20 years… 20 years since Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door originally released on GameCube in 2004 and now here we are in 2024 with a remake on Switch… I can feel the bones creaking. Does the game stand the test of time though? And does the remake enhance or break anything along the way?

The original TTYD is one of my favourite games of all time, doing what I feel a lot of the GameCube library did, which was taking the foundation of a great N64 game and building something that reaches that next level on it. In this case, TTYD built on the great N64 Paper Mario (which had already used the foundations of Super Mario RPG and branched off in its own direction) and came out with something that still 20 years later, is heralded as the best Mario RPG.
I know the vocal crowd on TTYD have been annoying over the years, constantly dismissing the newer entries but even as someone who found a lot to love in The Origami King, coming back to TTYD made it pretty clear that the Paper Mario series did lose something around the Sticker Star era onwards. It had lost its soul.

Booting up TTYD you're instantly greeted with a boat travelling on the seas towards a place called Rogueport and it's near immediate to see the spark the series had lost a lot of. Rogueport is this grimy port city. Graffiti lines the walls of the buildings, the citizens are rough and jaded, and yeah, we all know about the noose that sits in the middle of the town. It's unlike any other place you'd find in a Mario game and that's what makes it special. This isn't the usual grassy plains or desert, it's a foreign feeling port town that oozes character from the moment you step into it.
And it's not long before the characters show off their uniqueness too. Early on you meet your first partner character in Goombella, a female Goomba, an archaeology student who is dressed with a hard hat and a ponytail who has a lot of sass about her. Immediately you get a feel for the character and you get so much more from her in a few seconds than you do from a generic Goomba. The Origami King and Color Splash still had charm to the characters in the writing but it's incredible how much more you get from just a silly costume on a Goomba.
Even in the first conversation with Goombella as she's telling you about Rogueport, you can see a couple of mobsters Pianta beat the crap out of a unique design guard character saying “da boss sends his regards”. Like the silly Pianta introduced in Sunshine, yeah they're dressed up in black suits and shades like they're the mafia, you just don't get that kind of thing in most Mario titles!

That's what I mean by TTYD having soul though and the game oozes with it. Chapter 2 takes place in a forest that looks like it was drawn on one of those black cards where you scratch it to reveal colour underneath and it's citizens are these gray little Pikmin like creatures called Punies. Chapter 4 is set in a place called Twilight Town and it's this beautiful dusk setting with the sky looking something like a crayon style drawing similar to Yoshi's Island’s art style and it's citizens are these little green humanoid creatures whose shading is black and they're all a little depressed because they rarely see daylight. It's just so cool seeing the diversity and creativity and uniqueness in this game because even after 20 years, it still stands out amongst other Mario titles.

Same goes for Mario's party members where you start off with the usual species, like Goombella the Goomba and Koops the Koopa, but then they start giving you characters like Flurrie, a ghost like former actress who refuses to go outside without her necklace, and Vivian, a shadow who’s been bullied by her sisters and struggling to find her place in the world (don't worry, I'll talk about the localisation changes when I get to what's changed/new in the remake). It's a game that freshens up the familiar stuff from Mario while doing tons of new things on top of that and that's a big part of why I love the Mario RPGs, they weren't afraid to do weird and wonderful stuff to stand out from all the other Mario games.

Moving onto the writing, TTYD is a wonderfully self aware and charmingly written game. I mentioned the Pianta mobsters earlier but you've also got stuff like chests who curse Mario by giving him new abilities like turning into a paper plane and as you find each chest, Mario is more and more done with the schtick to the point you kinda feel bad for the last chest because his whole curse speil has been ruined. There's this whole tournament arc where you meet a big yellow bird calling himself the Rawk Hawk (I dare you to say that fast three times haha) and he's so clearly based off Hulk Hogan it's hilarious.
There's also the end of chapter stuff where the game gives you Peach sections as you see what's happening to her while she's held captive by the game’s villains called the X-Nauts. She ends talking to a computer called Tec who comes across all creepy at first, claiming it's fallen in love with Peach but somehow it still manages to become a pretty heartfelt and emotional experience as Peach teaches Tec what love is and the two form a bond as they help each other.
And there's small playable Bowser sections where he's always a step behind in the hunt for the crystal stars and is constantly being frustrated by that. It's also cool they gave him a few 2D platforming levels to play too as a little throwback to the original Super Mario Bros.

