SunlitSonata
This review contains spoilers
Brief recap on my feelings regarding the base game of Frontiers (www.backloggd.com/u/SunlitSonata/review/560239/). Despite its jank and extraneous systems like stats and a skill tree, I liked it and fondly think back on how distinct an experience it felt. I liked that we were getting a weightier plot in a Sonic game for the first time in a long time that feels aware of how much fans spent time with these characters over the decades, and an open world that gave players numerous directions and microchallenges to quickly jaunt between. Elements like combat and the Cyberspace stages weren’t very deep but they added variety as quick segways outside of the open world exploration to keep the experience fresh despite its repetitive core structure. They each had their moments; combat shining in the more Sonic Adventure-esque boss encounters and Cyberspace shined when you could properly plan movement across the stages but neither were pushed that hard over the run. The first two additional updates bringing legacy Sonic songs to find in the worlds, high score challenges and most importantly a spin dash elevated the exploration and focus on world movement to a satisfying degree; Cyberspace practically got a new layer with how fast you were. So, I was looking forward to how the last update would continue to play with the foundation.
With that being the case, oh boy is this update split in quality. There’s stuff that’s incredibly fun to play around with and exciting to imagine expansions for, and then there’s stuff I seriously question what was going on with putting Frontiers’s existing game systems up to the task, sometimes in the same place! It’s wild. Thinking more about what the update means for Sonic’s future instead just what’s here as a free expansion to an already released game, I’m more positive than most on here but it more than ever highlights the biggest strengths and weaknesses that exist in Frontiers’s current foundation.
One of the most attention-grabbing points I’ve seen going around is just how ludicrously difficult this update apparently is, like the game suddenly turned into Kaizo Frontiers or The Lost Levels or something like that due to its challenging tower climbs and trials attached to them. I’ll be honest though, while a few can be challenging the only tower that annoyed me with it was Tower 2 because part of it required nudging Sonic very slightly with the analog stick to balance on the narrow tops of platforms which is the opposite of speed. You had boxes on your first go to propel you up but they wouldn’t respawn upon a fall off, forcing players to inch their way forward if they fall below even once
(Update: This was fixed in a patch to make the pink blocks reappear if you cause them to despawn so you no longer have to incur a load screen, neat).
It’s also the only one that had a challenge involving thinking of enemy behavior in a specific way beyond being able to tank hits and spamming retaliation moves so while initially frustrating getting it down was fairly satisfying, not unlike a Devil May Cry secret mission.
There’s been quite a few comparisons made to KH3’s Re:MIND DLC. While weighed down by charging $30 compared to this being free, they’re both very conceptual addons that feed into stuff the fans wanted and pushed the game to its limits. The big difference though is that KH3’s main verb was its combat system and the fanbase was more than willing to get smacked in the face by superbosses even if game journalists weren’t. The reason Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix went on to be seen as the peak of the series for at least a decade was because of its superboss challenges. Fans adored Lingering Will and the Data Organization and hoped for something like that for years to fairly test their meddle after subsequent games dropped the ball there. KH3 had some clunk when it first launched, but the updates made a lot of Sora’s varied attacks feel smoother and more kinetic while the extra bosses genuinely topped what Kingdom Hearts II’s battles had to offer in terms of spectacle, music and even challenge while still being fair. The fanbase was prepared and even excited to be walloped.
Meanwhile, Sonic games have been incredibly easy for the past 14 years, so I can believe a lot of the fanbase was just lulled into thinking they never would test players meddle to this extent and got skill issued from most of the stuff here, especially with the option to switch to Easy Mode alleviating a lot of it (Extreme is a bad difficulty but that’s independent of this expansion). But the bigger issue in Frontiers specifically is that the combat worked best as a drive by occurrence to occasionally break up exploration and battle phases, not an actual system. The first, third and fourth challenges are all a cakewalk if you can just tank the hits and mash away with the canned animations. The fifth and final trial prior to the new final boss is to fight the first three bosses with only 400 Rings, Level 1 attack and a practically frame perfect parry on anything besides Easy Mode and to me this very thoroughly missed the point on one of the base game’s most beloved components.
In the base game of Frontiers, the first three Titan fights were the culmination of an entire island of exploration. Sage threatened you with the might of one at the start of each island, Sonic was on the back foot trying to get away from them, and the island progressed as Sonic collected Chaos Emeralds, helped reassure his friends, whilst the island music grew intense and bombastic, leading into the explosive action, cinematic moments with hard af metal vocals as payoff for the gradually building mundanity before. They were a surprisingly great example of setup and payoff communicated through all aspects of the game working in harmony.
