Nocturne is such an immersive experience, I always feel a strong sense of isolation and danger at every moment and like I'm really fending for myself in that treacherous ruined world. It has my favorite turn based combat system of all time, which has so many possibilties that it makes every other JRPG I play feel slightly disappointing. With the way buffs work there's rarely ever a need to truly grind, if you bring a good strategy you can win, at least when doing the normal endings. There are countless memorable and epic boss battles with easily the most consistent lineup in the Megatens I've played. Everything about the game from aesthetics to concepts to soundtrack is just so metal and brutal and raw. Even when it's really putting me through my paces or beating me down again and again, I'm never too frustrated for long because another idea occurs to me and something awesome happens again. I first completed it on the remaster on TDE, and it probably goes without saying that this PS2 version has better moodier lighting. This run I skipped the Amala Labyrinth entirely and felt the vanilla content had a much better flow and variety to it, but TDE has some of the best boss fights and extreme difficulty too so it's worth trying it once. I just adore this game :)

Before I played Galaxy 2, I only ever really played crappy licensed games on my PS2 for the most part. I was a young kid at the time so I couldn't really gauge if a game was actually good or not, I just got a game based on a show/movie I liked and that was that. That all changed one day when I was scrolling on YouTube and stumbled upon Super Mario Galaxy 2. I can't even remember what I saw since it's been so long, but I remember instantly thinking "I NEED to play this". This was right before we were going on a trip to Ocean City Maryland and I knew my dad's friend who was going on the trip with us, was bringing his Wii. I go to my local movie rental store which also had video games and rented it. The trip lasted a week and while I really should've been having a ton of fun on the beach, I instead couldn't get enough of Galaxy 2. I was addicted. I think I got up to like world 4 before I had to return the game and I had to part ways with the Wii. I also remember getting a gaming magazine that focused on Galaxy 2. I also distinctly remember a game called "Ivy the Kiwi" being a big focus in it too. God, I wish I still had that thing. I lost it ages ago and can't remember the name of the magazine, and I've tried to look it up online many times to no avail. Anyways, after the whole trip, me and my brother got a Wii and I got Galaxy 1 as you know. A bit after that I remember renting the game again and then eventually getting it for Christmas that year (I think).
I eventually did beat it, but not 100%. I never completed the game until the summer of 2015, I don't know why it took me five years but when I finally did it, I was absolutely ecstatic. This game means a whole lot to me as it not only got me into non-licensed games but it really kicked off my love for gaming as a whole.

So let's start with the biggest elephant in the room, this game's story. Yes it's very lame that they retconned the first game and that the story in general is way more lame in general compared to 1. This is my biggest criticism besides the game not being quite as atmospheric/spacey as 1. It is the reason I think I do like 1 more now, but it really isn't a deal breaker to me. I think there's enough fun dialogue throughout the game for it to still have an above average story for a mainline Mario game. Still, not nearly as good as 1's which yeah is a bit of a bummer.

However, I think the game more than makes up for this by being so much fun and more fun than 1. While 1 had plenty of good galaxies, I did think having several samey ones (the beach and bee galaxies) when there's only 15 full length galaxies was a bit of a downside. Galaxy 2 however did something different. Instead of having a mini galaxy here and there, and having your main galaxies be 6 stars, here the full length ones have 3. Now while there is a good reason they did this, this also led to the game having more sized galaxies that are way more plentiful. This along with the fact the level design is way more straight forward and faster paced, makes the game more fun than 1 I think. It's up to preference of course and I still love both games approach to level design.

Another reason this game is a blast to play is the addition of Yoshi. You wouldn't think he'd add so much to the levels but he does. He's in a good amount of the galaxies and also in them are powerups for Yoshi to use. These were also a great addition and just add that extra bit of fun to the game. I like them all but my favorite was definitely the dash pepper just because it's used in the best of ways. Alongside Yoshi and his powerups are new powerups for Mario. The drill and boulder mushroom were both cool but the cloud flower? Absolutely my favorite powerup in any Mario game. It not only just gives Mario a very pleasant design to look at, it let's you create a maximum of three temporary cloud platforms to use which is just so much fun. They clearly knew it was gonna be the fan favorite since it's used in a ton of galaxies.

