tap, rack, bang.

essentially an extended exercise in bullet meditation. its arcade-esque structure belies how much rigor and alertness receiver 2 demands of its players regardless of how uncompromising the randomized threats can be. most games become faster as you improve, but receiver 2 instead gets slower; refining your play here often means being methodical, taking your time, steadfastly running through your keyboard rituals as though they were rosary prayer beads, surveying environments carefully, and retaining a stalwart level of composure against the odds. brilliant map design evokes a constant dread & claustrophobia by endlessly looping hallways of industrial boiler rooms, penthouse apartments, and construction scaffolding, suggesting both subconscious impermanence and familiarity ('you' have had gunfights here before, sometime, somewhere else). you're thirty floors up in this intensely alienating, inescapable nightmare realm and the only one who can save yourself is you. and things continue in this genuinely frightening way until you learn to start flipping the script and turning the stringent limitations of its level design into opportunity. whether that means having a quick exit plan between floors, shimmying across ledges to avoid detection, or bolting and jumping through a window to avoid a barrage of turret fire. this isn't even yet digging into the intensely granular gun mechanics - the long and short of it is that by so sternly forcing players to abide by its ruleset, receiver 2's simulacrum is one of the sharpest games to ever transpose ideas of mindfulness onto a set of mechanics. a good few too many games about mental health only demand faux-resilience through narrative affect or through memorizing sequences of buttons in simplistic twitch platforming fashion, but receiver 2's interweaving of constant repetition and punishing failure reveals a strict & cohesive prescription and regimen: your mind and body have to be in sync if you're gonna stand any real shot out there.

tap, rack, bang.

generally speaking, in martial arts, a weapon is an extension of your body. it's cliche, but holds true. the only way to master a sword is to consider it as a limb. and in other games this is, i would argue, felt as a guiding philosophy. thinking and problem-solving is abstracted across these body-oriented mechanics. lavish one-button reload animations in games have conditioned players into seeing a gun as an extension of the player; i've argued in the past that leon in resident evil 4 is a particularly good example of this. a rifle to leon is as central to his kit as a knife, a grenade, a herb, a roundhouse kick, all executed with more or less the same mechanical apparatus.

tap, rack, bang.

receiver 2 brings guns and mental health to the forefront, but it shrewdly elides the easy question or metaphor regarding the grisly culture surrounding firearms in the united states to instead focus on your simulated gun as an extension of your mind and the implications of that idea in a diseased sociopolitical climate. reloading has been calibrated across not just one key, but several, and each gun will have different quirks or tics to master in this regard. revolvers are simple and reliable, but slower to reload and less equipped to deal with multiple threats, whereas the automatic pistols have more complex inputs in tandem with more versatility, but similarly present more opportunities to malfunction (and yes, your guns will jam in multiple different ways - good luck diagnosing and treating that while threats have their watchful eyes on you). likewise, dozens of other minor nuances are present: a colt m1911 has a safety switch, but when using a glock that same key is utilized to turn the glock's full-auto feature on, so holstering unsafely with a glock you attempted to make safe means your thigh is about to eat two or three bullets. without weapon acumen you are every bit as likely to kill or incapacitate yourself as a turret or drone is likely to gore you.

tap, rack, bang.

the central structure of receiver 2 revolves around the collection of analog tapes concerning firearms history, media representations of guns, common logical and emotional fallacies, and tips for maintaining a more lucid mind. these tapes are randomized and don't explicitly spell out their associations given how wildly varying they can be, but its lessons and mantras all hone in on a few key ideas which are subsequently internalized over the unfolding hours. the act of physically pointing and shooting has been entirely stripped of context and weight - what has this gratuitousness and gratification done to us? we live in a fractured environment which has the potential to fracture ourselves in turn - how can we safeguard ourselves against these negative influences? just as there are rules in place for the safe operation of a firearm, so too are there rules for the exercise of one's mind. and if you can safely train to have a mind impervious to adversity, you can begin to survive and aid others in survival.

tap, rack, bang.

receiver 2 is mechanically, narratively, and artistically sympatico in a way very few games have achieved. its prescription of an analog remedy for the digitized nightmare we've slowly come to inhabit over the past couple of decades is novel and commendable, regardless of a couple of minor issues i have with the game's prose (that said you will find no other game which explicitly draws a parallel between the birth/subsequent expansion of the universe and a chambered round shot in the dark). and it is a game presented with total earnestness and clarity regarding its subject matter. few sequels expand on the core concept as meaningfully as receiver 2 - a third game would be redundant, but its ending gracefully reminds us that the work we've set in motion doesn't end with our investment in these abstracted life-or-death scrambles. we break free, and we are made to live with the lessons we have slowly accumulated and grasped. "perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time". excellent stuff.

tap, rack, bang.
your mind's eye sharpens.

Can you feel the heat?
When the tires kiss the street
Move into the beat

Ever since I learned about occlusion culling, a technique deftly handled by Naughty Dog with their first PlayStation 1 title, Crash Bandicoot, my appreciation for the more graphically stellar titles for the system was granted a new shade. It helped offer me a frame of reference (granted, of one of the more extreme use cases) for the necessity to obscure unneeded geometry to save what precious few resources the console could afford - as well as giving me something to mull over whenever I play a 3D PS1 game that looks suspiciously good. Much akin to Crash Bandicoot, racing games benefit from what is essentially a densely curated linear track. With limited camera movement, every attainable viewing angle can be accurately poured over by the designers, letting them carefully weigh up exactly how much they can get away with at every meter of game space. This is very apparent in visually stunning racing titles like Wipeout 3, Colin McRae Rally 2.0, and Need for Speed: High Stakes; their tracks are glutted with turns, verticality and obstacles that exist to obscure as much model pop-in as possible, and offer a new piece of visual stimuli at every turn. This has a knock-on effect for how these tracks are actually driven on, too. Track designers are by necessity discouraged from long straightaways where the world noticeably phases into existence, and instead ensure that the player has very little if any downtime from cornering, maintaining a thrilling tempo that only stops when the chequered flag is waved. I say all this, because I really do miss the era where racing games were these hardware-defying explosions of style and skill, with enough big-money backing to allow the designers to let their perfectionism and neuroses get tangled in the engine’s crankshaft. I can only go in a straight line down a massive realistic unreal engine map for so long.

