Novelty and simplicity are Crypt of the NecroDancer’s greatest strengths. All you need to play is the arrow keys and yet this is one of the hardest roguelikes you will ever play, particularly if you dive into the unlockable characters. I’m nowhere near good enough to beat the game with Aria, but I still enjoyed trying to stay in the groove with Cadence and Melody. It should go without saying the music is wonderful. The singing shopkeeper is a delight, to the point where I wish he was playable. In any case, definitely check this out if you like rhythm games or want a new take on a roguelike.

Also, check out the crossover follow-up Cadence of Hyrule. Its lower difficulty and reduced roguelike elements make it a perfect entry point for the rhythm gameplay. Even if that’s not your cup of tea, the exploration is great and there’s an option to disable the rhythm if you struggle with that. Brace Yourself Games has earned my respect and I look forward to playing Rift of the Necrodancer after it releases!

Remember how Baby Mario cried if you didn’t protect him in Yoshi’s Island? That was done to encourage more intelligent play. This is even more true in Pikmin. Unless you have mastered the game, you WILL lose some of your squad, and it is never not haunting. You might blame the AI when they get stuck under a bridge or stand in the shadow of a Wollyhop, but even these moments can be circumvented with better planning and skill. I lost many hundreds of Pikmin on my first playthrough, enough to where I wanted to do a second one. Here, I was able to reduce my losses by more than half and beat my day record by an entire week. The time limit guarantees the world never revolves around you, but even the smallest changes in strategy will make a huge difference.

Fire ‘n Ice might be the best NES game nobody talks about. A puzzle game about creating, destroying, and pushing ice blocks to extinguish fires. Dana’s limited moveset and the way ice interacts with the environment are milked for all their worth. Pipes, torches, and black ice add some nice variable state to the later puzzles. I would have liked to see one or two more twists like that, but what’s here is a ton of fun. An easy recommendation to puzzle enthusiasts and one of my new favorite NES games.

Nintendo doesn’t have a strong track record with DLC, but even I couldn’t deny that 48 courses for $25 sounded like a great deal. Now that every course is out, I am happy to say the Booster Course Pass gets my personal recommendation, with two minor caveats. First, some waves are better than others and I will briefly discuss each one below. Second, the visuals. While I don’t really care about graphical fidelity, some of the DLC courses have a cartoony art direction that clashes with the realistic style seen in the base game. The fact Nintendo couldn’t be bothered to reuse nicer assets in certain courses reeks of laziness. With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

Wave 1
— Cups: Golden Dash & Lucky Cat
— Score: 5/10
— A very rough start. With one exception, the courses from Tour are quite boring. Cocount Mall was also downgraded compared to the Wii original. The escalators have obvious arrows telling you where to go and the cars at the end move less dynamically. These remove a lot of player reactivity and turn a great course into a merely decent one.
— Worst: Toad Circuit Overly simple track layout and aesthetic. Its “grass” is better described as lime concrete.
— Best: Ninja Hideaway The multiple paths, variety of obstacles, and great theming cement this as one of the best and most creative courses in the whole series. The fact it was from Tour still blows my mind.

Wave 2
— Cups: Turnip & Propeller
— Score: 8/10
— The tracks still don’t look the best, but they are much more interesting than Wave 1. Picking a favorite of the bunch was tough. I love the penguins in Snow Land, the bouncy mushrooms of Mushroom Gorge, and the train in Kalimari Desert.
— Worst: SNES Mario Circuit 3 I still enjoy this course for its music and sharp turns, but it is simple and less engaging compared to the others.
— Best: Waluigi Pinball Dodging pinballs while making sharp turns is a blast and the exclusive sound effects are a nice touch.

Wave 3
— Cups: Rock & Moon
— Score: 7/10
— I’m indifferent to half of these courses, but Peach Gardens, Boo Lake, and Maple Treeway are great. Bit of a letdown that the Wigglers in the latter are very easy to avoid compared to Wii.
— Worst: Merry Mountain Nice theme, but feels lacking in obstacles.
— Best: 3DS Rainbow Road The road looks more blue than rainbow, but the multitude of turns, obstacles, and setpieces make this a very memorable course. Easily one of the strongest Rainbow Roads in the series.

Wave 4
— Cups: Fruit & Boomerang
— Score: 8/10
— Originally, I thought this would be my favorite wave, but on further reflection, I think its on par with Wave 2. There are a couple duds like Riverside Park and DS Mario Circuit, but the rest are mostly bangers.
— Worst: DS Mario Circuit Textbook example of unremarkable. Doesn’t attempt anything unique and the layout is very flat.
— Best: Yoshi’s Island Favorite course in the DLC. The remixed music, obstacles, and exclusive sound effects make for an excellent tribute to a fantastic game.

Wave 5
— Cups: Feather & Cherry
— Score: 6/10
— Feather Cup is good, but Cherry Cup might be the weakest in the game. Even Koopa Cape is lukewarm, particularly with its pipe section lacking the water current and electric fans from Wii. This course also alerted me to how terrible the camera can be when tricking off half-pipes.
— Worst: Sunset Wilds The music and dancing Shy Guys are the only positives. Take these away and you’ve got one snoozefest of a track. The sky no longer changing with every lap is a huge slap in the face to Super Circuit fans. If Deluxe’s lighting engine really couldn’t support this effect, why is the course included?
— Best: Squeaky Clean Sprint Driving through a giant bathroom is novel. Couple that with great music and a huge alternate path at the end, and you have a track that begs to be replayed.

