One of few 2023 releases I've played, and the only one I've actually bought (one is free and one was gifted). I'll be pushing reviews out for these in due course, and first up on the block is 2Spider2Man. I played through this one twice before collecting my thoughts for this review, yet I imagine this'll actually be the shortest review of the 2023 releases. But that doesn't make this a bad game by any means; in fact I really love this one!

If you loved the first game then you'll definitely get enjoyment from this one in some form. It's safe to say those of us who did love that first one have already gone out and played this by now, that won't encompass everyone though. With a huge positive to detail right off the bat: I feel with very few exceptions, the gameplay here is brilliant. It feels really good to control in and out of combat, the combat itself feels satisfying to learn and master, movement is a highlight I felt in particular of all things? Like, it's just one of those things that you can feel is really damn good. It definitely feels much improved upon from the first game in that regard... at least from my memory of the first game as it's been a hot minute, but the quick positive resonance with me is likely a good sign. On upgrades from the first game I feel the presentation is massively improved, and although still not without some slight gripes here and there (face models can look somewhat off to be specific) it never felt bad to me.

The story is where I overall felt very satisfied and constantly invested; a lot of heart to this one and a super strong emotional core, with genuinely impactful moments that remained with me. But I kind of felt on my first playthrough and especially noticed on my second playthrough that the pacing of this plot feels rather... unwieldly. It has a really strong start and keeps that strength for a little while before it simmers into some rather notable downtime, only to then rocket back up again and- oh, it's over. Now the length of the story by itself I don't find to be an issue as they still put in plenty of fantastic things in here. It's moreso what they do with the length of the story- and thus the way it's paced -that irked me a bit, with big story beats kind of being jumped between whilst feeling like it could've done with a bit more in the middle. Again these big points do get your attention and remain interesting, and it's not like there isn't development done outside of them; but what's here didn't feel like quite enough. I would've loved them to add a bit more, flesh out more of the characters and give us more of those lovely emotional moments... maybe I'm biased as a sappy fuck but, hey. I think the ending sequence lost a fair bit of steam too, and there's one simple change they could've made that would've given a MUCH more impactful experience imo, though I didn't hate it as-is. So really my main issue does come back to how they rocket through a lot of things, where I think we could've had a bit more. The plot itself I'd say rivals the first game for sure, I'm not quite sure if it surpasses it however. I'd have to go back and replay that one to make a conclusive statement.

On a last note regarding the writing I think I was somewhat disappointed by the way they handled one of the would-be major players, or rather I'm a little let down in how they did the same thing twice by hyping-up a character and using them to drive the plot before kind of just dropping them a little suddenly. And what we do get is actually a really good portrayal but I think, along with this being a repeat of them doing this with a villain, the conclusion came too soon; suddenly, as I just said. I think this again comes down to a pacing issue with the story overall, I found it more noticeable here as- again -it's a repeat offence in these games. I'll stress again that what we got is good despite them almost rushing the conclusion of this character.

There is lots of fun to be had here between the main story and side content, it all feels suitably Spider-Man and is thoroughly enjoyable to me in spite of my grievances with the way the main plot is paced. As someone who is huge on writing, enjoying stories in all forms of media and wishing to be a proper creative writer myself some day, I take it more to heart than most people perhaps will. Yet... repeating myself again now... I can look over the pacing funk for the most part, and take-in the strong moments this plot does consistently bring to the plate. I was slightly more critical of less overall side-content compared to the first game but I can understand to a degree that it might've been due to working with new technology and what have you; even though I feel like they really should've made it on par with the first game, I can get that development resources and time are absolutely a finite resource. Yet despite that, what I'm less forgiving of is how this game lacks some QOL features from the first game. Relatively simple options too, which is why I cannot let them get away without a mention. It's not a huge slight against the game as a whole- whilst it sucks these options are missing, they at least don't take away from the primary experience -but hard to not notice when. Again, they've been in these games before... NG+ was originally a patched-in option, sure, but that was also a month after launch and all the way back in 2018. I'd like to think that at least NG+ would've been an easy add for a 2023 game. Come on...

Despite my woes over the rocket fast pacing, the lack of content compared to the first game, and missing features that shouldn't have to have been removed, this was still a great time and I don't regret the purchase. This game has wonderful highs despite occasionally falling down an open sewer hole instead, I've really loved my time with this one and can see myself picking it back up for sure. However... I do find it hard to rate this above the first game; whilst there is still a hearty helping of stuff to do and a really good story is present, it does all lack a bit compared to the first game. In a vacuum this game would certainly be rated higher, but it's impossible to ignore how this is a sequel game. Not a 1.5 like Miles Morales, a full-blown sequel title. I do think it comes close to what came before but I can't in good faith say it surpasses it; this game 100% slays the first when it comes to the core gameplay, it is incredibly satisfying, always enjoyable, and hugely improves on the already fantastic original gameplay structure. Yet it's an improved formula with less content to explore it with, and again my grievances with the pacing of the story too.

This one is still very much worth your time, I do not regret having played this (heck, I played it twice and felt positively both times). At the same time though it's not quite beating the first game for me as a base experience. DLC could likely change this- provided they go ahead and give us some -and I'll definitely give that a look if they do. What's here is still really great though, I'll prop it up as a recommendation if you like what you've seen and know you're a fan of these games thus far. This was nearly a 4.5 rating from me and it still comes VERY close to that, so let it show how much I enjoy this and think highly of it despite the mentioned flaws!

This review was originally going to go up alongside my next 2023 one (wow I wonder what game that'll be...) but since the game in question got an update just this week, I'll pull it back for a bit to let my thoughts swirl and collect some more to account for the new content added. One big addition in particular probably makes it appropriate I release this one first anyways, and there will be a second accompanying review that I'll put out probably after that one? It'll be a rather quick glimpse so it could go up any time, but we'll see.

So, F-Zero. The Nintendo franchise a lot of people seem to want back yet so few people have actually played for themselves; and that's not saying "there isn't anyone who actually likes these games" because that's not true. But much like the meme of "Persona 5 fans never actually played their game" I would believe the same to hold true here. Legitimately of all the people I know who've heard of this franchise (in-person, online is obviously a different story) it's because of Captain Falcon in Smash Bros. And it's not really a surprise that that's the case, but every time I'd bring this series up it'd be a response of "Oh Captain Falcon is from that right?". And heck, even my own brother who grew-up around me playing this game recently called F-Zero 99 "Captain Falcon 99" because he forgot the name of the series. He's not a kid by the way... I'm getting off-track. F-Zero! I'm very big on this franchise and as I just spoiled in the preceding sentence, this is a series I grew-up with so I'm very much fond of it. And hell, I even got my start with it on this same game. The original F-Zero for Super Nintendo, a classic in my eyes and from a period when Nintendo wanted to give themselves a 'cooler' image. Fun fact they nearly had Captain Falcon smoke cigars and holy FUCK am I glad they never went ahead and did that, because whilst this series does have a different vibe to its settings than most other Nintendo franchises it's not totally foreign and that's what I love about a lot of their games.

So yes. Off the bat I am admittedly biased for this game; it's one I grew-up with and one I hold in a special place for personal reasons I'm not going to state to internet strangers. But it's a big nostalgia trip for me and full of comforting old-school feels as a result. I do always worry a bit coming back to this one as I'm never fully sure how much of my positive memory is from the game itself having marks of quality or my warm and fuzzy nostalgia brain associating it with good times in my life... thankfully, I can attest that this game is still pretty great across the board! Let's start with the presentation because fuck me sideways I still think this game looks pretty damn fantastic to this very day. They made super effective use of the Mode-7 capabilities to make the "3D" gameplay work with tracks still being uniquely identifiable and memorable between each other despite being primarily limited to a 2D plane. It always mindfucks me when I remember just how this game looks beneath its layers, and that's because they do such a good job at giving you a great feel and sense of scale to the worlds here. The tracks all pop and look great, which extends to the playable vehicles too; all four are uniquely designed not just in gameplay but aesthetics too. In colour alone you can tell them apart at a simple glance and that works very well for a high energy, fast-paced game like this which is rather important in my eyes. Everything looks great and this game has visually aged remarkably well, but the gameplay...

...has also aged very well! It's very easy to describe so bear with me here. Racing around futuristic tracks as fast as possible whilst dealing with an ever-shrinking rank out and making sure to avoid blowing up your vehicle through the on-track hazards, barriers, magnets, the travelling bumpers, or mistiming a ramp jump and just blowing yourself up in one go. As mentioned already this game is very high speed and that makes all of this a lot harder than it would be in something like Mario Kart, as F-Zero is closer to a more 'traditional' motorsports game except with a much more exciting take on things with the addition of these hazards, very close rank outs, and especially the bumpers. Love them or hate them they're rather essential to not only making this game more lively without strangling the SNES memory to design 20 unique cars, but for preventing super easy wins. If the bumpers weren't here you'd be able to get into 1st place and hold it consistently without too much effort, provided you know the track decently enough. Bumpers add an extra layer of strategy and difficulty since even when you're ahead, you're not totally spared of having to combat other vehicles; you still have to think about your driving rather than mindlessly lapping the track until you claim your trophy. It makes this a proper elimination race at all times and I really enjoy it for the most part... we'll get there when we get there, shortly.