Anyway. Ridge Racer Type 4 is a Swiss watch. One of very, very few games I’d describe as “meticulous”. Every one of its moving parts serves a key purpose in its grand design. Its mechanisms are the result of painstaking consideration for the most minute details. Built to last, and never lose its sheen. The only game my dad likes (real). It all just moves & breathes with this air of confidence and romance, exemplified by the way the penultimate setpiece is the final lap taking place at the exact turn of the millennium - a genuinely affecting gesture to barrel through doubt and seize your future by any means.

One thing I’m particularly taken by is the overall stylistic presentation of Type 4. Among the first things you see upon loading it up are the game’s signature tail/headlight afterglows leaving trails across the screen. The preamble at the start of this review was for no reason other than the fact that R4 actualises the PS1. Its environments use every trick in the book with a healthy serving of incredible models & baked-in textures to make the world feel rich beyond the scope of the road. The game’s UI alone is worth studying for its consistent use of very few colours, empty-space and minimalist decoration (every game needs a "PLEASE" in the corner at all times). In establishing a universe that seemingly exists solely for the purpose of racing fictional cars around the fictional Ridge City, the developers at Namco have populated the series with a mountain of logos, icons, banners, signs, patterns, manufacturers, liveries and colour palettes. They work to establish the curves, hills and tunnels as very real places with a history all their own. How did Wonderhill get its name? Why is it called Shooting Hoops? Where are these places in Ridge City and how do they fit into the Ridge Racer universe?

Look at the Helter Skelter track’s logo, for instance. One of the things I enjoy about this logo is its deceptively simple construction that results in a complex visual illusion of sorts. Essentially, the structure is a series of circles that reduce in size from top to bottom. The circles do not change shape in the slightest, only in scale, and by removing their intersections and filling in some minor spaces to complete the shape, is this illusion achieved. It harkens to the track’s multi-levelled nature, conveying a sense of movement as you rapidly weave through overpasses and underground tunnels w/ the ferocity of a hurricane.

The whole game is like this. A veritable archive of mindful audio, visual and game design, of weapons-grade artistic talent. Beyond aspirational and genuinely medium affirming.

the other side of the coin for shredder's revenge. there's three specific shared traits here: both are coasting the wavelength of 80's arcade revivalism, both ameliorate the shortcomings and deficiencies of the parent franchises they spawned from, and both have had to adapt to tailor their mechanics for the home console market.

comparisons between the two don't seem to yield much in the way of positives for DDN. DDN is aesthetically crude, borne from an era in which ironic 80s pastiche was in vogue; shredder's revenge doesn't echo the same insincerity, instead brimming with love for the source material. DDN's sense of humor is juvenile and irksome, while shredder's revenge stands tall on its innate charisma. and while DDN introduces misguided moveset customization and a baffling + unnecessary upgrade system, shredder's revenge has a comparatively simple solution to the levelling dilemma that has plagued beat 'em ups since their transition from the arcade environment: relegate it entirely to story mode and allow players to level up simply through accumulating defeated foes. speaking of, shredder's revenge has both a story and an arcade mode, while DDN has...only a story mode. if you wanna 1CC, get ready to uh, take no damage, or something. we're working off an honor system here.

a plethora of problems, sure. but ultimately, the key difference between the two is really simple: DDN is more compelling as a beat 'em up, despite its foibles. whatever stiffness is felt in its opening chapters is wrung out by the finale. where shredder's revenge is loose and centered on player empowerment, DDN asks the player to engage with the mechanics on its terms. and there's a comprehensive strictness to these systems that engenders a genuine sense of reward when you find that one strategy that'll help overcome a grating section, or when you discover tech that'll aid in combos, or when you learn how to navigate its effective encounter design. it's one of those beat 'em ups where every tool in your arsenal feels like it has both general and niche use, where every weapon pickup feels like a godsend - but you still gotta swing that bat carefully.

one helpful point of comparison is the existence of a dodge in both games. in 2D beat 'em up circles, dodges have a crummy reputation because in the best case scenario, they dilute encounter design and defensive mechanics to telegraphed avoidances of attacks, and in the worst case scenario they break the game on its hinges completely. the dodge in shredder's revenge is apt given the number of aggressive enemies on screen, and tribute did well to imbue it with heft through recovery frames, but it's also still distinctly weightless. you float into offence, sway back with a dodge, and tap the attack button again to leap back into the fray and continue your assault.

while you'll have to avoid attacks by jumping and moving horizontally/vertically, there's two kinds of dedicated dodges in DDN, both of which are cumbersome. the first, and most interesting, is a god hand-esque duck. throw jabs in someone's grill, and duck if you register a high attack being thrown your way to maintain offence. given the recovery frames involved, and the danger of immediate punishment if you fail, there's a higher sense of risk involved with the duck than can sometimes be said for shredder's revenge. but there's genuine reward, too - wayforward gave it meaning by greatly increasing your damage for an extremely minute window of time upon a successful attack, which deftly encourages meticulous aggression. and you'll be needing that damage boost, because enemy hp has been tuned just so - they're not damage sponges, but offence doesn't guarantee security because the microseconds you spend wailing on a guy is plenty of time for some other enemy to waltz in on you and ruin the fun. DDN has this sense that you're flirting with danger constantly, that you're never actually safe - it's pretty remarkable how they were able to subtly achieve this.

