly and by result is influenced by Resident Evil 4. The OG and especially Dead Space 2 took this influence to give incredibly threatening enemies that were built around a toolset you had properly balanced to deal with them. You manipulated their enemy state between terrifying rush mode and kiting them together so you can get shots in while faster and more difficult incarnations came around the corner later. This significantly added to that horror, the necromorphs were very much abominations that gruesomely formed from humanity and their feral instinctual power that you had to manage and keep your distance especially with their erraticism was The defining factor.

But here? They're entirely defanged. This is utterly indefensible to me. The AI for lack of a better word is total dogshit. They'll constantly, CONSISTENTLY, revert to an idle state both after sprinting or even in the middle of attacks. They're boring, reduced in a manner similar to xenomorphs from Alien to Aliens, their threat deorbited to be replaced by, well, nothing. You're far more powerful too, weapon hitboxes have been so overtuned to where flamethrower just disintegrates now, as an example. Your stomp hitbox is so laughably huge that it brought me out of the game hard. I went through the entirety of chapter 4 trying to see how much I could get by just stomping enemies to death. I succeeded and that was depressing. I'm playing this game on Hard btw, and I've actually never been quite able to power through the original's hardest difficulties. I'm not that good at Dead Space. This remake really is just that toothless.

And that's astonishing to me. This is a remake set to be a powerful recognizable spirit of the original, with an uncharitable doctrine towards its coming entirely because EA still absolutely sunset the original devs with prejudice. But its roots, they're gone! They're not even a part of the equation here. I found playing this less interesting and engaging from a mechanical standpoint than Dead Space 3 and that in of itself is also something I never wished I had to say.

I don't know. On its own terms, I think it's largely understandable that people are seeing this from a nu-standpoint where they, likely honestly, never played the original. Simply observed it from its marketing and its dominating horror appeal and came in hoping to be blown away by that part of things. Which is there. That part is not, like, missing. This is in some sense a strongly competent horror walking sim of sorts (yeah i know, levels are still nonlinear, you still kind of fight things, but it's obviously not the point anymore). Difficult for me to internalize that though. The legacy I loved the series for is gone. I'm not very good with horror games exclusively, I loved Dead Space largely for how its monsters were analogous to the horror and forced me to feel things intrinsically through gameplay. I loved that something something ludonarrative. I liked the power and actualization of accomplishing past these terrible monsters, going through with wounds and scars and feeling like I really just lived through a stone cold hell.

Not here though. Dead Space has moved on. Maybe we should too.

GOTY 2022 & '21 - NUMBER 2
(Click here for the video)

If I think about games I'm a little precious about, above everything else, it's how much I love the tone. The amusingly goofy kindness of Resident Evil's STARS teams, the whimsically bleak setting of Pikmin, or the underground pop artists delivering high-concept worlds and packaging them in shlocky teenage anime templates in games like PaRappa or Ribbit King or Gitaroo-Man. It's the atmosphere that's established that distinguishes the games I admire from the games I love, and there's very few games as captivatingly atmospheric as Metroid.

I'm deeply attached to how Metroid games have made me feel. It can't help but feel personal. It's such an isolating experience. The only thing between you and the dark, foreboding space caves is Samus Aran - A Bio Booster Armor Guyver version of Ellen Ripley, and the most quintessential example of everything I thought was cool when I was ten. Metroid fucking rules, and Dread feels every bit like the immediate follow-up to Fusion that Yoshio Sakamoto would have made in the mid-2000s if things had worked out perfectly.

The Sakamoto Metroid is something I hold dear. I'm much softer on Other M than most, and will take it anyday over Retro Studios' GI Joe bullshit that crept into the Prime sequels. It's the idea of space being something akin to death. Entering the unknown in complete isolation. Not just a convenient setting to fill a game with a bunch of crazy monsters and superheroes.

One thing Metroid has always done better than Zelda is the upgrade system. In Zelda, you unlock items that help you navigate dungeons and solve specific puzzles. In Metroid, the upgrades fundamentally add to your abilities, whether that's your movement options, weapons or scanning systems. The gameplay becomes more complex as you're gain more skill with the basics, and more appreciation for what options these upgrades offer you. Dread might do the best job of this in the whole series, largely down to the intricacy and flexibility of the combat and Samus's movement.

Samus Returns did a lot to refine Metroid combat, but it always felt dead cramped on the 3DS. On the Switch, and with an entirely new game, they can really make the most of it. I'll never stop enjoying Super Metroid, but trying to introduce that game to new people is a daunting prospect. Viewing from a modern perspective, it's absurd to think of a Metroid game without analogue control or precision aiming. In old Metroid, Samus felt like someone in a massive, heavy robot suit. In Dread, she really feels like the cool, best-in-the-universe fighter that her biggest fans always saw her as. Boosting over and sliding under enemies, taking critical pot shots at muscular alien creatures, and completely undaunted by something as trivial as Kraid. Samus isn't pinned down by her suit. It makes her electric.

As a long-time fan of the series, so much of Metroid Dread is spent shouting "Holy shit! Samus rules!". Not just by how dynamic and effortlessly precise she appears in action cutscenes or the gameplay, but how the story expresses her character. She's surrounded by vicious threats and power-hungry, colonialistic forces, and she just fucking eviscerates them. Always the only hero in the room, and there's no sense of ego to her. Samus fucking Aran. She's the total fucking best.

Metroid Dread features some of the most complexly interlinked level design in the series. The map is dense and labrynthian, but delicately and deliberately so. The newfound confidence in the less restrictive controls have allowed the developers to create a bunch of optional challenges to reward the most dedicated of its players. You rarely get that old Super Metroid feeling of finding yourself at a complete dead-end and struggling to dig your way back to the last curiosity. You're just not that detached from any point of the map, though they don't shy away from allowing players to feel lost or confused either. There's an appreciation for everything Metroid has been.

