I loved Arkham Asylum, but I only "liked" Arkham City. The deciding factor for me is what I suspect other people really love about City: the open world layout of the titular city. I actually think having an overworld to freely explore de-emphasizes a lot of the tight pacing and level design that I really appreciated in Asylum. Is it fun to be swooping around the city and suddenly find yourself drawn into a subplot involving Jarvis Teech? Sure, I suppose I won't contest that. But most of my experience of the titular city is that it's the no-man's land of video game miscellany. Some thugs to fight, some Riddler trophies to collect, mostly things for the player to distract themselves from the main plotline.

If you're into that, cool, you're probably someone who gets a ton out of what Rocksteady was going for here. If not, well, you don't have to do all that. You can just ignore all the unscripted sequences and bop on over to the next storybeat... at the opposite end of the map. For whatever reason, the game really likes placing a lot of its key locations on opposite ends of the overworld's "V" shape. And at a certain point, swinging back and forth ignoring shouts of distress, I sorta shattered the illusion the first game so meticulously set up and stopped feeling like the Caped Crusader.

Look, my point is, there are a ton of memorable moments to Arkham City, but almost none of them actually take place in the overworld.

But those subareas are quite good! The Cyrus Pinkney Natural History Institute is full of fun rooms and set-pieces. The Mr. Freeze boss fight is incredibly well-designed, even if it isn't particularly subtle ("AH SO BATMAN HAS THE ABILITY TO CRASH THROUGH WINDOWS! NOW I KNOW NOT TO WALK TOO CLOSE TO WINDOWS! YOU CAN'T FOOL ME THE SAME WAY TWICE BATMAN!"). Ra's al Ghul feels like a complete sidetrack, but it's a nice change of pace. The final area also lends itself to some good combat rooms, and the final encounter... well, I kinda think Arkham was 0 for 2 with final bosses, but I like how it ends.

Catwoman's fun, too! Her segments are over and done with pretty quickly, but they make for nice diversions. Sorta wish you could do more with her, but w/e. That fakeout bad ending is quite the shock if you actually go for it.

So, like, I got my issues with Arkham City, but I still think it's a fine enough time. I'm given to understand later Arkhams continue to move further away from what I liked about the first game (I have Arkham Knight, just need to get around to it). That's a bummer for me, but if it's what people like, who am I to say no?

...that GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION "10 OUT OF 10" boxart is still utterly ridiculous, though. Are we in agreement on that?

[This is a review of Version 2.2.8, though I also played... I believe Version 2.0...? around 14-15 years ago]

Depending on how you define the term, my favorite Sonic fangames are Sonic Mania and Sonic 2: Special Edition. But assuming you don't count those (and, like, fair), then my favorite is Sonic Robo Blast 2. Without question, one of the greatest games to feature Sonic, over much of the official series.

Honestly, a lot of my appreciation for this game comes from how unlikely it all sounds on a high level. Even knowing how high-octane DOOM can be, I neeeever would've guessed at a well-realized, non-gimmicky Sonic game making sense in that engine. And yet...

I love 3D Sonic, but I'll be quick to point out that the post-Adventure games have pretty different design philosophies from the classic series. Yes, Sonic's always been a spectacle platformer series, but the means by which you get there changes. 2D Sonic places more focus on methodical exploration, with speed being a reward for good play; 3D Sonic encourages speed as often as it can, with speed built into its strongest set pieces. Exploration is traditionally presented as being divorced from speed in 3D Sonic...

(I haven't played Sonic Frontier yet, so no idea how the open world design addresses that)

...which is what makes Sonic Robo Blast 2 so striking. The game very cleanly blends 2D game design into 3D space. Levels are HUGE and expansive to accommodate the player's innate desire to explore, with a huge emphasis on naturalistic or logical environments. Sure, you still have plenty of video gamey obstacles like spinning spike bars and death lasers and such, but there's usually some sort of logical continuity to how the player explores the Zones, which in turn informs the cadence of challenges.

And it's not a complete rejection of 3D Sonic's design, either! A lot of the environmental storytelling you see in some of the Adventure titles and especially Sonic Unleashed, where the progression through biomes and buildings communicates its own adventure, gets teased out in SRB2. "Castle Eggman" isn't just a string of castle-themed rooms. It's a long trek through a forest leading up to the castle, followed by a trip through several rooms and libraries, followed by a run across danger-riddled castle ramparts. "Egg Rock" isn't just a generic space zone, but rather a slow infiltration of a meteor base as the player dives into the heart of Robotnik's stronghold. "Arid Canyon" is more than a generic desert level, it features a race through an abandoned mine and down to a train robbery.

Now, it isn't uniformly this - Greenflower and Red Volcano in particular are largely just biomes without any sort of adventure progression. But then, the game's still under development (even after twenty-five years of continuous work), and plans exist to embellish these levels and add more to boot. So, maybe some day! Even so, even with the game as it is, it's a very easy, very strong recommendation from me. Great stuff.

