2019
Great game that takes me back to the halcyon days of getting lost on shitty Geocities pages, following random links and looking at things I'm not supposed to, then frying my old man's Sony Vaio by pulling the power cable out when I hear him coming up the stairs. Like the early Internet, Hypnospace is built on a foundation of computer viruses and hot dog gifs and it's better off for it.
1999
After watching TransWitchSammy play Illbleed at the behest of myself and Appreciations, I knew Blue Stinger was the next game she ought to play in order to fully appreciate Crazy Games and Shinya Nishigaki's mad genius. However, I'd previously committed to playing the game myself and had intended to do so in December, coinciding with when the game takes place, and it was quickly settled that I would play and stream it instead.
I'd like Sammy to know I took a bullet for her and I hope she never forgets the sacrifice I made.
DINOSAUR ISLAND TRAVEL LOG
Day 1:
For a Sega Dreamcast launch title and a first outing by Nishigaki's Climax Graphics (rebranded to Crazy Games two years later), Blue Stinger leads with its best foot forward.
Elliot Ballade is sailing around Dinosaur Island with his friend, who is so busy occupying himself with fitting a PVC figurine into a jar that he gets caught in a time dilation bubble. Elliot is saved a short time later by Dogs Bower, and now might be a good time to mention Masaki Segawa of Basilisk fame did all the character designs for Blue Stinger. Not to disparage his future work, but he's really never designed someone quite like Dogs since.
The story takes itself a little more seriously than Illbleed, with Nishigaki preferring to skew more towards a tone similar to that of Jurassic park, carefully balancing action and suspense while sprinkling in bits of his humor. People are mutating into horrible amalgamations of mammal and reptile, and though you have an arsenal of traditional and high-tech weapons, you can also like, put on a sumo shirt and come at them like the gassed up middle-aged, denim shorts wearing freak of nature Dogs is-- and all while thunderous music by composer Toshihiko Sahashi (who later worked on Gundam Seed) blares at a level that's just a bit too high in the mix to be able to hear your friends talk over Discord even with the game dropped to 20% volume.
In other words: this is a crazy game by Crazy Games. Or it is for now....
Day 2:
It doesn't take long to reach the Hello Market section of the game, which is littered with tons of great examples of video game signage, including so much marketing for Hassy Recovery Cola that you might be forgiven thinking it's a real product you can put your real lips to. However, Hello Market also exposes an especially frustrating aspect of Blue Stinger's design that plagues it through the duration of the game: it's "gero camera," the Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting, which Nishigaki unaffectionately refers to it as in in an interview with Game Developer's John Andersen.
The camera tightly follows the player-character, and is at times so closely zoomed in that your visability when entering a room is limited to the back of your character's head. This was the result of an edict by Activision, which felt this sort of camera system would play better in Western markets as opposed to the more zoomed out position it takes in the Japanese version, because why on Earth would you want your game to be readable?
Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese and I want to hear Deem Bristow go "GAH'CHA!" so I was forced to constantly eat shit when entering into rooms because Blue Stinger's enemy placement is practically the template Signalis followed, only with greater and more devious intent. It's fine, I spent all my money on large cans of Hassy. Dogs is leaving Dinosaur Island with his life and the price is only a few thousand dollars in soft drinks and completely calcified kidneys.
Day 3:
I'm starting to get a little frustrated.
Elliot is equipped with a shotgun and Dogs has a god damn gatling gun, and both these weapons do shit damage. What the hell, man? How do you make a video game gatling gun feel bad. How do you make a video game gatling gun wielded by reigning sumo champ Dogs Bower feel bad.
The whole weapon economy is fucked. Your arsenal is largely purchased from vending machines, necessitating a certain amount of grinding to afford new armaments. But when certain guns feel weak despite their cache in gaming culture, blowing 8,000 bucks on a laser sword or bazooka carries a risk that the weapon might be a total waste of money. Do you want to horde your cash and trade it in for ammo, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs? Or do you want to see what's in the mystery box?
By this point, the wildly variable audio mixing was actively causing problems with hearing my friends and being able to absorb needed context for where to go and what to do. Sammy became my Otacon, using a guide to keep me grounded and focused on the task at hand, only we discovered so deep into the walkthrough that the author was littering it with half-truths and totally glossing over important pieces of information, as if they too were a bit fed up with Blue Stinger. If IAmYoFatha was on the job, this wouldn't have happened, but he's either dead or in jail.
Day 4:
Elliot swallowed monsters.
Day 5:
Ok, man, let me tell you about burger-frames.
The final boss comes after a three minute and 45 second long defense mini-game with no save inbetween, meaning at minimum you're doing that over again if you die. Or worse, you'll have to do that plus a run back down and up a tower to restock on bazooka ammo if you didn't have the foresight to overstock your supply beforehand, because it's about the only thing that does a reliable amount of damage.
Despite having predictable patterns and attacks that can be led, the final boss feels like a bunch of random bullshit. His fire breath frequently hits outside of the effect and sometimes does not actually harm you when standing directly in the middle of it. I cannot stress enough how wildly incongruous the hitbox is with the animation itself. It also deals an insane amount of damage, killing Elliot in two hits if you didn't upgrade his health (something I didn't know was even possible until after I beat the game) and Dogs in three.
This is where cheeseburgers come in. Of all the consumable items in the game, cheeseburgers have the longest period of invulnerability from the time you eat them to the time your health is recovered, meaning you could bypass potential damage by eating a cheeseburger at the right frame of the boss's attack. At worst, you'll get a little cooked but still heal, rubbing your tummy while your head is engulfed in flames. This was the only way I was able to keep myself alive and beat the boss.
By this point, I was already at my wits end with Blue Stinger, frequently flipping the high-speed toggle in Redream and going "VROOOOM" while throwing sumo chops at a million miles an hour just to keep myself awake and invested in what was happening. Towards the end of the final night, I was making plans to buy a Japanese copy of the game and frame it.
"Oh, you must like this game a lot, huh?" some unsuspecting guest might say.
"Fucking no I do not!"
___________________________________________________
Blue Stinger is brimming with charm, humor, and that signature Nishigaki style. It's also obtuse, frustrating, and ill-conceived. It has Dogs Bower and Hassy, and it also has the worst gatling gun in video games and a "vomit camera." It's Crazy Games - or rather Climax Graphics - at its most nascent but not at its most pure.
Stand for the national anthem.
I'd like Sammy to know I took a bullet for her and I hope she never forgets the sacrifice I made.
DINOSAUR ISLAND TRAVEL LOG
Day 1:
For a Sega Dreamcast launch title and a first outing by Nishigaki's Climax Graphics (rebranded to Crazy Games two years later), Blue Stinger leads with its best foot forward.
Elliot Ballade is sailing around Dinosaur Island with his friend, who is so busy occupying himself with fitting a PVC figurine into a jar that he gets caught in a time dilation bubble. Elliot is saved a short time later by Dogs Bower, and now might be a good time to mention Masaki Segawa of Basilisk fame did all the character designs for Blue Stinger. Not to disparage his future work, but he's really never designed someone quite like Dogs since.
The story takes itself a little more seriously than Illbleed, with Nishigaki preferring to skew more towards a tone similar to that of Jurassic park, carefully balancing action and suspense while sprinkling in bits of his humor. People are mutating into horrible amalgamations of mammal and reptile, and though you have an arsenal of traditional and high-tech weapons, you can also like, put on a sumo shirt and come at them like the gassed up middle-aged, denim shorts wearing freak of nature Dogs is-- and all while thunderous music by composer Toshihiko Sahashi (who later worked on Gundam Seed) blares at a level that's just a bit too high in the mix to be able to hear your friends talk over Discord even with the game dropped to 20% volume.
In other words: this is a crazy game by Crazy Games. Or it is for now....
Day 2:
It doesn't take long to reach the Hello Market section of the game, which is littered with tons of great examples of video game signage, including so much marketing for Hassy Recovery Cola that you might be forgiven thinking it's a real product you can put your real lips to. However, Hello Market also exposes an especially frustrating aspect of Blue Stinger's design that plagues it through the duration of the game: it's "gero camera," the Japanese onomatopoeia for vomiting, which Nishigaki unaffectionately refers to it as in in an interview with Game Developer's John Andersen.
The camera tightly follows the player-character, and is at times so closely zoomed in that your visability when entering a room is limited to the back of your character's head. This was the result of an edict by Activision, which felt this sort of camera system would play better in Western markets as opposed to the more zoomed out position it takes in the Japanese version, because why on Earth would you want your game to be readable?
Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese and I want to hear Deem Bristow go "GAH'CHA!" so I was forced to constantly eat shit when entering into rooms because Blue Stinger's enemy placement is practically the template Signalis followed, only with greater and more devious intent. It's fine, I spent all my money on large cans of Hassy. Dogs is leaving Dinosaur Island with his life and the price is only a few thousand dollars in soft drinks and completely calcified kidneys.
Day 3:
I'm starting to get a little frustrated.
Elliot is equipped with a shotgun and Dogs has a god damn gatling gun, and both these weapons do shit damage. What the hell, man? How do you make a video game gatling gun feel bad. How do you make a video game gatling gun wielded by reigning sumo champ Dogs Bower feel bad.
The whole weapon economy is fucked. Your arsenal is largely purchased from vending machines, necessitating a certain amount of grinding to afford new armaments. But when certain guns feel weak despite their cache in gaming culture, blowing 8,000 bucks on a laser sword or bazooka carries a risk that the weapon might be a total waste of money. Do you want to horde your cash and trade it in for ammo, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs? Or do you want to see what's in the mystery box?
By this point, the wildly variable audio mixing was actively causing problems with hearing my friends and being able to absorb needed context for where to go and what to do. Sammy became my Otacon, using a guide to keep me grounded and focused on the task at hand, only we discovered so deep into the walkthrough that the author was littering it with half-truths and totally glossing over important pieces of information, as if they too were a bit fed up with Blue Stinger. If IAmYoFatha was on the job, this wouldn't have happened, but he's either dead or in jail.
Day 4:
Elliot swallowed monsters.
Day 5:
Ok, man, let me tell you about burger-frames.
