SunlitSonata
This game and 999 I think perfectly balance out each other's flaws.
999 has the starker intentional atmosphere, but this one feels noticeably more uncanny.
This game has 999 beat on puzzle complexity but feels like you're trudging through it far slower.
The individual characters are stronger here but 999's cast is better as an ensemble.
The alternate endings aren't as scary but are far wilder and contribute better to expanding out the plot.
Everything in VLR is much better signposted when trying to get the true end but it blue balls you way more in the process of trying to wrap your head around it.
The dub here is better fit with the dialogue as it was planned further from the start rather than being inserted after two other games. The castings stand out a lot starker for their characters
To sum up, The Nonary Collection is a cool compilation and both games are worth playing. Just not one after another, you'll get fatigued for sure.
999 has the starker intentional atmosphere, but this one feels noticeably more uncanny.
This game has 999 beat on puzzle complexity but feels like you're trudging through it far slower.
The individual characters are stronger here but 999's cast is better as an ensemble.
The alternate endings aren't as scary but are far wilder and contribute better to expanding out the plot.
Everything in VLR is much better signposted when trying to get the true end but it blue balls you way more in the process of trying to wrap your head around it.
The dub here is better fit with the dialogue as it was planned further from the start rather than being inserted after two other games. The castings stand out a lot starker for their characters
To sum up, The Nonary Collection is a cool compilation and both games are worth playing. Just not one after another, you'll get fatigued for sure.
2022
The greatest strength of Neon White is how exceptionally laid out its core design is, and how its gameplay loop is expanded upon from world to world in a surprisingly beefy campaign if you’re trying to get Ace Medals (Platinum Relics, basically) through it. Almost every one of the new chapters introduces a new gimmick with a new kind of gun and its two uses, feeling like it makes the most out of whatever power a level gives you.
As the game goes on, levels have you hot swapping between these constantly, and it feels like a great amount of thought, effort and detail went into to making every single one feel distinct, in a similar way to games like the first two Super Monkey Balls or Donkey Kong (1994). I do think some levels can stretch the length quota; any stage that go on for 2+ minutes can feel aggravating to replay, but the majority are able to keep things interesting. Often more than certain main stages, I really got a lot from the side challenges from each of your companions, and how these stages operated in different ways that let their distinct personalities show without incessant painful dialogue. In particular, I really liked Yellow’s penultimate stage and how it felt like the game briefly became a boomer shooter.
Although level progression can be enjoyable when everything clicks, some stages force styles of movement progression on you that can turn the method of controlling into an aggravating stress test. It’s very easy for the 360 turns the game forces you to do for level optimization to ruin your mouse position when trying to say, circle around a tall structure, see the sky after using the stomp power that faces you toward the ground, or rocket launch up a building to be met with a stuck-out structure covering your camera. I can't imagine playing with a controller for lacking precision aim but even with a mouse it was incredibly unfun to have my view wrecked by being unable to move around in a circle without straight up lifting the mouse up, which would cause an immediate reset if it got stuck during a run. The final gift sequence felt less like a fun challenge and more like a tedious slog when dealing with a 360-tower scale at the end of a 2-minute level gauntlet where a single screwup meant doing the entire stage all over again. I feel similarly in regard to the second boss fight; the first and the final one do compelling work to translate the level moment to moment feel into a run that feels quick even if you lose, despite the wimpy finishers, but the second boss got so overly indulgent with the scripted sequences that the slight chance of screwing up in the middle of that 4-5 minute battle felt painful every time I felt like I wanted to restart.
As many others have pointed out, it's really the writing that's the most able to turn heads. To its credit, it’s able to be skipped almost in its entirety and doesn’t directly affect the strong core gameplay level progression I noted above. But in a way it affected my attitude through it, because every time I power through a new world, the story dialogues meant to break it up only show me how thoroughly uncool the character I’m playing is as a person. It feels like there’s a fundamental disconnect between euphoria for mastering a stage and White’s personality compilation of referential animeisms outside of it, despite Steve Blum’s best efforts.
It’s no secret that Sonic games have been wildly inconsistent, often for mechanical reasons, but one place I think most of them succeed in is properly communicating the spectacle, fun and thrilling sequences a player is meant to be experiencing in the stages through Sonic as a character, be it the expressive sprites of the 2D titles or his modern version’s trick posing and light comments chirped from time to time. They connect the intention between what personality the character is feeling versus what you, the player, are meant to feel while playing that just doesn’t exist in Neon White because of how divorced those sides of his character are.
Yet, for all the writing’s incessant need for forced references, incel humor (there’s a blatantly obvious 2019 Joker line, flat asses, and S-tier insults among other things) and all the tediously tepid character tropes that have me rolling my eyes even in actual anime, it’s the constant emoticons that deal the killing blow. They’re used so often, even in scenes trying to be emotional, from pretty sparkles to overly saturated blushing and depression lines that just makes any dialogue they’re paired with that much more performative. There’s even the very literal throwing up emoji, something that’s not even an anime effect so I’m genuinely baffled it’s present.
When it comes to weeaboo style writing goes, it's bordering the same level as RWBY, with worse jokes and slightly better thematic cohesion. Just like the first two seasons of that show, the best parts are, ironically, when the action director oversees the story. The side quests for your companions communicate their personalities in a way far more suitable to Neon White’s status as a video game than any dialogue unlock (which feels like if you gave an AI a Danganronpa script). There’s a lot more meaningful emotion to glean from your very first sequence of finding one of Green's gifts, conveying a creepy, yet sorrowful mood purely from gameplay, than almost any dialogue sequence where the writing is either comically bad or just borderline nothing (any conversation with the cat characters comes to mind).
The end of Neon White left me satisfied with how well everything had progressed by that point on a structural level just as much as relieved I’d never have to endure its unfun execution to justify its concept. But dammit, I felt something almost the entire time. And is that not the purpose of art, to make you want to feel, even when it’s intensive negative emotion? Neon White is a pendulum swing of a game I think succeeds at being a well-made and lastingly developed experience on numerous design levels despite its off-character cohesion and the incessant annoyance of its skippable writing. The tightly put together building blocks alone make it a recommendation, but it’ll be up to others to make the most of what’s surrounding them.
As the game goes on, levels have you hot swapping between these constantly, and it feels like a great amount of thought, effort and detail went into to making every single one feel distinct, in a similar way to games like the first two Super Monkey Balls or Donkey Kong (1994). I do think some levels can stretch the length quota; any stage that go on for 2+ minutes can feel aggravating to replay, but the majority are able to keep things interesting. Often more than certain main stages, I really got a lot from the side challenges from each of your companions, and how these stages operated in different ways that let their distinct personalities show without incessant painful dialogue. In particular, I really liked Yellow’s penultimate stage and how it felt like the game briefly became a boomer shooter.
Although level progression can be enjoyable when everything clicks, some stages force styles of movement progression on you that can turn the method of controlling into an aggravating stress test. It’s very easy for the 360 turns the game forces you to do for level optimization to ruin your mouse position when trying to say, circle around a tall structure, see the sky after using the stomp power that faces you toward the ground, or rocket launch up a building to be met with a stuck-out structure covering your camera. I can't imagine playing with a controller for lacking precision aim but even with a mouse it was incredibly unfun to have my view wrecked by being unable to move around in a circle without straight up lifting the mouse up, which would cause an immediate reset if it got stuck during a run. The final gift sequence felt less like a fun challenge and more like a tedious slog when dealing with a 360-tower scale at the end of a 2-minute level gauntlet where a single screwup meant doing the entire stage all over again. I feel similarly in regard to the second boss fight; the first and the final one do compelling work to translate the level moment to moment feel into a run that feels quick even if you lose, despite the wimpy finishers, but the second boss got so overly indulgent with the scripted sequences that the slight chance of screwing up in the middle of that 4-5 minute battle felt painful every time I felt like I wanted to restart.
As many others have pointed out, it's really the writing that's the most able to turn heads. To its credit, it’s able to be skipped almost in its entirety and doesn’t directly affect the strong core gameplay level progression I noted above. But in a way it affected my attitude through it, because every time I power through a new world, the story dialogues meant to break it up only show me how thoroughly uncool the character I’m playing is as a person. It feels like there’s a fundamental disconnect between euphoria for mastering a stage and White’s personality compilation of referential animeisms outside of it, despite Steve Blum’s best efforts.
It’s no secret that Sonic games have been wildly inconsistent, often for mechanical reasons, but one place I think most of them succeed in is properly communicating the spectacle, fun and thrilling sequences a player is meant to be experiencing in the stages through Sonic as a character, be it the expressive sprites of the 2D titles or his modern version’s trick posing and light comments chirped from time to time. They connect the intention between what personality the character is feeling versus what you, the player, are meant to feel while playing that just doesn’t exist in Neon White because of how divorced those sides of his character are.
