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𝙾𝙱𝙹𝙴𝙲𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝙿𝙾𝚆𝙴𝚁
"𝙰𝚕𝚊𝚗 𝚆𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝙸𝙸" (𝙾𝙾𝙿𝟸𝟹-𝙰𝚆)

𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝙰𝙸𝙽𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝙲𝙴𝙳𝚄𝚁𝙴:
𝙾𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚊 𝚆𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚜 𝟷𝟶/𝟷𝟷 𝟼𝟺-𝚋𝚒𝚝 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚟𝚒𝚊 𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚌𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚝 𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚊𝚕 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 "𝙴𝚙𝚒𝚌 𝙶𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝙸𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚛". 𝙳𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚗 █████ 𝚒𝟻-𝟽𝟼𝟶𝟶𝙺 𝚘𝚛 ███ 𝚎𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚖𝚒𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚘𝚏 ██ 𝚐𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚋𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖-𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚢; 𝚊𝚗 𝚖𝚂𝙰𝚃𝙰 𝚂𝚂𝙳 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 ██ 𝙶𝙱 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚎 𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚅𝙴𝚁𝚈 𝙼𝚄𝙲𝙷 𝚁𝙴𝚀𝚄𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙳 𝚝𝚘 ████████ ██.


𝙳𝙴𝚂𝙲𝚁𝙸𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽/𝙿𝙰𝚁𝙰𝚄𝚃𝙸𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚈:
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 █████ ████ 𝚍𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚁𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚢 𝙴𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝.

𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚜 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚊 𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚏 █████ 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝-𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚓𝚞𝚖𝚙-𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚜, ███████ , 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚔𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚞𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 ████ 𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚟𝚎 ██████████ 𝚘𝚏 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜. 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚖𝚊𝚣𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚍 / 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚙𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 ████ 𝚁𝚃𝚇-𝚜𝚕𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚍 𝚎𝚗𝚟𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 ████ 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗. 𝙾𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 ██████ 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚗𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍, 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚖𝚊𝚢 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 █████ "𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚜" 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝'𝚜 █████ 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚖𝚋𝚞𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐.

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚘 ██████████.

𝙱𝙰𝙲𝙺𝙶𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙽𝙳:
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚝 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙶𝙰𝙼𝙴 𝙰𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳𝚂 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟷 𝚋𝚢 █████ 𝙺𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚕𝚎𝚢. 𝙰𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚕 ██████ 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚊𝚝 ████████ 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙼𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚙𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚘 █████ 𝙺𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚕𝚎𝚢'𝚜 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢.

████ ██████ █████ █████ ██████████ ███████ █████████████ ██ ██ ████ █████ ██ █████ ██████████ ████████ ██████ ████████████ 𝙸 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚝𝚘 ███ 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 ███ 𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚑 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚔𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 ███ ████ █████████ ████ ████ 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 ███ 𝚢𝚘𝚞 ███ 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚙𝚒𝚎𝚌𝚎 𝚘𝚏 ███ █ ██ ██ █ ███ ███ █████████ ████ █████ ████ ███████ ████ ████ █████ .

𝙿𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚎𝚡𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚢𝚗𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 "█████" 𝚋𝚎𝚢𝚘𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚔𝚢𝚋𝚘𝚡, 𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚟𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚊 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚞𝚍𝚘█████𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.

𝙰𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚝 █████ 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚋𝚓𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 ██████ , 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚢 █████ 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚜. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 ████ -𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚞𝚐𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚞𝚗𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠𝚗, 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 ██████.
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Hello, and welcome to the Letshugbro Backloggd Review Page. This week we will review the highly anticipated new video game by Remedy Entertainment called Alan Wake II. Alan Wake II is available on the Epic Games Store as an epic 90GB download file on your personal computer, or can be purchased for your Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S or PlayStation 5 games console in digital download or Blu-ray disc format. Remedy's brilliance is on full display here with a very cool box art that is both pleasant and tasteful to the eye; they have set a high standard with their previous video games, but I can say without hesitation that Alan Wake II has created the best and most compelling content for Ending Explained YouTube videos that I have ever seen. The Wikipedia synopsis is truly riveting, and will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

