1999
My last experience with a golf game was Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Ted Couples, which didn't emulate so well. Not that it matters, because I am notoriously bad at golf both in and out of video games, and at this point it's pretty rare for me to pick up a club and try. Yet, Mario Golf has been calling to me lately, and I figure hey, it's Mario so it's probably designed for children, which is exactly where my skill level is at.
I spent the better part of my Saturday morning on hole 2 of Koopa Park smacking the ball too hard out of the rough and watching it whizz right by the hole as I knocked it between opposite ends of the green over and over again. I was 20 over par, Mario fucking killed himself.
Seeing as the biggest barrier here is the terrible misfortune of being me, Mario Golf is otherwise pretty good! Maybe the best golf game I've ever played bearing in mind my fairly limited exposure to the genre. The presentation is fantastic and gets by on a lot of that Mario charm, and the controls feel good and intuitive without babying you so much that I can place higher than 30th in a tournament, so you know... the skill ceiling is set high enough to give you some overhead! I also played this with a N64 controller that I placed an 8bitdo hall effect joystick in, and it made finessing the position of my putts and swings feel much better than it does on a stock analog stick.
I've seen quite a few people complain about how tedious and demanding course and character unlocks are, and I think that's a very fair criticism, but you can also plug in a code at the title screen and unlock almost everything. After being humbled several times by Luigi, that's what I did. I have no pride, there's nothing I hold sacred about this sport. I don't need to participate in an agonizing unlock system, I have nothing to prove to you, Mario Golf, or God.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
I hope your feet are kicked up under the cabana, a cool fruity beverage in hand, because I'm about to rain some Summah philosophy down upon you. Golf is a year-round sport, which makes it both Summah and Not Summah at the same time.
How can that be? Is it possible that Summah and Winter can co-exist? This is a question that has baffled Summah science for centuries! But perhaps we can get closer to the truth by examining Mario Golf and extract, separate, and measure its seasonal essence. To carry out this experiment, I put my copy of Mario Golf into an Amazon Basics juicer and it broke immediately.
Testing Mario Golf against the Summah Index Scale also yielded poor results, leaving much needed answers out of our grasp, like a parasol carried by Summah winds towards open waters. But maybe we're thinking of it all wrong. Why should the seasons co-exist when we have the means of making Summah eternal? Once it's 90 degrees in December, you'll be havin' a Summah forever.
I spent the better part of my Saturday morning on hole 2 of Koopa Park smacking the ball too hard out of the rough and watching it whizz right by the hole as I knocked it between opposite ends of the green over and over again. I was 20 over par, Mario fucking killed himself.
Seeing as the biggest barrier here is the terrible misfortune of being me, Mario Golf is otherwise pretty good! Maybe the best golf game I've ever played bearing in mind my fairly limited exposure to the genre. The presentation is fantastic and gets by on a lot of that Mario charm, and the controls feel good and intuitive without babying you so much that I can place higher than 30th in a tournament, so you know... the skill ceiling is set high enough to give you some overhead! I also played this with a N64 controller that I placed an 8bitdo hall effect joystick in, and it made finessing the position of my putts and swings feel much better than it does on a stock analog stick.
I've seen quite a few people complain about how tedious and demanding course and character unlocks are, and I think that's a very fair criticism, but you can also plug in a code at the title screen and unlock almost everything. After being humbled several times by Luigi, that's what I did. I have no pride, there's nothing I hold sacred about this sport. I don't need to participate in an agonizing unlock system, I have nothing to prove to you, Mario Golf, or God.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
I hope your feet are kicked up under the cabana, a cool fruity beverage in hand, because I'm about to rain some Summah philosophy down upon you. Golf is a year-round sport, which makes it both Summah and Not Summah at the same time.
How can that be? Is it possible that Summah and Winter can co-exist? This is a question that has baffled Summah science for centuries! But perhaps we can get closer to the truth by examining Mario Golf and extract, separate, and measure its seasonal essence. To carry out this experiment, I put my copy of Mario Golf into an Amazon Basics juicer and it broke immediately.