Yet, for all the writing’s incessant need for forced references, incel humor (there’s a blatantly obvious 2019 Joker line, flat asses, and S-tier insults among other things) and all the tediously tepid character tropes that have me rolling my eyes even in actual anime, it’s the constant emoticons that deal the killing blow. They’re used so often, even in scenes trying to be emotional, from pretty sparkles to overly saturated blushing and depression lines that just makes any dialogue they’re paired with that much more performative. There’s even the very literal throwing up emoji, something that’s not even an anime effect so I’m genuinely baffled it’s present.
When it comes to weeaboo style writing goes, it's bordering the same level as RWBY, with worse jokes and slightly better thematic cohesion. Just like the first two seasons of that show, the best parts are, ironically, when the action director oversees the story. The side quests for your companions communicate their personalities in a way far more suitable to Neon White’s status as a video game than any dialogue unlock (which feels like if you gave an AI a Danganronpa script). There’s a lot more meaningful emotion to glean from your very first sequence of finding one of Green's gifts, conveying a creepy, yet sorrowful mood purely from gameplay, than almost any dialogue sequence where the writing is either comically bad or just borderline nothing (any conversation with the cat characters comes to mind).
The end of Neon White left me satisfied with how well everything had progressed by that point on a structural level just as much as relieved I’d never have to endure its unfun execution to justify its concept. But dammit, I felt something almost the entire time. And is that not the purpose of art, to make you want to feel, even when it’s intensive negative emotion? Neon White is a pendulum swing of a game I think succeeds at being a well-made and lastingly developed experience on numerous design levels despite its off-character cohesion and the incessant annoyance of its skippable writing. The tightly put together building blocks alone make it a recommendation, but it’ll be up to others to make the most of what’s surrounding them.
2021
On paper, this had everything it needed to be a breezy time carried by its gorgeous art design, smooth skating mechanics and a fairly contained and manageable scope. It can be fun to quickly go from place to place and play around with gravity whenever it comes up, but it's held back by unnecessary creative decisions. The annoying/confused voice direction doesn't keep much interest over a played-out narrative, and the general lack of variety/mood escalation really drag it down.
There's slight variety as far as the size and shape of the not-Colossi at the end of each zone, but the approach and method in fighting them never changes between hitting the little needles on their backs. It's great for conveying the scope in conjunction with the art design, but only does so much to remain interesting when repeated six times. The music also fails to convey a distinct mood for each one; the game's soundtrack is pretty soothing synthwave for a lot of it that fits the vibe and gets slightly more intense at a boss but lacks emotional tone to make any key moments stand out. The game even denies you the satisfaction of toppling a boss by instantly blasting you into the mind dimension every time one is defeated. Doing this wouldn't interfere with the theoretically somber tone, as Shadow of the Colossus forced you to see the weight of your final strike as each beast fell; Solar Ash feels like it just wants to move on.
There are some good ideas I'd hope to see Sonic pick up in the future, a particularly good one being using the colored plants to open doors and rail-lines before time runs out or managing the platforms around radiation pools to avoid dying from too much exposure, but even with its pretty environments there's not much to break up the gameplay formula being repeated six and a half times over.
Lastly there's the storytelling. For some reason even though the art direction would suggest the world's design itself can carry the narrative like the Ori duology, there's pretty constant chatter from the main character Rei, who is directed to sound angrier and more resigned than desperate as the narrative wants her to seem. Her relation to Cyd was adequately done if a bit detached, but the side characters you run into or hear logs from feel like they were from a different game entirely. There's a quirky, almost cartoony way of speaking that feels at odds with this game stylistically in a way that seems uncanny. Characters like the captain and his various crews with their acting wouldn't be out of place in a kids network comedy show.
I was thinking of ways to convey a lot of the game's story ideas and other indie games already showed me better ways of accomplishing each element of its narrative delivery. If the game was more like Furi, where your protagonist's only verb of communication was their core gameplay (in that case, combat, in this case, moving) in contrast with everyone around them, that would've conveyed a more thorough emotional tone. I dogged on Neon White for its writing, but it was at least wholly separated from its slick game feel and did actually convey interesting storytelling through character-based stages while Rei's unnecessary chirping is in conjunction with playing. There are also audio logs, which felt much more interesting in a game like Outer Wilds because they were slowly unraveling a vast mystery with a lot of turns which worked alongside what the main character was doing in slowly exploring a galaxy. Here, on top of the tonal issue you can't even listen to them while running despite them being baked into the world, which feels like an oversight for the focus on constant flow.
Solar Ash had plenty of potential to convey a strong feeling and a generally swift game feel that carries it through its brief runtime, but it just came off as distracting and at odds with itself. I wish it embraced its strong stylistic elements and speed more than it does.
There's slight variety as far as the size and shape of the not-Colossi at the end of each zone, but the approach and method in fighting them never changes between hitting the little needles on their backs. It's great for conveying the scope in conjunction with the art design, but only does so much to remain interesting when repeated six times. The music also fails to convey a distinct mood for each one; the game's soundtrack is pretty soothing synthwave for a lot of it that fits the vibe and gets slightly more intense at a boss but lacks emotional tone to make any key moments stand out. The game even denies you the satisfaction of toppling a boss by instantly blasting you into the mind dimension every time one is defeated. Doing this wouldn't interfere with the theoretically somber tone, as Shadow of the Colossus forced you to see the weight of your final strike as each beast fell; Solar Ash feels like it just wants to move on.
There are some good ideas I'd hope to see Sonic pick up in the future, a particularly good one being using the colored plants to open doors and rail-lines before time runs out or managing the platforms around radiation pools to avoid dying from too much exposure, but even with its pretty environments there's not much to break up the gameplay formula being repeated six and a half times over.
Lastly there's the storytelling. For some reason even though the art direction would suggest the world's design itself can carry the narrative like the Ori duology, there's pretty constant chatter from the main character Rei, who is directed to sound angrier and more resigned than desperate as the narrative wants her to seem. Her relation to Cyd was adequately done if a bit detached, but the side characters you run into or hear logs from feel like they were from a different game entirely. There's a quirky, almost cartoony way of speaking that feels at odds with this game stylistically in a way that seems uncanny. Characters like the captain and his various crews with their acting wouldn't be out of place in a kids network comedy show.
I was thinking of ways to convey a lot of the game's story ideas and other indie games already showed me better ways of accomplishing each element of its narrative delivery. If the game was more like Furi, where your protagonist's only verb of communication was their core gameplay (in that case, combat, in this case, moving) in contrast with everyone around them, that would've conveyed a more thorough emotional tone. I dogged on Neon White for its writing, but it was at least wholly separated from its slick game feel and did actually convey interesting storytelling through character-based stages while Rei's unnecessary chirping is in conjunction with playing. There are also audio logs, which felt much more interesting in a game like Outer Wilds because they were slowly unraveling a vast mystery with a lot of turns which worked alongside what the main character was doing in slowly exploring a galaxy. Here, on top of the tonal issue you can't even listen to them while running despite them being baked into the world, which feels like an oversight for the focus on constant flow.
Solar Ash had plenty of potential to convey a strong feeling and a generally swift game feel that carries it through its brief runtime, but it just came off as distracting and at odds with itself. I wish it embraced its strong stylistic elements and speed more than it does.
2023
I don’t I’ve seen a single time where so much of the discourse incurred against a game specifically on here had so much to do with its art style, but here we are. I suppose there is the Demons’ Souls remake, but that was a case of failing to replicate a style that could’ve been replicated using their tools, not so much deliberately choosing a new aesthetic for a new game.
Not to say there isn’t other places where Sonic Superstars could theoretically have done better, but actually playing the game and then Mario Wonder subsequently, it’s hard to shake the feeling of how much JUST the art direction surrounds everything else in how Superstars is perceived. Yes, I personally would’ve preferred sprites or a hand drawn look and yes, it is a depressing indictment on the state of your modern gamer that every title that makes the big bucks since Pokémon’s jump to 3D models has used 3D models, but I don’t think Superstars’s art direction is without merit, especially when it comes to any sort of inner screen perspective. In something sprite based like Sonic Mania, the attempt to pull a background foreground effect on Metal Madness actually looks kind of ugly; scrunching the sprites makes it difficult to actually see Sonic during those segments making them a bit more annoying than they should be and clashing with the clarity and character of the rest of the game. Superstars has that potential to keep the art design more cohesive at depth. The opening zone, Frozen Base and Pinball Carnival all try to use the background during the level in ways that make the environments feel more dynamic. During Speed Jungle there was even a part where Tails was doing something in the background section of the screen, which was pretty rad, felt like it was a cohesive way to integrate the co-op expectation even while playing single player. But then you get stages like Sand Sanctuary and Lagoon City, which have banger music but feel weirdly empty at times because there’s too little going on in their background, making the art style feel cheaper. You could cover the emptier background abstractions well with sprites in the older titles but with 3D models it practically demands denser background design (see also, Klonoa 2 and the DKC Retro Studios Duology). There’s still character to be found in all of the model animations, even down to something as simple as how each character has a different way to follow over a rock. New character Trip and returning character Fang have a lot of cute animations going on, although because of the art style being what it is it’s harder than the sprite-based ones to fully appreciate every step of animation for smaller sprites. You COULD fix this with the cel-shaded costumes……………locked behind Kroger grocery shopping in the States……………..are you fucking kidding me? I have no idea whose idea was this but they need to be locked in a dark basement until they realize their mistake.
