Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Pokemon Colosseum is a game for veterans and die-hard fans of the franchise. If you do not enjoy Pokemon battling, and are into Pokemon for the interaction elsewhere such as catching wild Pokemon, participating in contests/side-events, or feeding them treats, then this is not the game for you. Furthermore, this game is quite difficult, even for experienced battlers, and will very much test your knowledge of Gen 3 Pokemon mechanics and doubles battles. With that said, there is both a lot to be loved regarding this theoretical departure from typical “10-year-old raises up a team of legends and conquers the gym and league” style of Pokemon games regarding its challenge, and a lot to be desired regarding its execution.

The first noticeable difference between Pokemon Colosseum and the mainline series is the ability (and in fact, need) to catch Pokemon exclusively in trainer battles. Here’s how it’s justified in-universe; you’re a rogue Team Snagem member who swiped Snagem’s old Snag Machine (that gave them the ability to snatch other trainers’ Pokemon), and it’s up to you to retrieve Shadow Pokemon whose hearts have been locked up by nefarious experimentation and thwart this villainous organization that’s spread its tendrils across the barren wastelands of Orre and save this forsaken region once and for all. This need to “save” the Shadow Pokemon and add them to your team is further compounded by two other factors. Firstly, Orre is, as previously mentioned, generally desolate and has no fertile environments to support wild Pokemon. Secondly, your starting team of Espeon and Umbreon is not the greatest; Espeon is powerful but lacking in defense and coverage, and Umbreon is bad unless you want to spend an eternity stalling in battle and spending all your earnings on health regeneration items.

In theory, this makes Colosseum’s lean towards battling quite exciting; you now have to factor in weakening opponents’ Shadow Pokemon to properly catch them, alongside usual victory strategies. In practice, however, this is kind of a pain. Part of this is due to the second noticeable difference between Colosseum and the main series; all fights are double battles, and you have to account for the other non-Shadow Pokemon on the opponent’s side. As a result, there is a very good chance that the combat ready Pokemon with strong STAB attacks and defensive moves are often not the same as those ideal for catching, with weaker moves to whittle down HP and status moves like Sleep Powder that are great for increasing catch rate but become a little impractical to constantly spam in a double battle due to outright attacks saving time and mitigating damage. Additionally, Shadow Pokemon love to spam the one guaranteed move they will have: Shadow Rush, a typeless attack that will always deal significant recoil to the user. This tendency goes against any intentions of catching Shadow Pokemon, and you’ll often find Shadow Pokemon ending their own lives from recoil before you get enough turns to snag them with your own balls. Also, since this is still a trainer battle, there’s a good chance that if you knock the Shadow Pokemon out, you won’t be able to get a rematch to try to catch the Pokemon again until quite a ways later. So, be prepared to spend plenty of money on Poke Balls and a lot of time save scumming to catch the harder and more coveted Shadow Pokemon, such as the Legendary Beasts.

You’re not out of the woods yet though, because here’s where Pokemon’s weaknesses start to come into play. I’ve always said that Pokemon has two major weaknesses: excess RNG, and excess grinding. Both of these issues are unfortunately exacerbated because of the need to purify Shadow Pokemon.

Shadow Pokemon have their hearts locked, because of the aforementioned experimentation, and in theory are supposed to be “stronger” according to the big bad. In reality, they suck, because their moveset isn’t fully unlocked (in fact, your Shadow Pokemon start with only Shadow Rush and will unlock more moves as their gauge drains) nor can they level up until properly purified. As a result, you must send them out into battle and spend time with them to lower their gauge, sort of similar to how Pokemon happiness is built up in the main series. Here’s the kicker: every now and then, Shadow Pokemon will enter “Hyper Mode,” where they will suddenly skip one turn and then become aggressive and disobedient. There’s supposed to be a risk vs reward here; the reward is that any attack successfully launched by Hyper Mode Shadow Pokemon will automatically score critical hits (double damage). However, the risk often wins here, and if so, your Pokemon will waste time attempting to attack your protagonist or just go back into its ball and force you to call out another Pokemon. As a result, you have to waste even more time using Call on your Shadow Pokemon’s turn to snap them out of it and lower the gauge. So, sending them out into battle can very quickly lower that Shadow Gauge to speed up purification, but it’s generally a bad idea to do this in mainline story mode battles where there are real stakes and opponents can quickly end you.

This is where grinding kicks in. As is, grinding is considered necessary in Pokemon Colosseum, because moving onto the next area usually comes along with sharp level increases of 3-5 levels; unless you’re just using the same two or three Pokemon, the natural EXP gain from story battles will not be enough. You’ve got three methods to choose from. Method one is to find previously fought trainers in dungeons and rematch them. It may or may not be appealing depending on how far you are from the nearest heal station/PC, and you’ll end up wasting time leaving and entering areas to refresh trainers anyways. Method two is to enter individual colosseums and fight four consecutive trainers arena style; you’ll also win a TM for your first four wins per colosseum and a nice cash prize. Unfortunately, Shadow Pokemon are banned here. Method three (and my preferred method) is to farm Mount Battle’s lower areas (more or less a stream of ten consecutive fights for Battle Coupons, used to redeem TMs and held items) for low-stakes fights and easy, albeit somewhat mindless XP. You won’t unlock this until about halfway through the game, but it’s definitely the most efficient and least risky method to work with. Regardless, be prepared to spend a lot of time grinding for everything: save scumming for catching Shadow mons, cash grinding for Poke Balls/TMs/potions, EXP grinding to scale up, and Shadow Gauge grinding to purify mons.

I think that actually sums up the main weakness of Colosseum; in theory, it adds a ton of wrinkles to shake up the formula and introduce difficulty, but in practice, this just adds tons of padding to the game. I’ve already mentioned the necessary evil of excess grinding as a form of padding as well as the RNG further wasting turns in battle, but there are even more time-wasters elsewhere. Battle animations are a huge culprit; there are introductory cutscenes to introduce the opponent and the setting, spawning animations whenever Pokemon come out (for both your own and the opponents’), attack and being attacked animations for every move, damage animations from status/weather, and a nearly ten-second long Shadow Pokemon identifier cutscene if one comes out. Oh, and if a multi target move like Surf or Earthquake is used, every individual Pokemon that is hit has its own dedicated stumbling animation. This problem is further compounded by Colosseum’s supposed strength, its lean towards Pokemon Battles. There are trainers everywhere, often within several feet of one another. Some of them will even automatically spot you in their line of sight and rematch after you’ve left and returned to the area. You’re also going to be taking plenty of damage or at the very least, using a ton of PP that has to be restored with healing machines and PCs, so be prepared to backtrack plenty. To put this all into perspective, the introductory dungeon in Pyrite Town can take several hours. As it stands, I would not be exaggerating if I said that half of the time in-game is spent watching battle animations, and it is a shame that the mostly empty and circuitous corridors of the in-game dungeons lend very little to environmental interactions outside of battling more trainers.

Despite how much I’ve criticized Colosseum due to the copious amounts of time wasted in-game… I actually enjoyed most of my time spent. Colosseum’s difficulty is its saving grace; opposing trainers are ruthless in exploiting Gen 3’s battle mechanics to knock you down a few pegs and hold you accountable. In part, the exclusive double battles set up Colosseum for success; you have to fully utilize set-up and defensive options (such as weather moves like Rain Dance and damage mitigation like Reflect), target switching based off of type advantages/disadvantages, item usage (which becomes much more committal in a Double Battle; you can’t take back the item and you have to determine which Pokemon loses its turn from item usage), and careful in-battle swapping of Pokemon versus sacrificing them when there are no in-between turns allowed to just switch your Pokemon on the fly. You’ll constantly need to adapt and exploit these mechanics yourself, because these opponents tend to bring their A-game for proper doubles strats; for example, one boss will spam Earthquake while using Protect on the other to relentlessly hit both of your Pokemon, another might abuse rain to activate Swift Swim (for doubled speed) and doubling the damage of Water-type attacks, and so on so forth.

I’ll also bring back to attention the limited Pokemon pool of Colosseum; there are at most 52 usable Pokemon in-game, and that is a good thing. As mentioned prior, you’ll absolutely need an expanded team because Espeon lacks options to deal with Pokemon that are strong against Psychics, and Umbreon is extremely mid. That said, most of the selection in-game isn’t too great either, but it’s certainly exotic; I believe this is due to Nintendo developing Colosseum (and its successor, XD) as opportunities to catch non Hoenn and Kanto Pokemon (from Ruby/Sapphire Emerald and LeafGreen/FireRed respectively) and transfer them to the main games when purified. As such, while the actual pool early game isn’t ideal, (in fact, I would label some such as Slugma and Furret as “garbo-mons”), there’s actually a lot of utility to each Pokemon when the options are so limited. “Weaker” Pokemon such as Skiploom provide status attack options (i.e. Sleep Powder) to make catching easier, or can provide defensive type utility (such as Misdreavus, the only catchable Ghost-Type) in blocking common attacks. There’s also a part of me that finds it extremely funny and satisfying to take down high-level and evolved Pokemon with Dunsparce’s hax-ridden Serene Grace or Gen 3 Qwilfish’s subpar base 55 Special Attack stat. These early game struggles make the end-game push that much more gratifying, from finally evolving your previously underwhelming early game mons to catching some valuable “viable” mons such as Skarmory, while gaining the necessary cash to further augment them with stat boosting drinks and TMs for better attacks. For all my complaints, Colosseum at least gives you the exact tools you need to success to excel in battling, and nothing more because they don’t need to. You know what they say; limitation can often lead to innovation, and struggle can often lead to satisfaction.

While Pokemon Colosseum still suffers from all of the shortcomings of your usual Pokemon game, it was somehow still a great fit for me, finally feeling challenged in a non rom-hack setting with battles aplenty. I won’t deny that my inner edgelord enjoyed this either, thanks to the underlying plotline of a spiky-haired 17 year old former criminal turned silent protagonist on his motor hovercraft destroying scores of trained and technical gritty criminals yelling “yOuR rEsIsTaNcE iS fUtIlE!!!!111!,” as cheesy as the whole affair felt while bodying Chaser Kai for the 22nd time with my Stantler. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if you’re feeling a bit let down from cruising through the mainline Pokemon games and are prepared to invest many hours putting your knowledge of Gen 3 mechanics to the test, then definitely give Colosseum a shot.

Huge thanks to Pangburn for helping me revise and hash this out, alongside being a great source to bounce ideas off of. This review went through several drafts and was easily one of the most challenging write-ups I've ever attempted, and none of this would be possible without his invaluable assistance.

Donkey Kong Country is a shining example of how to create depth through simple yet cohesive design principles, refusing to lose momentum thanks to its constant movement. Throughout its several hour run-time, Rare engages the player with organic challenge by creating a deep learning curve through obstacle escalation, resulting in a tight gameplay loop that demands increasing execution and climaxes with sheer satisfaction. A lot of people thoroughly discuss the (rightfully) praised graphics and soundtrack, but in this review, I’d like to shine a light upon the often underappreciated mechanical and level design.

Donkey Kong Country’s controls are simple, with the basic movement consisting of a tight jump and a roll/cartwheel serving as an attack and a quick burst of speed. The depth comes from successfully mixing rolls alongside jumps, for jump-cancelling the roll not only allows you to maintain horizontal momentum but also jump out of the roll in mid-air to span larger gaps. That said, there’s a catch: coming to the end of the roll animation at any time results in your character abruptly stagnating for a solid second or two, leaving you vulnerable to attack while destroying any momentum you had. However, the ability to barrel into consecutive enemies and chain speed boosts makes this risk very much worth the reward. Thus, learning when to chain bounces off of enemy clusters versus quickly somersaulting into them to speed up the Kongs requires not only good recognition, but also tight execution, and mastering this toolkit remains key to developing player growth and adapting to Donkey Kong Country’s scaling level challenges.

