Time loops are such an interesting concept to me, and I feel like video games are the only medium capable of fully realizing the concept. Majora's Mask comes to mind first. Twelve Minutes unfortunately comes second.

The gunplay is passable, the aesthetic the game is going for rocks, and the concept of the Visionaries (the people you have to kill to break the loop) having superhuman powers is pretty interesting.

The game goes for the "go loud or go quiet, the choice is yours" thing a lot of other games have, but like all those it's another example of just going for stealth if you don't wanna suffer through very same-y combat. It also doesn't help that it feels even more monotonous because you go through the same areas at the same times of day so often because time progresses on a per-level basis, meaning you do four levels before the day begins anew.

I'm not a fan of the way the game handles using the loop to my advantage, though. You get intel in one loop, and then apply that intel in another that results in you learning that oh, this thing happens at this time, instead of doing something that creates an entirely new scenario altogether (with the exception of like two of the Visionaries).

Essentially, the story is the most interesting part of the game. How is this island stuck in a loop? Why are Colt and Julianna capable of remembering between loops when everybody else isn't? Why are there different versions of Colt? I've only played through the main story as Colt, and I plan to play as Julianna. I don't expect an entirely different experience, though.

[9/20/23]

First RPG I've played in a hot minute (a few days after I was talking about how I should get on another one). Very addicting and I love me some action commands, even if some feel like they come too early/late. Same with blocking.

Sabotage is 2 for 2. Love to see it!

[10/22/2023]

This is what I've been waiting for, baby. 10 years since the last new 2D Mario, and like 17 since the last great one with New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. If that game wasn't so important to me growing up, this would have dethroned it.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the wake-up call for many a person who thought that 2D Mario would never escape New™ Hell. From the moment you expose your eyes to it to the very end of the 100% journey, it's like the team saw everybody complaining about the New series and chose to give them exactly what they wanted, right down to omitting the word in the title.

I figure I can start with the first thing you see: the artstyle. Mario and the crew (12, by the way! first playable appearance of Daisy in a mainline game as well but I'll let it slide) have new life to their movements, the whole game reminds me of that one Van Gogh-esque stage from New Super Mario Bros. U, and every single creature from the playable characters to the small talking flowers shows some sort of emotion. Goombas react in fear when you stomp one of their brethren and most enemies start freaking out if they see a fireball or bubble coming towards them. I'm not going to call the New series "soulless", but I am going to say that it now looks extremely basic compared to Wonder, as opposed to it looking just basic in the years prior.

Mario games live and die on their level design, and this game's lively as can be. No two levels ever utilize the same enemy or mechanic as their main gimmick with the exception of the obligatory challenge levels. The poison jungle theme continues to be my favorite in a 2D Mario since 2006 (except you NSMB2 fuck you for merging it with the beach world). Each level is then further distinguished with the Wonder Flowers. They're optional, but you'll be missing out on some of the most creative level design in a Mario game yet if you skip them. While some Wonder effects are reused, the levels they're reused in are distinct enough for them to stay fresh. The levels themselves are split into different categories, from your traditional stages ending in the iconic flagpole, to bite-sized challenges to spice up the journey, to arenas where you need to defeat all enemies onscreen, to puzzles that demand you remember you have a brain to decipher. It's like the team saw the shit people were making in Super Mario Maker and took notes on how to fully realize these ideas.

The Super Mushroom and Fire Flower return, and the latter's got a couple of adjustments to help make it feel better. You can now hurl fireballs while crouched, and you're no longer limited to just 2 of them anymore. The three new power-ups, too, are fun. The Bubble Flower is worthy of being a mainstay among its Fire and Ice counterparts; the bubbles' purely lateral movement alongside the abilities to go through walls and be a temporary platform to bounce off of give it insane flexibility. The Drill Mushroom is good as-is and has the potential to also be a mainstay, functioning as a way to hit enemies from below like a Spiny helmet from SMM and deal multiple hits with a Ground Pound faster than usual in addition to its ability to dig into the ceiling and floor to avoid danger, but I feel like another movement-related ability could have helped it and the level design using it. Maybe something like Ground Pounding the floor resulting in digging deeper than usual before slowly returning to the surface, or running into a wall at full speed to drill into the wall to reach otherwise blocked off areas. It's a power-up all about movement, but it's scratching the surface of what it could be. The Elephant Fruit is this game's gimmick power-up. You know the ones. They only appear in one game and rarely return, even in spinoffs (looking at you, Cape Feather, Superball Flower, Carrot, Propeller Mushroom, Gold Flower, Super Acorn.) You're larger, can do pretty wide melee attacks, and can toss out water if you have some. Melee attacks are a property that other items have had before, and throwing water serves few purposes if you don't care about coins. It's cool, but not cool enough to return as its niche use is level specific. The Super Leaf can already do melee and fly. It's why all the other flying items never return. The Elephant Fruit will probably share the same fate.