Testing Mario Golf against the Summah Index Scale also yielded poor results, leaving much needed answers out of our grasp, like a parasol carried by Summah winds towards open waters. But maybe we're thinking of it all wrong. Why should the seasons co-exist when we have the means of making Summah eternal? Once it's 90 degrees in December, you'll be havin' a Summah forever.
Ranma 1/2: Bakuretsu Rantou Hen, not to be confused with Ranma 1/2: Chounai Gekitou-hen, still has jump mapped to a button. I am going to douse myself in hot water and transform into The Joker.
That aside, unlike Chounai Gekitou-hen, Bakuretsu Rantou Hen actually came out here as Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle, leaving Rumiko Takahashi's designs intact as opposed to Gekitou-Hen's localization, Street Combat, which threw characters like Ryoga out for the likes of... G.I. Jim. Christ. To be fair, I never thought Gekitou-Hen looked all that good to begin with, and it certainly doesn't play very well. Hard Battle thankfully improves on both fronts, even if it's a bit too simplistic for its own good.
Characters are still weighty and slow but nonetheless move with more fluidity than the previous game. Attacks are responsive, I never had any trouble judging where a hit or hurtbox was, and the impact of your punches and kicks feels satisfying enough to make this an easy weekend morning pick-up-and-play fighter. I just wouldn't come to Hard Battle expecting anything technical, it's a very straight-forward fighting game. You can mash out your special at basically zero penalty by tapping P+K, just corner your enemy and melt them, it's baby's first fighter and that's fine cause I'm a big dumb baby and I suck at these, generally speaking. It also has Ranma in it, and as I've established plenty of times elsewhere, I love me some Ranma 1/2.
That being the case, your own investment will likely depend on how much you like Ranma 1/2, too. On a system that's certainly not wanting for fighting games, Hard Battle is as white bread as it comes, perfectly competent and well-executed if lacking depth.
Side note: the timing of me playing this is a bit serendipitous, as a trailer for a new Ranma anime just dropped a few hours ago. The Urusei Yatsura remake was fantastic, so I'm really hopeful for this.
That aside, unlike Chounai Gekitou-hen, Bakuretsu Rantou Hen actually came out here as Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle, leaving Rumiko Takahashi's designs intact as opposed to Gekitou-Hen's localization, Street Combat, which threw characters like Ryoga out for the likes of... G.I. Jim. Christ. To be fair, I never thought Gekitou-Hen looked all that good to begin with, and it certainly doesn't play very well. Hard Battle thankfully improves on both fronts, even if it's a bit too simplistic for its own good.
Characters are still weighty and slow but nonetheless move with more fluidity than the previous game. Attacks are responsive, I never had any trouble judging where a hit or hurtbox was, and the impact of your punches and kicks feels satisfying enough to make this an easy weekend morning pick-up-and-play fighter. I just wouldn't come to Hard Battle expecting anything technical, it's a very straight-forward fighting game. You can mash out your special at basically zero penalty by tapping P+K, just corner your enemy and melt them, it's baby's first fighter and that's fine cause I'm a big dumb baby and I suck at these, generally speaking. It also has Ranma in it, and as I've established plenty of times elsewhere, I love me some Ranma 1/2.
That being the case, your own investment will likely depend on how much you like Ranma 1/2, too. On a system that's certainly not wanting for fighting games, Hard Battle is as white bread as it comes, perfectly competent and well-executed if lacking depth.
Side note: the timing of me playing this is a bit serendipitous, as a trailer for a new Ranma anime just dropped a few hours ago. The Urusei Yatsura remake was fantastic, so I'm really hopeful for this.
2015
The main loop of Avalanche's Mad Max reminds me of those long nights fixing up an old sports car with my dad. Working together in the garage, listening to the radio and bonding... Except dad is a hunchbacked zealot named Chumbucket, and I'm busy welding spikes onto the side of the car so I can commit grand acts of vehicular terror.
I slept on this game when it came out. Pretty much had my fill for this particular brand of open world with all its tiny icons and repeating activities, and I found the Arkham Aslyum inspired combat about as played out. I'd also only seen roughly half of one Mad Max movie up to that point, and it was Beyond Thunderdome. Specifically, the part with the kids so I thought it sucked. There was nothing there to draw me in besides Larry Davis' repeated insistence that it was fantastic and worth my time, but I just wasn't having any of it, and it probably didn't help that The Phantom Pain was vying for my attention around the same time. That Kojima can put together a game unlike those HACKS and FRAUDS at Avalanche!