Picture each individual level as a mini-marathon, with their own set of intensity swells. Levels often start out simple, with important level features or gimmicks slowly introduced fairly early on. Then, the difficulty begins to ramp up, with the prominent level features taking up a more active role while punishing more heavily for missed inputs or slow reactions. As the level progresses, these elements intertwine with previously introduced dangers from past levels; these new combinations force further adaptation. Finally, the level comes to its denouement and throws the final gauntlet of variations at you, ending with a quick cooldown section (sometimes with rewards) and perhaps one final “gotcha” moment to seal the deal. This learning curve of slowly picking up the pace and reacting on the fly to increasingly demanding variations upon variations of different obstacles makes the victory lap that much sweeter when you finally break through the crash course, ready to proceed to the next lesson.

As part of this design philosophy, Donkey Kong Country emphasizes usage of moving parts to force specific execution tests; these parts include barrel cannons, swinging ropes, tire swings, and even steel kegs thrown against walls that the Kongs can ride. Furthermore, these passive elements are aided by potentially hazardous obstacles that constantly push players forward and hold them accountable, for stagnation or sloppy inputs will result in quick deaths. For example, Temple Tempest is filled with oversized beavers in millstones that chase you down like a boulder in an Indiana Jones film, while Misty Mines is filled with infinite enemy spawners that threaten to overwhelm you with a flurry of snakes and armadillos. These traversable interactables and constant sources of danger are a fundamental component of the obstacle escalation; they limit your available options and create situations where you must account for and effectively utilize all present elements.

To illustrate the previous points, let’s consider Oil Drum Alley, the first level of Krem Kroc Industries. Oil Drum Alley starts with a simple flaming oil drum atop a gap that’s easily avoided. Inquisitive players may also notice the single banana beneath the drum, implying that there’s a secret to be found. Furthermore, these players can unearth a TNT barrel nearby by recognizing the tells of a dangling rope over a buried object. It then follows that this TNT barrel has some association with the oil drum, and in fact, you’re encouraged to throw the barrel to destroy the oil drum, exposing the secret area below. As such, this single condensed opening segment in Oil Drum Alley both introduces you to the main hazard of the level while providing a hint on how to deal with it.

As you move further through the level, the level begins to test you more and more. First, it starts throwing in enemies between the flaming oil drums such as these leaping Kritters to force you to react to disposing or avoiding these foes. Then, you’re introduced to the first twist of the level after the Continue Barrel: the oil drums can flare on and off. This becomes important because you’re soon forced to use the oil drums as platforms to progress; meanwhile, you also have to now contend with these Lanky Kongs chucking barrels at you. Finally, you reach the climax of the level: platforming on oil drums set on a cycle of two quick burns and an extended burn, over thin air with tire platforms inbetween. As you clear this last segment, you’re met with one final “twist” and reward: the collectible letter “G,” should you choose to unearth it by jumping from the last oil drum.

Admittingly, it would be quite difficult to fit in thirty levels of varied platforming without some degree of repeating elements or compromising in design depth. However, Rare tackles this challenge in two ways. Firstly, Rare is extremely thoughtful at adding subtle wrinkles between similar levels. For example, Forest Frenzy requires players to cling to vertical ropes as an aid to cross vast expanses of abyss while carefully slinking up and down to dodge aerial enemies. However, Slipslide Ride, while also heavily utilizing ropes, plays with this idea by transforming the ropes into the main obstacle. Now, ropes automatically slide the player up or down, and as a result, players must often fight back against the natural flow, jumping to and from various slippery ropes to avoid both falling to their doom and getting spiked at the ceiling. In a similar fashion, Trick Track Trek first introduces the concept of the singular moving platform odyssey, daring the player to survive waves of goons that drop onto the platform from the rafters like a classic elevator defense stage. Conversely, Tanked Up Trouble turns this concept on its head by forcing the player to constantly travel beyond the moving platform, scouring nearby ledges while dodging Zingers to collect fuel cans and keep the platform running, lest it fall out of the sky after exhausting its gas.

Secondly, Rare understands how to cleverly disguise its use of similar elements through theme and interchanging other level assets. A great example here can be found between the second level Ropey Rampage and the Gorilla Glacier stage Ice Age Alley; while both stages heavily rely upon timing jumps between cliffs and swinging ropes, Ice Age Alley innovates upon this by utilizing slippery ice surfaces to punish complacent players while also giving players an opportunity to outright skip the rope swinging if they stumble upon Espresso the Ostrich to flutter over the large gaps. The dynamic set design also plays a huge part in differentiation: weather elements such as rain and snow as well as the changing night/day cycles while progressing through outdoor jungle levels further help sell the varied exotic environments of Kong Island’s wilderness. As such, it’s through these subtle design decisions that each individual level can begin to stand out on its own.

Rare further stratifies its levels by translating these ideas to two different separate settings. The first example comes in the form of two minecart levels. Instead of trekking on the ground, you’re now controlling a constantly moving vehicle in an auto-scroller. At their core, these levels are still classic 2D platforming, just now taking place on rails that require the Kongs to quickly react to hazards in order to precisely time jumps over gaps in the rails as well as various flying foes and overturned minecarts. The second type of variation occurs in the underwater levels, where the players must tap A to doggy paddle (an analog for underwater jumping) while quickly reacting to threats such as pearl spitting clams and whirling Croctopi. Adapting to these levels requires a fundamental understanding that “gravity” and jump limits do not apply in the same manner, and in fact, holding down on the D-pad to quickly descend is just as important as carefully tapping A to maintain your vertical position.

As a final strategy for creating depth within levels, Rare made sure to insert plenty of hidden secrets and surprises as part of the core exploration loop. Scattered around the various levels are tons of bonus areas, often indicated by stray bananas or seemingly out-of-place enemies. They’re usually not too far off the beaten path, as most of these secrets are just a well timed roll-jump or enemy bounce away, or hidden in a nearby breakable wall. These rewards don’t exclusively have to be bonus areas; well-timed execution or careful sleuthing can also result in collecting goodies in the form of animal tokens (for bonus stages to gain even more lives), KONG letters, banana bunches, and extra lives balloons. Even more rarely, this can result in finding shortcuts such as special Warp Barrels to the end of the stage or sequences of automated Barrel Cannons that let you skip difficult cannon timing sections. Having said that, while Rare was able to lay down solid framework for secret discovery, they would greatly improve upon rewards (beyond extra lives and fulfillment) in future iterations.

Despite all my praise, Donkey Kong Country is not perfect; there are aspects that the game fails to imbue with the depth of its standard platforming, such as its boss fights. All of these fights follow the same pattern of attack, dodging while the boss is invincible, attacking again, and repeating (often with a lot of waiting in-between attacks) until the boss is finished. Moreover, two of the bosses (Really Gnawty and Master Necty Snr) are just juiced-up versions of previous bosses (Very Gnawty and Master Necty, respectively) with similar attack patterns. The third boss, Queen B., can be easily dealt with by having Diddy hold the barrel in front of him and waiting for the boss to run into the barrel, and the fifth boss, Dumb Drum, is just a minion rush with plenty of waiting between minion waves. Even the final boss, King K Rool, features plenty of standing around while players wait to dodge the next line of cannonballs. It is a shame that for such an engaging and fine-tuned game, Donkey Kong Country’s bosses unfortunately feel rather un-interactive and one-dimensional.

Regardless, Donkey Kong Country is the epitome of successfully rebooting a beloved franchise and establishing a tough yet fair and fulfilling platforming game loop thanks to its thoughtful obstacle escalation providing an approachable and deep mechanical challenge. While the intimidating learning curve and short run-time may turn off some players, the varied and engaging level designs, distinctive visuals, immersive soundtrack, and high skill ceiling make Donkey Kong Country not just an icon of its era, but also a beloved classic worth revisiting time and time again.

in my previous ace combat 2 review I briefly discussed control theory in the mechanical sense. every input to a system is manipulated and corrected upon to attempt to achieve a desired output, whether it's PID as mentioned in the previous post or LQR or some other more obscure variation. theoretically we can extrapolate these controllers and the actuators they drive to chains of controllers in sequence, all spitballing commands back and forth endlessly. my advisor once told me fighter jets are inherently unstable systems desperately wrangled to usability by their data synthesis routines. this "sensor fusion" complicates the matter; we control our fighter craft indirectly through another controller, obfuscating the point at which the command originates.

in a similar way, we interface with our craft through fingers gripped around the control column; a kind of cross-talk between physical device and flesh providing the controller of your mind and the controller of your plane with the illusion of direct communication. the yoke of a plane used to be directly tied to the craft's actuators, yet as time has gone on the scope of these vehicles has increased to the point where such direct leverage isn't feasible. now the control surface exposed inside the cockpit transmits signals via fly-by-wire to that central computer, which screens inputs and fuses together these signals with its own conceptions and assumptions; reinterpreting and redefining our input along the way. it provides only simulation and never true control; we always sit at its periphery, merely influencing lest our behavior yields catatrosphic results. so too does our body age, the actuators of our extremities atrophying and failing more and more to meaningfully turn our brain's desperate commands into action. organs slowing down in best cases or growing erratically in worst cases, the information and nutrients delivered in our blood finding it harder to squeeze through veins from atherosclerosis, and neurons dying, erasing our memories along with them. our consciousness begs for control the older we grow as it simultaneously loses the ability to assert its will.

where does the body end and the mind begin? at what interface in our aircraft does the body melt into the enclosure of the craft, where we begin perceiving the motions of the plane as motions of the self, inextricably linked? at what point can we transcend the limits of our being, sloughing off our skin into more powerful bodies? rena, trapped inside the prison of her body, restricted from ever tasting the kiss of sunlight, yearns for the embrace of her true self, the Night Raven. cynthia, with rationale never fully revealed to the player, seeks too to enjoin with the culmination of the human race within the electrosphere, removing the clunky interfaces of bodies to bodies in search of ethereal, unattainable connection. their stories are unquestionably entwined and offer repercussions on those around them, pulling everyone into the web of their desires. and through it all each one, whether as plain-spoken as keith or erich or idealistic as the former two, exist solely within the bounds of their aircraft. it is, after all, their only way with interfacing with world as conveyed through the game and its engine; the only place these characters can exert control and expression outside of prescribed and pre-recorded cutscenes. each interaction with these characters exists only through video streams in the electrosphere until the moment of takeoff, where finally they can interface with the world as it exists, within the bounds of these two discs.

thus it follows that abyssal dision, the christ of ouroboros, is the villain of this entry. having already unwillingly yielded himself to the pull of the electrosphere, he grapples with the truth that within the digital world the need for control dissipates. the only way to wield power remains externally in the physical dominion. thus he exerts his own will, now at one with his craft, having achieved everything rena and cynthia could ever dream of, clawing desperately for the ability to feel and live and want and fuck. and then you, nemo, the silent overseer of this, provide the antithesis to dision. the player, given the illusion of flesh within the bounds of an in-game aircraft, become the controller of life and death. the reaper. through your (admittedly binary) choices you shape the world in your image, with each path leading you to cutting off the evolutionary dead-end that is dision. once you're already committed to forgoing the physical limits of your body there simply is no going back!

control structures grow and propagate beyond the individual controller beings who make up this planet, elongating tendrils into the social structures of our kind. small communities expand into empires, into feudal fiefdoms of divinely-ordained control patterns, and eventually into mass financialization under capitalism. top-down hierarchies of CEOs and boards overseeing department leads down to individual managers and teams, whether silent and steady or as manically tempermental as the current gutting of twitter. in ac3 these expand into powers of their own - general resource and neucom - stateless, directionless entities going through the motions of imminent warfare without rhyme or reason. between them exists the UPEO, a supposedly neutral international body, financially affirming both sides while simultaneously being crushed between them, all while supporting a gormless mass of euro-asian countries barely referenced throughout the text. much like in real life, who provides the control asserted by the united nations? do our (in the US) implicitly anti-UN charter military actions somehow legitimize said institution by monopolizing violence on its behalf? this is what the mouthpieces on our side of the pond would have you believe, regardless of the tepid or non-existent objections from the first world or the aggrieved lashings of what remains of the second world. economic control through sanctions, institutional control through the UN Security Council and its prized rotating member seats, physical control through wage slavery, and mental control through the torrent of social media.

