18 Reviews liked by ticky
EarthBound
1994
What do you even say about Earthbound in 2021? Saying the writing is good is obvious; playing this is like seeing where 50% of modern indie games got their inspiration from.
It's honestly impressive how good the timing of the humour is. Adding spaces and breaking up text boxes for expressiveness of joke delivery is common now but I can't think of anything else that was doing this in 1994?
The last boss is honestly still shocking in 2021, even after I've seen so many other things inspired by it. (That's my feeling about a lot of it - in 2021 I've seen so many of the things inspired by this game, and yet a lot of it still feels fresh and fascinating.)
I love how much it uses the intentional friction of its menu system for effect. Buy a ticket for the theatre at a counter, bring it over to the bouncer, show it to them from your inventory to be let in - many more steps than it has to be, but all with the effect of immersing you in the daily life of this little world. Even things like using the ATM to get your cash or calling your dad to save the game work in a way that slows the game down to get you to focus on the mundanity of life in this world. It's smart.
Everyone talks about how old RPGs are grindy and badly paced and they're mostly wrong because they just aren't interested in mechanics, but this is the game where it's right. For a battle system so simple, and with no strategy, they sure want you to be spending a lot of time with it. The encounter rate is incredibly high, stretching out many areas far longer than necessary, and individual battles are rarely interesting or have much strategic depth. They look and sound great, and the text is filled with personality, but the battles themselves are pretty poor.
A lot of Earthbound's peers were spending a lot of time experimenting with systems and thinking about what role these battles had in their gameplay loop. What made them interesting, what ensured battles contributed to the game's pacing, etc. Earthbound seems completely uninterested in these questions, which is surprising given how much else it's interested in questioning about 90s RPG design.
It's honestly impressive how good the timing of the humour is. Adding spaces and breaking up text boxes for expressiveness of joke delivery is common now but I can't think of anything else that was doing this in 1994?
The last boss is honestly still shocking in 2021, even after I've seen so many other things inspired by it. (That's my feeling about a lot of it - in 2021 I've seen so many of the things inspired by this game, and yet a lot of it still feels fresh and fascinating.)
I love how much it uses the intentional friction of its menu system for effect. Buy a ticket for the theatre at a counter, bring it over to the bouncer, show it to them from your inventory to be let in - many more steps than it has to be, but all with the effect of immersing you in the daily life of this little world. Even things like using the ATM to get your cash or calling your dad to save the game work in a way that slows the game down to get you to focus on the mundanity of life in this world. It's smart.
Everyone talks about how old RPGs are grindy and badly paced and they're mostly wrong because they just aren't interested in mechanics, but this is the game where it's right. For a battle system so simple, and with no strategy, they sure want you to be spending a lot of time with it. The encounter rate is incredibly high, stretching out many areas far longer than necessary, and individual battles are rarely interesting or have much strategic depth. They look and sound great, and the text is filled with personality, but the battles themselves are pretty poor.
A lot of Earthbound's peers were spending a lot of time experimenting with systems and thinking about what role these battles had in their gameplay loop. What made them interesting, what ensured battles contributed to the game's pacing, etc. Earthbound seems completely uninterested in these questions, which is surprising given how much else it's interested in questioning about 90s RPG design.
King of Retail
2019
Weirdly physical in a way that's almost compelling. The creator's clearly only heard of humans secondhand so all the "convince people to come visit your shop" scenes are deeply strange. The only game that lets you create a hybrid women's clothing, canned goods and mobile phone store.
Deathloop
2021
AAA games aren't supposed to be this scrappy and smart!! What happened??