Dracula, my friend, we sure are in quite the predicament; not only I’ve already defeated you three times each in different games, but it seems that you are quite the persistent rapscallion, and I need you to put you back together just to beat you yet again. Certainly an odd yet pretty fucking funny dance to have… but let’s make it memorable, shall we?

The first Castlevania is pretty straightforward in every sense of the word, a simple tale of a Vampire Killer that goes to Dracula’s lair to defeat him and free the land of Transylvania of its influence, and as many turns and ups and downs as that seemingly never-ending castle had, it still was a linear platformer. If that game attempted to realize a legend or a short myth made NES game, then this follow up tries to do the same for a full-fledged odyssey or saga, but even putting it that way makes it seem lesser than it really is, because in an era in which a surprising amount of sequels were already trying to differentiate themselves from their past outings, Simon’s Quest entirety identity and fundamental design, from the most visible of level lay-outs to the most hidden of secrets, revolves entirely around making Simon’s sad quest for what should have been his highest accomplishment a reality, no matter the cost.

I’ve never felt so conflicted about a game this much since… ever, now that I think about it; I struggle to point out parts of it that I truly enjoyed without also noticing stuff that irks me, I cannot mention definitive flaws without acknowledging that those manage to find some ways to work I adore, it’s a work I value, but also one I can’t really say for sure I enjoyed experiencing, and I cannot promise that I would have come out of this with my sanity intact if I didn’t use certain guides. Castlevania II is a game so unfathomably different to its original, so incomprehensibly ambitious, that I do not know if this is the result of an excellently creative mind or a completely mad one… perhaps both at the same time…

I think the subtitle of Simon’s Quest is the single most simple yet fitting string of words you could ever use to describe this, a true quest across the land of Transylvania with it’s riddles, monsters, secrets, weak to holy water walls and a mysterious ferryman that only brings you to were you need to go if you show him a heart and kneel, with it’s the single most metal thing I’ve ever seen in a NES game now that I think about it but I digress. The entirety of Transylvania is within a grey cartridge and the y and x axis, and it feels real, it shouldn’t, but it does: plagued by sessions changing between screens to make enemies respawn so you can farm hearts, the most of obscure and random of artificial steps you need to take so the game has mercy on your poor soul and lets you proceed, 2 feet deep lakes that immediately kill you unless you have a stone in hand so that the screen can move a bit down; all of this can be found in Simon’s Quest, and it’s as frustrating and mind numbingly complicated as it sounds, it’s not fun, but it somehow feels real.

Arriving at a town bathed in pale moonlight, a town with name and a place, you fight wraiths and dark spirits after the relief of the first sun rays of the dawn, which dissipate the evil for fleeting moments, letting the city breath in peace for the remaining of the day; the townsfolk mutter slowly, yet it feels too fast, to complicated to begin to understand it, others have very few to say, others sell, trade, and in some city even lie to you or spat out completely meaningless words, but after resting in the church (if you are lucky enough to encounter one), you leave once again, to the forests, depths and cemeteries of Transylvania, traversing terra ignota until you energy doesn’t let you act carelessly; perhaps you’ll get to another town, maybe you found the locations of one of the mansions, or maybe the night surrounds you once again, your enemies stronger and fiercer than before, and the only thing you can do is push forward. This, this right here, moments like these are were Simon’s quest has true meaning: the process of finding treasures and items that make you feel as if you were evolving, understanding the tricks and nonsense of Dracula’s curse in your favor, falling from invisible blocks time and time again but learning from it and getting stronger, beat the many mansions and getting Dracula’s remains thanks to the stakes and your own wit that has gotten you this far, and seeing the people of this land scream to you to get out of their town and how you made everything worse as you approach the remains of what was once the count’s Castle. In those moments where the game taps into the fullest potential of this open adventure, asking you to learn from it or fail, that is when Castlevania II achieves utter excellence… but by that you’d have to ignore pretty much everything else.

