SpikeTheStupido
2021
Toree 2 takes what the original Toree did, which was to be a very short but sweet platformer with a slight horror edge to it, and cranked it up to, I dunno, probably a 7.
There's some intrigue with the story, much like other games by this developer, but there's still not a ton to stick your teeth into. I see these games are more of fun little snack bite games meant to kill some time, and it serves that use very well, but they always leave me wanting more. If the developer ever went to make a full scale game with a plethora of mechanics that's smartly done, it'd have the potential to be one of my favorite 3D platformers. As of now, these games have just been fun. Not life changingly fun, but fun enough. And that's all it really set out to be.
There's some intrigue with the story, much like other games by this developer, but there's still not a ton to stick your teeth into. I see these games are more of fun little snack bite games meant to kill some time, and it serves that use very well, but they always leave me wanting more. If the developer ever went to make a full scale game with a plethora of mechanics that's smartly done, it'd have the potential to be one of my favorite 3D platformers. As of now, these games have just been fun. Not life changingly fun, but fun enough. And that's all it really set out to be.
This review contains spoilers
The Last of Us was a game that garnered massive amounts of praise. The overall buzz around the story, with certain game journalists claiming that it was "The Citizen Kane of Video Games", didn't exactly help temper expectations. With over 200 awards given, the game must have done something to earn them.
Yet, I didn't feel that way when I played it. To me, it was your average AAA third person shooter with a semi-decent story, but it was telling a story that I've seen done before. In a game that came out the very same year.
Lisa The Painful is one of my favorite games of all time.
Not only did Lisa completely rip out my heart emotionally, but it utilized gameplay in tandem with it's story to create something that only a video game could. Both of these things The Last of Us never attempted to do. From my perspective, it all felt like a pointless effort. Why have a game that doesn't utilize it's medium's strengths? Why do people try and tout it as the "Citizen Kane of video games" when it barely needs to be a video game? For a time, I labeled it as an example of the AAA industry's pathetic attempt at trying to be taken seriously as an art form by harping on what movies do, regressing the medium of it's true potential.
... Pretty fucking harsh, I know.
Needless to say, my expectations with The Last of Us were extremely skewed. I was set up for expecting to feel the same emotions similar pieces of media brought me, and for the game to be a game that changed the entirety of how the industry looked at and made games. More importantly, I expected it to change how I personally would look at video games. It wasn't any of those things. And it could never be any of those things for me. Lisa The Painful will always mean so much to me, and those feelings brought from that game simply could not be replicated by it, since they’re two completely different games. The industry has already proven to both myself and others that it's a beautiful art form. The game just isn't the game to change my perspective on what video games could be, because it most likely wasn't trying to be that. It was just being itself.
While these feelings aren't completely gone, I've soften my opinion on The Last of Us as time has passed by. There's no longer a feeling of contempt for the game, but more just a tinge of disappoint towards what it could have been. What that game could have been if it stretched it's legs more, focused on the aspects it was great at, in a medium that it's based in. All this preamble leads us to The Last of Us Part 2.
When The Last of Us Part 2's trailers were first being shown, I was rather confused. I had figured with a game like The Last of Us, a story like that would be book ended perfectly, with no real room for a sequel. And yet, like a zombie, it lives! Coming back to life! On it's release, critics praised the game, giving the game even more awards than the first game, even going so far as to break the record of game with the most awards given to it. On the other hand, fans seemed to be torn on it. I distinctly remember the flashes of my twitter feed being bombarded with a multitude of complaints, directed primarily on the story. Memes were made of Abby and Owen having awkward sex, countless videos raging about what they did to the characters, friends telling me just how awful the story was. The tidal wave of criticisms thrown at the game had my expectations set at the very bottom of the ocean.
And yet, bubbling back up to the surface, my curiosity was peaked. How exactly did the game handle these aspects? Would I have a different opinion? Have Naughty Dog improved their core gameplay design since The Last of Us? So, I told myself that if I ever saw TLOU Part 2 on sale for 5-10 bucks, I'd give it a shot.
10 bucks down the drain and 30 hours later, I can safely say that The Last of Us Part 2 is indeed, a video game that I have played. With both of my gamer thumbs. Having played through the game for myself, the story has probably been my biggest complaint as well.
The plot to this game makes it hard to sympathize with either side. It's meant to be a story about the cycle of violence, and it's very frustrating to experience when you don't seem to sympathize at all with any of the characters.
Ellie's goals seem to wane with each scene. In one scene, she's worried about Tommy and wants to go after him, in the next scene, she and Jessie have a falling out where she wants to take a boat directly to Abby, forcing a scene where she and Jessie split up for no real reason. Would it really be that difficult to save Tommy so that she can THEN go after Abby?
Why does Ellie go from okay with killing and murdering everyone, to suddenly having the shakes when killing a specific girl with a metal pipe? Why is she traumatized with this person specifically? This is a woman that told Ellie, directly to her face, that it felt good to hear Joel's screams, and that he was so glad they killed that bastard. For all intents and purposes, this should have Ellie feeling completely justified with killing her. Nora was being horribly evil in this situation. Not only that, but Ellie at this point has killed a large number of people, snapping their necks, stabbing them repeatedly, NakeyJakey was right, she does this all while calling them fuckers. She has a hate/murder boner sometimes, and then has small break downs for no real reasons other than to justify her forgiveness later in the plot.
Abby might be worse than Ellie in regards to feeling any sympathy. It's hard to feel anything for someone when they say "it's their fault for sending them to fight us" when she's justifying why they killed KIDS. Later in the story, she suddenly decides to protect Lev and Yara because she now feels guilty about it. But then, why have her defending her actions when Mel says it doesn't sit well with her? Is it because her room mate Manny agrees with the decision, and she's trying to put a mask on at the moment? Then again, she ends up having the heart to do this for Lev in front of Mel and Owen, so what's the big issue exactly? Mel even calls her out on this, but I still don't understand the motivation for the sudden change of heart. Lev and Yara as characters are meant to kick start her redemption, but there's barely an inciting incident besides them saving her life and them being like the kids she killed. It should have taken her a while to earn each other's trust, not for just Lev and Yara. And yet, here we are! Abby just suddenly changes her opinion! Yet, she never did the same with Joel?
This is the same woman that had such a strong, big hate boner that she denies sex at an aquarium so she can go and beef up more so she could kill Joel. When she finally meets Joel, she doesn't seem to even second guess herself when everything he did for her up until that point where she knew it was him, was protect and save her from a hoard of infected. She still goes through with the plan, not even considering to ask him why he did what he did. So for this woman to have a sudden change of heart in her violent tendencies seems a bit weird.
Though, I suppose it's been built in her head she has to do this, and I can only assume it's because her group is already bloodthirsty and vile. The WLF are torturing people to get information out of them, killing people without question, they have no disregard to sending out a pregnant woman on a mission where she could easily be killed or have a miscarriage from all the jumping and falling she does, they're a tribe who shoot anyone who they randomly see as "intruders". This isn't necessarily a bad thing for the story to do, though the pregnant girl in a war zone is fucking insanely dumb, Nakey Jakey is 100% right on that when he says it doesn't necessarily feel intentional. It's just, neither of these sides are doing anything to make you like them as individuals either.
At every attempt to have me sympathize with these characters, it tends to fail. I found almost every character in this game to either be weak, unremarkable, boring, or very okay. I feel nothing for these characters. The relationship between Joel and Ellie is probably the best one, given they have a very fun relationship with a fun back and forth between them as seen in flashback sequences, even divorced from the context of the first game. This is coming from someone who didn't really care much about Joel and Ellie's relationship in the first game, since I never really cared about these characters until they started to truly care about each other. Seeing their relationship go from trust, to breaking down at the truth of Joel killing the doctors that could have developed a cure, is a strong arc. But every other arc seems to fall flat. Abby and Owen have this weird relationship, which culminates when the both of them are getting hot and bothered and angry at each other for Owen calling out Abby going on a revenge mission that they just randomly have sex. It's one of the most baffling scenes in the game, and I had to cover my face from laughing so hard. Ellie and Dina's relationship I don't have any semblance of care for, Dina barely having much of a character besides a small inkling of banter. Lev and Yara are meant to be characters that lead Abby down the path of redemption, but there's really no reason for her to suddenly change her perspective. Lev is fine, I guess, but Yara is kind of forgettable, on top of her death being incredibly contrived. Abby and Yara could have gone back the through where they were on the island after they found Lev again, they even MENTION THAT THEY COULD DO THIS, BUT THEY LITERALLY ALL JUST IGNORE IT BECAUSE "OH, I HEAR PEOPLE BEHIND US". So instead of going towards the section of the island where they already know the layout to, where the population of that area was smaller given it's not a major city, their plan is instead to go to THE CAPITAL OF THE CITY, WHERE THE WLF ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR MOST TROOPS SENT TOWARDS??? It's completely asinine to me that there's a slight attempt to justify this plot hole, but they DON'T EVEN FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THE JUSTIFICATION.
Some characters in this game just don't get any real development, and almost feel like throw away characters, when really, they shouldn't be. Jessie's character amounts to nothing besides reminding Ellie that maybe her warpath isn't the right thing to do, Manny literally gets killed and Abby barely even reacts, Isaac is the leader of the WLF and is in charge of their practices, yet he's barely even a character that we get to examine. If we wanted to focus on how groups waging war on each other is bad, why have Isaac be this very basic war mongering tyrant who just REALLY wants to kill people not in his tribe?
One of the worst part I feel about this story is that, nobody even tries to ask Ellie how she feels about doing the surgery that will develop the vaccine. This in turn makes me dislike the doctor, (which is Abby’s dad), than feel any sympathy for him. This entire situation could have quite literally been solved if they actually asked Ellie what she wanted to do. That way, they could also ask Joel WITH Ellie there, maybe giving him some kind of closure to this idea if she agreed. Of course, the disconnect of communication is human nature, people don't always come up with the best solutions, but it's such a simple solution to two games worth of plot that could have easily been solved because of this one character's decision to not communicate when they could have, and another character’s actions to just kill everyone.
As the stories converge, we play as Abby going up against Ellie. After everything this character has gone through, she for some reason just, let's her live? Again? Whatever. We cut to years later, where Ellie is happy living a quiet life, but becomes haunted by the trauma of her past. She can't let it go, so she goes to find Abby once more. As it turns out, Abby was captured by slavers, and as Ellie accidentally liberates an entire slave trade just to search for this girl, she finds her hung up on a pole. She’s clearly malnourished and looks horrible. Ellie cuts her down and they both go to a boat with Lev. The mood is set on this fog enveloped beach, where the sea is covered with it’s unending presence. Ellie threatens Lev with a knife just to get Abby to fight her, and they throw down in the water. Ellie gets the upper hand and is drowning her, but thinks of the last times she spent with Joel, which we later find out is where she extended an arm to try and eventually forgive him for not telling her the truth, and let's Abby go. The cycle of violence has been stopped.
Yet, all I could think of while this scene was happening was that this was only happening because the plot has haphazardly been manufactured to get us to this point. The plot to the first Last of Us was reworked to fit this narrative, with the story beats plotted out with loose motivations and plot contrivances to get us there. Characters are brought on and their purposes were left forgotten about. Characters clashed with flimsy motives to kill one another. Watching the plot unfold was like watching Neil Druckmann tie two cats together with duct tape to watch them fight. It's entertaining to watch them bumble around like crazy idiots, but you made this happen, Neil. I can see the duct tape. Oh, great, now they're ruining my furniture. Thanks for that, Neil Druckmann.
The narrative has been criticized online for a number of reasons, and I think fans were mostly in the right for that. It’s clear to me that the script was in dire need of another draft, and what we got was a much more rushed script. As a game with a strong narrative focus, it fails to deliver on a good narrative. However, narrative focused games are, indeed, still video games. And I played this game with my two gamer thumbs. So how was the gameplay?
I.. Surprisingly liked it.