Wave 6
— Cups: Acorn & Spiny
— Score: 7/10
— The other waves had higher highs, but most of these courses are solid, if not great. Special shoutout to SNES Bowser Castle 3. On top of being fun to race through, it looks MARVELOUS. I was in awe my first run through it.
— Worst: Madrid Drive Indistinguishable from the dozen other city tracks in the DLC. Rome Avanti’s roundabout turns and Chain Chomps in the Coliseum give it a slight edge.
— Best: Wii Rainbow Road I have a ton of nostalgia for this one, but can you blame me? It was amazing on Wii and this HD rendtition is no exception.

Overall, the Booster Course Pass is a great addition to the best-selling Switch game. This brings the total number of courses to 96. Mamma mia! I honestly have no idea how Nintendo is gonna come close to that number of courses in the inevitable Mario Kart 9 without several years of development and a $70 price tag. However, if we end up having, say, 48 original courses and some major, interesting tweak(s) to the gameplay for $60, I won’t mind. For now though, have fun with more Mario Kart, and if you want to race with me online or just be friends, please send me a friend request on Discord. See bio for more information.

Half-Life 2 desperately wants to outdo its predecessor. The graphics, setpieces, physics system; they all scream, “Look how awesome we are!” This is no surprise, as Valve wanted to redefine the FPS genre in the same way Half-Life 1 did. Both games have awesome highs and unfortunate lows. For the sequel, however, I do think those lows drag it down enough for me to say I prefer the first game.

Weirdly, the biggest flaw is situated towards the first half of the game. This comes in the form of two chapters where you drive a vehicle. The first is a hovercraft and the second is a dune buggy. You drive through empty roads with no obstacles and are constantly forced to make pit stops to open security gates. I understand wanting to break up the driving with combat and the occasional puzzle, but this stop-and-go pacing got tiring after the second gate. It also doesn’t help that the driving controls and camera are shoddy compared to other vehicle-based games.

In addition, the combat feels underutilized compared to the first game. The weapon roster is solid, if not a little underwhelming with the removal of novelties like the tau cannon, gluon gun, and hive hand. At first, the gravity gun seems like a suitable replacement. Indeed, it can be useful if there’s furniture or sawblades around for dispatching foes. Because of this strong dependence on the environment, however, it is too situational. The Pheropods fall into the same category. Antlions only appear in Sandtraps and Nova Prospekt, and you are unable to command them until the former is over, so its only useful during the latter. It’s unfortunate too because Half-Life 1 had an equivalent weapon in the form of snarks. They weren’t a great weapon, but they didn’t become obsolete after a single chapter. As for the enemies, they can be summed up as 70% Combine soldiers, 25% zombies and headcrabs, and 5% other. Spreading them out like this hurts the pacing, especially when the first game not only had more distinct enemy behaviors, but did a fantastic job introducing and mixing them together without going overboard.

For the things I like about the sequel, a few of the characters were charming, such as Grigori. Fighting alongside him in Ravenholm was when the campaign started to pick up for me. Everything after Highway 17 was also great. Leading an army of antlions through Nova Prospekt, leading the Resistance to victory against the Combine, and destroying the Citadel with a souped-up gravity gun all made for a strong victory lap. I also never had to break out a guide to figure out where to go, unlike Half-Life 1. And while I don’t think the physics gameplay was developed much here, it was nonetheless cool to see ideas that would be expanded upon in the Portal games, like the energy balls and movable turrets.

In conclusion, Half-Life 2 is the weakest Valve game I’ve played. But that should tell you just how great their catalogue is. This title still has their stamp of quality in many areas. More importantly, it represents an evolution in technology and how Valve would make games going forward. When talking about Half-Life 1, Gaben said the company was interested in exploring the “phenomenological possibilities of [video games]”, and not just building shooting galleries. Both Half-Life entries pursue this goal, and the lessons Valve learned from their development would no doubt influence the Portal duology and other games of theirs I haven’t touched, like Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress. No matter what the future holds for Valve, I will always appreciate their contributions to the medium.

I was not a fan of the forced backtracking for the Chozo artifacts, but Metroid Prime is a classic for many reasons. There is nothing I can say about it without being redundant, so I’ll just say this is the definitive way to experience it. The graphics are incredible while also staying true to the original atmosphere. A game looking this amazing on Switch without framerate issues didn’t seem possible, yet here we are. The Spring Ball and flexible control options were great additions, but I wish you could remap individual buttons in-game. I might be alone in this, but mapping the shoot button to A instead of Y makes no sense, as you will be shooting very often and will have to uncomfortably twist your thumb or use a claw grip to hit A and B at the same time for shooting and jumping simultaneously. This was the first Switch game I felt compelled to remap my Joy-Cons in the main menu.

Don’t let that deter you from buying this though. Metroid Prime Remastered is a must-have for your Switch, especially if you never played the original.

Cult of the Lamb would be more impressive if ActRaiser hadn’t done the same thing a whole lot better decades ago. The dungeon crawling lasts too long for how uncomplex and imprecise the combat is and the lack of meaningful dialogue or events when managing your cult removes a big emotional hook from the proceedings. Also, do NOT play this on Switch. Loading times are abysmal and I experienced two crashes. Hard to get too upset since it was free via game trial, but these technical issues should have been patched by this point.