While I definitely like 1's soundtrack more now, 2's is also still amazing. It's funny, while the game isn't as atmospheric as 1, it may have the most atmospheric song between both games lol. That would of course be Cosmic Cove Galaxy which is hands down my favorite song in the game, which is fitting since it's also my favorite galaxy in the game. Some other songs I love are Sky Station GalaxyYoshi Star GalaxyStarshine Beach Galaxy and Wild Glide Galaxy. The game doesn't have as moody of an ost, it's more upbeat than 1 but it still has some moody tracks and is still amazing like 1. A good example of a moody track actually and a shoutout to this one is Slimy Spring Galaxy. They did not need to give a short galaxy like this such an otherworldly and atmospheric track but they did. I never really appreciated this galaxy when I first played the game but nowadays, I actually really love it. Again, while 2 doesn't have the same level of atmosphere as 1, it really does still have its moments.

I had a bit of an issue with the prankster comets in 1, not being the biggest fan of them since there's only 5 types (and one of the types barely gets used). This game improves on them I think. Instead of appearing randomly like in 1, you have to get a comet medal in each galaxy for them to appear. Once they do, they will never leave so you don't have to worry about getting them to appear again like in 1. There's also a better variety of challenges this time. You still have your speedrun comets, your daredevil comets, your purple coin comets. However, the cosmic Mario races have been replaced with cosmic clone comets. You now have a different type of speedrun where you have to collect clocks that give you 10 seconds each. You have comets where you have to kill a bunch of enemies in a period of time. These changes/additions, plus the comets not being color-coded anymore so you don't know what you're going to get until you go into the galaxy, just make them much more fun than in 1.

Another thing Galaxy 2 did better than 1 is the extra 120 stars. In 1, to get all 242 stars you have to play the exact same stars as Luigi and then your reward is two extra purple coin stars that I just never found good. In 2, you have 120 green stars to find. A lot of people don't like the addition of these and I never understood why. Sure you can say it's filler but they are brand new stars and they're usually placed in fun creative ways. They act as a sort of scavenger hunt for you to find and you can use the sound they make as a sign you're close to one. Sure, they're not quite as fun to get once you replay the game and know their locations. But a bunch of them still require more advanced techniques to get like triple jumps and stuff so I never found it tiresome to get them all even on this replay. And the reward you get is a fun challenging galaxy that blow's Galaxy 1's reward out of the water. Overall, I think it's a very good postgame and well worth doing it just for the Grandmaster Galaxy.

Just a couple of little changes I noticed between both games. The first is one I noticed all the way back in 2010 when I played both games. When you spin into a launch star in 1, there's like a little couple second delay until it activates. 2 fixes this issue and let's you activate it right away which is super nice. Something I noticed on this new playthrough is unlike 1, 2 doesn't let you spam the spin underwater. I don't know why I never notice this until now lol. I also think the automatic saving instead of giving you a prompt asking you to save is a nice addition in 2.

I love both Galaxy 1 and 2 so much, it really is hard to decide which I love more. While at this point, I'm sticking with 1, it really does flipflop back and forth a bunch for me. Chalk it up to me playing 2 before 1 maybe? Idk if I'd feel the same way if I played it way after 1 or something. Either way, I still feel the same way as I did with my 2022 replays. Play 1 for the much better story, better atmosphere and better OST. Play 2 for the better polished, all around more fun experience. The real answer though is to play both as they're both fantastic games.

Also my top 5 Galaxies now are Cosmic Cove Galaxy, Starshine Beach Galaxy, Slipsand Galaxy, Clockwork Ruins Galaxy, and Throwback Galaxy...among many others, there's just too many good ones in this game!

Complete playthrough. A very solid send-off for the best detective game in a long while, The Lemurian Vampire brings three new, fairly complex scenarios that are once again thoroughly satisfying to solve. A few new mechanics add novelty to the gameplay, now with each chapter taking place over multiple points in time, alongside a quality-of-life improvement that carries "known information" between chapters. It's a shame that this is the final DLC for the game as I'd take as much as I can get of these scenarios, but I eagerly await whatever Color Gray Games come up with next.