In this, your incredibly tight timer means it’s harder to enjoy the spectacle and instead you must think about which interchangeable move deals damage the fastest while watching the same cinematic animations over and over for every new attempt. Getting up to Wyvern’s level once in the base game was epic. Doing it multiple times when retrying gets very tedious and stale very fast as you hear the same lyrics and see the same animations again and again. Before even battling Knight he jankily spins around and spawns a quick spike shield to knock you down. Not too bad in the base game since you’d likely increased your rings plenty for protection at that point but in this challenge it’s a death sentence since there’s no shot you’ll have enough rings left after taking a hit there. Thus, sending you to do the first two battles again just to get back there. It’s the one mandatory portion of the DLC I would call outright bad and seriously question how much playtesting it got.
(This ALSO got patched to make the challenge more fair and less tedious, tho not sure how it affects difficulty levels other than Easy Mode, your get out of jail free card is at least more easy to grab at the door).
The alternate ending in Frontiers is just that; an alternate ending. The plot of this scenario more thoroughly carries tension compared to the entirety of the final island in the base game, and if you didn’t like the original ending bc it didn’t feel epic enough compared to games like Sonic Adventure 2 or Unleashed, here you go. There’s some sick soul stuff going on here if you’re willing to deal with a camera constantly getting stuck on trees, a finnicky targeting reticle and adjusting to a much stricter parry (less strict post the December 6th patch), but it does fundamentally alter the mood of Frontiers’s final moments to something closer to most prior 3D Sonics. One worry I had going in was that this ending would effectively patch out the original ending invalidating anyone who liked that conclusion but no. It’s contextually presented as another choice Sage could have suggested before heading into the base game’s final battle. In that regard, this would’ve best fit as a dialogue option right after clearing Rhea, but I can also imagine it would be too much to ask players to create new saves just to get back there when most people interested in this have clear files.
The main passion and thought I see in this update in regard to the future went toward the three new characters and the Cyberspace stages, funny enough.
Amy’s pretty fun to run around with in this game and if there's anything I'll go back to beside the Cyberspace challenges it's playing as her. Some people wish she used her hammer more often than her Tarot cards, but looking at her kit from a functional perspective I appreciate what was done with her here. Giving her the highest basic jump of the cast is a great way to differentiate her from the rest and tie into her Adventure 1 and Rise of Lyric movesets, without a doubt the biggest influences here. Once you unlock them it’s fun to bounce around for insane height as she flips around in the air to do a short hover that feels pretty smooth. She also has a cute variation on the multihoming attack from Lost World which was neat to see from an animation/speed perspective, as well as a more seamless variant on her hammer spin move from Sonic Adventure 1. It helps too that Amy is the most similar to Sonic at her core among the three new characters so her moves largely feel seamless in Frontiers’s foundation with a specific focus on vertical height. Honestly, Peak 3D Amy.
Tails takes a bit to get used to. He’s the only one of the cast with no homing attack, instead having a projectile as a weapon and his flight working like an initial horizontal motion followed by a big jump. I like how in classic Tails fashion you can easily kiss the level design goodbye hopping in his Sonic Adventure 2 plane I was genuinely shocked they brought back here. The plane replacing his boost can be annoying at max rings if you just want to get more speed while grounded since there’s still no option to turn skills off but you can unlock a spin dash so it isn’t too bad if you get him to that point. Any moment where you need to jump on a spring is questionable given the lack of homing, but it is compensating for Tails being the only character to consistently hold air position if you want him to. I could see him working in the future if speed was handed to him more by the environment or using his laser cannons were faster but there’s a foundation to do so and challenges playing to his uniqueness.
Knuckles. . . really needs more work. Gliding and attacking isn’t close to as seamless as it was back in Sonic Adventure 2 twenty-two years ago, with a second delay every time you start a glide and stopping in the air before doing a slower divebomb, compared to SA2’s quick and instantaneous drop. Even gliding itself is initially stiff to get used to, not nearly as bad as 06 Knuckles since the downward arc is more natural and you can reliably jump off the walls, but something you need to get used to.
(Update: A recent patch made Knuckles’s glide turning a lot less stiff than it once was on top of removing the second delay when pressing the jump button which is well appreciated. But you still can’t swap characters without going to one spot on the map over and over, somehow).
He’s saved by the actual challenges themselves, testing the player to glide carefully and think about wall climb travel. His skill tree has some fitting quirks but nothing to fit the enemies on the island at all with their overtuned speed and crazy beefy health bars. The fact that even HIS moveset, for the guy known for being the muscle of the group, barely attempts to make combat interesting or exciting makes me wonder if Sonic Team even wants the combat experiment to continue.
(Update: Strength parameters have been adjusted so leveling actually means more, but giving the characters stats at all was still a bad idea, even thought this about Sonic in the base game).