Beyond the occasional but very impactful slow-downs or the extremely samey aspect between pretty much every area, mansion and town besides the color palette, which are things that can be justified by how this is a entire open interconnected word running on a NinToaster (I had to throw out an AVGN reference at some point), Simon’s Quest fails in ways that put into jeopardy the very nature it tries to pursue. The design of the landscapes and dungeons themselves lack any of the intrigue and interesting architecture that the original had, and interesting enemy behavior has been thrown out the window in favor of different variables in the ways some approach you; bosses especially seem to have lost all the will to live despite never staying dead, and you know something’s up when that damage you more if you touch them than by their actual attacks, Dracula himself seems like the exception of all of this and the actual most challenging part of the adventure… until you start wailing on him… and you keep stunning him… and he just doesn’t move…. and the battle ends and you win… yeah… Simon’s Quest doesn’t really create challenge through interesting and complicated sections or enemy placement, but rather through endurance, how much patience you have to tackle the same enemies over and over again, how much you can you put up with ledge-jump after ledge-jump, with the only thing changing until the very end and in some very specific rooms being the damage you need to deal to defeat the enemies. The tricks of this land start to grow old and tired after a certain point, and those that don’t are to cryptic to discover them in the first place; I maintain that Transylvania feels real, yes, but does so while going through great lengths to sacrifice every possible aspect that could make it more engaging or fascinating to play beyond the base level, Simon’s Quest exists mostly to itself, but also for its torment, for Simon’s, for ours.

Simon’s Quest aimed for the stars and didn’t land among them, but it also didn’t quite miss, it’s out there, somewhere, occupying a weird space which can be both loved or hated, and in some cases both at the same time. I couldn’t end this review in good conscience without pointing out the many outstanding write-ups that many amazing people have done over here; Vee’s and poyfuh’s are outstanding analysis that value Simon’s Quest in a new light, while others like Kempocat’s view the reasons why the game fails while also recognizing its victories, and these are only a few examples, I’m beyond sure that this page is full of incredible analysis that bring new light to this game, each in a different way. I do no think there’ll ever be a point of consensus surrounding Simon’s Quest, nor I think I want it to, the passage of time has allowed the game to have more and more voices defending it, while others only see it as a mess speaking in moon runes (and rightfully so), and then there’s people kind of stuck in the middle, which I’m part of and I’m sure there are more like me that feel about this one similar to me, and maybe, by managing to create so many perspectives surrounding it, having so many possible interpretations and ways to see a game in which the characters only have one text-box of space to rely weird-ass info, maybe in a way, Castlevania II succeeds, and no matter what else could I say, both negative and even positive, I could never take that victory from it, and I’m so glad it has it…

… tho the endings being decided by how long you take to beat the game is weird as hell, like, ‘’Simon died because of his wounds after the battle’’, what are you talking about? I stun-locked the bastard with the golden knife for the entirety of the fight, the motherfucker didn’t even touch me!! What are you even on abou-

And I looked, and beheld a blue dragon: and his name that sat on him was Keil Fluge, and Rez followed with him.

Panzer Dragoon feels like a prototype of a lot of different games that came later, which I find to usually be the case for these landmark titles. This is far from an inherently bad thing, though; Panzer Dragoon predates Star Fox 64, and I imagine that the former will have more than a few unfair comparisons drawn to it by the latter by people who aren't aware of the date disparity. I know older, more foundational games tend to attract people who bring up that old Seinfeld Is Unfunny TVTropes page to talk about how a game has "aged", which is an incorrect assumption. That's because Seinfeld never stopped being funny. Yes, a lot of sitcoms drew from Seinfeld, but there's nothing they've done that has retroactively made Seinfeld look bad. Seinfeld is still funny. There was never a period where Seinfeld wasn't funny. And Panzer Dragoon, like Seinfeld, has always been good. I don't think there was ever a period where Panzer Dragoon was incredible, but the facets that it gets right haven't been rendered wrong by anything that's released in the intervening years.

What's here is a simple but entertaining game, leaning heavily on its arcade inspirations. As much of Panzer Dragoon's blueprints were used later by other games, it doesn't exist in a vacuum; Space Harrier and After Burner were both massive Sega titles that predated it, and it isn't difficult to spot the strands of their DNA sticking out from this. It's mechanically solid because it's mechanically simple. There's very little you can do to engage with the game beyond moving your reticle around and pressing the fire button. Again, though, it benefits from this simplicity; this is a game carried hard by its vibes, and it gets those across near-flawlessly. There are hints at a much bigger world than the small slice we see in the game proper, and the thumping music and crunchy models do an impressive job in carving out an aesthetic.

I find it difficult to write at length about Panzer Dragoon, because it’s a remarkably brief experience. I want to call it “thin”, but I think that carries a bit of a negative connotation. “Breezy” might be the better word. It’s over and done with in about forty-five minutes, and there’s very little to actually sink your teeth into; the narrative extends as far as “the bad guy is going to a tower, stop him”, and the gameplay itself is little more than a rudimentary shooting gallery where you blast away at whatever’s on screen at a given moment. The ability to shift perspectives and rotate the camera around yourself at least ensures that there’s never a moment where you’re doing nothing, but I struggle to imagine a world where these camera shifts happen automatically and it changes anything of real significance. These mechanics underlying the core gameplay of shooting and dodging (overwhelmingly more in favor of shooting than dodging) feel a bit underdeveloped. It would have been nice to see the perspective switching matter far more than just Stage 4, where you just swap to the closest view and never leave it for the duration of the level.

