If you love the sacred ritual of videogames- pushing buttons and seeing lights flash before you- there is much to love in Shenmue, a slow, cinematic game, a recreation of the archetypal martial arts revenge thriller, created with the tool kit of the Arcade Daimyo- Yu Suzuki. Every single cutscene, whatever it depicts, from treacherous murder to drinking a can of refreshing coca-cola (dewey condensation implied but not rendered with limited capabilities of the Dreamcast hardware) flies, twirls, zooms and pans with the flair of an Arcade attract screen, a cinematic language born of videogames. Ironically, later videogames would shamefully and shyly try to simulate real cameras, to limit their language to real world possibility, only for the modern drone to make that cinematic language born of videogames suddenly feasible in reality! This style of Drone cinema is currently being explored by directors such as the stalwart and unfairly demeaned misanthrope-auteur Michael Bay, and no doubt videogames bearing cinematic pretensions will soon find themselves reintegrating the attract scene language, wholly ignorant of it's shameful origins (to creators of cinematic videogames) within the medium of videogames, but here we see no such shame, Yu Suzuki uses his full palette.
(One must also herein express appreciation for Hideo Kojima's still under-appreciated masterwork, Metal Gear Solid V, which explores the tension of its concepts of deceit and double-think via a style of camerawork that will whiplash from a simulated second-person camera crew to impossible digital movements, [for example the scene in which Big Boss ascends a Helipad, followed by a furtive 'camera man' {who does not exist either in reality or the fictional reality of the game} only to come face to skull with his shadow archetype and object of hate- Skull Face- and for the camera to suddenly shoot across the Helipad, no longer held by simulated hand, and stabilize on Skull Face's skullface keeping his head dead center while he gives a speech, only to retreat and become a simulated camera man once again as he concludes.] in this way Kojima is playing with the digital heart of videogames and drawing it in compliment to the physical world of cinema, much like Shenmue itself.)
And so it is in this way, with the joy of the videogame, that Shenmue creates cinema, the controls are strange, but responsive, the repetition and iteration intrinsic to games, that which would be elided in film or television (but may find companionship in the brother medium of the videogame- literature) is here represented in full, The Revenge Thriller rendered in a slow burn form that can only be achieved with a videogame- hard skills of controls and input lightly tested, soft skills of memory and prioritization more deeply explored, each day driven by routine, different styles of gameplay with different controls for different contexts- the way a film maker might use different camera lenses and editing techniques for different situations.
Follow the clues, remember the names, ignore your friends, knock together heads, play arcade games, each action delivered with the kinaesthesis of the man who brought us virtua racer, and virtua fighter, the joy of buttons allowing you to inhabit, until you become lost yourself in Ryo Hazuki's quest of revenge.
At last though, the caveat must be declared: The Forklift part. I was sure, as a lover of pushing buttons, of the logistical, of the digital mundane, and above all as a trained operator of forklifts and other MHEs, I would rise above the grousing I see amongst others for this infamously tedious section of game, and see the beauty within. Imagine if you can, my horror when the game forced me to drive with a raised load- creating a dangerously high center of gravity and obstructing Ryo's view, no means to sound the horn to warn pedestrians, no organizational methodology for loading and stowing freight, the code of conduct by which those of my noble profession carry ourselves was being torn to pieces before my eyes! To spend 10 hours performing MHE labour for a mega corporation that does not respect my work, only to come home and pantomime a grotesque mockery of that very same labour was almost too much to bear, and I felt a damp, drizzly November growing in my soul.
Perhaps if I plied a different trade, I would award Shenmue full marks, but one cannot grade a game on 'if' or 'ought' and so I must leave this review on a sour note: it is a passionate masterwork, but it is not passionate about MHE safety...

An accursed object. A neighbour who pulls out a tip jar before he waves good morning. A treeful of chirping birds who sing Spotify ads. The brilliant diamonds of dew on impossibly green grass after a night of rain personally asking you to subscribe to their channel and smash the like button.

This game has been full of pee-brain monetisation schemes since its release, but there's been this little untarnished area in the corner. For the seasonal events, all 25 tracks were fully accessible on the house. And that pearl of a hundredth of a game was the single best free-to-play racing experience on the planet. There's a reason I'm being so hyperbolic. The actual act of racing here is the closest to mechanical perfection I've seen anything achieve. The game might be a guy begging me for money every ten minutes, but if I plug my ears, I get to glance bliss. It's such a small corner, but it's simplistic, infinite fun, and it's mine to love unreservedly.

Then it's gone. Now, you only get ten tacks a season. 40 a year. Of course, I could pay for the yearly subscription. It's not even that much, 30aud for the year. But it's tainted. If you start having to pay for those little sparkles that brighten your life, they dull. Of course, it was never really free. What about the electricity? For all I know, I couldn't even play it without Xbox Game Pass. But at least I didn't see what I was charged; I didn't see what I was missing. I certainly didn't see that I was actively gated from 60% of what was previously available to me. I saw a genuinely comforting little thing I could enjoy wholly that demanded nothing of me. Do you know how few things in my life I can describe in that way? But it, too, must chop itself in half and beg me to pay 9.99 to reattach its two squirming bloody pieces; it must deform itself in its quest to squeeze every cent out of me. Must the endless need for capital claim even the simplest pleasures of my life?

Went into this game expecting jank and instead got a very solid RPG.

Wizardry 1 does not fuck around. The game drops you into town, you make characters and buy equipment, then go right into the dungeon. Then you'll probably die in 20 seconds because you made a poor party comp and the enemies kill you in one hit.

This game is all about risk management. When party members die individually you have to drag them back to town and pay a hefty price to revive them. If the whole party dies, time to make a new one. Enemies are distinct and have varying degrees of power, so your first time facing them you won't know if they're fodder or something that will ruin your life. There are traps all over the place and the map tiles have no visual indications besides doors, so if it's your first time in an area you WILL run into those traps.

This is where mapping comes in. Break out the pencil and paper because drawing the dungeon is part of the gameplay loop. The dungeon is massive and you will get lost easily without a map to find your way. Marking down those traps will ensure you won't have to suffer their consequences again. Getting to the bottom floor to fight the final boss might seem like a grueling, impossible task at first but through mapping I discovered a way to get to there in only a couple minutes.

As competent as the game is, I wasn't able to actually beat it. The perma death is an interesting feature, but ultimately way too punishing as is. If the game were faster it'd be fine, but character creation is a little slow and it takes me about 5-10 minute to create a whole new party. With a dungeon as deadly as Wizardry 1's, this mechanic just felt like padding to me.

Luckily the game only autosaves when you return to town, so I was able to cheat a bit and close the game whenever my party was about to die. I found this to be just the right amount of punishing since it still made me waste time and lose progress.

But even with this I still couldn't push through the end. The last 2 floors are BRUTAL. Half of the enemy types are extremely evil. Mages will cast spells that pretty much instantly kill my squishier party members, the undead will DRAIN LEVELS with their attacks (more punishing than death it's fucking horrible), and demons grant multiple status effects. Floor 10 itself is a gruelling gauntlet of 7 mandatory fights (potentially more) before you fight the final boss, who is also really tough.

At that point you're basically required to grind for a while, but since the enemies down there are so strong it's not worth the risk of dying to grind them. Looking online I saw that most people grind using a repeatable encounter on the first floor, but doing this takes a loooong time. It would've taken me a full day's worth of grinding it to get to where I wanted to be, and at that point I didn't feel like finishing the game was worth my time.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the rest of the game though, and I hope the sequels do away with that brutal endgame grind.

