So, I decided to do a little digging on the development and circumstances of Wanted Dead and im convinced this is like a money laundering scheme or something. Like, this is definetly a crime right. Some rich asshole forms an entertainment company in switzerland called 110 Industries, which seems to consist almost entirely of this, Vapourware, and selling the debut album of Stephanie Joosten - most notable for playing quiet in MGSV - on Vinyl. He seems to really want to just make a game that's john wick, so he picks up Soleil and they just use his money to make a sequel to Devil's Third instead, being sure to cast Joosten and a Phillip-Morris model in lead roles, and put in the movie references the rich funder wanted in.

And yes, this game is just Devil's Fourth. Whilst Itagaki is oddly absent considering this game feels like a scam, It's the same Valhalla game studios team from Third, and it plays remarkably similarly. The main change is that combat is slightly less shit. You get pretty standard combos with your sword intermixed with a ludicrously powerful pistol used to stagger and parry enemies at a pretty high range. There's a heavy emphasis on canned finishers to restore health (Think doom 4), and the general sense is the game really wants you in the thick of things at basically every moment, slashing and dashing amongst the gunfire. It's a very chaotic system, and I would hesistate to say it's good, the enemy variety just isnt there, and enemies are just a bit too tanky to keep the flow great, but it's far improved from Devil's Third and is a serviceable action game with a pretty nice high degree of difficulty. I would go as far to say that it's bosses are pretty good, and I really like how fast the player dies - make the wrong mistake to even a single grunt and they'll kill you straight up, even on the difficulty that gives you cat ears.

But let's be real, that's really not appeal of Wanted dead when you get down to it. What is - is that will not see a game as truly baffling as Wanted: Dead in a long time. So many times it will make you question why. Why is there a relatively high production value full shmup included? Why is there this kinda rad mix of animated cutscenes intermingled in? Why do some scenes feel pieced together out of dialogue from different drafts? Why does the game clearly jab at some heavy stuff like health insurance and Margaret Thatcher for like 2 seconds and then drop it? Whats up with the Cooking videos featured heavily in the advertising but not in the actual game? Why is there a single (one) ladder that you can climb in the whole game? I legitimately could go on for much longer than this you have no idea, you go like ten seconds in this game and you wonder what the fuck the motivation behind the decisions was.

The game is all over the place to the point where I am in denial that it's just incompetence. A police officer pulling stuff from an interview that the SUPECT REFUSED TO TELL HER to go on to the next plot point is something Neil Breen would catch in the edit. The game's developers have been open that it's a throwback to cheapo PS2 games (presumably oneechambara being the point of reference?) but I seriously feel like this is all a bit. Am I being made fun of? Are Soleil making fun of this rich swiss asshole by making a shitpost? Am I now an accessory to money laundering?

Wanted: Dead is not a "weird game" in the way something like a Suda51 or Swery game is, or even LSD Dream Emulator. I'm tempted to compare it to kane and lynch 2 but that game is a million times more focused in it's vision and what it's trying to portray. I can't stop thinking about it, every decision it makes is so... wrong, yet also so deliberate. I've seriously never played anything like it.

It also, at times, also shines legitimately super brightly. I really like the banter between the gang, as weirdly odd as the voice acting is. I really like that one of it's primary characters is straight up mute and its a nice representation even. The mixing of media types and stuff is sick, there's one absolutely brilliant boss fight and the very final moments of the game provides a legitimately ace story twist which honstly makes me view the whole thing much more fondly.

The whole thing is bewildering. I can't stop thinking about it.

----------------------------------------------

Other "huh?" things I didn't mention for the sake of pacing

- Final level is absurdly long after the rest of the game was pretty good in this regard
- Claw minigame does basically nothing
- Difficulty curve insanely and blatantly all over the place, the first mission is one of the hardest.
- The degree to which the world is altered from the real world is odd and excessive.
- There's like 6 shower scenes
- Why do you get a free single revive like half the time when the game is overwise commited to being a tough classic action game? But you only get it when one member of your squad is there?
- Why is there such detailed gun customisation in a 5 hour action game
- Why is the one loading screen a very dated meme.
- Why does the one ninja elite enemy look like it's from a different game
- Why do the protagonists just not even mention sometimes why they're going to do a thing.