Whatever George Miller expected from Avalanche - unreasonable as it was - they put together a damn good Mad Max game, and I found it to be the perfect way to cap off the series-wide bender I started with Furiosa. Even at its most temperamental and finicky, Mad Max is so attuned to how I approach playing games that I was constantly running into something funny or exciting. Ramming into convoys, hooking War Boys out of the cockpit of their vehicles, chucking thunderpoons into the hoods of approaching cars and watching them burst into some of the best looking fireballs I've seen in a video game... it's is full of spectacle, and yeah, very little comes in the form of carefully controlled set pieces like George Miller wanted, but I'd argue that the organic chaos of Avalanche's Mad Max is what makes it appealing as a video game rather than a movie.
That said, as a product of 2015 game development, Mad Max is held back in some ways. The Arkham-style combat is very dry and one-note, reduced down to its barest state with little in the way of enemy variety to keep it interesting. The various side activities littering the world are also uneven in a way that's pretty typical of this sort of game, ranging from fun and engaging to busy work you'll only do out of some obscene obligation to completionism. Or because you want a level 6 harpoon (all but necessary by the third act) which someone decided to lock behind getting Jeet's territory to Level-0 and yes i'm mad about it, i hate disarming mines so much, i got this dog yapping in my ear the whole time and i keep getting blowned up because i'm Dumb as Fuck, also why can't i fast travel with the buggy, why do i gotta go to a safehouse and drive alllll the way out every time i want to use the buggy with the mine detecting dog it SUCKS! I take it all back, George Miller was right and he should be allowed to drive a war rig straight through Avalanche's studio.
Despite feeling somewhat limited and at times repetitive, I still had a lot of fun. Anytime the game started to drag, something wild would happen out in the open world and I'd perk right back up. Every lull punctuated by finding some dude standing in a minefield going "oy, don't come over here, there's boom traps all around and one of thems already got me buddy Pube Tubes-" before exploding like Tarantino in Django Unchained. Slowly assembling the best murder-mobile possible, then hauling ass across the desert, ramming into War Boys trying to fix up their rides on the side of the road, or peeling out from cover and t-boning a convoy's lead rig just feels good. I frequently found myself thinking "damn, the oil crisis can't come fast enough!" while careening into water-starved pilgrims during off-road chases, grinding them up in the wheels of the angel combustion herself: the Magnum Opus.
Still, I can't help but wonder what this game would look like if it released just a few years later with a more robust stealth system and a greater number of tools at the player's disposal. Sure, being a blunt instrument of vengeance is what results in the very pandemonium I've been praising the game for but imagine a version of this where you could play Mad Maxwell as being a bit more cunning, setting up traps, sabotaging fuel supplies before the enemy can detect you, or creating more elaborate ambushes to take out convoys. This isn't an Original Thought but I'd kill for a Mad Max game that implements something like the Nemesis System with a more diverse cast of regional warlords to take out. Mad Max is great, but it's also the bones of a better game.
The Phantom Pain, which launched alongside Mad Max, is comparatively more forward-thinking, and provides a much wider degree of freedom to its players. Maybe George Miller isn't wrong to say Kojima could make a fantastic Mad Max game, but you know, Kojima couldn't lock down his energy drink deal whereas I'm ambushing convoys in my Rockstar Energy buggy so... Gonna give this one to Avalanche. Sorry, George!
I slept on this game when it came out. Pretty much had my fill for this particular brand of open world with all its tiny icons and repeating activities, and I found the Arkham Aslyum inspired combat about as played out. I'd also only seen roughly half of one Mad Max movie up to that point, and it was Beyond Thunderdome. Specifically, the part with the kids so I thought it sucked. There was nothing there to draw me in besides Larry Davis' repeated insistence that it was fantastic and worth my time, but I just wasn't having any of it, and it probably didn't help that The Phantom Pain was vying for my attention around the same time. That Kojima can put together a game unlike those HACKS and FRAUDS at Avalanche!
