Man, I dunno.

The game makes an excellent first impression with creative art direction that immediately pulls you in. The characters are solid, balancing what we know from the MCU against a unique take on the guardians. But seriously, this thing is paced torturously at times. The ability progression is stretched really thinly across a 17-hour playthrough, which means you reach the apex of your arsenal with ages left to play. It means the tail end of the game becomes a total drag gameplay wise, which is a bummer because I think there are elements of the climax that are genuinely great. It just sucks I was already worn down by the experience by this point. It either needed to be shorter to have a more sharp experience, or more enemy variety and ability combinations to make it feel more concise.

Still, I can't ignore how much I loved the design of every location in the game. It's a fantastic example of aesthetic appeal carrying much of the experience, for better and worse.

I've heard this described as the fidget cube of videogames, and I think that's the undeniable summary of this experience - right down to all those times you accidentally drop the cube and curse in anger as you lean down to pick it up.

If I were rate this one on enjoyment alone, I'd probably be more inclined to give this one a 4/5. Critically, though...despite the risks taken, and the effort to differentiate itself from every prior Sonic title, it does just end up falling back into the middle of the road (a notoriously bad place for a hedgehog to be).

GAMEPLAY

The big selling point of Frontiers is the "Open-Zone" setup. Not an outright open world, but a set of 5 (well, 4 and a half) islands that Sonic can explore at will. Freedom of movement is the main appeal, and finally being able to do this in a Sonic game for what feels like the first time since Sonic Adventure really took me back. Picking a direction, blasting away at top speed and seeing where I end up, blissful. It's the baseline of what I want to feel from a Sonic game, and one that I rarely get to actually experience.

Of course, the manner of Sonic's controls have always been hotly debated by the ever-warring fandom. Sonic Team had the perfect solution: do it yourself! Sonic has a number of sliders to tune his handling to virtually whatever you'd like; regardless of whether it's actually remotely controllable or not. People who set his default running speed to maximum were gonna be in a rude awakening when they get to the parkour challenges, but they're completely free to do so. I had the luxury of playing close to a year post-launch, though; Sonic had harsh jump deceleration to start with, losing all momentum when jumping. Fortunately, Sonic Team listened to fans and let you turn that shit off - and it really, really helps.

So, you've got a Sonic you can tune to your liking, and huge areas to let him lose in. And yet, the game begins by almost immediately dumping you into a short, linear level with a completely different, fixed control scheme. Cyberspace levels are thrown into the experience to provide more traditional Sonic levels, and I appreciate and understand why; it's far easier to break them off into separate instances than build the levels naturally into the open world (which there is usually at least one instance of per island, so I'm glad they actually gave that a go). I also understand why the control scheme is different; the levels themselves rely a lot on scripted sequences that could potentially break if the player has set their acceleration outside of the accepted parameters. Unfortunately, while I understand the choices made, it doesn't stop Cyberspace from being a source of frustation, bordering on total misery. Sonic's turning circle becomes immense, and the levels themselves are automated to the point of failure, with the homing attack frequently failing to lock on when it needs to, and just generally being clumsy. One level even adds a drift mechanic that is completely embarassing in how much worse it is compared to previous games.

Moving away from Cyberspace, one other massive shakeup to the formula is the addition of a real, proper combat system. We haven't had such a thing since the dreadful Unleashed Werehog stages, and fortunately it's not nearly as limited. That said, it's no Devil May Cry either. Sonic can still homing attack to kill or notably injure the small fry, but larger enemies and minibosses will require much mashing of the X button. As you gain skill points, you can expand Sonic's reportoire to include dodge attacks, Rider Kicks, and just straight up shooting lasers from his shoes or something. There's enough variety in there to make it so that the varying enemy types may only be susceptible to specific moves, but admittedly there's also little stopping you from just persistently mashing X against at least half of the encounters.

Further adding to Sonic's moveset is the Cyloop. Holding Y will leave a trail behind Sonic, and allow you to draw circles, Pokémon Ranger-style, around enemies. This is often best suited to breaking an enemy's guard, but can also be used in the open world to activate events, solve puzzles, and (if you're persistent) gather a limitless supply of rings and other important resources. It's a neat trick, although I find it cuts out far too easily whenever you hit the slightest imperfection in the floor. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing such a move become a more permanent part of Sonic's skillset - where applicable.

At the heart of it, Sonic Frontiers is a big ol' collectathon. Each of the hundreds of grind rails and platforms that awkwardly pop into existence as soon as you're 10ft away lead to a small bounty of riches. Rings, obviously, still keep Sonic from dying to damage. However, depending on your ever-increasing stats, Sonic can both hold more maximum rings, as well as lose less of them when taking damage, more akin to a health bar. As well as that, you can find seeds that raise Sonic's attack and defense, skill points to unlock new moves, and memory tokens; needed to advance the plot. That's not forgetting about Emerald Vault keys, for getting the Chaos Emeralds, and Portal Gears from downed minibosses for playing the Cyberspace levels (the main source of the aforementioned Vault keys). That's a lot to collect, and sounds like a challenging, if time consuming gameplay structure. Of course, if you don't actually have any interest in playing the game, Big the Cat has you covered. Yes, if you collect enough purple coins, you can go fishing, and use your gains from that to just buy everything - everything - and theroetically max out Sonic's stats and get every mandatory collectible to beat the story within, say, an hour or so total of fishing. It's such a bizarre way to break the game that they might as well have admitted "Use this if you're a games journalist with a tight deadline!".

The fishing itself, by the way, is mindless - essentially a rhythm game without the rhythm. Cast the rod (doesn't matter where), wait for a bite (won't take more than 10 seconds), tap A, tap A again when the ring is within the red areas. Boom, fish. One part of getting 100% is to catch every fish at every spot, but that won't even be hard because it's as if the game's rigged to not give you any duplicates until you've 100%ed a fishing spot. The key rewards for fishing that you can't get anywhere else are the Egg Memos. They're simply snippets of random trivia, as well as Eggman's perspective on current events. It's mostly a checklist of references and fanservice, but more - much more - on that later.

So, the game plays fine, has a decent smattering of content, but not all of it good. A lot of it is just simple stimulation - pass by a dash pad or spring, get distracted, and get taken on a brief rollercoaster ride with high speed and minimal input. But the freedom of movement is key here, and that freedom to just go anywhere and forcibly glitch yourself up anything is simply liberating, which is very Sonic. Using the grind rails and springs is fun and all, but the real big brain gaming is finding the way to sequence break these pathways and take the collectible by force. It's what made those first two islands, in all their generic appearance, a real good time in my experience.

Sorry, I specified "the first two islands" just then, didn't I? Yeah, that whole "freedom of movement" thing sadly gets shut down by the third island, where the game decides that Cyberspace didn't fill its mandatory 2D quota and forces almost every single one of the hundreds of platforming sections on the island to lock Sonic into a 2D perspective. Doing so shuts down most of the controls, including the combat system, and stops you from leaving without finding some gap in the platforms to break out of it. This horrible downgrade in quality hangs over the third island almost entirely, and a good chunk of the fifth island as well. I really hated my time with these 2D segments, and it made me less inclined to collect every memory token as I had for the first two islands (but it didn't stop me in the end). To make an open world and liberating Sonic, only to shackle him back to these confines so soon after really makes me wonder what the circumstances surrounding this decision was.

This gameplay loop culminates in finding each of the Chaos Emeralds on each island(save one). Once all Chaos Emeralds on an island are obtained, you get to challenge the island's boss. Said boss holds the last Emerald, and when you finally grab it, you get to engage the boss as Super Sonic. On paper, this is a really fun implementation of Super Sonic, as opposed to a reward for clearing (often annoying) special stages, or only showing up in the final battle. It's a shame that Super Sonic remains unusable in the open world, but it's not like you really need it. You sure need it for the boss fights though, because they're proper slugfests. They unfortunately aren't the most inspiring fights, though - despite the soundtrack's best efforts. Mashing X remains the most worthwhile tactic until the boss chooses to throw an attack that you can parry - only then is the major damage dealt. Some bosses unfortunately tend to spam attacks that Sonic needs to do a quick time event to avoid or deflect, and some of the things they throw at you are downright confusing in how to deal with it. The spectacle is appreciated, but I had more fun watching other people do these fights than playing them for myself. The ring limit may seem like a tricky thing to deal with, but seeing as you can gain infinite rings before the right by holding Y and running in circles, it's really no big deal.

And before I wrap this up, there are a few little weird breaks in the formula scattered throughout the main story. These range from herding children, to mowing the lawn(seriously), to playing an actual sh'mup(seriously). They're usually kinda clunky, but at least don't outstay their lack-of-welcome. Except pinball. Oh, I hope you like pinball.

Well, that's more than enough about the gameplay - it's got grand ideas but a confused execution of them in the back half of the game, which is pretty disappointing.

STORY

I won't get too into spoilers, but I can describe how the story made me feel - pretty unimpressed. The premise is as basic as it gets - Sonic and co. get stuck on a strange land, and everyone else gets imprisoned while Sonic alone has to save their asses, while guided by a mysterious voice telling them to kill all the big stompy gits. All while a weird cyber-ghost girl keeps wishing death upon Sonic to his face every 10 minutes. It just sets up the gameplay loop pretty directly, and you probably already guessed where it's going as you get to reading this part. There's nothing new or inventive here, and I can't say I'm even disappointed - the deeper a Sonic story tries to go, the more awful is usually is.

Where the real appeal and attention is directed is the writing itself. Ian Flynn is no new name to Sonic, but for his first game rodeo it's not a bad effort. Not a bad effort, but I have a handful of bones to pick nonetheless. Flynn generally has a good grasp on when to be sincere and when to throw in the goofs - an increasingly difficult challenge for most fiction these days, and there are a few stumbles, but I appreciated that not every serious moment was clobbered by a crowbar layered in irony. If you're particularly jaded on Sonic, it might even seem ridiculous how serious the story takes itself sometimes, but I appreciate that the risk was taken. However, the dialogue - particularly the more optional "side stories" - are also heavily, heavily weighed down with a thick layer of fanservice. You're telling me Sonic and friends touch down on Unreal Engine 4 default landscape, and they all immediately get reminded of virtually every single previous game? I can appreciate an attempt at real continuity, and no hate to anyone out there who ate it all up, but the references were laid on way too thick. I'd settle for maybe a third of the total random call-backs to past games that made their way into the script - and sure, you can also keep the incredibly heavy handed attempts to force Tangle and Sticks into canon - but they really stretch to try to bring up the older games and it really took me out of it after a while.