Make it make sense.

This week, fortnite got an update to Unreal Engine 5.1, and it is remarkable. You don't have to be a lover of the corpo-cartoon artstyle to appreciate the massive improvement in tech, with lighting being a particular focus. But as impressive as that is, perhaps moreso is the integration. You'll be lucky to find anyone saying it "doesn't look like fortnite". Models still pop out in the lighting the same way, the reflections arent out of place, and many of the most obvious changes, like denser foliage which the light beatufiully scatters off, are both quite well measured and are brought in with a whole new map. It is a wonderful demonstration that heavily stylised games can (sometimes) benefit from new tech, as well as a masterclass in making changes in the right places to integrate with an extremely well defined art style.

In the same week, Nvidia rereleases Valve's best looking and possibly most cherished game with a similar setup - new look with a particular focus on lighting. Except it looks like shit.

The general assets are the main issue. Stock Portal has this subtlety to a lot of it's assets and textures especially in the first half of the game that slowly creeps up more and more towards the conclusion. What initially seem like sterile test chamber walls show deliberate signs of age, scuff marks, and are slightly stained. Even in the very first room, the table is slightly scuffed. It's subtle, but pervasive stuff and is one of those things that gives the game a bit of an uneasy vibe. The new assets just straight up do not look like they fit together at all. When you're in sections where bits of white wall combine with the square pyramid-ish walls it just looks super off to the point where i'd assume they were outsourced to completely different studios or something, they dont look like they're from the same game at all and the same could be said for an awful lot of the assets.

The lighting is also outright comical at times. In the final boss fight the floor is so fucking reflective it's hard to parse. The reflections in general are seriously a problem and combined with a massive increase in constrast creates a whole bunch of very ugly scenes, particularly in the first half. The second half of the game fares better with it's more industrial environments and larger focus on shadow casting, which is probably the one thing i'd say is the one legitimate improvement in RTX portal, but it's a needle in a haystack and you'll be lucky to find a few frames of gameplay where there isnt some horribly judged asset or blinding reflection to be a bigger distraction.

What really sucks about Portal RTX is that it should work. A more subtle use of the tech, textures which were touched up rather than replaced and maybe focusing the super eyecatching effects on specific areas could have made Portal look generally improved. Even a drastic change in art style like say, the Demons Souls remake could have worked in it's own way in a different vision sort of thing to better show off the tech (and yes, that sort of approach is it's own can of worms). But what's here feels lazy, unthought, and destructive, and it's hard to tell what it's even really going for other than OOOH REFLECTIONS. Like a horse that lays down in front of you asking for a beating, this is the truest example we will probably ever get of companies putting tech, bigger numbers and flashiness before artistry. Hollow and pathetic. If everything made with this modset/whatever it is looks like this, it can all rot.

This past week I made a trip to hang out with some friends an hour down the road, and something we do almost every time I come over is plug in the modded Wii and fuck around with whatever iso catches our eye. This two day event was no different: Monday night I banged out the last third of Resident Evil 4, and the next morning; huddled around the TV looking for something to pass the time with, I tried Pikmin on a whim. My memory card was full from last night’s adventure so I could only get a taste of the adventure at the risk of losing a massive amount of work, but even from the 3 day sample we tried, I could tell it was something special. Everything about it was attractive to me, from the Nintendo-spun RTS mechanics to the peculiar world they inhabited. I knew when I got home from that trip that I had to sit down and really sink my teeth into the game.

Funny enough, Pikmin has actually been a bit of a white whale for me personally. As a kid playing Luigi’s Mansion for the first time, unearthing the Pikmin trailer felt like peering into something beyond our world. It always looked like something I’d be into, but fate was not kind to my interests, and I never got my hands on a copy. Though maybe in retrospect I should have actually asked for the game once or twice… Regardless, I finally sat down to play it as an adult, and predictably it was absolutely wonderful. What I didn’t expect was that I’d go on to play through the game 3 times to completion within the week. Looking into it online it seems like the length of the game, and by extension the 30 day time limit, seem to be the biggest point of contention amongst most players. This is peculiar to me, as in my experience I found it to be the glue that prevented the game’s systems from completely collapsing in on themselves. That’s not a sleight against the mechanics though, and I do want to shine a light on the actual game part because I feel like it gets overlooked when looking at the game from the outside.

