This was my second attempt to play through Skyward Sword HD (first time I got about 80% through, this time about half way.) Despite being a massive LoZ fan (that never got the chance to play SS original) I genuinely can’t stand to finish this game. The combat is just so frustratingly not fun with the janky joystick config in the remaster. I adore the lore, the story, the art direction, world/map, music, EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERFECT. But the combat is just such a massive turn off. It’s very very cool in concept but in practice it’s just awful. Motion controls seem slightly more acceptable but with either option still it feels like 30% of the time your swings are just ignored or worse — they are misinterpreted for swinging the opposite direction. At first I felt like I could get past it but as I fought larger groups of enemies and harder bosses, it became clear that this play through was just going to be more of a point of frustration than any fun. I guess I’ll just never play through Skyward Sword unless a modder or Nintendo decide to remake or update it to be better.

Great fusion of Housemarque's experience in SHMUP design with the third-person shooter genre. Doesn't lose its step one bit and feels right at home along the likes of Super Stardust and Resogun. Movement is so responsive it never gets old dashing through enemy fire. I was worried that when the studio set aside the SHMUP genre they'd lose their identity, but instead they made a third-person shooter about abusing i-frames. It's a delight to play.

However, it suffers immensely from a feast or famine problem. The way health works—where your max health increases any time you pick up health items while at max health—means that players doing well keep doing well. If you're at max health, your max health merely continues to grow, setting you up for success by the time you hit the boss. Not doing so well? You'll constantly be scraping by, struggling to even regain what you've lost in each fight. It means a good run becomes an avalanche. And only good runs. Both of my victories—in the first and second halves of the game—came on runs where I didn't die once. Once the snowball starts rolling it's unbeatable. You get the artifact that leeches health on hit and the game becomes easy street.

It's always a hot or cold. You're either in the worst run and struggling to survive or the game feels like it's made for babies where it's impossible to die and aiming barely matters anymore. The game feels incredible, but it's a rebalance away from being truly perfect. Easily the quickest I've ever seen the end of a Roguelike.

I used to find this underwhelming after first experiencing the excess in luxury that was Super Mario Bros 3 back in the Wii virtual console days. Now I find comfort in its cohesion and understated nature. Despite having a set of backdrops that's barely above the original Mario Bros, Dinosaur Land is only behind Delfino Plaza when it comes to the most atmospheric and evocative settings in the platforming series. The way it gradually unfurls in reaction to the route you take and how it often interconnects in surprising ways makes it my favorite platforming overworld and I'm disappointed that no future platformer would build on its capacity for discovery and adventure. That it barely iterates on the ideas it introduces, a stark contrast to Nintendo's other works, only adds to the sense that you're only scratching the surface of SMW's digital depths. Even after completing the Star Road, a never seen before enemy on the credits tease the possibility of even more hidden depths. Platforming never got more adventurous than this.