When I played Breath of the Wild five years ago, I was excited for the future of the series. Despite liking several of the older games more, there was so much potential in the new format. The chemistry system, physics, artstyle, and open world were crafted with such immaculate detail I was largely able to look past its many shortcomings. How Tears of the Kingdom addresses these is a double-edged sword. It has a lot of gameplay improvements that will make it difficult to go back to its predecessor. That’s what an iterative sequel should do. At the same time, it is impossible to review this game without reviewing Breath of the Wild. Both games look and play so similarly you would be forgiven for thinking the sequel was a glorified ROM hack. Keep this analogy in mind as you read. My review will be focused on discussing the additions and changes the sequel made, starting with the tutorial.

I’m not going to mince words. The Great Sky Island is the worst tutorial in any Zelda game I’ve ever played. I have two big reasons for stating this. Firstly, it goes on FOREVER. It makes the maligned intros of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword look tame. Those games also had the benefit of establishing important characters in Link’s adventure. It would be hard to care about Zelda in Skyward Sword if there wasn’t so much time spent forging a connection with her before she’s taken away. After Ganondorf is introduced in Tears of the Kingdom, however, I spent over THREE HOURS reaching the tutorial shrines, with my sole accomplice being a Zonai warrior with a cardboard personality. Simple plot and characters aren’t problems in and of themselves, but Breath of the Wild wasted far less time accomplishing the same goal.

Reason number two is a lack of freedom. The Great Plateau worked so well because it was an authentic taste of the open world to come. The tutorial shrines could be tackled in any order and the minimal amount of text boxes allowed me to acclimate to the mechanics at my own pace. I was trusted to figure things out. Not so on the Great Sky Island. There’s a lot of Zonai constructs offering gameplay tips, some optional and some not. This doesn’t work for Zelda newcomers or Breath of the Wild veterans. The former will be overwhelmed by the mechanics, especially Ultrahand, and the latter will just want to get a move-on. More baffling to me is that each shrine has to be visited in a set order. The island is shaped like a donut and obstacles must be traversed by using abilities obtained from the previous shrine. None of the freedom that comes after leaving the island is present here. I was so desperate to explore Hyrule that I actually missed the paraglider for a few hours. I also used Rewind to reach a mini Sky island and thought I was trapped. Admittedly, this was a stupid idea and I could have fast-traveled to escape, but I got so fed-up with not having the paraglider that I looked up where it was. What do you know, I was heading in the oposite direction! Nintendo, why would you put an ESSENTIAL traversal tool in the middle of an OPEN WORLD???

As irritating as it was, the tutorial does not change the fact that Link’s abilities are a considerable improvement over the ones in Breath of the Wild. Ultrahand is what Magnesis should have been and then some. You can pick up any loose objects and Zonai devices, and then construct whatever your imagination can muster by supergluing them together. Nintendo should be applauded for allowing objects to be stuck together almost anywhere. It does mean mistakes are bound to happen, but the skill ceiling wouldn’t be nearly as high if you could only construct vehicles in a specific way. Admittedly, I only used Ultrahand when I needed to because I didn’t find Autobuild until much later and building a vehicle without that was not always worth the effort, but overall the system was a brilliant way of expanding on the physics-based gameplay.

Fuse is equally brilliant and my personal favorite ability. It single-handedly solves two major issues I had with Breath of the Wild: the weapon durability and the lack of utility for many inventory items beyond upgrading armor. Weapon durability was the hottest topic surrounding Breath of the Wild’s gameplay. I personally thought it was a good system, but suffered from diminshing returns. As the game went on, my inventory became bigger, but my weapons were still fairly brittle despite their higher damage numbers. It made me not want to engage with most enemies because I didn’t want to break my best weapons. Here, almost every weapon has a weak base damage value and the idea is to decide which monster parts or elemental materials you want to fuse onto the weapon to make it stronger. Weapons with strong base damage are few and far between. Even then, they almost always come with a trade-off. For example, bone weapons, which were useless in Breath of the Wild, now have much higher base damage to compensate for their pitiful durability, functioning like glass weapons in an RPG. Gloom swords obtained from Phantom Ganon inflict gloom on the player, necessitating meals that recover those hearts after use.

Whoever conceived the idea to fuse materials onto arrows is a genius. This eliminates the need for the previous game’s specific arrows, as your entire materials inventory now serves that purpose. I can only speak for myself, but in Breath of the Wild, I was constantly running low on arrows I wanted to use. In the sequel, only normal arrows can be looted, making them easier to stockpile, and fusing specific materials will achieve the effect of the ice, fire, shock, or bomb arrows from before, along with several new ones. This flexibility led to me using materials I never touched in the previous game, like Chuchu jelly and Keese eyeballs. However, being forced to select the materials for every single arrow breaks the flow of combat. Why not have the game remember the arrow you fired last time and give the option to switch back to a normal arrow like in Breath of the Wild? There also needed to be a faster way to select specific materials. Even with the sorting options, it takes way too long to cycle through the whole inventory. It’s mainly a problem when you want to use a material you haven’t touched recently. A personalized list of favorite materials that appeared alongside the general list would have been perfect for me.

I don’t have nearly as much to say about Ascend and Rewind, but they’re still great tools. The former is particularly special for how it asks the player to examine 3D space differently from the average video game. It is both goofy and exciting when Link is ascending for like five full seconds and I have no idea what’s at the surface. Its limitations on height and surface flatness also ensure it doesn’t overshadow climbing like Revali’s Gale did. Rewind is perhaps the least interesting, but its applications in motion-based puzzles and specific mini-bosses cement it as more worthwhile than Stasis. In other words, my least favorite ability in Tears of the Kingdom is more useful than the best ability from Breath of the Wild.