"Heavy-handed" can also be used to describe Flynn's attempts to wrangle the characterisation of Sonic and co. back in a direction resembling what the fans screaming at the writing since Colors wanted - and it's amusing how visibly hard Flynn is turning the wheel here. Tails in particular gets the blunt end of it, even blurting out "Then I'm wildly inconsistent!" verbatim when he brings up his infamous character regression in Forces, versus his heroism in Adventure. It manages to highlight the problems such moments created for these characters, without resorting to relentless irony and/or outright retconning. Eggman also gets a particularly unique character arc, though it's so disconnected from other media, and most of the game itself, that it's hard to really talk about without going full spoilers. I like where it could be going, I only hope that future games follow up on this change.

PRESENTATION

Of course, a story - and the rest of the game - rely strongly on how its presented. Frontiers, visually, is rather unremarkable. It's not an ugly game (or at least, normally - I may have had to turn all settings to minimum to get it to run) but there's still something almost double-A about this game, in spite of the price, runtime and Sonic's legacy. Lighting isn't optimal, and the environments go for a low-budget realism look that both clashes hard with Sonic as well as all the grind rails and springs thrown into them. The worlds may be fun to run through, but they're sure not pretty to look at. Even looking back at Sonic Unleashed - the last real AAA Sonic game - there's just so much more life in the animations and environments. Even going into Cyberspace, it's almost entirely comprised of regurgitated Generations/Forces assets. As such, every single level is either Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or assorted stuff from Forces. It's pretty distracting given that every level is also ripped from an older game in terms of layout, so now all your old favourites have been Green-Hillified. It's just not a pretty game. Oh, and of course, how could I forget - the pop-in. It's been discussed to death, I've no idea why it's as bad and egregious as it is, and while it never felt like a game-breaker to me it's really not something you want in a full-price game. I don't know if it's an engine limitation, or if they dialled it back for Switch and didn't let the other platforms cook, but...it's bad. Raw, even.

Cutscene-wise, well, we've yet to surpass the Unleashed intro, unsurprisingly. The in-game cutscenes are rarely anything more than sub-standard animation and lip-flapping, though it looks passable whenever they need a serious action sequence. The pre-rendered stuff obviously looks better, but still uses the in-game assets for everything, so it's not a marked improvement. Enemy design is pretty original for the series, but almost all of them are the same shades of dark grey, so they're not especially striking.

It's really not the best the series has looked, at all, and either Sega need to give them more budget, they need a better art director, or they need to ditch the Hedgehog Engine and find a better solution.

MUSIC

I'm no music expert, I don't normally have much to add. That being said, I've seen complaints levelled at the more atmospheric soundtrack of the game. Honestly, I didn't have a problem with it at all - I found it just about suited the mood for almost every kind of scenario. I did, eventually, have to switch on the jukebox when I started grinding everything out - a post launch feature allowing you to collect legacy songs from the franchise and listen to them throughout regular exploration. The highlight are the vocal themes that play during bosses - much different than what I'm really used to from Sonic games lately, but most of which really stuck with me. Real good tunes.

CONCLUSION

I'm writing this about the main game, and I've not played The Final Horizon as of yet because I want to review that addendum separately. Ultimately, I think my perception of this game is coloured more positively than many due to a.) parts of this game appealing to my own desires from a Sonic title, and b.) playing it after every major update was out allowed me to experience a more complete and fixed-up product than what people who played at launch did. As it is, I think Sonic Frontiers is a perfectly OK and functional game - but with many caveats that stop me short of recommending it wholeheartedly. If you tried it, and didn't vibe with it, it ain't for you. And judging from this page, it definitely isn't for a lot of people. I'm fortunately to be able to appreciate this for what it is...but it doesn't stop me from being disappointed at what it isn't.

First of all: big credit to Draco from Gatorbox for unearthing this unreleased prototype for the world to see - he did a great writeup on the game and its history which can be found here: https://battlebotsupdate.com/the-battlebots-prototype/

Battlebots - a tv show with one hell of an iceberg to it. Based on an idea called Robot Wars, coined by the late Marc Thorpe, it was to be the biggest event in America - arguably even the world - for budding engineers and roboticists who want to build radio-controlled death machines and make them fight. While the first event was streamed online (in the late 90s, so...yeah, I think that one's lost media) and the second was broadcast as a pay-per-view event, it was Comedy Central of all channels who picked it up for 5 seasons, from 2000-2002. What was basically packaged and advertised as "watch these two loud-ass commentators make jokes about this lame nerd war" accidentally became big enough to dethrone South Park, for a brief period. A series of circumstances would, unfortunately, lead to its cancellation after its fifth season - some claim it was due to the forced sketches, or the devolution of the meta towards tanky wedge-bots with no actual weapon, or a lawsuit that Battlebots filed against one of Comedy Central's sponsors. Either way, the show was halted, and wouldn't find a new network until 2015 - a run that, after a brief second cancellation, continues to this day (well, not to jinx it - it has not currently been renewed for another season as the time of writing) on Discovery Channel.

Thing is, that initial cancellation from Comedy Central had a knock-on effect - the cancellation of this very game. Despite developer Warthog having it almost ready to go, after another round of bugfixing, publisher THQ figured that Warthog's efforts were best spent elsewhere, than for a game for a just-cancelled show. So, everything went to waste and what's left is a mostly-functional prototype. It's seemingly feature complete, but not fully playable. Several bugs can cause the game to freeze, and certain things are just not quite right.

In terms of gameplay, this is easily the best officially licensed robot combat game. The Robot Wars games were varying degrees of terrible, though some more lovable than others in spite of their low budgets and awful physics. The physics here are incredibly arcadey and not true to life at all, but makes for some very enjoyable combat, particularly when spinners are involved. Each bot has four different HP bars: Armor, Frame, Weapon, and...I think motors? I've virtually never seen any meaningful damage done to that last category, but it makes the most sense. Armor can absorb frame damage, and if the weapon HP reaches zero, you're offenseless. Frame HP is the most important part, as your robot immediately breaks into pieces upon it hitting zero. The actual damage is pretty great to watch, with armor pieces having different models depending on HP value, and it's good fun watching parts (or entire robots) be sent flying to the other end of the arena, oil puddles in their wake (despite motor oil being a fairly uncommon sight in most bots...).

That being said, damage values and what affects them can be fairly janky. A weapon to weapon hit can often be as bad for you as the opponent, but this even applies if your robot's powerful spinning disc impact the opponent's pathetic metal spike. Frame damage can come from very weak hits, and it can all seem a bit unfair. Not to mention, some bots are simply better than others (Nightmare FTW).

The arena itself can be a dangerous place too - the main Battlebox is fitted with a handful of the hazards seen in the real thing (though scaled down and not nearly as many of them). They basically amount to "don't drive onto this part of the floor or you take damage from underneath". The exceptions are the corner hammers - "pulversiers" - which strike from above. In arcade mode, these are pretty much all removed, but replaced by random power ups that appear out of nowhere and temporarily buff your weapon, speed or just straight up gives you some seconds of invincibility. It can also disrupt your opponent's drive or give them contact electrical damage - the only negative effect you can receive is having phantom killsaws appear on the floor around your robot. The powerups are a fair idea to make arcade mode more, well, arcadey, but balance is assuredly not a factor with them around. That being said, balance isn't much of a thing in this game to begin with.

The roster is pretty good, all things considered - a fair mix of actual bots from the show, and shitty-looking OCs with the built-in editor. While you're meant to unlock these through gameplay, its unreleased state left me with no idea how, or even if you unlock them, so I used the save file provided by Draco. Robots are separated into four weight classes; lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight and super heavyweight. Curiously, within arcade mode, you have to defeat four robots in each weight division, starting from lightweight and working your way up. This leaves no real reason to pick anything other than a super heavyweight (or a very good heavyweight), as lighter weight classes are virtually guaranteed a loss once you reach the higher divisions.

Once unlocked, the bots from the show make for a nice enough variation of weapon types. That being said, the heavyweight bot Nightmare is essentially the best choice. His giant vertical spinning weapon can absolutely launch opponents, and its biggest real-life weaknesses - tilting to one side when turning due to the gyroscopic forces of the spinning weapon, and being unable to self-right when overturned - don't apply here, as tilting the analog stick in a particular direction magically turns the whole bot over. You can also build your own bot, but the editor is understandably limited and you're not going to have an easy time to start with, on account of the limited budget (shockingly realistic). You can certainly make some viable builds, but I think most people would rather just throw Mauler or Ziggo into the ring and actually look good while smashing things.

Graphically, the arena and bots look pretty solid and show accurate - though the scaling for both are pretty wildly off in certain cases. Sometimes you'll get a shot of the drivers after winning though, and they're so pathetically low-poly that I can't even tell if those are the builder's likenesses or not. Not really sure why they bothered, honestly. You can fight in other arenas that aren't the Battlebox, but I couldn't tell any real difference other than the theming. Robot Wars games had some really crazy arena variations, with minefields, molten steel pools and nuclear missile silos, so it feels a little pointless to have 9 variations of the same design. Perhaps more was planned, but didn't make the final completed build. The same is supposedly true of the bot roster.

In terms of audio, the music isn't taken from the show (as far as I remember) but it does match the vibe. Damage noises are mostly goofy stock sounds, but the show dubbed those over the actual arena audio anyway, so I suppose that's authentic! My favourite part of all, though, is ring announcer Mark Beiro reprising his role and having recorded his trademark goofy intros for each bot in the roster - even the shitty OC bots. They're a good laugh, though there's only one intro for each bot so they sadly get old quick.

Now, while all is well and good on paper, there are a few key issues. Certain things are just outright broken in this build - first and foremost, Biohazard. A heavyweight robot built by Carlo Bertocchini, it was a low-profile bot armed with a four-bar lifting arm. It's insanely low ground clearance allowed it to get right under and overturn opponents, with side skirts to hinder similar bots from doing the same. Winning two heavyweight divisions in the original US Robot Wars, followed by four Battlebots championship titles, it was the most successful heavyweight combat robot of its era.