Katsuhiko Yamada was credited as one of two stage designers for this, and it’s completely unsurprising that he would later go on to be the sole game designer for Rez. The two games run in parallel to one another: both are short-form, third-person rail shooters; both have a “hold the button to unleash a lock-on barrage” mechanic; both feature a heavy focus on aesthetics over most else. Where Rez ultimately comes out on top, I feel, is in its execution. It runs better, it has a style I’m more partial to, and it seems significantly more realized as a holistic experience. Still, though, Rez has got the benefit of having released six years later and with Panzer Dragoon to build off of, and that makes me appreciate this more. Anyone who’s a friend of Rez is a friend of mine.

Hitting all of the face buttons at the same time just straight up kills you and I think that's funny.

THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

Much like its predecessor, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is yet another remake of the original PlayStation 2 game, but this time ported into the more technically impressive Dragon Engine the newer entries adopt. To sum up my settled thoughts on the last game I played, Yakuza Kiwami left me disappointed; a remake that should feel thoughtful in its intentions but came out woefully lazy in the execution. Basically feeling like you’re playing a Yakuza 0 romhack with much of the quality storytelling and gameplay strip mined into something very dry. I’m sure it was a necessary stepping stone for RGG to move up from in order to reach the heights proven in later entries, but Kiwami already felt like a low point for someone trying to journey his way into this series properly.

Luckily, I can proudly say that Yakuza Kiwami 2 hasn’t suffered the same fate, instead demonstrating the greatness I already knew this series could offer. I can’t comment on how this succeeded as a remake towards the original, but nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this. While it doesn’t quite address all of my gripes with the first Kiwami, it certainly did enough legwork to make it feel like this is where the series ‘got good’. The combat is a bit of a trade-off when directly compared to Kiwami and 0, there’s no longer different brawling styles to switch between, but the simplified heat system is benefited by what the Dragon Engine introduces. Kamurocho is rendered beautifully in realistic fidelity. The crowd population feels more dense than ever, and enemies can now just fight you on the spot where battles seamlessly blend into neighboring stores, causing so much collateral damage. I had great joy in messing around with the game’s physics by throwing a random thug around like a bowling ball hitting pins that fly around. I take some issue with how out of hand these physics can be in combat, though. Sometimes momentum is thrown out the window, and you topple way too easily where it gets annoying. I’m just gonna chalk this up as just RGG still figuring out the Dragon Engine in its quirks until that hopefully got smoothened out recently. Yakuza/Like A Dragon is unique in how it juggles around so many ideas for gameplay, a kitchen sink approach to design I like to name it, but the one aspect that’s most vital to the usual experience is the immersion. A strength that Kiwami 2 embodies hard with its use of the Dragon Engine, making you feel you’re touring through a cultural Japanese hotspot filled with little stories and memories. The substories in Kiwami 2 aren't quite up there with later entries like 0, but they're still memorable for fleshing out Kamurocho with a refreshing amount of needed levity when you just needed a break from how serious the main story can get.

I think the story this time around is outstanding. I was emotionally hooked through the end, and it may end up being my personal favorite in the whole series, beating out Yakuza 0 by a slight margin. Yeah, there’s definitely some beats here that feel… too convoluted, especially with the revelations that last hour just throws on you regarding the villains which feel equal parts brilliant in hindsight but just questionable. It would’ve almost continued the same problem I had with Kiwami’s handling of its villains, where there’s one that acts as Kiryu’s personal foil, but the complexity of the plot sidelines them in favor of antagonists that just aren’t an interesting obstacle. Thankfully, Kiwami 2 immediately breaks that trend just enough where Ryuji Goda, the dark reflection of the values Kiryu stands for as the Dragon of Dojima, is given time to shine in a kick-ass finale. It took three games so far, but this is finally where I found my groove with Kiryu as a protagonist who I’m invested in, given how much shit he’s gone through and will continue to. I’m really liking the main cast that’s been cooked here with Haruka and Date, Sayama is an amazing character who unfortunately I’m aware gets written out of the games real soon. Jumping straight into Yakuza 3 is going to be… interesting, for many reasons, but I’m officially in this for the long haul.

