TeaFan556
73 Reviews liked by TeaFan556
Rhythm Heaven Fever
2011
I have never seen a game so obvious being about just having fun and succeeding in that goal in the best ways possible
Plants vs. Zombies
2009
There's something about PvZ that has so much charm that was never replicated ever again in the series. EA failed PopCap
Elite Beat Agents
2006
There are some strange rare design choices that cause minor moments of frustration, like one song constantly switching on and off between off-beat hits and another song that can overwhelm you with a flurry of notes right after an in-song cutscene, but in general, this game absolutely rules. It does a great job translating the song's lyrics and major beats into a firmly telegraphed form with the overlapping circles + lines that have to be traced as held notes, and they're all placed carefully in order to keep the chart and the player in-tune with the beat, perfect for the compact DS touchscreen. Admittingly it's not ideal relying on sheer score accrual over individual stage rankings to unlock the bonus stages, but it at least provides another incentive to master more difficult stages and the hardest settings when the thresholds are set that high. Either way, the game's charm is absolutely infectious and it never gets old watching three guys in suits and sunglasses dance away everyone's problems, no matter how minor they may be. Without a doubt, I can see myself coming back to push through the highest difficulty after clearing this on normal, so it's an easy recommendation despite some low points. I saw this advertised all over the place as a kid and can't believe it took me this long to finally try it out: hands down one of the best titles on the DS, and it's a real shame we don't see anything from iNiS anymore.
EarthBound
1994
I dug up a review/piece I wrote about Earthbound in 2017 on my old blog. I'd like to post it here:
"What does Earthbound mean to you?
In Itoi’s interview regarding Earthbound’s U.S. re-release on the Wii U Virtual Console, he looks back on Earthbound and describes his views on it now as a playground he threw stuff in for himself and everyone else to play in, and that everyone takes something completely different away from these bits and bobs he's filled it with. A communal sort-of game, in which children make up stories and ideas as they go along and put it right in with the rest of the make-believe. When you have a group of friends in a playground, kids will often enter and leave as their parents drop them off and pick them up, and little by little the stories the group goes on changes as children come and go. Between zombies, aliens, the future, and whatever else kids either think about or wonder about their own world. And of course, the longer this goes on, eventually dark thoughts and feelings enter. Relationships form, and people realize things about themselves and each other.
A lot of the spirit of a shapeshifting make-believe can be found in the game’s stories themselves, as each town is going through some crazy problem, and as the heroes continue their adventure, each new scenario adds something completely separate to the mix of fictional situations, drawing from all sorts of American cultural iconography and imagery.
This is another reason the game is so interesting, it as an adventure through a self-parody of the American youth, the landscape of American suburban adventure (or as it is referred to in the game: “Eagleland”) with the coming-of-age spirit so prevalent in American fiction. But it is told through the mechanics, systems, and interface of classically Japanese role-playing games, namely Dragon Quest. The inclusion of (pseudo) first person battles (albeit influenced by psychedelic visuals, as they take over the background of each fight), a command menu, stat growth, and equipment/inventory all pulled from the Dragon Quest system. This combination of simultaneous parody of Japanese systems and American culture and iconography makes it a truly unique international cultural creation.
In addition to this, the localization of the game lends itself very much to the identity of Earthbound. Much of the Japanese humor that would have been lost in translation is rewritten, but still preserves the wit and verbal/deadpan tone of the original. The octopus statue blocking your way in a valley is replaced with a pencil, to allow for the invention of the iconic “Pencil Eraser” (Just don’t use it in a pencil store!), a now staple joke of the game, with which the identity of the American version of the game just wouldn’t be the same without. Of course, the “Eraser Eraser” continuation of the joke found later in the game acts as an even better secondary punchline to the same joke.
Much of the game often feels like a rambling collection of jokes, ideas, and views on the world. Nothing is quite told boringly or without clear authorial perspective. It brings to mind the sort of writing that books like Cat’s Cradle used, in which Vonnegut described as each chapter being a small chip of the whole book, and each chip is a little joke in and of its own.
The U.S. release, in specific, is the Earthbound I think of so fondly when I think of the game. And I find that name so fitting as opposed to its Japanese name.
Earthbound.
Despite all the adventuring, all the crazy, wacky, surreal stories you learn and experience, even with the threat and exposure to extraterrestrial life within the game, your characters, your experiences, everything you do is very much bound to the planet Earth. Every idea in the game, every character you meet, makes up one grand image of the world that the game, in essence, is presenting to you as you explore it with your d-pad.
The NPC’s of the game are some of the most iconic in any, and the reason for that is that their dialogue is written so unpredictably and humorously, but yet so truthful to their representations of their roles as humans. A businessman in Earthbound will not sound like a businessman you meet on the street. He will sound like a caricature of what a businessman would sound like, knowing that he’s a businessman in this world of hundreds of other people and hundreds of other types of people. And in knowing that, he has found joy and laughter understanding his place. Each character is a figment of themselves in the eyes of a child innocently wandering around.
There is a famous English saying, “it takes all sorts (to make a world)”, that is often used to understand strangeness or foreignness in the world and in people. People often use it when they find something difficult to understand, because of how strange and foreign it might be, so they make the claim that the world must be so big, that it must require all sorts of strangeness and foreignness and things of all sorts of manners hard to understand, for it to exist as big as it does.
Earthbound, to me at least, is like a literal, humorous depiction of that phrase. Every character, every strange, surreal person that appears so plain, has to be there to make up this world. This Earth that we are all bound to."
If you read it all, thank you
"What does Earthbound mean to you?
