Not too long ago, I was asked by a friend to describe the appeal of Gravity Rush, and it took me a while to come up with an answer. Was it a twist on the classic open-world sandbox? A physics-defying superhero simulator? Both of these descriptions are reasonable to some extent, but neither felt like a perfect characterization of what kept me hooked to my favorite Sony series exclusive. Then a few days later, I stumbled upon this list, and BeachEpisode’s description caught my eye: a platformer where you “tumble through the world with an elegance of a Ghibli movie.”

Just like that, it clicked. In the same way that VVVVVV is a deconstruction of the traditional 2D platformer, Gravity Rush to me feels like the natural progression of deconstructing the open-level 3D platformer. There’s still jumping between floating platforms of course, but the jumping is deemphasized. Instead, since larger objects serving as buoys don’t have pulls towards the center of gravity, it’s up to you to shift the flow of gravity as necessary to prevent yourself from “falling off" and maintain control. Therefore, every surface becomes a possible platform, limited only by your access to said surface and your gravity energy gauge.

Since you aren’t necessarily jumping between platforms, it may be easier to characterize movement in Gravity Rush between two modes: grounded running/sliding, and soaring through the air between grounded movement. With the gravity slide, the protagonist Kat can make tight turns while also easily sliding up surfaces to maintain momentum without needing to jump and re-shift. Meanwhile, aerial movement can be thought more simply as “falling with style” (which explains why Kat’s float is less of a dive without boosting with X and closer to a derpy freefall), but is surprisingly tight; with the ability to slightly adjust your falling orientation with the left joystick, and the ability to either slowly rotate the camera with controller gyro controls or more quickly with the right joystick, the seemingly simple “flying” provides a fairly strong degree of character control. It never feels too disorienting either, because Kat’s hair will always point towards the directed flow of gravity when floating in place, and the camera will naturally rotate back towards “right-side up” from tapping R1 to stop/shift gravity (or you can tap R3 at any time to immediately snap to that perspective). As such, the real challenge is optimizing movement by juggling the two different modes to maintain momentum while never completely depleting the energy gauge. Since gravity sliding uses less energy and spending enough time not shifting gravity (including simple grounded running/waiting or natural freefall) will refresh the gauge, figuring out exactly when to insert these moments in-between gravity shifting traversal alongside collecting blue gravity tokens becomes key to efficiently getting from point A to point B. It’s a deceptively simple yet realized set of controls that can feel overwhelming at first but becomes this thing of beauty once mastered; some might call it less cool since you’re really just flail-falling about, but as an old teacher of mine once asked, isn’t flying really just missing the ground over and over again?

It's for this reason that it becomes quite frustrating that Gravity Rush 2 seems almost afraid to utilize its greatest strength during certain grounded side-missions and a few segments of main story missions. The most obvious culprits here are the forced stealth segments that will immediately catch you upon floating upwards and getting spotted by guards. It unfortunately feels rather counter-intuitive that a game emphasizing freedom of control has a few segments here and there that artificially limit your movement options. There are also quite a few grounded missions that require you to mash the square button to repeatedly talk to NPCs in hopes that they’ll point you to the right direction; definitely not great, but they’re at least over quickly enough and do end up facilitating movement around the city once you’ve got your necessary info to proceed. The absolute worst mission in my opinion however, has to be “Behind the Scenes I,” which has you running through the city on foot while dodging enthusiastic fans; NPC spawns are randomly generated, which means there’s a degree of luck getting a clear enough path and not too many NPCs to where they can’t be easily avoided or jumped over/around. I respect Team Gravity’s ambition in trying to diversify their missions and definitely appreciate the comedy behind the concept, but even I thought this one stuck out like a sore thumb.

While we’re on the topic of complaints, the other glaring complaint I often hear regarding Gravity Rush 2 is that the game feels a bit more grindy than the original title. You’re not likely to pick up many precious gems during most story missions and side missions, so most of your stock is going to come from getting gold medals in challenges and thoroughly exploring the hub areas to snag all the collectibles. Even then, you most likely won’t have enough to thoroughly upgrade all of the combat systems, which is where mining missions come in. Once unlocked, Kat can take a boat to a gravity storm mine and destroy green ore for precious gems. This process can take a while considering that environments are fairly spacious and empty, and it’s not particularly interesting repeating the same mines over and over for those final purchases. To be fair, mining missions do at least provide gravity storms that will occasionally spawn in different bosses for Kat to fight, and can also snag you talismans to augment your abilities and boost certain aspects of combat and movement. As a side note, if you really care about the trophy and don’t care much about the above, it is possible to replay old missions instead to at least get this grind out of the way.

Now, having gotten my major reservations out of the way… I actually like this way more than Gravity Rush Remastered.

The first main reason that comes to mind is that combat definitely has a lot more meat on the bone. In the original Gravity Rush, the flying kick was king; just aim and fire until everything in your path was gone, and if you miss, just keep readjusting and firing until you win anyways. Meanwhile, the sequel significantly buffs your other attack options to where combat no longer feels linearized through abusing the flying kick. Gravity sliding is much easier to implement during combat, not only due to the tighter controls but also due to the addition of a sliding dodge. Stasis Field (telekinesis to grab and throw objects) has also been buffed with a larger range than before, can be used without any temporary immobilization, and allows you to pick up enemies outright to chuck at other foes. You can also hold down the circle button when throwing to produce a piercing projectile at the expense of some of the SP gauge. Finally, Stasis Field can also be used defensively to block physical and energy-based projectiles with the proper upgrades. To tie this all together, the unlockable/farmable talismans really do make a difference in providing that extra kick to your basic abilities (ex: by dealing more damage with attacks, increasing the lock-on range of the gravity kick, decreasing the amount of gravity energy used, etc), and can later be recycled or merged for even more potent combinations of boosts.

The real crux behind the deeper combat, however, is due to the presence of additional Gravity Styles which drastically alter Kat’s abilities. For instance, Lunar Style sacrifices power in exchange for more manueverability. The wormhole kick in particular lets you zoom in on enemies (which tackles the issue I had in the original, of faster flying enemies slightly moving out of the way and causing my kick to miss entirely) and can be used to teleport across the stage. Additionally, Projectiles fired with Lunar Style create lingering hitboxes once they hit their target, which can stun-lock individual enemies and knock off armor. Jupiter Style, on the other hand, slows down Kat’s standard grounded movement but in return, adds a lot more weight to Kat’s grounded combo attacks and allows you to charge up a kick that not only deals more damage, but can also create a shockwave upon impact that can eviscerate nearby foes for better crowd control. Similarly, you can charge and fire larger projectiles in Jupiter Style to instantly wipe out bulkier enemies. These two styles also affect Kat’s traversal options. Lunar will give you access to a quick long and low rocket Jump and a charged spring Jump for height, both of which can be chained off walls to maintain momentum. Meanwhile, Jupiter Style buffs Kat’s gravity slide, by not only increasing the base speed, but also granting Kat superarmor with the relevant final upgrade while allowing Kat to quickly slide-tackle enemies. As such, switching between the different styles (including the basic Normal style) grants Gravity Rush 2’s combat a bevy of different approaches to better handle varied mobs while also adding additional depth to Kat’s movement in-between.

