The Forgotten City is a pretty cool experience that's still a little rough around the edges. While a time loop game isn't 100% unique they're definitely few and far between, and really cool when done well. This one mostly succeeds, and does so while being very heavy on NPCs and dialogue which I think are difficult to get right. While those aspects aren't perfect I think it still did an admirable job with them. My problems with the game are mostly minor but sort of add up to it feeling like a less polished experience overall than it could have been.

While the dialogue is pretty well written for the most part, the dialogue choices feel forced the large majority of the time. You start out with the same handful of options when talking to pretty much any character, which is pretty uselessly repetitive when you could just have fully scripted conversations. Thankfully the player character doesn't actually speak so there's no dialogue choice mismatch nonsense, but still even past the initial options I mentioned it feels like your choices aren't very meaningful. You can play into the role the game wants for your character, or not, but if you don't you probably won't be making much progress. Overall I'm fine with that, I don't need this to be a roleplaying game, but the presentation of it is in conflict with that and feels like a leftover from its origins as a mod.

Speaking of leftovers, the combat sections are just awful and really unnecessary to the extent they're used. Don't get me wrong, it's not a ton, but I still didn't need to do it more than once. I also ran into an unfortunate number of performance issues and glitches that did affect gameplay, I did play this fairly close to launch so hopefully those will be fixed but it is worth mentioning.

Before I get into somewhat spoiler-y territory I'll say that I would recommend this overall and it's a very interesting game if you're into this type of thing.



==Minor spoilers for the ending below==

The endings for the game are kind of a mixed bag in my opinion. The first two are pretty much the same, and while they are unsatisfying I doubt anyone is going to stop there, I just wanted to see them out of curiosity. The third ending is actually my favorite, while it isn't the "true" ending I thought it was very strong on its own. Maybe this is because it's the first one I saw, and some of the others reuse content from it which I mostly skipped through, but it felt well thought out. The true ending I think was still worth getting, and the very end I have to say was touching, but the conversation with you-know-who was ultimately kind of boring and unneeded, and I didn't really like the design of that final area. It was fine though, I didn't hate it or anything. I also thought it was a bit awkward at the very end how most characters didn't really recognize you if you did the ending towards the beginning of a loop, it makes sense but probably would've been better if they plot-magic'd that away. Thankfully all of the endings are pretty quick to see if you have a save in the late game anyways.

I played the first half of this one a while back and felt underwhelmed by it; nothing bad but just felt a bit dull. picked it up again recently and then finished it off tonight in a better environment to enjoy the game imo. having secured a widescreen CRT, the 480p anamorphic widescreen illustrations look much cleaner than on the hdtv I previously tried it on. even tho the has a bit of a Flash quality to it, it pops on a CRT and improves the experience quite a bit. the overall framing/themenig is cute as well, with the different poses being localized from their japanese counterparts expertly, the wiimote and nunchuck being artifacts from a temple, and mahjong tiles being used to represent the microgames in the free select menu. the cutscenes for each stage aren't intrusive either, and overall the game keeps you chugging through microgames as quickly as it possibly can.

the microgames themselves are a bit of a mixed bag... on one hand this may be the wii game that demonstrates the potential gimmicks of the wiimote the best, but on the other hand the games can generally be split up into either "some sort of generic waggle motion" or "fleshed-out idea with extremely imprecise controls". the former category isn't necessarily bad, as many of the games are excellently designed in order to be parsed quickly upon a first try. even if the actual movement is simple or doesn't require a special pose in order to do, the kinetic feeling involved with accomplishing the task is palpable, a bit like a phantom limb. it's when you begin to lose control over the game that it becomes much less fun, and more like a product of undercooked motion controls. thankfully I didn't really encounter this feeling outside of the final main stage, as the stages prior weren't too difficult at all. in fact, I was laughing at each microgame a fair bit during the middle stretch, which definitely hit on the mark for a game of this style. once you beat the game you get a couple extra options: orbulon's minigames involve the nunchuck but this sacrifices some of the simplicity and made the game feel clumsier in my opinion, while crygor is just an exercise mode using a collection of the most egregious waggle microgames from all stages, as if giving myself tennis elbow playing this is a real substitute for hitting the gym.

glad to have finally finished it and I may return to this one to do some multiplayer stuff. it's a solid wii game overall, and honestly the perfect game to download and try out considering how short it is. it's not as novel or in-depth as the original, but it more than does in a pinch.