With a game with this many new mechanics and enemies, the boss fights are bound to be the most unique we've seen since NSMB. Nah, have 4 Bowser Jr. fights where you jump on him (more than three times, wow!) and 3 Bowser-themed comveyor belts where you approach it and jump on a switch like it's 1985. This is the weakest part of the game for me, and this sentiment isn't unique at all. I was hoping that the game took a Yoshi's Island-esque approach where the new enemies or some variant of it are the bosses, or where said enemy gains the Royal Seed (the game's MacGuffin) like another game that I'll get exiled for mentioning and creates effects throughout the world they occupy. The one sign we're hot (cold? it's been 11 years) off the presses of the New series. At least the final boss fight rocked.

All in all, this game fucking rules and is the best Mario game we've gotten since Galaxy. I like the Mario franchise a perfectly normal amount to have beaten this game in 2 days and to have written this little about it.

[10/30/2023]

My first Forza Horizon game, and my first Forza game in a hot minute. Racing comes first and foremost, but the open world and its activities is perfect if I just want to boot up the game and relax by driving whatever car I feel like at any given moment.

The game also looks beautiful. This is the only way I've seen areas of Mexico that aren't Baja. That being said, though, the depiction of the country's regions and cities is like the one thing this game got right about Mexico. It's a game set in Mexico, made by a British studio. The progtagonist is confirmed to be the same one from Forza Horizon 4, so they're British. That's kinda annoying. Even more annoying is the almost stereotypical portrayal of Mexican people. We've got a woman who won't shut up about her grandfather and his history with cars, the Vocho is apparently the only car Mexicans are a fan of, and they mix Spanish in the occasional English sentence. I guess that last one's on me for setting the game audio to English, but they should have at least gone for the occasional full sentence in Spanish or none at all before making everyone sound like they only remember what they learned in their high school Spanish class. The radio's also got like zero Mexican songs. The Drum & Bass station is cool, though.

Shoutout to this game for carrying me through my first two years of college. Now it's Motorsport's turn to carry me through the next two.

[11/1/2023]

Scrolling through the list of games on Xbox Game Pass always ended with me facing the lineup of 8, soon to be 9, mainline entries in the Yakuza series at the bottom of that list. The more times I scrolled through out of boredom, the more they showed up, and the more interested I was in trying the series out. The out of context moments and the fact that one of my favorite streamers is a fan of the franchise helped too. So, I eventually took the plunge on the 17th of October of this year.

The game's a prequel, but that doesn't mean that the whole game exists only to set up the future games or be filled with name drops that would confuse somebody whose first game is the prequel (looking at you, Resident Evil 0, or something like that I never played it). Thank god for that. This is the first game in a while to actually grip me in its story. I originally planned to do one chapter a day, but eventually it ended up becoming two chapters a day, and even three on a good day.

The gameplay's fun if you enjoy walloping people in a variety of ways and also hitting people over the head with a variety of objects. The combat's at its most thoughtful in one-on-one fights, to be honest. It kinda felt like a fighting game the moment I realized I could whiff punish and be whiff punished. Slugger Majima rules.

Depending on how much I like the next couple of games, I honestly might blaze through the series in the span of a few months before Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth drops. If my time with Yakuza 0 means anything, this is a good sign.

[11/8/2023]

This game is a remake of a 2005 game, and it shows. Following Yakuza 0, jumping back to a game that was pretty lacking in comparison was pretty jarring. The Majima Everywhere system did some pretty heavy lifting in regards to content aside from the story. Speaking of said story, it's a pretty good one, but it's a shame that the fact that they didn't know that Yakuza was going to be as big as it is now is very apparent here. I'm surprised I haven't gotten bored of the combat yet. Kiryu's new era in his life that we follow through to 6 has gotta be pretty interesting if we follow him for that long. I'm expecting more of this with Kiwami 2. Hopefully it's not as barebones.

[11/11/2023]

I was planning to write a review for this game three days ago, when Risk of Rain had turned 10 years old. Unfortunately I was too busy playing Survivors of the Void on my Xbox because it finally released. That, and buying Risk of Rain Returns. Least I'm only three days late.

As I said in my Risk of Rain 2 review, I encountered a song from this game that would eventually lead me to discover this series. Best accidental discovery of my life. Eventually, I played the games in early 2021.

The original Risk of Rain is overshadowed by its sequel so hard it makes Street Fighter II look like a minor improvement in comparison. Stage traversal is the largest issue with this game. You can't move while attacking unless you're playing Huntress. It's so easy to accidentally loop because it's bound to the same button as normally going to the next stage. You need to kill every enemy before progressing to the next stage. Plenty of issues that add up to a pretty unenjoyable experience if you played Risk of Rain 2 first. Thankfully, I didn't do that.

That being said, though, this game's unique among roguelikes for its infinitely scaling difficulty and ability to pick up multiple of the same item. You could choose to beat the game normally, or you could collect so many items that you become a demigod, only smited by equally strong monsters should you last long enough. I wish more roguelikes would have a loop system like this game does.

Risk of Rain is more of a novelty to come back to 10 years after its initial release. It's gonna feel like even more of a novelty with Returns out. Beautiful game when you get the hang of it, and an even more beautiful soundtrack. Becoming God has never felt so satisfying.