ThruLidlessEye
In the 1983 film A Christmas Story, the main character's father receives a large package in the mail as a prize for solving crossword puzzles. The giant crate contains a lamp in the shape of a larger-than-life-size leg wearing a fishnet stocking. His wife hates it, eventually destroying it. He tries to put it back together. It might seem obvious but it's important to emphasize that while the film's narrator sees it as a primal signifier of sex, the father surely must know how tacky and shameful it is to display it in the window for all to see. He doesn't like it because it's good, he likes it because it's his, because he won it, because it's a symbol of his accomplishment. It's a matter of pride.
"It is the first American-produced visual novel"
For the first several years of my adulthood, I worked in a retail store. Christmas came and went, and every year we stocked a variety of holiday novelties and trinkets, including cheap reproductions of recognizable objects from a number of Christmas movies. Every year we got the leg lamp. We got it in different sizes. They sold, they sold out, and once it was sold out people would still come in asking if we had it.
"They sold this. To people. For money."
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has no redeeming qualities. It isn't a good game, it isn't a good piece of software, it isn't a good video or PowerPoint presentation or whatever. James Rolfe could have told you that, and he did, and that's the only reason anyone knows what this is, and the people publishing the remaster know this. The original is a piece of shit from top to bottom, beginning to end, from concept to production to release, and it is a piece of shit in earnest. There is no reason to go back to it, it deserves no legacy.
Yet it's being re-released for purchase and play on modern systems, under the pretense of historical significance or preservation. It will be bought out of irony, to share in some arms-length observation, a gross curiosity. From tip to tail the cultural object that is Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has been transformed from something honestly and irredeemably bad, to a completely disingenuous empty spectacle.
I haven't played it. You haven't played it. Nobody should play it. Nobody can play it, because it isn't a game. It shouldn't be here, it shouldn't be on the Switch or the PlayStation or the Xbox, it shouldn't be in your library, it shouldn't be in your thoughts. Let it fade away.
"It is the first American-produced visual novel"
For the first several years of my adulthood, I worked in a retail store. Christmas came and went, and every year we stocked a variety of holiday novelties and trinkets, including cheap reproductions of recognizable objects from a number of Christmas movies. Every year we got the leg lamp. We got it in different sizes. They sold, they sold out, and once it was sold out people would still come in asking if we had it.
"They sold this. To people. For money."
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has no redeeming qualities. It isn't a good game, it isn't a good piece of software, it isn't a good video or PowerPoint presentation or whatever. James Rolfe could have told you that, and he did, and that's the only reason anyone knows what this is, and the people publishing the remaster know this. The original is a piece of shit from top to bottom, beginning to end, from concept to production to release, and it is a piece of shit in earnest. There is no reason to go back to it, it deserves no legacy.
Yet it's being re-released for purchase and play on modern systems, under the pretense of historical significance or preservation. It will be bought out of irony, to share in some arms-length observation, a gross curiosity. From tip to tail the cultural object that is Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has been transformed from something honestly and irredeemably bad, to a completely disingenuous empty spectacle.
I haven't played it. You haven't played it. Nobody should play it. Nobody can play it, because it isn't a game. It shouldn't be here, it shouldn't be on the Switch or the PlayStation or the Xbox, it shouldn't be in your library, it shouldn't be in your thoughts. Let it fade away.
2004
How do you aim the camera ? Is it broken ??
2023
This is the best Square Enix game since Kingdom Hearts II.
2016
This is the worst one. This is the worst Final Fantasy. This is easily worse than popular punching bags like XIII and Spirits Within. There is no competition. There was no endgoal here, there was no vision. They took bits and pieces of 10+ years of cancelled projects and threw it at the wall and not a single thing stuck. This is Final Fantasy's worst story, worst setting, worst battle system. Zero sense of pacing, framing, structure. There's not a single reason to go back to it other than to think of what it could have been, a cruel sort of learning experience.
2023
Hi-Fi Rush don't mean a thing.
In the absolute broadest sense, I want more games like Hi-Fi Rush. I want more original IP, I want more studios to make games that seem outside of their wheelhouse, I want games to tackle new ideas and genre fusion can be a good place to synthesize something unique. I want more small-scale games that aren't structured with the goal of being the only thing I spend my free time on for the next year. I want more games that run at high framerates and resolution even if that means cutting back on the highest gloss new visual technique.
But if I look just a little closer at any part of this thing I just don't get it. As an action game it feels sluggish, stiff. As a rhythm game, I mean, come on; you get 8 licensed songs and they're all corny bullshit from over a decade ago, not new enough to be fresh, not old enough to be revered. Half the songs are from 90's acts who had certifiably entered a "washed up" or "sellout" phase by that point, and mixed in you get things like a Wolfgang Gartner novelty Mozart remix. People praised the original soundtrack (i.e. "streamer mode") when the game came out, saying that playing without the licensed tracks was no real loss, and I just really don't know how anyone listening to either score could interpret this as anything but an insult to both.
The game is full of platforming segments, but between the player's complete lack of momentum and how completely ineffectual both jumping and airdashing are, every single obstacle is a clunky chore. During combat the game practically plays itself; in fact, the idea that you don't really need rhythm to play this rhythm game was a selling point (although "selling point" may be a poor choice of words since everyone's playing this on GamePass). The entire experience feels like a checklist, there's just not a single moment of joy in playing this. There isn't even much extrinsic motivation because it always seems that even if I keep my style meter at S for an entire battle I end up getting a B. The only difficulty curve this game has starts at "win sloppily" and goes up to "win skillfully" but when the ranking gives you such an unclear idea of how well you're actually doing, why should I care?
This game has the misfortune of being the next high-profile action game after Bayonetta 3, and looking and feeling a whole lot like a worse Transformers: Devastation, and that's Platinum at their absolute most milquetoast. Its style could be best described as "inoffensive", the main character is just a regular guy, the robots you beat up are just regular robots, and everyone else looks like what I see in my mind's eye when I try to imagine "a RWBY character who only shows up in one episode", or "dollar store Promare". There's a guy who does JoJo poses, when you pick up collectables an announcer says "Excellent!" following by some electric guitar noodling. It's an original IP in the literal sense of not being directly based on an existing license, but it feels so attached to pre-existing media that I don't think it stands particularly well on its own. A game referencing Xenogears is not a replacement for new games as interesting as Xenogears.