The next improvement surprised me; believe it or not, despite my earlier complaints towards some of the missions, I actually do think that missions on the whole have also been improved. I’ve been a bit harsh so far regarding the missions that I don’t like, but the truth is that most of these feel relatively inoffensive or at the very least, not very intrusive. Stealth missions are quickly bypassed by running past enemies, taking them out one by one, or walking on walls outside of enemy vision. Mining missions, as brought up earlier, can be mostly ignored if you’re willing to grind the aforementioned old story missions for upgrades instead (and in fact, if you don’t care about the trophy or maxing out every single stat, you’ll get enough gems and talismans for the crucial abilities from other side/main missions anyways with little detriment towards movement/combat). It also helps that upgrades to the gravity gauge and health bar have been decoupled from the gems system altogether, and will naturally be augmented from completing story and side missions (as opposed to the original, which only increased the upgrade capacity cap for completing missions), thus providing a stronger incentive to tackle all the game’s sprawling content while lessening the need to gem grind. Granted, I still can’t defend Behind the Scenes I given how many times I had to restart due to bad RNG, but it’s more of an anomaly amongst better arcadey challenges that are otherwise great at testing your combat and movement optimization.

Having said that, there are some great side missions in Gravity Rush 2 that more than make up for the duller moments. One fan-favorite is the cake delivery mission, where Kat has to deliver fragile packages with Lunar Style using plenty of spring and rocket jumps to maneuver around skyscrapers, all the while dealing with recipients begging her for “the good stuff” and dodging attacks from your voracious best friend Raven. My absolute favorite though, has to be the first movie star mission, where a non-powered Kat must play the role of Battle Nurse through the filming of various scenes; the irony of a super-powered protagonist acting as a stunt double for a superhero film without her gravity powers definitely does not escape me. Not every side mission hits of course, but the vast majority of them grant you interesting avenues to exploit Kat’s various movement and combat abilities in a different fashion, and it’s still absolutely heartwarming and adorable to see Kat stumble and bumble her way through all these absurd scenarios while helping so many others along the way; in that sense, Gravity Rush’s side missions actually remind me a ton of my recent playthrough of Yakuza 0 and all the wild sub-stories that it had to offer.

Perhaps that’s the best way to explain my love of this franchise, as I could honestly nitpick the game all day. Gravity Rush 2 suffers from a similar issue to its predecessor in that the FOV feels a bit too constrained at times, which becomes particularly noticeable when you crash into a wall and the camera gets uncomfortably close during areas with tight corridors. Special moves are a strange combination of busted and janky; the Spiraling Claw does tons of damage between enemy clusters but often gets you stuck on walls, the Gravity Typhoon is just a quickfire projectile chuck that is often detrimental in the long-run since it strips the environment of possible projectiles for Stasis Field, and both are essentially rendered obsolete by the Micro Black Hole, which will outright destroy any enemies in Kat’s vicinity. Finally, I have some problems with the pacing here and there, particularly in how the beginning is rather sluggish (without many opportunities to really abuse your gravity shifting powers) while the endgame is quite rapid-fire and blows through multiple story chapters in the course of a couple hours.

Despite all of that, I absolutely adore this game. I have to admit that I don’t really mind that most of the missions are just some combination of flying around and beating up enemies, because Team Gravity does a much better job disguising all this by slightly varying your specific tasks during missions to better facilitate the satisfying bread-and-butter movement + combat without levels feeling too rote. It helps that the core game-feel is greatly accentuated with the little touches like how the wind rumbles around you while boosting, or how falling and landing from great distances creates an earth-shattering boom that stuns you temporarily unless you land and roll with R2. So much of the world feels like it was constructed with such love and care to the point where I’m willing to overlook much of the jank and many of the dips. The environmental storytelling of all the various locales, the little bits of chaos that ensue as casualties of Kat’s gravity powers (from accidentally launching NPCs about to destroying parts of the environment from shifting and landing all over the place), the little responses here and there from other civilians when Kat makes gestures at them… there’s so many details that ultimately bring everything together. I especially appreciate being able to revisit Hekseville again from the original Gravity Rush; it was quite nostalgic catching up with all the familiar locations and characters while understanding how new events played a role into shaping subtle differences. Sure, the story takes so many twists and turns that at times you wonder if anything’s ever played straight in the first place, but there’s this undercurrent of sincerity that keeps you invested throughout the game’s entirety. The final chapter after the fake credits was the perfect way to tie this all up, resolving a lot of the resounding questions left after the ending of the original Gravity Rush while giving Kat & friends the opportunity they needed to go out with an emotional climax.

At the end of the day, there is simply nothing like the Gravity Rush series. No game before or after has ever felt this exhilarating to me, zooming around these anachronistic floating isles and kicking major ass against these shadowy creatures while having fun with friends made along the way. Even despite the missing online functionality, the core solo experience feels just that memorable to me. It’s rare that a game fills me with the same sheer sense of wonder and discovery since the first time I ever completed Okami, nonetheless while considering all the various imperfections involved. Perhaps this game is the perfect encapsulation of a Japan Studio title: an innovative spin on a classic genre that pushed its concepts to their very limits while effortlessly exuding charm. In spite of all the lack of polish here and there, Gravity Rush 2 manages to stay true to itself, and most importantly, never forgets what makes games so much fun in the first place. I’ll forever be saddened at the loss of my favorite Sony developer, because this game deserved so much more. Nevertheless, as long as red apples keep falling from the sky, the seed of hope will find a way to keep hitting us somehow.

One of the more insane games I've played recently. Vampire Survivors is not exactly a well made game, it looks like it could be made in MSPaint and its "secrets", as in secret levels, characters etc. make no fucking sense whatsoever. Not just in how you attain them but in like, their literal content. Why is there a secret character in this game called "Peppino" as in, Peppino the protagonist from Pizza Tower...And he's just a fucking tree? It's literally a tree?? Why can you play as three identical ghosts of different colours called "Esdeath", "Toasty" and "Smithy"? What is the purpose of the Il Molise stage? Or the Moongolow stage? Why is it called "Moongolow"? Why is that O there? What's the deal with all of the (pun intended) batshit insane unlock methods for random shit that makes no sense? What's different about the "challenge" stages like Bat Country and Tiny Bridge that seem to be both easier and quicker to complete (and therefore less challenging) than the regular stages? Could the game please stop to explain literally anything about itself at any point? No? Goofy arcade-ass game.