With all of the abilities discussed, let’s move on to the shrines. Note that this is coming from someone who completed all 272 shrines across Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In the former, they were a mixed bag. For every good shrine that iterated on a puzzle idea, there were at least three mediocre or bad ones. Given that there’s more shrines in the sequel, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised little was done to address this. Puzzle shrines are still inconsistent with how much effort seems to have gone into them. There are even shrines dedicated to teaching basic combat actions like shield parries, throwing objects, and shooting a bow. I want you to think about that for a second. Nintendo didn’t trust its players to figure out how to shoot a bow! What happened to Breath of the Wild’s approach of combining these tips into a single shrine players were unlikely to miss early on? Ideally, there would be no such tutorials, but I’ll take one that overstays its welcome over several that only exist to bloat the shrine count. The sole exception to all of this was the combat shrines. Instead of fighting the same guardian robot 20 times with a variable amount of health, these shrines have unique layouts with deviously-placed enemies and hazards. Even better is how you are stripped of your equipment during the trial, meaning you have to work with what the designers give you. Like the previous game’s Eventide Island and Trials of the Sword, these challenges had to be crafted with a naked Link in mind, eliminating the possibility of players cheesing them with overpowered weapons or not having enough resources to win. I always felt the combat was at its best when you are scavenging for weapons to survive.

Nintendo seems to have only taken a half-step towards addressing the complaints about shrines, and the dungeons are no better. They have stronger build-ups, look distinct from each other, and have unique bosses, thank goodness, but they all follow the same structure as Divine Beasts. This structure is not bad by itself, but the repetition, combined with how short every temple is, makes them disappointing. I’m not even sure these temples are better than Divine Beasts, as I found most of the puzzles and bosses here to be a cakewalk. The detailed map and lack of small keys means the spatial reasoning required of players in classic Zelda dungeons is mostly absent. Therefore, if the puzzles don’t pick up the slack, dungeons feel unfinished. As underwhelming as the Divine Beasts were, I firmly believe they had more interesting puzzles. At least you had to understand the consequences of manipulating the controls for each one. The temples here don’t have a unique gimmick like that, except for the Water Temple, but that also has the most braindead puzzles.

I’m torn on the world design. For something advertised as expanding the scope of Hyrule, the Sky really feels like an afterthought. The tutorial island is actually the largest Sky island, which wouldn’t be a problem if the others were interesting. Instead, Nintendo mostly just added a few skydiving challenges, copy-pasted a crystal fetch quest in every region, and called it a day. It’s barely better than how it was in Skyward Sword, which is a low bar to clear. In contrast, finding a lightroot in the Depths after stumbling around in the dark was consistently rewarding. Since it’s the same size as the surface, mapping out the Depths is practically a game in and of itself. It is a bit lame though that the only extrinsic rewards unique to this area are Poes, Zonaite, and the spoils of a copy-pasted mini-boss. Poes are used as currency for a specific chain of shops that could easily have been part of every other shop in the game. Like, why not just have those items in other shops and use Rupees instead? Using them for navigating the Depths isn’t a good counter-argument because brightbloom seeds accomplish the same thing in a much better way. Zonaite is used for buying crystals to upgrade the battery for Zonai devices. If you like messing around with Ultrahand, this will be a worthwhile investment. I didn’t start upgrading it until after I completed about 90 shrines and most of the temples, so while I was largely able to make do with the default amount, it’s still a nice inclusion. One more question about the Depths though:

WHY ARE THE DUNGEON BOSSES ALSO FOUND HERE?! This means they are not special, just like every other enemy in the game! WHY?! When I first saw this, I incorrectly assumed they could be found BEFORE exploring the dungeons and originally wrote this review with that belief in mind. I’m so thankful I was wrong. Imagine if you fought Twinrova from Ocarina of Time hours before the Spirit Temple, with no alterations between fights. It would spoil the surprise. Nevertheless, I still believe these rematches weren’t necessary. They just add repetition to a game that already has too much of that.

This repetition is most abundant on Hyrule’s Surface, which should be a crime considering that’s where Breath of the Wild took place. The caves, for example, were fun at first, but they did little to stand out from each other, losing their appeal after the 10th one. The Bubbul gems in each one were also completely unnecessary, as they’re only used for one shop that doesn’t offer enough useful items to justify its existence. More enemies is great, but they’re reused just as incessantly as Breath of the Wild. Once you’ve beaten your fourth Lynel or Gleeok, subsequent encounters become a chore. It’s nice to see that Tarrey Town expanded its construction business, but repeatedly holding up a sign for Addison gets old fast. The Korok challenges ran themselves into the ground before 100 seeds, let alone 1,000. The escort missions are particularly dull and that same concept is used to unlock the fairy fountains. Why are the fairies in different locations anyway? Having them all next to stables robs the sense of mystery they had in Breath of the Wild, where only a diligent explorer could find them.

No need to worry about story spoilers in this next paragraph. I’ve carefully written it to avoid any details that weren’t shown off in the trailers.

