Hugh
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Hugh likes videogames
Hugh likes videogames
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GOTY '23
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It's been a long time coming. I owned Chrono Trigger when it released on the Nintendo DS 2008. I was only 13, and I was barely familiar with the reverence the game had. I think. It's hard to remember. I fell in love with the game, but I don't recall getting very far. I made it to the Sewer Access and Factory areas during the first visit to Future, but that's my only memory of the game. Fittingly, every other aspect of my experience with Chrono Trigger back then has been lost to time. Finally now, almost 30 years on from the game's release, I've had the chance to play through the entirety of Chrono Trigger. And wow! People were right! This game rocks!
Separated as I am from the context of its 1995 release, it's hard to even fathom how this game blew minds back then. I only know that it did. But even in 2024, if the technical aspects that impressed back then don't have quite the same sheen, it's still easy to tell how things like the more 'grounded' battle transitions and time travel concepts stood out from other games of the era. Most notable I think is the game's pacing, which trades in the wandering and 'hanging out' popular even among RPGs of its age for a more frenetic, fast-paced roller coaster ride that is constantly introducing you to new dungeons, enemy concepts, and unique boss fights. It never lets its foot off the gas - even when it finally opens up towards the end, all of the sidequest paths you can choose to explore lead to exciting and unique dungeons and bosses. Not super difficult bosses though - another drastic change from many RPGs of its time is the game's ease of play. It's pretty breezy! I died twice, and one of those times was from trying to take on the game's final boss as soon as it was available. Which is in itself a radical feature that I'd love to see more games try to implement nowadays.
Fairly short and insubstantial review here I know, but it's hard to say much about Chrono Trigger that hasn't been said. What an impressive delight.
Separated as I am from the context of its 1995 release, it's hard to even fathom how this game blew minds back then. I only know that it did. But even in 2024, if the technical aspects that impressed back then don't have quite the same sheen, it's still easy to tell how things like the more 'grounded' battle transitions and time travel concepts stood out from other games of the era. Most notable I think is the game's pacing, which trades in the wandering and 'hanging out' popular even among RPGs of its age for a more frenetic, fast-paced roller coaster ride that is constantly introducing you to new dungeons, enemy concepts, and unique boss fights. It never lets its foot off the gas - even when it finally opens up towards the end, all of the sidequest paths you can choose to explore lead to exciting and unique dungeons and bosses. Not super difficult bosses though - another drastic change from many RPGs of its time is the game's ease of play. It's pretty breezy! I died twice, and one of those times was from trying to take on the game's final boss as soon as it was available. Which is in itself a radical feature that I'd love to see more games try to implement nowadays.
Fairly short and insubstantial review here I know, but it's hard to say much about Chrono Trigger that hasn't been said. What an impressive delight.
When I was a kid, Metroid Prime was the game that made me love video games. It made me understand what this medium could really be. When the Trilogy release came out for the Wii, I began a tradition of playing all three games every year. This continued until the release of the Nintendo Switch, where I put my Wii and Wii U down for good and vowed to return to the games only when Nintendo released them for the new platform. It took a long while, but in 2023 it finally happened, and Prime was better than I remembered. We're still waiting on the other two, but for now, I can see no reason not to resume the tradition with this incredible remaster. For the first time, in at least 7 full playthroughs of Metroid Prime, I put the game on Hard Mode. I figured it would be annoying and spongey, but that it would be an interesting new way to experience the game. I also went with the classic Gamecube control scheme this time, playing the game as it was meant to be played for the first time in almost 20 years.
I am beyond thrilled to report that Metroid Prime not only holds up, it holds up better than it ever has. Really, I think this was the most I've ever enjoyed Metroid Prime. As I've gotten older, and as I've experienced many many more video games and watched video essays and GDC talks, even worked on designing my own video games, I've become much more intimately familiar with game design as an art. The way a game guides you, the way a game paces itself, plays upon your expectations, challenges the skillsets you've been taught. It really cannot be overstated how unbelievably well designed Metroid Prime is. Its map is tighter than it seems, and it dots its objectives so smartly the player doesn't even realize how good the trick is. The illusion of an open confusing map, when in reality the player is almost always being led to the right place without even knowing it. It's really something else. This gets stretched quite a bit in the endgame, as now the entire map is yours to explore. The endgame gauntlet as you descend through the Phazon Mines to get the Power Bombs, then climb back out in order to get the Grapple Hook, X-Ray Visor, and Plasma Beam... they really send you back across pretty much the entire map. I've seen complaints about the backtracking, specifically about how every area doesn't connect to every area, causing a longer than desired detour in order to venture to some of the more out of the way destinations. Hell, I even picked some of those same nits myself when I last played the game. My eyes are open now, though. The game sends you all that way so you can pick up the Artifacts, grab all the collectibles, visit those final rooms in Chozo Ruins and Phendrana Drifts that you couldn't yet reach. I knew this during my last playthrough of course, it's a pretty obvious move. But somehow I didn't fully grasp the genius of it - how subtly and smartly these necessary powerup destinations cross paths with the Artifacts you need. By the time I got back to the Mines with all the abilities I needed to take on the Omega Pirate, I had already picked up every Artifact besides the one you need the Phazon Suit for - an Artifact handily located on your trip back up through the Mine, ripe for the picking. The game design is perfect. Just perfect.