Oh, yeah. The gameplay.

It's fun! Damn this shit's fun as hell.

Vampire Survivors IS a well designed game. What a trip. I love the bit where I'm all like "whooosh, whooosh, PEW PEW PEW bam! bam! POOOOOOOOOOOOW"

"I am become death, the bullets of hell" -J. Robert Oppenheimer

I played this game for free on Game Pass and it gave me more hours of enjoyment than some somber slice-of-life indie about managing my emotions could ever have! Not bad for some piece of shit shovelware cooked up in Flash that takes half its identity from Castlevania! All of the bestiary entries are actually pretty funny and well-written! You didn't feel like just stopping and telling me what the fuck Eudaimonia M is supposed to be? What it's supposed to mean? How I even unlocked it? Ah, fuck it, I like blowing shit up too much

While going through Warioware: Touched! last year, I had my fair share of criticisms, mainly that the game felt somewhat trivial since every microgame was some form of poke + drag (or in the case of the mic games, just yelling til I won). On a surface level, it would appear that the other major Nintendo minigame collection series, Rhythm Heaven, falls into the same trap, since every game appears to be tap and flick, but I don't find that to be true. Quite the opposite in fact, as Rhythm Heaven DS is extremely challenging, yet super satisfying and fair.

Rhythm Heaven succeeds where I think Warioware: Touched! falls flat, because the former is much more subtle about mixing up devices to introduce an organic difficulty curve than the latter. Every minigame's gimmick is conveyed via some combination of call & response, memorizing rhythmic motifs, and recognizing appropriate audio & visual cues. This difficulty then gets ramped up, both within minigames and throughout the game's progression, by introducing new or different elements that alter how the mechanics are presented and utilized in some fashion, but ultimately retaining the core fundamentals. For instance, you might have to play "in the dark" for certain sections of minigames and rely heavily upon audio cues, or have to deal with sudden (yet firmly telegraphed) tempo shifts with tougher rhythmic variations, or even shift the backing melody or player actions to the off-beat to keep the player honest and in-tune with the minigame's workings. This, combined with the simple yet realized controls of tap, hold, and flick (lending itself naturally to syncopation from tap/hold + flick alongside quick note playing from tapping) allows for a much more robust toolkit and strengthened intricate designs for a broadly diversified minigame ecosystem. Even if all these different rhythm games revolve around the same theme (i.e. finding the natural flow and beat in simple and often mundane tasks), they all manage to stand out from one another despite seemingly simple controls because the rhythms at which they are executed from one another can be so drastically varied and iterated upon.

The attention to detail is especially evident within the remix microgames at the end of each five game minigame chain. These finales add a fresh coat of paint to the previous four microgames (and once you get past the initial 30, sometimes even more than just four) and putting players' execution and knowledge banks to the test while ferrying them between the different concepts with ease. There's an overlying melody to the whole affair, just played with a different filter for each specific minigame type, and moreover, they're linked in a way where the players can recognize the carried-over beat and be in specific positions where they're ready to quickly adapt to the new control scheme. For instance, consider Remix 8: the ping-pong into vegetable slice looks intimidating at first, but once you realize that swiping the paddle in the former has the exact same rhythm as swiping to slice vegetables in the latter, then it's merely a case of recognizing the visual/audio disguise and maintaining your composure. Another example that comes to mind is within Remix 10, where there's a section transitioning from the snowboarding minigame to the choir kids' Glee Club. Normally, you'd think that there would be some issues immediately flashing into Glee Club, since you can't possibly know what's coming up without prior experience and not holding your stylus on the screen will result in your Choir Kid automatically singing as per the control scheme of hold and release to play notes. However, this is accounted for with the lead-in snowboard minigame, because the last few frames of that section telegraph a jump, which requires the player to hold down the stylus on the screen and then flick and release. Since the jump hasn't occurred yet, the player should still be holding down, and this transitions naturally into the Glee Club's neutral state, where they can then release the stylus to the telegraphed beat and proceed onwards. It's little moments like these that make all the different jumps between previous minigames feel seamless, and transform the remixes into challenging, yet extremely fulfilling victory laps.

My only outstanding complaint is that certain minigames require considerably more accuracy and precision to master than others, and are often far more finicky about their timing requirements without obvious visual/audible feedback regarding slight misses, which can make repeated plays for that Superb/Perfect ranking a bit obnoxious. Glee Club and Moai Doo-Wop 2 are two of the more infamous culprits, to where some users have even created strategy guides. I can certainly relate, as it took me over 8 tries on Glee Club to snag a superb before I realized that the tight timing during the quick notes in the middle of the track was the section that was stumping me, since being off by just a hair there doesn't result in the other Choir Kids giving you the stink-eye. As a related aside, I did have a bit of difficulty with Rockers 2, since this minigame introduces the use of the L/R button as a whammy bar and feels a bit out of place, being the only minigame that doesn't exclusively use the touchscreen and forcing me to bend my left hand around to access the button. That said, I'll choose to chalk that one up to a skill issue since the unlockable Technical Guitar Course afterwards gives you plenty more opportunities to get used to this mechanic. Regardless, I find Rhythm Heaven to be a very honest and approachable set of minigames despite the level of mastery often required, and I can easily see myself coming back to this one to spend more time honing my skills. It's a complete and realized package that's truly the epitome of doing a lot with very little, and I eagerly look forward to testing my mettle with the remaining games in the series.

Sonic Team's biggest weakness as a developer, by far, is the way they obfuscate the fun latent in their own experiences. We're too deep into the 'kinda amusing but far too bloated and unpolished for their own good' era of 3D Sonic to say that NiGHTS is their worst example of this, but it comes to mind when I think about what the most SONIC TEAM sonic team game is.

NiGHTS is often talked about more like it's an experiential title. It's themes, narrative, and music can make it feel like that, but it's actually a pretty tightly woven arcade game too. I'd argue that's where most of the substance lies and that the trippy visuals are a sort of window dressing.

According to interviews, the game came about after an extensive, experimental developmental period where the developers were emboldened to experiment with 3D technology. After 3-5 Sonic games in a row, depending on who you ask, everyone wanted to make something new. An extensive plan for a large scale platformer based on dreams was developed, but after extensive prototyping, the flying mechanic that they had intended for the end of the game as a big, climactic moment proved to be the only one that was any good. Whoops.

I think this shows a bit in the final version. Awkwardly shoehorned in platforming and an extremely frontloaded story that might disincentivize further replays by mistake are the big offenders here, but these flaws are turned into double edged swords by excellent decision making on the part of the leadership. The awkward 3D controls are relegated strictly to a punishment for poor control of NiGHTS and the story, while brief and light, has enough thematic heft to stick with you. Maybe it'll stick so well that you'll try the game again even after a rough first playthrough.

