BansheeNeet
BACKER
2008
It ain't got no point to the game.
It would be very simple to play Braid in 2023 entirely as a lark, an opportunity to travel back to the year 2008 and come back laughing over just how wrong everyone was. Now, to be fair, everyone was wrong. Braid getting all this high praise for elevating video games, bringing philosophy and deep thought to a commercial video game, and expanding the audience's understanding of games, it all sounds like horseshit nowadays. It throws decades of independent, challenging work under the bus simply because it wasn't on Xbox Live Arcade. There is value in bringing more non-conventional games to the mainstream the way Jonathan Blow was able to by having the game be promoted by a big platform holder, but Braid is not the first game to do that either. Any prestige over Braid being the first Anything might as well be thrown out of the window.
That all being said, I came to Braid with an open mind and left with both more and less than what I expected. First of all, the game looks like ass. It has these painterly backgrounds that look ok, some nice pieces of art for the puzzles, and then every sprite clashes with all of that. Tim looks like shit, he's over-animated to the point of being uncanny, and every other moving thing in the game looks about the same level of bad. It's so sloppily put together in terms of art that I wonder how intentional it is, as this along with the sound effects and library music gives off a general vibe of cheapness, like the game was hurriedly put together. Considering the way the game is a commentary on games, that could be the case, but Blow talking about the care he took into art direction in interviews, and the fact that the upcoming Anniversary Edition looks basically the same but sharper, maybe someone out there thinks this looks good.
The game references Mario constantly, and the physics feel like they’re attempting to mimic Mario World’s, which would be appropriate given the nature of Mario World romhacks at the time which often encouraged save states and rewinding. But it’s completely off. Jumping off enemies often requires multiple attempts, having to rewind constantly because you were one pixel off their needlessly small hitbox. Levels are bizarrely put together in such a way that you never have to engage with any puzzle to progress outside of a small number of required ones. Blow said in interviews that he did this to avoid the constant rewarding of coins or collectibles that games often engage in, but it leads to every level consisting of two or three usually separate puzzle sections just floating in the air, often not connected or progressing from each other. This leads to levels feeling sterile and unexciting, the art does it no favors in, again, looking like it was just put together ungracefully.
The art along with the constant references to Mario emphasize the video gamey-ness of the whole thing. It’s like the game is defying the idea of having to lean towards more conventional story-focused game genres, like it was made on a dare to make a Mario game that was About Something. This game is made up of five main worlds, each one having a unique mechanic that builds on the base mechanic of rewinding and forwarding through time. Before every world, you’re given several paragraphs of text that tell the “story” of the game. Ostensibly the game is about the main character Tim looking for a princess to save after having jeopardized his relationship with her, but eventually, the princess and his struggle to find her come to represent many things. The time mechanics become a commentary on the irreversible nature of our decisions, the desire to go back when we can’t, and the virtue of patience. One world introduces a mechanic where certain objects are not affected by time after the text beforehand explains how Tim attempted to live a life unaffected by the things around him out of fear. Another has a ring that can slow things around him after explaining that Tim still wears what is presumably an engagement ring despite the princess leaving him, and how all social interactions are affected by this ring in a way he must navigate carefully. It’s a unique system of storytelling, and I’m not going to act like the text is poorly written or anything. There are some passages that I found genuinely affecting, but it isn’t an elegant solution for merging storytelling and gameplay at all. I get wanting to avoid cutscenes, but at the end of the day, this mode of storytelling feels too detached and non-committal. As Poyfuh explained in her review, these kinds of readings could be applied to anything, it doesn’t necessarily make this a deeper game than any other platformer. If I wanted to be more generous though, it’s kind of a museum approach to game presentation, as if each level is presented with a plaque next to it. After all, each world is accompanied not only by text but also by a painting, one that is revealed after completing each level of the world. It’s an interesting exercise in how context really can be everything, so I don’t want to completely invalidate it.
A lot of people have pejoratively described Braid’s plot as being another story of a sad straight boy lamenting the fact that he can’t talk to women. This is true, but I have to admit that in multiple parts of my life, I have been the sad straight boy that can’t talk to women, so a lot of the passages hit home in places. Shaking off years of misguiding narratives surrounding romance, and unrealistic depictions of love from fiction, including games, was a tough process that involved a lot of brutal truths, and the way the protagonist is not able to break away from them, felt very relatable. Having to learn that people are not abstract concepts, and the world doesn’t revolve around you, these are all experiences I’ve been through. I was expecting the writing to be laughable, but I ended up seeing myself in it, and I’m willing to admit that despite how embarrassing that may be.
But that’s the problem with Braid. I just spent most of this review talking about the writing, all of which is separate from the game part. Sure, it may have changed my understanding of the gameplay to an extent, but at the end of the day, when I miss what should be a really simple jump on an enemy’s head and have to rewind for the 10th time because everything still controls like ass, it’s hard to always keep all of that information in my head. The gameplay and puzzle design are tuned just wrong enough that these two parts of the game can’t connect despite all attempts to have them do so. You end up with some kind of neat journal entries and a forgettable puzzle platformer. Braid is almost there, but the way people talked about it back then just seems disconnected from reality, much like Tim in the game itself, and much like Jonathan Blow is right now according to his Twitter account. Braid and its legacy ended up becoming another weird puzzle floating in the air, one no one is excited to navigate anymore, no matter how much preamble it’s given. Nothing requires you to beat it, you can just move on to the next level.
It ain’t got no point to the game.
It would be very simple to play Braid in 2023 entirely as a lark, an opportunity to travel back to the year 2008 and come back laughing over just how wrong everyone was. Now, to be fair, everyone was wrong. Braid getting all this high praise for elevating video games, bringing philosophy and deep thought to a commercial video game, and expanding the audience's understanding of games, it all sounds like horseshit nowadays. It throws decades of independent, challenging work under the bus simply because it wasn't on Xbox Live Arcade. There is value in bringing more non-conventional games to the mainstream the way Jonathan Blow was able to by having the game be promoted by a big platform holder, but Braid is not the first game to do that either. Any prestige over Braid being the first Anything might as well be thrown out of the window.
That all being said, I came to Braid with an open mind and left with both more and less than what I expected. First of all, the game looks like ass. It has these painterly backgrounds that look ok, some nice pieces of art for the puzzles, and then every sprite clashes with all of that. Tim looks like shit, he's over-animated to the point of being uncanny, and every other moving thing in the game looks about the same level of bad. It's so sloppily put together in terms of art that I wonder how intentional it is, as this along with the sound effects and library music gives off a general vibe of cheapness, like the game was hurriedly put together. Considering the way the game is a commentary on games, that could be the case, but Blow talking about the care he took into art direction in interviews, and the fact that the upcoming Anniversary Edition looks basically the same but sharper, maybe someone out there thinks this looks good.
The game references Mario constantly, and the physics feel like they’re attempting to mimic Mario World’s, which would be appropriate given the nature of Mario World romhacks at the time which often encouraged save states and rewinding. But it’s completely off. Jumping off enemies often requires multiple attempts, having to rewind constantly because you were one pixel off their needlessly small hitbox. Levels are bizarrely put together in such a way that you never have to engage with any puzzle to progress outside of a small number of required ones. Blow said in interviews that he did this to avoid the constant rewarding of coins or collectibles that games often engage in, but it leads to every level consisting of two or three usually separate puzzle sections just floating in the air, often not connected or progressing from each other. This leads to levels feeling sterile and unexciting, the art does it no favors in, again, looking like it was just put together ungracefully.
The art along with the constant references to Mario emphasize the video gamey-ness of the whole thing. It’s like the game is defying the idea of having to lean towards more conventional story-focused game genres, like it was made on a dare to make a Mario game that was About Something. This game is made up of five main worlds, each one having a unique mechanic that builds on the base mechanic of rewinding and forwarding through time. Before every world, you’re given several paragraphs of text that tell the “story” of the game. Ostensibly the game is about the main character Tim looking for a princess to save after having jeopardized his relationship with her, but eventually, the princess and his struggle to find her come to represent many things. The time mechanics become a commentary on the irreversible nature of our decisions, the desire to go back when we can’t, and the virtue of patience. One world introduces a mechanic where certain objects are not affected by time after the text beforehand explains how Tim attempted to live a life unaffected by the things around him out of fear. Another has a ring that can slow things around him after explaining that Tim still wears what is presumably an engagement ring despite the princess leaving him, and how all social interactions are affected by this ring in a way he must navigate carefully. It’s a unique system of storytelling, and I’m not going to act like the text is poorly written or anything. There are some passages that I found genuinely affecting, but it isn’t an elegant solution for merging storytelling and gameplay at all. I get wanting to avoid cutscenes, but at the end of the day, this mode of storytelling feels too detached and non-committal. As Poyfuh explained in her review, these kinds of readings could be applied to anything, it doesn’t necessarily make this a deeper game than any other platformer. If I wanted to be more generous though, it’s kind of a museum approach to game presentation, as if each level is presented with a plaque next to it. After all, each world is accompanied not only by text but also by a painting, one that is revealed after completing each level of the world. It’s an interesting exercise in how context really can be everything, so I don’t want to completely invalidate it.