Just as notable as the game design (and the incredible soundtrack, sound design, visuals both in 2002 and 2024, etc) is how obviously influential the game has clearly been, and how its effects still ripple through the industry to this day. Exploring this abandoned civilization, only getting to read vague descriptions as lore and otherwise using the world design and environmental cues of this decaying world to tell a story. That's all an apt description of Metroid Prime, but it's also an equally apt description of Dark Souls and the many games that would follow in its wake. I'm not arguing that Metroid Prime was the chief inspiration for Dark Souls - it's more likely that Ocarina of Time was more significant - but it certainly stood out to me on this playthrough just how many cues modern games take from Metroid Prime's storytelling. Little things like all the doors in Tallon IV having been installed by the Space Pirates, with the different beam doors correlating to 'Security Clearance Levels' for their troops. The whole 'Metroid Prime' thing itself famously falls apart under intense scrutiny, but I'm willing to ignore that in the face of how much the game gets right here, especially for 2002. When games were only just beginning to excel at telling stories with sound and visuals over text descriptions, Metroid Prime wordlessly manages to combine both to build an untouchable atmosphere and create a unique game world codex all its own.
Please port the other two games Nintendo I am begging you. Shocking as this sounds after this review, the last time I played the Trilogy back in 2016 I considered Metroid Prime my least favorite of the three games. I'm fiending for a chance to see how the others stack up. Let me at 'em.
I am beyond thrilled to report that Metroid Prime not only holds up, it holds up better than it ever has. Really, I think this was the most I've ever enjoyed Metroid Prime. As I've gotten older, and as I've experienced many many more video games and watched video essays and GDC talks, even worked on designing my own video games, I've become much more intimately familiar with game design as an art. The way a game guides you, the way a game paces itself, plays upon your expectations, challenges the skillsets you've been taught. It really cannot be overstated how unbelievably well designed Metroid Prime is. Its map is tighter than it seems, and it dots its objectives so smartly the player doesn't even realize how good the trick is. The illusion of an open confusing map, when in reality the player is almost always being led to the right place without even knowing it. It's really something else. This gets stretched quite a bit in the endgame, as now the entire map is yours to explore. The endgame gauntlet as you descend through the Phazon Mines to get the Power Bombs, then climb back out in order to get the Grapple Hook, X-Ray Visor, and Plasma Beam... they really send you back across pretty much the entire map. I've seen complaints about the backtracking, specifically about how every area doesn't connect to every area, causing a longer than desired detour in order to venture to some of the more out of the way destinations. Hell, I even picked some of those same nits myself when I last played the game. My eyes are open now, though. The game sends you all that way so you can pick up the Artifacts, grab all the collectibles, visit those final rooms in Chozo Ruins and Phendrana Drifts that you couldn't yet reach. I knew this during my last playthrough of course, it's a pretty obvious move. But somehow I didn't fully grasp the genius of it - how subtly and smartly these necessary powerup destinations cross paths with the Artifacts you need. By the time I got back to the Mines with all the abilities I needed to take on the Omega Pirate, I had already picked up every Artifact besides the one you need the Phazon Suit for - an Artifact handily located on your trip back up through the Mine, ripe for the picking. The game design is perfect. Just perfect.
Just as notable as the game design (and the incredible soundtrack, sound design, visuals both in 2002 and 2024, etc) is how obviously influential the game has clearly been, and how its effects still ripple through the industry to this day. Exploring this abandoned civilization, only getting to read vague descriptions as lore and otherwise using the world design and environmental cues of this decaying world to tell a story. That's all an apt description of Metroid Prime, but it's also an equally apt description of Dark Souls and the many games that would follow in its wake. I'm not arguing that Metroid Prime was the chief inspiration for Dark Souls - it's more likely that Ocarina of Time was more significant - but it certainly stood out to me on this playthrough just how many cues modern games take from Metroid Prime's storytelling. Little things like all the doors in Tallon IV having been installed by the Space Pirates, with the different beam doors correlating to 'Security Clearance Levels' for their troops. The whole 'Metroid Prime' thing itself famously falls apart under intense scrutiny, but I'm willing to ignore that in the face of how much the game gets right here, especially for 2002. When games were only just beginning to excel at telling stories with sound and visuals over text descriptions, Metroid Prime wordlessly manages to combine both to build an untouchable atmosphere and create a unique game world codex all its own.