F-Zero has fifteen tracks to its name with a couple of reused settings, although given differences in the track layout in some way. Mute City I is your standard opening course whilst Mute City II changes the layout a bit to force you to turn where you'd usually drive straight whilst Mute City III keeps a more familiar layout and adds a mine field near the rough terrain segment. These differences are pretty simple spelled-out but do change how you approach the track in practice. Port Town I and II build off one other pretty naturally, with II essentially being an extended version of I and adds even more challenge to what is otherwise a decently difficult but always enjoyable track. The other variants are more different to one another, with choice segments being similar and otherwise primarily sharing aesthetic themes. And this is not a bad thing by any means! I really do enjoy all the tracks in this game, with none I'd say I outright dislike... sure I'm never waking up and thinking "Oh man I REALLY want to play Sand Ocean" but I don't hate any track is the point. They're all enjoyable in some form and that's a good thing for a racing game!

So you got all these tracks you can play on, how do you got about playing them? Grand prix mode of course. Fifteen tracks divided between three circuits; Knight, Queen, and King. The easier tracks are placed in Knight and the difficulty gradually builds towards the end of each circuit, as well as the harder tracks of course showing themselves as you go all the way up to King. In addition, you can have multiple tries on a track so long as you have enough lives to do so which is a small feature I really like. In most other racing games, you lose and that's it; you're done; your goose is cooked; so on, so forth. In F-Zero though you can have a number of chances in case you fumbled your first attempt, letting you learn a course through multiple tries and eventually claiming that victory. Lives are still limited of course so the game isn't giving you a free pass, but it's a suitably forgiving system that gives you a little leg-up without just doing all the work for you. Adding to this are F-Zero's difficulty options, so you aren't thrust into the hardest of hard right away. You can do a few runs on beginner if you like and work your way up through the higher difficulties that way, or as I like to do marathon each circuit in a specific difficulty until all difficulty levels have been completed. Now, I think beginner is a great way to ease-in a new player and standard follows up well on this too. Expert is mostly good until around Port Town II, but master is especially where I begin to take issue with this game's idea of difficulty.

At a glance, the difficulty mainly seems to affect the bumpers. Specifically how many can/will appear, how many are explosive, the competence of the slow and fast 'racer' bumpers... but it also increases how fast the other racers can go EVEN IF that car cannot usually reach that speed. Combine this with assholish Nintendo hard AI that does genuinely cheat (which also scales with difficulty level btw) along with the game eventually deciding to put parked cars in the middle of the road as extra obstacles... okay I don't mind the explosive parked cars in concept but it has always confused me, especially since some of the later games turned these into floating mines which make much more sense. Either way, the game's idea of harder difficulty is giving the AI cheat codes and leaving a bunch of drunk drivers around the track. This was a different era of gaming I get that, you can finish the tracks in an afternoon if you're not playing master (and the same could be said of expert but I just know the game too well at this point), yet I won't change my stance on this one. I feel this game IS well balanced to a point, but later tracks on expert really can take the piss whilst master as a whole feels really draining and honestly not too enjoyable... I don't think kid me ever 100%'d this game and I can see why, shit's not fun. And SPEAKING of NOT FUN,

oh my great giddy aunt what the shit is up with the AI in this game? Okay... so you can be miles behind an NPC and still have to play catch-up. That's fine, that's fair, that makes sense. But racing the AI in this game is like being chased by a damn Ao Oni, they're always behind you and ONE slip-up means they're passing by you effortlessly. "Oh but I can at least obstruct or destroy them-" nope, not in this game, the AI cars found the secret to immortality because anything that would and should kill your car will do diddly pissing squat to them. This isn't so much a problem on beginner, standard, and some of the expert tracks but it becomes instantly noticeable on master where everything is not only max speed but totally INVINCIBLE (insert title card here). If you could even just damage the NPCs to hinder their max speed until they go into a recovery zone that would be fine, you could actually feel like you're playing the same game as them rather than having a constant target on your back presumably for kicking puppies off-screen. It seriously sucks that the last stretch of challenge for this game is honestly not a fun time, because up until then the game provides a primarily well-balanced challenge that rewards your skills in memorization of the tracks, when to drift, use boosts, different ramp velocities... but master makes it all about the already challenging AI becoming totally unfair and putting explosive cars in the middle of the tracks. Yet I still went and fucking did it, I get to be an "F-Zero master!" for what zero credit that's worth. Maybe if I put it on my resume, future employers will take pity on me.

For my last footnote before I wrap this one up, the game also has a practice mode which is fantastic in theory. It's as it sounds, you get to race around a track of your choice either by yourself or with a chosen 'rival' from any of the four playable cars. This is a lot of fun, a simple time trial mode is perfect for what this game is at it's core; racing fast and knowing the track. Seeing your improvement as you make new top scores with your favourite vehicle or even getting one with each vehicle, it's a very obvious inclusion that just makes so much sense. Unfortunately they only went ahead and put seven of the game's tracks in this mode, and this confused the hell out of kid me. I thought I maybe had to unlock the rest somehow but was never able to do it, just to find out years later that there wasn't ever a chance of me getting to use those tracks in practice mode. Why they did this escapes me, but it's literally the only F-Zero game to have a limited track selection for practice mode. I would love to be able to race on some of these tracks without running through a circuit just for the one, but that's fine I guess. Because honestly despite all my complaints about the game's expectations on higher difficulties and the way it handles said difficulty? I still really love this game.

This is one of those classic games that just holds-up extremely well. The gameplay feels fantastic to play even by modern game standards, everything still looks great, the sound design is oh so satisfying and god DAMN the soundtrack! One of my favourite gaming OSTs ever made, there is not a single bad song in this game. It might confuse you, then, why I reduced this to a final thought but trust me when I say: Everything is memorable for one reason or another and never in a bad way, seriously give this one a listen any chance you get. Or better yet, give this game a go yourself! There's a number of ways to play it and you can't really go wrong with any method in my eyes. If you've never tried this game or franchise, this is a good one to play even if you understandably don't want to do all of the difficulty levels. It's simple to get into and possibly frustrating to complete, but you'll always remember a lot of the journey no matter how much of this game is under your belt... I love this game. Pure and simple.

Future F-Zeros would be a bit different from this, but the GBA ones remained closer to this timeless classic. And after nearly 20 years off the market, this year blessed us with a new take on this incredible game as another fresh taste of F-Zero goodness. But that's a review I'll get to soon enough!

This review's been a bit of a long time coming, but here it is at last. I meant to push this one out sooner but then the devs decided to give us more content across multiple unexpected occasions, those bastards. Jesting aside I had progressed fairly far into my review of this one, the day before the update to add Classic was pushed. So I delayed a bit to give my thoughts more time to settle... and then they decided to add Frozen Knight League after that, too. AND then they went ahead to add secret tracks after that! All this combined with working a new job giving me some varying amounts of free time, this review just naturally took longer to make as I had more content to consider, segments of a review to rewrite, and not always a ton of time to get all that done. But we're here now! F-Zero 99, a long awaited revival for this beloved waiting franchise. And apparently a divisive one at that?

I'll be honest, I'm really sad I had the surprise of this one spoiled ahead of time by a leak that said we'd be getting an F-Zero battle royale game. Yet even from this offset I was really hyped for the idea; F-Zero has always been a large-scale death race, it is actually perfect for a battle royale entry. If nothing else it certainly fits better than Mario, Pac-Man, arguably Tetris too (not to speak ill on any of those games) so retrospectively I'm surprised few people brought up the idea until it happened out of nowhere. Alas, from what I've seen the divide on this one comes from people who've only/primarily played the 3D games- X and GX -against those who are fans of the original 2D style. If my last review of the SNES original didn't paint me as being in that latter camp then I'll say it again, I really love the 2D F-Zero style even if I haven't spent the most time with the GBA titles; so it mainly comes back to the SNES original which is no doubt due to a fair bit of nostalgia bias too. Regardless, I think a return to the series roots for this entry was a fair enough decision and quite possibly one the better choice over using a 3D-era game too. For reasons I'll get into a bit later, but I will say upfront that I don't think this game would've been worse off for using X or GX as a template instead of the 1990 game. How is this game as it is though? Let's finally delve into that.

As everyone knows by know, F-Zero 99 is a reinterpretation of the original F-Zero game as a 99-player battle royale of sorts. 99 pilots enter in a bid to finish 1st, or settle for finishing at all in some cases; simple as can be. How it goes about this is giving us all of the original F-Zero tracks to race upon, with the courses widened and otherwise minimally modified to make the races less of a clusterfuck as they otherwise would be. If this sounds very easy, then it's really really not, but the same can definitely be said of the original F-Zero too. Except now it has a major feature I felt it lacked, multiplayer. In fact it's pretty much now an exclusively multiplayer experience, fitting with the whole battle royale style. Whilst tutorials are done against CPUs and will fill-up any empty lobby slots when the open entry period is left to run-down, the true meat of any singleplayer content is in the returning practice mode which rightfully has ALL of the tracks as an option now. But for the most part, you will be playing the multiplayer modes and I feel the game is far more fun in this format. Don't get me wrong I still adore the original F-Zero (it was my previously published review as mentioned) but the challenge in that game is either nonexistant or you having to steal wins against cheating CPUs who won't die even if a nuke drops, whilst in 99 the playing field is actually even at base-level; what will truly set pilots apart here are their individual skill level and familiarity with both their vehicle and the course being raced on. You know, as it should be? And it's really hard to find a particular fault in this aspect of the game by itself, as all four of the vehicles are perfectly viable and able to get 1st place wins with if you know what you're doing. It helps as well that they all offer different styles of play, so you can try out all four and see which one of them fits you the best.