It takes until over halfway through this nearly 6-hour narrative to present even one visual idea a fiftieth as compelling as Senua's Sacrifice delivered every 20 minutes. The visual language here loses all of the form-bending ideas of the first game, and what it gains is moist Unreal Engine 5 technical showcase gunk. Red light filters when something scary is happening. Netflix-era Zack Snyder shallow depth of field lenses (because there's nothing you want more with your exceptionally high-fidelity models than for them to be out of focus). Sparkly effects on the ground that look like they cost a handful of animators their lives to render but serve no excitement. Someone on the design team watched Inception in the last seven years. This game has all the pixels in the world at its whim, yet it looks like rubbish.

This game is abysmal, and I have very little interest in discussing why. Microsoft ordered a sequel to a narratively wrapped-up story of an individual's psychological quest, and Ninja Theory reasonably had no idea what to do. I couldn't come up with a good sequel to The Seventh Seal no matter how many millions of dollars you threw my way. So I don't really blame them, on paper, for this turning out poorly, especially with the writer and director of the first game not being heavily involved this time. Hellblade was a passion project; this is a business move. It sucks, but it happens.

I just can't ignore how much they bungle the entire experience. The combat has lost all of its heft and satisfaction. Encounters are slightly more varied and less frequent but elongated by this awful simplified and slopified two-attack system. The first game takes painstaking strides to present Senua's mental illness as a lateral factor, a struggle, something that makes her different but not lesser than other people. Hellblade II believes her Psychosis rends her the chosen one, able to comprehend the world past the layers of mere mortals. We are falling so deeply headfirst into magical mental illness cliches that I can barely believe they let this script past pre-production. This game even loses things I had yet to realise were there to miss. Take the narrator of both games. In both, you are positioned as a (new) voice in Senua's head. The narrator is another voice sitting with you, catching you up. This sounds ridiculous on paper, I'm aware, but it works. In Hellblade, this narrator uses a warm conversational tone that allows for natural exposition. It's a helpful lens to learn about a sullen, quiet, internal person who, by nature of the game, won't be talking aloud about themselves. It's clever. They had to keep it for this one, but it no longer has a purpose. We already know Senua. So now the voice just pretentiously waxes poetic at you every once in a while. It's so disconnected and pointless that it becomes funny. There are so many elements like this (e.g. Trauma surrounding her abuse from her father rebranded as 'The Shadow', a literal shadowy figure who pops up on occasion and is mean). There's no point in getting into them all. Suffice it to say, any element in the first game I praised as exceptional has been sanded down and homogenised, except the central performance, which is doing well by the woeful script. And the puzzles. They're still bad, but maybe 4% better. Cudos.

Before I and the Microsoft corporation close the book on Ninja Theory (I will be at least a little surprised if this studio lives to see their next game, even if it has allegedly already been greenlit), I just want to ask. Why? This is a doomed project. I'm not even just talking artistically here. This was never going to make money. Microsoft's AAA exclusives are all day-and-date to Game Pass. There isn't and wasn't and will never be a way this can realistically recuperate its production costs. I know Phil continues to insist Game Pass is profitable, and if that's true, awesome news! I'm super happy they're defying laws of equal and equivalent exchange to keep their business afloat and let me play new releases for cheap. But he probably also told the folks working on Hi-Fi Rush that he was proud of their work and awards buzz and that they'd continue to have gainful employment into the following financial year. So call me dubious! Xbox is a legendarily poorly run company. They buy this double A studio and tell them that they have to turn Hellblade into Xbox's The Last of Us and give them infinite money and time to make the sequel but spend no expense to promote it and dump it day one to gaming Disney Plus. What did you think was going to happen? It's going to be such a shame when they send Obisidan to the Fallout mines forever after Avowed equally awfully flops because it, too, cost $100 quazillion dollars, no one knows or cares about it and it will be available day of release on Peacock. And they'll still be paying that team that's been trying and failing to reboot Perfect Dark for the last seven fucking years! Make me CEO of Microsoft Gaming! I can't possibly do a worse job!

I'm not going to come on here guns blazing defending this game. I don't know the intentions of the artists involved. Its existence may be much more cynical than I believe. It's a walking simulator. Any game that sidelines traditional 'gameplay' as much as this will ruffle feathers. But I find something beautiful in the genre. Games take so much from cinema, especially nowadays, but games like Hellblade or even Hoky Shlok, like Until Dawn (which, blazing hot take, may be the best in the style ever) feel like a genuine communion between the two mediums. But I understand. I get why you'd poke fun at a piece of art whose marketing (and opening credits) seem to foreground how 'Important' its 'Message' is. I do it all the time. It's just not what I found when actually playing it. Hellblade is a formal and narrative delight, and despite some grievances with pacing and combat, I left my time with it deeply moved.

The primary problem with Hellblade is that it is much more successful as cinema than as a video game. The combat is weighty and satisfying, but aside from the three real bosses, every encounter is virtually identical. With how frequently the game slams the breaks to drop you off into yet another one, it can feel ruinous to the game flow. In this 7-8 hour experience, the swinging and rolling have basically lost their lustre by the second hour. The puzzles are barely worth mentioning at all. The rune door pattern puzzles (though thematically satisfying) are easily the game's weakest elements and unwisely frontloaded. Eventually, someone somewhere figured out they weren't working and malformed them into encounter-oriented collectable challenges instead of actual puzzle-solving; these are better but never more than OK. There are a couple of more exciting one-off puzzle scenarios, but on the whole, the parts where you're 'playing' in the most literal sense aren't when this game is most gripping.

What I love is everything else. It is quite a visually daring piece. I lambast photorealism in video games every chance I get, but that's because it's so often in lieu of a style. When I make fun of Marvel's Spider-Man it's not because the photorealism looks bad. It's because it's pointless! You aren't using the immense pixel count to show me something novel, so why not stylise and show me something I haven't seen before? There are nondescript grey buildings outside my window right now! Hellblade's use of photorealism is so striking not because of its high-fidelity rocks and trees but because of its contrast with the stylised visual language. The general mode of play must be a relaxed over-the-shoulder shot of realistic terrain because it makes the cutscenes and hellscapes so much more off-putting. The Sea of Corpses genuinely upset me. As for if there are too many cutscenes, I view it as only right that the game is so frequently out of your control.

Now, let's be very clear. The camera work here is not what I find stunning, which is usually what we gab about with an actual film. I think the shaky cam is tastefully delivered, and they make ample use of 360 pans, but in neither instance is what the camera is doing the most exciting part. When we talk about animated movies, or at least when I do, I get very excited about the boundless camera. But here, it feels as though a locked-down camera is being used to shoot a boundless frame. The amount of visual mileage this team gets out of layers, filters, lighting, and blocking is astonishing. Part of the credit goes to Melina Juergens and her singular face (even just eye!) acting throughout the game. Senua is a fully embodied mo-cap role, which, as of 2017, could be said about, at most, a handful of performances in any medium. Still, she's greatly empowered by enveloping arching shadows, film grain and flicker, and strange reflections of live-action ghosts against which she's convincingly acting. It's dazzling!

I'll point to what the internet calls the 'Blindness Shard Trial' as the apex of this game's visual splendour. To tiptoe around spoilers, I'll tell you that during it, in essence, Senua is trapped in a memory of being trapped in her head. It's one of the many ways the game tries to literalise her dissociation visually. Here, the actual frame is swamped in constant darkness, with a black-and-white VCR buzz that makes it feel as though everything was filmed found-footage style through a security camera. Then, Senua's character model is positioned on top of the frame (still in black and white) with its normal crystal-clear resolution. It is as though she has been green-screened into her own memory, which you are now experiencing through the lens of a horror game. The disconnect here is so powerful.

