Nightdive hits it out of the park once again! The last time I beat this game, I had just come home from getting my wisdom teeth pulled and I was all doped up with a mouthful of bloody cotton. It was nice to get the chance to beat it again in full command of my faculties.

I was pretty impressed this time around at how well the game holds up. It's impossible not to compare it to Doom, and in that regard I think it makes an admirable showing. The enemy and weapon variety and design are pretty weak. Bad guys are basically all hitscanners with various levels of health, and several of the weapons don't really have a very well defined role. The thermal detonators and land mines in particular seem undercooked to the point of being missed opportunities.

Where the game really shines is in the level design. Here it is enormously helped by the setting and lore. The levels aren't naturalistic, but Star Wars movie sets themselves are rarely naturalistic, opting instead for a strong, unifying aesthetic that's instantly recognizable. It's that aesthetic that the game nails so well and made it feel like a genuinely authentic Star Wars experience.

Dark Forces came out at a really awkward time in the franchise's history. The Extended Universe existed, and there was a fanbase, but LucasArts wasn't really putting the series to work in any meaningful way. I liked the movies and had a bunch of the guys, but I was the only one I knew who was into it at all; the kids at my school thought of it as "old." It was far from a given that a AAA Doom clone in the Star Wars universe would sell, much less start a whole spin-off franchise. My memory is that this was the first 3-D Star Wars experience, and it delivered on that in spades. The authentic sound effects, extremely detailed sprites and beautiful interiors made it more immersive than anything I had seen from this franchise before.

The technical improvements over Doom are very impressive and do a lot to really open up the maps. Moving walls, conveyer belts, rooms over rooms and a handful of true 3-D objects really expand the desingers' toolsets and make for a lot of really great little surprises and help keep things fresh. This time around I did notice a bit more jank than I remember the first time; in particular a few instances of really badly misaligned textures that I thought were pretty disappointing in what was otherwise such a polished experience.

I'm mostly reviewing the original game here because as always Nightdive just nailed the remaster. The uprezzed (?) textures look great, controller play feels fantastic, the new look for the cutscenes is spot on, and the extras are all really interesting. Geezers like myself (and anyone interested in games preservation really) truly are blessed to have these guys doing such diligent, skillful work keeping these old classics alive, and I can't wait to see what they have coming next.

Dang, I forgot to talk about this a while ago.

I like this DLC! It is a bit annoying that none of the other characters are here, but I guess restricting the team to the same 3 characters everytime makes it easier for my dumbass brain to think of a battle strategy and beat the campaign faster.

Yeah, it's cool. DK looks a bit weird tho.

This isnt no Dream Land 2. This punk ass pink punk got himself a highschool clique. This time, I wasn't deadset on abusing the same ability throughout, although like an addict relapsing it happened again in 64. If you were wondering why small gatherings of minors were forbidden at certain malls, well this is because Kirby has been there! This is certainly logical. We have watched his career with great interest and he's still finding more and more people to help him suck. One of his friends is a bit more independant than the others, his name is Gooey and he keeps me from sucking! That is why I avoided using him because I'm not about that life, but it was easy to press the wrong input and summon the fool. Go to bed already!

Eating crayons is good but how about using them for a good artstyle? Now thats making a killing! I'm kidding this absolutely FLOPPED every american was playing Ocarina of Time by then. But still, there are particles, visual feedback, the...flying Touhou witches, moving backgrounds. I'd drink to that, but I must stay sharp, for the fog is still coming. Once again you have to grind out if you wanna book a meeting with the eldritch abomination of a final boss during lunch hours. I suggest looking up some of the ways you can finish levels properly if you do not want to experience the walk of shame upon your way back to the world map. As there aren't many worlds, the darker side of this truth is that levels can take quite some time to finish, but it's reasonably okay. So I guess you can shamewalk a bit.