In Itoi’s interview regarding Earthbound’s U.S. re-release on the Wii U Virtual Console, he looks back on Earthbound and describes his views on it now as a playground he threw stuff in for himself and everyone else to play in, and that everyone takes something completely different away from these bits and bobs he's filled it with. A communal sort-of game, in which children make up stories and ideas as they go along and put it right in with the rest of the make-believe. When you have a group of friends in a playground, kids will often enter and leave as their parents drop them off and pick them up, and little by little the stories the group goes on changes as children come and go. Between zombies, aliens, the future, and whatever else kids either think about or wonder about their own world. And of course, the longer this goes on, eventually dark thoughts and feelings enter. Relationships form, and people realize things about themselves and each other.
A lot of the spirit of a shapeshifting make-believe can be found in the game’s stories themselves, as each town is going through some crazy problem, and as the heroes continue their adventure, each new scenario adds something completely separate to the mix of fictional situations, drawing from all sorts of American cultural iconography and imagery.
This is another reason the game is so interesting, it as an adventure through a self-parody of the American youth, the landscape of American suburban adventure (or as it is referred to in the game: “Eagleland”) with the coming-of-age spirit so prevalent in American fiction. But it is told through the mechanics, systems, and interface of classically Japanese role-playing games, namely Dragon Quest. The inclusion of (pseudo) first person battles (albeit influenced by psychedelic visuals, as they take over the background of each fight), a command menu, stat growth, and equipment/inventory all pulled from the Dragon Quest system. This combination of simultaneous parody of Japanese systems and American culture and iconography makes it a truly unique international cultural creation.
In addition to this, the localization of the game lends itself very much to the identity of Earthbound. Much of the Japanese humor that would have been lost in translation is rewritten, but still preserves the wit and verbal/deadpan tone of the original. The octopus statue blocking your way in a valley is replaced with a pencil, to allow for the invention of the iconic “Pencil Eraser” (Just don’t use it in a pencil store!), a now staple joke of the game, with which the identity of the American version of the game just wouldn’t be the same without. Of course, the “Eraser Eraser” continuation of the joke found later in the game acts as an even better secondary punchline to the same joke.
Much of the game often feels like a rambling collection of jokes, ideas, and views on the world. Nothing is quite told boringly or without clear authorial perspective. It brings to mind the sort of writing that books like Cat’s Cradle used, in which Vonnegut described as each chapter being a small chip of the whole book, and each chip is a little joke in and of its own.
The U.S. release, in specific, is the Earthbound I think of so fondly when I think of the game. And I find that name so fitting as opposed to its Japanese name.
Earthbound.
Despite all the adventuring, all the crazy, wacky, surreal stories you learn and experience, even with the threat and exposure to extraterrestrial life within the game, your characters, your experiences, everything you do is very much bound to the planet Earth. Every idea in the game, every character you meet, makes up one grand image of the world that the game, in essence, is presenting to you as you explore it with your d-pad.
The NPC’s of the game are some of the most iconic in any, and the reason for that is that their dialogue is written so unpredictably and humorously, but yet so truthful to their representations of their roles as humans. A businessman in Earthbound will not sound like a businessman you meet on the street. He will sound like a caricature of what a businessman would sound like, knowing that he’s a businessman in this world of hundreds of other people and hundreds of other types of people. And in knowing that, he has found joy and laughter understanding his place. Each character is a figment of themselves in the eyes of a child innocently wandering around.
There is a famous English saying, “it takes all sorts (to make a world)”, that is often used to understand strangeness or foreignness in the world and in people. People often use it when they find something difficult to understand, because of how strange and foreign it might be, so they make the claim that the world must be so big, that it must require all sorts of strangeness and foreignness and things of all sorts of manners hard to understand, for it to exist as big as it does.
Earthbound, to me at least, is like a literal, humorous depiction of that phrase. Every character, every strange, surreal person that appears so plain, has to be there to make up this world. This Earth that we are all bound to."
If you read it all, thank you
Disco Elysium is undeniably one of the most concentrated, and achieved, works to focus on individual introspection on the most granular level. It’s clear about it from the get go, it begins with a typical RPG character builder, then an inner dialogue, with the background of a pitch black screen, then the first steps in the game in a cramped hotel room, where the inner voices will be your first companions, and finally the first long dialogue tree being established with, of course, a mirror. There is an important detail revealed in this first contact, the main character doesn’t remember anything, not even his own name. If there is not a memory, not a past, only one thing remains, the current self. The absence and rediscovery of identity flow in a perpetual conversation from our protagonist to the whole of Martinaise and back.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
Pick Pac-Land when playing Smash with friends!!! The looks on their faces will be epic!!!!!
Fallout 3
2008
Pip-boy is dead. Now, I am Pip-Man.
My first playthrough of Fallout 3 was entirely mod-free, so I’ll be reviewing it through that lens. Strap on your Pip-Boys, grab your Todd Howard collectible bobble head, and follow me into the wasteland!
It is no overstatement to say that in 2008, Fallout 3 changed the course of the entire video games industry, rerouting seemingly every project in development that may have been a linear game into an open world adventure. Oblivion was great and all, but what Fallout 3 did with its open world was unprecedented, even in Grand Theft Auto III (often credited as the father of the genre). Followed by two other open world hits, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, this game proved that players didn’t need or necessarily even want direction in their video games. Go anywhere, do anything. It just works.
The game begins with a quick history of what happened to the world — in 2077, the Chinese dropped bombs on the US, we returned fire, blah blah blah world is ended in a nuclear holocaust. The world of Fallout isn’t our own, though; it’s a very different one in which the transistor was never invented, cars run on nuclear energy, and 50s Americana vibes dominate popular culture. Suddenly, you’re born! (Don’t feel too bad about being born. It happens to the best of us).