I wasn’t planning to mention the story since most Zelda games have the same one, but this one is so underwhelming I have to make an exception. To start with the positives, the tone is more epic than last time, which is a better fit for a game about saving the world. Matthew Mercer was also a perfect choice to voice Ganondorf and the final battle with him did not disappoint like the last game. Sadly, everything else sucks. For one, the story is hidden away in memories that can be uncovered out of order. Breath of the Wild also did this, but it was much more forgivable since those cutscenes did not spoil important plot details. They were just focused around Zelda’s relationship with Link and her journey of self-discovery. It was flavor text that nicely complimented Link’s journey in the present. Tears of the Kingdom, however, tries to tell a typical Zelda story through these memories and not only does the nonlinearity make it easy for plot twists to be ruined, but the memories add to a long list of moments where characters explain the same events over and over and over. The ending also undermines the most intersting idea the writers had. Unforgivable considering how effortlessly Nintendo nailed similar moments in past games.

Going into Tears of the Kingdom, I was optimistic Nintendo would find a way to make the recycled map and assets interesting. In several ways, they did. But I don’t believe there were enough alterations to Hyrule. I’m not a huge fan of Majora’s Mask, but it did a far better job recycling assets and I will always respect it for not repeating Ocarina of Time’s formula. But even when Nintendo did go back to that formula with Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, they still reimagined Hyrule with a new layout and artstyle. Heck, if you want an example of a reused map done right, just look at A Link Between Worlds. It brought new ideas to the series like merging into walls and renting items, which were paired alongside dungeons that reimagined old ideas. The resulting overworld was both familiar and fresh. The reason I don’t feel that in this title is because I found myself doing a lot of the same things from Breath of the Wild, and I was rarely incentivized to change that approach.

Tears of the Kingdom being so familiar despite six years of development is proof enough for me that it is not only not worth $70, but a sign Nintendo needs to scale back future Zelda games. Let’s be honest, any other company that put a similarly mixed effort into remixing old content would be accused of laziness. For all the problems the older Zelda games may have had, it really hits home how much I yearn for their comparatively smaller scope. Just think about how dense the map would feel if every region had its own dungeon, inhabitants, and music. That’s one of the many things I and lots of other players love about Zelda. Obviously, the series has come a long way since its inception and ignoring that evolution would be unwise. Nintendo should continue to build on their open-world design, just like they did here, but the size of the map should be correlated with the amount of unique discoveries. Dark Souls and Hollow Knight both proved to me that such a world is possible in the modern gaming landscape, but even they did not offer a true open world. I don’t know if an open world that dense with unique discoveries exists or even will exist. If I find it, however, you will know, because it will probably be the best game I ever play.

This came out the same year as Sonic ‘06 and that atrocious GBA port of the first Genesis game. And yet, it is among my favorite Sonic games. It was actually my first exposure to the Blue Blur. I replayed it last year to see if it was still good, and I can say it absolutely is.

The racing gameplay has so much depth, far more than Mario Kart. It’s all about managing your air (gas), accomplished by performing tricks, grabbing item capsules, rotating the stick at specific moments, and accessing character-specific shortcuts. There’s even a tournament mod for this game available on PC. That’s when you know you made something special.

The side modes are no slouch either. The story is stupid, but that’s par for the course with Sonic. Love the Babylon Rogues though. The mission mode, while repetitive, encourages mastery of the courses with their ranking system. It’s also worth doing to unlock AiAi, Nights, and Ulala.

I only have two complaints with Sonic Riders. The first is the lack of a good tutorial. There is an in-game video explaining the core mechanics, but it’s hidden in the Extras menu. Even then, it doesn’t explain everything you can do. The second issue is that there are only 16 courses, and about half of them are reskins. Sonic Team could have added more courses and iterated on the mechanics with a good sequel, but instead they took away the core mechanics and eventually decided to make Mario Kart clones. What a shame, but at least we have this title.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed across the many 2D platformers I’ve played, it’s that they rarely allow you to go at breakneck speed. If you’re moving too fast to react to obstacles, then you will crash into them and the speed flow will be broken. So how can a platformer allow you to go fast without streamlining the level design into a series of straight lines that lack challenge? Sonic’s answer to this conundrum was to slow you down with vertical slopes and stairs for platforming sections. This worked well enough that I was convinced a fast-paced platformer must occasionally slow you down to be interesting, until now.

Pizza Tower is refreshing in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin, but I’ll try. For one, the controls are a contender for the best in any platformer. They have a slight learning curve, but all of Peppino’s movement options are responsive, satisfying to pull off, and most importantly, flow into each other seamlessly. Even when you turn around, he keeps most of that speed. Being able to run up any wall feels great and is something Sonic should consider incorporating. The momentum is perfect.

Like any great platformer, the levels are designed around these controls. There are very few moments where you will encounter a wall or obstacles that feel explicitly designed to slow you down. Even then, the knockback is very brief. To accomodate the speed, levels are, funnily enough, a series of straight lines and inclines. The reason it works here, however, is an excellent balance between moments where you can hold the run button to rampage through enemies and moments of hot-footed platforming necessitating a variety of inputs and quick reflexes. An autorunner, this is not.

As nice as all of that is, there’s only so many ways to arrange platforms. The levels would have gotten stale if they all lacked gimmicks like John Gutter, the first level. Pizza Tower is not like this. Almost every level has at least one gimmick that changes the gameplay enough to be stimulating on its own while still allowing you to move quickly. The weakest levels slow you down too much (Bloodsauce Dungeon), have uninteresting gimmicks (Pizzascare), or are simply out of place (GOLF).