The battle system is also held in high regard with this game and for good reason too! Building off the turned based system in Paper Mario 64, the battle system here sees the usual timed button presses for extra damage and defence along with partners helping Mario out in battle with their own unique movesets (like Goombella can analyse enemies to show their HP, Koops is great for hitting multiple enemies on the ground in his shell). Battles take place on a stage where props can fall down and you can appeal to the crowd by doing stylish manoeuvres during attacks through timed button presses that will help build up your special gauge quicker. It's a really fun way to use the paper/pop up story book aesthetic for battles. When you add in the badge system as well that allows you to customise Mario’s moveset as well as grant him special skills like being able to jump on spiky enemies, you can find a lot to experiment with here. It's a proper turned based RPG system here where levelling up will allow you to increase HP, FP (for special/unique attacks) or BP (for badges) and it gives you a reason to participate in the overworld encounters which you can gain and advantage in by attacking an enemy with your hammer or jumping on them.

All that to say that TTYD is a brilliant experience at its core but what does this Switch remake change or do different? Well the most notable thing is they somehow made the already great looking GameCube game look even better. Characters have defined layering that better highlights the paper aesthetic and the new lighting system brings in detailed shadows and reflections, giving a shine to every location. This has unfortunately come at the cost of reducing the game’s framerate from 60fps to 30fps which does slightly change the button timings on attacks but honestly, it didn't cause me any issues once I got used to it and personally, while I would prefer 60fps, I find a stable 30fps to be fine for an RPG. I did experience some minor dips in some scenes where tons of characters appear on screen but otherwise it's a solid experience and I think the graphical update is worth it, especially when you see the two versions side by side.
Backtracking has been cut back in many areas with additional warp pipes along with a main hub with warp pipes to every world now being in one place.
Game overs now give you an option to restart from the last area you were in before you lost instead of your last save which is nice and saves a lot of time.
As alluded to earlier, a portion of dialogue relating to Vivian has been changed to more closely represent what was in the original Japanese script that was altered in the original GameCube release. Vivian now has dialogue saying that it took her while to realise that she wasn't her sister's brother but in fact their sister and that made their bullying worse, confirming that she is a trans character which I'm grateful that they went and fixed this in the localisation this time. Representation is important and Vivian’s storyline of finding a place where she belonged away from the bullying she received was always something I'm sure many trans people could relate to and having it confirmed in the localisation now will only make her more relatable to a lot of people.
The soundtrack has been fully re-done with an in-game badge being obtainable if you'd prefer the original GameCube soundtrack. You'd be missing out though because they added unique variations on the battle theme FOR EVERY AREA and it's incredible. Some themes now have vocal harmonies in them that are gorgeous and I had completely forgotten how the final dungeon had mixed elements of the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World underground themes and it made me smile every time I caught the transition. The updated soundtrack is incredible in every regard and it manages to still tap into that GameCube vibe even with the updated instruments.
There's other minor additions with some post game bosses that I didn't seek out but otherwise this is a fairly faithful remake and one where it's pretty easy to miss a lot of the changes and tweaks because they fit in so effortlessly.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remains the pinnacle of Mario RPGs in my opinion. It oozes charm and character through witty writing and fun character designs in a beautiful world full of unique and imaginative locations. A battle system that lets you experiment with a simple badge system that allows you to tweak your Mario build and a beautiful face lift makes this RPG still stand tall after 20 years and hopefully revisiting it will inspire (and Nintendo relaxing their rules) the dev team at Intelligent Systems to make another Paper Mario that is full of the charm and soul that Thousand-Year Door has.

I'm REALLY not a fan of Pokemon games. Even the ones that people say are really good, I rarely think are all that great. When I started this game I was really not expecting to enjoy it. This is easily one of the most disliked Pokemon games for being kind of the start of Pokemon's downfall so I was really worried because I'm already not super into these games, however to my surprise I thought it was pretty good.

The usual issues with these games that I find are still present. The battle system is basic and it's upsetting that it hasn't changed much in the main series besides Legends Arkoos and that's easily the biggest problem to me. These games are very boring especially at the start and they really esculate all that much until the endgame. This game just might be the worst case of it. I already knew about how easy this game would be so I decided to do a blind nuzlocke instead and the difficulty was still an issue. Most fights just boil down to swapping to whichever Pokemon had the effective move then executing it. I played the game in very small bursts over the course of a few weeks so it never got stale but if I had been any faster it easily would have been an issue.