Oh this is delightful. The creators of 80 Days put together a delightful little murder simulator. After killing your husband, you have to cover your tracks to get away with the crime and (hopefully) get the insurance payout. It’s mostly about navigating through a wacky cast of characters who have happened to either witnessed something or found evidence that you left behind. Getting a grasp of the surroundings and schedules of each passenger is a slowly building puzzle piece that helps you navigate all the different obstacles you face. Each playthrough could maybe take 10-15 minutes each and you can really vary up how you approach the puzzle box it gives you. Just a boat load of fun.

For a game that looks so simple at first glance, its surprising how impactful this experience is, addressing serious topics to do with relationships with clever metaphors and cutesy characters. The simple yet (mostly) wonderful narrative makes up for the average platforming and frustrating camera that sometimes struggles to keep up with your character. However, I did enjoy how the frequent changing of abilities and introduction of new gameplay mechanics throughout the game kept things fresh. Journey of the Broken Circle is a fun little platformer, and even though it has its flaws, it entertained me for the short time it took me to playthrough.

2020 Ranked

Transgressive art is art that is made to outrage in some way. It's in the name after all: the word "transgress" means to go over some kind of boundary, which in transgressive art, usually comes in the form of shock value utilized for the purpose to offend. In gaming culture, it seems there's a rush to justify the medium's nature as an art form by propping up more palatable and marketable titles that seek to have that arthouse flair or some form of cinematic sensibility, but if gaming is to mature as a medium, we must be able to acknowledge the ugly and the transgressive, and to do so, we can look no further than 1997's Postal.

I'll cut to the chase: this game isn't very good. The arcade-style gameplay is incredibly mediocre and drawn out way too long for its comparatively short runtime, and it really runs out of interesting gameplay ideas about a quarter of the way in. However, if I am being completely honest, the gameplay of Postal is the least interesting thing about it. The most interesting part of Postal lies in everything else surrounding said gameplay.

Despite the series' reputation nowadays, the original Postal does not look nor play the way you think it would. Your goal is to defeat a certain percentage of hostiles on each map, and while civilians can roam the map and flee in terror and get mowed down en masse, the game neither explicitly rewards or condemns you for doing so. There's the occasional morbid joke from an NPC, or a glib one-liner from the Postal Dude's inner monologue, but the "mass shooter" angle is played mostly straight. The atmosphere is top-notch as your rampage is backed by both the diegetic background noise and the occasional piece of droning, industrial ambience designed to unnerve you and really put you into the headspace of madness. Playing on Hard mode opens each stage with a diary entry from the Postal Dude, detailing his descent into madness and his penchant for violence as he believes himself to be on a one-man crusade against a supposed chemical attack from the military that is turning the townsfolk insane. The final mission is a cutscene of the Postal Dude attempting to shoot up a school (predating the Columbine Shooting by 2 years!) but finding his weaponry utterly ineffective at harming children, before he passes out and is finally locked inside a mental institution as a narrator reads off the definition of "going postal," ascribing his violent rampage to the mundanities of everyday life.

While the series' change in tone with expansion packs & future installments, and the direct quotes from Running With Scissors' founder Vince Desi claiming that the game was meant to be "really fun and fast, action-paced" would give the idea that the game's tone is intended to be humorous, the way Postal frames its violence is very purposeful and is not as fun or humorous as they may have intended it to be. One of the most common themes explored in transgressive art is that of mental illness and psychological dissociation, and taking into consideration both Postal's premise and conclusion, there's certainly more thought put into its themes and message beyond being a careless murder spree. Postal posits its violence as a product of contemporary society in a very unflattering, raw light that suggests a grander ambition than the comedic action game angle they claimed it to be (and would eventually fully realize with Postal 2). While Postal 2 went off the deep end of parody and was firing on all cylinders to be as offensive as possible on all angles, the more subdued, classical transgressive nature of Postal actually felt like it had something more meaningful to say, even if it wasn't entirely on purpose. Postal's controversy held up a mirror to the nature of mindless violence in society; the raw, brutal nature of it removing any glitz or glamor that the media would normally use to paint such violence with so as to be "entertainment." It's an experiment born of spite who's creation and ensuing controversy could only come from the minds of disgruntled former edutainment developers who wanted to make a real impact and push the boundaries of acceptability in the gaming landscape. Postal is an ugly, transgressive game that kind of needed to be made for gaming as a whole to mature as an art form.

