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Yakuza Kiwami
Yakuza Kiwami

Mar 17

Resident Evil 3
Resident Evil 3

Mar 17

Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition
Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition

Mar 10

Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Feb 05

Inscryption
Inscryption

Jan 11

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I wish the original Psychonauts felt as good to play as Psychonauts 2 does. In fact, I would like to petition Tim Schafer MYSELF into remaking Psychonauts 1 using everything they used to make Psychonauts 2 so great.

The game itself takes place only a couple days after the first but in reality, the sequel took over 15 years to come into existence but in that time it almost feels as if nothing was lost in creating a successor to the 2005 platforming classic. The humor, the style, the writing; everything feels so intact in creating this sequel. While this seems like a no-brainer (pun-intended), with how many remakes that happen decades after the original that lack the soul of the original, it’s actually a miracle that Psychonauts 2 feels like it is so genuine to its source material.

I had such a wonderful time exploring through this game and experiencing how much dedication went into creating this world, from bringing back OG voice actors to having a whole ass world dedicated to mainstay Jack Black where he sings an original song specifically for this game two years prior to him singing Peaches for the Mario Movie.

In all honesty, I would recommend newcomers to the series play this game first and if they are curious enough, watch the first game through youtube playthroughs until we get a proper remake of the first one. Not a simple upgraded remaster but a pure overhaul of everything that went into making the first one. Playing through the first game now in 2023 due to a dedication to Psychonauts 2 would be, in fact, a disservice to Psychonauts 2. The original was a flawed classic but it’s best not to remember the tediousness of it all but rather play Psychonauts 2 to experience how the vision should truly be played

Nintendo loves their gimmicks. Whether it be making you waggle the Wiimote in order to make Donkey Kong blow a dandelion or shake to make Mario spin attack, Nintendo has an infamous habit of forcing their players to play their way and none else. This is the case with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass which forces the player to play the entire game using only the stylus for the Nintendo DS.

At first I got sick to my stomach when I realized the d-pad did nothing but change menu positions. Slowly I put the stylus to the screen and the little Toon Link started moving and I immediately quit out to the main menu to see if there was an option I missed to make Link move like he had in any other game prior, but my heart sank to find out that Nintendo, of course, being the innovative and cutting edge company that they are, were going to force me to play this entire game with only the stylus.

Fortunately, after a few hours of playing, I got used to the stylus control. Basically, touching anywhere on the screen will guide your little fairy friend to that spot and Link will instantly follow. The further away in a direction you touch the faster Link runs. Many of the areas in the game are simple enough for this to not be much of a big deal but when trying to out maneuver a quick enemy or cut corners in a race against time, the stylus movement becomes just too approximate to be a proper replacement for the d-pad. Not to mention rolling seldom works whenever you need it to work. The game tells you to draw little circles at the edge of the screen in the direction you want to roll but I found that NEVER works. I end up just banging the stylus on the edge of the screen for a more accurate input. It’s not ideal but it’s a gameplay work around for something that should be much simpler to input.

But this isn’t to say that the stylus play doesn’t have its benefits. Touching the screen allows for pinpoint accuracy when utilizing some of the iconic weapons you’ll find along the journey. Nothing like precision arrow shooting, bomb throwing, grappling hooking and sword fighting. Just touching an enemy and having Link instantly slash it to pieces is an incredibly satisfying experience. Sometimes trying to side slash something or spin attack can be a little difficult for the game to register at times with their own unique stylus swipes but I’ve found just poking an enemy to death will get the job done.

At any given time, Link can only have one item at the ready because the game only allows one input for anything at a time and that’s the stylus so changing out items can be a little tedious especially in the heat of battle. Let’s say you’re in the middle of battle trying to run away. You need to attack his back with your boomerang but you have your grappling hook selected. You’re going to have to take the stylus off of the playing field which makes Link stop moving entirely allowing the enemy to get closer as you scramble through the bottom menu, select the boomer, select the boomerang in the top right corner and then finally get back to the action. Odds are though you’ll take a few unnecessary hearts of damage because of this. The game does offer a slight work around as the shoulder buttons will instantly ready the item to be used but that still doesn’t help with all of the hurried menu navigation.

Okay, that’s really all the gripes I have with the stylus play. If you ignore some of its pesky quirks, you’re in for a pretty light-hearted and classic style Zelda game. Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to The Wind Waker and because of that there’s a ton of ocean navigation to be had. In fact, Link and Tetra find themselves sailin away from the Great Sea after their triumphant defeat of Ganondorf only be succumbed by an eerie ghost ship sailing through their waters. Tetra finds herself the reluctant damsel in distress and Link is lost in an unknown ocean with the goal of getting back to his own ship and saving Tetra from the cursed ship.

Luckily for Link the exact island he lands on has everything he needs and all the information he needs to know in order to start his adventure. He meets a clever little fairy named Ciela with the same voice as Navi and her grandpa who guide him toward the Temple of the Ocean King which will give him the key to finding the ghost ship that holds Tetra captive. With so much ocean out there as well, Link is giong to need a ship and sure enough a treasure seeking, smoothing talking rapscallion name Linebeck is all for letting Link and Ciela use his ship if it means he partakes in the booty.