Miscellany:

- It is insane to me that this Sonic fangame off the DOOM engine spawned a Kart-Racer, which itself spawned a Persona dungeon-crawler. To parse this: a first-person shooter was modded into a third-person 3D platformer, which was modded into a racing game, which was modded into a turn-based RPG. It's hard for me to even wrap my head around that.
- I LOVE THE BOSS OF ARID CANYON. GREAT PULL HOLY CRAP
- Since I played different versions, it was kinda funny watching the plot go from "Eggman blew up a mountain, ANGST" to "Eggman Roboticized a mountain, oh but don't worry, people are okay (or at least will be once you beat the video game)"
- Theming the bonus rounds after NiGHTS into dreams... is a cute touch. Doesn't feel too far off from the realm of possibility, given the inexplicable NiGHTS cameos across some official titles and the Chemical Plant boss from Sonic Mania
- I haven't even played a Dark Souls game, but I love what that little sword-and-fire communicates in Castle Eggman.
- I think I tried the multiplayer once? Got dissed in text-chat for not knowing what I was doing, and decided I was good.
- Sonic's Speed Thok sure is a weirdly-named move, but it's a good compromise for the Homing Attack, itself a compromise for Sonic's speed in 3D. I like how much utility the move gives you, offset by just how much of a commitment it is. Good solution for something to give Sonic, to give him a movement counterpart to Tails' flight and Knux's gliding.

Part of a Japanese indie RPG Maker horror trilogy that has long existed in my head, alongside Ib and Mad Father. I know "trilogy" isn't quite right; the only real throughline these games have are similar game engines (Mad Father isn't even in RPG Maker) and translator. And anyway, if we're going by that logic, vgperson has handled way more stuff than just those three games. No matter; the trilogy in my head is Ib, Witch's House, and Mad Father. I played Ib many years ago, and now I've played Witch's House.

The Witch's House is predicated entirely around its ending reveal. There is other interstitial stuff that composes the rest of the experience, but the narrative thrust sits entirely within the ending. It's a good ending reveal, don't get me wrong, but the consequence is that everything leading up to it sort of feels irrelevant. Now, since the game's only an hour or so long, that isn't really that much of a strike against it - but it does make the experience feel lopsided in retrospect.

This isn't to say that the grand majority of the game is without merit. I think as a tonal piece, the game's at its strongest earlier on, when you're just doing some unsettling puzzles and the house is starting to go crazy. The third floor in particular is delightfully dark, with great setup and payoff. On the flipside, I kinda think any of the jump-scare chase sequences come across as ridiculous - particularly that giant skull on the fifth floor - but then I've always thought stuff like Ao Oni was more silly than scary.

Yeah, here's where I admit that indie horror projects like this have never been my bag. When I play one of these, the main thing I'm looking for is mood and tone, not spoopiness. I think, since I highlighted it before, I resonated a lot more with Ib when I played that years ago, since that had a lot more consistent tonality and theming between its gameplay and narrative. Witch's House is fine enough, good for its duration, but it isn't really something that sticks with me outside a couple moments and its ending. Its gameplay moments feel more like a fantasia of horror that only occasionally interacts with the character and story moments. No disrespect if that's the stuff that hooked you onto the game, but it isn't personally my thing.

My context for the original is pretty limited, but this sorta feels like one of those where something's been lost in the remake. Granted, as I understand it, the original Panzer Dragoon was very much a title whose significance was rooted in the era of its release: an early must-play title for the SEGA Saturn, ethereal and artistically-driven in a way games generally weren't at that time (heck, on the Saturn alone, NiGHTS into dreams... was still a year out). A compelling showcase of mechanics it was not, particularly in hindsight. These days, so many subsequent rail shooters have developed the genre far beyond the scope of the original Panzer Dragoon.

I guess with that, the idea of a Panzer Dragoon remake is in an unfavorable position. It is perhaps necessary, given how little we've seen of the SEGA Saturn since its heyday and how unlikely we are for SEGA to put out a proper Saturn compilation. But there isn't really a good way to reincarnate this sort of game. The original soundtrack/visuals no longer hold the same effect, so simply having those wouldn't work. Overhauling the art direction loses the original game's identity, particularly since so much of it was rooted in the technical limitations of the Saturn. Arriving at an art style that holds the same effect in modern day that the original had in its era would require a huge budget...

...and what we got was a budget title. Developed in the Unity engine! Unity is a perfectly serviceable game engine, but there's something a little homogenizing about rebuilding a one-of-a-kind video game in a stock engine. It'd be a little like trying to recreate Chrono Trigger in RPG Maker. Could you do so? Perhaps, but the heart and soul of Chrono Trigger lies in the specific way it was presented.

This is all to say - Panzer Dragoon Remake is okay, but it's over and done with pretty quickly. There is novelty to having access to a version of this game in modern day, but I don't really feel like I've gained anything for the experience, just that I can say I've played it now. I think I would've rather had an untouched "museum" release that helped place me in the reality of the original release. Is that asking for too mych? I dunno, but with what we got, I don't feel any less need to look for the original Panzer Dragoon on Saturn now that I've gone through the remake. Seems like we've missed the thrust of the exercise here.

Years ago, on a Super Mario messageboard I used to frequent (Lemmy's Land Forums), we played this elimination game involving like 50 different Mario games. The idea was that each person would "Save" one game, so at the end of the round, the last game to be "Saved" would be eliminated, and play would restart. I dunno if this sort of game is really played much anymore, but it's the sort of thing you used to see all the time on messageboards. Anyway, this one guy really liked the original Mario Tennis - if I remember correctly, his love was based entirely around playable Paratroopa - and would make a point to rush in and "Save" it at the top of each round. It got to a point where "Save Mario Tennis" became an in-joke around the community, and any time Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64 was mentioned, someone would be quick to "Save" it. Or that just became the name of the game itself: "Save Mario Tennis".