This guy Dedede is not doing no Ramadan, even his belly is in on the feast. I know he didn't brush his teeth down there. This and the spiders with them freakishly long legs make this the scariest entry in the mascot horror genre. I love spiders too, but maybe not legs. Everybody gangsta when Whispy Woods got a pair of his own and starts chasing you! top cinco rumpscaré yup and then there was a tanuki wow and the world watches in horror as I put him 6 feet under.

I know Kirby was starting to get stale for some people and they wanted another Super Star, but to me that is a better game. I am fine with this. This is definitely one of the games I like. If it wasn't absurd with the invulnerability frames I wouldn't be passed around like a blunt but I guess it'd be less funny. What was Meta Knight doing during all this though like naaaah fuck that harbinger of evil shit I'm hitting my Zzzs.

Até então, eu nunca tinha jogado A Link Between Worlds, e me arrependo amargamente de não ter feito isso antes. Esse é, definitivamente, o melhor Zelda 2D/isométrico já feito. Claro que A Link to the Past sempre vai ter uma marca especial e inigualável no meu coração, até pelo fator nostalgia que mexe bastante comigo, mas ALBW é a perfeita evolução de tudo que o seu antecessor fez de bom. Algo que o remake do Link's Awakening conseguiu resgatar de certa forma, mas que poderia ter sido melhor traduzido dentro de seu próprio contexto.

Pra mim, o maior diferencial que esse jogo tem é o fato de que, finalmente, a liberdade de exploração e de escolha do que e como você vai fazer retorna para a franquia. E, apesar de inicialmente eu ter estranhado a lojinha de aluguel de itens, depois de um certo tempo pensando sobre ela, cheguei à conclusão que foi uma ideia genial, e perfeitamente alinhada com a história do jogo (vou me conter para evitar spoilers). E por falar em história, essa possivelmente deve ser a melhor e mais fechadinha história de todos os jogos dessa franquia!

A mecânica nova que possibilita o Link de se transformar em uma pintura para se mover pelas paredes foi um acerto absurdo! Essa adição, juntamente com mais perspectivas tridimensionais, trouxe mais opções de level design para a resolução de quebra-cabeças e calabouços e aprimorou ainda mais a experiência de resolvê-las. Além de todos os benefícios que essas possibilidades trouxeram para a exploração do mundo, e é claro que a Nintendo, com toda sua maestria em fazer experiências memoráveis em video-games, iria saber aproveitar bem.

São pouquíssimos os pontos negativos, mas se eu fosse citar alguma coisa, seria que eu ainda prefiro a trilha sonora do ALTTP em comparação a essa, mas essa trilha sonora definitivamente não é ruim. Longe disso, é sensacional! Acho que é muito mais uma questão de como eu me acostumei com a acústica do SNES para as músicas e efeitos sonoros de Zelda. Mas quando falamos de todas as demais evoluções, esse jogo realmente beira a perfeição!

The first time I saw the trailer for this game, I was through the roof, I could not contain my excitement. However, I didn't take long for me to notice the red cards.

The characters arriving to the field like they are PNGs in a Power Point presentation, the generic and dull grass fields, the fact that this is a modern Mario Sport title...

Then later down the line, I started noticing:

- That the character roster had like only 10 dudes
- That the character animations were severely toned down
- That the characters had reused voicelines instead of brand new ones
- That none of the other Bowser minions were available as playable teammates
- That the customization aspect kinda made each character's stats meaningless
- That the game lacked any significant extra content
- That DAISY WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.

I'll get to the point. This game is empty, and it has no meaningful content worth the price.

This game is soulless, not because Next Level Games could not make a good follow up, but because Nintendo clearly rushed them to make another subpar Mario sport title as soon as possible.

This game is a joke, because playing as each character means nothing anymore and because the main gimmick of this game doesn't even matter at all, or has any impact on the flow of gameplay. Oh, you are telling me that I can combine two different environments, but the actual game field will stay as two halves of just plain and boring GRASS? Wow, that changes nothing, how cool, thanks a lot.