Speaking of bad ideas, the boss battles! This is the one portion of the game I would largely say is wholly a miss (OST can be hit or miss but even Senoue’s twangiest tracks aren’t as bad as Sonic 4’s and Tee Lopes with the others hits just as strong). Not to say bosses in the other Classics (sans Mania) were top tier designs either, but they were quick ways to close out the stages after the journey that was a Classic Sonic level. But they overcorrected way too much. Remember how I mentioned about 3D having more opportunities to use the background with placing models at varying depths? It’s mainly used to make every boss drag out for way longer than they should. Bosses like Speed Jungle’s are literally impossible to hit unless by their own attacks, while the bosses of Sand Santuary and Press Factory Act 1 are slow, tedious waiting games where each hit is spaced out by aroun 20 seconds of waiting, in ways that are not cheesed by Chaos Powers when they really should at the very least be incredibly vulnerable to that option.
Sure, you’ll occasionally get a solid fight; the first boss of Pinball Carnival instantly becomes vulnerable upon your action hitting every chip in the arena, and Golden Capital Act 1’s piggy bank feels closest to a Classic Sonic boss in the quick speed you can take it down and theoretically cheese it hardcore, but the majority of bosses hide in the background, launch a series of attacks and only occasionally leave themselves genuinely open before the long wait cycle begins anew. Or worse; Fang’s boss battle is a great concept let down by too much waiting; if you cut out the auto scrolling vertical sections and just had Fang’s phases flow naturally into each other it would be a game highlight. Instead, it can be really tedious upon taking a death dealing with unclear hitboxes. The worst trend of Sonic Adventure 1’s Chaos 4 battle and damn near every fight from Sonic Rush multiplied by being in almost every stage in the game. This is especially shit with the last boss of both campaigns. A gauntlet of a battle that takes far too many hits to kill while spending far too little time being able to be hit, and in the case of the second battle, multiple instances of being killed in one hit even WITH rings. That boss is a brutal gauntlet that demands near perfection and seems absolutely determined to never end; few things more grueling than dying late in its second phase and having to start from the beginning all over again. It took me two and a half hours to defeat it; that’s a devastating roadblock for a Sonic game, and so much of that time being waiting out the motions makes it all the more painful.
Worse yet, this is a solved problem! In Sonic Rush Adventure, Dimps realized that constantly waiting around for bosses to show their weak points was incredibly tedious and lame and gave the bosses seemingly big health bars as an excuse for you to constantly wail on them quickly. That also used 3D models at depth as well, why couldn’t Arzest have looked to that for inspiration or better yet, the classic games they clearly put a lot of effort into nailing game feel and level design embodying?
Despite despising most of the zone bosses, I actually do enjoy the final FINAL boss even more than Mania’s despite feeling like it could’ve been built up a lot more across the journey or incorporated Trip in some regard. It probably helps that it has multiple phases of striking it and speed exploration is a constant part of the battle, meaning you aren’t forced to just wait in place for overly drawn out attack animations.
In spite of boss design being a fairly sore spot, the main draw for me was the level design and how it played with the physics replication to play out the ideal Classic Sonic experience with the new art style and boy do I have words.
I feel like core Sonic level design is in sort of a Schrödinger’s dilemma for a lot of people, especially those grown on Mario’s shorter carefully paced stages. If it’s too focused on holding forward/right, SEGA made the game too automated and lacking in challenge. If it’s too filled with traps you actually have to learn to avoid and a lot of instant death opportunities, the game is bad because SEGA didn’t give me enough reflexes and I have to actually LEARN the level?! Boo! Mania did manage to actually crack that code for most people outside of non-fans who still couldn’t gel with Sonic at a concept level; out of all the classics it felt like it took influence from Sonic 2’s design sense the most, very horizontal with a lot of setpieces built to facilitate speed, only a few zones like Oil Ocean or Lava Reef pushing the platforming side but mostly being pretty lenient.
Superstars’s level design sense feels more reminiscent of Sonic 1 and 3&K in comparison. The go-fasting is a lot less designated for more platforming like 1 and the levels feel longer and denser in design around all heights closer to 3&K. The Carnival Night Act 2 experience of damn near timing out won’t be uncommon in Superstars. Yet, in spite of Mania being easier to pick up and play and thus easier to recommend to non-fans. Superstars’s levels largely were still enjoyable and felt believably layered enough to encourage multiple attempts at mastering them. Time Attack mode, having the levels without the bosses, is a godsend for speedrun types. It helps further that each zone is truly new, bringing with it its own set of distinct gimmicks to spice up the run. Maybe not all of them worked; not a fan of Speed Jungle Act 2’s darkness concept, or the CyberStation mouse path section, but the ones that I think worked well to spice up dense level design that demands more consideration from players. Pinball Carnival was a personal highlight but also the character-specific acts I think built on playing to their strengths in a way Mania only got one new Knuckles stage to show for it.
Helps just as well that core control is incredibly tight. Numerous interviews talked about how important it was to nail the physics of the classic titles, and while not entirely without jank (some weird crushing collision occasionally also present in Retro Engine), the speed, the windup and the weight feels just as it should which makes platforming and exploration satisfying to uncover not unlike the Classics. When understanding the level design in the right way, going fast can still be exhilarating. Even in the second campaign when the challenge ramps up, the abilities you’re given at a base level open up exploration in the broadest sense it could for a classic Sonic game, one particular ability being game changing for keeping the pace up.
Further helping this is the new Chaos Powers system with a new power for each emerald earned via special stages that aren’t on par with Mania’s, but I do commend for being unique concepts. Some of them are overly situational, mainly the Vision power which is really just the Knuckles Sunglasses from Sonic Adventure 2, but also Water which only applies to like, two Zones in the game, but the other powers make exploration and even the boss battles more tolerable. Bullet can let you chart directional course through the air. Vine can get that necessary vertical height. Clone can clear enemies giving you a smooth path for faster running. Slow can help ease the reaction timing on obstacles, etc. They feel like Mega Man powerups in how they can enhance enjoyment without necessarily requiring them either. For the levels at least; thank god the checkpoints mean you’ll have them all back for the boss battles because damn if they don’t do their damnedness to ease the pain.
Oh yeah and there’s a battle mode I guess. It feels as much an afterthought as I’m giving it here, but I do like how robot creation affects a certain part of the main game; that’s pretty cool and unexpected.
Ultimately, I’m not gonna say Superstars is a merely good first step or anything like that; it’s doing the Mega Man 11 thing of using 3D models and new gameplay mechanics to rethink the core loop of an old gameplay style but the majority of elements ARE here if they just sort out the inconsistencies and make the style more appealing. Tighten up those boss battles a la Sonic Rush Adventure, cel-shade those 3D models to make the animations better pop and tell Jun Senoue to make music as if for the SEGA Saturn instead of the Genesis, and boom, top tier Sonic game production factory right there. In its current form, Sonic Superstars is like blueberry pancakes where the pancake tastes great but the blueberries can be really sour from time to time.
Not to say there isn’t other places where Sonic Superstars could theoretically have done better, but actually playing the game and then Mario Wonder subsequently, it’s hard to shake the feeling of how much JUST the art direction surrounds everything else in how Superstars is perceived. Yes, I personally would’ve preferred sprites or a hand drawn look and yes, it is a depressing indictment on the state of your modern gamer that every title that makes the big bucks since Pokémon’s jump to 3D models has used 3D models, but I don’t think Superstars’s art direction is without merit, especially when it comes to any sort of inner screen perspective. In something sprite based like Sonic Mania, the attempt to pull a background foreground effect on Metal Madness actually looks kind of ugly; scrunching the sprites makes it difficult to actually see Sonic during those segments making them a bit more annoying than they should be and clashing with the clarity and character of the rest of the game. Superstars has that potential to keep the art design more cohesive at depth. The opening zone, Frozen Base and Pinball Carnival all try to use the background during the level in ways that make the environments feel more dynamic. During Speed Jungle there was even a part where Tails was doing something in the background section of the screen, which was pretty rad, felt like it was a cohesive way to integrate the co-op expectation even while playing single player. But then you get stages like Sand Sanctuary and Lagoon City, which have banger music but feel weirdly empty at times because there’s too little going on in their background, making the art style feel cheaper. You could cover the emptier background abstractions well with sprites in the older titles but with 3D models it practically demands denser background design (see also, Klonoa 2 and the DKC Retro Studios Duology). There’s still character to be found in all of the model animations, even down to something as simple as how each character has a different way to follow over a rock. New character Trip and returning character Fang have a lot of cute animations going on, although because of the art style being what it is it’s harder than the sprite-based ones to fully appreciate every step of animation for smaller sprites. You COULD fix this with the cel-shaded costumes……………locked behind Kroger grocery shopping in the States……………..are you fucking kidding me? I have no idea whose idea was this but they need to be locked in a dark basement until they realize their mistake.
