This game is... fine. I guess. So much has been said about it, I feel like I shouldn't carry on too long about it. Like, yeah, Lara is a pretty terrible archaeologist. She does all the usual archaeologist stuff of traveling to a foreign place and stealing all their cultural objects but then, on top of that, she also shoots whoever happens to be living there and destroys entire ancient buildings, like, come on girl, what are you even doing.

The main plot feels so empty for a lot of it. The vast majority of the game is just "rescue Lara's friend(s)" and it constantly finds new reasons why you can't quite get to them yet or whatever. Pretty much everything interesting about the plot is developed via the collectible journals which sure is an interesting choice.

The puzzle solving and platforming aspects were mostly fine? It got pretty janky in some spots and the majority of my deaths were trying to make a jump and Lara not grabbing or the camera turning her mid-air and making me fall to my death but when it works it's completely competent, I guess.

Speaking of completely competent: The shooting. I liked the combat early on when encounters were very small-scale (with usually only 3-5 enemies) but once it gave me the assault rifle and grenade launcher, every fight was like a dozen dudes and it got very boring very quickly. At first I had thought this was a response to that half-joking criticism people like to level at Uncharted where they say that Nathan Drake is a mass murderer with how much dude-shootin' he does but it turns out, no, they were just slowly escalating the encounter size until I had a proper arsenal. At one point it took away all the weapons except the bow and that was awesome!! I really liked that part!! More of that, please!!

I feel like collectibles in games can be somewhat controversial but I kind of liked some of what this game did? The journals are where a lot of character and plot development actually happens (which is maybe an indictment of the actual main plot of the game) and the artifacts give nice little tidbits of actual history (that I really wish were longer). But those two gave me enough that I made sure to get all of both of those before I finished the game. There's a ton of other collectibles too, though, and those definitely feel like a waste of my time for the sake of padding out the game. The GPS Caches, for example, give a minuscule amount of experience but there is approximately eight trillion of them in each zone to find.

Lara and Sam are definitely gay, right? Sam calls Lara 'sweetie' several times and in basically every cutscene they're in, they're holding hands or putting their arms around each other and I'm choosing to read that as romantic because it being a game about a woman rescuing her girlfriend is a thousand times more interesting to me.

Fuck QTEs, always and forever. It took me, like, three QTEs to get tired of mashing a button to do a thing. And in the prologue/tutorial section, the QTEs weren't displaying properly so I had to watch Lara's skull get crushed by a boulder like eight times before the game decided to tell me what button I needed to be pushing. Luckily it seemed to just be like that for the first couple because if the whole game had been that then I never would've finished this. Not just from QTE frustration but also because I got real tired real quick of seeing all the brutal and gruesome shit they do to Lara here. From what I understand, they tone it down in the sequels which is good, but oh my god it's so awful here. Truly hate it.

And one last thing: fuck the bright white flashes that you get from almost every menu option at a campfire. I had to close my eyes every time I clicked to buy an upgrade or unlock a skill or fast travel cause that shit is so uncomfortable. Fuck off, don't do that, what the hell.

Anyway. It was funny to play this after having watched the 2018 Tomb Raider movie because that takes some of this game's plot (Queen Himiko, Yamatai, some other proper nouns) so every time I recognized something I could be like "wow cool reference to a movie that came out 5 years later".

Very middling game that was a generally okay way to spend 13 hours. I feel like at a different time I could have more venom for this game and the way it's indicative of the design tendencies of AAA games but I just don't have that in me right now because all I wanted was a cool place to runny jumpy collect things and rescue cute girlfriend and that is basically what I got.

I think folk have been awfully harsh about New Super Mario Bros. in expressing their relief with Wonder. It's largely the same thing.

Despite the suggestions I've been seeing, Wonder doesn't represent a huge shift in 2D Mario design like 3 or World did. There's no innovation on par with the P-Meter, the world map, multiple exits or Yoshi. I might go so far as to suggest that the NSMB sequels did more to revitalise the core Mario gameplay. I think those games deserve far more credit than they're given for making 2D design mainstream again after a decade of tech-driven design. I'm not sure we'd have a Street Fighter IV without them. The real value in Wonder is in the soul it injects back into 2D Mario.