Thrilling, moody, and captivating - Alan Wake II is a contender for the Game Awards. It has a story that can't help but pull you in, a spell-binding tour de force that shines a light on Sam Lake's brilliantly dark mind. The game begins as a murder mystery, but pulls the rug out from under the player and turns into an all-out supernatural horror! The worlds and characters echo each other in unique and surprising ways, and the Overlap sections in particular are rich examples of the game's themes - the salt shaker story had me rolling on the floor! The stage fight scene from Alan Wake is one-upped by the mind-frying Dark Ocean Summoning scene, and the tragedy of Saga losing her family is a blatant commentary on a woman's struggle to achieve balance in their personal and professional lives - she and Casey will go down as gaming's best law enforcement duo! The Old Gods of Asgard are back too, so Lake clearly knows what his fans want to see! He deftly tricks the reader into believing the Cult of the Tree is the story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story's antagonist, and setting the trilogy's exciting conclusion at Deerfest makes Alan Wake II a genre-bending mixture of fact and fiction. The gut-wrenching ending is modern horror at its finest - this motherfucker is a home run! Alan Wake has done it again! I'll give it a score of █████ out of 5.

Bro I have never felt happier to get a WarioWare in my LIFE. Smooth Moves is by far my favorite entry in the series and one of my favorite Nintendo games of all time, so the fact we got a direct sequel had me excited, and they thankfully delivered.

I believe WarioWare has always been best when it had a central gimmick. Even though I really liked Get it Together, it felt a bit lacking without it utilizing the Switch's gimmicks. Thankfully that's what this game does and it is amazing. Unfortunately since the Joycons aren't nearly as intuitive as the Wiimote, some microgames can feel a bit finicky, but those few are outshined by a plethora that uses the motion controls to its absolute best. This game has one of the best selection of microgames in the series as not only it replicates Smooth Moves' style, it innovates on that style.

The only gimmick that doesn't particularly work well is the IR camera, but not many microgames utilize it so it's not a big deal. The new forms introduced with the NARRATOR returning are extremely fun and it brought back the spark this series didn't have for 17 years. Not saying the new games are bad but it didn't have a certain style that made me fall in love with this series.

Overall, this a fantastic return to one of my favorite gaming series and I'm hopeful they can keep innovating with whatever Nintendo's next console gimmick will be. I feel so happy to be a WarioWare fan.

Miyamoto's pretty happy to talk about his admiration of Pac-Man these days. Pac-Man Vs. was fairly unprecedented in its time, with Nintendo reaching out to work with a rival publisher's property. What has turned into respect was once youthful jealousy. Everyone loves Mario, but Pac-Man is one of the first things kids learn to draw. Miyamoto has Pac-Man Fever.

Devil World is a very strange game, but if you view it as a Pac-Man clone from the guy who made Donkey Kong, it starts to seem a little more coherent. You play as Tamagon, a little guy going around mazes controlled by The Devil. There are demons swarming throughout. I don't know what the Nintendo-brand power pellets are called, but they're here too. To attack the demons and collect the power pellets, you must pick up a crucifix, which grants you power for a few seconds. You have to take care around the edge of the screen though, as The Devil is constantly making it shift, however he likes, and can easily crush you if you're not careful. Once you've collected all the pellets, you're onto the next stage.

The second level has you collecting four floating bibles from each corner of the screen, all while it shifts. You must deposit each bible in a hole at the centre of the stage. When all four bibles are in their spot, you move to the bonus level. This works similarly to the second level, with a little more control over the scrolling, but it's just for bonus points and extra lives so you don't have to worry about it. Then, like Donkey Kong, it loops back to a harder version of Level 1.