and so DDN is able to fold its dodge into acute positioning - the secret formula for every good beat 'em up. after initiating a duck, you can dodge roll (which seems to have very selective iframes), or you can opt for a low-damage grounded attack or a high damage flying knee. every option here is grounded in decision-making filtered through positioning. to roll through certain attacks, i have to have the foresight to duck in advance. sure, i want to cancel a duck into a flying knee for my juggle - but if i do that, i'll jump right into a pit, or a stage hazard. the list of minute calculations goes on, and it's why this clicked for me in a way i couldn't with shredder's revenge.

if you'll forgive its aged aesthetic (leaving aside kaufman's score - your mileage still might vary but theres still at least a couple of standouts imo) what you find is a beat 'em up that understands the genre finds life through restriction. and you can't ask for more than that.

Following a particularly stressful, turbulent few weeks, I picked up Old School Runescape, hoping that a smattering of nostalgia and what I believed to be mindless grind would center myself a little. This is a game I hold near and dear with some sense of cloying ironic detachment (I have a framed picture of Tutorial Island in my room. My FFXIV character is named “Runescape”.), yet hadn’t actually played since highschool. Back then, I never once had the opportunity to be a paid member because my parents, wisely, were against the idea of telling the evil computer my name, let alone bank card details. I’ve spent the past week finally delving into the Member's content that Child Me couldn’t, longingly looking at the closed-off swathes of the world map and gated sections of the skills guide like a hungry orphan and dreaming of adventures out of reach. I must say, this game is pretty great.

To my surprise, there’s a certain magic to the way Old School Runescape approaches quest design. In a genre infamous for repetitive “get 30 bear asses” drudgery, OSRS instead decides to make quests something akin to a Sierra or LucasArts point and click adventure. A wide array of common world items and enough context clues in the witty dialogue for you to know what to do with them. It helps that the aesthetics are charmingly simple, but it still demands a surprisingly salient level of environmental awareness as even mundane decorations cannot be ignored for the potential solutions they could be.

There’s even something funny about this being a complete MMO with all the “combine x and y item” and “use x on y” trimmings, so often I’d be exploring the world and run in to another player busying themselves with God Knows What - the world feels alive in moments like these, games struggle to give players meaningful interactions with the world aside from Kill, and even the MMOs I like tend to flounder at this. Where I’d normally see people running rings around an enemy spawn zone killing everything in one hit like a combine harvester of content (and people can still do that in OSRS)... here, I find myself taking the time to watch the world go by, as another player character does some fucked up shit on a weird contraption I have no context or understanding about. In moments like these, I understand the appeal of open worlds lol.

The more subtle thing I realise OSRS gets right is its micro and macro scalability. If you were to set yourself a long-term goal, there is an almost dizzying amount of potential player expression here that will allow you to approach it. The game has at its disposal an absolute ton of in-depth quests and side activities that give meaningful rewards by way of transportation and helpful niche equipment. The game even boasts an Ironman mode that heavily restricts the amount you can trade or receive support from other players, and while that’s definitely not for me, it all feels totally viable. Suffice to say, it’s exactly what I need right now - a world to lose myself in for a while, and never feel like my time is being wasted because I keep finding new motivators around every corner and skills that collide satisfyingly into one another. Even if you just want to be the little adventurer on the wind, the game will make you feel perfectly cared for. I mean christ I just unlocked fairy leylines and I feel like the world is my oyster right now. Genuinely accomplished and fully-realised tabletop RPG chic. Let's kill a green dragon and visit some wizards in a tower.

Goes without saying, but what great music. These harpsichord and trumpet midi soundfonts are absolutely foundational. The game is so charming, man. I love that you can Right Click > Examine everything for a nugget of flavour text, I love the tone of the writing being filled with comfy eye-rolly UK boomer shit, I’m pretty sure I saw a Rising Damp reference. Hyooge world map gushing with mindful detail and cultures upon subcultures.

I wholeheartedly recommend giving this game a shot, whether you're a long-time returner or a first-timer, OSRS remains very unique. I'd push for you to use the Runelite client, a free open-source container for the game filled with options and mods to allow you to set your experience how you'd like. I'm using a graphical plugin called "117 HD", but there are a number of other ones that can come in handy, like a quest helper and timers.

"Death is in the fading scream borne on the wind. Death is in the bubbles from the deep, as dying lungs gasp their last. Death is in the soil, as the deceased become one with nature. Death is in a chair downstairs." - Gnome Child

not quite my tempo. firstly, you'll have to forgive the uncharitable level of cynicism i walked into this with - the combination of 'scott pilgrim developers' and 'love letter to konami beat 'em ups' had me a little on edge despite the obvious appreciation of the source material shredder's revenge is anchored upon. still, what i quickly found instead was rather unexpected: turtles in time by way of denjin makai. tribute's real sleight of hand here is they've really only sought to give a slight facelift to the konami beat 'em up formula. the enemy count is still ludicrously high, bosses still come fully stocked with super armor, attacks are still stubby...and while these were failings or caveats of the arcade lineage shredder's revenge descends from, here they've been recontextualized as part and parcel of the experience, trials made to be overcome through strength rather than coin. a clear effort's been made to integrate every prerequisite tool for success, which unfortunately included a dodge, but hey, what are you gonna do. fans of constant offence as a means of defence will have plenty to chew on here - the simplistic kits of these characters lend themselves nicely to extended combo strings and artfully dodging barrages of attacks/obstacles - but if you're looking for something a bit more intimate than a button pressing bonanza, i felt it was a bit lacking. it's hard for me to state it's anything more than a competently directed take on castle crashers.