with ac3 there is the ability to choose sides, yet each wingman plaintively intones that there are no victors, and no allegiances. the compulsion of action is compulsion enough to drive one to fight for either side regardless of intrinsic motivation. even pledging fealty to ouroborous in a grasp at true revolutionary action devolves into killing one's idols. keith and fiona both serve and gain nothing, which shows complicity but at the same time a sort of tender sadness. it is an acceptance of no alternative, verbally impugning their controlling entity while being completely unable to actually affect change outside of its purview. this is unfortunate but honest to how we live; I see legions of my peers and students I've taught profess broadly leftist rhetoric and a desire to use their skills for good that end up desperately looking at chances to contribute to the public good while working for lockheed or raytheon or bloomberg or jane street or etc. etc. etc. the only "stable" alternative is to pursue a didactic profession as I have, and even then there's the perils of navigating away from amorphous sums of defense contracting research grants all while treading water as an adjunct or visiting lecturer for years. when I see erich desperately flailing in his position playing mercenary under the guise of peacekeeping, I see those I work with or used to work with, trapped in a superstructure without the perceived means to escape it.

within this framework, ac3 manages to weave actual threads of plot momentum through its missions, unlike the prior two ac entries which primarily barreled the player forward to military victory. rather than the driving top gun-style thrill of earlier games, ac3 prefers a more measured, dreary approach to its environments, scenario design, and sound. rushing through rain to exterminate another set of indecipherable targets as part of a bombing run is simply work, not a heroic endeavor. icy synth envelopes and jittery, fragmented percussion dominate the soundscape of these affairs. the tense canyon runs of prior games is transformed here into a foggy ravine where a river runs through, reflecting the entities above it not unlike the opening hour of panzer dragoon saga, which released a year before. here you trail a ghostly reconnaissance ship with rena to either a hidden laboratory shadowed by the cliffs or a dead end, both of which yield different follow-up missions (one where you earn rena's trust and assist her in locating her beloved night raven and one where you prevent a ship containing a biological weapon from colliding with towers in an industrial district). these small touches lend narrative cohesion to the experience, with ebbs and flows more suitable for a longer-form game.

unfortunately this also leads to the game's only notable problems: its repetition in mission layouts between routes and odd difficulty spikes. the first issue is inevitable given the structure, and easily ignorable if you space out each route a bit thanks to the different viewpoints you experience for each sortie and the variety of different specific objectives on each map (even if they just amount to hit X ground targets... but that's totally expected for psx ace combat). each route ending also features completely novel setpieces such as the XR-900 fleet hijacked at the end of general resource's campaign or the claustrophobic geofront invasion in the neucom ending. of these perhaps the only mission type repeated too often for its own good is the sphyrna battle, which occurs around five or six times and loses its luster quickly.

the difficulty spikes are more egregious, although there were only two main ones I personally struggled with: broken wings at the end of the UPEO route and self awareness at the end of ouroborous II. the former is simply a giant lopsided dogfight that will effectively wall the player if they don't understand the nature of the game's unique handling. the latter requires the player to assault a series of ground targets while the night raven is in pursuit. night raven often limits itself in fights (there are multiple fights against it where it will do little but evade you) but here it feels it necessary to blast you with a laser beam that has no warning beyond a small, untelegraphed sound effect. very frustrating mission that capped off my experience with the game rather poorly, but I can justify it by at least noting I was able to beat it through careful examination of its behavior (it struggles to accurately shoot when you are ascending, so moving in hill-like patterns will allow you to avoid its blasts up into high altitude and then careen back to earth faster than it can chase you as you swoop into to destroy a target).

in particular in comparison to ac2 this game requires a much more nuanced understanding of aircraft control. rolling the plane was the first difference that was apparent to me; where ac2 allows smooth and responsive rolling, ac3 includes an inertial element to the rotation that will cause more than a slight adjustment to apply significant torque, potentially overshooting your target angle. differences in aircraft are also more apparent, made particularly noticable for narrative reasons when demonstrating neucom's technological might in the high-power low-mobility remora craft in the mission power for life or when conducting a mission in the vacuum of space in, potentially the game's most well-known mission, zero gravity. planes overall turn wider, will gain much more noticable momentum when flying downward (hence the self awareness strategy), and stall more realistically, causing the engine to lose its energy transfer and create a wobbly descent rather than the abrupt free-fall in ac2. learning how to perform basic immelman turns and split Ss became imperative to remaining nimble in dogfights, and this eventually extended to true mobility in 3D space, where combinations of these "vertical" adjustments with lateral movements became bread-and-butter. ac2 never comes close to requiring this, and although the vast majority of missions in ac3 rarely approach anything more difficult than its predecessors, the late-game trials it assesses you with are satisfying.

this is on top of numerous quality of life changes and upgrades, such as enemy draw distance at nearly 8000 meters away instead of barely 3000, gorgeous cloud cover replacing flat skies, selectable weapons, and instant mission retries with no monetary penalty. of these the most notable is that updated HUD designed by mr. driller mainstay minoru sashida. ergonomically curved with tasteful sections dedicated to the radar and plane status, the altitude and speed readings are significantly more visible. the best addition of all is the orientation ring, which provides not only an immediate compass display but also an invaluable visual on how the plane is oriented: the cardinal directions rotate to reflect your perspective relative to the Z axis, and the overall ring detaches itself from surrounding the vehicle the further you alter the pitch. it's so intuitive and natural to the experience that it makes flying in the first-person mode seemingly a must.

with that it comes full circle: a further sense of realistic control enhancing the feeling of instability and obfuscated input. I have to imagine that the reason ac3 is the only ac to retain this flight model is for this reason... it directly impacts the ambiance of the game by reducing its grandiose trappings. death-defying maneuvers are the exception and not the rule. yet simultaneously it creates a sense of communion with your craft; rather than bending it to your will you must cooperate with it and its controller. from the brain to the fingers to the playstation controller to the engine to the flight modeling, each cooperating through different abstraction layers to provide the sensation of real control. not (entirely) compromised to simply entertain while still maintaining the player's sense of agency. all of this with the goal that via immersion you'll fuse in and become one. in effect, sublimation.

Overall, I had a good time with Pokemon Scarlet, despite its many flaws. It had some nice steps forward, some flubs, and of course some crashing and burning as modern Pokemon games always do.
The story was generally more enjoyable than expected, but not some masterpiece like people are saying. It was still, in summary, a Pokemon game story. The Team Star stuff was more fun than expected (especially Clive), but was still basically a simple anime plot. And of course, no voice acting, which I think is fine for this kind of game generally, but it fails to work if the game just ignores that there's no voices and throws in full cutscenes and even songs... again.
Gym challenges are not very fun. Most are just throwaway 30 second minigames before a gym leader which makes gyms feel super bite sized and unimpactful. Sure, they have to coexist with 5 bases and 5 titans, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to have a little more pomp and circumstance. Bases/titans were pretty small and formulaic too, but that's more expected for what they are, I think. I wish at least one of these main activities had a little more meat on it, but I get that they're not the main draw, which is of course the open world.
The open world is generally pretty good. It's a modern open world Pokemon game, and plays out pretty much exactly as you'd expect with no real surprises. It's fun to see Pokemon just exist in the world, and try to get to areas you "shouldn't" be in yet, and all of those familiar trappings. One complaint I do have here is that the common Pokemon are way too common. It's a large world, and there's hundreds of Pokemon in the game. I don't need to see Oinkologne and Deerling everywhere I go, spread out the "cooler" Pokemon a little more to keep each area feeling unique and interesting.
Also, I'm specifically talking about the overworld, outside of the cities. The cities were super dry and also painful to explore due to performance. I checked out one or two past Megasoza, then kind of gave up to save myself the trouble.
New pokemon are overall solid, there's some nice new ones as always and some misses, and I especially liked a few cross gen evolutions like Kingambit. Please stop forcing the starters to have jobs as a theme. I did not warm up to the box legendaries too much either.
Raids are better than they were in Sword/Shield, but they still get old very quickly and while not quite as glacial, are still pretty slow. A good chunk of this friction is from how bad the online services are, though. Speaking of slowness, I saw people calling this game fast, and I mean, if you compare it to Diamond/Pearl, maybe? Otherwise, the general pace of battles is still painfully slow. Waiting for stat changes to resolve, abilities and items to proc, etc, makes battle feel as slow as ever and not something I'd ever want to endure vs using something like Showdown if given the choice.
The idea of multiplayer is cool, but again with these online services, it was not something I dipped into very much.
Performance, polish, and presentation have been talked about to death. They are, overall, a travesty. There's a moment early on where they try to really "wow" the player with a shot of the open world, saying how beautiful it is, and I laughed out loud at the mess I was looking at. I don't consider myself much of a graphics snob or anything, and I still had a lot of fun with the game, but come on. Aside from extremely low fidelity visuals, which I can mostly get used to, I ran into plenty of visual glitches in every play session. There's also the bad experience of using the box, which struggles to load the sprites for each Pokemon when switching boxes and really makes it painful to look around, which honestly probably contributed to me not quite finishing my living dex. This is all on top of more deliberate choices in presentation like the extremely bland Elite Four room and not being able to enter most shops, too. Just lackluster all around, though I'll give a little bit of credit for things like the animations around the borders of the screen when entering a battle.

-1 star for general performance/polish reasons, just unacceptable for what this game is. Would be a 4/5 otherwise.

Awesome little movement/arena shooter, it's exactly what you'd expect and hope it is. Stylish art with unique looks for each arena, tight mechanics that adds complexity in a way that's slight enough to manage with the quick pace, enemy variety without getting too annoying or straying from the main gameplay. My only real complaint here is that it's really short. Cleared it in 90 minutes, and it wasn't really challenging until near the end. There are NG+ and endless modes, but despite really enjoying this those just don't seem like the type of thing I'd get into for this game, might give them a shot in the future though if I get the itch for this again.

“Captain! Open the door…”

“Kick it in!”

“…lest we break it down… and take more than those shells.”

“You bastards may take… exactly what I give you!”


With that opening gunshot, I knew I had stumbled upon something truly great.

How is it that after over 30 years of adventure games, Return of the Obra Dinn nailed the formula and continues to this day to be the definitive detective mystery game? It’s actually deceptively simple; while its predecessors were often games built around mysteries, Return of the Obra Dinn is a mystery built around a game.

You see, most detective-mystery games attempt to adhere to reality, or at least some form of fictionalized reality. Investigators stumble upon the crime scene, sweep the crime scene to collect evidence, analyze the evidence in a lab, interrogate witnesses, and then arrest suspects. In other words, it’s your usual CSI drama-like that does its best to recontextualize real life crime fighting techniques into video game mechanics, and this can lead to a slew of difficulties and frustrations on the player’s end, such as being railroaded from case to case, brute forcing solutions from an already provided answer bank, and transforming complicated logical reasoning and deduction into what is more or less a streamlined experience that consists of answering several simple multiple choice questions.

Return of the Obra Dinn doesn’t do any of that.

The year is 1807, and the Obra Dinn has just mysteriously drifted back into port after being declared lost at sea five years ago. You are an insurance agent, woken up on an otherwise uneventful morning to piece together everything that’s happened to the 60 lost souls of the Obra Dinn and determine the damages to charge whoever is held responsible for this whole mess. You’ve been sent a mostly empty volume titled Return of the Obra Dinn: A Catalogue of Adventure and Tragedy as well as a mysterious pocket watch named the “Memento Mortem.” There’s no one left on the ghost ship to arrest or interrogate, and the crime scene is years old by now; it’s just you, armed with a magical timepiece, left to your own devices to fill out as much of this tragic and inky tale as you so desire.