Another common complaint is the story. Normally I don't think it's fair to call a Pokemon game's plot bad since they're all basically the exact same, however I can see where these complaints come from. The story had a lot of potential. I think Lysandre was actually a really cool villain but he's bogged down by being related to Team Flare who is easily the lamest evil Pokemon team. AZ was also a character I thought could have been really interesting if they gave him more time but they don't until the very end of the game. The main complaint I hear about the plot is the 4 rivals being too friendly. That's not the issue. The issue is that they're underdeveloped.The genderswap rival had some characterization but nothing super interesting or compelling. The other 3 each representing a different element of Pokemon games from filling out the Pokedex or just appreciating the Pokemon themselves. I think if fleshed out these could have been really cool characters but of course they aren't. Thankfully I think the future gens fix this even if they don't focus on more important aspects (such as making the games good.) To put it plainly, Gen 6 had A LOT of potential in its story that they just didn't go through with.

My favorite thing about this game besides the new Pokemon added has the be the region itself. At first I wasn't really enjoying it. Standard grass route and the first forest is copy paste Viridian forest from Gen 1. I was willing to ignore this though because at the time I assumed it was just them riding off the fact that the game was 3D so making the routes look super unique wouldn't be a priority. I was SO wrong. Kalos just might be the prettiest region in a Pokemon game. The early routes start off generic but they soon turned into sights that I was genuinely left me in awe. (My favorite is definitely the Pokemon League because its just this fucking massive castle where the camera starts to pan out as you approach it.)

The Pokemon designs are really good here. Gen 6 definitely went for a quality over quantity and it definitely shows. Greninja, Pangoro, Malamar, Tyrantrum, Sylveon, Hawlucha, Goodra, and Noivern are my favorites. I also love the Mega designs. My opinion of Sceptile who is my favorite Pokemon would be much lower if not for his Mega.

I no longer have high expectations for Pokemon and I don't see myself playing any of the future games, however Pokemon X and Y nail the aspects of Pokemon that I care about. The Pokemon, region and music are amazing and while I do agree that it has its flaws I don't think its fair to act like this game is the only Pokemon game that has them. This game is cozy. That's why I like it. Not my favorite Pokemon game but they definitely had way worse ones.

I've made it expressly clear that I adore all the Insomniac Spider-Man games and seeing as how this is effectively just more game I was almost guaranteed to like it.

The plot of this game isn't as emotional as the main game and I'm honeslty pretty happy about that. The main game felt like the big major comic book arc and this DLC felt like it was just meant to be a quick bonus little Spider-Man story where he fights a threat on a much smaller scale. I really appreciate how they got some lesser known villains for this too. (Whens the last time you've seen Hammerhead appear in anything since Spectacular Spider-Man?) Black Cat making her first physical appearance in this series here too and she's voiced by Erica Lindbeck and I have a crush on every character she plays.

Alot of the plot here is mainly just to set up for Spider-Man 2 and to hint at Peter training Miles for his game. I love the JJJ Episode where he has to go to the hospital at the realization that there are two Spider-Men now. It's a very nice cooldown after all the big drama of the main game. Genuinely just a fun, small scale Spider-Man story to tide the fans over between this and Miles Morales and thats all I wanted it to be.

The issues though come from the side content. Overall I think the side content here is a tad better than the main game. Or at the very least its more story focused than most of the main game ones which I think is neat. However they are kinda bullshit sometimes. Like I appreciate the extra challenge but when the bonus rewards are asking me to get a 100 Combo chain against swarms of the most aggresive enemies in the game I kind of start to get pissed off. But that's not even the problem.

Screwball. Enough said.

Also her challenges are actually kind of fun but when you try to go for the Ultimate Score on some of them they are just actual bullshit and they kind of push me from wanting to play them. (which wouldnt be an issue if they weren't based around Screwball and you had to hear her voice during all of them.)

Anyway yeah this DLC is pretty good. Nothing crazy but a fun side story between the much bigger game releases.



Also Black Cat is sexy as fuck.