The game has rhythm but it has no bounce, it gives the player no medium of expression, it's a consistent, plodding march. I don't even know what's "Hi-Fi" about it, it's an MP3 player and some earbuds!
In the absolute broadest sense, I want more games like Hi-Fi Rush. I want more original IP, I want more studios to make games that seem outside of their wheelhouse, I want games to tackle new ideas and genre fusion can be a good place to synthesize something unique. I want more small-scale games that aren't structured with the goal of being the only thing I spend my free time on for the next year. I want more games that run at high framerates and resolution even if that means cutting back on the highest gloss new visual technique.
But if I look just a little closer at any part of this thing I just don't get it. As an action game it feels sluggish, stiff. As a rhythm game, I mean, come on; you get 8 licensed songs and they're all corny bullshit from over a decade ago, not new enough to be fresh, not old enough to be revered. Half the songs are from 90's acts who had certifiably entered a "washed up" or "sellout" phase by that point, and mixed in you get things like a Wolfgang Gartner novelty Mozart remix. People praised the original soundtrack (i.e. "streamer mode") when the game came out, saying that playing without the licensed tracks was no real loss, and I just really don't know how anyone listening to either score could interpret this as anything but an insult to both.
The game is full of platforming segments, but between the player's complete lack of momentum and how completely ineffectual both jumping and airdashing are, every single obstacle is a clunky chore. During combat the game practically plays itself; in fact, the idea that you don't really need rhythm to play this rhythm game was a selling point (although "selling point" may be a poor choice of words since everyone's playing this on GamePass). The entire experience feels like a checklist, there's just not a single moment of joy in playing this. There isn't even much extrinsic motivation because it always seems that even if I keep my style meter at S for an entire battle I end up getting a B. The only difficulty curve this game has starts at "win sloppily" and goes up to "win skillfully" but when the ranking gives you such an unclear idea of how well you're actually doing, why should I care?
This game has the misfortune of being the next high-profile action game after Bayonetta 3, and looking and feeling a whole lot like a worse Transformers: Devastation, and that's Platinum at their absolute most milquetoast. Its style could be best described as "inoffensive", the main character is just a regular guy, the robots you beat up are just regular robots, and everyone else looks like what I see in my mind's eye when I try to imagine "a RWBY character who only shows up in one episode", or "dollar store Promare". There's a guy who does JoJo poses, when you pick up collectables an announcer says "Excellent!" following by some electric guitar noodling. It's an original IP in the literal sense of not being directly based on an existing license, but it feels so attached to pre-existing media that I don't think it stands particularly well on its own. A game referencing Xenogears is not a replacement for new games as interesting as Xenogears.
The game has rhythm but it has no bounce, it gives the player no medium of expression, it's a consistent, plodding march. I don't even know what's "Hi-Fi" about it, it's an MP3 player and some earbuds!
A beautiful, masterfully crafted piece of macaroni art. Fun, but don't be rough with it or look at it too closely.
The game is a very good demonstration of what Sony's newest console can do. If you had told me 15 years ago when I was playing the PS2 games at a friend's house that Ratchet and Clank would not only continue this far as a series, would still be made by Insomniac instead of the IP being sold off and going multi-platform, and would be one of very few high production-value exclusives for the PS5, I would not believe you. To me this feels like if Jimmy Neutron was still getting a big budget theatrical movie every few years. The use of the controller's adaptive triggers is at worst satisfactory, and at best makes standard the kinds of inputs that all the dozens of people who like the Steam controller praised it for.
The core mechanics are strong, a massive improvement over the 2016 movie-tie-in game. Everything in the previous game felt completely weightless, controlling Ratchet was like controlling a cursor; playing the game for the first time over half a decade ago I wondered if it would feel better with a higher framerate, trying out the first few levels on PS5 quickly gave me the answer (no). The camera movement still feels like its velocity is unusually high but that's basically my only complaint. Standard jumping and shooting feels great, and the multiple kinds of dashing give movement both in and out of combat so much more flair. The standard dash is the only time I can think of where a 3D game uses the kinds of trailing after-images seen in games like Symphony of the Night, and the R1/L2 dash is able to cover so much ground that I was shocked when I realized it wasn't limited to the wide, flat level where it is introduced. There are times where it feels both refreshing and somewhat absurd that a game with this amount of visual polish and movielike story presentation can be allowed to control like a classic PlayStation game.
It's always sort of telling to me that something is off when a game has something very unique on its title screen. An obvious and common example is when a game prominently features a button that takes you to a digital storefront, though a game like Sephonie giving you a direct link to a walkthrough right from the get-go is also pretty informing about what sort of priorities the game was made with. I've seen games that have speedrunning options before, but Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is the only game I've ever seen feature them in such plain sight, instead of burying them deep in the settings menu. The philosophy is no secret, this is a game that expects you to blitz through it.
The game encourages such fast-paced engagement with its core content, both by its mechanical speed and set-piece oriented linear segments as well as narrative urgency, that I got about halfway through before I realized that there was anything optional or hidden in the game at all. Many of the levels begin as a much more linear sequence, either because certain elements haven't populated the area yet, or because the game doesn't give you a necessary traversal ability until later. Though, even on a revisit, there's only so much opening up that can be done for some levels; the underwater laboratory is a particularly egregious example. The first visit provides some extreme urgency in the form of an Alien-esque monster stalking the halls, meaning the player likely develops a tunnel-vision preventing them from finding anything optional on their initial run. Coming back to this level later, it hasn't changed much at all other than allowing the player to go through it at their own pace. Finding a collectable in the deepest parts of this area is still going to require the player to take the whole loop around.
What's with that "zurpstone" side mission? To get one of the collectables you need to break 60 purple rocks in one of the early levels. A lot of them are up high, on towers and hills that seem inaccessible. After getting half of them, you get the option of flying around the area on a dragon, but the dragon can't actually damage the stones. After you get 45 of them, the dragon can breathe fire and break the rocks, and you get a piece of NPC dialogue saying "oh yeah I forgot to tell you earlier..." so it's not like they forgot to explain this to the player, they meant for this to be hidden information, and that's... stupid? What's the intent there? Did they want players to uselessly try to climb a mountain, having no idea that they should direct their attention elsewhere until they get every single other rock?