Having the Scott Pilgrim guys and the co-developers of Streets of Rage 4 on the dock here meant this was never gonna be a failure, regardless of its status as a pretty ridiculous exercise in nostalgia for folks who are still wrapping their arms around a childhood long past expiry. Sometimes a shameless cash-in can also be a fantastic beat 'em up, and that's okay - the miracle of video games is that sometimes really good ones are created to promote some shitty movie.

Although based on the secret ooze that created Turtles in Time, you can feel the SOR4 in this from the moment you first grapple an enemy. We're back. Tribute Games and Dotemu have done a technically-marvelous job of taking that original arcade/SNES framework Konami developed and polishing its rough, unforgiving edges off with fairer, more thoughtful mechanics from other brawlers that folks know and love. This game isn't quite as mechnically dense or strict in the challenges it lays down in comparison to other 2D beat 'em ups, but that makes total sense because this also has to be a 90s reverie for people who just want to see Mikey eat pizza or hear a 67-year old man try to sound like a teenager again or listen to the boss themes Wu-Tang composed. And that's cool by me - I want more people to experience the joys of the genre.

Mechanically, I'd say this thing plays like the Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 to Streets of Rage 4's Street Fighter IV - you're allowed far more leeway with OTGs, wall bounces and cancels compared to the precision of Wood Oak City, which leads to tons of incredibly satisfying juggle pathways that can even integrate obstacles from the surrounding environment. For example, with Raphael you can jab-loop a dude, cancel the last hit into a dash, cancel the dash into a shoryuken, roll-cancel over to the other end of the room and wall-bound the sandbagging body back to you by lunge-kicking it with a roomba. It's mondo bodacious, and goes to show how fulfilling fighting/brawling video games can be when you let the player "power fantasy" themselves as a lean green fighting machine with lengthy, stylish, free-flowing combos. A great way to show people how fun beat 'em ups are.

Six-player more or less throws all of the above out of the window in favour of a pizza party game, which is totally cool and lot of fun too, even if you're like me and don't know who anyone on the screen aside from the Ninja Turtles is (I am the right age for this flavour of TMNT, but they were called the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles over here and my mum didn't like me watching violent things and/or buying little post-Reaganite/Thatcherite plastic frog guys). A great beat 'em up should exist both as a big bashing exercise and a Sifu-like pathway to combat mastery, and no doubt some wise old masters will come along and show us multi-character juggle combos in the months to come that are like, mega bonkers radical, dude. Despite being PvE experiences, great beat 'em ups always end up developing fighting game-like communities around them who all end up complaining about patch notes and balance changes - it just goes to show the passion a great entry in this genre can inspire.

Only finished it twice so far - once solo and once in a random party - but feel like this could comfortably be a game like Streets of Rage 4 where I end up beating it like 10 times on different difficulties with different characters because it's clear they put the work in, making every character their own game to learn and every stage on every difficulty its own challenge to understand. What I'm trying to say here is that you should play Streets of Rage 4. Cowabunga! This thing has the fuckin Nickelodeon logo at the start and it could be Game of the Year lmao

Beauty in the little knick-knacks, the cute flora and vignettes of yesteryears. True, complete, warmth in the little stops made, flights through memory to profusely loving stories!! Want to turn back time to where I made my first steps in life with these earnest wings guiding me, but I'll settle for tearful solace filling this hole embracing this work. What an incredible world we can make and stories to tell just by looking through our small beady eyes at our collective town's paraphernalia and souvenirs. Love life.

Recommended by Nightblade as part of this list.

Wario is an odd character isn't he? Mario's opposite in every way, a bootleg completely defined by his contrast to his sanitized, family-friendly multi-million dollar counterpart. Mario is a chaste man of virtue, a hero of few words who saves the girl out of the goodness of his heart, a marketable face a la Mickey Mouse, utterly lacking in personality or character outside of being comically Italian. Wario in contrast is a portly type, a Kavorka Man defined by his vices, an ugly, greedy bastard who loves to gloat, with a face only a mother could love. And yet it is because Wario is entirely defined by being the antithesis of Mr. Jumpman that he has the one thing Mario could never dream of: freedom. Mario is confined by the brand, the 40 years of jumping and sleek design ethos iterated upon for decades over multiple console generations until the formula is down pat, the Super Mario Brand of platforming action. Wario's status as the opposite also extends to his games and their design, his freedom to experiment and spread his wings so to speak allow Wario to do whatever he damn well pleases, which is why even now, Wario Land 4 stands tall as Wario's "greatest achievement".

Wario Land 4 came hot off the heels of the last big Mario romp at the time, Super Mario 64, and in many ways, feels like a parody of sorts. Wario's latest treasure hunt has lead to him being trapped in a pyramid, where he must jump into paintings to gather a series of collectibles and save the princess utilizing his robust and dynamic moveset to do so. While the comparisons to be drawn are obvious, Wario Land 4's design philosophy veers in a different direction, being a much more linear experience focused more on Wario and his interactions with the environment than the exploration of the environments themselves. The functional immortality of previous Wario Land games is toned-down but still ever-present, with certain enemy types changing Wario's movement properties in ways that create a unique dynamic of enemies being both a puzzle-solving tool and an obstacle, that alongside each level introducing a new gimmick and gameplay mechanic to experiment contributes to some incredibly strong level design that makes each stage feel unique and distinct.