The Temple of the Ocean King on the starting island of Mercay acts as the centerpiece for the entire game. Link will continually return to this temple as he finds more gadgets and techniques in order to delve deeper in hopes of finding more sea charts that will allow him to continue his quest. The trick here is that there is a time limit and that’s where the Phantom Hourglass comes into play. The more time you spend figuring out the puzzles and battling through the floors, the more sand trickles down the hourglass and once there is no sand left the curse begins and Link will begin taking constant damage until he is dead.

But there is a silver lining within this temple as there are safe zones throughout every floor where time stops counting down and enemies no longer pursue you. So for those of you who get anxiety at a ticking clock rest easy, this is the only temple that does this and there are plenty of reprieves to be had to settle down and think about your next move. And you’ll need those reprieves to scout how to dodge some of the intimidating guards that roam the halls because they find you and slice you, not only will you take damage but you will lose a good 30 seconds off the hourglass as well. So planning here is everything.

While the idea of constantly returning to the same temple multiple times throughout the game might seem repetitive, gathering new items allows for new paths to be explored. I found that trying to come back and speedrun through each floor satisfying and is a testament to how well you understand the mechanics of your weapons and the dungeon itself. You start off with 10 minutes in the hourglass but as you beat more temples and explore the ocean you can eventually bring that number up to a whopping 25 minutes. I was able to get my temple completion time to about 22 minutes remaining (3 minutes used up) with the help of safe zones and time replenishments but I looked online to see how I compared to other players and OF COURSE there are people who beat the temple with NO time lost and I immediately closed the tab.

The rest of the temples are pretty straight forward for a Zelda game. Complete puzzles gather keys, collect the special weapon then collect the boss key. The cute thing about this one is that Link has to literally carry the boss key from the treasure chest he found it and take it to the lock while avoiding all the obstacles because it makes him slower. But overall it might be because I’m a galaxy brain I found the temples to be fairly simple and straightforward with very few puzzles that I thought were stumpers.

The bosses are classic tests to prove you know how to use the temple’s weapon and never really got beyond that in complexity which made them fairly simple to defeat. But knowing the weapons is vital in fighting the final boss which gives you the freedom of utilizing what you need in order to defeat it.

Speaking of items, those too are classic Zelda mainstays that you’ll recognize from throughout the series. You got the arrows, bombs, bombchus, grappling hook and hammer. The bombchus allow the player to draw a path with the stylus to its destination for precise utilization. Precision is really the name of the game with Phantom Hourglass items, being able to draw exactly where you want the boomerang to go or snipe with the arrows is some of the most satisfying uses of these items that a Zeda game has achieved. My favorite item though is the grappling hook. Not only does it grapple you to certain areas (and not have an annoying cutscene play everytime like in Wind Waker) but you can also tie your hook between two poles and tight rope walk. This comes in handy when you need to shoot an arrow in a hard to reach place. Not only that you can have Link catapult himself off a tethered rope while on the ground and launch him up to a higher plane. So at least the game brings some new ideas to at least a few of these classic weapons.

One of the brilliant ideas brought to the table is that now you can leave notes on the maps of the dungeons. You can mark where you’ve been, combinations to puzzles, pathways through mazes and so many other notes that makes navigation a ton more convenient. And this works with any map from temples, to islands to even maps on the sea charts, write down whatever you need. This works particularly well with the Temple of the Ocean King because with repeat visits having notes on where to go and shortcuts is so useful. Hell, I had to call to make an appointment to get a vaccine dose and used one of the sea charts to write down my appointment number because I had no pen and paper in my car! The Phantom Hourglass has made my life that much more convenient!

On the subject of sea charts, there is a lot of sea and you’re going to be using it to navigate to each of these temples on each of the islands spread throughout the World of the Ocean King. Unlike the Wind Waker where you had to constantly stop and bring out the Waker to change the direction of the wind, Linebeck’s steam powered boat (lovingly named the SS Linebeck, of course) just needs you to draw a line on a map and go along for the ride. Sailing the seas turns into a custom made on-rail shooter where you can shoot enemies with a simple touch of the screen and shooting a canon is satisfyingly precise. There isn’t a ton of enemy variety but from time to time they’ll give you something to shoot or jump over. In fact, the cannon shooting is so accurate it’s almost too easy to defeat enemies or sea bosses. Even though it is easy, battling bosses gives you the opportunity to not only fire at will but to constantly navigate around a boss to avoid damage and find its weak spot.

For the most part, the maps will have major islands already marked on your map so you can just draw a path to the port and go on your way. But something that I loved about Wind Waker, was finding each of the islands out at sea and Phantom Hourglass has a few unmarked islands on your map that you’ll to just have to do voyaging in over to discover which adds a bit more intrigue in exploring. Not that the world is huge like Wind Waker’s but it’s nice to know there’s a little extra to discover.

