AutumnLily
2016
I honestly didn't expect any game in the Souls series to surpass Dark Souls for me in large part due to an awareness that the most compelling aspect of that game, its rich, deeply interwoven world that is so well realised that it sears every corner of its map into your memory, is something I wouldn't again find in quite that form in any of the other three Souls games.
Dark Souls III knows it can't really compete on those terms, so instead does something completely different. It accepts a more linear path, much more linear than any of the other three Souls games by a fair margin (though still with a great deal of exploration to engage in within each individual area, never sacrificing the sense of intrigue, mystery and discovery), and engages in this style with intent; Dark Souls III is the most narrative of the Souls games, taking you on various emotional and thematic arcs in your journey across this waning land, arcs that can only exist with as much potency as they do thanks to the game knowing the order everything will be seen in. Rather than trying to be what the other games are, Dark Souls III gets it is best to be something proudly distinct.
The obvious retort here is how can you say Dark Souls III is interested in being something distinct when it has such a deep attachment to the past, bringing back so many places and characters from former games, how can that be consistent with all these references that are littered everywhere. But again, just like with the game's more intense linearity, Dark Souls III ending up this way isn't due to being lazy or cashing in on the success of the Souls series, this is intentional. These references are serving a very particular effect. In its dying days this world is crashing in on itself, colliding with other worlds, time and space becoming unhinged as this age approaches its final moments, and these echoes of former games, so many of them off-putting or bizarrely, indescribably nonsensical, are the most unsettling way to make this felt. There are so many moments where these references put a smile on my face, only to be followed up with the feeling that it doesn't feel quite right, this sense of unease creeping up on me.
The feelings this game engenders are so intentional, and so powerful, and I think thematically it ends up being the richest, most fascinating entry in the series as a result.
Even beyond all of this, beyond all the ways the game's seeming weaknesses somehow act as marked strengths, and beyond the depth of emotion found within all of it, Dark Souls III is also just fun. It is the most refined of the four Souls games, learning a lot of lessons from what came before it. There's still some amount of arcane nonsense that is hard to ever really work out on your own, secrets within secrets, but importantly this stuff doesn't touch the actual mechanics of the game of the game so much anymore. In terms of understanding how to play the game Dark Souls III ends up being the most accessible of all the Souls games and is all the better for it, with a bunch of quality of life features present also that manage to make the game more pleasant to engage with without ever compromising the game's emotionality or sense of fascination.
Dark Souls III has easily the highest floor of the Souls games, with a level of consistency that is wildly unheard of in the series. Meanwhile the high-points for me rank as the very peak of the series partly due to the stellar art direction, partly due to the game taking Dark Souls' macro-world design and trying to apply it on a more micro-level to fit within this linear approach (everything about the design of the Cathedral's map is just a work of art), and partly because Dark Souls III's increased sense of narrative spreads to boss fights also making so many of the best fights into actual stories packed with emotion, awe and fascination, with the mechanics of these fights complimenting the stories being told so beautifully.
It's genuinely amazing to me how Dark Souls III manages to all at once iterate and develop on what came before it in a way that fully understands it could never exist without these earlier entries, whilst also keenly charging forth as something so different from these earlier entries, boldly and unapologetically.
Dark Souls III knows it can't really compete on those terms, so instead does something completely different. It accepts a more linear path, much more linear than any of the other three Souls games by a fair margin (though still with a great deal of exploration to engage in within each individual area, never sacrificing the sense of intrigue, mystery and discovery), and engages in this style with intent; Dark Souls III is the most narrative of the Souls games, taking you on various emotional and thematic arcs in your journey across this waning land, arcs that can only exist with as much potency as they do thanks to the game knowing the order everything will be seen in. Rather than trying to be what the other games are, Dark Souls III gets it is best to be something proudly distinct.
The obvious retort here is how can you say Dark Souls III is interested in being something distinct when it has such a deep attachment to the past, bringing back so many places and characters from former games, how can that be consistent with all these references that are littered everywhere. But again, just like with the game's more intense linearity, Dark Souls III ending up this way isn't due to being lazy or cashing in on the success of the Souls series, this is intentional. These references are serving a very particular effect. In its dying days this world is crashing in on itself, colliding with other worlds, time and space becoming unhinged as this age approaches its final moments, and these echoes of former games, so many of them off-putting or bizarrely, indescribably nonsensical, are the most unsettling way to make this felt. There are so many moments where these references put a smile on my face, only to be followed up with the feeling that it doesn't feel quite right, this sense of unease creeping up on me.
The feelings this game engenders are so intentional, and so powerful, and I think thematically it ends up being the richest, most fascinating entry in the series as a result.
Even beyond all of this, beyond all the ways the game's seeming weaknesses somehow act as marked strengths, and beyond the depth of emotion found within all of it, Dark Souls III is also just fun. It is the most refined of the four Souls games, learning a lot of lessons from what came before it. There's still some amount of arcane nonsense that is hard to ever really work out on your own, secrets within secrets, but importantly this stuff doesn't touch the actual mechanics of the game of the game so much anymore. In terms of understanding how to play the game Dark Souls III ends up being the most accessible of all the Souls games and is all the better for it, with a bunch of quality of life features present also that manage to make the game more pleasant to engage with without ever compromising the game's emotionality or sense of fascination.
Dark Souls III has easily the highest floor of the Souls games, with a level of consistency that is wildly unheard of in the series. Meanwhile the high-points for me rank as the very peak of the series partly due to the stellar art direction, partly due to the game taking Dark Souls' macro-world design and trying to apply it on a more micro-level to fit within this linear approach (everything about the design of the Cathedral's map is just a work of art), and partly because Dark Souls III's increased sense of narrative spreads to boss fights also making so many of the best fights into actual stories packed with emotion, awe and fascination, with the mechanics of these fights complimenting the stories being told so beautifully.
It's genuinely amazing to me how Dark Souls III manages to all at once iterate and develop on what came before it in a way that fully understands it could never exist without these earlier entries, whilst also keenly charging forth as something so different from these earlier entries, boldly and unapologetically.
2019
When you read a piece of fanfiction you are not enjoying the piece of work it was based on, however it is both at once pulling from, often relying on, that original work, and also in turn can serve to inform how you relate to the original work furthering your appreciation for what was already there or shining light on interpretations that were not always obvious.
This kind of mindset can be applied to fan-content as a whole; the number of times I've seen fanart that helps bring out the emotions of the original work, emotions that were always there but just needed that new perspective for me to truly feel them, is many, and then you return to that original work and there's now just no other way for you to see it. In this way art and fanart exists in a reciprocal relationship of sorts, the latter only existing because of the former, the former gaining new depth in light of the latter.
Game modding is an instance where this all starts to get very weird. It's not hard to think of game mods as fanart that you engage with in parallel to engaging with the original work. This pushes the reciprocal relationship mentioned earlier to whole new levels, but is also really weird as, beyond a point and with enough mods applied, you start Ship of Theseusing the original work to the point where it's hard to say what it actually is you're enjoying. Is someone who is enjoying Skyrim, loaded up with a hundred different mods, enjoying Skyrim, enjoying exploring fan-content, or enjoying some whole new thing, perhaps a thing that has never actually existed before if this is the first time that exact list of mods has been applied all at once? Is this Ship still the one that Bethesda largely made, or something that lies outside the realm of any kind of clear authorial intent?