The final boss comes after a three minute and 45 second long defense mini-game with no save inbetween, meaning at minimum you're doing that over again if you die. Or worse, you'll have to do that plus a run back down and up a tower to restock on bazooka ammo if you didn't have the foresight to overstock your supply beforehand, because it's about the only thing that does a reliable amount of damage.
Despite having predictable patterns and attacks that can be led, the final boss feels like a bunch of random bullshit. His fire breath frequently hits outside of the effect and sometimes does not actually harm you when standing directly in the middle of it. I cannot stress enough how wildly incongruous the hitbox is with the animation itself. It also deals an insane amount of damage, killing Elliot in two hits if you didn't upgrade his health (something I didn't know was even possible until after I beat the game) and Dogs in three.
This is where cheeseburgers come in. Of all the consumable items in the game, cheeseburgers have the longest period of invulnerability from the time you eat them to the time your health is recovered, meaning you could bypass potential damage by eating a cheeseburger at the right frame of the boss's attack. At worst, you'll get a little cooked but still heal, rubbing your tummy while your head is engulfed in flames. This was the only way I was able to keep myself alive and beat the boss.
By this point, I was already at my wits end with Blue Stinger, frequently flipping the high-speed toggle in Redream and going "VROOOOM" while throwing sumo chops at a million miles an hour just to keep myself awake and invested in what was happening. Towards the end of the final night, I was making plans to buy a Japanese copy of the game and frame it.
"Oh, you must like this game a lot, huh?" some unsuspecting guest might say.
"Fucking no I do not!"
___________________________________________________
Blue Stinger is brimming with charm, humor, and that signature Nishigaki style. It's also obtuse, frustrating, and ill-conceived. It has Dogs Bower and Hassy, and it also has the worst gatling gun in video games and a "vomit camera." It's Crazy Games - or rather Climax Graphics - at its most nascent but not at its most pure.
Stand for the national anthem.
In the pantheon of seminal masterpieces that shaped the industry which Weatherby completely slept on (I was too busy playing Sonic Heroes, probably) The Sands of Time has been among the most interesting to finally loop back to. Nowadays, it might be easy to take what it's doing for granted. Clambering up crumbling ruins, dashing across walls, and swinging along busted piping is pretty bog-standard movement tech, but Sands of Time established this type of traversal so well that in terms of responsiveness and feedback, it doesn't feel like the industry has come that far since 2003.
The Prince's movement feels precise and deliberate, and progression is dependent entirely on how you position him and the timing of your inputs. Really, there might be an argument here that games have moved backwards, as titles like Uncharted come with far fewer fail states, and parkour mechanics in games like Assassin's Creed feels more automated. However, those games have more going on, whereas Sands of Time firmly roots itself in exploration and movement, making it a far better translation of the "cinematic platformer" to a 3D space than games like Tomb Raider. Which are bad. Evil, some would say.
Unfortunately, combat is the polar opposite, being a grotesquely clumsy affair. Geometry frequently obstructs the camera, and the Prince will too often fixate on enemies and fight back against your inputs as you try to point him towards a more immediate threat, resulting in this feeling of whiplash as you no longer feel in control. Combat is rarely challenging outside of these annoyances and remains rudimentary throughout the entire adventure, and in addition to just being boring, the game also likes to dump an obscene amount of enemies on you during every encounter. You run into combat encounters more and more as you near the end of the game, and at a certain point they feel less like a pace breaker and more an outright impediment, keeping you from the parts of the game that are actually fun. I'd prefer a more complex system with a greater enemy variety, but in lieu of that, I'd rather nothing at all than what Sands of Time actually provides.
It's such a shame, because the rest of the game is pretty damn good and would otherwise be one of the easiest 4.5/5's I've logged on the site. An endearing masterpiece that has weathered the test of time. But ah, whoops, I gotta jump off this guy's head and slash him in the back- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's- oh wait...
If I keep harping on it, I might sound as bitchy and ill-mannered as the Prince himself, who spends most of the game being a misogynistic pissant. Look, he grows by the end, it's about the journey. Yeah ok sure he forcefully kissed a woman who (at that point in time) did not know him, then rewound time to undo it, but that's because he knew it was wrong! Uhh... I'm not gonna think too hard on that one. I'm not saying you can't have your protagonist be unlikable and learn nothing - hell, I love Popful Mail! - but I did find it a little funny how many times I leaned back and thought "wow he really said that." Dudes need to be in therapy, but they too busy playing with their daggers of time.
I could definitely see myself revisiting The Sands of Time in the future, even despite how much I think combat steps all over the experience. It feels as good to play today as any of its imitators and there's no denying its significance in gaming history.
The Prince's movement feels precise and deliberate, and progression is dependent entirely on how you position him and the timing of your inputs. Really, there might be an argument here that games have moved backwards, as titles like Uncharted come with far fewer fail states, and parkour mechanics in games like Assassin's Creed feels more automated. However, those games have more going on, whereas Sands of Time firmly roots itself in exploration and movement, making it a far better translation of the "cinematic platformer" to a 3D space than games like Tomb Raider. Which are bad. Evil, some would say.
Unfortunately, combat is the polar opposite, being a grotesquely clumsy affair. Geometry frequently obstructs the camera, and the Prince will too often fixate on enemies and fight back against your inputs as you try to point him towards a more immediate threat, resulting in this feeling of whiplash as you no longer feel in control. Combat is rarely challenging outside of these annoyances and remains rudimentary throughout the entire adventure, and in addition to just being boring, the game also likes to dump an obscene amount of enemies on you during every encounter. You run into combat encounters more and more as you near the end of the game, and at a certain point they feel less like a pace breaker and more an outright impediment, keeping you from the parts of the game that are actually fun. I'd prefer a more complex system with a greater enemy variety, but in lieu of that, I'd rather nothing at all than what Sands of Time actually provides.
It's such a shame, because the rest of the game is pretty damn good and would otherwise be one of the easiest 4.5/5's I've logged on the site. An endearing masterpiece that has weathered the test of time. But ah, whoops, I gotta jump off this guy's head and slash him in the back- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's- oh wait...
If I keep harping on it, I might sound as bitchy and ill-mannered as the Prince himself, who spends most of the game being a misogynistic pissant. Look, he grows by the end, it's about the journey. Yeah ok sure he forcefully kissed a woman who (at that point in time) did not know him, then rewound time to undo it, but that's because he knew it was wrong! Uhh... I'm not gonna think too hard on that one. I'm not saying you can't have your protagonist be unlikable and learn nothing - hell, I love Popful Mail! - but I did find it a little funny how many times I leaned back and thought "wow he really said that." Dudes need to be in therapy, but they too busy playing with their daggers of time.
I could definitely see myself revisiting The Sands of Time in the future, even despite how much I think combat steps all over the experience. It feels as good to play today as any of its imitators and there's no denying its significance in gaming history.
With the release of Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe I knew I had two options: drop about sixty dollars on the rerelease that adds big garish black outlines to the characters as if something about the original's presentation made the action inscrutable, or put the iso of the original on my Wii's hard drive and play a much better looking game... With the Wiimote sideways. Well shit, that was a pretty easy call all the way to the end.
Frankly, I've found a lot of Nintendo's rereleases on Switch to be pretty uncompelling and settled on discomfort. I should get a pro controller if I'm going to play more Wii games, holding the Wiimote sideways might be the single worst way to experience any Nintendo game. What a garbage setup, with its prank D-pad and hard edges digging into your palm... At least Return to Dream Land plays well and is so enjoyable that even despite this horrid controller setup, I often found myself thinking "damn, this might be as good as The Crystal Shards."
Return to Dream Land is about as straight-forward a Kirby game as it gets. At least in single player. I get the feeling one of the big draws to this one is playing with friends, but nobody is willing to come over and watch Kirby and Meta Knight smooch with me. Tragic, I know. On some level, Return feels antiquated, with only Super Abilities and a very minimal amount of Wiimote waggling offering anything new to the typical Kirby formula, but I think adhering to tradition makes Return comfortably nostalgic.
That adherence to expected gameplay and inclusion of co-op makes this a friendly entry point, too. Not that most people reading a Backloggd review will struggle with Kirby's notoriously easy brand of gameplay, but I grabbed a copy of Deluxe for my niece after learning about how much she adores Kirby, and she's had a great time playing it with her mom. I'm 36 and had just as good of a time playing this hunched in front of a CRT. That's uh, the power of Kirby.
Frankly, I've found a lot of Nintendo's rereleases on Switch to be pretty uncompelling and settled on discomfort. I should get a pro controller if I'm going to play more Wii games, holding the Wiimote sideways might be the single worst way to experience any Nintendo game. What a garbage setup, with its prank D-pad and hard edges digging into your palm... At least Return to Dream Land plays well and is so enjoyable that even despite this horrid controller setup, I often found myself thinking "damn, this might be as good as The Crystal Shards."
Return to Dream Land is about as straight-forward a Kirby game as it gets. At least in single player. I get the feeling one of the big draws to this one is playing with friends, but nobody is willing to come over and watch Kirby and Meta Knight smooch with me. Tragic, I know. On some level, Return feels antiquated, with only Super Abilities and a very minimal amount of Wiimote waggling offering anything new to the typical Kirby formula, but I think adhering to tradition makes Return comfortably nostalgic.
That adherence to expected gameplay and inclusion of co-op makes this a friendly entry point, too. Not that most people reading a Backloggd review will struggle with Kirby's notoriously easy brand of gameplay, but I grabbed a copy of Deluxe for my niece after learning about how much she adores Kirby, and she's had a great time playing it with her mom. I'm 36 and had just as good of a time playing this hunched in front of a CRT. That's uh, the power of Kirby.
I somehow failed to unlock Yuffie during my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII, having made the fatal mistake of saving before speaking with her and getting my god damned gil stolen. About as successful as any Shin Megami Tensei recruitment attempt, frankly. At the time, I didn't even realize Yuffie and Vincent were optional characters; I was aware of them and just assumed you unlocked them as part of the story. Oh well, she stole my money, but I'm sure she'll be back around, and then we'll go on all kinds of crazy adventures together...
