holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, why are video games so GOOD

I haven't played any of the other games in the King's Field metaseries (yet). I got here mostly because a lot of people were going around recommending it to everyone who liked Lunacid, last year's really good indie tribute to them. The influence is impossible to miss, but Lunacid is still going for quite a different mood from the source material; Shadow Tower: Abyss is a lot less friendly and nostalgic, and it's even more atmospheric and mysterious--perhaps the most so of any game I've ever played.

It's kind of amazing just how strong of a case it makes for art direction over graphical fidelity, and that's coming from someone who's been playing that tune faithfully for decades. Fromsoft was still dealing in the low budget range in the PS2 era, but even by their standards... let's just say you could show me quite a few screenshots of this game telling me it was on the PS1 before I got suspicious. It's not even like it's a really early PS2 game, 2003 was around the middle of the console's lifespan.

And yet, however angular the models and crispy the textures, and despite its world and inhabitants often being deliberately grotesque, Abyss's overall effect manages to be hauntingly beautiful. The environments are highly varied, but I don't think I'll ever get the sort of main hub area out of my mind. You walk around on earthy platforms suspended high in a vast, pitch-dark cavern, lit neon green by sources clearly neither natural nor manmade, populated by bizarre creatures that just stare at you with obvious distrust and speak to you either in cryptic, just-short-of-hostile sentence fragments or not at all, and all the time you'll periodically hear strange, loud noises that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere. Like Jesus CHRIST, guys, leave some cool spooky vibes for literally every other game in the world! There are poor Metroidvanias starving in the Epic Store!

But the enigma of this game goes beyond the aching need to see more of its fucked up world. I finished it, and there are very few questions I could possibly answer about its core RPG mechanics. The controls and UI are, affectionately, riddled with retrojank and nothing in the game explains itself even a little beyond item descriptions that spare maybe five words for the purpose. There's no map aside from the occasional crude one scrawled on a wall, and the level design gets labrynthine. You can full heal by sacrificing a piece of equipment at certain spots, and you repair equipment by sacrificing some of your health at others. There are items I picked up that I never figured out any use for at all. What the hell kind of stat is Solvent? What's the difference between Mind and Mentality? What do these status effects actually do? Okay, you have a carrying weight capacity and if you go over it it slows you down, that's perfectly basic, but I can't seem to drop items so I guess I'm just in slow-mo until I get back to the little shop node and pawn some things off, might as well keep picking up looh my god I'm moving even slower now and TAKING A SHITLOAD OF DAMAGE OVER TIME WHAT--

I'm not usually a "don't use a guide" kind of girl, but seriously, don't try to use a guide. I'm not convinced you'll find one that answers a lot of these questions, anyway. The game is honestly, and surprisingly, not super hard as long as you stock up on healing potions and watch the extremely fragile durability of your gear. You don't need to optimize, and it's more unnerving and intriguing than frustrating to get lost in these levels. Combat is extremely basic aside from a cool dismemberment mechanic (most enemies will not necessarily die if you cut off their heads, fun detail!), but that's because it's not the main draw. The game is also pretty short, maybe a ten hour joint or so.

Play Shadow Tower: Abyss. I can be cagey about actually universally recommending games since my tastes can run to the esoteric and janky, and that's extremely the case here, but I don't think that does anything but enhance the experience. If you have literally any interest in dungeon crawlers or surreal, dark fantasy as a genre or aesthetic, play it. You deserve to give this game a serious try as much as the game deserves to be a household name.

Masterpiece obsession simulator. A game that invites the mind to spiral and to be consumed, that encourages paranoid uncertainty. Taking the shin-honkaku (new traditionalist) mystery into a new medium, the game obsesses over its own artifice and form, twisting what should be a classic whodunnit into a bold post-modern labyrinth of different genres, meta-reflections, and player implications. A game that feels like no matter how much you dig, there is no bottom. Even when you "beat" the game, solve the mystery, it only reveals more to you and in turn uncovers more questions.

What is at the bottom of Kamaitachi no Yoru? Strip it all back, find its heart, and what exactly is this game? That is the real mystery. And it's a mystery you could spend a lifetime trying to solve.