I mention this because, after a few non-starter attempts at unlocking both characters and one finally successful one, I can't really get the adoration for this title.

Mario Tennis is an extremely important Mario game. Since Camelot needed to pad out the roster with Doubles partners, the team got creative with their picks for playable characters. This is the game that introduced Waluigi as Wario's Doubles partner, and while that's not the move I would've made (personally I probably would've stuck Captain Syrup in there - yeah, they're enemies, but that's what Wario deserves), I'd be lying if I didn't say I loved what the lanky loser has become over the years. This is also the game that brought back Princess Daisy and Birdo, elevating these two supporting ladies into fairly prominent roles going forward (as well as cementing the pairings of Daisy/Luigi and Birdo/Yoshi). Playable Boo and Shy Guy would become common sights going forward, but this is where they got their start. Yes, Paratroopa over Koopa Troopa is a fun pull, even if it was probably just made because animating flight is easier than animating walking. The only real non-starter advanced by this game in the roster department is Donkey Kong Jr., since Diddy Kong would make for a far more logical Doubles Partner for DK going forward and Petey Piranha would fill in as the usual fourth Power character - but DK Jr. is a fun inclusion all the same, just someone who wouldn't see much of an expanded role in the future.

But I'll be honest, the roster is the main thing Mario Tennis has going for it. Apart from that, the game is shockingly dry as a tennis simulator. Yeah, it lets you play tennis, and yeah, the characters have some different properties, but that's pretty much it. I guess if you really like regular ol' tennis, this is a decent enough simulator for that, if a bit stiff - I never feel like I have as much control over the ball as I want (but then I mostly play Speed/Power/Tricky characters). Personally, I find the whole thing pretty wanting for some sort of high concept, even if it's just a big aesthetic change in one of the courts. For goodness sakes, all of the unlockable courts are just reskins of the regular court with JPEGs of the Mario cast printed on 'em! Playing this after growing up with Mario Power Tennis, it was a huge disappointment.

The side content is a'ight, but pretty limited, especially for singleplayer. Ring Shot is probably the game at its mechanical strongest, since it teaches the player how to rally, and there's a nice tense cadence to building up points. Piranha Challenge is okay - fun to see the Piranha Plants doing something, even if they're basically little more than pitching machines here.

Bowser Stage is a fun idea and a weird assertion of Mario Kart in a non-Mario Kart setting, but I actually find the items themselves a little lackluster. The issue with using Mario Kart items is that you think they'll do Mario Kart things, so I kept trying to use the Starman to tank hits when it's just a power-up in this game. Shells are probably most interesting, since both lock down where the opponent's able to move, but they can't hold this mode on their own. Actually, it's the stage itself I like best, since it has a gimmick of leaning towards whichever side's weighted down - really would've liked to see more courts experiment with gimmicks like this.

I like the idea of Mario Tennis more than I like what it actually does, I think. Tennis is a sport I like to play, and the idea of stapling Mario characters on in there is a fun idea. I especially like the consequences the game's had on shaping the series, perhaps more than any other non-mainline Mario game outside some of the Mario Karts. But as its own thing? I'd much rather Save a later Mario Tennis.

I’m given to understand that Camelot’s handheld golf outings are actually quite good. They’re the basis for the excellent Golf Story, after all - little RPG narrative adventures where you build up the player character’s stats over the course of a fun golf training arc. I think Mario Tennis GBC is going for the same sorta thing, but as it turns out, the effect doesn’t translate across sports.

It bears mention before getting into what Tennis GBC does with its campaign: the main issue at play with this game is how rough the AI is. It’s actually extremely easy to cheese it here, particularly in Singles: do a drop shot to one corner of the court, then either smash a return or do a lob shot to the opposite side. The AI naturally responds to the drop shot by running up to hit it, and most AI opponents lack the reach or speed to respond to this trickery. Once you figure out how to do this, and once you fall into a good cadence with this, most opponents are helpless before you.

It turns out that this is sort of a blessing in disguise. Annoyingly, the standard match length in the game’s story is 3 Sets, 6 Games per Set. For comparison, console Mario Tennis I don’t think ever forces the player to do more than 2 game Sets? Starting out the gate with best of 3 Sets and moving into Best of 5 Sets just feels like padding. I don’t even really like it when console Mario Tennis does that, but the gameflow is at least fast enough in console tennis that a climactic 3- or 5-Set Match feels like a well-paced struggle. Everything moves sooooo sloooooowly on GBC.

You also gain EXP and stats from minigames rather than standard tournament play, so you’re expected to intersperse these slow-ass games with slow-ass grinding sessions. In my experience, Mario Tennis GBC ended up being something to play while I had something else on out of necessity; I actually spent a decent amount of time playing this while meeting up with some out-of-state friends, while we were just loafing around and watching TV. I sort of have fond memories of the game for that reason, but boy does the game not earn it.

Speaking of earning things, you have to earn the right to get Mario characters into the game’s primary narrative! You spend most of the time in a rookie-to-success string of tournament arcs amid OCs, and it’s only after you clear the final tournament that you get the privilege of traveling to the Mario World to face off against interdimensional tennis superstar Mario (and Peach, in Doubles). I don’t necessarily object to relegating the Mario cast to legendary figures you have to earn the right to play against, but there ends up being no references to Mario until the credits roll like two or three times, grinding out the campaign. It’s a very curious decision to make in a game called Mario Tennis.