Please port the other two games Nintendo I am begging you. Shocking as this sounds after this review, the last time I played the Trilogy back in 2016 I considered Metroid Prime my least favorite of the three games. I'm fiending for a chance to see how the others stack up. Let me at 'em.
This review contains spoilers
“DELIVER UNTO US THE REMNANTS OF OUR PAST. RESTORE THEM TO THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACE.”
From the early hours of the first game, it’s very clear that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, encompassing a trilogy of games, is going to be about the process of the creatives remaking the game just as much as it is about actually remaking it. With REBIRTH we reach the middle chapter, and as the name implies it’s very much a game about new beginnings. It took me 100 hours to roll credits on this behemoth, and the whole way through I was being surprised and delighted by all manner of gameplay scenario, brilliant mechanic, and charming dialogue. Yet despite its enormity, Square Enix is able to keep a tight grasp on the game’s many running themes. I believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is absolutely one of the all time great video games, and the best Final Fantasy in over 20 years, and it’s that good precisely because of its ability to balance the heart and soul of its script with its immense wealth of Video Gamey goofiness and game-iness. And the creative team remembers one thing above all else: Final Fantasy VII is a game that means a lot of things to a lot of people, and all of those people want something different from this Remake project. Just as much as you feel celebration in Rebirth, you can feel fear. Fear of all the things that everyone wants. Fear of the people shipping Cloud with Aerith, of the people shipping Cloud with Tifa, of the people shipping Cloud with Chadley. Fear of the people demanding Aerith stay dead and demanding she be saved. Fear of the people wanting a perfectly faithful remake and the people wanting a new adventure built on the bones of the old. To remake a game like Final Fantasy VII is a thankless task, and with Rebirth the developers have realized the true potential of it: To deliver a story about delivering a story.
In FF7 Rebirth, we are shown a Planet that has been decimated by the defeat of the Whispers from REMAKE. Fate no longer being a set path has resulted in many doors opening within the planet, each doomed to a quick death but living potent lives while they’re around. This renders the planet even less stable than Shinra’s mako-farming already did. Every possibility is playing out, all at once, with every choice opening more doors, putting more strain on a planet in peril. As usual, Sephiroth designs some bullshit convoluted plan to manipulate this strain, uniting all of these worlds, making all the grief and despair and loss within them manifest at once and using that to do weird Sephiroth shit. And of course he’d want this, because I’m sure it’s what the creative team behind these games wanted too. Let Zack live! Let Aerith live! Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, everyone gets to live! Cloud gets with whoever the player wants, it’s all valid somewhere! Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could get everything they wanted?
“Ever wish you could just snap your fingers and forget the worst stuff?”
“It’s a part of who we are. Whether we like it or not.”
“Yeah. The deepest wounds never really heal.”
In their soulsearching for how to handle this, the developers of this game came to a sad conclusion. Final Fantasy VII is a game about losing things, and building something new from their ashes. Aerith’s death is possibly the most famous loss in the history of this medium. To save her would be to deny what Final Fantasy VII is. So instead of doing that, instead of giving everyone what they want, Square Enix instead shows us what that looks like. A bright mess, with visual metaphors and expository dialogue being thrown as everywhere fast as the camera can keep up. And then just as quickly, they hammer down on loss yet again. We save Aerith, deflecting Sephiroth’s fatal blow in a magical moment of deus ex machina that probably delighted as many people as it disgusted. Only to reverse those emotions upon the reveal that, no, we didn’t. Cloud as an unreliable narrator was always a key component of Final Fantasy VII, but in Rebirth that bit is played significantly more loudly and more frequently. At the start of the game, Cloud misremembers his past, to the great concern of his GIRLFRIEND LOVE OF HIS LIFE DARLING Tifa. But by its end, even his present and future are distorted. It was fascinating to me, seeing Square go for this. Turning our beloved if awkward protagonist into an empty vessel over the course of a massive adventure felt… wrong, in a way that felt right. It’s the opposite of your typical character development, and by the end it feels tremendously unsettling. Watching Cloud scamper madly after Aerith to get the Black Materia from her, only to give it up like a dog with a bone the instant Sephiroth tells him to hell, is emotionally frightening in much the same way that Cloud assaulting Aerith in the original is viscerally frightening. And I feel like that subtler edge is sprinkled over the game writ large - we don’t see Sephy kill Aerith here, but we see him flick her blood into Cloud’s face, see Aerith manipulate the lifestream to say a few parting words, and see Cloud descend into disbelief and madness for the remainder of the running time. The parallel worlds and timelines nonsense is handled in a very Lynchian way here, lending it all the emotional understanding that it lacks in logical understanding.