Every layer is razor sharp, and the few massive pieces of design interlock so well to allow for interesting strategy puzzles, that removing or adding just a single piece would likely send the whole thing crashing down. Across a single day there are only a few major things to keep track of: The Pikmin population, part locations, level layouts, and enemy spawns. It’s all disgustingly simple on paper, but contending with everything at once is where the magic really happens. Efficiency is the name of the game here, and because tasks have to be performed in real time by the Pikmin (with slight time saves coming from the number of Pikmin on a task and the status of their bud), a strong grasp of level navigation is all but essential to prevent massive time and population losses. Some weeks I’d play simple and juggle basic tasks to nab a part or two a day, whereas other times I’d find myself playing more towards chipping away at level hazards one day, and then cleaning up with 3 or 4 parts in a single stretch the next. It’s a testament to the complexity and density of the admittedly small levels that even after multiple reasonably efficient runs, I still couldn’t even begin to chart out anything resembling an optimal path to get parts as quickly as possible.

So how about the timer? Well, it's maybe not a direct threat in the way the developers intended. On a first playthrough you have more than enough time to collect all 30 ship parts and get the best ending (on my first playthrough with minimal resets I managed to beat the final boss on day 27, and collect the final part on day 28) and you’ll likely continue to shave off time with every subsequent run, so on paper it may seem like it the timer may as well not be there at all, right? I’m not convinced.

The reason I find the time limit to be such a captivating piece of the puzzle is not because it’s a particularly challenging thing to work around on its own, but for how it shifts your perspective on every mechanic and every choice you make over the course of a run. If you took this exact campaign and all it’s challenges, but lifted the 30 day timer, the way you’d approach each level would completely flip on its head. Multitasking would be unnecessary as you could execute a plan as slowly and carefully as possible, you would have all the time in the world to plant the maximum amount of Pikmin for any one scenario, and the punishment for mistakes shifts from added tension and short-term changes of plans, to simply robbing you of more of your time. In layman's terms, removing the timer would probably miss the point.

It’s been said that people tend to optimize the fun out of something if given the opportunity. In the case of Pikmin, this has completely different insinuations depending on the existence of a timer, and that’s what makes it such a fascinating inclusion to me. No matter how well you understand the game, no matter how sharp your execution is, it doesn’t matter. The timer is always looming overhead like an albatross subtly weighing on your psyche and steering your every move. Some may view it as something that just restricts player freedom, but with how loose the balance of the game and the timer admittedly are, it somehow perfectly balances itself as an element of the game that always subconsciously keeps the player in check. Few titles before or since have promoted optimisation in the face of a looming failure state so well, and this coming from a Nintendo game of all things could very well steer younger audiences to explore more games of this niche, and I just sorta love that prospect honestly.

This type of psychological tension is something I wish would be explored in more inherently childish games like this, and not just reserved for “mature” games. I sorta understand why this hasn’t been a common design principle - especially for a modern children’s game - but I love that the Big N was willing to put something like this together with their own flourish and have it come out so perfectly realized despite being such a bizarre mismatch of aesthetical and mechanical sensibilities. It would be easy to call it just a tech demo given its compact size (and it’s literal roots in GameCube tech demos) but that would be a mistake. The original Pikmin still stands as one of Nintendo’s boldest games to date, and I think it deserves to be viewed in the same glamorous light as every other masterpiece released on the purple lunchbox at the time. We need to do our best to cherish this game now, because I think the time of its potential influence and popularity has already begun to fade.

back when I first tried this series out I made the major mistake of playing kururin paradise first. do not do this!! after getting my ass thoroughly beat in the first half of the game I elected to finish this one instead, and while I certainly prefer paradise as an overall product, it's essential you learn the ropes here. humans have an innate ability to perform simple trig and kinematics by instinct - this is why we're able to quickly determine the speed at which to take turns when driving a car. kururin plays with this by featuring a twirling rigid rotor that must be parallel to the walls you're traversing through in order to avoid a collision. this consistent angular rotation component makes it much more difficult to judge future positioning without careful forethought and a steady hand.

this entry is more of a proof of concept than anything though, as it's rather bare outside of some cosmetic collectables and a handful of new environments. the difficulty ramps up significantly halfway through, but upon this replay I found that what felt more challenging than the actual obstacles was the consistency required for the endgame stages, which can easily take up to three minutes in a single go to complete. much of the graphics are middling pre-rendered assets that don't take advantage of the GBA's 2D prowess, and the music is pretty hit-or-miss as well. however, finishing this one (teeth gnashing over the castle and machine land stages aside) will have you entirely ready to take on the absolutely devious challenges that paradise presents, along with its superior art and multi-exit stages.