Obra Dinn keeps the questions simple: who is whom, and how did they die? Because the questions are the same for all fates, the game doesn’t lead you down any obvious lines of reasoning. Furthermore, there are tons of potential answers for each of the two main questions: you have every name from the ship’s manifest to insert as a potential identity, and a slew of verbs that could be inserted for a death, ranging from the classics “Clubbed” and “Shot” to the more out there “Poisoned” and “Eaten.” That’s right, you can write in cannibalism as a cause of death on the Obra Dinn.

As the insurance adjuster, you use the Memento Mortem to travel back to the exact time of crisis; it is aptly named “Remember Death” for a reason. You’ll often get a few seconds of audio leading right up to the moment of death, and then you’re immediately transported to the exact frozen moment in time, like a still diorama of doom, where you can examine the minute details in-person. As mentioned before, the book gives you little guidance regarding exact fates and identities, and it’s up to you to draw the connections. Lucas Pope pulls out every trick in the book: accents, nationalities, clothing, occupations, tools, items of personage, who they’re often around, even the continuity of the narrative itself. It’s pure deductive reasoning with little to no hand-holding; you’ll often have to find specific clues from one scene and tie it back to characters in a completely different scene, and not only spotting the minute details, but linking them together, is crucial to determining the fate of all 60 souls.

Let me take this time to just say it; Obra Dinn slays in presentation. The sound design is immaculate; the voice acting perfectly captures the tone and emotions across the entire cast, much less capturing their nationalities and speech patterns, and often thrown into the mix are a cornucopia of sound effects from squeaking, slashing, the sloshing of waves and the whistling of wind, and various cries of pain, anguish, and despair. The soundtrack (also composed by Lucas Pope) accentuates these moments too. I’ll never forget the clanging bells from Soldiers of the Sea signifying an approaching calamity, or the ominous wind instrumental melody from A Bitter Cold hinting at a lurking danger, and especially the abrupt baritone horns of The Doom alerting the player that shit just got real. Finally, who could forget the iconic 1-bit art style of the game, a “dither-punk” stylistic choice that inspired many classic Macintosh-esque graphics for games to come? Not only does it serve the practical purpose of letting Pope illuminate exactly what details he wants to highlight (mainly, the expressive faces of the passengers and crew of the Obra Dinn, as well as their colorful belongings set in scenes of harrowing jeopardy) while giving him room to leave out other extraneous details, including an almost lack of text outside of the book, it plays extremely well to the lean of a gothic and macabre tale of a ship lost at sea.

An understated but nevertheless crucial strength of this game to aid the brilliant presentation is that Lucas Pope understands how to use volume swells. To elaborate upon this, think about how much of popular music has learned to emphasize loud-soft dynamics in songwriting; the softer the build-up, the louder the climax becomes. A good example of this in classic video games is in Shadow of the Colossus, where Wander’s trek to each colossi is accompanied by practical silence with the exception of environmental noises and Agro’s hooves, leading to an anticipation track when Wander first stumbles upon the Colossi and then exploding into an epic battle track as he scales upon the Colossi’s body.

Obra Dinn has another fantastic translation of this idea; in the “present-day” overworld upon the ghost ship, all you hear is the call of the sea and the creaking of the ship’s planks. As soon as you find a body, the stopwatch pops open, plays a quick string melody as you spiral into the memory, and the few seconds of audio as a build-up to the time of death play out until the grisly, painted scene of death suddenly appears with the abrupt accompaniment of horns, strings, and bells. These scenes never outstay their welcome either; for the first time you stumble upon each new diorama, the player spends 60 seconds in the memory taking in all the new details, until the game fades out, pulls you into the book to form the outline, and then either opens a door in the distance so you can continue your search or leads you to the next body contained within a death diorama to find the next tragic happening. Certainly, it’s a pleasant and welcome surprise from so many games that just play the same droning background music over and over while players are performing the “same” task of investigating or working all the logic out.

Going back to the mechanics of Return of the Obra Dinn, there’s a degree of player control that I think is simply not present in other detective games. I’ve already mentioned that the game doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to figuring out fates and identities, but this increased player control is also due to the structure of the game itself. After solving a few of the opening fates, and opening new doors thanks to open doors within the memories themselves, you’re more or less free to explore around the Obra Dinn as you please and tackle whatever memories you want in whichever order you desire. In fact, the game’s reliance upon this often disconnected narrative via traveling back and forth through different memories is critical to working out the timing of the game’s events and forming the connections necessary to deduce whom is present at what time, ultimately leading to their respective demises. It’s also a nice-built in feature that you don’t even need to solve every fate to end the game; you can step off the Obra Dinn and head back home at any time if you ever get fed up. That said, the insurance report at the end of the game does vary depending on how you marked fates along your investigation, which means there is an incentive to actually try and perform your damn duty.

To add on to the above, Obra Dinn has several nods to player perspective and player agency that elevate this far above any other detective game I’ve ever played. Lucas Pope has mentioned previously in interviews about this degree of ambiguity that exists in detective work; multiple people can look at the same scene, but come away with different conclusions based off of the different clues that they notice and the different ways that their brain works out the logic and reasoning. Pope wanted to implement this into the game mechanics as well, and included some degree of leeway when it comes to putting down certain fates. Because many passengers and crew die off screen in the game (and in fact their bodies are often lost between the scenes of death and cannot be recreated for one reason or another), and because figuring out every exact fate of 60 souls is quite challenging, players often have to rely on educated guesses and process of elimination to figure out how everything exactly went down. Thus, Pope decided to allow multiple “acceptable” answers for certain circumstances because honestly, who’s he to say that this player’s interpretation is more correct than the other?

Even more viscerally shocking to me is that the game is innately aware of who you are and what role you play, and has multiple nods to this throughout the game. I can’t go into too much detail since that would quickly enter spoiler territory, but needless to say, your actions do have consequences upon the final findings and ending of the frame tale (both in the form of the insurance report and what’s revealed to you thereafter), and the game is extremely self-aware of how omnipresent death plays a role in your investigation and how without it, your perception of events would be much different. I also at this time want to point out that Lucas Pope puts a lot of emphasis in toolkits, particularly calling back to his time spent at Naughty Dog developing GUI tools. Pope then proceeds to both play this emphasis straight and subvert this at times; sure, the book is great at marking down the exact location of bodies, but what happens when the bodies can’t be recovered? It’s extremely helpful to zoom in on people within the frozen memories and then press Tab to immediately lock in on their location within the sketch, but what do you do when the person is so far away in the background of the memory that zooming in doesn’t lock onto that identity? By doing this, Pope utilizes the presence of the built-in tools to their maximum capacity, through both forcing reliance upon the tools and reliance upon other means of discovery when the tools are subverted.

Lastly, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what makes Obra Dinn a goldmine for so many memorable moments. I’ve already discussed the presentation and the strong presence of player control/perspective/agency that only a video game could really accomplish, but there’s two additional reasons I want to walk through at this time. Firstly, Obra Dinn’s anachronistic narrative sets it up for success in a few ways. Of course, there’s the degree of player control that this allows, thanks to letting players walk through most memories however they wish. We’ve also discussed the presence of continuity serving as a usable clue itself; that is, if a character is dead in a prior scene, then chronologically, that identity should not be present later on, and so on so forth. However, we haven’t talked about the power that disjointed story-telling has narratively, in that twists and sudden shifts in plot development feel much more natural and built-in.

To further elaborate, let's consider the cold opening of this game, where a few men bang on the captain’s door before one is unceremoniously shot in cold blood. This scene does several important things; firstly, it’s a sharp contrast from the peaceful and quiet beginning as you obtain your magical pocketwatch and stumble upon the rotting and decaying bones of the “first” victim, and in doing so, it immediately grabs your attention. Secondly, it introduces a flurry of new characters and terms in the form of “MacGuffins” that are most certainly relevant and just known to the cast at this point, but to an outsider like you, won’t make any sense at all. Think of it like a reverse Chekhov’s Gun; it’s mentioned in passing often at the chronological end (after all, the timing of deaths within death scenes means you’ll generally be traveling backwards) and its relevance has already been established, so you don’t have to wonder about whether or not it’s important. In fact, it provides a degree of investment to figure out exactly what it means and how it all played out. Finally, these scenes often take place in altered environments (i.e. what the Obra Dinn looked like 5 years ago) and slowly introduce and naturally funnel you towards more and more death as events unfold, with unlocked doors and recently deceased bodies giving you further access to more parts of the ship and more memories. By doing so, there’s an actual sense of progression alongside the sense of satisfaction from filling out the outlined narrative.

Speaking of progression and satisfaction, that brings us to the last additional reason, namely via investment. The game’s lack of hand-holding and overall difficulty are a huge reason why, as well as the focus on personal growth versus systems growth; the systems and mechanics present at the beginning of the game are the exact same as those at the end of the game, and the only thing that has evolved is the player’s knowledge of the fates and workings of the ship. Heavily aiding to both the player’s growth and the difficulty of the game is the “rule of three” mechanic used to validate fates. It strikes a certain balance; Pope wanted a mechanic that would put the player at ease for successfully figuring something out (i.e. not letting the aforementioned ambiguity rule over the whole process) but at the same time, not be so simple as to allow for the game to railroad players into certain choices or obvious brute-forcing. As such, the player must correctly fill out three sets of identities and fates before the book makes these choices permanent and congratulates the player upon their work. The “Eureka!” moments garnered from this system from correctly deducing the story are just as important to me as the “Holy shit!” moments that I experienced from the story unfolding itself. Is it a perfect system? Of course not; you could argue that the mechanic can be abused if you’re very sure about two particular fates and not so sure about the third to allow for more guesswork, and that the mechanic is “contrived” like much of this game. Nevertheless, I appreciate that this margin of error exists as a concession to the player and a good in-between for rewarding players with self-satisfaction while providing an adequate challenge despite providing more than adequate tools to meet the challenge.

A few closing thoughts: for years, many players and developers have pointed out that there’s a glaring dissociation between game mechanics and narrative. That is, we tend to view game mechanics and narratives as separate, and in fact in many cases, mutually exclusive. That’s why in many longer games, you’ll often have chunks of extended gameplay in the form of combat or puzzles, and then chunks of extended storytelling, often in the form of cutscenes, dialogue, text boxes, etc. This works just fine for longer run-times in the span of 20 - 100+ hours, but it would absolutely ruin the pacing of shorter games to switch players back and forth between exclusive gameplay and exclusive storytelling, and smaller indie studios often don’t have the budget or resources to maximize these aspects separately.

I’ve been searching for many examples of games where gameplay and storytelling are married effectively, and there’s a few that come to my mind such as Journey, Ghost Trick, Shadow of the Colossus, Outer Wilds, and so on so forth. Needless to say, I’m both embarrassed and happy to report that one of the greatest examples has been right under my nose the entire time. There’s no separation between Return of the Obra Dinn’s gameplay and narrative, and at no point is there exclusive storytelling or exclusive gameplay. Simply put, interaction with the narrative is the gameplay.

All of the previous points come back into play. The personal growth is learning more about the story. The logic and deductive reasoning into figuring out identities and fates are the core gameplay mechanics. The focus on eerie and often grotesque visuals and expressive sound effects and voice acting are integral to piecing together the Obra Dinn’s story. The very presence of death throughout the narrative is the only thing allowing you to even solve these fates in the first place, because without the Memento Mortem as a game mechanic allowing you to travel back to the exact time of death, you’d just be some insurance adjuster who walked onto an empty ship, saw a locked door and flies swarming around a pile of bones, and walk straight back to the rowboat to fabricate at best, a creepypasta of how 60 people were mysteriously lost at sea. Gameplay and story are inexorably intertwined, and one aspect would cease to exist or be severely crippled without the other half.