Devil World's mechanics are odd and convoluted, but once you get a grasp of them, the game's pretty fun. It's nowhere near as coherent as Pac-Man. I think that's standard for early 80s Nintendo games, and something they got better at once the locations and characters of their titles became less abstract and more definite. The Clu-Clu Lands and Wrecking Crews would soon be set aside for Metroid and Zelda. Games with hard lore, characters and settings. Things you could latch onto and reflect upon. Devil World's satanic/religious theme's just an arbitrary topic to base a handful of the game's enemies and items upon. They could have been anything, and it wouldn't have changed the game. It's a little curious that Nintendo of America didn't opt to bring this over with different sprites, ala Mario 2, but then, the game's nowhere near as good as Doki Doki Panic, so maybe it wasn't worth the bother.

I can't give the game too much shit for ripping off Pac-Man. Taito only came out with Bub's design two years after Nintendo introduced Tamagon.

In all the time building up to this game and Mario Wonder, I have constantly argued about what "soul" means for a video game. To have a "soul" means to have substance, a reason to exist in the first place, something of inherent value. There are many games I would argue that have a vast "soul," Fallout New Vegas, Lobotomy Corporation, hell, even something like Tsukihime has some value buried deep down inherently. So the question then becomes, what does a game with no "soul" look like?

Enter Sonic Superstars.

While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.

None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.

Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.

What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.

Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.

Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.

I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.

There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.

The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.

To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.

In his video last year regarding context sensitivity, Matthewmatosis opens by describing Ghost Trick as entirely context-sensitive: the main action button ("trick") always performs a different action depending on the item possessed. However, he points this out as an exception to the trend of heavy context-sensitivity weighing down modern titles, because simply put, Ghost Trick uses context-sensitivity not as a crutch, but as its core. It never seems to suffer from fuzzy context: the game not only gives you plenty of safe time to experiment with set-pieces leading up to timed sequences (since untimed traversal to the victim is every bit a puzzle in itself), but also briefly describes the single "trick" of each object possessed to give players an idea of how to progress. Furthermore, Ghost Trick's difficulty hits a perfect sweet-spot: it doesn't feel free because traversal and manipulating objects to your advantage require a good degree of planning and experimentation, but failure also never feels too punishing because other characters and the environment are great at providing thoughtful feedback upon failure, so the player isn't just banging their head against a wall via quick restarts at built-in checkpoints.

Essentially, it's like playing the ancestor of Return of the Obra Dinn but with a time loop mechanic attached. The objective remains simple (travel back to four minutes before death to avert fate), but how to achieve said objective is always completely dictated by your surroundings. As a result, it naturally iterates upon its basic structure to create more unconventional scenarios: soon you're not just manipulating objects for traversal and foiling assassins, you're also solving locked room mysteries, or traveling to different environments to save victims from elsewhere, or diving into deaths within deaths to avert multiple fates at a time. Through all of this, Ghost Trick understands one of the key strengths of video games: creating virtual playgrounds of experimentation unsaddled by the limitations of time to reward players through the joy of discovery. The player is constantly surprised time and time again not only from unexpected object interactions, but also from how the narrative weaves in and out of death sequences to create suspenseful moments. It's a minor miracle in itself that the story never jumps the shark: the gameplay mechanics remain firmly consistent alongside its lore, and every plot thread is neatly wrapped up by the end of the game after a series of subtly foreshadowed twists. Combine this marrying of storytelling and gameplay with expressive animations, a colorful and very personable cast, an understated yet powerful soundtrack, and a great mix of humor and emotional moments, and you get what is perhaps the most cohesive title in the DS library.

It's rather poetic that a game which looked simple on the outside provided such an intricate exercise for Shu Takumi to prove that he was no one-trick pony. I'm grateful that Ghost Trick has finally been ported to modern systems for a whole new audience to lose their minds over this, for it's a masterpiece that everyone owes to themselves to check out. At the end of the day, nothing feels quite as cathartic as miraculously changing destiny in the face of inevitable death.

My first thought was that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was just going to be a straight spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio Future (which would have been a letdown considering my three weeks of original Jet Set Radio prep), but I'm pleasantly surprised by the blend of mechanics presented! In reality, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes the overall structure and aesthetic from Future while borrowing more heavily from original Jet Set Radio's tight level design and intricate scoring mechanics, and dare I say, actually improves upon certain aspects. It does have a few underdeveloped features as a result of its experimentation, but overall, not a bad first attempt by Team Reptile!