Despite basically being the original F-Zero, it still stars some changes of its own. For one, the original boost system is replaced by what we've had in basically every game since X. Rather than earning boost charges each lap, you can boost at any time by using your vehicle's power meter. Whilst a simple and much appreciated change it does make the game more different by itself, most notably the Golden Fox goes from being really bad to actually usable (and debatably the best vehicle in the game now) and changing how you can approach certain courses and their shortcuts. This does mean that Mute City III is basically nothing but Mute City I with a different palette and noob trap mines however, since you can very easily take the boost shortcut from the first lap. Still, the system is very well implemented and much appreciated even if I still quite like the original boost charge mechanic too. The bigger change is the addition of supersparks and the skyway, which fits the 99 format perfectly: Dropped by other racers or from colliding with the big boy golden bumpers, supersparks fill-up a meter of their own just below your machine's power that allows you to use the skyway when filled all the way. The skyway is basically a personal(ish) road above the road that you can travel on for a limited time by using your collected sparks, giving you some extra boost pads to which altogether really lets you cut ahead of the competition and makes for some really great comebacks. What makes this perfect to me is that the duration of the skyway is based on your proximity to the player currently in first, making it more of a thought process as to when you should use it rather than becoming "press the button to win". When and where you should use it varies by the specific course you're racing on, where on the course you're situation, how far from the lead of the pack you are, how many other racers are also using the skyway... you could definitely ignore all that and just use it as soon as you get it of course but I really like having to think about when to use my super special power-up in a game like this, either reaping the rewards or sitting in regret as I instead crash out stupidly after it ends. Additionally, the spin attack seen in future F-Zero games makes a return here although without sacrificing your speed as it so often does. It serves as an equally effective offensive and defensive maneuver here considering the side-swipe wasn't added, which I think works out for the better given the more simple designs of this game compared to what came later. Side-swipes are also far more devastating attacks to be on the receiving end of which would be particularly potent in a battle royale game with 99 players... the spin attack was a perfect addition and fits fantastically, letting you defend yourself when your power is critically low or taking out a pesky bumper (and maybe sneaking a KO on a player who got too greedy with their boosts).

The changes to the system make the game much better suited to the battle royale format and give it an inviting feel to those unfamiliar with F-Zero, without completely neglecting the need for skill. This is where I think using the SNES original as a template was the perfect decision: In the 3D F-Zero games and especially in GX, there's quite a bit of player-applied tech that ranges from situationally useful to basically required at certain difficulty levels. Combine this with the less forgiving track design the deeper into the game you get and it would honestly be a terrible introduction to people who are only now being given the chance to try and F-Zero game. This series has always had a bit of a competitive focus with thrilling high-tier difficulty being what makes many of us love it as much as we do, and this can include the original game for sure. But when we delve into player-applied tech... the SNES F-Zero only really has boosting into a wall for a rebound, mashing the acceleration button whilst turning corners, or using up/down on the D-Pad when airborne (though this is something the game outright tells you about). You can also play the game perfectly fine without using such techniques despite being given an easier time on certain tracks when knowing how to use them, compared to the much higher skill ceiling demanded in the 3D games. For as much as I would love to be able to play GX online with 29 other players, I think they made the right move in giving us a reimagining of the first game. It's not only easier for them to develop content for and easier to make work with the 99-player format but the more evened skill-level of the game overall makes it easy for players both new and old to pick it up, hop into some games, and have a good time with one another. Veterans will quite naturally have an advantage but this game is so easy to pick-up and play that newcomers who end up enjoying the core gameplay should catch up before long, or hell even just enjoy comfortably playing at their own pace. Battle royales are naturally a bit competitive but something like this can certainly be enjoyed casually, which F-Zero 99 offers through a handful of alternative gameplay modes beyond hopping into a single-race.

Getting it out of the way first, there's Team Battle. Racers are split between differently coloured teams and race to get the most points for their team, the one with the most collective points at the end wins. It's a fun distraction the first few times but a month or so into the game I quickly started to skip chances to play it, so pretty much after I got the profile cosmetics you can unlock from this mode. It can be fun given it's still F-Zero but this particular format is not too much my thing I guess. What is right up my alley are the Grand Prix events, as well as Mini Prix events by extension; the Grand Prix comes in three flavours of Knight, Queen, and King leagues just like the original F-Zero game. And the courses you play on are the same as in the original, except the further into the races you go the higher you must play to continue the grand prix and progress to the next track. 99 players on the first track, down to a measly 20 on the final track! This is an incredibly fun game mode that really puts your skills to the test, with mechanics such as gaining power meter extensions/restorations from scoring a KO coming properly in clutch when you get the hang of them considering the additional power carries over to future races in that event. It can be difficulty to get a super high power meter, but it really does make the difference given it allows you to play more aggressively and utilize boots more frequently compared to other players with less power meter. You can still make it all the way to finishing a grand prix without this though, although to get top-3 (let alone be the overall winner) it becomes a lot more essential in order to keep-up with the competition. With how you earn entries for grand prix events just by playing the game normally, it makes the mode a properly fun and rewarding test of your track knowledge and racing skills when they come around. It's such a simple idea much like the rest of the game itself, but it ends up creating something incredibly thrilling and enjoyable.

...but that's not all! Because as I was writing this review, we had a new update to include an extra game mode: Classic. This returns the boost system to how it was in the original SNES game (rip Golden Fox mains) whilst also shrinking tracks back down to their original sizes and limiting lobbies to 20 players. They even go so far as to modify the camera angle to make it feel more like the original game, too. As someone who has obsessed over the SNES F-Zero this mode was practically made for me and I was so giddy when it first game out, but even looking back on it now I still absolutely love getting the chance to play it whenever it comes up. The 99 format works perfectly for this game and yet the original game just made into a multiplayer experience works just as well, being a real testament to how this franchise has always fit the mold for a battle royale format. With this update also came 'lucky ranks', a once-per-day gameplay system that gradually awards you parts for unique profile backgrounds exclusively obtained through this mode. Essentially, you get up to five of these a day and they equate to randomly chosen racing ranks or can sometimes be a randomly chosen vehicle. Match up as many as you can to get bonus EXP and bounty chips that eventually award you a background. It's a neat little addition that doesn't ask much of you, really just keep playing the game and you'll get stuff that way. Typically you can get a background from this mode every five/six days, depending on a few factors (including how often you play the game of course). I do think it can be a little punishing for players who consistently rank in certain areas though, as in order to get more from the lucky ranks you need to be landing in a wide number of positions which can mean intentionally tanking races at certain points. I've never done as such myself, but on days with particularly bad runs I have certainly gotten more consecutive lucky ranks than on days I've been at my best off the bat. In this regard it makes the system open to players of all skill levels and I do like that, I can't get much upset at the system's flaws either as it is random cosmetic fluff at the end of the day. Nothing you won't get within a period of time regardless of how good or bad you play; as long as you are playing and finish at least five races per day, you'll get bounty chips to acquire a profile background. It's harmless for the most part.

And then as I was ready to wrap the review again, they went and added the limited-time Frozen Knight League event. Starting in mid-December and concluding mid-January, all Knight League tracks were given special snowed-over variants that slightly modified the courses; new graphics, of course, but also some layout changes that primarily came in the form of adding slip zones to crucial points of the courses. From completing certain tasks by playing on these tracks in regular 99 races and by competing in the special Frozen Knight League Grand Prix, you could earn special cosmetic items for your profile as well as the much-coveted snowy blue boost that not only changes the boost colour and changes the default engine emission from orange to blue but also gives your machine a little snowy effect each time you use the spin attack. Rewards you could gain from just playing the game and having fun with it, making them feel like proper rewards and not something to grind painstaking hours for. I think I got all the special rewards in three or so days? It was quite early into the event, but I still loved my time with the specially modified tracks whilst they were there. AND then this leads into what is currently the latest update (I'm going to scream if they jump my review again with yet another update, I swear)... two major features were added, the easiest to address being private lobbies. It's what it says on the tin, you can play in games with friends without having to rely on a dice roll to see if you get in the same public lobby. There are some slight progression nerfs presumably to stop people cheesing with a second account, but that's fine. I have no use for private lobby mode anyways but it's something I did feel the game was lacking, so it's a much appreciated addition.