Time to address the elephant in the room: for a story-heavy game, is the story exceptional? I wouldn’t necessarily say so, as if I were to compare this to exceptional works of fiction in other mediums (say, a book like Moby Dick), I’d say that Obra Dinn’s details aren’t quite as elaborate nor as fanciful.

But Return of the Obra Dinn isn’t trying to be a book, or a movie, or even a museum installation. It’s trying to be a video game, and it embraces the strengths of the interactive medium so well that I honestly couldn’t care if the story isn’t as ambitious or beautifully scripted and its prose doesn’t match with even contemporary acclaimed writers. Frankly speaking, Return of the Obra Dinn doesn't just elevate the bar for detective games, it blows the bar off the rail and becomes something much more. I’ve been playing through a few other detective games recently, and none of them even came close to holding a candle to the grandmaster itself. That, and a lot of free time (and maybe a bit of nostalgia and passion) led me to reference a few analysis and interview videos and type this all up in an afternoon or so. It'll all make sense soon, but just know this: the narrative might not necessarily be exceptional, but I’d damn well say that this narrative is exceptionally told.

My one video gaming regret is that I will never be able to experience this again for the first time. As a result, I have resorted to recommending this to virtually everyone I know with no reservations and buying my friends copies of Return of the Obra Dinn so I can be there when they too, experience the frustrations and satisfactions of the medium in its rawest form for the first time. I really don’t know what else to say; I’ll vouch for this game in every waking moment of my life, and at this point, I'm convinced that I’ll probably buy anything Lucas Pope makes day one with no exceptions. If you want a game that will challenge your perception of what video games can be and accomplish, I don’t think you can do much better than this.

Sources referenced:

Return of the Obra Dinn Thinks Differently About Narrative

How Return of the Obra Dinn Works

How Return of the Obra Dinn Makes You An Honest Detective

Rumination Analysis on Return of the Obra Dinn

Lucas Pope on 3 years of Return of the Obra Dinn, and what's next

Noclip Podcast #07 - Lucas Pope

Return of the Obra Dinn Steam Page

I went in to this expecting "God of War 2018 but more" and I didn't know how right I'd end up being. This game has a lot going on, at times too much, both in story and gameplay.

A departure from 2018's very focused narrative, this one was a little bit all over the place at times. It worked well sometimes as an excuse to let us explore the world more and meet characters we otherwise might not, but other times it felt a little lost. This also affected the last section of the story and ending, which I felt was pretty rushed for what it was meant to be. Overall though, it had some nice twists and turns and I liked getting the chance to expand the world a bit with how many places you touch on, and even how this tied into gameplay (with controllable and companion characters).

On the gameplay side, things felt more varied than I remember 2018 being, which was nice and an attempt to address a perceived problem in 2018. People complained about the troll fight showing up a million times in that game, and here there wasn't anything so egregious. I did think a couple unique minibosses should have stayed unique here instead of being repeated 2 or 3 times though. It just takes away from that first encounter feeling like something special when there's another nearly identical fight later on. And this isn't a "there should be more unique minibosses" ask, I think there were plenty, they just could have cut some of the repeat fights instead. A couple times during the main story I felt like the pacing was a little off. There would be several combat or puzzle sections in a row instead of mixing them up more evenly, which led to some fatigue at times. I also thought the puzzles were a little much this time around, in the sense that there were 1 or 2 too many mechanics at play. This isn't a difficulty complaint, but more like "why is there a set of branches I can set on fire with R2, but also another that requires a Rune arrow setup first". Rune arrows in general had some of the slowest and most particularly precise puzzles that didn't feel like they worked as consistently as they should, especially for how long they take to setup your chain reaction solution. It didn't help when I was in the middle of executing the puzzle's solution and my companion would should out hints because I was taking too long.

Companion dialog in general was just a little too frequent, too, when it comes to suggestions or callouts during combat and exploring. One the one hand, I was impressed by how specific some of the hint lines were for every puzzle in the game which could only possibly be used one time, and on the other, you have "You're on fire! ...But you probably already knew that." Ugh. Same with Shield Strikes, the blue circles would appear and I'd already be in the middle of hitting the input, but I'd get a "Use a shield strike!" before it even got out. Some variation there or waiting more than half a second before shouting at me every time I get a status would've gone a long way (and also maybe slightly less quippy dialog for these, mostly for Atreus/Mimir/Odin's intro, though it generally wasn't too offensive).

The RPG mechanics were, like in 2018, just fine. They didn't feel super necessary but didn't get in the way too much. Following the trend, there was probably a little too much going on here too. You've got so many systems in play that you can customize and upgrade that I don't even want to list them all out. Again it feels like cutting one or two of these might have been some nice streamlining, like did we really need the amulet, and did that really need set bonuses? It didn't really feel like it added much that couldn't have been given elsewhere, like on armor or weapon hilts.

I want to commend this game for its accessibility options too, which were a good showcase of how those kinds of settings benefit everyone. I ended up using the auto pickup option for pretty much the entire game, which saved me the fatigue of spamming circle every time I defeated a pack of enemies. I could see it getting in the way during combat though, and I did get punished once or twice for picking up a health or rage stone at a bad time, but that was totally fine as a tradeoff to me. On the theme of customization, I almost recoiled when the Skyrim-style compass appeared for the first time and proclaimed itself a permanent immersion-breaking fixture in the HUD. So I was very glad that I could customize the HUD to not only disable it, but also assign a new motion (touchpad swipe right) that would make me face the direction of my current objective when I needed it instead of having to turn on the compass in case I got stuck. Also, I could turn off the annoying blurred background for subtitles. Props here for sure.

It goes without saying, but this is also a beautiful looking game with tons of polish and great presentation, just like 2018. The more varied locations really shine through here too, which are great to take in visually. Character performances were generally very good too (special shoutout to Ratatoskr), with some more unique takes on ones like Thor and Odin compared to their usual pop culture representations. The game, and 2018 for that matter, definitely fits in that "AAAA" or "AAA+" space that a handful of high budget and very visually impressive games occupy (like FF7R), which are really cool to just behold, even before you talk about actually playing through them.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game, and I got what I came for. I think I would put it ahead of 2018 if I had to rank them, though it wasn't entirely consistent in its quality for both story and gameplay. When it was at its best, it was captivating to follow and satisfying to play, but there were definitely some duller or more frustrating parts along the way. And based on my rating, you can tell that despite some of the negative points I've made, I have a very positive impression overall, and the highlights are really what I'll take away. Also, the attack plants in Vanaheim are awful.

Slight vague SPOILER: there is a new weapon in this game (what a shock!), for which the sequence of acquiring was a highlight. After getting it, I thought it was very cool and went to use it as much as possible, but I never felt like it was actually the best choice for almost any situation (compared to the other weapons which had clear spots to stand out). This could just be me not 100% clicking with it or missing some aspect, but I didn't totally get what its niche was meant to be, and I can't recall any fights or enemies (other than the obvious one) where I felt compelled to swap to this, other than maybe for long range.

ACTUAL SPOILER WARNING: I think Atreus's Ironwood sequence + its immediate follow-up was actually where I thought the game got more interesting and picked up a little, so it's interesting to see others saying that a slog or filler (though I'll concede there was one too many chores to do with Angrboda). Up til about that point, it was extremely just "more 2018" in the general structure. Swapping characters completely and getting a lot more story going on for Atreus's side kind of woke me up in a good way (though technically you do play as Atreus earlier, briefly). I also actually really liked Atreus's combat, especially later on with Ingrid, so that helped keep things fresh. The same happened with the main Asgard section (the second, I could take or leave) where it was a cool way to expand the world and pair up with different characters that you just couldn't get with Kratos. I saw someone compare Ironwood with the Cloud & Aerith section of FF7R which was interesting to me too (more like "downtime," new characters and setting that get you away from what you've been used to up til that point, etc). Angrboda was a nice character and it was cool to see Atreus get to be himself outside of his dad's watchful eye.

the jointed, scythe-like arms on the necromorphs stick out for multiple reasons, but there's a subtle trick the designers pull with it (intentionally or unintentionally) that fucked me up so many times playing through this game. with the camera in the traditional claustrophobic over-the-shoulder view, there's virtually no way to view what's behind the player without carefully swinging it around. when one of those necromorphs silently creeps up on you and dangles their arms right over isaac's head, letting them peek right into the frame... it elicits such a snap reaction from me anytime it happens. in an otherwise quiet situation there's a hope that hauling ass without looking back will put enough distance between you and them to turn around safely, but god forbid it happens when you're already firing off shots at enemies ahead of you. that heart-sinking feeling of realizing the crowd you had carefully herded together isn't the extent of the danger in the room and that you're actually completely flanked turns tense strategy into desperate flailing. rarely does isaac lack for available weapons or resources, but encounters like these reinforce that it's a constant struggle for survival regardless.

in many ways this is the bastard heir to the resident evil 4 throne, and it even attempts to be a "regular" survival horror game to boot. besides the perverse way bodies are reanimated and mutated into angular beasts, intestines dangling and writhing outside of the torso, there's some gesturing towards explorable environments and puzzle-solving. each chapter is located in a different wing of the ship, with each of these areas arranged in a spoked hub design with linear branches leading to key items towards some sort of general puzzle located in the center. no real brainteasers here -- most of it's either just picking up key items or manipulating interactables with the kinesis ability -- but I found the scenario escalation here surprisingly appealing. driven on by various talking heads over the diegetically-integrated hologram comms, the pace feels brisk, and the game rarely stumbles in regards to directing the player to their next location. it's certainly not organic, but this is the re4 model, not re1.

the first five chapters or so were novel but felt overly dependent on fetch objectives, and it was in the second half of the game where it seemed like the designers stretched their legs a bit. setpiece loaded areas such as the USS valor and its power outages, fiery engine interiors, and wide-open bridges ripe for combat arenas elevate what otherwise would have been dry encounters into a strained flow of ratcheting tension from room to room. much of this is helped by the disorienting zero gravity sections that open up some minor platforming and release the shackles on isaac's otherwise-lethargic movement. at their best they hinder typical combat and make ordinary enemies more threatening through spatially-foreign positioning that plays with one's typical mental layout of encounter locality; at worst they are perfunctory beyond the clunky fun of watching isaac bounce from wall to wall. the sections exploring the vacuum of space are less interesting... any attempt to constrain the player by tethering them to a countdown (in this case an oxygen meter) risks them struggling to execute within the limit or becoming anxious at the impending doom. the designers punt on these issues by introducing heavy guardrails into these sections along with frequent oxygen refills, which take what should be the threat of venturing beyond the limits of human existence into the void of space and reduce them to a dog leash.

these are just the bits of downtime between the combat, however, and each encounter feels like a proper challenge to optimize and strategize within. shooters generally use the general projectile model of impact: momentum (and thus kinetic energy) demonstrated by the jitter of firing of a clip and the repeated thud of the bullet meeting its mark. dead space sets itself apart by dispensing with this and introducing the slice. much like how simply unloading rounds into a zombie's torso is inefficient in resident evil, dead space heavily discourages aiming for the easiest targets in favor of severing appendages. the hooked arms and stubby legs of necromorphs come in a variety of configurations from wildly dangling to tucked in to swaying alongside a jaunty waddle, and learning how to properly dissect each orientation is key. this makes lining up shots less focused on quick reactions and more on careful placement, and no weapon handles this better than the handgun equivalent: the plasma cutter. it evicersates even late-game enemies with ease so long as the player properly places its linear crosshairs perpendicular to the extremity, which requires instinctual understanding of both its vertical and horizontal firing modes. the other weapons are equally as impressive: the line gun and the contact beam both hail from applications in excavations and provide extremely powerful severing power with a wide horizontal blast for the former and a focused vertical shot for the second. the ripper in theory was one of my favorites as well with its remote controlled sawblade that could easily trim opponents down to size, though its stopping/staggering potential is low and prevented it from keeping a permanent spot in my inventory. indeed, most of these extra weapons have excellent specific uses but lack that high reliability and versatility of the plasma cutter. if I did a second playthrough right now, I may as well just do a handgun-only run.

