This is a delight to play, and not just in the very horny way that you'd expect with a game like this. Included in the game is a toggle to disable all 18+ content, which I thought was very funny when I first saw it -- but the writing in this VN is just lovely, the characters are cute and charming, and this could easily stand alone without the (really good) explicit content. So much love and care went into making every part of this VN and I sincerely adore it. Margaret is such a relatable character and I want her life so bad. It's the ultimate dream: Become a librarian, get really into tea, gather a cozy circle of close friends, and just settle down for a life of comfort (and lots of reading).

Shoutout to that one meme on twitter that led me to this game and my newfound desire to be an adorable mousegirl :3

For the longest time, I thought that the prevalent issue weighing down roguelites/likes was excessive RNG. Later on, I slightly adjusted my stance: RNG was okay, but a lack of player control to combat any unexpected changes as a result of RNG was not. In one fell swoop, Mosa Lina has neatly proven both of those issues to be mere symptoms of the root cause: modern roguelites/likes overemphasize the macro over the micro.

This problem I think, stems from the genre's overreliance upon meta-progression and run investment. While these would at first appear to be opposite ends of the spectrum (after all, meta-progression often relies upon you throwing away successive runs to gain some kind of advantage/pass certain checks), they both point to the same core issue of ultimately not respecting the player's time. In the former case, the moment-to-moment gameplay often isn't interesting enough to sustain a run. In the latter, the player either succeeds with the "god-run" and has to chase the high through more grinding all over again, or throws it all away due to mistakes/RNG and feels like absolute shit, lamenting what could have been with their hours spent, just inches away from the finish line.

Mosa Lina doesn't fall victim to this, because it was never about winning in the first place. There's no end to the game: the core concept infinitely loops and you'll never hit the credits roll unless you decide to manually mash through them in the pause menu. There's a scoring system in place, but the descriptions themselves often mock how points are handed out arbitrarily. On top of this, there's no meta-progression whatsoever because practically everything is unlocked and randomized from the start: you've got three randomized toys to play with out of a pool of nine randomly selected for the particular loop out of 21 possible toys, and if nothing works (which the game outright warns you will happen), just reroll until something sticks.

As a result, the game solves two problems at once: the aforementioned issue of filling up a player's time with weak moment-to-moment gameplay, and the classic issue of "lock-and-key" solutions creating linear puzzles that lack replayability. Although the game characterizes itself as "a hostile interpretation of the immersive sim," I find it to be more indifferent if anything. It doesn't guide you towards solutions, it never provides any incentives for finding solutions, and it never even bothers to explain its underlying mechanics aside from listing the control scheme and being forthright with its unpredictability. Yet by doing so, it sets itself up as the perfect player-driven sandbox. The difficulty and learning curve is entirely up to you; sure the types of tools are randomized, but half of the battle is figuring out what to do with the tool combinations given and exploiting the game's floaty gravity and set pieces with your heavy character and tight jump. If you can't succeed, a refresh is just seconds away!

I don't think I've yelled so much at a video game since my high school days of grinding Dota 2 (a very dark period in my life, I'm aware). However, these were not yells of frustration or exasperation in the slightest. No, this was me shouting in excitement every time something batshit crazy happened on screen (read: pretty damn often). Sometimes the game really does ask for the seemingly impossible with huge gaps to cross/jump and absolutely garbage or ill-fitting tools that I can't even say feel balanced at times; I swear the fish have been useless in 80% of their appearances. That's what makes it so damn enthralling though: savoring the thrill of discovery when I learned how to bomb-jump in mid-air by properly timing my placements, or somehow finagling a solution by pushing and juggling around some crazy contraptions made of dead frogs, some wire, and a ladder. The possibilities felt endless, and while I do have some critique for the initially unintuitive aiming (you shoot upwards/downwards at a 75 degree angle from the horizontal and can't fine-tune your trajectory any further), this game really is the full and realized package it claims to be despite (or perhaps as a result of!) its lack of excessive streamlining. With Level Editor updates on the way, I can 100% see myself returning to mess around more in the future. I'm nothing but pleased as punch that a game which wasn't even on my radar has sufficiently blown me away: in a year of flashy major releases and tired conventions, Mosa Lina pulls back the curtain to reveal that the basics are all you need for a good show after all.

