Despite my obsession with Time Crisis, the original game is something that I respect a lot more than I actually enjoy playing. Right away, the hallmarks that characterize the series are present front and center. The trademark cover system becomes key to careful resource management, in that you must time your dodges carefully against incoming attacks while keeping an eye on your remaining ammo and syncing your dodges with necessary reloads. Enemies are color-coded to quickly communicate their threat level (reds will almost immediately damage you, orange vests have trickier weapons with slower attacks but higher accuracy, and blues are your standard fare that tend to shoot like stormtroopers but will eventually find you), with closer enemies easier to spot and hit but generally posing a larger threat, especially enemies with clubs and claws that will never miss. Headshots aren’t required since any hit will immediately down a foe, but higher accuracy is nevertheless rewarded because enemies are often utilizing cover just like you, and nailing enemies when they’re appearing for the first time out of hidden traps and doors or hitting their exposed limbs sticking out of cover saves valuable seconds.

As such, the toughest enemy is not so much Time Crisis’ many goons or the bosses, but rather, the timer itself. It’s simultaneously the original Time Crisis’ biggest draw and biggest con: every action you take contributes to preservation of your remaining time, including optional bright orange enemies that provide little time bonuses upon hit, resulting in a very focused arcade experience. However, as a result, I found the game to be extremely difficult and punishing: you can’t afford to play it safe with the scant time gains you’ll get from clearing each scenario (since the timer is never reset, even after clearing acts or stages), especially because enemies appear in waves that progress only upon clearing all present enemies on screen, and can also waste tons of time if you miss and they duck behind cover. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem, except unlike the other main installments, standard enemies (blues and more competent browns) in the original Time Crisis deal damage based off of bullet thresholds; after a certain number of shots fired your way out of cover, they sometimes have a chance to fire a shot that can actually damage you. There’s no feasible way to distinguish between a shot from these foes that will miss versus actually hitting you, because the animation to duck below cover isn’t faster than the short delay between the red flash of damaging bullets and the actual hit, so it’s impossible to react to. Furthermore, actually getting hit wastes a few seconds because it puts you in a state where you cannot fire or duck below cover to reload, creating further complications especially in scenarios where multiple enemies are on screen firing at you. As a result, it often felt like I was required to memorize spawn locations and pick off enemies immediately to prevent most bullets from being fired altogether, since playing by quick reaction felt unviable when I had to play proactively in scenes where multiple enemies were firing, making it easy to lose track of how many bullets came close to hitting me. This pressure of needing to play almost perfectly was exacerbated by the fact that continues restart you at the beginning of acts instead of resuming where you lost all your lives, and that there is no way to regain lives outside of downing 40 enemies in a row without missing once. I respect what the original was trying to do with its simple toolkit and scoring system, but I can’t deny that the difficulty curve felt ridiculously steep and unwelcoming at times.

Still, I can’t be too much of a downer. It’s classic Time Crisis with a batshit crazy plot involving destructive weapons, kidnapping, and terrorists, alongside extremely cheesy dialogue and corny voice-acting with tons of flashy boss fights in a 3D low-polygonal trap-ridden castle. The exclusive Special Mode in the Playstation edition is a nice cherry on top, with branching paths that decide what environments you traverse resulting in different boss fights, all determined based upon your clear times: not quite as exciting as how they handle branching paths in House of the Dead (i.e. saving civilians, shooting switches, etc), but I respect its presence regardless. While I’ll generally deviate towards the other entries in the series, I’m glad I got to finally explore the ambitious beginnings of my favorite light-gun franchise that set the standard of spectacle for future installments. Now if only I could find those remaining Time Crisis II and 4 cabinets…

The first genuinely pleasant surprise of my 2023.

Flywrench's core concept seems so simple in theory, yet is carried out so deftly despite how ankle-breakingly difficult the game gets. You steer this flying contraption that has to maneuver through these tight corridors and have to change to the correct corresponding color (white in neutral state, red when tapping and holding jump, and green when spinning the contraption and bouncing off of yellow walls) to successfully pass through while "platforming." There's not much complexity to the control scheme in terms of movement tech, but the controls are quite sensitive, to where you could sneeze on your controller or accidentally tap the jump button too quickly and you'd find yourself rocketing off into the ceiling. It's not the most elegant platformer out there given the sheer precision required to master the momentum physics, aerial drift, and the eternal struggle against gravity itself, but the raw and sloppy feeling quick-fire movement turns into this thing of beauty when you finally break through and start exploiting the game's systems, flying through levels like a speed demon with no regards for safety.

Without a doubt, this is the fastest platformer I've played to date. That's a good thing; all of the levels minus the final level in the Sun can be realistically cleared in less than 15 seconds (and most in half of that time even). The game never felt unfair in my eyes either, because Messhof does a great job carefully introducing each new related concept (the jump, then the spin, then unpassable pink line barriers, then switches and moving obstacles, etc) and really fleshing out the obstacle escalation to its maximum potential with so many different combinations. The difficulty thus stems less from overwhelming the player with hazards all at once or lengthening levels to punish more heavily, and more from utilizing trickier variations of obstacles to create tighter execution barriers. Since levels are over in a blink of an eye and death is just a quick fade out animation that immediately reloads, there's essentially no time to rage when you've already respawned for another go.

I've always thought that I understood the "controls as an extension of the body" theory, but Flywrench is the first game that really forced me to experience it in action. It's such a blindingly quick experience, that even if you can see the levels coming right at you with the brightly color coded hazards and imagine completing it in your head, it ultimately comes down to a test of pure reaction time. It's less about trusting your inherent skill as a player, and more about throwing your inhibitions away, forgetting about execution/input barriers, and melding with the vessel itself and just doing it outright. You don't really have time to consider the play by play for something as condensed and quickfire as this game; you just have to make it happen. I honestly can't really say any other game has ever put me in this headspace.

It's not a perfect experience: the difficulty spike in the last world (Mercury) is very noticeable as it took me about an hour to clear everything prior and almost two hours to clear Mercury alone, the game has some occasional strange stuttering and frame rate drops which causes extremely noticeable chugging since the game's logic is tied to the frame rate, and the final level feels a tad bit out of place since it's significantly longer than any other level in the game. Despite that, Flywrench is definitely the best "arcade" 2D platformer that I've played to date, and it's somehow criminally overlooked despite being by the creators of Nidhogg. The simple yet distinct energetic retro visuals and the absolutely fire soundtrack only further highlight how this is unlike anything that I've ever played before. Definitely give this a shot if you're looking for a succinct rush of adrenaline that puts practically every other precision platformer I've ever played to shame.

Spotting an arcade cabinet of Time Crisis 5 was like spotting a unicorn in the wild for me, and as such, I immediately felt compelled to run through the whole thing. I imagine that the devs must have been just as excited as I was to try out their new toys (in the form of the Unreal Engine), because that would be the easiest way to explain the drop in depth from previous installments. The dual pedal system sounds great in theory (switch perspectives on the fly to target covered enemies from their weak points while dodging more threatening attacks), but it makes the game somewhat of a breeze, because you can switch pretty quickly with no limits and enemies take a few seconds to refocus their attacks towards you, not to mention that you can dodge every bullet your way by doing so. You're heavily conditioned to do so anyways, because the animation for ducking back under cover has been slowed in comparison to how quickly red-highlighted bullets can be spotted and then damage you, so it's much harder to dodge without outright switching with pedals. Besides that, there's a lot less incentive to mess around with your other weapons, because there aren't quite as many yellow grunts to attack to farm extra ammo: not that you'd really need to anyways, since the unlimited handgun deals enough quick damage to dispatch practically everything with ease. The game also feels a bit more gimmicky this time around due to all the other sections that detract from Time Crisis's signature cover shootouts. There are a few quick time events that require you to press the correct pedal to avoid damage, a single sniper section that has you headshotting foes to avoid detection (unlikely anyways since they die to two body shots and you'll usually fire fast enough), and some "break the targets" quick time events that become simple enough since you're provided with unlimited ammo during these moments.

I do have to admit that at the end of the day though, it's still Time Crisis despite the obvious lack of focus, and it's still got many of the hallmarks that got me so interested in the first place. The light gun aiming feels pretty responsive and satisfying due to the vibrations and fantastic visual/audio feedback, there are some pretty intense railgun sections that actually prompted me to really keep an eye on both perspectives with the pedals, and the story still makes absolutely no sense at all with some of the laziest voice-acting imaginable. I can't help but grin though, as the campyness of the franchise, with all its exaggerated boss fights and gratuitous explosions, has always been a big draw in its memorability. As it stands, it's definitely the weakest of the Time Crisis games I've dabbled with, but I'm glad to have finally found and conquered another installment. The search shall continue until I've beat them all...

A bit of context before I start: in the middle of 2022, Pangburn and I had just finished up reviews of Ys: The Oath in Felghana and we were looking for something new to try out on the backlog. Now, as the overambitious planner I tend to be, I suggested that we play Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure, as a Wii game that I had bounced off of a year ago but had wanted to get back to for a while since. He agreed, and we were to get at it and quickly finish this one up because a lot of other impending 2000s era classics were on the docket in the months to come.

Consider this review my comeuppance, because I am directly responsible for Pangburn’s anguish and due to many schedule slips (and existential dread after many conversations before and after that review), I didn’t end up finishing the game until yesterday, playing it in splurts over the course of my holiday break. I always sympathized with his pain, but now, I think I can genuinely empathize with his struggle.