The game is surprisingly buggy for how otherwise polished it appears. At least once per level I found myself either dying or getting stuck due to broken collision. In one of the arena missions, enemies just stopped showing up and I had to reload from checkpoint. Character chatter often seemed to reflect a completely different context than what was going on; I can't be certain that all of these were actually errant but it sure felt like it. At one point, after doing one of the Glitch missions (interesting coincidence) the game didn't actually give me the reward, and instead had me do another, different mission at the same terminal. Later in the game I found the final Glitch terminal, but the reward was already sitting out in the open.
The character dialogue is just unbearably, sickly sentimental. You'll be doing your regular scrimblo bimblo bouncehouse funtime and your silly big-eyed robobuddy will ask you why you don't fear the future. Everyone feels like a member of one of those online "support groups" that turn into gossip circles as soon as the wrong person steps out of line, it all feels excessive and disingenuous. Some late twist reveals throw a wrench in the works but get resolved so quickly that I'm not sure what the point was. Kit is the only character who really has a recognizable arc, but I'm not sure what it's in service of or what really changed, was it a matter of self control or of learning to take risks? I don't know.
Relatively minor spoilers ahead, the bad guy loses at the end, shocker. The premise of the game is that Dr. Nefarious bridges the gap between dimensions to find a universe where he always wins. This is where most of the game takes place, and for basically every story beat this rings true. Nearly everything that could go wrong for our heroes does go wrong. It might seem that the story is being set up to be about perseverance or the power of friendship overcoming impossible odds, but that's not really what happened. Having all but conquered his own world, the alternate universe Emperor Nefarious falls victim to his own hubris, and decides that he must also conquer the universe that Ratchet, Clank, and Dr. Nefarious are from. This is, obviously, not the universe where Nefarious always wins anymore; sure enough, who delivers the final blow on the Emperor? Not Ratchet, Rivet, Clank, or Kit, but Dr. Nefarious. From start to finish the story is driven almost solely by the antagonists.
You can get a keyblade and make the money look like rupies, so that's neat.
The game is a very good demonstration of what Sony's newest console can do. If you had told me 15 years ago when I was playing the PS2 games at a friend's house that Ratchet and Clank would not only continue this far as a series, would still be made by Insomniac instead of the IP being sold off and going multi-platform, and would be one of very few high production-value exclusives for the PS5, I would not believe you. To me this feels like if Jimmy Neutron was still getting a big budget theatrical movie every few years. The use of the controller's adaptive triggers is at worst satisfactory, and at best makes standard the kinds of inputs that all the dozens of people who like the Steam controller praised it for.
The core mechanics are strong, a massive improvement over the 2016 movie-tie-in game. Everything in the previous game felt completely weightless, controlling Ratchet was like controlling a cursor; playing the game for the first time over half a decade ago I wondered if it would feel better with a higher framerate, trying out the first few levels on PS5 quickly gave me the answer (no). The camera movement still feels like its velocity is unusually high but that's basically my only complaint. Standard jumping and shooting feels great, and the multiple kinds of dashing give movement both in and out of combat so much more flair. The standard dash is the only time I can think of where a 3D game uses the kinds of trailing after-images seen in games like Symphony of the Night, and the R1/L2 dash is able to cover so much ground that I was shocked when I realized it wasn't limited to the wide, flat level where it is introduced. There are times where it feels both refreshing and somewhat absurd that a game with this amount of visual polish and movielike story presentation can be allowed to control like a classic PlayStation game.
It's always sort of telling to me that something is off when a game has something very unique on its title screen. An obvious and common example is when a game prominently features a button that takes you to a digital storefront, though a game like Sephonie giving you a direct link to a walkthrough right from the get-go is also pretty informing about what sort of priorities the game was made with. I've seen games that have speedrunning options before, but Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is the only game I've ever seen feature them in such plain sight, instead of burying them deep in the settings menu. The philosophy is no secret, this is a game that expects you to blitz through it.
The game encourages such fast-paced engagement with its core content, both by its mechanical speed and set-piece oriented linear segments as well as narrative urgency, that I got about halfway through before I realized that there was anything optional or hidden in the game at all. Many of the levels begin as a much more linear sequence, either because certain elements haven't populated the area yet, or because the game doesn't give you a necessary traversal ability until later. Though, even on a revisit, there's only so much opening up that can be done for some levels; the underwater laboratory is a particularly egregious example. The first visit provides some extreme urgency in the form of an Alien-esque monster stalking the halls, meaning the player likely develops a tunnel-vision preventing them from finding anything optional on their initial run. Coming back to this level later, it hasn't changed much at all other than allowing the player to go through it at their own pace. Finding a collectable in the deepest parts of this area is still going to require the player to take the whole loop around.
What's with that "zurpstone" side mission? To get one of the collectables you need to break 60 purple rocks in one of the early levels. A lot of them are up high, on towers and hills that seem inaccessible. After getting half of them, you get the option of flying around the area on a dragon, but the dragon can't actually damage the stones. After you get 45 of them, the dragon can breathe fire and break the rocks, and you get a piece of NPC dialogue saying "oh yeah I forgot to tell you earlier..." so it's not like they forgot to explain this to the player, they meant for this to be hidden information, and that's... stupid? What's the intent there? Did they want players to uselessly try to climb a mountain, having no idea that they should direct their attention elsewhere until they get every single other rock?
The game is surprisingly buggy for how otherwise polished it appears. At least once per level I found myself either dying or getting stuck due to broken collision. In one of the arena missions, enemies just stopped showing up and I had to reload from checkpoint. Character chatter often seemed to reflect a completely different context than what was going on; I can't be certain that all of these were actually errant but it sure felt like it. At one point, after doing one of the Glitch missions (interesting coincidence) the game didn't actually give me the reward, and instead had me do another, different mission at the same terminal. Later in the game I found the final Glitch terminal, but the reward was already sitting out in the open.