A lot of people have pejoratively described Braid’s plot as being another story of a sad straight boy lamenting the fact that he can’t talk to women. This is true, but I have to admit that in multiple parts of my life, I have been the sad straight boy that can’t talk to women, so a lot of the passages hit home in places. Shaking off years of misguiding narratives surrounding romance, and unrealistic depictions of love from fiction, including games, was a tough process that involved a lot of brutal truths, and the way the protagonist is not able to break away from them, felt very relatable. Having to learn that people are not abstract concepts, and the world doesn’t revolve around you, these are all experiences I’ve been through. I was expecting the writing to be laughable, but I ended up seeing myself in it, and I’m willing to admit that despite how embarrassing that may be.
But that’s the problem with Braid. I just spent most of this review talking about the writing, all of which is separate from the game part. Sure, it may have changed my understanding of the gameplay to an extent, but at the end of the day, when I miss what should be a really simple jump on an enemy’s head and have to rewind for the 10th time because everything still controls like ass, it’s hard to always keep all of that information in my head. The gameplay and puzzle design are tuned just wrong enough that these two parts of the game can’t connect despite all attempts to have them do so. You end up with some kind of neat journal entries and a forgettable puzzle platformer. Braid is almost there, but the way people talked about it back then just seems disconnected from reality, much like Tim in the game itself, and much like Jonathan Blow is right now according to his Twitter account. Braid and its legacy ended up becoming another weird puzzle floating in the air, one no one is excited to navigate anymore, no matter how much preamble it’s given. Nothing requires you to beat it, you can just move on to the next level.
It ain’t got no point to the game.
2000
The presentation on this game is absolutely killer. All the characters are rendered and animated beautifully in that lovely Game Boy Color style, along with the UI and other visual elements. The music consists of (what I assume are) classic Pop'n Music tracks remixed for the GBC and they also sounds incredible. Seriously, even if you're like me and don't really know much about the series, you should boot this up in an emulator because it just looks and sounds great. As for playing, well, Pop'n already looked pretty tough just in Arcade form, and it does not translate well to a controller. There were times when I felt like I had a good grip on the layout, only for the game to immediately throw something my way that completely reset my brain. The game involves pressing left, up, right, A, and B, as notes come down to one specific button, and it's an extremely tough layout to memorize. Asking me to press some at the same time or to switch rapidly between them just felt mean. I'm willing to bet there are people out there who have complete control over every track in this game, and I salute them, their brains are simply bigger than mine. Maybe it's easier on an actual GBC, since the buttons are closer together. But like I said, I think anyone who has any affection for the GBC should boot this up at least once, it's a neat little thing.
A game made by a very small team, has a lot of good ideas but ultimately can't fulfill all of them and ends suffering from a lack of understanding of the strengths of metroidvanias.
All the sprite art and animation is great, and I love the idea of a bite-sized metroidvania. But to start with one problem, nearly all your attacks are on the same button, each needing a different direction of the d-pad to use. Some also only come out in the air, or in the air with a direction pressed. I don't know why this method was used considering all the buttons in this game that go unused, but it leads to a lot of using the wrong attack in tight situations, or just nothing happen when you expect something to happen because you just landed on the ground so the game doesn't know whether to use a ground or air move.
Despite this, the movement is pretty fun, the double jump in this game stops between the two jumps to allow you to move straight to the left and right. It's also a broomstick, so it's a nice bit of theming as well. This game's version of the morph ball is turning into a cat, and even includes bomb-jumping in the form of yarn bombs, it's really cute. As for the titular 66 mushrooms, they're spread all throughout the level and it's fun to consistently find new ones and solve mini environmental puzzles to do so.
The two real killers here are the pace of progression and navigating the world itself. For some reason, the main way of getting experience points to upgrade your weapons is collecting certain groups of the titular 66 mushrooms. Not certain amounts, but groups, as all the mushrooms are split up into random groups, and when one is filled, you get a certain amount of XP. The problem is each group is made up of mushroom all over the game, and by the end of the game I only had one group complete, every other one missing one or two. This meant my weapons had almost no upgrades, and remained around the same attack power for the whole game. In fact, the game has several items that upgrade your stats and health, and they're all not found until the last third of the game basically. It feels like someone took a normal game and just ripped out 90% from the middle, leaving only the beginning and end.
Navigation also feels kind of sloppy, the only reason I never got lost being the game having a system to always tell me exactly where to go, and even then I had trouble discerning how to get certain items. It doesn't help that the one walktrhough I consulted for help got one item through a glitch. That's another thing, this game had a lot of real rough glitches, like getting stuck in the wall and having to reset, or entire rooms being corrupted and having to guess how to navigate it by referencing how the room is supposed to look. I'm willing to forgive it here more because as stated, this is a very small game, but it's bad enough that I wouldn't recommend this game to someone unless they were able to look past a lot of glaring issues. One thing I won't give a pass on is the final boss. I guess I won't give any spoilers, but it is DIRE, and uses a mechanic that the game basically never requires you to use.
Overall, a lot of cute aspects and ideas plagued by a lot of problems that come with not having the ability to polish and refine the way bigger games do. But at the end of the day, it's kind of encouraging to see a game like this released on Steam. The glitches, errors, and skewed priorities of the game reveal a certain humanity in this game's creation. It's a reminder that game dev is tough, but eventually a game comes out. It's also a reminder that anyone can make a game, and that's ultimately a good thing, no amount of bad Steam games can convince me otherwise.
All the sprite art and animation is great, and I love the idea of a bite-sized metroidvania. But to start with one problem, nearly all your attacks are on the same button, each needing a different direction of the d-pad to use. Some also only come out in the air, or in the air with a direction pressed. I don't know why this method was used considering all the buttons in this game that go unused, but it leads to a lot of using the wrong attack in tight situations, or just nothing happen when you expect something to happen because you just landed on the ground so the game doesn't know whether to use a ground or air move.
Despite this, the movement is pretty fun, the double jump in this game stops between the two jumps to allow you to move straight to the left and right. It's also a broomstick, so it's a nice bit of theming as well. This game's version of the morph ball is turning into a cat, and even includes bomb-jumping in the form of yarn bombs, it's really cute. As for the titular 66 mushrooms, they're spread all throughout the level and it's fun to consistently find new ones and solve mini environmental puzzles to do so.
The two real killers here are the pace of progression and navigating the world itself. For some reason, the main way of getting experience points to upgrade your weapons is collecting certain groups of the titular 66 mushrooms. Not certain amounts, but groups, as all the mushrooms are split up into random groups, and when one is filled, you get a certain amount of XP. The problem is each group is made up of mushroom all over the game, and by the end of the game I only had one group complete, every other one missing one or two. This meant my weapons had almost no upgrades, and remained around the same attack power for the whole game. In fact, the game has several items that upgrade your stats and health, and they're all not found until the last third of the game basically. It feels like someone took a normal game and just ripped out 90% from the middle, leaving only the beginning and end.
Navigation also feels kind of sloppy, the only reason I never got lost being the game having a system to always tell me exactly where to go, and even then I had trouble discerning how to get certain items. It doesn't help that the one walktrhough I consulted for help got one item through a glitch. That's another thing, this game had a lot of real rough glitches, like getting stuck in the wall and having to reset, or entire rooms being corrupted and having to guess how to navigate it by referencing how the room is supposed to look. I'm willing to forgive it here more because as stated, this is a very small game, but it's bad enough that I wouldn't recommend this game to someone unless they were able to look past a lot of glaring issues. One thing I won't give a pass on is the final boss. I guess I won't give any spoilers, but it is DIRE, and uses a mechanic that the game basically never requires you to use.
Overall, a lot of cute aspects and ideas plagued by a lot of problems that come with not having the ability to polish and refine the way bigger games do. But at the end of the day, it's kind of encouraging to see a game like this released on Steam. The glitches, errors, and skewed priorities of the game reveal a certain humanity in this game's creation. It's a reminder that game dev is tough, but eventually a game comes out. It's also a reminder that anyone can make a game, and that's ultimately a good thing, no amount of bad Steam games can convince me otherwise.
