The thrill is gone. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle brought demented genius to tactics by reimagining the possibilities of tile-based movement, simplifying hit accuracy (making battles more dangerous than expected), and flipping the morbid tone of XCOM on its head. This sequel drains Mario + Rabbids of its irony. Sparks of Hope offers more characters, fights, powers, and overworld exploration, but all these extras create a more plodding experience with predictable outcomes.

Sparks of Hope is adequate. Exploiting the unique advantages of Mario, Rabbid Mario, newcomer Slash, and the rest of the cast remains an engaging, albeit easier, proposition. It's better if you find your back against a wall, as when one scenario whittled my party down to Luigi, which forced me to carefully snipe at three enemies for numerous turns until I was the last thing standing.

But such moments are unlikely due to the addition of Sparks. Sparks resemble the Summons creatures from the Final Fantasy series, only they make combat much more lopsided in your favor, even if you crank up the difficulty setting. In addition to giving your party members passive stat bonuses, Sparks can be called upon during battle and enhance your already formidable list of abilities. Absurdly, each character can equip two Sparks. Unless you're new to turn-based tactics, there's no reason why you shouldn't dominate the competition with this overwhelming amount of game-breaking possibilities.

It doesn't help that Sparks of Hope lacks enemy variety despite ratcheting up the number of encounters to a gluttonous degree. The level-gaining potential is so high that you'll rarely be unprepared or caught off-guard.

The biggest disappointment in Sparks of Hope lies in its bullshit promise of increased spatial freedom. The game claims to take away the tiles that characterize tactical games, but the tiles are merely invisible now. Why pretend that limited spacing for character positioning doesn't exist? It's one of the most idiotic gameplay features ever conceived.

Similarly, the introduction of real-time factors, like ticking bombs and wind gusts, don't actually translate Sparks of Hope into a more dynamic game. Ubisoft could have gone wild with this concept. Foes waiting their turn could have unpredictably come alive for all-out brawls. Party members could have been synchronized for innovative combos. Environmental factors could have transformed areas into meat-grinding lessons of attrition and resilience. Instead, everything can be measured and foreseen. Sparks of Hope is just another proponent of ego-stroking modern design, where players sleepwalk through their uneventful gaming lives.

Mortal Kombat inflicted more collective brain damage to gamers than any other release. Thirty years later, many people still believe fatalities are cool rather than repetitive novelties.

This game has an embarrassing lack of depth. Fighting game characters should be distinguished by more than appearances and a couple of special moves. The basic techniques (rapid jabs, sweeps, etc.) all look and feel the same from combatant to combatant. There's a reason for the laziness: MK banks on blood to enrapture its audience. (What an absolute joke it was back in the 1990s seeing critics pretend this crap rivaled Street Fighter II.)

The fatalities themselves are not even that interesting in hindsight. That's because MK functions like pornography. Pornographic thrills in media grow more explicit to satisfy people's unending lust. The fatalities of today are much more gruesome and intricate. Even if they repulse someone, they grab more attention. The original finishers have thus become irrelevant to all but the most nostalgic of fans. With MK, you can't get no satisfaction because it's all about temporary highs, as opposed to timeless gameplay.

Resist the urge to pat MK on the back for being the most playable of the old fighters with digitized graphics. Transcending the likes of Pit Fighter and Way of the Warrior is like being able to back your car out of a parking spot with no accident, as opposed to ramming the vehicle into a stationary object. MK is the bare minimum for people who don't care about craft in video games.

The 3D Mario titles have a similar illness. They demand the collection of celestial bodies, many of which appear in obvious places or require the player to engage in gameplay gimmicks. And their tone is largely one-dimensional, to the point where the games' joyfulness devolves into smarminess. This is why I don't bow before the innovative Super Mario 64, and why when I revisited Super Mario Galaxy last year, I came away thinking, "How did I ever believe this was all-time great?" (Note: I haven't played Super Mario Sunshine, so perhaps its unusual qualities would impress me.)

Super Mario Odyssey has its fair share of stupidly hidden moons and disposable appeals to nostalgia (e.g., when fully rendered Mario transforms into super pixelated Mario). But there is a wickedness to Odyssey that makes the game more intriguing than its overwhelmingly friendly ancestors.