the typical crane-arm necromorph comprises most of the alien cast, but it's worth mentioning that many other enemies take advantage of your special abilities as well. where I fall regarding whether this is a good or bad thing is mixed... after all, the bread-and-butter of the game is severing, and when the game attempts to introduce additional factors it's hit or miss. take for example enemies that split open into reams of parasitic spawn upon death, specifically when the arms have not been severed. the little tykes are finicky to dispatch with anything other than the flamethrower, and when not getting picked off one by one they have a bad tendency to leap upon you and force you to perform a mashing QTE to remove them, something the game leans on a bit too heavily even with regular enemies. anything with projectiles is also sketchy, as isaac struggles to maneuver around them thanks to the camera angle; the damage is less the issue compared to the obnoxious hitstun. even then, much of the annoyance is combat stems from ignoring the severing gimmick, and I more or less understand the designer's intent in slapping the player's wrist for attempt to play guns ablaze, but no one is a perfect aim (esp on ps3 at ~20 fps). I could do without lethargic segments of carefully sniping single-tendril projectile minions strewn across the ground when I could be thrown into the actual fear inherent in the quickly-moving enemies of regular combat. plenty of the necromorph variants don't have the issues regardless and enrich the design no matter the apperance whether it's the occasional invincible stalker miniboss or the shuddering valor crewmembers that move at lightning speeds.

which is to say, the game is frequently great and occasionally fantastic whether wading through a sea of aliens or being a handyman around the decks of the ishimura. for perspective, I believe this game took me around nine hours, and at the same time by re4 rules it bats a lower average in terms of overall scenario/encounter creativity, regardless of the praise above. the bar is high! I'm putting it in this context because the other, possibly more intended context of tense space thriller is less appealing to me. bioshock-esque audio logs, frequent yammering from people never properly introduced, an extremely on-the-nose analogue to scientology, pointless intrigue that never affects your actual tasks around the station... how many times must I watch an NPC soliloquize from behind plexiglass before executing something supposedly shocking before I get the point. it was de rigeur to do shit like this tho in the 360 era, and the absence of traditional cutscenes makes it easier to swallow for sure. it's just odd none of the staff ever realized how goofy it is for isaac to be running around digging through receptacles for spare items while someone is solemnly shooting a random crew member. in 2022 you're not here for the story though, you're here because you want an early HD third-person shooter that doesn't lean on a cover system as a crutch. in that respect dead space is a lot more clever than it originally lets on.

There's a lot of discourse about how Ys Seven is one of the more middling games in the franchise but I'm going to be honest... I really liked it! That isn't to say that it reaches the heights of Ys Origin before it or Ys VIII after it (and I will inevitably be making comparisons to the other games in the series that I've played), but I found the whole experience to be another thrilling entry in the series with very few infuriating moments and plenty of hack and slash pleasure.

Similar to Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ys Seven is a sort of stepping stone in the franchise, in that it marks the transition between the "Ark era" isometric 2D-3D Ys games and the "modern era" party-based Ys games such as Memories of Celceta and Ys VIII. The graphics can feel a little rough and polygonal for their time given that this was originally a PSP game and later localized to PC, but with the HD Texture Pack, it's not too shabby. You get to play as the chad adventurer Adol Christin and his best friend Dogi, sailing to the foreign kingdom of Altago, now stricken with a mysterious plague, an arrogant defense force that almost immediately throws our red headed hero in jail, and the omnipresent clash between progress and tradition. Tasked by the king to discover the source of the unrest, Adol and Dogi must team up with a flurry of other tribal representatives of Altago with their own stories and abilities in yet another cursed land and prophecy that Adol somehow finds himself at the center once again.

Combat in Ys Seven leans less in the Ark-era angle of jumping and dodging and more in the vein of classic hack and slash with character specific abilities and powers. It's pretty bread and butter combat, with the A button handling the basic attack and holding down the trigger + using ABXY to use abilities that are dependent upon an energy meter of sorts. Added to Ys Seven's movement in lieu of a jump is a quick roll, that allows you to both quickly get out of the way of incoming attacks while positioning yourself to the side or behind of opponents to continue your assault. It's sort of a deceptively simple combat system, because while it's a ton of fun to just mash the A button and go ham, it eventually becomes far more productive to use charged standard attacks to more quickly build up your energy meter so you can unleash a flurry of skills that can provide external benefits via additional damage and extended range. In addition, there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors layer thrown onto all of this via the party system, since there are up to three party members (including Adol) on the field at any time, and each character has one of three different attack types that must be accounted for depending on the opposing foe (i.e. Adol's sword is great against amorphous, fleshy enemies, while Dogi's fists are great against heavily armored enemies, etc) since using the wrong attack type will generally deal significantly less damage. So, there's actually a very solid and often frenzied gameplay loop of rolling around the environments to and fro the various enemies, and quickly switching party members and attack abilities whenever the energy meter builds up sufficiently, despite not retaining the EXP combo multiplier of Ys Origin and Oath in Felghana.

Now despite Ys Seven being an "easier" game due to having multiple party members to fall back upon as well as healing items that can be used in the middle of combat, Ys Seven is still not a mindless game. It is possible to dodge most attacks with the roll, but it doesn't make you invincible; the hurtbox is still active while you are rolling, so while your character is in motion, you can still be hit by waves or projectiles. That's where the flash guard comes in; by quickly hitting the L1 and R1 buttons in succession, you can perform a timed flash guard parry to negate an enemy attack (something that I really wish the game actually talked about; it never mentions this once in the tutorial or the manual and that's probably one of Ys Seven's greatest sins). This also isn't mindless however, because Ys Seven turns the timed flash guard parry into a high risk vs high reward situation; if you mistime the parry and you end up getting hit after the window, you'll take critical hit damage from enemy attacks. In addition, the flash guard doesn't give you an extended noticeable invincibility frame window after a successful parry (unlike Ys VIII), so attacks with lingering hitboxes such as lasers fired straight at you or extended enemy rush attacks will continue to deal damage after your parry. However, your immediate attack combo after a successful parry will deal critical hit damage towards opponents, and successful parries very quickly fill up the energy gauge. There is actually a method to the madness of balancing Ys's aggressive offense with on the fly defense, and mastering this push & pull is not as free as simply mashing A and then relying on one defensive option for everything. As a result, it's incredibly satisfying balancing calculated abilities and attacks in-between dodging and parrying enemy attacks in the middle of flashy, oversized boss fights.

Character progression via item crafting and leveling up is a bit more of a mixed bag. On one hand, I quite respect the character skill level up and unlocking system; each weapon is actually tied to a specific character skill, and you have to use a certain character skill enough times in order to use it indefinitely. It's a nice little way to reward players that remain cognizant of experimenting with different abilities and playstyles, and it gives individual weapons more meaning than simply serving as a stat upgrade. On the other hand, item collecting and crafting can be a little frustrating at times. The systems serve as a sort of conduit of fulfilling most of the side quests to document all the dropped resources from enemies/item hordes and also are raw materials that can be used to more cheaply produce better armor/weapons/healing items without spending money. There are a couple of caveats to this though.

Firstly, rarer drops are often required for certain recipes, and are RNG based. Most of this is circumvented by buying a Luck Medal to almost exclusively get rare drops, but there's also the case of specific item hordes in specific locations producing the exact species of rare item drop that you need, despite these item hordes in the same general vicinity looking the exact same, which can make item grinding a bit frustrating. There's also certain quests that require item grinding for resources scattered throughout the land (with basically no assistance from in-game to tell you where those resources are located if you're trying to farm item hordes). Finding these resource wells is trickier than it looks because the minimap doesn't automatically mark the locations unless you are holding the Silver Telegnosis (which in itself becomes an issue because you have to constantly switch back and forth between the Silver Telegnosis and the Luck Medal for the better guaranteed drops), and even then it only shows the location of a few resource wells within a certain distance instead of mapping the whole area. Finally, there's also a held item that straight up increases the amount of money gained from killing enemies, so it's not like you'll need to spend a ton of resources buying healing items as is when money can be pretty plentiful.

I'm making a particular point out of this, because while most of Ys Seven does not require excessive grinding, the endgame right before the final boss suddenly requires a ton of resource hoarding if you want to construct the best weapons and armor for everyone in your party. It's noticeably worse because most of the materials required for the synthesis of the final equipment are best gathered from the resource wells instead of gathering monster drops, which means this late game resource grind actively takes away from the most prevalent strength of the game. In addition to the problems listed above (items scattered throughout the land especially in areas that you have since forgotten the names of for particular drops, resource caches that look the exact same in a particular area but have different rare drops, etc), the somewhat lackluster AI also becomes more flagrant. They're not the greatest at doing exactly what you want them to do (i.e. dealing tons of damage alongside you spamming abilities and successfully dodging/flash guarding) but they tend to handle themselves well enough and are also supposed to help you collect drops from resource caches to minimize downtime. The key phrase here is "supposed to," because sometimes the AI messes up and just pauses to stare at you while you mash the A button 6 times in a row to collect all the resources from a single cache. As it stands, grinding in Ys is usually not an issue, because the bread and butter combat gameplay loop is great as is, but the late endgame really accentuates the flaws of the item crafting and collection systems and can make the final hours quite a bit more tedious if you want the best equipment. As such, if there are any noticeable weaknesses in Ys Seven, they would probably be these systems.

Despite my gripes here and there, Ys Seven is a fantastic entry in the series, both as a starting point to how easy it is to pick up and for veterans of the series both due to its challenging yet satisfying combat system and also in the form of lore drops, as it often references Adol's legacy as an adventurer across his past exploits. I do think that some of the side characters could have been developed a bit further, but they're still a ton of fun to use and explore regarding their own abilities and attack styles; I especially appreciate that it's a lot of fun playing as the ranged archer Aisha and spamming arrows, but she's not overpowered because there's often more downtime from her weapon skills and the range is good, yet not laughably huge. And the dungeons are fairly solid too, with a bit more sprawl and some added "puzzle" elements via key items (reminding me a lot of metroidvanias) and additional hazards reminiscent of a booby trapped crash course to keep you on your toes. The only other complaint I would have is that I do wish that the jump was retained; it would have added just another dimension to boss fights in being able to jump over attacks while allowing further verticality in dungeons and improving the honestly pretty solid movement in the overworld, something that Ys VIII does fortunately account for. Nevertheless, I really savored my time with Ys Seven as part of my journey through the series this year; it was a nice way to relieve stress and quickly press buttons somewhat aggressively but not too mindlessly, the environments are colorful and quite varied, the antagonist provides a moving touch to the plot thanks to the perfect amount of tragedy, and the soundtrack continues to kick ass because Falcom still hasn't made a single bad soundtrack for their games. Seriously, the opening movie says it all. The final boss fight that requires you to use all your party characters as a sort of reward for all your time spent experimenting and learning the ins and outs of the game is a great cherry on top of the cake.

If you weigh this by the expectations set from playing Ys Origin or Ys VIII, then I can definitely see how Ys Seven could be a tougher draw for you. Regardless, despite the lack of polish here and there, this more than holds up, and should not be missed as yet another fantastic entry in this classic fast-paced staple Falcom series.

Replaying as an adult via the Zero/ZX collection on Switch:

Gameplay and story-wise, this is a beautiful new chapter in the X franchise. Takes all the great gameplay feelings from X and tells a new story later in the future. I love how it was tied into the original X games. The story is actually good(?!) and the opening sequence does well to convey the stress and importance of the event, even though it is being shown in a series of still images. The gameplay and level design are excellent. Having the buster shot and the saber as a sub-weapon is great and allows you to smoothly transition between close and long-range combat.

The inter-connected world is a great idea but it is unfortunately not utilized to its fullest extent. I still like it though!