But this is where we have to ask. Is this game's portrayal of psychosis a good one? That's not my call to make. I'm lucky enough not to have to live with psychosis or hallucinations of any form. So, I'm not going to speculate on whether this is exploitative. What I can say is that it is powerful. It's a shame the marketing took the tone and framed the game the way it did because this isn't trying to be a realistic, sensitive portrait of mental illness. It's not trying to capture a truth but a feeling. Once again, I don't have psychosis, all I can discuss is through the lens of my own experiences. I find how this game tackles the idea of constant war with yourself, feeling as though your internal and external are different beings, to be resonant and very affecting. Even if it takes the modes of exploitation cinema to get there, I think the actual conclusions it comes to are (if a little obvious) sweet. Perhaps it's silly that the closing to this blood-soaked psychedelic epic was that 'you're not broken because you're different' and 'we need to be able to let go of the ones we lose to mourn them properly', but it'd sufficiently won me over with its spin-cycle torture-chamber that I was legitimately happy to see the main character find any sense of closure.

Some final notes. The person who put the illusion section that early in the game should be shot. It is murderously slow for an already slow burn. I'd imagine thousands of people randomly picked that of the two opening areas to start and unceremoniously dropped the game, assuming it was all like that. I somehow haven't mentioned it yet, but the binaural audio is pretty interesting. I'm a sensitive little baby and couldn't have realistically handled it for the entire runtime, but I had it on for an hour or so, and I found it very disorienting in a good way. The permadeath fakeout is genius. The credits song is completely bogus. Likewise, the Lorestones are completely bogus. You get the sense they're included only to have some 'gamey' element for the players, but that's gas. It's the one way the game shows a smidge of embarrassment for how 'not a video game' it is, and I have no interest in that. The rest of its construction embraces its existence as an intermediary piece of art, and that's exactly what makes it special.

Why does this have a sequel? How, even?

when I'm in a mediocre mystery game competition and my opponent is spike chudsoft

I don't know about this. I kinda like the plot, generally, and it's impressive that they managed to tie it all together, but it's also like... insanely immature? Tonally stupid?

The many overarching paths means several pieces of information you will simply read like 3 times. Luckily there's a skip button, but once you discover it it's hard to not use it constantly to skip the awkward facial animations and filler dialogue that takes forever to appear, and just use the log to read it instead. I'm usually a cutscene enjoyer, but maybe the fact that I expected like a modicum of any sort of gameplay (beyond 3 QTE sequences and trial-and-error-point-and-click puzzles with barely any logic behind them) when starting this cracked my patience, or maybe this game really does just keep yapping, or maybe watching too many Youtube Shorts finally fried my brain. I'll leave that up to the reader's imagination.

Nevermind the dance number at the end, every action scene being centered on a porn mag kinda really took me out of it. Not that I dislike heheh booby comedy, but it didn't really feel like they handled it well. It's weird. Also despite playing the game in Japanese the final dance number is completely in English, which only made it feel even more out of place - I'm not like allergic to English or anything, I swear, but it's suddenly completely different voice actors. Plus a character whose life was completely ruined is just uh, yknow, dancing. Just really weird. Odd game. I won't play the sequel. I wouldn't do that even if I liked it because everyone apparently hates that, but now you know. If you even care about me...

My first Donkey Kong Country game was Returns for the Wii. I got it for Christmas the year it came out (that or it was 2011 I forget) and I remember being so excited to play it. While nowadays, I'm not the biggest Returns fan personally, I can't deny it started my love for the DKC series. Once I got into Super Nintendo games with Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, I decided I wanted to play the very first Donkey Kong Country game since at that point I still only played Returns. I bought it at my local flea market I believe and really enjoyed it. I mentioned how Yoshi's Island always reminds me of the weekend, since I would play that a lot during that time, and the same applies here too. While I think the sequel does everything this game does but better, I still think the original is a really fun time.

The general gameplay of Donkey Kong Country is you run, jump and roll. Those are basics of course, as each level has other aspects that change gameplay up like barrel cannons you can shoot out of or ropes you can jump on but the general gameplay is pretty simple. The controls are basically perfect, rolling feels super good to perform, and if you know the layout of the levels it's very easy to just speedrun through levels since both Donkey and Diddy are relatively fast. Speaking about the characters, Diddy Kong's first appearance was in this game, and he honestly upstages Donkey Kong. If you get a DK barrel, you can get the other Kong along and they basically act as a 2nd hit. You can switch freely and this is helpful since they each have different attributes to them. Donkey Kong is slower but heavier so he can kill certain enemies that Diddy can't. Diddy just feels better to play as he's faster than Donkey and also has a smaller hitbox. Both are valuable, but Donkey is more situational and is mostly just used for one enemy type (and even then, Diddy can defeat them by rolling into them) so Diddy Kong is my much-preferred Kong to use.

As for collectables in the levels, you have bananas of course. The main plot involves King K Rool stealing DK's banana hoard and he must go after him and his baddies to obtain them back. I think the reasoning behind there being so many littered throughout the levels is he just dropped them or something but either way, they act as coins and getting 100 earns you a life. You can collect letters that spell out KONG and they also give you a life. You can also collect these animal buddy tokens, and getting three of a specific buddy lets you collect these stars, and every 100 you collect ALSO gives you a life. Besides all this, you can also find secret bonus rooms. These all contain all the aformentioned items, or just lives straight up, but these can be a pain to find. I wouldn't have an issue normally since these are optional bonus rooms so it makes sense they'd be really hidden, but getting every single one is how you get 101% in the game, so if you're a completionist you must find them all. The real issue then is, a good chunk of them are just kinda bullshit. You'll have some that are very easy to spot and are self-explanatory. But then you have ones that are completely hidden and sometimes even require blind jumps into pits. I know they wanted you to buy a guide or a Nintendo Power back then to find these locations, but I don't find random pit bonuses or random breakable wall bonuses fun ever. I used a guide for like 80% of these cuz I only ever 100%ed this game once before, so I forgot most of these. The sequel can be like this too, but it generally handled bonus room locations a lot better. Alongside all the collectables and bonus rooms, you also have animal buddies. These are fun as they change up the gameplay slightly. Rambi can kill usually unkillable (unless you have a barrel) enemies by running into them. Expresso can jump a bit higher and float over large gaps. Enguarde swims faster in water and has an attack you can perform. Winky...well Winky just jumps really high, tho he can also jump on usually harmful enemies too and he's honestly underrated. These guys appear enough where they don't just feel like one-off gimmicks or anything.

The levels themselves are generally well designed. They're simpler than the sequels, and I feel like there's generally more bullshit due to enemies suddenly appearing on screen randomly, but there's a nice flow to the levels. Visually, I think it just looks alright. The characters themselves looks good, I just think some of the backgrounds don't look great compared to others, and definitely compared to 2's backgrounds. I think it also doesn't help that the level themes aren't too interesting in this game. You have jungles and mines and factories and Mayan temples and some of these are more unique than others, but they don't exactly lead to very vibrant colors. When it hits, it hits. The one jungle level with the sunset is really nice and I like the ice caves. The factories are kind of cool near the end too, but overall, I think the level settings can be a bit bland here. Not like Returns tho, since that is very formulaic with its level themes but compared to 2, 1 is not as good in that regard.

The bosses in this game are kind of a joke. All of them, besides King K Rool, are incredibly easy and just feel like a slightly tougher regular enemy. They could've easily had no bosses and it would've been fine so I guess it's not like they detract from the game too much, however 2 did bosses way better.