Whatever George Miller expected from Avalanche - unreasonable as it was - they put together a damn good Mad Max game, and I found it to be the perfect way to cap off the series-wide bender I started with Furiosa. Even at its most temperamental and finicky, Mad Max is so attuned to how I approach playing games that I was constantly running into something funny or exciting. Ramming into convoys, hooking War Boys out of the cockpit of their vehicles, chucking thunderpoons into the hoods of approaching cars and watching them burst into some of the best looking fireballs I've seen in a video game... it's is full of spectacle, and yeah, very little comes in the form of carefully controlled set pieces like George Miller wanted, but I'd argue that the organic chaos of Avalanche's Mad Max is what makes it appealing as a video game rather than a movie.
That said, as a product of 2015 game development, Mad Max is held back in some ways. The Arkham-style combat is very dry and one-note, reduced down to its barest state with little in the way of enemy variety to keep it interesting. The various side activities littering the world are also uneven in a way that's pretty typical of this sort of game, ranging from fun and engaging to busy work you'll only do out of some obscene obligation to completionism. Or because you want a level 6 harpoon (all but necessary by the third act) which someone decided to lock behind getting Jeet's territory to Level-0 and yes i'm mad about it, i hate disarming mines so much, i got this dog yapping in my ear the whole time and i keep getting blowned up because i'm Dumb as Fuck, also why can't i fast travel with the buggy, why do i gotta go to a safehouse and drive alllll the way out every time i want to use the buggy with the mine detecting dog it SUCKS! I take it all back, George Miller was right and he should be allowed to drive a war rig straight through Avalanche's studio.
Despite feeling somewhat limited and at times repetitive, I still had a lot of fun. Anytime the game started to drag, something wild would happen out in the open world and I'd perk right back up. Every lull punctuated by finding some dude standing in a minefield going "oy, don't come over here, there's boom traps all around and one of thems already got me buddy Pube Tubes-" before exploding like Tarantino in Django Unchained. Slowly assembling the best murder-mobile possible, then hauling ass across the desert, ramming into War Boys trying to fix up their rides on the side of the road, or peeling out from cover and t-boning a convoy's lead rig just feels good. I frequently found myself thinking "damn, the oil crisis can't come fast enough!" while careening into water-starved pilgrims during off-road chases, grinding them up in the wheels of the angel combustion herself: the Magnum Opus.
Still, I can't help but wonder what this game would look like if it released just a few years later with a more robust stealth system and a greater number of tools at the player's disposal. Sure, being a blunt instrument of vengeance is what results in the very pandemonium I've been praising the game for but imagine a version of this where you could play Mad Maxwell as being a bit more cunning, setting up traps, sabotaging fuel supplies before the enemy can detect you, or creating more elaborate ambushes to take out convoys. This isn't an Original Thought but I'd kill for a Mad Max game that implements something like the Nemesis System with a more diverse cast of regional warlords to take out. Mad Max is great, but it's also the bones of a better game.
The Phantom Pain, which launched alongside Mad Max, is comparatively more forward-thinking, and provides a much wider degree of freedom to its players. Maybe George Miller isn't wrong to say Kojima could make a fantastic Mad Max game, but you know, Kojima couldn't lock down his energy drink deal whereas I'm ambushing convoys in my Rockstar Energy buggy so... Gonna give this one to Avalanche. Sorry, George!
2021
Thinking about that scene from Red Dragon where Dolarhyde has Fred Lounds bound to a chair, forcing him to look at photos of his crimes, but it's just snapshots of Psyduck floating down a river looking so serene.
I don't think there's a better game to illustrate what I dislike about modern Pokemon than this bloated, dry, and positively uninspired sequel to Pokemon Snap, a Summah classic and one of my favorite games of all time. Yeah, the Zero-One is back, you can bean Pikachu square in his smug face with an apple, even Todd is here, but staples of the original game feel so lifeless, so by-the-numbers, and all the charm is dulled under layers of glossy topcoat.