The star addition of this update has been secret tracks, however. When playing a 99 race, there's a chance of one of the course vote options instead being a glitched-out "???" selection that randomly flashes between the existing course previews. This is what I thought was their way of preserving Frozen Knight League tracks as I was initially taken to a secret track that looked like the frosted Death Wind variant, except when I got into the race I quickly heard the music was different... and then saw the layout was utilizing elements of the White Land tracks mixed into the Death Wind I layout: "White Winds" as it has since been dubbed fans. There are currently four secret tracks in the game and I don't want to spoil the other three even if most people who've played this game no doubt know the secret tracks by now, but holy SHIT am I all for these being in the game! ...whilst fans have quite quickly cracked the timing on when a lobby will be given a secret track option, making them very easy to scout-out now, they are still incredibly exciting to find and race upon. Remixing existing tracks into something a little less familiar and quite a bit more challenging, this is one of the best additions the game has received beyond the rollout of all the original courses (which concluded early into the game's life anyways). Whilst many of us have been hoping for the 'BS F-Zero' tracks to make a return in this game, and quite less optimistically hoping for future F-Zero tracks to be remade in this mode-seven style, this is a clever and efficient way of filling the void of new tracks by utilizing existing assets to create something different and entertaining. My main gripe with these tracks are how they can be a fair bit unforgiving to new players considering they like to mix-in elements from tracks that are reserved to grand prix events, tracks the game is knowingly calling 'pro tracks' when they show-up in a separate rotational mode. As an avid F-Zero player I'm all for seeing these tracks done the way they are but thinking about how it might look to the perspective of a newcomer... yeah these tracks must seem quite unfair? Especially if they haven't yet wandered into the Grand Prix events to unlock the base tracks for practice, let alone experience them once. Still, I think secret tracks are a healthy addition to this game on the whole and I seriously hope we get more of them if don't end up getting entirely new tracks instead. Or hell, give us both! Please?

Whilst my initial draft of this review had left me cautiously optimistic but unwilling to believe Nintendo's commitment to supporting this game long-term. But we're here SIX MONTHS later and they're still giving it attention with excellent additions such as Frozen Knight League and secret tracks injecting fresh life to the bloodstream of the game, when I was originally believing they'd pull the plug not too long after they released the King League in full. This game has made me so happy, bringing new attention to F-Zero and getting new fans into the mix after this franchise experienced a near-20 year hiatus that very few people believed it would ever escape. It's made me really happy to see the series come back in any form, and having a game that means so much to me be meaningfully remade into a format that I am now absolutely obsessed with and can enjoy in multiplayer form- the way F-Zero always should've been -is incredible. I have my biases in giving this game a 4.5/5 and I will openly admit to it, I just can't help myself though. This is how you take a classic game and remix it into something new yet familiar for audiences of all kinds, THIS is how you do a free-to-play done right: F-Zero 99 is a fun time that rewards you for simply playing the game at your own pace. In a world full of $70 crap that still has mobile game microtransactions shoved in, this has been a much welcomed change of pace and so it's no surprise this has quickly become a game I've sunk hours upon hours into. Provided they continue to update this game the way they have been, I'll gladly give this game another log when it's first year anniversary comes around this September.

Whew... that's a lotta words. My next F-Zero review, hopefully coming out soon, will certainly be a lot shorter since there isn't much to say on it. But it is our last stop in SNES realm for the time being. There's some other games I have to catch-up on with logs coming in due course, too, one of them hopefully being tomorrow. The last of my 2023 review, and another free-to-play I have accidentally formed an obsessive relationship with. Until then, hope you enjoyed this massive wall of fangirl text!

So... this was not a review I expected to be posting. Nor was it a game I expected to be playing again, ever. Whilst this game as a whole really needs no introduction at this point, my history with it is a little weird. I tried out Fortnite BR a little bit before it became a huge hit with the mainstream due to exposure from my brother who was playing it and loving it, and I personally was not a huge fan of it. I didn't hate it but I wasn't engaged too much by what I was playing and so dropped it after trying to give it an honest go for a few days. But a few years back I made a bet to a friend that I'd start playing Fortnite again if they ever added Peter Griffin to the game, which finally happened with this season's battle pass. I'm not even a fan of Family Guy, far from it, I was simply unconvinced that they'd ever put him in the game. But as I saw collabs such as Futurama and Invincible pop-up I realized my bet from years ago was likely coming to reality sooner rather than later, with that same friend instantly reminding me when we had official confirmation of Peter Griffin in the game. So I honored the bet, and... fuck. I really wish I'd gotten back into this game sooner, man. It's way too much fun.

I'd like to highlight upfront that I am primarily if not entirely a zero-build player. Whilst I did spend my initial matches playing the default builds mode to try and refamiliarize myself to the game that way, I was reccomended zero-build due to my openness in not having interest in the game when last I played it. My opinion on builds has improved a fair bit and I think it's a solid mode to hop into a couple times, but I simply prefer playing zero-build and it's thus where I've spent much of my time with the main game. Fortnite is a third-person shooter with building mechanics whilst zero-build simply disables the building options to make it a more traditional battle royale experience, but this one change did end up giving much more of a new perspective on the game than I had originally expected. Whilst in the default builds-on mode much of your strategy and planning will come from how you utilize the build functions to create preemptive cover and defensive movement options, zero-build instead runs you through the risk of being in an open world with limited cover options yet instead finding out how to gear mobility tools to your advantage. Things such as the grapple blade (my personal favourite weapon thus far) and shockwave grenades that have multiple purposes, with one purpose being to aid in your movement options when vehicles are not easily accessible. It keeps the traditional shooter elements that I like whilst adding more of an involved feeling to the gameplay with it especially helping in making the massive maps traversable whether or not you actually have a vehicle. It's genuinely quite impressive how many times I've just walked and sprinted across the world without ever really thinking about how far of a distance it truly is, because it all blends together so well and works as a connected open space. Inversely to your movement options, you can also destroy most existing structures with your guns or explosives to instead limit where other players can hide behind and bait them into having to face you head-on; whether or not this works in your favour is a gamble, really, unless you know the other player is in a pinch already. It adds more on the fly thinking to the gameplay in what is otherwise a simple but very solid third-person shooter battle royale game, and given this is a genre I'm not the most familiar with (this, TF2, Garden Warfare 1/2, and the classic Battlefront games are really the only shooters I can say I'm a fan of from the top of my head) it's something I can very easily get behind. I find the reliance on cleverly utilizing movement options and your momentum both in and out of firefight situations to be a lot of fun, plain and simple.

The weapon variety in the game is very good too and makes it very unlikely that you'll get similar starts across games, with a lot of the fun for me coming in trying to work with whatever it is you can get your hands on and gaining an ever-expanding arsenal as you traverse the map and eliminate other players to potentially collect their inventory items for yourself. Mod benches (apparently a new addition) can give you an edge when coming across them too as you can equip a number of weapons with useful modifiers such as zoomed-in scopes for ADS or reduced weapon recoil. This is all pretty standard stuff in shooters from what I can gather but I like it a lot, even if certain weapon types should near-always run the same few mods unless you're trying to catch opponents off-guard with something different. Weapon variety expands further beyond your basic kinds of assault rifles and shotguns though, with more unique items for your loadout including the likes of anvil rocket launchers and lock-on pistols (my favourite firearm thus far) and these particular weapons add a lot of spice to your average match. Whilst a lot of the 'best' weapons do come back to just being those more simple firearms, I'm not the kind to sweat too hard about what's in my loadout so long as I can have a good balance to it. I'll use what I can get my hands on or ideally what I find most fun to use, which these other kinds of weapons tend to do for me. All in all the sheer variety of weapons to be found makes for a very chaotic game that can hardly be predicted, especially as items come and go from the loot rotation throughout the season. However, I feel this is where I can also talk about what is my main negative of the game thus far; weapon balance, or the occasional lack of it. Any game is going to have some kind of internal 'meta', where something is far better than the rest and something is far worse than the rest. Even in metagames where just about everything can be considered viable that won't stop this fact from occurring, there's no way to evenly balance everything without making everything function 1:1 to the same. That being said, Fortnite's balance of weapons generally works out and I've bear witness to a number of changes across this season but a couple of weapons stand out to me as being particularly unbalanced in one way or another.

First up in this regard is probably now the smaller offender, the ballistic shield. This was once a top-offender for me but they changed this thing in a meaningful way late into the season that makes it feel much more manageable although still a weapon I find to be more annoying that anything else. You have a small pistol and a large home-made shield of sorts, able to pull-up the shield as extra cover whilst utilzing the weapon in ADS where you can block incoming hits and still make use of your pistol for some damage. Fun fact, this was the first weapon I found when playing a match which made it all the more prophetic that it would wind up as one of my least favourites to come across and one I won't willingly pick-up. Initially, the shield's HP was seemingly infinite and wildly inconsistent on when hits would stun the user for a punish window; this would mean that even the proposed counter to the shield in a Hyper SMG was not guaranteed to work, with even full magazines not granting a stun in some scenarios. So you'd instead basically need to sacrifice an inventory slot for one of the more consistent counters, the grapple blade or a pack of cluster clingers... and whilst I do love both of those weapons, part of the fun of Fortnite to me is not having to use any specific kind of weapon and rocking what you like most out of what you can find. But the shield would basically demand you have a specific kind of item for something you may or may not end up running into at some point, since not running either weapon could leave you to be screwed over. Thankfully they since changed the shield to have a damage limit and although it's still a little much in zero-build (your max HP is 250 and the shield's max HP is not far off with 150) you can at least consistently counter the shield with more weapons now. Yes, other fringe scenarios existed such as being able to target the hand or feet of the shield user but these are situational at the best of times. I still find the weapon annoying to come across and think it could require taking-up two inventory slots given you're using both a shield and a gun on top of doubling your health (for zero-build) but it's now possible to beat it out with a number of options, making it less of a 50/50 encounter unless you unfortunately run into it early-game.