Fun in its ambition and variety, something Treasure would make themselves famous for following this game, but also sloppy in a lot of places. The fact that this game has a power-up for surviving bottomless pits feels like a last-minute balance decision, and fun is often interrupted by moments that feel unfair or too precise. Still, it's all worth it for this thing. The fact that the fight against this thing plays while "Produced by Treasure" appears in the end credits certainly says something about where this company was headed.
The key to a good Jackbox game, at least when it comes to the more joke-oriented ones, is one that allows everyone the opportunity to be funny. I play this game with a group of people who are sometimes down with going all in on a joke in these games, but often feel exhausted at the thought of having to come up with something funny on the spot. Not everyone is an annoying nerd who listens to too much comedy bang bang (i.e. me), so when a game provides the right prompts and help for players to construct jokes with, that's when these games are their most effective. I'm thinking stuff like Mad Verse City, Tee KO, Job Job, or Talking Points. These are games that, even if improv comedy is the last thing you want to do, you can often just have something hilarious basically handed to you by the game, and now you're on an even playing field with people who are more down to clown. After all, a good party game should have as many people at the party involved or invested as possible.
Whenever a game just goes "Okay now here's the part where you say something funny", the results are way more inconsistent and therefore less fun, and I couldn't help but feel that when it came to Junktopia and Roomerang in this pack, even if their presentation is really good. I still enjoyed them, but at this point with so many Jackbox games it's hard to advocate for them when there are games everyone is immediately on board with. Quixort is good for any annoying trivia nerd (i.e. me), and Nonsensory is just generally confusing. Lastly, I agree with the sentiment other reviews have when it comes to getting these games under one launcher, at 9 entries with 5 games each, most of which are only in one pack, people really need a more orderly way to manage them.
Whenever a game just goes "Okay now here's the part where you say something funny", the results are way more inconsistent and therefore less fun, and I couldn't help but feel that when it came to Junktopia and Roomerang in this pack, even if their presentation is really good. I still enjoyed them, but at this point with so many Jackbox games it's hard to advocate for them when there are games everyone is immediately on board with. Quixort is good for any annoying trivia nerd (i.e. me), and Nonsensory is just generally confusing. Lastly, I agree with the sentiment other reviews have when it comes to getting these games under one launcher, at 9 entries with 5 games each, most of which are only in one pack, people really need a more orderly way to manage them.
1995
It was the summer of '95. Batman Forever was in theaters, Cotton Eye Joe was on the radio, and uhh hold on let me google something...uhh The NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb artillery positions begins in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a time of change, revelations, revolution, and at the forefront of all this was one man, nay, a creature. A green guy with a big game and an even BIGGER attitude. What he lacks in size, he makes up for in style, as well as his huge cock. The man, the myth, the legend, the thing on everyone's mind, a one-syllable name that could move mountains and catch lightning: Bug!
Ahh, The Summer of Bug. Of course I wasn't born at the time to experience it, but if I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is transport myself to August 1995, to be there amongst the people that Bug brought together. The comradery, the kinship, the warmth of men setting aside their difference for one day, to unite in the reverie brought on by Bug's release. But of course, I'm only recounting what has already been extensively documented, analyzed, and mythologized in the past decades since that day. Echoes of Bug's influence can be heard throughout our daily lives, in everything we see and do, Bug has its place. This is, as everyone knows, why every family in the world always leaves one seat at the table empty, for it is Bug's place to sit. The term "monogamy" is now obsolete, as any couple fully understands they are in a relationship with not just their partner, but with Bug as well.
(In the year 2072) My two horrible grandchildren who want me dead: "Shut up, grandpa! We hate this story and we hate Bug! We like our other grandpa better, he has a region-free Saturn with a 4MB RAM cartridge!"
Oh ho ho, you kids. Someday you'll understand. You'll understand that your other grandpa is going to hell, along with anyone else who covets the RAM cartridge. Ahhh, all this recounting is making me tired, let your old peepaw nap for just a minute.
Goes to sleep, never wakes up again
Ahh, The Summer of Bug. Of course I wasn't born at the time to experience it, but if I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is transport myself to August 1995, to be there amongst the people that Bug brought together. The comradery, the kinship, the warmth of men setting aside their difference for one day, to unite in the reverie brought on by Bug's release. But of course, I'm only recounting what has already been extensively documented, analyzed, and mythologized in the past decades since that day. Echoes of Bug's influence can be heard throughout our daily lives, in everything we see and do, Bug has its place. This is, as everyone knows, why every family in the world always leaves one seat at the table empty, for it is Bug's place to sit. The term "monogamy" is now obsolete, as any couple fully understands they are in a relationship with not just their partner, but with Bug as well.
(In the year 2072) My two horrible grandchildren who want me dead: "Shut up, grandpa! We hate this story and we hate Bug! We like our other grandpa better, he has a region-free Saturn with a 4MB RAM cartridge!"
Oh ho ho, you kids. Someday you'll understand. You'll understand that your other grandpa is going to hell, along with anyone else who covets the RAM cartridge. Ahhh, all this recounting is making me tired, let your old peepaw nap for just a minute.
Goes to sleep, never wakes up again
2001
Oh what's that, you thought you were good at Dr. Mario? Well turns out you're shit. You're shit and this random Wario Land enemy is kicking your ass and the timer say you've been playing for 90 minutes and you're only on stage 5, go fuck yourself.
1995
Absolutely incredible, the perfect send-off to the Genesis and its philosophies. We got incredibly flashy animations and immaculately colored background, good-ass music with the crunchiest vocal samples, a weird little guy in a world of other weird little guys, and a willingness to change up level design to keep things fresh throughout the entire playthrough instead of just slight iterations on similar level ideas. Carries the spirit of Sonic in that way, but comes out a lot more consistent and even better presentation wise IMO. I always loved how act 2 of a Sonic zone could always be really different from act 1, and this game takes that even further where the 2nd "act", while still carrying a similar theme or idea, basically feels like an entirely new level that has its own great ideas. The grabbing mechanic really opens up how you can interact with and traverse levels, where someone skilled enough can go anywhere they want, making hunting secrets more fun than other 2D platformers with big levels (I love that in nearly every case if you climb up a giant wall by repeatedly grabbing it you're rewarded with a gem). The difficulty balance here is also just right, demanding in a lot of places but also consistently rewards the player with health pickups and lives so as to keep them motivated. I noticed several moments of intense levels or boss fights being followed by a level that, while still challenging, is more lenient and slower-paced, which again helps with motivating players to keep going.
Some bosses, especially the final one, feel like really mean difficulty spikes but here's a really important pro-tip for the final boss: in the second phase, when he does those lightning attacks that can kill you in one frame, before he does one just start spamming grab to the upper-right and 9 times out of 10 you'll successfully grab him and he'll do the black hole attack afterwards. During that, you can spam grab to stay in one place. With these two tricks, you can make the second half of the final boss pretty easy. But I was losing my mind trying to beat it without this knowledge, and felt really good over being able to find all this without consulting a walkthrough. Like I said, just the right amount of challenge. Hoping to come back to this and beat it with no save states, which I did use for stuff including the final boss. Speaking of bosses, I like being able to absolutely destroy certain bosses by grabbing them over and over again fast enough where they can't even let out an attack. Some may consider that to be broken but I prefer that over some "wait your turn before your first of ten hits" bullshit.
We gotta bring Ristar back. Any time I play a fantastic old 2D platformer that hasn't had any new installments in ages I remind myself that Bubsy was able to get two and feel like weeping.
Some bosses, especially the final one, feel like really mean difficulty spikes but here's a really important pro-tip for the final boss: in the second phase, when he does those lightning attacks that can kill you in one frame, before he does one just start spamming grab to the upper-right and 9 times out of 10 you'll successfully grab him and he'll do the black hole attack afterwards. During that, you can spam grab to stay in one place. With these two tricks, you can make the second half of the final boss pretty easy. But I was losing my mind trying to beat it without this knowledge, and felt really good over being able to find all this without consulting a walkthrough. Like I said, just the right amount of challenge. Hoping to come back to this and beat it with no save states, which I did use for stuff including the final boss. Speaking of bosses, I like being able to absolutely destroy certain bosses by grabbing them over and over again fast enough where they can't even let out an attack. Some may consider that to be broken but I prefer that over some "wait your turn before your first of ten hits" bullshit.
We gotta bring Ristar back. Any time I play a fantastic old 2D platformer that hasn't had any new installments in ages I remind myself that Bubsy was able to get two and feel like weeping.