The flying is pure, freeform fun once you get the hang of it, but it's like nothing else released before it or since, so it's a very confusing concept to try to come to grips with in a short amount of time.

This is going to sound like I'm bullshitting you, but I really do think NiGHTS's un-evenness doubles as a strength. It feels truly like a fragmented stream of consciousness that succeeds at feeling as surreal mechanically as it is aesthetically. There are a lot of games about dreams, but they're usually a visual element supplementing bog standard gameplay. Despite NiGHTS's display of what makes a satisfying arcade game, it can't be nailed down to many existing genres or gameplay loops, especially now. It FEELS like the type of out of body experience you'd have in a dream, and the way it shies away from explaining it's core concepts and lore work to instill this feeling too.

It also helps that there's a pretty kickass arcade game under the hood if you're willing to take that rank system seriously. Let me give you a tip: Instead of turning those orbs on your first go around through the level, pass the goal and go back around again. See how many orbs and chains you can squeeze out of a single loop. All of a sudden, the game design clicks into place and you're playing an exhilarating action game with a tight arcade loop in line with the best Sonic entries.



NiGHTS is definitely an acquired taste, but lean into it's absurdity and you'll be entranced. It's a genuinely great game with an uplifting meta-narrative, top notch visuals, and the best soundtrack out of Sonic Team's legendary discography.

Some dreams feel like they're over in a few minutes, and others can feel like a lifetime. I encourage you to take advantage of the fact that this one only ends when you let it.

sonic team should've stuck to their strengths and sold their games as arcade experiences through and through. nights is a masterpiece on all fronts; an experimental title at an experimental time in sega's life that fits somewhere between the worlds of sonics cd and adventure as far as presentation and game theory.

as said elsewhere its jungian roots and elaborate visuals are ultimately window dressing, but you bet your ass they sell me; i find myself regularly transfixed by the endless dreamscapes of nights' world and the perfect, and i mean PERFECT soundtrack composed by the minds behind several of my favorite sega scores - namely sonic cd and adventure. that's hardly to speak poorly of the gameplay though. i think 'getting' nights is a steep process but that session the game finally clicks for you, and you truly get to experience the feeling of flight and acrobatics in synchronicity with the analog stack, it's a high few other games can offer you. truly one of the most magical experiences i've ever had with a game. and no questions asked, christmas nights is a perfect bow on the present, uber-charming and sweet as it comes.

it's funny - this isn't one i spent time on as a kid, but it was a later discovery for me, and now i think i could probably call this my favorite thing sega's ever put out. that's about as high praise as i can offer.

Dreams... why do we have them? Where do they come from?

They're many things. They often inspire us to create, mold and manifest those same dreams into reality. They give us a vision of what is to possibly come, or perhaps to remind us of simpler times that made our little hearts grow. Above all else, they serve as our home away from home, to escape from the troubles we face in our lives as we sleep through the moon's company, or look towards the sky as we lay on that peaceful hill and put our head in the clouds with the sun. To relieve us from all that stress and bad energy, and bring back that positive outlook that is so important to us as we live on this plane of existence. In a way, it is the most significant element for all of us. Without the ability to dream, what would we do aside from just exist? Where else could we go to get away?

...at the very least, that's my interpretation of them.

No one knows how they work, and we probably never will figure them out or who is out there trying to motivate and cheer us up. Is it a mystical property our bodies have? Is someone above looking out for us? Are they just... as they are? For all we know, we could each have our own personal rogue nightmaren that looks over us and tries to keep those night terrors at bay, and allow us to remain hopeful and optimistic. When we pass, do we meet them? The concept of dreaming in itself is a dream as my imagination runs rampant like the sheep that I count within my mind. It's more intriguing as I ponder on it, because I always find myself diving into that same realm to find my vision on creative personal projects, or to bring me strength to work toward a brighter future for myself and those around me. What about you?

Dreams of finally meeting that special someone online who lives many miles away? Don't worry, you'll see each other soon. Dreaming of finally making your own game and putting it on Steam? You got this. A dream of becoming a YouTube content creator? You can do it.

We can.

That is what matters. I'll always believe in you. Never doubt yourself.

Why the sudden burst of helpful optimism? Well, that brings us to you NiGHTS, the instigator of my sunny disposition. You offer me this flight through your world of colors and frolicking moody nightopians that grow with age as I play your game, challenging me to climb ranks and smash Sonic's records. I continue to be amazed at your poise and grace with your cat-like gaze. You're but an arcade game at your core, and yet you touch my heart with your musical score and the neverending warmth of your silent tale. It feels as though I had my emotions bottled up to keep myself professional like an adult as I went on my adventure with you, and yet... I left the experience feeling like a kid again, singing your tune to bring myself joy. With you, I touched the stars and felt the wind beneath my newly discovered wings.

If I may ask you, the reader...

Is it strange to be this full of cheer with tears in my eyes?

This is a game that kind of goes beyond words. The game is abstract enough to keep me coming back to it, wanting to see how deep the game really goes. The game is fun and fluid to control, and just the simple act of flying around is fun. Learning to master each level and find the optimal paths through each route to maximize bonus time score is exhilarating. The A-life system is also curious and provides an interesting personalization to each persons game file (even if 99.99% of players have ZERO IDEA how that system works.) The plot is even a heartwarming story about overcoming anxieties and finding your way, even if the CG for the cutscenes is a little scary by todays standards. This is just one of those games that I adore from both a gameplay and vibe perspective. It probably isn't for everyone as I'm sure the abstract nature of literally everything would confuse people enough to stop playing, but it hit all the right notes for me. There is a modern port to PC that some diehard fanatics swear against because of control issues but ngl they feel pretty much identical to me so I think it's a solid way to play if you don't have a sega saturn lying around.

I won’t mince my words here: the last month has been a bit underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some solid titles that I finally got to finish and everything’s been interesting enough to where I still wrote about it, but nothing’s quite blown my mind recently. Flywrench might have set the bar a bit too high, for better or for worse. So, it looks like it’s time for another nostalgia reset; what better way to get myself back in gear than to go back to the source? Consider this write-up a follow up to my original Donkey Kong Country piece; since I think I’ve fleshed out obstacle escalation theory a ton by this point, I’ll focus more on differences between the two games this time around.

There’s an old Eurogamer review round-up that sort of laments the lack of differences between the original DKC and Diddy’s Kong Quest, referring to the sequel as a victim of “lack of ambition.” I honestly don’t agree with this assessment; Donkey Kong Country 2 preserves much of the original design philosophy for sure, but the game’s levels are often structured so differently with so many new ideas that I find it quite baffling to describe the sequel as “not terribly imaginative.” If anything, there were so many new ideas that many of them led to a lot of dissonance regarding expectations of flow and functionality between the two games. I’ll try to go over as many of the outstanding features as I can, but first, we should address the change in scope that seems to have thrown off so many of us, myself included.