A mesmerizing game at its best. The first few missions are such a slog, given that your starter trucks think of shallow mud as if it were glue, but getting a truck that can haul things over terrain with actual obstacles allows this game to show off how fun it can be.

It's a little bare in terms of gameplay elements - it really is just "deliver thing to place" - but the actual logistics of getting thing X to place Y turns this simple act of traversal into a puzzle, making this much more comparable to Death Stranding than SCS's Truck Sim games. It's a shame that the game is either ludicrously easy or really hard once you acquire a few trucks, with no real in-between. This means that the only real factor is "can your truck grip the terrain and/or winch itself along", which doesn't completely nullify the fun in the game, but I rarely feel like I need to use more than 4-5 of the 60+ vehicles in the game.

All in all it's still an enjoyable game that allows you to engage your brain a bit without being an overly stressful or action-packed experience. I'm not really big into them myself but I imagine this is peak "podcast game" material. My suggestion is to Cheat Engine in a small amount of money so the hump at the beginning is a little smaller, and you can get to the meat of the experience a little faster - you won't exactly be robbing yourself of the feeling of progression either, as most of the content is still locked behind levels.

Yea, this was great, the art direction in this game is my favorite in the series so far, some are hit and miss but the characters work surprisingly well in 3d, and speaking of the characters, they wee a nice change to the warioware formula, the tag team angle to it all makes it more tense and fun, too, my only problem is that some characters aren't that fun to play as others are which kinda sucks. Overall just a really great time, now uh, if you don't mind me asking.. when's rhythm heaven coming to switch

art restoration is a subject thats been broached since the days of babylon - we, as a people, have dealt with the minutiae of this delicate work, with its chief dilemmas and hermeneutics, for as long as civilization has existed. there's a particular technique with regards to reconstruction of architecture: anastylosis. this occurs when you take a crumbling edifice, monument, or structure and you restore it, using the original elements and components, to its untouched, initial form - at least, to the extent that you can. this is to preserve the original texture. it's a noble, aspirational endeavour, one rooted as much in aesthetic appreciation as it is in simple respect for past achievements and a desire to transpose oneself into bygone eras. on a macro-scale, you see this practiced in countries like greece, india, and turkey - any country with a rich tapestry of culture and history, really - but id wager it occurs in everyday life on a micro-scale, too. there's a hindu temple in my region that causes a lot of trouble for its proprietors because they've imported all the necessary construction materials from india so as to bring it in line with the specifications of their native temples. those materials arent made to last canadian winters, so the temple get absolutely battered in frigid temperatures, which leads to frequent reparation and reconstruction in other seasons. still, they go ahead and continue to toil away anyways, in large part because, well, it's important to them, and they're deeply committed. is it the same temple that it once was, originally? is it even an edifice with the same rich history as its predecessors? probably not, but thats fine.

games partake in reconstruction and restoration as well, but it cant be said that we practice anastylosis. anastylosis, no matter how well-intentioned the practice is, attracts criticism, particularly in the finer arts, because crafting a representation of the original state of being yields a host of problems from a theoretical standpoint. while this opens up dialogue with regards to other forms of art im a bit too out-of-my-depth to tackle, a few of the same questions can be raised for games. as the discipline continually evolves, how do you become so acute in execution, so empiricist in approach, that something can functionally resemble the original? moreover, with something as ludic as the simple act of 'play', should you attempt to craft a representation of the original in the first place?

some give up, some dont even try, some bend the knee towards market pressure. remakes, remasters, and ports have been in news cycles frequently over the past few years, and it's clear that the industry - let alone your average consumer - doesnt have a unified approach to this, nor do they often care. there are several remasters and remakes that have attracted as much staunch criticism as they have fervent praise - demon's souls, final fantasy vii, crash bandicoot, shadow of the colossus, resident evil 2 and 3, ratchet and clank...the list goes on. botched remasters exist as well, haunting the original forms like specters, such as the silent hill hd collection, the arkham collection, diablo II, and so on. or how about cases where preservation has failed from the outset, like when developers fail to preserve source code, leaving the world with inferior versions of the same product? the recent ninja gaiden collection comes to mind.