Cappy, a talking hat, is the most subversive figure of any mainline Mario game (I have to exclude the Mario RPGs because they always mock conventions). He represents corporate branding to the extreme: When Mario hits certain enemies or objects with Cappy, it allows him to possess things like a demon — and mark them with his patented cap and mustache. In previous Mario games, the hero gains powers by acquiring items or suits. Here, he takes away the will and agency of others, manipulating their existence. This dynamic can have disturbing connotations when it involves living creatures, but it makes Super Mario Odyssey a strangely honest game about how three-dimensional space — and everything in it — is here for our exploitation. The weird implications of using Cappy overshadow a lot of that overbearing optimistic tone that grates on my nerves. Cappy outs Nintendo's dark edges. (Fellow critic Andrew Hathaway once compared Odyssey's demented vibes to the trick in Super Mario World where Mario can sacrifice Yoshi in midair to continue platforming.)

Half the fun in Odyssey is finding out what Mario can possess. Some options resemble bizarre gags or asides, like the piece of meat or the man with the remote-controlled car, but actually lead to moons. The most substantial forms enable distinct attacks and modes of travel. While many of the possibilities involve classic Mario foes like Chain Chomps and Bullet Bills, I was drawn more to the unique additions like Spark Pylons and Pokios, the latter of which allow for some of the most compelling platforming in 3D Mario history.

Odyssey has too many limitations and too much bloat to compete with the greatest Mario games (Super Mario Bros., Mario 3, Yoshi's Island). But with Cappy's devilish capabilities and a strange assortment of locations like Metro Kingdom, Luncheon Kingdom, and Lost Kingdom, Odyssey is the most gonzo of all Mario platformers. Indeed, where can the Italian plumber go from here? The other 3D Marios didn't stoke my imagination like this. They merely granted a fleeting sort of happiness.

Great animation and a lot of boss fights don't make a great game. If you've played the Contras, the Mega Mans, the Metal Slugs, and TurboGrafx-16 shooters, you've seen most of what Cuphead has to offer, including its supposedly high difficulty (as commemorated by the adolescent, predictable outrage over Dean Takahashi's gee-whiz ineptitude: https://venturebeat.com/games/cuphead-hands-on-my-26-minutes-of-shame-with-an-old-time-cartoon-game/).

Despite the absence of a compelling array of power-ups, Cuphead is not that hard. Unlike the truly uncompromising shooters (Contra IV, Mega Man, Super Star Soldier, R-Type, and so on), Cuphead throws pieces of a game at its audience: you don't have to fight through a level to get the opportunity to lock horns with a boss. Instead, you move an avatar on a world map, which provides instant access to the bosses. If you're even halfway familiar with classic shooters, most of these battles will not be intimidating; more than a few will be quite boring due to their plagiarism. And inexperienced gamers can simply "get good" without the inconvenience of having to learn levels or any potential complexities of an upgrade system.

It's more than clear that Studio MDHR has a superficial appreciation for shooters and intended to score a trendy indie hit by overcompensating with admittedly impressive hand-drawn animation. The actual levels in Cuphead are pathetic at best: short, obvious, undramatic, phoned-in, an insulting waste of time. And the horizontally scrolling battles feel like lukewarm ideas that would have been rejected by the makers of groundbreaking fare like Gradius, Life Force, and Lords of Thunder. I could only imagine liking Cuphead if I were ignorant of video game history and the mechanical possibilities of the art form.


Batman: Arkham Asylum excels at making one feel like a version of the comic book legend. Preying on unsuspecting criminals, dispatching fools with unmatched martial arts, becoming a sort of mini-god through the use of gadgets, pulling yourself into the corners of an environment like an animal. And the way Rocksteady Games turns the contrivances of side missions into a prolonged pursuit of the Riddler -- few moments in big-budget 21st century games match the satisfaction of shattering that magnificent bastard's cockiness -- should go down as an all-time ludonarrative masterstroke. But even though few titles put you in the shoes of a superhero as elegantly as Arkham Asylum, the game comes across as too neat and tidy with the detective vision and automated movement during fights. It's still impressive how Arkham Asylum handles such conveniences (I particularly get a kick out of extending combos with gadgets), but if the idea is to be Batman on an intimate level, shouldn't there be a greater sense of hard work and discovery? The Arkham series runs away from this question. This is Metroid Prime lite to some degree.

