Big improvement over the first game. They try so many things, making each level feel pretty unique. Level design is pretty good, sound track is bangin', and Dixie is a great new character with a standout "ez mode" for jumps.

I found most of the animal buddies to be really fun to play as, except for one in specific circumstances, which I'll get to later.

The game has a ton of bonuses and collectables. They did feel a bit inconsistent on how well hidden they were though. Sometimes they had a literal arrow pointing at them, or a stray banana(s) that tells you an otherwise dead-end may hold secrets. Other times you better hope to catch a glimpse of the 1 pixel that showcases that there's a secret in an otherwise bottomless pit, or worse yet, have a random ass wall that you can just pass through for no reason with no indication it is any different from other walls.

I went half way through the game getting every secret before it became a challenge just to pass the level, never mind trying to squeeze into every nook and cranny. I really feel like the harder ones are designed for people who already know the levels inside and out.

My complaints mostly come down to a few things that make it harder than it really should be. The first is that the screen can often feel too far zoomed in, and enemies or obstacles come too fast to react properly. It's not the worst case ever, and I'd even say it's definitely a problem in the minority of levels.

The other thing is that hit boxes can feel a bit janky at times. The hornet enemies, and brambles stages definitely highlight this (and God help you if you're playing as the parrot in a brambles stage - which is the animal buddy thing I referenced early).

Both of these things wouldn't be too bad by themselves if it had a system like Sonic where you could easily power through if you kept your 1 safety ring, but this game has a maximum of 2 hit points at any one time. The game is already hard (in a very fair way) just by design, so having these 2 things costing you health, can really make this game walk the line between masterpiece and fucking annoying piece of shit.

More like……. Warsnooze, amirite

I really wanted to vibe with this one, but it’s just too darned dull. It’s extremely fair… except for a whole string of story missions where the other side gets to warp in infinite units. The hero units are all fun to use… except that you lose instantly if they go down, so better not have too much fun. Smh.

Ultimately a two-star tactics game, but +1 full star for the good music and outstanding pixel art.

Mascot character platformers are one of the most exciting genres in gaming to me. They have the potential to be an intriguing concoction of every visual, aural and story element that normally goes into games, but benefit strongly from their bend towards the main controllable character being the mechanical focus. Characters like Rayman, Ratchet & Clank, Hat Kid, their games are informed by their personalities and rulesets in a way that contextualises the player’s involvement in their worlds. Conceptualised well enough, the degree of exploration and interaction afforded to the characters can elevate these titles to surprising degrees, and give them a unique voice with a sense that they really have something to say.

This is pretty much where Psychonauts comes in. The first game came about in the full swing of the mascot platformer craze of the 00’s - and with the help of Double Fine’s history in sharp character writing and adventure exploration, concocted a game where the themes are both broad and accessible: Psychics exist and can explore people’s mental planes to empathise with visualisations of their own unique psychological issues.

Part of my adoration for the first Psychonauts comes from its strong visual direction, with off-beat and illustrative takes on individual character’s mindscapes. Psychonauts goes above and beyond with its core concepts by allowing its cast to express themselves through clever writing and impressionistic environmental caricature. Likely inspired by Rankin Bass stop motion movies and the artwork of Tim Burton, who’s styling has roots in ideas of eccentrism, depression and nonconformity - as well as have a level of cheeky humour that complements its attempts to depict darker themes. It sets the perfect stage for what Psychonauts is setting out to do; to let its cast express themselves in unique and personal ways of which the player is tasked with physically navigating, a visual metaphor for the therapist and the client. All these abstractions never go too far into sheer chaos because they’re balanced wonderfully and grounded with stereotypical visual metaphors that help keep things grounded, like “censors”, “emotional baggage”.


Psychonauts 2 is great, I’m amazed that it not only delivered on its promise of being a follow-up to the original title, it also exceeded it in almost every aspect. My main complaints are that I simply didn’t find it anywhere near as laugh-out-loud funny, and that the climax is a little contrived to the point it simply wasn’t satisfying. One of the strengths of the original was the level of interaction you had with the world in the form of use-items and environmental objects, and character count… something Psychonauts 2 seems to have made an effort on trimming down. I think a lot of my disappointment in the humour of this game stems from how little there is to reveal, by comparison? Still, it’s a fun story to see unfold - I’m hugely fond of how there is a throughline across the levels in the form of a kind of shared trauma within the cast.