Sure the combat could be better but if you think its bad clearly you've never impulse mega flare permafrost dancing steel into stagger will-o-the-wykes lightning rod gigaflare zantetsuken level 5-ed before and it shows :/

I struggled a good bit throughout my playthroughs of Final Fantasy XVI. It is now the third mainline game in the series I've beaten but at the time I started it I had intended it to be my first. Its a series I've always known i needed to try to get into, and the demo of this game was absolutely amazing, it completely blew me away. I was very unexpectedly hyped for this. And playing it I was like oh yeah this is def 5/5 material, after the Garuda fight I was so sold on the game. The music is fucking fantastic and I've never seen such awesome boss fights. But then after that the game felt like it had already peaked. There are still great boss fights through the rest of the game but they never were as impactful as the first 10 or so hours were for me. I felt myself increasingly disinterested in the plot and all the lore and by extension - the game itself.

All that changed near the end when I finally actually started doing side missions. I surprisingly ended up becoming quite fond of all the side characters in the Hideaway and to a much lesser extent the different characters out in the various towns and villages. The game has a pretty damn good cast. It was around that point that I was pretty hype for the end. And for the most part the finale delivers. Its plenty epic, and I was having a great time. But in the end, I was a bit disappointed in how everything wrapped up. That's not to say that there's really anything wrong with the ending, it just wasn't what I was wanting. How i feel about that is how I feel about Final Fantasy XVI as a whole. Plenty of great moments, but in the end still just a little disappointing.

Now that I've explained that I still think FFXVI is great, I have a lot more to complain about. Mostly minor things but it all added up over my 90 hours spent with the game. Some minor annoyances like enemy phases being tied to health bars so sometimes when you set up a stagger and start unleashing, the game just lets them sit there and recover without taking damage and you being unable to do anything for like 20 seconds before the next phase begins. There's also some battles in the wild where if the fight naturally goes a little further than where it started, enemies may just become immune and run back to their spawn point at full health. There's also without fail after every big boss, a main quest that's meant to let things settle but it just kills the pacing and feels like the game is wasting your time by dishing out forced side quests, sometimes several in a row. In the more dungeon-y areas the game is also pretty bad at leading the player along, there were several times I ran completely in the wrong direction because it doesn't make it clear what doors you can open unless you're right next to them. My final complaint is that Final Fantasy mode, the supposed hard mode for NG+, is a complete joke. Now I'm sort of glad it wasn't hard because it made the platinum obtainable for me and now that i have one for a mainline game in the series I don't ever have to bother again. But like, the games idea of hard is give every enemy 50x as much HP. For normal enemies it ain't nothin a level 5 Zantetsuken can't solve but any enemy with a stagger bar doesn't actually feel harder to fight, they just take ages to fucking kill. Even though i skipped every cutscene and did minimal side content, my FF playthrough felt longer than my first where I did basically everything. It just isn't very fun.

So that's about all of my thoughts with Final Fantasy XVI. But to end on a more positive note: Jill is hot and Titanic Block + Counter is one of the most satisfying moves of all time.

Thanks for reading <3

-----TLDR----
+ Great cast
+ Amazing soundtrack
+ Awesome boss fights throughout
- Story quality and pacing is wildly inconsistent
- Didn't like the way it ended
- Too many little gameplay grievances that add up

Nancymeter - 85/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #278)
Time Played: 92 hours
Completion #6 of November
Completion #210 of 2023

Everyone has to start somewhere right? Every person had to start with something that inspired them. Whether that be an event, maybe a tv show or film, maybe even a book, or maybe a 3D platforming shooter on the ps2. Or for me at least.

Ratchet & clank was a game born from the gods. If people were destined to do stuff, then this was the game that saw me in that direction. After insomniac lost spyro they needed a new big platforming series, so they borrowed naughty dogs engine which they used for Jak and Daxter and were able to create what would become the first ratchet game. After the release, the game would spawn a PlayStation staple franchise and specifically for this review: a boy with a small dream. But that’s for later. Let’s get onto the actual game itself.

Act 1:

Now I know I’ve reviewed this game in the past, but it certainly lacked the depth it needed, so why not give it that missing depth right now? The story sees you in control of a Lombax named ratchet. He’s alone on the desolate planet of veldin with the dream to escape and to explore other planes across the solar system. Meanwhile, there’s a malfunction in a robot making factory and the result of this is clank, a tiny robot. He finds out that an evil man named chairman drek is planning on destroying planets to create a planet for his own. Clank quickly begins to try and escape but is shot down by other bots and ends up landing in veldin. From there, he meets ratchet and clank helps him to escape the planet with the deal of finding captain qwark and putting a stop to chairman dreks plans. But before we continue the story: it’s time to go into gameplay.