self-assured and effortless, nights is an absolute joy to play in its purity

this game has me caring more about high scores and leaderboards than any other just because memorising the level layouts and gliding ever so slightly more gracefully as you replay, maximising efficiency to just about cram one more lap in is just so exhilarating and addictive in itself; it's so simple to pick up and play but leaves you with such a high skill ceiling to work towards

its visuals and music are also just wonderful and nail the inviting yet ethereal atmosphere of being in a dream, further incentivising replays since nightopia is simply just such a nice place to exist in

nights is a short game, but burns bright for its entire duration, and it's one that i see myself returning to many more times and only growing more fond of, we really need more games like this i think

In his video last year regarding context sensitivity, Matthewmatosis opens by describing Ghost Trick as entirely context-sensitive: the main action button ("trick") always performs a different action depending on the item possessed. However, he points this out as an exception to the trend of heavy context-sensitivity weighing down modern titles, because simply put, Ghost Trick uses context-sensitivity not as a crutch, but as its core. It never seems to suffer from fuzzy context: the game not only gives you plenty of safe time to experiment with set-pieces leading up to timed sequences (since untimed traversal to the victim is every bit a puzzle in itself), but also briefly describes the single "trick" of each object possessed to give players an idea of how to progress. Furthermore, Ghost Trick's difficulty hits a perfect sweet-spot: it doesn't feel free because traversal and manipulating objects to your advantage require a good degree of planning and experimentation, but failure also never feels too punishing because other characters and the environment are great at providing thoughtful feedback upon failure, so the player isn't just banging their head against a wall via quick restarts at built-in checkpoints.

Essentially, it's like playing the ancestor of Return of the Obra Dinn but with a time loop mechanic attached. The objective remains simple (travel back to four minutes before death to avert fate), but how to achieve said objective is always completely dictated by your surroundings. As a result, it naturally iterates upon its basic structure to create more unconventional scenarios: soon you're not just manipulating objects for traversal and foiling assassins, you're also solving locked room mysteries, or traveling to different environments to save victims from elsewhere, or diving into deaths within deaths to avert multiple fates at a time. Through all of this, Ghost Trick understands one of the key strengths of video games: creating virtual playgrounds of experimentation unsaddled by the limitations of time to reward players through the joy of discovery. The player is constantly surprised time and time again not only from unexpected object interactions, but also from how the narrative weaves in and out of death sequences to create suspenseful moments. It's a minor miracle in itself that the story never jumps the shark: the gameplay mechanics remain firmly consistent alongside its lore, and every plot thread is neatly wrapped up by the end of the game after a series of subtly foreshadowed twists. Combine this marrying of storytelling and gameplay with expressive animations, a colorful and very personable cast, an understated yet powerful soundtrack, and a great mix of humor and emotional moments, and you get what is perhaps the most cohesive title in the DS library.

It's rather poetic that a game which looked simple on the outside provided such an intricate exercise for Shu Takumi to prove that he was no one-trick pony. I'm grateful that Ghost Trick has finally been ported to modern systems for a whole new audience to lose their minds over this, for it's a masterpiece that everyone owes to themselves to check out. At the end of the day, nothing feels quite as cathartic as miraculously changing destiny in the face of inevitable death.

I haven't written a retrospective review in a while, but there's something in the background that I've been working on that I think writing a base review for the original game would benefit from. That, and I honestly haven't seen any reviews talking positively about the gameplay for all the high scores discussing how much they loved this childhood classic. So, why not knock out two birds with one stone?

The gameplay of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series plays out like a very traditional turn based dungeon crawler roguelike. As a newly transformed amnesiac Pokemon who can only faintly remember being a human, you and your partner must traverse floor after floor of randomized mystery dungeons layouts, fighting scores of hostile Pokemon while micromanaging your hunger (represented by a belly capacity), health, and stamina (PP) to safely make it out in one piece. In between dungeons, you can participate in the daily toilings of Treasure Town as a member of Wigglytuff's Guild, claiming fortune and fame in the name of adventure while helping out those in need through various job board requests and bounties upon those who seek to do wrongdoing to others. By completing quest after quest and gaining rewards and experience along the way, and recruiting a few friends and allies in your journey too, you and your partner slowly begin to make out your place in this familiar yet ever so sprawling universe and seek to put an end toward the growing calamity that threatens to put an end to the very domain of life and death as we know it.