     ‘We will struggle together and grow stronger than before.’

Played with BertKnot, in preparation for our Zelda Marathon podcast.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2002) was the result of an unexpected and incomplete development. The Capcom team, led by Hidemaro Fujibayashi, had been temporarily transferred from The Minish Cap (2004) to work on the multiplayer section of the A Link to the Past (1991) remaster. Many of the ideas were found in both games, but were primarily intended for a single-player experience. The resulting title was of questionable quality, unable to establish a distinct identity. However, the concept of a multiplayer opus for Zelda franchise was not a bad idea, and a hybrid title halfway between cooperation and competition was conceived. To demonstrate the connectivity between the GBA and GameCube, Nintendo set about developing Four Swords Adventures, which was to be a retelling of the original title, but in a much longer format. With Toshiaki Suzuki as director, the project was overseen by Aonuma and Miyamoto; the latter, in a very characteristic moment, insisted on last-minute changes to prioritise gameplay over story.

     A game-design built around references

The game follows the storyline of Four Swords, and players control reflections of Link as they work together to rescue the Seven Sages and stop Shadow Link and Vaati's attacks on Hyrule. Eight different worlds, each consisting of three levels, unfold throughout the adventure. The latter always features one of the series' iconic dungeons, often from A Link to the Past, while the first two showcase famous locations from the overworld. Remarkably, Four Swords Adventures is a continuous layering of references, borrowing from The Legend of Zelda (1986), Ocarina of Time (1998), The Wind Waker (2002), and all the rest. This approach works wonderfully and has been perfectly analysed by Aonuma, who points out: ‘In bringing together the elements for the Four Swords [Adventures], [Suzuki] looked at, essentially, taking elements from the 3D Wind Waker, [...] finding ways to take elements that people who have played the newer games would then see in this game and be familiar with, in addition to taking some of the older elements from the past 2D games. [...] Four Swords [Adventures] is going to be something that will feel familiar [...] to both the old-school fans and the new-school fans.‘ [1]

The endless interplay of references allows for a smooth and natural progression, which benefits the game's arcade flavour by borrowing puzzles and mechanics familiar to veterans, but also by subverting players' expectations. On several occasions, the game throws in surprises that can catch players off guard – the Flying Tiles were particularly effective. Similarly, the gameplay mix – with side-scrolling sequences reminiscent of Adventure of Link (1987) and Link's Awakening (1993), or those set in the Dark World a la A Link to the Past – rejuvenates parts of the previous games. The boss of the sixth world is Moldorm, who will evoke painful memories for anyone who played A Link to the Past: the boss would often throw the player off the platform, and a fall would force them to climb back up several floors to start the fight again. Here, falling leads to a small side-view pit, making it easy to rejoin the action. The mix of 2D and 3D works to create fresh puzzles, which also take advantage of the two screens the player has to look at, both the GameCube's monitor and the GBA's screen. Projectiles can be fired through doors or ceilings, hitting targets that seem out of reach.

     Exploration between cooperation and competition

In general, Four Swords Adventures manages to use its items wisely, exploiting them as much as possible. As with Four Swords, it is unfortunate that some items quickly become obsolete, and that players are often invited to take the same item, but the effort required to create complex puzzles that work in both multiplayer and single-player modes minimises this criticism. With several players, the linearity of the progression is never a problem, as it fades in favour of the competition between players. Moreover, the title offers levels that are more exploration-oriented – the Village of the Blue Maiden being perhaps the most telling example. The level is an excellent recontextualisation of exchange quests on a level scale: players can split up to collect clues separately and gather the information necessary to continue exploring. In these cases, the level invites closer cooperation and pushes the competitive element into the background. It is this invisible balance that makes Four Swords Adventures so enjoyable: the game always strikes the right tone to keep players engaged, and the level diversity keeps the experience refreshing.

