Lapbunny
2012
I've completed three or four randomizers of this game. I've lost count. Every time, there are two specific moments which I audibly say "oh fuck this game" out loud - it's either getting lost in Aquatic Mine (conveniently available as a first stage at least 2-3 times now), or it's when I have Shadow dramatically ramp off the first jump in Sky Rail, off the stage, into the kill plane, while the Chao Kindergarten music is playing, as Omochao starts talking about mating rituals, and Shadow reaches mach 5 to his death. Somewhere in the middle of this journey, my objections melt away as I figure out why the supposed boundaries of the game don't matter - I accidentally clip through a wall and realize I can use this knowledge to skip the Flame Ring. (Outer Wilds?? eat your fucking heart out???) A bunch of Chao drown themselves across a pond to the climatic Live and Learn, like their life depends on it. It does. By the end I'm on the verge of tears as Sonic says his heartfelt goodbye to Shadow: "NEED MORE MEMORY, BUD!"
What I'm saying is - even if you take this anxious mess of emblematic (ha!) 00's angst, cut it into scissors, smear a glue stick against a wall, chuck the pieces at it, then shoot an entire bottle of ketchup across it while blasting Jamiroquai, DMX, Pendulum, Streetlight Manifesto, and Foo Fighters all at the same time inside a moving car, it never crashes! You come out of it with a pending arrest warrant, but I swear it still ends up worth it and ready to go again. I don't know why! There's just something here, man. Something special.
The level design is so slapshot. Have you ever stopped running in the middle of the speed levels and looked at a broad view of what they... do? They're linear, and there are these big dash pads that they tell you to go this way, and the second you walk around one you look around and tell yourself "what the FUCK were they thinking?" Then the game suddenly jets Sonic in some direction because you happened upon the middle of some half-scripted segment, and the game asks you, "what the FUCK were you thinking?" But they probably realized people were doing this, so they made it non-linear by putting STUFF right in those sections. Instead of just moving along, eventually you're constantly looking for the places it fucks up! Guess what? There's SHIT there! Every time. There's a life! There's a lost Chao!! There's a fucking upgrade!!! There's a pipe in outer space and you whistle at it and a skunk pops out. God dammit. Brilliant.
This game is a pile of confetti ideas, and it's best every time you throw it up in the air and ignore the complete mess it makes. Suddenly you forget how the walker missions aren't designed around anything, and the emerald stages are horribly winding messes by choice, and the speed missions are designed around psychically predicting you'll be holding the analog stick in a particular direction even though the camera has no vestibular system, and that this jank is all desperately held together by tamogachis and kart racing. The aesthetic does a Weekend at Bernie's on the gameplay. The misplaced mix of edge and "what if we all just got along........." optimism shoots it through the fuckin door and into the horizon. It's incredible. I think about how much this game sucks every time I play it. By the end I'm laughing or crying. I can't tell which. I never care.
No one makes five different functional video games in one with umpteen different music directions starring an edgy antihero against jarring heavily-contrasted rainbow palettes. Why? Because it's stupid. And I love this stupid, stupid game so much.
What I'm saying is - even if you take this anxious mess of emblematic (ha!) 00's angst, cut it into scissors, smear a glue stick against a wall, chuck the pieces at it, then shoot an entire bottle of ketchup across it while blasting Jamiroquai, DMX, Pendulum, Streetlight Manifesto, and Foo Fighters all at the same time inside a moving car, it never crashes! You come out of it with a pending arrest warrant, but I swear it still ends up worth it and ready to go again. I don't know why! There's just something here, man. Something special.
The level design is so slapshot. Have you ever stopped running in the middle of the speed levels and looked at a broad view of what they... do? They're linear, and there are these big dash pads that they tell you to go this way, and the second you walk around one you look around and tell yourself "what the FUCK were they thinking?" Then the game suddenly jets Sonic in some direction because you happened upon the middle of some half-scripted segment, and the game asks you, "what the FUCK were you thinking?" But they probably realized people were doing this, so they made it non-linear by putting STUFF right in those sections. Instead of just moving along, eventually you're constantly looking for the places it fucks up! Guess what? There's SHIT there! Every time. There's a life! There's a lost Chao!! There's a fucking upgrade!!! There's a pipe in outer space and you whistle at it and a skunk pops out. God dammit. Brilliant.
