Years have passed since I’ve played my beloved Hyper Light Drifter. I wanna say I played this in 2016(?), a shrimple 14 year old girl who only knew it from a 20 second twitter clip that was rlly emotionally evocative. Didn’t know one thing about the gameplay, went fuck it we ball mode and played it. It was, back then, one of my favorite games ever, and over the years I began to doubt that. It’s no-dialogue story gimmick, good music, and catchy title were the only bits that stuck with me as years passed. I thought I’d been duped a bit emotionally by some easily marketable ideas, and that I wss some kinda ‘cool games poser’.

Do you know how happy I am to report that I was right in this case? I’ve been right a lot in this way recently- replaying Soul Hackers and Bastion lately showed me that I actually underrated or didn’t fully grasp how good some of these games were, and I’m really glad I hissed away my initial urge to avoid childhood joys out of embarrassment.

Here’s some history I think is an interesting little primer: I like three of the Zelda games. Played most of em. Like 15 of them probably? I genuinely hate all but three: Zelda 1, Minish Cap, and Four Swords (I’m a bit of a Game Boy Bitch it seems. Never had one growing up but I am!). Zelda 1 is like- one of the first games I recall playing. My dad’s parents sold their childhood SNES and it’s games but I did grow up using their old NES for some reason. They amassed a pretty good selection I think given the fact some weird poor kid from the middle of nowhere was making the buying decisions: Zelda 1 and 2, Blades of Steel, NES Golf, Final Fantasy 1, and Mario 2. I played the hell outta Zelda 2 the most I think. It was kinda infuriating! I wanted all the answers!

Later on in life, I really took a liking to Zelda 1. It’s simple, everything’s pretty to the point, and there ain’t many games like Just Zelda 1 made today. Like- you’ll have kinda similar things, right? But then there’ll be an extended segment that makes you go “….Oh. That’s Link To The Past, right.” and it kills the enjoyment I have, genuinely! Just think of LttP- ugh! What a- what a fucking specific and weird and unapproachable dull thing. Link to the Past.

Anyway- what I like in Z1 is it’s specificity and simultaneous lack thereof. Every time I get an item in Zelda 1, I know what it does immediately. If it’s long enough since I’ve upgraded a piece of equipment, I can feel a hankering for the eventual upgrade of it. If I ain’t seen a secret area in a bit, my mind tunes to look for them effectively.

Most importantly, though: the plot (however simple it is in Zelda 1) is a transfer of information. You don’t make a lot of active plot progress until the end of the game in Zelda 1. You have the NES game’s manual to tell you what is happening, and you have whatever story clues are contained in the individual moments. What’s happening here, though, is a structured pattern of plot-by-learning. Not exposition, really. Just other people having info, and the story forming as you’re given more context for how it all concludes. Nothing is ‘happening’, though. However, this is story a type of story I find universally compelling. Especially once you get into the nitty-gritty- who else knows that thing you just learned, and why didn’t they tell you before?

Zelda 1’s story isn’t that interesting, really. Like let’s be honest- I’m not gonna call it the masterclass in simple plot communication. But like…..I certainly remember it more fondly today than anything that happened in Ocarina looking back. Hyper Light Drifter takes the addicting and lovely parts of this structure to the extreme: information is conveyed through pure emotional connection. You see images, hear some tone-setting music, your heart does the rest of the work. You really do not need to hear words, you just need to understand at the base level what is most important in each individual scene.

Heck, it’s even got the hyperfocus on an underground dungeon world!

There’s a tendency to call this game cryptic that I really despise, though. It’s not. There’s this stupid thing where you can get the story of the game by obtaining these tablets that translate everything about the backstory and uh…you don’t need that. I’m the Hyper Light Hypewoman and I’m probably never doing it, honestly! Each part of this game is perfectly communicated. If you think there’s something missing it’s likely not that you misunderstood anything- it’s just That Simple, and your brain expects more.

What happens, as I see it- is incredibly simple. Our main character, THEE Hyper Light Drifter, awakens to find a disease they’ve had for a while worsening. They start blacking out for portions, seeing these visions of a beast killing them and sparking the end of humanity. Usually, at the end of these visions, a scary ass dog appears leading them in different directions. The Drifter trusts this dog for no good reason. Really, they shouldn’t based on the facts: these visions of the future they start getting feature the dog adjacent to themselves drowning within another creature’s maw, and civilization as a whole getting blown the fuck up.

We get context for the creature that will kill us and it’s supercomputer papaw throughout 4 episodic chapters. Universally, people are hurt by it after thinking they could approach it like any other situation. Not even the computer in some cases: just other species of lil peoples that suddenly get possessed by murderous ideology. These people have NO reason to trust others. Neither do you, kinda!

Another driftin’ sick fellow, though, dies shortly after risking life and limb to protect you. This reaffirms the Drifter’s inherent trust in others, and once the time comes, their trust is rewarded. They defeat the beast and escape alive and healthier after the scary ass dogthing leads them to safety. They’ve protected the world, but disabled their method of escape (the supercomputer that controlled the elevator system between the lower world and the surface). They will die, but alone with the dog and no one else now. Not from their painful sickness. It’s not perfect, but it could be considered better. And not to mention, life-affirming: it’s so difficult to trust others. I’ve been burned basically every time I’ve done it. It’s nice to consider this impulse still might not be worthless.

Hyper Light Drifter, overall, is a game about constant trust. It is a game full of secrets, where the artist's touches prompt you and reward you for trusting them. There's a universal Secret Symbol: you see it, you know something's there. Sometimes it's just a room with a key for ya to take. Isn't that nice? A lot of the times you land in a three-screen dungeon leading up to, you guessed it, a key. Sometimes it feels like you're being tricked. Could be a trick, even, honestly. But you always get a lil treat for your efforts. A reward for handing over your trust. There's a lot more about the game's design I think supports this philosophy but like- number one, I'm just gonna be repeating my words for like six more paragraphs if I do that, and number two: you don't want that at all. Like duh. That would blow. Not sure if what's about to follow is better, but like you'd hate it either way so I'll take those odds.