Naturally, I did a more complete playthrough of Final Fantasy VII sometime after my disastrous first run, and being as Yuffie is optional, I found she doesn't really have much agency over the story. Sure, there's plenty of interesting side content involving her and Vincent which helps build the world of FFVII and provide additional context for some of the game's larger narrative beats, but besides puking all over the Highwind and raining even more puke down onto unsuspecting citizens while skydiving into Midgar, she isn't given much to do.
So, at face value, Episode Intermission attempting to weave Yuffie into the core narrative of Remake is welcome, and I feel like there's far more character building and actual growth bottled up in its short 4-to-5 hour run than the entirety of the original game. There's still two more parts to the remake series, too! Yuffie fans are eating good (note: Yuffie fans are shattering their teeth on rock hard nuts, they are maniacs, and you should not trust them or accept any gifts from them)!
Intermission takes place roughly halfway through Remake, with Yuffie and her partner Sonon infiltrating Midgar to steal experimental materia from Shinra with the help of Avalanche. It's a little ironic that Avalanche's splinter cell is accused of working with Wutai operatives when the core branch of Avalanche was doing that all along, and throughout Yuffie's time in Midgar, she and Sonon both wonder if the more extreme sect ought to be who they partner up with. Also, there's a bunch of Compilation of Final Fantasy VII shit in here, and I can barely parse any of it from content exclusive to the Remake continuity. I will never play Dirge of Cerberus or read On the Way to a Smile, that is TOO MUCH FINAL FANTASY VII!
Yuffie's playstyle is a hybrid of close quarters and ranged combat and I like it quite a bit, though I never did get the hang of her parry timing or dodge ability. Not that they're necessary, but I feel like there's a skill ceiling there I never could reach. Being able to change the affinity of your basic attacks without the use of elemental materia is overly generous if it carries over into Rebirth but considering she's the only playable character in Intermission, it becomes an invaluable addition to her kit. Mug also compensates for a lackluster assortment of stealable items by applying a large amount of stagger at little cost.
It's a shame Sonon is not playable as I'm a sucker for any character that uses polearms, but hey, Cid is in Rebirth and I kinda get why they didn't want to overcomplicate the DLC. Dungeons, likewise, are pretty simplistic and don't have a whole lot going on, but good combat, great bosses, and an enjoyable story more than make up for how dry they are.
The true stand out feature of Intermission, however, is Fort Condor. Finally, the return of the persistent collectable mini-game to Final Fantasy. Much like the Fort Condor game in the original, it's a mini RTS/tower defense game, only it functions a whole hell of a lot better here and gives you a little something extra to work towards. Once you hit Shinra HQ, you're pretty much locked in until the credits roll, so most of my time with this was bottled up in the opening hour of the game, but I really hope it shows back up in Rebirth. I'm a huge slut for Tetra Master and I can see myself getting deep into this, too.
Now's a good time to jump into Intermission if you haven't already. It's worth the asking price and certainly seems like it will be required reading for Rebirth, and if you pick it up now you'll still have enough time to Google "what the hell is up with Nero?" before that game releases.
Naturally, I did a more complete playthrough of Final Fantasy VII sometime after my disastrous first run, and being as Yuffie is optional, I found she doesn't really have much agency over the story. Sure, there's plenty of interesting side content involving her and Vincent which helps build the world of FFVII and provide additional context for some of the game's larger narrative beats, but besides puking all over the Highwind and raining even more puke down onto unsuspecting citizens while skydiving into Midgar, she isn't given much to do.
So, at face value, Episode Intermission attempting to weave Yuffie into the core narrative of Remake is welcome, and I feel like there's far more character building and actual growth bottled up in its short 4-to-5 hour run than the entirety of the original game. There's still two more parts to the remake series, too! Yuffie fans are eating good (note: Yuffie fans are shattering their teeth on rock hard nuts, they are maniacs, and you should not trust them or accept any gifts from them)!
Intermission takes place roughly halfway through Remake, with Yuffie and her partner Sonon infiltrating Midgar to steal experimental materia from Shinra with the help of Avalanche. It's a little ironic that Avalanche's splinter cell is accused of working with Wutai operatives when the core branch of Avalanche was doing that all along, and throughout Yuffie's time in Midgar, she and Sonon both wonder if the more extreme sect ought to be who they partner up with. Also, there's a bunch of Compilation of Final Fantasy VII shit in here, and I can barely parse any of it from content exclusive to the Remake continuity. I will never play Dirge of Cerberus or read On the Way to a Smile, that is TOO MUCH FINAL FANTASY VII!
Yuffie's playstyle is a hybrid of close quarters and ranged combat and I like it quite a bit, though I never did get the hang of her parry timing or dodge ability. Not that they're necessary, but I feel like there's a skill ceiling there I never could reach. Being able to change the affinity of your basic attacks without the use of elemental materia is overly generous if it carries over into Rebirth but considering she's the only playable character in Intermission, it becomes an invaluable addition to her kit. Mug also compensates for a lackluster assortment of stealable items by applying a large amount of stagger at little cost.
It's a shame Sonon is not playable as I'm a sucker for any character that uses polearms, but hey, Cid is in Rebirth and I kinda get why they didn't want to overcomplicate the DLC. Dungeons, likewise, are pretty simplistic and don't have a whole lot going on, but good combat, great bosses, and an enjoyable story more than make up for how dry they are.
The true stand out feature of Intermission, however, is Fort Condor. Finally, the return of the persistent collectable mini-game to Final Fantasy. Much like the Fort Condor game in the original, it's a mini RTS/tower defense game, only it functions a whole hell of a lot better here and gives you a little something extra to work towards. Once you hit Shinra HQ, you're pretty much locked in until the credits roll, so most of my time with this was bottled up in the opening hour of the game, but I really hope it shows back up in Rebirth. I'm a huge slut for Tetra Master and I can see myself getting deep into this, too.
Now's a good time to jump into Intermission if you haven't already. It's worth the asking price and certainly seems like it will be required reading for Rebirth, and if you pick it up now you'll still have enough time to Google "what the hell is up with Nero?" before that game releases.
1995
Though I thought very highly of Dead or Alive, my attempt to pinpoint when the 3D fighting game genre came into its own (or "got good" if you want me to be less polite) has now taken me a few months back to Soul Edge or Blade or whatever the hell you want to call it.
Soul Calibur and DOA are pretty much neck-and-neck for me, and whichever series I prefer changes with the weather. I was hoping that these initial releases would be different enough in terms of quality that I could easily point to one as being better, but it turns out this is not the case!
Sure, Soul Blade differentiates itself by focusing on weapons and even has a surprisingly robust story in the form of the very funnily named "Edge Master" mode, but I think I prefer the weight of Dead or Alive's characters and how that game paces combat. Soul Blade has a deeper combo system, but Dead or Alive is easier to pick up and play. Dead or Alive has jiggle physics, but Soul Blade has Voldo-- there's a lot to weigh here!
That said, Soul Blade released on consoles first, so for the purposes of my completely pointless experiment, it has DOA beat. I could take this back even further and try Tekken 2, but I've played the demo enough times already and I'm not especially impressed by how it feels. Look, it's a weak excuse, I know. I just need to free up some time so I can figure out how the hell you chain Taki's Critical Edge into an actual combo so Sophitia can stop beating the absolute piss out of me. Google is not being helpful, every old GameFaQs and Reddit thread I find basically just says "do it better." Do what better!? It's not in the manual! OH FUCK SOPHITIA IS RUNNING RIGHT AT M-
Soul Calibur and DOA are pretty much neck-and-neck for me, and whichever series I prefer changes with the weather. I was hoping that these initial releases would be different enough in terms of quality that I could easily point to one as being better, but it turns out this is not the case!
Sure, Soul Blade differentiates itself by focusing on weapons and even has a surprisingly robust story in the form of the very funnily named "Edge Master" mode, but I think I prefer the weight of Dead or Alive's characters and how that game paces combat. Soul Blade has a deeper combo system, but Dead or Alive is easier to pick up and play. Dead or Alive has jiggle physics, but Soul Blade has Voldo-- there's a lot to weigh here!
That said, Soul Blade released on consoles first, so for the purposes of my completely pointless experiment, it has DOA beat. I could take this back even further and try Tekken 2, but I've played the demo enough times already and I'm not especially impressed by how it feels. Look, it's a weak excuse, I know. I just need to free up some time so I can figure out how the hell you chain Taki's Critical Edge into an actual combo so Sophitia can stop beating the absolute piss out of me. Google is not being helpful, every old GameFaQs and Reddit thread I find basically just says "do it better." Do what better!? It's not in the manual! OH FUCK SOPHITIA IS RUNNING RIGHT AT M-
2023
Early access streamer bait (derogatory) that I was initially apprehensive about but jumped in on after caving to peer pressure and ended up having more fun with than any other multiplayer game since freaking 1 vs 100.
You probably know how this game operates by now: you and a crew of three others (Apprecations, HaroKid, and TransWithSammy with a few guest appearances by friends of friends thanks to the More Company mod) plumb abandoned facilities, desolate planets, and "MILF mansions" - as they were colloquially referenced by my crew - for treasure... Or trash, as Lethal Company frames old soda cans, whoopie cushions and sheets of metal as items of value in much the same way Pikmin does. Complicating your excursions are violent bouts of inclement weather, natural and artificial hazards, and monsters. Lots of monsters. There are no MILFs in MILF Mansion, just a crackerjack-man with a shotgun looking to blow your head off.
Note: I am aware a nut-cracker is not a "crackerjack-man," I just called him that in a panic (I believe while running away screaming "CRACKERJACK-MAN!") and kinda kept going with it. I'm old and kept playing this game past my bed time. I once tried to explain how I thought Red Bull tastes like perfume, I should be in hospice.
Horror-comedy is pretty well defined even within the medium of video games, but I'm hard pressed to think of many examples that express this genre quite so effectively through their mechanics. Sure, there's some eerie monster designs, and you can buy some very silly items in the in-game store, but moments of genuine tension and comedy are more often borne from how you engage with the game rather than being experienced passively. Being lost in a pitch-dark maze far from your friends - who might be dead for all you know - is dreadful, especially when you start to laugh after a circling monster steps on the whoopie cushion you dropped, alerting it to your exact location. In other words, it's the perfect game to showcase Weatherby's many foibles.