Despite enjoying many other kinds of fan-content I don't really engage with mods very much. I like my first playthrough of a game to best match the original author's intent, and I seldom replay games which means I rarely get opportunity to experiment beyond this point. Beat Saber is thus the first game that I've ever heavily messed around with mods for, and why this subject has been so on my mind since first engaging with it.
The base-game of Beat Saber is...fine. A nice spin on the rhythm game genre that takes great advantage of VR but that is really held back by its limited and uninspiring selection of songs and that has a scoring system that I don't really get on with. The moment you start modding it though the game opens up so much, endlessly replayable with the sheer variety of songs, the creativity with what is possible within the beat-maps both being thrilling in and of itself but also giving you a better appreciation of the game and songs that these mods are built upon.
Consider this rating very arbitrary then, some strange mid-point between what I think of the base-game (good-but-not-great) and the amount of joy that modded Beat Saber has given me. I can't say that my experience with whatever it is I've been playing isn't one that I had with Beat Saber exactly, but I can't say it wholly is either. Ship of Beat Saber, or something like that.
This kind of mindset can be applied to fan-content as a whole; the number of times I've seen fanart that helps bring out the emotions of the original work, emotions that were always there but just needed that new perspective for me to truly feel them, is many, and then you return to that original work and there's now just no other way for you to see it. In this way art and fanart exists in a reciprocal relationship of sorts, the latter only existing because of the former, the former gaining new depth in light of the latter.
Game modding is an instance where this all starts to get very weird. It's not hard to think of game mods as fanart that you engage with in parallel to engaging with the original work. This pushes the reciprocal relationship mentioned earlier to whole new levels, but is also really weird as, beyond a point and with enough mods applied, you start Ship of Theseusing the original work to the point where it's hard to say what it actually is you're enjoying. Is someone who is enjoying Skyrim, loaded up with a hundred different mods, enjoying Skyrim, enjoying exploring fan-content, or enjoying some whole new thing, perhaps a thing that has never actually existed before if this is the first time that exact list of mods has been applied all at once? Is this Ship still the one that Bethesda largely made, or something that lies outside the realm of any kind of clear authorial intent?
Despite enjoying many other kinds of fan-content I don't really engage with mods very much. I like my first playthrough of a game to best match the original author's intent, and I seldom replay games which means I rarely get opportunity to experiment beyond this point. Beat Saber is thus the first game that I've ever heavily messed around with mods for, and why this subject has been so on my mind since first engaging with it.
The base-game of Beat Saber is...fine. A nice spin on the rhythm game genre that takes great advantage of VR but that is really held back by its limited and uninspiring selection of songs and that has a scoring system that I don't really get on with. The moment you start modding it though the game opens up so much, endlessly replayable with the sheer variety of songs, the creativity with what is possible within the beat-maps both being thrilling in and of itself but also giving you a better appreciation of the game and songs that these mods are built upon.
Consider this rating very arbitrary then, some strange mid-point between what I think of the base-game (good-but-not-great) and the amount of joy that modded Beat Saber has given me. I can't say that my experience with whatever it is I've been playing isn't one that I had with Beat Saber exactly, but I can't say it wholly is either. Ship of Beat Saber, or something like that.
I played Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart largely to see what the PS5 is capable of visually, and it very much delivered in this regard. The game is gorgeous, at times stunningly so, and is very adept at showing this off via its worldbuilding, various different visual tricks, and a host of exciting, inventive set-pieces. The opening shot as I landed on Blizar Prime was actually just breathtaking, and there are plenty of moments like this throughout; whilst I do have a lot of complaints with the game as a whole I can't deny that I got what I came here for.
A big problem is that for all its flashiness, Rift Apart also feels weirdly cheap in some ways too. Most notably the game was intensely buggy for me; during my playthrough I hit kill planes on level architecture that should have been traversable a handful of times (including dying from touching the edge of a platform you're literally required to jump on), was stuck in the falling animation on top of other characters a few times also (the game only knows how to terminate this by eventually realising what's happening and killing you, though in one instance it just had no idea and I was stuck there falling in place for a couple minutes), clipped through things multiple times (including getting stuck inside another character), had dialog accidentally start repeating in scenarios where it no longer made any sense. And look, I get, QA is really hard and some things are going to slip through, but wow was I left wishing some of the money that had gone into making the game look gorgeous had instead gone into making sure it wasn't constantly breaking its sense of immersion like this.
Beyond all of this, the game was a solid enough experience. The gunplay is good fun with a lot of varied and sweet weapon designs, and though I think the game both overuses the same small handful of enemy designs and leans a bit too hard on "clear every enemy in this room before you can proceed" being the most common progression gate, the frantic chaos of it all is very appealing and remained engaging throughout. The other game modes, notably Clank's possibilities puzzles and Glitch's hacking sections, landed less well for me, both having some cool ideas, but neither being given the space to breathe or develop properly. It's like you spend the whole game being tutorialised in bite-sized chunks on how to play these alternate modes, and then after all of this you're given maybe one good level for each before the game ends.
Overall the experience was enjoyable enough, I very much got what I came here for, and I devoured it over the course of a week, but there were enough problems present that it made it a hard game to really love. Beyond this the experience very much made it clear that there's a whole lot more to games than just looking pretty and that making aesthetics priority number one is a dangerous road to go down.
A big problem is that for all its flashiness, Rift Apart also feels weirdly cheap in some ways too. Most notably the game was intensely buggy for me; during my playthrough I hit kill planes on level architecture that should have been traversable a handful of times (including dying from touching the edge of a platform you're literally required to jump on), was stuck in the falling animation on top of other characters a few times also (the game only knows how to terminate this by eventually realising what's happening and killing you, though in one instance it just had no idea and I was stuck there falling in place for a couple minutes), clipped through things multiple times (including getting stuck inside another character), had dialog accidentally start repeating in scenarios where it no longer made any sense. And look, I get, QA is really hard and some things are going to slip through, but wow was I left wishing some of the money that had gone into making the game look gorgeous had instead gone into making sure it wasn't constantly breaking its sense of immersion like this.
Beyond all of this, the game was a solid enough experience. The gunplay is good fun with a lot of varied and sweet weapon designs, and though I think the game both overuses the same small handful of enemy designs and leans a bit too hard on "clear every enemy in this room before you can proceed" being the most common progression gate, the frantic chaos of it all is very appealing and remained engaging throughout. The other game modes, notably Clank's possibilities puzzles and Glitch's hacking sections, landed less well for me, both having some cool ideas, but neither being given the space to breathe or develop properly. It's like you spend the whole game being tutorialised in bite-sized chunks on how to play these alternate modes, and then after all of this you're given maybe one good level for each before the game ends.
Overall the experience was enjoyable enough, I very much got what I came here for, and I devoured it over the course of a week, but there were enough problems present that it made it a hard game to really love. Beyond this the experience very much made it clear that there's a whole lot more to games than just looking pretty and that making aesthetics priority number one is a dangerous road to go down.
2020
I entered Astro's Playroom a bit nervous that it would end up feeling like a cynical cash-in on nostalgia, but the experience was surprisingly joyous and those moments of nostalgia actually quite satisfying. It's mostly a glorified tech demo I suppose but a very effective one.