Speaking of bad ideas, the boss battles! This is the one portion of the game I would largely say is wholly a miss (OST can be hit or miss but even Senoue’s twangiest tracks aren’t as bad as Sonic 4’s and Tee Lopes with the others hits just as strong). Not to say bosses in the other Classics (sans Mania) were top tier designs either, but they were quick ways to close out the stages after the journey that was a Classic Sonic level. But they overcorrected way too much. Remember how I mentioned about 3D having more opportunities to use the background with placing models at varying depths? It’s mainly used to make every boss drag out for way longer than they should. Bosses like Speed Jungle’s are literally impossible to hit unless by their own attacks, while the bosses of Sand Santuary and Press Factory Act 1 are slow, tedious waiting games where each hit is spaced out by aroun 20 seconds of waiting, in ways that are not cheesed by Chaos Powers when they really should at the very least be incredibly vulnerable to that option.
Sure, you’ll occasionally get a solid fight; the first boss of Pinball Carnival instantly becomes vulnerable upon your action hitting every chip in the arena, and Golden Capital Act 1’s piggy bank feels closest to a Classic Sonic boss in the quick speed you can take it down and theoretically cheese it hardcore, but the majority of bosses hide in the background, launch a series of attacks and only occasionally leave themselves genuinely open before the long wait cycle begins anew. Or worse; Fang’s boss battle is a great concept let down by too much waiting; if you cut out the auto scrolling vertical sections and just had Fang’s phases flow naturally into each other it would be a game highlight. Instead, it can be really tedious upon taking a death dealing with unclear hitboxes. The worst trend of Sonic Adventure 1’s Chaos 4 battle and damn near every fight from Sonic Rush multiplied by being in almost every stage in the game. This is especially shit with the last boss of both campaigns. A gauntlet of a battle that takes far too many hits to kill while spending far too little time being able to be hit, and in the case of the second battle, multiple instances of being killed in one hit even WITH rings. That boss is a brutal gauntlet that demands near perfection and seems absolutely determined to never end; few things more grueling than dying late in its second phase and having to start from the beginning all over again. It took me two and a half hours to defeat it; that’s a devastating roadblock for a Sonic game, and so much of that time being waiting out the motions makes it all the more painful.
Worse yet, this is a solved problem! In Sonic Rush Adventure, Dimps realized that constantly waiting around for bosses to show their weak points was incredibly tedious and lame and gave the bosses seemingly big health bars as an excuse for you to constantly wail on them quickly. That also used 3D models at depth as well, why couldn’t Arzest have looked to that for inspiration or better yet, the classic games they clearly put a lot of effort into nailing game feel and level design embodying?
Despite despising most of the zone bosses, I actually do enjoy the final FINAL boss even more than Mania’s despite feeling like it could’ve been built up a lot more across the journey or incorporated Trip in some regard. It probably helps that it has multiple phases of striking it and speed exploration is a constant part of the battle, meaning you aren’t forced to just wait in place for overly drawn out attack animations.
In spite of boss design being a fairly sore spot, the main draw for me was the level design and how it played with the physics replication to play out the ideal Classic Sonic experience with the new art style and boy do I have words.
I feel like core Sonic level design is in sort of a Schrödinger’s dilemma for a lot of people, especially those grown on Mario’s shorter carefully paced stages. If it’s too focused on holding forward/right, SEGA made the game too automated and lacking in challenge. If it’s too filled with traps you actually have to learn to avoid and a lot of instant death opportunities, the game is bad because SEGA didn’t give me enough reflexes and I have to actually LEARN the level?! Boo! Mania did manage to actually crack that code for most people outside of non-fans who still couldn’t gel with Sonic at a concept level; out of all the classics it felt like it took influence from Sonic 2’s design sense the most, very horizontal with a lot of setpieces built to facilitate speed, only a few zones like Oil Ocean or Lava Reef pushing the platforming side but mostly being pretty lenient.
Superstars’s level design sense feels more reminiscent of Sonic 1 and 3&K in comparison. The go-fasting is a lot less designated for more platforming like 1 and the levels feel longer and denser in design around all heights closer to 3&K. The Carnival Night Act 2 experience of damn near timing out won’t be uncommon in Superstars. Yet, in spite of Mania being easier to pick up and play and thus easier to recommend to non-fans. Superstars’s levels largely were still enjoyable and felt believably layered enough to encourage multiple attempts at mastering them. Time Attack mode, having the levels without the bosses, is a godsend for speedrun types. It helps further that each zone is truly new, bringing with it its own set of distinct gimmicks to spice up the run. Maybe not all of them worked; not a fan of Speed Jungle Act 2’s darkness concept, or the CyberStation mouse path section, but the ones that I think worked well to spice up dense level design that demands more consideration from players. Pinball Carnival was a personal highlight but also the character-specific acts I think built on playing to their strengths in a way Mania only got one new Knuckles stage to show for it.
Helps just as well that core control is incredibly tight. Numerous interviews talked about how important it was to nail the physics of the classic titles, and while not entirely without jank (some weird crushing collision occasionally also present in Retro Engine), the speed, the windup and the weight feels just as it should which makes platforming and exploration satisfying to uncover not unlike the Classics. When understanding the level design in the right way, going fast can still be exhilarating. Even in the second campaign when the challenge ramps up, the abilities you’re given at a base level open up exploration in the broadest sense it could for a classic Sonic game, one particular ability being game changing for keeping the pace up.
Further helping this is the new Chaos Powers system with a new power for each emerald earned via special stages that aren’t on par with Mania’s, but I do commend for being unique concepts. Some of them are overly situational, mainly the Vision power which is really just the Knuckles Sunglasses from Sonic Adventure 2, but also Water which only applies to like, two Zones in the game, but the other powers make exploration and even the boss battles more tolerable. Bullet can let you chart directional course through the air. Vine can get that necessary vertical height. Clone can clear enemies giving you a smooth path for faster running. Slow can help ease the reaction timing on obstacles, etc. They feel like Mega Man powerups in how they can enhance enjoyment without necessarily requiring them either. For the levels at least; thank god the checkpoints mean you’ll have them all back for the boss battles because damn if they don’t do their damnedness to ease the pain.
Oh yeah and there’s a battle mode I guess. It feels as much an afterthought as I’m giving it here, but I do like how robot creation affects a certain part of the main game; that’s pretty cool and unexpected.
Ultimately, I’m not gonna say Superstars is a merely good first step or anything like that; it’s doing the Mega Man 11 thing of using 3D models and new gameplay mechanics to rethink the core loop of an old gameplay style but the majority of elements ARE here if they just sort out the inconsistencies and make the style more appealing. Tighten up those boss battles a la Sonic Rush Adventure, cel-shade those 3D models to make the animations better pop and tell Jun Senoue to make music as if for the SEGA Saturn instead of the Genesis, and boom, top tier Sonic game production factory right there. In its current form, Sonic Superstars is like blueberry pancakes where the pancake tastes great but the blueberries can be really sour from time to time.
Growing up in the 2000s, Pokemon was everywhere. It was hard to escape the toys, the video games, the anime/movies or the trading cards just because of how dominant it was on route to be the highest grossing media franchise of all time, before a brief dip in the 2010s that rose again with Pokemon GO. But with how popular it was then, there were naturally other contenders in the “toy advertisement/real life game/monster collecting” niche fighting for attention and most kids probably clung to at least one other one. There were a lot of these, be it a version of Yu-Gi Oh, Beyblade, Digimon or even extremely late contenders like Monsuno.
The main Pokemon alternate I grew up with was Bakugan, which I’ll talk more about on a future date, but for a few weirdos it might’ve been Chaotic, that Danish monster card game anime but not really anime show produced by 4Kids that aired at around 6 AM on Cartoon Network and probably other places maybe. In being curious how well that first Bakugan game held up, I also bought this game under the same game publishing brand for around $10 to see how it compared to that vague curiosity I had of this series’ existence.
And holy hell it is awful! A lot of the more obvious bad licensed games in the 6th and 7th gen like the Charlies Angels game or Aquaman game or Simpsons Skateboarding or DBZ Sagas have been made known elsewhere, but sometimes you see a game maybe nine other people had played and you’re shocked was even allowed to market in the limited, barely held together state that it’s in, the unexpected kind of shovelware that struggles to have ideas held back in any possible way it could be.