whatever your stance on any of these remakes or remasters are - one thing that unifies them is that they're all beloved intellectual properties that are routinely and steadfastly discussed. less attention is given towards works that havent penetrated this cultural consciousness, or dont quite so easily belong to these strata of iconography. if you google any niche game that taps into that endless well of childhood nostalgia, you will hear the cries and pleads for a remaster or remake. blinx the cat hd longplay on youtube? "this needs a remake!" scaler, on the ps2? "ahh, underrated gem from my childhood. there should have been a sequel or a remaster." metal arms: glitch in the system? the suffering? robotech invasion? you betcha.

obviously these developer-sanctioned treatments will never come, despite the sincerity of these wishes. but, again, with a medium as ludic and experiential as games, maybe there's an argument here. and im certainly willing to hear some of these arguments out, particularly when they’re a direct result of passion. you want to hear about a dispassionate restoration? how about when demon’s souls was treated with no respect during its development by a plethora of executives, only to then resurface as a remake, missing its aesthetic expressive core and led by a completely separate team a decade later because those very same executives knew they could push hardware at retail in such a way? and there is precedent for touching up older titles that are given far less reverence. were it not for the dedication of a few, we would not have discovered that aliens: colonial marines, a title infamous for its lack of polish, could be somewhat fixed by simply altering a typo in its code.

this is what makes redriver 2 – a fanmade project which exists to reverse engineer the PS1 copy of the game, allowing for a fully playable, unofficial PC port – a fascinating exercise. driver 2 released to mixed reception because it was too visionary. developer reflections’ ambitions to improve their in-house formula severely taxed the processing power of the PS1, resulting in performance issues, a litany of bugs and technical issues, poor draw distance, bad load times, and so on. this is an open-world, mission-based wheelman extravaganza featuring four sweeping, painstakingly rendered maps, dozens of high-octane car chases, several animated CGs, licensed music (kenny rogers!!), an on-foot mode, and so on. pedestrians, vistas, cars – everything we take for granted in the open-world format is utilized in nascent form here. it may not sound like much, but driver 2 is very much an early precursor to grand theft auto III and games of that particular species, all of which resulted in an icarus-like title that couldn’t excel in its environment.

redriver 2, through grit and precision, fixes a lot of these issues. it’s still a smidge prone to glitches, but the draw distance has been improved, the performance is stable, the load times are near instant – it results in a game that doesn’t have both its shoelaces tied together anymore, and can be taken on its own terms as a direct sequel to the original driver, no longer shackled to its original form. it’s like it’s been given a healthy dose of nitrous. it’s a game that’s exceedingly fun as a result, improving on the original in myriad intelligent and easily discernible ways.

reflections work here is really something special. the original driver is strongly self-assured – the most infamous tutorial in gaming is simply a reflection of how well-tuned its goldilocks-esque handling, vehicular weight, and driving mechanics were. it was intuitive, very much designed for the PS1 controller and not in spite of – a crucial difference of approach in a racing title. but it was very much a prototype, nonetheless. its maps were too gridlike and disorderly, too littered with straightaways to fully capitalize on its frequent cat-and-mouse chase missions; its difficulty was inconsistent, vicious, and unflinching; its approach to immersion was appreciated but conflicted with errant AI and a non-diegetic UI.

driver 2 ameliorates many of these concerns while retaining the excellent driving mechanics of the first. wetting one’s whistle as a wheelman here is still every bit as improvisational and reactionary as before, but the game is far more playful and granular. the most impressive thing here (and something redriver 2 so excellently preserves) is how well textured and moody these worlds are. weather effects, a canvas of painterly skies, and catchy jingles set the tone here, but reflections is excellent at landmarking their maps and making streets visually distinct and legible in spite of issues with draw distance. this is really impressive work with regards to creating a sound representation of a city for its era across four maps, particularly considering the genre we’re dealing with. on top of this, maps have added complexity in structure – no longer beholden to straight roads, driver 2 packs plenty of curvy roads, twisting alleys, underground tunnels and highway ramps that allow for more player expression and more opportunities for evasion. for instance, winding between trees and weaving a path in and out of traffic, effectively creating a slalom route, is something i found myself doing to a much greater extent than in the original, specifically when these opportunities actually exist for once.