As a preface to discussing the game, we first have to briefly talk about difficulty in video games, particularly difficulty in the point and click adventure game genre. Difficulty in video games can usually be divided into two categories: the knowledge test (i.e. figuring out and knowing what to do) and the execution test (that is, actually performing the actions to progress). While the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive (as there is always some degree of learning on the fly/recognizing context clues and pairing that up with performance), difficulty in plenty of scenarios will tend to lean more towards one category than the other, and that especially tends to ring true in point and clicks; knowledge tests usually reign supreme due to the nature of the genre relying heavily on puzzles, and execution tests boiling down to a few timed environmental interactions or performances in included side minigames.

We can then think of Zack & Wiki as a successor to the classic point and click adventure games of the 1990s, especially those of LucasArts, whose work evolved into the 3D adventure game space with more intricate timing and precision placement puzzles as reflected in titles such as Grim Fandango and its infamous forklift puzzle. I bring up this particular model, because Zack & Wiki is in many ways exemplary of that exact style, for better or for worse. Simply put, Zack & Wiki takes many of the general conventions of the genre, and many of the classic weaknesses too, but its many “innovations” also led to the game becoming much more frustrating than the games it built off of.

There’s a very good video regarding difficulty in point and click adventure games by Yahtzee; while I won’t go into detail regarding all his points, one of his main takeaways is that a certain balance regarding puzzle difficulty has to be reached. You have to create puzzles that are not so simple as to where they can just be solved instantly (simple lock & key puzzles), and not so complicated as to where shaky logic/obscure environmental clues must be relied upon and players are instead incentivized to trial and error their way through the game. Yahtzee highlights the spitting puzzle in Monkey Island 2 as a good example of perfect difficulty, where he mentions that multiple locks (noticing wind direction, thickening your phlegm, and needing a distraction to move the finish line flags) require multiple keys (hearing a conversation regarding the wind as a factor, color mixing drinks, and earlier context clues with blowing your horn). As such, puzzles need to be both intricate and reasonably intuitive to give players that rush of satisfaction.

Zack and Wiki unfortunately tends to fail on both fronts with regards to this. Many of the puzzles are pretty damn simple, to the point where a good chunk of them are quite literally “fit a square peg into a square hole” environmental interactions. It also doesn’t help that many of the tools that you’ll get will be used once or twice and then replaced with another tool that you’ll obtain from solving that scenario; it’s in many ways a stream of classic inventory puzzles (using object A to solve problem B) with one lock and one key at a time. There are exceptions of course, for example needing to occasionally flip held objects to utilize the other side (like for instance, using a spread out umbrella to shield against wind and then using the hook side of the umbrella to snag far away chains) or shaking Wiki to transform animal tools back into animals for those specific interactions, but in general, these exceptions tend to be scant and are very obvious follow-ups when there exist few other approaches as dictated by the environment around you.

However, Zack and Wiki also performs the sin of doing the exact opposite; that is, making puzzles require so many steps from so many different places that the solution cannot be reasonably intuited from context clues, often with somewhat obtuse conclusions. One great example actually came up a couple of days ago when Pangburn and I were talking about the airship level. This is an “infiltrate the enemy base” stage where Zack & Wiki must sneak into Captain Rose’s plane, systematically eliminate or avoid enemy goons, and then escape via Rose’s personal vehicle, with tons of steps involved. One of these steps involves unlocking and then using a turret directly outside the hangar to not only destroy an air vent cover, but also destroy the already open hangar door. Pangburn actually got softlocked because he didn’t destroy the hangar door and some goons later lock the door and block the door controls, and after talking this through, we figured out why; there are no tells given signifying that the elimination of the door is crucial to solving the level. The closest I could think of comes earlier in the level, where after turning off a propeller, some alarm apparently goes off and a goon comes to check on the propeller controls. However, not once does the goon signal to check the hangar door controls from this alarm that they will mess with the controls and block Zack’s exit route, nor do any of the crew throughout the level’s runtime. You can leave the hangar door and air vent cover open (and in fact even leave Rose’s plane on with the engine running) without the goons noticing or taking action until they close the escape routes, at which point it becomes too late. Because this level is quite lengthy and requires so many different actions before the potential soft lock, I can’t fault Pangburn for not destroying the hangar door, and in fact planning so far ahead to secure the getaway gets easily overlooked when so many precise steps are necessary.

That actually leads me to what I think is the second biggest problem with Zack and Wiki: the levels are just too goddamn long. I won’t go too into detail regarding the death and ticketing system, as Pangburn has already described that sufficiently, but needless to say, the takeaway here is that there is a difference between making something difficult, and making something tedious. Performing the incorrect actions (often as part of trial and error, in fact) or running into hazards will result in not just a slight time loss from animations as is common of the genre, but in fact permadeath that requires you to restart the level or use a ticket (which has to be bought with money in the hub, and money grinding in earlier levels is another issue of itself) to respawn. That also doesn’t take into account that softlocking is extremely easy, because crucial environmental objects can be easily fumbled or destroyed and Zack doesn’t signify this softlock with an instant death or failure, but rather just the usual disappointed animation similar to more forgiving failures (such as accidentally inserting the wrong shape into a hole, where he obviously won’t die). However, not all environmental destruction resolves in softlocking either, because sometimes these objects and tools can be replenished… but not always! This inconsistency makes Zack and Wiki’s “checkpointing” system even more frustrating; how are you supposed to know what softlocks and what doesn’t without prior knowledge of events, and thus figure out exactly when or when not to restart?

The level design itself is also an issue with padding out levels, not just the puzzles contained within. Remember when I said that a lot of Zack and Wiki’s difficulty stems from simple inventory puzzles? Zack only has space to carry one item, which means you’re constantly throwing down items on the ground to replace them with something else, and backtracking plenty to recollect old items for follow up interactions. Furthermore, levels tend to be massive, and pathing is not great; players have to keep clicking around the level to specifically guide Zack to not run into obvious level hazards and die, even if this form of interaction is not particularly interesting. Compounding to this problem, levels often change their camera angles gradually as Zack walks around the stage (as opposed to classic point and clicks that lean heavily towards fixed camera angles for each room and immediately snap when absolutely necessary), so you might not even be able to click specifically where you want to go and have to keep clicking on the screen for Zack to keep up. The biggest culprit here is a level dubbed “Icicle of Prosperity,” where Zack has to continually drag up tools (many of which are heavy and slow down his movement speed) from the ground to a giant icicle up top on the same path, over and over. Needless to say, this issue annoys me because it could have just been solved by condensing single levels or allowing Zack to carry more than one item at a time; it’s just not engaging to watch Zack bumble from one part of the stage to the next, especially when failing to do so results in an entire restart of the whole process.

Okay, so if everything inbetween the action is extremely boring, then the action itself as execution tests should save the game right? Wrong. In fact, I would say that the motion control minigames actually contain some of the lowest dips in the game altogether. When the actions work and you can follow the given pose signified by the game (very similar to how WarioWare Smooth Moves expresses its starting states actually), then it’s fine; these are the simple actions like pulling a lever down, shaking a tree, pressing a button, and the usual fare. Conversely, when the motion controls don’t directly convert 1:1 with actions in-game, it is genuinely obnoxious. Again, I find myself agreeing with Pangburn regarding many of the worst culprits, so I’ll just elaborate upon a few of them.

- One level in the volcano section requires you to use a tennis racket to deflect fireballs towards specific targets. There are no context clues or hints given on how to navigate this; you just have to figure out on the fly that the timing of the hits determines if the shot goes left or right (similar to Wii Sports baseball). Pointing the Wiimote in the direction before swinging does nothing. This timing however, apparently has nothing to do with verticality, which becomes important when you have to lob a fireball upwards to hit the treasure chest. I hit multiple fireballs in the correct vicinity but kept undershooting the target before I unceremoniously nailed the target while doing the same exact thing.

- The anchor in the final boss fight is extremely stupid. You have to whirl your Wiimote like twirling a lasso, and then flick your Wiimote towards the sensor bar to unleash it when you feel the vibration. Here’s the kicker; these are emulated motion controls (there’s no built-in sensor in the Wiimote) so what is intuited versus what you must actually do is quite different. I learned from GameFAQs that you must instead, gently tilt the Wiimote and hold it in that direction to let go. It’s another classic case of the required action going against intuition and thus feeling like classic 2000s jank instead of a satisfying and tough execution test.

- Bonelich is hidden in a few levels, where he can be woken up to play in some rhythm minigames, shaking the bell in time with the prompts. Again, Zack and Wiki uses tilt sensors (to determine controller positions) over accelerometers, so shaking the bell is really more like slowly tilting the Wiimote towards the screen. Even more frustrating though, is that clearing Bonelich’s optional minigames is required to unlock certain Secret Treasure Maps, and for the life of me, I could never figure out the proper action for a sustained note in the minigame, since shaking vigorously only messed with the tilt sensors.

Thus, I now understand on a deeper level exactly what was so aggravating regarding Zack and Wiki’s motion controls, and it is an absolute shame that one of the supposed selling points of the game (that is, introducing difficulty through minigame execution tests that are supposed to be more intuitive and thus more immersive) is instead one of the most glaring weaknesses of the whole experience. All I’m saying, is that I think this would have gone a whole lot better if the game was released a couple of years later with Wii Motion Plus support so my sword swings and rotating blocks actually came out in-game as reflected by my outside actions, more similarly to that of Wii Sports Resort.