Okay, we already toyed with doing some Tim Rogers self-obsessed storytime bullshit during the Zelda Talk, but like- you either closed this review cuz of that or you’re itching for more. Ya want more? Oh, I got more.

In 2019 I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I have never told my family this, and I didnt tell a single person in my life until 2023. It's like- a fairly well known fact now. In my everyday life, things have gotten harder to manage vis-a-vis that, but y’know, back then it was simple: my inner monologue was hateful towards myself, and I would sometimes say things out loud and immediately recognize I was having a vivid memory-hallucination so strong I forgot where I was. Between then and now, we’ve got one major difference: trust issues. It’s about to get a little heavy so y’know. Trigger warnings and what not. There’s like- usually two or three things people talk about when they say that, so I hope you know to save this tab for later if that hurts right now.

In the years between then and now, I’ve lost every person I trusted for the most part. Most of my childhood friends killed themselves or were killed by their families. One of these particular suicides, which happened in 2017, I walked in on after it had happened. Which was a lot to work with as a teen. There were things I promised them I’d do I never got to, and vice versa. Obviously I dont like- blame any of them. Thats a really unfair thing to do, I think. But it really hurt my ability to trust others. Still, though, I had to actively try to trust people when I could regardless of how much it was hurting me to do so. I've always been a hopeful little soul, and people looked to me constantly for inspiration or to uplift their mood. When you're met with all that, you can't let that crack at all. You have to be this perfect emblem for others, even though it sucks. For a long ass time, I did trust like- one particular person a lot (genuinely!) and that isn’t true any more. You’ll remember when I threw out 2023 earlier? They helped me a lot starting in like- 2022 to help me get past a lot of this shit. We talked nearly every day for like a year. They were kind in the moment when I tried to talk about the symptoms of my schizophrenic disorder which was like- pretty new to me! Hadn't had much of a chance to talk about it before, but now here's someone who knows all the terminology that I'm having to use right now!

So, early 2024 rolls around and I have a crazy schizophrenia hallucination episode. I live alone with no in-person support network at this point. I try to kill myself the same way my old best friend did back in 2017, just in a public park at night instead of a house. At some point shortly after I tell them this, they just never talk to me again. I shouldn’t say never- I still text them sometimes, they might respond with a simple sentence once every month. If I try and ask how they’re doing or if we can talk soon, it’s left on read. If I say “Hey I watched that movie you mentioned.” there’s a one in five chance they say “Cool, that one’s good.”

Needless to say- much of my day now is spent grappling with trust issues. Like most of the day. It’s my fulltime job type shit. caused not exclusively by this new issue. But it's certainly not helping, right? I do not trust any one which, y’know, sucks! That used to be like- easy to do! However stupid it might be, though, if someone asks me to trust them with something I do as asked. Always.

I am a quitter in a lot of ways, and a real self-aware idiot, but let one thing be known: I try the hell outta it when I do that shit. I have crazy trust issues that make me think that every kind act done to me is part of some larger ploy. That they only intend to use and betray my trust later. Every time I’ve ever had the “oh this person’s playing nice they Actually Hate You” alarm ring, I’ve been correct.

But like- it feels stupid to let the Brain Disease Currently Putting Me Down win, right? That’s my Real Fucking Life Vow to the world right there: I will never stop trusting people no matter how hard this shit gets. That’s what the got damn game is about. #HyperLightMentality #AntiHaterLifestyle

I guess the conclusion I want you to draw from all this info is: talk to people in your life, even if it hurts or sucks to do. Ya gotta trust people, I think, maybe. And uh- Hyper Light Drifter is a really great piece on how the power of trust extends beyond logical reason sometimes. Not in a like- sometimes you just gotta have faith bullshit happy ending way. More like- you'll have these self-aware moments where you recognize your trust in something is illogical or really unfair towards yourself, but you live with it regardless. Shouts out Heart Machine, heard they're making a weird spiritual sequel roguelike to this now? Kinda weird, right? I'm super down for whatever that is.

On Saturn there's Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun, both games I've always really liked and immediately got the hang of.
And then there's this game...

My first time playing this I felt like I was fighting the game mechanics, I often felt like I was missing something.
I really struggled my way through this game, brute forcing my way to the end while throwing away multiple continues. I didn't understand why it couldn't just be a straightforward run-&-gun or action platformer, it seemed like the added mechanics just got in the way.
It was so frustrating and exhausting to play. I just saw it as the one weak link in the developer's history.
And so this game just sat on my shelf for many years and I'd always remember it as that weird mediocre treasure game.

Only now after coming back to it years later and finally understanding how to play it I feel qualified to write this review.
Silhouette Mirage comes from a developer that is most known for out-of-the-box ideas and experimental game design, and this is one of their games that pushes things even further than usual.

Silhouette Mirage is a misunderstood game, and I also misunderstood it.
This game is deceptively esoteric and deceptively genius. So much so that it took many playthroughs before I finally "got it"

Silhouette Mirage has a color polarity system but the player can't just easily change color at the press of a button you have to face left or right, it's the kind of idea that seems arbitrary and unique for the sake of being unique at first. It's easy to write the mechanics of this game off as shallow the game can almost feel mechanically confused, but the truth is that it isn't just a gimmick, most mechanics are deep and thoughtfully designed.

That's how the game is deceptive, before I really learned the deeper skills and mechanics I assumed that jumping over enemies and trying to move around them was a effective way to play, instead it's all about manipulating and forcing enemies into places where they are at a disadvantage, in other words move the enemy not yourself. It's counter-intuitive to the the way most games would go about something like this. There's a lot of depth to this idea, and it does work in practice once it's properly understood. Many of the bosses in the game feel the same way, before I understood their gimmick, patterns, or weakness they seem tedious and unfair but now they're fun to fight and a reasonable challenge. It's a huge contrast in difficulty all coming from the mechanics themselves. Nothing about Silhouette Mirage is minimal or simple.

This is primarily a run-and-gun game, but it feels a lot like a beat-em-up in some aspects with how spacing is used, it's really important to navigate around enemies and push them into place to control the situation.

You can shoot enemies with the same color and it won't do damage, it might seem like a waste but what this actually does is drain their energy, my first time playing I didn't understand the utility of this and only tried to damage them, it's really important to drain some enemies of all their power first.