Your father, Liam Neeson, pulls you from your mother’s womb as you enter this exciting new world of nuclear mutants and wasteland horrors. Your mother dies in childbirth, and your Liam Neeson dad raises you in the safety of Vault 101, one of the few underground safe havens that protects from the creatures on the surface. Your best friend, Amata, is the daughter of the Overseer, the tyrannical leader of the vault. You go through some typical growing up stuff, from baby to prepubescent teen to a grown ass 19 year old. You see some glimpses of the trials and tribulations of growing up, choosing a career, and getting bullied. Tunnel Snakes rule! This whole section is quite interesting but only lasts an hour at most, so hold on to your hat and we’ll get you out into the open world in just a bit.
Like I said, in 2008 this was a literal game changer. Leaving the vault to chase after your missing father, you step out into the world for the first time and see the expanse of the Capital Wasteland. The visuals have not aged well, but a few mods will definitely make it more bearable. I won’t get too much farther into the story of Fallout 3, of which there isn’t much. I want to focus on the world. This game, much like Skyrim, is a sandbox for you to build your own post-apocalyptic story.
There isn’t much of an overarching objective beyond “Find your dad.” There’s one simple reason I still praise this game design to this day: “Find your dad” is exactly the right balance between urgent and trivial. Most open world RPGs, including most of Bethesda’s, suffer from creating a main objective that is so urgent that if you truly want to role play you can’t do any side quests. There isn’t time for exploring when the Dragon God is attacking villages or your son has been kidnapped by the Institute. But your dad, a seasoned wastelander and capable doctor, has wandered outside of his own volition. He’ll be fine on his own, but I still want to find him. But if I stop here and check out Paradise Falls… well, it’s not a big deal.
Fallout 3 features some of the most interesting quests in RPG history. I don’t want to spoil them, but look out for Tranquility Lane, The Mechanist vs. the Ant-Agonizer, Oasis, and Our Little Secret, among others. There are less quests than you might be used to in other open world games, but each quest is a lot more substantial than you’d anticipate, all of them with multiple branching paths and conclusions. Each quest comes to you pretty organically through conversation, environmental clues, or just overhearing something interesting at the local bar. Fallout 3 features a Karma system that disappears from later games, which works just as it sounds. Do something bad and you lose karma, do something good and gain karma. Karma is said to influence events around you and determine how some NPCs interact with you, so stop stealing stuff! Or don’t.
The music is amazing. Inon Zur is as purposeful as always, matching ambient soundscapes to the marching rhythms of war. The main theme is nothing short of iconic, and is still the main theme of the Fallout franchise today. Dun dunnnn dunnnnnnnnn
Although not as fleshed out as the characters in Fallout 4 or NV, Fallout 3 does feature some great characters to team up with. Among the companions, I stuck with Fawkes the super genius Supermutant and Dogmeat, my loyal mutt from the junkyard for the majority of the game. Other characters like Charon, king of the Ghouls, Sierra Petrovita, Curator of the First National Nuka Cola Museum, and the residents of the all-child city of Little Lamplight round out a cast of interesting people to meet. The dialogue is quite well written as well, and conversations are interesting and not something you’re skipping through to get to the “good stuff.” Conversations are, for the most part, the good stuff. Sierra was my first video game wife. Well, you can’t marry her, but we’re all just doing a make pretend here.
The gun play is bad. I don’t have a lot else to say. It’s clunky and it feels bad to shoot. There’s no way to reliably aim your gun in this game that is dependent on guns. VATS is essentially a lock-on system using AP (Action Points) and is the best way to ensure you’re doing any damage to enemies. You can also pick which body part to hit with your shots, and crippling specific body parts is the most strategic way to win fights. Cripple legs to immobilize enemies, or cripple arms to make them drop their weapons. Be aware there is weapon degradation ! But no crafting needed, stop by any merchant and pay them to repair your weapons and armor. I recommend a melee build, this game is a good bit easier with a Shishkebab. The shooting has aged terribly, but again that’s not the good part of the game. VATS is a clever holdover of the combat from the first two games, sitting somewhere between turn-based and live combat.
The settings are amazing. Oasis is my favorite, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just head north, you’ll get there. Paradise Falls, the slave city, is very neat for a city built entirely of junk. Little Lamplight is a town of all children and entirely subterranean. Seeing the 70 story Tenpenny Tower in the middle of the desert for the first time is a wonder I will never forget. Rivet City is a whole city build into a dilapidated aircraft carrier parked right on the river. Underworld is a secret city of ghouls trapped underground. Visit the proud Republic of Dave. And when you see the White House in shambles, the Washington monument crumbling… it makes you feel something (if you’re American). It’s all so dismal, wonderful, and hopeless at the same time.
And if you’re unfamiliar with Fallout, the monsters will blow your mind. Fallout has always had some of the best monsters in video games, so this isn’t surprisng, but some of them are legitimately scary while others are simply baffling. Supermutants and ghouls are all well and good, but let’s hang out with a centaur sometime. Whenever I look at it I remember how far we have strayed from God’s light.
More than anything, this game lets you explore. You can go far and wide, or stay on the short and narrow. Care about the story or don’t. It matters exactly as much as you want it to. Find the people, go to the places, shoot the stuff, don’t shoot the stuff, I don’t care. Just go. Any direction you please.
Fallout 3 is a wonderful and depressing trip into post apocalyptic America. Go literally anywhere and do literally anything you please. If that’s scary to you, the main quest will take you all over the map. But I encourage you to stick to the road less traveled- that is to say, don’t follow the roads. Fight for good or evil, for the Brotherhood or the Enclave, for justice or chaos. Just make sure to allow yourself to feel that freedom. They keep telling you that war never changes, but more importantly you’ll find that in some terrifying ways America never changes, either.
