Here's your hook - LUNLUN SUPERHEROBABYS DX was developed by a mother for her six children. What's the development story behind your last videogame purchase? You feeling good about yourself now, huh?

LUNLUN SUPERHEROBABYS DX is a very unusual game, and there's not a lot of documentation on it online (particularly not in English), but when I mentioned I was playing the game on Twitter, I was retweeted by the legend, LunLun Games herself, giving me a little more insight into this curious home project.

£4-ish on the eShop, the description tells us that Baby Lunlun has "been eaten by the giant & evil Boss Poo!", and we have to help him escape, platforming, boosting and hammering his away through the poo's innards. You start in a sort of Kirby's Adventure-style hub world, flooded with coins, enemies (more poos), and several doorways. Behind each door is a miniboss (mostly poos). In a move perhaps inspired by Breath of the Wild, you can head straight to the finish at any point, but the more minibosses you defeat, the easier the final battle with Boss Poo will be.

At the top-left corner of the screen is a number. This acts as a time counter, health bar and power meter. The more coins you collect and enemies you attack, the higher it rises. Get over a 100 and you'll be able to launch a special attack that can defeat any enemy in an instant. It's actually quite an elegant system.

The central gimmick of LUNLUN SUPERHEROBABYS DX is "Anyone can play!", which the ESRB might have something to say about, as they determine the extensive display of feces makes the game unsuitable for children under the age of 10.

There isn't a lot to rave about in LUNLUN SUPERHEROBABYS DX. While there's an undeniable scruffiness to it, the art and music are surprisingly competent, and the core gameplay is fun enough. The tone is amusingly odd, and that carries through to the writing. Unlike a lot of very cheap, weird eShop games, there's a good degree of game design literacy at display here, with ideas seemingly rooted in Zelda, Gradius, Sonic and Kirby. It's game snob friendly, which is admirable for a game that's only really intended to be an amusing diversion for young children. The game's description suggests that "while the game was made with care for players of all ages, there might be some areas still challenging for some children. Please be a dear and help them out!"

I can't say this is a strong recommendation, but I admire LUNLUN SUPERHEROBABYS DX. Its intentions are very modest, and I appreciate that. I don't expect a mother of six to be able to create a top-tier videogame on her own, but this is a charming little release. I just hope I'm not the only baby amused by it.

I don't feel fully qualified to discuss Gunfighter II's technical issues, given the fact that the copy I bought last week came with an enormous, deep scar on the disc. Who knows how much of my experience can be attributed to that. It mainly seemed to affect the "NOW SAVING - DO NOT TURN OFF" screen, which would take up to a full minute to bypass as the audio glitched out. I don't like to use that worn-out "cursed" patter, but it was clear that I was never going to come back to the misery of running this disc. I either had to do it tonight, or face the very real possibility that it would never play again.

Gunfighter II is a sequel to a Q4 2001 PS1 lightgun game. It doesn't appear to have been brought into production because of the prior game's success, but the idea that these games cost nothing to make and can be thrown together in a month. This is a game from UK developer, Rebellion, years before their cult success with the Sniper Elite series. Their recent history featured titles like The Mummy, Largo Winch and the GBA version of Snood.

Let's talk about the things I like. Both Gunfighter games take obvious inspiration from Time Crisis 1. You reload while ducking behind cover, run from spot to spot, and your gun can take down enemies in a single shot (unfortunately, there are a few too many exceptions to this in Gunfighter II). I've also come to accept I really enjoy wild west settings. Saloons, canyons, desert bandit encampments, singing sorrowful campfire songs to your horse... that stuff all sounds pretty good to me. I could subsist on a diet of bourbon and beans quite happily. Rebellion understand the potential of its theme, and levels explore a good number of those old tropes. The game even utilises the G-Con 2's more advanced tracking for a duel at high noon with the final boss. Cracking.

Let's get into it, then.

Gunfighter II makes one thing abundantly clear - Lightgun games really need strong art direction. Time Crisis was so lucky having mid-nineties Namco on its side. Everything in Gunfighter II is a shade of brown. Not in the way that people talk about PS3 FPS games. I really mean it. It's really difficult to pick out distant enemies, and the game is chock-full of them. And there's innocent victims to avoid too, looking much the same as the criminals. The game really could have used a few Roy Rogers-types. There isn't a single sequin behind all the dust.

Animation quality runs on a scale from charmingly amateurish to concerningly malfunctional. Shoot an enemy multiple times, and they'll shift instantly between poses like you're flicking through Smash Bros trophies. There's even a handful of in-engine cutscenes through the campaign, and it's very funny when they attempt to do a cool close-up on these WWF Smackdown background models.

Enemy hitboxes are some of the fussiest I've ever encountered in a lightgun game. You may argue that I'm not as good a shot as I might like to think, but each trigger pull comes with an on-screen bulletmark, and a ton of them landed right on these guys' cuntnuts. Take my advice and always aim for the torso. The game doesn't always recognise those shots either, but it's by far the most reliable strategy.

Oh, and the audio's pretty crap. The soundtrack's full of short loops that likely came from an archive of stock music. They cheaped out on this one, making a 2003 PS2 game on CD, and I don't think they were even pushing the limits of the 700mb that offers.

The menus are atrociously designed, and my trusty G-Con 2 even seemed to lose connection during one level, but given the state of the disc I bought, I'm giving the game the benefit of the doubt on those points.

You can do a decent lightgun game on a tight budget. Cunning Developments' Endgame was developed under remarkably similar conditions, with remarkably similar intentions, and it's fucking miles better than this. Nothing special, obviously, but I saw that game in Tesco's for a tenner, and if my memory serves me, this was at least double the price at launch. I guess that goes to show why those guys were brought on to do Metroid Prime Pinball, while Rebellion were still stuck in the dirt, doing PSP versions of Gun and From Russia with Love. (Mind you, their version of Miami Vice was shockingly decent.)

You're never going to play this, and I never would have either, but it was one of the last three PS2 lightgun games on my list, and I found a £7 copy on an otherwise fruitless trip into town. I do not have any immediate desire to play either Resident Evil Survivor 2: Code Veronica, or Cocoto Funfair, but I can see that hunger on the horizon, and my bounty list is getting mighty short.

I'm awarding this one an extra half-star because the horses don't take damage when you shoot them. I just hope the travelling surgeon doesn't get too cross with me when they discover how much careless lead I put into them.

I just spent a week staying with my parents back in Orkney. It's not accurate to call it my hometown, because my whole family have moved out of the main town of Kirkwall, to a bunch of fields half an hour outside of it. It always makes me a little self-reflective whenever I visit. How things have changed since I left, what I gave up, and why I couldn't picture myself living there any longer than I did.

After years of pitching the idea to my mum, my recently-retired dad has finally purchased an enormous 4K TV. A big 77 inch Sony OLED Bravia thing with HDR, VRR and all the other bells and whistles I couldn't hope to namedrop. No, he hadn't turned off Motion Smoothing, and sitting through a splined version of Kong: Skull Island was quite the ordeal, but I did get up early to tweak all the settings one morning. The Steam Deck can do 4K on older games, and seeing killer7 like that was quite extraordinary (even if I think the game's aesthetic pairs better with a CRT).