It's a really clever layer added to this mechanic, instead of just aggressively attacking everything the game has a focus on disarming your opponent first, so you can get in closer and deal heavier damage. The game prioritizes defense and patience in a really unique way there's not really any run-and-gun game that does things like this. Silhouette is certainly no Contra or Metal Slug, you can't just run in and blast away groups of enemies.

Once an enemy or boss is disarmed they usually have no attacks they can do anymore leaving them open to being grabbed, you can grab and throw almost any enemy and boss which is important for controlling the battle and spacing, but the player can punch money out of enemies and bosses while grabbing them.
This leads to some grinding for shops where you can buy healing items and upgrade weapons, it's essential to have a chance against harder bosses later into the game, there's another layer of resource management added to everything that's already going on here.
It's a lot to keep track of and will keep the majority of players from enjoying it. This is definitely not a game for everyone, I think it has a niche appeal. It's a very demanding, complicated, and punishing action game.

As well as everything works and how well planned and developed many aspects of the game are, there are some serious problems that skill alone can't fix.

My first time actually getting to the final level of the game I was experimenting with weapons and ended up stuck with the Bomb weapon named Angara, the massive problem with this is that Angara can only hit ground targets, you see the final few bosses are exclusively airborne... I could not hit them, I had no chance. My entire playthrough ended right there at no real fault of my own. The game can be very frustrating in a few places if you don't play it the intended way.
There's a smoke/toxic weapon and a targeting homing shot that both take more much setup when regular weapons feel more reliable and less risky (there are situations where they are useful, but my impressions weren't great I didn't use them much) worst of all weapons give enemies knockback. This is no issue with the standard shot, Laser, or boomerang, but the rest just hit once launching the enemy away while the rest of the attack misses (most of the time).

If I had to pick out the most significant weakness, it would be over reliance on one-off mechanics.
committing too hard to an idea at the detriment of pacing or enjoyability, at times it's as if they thought the idea was too good of a concept not too put in the game without considering if it's worth including to begin with. I always reward a game for creativity and I think they deserve some credit for trying and experimenting with new ideas, but those ideas can't always be good. Sometimes it's possible to go too far in that direction, I think they get a bit carried away at times.

I think this flaw is the most demonstrated in this game, often it's just one or maybe two bosses in their games that have this issue but here I can count at least six that do this, it's a lot to explain as the scenarios can be very specific, so I'll let parts from my latest playthrough (on very hard) speak for itself.

SPOILERS FOR FINAL BOSS
https://youtu.be/rUB-91LxKeE

Whenever there's a boss exclusively in the background it's dreadful, both of those go on for five or more minutes as the player is just waiting around for them to damage themselves.

You would want a game like this to scale in difficulty gradually and naturally, with a few exceptions that's true here and the game overall is challenging, the semi-final boss is a significant spike in difficulty, and it's fought right after another very hard boss being the third one in a row with no heals or shops in between, most of my playthroughs ended there.

As it turns out these fights can be broken or exploited by just holding reflect or attack in the corner, figuring it out is part of the challenge but once that's over with at times there's no challenge left and fighting it knowing the solution just takes all the challenge and skill away (if the player takes the safest strategy) and the worst fights can start to become mindless.

The bosses that are straightforward to fight or use your full move-set end up being the most fun and thankfully they make up the majority of the game, many have a clever mechanic that just helps or makes it much easier without getting in the way or ruining the overall flow and there are a lot of them, not all boss fights are bad there's a lot of very memorable and fun ones. It's an extremely creative game with a lot of very memorable levels and boss fights.

I have some things to complain about in terms of gameplay, but I can't complain at all about the presentation
graphically it's a nice looking game with charming and unique character designs, they're about as unusual as the rest of the game, every level takes place in a very different environment from the others and there's a lot of imaginative and appealing locations, it's nowhere near the spectacle or scope one would expect from Treasure, nothing mind blowing or awe inspiring but it's still above average and the game is very distinct.

The soundtrack is catchy it's not my favorite but there are a few standout level themes and it's well varied
Overall the game has a very unique character and style with a strange and complicated plot to go along with it

Despite being complicated the game is responsive and has many moves to take control of any situation, it feels good to run up walls or slide and the character has a lot of air movement without being too "floaty"

It can seem cumbersome a lot of times, there are a few parts I don't enjoy in this game that there's just no getting around. It's a game that has a lot to like but it takes a lot of work to learn to like. In the end it still has more than enough good ideas to make it worthwhile.

In spite of everything I appreciate that the developers took some risks, I think the developers learned from this experience and used that to create more great games like this one, if anything Silhouette Mirage is an extremely unique and unusual game that any action game fan should experience.

Press on, employee.

My friend Larry has been acting a little weird lately. He keeps standing in the corner staring at me, telling me we should play Home Safety Hotline in a voice that's not his, and there's this really horrible smell like rotten eggs that's been filling up my apartment. I don't know if it's related, but Larry - who has taken to crawling on the walls and ceiling - showed me the trailer and explained that it's created by Nick Lives, who previously worked on Hypno Space Outlaw. I was intrigued and then partook in a large feast of cornmeal that had been curiously laid out on the dining room table, as the voices in the walls demanded.

Home Safety Hotline sits the player down with a bestiary of common home hazards ranging from bees to Boggarts, house flies to Dorcha, which the player must refer to in order to properly diagnose the problems of callers who are currently in various states of duress. True to the real-world experience of working in a call center, the loop of taking a call and finding a solution can be a bit rote, and much of the challenge is borne from callers providing inaccurate or conflicting pieces of information. On some level, it almost feels like a Loveline simulator. Lot of calls about kids getting eaten tonight... Must be a full moon.

Caller: It... It... It stole me...! It stole me!! I'm not me anymore, I'm... it took me! I can't see myself anymore, I'm gone! Help me!! Help me get b--

Adam: Alright, I'm putting her on hold. Sick of her already... Drew, how many times do we get calls like this and the answer is always carpenter ants?

Drew: All the time.

Adam: Helen? Get yourself some Raid, babydoll.