Overall I had a lot of fun throughout, though honestly the only vehicle section that didn't feel like a dip in enjoyment for me was the hamster ball one (which, fortunately, was delightful). The inclusion of a gacha mechanic being tied into the collectathon nature of the game was very frustrating, though the game gives you almost enough coins in a single playthrough to just about get everything anyways so it could be worse (though still sucks).
Overall I had a lot of fun throughout, though honestly the only vehicle section that didn't feel like a dip in enjoyment for me was the hamster ball one (which, fortunately, was delightful). The inclusion of a gacha mechanic being tied into the collectathon nature of the game was very frustrating, though the game gives you almost enough coins in a single playthrough to just about get everything anyways so it could be worse (though still sucks).
2017
Completing Survivor difficulty on Rain World was one of the hardest experiences I've had with a game. It's not that the game is cruel, or unkind. More that it, and the world it places you within, exhibit a deep indifference towards your survival or success. Predators are everywhere and some will for a long time feel actively unfair, so much of your long-term survival necessitates you experimenting in order to learn and understand but in doing so likely dying in the process, multiple progress-critical mechanics are never explained to you. You need to eat, you need to escape the overwhelming, consuming rainfall, and somehow you need to not let your spirit be broken in the process.
Rain World is an incredibly hard sell. So much of its obtuse construction flies in the face of more standardised "good game design". It's almost impossible not to end up deeply frustrated with the game at some point on your first playthrough as you start to feel trapped into some corner of the map, feeling at the mercy of the harsh world around you and its seeming unpredictability. I will say that the only content in the game I really consider bad is the Rain Deers in the Farm Arrays, and that outside of that basically every moment of frustration did bear considerable fruit for me in the end. Try to find the strength to continue even in those darkest of moments.
You see, for all those struggles and frustrations, all the obtuseness, the game managed to achieve some incredible moments for me. The big one is that, dramatically more so than the vast majority of games, you genuinely feel like you're playing out the role of this strange little slugcat. The desperation to find food, the awareness of the ticking clock as the rain beckons, the panic as predators chase you down and there's not time to think or process and you genuinely have to turn to instinct to figure out how to escape. At its best Rain World is so immensely immersive, the rush you feel speaking less to the feeling of wanting to do well in a videogame and more to the feeling of wanting, desperately, to survive.
It's just such a deeply emotional experience to me. All that frustration is worth it for the time where you manage to find a bunker, deep into unknown territory, mere moments before the rain sweeps you away, or the time you escape multiple predators all closing in on you at once against what feels like insurmountable odds, or finally, finally understanding your movement and the nearby enemies and the surrounding landscape well enough, alongside just the right amount of luck, to break through a pathway that has had you stuck for ages. Curling up in your newfound bunker and getting to rest easy, feel safe, if only for a moment.
There's more to the game than this too. The game ends up turning into a very profound, even spiritual, experience in ways I couldn't really see coming even though I knew others have had similar experiences with it, and in ways I'm still processing the day after finishing it and will likely continue processing for a while (update from almost a year later; this aspect of the game has burrowed into my head wholly and completely, my fascination with the game's Buddhist themes grow with time unendingly). In my playthrough both the central couple hours and the final couple hours were remarkable to me and left a huge impression. I don't want to drift into spoilery territory though, so will leave that there.
Rain World is such a very hard game to recommend, and requires a lot of effort from you to meet it on its own terms, but the experience I had with the game is something that will stick with me for a long time.
Rain World is an incredibly hard sell. So much of its obtuse construction flies in the face of more standardised "good game design". It's almost impossible not to end up deeply frustrated with the game at some point on your first playthrough as you start to feel trapped into some corner of the map, feeling at the mercy of the harsh world around you and its seeming unpredictability. I will say that the only content in the game I really consider bad is the Rain Deers in the Farm Arrays, and that outside of that basically every moment of frustration did bear considerable fruit for me in the end. Try to find the strength to continue even in those darkest of moments.
You see, for all those struggles and frustrations, all the obtuseness, the game managed to achieve some incredible moments for me. The big one is that, dramatically more so than the vast majority of games, you genuinely feel like you're playing out the role of this strange little slugcat. The desperation to find food, the awareness of the ticking clock as the rain beckons, the panic as predators chase you down and there's not time to think or process and you genuinely have to turn to instinct to figure out how to escape. At its best Rain World is so immensely immersive, the rush you feel speaking less to the feeling of wanting to do well in a videogame and more to the feeling of wanting, desperately, to survive.
It's just such a deeply emotional experience to me. All that frustration is worth it for the time where you manage to find a bunker, deep into unknown territory, mere moments before the rain sweeps you away, or the time you escape multiple predators all closing in on you at once against what feels like insurmountable odds, or finally, finally understanding your movement and the nearby enemies and the surrounding landscape well enough, alongside just the right amount of luck, to break through a pathway that has had you stuck for ages. Curling up in your newfound bunker and getting to rest easy, feel safe, if only for a moment.
There's more to the game than this too. The game ends up turning into a very profound, even spiritual, experience in ways I couldn't really see coming even though I knew others have had similar experiences with it, and in ways I'm still processing the day after finishing it and will likely continue processing for a while (update from almost a year later; this aspect of the game has burrowed into my head wholly and completely, my fascination with the game's Buddhist themes grow with time unendingly). In my playthrough both the central couple hours and the final couple hours were remarkable to me and left a huge impression. I don't want to drift into spoilery territory though, so will leave that there.
Rain World is such a very hard game to recommend, and requires a lot of effort from you to meet it on its own terms, but the experience I had with the game is something that will stick with me for a long time.
2009
Even played 12 years after its release, after I'd already completed Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, Demon's Souls still somehow manages to carry this creative, experimental energy to it. It feels like the game is constantly trying to push at the edges of what it is capable of being and doing which makes for an experience that is much more strange, unpredictable and even transgressive(??) than what would be seen in later games.
This comes with upsides and downsides. Demon's Souls is still an immensely fascinating and exciting game to explore even after all these games that would go on to refine what it was doing. To a very similar tune, though, Dark Souls really does refine what is going on here in many ways and so for all the moments in Demon's Souls that work there are also a lot that inevitably fall flat also.
The fire-breathing dragon sections are immersion breaking nonsense. World tendency is so overly obscure that you can't meaningfully attempt to do anything with it without looking up exactly how it works online, and has an awful inclination towards harshly punishing people who are struggling at the game. The swamp impeding your rolling outright breaks combat for melee builds in a very unpleasant way. Being able to bulk-buy healing items trivialises any sense of getting worn down over the course of a level. Having to grind upgrade materials ensures that once you're far enough down the upgrade path on your current weapon there will be just too much sunk cost involved in jumping to anything else (weirdly I think this is one of the biggest things Dark Souls managed to refine). The maze at the end of the mines is just miserable. The frame-rate drops in the mines were especially miserable. A fair handful of the bosses ended up being either straightforward and easy or oddly-obtuse (and also easy). The game largely has a negative difficulty curve due to its attempts at non-linearity, with much of the late-game content feeling like a breeze compared to the earlier stuff.
I could go on for a while... Demon's Souls has a lot of moments that just don't really work. It's kind of inevitable when you take this many swings that some of them are going to miss, but thankfully a lot of them hit too, and it's a testament to the game's legacy that despite the misses I still found myself getting so excited by the moments that do work, so eager to see what trick it was going to pull next, and so drawn into the dense, overwhelming atmosphere of this world.