And it immediately crashes the game upon being selected.

Yeah, bit of a bummer that one. And in case you're wondering, it's broken to the point of crashing the game if the AI selects it as well, which is certainly a rude way to end an Arcade Mode run. Other instances include some of Mark Beiro's voice lines tending to break, instead playing some corrupted garbage file as audio and damaging my poor ears in the process. The game usually locks up not long after that. Certain UI elements also break often, and that's just the bugs I came across.

Still, altogether, Battlebots had the making of a genuinely fun game. The physics are goofy yet fun, the bots look good, and some testing could easily eliminate the remaining problems. Sadly, this wasn't to be, and to this day there's not many robot combat games out there. Robot Arena 2 is in-depth (for it's time), but old and broken, in spite of the modding community. Robot Arena 3 is a scam, Robot Rumble 2 is ridiculously complicated for better and for worse (and is still in early alpha after all these years). Hell, there are some roblox games that offer a decent pick-up-and-play alternative. But nothing truly big has appeared yet, in spite of the continued run of the show to this day (knock on wood). Still, it's a really fortunate outcome that despite this game being cancelled, we can still play...most of it. And given the lack of alternatives, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to any robot combat fan who's reading this. I'm sure there's dozens of us!

N-Gage has decent games, what are the odds?

Resident Evil Degeneration is based on the movie of the same name - a distinction no other Resident Evil movie would receive, to my recollection. I watched the movie itself before playing this tie-in; in terms of accuracy, there's not really any point comparing because this game only covers the setting of Degeneration's opening act, heavily padding it out and expanding on it to the point of being a videogame's worth of content. Despite this, it still clocked in at a measly sub-2 hours; there's an achievement for beating it in under 45 minutes.

Graphics are about on par with early PS1, but on a phone screen - both remarkable for the time, but also pretty paltry compared to say, the DS, and utterly ugly to witness now. Leon's character model is the only one that received much love; the other human characters are ugly and kind of misshapen, Senator Ron Davis in particular having a head that looks like it came out of Goldeneye with cheats on. Environments aren't so bad, with some neat effects on offer. I did, however, get a chuckle out of the endlessly reused "Flying to the UK?" poster, plastered about 4 times on every wall. It can't have been a memory issue, because the same poster appears in at least 4 different colours throughout - I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the dev's offices to see what the reasons were for the many unique decisions made throughout the 15 month development.

Most of the effort likely went into gameplay - which is a legitimately impressive distillation of Resident Evil 4's mold-breaking gameplay style, crammed down onto a Nokia phone. The aiming, the knifing, the ability to kick enemies and doors alike, it's just about all here. Even the sodding instant-kill quicktime events, which are almost as annoying here as they were in actual RE4. I noticed a bit of unresponsiveness with inputs, and it took me a long time to adapt to the limited assortment of available buttons.

I'd make a point about how easy the game was, even on normal - zombies appear in small numbers, and are easily felled by headshots. Even the knife, if timed right, can dispatch a zombie with little resistance. This might be the easiest knife-only run in the franchise, with the short length and abundance of healing items at every turn. By the end, I still had 3 first aid sprays and 10+ green herbs on me, and not for lack of using them! Yellow herbs also appear to increase Leon's maximum HP, and you don't even have to mix them with green herbs...because herb mixing, understandably, did not make it in. The inventory sorting system was also cut - again, entirely reasonable. However, having played this via an emulator, and mapping the inputs to a controller, it likely offered a far greater precision than an actual Nokia phone ever could have. So with all this considered, the game may be far more appropriately difficult on actual hardware. Still, there are a lot of concessions made...

You simply have a (pretty gargantuan) amount of storage available compared to past Resi games, which can be expanded further by buying from the merchant. No, sadly not the cloaked weirdo with the funny voice from RE4 (actually, almost no voice acting at all, other than Leon's iconic death moan from RE4), but other special forces soldiers who went in to fight the infected, and uh...decided to set up shop instead? Everything is pretty cheap even to begin with, but with the sheer amount of money that enemies dropped (THOSE DOGS HAD $300 ON THEM?! EACH!?) there are treasures adding to Leon's immense wealth even further. It's very, very easy to end up with every weapon fully upgraded around the three-quarters point - and the knife is still all you really need anyway.

Altogether, it's a very short plod (Leon is slow as hell here), through handfuls of easily dispatched zombies, poorly rendered character models, and brain-dead bosses (there are no less than THREE separate Tyrants in this game. Which, in case you were wondering, is three more Tyrants than there were in the movie.). But between the technical achievements, enjoyable banter between Leon and Hunnigan (when not endlessly repeating the mission objectives) and attempt at cinematic cutscenes...I can't help but have a certain fondness for this game! They made something that was very much designed to be played on an old shitty mobile phone with fuck-all battery and inconvenient buttons that are ill-suited to gaming. To make a fully-functioning Resi game that plays like a scaled-down Resi 4 while still catering to these limitations has earned my respect...and it's not entirely unfun, either!

I don't know much about the actual quality of the N-Gage library, but this feels like a must-play as far as that service is concerned. As far as Resi in general goes? If you have the means to play it, I genuinely think it's worth a quick try - maybe you'll take as much a liking to it as I did!

Just an absolute fucking mess on all accounts. In my brief experience with the game, I've found it to be an absolutely user-hostile experience with no intention of actually gathering a playerbase - as is evident by the playcount. The menu is an overdesigned disaster, the shooting is incredibly clunky, and the stealth mechanics are dubious at best. The tutorial only explains the bare essentials, and trial-by-fire is the only other way to find out anything. All I found out is that the game is not fun, not designed to be fun, and likely never will be fun.

EDIT: in my rage, i forgot to add - microtransactions and a battle pass in a paid game. How incredibly bold of them. If I didn't get this in a humble bundle I'd be actively offended.

I give the servers a year at the absolute most.

I've been debating for a while whether I wanted to write a review for Silent Hill: The Short Message. I actually had one half-done and completely scrapped it because dogpiling further on something that's already being (rightfully) bashed by half the internet felt like a waste of energy, and I'd rather just spend my time turning "pixels make monkey brain release happy chemicals" into several paragraphs, or at the very least discussing something that has pros and cons. TSM kept showing up, though, and after seeing a bit of the developer interviews, I felt like I needed to write something, if only for the sake of catharsis. Strap in, this is going to be a long rant.

Content Warning: Spoilers, plus every warning that comes with this game (suicide, self-harm, bullying, parental/sexual abuse, etcetera).

My understanding of the current strategy at Konami is that the years of mismanagement left the company devoid of its original talent, so the same people that ran the company into the ground now try to find a way to outsource as much they can of their existing IP, see what sticks, and run with it. Silent Hill is their main victim, and The Short Message, their latest attempt at "reviving" the once prestigious series by having developer HexaDrive puppeteer the corpse.

And I wouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole -- I accepted long ago that Silent Hill is dead -- but I heard someone say that it was made by an indie developer and it was about gay girls and grief, which picked my interest. After going through TSM... I guess I understand how one could conclude that's what was happening if they squinted? But like, really squinted, and missed the collectables that establish Maya as not only heterosexual, but also pregnant? It's really not a queer narrative -- but never mind that, because that's far from biggest problem.

The Short Message can be described as an infinite trainwreck. It's not simply that it's bad -- it is, right from the start -- but as it goes on and on, as you stare in disbelief as more and more train piles up and the carnage keeps increasing, it becomes so much worse. In my first run, I wrote it off as a well-meaning but horrendously hamfisted attempt at tackling a serious theme, but as I dove into it, the more it felt like an offensive, out-of-touch caricature of what it portrayed, then finally as an harmful, exploitative piece of media and a terrible omen for the future of Konami properties. And instead of jumping right through to the end, let's go through each of those stages to understand why defenses offered for the game's many issues are absurd.

Hamfisted

One of the greatest tools a horror writer can employ is the uncertain, the unknown. Scares are not nearly as effective as the anxiety that precedes them. Show the monster and we'll run the opposite direction. Imply a monster and we'll be tense the whole day, not knowing what it is or when or from where it will jump out at us. This goes for smaller and/or more abstract aspects of the world, as well: information that is directly told isn't as impactful as that which the reader pieces out on their own from breadcrumbs scattered in the text, and then some of their own imagination. The keyword here is "subtlety".

Think of Silent Hill 2. In that game, protagonist James Sunderland is invited to Silent Hill via a letter from his wife Mary, which is especially suspicious considering that Mary has been dead for three entire years. Except not really, as we soon find out. Even worse, we start discovering that James not only is not sound of mind, he might not be the good person he says he is. These things come up organically over the narrative: there are multiple things we can deduce about James as a character from his behavior, and he is a textbook example of an unreliable narrator, which leaves the truth behind multiple events undetermined.

The Short Message, on the other hand, features teens toxic relationship with social media, so in a span of thirty seconds, the main character looks at her phone, concludes and states aloud that she'll always have less followers than her friend, and decides to kill herself right then and there. Y'know. Just in case you didn't realize that she has a bad thing going on with social media, like, she has very low self esteem, and is depressed, and... did I mention social media? Because maybe you missed that.

Whether the writers think of themselves too highly or of their audience as complete idiots, the fact is that The Short Message is more afraid of its player than the opposite. It is a game desperate to be understood, certain that its player won't manage to grasp it, leading it to spell out everything in eye-rollingly clear detail. Every character's motivations is expressed plainly, every note, flashback and monologue recounts events in vivid, unnatural detail through writing so stiff it could qualify as a blunt weapon, and nothing is left to be felt, interpreted or speculated.

The result is a mix of second-hand embarassment, accidental comedy and tastelessness, and there are many, many examples of that we could pick apart, from the way the game communicates the protagonist's suffering of parental abuse, her relationship with social media, views on mental health... Even the names. Maya's full name is Maya Hindenburg. There are a bunch of problems with the game's supposedly German setting, starting with the name "Kettenstadt", and as a non-German person, I'll leave that to the German folk to elucidate but calling a German character, especially one like Maya, "Hindenburg", is truly something special.