the difficulty of driver 2 still subscribes to the same few tenets – the AI remains as predatory and uncompromising as ever, cars are still difficult to takedown, missions still have very little margin for error, time limits are still strict, RNG means traffic patterns will always reset on a re-attempt of a mission (and occasionally the path your enemy will take does as well), when youre chasing somebody you have to be roughly within 100 m of them or they will escape – but the game remains more playful in mission variety and execution. it’s a heartpounding moment when you have a set amount of time to take down an ammunition supply truck, only to then have your hopes dashed the minute you actually take down the truck because now you have to commandeer a heavily damaged truck to its new destination under the same time limit. my fingers practically seized up when i actually made it there, and then with ten seconds on the clock i was still told i had to open up the garage, park the truck, and close the garage. and then in the next mission you chase another truck except its throwing a grenade every second at you. so the difficulty is as nailbiting as ever, but tuned for least amount of frustration, save for a few borderline kaizo instances. the most infamous of these is chase the gunman – a mission which inevitably combines every single element of driver 2s difficulty, revolving around drifting alongside a narrow canyon to take down a gunman while contending with jutting out fences, trees, and other traffic – but even this is far less frustrating than the presidents run from the first game, and despite its hardcore difficulty, at least feels within the realm of human execution. when i finally cleared it i had essentially achieved a perfect run, my car in delicate lockstep with my opponents, drifting in perfect synchronization and carving a path to exploit traffic patterns and put him down for good. just about the only annoyances here are inconsistent time limits on retries.

the on-foot element of the game is frequently cited as a distraction but i found it charming and unintrusive, and usually achieved appropriately within its mission design. driving on to a boat and veering to a halt to clamber out of the vehicle and plant c4 charges, then rushing back into your car and accelerating to jump off the boat….beating a train and exiting your car to save someone in the trunk of another car on the brink of railway execution…it’s charming in execution, perhaps not vital but fresh for its time and respectable. this element, too, is greatly improved from its PS1 incarnation by simple virtue of improved performance.

all this and more from a title left in the dust, but rebuilt and re-enforced so as to highlight its strengths.
cesar brandi has a particular view on restoration which i happen to like. he posits that restoration is "the methodological moment in which the work of art is recognized, in its material form and in its historical and aesthetic duality, with a view to transmitting it to the future." i think this is what redriver 2 accomplishes so compellingly, so deftly, in a way that a lot of remasters and remakes fail to capitalize on – and in this climate of publishers and developers routinely exploiting the audience’s desire for regressive nostalgia, for re-experiencing puerile, unchallenging, dopamine-inducing entertainment from youth, i think it’s an almost necessary title. it certainly gave me a lot to think about, and its staggering how the right craftsmanship can elevate a title previously deemed inferior. im really hoping for more of these cleverly considered projects to blindside me in the future.

github for download and installation instructions: https://github.com/OpenDriver2/REDRIVER2

Breath of the Wild. I don’t think I’ve ever been this conflicted on what angle to approach a game from. There’s so many aspects I could start with, each of them encompassing an important part of the game that’s worth critique. And that makes sense - Breath of the Wild is easily, definitively the largest game I’ve ever finished in terms of scope.

I understand that I sound like a bit of a casual gamer video game player, a normie, a Nintendrone, and… well, in some ways I definitely am, and if I had a bit more experience with open world games (my only other time with the genre was having tried Assassin’s Creed 2 shortly after I started and fell in love with Breath of the Wild. I got frustrated that the game would present such a beautiful, expansive map with such gatekeeping, hand-holding and comparatively superficial parkour and exploration; I have yet to return to the game), I probably would have a better understanding of what triumphs and missteps Breath of the Wild makes for a game of its genre.

But… I think I won’t worry about that. I’ve experienced this game on its own merits, as who I am. I think by writing about this game on a site where people occasionally check in on my writing (hi, everyone who dropped by to wish me well. i can’t thank you enough; i’m doing better for now, though the road ahead is still rocky), I’m proclaiming that I have something worth saying, so I suppose I might as well make it a little personal.