First off, you only play as the one main human character, Tom, voiced by Jason Griffith Sonic. This was confusing to me, since my vague memories of the show involved numerous human characters good and bad associated with different tribes of monsters possibly even building ideological reasons about why one character vibed with one side the most but nope, more than one human model was clearly too much for this game considering even his plain grey shirt has warping textures and his face looks like this.
https://i.imgur.com/hWYzqJH.jpg
The gameplay of Chaotic Shadow Warriors alternates between two styles, barely functional asset flip tier in the overworld, and ungodly bland and sluggish when inside of the monster fights.
The asset flip overworld parts highlight maybe the most obvious issue with the game; it runs like dogwater. When people think of the negative stereotype of 7th gen games and their obsession with bloom creating barely running experiences, this hits the dot right there. In the many worlds it almost never felt like Tom wasn’t running at maximum 15 frames per second, occasionally even lower, with it almost creating the sensation that you kept going from a run to a slow walk over and over despite the animation remaining the same. The very few bits of shoddy platforming thrown in are crippled by not only a hilariously stiff jump, but the terrible frame pacing making it an active struggle to meaningfully aim yourself in midair when going for a bigger leap. Tom isn’t given any sort of ambient lighting in the darker caverns to stand out from the environments, and the lava world is on par with Lost Izalith in Dark Souls 1 for how heavy the contrast between overly dark ground and overly bright lava is. And it’s not like the worlds in their ugly barely functional bloominess had anything in them beyond random objects to scan for plot progression. Almost all the time the only other characters are tiny bugs that die instantly just by spamming RT of a gun you’ll never run out of ammo for, and monsters to engage in the turn-based battles. And even those aren’t handled consistently. Sometimes running into them triggers an awkward zoom in of the monster’s unblinking model, sometimes you just see the static model and a battle initiates without a zoom, and sometimes a battle initiates without seeing a monster at all. It genuinely feels like the state of this was unfinished.
On top of this, most of the zones have zero actual connection to each other. Oftentimes finishing an area will immediately incur a laggy load screen, and Tom will instantly warp to another entirely separated part of the world. There was one section in a jungle level where you open a gate and can see more level on the other side, but it still triggers a loading screen as you're about to go through. This also happens when entering a window inside a castle with a load screen midway through some steps to load the rest of the level. If you turn around to go back outside the castle or on the other side of the open gate, that also incurs a loading screen without even disguising it by something as simple as going through a big door with a black void on the other side. This non-existent seamlessness really feels like they were struggling to find any way to tie together the loose collection of poorly lit assets they whipped up. And the weird thing is that the game has a fast travel system! It could easily just tell you to travel to a new location on your map when you have a reason to go to a particular place, but they couldn’t get THAT right. It makes for a consistently bizarre experience in seeing just how barely held together every single aspect of this world and this gameplay loop is being stretched for over 6 hours.
And this is WITHOUT talking about the monster battles, which are the supposed draw of a game like this. While not AS much of a barely running asset flip as the overworld stuff, it falters for different reasons, namely being boring, unintuitive and limited.
In concept it’s your typical RPG party system, up to 5 monsters on the field, a front and back row, defeating enemy forces that pile up to the same amount. You activate attacks via timing button presses for every single attack the exact same way when they line up with a shape, manage a resource based on how powerful certain attacks have potential to be and use spells for various effects, most of which are useless beyond heals and damage dealing attacks. There’s a somewhat neat risk/reward mechanic regarding whether you want to block an attack or scan a monster to add it to your team, with three of one monster in the same grade being able to be refined into a higher grade (higher grade monsters having better stats and more powerful attacks), but that’s really all the battles have going for them beside type effectiveness only notable a handful of times. Once you’ve balanced out which monsters you want to capture, it really does just come down to dealing damage with choppy canned animations, using magic to strike monsters in the opponent back rows, or taunting to gain more Attack Points at the cost of not moving.
And man, does the menuing to prepare for battles make trying to do ANY of this incredibly unintuitive. Selecting a monster for your team and their equippable item is done entirely through a row that only fully shows the information of one monster and non-descriptive pictures of two others. You can skip to the beginning or the end of your collected monsters but nowhere in the middle of the row to find a particular monster. You have no way of organizing the rows, meaning certain monster types will always be together and forcing slow scrolling to reach different types. If you try to scroll through equippable items too fast, the description for them won’t even load on time, forcing you to wait around for the text description of what the item does to eventually appear onscreen!
On top of this, you only have one slot to have a party equipped in, discouraging the use of different teams for different situations. A big part of why this game system discourages experimentation is because of what the game in context considers to be racist monsters. These are particularly strong monsters that will refuse to join any party that isn’t solely of their kind. Imagine in Pokemon once you acquired a Pokemon like Mewtwo or Lucario, you couldn’t include them in any party unless it entirely comprised of Psychic Type or Fighting Type Pokemon respectively. It’s that level of annoyance and it won’t even let you quickly swap out the other race monster for one of its race. Instead, you must find the other race’s monster, enter a menu and swap it out for one that’s the same race as the racist monster you want on your team. Lastly, the game bafflingly doesn’t even let you heal the monsters you capture unless you win a battle with them in your party or fuse it into a new monster. To continue the Pokémon metaphor, imagine if once you capture a Pokémon at 1 HP, you had to have it win a battle against a trainer to heal it for future encounters. It’s bizarre.
Once you get to the end of this game’s lousy excuse for a plot, which does nothing of worth beyond saving random monsters from corruption by winning battles and collecting pieces of a seven sided shape that has no tangible point by the end, you find out some evil gargoyle was behind it, he says “This isn’t a game”, Tom says “Let’s get chaotic” and you can handily defeat him via the exact same turn based “chess” match you’ve been slogging through all game (you can add him to your party against him despite never capturing him via gameplay). Then you talk to a concept art render on Tom’s cellphone and then the game ends. The credits speed by in less than a minute, as if the entire development team were ashamed, they had to ship this travesty of a product in the shape it was in.
I feel bad for any actual fans of this incredibly niche card game kids show because this game is the exact kind of thing you would get for Christmas and then either immediately hate or play through gritted teeth trying to say it desperately wasn’t a mistake. THIS is the worst game Jason Griffith had ever been strung along for, more than any Sonic title. But sometimes it helps to appreciate just how intricately terrible a product can get both as a game and a license representation, when seeing the range of many more concerted efforts almost anywhere else.
The main Pokemon alternate I grew up with was Bakugan, which I’ll talk more about on a future date, but for a few weirdos it might’ve been Chaotic, that Danish monster card game anime but not really anime show produced by 4Kids that aired at around 6 AM on Cartoon Network and probably other places maybe. In being curious how well that first Bakugan game held up, I also bought this game under the same game publishing brand for around $10 to see how it compared to that vague curiosity I had of this series’ existence.
And holy hell it is awful! A lot of the more obvious bad licensed games in the 6th and 7th gen like the Charlies Angels game or Aquaman game or Simpsons Skateboarding or DBZ Sagas have been made known elsewhere, but sometimes you see a game maybe nine other people had played and you’re shocked was even allowed to market in the limited, barely held together state that it’s in, the unexpected kind of shovelware that struggles to have ideas held back in any possible way it could be.
First off, you only play as the one main human character, Tom, voiced by Jason Griffith Sonic. This was confusing to me, since my vague memories of the show involved numerous human characters good and bad associated with different tribes of monsters possibly even building ideological reasons about why one character vibed with one side the most but nope, more than one human model was clearly too much for this game considering even his plain grey shirt has warping textures and his face looks like this.
https://i.imgur.com/hWYzqJH.jpg
The gameplay of Chaotic Shadow Warriors alternates between two styles, barely functional asset flip tier in the overworld, and ungodly bland and sluggish when inside of the monster fights.
The asset flip overworld parts highlight maybe the most obvious issue with the game; it runs like dogwater. When people think of the negative stereotype of 7th gen games and their obsession with bloom creating barely running experiences, this hits the dot right there. In the many worlds it almost never felt like Tom wasn’t running at maximum 15 frames per second, occasionally even lower, with it almost creating the sensation that you kept going from a run to a slow walk over and over despite the animation remaining the same. The very few bits of shoddy platforming thrown in are crippled by not only a hilariously stiff jump, but the terrible frame pacing making it an active struggle to meaningfully aim yourself in midair when going for a bigger leap. Tom isn’t given any sort of ambient lighting in the darker caverns to stand out from the environments, and the lava world is on par with Lost Izalith in Dark Souls 1 for how heavy the contrast between overly dark ground and overly bright lava is. And it’s not like the worlds in their ugly barely functional bloominess had anything in them beyond random objects to scan for plot progression. Almost all the time the only other characters are tiny bugs that die instantly just by spamming RT of a gun you’ll never run out of ammo for, and monsters to engage in the turn-based battles. And even those aren’t handled consistently. Sometimes running into them triggers an awkward zoom in of the monster’s unblinking model, sometimes you just see the static model and a battle initiates without a zoom, and sometimes a battle initiates without seeing a monster at all. It genuinely feels like the state of this was unfinished.
