About 5 years ago, I'd heard of a game called Outer Wilds and thought it looked pretty neat. It then came out and I decided back then that it wasn't the right time to play this game, I was interested in it but it just wasn't quite the right time. Not the first time this has happened to me for a game before, there's a fair list of games where I want to play and know I'll probably like a lot, but it just doesn't feel like the right time. Outer Wilds was one of those games, just affected by some weird mental block that made me wanna wait until I felt I was ready to play it.

And during those years of waiting I'd heard countless times from content creators, media folk, and regular people about how incredible this game is but crucially, no one was ever able to explain why. That was such a mystery to me, there's so so many games people love with all their heart and you're able to understand why, so why not Outer Wilds? That was a question I'd had 5 years ago, and it only got louder during those 5 years as more and more people played the game and said it their favorite game ever, or at least top 5 ever and that you MUST play it.

I was driving home from work in early May 2024, and recently Outer Wilds was on my mind again and I thought to myself that maybe it was finally time to play it. Got home, searched it and conveniently it was on sale on PS5, so what the hell, now's the time.

Fast forward to May 15th 2024, and 24 hours of playtime later I rolled credits on Outer Wilds, solving the mysteries of the Hearthian Solar System and as incredible as they all are, just awe inspiring incomprehensible storytelling, the greatest mystery I got to solve was finally just what it is about Outer Wilds and why people love this game so much. Like everyone else, I cannot quite put it into words. It's impossible, a fool's errand. Even if I'd went and spoiled the entire thing for you, no amount of words could explain how this game does what it manages to do and makes you feel the things that you will feel. You simply just have to experience it for yourself.

And just know that if you've ever asked yourself, 'What is it about Outer Wilds that people love so much but can never properly explain why?' That mystery you will solve once you roll credits. And it's the greatest mystery of them all.

I played the Pepper Grinder demo during Next Fest and I really loved it and I was eagerly anticipating the games release, and I immediately picked it up once it launched. Despite some of the good that crops up during the game, overall Pepper Grinder is a massively, MASSIVELY underwhelming game.

Before I get into the issues I have with the game, I just want to mention that the art and the aesthetic of this game is pretty fantastic. The pixel art, the animation, the color palette, how diverse every level looks, it's all really impressive stuff. Drilling through mountains and volcanoes and icebergs and ruined cities all make for really fun settings for the game. It's just disappointing that all of that feels wasted on levels that don't take advantage of what makes this game great.

Pepper Grinder excels when it's just Pepper, the Grinder, and a whole lot of dirt. The movement is tight, its fun, it's fast and it's got a lot of personality to it. The game throws in some fun gimmicks too like dousing lava with water to allow you to quickly drill through the magma before it melts again, or ice that will break behind you as you drill creating exciting moments of platforming in really unique ways. The game just discards these ideas so quickly that with a run time of roughly 3-4 hours, they feel very underutilized. Some of these ideas only appear once, or maybe twice out of 23 total levels and I just wish there was more I could do with them. And it absolutely does not help that there's so many parts of other levels that focus on all the things that don't make the game fun. Having to shoot rockets at ice takes longer than it needs to, 'combat' sections get old after the first one in level 1, and World 4 is almost entirely focused around these slower, less drilling inspired things. One entire level in World 4 has an entire three places to actually drill, and the rest is filled with unfun autoscroller combat with a machine gun. There's just far too much in this pretty short game that's just frustrating or unsatisfying. But even still, there's a lot of fun to be had when the game isn't focused on all the things that aren't fun. If the whole game was like this, it wouldn't feel so bad, except for one giant glaring problem: the bosses.

The boss battle in this game are outright bad. There's unfortunately not a single one that is fun, they're tedious and frustrating to fight and show off every single flaw the game has on offering. This game is just not built for these, they don't add anything to the experience and actively detract from it. The final boss in particular is especially bad, the first phase is fine (even though halfway through the AI broke for me), but the 2nd phase is genuinely a slog to fight. It's like one of the worst combat arenas I've experienced in a game since the good old Capra Demon fight in Dark Souls.
Just all round really frustrating bosses that do nothing to enhance the strengths of this game.

Maybe I went in expecting the wrong things, but this package has overall left me largely disappointed. So if you are like me, and you played the demo and really loved the fast paced drilling action and wanted to get this for more of that, I cannot recommend Pepper Grinder for how misused this games mechanics are that get focused on all the wrong things.