2019
The ideal level of complexity for a mobile game I can get into: not too involved or distracting, but engaging enough that it doesn't feel like mindlessly tapping for a reward in a colorful skinner box. Genuinely challenging and a lot of game to sink your teeth into, and it also looks and sounds great. It even started doing some Tetris Effect shit to me where I started seeing creep combos when I closed my eyes. Ultimately my biggest problem is that, even without the free-to-play model, it still does that mobile game thing of "oh you're in the last set of levels? well now everything's going to be so hard that you either do a level over and over again or spend your resources on overpowered items that have now become necessary to complete the level." Still pretty good though, check it out if you end up with a free sub to Apple Arcade.
2022
Really appreciate a game like this that makes its mission statement very clearly and then nails it. These days I think these sorts of Sonic-inspired linear 3D platformers are much more appealing to me than someone trying again to revive the collect-a-thon format for the 5th time, and Lunistice is a great example of the former. Going fast is the goal, quick reactions are key, and moving through levels feels smooth and graceful. Also love the visuals, I love it when a crystal in a game looks like a Crash Bandicoot 2 crystal. If I were to have one complaint, Hana's shadow should be a little more prominent. There were some mistakes I made that I felt like I could've avoided if I had a better idea of where Hana is in 3D space. But to be fair, this only happened a couple times early on, and by the second half of the game I got used to it and managed just fine.
My feelings about the Pokemon series have been complicated for a while now. Lately it seems the series' fandom feels this way as well, as they appear to be in a constant state of war with each other and The Pokemon Company itself, but I’m talking from an outsider's perspective. I’ve always been around people who love Pokemon, and I’ve enjoyed the series and its titular Pocket Monsters plenty of times myself, but when it comes to actually sitting down and playing mainline Pokemon games, I only really get the desire to play one every 2 or 3 years, and when I do I very rarely bother with anything past seeing credits. I get the urge, I satisfy it, and then I move on. This is all to say that I don’t have a strong opinion on what Pokemon should or shouldn’t be. The strongest thing I can say about it is that I usually can’t muster up much enthusiasm for a new entry. So, when something like Legends Arceus shows up, a big game in the series that changes the formula so much that it’s debatable whether it's even a mainline game, now there’s something I feel more confident weighing in on, and a lot more curious to check out.
One aspect of Pokemon I HAVE been regularly keeping up with is Pokemon Go. I played it for a short while during its peak popularity before dropping it, but my friends convinced me to get back into it a few years ago. It's a fun group activity to do while out in public, something to pull out to see all the funny little guys I’ve caught, and in some of my most miserable moments in life, one of the few things motivating me to get out of the house. It’s a simple game, but it provides the exact level of entertainment and engagement that I want from a mobile game. Legends Arceus clearly takes some influence from Go’s style of catching and cataloging Pokemon, even borrowing the term “research task” which originated in Go, at least from what I can tell. Considering my primary fixation in Go is the catching and collecting aspect, this seemed like a great premise for an open-world Pokemon game. Over the years the structure of Pokemon battling has interested me less and less, saying this as someone who isn’t at all invested in the competitive scene or multiplayer Pokemon in general. I’ve seen one or two Angry Pokemon Fans claim that Go ruined the franchise, and while I can see why someone would say that, for me, it did the exact opposite. Ultimately, the attempt to merge Go-esque mechanics with both a Breath of the Wild style overworld and the traditional Pokemon mechanics is fun, but messy and flawed.
In this game, trainer battles and dungeons (or at least the Pokemon equivalent of dungeons) take a back seat, and instead the focus is on exploring a new, giant overworld split up into several areas, each with distinct climates, Pokemon populations, and level averages. In each section there are also unique ingredients to collect and craft into different items, sidequests to undertake, and eventually a “final boss” in the form of a Noble Pokemon that has been “frenzied” by a strike of lightning out of a time-space-hole, which you also came out of. This is a game about catching Pokemon more than anything, which is where the Pokemon Go comparison comes from. Like that game, you don’t have to engage in battle with a wild Pokemon to catch it. But now, catching has been greatly elaborated on, requiring a combination of effective item usage, positioning, and aiming. You can also end up in a battle with the Pokemon, intentionally or not. Coming upon a wild Pokemon requires a series of decisions and quick thinking, especially since many Pokemon will immediately begin attacking you if they are alerted of your presence. This is a world where the relationship between humans and Pokemon is uncertain and wary. In your average Pokemon game, the idea of a Pokemon attacking a human is preposterous, and reason for alarm, but here it’s expected. A Geodude will spot you and start throwing rocks at you, a Rapidash will charge you head-on, a Haunter will try to cut you off your path by teleporting in front of you, truly everyone is ready to throw down. I think this is one of the most effective parts of the game, how Pokemon end up being genuinely terrifying if you’re not prepared for them. They can corner and gang up on you and your team, this is the first time the term “blacking out” for getting a game over actually makes sense, these bitches are knocking you unconscious!
The focus is on catching Pokemon and navigating a world where they rule their domains, and I think this part of the game works really well. I love the streamlining of catching Pokemon and setting up all these different research tasks involving them to fill so that there’s always something new to work towards even with a Pokemon you’ve seen plenty of times already. It makes the problem of “fuck this it’s another Zubat” from previous games a lot less of a problem because now there’s an incentive to run into a Pokemon multiple times. Catching Pokemon may be more streamlined, but that doesn’t mean it’s monotonous either. Pokemon often have unique challenges in catching them, such as identifying their favorite food or knowing whether they run away at the sight of you or immediately begin attacking. Sure, it’s not as involved as catching something in Bugsnax or Ape Escape, but when it’s not a level 3 Bidoof, some thinking is required. There are a lot of little calculations to be made, like how close you can get before alerting a Pokemon, whether or not you can manage to throw a ball at it from far away, or if you can make it to another hiding spot from where you are. You can hit Pokemon with items to stun them, smoke bombs to create hiding spots, or stealth spray to become harder to identify. The use of items to help with catching Pokemon often involves the crafting aspect of this game. I don’t know if I can fully identify why the idea of crafting in the new Animal Crossing game disgusts me but I’m fine with it here. I don’t know, it’s nice to always have a backup supply of stuff to make Pokeballs, potions, and revives out of. Also, the ingredients for making these items are everywhere, and just buying items isn’t prohibitively expensive either so it’s not like crafting is the only viable option. But like I said, everything about catching Pokemon and traversing the overworld feels really solid, it’s the reason I kept playing and still have the urge to knock out some of the remaining sidequests and post-game content. But this is not a case of hitting the bullseye on the first try, because there’s a whole lot in this game that could use some improvement.
To me, the biggest issue in regard to this game’s structure is that it tries being Breath of the Wild but instead it’s if BOTW was only its overworld, without the countless trials and dungeons scattered throughout. Each of the overworld areas has distinct regions within them, but what they don’t have is the thing other open-world games do where there’s something distinct, weird, or large off in the distance, motivating the player to investigate. The main path in every area usually just leads to the top of a mountain. This ends up making the overworld feel samey, and even where there are distinct sections on the map, they don’t stick in my head as memorable landmarks. If I didn’t have a marker to follow, I would end up constantly checking my map to remember where the fuck I am or going. There are maybe two parts of this game that I would consider to be close to a dungeon, everything else is out in the open, which you could argue is appropriate for the setting, but nah, this world needs places to go besides “on top of the mountain” or “on the beach” or “that island over there”. The Ride Pokemon do help a lot, I like the way you gradually unlock better and better forms of traversal and how it makes the world feel like it opens up more and more. But there’s that one balloon mission that requires gracefully switching between them, and that’s where you run into the problem with this game’s maximalist approach to controller layout. Every button has a function, and often in a way you wouldn’t expect. You get used to it for the most part, but one thing I never got used to was using + to summon a Ride Pokemon, and using the left and right d-pad to switch between them. I always messed up some part of this process and would end up summoning when I intended to pause, immediately alerting every Pokemon around me.