Its ending may be convoluted and messy, but the moments that should hit do hit, especially when you’re watching them again without expectation. It’s all very smartly done, making for a hype and difficult final challenge while also paying off both the subtle and unsubtle visual and emotional language that the game had spent so much time building. Final Fantasy VII is a monolith, and Rebirth feels like a game that manages to bring out both the darkness and the light within it.
All the while, you are also experiencing, yknow, an enormous 100 hour JRPG, full of sidequests and minigames and dumb bullshit galore. The combat is fantastic, the cutscene direction is top tier, and every odd task and bizarre mechanical addition lends itself to creating an absolute benchmark in video game scope. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like a current gen video game has approached the enormity and variety of one of the classic PS1 RPGs that this game is remaking, and seeing it with so much panache is genuinely electric. I was never bored and never anything more than intentionally annoyed. Even if the game had no script at all, it would be one of the all time great video games solely based on its video game-iness alone. It’s truly something special.
All these words said and I still feel like I haven’t scratched the surface. This is an extremely dense game, stuffed full to bursting with worldbuilding, visual metaphor, complicated themes and complex storytelling. It would take many playthroughs and many more hours of analysis and thought for me to come to some sort of truly comprehensive overview of what this game is trying to say and do. But for now, I think I get the gist. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is very much a game about creating itself, about the many doors open to its creators and the struggle to deliver something that could make everybody happy. The struggle to resist their own urges, the struggle to resist the easy temptations of both pleasure and pretentiousness. In that same sense, Rebirth is also about clinging to yourself, holding on to what you are in the face of insurmountable terror and pain. Of using your past to overcome your present and face a bright future. About how what has been lost, what has been stolen, what has been destroyed is never gone. It is only turned into something else. Everything we ever have is with us always, and it’s how we use those things that define who we are. Are we Rufus and Dyne, letting our past manipulate us and goad us into destruction? Or are we Aerith, or Tifa? Using what we’ve lost to strengthen our principles, to move on with fiery eyes towards the unknown?
“Reflect on thy long and bloody path, and kindle life’s fire anew. Forget not thine ire. For it shall remake you.”
From the early hours of the first game, it’s very clear that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, encompassing a trilogy of games, is going to be about the process of the creatives remaking the game just as much as it is about actually remaking it. With REBIRTH we reach the middle chapter, and as the name implies it’s very much a game about new beginnings. It took me 100 hours to roll credits on this behemoth, and the whole way through I was being surprised and delighted by all manner of gameplay scenario, brilliant mechanic, and charming dialogue. Yet despite its enormity, Square Enix is able to keep a tight grasp on the game’s many running themes. I believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is absolutely one of the all time great video games, and the best Final Fantasy in over 20 years, and it’s that good precisely because of its ability to balance the heart and soul of its script with its immense wealth of Video Gamey goofiness and game-iness. And the creative team remembers one thing above all else: Final Fantasy VII is a game that means a lot of things to a lot of people, and all of those people want something different from this Remake project. Just as much as you feel celebration in Rebirth, you can feel fear. Fear of all the things that everyone wants. Fear of the people shipping Cloud with Aerith, of the people shipping Cloud with Tifa, of the people shipping Cloud with Chadley. Fear of the people demanding Aerith stay dead and demanding she be saved. Fear of the people wanting a perfectly faithful remake and the people wanting a new adventure built on the bones of the old. To remake a game like Final Fantasy VII is a thankless task, and with Rebirth the developers have realized the true potential of it: To deliver a story about delivering a story.
In FF7 Rebirth, we are shown a Planet that has been decimated by the defeat of the Whispers from REMAKE. Fate no longer being a set path has resulted in many doors opening within the planet, each doomed to a quick death but living potent lives while they’re around. This renders the planet even less stable than Shinra’s mako-farming already did. Every possibility is playing out, all at once, with every choice opening more doors, putting more strain on a planet in peril. As usual, Sephiroth designs some bullshit convoluted plan to manipulate this strain, uniting all of these worlds, making all the grief and despair and loss within them manifest at once and using that to do weird Sephiroth shit. And of course he’d want this, because I’m sure it’s what the creative team behind these games wanted too. Let Zack live! Let Aerith live! Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, everyone gets to live! Cloud gets with whoever the player wants, it’s all valid somewhere! Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could get everything they wanted?