One issue that apparently escaped my notice the first time around (I replayed Future recently just to confirm this) was that Future's extremely linear and stretched-out levels resulted in tons of backtracking upon missing objectives/falling off the stage, and led to fairly rigid approaches that really tried my patience upon additional loops. This is fortunately not the case with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: levels are generally a lot more open with many more shortcuts and are spaced apart carefully to where traversal feels much more free-form. It more closely resembles original Jet Set Radio, especially when you consider how its momentum mechanics complement this design. Future made the speed fairly easy to obtain: jump onto a rail regardless of your momentum, then keep mashing trick to accelerate and never slow down. On the other hand, original Jet Set Radio became well-known for how slow your character would move about unless you actively utilized rails and grindable walls to speed up, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes a modern twist: you need to maintain momentum by either rail grinding and leaning into corners for speed boosts, or by using grounded manuals combined with boost (refreshed from performing tricks) to retain speed.

The momentum mechanics go hand-in-hand with the game's combo system. After thoroughly exploring levels to spray graffiti spots for "rep" and completing subsequent score and movement-tech challenges from opposing crew members, your crew must finally confront opposing crews in a crew battle, outscoring them with trick combos in their own territory. The scoring and trick system improvises upon both original Jet Set Radio and Future: in both games, the safest way to score trick points was abusing infinite grind loops and repeating the same tricks/movement over and over. However, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk turns this on its head: you don't get tons of points for doing the same tricks ad-nauseam (since trick value decreases and eventually levels off when used more and more). Instead, the main key to getting points is increasing the multiplier by utilizing unique features of the stage: that is, leaning into tight corners on grindable rails, wall-riding billboards, and going up half-pipe ramps (which are improved over the original game since you can manual up ramps and then air boost off into manuals/rail and wall-grinds, so they can function as part of a combo). The key word is "unique," since utilizing the same set-piece in a held combo will not give additional multipliers, and the same goes for graffiti spots that can now also be resprayed as one-time trick bonuses during continuous combos. As a result, the trick and multiplier staling incentivizes players to fully explore and utilize every set-piece present upon the open stages to create massive combos, made easier thanks to the mid-air dash (which also lets you alter airborne momentum once) and the manual. The only downside here is that the game's circumstances never become difficult enough to necessitate this trick optimization; the story crew battles are pretty easy and I was leapfrogging them using the above strategy (i.e. while other crews were floundering around several hundred thousand, I was well beyond a couple million in score), so unless players are trying to crack the tougher post-game score barriers for optional characters/achievements, they may never need to lean on these strategies at all.

The lack of difficulty serves as a microcosm of this game's unfortunate trend: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk certainly innovates upon many features from the Jet Set Radio games, but I find a few to be undercooked or lacking in execution. The combat's one example: it's not a bad idea in theory (using tricks to both deal damage and maintain score/momentum) and in fact has been proposed before, but its implementation leaves something to be desired. Attacking enemies feels like it has little impact because of the muffled sound-effects, akin to slapping a wet sock on a table. Also, most enemies can be defeated with a single grounded attack into an immediate "corkscrew" jump and then spray-painted in the air. While this graffiti coup de grâce never gets old, it does feel quite difficult in practice comboing in and out of this linearizing technique (since you need to be standing and off your skates to execute, breaking any combo potential), so combat never really flows and the mandatory combat sections in-story feel somewhat superfluous.