Those expecting the heavy puzzle solving and obtuseness of Hypno Space Outlaw might then be a little disappointed with how straight-forward Hotline is, but it's really more a vehicle for some very imaginative and entertaining writing, and the excitement of seeing new entries in the bestiary unlock during each subsequent shift dulls how samey most nights are on a mechanical level. You won't hack into a bunch of weird databases or decipher codes here, and Hotline's central mystery doesn't leave many unanswered questions by the end of its short 3-4 hour run, but that's fine. In fact, after biting into several incredibly long games over the last couple of months, it's preferable.

My only real complaint is that the game only leverages audio queues once, and calls rarely share the same answer, which trivializes the late game through a simple process of elimination. Otherwise, I am so into what the game is going for that it feels like targeted content. It's hard to dig into specifics without spoiling some of the more inventive entries or giving away the plot, but I do appreciate how ranged and varied a lot of Hotline's creatures are. You'll frequently diagnose problems caused by benign beings like toilet Hobbs, which enjoy cleaning your bathroom and can be placated by providing them a single egg at night. You'll also have to deal with more abstract and frightening entities like memory wisps, which essentially give their victims Alzheimer's. No cure for that, you have to let them run their course. What can you say other than "good times?"

Maybe I'm predisposed to whatever kind of weird horror Nick Lives is putting out into the world (Night Signal looks interesting and I'm way into the premise of Please Insert Disc), reviews on here appear more mixed, but I do think this is worth checking out if you want something short, simple, and backed by some really fun writing. I have to go now, the soil is calling me...

I picked up Shenzhen Solitaire by Zachtronics a couple years ago and didn't think much of it. I played it a little and found it confusing and arcane. My mind couldn't think or plan ahead the way the game needed you to, and I got frustrated having to reset constantly.

For a long time I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy, in all aspects of my life. What is self-worth when you have so little with which to define one's self? The kind of destructive thinking that informs anything and everything you do. I have 3000+ hours on Paladins. More than half of that time I have probably spent frustrated- about my aim, my KDA, my game sense and knowledge. Constantly checking the stat trackers, getting discouraged that I can never be like the good players.

Shenzhen Solitaire has a way of sneaking up on you, as you sit there resetting the board. I got into the habit of clicking and slightly dragging a card over and over as I scan the board for possible routes, the way someone might shuffle or fidget with a physical deck of cards. The same droning ambient loop plays in perpetuity, to this day I don't even know if I really even like it. But I could listen to that loop for hours, and I did end up listening to it for hours. Turning it off was weird- the silence actually felt deafening.

Getting my first win was a revelatory moment, cause I had probably lost 50-100 times before I finally cleared the board. The feeling of accomplishment may have been the closest I had gotten to self-actualization in a long time. I have these moments of hyperfixation my entire life. They all matter to me in different ways, but solitaires a bit different. I felt like I was clearing cobwebs in my brain through constant iteration. I felt satisfied, and I realized I had stopped getting frustrated a long time ago. Awhile later, I reached 20 wins, and it clicked for me why it was working so well for me. It's because I was feeling, for a brief moment in the whirlwind of life, like I was actually at peace.

There's a lot of writing out there on what makes solitaire so compelling. Francine Prose wrote in Solitaire: Me vs. Me the following: "Like writing, it’s entirely private, the exertion is purely cerebral; you’re playing against yourself, against your previous best, against the law of averages and the forces of chance. You’re taking random elements and trying to put them together in a pleasing way, to make order out of chaos."

As I sit there, fighting against both my brain and the board state, I finally make a move that allows me to sort out an entire pile. I feel a feeling of elation that video games very rarely give me anymore. Its as if my thoughts have decayed by the constant low-level dread of depression, and I have sunk into the worst kinds of maladaptive coping mechanism. Competitive online gaming gave me an outlet to let out frustration and anxiety, but I rarely was feeling good whether I won or I lost. I was always on-edge, always annoyed at something. Even the act of running the game itself became a source of anxiety. Researching monitors, FPS optimizations, mouse polling rates and DPI. Everything felt like a constant tightrope and I think to myself, when did this stop being a game? When did I stop having fun doing this?

Zachtronics Solitaire Collection has allowed me a calm respite in the storm of my thoughts- a world in which I can both relax and challenge myself in a healthy manner. While regular Freecell and Klondike solitaire are very simple conceptually, they provide a solid blueprint for creatives to remix into extremely deep play experiences.Fortune's Foundation, with its beautiful tarot cards and complicated ruleset, is a particular standout. It has so many possible fail states that Zach included an Undo button, which is somewhat of a rarity in the popular Solitaire-likes. Even with the option, it's such a difficult game that I have yet to clear it. I have gotten close- so tantalizingly close- only to realize an action I made 50 moves ago has painted me in a corner. I realize it, I note where I went wrong, I reset, and I try again.

I think it has taught me to deal with failure in a far more healthy way. I come from a career field where making a mistake is met with open hostility, and I make many mistakes. It's so easy to internalize failure in the immediate moment as an inherent failing of either the self or others. In the smorgasboard of sight and sound that is competitive gaming, where its so easy to tie your self-worth with your mechanical skill, it becomes natural to spiral into the worst impulses.

The repetitive, calming nature of solitaire has become a therapeutic exercise for me, in ways I mostly imagined games to be. I long called gaming my coping mechanism- but it was hardly anything like that. Being able to find an experience like this, in solitude, has made all the difference for me. Gaming is a personal experience, as all art is. So what makes something like a standard deck of cards into a meditative gaming experience is just that.

In Solitaire, all that awaits failure is the humdrum ambience of the background and the opportunity to reset the board and try again. In solitude, I learned to center myself in the moment rather than allow my anxiety to consume my every thought. In solitude, I learned to give myself a chance.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is pretty much an improvement over the original in almost every single way.

The level designs and aesthetics are more varied and fun, providing the player with a good challenge, but I believe levels never become quite as hard as Crash 1, which allows this game to be more beginner-friendly, in my opinion.