In a retrospective Retro Gamer interview, lead designer Gregg Mayles describes this best: “If we had made it speed runs again then there wouldn’t have been much scope for us to go anywhere different with it.” The focus then, shifted from a speedrunning-friendly momentum-based platformer to a platformer that emphasized exploration, all while still emphasizing fluidity through interchangeable moving parts. Mayles later adds, “[they] wanted to maintain the same ‘go first’ gameplay where all the barrels and baddies were set up so if you went first time – or got the timing right – then the levels were very fluid, but I also wanted to add something new to it. So the first one was very linear, and the second one introduced exploration.”

This is perhaps the most pronounced improvement from the original to the sequel: secret finding and completion now feels significantly more intuitive and fulfilling. While I never personally had much of an issue with exploration in the original, I have to admit that there isn’t much of an incentive trying to find bonus rooms outside of collectibles that all lead to extra lives and the thrill of stumbling upon treasure troves through tougher maneuvers. Diddy’s Kong Quest, however, shows far more focus: the usual spelling and slot minigames alongside treasure troves have been replaced with timed challenges that actively test players’ abilities as par the level’s themes: for example, the bonus area in the first half of Screech’s Sprint requires players to switch between characters to balance out cartwheel jumps and hovering, a bonus area in the windy Gusty Glade requires players to time jumps across dragonflies while being boosted by a current, and so on so forth. Moreover, secret entrances and bonus barrels are more clearly marked with elements such as stray bananas, enemy clusters guarding paths, platforms that are just off-screen, and even banana arrows redirecting players to areas of interest or spelling out button prompts to supercharge animal buddies/team throw. One particularly clever example comes in the level “Target Terror”, where an enemy throwing barrels at you in the car ahead drops to a track below the main track if you decide to make the jump, signifying for future runs that there’s probably something hidden below.

Another improvement towards secret finding comes in the form of cannonballs that have to be carried across segments of the level to activate a cannon into potential bonus sections; it’s a welcome change since it pools the difficulty into the task of ferrying the cannonball while grappling/avoiding enemies inbetween, instead of attempting to create difficulty via obscuring the bonus area entrance. Finally, the reward is also greatly enhanced: instead of more lives to throw into the fray, you receive Kremcoins that can be used to unlock guarded golden barrels by Klubba and access tougher levels in the Lost World to achieve that true ending and snag that sweet, sweet 102% completion. Again, I never found the original limited exploration in DKC to be much of a detriment, but I nevertheless believe that the exploration loop feels much more fleshed out and substantial this time around.

This layer of calculation behind the mechanics translates to practically every single one of the mechanics in the sequel, starting with the characters themselves. It’d be easy to write off Dixie Kong as a Diddy Kong clone, considering that their weight and physics are about the same and Dixie was originally created by iterating upon Diddy’s design in the first place. However, let’s consider Donkey Kong’s value as a controllable character in the original; outside of being a heavier character to one hit KO Armys, Krushas, and Klumps by jumping (Diddy must generally use barrels and cartwheels to defeat these enemies, or in the case of Krushas, often outright avoid them), as well as the abilities to hand slap the ground (not really useful in the original outside of collecting some stray items with no hints and defeating stunned Rock Krocs in one level) and holding the barrel directly above his head, Donkey Kong mostly serves as the character you play when you don’t feel like risking the more agile Diddy Kong to potential death. Diddy’s quicker cartwheel and faster jump means that he is the weapon of choice for most of the platforming in the long expanses of the original DKC, and Donkey Kong is often there just as a “back-up” second life.

In Diddy’s Kong Quest, Dixie and Diddy are stratified enough to where your second character is more than just a representation that you can take a second hit. Diddy is of course, still a pleasure to control thanks to his quick cartwheel jump providing a “low and long” form of movement, and holding the barrel directly in front gives Diddy a quick form of defense for approaching enemies. Dixie, on the other hand, snags Donkey Kong’s utility of holding the barrel directly above the character’s head and utilizing overhead throws with a bit extra. All of her moves involve her long blonde ponytail, including her ability to hover in mid air by holding down Y to slow her descent and reach dangling collectibles while more carefully maneuvering past flying obstacles. As a result, it might be easier to think of Diddy as the better character for the classic speedy platforming experience, while Dixie is not quite as agile but is extremely helpful for spanning larger gaps and taking your time while ascending/descending vertically.

Moreover, the sequel also places additional emphasis upon having both characters available to you at once. Most of this comes in the form of the team-throw: you can pick up your partner at any time and angle the throw to reach collectibles and platforms/hooks that would normally be impossible to jump to. Additionally, since Diddy and Dixie are both lightweights, Krunchas can only be defeated with the team-throw outside of barrel usage and animal buddies, since jumping onto Krunchas will just result in Diddy/Dixie bouncing off. Finally, certain barrel cannons are marked with either Diddy or Dixie’s face, meaning that you will need to either be using that particular character or throwing that particular character into the cannon to be launched. Having both characters on your screen has an inherently deeper meaning than just possessing another hit; not only will you need to pick the correct character for the best approach, you must often have both on-hand to maximize opportunities with the team-throw and be allowed access to character-coded barrels.

Regarding character control, animal buddies have also been greatly buffed. The original was admittingly a bit more wishy-washy towards usage of animal buddies; while they were intended as a power-up, levels had to nevertheless be designed without explicit usage of them, resulting in many situations where animal buddies at best felt like extraneous helpers that could sometimes help unlock secret areas and provided another hit point of health, and at worst feeling like an active detriment (ex: Rambi’s awkward size and maneuverability in Manic Mincers, or Espresso’s inconsistency safely walking over Klap Traps in Orangutan Gang). As seen previously, animal buddies like Rambi and Engarde can throw out attack hitboxes to break fake walls for secrets, but Diddy’s Kong Quest goes beyond that and often sculpts entire playgrounds for animal buddy abilities, going as far as to include animal buddy transformation barrels for particular sections.

Toxic Tower is a great example of this in action: you start with a very open and wide section that requires very high and lengthy jumps, often on Zingers, to scale the initial heights, as per Rattly the Snake’s speciality with the charged superjump. Then, the stage transitions to a more enclosed series of chambers and tight passageways, with tons of vertical navigation and roaming enemies that require Squawk’s flight and egg shots to clear. Finally, the stage’s final stretch is a straight shot up to the exit, forcing the player to rely upon Squitter the Spider to quickly create temporary web platforms to scale up the chute while pursued by the ever-rising toxic waste. As an addendum to maintaining composure with the animal buddy, “No Animal Signs” will force the Kongs to abandon that particular playstyle while often rewarding players that manage to get that far with their animal buddy intact with a reward, such as banana bunches, extra lives, or in some cases, barrels that can be used (and only appear in that particular fashion) to open up yet another secret area. The end result is yet another design tool that’s been pushed to its furthest extents so far for more varied level structures, broadly increasing the DKC toolkit while maintaining the same core principles.