See, my expectations about the game have been fairly low thus far, about the complete opposite from the first game. Part of that had to do with the fan backlash, which made me expect a boring video game, but another part of it was that I was expecting this game to have many of the same problems that previous Naughty Dog games have had.
Naughty Dog games, specifically modern day ones, often feel segmented — the main 3 pillars being combat, exploration, and puzzles. Numerous times, I would be able to tell what kind of section I was in simply because of how the level was laid out. If you saw a bunch of boxes randomly in a street way, you knew you were going to be fighting. If you saw a ladder or a pallet, you knew you were going to be doing a puzzle. If you saw a little blocks you could clearly grab onto in Uncharted, you knew you were going to have to do a climbing section. The designers had a difficult time creating spaces that were both believable and functional for the player to exist in.
Another problem with Naughty Dog games that I had was that you never had a full sense of scale. In TLOU1 specifically, there were hardly any viewpoints of the city from high up. I would constantly feel like I was just heading in whatever direction the level design dictated me to go, with no real sense of landmark or discovery. This cropped up in the Uncharted games I've played as well, where you were often too in the mud of things.
... So to my genuine surprise, The Last of Us Part 2 managed to solve BOTH of these issues. And, I don’t know, I might have, maybe had a lot of fun because of that?
The Last of Us Part 2 does a way, WAY better job at seamlessly blending those gameplay pillars. Most of the time, the pillars blend within the same environment, and sometimes, they even play around with your expectations. My favorite example is this section where you bust into a hotel, and a makeshift door chime made of beer bottles goes off as you enter. This put me on edge, because I figured I was still in an exploration section. I went upstairs and I was in a large apartment room, and I was still put on edge — something about this large space made me feel vulnerable. But I shrugged it off, thinking that I was probably just overreacting, and went to the work bench to adjust my weapons. Wha-bam! An enemy comes up behind me, attacks me, suddenly I'm thrust into a combat section. It put me through the exact emotions I was supposed to be feeling, and I lulled me into a false sense of security. These types of sections aren't incredibly common place, but there's enough moments just like this that has very much improved since the Uncharted/TLOU1 days.
The sense of scale issue has been solved with much more open level design, often times giving you high up vantage points at the beginning of a section, as well as other little tricks to make this world feel more expansive and lived in. There was an effort to make the environments more believable to the setting, and what you interact with within that environment feels much more well placed and thought out.
The rope mechanic is probably the most fun I've had with any Naughty Dog game post-Jak. The first rope puzzle where you have to figure out how to get the outlet to a different plug was one of the best moments I've had in any The Last of Us games and it's because the game let me figure out the puzzle for myself, and it was intuitive to solve. It utilizes the world and the physics in such a uniquely video game way that made me wish there were more times when they used the rope. If there ever was a Part 3, including more open sections like when Ellie and Dina explore on horse-back an entire city, would be SUCH a blasty-blast.
In terms of combat, the survival balance of fighting, shooting, crafting, healing is all there from the first game, if not slightly better. The game's drop system gives you just enough to have your head above water, and there's fun to be had trying your best to survive the onslaught. Humans are more fun and dynamic, flanking you and having you come up with on the spot strategies to out maneuver them. The infected I often see as more of a slog, with runners and stalkers being slightly annoying, clickers being incredibly annoying, bloaters being ammo depositories that aren't very challenging. They serve a great break up from the human enemies, but they're probably the weaker of the two. Melee combat works weird, and I’m never sure what I’m doing wrong within the system. I attack an enemy and have my momentum going with punches, but then they suddenly have the upper hand and hit me. It isn’t clear to me when I’m meant to duck and weave and when I can keep wailing on someone.
Scavenging is simple, yet somewhat enjoyable. You're on the constant murder spree in this game, so to have sections like this where you can soak in the environments and do small environmental puzzles to find supplies is a welcomed inclusion.
Granted, all of these gameplay loops tend to get a little stale after the 30-40 hours spent in it, but it still maintained decent level of enjoyment from me.
When I was younger, I had always wanted a game that felt like what Last of Us Part 2 is like — an apocalyptic cityscape, overgrown with life that has seeped it's way back in since the fall of humanity. Surviving a zombie apocalypse and being able to explore abandoned ruins of a modern day city in order scavenge for supplies has been an itch I've always wanted scratched. It's not as open as I would prefer, (and I haven't been able to scale large buildings with a grapple hook), but the direction of which this world has been crafted is wonderfully done and breathtaking to be in.
Some of the set pieces in this game are fantastic. Whether it be the emergency flares covering an underground subway tunnel with pure red, the many overgrown suburban houses, the large scale city of Seattle overgrown with life and the undead alike, some areas being submerged in water with running rapids, the zoo, aquarium, island, heck, to everything! It fills a very specific niche for me, something I didn't expect going into this game given the previous game didn't scratch that itch. Soaking in some of these environments was a major highlight for me, and it’s clearly a labor of love.
... Man, I had a lot more to say about this game than I expected I would.
Honestly, I didn't really expect to like this game. In any regard, for that matter. Combining the amount of backlash received online, alongside my already pre-existing distain for the first game, I figured I'd walk away from this game with a much more cynical attitude. But with expectations made so low, it's left me able to appreciate what's there on a technical and gameplay level, both of which have surpassed The Last of Us by a wide margin for me. This puts me in a bit of a pickle, however. If I liked the game because of my low expectations, am I now being more biased towards the game because of these low expectations? Well, yes, of course. I can clearly see the game still doesn't push the medium in many ways. It fails at being a narrative-driven game with the inclusion of a bad narrative. It fails at creating a gameplay loop that reinforces the narrative they wanted.
But hey, at least I got something out of it. I had fun with a video game using my two big gamer thumbs, and I got to explore a beautiful post-apocalyptic universe in a way that scratched a specific itch. It's probably not what Neil Druckmann wanted, but fuck him, that's what he gets for ruining my fucking furniture.
Yet, I didn't feel that way when I played it. To me, it was your average AAA third person shooter with a semi-decent story, but it was telling a story that I've seen done before. In a game that came out the very same year.
Lisa The Painful is one of my favorite games of all time.
Not only did Lisa completely rip out my heart emotionally, but it utilized gameplay in tandem with it's story to create something that only a video game could. Both of these things The Last of Us never attempted to do. From my perspective, it all felt like a pointless effort. Why have a game that doesn't utilize it's medium's strengths? Why do people try and tout it as the "Citizen Kane of video games" when it barely needs to be a video game? For a time, I labeled it as an example of the AAA industry's pathetic attempt at trying to be taken seriously as an art form by harping on what movies do, regressing the medium of it's true potential.
... Pretty fucking harsh, I know.
Needless to say, my expectations with The Last of Us were extremely skewed. I was set up for expecting to feel the same emotions similar pieces of media brought me, and for the game to be a game that changed the entirety of how the industry looked at and made games. More importantly, I expected it to change how I personally would look at video games. It wasn't any of those things. And it could never be any of those things for me. Lisa The Painful will always mean so much to me, and those feelings brought from that game simply could not be replicated by it, since they’re two completely different games. The industry has already proven to both myself and others that it's a beautiful art form. The game just isn't the game to change my perspective on what video games could be, because it most likely wasn't trying to be that. It was just being itself.
While these feelings aren't completely gone, I've soften my opinion on The Last of Us as time has passed by. There's no longer a feeling of contempt for the game, but more just a tinge of disappoint towards what it could have been. What that game could have been if it stretched it's legs more, focused on the aspects it was great at, in a medium that it's based in. All this preamble leads us to The Last of Us Part 2.
When The Last of Us Part 2's trailers were first being shown, I was rather confused. I had figured with a game like The Last of Us, a story like that would be book ended perfectly, with no real room for a sequel. And yet, like a zombie, it lives! Coming back to life! On it's release, critics praised the game, giving the game even more awards than the first game, even going so far as to break the record of game with the most awards given to it. On the other hand, fans seemed to be torn on it. I distinctly remember the flashes of my twitter feed being bombarded with a multitude of complaints, directed primarily on the story. Memes were made of Abby and Owen having awkward sex, countless videos raging about what they did to the characters, friends telling me just how awful the story was. The tidal wave of criticisms thrown at the game had my expectations set at the very bottom of the ocean.
And yet, bubbling back up to the surface, my curiosity was peaked. How exactly did the game handle these aspects? Would I have a different opinion? Have Naughty Dog improved their core gameplay design since The Last of Us? So, I told myself that if I ever saw TLOU Part 2 on sale for 5-10 bucks, I'd give it a shot.
10 bucks down the drain and 30 hours later, I can safely say that The Last of Us Part 2 is indeed, a video game that I have played. With both of my gamer thumbs. Having played through the game for myself, the story has probably been my biggest complaint as well.
The plot to this game makes it hard to sympathize with either side. It's meant to be a story about the cycle of violence, and it's very frustrating to experience when you don't seem to sympathize at all with any of the characters.
Ellie's goals seem to wane with each scene. In one scene, she's worried about Tommy and wants to go after him, in the next scene, she and Jessie have a falling out where she wants to take a boat directly to Abby, forcing a scene where she and Jessie split up for no real reason. Would it really be that difficult to save Tommy so that she can THEN go after Abby?
Why does Ellie go from okay with killing and murdering everyone, to suddenly having the shakes when killing a specific girl with a metal pipe? Why is she traumatized with this person specifically? This is a woman that told Ellie, directly to her face, that it felt good to hear Joel's screams, and that he was so glad they killed that bastard. For all intents and purposes, this should have Ellie feeling completely justified with killing her. Nora was being horribly evil in this situation. Not only that, but Ellie at this point has killed a large number of people, snapping their necks, stabbing them repeatedly, NakeyJakey was right, she does this all while calling them fuckers. She has a hate/murder boner sometimes, and then has small break downs for no real reasons other than to justify her forgiveness later in the plot.
Abby might be worse than Ellie in regards to feeling any sympathy. It's hard to feel anything for someone when they say "it's their fault for sending them to fight us" when she's justifying why they killed KIDS. Later in the story, she suddenly decides to protect Lev and Yara because she now feels guilty about it. But then, why have her defending her actions when Mel says it doesn't sit well with her? Is it because her room mate Manny agrees with the decision, and she's trying to put a mask on at the moment? Then again, she ends up having the heart to do this for Lev in front of Mel and Owen, so what's the big issue exactly? Mel even calls her out on this, but I still don't understand the motivation for the sudden change of heart. Lev and Yara as characters are meant to kick start her redemption, but there's barely an inciting incident besides them saving her life and them being like the kids she killed. It should have taken her a while to earn each other's trust, not for just Lev and Yara. And yet, here we are! Abby just suddenly changes her opinion! Yet, she never did the same with Joel?
This is the same woman that had such a strong, big hate boner that she denies sex at an aquarium so she can go and beef up more so she could kill Joel. When she finally meets Joel, she doesn't seem to even second guess herself when everything he did for her up until that point where she knew it was him, was protect and save her from a hoard of infected. She still goes through with the plan, not even considering to ask him why he did what he did. So for this woman to have a sudden change of heart in her violent tendencies seems a bit weird.
Though, I suppose it's been built in her head she has to do this, and I can only assume it's because her group is already bloodthirsty and vile. The WLF are torturing people to get information out of them, killing people without question, they have no disregard to sending out a pregnant woman on a mission where she could easily be killed or have a miscarriage from all the jumping and falling she does, they're a tribe who shoot anyone who they randomly see as "intruders". This isn't necessarily a bad thing for the story to do, though the pregnant girl in a war zone is fucking insanely dumb, Nakey Jakey is 100% right on that when he says it doesn't necessarily feel intentional. It's just, neither of these sides are doing anything to make you like them as individuals either.