This is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen from a technical standpoint. Uses, and masters every trick in the Unreal Engine book while also inventing new ones. Unbelievable work with gravity tricks, false scale, shaders and portals. Every area is simply stunning. I can’t believe how good it looks. Oh my god. Platforming feels wonderful and mercifully there’s an easy mode for the less-than-stellar combat.

This review feels bad to me so I'll just end it here.

kind of late to the "astro's playroom" discourse but its such a game that could be only a capitalist propaganda but, in the end, is a letter of love to playstation and its history with delightful gameplay and levels! screamed a lot seeing metal gear, final fantasy and devil may cry references and looooved how team asobi respects ico! makes me really sad that, with all this love and care, astro bot is probably a franchise destined to be sony's tech demo project, existing only for the purpose of selling hardware capabilities. not so different from what nintendo does with all their mario games, but mario is a consolidated franchise with its own mythos. astro is cute and perfect and wonderful, but only a mirror to the glory days of sony and its variety of games. wish things were different!

a cartesian nightmare wrapped in a winnie the pooh-esque husk, legend of mana goes out of its way to be unmarketable, genuinely weird, aimless, and wholly contrarian, but in the most charming way possible. koichi ishii is on record basically saying he wanted to be an asshole with this game and make a game about nothing.

legend of mana's development came hot off of saga frontier, which ishii and battle chief hiroshi takai both worked on. the team that made that game splintered into two, one for legend of mana and one for saga frontier 2, so it's interesting to compare the two and the relatively similar styles they both present. it kind of also represents the rebelliousness in which mana was made with - ishii wanted to go with these insane ideas he had for frontier which were shotdown (which evolved into many of mana's systems like the world make system and the monster raising), and takai felt like at least his take on turn-based games were crystallized and perfected with frontier.

there's this transgressive rub to legend of mana which will definitely turn people off, which is one of the most perfect aspects of the game. the true enjoyment comes with just not giving a fuck anymore and really sliding into the saccharine comedy and weird arcane elements of the game. you can really do whatever you want and interact with whichever systems you feel like, or totally ignore them. it's a game that really could not care less if you're playing it or not, yet has a weirdly emotionally resonant story despite all this - I mean, yoko shimomura did the soundtrack, so you know it bangs and is gonna make you cry at some point.

though the story is light and fractured, there's some excellent and creepy components that bind it together. one of those are the sproutlings, which are a hive-mind race of little cabbage fairies that once guarded the mana tree that walk around the world talking about how the world is all a giant lie. people react to them similarly to say a beggar or a soothsayer - some people like niccolo straight up detest them for no particular reason and most everyone else just ignores them as if they aren't there. but you as the player totally know they're telling the truth because you are actively reconstructing the world.

there's also a few plotlines that have several events that progress in sequential order. it can be very easy to miss these or forget what's going on within them. that's perhaps why the cactus diaries exist (which is another fun and sweet little system that you could wholly not know exists or participate in). the most compelling of these imo is the jumi plotline, but all of them are interesting enough to keep me pressing on. you have to finish at least one of the main story arcs to finish the game but you can theoretically do all three in one go and there's a few differences depending on how you do them.

there's a lot to dig into here - it's legit teeming with STUFF to read and ponder and replay. but it also cannot be understated how absolutely gorgeous the game is. the music is incredible. the drama of laying an artifact on the board and watching it froth with golden bubbles or ignite a geyser of fire is invigorating and mythic. and all the backgrounds are incredible - the style is somewhere between final fantasy tactics and beatrix potter. my favorite areas are probably the junkyard, tower of leires, and gato grottoes but a ton of them are genuinely memorable. the character designs are probably my fav thing from the game. the design team was told no one could be straight up a human besides the main character so you have people that are cornucopias, centaurs, onions... there's a little girl who's super angsty because her force her to dress like a fairy (her dad's a beetle and her mom's a butterfly).

this is probably the only thing i've played this year that i would actually replay. v happy with it!