And it’s hardly the most important thing, but since Tennis is such a limited sport compared to Golf, it takes to having stapled-on RPG stats a lot less elegantly than Golf does. I know I would’ve ground things out, but for the life of me I can’t remember what nuance these stats added, on top of making me able to compete with the higher-end foes.

Looking at what the game offers, I’m willing to accept that I’m inherently missing something by playing Mario Tennis GBC in a vacuum, as a lot of its side content ties in to connecting the game with the N64 console version (transferring characters and mini-games, etc). I think of how it goes for Pokémon Stadium, where the intention is that the console game benefits from its connectivity with the handheld game. But Pokémon Stadium still represents a largely complete experience even without the handheld games. I guess Mario Tennis GBC can stand alone, but there's so little to it that if you're not inherently sold on the core loop of playing slow tennis with some dude against easily-duped boofheads, you're just wasting your time. Too bad.

Trades the prequel's strong theming for mechanical adjustments. This isn't to say theming isn't present; the story and characters are way more prominent this time around. But it's clear Lightweight was interested in cleaning up the fighting game experience this go-around. Controls are simplified, weapon differences are more pronounced, and certain characters even have unique stances - for example, Gengoro trades the standard katana mid-stance with an iaidō moveset. Which admittedly seems redundant in a game where any strike is a killing blow, but heck if it ain't fun.

I would've thought for sure that POV Mode would've been removed in the sequel, but it's actually been expanded quite a bit. Most of the core modes have a version of it available, and wireframes have been added for the player character. It's kind of a strange effect, since it's not true first-person anymore, but it works once you get used to it. Actually, the player character's tendency to look at the opponent is useful for orienting yourself. The Story Mode bosses are especially obnoxious in POV Mode, though.

Oh, yeah, the story mode's final bosses. In an interesting move, each of the respective final bosses has a unique gimmick: characters of the Shainto school fight a final boss who teleports away from every strike, while the Narukagami students face off against an armored final boss. It's an interesting idea, where the former tests your ability to double-strike (since dude's vulnerable while recovering from his teleport) and the latter tests your ability to literally stab him in the back (as he isn't armored there). Though in practice, it feels like more of an annoying binary check than a proper test. Ah, well.

While I appreciate everything done to streamline this game's experience, I do kinda feel like the deliberate intentionality of the original's been lost. The Bushido Code only really exists from a narrative perspective, since it's not reinforced by the gameplay. There aren't any branching paths, save the Shainto students getting to renege on their whole revenge plot at the last second. Even the buttons have sort of lost their purpose, since you no longer have that cool rise/fall, advance/retreat effect from the first game; parry is done automatically, and the stance-shift button is now separate from the raise up/lower down buttons.

I still like this game, and I think that if you're strictly interested in multiplayer/fighting game shenanigans, this is the one to look to. But I probably prefer the tone of the original a bit more. Theoretically, you'd have a complete winner combining the two games' approaches, but as a little duology, it ain't bad, either.

A few things that made me go WTF - a lady in underwear gunning me down with an M-16, a funky black guy in an afro and shades inexplicably showing up in this bushido story, Black Lotus turning into the Phantom of the Opera and developing a pronounced Irish brogue, a very rude Kilroy showing up on one stage. Game's kinda weird.

I blame the podcast "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" for this playthrough. Mike Nelson and Conor Lastowka had just started reading Ernest Cline's "Bridge to Bat City", and they glommed onto the oddly specific details of (1) main character Opal playing Atari games with Buddy Holly music in the background and (2) Opal's uncle gifting her a copy of MegaMania before taking her to her mother's deathbed. Figured it was worth giving that a go.

Strictly speaking, developer Steve Cartwright got the idea for this game off Astro Blaster, not Space Invaders. But Space Invaders makes for a fairly easy shorthand these days: fixed-screen space shooter dealing with waves of alien enemies, where each of the enemies is modeled after normal Earth things (in Space Invaders' case, sealife; in MegaMania's case, food and household objects). On top of the waves of enemies moving in different patterns (and some decent stuff there - I like seeing the Space Dice roll through), the gimmick for MegaMania is its Guided Missiles in Games 1 & 2, which follow the player's movements.

This ain't bad, but it is strikingly weird. Straightforward enough to program, since it's basically just applying the player's movement to a second sprite, but pretty different from how a lot of games think of their projectiles. I can't tell you how many times I went to line up a shot and retreat from counterfire, only for this to make my missile weave around the enemy. You kind of have to play less defensively than you do in a lot of these space shooters to make the Guided Missiles work. Kinda different than my usual playstyle, but not bad - gives the game its own identity, firing and tracking down an enemy to line up your shot. But if you're not a fan, you can just pick Games 3 & 4 for Straight Missiles, which completely ignore the player's inputs. Nice to have the option.

I kinda wish there was more of a story to this. It's ultimately pretty inconsequential, since a lot of these early games don't really need a narrative, but I love seeing how much effort Atari would put into manuals of this era (the Swordquests and Yar's Revenge come to mind). I haven't played a lot of Activision's efforts in this era; maybe this was pretty typical for them? Nice of them to actually credit Steve Cartwright, though.

Let the record show, my play improved substantially after I muted the game audio and played Buddy Holly's "Everyday" in the background, so maybe Opal's onto something. Ended up with over 62,000 points, so per the manual, I am eligible to become an official MegaManiac. I expect Activision to send me the official emblem in the mail in 8 to 10 business days.