The exploration aspect of Wario Land 4 is contrasted by it's HURRY UP! mechanic, each level capped off by a switch that activates a countdown timer that will kick you out of the level and rob Wario of his riches if it reaches zero, transforming the previously, seemingly labyrinthine levels that you spent oodles of time exploring into these one-way obstacle courses that demand perfect execution on higher difficulties if you want a chance to make it to the end with your treasure in-tact. It's a genius mechanic that makes Wario Land 4 stand out and adds another layer to the level design in ways you wouldn't expect, complimented by Wario's fantastic and dynamic moveset that makes these mad dashes some of the most satisfying platforming action on the GBA.

But the biggest aspect of Wario Land 4 that makes it stand out from it's doppelganger's series of games is that aesthetically, it's fucking weird. Compared to the cartoonish surreality of the Mario series, with its anthropomorphic turtles and scenery dotted with eyes, Wario Land 4 is reminiscent of the gross-out humor of the 90s, containing surreal, disgusting, sometimes horrific spritework and enemy designs, alongside an incredibly dynamic and off-kilter soundtrack that gives the whole game an certain edge most Nintendo products would never even deign to hint at. Many of the staff that worked on Wario Land 4 would go on to work on WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Micro Game$! 2 years after Wario Land 4's release, and its immediately apparent in Wario Land 4's overall attitude. Yet, it's this edge and experimentation that makes Wario so charismatic a player character, so charming a man that he captures your heart through his sincerity and in-your-face attitude.

Considering that state of Nintendo at the moment, its no wonder that this kind of off-kilter platforming action has yet to resurface in its modern oeuvre, considering the sleek minimalist nature of the Switch and the stark white of the UI in Nintendo's triple-A titles. The wacky, innovative spirit may live on in the WarioWare franchise, but any hopes of Wario's puzzle-platforming antics resurfacing at the Big N's HQ are minimal at best, which is a shame because Wario Land's vibes are infinitely more magnetic than whatever sterile mask Mario is putting on for the public. Du Doppelgänger! Du bleicher Geselle! How you shall be missed...

despite its pong-descendant status representing one of the earliest advancements in video game development, breakout - both as a game, and a genre - has never felt like it's had its time in the sun. no one would put forward an invective or dismissive position regarding breakout, but few would argue that it has maintained a foothold in the industry's subconscious, and at present the genre has seemingly been relegated to mobile game fodder. at best, the most you can hope for is for a few eccentrics to remember arkanoid fondly - and why shouldn't they? with its far cry from the mechanics of progressive breakout titles, taito's evolution of form emphasized peculiar stage design, high speed brick breaking, multiple hazards in the form of drone enemies, a space-age lounge aesthetic, and numerous powerups designed to introduce a degree of modularity in the playfield. the paddle - or vaus, in arkanoid - can fire lasers, multiply the number of balls in the field, slow the ball down, or elongate in length, to name a few. importantly, none of these powerups intersected, which introduced an ever-present degree of decision-making superimposed on the frantic juggling act essential to brick breaking. in one of the title's many hypothetical scenarios, i may not want to switch out a power-up in my possession for an oncoming powerup, but attempting to slide out of the new power-up's path of descent might mean allowing the ball to dart past me, thus losing a life. these mechanics dovetailed into a game where turning away from the screen for even a fraction of a second might result in death. arkanoid required precision and demanded attention - it necessitated player's eyes to be glued to the arcade cabinet's digital luster, and cultivated strong engagement as a result.

in spite of these strengths, it's important to understand why the genre's slow-crawl fade into oblivion may have occurred. we can only offer theories for this, but firstly, i'd like to point out that breakout and all of its successors are simplistic games that hinge primarily on instinctual input. which isn't to say these games are bereft of strategy - but that these tactics are minimalistic even to the trained eye and for the uninitiated, almost totally unseen. for the sake of comparison, it's worthwhile to consider how something as reaction-driven as tetris can be has still maintained cultural dominance all these decades later. it's a brisk game, its dense strategy has been unfurled across millions of player-inputted hours and iterations of the formula, its mechanics are perfectly interlocked, and upon failure, a player usually has an idea of how to improve. the same can't be said for breakout or any of its plentiful successors, which are usually content to posit the intrinsically demotivating consequence of 'simply do better, next time.' this is a perfectly acceptable arrangement for some players, and in a different mechanical suite, might be totally permissable. but breakout's simplicity tacitly discourages improvement and feigns a truly fair set of mechanics the way tetris affords. tetris is, at its core, a game of space control. the player is always centered at the helm, and despite the 'randomized' blocks coming your way, the apparatus is entirely yours to execute with as you please. by contrast, you might have noticed i left one power-up out of the medley when discussing arkanoid - the power-up that automatically lets you skip a level. a godsend for some, but it's an exhibition of the kind of seemingly random behaviour that can make breakout frustrating for some players. in other words, in breakout the game exercises jurisdiction over players parallel to players acting within the construct of the game. the pace is not set by the player, as it is in tetris, but is set in conversation between the player's maneuvering of the field and the physics of the ball. tetris is mediation, breakout is negotiation. the consequence of this is simple: if you aren't invested, the breakout experience gets flattened, and there's no steady sense of escalation or improvement. factor this with the game actually getting slower or more cumbersome towards the end of any given stage rather than faster (since players might take haphazard shots or struggle to demolish the last brick), and it's easy to see why players are turned off from the genre with ease.

strikey sisters isn't nearly as blisteringly fast as arkanoid. its stage layouts have more obstacles, but generally ask you to make less complicated shots. screen real estate is arranged slightly more horizontally rather than vertically, which gives it a bit more of a cramped feeling. but the core feature that makes strikey sisters such a compelling take on the arkanoid formula is both a greater degree of consistency than arkanoid juxtaposed with a greater degree of randomness.