Much of my early interest in videogames was shaped by my older brother. I would be his Tails, his Skate, and less enthusiastically, his Gilius Thunderhead. He suggests he doesn't have a lot of time for games these days, but in spite of that, I know has sunk over 500 hours into the Destiny games, and he's spent a lot of money on fancy controllers with backbuttons. I don't fully know what he thinks of my ongoing enthusiasm for games, whether there's an air of "racecar bed" to it, but there seems to be at least a part of him that's a little envious of it. Like that was part of himself that he gave up for a family, financial security and a bunch of high-end home appliances that he doesn't get to use as much as he thought he would. Maybe he's grown up in ways that I haven't. Maybe we've just become very different people. Maybe time has made our differences more apparent. I first noticed it when I got a GameCube, and in spite of all the lawnmowing and housework we'd teamed up on to afford Resident Evil 2 on launchday, he wasn't making plans to try the Resident Evil remake when I told him how incredible it was. He was more focused on going to T in the Park and talking about how into Muse he'd become. [see note]

He was fairly insistent about bringing his PS5 around to our parents' house. I think he'd been looking for a good excuse since our dad got the new telly. He'd even left his braided HDMI 2.1 cable plugged in, in preparation. For all the talk about how he doesn't really have the time for games now, I know he never stopped investing in them. He has owned every PlayStation, and even bought one of those Dual Play 3D TVs that allowed each player to see their own full-screen image when doing multiplayer on Gran Turismo 5. He was pushing me to take the PS5 with me when we visited him on Monday, but it didn't come over until he brought it for the big family day on Saturday.

The PS5 didn't get as much of a look in as I think he'd been hoping. He brought two Dualsenses, and one fancy SCUF controller with the backbuttons, and those were eagerly held by his son and my sister's many, many children. The only local multiplayer game he had was Gran Turismo 7, and I was stuck helping young children navigate Kazunori Yamauchi's middleclass menus, while he sat with his increasingly drunk wife in the neighbouring kitchen. It wasn't even a full hour before they were asking about the new Mario Kart tracks, and my 1080p Nintendo Switch went on.

The following day, I was scheduled to leave. Poor weather conditions lead to my flight being cancelled, and I was driven back to my parents for another night. Everyone was exhausted. It was as if fate was prodding me to further explore the potential of Ultra High Definition.

I remembered my brother hyping up Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. I hadn't known him to play platformers since the Mega Drive, scoffing at Crash Bandicoot and Croc: Legend of the Gobbos in our subsequent PlayStation library, but I guess becoming a father has pushed him to chase more kid-friendly games, and knowing how enthusiastic I still am for Super Mario, I guess it seemed like a natural recommendation. I saw a digital copy had been installed on his console, and I gave it a shot.

I've been a vocal critic of the shift in direction Sony have taken since the PS3's later years. Shifting their chief base of operations from SCEI Tokyo to the SIE headquarters in San Mateo, California wasn't just a concern for weebs, but it marked a change in the company's values. The PlayStation brand had started as something to bridge the gap between high-end home entertainment and Nintendo-style videogames, with the project originally intended as a SNES with a CD drive, and many of its key developers following that legacy. While games retained the strong standard of mechanical design that had been established on the NES and SNES, they didn't have to follow the conservative family-focused intentions as dictated by Hiroshi Yamauchi. This lead to more adult themes in games like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, but also artier, experimental projects like Jumping Flash and PaRappa the Rapper. That was the PlayStation that I was a fan of, and one that Sony had shifted away from when chasing the surprising success of the Xbox 360. After a tough few years with the expensive PS3 hardware, Sony finally managed to eke out a success with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and every project they would invest in afterwards would seem influenced somewhat by its quick-talking, cinematic presentation.

Rift Apart is very much a post-Uncharted 2 Sony game. Nothing ever shuts up, and you never really find yourself thinking about anything. You're constantly force-fed setpieces, with little meaningful user input. Don't play it the way it wants you to, and it won't be long until a character repeatedly pushes you towards the correct answer with a looping instruction. Each environment is enormous, with elaborately detailed buildings and rock structures decorating every location, but they're mere facades. You can only explore what's on the pre-determined route, and there's no meaning to any of it beyond set dressing. Characters attempt to project a fun, wacky presence, but I didn't hear a single funny line of dialogue. The script comes off like a TV spin-off of a Disney blockbuster. There's no sense of sincere passion behind anything. It's just a lot of very talented people doing their job.

There's still a shadow of a real game in Rift Apart. For a lot of the younger players trying it, it's likely their first interaction with a twin-stick shooter, and the warping dodges and weapon options play a little like a kids' version of Returnal. Everything is slick as all get out, and presented attractively, but there's little sense of real depth. If you weren't playing it right, the game would bend itself backwards to put you on the correct path.

Seeing my nieces and nephews over the last week got me thinking about kids' games. The most engaged I saw them was when my 7 year-old nephew was messing around with Google Maps, laughing when he warped through a car that disappeared, resolving that he "blew it up", and finding shitty rundown buildings that he'd joke were my house. It reminded me of how I'd messed around with games and interactive CD-ROMs at that age. I wasn't really interested in how I was supposed to play. Kids don't want to be told how to play. It's instinctive. They try something basic, see the effect, and if it was funny or interesting enough, they dig a little deeper. It's why Minecraft and Roblox have become such massive, dystopian revenue platforms. I don't think games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart have a lot to offer them, beyond a distraction. I never thought the Aladdin TV series or Timon & Pumbaa were ever any good, but the familiar characters and constant motion shut me up when they were on.

I think Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart contrasts very poorly against something like Super Mario Odyssey. A game full of fun, surprising moments that truly has a cross-generational appeal. Young kids can have fun discovering rewards from experimenting with every vertex of the levels, and running around the beach with the funny dog, while their weird Mario veteran uncle finds himself emotional at the implementation of the N64 triple jump and the grand celebration of the character's Donkey Kong roots.

Maybe that's it. Maybe my brother just hasn't been playing the right games. Maybe the Resident Evil remake was that Sliding Doors moment that made him the owner of a two-door fridge freezer, and me, the owner of a Steel Battalion controller. It's a little dispiriting to think he might see Rift Apart as the best that a PEGI 3+ can get. How we could have grown up playing the very same copies of games, and lead to such wildly different evaluations of the medium. I love my brother, and I want nothing but the best for him, but suggesting *I* was missing out by not buying Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart makes me very worried about a lot of things.

I put my PlayStation account on his PS5. Maybe he'll dig through my library and download the Resident Evil remake for himself. I think it's far more likely that he'll just keep my profile on there out of courtesy, uncurious about the doors I've opened up, just in case I ever end up playing his PS5 again. I don't expect I will, either. Maybe his son will try the Tony Hawk's I bought, though.


[note - He has not talked about Muse in a very long time, and it was unfair of me to bring this up.]

There's definitely a vibe to Super Mario RPG. This isn't nostalgia talking. I didn't play the game until 2017, on the SNES Mini. But the music, the writing, the sequence of tasks you have to perform... this is the game Squaresoft made when they thought Final Fantasy VII was going to be an N64 project. It's a silly, kid-friendly fairytale RPG, but there's a real through line from this to both Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time. It's not that games don't make us feel like they used to when we kids. They just stopped making them like this.

So much of what I love about Mario RPG is in its presentation. It was a real technical achievement on the SNES, but that meant it was pushing against boundaries in every direction. I mean, really, this was an isometric RPG with pre-rendered graphics and a very prominent jump button, and that was about as 3D as you were getting in an adventure game back then. Characters had very limited poses to communicate with, and they opted to keep Mario mute as he gave direct responses to NPCs, expressing himself through pantomime and, again, his trademark jumping. It's a bit of a puppet show, and it's deeply endearing.

Removing the limitations of an old game is always hazardous, and particularly when that carries so much of its appeal. New developers, ArtePiazza, have earned Square Enix's trust from decades of ports and remakes, spanning all the way back to the Super Famicom version of Dragon Quest III, and they've taken great pains to stay faithful to the original game's charm, though you can feel the stress they were under, taking Zoom meetings with Shigeru Miyamoto and Tetsuya Nomura. Playing this game is accepting that it's going to look like a Fancy Modern version, discarding the funny old sprites, and past that, there's very little for the old guard to grumble about. Hell, the bulk of the characters still look like beautifully crude old CGI.