This game is an insult to the people that were waiting for a Mario Strikers Charged follow up after more than 15 years of BEGGING.

This game is not Mario Strikers, so as far as I'm concerned, I am still waiting for said follow up.

I first played this last year when the Remaster came to modern consoles. However, with you now able to walk through environments, rather than viewing everything like a diorama, you feel extra immersed in the surroundings. Everything else about the game remains unchanged, even the dreadfully dull Tartarus, the dungeon that keeps going. They did try adding new elements to keep it interesting, but it's not enough to change the fundamental aspect of going through procedurally generated levels, hoping every corner produces a set of stairs. I had hoped they found a way to make it less monotonous. As always, the story, characters and music are top-tier. I loved spending time with these characters again, and sad to see them go again.

I feel so sorry for all non-Spanish speakers who will never understand just how funny the name ‘’Señor Chirridos’’ is; like… is not a bad translation of Mr. Scratch by any means, but it’s so fucking funny and it surprises me even more they just didn’t keep the original name… but I’m so glad they didn’t.

If Alan Wake is the main TV series, then American Nightmare feels like a Halloween special, which seems to be exactly what they were going for. Despite the original game having such an open finale and this going directly after it, it doesn’t really build upon the pre-established narrative beyond Alan’s character and his conflict with his doppelgänger, and that’s fine! I’m totally up for a shorter, more fast-paced story in this world, and American Nightmare does have a super interesting premise.

I actually liked how the combat worked in the first game, so expanding on that with more weapons and enemies while using the backdrop of a Night Springs episode and introducing a time-loop is the kind of craziness I can get behind, and AM does succeed at creating more interesting combat encounters than the original game ever did… but doesn’t try to go for more than that despite its many opportunities.

It does show a promising start; the three main areas of Arizona are interesting and fun to go through and a perfect excuse to battle the Taken, getting more manuscript pages, see more of Mr. Scratch and the little interactions with each of the characters, while not as natural as any of the conversations with the fellas of Bright Falls, are pretty neat. With the addition of a couple of weapons and enemies, this feels like the kind of combat sections they wanted to make the first time around; they even took out the driving section! We are freed from this accursed blight!

And we even get to hear how Barry and the Old Gods of Asgard are doing, glad to know they are still putting out pure fire!

It’s a pretty good time, a simple one, but it has some cool moments, I really liked the battles, and overall is just an entertaining time!... and then the second loop begins.

I absolutely love the idea of time-loops as a gameplay system, getting to learn more of the world and levels and using that knowledge to do tasks way faster and m is the best, however, poorly implemented time-loops can turn into doing the exact same thing x amount of times only with a different objective or two and with some new enemies… guess what American Nightmare decides to do. Each time loop is shorter than the last one, but not because you actively take decisions that make things speed up, but because either what were multiple objectives is only one now or because a NPC did the thing way before you. It doesn’t help that the major set-pieces don’t change at all; watching the petrol extractor is a cool sequence, but not one I would have liked to go through three times, and no, putting rock songs, as good as hey sound, doesn’t make it different or better.

Going through the motions the first time was fine, but having to walk through the same rope two other times is a chore, even if gets shorter every time. Worst part is that they really could have given you more openness if they really wanted; the NPCs you encounter also remember the time loops and no matter what, you can only truly win at the end of the last one, so diving you more lenience on how you deal with things wouldn’t have really affected thing at all, and we have here is just an excuse to turn 3 levels into 9.