Rule of Rose is a game about pain, or, more specifically, about learned helplessness. Its theme song, “A Love Suicide,” really contains all the themes therein. Presented as a melodramatic lounge torch song, you could venture to say it feels manically out of line with the type of game Rule of Rose is. It’s a survival horror game in the vein of Resident Evil or, perhaps more accurately, Silent Hill. It has a lock-and-key sort of progression with you running about a confined location and seeking out items that help you move along to the next section.

If made today, or honestly, if it hadn’t been specifically commissioned by Sony, this would have been an adventure game. Punchline is, after all, a studio made up of remnants of Love-de-Lic. This is the team that made Chulip. I can’t confidently say if Rule of Rose would be a better game sans combat, but its combat certainly didn’t win it any points with mainstream publications at the time. More on that later. Back to the theme song.

The shock factor of “A Love Suicide” and its lyrical contents deem the game as one going for pretty stark punches. Themes of masochism are laid like a gossamer sheet over an aesthetic of prim schoolgirls. The croon of Kaori Kondo’s contralto toes the line between the masculine and feminine. It implies a certain brutality that will be embarked on upon the game’s start. If anything, though, “A Love Suicide” is more shockingly honest about what lies ahead than cheap or in poor taste.

Musically, the game plays with these sort of lounge-y, ballroom sounds. Violin, cello, and piano dominate Yutaka Minobe’s soundtrack. The melody of “A Love Suicide” is shared with several tracks that play throughout the game, and is featured prominently in rearranged forms. It immediately recalls the Caretaker’s “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World.” Ideas of cultural memory and emergent nostalgia are curried up. The music occasionally seems positioned as if coming from another room, or another chamber, and the familiar tune that permeates throughout the soundtrack is a throughline for what seems like something important, something worth paying attention to.

This is a game about masochism. That’s a type of pain, and a type of love—an unrequited relationship in which someone hurts another, and they accept it purposefully. Playing the game, at times, feels like a masochistic act. Combat is clunky and unfair. Jennifer will plummet to the ground and receive damage the moment she stands up without a chance of recovery. No weapon truly feels better than another to use, no matter how improvised. The weapons themselves feel like cruel jokes—your first is not only a fork instead of a knife, but the smallest type of fork. Jennifer struggles to wield any of them and covers her face when she swings her big metal pipe. Health items are limited and require intense scrounging to find. There’s little rhyme or reason to their effect—why would a lollipop heal more than a biscuit? Isn’t a biscuit more substantial?

You don’t have to fight that much in Rule of Rose, though. There’s only 3 bosses. You can run away most of the time, which feels more in line with what Jennifer, who is directly teased for being a coward, would do. Other than that, you have a dog named Brown with you. He can find stuff by setting an item for him to investigate. This is where the main progression of the game comes in—each chapter, you are tasked with finding some kind of item to return and give to a group of evil little girls named the Red Crayon Aristocrat Club. What follows is essentially a trail of breadcrumbs laid out for you to flit from one horror to the next. These segments correlate directly with demented little scrawled fairytales you find lying around made with scrap paper.

This is where the vibes come in, really. The FMVs have a sort of giallo charm to the bombast of some of the images but the uncanniness of being grounded in some reality. They end abruptly and carry a dizzying sense of cruelty with each. This game is not that graphic with its horror, it much prefers to give a creeping sense of dread or to unsettle you with uncomfortable situations, but it is very bold with its depictions of animal cruelty, of which there is a pretty hefty amount of. The story itself could not work without this and in fact hinges pretty heavily on this idea, of doing something terrible to something that can’t defend itself or is afraid.

It has some elements of Edward Gorey to it, but I think more than anything the game reminds me of shoujo and josei manga. The melodramatic and psychosexual moments of Moto Hagio are here. The game does not assume its audience is male—in fact, I think women and queer people would get a lot more out of this. The true horror at the center of the story is innately female. The fear of growing up, romantic feelings, the ephemerality of beauty, and gender expression are all here. The game is explicitly lesbianistic in a sensitive, non-pandering way. It also obviously has this veneer of rose petals and boarding schools laid overtop it to really seal what I would call the closest thing to a Year 24 Group video game. I also can’t help but think of Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures sometimes. I also wouldn't be shocked if the VIvian Girls were a touchstone.