Breath of the Wild had me absolutely hooked when I first experienced it blind in 2020, near the onset of the pandemic. Somehow I’d remained completely oblivious to the Nintendo Switch’s two signature games for years, and just like with Super Mario Odyssey, my reclusiveness found itself rewarded. Up until very recently, I’d thought that there hasn’t been a single Nintendo console for which the flagship Zelda was better than the flagship Mario - in fact, Zelda in general is a franchise I’m pretty mixed on, with most of the games in the series seemingly completely misunderstanding what I like about Zelda and becoming bloated, tedious experiences that in my opinion didn’t respect my time.
In that regard, Breath of the Wild was a breath of fresh air.

So when my cousin who lives with me told me that she’d borrowed a copy of Breath of the Wild from her friend, didn’t gel with it at all and offered me to try it, I approached it with a cautious optimism at best. What followed was me becoming absolutely glued to my Switch for hours on end. I still remember little moments here and there, like the first time I’d gotten Link up to the Plateau tower and couldn’t tell the various other towers and shrines apart; or when after finally marking the four shrines, I accidentally had Link walk off the tower like an idiot and frantically paused the game to warp him back to safety (I think Mirror’s Edge had left me pretty acrophobic in video games; though I want to think I’m over it now); or how I completely failed to pick up the hint when the Old Man would try to teach you about how to cut down trees to use their trunks as makeshift bridges, instead stocking up on some stamina foods and having Link climb around the abyss that separates the Old Man’s house and the Stasis shrine.

But I loved that that was a possible solution at all! The impression I’ve always gotten from Zelda puzzle design post-1992 was that there was only one solution ever intended by the developers for any one puzzle, and that players would (or, at least, I would) get punished for not thinking and approaching the puzzle from exactly the same angles as the designers intended. It’s a suffocating kind of design that’s always turned me of from the Zelda series as its temples transitioned from dungeon crawling to puzzle solving; it’s not that Breath of the Wild is completely exempt from it, but so much more of the game lets you solve it any way you can find within its own rules than any other Zelda game, and video games in general in my experience, that Breath of the Wild was genuinely wonderful to play.

I don’t think a Breath of the Wild review would be complete without a mention of the Great Plateau - it does so much right to set the game up in a bite-sized piece that’s exactly big enough to feel big, especially coming off of Mario games. Not only are individual objectives within the Plateau just as open-ended as the rest of the game is (just look at speedrunner stasis launching Link and bomb shield jumping him all across the place), but the sheer sense of minimalism it provided was amazing, with the Old Man giving the bare minimum of handholding and exposition.

It’s kind of like a great reset manifested as a soft exhale: aside from the Bokoblins (who look so different so as to be unrecognizable), the only familiar Zelda elements I noticed from the Plateau was Hyrule Castle, way off in the distance, and the Temple of Time, left in ruins, its melody fragmented, to prove a bold point.
Not a rupee, not a town or even a single human soul besides Link and the Old Man; I didn’t even encounter Koroks until Link had left the Plateau. In terms of sheer utopian post-apocalyptic atmosphere, the Plateau is simply unparalleled by the rest of the game, and like Pikmin, it’s a sort of beauty that’s unfortunately a little too good to last.
Still, even then, I’d say Breath of the Wild is a sort of rarity for modern Nintendo in how little it relies on rote nostalgia, how it takes an iconoclastic approach to a lot of Zelda tradition, and makes use of what it keeps mostly for deliberate impact and effect.

All these experiences, not to mention the two hundred hours that ensued once I actually got Link off of the plateau, were probably perfect to experience for the first time during the pandemic, being offered a sense of freedom and outdoors exploration that I craved more than ever in a particularly suffocating period of my life, for more reasons than just the novel virus itself.
I know a handful of my reviews across the past year have said “I liked it because I played it during the pandemic”, but Breath of the Wild might be my most sincere, most unreserved nomination for that title.


Which is not to say that I don’t have any reservations about Breath of the Wild. Bear with me, you’ll hate me after I say this: in some ways, I think the 2017 Zelda game is all breath… but no depth.

I feel a little bad saying that about Breath of the Wild on account of what it does accomplish, honestly. But there are a lot of small issues I have with each individual nuance of the game that add up and creep in as a sort of mild dissatisfaction that detriments from my overall experience.

A lot of them will sound like familiar nitpicks - what’s with rain and climbing being so at odds in such a clumsy way, and why does Revali’s Gale remove half of the complexity provided by both mechanics? Is the way they handled weapon durability really the best way they could have gone about it? Don’t the infinite material limit and expandable equipment slots incentivise hoarding? Are extra temporary health/stamina foods not straight-up better than restorative foods? Does the Master Sword (and Urbosa’s Fury) make weapon durability pointless once unlocked?