Still, I hope not; the fun of base Frontiers and even this expansion was using the various character abilities to seamlessly explore, not stopping for combat over a long period nudged by mostly vestigial stats.
But the Cyberspace stages, surprisingly, are a real highlight and the biggest straight up BUFF over the base game. In the base game, Cyberspace levels could often be fully 2D, not being particularly fast. The levels were very short and even with multiple objectives including a ring count check, time and Red Ring collecting a lot of them were one and dones. There were only two stages that changed up the gameplay and one of them (drifting) worked terribly without evolving on a base mechanic. Now, introducing Sonic’s sprawliest 3D only level design since Sonic 06, objectives that require exploring the stages, gimmicks that complement speed in interesting ways and game design built around speed tech like your insane spindash and magnet dashing. I really hope we see more level designs along these lines in the future because I liked every single one I attempted. The biggest issue here is that by the very nature of exploring you’re never incentivized to go to any of them. If you’ve been Cylooping the various glowing ground spots as the characters, you’ll get more than enough Lookout Koco to never even think about trying these. And sure, you COULD get vault keys in the original game from Big the Cat, but that was a choice to avoid exploration and use currency in a specific way, not a consequence of being curious. But I’m glad the team realized the inherent potential these could have as a side order to the main game and I hope this is where they expand on particularly, perhaps even incorporating aspects of this design into the maps themselves.
Overall, this update was perfectly acceptable and carried by its fun character movement, new level/world designs, and general fact that it is free, but I feel like certain aspects, such as the high difficulty outside of Easy Mode, or the incredibly poorly thought out fifth trial are VERY wrongly seen by some as being a transfer into the next game. Sonic Frontiers being in the position that it is would only be this hard when it’s feeding into the existing audience playing the game months after launch, not the general gaming public buying it for the first time after seeing reviews from major publications. I hope the focus on more sprawling sequence breaky level design remains alongside the varied methods for traversal and alternate characters in dense worlds more in Sonic’s typical vibrant art style for the next game’s tone and I’ll look forward to what modders can accomplish with the new toys they were given to play with in the meantime.
As is often the case, the music hit pretty hard. The new Final Boss theme is much more bombastic than the version in the base game and is pretty in line with the hyper anime energy Sonic used to have, the chapter themes for each of the main characters can get repetitive but are pretty atmospheric, the Cyberspace remixes are really rad and more intense to fit with the crazier stage layouts, and the particular theme that plays when you first switch back to Sonic, excellent stuff right there. With that in mind. . .
For the love of god Sonic Team, P L E A S E, PLEASE fix the pop-in for the next game! It’s more jarring here than in the base game because the new characters have some form of flight. Switch 2 is on the horizon so make the mandatory Nintendo representation only be on that platform. We don’t need the PS5 game held back by its Switch limitations any further when this style of game could look exciting to explore when so many platforms and objects aren’t appearing right in your face the moment you approach them.
With that being the case, oh boy is this update split in quality. There’s stuff that’s incredibly fun to play around with and exciting to imagine expansions for, and then there’s stuff I seriously question what was going on with putting Frontiers’s existing game systems up to the task, sometimes in the same place! It’s wild. Thinking more about what the update means for Sonic’s future instead just what’s here as a free expansion to an already released game, I’m more positive than most on here but it more than ever highlights the biggest strengths and weaknesses that exist in Frontiers’s current foundation.
One of the most attention-grabbing points I’ve seen going around is just how ludicrously difficult this update apparently is, like the game suddenly turned into Kaizo Frontiers or The Lost Levels or something like that due to its challenging tower climbs and trials attached to them. I’ll be honest though, while a few can be challenging the only tower that annoyed me with it was Tower 2 because part of it required nudging Sonic very slightly with the analog stick to balance on the narrow tops of platforms which is the opposite of speed. You had boxes on your first go to propel you up but they wouldn’t respawn upon a fall off, forcing players to inch their way forward if they fall below even once
(Update: This was fixed in a patch to make the pink blocks reappear if you cause them to despawn so you no longer have to incur a load screen, neat).
It’s also the only one that had a challenge involving thinking of enemy behavior in a specific way beyond being able to tank hits and spamming retaliation moves so while initially frustrating getting it down was fairly satisfying, not unlike a Devil May Cry secret mission.