But the cruelty. The cruelty is what is so prevalent here. This is a game about how scary it would be to be a little girl again. The marching passage of time ages you, distances you farther from your memories. You can’t disentangle yourself from the person you were as a child. That’s still you, no matter how grown up you feel—the dramaturgical era of our lives lingers, and colors how we view every social dynamic we know. The idea of receiving a cold shoulder, being ostracized, being locked in a room as a mean prank, and being rampantly bullied is the worst thing imaginable. But being abandoned is even worse. Having no one, being lonely, is worse than being a victim. I can’t claim to be an expert on post-trauma periods, but everyone here is so desperately afraid of being punished. They’re paralyzed with fear that what they do might be interpreted as insubordination, as childish, as unsophisticated, or as disobedient. But they’re all children—they should be brattish, they should be a little filthy. Why are they so afraid of what they are?

Everyone wants to imagine they are the most mature person in a room, the sanest one with their shit together. You can forgive a lot if you decide to turn a cheek and be the bigger person. As a middle schooler, I was bullied rampantly for being a sissy. I was in the closet but unsure when was a good time to come out, when other people did it. I dissociated so heavily from my bullying that I never once told my mom that anyone had said anything hurtful to me, had hit me when the teachers weren’t looking, had knocked my books out of my hand in the hallway. If I could learn to cope with the unavoidable reality of a purgatorial middle school, I could overcome it. I could grow up faster than them and make older friends and hang around people that wouldn’t hurt me. I just had to go faster. But time moves at the same speed for everyone.

I don’t think Rule of Rose is a perfect game. I think it reveals some of its feelings on fat people or the mentally disabled too readily. I do think there’s something to be said about how unreliable the narration is, and how skewed the perspective is, but it still is occasionally cheap in its coding. The game also gets a bit heavy-handed near the end where things can be neatly explained away instead of left hazily in the lurch as they maybe should have. But I do know that no other piece of media has so accurately captured the feeling of being bullied than this one. The nightmarish, tubelike airship the game takes place in feels like an inescapable trap. There’s a certain animism applied to every object in the game, as if giving them a proud dignity (or as if someone had time to make up a bunch of characters around them to feel less lonely). Perhaps most shockingly is the final scene, which brims with a cruelty far less obvious than anything else in the game. This is an exhausting game, and one that often feels like a noose. But it bubbles with empathy even for the ones who tied you up in the first place. Some of our darkest fantasies come from wishing for a better life.

How do you come this close to making a cute, aesthetically fatnastic tribute to Virtua Racing only to fuck it up entirely with obnoxious, terrible voice acting punctuating every moment of gameplay, some wonky physics and drifting, and AI that rubber bands at the drop of a hat.

Virtua Racinng from 1993 is also legitimately more thrilling, fast, has better track design and is less obnoxious. Who the fuck thought giving a retro throwback racer more constant chatter than an ace combat final mission? (that repeats itself astonishingly quickly) was a good idea?

It has a saving grace in it's flat shaded, glorious aesthetic which really does feel like a great modernisation of Virtua Racing. Which makes it only worse when the Model 1 - style graphics make way for in-game advertisments for Curve Digital's other games. Yes, that is actually a thing, and no, now I have no intention of playing Snake Pass, what the fuck?

Fuck this. Just play the Virtua Racing port on Switch.

There's a lot in this game that I love love love love love. The final few days are the kind of JRPG climactic stuff I live for, and it's just so satisfying to revisit this world and its aesthetics.

My big issue with the game is that a lot of the main story drags - there just isn't a sense of forward momentum, and even the final week has a few days that are more about you running around taking care of what feels like busywork because obviously the plot stuff can't take place until the last day. The time travel days are also pretty dull, and Scramble Slam is just a nightmare of a time-waster.

Super Metroid is built on a foundation of dread. Clever foreshadowing of future events and callbacks to the original game set the stage for Samus Aran's most dangerous adventure yet. From the very beginning, you can see the layers in the world you will be peeling back out of that sense of adventure and throughout its entire runtime, Super Metroid not only never disappoints, but it constantly proves its ability to create an engaging adventure as a genre-defining masterpiece.

The world is expertly designed, with foreshadowing and temporarily inaccessible pathways that lead to new abilities. These abilities grant even more possibilities to the player for exploration and combat. The dread created with the seemingly abandoned environemt is elevated as you slowly but surely realize you are not alone in Planet Zebes. This atmosphere is created with the amazing art-direction, music and sound that fits the setting perfectly.