2018

Easily in the top 5 most overrated games of all time. The only reason Hades doesn't deserve the lowest rating is the impeccable presentation from Supergiant Games. As with the developer's other work, it's easy to get sucked into Hades because of how good it looks and sounds. This time, the studio marries its distinguished production style with a business plan based on appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Hades' familiar, repetitive action has gotten a pass from critics and fans thanks to the game's shrewd psychological manipulation. The fast leveling provides a reliable dopamine rush, and the upgrade preview icons flatter and tempt players by letting them know the progress that lies just a room away. The actual combat and upgrading are unoriginal and unchallenging. Using the logic I learned from the Diablo series and its many followers, I developed tactics (after a mere handful of failed runs) that allowed me to dominate most rooms and defeat Hades on my first attempt. The game evokes hell while being formulaic and welcoming, offering an onion that you can always peel. The perfect recipe for ego-stroked addiction.

And the story doesn't live up to the hype. It's all cliched juvenilia about flipping the bird to daddy and running to mommy for wise words and protection and having funny conversations with friends after you get a boo boo. Hades exploits the infantilized gaming market like a shameless pimp. Game of the Year? More like Trick of the Year.

In the history of turn-based combat, there is nothing duller or more nonsensical than watching so-called heroes passively absorb consumable spells from clueless enemies. And the story reads like it was written by a talentless high schooler. An embarrassing sequel that unfortunately has inspired a number of juvenile, awkwardly complex JRPGs.

Chrono Trigger is extraordinary in many ways. The Millennium Fair ranks as the greatest initial location of any RPG, serving as an organic tutorial, a location where your actions will be judged later on in court (a groundbreaking idea), and a damn fun place to visit in general. The soundtrack by Mitsuda and Uematsu — a masterpiece by itself — stirs every emotion in the book with a grandness that transcends the efforts of so many fully orchestrated tracks we hear today. The turn-based combat is tight and fast-paced, with a combo system that hasn't been topped. And the plot is full of colorful characters and brilliant twists, including the death of the protagonist and the shocking conversion of a devilish villain.

At the same time, people overrate Chrono Trigger when they call it the greatest SNES RPG or, worse, the best RPG ever. Too many little flaws for either claim to be true: the overworld graphics are tiny and dull; certain sound effects, like that hoarse creature roar, are comically overused; some techniques are useless and visually embarrassing (see Ayla's Dino Tail); the endings are as underwhelming as they are plentiful; and that bike mini game is insultingly atrocious with its contrived place switching. Final Fantasy VI, Illusion of Gaia, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, and Secret of Evermore are more consistent than Trigger, yet Trigger gets most of the glory. We need to rewrite the RPG history book when it comes to this injustice, despite Trigger's obvious greatness.

If you put me in a room of trash talkers who want to play this particular Smash Bros., I'll gladly pick Samus and snipe people like a cheap bastard and have a great time. (And by "play," I mean a multiplayer brawl, not a stripped-down one-on-one fight. I'm sorry tourney nerds, but Smash is an uninteresting one-on-one fighter. You suck the fun and uniqueness out of Smash Bros. when you sanitize it in the name of some conservative notion of competition.)

But from a critical standpoint, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been spit-polished to the point where it registers as very made-by-committee and antiseptic. Its distinguishing characteristic is a ridiculous amount of content (a word that shouldn't be confused with creativity). The number of characters is obscene when one recalls the main appeal of Smash Bros.: pitting the most iconic and popular Nintendo characters against each other. Now everyone shows up for the sake of random fan demands and Nintendo's almighty bottom line. All the stars from the non-Nintendo games, as well as the Nintendo-branded characters who don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as your Marios and Kirbys, betray the notion that we're watching larger-than-life Nintendo figures fight it out. I don't care about Ryu from Street Fighter trading blows with Cloud from Final Fantasy. Does Ryu really need to be in another game? I can raise the same question for others. Ultimate may not be an open world game, but it champions a similar type of quantity-over-quality philosophy. Meanwhile, as fine-tuned as the controls are in Ultimate, I still vastly prefer the faster flow and more dangerous vibes of Super Smash. Bros Melee (which introduced the most fascinating stages in the series: Hyrule Kingdom and Brinstar Depths). Ultimate feels quite safe despite the lofty implications of its title.


Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors has an appreciable amount of video game genius. Whereas many fighting games of the current century push out contrived story modes, Darkstalkers uses energetic and detailed visuals for more organic and impactful storytelling. See how Sasquatch's animations and stage reinvent the Bigfoot legend as a communal, lovable creature, or how Victor's level, with its day/night cycle and remnants of violence, serves as a frighteningly appropriate homage to Mary Shelley's classic novel. The graphics are so evocative and rich in meaning that they're liable to distract one from battle. Indeed, part of the key to mastering Darkstalkers is growing accustomed to its creative weirdness. No mere Street Fighter II esque cash grab, the game is mechanically ahead of its time with its air blocks and EX specials, setting the table for Capcom's future Street Fighter titles and the flashy (and troublingly overrated) Marvel series. Darkstalkers even produces unique suspense with its super bar that depletes with time, forcing players to make smart decisions faster. In today's world where philosophically bankrupt fanboys cheer on a neverending pandering cycle of crossover guest stars in fighters, they just don't make them like Darkstalkers anymore.

While I can't help but admire Terry Cavanagh's commitment to his concept, Super Hexagon is more compelling to watch than to play. The visuals have a unique hypnotic beauty, and you can even close your eyes and get lost in Chipzel's urgent, ever-evolving soundtrack. But as an arcade-style challenge, Super Hexagon doesn't keep me coming back for more. Its simplicity is its greatest strength and weakness. The paradox follows: Super Hexagon would be less remarkable if it were more complex, yet I find myself wanting more of a reason to stay engaged as a player outside of getting used to the game's patterns to arrive at a sense of accomplishment. Being a mere spectator allows me to focus on Cavanagh's artistic conviction as well as relish the interplay between Chipzel's music, the pulsing shapes, and the constant string of narrowly avoided collisions; playing Super Hexagon leads me to question its long-term experiential appeal.

One can't overstate the historical impact of Super Mario 64. Its analog-stick controls and adjustable camera set the stage for 21st century gaming. Its 3D platforming has as many imitators as a mid-1960s Beatles album. And there's still nothing like the surreal invitation to stretch the features of Mario's big face before the game even starts.

But I still hesitate to call Mario 64 great. Once you acknowledge the major leap in presentation and get over the thrill of moving in three-dimensional space, you're left with a Mario that overemphasizes the collection of items in levels that you must play to death. Before Mario 64, Mario games had a momentum to them. Mario 64 feels more like a scavenger hunt without stakes. There's little urgency or pressure. By the halfway point, I'm already disinterested.

And whatever happened to the creative thinking behind Mario's abilities? The conservatism started with Super Mario World, which merely updated how the hero can fly and gave him a gimmicky dinosaur buddy. In Mario 64, the most notable addition is the expanded repertoire of jumps, but let's not forget this more acrobatic style already showed up in the greatest remake of all time, Donkey Kong 1994. The effects of the special caps in Mario 64 don't spark my imagination: another flying ability and two passive abilities, one of which corrects the stupid regressive rule that Mario can't breathe underwater. It's almost as if 1990s Nintendo threw up its hands after conceiving the wide array of game-changing powers in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Yoshi's Island.

I also despise Mario 64's patronizing, one-dimensional tone. This is a case where the massive influence of Mario 64 has short-circuited the gaming world's memory of what pop games could achieve emotionally. No matter the stage, Mario hoots like he just won the lottery as he jumps about. This creative decision smacks of the condescension Nintendo trotted out with the smiling clouds in the remakes within Super Mario All-Stars. It's clear Nintendo stopped trusting the emotional reactions of its audience with the release of Mario 64. Now people expect to hear the cute yelps and get showered with praise for finding a star under a rock. Would our tails no longer wag without these features?

Is Tokyo as predictable and artificial as its depiction in Yakuza 0? The city only seems alive when you happen upon one of many absurd but inconsequential quests. These wacky sidebars also stand out because of their contrast with the standard soap opera crime narrative of the main story. Perhaps Yakuza 0's endless contrivances could be forgiven if the martial arts action weren't so awkwardly telegraphed and designed. The game tries to convince you the combat is cool with its monotonous use of multi-angle cutscene finishers, but anyone with basic knowledge of the beat-'em-up genre and fighting games has seen all of this crap before in more fluid packages. The desaturated still-frame shot that one activates with a victory speaks to the desperate dullness at hand in Yakuza 0. Critics should be jailed for giving this game a pass on its flagrant lack of creativity back in 2017.