At every attempt to have me sympathize with these characters, it tends to fail. I found almost every character in this game to either be weak, unremarkable, boring, or very okay. I feel nothing for these characters. The relationship between Joel and Ellie is probably the best one, given they have a very fun relationship with a fun back and forth between them as seen in flashback sequences, even divorced from the context of the first game. This is coming from someone who didn't really care much about Joel and Ellie's relationship in the first game, since I never really cared about these characters until they started to truly care about each other. Seeing their relationship go from trust, to breaking down at the truth of Joel killing the doctors that could have developed a cure, is a strong arc. But every other arc seems to fall flat. Abby and Owen have this weird relationship, which culminates when the both of them are getting hot and bothered and angry at each other for Owen calling out Abby going on a revenge mission that they just randomly have sex. It's one of the most baffling scenes in the game, and I had to cover my face from laughing so hard. Ellie and Dina's relationship I don't have any semblance of care for, Dina barely having much of a character besides a small inkling of banter. Lev and Yara are meant to be characters that lead Abby down the path of redemption, but there's really no reason for her to suddenly change her perspective. Lev is fine, I guess, but Yara is kind of forgettable, on top of her death being incredibly contrived. Abby and Yara could have gone back the through where they were on the island after they found Lev again, they even MENTION THAT THEY COULD DO THIS, BUT THEY LITERALLY ALL JUST IGNORE IT BECAUSE "OH, I HEAR PEOPLE BEHIND US". So instead of going towards the section of the island where they already know the layout to, where the population of that area was smaller given it's not a major city, their plan is instead to go to THE CAPITAL OF THE CITY, WHERE THE WLF ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR MOST TROOPS SENT TOWARDS??? It's completely asinine to me that there's a slight attempt to justify this plot hole, but they DON'T EVEN FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THE JUSTIFICATION.
Some characters in this game just don't get any real development, and almost feel like throw away characters, when really, they shouldn't be. Jessie's character amounts to nothing besides reminding Ellie that maybe her warpath isn't the right thing to do, Manny literally gets killed and Abby barely even reacts, Isaac is the leader of the WLF and is in charge of their practices, yet he's barely even a character that we get to examine. If we wanted to focus on how groups waging war on each other is bad, why have Isaac be this very basic war mongering tyrant who just REALLY wants to kill people not in his tribe?
One of the worst part I feel about this story is that, nobody even tries to ask Ellie how she feels about doing the surgery that will develop the vaccine. This in turn makes me dislike the doctor, (which is Abby’s dad), than feel any sympathy for him. This entire situation could have quite literally been solved if they actually asked Ellie what she wanted to do. That way, they could also ask Joel WITH Ellie there, maybe giving him some kind of closure to this idea if she agreed. Of course, the disconnect of communication is human nature, people don't always come up with the best solutions, but it's such a simple solution to two games worth of plot that could have easily been solved because of this one character's decision to not communicate when they could have, and another character’s actions to just kill everyone.
As the stories converge, we play as Abby going up against Ellie. After everything this character has gone through, she for some reason just, let's her live? Again? Whatever. We cut to years later, where Ellie is happy living a quiet life, but becomes haunted by the trauma of her past. She can't let it go, so she goes to find Abby once more. As it turns out, Abby was captured by slavers, and as Ellie accidentally liberates an entire slave trade just to search for this girl, she finds her hung up on a pole. She’s clearly malnourished and looks horrible. Ellie cuts her down and they both go to a boat with Lev. The mood is set on this fog enveloped beach, where the sea is covered with it’s unending presence. Ellie threatens Lev with a knife just to get Abby to fight her, and they throw down in the water. Ellie gets the upper hand and is drowning her, but thinks of the last times she spent with Joel, which we later find out is where she extended an arm to try and eventually forgive him for not telling her the truth, and let's Abby go. The cycle of violence has been stopped.
Yet, all I could think of while this scene was happening was that this was only happening because the plot has haphazardly been manufactured to get us to this point. The plot to the first Last of Us was reworked to fit this narrative, with the story beats plotted out with loose motivations and plot contrivances to get us there. Characters are brought on and their purposes were left forgotten about. Characters clashed with flimsy motives to kill one another. Watching the plot unfold was like watching Neil Druckmann tie two cats together with duct tape to watch them fight. It's entertaining to watch them bumble around like crazy idiots, but you made this happen, Neil. I can see the duct tape. Oh, great, now they're ruining my furniture. Thanks for that, Neil Druckmann.
The narrative has been criticized online for a number of reasons, and I think fans were mostly in the right for that. It’s clear to me that the script was in dire need of another draft, and what we got was a much more rushed script. As a game with a strong narrative focus, it fails to deliver on a good narrative. However, narrative focused games are, indeed, still video games. And I played this game with my two gamer thumbs. So how was the gameplay?
I.. Surprisingly liked it.
See, my expectations about the game have been fairly low thus far, about the complete opposite from the first game. Part of that had to do with the fan backlash, which made me expect a boring video game, but another part of it was that I was expecting this game to have many of the same problems that previous Naughty Dog games have had.
Naughty Dog games, specifically modern day ones, often feel segmented — the main 3 pillars being combat, exploration, and puzzles. Numerous times, I would be able to tell what kind of section I was in simply because of how the level was laid out. If you saw a bunch of boxes randomly in a street way, you knew you were going to be fighting. If you saw a ladder or a pallet, you knew you were going to be doing a puzzle. If you saw a little blocks you could clearly grab onto in Uncharted, you knew you were going to have to do a climbing section. The designers had a difficult time creating spaces that were both believable and functional for the player to exist in.
Another problem with Naughty Dog games that I had was that you never had a full sense of scale. In TLOU1 specifically, there were hardly any viewpoints of the city from high up. I would constantly feel like I was just heading in whatever direction the level design dictated me to go, with no real sense of landmark or discovery. This cropped up in the Uncharted games I've played as well, where you were often too in the mud of things.
... So to my genuine surprise, The Last of Us Part 2 managed to solve BOTH of these issues. And, I don’t know, I might have, maybe had a lot of fun because of that?
The Last of Us Part 2 does a way, WAY better job at seamlessly blending those gameplay pillars. Most of the time, the pillars blend within the same environment, and sometimes, they even play around with your expectations. My favorite example is this section where you bust into a hotel, and a makeshift door chime made of beer bottles goes off as you enter. This put me on edge, because I figured I was still in an exploration section. I went upstairs and I was in a large apartment room, and I was still put on edge — something about this large space made me feel vulnerable. But I shrugged it off, thinking that I was probably just overreacting, and went to the work bench to adjust my weapons. Wha-bam! An enemy comes up behind me, attacks me, suddenly I'm thrust into a combat section. It put me through the exact emotions I was supposed to be feeling, and I lulled me into a false sense of security. These types of sections aren't incredibly common place, but there's enough moments just like this that has very much improved since the Uncharted/TLOU1 days.
The sense of scale issue has been solved with much more open level design, often times giving you high up vantage points at the beginning of a section, as well as other little tricks to make this world feel more expansive and lived in. There was an effort to make the environments more believable to the setting, and what you interact with within that environment feels much more well placed and thought out.
The rope mechanic is probably the most fun I've had with any Naughty Dog game post-Jak. The first rope puzzle where you have to figure out how to get the outlet to a different plug was one of the best moments I've had in any The Last of Us games and it's because the game let me figure out the puzzle for myself, and it was intuitive to solve. It utilizes the world and the physics in such a uniquely video game way that made me wish there were more times when they used the rope. If there ever was a Part 3, including more open sections like when Ellie and Dina explore on horse-back an entire city, would be SUCH a blasty-blast.
In terms of combat, the survival balance of fighting, shooting, crafting, healing is all there from the first game, if not slightly better. The game's drop system gives you just enough to have your head above water, and there's fun to be had trying your best to survive the onslaught. Humans are more fun and dynamic, flanking you and having you come up with on the spot strategies to out maneuver them. The infected I often see as more of a slog, with runners and stalkers being slightly annoying, clickers being incredibly annoying, bloaters being ammo depositories that aren't very challenging. They serve a great break up from the human enemies, but they're probably the weaker of the two. Melee combat works weird, and I’m never sure what I’m doing wrong within the system. I attack an enemy and have my momentum going with punches, but then they suddenly have the upper hand and hit me. It isn’t clear to me when I’m meant to duck and weave and when I can keep wailing on someone.
Scavenging is simple, yet somewhat enjoyable. You're on the constant murder spree in this game, so to have sections like this where you can soak in the environments and do small environmental puzzles to find supplies is a welcomed inclusion.
Granted, all of these gameplay loops tend to get a little stale after the 30-40 hours spent in it, but it still maintained decent level of enjoyment from me.
When I was younger, I had always wanted a game that felt like what Last of Us Part 2 is like — an apocalyptic cityscape, overgrown with life that has seeped it's way back in since the fall of humanity. Surviving a zombie apocalypse and being able to explore abandoned ruins of a modern day city in order scavenge for supplies has been an itch I've always wanted scratched. It's not as open as I would prefer, (and I haven't been able to scale large buildings with a grapple hook), but the direction of which this world has been crafted is wonderfully done and breathtaking to be in.
Some of the set pieces in this game are fantastic. Whether it be the emergency flares covering an underground subway tunnel with pure red, the many overgrown suburban houses, the large scale city of Seattle overgrown with life and the undead alike, some areas being submerged in water with running rapids, the zoo, aquarium, island, heck, to everything! It fills a very specific niche for me, something I didn't expect going into this game given the previous game didn't scratch that itch. Soaking in some of these environments was a major highlight for me, and it’s clearly a labor of love.
... Man, I had a lot more to say about this game than I expected I would.
Honestly, I didn't really expect to like this game. In any regard, for that matter. Combining the amount of backlash received online, alongside my already pre-existing distain for the first game, I figured I'd walk away from this game with a much more cynical attitude. But with expectations made so low, it's left me able to appreciate what's there on a technical and gameplay level, both of which have surpassed The Last of Us by a wide margin for me. This puts me in a bit of a pickle, however. If I liked the game because of my low expectations, am I now being more biased towards the game because of these low expectations? Well, yes, of course. I can clearly see the game still doesn't push the medium in many ways. It fails at being a narrative-driven game with the inclusion of a bad narrative. It fails at creating a gameplay loop that reinforces the narrative they wanted.
But hey, at least I got something out of it. I had fun with a video game using my two big gamer thumbs, and I got to explore a beautiful post-apocalyptic universe in a way that scratched a specific itch. It's probably not what Neil Druckmann wanted, but fuck him, that's what he gets for ruining my fucking furniture.
1994
Pulseman is a game that looks better than it actually is. Which is a shame.
Aesthetics wise, this game is a treat. Under the surface of those beautiful sprites though, the gameplay tends to become a bit of a drag. You have a fun physics based mechanic, but you don't really have much control of it. Combine a very basic move set, a lacking of enemy variety and level/enemy design that's made to slightly annoy you rather than test your skill, and you're left with a game that's unfulfilling. And that's a shame, because parts of this game can be trip! But I guess it's hard to find a pulse when your gameplay is only so skin deep.
... That word play breaks down under scrutiny, I know.
Aesthetics wise, this game is a treat. Under the surface of those beautiful sprites though, the gameplay tends to become a bit of a drag. You have a fun physics based mechanic, but you don't really have much control of it. Combine a very basic move set, a lacking of enemy variety and level/enemy design that's made to slightly annoy you rather than test your skill, and you're left with a game that's unfulfilling. And that's a shame, because parts of this game can be trip! But I guess it's hard to find a pulse when your gameplay is only so skin deep.
... That word play breaks down under scrutiny, I know.
2009
As Resident Evil 4 Remake was fast approaching, me and a friend decided to play RE5 on a whim. I mentioned in my Resident Evil 4 review that this was the first Resident Evil game I had ever played. And it did not leave a very good impression on me.
This game is a result of iteration and a need for revival. Resident Evil 4 was already quite a stand out for being more focused on action than it was horror, and RE5 is iterative of that game's success. There was a craze for third person cover shooters during this generation, and inserting that type of gameplay into Resident Evil probably made sense from an action game standpoint. It still contains DNA of Resident Evil however. Tank controls, needing to stop moving while aiming, item management — it all still feels like Resident Evil, just put in with some of the trends of what was then, modern day gaming.
The result of this trend-chasing is this messy, undefined, drab looking game with an enjoyable co-op campaign.