Perhaps the greatest strength of Explorers of Sky to me is that it's almost a picture perfect translation of the Pokemon JRPG turn based battling system as a spinoff, in that almost every move has a purpose and can't be easily labeled as "useless." Weaker moves with lower base power and higher PP have their use because you can't just go to a Pokemon Center whenever you run out of PP; you have to use a Max Elixir to restore PP, and inventory space is a very coveted resource. Meanwhile, a lot of these weaker moves also distinguish themselves from their stronger cousins, in that many of these weaker moves have differing range (i.e. using Heat Wave or Lava Plume over Flamethrower to hit all enemies in a room over all enemies surrounding the player respectively) that can be strategically used to pick off enemies (or deal with more than one at a time) that would otherwise pose a more significant threat up close and personal. Stat gain and reduction moves like Growl are just as useful too, because health is absolutely a resource when you don't have all day to just sit around and recover, and Vile Seeds (which decrease enemy defenses when thrown) are far too valuable to just be used on singular dungeon enemies. Even the gimmick moves that you'd never normally see in competitive Pokemon battling or factored in during min-maxing have niches here. Pay Day, the move that gave you a bit more moola if used in Trainer battles, is suddenly invaluable in EoS because Wigglytuff's Guild is extremely stingy and will take away 90% of all your Poke currency earnings from jobs. Recycle, the move that was really only used on the "Funbro" infinite stall set on Pokemon Showdown, can be used here to restore used TMs, an absolute godsend when TMs are a super rare treasure/lottery earning and cost thousands of Poke to purchase from Kecleon that you probably don't have. Even Rock Smash, a base 40 attack that's forever relegated to HM slaves in the mainstream Pokemon games, has a practical use here as a reliable way to destroy dungeon walls that can hide treasure and provide safer routing to other rooms and stairs. I could go on and on about the creativity of the greater Pokemon system translated into the roguelike medium, but needless to say, there's a surprising amount of freedom of expression to be found in the combat in Explorers of Sky from the moves alone.

I'll point out the elephant in the room as a follow-up; one of the biggest gripes that I've always had with the Pokemon series is the huge amount of luck/RNG to be found with the combat, and Explorers of Sky is no exception to the rule. Remember the gen 1 miss? EoS often feels a bit like that but more exaggerated; moves love to miss randomly for no apparent reason, and even moves in the base games that typically have a starting accuracy of 100% like Thunderbolt (as opposed to stronger moves that have a set lower accuracy like Thunder) and the standard attack from tapping A can miss for no apparent reason. In general, all attacks in EoS have "Hit Ratios" that don't align 1 to 1 with accuracy in the other Pokemon games, and in fact have two accuracy checks if the move is damaging. As such, I can agree that combat can be a bit frustrating as such; Water Gun shouldn't just randomly miss, Dragon Breath shouldn't be paralyzing me every other hit, and Mud Shot shouldn't be slowing me down every single time. Often, the randomized behavior of enemies plays just as huge of a part in survival as your inherent skill. And yet, I think this challenge is what makes Explorers of Sky so interesting to me; learning to roll with the blows and mitigate the danger plays a significant part in your personal growth and a strong reason why I find EoS a lot more fun at times than the main series.