There’s one last particular moment that comes to mind as my least favorite section of the game (yes, even while considering the onslaught of motion control jank combined with exhausting and truly mental puzzling in the last hour of the game). The Frozen Temple world’s level “Keeper of the Ice” is a stage where the treasure chest is already in sight, but there’s a big catch; the level is guarded by a sweeper robot that turns on every 10 seconds to sweep up Zack’s footprints and will prematurely end the level if it collides into Zack at the end of any footprint trail. In other words, this is a forced stealth segment in a point and click adventure game, and is perhaps the worst forced stealth segment that I have ever had to suffer through in any game to date. You can either avoid the robot by hiding on a non-snowy surface (i.e. ice or any covered gazebos) or shaking nearby trees to cover your close footprints. It sounds simple but doesn’t translate well because as mentioned prior, shifting camera angles and questionable pathing make it tougher in practice to get exactly where you need to be within every 10 second interval, and you have to be standing in exactly the correct position in front of the tree (not just anywhere around) to be able to shake it. Couple this with one puzzle where you have to slowly carry a transformed goon totem across the map as well as the fact that halfway through, the sweeper bot will break the ice in the middle of the level and cut off a route, forcing you to take a more circuitous path around the stage, and you have what is perhaps the most drawn-out and absolutely miserable level in the entire game. One misclick or failed pathing interaction here means that you’ll have to spend another attempt slowly inching your way through the snowy garden, ten seconds at a time.

I feel somewhat guilty that I have to be this harsh towards a beloved favorite of many, especially when considering how many interesting ideas were at play. The potential of Zack & Wiki shines through so crystal-clear; the cel-shaded graphics more than hold up, there’s tons of charm in both the main cast and side character interactions, and the difficulty, when presented with cool challenges like the potion puzzle in “Mad Science” or the controllable robots in "Relics of the Past," provides that fun and thrilling rush. Unfortunately, there’s just so much downtime and slogging throughout the whole game with not enough world-building or gripping storytelling to keep me constantly engaged during its weaker moments. Needless to say, I can’t see myself returning to the game to tackle optional end-game content or recommending this to anyone outside of those looking for a prime example of why vanilla Wii motion controls can go too far. Capcom went on record in 2008 as rather doubtful that a sequel would be announced in the near future, and as much as I hate to be pessimistic, that sadly may be for the best.

Bandai-Namco released Boomeroad worldwide two days ago as part of a suite of simple and experimental games to train new recruits from their indie developer Gyaar Studio. The concept here combines a standard 3D platformer with boomerang throwing that creates grindable rails that can be chained for extended mid-air traversal. You refresh your energy gauge by passing through rings and landing on platforms, and you can increase the gauge's capacity by collecting optional artifacts. Unfortunately, the gameplay is undercooked. You can't adjust the shape of the boomerang's arc besides flattening the upward curve a little, there's very few interactable objects (switches and fans) that force the player to throw the boomerang at them for activation, and you can in fact avoid most of these elements entirely by throwing two chained boomerang arcs to climb up and walk on top of the level's walls, skipping entire sections of the level while never running out of gauge. While I thought speedrun mode would mitigate most of these shortcomings, I don't find the movement satisfying enough because there's fairly little momentum conserved upon jumping off of rails for speeding up, so the movement itself lacks weightiness and route planning isn't very interesting when you're incentivized to just follow the set path of rings for time bonuses. I suppose there's only so much I can complain about a free game nevertheless, and although I don't see Gyaar Studio returning to this, I do think they've got a solid concept on their hands that could prove to be an interesting 3D puzzle-platformer if thoroughly fleshed out with more committal movement and tighter level design.

I was talking with a friend a few months back about how there seemed to be this cheery and upbeat trend with Game Boy Advance titles. In essence, I think this is a classic case of developers adapting to the limitations of the system. The original GBA has no backlight, resulting in a lack of darker palettes and backgrounds often looking a bit washed out: try and compare Mine Cart Carnage from the original Donkey Kong Country to its GBA port counterpart and the difference becomes obvious. Additionally, the GBA has no soundchip: the CPU instead processes the sound, and as a result, the GBA generally sounds much more compressed, with lots of sharp noise over its muffled audio. Again, compare the original SNES version of Minecart Madness to its GBA translation for reference. As a result, the GBA is filled with happy-go-lucky titles that emphasized brighter colors and catchy and cheery chiptunes: Golden Sun, Wario Land 4, Gen 3 Pokemon, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, Warioware, Drill Dozer, and so on so forth. They even play around with this disparity to their advantage with the Advance Wars titles, emphasizing this almost idyllic portrayal of cartoon warfare as a sort of disconnect with little cynicism. I’d like to highlight this observation not necessarily as a bad thing that much of the GBA’s library was marked with warm and uplifting tones, and rather as something that fascinates me, though it does make me wonder if there are any true horror games to be found on the GBA or if they were even considered viable in the first place.

For those very reasons, I unfortunately have to mark the Silent Hill: Play Novel as a straight mismatch. The comparison becomes extremely relevant here, because the original Silent Hill is also a classic example of limitation breeding innovation. Team Silent was able to disguise the original Playstation’s limitations through both its gameplay and its presentation. Frame rate drops didn’t matter as much when the combat was already so slow and deliberate and the anticipation leading up to confrontations mattered just as much as the tension of the moments themselves. The limited draw distance became a strength for Silent Hill, with the developers abusing fog and darkness to create this “fear of the unknown” practically unparalleled to its contemporaries while also distracting players from the not so smooth character models and textures. Sure, the original might ultimately still be a linear and straightforward playthrough, but the act of exploration through a simultaneously worldly and otherworldly setting and poring through layers of fog did wonders in regards to concealing its linearity. Akira Yamaoka’s dissonant industrial soundtrack further highlighted the cold and rusty feel of wandering through an abandoned Connecticut town. All of this, unfortunately, just isn't there on the GBA, and leads me to believe that this was a poor fit for the system.

Again, this is due to the GBA's limitations, but unlike its original PSX counterpart, Konami couldn’t hide it quite as well this time. As an example, let’s again compare the soundtracks between the two different versions. Listen to the Silent Hill Theme on the Play Novel (well, the first 15 seconds anyways, as that’s all that was included), and then listen to the included theme on the original Playstation; the difference is night and day. Similarly, the visuals have taken a hit, because the pixelated stills of the Play Novel on the smaller GBA screen can’t come close to capturing the emptiness of Silent Hill on the Playstation, with its enveloping darkness and fog swallowing the town’s surroundings upon sight. I’ll give them credit for trying, but it’s just not the same; after all, Silent Hill is not just about what you can see, but rather what you can’t see, and the GBA visuals just don’t leave enough to imagination.

But it’s not just the atmosphere that’s a drastic drop in quality: I think the gameplay itself is also a mismatch. Silent Hill is a master of subtlety, disguising player choices made here and there in-between all the action, as something of a test of faith. Credit goes to chump here for pointing this out, but essentially, Silent Hill makes the decision-making towards an interactive ending feel less like a selection of correctly answering multiple choice questions, and instead feel more like embodying a certain “playstyle” by stringing together a pattern of actions; if you believe it, you can probably achieve it. Unfortunately, the former is exactly what the Play Novel is. Sure, there are some choices along the way that are more or less there for flavor text and won’t actually impact the route taken/final ending, but at the end of the day, it’s all laid out in the flowchart. Its structure ultimately works against its own illusion: while it’s certainly convenient jumping back to the flowchart to select every option to see what happens next, this breaks its veil almost immediately. You’re left with the lingering and obvious fact that you are just choosing between A or B to get the best ending possible. It’s for this reason that while Silent Hill’s original narrative was strong enough, it was not so much the story that sold it so much as the act of its storytelling itself. Deciding whether to hide or seek from a binary choice in branching storylines will never compare to the feeling of presence created from swinging around your flashlight in the dark on an abandoned street.

I admit that perhaps I’m being a little uncharitable to the Play Novel based off of its concept and execution in comparison to the original, but it does have some novelty. Cybil Bennett’s separate scenario is the main draw here: you can play through her perspective, and to Konami’s credit, while the base story remains the same, the actual events that Cybil goes through tend to be quite different than those experienced by Harry in the main scenario. Having said that, it is drastically shorter than Harry’s scenario: there are only three endings compared to the main scenario’s five, and half as many potential choices that can be made. In addition, you can’t unlock Cybil’s scenario until completing Harry’s scenario at least once, which meant that my main interest was stuck behind at least an hour of mashing through text and often repeating the same puzzles since certain choices made early on would affect the final ending and couldn’t be bypassed with the flowchart alone (though I concede that my curiosity to see all the content played a part in this).

There’s a bit more that could be said, namely that the puzzles were pretty one-note and seemed more like distractions than anything (with one particular “click on the bug” puzzle being a particular pain in the ass due to the screen crunch and the unclear cursor hitbox), and that it absolutely annoyed me how I had to mash through the first minute of introductory dialogue every time I restarted a scenario because the game wouldn’t let me open up the flowchart right away, but the short and thick of it is that the Silent Hill Play Novel constantly reminded me that I could be playing the real thing instead. It’s possible that the original text was far richer in its prose, which would mean that the stiff language was instead a result of the English fan-translation, as it vaguely reminded me of creepypasta. Additionally, perhaps the Andy Scenarios that were only temporarily available for download via phone (and have since become lost media) could have added a bit more bulk to the experience. As it stands though, I think that this is most definitely not a substitute for playing through the original on the Playstation, but rather, a passing curiosity for die-hard Silent Hill fans. At least there’s a silver lining to all of this: Silent Hill is an experience that can’t be genuinely replicated in any other form due to the magic of the original remaining deeply embedded in its distinct and understated design principles, no matter how many more will try to do so in the future.