There’s been quite a few comparisons made to KH3’s Re:MIND DLC. While weighed down by charging $30 compared to this being free, they’re both very conceptual addons that feed into stuff the fans wanted and pushed the game to its limits. The big difference though is that KH3’s main verb was its combat system and the fanbase was more than willing to get smacked in the face by superbosses even if game journalists weren’t. The reason Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix went on to be seen as the peak of the series for at least a decade was because of its superboss challenges. Fans adored Lingering Will and the Data Organization and hoped for something like that for years to fairly test their meddle after subsequent games dropped the ball there. KH3 had some clunk when it first launched, but the updates made a lot of Sora’s varied attacks feel smoother and more kinetic while the extra bosses genuinely topped what Kingdom Hearts II’s battles had to offer in terms of spectacle, music and even challenge while still being fair. The fanbase was prepared and even excited to be walloped.
Meanwhile, Sonic games have been incredibly easy for the past 14 years, so I can believe a lot of the fanbase was just lulled into thinking they never would test players meddle to this extent and got skill issued from most of the stuff here, especially with the option to switch to Easy Mode alleviating a lot of it (Extreme is a bad difficulty but that’s independent of this expansion). But the bigger issue in Frontiers specifically is that the combat worked best as a drive by occurrence to occasionally break up exploration and battle phases, not an actual system. The first, third and fourth challenges are all a cakewalk if you can just tank the hits and mash away with the canned animations. The fifth and final trial prior to the new final boss is to fight the first three bosses with only 400 Rings, Level 1 attack and a practically frame perfect parry on anything besides Easy Mode and to me this very thoroughly missed the point on one of the base game’s most beloved components.
In the base game of Frontiers, the first three Titan fights were the culmination of an entire island of exploration. Sage threatened you with the might of one at the start of each island, Sonic was on the back foot trying to get away from them, and the island progressed as Sonic collected Chaos Emeralds, helped reassure his friends, whilst the island music grew intense and bombastic, leading into the explosive action, cinematic moments with hard af metal vocals as payoff for the gradually building mundanity before. They were a surprisingly great example of setup and payoff communicated through all aspects of the game working in harmony.
In this, your incredibly tight timer means it’s harder to enjoy the spectacle and instead you must think about which interchangeable move deals damage the fastest while watching the same cinematic animations over and over for every new attempt. Getting up to Wyvern’s level once in the base game was epic. Doing it multiple times when retrying gets very tedious and stale very fast as you hear the same lyrics and see the same animations again and again. Before even battling Knight he jankily spins around and spawns a quick spike shield to knock you down. Not too bad in the base game since you’d likely increased your rings plenty for protection at that point but in this challenge it’s a death sentence since there’s no shot you’ll have enough rings left after taking a hit there. Thus, sending you to do the first two battles again just to get back there. It’s the one mandatory portion of the DLC I would call outright bad and seriously question how much playtesting it got.
(This ALSO got patched to make the challenge more fair and less tedious, tho not sure how it affects difficulty levels other than Easy Mode, your get out of jail free card is at least more easy to grab at the door).
The alternate ending in Frontiers is just that; an alternate ending. The plot of this scenario more thoroughly carries tension compared to the entirety of the final island in the base game, and if you didn’t like the original ending bc it didn’t feel epic enough compared to games like Sonic Adventure 2 or Unleashed, here you go. There’s some sick soul stuff going on here if you’re willing to deal with a camera constantly getting stuck on trees, a finnicky targeting reticle and adjusting to a much stricter parry (less strict post the December 6th patch), but it does fundamentally alter the mood of Frontiers’s final moments to something closer to most prior 3D Sonics. One worry I had going in was that this ending would effectively patch out the original ending invalidating anyone who liked that conclusion but no. It’s contextually presented as another choice Sage could have suggested before heading into the base game’s final battle. In that regard, this would’ve best fit as a dialogue option right after clearing Rhea, but I can also imagine it would be too much to ask players to create new saves just to get back there when most people interested in this have clear files.
The main passion and thought I see in this update in regard to the future went toward the three new characters and the Cyberspace stages, funny enough.
Amy’s pretty fun to run around with in this game and if there's anything I'll go back to beside the Cyberspace challenges it's playing as her. Some people wish she used her hammer more often than her Tarot cards, but looking at her kit from a functional perspective I appreciate what was done with her here. Giving her the highest basic jump of the cast is a great way to differentiate her from the rest and tie into her Adventure 1 and Rise of Lyric movesets, without a doubt the biggest influences here. Once you unlock them it’s fun to bounce around for insane height as she flips around in the air to do a short hover that feels pretty smooth. She also has a cute variation on the multihoming attack from Lost World which was neat to see from an animation/speed perspective, as well as a more seamless variant on her hammer spin move from Sonic Adventure 1. It helps too that Amy is the most similar to Sonic at her core among the three new characters so her moves largely feel seamless in Frontiers’s foundation with a specific focus on vertical height. Honestly, Peak 3D Amy.