One of the worst offenders, though, actually has nothing to do with any of the characters and is instead a note that describes "The Silent Hill Phenomenon", a medical phenomenon where mentally distraught people will sometimes see fog outside in days of clear weather. "Societal uncertainty or apprehension about the future manifests as fog". It's a desperate and transparent attempt to explain how one can silent hill outside of Silent Hill, and as such, this is a Silent Hill game!

Besides lacking any sort of grace or mystery, this excuse is being made about something that truly doesn't matter: the physical location of games has been the least of the franchise's problems in the last decade or two. Resident Evil 4 took place miles away from Raccoon City and the T-Virus, but it was a great game, so who cares? Heck, P.T. took place in a hallway and people went nuts over it, and it's unlikely the hype would have died down if they'd announce it wouldn't take place in literal Silent Hill. But apparently, it's such a big deal to the writers that they needed to include this note about it in the game.

Out-of-touch

The Short Message isn't a queer narrative, but the first chapter definitely has one thinking otherwise. Was this intentional? Was the developer queerbaiting for clout? At first, it felt like this might be the case, but then Hanlon's razor hit, and one look at the rest of the script revealed that the explanation was probably much simpler: this story about teenage girls had probably been written by an out-of-touch middle-aged man who only ever observed them from afar. This suspicion was later confirmed in the developer interviews.

There's a tendency for men like that to, mixing their own perception of sexuality with their ignorance on the nuances of social interactions between young women, write characters that read as absolute gal pals, but are actually super straight, creating these fictional people that register as unnatural to most people and as somewhat revolting to queer folk, as they reinforce the narrative that homosexuality is just a phase people grow out of while simultaneously fetishizing same-sex attraction.

Not that it's worth lingering on the topic of queerness, because unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as TSM's portrayals of people go: the way teenage girls are presented registers like a condescending caricature made by an older generation, complete with an understanding on how young people engage with social media that could reasonably air on your regional equivalent of Fox News. Furthermore, the events involving bullying are so surface-level that they seem straight out of some American rom-com -- the jocks 'jumpscare' gets more laughter than gasps -- and the portrayals of mental illness are uninformed at best and harmful at worst.

The latter is especially problematic because TSM operates under the guise of doing public service and warning about suicide -- more on that in a second -- but good intentions aren't enough when talking about such a theme. Much to the contrary: because vulnerable people will very easily shut themselves off from others, reveling in platitudes like TSM does is far more likely to have the opposite effect from the desired one. Ironically, the game alludes to this phenomenon, but misunderstands it and paints it as a character flaw.

At one point in the story, Anita tells her friend via text that "adults don't understand". It's meant as a failure of her character -- she won't reach out -- but she's right. Adults don't understand. They forget that being a teenager is a messed up part of life, where these developing kids struggle with all sorts of intensive changes to their brains and bodies, as well as a gamut of emotions adults may have gotten used to after years of living them, but teens are definitely not. If anything, the amount of vile discourse around perfectly normal teenager insecurities TSM sprung out of people is proof that we definitely don't care enough for our teens, and are probably encouraging them to shut themselves off instead of seeking help.

Which is a very good segue into the next point: a lingering question throughout The Short Message's runtime is "does this game have anything to say?". Yes, social media bad. We know. Facebook has been there for 20 years and we've all seen it. And yes, depression bad, and that hotline number spammed on the player's face will maybe help. And? Are you going to say something about it, open some sort of discussion, make some criticism that isn't of the main character herself?

Let me help with some leading questions: how does our current societies and the physical spaces they occupy shape teenagers relationship with social media, and are the problems in that relationship exclusive to that age group? What could be changed about social media to avoid that? What sort of structures are in place that allow, if not incentivise bullying to happen, and what groups are more often targeted? What about cyberbullying, specifically? Are women more vulnerable? Are artists and artistic-minded folk more likely to suffer from mental illnesses?

There are many discussions TSM could bring to the table if it would just stop and focus into one theme. The problem is, it isn't remotely interested in any of those things.

Exploitative

A somewhat frustrating take that's taken over discourse around the Silent Hill series is that it's all about "trauma". It's a reductionist view, for one, as the series presents a variety of fascinating themes, and trauma is mostly worked on in Silent Hill 2. Even looking at that game alone, however, the lens it uses to examine that subject is important: when people say SH2 is about trauma, they refer to how that game examines it through people who have suffered through it, not focusing on their past, but instead, on their present. It's not literally about trauma, it's about the broken husks of people that trauma leaves behind.

In TSM, there's a scene somewhere in the first half of the game triggered by interacting with a bloodied sink where a razor sits. It's a graphic scene that shows the protagonist inflicting self-harm while crying and begging for forgiveness, and from the start, it registered as tasteless and unnecessary: looking at the sink already told the entire story, and if you've dealt with people that practice self-harm, you know it's not something to be shown. Much worse than misguided, however, hearing the developers themselves repeat this idea of Silent Hill equaling trauma and how it shaped their entire work reveals the ugly truth: TSM is entirely about trauma and in no way about people.

Suicide isn't a theme to be discussed, but rather, it's material, and the point of the game is not, in fact, in starting conversations about the topic, nor in building characters or exploring their mental states. Instead, it wants its small cast to suffer as hard as possible, in as many ways as possible, for the audience's perverse appreciation. It's a theme park ride where we tack as many mental illnesses and assorted cruelties as possible onto the character so as to... scare? the player? "To your left, right now, the liiiiiiiiving room of chiiiiild abuuuuuse!!! 👻". It has been labeled "trauma tourism" by some, an accurate descriptor for what the game actually achieves.

It turns out, and gamers with lower constitutions might want to sit down before hearing this, but good horror isn't just a slideshow of bad stuff. It's actually an elaborate sequence of build ups, releases, and developments. Shocking, right? It goes further than that: psychological horror isn't quite the same as flipping through the pages in the ICD's psychiatry section. Doing so is more likely to confuse than to terrify, and the fact that people who didn't understand these things got a few million dollars and the license to a high-profile IP is disturbing.

Or, really, understand anything about writing a good story or dealing with sensitive subjects. To think HexaDrive was once being considered as developers for the Silent Hill 2 Remake... if these people had written Silent Hill 2, they'd place a note with a psych evaluation of James somewhere so as to clue the player in. There would be more flashbacks showing Eddie being bullied than actual meetings with Eddie, and they'd be sure to show Angela being violently abused on camera. Otherwise, how would the player realize why those characters act the way they do, and how would they be able to empathize?

Not that Bloober Team is set to fare any better, but we'll cross that (burning) bridge when we get there. For now, Silent Hill: The Short Message is a pathetic addition not simply to the already bastardized enough Silent Hill series, but to gaming in general, and the fact that it claims to have a message of any sort, to have importance, is offensive. If anything, it serves as a strong proof that free can sometimes be too expensive a price of admission.

The chase sections

...oh, yeah, this is not a pure walking sim, there's chase sections and such. Bolted on chase sections, so I might as well bolt on something about them to this review. There are a few chase sections where Anita is pursued by a cherry blossom monster in the Otherworld, and you know they're coming because she will begin to desperately pant and whimper as soon as she steps into one such area, almost as if the game was telling its player it's time to be scared.

What's most jarring about these sections, however, is how HexaDrive managed to make something entirely composed of outdated horror game tropes. There's even a bit at the very end of the game that's reminiscent of The Eight Pages, except with none of the depth, or charm, or... anything that already lousy game had to offer. I doubt ever they played The Eight Pages or even lived through its heights of popularity to understand what made it click, anyway.

Likewise, some believe Silent Hill: The Short Message to be some sort of response to P.T., as if to show they don't need Kojima to make a beloved free teaser. I refuse to believe the anyone involved in this nonsense ever played P.T., or even know it existed. If they did, and this was truly an attempt to replicate it's success... let's say it's no simple feat to miss the mark by this much, and congratulations are in order.

A fun side effect of writing about games, even on an amateur level, is that one ends up reflecting and researching on games a bit deeper and thus getting to know more about them than if they just hop from game to game. I originally planned to open this review by talking about the early days of the DS and PSP, how despite the DS being the best selling (and arguably best) portable in history, the two portables being presented in 2004 left audiences puzzled as to what Nintendo was thinking, and why anyone would want that quirky thing instead of the much slicker PSP. That's because I believed that to be the cause for Konami opting to play it safe and make the first DS Castlevania a sequel -- an assumption which proved incorrect.

No, Iga was pretty much sold on the DS from the start, and Aria of Sorrow's great sales on a Nintendo platform sealed the deal on the DS as the host for the next portable entry in the Castlevania series. As for why make a direct sequel, in particular, that is owed to Iga knowing that he and his team had accomplished something special with Aria, both in terms of storyline and gameplay. Iga truly loves the soul system from that game, and that would become even more evident years later, with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, but I digress.

As a direct sequel to Aria, Dawn of Sorrow might get criticised for being a rethreading of known ground, but the fact of the matter is, it's rethreading some damn solid ground. Most of what I mention in my Aria of Sorrow review applies to its sequel as well, from the robust gameplay systems to the beautiful sprite art. There are some areas in which Dawn attempts to stand out from its prequel, some of which are successful, some of which, not so much.

Immediately apparent from the cover of the game is that the art style for character art was changed, moving away from Ayami Kojima's (gorgeous) character portraits to... somewhat generic anime art. This change is said to be a result of demographics, with portable gamers being mainly children and, as such, it making sense to use character art that appealed more to that age group. Unfortunately, none of us happened to be in the room when that decision was taken to loudly point out that Aria was a success among that very demographic and that aging down the brand identity so suddenly might be a bad idea, so this is what we got stuck with.

It's not that the character art is terrible -- it reminds me of Rondo, which also used anime art and is still widely beloved by the fanbase -- but Dawn is trying to tell a story from a handicapped position and nailing the gothic horror vibes right from the cover would have helped its case by a lot. See, the position of a sequel to a work that was never written in a way to have one is a difficult one: the big twists have already happened and characters have experienced their respective growths, so what do we work with to make a new story?

(Incidentally, Dawn opens by spoiling the big twist in Aria, so absolutely play Aria first if you can.)

What immediately springs to mind are those Disney direct-to-VHS sequels that were mostly pretty forgettable, when not antithetical to the original work, as that's absolutely the vibe one gets when one mischievous gang of troublemakers shows up in the opening in Dawn to oppose Soma and his crew. The generic cartoon aesthetic makes for a poor first impression even though the storyline is actually quite competent and, for a game ostensibly marketed at children, it shows some rather dark imagery.