To elaborate upon that, there are two major factors regarding this "problem" of taking damage, where defeating the opponent with little negative consequence is the solution. The first factor is in regards to recovery and acting during danger; even when crippled or affected by RNG, there is usually something you can do. For example, while paralyzed, your Pokemon's turn speed is halved and it won't be able to use moves or standard attack, but you can still move around and use items. So, one solution here is to switch places with your ally Pokemon and have them take up the gauntlet, or you could instead throw a seed at the enemy Pokemon to cripple them or throw damaging items in lieu of an attack, and so on so forth. Similarly, when your Pokemon is cringing as a side effect from getting hit by Rock Slide or Bite, etc, you can still move despite not being able to attack with moves, so a perfectly viable solution is to step backwards and force the opponent to approach while you regain your turn. Playing in part to this is also the preparation beforehand; negative statuses and damage can be mitigated or prevented entirely with the right items, IQ skills (from ingesting enough Gummis), and seeds or berries. In a similar vein, traps and randomly spawned Monster Houses (rooms where tons of enemy Pokemon suddenly descend upon you) can be a huge pain, but having the right ranged moves and offensive Orbs for crowd control can save a run from total chaos. Despite how difficult and often unfair the game can feel, there really is a certain satisfaction to being prepared for all of these different nightmare scenarios and carefully plotting out your next moves to navigate and escape dungeons with great loot and valuable experience.

I'd be remiss not to mention the new additions and changes between Explorers of Time/Darkness and Sky, which is considered to be the "definitive" version. Time and Darkness both have exclusive items (Vile vs Violent seed) and exclusive Pokemon (picking between Celebi and Mewtwo for example), and Sky, as the Platinum of its series, forgoes this entirely; the whole gang is here to be recruited to maximize your friend list. Sky's also got Spinda's Cafe, which streamlines item management and stat growth in the form of drinks that can provide random stat boosts alongside using up seeds/berries/Gummis and a Recycle Shop that finally provides a reliable source of Reviver Seeds without spending over a thousand Poke and has a Prize ticket lottery where you can win rare TMs among other great loot by discarding unnecessary/useless items. There's also the post-game Shaymin Village + Sky Peak sidequest with tons of other Pokemon to recruit (including, you guessed it, Shaymin!) and Sky Gifts to send to your friends. Finally, Explorers of Sky has some side episodes where you can play as other important story Pokemon facing their own struggles and further illustrating the depth of characterization to be found in the game. I'd be spoiling too many memorable moments by explaining the plot details here, but needless to say, it was great learning more about the background of those that the protagonist meets in their adventure, and you won't want to miss any of those episodes.

Many before me have spoken at length about this, but ultimately I think the reason why Explorers of Sky is so compelling is because the game is a journey of growth. Of course, there's the gameplay perspective regarding this growth; the mechanics that you deal with at the beginning of the game are the exact same as the mechanics required to tackle the final dungeons and the challenging and plentiful post-game dungeons. While there are more elements of danger to juggle and more creative elements to abuse, it all boils down to the same tense yet satisfying turn by turn dungeon crawling roguelike combat, just with higher stakes on both your end and the opponents' end; the personal growth through what your team has accomplished and become feels so gratifying because it was all your own hard work, and your increased experience and knowledge base will continue to carry you through. Nevertheless, there's also the journey of personal growth as reflected in the overarching narrative. Again, I won't get too nitty gritty with the details in case others want to make the dive, but you and your partner really do go from anxiety ridden, budding greenhorns to legends of Treasure Town by overcoming previously thought to be insurmountable obstacles and fighting against the very nature of time and destiny itself. I'd be lying if I said there weren't plenty of moments where I teared up from the emotional stakes across the colorful cast, and the fantastic soundtrack and vibrant visuals really help sell the spirit of adventure and fighting for those who have supported you every step of the way.

Look, I get it; as a kid who absolutely had to get his hands on every single Pokemon game imaginable and has still been closely following the future of the franchise, Pokemon has changed. Going from a once beloved and epic monster collector battle simulator where some kid from the middle of nowhere became a champion, to game after game, sequel after sequel of watered-down, repetitive, thoughtless, and empty hand-holding titles inundated with padding and souless exhaustion has not done Nintendo's cash cow any favors in terms of critical reputation, and the perception of my once favorite franchise has nosedived off a cliff. Even going back to classic Pokemon spin-off titles from my childhood has not held up well against my nostalgia, and I've been constantly disappointed so, so, many damn times. Finally, it didn't help that the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon franchise met a strange stagnation after its peak, with the immediate WiiWare successors only being released in Japan and the following global successor resulting in a noticeable drop in quality. Having said that, even in the face of the growing critical reevaluation, we'll always have Explorers of Sky. It's proof that Pokemon, at some point, was more than just another copy and pasted 4Kids sellout that's taken us for granted and in fact had some of the most complex, varied, and compelling gameplay that I'm happy to say more than holds up and remain glad that it was an integral part of my childhood. From the little I've played of the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's remake, I'm cautiously optimistic regarding the franchise's future, but even so, maybe the era of the superfluous videogame remake doesn't matter here. Sometimes, it's just nice to revisit the good times and remember that despite all the doom and gloom in the modern video game industry, they'll never be able to take away those moments that define us; maybe those then, were the real treasures that we've been searching for all along in Explorers of Sky.