Lethal Company's most interesting feature is how it plays with audio cues. Proximity voice chat places an emphasis on sticking together and coordinating, and becomes vital given the procedural nature of facilities, which are often labyrinthine and steeped in darkness. Monsters are identifiable by the sounds they make, and their distance and placement can be discerned from how their growling and stomping pans between audio channels. Much like every other facet of Lethal Company, proximity audio plays a large role in fostering anxiety and humor, whether it instills panic as the thunderous pounding of an Eyeless Dog's paws spell imminent disaster, or relief as you trek back to the ship from a harrowing expedition only to hear your crewmates blasting Canned Heat in the distance.
Mods add a lot to the game too, allowing players to replace the models of monsters with dumb shit like Son Goku, change the hazmat suits to NOS tracksuits, or expand the total number of allowable crewmates. In a lot of ways, I could see Lethal Company becoming as customizable and well supported by mods as Left 4 Dead 2, if only it would get Steam Workshop support so I don't have to deal with dumping weird dll's into file trees.
Being in early-access does come with a slew of problems. Instability, pieces of geometry loading in wrong, and general issues with mod compatibility are all standard and predictable consequences of being in-development, though Zeekerss does hope to have the game completed "within six months." Given how simplistic the game is, that doesn't seem like an unreasonable target, and it's explosive popularity does engender a lot of confidence that new features will be added over time. I'm not one to buy-in on early-access games, but Lethal Company is worth jumping into for its low asking price, especially given the level of official and community support.
Stating the obvious, you might not have as much fun with Lethal Company if you play it in a random group. Maybe that extra chaos factor of not having a rapport with any of your crewmates is it's own kind of fun, but I was never willing to wade into that part of the game. Call it social anxiety if you want, frankly I think the sound of my voice is as much a horrible burden on my friends as my inability to stay alive longer than two minutes. But with a familiar party, Lethal Company is so perfectly poised to exploit the usual antics of your friend group that it becomes a blast.
(I don't rate early-access games so, no current score for this one.)
You probably know how this game operates by now: you and a crew of three others (Apprecations, HaroKid, and TransWithSammy with a few guest appearances by friends of friends thanks to the More Company mod) plumb abandoned facilities, desolate planets, and "MILF mansions" - as they were colloquially referenced by my crew - for treasure... Or trash, as Lethal Company frames old soda cans, whoopie cushions and sheets of metal as items of value in much the same way Pikmin does. Complicating your excursions are violent bouts of inclement weather, natural and artificial hazards, and monsters. Lots of monsters. There are no MILFs in MILF Mansion, just a crackerjack-man with a shotgun looking to blow your head off.
Note: I am aware a nut-cracker is not a "crackerjack-man," I just called him that in a panic (I believe while running away screaming "CRACKERJACK-MAN!") and kinda kept going with it. I'm old and kept playing this game past my bed time. I once tried to explain how I thought Red Bull tastes like perfume, I should be in hospice.
Horror-comedy is pretty well defined even within the medium of video games, but I'm hard pressed to think of many examples that express this genre quite so effectively through their mechanics. Sure, there's some eerie monster designs, and you can buy some very silly items in the in-game store, but moments of genuine tension and comedy are more often borne from how you engage with the game rather than being experienced passively. Being lost in a pitch-dark maze far from your friends - who might be dead for all you know - is dreadful, especially when you start to laugh after a circling monster steps on the whoopie cushion you dropped, alerting it to your exact location. In other words, it's the perfect game to showcase Weatherby's many foibles.
Lethal Company's most interesting feature is how it plays with audio cues. Proximity voice chat places an emphasis on sticking together and coordinating, and becomes vital given the procedural nature of facilities, which are often labyrinthine and steeped in darkness. Monsters are identifiable by the sounds they make, and their distance and placement can be discerned from how their growling and stomping pans between audio channels. Much like every other facet of Lethal Company, proximity audio plays a large role in fostering anxiety and humor, whether it instills panic as the thunderous pounding of an Eyeless Dog's paws spell imminent disaster, or relief as you trek back to the ship from a harrowing expedition only to hear your crewmates blasting Canned Heat in the distance.
Mods add a lot to the game too, allowing players to replace the models of monsters with dumb shit like Son Goku, change the hazmat suits to NOS tracksuits, or expand the total number of allowable crewmates. In a lot of ways, I could see Lethal Company becoming as customizable and well supported by mods as Left 4 Dead 2, if only it would get Steam Workshop support so I don't have to deal with dumping weird dll's into file trees.
Being in early-access does come with a slew of problems. Instability, pieces of geometry loading in wrong, and general issues with mod compatibility are all standard and predictable consequences of being in-development, though Zeekerss does hope to have the game completed "within six months." Given how simplistic the game is, that doesn't seem like an unreasonable target, and it's explosive popularity does engender a lot of confidence that new features will be added over time. I'm not one to buy-in on early-access games, but Lethal Company is worth jumping into for its low asking price, especially given the level of official and community support.
Stating the obvious, you might not have as much fun with Lethal Company if you play it in a random group. Maybe that extra chaos factor of not having a rapport with any of your crewmates is it's own kind of fun, but I was never willing to wade into that part of the game. Call it social anxiety if you want, frankly I think the sound of my voice is as much a horrible burden on my friends as my inability to stay alive longer than two minutes. But with a familiar party, Lethal Company is so perfectly poised to exploit the usual antics of your friend group that it becomes a blast.
(I don't rate early-access games so, no current score for this one.)
1997
I'm a bad driver. It's been a running theme in all my reviews for driving-centric video games, and frankly Blast Corps should be perfectly suited for my specific brand of terrible handling. Careening into buildings and silos, turning into a mighty fireball that immolates any wouldbe survivors -- including myself! All so high yield explosives can travel to their destination, where presumably they'll create even more harm. Destruction of both the intentional and negligent variety, I've never been more qualified for a job.
But Blast Corps has filtered me. Despite my best efforts, I can't do the requisite amount of harm to deliver the payload, at least not without an exhausting number of retries. I'd like to pin the blame on Blast Corps' controls, which suffer from being mapped to a single analog stick. Well, that and the abundance of Backlash missions. Fuck the Backlash, it's the hardest to the control and the least interesting vehicle in the game.
If you replaced all the Backlash missions with the giant robot that does ridiculous gymnastics tumbles into buildings, I'd have rolled credits and given this game a 4/5 and two kisses on the cheek. I almost mistakenly referred to the Backlash as the Sideswipe, which is insulting because the Sideswipe is great. J Bomb? Skyfall? Fantastic. But every time I sent the cursor to a new mission and saw that ffffFUCKING dump truck the vein in my head started growing bigger and making weird sounds and man I can't do that, the doctor said it can't do that!
But Blast Corps has filtered me. Despite my best efforts, I can't do the requisite amount of harm to deliver the payload, at least not without an exhausting number of retries. I'd like to pin the blame on Blast Corps' controls, which suffer from being mapped to a single analog stick. Well, that and the abundance of Backlash missions. Fuck the Backlash, it's the hardest to the control and the least interesting vehicle in the game.
If you replaced all the Backlash missions with the giant robot that does ridiculous gymnastics tumbles into buildings, I'd have rolled credits and given this game a 4/5 and two kisses on the cheek. I almost mistakenly referred to the Backlash as the Sideswipe, which is insulting because the Sideswipe is great. J Bomb? Skyfall? Fantastic. But every time I sent the cursor to a new mission and saw that ffffFUCKING dump truck the vein in my head started growing bigger and making weird sounds and man I can't do that, the doctor said it can't do that!
2002
"Awarded "Top Overall Game of E3" by Gamespot.com!" reads the back of State of Emergency's box in big, bold white letters. It's sometimes easy to forget with the reception of this game that it did show well when it was first revealed. Incredibly dense crowds running around, looting and rioting without any significant cost to performance, it's one of those games you could point to in the early days of the PlayStation 2 and say, "last gen couldn't do this." Unfortunately, State of Emergency lacks good gameplay to back up any of its tech.
Revolution, State of Emergency's "story mode," tasks you with completing over 175 individual missions spread across four maps. I've heard a lot of complaints about the game's length, particularly bemoaning how short it is, and yet Revolution is so tedious it feels like State of Emergency is ten times as long as it actually is. Missions frequently repeat and rarely ask anything interesting of you. Go to this shop and guard it, go to this other shop and throw a firebomb into it, do your taxes, brush your teeth.
Escort and defense mission are plentiful and are the absolute worst because of how paper thin your escort target's health is. Waves of heavily armored goons pour out from the god damn walls to jump them, and by the time you swing the camera around, they'll be on the ground getting their skull stomped in. Once you memorize where the enemy's spawns are and know to anticipate them, you still have to contend with the game's horrible targeting, which will likely cause enough enemies to slip through your fingers that every attempt starts to feel like dumb luck. Maybe you'll get it this time, or maybe your escort target will get stuck behind a bunch of tables in the food court and you have to reload the game.
Despite this, I still felt like I'd push through and finish this thing, especially given my weird pre-occupation with it. I have vivid memories of moving between states in my teens and having nothing else to do on the ride there other than read the same issue of EGM with a State of Emergency cover story over and over again. This single event managed to tattoo the cover onto my fucking brain for twenty-two years, and when building my catalog of games for my PS2's hard drive, it finally felt like it was time to laser that sucker off. Only it wouldn't load. Some sort of compatibility issue. Now I have a complete-in-box copy of State of Emergency. That's about where I'm at right now if you've been wanting a mental health check.
And yet, all this journey has led to is me abandoning the game, shelving it indefinitely. I died with only a few missions left to go in the mall, having spent a solid 40 minutes on a single escort mission that for all the aforementioned reasons became this unscalable wall. I accidentally hit "replay level" instead of "quit," which loaded me back in on the first mission. Mistake number one. Mistake two? Backing out of the mission to reload it from the menu, which caused the game to autosave and terminate all my progress.