these two contradictory tenets - strict order, and total variability - seem like they represent an inherent paradox, but this isn't really the case, and to explain why, it's worth discussing what makes strikey sisters different. the most apparent difference is that you don't control a paddle in strikey sisters - you control one of two sisters, both of whom have the same kits (for fun co-operative action, but i played the game solo). you might argue it would be a bit more difficult to hit the ball with the sprite of a character rather than the sprite of a horizontal paddle, but that's why strikey sisters has not one, but three ways of hitting and manipulating oncoming balls. hitting the ball directly with your sprite in classic arkanoid fashion guarantees a shot that is slower, but a little more difficult to aim. but hitting the attack button lets your character slice in a parabola arc - on contact, the strike makes the ball travel faster and the nature of the arc means you have better, more intuitive control over your aim than in other breakout titles. and finally, charging your attack shot will make the ball travel at the fastest velocity possible, and also guarantee the destruction of a brick, which would otherwise take two shots (something true of every brick in the game, unlike arkanoid's variable hp bricks).

taken together, these elements underscore far more transparency in the game's set of mechanics (no one would argue that arkanoid isn't a fair game, just that its unrelenting speed and errant physics somewhat obscures this and has the detrimental side effect of stopping would-be interested players). but these components of strikey sisters intersect with the way it handles its bestiary and powerup mechanics. throughout its many stages, strikey sisters has a full-fledged bestiary of enemies designed to trip you up at every turn while you try to break bricks. some fire projectiles that slow you down. some strike the ball right back at you. some fire projectiles at you in varying speeds and quantities. some will summon tornadoes to block the path of the ball. some will shake the earth and alter the arc of the ball when you least expect it. and all of them, upon hit, will alter the ball's direction. since enemies will randomly spawn in and try to thwart your efforts right up until the last brick is broken (by which point you just have to mop up the last few enemies remaining), this means that your progress is continually and organically impeded by a constant barrage of foes, which brings the juggling quality that defines breakout at its best to the forefront. importantly, your charged attack will destroy enemies in one hit and repel projectiles back into either enemies or bricks, and the attack more generally has a close-quarters function should enemies get a bit too close.

threading these systems together is the nature of powerups. you gain no powerups from destroyed bricks, but every slain enemy will drop a randomized powerup which either affects the ball (for instance, double balls or an iron ball which, while significantly weightier, will plow through bricks undeterred), the player in passive form (shields, an hp point, or speed), or spells which are offensive or defensive in nature (traps, projectiles, and so on). managing every power up you get effectively is often the key to victory on a stage, and leads to any number of insane interactions. the double ball powerup is particularly enjoyable this time around since the control you have over the ball's speed and arc means skilled players can more reliably keep both balls in rotation, whereas the multiple ball upgrade in arkanoid felt more like a single use shotgun if anything.

as if all this managing of various systems wasnt enough, the final key to the puzzle is how far strikey sisters goes in the completionist angle. it's one thing to clear a stage, but to clear it well means collecting coins dropped from every brick you destroy, which effectively means players have to intelligently manage a ball in rotation, enemies attempting to trap or kill them, and coins falling from destroyed bricks at any given moment. it's a tough balancing act, but with every tool at your disposal it can be made fair. the more coins you've amassed, the more likely it is you'll get other collectables as well from chests which you still have to hit to open - emeralds, keys which unlock secret levels, and a tarot spell which, if successfully used, destroys enemies and adds them to your bestiary. breakout as a genre is at its best when there are several components interwoven with the core mechanics of keeping a ball in rotation, and for those pursuing mastery strikey sister presents an incredibly compelling solution.

like many great games, strikey sisters threads together order and chaos to brilliant effect. it's a smart and tightly designed title with a great deal of miscellaneous content to dig into. i've always had a fondness for these kinds of coffee break games you can play in between long days spent working - i wouldn't have put as many hours into the first risk of rain as i did if this wasn't the case - but strikey sisters is so, so easily the gold standard of this branch of design. bravissimo, dya games

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A profoundly misunderstood classic that manages to impresses when stacked up against other games of the time, and effortlessly clears most modern attempts at being a satisfying action game. Even beyond the innovation on display (nobody was doing it like Capcom back in the late 90's/early 2000's) I'm consistently swept off my feet at how enjoyable this game is, even after around 8 personal playthroughs and 21(!) years of further innovation and inspiration in the medium. Dante may be a tad heftier than your modern action protag, but it has the side-effect of forcing you to constantly stay glued to encounters in a way I haven't really seen before. You must consider every step you take and every action you make, it's electrifying. I don't have any ill will towards Itsuno for reinventing the series like he did --who wouldn't after being tasked with scraping together the scattered remains of the last title and still having it come out like crap-- but there's still something here that later entries still have yet to recapture for me. It may not have the glitz and glamor of it's many sequels, but what you get instead is one of the most well considered, tightly paced, and highly rewarding gaming experiences out there.

Ya girl is sick as fuck this week which means I’ve been doing very little other than reading comics and playing Ratchet and Clank games so here we are already, back at it again, with a very strange sequel. I feel like the conversation around these games kind of portrays the evolution of this series as a few pretty hard breaks in style – like later we will get to the one where we flip from kind of Attitude Humor to Orchestral Heartful stories where Ratchet loves friendship or whatever and the jokes go from being about how Amazon would shoot you with a gun for money to like, a robot doing the macarena or something. But the first stylistic break, as it’s discussed, supposedly comes right here in Going Commando, where a revamped control scheme leads this series pretty much immediately to its place as “a third person shooter, with some platforming,” rather than “a platformer where your weapons are mostly guns,” or at least that was my understanding.