The idea is that, with Dracula being forever gone, a cult forms from people that desire a new Dark Lord, and a few of its head figures step forward as candidates to fill the power vacuula. They decide to have a go at Soma, attacking him and his girlfriend when the two are hanging out in town, and our boy doesn't take too kindly to that, setting out in pursuit of the group, pulling the whole crew from Aria in with him. What follows is a metroidvania romp just like Aria, which has Soma claiming monsters' souls as he brings down the Dark Lord wannabes.

Where Dawn successfully improves on Aria is in quality of life features as well as better tuning. On the former front, Soma can now use two different equipment sets that can be swapped at the press of the X button, a very welcome feature as it switching souls without entering the menu, thus letting the player adapt to each situation faster. The game also makes good use of the DS's top screen, displaying either the castle map or a screen with Soma's and enemy's stats. While having the map always visible is a godsend in this genre, having enemy info readily available is great when farming souls, as it does exactly the same thing the gadget from the Advance Collection does in Aria.

As for tuning, weapons have been rebalanced, emphasizing their variety. There's even a system through which, by imbuing weapons with certain souls, they can be upgraded, a nice addition that unfortunately ends up underutilized due to the rarity of some of the souls it requires. Having a use for excess souls, however, is a nice thought, and again I point to Bloodstained as the unofficial successor to Dawn, with Iga further refining this idea in that game.

Incidentally, while Aria already had souls that powered up with their count, Dawn brings this feature to the forefront explicitly calling it the Soul Level -- this is also a key feature in Bloodstained, where it exists for all souls-- uh, all shards. Souls have also been retooled in Dawn: while a lot of them are reskins from those from Aria, there are a handful of interesting new additions to the roster, and the player can expect to work with different toolsets than the ones the prequel gives. Of note is that late game souls are absolutely stacked, making them really gratifying to use.

And they have to be, because the best part of Dawn is its extremely challenging bosses. Aria's were great, but Dawn takes it to a new level: every boss is a unique enemy with a carefully crafted moveset, and their hits are extremely punishing. Even when spamming items, playing sloppily ultimately ends up in Soma getting overwhelmed, so instead, the player is expected to learn each tell and carefully avoid each attack. The magic seal mechanic is the cherry on top, forcing the player to remain vigilant for the prompt while adding flavor to finishing off the boss.

(Admittedly, if playing on an emulator, magic seals are an absolutely cursed mechanic, practically serving as an accidental form of anti-piracy . In that case, use the mod that removes them from the game.)

But is it better than Aria? Probably not: it will never be able to count on the simplicity and novelty factor that that game presented. However, even if it doesn't surpass its predecessor, it is a thoroughly enjoyable game that proudly stands at its prequel's side. Fans of Aria willing to look past a horrid first impression will find themselves a fiercely challenging game that brings back many of the original's boons.

Sunny-side-up eggs and toast. A warm cup of coffee. Relaxing piano music. An easel and a canvas. What better way to enjoy a morning?

Behind the Frame invites its player to revel in that tranquil scenery. It tells the story of a young painter who's trying her best to enter an art exhibition in New York and, on an afternoon that would have been spent with the easel, ends up learning more about an old neighbor who doesn't interact with other people much. As a short narrative-focused game, it's better not to go any deeper into the story in a review: suffice to say, it's a touching and easy to relate to story about being true to oneself and one's feelings.

Much like Tangle Tower, another 2D hand-animated point-n-click on Steam, Behind the Frame immediately distinguishes itself through its immaculate vibes: the Ghibli-inspired characters and animation, gorgeous environments and emotional tunes are highly effective in setting the mood to our lovable artist's surreal adventure. The similarities end there, however, as Behind the Frame is much more focused on its narrative than anything else.

The game is strictly linear, with six chapters composed of events that unfold in sequence -- not unexpected from a narrative game, but the particular choice of mechanics here does end up giving off this distinct feeling of being constrained. It's also far lighter on puzzles, which, bar the ones at the tail end of the game, are solvable within seconds. This makes the package less attractive for its brainteasers, and more of a game to unwind to on a lazy evening. On that front, it makes a very compelling case for itself.

This is the first original IP from Akatsuki Taiwan, and it does leave a good impression along with the lingering question on whether they'll make more original games like this.

Sayonara: Wild Hearts is a musical action game by Simogo that puts the player in control of a woman with a broken heart as she explores the surreal world inside her mind. It's also the source of the prettiest migraine I have ever had.

Speaking purely in terms of presentation, Sayonara is an achievement on its own. Using the familiar motifs of tarot arcanas, the game establishes its protagonist and the antagonists in gorgeously animated 3D scenes that seamlessly merge into the gameplay. Tension builds up and releases along with the beats, which in themselves are a treat for the synthwave enjoyers out there. There are also some fantastic ideas that mesh concepts related to sound and music to the level design in unexpected and mindblowing ways, the Stereo Lovers stage being my uncontested favorite.

But there is such a thing as too much color, too much flashing and too much motion. Having finished the game in a single sitting just over an hour long, I walked away with a headache so bad, the mere thought of playing the game again to attempt high scores or solve the riddles felt terrifying. I shiver to think of someone with actual epilepsy trying this game out, as even for me, as beautiful as the motorcycle ride through the Heartbreak Subspace was, it's hard to tell if it was worth it in the end.

Plus, as wondrous as the sights are, the gameplay lacks the mechanical precision that one would expect from a game tagged as rhythm. Controls feel floaty and the intense use of perspective and unusual framing leads to lots of avoidable mistakes when dodging or swaying. Plus, the intended movement rarely matches the beat, which means this is less of a musical game and more a game with music playing along the action. These are all intentional design decisions, mind you, and they work very well for what the game is trying to achieve, but it bears saying that this won't scratch the rhythm game itch nor does it have that extensive, satisfying replayability those games tend to have.

All in all, Sayonara: Wild Hearts merits a recommendation, but a very cautious one. You have to know what you’re getting into, and you should have some aspirin nearby just in case.

Can I be honest with you guys? I don’t care about F-Zero. Like at all.

The one game that I arguably had played and liked was GX, which seemed to be the common consensus, otherwise I have no string opinions one way or the other across the entire series despite the cool world and characters, it was a series that never really interested me.

So why do I find myself damn near addicted to this game?

F Zero 99 is fun, not without it faults most possibly due to the business model the game adheres to but it’s a fun, addicting, challenging and exhilarating ride.

F Zero 99 was a game that received some flack when it was revealed nearly 3 weeks ago, a direct that while fine had nothing Super note worthy other than that Paper Mario Remake. Of course as a Cing stan I lost my mind over the Another Code remake collection which obviously means Kyle Hyde will return, but too any sane person this was one of the only newer announcements. Reactions were not very good, it was elevated by it being leaked beforehand but the blow still hurt for most fans, and again I did not care. But alongside a thing I was semi excited for and got disappointed I downloaded this on my Switch and to my surprise, I had way too much fun.

This game manages to be incredibly accessible to newcomers while having a ton of depth and nuance to it. The battle royale structure fits F Zero the best out of all these 99 games since there’s a level of feedback there that’s not in any of these other games, it gets a bit chaotic sometimes but on the whole it’s a super fun time trying to survive as a person who usually isn’t a fan of these games, the elimination gimmick isn’t as prevalent as all the other games but there’s a frantic energy and euphoria climbing up the ranks and going fast, feels like an extreme version of bumper cars and I love it.

There are a few issues, due the free to play model, the stage and vehicle selection is quite limited right now, the rotation stuff for Grand Prix and such I don’t really like and is just artificial scarcity for the sake of it, and given it’s a gloried remake of the first game, the graphics aren’t anything to right home about.

But literally my main complaints are just wishing there was more of it, it’s really hard to put into word what makes this game so fun other than it’s fun to go fast, but it’s just fun to go fast. Maybe it’s because of what I played alongside it, but i had a ton of fun with F Zero 99, gonna try and get 1st and maybe even try GX again!

Alright let’s do this one more time.

Sonic Frontiers is a game that I have played and spoken about as a total of 3 times on here as of now, 4 if you count the preview I played in London, and it’s a game that I have no strong opinions on one way or the other. I don’t really hate Sonic Frontiers, but I am not really a fan of it either? It’s a very weird game that for some reason is called the pinnacle of Sonic even at release. It baffles me, I won’t judge but I’m confused at this games reception, even more so than now with this latest updates. I was originally planning on doing a re-review of the entire game alongside talking about the new updates, but I feel there’s first of all no need, second I think it could make a good video and lastly, I don’t have the energy to re review a game that I don’t have much of a stance on. Anyway, why am I talking about these updates?

Sonic Frontiers is the first sonic game to feature free content updates, 3 major updates to be exact, adding new features, modes, options and for the last update, an entire new story. Even as someone who didn’t really care about Frontiers, this intrigued me, I don’t know if i thought if it would fix the game but at least I could maybe, maybe see what all the hype was about. The answer is more complicated then I could imagine, but unfortunately, I’m leaning towards a negative side. This is gonna be a long, negative ass review of Frontiers after launch, I’m tired.

Update 1: Sights, Sound, and Speedymcfly!!!

Update 1 is what Is the update in my opinion, that put stuff that was probably supposed to be in the game at launch into it, and it does it job, fine. This right here is a fine update. The features in this update are quite cool but needed a bit more time in the oven, something we will see later on especially. First, there’s a new jukebox mode that contains songs from across the series, I like this, as someone who doesn’t really care about Frontiers music, it’s nice to get songs that I actually like and can listen to while running around at the literal speed of sound, getting them is fun as you need to think out of the box to get some of the better song choices, usually vocal songs, while others are easy to find. You also have a photo mode, which isn’t very good in my opinion, it’s feels so limited since you can’t even use it in cyberspace, it only has a limited pool of filters and, nothing else. No pose’s, stickers, other unique filters or anything else, it’s just serviceable.