This game is a pile of confetti ideas, and it's best every time you throw it up in the air and ignore the complete mess it makes. Suddenly you forget how the walker missions aren't designed around anything, and the emerald stages are horribly winding messes by choice, and the speed missions are designed around psychically predicting you'll be holding the analog stick in a particular direction even though the camera has no vestibular system, and that this jank is all desperately held together by tamogachis and kart racing. The aesthetic does a Weekend at Bernie's on the gameplay. The misplaced mix of edge and "what if we all just got along........." optimism shoots it through the fuckin door and into the horizon. It's incredible. I think about how much this game sucks every time I play it. By the end I'm laughing or crying. I can't tell which. I never care.
No one makes five different functional video games in one with umpteen different music directions starring an edgy antihero against jarring heavily-contrasted rainbow palettes. Why? Because it's stupid. And I love this stupid, stupid game so much.
Hoenn is absolutely wonderful for a randomizer. There should probably be a slider for how brutal Wonder Guard is, but isn't that part of the fun? Right?
Right?
Right?
2002
At PAX they have a big multiplayer LAN setup of multiple copies of this game. I go every time. Every time they have a training session where they reiterate to HIT THE EJECT BUTTON if your cockpit is blowing up. EVERY time I go, someone doesn't. Every time someone doesn't, they have to recreate that save file from scratch. For the multiplayer mode.
I yearn for my own copy.
I yearn for my own copy.
Yes, the backtracking is a bit padded and annoying - even with the updates - and yes, the characters brazenly point it out. Yes, Bowser's butt monkey phase stuck in our mouths a bit too long after this. Yes, it's a shame the updated graphics didn't get a nice 60 FPS treatment to go along with them. Yes, I had this in the back of my head as "that game that accidentally turned me into an internet gremlin 20 years ago"; I expected that I'd bought this remake as a little nostalgia romp to reminisce, enjoy the vibes of a game that runs entirely on vibes, and shelve it again.
But nah, this fuckin script is so good, man. Paper Mario 64 out-Marios this with pristine charm, and Super Mario RPG is more... RPG...-y. But this game never strains to outdo either, and it ends up better at both. All the standard JRPG dialogue to tell you where to go has just enough little tongue-in-cheek asides, lampshade mounts, brick jokes, and fourth wall breaks peppered in to keep your eyes on each and every dialogue line, Tattle, and signpost. It lets Mario run free as a pastiche of himself; that deviation could've come across as grimy as the town it starts in - if it ever tilted into a level of smarmy, self-fellating self-reference*. But it doesn't. It keeps convincing you to believe in it anyway, and that bastion of monumental Mario consistency stands right behind the actual gameplay. The love for setting the mood and adventure keeps the heart, even as it occasionally stops to literally rip something to shreds.
After I played Paper Mario and TTYD as a kid, I tried to play a ton of other RPGs. I didn't like most of em - but I thought it was because they lost that interactive bit in the battle system. I get why now! You know what's a better gameplay loop that I'll fall for, every time, far more than numbers going up? Make me think I might laugh every time I hit a button.
I thought I remembered know what's around every corner. I don't. When I don't, I cackle. When I do, I still cackle. It loves itself for what it is. I love it.
(Also, y'know, gimme some of those numbers going up. As a treat.)
---
* Sometimes I wonder if Miyamoto saw the series going here and jerked too hard backwards. They say restrictions breed creativity! Here's a neat idea for a restriction: restrict Miyamoto to a dungeon and let the team create their own fucking game
But nah, this fuckin script is so good, man. Paper Mario 64 out-Marios this with pristine charm, and Super Mario RPG is more... RPG...-y. But this game never strains to outdo either, and it ends up better at both. All the standard JRPG dialogue to tell you where to go has just enough little tongue-in-cheek asides, lampshade mounts, brick jokes, and fourth wall breaks peppered in to keep your eyes on each and every dialogue line, Tattle, and signpost. It lets Mario run free as a pastiche of himself; that deviation could've come across as grimy as the town it starts in - if it ever tilted into a level of smarmy, self-fellating self-reference*. But it doesn't. It keeps convincing you to believe in it anyway, and that bastion of monumental Mario consistency stands right behind the actual gameplay. The love for setting the mood and adventure keeps the heart, even as it occasionally stops to literally rip something to shreds.
After I played Paper Mario and TTYD as a kid, I tried to play a ton of other RPGs. I didn't like most of em - but I thought it was because they lost that interactive bit in the battle system. I get why now! You know what's a better gameplay loop that I'll fall for, every time, far more than numbers going up? Make me think I might laugh every time I hit a button.
I thought I remembered know what's around every corner. I don't. When I don't, I cackle. When I do, I still cackle. It loves itself for what it is. I love it.