Playing the game co-op is indeed fun. There's a certain magic to being able to play a game like this with a bud. The problems mostly come with the later half of the game, where levels begin to blend together with uninteresting level design/gimmicks. Probably the last 3 chapters are the worse part of the game, and the final chapter especially is the roughest part of the game. Never mind the long, drawn out levels, the final boss with Wesker was a complete joke. For this co-op session, me and my friend were essentially standing around during the final boss fight, my friend circling around Wesker very slowly and avoiding his predictable attacks as I stood there and shot at his back. This repeated for about 5-7 minutes until he eventually died. All for an anime battle between a delusional psycho who thinks he's God and wants to judge humanity with his big dumb parasite monster tentacles.
There's a lot to complain about with this game, but there's some good chunks to be found in here. I think the first 3 chapters are fairly fun, playing the game in co-op brings about a lot of enjoyment, and it's to the point where overall, I enjoyed my time with this game more than I did on my first playthrough back in 2009. The faults of the game are glaring, but it still provides a fun co-op experience that makes me, at the very least, not hate the game. Honestly, it makes me want to try out RE6 in co-op as well, just to experience it the co-op fun.
This game is a result of iteration and a need for revival. Resident Evil 4 was already quite a stand out for being more focused on action than it was horror, and RE5 is iterative of that game's success. There was a craze for third person cover shooters during this generation, and inserting that type of gameplay into Resident Evil probably made sense from an action game standpoint. It still contains DNA of Resident Evil however. Tank controls, needing to stop moving while aiming, item management — it all still feels like Resident Evil, just put in with some of the trends of what was then, modern day gaming.
The result of this trend-chasing is this messy, undefined, drab looking game with an enjoyable co-op campaign.
Playing the game co-op is indeed fun. There's a certain magic to being able to play a game like this with a bud. The problems mostly come with the later half of the game, where levels begin to blend together with uninteresting level design/gimmicks. Probably the last 3 chapters are the worse part of the game, and the final chapter especially is the roughest part of the game. Never mind the long, drawn out levels, the final boss with Wesker was a complete joke. For this co-op session, me and my friend were essentially standing around during the final boss fight, my friend circling around Wesker very slowly and avoiding his predictable attacks as I stood there and shot at his back. This repeated for about 5-7 minutes until he eventually died. All for an anime battle between a delusional psycho who thinks he's God and wants to judge humanity with his big dumb parasite monster tentacles.
There's a lot to complain about with this game, but there's some good chunks to be found in here. I think the first 3 chapters are fairly fun, playing the game in co-op brings about a lot of enjoyment, and it's to the point where overall, I enjoyed my time with this game more than I did on my first playthrough back in 2009. The faults of the game are glaring, but it still provides a fun co-op experience that makes me, at the very least, not hate the game. Honestly, it makes me want to try out RE6 in co-op as well, just to experience it the co-op fun.
2005
There was once a time where Resident Evil 5 was the only game within the series that I have ever played. After playing through RE5 with a friend I no longer even speak to, they suggested I should play Resident Evil 4. So, I decided I should pick it up. I'm pretty sure I played it almost to completion.
... Yet, I don't remember anything of what I thought about it back then.
Which is strange, because this game is an absolute roller-coaster. The escalation from a small village cult to a full blown government armada is done gradually, and with each step, the game becomes more and more demented. Crazy gimmicks appear one after the other, spiraling out on all cylinders as you blast you way from set piece to set piece. Whatever idea they wanted to implement, they stuck into this game. It could be from something as simple as giant monster, to escorting Ashley through a long corridor as she tries to spin a gear, to a giant statue coming to life and fleeing from it, to a slowed down survival horror section, to a helicopter mowing down big areas of enemies as you attempt to traverse through it all. It's a constant flow of new mechanics that just spit out at you.
The story is like a cheesy action film, complete with Leon spouting one liners like they're going out of style. Every character is this heightened reality of dumb bullshit that I just kind of love. The parasite in this game (I think) was inspired by Cordeyceps fungus, which is insane considering how much that idea for zombies would become prevelant YEARS down the line. Truly ahead of its time.
So what gives, teenage me? Why don't I remember anything about the game? It could have been because I'm not a big fan of horror, and the game wasn't scaring me like I was expecting it to. It could have just been that I was going through some things at the time. But regardless of the cause, it's made me miss out on appreciating RE4.
... Yet, I don't remember anything of what I thought about it back then.
Which is strange, because this game is an absolute roller-coaster. The escalation from a small village cult to a full blown government armada is done gradually, and with each step, the game becomes more and more demented. Crazy gimmicks appear one after the other, spiraling out on all cylinders as you blast you way from set piece to set piece. Whatever idea they wanted to implement, they stuck into this game. It could be from something as simple as giant monster, to escorting Ashley through a long corridor as she tries to spin a gear, to a giant statue coming to life and fleeing from it, to a slowed down survival horror section, to a helicopter mowing down big areas of enemies as you attempt to traverse through it all. It's a constant flow of new mechanics that just spit out at you.
The story is like a cheesy action film, complete with Leon spouting one liners like they're going out of style. Every character is this heightened reality of dumb bullshit that I just kind of love. The parasite in this game (I think) was inspired by Cordeyceps fungus, which is insane considering how much that idea for zombies would become prevelant YEARS down the line. Truly ahead of its time.
So what gives, teenage me? Why don't I remember anything about the game? It could have been because I'm not a big fan of horror, and the game wasn't scaring me like I was expecting it to. It could have just been that I was going through some things at the time. But regardless of the cause, it's made me miss out on appreciating RE4.
1995
I really don't like being negative with my reviews, especially to a Kirby game, but I'm sad to say that I've come to feel very blase about Dreamland 2.
Dreamland 2 is a very railroaded experience that uses it's copy abilities as bite-sized gameplay variations through each level. There's very little reason to try and use different copy abilities, besides finding the rainbow shards. This makes experimentation not really worth it. It doesn't help too that copy abilities can often hinder your movement. A handful of these abilities like to stop Kirby dead in his tracks so that he can perform a move. They tend to not compliment the level design of the game, and end up making you want specific variations.
By the last two worlds, I sort of had my fill with Dreamland 2. I managed to squeak past the finish line, since the final world is more or less a boss rush, but I'll be damned if I want to go and get all of the rainbow shards. If that last level was full of more complicated levels, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to finish it.
Despite all these negatives though, I think there's still enjoyment to be had with the game. There's some decent level design all throughout and for a Gameboy game, it has fair amount of content. The music and art is fairly cute, and all the animal buddies are just the cutest! But compared to the rest of the Dreamland games, heck, compared to almost any Kirby game I've played, this one has probably been the weakest. I'm really glad Dreamland 3 improves the concepts found within this game by a wide margin.
Dreamland 2 is a very railroaded experience that uses it's copy abilities as bite-sized gameplay variations through each level. There's very little reason to try and use different copy abilities, besides finding the rainbow shards. This makes experimentation not really worth it. It doesn't help too that copy abilities can often hinder your movement. A handful of these abilities like to stop Kirby dead in his tracks so that he can perform a move. They tend to not compliment the level design of the game, and end up making you want specific variations.
By the last two worlds, I sort of had my fill with Dreamland 2. I managed to squeak past the finish line, since the final world is more or less a boss rush, but I'll be damned if I want to go and get all of the rainbow shards. If that last level was full of more complicated levels, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to finish it.
Despite all these negatives though, I think there's still enjoyment to be had with the game. There's some decent level design all throughout and for a Gameboy game, it has fair amount of content. The music and art is fairly cute, and all the animal buddies are just the cutest! But compared to the rest of the Dreamland games, heck, compared to almost any Kirby game I've played, this one has probably been the weakest. I'm really glad Dreamland 3 improves the concepts found within this game by a wide margin.
1992
Kirby's Dream Land is REALLY cute. Frankly, it's adorable.
It's genuinely surprising to me that from a pure game feel, the original Kirby still feels great to play. Kirby feels so easy to move around and maneuver, floaty but also just the right amount of weight. It's also surprising to me just how despite not having the copy ability that this game still works. There's still power ups and they bring about engaging ways of attacking. It really goes to show how much Sakurai rocks at games, even at an early stage of his career.
It doesn't take too long to beat, so there's not a lot to sink your teeth into, much like with the last game I played, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. But once again, it's just a result of being a Game Boy game. But for what it is, it's a quaint, cozy little game, and the start of a legendary developer's career.
It's genuinely surprising to me that from a pure game feel, the original Kirby still feels great to play. Kirby feels so easy to move around and maneuver, floaty but also just the right amount of weight. It's also surprising to me just how despite not having the copy ability that this game still works. There's still power ups and they bring about engaging ways of attacking. It really goes to show how much Sakurai rocks at games, even at an early stage of his career.
It doesn't take too long to beat, so there's not a lot to sink your teeth into, much like with the last game I played, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. But once again, it's just a result of being a Game Boy game. But for what it is, it's a quaint, cozy little game, and the start of a legendary developer's career.
Mario Land 2 is a neat little game! It's a peculiar stepping stone for both Mario and the eventual Wario Land series. It breaks from the mold of most Mario games with it's level theming, it's bosses, and it's non-linear approach, making it a refreshing, bite-sized Mario experience!
The downside is, the game often feels limited. Given that it's a Game Boy game, it's bound to feel like that. With only a few Power-Ups, with only one that's wholely original, Mario's range of actions are scarce. They make up for this scarcity by incorporating interesting level gimmicks to try and stand out, which are enjoyable in their own right. There's never enough to really sink your teeth into though, which is a shame, because I feel like a lot of these ideas could be expanded upon. It's important to keep in mind, however, that it IS a Game Boy game, and for what it's accomplished in context of the time and the hardware, it's really a stand out title.
The downside is, the game often feels limited. Given that it's a Game Boy game, it's bound to feel like that. With only a few Power-Ups, with only one that's wholely original, Mario's range of actions are scarce. They make up for this scarcity by incorporating interesting level gimmicks to try and stand out, which are enjoyable in their own right. There's never enough to really sink your teeth into though, which is a shame, because I feel like a lot of these ideas could be expanded upon. It's important to keep in mind, however, that it IS a Game Boy game, and for what it's accomplished in context of the time and the hardware, it's really a stand out title.
Metroid Prime is a flawed game.
Usually in Metroid games, they do a great job at circling you back around to an area in which you need to be next. It properly conveys to the player where they need to go, all without holding their hand. Prime doesn't do this. Instead, they tend to have you jump around from area to area, looking for a new thing that's suddenly popped up on your scanner. This can lead to a lot of unnecessary backtracking, and takes away a lot of the enjoyment from exploring. It doesn't help that the map design can often be confusing, with a 3D map that looks cool, but is often hard to read.
"Hard to read" is sort of a trend for Metroid Prime. It's dedication to realism is what's responsible for this. Often times, what you can break with your arsenal can be confusing to discern. In the 2D games, you could use shots from your beam canon or your power bombs on were denoted what you can interact with, accompanied with very game-y icons that would appear when hit and faded back to normal geometry if left alone. Prime, with it's realistic terrain, makes this aspect questionable. To add insult to injury, destroying these "lock-and-key" doors can often require the use of your scanner to trigger your ability to even begin to interact with them.
Ontop of all of this is a fetch quest for Chozo Artifacts, locking you out of the final area and it's boss fights until you backtrack throughout the entirety of the map once again. All of this can be so headache inducing. I was hoping the remake would fix these aspects, but alas, they were completely faithful to the original design. This is fairly disappointing, given its such a missed opportunity to fix the weakest aspects of this game, and reform it into something more.
... That's a lot of negatives, I know. It might be surprising to you that I still believe Metroid Prime is something special. Despite it's many flaws, it is yet another one of those games that absolutely nails key aspects of it's design, and falls apart at the seams.