On that note, Donkey Kong Country 2’s most defining experimental level design trend is perhaps its enthusiasm to dabble with verticality. While the original only had one primarily vertical level in Slip Slide Ride, the sequel happily mingles with scaling heights every other level or so, with some levels that resemble a spiraling zig-zag with interspersed horizontal platforming like Windy Well while others commit hard to a full scalar climb such as the aforementioned Toxic Tower. It seems antithetical at first to design so many vertical levels in a game that’s practically mastered its horizontal traversal with the fast cartwheel jump for maintaining momentum, but in my opinion, it’s simply a different language of platforming that builds off the same organic obstacle escalation and fluid movement, and with that different language comes a different set of tools to express the language more fluently. Skyhooks, barrel cannons, animal buddy abilities such as Rattly’s superjump and Squitter’s temporary web platforms, climbable ropes and chains, and even certain water levels that experiment with the changing height of the liquid and interspersing dry land platforms are just some of the many level elements that are utilized to aid ascending player movement, alongside the usual hazards to spur players into action such as the aforementioned rising toxic goo in Toxic Tower and the bramble walls encountered while flapping about with Squawks. Even within this new territory, DKC 2 subverts its own set expectations with two levels that force players to travel downwards, in the form of Parrot Chute Panic (which has players slowly descend a Zinger infested hive with the help of purple budget Squawks) and Black Ice Blitz (which as a foil to Parrot Chute Panic, goads players into quickly descending a slippery icy chasm to avoid being swarmed by grounded foes). Though it is easy to criticize the sequel for taking such a seemingly drastically different approach to level design, I do believe that Diddy’s Kong Quest deserves to stand on its own merits and absolutely presents a more calculated and methodical, yet just as focused platforming experience.

What stands out to me as this game’s greatest strength is that no idea is ever repeated verbatim, both within the game and with respect to the original DKC. A great way to illustrate these wrinkles that are used to diversify level navigation is through examination of the three minecart levels, which have now been rethemed as roller coasters. Target Terror has Diddy and Dixie leaping between skull cars to hit green checkmark barrels while avoiding red X barrels to open up closed gates and avoid closing already open ones. Meanwhile, Rickety Race recontextualizes the roller coaster ride as a straight up competition, incentivizing players to defeat and bypass enemy skull cars to eventually stomp the goon in first place and snag the level’s DK coin. Finally, Haunted Hall introduces the timer into the equation, and requires the player to collide into + barrels while avoiding – barrels to maintain timer longevity and avoid certain doom from the pursuing Kackles. At the end of the day, all of these examples are horizontal auto-scrollers, but thanks to the varied level objectives defining how traversal must be accomplished, the levels still feel distinct without any single one bleeding into another.

I could go on and on about the sheer amount of fresh level elements introduced in DKC 2 and just how many of them remain memorable to me, from the air draft balloons in Red Hot Ride to the rolling giant tires of Jungle Jinx to the usage of Clapper seals in Lava Lagoon purifying the lava into water and creating this mad scramble to make it in one piece to the other side before the liquid heats up again, and so on so forth. Sure, most of these elements are only present in one or two levels and could be written off as “gimmicks,” but that doesn’t take away from their value. Rare’s willingness to throw realism out the window and tinker with so many different kinds of mechanisms may seem at first quite unfocused, but by embracing experimentation that’s all designed to keep the player moving, that eagerness actually points to a deeper level of commitment that few platformers manage to effectively achieve.

Of course, there’s another piece to the puzzle that stops the game from ever feeling too stale, and that’s the theming itself. Again, Rare’s abandonment of realism is a key motivation; while the original DKC was often limited to natural landscapes and caves outside of Kremkroc Industries, Diddy’s Kong Quest commits fully to the absurdity of fighting alligator pirates in an unfamiliar land and as a result, greatly diversifies its various settings from the decks and sails of the Gangplank Galleon (a fitting beginning, considering that the previous adventure ended here), to the glowing infernal pits of Crocodile Cauldron, to the abandoned urban amusement wasteland of Krazy Kremland that nature has begun reclaiming with brambles and overgrown beehives. You don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the most richly textured games on the SNES, with plenty of corresponding level elements such as the sticky honey walls of Hornet Hole and the eerie disappearing ropes of Ghostly Grove to further sell the exoticism and accentuate the level of detail presented in each environment.

I’d be remiss though, to not spend a paragraph gushing about the soundtrack, something that I’d consider a formality at this point while praising the game. If the original Donkey Kong Country OST was a 10, then this is an 11. Not only are there practically no wasted tracks within the repertoire, but also every notable track ends up being a standout. I’m led to believe that David Wise was in a class of his own, because even to this day, the diverse and richly layered instrumentation is like no other. The whistling wind of Jib Jig, the bubbling lava of Hot Head Bop, the screams of excitement from Disco Train: the sheer attention to detail to embed all these different environmental SFX into the tracks themselves so that the effects never break your attention away from the task of platforming is incredible. It’s the cherry on top of this whole package; sure there’s a part of me that might get a little annoyed falling several stories in yet another mine shaft level, but at least I get to do it while the steel hammer samples in Mining Melancholy go for another run.

I’ll quickly address the lingering complaint that I had from the first game as well; I had previously lamented that bosses in Donkey Kong Country seemed to be a one and done affair, though the sequel does a great job substantially increasing their interactivity. Some are still a bit simple but at least have some extra steps to them: these include the first Krow fight, which you can clear by jumping on egg projectiles and then waiting for Krow to run into the held egg (though it is at least justified by being the first boss fight) and Kudgel, whose boss fight becomes a case of “jump when he lands to avoid getting stunlocked” and then ramming TNT barrels into him when appropriate. Fortunately, the highlights leave these fights in the dust. The clear standout for me here is the fight against Kleever, this giant possessed cutlass that slashes at you relentlessly while you jump to and fro between skyhooks dodging fireballs and waiting for the cannonball to respawn to get your hit in. There’s also a boss fight vs yet another giant bee, but unlike the fight vs Queen B in DKC, this King Zing fight lets you play as Squawks and shoot eggs at the giant bee’s stinger, alternating with an invincible phase where you have to dodge spikes in the closest thing resembling a bullet hell in the series and then segueing into a quickfire second phase where Squawks has to defeat an outer circle of respawning normal sized Zingers before landing the final hit.