The weapon that has been trouble for this season from early on and is still trouble now, though, would be the reaper sniper rifle; I straight-up think this weapon is on the overpowered side, at the very least in zero-build. I'm probably not in the best place to compare this one to prior sniper rifles given this is my first proper season but I will say I did at least wait to hop on the hate bandwagon for this weapon, people complaining about it close to the start of the season felt like "people don't know how to counter this weapon so it's overpowered by default" and I had this same mentality with the ballistic shield. As mentioned I just think the shield is annoying rather than overpowered, but the reaper definitely hits both of those marks. Along with every other mark you could dream of because I find this weapon quite easy to learn with extremely rewarding payoff, even post-nerf (if we can call it a nerf). Three bullets per magazine prior to upgrades(!) with the capability to deal OHKO shots even at the lowest rarity, as well as the option of removing glare. This thing is nasty and is not only fantastic at long range, but also medium to close range too... it out-damages ARs and shotguns by a fuckton even disregarding headshots, which means even if you are blessed with life following a missed headshot you're starting a firefight off having taken somewhere around 110 damage. So many times on the mic has a firefight been brought to attention by someone yelling "FUCK I'M SNIPED" (which must sound great without context) or any kind of equivalent, at other times someone will randomly be knocked and that's how we'll know we're being targeted by a sniper. In solos you straight-up just drop dead and whilst multiplayer at least has potential comeback from one of your friends essentially being a living sniper meatshield, it's still annoying that it happens quite frequently and drains you of your recovery resources from only one interaction. With a sniper that has glare you can at least potentially see that and adjust your route accordingly to avoid being hit, but for snipers without glare it becomes nigh impossible to see it coming unless you've got sixth sense. Then there's the other issue of countering a reaper rifle: Your best option is basically using one of your own. Grapple blade to close the distance? Predictable travel path, you'll be shot by anyone who is half-decent at the game. Enforcer AR for long range counter? That's a poor man's sniper and requires mods of its own to be reliable. Flow-inducing items? Might help with mixing up an approach but it is by no means a consistent counter provided the sniper can adjust their aim, which is a reasonable assumption. Weapon mods make it hard to tell what loadout the rifle will be too and thus makes it even more questionable as to what counters sniping except for sniping someone first. It's another weapon I won't use on principle despite it basically being mandatory in mid-game and is damn essential to have in the end-game, but I don't find it fun to be memed on for 275+ damage out of nowhere and thus won't subject others to that same experience. I have used it in the past and a lot of winning games would come down to 'playing chicken' with sniper rifles, pretty slow and not the most exciting thing in the world... "camp or die" sums the sniper situation up pretty well. I won't shame people for using the weapons they have fun with but I strongly suspect people primarily use these things for how powerful they are, especially when some people end up carrying two reaper rifles at once; to say nothing of squads that have multiple players applying repeated pressure with each one carrying the rifle. This weapon is NOT unbeatable, but it does get seriously draining to have it pulled out of nowhere and lose to it multiple games in a row. When you end up overcoming it there is a huge satisfaction factor to be had, but the counters are so situational and inconsistent even if you choose to go the "snipe the sniper" path. This weapon being near-untouched (they gave it nerfed bullet drop that anyone with half a brain has already adjusted to by now) is mostly what reinforces this as a negative impact on the game, and this paragraph being SO DAMN LONG to talk about a single gun probably shows it strongly too. This game will generally let you have a great time and won't take the piss that often, you can have a lot of fun with the chaos in this game and nothing is really irksome. But the sniper is so fast and powerful, packs up to five bullets before needing to reload, can be used effectively at almost any range, can hide the glare, effectively utilize a number of mods to make it wholly unpredictable that it seriously feels like it defines the metagame. Trying to go against it is an uphill battle: You're pretty much required to snipe like a good little boy/girl/enby if you want to have a chance at getting far. I don't play to win and nor do I really care too much about winning consistently, I just want to have fun but then losing many games in a row to an instant-KO sniper drains me.

Despite that huge wall of text about how one weapon is, in my opinion, bad for the meta? I really think this game is currently balanced out pretty well. Yes, I find shields annoying and will usually just run from players using them; yes, reapers one-tapping from their lowest rarity is incredibly crappy balancing; yes, the hammer pump is so laughably useless compared to the stupidly good frenzy auto (didn't even get into that one did I?). But by and large, the game is well balanced in how chaotic it is. Builds and zero-build end up having differing metas which will inevitably create a disconnect in the playerbase on what is and isn't overpowered, which is where I think the reaper is especially egregious as although there are more counters to it in builds it's still ridiculously strong in the mode whilst being pretty much mandatory the further into zero-build matches you go. I've already said there will always be a meta to something no matter how hard an equal balance is attempted, but even so there's a difference in something being stronger than the rest and something pretty much defining a meta. Sniper meta has been pretty real and I've tried to ride it out, but with the one real nerf taking very little time for competent players to adjust to it's hard to justify it anymore. This game is so much fun! ...the game being defined by who snipes who first is not fun, and an unfortunate reality. On one game I was so low about the opposing team having double-snipers that I just ran to the person shooting me from behind and let myself lose to their common frenzy auto. Not my proudest moment, but it was better than getting one-tapped by snipers for the hundredth time y'know? Wasn't going to be able to run and reboot my friend from that pincer motion, so just take the L in the way I want. I digress...

But hey, shooting and looting isn't all there is to Fortnite nowadays apparently. How about those extra game modes? Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite, and Fortnite Festival. Of these three I have by far spent the most time on Rocket Racing, which may as well just be called Mario Kart DS for one reason that really discredits a lot of the positive aspects of this mode: Snaking. You can have all the track knowledge in the world and be apt at knowing when is the right time to use drifts and boosts, but nothing can compare to the very simple power of snaking across tracks like a maniac. Speed retention is important in this mode but you have no real means of doing so without constantly drifting, and thus snaking becomes the best option. Aside from this core issue, I've been very on-and-off with the track rotation at higher ranked levels. For the longest time you'd be stuck playing a lot of the more "difficult" tracks in the mode, although the general idea of difficult is to take an old track and then place a bunch of slow-down hazards across it haphazardly. This makes "harder" tracks fairly predictable and boring whilst further incentivizing snaking during the brief breaks given by the track design, although is is hardly something to be considered forgiving. It does seem to be that even Epic knew this and increased the pool of available tracks at higher ranked levels at a certain point, making me go back to the mode a few more times before I ultimately just stopped playing it. It was fun at first but the later track designs just being chock-full of hazards all of the damn place combined with the necessity of snaking to reasonably compete for higher finishing positions killed my drive to play it more. This mode has a lot of potential but I've had my fun with it for now, maybe someday I'll go back to it. The other modes I'll touch on more briefly since they're just sort of 'there' for me; Lego Fortnite is something I loved a lot the first time I tried it and then subsequently fell out of. At first feeling like Minecraft-at-home I wound up seeing it as more or less a diet version of Ark (and we now have Palworld also filling that niche) and Ark is a game that exists... I'm not fussed on it, and sadly Lego Fortnite ran out of things for me to care about quickly. This is another mode with potential and although they've added more to it now I honestly haven't felt the desire to try it again. Lastly is Fortnite Festival, a simple but fun rhythm game that started out as my least favourite of these distractions but I would now say is the one I like most even if I still don't touch it all too much. Rhythm games themselves are very hit-and-miss with me but hopping into a few rounds of this every so often to grind out a song and learn the patterns for it can be pretty fun, even if this is a mode I'm still not that crazy over. But Fortnite Festival is a good spot of fun, especially on expert difficulty which is pretty much the best way to play the mode. Each insutrment type also has its own difficulty level, too, so you can experiment and find what you like to use the best... drums aren't for me, I can tell you that.