Beat the campaign so I feel comfortable writing a review at this point.

MWIII was supposedly intended to be a large DLC for MWII and man does it reek of that original intent. That's mostly a bad-to-midling thing but it does provide for a solid multiplayer experience. If we share the same brain rot and you bought skins or other goodies from the CoD store for CP (God why?) those are still around. No hard resets here. MWII had a solid gameplay experience and that has been maintained and even improved in some ways like faster, tighter controls and a whole new suite of gadgets and weapons on top of the existing MWII set. The wheel wasn't reinvented here--it was polished. Multiplayer is good but definitely not worth dusting off your GameBattles account and dumping in dozens of hours.

The campaign is where that DLC accusation is in full presentation. To my knowledge this is the first year-to-year story continuation in franchise history. MWIII picks up almost immediately after the MWII campaign left off. We have a series-best cast of characters and a new main villain is introduced in a meaningful sense. The problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere. This is exacerbated by the fact that MWIII wants to be the 2009 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 so badly. The atmosphere of the campaign is less a reboot of one of the most beloved blockbuster FPS campaigns of all time and more like if someone made a shooter campaign out of the CoD battle royale game peppered with some Glup Shitto seasoning to disguise things a bit (remember when they stormed that airport in MW2? What if it was a soccer field and you were there?!).

And that battle royale thing isn't just a vague jab. Of the 14 campaign missions, 6 of them are "Open Combat" missions--a sort of PvE round of CoD Warzone where you have various objectives that boil down to "move across the map." At their best, CoD campaigns are cinematic and these missions trade that for... replay value I guess? I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that, though. The remaining 8 missions are each shorter than any other CoD campaign missions I can remember. Not bad. Just short and simple.

The game also tries to have its "big cool evil guy does terrible thing" moment at the end to setup for more in the future. No spoilers but it ends up feeling rushed, hollow, and a bit like a fuck you to anyone who cares about the central cast of characters. I don't especially care about them but this story beat made sure I kind of can't in the future.

If you like CoD, sure. Check this out on deep discount. No one should pay $70 for this reheated pass at MWII.

I always got this idea as a kid that the greatest thing a single-player game could aspire to was to be multi-player. Crash Bandicoot? Get Coco in the mix too. Mario 64? Get Yoshi off that dang roof and let's chill together. Modding and the internet have made my terrible little kid ideas possible and the results are that it's... fine? Any number of mods that let you have Mario and Luigi on screen at one time are a cool novelty but something is almost certainly lost in that leap from curated, individual experience to virtual cat-herding wish fulfillment session. Enter: The Outlast Trials

So yes, worse video game in some ways. But to some extent, I'm just happy Red Barrels is still making things. Outlast is one of my favorite horror games of all time but Outlast 2 really missed the mark for me. Anytime a sequel fumbles, I get nervous that we may never see the IP (or even the studio) again. Instead of dying out, Red Barrels said "alright let's do a weird one" and I love that (even if it isn't a 5/5).

The Outlast Trials has no right to work as well as it does. I mean, this franchise is known for constant quiet tension shattered by explosive moments of disgusting horror. And yet here I am with my dumbass friends taking turns throwing bricks at a horny cop with a cattle prod. I could see that being a real problem for some fans of the series but in execution it's a blast. For what it's worth, the game is fundamentally built on an almost arcade-ified version of the Outlast formula that can be played entirely solo. In that way, it probably is objectively worse than its predecessors. But get a few friends in the mix and suddenly you're running around a carnival haunted house together just howling and yelling the whole way.

At the end of the day, the game's solid and even better with friends. The true achievement is managing to take such an intimate experience and turning it into an amusement park ride while keeping some level of quality. Do I want this to be the future of the franchise? Absolutely not. But I hope it effectively funds a true Outlast 3.

EDIT - Changed my rating to a full 10/10 because, despite my qualms, it really does deserve it.

Honestly, if it weren't for PS Plus making this free for this month, I might not have checked out Animal Well right away. And what a shame that would be, because this game is truly special.

I will admit, it didn't seem that way to me initially. With the retraux pixel-art style and the TV scanline filter (which thankfully can be toggled off), it wasn't too appealing to me visually. No disrespect to games that also employ those visuals, but they can usually be a mixed bag, at least for me anyway.