This may be my hottest take though. I don't love the OST. A big reason for that is most of the OST was in Returns, and so I had always felt there was an identity crisis with this game which is not the game's fault and is more a me thing because I played Returns first. Even outside of that, some of the songs I just never really got into...but objectively the OST is quite solid. There are still bangers like Aquatic Ambience and Gang-Plank Galleon of course. Also a shoutout to Fear Factory, that one's nice too. Even though I don't love the OST, it's still good overall, I just much prefer 2's tbh.

I've kind of been complaining about things here or there despite praising the gameplay. Something else I'll praise about this game tho is its Rare charm. Animations are very charming between characters. Donkey and Diddy both get terrified when you're at the edge of a cliff. They do a charming celebration whenever you defeat a boss or complete a bonus room. Diddy Kong throws his hat down and stomps on it when he loses a bonus room. The dialogue between the other characters like Cranky or Funky or Candy are very charming too. There's a fake-out Kremlin credits that happens when you get halfway into King K Rool's fight, and the actual credits have humorous cutscenes between characters. Not only is this game charming as hell, but it also created all these well-known characters too. We wouldn't have Diddy Kong or Cranky Kong or Funky Kong if it wasn't for this game. We wouldn't have my man K Rool either, he's such a memorable villain. The Kremlins themselves are very memorable and cartoony. I think besides the actual gameplay, the best thing DKC1 does is the worldbuilding and charm. Before this, we just had DK and DK Jr. It's all thanks to Rare, that we have as many memorable characters as we do now.

I may have some issues with this game, and I think 2 fixes them all pretty much, but this is still a classic for a reason and is staple Super Nintendo game. I was honestly thinking about dropping this to a 7, even up until writing most of this review, but it wasn't until the paragraph before this did, I really ponder and think about how many staple characters this game created and just how charming this game is in general. It's very important to entire DK series as a whole and is a very fun platformer at that! However, as I've said several times in this review, 2 is better in every way and I'm going to be replaying that soon so stay tuned for that review!

This was actually the last mainline DKC game I played. My first was returns, as I said in my DKC1 review. I played 1 and 3 shortly after that and I played Tropical Freeze the day it released. I didn't play 2 until years later in 2018 where an Instagram account I was following was selling a CIB copy for $35. That sounded like a good deal back then, and considering it's almost $90 now it's even better now, so I bought it off them. I really enjoyed my time with it, but it wasn't until replaying it in 2022, where I truly saw it as a masterpiece. Do I still think that now? Look at my score to find out (that means yes).

Let's start with the gameplay changes. The thing you'll notice when you first start the game is you don't play as Donkey Kong anymore. You still play as Diddy Kong but replacing Donkey is newcomer Dixie Kong. The main plot this time is King K Rool is back, he has kidnapped Donkey Kong and you must team-up as Diddy and Dixie to defeat him and save DK. Pretty simple but it works. Anyways, Diddy plays pretty much the same but Dixie is a bit different. Her main gameplay change is the fact that she can glide by using her hair. This is incredibly helpful with certain segments throughout the game and because of this plus being more fun to control, I definitely prefer this duo over the first game's. I still think Diddy feels better to play as since he's still faster here and has a better roll (Dixie's roll sucks if you're trying to roll jump off a cliff) so he was my go to Kong when I had both but Dixie is still very fun to play as here due to her glide. This game did add another new big mechanic that plays a part in a bunch of levels. By pressing the A button, if you have both Kongs, you can perform a Team Up. This basically lets you throw the kong upwards in whatever direction you want, and it lets you get up to high places you normally couldn't get to or collect items up high. It's nice and quick to pull off and just adds that much more depth to the levels.

The levels themselves are better than ever here. The level design is improved, with each level feeling pretty distinct from each other. One moment you'll be riding air balloons over a pit of lava and the next you'll be racing enemies in a haunted amusement park. Levels have gimmicks but they never feel intrusive or annoying to me. The level themes are also way more interesting this time. The mains setting here is pirates and that first world makes great use of it. You had levels where you run on top of a ship, levels where you are swimming inside the ship itself and then levels where you're climbing up the top of a pirate ship. That's all the first world, and even tho it's all pirate themed, they all feel distinct. Besides that, you have typical lava stages tho they're visually appealing in this game, you have these beehive stages where honey stops you dead in your tracks, you have bayou stages..just all the level themes in this game are so much more unique compared to the 1st game. Honestly, the backgrounds used in these levels are better than the 1st game's as well, they made them really clean looking this time around.

As for the collectables, you still collect bananas..and KONG letters. Animal Friend tokens are gone which is nice because they could kinda be annoying at times. Instead of finding a bunch of random bonus rooms to 100% the game, this time you must collect Kremkoins and DK coins. Kremkoins are all found in bonus barrels, or sometimes secret walls. These both lead to the bonus area, which instead of being all lax and random like in DKC1, you have to play a bonus game whether it's collecting all the stars or defeating every enemy or just getting to the coin itself. This is more unified than how it was in DKC1 and I prefer it this way. The DK coins are always only in levels once, and they're usually just in the stages and not in the bonus rooms. Anyways, collecting every Kremcoin and every DK coin, and completing every level, gets you 102% in this game. I much prefer this over the bonus rooms in DKC1. They are much easier to find without a guide, tho I still had to look up some but that's better than almost all of them like in DKC1, and it's better for it.

Animal buddies are back and you have some returning ones plus some new ones. Winky and Expresso are gone but Rambi, Enguarde and Squawks are back. Rambi and Enguarde are exactly the same except they have a charge move you can perform to go super fast and kill any enemies in your path or to open up secret bonus rooms. You can now ride with Squawks and shoot nuts out of his mouth at enemies, so he's changed drastically. There's a new animal buddy called Quawks who is only used in one level and is purple, cannot fly upwards (only glide down) and cannot shoot nuts. He's not worth getting into since it's just a downgrade of Squawks, but the other two animal buddies are. Rattly the rattlesnake, is basically Winky but better. He can jump high, jump on normally dangerous enemies like Winky but you can also charge him up to perform a super jump. The other new animal buddy, Squitter the Spider is awesome and is my favorite buddy in the series. You cannot jump on enemies as him but you can shoot projectile webs out of his mouth and if you press the A button, you can shoot a different type of web and if you press A again..you can create a web platform to jump on. They use this a good amount in some of the stages and this mechanic just makes him super fun and interesting to use. Along with all this, there are also these animal buddy barrels that let you transform into just the animal buddy.

The bosses in this game are also a big improvement from 1. Gone are very easy bosses that feel like a big version of a normal enemy. Every boss in this game feels distinct (besides the zinger fight tho his fight was pretty fun) and aren't piss easy and also aren't super quick. They feel like actual bosses, with the K Rool fight being a standout. Definitely my favorite fight in the trilogy. While not too difficult, he's still really fun.

If you had gotten 15 Kremcoins per world, you could pay them to this fella named Klubba. Once you do, you can access a level from the Lost World, a secret super hard bonus world. These are definitely some of the hardest levels in the game, tho I must brag and say it only took me two tries to beat Animal Antics this time around. Going back to the difficulty, yeah this game can be quite tough. It's not like bullshit hard, just the levels themselves can have some very tough portions and honestly, I welcome it. I still died a bunch in this game but I think the difficulty curve is very nice. It doesn't start off hard at all, it gradually start's getting pretty tough by world 4.

The OST is a big upgrade from the first game I think and is honestly amazing. Some of my favorites were Mining Melancholy, In A Snow-Bound Land, LockJaw's Saga,Hot Head Bop, and Forest Interlude. That is not even mentioning the absolute fucking goated song that is Stickerbush Symphony which is honestly a top 5 song for me from any video game ever. It's that amazing and I've loved it before I even played this game. This is a top tier OST I think and may be the best SNES soundtrack of all time.