There's a suite of quality of life tweaks that take much of the old SNES RPG pain out of the experience. Downed characters can be swapped mid-battle, timing-based attacks now give a little heads up to help you figure out when you're supposed to press A, and the game's constantly auto-saving. It's less of a commitment. Yes, I like the tension that comes from not knowing when you'll be allowed to turn a game off, but I was still using save states when I played on the SNES Mini. I'm not kidding on that we had it better off in the nineties.

I really don't know what younger audiences will make of this, though. Seeing copies sitting on the shelves of Smyths Toys, with the no-nonsense "MARIO RPG" title and stark box art, it doesn't come with a disclaimer that says "THIS CONTROLS A BIT LIKE LANDSTALKER". If you're not already well versed in 16-Bit games, the game could feel really stiff and awkward. This is a game before there was a consensus on what Mario sounded like. Are kids going to understand why he's not whooping and exclaiming with every jump? Let's face facts. People who have first-hand experience of the 1996 release line-up are fucking old now. Most people buying Mario games aren't us. Are they going to understand? And if not, why doesn't Princess Peach look like the crude assembly of geometric shapes that she did on the SNES? There's concessions made for the modern perception of the Mario brand here, and they really clash against the eight-way movement system and silent text boxes. I think it's a real downer that they couldn't fully commit to the bit.

There's new FMV cutscenes that mimic the movement and animation of the original. I'm sure there's a certain kind of player who will see these and gasp in awe. They're not me, though. I don't think they're anywhere near as charming when freed of the static perspective. Again, this isn't a game that I've had a long relationship with. If I'd played the game at a more impressionable age, and fantasised about a more tangible version of its world, maybe it would have done something for me. I just like the old approach more.

So, it's bittersweet in all. A compromise. A better-playing version of a game I really like, but a version I like less overall. When I next want to play Mario RPG, I honestly don't know whether I'll play this or the SNES version. In all likelihood, I'll grumble about the indecision and play something else altogether. That's a shame. The game's really good, I like it a lot, and I respect the people who worked on this new version. If you want to play Mario RPG, I think the Switch release is the much more reasonable recommendation. But if you're like me, and you admire what developers were able to achieve on more rudimentary hardware, and the amusing, lovable games all those limitations lead to, I think you know that you'd be denying yourself something for the sake of convenience.

Never mind me, though. I'm a nut. Go have fun.

Disclaimer: There's no Spoiler tag on this, and while I'll refrain from spoiling story details for Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, I will be discussing spoilers for Yakuza 6 and 7, and would recommend avoiding this review if you haven't played through those games


I wasn't sure what I was getting into here. I'd avoided pretty much every piece of coverage after the initial teaser trailer. I was expecting something of a Ground Zeroes. A little Yakuza to present a few new story threads and warm us up for 8. I was also very willing to skip it entirely. I didn't like the idea.

I felt Yakuza 6 left Kazuma Kiryu with a perfect out, and he'd more than earned it. He'd been through more than his share of hardship. It was enough to make The Dragon want to retire, man. We saw him as a new grandparent, making friends at his new local, joining in with the baseball team, and finding happiness in his peaceful new life. He was going to be alright, and it was a lovely way to say goodbye to a character we've all grown so fond of. I knew he'd be back eventually, but I had hoped they'd work a little for it. Like when shit got really real, and more than our new protagonists could handle, he'd emerge from the shadows to bring back justice. Kazuma Kiryu was the nuclear option. When he appeared in 7, I wasn't thrilled with it, but as a means of passing the torch to Ichiban Kasuga, and tie us back to the old side-characters, I accepted it. And I've seen a lot of fans take issue with 7's gameplay, but the game did terrifically well both commercially and critically, and Kasuga wasn't a Raiden. Most people actually seemed happy with him. I had faith that they wouldn't run back to Uncle Kaz to do another game.

It's a shock that Gaiden justifies this seemingly cynical decision. It was naive to suggest Kazuma Kiryu could live a life in peace and obscurity. The people who were securing his identity and the safety of Sunshine Orphanage would want him to do something for them. Like beat up a bunch of guys. To the yakuza, he's as recognisable as Elvis Presley, and even fewer of his fans believe he's dead. It's very in-character with Kazuma's sense of honour and ludicrous, straight-laced forthrightness, that he wouldn't do more to hide his face than wear a pair of sunglasses. He didn't even change his shaving pattern. Gaiden risks disrespecting the fans who bought the Song of Life After Hours Edition who wanted to toast the man's departure with a dram from an officially licensed glass, but there's a genuine reason to keep his story going. We didn't really know him well enough.

Gaiden is a shorter Yakuza game. That still puts it around 20+ hours, and it hasn't lost any of its interest in side-content. There's five whole late-nineties Sega arcade games to play, for a start. Gaiden mainly takes place in Yakuza 2's Dotonbori Sotenbori, it's one of the series' smaller maps, though it's becoming increasingly comparable to Kamurocho-levels of familiarity. It's long worn off its novelty, but it's a decent location to structure a more modest entry around. Side-missions are dished out by new character, Akame, and has you carrying out favours all across town. It gives them a bit more structure and narrative justification than nebulous experience point systems, and I welcome the change. Akame's a lot of fun, and I don't think she's leaving the series anytime soon.

Another surprise - I think Gaiden has the best fights. Maybe it's the shorter length of the game to thank, but it's nice to have an entry where Kazuma doesn't start the game feeling far crapper than he did at the end of the prior one. And now he's got a bunch of spy bullshit to play with. It's inherently silly, and there's a couple of big laughs when he pulls out the Spider-Man shit during otherwise serious fight sequences, but it's a lot of fun to play around with.

I think the relief of playing a somewhat breezier entry (particularly after the overstuffed Ishin) has a lot of fans giving the game maybe a little too much credit. I am pretty tired of the Osaka map, and I was hoping to spend more of the game in any of the series' other locations. Yakuza really benefits from tighter pacing, though. I'm quite used to playing a thrilling Act 1, and then spending a full week trying to get to the exciting stuff again. I dropped out of Judgment before the hypothetical "fun bit" started. I'm, again, avoiding all the pre-release 8 coverage, but I have heard it's intended to be the biggest game in the series, and that's making me quite weary.

Anyway. He's back, and they've convinced me that's the right decision. If you're new to the series, perhaps annoyed that I keep calling it "Yakuza", I don't think you really need this one. It's a side-story for the Kazuma Kiryu fans, but also one that pays off on some recent plot threads that 7 merely glossed over. If you started these games multiple console generations ago, and you're still willing to continue, this could be the thing that brings back the passion. It is more than a prologue for 8. Sega are kind of taking the piss with all the money they're getting out of us, though.

Hey. So, I got £50 of Steam credit for Christmas, so I bought the new Yakuza and had about £16 left over.

I go through Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 like most people go through loafs of bread. And this is securing it, right? It's in my Steam library, and that's good for the rest of time (or at least until Activision have to pull it from the service because of music licensing complications or some shit). It was free money, and could only be spent on games. Fuck else was I going to do with it? Yes, I already own this game on PS5 and Switch (not to mention the number of platforms I own the original Neversoft versions on), and I was fairly satisfied with the experience of Remote Playing it on my Steam Deck, but why have cotton when you can have silk?

Anyway. Good game.