While the final world partially abandons this approach, being a little too dense in its succession of puzzles and battles, all the levels are of a reasonable length, elegantly breaking up the action like a play. The aim is never to put players in a difficult position, but rather to reward them for their knowledge of the series' mechanics: arguably, Four Swords Adventures is a game whose optimal experience may require several players with a fairly extensive knowledge of the series. The ability to anticipate the design of the puzzles adds an exhilarating aspect to the title, and a chemistry between players who can race through the rooms to collect Force Gems. Of course, slower, more deliberate exploration is just as welcome, but this is a different, equally interesting experience.

It is also worth mentioning the presence of two other modes: Shadow Battle embraces the competitive aspect of the title, while Navi Trackers is a completely different mode, exclusive to the Japanese version – it was dubbed and was able to pronounce the players' names, which would probably have been too difficult to recreate in English. In any case, Four Swords Adventures was a love letter to a franchise that was then almost two decades old. It borrows codes that have become standards and sometimes subverts them, ambushing players with friendly mischief. The title alternates between the visual styles of A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker, depending on the sequence, while the music uses iconic themes from the franchise. If the game has few particularly memorable passages – the Village of the Blue Maiden is undoubtedly the exception – it is imbued throughout with a rare sincerity that pays tribute to the series, its creators and its players.

__________
[1] Eiji Aonuma, GDC Roundtable, 17th May 2004.

I loved this game so much that I made a game about it.

Won't bore you with the same repetitions - it simply is as boldly, beautifully broken as they say. A stunning performance of childhood dreams; the memories that have never run at 60fps. Bugs, like Pokémon, aren't inherently good or bad - they're an interaction with a world, something for you to make of what you will. Games are dream-states that should not strictly conform to space-time, and we are Dennō Senshis, disciples of Helix and MissingNo, hearts and souls with the power to bend, rend and expand these colourful worlds to our will. It's no coincidence that the big gimmick in this one is your ability to turn Pokémon into rough-skinned fighting polygons that explode in light - Violet/Scarlet is a rare breed of modern Nintendo game, a wild beast that's escaped from a stable of capitalist filth with its self-awareness and consciousness intact, a rebellious undertale in the era of digital foundries. I want to nuture its memory in the same way that it nurtured my thoughts of the bygone days. I want to protect it from patches and fixes forever. I want to play it again.

𝙷𝚎𝚛𝚎'𝚜 𝚝𝚘
𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚘𝚔é𝚖𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚝,
𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚘𝚔é𝚖𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝,
𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚘𝚔é𝚖𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚞𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎.

The reason I played this is because it was made available on Nintendo Switch Online. Now, I'm not stupid. Okay, having an NSO sub is kind of stupid, but ignore that for now. I know that there are endless different ways to play old games for free. I have multiple different programs and modded consoles for this exact purpose. Right now, if I wanted to, I could play literally any Game Boy game I wanted to on my PC or my Vita or my 3DS. But if there's one thing that a subscription service can be useful for, it's curation. Very little subscription services actually do this, and Nintendo definitely doesn't always do it well, but it can make all the difference to have a service actually care about what it's providing to the user. A lot of times I stare at a giant list of ROMs on my PC to play and end up playing nothing, sometimes I need someone to tell me "well why don't you play one of these games" and Nintendo did that. I probably would have never given the Game and Watch Gallery games a shot because from the outside they seem to just be what the title says, compilations of old Game & Watch games, probably not anything all that engaging. But now, I think I need to play all of these games.

You know how people talk about graphics peaking at the PS2 and everything afterwards being unnecessary? I think I'm becoming that person but specifically in regards to pixel art and the GBC. I adore the look of this game, the colors are so vibrant and the pixel art is all incredibly expressive and detailed while working within the limitations of the system. This not only makes for a great looking game, but one that can also showcase how expressive the original LCD games managed to be despite being made up of a very limited amount of still images. That also extends to how they play. Each minigame, while having a simple premise, has a lot little nuances, ways to get bonus points, ways each one encourages you to take more risks while always keeping the player engaged and changing things up. The best minigames in this collection are the ones that are essentially spinning plates: having to maintain multiple parts of the screen, having the player constantly switch their attention to different parts of it and punishing them for being negligent to any part of the minigame. Mario Bros and Greenhouse are the stand outs for this reason, and it makes sense since their classic versions are already great as well (Greenhouse Classic even has more score bonus opportunities than the modern version). The other minigames are mostly good, thought I'd argue Egg and Turtle Bridge have better classic versions, and Donkey Kong Jr feels like an even more ungraceful version of the arcade game, so it's better to just leave that one alone.