But I think you can agree with me that in 2021, these seem like pretty uninteresting thoughts to explore. So maybe let’s not do that, and look at the bigger picture once again.

On paper, I really love the idea of how Breath of the Wild decides to paint its story and central conflict, where most of the story has already taken place, and you’re mostly going through the post-mortem of everything and slowly building up Link’s power until he’s ready to go and set things right. With the conflict against Ganon being looming but never present until Link actually goes to confront him, Breath of the Wild presents itself as the most peaceful and beautiful apocalypse ever.


But, as much as I resonated with Zelda’s struggle to keep her composure under overwhelming impostor syndrome, being forbidden from exploring her true passions, how much responsibility was put on her to the brink of straight up breaking, and how her father clearly struggled himself throughout the entire ordeal, how much grief there is to be found if you look around in aspects of Breath of the Wild’s story, especially family-related grief…
I couldn’t tell you I actually cried through any of it - and I’m a person who’s moved to tears by the slightest instance of family-related loss in fiction.

On one hand, I think it’d make sense to be able to approach all these events from some distance - a hundred years’ worth, in fact - but the thing is that with the memories, Nintendo wanted players to be able to experience these key moments themselves. And maybe this was better than going through the entire story and having to bear watching Zelda under so much anxiety through every moment of uninterrupted storytelling? I’m not sure.
And I don’t think Nintendo was entirely sure about how much show and how much tell they wanted, exactly how detached or attached they wanted players to be from the events of Hyrule’s past. It’s the Super Mario Galaxy issue again: Nintendo not being sure how minimalist or maximalist they wanted to be.

A lot of these issues communicate an underlying unconfidence to me as to how Nintendo felt about moving past a lot of Zelda conventions. I feel like the swordplay and weapon-based combat is a big sign - neither Flurry Rush nor Sneakstrike feel like actually interesting mechanics, and while it’s clear that Nintendo wanted to revolutionize swordplay in Zelda, the impression I get is just that… it’s shallow breathing. I would honestly have liked to see them go even further. Ditch the idea that Link has to be a swordsman. It’s called Breath of the Wild. Maybe let Link be the breath of the wild - the wind. Maybe his rune powers could revolve around controlling air flow and wind, and become a mainstay of his kit. Maybe combat could involve deflecting enemy projectiles and blowing them back into them - kind of like an equivalent of perfect shielding for physical projectiles, and less inconsistent.

Maybe they could even (gasp) let Link be anything other than a white blond boy. I’ve literally never understood Nintendo’s thinking regarding Link as a player avatar, and a lot of related points affect how I enjoy games in general (not even just Zelda) more than I honestly care to admit.
Am I ready to completely tank my credibility as a video game critic? I am. Let’s do this.


“You’ve acquired the legendary Master Sword, that which seals the darkness. You feel that the sword itself delights to be in your possession…”

...what?

”You scurry back to the Pokémon Center, protecting your exhausted Pokémon from any further harm…”

huh?

”YOU GOT A MOON!
Bench Friends”

I think you get where I’m getting at with this. Who is you? Who is this you that video games talk to? Is it the player character? Is it the player? Do video games know how to tell the difference? Do video games even recognize that there is a distinction to be made?

There are basically two examples I can think of that are consciously exempt from this, both by the one same person dog: Undertale and Deltarune. A lot of other games seem to conflate the concepts of the player character and the player in how they address them, even in cases where multiple player characters are involved. And honestly? It frustrates me quite a bit.
I have a bit of an irrational obsession against the original Dragon Quest, for example - and that’s because the NES script constantly refers to the Hero as “you”, in a position that I have no connection to whatsoever. I’m a bit more comfortable with Pokémon games by contrast partly because the older games at least have the courtesy to refer to the player character only by the name players choose for them, letting them detach from the player character if they wish; and the newer games at least make the process of relating to the player character more natural by letting players customize their characters to better represent how they wish to present within the game world.