The old Tony Hawk's remains one of the most successful score attack designs ever presented. You're given a level, and it's up to you to see how many points you can squeeze out of the arrangement of ramps, rails, ledges and obstacles. Neversoft pretty much nailed the design on THPS2, and only lost sight of that as they attempted to chase trends in contemporary videogames and skateboarding culture. I don't want to linger too long on all the Jackass shit that started to creep in from THPS4, or the parkour, or the fucking car driving objectives from THUG. Those later games did introduce some stuff that really added to the basic formula, though. Neversoft were technical wizards, and their games were stuffed to the brim with wild optional content. Don't forget that they included a robust online mode in 2001's THPS3, long before Sony even got serious about releasing a PS2 Network Adaptor. Spine transfers, reverts and even THUG's wallplants are all here. It's just the stuff that added to your combo potential without bogging it down with cavemans and infinite grind spins and all that shit. Remember when they did a stealth mission in one of these games? Sorry. I said I'd try not to talk about the sequels.

THPS1+2 is a game that really benefits from handheld access. Those 2 minute score attack runs kind of beg for instant access at any time. The Switch version is definitely a compromise, though. You do feel the diminished framerate, especially when you're chasing leaderboard positions, and the visual presentation takes a hit overall (even though I have some affection for how the compromised lighting sometimes does a better job of reflecting the original games). The Steam Deck is up to the task of playing the full fat version of the game, and comes with all the customisable settings from a typical PC version, if you want to prioritise presentation or performance. The device itself is a little clunky, and I found myself missing a few too many manuals with its d-pad, but maybe that's just something I need to adapt to. Playing the game docked to a TV with a Dualsense, I was just as capable a player as I am on PS5, though you do lose the fun adaptive trigger support.

There's still some minor things I don't love about THPS1+2. The game-wide Challenges feature seems a little awkwardly implemented, whilst largely ignorable, and the unlockable clothing seems like something that was implemented while Vicarious Visions were arguing with the publisher over how many microtransactions they'd have to stuff in the game. Some of the goals don't work brilliantly with the new engine, and there's a few that I'll have to drop my stats for in order to land in the right places. I still forget how to bluntslide for that one Philadelphia goal, and the game doesn't do a great job of telling you how to, either.

I still love the original PS1 release of THPS2, but this is a more robust and enjoyable way to play that content. The game is rightfully held up as a classic with some of the most consistently positive reviews of any game, and Vicarious Visions didn't fuck up the remake. We all got so excited when EA Black Box made a proper skateboarding game that we let this series die, but THPS remains the real videogame. They'll never be able to match it, so we just have to keep coming back to these nineteen levels until our bodies fail us, and we go to the same place as Bring the Noise.

"Flashback 2" is a game I used to dream about. I don't know if I can eloquently express just how cool the original game seemed to me as a child. It was unusual to find a game where you played as a character with realistic human proportions, for a start, but it was the wild diversity of its locations, and the satisfying consistency of its controls that really captivated me. The weird, lush alien jungle you wake up in leads you to a weird, concrete underground that reminded me of the alleyways and backrooms I wasn't allowed to go in. Flashback was dangerous and sort of illicit. It was satirical about adult subjects like part-time jobs, public transport and bureaucracy. It was a million miles from any other Mega Drive game. At that time, no game seemed better lined-up to deliver all the rich potential of the future than "Flashback 2".

I don't really want to bully this game too much. I love Flashback, and I didn't buy this to fuel an online rant. I'm an earnest fan, and while I saw many red flags on my approach, I was curious about the game that Paul Cuisset decided was worthy of branding as its first numbered sequel. I recently viewed a behind the scenes video on YouTube that had been uploaded around a week prior. I was the twentieth viewer. I'm well aware that the braver members of the development team may be trawling the internet for player reactions, and by posting a review, there's a fair chance they'll read it. I don't want to ruin their week, and given this, I'll pepper this review with a couple of pieces of faint praise.

1- Flashback 2 isn't as bad as I'd anticipated
2 (even fainter)- Flashback 2 is the best continuation of Flashback I've played (including that truly abysmal Flashback Legend GBA prototype)

For all the talk of unacceptable performance issues and idiotic design, I don't think the game is that bad. On calm waters, I felt the game was acceptable. It's a first-time project from Microids' new in-house development studio, and given the state of independent multiplatform development in continental Europe these days, I think the game they delivered makes sense. Ubisoft's acquisitions ravaged France, Belgium and much of Northern Europe's games industry with relentless studio buyouts, and I'm thankful Cuisset retained the rights to his greatest achievement after working with the publisher on that atrocious "remake" ten years ago. All the attention surrounding the game's release has been put on IGN's 2/10 review, but if this had been released as a 3DS eShop game without a familiar title behind it, I fully expect some outlets would have risen to a 5 or even 6.

Right. Hopefully that's cushioned the blow.

With the couple of software updates the game has received since launch, Flashback 2's biggest problem isn't its performance. It's just that it's really fucking boring. Conrad Hart wakes up after sending himself to cryosleep, drifting off to the boundless unknown at the end of the first game, and wakes up a few moments later having to revisit all the same locations and do a bunch of the same shit. New Washington, the jungle, Planet Morph, IAN. They're all back, expecting you to have remembered them from 30 years ago. Only a few things actually resemble the original game. Mainly the elevators. The original game's art hasn't been referenced for much beyond the colour of Conrad's jacket. Typically, if anything in Flashback 2 reminds you of the first game, it's coincidental.

The game uses a Kirby and the Forgotten Land-style diorama view, with Conrad appearing small and distant in these elaborate sci-fi environments. Conrad isn't a big pink ball, though, and it's often quite a challenge to see where this drab little man is on the screen. The camera often obscures ledges and jumping points, and you need to line yourself up with each one perfectly to be able to use them. So much of the game is spent wobbling into the intended position to progress. I'm still trucking on with my 2009 Sony Bravia, but the combination of Flashback 2's obtuse camera and Black Friday sales was the closest I've come to buying a bigger TV in 14 years.

Despite the precedent for falls killing you in Flashback, this sequel loves a sheer drop. You take zero damage from them now. It just makes designing environments easier when you don't have to line up different floors properly. To Flashback 2's great benefit, if an obligation is ever at risk of making the game truly insufferable, they just don't bother putting it in. The unbalanced gunfights, the disjointed level design, the wonky puzzles. Don't worry, the game's not asking you to commit to any of it. They essentially give you a "skip content" button whenever things are getting too rough. If you continue after dying, there's no punishment. All your progress carries over to your new spawn. Trivialising every action sequence is a good way to prevent players from feeling frustrated, though it jeopardises any sense of tension or excitement the designers may have once hoped for.

Different levels take distinct approaches to gameplay. Sometimes subtly so. One may play more like an RPG, or a standard twin-stick shooter, or even a Metroidvania. Typically, the less demanding a style is on the surrounding game design, the less of a pain in the arse it is to play. There's a wee hacking mini-game in here. It's something you could run on a solar-powered calculator, and it's far and away the most solid part of the whole package. There is a sense that this team could make games, but expecting them to make a PS5 release is like asking your cat to paint your house.

A fundamental problem with the game's structure is they've jumped to the conclusion that "action" equals "fun", without making combat in any way exciting or challenging. These parts are supposed to be the fun bits, to reward you for pushing through the tedious bits, but there's no distinction between the two. The game constantly throws medikits at you, and no matter how many hits I took from complete lack of care, I never ended up with less than 10 in my inventory at any time. Gun play operates like a twin-stick shooter, and it just makes no sense with Flashback 2's floating - sometimes side-on, sometimes isometric - camera. The automatic lock-on function does all the work, lining up shots and playing the game for you. Geometry does nothing to spice up these sequences either, with bullets flying through cover and Conrad having little meaningful relationship with his environment. Thanks for making this game, guys.

I wouldn't call Paul Cuisset a household name. He hasn't had the best career. Shockingly, he does not seem ashamed of it. I'm used to cute wee nods for the fans in games from Kojima, Suda or Suzuki. I almost leapt out of my seat when I saw this prick reference the PS3 survival horror shitshow, Amy, in Flashback 2. What's he doing? The old man has left the house with his trousers down. Please arrest him for his own safety.