As a first attempt at bringing Metroid into a 3D space, it's a really good attempt. They absolutely nailed the world design, building a believable world that's as rich as it is beautiful. It's a different take on Metroid, being more of a dry, realistic approach to the Metroid universe, but it's done in a way that's faithful to the original games. The exploration and action is spot on, albeit clunky with the constant need to switch between visors, beams, and missiles, (Metroid has always had this problem though, so it's also spot on). Combat can feel really nice, and often times can be challenging. Some of the bosses can be frustrating with how much they need to be hit to open up their weakness, but most of the bosses are great.
The music to the game sets the atmosphere ablaze. It works in tandem with the environments to create these fascinating moods and atmospheres. The overworld to Tallon IV is one of the most beautiful areas in the game, it's rain-soak foliage that's a constant downpour establishes the life that used to be on this planet. As you journey further, you begin to view more aspects of this dying planet, and the corruption that's gone through it. It's remnants are all there though, and nowhere is that more established than in Phendrana Drifts, a snow covered ruins of the Ancient Chozos. Within this bitter tundra are temples that are frozen solid from the broken roofs collapsing in upon itself, with statues erected of a forgotten people frozen in time. It's genuinely awe-inspiring, and it's one of my favorite snow areas in ANY game.
I'm only scratching the surface here, but I think that's why Metroid Prime is so special. The world feels so realized and enchanting, with the graphical fidelity and incredibly strong art direction to aid in pulling you into it's world. With it's dry realism and it's even drier-reading lore, it establishes a universe that's ripe with exploration.
I just wish that the gameplay and the level design reflected that feeling. As of now, Metroid Prime Remaster is a beautifully recreated version to a flawed GameCube game, and it could have been so, so close to being an all time favorite. It's not, but it's still a wonderful little game.
Usually in Metroid games, they do a great job at circling you back around to an area in which you need to be next. It properly conveys to the player where they need to go, all without holding their hand. Prime doesn't do this. Instead, they tend to have you jump around from area to area, looking for a new thing that's suddenly popped up on your scanner. This can lead to a lot of unnecessary backtracking, and takes away a lot of the enjoyment from exploring. It doesn't help that the map design can often be confusing, with a 3D map that looks cool, but is often hard to read.
"Hard to read" is sort of a trend for Metroid Prime. It's dedication to realism is what's responsible for this. Often times, what you can break with your arsenal can be confusing to discern. In the 2D games, you could use shots from your beam canon or your power bombs on were denoted what you can interact with, accompanied with very game-y icons that would appear when hit and faded back to normal geometry if left alone. Prime, with it's realistic terrain, makes this aspect questionable. To add insult to injury, destroying these "lock-and-key" doors can often require the use of your scanner to trigger your ability to even begin to interact with them.
Ontop of all of this is a fetch quest for Chozo Artifacts, locking you out of the final area and it's boss fights until you backtrack throughout the entirety of the map once again. All of this can be so headache inducing. I was hoping the remake would fix these aspects, but alas, they were completely faithful to the original design. This is fairly disappointing, given its such a missed opportunity to fix the weakest aspects of this game, and reform it into something more.
... That's a lot of negatives, I know. It might be surprising to you that I still believe Metroid Prime is something special. Despite it's many flaws, it is yet another one of those games that absolutely nails key aspects of it's design, and falls apart at the seams.
As a first attempt at bringing Metroid into a 3D space, it's a really good attempt. They absolutely nailed the world design, building a believable world that's as rich as it is beautiful. It's a different take on Metroid, being more of a dry, realistic approach to the Metroid universe, but it's done in a way that's faithful to the original games. The exploration and action is spot on, albeit clunky with the constant need to switch between visors, beams, and missiles, (Metroid has always had this problem though, so it's also spot on). Combat can feel really nice, and often times can be challenging. Some of the bosses can be frustrating with how much they need to be hit to open up their weakness, but most of the bosses are great.
The music to the game sets the atmosphere ablaze. It works in tandem with the environments to create these fascinating moods and atmospheres. The overworld to Tallon IV is one of the most beautiful areas in the game, it's rain-soak foliage that's a constant downpour establishes the life that used to be on this planet. As you journey further, you begin to view more aspects of this dying planet, and the corruption that's gone through it. It's remnants are all there though, and nowhere is that more established than in Phendrana Drifts, a snow covered ruins of the Ancient Chozos. Within this bitter tundra are temples that are frozen solid from the broken roofs collapsing in upon itself, with statues erected of a forgotten people frozen in time. It's genuinely awe-inspiring, and it's one of my favorite snow areas in ANY game.
I'm only scratching the surface here, but I think that's why Metroid Prime is so special. The world feels so realized and enchanting, with the graphical fidelity and incredibly strong art direction to aid in pulling you into it's world. With it's dry realism and it's even drier-reading lore, it establishes a universe that's ripe with exploration.
I just wish that the gameplay and the level design reflected that feeling. As of now, Metroid Prime Remaster is a beautifully recreated version to a flawed GameCube game, and it could have been so, so close to being an all time favorite. It's not, but it's still a wonderful little game.
2003
Kirby Air Ride is a game that suffers it's own design. What it's meant to be is a game that's very simple to control, but hard to master. As a result though, it can be jarring to use solely the A button to stop alongside powering up a boost. The A button is then also tied to sucking up enemies and activating certain copy abilities. All of this halts your momentum, and at times, it can be aggravating to deal with. Starting and stopping isn't the type of thing you'd probably want, nor expect, from a racing game. It is by far the biggest off put to the game, and it's reasonable to surmise why this didn't catch on.
The game doesn't make a great first impression either. You start off with a Warp Star as your primary vehicle, with other options needing to be unlocked. You might tend to stick to this vehicle since it's the one that's the most balanced. But as a result, you'll find yourself confused how you keep failing to win the race. You may get frustrated, or maybe bored, and decide to try out the other modes. The second mode you come across is a top down racer that's not super interesting or worth noting, and there's something called "City Trial" that you've heard was fun, but you don't know much about. You'll play a few rounds, and you'll probably have your most fun there, but for a game to be a racing game and not be very good as a racing, you'll probably call it quits there.
Kirby Air Ride is not at all a perfect game. It is, however, one of those games that exceeds so, so much at specific mechanics and systems, that it ends up making it one of my favorite games ever. It's weird, it's strange, and it's everything I love about video games.
First of all, City Trial mode. As an entire "side mode" it is by far one of my favorites in existence. It's similar to Smash Run from the 3DS Smash Bros if you're familiar with that, but implemented much more tastefully. It's a relatively open map with many different locations, and your goal is to collect enough power ups for your vehicle to compete in a randomly selected mini-game at the end of the round. What vehicle you find and what power ups you get, as well as your skill at the mini-game, all determine your chances of winning. It's a fantastic party mode that's provided me with countless hours of enjoyment over the years, whether it be with friends or by myself.
Working in tandem with City Trial, along with the rest of the game modes, is the excellent progression system. If you're familiar with future Sakurai games, like Kid Icarus Uprising, or more commonly Smash Bros, the feeling of finding out how to unlock characters and or filling out the checklist for unlocks is an immense joy. Kirby Air Ride is where this progression system was first nailed down, and is probably my favorite implementation of the system. For the uninitiated, the checklist is a list of accomplishes, challenges, and specifications to mark off by completing those goals, and you potentially gain a new unlock from it. These objectives could be things you do naturally within the game to more specific challenges. Once you complete a challenge, the objective gets checked off, and the surrounding 4 blocks around the completed box becomes readable, giving you an idea of how to check off more. The unlockables for these checklists could be something as cool as a color, a vehicle, or even playing as King Dee Dee Dee or Meta Knight! Each mode has their own checklist, and it makes it so rewarding to replay the game to earn specific unlocks for each section. Twice over the years, if I filled out the checklist completely, I would end up deleting my save to do it all over again. This has made the game so much fun to come back and replay.
As you play the game more, you begin to realize that the many different vehicles all serve different play styles to the race tracks. These styles can be tricky to learn, but rewarding to master. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. The Wagon Star has great acceleration and can turn well, but you're sacrificing your ability to boost and drift. The Swerve Star is fast, able to stop at a dime, but you sacrifice being able to control the vehicle without stopping. Some are good for damaging opponents, some are good for gliding, some have specific characteristics that give them advantages over others, like the shadow star gaining a boost when behind other racers. Some are worse than others, no doubt. The Formula Star is probably the worst vehicle in the game given that it has a high top speed but most tracks tend to curve, making you lose that top speed, but in places like City Trial, this can have it's uses with certain events. Depending on what mode you play, your vehicle of choice will have it's own advantages and disadvantages. It's unbalanced at times, but the sheer variety in fun and interesting play styles is something worthy of praise.
Learning these race tracks and mastering the machines is a really fun feat. It's satisfying to slide on the ground doing a sharp turn and then boosting forward with a shot of speed. The tracks that make the best use of this are some of my favorites. Not all the tracks are the best, I think the first two tracks might be the weakest in the entire game, but there's a lot of enjoyment to be had with them overall. Finding different paths, secret paths, and completing objectives off the checklist help make replaying the game easy to engage with for me.
On top of all of this, the music to this game stands out immensely for me. They're similar to Melee's orchestra, but mixed in with synth music that sounds more in line with Kirby. Everything about it holds a very charming, very Kirby sound. It's not my favorite Kirby soundtrack, but it's insanely memorable and varied.
I love this game. It's such a strange concoction of ideas that somehow manages to work for me. It's one of Sakurai's weirdest games, and for that, I love it. At a very young age, it spawned a great desire to play games that are more on the stranger side mechanically, and it's emblematic of what I think the GameCube best represented; strange ideas that stick out and innovated. They weren't ever perfect, but they were so uniquely fascinating.
The game doesn't make a great first impression either. You start off with a Warp Star as your primary vehicle, with other options needing to be unlocked. You might tend to stick to this vehicle since it's the one that's the most balanced. But as a result, you'll find yourself confused how you keep failing to win the race. You may get frustrated, or maybe bored, and decide to try out the other modes. The second mode you come across is a top down racer that's not super interesting or worth noting, and there's something called "City Trial" that you've heard was fun, but you don't know much about. You'll play a few rounds, and you'll probably have your most fun there, but for a game to be a racing game and not be very good as a racing, you'll probably call it quits there.
Kirby Air Ride is not at all a perfect game. It is, however, one of those games that exceeds so, so much at specific mechanics and systems, that it ends up making it one of my favorite games ever. It's weird, it's strange, and it's everything I love about video games.
First of all, City Trial mode. As an entire "side mode" it is by far one of my favorites in existence. It's similar to Smash Run from the 3DS Smash Bros if you're familiar with that, but implemented much more tastefully. It's a relatively open map with many different locations, and your goal is to collect enough power ups for your vehicle to compete in a randomly selected mini-game at the end of the round. What vehicle you find and what power ups you get, as well as your skill at the mini-game, all determine your chances of winning. It's a fantastic party mode that's provided me with countless hours of enjoyment over the years, whether it be with friends or by myself.
Working in tandem with City Trial, along with the rest of the game modes, is the excellent progression system. If you're familiar with future Sakurai games, like Kid Icarus Uprising, or more commonly Smash Bros, the feeling of finding out how to unlock characters and or filling out the checklist for unlocks is an immense joy. Kirby Air Ride is where this progression system was first nailed down, and is probably my favorite implementation of the system. For the uninitiated, the checklist is a list of accomplishes, challenges, and specifications to mark off by completing those goals, and you potentially gain a new unlock from it. These objectives could be things you do naturally within the game to more specific challenges. Once you complete a challenge, the objective gets checked off, and the surrounding 4 blocks around the completed box becomes readable, giving you an idea of how to check off more. The unlockables for these checklists could be something as cool as a color, a vehicle, or even playing as King Dee Dee Dee or Meta Knight! Each mode has their own checklist, and it makes it so rewarding to replay the game to earn specific unlocks for each section. Twice over the years, if I filled out the checklist completely, I would end up deleting my save to do it all over again. This has made the game so much fun to come back and replay.