This comes with upsides and downsides. Demon's Souls is still an immensely fascinating and exciting game to explore even after all these games that would go on to refine what it was doing. To a very similar tune, though, Dark Souls really does refine what is going on here in many ways and so for all the moments in Demon's Souls that work there are also a lot that inevitably fall flat also.
The fire-breathing dragon sections are immersion breaking nonsense. World tendency is so overly obscure that you can't meaningfully attempt to do anything with it without looking up exactly how it works online, and has an awful inclination towards harshly punishing people who are struggling at the game. The swamp impeding your rolling outright breaks combat for melee builds in a very unpleasant way. Being able to bulk-buy healing items trivialises any sense of getting worn down over the course of a level. Having to grind upgrade materials ensures that once you're far enough down the upgrade path on your current weapon there will be just too much sunk cost involved in jumping to anything else (weirdly I think this is one of the biggest things Dark Souls managed to refine). The maze at the end of the mines is just miserable. The frame-rate drops in the mines were especially miserable. A fair handful of the bosses ended up being either straightforward and easy or oddly-obtuse (and also easy). The game largely has a negative difficulty curve due to its attempts at non-linearity, with much of the late-game content feeling like a breeze compared to the earlier stuff.
I could go on for a while... Demon's Souls has a lot of moments that just don't really work. It's kind of inevitable when you take this many swings that some of them are going to miss, but thankfully a lot of them hit too, and it's a testament to the game's legacy that despite the misses I still found myself getting so excited by the moments that do work, so eager to see what trick it was going to pull next, and so drawn into the dense, overwhelming atmosphere of this world.
1998
I have some amount of respect for Half-Life. The game's eye for set-pieces, and constant insistence on re-inventing itself, makes for a varied experience that seems ahead of its time in some ways. The game also did a lot for immersive storytelling in games, though this aspect of Half-Life comes across as very clunky nowadays when contrasted against what followed in its footsteps. I will also say that, despite the harsh words that are about to follow, I enjoyed playing through Half-Life quite a bit more than my rating indicates; I played through the game in the company of friends, and everyone gently mocking the game's failings throughout helped make for an enjoyable time.
The problem is, for all it managed to do for the medium Half-Life has sadly aged almost impressively horrendously. The opening couple hours, which play out almost as survival horror, manage to still capture some amount of the tension they likely had a couple decades ago, but almost everything after the point where soldiers start showing ends up being some brand of frustrating with awkward enemy placement, cheap deaths, and myriad moments where I had to look up what I was even meant to do. Following this downward trend in quality to its natural conclusion fighting the final boss was an intensely unpleasant experience, all to get an ending that for me fell flat on its face.
I also deeply disliked the quick-save/quick-load feature and how the game seems very much designed with it in mind. Maybe I just suck at FPSes but there are countless moments in this game that only really make sense in a world where you assume most players are actively using quick-saving. Actually using this feature though leads to what feels like a very disjointed experience, robbing you of any feeling of genuine accomplishment and making every moment of disaster only a button press away from having never happened. Talking to friends I get the impression that a lot of PC games of this era were designed with this style of play in mind, and wow do I not get on with it at all.
The problem is, for all it managed to do for the medium Half-Life has sadly aged almost impressively horrendously. The opening couple hours, which play out almost as survival horror, manage to still capture some amount of the tension they likely had a couple decades ago, but almost everything after the point where soldiers start showing ends up being some brand of frustrating with awkward enemy placement, cheap deaths, and myriad moments where I had to look up what I was even meant to do. Following this downward trend in quality to its natural conclusion fighting the final boss was an intensely unpleasant experience, all to get an ending that for me fell flat on its face.
I also deeply disliked the quick-save/quick-load feature and how the game seems very much designed with it in mind. Maybe I just suck at FPSes but there are countless moments in this game that only really make sense in a world where you assume most players are actively using quick-saving. Actually using this feature though leads to what feels like a very disjointed experience, robbing you of any feeling of genuine accomplishment and making every moment of disaster only a button press away from having never happened. Talking to friends I get the impression that a lot of PC games of this era were designed with this style of play in mind, and wow do I not get on with it at all.
Ori and the Blind Forest actually reminds me a lot of Metroid Fusion in terms of how it's not really a Metroidvania as the game is very keen to push you down a clear linear story-driven path, but the Metroidvania-style exploration is still there in the late-game for those who want to engage in it to go find some more collectables and see a bit more of the world. Ori's story-beats aren't quite as compelling to me as Metroid Fusion's so this structure doesn't work quite as well for me as a result, but the game has enough going for it in other regards that I'm still largely on-board with what the Ori and the Blind Forest is trying to do.
The main thing I kept hearing about Ori before going in was how pretty it is, and gosh it really is. I think this can sometimes be to the game's detriment weirdly, the number of times I didn't notice the spikes that kept killing me because they just blended into the aesthetic was, uh, many. Being so pretty definitely helps contribute to the game world being generally pleasurable to exist in though, and the way the movement develops over the course of the game leads to the feeling of there being multiple solutions to a lot of the late-game platforming puzzles, and ends up feeling fluid and just a ton of fun (when you aren't colliding into the same enemies you've been killing the exact same way for the past few hours whilst dashing around).
That's the thing, everything great about Ori and the Blind Forest comes with a heap of caveats. Sure the escape sequences are intense, inventive and even majestic at points, but they're also just very frustrating at points as you repeat the same sections over and over just to get to the same unpredictable trial-and-error moments for the nth time. The platforming as you proceed from one area to the next is incredibly solid, and presents some enjoyable moments and challenges, but the way that checkpoints work looms over you ready to make you feel bad if you use them too aggressively and don't have enough left, but also invoking those same feel-bads when you don't use them aggressively enough and are forced to repeat sections over and over as a result.
I've heard the sequel iterates effectively on all of this and I'm very excited to check it out as I love a lot of what is going on here but gosh there's a bunch that bugs me too and it's so close to being much, much better.
The main thing I kept hearing about Ori before going in was how pretty it is, and gosh it really is. I think this can sometimes be to the game's detriment weirdly, the number of times I didn't notice the spikes that kept killing me because they just blended into the aesthetic was, uh, many. Being so pretty definitely helps contribute to the game world being generally pleasurable to exist in though, and the way the movement develops over the course of the game leads to the feeling of there being multiple solutions to a lot of the late-game platforming puzzles, and ends up feeling fluid and just a ton of fun (when you aren't colliding into the same enemies you've been killing the exact same way for the past few hours whilst dashing around).
That's the thing, everything great about Ori and the Blind Forest comes with a heap of caveats. Sure the escape sequences are intense, inventive and even majestic at points, but they're also just very frustrating at points as you repeat the same sections over and over just to get to the same unpredictable trial-and-error moments for the nth time. The platforming as you proceed from one area to the next is incredibly solid, and presents some enjoyable moments and challenges, but the way that checkpoints work looms over you ready to make you feel bad if you use them too aggressively and don't have enough left, but also invoking those same feel-bads when you don't use them aggressively enough and are forced to repeat sections over and over as a result.
I've heard the sequel iterates effectively on all of this and I'm very excited to check it out as I love a lot of what is going on here but gosh there's a bunch that bugs me too and it's so close to being much, much better.