Crash now has a new move, that being the slide! Doing a slide jump in this game is very satisfying, especially when you're trying to do longer jumps, or when you're just casually running through the stage!
Additionally, Crash also has the Belly Flop, which is performed by pressing the slide button after a jump, and I think it's fine. I found it useful for breaking my momentum in the middle of a jump, but I don't find it as reliable as something like the Stomp in the Boost Sonic games.

I think the bosses are a bit better than last time, not by much, but they are fun to fight, as simple as they may be.
Additionally, there's a bit more story this time around.
I didn't really discuss this during my Crash 1 review, but the plot of last time was that Crash was a failed experiment by Dr. Neo Cortex, and that he escaped the lab, but his girlfriend Tawna, is still stuck in there, and Crash has got to save her from Cortex and stop him from taking over the world with his army of animal experiments.
This time around, Tawna is nowhere to be seen (I wonder why) and Crash has a younger sister named Coco. She doesn't do much in the story, mainly just trying to warn Crash of Cortex's actual plan, which is pretty obvious to see, but considering that Crash is a big dumbass... yeah. Cortex is using Crash to get all crystals, the plot McGuffin of this game, to power up the Cortex Vortex and rule over the world!

The biggest glow-up, I'd say, has got to be the voice acting. Now, in the original game, voice acting was minimal and we didn't hear many characters talking, but when they did... it was meh. Nothing bad per say, but nothing really good either.
This time around, there are more cutscenes, and we hear more of Dr. Cortex, this time being voiced by Clancy Brown, and I love how much character he gives to the mad scientist, it's great!

And that also applies to the game's overall presentation, as the graphics look slighty better, especially Crash's model, and the music is more catchy than the original. Not all of it is memorable, but there are some pretty good tracks in here.

This time around, I actually decided to go for 100% completion, being the first time I ever 100%'d a Crash game, and while it is generally a better experience than the original, but not having to worry about dying, there's probably way more backtracking here than last time.
Now, Crash 1 had its backtracking moments, especially with the colored gems, but this time around, not only can you get a gem by breaking all of the boxes, but also by doing something different, and this is where the Death Routes come into play!

Not all stages have a Death Route, and not all secondary gems require you do a Death Route, but a Death Route is an alternate route of a stage that you get by not dying up to that point. The thing is, a good chunk of stages that have Death Route have boxes in said route and in the main route, which requires a bunch of backtracking and fighting against the game's locked camera to break every box in the stage and get one of the gems.

While this game is an improvement over the original in many aspects, this was the pits, and not really that fun.
But I will admit, I did smile when I finally got 100% completion, especially because it was my first time doing so.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a great sequel to the original, improving on a lot, but still has a couple of snags holding it back from being the best it could be.

Ah, Crash Bandicoot. One of the earliest pioneers in 3D Platforming Action, coming out the same year as the revolutionary Super Mario 64.

Unlike Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot decides to opt for a more traditional approach when it comes to level design.
While Super Mario 64 was very open and sandbox-like in its level design, Crash Bandicoot is like the 2D Platformers of old, where you go from point A to B, while trying your best not to lose all your lives.
It may be simple, but Crash Bandicoot succeeds in providing fun level design... but it can get quite challenging, even early on in the game.

Some levels are long, others are challenging, and then there are some that are both. Crash Bandicoot will challenge you, and it will challenge you even more if you're trying to go for 100%!

Probably one of the most well known things about the Crash series is the fact that you can jump and spin boxes you find throughout the levels.
That's all well and good, especially because the act of breaking boxes, and hearing that ricochet sound while you're spinning them, is ultra satisfying, but you'll need to break all of them if you want to get that stage's gem, which all of them will be required to 100% the game, and get the best (?) ending.

The problem with this original game is that, it doesn't matter if you broke a checkpoint box or not, if you die once, you will not be able to get that stage's gem, which means you have to get every box without losing a life.
And with how hard these levels can get... yeah, fuck doing that.

I personally didn't 100% the game during my most recent run, simply because it just turns from something that can be fun but challenging, to something very frustrating. And that's not even accounting the colored gems that you'll get later on in the game, that you'll need to use in previous levels to get just those few missing boxes that you couldn't get to before.
I salute those who have 100% this game!

But when you're not going for 100%, even with its difficulty, I'd say Crash Bandicoot is a good game. Crash himself is a bit heavy on his jumps, but you'll get used to it, and overall, I just had a good time going through the levels and beating the bosses.

Speaking of the bosses... they're ok. They have their own obstacles to avoid, and most of them have a sort-of gimmick, like with Ripper Roo where you defeat him with Big TNT crates, or in Pinstripe Potoroo's fight where you hide behind some objects to avoid his gunfire.
They're fine, but nothing too special.

Outside of that, this game looks great for an early PlayStation game! Crash's model is not as detailed as future games, but I think it looks fine for a 1st game, and the environments that Crash goes through are really nice looking!
I remember when I was a kid, and when I saw this game for the 1st time, even though I already had much more modern games to play, I still liked looking at Crash 1, in spite of being older.
It was probably the sunsets.

The music is fine. I think they decided to go for an atmospheric sound for a lot of the stages, and it works in the moment, but not a whole lot of it I find catchy. But the main theme is classic!

In conclusion, while it gets hard quite early in the game, and going for 100% is not worth your time, Crash Bandicoot can be a pretty fun 3D Platformer!

Drakengard is one of the most interesting games I have ever played. At its first glance and in its opening hours, it seems like the standard RPG affair, and it's not until after the first of the games 5 endings did the gears start turning in my head. Drakengard’s thesis statement might as well be to subvert the players expectations at every turn after that first ending, and it's honestly one of the most ethereal gaming experiences I have ever witnessed. To be honest, I’m having trouble even formulating all of my thoughts in an even slightly coherent manner, because this game is so fucking good. I think it is inevitable that in a few months I will find anything I say in this review somewhat shallow but that's the beauty of interpretive art like this. I didn't truly understand Evangelion after I first watched it at 15 and I think my Metal Gear Solid 2 review is extremely surface level now but I leave it up as a digital time capsule. Can you tell this review is going to be a lot of yapping?