Another problem is that this whole new form of Pokemon catching is clumsily stuck alongside traditional Pokemon mechanics that make both of those things not feel as good as they could be. I know I said normal Pokemon battling doesn’t interest me much, but mostly battling wild Pokemon turns out to be even less interesting. There’s just not much thinking involved in it, which is why I always tried catching Pokemon outside of battle whenever I could. The second area in the game throws alerted Pokemon at you again and again until you end up fighting 3 Croagunks in a row with no change in strategy on how you fight them. Pokemon are also constantly respawning, so when you think you’ve cleared an area, one will just show up out of thin air when you turn the camera. The addition of agile and strong style moves is neat but using them against wild Pokemon often feels like prolonging something that’s already taking too long. The amount of bland wild Pokemon fighting led me to honestly miss trainer battles, which are in the game, but only barely. Any story battles are easy right up until the last stretch of the game, and a lot of the more engaging fights are post-game content. Also, it’s a bad fucking feeling to fight three Pokemon at once with only one Pokemon. I kind of get that in the wild it helps keep the player afraid of alerted Pokemon, but making me do it in a trainer battle is very annoying. It simply feels unfair to have your first Pokemon basically be dead on arrival as it gets combo’d by three opponents. Do you know what would be nice for these situations? Double battles! Imagine if this game was an open-world version of Pokemon Colosseum, now there’s a video game. Funnily enough, that game had the exact opposite structure where it was all trainer battles and no wild Pokemon, but at the end of the day, I would consider Colosseum to be a better game simply because double battles are cool. Even if it were all single battles, it’s certainly more engaging than constant wild Pokemon fights.
Maybe it seems hypocritical on my part to admonish this game for not being more like the main series games I’m already tired of, but if I’m being honest, the shortcomings of this game made me crave a more traditional Pokemon entry. So much about this game’s structure is fun, but it needs something else going on. This is where I really feel the weight of Game Freak’s release structure weighing the game down, since in comparison the Zelda team clearly had all the time in the world to release their Big Next-Gen Game. Game Freak also clearly doesn’t have access to the same tech wizards that first-party Nintendo games often have on staff, but I don’t have too much of a bone to pick with this game’s graphics. The overall look and feel is serviceable, and while there were moments of egregious slowdown, they were few and far between. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it Actually Looks Good, but I didn’t mind the graphical fidelity (high praise, I know).
Like I said earlier, this game places itself in a very interesting time for the Pokemon series, in which humanity has not found a peaceful relationship with Pokemon and only barely understands their nature. Playing as someone at the front line of Pokemon research is a good premise, but in terms of the actual plot, I felt like it was mostly cool moments surrounded by stuff I didn’t care about. The story around the Noble Arcanine was neat, seeing Jubilife Village grow is interesting, Ingo’s whole deal is honestly pretty cool, but there’s a whole lot of stuff I just find dumb. The Pearl and Diamond clans' whole thing being about arguing whether time or space is better is the dumbest thing ever. It’s like arguing about whether sleeping or eating is better, who the fuck cares. And the clan leaders are constantly like “Ah yes, you got here just in TIME. Remember that TIME is the essence, who needs SPACE” like shut the fuck up! And then some character shows how wise they are by being like “Perhaps we need both time AND space”, OK, yeah, great job. Maybe it’s meant to be a petty argument, but christ, witnessing multiple conversations about whether time or space is better just makes my brain leave my body. I guess it’s no more ridiculous than Team Magma and Team Aqua, but in this game, these are supposed to be characters on our side, and not just incompetent villains. Maybe some small child thinks it’s very interesting, good for them, I guess. Also, in terms of cutscene presentation, it varies wildly. There are some scenes that very obviously are the Key Cutscenes with all the animation and camera movement and direction in the world, but a lot of what could be interesting moments are given very little to work with. It doesn’t help that every time a character does something interesting it just cuts to black, but I don’t think this game is uniquely guilty of that.
There are some other gripes I have about the general premise of this game. When you are cast into the Hisui region, your instruction from God is “Seek out all Pokemon”, and that essentially means helping your ancestors tame the wild frontier of Pokemon in order to pave the way for modern society. It’s sort of like Pokemon Manifest Destiny, and it did raise some concern in me throughout playing the game, but I’m not nearly capable enough to dissect it, especially since confronting this game’s attitude on “taming the land” would involve eventually confronting the entire open world game genre. Just felt like I needed to mention the fact that, yeah, it is a bit off putting. It doesn’t help that the organization you work for, Galaxy Team, has come into the Hisui region as outsiders, inserting themselves into conflicts between the local clans. A series like Pokemon is probably never going to seriously go into this topic, but I would like to transition this talking point into another involving something this game DOES try to get serious about. It is established throughout the game that catching Pokemon in Pokeballs is something very new, and people outside of Galaxy Team are at first adverse to it. Several characters claim that it’s cruel and uncaring and that it reduces Pokemon to tools and servants instead of equals to their human partners. This ultimately leads to nothing, as the game just responds with “actually Pokemon love being in Pokeballs, they like it a lot, there is no part of this that is bad.” At some point, why even bother if the answer to what seems like a relatively challenging question for the series is simply, “nuh-uh.” Remember when Pikachu’s Vacation was like “Pokemon will never fight each other outside of a trainer battle” and how absurd that sounds if you think about it? It feels like that, a dumb answer for an idea that, if you’re going to bother acknowledging, you should respond with something a lot more thought out.
There’s a good thing here, and I did genuinely have a good time with this game. But I can very clearly see a much better game than this, it’s a real “one step forward, two steps back” situation. I appreciate that Game Freak went for it in this one, and I hope they get a chance to make a sequel that’s given a little more time in the oven. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen of Scarlet/Violet seems to indicate that probably won’t be the case for any Pokemon game in the near future. Also, I’m starting to realize maybe I just want a JRPG with an actual party instead of 1-on-1 dueling, I think that’s what I need in my life. A monster collecting JRPG that allows you to battle with multiple of them at once in a full party, does such a thing exist? (This is a joke; I know that this extremely exists). One more thing: fuck you for making Decidueye fighting-grass, what’s wrong with you, I was scammed.
One aspect of Pokemon I HAVE been regularly keeping up with is Pokemon Go. I played it for a short while during its peak popularity before dropping it, but my friends convinced me to get back into it a few years ago. It's a fun group activity to do while out in public, something to pull out to see all the funny little guys I’ve caught, and in some of my most miserable moments in life, one of the few things motivating me to get out of the house. It’s a simple game, but it provides the exact level of entertainment and engagement that I want from a mobile game. Legends Arceus clearly takes some influence from Go’s style of catching and cataloging Pokemon, even borrowing the term “research task” which originated in Go, at least from what I can tell. Considering my primary fixation in Go is the catching and collecting aspect, this seemed like a great premise for an open-world Pokemon game. Over the years the structure of Pokemon battling has interested me less and less, saying this as someone who isn’t at all invested in the competitive scene or multiplayer Pokemon in general. I’ve seen one or two Angry Pokemon Fans claim that Go ruined the franchise, and while I can see why someone would say that, for me, it did the exact opposite. Ultimately, the attempt to merge Go-esque mechanics with both a Breath of the Wild style overworld and the traditional Pokemon mechanics is fun, but messy and flawed.
In this game, trainer battles and dungeons (or at least the Pokemon equivalent of dungeons) take a back seat, and instead the focus is on exploring a new, giant overworld split up into several areas, each with distinct climates, Pokemon populations, and level averages. In each section there are also unique ingredients to collect and craft into different items, sidequests to undertake, and eventually a “final boss” in the form of a Noble Pokemon that has been “frenzied” by a strike of lightning out of a time-space-hole, which you also came out of. This is a game about catching Pokemon more than anything, which is where the Pokemon Go comparison comes from. Like that game, you don’t have to engage in battle with a wild Pokemon to catch it. But now, catching has been greatly elaborated on, requiring a combination of effective item usage, positioning, and aiming. You can also end up in a battle with the Pokemon, intentionally or not. Coming upon a wild Pokemon requires a series of decisions and quick thinking, especially since many Pokemon will immediately begin attacking you if they are alerted of your presence. This is a world where the relationship between humans and Pokemon is uncertain and wary. In your average Pokemon game, the idea of a Pokemon attacking a human is preposterous, and reason for alarm, but here it’s expected. A Geodude will spot you and start throwing rocks at you, a Rapidash will charge you head-on, a Haunter will try to cut you off your path by teleporting in front of you, truly everyone is ready to throw down. I think this is one of the most effective parts of the game, how Pokemon end up being genuinely terrifying if you’re not prepared for them. They can corner and gang up on you and your team, this is the first time the term “blacking out” for getting a game over actually makes sense, these bitches are knocking you unconscious!