On top of this, most of the zones have zero actual connection to each other. Oftentimes finishing an area will immediately incur a laggy load screen, and Tom will instantly warp to another entirely separated part of the world. There was one section in a jungle level where you open a gate and can see more level on the other side, but it still triggers a loading screen as you're about to go through. This also happens when entering a window inside a castle with a load screen midway through some steps to load the rest of the level. If you turn around to go back outside the castle or on the other side of the open gate, that also incurs a loading screen without even disguising it by something as simple as going through a big door with a black void on the other side. This non-existent seamlessness really feels like they were struggling to find any way to tie together the loose collection of poorly lit assets they whipped up. And the weird thing is that the game has a fast travel system! It could easily just tell you to travel to a new location on your map when you have a reason to go to a particular place, but they couldn’t get THAT right. It makes for a consistently bizarre experience in seeing just how barely held together every single aspect of this world and this gameplay loop is being stretched for over 6 hours.
And this is WITHOUT talking about the monster battles, which are the supposed draw of a game like this. While not AS much of a barely running asset flip as the overworld stuff, it falters for different reasons, namely being boring, unintuitive and limited.
In concept it’s your typical RPG party system, up to 5 monsters on the field, a front and back row, defeating enemy forces that pile up to the same amount. You activate attacks via timing button presses for every single attack the exact same way when they line up with a shape, manage a resource based on how powerful certain attacks have potential to be and use spells for various effects, most of which are useless beyond heals and damage dealing attacks. There’s a somewhat neat risk/reward mechanic regarding whether you want to block an attack or scan a monster to add it to your team, with three of one monster in the same grade being able to be refined into a higher grade (higher grade monsters having better stats and more powerful attacks), but that’s really all the battles have going for them beside type effectiveness only notable a handful of times. Once you’ve balanced out which monsters you want to capture, it really does just come down to dealing damage with choppy canned animations, using magic to strike monsters in the opponent back rows, or taunting to gain more Attack Points at the cost of not moving.
And man, does the menuing to prepare for battles make trying to do ANY of this incredibly unintuitive. Selecting a monster for your team and their equippable item is done entirely through a row that only fully shows the information of one monster and non-descriptive pictures of two others. You can skip to the beginning or the end of your collected monsters but nowhere in the middle of the row to find a particular monster. You have no way of organizing the rows, meaning certain monster types will always be together and forcing slow scrolling to reach different types. If you try to scroll through equippable items too fast, the description for them won’t even load on time, forcing you to wait around for the text description of what the item does to eventually appear onscreen!
On top of this, you only have one slot to have a party equipped in, discouraging the use of different teams for different situations. A big part of why this game system discourages experimentation is because of what the game in context considers to be racist monsters. These are particularly strong monsters that will refuse to join any party that isn’t solely of their kind. Imagine in Pokemon once you acquired a Pokemon like Mewtwo or Lucario, you couldn’t include them in any party unless it entirely comprised of Psychic Type or Fighting Type Pokemon respectively. It’s that level of annoyance and it won’t even let you quickly swap out the other race monster for one of its race. Instead, you must find the other race’s monster, enter a menu and swap it out for one that’s the same race as the racist monster you want on your team. Lastly, the game bafflingly doesn’t even let you heal the monsters you capture unless you win a battle with them in your party or fuse it into a new monster. To continue the Pokémon metaphor, imagine if once you capture a Pokémon at 1 HP, you had to have it win a battle against a trainer to heal it for future encounters. It’s bizarre.
Once you get to the end of this game’s lousy excuse for a plot, which does nothing of worth beyond saving random monsters from corruption by winning battles and collecting pieces of a seven sided shape that has no tangible point by the end, you find out some evil gargoyle was behind it, he says “This isn’t a game”, Tom says “Let’s get chaotic” and you can handily defeat him via the exact same turn based “chess” match you’ve been slogging through all game (you can add him to your party against him despite never capturing him via gameplay). Then you talk to a concept art render on Tom’s cellphone and then the game ends. The credits speed by in less than a minute, as if the entire development team were ashamed, they had to ship this travesty of a product in the shape it was in.
I feel bad for any actual fans of this incredibly niche card game kids show because this game is the exact kind of thing you would get for Christmas and then either immediately hate or play through gritted teeth trying to say it desperately wasn’t a mistake. THIS is the worst game Jason Griffith had ever been strung along for, more than any Sonic title. But sometimes it helps to appreciate just how intricately terrible a product can get both as a game and a license representation, when seeing the range of many more concerted efforts almost anywhere else.
2023
Currently undergoing a rewrite. For now, enjoyable, great game feel, some exciting story, but comically lopsided.
When this was announced during the September Nintendo Direct, I was incredibly excited. The Switch being such a success seemed to give spotlight to many of their more underappreciated franchises less likely to be seen on the behind the competition consoles like the Wii U and Nintendo 64. This was a full ground up remake uniting the style of two obscure games by underappreciated developer Cing (RIP), one of which was built on the touch screen and the other one heavily using motion controls that never released in America. It sounded like a dream come true, especially because later that year I played through Cing’s effort made in between those two games, Hotel Dusk, and thought it was great. It was packed with cozy noir vibes, an ensemble bursting with secrets of a wider picture, and puzzles taking advantage of the DS in unique ways. Seeing Cing’s stomping ground returned to after being bankrupted for 13 years had me excited to see how those concepts were translated into a modern form.
The Another Code duology stars Ashley, a curious and anxious teenage girl on a journey to find the dad who had been missing from most of her life, to eventually unraveling the aims of his scientific research of memories and the self. Both games give her a companion to bounce off of, areas to explore for objects, people to talk to and discoveries to unravel.
In Two Memories, it follows a triangular structure that meshes puzzle, point and click and visual novel-esque adventure fairly seamlessly. Ashley and ghost companion D explore a mysterious mansion room by room, solving light puzzles and balancing discoveries about the work Ashley’s father had been doing about his memory technology with stories about D’s past to move on from his own personal demons. With little distance between the rooms, it helps to make sure that one of those three game modes is always happening. Gameplay/puzzle stuff is constantly affecting your understanding of the story and it makes everything feel breezy but still of heavier importance than the DS original.
Despite the focus on puzzles not trying to be particularly hard with the main goal being the intermingling stories of Ashley and D, I do feel like there was far more to do with them, in both games. The original Another Code was a DS title and the DS had a lot to work with: two screens, a microphone to blow in, a pen to draw and the ability to close the thing. The Switch’s console gimmicks outside of gyro have largely been put on the backburner outside of just, the general console to handheld gimmick. A lot of puzzles can seem very binary without that console stuff. They work fine, but it might’ve been interesting to (optionally) reincorporate tech demo aspects of the console seen in a game like 1-2 Switch into here to make a puzzle or two more memorable.
Presentation is a mixed bag; figuring out how to bring a game from the underpowered two screen handheld to an underpowered TV handheld console I can imagine had a lot to figure out, but I believe most of their choices were sensible. The characters were redesigned as more fully animated people, with a white sheen reflecting with the almost watercolor lighting of the island, and while stiff in the short dialogue moments, the more dedicated cutscene animation was nice to see when it happened. When examining objects, cute little heads of Ashley and D pop up to show emotions they feel when first examining an object, many of these having voice clips. The game has an appreciable quality of life toggle for both exploration and puzzles if you get lost. Possibly my favorite touch of the presentation here is the journal-like design of the map. Ashley will constantly make notes around different rooms and locations reflecting her goals and personal thoughts in a way that feels distinct to who she is, so keep checking whenever something new happens in the stories! It’s a nice touch of soul. See here: https://i.imgur.com/W2Jav71.jpeg
On the downside, there’s the voice acting, which for being such story-driven games it’s disappointing they chose largely unknown Canadian actors (except Asuna SAO Abridged, she was a pleasant surprise in her brief parts). This was possibly done to save money on such a niche game but a majority of the English cast turns in dry and stiff performances with overly fast line reads and somewhat muffled emotional oomph. Despite not having seen any of this cast performing for video games or even anime, Ashley’s voice still manages to shine as an increasingly believable teenage girl balancing enough interests and cute quirks with the right amount of sarcasm and tears. I just wish that extended to anyone else in the cast, particularly her father. You can switch to Japanese for more consistent performances across the board from everyone, but imo it also makes Ashley herself stand out less from the others so make your choice if you wish.
What’s a bit harder to get around is the camera while walking around. This is more an issue in the first game than the second one given how claustrophobic the mansion’s hallways and turning staircases can be but it’s unfortunate even after adjusting the camera speed how much space Ashley talks up on the screen while running around at times being hard to see beyond her transparent shape when climbing stairs or the camera closing in too close while examining items in rooms. This can make it a bit disorienting walking around in small rooms.