The game is a deconstruction of RPG and general fantasy tropes in such a brilliant way, at first seeming to give into them. However, as you go on and dig under the surface of these characters and realize their complexities you start to understand and appreciate Drakengard that much more. Caim at first looks the part of your standard pure of heart RPG protagonist, even going mute at the very beginning of the game to mimic this. However, you very quickly realize that Caim is an absolutely bloodthirsty maniac. He is purely fueled by blind rage and bloodlust, yet will still protect his sister because he knows he's supposed to care for her. The game calls you out on this constantly but you must continue the bloodshed in order to press on with the game…
His sister Furiae seems to be your standard pure and innocent “damsel in distress” character, but this presentation of her character early on is almost like a red herring of sorts. Her lack of development is a critique of that archetype in and of itself. She purposefully keeps the less savory parts of her locked away, and it's not until the end that it's revealed more. Her feelings for Caim are just subtly incestuous which serve to drive home the point that despite her surface level appearance as your standard pure damsel in distress, that's really not what she is. Every character is like this really, Verdelet constantly accosts Caim for his bloodshed yet he is the one that drives him to action most often and routinely benefits from it. Inuart seems like the standard best friend character but gets consumed by jealousy and a pursuit of power to protect his lover, almost acting like the protagonist of a story that's not his. The greatest thing about the complexities of these characters is that it's never too particularly in your face about it either. I absolutely love how this game urges you to dig deeper into its themes. Other than the deconstructive elements of the plot, I feel like Drakengard is a story about hatred, revenge, the things we lose, the importance of love and what a lack of love can do, and the inherent faults of humans. In endings A B and C, Caim loses those closest to him due to his endless conquest of bloodshed. He ends with less things than he started. Ending A he not only loses Furiae and Inuart, but Angelus as well. Ending B he loses not just the three mentioned but the world is doomed and it seems like whatever battle that comes next won't be one Caim survives. Ending B in particular really brings things full circle for Furiae to me as well. After an entire game where she gets minimal screen time or development, the world is filled with grotesque clones of her that doom the world. She no longer has any love for Inuart or even Caim, after Inuart obsesses over protecting her. In Ending C Caim is forced to kill Angelus with his own two hands, the final price of his senseless killing is killing one who he holds the most dear. In each of these first three endings Caim is explicitly punished for his bloodshed. None of these endings are happy, and when I was playing I thought that surely endings B and C would be happier endings than ending A. However, Drakengard does not feel compelled to do this and each ending gets even more bleak than the last. You could take this as the game just being edgy, but I think to do so would be to blindly deny the game of its narrative qualities. Ending D sees the world caught in a permanently frozen state, but not before Caim dies in the end. It's so bleak and just so ethereal. Ending E is the most out of left field one. Caim and Angelus end up in fucking Shinjuku where they play a rhythm game to beat the final boss before being shot down by two missles from the Japanese defense force. The atmosphere is just so chilling and the imagery of Angelus being impaled on top of Tokyo Tower is one of the coolest things ever. The point I'm really trying to make here though is that every ending ends in varying degrees of misfortune for Caim as a result of his blind rage. Even in D and E where he tries to save the world and do a good deed he is punished with death. In attempting to save the world he also dooms it. Another core theme I find with this game is love. You see this a lot with Manah, who is seemingly manipulated by The Watchers/The Gods into thinking she is loved by them, as she received no love from her own mother and was abused by her. This sends her on a path to creating the apocalyptic scenarios that appear in basically every ending. In the end of ending A, she begs for death from Caim yet neither of them think she deserves such a release. She ends with no one left to give her love, not even The Gods. Inuart constantly tries to look for love from Furiae, completely misunderstanding her at every turn, eventually blaming Caim for his own infidelity and seeking revenge on him. These two themes come together to show that the world is this way because of the faults of mankind. Caim is only a coldblooded killer because of his parents death during the war and the attempted reconstruction of the world is due to the easily manipulated nature of humans especially those that are young and not cared for. In the more abstract, things are this way because of the genre that this story is. There is war, there is untold amounts of bloodshed because this is a fantasy RPG. Caim kills because he needs to level up and continue with the story. Which brings me to the gameplay.

The way people talk about the combat of this game makes it seem like the biggest piece of dogshit ever crafted, but really it's not that bad. The systems present in this game are fine enough and far from what I would call bad. However, the combat in Drakengard IS monotonous, but I think this serves a thematic purpose. You’re not meant to enjoy all the senseless killing, and as I said earlier Caim is punished for the indiscriminate bloodshed. However, this is a video game and you must do what the game says to keep going. You must kill even when you don't want to, to continue the game. It's a commentary on the genre in the sense that in RPGs and most video games in general you are rewarded for bloodshed. You are rewarded for killing senselessly and are never called out on it simply because it's a video game. Drakengard breaks this mold and goes as far to try and make the killing itself unenjoyable. I think it’s a really cool aspect of the game that gets overlooked by some because they simply write the combat off as bad and don't interact with it in a ludonarrative sense. The flying missions are awesome though I cant lie. They do also get a bit grueling at times so the ludonarrative cohesion remains intact but they’re definitely more fun than the ground missions.

The last thing I really want to talk about is the music in this game. Drakengard has the most interesting soundtracks in any game I've ever played. It has the sound of what you would expect from a high fantasy game, except it doesn't. Every song in the game uses samples from famous composers in really interesting ways. From Mozart to Tchaikovsky to Holst, you're bound to recognize some of these composers when you see them in the credits but it's doubtful that you'll actually recognize the songs as they appear in game. The game will often loop the same very short sample over and over to create songs that sound traditionally orchestrated but still have a distinct electronic feel to them. I’ve never heard anything like it— I wouldn't necessarily say that the songs are good in a traditional sense but as far as experimental music goes it's really unique and fun to listen to. The best of these songs is the ending B credits theme, “Growing Wings”. Give it a listen if you'd like to see an example of what I'm talking about.

I think that's about all I have to say about the game at this time. This is a serious contender for one of my favorite games of all time and I implore you to play it if you haven't. This probably isn't the case if you read this spoiler tagged review but the point still stands. This game is a masterpiece

Honestly the reason I gave up on this one is more my fault than the game’s, because for a genre I don’t typically mess with that much (fighting games generally) I had a pretty good time with this one. There aren’t too many special moves and the ones there are aren’t too bad to pull off, though I’m gonna be real I’m bad at remembering and executing inputs for special moves and that’s probably why I don’t play fighting games. I do feel like this was relatively beginner friendly in that regard, though I feel like the gimmicks for the NPC fighters in story mode ramp up a not insignificant degree. Like one of those dudes turns invisible, what the hell?