The ranking system is excellently done. Grabbing all of the secrets and completing a second lap of the escape sequence while keeping my combo active was as tough and stressful as it was exhilirating and rewarding. It’s completely optional, but achieving them in my favorite levels was the highlight of my playthrough. It was so enjoyable I’d go as far as to say this is how the game is meant to be played.

Audiovisually, Pizza Tower is superb. The art style won’t be for everyone, but the exaggerated 90s flair gives it a surreal vibe that stands out from the chunky pixel art of most indie titles. Peppino is also extremely expressive no matter what you’re doing. He has a large variety of taunts, idle animations, and running cycles, all of which are buttery-smooth in motion. The sound design is an earworm, though I couldn’t help but notice a lot of it sounded similar to cartoon stock sound effects. After a trip to the wiki, I can confirm this to be true. The music is great, but only in the moment. I can’t recall any tune aside from “It’s Pizza Time!”, which is a certified banger.

Also great is the bosses. All of them have thrilling attack patterns and are far better than I would have expected for a platformer lacking a dedicated combat system. There probably could have been a time limit instead of giving Peppino a health bar to keep continuity with the main levels, but that’s a minor complaint.

Not so minor is the handling of secrets. In any other platformer I would praise their inclusion, but here, I found a lot of them to be too well-hidden and disruptive to the relentless pacing. Memorizing their locations is completely doable to earn a P-rank, but that only reinforces my point. They’re not satisfying to find for their own sake. The levels aren’t built for exploration anyway, so fewer of these or having them signposted by a trail of ingredients more often would have been appreciated.

The lighter exploration is also why, despite my comments in the first paragraph, I can’t entirely agree with the Sonic comparisons. They’re both speed platformers, yes, but their approaches to exploration and even level design are worlds apart. As much as Sonic is known for going fast, slowing down was encouraged for obtaining the Chaos Emeralds. If you didn’t care for them, the higher routes offered a quicker way through the levels when mastered. They were designed to appeal to both types of players and were very successful. Its use of physics-based movement is also still unmatched to this day and feels distinct from a dedicated run button. Just to be clear, Pizza Tower and Sonic offer completely valid ways of designing speed platformers. But they are different, and that’s a good thing. That is also why I avoided mentioning Mario’s greedy rival until now. For one, I haven’t played Wario Land 4 yet. And two, the one Wario Land game I have played, 3, is not applicable here due to its much slower, but still fascinating, puzzle-platformer design.

So, yeah, Pizza Tower is great. The best indie platformer in years. Highlighting its few flaws as much as I did only serves to highlight just how expertly cooked it is on the whole. Tour de Pizza served up a delicious debut and I’m eagerly awaiting their next meal!

One of the most acclaimed 3D platformers of all time, Banjo-Kazooie was unfortunately a slog for me to finish. It’s not a bad game and has a lot of redeeming qualities like the animation, art direction, music, sound design, and level theming. However, I want to highlight some design choices I found baffling, which contribute to why the game didn’t fully click with me.

Let’s start with the movement. The titular duo has a wide arsenal of abilities, but they don’t flow into each other very well. It’s tiring enough to constantly have your finger on the Talon Trot button for going faster, but you’ll also be forced to slow down or come to a stop to perform actions like headbutts, backflips, shooting eggs, and the rat-a-tat rap, the latter of which is needlessly difficult to pronounce. Seriously, why not rat-a-rat tap instead?

Anyway, the slower movement isn’t inherently a problem, but it does mean Banjo-Kazooie is far more dependent on interesting level design than its inspiration, Super Mario 64. In that game, there were often multiple routes available for acquiring a star, with faster routes requiring riskier maneuvers. Banjo-Kazooie’s Jiggies actually offer more freedom on a level-by-level basis since they can always be acquired out of order and in one seamless run, except in Gobi’s Valley and Freezeezy Peak for some reason. At least unlocking their respective items doesn’t take more than a handful of minutes.

The macro structure, however, is almost the complete opposite of Mario 64. You unlock levels in a mostly linear order because the Jiggie and music note requirements are very high. While this should have allowed for a natural difficulty curve, I don’t believe Rare stuck the landing. To demonstrate this, I’m going to first outline the order in which the levels are unlocked:

1. Spiral Mountain (Tutorial)
2. Mumbo’s Mountain
3. Treasure Trove Cove
4. Clanker’s Cavern
5. Bubble Gloop Swamp
6. Freezeezy Peak, Gobi’s Valley
7. Mad Monster Mansion
8. Rusty Bucket Bay
9. Click Clock Wood

Now, I have no complaints about Spiral Mountain, Mumbo’s Mountain, and Treasure Trove Cove. The other stages, however, have at least one issue that makes for a rather uneven difficulty progression. Clanker’s Cavern is a great example to start with. It’s the first level requiring you to swim underwater. It’s odd that this comes after Treasure Trove Cove, which taught you to avoid the water because of the shark. Clanker’s Cavern even has its own shark. He may be friendly, but it’s still an odd decision by Rare. A bigger issue is the swimming controls. The default speed is pathetically slow and boosting forward requires using Kazooie. You actually lose control when using the boost, which makes collecting things underwater needlessly difficult. In other words, you’re always going too slow or too fast. Despite this, you are required to swim through a keyhole at the bottom of a trench three times before you can access most of the collectibles. This is like asking a kid who is afraid of diving to fetch three diving rings from the deep end in one go. Needless to say, you will likely drown on your first attempt. If you’re playing the N64 version, then you will also learn that music notes aren’t saved upon death, instead being recorded as high scores. This was fixed in the Xbox 360 remaster and I don’t intend to hold that against the original, but the constant retreading of levels helped me realize how stupidly difficult some of the Jiggies are to acquire given their location in the game. That is the main issue I have with the remaining levels. Here are my summarized thoughts on each of them:

Bubble Gloop Swamp
— This and Clanker’s Cavern should have swapped places. It builds on Treasure Trove Cove’s treacherous water gimmick and most of the Jiggies are easy to acquire. The feeding frenzy minigame is insane though. Despite that, this is one of my favorite levels.