Where this game is more consistent is in its soundtrack. In a game that encourages playing each minigame up to the score limit, the music better be good enough to be listened to over and over again, and it most certainly is here. No track slacks, and it's nearly all original stuff as far as I can tell, so it doesn't really on playing the usual Mario fare either. This game also does a great job at providing context for these Game and Watch games, and helping the player appreciate them more than they would if just handed a boring port of the original, something a lot of game compilations fail to do. There's a museum with light trivia, but I mean more in the way that the modern versions of these games highlight what was already great in them, and so going back to the classic version doesn't feel like a downgrade so much as just another way to play. It helps the player see why these LCD games were popular, what made them stand out as games, it gives them value that could be lost if you engaged with them outside of this compilation.

This game was such a surprise, I never would have guessed how fun I found this. Hey, if you have an NSO sub, this is worth checking out, and hopefully they add more to the service. Or I mean, I could just go play them right now myself. Or play literally anything ever, actually. Or I could just sink more time trying to get all five stars in Greenhouse. Life is full of decisions, is the lesson here today.

Intelligent systems, is this a bit?

As soon as it was announced Engage is a game that was raising a bunch of red flags. Nostalgia baiting, the awful focus on a myunit, gimmicky new mechanics and fucking GACHA? The whole thing really looked like intelligent systems giving into the worst tendancies of post-awakening Fire Emblem.

And y'know, if that was it, i'd probably be at least fine with that. Fates, even revelations, one of the dumbest fucking things i've ever played, are all still at the very least, compelling. I have like 100 hours in Fates, embarassing as that is, because the Fire Emblem formula is still pretty great, conquest has like 5 good maps and the bad stuff is mostly ignorable. I have played fucking Gaiden to completion even after Echoes was out just to see what was up.

With engage ive got 15 hours in it and I can barely stomach a moment more. I want to keep going because I love FE. But I absolutely cannot stand this game.

Yes, like Fates, Engage is a game that falls prey to IS' stupid tendancies. But the real sin with Engage is that what has been cribbed about just does not gel together at all.

Main issue is bloat, on a gameplay level. Part of the genius of Fire Emblem is how really quite simple it all is, and how limited the resources and options really all are. The best section of the entire franchise, and it's not even close, is Thracia 776's Munster arc, a section which truly relies on you making the most of an incredibly limited toolset and pushing it as far as you can against overwhelming odds. Of course, over the years the complexity inevitably increased, to mixed but often positive results. Engage firmly goes too far though.

The big problem is the mixing of the social sim stuff from 3 houses whilst also incorporating its new stuff with the engage system and so on. Being able to boost stats and stuff in a hub was questionable but mosty worked in 3H, a game structured around it. In Engage all the stat boosting, friendship boosting, animal handling(why), minigames (WHY) are mindnumbing roadblocks to the fun strategy. These sorts of things have never really sat right in FE, where the ways damage formulas and speed formulas in particular work make tiny stat boosts often have huge implications, but this goes way too far in a game system very unsuited to it. It essentially stretches the preperations stage, already too long in most FEs, to being the majority of the game. It's unnaceptable.

And it's a real shame as a lot of the changes in the gameplay department are actually really good. Map design is probably the best it's been since radiant dawn, unit balance doesnt seem so overfocused on a small amount of strong units, bosses actually move about and honestly the engage system, regardless of it being insulting to the original characters and whatever, is a pretty neat gimmick honestly. It's a way more balanced version of pair up that gives effectively more burst damage and interesting techniques, which combined with enemies being generally stronger than previous games makes for an interesing loop. Obviously, its in this game so the execution is flubbed - the rings being limited in number kinda undoes the balance improvements on its own, and the skill inheritance, bonding, and gacha ring stuff is yet more pointless fluff to waste your damn time.