Watching that little loading bar at the top slowly tick to the right like I'm trying to load into Backloggd's notifications page left me ample time to contemplate what I'd done and what game I'd put in instead, cause I sure as shit wasn't finishing State of Emergency. Sure, this is mostly on me and my carelessness, but the way this game handles your save data isn't great and deserves some of the blame.
I think there's something here if you just play Chaos mode, which more or less turns State of Emergency into a 3D arcade brawler. You run around and cause havoc to keep time on the clock, and you know what? It's not bad. It's not great either, but it's something I can actually see myself coming back to from time to time. It's just a shame all the unlockable content is tied to Revolution mode, which I almost certainly will not touch ever again.
Anyway, they should make a State of Emergency 2, really hammer out all the issues. I'm sure it'd be great.
Revolution, State of Emergency's "story mode," tasks you with completing over 175 individual missions spread across four maps. I've heard a lot of complaints about the game's length, particularly bemoaning how short it is, and yet Revolution is so tedious it feels like State of Emergency is ten times as long as it actually is. Missions frequently repeat and rarely ask anything interesting of you. Go to this shop and guard it, go to this other shop and throw a firebomb into it, do your taxes, brush your teeth.
Escort and defense mission are plentiful and are the absolute worst because of how paper thin your escort target's health is. Waves of heavily armored goons pour out from the god damn walls to jump them, and by the time you swing the camera around, they'll be on the ground getting their skull stomped in. Once you memorize where the enemy's spawns are and know to anticipate them, you still have to contend with the game's horrible targeting, which will likely cause enough enemies to slip through your fingers that every attempt starts to feel like dumb luck. Maybe you'll get it this time, or maybe your escort target will get stuck behind a bunch of tables in the food court and you have to reload the game.
Despite this, I still felt like I'd push through and finish this thing, especially given my weird pre-occupation with it. I have vivid memories of moving between states in my teens and having nothing else to do on the ride there other than read the same issue of EGM with a State of Emergency cover story over and over again. This single event managed to tattoo the cover onto my fucking brain for twenty-two years, and when building my catalog of games for my PS2's hard drive, it finally felt like it was time to laser that sucker off. Only it wouldn't load. Some sort of compatibility issue. Now I have a complete-in-box copy of State of Emergency. That's about where I'm at right now if you've been wanting a mental health check.
And yet, all this journey has led to is me abandoning the game, shelving it indefinitely. I died with only a few missions left to go in the mall, having spent a solid 40 minutes on a single escort mission that for all the aforementioned reasons became this unscalable wall. I accidentally hit "replay level" instead of "quit," which loaded me back in on the first mission. Mistake number one. Mistake two? Backing out of the mission to reload it from the menu, which caused the game to autosave and terminate all my progress.
Watching that little loading bar at the top slowly tick to the right like I'm trying to load into Backloggd's notifications page left me ample time to contemplate what I'd done and what game I'd put in instead, cause I sure as shit wasn't finishing State of Emergency. Sure, this is mostly on me and my carelessness, but the way this game handles your save data isn't great and deserves some of the blame.
I think there's something here if you just play Chaos mode, which more or less turns State of Emergency into a 3D arcade brawler. You run around and cause havoc to keep time on the clock, and you know what? It's not bad. It's not great either, but it's something I can actually see myself coming back to from time to time. It's just a shame all the unlockable content is tied to Revolution mode, which I almost certainly will not touch ever again.
Anyway, they should make a State of Emergency 2, really hammer out all the issues. I'm sure it'd be great.
This review contains spoilers
I often think about how much Square's 2005 Final Fantasy VII tech demo cursed the company to a decade of fans groveling at their feet for a remake, something that prior to that demo was not really talked about all that much. At least not at such a scale, or to the point that every E3 came with people joking about its supposed appearance or lack thereof, something that Metroid Prime 4 has more or less embodied today. Repeated attempts to quell fans and explain in no uncertain terms that it was just a demo did little quiet the discussion, and Square eventually changed tact and asserted a remake would not be possible unless it could top the original, a proposition they framed as being so risky and improbable that it'd just kill the company.
While selling IPs for pennies on the dollar to invest in NFTs right before a market crash, an insider trading scandal, and flops like Forspoken have put Square in a bad position, they've been able to weather these hits and stave off total ruin. For now, at least. Modern game development is fucked. It's so fucked that Final Fantasy VII Remake is a project Square is now willing to take a chance on, but it is only sustainable as three separate projects aiming to cover the entirety of what was a 40 hour mid-90s video game. It is not simply a matter of being able to top the original creatively and financially, it's replicating a game from an era where less got you more in a time where more means less.
And in a lot of ways, Remake both succeeds and fails at this. All the key beats are here, like storming the Mako reactor, the Sector 7 plate falling, the high speed motorcycle chase out of Midgar and into the wide open plains of Gaia... But what was originally a three to five hour segment of a much larger game has now been pulled like rubber, stretched so thin it is nearly transparent to suit a full gameplay experience. Midgar is a big place, you simply cannot invest in the amount of assets needed to portray it in the modern day and have enough time and budget left to design a whole open world and numerous dungeons and towns with their own bespoke aesthetics, and the cost is that Remake at times feels bloated.
Portions of the original that took mere minutes are now elongated into full chapters, like the Sector 5 underpass, which has mutated into a dungeon the player must traverse several times. Pre-existing dungeons like Shinra HQ are so massive that they have a tendency to overstay their welcome, and moments of urgency in the story are broken up with prolonged periods of downtime that adversely affect the pacing.
Square has had a real side quest problem for a while now. They often feel dry and inorganic, presented as checklists of things to do rather than being an obscure but natural part of a larger, living world. Though they are not mandatory, they're often presented in a way that feels it, a nagging green icon and the promise of a reward too good to pass up if only you're willing to put in some work. Aerith is probably being dissected (or worse) by Hojo but uh, I gotta run this Uber Eats order to Chocobo Sam.
This is something I hope Rebirth will address by covering a comparatively much larger portion of the original's story. I also hope it further explores Remake's most interesting aspect, which is it's almost Cabin in the Woods-like meta narrative about being a remake.
I often see people complain when a remake deviates from the source material, but provided the original is still readily available - as is the case with Final Fantasy VII - then the idea of a 1:1 remake becomes profoundly boring to me. A reverence for and understanding of the original is of course necessary, but I'd prefer a remake actually say something new rather than be a straight retread. And so Remake to me is perfectly titled, not just in how it embodies being a remake as a product but by exploring how self-aware characters are attempting to remake their own story.
Sephiroth has apparently already lived the events of Final Fantasy VII, and spends much of this game coercing Cloud as he had in the original, using him a puppet and setting him against the fates so that hey may break causality. This doesn't just benefit Sephiroth by helping him avoid eating shit in the Northern Crater a second time, it also presents Cloud and his company the opportunity to fight him without facing the same consequences they did the last time, even if they may not be as acutely aware of what those consequences are.
Except for Aerith, who subtly displays her own level of awareness for the original timeline, knowing people's names before they're given and generally displaying a level of precognition over minor aspects of her world that seem unimportant on a surface level but nevertheless betray her placement in Remake's continuity. For her, the opportunity to defy destiny is a decision made with considerably less confidence as she knows what her sacrifice accomplishes.
Naturally, the fates, or "whispers" as they're known, physically intervene when events begin to deviate. Wedge survives plate fall, so that fucker's gotta get thrown out a window. Hojo nearly spoils Cloud on the reveal that he's not a member of SOLDIER, so he gets whisked away while going "Ohhhh my, how faaaascinating~" like a weird like freak. In a way, the whispers represent the very boring fans that want Final Fantasy VII but more prettier, who dislike any chance taken with the material and will react violently when presented with something different. For Square to move past the baggage of FFVII, they too must destroy the expectations placed upon them and venture into uncharted territory.
Suffice it to say, I'm pretty happy with these creative choices and found myself far more invested in Remake because of them. It's a good counterbalance to all the bloat and actually left me interested enough to push through some of Remake's more tedious lows just to see where everything was going.
On the more mechanical end, Remake is pretty solid. A complaint I had about of the original is that characters largely felt the same despite ostensibly slotting into traditional job classes, with the key differentiating factor being what materia was equipped to them. Conversely, Remake provides each party member their own play style, and it adds a lot of diversity to combat. The materia system remains largely unaltered, serving as a sort of common point between the games to keep players grounded early on, while the new take on the ATB system feels like a near perfect answer to Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based gameplay.
I think Remake also deserves a lot of praise for how well it translates the visual design of the original. There's an alternate reality out there where this game was made for the PS3 and adopted a more grounded aesthetic akin to Advant Children, and thank god I don't live in it. I also adore the soundtrack. Subtle things like making sure the bits of metallic percussion in the battle theme are still there, the incorporation of the Shinra theme in Crazy Motorcycle Chase adding a nice narrative tie, or just my own Pavlovian conditioning resulting in me getting hyped as hell anytime J-E-N-O-V-A starts playing... it's good stuff.
Final Fantasy VII Remake would not exist were it not for that tech demo, and I don't mean that to say the possibility of a remake wasn't there until E3 2005. Rather, its themes are a direct response to the albatross that hung from Square's neck in the decade following. What artistic value would there be in doing a by-the-numbers remake, going through the motions from start to finish? It'd make a lot of people happy, sure, but I can't imagine it being anything other than bloodless.
While selling IPs for pennies on the dollar to invest in NFTs right before a market crash, an insider trading scandal, and flops like Forspoken have put Square in a bad position, they've been able to weather these hits and stave off total ruin. For now, at least. Modern game development is fucked. It's so fucked that Final Fantasy VII Remake is a project Square is now willing to take a chance on, but it is only sustainable as three separate projects aiming to cover the entirety of what was a 40 hour mid-90s video game. It is not simply a matter of being able to top the original creatively and financially, it's replicating a game from an era where less got you more in a time where more means less.