More thoughts here

cosmic smash sets the tone.

sonic adventure was a system seller, a response to nintendo's own 3D platformer which was sm64. however, games like Rez, L.O.L., Roommania and most importantly Cosmic Smash were political statements. it was a response not to one game but to the industry as a whole. that was sega saying "we are not afraid to experiment, and look at what that sentiment birthed".

sega gave their geniuses the platform and opportunity to shine. without worrying about money and profit, they allowed for odd and questionable ideas to become fully fletched experiences and the result was one of the best libraries of any videogame console ever. more importantly to this review is that this push of unadulterared >art< resulted in a strong and firm sense of style.

when people think of Y2K aesthetics, they're thinking of the dreamcast. they're thinking of Space Channel 5. they're thinking of Tomoko Sasaki's Serani Poji. they're thinking of Rez. but moreover, they're thinking exactly of Cosmic Smash.

a game that would give the guy who created VIDEOBALL a field day, a simple and finite one-player digital sport that gives the player set challenges that they can choose to overcome with whatever moviments they like. there's a time limit, but you don't need to worry about that when you already know how to control your character. it's ok, you'll make it. the challenges get trickier, but you get stronger, you create muscle memory and your own strategies to each stage. eventually you get a game over -- or you win, who knows -- and then, you think, "i'm gonna do it again".

all of that, of course, coated under the most clear cut and transparent display of what people would later call "Y2K aesthetics". so much in fact that it seems weird to think of cosmic smash as a part of the era and not the trend setter itself. the music, the textures, the lines, the minimalism, even the game design itself, all reek of the turn of the century. it's a more contained and quiet version of what Rez was doing, so it ends up being less eye catching but still beautiful. its minimalism also contrasts Rez's intricate design and artistic execution, being the exact opposite extreme, so it's sort of the anti-rez.

cosmic smash is an era defining statement, a tone-setter that feels like the cherry on top of the dreamcast library. anyone could play this, and everyone should.

Pop-Up Kirby is officially...found media! I enjoy Return to Dream Land back on the Wii, even finished it when I rented it from Blockbuster with my brother. Those were fun days as a kid... This truly was Kirby's return after a decade of Super Star's style left to sit there other than the DS remake. I plan to try the epilogue mode soon, but the minigame mode is a real treat of fanservice!
It's fascinating just how far the Kirby GCN iceberg goes. Once a late GameCube title canned and moved onto the Wii for a 3D action game. Then restarted development and shifted to a 2D pop-up book style game, which eventually became the game we know today. Assets reused for Smash Bros Brawl, Subspace possibly being inspired by Kirby GCN, and beta songs from all 3 iterations of Return to Dream Land. You can hear a specific motif that was truly made for Pop-Up Kirby and GCN, like yeah this totally would fit a storybook Kirby game. All of those assets were in the Wii game and still in this Switch remake, it's kinda crazy! This is just my space to ramble about Kirby GCN cuz it looked so damn cool...

(Edit: 2/13/24) Magalor Epilogue is a fun mode that adds some extra challenge to the mix. I like the moveset, upgrades and action focused level design a lot. I wish I could have tried it in co-op, but it’s a good, short experience in single player.

Despite an obvious dog whistle of a title and story, the game is honestly...fine? Like, don't get me wrong, it plays well and has a charming, if overly simplistic, art style, but did we really need Wario Land 5 with a sprinkling of Sonic the Hedgehog? This is not the next big world-changing combination since Harry Reese discovered the culinary genius that is chocolate mixed with peanut butter. Instead, we have a Wario game that emphasizes going as fast as possible and not taking your time and enjoying the inventive level themes and enemy designs. Why craft all these things if you just want us to run past them? I suppose that's the culture nowadays, people want everything over with as quickly as possible. Such is the era of TikTok and McDonald's...sigh