Adjacent to this is the heat system, a spin on original Jet Set Radio's enemy escalation during story stages. As your character goes about spraying graffiti, police forces begin to spawn in tougher waves: for example, wave one consists of simple grounded officers with batons and pistols, wave two activates turrets that home-in on the player with chains and slow their movement, and wave three brings in armored forces that can block attacks. I found most of these enemies to be mere nuisances: you can easily skate around and dodge most attacks (except for the turrets, which can be easily disabled with a single attack + spray), and since enemies can't be easily comboed for points and will respawn continuously upon defeat anyways, it's best to just ignore them as is. Again, this is fairly similar to original Jet Set Radio's strategy of outmanuevering enemies since foes there were active time sinks, so this doesn't bother me greatly. Unfortunately, this creates friction with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's exploration, and not just in the sense that enemies will impede progress. The game requires you to swap between the three different types of movestyle for their different abilities: skateboards can ride on extendable fire hydrants to extend them vertically and reach heights, inline skates can skid on glass to shatter specific ceilings, and bikes can open special garage doors. The only way to switch between characters/movestyles is to go to checkerboard tiles and dance, but the game prohibits switching when there's "too much heat." Thus, you have to de-escalate the heat gauge by entering orange porta-potties (unmarked on the map, so hopefully you remember their locations!). However, they also lock up after a single use, so players have to either outright leave the stages or find a different porta-potty elsewhere to reopen old porta-potties for enemy despawning. I think this could have easily been improved if the heat gauge slowly decreased over time from successful enemy evasion.

Even with my criticisms, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was definitely worth the three year wait. The story isn't anything mindblowing, but it's got some nice twists that are conveyed via these surreal platforming sequences that are a cross between the time rifts from A Hat in Time and a Psychonauts fever dream. I'm pleasantly surprised by a good chunk of the soundtrack too: Hideki Naganuma's three contributions are the obvious highlights, but other tracks like 2Mello's I Wanna Kno and Sebastian Knight's Feel the Funk more than hold their own weight. It's a good mix of upbeat sampledelia hip-hop and chill ambient tunes, with my only real complaint being the lack of guitar-heavy rock tracks like Magical Girl or Statement of Intent... RIP Guitar Vader. Finally, I more than got my playtime's worth out of 100%ing the game, considering all the hidden areas and collectibles to find and just how much fun I had figuring out new ways to string together ridiculous combos. Despite the game's various areas of improvement, I find Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to be a fantastic fresh take upon a beloved franchise that isn't just a homage to Jet Set Radio, but a love letter to classic Y2K counter-culture and skating games as a whole. If you're not a prior fan of the franchise, this might not be the game to change your mind, but if you are, then I see no reason why you wouldn't find some enjoyment out of it. It's no surprise that fans absolutely ate this up, with excitement for the franchise reaching a new fever pitch. Your move, SEGA. Let's see if you guys still understand the concept of love.

I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.

Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.

From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.

In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.

In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.

The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.

In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.

Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.

It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.

Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.

Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.

Far too early to speak on this with any authority, but some early thoughts:

• As with Divinity: Original Sin 2 the potential for roleplay immediately crumbles if not playing as an origin character. Especially damning since they are all locked into a specific class and race except for the Dark Urge.

• Dialogue options being marked by skill checks and background tags deflates them. It would be more fitting for certain options to have the checks/tags but not convey this to the player until it is time to roll. If I see an option tied to my one-of-like-six background choices, I effectively have to pick it so I can get Inspiration. As for the checks, I can prep the face of the party with Guidance, Charm Person, Friends, what have you. Which itself leads into...

• Despite being a four-member party game, the other three characters might as well not exist for the purposes of dialogue. If you're lucky you'll see one of the origin characters milling about in the background of a conversation, but the person/people I'm playing with are forced to listen and suggest options. So just like with real 5E, it's best to have one person do all the talking since only one person can anyways, further displacing non-faces from the story they are meant to be involved in.

• Origin characters all talk like they're YouTubers, falling into a pillow at the end of a sentence, a permanent vocal sneer tainting each word (except for Gale). There is no space for subtlety in their characterisation either, their MacGuffins and driving purposes laid so bare like the Hello Neighbour devs trying to get MatPat's attention.