And in a lot of ways, Remake both succeeds and fails at this. All the key beats are here, like storming the Mako reactor, the Sector 7 plate falling, the high speed motorcycle chase out of Midgar and into the wide open plains of Gaia... But what was originally a three to five hour segment of a much larger game has now been pulled like rubber, stretched so thin it is nearly transparent to suit a full gameplay experience. Midgar is a big place, you simply cannot invest in the amount of assets needed to portray it in the modern day and have enough time and budget left to design a whole open world and numerous dungeons and towns with their own bespoke aesthetics, and the cost is that Remake at times feels bloated.
Portions of the original that took mere minutes are now elongated into full chapters, like the Sector 5 underpass, which has mutated into a dungeon the player must traverse several times. Pre-existing dungeons like Shinra HQ are so massive that they have a tendency to overstay their welcome, and moments of urgency in the story are broken up with prolonged periods of downtime that adversely affect the pacing.
Square has had a real side quest problem for a while now. They often feel dry and inorganic, presented as checklists of things to do rather than being an obscure but natural part of a larger, living world. Though they are not mandatory, they're often presented in a way that feels it, a nagging green icon and the promise of a reward too good to pass up if only you're willing to put in some work. Aerith is probably being dissected (or worse) by Hojo but uh, I gotta run this Uber Eats order to Chocobo Sam.
This is something I hope Rebirth will address by covering a comparatively much larger portion of the original's story. I also hope it further explores Remake's most interesting aspect, which is it's almost Cabin in the Woods-like meta narrative about being a remake.
I often see people complain when a remake deviates from the source material, but provided the original is still readily available - as is the case with Final Fantasy VII - then the idea of a 1:1 remake becomes profoundly boring to me. A reverence for and understanding of the original is of course necessary, but I'd prefer a remake actually say something new rather than be a straight retread. And so Remake to me is perfectly titled, not just in how it embodies being a remake as a product but by exploring how self-aware characters are attempting to remake their own story.
Sephiroth has apparently already lived the events of Final Fantasy VII, and spends much of this game coercing Cloud as he had in the original, using him a puppet and setting him against the fates so that hey may break causality. This doesn't just benefit Sephiroth by helping him avoid eating shit in the Northern Crater a second time, it also presents Cloud and his company the opportunity to fight him without facing the same consequences they did the last time, even if they may not be as acutely aware of what those consequences are.
Except for Aerith, who subtly displays her own level of awareness for the original timeline, knowing people's names before they're given and generally displaying a level of precognition over minor aspects of her world that seem unimportant on a surface level but nevertheless betray her placement in Remake's continuity. For her, the opportunity to defy destiny is a decision made with considerably less confidence as she knows what her sacrifice accomplishes.
Naturally, the fates, or "whispers" as they're known, physically intervene when events begin to deviate. Wedge survives plate fall, so that fucker's gotta get thrown out a window. Hojo nearly spoils Cloud on the reveal that he's not a member of SOLDIER, so he gets whisked away while going "Ohhhh my, how faaaascinating~" like a weird like freak. In a way, the whispers represent the very boring fans that want Final Fantasy VII but more prettier, who dislike any chance taken with the material and will react violently when presented with something different. For Square to move past the baggage of FFVII, they too must destroy the expectations placed upon them and venture into uncharted territory.
Suffice it to say, I'm pretty happy with these creative choices and found myself far more invested in Remake because of them. It's a good counterbalance to all the bloat and actually left me interested enough to push through some of Remake's more tedious lows just to see where everything was going.
On the more mechanical end, Remake is pretty solid. A complaint I had about of the original is that characters largely felt the same despite ostensibly slotting into traditional job classes, with the key differentiating factor being what materia was equipped to them. Conversely, Remake provides each party member their own play style, and it adds a lot of diversity to combat. The materia system remains largely unaltered, serving as a sort of common point between the games to keep players grounded early on, while the new take on the ATB system feels like a near perfect answer to Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based gameplay.
I think Remake also deserves a lot of praise for how well it translates the visual design of the original. There's an alternate reality out there where this game was made for the PS3 and adopted a more grounded aesthetic akin to Advant Children, and thank god I don't live in it. I also adore the soundtrack. Subtle things like making sure the bits of metallic percussion in the battle theme are still there, the incorporation of the Shinra theme in Crazy Motorcycle Chase adding a nice narrative tie, or just my own Pavlovian conditioning resulting in me getting hyped as hell anytime J-E-N-O-V-A starts playing... it's good stuff.
Final Fantasy VII Remake would not exist were it not for that tech demo, and I don't mean that to say the possibility of a remake wasn't there until E3 2005. Rather, its themes are a direct response to the albatross that hung from Square's neck in the decade following. What artistic value would there be in doing a by-the-numbers remake, going through the motions from start to finish? It'd make a lot of people happy, sure, but I can't imagine it being anything other than bloodless.
2003
Man, what the hell do you even say about Bust-A-Move? How do you even liven Bust-A-Move up, for that matter? It's one of those puzzle games where the formula is so locked down there really doesn't seem to be anywhere else to go with it other than applying a new coat of paint every generation.
I guess that's what I think about Bust-A-Move 3000, thank you for reading!
The main mode in 3000 does off some fun twists here and there. Segmenting the well into unique shapes complicates your ability to ricochet bubbles, and special block types add an extra layer to clearing your well that makes some stages pretty tricky to clear. The main mode is also broken up in a very Shadow the Hedgehog sort of way, potentially even rivaling that game for its total possible routes. The key difference here is that you can freely choose which path to take when presented with a fork, as opposed to having Bub shoot every soldier he sees to death. Arguably, it'd be a better game if he did.
I gave the original Bust-A-Move for the SNES a 2.5/5 and thought "oh wow, that's a little low." It's a 3/5 now. My scores are fluid and I have no integrity. Bust-A-Move 3000 is also a 3/5 because I guess I feel more or less the same about all of these and settling on "these games are ok" is a good motivator to just remove the first two PS2 games from my backlog and accept that if I must bust moves, I best be bustin' 3000-style.
I guess that's what I think about Bust-A-Move 3000, thank you for reading!
The main mode in 3000 does off some fun twists here and there. Segmenting the well into unique shapes complicates your ability to ricochet bubbles, and special block types add an extra layer to clearing your well that makes some stages pretty tricky to clear. The main mode is also broken up in a very Shadow the Hedgehog sort of way, potentially even rivaling that game for its total possible routes. The key difference here is that you can freely choose which path to take when presented with a fork, as opposed to having Bub shoot every soldier he sees to death. Arguably, it'd be a better game if he did.
I gave the original Bust-A-Move for the SNES a 2.5/5 and thought "oh wow, that's a little low." It's a 3/5 now. My scores are fluid and I have no integrity. Bust-A-Move 3000 is also a 3/5 because I guess I feel more or less the same about all of these and settling on "these games are ok" is a good motivator to just remove the first two PS2 games from my backlog and accept that if I must bust moves, I best be bustin' 3000-style.
I've always been a little bit weary of the Samba de Amigo games. Something about flailing plastic maracas around coupled with my total lack of coordination seems... dangerous. I have no sense of timing or rhythm, my body moves with the grace and flow of a marionette. I'm lucky I don't have kids because there won't be video footage of me accidentally beaning them in the face with a joycon, but the potential for self-harm is still there... "1... 2... 3... jump!" and my hands go directly through the lights of my ceiling fan. Spending the night getting glass picked out of my knuckles in the urgent care. Terrible. Why would I sign on for that?
Well, the allure of a good deal, for one. Big thank you to Sega for sending Samba de Amigo: Party Central out to die so I could grab it for a cool 14$. Also, I do like to party (alcoholic) and I love to get down (on the ground because I drank too much), so I spent some time clearing furniture to make a good open space and moved my collection of priceless Victorian era porcelain dolls out of the way and finally played me a little Samba de Amigo.
Party Central is remarkably easy and probably the best time I've ever had with a rhythm game in terms of sheer personal performance. I was pulling A and S ranks with ease because it's just so lenient, almost comically so, and while the low skill ceiling might be a problem for some, waving my arms around like Kermit and still being told "aw, good job, buddy!" made me feel pretty great! The StreamiGo mode, which adds additional objectives like getting less than three boo's or clearing with a set score, adds a little extra challenge and replay value, and I do think the whole conceit of Amigo trying to build clout as a streamer is pretty funny. He's gonna have to switch to hot tub streams eventually, that's... that's where the money is. Subscribe to Amigo's OnlyFans...............
I did encounter a lot of issues with misread inputs and latency but honestly, that might just be my Joycons. I've long been suffering from drift despite barely using these things, the Joycons are hands-down the worst controllers Nintendo has put out, which is quite an accomplishment all things considered. Bad form factor and cheap parts... it would not surprise me if I simply have poor form, but I'd be even less shocked if this was a hardware issue. Still, Party Central is so forgiving that it never became more than a minor annoyance.
If you're as rhythmically impaired as I am, you might actually get something out of Party Central and considering how cheap it is (Sega had like, zero confidence in this, huh?) it's a pretty easy pick up. Just make sure you have your Joycon straps on or you'll fling one of them directly into your porcelain doll collection and straight through the window and directly into the face of the neighbor's kid and spend your whole morning writing this review on hold with the insurance company
i'm in a lot of fuckin trouble, man
Well, the allure of a good deal, for one. Big thank you to Sega for sending Samba de Amigo: Party Central out to die so I could grab it for a cool 14$. Also, I do like to party (alcoholic) and I love to get down (on the ground because I drank too much), so I spent some time clearing furniture to make a good open space and moved my collection of priceless Victorian era porcelain dolls out of the way and finally played me a little Samba de Amigo.
Party Central is remarkably easy and probably the best time I've ever had with a rhythm game in terms of sheer personal performance. I was pulling A and S ranks with ease because it's just so lenient, almost comically so, and while the low skill ceiling might be a problem for some, waving my arms around like Kermit and still being told "aw, good job, buddy!" made me feel pretty great! The StreamiGo mode, which adds additional objectives like getting less than three boo's or clearing with a set score, adds a little extra challenge and replay value, and I do think the whole conceit of Amigo trying to build clout as a streamer is pretty funny. He's gonna have to switch to hot tub streams eventually, that's... that's where the money is. Subscribe to Amigo's OnlyFans...............