I accidentally overwrote a save state before a boss that was kind of a pain in the ass, which is why I dropped it. I also do think it’s a shame that you’re limited to the eight playable fighters in story mode since there are some cool dudes, even if it does feel like there’s a lot of asset reuse. But I don’t know, I think that’s at least kind of clever.

I think my biggest beef isn’t the fault of the original game but how Nintendo handles releases that were originally Japan-only. This game has a lot of text, including hints on what the enemy robots are good at. Unfortunately, they don’t bother translating the roms before slapping them on NSO, which sucks! This game feels really charming and I think it’d be a lot of fun to actually understand the Mega Man-ass plot, but I guess that’d be work or something? Maybe there’s some weird directive from higher-ups. I don’t know, I just think it’s a shame.

It’s also a shame that this never got any kind of follow up that I know of. I guess not everything needs to become a franchise but this is cute enough that I wish it’d get a revival of some kind.

I was kind of surprised how Into this game I got, but I guess it does make sense. Adult coloring books are super popular, right? Maybe I should look into those because hot damn it was fun messing around with this game. When I was a kid and I got a coloring book, I'd go kind of crazy with whatever colors I liked instead of the colors that, well, technically made sense, and I felt like it was fun to apply the same philosophy to each screen. The fact that you get four colors for each area helps things still look kind of nice even if you decide to color the tree trunks green and the leaves yellow, you know? I ended up kind of approaching each screen as a puzzle to the point where when you get to make your own pallet, I ended up not really using it all that much because I enjoyed working with the tools I was given.

I probably ended up making things a little boring once I got the fill tool, though.... but at the same time, it made sense to me. I liked the bright, fairly uniform colors, and the only thing that ended up really frustrating me about the whole thing was that it could be kind of difficult to differentiate different objects with both controller and mouse. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how to target a trunk to color and would just color the leaves... and damn, the "draw a thing" segments were uh. Well, I'm actually pretty proud of a Dragon Quest slime I drew. But the "recreate these paintings" segments looked goofy as hell.

But I feel like that's part of the point, isn't it? I'm sure there are people who have made some fantastic works of art in this game, but I think bringing a sort of amateur-ish vibe to the game feels like it vibes with the Themes. Pizza (or whatever your favorite food is, I ended up naming them Sushi lmao) just kind of picks up the brush to be Helpful and isn't really a professional or anything. The themes here are real good, man, whether you relate more strongly to Chicory or Pizza.

I... kind of did art when I was younger, but I got discouraged because I didn't think I was any good. There were people who told me I was good, but like. They were family. Was it actually any good? I don't know. It was pretty How To Draw Manga flavored. I think someone was Real with me and that kind of discouraged me out of it, but was it Real or Mean? I guess Art is just supposed to be, you know, fun and personal expression... I feel like the art classes in this game actually did a pretty alright job of getting that across, haha.

But you do kind of want to live up to the Legacy of the artists you admire, right? Even if that might not be for the best? There isn't something as crazy as a Chosen One who colors the entire world, but man. There's good themes here, is all I'm saying. I Did Cry at the end. Both the Art Themes and the Depression Themes were Very strong.

On the more, uh, gameplay-ish side, outside of Coloring there's a lot of puzzles around trying to figure out how to traverse the environment, with the more abilities you get making it easier to get where you want to go and making it possible to find Secrets. I found it really fun! There's a lot of puzzle elements that interact with the environment in fun ways, like colored surfaces that touch the water bleeding into it once you gain the ability to start coloring in water, and clouds that you can use to traverse raining color out if you color them in. It's cute!!!

There's no combat outside of boss fights, which are Buck Wild, man. They start out Kirby endboss in terms of flavor and get wilder from there. You can say the game doesn't quite prepare you for them but they ARE basically still traversal based, more or less... the ones I found kind of frustrating ended up being the mirroring ones. Fortunately, the game isn't Mean about them and gives you generous checkpoints even if you don't mess with the difficulty options.

Anyway, I think it's a whole lot of fun! Definitely a recommend from me, whether you're Big Into Art or not. The world it presents is also really fun, with a bunch of cool ideas that it doesn't dig TOO deeply into but presents you in a cute way. Lotta good minor NPCs. My favorite location is Feast, which may be a bit of a Nightmare Area for some but was a complete delight for me, an insect lover.

Arcade Week: Day #7

Darkness falls across the land, after we shot some aliens, helped some frogs cross a road, shot some asteroids, shot some more aliens (we love shooting huh), appeared in the olympics, and got chased around a maze we finally made it. We finally found the king of the arcade scene and we’re finally ready to meet him. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Donkey Kong. He was created in 1981 by Shigeru Miyamoto in an attempt to copy the success of pac-man and it definitely worked. The game even got some legal issues thanks to universal and its similarity to King Kong but thankfully that all got cleared up and we can still enjoy Donkey Kong to this day. So let’s hop in shall we? Cause it’s on like…uhh…

In Donkey Kong, you play as jump man (a very imaginative name but he would later become Mario) on his mission to save his girlfriend Pauline. To do that however, he must Climb up the platforms and avoid the falling barrels to make it. The interesting thing about this game however is the fact that it has multiple differed stages which was quite groundbreaking for the time. These levels will bring in new ways to get points and even more obstacles to try and avoid at all costs or else well…maybe you’re gonna have to get a new girlfriend buddy.

Overall, Donkey Kong is probably one of my favourites when it comes to the arcade scene. Sure, I’ve said it before that dig dug will always be my favourite but I can’t help but really get into this game because of just how imaginative it all is, you can tell how much work and effort they put into this and not just a mindless game to capitalise off the success of pac-man, this game is a lot more special then that. It would not only go on to inspire the Mario series, but other series like Kirby as well. Remember the legal action between Nintendo and universal? Well if it wasn’t for John Kirby, who knows what would’ve happened to the game. And that my friends, was our arcade week, thank you so much for reading.