Compared to future instalments, the first ratchet game isn’t as shooter heavy as its successors but it is still a core part of its gameplay. Considering the fact that before, insomniac’s only really major work were the spyro games, you can see that formula kind of applies to the first ratchet game. Even with this however, it still ends up sticking out on its own. You get a choice of 16 weapons all with different attributes. I’m not going to go too in depth about the weapons, because you can tell they were still trying to work out what works and what didn’t and believe me, the taunter is a big showcase of that. Some weapons include the decoy glove, whereby a small inflatable version of ratchet will stand and enemies will instead attack it instead of you. The suck cannon sucks up enemies and even crates which can then be launched back at enemies, this then brings me onto the next bit of gameplay.

The currency in the game is something that would still define its successors. These are bolts. These can be found by killing enemies or even finding them in smashable beige crates, or even surprisingly: bomb crates. Bolts are now explosive! There are different types of crates in the game. Those being the normal beige crates, bomb crates which explode in 3 seconds, metal crates which can only be opened through some form of explosion, and nanotech crates. Nanotech is essentially the health in the game and the crates can be found practically everywhere. Before I go in depth about the currency and its themes, let’s continue the story shall we?

Ratchet and clank end up crash landing on planet novalis but end up getting a ship from the planetary chairman (a very imaginative name) and end up finding…the plumber. The absolute legend. The crack of all jokes. But anyway. They end up going to different planets to try and find captain qwark. But just before I get onto that, I just want to take a minute and talk about another part of the gameplay.

Something that makes the first ratchet game certainly stand out is its non-linear progression. Essentially, in almost all levels you can take different paths to get to different things, these could be important items, important story beats, or just nice little bonuses. What I like about that is that, it encourages exploration and almost pushes it on the player to keep returning to places and just checking out everywhere they can. It’s a very nice bit of gameplay that I wish was continued and pushed a lot more in later ratchet games.

They end up arriving on planet kerwan whereby clank gets a heli pack upgrade and ratchet ends up getting a swingshot. To start off with, the swingshot is one of the gadgets that helps ratchet out with puzzles, these pop up all over the games and work differently to weapons as well…they don’t kill anyone. The heli pack is also an upgrade that helps give ratchet a lot more flexibility in terms of things like reaching hard to reach places. Clank ends up getting 2 other upgrades later on which help with similar things and can come in quite handy. I’ve never met anyone on this planet who hates the heli pack or thruster pack, and if someone does…do you really?

They eventually do end up finding qwark and he ends up taking them to his base on planet Umbris…however, he ends up turning out to be helping drek this entire time and leaves them to the slaughter, thankfully tho ratchet and clank make it out with their lives…but maybe not so much their friendship as clank fell for qwarks tricks. This then leads us into act 2 of the game! Oh wow!

Act 2:

So they end up getting a brand spanking new ship and end up having to try and track down qwark, however before they can…there’s a bunch of issues. For starters, they’re on the planet orxon and the air is very dangerous to breathe, so they are forced to try some form of gas mask to find the infobot and locate qwark. If you don’t know what it is, it’s essentially a small little robot that gives the coordinates of the next planet.

Also, just wanted to also talk about the themes of the game and I thought this would be an excellent time as any. So, if you’re following this I’m just wondering…have you noticed how expensive everything is? Well, you’ll never get what that is! Why it’s good old consumerism my favourite! The main theme of this game and the entire ps2 quadrilogy are obviously the satire and extreme push of consumerism. Stuff is advertised everywhere and practically nothing in the game doesn’t not come with a price. But that is the sort of genius of the writing. Everything has to come with a price and if you can’t pay it then tough shit. It gives the world an almost slightly depressing view. But I digress.

Eventually they get a gas mask from planet pokitaru and go to a bunch of other planets, including hoven where they thwart one of dreks plans…and clank hits on a girl??? This is until they eventually decide to confront qwark on the gemlick base. And oh man…this is where it gets good.