I really enjoy the leveling system for the weapons. While it does take longer than it should to get to the next level, it is always fun for your character's skills with their weapons to improve as you use those weapons. The triple rod was a fun addition too. I didn't use it at all when I was younger (I just wanted to use the cool energy sword) but I used it a lot on this playthrough and thought it was really good. A great weapon choice for the final boss, which I think might be purposeful to make sure that the weapon felt like it had a real place in Zero's arsenal.

The game is definitely not without its flaws though. For one, it's punishingly difficult (at least at the start; see bottom). I found it difficult to beat the first level's boss even with my literal decades of experience playing Mega Man-style games and other action platformers.
Enemies do a lot of damage and the only way to get more HP is with cyber elves which drop from enemies or are found in capsules. Then, after you find the correct elf, you must feed it way too many energy crystals which do not drop as much as they should. In my playthrough I only fully raised one HP upgrade elf and one Subtank elf. They just require too many crystals to feasibly raise all the ones you need without grinding.

The grinding is the next issue, in that there is not really any reason to do except to just get more energy crystals for your elves. As stated above, on a normal playthrough without grinding, I only found enough crystals to actually use two of the major elves that give permanent upgrades. There are also simply way too many elves to find for a game that takes under 3 hours to beat.

With the addition of the levels' ratings, it feels like the game's systems seem at war with themselves. It wants to reward your exploration and repetition by letting you find cyber elves, but the rating system wants you to beat the level as quickly as possible. Then, if you use any of the elves, you are punished for it with a reduced score.

Finally, while I do enjoy the addition of the elemental chips, it makes some of the bosses quite trivial. If you hit them with the element they are weak to, it staggers them and starts them on a new attack animation. Some of the toughest bosses in the game are turned into jokes if you hit them with the right element because of the loop this causes. They start an attack, you dodge and hit them with a charged buster, they stagger, and they start the same attack again. Repeat until dead.

Nothing complicated here, Zero Mission was just a joy to pick up and tear through, blasting missiles and lasers in quickfire run and gun while maneuvering a tightly packed planet filled with careful and precisely placed powerups. It's no Super Metroid in terms of level design (no "Geemer crawling out of the wall" moments of discovery, at least), but the map is solid and with enough tinkering and studying, you'll basically be able to figure out exactly where to go and how to progress as long as you remember what goes where, since the map will mark collectibles/destinations but not specific color-coded obstacles for the correct powerup. Hell, I was even okay with most of the extended stealth section, since getting caught was not an instant reset as long as I stayed on my feet to quickly outrun and avoid the pirates, and it was super satisfying to scrape by the skin of my teeth at times. My biggest gripe is that I do think the boss fights feel less memorable than those of Super Metroid; a bunch of scattered fights vs giant worms and larvae and a Mother Brain fight where I got pinballed by a million projectiles while trying to escape the lava to get back onto the platform can't compare to the likes of Phantoon's ghastly spectacle or Draygon's underwater confrontation. But regardless, it's a nice and snug package of a Metroidvania with classic GBA visuals and upgraded 8 bit tunes of the original with plenty of abilities to exploit over the course of a few hours while picking up a few tidbits concerning Metroid lore and Samus's past, and I'm happy to say that it's basically comfort food for me at this point.

Well, it’s that time of year again. You know, that time of year where you try playing a million things, but nothing quite seems to click or stick for some reason. But I recently got my Steam Deck in the mail and felt like messing around with it some more, and it turns out a favorite of mine from last year, Furi, was Steam Deck verified. So one thing led to another, and I ended up playing through Furi three more times; a normal replay through the Steam Deck, a speedrun (in speedrun mode) on standard PC, and then Furier again on my desktop. And despite being as simple to pick up as the day I started playing last year, it’s still an absolute joy to run through. So let me try to answer this question: how is Furi, despite being a simple game compared to its influences, still one of my favorites?

I’ve already talked about how Furi’s tough but fair and inviting through its health and progression system, so I won’t go into too much detail about those systems and instead shift the discussion to the controls. Furi boils down your actions into four basic control mechanics: firing your pistol, dodging with your dash, slashing your sword, and parrying. Accessibility is 100% one of the biggest draws of Furi; the developers wanted to make a game that you could immediately pick up and figure out quickly how to play and exploit via its simple control scheme. To add on to this argument of accessibility, consider the melee attack signals; The spectacle of it all is absolutely a key selling point to Furi too. The developers were less concerned about realistic animations and more concerned about creating a fair system of mechanics that remained consistent between bosses, which is why there’s a noticeable speedy animation between the sound effect signifying a melee attack and the actual attack itself. That said, I will say that it is deceptively simple, because you can charge all of these actions and chain them together successfully to mix up strategy. Want to quickly get the drop on an enemy sending wave attacks at you? You can charge your sword slash and dash while holding down the charge so you can immediately release your attack to get that sweet, sweet punish, or if you prefer charge shots, you can do that too.. Need to get rid of a bunch of projectiles while dodging grounded waves? You can fire with the right joystick while dodging with L1, something that took me a long time to get used to in Furier. You can also parry while charging your slash (a much more difficult series of inputs in my opinion) and during close quarters combat, similarly charge your slash while inbetween enemy attacks so as long as you don’t get hit, you can deal much more damage on the counter attack. There’s also a degree of player control in that enemy attack patterns can often be interrupted with your own sword slashes or charged shots, while mixing in dodging and firing simple shots to avoid staggering or interrupting more favorable patterns. A friend who played through Furi’s normal mode recently had been telling me that he had no incentive to try any of this, since he was able to get by just fine with parrying and counter attacking, so allow me to provide a different perspective as someone who’s run through Furier and speedrun mode; you need everything you can get because bosses are far more punishing, both in their tougher attack patterns and aggression. In a sense, I find that the normal Furi mode is a great way to feel good about yourself by successfully pulling off the right inputs and mastering the basics while speedrun and Furier mode push those limits further, forcing you to find every opportunity to deal damage because every second spent not ending the fight is a second gone towards potential death. Not everything has to have a complicated system of long button presses and abstruse strategies; sometimes you just need that simple dose of dopamine you know? And if you don’t feel like that’s enough, then go for speedrun and Furier mode (and there’s even a cheat code to unlock Furier mode from the start if you just want everything thrown at you at once).

Let me expand a bit more upon my perspective due to these more difficult modes. Because combat’s relatively simplified already, combat gets pretty damn fast. Don’t even think about trying to coast by with “parry and counterattack” on Furier; bosses love to swarm you with so many projectiles that there’s no way you can parry them all, and have plenty of wave, laser, and AOE attacks that you absolutely have to dodge. Moreover, while Furi is generally a very fair game in giving you multiple avenues to solve a problem (i.e. avoiding damage while dealing damage), bosses have some degree of “RNG” in choosing when they want to block/dodge/parry your counterattacks as well as mixing up their patterns and mixing up how many times they choose to attack you with melee attacks. On regular difficulty, bosses will throw in the occasional green bullet to help you get health back, but these are not present on Furier, and many of the melee attacks I ended up parrying were blue counterattacks that didn’t grant me health back. As such, it was no longer good enough to just play defensively and focus on parrying all attacks then counterattacking, because it was too risky. It’s Furi’s frenzied push & pull combat at its core; you have to mix in charging attacks, peppering bosses with standard bullets, and parrying/dashing inbetween to avoid damage while interrupting unfavorable patterns with your own attacks, because when healing becomes that much more rare and damage becomes more deadly, the best defense happens to be a good offense. And before I forget, there's plenty of wrinkles to be found in the form of speedrun strats that can save tons of time in the Speedrun mode while saving you a lot of toil in Furier mode, such as shooting a wall alarm to bait out The Strap from her hiding place or targeting The Hand with shots as he taunts you or lays down beam after beam; in the thick of the fight, you'll need every advantage you can get.

The spectacle of it all is also absolutely a key selling point to Furi. The quick and often tough combat obviously sells to how over the top the game usually feels, as well as the flashy boss patterns filled with lasers and neon bullets/waves and the pounding, often relentless synthwave themes of each boss. The boss designs (from Takashi Okazaki, perhaps better known for designing the characters of Afro Samurai) and speedy attack animations are a huge part of this as well, and damn if it isn’t satisfying watching the fruits of my labor in the form of an extended punish cutscene animation every time I pull off a successful charge slash or perfect parry. There’s also contrast inbetween the frenzied action sequences to accentuate the emotions, both during short downtime in boss fights when the boss is taunting you or staring you down and during the extended walking sequences inbetween boss fights. If Shadow of the Colossus has taught me anything, it’s that these careful moments of forced downtime are a necessary reprieve from the upbeat boss fights; players get to soak in the lore and the abstract and stylized corridors and spaces comprising the prison, while The Voice sets up the scene for the next incoming opponent, all at their own pace. The transition from quietude to an explosion in action through a build up of tension is reflected in the walking tracks to the boss themes themselves; just try and consider shifting from the dreamy and majestic “[A Picture in Motion]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUlAytznxn4)” to the more pronounced eargasm that is “Wisdom of Rage” or the sudden drop in “What We Fight For as you leave behind the blustery desert winds for a confrontation versus your most determined foe yet. The shifts in tone as well between the phases, such as the hurried accelerating beat in “Wisdom of Rage” as the Line tells you to “seek joy in these last precious moments” or how additional layers and volume pile up upon one another in Danger’s 7:53 as the Star piles up attack after attack to snuff you out at the end of the tunnel really highlight both the shifting moods of the fight and the personalities of those you must take down in your quest for redemption.

I’m not going to talk too much about the storyline of Furi, as I think overanalysis of its subtle and understated narrative notes would go against the spirit of its storytelling and ultimately become reductive. That said, I can’t help but notice the little things, both in conveying emotional moments and bleeding character personality in the battlefield. Like how there’s a blaring transition in the beginning of 6:24 that also serves as the sound of the alarm system set off by the Chain to warn the other guards of a prison escape, remaining steadfast to his duty despite his receding arrogance and faith as you systemically outmaneuver him. Or how the Hand grows more and more desperate as the fight goes on, throwing away his shield while he continues to taunt you of your emptiness, perhaps more as motivation for himself as less as hurtful words to tear you down, and in his final close quarter combat phase, hacking away at you relentlessly and eventually slowing down as he realizes that what he fights for will not be enough to claim victory over the stranger. Or how the Beat never once actually attacks you physically during the majority of the fight, choosing instead to run away from you as you approach past wave after wave of turrets, and how by the end, she is leaning on her stick as she begs you to turn away, knowing that her final moments may ultimately be in vain and barely even mustering up the strength to attack you unless you decide to throw her a bone and wait around for 20 seconds while she pleads for mercy. Finally, as the Voice leaves you and you step through that portal to the world, there’s a subtle use of player control through the videogame medium that I really appreciated; the autowalk button stops working. You’re forced to take your first steps in this beautiful, natural, world, and as you do, everything around you decays and turns to dust. So were you really the hero all along or just another classic case of protagonist syndrome, and what were you really fighting in the end?

Before I forget, I also want to use this time to gush about two boss fights in Furi that I didn’t give much props to at first, mainly because I found them annoying or forgettable, but really grew on me over time. The Scale is the first of these two; as the fourth boss you fight, he’s this fish-humanoid creature whose world has been torn to tatters by the stranger’s actions. Compared to the previous boss, a wise old man who could not give less of a shit and just wants you out of the way to “make his clocks tick again,” this guy radiates enmity. He’s given up on trying to better or out moral you, as he states “Don’t look so horrified: you’re staring at yourself.” As he laughs mirthlessly between attacks while he pulls out every trick in the book, including attempting to drown you in the muck and overwhelming you with clones and bullets, he is seething; he doesn’t care what it takes anymore or what it means, he just wants you dead even knowing that nothing will bring back his people or his civilization. The scale was a huge chump check during my Furier run, and my memory of his fight is forever embedded thanks to both his relentless attacks and the overbearing atmosphere of the arena. Lorn’s “Set Me Free” perfectly conveys this mood in my mind, as this mish mosh of dark and scattered percussive notes (distinctly different from the often melodic and aggressive synthwave themes of the other bosses) both reflects the sudden drops of water droplets from pipes as they echo across the sewers while displaying the frenzied and ruthless strength shown from the Scale. Couple that with the screen distortion every time you get hit by one of his bullets, and it’s hard to not feel a sense of oppression as the Scale descends upon you in his last, unfocused effort to seek vengeance.