I was talking with a friend a few months back about how there seemed to be this cheery and upbeat trend with Game Boy Advance titles. In essence, I think this is a classic case of developers adapting to the limitations of the system. The original GBA has no backlight, resulting in a lack of darker palettes and backgrounds often looking a bit washed out: try and compare Mine Cart Carnage from the original Donkey Kong Country to its GBA port counterpart and the difference becomes obvious. Additionally, the GBA has no soundchip: the CPU instead processes the sound, and as a result, the GBA generally sounds much more compressed, with lots of sharp noise over its muffled audio. Again, compare the original SNES version of Minecart Madness to its GBA translation for reference. As a result, the GBA is filled with happy-go-lucky titles that emphasized brighter colors and catchy and cheery chiptunes: Golden Sun, Wario Land 4, Gen 3 Pokemon, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, Warioware, Drill Dozer, and so on so forth. They even play around with this disparity to their advantage with the Advance Wars titles, emphasizing this almost idyllic portrayal of cartoon warfare as a sort of disconnect with little cynicism. I’d like to highlight this observation not necessarily as a bad thing that much of the GBA’s library was marked with warm and uplifting tones, and rather as something that fascinates me, though it does make me wonder if there are any true horror games to be found on the GBA or if they were even considered viable in the first place.

For those very reasons, I unfortunately have to mark the Silent Hill: Play Novel as a straight mismatch. The comparison becomes extremely relevant here, because the original Silent Hill is also a classic example of limitation breeding innovation. Team Silent was able to disguise the original Playstation’s limitations through both its gameplay and its presentation. Frame rate drops didn’t matter as much when the combat was already so slow and deliberate and the anticipation leading up to confrontations mattered just as much as the tension of the moments themselves. The limited draw distance became a strength for Silent Hill, with the developers abusing fog and darkness to create this “fear of the unknown” practically unparalleled to its contemporaries while also distracting players from the not so smooth character models and textures. Sure, the original might ultimately still be a linear and straightforward playthrough, but the act of exploration through a simultaneously worldly and otherworldly setting and poring through layers of fog did wonders in regards to concealing its linearity. Akira Yamaoka’s dissonant industrial soundtrack further highlighted the cold and rusty feel of wandering through an abandoned Connecticut town. All of this, unfortunately, just isn't there on the GBA, and leads me to believe that this was a poor fit for the system.

Again, this is due to the GBA's limitations, but unlike its original PSX counterpart, Konami couldn’t hide it quite as well this time. As an example, let’s again compare the soundtracks between the two different versions. Listen to the Silent Hill Theme on the Play Novel (well, the first 15 seconds anyways, as that’s all that was included), and then listen to the included theme on the original Playstation; the difference is night and day. Similarly, the visuals have taken a hit, because the pixelated stills of the Play Novel on the smaller GBA screen can’t come close to capturing the emptiness of Silent Hill on the Playstation, with its enveloping darkness and fog swallowing the town’s surroundings upon sight. I’ll give them credit for trying, but it’s just not the same; after all, Silent Hill is not just about what you can see, but rather what you can’t see, and the GBA visuals just don’t leave enough to imagination.