My first playthrough of Fallout 3 was entirely mod-free, so I’ll be reviewing it through that lens. Strap on your Pip-Boys, grab your Todd Howard collectible bobble head, and follow me into the wasteland!
It is no overstatement to say that in 2008, Fallout 3 changed the course of the entire video games industry, rerouting seemingly every project in development that may have been a linear game into an open world adventure. Oblivion was great and all, but what Fallout 3 did with its open world was unprecedented, even in Grand Theft Auto III (often credited as the father of the genre). Followed by two other open world hits, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, this game proved that players didn’t need or necessarily even want direction in their video games. Go anywhere, do anything. It just works.
The game begins with a quick history of what happened to the world — in 2077, the Chinese dropped bombs on the US, we returned fire, blah blah blah world is ended in a nuclear holocaust. The world of Fallout isn’t our own, though; it’s a very different one in which the transistor was never invented, cars run on nuclear energy, and 50s Americana vibes dominate popular culture. Suddenly, you’re born! (Don’t feel too bad about being born. It happens to the best of us).
Your father, Liam Neeson, pulls you from your mother’s womb as you enter this exciting new world of nuclear mutants and wasteland horrors. Your mother dies in childbirth, and your Liam Neeson dad raises you in the safety of Vault 101, one of the few underground safe havens that protects from the creatures on the surface. Your best friend, Amata, is the daughter of the Overseer, the tyrannical leader of the vault. You go through some typical growing up stuff, from baby to prepubescent teen to a grown ass 19 year old. You see some glimpses of the trials and tribulations of growing up, choosing a career, and getting bullied. Tunnel Snakes rule! This whole section is quite interesting but only lasts an hour at most, so hold on to your hat and we’ll get you out into the open world in just a bit.
Like I said, in 2008 this was a literal game changer. Leaving the vault to chase after your missing father, you step out into the world for the first time and see the expanse of the Capital Wasteland. The visuals have not aged well, but a few mods will definitely make it more bearable. I won’t get too much farther into the story of Fallout 3, of which there isn’t much. I want to focus on the world. This game, much like Skyrim, is a sandbox for you to build your own post-apocalyptic story.
There isn’t much of an overarching objective beyond “Find your dad.” There’s one simple reason I still praise this game design to this day: “Find your dad” is exactly the right balance between urgent and trivial. Most open world RPGs, including most of Bethesda’s, suffer from creating a main objective that is so urgent that if you truly want to role play you can’t do any side quests. There isn’t time for exploring when the Dragon God is attacking villages or your son has been kidnapped by the Institute. But your dad, a seasoned wastelander and capable doctor, has wandered outside of his own volition. He’ll be fine on his own, but I still want to find him. But if I stop here and check out Paradise Falls… well, it’s not a big deal.
Fallout 3 features some of the most interesting quests in RPG history. I don’t want to spoil them, but look out for Tranquility Lane, The Mechanist vs. the Ant-Agonizer, Oasis, and Our Little Secret, among others. There are less quests than you might be used to in other open world games, but each quest is a lot more substantial than you’d anticipate, all of them with multiple branching paths and conclusions. Each quest comes to you pretty organically through conversation, environmental clues, or just overhearing something interesting at the local bar. Fallout 3 features a Karma system that disappears from later games, which works just as it sounds. Do something bad and you lose karma, do something good and gain karma. Karma is said to influence events around you and determine how some NPCs interact with you, so stop stealing stuff! Or don’t.
The music is amazing. Inon Zur is as purposeful as always, matching ambient soundscapes to the marching rhythms of war. The main theme is nothing short of iconic, and is still the main theme of the Fallout franchise today. Dun dunnnn dunnnnnnnnn
Although not as fleshed out as the characters in Fallout 4 or NV, Fallout 3 does feature some great characters to team up with. Among the companions, I stuck with Fawkes the super genius Supermutant and Dogmeat, my loyal mutt from the junkyard for the majority of the game. Other characters like Charon, king of the Ghouls, Sierra Petrovita, Curator of the First National Nuka Cola Museum, and the residents of the all-child city of Little Lamplight round out a cast of interesting people to meet. The dialogue is quite well written as well, and conversations are interesting and not something you’re skipping through to get to the “good stuff.” Conversations are, for the most part, the good stuff. Sierra was my first video game wife. Well, you can’t marry her, but we’re all just doing a make pretend here.
The gun play is bad. I don’t have a lot else to say. It’s clunky and it feels bad to shoot. There’s no way to reliably aim your gun in this game that is dependent on guns. VATS is essentially a lock-on system using AP (Action Points) and is the best way to ensure you’re doing any damage to enemies. You can also pick which body part to hit with your shots, and crippling specific body parts is the most strategic way to win fights. Cripple legs to immobilize enemies, or cripple arms to make them drop their weapons. Be aware there is weapon degradation ! But no crafting needed, stop by any merchant and pay them to repair your weapons and armor. I recommend a melee build, this game is a good bit easier with a Shishkebab. The shooting has aged terribly, but again that’s not the good part of the game. VATS is a clever holdover of the combat from the first two games, sitting somewhere between turn-based and live combat.
The settings are amazing. Oasis is my favorite, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just head north, you’ll get there. Paradise Falls, the slave city, is very neat for a city built entirely of junk. Little Lamplight is a town of all children and entirely subterranean. Seeing the 70 story Tenpenny Tower in the middle of the desert for the first time is a wonder I will never forget. Rivet City is a whole city build into a dilapidated aircraft carrier parked right on the river. Underworld is a secret city of ghouls trapped underground. Visit the proud Republic of Dave. And when you see the White House in shambles, the Washington monument crumbling… it makes you feel something (if you’re American). It’s all so dismal, wonderful, and hopeless at the same time.