As you play the game more, you begin to realize that the many different vehicles all serve different play styles to the race tracks. These styles can be tricky to learn, but rewarding to master. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. The Wagon Star has great acceleration and can turn well, but you're sacrificing your ability to boost and drift. The Swerve Star is fast, able to stop at a dime, but you sacrifice being able to control the vehicle without stopping. Some are good for damaging opponents, some are good for gliding, some have specific characteristics that give them advantages over others, like the shadow star gaining a boost when behind other racers. Some are worse than others, no doubt. The Formula Star is probably the worst vehicle in the game given that it has a high top speed but most tracks tend to curve, making you lose that top speed, but in places like City Trial, this can have it's uses with certain events. Depending on what mode you play, your vehicle of choice will have it's own advantages and disadvantages. It's unbalanced at times, but the sheer variety in fun and interesting play styles is something worthy of praise.
Learning these race tracks and mastering the machines is a really fun feat. It's satisfying to slide on the ground doing a sharp turn and then boosting forward with a shot of speed. The tracks that make the best use of this are some of my favorites. Not all the tracks are the best, I think the first two tracks might be the weakest in the entire game, but there's a lot of enjoyment to be had with them overall. Finding different paths, secret paths, and completing objectives off the checklist help make replaying the game easy to engage with for me.
On top of all of this, the music to this game stands out immensely for me. They're similar to Melee's orchestra, but mixed in with synth music that sounds more in line with Kirby. Everything about it holds a very charming, very Kirby sound. It's not my favorite Kirby soundtrack, but it's insanely memorable and varied.
I love this game. It's such a strange concoction of ideas that somehow manages to work for me. It's one of Sakurai's weirdest games, and for that, I love it. At a very young age, it spawned a great desire to play games that are more on the stranger side mechanically, and it's emblematic of what I think the GameCube best represented; strange ideas that stick out and innovated. They weren't ever perfect, but they were so uniquely fascinating.
Really clever little game! It's definitely meant to be replayed in short bursts and serves functionally the same purpose as something like Tetris; bite-sized gameplay to pick-up and play. And in that respect, it nails it!
First impression through the story mode has just been, this is fun! I really love how they've given Wario and his weird friends a ton of character and charm here. Some of these mini-games feel a bit tame in comparison to what I've seen from other games within the series, but I hear the other games only increase in quality!
First impression through the story mode has just been, this is fun! I really love how they've given Wario and his weird friends a ton of character and charm here. Some of these mini-games feel a bit tame in comparison to what I've seen from other games within the series, but I hear the other games only increase in quality!
2023
Warioland 4 has always been a game that's stuck out in Nintendo's library. It's a game that throws a smorgasbord of ideas at you. Each level is packed with an interesting gimmick, and it never seems to falter with it's bombastic tone.
Pizza Tower takes Warioland as a concept, and puts it into a more modern, speed focused perspective. What it accomplishes in the 8 hours that I've played is nothing short of astonishing!
Fast, energetic puzzle platforming, with an insane amount of movement tech that expands just how fast you can speed through levels. Grabbing an enemy and pile driving them into other ones while still maintaining your momentum is insanely satisfying! There's moves I'm still not entirely sure how to do, or string together, but it just shows the mechanical depth to the moveset. There's also a combo meter as well as a ranking system, which play intandum with each other to create a high, but rewarding skill ceiling. Being able to get an S rank in this game will require mechanical and level mastery, which will be something I'll have do at a later point in time. This is the type of game that will really shine with repeated playthroughs, and I can tell just tell that's what the intention of the designers wanted it to be. Usually I'm not very good with ranking systems, (I tend to get frustrated with aiming for perfection), but who knows, maybe I'll get something out of this game's ranking system.
The boss battles in this game are excellently designed, each feeling like a tough but fair challenge. They're all about learning the attack patterns and when you can attack, and it's all telegraphed effortlessly. The final boss to this game is fantastic, another one of those final bosses that takes everything you've learned from the game thus far and tests you on it. It also acts as a bit of a boss rush mode, but cut down for impact and time. It's insanely good!
I'm in love with the ugly expressions of the characters. The art tends to be rough around the edges and bombastic, while being really well animated. Not everything is consistent, and that's absolutely okay, since it brings out such a wild and expressive attitude. It's that sort of early NewGrounds rough-ness that I love, but grown leaps and bounds in both a technical and artistic prowess.
I would make every facial expression in this game a fucking profile picture, they're all my little scrimblos.
The music to this game runs on all cylinders. Each track is energetic and full of early SNES-Sega era inspired tunes and samples. Sometimes funky, sometimes chip tune, sometimes groovy. A lot, and I mean A LOT of this soundtrack rules. The final boss's music, which is about 3 different variations to fit the different phases, are so wildly different and insane sounding. Absolutely my favorite tracks from a game that's already full of absolute treasures.
Man, Pizza Tower just fucking rules in general. It's another one of those games this year that has just put a big goofy smile on my face. If there was ever a complaint, it would probably be that levels sometimes gate you forward if you missed a topping, making you have to replay the entire level. Which can be somewhat annoying given that these levels tend to be more on the long side. But it's whatever, I had the same problem in Warioland 4, and it's more of a preference thing anyways.
Pizza Tower takes Warioland as a concept, and puts it into a more modern, speed focused perspective. What it accomplishes in the 8 hours that I've played is nothing short of astonishing!
Fast, energetic puzzle platforming, with an insane amount of movement tech that expands just how fast you can speed through levels. Grabbing an enemy and pile driving them into other ones while still maintaining your momentum is insanely satisfying! There's moves I'm still not entirely sure how to do, or string together, but it just shows the mechanical depth to the moveset. There's also a combo meter as well as a ranking system, which play intandum with each other to create a high, but rewarding skill ceiling. Being able to get an S rank in this game will require mechanical and level mastery, which will be something I'll have do at a later point in time. This is the type of game that will really shine with repeated playthroughs, and I can tell just tell that's what the intention of the designers wanted it to be. Usually I'm not very good with ranking systems, (I tend to get frustrated with aiming for perfection), but who knows, maybe I'll get something out of this game's ranking system.
The boss battles in this game are excellently designed, each feeling like a tough but fair challenge. They're all about learning the attack patterns and when you can attack, and it's all telegraphed effortlessly. The final boss to this game is fantastic, another one of those final bosses that takes everything you've learned from the game thus far and tests you on it. It also acts as a bit of a boss rush mode, but cut down for impact and time. It's insanely good!
I'm in love with the ugly expressions of the characters. The art tends to be rough around the edges and bombastic, while being really well animated. Not everything is consistent, and that's absolutely okay, since it brings out such a wild and expressive attitude. It's that sort of early NewGrounds rough-ness that I love, but grown leaps and bounds in both a technical and artistic prowess.
I would make every facial expression in this game a fucking profile picture, they're all my little scrimblos.
The music to this game runs on all cylinders. Each track is energetic and full of early SNES-Sega era inspired tunes and samples. Sometimes funky, sometimes chip tune, sometimes groovy. A lot, and I mean A LOT of this soundtrack rules. The final boss's music, which is about 3 different variations to fit the different phases, are so wildly different and insane sounding. Absolutely my favorite tracks from a game that's already full of absolute treasures.
Man, Pizza Tower just fucking rules in general. It's another one of those games this year that has just put a big goofy smile on my face. If there was ever a complaint, it would probably be that levels sometimes gate you forward if you missed a topping, making you have to replay the entire level. Which can be somewhat annoying given that these levels tend to be more on the long side. But it's whatever, I had the same problem in Warioland 4, and it's more of a preference thing anyways.
2023
This is one of those games that's given me such a tremendous smile on my face while I played it.
My first reaction to this game was about the same as everyone else's: "This looks like a game that'd be made during the 6th Gen". Which isn't by any chance a demeaning thing, but a phrase of endearment. They literally don't make games like this anymore, especially with a big studio at the helm. And with a price tag of $30 USD, it's evident that this is a game made on a budget. But god damn, does it have a hard time showing that it is at times.
You have comic book visuals oozing with charm — a fantastic blend of 2D and 3D, with in-game animations working in tandem with the main gimmick of the game to emphasize that everything is to the beat. It's all energetic, lively, and REALLY fun to look at. Seeing some of these cutscenes had my jaw dropping at how nicely animated it was. There's a lot of heart and soul put into just the visuals, and it pays off stupendously!
The main gimmick of this game is that it's a rhythm action game. It's fairly forgiving on the timing, but rewards you with more stun and damage if you time your hits to the beat. It's probably the best version of this type of game I've seen. Not to mention just how complex this combat system is, with many different abilities and combos you can pull off. It's taken notes from the best character action games in the business, and has put it's own fun twist on it.
A lot of the game has you platforming, fighting, searching for collectable, upgrading and unlocking your abilities, mixed in with some really fun set pieces. There's times where licensed music is introduced, and it ends up feeling like an interactive music video with how it plays out. It uses a lot of simple rhythm game-esque prompts during sections like these, along with some rail grinding and dodging to the beat. It comes together so well and makes these moments stand out substantially.
I think some of the level design can be a bit uninteresting in some places. After a while in the Zanzo and Korsica areas, they tend to over stay their welcome with back-to-back hallways where they're just enemy battle pits. It reminds me of some of the weaker areas in Kingdom Hearts, actually. Luckily, the game makes it up with a lot of really solid boss fights. Mimosa is absolutely the standout here for me, not only is her theme amazing, but mechanically she was just a joy to verse. Roquefort has this insane amount of set pieces that's so visually unique and mechanically wonderful, and is emblematic of how much they really throw everything at the wall with some of these bosses. Kale is fucking hard with his final phase, and getting past him was so satisfying after I got it down. I played on Very Hard, and man, did the combat system get made the most out of with it.
The music has some standout moments, (it should given its a rhythm game) , but I would have liked it if there was a bit more variety to the very guitar heavy tracks in the game. Granted, it's all about a overly confident dork who wields a guitar — obviously it should have a guitar as it's center piece — but it would have been nice to hear different types of genres for boss themes and certain areas. It can also be a bit one note with it's rhythm, but this is kind of the drawback to being a game about rhythm combat. All of this doesn't really matter though, it's all so nicely put together.
The story itself is a very cornball story about some dumb ass who's in way over his head somehow bullshitting his way into breaking an entire tech conglomerate hellbent on mind controlling it's users. You got some fun, tropey characters, with some dumb jokes that had me giggling from time to time at how ridiculous it was. It charmed me, but I could see the cracks towards the end with the sort of rushed along "character's lowest point" arc for Chai, which is a bit of a shame, because the mini-game and the song were really nice. I'm assuming this is something that had to be moved along due to budget stuff. There's a few things like that in this game, and they even poke fun and acknowledge that with one of Kale's robots showing up during Korsica's end cutscene.
The amount of times I've stated out loud to myself "fuck, that's awesome" has been plentiful with this game. It can have some weak spots, sure, but it packs so much into such a nice experience that I can't help but appreciate it. This is the first character action game I've played where I really seemed to get the appeal of the genre a lot more, so it's honestly been a breath of fresh air. There seems to be more stuff to do in the game, so maybe I'll appreciate the game even more as I do that, but for now, I really, REALLY liked this game!
My first reaction to this game was about the same as everyone else's: "This looks like a game that'd be made during the 6th Gen". Which isn't by any chance a demeaning thing, but a phrase of endearment. They literally don't make games like this anymore, especially with a big studio at the helm. And with a price tag of $30 USD, it's evident that this is a game made on a budget. But god damn, does it have a hard time showing that it is at times.
You have comic book visuals oozing with charm — a fantastic blend of 2D and 3D, with in-game animations working in tandem with the main gimmick of the game to emphasize that everything is to the beat. It's all energetic, lively, and REALLY fun to look at. Seeing some of these cutscenes had my jaw dropping at how nicely animated it was. There's a lot of heart and soul put into just the visuals, and it pays off stupendously!
The main gimmick of this game is that it's a rhythm action game. It's fairly forgiving on the timing, but rewards you with more stun and damage if you time your hits to the beat. It's probably the best version of this type of game I've seen. Not to mention just how complex this combat system is, with many different abilities and combos you can pull off. It's taken notes from the best character action games in the business, and has put it's own fun twist on it.