If you're a true Flashback nut (i.e. me and the other nineteen guys who watched that YouTube video), you may have some knowledge of a "Flashback 2" that was briefly worked on for the Mega CD. Not much is known about the project, and most of its story would be reworked for Fade to Black, but one thing they were most keen to implement was a mech suit for Conrad. In this radically different version of Flashback 2, they have been keen to implement the feature. Weirdly, and amusingly so. Multiple characters will surprise you with their familiarity with Japanimation robots. From a Marlon Brando pastiche mobster to a mutated village oracle figure, there's a wide range of personality types who will act against type to discuss just how intimately familiar they are with mechs. The mech stuff amounts to an atrocious minigame you play once, and another section later on, where you walk in a straight line. I think the 1993 Flashback 2 "mechs" more resemble this game's power armour - a feature that the game barely introduces, and rather, just dumps in without much explanation. You press triangle, and Conrad goes into morphin' time, adopting a full body metallic suit. It prevents him from taking damage from radiation. Like most of the game, it's completely lacking in substance, but it's cute to think that maybe Cuisset was thinking of the first time he attempted to make this game at some point during production.

I'm a fan of early 3D games from small, inexperienced developers. I can enjoy a 10fps Game Boy Color conversion of a PC FPS. I have completed Deadly Premonition. It's fair to say I have a high tolerance for poor performance in games. That said, Flashback 2 pushes at the furthest reaches of my empathy. Environments are often very large, and you may spend over an hour in some of them. Interact with them too much, by destroying breakables, attacking enemies, or opening pathways, and the software will dedicate more processing power to remembering that interaction, dropping the framerate. Even menus seem affected by the increased burden, taking multiple seconds to scroll through options. In one Metroidvania-like section, I was completely stumped for well over an hour, retreading the same ground over and over. By the end, the game looked like I was attempting to run Half-Life 2 on Windows 95. Leaving the area and coming back doesn't reset the environment to default. The game does not forget. It does not forgive. It encumbers itself with remembering each little interaction you ever deigned to commit to it in your flailing cluelessness, warping and sweating for your sin. Somehow, I eventually fiddled with the Analyser's frequencies enough in enough rooms to find my way out of this rapidly-degrading purgatory, but it's not an experience I will forget anytime soon.

There's also a lot of weird presentational setbacks. The bold utilitarian typeface, clashing hard against the overdesigned neon, semi-transluscent HUD elements. The menus that feature synonymous terms for different options. The dialogue trees that display the wrong characters' portraits, and once, a blank white square. Character artwork and in-game models bear little resemblance to each other, too. One fairly significant character appears with blonde hair in portraits and cutscene artwork, but with pink hair on their in-game character model, and I highly doubt it's intended as an homage to A Link to the Past. I've seen people accuse the game of using AI-generated artwork. I will not libel myself by commenting on that. Environments frequently look surprisingly complex, attractive, and intricately detailed, though some of the most interesting-looking locations are blocked off by invisible walls, and only serve as elaborate backgrounds. There's also the script and the apparent lack of any voice direction. I suspect it wasn't written by native English speakers, but French programmers who were confident enough in their fluency to avoid hiring any English localisation staff. There's a lot of awkward terminology, weird, bad jokes, and conversations with no sense of natural flow. Conrad doesn't feel anything like any previous version of the character (which thankfully means he's not like the Ubisoft remake Conrad, either), mainly coming across like a college student who wants to be cool and funny, but has no idea how to tell a joke. Locations, technology and character names get pronounced differently by each member of the cast, and one of them even struggles with the name "Ian". Maybe the most nostalgic part of the package is that it feels like years since I've played a game that had a script this bad.

I almost respected the story. It looked like it was headed towards some amusingly pulpy territory that surprised me with a sort-of clever twist. I thought they were using some very silly logic to make both Flashback 2 and Fade to Black simultaneously canon sequels to the original game. They don't, though. They use modern "multiverse" shite to tell a story that's both completely incoherent and inconsequential. There's two Conrads, and a supporting character that's named suspiciously closely to one from Fade to Black, but I don't think the team ever thought about the story half as hard as I did. There's some interesting stuff regarding a subclass of mutants on Titan, and what that suggests about the enemies at the start of the first game, but I'm not sure they even had those guys in mind. It's mainly just a hodgepodge of worn-out tropes, and very little of it gels together in any meaningful way. There's a Deku Tree, and AVALANCHE, and a bit where you have to tell which of the two presidents is the real one before killing the imposter. It's nonsense. Don't make the mistake I did by thinking it might be worth paying attention to.

Despite the myriad of problems I have with the game, I do have a little respect for it. On some level, as a boring game for the world's biggest nerds, Flashback 2 almost works. Through all the ideas that don't quite come together, you can see the things that were once attempted with it. The ambition it once had, that was later sacrificed as they had to be realistic about what the team's capabilities. I'm not going to pretend that it represents the fulfilment of a creator's long-discarded personal dream in the way a Shenmue III does, but it's a much more curious prospect than something as homogenous as a typical PS5 action game. The twin-stick, Metroidvania, lite RPG, wannabe cinematic epic. I don't know. I haven't played many games like that, and if I really squint, I can almost see the game they once wanted to make. If the team had a Satoru Iwata-level talent on board, they might have been able to refocus the project to deliver something worthwhile. There is not a single person on the planet who I'd recommend play the game, but if I was to hear a Real Flashback Guy ranting against it, I might ask them to calm down a bit.

When I completed the game, the ending cutscene failed to play. Goodbye, Flashback 2.

I respect the history behind Duck Hunt. How the earlier projector-based versions of the game reflects some of Nintendo's first experiments with releasing interactive electronic games and selling that to consumers. The inherently videogamey qualities, like music and animation, lend the game so much charm. That said, it's basically something you'd try on Wii Play for five minutes and never think of again your entire life.

Duck Hunt has three game modes. Game A features one duck at a time, and you can fire three shots before they fly away. B features two ducks at a time. This is all pretty easy. The ducks are pretty large and fly in straight lines until they bounce off the side of the screen. There's no end until you mess up too many shots, and if you're decent at lightgun games, it could be well over half an hour before you see a Game Over. The Zapper is a nice gun that carries much of the visual style of the early NES stuff, and there's a satisfying heft to each pull of the trigger, though I'm thinking of opening mine up and spraying some WD40 on the 35-year-old internal spring mechanism that reverberates with each shot.

Game C is both more interesting, and less interesting. The cartoon Duck Hunt Duo are gone, and it doesn't carry as much charm, but the gameplay's a tad more intricate. This is clay pigeon shooting. A beep is sounded, and two targets are flung through the air. You have three shots to hit both of them, and they become harder to hit the longer you wait. I find they're easiest to hit at the peak of their arc through the air, steadying themselves for a second. It's easily the biggest challenge in the game, and I frequently found myself using the Zapper's sights to line up my third shot, but it's still a little too simplistic to compete with 90s lightgun action. I went through 18 rounds of Game C without really trying. It's more of an endurance test than a test of skill. Play long enough, and you naturally start trying stupid trick shots, firing from the hip and spinning around before taking your shot. I suppose this game could serve as good practice for someone who hopes to become incredibly cool.

There's reasons to like Duck Hunt. It can work particularly well if you're taking turns with another player. The iconography is definitely likeable, and they did a great job of fleshing that all out in Super Smash Bros for Wii U. I like the ducks, I like the dog, I like that I can pretend that they're just playing along with me and nobody's actually getting killed. It's just too static and plain too really hold your attention for long. Even alongside the bulk of the early NES library, it's disappointingly simple. Any of Time Crisis 2's minigames hold more depth and excitement.