As a kid, this was easily my favorite Mario Sports outing, even over Mario Superstar Baseball (which, like I mentioned before, I only recently came to appreciate). Revisiting it really hammers in that, yes, there really is something to Power Tennis.

Revisiting this around my Mario Tennis 64 playthrough really hammers home how much has been improved. Gameplay overall feels a lot tighter, and I feel like I have way more control over where the ball's going. Characters feel markedly different from one another, even within the same character class. This is in large part due to the Power Shots, that high concept that the original game sorely needed to keep things interesting. Power Shots are often character-defining, but they're far from the only unique thing each character has going for them - think of them more as your inroad to each character.

The unlockable characters most clearly exemplify this, so let's run through them. Petey Piranha is a fairly standard Power character, with low movement and high volley speed, Petey is so huge that he barely needs to move around. Paratroopa this time around is a Technique character, but he has a ridiculously fast lunge that lets him catch tricky shots from his opponents. Fly Guy can fly like a helicopter, so he always faces forward - no need to account for turnaround time when chasing the ball. Wiggler is my favorite inclusion - he's a very inspired character pull/redesign, whose long body means he has little trouble keeping on top of the ball. There's a strong sense that who the characters are factors into their individual styles, on top of the classes they slot into.

I also have to say, I'm extremely impressed by what the game is as a celebration of the extended Mario franchise. This is definitely something I didn't catch as a kid; before, I saw that there were TWO dumb Mario Sunshine courts and thought they were just giving the new game needless lip service. And, like, I'm not gonna pretend that the Ricco Harbor (oh, sorry, Gooper Blooper) Court doesn't seem excessive to me.

But, like, lookit the other courts! The Luigi's Mansion Court is to be expected, perhaps, but what about that Donkey Kong court, with Klaptraps and Kritter models pulled from Donkey Kong 64? A Wario court themed after WarioWare but with Wario World music? A court themed after arcade Mario Bros., specifically? Oh, but you might think, that's all well and good, but there's no Yoshi court. True, but Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Story get their due. Shy Guy turns into a Spear Guy for his Power Shots, Wiggler turns into Flutter, Fly Guy exists... heck, Thunder Lakitu of all enemies shows up on the Donkey Kong court! The team could've picked any number of enemies for the desired effect, but no, they went with such a specific Yoshi's Island character. The game sort of presents this vision of what a greater Mario series celebration could look like, and all this exists in some random tennis spin-off, not a tentpole anniversary title.

...Wario Land 3 music plays at one point! Would've thought for sure that game was on the fast track to obscurity at this point.

I think these days I do ultimately prefer Superstar Baseball, for the sheer depth of mechanics at play. But this is an easy runner-up! My favorite turn at the wheel Camelot's had with these characters, at least of what I've played. Would love love love to see another game like this someday.

...a new OC would've been fun for this game, like when we got Waluigi in Tennis 64. Walpeach would explain a lot of stuff here, but I also like that rejected Potato character, she coulda been fun.

I mentally lump this game together with Hey! Pikmin, which should clue you in on what I think of this game. Truthfully, this game isn't nearly as stinky as that one, but it definitely bums me out way more. Hey! Pikmin is just a failed experiment by a studio that could seemingly orchestrate murder and still sucker a publisher into hiring them. Zip Lash was a final, last-ditch effort to save the franchise, in much the same way Fire Emblem Awakening was a last-ditch effort to make something of Fire Emblem. Only Awakening catapulted Fire Emblem from a D-list franchise to one of Nintendo's A-listers (for better and for worse), while Zip Lash failed so thoroughly that it killed the studio that made it. A slow death at that, wasting away for years with nothing to show for their agony but a slow retreat from society and a forgotten, desiccated husk discovered long after the fact.

Zip Lash is a conga line of bizarre decisions. Turning a quiet, character-driven open world game that defies genre into a 2D platformer is itself strange, but I at least get that one - desperate for something that would stick with Nintendo's audiences, skip Ltd. turned to an extremely safe and marketable genre. I also think the titular Zip Lash, while weird in the context of Chibi-Robo (how do you extend plug), is a decent idea. Actually, it lends itself to some decently cerebral moments in level design, trying to line up your shot and taking ricochet into account. At a certain plug length it doesn't really matter where you're aiming, since you're pretty much guaranteed to hit the foe anyway, but it's something.

What I don't get is the level roulette. So each world (well, continent, since you're globe-trotting Earth) contains six levels. You need to clear each of these levels before you can fight the boss and move on to the next continent. Standard stuff. Only, for some reason, you cannot select a level to go to - you have to play a roulette mini-game at the end of each level. This roulette contains numbers 1-3. Whichever number you roll is how many levels ahead you go. So, like, if you've just finished Level 2, and you spin a "1", you move on to Level 3. But if the spinner lands on a "3", your next level is 5.