The focus is on catching Pokemon and navigating a world where they rule their domains, and I think this part of the game works really well. I love the streamlining of catching Pokemon and setting up all these different research tasks involving them to fill so that there’s always something new to work towards even with a Pokemon you’ve seen plenty of times already. It makes the problem of “fuck this it’s another Zubat” from previous games a lot less of a problem because now there’s an incentive to run into a Pokemon multiple times. Catching Pokemon may be more streamlined, but that doesn’t mean it’s monotonous either. Pokemon often have unique challenges in catching them, such as identifying their favorite food or knowing whether they run away at the sight of you or immediately begin attacking. Sure, it’s not as involved as catching something in Bugsnax or Ape Escape, but when it’s not a level 3 Bidoof, some thinking is required. There are a lot of little calculations to be made, like how close you can get before alerting a Pokemon, whether or not you can manage to throw a ball at it from far away, or if you can make it to another hiding spot from where you are. You can hit Pokemon with items to stun them, smoke bombs to create hiding spots, or stealth spray to become harder to identify. The use of items to help with catching Pokemon often involves the crafting aspect of this game. I don’t know if I can fully identify why the idea of crafting in the new Animal Crossing game disgusts me but I’m fine with it here. I don’t know, it’s nice to always have a backup supply of stuff to make Pokeballs, potions, and revives out of. Also, the ingredients for making these items are everywhere, and just buying items isn’t prohibitively expensive either so it’s not like crafting is the only viable option. But like I said, everything about catching Pokemon and traversing the overworld feels really solid, it’s the reason I kept playing and still have the urge to knock out some of the remaining sidequests and post-game content. But this is not a case of hitting the bullseye on the first try, because there’s a whole lot in this game that could use some improvement.
To me, the biggest issue in regard to this game’s structure is that it tries being Breath of the Wild but instead it’s if BOTW was only its overworld, without the countless trials and dungeons scattered throughout. Each of the overworld areas has distinct regions within them, but what they don’t have is the thing other open-world games do where there’s something distinct, weird, or large off in the distance, motivating the player to investigate. The main path in every area usually just leads to the top of a mountain. This ends up making the overworld feel samey, and even where there are distinct sections on the map, they don’t stick in my head as memorable landmarks. If I didn’t have a marker to follow, I would end up constantly checking my map to remember where the fuck I am or going. There are maybe two parts of this game that I would consider to be close to a dungeon, everything else is out in the open, which you could argue is appropriate for the setting, but nah, this world needs places to go besides “on top of the mountain” or “on the beach” or “that island over there”. The Ride Pokemon do help a lot, I like the way you gradually unlock better and better forms of traversal and how it makes the world feel like it opens up more and more. But there’s that one balloon mission that requires gracefully switching between them, and that’s where you run into the problem with this game’s maximalist approach to controller layout. Every button has a function, and often in a way you wouldn’t expect. You get used to it for the most part, but one thing I never got used to was using + to summon a Ride Pokemon, and using the left and right d-pad to switch between them. I always messed up some part of this process and would end up summoning when I intended to pause, immediately alerting every Pokemon around me.
Another problem is that this whole new form of Pokemon catching is clumsily stuck alongside traditional Pokemon mechanics that make both of those things not feel as good as they could be. I know I said normal Pokemon battling doesn’t interest me much, but mostly battling wild Pokemon turns out to be even less interesting. There’s just not much thinking involved in it, which is why I always tried catching Pokemon outside of battle whenever I could. The second area in the game throws alerted Pokemon at you again and again until you end up fighting 3 Croagunks in a row with no change in strategy on how you fight them. Pokemon are also constantly respawning, so when you think you’ve cleared an area, one will just show up out of thin air when you turn the camera. The addition of agile and strong style moves is neat but using them against wild Pokemon often feels like prolonging something that’s already taking too long. The amount of bland wild Pokemon fighting led me to honestly miss trainer battles, which are in the game, but only barely. Any story battles are easy right up until the last stretch of the game, and a lot of the more engaging fights are post-game content. Also, it’s a bad fucking feeling to fight three Pokemon at once with only one Pokemon. I kind of get that in the wild it helps keep the player afraid of alerted Pokemon, but making me do it in a trainer battle is very annoying. It simply feels unfair to have your first Pokemon basically be dead on arrival as it gets combo’d by three opponents. Do you know what would be nice for these situations? Double battles! Imagine if this game was an open-world version of Pokemon Colosseum, now there’s a video game. Funnily enough, that game had the exact opposite structure where it was all trainer battles and no wild Pokemon, but at the end of the day, I would consider Colosseum to be a better game simply because double battles are cool. Even if it were all single battles, it’s certainly more engaging than constant wild Pokemon fights.
Maybe it seems hypocritical on my part to admonish this game for not being more like the main series games I’m already tired of, but if I’m being honest, the shortcomings of this game made me crave a more traditional Pokemon entry. So much about this game’s structure is fun, but it needs something else going on. This is where I really feel the weight of Game Freak’s release structure weighing the game down, since in comparison the Zelda team clearly had all the time in the world to release their Big Next-Gen Game. Game Freak also clearly doesn’t have access to the same tech wizards that first-party Nintendo games often have on staff, but I don’t have too much of a bone to pick with this game’s graphics. The overall look and feel is serviceable, and while there were moments of egregious slowdown, they were few and far between. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it Actually Looks Good, but I didn’t mind the graphical fidelity (high praise, I know).
Like I said earlier, this game places itself in a very interesting time for the Pokemon series, in which humanity has not found a peaceful relationship with Pokemon and only barely understands their nature. Playing as someone at the front line of Pokemon research is a good premise, but in terms of the actual plot, I felt like it was mostly cool moments surrounded by stuff I didn’t care about. The story around the Noble Arcanine was neat, seeing Jubilife Village grow is interesting, Ingo’s whole deal is honestly pretty cool, but there’s a whole lot of stuff I just find dumb. The Pearl and Diamond clans' whole thing being about arguing whether time or space is better is the dumbest thing ever. It’s like arguing about whether sleeping or eating is better, who the fuck cares. And the clan leaders are constantly like “Ah yes, you got here just in TIME. Remember that TIME is the essence, who needs SPACE” like shut the fuck up! And then some character shows how wise they are by being like “Perhaps we need both time AND space”, OK, yeah, great job. Maybe it’s meant to be a petty argument, but christ, witnessing multiple conversations about whether time or space is better just makes my brain leave my body. I guess it’s no more ridiculous than Team Magma and Team Aqua, but in this game, these are supposed to be characters on our side, and not just incompetent villains. Maybe some small child thinks it’s very interesting, good for them, I guess. Also, in terms of cutscene presentation, it varies wildly. There are some scenes that very obviously are the Key Cutscenes with all the animation and camera movement and direction in the world, but a lot of what could be interesting moments are given very little to work with. It doesn’t help that every time a character does something interesting it just cuts to black, but I don’t think this game is uniquely guilty of that.
There are some other gripes I have about the general premise of this game. When you are cast into the Hisui region, your instruction from God is “Seek out all Pokemon”, and that essentially means helping your ancestors tame the wild frontier of Pokemon in order to pave the way for modern society. It’s sort of like Pokemon Manifest Destiny, and it did raise some concern in me throughout playing the game, but I’m not nearly capable enough to dissect it, especially since confronting this game’s attitude on “taming the land” would involve eventually confronting the entire open world game genre. Just felt like I needed to mention the fact that, yeah, it is a bit off putting. It doesn’t help that the organization you work for, Galaxy Team, has come into the Hisui region as outsiders, inserting themselves into conflicts between the local clans. A series like Pokemon is probably never going to seriously go into this topic, but I would like to transition this talking point into another involving something this game DOES try to get serious about. It is established throughout the game that catching Pokemon in Pokeballs is something very new, and people outside of Galaxy Team are at first adverse to it. Several characters claim that it’s cruel and uncaring and that it reduces Pokemon to tools and servants instead of equals to their human partners. This ultimately leads to nothing, as the game just responds with “actually Pokemon love being in Pokeballs, they like it a lot, there is no part of this that is bad.” At some point, why even bother if the answer to what seems like a relatively challenging question for the series is simply, “nuh-uh.” Remember when Pikachu’s Vacation was like “Pokemon will never fight each other outside of a trainer battle” and how absurd that sounds if you think about it? It feels like that, a dumb answer for an idea that, if you’re going to bother acknowledging, you should respond with something a lot more thought out.
There’s a good thing here, and I did genuinely have a good time with this game. But I can very clearly see a much better game than this, it’s a real “one step forward, two steps back” situation. I appreciate that Game Freak went for it in this one, and I hope they get a chance to make a sequel that’s given a little more time in the oven. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen of Scarlet/Violet seems to indicate that probably won’t be the case for any Pokemon game in the near future. Also, I’m starting to realize maybe I just want a JRPG with an actual party instead of 1-on-1 dueling, I think that’s what I need in my life. A monster collecting JRPG that allows you to battle with multiple of them at once in a full party, does such a thing exist? (This is a joke; I know that this extremely exists). One more thing: fuck you for making Decidueye fighting-grass, what’s wrong with you, I was scammed.