If the game just had the engage system over lets say, Radiance series levels of prep and other stuff going on, the gameplay could have been great, probably the best the series had seen in over a decade. But there's way too much going on to waste your time and it does not gel together.

The story and characters are so bafflingly bad I don't know who it's even for. As ludicrously bad as fates' are, at least it's very easy to pinpoint what's going for - the sheer power trip of being infalliable corrin, the stupid golden route both sides-ing and being able to have children with your big booba wyvern riding sister. Engage's is less bad in the "IS is down bad" regard, but it's worse in that it just completely forgets to have anything at all. It's completely hookless, the world and characters feel like they've got nothing going on at all, and it all feels very rote. The mystical/dragon elements feel tappen onto a pretty normal fire emblem plot and all they do is make the MC less personable and relatable. FE has only really had a good story in like 4 games, but it's structure as a series has always made it very easy to connect to characters and it has never dropped the ball this hard, and it's not like it's even trying something.

The whole game is just a confused mess, and doesnt even seem to be sure of who it's appeal is for. It's nostalgia bait to an extreme whilst barely resembling the simple, down to earth nature of those games. It goes for a simpler structure, dropping choice and most of the social sim elements (which people quite liked even if they're not entirely my bag), but keeps just enough of them to be really annoying. Characters are less of a focus for some reason? Romance is less of a thing? I can't even tell who this game is for because it feels like it consciously does something to alienate a fan of every game in the series, and it certaintly isnt for new players. Even as a "we needed 20 more characters to eventually put in heroes" joint it's a complete failure.

I hesitate to say this is the worst FE - Revelations is truly awful - but even Fates had like, an idea of what it was going for, as bad as what that is and as bad as it's execution is. Engage is aimless and awful and for the first time ever, it's easy for me to put an FE down.

Essentially a battle between the two sides of nostalgia’s collectable coin: on one there’s the ugly and hollow self-perpetuation of “oddjob slappers-only natalya AI bad” that the Nintendo-Microsoft marketing machine is currently indulging in - cravenly memeing about the pause menu music while the game’s original developers call foul of an emulator’s exhumation in the replies column; but on the other side, despite it all, there remains a more sincere evocation of random-access memory here, one that arrives in unexpected moments - on this playthrough I was struck by the sound of Natalya shooting a guard off-screen in the eerie silence of Jungle, the way the cartoon violence suddenly veers towards reality in a rainforest soundscape that thrives upon an absentia of Kirkhope’s otherwise-welcome elevator-electrofunk. It felt good to be reminded of a time when this game felt so real to us and there was genuine fear in Xenia barrelling across a rope bridge with a grenade launcher… I don’t want to go back, but I do like to visit.

Like Pokémon Red & Blue, this is a game that’s ultimately doomed to be misunderstood and maligned by those that came after us. Despite playing this game for days and years on end, I’ve never been able to perceive the all-consuming glitches, bugs and jank these games apparently stink of. A recent Twitter thread recommended switching the control scheme to 2.3 Mode and then using the Switch’s built-in accessibility settings to swap stick and button inputs around in order to get the conventional twin-stick shooter experience; many replies praised the OP for “fixing” the game on behalf of Nintendo - but in what way was the game broken? Why afford yourself precision aiming in a game that is best left in the hands of a frankly glorious Auto-Aim? Why deny yourself the James Bond Musou experience of running down Control’s corridors with dual RPKs on full auto? Why not indulge in a couple of thoughts about how game designers in the 1990s overcame technical limitations that they didn’t even know existed yet? Other gamers in proximity to the thread lamented the fact that the re-release does not include upscaled or redone textures and character models, but I’m not going to get into the Midjourneyification of preexisting art because I don’t like to write mean things about consumers who just want to hitch a ride on a Ship of Theseus that bears the false flag of Goldeneye: 007. It aged poorly? So will you, soon enough.

As the only clown on this website who has played the whole game (in one sitting right at release to secure a free Pickle Rick back bling in Fortnite), I can say with confidence High on Life is dreadfully weak. And that's a bit of a shame since it theoretically has good bones.

