I think the greatest sin of the NSMB games is that they've "flattened" people's perception of what the 2D Mario games were/can be. Believe it or not, games like SMB3 and SMW didn't limit themselves to just "grass world, desert world, ice world, water world", and even when they did use those tropes, they didn't depict them exactly the same way. Those games didn't just have an overworld map, SMB3 had essentially a board game with moving pieces that was catered perfectly to competitive playthroughs, and provided variety between levels. SMW's map was less varied, but told a story through the way you progressed through a detailed map with detours and distinct sections that all made sense in how they were all a part of one specific location. Even SMW has more than just one 1-up minigame. These games had distinct personalities, different aesthetics and inspirations, and the NSMB series serves to get everything in one perfect line. This is what Nintendo would have you believe Mario has Always Been and Always Will Be, which is why it seems projects like Super Nintendo World and the Illumination Mario Movie seem to borrow a lot from these games.

There are some actually good ideas for Mario levels here, some joy is to be had in terms of providing good, reliable 2D Mario platforming. Honestly, I wouldn't go all the way to say this is a bad game. But it seems to actively try to be unremarkable the whole time. The game's marketing revolves around "look at AAALLLL the COOOIIIIINS" but I'll be honest, there's a lot of them but not THAT many. Not enough to hang your entire game on. Also the raccoon leaf is here, P-meter and all, no real reason, it's just here because they need something here, god forbid they come up with an actual new power-up. Like I said, there's genuinely good levels and moments in this game, but it's not worth it.

One last thing: this game tries not to be too hard in terms of level design, which is fine, but it tries to make up for that by making some of the collectibles absurdly difficult to find, usually involving assumptions I would never make on my own. I guess that's also not a bad thing, just slightly exhausting. Glad I never got tricked into actually buying this game at any point. Did you know it's very easy to hack your 3DS?

This review is mostly about the port itself more than about Pac-Man, because besides it being a ROM file dropped onto an Unity project with a couple of overlays and adding in online leaderboards, it has a list of achievements that serve as the completion mark for this "Arcade Game Series" version of Pac-Man.

All of them are pretty much your basic stuff, make it to Round 2, and make it to Round 5, and then to 9 and so on (up until Round 17). Eating the different fruits (or artifact really, Bells and Keys included) per Round, and last but not least, eating the Ghosts in succession one after another which I thought was gonna be harder but not really if you just do it in Round 1. All and all pretty easy especially after activating the option that just lets you select which round to start in, but then after that you're met with the one achievement that tells you to clear three Rounds in succession without eating any Ghosts or without taking any hits, that one achievement in particular is actually hard and does require you to grind the game for a bit, but all of the other ones are more fair.

So, about the port... It's as much as they could do I guess. Besides having the Pac-Man game in the center, it offers you the option to put some overlays over it, or nothing. The previously mentioned online leaderboards and some options like changing the reverb of the game for some damn reason, the fact that the game is pretty much around the 780 megabyte mark for what would be a ROM and then some images goes on to show how much bloat is put in Unity projects after they're exported, and people still tell me why I hate the engine.

(This is pretty much spoiler free)

It's really enthralling to find something that brings my jaded and nostalgia biased perception of any media of "progressing mediocrity" and throw it out of the water to fire up the soul in your hearts once more and say "We're back and better than ever". Maybe my outlook will change and be more hopeful towards the future. Maybe I will stay jaded and just deem that thing an outlier and a modern classic or some other buzzword. No matter what it will be though, that particular "thing" will be a classic.

Outer Wilds is that "thing". It's a once in a lifetime achievement of video game design for the overall medium and a once in a lifetime experience for me. An experience that will be wholly ruined if spoiled beyond the synopsis and which makes it immensely difficult to talk about its qualities in public without ruining some of the magic. It's a game of knowledge. The less learned beforehand the better.

A game which ties the individual emotions of you as a player, you as a character with the seemingly cold and indifferent outer space. It dabbles on nihilism and the existential dread of your unimportance in "the big picture" and flips it entirely on something profound and hopeful melancholy in all the vanity. And it doesn't sprinkle hope in crumbs neither does it provide forcefully. The game will be hostile and indifferent pretty much all the way through and most of your efforts to best it will be in vain. You need to find that hope within yourself. The whole game is a song, whether a swansong or an elegy, it's up to you.

Being an exploration game, it's also a game about curiosity. Now the game explores curiosity thematically in two ways: through its base game and the DLC Echoes of the Eye.

(While we are here, I'd like to give a disclaimer that the base game and the DLC play very differently, for better or for worse)

The base game explores on the wonder of curiosity, the drive to know, the drive to find out, the drive to understand and the rush and magic that comes along with it; the DLC on the other hand explores on the fear aspect of curiosity, on how the things that you find maybe aren't something you want to find out or aren't ready for it. The exploration aspect is designed so organically, so meticulously and with such thought, that nothing feels "wrong" or out of place or order. There's full freedom of exploration and none of it feels non-satisfactory over an oversight.

The puzzles don't hold your hand at all and it's upto you to figure it out; by yourself as googling up your walkthrough will severely damage your experience. They're subjectively not easy and some of them can be incredibly complicated to figure out. But it's worth it. Finding them by your own is worth it.

All of this is bolstered by the amazing sound design and the stellar soundtrack by Andrew Prahlow which wouldn't be the first thing that come on your mind when thinking about exploring in space but it fits like a glove.

It's certainly did not come out of the blue and wears it's inspirations on its sleeves viz. Zelda, Myst, a lot of Metroidvania design. But it'd be an awful lie to insinuate and categorize it as something similar or akin to any of the others. It's a truly unique and original experience that is exclusive to games as a medium and which elevates the said medium.

Probably my second favourite game of all time, if not my favourite.

10/10

This is probably the only non-Live Action media that just gets how to capture the atmophere that the reality brings to your senses and thanks to Covid this feeling of familiarity further enhances the experience in the spin-off route. 24th ward feels like the world of its own with how SC pictures the every corner of its environment as identity liberating and eventually captivating, dark, aggressive and fragile, lost in its own ordinary uniqueness given the internet's ever-growing sovereignty, never hyperfocusing on its individuals (excluding the spin-off chapters, naturally) despite maintaining its interpersonal balance with characters' distinct mannerism communicated through the virtually zero exposition, completely relying on iconic sprites and avatars that subconscious cement their characteristics to the player's mind and instead shows as how, in seemingly disconnected fashion, the population acts and re-acts on their own and each others' delusions of grandeur as the consequences and the influence of the one great man spreads out and forms the stand-alone complex, while all of it in an indirect fashion build the same concept up as they all are coming together in the climax. That which, I think, is the best way to weave the narrative centered around the detective group, instead of allowing the paragons of virtue to maintain the law by force.

The rest, I am afraid, are spoilers that I do not want to give away as of now.