Despite that, however, I do believe that Animal Well uses them to its benefit and helps sell its eerie, otherworldly atmosphere.

Speaking of which, there's next-to-no overt narrative in Animal Well, which is entirely a show-don't-tell experience that thrives on worldbuilding naturally during gameplay. That approach also extends to the gameplay itself, as your goals and abilities are things that you have to uncover as you go. This lends itself to some truly excellent Metroidvania level design and gameplay mechanics as you experiment with button combinations and obstacles to reach said goals.

Seriously, I cannot praise the puzzle design in this game enough. It genuinely belongs up there with the likes of Portal 1 + 2, Myst, and Obra Dinn. It's all incredibly intuitive, and really only once did I refer to a guide, and even then it was to confirm the answer.

That said, admittedly, Animal Well can get in its own way with how obtuse it is. There are a decent number of save points scattered throughout the map; however, backtracking to them is still necessary in some segments. There are also a couple of tedious parts, including a long-winded chase sequence with some jumps that you have to be pixel-perfect to make.

Nevertheless, Animal Well is truly spectacular and well-deserving of the 89 it currently has on OpenCritic, and then some. Any other Metroidvania developers currently playing through it must be equal parts excited and frustrated for what Billy Basso has brought to the genre. Kudos to you, sir.

10/10

The City That Never Sleeps is is effectively the title of the season pass of Spider-Man on PS4, comprising the 3 DLC mission sets released for it that together comprise what is more or less a 4th act that follows the main game's 3. It follows Spider-Man taking on a resurging Maggia crime wave led by Hammerhead. It took me about 12 or so hours to get all the trophies in all 3 DLCs, but that, as with the normal game, is a fairly easy task to accomplish compared to many other PS4 games.

Given that this is more or less 3 smaller stories that make up a 4th act, it almost feels like an expansion to the main game or a micro-sequel that reuses the same city. Swinging around the city was still as fun as ever, and the 9 new suits (3 per-DLC) were a very welcome addition to the base game's 29, but it is just more Spider-Man. Despite being shorter, the story is still well told, and I especially liked what they did with Yuri's arc over it. If anything, I kinda wish it had been one large expansion from the beginning instead of 3 smaller storys, as the larger connected narrative feels a little rushed compared to the base game's. The DLC's don't seem to run as well as the base game, though. There were several times where I would flying across the city on my way to another activity and the game would just freeze to load in the area I was going into, and a couple missions had a floating/frozen car that kinda made that mission freak out, where those were never things I encountered in the base game.

The pack of 3 starts out a bit lukewarm, with The Heist having some remarkably aggravating and not fun challenge missions (which were already the worst part of the base game, so making those worse is saying something), on top of some other fairly uninspired side activities and a difficulty level that's a bit of a step down from act 3 of the base game. It really picks up the pace in the 2nd and 3rd bits of the pack though, with Turf Wars and Silver Lining having a very nice difficulty curve across the whole of the TCTNS expansion with some really brutal new enemy types, much better challenge design, and some enemy base missions that will really test just how good a grasp on the combat you have. Even the bosses are damn tough compared to a lot in the main game, with the final boss of the 3rd pack, while not having the atmospheric gravitas that the main game's climax has, it was certainly a far harder boss.

If you were to buy the digital deluxe edition of the game, which is $80 compared to the normal game's $60, then that's a pretty good value proposition as far as I'm concerned. You're getting 33% more game, and you're paying 33% more for it. At $10 a piece separate, it's a bit of a bigger ask, as is the $25 for the season pass, but this is a very easy recommendation if you pick the digital deluxe edition on sale for $50 like it is at the moment of writing this review.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. While it's not exactly a must-play, completely revamped version of the main game's story, it's a very well executed expansion to the base game that is well-priced and has good value for money (which is something many other game's DLC's can't really say these days). Even if you may feel that paying $20-$30 extra bucks on top of the base game's $60 is a bit much, I can say with high confidence that this is gonna be something well worth checking out if and when Spider-Man ever gets a GOTY Edition sometime next year ^w^

The last hour of this game is unbelievably impactful. I was completely unprepared for that ending.

What a treat it was to play this game for the first time. Superb characters, a gorgeous score, wonderful art direction that just pops and an excellent story to boot. Joyous.

I will make a point to recommend this to my friends.