The exploration is top notch, every single location bleeds into the other with movement so fluid that every single jump and move feels natural and an overall tool that can enhance and reward a skilled player's experience. It treats you and challenges you as an intelligent player with so little flaws that it genuinely feels like this game could have come out this year.

Overall, Super Metroid is a turning point not only for the series, but for adventure games overall. This genre defining masterpiece has aged like a fine wine over the past 27 years and has single-handedly proven to me how far the potential for this series can go.

About thirty years too late to be presenting any fresh takes about Super Mario World, but here comes my thoughts regardless! This game's a classic, launching off the SNES and entering fierce competition with the contrasting Sonic 1 a year later.

Let's start out with the positives. The introduction of Yoshi is a nice touch, functioning as a power-up with his own unique rules such as being able to get him back after being hit or eating enemies for power-up variations. I quite enjoy the overworld's system of secret exits in tons of levels to unlock alternate routes, warps and secret worlds, and when I thought about it I'm actually shocked more games haven't really used this system given how popular Super Mario World was? Most games that use level selects are either pretty linear or have more direct branching paths (just look at Super Mario 3D World for example), rather than the complex web of exits that Super Mario World has. I will say though that, and this comparison will pop up a few times due to the games being connected and being my favorite 2D Mario (currently), I do prefer Super Mario Bros. 3's overworld. It doesn't have the complexity of exits, but the different ways you can tackle pathing is very interesting, and I always liked the way you could use items before entering levels.

The game doesn't FULLY utilize the SNES' power, unsurprising for a launch title, but Super Mario World is still a pretty looking game (even if I prefer SMB3's a bit more dusty, even "realistic" feel at times), and some parts of it particularly ooze quality such as Bowser's overworld or the Forest of Illusion. I really like the small touch of lightning flashes in the Bowser level overworld giving you a glimpse of the final boss! This game also does all the little things right, stuff like Peach in the final battle helping you out, that help elevate it beyond what would feel like bog standard New Super Mario Bros fare. This game clearly seeks to iterate on the NES Super Mario games and loves introducing new concepts such as springs, the aforementioned Yoshi, the cape's movement, and a toooooooon of gimmicks to mess around with. Super Mario World doesn't play it safe and when it is on, it is on! My favorite levels would probably be most of the Bowser levels, Forest of Illusion levels, Chocolate Island 2 (what a crazy cool gimmick!), Chocolate Island 3, and Ludwig's Castle off the top of my head.

This game had a lot of problems for me too, though, and when it was off it was pretty off. The most obvious thing that hurt a lot of the cool level design was the physic. Mario feels waaaaay floatier and loose compared to the NES titles, is this just me a thing? I hear a lot of people complain about SMB1 or even SMB3's physics, but when I was replaying SMB1 recently I was able to consistently bring myself to a halt on the edges of platforms and do crazy tricks. But in World, Mario retains much more of his momentum when he lands from a jump while also being floatier in the air. Great when you have lots of open space! Not so great whenever you jump on something small. I legitimately had an easier time with a bunch of the Bowser levels because they asked you to do daring, risky, precision platforming but onto large platforms than sometimes I had with simple "hit a block, jump on the block" stuff because it is so easy to slip off of one block if you get the momentum even a bit off.

Similarly, I would say I prefer the P-Speed of Super Mario Bros 3 to Super Mario World's dashing system. World feels a bit squished onto an SNES controller frankly, with both the power up and dash buttons on the same button leading to awkwardness if you want to both run and attack. You also basically want to be holding down dash 80% of the time, which can feel kinda weird to then also jump and led to me often letting go of dash to jump when I really shouldn't. You CAN just fat finger the dash with the jump and spin jump, but it often feels off and with the spin jump in particular not great. I also had a few troubles with my fingers being a bit big for the buttons for this, but I won't really dock points from the game for that because on the SNES (which it was designed for) the buttons were bigger and more spread out than a Pro Controller, so it'd work better with its intended design. P-Speed also feels more skillful, needing to find ways to keep up your momentum and plot out how to move and platform through a course, versus holding down a button. It also allows you to build it up while attacking and felt super smooth with the fire flower.