Tails takes a bit to get used to. He’s the only one of the cast with no homing attack, instead having a projectile as a weapon and his flight working like an initial horizontal motion followed by a big jump. I like how in classic Tails fashion you can easily kiss the level design goodbye hopping in his Sonic Adventure 2 plane I was genuinely shocked they brought back here. The plane replacing his boost can be annoying at max rings if you just want to get more speed while grounded since there’s still no option to turn skills off but you can unlock a spin dash so it isn’t too bad if you get him to that point. Any moment where you need to jump on a spring is questionable given the lack of homing, but it is compensating for Tails being the only character to consistently hold air position if you want him to. I could see him working in the future if speed was handed to him more by the environment or using his laser cannons were faster but there’s a foundation to do so and challenges playing to his uniqueness.
Knuckles. . . really needs more work. Gliding and attacking isn’t close to as seamless as it was back in Sonic Adventure 2 twenty-two years ago, with a second delay every time you start a glide and stopping in the air before doing a slower divebomb, compared to SA2’s quick and instantaneous drop. Even gliding itself is initially stiff to get used to, not nearly as bad as 06 Knuckles since the downward arc is more natural and you can reliably jump off the walls, but something you need to get used to.
(Update: A recent patch made Knuckles’s glide turning a lot less stiff than it once was on top of removing the second delay when pressing the jump button which is well appreciated. But you still can’t swap characters without going to one spot on the map over and over, somehow).
He’s saved by the actual challenges themselves, testing the player to glide carefully and think about wall climb travel. His skill tree has some fitting quirks but nothing to fit the enemies on the island at all with their overtuned speed and crazy beefy health bars. The fact that even HIS moveset, for the guy known for being the muscle of the group, barely attempts to make combat interesting or exciting makes me wonder if Sonic Team even wants the combat experiment to continue.
(Update: Strength parameters have been adjusted so leveling actually means more, but giving the characters stats at all was still a bad idea, even thought this about Sonic in the base game).
Still, I hope not; the fun of base Frontiers and even this expansion was using the various character abilities to seamlessly explore, not stopping for combat over a long period nudged by mostly vestigial stats.
But the Cyberspace stages, surprisingly, are a real highlight and the biggest straight up BUFF over the base game. In the base game, Cyberspace levels could often be fully 2D, not being particularly fast. The levels were very short and even with multiple objectives including a ring count check, time and Red Ring collecting a lot of them were one and dones. There were only two stages that changed up the gameplay and one of them (drifting) worked terribly without evolving on a base mechanic. Now, introducing Sonic’s sprawliest 3D only level design since Sonic 06, objectives that require exploring the stages, gimmicks that complement speed in interesting ways and game design built around speed tech like your insane spindash and magnet dashing. I really hope we see more level designs along these lines in the future because I liked every single one I attempted. The biggest issue here is that by the very nature of exploring you’re never incentivized to go to any of them. If you’ve been Cylooping the various glowing ground spots as the characters, you’ll get more than enough Lookout Koco to never even think about trying these. And sure, you COULD get vault keys in the original game from Big the Cat, but that was a choice to avoid exploration and use currency in a specific way, not a consequence of being curious. But I’m glad the team realized the inherent potential these could have as a side order to the main game and I hope this is where they expand on particularly, perhaps even incorporating aspects of this design into the maps themselves.
Overall, this update was perfectly acceptable and carried by its fun character movement, new level/world designs, and general fact that it is free, but I feel like certain aspects, such as the high difficulty outside of Easy Mode, or the incredibly poorly thought out fifth trial are VERY wrongly seen by some as being a transfer into the next game. Sonic Frontiers being in the position that it is would only be this hard when it’s feeding into the existing audience playing the game months after launch, not the general gaming public buying it for the first time after seeing reviews from major publications. I hope the focus on more sprawling sequence breaky level design remains alongside the varied methods for traversal and alternate characters in dense worlds more in Sonic’s typical vibrant art style for the next game’s tone and I’ll look forward to what modders can accomplish with the new toys they were given to play with in the meantime.
As is often the case, the music hit pretty hard. The new Final Boss theme is much more bombastic than the version in the base game and is pretty in line with the hyper anime energy Sonic used to have, the chapter themes for each of the main characters can get repetitive but are pretty atmospheric, the Cyberspace remixes are really rad and more intense to fit with the crazier stage layouts, and the particular theme that plays when you first switch back to Sonic, excellent stuff right there. With that in mind. . .
For the love of god Sonic Team, P L E A S E, PLEASE fix the pop-in for the next game! It’s more jarring here than in the base game because the new characters have some form of flight. Switch 2 is on the horizon so make the mandatory Nintendo representation only be on that platform. We don’t need the PS5 game held back by its Switch limitations any further when this style of game could look exciting to explore when so many platforms and objects aren’t appearing right in your face the moment you approach them.