Kind of a quirky, fun way of blitzing through the game, right? Well, no, not really. In fact, not at all. Ignoring the fact that this dumb thing legitimately adds a minute or two's worth of fiddling around between levels, this doesn't change the fact that you still have to clear all levels within a continent. So in my previous example, the player skipped Levels 3 and 4, moving straight into Level 5. This presents an issue: those two levels still need to be completed. But the levels do exist within a loop, so Level 1 comes after Level 6 in this roulette progression thing. What this means is that, ideally, the player would clear Level 5, spin a 1 to move on to Level 6, then spin a 3 to skip ahead to Level 3. Because - yes - if you spin a 1 or a 2, you are returned to a level you have already cleared, and you are expected to play that level again!!! It is necessary to finish a level to get that roulette, so you can't just stick your head in and dip out. It's a good thing four out of the six options on that roulette are "1", so you have good odds of playing the video game normally. Because if you try for another option to shake it up, there's a great chance you'll be replaying a buncha dumb levels you've already played as punishment for engaging with the systems at play.

Another weird choice is the battery system. So like previous Chibis-Robo, this game's hero has a finite amount of battery, which needs to be recharged here and again. My thought would be to use this as a themed health system, the way previous games sorta implicitly do - falling from a great height or getting roughed up by Spydorz in the first game quickly drains Cheebo's battery. But, for some reason, this game includes a separate health system. Battery is instead a separate resource for the player to manage. Throughout each level are outlets, acting as mini-checkpoints. The player must always keep an eye on the battery level, and when it's running low, they must drop everything they're doing to find one of these outlets. Sometimes, this means backtracking. I guess I've seen this sort of thing done before (off-hand, I think of Sandopolis Act 2 in Sonic & Knuckles, where you have to keep pulling the switches to reset the lights), but given how much ceremony Chibi-Robo puts behind plugging in and charging up, it's something else that bogs down the action.

Also, may I just say: in a game where you're roaming the Earth, wandering outside for the whole adventure, it sure is handy that there are so many Type A outlet designs lying around. No universal adapters necessary!

There's also the product placement! This game uses real-world snacks as collectables. In each continent, a tertiary goal is to find all the snacks you can to feed a toy. I know that sounds strange, but don't worry, it's a different toy in each continent. I'm not opposed to product placement, not even in a Nintendo game; Pikmin 2's product placement is nothing short of genius. But it worked there because it juxtaposed these clean sterile images of, like, friggin' Vlasic Pickles with a would-be cultural anthropologist trying to reason out what role this thing had within this fallen society. Here you're just getting promotional praise. So if you ever wanted a cymbals monkey to give you a straight ad read of UTZ REGISTERED TRADEMARK SYMBOL CHEESE BALLS, well, I guess this is what you've been waiting for.

Much like a player who accidentally hit a number greater than 1 on the level roulette, I could go on and on all day with this. But the bottom line is that this game shows a shocking lack of the single most fundamental aspect of the first game: humility. Chibi-Robo in this game is a global superhero, who lives in outer space, in his own satellite and flies down to Earth to solve global crises. Everyone in the world knows and loves him! He's the object of ladies' affection! He's a shoe-in for the intergalactic space patrol! Aliens fear him! Not to spoil the ending or anything, but the final boss is a mecha fight, with Chibi-Robo piloting a giant mecha modeled after himself! Yeah, isn't he so cool? Don't you wish you were like Chibi-Robo?

It... this game breaks my heart. I feel so bad for the human beings who were tethered to this game's success, who needed to produce something that could be a tentpole title, to prop up their failing studio and keep them in business. This game needed to be a very specific thing to even have a chance at being that, and that specific thing was as far as you could get from what I loved about the first game. The original Chibi-Robo is quiet, introspective, mature, and offers no easy answers to life: just characters doing their best and making small steps in the right direction. But something quiet and modest like that couldn't sell; hell, it had failed to sell over and over again. Yet, even turning their back on all that, getting full support from Nintendo, skip Ltd. couldn't make something to save them. And in the end, they had to watch their world fade away.

It was worth it to me to buy this game brand new. The original Chibi-Robo was so important to me that I actually voted for the little guy in the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot (I suppose that makes me in part responsible for the Mii costume we got in Smash Ultimate?), so supporting the do-or-die last release was not even a question for me. Plus, it came packaged with that amiibo of Cheebo sitting down, holding his plug overhead - one of the best amiibo, I think, since it really captures the little guy's understated personality. But devoid of that context, if you're looking at the game now as something to play, I don't think I could ever recommend it as anything but a showcase of what not to do, of what desperation will make of something once-great.

I got this on launch, but I never got super deep into the game's community. No indictment on the game by any means, just not something I spent a lot of time on myself. Normally I make a point to only cover stuff I've completed one way or another, and that's not really possible for this game. But since online's been shuttered, I suppose there's no harm in giving some quick thoughts.

I think it is so cool that Super Mario Maker exists. A 30-year anniversary celebration of Super Mario Bros. (down to coming out right around the original Japanese release date: Friday the 13th in September), placing the power of game design in the players' hands. True, things like Lunar Magic had existed in an unofficial capacity for years, and especially these days there's way more you can do with ASM. But Mario Maker is a GREAT tool for general access. Taking its cues from Mario Paint, the UI is perhaps initially intimidating but quite easy to navigate once you settle in and start poking around.

Being able to switch between game styles is suuuuper cool. I definitely wish the different games (Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros. U) all retained their own physics, instead of just reusing the New Soup physics - a subtle thing, but you notice it when comparing to the source material. But I get why you'd want all of Mario Maker to feel the same, and New Soup is a solid enough physics engine. Besides, the real fun of each style is seeing all the hallmark elements of each game, as well as seeing reinterpretations of game elements across games. It must've been a fun challenge, for example, to reinterpret the Ghost House and Doomship level archetypes for the games that didn't originally have them.