I don't even know how to begin writing about Dark Souls II. The game seems to me to be categorically a mess, with moments of brilliance and excitement mixed among moments of frustrating design much worse than anything in the original Dark Souls.
I will say that my average enjoyment for the game was quite a bit higher than the score I'm giving it indicates, but the low-points are so low that I struggle to imagine playing through the game again from the beginning. Heidi's Tower of Flame, Harvest Valley, Earthen Peak, Black Gulch, Shrine of Amana, the Giant memories, Frigid Outskirts, and a significant portion of Brume Tower were all just broadly not enjoyable or even very frustrating. Dark Souls 2 logic also serves as a big annoyance throughout (how to unlock Huntsman's Copse, burning down the windmill that is made of metal at the point where you light it aflame, how to unlock Castle Drangleic's front doors, and everything to do with unlocking the final boss, all required some amount of direction to be given to me in a way I never struggled with in the first game).
None of this is helped by Dark Souls 2's attitude towards worldbuilding. The original Dark Souls is certainly not without its faults (largely contained within the Lord Souls content thankfully), but it builds up a lot of forgiveness from me because the world is so immersive, so genuinely exciting to see the ways it all starts to link together both in a physical sense and a lore and worldbuilding sense. The world of Dark Souls 2 is more chaotic, with an active and intentional disregard for physical reality as it seeks to show a world in disarray, space contorting in the same way that time did in the first game. I don't outright dislike this, and in fact think it's really cool that Dark Souls 2 decided to take things in a very different direction, but the reduced sense of immersion that comes with this makes the low-points a lot harder to shrug off for me.
Of note, Dark Souls 2 alters a bunch of systems and mechanics from the first game. I'm totally fine with this in the abstract, each game exists as its own entity and doesn't really owe anything to what came before it, but some of these changes did land very poorly with me. Ever-reducing health total that needs to be undone with the usage of human effigies, enemies permanently de-spawning from the world after you've killed them a certain number of times, the adaptability stat, and a greater emphasis on resource management and finite supplies, are all extremely well-meaning changes that make sense but feel kind of awful in practice. I do think people often ignore the things Dark Souls 2 does right though; jump attacks are much better than they used to be, back-stabbing and endurance are both thankfully nerfed, there's a greater emphasis on making two-handed play appealing and de-emphasis on shields and blocking, dual-wielding weapons and power stance are awesome additions, you're given a better level of control over the rpg-aspects of your character, and every single change made to how estus functions (other than it being tied to your adaptability stat, which is clearly bad) was great! People talk about the systems and design in DS2 as if they're a strict downgrade, but I think of it more as a side-step; handling some things worse, but also some things quite a bit better.
And gosh the highlights here are so good. Eleum Loyce ranks up there with the very best content in the original Dark Souls. No-man's Wharf was another big highlight, though there are a few different places that are going to linger with me. Dark Souls 2 also just has a great eye for memorable set-pieces; my personal favourite was the ogre chasing you in Aldia's Keep, it clumsily releasing other creatures from their cages one-by-one as you dash away down the hallway.
I might never return to this game because of its low-points, but its high-points are going to stick with me much longer than for any other game I could say that for. Dark Souls 2 is such a mess, but also such a fascinating mess.
I will say that my average enjoyment for the game was quite a bit higher than the score I'm giving it indicates, but the low-points are so low that I struggle to imagine playing through the game again from the beginning. Heidi's Tower of Flame, Harvest Valley, Earthen Peak, Black Gulch, Shrine of Amana, the Giant memories, Frigid Outskirts, and a significant portion of Brume Tower were all just broadly not enjoyable or even very frustrating. Dark Souls 2 logic also serves as a big annoyance throughout (how to unlock Huntsman's Copse, burning down the windmill that is made of metal at the point where you light it aflame, how to unlock Castle Drangleic's front doors, and everything to do with unlocking the final boss, all required some amount of direction to be given to me in a way I never struggled with in the first game).
None of this is helped by Dark Souls 2's attitude towards worldbuilding. The original Dark Souls is certainly not without its faults (largely contained within the Lord Souls content thankfully), but it builds up a lot of forgiveness from me because the world is so immersive, so genuinely exciting to see the ways it all starts to link together both in a physical sense and a lore and worldbuilding sense. The world of Dark Souls 2 is more chaotic, with an active and intentional disregard for physical reality as it seeks to show a world in disarray, space contorting in the same way that time did in the first game. I don't outright dislike this, and in fact think it's really cool that Dark Souls 2 decided to take things in a very different direction, but the reduced sense of immersion that comes with this makes the low-points a lot harder to shrug off for me.
Of note, Dark Souls 2 alters a bunch of systems and mechanics from the first game. I'm totally fine with this in the abstract, each game exists as its own entity and doesn't really owe anything to what came before it, but some of these changes did land very poorly with me. Ever-reducing health total that needs to be undone with the usage of human effigies, enemies permanently de-spawning from the world after you've killed them a certain number of times, the adaptability stat, and a greater emphasis on resource management and finite supplies, are all extremely well-meaning changes that make sense but feel kind of awful in practice. I do think people often ignore the things Dark Souls 2 does right though; jump attacks are much better than they used to be, back-stabbing and endurance are both thankfully nerfed, there's a greater emphasis on making two-handed play appealing and de-emphasis on shields and blocking, dual-wielding weapons and power stance are awesome additions, you're given a better level of control over the rpg-aspects of your character, and every single change made to how estus functions (other than it being tied to your adaptability stat, which is clearly bad) was great! People talk about the systems and design in DS2 as if they're a strict downgrade, but I think of it more as a side-step; handling some things worse, but also some things quite a bit better.
And gosh the highlights here are so good. Eleum Loyce ranks up there with the very best content in the original Dark Souls. No-man's Wharf was another big highlight, though there are a few different places that are going to linger with me. Dark Souls 2 also just has a great eye for memorable set-pieces; my personal favourite was the ogre chasing you in Aldia's Keep, it clumsily releasing other creatures from their cages one-by-one as you dash away down the hallway.
I might never return to this game because of its low-points, but its high-points are going to stick with me much longer than for any other game I could say that for. Dark Souls 2 is such a mess, but also such a fascinating mess.
2002
Super Mario Sunshine develops upon SM64 in some compelling ways. It manages to have the same expressive, fluid movement that SM64 does whilst making it also so distinctly different both from SM64's movement but also from the movement systems of any other 3d platformer of the time thanks to the integration of FLUDD, which in turn leads to these compelling extreme cases of verticality. Probably the most meaningful and enjoyable thing going on here is that unlike in SM64 where stages feel very abstract, here the main stages feel like believable spaces making them much more enjoyable to just exist in. There are some really fun moments to be had here just manoeuvring around these levels and enjoying the easy-going mood of this island and in this regard Sunshine feels like a big step forward from SM64.
Unfortunately at some point you have to actually try and progress in the game, instead of just messing around in these inviting spaces, and at that point Sunshine rapidly falls apart. The secret levels, where you lose FLUDD and have to traverse piles of moving blocks in a more traditional style, are a nice idea in terms of re-contextualising your move-set and abilities, but it often feels that unlike in SM64 here Mario literally isn't designed with these sorts of challenges in mind, and on top of that there's such a bizarre, surreal, almost-ugly aesthetic to them that they almost feel unfinished and thrown-together. Some of the novelty levels suffer similarly in terms of feeling unfinished, and are even just outright buggy at points (the pachinko machine is the obvious example here, but another one of these levels had me clip around a wall to my death multiple times).