The other two modes are the ones that add, like, actual replay value to Frontiers. In the base game, there was nothing of the sort other than Arcade Mode where you can replay Cyberspace, which was nice if you wanted a higher rank but in terms of going back to the game, that was it. There was nothing to really go back on and improve on, there was no ranking system in combat, no super sonic to mess with, no post game side objectives or anything. So adding these where a welcome addition, it’s fine. Again I have to stress this is a fine update, but it’s nothing that really boosted my enjoyment on the game as much as I wanted it, we got a boss rush and egg shuttle which is nice. Sorry for the short and scattershot thoughts but there’s not really much to say on this update, it adds more meat to Frontiers which is a good thing but other than that, nothing really outstanding or that great honestly.

(There’s also extreme mode which I haven’t unlocked but from I heard it’s quite bad despite the few neat additions it adds)

Update 2: Sonic’s birthday bash (He died when he turned 15! F in the chat 😔)

Update 2 was the update that I kinda brushed over, something that I didn’t really know what to expect, and it surprised me and how good it was, there’s even some moments of where I thought, okay, I kinda get it now. Not to the point where I would call it my favourite sonic game, but instead of me not really coming back to it unless I get the PC Version and mod it, it’s a game that I could come back to if I’m feeling up for it.

Update 2 shakes up a lot of things, the birthday stuff is quite superfluous, it’s nothing then a cosmetic thing which I don’t really care about. But everything in this update doesn’t miss, I’m serious, nearly aspect while could have done with some work, enhances the game. First, a very small but incredibly helpful thing is that you can keep your speed while jumping, this is such a small but wonderful fix as it keeps the flow of the game instead being kinda awkward. What this update adds are new action chain challenges, and these are really great, essentially you need to go around the map collecting chains, which you can do my homing attacking on stuff, rail grinding etc, all while collecting orbs to multiple your score. This is fun because it’s using Frontiers whack ass world design to its benefit whole providing a fun challenge, it’s like, actual side content. And what you get for the reward is so great, the spin dash. Around this time Khisimoto was taking in feedback from the community, and for better or worse, this is one of the things added. The Spin dash here isn’t really a Spin dash per say more like a Spin Boost, but as someone who enjoyed using the drop dash, this is sorta a game changer to Frontiers movement and how I’d approach it.

There’s also some fun new challenging Koco stuff that increase your boost meter and a new game plus mode, while it sadly doesn’t increase the difficulty, but I wouldn’t say it’s knock on adding this since most new game plus games doesn’t even do this, but it’s something that could have made it gone the extra mile. So on the whole, update 2 boosts my enjoyment of Frontiers considerable, let’s hope update 3 can stick the landing.

Update 3: The Final Animal Crossing Horizon

What the hell

Update 3, kinda broke me, it’s everything that i love and hate about Frontiers combined into a mess. A mess that I can’t for the life of me still understand the reception of. Update 3 was the big one, the first time multiple playable character were in a 3D Sonic game since Sonic Forces! But more seriously since 06 and maybe even Black Knight if you’re insane like me. This a big deal, along with promising to fix Frontiers polarising ending.

See, I didn’t mention this in my review due to being spoiler free, but Frontiers final boss is both baffling and underwhelming, providing no satisfying challenge either being easy with a QTE, or just pure nightmare fuel with the shooter thing, along with the big fucking purple moon named THE END spouting complete and utter nonsense that was not built up in a satisfying and compelling way in a story that’s too subtle. The final horizon aims to fix this ending both narratively and mechanically. I say aim because they completely missed the fucking target.

Good lord, this was both innanely frustrating, boring and depressing. I can imagine due to Kishimoto trying to listen to all the feedback he’s gotten on Twitter, he tried his damn best to please everyone in such a limited time lot of 2 months and has only divided people on this far even further on this game.

How this works and is integrated into the game feels quite disconnected, instead of outright replacing it, it’s a new alternate timeline/“What if” where Sonic uses his cyber corruption to defeat the End, all while his amigos collect the Chaos Emeralds.

In terms of story, uh this was quite bad! There’s a lot of great moments, mostly in the final boss and ending but everything else is just what I hate about Frontiers plot, it’s so boring! Like, the dialogue has had a complete nose dive in quality in my opinion. A lot of the moment to moment dialogue just doesn’t feel natural, the voice acting is just not there for most of the characters except for Roger, the rest of the characters sound bored out of their mind. The dialogue is the worse of Ian Flynn in my opinion, while I like his work in some cases, here I couldn’t vibe with it. There’s a ton of references that don’t gel with the general tone and atmosphere at hand along with making a lot of unnecessary retcons to the game and lore, some are good, most of them… Yikes. They reiterate the character arcs in the game and retcon a ton of things. So now Big is a hallucination of Sonic (Even though he showed up in the Prologue) and Sonic uses the power of cyberspace to create all the whack ass shit in the Starfall Islands, what now? Can Cyberspace pretend to be a bar of soap and give them all the slip? It’s just silly. But the revised slow story is the least of my problems.

Okay, let’s talk about what I like. Cyberspace is pretty cool! It still sorta reuses stages but it’s fun! The final boss while not without its flaws, it’s good! Has a ton of hype moments as well especially with that new shiny form we get a split second of. Very nice! What’s not nice however is the new actual form we play is just Super Sonic, but with blue eyes! Very not nice! The new songs are pretty good! And uh… I like how the trial areas look!

I’m gonna be honest guys, this update made be tired of a lot things both in the update and just on the whole, the only thing keeping me sane was booting up a couple rounds of F-Zero 99, because my god. This broke me.

The two fatal flaws of the update are first, the new characters. They are bad! The issue with them is that at their core they’re fine, but they just have these little quirks that annoy you.

-Amy is arguably the best character here, her moveset is completely comprised of cards, not her actually weapon she uses. It’s completely silly given how she’s smacking people with cards, riding a motorcycle with cards and gliding with cards and the Hammer gets, is a parry. I don’t know who to blame for this, but this feels like such a baffling decision. Despite this, I feel Amy is semi fun to play as, which can be said for all the characters, she’s the only one that doesn’t adversely have anything wrong with her
-What did they do to my boy Knuckles. Knuckles is one of my favourite sonic characters both to play as and narratively and in both sides they did him so dirty, they kinda reverted him back to a meathead now which is disappointing. But what they did do to him in terms of gameplay??? It’s not terrible, but his glide has this weird delay that still keeps your speed, not only does this not make sense as Amy has her glide completely none delay. Because of this and i shit you not, you get a reboot of the infinite jump glitch from Rise of Lyric. Aside from this, his climbing doesn’t feel natural or fun to use, and is too finicky.
-Tails is in the middle of this, to me he was the least fun character to use. His flying power is only increases your height vertically for a limited time and then you can move around for a limited time. This is understandable to limit how broken flying can be. But I don’t know, it’s not really fun to use, and it’s still kinda broken, 06 at least had the right idea of capping it vertically at a certain point, in Frontiers it feels more like an glorified mid air jump rather than flying, I’m harping on this because Tails isn’t much of a very interesting character to play as, he can throw wrench’s like a Hammer Bro, he’s packing heat like Shadow, and that’s about it!

The biggest issue with all these characters is that they start you off at square one, you’ve got level 1 speed, defence and absolute no stats, not even the cyloop. You essentially have to do a whole game’s worth of upgrading on one Island. I do like the idea of finding experience points through the Koco but it’s just not fun to do this, especially given how in the night sections while there’s a comet storm, the game showers you with Koco and such, so it’s pointless. What all 3 characters also suck at is combat, they are not built for combat, Tails especially given how he doesn’t even have the homing attack. They can’t go combo mad on the enemies and only have a dinky 3 hit combo along with maybe an additional attack in you’re lucky. I don’t know if this was an intentional but you have to just, waddle away when you see an enemy. It’s overall overwhelming disappointing that the thing that the update was advertised on is bad, but is the other stuff go-

No, not at all.

How this update is structured is like a whole new island, it reminds me of Cannons Core or End of the world but instead of being a perfectly lengthy, challenging final level putting what you’ve learned throughout the game to the ultimate test. It’s drawn out to all hell. Of course, I can’t bring up this update without the challenge increase, I played on Normal and have heard horror stories of what it is on Hard and Extreme, and to me, it’s not designed very interestingly.

I love me a hard experience, especially for a platformer, but you have to understand the mechanics of the game and making that challenge satisfying around it, hell we’ve seen it done well in this game with the new Koco and Action chain challenges So what happened here? I’ll give props for less automation and such but whenever there’s fair and hard platforming challenge, there’s just double the amount of dull, Kazio little Timmy ass level. It feels like getting it over Sonic edition, especially with those towers, which unlike Rhea (my favourite part of the game) don’t have any pick me ups, if you mess up, it’s back to the beginning! And like, for some games like the 3D Mario games, you signed up for that shit since it’s the end of the game, you know that’s you’re getting into a tough as nails challenge that’s kinda unfair. But with this, I don’t get why it’s like this, again it’s not that I find it being hard is a bad thing, far from it! Especially as someone who thought Frontiers was piss easy. But here, Frontiers has no difficultly curve, so it’s 0 to 100 so quickly.

Imagine in Sonic Heroes, you played through Team Rose, and then for the final stage you had super hard mode thrown onto you, that’s what the final horizon is. It’s not even like the Adventure Packs from Unleashed, since there it’s at least linear stuff that you can quickly rebound from when you fail through checkpoints, the incentive for all of these are rankings, which Frontiers in the Open Zone, does not have. So you’re left with an unsatisfactory challenge that isn’t fun.

It also just has that artificial difficulty pumped to it, whenever you do the trials, your back to square one in terms of boss fights, instead of making the boss rush harder, they just make you have none of the stuff you’ve worked hard on. In the final boss, parrying actually have timing now, which the game was not built for a perfect parry like this and they just, throw it on you.

Let be clear, when the final
Horizon is good, it’s some of the best stuff in Frontiers (Which is Generations at its worst but whatever) but you have to trudge through just a lot of things that I don’t care for in this update. I’ll give props for being so ambitious with so many new assets and such, but like, my biggest thing with this account and whole review is how sometimes, ambition is the cause of downfall.