While the base graphical quality is solid, the game is sorely lacking in variety. The Ghosts Houses and Castles looking the same isn't the issue, but Donut Plains and Chocolate Island for example feel like they could easily be the same "area". It feels like for the main game at least the game has about 3-4 themes that it stretches out compared to the extreme variety of Super Mario Bros. 3 or some other platformers, without having a "unifying" feel that would make it be more logical. Valley of Bowser and Forest of Illusion not only had some of my favorite level design but were some of the only levels that had a truly unique aesthetic which I think really helped them stand out.

Thirdly the game has some VERY uneven level design, to the point by the end I was getting into a rhythm of liking about 2-3 levels fairly well then coming across one I rather disliked. Pretty much every castle level except for Iggy's, Ludwig's and Bowser's sucks. Lemmy and Larry's are probably the worst offenders here, the start of Lemmy's castle is just a needlessly annoying gimmick (and I don't think Ieven ended up clearing it the "right" way lol) which sours a fun latter half, while Larry's has a very boring snake block segment at the start that is RIDICULOUSLY easy but takes like a minute, which if you have to retry the level multiple times starts to feel like brain rot. Wendy's level also suffers from me finding the spin jump onto sawblades or wrecking balls unreliable, leading to frustrating deaths. Sunken Ghost Ship was also a level I disliked.

And while I know many people describe one of THE moments of Super Mario World as getting the cape...I gotta be honest, Donut Plains 1 is one of my least favorite levels in the entire game. The placement of the enemies feels all wrong! The start of the course clearly wants you to be able to get a cape from a Cape Koopa, then learn how to use it to fly, except they placed them in such a way that the enemies at the start will respawn super easily and make it tremendously annoying to do so! The entire level was annoying and actually one of the ones I had the most trouble with, on top of that I get the appeal of how the cape controls but I wasn't exactly a great fan. It does feel pretty nice whenever you get a very wide open space (unless there's enemies), but anything not meant for you to basically skip over everything feels trashy.

Unsurprisingly the story is very barebones and I don't think it has setpieces that match up to taking down Bowser's entire army in SMB3, but I did really enjoy all the little skits after clearing each castle. Were they necessary? Not at all. Were they one of those little things this game does quite well? Absolutely! I looked forward to seeing what each one would do, and of course this is the kind of thing that is enjoyably abusable in the SMW modding scene.

Overall, Super Mario World was a good game with some great highs and frustrating lows. It's easy for me to understand why people consider it a masterpiece, particularly anyone who really gels with the physics (watch people who REALLY know how to play this game and they can pull off soem crazy stuff!), but too much dragged it down for me for it to reach that level. I got half the exits in the game and it was fun enough I'll probably go back some day to get some more, though, so I'd say mission accomplished...and I'm pretty excited to play Yoshi's Island sometime soon. :)

Actually quite a bit better than I remembered. Compared to DYNASTY WARRIORS 7 this has much more engaging gameplay and is fuller-featured. But it seems like to achieve those steps forward they had to scale back the presentation significantly, and that's a shame given how strong 7 was in that regard. There is a TON of story content, but it's not particularly well done, with lots of important aspects of the narrative skipped over and mainly in-engine cutscenes which can be janky and ruin some of the drama. Overall there's less of a focus on the individual characters besides the big ones. Also, there are some notable corners cut here and there - missing v/o, an abundance of typos, graphical oversights. It seems a little bit like quality was sacrificed for quantity.

Honestly you could make an argument for this over 7, but personally, I can't put it there. It's frustrating that there has never been a best one of these games in all aspects.

It doesn't tie its plot threads as successfully as I hoped, and the last case doesn't manage to wow with yet another terrific layer of mystery to end the whole deal on an exclamation mark, but I'd be lying if I said that this game wasn't a joyous satisfying ride. It's beaming with personality and jovial moments, the cast of characters might be the best the series has seen, and being the second game writers were allowed to subvert them in exciting ways. The plot is good, and even more so than the first game it pulls off a story well-informed by the time period, thus being the Ace Attorney that's so refreshingly aware of the real life and the issues and challenges real people face. Best Takumi game since the Trials and Tribulations for sure, even if on the mystery side of things I'm not as over the moon as others seem to be.