You ever go back and watch, like, Shrek or some shit and then you're like "wait a second, since when was 'Bad Reputation' in this? And how does it work so well?" That's every single stage in Elite Beat Agents. A dozen and a half action-packed vignettes concerning characters trying to do anything from babysitting to drilling for oil to surviving on a remote island, accompanied by a licensed music track that, more often than not, feels lyrically contradictory to what's actually going on in the story. And as you're walkin'-and-a-talkin'-and-a-movin'-and-a-groovin'-and-a-hippin'-and-a-hoppin'-and-a-pickin'-and-a-poppin', you might ask yourself... How? How is it that these specific soundwaves, produced by these low-quality DS speakers, originally devised by pop stars who were already outdated by the time this game released, are able to compel my stylus to fly across the bottom screen so quickly? And with such precision? Because, even if you ignore how genuinely witty this game is, parodying at once both American movie montages and the concept of rhythm gaming itself, it's so utterly mechanically satisfying at a base level. There are few, if any, video games that bring me more joy than what I feel whenever I manage to drag myself out of the red with a perfect string of beats as the EBAs pick their heads up and start chanting in tandem to my actions during the most frantic section of "Sk8er Boy" or "Material Girl." And, yeah, the two scoring systems are at odds with each other, on higher difficulties you can die just because there's too large of a gap in between notes, and spin beats don't serve much of a purpose. But, having just now finally completed the game with the Divas after leaving them sitting on "Without a Fight" for the last who-knows-how-many years, I think I can safely admit to myself that I simply do not care. Most of the time, whenever I'm playing a different rhythm game, I just think about how I could be playing Elite Beat Agents instead. And whenever I think about Elite Beat Agents, I usually think about how they managed to cram three minutes of blatant sexual innuendo into a Nintendo game, and how it happens to air while you're playing as an anthropomorphic representation of a teenager's bloodstream. Or I think about how it presents the most painfully melodramatic Christmas story of all time, focused on an anonymous family that you have absolutely no connection to... and how it still works on an emotional level just because Chicago happens to be playing in the background. But, mostly, I just think about how, whenever I hear any of these songs in isolation, I can still visualize the pattern of in-game beats that appear during each section of the track. Music lives.

Software Creations supposedly began work on Equinox in March 1990, being the first Western developer to gain access to a SNES devkit. The game wasn't completed for another three years, reportedly at least partially due to visual bugs, and even in the final product you can still see glimpses of flickering and incorrect overlapping. Not only that, but there are weird glitches that can happen for unknown reasons that may lead to soft resets. The damn thing is barely holding itself together, and it nearly collapses under its ambitions alone even without the technical issues in mind.

Yet, in spite of all that, I mostly enjoyed myself. It definitely got a bit exhausting towards the end of its eight hour runtime as the dungeons became more and more massive, but it starts off surprisingly strong and still manages to keep things going acceptably throughout. My favorite aspect is probably the ambient soundtrack by the Follins, which I never found myself getting tired of throughout the entire game. Wasn't always a fan of the way the game looked, especially not that grimace Glendaal makes every time he dies, but there are some very pretty areas such as Quagmire and Atlena during the midgame. It reminds me a lot of Landstalker in that aspect - not just that they're both isometric action RPGs, but they're both kind of ugly for the most part yet still endearing. I'm not sure which I prefer.

The puzzles aren't so great either once you reach a certain point, mostly consisting of weird optical illusions and other sorts of perspective fuckery. An interview from 1994 mentions that 3D shadowing to allow for better depth perception wasn't really possible at the time, possibly indicating that a lot of these types of rooms were meant to be clearer than they really are. Hitboxes can also be pretty frustrating, especially with spikes, and I found that none of the bosses were very engaging. Combined with how long the game is, it seems like the negatives should outweigh the positives, but such is thankfully not the case for me this time.

Equinox is definitely more of a 'vibes game' than something I'd really entertain the thought of revisiting, but I had a pretty decent time regardless. Not very descriptive, of course, but surely it makes sense. The soothing soundtrack and smaller emphasis on combat really do wonders to the feel of the whole thing, despite the aggravating difficulty later on. I would definitely recommend this if you're super into Landstalker or Light Crusader. I don't know if it's necessarily better than those, and it's certainly a little janky, but it's worth a look if you're in that crowd.

(Logged as a shoe-in for both the base Monster Hunter: World game, and the Iceborne expansion.)
Lavish & deathly exciting at practically all times - varied and expressive social MMO tissue connecting its numerous multi-layered terrariums of gorgeous arenas and silly monsties.