The most glaring problem is, of course, the dialogue. The pre-release comparison to Borderlands 3 is apt as characters literally do not cease their oral spew, and you are forced to listen to them before you can progress at key points. Borderlands has ameliorated this in part with the ECHOnet transmissions, keeping you apprised of plot elements as you messed about on Pandora. Save for key story moments, the dialogue therein is accompanied by your mad dash for loot and slaughter. High on Life quivers in its boots at the mere thought that you might miss a single phoneme. There is no means to skip dialogue. There is no opportunity to play the game when characters are talking. If you are not physically glued in place, you are locked in a distraction-less room. And should you dare to break from the tedium of a suburban hardwood floor and off-white walls by heading upstairs, you are scolded by your guns to pay attention. In a properly written, compelling narrative this would be fine, but a substantial chunk of the game is NPCs yammering incessantly. Fake arguments become auditory static, the white noise penetrated only by mention of racism, misogyny, or a cavalcade of 'fuck's. Does a holstered gun have something to say? Worry not, they'll speak to you over radio. That there is so much dialogue is rather interesting in and of itself, particularly seeing how your different weaponry will engage in conversations with NPCs, but there is not a moment where speech is not occurring. The only moment of respite is if you stay in place.

And some of the writing is passable, some even bordering on good. But it never comes out of Justin Roiland's many mouths. The closest I came to cracking a smile was when Zach Hadel, Michael Cusack, Rich Evans, Jay Bauman, Mike Stoklasa, or Tom Kenny was the focus. In a vacuum, some of their witticisms might have earned a chuckle or at least a considered exhale, but these moments are paltry oases after being duped by an infinitude of mirages. You know in your bones that a joke will not be allowed to stand on its own, and that Roiland or his other hack voice 'actors' will need to get their own two cents in. It is a Reddit comment thread not only in content, but in presentation, someone always retelling the above poster's joke but worse. In Roiland's world, stuttering is a feature, not a bug. His stammering makes Porky Pig seem eloquent. A one-take wonder.

"Is the gameplay good?" This question was asked more times than I can count during my marathon. As I emphatically repeated there, "no." There's a weightlessness to every second of combat that betrays the animations and premise of your guns being living things. There is more weight, more oomph, more impact to Spore's creature stage combat than there is to this gunplay. Your bullets genuinely feel as if they are lobbed foam balls. The only times at which there is some punch is when detonating sigh Sweezy's crystals with her charge shot. I can't tell if it's all a consequence of your enemies being shrouded in goop or not. Your shots take away the goop to expose their regular flesh, but this somehow imparts little feedback. Is it because there is so much flash and bedlam occurring that I can't even tell where and when my shots are landing? I have no idea. At the very least the juggling of enemies is semi-novel (even if it comes after Kenny begs lustfully for me to use his 'Trickhole'), and Creature is semi-satisfying if only because you can launch his children and go find a quiet[er] corner to recuperate mentally in. You get some basic manoeuvrability upgrade which makes this a Metr- Search Action game in some sense when coupled with returning to planets to find extra cash. You can upgrade your weapons and unlock modifiers for them but the changes are so minute I couldn't really tell how much of an impact they were having. What the mods do do is change the colour of your weapons. Given that so much of your screen real estate is occupied by their "beautiful dick-sucking lip" visages, this is the most substantial alteration you can make.

The music is like Temporary Secretary by Paul McCartney but bad.

Visually there is something of value here (in theory). While many of the alien inhabitants blend together with their amorphous sausage anatomies, the unique NPCs typically bear striking designs. Sweezy notwithstanding, the guns are cute as well, even if I feel Kenny is perpetually doing the Dreamworks smirk. Kenny and Gus' iron sights are adorable, and the way Gus clamps onto your hand indoors melts my heart. Creature reminds me of that Skylander that had the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Inoffensive! Until you see his actual full model and you realise he has three tits and a prolapsed anus for a barrel. And Gus looks like he has a turtle's cock.

Errant thoughts:

Boy howdy is there a lot of mpreg talk.

One of the scenes you can warp in is a movie theatre where you can watch all of Demon Wind with the RLM crew. That would be okay but I don't think the MST3K style commentary works for a film that belongs in a Best of the Worst episode. There's a reason why they show you fragments of them watching it, and why their film commentaries are for more compelling films.

There is so much overlapping of dialogue that I genuinely got a headache that intensified over the game. A horror during a Tylenol shortage in Canada.

I put more effort into gathering my thoughts than they did making this shit.

I wish that I had always been in a grave.