If I had any little nitpick about this game, it's the fact you have to use banana coins to save and move to other worlds freely. I forgot to mention this in the collectables section, but you also collect bananas throughout the stages, they're plentiful, but after saving once or using Funky's Flights in a world, you must pay each Kong coins to do either action again. Because coins are super easy to get, this wasn't an issue for me but if you reset the game, you lose all your coins (and lives) so I can see where it would be an annoying mechanic to some people.

This is peak Donkey Kong Country imo. Everything from 1 was perfected in this game and then some, and it easily has the best soundtrack in the entire series, which does play a big part in me loving this game. I have more nostalgia for Super Mario World but I cannot deny the fact that this is the better platformer on the Super Nintendo. Because of this, I do think this is the best SNES game I've played period. It's just a masterpiece through and through. Do yourself a favor and play it!

I'm going to get back to the Kirby marathon now but I do plan on replaying DKC3 in the near future so stay tuned for that whenever I decide to play it!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

For the longest time, this was in my top 5 Kirby games. I got this on the Wii U virtual console back in the day, and remember enjoying it a lot. I also remember that I used save states on certain parts and was annoyed at other parts of the game but I generally loved the game's aesthetic and vibe, I guess those aspects overshadowed the bad parts in my mind. What do I think of the game now though? It's not bad at all, but it does have some really annoying issues that nowadays do hamper my experience.

Let's talk about the gameplay first and foremost. Compared to Superstar, it's a big downgrade. Kirby's running speed is very fast, but his walking speed is incredibly slow. This wouldn't usually be an issue however, a lot of them the camera won't pan at the start of a new area until you've gotten until the edge of the screen. Unless you're as careful as can be, if an enemy is there it will hit you. This never happened at all in Superstar. When Kirby floats and gets out of a float, he loses all momentum he's gained and will basically stop in place. Maybe this is so you don't spam the float but it ruins the flow of the gameplay a bit and is an annoyance since Superstar also never did this. It's also incredibly easy to get hit in this game, not only because or the whole screen having to catch up with Kirby, but because the invincibility frames last like a second or less so it's so easy to just get comboed if you're unlucky. This is something I noticed even back in the day, you get hit A LOT in this game and it's quite annoying. One last thing this game downgraded from Superstar, and this one isn't as bad as the other things I mentioned (at least for me) is Kirby's moveset. Kirby goes back to only having one basic move per copy ability. While this is naturally a downgrade compared to Superstar, the animal friends return from Dreamland 2 and do make up for this a bit I think.

Not only are Rick, Kine and Coo back from Dreamland 2, this game adds three new animal friends as well. Nago the cat, Pitch the bird and ChuChu the octopus are the new additions and they're all very solid. Nago is actually my favorite of the six, cuz he feels the best to control but also because he has a very helpful triple jump. Pitch doesn't really have any abilities but he is a cute little guy. ChuChu can only float a couple of times at once but she has the ability to hang from ceilings (it only really gets used once tho lol). Anyways, like Dreamland 2, Dreamland 3 gives each animal friend their own specific take on the copy abilities. With six animal friends now, and 8 copy abilities, that's 48 unique animal friend abilities. There are way less copy abilities in this game compared to Superstar, however with this many animal friend abilities, I feel like it never gets boring since you're more than likely always discovering new ones throughout the game which is fun.

Going into the level's themselves, they aren't great tbh. A good chunk of them are very simple with enemies littered throughout. The level design is way too basic and can get boring some of the time (mostly some of world 3 and 4). They try to combat this with the game's main collectable, the heart-stars, but this can also be a mixed bag. Early on they aren't bad. Each world has six stages, and each of the six stages use the same heart-star conventions. The first always deals with flowers. The second always has you bringing a specific copy ability or animal friend to some part of the stage and interacting with whatever. The third has you playing a minigame a way into the stage. The fourth has you collecting a single object in the stage and bringing it to the end. The fifth has you bringing a specific animal friend to the end of the stage so they can be with their girlfriend/boyfriend. And the 6th has you collecting several objects in the level and bringing them to the end character. Yeah, you get a heart-star from a character at the end of the stage..and they can be pretty fun to see. Mostly because this game cross overed with other Nintendo properties like ROB the Robot and Metroid. Anyways, heart-stars aren't usually too bad to get but the endgame has some really annoying ones. The last couple minigames are like annoying as balls to do without save stating, otherwise you have to redo the stage each time you lose, so I decided to just save state again like I did all the way back in the day. That plus others can just be plain cryptic, and yeah..the collectables aren't super fun to get some of the time.

I know I've spent most of this review complaining so far, and yeah, the gameplay probably is the weakest part of this game, but some of the other aspects are fantastic and make up for the gameplay a bit. The visuals for example are amazing in this game. I still think Yoshi's Island is the best-looking Super Nintendo game, however this is right next to that. This game is a coloring book come to life and it's so nice to look at. It fits Kirby perfectly too and I really wish the modern games tried to do something like this again. Besides the amazing art style, this game is just really charming in general. Whether it's all the animal friend's reactions to Kirby picking other friends instead of them, or the bosses of each world standing idle not fighting you after you purified them by getting every heart-star in the world. Gameplay be damned, it's clear the Kirby3 team were passionate about the actual world and characters. I also always loved the atmosphere in this game. Idk if it's because of the cutesy art style combined with Dark Matter as an antagonist, but this game always felt a bit off in a way I really liked. I don't know how to describe it, but Dreamland 3 fans will probably understand what I mean.

The bosses in general are solid. You have the usual Wispy Woods and some other cool ones. Besides the introduction of Ado (who is basically just Adeline before Adeline), Dark Matter and Zero are great final bosses to the Dreamland trilogy. Dark Matter is cool ofc but Zero is very creepy especially for a Kirby game. The fact it's a giant white sphere that bleeds as you attack it, and the fact its last final form is its eyeball ripped out of the sphere, all bloody and everything, it's so unlike Kirby and just gives the game this eerie feeling I love.

The music in this game is also super good and drives the atmosphere home even more. My favorite songs were probably Grass Land 1, Grass Land 4 and Ripple Field 1. The entire soundtrack is really solid though and like I said, really helps with game feeling atmospheric.

I'm sad this isn't in my top 5 Kirby's anymore. This game has a lot of charm and heart to it but on the gameplay side, it just has too many issues for me to rate it super high. My judgement was clouded back then by the art style and atmosphere, and while those are still great now, I can't deny this game isn't as good as I once thought. I still like it overall, but I will kneel to all the Superstar fans despite not loving that game's structure...that is the superior Kirby game. If they took the gameplay from Superstar and the art style, atmosphere and single campaign structure from this game...I may have gotten my perfect Kirby game. Ah well, a man can dream. I will say tho, I do like this more than Dreamland 2. There isn't a level as bullshit as that trial and error in 2 and this game visually just looks so much better of course. That and I have more nostalgia for it haha. Anyways, next is Donkey Kong Country 3 so look forward to that!

6.5/10

We have now come to the third and final game in the DKC trilogy and funnily enough, this was the first of the three I ever played. I remember feeling ecstatic when I found this at my local flea market randomly for $10 I think. I'd just gotten into collecting retro Nintendo games and a title like this was perfect for my collection I thought. I played this and enjoyed it back then, but seeing as it was my first SNES DKC game, I didn't know how it compared to the other two. Well after beating those two, I realized how much weaker this game is in comparison. After replaying all three games back-to-back, yeah this still holds true today.