If you combined portions of Warioware Mega Microgames, Twisted, and Touched, you'd essentially have Warioware Gold. For the most part, everything flows together well and it's pretty easy switching between the forms of control since it's all within the palms of your hand, so mastering the juggle of every type of minigame is quite satisfying. That said, I do think that the game lacks a bit of novelty despite how cohesive the whole experience is, with a good chunk of the library's microgames brought back from prior installments. The few minigames that I've played that combined multiple different control forms (control pad, gyro controls, touch screen, and mic) were fantastic, such as the final boss fight and the Mewtroid minigame, I just wish there were more of them bundled into the core experience to maximize the potential of the 3DS. In addition, a lot of my previous complaints from Touched (that is, the touchscreen minigames are a tad too easy and are all some form of poke or drag, and the mic minigames can all be won by yelling loudly enough at the right time) do carry over which lessens the overall package a little bit, but it's still a pretty fun experience that I can see myself coming back to considering how much stuff there is to unlock and all the arcade and challenge modes to mix everything around. As such, I maintain that Gold doesn't have as distinct of an identity as the other games before it as someone who's gone through a lot of the series' history, though the cleaned up visuals are surprisingly charming and the classic absurdist tone (noting that I actually don't mind the voice acting) and silly slice-of-life background threads are all still there; if you don't feel the need to revisit all the prior games, then you could definitely do a lot worse than the compilation of most of its best moments.

I ultimately like Super Sami Roll, but I wish I liked it more. Its concept sounds fantastic on paper (master a simple toolkit to handle weighty rolling-heavy movement), but its execution left a bit to be desired on my end. It certainly didn't help that some perceived inconsistencies regarding its mechanics made the learning curve that much more frustrating.

The simplest way I can put this is that Super Sami Roll is essentially a modern take on the classic speedrunning platformer (think: momentum-based platformers where speed is not so much a given as it is a reward for mastery) that also has a lot of nuance to its toolkit. The key is figuring exactly how to link your moves together to retain speed while never falling into the abyss: for example, you can use your tongue-grapple to latch onto distant platforms/walls, chain that into an instant jump off the grapple to retain aerial momentum and gain height, then immediately ground-pound right over a platform for a quick dash of speed and bounce even higher, etc. It's a really satisfying feeling when pulled off, and allows for some crazy player-discovered shortcuts that are heavily encouraged via the secret "Maestro" ranks.

The problem here is that for me, these highest-level challenges feel too inaccessible because of the game's inconsistencies. Certain key mechanics feel "off" and are utilized often enough to where they actively marred my experience:

- Sami's tongue-grapple is somewhat context-sensitive: to aid players, there's a white-line prompt displayed in front of Sami to show where Sami's tongue would latch onto when activated. However, if Sami is going at too quick of a speed in relation to the object that the player is trying to latch on, the tongue will often outright fail to latch onto the object and miss entirely, causing Sami to fall into the abyss.

- Trapezes stumped me for some time, because they don't function off of stored momentum much like most of the game's movement. Here is a MS paint diagram to try and illustrate my point. Fundamentally, every 3D platformer I've played with a swing/trapeze wants you to jump halfway between the bottom and the apex of the swing while rising for maximum height: this gets you the most speed for your jump while still retaining a velocity pointed upwards. However, Super Sami Roll's trapezes apparently ignore gravity, because Sami will swing in a complete circle around the trapeze losing no speed at all, and the direction you jump off of the trapeze is independent from your prior swing velocity. As a result, it's more favorable to jump at the exact apex of the swing or slightly beyond that, which really fucked with my intuition until I learned exactly how it operated in contrast to traditional physics.

- Sami's ledge-grab window feels way too tight, and if you contact a wall right before the ledge-grab margin, Sami will simply bonk his head against the wall instead of grabbing the ledge or immediately wall-sliding. I find that traditional 3D platformers tackle this issue by either giving a generous ledge-grab area of impact, or giving a slight wall-slide velocity upwards upon wall contact to allow players to hit the window, but because Super Sami Roll does neither, it's way too easy to just slightly miss the ledge-grab and fall too far into the abyss to recover. As a result sequence-breaking with the tongue-grapple + wall jump often feels too risky and inconsistent, even though the game really wants you to do so in order to snag those Maestro ranks.

In addition to all of these issues, I unfortunately found Super Sami Roll a bit tedious. Most of the mechanics are introduced fairly early on, but levels don't just get harder, but also get longer. This isn't a huge deal if you're playing on Normal mode with checkpoints, but on Advanced mode with no checkpoints (and only no checkpoints as the only difference... it certainly would have been appreciated to add in stricter time limits or more obstacles to spice things up), it often feels like banging your head against a wall over and over again. It's a tough learning curve to swallow, worsened because sometimes your tongue simply won't grapple as planned or Sami will bonk his head against the wall while wall-climbing, so consider this my warning that a lot of patience is necessary.

Oddly enough, I think this functioned better in my mind as a casual platforming experience than a hardcore speedrunning platformer. Once I accepted that the tighter Maestro ranks were not within my visible reach (and turned off Advanced mode in World 4 due to how punishing the game became), the rest of the game became much easier to swallow. That does make me wonder though: what audience does Super Sami Roll really appeal to? Casual players who dabble with the occasional 3D platformer might find it overly frustrating even with accessibility options if they're not used to the weighty toolkit (there's only so much you can accommodate for if you're falling off all the time!), but more hardcore players might find the advanced mode rather tedious due to level length and a lack of general level design variability (they're mostly long-winding curvy corridors with no differences in rollable surfaces whatsoever). There are some other minor nitpicks like the shoehorned-in boss fights (boring three-hit dodge-and-punish fights with tons of waiting around), but even if Super Sami Roll isn't completely my cup of tea, I can at least appreciate what it brings to the table. I need a break from 3D platformers in the meantime, but there's still content left with the many hidden exits to be discovered + the unlockable 5th world, so who knows? My mind can be changed.

It might be easiest to think of the original Knytt as the Yume Nikki of 2D platformers. You play as a weird little creature that got abducted by a friendly alien, only to crash land upon a foreign planet and be tasked with collecting the fallen parts of the spaceship to return home. All you’ve got at your disposal is the classic single jump and wall cling/climb, as well as a searchlight that will point you towards the closest spaceship part. The collected parts won’t upgrade your toolkit in any fashion (and as such I find it misleading to mark this as a traditional Metroidvania) and there isn’t a single word of dialogue spoken or written in the landscape; as a result, this is a platformer dedicated to exploration as its own reward.

There’s no map in Knytt, so you’d think that it would be quite easy to get lost and stumble about with little direction. However, Knytt provides enough environmental context if you pay close attention and the searchlight will keep you moving through the sprawl with ease. While the game is less focused on mechanical difficulty, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s trivial: any liquid as well as particular invincible enemies (marked for danger when your character glows red upon approaching) can still end your life and send you back to the nearest checkpoint (though fortunately the quick respawn never feels frustrating). Having said that, the act of jumping and climbing about this unfamiliar yet vibrantly colored landscape, aided greatly by the tight controls, is more than enough to keep the player occupied while sporadic ambient tunes chirp in the background accompanied by the satisfying plodding of your footsteps.

As a result, the difficulty stems not from execution tests, but rather from spatial recognition and keeping the big picture in mind when figuring out exactly how sections of the overworld link to one another to maintain progression. A lot of players get frustrated when they keep running into dead ends, impassable expanses of fluid, or taunting one-way passages, but personally, I see it as fantastic motivation to figure this all out and fit each individual piece into the underlying puzzle; if it’s not a straight shot, then somewhere and somehow, there must be another path to get to the other side regardless. Perhaps it's quite simple and is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but Knytt isn’t trying to be. It’s one of the most focused and emblematic pure adventure platformers of all time, with tons of replayability due to its open-ended nature and extraordinary warm ambience, and a few tucked away secrets and shortcuts for the more discerning eye. Considering that a full playthrough takes less than an hour and that it’s free, I’d easily recommend it nevertheless; as one of the first indie greats, Knytt feels like a snug encapsulation of its era that doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.

Well, I do at least appreciate the honesty this time around.

I was actually quite excited for The Pathless, even though my adventure of exploring Journey-likes throughout the last two years has not been great. I’ve been trying to elucidate exactly why I’ve been so consistently disappointed by all of the spiritual successors in the time since, and I think I’ve figured out why. To put it simply, it’s a matter of focus and cohesion.

The more I’ve written about various video games on Backloggd, the more I’ve come to realize that these are the two qualities I treasure the most when discussing what makes a good video game. With focus, you need a game where every element is fine-tuned to achieve the same overall goal, with a clear and same intent expressed and achieved by every item. That however, is not to be confused with cohesion, which deals with how these pieces fit together. There needs to be a sense of community and harmony amongst all the different elements; often, different elements in games clash not just from opposing intents, but also from clashing rhythms. That doesn’t mean you can’t change the tempo throughout of course, but there has to be some sort of underlying glue to justify this tempo shift with purpose. In other words, focus keeps the destination within sight while cohesion keeps everything moving towards said destination.