Come on, I had to mention the music at some point. The entire score was composed by David bergeaud and unfortunately he hasn’t returned to the series since quest for booty. His soundtracks in almost every ratchet game he did were excellent and fit with every planet they were inserted into. Whether it be the futuristic and busy landscape of planet kerwan or the desolate yet dangerous gemlick base, everything he composed for the game fits perfectly and encapsulates each world perfectly. It’s a shame later soundtracks wouldn’t encapsulate the same feeling the first few ratchet games did but, hey, we still have the work he did and it can still be appreciated today, if they put it in streaming services…

Act 3:

After attempting to confront qwark, they get into a fighter jet and he crashes onto the planet of oltanis. It’s at this moment when ratchet and clank decide to put aside their differences and actually defeat drek for the good of the galaxy. They try to get oltanis but clank can’t come out because of the lightning and dangerous conditions of the area. Ratchet is then forced to go on his own where he finds qwa- I mean Steve and gets the gagdetron pda…which I have to dedicate a paragraph to.

The gadgetron pda. What’s so good about this baby? It’s essentially the get yourself out of having no ammo card. You can use this thing absolutely anytime you want is essentially a portable vender. The only downside is the fact that the ammo costs more than it does at an actual vendor but who cares! If your loaded this is a perfect way of getting out of dangerous fights.

After getting an infobot, they travel to quartu, otherwise known as the robot factory from where clank was created. Clank ends up becoming giant in a pretty short section which I’m not going to go too in depth about. Essentially they end up getting another infobot for their trouble and end up making it to kalebo III to try and sneak into the robot factory in quartu. Kalebo III just happens to be the headquarters of none other than gadgetron, the company that has been selling you weapons and everything. They meet the chairman and end up having to participate in a hoverboard competition.

Hoverboarding is essentially a little racing game that you can be in. There’s only two tracks with those being in Rilgar and kalebo III. They aren’t that exciting but they certainly were for younger me, but nowadays they frustrate me as all hell. I also forgot to mention about some of the other important gadgets. Those being stuff like the grind rails which let you grind on railings (shocker), the magnet boots which let you walk on magnetic surfaces, the gas mask which I already touched upon. These not only help with puzzles but they also look really swag on ratchet.

After the competition, ratchet receives a remote that turns him into a robot. He decides to use this to his advantage and sneak into the robot factory on quartu. After doing so, they end up finding the exact place where clank was born. I’m not going to describe the scene because…I think it says everything perfectly. Afterwards however, it turns out that drek plans on destroying veldin as a sort of fuck you to ratchet. They decide to try and return to veldin immediately and stop drek in his tracks. Drek ends up revealing that he was the one that polluted his kinds homeworld and he was going to do it again on the new planet he was creating, just to make more money and repeat it over and over again. With this, ratchet and clank finally decide to take drek down once and for all.

The final battle is pretty excellent and cinematic. With the desperate attempt to try and stop drek at all costs from destroying veldin with his deplanetizer ray. Ratchet and clank end up succeeding and shoot drek to his own planet, destroying it in the process. The end shows ratchet and clank finally being really best buds and deciding to live with each other and just be…the best duo like come on.

Epilogue:

After everything…I still love this game. Of course it isn’t perfect but that’s ok. If it wasn’t for this game I probably wouldn’t reviewing different games at this very moment. This was the first game I ever played and I hold it really dear to my heart and hell even the entire franchise to my heart. The story of the first game and the themes it touches on are still perfect to this day. And whilst gameplay could’ve done with a few fixes, that’s what the other games would later help with. And even back then, I called it the game with the biggest heart, because that’s true. It was. It’s still well liked today and I honestly couldn’t thank it enough. And I can’t thank you guys enough either for sticking with me for so long!

Great gameplay, excellent story, breathtaking music, interesting selection of weapons and gadgets, and the plumber still has his cra-I mean back, thanks for the 100th review!

If I could describe this game to the best of my ability, it's kind of like you're riding a bike down a hill at full speed. As soon as you realize you're having a blast, all of a sudden a metal pipe clotheslines you and knocks all of you and both of your shoes off.

It opens to one of the most enthralling prologues to a game I've played of recent, with fun gigantic battles and fantastic orchestras that vibrate your nuts off. It's epic and mature, and I really enjoyed the more political aspect that the story of this one leaned into. It just unfortunately has horrific pacing.