On release, there was pretty heated debate over whether or not Dread was the best Metroid game. I think we've all dismissed that notion as empty hype now, but we shouldn't forget all the good, unique things the game has going for it. It's definitely the most fun Metroid game to move around and fight in. It's taken what Team Ninja presented with their fast-moving, high-flying Samus, and actually put her in a proper Metroid game. It's also a thoroughly encouraging sign that Nintendo still care about SNES fans. We shouldn't take this for granted.

"As stated by the royal court due to recent plunders, all belongings of the deceased pilot are to be considered property of the local authorities."

When you first start playing Nauticrawl, you will be completely and immediately overwhelmed. This is by design. The cockpit that you occupy is full of levers, and clicky buttons, and pull cords, and none of them are labelled. You're expected to play around with them, hit switches until anything happens, and then inevitably get a game over for what seems like literally no reason. It is confusing, and it is unfair.

Eventually, you'll stumble your way into hitting the right switches. It doesn't take too long, but it stops just before your frustration can set in. The murky, bassy rush of water around your Nauticrawl gets interrupted by beeping monitors and rolling engines, and you can start to figure out what each of these individual pieces do as a whole. You'll continue to make mistakes that cost you the game; you'll ram into a wall and break critical systems, or get caught by a patrolling drone, or simply run out of gas and battery and leave yourself stranded on the sea floor, but each of these failures teaches you something new. You won't lose the same way twice, because you've learned the two things that make you lose: ignorance, and carelessness.

The Nauticrawl starts to feel like a second skin. You flick off monitors as you move, because you know where you're going to go before you take a step. You redirect battery power from the vestigial components you've identified. You know exactly how much time you've got to loot guard towers before the security drones spawn, and you know how to evade them if they do. Try as they might to stop you, the royal court doesn't stand a chance. You've figured out how to use their machinery better than they can.

The Nauticrawl turns from an oppressive, horrifying machine into a symbiotic tool. You take the vehicle that has been used to enslave you, and you turn it against the royals. You will walk through them. They have contented themselves with autonomous guards and slave labor, and, in doing so, have ensured that they will be usurped. The drones are easily outsmarted and outwitted; you carry the flame of a popular revolt. Those forced into Nauticrawls outnumber the members of the royal court.

There's a moment at the halfway point that I won't describe beyond the fact that you get access to additional tools, but they're responsible for blowing the entire world of the game wide open. It's the exact turning point where Nauticrawl turned from something I liked into something that I loved. This relies a little on some very forced contrivances for the player's sake, which seemed like a bit of a step down after all of the learning needed to get this far in the first place; it feels like a developer losing confidence in a player who, by getting this far, should already be trusted to figure things out by themselves.

This is a minor blemish on something that is otherwise so wonderful as a holistic experience. Nauticrawl is an unforgettable title that effortlessly forces to player to work through the confusion and persistence required to learn something without a manual better than any of its contemporaries have ever even attempted.

S&P:SS is a rock solid rail shooter, albeit a much more crowd-pleasing affair than its predecessor, which was akin to an iron-deficient recollection of End of Evangelion as reflected through the lens of a fever dream. Star Successor takes a more generalised approach to the rail shooter formula, with fewer gimmicky segments and an easily digestible rosary of stages that begin & end in the ways you could predict. Being the sole game Yasushi Suzuki has expressly worked on as Art Director, their calibre of style and pageantry in Star Successor is absolutely off the hook - I doubt I’m being controversial in my assessment of their skill as an artist being some of the most refined aesthetic sensibilities to have blessed the medium yet. The level of planning here for boss variety is particularly impressive, I’m convinced the bones are here for a knockout boss rush title. Huge fan of the guy that turns into dolphins that bounce beachballs and jump through hoops which all become dangerous projectiles. As a whole, I’m fairly convinced that this game is more smartly designed overall than its predecessor, as the consistency with which it dolls out mindful bullet patterns that compound effortlessly on the mental stack, and contextualisations for the multi-layered hazards are nothing short of impressive.

Where things turn sour for me is in the dodgy hitboxes and how drawn-out the stages feel, as the excursions buckle under their padding and turn into fairly languid drifts across locales and enemy swarms. Nothing lasts as long as I’d feel they should, and I repeatedly find myself sighing with fatigue when another mob corridor is punctuated with another miniboss as opposed to a more meaningful perspective or narrative shift. Credit where it’s due, it’s ultimately a good thing that Treasure took a very different approach for this sequel, one that effectively showcases the ways their aesthetic and design tenets matured in the span of a decade. My preference for the original is just a consequence of it winning me over in the battle of appeals - in the personal and artistic fulfillment I gain from “imperfect” games that scan as confused little miracles. Star Successor is solid, but far too articulately concocted to give me any real sense of impact - feeling more like a product, and therefore more prone to being scrutinised over the mechanical minutia. Ultimately a miss for me, but a stunning little simulacrum of a game I still find otherworldly.

Game: What's the most important part of comedy?
Player: I dun-
Game: TIMING!
Player: hehehe ok
Game: What's the most imp-
Player: timing
Game: You! Soulless bastard!
Player: woah, ok buddy
Game: Well if you're so clever, knock knock
Player: Who's there?
Game: THE 4th WALL!
Player: heh yeah ok cool
Game: NO!! YOU SAY "THE 4th WALL WHO?"!!!1!
Player: ... the4thwallwho
Game: FROM THE TOP, ASSHOLE. KNOCK KNOCK!!
Player: ffs man
menu > quit > delete