Most Journey-likes actually have the issue of too much focus and cohesion in my opinion. They’re so dead-set on becoming the next Journey, copying the ambience, game structure, and storytelling to a T, that despite the golden formula “working” since it was already proven in 2012, these games all feel rather uninspired since their lack of ambition fails to elevate the final product to anything more than yet another indie copycat, forgoing any sense of identity. For what it’s worth though, The Pathless is an antithesis of the usual formula because it is at least trying to do something different.

In this iteration, you get to play as the Hunter, who has traveled to a mysterious island afflicted by a curse, and must traverse the wilderness to free possessed spirits from a malevolent warrior dubbed “The Godslayer.” You can think of The Pathless as a combination of Journey, Breath of the Wild, and Shadow of the Colossus: the overall narrative strikes many of the same beats as thatgamecompany’s magnum opus, as do the visuals (courtesy of Matt Nava, creator director of Giant Squid and one of the main artists behind Journey in fact) and the original score (composed by Austin Wintory, who also composed Journey’s OST), while the exploration loop borrows heavily from BOTW’s open world structure and the boss fights seem heavily influenced by the epic dances of death of SOTC. I think you can see where this is going; it’s a combination of some of my favorite trends (and in fact, some of my outright favorite video games), and it’s like your favorite band from your high school days got revived for a world tour to play all their greatest hits.

It's such a shame, that Giant Squid’s ambition led to this jumbled mess lacking in focus and cohesion.

Let’s start with the most noteworthy positive: the core movement within the overworld. I admit I wasn’t too impressed at first, since I originally thought that all you need to do is just hold down the right trigger and release as soon as you finishing locking onto floating talismans with the outline turning red to refill and maintain momentum in your dash gauge. However, as wondermagenta points out, there’s actually more to this: if you release your trigger as soon as the outline is about halfway filled, you’ll fire a golden “skillshot,” which not only flies faster (so you can fire at even more targets), but also provides an even larger speed boost. This becomes even more important if you’re firing while airborne, as nailing successive skillshots means that you’ll spend less time free-falling (since you can’t glide while charging your arrow) and thus gain more overall distance. So, there’s two levels of optimization here: planning your path amongst the talismans to avoid firing arrows that get blocked by obstacles like hills and trees and jumping/gliding over rivers and gaps that would slow you down, and reacting on the fly by charging and releasing the arrow to chain skillshots and maintain momentum and the dash gauge. You can absolutely just autopilot and rely strictly on a full red outline + context sensitive aiming to get by of course, but nailing this skillshot over and over turns simple overworld traversal into quite the engaging exercise instead of just holding the control stick forward.

The problem then, is just about everything else.

We'll begin by considering the puzzles that serve as the “destinations” between the core movement. They’re an intentional slowdown from the freeform travel for sure, but unfortunately, I find this change of pace rather unwelcome. You need to solve a certain minimum of puzzles in each area to unlock emblems to activate spirit towers, so there are plenty of puzzles you’ll be forced to tackle. Unfortunately, despite all the different combination of elements (torches, ring switches, weighted switches, etc) interchanged throughout, they all begin to bleed into one another by the end because they’re all absolutely tedious affairs.

Your AI companion is one key reason here: you essentially have to keep an eye on your falcon and guide it closely to switches or while dragging around hoops. Waiting for the falcon to finish is not particularly engaging, and positioning gets particularly annoying in some circumstances such as this where you not only have to stand in the right spot to get the falcon to drag it to the appropriate height, but also quickly swap targets by again getting into the right position (for the context sensitive prompt and for the falcon to “come” to you) before quickly letting go and getting into position for the shot. Speaking of which, the game also often feels far too finicky about being in the right position when taking shots for switches and torches, such as this example. It looks like I’m in the vicinity to shoot an arrow at the first torch to light the 2nd behind it, but the game is rather stingy about factoring in the perfect height for a shot, not just the specific direction itself. You also have to be the proper distance away (if the shot is made too close, your arrow will just clang and disappear), and this gets further complicated since many of the torches/switches must be shot properly in mid-air with a full charge/powershot. As a result, it’s rather obnoxious constantly adjusting your player model and taking potshots at what should be a simple line of sight aim to get your wanted trajectory to properly register. Finally, a lot of these puzzle sections are large enough to justify dashing between objects of interest, but in many scenarios, no talismans are around to refill your dash gauge; as a result, you’ll most likely have to spend most of your time slowly walking around the area, a far cry from the enthralling dashing and sniping that The Pathless exemplifies.

Some of these “puzzles” are actually cursed shrines that immobilize your falcon as the main condition, and that brings us to the next major nitpick: The Pathless often tries to be a precision platformer, and it really does not succeed because the game was not built for verticality. You see, in these cursed shrine sections, you are often reliant upon shooting talismans while airborne to nail specific long and extended jumps, and this doesn’t quite work because the Pathless’s vertical movement is split between a simple standard high jump with little horizontal momentum, and talisman shot-boosted jumps with tons of horizontal momentum. You’ll constantly find yourself undershooting with the former, and often overshooting with the latter. There’s no gimmick to these areas besides the lack of a usable eagle, and the only other formality attached is that you have to waste more time rubbing your eagle to purify it of its curse afterwards, resulting in these shrines feeling rather like gimmicky padding.

It gets worse though: this issue also translates to the overworld, because a good chunk of the hub levels relies heavily upon scaling cliffs and buildings that can’t be easily covered with the sub-par standard jump and thus require you to expend wing flaps for that quick vertical boost (since shooting mid-air talismans gives little vertical height, instead focusing on a quick forward horizontal boost). Since flaps are also a finite resource that must be recharged by remaining grounded, cliff/building traversal requires a fair bit of waiting around for full recharges; I’d like to say that this issue gets alleviated as you progress, but that would also be misleading since while you will have more flaps to work with from collecting flight crystals from optional puzzles/exploration and defeating bosses, the heights themselves also gradually increase and will require more flaps as is. This issue could have actually been more properly tackled if shooting talismans in mid-air restored flaps, or if the blue crystals that provide significant vertical boost that are introduced in the 4th area were introduced earlier for this specific purpose; as it stands, I think those crystals are a great addition, but stands as a case of too little and too late when the majority of the game feels stunted by how awkwardly verticality is handled.

To expand upon this further, players often need to rely upon Spirit Vision to figure out points of interest, marked by orange glows when the radar wave rolls over the landscape. There’s two major issues here. Firstly, much of the landscape is obscured by tall environmental objects (cliffs, towers, hills, etc), which can make it quite difficult to make out exactly where all the glows are and if everything’s been covered, unless you get to a high enough height yourself to pick out every point; as we’ve established, this is a pain in the ass because traveling up and down just to temporarily spot points of interest is extremely time consuming. Secondly, not every glow is created equal: many of these glows are smaller exploration points with simpler one-note solutions that reward you with yellow experience crystals, and it’s not as easy to pick apart smaller and larger/more prominent glows when smaller exploration points are often clustered together. For what it’s worth, these puzzles are quite diverse in nature and include activities such as lighting all the torches, playing Simon Says, and platforming from one end to another while “the floor is lava.” Unfortunately, the reward is just not there; the only thing that these experience crystals give you is more flaps with your eagle when you level up, which again is not a great incentive because flying often feels removed from the established momentum-based running. There’s no “dash” when flying, so forward momentum has to be preserved by shooting talismans that are scattered rather loosely in the air, and aiming your bow will result in vertical drop because your eagle can’t hold you while you aim, in a way defeating the original purpose of flying. The result is that movement potential is actually somewhat stunted by the amount of flying required throughout, and that exploration feels tedious at times because figuring out exactly where to go is not necessarily simple nor rewarding. I think this feedback loop could have been better handled by allowing players to invest experience towards stat growth of their choosing (higher jumps, faster movement speed, a larger dash gauge, etc) rather than just funneling all experience towards more flaps.

Speaking of frustrating gaps interrupting continuous movement, did I mention the forced stealth sections? That’s right, The Pathless has mandatory forced stealth segments, my favorite addition to any great video game. Every time you enter a new area, a red cyclone will appear and swarm the player, chucking your eagle buddy off into the grass several feet away while you must inch your way towards retrieving it and avoiding detection from the searchlights of the possessed spirit demon. While getting caught doesn’t result in dire consequences (you just lose some progress on your experience bar and are thrown out of the cyclone), actually getting caught isn’t much faster than doing the task properly, so you might as well try. That doesn’t remove the red cyclone however; it remains within the area as this malignant tumor that seems to follow you around and will shove you back into another forced stealth section if you get too close to the eye of the storm. It especially loves showing up at the most inconvenient times, such as when you’re trying to solve puzzles for emblems or clearing up that last small orange glow for EXP, which again breaks up any built-up momentum and limits player choice because you’re running away if you don’t want to sit through another playable cutscene and there’s nothing you can do about the situation except solve puzzles more quickly for faster tower activation to rush towards the next phase to get it off the screen. And even that’s another case of limiting player choice: why situate the mandatory boss encounter in the center of the area where there’s other exploration I might want to tackle first, instead of isolating the red blob without encapsulating anything else of interest?

Boss fights usually have two distinct sections: the chase, and the arena. The first phase is actually quite thrilling: you spiral around the red storm pursuing the now fleeing beast, shooting the talismans in your path to maintain momentum, and must land enough hits on the beast in the form of eye targets before letting your eagle get the final takedown. It’s not free thankfully, due to the need to keep refilling the dash gauge while hunting and because the beast will spew pulsing fireballs and leave behind flame walls that must be circumvented or jumped to avoid getting stunned and falling further behind. If this was the entire boss fight, then I would have been left quite satisfied.