The character dialogue is just unbearably, sickly sentimental. You'll be doing your regular scrimblo bimblo bouncehouse funtime and your silly big-eyed robobuddy will ask you why you don't fear the future. Everyone feels like a member of one of those online "support groups" that turn into gossip circles as soon as the wrong person steps out of line, it all feels excessive and disingenuous. Some late twist reveals throw a wrench in the works but get resolved so quickly that I'm not sure what the point was. Kit is the only character who really has a recognizable arc, but I'm not sure what it's in service of or what really changed, was it a matter of self control or of learning to take risks? I don't know.
Relatively minor spoilers ahead, the bad guy loses at the end, shocker. The premise of the game is that Dr. Nefarious bridges the gap between dimensions to find a universe where he always wins. This is where most of the game takes place, and for basically every story beat this rings true. Nearly everything that could go wrong for our heroes does go wrong. It might seem that the story is being set up to be about perseverance or the power of friendship overcoming impossible odds, but that's not really what happened. Having all but conquered his own world, the alternate universe Emperor Nefarious falls victim to his own hubris, and decides that he must also conquer the universe that Ratchet, Clank, and Dr. Nefarious are from. This is, obviously, not the universe where Nefarious always wins anymore; sure enough, who delivers the final blow on the Emperor? Not Ratchet, Rivet, Clank, or Kit, but Dr. Nefarious. From start to finish the story is driven almost solely by the antagonists.
You can get a keyblade and make the money look like rupies, so that's neat.
2022
Put off reviewing this because I thought I might finish it. Nope.
I have watched, at most, one episode of Rick and Morty. I don't love it, but I also haven't been overexposed to it in the way that a lot of people have. I thought this game had a few funny moments, but even with the chatter set to the lowest setting that isn't "off" nobody in this fucking thing will ever shut up for a second.
I've seen people complaint about the soundtrack but I thought there was a small handful of genuinely good tracks here, the Zephyr Jungle level music stands out.
High on Life begins with a game-within-a-game sequence and one of the first jokes is "the fact the game has a crouch but no double jump shows where their priorities were", which I guess is funny in isolation, but it raises genuine questions. Everything that the player can do in this game feels like it needs its numbers pumped, you should be able to jump higher, dash farther. Why are dashes even limited by fuel? Every enemy besides the most low-level grunt peons is covered in a protective goop, basically nothing in this game dies in one hit regardless of whether you headshot or use melee. Secondary fire ammo isn't exactly scarce but you can't hold much, can only restock in specific places, and the cooldown between shots is too long.
Every now and then it introduces something like the grappling hook or sawblades you can stick into walls to make platforms, and stuff like that is the best part of the game. Most of the time it feels like it's afraid to actually let you have fun.
I have watched, at most, one episode of Rick and Morty. I don't love it, but I also haven't been overexposed to it in the way that a lot of people have. I thought this game had a few funny moments, but even with the chatter set to the lowest setting that isn't "off" nobody in this fucking thing will ever shut up for a second.
I've seen people complaint about the soundtrack but I thought there was a small handful of genuinely good tracks here, the Zephyr Jungle level music stands out.
High on Life begins with a game-within-a-game sequence and one of the first jokes is "the fact the game has a crouch but no double jump shows where their priorities were", which I guess is funny in isolation, but it raises genuine questions. Everything that the player can do in this game feels like it needs its numbers pumped, you should be able to jump higher, dash farther. Why are dashes even limited by fuel? Every enemy besides the most low-level grunt peons is covered in a protective goop, basically nothing in this game dies in one hit regardless of whether you headshot or use melee. Secondary fire ammo isn't exactly scarce but you can't hold much, can only restock in specific places, and the cooldown between shots is too long.
Every now and then it introduces something like the grappling hook or sawblades you can stick into walls to make platforms, and stuff like that is the best part of the game. Most of the time it feels like it's afraid to actually let you have fun.
2023
In Pokemon if you want to heal in town you go to a hospital and your party heals for free; to heal outside of town you need to buy a very cheap item with money that you earn from every battle.
In Cassette Beasts to heal in town you need to give the doctor 10 pieces of wood, or 20 pieces of plastic for a healing item you can use wherever you want, or you can rest at a campfire if you spend 5 pieces of shit. Fuck off.
Tap the B button to spend half your stamina bar for a split second movement speed increase. Systems are not mechanics, economies are not fun. Complete waste of time.
Just like Pokemon, there is nothing to be gained from actually playing it that you can't get from listening to the OST and looking at concept art.
In Cassette Beasts to heal in town you need to give the doctor 10 pieces of wood, or 20 pieces of plastic for a healing item you can use wherever you want, or you can rest at a campfire if you spend 5 pieces of shit. Fuck off.
Tap the B button to spend half your stamina bar for a split second movement speed increase. Systems are not mechanics, economies are not fun. Complete waste of time.
Just like Pokemon, there is nothing to be gained from actually playing it that you can't get from listening to the OST and looking at concept art.
2022
Monkey video game.
There are very few pieces of media in general that I've known about as long as Ape Escape without actually interacting with at all. When I was a kid I would get these books from the library that were mostly cheat codes and game guides, but sometimes they had these sort of "editorial" sections where the author would just write the exact kinds of essays you read on sites like this. Like, a review of the latest Gundam game would devolve into a diatribe on why Dragon Ball is objectively better than The Simpsons because the characters age (I'm exaggerating 20+ year old memories but you get the idea). I probably read all the names of these monkeys before I even really knew what a "PlayStation" was.
I really like the aesthetic. The low poly spiky haired super deformed anime scrimblo humans. The direct-to-VHS quality voice acting. The rainbow gradients. The sick breakbeats. A wonderful artifact of its time.
Unfortunately the gameplay is extremely hit or miss. The entire left side of the controller is dedicated to movement and camera controls, right shoulder and trigger are both jump, the face buttons are used to select items, the right stick uses the item. Most of the items offer unique, interesting, and tactile ways to use the right analogue stick; I'm genuinely disappointed that most games default to using the right stick for the camera (not just because of this game to be clear, in general). Aside from the items, the core platforming is too limited and just doesn't feel good. In the game's slower moments, focusing on using the items to solve puzzles or other environmental challenges, this feels a lot like the N64 Zelda games (right down to having a lot of the same types of setting, there's a level here that is just Jabu Jabu's Belly). When the game decides that it wants to be a platformer, you start to feel the limitations of only being able to use one item at a time. Combine those limitations with the weak core movement and constrained, Croc-esque level design, and you get moments that feel not unlike Balan Wonderworld.
