7 reviews liked by JedPressgrove


I won't lie – I spent 100 hours on my single playthrough. Every addicting hook from the Harvest Moon series is nailed in this tribute, bringing out your inner capitalist and matchmaker. But to what end? Like its predecessors, Stardew Valley has nothing to say about your activity. It simply wants you to do more of it. I looked upon my barns, fields, and sheds, and thought, “Is this it?” That's right – I had a mid-life crisis in Stardew Valley, and it had no answers for my emptiness.

I have a frustrated love for the Zelda series. Perhaps I love what it COULD be rather than what it is, and the gulf between the two creates discontent.

Unfair? Maybe. In any case, this remake is a mostly enjoyable return to the first portable Zelda title, but each tweak to the original is a two-edged sword, e.g.:

- The plasticine environment successfully demarcates the dream world from the “real” world of the animated cutscenes, yet its misleading veneer of cuteness clashes with its existential theme. "But the original Gameboy graphics were cute too!" you might protest. A little, yes, but more by limitation than design. The dot eyes and simple shapes were necessary due to tiny screens and monochrome palettes, but in the remake they're retained out of unthinking reverence, not with a mind toward the story's dark heart.

- Permanent buttons for sword and shield improve convenience, but they also destroy Awakening's unique mechanical voice among the Zelda pantheon; in the original GB release, no tool was so sacrosanct that it couldn't be tucked away. You could let the shield gather cobwebs in your pouch if you wished, and could even make a challenge of using the sword as little as possible. But now? On the Switch? They're permanently a button tap away. And there aren't enough additions to the sword-and-shield play (besides stunning the blade-brandishing rushers) to warrant its new front-and-center presence on the gamepad.

But back to undue reverence -- if the remakers were willing to tinker with the above elements, why didn't they add more to the plot as well? The existential story of LA demands a sidequest or two, enough to give players some agency (at least the possibility if not the actuality), some room to react to the dreadful truth of the island. This unwillingness to build on the legacy, to treat flaws as sacred as virtues, is the most frustrating aspect of Nintendo's remakes.

I hate this game for one simple reason. It is not at all what I was led to believe it was.
Everyone on YouTube heralds this game as a mash-up of a rogue-lite and a Metroidvania. It is definitely a rogue-lite. Personally, I prefer rogueLIKE games where progression is based on your own skill and unlocking new items/discovering secrets rather than playing over and over again for permanent upgrades.
This is in no way a Metroidvania. It may open up later, but I only had to play about 10 runs to see the same items again and again. There are no unlockable movement options for exploration in as much as I played, and it seems there would be very little reason to explore anyway since the majority of stages are enclosed, cookie-cutter bullshit with the same enemies and weapons spawning every fucking time. These types of games, crucially, need variety to hook me, and there is none in the first 3 hours. It's not even as particularly challenging as people say it is, managed to beat the first boss without even getting hit.
Nice art style I guess? But again it is misleading; I expected a Hollow Knight-esque presentation of a serious story/lore. But no, instead I'm met with cheap references to frankly better games and silliness designed to get a giggle out of me yet only receiving agonising groans. Lots of games have nuanced humour and references to other media. This is not one of them, as hard as it may try.
I've seen enough to know this is absolutely not my kind of game. I do not understand the critical acclaim one bit. Overhyped. If you want what you think this game was going to be, play Noita.

It satisfies in a lizard-brain way. Enemies burst and emit shards of gold, cells, new gear. You can slink across platforms with ease. A fortunate, harmonious build or powerful piece of gear can make a run that much easier or memorable.

But when I start to think about for more than a few seconds I begin to resent myself for putting time into it. It's built in more of a compulsive way than anything, freely taking whatever design principles from other roguelikes to crystalize a fast moving loot-lottery structure. Runs feel too lengthy despite the fast pace. The level design and even the platforming are pretty bland, and I couldn't tell you much about the lore, especially when so many interactions with the environment were just cutesy lootdrop references to other games.

It's fine for people who just want to scoot and whack their way through several rusty looking, anonymous feeling environments I suppose.