There seems to be a prevalent expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

On Friday, January 5th, I got a ping in a discord server consisted of one friend group about an impromptu Fortnite get-together. Since I admittedly regained an interest in playing it, and because said friend server has yet to really do much for several months, I decided to take the opportunity to see how the game has transformed and evolved over the years. Installed the dreaded EGS launcher, got marginally but not totally surprised by the increased file size, and proceeded to log back into my account from years prior. After all, it's only gonna be just for a few days, and then I’m off to uninstall it...

...but things didn't pan out that way. What has happened instead, was a transformation into becoming an Epic Fortnite Gamer. A near 3-week foray, money spent on the Battle Pass and both Gambit and Rouge skins, and grinding my way towards unlocking Peter Griffin's page, all while accumulating levels, Ranked medals, and other knick-knacks along the way. Life really does come at ya fast when you least expect it!

To go more in-depth into my prior experience: I'm very much someone who first played Fornite's at-the-time new Battle Royale format, played a couple of matches - both with my completely separate and no longer in touch friend group and solo - and thought it was kinda neat but really lacking in staying power. I'm uncertain if I was also one of many that thought it was simply gonna be a fad that'll fade away, since this was nearly 7 years ago now, but it matters naught since it's still here, and about as popular as it was since then. There's no need to cover much of what it's about, cause even if you never played it, you certainly know of it and the appeal, so I'm just gonna make this a thorough dumping ground of my thoughts as someone who finally came back to the bus.

Firstly, and more importantly, I'm glad that Zero Build is a mode that can be opted into. Now, I'm not besmirching the mechanic in its holistic entity, but I will admit one of the reasons I fell off pretty quickly originally was because of the gap between people who can build (especially PC players), and people who can't (especially console players). You can be a quickshot all you want, but as long as the other guy can spontaneously build a Jenga tower or a Minecraft fortress to recuperate quickly, your choices are to either eat shit, continue to pester them, or just give up and bolt out entirely. These types of encounters, to me, are fine in doses - the risk-reward allure is just balanced enough that it isn't entirely irritating, and the satisfaction method is incredible! That, however, begins to dissolve into ruin when it occurs ad nauseum, tying itself into state of the loop, and altogether just demotivates my ass since the most I can do is a stairway to heaven and maybe a few walls despite my flicks of the mouse and sensitivity zones. Even with the practice mentality, there's also the fact that, again, it's been 7 years - if you've played any sort of multiplayer shooter in mind, you'd know that there's a good chance that any sort of tech people know about, will inject and hone their craft to it to days on end, and I've seen plenty opponents do some shit that simultaneously leaves me fascinated and discontented. So, just having a mode where there's little frills to that, is appreciated, even if I do tap back into the regular option every now and then.

The other thing is that there's like... actual POIs and side activities now. I recall these being a thing in 2017, but it was a lot more minimalistic and very much in the vein of "we needed something to have players distract themselves and play the game with". Solid enough base, but combine that with the haphazard loop I had before, it again just made the dull grind even more prevalent. That nagging aspect is still present, but it's way easier to tolerate and avoid now. Vehicles, more movement options when doing on-foot roaming, an entourage group to pick off and reap rewards from to better your gamestate, and just the overall map layout is way, way more satisfying to convey and poke around than ever, even if I'm not entirely sure how prior seasons were like. Hell, this also obfuscates the other big critique that was going on at the time, which was how spacious people could become. Rarely has the thought of "man this is kinda boring" occur now since everything feels more fulfilling to explore and do, especially using grapple blades atop various points and just ZOOOOOOOOMING to where I need to go, or just ramming bogeys and guffawing at how high they get launched, or doing dopey motorbike tricks across hilltops. It's neat! It's exciting! It just about upends most of the issues I had to begin with!

I really don't have much else to like, add at this point, aside from some qualms:

- The bots here are on the opposite spectrum end of TF2's Bot Crisis; instead of being hammered down by some flagrant creations stopping any sort of enjoyment I can muster, there's more of an awe factor over how braindead they can be. I'm not quite sure how the system itself operates, but while I know and understand they're a necessity to fill up empty spaces, that becomes highly questionable when I see these guys fuck up easy picks, do some bizarre pathfinding and routine interactions, and somehow overcompensate within a quarter at most of the 100-player pool. This is the least egregious of the three ire I'm covering, but even then it's just... confounding. Not sure what's going on here!

- Aside from BR, there's now Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Festival. I only used LF briefly cause of an XP exploit, but I did at least put actual time into RR and Festival, and I'm thoroughly unimpressed with both. The former's a really dull and barebones arcade racer that couldn't even compete with some of the more straightforward affairs during the 5th Console Gen Boom, and well, Cold_Comfort goes over the woes of Festival even if I'm not that harsh about it. One could say these can be ignored since the main aspect is BR, but since they're easily visible upon the main bar of the lobby, I feel like it's fair game to expect these to be in a commendable quality - especially since Epic Games have been making big talk about user-generated content and have seemingly been in a stronger push in competing with Roblox.