For as much as I'll defend the NSMB games, I won't deny they were sterile. You could enjoy playing them, but there wasn't much to love in them, with their sanded-down on-model characters, plastic levels and synthetic sound design. Wonder is focused on surprising and delighting its players. To "put smiles on the faces of everyone Nintendo touches". Wonder is frequently silly, strange and amusing, but kind and gentle in being so. Never obnoxious or upsetting. Even the Talking Flowers are soft-spoken and encouraging, never coming close to Omochao unsufferability. It's a game that will enthral fans, lapsed Mario players and children who are playing Mario for the first time.

It's no World, though. The focus on novelty holds back the depth of each level's appeal, and I don't really see myself coming back nearly as frequently as I would for my favourite entries in the series. With the exception of the Drill Suit, none of the new power-ups switch up the gameplay to the degree of SMB3's. The Power Badges are a welcome addition, but essentially just serve to bring back gameplay styles from more distinct entries like Mario 2. The game didn't feel like the kind of shift I'd expect in an all-new Mario game, but a post-Mario Maker NSMB sequel that had to do more bespoke stuff with its levels to justify itself. When I accept that, it's easier to appreciate the things that Wonder does well.

Within Nintendo, Wonder has been approached as an opportunity to give younger members of the staff more control within their most precious franchise, and it's clear that they've been very delicate with it, while addressing the tastes of 2023 audiences. They've clearly studied the series for inspiration, and Wonder incorporates a lot of features I haven't seen Mario touch in years. I really appreciated the funny little cutscenes after each castle, which are straight out of SMW, but they also help establish the sense that these disparate, wacky levels are intended to represent an overarching adventure. The online features are intended to encourage players who might drop out of frustrating, lonely single-player games, and I appreciate its inclusion, though it's not something I took a personal interest in. Even the concerning Talking Flowers do elevate the experience of retrying a level, with a voice cheering you on through the obstacles and enemies.

The diverse roster of new enemies and multiple playable characters really add to the game's sense of vitality. There's so much energy in their animation, and a lot of great little details. You can play as your favourite, and you're never made to feel like you're not getting the real experience if you don't choose Mario. Even the story's text boxes use a variable field for the character's name, so you can pretend this mission to save the Flower Kingdom was mainly the work of Light-Blue Yoshi, if you so choose. All the transformations are unique to your chosen character, and all of Peach's were really cute.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a really fun game, built with great care and talent. I just can't help but feel it regresses in areas that I don't expect from a new Mario title. Maybe that's the problem with bottling a beloved formula. I don't know if we're ever going to get another 2D Mario game that messes with its fundamentals as much as the new 3D ones do. With Miyamoto and Tezuka taking more hands-off roles on these projects, there's clearly a concern not to break what they established. Perhaps it would be better to follow in their sense of wild, daring creativity than to just play covers of their biggest hits. Maybe that's an unrealistic desire, though. Whatever. It's another good Mario, and I won't feel too hurt if they just make more of those.

Yeah this is the best 2D Mario. After years of stagnation with the NSMB series (and i love Wii), Nintendo comes in with this banger of a game. I won't really be stating the obvious here, everyone knows how much of a breath of fresh air this game is, thanks to the new Wonder gimmick and just generally the really appealing artstyle. But in addition to the Wonder effects and the cool new powerups, the level design benefits from simply just removing the time-limit that the previous games had. It's enough of a difference that allows levels to be a little bit more complex than they were before.

If there's one problem with the game, it's the boss fights. For a game as creative as this one, the boss fights are lacking even by Mario standards. The exception is the final Bowser fight but that's it. Actually, there's a second problem: badges. Outside of the specific Badge Challenge levels, badges in this game are wildly unbalanced. The tierlist is Grapple Vine > Glide Cap > literally everything else. Great idea but the normal level design doesn't make enough use of them.

All of that said though, at the end of the day....it's still 2D Mario. Levels are fun and creative but even with the Wonder effects, they still don't reach the heights of Donkey Kong Country. The Wonder helps set them apart and there's enough variety, even when certain gimmicks are reused, but some levels do inevitably.....blend in. Difficulty is fairly easy (Special World good challenge though).