1992
Huge improvement over Sonic 1, more than I even realized when I first played through the Genesis Sonic games, but the bafflingly bad string of levels right at the end really make it hard for me to muster up that much enthusiasm for this. When you get owned by like the fifth crab in Metropolis Zone, or get caught off guard in Wing Fortress Zone and fall to your death yet again, those moments make remembering the good times a little harder. Ultimately didn't even make it to the final boss this time because I find the last stretch of this game so exhausting. Also, is there anyone who thinks the chaos emerald minigame here is better than Blue Spheres? If so, that's scary, I don't want to know that person.
2011
Sonic Frontiers is gonna be here any minute now, so I thought I'd get caught up on the latest in Hedgehog gaming, starting with this. I tried playing Generations several years ago, but for one reason or another, I fell off. I think the fast reaction-based platforming threw me off, and I think I was still in my "old Sonic rules, new Sonic drools" phase. Since then, I've only become an even bigger Sonic fan, but one with a much greater appreciation for every era. I mean, right now Sonic Adventure 1 is my favorite of the 3D games, that's not something you just start saying unless you're REALLY poisoned. At the same time, my past experiences with this and Unleashed led me to believe I would still dislike boost-era Sonic, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out I enjoyed it quite a bit in this game.
The modern Sonic stages do a really good job of incorporating the 2D Sonic design of requiring fast and precise platforming to make it to the top of the stage, where more sections facilitate fast movement, while failure sends you to the bottom of the stage where its harder to get going anywhere. The game also includes multiple opportunities to fall or rise to these different sections depending on how you play, so these "failure sections" never feel like they go on for too long, and the "success sections" still challenge good players. It's a philosophy that allows these stages to carry a lot of fun momentum, and it's an effective expression of speed that the non-boost games don't always capture. It also helps that unlike Unleashed, the frame rate is fully consistent (at least on PC).
Classic Sonic is also no slouch here. The 2D stages honestly have the consistent fun of something like Sonic 2. Sure, things are a lot more simplified compared to what Sonic could do in 3, but the strengths of classic-era Sonic design are felt here. The game also does a fun thing where modern and classic Sonic both go through the same stage, but often explore different parts of it, like how classic Sonic spends a lot of time inside the building in Speed Highway that Sonic runs to the bottom of, or how modern Sonic's Crisis City ends when he reaches the fire tornado, whereas classic Sonic spends the whole stage going around it. There's an effort to make sure classic and modern Sonic don't feel like two separate games, but instead subtly interact with each other, which ties into how modern Sonic gameplay takes cues from classic Sonic design. And of course, the incredible remixes for every stage speak for themselves.
Ultimately I still prefer Adventure, because as fun as boost gameplay is, I think it wears out its welcome at a certain point, and this game lasts just to the point before that happens. I never really got a hold of the drift mechanic and felt like the game never really justified mastering it, and the stomp is just a worse version of the SA2 bounce. There's also the fact that, well, I think one of the most vital aspects of Sonic is the ability to play as multiple characters, and it seems Sonic Team is dead-set on never letting that happen. Characters show up for bonus challenges, and it's just sad to see them reduced to hosting minigames. In addition to that, this game features one of the most severe fumbles at the end zone I've seen in a game. Hopefully, we never see the trope of "the actual final boss is a big, lumbering, forgettable thing" again, and that's not even getting into the boring choice of music and the constant reminders from side characters that yes, that does look like a homing shot.
But in this age of superfluous remakes that exist only to remind you that a Brand Exists, I appreciate Sonic Team's approach here. Instead of making a worse version of an existing game, let's instead highlight some of the best and most exciting moments in the series and elevate them even higher. A version of City Escape this good would have never existed if they had to remake the entire game. You hear that Konami, just make Silent Hill Generations and stop wasting our time!
The modern Sonic stages do a really good job of incorporating the 2D Sonic design of requiring fast and precise platforming to make it to the top of the stage, where more sections facilitate fast movement, while failure sends you to the bottom of the stage where its harder to get going anywhere. The game also includes multiple opportunities to fall or rise to these different sections depending on how you play, so these "failure sections" never feel like they go on for too long, and the "success sections" still challenge good players. It's a philosophy that allows these stages to carry a lot of fun momentum, and it's an effective expression of speed that the non-boost games don't always capture. It also helps that unlike Unleashed, the frame rate is fully consistent (at least on PC).
Classic Sonic is also no slouch here. The 2D stages honestly have the consistent fun of something like Sonic 2. Sure, things are a lot more simplified compared to what Sonic could do in 3, but the strengths of classic-era Sonic design are felt here. The game also does a fun thing where modern and classic Sonic both go through the same stage, but often explore different parts of it, like how classic Sonic spends a lot of time inside the building in Speed Highway that Sonic runs to the bottom of, or how modern Sonic's Crisis City ends when he reaches the fire tornado, whereas classic Sonic spends the whole stage going around it. There's an effort to make sure classic and modern Sonic don't feel like two separate games, but instead subtly interact with each other, which ties into how modern Sonic gameplay takes cues from classic Sonic design. And of course, the incredible remixes for every stage speak for themselves.
Ultimately I still prefer Adventure, because as fun as boost gameplay is, I think it wears out its welcome at a certain point, and this game lasts just to the point before that happens. I never really got a hold of the drift mechanic and felt like the game never really justified mastering it, and the stomp is just a worse version of the SA2 bounce. There's also the fact that, well, I think one of the most vital aspects of Sonic is the ability to play as multiple characters, and it seems Sonic Team is dead-set on never letting that happen. Characters show up for bonus challenges, and it's just sad to see them reduced to hosting minigames. In addition to that, this game features one of the most severe fumbles at the end zone I've seen in a game. Hopefully, we never see the trope of "the actual final boss is a big, lumbering, forgettable thing" again, and that's not even getting into the boring choice of music and the constant reminders from side characters that yes, that does look like a homing shot.
But in this age of superfluous remakes that exist only to remind you that a Brand Exists, I appreciate Sonic Team's approach here. Instead of making a worse version of an existing game, let's instead highlight some of the best and most exciting moments in the series and elevate them even higher. A version of City Escape this good would have never existed if they had to remake the entire game. You hear that Konami, just make Silent Hill Generations and stop wasting our time!
Every couple of years I see this game in my library and feel compelled to give it another try. This is one of the first games I had in my Steam library, and it never fails to disappoint me every time I play it.
I think this is one of those things where the idea for the game sounds good until you think about what it would actually be like to play it. There are a lot of falling block puzzle games, why not twist that and make it so that you're not controlling the blocks by dropping them, but instead by managing them from inside the field, jumping and dodging them while trying to arrange fallen blocks? The truth is that trying to create combos in a falling blocks game isn't very fun when the only means you have to do it with is a gun that only shoots horizontally. Waiting for the game to eventually create a large enough cluster of blocks to then slowly shoot it in order to get the points for it is simply not fun, it's like someone's playing a really fun game and you're just kind of witnessing that person have fun instead of you. Cool music though.
I think this is one of those things where the idea for the game sounds good until you think about what it would actually be like to play it. There are a lot of falling block puzzle games, why not twist that and make it so that you're not controlling the blocks by dropping them, but instead by managing them from inside the field, jumping and dodging them while trying to arrange fallen blocks? The truth is that trying to create combos in a falling blocks game isn't very fun when the only means you have to do it with is a gun that only shoots horizontally. Waiting for the game to eventually create a large enough cluster of blocks to then slowly shoot it in order to get the points for it is simply not fun, it's like someone's playing a really fun game and you're just kind of witnessing that person have fun instead of you. Cool music though.
It's 2014 and Nintendo still isn't sure what to do about this whole "monetization" thing. Around this time, they had a couple of games out under the term "Free to Start", which were games that only allowed you to play one or two sets of levels before eventually requiring money to buy the rest of the game. It was kind of like how most game demos work now, but at the time Nintendo would claim this was their answer to free-to-play games. Eventually, Nintendo would start making games that were monetized like any other game, mostly in the DLC front, leaving microtransactions to random phone games, but before then, they were pretty quirky with their experiments in free-to-play games, possibly their most quirky being Rusty's Real Deal Baseball.
At its most basic, this is a collection of 10 baseball-themed minigames, all of which have basic and advanced difficulty levels and two endless modes. The thinking was probably to allow users to pick and buy the minigames they wanted, while the base game was free. The "Nintendo-like solution" here is then to introduce HOW the users would buy the games. Enter Rusty: a retired, semi-disgraced baseball player who now runs a struggling sports equipment store. His wife having left under mysterious circumstances, he's now left with taking care of ten identical-looking children while running the store, which despite its declining nature, has a big "I <3 Haggling" sign at the front. And so while every game is listed for $4, haggling can bring them down easily to under $2.