And if you’re unfamiliar with Fallout, the monsters will blow your mind. Fallout has always had some of the best monsters in video games, so this isn’t surprisng, but some of them are legitimately scary while others are simply baffling. Supermutants and ghouls are all well and good, but let’s hang out with a centaur sometime. Whenever I look at it I remember how far we have strayed from God’s light.
More than anything, this game lets you explore. You can go far and wide, or stay on the short and narrow. Care about the story or don’t. It matters exactly as much as you want it to. Find the people, go to the places, shoot the stuff, don’t shoot the stuff, I don’t care. Just go. Any direction you please.
Fallout 3 is a wonderful and depressing trip into post apocalyptic America. Go literally anywhere and do literally anything you please. If that’s scary to you, the main quest will take you all over the map. But I encourage you to stick to the road less traveled- that is to say, don’t follow the roads. Fight for good or evil, for the Brotherhood or the Enclave, for justice or chaos. Just make sure to allow yourself to feel that freedom. They keep telling you that war never changes, but more importantly you’ll find that in some terrifying ways America never changes, either.
Mario Party 9
2012
i’ll be honest i’m a pretty big mario party snob, so imagine my surprise when i beat this game and thought “wow that was good”! i think most mario party fans hate the car, and it’s generally for good reason. it feels a lot more luck dependent on an already luck dependent game. it’s also a lot more snowball-y and can feel much more frustrating overall. that’s all to say, i surprisingly don’t mind it in the context of there’s 10 other mario party games that are standard so i don’t really mind a big change in the formula here! i think the standard formula is just very clearly superior but the car is a unique style that along with all of the board gimmick truly isn’t that bad!
speaking of the boards, they’re almost all solid! i really like how they look (aside from magma mine that map is kind of disgusting overall) and they have some cute gimmicks throughout! the captain events and bosses are the big new things and they’re all pretty cool! the bosses especially are a cool idea that i really liked, there’s a good mix of luck and skill on them, i do kinda wish there wasn’t a “captain” bonus on them though. my stand outs were bomb-omb factory and blooper beach.
the mini games are really really good here. one of the best collections in the series easily! the only downside is no 2v2 mini games. there’s a couple bowser jr mini games that sort of replace them, and they are pretty fun but i would have preferred bowser jr games to replace 1v3s maybe. 1v3 is pretty unbalanced generally and 2v2s lead to some of the best in my experience. that doesn’t take away from one of the strongest free for all/battle mini game collections in the series though! peak precision rocks and is one of my all time favorite mini games ever. the 10 perspective swap games were cool too, although some were more interesting than others. honestly one of the worst parts of the mini games is the new “winner” screen, it removes the charm of the little cutscene of what happens after a game for a lot of them and it’s a bummer.
like i said at the start, i’m a pretty big mario party snob but i had a surprisingly solid time here! it doesn’t live up to the best of the standard formula, but it’s a solid unique spin on the series with a great mini game collection. i would never pick it over something like 2 or 6 or even superstars, but it’s a good time!
speaking of the boards, they’re almost all solid! i really like how they look (aside from magma mine that map is kind of disgusting overall) and they have some cute gimmicks throughout! the captain events and bosses are the big new things and they’re all pretty cool! the bosses especially are a cool idea that i really liked, there’s a good mix of luck and skill on them, i do kinda wish there wasn’t a “captain” bonus on them though. my stand outs were bomb-omb factory and blooper beach.
the mini games are really really good here. one of the best collections in the series easily! the only downside is no 2v2 mini games. there’s a couple bowser jr mini games that sort of replace them, and they are pretty fun but i would have preferred bowser jr games to replace 1v3s maybe. 1v3 is pretty unbalanced generally and 2v2s lead to some of the best in my experience. that doesn’t take away from one of the strongest free for all/battle mini game collections in the series though! peak precision rocks and is one of my all time favorite mini games ever. the 10 perspective swap games were cool too, although some were more interesting than others. honestly one of the worst parts of the mini games is the new “winner” screen, it removes the charm of the little cutscene of what happens after a game for a lot of them and it’s a bummer.
like i said at the start, i’m a pretty big mario party snob but i had a surprisingly solid time here! it doesn’t live up to the best of the standard formula, but it’s a solid unique spin on the series with a great mini game collection. i would never pick it over something like 2 or 6 or even superstars, but it’s a good time!
(6-year-old's review, typed by his dad)
I like how it's got lots of games inside one game. My favorite is Mancala.
I like how it's got lots of games inside one game. My favorite is Mancala.
Miitopia
2016
waited 30 hours for the gameplay to get even remotely good. it didn’t. the only thing this game has going for it is the fact that it’s decently charming. other than that you’ll have a completely dogshit job system that’s tied to your players level for some reason rather than being it’s own separate thing, actively discouraging trying out new jobs due to the fact that grinding will be mandatory. there’s the atrociously boring combat where you’ll only ever get to use your main character, making the job system feel even worse considering you can’t actually do direct commands for party members and just hope they’ll do something beneficial. it’s so needlessly limited and i seriously can’t comprehend why there’s not even the option to control party members. the “dungeons” that make early NES rpg dungeon designs look like fun and exciting areas to explore through due to just how unfathomably boring they are. walk a straight line, occasionally choose a different pathway, rinse and repeat for the next 30+ hours. there’s little to no variety here whatsoever, and even when sped up it feels like such a slog because of how fucking boring it all is. and even more stupid shit littered throughout the game to sour the experience. this game is actually so awful it’s not even funny, it genuinely confuses me as to this game seems to be held in such high regards.
My favorite game in my favorite series. RE4 Wii Edition is the first RE game I ever played. I've played this game on PS3, PS4, & PS5, but consider the Wii version with the motion controls the best version. Motion controls were perfectly integrated and it had all the additional content like Mercenaries, Separate Ways, and Assignment Ada.