Mini-bosses that are interesting to fight exactly once are re-used a few times with minimal changes. There's zero indication of how many blue coins you've found in any individual level. You're able to access levels you're literally unable to complete yet with no indication you can't complete them; I was allowed into a level that required a Yoshi to complete, didn't know I needed to unlock Yoshi elsewhere first in order for the egg to spawn, and so spent ten minutes wandering around trying to figure out where on earth its egg could possibly be. FLUDD is really not built for some of the more precision-focused aiming challenges (a part in "The Secret of Casino Delfino" relating to this is egregious and miserable and I'm glad I had friends hanging out with me to mock it with), and hit-boxes are just kind of garbage sometimes. The races are all just trivially easy, as are many of the Shadow Mario chases, which makes the harsh difficulty spikes the game has all the more jarring by contrast. There are just so many sprites in the game, even outside of the secrets, that are just so bizarrely, clearly not-fun either in terms of these difficulty spikes or just various design elements, and it's rough that they end up taking up a vast bulk of your playtime (in addition to the aforementioned "The Secret of Casino Delfino", I found "Yoshi's Fruit Adventure" and "The Watermelon Festival" particularly frustrating to the point where I just abandoned both of them).
If Super Mario Sunshine had ended on a more compelling note maybe I'd be more forgiving towards it, but the final mountain sequence has basically no redeeming qualities, especially when contrasted with how the Bowser levels in SM64 were among the highlights of that game in terms of platforming, and the final boss felt like such a strange anti-climax to me. It's frustrating because I do think Super Mario Sunshine has some really cool ideas, iterates nicely upon the groundwork that SM64 laid, and just has some really enjoyable vibes to it, but the low-points are so low and such a mess that it's very hard for me to really think about the game in positive terms.
Unfortunately at some point you have to actually try and progress in the game, instead of just messing around in these inviting spaces, and at that point Sunshine rapidly falls apart. The secret levels, where you lose FLUDD and have to traverse piles of moving blocks in a more traditional style, are a nice idea in terms of re-contextualising your move-set and abilities, but it often feels that unlike in SM64 here Mario literally isn't designed with these sorts of challenges in mind, and on top of that there's such a bizarre, surreal, almost-ugly aesthetic to them that they almost feel unfinished and thrown-together. Some of the novelty levels suffer similarly in terms of feeling unfinished, and are even just outright buggy at points (the pachinko machine is the obvious example here, but another one of these levels had me clip around a wall to my death multiple times).
Mini-bosses that are interesting to fight exactly once are re-used a few times with minimal changes. There's zero indication of how many blue coins you've found in any individual level. You're able to access levels you're literally unable to complete yet with no indication you can't complete them; I was allowed into a level that required a Yoshi to complete, didn't know I needed to unlock Yoshi elsewhere first in order for the egg to spawn, and so spent ten minutes wandering around trying to figure out where on earth its egg could possibly be. FLUDD is really not built for some of the more precision-focused aiming challenges (a part in "The Secret of Casino Delfino" relating to this is egregious and miserable and I'm glad I had friends hanging out with me to mock it with), and hit-boxes are just kind of garbage sometimes. The races are all just trivially easy, as are many of the Shadow Mario chases, which makes the harsh difficulty spikes the game has all the more jarring by contrast. There are just so many sprites in the game, even outside of the secrets, that are just so bizarrely, clearly not-fun either in terms of these difficulty spikes or just various design elements, and it's rough that they end up taking up a vast bulk of your playtime (in addition to the aforementioned "The Secret of Casino Delfino", I found "Yoshi's Fruit Adventure" and "The Watermelon Festival" particularly frustrating to the point where I just abandoned both of them).
If Super Mario Sunshine had ended on a more compelling note maybe I'd be more forgiving towards it, but the final mountain sequence has basically no redeeming qualities, especially when contrasted with how the Bowser levels in SM64 were among the highlights of that game in terms of platforming, and the final boss felt like such a strange anti-climax to me. It's frustrating because I do think Super Mario Sunshine has some really cool ideas, iterates nicely upon the groundwork that SM64 laid, and just has some really enjoyable vibes to it, but the low-points are so low and such a mess that it's very hard for me to really think about the game in positive terms.
2021
Before Your Eyes was an intensely emotional experience for me on many levels. I teared up at a few different points, and the ending caused me to weep. The game is only an hour and a half long, the passage of time in the game is controlled by your real-life blinking, and it goes on to explore a lot of challenging and engrossing themes that were paid off very effectively in ways I wasn't expecting even partway through; if this sounds appealing then I advise you learn nothing more about the game before playing it, even though I am someone who isn't particularly spoiler averse this is absolutely one of those rare examples of a game that is best played with as little foreknowledge as possible. If you're not convinced you want to play this game, hopefully me touching on its strengths in this review can help in some way though be warned I will talk a fair amount about the emotional impact of the mechanics and I lightly hint at the themes of the game's narrative.
Two things really stand out to me thinking back on this Before Your Eyes. The first is the game's exploration of memory and transience, which just on a textual level is already fascinating and moving to me, but the blinking mechanic breathes life into this discussion so beautifully. The are moments where you're caught in a moment so warm and safe you want to linger there forever, and you try and hold your eyes open so you can, but then you come to this acceptance that time has to move on, everything will pass eventually, and you give in and finally learn to let go of that moment, that precious memory of the past, and move on to what waits for you in the future; you give in and blink.
Conversely there are moments where you're in the middle of listening to what your mum, your dad, your best friend, has to say and then you reflexively blink without intending to and that moment disappears; memories, and time, slipping away from you like sand through your fingers. There were moments where this happened and I was okay with continuing onwards, but also multiple occasions where time escaping me like that, where this relentless march of time leading to sentences being cut off in your memory, half-formed, felt like an emotional gut-punch, leaving me longing to be able to turn back the clock even for a moment.
The blinking mechanic is, sadly, not perfect. It worked well enough for the game to absorb me into its world like it did, and led to some incredibly emotional moments as I detailed above, but there were definitely a handful of moments where I blinked and it didn't register (though thankfully the alternative, registering blinks that didn't happen, didn't occur which is good as this would have been much more dire I feel). These imperfections are the main thing stopping me from giving the game a perfect score, though they aren't so notable as to stop me from loving the game and all it has to say and show.
The other thing that stands out to me about the Before Your Eyes is the themes it explores via its narrative. Partway through the game I actually had a few different things I wasn't entirely onboard with about this narrative, and yet by the end every single one of these concerns had been directly addressed and often subverted in ways that paid off the fact that I wasn't entirely onboard with them earlier. I don't want to go into the themes here too explicitly since I don't want to ruin the ways in which they come together so beautifully, but I will say that the game's final notes are remarkably mature having something to say that we dearly need to hear in this time of rampant capitalism. The way this messaging was delivered was deeply affecting, incredibly healthy for me, and left me feeling very well-nourished.
Two things really stand out to me thinking back on this Before Your Eyes. The first is the game's exploration of memory and transience, which just on a textual level is already fascinating and moving to me, but the blinking mechanic breathes life into this discussion so beautifully. The are moments where you're caught in a moment so warm and safe you want to linger there forever, and you try and hold your eyes open so you can, but then you come to this acceptance that time has to move on, everything will pass eventually, and you give in and finally learn to let go of that moment, that precious memory of the past, and move on to what waits for you in the future; you give in and blink.