But not only can you explore the seas you can also explore the ocean floor as well. Wind Waker allowed you to use a crane to grab treasure chests on the seabed but these are usually depicted with short cutscenes. Phantom Hourglass fleshes this process out as a mini game where you must guide the crane down while avoiding octorok bombs by guiding it left and right as well as making it speed up or slow down. Then once you grab you gotta bring it back up but watch out because five hits and the crane is gone. You can get it repaired at the ship shop on Mercay island for a fee but sometimes I’ll forget and go to consecutive treasure sites and forget that my crane only has like one or two hits before exploding which makes me get on the edge of my seat when playing these minigames. While the game isn’t chock of full extra minigames or sidequests, just seeing the extra input put into this aspect of Wind Waker that was rather bare.

As with Wind Waker, sailing overall became tedious and time consuming and as well as Phantom Hourglass does to fix a lot of Wind Waker’s sailing problems it will eventually get repetitive and feel like a time sink. Luckily, there are golden frogs to find and blast out of the ocean and they will be so amazed by your aim that they will give you a special symbol to draw with on your Cyclone Slate given to you by the big boss of the golden frogs. Draw that slate anywhere in the ocean and you immediately be cycloned over to that area. The only down side is that the song that plays isn’t the Ballad of Gales song but rather just the enemy encounter song for some reason.

The music is very familiar to Wind Waker with a few standouts. You’ll be hearing the same song playing for every island, temple, enemy encounter. I mean, it’s got that Zelda magic but overall the soundtrack is underwhelming.

I have a very nostalgic bias towards the bright and cel-shaded art direction of Wind Waker and I love that they pixelated it all down to fit the constraints of the DS. The top-down perspective also keeps with tradition of old-school/handheld Zelda titles and is a time-mending blend of old and (then) new. Although there are a handful of moments where the camera will go behind Link which gives the game an odd vantage point for control but neat to see nonetheless.

Seeing the islands pop up along the horizon as you sail the SS Linebeck across the sea is always a treat. The islands are a cartoony representation of what actually appears on the island because when you get on the island everything is understandably pretty flat due to the perspective. Like the Isle of Ember, on the seas it looks like a big raging volcano but when you’re off the boat, it’s all just three not-so-high levels of flat land with a lava pool in the middle and it’s pretty funny to see how it scales down.

My time with Phantom Hourglass was simply delightful. I usually play Zelda games when they first come out but for whatever reason I missed out on the DS ones despite owning a DS. It was like embarking on an adventure in a time in Zelda’s history where Nintendo was aiming on a transition. You get a bit of a the classic with a little but of the gimmicky style of Nintendo that would dominate the next decade and a half. If you love Wind Waker, just imagine a miniature and streamlined version of that game that acts as a continuation of its story as well as fixes its sailing. It’s definitely worth it to seek it out whether you can find it from a game shop or emulator.


Hi-Fi Rush is stylish in almost every aspect. Music, art, humor, rhythm, dialogue, gameplay. Mending a rhythm game with the stylish action genre, every piece of Hi-Fi Rush is drenched in its apparent dedication to these aspects. The game moves at a certain BPM and EVERYTHING is based on the beat. The environments, the music in the background, the NPCs, the pace of the main character’s footsteps all move and flow based on this BPM. The game incentivizes you to play in time to the beat. Jumping to the beat, dodging to the beat, swinging your cool guitar into enemies FLCL style to the beat will allow you to jump higher and deal even more damage to your enemies.

Being a rhythm game, music is the foundation for every level. From puzzles and platforming to combat encounters and boss battles, the game uses music ranging from original music to indie bands to Nine Inch Nails. It’s jaw-dropping how well the first boss syncs up his attacks with NiN’s “1,000,000”. But just even the little things like grappling to a ledge right on the beat and hearing that cool little HEY!’ sound effect just makes you feel good.

Don’t worry though. If you aren’t musically-inclined you can still play well enough as the game doesn’t penalize you for not hitting the right BPM but rather it rewards the player for staying on beat. But I’ll admit, if you aren’t, at least regularly, playing to the beat, you are missing out on a ton of what makes this game so cool. The game does offer an optional metronome on screen to help with pacing but the visuals of the scenery do this just as well.

At first I thought that rhythm was the only gimmick this game offered but I soon learned that this game is a whole ass competent stylish fighting game in and off itself, with so many different moves to unlock, combos to learn, characters to help you assist that you can also customize, Hi-Fi Rush is so much more than a gimmick and honestly could hold its own without the rhythm stuff but the rhythm aspects are what makes this game one of the most memorable in recent memory. Not to mention, being able to replay older levels with all your newly acquired abilities to earn more cash to buy more moves or collectibles for your characters adds so much to the replay value.

Hi-Fi Rush was an absolute blast. Visually, musically, mechanically; everything comes together so well. Even the writing, the stupid dialogue of the loveable but braindead MC and the cast of both allies and villains give me so many Futurama vibes that just hits the spot. This game came out of nowhere and I’m glad to see how much more they can add to this in future installments.