- Since this is an ongoing season, solidifying and boxing the current meta state is tricky. What I can say for now though is that, with the feel of everything being good on a base level, there's a clear power imbalance. There's absolutely no reason to pick up the Hammer Pump variant of the shotgun, since Frenzy Auto has a strictly higher DPS and can easily mulch people by comparison; same goes for the Enforcer AR, being pitifully outclassed in speed and output by the Nemesis and especially Striker variants; I don't have any major beef with the Lock-On Pistol, due to its four-charge shots contains a slight buffer between each piece + all while leaving the player vulnerable should they be careless (especially to someone who Knows What They're Doing)... but the availability of this is perplexes me. I've gone entire games without either my downed foes or myself finding it, meanwhile I can simply trip across Ballistic Shields, a weapon that sounds about as good as it does while also not being nearly as OP as it sounds or others postulate, despite that being in a higher rarity color. Weird little quirks like that making the fights distinct but also just sort of headscratching as to where they could go. Also, maybe an Issue Of Skill, but I’ve seen instances of a bullet from my sniper shots clearly hitting its mark, but then somehow never registering?

I actually can’t recall the last time a multiplayer game had its pull on me quite like this, perhaps Among Us which had faced similar views. May keep this on for the time being until I actually do procure the Griffin or maybe Solid Snake since he’s close to being unleashed upon the world. I’m not sure where and how this chapter will go next, but if nothing else, it at least pulled me back in after years of inquisitive glances and intrigue. It is also carrying one of the most important mantles of any piece of fiction: having multiple patient zeros that will cajole someone into becoming a furry. Truly, this is a blessed time!

In the span of 20 days, I’ve killed Dracula like 3 times now, I don’t know why so many games have an obsession with him but I’m starting to pity the poor bastard, like, he only shows up in one puzzle and his purpose is to perish, now that’s a true tragedy…

During its initial release, a portion of the discussion around Storyteller revolved around how it really wasn’t what it seemed at first; from promotional material and even its descriptions, you’d be led to believe this is a game about creating stories, using the characters and options available to form your own visual narrative, an idea that even the game’s own opening text seems to be pointing towards, when in reality this is pretty much a puzzle game. In each of the levels you get a set of characters and scenarios and from there you need to reach a specific result, and for many this prospect was less enticing than that supposed original ‘’go wild and crazy with your imagination’’ idea, but I believe that throwing Storyteller to the side simply because it isn’t something that ‘’sounds cool’’ is silly at best, especially when what it really is still sounds incredibly promising.

Building up a narrative and creating a story to reach a specific ending is a fantastic concept, an idea so fascinating that can lead to so many cool experiments, and gamifying the act of forming a world, giving life to a set of characters with a finale in mind is far from being an idea always bound to backfire, it’s a genius one with a super strong premise… one that Storyteller fails to realize.

Being simple is a good thing, and then there’s being simplistic; each of the puzzles feel… barebones is the word I want to say, but I’m not entirely sure it’s the right one; no challenge is designed badly or unclear, but they also aren’t great. I’ll admit I definitively wasn’t a having a bad with the experience, but I also wasn’t feeling particularly excited or even just really that entertained, it’s a very ‘’going through the motions’’ kind of game, where none of the puzzles are particularly challenging and few have those moments where the pieces fall into place and you feel like a genius. As such it could be seeing as a cozy or pick-up-and-play style of game, but considering just how short it is and how little it attempts in that time to actually make it a super relaxing or enjoyable experience, I find it hard to call it one. You just do puzzles until its over… and without ever fully tapping into true ‘’imagination’’ territory.

It's hard to feel as a storyteller when there’s so little space of possibilities; as I said the fact there’s always one ending for each of the puzzles doesn’t bother me, but that the characters have a set of behaviors that you cannot change and that there’s basically only a single way to achieve said ending does. At first it’s fun to learn how each of the characters behave, but after a while it quickly turns into an automatized experience, where you see your objective and think ‘’oh yeah, I know which character has to do each thing’’ which might sound good, but in practice feels like placing pieces of the same puzzle over and over, sometimes rearranged, sometimes with a different set of pieces. The secondary objectives that some of the levels have as well as the stamps and the Devil re-tales are an interesting spin for sure, and especially towards the end this concept shows its highest potential, but it just not involving nor realized enough to be memorable or that fun.
The game doesn’t tell stories, just broken scenarios, and you aren’t tasked with forging them, just to fix the… I don’t know if that even makes sense, but what I’m getting at is that Storyteller, even at its best, doesn’t seem to strive for much despite shooting pretty damn high, and I’m left with the sensation that many other puzzle game accomplish the idea of creating your own path or solution much more consistently than the game about creating tales.