There's a certain uniformity of design in modern Pokemon aesthetics that makes everything too clean for my tastes. Characters feel like they're fresh off the factory line, bland drones still covered in flux and flash. Looking at Todd is like looking at someone you know who has fallen prey to the body snatchers, there's a wrongness to him, a certain soullessness that makes me think "oh no, they got you too...?" And then I flash him in the face repeatedly with my camera, blinding him so I can escape. Modern Pokemon is packaged in a way that is so nakedly product that I can't see past it, and I know this is a very weird statement to make considering these have always been products. Anyway, the stink of chemical sanitization is all over New Pokemon Snap. I don't like it!
You'd think the gameplay would be New Pokemon Snap's saving grace, because it's really hard to botch a formula that boils down to "take pictures of Pokemon so Professor Oak can say "wwwWONDERful" while looking at Snorlax's taint," but man, after the first three hours I just stopped having fun with this. The core mechanics are largely the same, but there's just so much more of it. More levels divided into different tiers with different times of day that are packed with more Pokemon, so many Pokemon that they're spilling from the trees, constantly dancing and playing and growling and screaming in your periphery while you try to settle on what the hell to even take a picture of. The bloat spills into the main gameplay loop, forcing the player into a grind where they need to constantly redo courses to raise their levels so they can take pictures of glowing flowers so they can get not-pester-balls that need to be thrown at more plants to change elements of the level that open new routes and new stages.
There's also LenTalk Requests, which help the player track special events and photo opportunities, but even this comes with the caveat of being too much. By the time I beat the game, I had over 120 requests available to me, and man, I'm not doing all that shit. The game is very finicky about marking requests complete anyway, and it won't let you submit photos that satisfy requests taken on your first trip through a course because you need to be given the prompt first. I eventually disengaged from the requests system entirely because it just meant having to take even more trips back into courses that I was already growing bored of.
This might all be more involved than the Nintendo 64 Snap, but to me that's not necessarily a positive. What I find appealing about the original game is that it's essentially an arcade on-rails shooter with a simple but satisfying loop and a unique photography gimmick. It also released near the height of Pokemania and came with the whole Blockbuster printer station hook, so there's very much this "moment in time" quality that adds to its charm, not that the game is lacking in any when played in isolation or separated from when it released. It was just you and your camera, taking pictures of Pokemon for the love of the craft, and Professor Oak looking at pictures of Eevee and going "oohh, hehe... very good!" Some of us grew up to be Professor Oak, but damnit, I'm young at heart and just want to take some pictures of Pokemon without feeling like it's a second job.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
The original Pokemon Snap was a certified Summah hit, but Summah is not passed down by rite, and taking a picture of yourself attempting to knock a Raichu off his surfboard-tail into Sharpedo infested waters does not a Summah make. No, just like every other game in this year's series, New Pokemon Snap has to be put to the test and evaluated... I am a strict observer of Summahtology, after all.
Durability testing is a critical part of my methodology. You have to make sure the game itself can stand up to the harsh conditions of the Summah season. The heat, the waves, being pecked at by gulls... Crack a game open, pull forth its juicy innards and dip them into some hot butter, then take a bite. If it's tender and sweet, then you got Summah meat. So, in the case of New Pokemon Snap, I decided to create my own Pester ball using an old Burger King Pokeball container filled with a compound created from bleach and ammonia I had lying around.
My landlord, having realized my rebellious spirit can no longer be contained within manmade walls, has evicted me. The worst part of all? New Pokemon Snap is not a Summah game.
But that won't stop me from havin' a Summah. I got some old boots I'll be cookin' up on the grill, and then it's another night under stars. You don't need walls and a roof to enjoy the Summah. If anything, they just get in the way.
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I don't think there's a better game to illustrate what I dislike about modern Pokemon than this bloated, dry, and positively uninspired sequel to Pokemon Snap, a Summah classic and one of my favorite games of all time. Yeah, the Zero-One is back, you can bean Pikachu square in his smug face with an apple, even Todd is here, but staples of the original game feel so lifeless, so by-the-numbers, and all the charm is dulled under layers of glossy topcoat.