A lot of the game has you platforming, fighting, searching for collectable, upgrading and unlocking your abilities, mixed in with some really fun set pieces. There's times where licensed music is introduced, and it ends up feeling like an interactive music video with how it plays out. It uses a lot of simple rhythm game-esque prompts during sections like these, along with some rail grinding and dodging to the beat. It comes together so well and makes these moments stand out substantially.
I think some of the level design can be a bit uninteresting in some places. After a while in the Zanzo and Korsica areas, they tend to over stay their welcome with back-to-back hallways where they're just enemy battle pits. It reminds me of some of the weaker areas in Kingdom Hearts, actually. Luckily, the game makes it up with a lot of really solid boss fights. Mimosa is absolutely the standout here for me, not only is her theme amazing, but mechanically she was just a joy to verse. Roquefort has this insane amount of set pieces that's so visually unique and mechanically wonderful, and is emblematic of how much they really throw everything at the wall with some of these bosses. Kale is fucking hard with his final phase, and getting past him was so satisfying after I got it down. I played on Very Hard, and man, did the combat system get made the most out of with it.
The music has some standout moments, (it should given its a rhythm game) , but I would have liked it if there was a bit more variety to the very guitar heavy tracks in the game. Granted, it's all about a overly confident dork who wields a guitar — obviously it should have a guitar as it's center piece — but it would have been nice to hear different types of genres for boss themes and certain areas. It can also be a bit one note with it's rhythm, but this is kind of the drawback to being a game about rhythm combat. All of this doesn't really matter though, it's all so nicely put together.
The story itself is a very cornball story about some dumb ass who's in way over his head somehow bullshitting his way into breaking an entire tech conglomerate hellbent on mind controlling it's users. You got some fun, tropey characters, with some dumb jokes that had me giggling from time to time at how ridiculous it was. It charmed me, but I could see the cracks towards the end with the sort of rushed along "character's lowest point" arc for Chai, which is a bit of a shame, because the mini-game and the song were really nice. I'm assuming this is something that had to be moved along due to budget stuff. There's a few things like that in this game, and they even poke fun and acknowledge that with one of Kale's robots showing up during Korsica's end cutscene.
The amount of times I've stated out loud to myself "fuck, that's awesome" has been plentiful with this game. It can have some weak spots, sure, but it packs so much into such a nice experience that I can't help but appreciate it. This is the first character action game I've played where I really seemed to get the appeal of the genre a lot more, so it's honestly been a breath of fresh air. There seems to be more stuff to do in the game, so maybe I'll appreciate the game even more as I do that, but for now, I really, REALLY liked this game!
1998
"What game you play first is usually what you love the most." Usually.
Mario 64 was the first game I had ever played. Reflecting back when I was older, there was a brief moment a couple years ago, (and by brief I mean, like, at least a couple of months), in which I had felt like because Banjo Kazooie was iterative of Mario 64, it somehow lessened the experience. As if, because it's taking ideas that weren't it's own, it was somehow less special. That it's now more boring.
I was grumpy at the time due to some personal life issues, but even then, I was aware at just how dumb the thought was. I mean, come on, a game you loved your entire life is now boring to you? It was quickly dispelled with another playthrough of each game when I was in a better mood. After the replays, I concluded that each game had it's own strengths and weaknesses that only come from the result of their execution, and I loved them both unconditionally. But I still preferred Banjo Kazooie.
This idea sort of struck a chord with me, and it's something I've realized is true regardless of the game — My enjoyment of a game will always come down to the execution of ideas, how those ideas fit into my own particular tastes, and how much something sticks with me. Your preferred flavor will be your flavor, but you can always enjoy other flavors, so to speak. Granted, it won't always be your preferred— sometimes tastes change. But you will tend to prefer one thing over another.
Banjo Kazooie is one of the reasons I love video games. Mario 64 may have taught me what video games were, but Banjo Kazooie is the game where I found out my preferences.
What made Banjo Kazooie so unique from Mario 64 was it's structure. I loved that the levels were open and you could continue to explore the world without needing to be kicked back out like the missions in the Mario formula. It helped me feel like I was in this world, and not just in a video game. I loved that you could get new abilities and they would change the way you navigate through a world. I loved the transformations and how they added interesting changes to the gameplay (and even more so in it's sequel). I loved how there were multiple objectives within a level with their own characters, making it feel like the world was alive and lived in. I loved that this game is about a dumb, but good natured bear and his sarcastic, loud mouthed bird in his backpack go up against an evil witch that speaks in dumb rhymes because she stole his hot sister and she wants to steal her hotness for herself. I absolutely loved that this was an "open world" game, back when it was still applicable to call it that. GTA 3 would later change what that word meant forever, but at the time, that's what I remember people would call it. By modern definitions, it's obviously not as big, but this has actually benefited the game in hindsight. Since content is considerably more closely packed together, there's never really any of the stretching of content syndrome you'd find in modern games. Banjo Kazooie does an excellent job at packing it's levels with stuff to collect, giving the player fun ways to traverse, giving a tremendous feeling of exploration, and wrapping it all up in a very whimsical, charmingly tongue-in-cheek way.
Each level in Banjo Kazooie is engrained into my soul forever. Mumbo's Mountain, Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker's Cavern, Bubble Gloop Swamp, Freezeazy Peak, Gobi's Valley, Mad Monster Mansion, Rusty Bucket Bay, Click Clock Wood, they're all fantastic levels, with such vivid themes and character. Talking about all of them would take up too much time, but my favorite levels were always Freezeazy Peak and Click Clock Wood. Freezeazy Peak cemented my love for winter levels, with it's Giant Snowman, Christmas tree, log cabins with glowing lights inside, the winter night sky, Boogey the Polar Bear and his dumb shenanigans. All of it evokes the spirit of Christmas, and in part, is what my mental image of Christmas even is. Click Clock Wood on the other hand was this really interesting final level that was a remixed version of the same level, but it changed season whenever you entered into a different door within it's main hub. Each season had things you could do only within that season, but would progress time for certain events to occur. Characters like the Eagle would grow older and older each time you'd feed him, items would become easier to obtain from one season to the next. It's where the game is at it's most clever.
For the longest time, I had maintained the thought that Clanker's Cavern and Rusty Bucket Bay weren't very good levels. But the more I've replayed, the more I've learned to genuinely appreciate them. This is something that only happened recently, too! I never thought it would have happened! They're both grimey and industrial, but take two completely different takes on the same idea. Clanker's Cavern is a water level, but it's such a uniquely interesting take on a water level. You're swimming around in what's basically a trash disposal, with this mechanical shark that may or may not have once been a real shark, as you swim in his guts, his mechanical exterior, and area surrounding him. Rusty Bucket Bay has more to do with this ship surrounded by a bay of poisonous water, traversing the ship and portside alike.
I think the reason why I didn't like these levels growing up is that they both tended to scare me. They were the levels that my sister pawned off to me as we both played through the game, and they gave the both of us anxiety by having some of the more challenging parts in the game. Having to swim through a key to have Clanker float up to the surface was nerve wracking, and it didn't help that the swimming controls were stiff and hard to get your angle just right. Rusty Bucket Bay has the infamous pipe room that makes it very easy to die and have to restart the level again. Getting there used to fill me with unbelievable dread. Now that I'm older, and I've played this game countless amount of times, I genuinely appreciate the challenge it brings. It makes me appreciate that in the original version of the game, if you died, you would have to recollect all your notes. I get why people wouldn't like it, and for a time, I didn't like it either, but it's a fun challenge that puts you on the edge of your seat. I could easily play without it, but I think it adds some extra challenge if you're into that sort of thing.
The finale has always been so memorable to me. Grunty's Furnace Fun being a quiz/trivia game show as well as a sort of a boss rush is such a stupid, quirky, yet fun idea. It's so fitting for this ridiculous universe to end in such a silly way. The final boss fight with Grunty is probably one of my favorite boss fights. Having it set at the top of the tower, these murky storm clouds with a reddish glow peaking out of them as lightning crashes everywhere paints such a vivid picture in my head. The boss fight itself is really fun too, with multiple phases that really test out all the abilities you've gained throughout the game. And then finally getting to see the Giant Jinjo send her crashing down after many attempts at breaking her shield as it's timed with the music, only for her to throw out one last magic attack at you as she plummets to the ground is just, agh, it's so satisfying. It's such a great final encounter. Replaying your save file and seeing that Grunty's still trapped under that rock was always so cool, and it was the first time I've ever seen a game have that level of detail, as well as having the game continue even after I beat it. It's a small thing, but being able to see how your actions affected the world around you, and being able to still play the game even after you did every thing has become such a beloved trope of mine.
Speaking of the music, Grant Kirkhope's music is incredibly distinctive — almost too distinctive. It's so ingrained into Banjo Kazooie's DNA and fits the entire game like a glove. The back and forth chords of his signature style adds to the jovial tone, even in the more dramatic or spooky moments. I say it's "too distinctive" mostly because Grant tends to lean more into the similar tropes found within Banjo Kazooie's music with his newer music, when in reality, he has much more range than he let's on. There was a point where I thought maybe it was too played out, and became too much for me personally, but honestly, it was silly to think that. Grant's a legend, and his music is incredibly memorable, and most musicians wish they could have even one good tune to stick in your head forever. Grant's been able to do that with almost entire soundtracks, and that's incredible!
My preferences have grown over the years, and maybe stuff like the theming of the levels not being at all unified bothers me slightly. Maybe Clanker's Cavern and Rusty Bucket Bay aren't the best levels ever. Maybe the music isn't my single most favorite video game music ever made. But god, I don't fucking care. This game is just so fucking cool, you guys. GOD, Sexy Grunty is so fucking HOT—
With this review, I haven't said everything I wanted to say about this game. I'm not even sure I could at this point. It's so hard to formulate the right words to even begin to convince people how special this game is. But maybe, I don't need to. Maybe all I need to say is that, this game is the most important game I've ever played. It's the benchmark of my gaming preferences, and that's so important to me specifically. I can only hope that you feel the same.
Mario 64 was the first game I had ever played. Reflecting back when I was older, there was a brief moment a couple years ago, (and by brief I mean, like, at least a couple of months), in which I had felt like because Banjo Kazooie was iterative of Mario 64, it somehow lessened the experience. As if, because it's taking ideas that weren't it's own, it was somehow less special. That it's now more boring.
I was grumpy at the time due to some personal life issues, but even then, I was aware at just how dumb the thought was. I mean, come on, a game you loved your entire life is now boring to you? It was quickly dispelled with another playthrough of each game when I was in a better mood. After the replays, I concluded that each game had it's own strengths and weaknesses that only come from the result of their execution, and I loved them both unconditionally. But I still preferred Banjo Kazooie.
This idea sort of struck a chord with me, and it's something I've realized is true regardless of the game — My enjoyment of a game will always come down to the execution of ideas, how those ideas fit into my own particular tastes, and how much something sticks with me. Your preferred flavor will be your flavor, but you can always enjoy other flavors, so to speak. Granted, it won't always be your preferred— sometimes tastes change. But you will tend to prefer one thing over another.
Banjo Kazooie is one of the reasons I love video games. Mario 64 may have taught me what video games were, but Banjo Kazooie is the game where I found out my preferences.
What made Banjo Kazooie so unique from Mario 64 was it's structure. I loved that the levels were open and you could continue to explore the world without needing to be kicked back out like the missions in the Mario formula. It helped me feel like I was in this world, and not just in a video game. I loved that you could get new abilities and they would change the way you navigate through a world. I loved the transformations and how they added interesting changes to the gameplay (and even more so in it's sequel). I loved how there were multiple objectives within a level with their own characters, making it feel like the world was alive and lived in. I loved that this game is about a dumb, but good natured bear and his sarcastic, loud mouthed bird in his backpack go up against an evil witch that speaks in dumb rhymes because she stole his hot sister and she wants to steal her hotness for herself. I absolutely loved that this was an "open world" game, back when it was still applicable to call it that. GTA 3 would later change what that word meant forever, but at the time, that's what I remember people would call it. By modern definitions, it's obviously not as big, but this has actually benefited the game in hindsight. Since content is considerably more closely packed together, there's never really any of the stretching of content syndrome you'd find in modern games. Banjo Kazooie does an excellent job at packing it's levels with stuff to collect, giving the player fun ways to traverse, giving a tremendous feeling of exploration, and wrapping it all up in a very whimsical, charmingly tongue-in-cheek way.