So I was a little surprised to find that it didn’t REALLY feel that way to me, much. Certainly the game has more in the way of obvious combat arenas, with bigger open flat areas to hop around in with your guns, but these are as often as not designed considerately with interesting terrain and enemy placements so I rarely felt like I was being asked to just charge a room loaded with enemies I was ill equipped to deal with, which happened a lot in the back half of the first game. Strafing is nice to have and the Lara Croft Strafe Jump in particular feels very good, but I ran into an issue where when I tried to shoot while doing this it would often break my lock on and start shooting my gun off to the side. This game wisely scales the damage guns do so early weapons (which tend to be more conventional things like pistols and the absolutely A+ video game hall of fame shotgun here) become much less effective over time, which also means that the weapons that are really the only viable ones in the levels where weapon choice actually matters somewhat have really limited ammo and these snafus did tend to hurt. These kinds of little things defined my time with the game.

There are a lot of THINGS in this game, and a lot of things to DO, but none of them feel quite right, or as good as they did before if they’re returning items or activities. For example, there’s a space combat minigame that you’re forced to engage with multiple times throughout the campaign and there are many optional challenges across the multiple bespoke maps for this minigame you can do too. There’s a shop where you can buy many upgrades for you ship in offense, defense, speed, and cosmetics. Mission objectives are varied, as are enemy responses based on the maps you’re in. And yet the ship feels kind of shitty to control?? Not bad enough to make finishing the levels difficult, just bad enough to make them tedious. There’s only one real enemy type to engage with and they’re not smart enough to be fun to engage with or actively threatening but they also come in such numbers occasionally and your ship lacks the movement options you would want to see in this kind of arcade setup to make up for the kind of floaty controls on it that you’re always in a low level state of being pestered. They’re not too hard, they’re not too long, there aren’t too many of them that are mandatory, and the activity is surprisingly full featured, but it feels like the mark was missed on it.

This is everywhere. Hoverbikes replaces hoverboard races and just kind of feel worse to control and have less going on mechanically. There are glider courses that are again not particularly long or challenging but ARE deeply unfun to break up the pace. There are only like two levels where you play as Clank and his mechanics have been both expanded and heavily streamlined to the point the levels may as well play themselves. Several guns from the previous game return and you get them for free if you have a save from it but they don’t feature the big new levelling mechanic from this game and they’re obviated almost immediately because their damage sucks. The trespasser minigame has been changed from a methodical puzzle to a minigame that is somehow both based around twitch reflexes and trial and error. It feels like there was a concerted effort to stuff this game with STUFF, to make sure you’re always Doing Something, and to generally actionize the proceedings. I just don’t think most of these mechanics got enough time in the oven, which makes sense, because this game had to have come together in, what, ten months? I will give them one though the combat arenas are really cool and challenging areas with like, unique bosses and shit in them in addition to a plethora of neat missions with a wide variety of objectives and big cash rewards, really good time.

The core of the experience though is still jumping on stuff and hitting guys with a wrench and/or bullets and I think that’s pretty much as good as before if not better! I think if there’s less platforming here and an increased emphasis on gunplay it is only to better accommodate the diverse array of weaponry available, which is a little bit more creative than the first game’s, and in tandem with Ratchet’s more shootery control scheme, the aforementioned level design does give them more of a chance to shine I think. God bless Ratchet 1 I did spend most of my time running around in a circle or charging enemies head on. So if the split before was like a hard 70/30 it’s maybe now closer to a solid 50/50 imo, and more evenly weighted too. Where the first game definitely started to lean more heavily into the combat in the last few levels, which did leave kind of a bad taste in my mouth because I DON’T think of that as that game’s strongest element, here you’re still being asked to utilize gadgets and platforming muscles all the way to the end in pretty much equal measure. The most visually and mechanically engaging rail grinding sequence in the series to this point happens right before the final level and I was quite happy to have it be a mandatory bit.

The story of Going Commando kind of fucking blows, and part of that is because this game was again written by people who are not writers but this time the structure was a little more ambitious and complicated and it’s in part because I was expecting too much from the sequel to a game that was ACCIDENTALLY strongly anti-capitalist, written and created by capitalists, produced within possibly the most intensely capitalistic artistic medium that there is today. Really that is on me. That’s my fault.

So it’s been a few months since their previous adventure and Ratchet is getting a little itchy to both have something to do again and keep his sense of importance and celebrity going, so he’s really overjoyed when Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the CEO of Megacorp, a company from the next galaxy over that is way bigger and more evil than either of the two evil corporations from the galaxy in the first game, begs him for help on a top secret mission to retrieve a stolen project from his company’s R&D division. He plays to the duo’s egos by bribing Ratchet with commando training and a fancy suit and ship, and Clank with a cushy corporate job, and away they go, entirely unquestioning of this man, or this situation, which are both extremely suspicious. This is a great setup for an ironic inversion of the first game’s premise. It of course turns out in a twist, I guess, about halfway through the game, that Ratchet and Clank ARE stopping a thief from stealing from Megacorp, but the thief was the good guy the whole time and R&C are actually working for the bad guy whoaaah! And things kind of start to fall apart? Because after being betrayed and left for dead by Fizzwidget Ratchet and Clank are like “pfft he did that by accident let’s go find him” and then they spend like a third of the game chasing this guy around, led by the nose, refusing to believe this dude is evil or that he made monsters on purpose or that he tried to kill them, even after they side with the thief, Angela, who to drive the point home is also an angry scientific genius lombax like Ratchet lol.