But, there’s more. Once your eagle knocks the beast down, the fight gets transported to the arena at the center of each area for an epic showdown. Or so it seems, but these fights actually lack any teeth. They essentially become rhythm game segments where you just have to aim and fire your bow whenever you see the flashing white context-sensitive prompt while you walk around in circles and jump occasionally to dodge attacks. Not only do I feel like these fights fail to utilize the full toolkit of The Pathless (namely, the smooth ground momentum-based movement), they’re also quite trivial in that once you’ve figured out the first phase, that is basically all there is to it. These fights simply have no stakes involved; if you happen to take too much damage and get knocked out of the arena, all you have to do is walk right back in and resume the fight in the exact phase where you left off. It’s what separates the one-dimensional fights of this game from the intimate dances of death of Shadow of the Colossus. In the latter, the sense of scale is fairly apparent because you are this ant crawling up a giant hulking stone creature, clinging on for dear life while the screen shakes wildly and the frames spiral out of control as you scale this magnificent artifact, plunging your sword into its weaknesses while it writhes in agony. In the former, you get to take a few potshots at a slightly oversized animal here and there while tilting your joystick to the left/right against a beast that’s all bark and no bite, letting go of the right trigger whenever you see a flashing white box on screen and once in the blue moon, getting the chance to shoot a crystal to regain dash gauge or jumping and hovering with your eagle to dodge the ground for a bit. Summed up, it’s a far cry from what originally inspired it in the first place, and it’s just too scripted and too straightforward for any emotion to be properly conveyed in the first place.

At this point, I think I’ve gone into enough detail regarding the lack of focus. Giant Squid wanted to introduce so many different elements into the game, that looking back upon this, so many of these different elements feel rather undercooked and require far more polish to really stand out on their own.

That said, there’s also a lack of fluidity throughout the whole experience; the clean ground movement across the overworld is consistently broken up due to the middling and sluggish puzzles, and in fact the dashing and shooting is often stymied by how much verticality is required for travel as well. The exploration loop gets broken up over and over due to the glowing red storm following you and interrupting any puzzle solving, while the loop itself is really more of a frayed tangle of threads since much of the exploration leads you to unrewarding mini-puzzles. Even the boss fights themselves are more of a nuisance than a highlighted destination because they goad you to stop whatever you’re doing just to get rid of the possibility of forced stealth segments, and go from an exhilarating hunt to a glorified cutscene. The gameplay elements all feel at odds with one another, and momentum isn’t preserved because the game insists on shifting the player back and forth with little purpose. What really seals the deal though, concerning the lack of cohesion, is that the underlying narrative to tie everything together just isn't there.

I think there’s two lines of reasoning regarding the weak storytelling. The first reason is that the execution doesn’t live up to the premise, both in terms of the characters and the worldbuilding. The forced relationship between the eagle and the hunter has been pointed out by many before me, so I won’t go into excess detail here; needless to say, I concur that at no point does the eagle ever feel like a separate entity. Almost all of your interaction with the eagle revolves around the eagle as a gameplay mechanism: send your eagle to move around weights and targets, shoot off your eagle to knock down the boss, go after your eagle in the forced stealth segment to be rid of the storm temporarily and then rub it a few times so you can flap again, etc. The eagle never gets a chance to do anything of its own volition; it’s essentially stuck as yet another “thing” you have to account for to avoid getting stuck and nothing more.

I also have to question the writing behind the main villain himself, and whether or not his personality really fits with the overall tone set. Much of the worldbuilding is included within the exploration loop; you wander about the vestiges of a ruined civilization, and scattered throughout the decaying buildings and forgotten relics are memories of a society torn asunder, with some lost souls praying for a release from their supposed doom while others give in to madness and pray to their new “savior” only to find themselves on the receiving end of the gods’ anger. It’s such a promising (albeit somewhat tropey and clichéd) idea to run with… which is why I was left quite disappointed by how over the top and comically evil the main villain comes across at the end. Are you kidding me guys, this is the supposed Godslayer that you were all looking towards for direction? He was literally spouting lines like “wItTNeSs My aScEnSiOn” during the final confrontation, how did he ever get this far on the storyboard for what was supposed to be an introspective and spiritual tale? Maybe this civilization deserved its demise if this was the best they could muster up.

Even more importantly though, beyond all the loose-fitting gameplay mechanisms and the dissonant writing, is the lack of cohesion beyond the narrative and the gameplay itself. The way I see it, video games have great potential as a medium, because they’re capable of marrying storytelling and gameplay through interaction in a way that other mediums cannot; when done properly, the gameplay should serve as a vessel for the narrative. Thus, there should be both mechanical meaning and narrative/metaphorical meaning behind actions in a game to tie everything together. However, the Pathless has a lack of narrative purpose behind much of what is going on in game. Mechanically, it makes sense why smaller puzzles are scattered throughout the areas to help guide players’ attention and keep them engaged with smaller tasks, but it's never really explained in-game why this came to be. Why do I suddenly get one more additional “flap” whenever I get enough of these crystals, and why do I now get to “mega-flap” when I’ve beaten this particular boss? The best example of this disparity between gameplay and narrative however, has to be the secret ending (obvious spoiler alert from clicking on the link, you’ve been warned) that is unlocked once you collect every talisman in all the areas and activate the golden switches in the purified arenas. Again, it mechanically makes sense for there to be some kind of reward for finishing every major puzzle in the game, but it bothers me that there’s nothing in the world-building or story hinting at the possibility of another end; I never even knew there was a secret ending until I looked it up. I have no problem justifying mechanical purpose for elements within the game, but if they can’t be justified within the narrative itself… then how is my sense of immersion supposed to remain intact?

I’ve deliberated upon writing this particular review; I don’t particularly enjoy writing negative reviews, especially ones of indies emulating my favorites, and my feelings have only become more and more complicated as I’ve pondered over these past few weeks. In the past, I’ve gone from feeling sheer disappointment and anger while reviewing Journey-likes, to mostly indifference and acceptance that this was just the way things played out, and that industry would continue to pump out palette-swaps of one of my favorite games until the death of the sun. This time though? I just feel bummed. There was so much shaping up to be a success here: it had all the right inspirations in all the right places, the “glue” that was supposed to hold everything together seemed solid enough, and Austin Wintory’s score is phenomenal. But this just… isn’t it. The lack of detail tying everything together more than shows when you try to dive deeper into the pool, and ultimately, this could have easily been the next Journey, but now it will never be anything more than yet another spiritual successor living in the shadow of its idols. I didn’t want to be this harsh, but I suppose I get this emotional towards the things I love. Maybe it’s time I moved on and finally got around to that long delayed replay of Journey. Sometimes, you just can’t beat the classics.

I will be upfront here and admit that my initial impression of Magic Pengel was underwhelming. The first couple of hours felt extremely plodding, thanks to the opening glut of story cutscenes with awkward voice acting, the lack of part variety to attach to your Doodles (your drawable monsters for battle), and the initial grind for more colors necessary to both draw and further develop your Doodles. This initial grind can be a nightmare because a lot of the fightable villagers will easily outclass you in terms of sheer stats and stall you out by using Charge every other turn to heal off more damage than you can inflict, so you’ll end up wasting your arena time if you happen to challenge a super tough villager since there’s also no way to forfeit a match. It also doesn’t help that there’s a half minute loading screen every time you need to move to a new area in the overworld, so you’ll end up sitting through over a minute of loading screens moving between the two main arenas alone since there’s no fast travel and you’ll have to pass through the market every time. Not a great start for a seemingly great premise!

Get past this initial roadblock by winning a few arena matches and gaining enough resources to thoroughly flesh out your Doodles with better stats, however, and the game starts to find its footing. Combat is almost entirely turn-based rock-paper-scissors (magic trumps attack, attack trumps block, block trumps magic) with some degree of mind games. This fortunately does get a bit more complex later on; landing magic spells can inflict status effects such as paralysis and sleep upon foes, as well as temporarily lock or punish types of attacks depending on the spell used. This essentially adds another layer to the mind games, aside from the aforementioned Charge for healing/powering-up the next attack/resetting neutral; thus, combat isn't just mindlessly following the advantage triangle specified above. In addition, the colors and parts used (i.e. adding limbs, wings, a held weapon, etc) drastically change both your stat and skill distribution (explained in more detail here and here ), and since your drawing capabilities and max capacity are increased with each arena win, you’ll likely be redrawing your Doodles all the time anyways to keep up with the tougher fights while tinkering with new and expanded loadouts. Simultaneously, it becomes a lot easier to farm resources since your Doodles will finally have enough attack power to deal more damage than opponents can heal off with Charge, and you’ll earn significantly more of each color (a few thousand as opposed to a few hundred in the early game) upon victories. While Magic Pengel’s combat never reaches the depth of similar monster battling systems such as Pokemon, I nevertheless found it easy enough to get into the rhythm of the progression loop once I got past the opening grind, and it served as a solid podcast game that vaguely reminded me of my days laddering on Pokemon Showdown.