I would have much preferred just having the character playable in their own, self contained campaigns (Like you can’t even play as them outside of the DLC area, which was disappointing at first but seeing how they play I’m kinda glad lol), covering the events we only hear of in the main story, then, pull the end of the world stuff when Sonic gets corrupted at the end of Rhea, maybe use the Tower design or the new Cyberspace stages or something and then keep Ouranous structurally the same from the base game, then finally using the new final boss. That would have easily just make Frontiers slightly edge out (Maybe along with distinct themes for the last two islands as well but I can be too greedy), because as the Final Horizon, it’s mid… Not awful, but not peak either

Conclusion, Bros, I am tired

So, Sonic Frontiers is finally in complete open beta! It finally did it! But in all seriousness, this solidified my thoughts on Frontiers and new Sonic stuff as a whole, there’s a lot of great ideas here and concepts, but there’s always a catch and in this case, there’s too many to list . Every damn thing, this game, Sonic Origins, Sonic Prime, the movies, the comics nearly everything post Generations has this rule and it’s disappointing to see Sonic fall into the same things and fans kinda just, eat it up.


Let me clear, I don’t wanna be the fun police like a lot of Sonic detractors are who aren’t even fans of the franchise yet still check it out knowing they’ll dislike like it. I do not want to ridicule the franchise, I want to see it improve, but to do that, we need to acknowledge its flaws, it’s shortcomings yet celebrate when it’s gets something right. You can love something so much, if you think Frontiers is the peakest of fiction, then do! I am not stopping you to think that as someone whose opinions has flunacted in this game more than the UK’s economy. But understand that some of this is flawed in my and many others eyes and can do better, and critique has improved this game! Look at Update 2 and parts of Update 3! Without fan feedback, we wouldn’t have gotten the Spin Dash or New Game Plus! When a new game comes out, I will bet that the issues I have with this entire game, will hopefully be fixed and can be something that genuinely stand as one of my favourite Sonic games.

But as it is, I am tired. Maybe Superstars will bring me out of being tired, but I’m kinda tired of the series new stuff while semi satisfying me still falling to the same pitfalls killing the franchise, only this time people are less outspoken towards it. I will always cherish everything in the past, but as for the future, it looks bright, and it’s gonna be great for most, but I need to rest damnit.

Mario and Sonic: Wonderstars: Part 1 A Mid Miracle

Finally, after a decade, Sega releases a new Episode in the Sonic 4 saga! Easily the best episode in the game!

Sonic Superstars is a game that exists, it is a game that I played and consumed. But honestly? I am kinda disappointed. From my last review I was tired of the franchise as a whole, I wanted to take a long sleep/break from new content of the franchise and blissfully reminisce about the better past. If was tired then I have insomnia now.

I am sorry people, as a person who has reviewed all the major Classic Sonic games on my account and as a Sonic fan, this game was mid sadly. This is the bare minimum, we are in was is possibly one of the most packed months in gaming with the Plumber launching his new wonderful game in a few days and Insomiac dropping the first PS5 game meanwhile Sonic is just, slacking. I knew it wasn’t gonna match up to those but I at least expected something as least as good as Mania, and I got the most game of all time.

I wasn’t really hyped for Superstars when it was announced, Naota Oshima being back was a nice surprise I suppose but the company (Arzest) wasn’t making me impressed at all with any of the new things they cooked in this game, it all felt like slob to me. Nothing I can say is PEAK nor I can i see is bad which is what most sonic is blah blah blah we get the point I’m old and out of touch and Sonic bad we get it, but in truth, Superstars isn’t bad, it’s not good either.

When the game leaked and people started playing it myself including, I was completely baffled by both sides of the debate, the mindless Twitter drones yelling “PEAK PEAK” and getting pissed at 7/10’s, fine scores for this game, meanwhile the other crowd calling the game one of the worst Sonic games. And yet at the same time, I sorta understood, it was weird but Superstars to me, is what Sonic 4 Episode 2 is. A game that I played and exists.

I don’t want to do a Super in depth look like I did with previous games where I go through all the zones and shit for reasons I’ll get into, but Superstars is exactly what you expect when “New 2.5D Classic Sonic game” comes into you’re head, maybe in 2013 that would be somewhat cool, but we are in 2023. We’ve seen this done so many times and a lot better, it’s not far off from Mega Man 11 but 11 is one of the best entires in the series with tight design despite the double gear system being similar to what this game introduces, but Superstars doesn’t really do anything more worthy both good and bad, it’s kinda just meh.

I really don’t know what to start with this game, there’s no real strong positives or things that really stick out for me as genuinely awful. Superstars is competent but doesn’t aspire to be anything more.

The story is fine, but they drop everything it sets up so abruptly it’s kinda funny. The level design, is fine but then it nose dives into quality so hard. There were no levels that made go “FUCK YEAH THIS SHIT WAS FIRE 🔥 🔥🔥” or “HOLY SHIT THIS WAS GARBAGE 💩💩💩” the themes are fine, they are not great by any means but they look colourful and vibrant enough, it’s enough to be new but not enough to be great. And the gimmicks range from fine to midly annoying and aren’t as fun as anything from the original games. Stages don’t have a clear philosophy or goal like other games and feel cobbled together, especially with how secrets are handled especially since there’s no Elemental shields. A lot of them are just, out in the open, there’s no challenge to find the special stage rings. Speaking of, the Special Stages in this game are fine, they feel kinda weird, in a game where the physics are on point but here they feel stilted and awkward, they’re all the same level of challenge, kinda annoying.

The music is both PEAK and MID, they’re really inconsistent, as they use different sound fonts. The steller Mania and the poundshop Sonia 4 sound font are both used, the compositions are not bad and there are some bangers, but there are just some tracks that do not sound good at all.

The characters, play fantastic, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles all play like they did in Mania and feels so fun to play and Amy while they’re still having trouble to finding her footing as the 4th member of Team Sonic is fun in this game, and Trip (I’m not even gonna bother spoiling this review it’s not worth it) is a worthwhile wild card addition to the game.

The Emerald Powers are awful, they feel either overpowered or superfluous and don’t add much to the game, which is bad because this is the big thing about the game, the big selling point and it’s just kinda meh. This isn’t like the Wisps, Wonder flower or the Double Gear system where it fundamentally changes the game and how you approach it thus enhancing it, it’s kinda just there but thank god some of them are insanely over powered because good lord the bosses.

This is the one of the only things that does Superstars poorly. the bosses are so abysmally bad and boring that it’s insulting, too much waiting, stop and go and don’t feel satisfying to fight or even cheese with the Emerald Powers, the final few bosses especially pissed me the fuck off.

As I near to this ramble ass review about an old 17 year old boy ranting about a blue hedgehog game I really wonder to myself, Sonic Superstars has nothing apart from supposedly mediocre Co-op and is laughably priced as much as Tears if the Kingdom here (£70!). Everything it attempts has been done better by other better games, a retro revival with new fun twists? Mania has you covered, A game with fun Co-op? the Rivals games and the new SA1 Online mod , 2.5D Graphics? Generations runs literal circles around it with how it’s uses it and aesthetically. A game that has a new twist and enhances the experience? Advance 3. All of these games aren’t perfect to varying degrees, but all of them have something, Superstars doesn’t. It’s a game hindered by it’s gimmicks such as with multiplayer that it leads to a worse experience. But in spite it all, it’s game that I don’t really hate? I had some fun with it but it’s really not a game that I want to go back to, the only 2D games that is worse than this in my opinion is Chaotix, Sonic 4 Episode 1 and Advance 2.

Say what you want about the series, but the series 2D offerings are some of the best in the business, right up there with Mario and Mega Man. They are consistent, fun, exciting, thrilling, exhilarating and always offer something new, to the point where the surpass Mario and Mega Man in some cases due to their series stagnation at points, each 2D game evolved the formula in a natural and compelling way, even games I don’t love as much like CD, Mania and Colours DS at least have that special sauce that made those games, special! CD has its incredible aesthetics, Mania had that nostalgia and twist factor and DS has the Wisps and such. Superstars only aspires to be an unambitious 2D Sonic game, the same games that Mario and Mega Man ran into and have over come and I hope Sonic does to, unless, safe to say my fail safe for the widely inconsistent franchise, will cease. Anyway, I am still tired, I desperately want to go to sleep, but my insomnia is still present, a shame…

Mario & Sonic: Wonderstars: Part 2: What a Wonderful Super Mario World

Super Mario Bros Wonder is a great game, no need to tell you that. But from my reaction to the game at first I wouldn’t have expected that let me tell you. When the game was first announced I had the exact same apathetic reaction I had with Sonic stinkerstars. Meaning that I did not care for the game at all, thinking it was just another 2D Mario game, the art style wasn’t my thing and nothing it really showed me while looked cool wasn’t anything that was gonna change my mind.

Then the direct hit.

The direct basically sold me on Wonder despite having a few gripes from what I was seeing. Nintendo had let the game cook and simmer for as long as it needed and we’re proud with what they made both from interviews and the game itself. Of course being proud of a game doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t any good but the fact they had no deadline and could do whatever they want with the game with anything showed me incredible promise.

And they did deliver.

I’m gonna structure this review slightly differently from the rest, I can easily say that “GOODS, THEN BADS” which would sell my thoughts on the game sure but I feel I want to go the extra mile and talk about the initial gripes I had with the game first then detail if they still exist or not. So without further ado, Let’sa go!

Wonder Problem 1: The Gentrification of Mario

It’s no secret why everyone went crazy over Wonder both post release and especially pre release was that it was breaking the New Super Mario Bros shackles of the same exact world theming, backgrounds actually looked detailed, they’re using advantage of the artstyle and all that jazz. For some reason when it was first revealed I didn’t like it, I found the artstyle was doubling down on the platiscally look the NSMB games coined essentially and the environments looked kinda the same but the bare minimum. Can I give myself a slap on the head from the past?

Super Mario Wonder feels fresh. It sorta does the same thing as Odyssey where each world theme isn’t super out of the ordinary for Mario, but it is enhanced both in terms of theming and the context of the world, which you can even see in the story. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary again but they went a lot further then I expected. Gone is the plot to rescue Peach or anyone for that fact, we’ve gone back to the Super Mario Land 2 era where we need to save stolen property. Each world has a contextual problem you need to solve after Bowser plans his “Big Wonder” after he turns into a castle. It’s not much but the extra unneeded touch makes Wonder more complete that it had any right it needed to be. It’s not as muc as Odyssey nor is it a game that actively tries to be a comedic story but it was charming, especially with the talking flowers.