But by far the worst case I have about it is with Zelda, because of how the series insists that Link is a one-for-one representation of the player: making him silent so that players can supposedly imagine what he says, and what his personality is like; coming from humble backgrounds so that players can imagine themselves being the underdog just like Link, triumphing despite not having any inherent advantages; his name (customizable in most entries, even those with Link in the name) is at least partly based on his role in connecting the player to the game; Eiji Aonuma even making the extremely audacious claim that they intended him to be gender neutral in various incarnations.

To which I will always quote the single reason why Romani insists Link should train with her to fight off the aliens in Majora’s Mask:

“You’re a boy, won’t you try?”

Breath of the Wild does break a lot of conventions regarding Link. Link’s chronological earliest appearance is after already having been knighted, with the Master Sword in his possession; his name is fixed, though that probably has more to do with the fact that cutscenes are fully voiced now; and his dialogue options display more character than ever, and even provides monologue at times (the Japanese and Korean scripts present the Adventure Log entirely from Link’s own point of view, in fact). In a lot of senses, Link is more of an autonomous character than ever before, and a lot of the snags in player/character incongruence that remain can be bypassed with how much choice Breath of the Wild provides.

So it feels all the more incongruent when an essential part of the Divine Beasts quest has Link thrown out from Gerudo Town for being male, only being allowed entry under the specific understanding that he engages in crossdressing, doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Comparing it to Super Mario Odyssey, where Mario literally only tries on (a version of) Peach’s wedding dress because he feels like it, and the only two responses he gets are a “You’re getting married and you didn’t tell me?!” from Luigi and a “You look amazing! Love the outfit!” from Bowser, it feels particularly out of touch by contrast.

You might have noticed I’ve referred to Link specifically as himself throughout this review without conflating him with me or you. Call it a nitpick, call it worse things, but this matters to me, you know?

I think Breath of the Wild is definitely going in a direction where I want to see the Zelda franchise going, and even as a snapshot of a work in progress, I’m hooked. It’s just that I think Zelda is capable of a lot more, and I think it’s capable of being even more meaningful to video games than it already has been in the past four years. I’m not worried about that. The sequel already looks like it’s checking a lot of boxes that I’m really excited about, so let’s wait and see.

I’m holding my breath, Nintendo. Your move.

Surfing through petabytes of information, a storm of myriad colors clouds my vision, a harmony of sound and visual stimuli overclocking my senses. There's a rhythm to be found in the chaos, a flow to the motion, a song that's built upon a cacophony of sounds, bullets and explosions creating an orchestra in my mind.

Rez is less of a game and more of a transcendent audiovisual experience. The gameplay is hypnotic, putting you into that trance state as you take aim and shoot before your brain can process what you've done, but the real point of Rez is it's aesthetic, a style so thick and permeating it becomes the substance. Shots that fall in time with the music, the soundtrack that gradually builds and builds as you progress through the level, it feels less like a rail-shooter and more like an improv jam session: everyone's feeling out the tempo, the rhythm, the harmony, working out the kinks as you go along until it all falls into place and everything starts to harmonize, the song in your soul finally coming out in full force, an iridescent moment in time where the instruments sing and everything is perfect. Rez is a reminder: Take in the sounds, witness the lights, let it wash over you like the waves of the ocean lapping the coast. That's what it means to be alive.

This moment needs to be cherished. Double fine finally put out a product with the polish and technical competency to match it's whimsy and poignancy. Psychonauts 2 is the best narrative to grace the 3D platforming genre, and by a sizable amount. Characters like Bob and Ford are some of the most interesting and charismatic NPCs I've seen in a long time.

Psychonauts 2 operates with a deft touch, but is unafraid to teach Raz and the player lessons about mental health, the root of "evil" and the importance of companionship while making it fun to play.

The level design is a bit less chaotic in gameplay structure than the first game, but the worlds are of a more consistent quality here. There's only 2 (1.5?) levels for me that stand out as being a touch less engaging, but they're a minor blemish on a great package

I think the mechanical rust that's attributed to Psychonauts 2 is a bit overstated. It's not Super Mario Odyssey levels of fluidity, but it's a perfectly competent platformer mechanically. The actual flaw I'm willing to dock Psychonauts 2 for is the uneven pacing in the games opening hours. In the process of getting the ball rolling, Double Fine struck an uneven balance between exposition and assuming players came into it with all the necessary context. This is less of an issue starting with the first main brain in the hub, and disappears later on, but it's easy to see how players may be turned away early on, despite how rewarding it is to continue with