But it’s not just the atmosphere that’s a drastic drop in quality: I think the gameplay itself is also a mismatch. Silent Hill is a master of subtlety, disguising player choices made here and there in-between all the action, as something of a test of faith. Credit goes to chump here for pointing this out, but essentially, Silent Hill makes the decision-making towards an interactive ending feel less like a selection of correctly answering multiple choice questions, and instead feel more like embodying a certain “playstyle” by stringing together a pattern of actions; if you believe it, you can probably achieve it. Unfortunately, the former is exactly what the Play Novel is. Sure, there are some choices along the way that are more or less there for flavor text and won’t actually impact the route taken/final ending, but at the end of the day, it’s all laid out in the flowchart. Its structure ultimately works against its own illusion: while it’s certainly convenient jumping back to the flowchart to select every option to see what happens next, this breaks its veil almost immediately. You’re left with the lingering and obvious fact that you are just choosing between A or B to get the best ending possible. It’s for this reason that while Silent Hill’s original narrative was strong enough, it was not so much the story that sold it so much as the act of its storytelling itself. Deciding whether to hide or seek from a binary choice in branching storylines will never compare to the feeling of presence created from swinging around your flashlight in the dark on an abandoned street.

I admit that perhaps I’m being a little uncharitable to the Play Novel based off of its concept and execution in comparison to the original, but it does have some novelty. Cybil Bennett’s separate scenario is the main draw here: you can play through her perspective, and to Konami’s credit, while the base story remains the same, the actual events that Cybil goes through tend to be quite different than those experienced by Harry in the main scenario. Having said that, it is drastically shorter than Harry’s scenario: there are only three endings compared to the main scenario’s five, and half as many potential choices that can be made. In addition, you can’t unlock Cybil’s scenario until completing Harry’s scenario at least once, which meant that my main interest was stuck behind at least an hour of mashing through text and often repeating the same puzzles since certain choices made early on would affect the final ending and couldn’t be bypassed with the flowchart alone (though I concede that my curiosity to see all the content played a part in this).

There’s a bit more that could be said, namely that the puzzles were pretty one-note and seemed more like distractions than anything (with one particular “click on the bug” puzzle being a particular pain in the ass due to the screen crunch and the unclear cursor hitbox), and that it absolutely annoyed me how I had to mash through the first minute of introductory dialogue every time I restarted a scenario because the game wouldn’t let me open up the flowchart right away, but the short and thick of it is that the Silent Hill Play Novel constantly reminded me that I could be playing the real thing instead. It’s possible that the original text was far richer in its prose, which would mean that the stiff language was instead a result of the English fan-translation, as it vaguely reminded me of creepypasta. Additionally, perhaps the Andy Scenarios that were only temporarily available for download via phone (and have since become lost media) could have added a bit more bulk to the experience. As it stands though, I think that this is most definitely not a substitute for playing through the original on the Playstation, but rather, a passing curiosity for die-hard Silent Hill fans. At least there’s a silver lining to all of this: Silent Hill is an experience that can’t be genuinely replicated in any other form due to the magic of the original remaining deeply embedded in its distinct and understated design principles, no matter how many more will try to do so in the future.

What a brilliant mess this game is. Breath of the Wild, when it came out, felt like a flawless jewel. You could complain (and I did!) about how weapon durability disincentivized engaging with the combat, or bemoan the relative weakness of the dungeons, but those were all gripes around the edges of the monumental fact that they had near-perfectly delivered on the promise that open world games had been making for decades. It was reacting to the larger world of video games in a way Nintendo largely refused to do, and at the same time it was like nothing we'd seen before.

Tears of the Kingdom is very much like something we've seen before. The core conceit is identical to its predecessor despite the different array of magical abilities, and even the plot is largely unchanged: Zelda is gone, again. The great evil is back, again. Climb the towers, find the shrines, do the dungeons, save the princess.

But to see this as just more Breath of the Wild is also to miss the point. The first game was constrained by its immaculate crystalline structure. It had to be the open-world game. Tears of the Kingdom could never be that because that's already been done, and it uses the extra freedom of the younger sibling to get weird with it.

In a lot of ways, this weirdness isn't for the best. The control scheme is onerous to say the least, particularly when engaging with the construction mechanics. The combat scaling is way off, with enemies either taking ten hits from a top-tier weapon or dying immediately. Once you get a feel for the patterns in the depths, they're largely empty and repetitive.