Even the final fights vs K Rool (sorry, Kaptain K Rool) have been juiced up, with plenty more jumping and rolling to be done to dodge scores of spiked cannon balls as well as some colorful gas clouds that can mess with your control scheme or movement speed if you’re not careful. The first fight is a bit longer than previous boss fights since it serves as the final boss gauntlet, but there's at least some wiggle room since a Buddy Barrel is given to you at the start of each new phase if you've taken a hit. While the true final boss fight in Krocodile Kore more or less uses the same types of attacks as the first encounter, I appreciate that they’ve at least upped the ante with some new attack patterns and scaling everything they have to throw at you in one “phase” before letting you plug up his blunderbuss with a cannonball for good. All in all, it’s improvements across the board for bosses, and while some of them are still a bit lame, it’s a vast jump up from the one-dimensional and often palette swapped fights of the original game.

So, with all the welcome changes out of the way, do I really have any outstanding major complaints to spill? I’ll admit, I often struggle to find any substantial errs in Diddy’s Kong Quest. It’s a more difficult game for sure, but I also find it surprisingly fair: the game gives you plenty of leeway with all the bananas, KONG letters, and hidden balloons and coins to win more lives at Swanky’s Bonus Bonanza, assuming you’re playing competently enough and exploring levels to their greatest extent. Moreover, most levels are pretty condensed and usually don’t take more than several minutes to clear when carefully approached, with plenty of Buddy Barrels and the Star Barrel halfway through the level as fail-safes if you end up taking a hit or two. I’ve also found during my experience that the obstacle escalation theory continues to holds true, and that dangerous moments are often greeted with plenty of warning prior and enough time to react and adapt accordingly, with instances where I’m confronted with something that I’m genuinely not prepared for few and far between. With that said, there are a few exceptions:

- Web Woods is often cited as one of the most notorious levels in the game: the majority of this stage is spent playing as Squitter, with large stretches of abyss that have to be crossed with disposable web platforms while sniping any Zingers and Mini Nectys in the way. Upon my replay, I don’t think it’s as hard as others make it out to be, but it definitely feels a bit longer because Web Woods forces either extremely careful movement and web shots when going fast ( see Mike Kanis’ recording for an example ) or for casual playthroughs, steady and often strenuous platforming across daunting gaps while juggling enemies at the same time. I’ll concede that the level could probably be improved upon with a few smaller gaps and removing the extraneous introductory Kongs platforming section, but otherwise, I think this level serves its purpose well and just takes a bit of time to get used to. Though, I do think that putting the DK coin in the end-of-level target is pretty lazy and evil considering that the coin flashes in the display for less than half a second and you'll have to replay the whole level again if you were just a hair off.

- Screech’s Sprint is probably the most significant difficulty spike present in DKC 2 in my opinion (which is saying something considering Toxic Tower is the level right before this), and as the final level before the first K Rool fight, is unfortunately a bit of a slog and probably my least favorite level in the game. The first half of the level is solid end-game platforming through the brambles and isn’t too bad, but the second half of the level is an extremely tight race as Squawks against his goth counterpart Screech, that has to be played close to perfectly if you’re not aware beforehand of the many shortcuts hidden in the brambles since second place will result in instant death. That’s not even bringing into account the KONG letters that are all present in the race segment, or the hidden DK coin (that can at least be collected in a throwaway run). Needless to say, it’s a cool concept, but there’s not much time given for the player to scale up and adapt to the sudden rush of precision required for the race or to discover all the ins and outs of the course, so if any level in the game feels like throwing away lives and banging your head against the wall, I’d wager that it would probably be this one. Also, it overrides Stickerbush Symphony with its own theme... which isn’t a bad track, but it's automatically my least favorite track in the OST because anything that takes away from the GOAT of VGM is an instant con in my book.

- Animal Antics is generally the final level tackled by most players who are going for the true final boss fight (as the final level in the Lost World), and while I hesitate to call any single level gimmicky, I suppose this is the one that comes closest to the definition. It’s a marathon that involves the usage of all five animal buddies, which already sounds like quite an exhausting affair. However, it’s exacerbated by the fact that the first two animal buddy segments (Rambi and Engarde) are pretty straightforward by this point, but the next two right after the Star Barrel in the form of Squitter and Squawks generally take up a lot more time, especially because the Squawks segment requires you to navigate yet another bramble maze while a mercurial wind current keeps blowing you left and right and forces you to alternate between fighting the wind or fighting the controls to avoid being blown astray by the wind. The final segment with Rattly is not particularly difficult, but it sure is intimidating as hell since there are no Buddy Barrels to be found there and you’ve probably already taken a hit as Squawks, turning what should be the victory lap of a marathon into a one of the most nerve-wracking level finishers, since dying here means getting sent back to the Star Barrel and having to do Squitter, Squawks, and Rattly all over again. It probably doesn’t help that Toxic Tower utilizes the animal buddy swap formula more succinctly either, with a smoother difficulty curve to boot.

Besides these three levels though, I can’t really say that the difficulty in Diddy’s Kong Quest ever felt discouraging to me. If anything, I found my second full playthrough even more fulfilling this time around; while I was still in the process of mastering the controls during my first run, I really got the chance to flesh out my understanding of the levels during my replay and spend more time adapting and figuring out how all the different moving parts and hazardous elements fit together in different ways. With so many new combinations to consider, I could honestly keep at this for days, even weeks upon end putting my skills to the test; more depth via tighter execution barriers from tougher obstacle courses with even more secrets to explore results in a higher skill ceiling after all. It’s really quite rewarding to figure out game-plans for each level and grind out the specific inputs necessary; as Gregg Mayles put it, the fluidity and momentum is still there, just a tad bit more difficult to grasp, and that makes actually achieving it all that much sweeter.

While the jump from the original Donkey Kong Country to Diddy’s Kong Quest came with mostly scores of improvements (even if most of the improvements were over features that never genuinely bothered me in the first place), there is one quality of life issue that does weigh on my mind as an obvious area of improvement. Aside from the tracked Kremcoins and optional DK coins, a third type of collectible in the form of banana coins is also present. However, just like the lives and banana count, the banana coin count is reset whenever the system is turned off since it’s not tracked, which becomes a bit obnoxious because banana coins are mandatory whenever requesting services from the other Kongs, from asking Cranky for hints and Funky for flights to other worlds, to even saving the game itself. It’s at least slightly mitigated since banana coins are plentiful within levels and are respawned every time you revisit, and the first time visiting Wrinkly and Funky for saving and flights respectively in each area will always be free. Nevertheless, I concede that this is a bit of a barrier for newer players who feel the need to save more often or for players who don’t have as much time on their hands to commit to longer sessions to build up lives and banana coin stocks, and Rare did seem to learn from this since paying to save is limited to just Diddy’s Kong Quest in the original trilogy.