Let's (again) start with the gameplay changes. K Rool has once again kidnapped Donkey Kong. Not only that, he kidnapped Diddy Kong this time around! So it's up to Dixie to team up with her baby cousin, Kiddy Kong, to save them both. The first thing you'll notice is the fact I said baby. Yes, you play as Dixie and a literal baby this time around. Yes, he is lame conceptually. But I also think he's kinda lame gameplay-wise too. Dixie plays the same as she did in 2, however Kiddy is basically like Donkey Kong from DKC1. He's heavy and can bounce on enemies Dixie normally couldn't. Not only that, he has the ability to bounce on water if you time it right..and also the ability to destroy weakened floor with a team up. Both of these new mechanics are barely used in the game, so it's easy to forget about them. Otherwise, he's just Donkey again only less cool which is disappointing considering I preferred the two lighter weight characters from 2. The team up is also not as responsive in this game for some reason? You can do it anytime you want in 2 but here, sometimes it won't work, and you have to move a bit for it to go. Idk if it's because Kiddy is big character or what, but it can be slightly annoying. Not the worst thing in the world but just annoying since this wasn't an issue in 2. Other than all that, the gameplay is the exact same as the first two, which means it's still a fun time for the most part.

The actual levels I find to be a big downgrade from 2 and even a bit of a downgrade from 1. The level settings in 1 weren't amazing but they were interesting enough. The ones in 2 were amazing and were full of a variety of settings I really enjoyed. 3 I just find super boring when it comes to it's level themes. It has forest levels, factory levels, snow levels, levels that are supposed to be Canada?, sawmill levels (okay those aren't terrible), lakeside levels, cave levels etc. Besides the sawmill levels, which are kinda neat, I find the level settings in this game to be uninspired and boring compared to the first two games. I also think because of this, this game visually looks worse than 2. Due to its environments, 2 could be really vibrant and eye-catching. 3 does not have a pleasing color pallet to me and I generally think it looks ugly a lot of the time because of that. The levels themselves are mostly standard fare I'd say. Some of the gimmicks near the end, and yeah this game loves its gimmick levels, can be really annoying tho. Infamous ones like Lightning Look-Out and Poisonous Pond are annoying yeah. There are also some other annoying ones like Koindozer Klamber and Rocket Rush that I don't hear talked about as much and they were even more annoying than the two I mentioned prior. Still, these levels are all in the endgame. Otherwise, most of the game's levels are pretty alright.

The collectables in this game are pretty similar to 2's. Bonus games back again, and this time there's a new one where you must collect 15 green bananas that dissapear after 2 seconds. This is a fine addition to the minigame lineup, tho I must say some of these were super annoying. I don't remember having many issues with the ones in 2, but here they can be brutal. This game changed it so every level (besides the Lost World) has exactly two bonuses and honestly I like that change. Once you've gotten two in a level, you know you don't have to look for more. Again, besides the Lost World which throws in a couple levels that have 3 bonuses. The DK coin was also changed. Instead of just being in a level randomly, and collecting it just like that, you must defeat an enemy called Koin. He uses the coin as a shield and you must ricochet a metal barrel off a wall or whatever to hit him as he always faces whatever direction you're in. I honestly liked this change as well since they kinda turned the DK coin into a little puzzle where you must figure out how to kill this enemy and it's pretty cool.

The animal buddies are again back. They got rid of Rambi, which is weird since he's in the first two games and is a staple buddy after this. Enguarde is still here though, and so is my boy Squitter. They got rid of Rattly but kept the several Squawks. Besides all these returning ones, there are also two new ones. Parry the Parallel Bird floats above you and can collect items in the air. If they get hit, they die but if you bring them to their animal buddy sign, you'll usually get something nice from it. The other new animal buddy is Ellie the Elephant. She gets used a ton in this game and has several different abilities. She can suck up water and shoot it out of her trunk. She can suck barrels from far away. She's afraid of mice and that mechanic gets used a couple of times. She's not bad honestly but she's also not one of my favorites.

I didn't really mention the overworld in my review for 2, because it was similar to 1's, however I must commend this game for switching things up and improving the overworld this time around. You can actually move around the world of DKC3, which makes it feel more alive. You use a variety of vehicles from Funky and you get more as you progress. Throughout the world, you can also find secret caves which house Banana Birds. You must do a Simon Says type game to get them, but these birds are used to get 103% and the true ending. While I personally don't care about the birds themselves, having secrets to find in the overworld was a nice addition. Besides this, you also have these bear characters you can interact with. One bear gives you a couple items in exchange for bear coins (this game's new Kremkoin) that you can then give to other bears in exchange for some banana birds. Other bears require you to do certain tasks in levels or the overworld to unlock banana birds as well. These are fine imo, but they're less fun than just exploring the overworld and finding the caves. Plus the bears designs I don't really care for, they never felt like "Donkey Kong" to me idk.

The bosses this time around, while better than 1's, aren't as good as 2's. For some reason, they made like every boss in this game uncanny and creepy and I don't dig their designs as much as 2's bosses. Besides that, I felt like they were simpler compared to 2's. With the exception of Barbos which I ended up kinda liking, the others I wasn't much of a fan. That includes the K Rool fight too. This is my least favorite version of his fight. I don't really dig how you fight him (I think it's less fun than the cannonballs in 2) and I don't really like the whole Frankenstein thing they went for. Kaptain K Rool was just way cooler.

I may have complained throughout this review, however nothing compares to the OST. This is a massive step-down from the 2nd game and a big downgrade from the 1st game as well. I did like Water World, that song stood out from the rest and proves that the water themes in these games are always the best, however the rest of the OST was incredibly forgettable. Compare the beginning level theme from 2 and then 3. It's night and day. Only reason I'm bringing this up is because this series is known for its amazing soundtracks. I know David Wise didn't work on this game and it definitely shows.

While I was definitely really negative throughout this review, I don't think this game is bad. It has the same old gameplay everyone loves, and even does some things right like the overworld and the collectable changes. However, with the OST being a massive downgrade from the first two games, and the levels themselves being worse overall, I can confidently put this at the bottom of my SNES DKC ranking. I'd never play this over the first two games but I've definitely played worst platformers before lol.

And with that, the DKC trilogy is done. I'm gonna take a break with Kirby as well, as I've been burnt out on platformers a bit. I actually do plan on starting a Zelda marathon next (I might alternate the Kirby marathon with this as well eventually) with some buddies of mine joining me too so stay tuned for a Zelda 1 review in the near future!

I know I'm still in the middle of another marathon (Kirby) but I've decided to also go through every Zelda game I own and can emulate because I've been in a big Zelda mood lately. Not only that, some other Backloggd members have also decided to join this marathon as well. Namely QuentTheSlayer, Ptcremisi,Steinco,Phantasm and a couple others. The four I mentioned plan on playing pretty much every game like I am, while the others plan on picking and choosing games they want to play. Either way, be sure to check out their accounts because they plan on putting out reviews for all the games too!

Anyways, The Legend of Zelda. I first played this game years ago on my brother's 3DS XL. He randomly bought this off the eShop and when he wasn't using his 3DS, I decided to actually try the first Zelda game out. I don't think I got far, and I didn't love it but it was neat finally trying this game out. Fast forward to 2020, I was trying to beat some games I started but never finished. Since I still had NSO, and I knew this game was on it, I decided to finally beat it once and for all. I did, and yeah I didn't like it all too much. I think I had to use save states, and definitely had to use a guide for most of it and that hampered my experience a lot. Coming back to it today tho, I say I still don't really like it all too much but it has its merits.

I guess I'll first go into the story of this game. Most future Zelda games also go by this same story structure as well, so get used to what I'm about to say. You play as Link, a young boy from the kingdom of Hyrule. You must rescue the princess of Hyrule, Zelda, from the big bad of this series, Ganon. You must collect the pieces of Triforce, which are used to stop Ganon, and they are split into 8 shards and are all found at the end of dungeons. The three pieces are the Triforce of Courage, Wisdom and Power. The specific pieces don't really come into play until later games, because that's if. That's the entire story of the first Zelda game. It's incredibly simple but it works, and these story details are the backbone of the entire Zelda series.