I did encounter a lot of issues with misread inputs and latency but honestly, that might just be my Joycons. I've long been suffering from drift despite barely using these things, the Joycons are hands-down the worst controllers Nintendo has put out, which is quite an accomplishment all things considered. Bad form factor and cheap parts... it would not surprise me if I simply have poor form, but I'd be even less shocked if this was a hardware issue. Still, Party Central is so forgiving that it never became more than a minor annoyance.
If you're as rhythmically impaired as I am, you might actually get something out of Party Central and considering how cheap it is (Sega had like, zero confidence in this, huh?) it's a pretty easy pick up. Just make sure you have your Joycon straps on or you'll fling one of them directly into your porcelain doll collection and straight through the window and directly into the face of the neighbor's kid and spend your whole morning writing this review on hold with the insurance company
i'm in a lot of fuckin trouble, man
2000
I got hit in the head very hard and woke up here...
I have a bad relationship with Mario Party and have already written several incendiary reviews on that series. I'll never apologize for those, because Mario Party has hurt me in ways both psychological and physical. The same can be said about Sonic the Hedgehog, so Sonic Shuffle is a real "worlds colliding" moment, smashing me between two points with such force that all my internal organs are emulsified on impact. Welcome to Maginary World, it fuckin' sucks here.
The Precious Stone, which governs the world of dreams, has been shattered by Void, a spirit who's only sin is being an avatar for the dark half of man that exists within us all and who the game repeatedly tells the player had the audacity to even exist. Not going to say this silly little story is offensive or anything but it is also really funny when your heroes are like "the world of dreams was once a beautiful place, and then Void had to be born..." Even Sonic gets in on this savagery, dogpiling the poor guy and going so far as to assault him before finally growing a conscious and realizing Void just wants to be embraced and made whole.
Look, there's something to be said here about stones and glass houses, because after slogging my way through Shuffle's story mode, I wanna jump the guy, too.
Sonic Shuffle forgoes dice rolls in favor of a card system, removing some of the random chance present in Mario Party for something more strategic. You can move a set amount of spaces based on what's available in your hand, or draw a card blindly from your opponent's hand, and on paper this actually sounds like a good system. Indeed, it might be if you're playing with friends, but every time I politely requested Fightcade to "ADD SONIC SHUFFLE OR I WILL DO SOMETHING WE BOTH REGRET" I was curiously met with silence. It's like they don't appreciate it or something. Very strange.
The AI is so brutal that the Sonic Wikia has a whole section dedicated specifically to combating it, something that is absolutely not the responsibility of an encyclopedia article to do. Even the Wikia admits the AI is skewed upwards, and from personal experience I can confirm the computer on "normal" is able to read everyone's hands and will routinely pick the cards that are the most advantageous, either for their personal benefit or by anticipating what you need and making the choice to kneecap you. Though it's noted as a characteristic of hard mode, on several occasions the computer veered away from a precious stone to camp out near where the next would spawn, and since Eggman will drop a fucking 16-ton anvil on the head of the player furthest from the last collected stone, this meant being actively punished for grabbing a stone only for another character to claim the next before I even had a chance to move.
At least playing in Redream bestowed me with the ability to cheat. Oh, the AI can see all my cards, can they? Well, if I just habitually load a save state, I too can know the placement of every card! I don't have to finish each level with six precious stone pieces, or the most rings and mini-game wins-- I don't need things, I want them. Now I am become Mario Party.... How the tables have turned.
Being allowed to tap into my own disgusting sadism aside, it is worth having this level of insurance to insulate you from the computer, as in true party game fashion, you might just lose to some bullshit and have to replay the entire board. The only difference here is that Sonic Shuffle drops any pretense of being random, it doesn't care to veil itself in the illusion of chance and is upfront with its cruelty. I gotta respect that.
It also just feels bad to play regardless of how conniving the AI is. Mini-games are uninspired and control poorly, and they fall into the Mario Party trap of not filtering previously played games out of the rotation. After beating the story mode, there were still thirteen mini-game I hadn't even seen. At least Sonic Shuffle has the decency to not end every turn with a mini-game, instead having them trigger by landing on an event space. Unfortunately, this also means you can roll a turn where you end up playing four mini-games, so fuck, I don't know! There are also "Accident!" games which trigger randomly and are unique to the board, but these lack any kind of preamble to convey the rules, instead placing them on the bottom of the screen while the game is underway. Not gonna complain about reading subtitles, but this is like trying to process information while a brick is being thrown at you just outside your periphery.
Mini-games aren't the only thing that feels insipid about Sonic Shuffle. Even the boards themselves are dull, with extremely trite gimmicks like not being able to step across alligators if their mouths are open. Fuck that. I'm gonna lay down, let the jaws of the beast take me. That's far more preferable to listening to lumina explain each board's unique spaces which, it turns out, just warp you to a random location. That's it, that's what all of them do. The final board is laid out like the Vortex World from Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and it is absolutely confounding. Probably spent more time just looking at the map counting spaces to figure out the most efficient route to a precious stone piece only for the math to never work out with how many spaces away the game claims I am, and I have to think it's just miscounting and judging distance through some other metric. Or maybe it's not, I can't tell!
I remember my first experience with this game. I was at Wal-Mart probably a month or two after it released. Sonic Shuffle, a Sonic game I hadn't heard of?? How is that possible...? I begged my dad to buy it, went home, popped it in the Dreamcast, and had a truly miserable time. And yet, I played it to completion. You'll just have to trust me on this because the battery to my VMU has long since died, and though I still own the game, I can't really prove that I unlocked every character and every item in Sonic's room. But like a man possessed, I did. This time? I settled for beating the story mode.
"See you again..."
No, you won't.
I have a bad relationship with Mario Party and have already written several incendiary reviews on that series. I'll never apologize for those, because Mario Party has hurt me in ways both psychological and physical. The same can be said about Sonic the Hedgehog, so Sonic Shuffle is a real "worlds colliding" moment, smashing me between two points with such force that all my internal organs are emulsified on impact. Welcome to Maginary World, it fuckin' sucks here.
The Precious Stone, which governs the world of dreams, has been shattered by Void, a spirit who's only sin is being an avatar for the dark half of man that exists within us all and who the game repeatedly tells the player had the audacity to even exist. Not going to say this silly little story is offensive or anything but it is also really funny when your heroes are like "the world of dreams was once a beautiful place, and then Void had to be born..." Even Sonic gets in on this savagery, dogpiling the poor guy and going so far as to assault him before finally growing a conscious and realizing Void just wants to be embraced and made whole.
Look, there's something to be said here about stones and glass houses, because after slogging my way through Shuffle's story mode, I wanna jump the guy, too.
Sonic Shuffle forgoes dice rolls in favor of a card system, removing some of the random chance present in Mario Party for something more strategic. You can move a set amount of spaces based on what's available in your hand, or draw a card blindly from your opponent's hand, and on paper this actually sounds like a good system. Indeed, it might be if you're playing with friends, but every time I politely requested Fightcade to "ADD SONIC SHUFFLE OR I WILL DO SOMETHING WE BOTH REGRET" I was curiously met with silence. It's like they don't appreciate it or something. Very strange.
The AI is so brutal that the Sonic Wikia has a whole section dedicated specifically to combating it, something that is absolutely not the responsibility of an encyclopedia article to do. Even the Wikia admits the AI is skewed upwards, and from personal experience I can confirm the computer on "normal" is able to read everyone's hands and will routinely pick the cards that are the most advantageous, either for their personal benefit or by anticipating what you need and making the choice to kneecap you. Though it's noted as a characteristic of hard mode, on several occasions the computer veered away from a precious stone to camp out near where the next would spawn, and since Eggman will drop a fucking 16-ton anvil on the head of the player furthest from the last collected stone, this meant being actively punished for grabbing a stone only for another character to claim the next before I even had a chance to move.
At least playing in Redream bestowed me with the ability to cheat. Oh, the AI can see all my cards, can they? Well, if I just habitually load a save state, I too can know the placement of every card! I don't have to finish each level with six precious stone pieces, or the most rings and mini-game wins-- I don't need things, I want them. Now I am become Mario Party.... How the tables have turned.
Being allowed to tap into my own disgusting sadism aside, it is worth having this level of insurance to insulate you from the computer, as in true party game fashion, you might just lose to some bullshit and have to replay the entire board. The only difference here is that Sonic Shuffle drops any pretense of being random, it doesn't care to veil itself in the illusion of chance and is upfront with its cruelty. I gotta respect that.
It also just feels bad to play regardless of how conniving the AI is. Mini-games are uninspired and control poorly, and they fall into the Mario Party trap of not filtering previously played games out of the rotation. After beating the story mode, there were still thirteen mini-game I hadn't even seen. At least Sonic Shuffle has the decency to not end every turn with a mini-game, instead having them trigger by landing on an event space. Unfortunately, this also means you can roll a turn where you end up playing four mini-games, so fuck, I don't know! There are also "Accident!" games which trigger randomly and are unique to the board, but these lack any kind of preamble to convey the rules, instead placing them on the bottom of the screen while the game is underway. Not gonna complain about reading subtitles, but this is like trying to process information while a brick is being thrown at you just outside your periphery.
Mini-games aren't the only thing that feels insipid about Sonic Shuffle. Even the boards themselves are dull, with extremely trite gimmicks like not being able to step across alligators if their mouths are open. Fuck that. I'm gonna lay down, let the jaws of the beast take me. That's far more preferable to listening to lumina explain each board's unique spaces which, it turns out, just warp you to a random location. That's it, that's what all of them do. The final board is laid out like the Vortex World from Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and it is absolutely confounding. Probably spent more time just looking at the map counting spaces to figure out the most efficient route to a precious stone piece only for the math to never work out with how many spaces away the game claims I am, and I have to think it's just miscounting and judging distance through some other metric. Or maybe it's not, I can't tell!
I remember my first experience with this game. I was at Wal-Mart probably a month or two after it released. Sonic Shuffle, a Sonic game I hadn't heard of?? How is that possible...? I begged my dad to buy it, went home, popped it in the Dreamcast, and had a truly miserable time. And yet, I played it to completion. You'll just have to trust me on this because the battery to my VMU has long since died, and though I still own the game, I can't really prove that I unlocked every character and every item in Sonic's room. But like a man possessed, I did. This time? I settled for beating the story mode.