(Originally published in this blog entry in March 2022)
https://xatornova.blogspot.com/2022/03/pac-man-pleasure-of-maze.html

When we think about Pac-Man, one of its indelible images involves the eponymous character running away from some colorful ghosts and later him being the one that chases them after getting a Power Pellet in order to eliminate them. Because of this, Pac-Man is usually cited as the first game with power-ups. However, the ghosts have a shorter duration of vulnerability after each level, and once you reach the twenty-first screen, those Power Pellets have no impact on them, and instead ghosts are faster, which represents how little actually mattered to director Toru Iwatani to entrance the player with the satisfaction of overcoming enemies they were previously weak to.
Pac-Man is a maze game where the player has to obtain all pellets and avoid ghosts that pursue the player to get to the next screen. Before its release, mazes in videogames were more closely associated with role-playing games such as Oubliette and Beneath Apple Manor, two great games of their generation that broadened the understanding of navigation in dungeons as social spaces or as a source of horror. However, the maze in Pac-Man is seen from a top-down perspective, while every element from role-playing games is absent. This is due to Iwatani's mechanical understanding of games, a consequence of his background as an engineer, and his interest in the development of pinball machines (which initially led to his first video game, Gee Bee, to have similar rules to pinball), where the immediate legibility of objectives is of paramount importance, and the abstraction of sensations is conveyed mechanically.

This element is precisely what differentiates Pac-Man from previous representations of a maze: Its economy in language, and its mechanization and legibility of simple components. If labyrinthis in role-playing games derive their strength from draining the player's resources, Pac-Man replaces this with the constant chase, where the game demands attention to avoid defeat and tests the mental fortitude of the player. By making the avatar move automatically in the direction it is facing, the implication of the player with the events on screen is bolstered, since not paying attention leads to not making decisions such as turning on bifurcations, or deciding between avoiding enemies and getting pellets on time. Through these resources, Iwatani blends the action derived from the chase and avoiding enemies on time with the labyrinthine construction of spaces in a way that seems natural, almost obvious and easy.

It is this feeling of ease that led Pac-Man to have numerous successors in its generation, but the fundamental difference between Pac-Man and other maze chase games is the depth in the movement speed. The avatar goes faster when it is not consuming pellets, can turn corners faster than the enemies, and can get through the lateral tunnels faster as well. Through this alongside the increasing speed of the enemies after each level leads to frequent situations where a player about to be caught escapes by very little from the enemies, in dodges at the last second, through which the player has to utilize the maze layout and search for appropriate places to gain more speed while being aware of their position in the screen. This element is Iwatani's true finding with Pac-Man: The pleasure of the maze, and this quality is what gives it true significance above superficial elements such as having the first mascot character or being the first game with cutscenes, and makes it, four decades and many sequels and variants after its release, still resonate with firmness.

Primera vez en la historia de Super Mario que una de sus entregas principales sabe a decadencia. Nunca antes, ni siquiera en los juegos más derivativos de la serie principal (World, Galaxy 2, 3D World), había olido a falta de ideas nuevas. Hasta ahora.

Super Mario Odyssey es un Greatest Hits encubierto. El viaje que hacemos por los distintos mundos del juego bien puede interpretarse como una visita guiada a través de los distintos títulos de la saga. Hay 64 en la filosofía híbrida de los niveles y el nostalgia trip del Reino Champiñón, hay Sunshine en la extensión de movimientos de Cappy y la arquitectura realista (y vertical) de New Donk City, hay Galaxy en el diseño de los power-ups y la navegación del Reino de Bowser, y hay 3D Land en algunos de los tramos más plataformeros para obtener lunas. Hasta la vertiente 2D de la saga tiene su hueco en numerosos desafíos bidimensionales, con Mario pixelándose y dándonos un botón para acelerar. La banda sonora es así también, en ella hay de todo (ritmo, ambiente, épica...), y de un mundo a otro no permanece intacta ni la estética. Esto es un popurrí, y para cuando llegamos a la celebración del festival (con homenaje al Donkey Kong original incluido) nos damos cuenta de qué tipo: rebozado. Odyssey tiene sabor a repaso, a nivel final rememorando lo aprendido made by Nintendo.