My second pronounced moment of newfound appreciation comes in the form of the 7th boss, The Burst. Now on my first run, I found this to easily be one of the most annoying fights in the game, as I had trouble pinning her down while she constantly ran away from me, but upon later runs, after learning of a more consistent strat where ducking behind a wall would result in a vulnerability state where you could tag her, I can’t help but appreciate what I would consider as a very interesting videogame adaption of the classic short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” The line between prey and predator becomes blurry as the two of you have a dance with death, you as you attempt to discern her whereabouts (made easier because parrying is locked to an opponent’s general direction and her red sniper laser will show you her location) and she attempts to toy with you with every trick in the book. After all, she’s studied all of your previous fights and scanned you in your walk-up to the arena, and she’s got mastery of an everchanging arena filled with movable walls and gaps alongside an arsenal of drones & mines while she attacks you from the safety of her cloaking device; how could she possibly lose? The shift in tone as she begins to increasingly realize how bad of an idea it is to play with her ”food” is absolutely present in Carpenter Brut’s theme “[You’re Mine]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ5gtInauiI)” as the music becomes increasingly more dissonant and hurried; while you’re barely fighting for your life, escaping danger by the skin of your teeth as her sniper goes off while ducking behind walls (100% developer intended, by the way), she becomes more and worried, crying out in her desperation phase “I can’t fail, this is my game!” In the end, I beat her at her own game despite all her shenanigans, and it’s made all the more satisfying because as the Voice says, “she was a cheater anyway.”

Let’s get back to the original question, and tack on an additional follow-up for fun; I’ve played through this game maybe 5 times now if you include The Onnamusha, so how the hell am I not bored of it? Well, as I stated prior, there’s just something so damn satisfying about taking down a series of guardians that are sized and stylized just like you with a lightning katana and a plasma pistol, but there’s also a strong sense of personal progression for me. I went from getting my ass handed to me with a game over on the tutorial boss to S ranking normal mode on the Steam Deck and finally beating Furier over a year later. Because the mechanics remain relatively simple and the controls never “evolve,” there’s a strong sense of growth, not from gaining new skills or attacks necessarily, but rather from mastering the controls and understanding its ebb and flow. Tomkon’s video on this titled “Furi Is Pretty Simple But That's Exactly Why You Should Play It” says it best; “"If you had to relearn everything from one boss to another, you could still feel satisfied by mastering any particular one, but you'd lose that important feeling of progression at the macro level.” Moreover, I genuinely believe that simplifying the controls and mechanics in Furi allowed the developers to push their combat system to the limits and expand upon their ideals with their unchanging toolset. For example, you go from a tutorial boss that shows you the ropes of both close combat and bullet hell range combat, to a boss that actively runs away from you and sprays you with lasers and energy balls (The Strap), to a boss that reflects your own bullets and freezes them during the long range phase (The Line), all within the first couple of hours of the game. What if we introduced a boss that restricted the use of the plasma pistol and required careful interaction to bypass the shield that reflects bullets and focused more on constant vigilance of punishing dodged attacks? The Hand has you covered. And what if we flipped that on its side and had a boss that loved to fly off stage, so melee combat is not as prevalent and you had to focus on nailing your long range pistol shots or parrying back bullets? The Song comes right after The Hand. This experimentation within the seemingly simple system is perhaps exemplified by The Edge and The Star; the former is a boss that distills the game into an entirely close quarters combat fight who can take you down in a couple of hits and focuses on testing your execution of parrying, while the latter focuses more on a war of attrition where pulses, lasers, and bullets flood the platform and parrying + close combat becomes practically irrelevant when you must rely on your laser to systematically target the floating hands of doom while positioning yourself to carefully dodge all incoming attacks and quickly readjusting to pile on the damage. And finally, even within single boss fights themselves, just as the moods shift inbetween phases, the attacks themselves also shift to turn the tides of battle and keep you honest. These “twists” in the boss fights keep the often long and detailed encounters from growing too stale, because bosses are more than happy to bring in unexpected strategies to test your mettle. For example, as you progress in The Strap’s fight, she hacks away at her restraints and begins to gain access to a scythe melee slash at first, and then to an even more mobile on feet phase where she does the classic “come out of nowhere” attack and scuttles around you like an amalgamation of a killer crab and a gritty reboot of the Pixar logo lamp. Other notable twists that occur in Furi include the final two phases of The Edge taking place on a 2.5D plane as he beats you up with an oar in a homage to Miyamoto Musashi, and The Song abandoning her powers of flight and focusing more on overwhelming you with pulses and projectiles while chasing you down as pillars of light thunder from the sky. There’s so much variety that could be covered in such a basic combat system, and I was always kept on my toes wondering what the next crazy idea thrown at me would evolve into as I made my way through the prison.

Now, having played through almost all of the game’s modes and difficulties at this point (only haven’t beat The Flame and Bernard on Furier as DLC), I will acknowledge that there are a few flaws. Some of the bosses could be considered too by-the-book when playing on standard difficulty if you’re content with just parrying and counter attacking, and if you’re looking for a game with a crazy move list and need for precise planning (akin to something like say, God Hand), standard Furi may not be your ballpark. A couple of the bosses could be considered easily “cheesed” if you know the right strats; for example, if you keep attacking the Hand by chasing him down and sword slashing, you can prevent him from launching practically any attacks at all until he counter-attacks (at which point you parry) and essentially trivialize almost the entire fight. And finally, there are some noticeable difficulty spikes on both Furi and Furier difficulty; in my case, it was The Burst’s final desperation phase (which definitely caused some frustration, having come so close to ending her only for it to slip away) and The Star on Furier, which has some very tight execution tests with little reprieve for relaxing or making mistakes. Fortunately, I do believe that Furier difficulty is an excellent use of a new game + system, with tougher and more intimidating attack patterns that turn the already powerful bosses into behemoths, though it does have the unintended consequence of making the more straightforward bosses like The Hand and The Edge seem like a walk in the park after you’ve mastered the controls and mechanics.

But at the end of the day, does this really matter enough to me? I’ve already stated in the past that most crushingly difficult games are not exactly my cup of tea; not that I particularly dislike challenging video games, but I’m not inherently drawn to the challenge of grinding against difficult enemies and bosses as I am interested in an overall fruitful experience. Moreover, with so much to explore on the horizon thanks to stronger systems at my disposal, there are so many games I want to get to and cover that I rarely ever consider replaying games, even favorites of mine such as Okami and Ori & The Blind Forest. And yet, I somehow felt inspired enough to come back to Furi and beat it four more times, feeling just as enthused and enthralled as the first time when I cleared it last November. I can’t help but admire the decision making of the Game Bakers; they knew exactly what they wanted to make, and they set out to gather the best team possible to make that vision a reality. And even though they will admit upfront that difficult video games are not for everyone, and that perhaps a simply set-up system might not cover everyone’s tastes, they remained steadfast in their artistic ideals and committed their final designs, stating that “consensus leads to dull results” and that “… having a strong sense of consistency and focus are essential to [creating] unforgettable moments, whereas trying to please everyone is definitely not the key to success.” It’s an uncompromising yet inviting game of thrills and challenges, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s fast. It's fun. It’s Furi. It’s fucking good.

I've always had an issue with dropping games after getting stuck -- even if very briefly -- only to struggle to want to pick them up again after spending time away from the game. uncharted is a special case here, with me getting stuck on a puzzle around the final third of the game when I was a spry 12 years old. a couple months ago my gf asked me to pull this one out, and I ended up exhuming this decade-old save... slotting back in was almost too easy. when your whole game is the most by-the-numbers cover shooter it's hard to forget how to play it, and the rest of the components barely qualify as notable gameplay additions.

this an early cover shooter too, and it is relatively rough even compared to its forebears. snapping to cover is not a natural system and rather seems sloppily mapped per-object, meaning that many deaths will occur from drake refusing to crouch behind whatever wall or railing he's near. guns are piddly and lack weight, weapon variety is ho-hum, and enemy AI rarely pushes or does anything beyond leaning out of cover. it's effectively a series of light-gun corridors strung together by ico-ripoff platformer sections. they're not bad, and at its best it's a competent third-person shooter -- at the very least the pistol hits pretty hard! during this clean-up I didn't play any of the vehicle sections but given my sparse memories I'll assume they were nothing special, if at least not particularly frustrating. the only real other twist the game takes is a detour into some like horror elements with the introduction of zombie-monster-cursed-people things. perhaps playing a lot of RE has rotted my brain recently, but the ugly mo-cap animations these creatures perform after taking full shotgun rounds to the face really feels unsatisfying. no gibs? no more than a couple little spurts of blood? the added sixaxis-powered motion QTEs when they jump on you have really aged poorly as well, though I suppose I can forgive it considering it came out in only '07.

also it's old hat to say it on here by this point, but good god is nathan drake just completely devoid of character. naughty dog has never been good at making anything that wasn't just completely creatively bankrupt, and absolutely nothing in this game has a shred of originality. nathan does nothing and has no character beyond endlessly quipping, which I suppose may be lightly innovative for this time period. years before the overall cultural shift towards non-stop defusing of tension and suppposedly self-aware whedon-ass dialogue this game was already utterly mired in it.

The more I practice speedrunning this game, the more confidently I can call it my favourite in the original Mega Man series.

The simple and humble nature of this entry makes for a fantastic purity that (while perhaps not always intentionally) feels quite free and allows for tremendous player expression. Due to the lack of E-tanks, not to mention I-frames not serving as a crutch mechanic against spikes, everything must be approached with skill and tactics alone. Take for example the Copy Robot fight. Should players slowly pelt it with bombs for a safe strategy, swap between the buster and Guts Man's weapon to render it helpless, or go all out with the fire to quickly kill it?

What of the pillars in Fire Man's stage? Should they be skipped with the Magnet Beam, frozen with ice, or patiently jumped past? Or the platforms in Guts Man's stage? Should the player learn how to leap across them, or fight Elec Man twice to destroy the guts blocks with his beam? The concept of revisiting stages for items would not be revisited until Mega Man 4, and boy did I have fond memories of experimenting with every weapon so heavily with this game.

In fact, I still have so much fun experimenting with different ways to tackle enemies. Maybe I'll freeze the Big Eyes and rapid blast them with the Buster, or maybe I'll use the magnet beam to lure them into the pits in Elec Man's stage. Every weapon in the game feels overpowered in the right circumstances. While later MM games feature more weapons, the limited amount of robot masters meant the limited amount of weapons here needed to have more than one purpose, thus the shield bundled with Fire Man's shot or the multi-directional nature of the Elec Beam. It's something I greatly prefer to only a couple weapons being worthwhile, such is the case with the metal blade mostly making the other weapons in MM2 redundant.

Of course, I can't forget the atmosphere either. The almost cheerful nature of Bomb Man's theme mixed with an underlying melancholy is permanently engraved in my mind, heavily mirroring my feelings of excitement to explore such a colourful futuristic world despite it being in the back of my mind I was unfortunately forced to face my own robot brothers. The battle against Yellow Devil also sounds like a descent into hell as I do my best over countless attempts to finally learn its pattern.

Sure, the game isn't perfect; I really wish Ice Man's level had water physics from later entries and the RNG platforms didn't suck, but something about reaching my destination always makes me feel complete. Seeing the hero I played as the entire time was a kid with his own family to return to, it truly awoke feelings of motivation in my silly child self.

FIGHT, MEGAMAN!
FOR EVERLASTING PEACE!