The game isn’t a incredibly ended open experience with player experience at its focus, nor does it want to be and nor it should be judged as such, but what it is is a overly simple, limited and average puzzle game that’s only somewhat enjoyable. It may not be something that it isn’t, but it also is not even close at being a true accomplishment of what it aspires to be, and that’s much, much more tragic than the former option…

Paper Mario Sticker Star was a landmark experience in my relationship with video games.

At one point in time, Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door was my favorite game. I didn’t know what a JRPG was, and from how I heard people talk at school, thought it had something to do with the war in Iraq. I hadn’t played Chrono Trigger yet. But anything with Mario on it passed my parents' arbitrary content filtration, so Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remained a unique game that pressed multiple buttons I liked. The art style spoke to me as an aspiring vector graphic artist. There was strategy, there was story, with enough player engagement and metatextual dressing to sell me on turn-based combat. It was funny, it was cute, with just enough depth to help me graduate from the simplicity of the Mario platformers I was used to.

Super Paper Mario was fine. I knew it was a different genre before it came out, which offset my disappointment somewhat, enough that I never said out loud, “this art style is lame.” My Smash Bros. friend thought it was hilarious, so I liked it, too. I got my sister to play it, in an attempt to convince myself to love it. It didn’t work, but Super Paper Mario became the first game she ever finished. I was happy for her. So I never said out loud, “this game should have been better.” But I felt it.

Sticker Star came out during a long period when I didn’t play video games. I didn’t get to it for years. By the time it was $10 on clearance, there were other games I liked. Maybe Xenoblade Chronicles or Fire Emblem Awakening were my new favorite games. But now Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door had ~nostalgia~ status, before I knew what that word meant, much less what it meant for me.

I played all of Sticker Star. I finished it. I remembered and remember nothing about it. I felt nothing. Or thought I felt nothing. Until I saw empty achievement podiums in the post-game inviting me to do a bunch of pointless grindy bullshit to check off some checklists.

My first reaction was “oh, more content! More Paper Mario!” until my brain processed what the game was asking of me. Find all the trinkets? Win a lottery 50 times? Collect 10,000 coins?

I said out loud, “Why would anyone do that?”

Then a profound realization washed over me. I did not like this game. I did not enjoy any of my time with this game. I had finished this entire game precisely because of my remembered love for a different game with the same name. A love that had at once been unexamined, treasured, and rendered featureless and sourceless with time.

I stared at the achievement markers, not yet knowing what an achievement was, and felt an inscrutable feeling of dread and betrayal. This game was bad. But beyond the game being bad, Sticker Star was also behaving as if it were unaware it was bad. Smash Bros. had checklists, but they unlocked new stages, new characters. Those checklists were crude interfaces for unlocking fun surprises. This was just… homework.

But why would Nintendo give me homework? Why would Mario give me homework? And why would a real life human do that homework if they weren’t getting graded or paid? I quietly saved the game, returned it to its case, and closed my 3DS, more pensive and alone feeling than I was expecting to feel that day. I told no one about this experience. I told no one I had even played the game. My Smash Bros. friend was gone and married at that point, anyway.

I’d watched people at school play bad flash games, so I knew bad games existed. But they seemed to poke fun at themselves, aware of their own disposability. This was the first time my childish, uncritical brain was forced to confront the reality that bad games could come from Brands™ made by Adults. Because the more I stewed on why the idea of those achievements felt like homework, the more I realized the entire experience of playing the game felt like homework. Stripped of context, stripped of story, the basic actions of the game were straight unfun to play. But that meant the presentation hadn’t made the game fun, it had only been a distraction from the neutral hell of paying money to do homework for zero learning or recognition.

I don’t want to oversell Sticker Star’s importance in my developing critical facilities, but it is the clearest turning point of my self-awareness with a game before several of my behaviors changed. I stopped getting excited for games before their release. I stopped visiting IGN - they’d given this game an 8.3! I stopped saying a game was among my favorites if I couldn’t remember why. I actually finished Xenoblade Chronicles. That ending suuuuucked, and the game stopped being in my top 10.

There’s a good chance many of these changes would have come about as side-effects of growing up. But maturity and wisdom are not guaranteed with age. New ‘bad’ Paper Mario games keep coming out, and I see its “fan” base go through phases of evangelical rage and disappointment with every release. Fans who never learned the lessons that Sticker Star offered, that fans should sprout up around products, and not that products will be made for fans.