• Without a DM to actually intervene, to interpret the players' wishes, anything requiring interpretation is simply gone. Nearly every spell that isn't a very simple effect or damage dealer? Absent. This leaves players with options for what colour of damage they want to do, or what one specific action they might like to take. Creativity spawning from these bounds is incidental, not intentional.

• The worst part of 5E, its combat, is not improved in the slightest here, and if anything is actively worse. One of the great benefits of the tabletop setting is that the numbers are obfuscated. Statblocks need not be adhered to. Players typically don't know the raw numbers of a creature's health or saves unless they clue in through what rolls succeed for saves, or keep a mental tally of damage done before the DM says they are bloodied. The DM has the option of disclosing information, but here the player is forced to know everything. Every resistance. Every hit point. Every stat point. Every ability. Combat cannot be creative as a result because the whole of its confines are known the entire time. You even know the percentage chance you have to hit every spell and attack. It makes it all hideously boring.

• If spells are going to be one and done boring nothingburgers, the least Larian could have done was not have some of them, like Speak with the Dead, be tied to a cutscene that tells me a corpse has nothing to say. I get it, the random goblin body I found probably isn't a font of lore, but do you need to take me into a scripted sequence of my character making a concerned face with their fingers to their temple as I am told for the eighteenth time that it has nothing for me.

• When spells are being learned, there is no indication as to which are rituals and which are not, nor are there options to sort or filter choices. With so few choices maybe it doesn't matter.

• Despite a bevy of supplementary sourcebooks giving players countless options for their characters, you're stuck with primarily the base text. Perhaps it would be unrealistic to wish for every subclass, every spell, every feat, but not knowing this narrow scope beforehand meant my hopes for, for example, a College of Glamour Bard or a Hexblade Warlock were dashed. Without the spells that make those subclasses interesting, however, I suppose they might as well be absent.

• The 'creative solutions' of stacking boxes to climb a wall or shooting a rope holding a rock over someone's head are not creative, they are blatantly intended and serve only to make the player feel smart for being coerced by the devs into a course of action.

• The folks eager to praise Larian for not including DLC seem to have missed the Digital Deluxe upgrade that gives you cosmetics and tangible benefits in the form of the Adventurer's Pouch.

• As touched upon by others, the devs are clearly more invested in giving players the option to make chicks with dicks and dudes with pussies than they are in actual gender representation. This binarism only exacerbates how gendered the characters are. With no body options besides "Femme, Masc, Big Femme, Big Masc" and whether you're shaven and/or circumcised, the inclusion of a Non-Binary option becomes laughable if not insulting. Gender is expressed and experienced in countless ways, but here it comes down to your tits (or lack thereof) and your gonads. No androgynous voice options. No breast sizes. No binders. No gaffs. No packing. The only ways for me to convey to fellow players that my character is anything besides male or female are my outright expression of my gender, to strip myself bare, or hope the incongruity between my femme physique and masc voice impart some notion of gender queering. Maybe this is great for binary trans men and women, but as a non-binary person it comes across as a half-measure that seeks to highlight my exclusion from this world. More cynically, this, alongside Cyberpunk 2077 read as fetishistic, seeing the trans body as something for sexual gratification, rather than just that, a body.

I'll keep playing it, but damn if my eyes aren't drifting towards playing a real CRPG for the first time.

There are two Pikmin 4s. There's the cozy, kid-friendly potter around gardens that lasts until the initial credits sequence, and then there's the game that creeps up afterwards. Adding full camera controls, a lock-on system, Splatoon/New Horizons character editor and a host of cuddly, chattering NPCs may worry traditionalist GameCube/Wii/Wii U fans, but they just have to hold their horses and push through the relatively brief introductory campaign.

Look, I welcome them opening up the franchise to new players. Nintendo want to explore the full potential of these mechanics and the depth of strategy that they offer, but the most important members of the audience have always been the kids. In his time as a kindly member of his local community, Miyamoto has encountered children who like Pikmin, which is evidence enough to convince him that there is an appeal for the under-8s. The harsh, ecological subtext is one of the main qualities I love the series for, and I think it's important for kids to start thinking about this stuff from a young age. I don't want them to be put off by complicated controls and stressful resource management, and if it takes a credits sequence to persuade them that they're worthy Pikmin fans, so be it.