There's a certain uniformity of design in modern Pokemon aesthetics that makes everything too clean for my tastes. Characters feel like they're fresh off the factory line, bland drones still covered in flux and flash. Looking at Todd is like looking at someone you know who has fallen prey to the body snatchers, there's a wrongness to him, a certain soullessness that makes me think "oh no, they got you too...?" And then I flash him in the face repeatedly with my camera, blinding him so I can escape. Modern Pokemon is packaged in a way that is so nakedly product that I can't see past it, and I know this is a very weird statement to make considering these have always been products. Anyway, the stink of chemical sanitization is all over New Pokemon Snap. I don't like it!
You'd think the gameplay would be New Pokemon Snap's saving grace, because it's really hard to botch a formula that boils down to "take pictures of Pokemon so Professor Oak can say "wwwWONDERful" while looking at Snorlax's taint," but man, after the first three hours I just stopped having fun with this. The core mechanics are largely the same, but there's just so much more of it. More levels divided into different tiers with different times of day that are packed with more Pokemon, so many Pokemon that they're spilling from the trees, constantly dancing and playing and growling and screaming in your periphery while you try to settle on what the hell to even take a picture of. The bloat spills into the main gameplay loop, forcing the player into a grind where they need to constantly redo courses to raise their levels so they can take pictures of glowing flowers so they can get not-pester-balls that need to be thrown at more plants to change elements of the level that open new routes and new stages.
There's also LenTalk Requests, which help the player track special events and photo opportunities, but even this comes with the caveat of being too much. By the time I beat the game, I had over 120 requests available to me, and man, I'm not doing all that shit. The game is very finicky about marking requests complete anyway, and it won't let you submit photos that satisfy requests taken on your first trip through a course because you need to be given the prompt first. I eventually disengaged from the requests system entirely because it just meant having to take even more trips back into courses that I was already growing bored of.
This might all be more involved than the Nintendo 64 Snap, but to me that's not necessarily a positive. What I find appealing about the original game is that it's essentially an arcade on-rails shooter with a simple but satisfying loop and a unique photography gimmick. It also released near the height of Pokemania and came with the whole Blockbuster printer station hook, so there's very much this "moment in time" quality that adds to its charm, not that the game is lacking in any when played in isolation or separated from when it released. It was just you and your camera, taking pictures of Pokemon for the love of the craft, and Professor Oak looking at pictures of Eevee and going "oohh, hehe... very good!" Some of us grew up to be Professor Oak, but damnit, I'm young at heart and just want to take some pictures of Pokemon without feeling like it's a second job.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
The original Pokemon Snap was a certified Summah hit, but Summah is not passed down by rite, and taking a picture of yourself attempting to knock a Raichu off his surfboard-tail into Sharpedo infested waters does not a Summah make. No, just like every other game in this year's series, New Pokemon Snap has to be put to the test and evaluated... I am a strict observer of Summahtology, after all.
Durability testing is a critical part of my methodology. You have to make sure the game itself can stand up to the harsh conditions of the Summah season. The heat, the waves, being pecked at by gulls... Crack a game open, pull forth its juicy innards and dip them into some hot butter, then take a bite. If it's tender and sweet, then you got Summah meat. So, in the case of New Pokemon Snap, I decided to create my own Pester ball using an old Burger King Pokeball container filled with a compound created from bleach and ammonia I had lying around.
My landlord, having realized my rebellious spirit can no longer be contained within manmade walls, has evicted me. The worst part of all? New Pokemon Snap is not a Summah game.
But that won't stop me from havin' a Summah. I got some old boots I'll be cookin' up on the grill, and then it's another night under stars. You don't need walls and a roof to enjoy the Summah. If anything, they just get in the way.
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2018
Man, I love Hiroshi Nagai's paintings. His blend of vibrant and pastel colors is so effective at evoking a sense of warmth and relaxation, and his common themes of pristine palms, deep blue waters, clear skies, sports cars, and soft sandy beaches cement him as king of Summahtime art. Thanks to his collaboration with Eiichi Otaki, Nagai's style and broader catalog of paintings have found popularity within the Vaporwave scene, so it's little wonder that the developer of Slipstream - a game firmly rooted in the aesthetics of VHS degradation, tape warping, and scanlines - would crib from him for their cover art. And like a bloated dead-eyed trout, I've fallen for the bait. "Ah, now this looks like a Summah treat," I think as the hook sinks into my cheek.