Conversely there are moments where you're in the middle of listening to what your mum, your dad, your best friend, has to say and then you reflexively blink without intending to and that moment disappears; memories, and time, slipping away from you like sand through your fingers. There were moments where this happened and I was okay with continuing onwards, but also multiple occasions where time escaping me like that, where this relentless march of time leading to sentences being cut off in your memory, half-formed, felt like an emotional gut-punch, leaving me longing to be able to turn back the clock even for a moment.
The blinking mechanic is, sadly, not perfect. It worked well enough for the game to absorb me into its world like it did, and led to some incredibly emotional moments as I detailed above, but there were definitely a handful of moments where I blinked and it didn't register (though thankfully the alternative, registering blinks that didn't happen, didn't occur which is good as this would have been much more dire I feel). These imperfections are the main thing stopping me from giving the game a perfect score, though they aren't so notable as to stop me from loving the game and all it has to say and show.
The other thing that stands out to me about the Before Your Eyes is the themes it explores via its narrative. Partway through the game I actually had a few different things I wasn't entirely onboard with about this narrative, and yet by the end every single one of these concerns had been directly addressed and often subverted in ways that paid off the fact that I wasn't entirely onboard with them earlier. I don't want to go into the themes here too explicitly since I don't want to ruin the ways in which they come together so beautifully, but I will say that the game's final notes are remarkably mature having something to say that we dearly need to hear in this time of rampant capitalism. The way this messaging was delivered was deeply affecting, incredibly healthy for me, and left me feeling very well-nourished.
2016
A beguiling experience, so much so that I ended up replaying it within a week of finishing it for the first time.
I think this game threw me off in my first encounter with it because the early-game seems to have such a focus on dictatorships and their oppressive powers, as the child you guide sneaks past guards and their vicious patrol dogs, as people are turned into zombies, cattle even, whilst the land is left to ruin. I assumed that on some level that was just going to just be the point, each gut-wrenching death an admonishment of the system enacting them, and so was caught completely off-guard by the game's increasingly surreal and fantastical developments.
More prepared for this mysterious world's descent into progressively stranger and unreal territory on my second playthrough, more prepared for how the visceral, very real horror that inhabits the game from its opening moments eventually warps into the kind of horror that consumes our minds, our very flesh, I ended up being even more on-board with what's going on here.
The game leaves a lot up to interpretation, but my own personal read is that INSIDE is very much about control. The most immediate tie-in here is how oppressive systems seek to exert control, but the game expands on this asking questions about the nature of control within narrative, control within videogames, and how ultimately who is in control is so often going to come down to a matter of perspective. I have a lot of feelings, largely positive, regarding how the game explores all of this but don't want to send this review into the territory of overt spoilers.
Despite all the things I love about this game, I do think it tries a bit too hard to be, well, a game in the conventional sense. The subtle environmental platform-puzzler aspects that weave themselves into your adventure as your propel yourself along are wonderfully handled, but moments when the game stops you in your tracks to make these puzzles more of a focal point are much less appealing to me all at once disrupting the immersion brought by the game's atmosphere by making the environments less believable whilst also bringing the game's compelling forward momentum to a grinding halt. This all just leaves me wishing the game had leant even harder into its narrative and artistic focus.
That all said, INSIDE is a wonderful little experience, one whose best moments and ideas tunnelled into my brain, and whose ending arc is going to stick with me for a long time.
I think this game threw me off in my first encounter with it because the early-game seems to have such a focus on dictatorships and their oppressive powers, as the child you guide sneaks past guards and their vicious patrol dogs, as people are turned into zombies, cattle even, whilst the land is left to ruin. I assumed that on some level that was just going to just be the point, each gut-wrenching death an admonishment of the system enacting them, and so was caught completely off-guard by the game's increasingly surreal and fantastical developments.
More prepared for this mysterious world's descent into progressively stranger and unreal territory on my second playthrough, more prepared for how the visceral, very real horror that inhabits the game from its opening moments eventually warps into the kind of horror that consumes our minds, our very flesh, I ended up being even more on-board with what's going on here.
The game leaves a lot up to interpretation, but my own personal read is that INSIDE is very much about control. The most immediate tie-in here is how oppressive systems seek to exert control, but the game expands on this asking questions about the nature of control within narrative, control within videogames, and how ultimately who is in control is so often going to come down to a matter of perspective. I have a lot of feelings, largely positive, regarding how the game explores all of this but don't want to send this review into the territory of overt spoilers.
Despite all the things I love about this game, I do think it tries a bit too hard to be, well, a game in the conventional sense. The subtle environmental platform-puzzler aspects that weave themselves into your adventure as your propel yourself along are wonderfully handled, but moments when the game stops you in your tracks to make these puzzles more of a focal point are much less appealing to me all at once disrupting the immersion brought by the game's atmosphere by making the environments less believable whilst also bringing the game's compelling forward momentum to a grinding halt. This all just leaves me wishing the game had leant even harder into its narrative and artistic focus.
That all said, INSIDE is a wonderful little experience, one whose best moments and ideas tunnelled into my brain, and whose ending arc is going to stick with me for a long time.
It's kind of hard for me to overstate how big a part of my childhood and very-early teenage years the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series was. I would play basically every game released, 100%'d 2, 3 and Underground 2 more times than I can count, and so much of my early music taste came from this series too. No doubt I'm one of countless people who in their childhood excitedly started trying to learn to skateboard after too-much-time playing these games only to be quickly rushed to hospital due to breaking a bone (my poor arm).
Playing THPS 1+2 was understandably an intense nostalgia-trip. Even just beyond being really cool to impressionable-young-me, the two games that were remade here were such a wonderful mixture of sports game, arcade game, and 3d platformer, blending genres in a way that was legitimately exciting at the time and would spawn a wave of imitators in the following few years. THPS 1+2 is extremely faithful to these originals in terms of feel and intent, whilst updating it in ways that are nearly unanimously positive; adding in the best portions of the move-sets from later games so that you can flow around levels much more naturally, and reworking the visual design of the game to compliment the much-improved graphics.
Sadly these games have lost something through the years, and whilst this game is certainly an improvement over the originals (it's hard for me to imagine returning to the first Tony Hawk's game's extremely limited move-set) there are certainly moments when it feels like all these updates somehow make some of the wrinkles more noticeable; some of the fetch-quest items just blend into their surroundings for how detailed everything surrounding them is. Maybe trying to hunt down five "don't skate" signs hidden throughout a level on a 2 minute timer only to be forced to find them all again when you can't for the life of you figure out where the fifth one is just fundamentally hits a bit different over two decades later. Being asked to locate five homeless people and jump over them in a specific order definitely hits different (seriously, how not punk can you possibly get??). Time is not always kind.
So the experience was certainly largely fun, and great to return to after all these years, but also very much flawed, bearing the weight of time on its shoulders. It took me about four hours to 100% the first and second game content after which I struggled to find much more to do. I could play through the game again with a different character, something that appealed to me greatly when I was a kid, but there's so much else I can do with my time nowadays that it's hard to sell me on what largely amounts to running back the same experience all over again. I put a few hours into the speedrun mode and it was fine, but trying to find scripted routes through levels really detracts from the free-flowing, expressive nature of the movement for me. The game seems to have an expectation that you'll put a lot of time into it considering its levelling and challenge systems, but I think I'm largely done with the game for now; content with my experience, grateful to have had this opportunity to revisit a freshened-up version of something that was once very important to me, but also very ready to move on to something a bit more substantial.