This is action horror. Definitely moves in a different direction from previous games in the series, but this still has enough horror aspects to be called horror. I've heard from multiple people who have played this game that don't play too many horror games that they consider it scary.
Gameplay, environment, and enemy design are A+. Final Boss could've been more memorable. Shifting the needle more towards horror could have worked for me as well. But this game is perfect for me and probably the most replayable game of all time.
This is action horror. Definitely moves in a different direction from previous games in the series, but this still has enough horror aspects to be called horror. I've heard from multiple people who have played this game that don't play too many horror games that they consider it scary.
Gameplay, environment, and enemy design are A+. Final Boss could've been more memorable. Shifting the needle more towards horror could have worked for me as well. But this game is perfect for me and probably the most replayable game of all time.
The definitive way to play RE4 and I still won't hear otherwise. The wii-mote aiming and WAGGLAN were essential parts of the experience, and this was also the first time I personally played through the whole game start to finish. Love RE4 to death and the Wii enhancements were the perfect compliment.
best version of RE4, period
Peak fiction. A game so good that all of its cinematic elements were endlessly parroted by western games for a decade, almost none of which reached the same emotional height. Also another contender for the 'nunchuck games that actually feel good to play' box.
Mario & Luigi Superstar saga is the first of a long lineage of Mario & Luigi RPGs that were both faithful sequels to Super Mario RPG on SNES, but also a variation of the Paper Mario RPG series that took concepts from both. Since Mario & Luigi games were always released on handheld consoles, it's reasonable to assume M&L as I'll refer to it from here on, was meant as the portable RPG series, while Paper Mario would be the home console series... at least until Sticker Star. With that in mind, M&L might come off as an afterthought or not nearly as ambitious or high quality comparatively, but not only does it succeed expectations, it's incredibly transformative of the Mario world and really sets itself apart from its contemporaries.
M&L Superstar Saga is as ambitious as it is transformative. The emphasis of Superstar saga is the simultaneous control of Mario & Luigi, and how they put their skills together to traverse and clear puzzles, or separate and tackle objectives with their own more limited skillsets. While ultimately the pacing can be reduced to a crawl in many sections requiring constant "Bros. Moves", the level design is very proactive to keep these capabilities in mind which allows for more creative concepts in level design to keep it interesting and unique. Cycling through the Bros. Moves can be a chore, and swapping the positions of Mario & Luigi grows tiresome especially when it's required to do multiple times in one section, which is probably why the next few entries do away with it, to remove intrusive requirements for progression. With that said, all the animations and interactions Mario & Luigi have with each other using these abilities are incredibly charming and pretty funny, especially if you don't have a specific ability yet and attempt to use the action combination, you can see Mario or Luigi get rather angry with the other, which I really like.
The story and general world building of Superstar Saga are simple, but present some very interesting ideas. A neighboring kingdom of the Mushroom Kingdom, BeanBean Kingdom pays Princess Peach a visit in an attempt to enforce relations and presumably peace. All for it to be a ploy for Cackletta, a rather infamous individual in BeanBean Kingdom, to steal Princess Peach's voice for undisclosed reasons at the start. It's incredibly interesting to have a villain other than Bowser to be the catalyst for Mario & Luigi's adventure, even having Bowser take on a supporting role much like in Mario RPG, unfortunately not playable this time around. While I could tear apart the inciting incident about how the implication of a neighboring kingdom harming another that could easily lead to misunderstandings, war, and many other ugly consequences, I won't because Mario isn't that deep of a franchise, nor would it exactly fit with Mario's upbeat energy and vibe, so we'll continue on. Mario, Luigi (against his will), and Bowser set out for BeanBean Kingdom to stop Cackletta and retrieve Princess Peach's voice, this all goes awry when Fawful, Cackletta's... understudy? Minion? Friend? I don't know, but anyway, Fawful stops them in their tracks, and the real adventure begins from there. While I won't delve into everything here, the story presents a lot of concepts the Mario series has never tackled before which I liked. One thing that really stood out to me is the rather dark undertones this game has, there's definitely a few settings and incidents that come off rather grim or disturbing which was a fantastic subversion for Mario and how the game itself is presented.
Exploring BeanBean Kingdom is great since it presents a lot of settings that haven't been in a Mario game before, but do play it safe with staple environments like a desert and some woods, though the history and purpose of these settings is fleshed out enough and significant enough to Beanbean Kingdom to make them stand out and feel justified. There's also some interesting concepts of Mushroom Kingdom immigration which I find particularly fascinating and wish they delved into that more, but I'm glad it was there at all. As I mentioned, BeanBean Kingdom has extensive history, and you get to go through many historical areas such as ruins, castles, and forgotten structures it really helps the setting of BeanBean Kingdom feel like it's existed for a long time, and has significance in the Mario World without ever being acknowledged or explorable until this game. While it can get a bit repetitive at times, I very much enjoyed exploring these areas and gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for the setting, since the developers really tried to do everything they could to accomplish that, and I think they definitely did it well.
Combat is very creative while taking notes from other Mario RPG's. Contrary to Mario RPG and Paper Mario that give player input on lowering damage by guarding at the right time, Mario & Luigi takes this concept and expands upon it. In M&L you can potentially avoid taking a single hit of damage through the entire game if you understand enemy moves, timings, and patterns well enough. Rather than guard, Maro & Luigi can avoid damage by jumping, and remove projectiles or other obstructions with hammers, they can even attack the enemy during their turn by jumping on them or smashing them with your hammer during some of their attacks. Not only does this keep combat constantly engaging and forces you to always pay attention, but it rewards mastery and skill remarkably well which is a huge plus. It could inadvertently do the opposite as well though, where the game can come off as too easy and be incredibly unengaging because there's no stake or risk in fights if you never take damage. This is remedied a bit by the fact most enemies in Superstar Saga hit like trucks, especially later on, and attacks become harder to react to with odd timings, wind-ups, and difficult visual tells you need to pay attention to or else you're in a world of trouble. Not to mention the status effects in this game like tripping prevent you from dodging the next incoming attack, which can be devastating depending on the circumstance. It's... an odd system, but I think Superstar Saga does a great job at balancing it and gradually increasing the difficulty overtime to not make it feel inconsequential.