Before I wrap this one up, there is another aspect I want to touch upon and that's monetization. I feel like the monetization practices in Fortnite are largely acceptable, especially when I compare them to the typical AAA gaming landscape nowadays. Fortnite is a free-to-play game with a battle pass model that is self sustaining, where you pay for it once and can earn back your 950 V-Bucks through opening the tiers little by little (in fact you get some pocket change leftover as you earn a total of 1500 V-Bucks for the whole thing) to invest back into the next battle pass. You can also take these Monopoly dollars to the item shop and spend them there for select skins, bundles, music tracks, all that good stuff that might tickle your fancy. The battle pass by default costs just under ten dollars or whatever your regional equivalent might be and it ended up giving a lot more stuff than I was expecting to get, I can't lie. A good variety of characters each with a handful of differing styles for added spice, loading screen splashes, weapon skins, music tracks, gliders, pickaxes, emotes, emojis, vehicle skins- calm down Ebin Games! Whilst this is indeed a lot of stuff, the actual value you get from it depends upon how you feel towards the specific contents in the pass and thankfully I've found use for just about everything here save for a couple of characters I'm not quite interested in to use more than a couple of times, if I've used them at all honestly. I don't feel anything is wrong with any of these designs but I just haven't been compelled by some of them, and to be fair part of that blame goes to the small handful of shop skins I've bought... yeah okay I'll cut to the chase right now, this is monetization that I can get behind. The base experience is free and you don't have to spend a single penny if you don't want to, so if it ends up being a game you do see yourself repeatedly coming back to then I feel it totally worthwhile to throw down a couple of bucks for cosmetic items you're going to get enjoyment out of. Whether you buy a shop skin, a bundle, or go-in on the battle pass I don't think you can really go wrong so long as you don't impulse-buy things. There is inherent FOMO that goes into monetization regarding battle pass models and rotating storefronts which is something I won't deny; I've had a friend who plays the game completely F2P (although he was tempted by the battle pass a few times but joined too late to get what he wanted from it) call the shop prices 'scummy' which was an interesting take. As interesting as one word can be, I suppose, but interesting to see a different perspective on it from my own. In a way I can understand the absurdity of individual skins from the outside looking in, but at the same time I look at it that if you're happy to keep playing the game then you're going to get a lot of value out of what you're buying. People are happy to spend a hefty chunk of change on takeout, sometimes multiple times a week, which is a very temporary product compared to a cosmetic in a video game that'll last... maybe not literally forever, but a damn good while with how popular Fortnite continues to be. I'm happy to throw down some change for some cosmetic items I know I'll enjoy considering how this has become a go-to game for me alongside F-Zero 99, with the base experience having been free for me to enjoy prior to deciding "Yeah, I love this enough to want to give them some of my money". You'll still be getting items as a F2P user, too, and can save enough free V-Bucks over time to eventually get the battle pass without paying a single penny anyways at which point it'll become self-sustaining provided you don't spend too much in the shop. That being said, the FOMO is still an unavoidable and unfortunately undeniable aspect of any monetization system done this way, but I think they've done their best with what's here. How much you trust yourself with playing around practices like these will definitely affect your opinion on it and for myself I'm not too suggestible when it comes to microtransactions, so unless I see something I know I want and will use I'm not going to be spending my money wildly. All-in-all I do think this approach to monetization works very well and is certainly far better than any of the imitators who nickel and dime customers without relent, but if you know you have impulsive spending habits then approach with major caution just as you would any other rotating storefront/battle pass format.

Having made this review gradually across the game season, I've seen my opinions on the main game rarely change. Once I got into the gameplay loop and understood how things worked and the best way to get to grips with them, the feel of everything has been consistently enjoyable and fun. I have my gripes with certain aspects of balance but can enjoy the game in spite of these problems as they feel relatively small compared to the rest of the game, honestly the big exception being how the reaper sniper rifle absolutely dominated zero-build from start to end. Even holding off on this review a couple hours longer to play some final rounds of the season, my opinions remain much the same as they have been to this point; I love the core of this game and enjoy getting to go-in for some rounds when I get the chance. If I'm not playing F-Zero 99, I'm probably playing this. I'd never have thought I'd come to love Fortnite as much as I do now, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance and think I'll be sticking with it for a long time! For each season I play, I'll keep my thoughts on them logged and release them on-site at the end of it just like I did here. It'll be fun to catalogue my thoughts of each season, I think? We'll see how it goes. Overall, I've been really enjoying my time with this game despite its handful of flaws. I'm curious to see how long-time players feel as apparently it's more divisive of a season around here, but my friends who have played longer still seemed to enjoy this one quite a bit too? I dunno. The playerbase is so huge I guess you'll see a pretty fair split of every opinion no matter where you go. Regardless, I've had my fun here and I look forward to the next season coming real soon. Can the legends of Greek mythology stand-up to this season of underground rebellion? ...I mean, probably.

This'll be an extremely quick, to-the-point review since there isn't too much new to say on this one. And hey that's probably a refresher from all the paragraphs I usually chuck-out! As you can see, I played this one quite a while ago and meant to review it MUCH sooner. But oh well, is what it is I guess. Now, what is a "BS F-Zero"? Basically a sort-of sequel to the original SNES F-Zero that was distributed via the Japan-only Satellaview add-on. What we have on-hand is technically not the complete product however... the live event 'Soundlink' versions of the game (which featured commentary voices and I believe remixed music?) were never archived. What we instead have is the 'practice' version, which contains five of the ten courses to freely play upon in practice or grand prix formats akin to what is in the original F-Zero. This has left two locations in the series, Forest and Metal Fort, completely unused in any official capacity as all we have left of those tracks is archival footage from many years ago. There is now technically an exception to this, hence why I specified "official". But that's a story for another time. This is the second BS F-Zero game and the only one really worth covering, considering the first one is split-up by different 'weeks' and retreads the original F-Zero courses except for adding one new one at the end of each grand prix. Those five courses are the ones used in this game, so it's only worth picking up this game if you wish to experience the BS F-Zero exclusive content.

In this little practice pack we have Mute City IV, Big Blue II, Sand Storm I and II, and Silence II. Sand Storm is technically the only new location introduced here but it also utilizes remixed assets from Sand Ocean, though I like to see it as being on the further reaches (or 'dark side') of the Sand Storm planet. These tracks are all really good in my eyes with Silence II being my favourite of the bunch by a wide margin, offering a similar feel to the original Silence track whilst still being uniquely distinct enough to be worth playing. Mute City IV follows the trend of being a slight layout modification of the original Mute City track, this time being set during a sunrise and featuring a lot of boost panels that can make you quickly lose control especially as they end off with a huge section of jump panels that can easily cause a crash-out if you don't react accordingly. You can also try to slide/drift your way towards the corners of the track to avoid the jumps, instead taking more boost pads around the typical final turns of Mute City. It's an alright track when you learn it after a few runs with a very beautiful aesthetic to it. Big Blue II is okay, it's not bad but is far less fun than the iconic original track; this one instead goes for an approach favouring jump panels, which is fine but it makes me more think of a Red Canyon track than Big Blue. I still like it for what it is, at least. And lastly are the totally new settings with Sand Storm I and II. I feel like Sand Storm I is actually a very fun and exhilarating track with how it encourages you to tackle it with cornering/drifting, and also a simple but fun land-mine section that sees you having to drive super careful to avoid touching them and the magnetic fields on either side. It's a fair bit challenging but feels great to conquer it after multiple runs and learning where everything is... something I feel far less fondness for with Sand Storm II, an okay track but disappointing finale to this package. Sand Storm II is technically a little bit shorter than Sand Storm I but it really doesn't feel that way, the tighter turning at the start is something I actually like but the land-mine straightaway is replaced with a fairly dull pull-magnet section that makes the track feel like "Fire Field at home". What makes it particularly lame here is that the Death Wind pushing is always in effect, meaning you're fighting two very similar track elements at once which is an interesting idea but I wasn't a fan of the execution. If I'm running through this tracks, I almost never pick Sand Storm II.

And that's really all there is to say on this one, actually. This is basically a lite version of the original F-Zero with five new tracks, although there are also four new vehicles as well which I have some. Mixed feelings on? The Green Amazone and Blue Thunder are both my favourite go-to vehicles here, as they feel the most like machines from the original F-Zero and are thus easiest to get to grips with. The Luna Bomber goes as fast as a hyperactive child downing sugar but has really mediocre steering/control in exchange, it's a vehicle I basically forced myself to learn because it's hella fun to zip-through these courses with a machine this fast but just takes a bit of learning. Fire Scorpion is... a vehicle. I'll be honest, I never pick this one. I feel as if it doesn't have much of anything going for it, essentially being a worse Fire Stingray. And hey I absolutely love the Fire Stingray, but Fire Scorpion isn't it chief. I'm not sure what, but something about this one feels very off to me. As for a critique affecting all the new vehicles, it's the graphics; instead of the pixel art seen in the original F-Zero, as well as the rest of this game's elements, they utilize models pre-rendered into sprites akin to Donkey Kong Country. With this game coming out in '97, it's understandable to see why. By the time this game game out, the N64 had already been out for almost a whole year; the first BS F-Zero came out in '96 and was half a year older than the N64, too, so it's fair that Nintendo would want to use the pre-render technology to make the still existing SNES look ever more impressive than it already is. The first Donkey Kong Country had been out two years before BS F-Zero 1, so I can't fault them for making the machines here 3D rather than taking the hand-drawn approach again. However... it clashes very badly with the other assets in the game. We have these highly detailed models retaining a great degree of graphical fidelity even given their restricted SNES palettes set against the traditional sprite styles for the courses and bumpers. You go so fast in these games that the course part can be forgiven to a degree, you'll zip-zoom by and not really notice the lack of track detail unless you've paused it or something. The backgrounds are more detailed too and thus blend better with the machine models. But the bumper sprites are the exact same as the original F-Zero and as such you have these 3D models in the same plane of existence as hand-drawn graphics? It feels like a fan game that didn't quite go the full-effort, which is appropriate since this is basically an officially licensed ROM hack of the first F-Zero. The machines by themselves look pretty good and the pre-render style is always a favourite of mine, but they clash quite noticeably with the rest of the game's assets.