(Also, y'know, gimme some of those numbers going up. As a treat.)
---
* Sometimes I wonder if Miyamoto saw the series going here and jerked too hard backwards. They say restrictions breed creativity! Here's a neat idea for a restriction: restrict Miyamoto to a dungeon and let the team create their own fucking game
1990
One day I will die. My flesh will no longer recall memory, and my atoms will scatter. But as inconsequential as I am, or as this game is, or as is this the brief little event where I played half a game because my wife recognized it at Round 1 and I had to stop playing so we could move along and jeer at the awful music - as long as I live, and maybe in a cycle of reincarnation, and maybe in the Akashic Records somewhere, eternally exists my discomfort at the ugly visuals, the piercing trebly FM synth bell tones, and the awful control behind this miserable game. It is seared into my being, my gray matter forced to replay the minor cringing feeling through the rest of my body from the recesses of my memory, a reaction to becoming one with this disposable market share grab at Tetris. It tangentially influences my personality like a star billions of miles away. It is nothing to me, and everything.
I don't need to think about it ever again. Why must my brain remember this so vividly in response to seeing it on this website? What use does this do for my life, or anyone else's life, or the universe? At least it makes me think about this stuff, in the same way an interaction with someone at a Wendy's or a particularly loud fart might.
God is dead. Life is wonderful. Just don't play Columns.
---
"like Tetris but a bit better" - Glenn Rubenstein on Columns, Wizard Magazine, 1993
I don't need to think about it ever again. Why must my brain remember this so vividly in response to seeing it on this website? What use does this do for my life, or anyone else's life, or the universe? At least it makes me think about this stuff, in the same way an interaction with someone at a Wendy's or a particularly loud fart might.
God is dead. Life is wonderful. Just don't play Columns.
---
"like Tetris but a bit better" - Glenn Rubenstein on Columns, Wizard Magazine, 1993
1993
speedrun classic
This probably more viscerally appeals to certain people, and if you're that person and you know the game exists then you probably already played it. If not - yes. go. duh.
I'm not that kind of mystery freak, but there was an itch that Obra Dinn made me realize I had by covering me in a scratchy wool sweater and this game was a fantastic way to get that out. Wonderful message, too - it's that little extra I was looking for.
I'm not that kind of mystery freak, but there was an itch that Obra Dinn made me realize I had by covering me in a scratchy wool sweater and this game was a fantastic way to get that out. Wonderful message, too - it's that little extra I was looking for.
2003
Better than Alternative, fight me. (don't actually fight me please I'm very sensitive)
I've watched enough YouTube Poop to legally say I played this, right?
2009
you are now thinking about how sticky those buttons are on the one at your local arcade. mmmm sticky sticky schlick
2021
This review contains spoilers
It's nice when you pick up a creepy roguelike and there's a sequel to the 1998 Pokémon Trading Card Game Game lying around in the middle of it
In multiworld applications like Archipelago it turns into a slog at endgame when you're equipped with everything and go through early dungeons with overkill. But if you're keeping up with the pack, it's great fun piecing together what you can or can't do at any time. The discovery section is such a joy to route.
2017
The ending arc is as jarring as everyone understandably criticizes it, but any narrative hangups I have are completely numbed by how good the mouthfeel, aesthetic, Bildungsroman, and little details are.
Every now and then I remember an apocryphal story I read somewhere about someone leaving Pixar's Coco down south when they saw an old granny crying "it's true! It's all true!" in Spanish as she exited the theater. That was me, but instead I exited this game crying over how beautifully it nailed the feel of rust belt PA. (Pretend I was screaming "yinz! yinz!" for full effect)
Every now and then I remember an apocryphal story I read somewhere about someone leaving Pixar's Coco down south when they saw an old granny crying "it's true! It's all true!" in Spanish as she exited the theater. That was me, but instead I exited this game crying over how beautifully it nailed the feel of rust belt PA. (Pretend I was screaming "yinz! yinz!" for full effect)
2016
This review contains spoilers
Importing your Mass Effect 2 save is a pretty banger joke.
2007
Something I find incredible is that the ambience of this game dominates the experience - the grim humor and lab rat setting wash over it, driving it as much or more than the gameplay loop. Yet the puzzle gameplay is still engrossing; what's left is, somehow, an unchanging but infinitely-replayable puzzle game. Some people like Portal 2 more because it's bigger and funnier, totally valid. But judging by what it is and not what it's not, Portal is pristinely perfect.