Freezeezy Peak
— Solid stage with great theming, but killing the snowmen requires precise aiming with the Beak Bomb. The lack of a reticle makes it hard to judge whether the attack will land.

Gobi’s Valley
— Entering one of the pyramids for a Jiggie requires pressing a timed switch with little margin for error. Other than that, the level is fine.

Mad Monster Mansion
— The Jiggie requiring the Pumpkin transformation is accessed via a small pipe on the roof of the mansion. It is neither explained, nor is it intuitive that the pumpkin is immune to the hedge thorns you must traverse to reach the pipe. Getting up there is also tricky since the hedges are so narrow and the pumpkin controls are a touch slippery. Aside from that, it’s a solid level.

Rusty Bucket Bay
— Exploring the area around the ship is fun and the oily water is a nice evolution of the treacherous water gimmick from before. Sadly, the ship itself is kind of a pain to explore. I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out both how to access the level in Grunty’s Lair and find the door used to enter the ship. The doors you have to break down in both instances do not look breakable, which is poor design in a linear game. Then, there’s the Jiggie behind the boat turbines. Everyone remembers this challenge for having zero margin for error. Why is this kind of difficulty not reserved for the final level?

Click Clock Wood
— Brilliant concept, messy execution. Many of the Jiggies require climbing the central tree, which you must do for all four seasons. This is where I really wished Banjo had a ledge grab. You’d think a bear would be able to do this easily, but nope!

Okay, the levels have their highs and lows, but so did Mario 64. What’s the big deal then? For me, it’s the requirements for finishing the game. In Mario 64, you only had to collect 70 of the 120 stars. That meant you could skip stars or entire levels you weren’t fond of and because you unlock levels so quickly, replays could be vastly different from each other. Casual speedruns of the game are proof of this. I mentioned Banjo-Kazooie’s linear structure earlier, but what I didn’t mention is how little leniency you are given for accessing the final boss. You need 94 out of 100 Jiggies and 810 out of 900 music notes. Every level has 10 Jiggies and 100 notes, with an additional 10 Jiggies found in Grunty’s Lair. Since you can only miss out on 6 Jiggies and 90 music notes, you need to complete every level nearly perfectly. I really don’t understand why Rare thought this was necessary. It makes repeat playthroughs far less interesting and may turn off players that don’t enjoy specific levels. As my earlier comments indicate, I am one such player.

Speaking of comments, how about you leave one saying how my opinion is invalid because I didn’t have the same experience as you? In all seriousness though, I hope this critique strengthened your love for Banjo-Kazooie. If you somehow haven’t played it, I suggest trying out the first two or three levels before you consider quitting. While I prefer Super Mario 64 overall, Banjo-Kazooie did improve on one important thing. The levels don’t kick you out after finding a Jiggie, which the mustachioed plumber wouldn’t adopt until Odyssey, almost 20 years later! Even if I dislike aspects of Rare’s works, they were often ahead of their time.

Next Level doesn’t understand what made the original game so memorable. Dark Moon may have been a step back, but at least it attempted to flesh out the combat with the Strobulb and power surge. The puzzle gimmicks were also spread across multiple, cohesive mansions. Even if they never touched the first game’s mansion, they were believable as places. When fans wished for a return to a single mansion after Dark Moon, I believe what they really wanted was a return to a cohesive setting.

Despite Luigi’s Mansion 3 taking place in one hotel mansion, it has no sense of cohesion. Expected setpieces like a shopping mall, exercise room, and sewer exist alongside a prehistoric museum, Egyptian tomb, pirate cove, and a magic show. The mansion is a series of unrelated levels taped together, an unsatisfying compromise of the first two games’ design philosophies. Top that off with extremely repetitive combat against the same few enemies, cat chases that exist to pad the runtime, a gimmick that doesn’t enhance the puzzles as much as you think (Gooigi), and a lack of worthwhile items to spend gold on, and you have the most overrated Switch exclusive. The only reasons I’m not giving this one star are because most of the boss fights were interesting and the film studio was both conceptually neat and starred a ghost who isn’t hostile.

Given the strong following Next Level has, I’m fully expecting them to develop Luigi’s Mansion 4. But given their track record with the series, I doubt it will feature the best elements from all three games. The atmosphere and cohesiveness of 1, the combat of 2, and the bosses of 3.

I dislike the term “Souls-like.” Not only does it force me to say “Souls” a lot in this review, but nobody seems to agree on what it constitutes. The roguelite Dead Cells, for example, is also considered a Souls-like…for some reason. Maybe it’s the high difficulty? The limited healing? Or perhaps the exploration? As much as I love the game, calling it a Souls-like seems like a marketing ploy by the devs. The Souls games have more than just those elements, such as high-commitment attacks, obscure side quests, an oppressive atmosphere, and more.