A word of warning though: as much fun as it is sketching crude creatures with your Pengel and watching your crayon abominations destroy developer-drawn Doodles with much more effort put into sketching, that is unfortunately just about all that this game has to offer. Magic Pengel’s narrative touches upon some interesting lore and story beats concerning both the world of color and the supporting cast (such as your friend Zoe’s connection with her missing foster father, a renowned Doodler that once worked for the king), but the game never goes into too much detail with its sparse storytelling, and it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger as your friends decide to set off on another adventure. While you can sell spare colors for gold gems, there’s not much to purchase from shopkeepers; you can buy a few brushes to further adjust your line thickness, but the only other items on offer are Doodles, and there’s no point in buying those when you’ll get far more utility out of drawing your own (especially because you can’t delete any part of a Doodle drawn by an NPC). Finally, the game is a bit lacking in post-game content. The only unlocked features are a new arena where you can engage in 1 v 3 or 2 v 3 fights for higher rewards, as well as a hidden boss that can be fought if you somehow grind one million gold gems. As such, I have to concede that a lot of the Magic Pengel’s surrounding elements could have used some more time in the oven.

Ultimately, I prefer the game’s spiritual successor Graffiti Kingdom for its more succinct runtime and expanded drawing utensils. Even so, I mostly enjoyed my time with Magic Pengel (the quaint charm and artstyle admittingly a big reason why), and I’d say it’s worth checking out if you want a taste of one of more creative monster collecting/creating games out there. I think Taito had something really special on their hands with this formula, and it’s a shame we’ll never see a game in this vein from them again.

It's been almost 9 years since the last Donkey Kong Country game has been released, so I imagine that like all great classics, an indie market rose to meet the demand of nostalgic favorites that AAA developers have since neglected. Kaze and the Wild Masks definitely scratches that itch, especially if you liked playing as Dixie Kong in Donkey Kong Country 2, but as much fun as I had during its four hour runtime, I do find it to be rather generic and derivative. Derivative in fact, to the extent to where I can point to Kaze's levels and note the striking similarities to exact levels in the Donkey Kong Country franchise. Here are some examples:

- Ropes of Hope is basically Forest Frenzy; you jump and hang onto vertical ropes, sliding up and down to dodge aerial foes.

- Lights On Lights Off is the Kaze equivalent of Stop & Go Station; here, you activate light switches to temporarily disable otherwise invincible crab enemies that block the path.

- Toxic Lake can be thought of as the first part of Toxic Tower, where you have to quickly jump up platforms and hoops to avoid becoming engulfed by the rising green death water.

- Ride to Heaven is budget Trick Track Trek; it's the Kaze variant of the singular moving platform odyssey, dodging floating enemies along the way (though without the falling goons from the rafters like Trick Track Trek).

- Sprint of Spirits is essentially bastardized Haunted Hall; here, Dragon Mask Kaze automatically runs to the right while being chased by some evil ghostie vegetable, with red switches speeding up the possessed produce while blue switches will freeze it for a moment.

I do find it flattering of course, that Kaze is clearly influenced by Donkey Kong Country, but I also think it is a bit absurd that I can literally highlight specific elements as direct replicates of DKC level features. Slingshots in Kaze are the equivalents of barrel cannons, with some marked as automatically firing while others have to be timed. The masks can be thought of as animal buddies, with the shark mask essentially a better Engarde that can also swim up and down diagonally and the hawk mask as analogous to Squawks (tap A to flutter against gravity and X to launch an attack similar to Squawks' nut projectile). The exception is the lizard mask, though this also has a counterpart in DKC as the minecart, turning levels into an autorunner where you just have to jump (and occasionally dive) at the right time. Even the collectibles are reminiscent of the DKC games, down to the KAZE letters (like that of the golden KONG letters), though I do think that secrets are a lot easier to find in Kaze than the main games, with basically no incentive to revisit them since there are no external rewards to be found (while bonus rooms in DKC provide plenty of bananas, coins, and extra lives to give you that little rush).

As it stands, Kaze is fun enough for a first romp, but it lacks the depth that the DKC games really exemplify for me to justify going back for replays or speedrun/no-damage achievements. Enemy placement feels a bit more haphazard at times, and doesn't really provide me enough opportunities to build up momentum by spinning into clusters of enemies. For that matter, you also can't control your aerial height after bouncing off of enemies in Kaze (whereas in DKC you can either soft bounce by not holding down jump as you land on enemies, or boost off them by holding/tapping jump), which is a bit of a shame. There just aren't enough opportunities to really utilize any interesting speedrun tech outside of mashing spin with few lasting consequences (as compared to DKC's stagnation state if you come to the end of your roll animation). It also doesn't help that even within specific worlds, you'll find a ton of different environments that don't necessarily make sense (such as a desert sands level in the ice world) and thus gives off this sense of copy & pasted designs throughout the game, especially when you compare Kaze's lack of distinct theming in worlds and rather generic soundtrack to the immersive set design and environmental theming and level elements across the many wild landscapes of the series to the tunes of David Wise. There just aren't enough wrinkles to really shake up level approaches and difficulty, and the atmosphere can't hold a candle to the main series.

If you're desperate for a taste of the old times and have five bucks to spare during a sale, then you could do a lot worse than Kaze. Otherwise, I'd recommend going back to the Donkey Kong Country games or playing a 2D platformer that's inspired enough by the formula but also manages to inject its own personality into the game while providing distinct theming and atmosphere, such as Rayman Legends. As fun of a little diversion as Kaze was, I cannot sincerely say that it manages to come out on its own as anything more than a clone without the underlying details that made the originals it was inspired by so great.

A return to form for Rain Games. While World to the West stretched its exploration to the limits of tedium, with tons of tiring backtracking inbetween and a lack of a satisfying finish to tie things up, Teslagrad 2 feels much more like the true successor to the original metroidvania puzzle platformer thanks to its snugly contained world and understated narrative. This time however, there's a lot more depth to the package thanks to the emphasis on movement mechanics. The game does a great job wordlessly demonstrating all the different uses of each unlockable ability through classic obstacle escalation (starting with simple polarized magnets, then introducing polarity tunnels, ziplines, throwable magnetic blocks, and much more), throwing the player into a variety of different situations that facilitate the usage of these different tools. As a result, it feels less like trial and error and more like a constant stream of progression. Furthermore, it's great at keying you in on the multifaceted nature of your unlocks, such as being able to use the magnetized throwing axe as both a door destructor and as a pivot that you can launch yourself off of to reach new heights. The highlight here is the slide tackle, which once unlocked, allows you to quickly traverse boost rails and loops/valleys to quickly shoot yourself into the air or across vast expanses. It's not afraid to lean into this momentum-focused exploration either, with some optional time trials that unlock even more hidden abilities like directional blink and double jump that certainly aren't necessary to clear the base game, but become super useful if you're just looking to fly through the environment and find every hidden battery.

There's only a few minor complaints this time around. Firstly, there's no fast travel, so backtracking upwards after falling a bit can take a bit more time due to less of an emphasis regarding vertical movement potential. This is at least mitigated thanks to all the secret tunnels, waterfalls (allowing quick blinking through water), and ziplines that can be activated to quickly backtrack this seemingly expansive world while stumbling upon secrets along the way. Secondly, boss fights have been mostly improved with the addition of shield generations before each fight, allowing you to take a second hit (so there's a bit more leeway, giving you more time to adapt to boss strategies on the fly), though the fights are still mostly quite static (dodge a wave of attacks and strike back, rinse and repeat) and require a lot more waiting than anything else. Finally, the slide tackle and the ground-pound are mapped to the same key, which can make momentum conservation a little more tricky when you're trying to retain your sliding state but suddenly grind to a halt and shoot downwards once there's enough height between you and the ground. I did eventually get used to this, but it would have been nice if there were any ability to separate the two actions from the same input and allow for separate rebinds.

Regardless, this definitely feels like a step forward from the original Teslagrad, which felt somewhat unassuming and at times felt a bit awkward and sluggish given the emphasis on magnetic puzzle solving over platforming in a fairly linear environment. The richly detailed backgrounds and the heavy environmental storytelling via the collectible batteries and various heirlooms in the backdrops further compliment the game's confidence; it's fairly comfortable leaving the player to their own devices and letting them explore the playground at their own pace, with tons of toys to mess around with. It definitely helps that the time trials come with fantastic bonus incentives, and that completing all the trials also unlocks a secret map for scrounging those last pesky batteries, as is the hidden boss that serves as its own reward once you've experienced all that the world has to offer. The price tag may seem steep to some, given that it only took me 6 and a half hours to 100%, but the joy of zipping around the world is more than enough incentive for me to consider a future replay. It's a more than worthy send-off for Lumina's journey that will remain as one of my favorite surprises of 2023, and definitely one of the better metroidvanias I've ever played.

I should have known something wasn't right about Memories of Celceta by the one-hour mark. Looking back, I’ve now repeatedly picked up and shelved this game a grand total of five times over the past year, with my feelings upon the game becoming more mixed every time. In fact, it actually made me question whether or not I liked Ys Seven to begin with. Upon a quick replay though, I can confirm that the issue was not so much Ys Seven’s baseline mechanics but rather Celceta’s interpretation of said mechanics. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refrain from poring over Celceta’s general background (since the core ideas have carried over from Ys Seven and have been thoroughly explained here) and treat this write-up more as a compare & contrast.

The first thing that comes to mind is that despite carrying over the baseline combat mechanics from Ys Seven, Celceta’s pacing feels far more sluggish than Ys Seven. This struck me as quite odd at first, because there’s no immediate culprit that would draw my ire as anything that was excessively grindy (as compared to Ys Seven, which really suffers from an end-game resource grind for the best weapons in the game). Upon further reflection, I came to realize that it was actually a mix of smaller factors that kept intrusively interrupting the flow of Ys’s traditionally frenetic bread-and-butter gameplay over the course of the entire run. For example:

- Celceta has tons of slow swimming thanks to all the different water bodies and water elevation puzzles scattered throughout the overworld and the dungeons. This gets even more obnoxious because there are tons of enemies present in the water that Adol and company have to fend off with a very committal thrust (since you can’t dodge or flash guard while swimming).