When you first start the actual game, the first thing you see on the first screen you're on, is an empty cave. You meet an old man, and he utters the now famous dialogue "It's dangerous to go alone, take this!". He hands you a sword and with that, you're free to explore the world of Hyrule. Exploring Hyrule can be pretty fun and frustrating on your first playthrough. On one hand, you'll be exploring everywhere trying to find each dungeon and trying to find any secrets you can. That can be very fun for people that just love to explore with almost zero direction, this is a game from 1986 so the best direction you'd get back then were vague hints or using an issue of Nintendo Power for help. This is 2024 tho, and you've been able to just look up a guide online for a while now, so that's what most players will do. And honestly, that's what I did and it's the best way to get through the overworld portions at least. See, this game's overworld relies on you finding random secrets you would only find by randomly guessing their locations or by using a guide. This game loves random bombable walls or random bushes you can burn, and while this only affects actually dungeons near the end, this is used for required items and also several rupee locations (that you WILL need) and so I think this is an unfun part of the overworld. If there was any indication the walls or bushes had secrets, it would be fine, but there isn't unless you find some very vague dialogue in game. That, plus just bombing a wall or burning a bush isn't really puzzle-like, which I would prefer in my Zelda overworlds. This is something future Zelda games improved on, but here, you might as well just use a guide to get most of the overworld stuff done first and then move onto the dungeons (that's what I did). I can see why some other people might find it more fun to constantly replay this game and actually memorize all the secrets, however I just don't think that's good game design and so I decided to do the whole overworld with a guide.

The dungeons themselves, while not great, are definitely the best part of this game. They are way less cryptic than the overworld, and thus are more fun. They can get pretty brutal near the end of the game, and also more confusing (they start to rely on bombable walls too) so I had to use a guide for the last couple as well. But in general, despite the simplicity, the dungeons are pretty fun. The bosses at the end of each dungeon are pretty easy but with this type of game, I'm fine with that since the bulk of the game is exploration. Something I didn't like, and I'm mentioning it here because it happens mostly in dungeons, is the fact you start with 3 health when you die. No matter how many heart containers you have, you'll always just start the game with 3 health and it's my biggest issue in the game because it's tedious having to get more health to have a fighting chance (since it's so easy to get hit in this game). Luckily, there are a couple fairy fountains that restore your health fully throughout the world, and there are caves that give you potions (believe me you will need these) so they make that whole health system a bit more tolerable. Going back to "since it's so easy to get hit in this game" whenever you get hid, there enemy pushes you back a bunch and because the invincibility frames are relatively short, it's not hard to get comboed by enemies and die. Now this didn't happen too much in my playthrough, but it can still be annoying. Outside of getting hit tho, Link plays well otherwise.

Inside the dungeons, and also outside in caves, you can collect different items that aid you in your adventure. You have some iconic items like the boomerang, bombs, a bow and arrows and ofc the iconic Rupees. You also have heart containers in this game, that you will want to find in all the caves and after each dungeon boss. There aren't heart pieces in this game, only containers, so each of them is super valuable. I won't get into all the main dungeon items, just know they're all pretty solid, but I will get into the clock. Sometimes when you kill an enemy, it drops a clock. When you pick up the clock, it stops every enemy in place if they're on the same screen you collected it on. This can be SO helpful in later encounters if you somehow are able to get one, it's very random tho so you better hope you get lucky. I also will say, one time during my playthrough, I killed three of these boomerang enemies and got three fairies at once from them. Idk how lucky that is but it seemed pretty insane.

The music in this game is simply iconic. The Title Theme(yes I shared the Famicom version, it's the best version) is probably my favorite song in the game and is the main theme of the entire franchise which makes sense since it's amazing. The overworld also uses a version of these theme and it's also very good. Picking up items and finding secrets also play jingles and they've been in pretty much every Zelda game since this one as well. If this game does anything super well, it's the sound design. There's a reason so much of it was reused for future titles lol.

While I don't care for the first Legend of Zelda all too much, due to the exploration secrets not being great and the 3 heart after death thing, I can't deny it's an iconic game and was very important in the grand scheme of things for the Zelda series. I don't love playing it, but I can certainly appreciate it for what it is.

Now that Zelda 1 is done, Zelda 2 is next. I actually have never played that one, and I haven't heard great things, so I'm worried I won't like it much but I guess we'll see. Look forward to that next.

Also, when I get to the 3D Zelda titles, I'll try to sprinkle in some smaller games in between but more importantly, I'll try to mix some Kirby games in between. Basically, I'll be doing a mix of Kirby and Zelda eventually. Just letting you know now since you'll eventually notice, I'm sure.

As you drift along the road, there’s deeper meaning to the mindful state of arcade bliss. OutRun communicates with clarity about an idealized rendition of everyday life. It stays true to its sacrosanct purity — the sheer elegance of a driving game — built entirely on the little details. Is the trip more important than the destination? The designer poses the question with sincerity, in direct toyetic-zen fashion that only Sega could best fulfill.

Ticking numbers and arrows act as a catalyst, with a balancing act between speed and control. There’s uncertainty to the drifts, the ebb and flow of life, in those do-or-die spots. It’s in those moments that the game truly thrives. The player wages a subtle war, pinned on that question of time, determining the value of our play. Do you take the easy way out? Coins brim with endless potential, as the brilliant course selection system provide a myriad of paths to take.

As you reach the final step, each track swells in pure euphoria. The sound offers us clarity, a way to reason with our trip. The arcade cabinet draws you in entirely. Every race is an event. You’ve made it home. A journey, a game of cohesive depth, all told in the span of 5 minutes.

OutRun succeeds wholeheartedly as an arcade game. There is nothing else it would rather be. For that it is a miraculous achievement, one of a time capsule to an era long gone, forming a complete picture from unified mechanics and palatable choice. The only constant is time — and the cerulean skies that await us.

Finally went back and finished the one that started it all, the OG Fallout 1 from 1997. Its rare for me to go back to a game I dropped, even rarer still for me to actually finish it on a second time around, but I guess this franchise is just built different. Not going back to finish F3 anytime soon though.

There's a simplicity to Fallout 1 which I appreciate. I didnt miss that many quests simply because there aren't all that many. Certainly part of the reason for it is the game's dev cycle led to a whole lot of cut content, but it also means the game doesn't outstay its welcome.

The pre-rendered art deco buildings set atop the grimy post apocalyptic desert's earthy tones look great. Time has not been kind to the game's proportions, in regards to modern displays, a lot of the text is poorly readable and so much of the game is squinting at which indistinct background detail I have to click on to continue, but compared to later entries there is a more inmediate sense of scale and scene that the isometric perspective allows.

The game has a really weird difficulty curve. I am of the opinion that in RPGs areas shouldnt be scaled for the player, but the nature of the overworld grid system and random encounters means there is often one single tile of difference between being jumped by weak ass mole rats who can't even tickle you and a super mutant deathsquad who will fuck your shit up really quickly. I guess thats part of the fun, but I like the approach of New Vegas' relatively signposted dangers tempting new players to be mauled by deathclaws if they rush for Vegas early on.