The main thing I've always loved was the crossover stuff with Costume Mario. Like, okay, cute idea, getting in all the Mario characters as alternate costumes. Amiibo support was the REAL treat, meaning that all the other characters in Smash Bros. got to have some fun. Including third-party characters! Playing as Sonic in a Mario platformer was a little mind-bending. But then they just kept going! I don't claim to understand why Shaun the Sheep or Hello Kitty are here, but I'm not inclined to complain. And even within Nintendo, the picks got enjoyably obscure. Ayumi Tachibana? A lady from the Japanese team in NES Volleyball? Friggin' Master Belch??? There's sort of this feeling like all these characters were invited to Mario's birthday party, it's great. Granted, I dunno why you'd invite Master Blech to a birthday party, but hey...

Like I said, I didn't spend a ton of time with the game, but I did make a small handful of levels. There were two I was pretty proud of. One was called "Buddy Beetle", and it was a SMB3-themed one where the player worked with a big ol' Buzzy Beetle to collaborate on puzzles and get to the end. The other was "Koopa Troopa's Walk", a SMW-themed one where a Koopa Troopa navigated a straight line at the top while a player navigated an obstacle course and tried to keep up. Both pretty simple high-concept ideas, but I had fun telling little stories through the level design.

...I guess they're lost now with everything else, huh? Still, for a good 8-9 years, an innumerable amount of people would've interfaced with them. I wonder who all played them, and what they got out of 'em? Were my levels part of peoples' rush to beat everything before the service shut down? I hope folks had fun.

Mario Maker 2 is an overall improvement on the first game in most ways that count, but at the cost of Costume Mario. I do get it - renegotiating all those licenses would've been a total nightmare, and especially doing them for something as trivial as a palette swap could not have felt like an ideal use of time. Sadly, as someone with only the most casual connection to the Mario Maker scene, this means that the one thing I really cared about in the long run isn't there, and I kinda prefer the original by consequence.

But there's a good deal that's been added, too, so let's not dwell on what's missing. A new suite of level archetypes is nice to see, plus nighttime to add a new layer of depth. Slopes were conspicuous in their absence last time, so they're very welcome here. A ton of other things feel like game changers, too, like On/Off Switches, additional checkpoints, and keys. New enemies are always appreciated, and the Lemmy's Land Tourist in me will always appreciate the Koopalings being relevant.

Super Mario 3D World's inclusion as a special level archetype is a curious one. I think adding something new to proceedings is cool, but it seems weird to convert an explicitly 3D Mario entry into purely 2D design. But (1) it comes with its own suite of power-ups/enemies/obstacles and (2) the mechanics are a bit different, so it makes for a pretty decent complement as its own thing. I do think it's strange that 3D World is the only game presented as this sort of Extra Style; I had Super Mario Bros. 2/USA pegged as an Extra Style that'd be added in a patch, but that never really shook out. Though we got SMB2 controls later as a unique power-up, so... I guess it evens out?

Speaking of power-ups as theme consolation prizes - the Superball Flower and the Master Sword feel like this, too. Obviously the Master Sword is way more interesting, since turning into Link gives Mario a wildly different moveset. From what I've seen, Link levels tend to be a lot more puzzle-oriented by consequence, which feels like a very accurate expression of Zelda's whole thing in the template of a Mario game. I would've loved to see other character-based movesets like this (Samus, maybe?), but just the one is neat.

...but Superball is cool, too! Definitely not something I would've ever expected to see come back, since I figured Superball was just poor man's Fire Flower. Super Mario Land is probably the only other obvious pick for an Extra Theme, since Yoshi's Island/Wario Land is a bit too removed from standard Mario and all the other New Soups/Mario Advances would feel redundant with what's already in-game (and Super Mario Land 2 is mostly just a slower Mario World). So it's neat to see SML repped in its own way.

I didn't spend much time if any with the course creator, but I did have a ton of fun running through the game's campaign. I'm sure the story mode is mostly just your in-road into the creative side, but I love the little story they make for these characters. Toadette as the strict forewoman of a construction project is... not at all a role I would've pictured, but I kinda love this take on her? Toad the Toad being relevant is always nice, and I like all the little character details you can pick up on if you read between the lines of the "anonymous" course creators. For example, Bowser gives his son a weekly 40-coin allowance! When else are you gonna learn something like that?

Like I said at the top, I probably like the first Mario Maker better for what it represented, but Mario Maker 2's at least as good in its own right. By now, almost every major Wii U game has been reincarnated on Switch, and I gotta respect that Ninty did more than just opt for a (second) port of the previous game. I don't expect we'll be seeing another Mario Maker any time soon, but I'm glad they let people experiment once again.

Given Tomb Raider's British heritage, a game themed around Arthurian legend was probably long overdue. Granted, Legend plays pretty fast and loose with the Arthurian cycle, casting it as part of a common global legend in the same way that multiple ancient cultures have a flood myth, but that sort of syncretic blend of world legends is part of the fun of these globetrotting treasure-hunting narratives.

I probably owe Tomb Raider: Legend a revisit at some later point, once I've better put the Tomb Raider series into context. As of this writing, this is the only mainline, non-Survivor Tomb Raider I've finished. I know Legend is sort-of the start to its own reboot trilogy, but I feel like I'm missing why it was well-received by not tracking the original run of Tomb Raider's decline in quality through Chronicles and Angel of Darkness. As its own thing, I found Legend fine, not really remarkable but not really offensive. But I suspect that sort of game was precisely what Tomb Raider needed at that point in time: a fresh run in a new set of hands several years after Angel of Darkness broke the series' foundation.