I don't think I'll finish this game, I don't think I can. By the time you get to the snow levels the game is bullshit, and it knows it's bullshit because it starts putting endless health deposits at the beginning of the platforming challenges. I got knocked off that falling ice bridge by a spikeball 20 times, and I think that's enough.
It's cute, it has some neat ideas, it's fun when it wants to be, but it's not even close to a must play.
There are very few pieces of media in general that I've known about as long as Ape Escape without actually interacting with at all. When I was a kid I would get these books from the library that were mostly cheat codes and game guides, but sometimes they had these sort of "editorial" sections where the author would just write the exact kinds of essays you read on sites like this. Like, a review of the latest Gundam game would devolve into a diatribe on why Dragon Ball is objectively better than The Simpsons because the characters age (I'm exaggerating 20+ year old memories but you get the idea). I probably read all the names of these monkeys before I even really knew what a "PlayStation" was.
I really like the aesthetic. The low poly spiky haired super deformed anime scrimblo humans. The direct-to-VHS quality voice acting. The rainbow gradients. The sick breakbeats. A wonderful artifact of its time.
Unfortunately the gameplay is extremely hit or miss. The entire left side of the controller is dedicated to movement and camera controls, right shoulder and trigger are both jump, the face buttons are used to select items, the right stick uses the item. Most of the items offer unique, interesting, and tactile ways to use the right analogue stick; I'm genuinely disappointed that most games default to using the right stick for the camera (not just because of this game to be clear, in general). Aside from the items, the core platforming is too limited and just doesn't feel good. In the game's slower moments, focusing on using the items to solve puzzles or other environmental challenges, this feels a lot like the N64 Zelda games (right down to having a lot of the same types of setting, there's a level here that is just Jabu Jabu's Belly). When the game decides that it wants to be a platformer, you start to feel the limitations of only being able to use one item at a time. Combine those limitations with the weak core movement and constrained, Croc-esque level design, and you get moments that feel not unlike Balan Wonderworld.
I don't think I'll finish this game, I don't think I can. By the time you get to the snow levels the game is bullshit, and it knows it's bullshit because it starts putting endless health deposits at the beginning of the platforming challenges. I got knocked off that falling ice bridge by a spikeball 20 times, and I think that's enough.
It's cute, it has some neat ideas, it's fun when it wants to be, but it's not even close to a must play.
2020
A very effective commercial for a product I already bought. I wish it was much more than that.
Comparing this to Nintendo is an inevitability. This is a pack-in exclusive launch title, a platformer with a focus on motion/controller gimmicks, and a heavy focus on brand nostalgia. I got a lot of the same feelings with this that I did the first time I played Super Mario 3D World; that was the first console game I ever played in HD in my own home, and Xbox's output has been weak enough that this may as well be the first new big budget 4K console game to grace my living room. Not to mention very few games ask you to blow on your controller.
That said, I would mostly compare this game to the "other" side of Nintendo. You can use a site like MobyGames to find out who did what on your favorite games, and with any luck, you can find out what they're doing now. Through various spurts of curiosity I've found over time that for many of the most charming Nintendo games of yesteryear, there are two main paths for the people who worked on them; either they get promoted to a leadership position and little of their own work makes it into subsequent products, or, well...
I don't know how to charitably say this. They polish turds. Their talents are wasted making boring products sellable. They do good work, and I'm sure they like it; if your job is to draw Mario, and you love drawing Mario, then it might not matter whether you're drawing Mario for the platformers or the RPG's or the sports games. People who did some of the best work during the Gamecube/GBA-era across every discipline from programming to sound design are working hard to give the next Mario Party a mirror sheen.
It's not like Japan Studio had been doing that much for the past decade anyway, mostly development support and remasters, but knowing that Team Asobi has more or less replaced it makes this celebration feel a bit more like a funeral than an anniversary. I suppose we'll find out how valid this is whenever we found out what Asobi is doing next.
For every time I point at the screen and clap my hands and say "I know what that is! I remember the PSone attachable LCD screen!" there's a reference to LocoRoco or Vib Ribbon or Jumping Flash, something that in my opinion stands in stark contrast to this perfectly egg-shaped, orifice-less non-mascot. Astro makes fucking Sackboy look like he has life in his eyes. The game takes opportunities to remind us of games that felt truly fresh and new, but aside from the sheer fidelity, Astro's Playroom just doesn't have much going on at its core.
The core, though, is only part of the experience. Each level is a more or less even split between the bare-bones traditional platforming and a unique controller gimmick mini-game. It's genuinely very strange. PlayStation controllers have had motion capability since the PS3 launched, but they didn't exactly have a good start so it doesn't seem to have ever caught on. After a few hours of this I replayed the early sections of Horizon Zero Dawn to get my save file caught back up to where I was on PS4, and found myself fruitlessly moving the controller; why don't more games support gyro-aiming when it's been an option for so long? The PS4 controller is nearly a decade old, the touchpad already seems so deprecated that I don't even think most of the PS5 UI even lets you use it for navigation or typing anymore, and yet I have never seen a better use of it than the rolling mini-game in Astro's Playroom. It's like when Nintendo Land's Zelda mini-game had more responsive swordplay than the previous year's actual Zelda game.
That's the thing, there is a quality here, I think this game can grab you. It's pretty, it has a genuinely excellent soundtrack, it's full of easter eggs and call-backs and weird little interactions. Despite its flimsy backbone it offers some mechanically interesting moments. It's a game that knows its history, it was made in part by some of the same people who made that history. To make one last Nintendo comparison, it reminds me a bit of Bowser's Fury in the sense that they both feel like something that simply could not exist anymore as a standalone product. They're both a complimentary piece to a more "known quantity" product, they both lift a substantial amount of their assets from a previous game (Astro Bot Rescue Mission in this case), and they both make me hope that something new is down that road, something that takes the good parts of this small experience and fleshes out the parts where it's lacking. They both make me worried that such something is not down the road at all.