That’s how I’d describe the game’s presentation, charming. Things that were just so straightforward in previous games such as going into pipes, doors, enemies hitting you etc now have so much life injected to them. The game’s environments and artstyle, while not my ideal and in terms of environments that could have gone further into the weird, are incredible. Gone are the boring samey backgrounds and now nearly everything single stage has a unique background and environment. In terms of music while I wouldn’t it’s the best of 2D Mario but it is still great, it definitely gets slightly repetitive with the Wonder flower theme playing almost nearly everytime and the athletic theme being used even more than the main defining theme, but I think even just the sound design which is completely different from other games and is excellent shows how this is, for better or worse, a big overcorrection of the New Super Mario Bros series, and that can be perfectly seen in my next pre Wonder problem

Wonder Problem 2: Variety Variety Variety!

One initial problem I had seeing the trailer was the Wonder flower, this gimmick to me seemed like variety for the sake of it instead of crafting actual good challenging platforming you can have some weird mini game intrusively tuning the flow of the game, like for instance later Yoshi games and how they’d abused the transformation gimmick, and even when the direct hit of me having a slightly more optimistic look on the game I couldn’t help but feel that variety was favoured of good level design and challenge especially with the new badge system , and I was kinda right but also insanely wrong.

First things first, the Badge system, You see, Mario Wonder only had 6 Power Ups, the 3 you’ve come familiar with like the Mushroom, Fire Flower and Star, with the new ones being the Elephant Apple which turns you into an Elephant which I’m sure is gonna spark an sexual awakening with a few people basically being a great melee weapon and can hold water, The Bubble Flower which is the Ice Flower but with Bubbles (Personally prefer the Ice Flower) and the Drill Mushroom which drills into the ground. I don’t think the Item game is particularly strong in this game or bad but it’s clear that the Badge system takes precedence.

You can equip one badge from three categories. Action Badges which basically add an additional movement option or enhance an ability, Boost Badges which basically make the game easier with more power-ups, a way to find hidden items and even a rhythm badge where you jump to the beat, which gets my Hi-fi Rush part of my brain go happy. Finally, you have the Expert Badges where there’s only four in the entire game but make the game harder, my preferred ones being the spring jump and Jet run. I think the Badge System is really only a cool idea that needs refining, I don’t think having say, two more Badge slots would hurt and maybe having more interesting badges wouldn’t hurt, I would rather have more Power-ups since there’s a lot more you can with that in terms of level design that’s not locked in with specific Badge challenges, but they’re cool.

But anyway, the gimmick of the Wonder Flower is at its core what I theorised, giving some variety and changes to a normal experience, the way they handle it is quite inconsistent, for one in some stages they give it and leave it in the open while others have you try and find it, all of which end by giving you a Wonder seed, the main collectible of the game. I’m happy to report that the Wonder effects never really angered me in my playthrough, not all of them were great but in a game like this where it is so easy to screw up these gimmicks it’s incredible there wasn’t a single one where I could say they sucked which again, surprises me. A lot of these gimmicks include transforming into creatures you’d see in the stage you’re playing akin to Super Mario Odyssey, or a status effect like Metal, P-Balloon, stretching ect. Oddly enough or “normally” my favourite and possibly the laziest one is making the core stage harder by reinforcing the gimmicks in that stage.

At this point, the Nintendo formula of 2D or even just linear stages used in verbatim especially in the New Super Mario Bros series, where a stage introduces a gimmick and that gimmick gradually gets harder and more difficult /involved, especially when extra items/goodies are here in the case of this game with Wonder Flowers, Purple Coins and secret exits. I don’t think this formula is bad per say it’s great when put to use see in the Retro Donkey Kong games and outside of the Nintendo sphere and Ubiart Rayman games but I feel this sorta creeps in the issue with the Wonder flower.

Some stages in this game, are innanely short without the gimmick and even with them they don’t feel, not undercooked but missing something? Like I feel this problem comes apparent in the later two worlds discounting Bowser’s Castle, it feels like this game wanted to do a lot more in terms of it level design which as it is is really good but take a game like 3D World, Tropical Freeze and especially Galaxy 2 for instance, those games feel like with each level they really wanted to fully challenge the player with its gimmicks and level design they both worked hand in hand with each other and it’s not like Wonder doesn’t have that in fact there’s a good attempt here with the Break Time stages which are short challenge stages and especially the Badge challenges, but usually the gimmicks have presendance over the level design in some cases, it’s not enough to make it a major problem but it’s just enough where becomes odd, maybe it’s because the game is quite new but there’s just a good chunk of levels even with the Wonder flower that I completely forget and I don’t care for, which again may be because it’s new but then again, a game like Odyssey, Galaxy 2 or hell even Mario Maker 2’s story mode with limited with spectacle it is for instance I can still remember almost every moment of the first magical of those games but with Winder while moments of those shine, it in cases more than not feels like the New Super Mario Bros games where the levels are of good and but inconsistent quality.

Despite this however, I do think the Wonder flower is a welcome addition to the game, it helps break the pacing of platforming in unique despite a few missteps in making the base level a bit lacking, hell you can even skip most of the Wonder flowers though I probably think that the seed limit maybe damper that tangible goal.

Wonder Problem 3: I Ordered challenge in my Mario Game!

Sadly, while a lot of my initial worries of how the Game’s variety was handled were elevated somewhat, my issues with how the difficulty was handled, was sadly kinda proven right. My worry was that the game wouldn’t be that challenging. HOWEVER, that’s not really a big issue since the game is already interesting enough to keep my attention, but I think being a slight bit harder would have elevated the game a lot, it’s like a spice to me. The food doesn’t need it but it can help a lot by elevating the whole experience.

This is possible due to how the game is structured, the game has a large interconnected world like Mario World but every once and again you return to the Petal Isles, which is a cool idea as a recurring beach location. Hell one of my favourite backgrounds had Bowser just floating there, menacingly. I feel where issues arise are the last two worlds discounting the castle since you can choose what world you want to play, and It kinda just feels like the same level of difficulty throughout the game kinda. Wonder really didn’t have a big rise in terms of challenge unless we’re counting the obvious Special World akin to Mario World, and even that had the super difficult ending level that every Mario game has coined being the first 2D Mario game to have it, but again despite this issue with the challenge, the game does remain fun and interesting throughout, Especially with the break time and Badge levels, then the bosses come in.

Good lord, It felt like apart from the first and last world, every world in this game felt off to end on, like something was missing. We’ve returned back to the Super Mario Bros 1 days of one character being the only boss throughout the entire game, this being Bowser Jr. His bosses are fine but like, feel like Tower bosses which are absent in this game. And I know the criticism of “But the bosses in 2D Mario weren’t ever interesting” comes to light but, that’s not an excuse. Wonder does a lot to fix issues relating to the core 2D Mario formula, why couldn’t bosses be a part of that? Interesting enough the game basically had “We’ll release when we feel it’s ready” approach which is incredibly based but I’m starting to the doubt that notion with the bosses and certain more minor details. Like are you seriously telling me that they couldn’t have figured out any boss ideas for this game when there’s supposedly a trilogy worth of things on the cutting board, even the final boss has the trademark “Nintendo floating head and hands” thing that’s basically become somewhat infamous, it’s a good fight and eaisly the best in the game, but I’m sorry to say that nearly every single New Super Mario Bros final boss apart from DS has it beat out.

In summary, while too me this is sorta Wonder’s biggest issue, it’s and issue that doesn’t really fully effect that whole experience, like I said, it’s the spice of a game and more specifically a platformer to me. Add too much without moderation or a care and it feels trusting or unenjoyable, add too little and it feels noticeably lacking

Wonder Problem 4: Friends with Benefits

The final Pre-Wonder problem I was sensing was multiplayer, both in terms of how it was implemented and how it would effect the wider ecosystem of the game. Each New Super Mario Bros game felt like it had a different effect to the multiplayer, DS didn’t have it and opposed for the awesome Mario Vs Luigi star battle mode, Wii was the first Mario to have 4 Player co-op which sadly while I like Wii hindered it’s potential as a game in both ways, there wasn’t enough precautions to make the multiplayer as chaotic as it was and in terms of a single player campaign, the level design while enjoyable had a ton of empty and large space in a lot of its levels, made Yoshi into a stage only gimmick, bosses being dumbed down to fit all 4 Players. I could go on. 2 focused on 2 players with a camera system that doesn’t make all too much sense since both people have their own screens and discounting that the level design of 2 didn’t feel intended for Co-op do it does feel a tad bit unnatural and U despite being so derivative might have struck an excellent balanace between providing great single player action and multiplayer mayhem which can be extended to 3D World.

Wonder isn’t anything new, the multiple item boxes and crown from 3D World is brought back and now acts as a camera and the bubble system has been replaced with the ghost where players now have to actively save the person. I feel the biggest issue with the slightly revamped system is the lack of collision between players.

You see, if you live in a big family like me where half the people don’t even know what a Mario is and your parents force you to play with them, it’s bound to put you in a bad mood, so you wanna get it done quickly. With every single game discounting the handheld ones (?), Collision was big factor working together or against your perrs. And I really miss it here. A lot of the times in games where a little kid was playing carrying basically allowed you to have a good enough experience while having fun and that being good feels off? Like I’m really wondering if this did influence the design of the levels and game that radically for it to be removed. But other than that, I guess it’s fun, Mario multiplayer wasn’t always a super big deal for me it was more of an neat little add-on.

This would be where this ends if it wasn’t for the fact that Wonder has online! The online led to some cute interactions but was fine overall. Unlike Maio Maker 2 where the multiplayer is fun as hell but is a Russian roulette if it works or not, the online is pretty consistent but definitely not game changing, I think a few more modes and such would have made this at least more worth it to me.

Whoa Mario, That was really Super Mario Bros Wonder

Despite my few gripes with the game, Super Mario Wonder is a damn good game that too me, is similar to Odyssey. It’s a game that gets a lot right and at its core is good, but with a few touch ups and a slight challenge increase could be one of the greats, but both games along with Bowser’s Fury show a promising future ahead for mainline Mario, a genre that was already unnaturally consistent but somewhat lacking, but for what it is, Super Mario Wonder despite not being my favourite 2D Platformer, is an impeccably well made and fun time.