I do want to stress that the old guys should stick with it. This is the biggest Pikmin game ever made, with the most stuff for those people. They're not littering the game with GBA and N64 references for Generation Alpha. They know we're here, and we want to play the game that Eurogamer's been teasing since September 2015.

You get a hint of this early on. Pikmin 4 somewhat obnoxiously adopts the mantra of "Dandori"; a suggestion that players should prioritise efficient planning and quick strategy in their approach. That's how Pikmin's design has always encouraged players to approach the game, but they're making it text here, and it's a fancy foreign word/compound kanji for kids to glom onto. Putting it in such focus has given the designers the freedom to explore some really taxing challenges. The Dandori Challenges themselves start out fairly easy, but there's rewards for doing them as efficiently as possible, with Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum rankings for meeting certain criteria. They're as hard as you want them to be, and the post-credits ones are often pretty bloody hard to start out with. If you want to meet every challenge the game has for you, you're going to be playing Pikmin 4 for a very long time.

The entirely distinct "Dandori Battles" are another beast altogether. Pitting you against an opponent, you have to fight them to acquire the most resources within a time limit. There's random power-ups and a lot of fluked victories. They're playing with Pikmin stuff, but they don't really feel like part of a Pikmin campaign. They feel like a silly multiplayer mode that you can play against a bot, because that's what it is, except they're mandatory parts of the main levels. I don't mind too much. They're not too much work. Just a little out of step with the surrounding design.

Again, this is a game that wants to appeal to veteran fans. 4 pulls so much from the previous games. Often in an "oh fuck, that's back??" way. Not the genuinely bad stuff, mind. 2's multi-level dungeons are back, but they're not tedious, randomly generated guff anymore. They're consistently clever, inventive and attentively designed. Series fans will be aware of how distinct each of the first three games are, and there's been real effort to incorporate as much of their appeal into one game as possible. Personal favourite, 3, gets the least attention in this regard, and I do miss just how much you were able to get done at one time with three Captains actively performing tasks at the same time, but you do get a hint of that gameplay with the big new doggy partner.

This isn't a retread, though. Acting as part of an expanding rescue operation, as opposed to fragile survivors, changes the vibe. It's not so lonely or harsh, there's no strict deadlines, and you don't feel the same gutpunch when you lose thirty Pikmin to a cackhanded decision. It's just a number that went down. It'll go up again after a bit of harvesting. Maybe that's stripping something out of the series that I love, but it makes me thankful that Nintendo are keeping the previous games relevant with Switch rereleases, and not shying away from making this a - somewhat intimidating - numbered sequel. If you want that harsher tone, play the earlier ones. They're just as easy to access. We don't need to hold the series back and keep it to ourselves. Let it expand. Let the new people in. Let it be the thing that gets new generations captivated with nature, space and science. Let it be the friendly face that subversively worms these thoughts into households that might be dismissive of them. Let it save us.

It's still a ton of Pikmin, mind. If you like that, you're in for a feast.

A great example of a story that can only be told via a video game; the way the plot moves and develops is so interconnected with the game's mechanics that it's hard to imagine this really existing in any other form, and that in itself is already enough to make the game worth experiencing.

I love the characters, humour, and the way the animations compliment both of these aspects so well. The story itself is largely enjoyable and very engaging, though so relentlessly full of twists and turns, and constantly asking you to suspend your disbelief even further, that I never really gained my footing for long enough to form much of an emotional connection with what was happening.

The actual puzzles in the game are generally pretty easy, especially with the game's habit of pushing hints on to you, and sometimes they struggle to elevate far beyond "interact with everything you can see", but the way they're so deeply integrated with the story, and the manner in which the game uses them to express its humour, is so satisfying that I largely think of them fondly anyways.

Also; Missile is really good.