The character's talk so slowly and there's so much exposition that's drawled out in explanations rather than shown. It sure as Hell makes the combat and boss sections way more exciting, but the abrupt fall into the most boring, endless MMORPG fetch quests and lore dumps made me speedrun depression, especially near the end. When it's finally time for that sick Kaiju battle theme song to start playing again, it's like getting cold water splashed on your face to wake you up. By far that is the worst thing about this game.

The combat for the most part is fun and flashy, but it gets so repetitive down the line. It's watered down and fairly bare bones for an RPG. It was okay, but I found myself wanting a bit more to play around with because there's so little powers you can use. The plot linearity didn't necessarily bother me at all because I feel like we've been getting assaulted by really shitty open-worlds lately. The areas are still gigantic and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery for a change.

All of that being said, the story still goes pretty hard despite the pacing issues. The emotional beats did hit for me and Clive is a very refreshing protagonist for this series. You can tell that they put a lot of care in nurturing his relationships with the other characters to help bolster the themes, but I do wish that that care extended to some others. In my opinion, Jill is just yet another example of Square's inability to write women because she's basically cardboard. Honestly, a ton of the random as shit side characters get more development than her through the side quests, which is very weird.

Overall, it's good but it can be a bit of slog to get to the end. I don't think I'd ever replay it, but if I did, most of it is getting skipped in chunks.

text by Brandon Parker

★★★☆

“A STRANGE AND RARE DESERT PLANT THAT ONLY COMES UP OUT OF THE GROUND EVERY 20 YEARS OR SO, AND SO ALIEN IS ITS SHAPE AND UNIQUE ITS BEAUTY THAT THE SNAKES, LIZARDS, AND OTHER DESERT ANIMALS ALL STOP FIGHTING AND KILLING EACH OTHER OUT THERE, AND THEY ALL CALL A TRUCE JUST FOR THE CHANCE TO GET A GOOD LOOK AND WONDER IF IT'S EDIBLE OR NOT.”

I recently played Sherlock Holmes vs. Arsène Lupin, and let me inform you how excited I got after I had started that game up: real excited. Right as you settle into the game proper, instead of your everyday, commonplace tutorial screen popping up to educate you on the controls for your intial playthrough or whathaveyou, this game’s tutorial just tells you to get a damned notepad and pencil. Being that this is a Sherlock Holmes game, you’ll be playing as Sherlock Holmes, of course, and they won’t be cutting corners to make it easy on your theoretically ignorant selves. Only the beginning of the game, though, lives up to that intial assurance, in my opinion. The rest is the usual adventure game ridiculousness. Oh, well, they tried. Good for them. The main thing is, there’s a part early on where you have to find a certain painting in an art gallery. You have to type in an answer to a question, the question being, “What is depicted in the painting?” After spending half an hour typing in as many ways as I could think of to say, “HMS Victory,” I quit the game to look up a walkthrough and found the answer. It was “boat.” So: Brandon Parker is smarter than Sherlock Holmes. This is a historic fact, now. You can even add it to Wikipedia and reference this review.



Now, I worry about the kids sometimes, and myself. Back in “the fair time,” as I call it, you used to have your King’s Quests or your Monkey Islands, but nowadays, if you want a game that doesn’t involve shooting small nations of foreign men over and over in dull grey and brown environments, you’re stuck with either licensed stuff based off of Pixar movies or boring platformers with stupid animal mascots. And that’s another thing. Current kid movies have the same problem as current adventure games. Compare those beautiful, hand painted Disney movies of old to this lifeless, 3D animated computer stuff. I think a link could be drawn between adventure games and Disney movies. I don’t feel like doing it at the moment, though. Forgive me – I am exaggerating, slightly. There are the Icos and Katamaris and whatnot, but do kids even know about those things? Do those games get commercials, or do kids even watch television anymore? For all I know, these days they come out of the womb with hand cupped to the side of their ear, room for a cellphone to be slid in there, and then it’s straight to 4chan boot camp. We might be lost already.