Throughout the game you can find a number of robots who have hearts in their eyes, in a frenzied glee, pawing at and rubbing against the objects of their affection, PlayStation hardware. I don't know what exact purpose this serves, if that's meant to be a representation of how much the developers love the brand, if that's how they expect players to behave, or if this is meant to suggest and cultivate that kind of fervor. I guess I know this feeling is somewhat pathetic, but it's such an extreme expression of enthusiasm that it makes me feel sort of sad. Sad that so many people are buying this console, a system the aesthetics of which are so absurd and in-your-face that they're impossible to ignore, and they skip over this game the same way you might skip over the 3DS's AR cards or StreetPass games, sad that to a lot of people a game like this is just cluttering up the screen on the box that plays the next Call of Duty. Sad that so many people, even some of the people who like games, even some of the people who work with games, view games as a waste of time. Sad that if this is a genuine expression of love for games from the people who make them that it needs to be ran through the filter of this edgeless, faceless, lifeless drone. It makes me feel kind of stupid and out of touch for caring about games even half as much as this imaginary robot does.
Comparing this to Nintendo is an inevitability. This is a pack-in exclusive launch title, a platformer with a focus on motion/controller gimmicks, and a heavy focus on brand nostalgia. I got a lot of the same feelings with this that I did the first time I played Super Mario 3D World; that was the first console game I ever played in HD in my own home, and Xbox's output has been weak enough that this may as well be the first new big budget 4K console game to grace my living room. Not to mention very few games ask you to blow on your controller.
That said, I would mostly compare this game to the "other" side of Nintendo. You can use a site like MobyGames to find out who did what on your favorite games, and with any luck, you can find out what they're doing now. Through various spurts of curiosity I've found over time that for many of the most charming Nintendo games of yesteryear, there are two main paths for the people who worked on them; either they get promoted to a leadership position and little of their own work makes it into subsequent products, or, well...
I don't know how to charitably say this. They polish turds. Their talents are wasted making boring products sellable. They do good work, and I'm sure they like it; if your job is to draw Mario, and you love drawing Mario, then it might not matter whether you're drawing Mario for the platformers or the RPG's or the sports games. People who did some of the best work during the Gamecube/GBA-era across every discipline from programming to sound design are working hard to give the next Mario Party a mirror sheen.
It's not like Japan Studio had been doing that much for the past decade anyway, mostly development support and remasters, but knowing that Team Asobi has more or less replaced it makes this celebration feel a bit more like a funeral than an anniversary. I suppose we'll find out how valid this is whenever we found out what Asobi is doing next.
For every time I point at the screen and clap my hands and say "I know what that is! I remember the PSone attachable LCD screen!" there's a reference to LocoRoco or Vib Ribbon or Jumping Flash, something that in my opinion stands in stark contrast to this perfectly egg-shaped, orifice-less non-mascot. Astro makes fucking Sackboy look like he has life in his eyes. The game takes opportunities to remind us of games that felt truly fresh and new, but aside from the sheer fidelity, Astro's Playroom just doesn't have much going on at its core.
The core, though, is only part of the experience. Each level is a more or less even split between the bare-bones traditional platforming and a unique controller gimmick mini-game. It's genuinely very strange. PlayStation controllers have had motion capability since the PS3 launched, but they didn't exactly have a good start so it doesn't seem to have ever caught on. After a few hours of this I replayed the early sections of Horizon Zero Dawn to get my save file caught back up to where I was on PS4, and found myself fruitlessly moving the controller; why don't more games support gyro-aiming when it's been an option for so long? The PS4 controller is nearly a decade old, the touchpad already seems so deprecated that I don't even think most of the PS5 UI even lets you use it for navigation or typing anymore, and yet I have never seen a better use of it than the rolling mini-game in Astro's Playroom. It's like when Nintendo Land's Zelda mini-game had more responsive swordplay than the previous year's actual Zelda game.
That's the thing, there is a quality here, I think this game can grab you. It's pretty, it has a genuinely excellent soundtrack, it's full of easter eggs and call-backs and weird little interactions. Despite its flimsy backbone it offers some mechanically interesting moments. It's a game that knows its history, it was made in part by some of the same people who made that history. To make one last Nintendo comparison, it reminds me a bit of Bowser's Fury in the sense that they both feel like something that simply could not exist anymore as a standalone product. They're both a complimentary piece to a more "known quantity" product, they both lift a substantial amount of their assets from a previous game (Astro Bot Rescue Mission in this case), and they both make me hope that something new is down that road, something that takes the good parts of this small experience and fleshes out the parts where it's lacking. They both make me worried that such something is not down the road at all.
Throughout the game you can find a number of robots who have hearts in their eyes, in a frenzied glee, pawing at and rubbing against the objects of their affection, PlayStation hardware. I don't know what exact purpose this serves, if that's meant to be a representation of how much the developers love the brand, if that's how they expect players to behave, or if this is meant to suggest and cultivate that kind of fervor. I guess I know this feeling is somewhat pathetic, but it's such an extreme expression of enthusiasm that it makes me feel sort of sad. Sad that so many people are buying this console, a system the aesthetics of which are so absurd and in-your-face that they're impossible to ignore, and they skip over this game the same way you might skip over the 3DS's AR cards or StreetPass games, sad that to a lot of people a game like this is just cluttering up the screen on the box that plays the next Call of Duty. Sad that so many people, even some of the people who like games, even some of the people who work with games, view games as a waste of time. Sad that if this is a genuine expression of love for games from the people who make them that it needs to be ran through the filter of this edgeless, faceless, lifeless drone. It makes me feel kind of stupid and out of touch for caring about games even half as much as this imaginary robot does.
2022
Splatoon is really strange because, in a vacuum, these three games make up what is probably Nintendo's most flatly iterative series. The aesthetic, the design sensibilities, the story, the structure, from top to bottom it's the same; you get some new single-player levels, some new multi-player maps, some new weapons, maybe a new game mode if you're lucky (it's a card game in this one). It makes sense why someone might be disappointed by this, especially considering how novel the first game seemed on release. It may be more of the same, but I think it's a winning formula. 7 years later I still find this both visually and mechanically more interesting than a lot of other big shooters on the market.