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.
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.
Super Mario Bros Wonder is easily the best 2D Mario title of this millennium, a game bursting with life and expression whenever it can, as well as a consistently solid time from beginning to end. Though I don’t think it quite hits how exciting the 3D titles are to play or their same arcs of progression (your goal never changes or diverges in any way from world to world outside of one that didn’t even have a boss), I enjoyed it throughout.
Every new gimmick it adds within the levels does something to make the experience feel a little bit wilder, whether via jumping hippos to elevate platforming, turning you into an enemy for a new spin on traversal, matching timing of disappearing blocks, walking on the ceiling, inflating, or playing around with time integers. Only occasionally do they shake up how you’ll actually play THROUGH the game, but in spite of some repeats they’re a consistently enjoyable spurt when they happen. I looked forward to seeing the Wonder effect for every new level as a constant incentive to go further and further into the game.
Much has been said regarding Mario Wonder’s art design and it bears repeating; this is a lovely looking game. After the fairly sterile and repeated character animations of the New series, Wonder shines by just how many little animations every character has to punctuate the many possible actions. Kicking realism out the door, they took the Mario 3 design of having the sprites cheat the camera angle for the sake of being more consistently in your face and the choice paid off. Despite the Switch’s lower end specs compared to the other systems on the market, the ART DESIGN does enough to make the game feel like it’s on something even stronger. Every character cheering whenever they make a higher jump never failed to make me smile. Although he slips a little bit when doing longer yells falling down pits, Kevin Afghani is genuinely a great new Mario and Luigi. His capturing of Martinet’s little voice quirks is incredibly on point throughout the game and I’m very happy for his career to effectively be set for life voicing THE iconic video game character for the next several decades running. The music isn’t as up there with Mario’s best soundtracks for new iconic ditties, unfortunately, but I did enjoy any stage where music was the gimmick for how the level design played around with it (where are those house stages so short tho?). Definitely one of several instances inspired by the creativity Mario Maker players have shown.
The powerup game is notable in the sense of the game’s most publicized power actually being the worst of the new ones. Mario and co looking like elephants is a wacky visual but in practice the elephant is mainly used to break sets of blocks or water very specific plants in a stage that’ll actually happen to have water in it. Feel like there was more potential this form could’ve had and honestly New Super Mario Bros Wii’s Penguin suit was a better animal based suit power. Its run could slide you on the ground to keep some momentum in addition to fulfilling the projectile purpose of an ice flower.
It’s the other two that actually change the game in a positive way. Bubble carries on the function of the bubble Yoshis from Mario U and serves as both a platforming tool and a kill option of mass destruction all at once, truly feeling like a power up. Drill, meanwhile, finally delivered on the potential of Mario holding a massive drill in Galaxy 2 by giving every stage a new sense of depth hanging on the floors and ceilings. It even serves as effective production against ceiling falling projectiles; a great help for maintaining speed flow in stages with obstacles falling from the sky. Despite thinking the elephant was missed potential, the other two pick up the slack for considering of how they add onto the core Mario experience.
Hilariously, Mario Wonder has the exact opposite problem as Sonic Superstars when it comes to boss battles. Whereas the Superstars bosses were great concepts that suffered from being incredibly cheap and drawn out and having constant waiting, the Mario Wonder bosses are very easy, comically short, have almost zero variety and feel conceptually limited despite the versatility of the stages. This is the only area where the New Soup games still have the edge over Wonder. Even the DS game played around with bigger enemies as boss fights while the Bowser Jr fights it had in between them it saw as stopgap minibosses are more like every boss here outside of the last one. The final boss plays around with the arena in fun ways but is a bit been there done that relative to a lot of other Nintendo properties over the past two and a half decades. After Mario 3D Land, World and Odyssey played around with the concept of the “ending” Bowser battle, I can’t help but feel like there was a little more to do that wasn’t fully capitalized on. The use of rhythm is nice, but there was more to play with for everything a Bowser battle could be under the stipulations of these gimmicks.
The Badge system is interesting, in theory. I can imagine a combination of badges could come together in local multiplayer but in Single Player, most of these you will never use and feel more like downgrades once you have a really good one since you can only select one. For what reason would I ever willingly use the invisibility (intentionally), the hidden block power, or the Dolphin Kick outside of very specific stages where Mario is underwater to warrant it? After achieving the Boosted Spin Jump which made getting flagpoles a cinch for nearly every stage in the game, it felt like I had little reason to try anything else besides the sensor if I needed it. It’s a shame too bc I would’ve loved to see how some of these could function in more levels, particularly the grapple vine power, but there was just never a better advantage to take than that boosted midair jump. Thankfully the final challenge, while having slightly too much input drilling felt like it had appropriate advantage of all these powers, and the reward obtained from clearing it is a fun and memorable quirk that reminds me of the Paper Mario game badges.