It’s not that I don’t think they can’t handle the violence, or anything. I’m sure most can, and those that can’t will just end up as republicans, or spree killers, or something. I know I used think, wouldn’t it be great if Inspector Gadget wasn’t a dumbass and had hands that could turn into machine guns, or something useful, at the least? You’re not fooling anybody, there. Kids know that that kind of crap is dumbed down for them. That’s not what I’m asking for, however. It doesn’t have to be dumbed down or made for kids in particular at all. It just doesn’t have to be nonstop violence. I guess that’s what I’m saying. Say there’s a kid who wants to play something other than Halo. He just doesn’t know it yet. I’m sure the peer pressure to play Halo and “pwn bitches” with his peers on Xbox Live is enormous, but let’s say this guy is going to strike out on his own. Good for him. Yet, after trying to make it on his own out the real world, Poor Little Ness finds he has so few options that he ends up taking the weak man’s road of used Spec-Ops games for PSX. And he was such a good, promising young lad. Now doesn’t that break your god-damned heart?

I’m only emphasizing the kids, here, since they don’t call them your formative years because you’re free to completey heck them up however you want and change your mind later. I know I wouldn’t be the man I am today if I didn’t have all these fond memories of walking around all those green environments in old adventure games, back when trees were in games, constructing tools out of pocket lint. And personally, I’m also sick as hell of shooting people myself, anyway. By the time I play MGS4 I think the line will be dangerously blurred between player and character. I already feel like a tired, old veteran, sick of battle and death, now, so I won’t be playing so much as method acting.

I’d simply like to see something that has room for your imagination to get in there. The modern videogame is an alkali desert when it really needs to be something more, uh, fertile. Man didn’t abandon painting when he learned to sculpt. Let’s get some colors in there, some majestic green trees and clear blue skies. The imagination can’t grow in the desert. Anything creative or weird doesn’t have to be an abstract handheld game with a clever game play hook anymore. More Balloon Fight and Kiwi Kraze is what I want, I think. Remember Kiwi Kraze? You were a bird in New Zealand rescuing your bird buddies. I don’t know if anyone would even think to make something like that anymore. If they did, they’d use satellite imagery to recreate New Zealand exactly, or some bullstuff. You can do all sorts of weird stuff in games that’d be a lot harder to pull off in a movie or book. Let’s see some of that.

Back in the Fair Time, a company called Electronic Arts (you might’ve heard of them) didn’t look at those games from Sierra and Lucas Arts and see all the happy childhoods, the greenary, the cherished memories born from those games. No, to people like them, they could and can only see “markets” that need “penetrating.” Every bit as horrible as it sounds. These are the kinds of people that invent their own doublespeak business language to say things without really saying anything. The kind of people that up and buy the NFL when too many people start to buy their competition’s NFL game. Well, back when they were wanting to make adventure games, being incapable of ever creating a Full Throttle or a Gabriel Knight themselves, they merely waved their money around and brought in Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time, was the greatest detective (I’m now the best). They were decent enough adventure games, but poor Sherlock Holmes games. They were also damn ugly and lacking in the use of the color green, though I guess it’s the same for London.

Anyway, someone finally made a good Sherlock Holmes game, and it’s not even a real Sherlock Holmes game. It’s about some dude named Layton. A couple of guys making up their own stuff made a better Sherlock Holmes game than EA did, with the actual Sherlock Holmes. Is there something other than spending money that they can handle doing properly? Yeah, we’re not supposed to hate them anymore, being that they apologized for the murders of Origin, Bullfrog, and all – a standup thing to do, I’ll admit, but I won’t fall for that. I know how these people operate. They’re not like you and me. They don’t have a conscience. They’re machines, programmed to simply want more money. They’ll only show a response to anyone other than themselves if their income is threatened. They look at their invented graphs and formulas and follow them to the letter. When something new and original that doesn’t fit in these formulas does well, it’s a “big suprise” that “exceeds all expectations,” and so they imitate the hell out of it, thinking that’s all there is to it. You know at the end of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, when that machine is possessed by a demon and is going through the forest cutting everything down? EA is that demon possessed machine, and they’re cutting down that forest to make room for a new alkali desert, where, as you know, imagination is unable to grow.