- The first half of the game doesn’t let you freely teleport between differently colored monuments, which becomes very tedious when backtracking for resources/side quests/healing. It’s not until the Primeval Lands are unlocked and you obtain the Gold Wing that backtracking becomes much more efficient.

- There’s some coding/binding oversight that doesn’t let you use your special attack bound to the Y button without expending your EXTRA attack/gauge if it’s completely filled up. The result is that I felt pretty reluctant to use the Y special attack most of the time, and accidentally threw away my EXTRA attack plenty of times, forcing me to engage in additional grinding to enter every boss fight with a full EXTRA gauge.

- There are some high-level enemies near the beginning of the game with tons of health that you’d think would be a good idea to avoid; however, it’s actually pretty easy to defeat them by flash guarding the telegraphed attacks and they're worth boat-loads of experience. The Golden Pikkard near the middle of the game functions similarly to this, in that it can grant multiple level-ups at a time and is otherwise a somewhat unengaging fight since it will just run away from you while tanking attacks. These opportunities feel too good to pass up since it’s often very little risk for significant reward, resulting in the player occasionally grinding to become over-leveled for a good chunk of the game.

- The game encourages you to go for “aerial combos” juggling enemies for extra damage, but most characters are incapable of using standard attacks to hit launched foes because there’s no jump and most standard attacks aren’t pointed upwards. This creates this gap in combat where after hitting enemies with launcher special attacks and running out of the SP gauge, you have to wait for enemies to return to earth before resuming your assault.

- Each of the six playable party characters has a “unique” action that requires you to switch to them to activate something in the overworld (ex: Adol is the only one who can access memories, Duren is required to unlock chests, etc). This wasn’t completely absent in Ys Seven, but it’s significantly more intrusive in Celceta because there are many more instances requiring character-specific context-sensitive prompts, so a lot more time is spent menuing to switch party characters on the fly if the ones you’re currently using for combat don’t correspond with those required for overworld actions.

- While there’s no late-game resource grind as previously mentioned, there’s something far more egregious that players may feel incentivized to do. Due to some developer oversight, Falcom misaligned the world map, which means that to achieve 100% map completion, you have to unintuitively “hug” walls of certain areas to register them as part of the percentage. This gets particularly grating because the game is very picky as to what has/has not been registered, to where unregistered parts of the map may not even appear to be visibly faded while looking at the map display. You don’t have to 100% the map to beat the game of course, but since the item you receive as a reward for doing so is extremely valuable (a sub-item that accelerates the accrual of your EXTRA gauge), most players will probably end up going through this laborious and unclear clean-up that was fortunately addressed in Ys VIII with far more generous guidelines.

Looking past these pacing issues, Celceta does at least expand and often improve upon the toolkit from Ys Seven. For instance, dodge-rolling right when enemies attack performs a “Flash Move” that grants you temporary invincibility and temporarily slows the enemy down (as opposed to the Flash Guard, which is more of a “parry” that builds up your SP/EXTRA gauge), which should theoretically open up more avenues of combat. In addition, new special attacks for characters are naturally unlocked as the player progresses through the game’s fights; while Ys Seven ran the risk of players potentially not gaining permanent access to new special attacks if not used enough with new weapons, Celceta’s unlocks operate independently of purchasing new weapons to avoid this issue. Lastly, Celceta provides a stronger incentive for utilizing special attacks by allowing players to regain half of the expended SP if the special attack is used as a finisher, rewarding players for wisely timing special attacks to improve the flow of combat.

The more pressing issue then, is that the enemies and bosses are not scaled appropriately to match the player’s buffed toolkit, resulting in what is probably the easiest Ys game to date. Ys Seven at least ran the risk of punishing the player for mistiming the Flash Guard: if the player is hit during the end-lag after the active parrying frames, they would receive critical damage, thus balancing the risk vs reward. Meanwhile, Celceta not only removes this risk altogether, but in fact allows the player to mash the Flash Guard with no delay between inputs to quickly build up the SP/EXTRA gauge in practical invincibility, trivializing fights. Similarly, the charged attack is streamlined from Ys Seven to Celceta: Ys Seven forced the player to commit by holding down the attack button, while Celceta instead links the charged attack to a built-in timer (wait long enough without attacking and the next attack you launch will be charged). While this doesn’t appear to be a drastic change, there’s a lot less decision-making that goes into the latter compared to the former; the player is consciously making the decision to charge up an attack in Ys Seven, but in Celceta, it’ll naturally charge while dodge-rolling around anyways. Finally, remembered when I mentioned that most characters are incapable of hitting launched enemies with standard attacks for aerial combos? There’s one exception to this, and she’s the most busted character in the game: Karna can often infinitely juggle enemies with her ranged standard attack, and can in fact out-space the vast majority of mobs in the game. Couple all of these things with the activated flash-moves from rolling through enemy attacks, and Celceta’s combat often devolves into mindless hit-and-run strategies where you can dodge-roll/flash-guard through every attack in the game with little risk to the player.

As a result, Memories of Celceta lacks an engaging difficulty/learning curve compared to other games in the series; the same broken strategies that work at the very beginning are just as effective at running through late-game bosses, and there’s not much incentive for the player to experiment outside of their comfort zone considering how easy it is to fall back upon hit-and-run. I imagine that Falcom caught wind of complaints regarding spongey bosses in Ys Seven and thus toned down their health bars accordingly, but it feels like they went in the complete opposite direction because even the final couple of bosses absolutely melted in a couple of minutes from abusing flash guard critical-boosted EXTRA attacks. The game also lacks a satisfying payoff to justify the tedium: Memories of Celceta tries to place more emphasis upon the individual party members as opposed to the overarching lore (which is why Ys Seven’s limited storytelling feels more acceptable), but so much more time is spent mindlessly backtracking for side-quests that fail to provide interesting lore/character development, and the game abruptly grinds to a halt after an anti-climatic final boss fight that fails to provide any resolution or catharsis to any of the game’s party members. It really feels like Falcom phoned in Celceta's ending in comparison to the simple yet impactful narrative that Ys Seven provided, thanks to Ys Seven’s well-developed tragic villain and emotional climax.

Many have described Ys Seven and Memories of Celceta as a sort of “transition period” between the Ark-era isometric 2D-3D games and the “modern-era” party-based fully-3D games with broader scopes and longer runtimes, but I will go a step further: Memories of Celceta is the stepping-stone of the Ys stepping-stones. The short and thick of it is that while there is no single abhorrent quality or moment that makes the game unbearable, it's also the first Ys game that's struggled to hold my attention and I can’t think of any reasons to recommend it as opposed to its peers. If you want a tougher game with less developed mechanics but a tighter execution to fit its rougher toolkit, then Ys Seven is the way to go. If you want a more expansive and polished toolkit with a more engaging difficulty and learning curve to justify said toolkit, then Ys VIII is your weapon of choice. Finally, if you just want the tale of Celceta told to you in a more succinct and colorful manner, then I’d suggest playing through the original Ys IV via Dawn of Ys. Memories of Celceta loves to emphasize the importance of treasuring the past… but I sure as hell wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first Ys game that I ended up forgetting.

Lunistice's core precision platforming instantly hooked me as soon as I picked up the controller. I see a lot of the comparisons to Sonic, and for the most part I agree; it's generally very tight jumping across small platforms with occasional rail riding sections with a few easily spotted shortcuts and side corridors that you can make your way to for a tougher challenge and extra collectibles to find out more about the main story. In this sense, the speed isn't always a given, since it takes dedication to master the demanding platforming despite the simple controls, but it is most definitely a reward flying through stages and scoring S ranks once you get into the swing of things. For the sake of description however, I actually think it might be more accurate to describe this as a 3D Freedom Planet (yes I know, that's Sonic inspired too); the main character, Hana, has a double jump and a full body tail swing attack that performs triple duty as a enemy clearer, a hurtbox extender to quickly snag nearby collectibles without wasting time turning around, and a "triple jump" to extend your aerial drift and gain a bit more height.

There really aren't many nitpicks here; the rhythm section does feel a bit out of place, but I'd assume that figuring out the cycles for speedrunning and understanding the tempo would make it feel much less frustrating, thus serving as an example of the game leaning even more heavily towards "easy to pick up, harder to master." I unfortunately do think that playing as Toree (one of the unlockable extra characters in the post-game) of Toree 3D fame isn't that satisfying, as the levels still have tons of enemies that you just have to outright avoid (since you can't attack) while often turning a ton to collect all the stars, and the consequence of dying in one hit from enemies means that despite Toree feeling like the fastest character, I still felt like I had to play much more cautiously to avoid a reset. The other unlockable character, Toukie, is a lot more interesting; in exchange for a slightly slower character, you get three jumps of slightly lower height instead, opening the door for more creative and different pathing than that of Hana's. Even though I don't think the extra content in the form of Toree playthroughs is that great, and the actual game can be "beat" in a couple of hours, the core gameplay as well as Toukie make the fairly low asking price of $4.99 absolutely worth it. Combined with nostalgic graphics of the PS1 era and some banging tunes, this is definitely a great hidden gem if you're into short and sweet 3D platforming with emphasis on quick bursts of challenging yet rewarding bursts of slick action.