That's actually all there is to say on this game now, for real. BS F-Zero 2 is a fun little distraction offering five new tracks to play on with some different-ish machines to have a go at too. This is essentially the first F-Zero with less content, but the core of the game still plays very well and yes the AI is still a cheating prick on higher difficulties. This one ranks slightly lower than the original for having less meat on its bones, but especially the clash in art-style. I'd at least be a bit more forgiving if the other new tracks- Forest and Metal Fort -had pre-render looks, however they do not and thus that makes the vehicle graphics a bit of a noted anomaly in this game space. You can play this one and finish it in an afternoon if you want, or do what I did and finish it gradually on each difficulty setting across commuting trips on the bus. You'll like this one if you really wanted more from the original F-Zero, it's hard to be disappointed aside from knowing the full version is likely lost to time. There is now an unofficial technicality to this statement, but that'll be another review for future me to worry about.

Oh boy... this is going to be quite a disappointing review to have to make. Mortal Kombat 1, the little game that could've but so far definitely hasn't. When this game was announced I was most interested in how it's based around the new timeline created by Fire God Liu Kang at the end of MK11 Aftermath. I'm all about alternate interpretation stuff and 'what if' scenarios are especially interesting, the premise for this game seemed right up my alley! How is it? ...I already used the word disappointing. So that's probably a tell. Even more of a tell is how unmotivated I felt to actually make this review even after sitting down to start it (for reference this began around the time of Peacemaker's delay and is only NOW being picked back up after the Ermac trailer dropped!)

Beginning with some positives, I guess. I quite like the gameplay here even if it's not too hugely different from your typical Mortal Kombat approach, but the addition of Kameo fighters makes it feel that little extra bit fresher. Getting to mix-and-match fighter moves alongside Kameo options gives the game a huge level of versatility to it even if some characters naturally pair together much better than others. For someone like me who just enjoys having fun with the game rather than sweating over tiers, though, it's very enjoyable to hop-in with different combinations and find pairings that I enjoy most. Graphically, this game is pretty good although some of the character faces hit that 'uncanny valley' effect where they're realistic but something is quite obviously still off about them. But for the most part this game has some nice visuals, and I say 'for the most part' as it all blends together very nicely in motion but in stills and less action-packed moments you can see more of the cracks in the art-style. Nothing I'll deduct much credit for though. Last point of praise I'll give the game is the roster, which although divisive I'd say I like a fair amount of? You've got the must-haves alongside fan faves and obscurer 3D-era picks who haven't seen the light of day in years so there's a good amount of visual and characteristic variety, alongside just about everyone feeling distinct from one another in a good way. Combine this with the unique feels among the Kameos and you can pair most characters together in quite the satisfying manner.

And that's quite honestly all the positivity I can muster for this one because holy moly is the rest of this game a huge nothingburger. It's quite unfortunate as well how this game continued to the worst trend of the previous NRS-era games by having DLC announced prior to the game's release, not only offering a fan favorite as a pre-order incentive but having a full pass planned and announced before the game would come out. Except unlike previously, the DLC was announced quite ahead of schedule; with MKX at least (I'll be damned if I remember anything from MK11, I tapped-out during that gmae's pre-release) it was only around a month before the game launched. But with MK1, we knew about every upcoming DLC character/Kameo before we knew much about the game itself which I hopefully don't have to go into detail about why this is such a bad thing? This pursuit of financial greed extends to the in-game economy, or rather what may as well be a lack of it. This game is such a charmer that you not only have to grind for the funny fake currency that gets you fancy-looking skins, but said funny fake currency is actually not infinitely obtainable... unless you pony-up cash to buy more from the shop, for fucking real. But it's also announcer packs and even low-quality bonus fatalities! So unless you paid too much for the special editions that came with bonus currency or are willing to pay money for more after already dipping what was likely full-price on the base game, you have to manage your currency carefully like some broke ass college student. Whilst this is lucky for me- someone who doesn't give a hoot about skinconomies at all, nevermind in fighting games -the practice is undeniably shitty regardless. It's not targeting me and won't work on me but that's not even the point of it all, because the point here is that they seriously implemented this system to begin with. You can instead dip the shitty "free" currency into a gacha system to POSSIBLY unlock certain cosmetic rewards that way though, except most of the time you're more likely to get concept art for stage NPCs and other guff. So god forbid you have impulses related to gambling because this is really going to be a tough game to stomach, in fact I'll say right now that you should actively avoid this game if you know you're likely to fall for predatory microtransaction garbage like this.

The monetization is crap but that's only part of the game, sure. I'd debate it's problematic enough to be a bigger part of the game than most will admit though, between locking-behind story important characters as DLC (one of them is even day one DLC because NRS are that stupid) and forcing you to pay a considerable amount of money to get extra costumes in a full-price game. This is a practice that really makes Street Fighter 6 look flawless, except I can at least say that game (will get to covering it eventually... probably) had a good amount of base game content to chew on. Whilst that doesn't stop the microtransaction system from being needlessly greedy and a notable blight on an otherwise excellent title, there is at least a good amount of stuff in the game to do without paying for extra shit. MK1? We get "World Of Light at home", the very contentious Invasions mode. I'll be real, at first I didn't understand why this mode was getting lots of crap thrown its way because the introductory stage of Cage Mansion was a lot of fun! And then I completed it and was sent off to the actual 'season' of the mode and boy oh fucking BOY did it fall apart quickly. I already made the World Of Light comparison but it rings so true that it's kind of insulting to the original mode. World Of Light was never said to be anything like a huge adventure mode despite the theatric reveal trailer it got, whilst a lot of hype was placed on Invasions only for it to be "go and uppercut Lv.1 CPUs until you have to fight a boss who you will either cheese with items or get steamrolled by LOL repeat a few times". Invasions is where you get a third type of currency used to unlock temporarily available skins themed around the current 'season', each season itself being tied to a certain existing MK character and themed around them. This is, in theory, an awesome idea! ...but they put the bare minimum effort possible into the cosmetics for this mode, with some characters eating super well and others barely having anything worthwhile. You can unlock even more simple cosmetic shit through playing the mode but just like the ones you have to pay for, they're incredibly hit-or-miss and rarely worth anything (hence them dumping so many on you and leaving the more detailed things locked behind premium currency). This currency is actually given out at an insulting high rate too, to the point I had way more than I wanted or needed by complete accident! But if you want to actually finish a season of Invasions, it feels like a very sluggish grind that never really improves as they have continually removed ways of speeding-up the grind despite previously claiming "those are features". The best season so far has been the cryomancer season, because it bugged-out and let me unlock everything without playing the actual mode so I didn't have to do jack fucking shit.

But speaking of GRIND, I hope you love to GRIND because this game is full of GRIND. Gotta grind your account level to unlock Kameos, gotta grind each individual character level to unlock more recolours specific to them as well as some gear pieces, grind both to unlock banner pieces related to that character, then you also have to grind each Kameo to unlock their own cosmetics and banner pieces, oh and make sure you keep GRINDING those characters and Kameos to unlock the ability to read their fucking movelist in-game (not the ability to use those moves, just to see the inputs in-game). Grind, grind, grind, griiiiiiind... this game is one huge grind and does not respect your time as a player; it sees you as a payer instead, either sinking extra cash or all of your time into this bland, live-service game in hopes of you sticking around to enjoy what little content there actually is to play with. I think the breaking point of this grind for me came in two parts: Okay, so like most EXP systems the requirements go up the higher your level. Sure, fine, whatever, but this game really took that concept and ran with it way too much because the climb becomes very steep very quickly. So this incentivises swapping characters and Kameos around often, right? No, because eventually those characters will also reach the steep point in the grind leaving you at a bit of a stand-still. Whilst your reward for getting a character up to "mastery" is a small helping of premium currency (except none of the DLC characters do that because NRS can go fuck themselves) the grind did not feel worth it to me ONCE, as in I only did it once and didn't feel like doing it again after realizing I wasted my time playing Omni-Man since he wasn't hiding any magic crystals up his ass. If this was only half of my breaking point though, what was the other half? EXP is not gained in local matches. The grind is fucking terrible already and even when playing on a Discord call to have people to talk with I was finding myself quitting partway through to play something else instead, but I can't even progress ANY of this grindy shit whilst playing with my friends? Actually inept. Whilst this is, once again, a cosmetic structure I don't care for the idea that they disabled EXP gain for local matches is very stupid. Fighting games are best enjoyed with friends, the online play community for MK in particular is incredibly uninviting, but my options here are to grind the shitty solo modes or grind the online modes that I don't find fun. Yaaaaaaaayyyy...