What was most disappointing, other than the various bugs (one of which locked me out of hardened power armor, because the Boneyard main quest is beyond fucked) was that skill checks were often dice rolls. Now, I'm not so ignorant as to not know why this is; its a CRPG, it owes its DNA to GURPS and D&D and the like, the traditional tabletop roleplaying games where its often about using literal dice to roll for skill checks and whilst I have only played these games a handful of times, I don't think they translate very well to videogames in a literal sense. Maybe this is blasphemy, given the influence they have had on videogames, but when you're playing these games, often the excitement and intrigue comes more from the social aspect and the very literal human game master who is making sure that the results are abided by. Even then, there are re-rolls and stuff like that. These types of dice rolls CAN be used well, for e.g in Disco Elysium where often times failing can lead to just as if not more interesting outcomes than succeeding them, but here they feel kinda token at times.

Case in point, what exactly is the point in levelling up my repair/science skill or whatever if I can just infinitely try until I succeed? Sometimes there is a consequence for repeatedly fucking up checks like a locker rigged with explosives (and I think maybe if your required skill is too low certain options are not even possible to do?) but more often than not there is nothing. You just keep trying until you suceed, which isnt even save scumming, its just, scumming I guess.

Watching interviews on this topic, including GDC talks, there is an interesting evolutionary lineage of how these RPGs handled stuff. Josh Sawyer didnt work on F1 but definitely played it. In Fallout 3 again the skill options are dice rolls but are also visible, you are knowledgeable of exactly what options you can use to advance the situation in dialogue. This trades in a lot of mystery and perhaps the interesting dynamic of not knowing which options are "best", whilst also making save scumming even more viable, but also makes the player more clued in and feel rewarded for their particular build, even if in practice, a 99% speech and 1% speech characters can both pass the check with enough tries. It also removes a slight annoying aspect of 1 wherein if you dont have enough speech or barter or whatever, you will straight up not know if you can actually pass the check, and you'll wonder if there is any point in thinking about any of your choices if the "correct" ones will always be locked away opaquely.

Fallout New Vegas in my opinion improves upon 3 by making them binary threshold checks, which instantly makes build choices so much more instantly satisfying and understood by the player. Not to say that full transparency is the apex of game design, but in the case of what an RPG like Fallout is trying to do, I think it works best. There are numerous skills which help in solving quests through dialogue, not just speech, barter, medicine, intelligence, etc. Its definitely a system which can be improved however, on replay, speech is just far and away the "solve quest" button and running a non speech character nigh on demands either extreme violence or copious use of drugs and armor to make up the difference, and the transparency of it all can kinda ruin the magic, especially when you learn most quest's "optimal" solution after a few runs (though admittedly I have 500 hours in FNV so I guess its fair enough that I know it inside and out)

Disco Elysium came out and whilst it went back to rolls, the games design feels much more conscious of why it works for table top, with skills being their own characters, seemingly non-signposted dialogue choices being counted, rerolls allowed on levelling up certain skills, leading to an attitude of "well, Ill just come back later" rather than reloading a save and the general vibe of the game being one of comical failure being overcome. Most importantly, certain dicerolls being weighed by seemingly inconsequential dialogue options which are shown to the player, is a brilliant system. Not only because it makes you very careful about what you will say and it keeps some of the opaqueness that keeps the game fresh, but at the same time makes the player feel like they have greater agency over the capricious dice rolls.

Pentiment took this last innovation and honestly, it rules. Steal shit if its good man, thats how game design works. It also improves greatly upon FNV by making the RPG skills not inmediately "solve" the issues facing the player. Even though its a very accesible and easy game, there are many really tough challenges like getting on Martin's good side, or convincing sister illuminata to hand over the tome, which if you use certain skill traits will just straight up fail you. Surprise surprise, a 15th century artist making passes at a married woman doesn't go over too well. Indeed, the illuminata check requires you to both acknowledge the struggles of women in the early modern period whilst also putting yourself as the player in the shoes of religious people of the era. "Knowledge is inherently valuable and good"? Nu-uh she doesn't give a shit, this tome could be considered heretical and be bad for the soul. Simply by how these mechanics work, Pentiment is able to get the player to humanize and empathize with people from the past who's lives and viewpoints feel so alien to us via what is essentially a VN with RPG elements. Realistically, if you have the "law" trait making you knowledgeable of imperial law and use it, 90% of the time its met with "shut the fuck up you fucking nerd". Its so fucking good dude, it stands on the shoulders of giants from what feels like a conversation between designers of 1->3->NV->De->Pentiment. Sidenote, Ive actually read through all of the books in the Pentiment reading list, and I think when Im done with uni stuff I'll replay and write some overlong comparative analysis.

Oh shit, I was talking about Fallout 1 wasn't I? Err, okay what else? I did quite liberal use of save scumming, but that feels almost intended to some extent. The combat isnt particularly satisfying or interesting, especially at first when its just 2 groups of people missing 90% of their shots until someone hits a crit. Eventually things click, and somewhat begrudgingly I will admit that the contrast in combat between the initial start and more fluid endgame with miniguns and rocket launchers (on the fastest combat speed of course) were effective in making the latter feel more substantially evolved from the former. I do wish that companions were more fleshed out than just "here's a guy, he shoots people you don't like now" and more to the point GOT OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY WHEN IM TRYING TO MOVE THROUGH A BUILDING, but then this WAS the first game and budgets were low. Its also funny how weirdly the Voiced NPCs are spaced. Theres a guy in the hub with a single quest who then says absolutely nothing else (loxley) and then Im pretty sure there are none in the Boneyard unless I missed something. All that dispute between the Blades and regulators and the gun runners? No voices for you I guess. Originally one of the reasons why I dropped F1 was that the game's personality was hard to gauge when so many of the game's technical restraints seemed to make everything kinda bland, with identical looking mfers with in all honesty not super defined character voices. I think what really sold me on the game was actually having a full conversation with series regular Harold the ghoul, its an endearing performance and probably my personal highlight of the game. All in all, F1 has enough of the good to balance the bad, and Im certainly appreciative of the series it spawned, even if Im not entirely in love with it.

BTW, I wish I could go back in time and erase Monty Python from existence. Old fallout is like patient 0 for how that shit got run into the ground.

Lorelei has a very interesting setup that fails to live up to the expectations it sets.

I really enjoyed how non-linear most of the game is. The mansion the game takes place in is large and open, there's several ways to progress right from the start. The game spreads out puzzles you can solve immediately and puzzles that'll take additional context pretty evenly throughout the world, giving the game a feeling of complex interconnectedness. Whenever I'd get access to a new part of the mansion I'd be paying heavy attention to whatever I came across, trying to recontextualize it in the context of puzzles I'd come across previously and seemingly couldn't solve.

This gameplay loop felt very satisfying for a while but puzzles are usually much simpler than they appear. The solution to puzzles will often be just noticing a code you saw earlier fits the number of inputs on a lock.

For example, I'd come across a lock let's me input a 7 digit code but nothing in the room would point to the answer. Later on I'd solve another puzzle and the reward is a slip of paper with a 7 digit code on it. Then it'd click I had somewhere to input that code, and I'd walk back to the 7 digit lock and punch the code in. This wasn't satisfying to solve and it sadly makes up a majority of the puzzle's solutions.

There were still a few really good puzzles, especially the game's "main" one. Solving that made me wish the rest of the game's big puzzles were that complex, but nothing else even comes close.

There are parts of the game that are downright tedious. The game has manual saves and in certain sections you can get game overs. There are save points everywhere and you know when you'll encounter potential game overs, but this makes those sections feel especially pointless.

I might be a dumbass for running into an extremely slow moving enemy without saving, but the punishment of losing progress feels too harsh and the tension this provides isn't worth it. Plus the game randomizes a good chunk of puzzles, so I found myself having to resolve some after dying because the solution changed upon reloading.

Can't say much without spoiling it but the story fell flat for me and failed to have any impact. I think it's presented in an interesting way throughout the game but the actual climax is lacking.