Usually what makes an adventure game a stuff one is that the puzzles are just plain hecking nonsense. And, often, I think that happens because the game is just too damn long. The designers aren’t smart enough come up with enough clever puzzles to fit in the entire game for every situation, so they get desperate, and when they get desperate this leads to madness, which leads to the bizarro moonside logic. All of us here know of the Gabriel Knight Moustache Massacre of ’99. This is something now told to small children as a warning. I even think it’s in the latest edition of Bullfinch’s Mythology, under “Tragedies.” I was there at ground zero. I remember it clearly: I finally had a computer all my own for the first time, and, to celebrate, the two latest entries in my favorite game series’ at time – the games being GK3 and Ultima IX. I tell you, it did something to me, something whose effect still lingers to this day. I’d also like to point out that Ultima IX was diddled with by Electronic Arts, known by their true name, “Hexxus“. Hexxus was voiced by Tim Curry, who also voiced Gabriel Knight in his third game, and is known for sounding like a child molester. I personally believe that when the universe is trying to tell you something, you should listen.

So maybe it’s just too hard to come up with enough sensible puzzles to cover an entire game. The Big Sleep didn’t make complete sense to Raymond Chandler, and he wrote the damn thing. And remember the Holmes story where the guy injected monkey blood or something and started climbing trees? What in the heck was that all about? And what a literal pushover Moriarty was. Holmes was too smart for Doyle’s own good, in my opinion. So you wonder what hope there is for there ever being a great detective game that makes sense. But then you remember something like Full Throttle, a game so good that I actually forget it’s an adventure game, and then you think, maybe everyone else is just lazy. Well, you think too much. Just take it easy. What they’ve done here for Professor Layton is side-step that problem by just getting together a bunch of good puzzles that don’t really have much to do with jack stuff. It’s just a series of puzzles that usually come from some guy coming up and saying, “Have you heard of this one?” But they can get away with it because they’re all good ones. It’s really a puzzle game disguised as an adventure game, and therefore actually ends up being a better Sherlock Holmes simulator game than what any adventure game could ever be. Also, it’s a real nice looking game. It doesn’t look like anything else out there. A cartoon, but more The Little Prince than some anime horsestuff. So that’s pretty good.

I guess Japan has only one videogame magazine, and it’s called Famitsu. If any others exist, I have no knowledge of them. If you’re a hip American, perhaps you know all about this magazine, already. But in an issue, there was an article about Professor Layton, and the title of the article was, “Level 5’s new game’s genre is unknown? New style game to train your brain,” except it said that in Japanese, rather than English. Yeah, it seems that in Japan they see an adventure game and, to them, it is some kind of crazy Brain Training knock-off. Ha, ha, those lovable, crazy Japanese. The closest thing those primitive deviants have for comparison is cartoon sex games and Phoenix Wright, so this is a bold new step for them. I hope it takes off.

Anyway, according to the opening cutscene, Layton and I are under some sort of non-disclosure agreement by the curious village, so I can’t exactly talk in specifics about the events of The Case. Sorry. I’ll just say you missed out. A great time was had by all.

I haven't really played a 2D Mario game since the launch of the "New Super Mario Bros." series as I found it got pretty stale after the first game, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder is such a breath of fresh air. It feels like I've been teleported back to when I played Super Mario World for the first time.

This game is bursting from the seams with creativity. The introduction of Wonder Seeds takes the already fantastic levels and flips it on it's head. Every time I reach a Wonder Seed I get so excited wondering what crazy mechanic the game is about to introduce to me. Whether it's turning into an enemy, riding a stampede of bulls, or bouncing to the finish line on top of hippos; each seed is crazier than the last.

The introduction of badges also lets you customize your experience to how you want to play the game. I found myself mainly using the spin kick so I could double jump but there are so many to chose from. Whatever you pick, it truly enhances the already perfect precision platforming this game features.

The soundtrack in this game is unmatched, with the Overworld and Athletic theme being my favourites. There was never once a track I wanted to end, each song is a BANGER. Not to mention that each world gets an ADDITIONAL soundtrack for when you activate a Wonder Seed.

Each level is designed with a beautiful pastel like colour palette similar to the likes of Yoshi's Island and is given so much depth and detail in the form of parallax. Every time I load up a new level I am truly enthralled you into the wonder of this world.

The updated poses and animations to Mario and his foes breathe so much life into them. Whether it's Mario going through a pipe and grabbing his floating hat he left behind or a Goomba with the look of pure horror on his face as his best friend is being flattened right in front of him, they add so much personality to this game.

This is PEAK Mario and the future of 2D Mario is looking very bright.