1994
I think calling a game "Impressive, for an [insert old console here] game" typically carries with it the implication that the game in question is more technically advanced than one might expect, but not necessarily remarkable otherwise.
This game's spiritual predecessor, Star Fox, is impressive, for a Super Nintendo game. A home console game with real-time polygonal 3D graphics in the early 90's is something to behold, but it's a pretty basic space shooter from top to bottom, a looser Space Harrier or After Burner. Putting the game on a more recent, capable platform might improve the game in some relatively basic technical ways, like improving the framerate. Aside from that though, Star Fox has the bittersweet benefit of being trite enough to be fully realized.
This is all to say that Vortex is not merely impressive for a Super Nintendo game, it is flat out held back by being a Super Nintendo game.
On startup the game informs you that it not only uses to Super FX chip, it has surround sound and paid the license to use the Dolby branding. It opens with a short narrative introduction before giving you a Zelda 1-style rundown of what all the objects in the game are for, what to avoid, what to collect, etc. The title screen presents several options, including a hands-on explanation of the game's controls, which a first-time player should probably check out.
Considering how simple Star Fox was, I was kind of shocked by just how deep this game's core mechanics are. This game has a surprising focus on a unique style of movement; you press left and right to turn, but up and down more or less act as a gear-shift, from reverse to park to 3 levels of forward drive. You can press X to jump, and press B to do a Resident Evil-style quick-turn (or perhaps Croc is the more appropriate comparison). You can hold L and press any face button to select one of several different modes, your main robot form, a car, a plane, and a stationary defense mode. If you press both shoulder buttons while in defense mode, you detonate a bomb that acts as an emergency screen nuke when you're feeling overwhelmed. The plane basically controls like an Arwing, meaning that you can use the up and down buttons for free aiming (though the game has a strong enough lock-on that you likely won't need it), and is your fastest option for movement. The car is almost as fast, but uses less fuel, so it's the best option for getting around. The robot is slow, but is the only form that can pick up objects, and the only form that can use all weapons. You shoot you lefthand weapon with Y, and your righthand weapon with A, and you can hold R and press either of these buttons to cycle between weapons.
Before going into the main game, a novice player should probably also check out the 3 training missions. The first is basically a hoard mode level in a mostly empty field, all you have to do is kill 30 enemies. The second is a linear obstacle course that introduces the game's first-person underground areas. These parts of the level are full of crusher obstacles that deal so much damage and are so difficult to avoid (primarily because the first-person perspective means it's difficult to tell where you actually are in space, but also because your movement is so indirect and the framerate is poor) that I wonder if this is actually meant to make the player look for an alternate way to clear the stage; you can actually just jump over the buildings that lead you underground and walk all the way to the exit. The third level is a simple map with a series of paths leading to five enemy structures that you must destroy.
And honestly, a first-time player may as well stop there, because the game has just peaked.
Despite the game's generous onboarding process, the first level of the actual main story mode leaves an absolutely terrible impression. The player is in a hallway in outer space, the environment is an empty starfield with a couple of barriers on either side. Unlike the ground missions, there is absolutely no verticality here. Enemies are all at the same elevation, and the alternate forms of your vehicle are basically useless for anything other than changing your speed. At the end of this completely linear area, the player encounters a boss. The boss's hitboxes are nebulous, what weapons damage it most are a mystery, and the player should probably be awkwardly mashing both the Y and A buttons. Especially if it's your first time, you will probably die; even if you know what you're doing the hitboxes are fickle enough that you might die anyway. You are sent all the way back to the beginning of the hallway.
The game only has 7 levels. There are 2 levels in this game that consist solely of these "space hallways". These levels are the "vortex" that the game is named after. It barely matters if the later levels use the material seen in the training missions in interesting ways, nearly a third of the game's content is flat out bad. What I have played of the later levels was a significant enough difficulty spike that I feel confident saying that it probably isn't worth trying to play through this game without using passwords.
What I mean when I say this game is held back by being a Super Nintendo game is that while, yes, a framerate boost would definitely help, the game has a really strong foundation that it simply cannot deliver on when constrained to this platform. Its controls are so convoluted that even a modern controller would struggle to conveniently assign each gameplay function to its own input. The game introduces so many types of level widgets and obstacles and systems that seem like they would be perfect for a game with the structure of Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron, but completely wastes these concepts in favor of hallways seemingly for no reason other than the cartridge simply didn't have the space for anything more interesting. This game was released in September 1994, just a few months before the release of the PlayStation in Japan. If this game had come out one generation, even one year later, it would have benefited in so many ways. More horsepower, more frames, more space for level layouts and graphics and music, they could have put that surround sound license to much better use; keep waiting until '97 and you could have had enough buttons.
This game could have been in fierce competition with Jumping Flash or Air Combat, instead it's faded into total obscurity. Despite its incredible potential, in the state that it's in, the game as it actually exists, I don't think it deserves better.
This game's spiritual predecessor, Star Fox, is impressive, for a Super Nintendo game. A home console game with real-time polygonal 3D graphics in the early 90's is something to behold, but it's a pretty basic space shooter from top to bottom, a looser Space Harrier or After Burner. Putting the game on a more recent, capable platform might improve the game in some relatively basic technical ways, like improving the framerate. Aside from that though, Star Fox has the bittersweet benefit of being trite enough to be fully realized.
This is all to say that Vortex is not merely impressive for a Super Nintendo game, it is flat out held back by being a Super Nintendo game.
On startup the game informs you that it not only uses to Super FX chip, it has surround sound and paid the license to use the Dolby branding. It opens with a short narrative introduction before giving you a Zelda 1-style rundown of what all the objects in the game are for, what to avoid, what to collect, etc. The title screen presents several options, including a hands-on explanation of the game's controls, which a first-time player should probably check out.
