[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.

[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!

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.

Me losing my cartridge with a town from 2013 at a bank in 2017 was my first encounter with the feeling known as grief. Anyway, I'm currently replaying this game 10 years after the game's North American launch. It feels so good to come back to an entry that has stuff to do and characters with more than three lines of dialogue.

It's your typical Animal Crossing gameplay loop. You get on for like 15 minutes at least once a day to do stuff exclusive to that time of day, and you keep doing that over and over throughout the year to experience everything the game has to offer. It's the kind of game you play to relax and take a break from other, faster games. Catching fish and bugs, customizing your house and character, the usual.

The game's main gimmick is that you are the mayor. As that person, you're responsible for turning the place into a "perfect town" by enacting ordinances and starting public works projects that range from bridges to new buildings and other functional stuff. Effectively, you have limited customization over the outdoors, even if it is a bit limited.

Welcome Amiibo, the expansion released in 2016 that adds amiibo functionality, a new currency, and some very cool crossover stuff with The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon. Not too big of an impact, but still very cool that they actually updated the game three years after launch.

I love this game, if it wasn't apparent already. I love checking in on these lines of code as if they're longtime friends. I love chilling on the island, both alone and online, even if the latter appears to be rampant with hackers (I've only encountered one on my only online visit so it's pretty much 100%), to get the rare bugs and fish. I love watching this town of mine grow over days and weeks and months and years of continuously checking in.

Ten-year-old me was enamored with this game. Twenty-year-old me is enamored even more. Having a sequel that strips the personality and exposed the franchise to the mainstream does that to a guy.

When I usually play games that are labeled as industry-defining, I often play them primarily for that purpose. They're industry-defining because they laid the foundation, but some of them come short of being enjoyable on their own.

I really should leave that idea behind.

RE4 was a blast to go through, start to finish. It's the best balance Resident Evil had between horror and action before it started tipping too far towards the opposite direction to the point that the series needed a soft reboot to recover from its severe case of Michael Bay-ification. Details in combat like throwing a flashbang at mutated enemies and enemies reacting to where I hit them make the combat feel so, so satisfying. The cultists' monotonous chanting and the creepy-ass breathing of the Regeneradors (which I also now completely understand why they are so feared) proves that the game can still be pretty spooky.

The reason why it's a 9, and not a 10, is because I think that QTEs that instantly kill you upon failure is kinda really stupid. Not every QTE instakills if you fail, but they're still pretty spread out that it's annoying. If the remake retains what I love about this game alongside the removal of QTEs, it might just be a 10.