Y lo preocupante es la razón de esta mirada atrás. Cappy poseyendo cuerpos a modo de reinterpretación del power-up de toda la vida es quizá el mayor fracaso de la historia de Super Mario. Nunca ha tenido el jugador tantas opciones y formas de jugar, y nunca habían sido estas tan evidentemente accesorias, planas, gimmicks. De usar y tirar. Pareciera una metáfora involuntaria del punto en que se encuentra la saga con Odyssey: Mario poseyendo cuerpos para resolver lo que toca y luego a otra cosa es Nintendo tratando de buscar nuevas vías para su saga y fracasando en cada intento. Después de tres décadas parece no quedar nada dentro de Mario, así que toca buscar fuera, pero la búsqueda resulta infructuosa y no da respuestas. A cada nuevo cuerpo, un par de usos y hasta luego; a cada nuevo intento, un fracaso y vuelta a saltar. No se libra ni el moveset de Cappy, la mayor baza del juego. Los combos saltimbanquis son rebuscados y extremos, otro intento desesperado por hacer algo nuevo con el movimiento. Ni siquiera tienen lógica, tan solo existen, y el jugador aprende a dominarlos porque exprimir sus mecánicas es satisfactorio en sí mismo (algo que Super Mario, por suerte, todavía no ha perdido).

La experiencia de jugar Odyssey consiste en pasar por un conglomerado de convenciones de diseño de Mario en pos de recolectar lunas. Hay exploración, coleccionismo, retos de habilidad y de todo. Y una gran parte del mix agota, se siente trabajo. Habrá quien diga que, como nosotros elegimos las lunas que queremos obtener, es culpa nuestra si acabamos realizando misiones aburridas en vez de ir a por la parte divertida. A este argumento yo replicaría que la realidad de la experiencia de jugar Odyssey es otra: el jugador explora los mundos que se le presentan e inevitablemente, por su objetivo de dar con y acumular lunas, trata de hacerse con las que se le cruzan por delante, o al menos la mayoría. Como consecuencia, una parte sustancial del juego será aburrida e insatisfactoria, dejando mal sabor de boca.

(Originally published in this blog entry in March 2022)
https://xatornova.blogspot.com/2022/03/robotron-2084-twin-stick-apocalypse.html

There is something strangely beautiful about the end of the world in art and the reaction that it draws from its characters, particularly the feelings that it gets from the people facing the inevitable demise, because it is then that you see them at their rawest. Robotron 2084 fits that category as an abstract portrayal of the collapse of civilization by the hands of machines, and to that purpose it sets the player as a survivor in the middle of the catastrophe, surrounded by robots chasing down the remnant humans. You can opt to save them, but the main challenge is to get past the waves of machines. The aim of the developers is that the player feels panic in an apocalyptic scenario, and to that purpose there are two sticks, one for movement and the other one to shoot in a direction, as the survivor's defense mechanism. The repercussion this has on the player is that there's a need to coordinate betwen two forms of reaction: To dodge and to shoot, and these two draw your attention away from each other and conflict with each other, and the result is that there's a dissasociation between these two understandings of your avatar that leads to a chaotic state of mind that turns the attention of the player to the game, their surroundings and their position.

Now, this is a precursor to the twin-stick shooter genre, and great games have been born from this control scheme, such as The Binding of Isaac and Assault Android Cactus, but to me, the original Robotron 2084 remains the strongest because the feeling that it awakes is not only an adrenaline rush but also a desperate, raw feeling that complements the game's aesthetic vision. It does this in a purer state, because your bullets can't be improved and go in just eight directions, which means that unlike a lot of other modern shoot 'em ups, precision is also important in this game, and ultimately, because its nature as an arcade game turns around the power fantasy aspect that may arise from this. In Robotron 2084, defeat is inevitable, because no matter how many screens you go through, eventually you will lose, and the enemies win. There is no end to this game, and the developers transform this arcade convention into something beautiful. It reminds to the endings of Crisis Core, or Halo: Reach that came out decades after, but in a whole game dedicated to that feeling, without their sentimentality. You just fight through waves of enemies until your body and mind can't go on, and you succumb. That is when the game is really over. No extra continues. That's the canonical end. As a portrayal of the end of the world, it is successful and radical unlike almost any other shooter that I have seen.