Outside of the occasional 5-Star stage in the Special World that definitely makes things trickier, it left something to be desired challenge-wise even compared to other mainline Marios. Most players, even kids, likely won’t see a Game Over screen, and while I don’t mind on paper given most Mario games target all ages, but it’s notable here SPECIFICALLY bc of how many safety nets the game has in place. A badge that effectively bounces you off any kind of liquid death is obtainable not too far into the adventure, but you also have four Yoshis and a Nabbit to never take any kind of damage while also likely not being touched by more experienced players, and multiplayer turned into a strand-like system where standees can be placed to revive any player from a death. Said multiplayer is incredibly helpful for the Secret Park stages but is mostly a constant safety net anywhere else. The heart system is a cute way to show a sense of collaboration, so I appreciate that.
Super Mario Bros Wonder is the best 2D Mario since the early 90s, a great game that looks gorgeous and does a lot to keep its level surprises fresh. Maybe it lacks that personal edge and movement expression/progression of some of Mario’s 3D outings, and maybe it could’ve pushed challenge a little harder specifically considering all of the safety nets the game provides for you but I’m thoroughly satisfied with Wonder as what I hope to be the swan song for Mario’s storied Switch game career. It does tell me that the next 3D outing on Switch 2 has the position to be a true game changer in how we even PERCEIVE Mario games, but Mario Wonder served as an effective encapsulation of the Mario experience plateau capped with enough character and flavor to have a feel that could truly only belong to it.
Every new gimmick it adds within the levels does something to make the experience feel a little bit wilder, whether via jumping hippos to elevate platforming, turning you into an enemy for a new spin on traversal, matching timing of disappearing blocks, walking on the ceiling, inflating, or playing around with time integers. Only occasionally do they shake up how you’ll actually play THROUGH the game, but in spite of some repeats they’re a consistently enjoyable spurt when they happen. I looked forward to seeing the Wonder effect for every new level as a constant incentive to go further and further into the game.
Much has been said regarding Mario Wonder’s art design and it bears repeating; this is a lovely looking game. After the fairly sterile and repeated character animations of the New series, Wonder shines by just how many little animations every character has to punctuate the many possible actions. Kicking realism out the door, they took the Mario 3 design of having the sprites cheat the camera angle for the sake of being more consistently in your face and the choice paid off. Despite the Switch’s lower end specs compared to the other systems on the market, the ART DESIGN does enough to make the game feel like it’s on something even stronger. Every character cheering whenever they make a higher jump never failed to make me smile. Although he slips a little bit when doing longer yells falling down pits, Kevin Afghani is genuinely a great new Mario and Luigi. His capturing of Martinet’s little voice quirks is incredibly on point throughout the game and I’m very happy for his career to effectively be set for life voicing THE iconic video game character for the next several decades running. The music isn’t as up there with Mario’s best soundtracks for new iconic ditties, unfortunately, but I did enjoy any stage where music was the gimmick for how the level design played around with it (where are those house stages so short tho?). Definitely one of several instances inspired by the creativity Mario Maker players have shown.
The powerup game is notable in the sense of the game’s most publicized power actually being the worst of the new ones. Mario and co looking like elephants is a wacky visual but in practice the elephant is mainly used to break sets of blocks or water very specific plants in a stage that’ll actually happen to have water in it. Feel like there was more potential this form could’ve had and honestly New Super Mario Bros Wii’s Penguin suit was a better animal based suit power. Its run could slide you on the ground to keep some momentum in addition to fulfilling the projectile purpose of an ice flower.
It’s the other two that actually change the game in a positive way. Bubble carries on the function of the bubble Yoshis from Mario U and serves as both a platforming tool and a kill option of mass destruction all at once, truly feeling like a power up. Drill, meanwhile, finally delivered on the potential of Mario holding a massive drill in Galaxy 2 by giving every stage a new sense of depth hanging on the floors and ceilings. It even serves as effective production against ceiling falling projectiles; a great help for maintaining speed flow in stages with obstacles falling from the sky. Despite thinking the elephant was missed potential, the other two pick up the slack for considering of how they add onto the core Mario experience.