I haven't even mentioned story mode and I'm surprisingly less angry about it than one might expect from my previous uses of strong words. The story mode is forgettable and disappointing despite having a cool idea. It just doesn't really do anything at all with what they decide to set-up, trying to force-in all the characters they can even when they have nothing much to do in the grand scheme of things. Leading to some very pathetic-looking matchups that make should-be strong, intimidating characters a problem to be theoretically circumvented. The writing is pretty buns but that's honestly to be expected at this point, it ain't like either of the previous games (nor Aftermath) were known for their stellar writing. Story mode is repetitive and just kind of 'there', but it's over very quickly and has a fun final chapter at least. I can't really go into any details without spoiling said final chapter's gimmick but it does add to the disappointment of Invasions, having all these extra NPCs they could be using instead of pitting me against the same few recoloured fighters and giving them generic names. Story mode is a mediocre one-and-done mode in the grand scheme of things which is far less offensive than being a painfully terrible grind, plus you at least get to unlock Havik for getting through it the first time. The final chapter once held some replay value during the game's early days when everyone was discovering how deep the chapter went, but nowadays it's all really well documented. Oh well, it's still a fun novelty to think back on.

I could complain a bit more about how the DLC Kameos eat so much better than the base game Kameos, but that short statement alone kind of speaks for itself; base game Kameos still have their uses but the DLC ones so far have had a LOT more put into them, making them far more appealing options. I only have a limited amount of DLC to-hand since I'm basically taking the scraps my brother has purchased. In fact he's kind of the only reason I have this game at all, I was about to skip out on it until both his girlfriend and our parents got him MK1 for his birthday. So I pretty much got a free game that day, and whenever he's bought DLC I've been able to get that through console sharing. Yet even as someone who has not only gotten this game for free, but also been able to enjoy the pre-order bonus for free AND been able to use some of the DLC characters and Kameos for free, I would not recommend this game in its current form. I would go further as to never recommend it in any form if you're especially vulnerable to predatory microsanction practices. MK1 is a game that had, maybe still has, a lot of potential and it's been squandered by what is most certainly a rush development cycle that has been made to instead focus on getting as much cash from players as possible. The worst part is I will still say that the DLC trailers they create all look super hype, the marketing team for these games always know how to push their products well but I am long past the point of buying into it. I'll happily take a fast-paced fighter with less single player content to grind out online rounds because the gameplay there is far more engaging and rewarding, whereas even with the reworks to the gameplay here MK1 is still not the kind of game I'll be playing by myself. Hell, I haven't even brought it out to play locally with friends since January. Perhaps in a few years when they've done all the expensive DLC and you can buy the game as a truly complete package for a couple of bucks, this is a game that'll be closer to something I can recommend getting. But unless you are an absolute Mortal Kombat diehard I don't think you'll get much from this one. Disappointing game turned into an experience ruined by the push for a live-service grind and emphasizing microtransactions, not that it comes as a huge surprise these days. Maybe I'll come back some day, though I currently don't even care enough to think about trying this game again.

Unfortunately, despite my immense excitement for this one, I don't have a ton I can say on it; this'll definitely be one of my shorter reviews. I honestly was going to leave it with a very brief tl;dr since the season has been over for a good few days now and I wasn't very hype to talk about this one... so I'll be as brief as I can do.

The theme for this one instantly caught my attention in the best way possible. The new Battle Pass designs were a bit mixed for me at first but I very gradually grew to love most of them, I think they're all solidly made in one way or another despite some room for improvement on a couple of them. The map changes, though quite minor compared to what I expected, added some really great new areas to explore with The Underworld and Grim Gate making for some funky final circles with their uniquely jagged geometry populated with ruinous areas. The new weapons are largely really fun, the DMR kind of felt like a ranged peashooter but when you learn to consistently headshot with it then it's really good as a sniper alternative. I gradually fell out of love with the Warforged as I can't control it as well as I'd like but it's much better being used as a midrange option, I still enjoy using it but I won't rely on it as much as I did at the start of the season. Gatekeeper shotgun is really fun with its triangle spread and hella high headshot damage, really dirty to use with a Drum Mag mod too... stars of the show for me had to have been the special Greek items. Thunderbolts Of Zeus, Wings Of Icarus, and Chains Of Hades. The Wings are something I also gradually fell out of love with but had a bit of a resurgence with near the end of the season, unfortunately for the most part they're not great at all beyond early game rounds where other players will have limited weaponry. They become especially useless in multiplayer since you'll have one teammate with wings whilst the rest of you presumably don't, and if you do then you all become big vulnerable targets. Thunderbolts were a lot of fun despite being quite bad and easy to predict, a really enjoyable weapon to jumpscare someone with but most people would just easily gun you down during the lengthy vulnerability period this weapon has. Chains Of Hades aren't the Grapple Blade but I love these things so much, yoink people from their hidey holes or straight out of the sky to go to town on them with the chains themselves or swapping to another high damage close range weapon to finish them off. It's a shame these ones weren't in the game for very long, and this leads to one of my bigger issues...

Immersion breaking collaborative events. The main offender here was the Avatar event, given the map was permanently changed to have the shrines in-place until the season ended and all of the Greek themed special weapons were outright removed for no real reason. Hilariously, this update came only a few days after they decided to buff the Chains Of Hades which meant this weapon was not only added later than the other specials but also had meaningful balance changes added later that we couldn't use for very long at all. During the Avatar event we were still given storyline quests to complete too which was absolutely dumb, you want me to give a toss about the happenings of this world when everyone is chucking water and rocks around? This game doesn't have the best immersion given the sheer amount of characters in it but ultimately it's my fault if I'm choosing to do story quests as Peter Griffin or some similarly dumb character choice, whereas this event basically put a pause to the MYTHS part of MYTHS & Mortals. Literally the season's own fucking name. Right after the Avatar event we hopped into a Star Wars event that I was also hyped-up for, but it ultimately disappointed me. One lightsaber across the entire map with the rest of the weapons being unreliable E-11s or the admittedly really fun Bowcaster. This was another questionable case of the collab content not leaving after the collab was said to be over but I was happy to keep using the Bowcaster for longer, given the event was also depressingly short? Maybe it flew by because it was actually fun, unlike Avatar which was miserable; absolutely killed my desire to play the game. But hey, it accumulated me a bunch of Supercharged XP which ended up netting me a complete Battle Pass... and then some, because they did a Supercharged event around the end of the season which made my level skyrocket way too high. Thanks I guess?

Weapon balance... was kind of crap. The Reaper Sniper Rifle got nerfed eventually and it went from a weapon I didn't like to a weapon I think was genuinely pretty fun, being quick to lean into massive bullet drop but still retaining great damage on each shot. Not perfectly balanced (you can still hold 3 bullets at minimum) but a lot better than what came before. Where things went very wrong was the addition of Waterbending, holy fucking SHIT I hate this pissing thing. When it was first introduced it was about comparable to a Rare-quality Nemesis AR I believe? With the incredible boon of infinite ammo and receiving both HP regen and mobility buffs when in water. Not a fantastic weapon but great to have as a back-up given it doesn't run out of ammo. Right... so who was the jackass that decided it needed to have incredibly buffed travel speed, actually being hitscan until a certain point, no damage dropoff at all, very minute bullet dropoff that actually turns into a more deadly spread attack at certain ranges, incredibly high structure damage, fire rate up the fucking ass, AND increased damage and headshot multiplier on top of that? This thing was a menace, absolutely unbearable to go up against. It could snipe you at long range, laser you to death at mid range, and it was only beaten at close range but consistent shotgun headshots unless the opponent was already weakened. And since this thing lets you heal for free as well it meant you only really needed to carry shield items and mobility items, maybe a shotgun if you're not confident at close range with this thing. This weapon became boring to use really quickly but if you wanted to play ranked mode then you absolutely needed to use it, or else you may as well have quit there and then. This thing definitely contributed to me only ever playing when asked to play in the latter half of the season, because your best counter was to use Waterbending for yourself. Maybe get godlike aim with the Reaper. It was unbalanced, it was not fun to be lasered by this thing every single game, it took very little effort to effectively use... fuck this weapon. I don't get how they never nerfed it.

Despite all my complaining, I still had some fun with this season. A lot of it did come from the in-game events and boss fights rather than the PvP elements though, except for early on where things were still being figured out. Although that was if you could even play early on because even after the launch day disaster the game was unusually unstable, tending to crash out of nowhere in the middle of matches. It got much more stable within launch week and by the end of the season the game was running pretty smoothly again, but the end of the season also had a bunch of bullshit that was killing my enjoyment for it. Nothing wrong with taking a break from a game like this, though, I wasn't obligated to play it and so I didn't force myself to play it the whole way through. Simple enough. This one was simply a huge disappointment... the vibes were on-point, and then they decided to sell their soul for collaborations to take over the world instead. I don't think the season quite recovered after that despite the Greek weapons returning and the Star Wars weapons being enjoyable. It's a shame but it is what it is.

Up next, Zeus pissed off a rag-tag team of Mad Max villains before he decided to bounce from the island. How will this season of chaos and carnage stack-up to the Avatar- I mean, Greek themed season? We shall see.