M&L has a big emphasis on timing with both counterattacks, but also regular attacking. This is very much like Mario RPG and Paper Mario where just before landing an attack, pressing the corresponding button will ensure your attack goes off correctly. Which, once again ensures the player is always focused and engaged with combat encounters so they can get through it quickly or optimally so they can progress the game. M&L takes it a step further with Bros. Attacks. While you're learning different traversal techniques outside of battles, those same techniques can be used in combat to perform very powerful attacks that require multiple different button inputs to pull off for a huge payoff of damage. Bros. Attacks require both Mario & Luigi, and each have different button combinations and timings you need to learn and master before utilizing them properly. The game does a fantastic job with the ability to make the Bros. Attacks easier to perform, but cost more BP (Bros. Points) to use, by slowing down the animation and showing the button prompts on screen. You can increase the difficulty of these moves which will decrease the amount of BP used, but the attack will move at normal speed and with/without button prompts depending on the difficulty you selected for it. I love this idea a lot since it feels like a tutorial while still giving the player's a reward with a higher cost, while mastery of the move only increases the rewards with a lower cost. There's an additional layer to all this as well, if you use a specific Bros. Attack enough times, the move will gain an "advanced" variation which is much harder to perform, but have additional benefits like stealing items, giving status elements, or simply doing more damage. No other M&L game does this, or really any other Mario RPG, so its exclusivity, while sad, is a huge boon this game has going for it. The amount of learning and mastery of these moves only to become harder and more rewarding is an incredible idea that never feels impossible to implement in your gameplay, but you also don't necessarily need to if you want to stick to the normal versions. To be frank, there's specific Bros. Attacks that are so over-tuned anyway, you'll probably end up using them the entire playthrough, which is unfortunate because it sort of defeats the point of all the variety and evolving moves, but it's still a very much welcomed addition.
Sound design and music are phenomenal here as well. There's a ton of upbeat tracks, a good amount of ambiance, good climactic music, everything you need is here. Nothing really stands out in a bad way except a few voice lines that sound a bit off, but other than that, nothing really stood out as bad or distracting.
Superstar saga impresses me as the first outing for this series. A lot of my criticisms are either fixed or at least addressed in later entries, the prospect of a new kingdom, characters, antagonists, and concepts for the Mario world are very much welcome and executed incredibly well while feeling very creative. BeanBean Kingdom feels like it really belongs with an extensive history that is fleshed out throughout the game while exploring it, while also slightly dipping its toes into Mushroom Kingdom immigration and general relations enough to satisfy me as well even if I did want a bit more of that. The combat is very innovative with a strong emphasis of mastery that rewards players constantly and feels very satisfying to master. Bros. Attacks having built-in tutorials for a higher resource cost so you can familiarize yourself with it to increase the difficulty while lowering the cost is great, it gets even better when those attacks get harder variations later with even more rewards to further encourage mastery is honestly something I want to see more of in RPG's 100%. I highly recommend this game since it's very creative and has a lot of unique concepts that you won't really find anywhere else. My largest criticism is really just some of the level design involving Bros. Moves to progress, and constantly having to switch positions to use certain ones can be annoying, but otherwise, everything here is very well done. I suppose my next review will be Mario Wonder in a week or two depending how long it takes, so please look forward to that as well. Thank you all for reading!
M&L Superstar Saga is as ambitious as it is transformative. The emphasis of Superstar saga is the simultaneous control of Mario & Luigi, and how they put their skills together to traverse and clear puzzles, or separate and tackle objectives with their own more limited skillsets. While ultimately the pacing can be reduced to a crawl in many sections requiring constant "Bros. Moves", the level design is very proactive to keep these capabilities in mind which allows for more creative concepts in level design to keep it interesting and unique. Cycling through the Bros. Moves can be a chore, and swapping the positions of Mario & Luigi grows tiresome especially when it's required to do multiple times in one section, which is probably why the next few entries do away with it, to remove intrusive requirements for progression. With that said, all the animations and interactions Mario & Luigi have with each other using these abilities are incredibly charming and pretty funny, especially if you don't have a specific ability yet and attempt to use the action combination, you can see Mario or Luigi get rather angry with the other, which I really like.
The story and general world building of Superstar Saga are simple, but present some very interesting ideas. A neighboring kingdom of the Mushroom Kingdom, BeanBean Kingdom pays Princess Peach a visit in an attempt to enforce relations and presumably peace. All for it to be a ploy for Cackletta, a rather infamous individual in BeanBean Kingdom, to steal Princess Peach's voice for undisclosed reasons at the start. It's incredibly interesting to have a villain other than Bowser to be the catalyst for Mario & Luigi's adventure, even having Bowser take on a supporting role much like in Mario RPG, unfortunately not playable this time around. While I could tear apart the inciting incident about how the implication of a neighboring kingdom harming another that could easily lead to misunderstandings, war, and many other ugly consequences, I won't because Mario isn't that deep of a franchise, nor would it exactly fit with Mario's upbeat energy and vibe, so we'll continue on. Mario, Luigi (against his will), and Bowser set out for BeanBean Kingdom to stop Cackletta and retrieve Princess Peach's voice, this all goes awry when Fawful, Cackletta's... understudy? Minion? Friend? I don't know, but anyway, Fawful stops them in their tracks, and the real adventure begins from there. While I won't delve into everything here, the story presents a lot of concepts the Mario series has never tackled before which I liked. One thing that really stood out to me is the rather dark undertones this game has, there's definitely a few settings and incidents that come off rather grim or disturbing which was a fantastic subversion for Mario and how the game itself is presented.