I have no rage for Sticker Star. I successfully recognized that Sticker Star did not deserve to tap into the well of emotions that had been drilled by the Thousand Year Door. With that realization, the bubble of nostalgia around the Thousand Year Door popped, its warm glow confined to its own identity instead of allowed to exist as an emotionally ethereal entity that could bless and inhabit other games. With that skill obtained, other nostalgia bubbles began to deflate over the years until none remained. It was a melancholic mental transformation, but with it came a confidence that the games I liked were Actually Good instead of emotional echoes of a previous self.

The Paper Mario series effectively taught me how the commodification of game series changes its identity. I’m tempted to say “and robs it of its soul,” but the new bad Paper Mario games have a different soul. A beige-colored soul. A market-tested soul that sets sales records, with legs enough that whatever Paper Mario came out on the Switch can probably tap into nostalgia people have for Sticker Star. (A concept that belongs in my personal version of hell.)

It’s only fitting that Mario, who introduced me to platforming, racing, and JRPGs, would also be the one to teach me about the dystopian rot of corporate game production.

I am not grateful.

This is one of my rare short reviews because I only played this for 40 minutes or so, but playing this was just so off putting. It screamed "what if majora mask + yume nikki = anime" and the writing pretty much reflected that too. It felt like it was attempting to be deep or reflective without actually having the experience to be deep or reflective. The writing resembled what you would find in really generic and obnoxious jrpgs. Some of the art potraits felt suspicious. Theres a huge hallway with repeating images of the happy mask salesman's face. At a certain point, how interesting something looks visually can only make up for the atmosphere so much, when you're borrowing so many ideas I want to know why I wouldnt rather just go play Yume Nikki (or Majoras Mask) instead. The concept for Night Loops is interesting but it feels like it got lost in its inspiration instead of focusing on what it actually is. That weird sheep who spoke in a shitty Brooklyn accent did not help.

I've always been a little bit weary of the Samba de Amigo games. Something about flailing plastic maracas around coupled with my total lack of coordination seems... dangerous. I have no sense of timing or rhythm, my body moves with the grace and flow of a marionette. I'm lucky I don't have kids because there won't be video footage of me accidentally beaning them in the face with a joycon, but the potential for self-harm is still there... "1... 2... 3... jump!" and my hands go directly through the lights of my ceiling fan. Spending the night getting glass picked out of my knuckles in the urgent care. Terrible. Why would I sign on for that?

Well, the allure of a good deal, for one. Big thank you to Sega for sending Samba de Amigo: Party Central out to die so I could grab it for a cool 14$. Also, I do like to party (alcoholic) and I love to get down (on the ground because I drank too much), so I spent some time clearing furniture to make a good open space and moved my collection of priceless Victorian era porcelain dolls out of the way and finally played me a little Samba de Amigo.

Party Central is remarkably easy and probably the best time I've ever had with a rhythm game in terms of sheer personal performance. I was pulling A and S ranks with ease because it's just so lenient, almost comically so, and while the low skill ceiling might be a problem for some, waving my arms around like Kermit and still being told "aw, good job, buddy!" made me feel pretty great! The StreamiGo mode, which adds additional objectives like getting less than three boo's or clearing with a set score, adds a little extra challenge and replay value, and I do think the whole conceit of Amigo trying to build clout as a streamer is pretty funny. He's gonna have to switch to hot tub streams eventually, that's... that's where the money is. Subscribe to Amigo's OnlyFans...............

I did encounter a lot of issues with misread inputs and latency but honestly, that might just be my Joycons. I've long been suffering from drift despite barely using these things, the Joycons are hands-down the worst controllers Nintendo has put out, which is quite an accomplishment all things considered. Bad form factor and cheap parts... it would not surprise me if I simply have poor form, but I'd be even less shocked if this was a hardware issue. Still, Party Central is so forgiving that it never became more than a minor annoyance.

If you're as rhythmically impaired as I am, you might actually get something out of Party Central and considering how cheap it is (Sega had like, zero confidence in this, huh?) it's a pretty easy pick up. Just make sure you have your Joycon straps on or you'll fling one of them directly into your porcelain doll collection and straight through the window and directly into the face of the neighbor's kid and spend your whole morning writing this review on hold with the insurance company

i'm in a lot of fuckin trouble, man

I got hit in the head very hard and woke up here...

I have a bad relationship with Mario Party and have already written several incendiary reviews on that series. I'll never apologize for those, because Mario Party has hurt me in ways both psychological and physical. The same can be said about Sonic the Hedgehog, so Sonic Shuffle is a real "worlds colliding" moment, smashing me between two points with such force that all my internal organs are emulsified on impact. Welcome to Maginary World, it fuckin' sucks here.