Playing THPS 1+2 was understandably an intense nostalgia-trip. Even just beyond being really cool to impressionable-young-me, the two games that were remade here were such a wonderful mixture of sports game, arcade game, and 3d platformer, blending genres in a way that was legitimately exciting at the time and would spawn a wave of imitators in the following few years. THPS 1+2 is extremely faithful to these originals in terms of feel and intent, whilst updating it in ways that are nearly unanimously positive; adding in the best portions of the move-sets from later games so that you can flow around levels much more naturally, and reworking the visual design of the game to compliment the much-improved graphics.
Sadly these games have lost something through the years, and whilst this game is certainly an improvement over the originals (it's hard for me to imagine returning to the first Tony Hawk's game's extremely limited move-set) there are certainly moments when it feels like all these updates somehow make some of the wrinkles more noticeable; some of the fetch-quest items just blend into their surroundings for how detailed everything surrounding them is. Maybe trying to hunt down five "don't skate" signs hidden throughout a level on a 2 minute timer only to be forced to find them all again when you can't for the life of you figure out where the fifth one is just fundamentally hits a bit different over two decades later. Being asked to locate five homeless people and jump over them in a specific order definitely hits different (seriously, how not punk can you possibly get??). Time is not always kind.
So the experience was certainly largely fun, and great to return to after all these years, but also very much flawed, bearing the weight of time on its shoulders. It took me about four hours to 100% the first and second game content after which I struggled to find much more to do. I could play through the game again with a different character, something that appealed to me greatly when I was a kid, but there's so much else I can do with my time nowadays that it's hard to sell me on what largely amounts to running back the same experience all over again. I put a few hours into the speedrun mode and it was fine, but trying to find scripted routes through levels really detracts from the free-flowing, expressive nature of the movement for me. The game seems to have an expectation that you'll put a lot of time into it considering its levelling and challenge systems, but I think I'm largely done with the game for now; content with my experience, grateful to have had this opportunity to revisit a freshened-up version of something that was once very important to me, but also very ready to move on to something a bit more substantial.
2019
My recent obsession with Beat Saber has finally been the death knell for Ring Fit Adventure, after months of telling myself I'd return to Ring Fit one day hopefully. It just feels too much at points like I'm just being told an exact list of what to do by a personal trainer, which I very much get is the point but I much prefer how something like Beat Saber works as a game that I'd want to play even outside of the immense health benefits and that those health benefits are instead just a bonus for doing something I'd want to do anyway.
It doesn't help that the aesthetic is a lot. It's dorkiness was initially charming, but hours of hearing the same phrases over and over grows grating. It's hard for me to be too down on the game as I can see it works for a lot of people and clearly does some things very right, but it is not at all for me.
It doesn't help that the aesthetic is a lot. It's dorkiness was initially charming, but hours of hearing the same phrases over and over grows grating. It's hard for me to be too down on the game as I can see it works for a lot of people and clearly does some things very right, but it is not at all for me.
It's hard for me to know whether to treat the four games enclosed in this package as separate works or individual pieces of a grander whole, as the reality feels somewhere halfway between those two extremes. They each largely work as their own self-contained entries, but also reflect on one another, reuse systems and content, and in one case outright reuse levels.
Broadly the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove collection is a very solid package. Most notably I love the aesthetic, visually the game harkens back to the NES capturing that 8-bit graphical style but beautifying it substantially. Similarly the music bops along like the best Mega Man tracks, though perhaps struggles to be as consistently engaging by the time you're hearing all these tracks fourth time round. This kind of speaks to an issue I have with this package in general which is that for me it struggled at points to maintain itself for the 20+ hour playtime involved in completing all four games; playing the whole collection at once now is likely a very different experience to playing one entry every couple years as they were made.
The gameplay can be more of a mixed bag, though is generally really solid. The boss fights are a highlight, and the game has a lot of creativity constantly throwing new ideas at you. I'm not really in love with how many challenges ultimately just boil down to there being insta-death surfaces, nor the extent to which enemies can sometimes only be threatening due to their ability to chip-shot you down into the abyss (this is by far at its worst with Plague Knight where many deaths just feel cheap).
I think the original Shovel Knight experience stands out as the strongest entry due to being the most balanced, and also thanks to its very charming writing. Whilst Plague of Shadows continues this charm it struggles along as the weakest entry due to Plague Knight's awkward movement, the over-complicated bomb-design options and the recycled level designs; if the writing wasn't so good the game would have fallen completely flat for me.
Specter of Torment and King of Cards both suffer a bit from feeling unbalanced; all the special abilities you can get being optional means the game can't really be designed with them in mind, so a handful of them just break the game in half and trivialise a lot of the challenges. That said these two games feature the most satisfying movement of this collection. I particularly love how King Knight's movement patterns turn getting from A to B into its own little puzzle at times and think King of Cards actually has the strongest platforming to be found here (sadly brought down by the weakest writing, and the thankfully-largely-optional card game Joustus being not-very-good).
If I was to rate each entry separately it would look something like;
Shovel Knight; 8/10
Plague of Shadows; 6/10
Specter of Torment; 7/10
King of Cards; 7/10
Broadly the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove collection is a very solid package. Most notably I love the aesthetic, visually the game harkens back to the NES capturing that 8-bit graphical style but beautifying it substantially. Similarly the music bops along like the best Mega Man tracks, though perhaps struggles to be as consistently engaging by the time you're hearing all these tracks fourth time round. This kind of speaks to an issue I have with this package in general which is that for me it struggled at points to maintain itself for the 20+ hour playtime involved in completing all four games; playing the whole collection at once now is likely a very different experience to playing one entry every couple years as they were made.
The gameplay can be more of a mixed bag, though is generally really solid. The boss fights are a highlight, and the game has a lot of creativity constantly throwing new ideas at you. I'm not really in love with how many challenges ultimately just boil down to there being insta-death surfaces, nor the extent to which enemies can sometimes only be threatening due to their ability to chip-shot you down into the abyss (this is by far at its worst with Plague Knight where many deaths just feel cheap).
I think the original Shovel Knight experience stands out as the strongest entry due to being the most balanced, and also thanks to its very charming writing. Whilst Plague of Shadows continues this charm it struggles along as the weakest entry due to Plague Knight's awkward movement, the over-complicated bomb-design options and the recycled level designs; if the writing wasn't so good the game would have fallen completely flat for me.
Specter of Torment and King of Cards both suffer a bit from feeling unbalanced; all the special abilities you can get being optional means the game can't really be designed with them in mind, so a handful of them just break the game in half and trivialise a lot of the challenges. That said these two games feature the most satisfying movement of this collection. I particularly love how King Knight's movement patterns turn getting from A to B into its own little puzzle at times and think King of Cards actually has the strongest platforming to be found here (sadly brought down by the weakest writing, and the thankfully-largely-optional card game Joustus being not-very-good).
If I was to rate each entry separately it would look something like;
Shovel Knight; 8/10
Plague of Shadows; 6/10
Specter of Torment; 7/10
King of Cards; 7/10