“Ever wish you could just snap your fingers and forget the worst stuff?”
“It’s a part of who we are. Whether we like it or not.”
“Yeah. The deepest wounds never really heal.”
In their soulsearching for how to handle this, the developers of this game came to a sad conclusion. Final Fantasy VII is a game about losing things, and building something new from their ashes. Aerith’s death is possibly the most famous loss in the history of this medium. To save her would be to deny what Final Fantasy VII is. So instead of doing that, instead of giving everyone what they want, Square Enix instead shows us what that looks like. A bright mess, with visual metaphors and expository dialogue being thrown as everywhere fast as the camera can keep up. And then just as quickly, they hammer down on loss yet again. We save Aerith, deflecting Sephiroth’s fatal blow in a magical moment of deus ex machina that probably delighted as many people as it disgusted. Only to reverse those emotions upon the reveal that, no, we didn’t. Cloud as an unreliable narrator was always a key component of Final Fantasy VII, but in Rebirth that bit is played significantly more loudly and more frequently. At the start of the game, Cloud misremembers his past, to the great concern of his GIRLFRIEND LOVE OF HIS LIFE DARLING Tifa. But by its end, even his present and future are distorted. It was fascinating to me, seeing Square go for this. Turning our beloved if awkward protagonist into an empty vessel over the course of a massive adventure felt… wrong, in a way that felt right. It’s the opposite of your typical character development, and by the end it feels tremendously unsettling. Watching Cloud scamper madly after Aerith to get the Black Materia from her, only to give it up like a dog with a bone the instant Sephiroth tells him to hell, is emotionally frightening in much the same way that Cloud assaulting Aerith in the original is viscerally frightening. And I feel like that subtler edge is sprinkled over the game writ large - we don’t see Sephy kill Aerith here, but we see him flick her blood into Cloud’s face, see Aerith manipulate the lifestream to say a few parting words, and see Cloud descend into disbelief and madness for the remainder of the running time. The parallel worlds and timelines nonsense is handled in a very Lynchian way here, lending it all the emotional understanding that it lacks in logical understanding.
Its ending may be convoluted and messy, but the moments that should hit do hit, especially when you’re watching them again without expectation. It’s all very smartly done, making for a hype and difficult final challenge while also paying off both the subtle and unsubtle visual and emotional language that the game had spent so much time building. Final Fantasy VII is a monolith, and Rebirth feels like a game that manages to bring out both the darkness and the light within it.
All the while, you are also experiencing, yknow, an enormous 100 hour JRPG, full of sidequests and minigames and dumb bullshit galore. The combat is fantastic, the cutscene direction is top tier, and every odd task and bizarre mechanical addition lends itself to creating an absolute benchmark in video game scope. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like a current gen video game has approached the enormity and variety of one of the classic PS1 RPGs that this game is remaking, and seeing it with so much panache is genuinely electric. I was never bored and never anything more than intentionally annoyed. Even if the game had no script at all, it would be one of the all time great video games solely based on its video game-iness alone. It’s truly something special.
All these words said and I still feel like I haven’t scratched the surface. This is an extremely dense game, stuffed full to bursting with worldbuilding, visual metaphor, complicated themes and complex storytelling. It would take many playthroughs and many more hours of analysis and thought for me to come to some sort of truly comprehensive overview of what this game is trying to say and do. But for now, I think I get the gist. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is very much a game about creating itself, about the many doors open to its creators and the struggle to deliver something that could make everybody happy. The struggle to resist their own urges, the struggle to resist the easy temptations of both pleasure and pretentiousness. In that same sense, Rebirth is also about clinging to yourself, holding on to what you are in the face of insurmountable terror and pain. Of using your past to overcome your present and face a bright future. About how what has been lost, what has been stolen, what has been destroyed is never gone. It is only turned into something else. Everything we ever have is with us always, and it’s how we use those things that define who we are. Are we Rufus and Dyne, letting our past manipulate us and goad us into destruction? Or are we Aerith, or Tifa? Using what we’ve lost to strengthen our principles, to move on with fiery eyes towards the unknown?
“Reflect on thy long and bloody path, and kindle life’s fire anew. Forget not thine ire. For it shall remake you.”