The Precious Stone, which governs the world of dreams, has been shattered by Void, a spirit who's only sin is being an avatar for the dark half of man that exists within us all and who the game repeatedly tells the player had the audacity to even exist. Not going to say this silly little story is offensive or anything but it is also really funny when your heroes are like "the world of dreams was once a beautiful place, and then Void had to be born..." Even Sonic gets in on this savagery, dogpiling the poor guy and going so far as to assault him before finally growing a conscious and realizing Void just wants to be embraced and made whole.

Look, there's something to be said here about stones and glass houses, because after slogging my way through Shuffle's story mode, I wanna jump the guy, too.

Sonic Shuffle forgoes dice rolls in favor of a card system, removing some of the random chance present in Mario Party for something more strategic. You can move a set amount of spaces based on what's available in your hand, or draw a card blindly from your opponent's hand, and on paper this actually sounds like a good system. Indeed, it might be if you're playing with friends, but every time I politely requested Fightcade to "ADD SONIC SHUFFLE OR I WILL DO SOMETHING WE BOTH REGRET" I was curiously met with silence. It's like they don't appreciate it or something. Very strange.

The AI is so brutal that the Sonic Wikia has a whole section dedicated specifically to combating it, something that is absolutely not the responsibility of an encyclopedia article to do. Even the Wikia admits the AI is skewed upwards, and from personal experience I can confirm the computer on "normal" is able to read everyone's hands and will routinely pick the cards that are the most advantageous, either for their personal benefit or by anticipating what you need and making the choice to kneecap you. Though it's noted as a characteristic of hard mode, on several occasions the computer veered away from a precious stone to camp out near where the next would spawn, and since Eggman will drop a fucking 16-ton anvil on the head of the player furthest from the last collected stone, this meant being actively punished for grabbing a stone only for another character to claim the next before I even had a chance to move.

At least playing in Redream bestowed me with the ability to cheat. Oh, the AI can see all my cards, can they? Well, if I just habitually load a save state, I too can know the placement of every card! I don't have to finish each level with six precious stone pieces, or the most rings and mini-game wins-- I don't need things, I want them. Now I am become Mario Party.... How the tables have turned.

Being allowed to tap into my own disgusting sadism aside, it is worth having this level of insurance to insulate you from the computer, as in true party game fashion, you might just lose to some bullshit and have to replay the entire board. The only difference here is that Sonic Shuffle drops any pretense of being random, it doesn't care to veil itself in the illusion of chance and is upfront with its cruelty. I gotta respect that.

It also just feels bad to play regardless of how conniving the AI is. Mini-games are uninspired and control poorly, and they fall into the Mario Party trap of not filtering previously played games out of the rotation. After beating the story mode, there were still thirteen mini-game I hadn't even seen. At least Sonic Shuffle has the decency to not end every turn with a mini-game, instead having them trigger by landing on an event space. Unfortunately, this also means you can roll a turn where you end up playing four mini-games, so fuck, I don't know! There are also "Accident!" games which trigger randomly and are unique to the board, but these lack any kind of preamble to convey the rules, instead placing them on the bottom of the screen while the game is underway. Not gonna complain about reading subtitles, but this is like trying to process information while a brick is being thrown at you just outside your periphery.

Mini-games aren't the only thing that feels insipid about Sonic Shuffle. Even the boards themselves are dull, with extremely trite gimmicks like not being able to step across alligators if their mouths are open. Fuck that. I'm gonna lay down, let the jaws of the beast take me. That's far more preferable to listening to lumina explain each board's unique spaces which, it turns out, just warp you to a random location. That's it, that's what all of them do. The final board is laid out like the Vortex World from Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and it is absolutely confounding. Probably spent more time just looking at the map counting spaces to figure out the most efficient route to a precious stone piece only for the math to never work out with how many spaces away the game claims I am, and I have to think it's just miscounting and judging distance through some other metric. Or maybe it's not, I can't tell!

I remember my first experience with this game. I was at Wal-Mart probably a month or two after it released. Sonic Shuffle, a Sonic game I hadn't heard of?? How is that possible...? I begged my dad to buy it, went home, popped it in the Dreamcast, and had a truly miserable time. And yet, I played it to completion. You'll just have to trust me on this because the battery to my VMU has long since died, and though I still own the game, I can't really prove that I unlocked every character and every item in Sonic's room. But like a man possessed, I did. This time? I settled for beating the story mode.

"See you again..."

No, you won't.