Um, game's a bit janky. A lot of the general jumpy climby stuff in what I've played of the original series feels like that, where it's easy to fling one's self off a cliff in a wild direction despite the game's best efforts, so I sort of feel like that's a problem a lot of this genre ran into before Uncharted really smoothed out gameplay feel (or maybe that's just a consequence of my playing on PC?). But there are a few set pieces that feel very much of its era, taking big swings that don't completely connect. Those motorcycle sequences, for example: neat idea, something that you couldn't really do on PS1, barely something you could do on PS2 if this game is anything to go by. That one bit where you're climbing down a tall, tall chamber is surprisingly rough, too, since between the crumbling platforms and some of the jumps down, it was easy to overshoot and wind up taking too big a jump and ragdolling on the next platform. Plus there was that one boss fight against the guy (don't remember his name) who just kept screaming "DAMN YOU LARA BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH FINE WE'LL DO IT YOUR WAY FINE WE'LL DO IT YOUR WAY DAMN YOU LARA DAMN YOU LARA BET YOU WISH YOU COULD DO THAT HUH". Like, dude, chill.

But Legend is one of those where jank adds to the experience, so don't read this as much of a complaint. I do think all the ideas the game advances are sound, even if they are rough in execution. Anyway, the times where the game really does come together are quite fun. Not a lot of the game's stuck with me, but that one level, where you start out at a crummy roadside tourist trap about King Arthur that transitions into Arthur's actual tomb, is suuuuch a fun concept. Definitely worth the visit for me all on its own.

I don't know how to wrap this one up, so here's a video I took during my playthrough that I titled "tombraiderlegends.mp4".

I have exactly one criticism for this game, and it's quite the nitpick: A Hat in Time feels a little too cynical for the genre style it's going for. It's not much, and it's really only in a handful of places - for example, that throwaway line about Hat Kid's soul feeling "the normal amount of empty". It's a really funny line! But it does take me out of things just a little bit.

Everything else, though? Some of the most fun I've had in what's easily my most comfortable type of video game. 3D platformers are comfort food for me, so I was quite excited when this game's Kickstarter was announced. A modern 3D platformer, deliberately evocative of GameCube titles I'd grown up on like Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker? I didn't kick in, since admittedly there have been very few games I've backed on Kickstarter, but I was very excited to follow the game's progress.

Then it came out, and it was even better than I could have imagined.

There's an immediate joy to this game. Hat Kid has to be one of the most likable protagonists - cute and fun-loving, but impulsive, rude, and little concerned with the troubles she finds herself drawn into. There are all these hints at the world being fairly dark, what with those character vaults hinting at all the major players' tragic backstories, but this almost never intersects with the actual narrative of the adventure. Hat Kid almost feels like Kirby in this regard: an adorable hero in a sweet world with dark overtones. Only Kirby himself is not wired to interface with tragedy, just friends and foes, while Hat Kid is kinda annoyed by everyone (besides Bow Kid) and is content to cavalierly do her own thing.

Which makes for a great complement to the game's "anything goes" approach to level design! This is one of those games where there isn't really a "tutorial" world, nor is there any point in having one, since what every level asks ends up being so unique. This isn't to say that the game leaves the player in the lurch; "Mafia Town" very naturally shows off what Hat Kid can do and gives the player a ton of space to explore. And then every other world does something wildly different.

"Battle of the Birds" is quite simply one of the most fun and engaging video game worlds, period. What a fun way to bring together wildly divergent ideas! I'm curious about the original "science owls" concept mentioned in the Kickstarter, but I honestly can't imagine preferring it to what we got: two inexplicable rivals, a funky penguin and a train conductor... thing... trying to win an annual film director award. Dead Bird Studios and the respective train/moon film sets make for cool, divergent environments with their own challenges, and while I have a definite favorite (The Conductor), the whole thing's great.

Since I'm going through all the different worlds anyway - "Subcon Forest" is probably the other easy candidate for someone's favorite world. Having Super Mario Bros. 2 in my foundational gaming background, I went in expecting a very dreamlike world (i.e. Subconscious). And while that is the case, it's a dual meaning, since you spend the whole world Subcon-tracting. The Snatcher is suuuuuuch a fun villain, adding a ton of loud personality to what's otherwise a very melancholy, quiet world. I love the scattershot flow that comes from this world, where you can get saddled with contracts in one level that won't even be addressed for another level or two. Makes the whole thing feel way more sprawling than you'd expect.

Speaking of sprawling, there's Alpine Skyline! I've heard it called the also-ran world of this game, and it's hard to argue with that. I do still think it's quite good, though! A big world of pure platforming challenges makes for a fun counter-offer to the game's usual character-driven design. Like you definitely miss the presence of other characters, but there's something nice and silently contemplative to all the obstacle courses that characterize this place.

...other levels I'll cover if/when I get around to doing reviews for the DLC. This write-up just covers the base game.

But, like, I've spent a lot of words articulating a simple point - A Hat in Time is a wonderful, wonderful game. One of those where everything, from the cast to the level design to the writing to the MUSIC, contributes to one of the most enjoyable games I can think of. An easy personal recommendation for anyone.