Despite those quirks in presentation and simplistic puzzles, I thought the overall story of the first game felt tight in tying exclamations for mysteries with your exploration as a narrative hook, with a very sweet ending and protagonist easy to root for in her desires. The one major gripe I have is with a certain character. I’m not gonna say who but you’ll know when you see him. They do very little to hide themselves as incredibly impersonal, (this goes beyond voice acting, with even the camera pointing the tell out right in the center of the screen) and it makes Ashley seem like she can’t catch a hint. This game is rated T and is far too niche for most of the Switch’s kid audience, but come on, there were many ways they could’ve made the reveal land far more effectively. While the ability to use the DS was regrettably lost on the developers, I enjoyed my time learning about Ashley and D while exploring the mansion bit by bit in this first game.
The second game, Another Code R, was never officially released in America, and with Wii games being region locked and difficult to map emulation controls for, I was excited to get into Trace Memory’s followup that never made it stateside for the first time officially. Imagine my surprise when I was told that it majorly cut down the game and even changed the endgame flat out. This game has Ashley exploring a much more open area in the forest with houses, a restaurant and a boating lodge with some isolated houses here and there filled with puzzle objects. It’s a far larger affair befitting its initial transition to a home console. Although it was initially jarring going from the end of the first game to this one where Ashley’s relationship with her dad is a lot rockier, I ended up liking Ashley a LOT more as a protagonist in the second game. Her emotional range is more thorough from being more excited to being snarkier and more sardonic when the story tests her patience without losing the vulnerability. More characters for her to bounce off made many of her character interactions more dynamic, and this game gives her a more special interest in music which leads to some pretty cute scenes.
Sadly, the second game, being so much bigger, means that it loses a lot of momentum and focus that the first game had in favor of being almost exclusively conversation to a greater ensemble of characters. And of these new characters, there are only about 3 of them with any real intrigue about them. It's not like the cast of Hotel Dusk where it feels like almost everyone has something interesting to add; the cast here are more flavor for the general vibes of the campsite/town area. In the first game, you were exploring a mansion bit by bit, constantly learning more info about Ashley’s dad’s research and D’s past while solving puzzles at a constant rate. In the second game, almost any puzzle is reduced to a scant series of button pushes and stick turns to open doors for nearly the whole game, with only about three clock puzzles over halfway through the title even approaching the already basic puzzles of the first game. The “combining items” idea is used even less here than it was in the previous game and the camera overlay introduced in 1 is never used, once, throughout the whole thing here. All we get is wonky controller/console turning, not wanting to use any special JoyCon features in a game like this that practically ASKS for it with how much the original version made you tilt the Wii Remote! In addition, this second game has a much harder time balancing out your primary companion’s story with Ashley’s own mystery. The resolution to his subplot is earned and compelling, but the way it takes so many hours to pan out means a lot more time will be spent running back and forth around the overworld to various dialogue prompts with mostly uninteresting new side characters and the pop-in of foliage becoming increasingly distracting.
The upside of the longer runtime is that everything comes together well in the final third of the game to greater dramatic effect than its predecessor. The last two chapters really bring home the whole journey across this duology, tying well into the implications the first game ended with while also saying even more about who Ashley choses to be. A Kingdom Hearts-esque plot beat around this part ties well through the adventure game choice selection stuff. Discovering a big twist about one of the scant interesting new players was surprising yet believably foreshadowed to find out and while maybe the exclamations went on for a little too long it left the plot off on a far heavier emotional tone than I expected, complemented by the moody dark lighting of the sky and some fairly somber music. At the end of the day, even with the more glaring pacing and scope issues in the second game, the heart of Cing’s storytelling and protagonist writing carries through and makes Ashley’s journey across these two games feel affectionate and meaningful, topped with nice end credit presentation.
Regardless of any gripes regarding translating these two games to a more standardized console, I’m very happy this exists. They did a good job with this collection, I’m happy to have finally experienced Ashley’s story across these two games and I’m happy Nintendo was willing to let Cing refugees from Arc System Works dig into the IP bucket to reintroduce Another Code to the world. I dread the idea of trying to transplant Hotel Dusk’s far more distinct style into these graphics, but I’ll respect those at Nintendo using their currently massive success to find hidden gems from their back catalog for new fans to uncover.
……………………….Custom Robo next please?
The Another Code duology stars Ashley, a curious and anxious teenage girl on a journey to find the dad who had been missing from most of her life, to eventually unraveling the aims of his scientific research of memories and the self. Both games give her a companion to bounce off of, areas to explore for objects, people to talk to and discoveries to unravel.
In Two Memories, it follows a triangular structure that meshes puzzle, point and click and visual novel-esque adventure fairly seamlessly. Ashley and ghost companion D explore a mysterious mansion room by room, solving light puzzles and balancing discoveries about the work Ashley’s father had been doing about his memory technology with stories about D’s past to move on from his own personal demons. With little distance between the rooms, it helps to make sure that one of those three game modes is always happening. Gameplay/puzzle stuff is constantly affecting your understanding of the story and it makes everything feel breezy but still of heavier importance than the DS original.
Despite the focus on puzzles not trying to be particularly hard with the main goal being the intermingling stories of Ashley and D, I do feel like there was far more to do with them, in both games. The original Another Code was a DS title and the DS had a lot to work with: two screens, a microphone to blow in, a pen to draw and the ability to close the thing. The Switch’s console gimmicks outside of gyro have largely been put on the backburner outside of just, the general console to handheld gimmick. A lot of puzzles can seem very binary without that console stuff. They work fine, but it might’ve been interesting to (optionally) reincorporate tech demo aspects of the console seen in a game like 1-2 Switch into here to make a puzzle or two more memorable.
Presentation is a mixed bag; figuring out how to bring a game from the underpowered two screen handheld to an underpowered TV handheld console I can imagine had a lot to figure out, but I believe most of their choices were sensible. The characters were redesigned as more fully animated people, with a white sheen reflecting with the almost watercolor lighting of the island, and while stiff in the short dialogue moments, the more dedicated cutscene animation was nice to see when it happened. When examining objects, cute little heads of Ashley and D pop up to show emotions they feel when first examining an object, many of these having voice clips. The game has an appreciable quality of life toggle for both exploration and puzzles if you get lost. Possibly my favorite touch of the presentation here is the journal-like design of the map. Ashley will constantly make notes around different rooms and locations reflecting her goals and personal thoughts in a way that feels distinct to who she is, so keep checking whenever something new happens in the stories! It’s a nice touch of soul. See here: https://i.imgur.com/W2Jav71.jpeg
On the downside, there’s the voice acting, which for being such story-driven games it’s disappointing they chose largely unknown Canadian actors (except Asuna SAO Abridged, she was a pleasant surprise in her brief parts). This was possibly done to save money on such a niche game but a majority of the English cast turns in dry and stiff performances with overly fast line reads and somewhat muffled emotional oomph. Despite not having seen any of this cast performing for video games or even anime, Ashley’s voice still manages to shine as an increasingly believable teenage girl balancing enough interests and cute quirks with the right amount of sarcasm and tears. I just wish that extended to anyone else in the cast, particularly her father. You can switch to Japanese for more consistent performances across the board from everyone, but imo it also makes Ashley herself stand out less from the others so make your choice if you wish.
What’s a bit harder to get around is the camera while walking around. This is more an issue in the first game than the second one given how claustrophobic the mansion’s hallways and turning staircases can be but it’s unfortunate even after adjusting the camera speed how much space Ashley talks up on the screen while running around at times being hard to see beyond her transparent shape when climbing stairs or the camera closing in too close while examining items in rooms. This can make it a bit disorienting walking around in small rooms.
Despite those quirks in presentation and simplistic puzzles, I thought the overall story of the first game felt tight in tying exclamations for mysteries with your exploration as a narrative hook, with a very sweet ending and protagonist easy to root for in her desires. The one major gripe I have is with a certain character. I’m not gonna say who but you’ll know when you see him. They do very little to hide themselves as incredibly impersonal, (this goes beyond voice acting, with even the camera pointing the tell out right in the center of the screen) and it makes Ashley seem like she can’t catch a hint. This game is rated T and is far too niche for most of the Switch’s kid audience, but come on, there were many ways they could’ve made the reveal land far more effectively. While the ability to use the DS was regrettably lost on the developers, I enjoyed my time learning about Ashley and D while exploring the mansion bit by bit in this first game.
The second game, Another Code R, was never officially released in America, and with Wii games being region locked and difficult to map emulation controls for, I was excited to get into Trace Memory’s followup that never made it stateside for the first time officially. Imagine my surprise when I was told that it majorly cut down the game and even changed the endgame flat out. This game has Ashley exploring a much more open area in the forest with houses, a restaurant and a boating lodge with some isolated houses here and there filled with puzzle objects. It’s a far larger affair befitting its initial transition to a home console. Although it was initially jarring going from the end of the first game to this one where Ashley’s relationship with her dad is a lot rockier, I ended up liking Ashley a LOT more as a protagonist in the second game. Her emotional range is more thorough from being more excited to being snarkier and more sardonic when the story tests her patience without losing the vulnerability. More characters for her to bounce off made many of her character interactions more dynamic, and this game gives her a more special interest in music which leads to some pretty cute scenes.