Each level in Banjo Kazooie is engrained into my soul forever. Mumbo's Mountain, Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker's Cavern, Bubble Gloop Swamp, Freezeazy Peak, Gobi's Valley, Mad Monster Mansion, Rusty Bucket Bay, Click Clock Wood, they're all fantastic levels, with such vivid themes and character. Talking about all of them would take up too much time, but my favorite levels were always Freezeazy Peak and Click Clock Wood. Freezeazy Peak cemented my love for winter levels, with it's Giant Snowman, Christmas tree, log cabins with glowing lights inside, the winter night sky, Boogey the Polar Bear and his dumb shenanigans. All of it evokes the spirit of Christmas, and in part, is what my mental image of Christmas even is. Click Clock Wood on the other hand was this really interesting final level that was a remixed version of the same level, but it changed season whenever you entered into a different door within it's main hub. Each season had things you could do only within that season, but would progress time for certain events to occur. Characters like the Eagle would grow older and older each time you'd feed him, items would become easier to obtain from one season to the next. It's where the game is at it's most clever.
For the longest time, I had maintained the thought that Clanker's Cavern and Rusty Bucket Bay weren't very good levels. But the more I've replayed, the more I've learned to genuinely appreciate them. This is something that only happened recently, too! I never thought it would have happened! They're both grimey and industrial, but take two completely different takes on the same idea. Clanker's Cavern is a water level, but it's such a uniquely interesting take on a water level. You're swimming around in what's basically a trash disposal, with this mechanical shark that may or may not have once been a real shark, as you swim in his guts, his mechanical exterior, and area surrounding him. Rusty Bucket Bay has more to do with this ship surrounded by a bay of poisonous water, traversing the ship and portside alike.
I think the reason why I didn't like these levels growing up is that they both tended to scare me. They were the levels that my sister pawned off to me as we both played through the game, and they gave the both of us anxiety by having some of the more challenging parts in the game. Having to swim through a key to have Clanker float up to the surface was nerve wracking, and it didn't help that the swimming controls were stiff and hard to get your angle just right. Rusty Bucket Bay has the infamous pipe room that makes it very easy to die and have to restart the level again. Getting there used to fill me with unbelievable dread. Now that I'm older, and I've played this game countless amount of times, I genuinely appreciate the challenge it brings. It makes me appreciate that in the original version of the game, if you died, you would have to recollect all your notes. I get why people wouldn't like it, and for a time, I didn't like it either, but it's a fun challenge that puts you on the edge of your seat. I could easily play without it, but I think it adds some extra challenge if you're into that sort of thing.
The finale has always been so memorable to me. Grunty's Furnace Fun being a quiz/trivia game show as well as a sort of a boss rush is such a stupid, quirky, yet fun idea. It's so fitting for this ridiculous universe to end in such a silly way. The final boss fight with Grunty is probably one of my favorite boss fights. Having it set at the top of the tower, these murky storm clouds with a reddish glow peaking out of them as lightning crashes everywhere paints such a vivid picture in my head. The boss fight itself is really fun too, with multiple phases that really test out all the abilities you've gained throughout the game. And then finally getting to see the Giant Jinjo send her crashing down after many attempts at breaking her shield as it's timed with the music, only for her to throw out one last magic attack at you as she plummets to the ground is just, agh, it's so satisfying. It's such a great final encounter. Replaying your save file and seeing that Grunty's still trapped under that rock was always so cool, and it was the first time I've ever seen a game have that level of detail, as well as having the game continue even after I beat it. It's a small thing, but being able to see how your actions affected the world around you, and being able to still play the game even after you did every thing has become such a beloved trope of mine.
Speaking of the music, Grant Kirkhope's music is incredibly distinctive — almost too distinctive. It's so ingrained into Banjo Kazooie's DNA and fits the entire game like a glove. The back and forth chords of his signature style adds to the jovial tone, even in the more dramatic or spooky moments. I say it's "too distinctive" mostly because Grant tends to lean more into the similar tropes found within Banjo Kazooie's music with his newer music, when in reality, he has much more range than he let's on. There was a point where I thought maybe it was too played out, and became too much for me personally, but honestly, it was silly to think that. Grant's a legend, and his music is incredibly memorable, and most musicians wish they could have even one good tune to stick in your head forever. Grant's been able to do that with almost entire soundtracks, and that's incredible!
My preferences have grown over the years, and maybe stuff like the theming of the levels not being at all unified bothers me slightly. Maybe Clanker's Cavern and Rusty Bucket Bay aren't the best levels ever. Maybe the music isn't my single most favorite video game music ever made. But god, I don't fucking care. This game is just so fucking cool, you guys. GOD, Sexy Grunty is so fucking HOT—
With this review, I haven't said everything I wanted to say about this game. I'm not even sure I could at this point. It's so hard to formulate the right words to even begin to convince people how special this game is. But maybe, I don't need to. Maybe all I need to say is that, this game is the most important game I've ever played. It's the benchmark of my gaming preferences, and that's so important to me specifically. I can only hope that you feel the same.
Divorced from the motion controlled days of yesteryear, Skyward Sword is a fun time with some interesting ideas. I don't think it plays around with it's ideas enough to be completely interesting, but my guess is that it's primary focus was on getting the motion controls right. I can only guess this, given that I've only played the HD version, but that's the impression I've gotten.
The gameplay plays around with things like flying the Loftwings, a stamina mechanic, an entire boating mechanic that's accompanied by one of the best ideas I've ever seen in a Zelda game with the time shifting stones, etc. But these elements tends to feel half baked in their execution. The Loftwings are really only necessary for a small percentage of the game, and the gameplay consists of just flying to objectives with barely any threats or interesting maneuvers. The stamina mechanic, and how it's used in Skyward Sword, doesn't make much sense to be included. These areas aren't big enough to warrant a need for this mechanic, and it rarely provides for much interesting gameplay scenarios. There's an entire section of the sandlands that was once water, and using the mechanics of the time shifting stones, which are already a really cool mechanic, you go exploring on this once existing ocean and find a pirate's ship, which is one of the best dungeons in the entire game. It feels like it's so drenched in potential lore and gameplay ideas, but it just barely does much of anything with them, and the final boss misses all the potential to carry on with the pirate's story and giving the game more potential lore behind these automations. The robots could have been so much more interesting! But they're just kind of... there. Which is disappointing because it had so much potential.
This game also tends to reuse the same 3 areas a LOT. Some of the remixes can be fairly clever, but often times it ends up making this world feel rather small and limited. Though, in part, Zelda has been facing this problem for a while now. The same few biomes in the same old Hyrule tends to get a bit boring after a while.
All that being said, I enjoyed Skyward Sword. It's combat was fun and was fun to learn how to maneuver, with some really great bosses. The puzzles and dungeons tended to be really well executed—the final dungeon especially was a really cool concept for a dungeon. They iterated a lot of what Twilight Princess did with the Tears collecting and made them a bit more interesting. And more importantly, the story this time around was delightful at times.
I think they learned a bit from Zant in Twilight Princess, because Ghirahim is fantastic. He's a mix of evil bastard, but has a baseline level of respect towards you that's fascinating from a Nintendo villain. He's a bit more nuanced than your average baddy. Groose is a fun side character that has a nice little arc, along with Impa. Zelda and Link are great in this game, and have an emotional connection that actually made me tear up. There's a part where Zelda says to come back for her, and to wake her up, and you get the dialogue option to say "I promise". For some reason that just hit me so hard. I really love these two characters, their relationship rarely ever gets touched, but it's so sweet to know they really care for one another. At the same time though, these characters don't seem to get enough time to spend with one another. Their arcs don't feel like they've reach their full potential, which is a bit of a shame.
Lore wise, this game has been interesting. The first in the timeline, and it seems like the God's of this universe are considered the new God's, and Demise seems to hate these old God's for some reason. There's still that technological background element that seeped into my brain since my Twilight Princess Review, and it's been interesting trying to piece together that theory with this game. There's a curse for Link, Zelda, and Demise to all be cursed to this cycle for generations, but why? Why would these "gods" cause these 3 in particular to be so symbiotic to one another? I'm not sure, but these legends are not as medieval as they appear on the surface.
Skyward Sword is fine, good, and great at times. It's got some heart that I appreciate. It makes complete sense to me though why BOTW had to happen. The series' formula had reached it's limit, and instead of trying what was already done before and perfected as much as it could, they decided to step back and reexamine what made Zelda so interesting in the first place. And as a stepping stone to that, I appreciate this game.
The gameplay plays around with things like flying the Loftwings, a stamina mechanic, an entire boating mechanic that's accompanied by one of the best ideas I've ever seen in a Zelda game with the time shifting stones, etc. But these elements tends to feel half baked in their execution. The Loftwings are really only necessary for a small percentage of the game, and the gameplay consists of just flying to objectives with barely any threats or interesting maneuvers. The stamina mechanic, and how it's used in Skyward Sword, doesn't make much sense to be included. These areas aren't big enough to warrant a need for this mechanic, and it rarely provides for much interesting gameplay scenarios. There's an entire section of the sandlands that was once water, and using the mechanics of the time shifting stones, which are already a really cool mechanic, you go exploring on this once existing ocean and find a pirate's ship, which is one of the best dungeons in the entire game. It feels like it's so drenched in potential lore and gameplay ideas, but it just barely does much of anything with them, and the final boss misses all the potential to carry on with the pirate's story and giving the game more potential lore behind these automations. The robots could have been so much more interesting! But they're just kind of... there. Which is disappointing because it had so much potential.
This game also tends to reuse the same 3 areas a LOT. Some of the remixes can be fairly clever, but often times it ends up making this world feel rather small and limited. Though, in part, Zelda has been facing this problem for a while now. The same few biomes in the same old Hyrule tends to get a bit boring after a while.
All that being said, I enjoyed Skyward Sword. It's combat was fun and was fun to learn how to maneuver, with some really great bosses. The puzzles and dungeons tended to be really well executed—the final dungeon especially was a really cool concept for a dungeon. They iterated a lot of what Twilight Princess did with the Tears collecting and made them a bit more interesting. And more importantly, the story this time around was delightful at times.
I think they learned a bit from Zant in Twilight Princess, because Ghirahim is fantastic. He's a mix of evil bastard, but has a baseline level of respect towards you that's fascinating from a Nintendo villain. He's a bit more nuanced than your average baddy. Groose is a fun side character that has a nice little arc, along with Impa. Zelda and Link are great in this game, and have an emotional connection that actually made me tear up. There's a part where Zelda says to come back for her, and to wake her up, and you get the dialogue option to say "I promise". For some reason that just hit me so hard. I really love these two characters, their relationship rarely ever gets touched, but it's so sweet to know they really care for one another. At the same time though, these characters don't seem to get enough time to spend with one another. Their arcs don't feel like they've reach their full potential, which is a bit of a shame.
Lore wise, this game has been interesting. The first in the timeline, and it seems like the God's of this universe are considered the new God's, and Demise seems to hate these old God's for some reason. There's still that technological background element that seeped into my brain since my Twilight Princess Review, and it's been interesting trying to piece together that theory with this game. There's a curse for Link, Zelda, and Demise to all be cursed to this cycle for generations, but why? Why would these "gods" cause these 3 in particular to be so symbiotic to one another? I'm not sure, but these legends are not as medieval as they appear on the surface.
Skyward Sword is fine, good, and great at times. It's got some heart that I appreciate. It makes complete sense to me though why BOTW had to happen. The series' formula had reached it's limit, and instead of trying what was already done before and perfected as much as it could, they decided to step back and reexamine what made Zelda so interesting in the first place. And as a stepping stone to that, I appreciate this game.