It's natural for NES-owning lightgun fans to want a Zapper and Duck Hunt. They're a crucial part of the genre's history. Just don't expect too much from it if you actually go through with it, though. I'm still trying to distract myself from the fact I spent £40 on a boxed copy.

There's been this notion around the Sonic games that if Sega just stopped making stupid decisions, it'd be perfect and we'd all have a great time. You know, I don't buy that. Maybe I'm just a little sick of Sonic.

Despite everything else, the old Mega Drive games are still fairly precious to me, and I have some affection for a half dozen other Sonic titles, but I wasn't as bowled over with Mania as most seemed to be. There wasn't a lot of truly new stuff in it. I just don't know how fertile this formula is. If running around rollercoaster tracks and jumping when necessary is all that captivating, or if it can really be taken to interesting new places without a radical shake-up.

Don't get me wrong, Superstars is pretty crap. They've been understandably keen to promote the physics they've pulled from Sonic Mania, but that doesn't save the poor collision models, the rotten level design or the dogshit mechanics. Even if Sonic runs up hills properly now, it doesn't prevent the game from being tedious as all get out. It just doesn't seem to have been designed with much insight. Sonic Team have included a Fantasy Zone level in here, solely because they didn't get the joke when they saw Mania's Mean Bean Machine boss. I struggle to recall any moments where I had fun. Mostly, I remember the shock when I saw they thought to bring back the bouncy floor from Sonic CD's Wacky Workbench.

Oh, and everybody's already talked about it, but those bosses are truly appalling. I couldn't bring myself to replay a single level, knowing one of those were at the end of it.

There's pockets of positivity in the project. Basically all aesthetic. The character models are generally pretty nice, but their limited animation makes them look like they were extracted from a better game and dumped onto a Steam community page. Sonic Mania/Shredder's Revenge boy, Tee Lopes, has composed a few typically great tracks, and they stand out alarmingly in among the synthesised dredge from Sonic Team. The 2D animation sequences are nice too, as is typical of all the post-Mania stuff, and like those, they're let down by lacklustre music.

At its best, it's a halfhearted retread. It's attempting to mine nostalgia from a source that's been tapped out relentlessly for decades. Bold, youthful confidence used to be Sega's whole thing. They'd speed into new potential anywhere they saw it, and all their most beloved projects carried a sense of boundless energy. Now, they're sitting in the paddling pool, trying to make Samba de Amigo a thing again, and too scared to do a Yakuza game without Kazuma Kiryu.

I wasn't even excited for this, and I'm still bitterly disappointed. They've really fucked this one up, and if you bought it on launch day, you might have paid £55 for it. I can't recall the last time I've been this upset with a new game, and I'm in the middle of playing Flashback 2 right now.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER ELEVEN
Video version

Hey everyone! How’s your fucking JANUARY going? Remember when I used to put these out in the run-up to Christmas? Well, I’ve been quite busy over the last while, and I’m sorry to say that GOTY has taken a back seat for the last month or so. Please don’t think that means I don’t take this stuff seriously though. Maybe work doesn’t begin in earnest on GOTY content until the last quarter of a year, but every time I play a game that I think might be a contender, I’m considering its place on the list, jotting down notes and sometimes even recording footage. Occasionally, I’ll have to abandon work on a post because of a surprise late release or something, and that happened in 2018 too, but fuck it, consider this an extra. It gives me an opportunity to address the lateness of this year’s list, but I also think this is one of the more interesting and obscure contenders for the list, and I wasn’t happy about the idea of cutting it.

The Missing was a bit of a surprise this year, coming from Hidetaka Suehiro’s new studio, White Owls, who had recently closed their Kickstarter campaign for an open-world supernatural mystery adventure game, seemingly targeted at Deadly Premonition’s die hard fanbase. It didn’t seem reasonable to expect anything of note to come from the team until that game was finished, but weeks later The Missing launched on all formats, and it’s really quite good.

You see, the driving force behind Deadly Premonition (at least for me) was figuring out whether or not the developers knew what they were doing. Whether it was just a shite survival horror game propped up by its influences and ambition, or if it was a sincere attempt to make something unique, compelling and impactful. And though I was massively satisfied by its closing hours (I still stand by it as one of my favourite ending sequences in a game), and it definitely made me like Swery, it didn’t completely give away whether he was a genius or just a lucky hack. The Missing reassures me that he’s someone worth taking an interest in.

The Missing can be easily overlooked as a grim Limbo clone. Another dark, surreal walk through some tired imagery and obtuse puzzles. The game is largely a subversion of this trope, though. This subgenre of adventure platformers have become synonymous with grizzly deaths. Limbo, Flashback, Another World, even Tomb Raider are all well known for how bleak and gruesome their Game Over screens are. The Missing decides the story should go on beyond that. As your character, J.J., is torn apart, burned or stabbed, losing limbs, their story continues. You can’t die on the Island of Memories. You just go on, dragging your body through a series of increasingly absurd puzzles.

Swery’s distinctively Osakan balance of eccentricity and down-to-earth charm comes through in the game’s increasingly absurd puzzles and sense of humour. I don’t really want to spoil the locations you’ll be taken to throughout the adventure, but it’s worth telling you that the game loses interest in grim, cold, dark environments after a wee while, and it’s very much in step with the kind of weirdness fans would hope for from a new Swery game.

This isn’t to say that The Missing is a joke game though. There’s a sincere attempt to express something positive about complicated social issues here, and those who have completed The Missing will know what I’m talking about. I don’t know how competently Swery delivers his message of support, but it’s something I can appreciate, and it’s encouraging to see him deliver a positive message while tackling controversial subject matter.

The Missing isn’t a terribly slick game, but it’s a really interesting little title. Controls can be frustrating, presentation can be clumsy and puzzles can be occasionally obtuse and tedious, but that’s something you accept when you play a Swery game. The pay-off is something that shows great respect to its influences while resulting in something peculiar and uniquely fulfilling. If you’re into weird little games, The Missing’s something I’d like to recommend for you.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER TEN
Video version

It’s my great pleasure to welcome the first mobile game to make it onto one of my GOTY lists. Part-Time UFO’s a wee belter.

Coming from a new subdivision of Kirby developers, HAL Laboratory, and being the first game the company has self-published in 25 years, HAL Egg’s first title is a game that matches the scale and charm of some of their earliest titles. Part-Time UFO focuses on UFO Catcher/claw machine mechanics and tells a story about a cute wee UFO finding itself stranded on earth and taking up odd jobs to earn money. Throughout the game, you’ll be tasked with loading a farmer’s pick-up truck, reassembling a pile of scattered dinosaur bones and arranging a pyramid of cheerleaders. This is HAL at their best.

I still like the new Kirbies fine, but you won’t see the bloated, repetitive Star Allies on this list. Part-Time UFO feels like what the first Kirby games were- Daft wee games that took simple mechanics and explored them through a series of cute, funny little levels. At a time when home gaming was at risk of becoming a dry, drawn-out alternative to snappy sparky arcade games, HAL were putting out stuff like Dream Land 1 and Pinball Land to expand on what could be done with shallow, attention-grabbing coin-ops and give us something to feel genuine affection for. Part-Time UFO’s one of those games, and it snuck out on App Stores.

Part of what makes the game so funny and endearing is the deliberate clumsiness of its controls. Your slidey wee spaceship isn’t the best thing for pinpoint accuracy, and the big dangly claw is even clumsier. It’s really good fun to see desperate people task this cute wee flying saucer with intricate jobs. HAL pair this concept with great big pixels and thick lines on everything. These are people who know how to make daft wee classics, and they’re firing on all cylinders here.