But damn if it isn't also interesting. The truth I keep coming back to is this: although I think Breath of the Wild is a "better" game in some abstract design sense, I lost interest after about 100 hours. Meanwhile, I've spent twice that playing Tears of the Kingdom and I'd be happy to continue if only there weren't more games to get around to.

This game takes huge swings, and while not all of them hit the ones that do are incredible. You only have to glance online to see the videos of mechs and drones players have built. The depths feel genuinely terrifying. Fusion is fully brilliant, simultaneously solving durability and making room for countless moments of discovery. There are genuinely good boss fights for maybe the first time in any Zelda game.

And I could rhapsodize endlessly about the way the world interconnects with itself. To my mind, the only real justification for the concept of "open world" is the idea that your actions as a player have non-local effects on the world you exist in. Breath of the Wild gestured at this, but Tears of the Kingdom fully embraces it. Conversations continue across the map from one another as NPCs wander from place to place. Refugees you meet in one region return home to another as you rebuild their houses. The world feels alive in a way that games seldom attempt and almost never achieve, and I love it for that.

It may be easy to write off Pokemon Snap as yet another gimmicky spinoff of Nintendo's most lucrative franchise, but looking back, it’s honestly a very refreshing take on the arcade rail-shooter. HAL Laboratory managed to transform a gameplay vessel known for flashy, action-packed titles into one of the most relaxing and heartwarming diversions in the N64 library. Just consider how the mechanics were translated: the guns became your toolkit, in the form of your camera and your apples + Pester Balls to interact with the environment and local wildlife, and the “damage” became a photography scoring system as you carefully manipulate your surroundings and wait for the perfect moment to take your shot. The game has excellent replayability due to its depth of interactions packed within the span of a few hours, and becomes a fantastic exercise of discovery and optimization: it’s quite satisfying figuring out exactly how every Pokemon can be lured and baited into favorable positions to maximize your score while unlocking a few new courses along the way. Furthermore, experimentation never feels punishing because courses are already naturally short (within 5 min per run) and you’ll later unlock the Dash Engine to accelerate your cart if there are any particular sections you want to get to immediately. It’s a fantastic way to encourage finding as many unique interactions as possible while rewarding acute player awareness; my favorite examples include stringing together multiple far-away shots of Lapras across the beach stage to finally snag an up-close profile photograph at the end, or realizing that you can "feed" Grimer with enough Pester Balls to spawn Muk. Of course, this goes without saying that nothing quite hits the spot like taking pictures of happy, dancing creatures on a chill Pokemon safari.

What does hold Pokemon Snap back a bit is the scoring system. It unfortunately feels like a crapshoot trying to snag a perfect score, since Professor Oak’s requirements regarding size seem a bit nebulous besides the obvious guideline of “make the Pokemon as large as possible within the frame with the whole body included” and pose specifications feel even more arbitrary (given that the Pokemon is facing forward of course), with anything that’s not an aggressive or flashy Pokemon stance often meeting the fate of “it’s so-so,” whatever that means. Also, needing to be exactly pin-point accurate on the reticle in order to associate a score with a particular Pokemon species should work well in theory, but this concept doesn't quite hold up in scramble situations when multiple species are present in the frame and none of them are covered by the reticle. Case in point, Professor Oak was very sure that this was meant to be a picture of Haunter. Let’s just say that being at the forefront of Pokemon research with a PhD doesn’t necessarily make him the most qualified to judge photography. The flimsy scoring mechanics aren't a huge deal for most of the game, given that unlocking courses seems to be locked behind photographing a certain number of different species as opposed to sheer score accrual, but it does hurt the post-game appeal of trying to beat the challenge scores.

Regardless, Pokemon Snap remains a somewhat overlooked and innovative twist on a classic video game genre, popularizing photography games and spawning many spiritual indie successors that have begun sprouting in recent years. While a part of me does wonder what HAL Laboratory could have done with a bigger development budget, given that there are only six main courses and only 63 out of the original 151 Pokemon were included, I have to respect how so many different hidden secrets were packed into a game that can be easily completed in a single afternoon. It never fails to put a smile on my face, playing the Pokemon flute and watching Snorlax bob its chubby face to the rhythm, or luring a horde of Charmanders from over a hill with apples and snapping shots of them jumping joyously about. I’m very much looking forward to committing to a full run of the long-awaited sequel later this year to see how the franchise decided to expand from this snug and breezy little package.