As the loops go on, more enemies get introduced, and… listen, I really do like the combat way more on here, and some of the new enemies are pretty interesting; the Taken that throws projectiles and explosives and the one that divides each time you shine light on him are super cool ideas from a gameplay-wise and as ideas on their own but the rest of them… in many ways they feel like a waste. The enemies that replace the birds from the original game are faster to deal with but just as annoying, the giants are bullet sponges with no interest move-sets on their own, and the spiders are cool story wise, since they apparently are not part of the Taken perse and instead are part of the Dark Place fauna, but they being just big spiders feels like a wasted opportunity to create something way more cool and alien, and alsoWHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE TO BE SPIDERS OH MY GOD-

American Nightmare doesn’t create challenges by throwing enemies with interesting sets of moves, it just throws at you guys that really know how to take damage or a ton of them at the same time, best exemplified on the Arcade mode. I do know and understand that this is a more gameplay-focused entry, but when in the main story you go through the same beats over and over with some minor alterations, and the arcade mode —which by the way, has some unique level themes that I would have preferred to see much more in the main story instead of going through the Observatory three times — is just Wake against waves of enemies and see what score you can get… at a certain point the game loses me, and it doesn’t pull from the creativeness that I know it has and can have to keep me glued to it.

The Taken stay completely silent, and the creepy charm that was found on hearing their grunts and lines amongst the trees is completely gone; the manuscript pages are way less interesting this time around, and the opportunity of this being based around and taking place in a Night Springs episode Alan wrote isn’t taken advantage of at any point, making for a way less interesting story, and use of the reality- bending pages.

In the end, the thing that really kept me more intrigued and wanting to see the game to the finale was, who else, Mr. Scratch himself. I enjoyed most of the villains in the original Alan Wake, but NONE feel like Mr. Scratch; the sound distorting every time Wake says his name, the way he taunts Alan and how he ENJOYS being the worst of him, a true monster all the way through, it’s a disturbing delight every time he’s on screen (literally) and the uneasiness he carries is one I didn’t expected to be done so well. I wished he and Alan had more opportunities to bounce each other, ‘cause every time they did it was a delight, and luckily it seems that American Nightmare isn’t that important to the overall Alan Wake narrative, so hopefully he didn’t kick the bucket, I’d love to see more of him…

There’s still that Alan Wake attention to detail and story in here, but it didn’t go as deep as it could have, and we have is a story that, while fun at times and with some cool extras and secrets, it still is what is: a Halloween special that doesn’t want to be a real successor or groundbreaking, but it also doesn’t take advantage of the potential it itself sets, and it can drag on at times… Still fun and funny at times, tho!

We’ll meet again, Champion of Light

I’ll see you soon, Herald of Darkness

I don't know, man. There's plenty to like here—charming characters, a cute story, semi-compelling political drama, good (enough) maps, gorgeous GBA aesthetic, whatever. But I've been frustrated and dragging my feet playing this. There is a tiny little fence between me and having fun, and no matter what I do, I cannot hop over it and be compelled to finish this game. That fence is named Seth.

Let me be clear. Lovely guy. Seems really sweet. But he is a sponge on the hypothalamus of my brain. He sucks up every drop of serotonin produced while playing this game. Instead of pumping my fist and shaking hands with another comically muscular man before we ride in a helicopter and are tricked into a death battle with a technologically superior alien species that only one of us escapes alive, I'm sucking my thumb and honk-shooing in my nightcap and gown beside a brick-and-mortar fireplace. Seth is the single most overpowered character I have ever seen in any video game. Still, with like 5 or 6 chapters left in the entire game, he one-shots every normal enemy and two-shots every boss. What are we doing here? Seth bends the very map design around him. Choke-points are no longer threatening. I stand slack-jawed as I drop the red-haired menace in front of 300 enemy goons, praying they will be enough to end his reign. Yet he stands steadfast as they all line up and take turns missing every attack and dying instantly. The Australian government cannot produce enough iron lances to feed into the Seth-powered enemy chipper. He is less a man and more an industrial machine.

Seth has ruined the thrill of permadeath. He has ruined my investment in the combat. He has stolen my crops, and he has pillaged my coffers. I never want to see this man again!

There is a lot to be said about how novel the pacing of this game is and how much I enjoy saving only at the end of chapters (and the chapter structure itself), but I'll save it for when I actually finish one of these things.