Sadly, the second game, being so much bigger, means that it loses a lot of momentum and focus that the first game had in favor of being almost exclusively conversation to a greater ensemble of characters. And of these new characters, there are only about 3 of them with any real intrigue about them. It's not like the cast of Hotel Dusk where it feels like almost everyone has something interesting to add; the cast here are more flavor for the general vibes of the campsite/town area. In the first game, you were exploring a mansion bit by bit, constantly learning more info about Ashley’s dad’s research and D’s past while solving puzzles at a constant rate. In the second game, almost any puzzle is reduced to a scant series of button pushes and stick turns to open doors for nearly the whole game, with only about three clock puzzles over halfway through the title even approaching the already basic puzzles of the first game. The “combining items” idea is used even less here than it was in the previous game and the camera overlay introduced in 1 is never used, once, throughout the whole thing here. All we get is wonky controller/console turning, not wanting to use any special JoyCon features in a game like this that practically ASKS for it with how much the original version made you tilt the Wii Remote! In addition, this second game has a much harder time balancing out your primary companion’s story with Ashley’s own mystery. The resolution to his subplot is earned and compelling, but the way it takes so many hours to pan out means a lot more time will be spent running back and forth around the overworld to various dialogue prompts with mostly uninteresting new side characters and the pop-in of foliage becoming increasingly distracting.
The upside of the longer runtime is that everything comes together well in the final third of the game to greater dramatic effect than its predecessor. The last two chapters really bring home the whole journey across this duology, tying well into the implications the first game ended with while also saying even more about who Ashley choses to be. A Kingdom Hearts-esque plot beat around this part ties well through the adventure game choice selection stuff. Discovering a big twist about one of the scant interesting new players was surprising yet believably foreshadowed to find out and while maybe the exclamations went on for a little too long it left the plot off on a far heavier emotional tone than I expected, complemented by the moody dark lighting of the sky and some fairly somber music. At the end of the day, even with the more glaring pacing and scope issues in the second game, the heart of Cing’s storytelling and protagonist writing carries through and makes Ashley’s journey across these two games feel affectionate and meaningful, topped with nice end credit presentation.
Regardless of any gripes regarding translating these two games to a more standardized console, I’m very happy this exists. They did a good job with this collection, I’m happy to have finally experienced Ashley’s story across these two games and I’m happy Nintendo was willing to let Cing refugees from Arc System Works dig into the IP bucket to reintroduce Another Code to the world. I dread the idea of trying to transplant Hotel Dusk’s far more distinct style into these graphics, but I’ll respect those at Nintendo using their currently massive success to find hidden gems from their back catalog for new fans to uncover.
……………………….Custom Robo next please?
Why they decided to make a game for Gravity Falls, a series held in large part for how sharp the delivery of its writing is, and then kneecap it by having absolutely no voice acting baffles the mind. The 3DS COULD handle voice acting, as seen with Kid Icarus Uprising and the various Fire Emblem/Layton games on it. Even the main theme present in the game sounds very clean. Whatever writing tying this together is made far drier when you only have text boxes.
Also you fight the same boss four times and despite literally every other character looking palette accurate they made Wendy look permanently sunburned and it bugged me all game.
At least the UbiArt engine does bring the world to video game life in a way few other styles could and the secret codes are about. Stands out for the novelty as a 3 hour romp but for very little else.
Also you fight the same boss four times and despite literally every other character looking palette accurate they made Wendy look permanently sunburned and it bugged me all game.
At least the UbiArt engine does bring the world to video game life in a way few other styles could and the secret codes are about. Stands out for the novelty as a 3 hour romp but for very little else.
Rough around the edges in places but a very good game that excellently takes advantage of the Wii's excellent AR sensors without waggle shit. Some parts near the end are rough and it's kind of a one and done but it definitely didn't deserve the awful treatment from its publisher.
2005
One of the most disappointing sequels I've ever played. While Pac-Man World 2 may have its hiccups and bizarre difficulty spikes, World 3 is a monument to emptiness. Mildly amusing dialogue aside there's almost nothing to this game. Go from empty area to empty area engaging in boring overlong combat hoping something happens. It's more functional and feature interesting than a DMC2 but no less deflating and uneventful
2005
I'm sort of at a crossroads when it comes to this game. On the one hand, the initial confusion regarding the controls, the incredibly bizarre gameplay feel, the insane puzzle of plot, obvious lock and key approach to gameplay puzzles, and the shitty boss fights do drag the game down to a degree and make it difficult to recommend to those not willing to tame it.
But on the other hand, I've rarely seen a game that felt more specified on a craft level. Killer7 is a weird, weird game, yet all its mechanics and plot beats work toward its intent. Each of your 7 characters have a distinct feel in terms of their gameplay and the proper use for them, while the forgiving death system and brief spurts of anime cutscenes add to the style in their own way. You're constantly left surprised by killer7, sometimes confused and sometimes in awe, but I was compelled to keep going in it all throughout for how well its style coats it in exploring what a game can be capable of in piecing together this information. The final (real) chapter of gameplay in particular has such a tone to it, helped along by great tone setting music and truly sublime sound design.
It's a game I admire more than love, but nonetheless find it a remarkable craft that every piece could arrange itself in such a way.
But on the other hand, I've rarely seen a game that felt more specified on a craft level. Killer7 is a weird, weird game, yet all its mechanics and plot beats work toward its intent. Each of your 7 characters have a distinct feel in terms of their gameplay and the proper use for them, while the forgiving death system and brief spurts of anime cutscenes add to the style in their own way. You're constantly left surprised by killer7, sometimes confused and sometimes in awe, but I was compelled to keep going in it all throughout for how well its style coats it in exploring what a game can be capable of in piecing together this information. The final (real) chapter of gameplay in particular has such a tone to it, helped along by great tone setting music and truly sublime sound design.
It's a game I admire more than love, but nonetheless find it a remarkable craft that every piece could arrange itself in such a way.
2001
Aged poorly when it comes to the camera and all the gimmick sections, but revolutionary for the time and properly paved the way for its entire genre.
1990
Best 2D Mario hands down
1992
A fairly underrated arcade game brought to the Game Boy. Even its brief cutscene interludes are pretty nicely rendered. Its difficulty is a bit too punishing, forcing you to repeat entire stages if you die at any point during them, but the stages themselves, despite their lack of real "theme" or memorable bosses, have a nice curve to them and don't go on for too long.
The key thing that sets this game apart for when it came out was its core possession mechanic.
Over a year before Kirby's Adventure, and 25 years before Super Mario Odyssey, this game has you play as a spirit with the power to possess enemies occupying the levels. You have two bars: a health bar and an energy bar. Both bars deplete to some extent as you take damage, but moreso the health bar, and when you lose all your health, you have a couple seconds to possess another enemy before your energy goes down. And there's quite a number of enemy characters to chose from. From gangsters, to fire breathing coyotes, to robots, to ninjas spinning nunchucks, shirtless floating men, what appear to be cat wizards and even warrior women, you get a lot to work with. Each enemy has different weapon range, movement speed, health and jumping physics, all fairly advanced modifications for its time. Inevitably you'll find which enemy best suits your playstyle and go to that, but it leads to a bit of risk/reward when you're low on health based on if you're close enough to an enemy in one place.
This isn't a game that'll blow your mind, but for what it is, it's a solid template for an enjoyable game concept.
The key thing that sets this game apart for when it came out was its core possession mechanic.
Over a year before Kirby's Adventure, and 25 years before Super Mario Odyssey, this game has you play as a spirit with the power to possess enemies occupying the levels. You have two bars: a health bar and an energy bar. Both bars deplete to some extent as you take damage, but moreso the health bar, and when you lose all your health, you have a couple seconds to possess another enemy before your energy goes down. And there's quite a number of enemy characters to chose from. From gangsters, to fire breathing coyotes, to robots, to ninjas spinning nunchucks, shirtless floating men, what appear to be cat wizards and even warrior women, you get a lot to work with. Each enemy has different weapon range, movement speed, health and jumping physics, all fairly advanced modifications for its time. Inevitably you'll find which enemy best suits your playstyle and go to that, but it leads to a bit of risk/reward when you're low on health based on if you're close enough to an enemy in one place.
This isn't a game that'll blow your mind, but for what it is, it's a solid template for an enjoyable game concept.
The Empire Strikes Back of sandbox games starring talking animals. Bigger, darker, more interesting, better laid out (if somewhat padded), Sly 2 is the perfect example of a game that builds off of the original while crafting a compelling place for its own.