Good gameplay, decent music, I have ptsd from barrels now, and springs in fact

Happy Halloween!

Even people who enjoy playing old games can be guilty of looking at them patronizingly, like they’re just cave paintings that formed the basis of the renaissance art which deserves the real analysis. However, as a programmer and a games analyst, I wanted to highlight the amount of work that went into designing these seemingly primitive games, and what better way is there to do so than looking at decompiled source code. Specifically, this will be the code at the heart of Donkey Kong’s difficulty: the movement of the barrels.

If you haven’t played Donkey Kong before, you might be wondering what makes barrels rolling down slopes so difficult. They all go at the same speed, they’re the same size, and there isn’t a restrictive timer that forces you into hasty mistakes. However, sometimes they go straight down the ladders between each of the slopes, and this is what makes the game so tricky. Ladders are incredibly useful, letting you quickly reach the next level and reliably dodge barrels underneath you, but the slow climbing speed and potential for getting hit by a falling barrel leads to a lot of quick decision making at each ladder. At first, it may seem like the falling is entirely random, but here’s the exact logic of how it works:

(Decompiled and commented by Don Hodges. If you've never seen Assembly code before, yes, it really is this nightmarish)
2178 3A4863 LD A,(#6348) ; get status of the oil can fire
217B A7 AND A ; is the fire lit ?
217C CAB221 JP Z,#21B2 ; no, always take ladders before oil is lit
217F 3A0562 LD A,(#6205) ; else load A with Mario's Y position + 5
2182 D604 SUB #04 ; subtract 4
2184 BA CP D ; is the barrel already below or same level as Mario ?
2185 D8 RET C ; yes, return without taking ladder
2186 3A8063 LD A,(#6380) ; else load A with difficulty from 1 to 5.
2189 1F RRA ; divide by 2, result can be 0, 1, or 2
218A 3C INC A ; increment. result is now 1, 2, or 3
218B 47 LD B,A ; store into B
218C 3A1860 LD A,(#6018) ; load A with random timer
218F 4F LD C,A ; store into C for later use
2190 E603 AND #03 ; mask bits. result now random number between 0 and 3
2192 B8 CP B ; is it greater than modified difficulty?
2193 D0 RET NC ; yes, return without taking ladder
2194 211060 LD HL,#6010 ; else load HL with player input.
2197 3A0362 LD A,(#6203) ; load A with Mario's X position
219A BB CP E ; compare with barrel's X position
219B CAB221 JP Z,#21B2 ; if equal, then go down ladder
219E D2A921 JP NC,#21A9 ; if barrel is to right of Mario, check for moving to left
21A1 CB46 BIT 0,(HL) ; else is Mario trying to move right ?
21A3 CAAE21 JP Z,#21AE ; no, skip ahead
21A6 C3B221 JP #21B2 ; yes, make barrel take ladder
21A9 CB4E BIT 1,(HL) ; is Mario trying to move left ?
21AB C2B221 JP NZ,#21B2 ; yes, make barrel take ladder
21AE 79 LD A,C ; else load A with random timer computed above
21AF E618 AND #18 ; mask with #18. 25% chance of being zero
21B1 C0 RET NZ ; if not zero, return without taking ladder
21B2 DD3407 INC (IX+#07) ; else increase barrel animation
21B5 DDCB02C6 SET 0,(IX+#02) ; set barrel to take the ladder
21B9 C9 RET ; return

The line that may stand out is the “load A with difficulty 1 to 5” command, when the game never explicitly states a difficulty level. This is a value hidden from the player that simply increments every thirty-three seconds, or when the player reaches a new level number that’s higher than the difficulty value. To oversimplify the minutiae of the exact math, this is used for comparison with a random number between zero and three to decide if the barrel goes down the ladder. For the player, this means that on the lowest difficulty (the first thirty-three seconds of level one), barrels go down the ladder 25% of the time, but this increases by 25% either when thirty-three more seconds pass or the player goes to the next level before such an increase, until it reaches a maximum of 75%. However, there are two cases where barrels will always choose to use the ladder, either when Mario is directly underneath the barrel, or when Mario is actively moving towards a barrel that's going the same way.

So, the question now is why Nintendo bothered to put so much detail into something people could easily dismiss as token-taking randomness. The reason is a concept that anyone who does a lot of cooking understands well: that just because something can’t be consciously detected, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant to the experience. The best example might be how barrels moving in the same direction you’re walking towards will always go down the ladder. That might not be a rule you’re directly conscious of, but it ensures that thoughtlessly walking towards a ladder will always result in punishment. Similarly, barrels always dropping on top of you if you’re on the ladder itself forces you to be mindful of where you stand, and not use them as a safe zone. Players begin to understand these mechanics implicitly, and this mix of reliability and randomness creates difficulty in a way that makes the game more tense even without a change in the player’s control. Consider the alternative methods of raising the difficulty: boosting the speed of the barrels would make them harder to react to, but easier to jump over, and slower barrels would have the opposite effect, making the difficulty adjustment more of a lateral shift than a direct increase. Throwing more obstacles could lead to cases where barrels clump up and become impossible to jump over, and randomly mixing up fast and slow barrels could cause the same issue.

Despite how this barrel logic is just a small part of the game, considering its implications reveals just how thoughtfully it was designed. Randomness is an easy way to make games harder, but when coupled with the deterministic rules which enforce proper play, players will never fail directly due to the randomness itself. Few games handle randomness and difficulty as cleanly as this, even forty years after the fact. It’s a reminder to take even the oldest, most seemingly primitive games seriously, and that there’s always something left to be learned, especially from the ultimate classics.

I'm obsessed with this game. It's a brainrot that consumes me every waking hour. I binged the finale to Canto VI for 5 hours straight and was hooked the entire time. I've been working through reading the literary inspirations for all the Sinners, and what Project Moon have built off the back of Wuthering Heights is incredible. More than anything, the character writing is so movingly human despite the horrors and depravity of the City. Nobody's ever too "broken" to be worth love.

Love must be the reason why
I still believe in this lie
That you'll live a better life
Without me by your side