The moment of betrayal, where Ratchet and Clank lose all the nice shit they’ve been given poisonously by the corporation and are left to die, should also be the moment where they realize they’ve been played, and snap back to the skepticism of the world and the powerful people in it they had in the first game. This game should be like, premised around the fact that they can’t see the strings controlling them because they’ve joined the Captain Qwark tier of elitism at the beginning, and it is, sort of, but once the rug is pulled nothing changes for them materially or in their attitudes. Ratchet and Clank are broadly the straight men to the galaxy’s wacky and shady antics in this game in a similar way to the way Ratchet was in the first game but they don’t have like, CHARACTERS in the same way that they did, they don’t really react to things appropriately or at all beyond like “oh man we gotta stop the monsters!” which is kind of the only thing they say in the game, over and over again, when talking about their objectives.

If I had to guess at the intentions of the writing team I would think that this was done to make them believe Fizzwidget was a good guy up until the reveal at the end of the game that he’s actually been impersonated by Captain Qwark since before the beginning of the game, who invented the monsters and the crisis around them in a ploy to invent a bad guy for himself to defeat so he could become a hero figure in a new galaxy like he was in the first game’s, but this doesn’t make a lot of sense either, on multiple levels. First this should parallel Ratchet’s character turn, because it mimics his desire to hold onto the fame he briefly had and that was slipping away from him in the wake of the first game, which in turn mirrored Qwark’s motivation for working with the villains in that game in the first place, which led to his downfall and disgrace and current situation. You would think this might, I dunno, lead to Ratchet maybe learning a lesson or something, thinking about it at least, anything? But he doesn’t, this isn’t a game ABOUT Ratchet and Clank really, it’s just a game where they’re our tour guides through a plot that they’re not really personally invested in and have no real reason to care about beyond, y’know, thinking people dying are bad. The only reason they seem to care at all though is because Ratchet is ostensibly working for Fizzwidget which is the other problem here, Ratchet is IN LOVE with this asshole, in LOVE with him.

I don’t really understand why Qwark had to BE Fizzwidget for the entire game unless he was specifically planning to bring Ratchet into it for revenge, which he seemingly does, but then his actual plan doesn’t really have anything to DO with Ratchet and is really about re-attaining his personal status, so then why wouldn’t he just be like, working WITH Fizzwidget, from a writing perspective? Because this game is basically a nonstop parade of Megacorp’s many evils, he’s not a good dude. But RATCHET thinks he is, and when they find the real Fizzwidget at the end of the game, Ratchet is like “oh SIR, it’s an HONOR to meet you at last SIR would you DEIGN to allow me to KISS your BOOTS with my UNWORTHY LIPS my DEAR SIR” like what the fuck are you talking about man this is the most evil person you’ve ever even HEARD OF. The whole thing is just so confused, it’s like, a very simple outline full of really obvious themes and easy slam dunks to make and they just don’t do ANY of them it’s very weird. The dichotomy between making every second of the game about how evil Megacorp is and then having the boss and I think maybe founder of Megacorp (?) show up and be the coolest dude who we look up to is so galaxy brained I do not know how they did it.

DESPITE THIS THOUGH, the margins of the game are still full of the wonderful and fun little details that make LIVING in the world of Ratchet and Clank seem like even more of a nightmare than living on Earth, but are very funny and often creative when they’re in my Playstation. In broadening the scope of the satire some of the jokes are way more potent here, like a school field trip getting a tour of a weapon factory an oohing and ahing at gigantic warheads that decorate the lawn or the increasingly deranged and upsetting violence in the advertisements in this game, less frequent but more effective. I enjoyed the pseudo hippy guy who is found on two planets and tied to two awful sidequests, one of which is one of the worst areas in any video game ever made, but who imparts his “wisdoms” and powers in exchange for fees he insists he doesn’t want or need. A particular highlight was the henchmen squad of the game, Thugs-4-Less, who are mostly a generic “guys who look tough but actually are sensitive and like unexpected things” gag but enhanced by the fact that they’re still extremely evil and murderous on top of that which I thought was nice. Their boss just genuinely cares about their well being, and wants them to get their benefits and their picnic. There are more jokes that aren’t directly related to the satire of the setting too, beginning the series’ march away from its initial themes and towards whatever it’s going to be on the PS3, I guess, but they’re mostly pretty funny as well. Like there’s a random monster you need to talk to at one point who has sapience and is wearing like, a smoking jacket with a cravat and maligning his plight as the only guy in his species who can talk and Clank just says “A burden often accompanies self-awareness, sir” like what a weird thing to include it’s pretty good.

I’m similarly mixed on the aesthetic sensibility of the game. The first one had this kind of cool grungy sensibility, where menus were displayed on physical monitors with crt screens and stuff and there is still an attempt to do some of that but now everything is just kind of a buzzy blue with a sleeker look to it. It’s a similar vibe but certainly a less involved one too, kind of the same feeling as a lot with this game. There feels like there’s less depth to the color palette, with a higher percentage of levels and time spent in similar graying beige-ish factory-ish settings. There are certainly highlights but I think there might just be too many levels in general? I would be okay if these games had like eight really good levels instead of fifteen with some stinkers.

The game is a weird experience. I don’t really want to call it a mixed bag because the core of the game, which really is what you spend MOST of your time on, the running and gunning and jumping, is great, and great the whole time, and really a blast. I have my issues with the story but the optional cutscenes and a lot of the moment-to-moment goofs were really good! The music was outrageous, incredible, maybe on average better than last time. It’s really all that extra content, the story, whenever I thought about stuff for too long the seams started to show. It’s hard to judge an experience like Going Commando, but I guess I don’t really do that here. I liked it, it was fine haha.