All in all, I’m not sure if I have any far-reaching takeaways to present here or if there were really any lessons to be learned in the first place, but I’m glad I finally found the time and the opportunity to come back to really flesh out my understanding of a title that once frustrated the hell out of me as a kid. Sure, I could join the never-ending debate of which title has the greater legacy or “aged better,” but at the end of the day, I don’t think I necessary prefer Diddy’s Kong Quest over the original Donkey Kong Country or vice versa; I simply think that they’re different appeals for different moods. If I want to feel good about myself and just dash through levels in my comfort zone, I’ll pick up the original and spend a couple of hours speedrunning Blackout Basement or Loopy Lights. However, if I want make my hands sweat a bit more and really put my execution to the test, then DKC 2 will be my weapon of choice and I’ll get to feel overwhelmed while the woozy arpeggios of Forest Interlude roll over me once more. Whichever one I pick, I think I’d have a pretty damn good day.

As it stands, I’m not quite ready to put Donkey Kong Country 2 on a pedestal as my favorite 2D momentum-based platformer of all time. That said, I’ll call it an “honorable draw” as Gregg Mayles stated five years ago, and it’s about time that I started being more open with myself regarding my appreciation for what Diddy’s Kong Quest brought to the table. Hopefully, all this musing about will encourage some more to do the same. Thanks for reading, everyone.

Here's the lyrics to Sonata's theme if anyone's having trouble following along.

Ooh ooh
Ooh ahh
Ooh ooh, ooh oh
Ahh ahh ah ahh ooh

Ooh ooh
Ahh ooh
Ooh ooh, ooh oh ooh
Oh ooh oh ooh ooh ahh

This is one of those games where it's hard not to make up a (likely somewhat accurate) narrative in your head about the tension between the developers and their bosses. This is the freshest take on its genre in many years, something that ought to belong to us all as a folk game. All games should, but you get my meaning. This is wonderful new territory, opening up massive tracks of design space almost entirely outside of the traditional grounds for tcgs/ccgs. And yet it squeezes you for cash like it's any other abusive mobile game.

The weird tragedy of Marvel Snap is that the developers who actually make the damn thing overperformed. Looking at its marketing materials and its monetization scheme, it's clear that Snap was never really setting out to change things or make a big splash. It was to be old school mobile whale bait using a valuable property. But the devs poured too much love in and had too many new mechanical ideas and oops! We accidentally attached a masterpiece to this store begging you for $100 to get a few jpegs that slows your progress to a crawl if you don't go digging in your purse.

Bless the artists here doing everything they can to genuinely contribute to and transform what competitive games are and can be. Fuck Disney and the studios they contract for shit like this.

Credit where it's due: it's very rare you'll get a sense of "card envy" driving you to buy. The matchmaking here prioritizes your collection level to an almost absurd degree, meaning that you are largely playing against people with the same cards as you. The pool system allows a bit of variety between two players at the same collection level, but in practice you and your opponent are essentially working with the same tools.

I will continue playing this, as I find the gameplay and laddering experience intrinsically rewarding and mindbending in ways that activate new parts of my brain I didn't know were resting in there. If you're more motivated by getting shiny new things (which is fine! I sure love some of that as well) and not so much self-improvement and the richness of competition, I'd stay away for now, as this will only frustrate you with its drip-feeding.

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The kinds of crowds I tend to hang around and the kinds of criticism I tend to read lead me to a lot of people turning their nose up at the very sight of Marvel. I get it and carry more then a little resentment when it comes to the cultural monolith that is Disney, but personally I'll have none of that sneering dismissal of "capeshit". I only hope that as Marvel's cultural relevance drops from "primary touchstone for all of popular culture" to "one very popular setting/brand among others", that hostility will cool down and people won't be walking around finding any opportunity to shut down others for liking comic books and movies too much. There's something to be said about toxic fanboys doing their thing and being obnoxious in the opposite way, but I won't comment since they essentially do not exist in the slices of the world I inhabit.

I mention that just to preface saying that Marvel's massive cast of characters with lots of individual charm, pre-existing emotional connections, and general flair makes for a pretty flavorful card game, all things considered.

What if you made Mario Party, but with even less minigames and somehow even more RNG? Here comes Sonic Shuffle, with its need to make almost everything a damn "draw the higher card" game, including the collection of Gems (equivalents of Stars). The minigames that show up are serviceable, but they're few and far between the sheer amount of slogging that it takes to even move on the board because drawing cards to move is a nightmare. And don't even get me started on the game's plot or general presentation. I can't even say this was fun as a gag game, I regret everything trying this out.

This was great! The thing I love most about Kid Icarus: Uprising is its tone - the artstyle is such a perfect blend of cartoon and fantasy, the characters are all excellently voiced and the dialogue is often quite cringe but very intentionally so, the awkwardness of the characters is the joke and that's nice! It's very refreshing and earnest in the way that modern Marvel could only dream of

I do take issue with the controls in some places as I think most do. The dash really irritated me at times, anytime I wanted to initiate movement out of a walk I felt forced into a dash I didn't want to do which had me barrelling right into enemy fire or off a ledge more than I care for - and holding down the fire button as long as you do gives you some serious fatigue in your left index finger - especially when you need to release and tap it so much in the ground sections for dash shots. Generally I thought the flying sections were quite a lot better than the ground sections, which I enjoyed well enough but I think serve as proof that this game might've been a tad too ambitious for the 3DS given how weird the controls are.

I generally dreaded the ground sections a little bit, so I was thankful for when the game mixed it up - which it did a lot! There's a chapter where it's all flying, there's a chapter where the ground section is on a small platform where you have to defend some Centurions - it's cool! Though I noticed they don't really start mixing things up until the second half of the game? Like the first half of the game really follows the formula and I'd argue the game doesn't really stray from that much at all until the Aurum stuff (Pandora's Labyrinth Of Deceit aside.) (Also, kinda tangentially - is it just me or does the game not suddenly fly by in the second half? I coulda swore the first like, 15 chapters were way longer than the last 10 or so. Just me?)

Either way, I really enjoyed this. It's consistently creative, charming and earnest. It starts off well enough but just gets better over time, the game takes a big jump in quality once Hades takes over as the villain imo - and I have become such a simp for Palutena. I love her. She is so cheeky and mean. The way she constantly messes with Pit and crushes his self-esteem at every given opportunity? What a girlboss. I mean, couldn't be me but - please start an Onlyfans! I will throw cheese at it like you wouldn't believe

Btw it's crazy how many UI and game design elements were just lifted straight from this into future Smash Bros installments, I know Sakurai headed this project up too but like, wow! Damn! I didn't realise how like almost none of Smash's UI or menu elements were actually original at all! Weird!

Good game!