Hey, how about that Nintendo Switch Online, am I right? Doesn't it SUCK ASS? Ok, no, it doesn't completely suck, as it does have a selection of various retro games that, while not being the best selection, does have a good amount of titles that I would have never seen or heard of otherwise. The service has at least that going for it, even though most of it does suck. Nevertheless, after scrolling through the lineup once again, I stumbled across Vice: Project Doom, which I had heard of and seen previously in videos, so I decided to finally give it a shot.

After playing through it, I can say that the game is actually pretty good, and what I would say is a bit of a hidden gem of the NES library. It does have problems, with some of them involving a lot of copy-pasting, but it was still a fun title to experience.

The story is pretty fleshed out and developed, which is aided by the cutscenes throughout the game, along with the most 80's-action-movie-like dialogue ever, the graphics are pretty good, the music is alright, but not too memorable, the control is solid all around, and the gameplay is familiar, yet still different and varied enough to where it is still fun to experience.

For the most part, the game is yet another action 2D platformer, where you travel from the beginning to the end of numerous stages, fighting enemies with a selection of weapons, including a whip, a gun, and grenades, taking on bosses, collecting items and ammo, and finding more out about the story along the way. It has all the beats of a standout title for the system, and it works really well, with the game providing enough challenge to not make it easy, while also giving the player enough versatility to have plenty of options for moving ahead, which is a plus in my book.

Aside from the platforming stages, there are also two other types of gameplay sections the game offers. First, there is the vehicle driving sections, where you drive on a highway, shooting down enemies and taking on bosses as well. Sure, it's not that complicated or in-depth, but it is a nice pace breaker in the mix of the regular platforming, even if it may be a little too easy for me.

The third and final gameplay sections are on-rail shooter segments similar to House of the Dead and Time Crisis, where you have to shoot a bunch of enemies that appear on your screen from a first-person-perspective, alternating between using either your gun or grenades to take them out. Just like with the driving segments, these are also pretty fun distractions from the main gameplay, and while they are also pretty easy, it is still a good time, and it's cool seeing this type of gameplay from the NES.

With all that in mind, the problems the game has would basically be a majority of the problems that Ninja Gaiden have, because it is basically just Ninja Gaiden except with aliens n junk. Alongside that, the game doesn't really leave too much of an impact. Sure, it does have different types of gameplay that make it unique among other games, but in terms of the plot, setting, and characters, it is pretty generic when compared to other games of the time, and as such, it doesn't really stand out as much as it needs to, which is probably why it went long overlooked ever since.

Overall, while it isn't the most noteworthy of games, and it is pretty much just Ninja Gaiden, except with aliens, it is a solid hidden gem of the NES library, and one I would definitely recommend for anyone to check out if they want to see what else the system has to offer.

Game #118

Guide for people who are new to Elite: https://pastebin.com/CgkRM05Q

A limited, but stunning space exploration game with completely fluid 3D play. You have an overworld and a huge universe to indulge in, but really your options and what to do are limited, when you mostly stick to trading things inbetween planets and shoot pirates who attack you. Buying additions makes life easier, but the primary objective of the game, reaching the Elite rank, is only attainable after you destroy about 6000 ships, which demands an impossible ammount of dedication for one person. More fascinating today as a tech demo, than as a skeleton of a gameplay that somehow wasn't even updated with Elite: Dangerous either.

On the original, BBC Micro version, the controls are nice and tight, and I recommend it. (3.5)

The ZX Spectrum version has nicer wireframe rendering(to be perfectly honest, any port after the BBC Micro hardware is an improvement), but the controls have suffered and for some reason are slippery. The steering never centers but almost as if it intentionally veers off into the sides. I don't know if the programmers tried to make the game more tricky by providing this element of instability to the controls, but it is not useful in the slightest, and makes flying and navigating the cosmic waters a lot more taxing than it already is. (1.5)