Considering how simple Star Fox was, I was kind of shocked by just how deep this game's core mechanics are. This game has a surprising focus on a unique style of movement; you press left and right to turn, but up and down more or less act as a gear-shift, from reverse to park to 3 levels of forward drive. You can press X to jump, and press B to do a Resident Evil-style quick-turn (or perhaps Croc is the more appropriate comparison). You can hold L and press any face button to select one of several different modes, your main robot form, a car, a plane, and a stationary defense mode. If you press both shoulder buttons while in defense mode, you detonate a bomb that acts as an emergency screen nuke when you're feeling overwhelmed. The plane basically controls like an Arwing, meaning that you can use the up and down buttons for free aiming (though the game has a strong enough lock-on that you likely won't need it), and is your fastest option for movement. The car is almost as fast, but uses less fuel, so it's the best option for getting around. The robot is slow, but is the only form that can pick up objects, and the only form that can use all weapons. You shoot you lefthand weapon with Y, and your righthand weapon with A, and you can hold R and press either of these buttons to cycle between weapons.
Before going into the main game, a novice player should probably also check out the 3 training missions. The first is basically a hoard mode level in a mostly empty field, all you have to do is kill 30 enemies. The second is a linear obstacle course that introduces the game's first-person underground areas. These parts of the level are full of crusher obstacles that deal so much damage and are so difficult to avoid (primarily because the first-person perspective means it's difficult to tell where you actually are in space, but also because your movement is so indirect and the framerate is poor) that I wonder if this is actually meant to make the player look for an alternate way to clear the stage; you can actually just jump over the buildings that lead you underground and walk all the way to the exit. The third level is a simple map with a series of paths leading to five enemy structures that you must destroy.
And honestly, a first-time player may as well stop there, because the game has just peaked.
Despite the game's generous onboarding process, the first level of the actual main story mode leaves an absolutely terrible impression. The player is in a hallway in outer space, the environment is an empty starfield with a couple of barriers on either side. Unlike the ground missions, there is absolutely no verticality here. Enemies are all at the same elevation, and the alternate forms of your vehicle are basically useless for anything other than changing your speed. At the end of this completely linear area, the player encounters a boss. The boss's hitboxes are nebulous, what weapons damage it most are a mystery, and the player should probably be awkwardly mashing both the Y and A buttons. Especially if it's your first time, you will probably die; even if you know what you're doing the hitboxes are fickle enough that you might die anyway. You are sent all the way back to the beginning of the hallway.
The game only has 7 levels. There are 2 levels in this game that consist solely of these "space hallways". These levels are the "vortex" that the game is named after. It barely matters if the later levels use the material seen in the training missions in interesting ways, nearly a third of the game's content is flat out bad. What I have played of the later levels was a significant enough difficulty spike that I feel confident saying that it probably isn't worth trying to play through this game without using passwords.
What I mean when I say this game is held back by being a Super Nintendo game is that while, yes, a framerate boost would definitely help, the game has a really strong foundation that it simply cannot deliver on when constrained to this platform. Its controls are so convoluted that even a modern controller would struggle to conveniently assign each gameplay function to its own input. The game introduces so many types of level widgets and obstacles and systems that seem like they would be perfect for a game with the structure of Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron, but completely wastes these concepts in favor of hallways seemingly for no reason other than the cartridge simply didn't have the space for anything more interesting. This game was released in September 1994, just a few months before the release of the PlayStation in Japan. If this game had come out one generation, even one year later, it would have benefited in so many ways. More horsepower, more frames, more space for level layouts and graphics and music, they could have put that surround sound license to much better use; keep waiting until '97 and you could have had enough buttons.
This game could have been in fierce competition with Jumping Flash or Air Combat, instead it's faded into total obscurity. Despite its incredible potential, in the state that it's in, the game as it actually exists, I don't think it deserves better.
mario is my very favorite :)
the buttons feel not very good :(
the buttons feel not very good :(
2022
I don't think many games have so vividly captured the feeling of wandering a city alone at night. I can't bring myself to truly hate Ghostwire, but I sure hate a lot of things about it.
The story is nothing, a complete waste of time, it could have been seconds long and wordless if this were an arcade game. Monsters show up, bad guys kidnapped a girl, use your magic powers to save her; they spend 30 full minutes explaining this to you.
The combat feels unsure of itself. It uses a lot of classic FPS design for its weapons and enemies, but it's too imprecise, too slow, the scale is too small. The "aim assist" button should have been a full Metroid Prime-esque lock-on.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, between the main missions, there are these relatively small city areas where you can explore, do side quests, shop, etc. Ghostwire is an entire game in which traversal feels exactly like those parts of DX:HR.
I hate when an open world game shows me a fraction. I especially hate when that fraction's denominator is six fucking digits. DK64 and Crackdown are blushing.
The story is nothing, a complete waste of time, it could have been seconds long and wordless if this were an arcade game. Monsters show up, bad guys kidnapped a girl, use your magic powers to save her; they spend 30 full minutes explaining this to you.
The combat feels unsure of itself. It uses a lot of classic FPS design for its weapons and enemies, but it's too imprecise, too slow, the scale is too small. The "aim assist" button should have been a full Metroid Prime-esque lock-on.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, between the main missions, there are these relatively small city areas where you can explore, do side quests, shop, etc. Ghostwire is an entire game in which traversal feels exactly like those parts of DX:HR.
I hate when an open world game shows me a fraction. I especially hate when that fraction's denominator is six fucking digits. DK64 and Crackdown are blushing.
It's syntax is particular enough that it won't recognize "hq" (lowercase) as "Headquarters", but will recognize "HQ" (uppercase). I have no idea how to make progress. I ask what seem like obvious, natural questions, with correct grammar and punctuation, and nothing happens; I type in blunt, old-school adventure game inputs, and get some results, but hit a wall shortly afterwards. Maybe this is moreso an issue with the English language version (I believe this is, afterall, the first official release of Portopia outside of Japan, and is a small, free, tech demo that likely didn't get much QA), but I have some doubts. Maybe it's significantly easier if you're already familiar with the original game and know what sorts of questions you should be asking, which I feel safe assuming most English speakers won't be. Maybe this is an intentionally botched "AI tech demo" so that Squeenix doesn't get swept up in the prospects of automating parts of their development process, or maybe, just maybe, AI isn't actually all that impressive yet.