Exploring BeanBean Kingdom is great since it presents a lot of settings that haven't been in a Mario game before, but do play it safe with staple environments like a desert and some woods, though the history and purpose of these settings is fleshed out enough and significant enough to Beanbean Kingdom to make them stand out and feel justified. There's also some interesting concepts of Mushroom Kingdom immigration which I find particularly fascinating and wish they delved into that more, but I'm glad it was there at all. As I mentioned, BeanBean Kingdom has extensive history, and you get to go through many historical areas such as ruins, castles, and forgotten structures it really helps the setting of BeanBean Kingdom feel like it's existed for a long time, and has significance in the Mario World without ever being acknowledged or explorable until this game. While it can get a bit repetitive at times, I very much enjoyed exploring these areas and gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for the setting, since the developers really tried to do everything they could to accomplish that, and I think they definitely did it well.
Combat is very creative while taking notes from other Mario RPG's. Contrary to Mario RPG and Paper Mario that give player input on lowering damage by guarding at the right time, Mario & Luigi takes this concept and expands upon it. In M&L you can potentially avoid taking a single hit of damage through the entire game if you understand enemy moves, timings, and patterns well enough. Rather than guard, Maro & Luigi can avoid damage by jumping, and remove projectiles or other obstructions with hammers, they can even attack the enemy during their turn by jumping on them or smashing them with your hammer during some of their attacks. Not only does this keep combat constantly engaging and forces you to always pay attention, but it rewards mastery and skill remarkably well which is a huge plus. It could inadvertently do the opposite as well though, where the game can come off as too easy and be incredibly unengaging because there's no stake or risk in fights if you never take damage. This is remedied a bit by the fact most enemies in Superstar Saga hit like trucks, especially later on, and attacks become harder to react to with odd timings, wind-ups, and difficult visual tells you need to pay attention to or else you're in a world of trouble. Not to mention the status effects in this game like tripping prevent you from dodging the next incoming attack, which can be devastating depending on the circumstance. It's... an odd system, but I think Superstar Saga does a great job at balancing it and gradually increasing the difficulty overtime to not make it feel inconsequential.
M&L has a big emphasis on timing with both counterattacks, but also regular attacking. This is very much like Mario RPG and Paper Mario where just before landing an attack, pressing the corresponding button will ensure your attack goes off correctly. Which, once again ensures the player is always focused and engaged with combat encounters so they can get through it quickly or optimally so they can progress the game. M&L takes it a step further with Bros. Attacks. While you're learning different traversal techniques outside of battles, those same techniques can be used in combat to perform very powerful attacks that require multiple different button inputs to pull off for a huge payoff of damage. Bros. Attacks require both Mario & Luigi, and each have different button combinations and timings you need to learn and master before utilizing them properly. The game does a fantastic job with the ability to make the Bros. Attacks easier to perform, but cost more BP (Bros. Points) to use, by slowing down the animation and showing the button prompts on screen. You can increase the difficulty of these moves which will decrease the amount of BP used, but the attack will move at normal speed and with/without button prompts depending on the difficulty you selected for it. I love this idea a lot since it feels like a tutorial while still giving the player's a reward with a higher cost, while mastery of the move only increases the rewards with a lower cost. There's an additional layer to all this as well, if you use a specific Bros. Attack enough times, the move will gain an "advanced" variation which is much harder to perform, but have additional benefits like stealing items, giving status elements, or simply doing more damage. No other M&L game does this, or really any other Mario RPG, so its exclusivity, while sad, is a huge boon this game has going for it. The amount of learning and mastery of these moves only to become harder and more rewarding is an incredible idea that never feels impossible to implement in your gameplay, but you also don't necessarily need to if you want to stick to the normal versions. To be frank, there's specific Bros. Attacks that are so over-tuned anyway, you'll probably end up using them the entire playthrough, which is unfortunate because it sort of defeats the point of all the variety and evolving moves, but it's still a very much welcomed addition.
Sound design and music are phenomenal here as well. There's a ton of upbeat tracks, a good amount of ambiance, good climactic music, everything you need is here. Nothing really stands out in a bad way except a few voice lines that sound a bit off, but other than that, nothing really stood out as bad or distracting.
Superstar saga impresses me as the first outing for this series. A lot of my criticisms are either fixed or at least addressed in later entries, the prospect of a new kingdom, characters, antagonists, and concepts for the Mario world are very much welcome and executed incredibly well while feeling very creative. BeanBean Kingdom feels like it really belongs with an extensive history that is fleshed out throughout the game while exploring it, while also slightly dipping its toes into Mushroom Kingdom immigration and general relations enough to satisfy me as well even if I did want a bit more of that. The combat is very innovative with a strong emphasis of mastery that rewards players constantly and feels very satisfying to master. Bros. Attacks having built-in tutorials for a higher resource cost so you can familiarize yourself with it to increase the difficulty while lowering the cost is great, it gets even better when those attacks get harder variations later with even more rewards to further encourage mastery is honestly something I want to see more of in RPG's 100%. I highly recommend this game since it's very creative and has a lot of unique concepts that you won't really find anywhere else. My largest criticism is really just some of the level design involving Bros. Moves to progress, and constantly having to switch positions to use certain ones can be annoying, but otherwise, everything here is very well done. I suppose my next review will be Mario Wonder in a week or two depending how long it takes, so please look forward to that as well. Thank you all for reading!