I do have some background with the series, with much history on Freedom Unite, and far less with the fantranslation of Portable 3rd + 3Ultimate at various points through highschool, and hit the credits of Rise. Freedom Unite came packed with FMV cutscenes that demonstrate how the monsters lived in their downtime - characterising the monsters to assure the player that they weren't merely thoughtless models with movesets to memorise, but individual links in the food chain with roles that keep the world biodiverse & strong.
It was always my favourite part of the game, and what felt like the series' missing hook to really sell me on the core conceit was in how this aspect is somewhat downplayed or unexplored.

By God's grace this was the kind of ecological focus MH:W absolutely relishes in. An interlinking tapestry of ecosystems ticking away, living & interacting in countless ways to make the New World feel so gd raw. And it's not just pageantry either, it plays into behaviours and environment interactions from traps to turf wars. So so so good to head out for a simple hunt to watch it blossom into a scrappy mess of tooth & claw, so so so good to go on aimless expedition to a zone and notice a new handful of behaviours from their endemic life. I’d not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t compliment the chefs on all of this, every monster in every zone is given so much purpose it’s inspiring.

One thing this series has always been great at is its environment design - the world of Monster Hunter is a land of plenty, and everything is blown out of proportion to match. You're eating sirloin steaks the size of your head, oyster side dishes that can feed an army. The tooth you built your hammer out of can sink a ship. Zones and skyboxes that coil across different unique biomes rich in visual stimuli, adding heaps of context for the world and how things are as they are. Pan the camera up at any point and you can assuredly see a spire of choral, ice or crystal towering over you from what appears to be a mile away. Hoarfrost Reach is gorgeous I need to live there NOW.

Moment to moment combat is of course good as hell. I love that it’s slow and weighty enough to separate it from a more typical Capcom character action affair. Even with the amassing layers of QoL the series has glazed itself with, World still focuses on hefty player move commitment and punishment. Every weapon here feels great and each individually recontextualises your approach to any fight, but I found a home with the Dual Blades I’m afraid. I love these stupid ale blades man!!! Basically adored the progression right up until the Furious Rajang, where the game takes a very steep swerve into grind and Raid-like Design territory I find catatonic & diagnostic. The Fatalis fight is so much fun I wish I could solo it 😢

Truly a Ubisoft Original © in a sense that it's been the buggiest release in recent memory. I had sound bugs, cutscene bugs, gameplay bugs. I found a way to glitch the game to run entirely in slow motion. One time all sound effects disappeared until I completely rebooted the app. During one of the boss fights the camera stuck to a place so I had to rely on muscle memory and sound cues when the boss was out of frame (I still defeated them which might actually speak highly of the design). Whatever this is. It was a shockingly unpolished ride which makes me believe that the last group in Ubisoft subsoils which is still allowed to make games was rushed to get Prince of Persia out the oven. And I'm sorry to lead with this, because the game itself is seriously awesome.

It's just a stupidly good game of its type. With Prince of Persia the craft of making "good ass metroidvania" seems to be perfected to a sheen. These folks in Montpelier aren't afraid to leave you alone with the whole map and vague directions to explore. They will create a wildly intricate 2D combat and not teach you any of its peripeteia unless you check with an NPC tucked at the corner of one of the rooms. They will drop you into shockingly precise platforming section required to progress. They also designed maybe the best set of powers in a metroidvania, nearly all of which used to equal success in exploration, combat and puzzles! Nothing here is breaking new grounds, but every core facet of new Prince of Persia is designed to create just right amount of friction to be engaging. Fantastic fucking time when you're not dealing with bugs.

I'm also very much enthused by artistic goals of The Lost Crown. The old Prince of Persia were good, but Persia itself always felt like an middle eastern fantasyland with corresponding iconography of evil vizier scheming behind the back of good sultan, and only you, the prince of an abstract ancient Arabic country is destinied to save the night. The Lost Crown actually strives to be a game that's unmistakably Persian, paying a lot of respect to the culture, drawing from Iranian literature, ancient Zoroastrianism and hiring Iranian voice actors to do an awesome Farsi dub. I'm not lettered enough to confirm the ingenuity of the work, but it feels authentic and reverent. And the story is quite neat too, playing on expectations that come with the name. I came for a solid metroidvania and stayed for great vibes.

I'm just kinda upset that with all these positive I wasn't having exactly the best time with all the technical issues I encountered. Ubisoft should've let it cook for a few more months. Maybe I'll do a full map sweep after patches some months later and my impression will only improve.