I don’t know how much more there is to say about Part-Time UFO, but I’ve got some time to spare, so let’s talk about what works about this kind of design, and why I’m so glad HAL have found an avenue to make more of them.

See, when you have freedom to do whatever, you’re likely to stick to typical logic. Just make a fucking Star Wars game. That’ll sell. When you’re limited by arbitrary rules, like pixel count, a handful of visual techniques, a couple button inputs, that’s what leads to satisfying, innovative, endearing results. The worst Game Boy games were the ones that attempted to bring over home console design to a monochrome screen and fuck all buttons. HAL knew how to make stuff that shone within those narrow walls. They made a wee ball fight a penguin in a boxing ring. They know how to work with fuck all. Part-Time UFO is a Lego cat among 200kb JPEGs of Michelangelo sculptures.

HAL doing stuff like this makes me feel okay about the idea of hardware becoming more standarised and the threat of traditional handhelds fading away into the mist. These are the people who made our games – Our Kirbies, our Super Smash Bros. Melee, our Pokémon Snap – and they’re still hanging around to make sure things don’t get shit or boring. They’re showing the generation of designers who grew up playing Croc and fucking Disruptor that their passions were built on foundations of shit. This is what a great game looks like, and this is the way you make one in 2018. Aye, it’s a fucking mobile game. You think that’s a reason not to play it? You make me fucking sick. You’ve got a phone and a couple quid in your pocket. It’s time to balance animals on an elephant’s head.

If you’re upset nobody makes games like Mr Domino or Ribbit King anymore, you should be shouting from the rooftops about Part-Time UFO. I don’t care how many pixel art games are on the eShop. This kind of design is a rare thing, and we ought to cherish it, incubate it and watch it grow up into a great big chicken. And if you don’t, I’ll fucking hate you.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER NINE
Video version

It’s all very easy to smirk at the unsold Labo boxes on the shelves in GAME and call Nintendo naive for thinking it was a viable product. Kids want what’s cool, and what’s cool is what’s trending, and what’s trending is what’s cheap or ubiquitous. Fortnite, fidget spinners, Facebook. Empty, vapid shite that can’t organically nurture passion. Labo’s target audience is too narrow and too quirky to ever support a craze to its full potential. But that’s my groove, ya dig? This is the Switch’s flexibility bending into the form of a Wii U. Concepts raised by minds unaware of why people buy Xboxes. Labo’s the kind of thing I hope I’d have wanted when I was a kid.

But this isn’t about kids. This is about why a childless man in his thirties loves Labo. I love it for all the things admirable about it. I think this will be more relatable if I get a little more anecdotal though.

My first week with Labo was a unique thing. It was a videogame launch that felt completely fresh. A big slab of a box comes through my front door, and with the help of some brilliant, considerate tutorial software, we’d make a wealth of stupid games peripherals together. We’d discover things about the ingenuity of hardware design, and run down a road towards daft, high-concept novelty games. We’d build the Dreamcast 2 and thank the engineers who made it possible.

The process of constructing is a rare, if not unique, thing to find in something sold as a videogame. You open the squat Labo box, follow the attractive and carefully presented instructions, and you slowly create a new toy. Every step, gaining new insight into hardware design and the foresight Nintendo had when implementing each bit of new technology into the Joycon. It’s revelatory. A lot of the Labo talk has been about inspiring kids to get into inventing, but the process is also a valuable lesson for lifelong videogame fans who might take a lot of the cleverness of peripheral for granted when they start to play a game with it. Labo’s not only given me an entirely new appreciation of the Switch, but gaming hardware in general. I’m bowled over by how good Nintendo are at their jobs.

Look, let’s try and get over the whole console war patter. I really like Nintendo. I think they have really exciting and interesting ideas about different directions to push the games industry in. You kind of have to buy into that vision to really explore the extent of those ideas though. You have to trust them and fill them with money, like a big Luma, and if everything goes well, you get to go to an exciting new place.

I like the Switch so much, it’s actually made it difficult for me to play long games on traditional consoles. I like that I can play a game with long tedious stretches, like Okami or something, and play the boring bits in wee fifteen minute windows of free time. Not having to grin and bear it, dedicating your entire evening’s leisure time to something you hated doing. I like that almost every game I buy for it doubles up as travel entertainment. I like how casually I can start a local multiplayer game of something.

An adult talking to adults about Labo is a silly thing. Nobody wants to do it. They deflect to talking about Nintendo as a company, or distribution methods or whatever else. I don’t mind. Labo’s a set of daft toys you get to build, and it’s fun. I can talk about the other stuff too, but the core of it – the thing we’re actually focused on here – is a silly thing. You won’t like it if you’re not into silly things.

I love silly things. I love Sega Bass Fishing on the Dreamcast and Rock Band and the big Super Hang-On arcade machine that you get to sit on. To some degree, Labo is Nintendo’s way of making those games in 2018.

It’s the silliness of owning a piece of cardboard that makes a toy piano that sounds like a spluttering old man.

There’s so much negativity clouding how people look back at games like those. Such a waste of plastic and silicon. Expensive novelties that become boring and discarded within weeks. Labo’s environmental impact is more comparable to a week of daily newspapers. It’s five distinct, high-concept toys and games, and they’re all doable within this ingenious construction project. You get sick of them – and I’m not encouraging this behaviour by any means – you can break down the entire thing and recycle it. Labo isn’t just an environmental stunt, but a way to teach people about what’s been going on inside their electric boxes for decades.

In the Switch’s first year, I was torn. Nintendo were producing some of the best games they’ve ever made and making a massive success, commercially, but I was worried that we’d lost the silly Nintendo. Labo shows me that they’re still here, and sillier than ever, but in a remarkably sensible, clever, innovative way. If Nintendo lost that, I’d worry that I wouldn’t find videogames exciting anymore. The Wii U was silly, and I loved it, but it was a commercial failure. I was worried that Nintendo were going to be silliness-shy, moving forward. Labo is the thing that turns their new iPad lookalike into something ridiculous, and I couldn’t be more thankful for its presence.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER EIGHT
Video version

I trust these Yakuza posts will start to slow down next year. We’ve pretty much caught up now. Yakuza is now a global franchise, and you can play every game in the core series in English on HD platforms. Kiwami 2 is an odd duck though. Not only is it a remake of 2, it’s a sequel to Kiwami that references 0, and it uses the engine and core gameplay from 6. And being a lower-key entry in the series, it seems to have more in common with the PS3 games than anything we’ve had in the last couple of years. It kind of feels right for it to be the last numbered entry that I hadn’t played before. It’s something of a summary of the whole series up to this point.

The downsides of Kiwami 2 are mainly the things taken, reverentially, from the PS2 game. It feels odd going from 6 to a game with text-only cutscenes. Most of the old sidequests feel kind of tame and stale in comparison to what we’ve had in recent games, and the zanier new ones really stick out in a way that feels unnatural. It’s hard to get into the game when the tone and presentation jumps between generations constantly, and it takes a long time for it to really find its footing.

Like Kiwami 1, the pacing doesn’t feel as well considered as recent games. For the bulk of the game’s early hours, I was struggling to get into the story. Kazuma feels supplementary to much of its events for a long time, and is rarely offered direct emotional attachment to them. After 6, it kind of felt like cheating to play another Kiryu Kazuma game, but the Kaz I knew felt distant in the early hours. It’s worth sticking with though.

Yakuza 0’s big gimmick was its eighties period piece setting, and Kiwami kind of followed suit by presenting a Kamurocho that vividly reflected the mid-2000s through its music, story and little visual nods to the era. Kiwami 2 doing the same might lack impact for many, but having visited Osaka in the mid-2000s, I was heavily invested in seeing that time and location captured in a Yakuza game. It was a great big treat for me. The new engine offered 6’s Kamurocho a whole new level of tangibility. That improvement goes into creating the most detailed and believable version of Sotenbori too. It was a real treat for me to dig into alleyways and apartment corridors, feeling intense de ja vu. Approaching shops and restaurants I’d been in and smirking at how they’d been redesigned to fit within a Yakuza game.