"See you again..."
No, you won't.
1990
I'm just like Captain Falcon, I'm getting exploded all the time.
Along with Pilotwings, F-Zero might be the most technically impressive entry in the Super Nintendo's launch lineup, though it is less a demo and more a proper video game. Sure, the Sega Genesis had been out for a while and had already simulated 3D spaces to great effect with games like Space Harrier, but F-Zero is so smooth and runs so fast that even with the leg up, it makes a strong case for investing in Nintendo's 16-bit hardware.
Setting aside its role as a Mode 7 showpiece, it's just a well-designed racing game, with incredibly engaging courses, cars that handle great, and a satisfying sense of speed that is rarely interrupted by performance hitches. F-Zero isn't bogged down by a bunch of track gimmicks, it lacks depth mechanically, it's about as straight-forward as you can get, but I think that's a strength.
That's not to say it's perfect, though. F-Zero might be one of the better racing games on the SNES but it also suffers from issues typical of this generation. There's rubberbanding, and god help you if you screw up and smack into a wall near the end of a race, because your position will be taken by at least a car or two. Whenever you're behind a racer, they have a tendency to weave back and forth to prevent you from overtaking them, and during late game courses where tracks become more narrow and turns more tight, it can feel like threading a needle where inaccuracy is punished harshly by bouncing you against walls like a pinball until you blow up.
That said, I'm a huge Super Mario Kart defender, so I can't judge F-Zero too harshly for its sins, and if it came down to it, I'd knock Mario Kart off the shelf if it meant having room for F-Zero. Great pickup for Super Famicom owners. CIB sets are still affordable, and not only is the game in English, the comic in the back of the manual is, too. Even numbers the speech bubbles to guide native Japanese speakers as it's presented left-to-right. I thought that was neat. F-Zero is neat.
Along with Pilotwings, F-Zero might be the most technically impressive entry in the Super Nintendo's launch lineup, though it is less a demo and more a proper video game. Sure, the Sega Genesis had been out for a while and had already simulated 3D spaces to great effect with games like Space Harrier, but F-Zero is so smooth and runs so fast that even with the leg up, it makes a strong case for investing in Nintendo's 16-bit hardware.
Setting aside its role as a Mode 7 showpiece, it's just a well-designed racing game, with incredibly engaging courses, cars that handle great, and a satisfying sense of speed that is rarely interrupted by performance hitches. F-Zero isn't bogged down by a bunch of track gimmicks, it lacks depth mechanically, it's about as straight-forward as you can get, but I think that's a strength.
That's not to say it's perfect, though. F-Zero might be one of the better racing games on the SNES but it also suffers from issues typical of this generation. There's rubberbanding, and god help you if you screw up and smack into a wall near the end of a race, because your position will be taken by at least a car or two. Whenever you're behind a racer, they have a tendency to weave back and forth to prevent you from overtaking them, and during late game courses where tracks become more narrow and turns more tight, it can feel like threading a needle where inaccuracy is punished harshly by bouncing you against walls like a pinball until you blow up.
That said, I'm a huge Super Mario Kart defender, so I can't judge F-Zero too harshly for its sins, and if it came down to it, I'd knock Mario Kart off the shelf if it meant having room for F-Zero. Great pickup for Super Famicom owners. CIB sets are still affordable, and not only is the game in English, the comic in the back of the manual is, too. Even numbers the speech bubbles to guide native Japanese speakers as it's presented left-to-right. I thought that was neat. F-Zero is neat.
I love Mobile Suit Gundam, and I love a game I can beat in a single sitting, so Journey to Jaburo ought to be tailor made to my sensibilities. Yet, clunky controls and dull, repetitive gameplay left me with little patience for its whopping two hour long campaign. "White Base is under attack!" Yes, I know that, Sayla. I'd love to help but I'm a little busy shooting this Zaku with twenty fucking bazooka rounds.
Journey to Jaburo covers (roughly) the first half of the original anime, starting with Amuro activating the RX-78-2 Gundam on Side-7 and concluding with the defense of Jaburo on Earth. Although the game is only 9 missions long and arcade-like in pace and structure, a decent amount of key battles are covered and animated cutscenes do a serviceable job of connecting them. Sure, you're missing stuff like the salt arc, jumping onto white base, Chad Aznable laughing, and some major moments are touched on so briefly that they might be difficult to parse for the uninitiated, but when you're trying to truncate a space opera to fit in the confines of a PS2 game, you gotta make some cuts.
You could make the argument that Journey to Jaburo should've been more comprehensive by covering the White Base crew's return to space, but given how awkward the controls are, I do not want to think about how the Gundam would handle in zero gravity.
The RX-78-2 feels like a tank, and on some level that's appropriate. The whole "real robot" genre is built on these mechs being actual pieces of military hardware, so moving around should feel laborious to some degree. That's fine, but it starts to come apart with how often inputs are misread and eaten, a result of all control styles mapping movement to the D-pad. If you don't ride the very edge of a directional button, you might turn when you don't want to, and sometimes double-tapping to dash in a direction just doesn't work and your mobile suit stands in place like a dumbass. It is somehow both too sensitive and not responsive enough.
Slight errors when orienting yourself mid-battle is punished hard. The Gundam can't take much of a beating, and is thoroughly outclassed defensively and offensively by Zeon's frontline grunts. It is certainly the case in canon that Zeon was putting out suits that were sturdier than the Gundam by the end of the One Year War, with Amuro's talents as a newtype compensating to such a degree that he eventually became bottlenecked by the machine itself. That said, a Zaku-I should not take 30 seconds of mashing the attack button over and over again to blow up.
You can't lead your shots either, which effectively renders the Gundam's beam rifle useless, especially against fighter jets. You can be perfectly locked on but whiff every shot because you're stuck shooting where they were, and in missions where you're tasked with defending the White Base, watching its health tick down because of a limitation in the way the game is designed is irritating. Maybe I'm more irked by this than I ought to be, because playing this off my PS2's hard drive resulted in numerous crashes, particularly when trying to reload a mission after a game over.
This came to a head with the final mission, which despite how brisk all the others are, feels like it drags. You have to clear out several basic mobile suits over two attack phases, then go toe-to-toe with Char who hits like a truck and is so squirrely you can scarcely keep a lock on him. When you do take him out, you're (literally) smacked with another boss fight against a mobile armor that can stunlock you to death with its main canon. Fun. There's a whole secondary gameplay mode that unlocks when you beat the story and despite the fact that the core campaign is so short, I don't want to play it. I've been told it's better and requires more strategic thinking, but like, it's going to control the same and I've had enough of what Jaburo is putting down.
I rented this when it came out and at the time could only stomach up to the second mission before I took it back. As an adult who has been micro-dosing bad games to build up a tolerance, I was able to beat it and find some appreciation for its arcade-like structure - I don't even mind its length and view it as a positive quality - but it's so rough and unrefined that I can't see myself picking it up ever again.
One of these days, I'm gonna end up decking Bright.
Journey to Jaburo covers (roughly) the first half of the original anime, starting with Amuro activating the RX-78-2 Gundam on Side-7 and concluding with the defense of Jaburo on Earth. Although the game is only 9 missions long and arcade-like in pace and structure, a decent amount of key battles are covered and animated cutscenes do a serviceable job of connecting them. Sure, you're missing stuff like the salt arc, jumping onto white base, Chad Aznable laughing, and some major moments are touched on so briefly that they might be difficult to parse for the uninitiated, but when you're trying to truncate a space opera to fit in the confines of a PS2 game, you gotta make some cuts.
You could make the argument that Journey to Jaburo should've been more comprehensive by covering the White Base crew's return to space, but given how awkward the controls are, I do not want to think about how the Gundam would handle in zero gravity.
The RX-78-2 feels like a tank, and on some level that's appropriate. The whole "real robot" genre is built on these mechs being actual pieces of military hardware, so moving around should feel laborious to some degree. That's fine, but it starts to come apart with how often inputs are misread and eaten, a result of all control styles mapping movement to the D-pad. If you don't ride the very edge of a directional button, you might turn when you don't want to, and sometimes double-tapping to dash in a direction just doesn't work and your mobile suit stands in place like a dumbass. It is somehow both too sensitive and not responsive enough.
Slight errors when orienting yourself mid-battle is punished hard. The Gundam can't take much of a beating, and is thoroughly outclassed defensively and offensively by Zeon's frontline grunts. It is certainly the case in canon that Zeon was putting out suits that were sturdier than the Gundam by the end of the One Year War, with Amuro's talents as a newtype compensating to such a degree that he eventually became bottlenecked by the machine itself. That said, a Zaku-I should not take 30 seconds of mashing the attack button over and over again to blow up.
You can't lead your shots either, which effectively renders the Gundam's beam rifle useless, especially against fighter jets. You can be perfectly locked on but whiff every shot because you're stuck shooting where they were, and in missions where you're tasked with defending the White Base, watching its health tick down because of a limitation in the way the game is designed is irritating. Maybe I'm more irked by this than I ought to be, because playing this off my PS2's hard drive resulted in numerous crashes, particularly when trying to reload a mission after a game over.
This came to a head with the final mission, which despite how brisk all the others are, feels like it drags. You have to clear out several basic mobile suits over two attack phases, then go toe-to-toe with Char who hits like a truck and is so squirrely you can scarcely keep a lock on him. When you do take him out, you're (literally) smacked with another boss fight against a mobile armor that can stunlock you to death with its main canon. Fun. There's a whole secondary gameplay mode that unlocks when you beat the story and despite the fact that the core campaign is so short, I don't want to play it. I've been told it's better and requires more strategic thinking, but like, it's going to control the same and I've had enough of what Jaburo is putting down.
I rented this when it came out and at the time could only stomach up to the second mission before I took it back. As an adult who has been micro-dosing bad games to build up a tolerance, I was able to beat it and find some appreciation for its arcade-like structure - I don't even mind its length and view it as a positive quality - but it's so rough and unrefined that I can't see myself picking it up ever again.
One of these days, I'm gonna end up decking Bright.