It seems as long as you have at least a few of the features that the Souls games popularized, your game is a Souls-like. But you know a series that has a lot in common with Souls that isn’t considered a Souls-like? Castlevania. The old-school games were brutally tough platformers that featured high-commitment attacks, oppressive atmospheres, and scarce healing opportunities. Symphony of the Night and its handheld successors added exploration, side quests, and RPG elements to the series, but they also ditched the methodical action and considerably lowered the difficulty. The higher challenge, whip-based combat, and tense platforming in Circle of the Moon on GBA was the only time Konami bridged the gap between the old and new Castlevanias. It was very flawed, but there was also nothing quite like it, until the arrival of the Souls games and the main subject of this review: Salt and Sanctuary.

I don’t just want to make another review reinforcing how similar Salt and Sanctuary is to Dark Souls. Sure, there’s a lot of valid comparisons to be made and I will bring them up later, but I want to bring light to why this game also feels like a true successor to old-school Castlevania. Most comparisons between Souls and Castlevania that I’ve seen reference Symphony of the Night, but the only features Souls borrowed from that game were the exploration, RPG elements, and variety of weapons. These features aren’t unique to Symphony, and they weren’t unique when it was first released. But that slow, deliberate combat from its platformer predecessors? That was special and it’s what Souls and every true Souls-like features in my opinion. Salt and Sanctuary is part of that group. It is as much a spiritual successor to Castlevania as it is a Souls-like.

Now for the game itself. It borrows from its inspiration very well. Every feature I explicitly mentioned in the first paragraph is present, so I won’t repeat them here. One of its new ideas are stone statues used to summon specific vendors at sanctuaries, which act like the bonfires in Dark Souls. These statues are fairly scarce, encouraging thoughtful decision-making as to what vendor you need at the moment. Should I summon a blacksmith to upgrade my gear? Maybe an alchemist to change my current weapon? Or maybe a sellsword to summon another player? There are eight types of statues that can be used and no more than four are allowed per sanctuary. However, once I realized I could group multiple vendors with the fast travel guides, the stressful decision-making was completely destroyed. They can warp you to any sanctuary you’ve visited. As a result, I was warping back to a select few sanctuaries over and over again to stock up on items or upgrade my equipment. No need to use any statues other than the ones for summoning guides. Or I could just use a calling horn to warp to any sanctuary where a guide was installed. The guides even sell these horns for dirt cheap, so why not buy as many as you can to fast travel at your convenience? I’m grateful I didn’t realize the sheer brokenness of calling horns until after I finished the game.

My suggestions for fixing this are simple. Limit fast travel to the sanctuaries where I placed guides and remove calling horns. I would then have to decide if installing a guide at my current sanctuary was worth it. By extension, I would be encouraged to use the other statues more often. I don’t think backtracking would have been negatively impacted all that much with these changes. The world is full of shortcuts back to previous levels and even if the backtracking was tedious, the level design pushes the player to explore areas in a mostly linear order. That is probably the reason there is no map, but I still think there should have been one because it’s much harder to remember the layout of a rectangular 2D world as opposed to a uniquely shaped 3D world like Lordran.

I wasn’t impressed with the covenant system. I chose to stick with my starting creed the whole playthrough because I correctly assumed breaking it would result in undesirable consequences. On a gameplay level, my choice didn’t affect me beyond a handful of sanctuaries preventing me from using elemental buffs for my weapon. I used those a lot, but if the intention was to challenge players that stick to one creed, Ska Studios needed to include more sanctuaries aligned with different creeds. Players would then have to make a choice. Either they stick to their creed and miss out on certain items or they change their creed to get those items, but face repercussions from their previous creed.

The missed potential is depressing because the statues and covenant system could have made Salt and Sanctuary rise above being a Souls and Castlevania (Soulsvania?) clone. It’s an extremely competent clone for something made primarily by one person, but it is a clone at the end of the day. I still had fun playing it and can easily recommend it to fans of its inspiration. Just don’t expect it to deliver an experience like those classics.

Half-Life was a pleasant surprise. I haven't played many FPS games, mostly because I've found myself getting bored with them after a while. The few I have enjoyed, like Metroid Prime and BioShock 2, were fun because they had engaging stories and exploration.

Half-Life doesn't have much exploration, but it doesn't matter because the pacing is excellent overall. The only times I felt it stumbled was chapters 6-8 and the entirety of Xen. The former had too much backtracking and the latter had repetitive alien fights and extremely annoying platforming in low gravity. In addition, there were several times I was confused on where I was supposed to go and had to consult a walkthrough. Whoever decided to make the player slip past fans in "We've Got Hostiles" and "The Blast Pit" needs to be punished.

Those bumps aside, I was hooked during the Black Mesa Incident. I was constantly thrown into a variety of situations that not only tested my shooting skills and situational awareness in different ways, but also fit the setting perfectly. When the credits rolled, I reflected on how far I had come. It was then that I realized I was in control for basically the entire game. With almost no cutscenes to take control away from me, I was allowed to put myself in Gordon Freeman's shoes to escape Black Mesa and stop the alien threat. To say this was immersive would be an understatement.

Valve truly made something special with Half-Life. A work of art that bridges the gap between the player and the game. This is something anyone interested in the medium should experience. Not necessarily finish, but experience.