For a game I’d never played before, there was a lot of nostalgia going into Kiwami 2. Not just the Osaka thing, not just that it might be the last Kazuma Kiryu story I’d play, but how PS2ey the whole thing felt. Yakuza’s often shlocky, but rarely as much as this. Some of the twists and dramatic stings are pure anime trash, and I loved it. Brought me right back to being a massive weeb teenager. There’s also the blending of all the elements from previous Yakuza games. This is maybe the last game in the core series I’d recommend to new players, but for someone who’d played all the rest of them, this was pretty much a perfect place for me to end on.

The Kazuma Kiryu era of Yakuza is supposedly over now, and there’s going to be a lingering nostalgia for it, moving forward. Maybe it’s hard to appreciate, having five of them come out within the space of two years, but I think Kiwami 2’s one I’m likely to come back to when I want to feel deep in the heart of it all. It doesn’t have nearly all the things I love about the series, but it almost feels like the most Yakuza Yakuza game. I have my issues with it, but I’m glad it’s here for when I need it.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER SEVEN
Video version

I never look forward to this. Having to talk about why a fighting game is good. It’s nice then that I can deflect on something else here – This is an anime license. Let’s talk about Dragon Ball.

In the west, Dragon Ball Z is pure dork stuff. It’s embarrassing to be into it. To the layman, it’s dumbguy anime at its purest – muscley screaming guys constantly shooting energy beams through massively stretched out fights, and the stakes are irrelevant thanks to the existence of cure-all magical wishes and boundless physical limitations. To anime fans, it’s something you’re supposed to grow out of. Cheap, commercial, shallow pandering to sell toys. It’s something I love though.

JRPG fans will know, from Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, that there’s a real charm to Akira Toriyama’s work, and if you watch (or preferably, read) Dragon Ball from the start, you’ll appreciate that. The early stuff blends old-world Chinese folk stories with farcical sci-fi concepts, incredibly detailed vehicles and monsters, robots and ancient demons threatening the lives of dusty old men and talking animals. Z relentlessly raises the stakes at every opportunity, with massive plot twists and baddies who can blow up planets with minimal effort. It laughs at the notion of jumping the shark. Dragon Ball Z gets on the shark and rides it through space. It’s something I’ve got tremendous affection for.

Dragon Ball FighterZ might be best videogame adaptation ever made. Not only does it capture the intensity and limitless boundaries of the series’ fights, it contextualises them within the structure of a fighting game so solid it rivals Street Fighter. I also like the controversial implementation of characters from the newer Super series, as I really like Beerus. Sadly, it also features some of the last voice work from the late Hiromi Tsuru, who played Bulma – A character who’s been with the series from the start. I’m just glad her work could be captured by such a good product.

The game is beautiful, building on the engine Arc System Works developed for Guilty Gear Xrd. In regular gameplay, the character models pass for high-quality sprites, with animation focused on cool key frames and high impact movement. The occasional camera shifts reveal that each character is actually a full cel shaded 3D model though, and the engine lends itself to wild super moves that recreate Akira Toriyama’s memorable framing and poses. I don’t think there’s been a better looking anime game, and the talent behind its design means the visuals shine even on the Switch.

FighterZ implements ideas from Dragon Ball Z in its mechanics. You can charge ki, launch characters into the air, warp behind them, lock into fast-paced fist-fights and of course fire off big kamehamehas and do-donpas. Each character’s fighting style has been carefully considered for their utility and distinctiveness, meaning even canonically weak characters like Yamcha, Tien and Nappa have appeal within a roster that includes Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Hit.

Maybe the most crucial Dragon Ball element in the game is its pace. There’s few fighting games as fast as FighterZ, and it feels all the more fun and rewarding for it. Breaking combos with well-timed counters and warps, and juggling opponents into your attacks doesn’t only feel exciting, but true to the imagination and wit that underlies the series’ fights.

I’ve played my fair share of Dragon Ball games in my time, but this is the first one that I’d recommend regardless of whether or not you’re a fan of the original property. Goldeneye was a good laugh in multiplayer, the old 16-bit Disney games were often terrific, but Dragonball FighterZ feels worthy of the scene that’s formed around it. It’s also getting new people to discover the classic series, which might be the mark of a great game license. Dragon Ball is a series as old as the Famicom, but it’s taken this long to make a game that really let fans feel like they were part of its fights. I hope Arc Sytem Works and Bandai Namco support it for a long time. Long enough to get Taopaipai in there, certainly.

GOTY 2018 - NUMBER SIX
Video version

The Nintendo Switch is a fantastic platform for so many reasons, but one aspect has been a thrilling surprise for me. The audience it has cultivated is very much in line with my tastes. Switch owners tend to be people who have been playing games for decades, who hold older games in high esteem and are particularly responsive to unique, charming games. Publishers have noticed, and here’s the wonderful result of all of this – Taiko no Tatsujin has been released in Europe.

Now, you may know, I am a really big fan of Taiko no Tatsujin. It’s a big part of the reason why I have a Japanese PS2. It’s a cute, simple rhythm game with tracklists cultivated and contributed to by some of the musicians who worked on Katamari Damacy. About half of the Namco Original tracks in each game sound like they could have appeared on a Katamari soundtrack, and there’s nothing that draws me quite to a rhythm game quite like that.

Drum ‘n’ Fun is a really great entry-level Taiko no Tatsujin. You get a few big Nintendo songs, a load of big anime theme tunes, some weird arrangements of publicly licensed nursery rhymes and classical music, and a load of J-pop stuff you’d likely never heard of. Mind you, a couple of them are songs you might recognise from Ouendan, and if you’re into Japan-focused rhythm games, you really ought to be familiar with Ouendan.

Crucially, the difficulty range is maybe the widest it’s ever been in the series, and the control options are similarly diverse. You can have young kids play, shaking the joycon with a ton of assist options on, or if you’re a real rhythm game elite, you may opt to invest in a Tatacon and try everything on the hardest settings. Domestically available Tatacon. I never thought I’d live to see the day. You can also play with traditional buttons or use the touchscreen if you’re playing portably. You can enjoy the game how you like.

There’s also DLC, which is a bit of a novelty for me, since I’ve only really stuck with the PS2 games before. There’s new tracks every few weeks, and with the game selling so well in Japan, I don’t see it slowing down any time soon. I have to mention that the PS2 experimental breakbeat techno screaming classic, Saitama 2000 is available for purchase on western eShops and comes with a heavy recommendation from me. I’d almost go as far as to say I’d consider it to be Taiko no Tatsujin’s theme tune, and my only disappointment is that it wasn’t included from the start.

There’s party games too, and while they’re generally fun, with some really great highlights amongst them, I’ve only really included them in the video to make it look a little more visually interesting. The real draw for me is the core rhythm gameplay and the bizarre tracklist.

Taiko no Tatsujin is a firm favourite for me, and I’m so glad to have such easy access to it. Not only in the sense that I could go into my local GAME and ask for a copy, but it’s on the Switch. I can load the game up whenever and wherever I want, and try perfecting Odoru Pompokorin yet again. I could always go make sure the Japanese PS2’s connected, set up a Tatacon, browse through for a certain disc and play Taiko no Tatsujin until I decide to put it away again, but now I can turn it on and off on a whim. And I often have those whims. Taiko no Tatsujin’s an arcade classic because it’s really great in short sessions, and now that experience is accessible to the home audience. Brilliant. I’ve got to applaud it for that.