I find this to be an incredibly compelling pitch for a game. There are already a few games centered around the game creator and player having a "dialogue" together throughout the game, or games that revolve around different conversations with different characters and trying to "get" something out of them, so a game centered around the negotiation process between a buyer and seller is rife with potential. Some games have haggling mechanics, but not as the center focus of the game. The problem here is that since this is a Nintendo game for children that uses real-life money, the actual system for "haggling" can only go so far.
For a haggling system to be true to real life, it would have to be pretty tough to get a good deal. There would have to be several fail cases that are easy to step into, and factors outside of and leading up to the transaction to take into consideration. Even if one were trying to make a haggling system that was simpler than real life, there would still have to be some threat of failure. But Nintendo probably doesn't actually want to stop users from getting the lowest possible price on these games, so as long as you play every minigame often enough to get donuts, you have infinite tries and constant guidance for haggling Rusty down to the lowest price. Paying anything other than this is actively discouraged by the game, and in a way that makes sense, because it would probably suck to pay one price for a game and find out someone else paid way less. While it's disappointing that the actual "haggling" aspect of the game is very trivial and only really used as a setup for the game's plot and presentation, I do think it's an effective setup.
It's very easy to become attached to Rusty and his whole weird thing going on, he has the charm of a middle-aged man you just met who's very nice to you. He's like a guy I would love to meet at an Applebee's. He's also very pathetic, so it's fun to help him talk through his problems while also making them worse by constantly tricking him into giving you deep discounts. I know I complained about how incredibly the "haggling" system is, but maybe that's perfect for Rusty, it makes sense for his character to be incredibly bad at this, he's a softy who lets himself get carried away easily. In that case, this game probably isn't the best fit for a real-ass haggling system, Rusty isn't the type to fight back all that hard. And the story is just generally cute and funny, I think that makes up for it.
The mini-games themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. Just so you know, you don't actually have to know a lot about baseball to enjoy them. Each minigame focuses on one aspect of baseball, using simple controls for each one. There are ten available to purchase, and about 6 of them you need to purchase to "complete" the story. The first one you get, "Bat and Switch", honestly made a bad first impression on me. It felt like one of those things where I couldn't figure out the timing consistently, and when I feel like I'm doing the same thing but getting a different result, that really tries my patience. This unfortunately isn't the only mini-game with such a problem, as others use gyro controls, and while they aren't badly implemented, it just feels worse than just controlling it normally. Thankfully, there are enough levels in each minigame that if one doesn't fancy you, you won't feel like you're missing out too much by skipping it. There's also a good variety of what you do in these games, like a game about being an umpire, or one involving that one Japanese toy with the parts you knock out with a hammer. They have simple controls and premises, and at their best, they make for a great little toy to play with while waiting for something or in the middle of some task. I would say I enjoyed most of the minigames, but there are only a few I would vouch for as being stand out.
This leads to a problem I have with the game's structure, in which specific games are required to be purchased to progress the story. Why not just have the first 6 or so games progress the story, and the rest be optional purchases? Because I would much rather just pick and choose the games I want instead of being forced to buy the games that require gyro controls.
So in the end, Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is kind of a strange mess, and its unorthodox payment setup has probably led to a lot of people not bothering with it. But as long as you aren't like, actively making the wrong choice during purchases, you shouldn't end up spending more than $20 for this game. I think it's genuinely fun to interact with Rusty and his family and see the story play out, and doing it through this shop setting is a neat novelty, even if it doesn't reach its full potential. How much you enjoy the minigames will be up to personal preference but consider giving a couple of them a try. Also, fun fact, if the account on your 3DS is the same as the one on your Switch, any funds added to your Switch can be used on the 3DS as well. So it's not impossible to still play this game (don't know if emulators have figured out how to play this game without like, constantly switching in and out of saves or whatever). I genuinely think Nintendo should bring back Rusty, just have a better set of mini-games and we're golden. Now more than ever, I want to talk to this pathetic middle-aged dog.
At its most basic, this is a collection of 10 baseball-themed minigames, all of which have basic and advanced difficulty levels and two endless modes. The thinking was probably to allow users to pick and buy the minigames they wanted, while the base game was free. The "Nintendo-like solution" here is then to introduce HOW the users would buy the games. Enter Rusty: a retired, semi-disgraced baseball player who now runs a struggling sports equipment store. His wife having left under mysterious circumstances, he's now left with taking care of ten identical-looking children while running the store, which despite its declining nature, has a big "I <3 Haggling" sign at the front. And so while every game is listed for $4, haggling can bring them down easily to under $2.
I find this to be an incredibly compelling pitch for a game. There are already a few games centered around the game creator and player having a "dialogue" together throughout the game, or games that revolve around different conversations with different characters and trying to "get" something out of them, so a game centered around the negotiation process between a buyer and seller is rife with potential. Some games have haggling mechanics, but not as the center focus of the game. The problem here is that since this is a Nintendo game for children that uses real-life money, the actual system for "haggling" can only go so far.
For a haggling system to be true to real life, it would have to be pretty tough to get a good deal. There would have to be several fail cases that are easy to step into, and factors outside of and leading up to the transaction to take into consideration. Even if one were trying to make a haggling system that was simpler than real life, there would still have to be some threat of failure. But Nintendo probably doesn't actually want to stop users from getting the lowest possible price on these games, so as long as you play every minigame often enough to get donuts, you have infinite tries and constant guidance for haggling Rusty down to the lowest price. Paying anything other than this is actively discouraged by the game, and in a way that makes sense, because it would probably suck to pay one price for a game and find out someone else paid way less. While it's disappointing that the actual "haggling" aspect of the game is very trivial and only really used as a setup for the game's plot and presentation, I do think it's an effective setup.
It's very easy to become attached to Rusty and his whole weird thing going on, he has the charm of a middle-aged man you just met who's very nice to you. He's like a guy I would love to meet at an Applebee's. He's also very pathetic, so it's fun to help him talk through his problems while also making them worse by constantly tricking him into giving you deep discounts. I know I complained about how incredibly the "haggling" system is, but maybe that's perfect for Rusty, it makes sense for his character to be incredibly bad at this, he's a softy who lets himself get carried away easily. In that case, this game probably isn't the best fit for a real-ass haggling system, Rusty isn't the type to fight back all that hard. And the story is just generally cute and funny, I think that makes up for it.
The mini-games themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. Just so you know, you don't actually have to know a lot about baseball to enjoy them. Each minigame focuses on one aspect of baseball, using simple controls for each one. There are ten available to purchase, and about 6 of them you need to purchase to "complete" the story. The first one you get, "Bat and Switch", honestly made a bad first impression on me. It felt like one of those things where I couldn't figure out the timing consistently, and when I feel like I'm doing the same thing but getting a different result, that really tries my patience. This unfortunately isn't the only mini-game with such a problem, as others use gyro controls, and while they aren't badly implemented, it just feels worse than just controlling it normally. Thankfully, there are enough levels in each minigame that if one doesn't fancy you, you won't feel like you're missing out too much by skipping it. There's also a good variety of what you do in these games, like a game about being an umpire, or one involving that one Japanese toy with the parts you knock out with a hammer. They have simple controls and premises, and at their best, they make for a great little toy to play with while waiting for something or in the middle of some task. I would say I enjoyed most of the minigames, but there are only a few I would vouch for as being stand out.
This leads to a problem I have with the game's structure, in which specific games are required to be purchased to progress the story. Why not just have the first 6 or so games progress the story, and the rest be optional purchases? Because I would much rather just pick and choose the games I want instead of being forced to buy the games that require gyro controls.
So in the end, Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is kind of a strange mess, and its unorthodox payment setup has probably led to a lot of people not bothering with it. But as long as you aren't like, actively making the wrong choice during purchases, you shouldn't end up spending more than $20 for this game. I think it's genuinely fun to interact with Rusty and his family and see the story play out, and doing it through this shop setting is a neat novelty, even if it doesn't reach its full potential. How much you enjoy the minigames will be up to personal preference but consider giving a couple of them a try. Also, fun fact, if the account on your 3DS is the same as the one on your Switch, any funds added to your Switch can be used on the 3DS as well. So it's not impossible to still play this game (don't know if emulators have figured out how to play this game without like, constantly switching in and out of saves or whatever). I genuinely think Nintendo should bring back Rusty, just have a better set of mini-games and we're golden. Now more than ever, I want to talk to this pathetic middle-aged dog.