Hilariously, Mario Wonder has the exact opposite problem as Sonic Superstars when it comes to boss battles. Whereas the Superstars bosses were great concepts that suffered from being incredibly cheap and drawn out and having constant waiting, the Mario Wonder bosses are very easy, comically short, have almost zero variety and feel conceptually limited despite the versatility of the stages. This is the only area where the New Soup games still have the edge over Wonder. Even the DS game played around with bigger enemies as boss fights while the Bowser Jr fights it had in between them it saw as stopgap minibosses are more like every boss here outside of the last one. The final boss plays around with the arena in fun ways but is a bit been there done that relative to a lot of other Nintendo properties over the past two and a half decades. After Mario 3D Land, World and Odyssey played around with the concept of the “ending” Bowser battle, I can’t help but feel like there was a little more to do that wasn’t fully capitalized on. The use of rhythm is nice, but there was more to play with for everything a Bowser battle could be under the stipulations of these gimmicks.
The Badge system is interesting, in theory. I can imagine a combination of badges could come together in local multiplayer but in Single Player, most of these you will never use and feel more like downgrades once you have a really good one since you can only select one. For what reason would I ever willingly use the invisibility (intentionally), the hidden block power, or the Dolphin Kick outside of very specific stages where Mario is underwater to warrant it? After achieving the Boosted Spin Jump which made getting flagpoles a cinch for nearly every stage in the game, it felt like I had little reason to try anything else besides the sensor if I needed it. It’s a shame too bc I would’ve loved to see how some of these could function in more levels, particularly the grapple vine power, but there was just never a better advantage to take than that boosted midair jump. Thankfully the final challenge, while having slightly too much input drilling felt like it had appropriate advantage of all these powers, and the reward obtained from clearing it is a fun and memorable quirk that reminds me of the Paper Mario game badges.
Outside of the occasional 5-Star stage in the Special World that definitely makes things trickier, it left something to be desired challenge-wise even compared to other mainline Marios. Most players, even kids, likely won’t see a Game Over screen, and while I don’t mind on paper given most Mario games target all ages, but it’s notable here SPECIFICALLY bc of how many safety nets the game has in place. A badge that effectively bounces you off any kind of liquid death is obtainable not too far into the adventure, but you also have four Yoshis and a Nabbit to never take any kind of damage while also likely not being touched by more experienced players, and multiplayer turned into a strand-like system where standees can be placed to revive any player from a death. Said multiplayer is incredibly helpful for the Secret Park stages but is mostly a constant safety net anywhere else. The heart system is a cute way to show a sense of collaboration, so I appreciate that.
Super Mario Bros Wonder is the best 2D Mario since the early 90s, a great game that looks gorgeous and does a lot to keep its level surprises fresh. Maybe it lacks that personal edge and movement expression/progression of some of Mario’s 3D outings, and maybe it could’ve pushed challenge a little harder specifically considering all of the safety nets the game provides for you but I’m thoroughly satisfied with Wonder as what I hope to be the swan song for Mario’s storied Switch game career. It does tell me that the next 3D outing on Switch 2 has the position to be a true game changer in how we even PERCEIVE Mario games, but Mario Wonder served as an effective encapsulation of the Mario experience plateau capped with enough character and flavor to have a feel that could truly only belong to it.
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.
2013
In the 2013 video game Puppeteer, a breezy and simplistic yet charming 2.5D platformer that justifies its 2.5D more than the bulk of games in that style ever have with its stage show aesthetic, your character Kutaro is a wooden puppet. A big part of the game is collecting puppet heads which act as hit points
There are a total of 104 heads to collect across the whole game. Every single one of these heads has a unique animation associated with it if you can hold onto it in the right spot. Could be a unique contextual moment within the game to take a shortcut, get rewards, skip a boss phase, or reaching a bonus stage. Beating the game will give you a head that can perform the contextual action of any other head to see the work put in, but there’s still that desire to find which heads you missed to see their distinct sense of character.
That is a level of soul and dedication you really only see from developers incredibly passionate about their craft and appreciating their effort a decade later it’s a damn shame to see Japan Studio shuttered now when it could be the perfect gap material between Sony’s mega blockbusters.
There are a total of 104 heads to collect across the whole game. Every single one of these heads has a unique animation associated with it if you can hold onto it in the right spot. Could be a unique contextual moment within the game to take a shortcut, get rewards, skip a boss phase, or reaching a bonus stage. Beating the game will give you a head that can perform the contextual action of any other head to see the work put in, but there’s still that desire to find which heads you missed to see their distinct sense of character.
That is a level of soul and dedication you really only see from developers incredibly passionate about their craft and appreciating their effort a decade later it’s a damn shame to see Japan Studio shuttered now when it could be the perfect gap material between Sony’s mega blockbusters.
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?
This review contains spoilers
Bern is a big fan of the world’s slowest computers updating to 99% and then proceeding to brick forever before they finish.