Slipstream is an OutRun inspired retro-racer that has you going one-on-one against named rivals on each leg of your bifurcating journey. The big mechanical gimmick here involves tailing traffic to take advantage of other vehicle's slipstreams, which allow you to slingshot ahead and gain ground on your rival. This mechanic has appeared in plenty of other games, but it's applied well here, with only the gran prix mode suffering as its looping courses result in other racers spreading out too far for the system to be reliable. The player also has the ability to rewind up to five seconds of gameplay, which might cheapen the challenge for some, but I'd argue that Slipstream bills itself as something more casual. It's the kind of simplistic, straight-forward arcade racer you play to chill out and not take too seriously.
Slipstream is more style over substance, and it generally sticks the landing there with a few exceptions. I think it goes a bit too hard on the VHS filters in a way that people playing up the old tape aesthetic often do. The warping effect on the pause menu, for example, is so intense as to make the on-screen options borderline unreadable. Anytime I'm hit with a questionable application of "old video tape" filters I wonder if the people behind them refer to it as a "VHS player" or VCR. To be fair, you can tweak this to your preference, but on first impression I find it a bit overbearing.
I'm also going to hazard a guess that the developer of Slipstream is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan. Nine of the 20 tracks borrow names from Sonic zones in a way that's completely lacking in subtlety. Stardust Speedway, Marble Garden, Aquatic Ruin, Mystic Cave... The Sonic 2 zone title cards manifest before races in the gran prix, and even the countdown before races feels like a nod to Sonic Mania. Not that there's something strictly wrong with this but considering all of Slipstream's inspirations and how the come together, the game feels just a bit too referential and less genuine, and it took me out of it.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
I mean, have you seen the cover art? I want to lay my bare body against that black and white concrete and let it cook me alive. I'll become a glorious Summah sausage and ascend to a higher state of Summah serenity as I'm consumed by hungry beach goers...
As with other games in my 2024 Summah series, I've put Slipstream up to the tried-and-true criteria of the Summah Index scale, with additional buoyancy testing that required me to visit the majestic rolling waves off the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, where I threw my PlayStation 5 into the ocean. It sank like a damn rock. I need my PS5 back. if anyone knows how to get my PS5 back please get in touch with me
uhh, it's summah. its a summah game. if anyone knows experienced divers in the san diego area leave a comment on my web portal
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Slipstream is an OutRun inspired retro-racer that has you going one-on-one against named rivals on each leg of your bifurcating journey. The big mechanical gimmick here involves tailing traffic to take advantage of other vehicle's slipstreams, which allow you to slingshot ahead and gain ground on your rival. This mechanic has appeared in plenty of other games, but it's applied well here, with only the gran prix mode suffering as its looping courses result in other racers spreading out too far for the system to be reliable. The player also has the ability to rewind up to five seconds of gameplay, which might cheapen the challenge for some, but I'd argue that Slipstream bills itself as something more casual. It's the kind of simplistic, straight-forward arcade racer you play to chill out and not take too seriously.
Slipstream is more style over substance, and it generally sticks the landing there with a few exceptions. I think it goes a bit too hard on the VHS filters in a way that people playing up the old tape aesthetic often do. The warping effect on the pause menu, for example, is so intense as to make the on-screen options borderline unreadable. Anytime I'm hit with a questionable application of "old video tape" filters I wonder if the people behind them refer to it as a "VHS player" or VCR. To be fair, you can tweak this to your preference, but on first impression I find it a bit overbearing.
I'm also going to hazard a guess that the developer of Slipstream is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan. Nine of the 20 tracks borrow names from Sonic zones in a way that's completely lacking in subtlety. Stardust Speedway, Marble Garden, Aquatic Ruin, Mystic Cave... The Sonic 2 zone title cards manifest before races in the gran prix, and even the countdown before races feels like a nod to Sonic Mania. Not that there's something strictly wrong with this but considering all of Slipstream's inspirations and how the come together, the game feels just a bit too referential and less genuine, and it took me out of it.
BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?
I mean, have you seen the cover art? I want to lay my bare body against that black and white concrete and let it cook me alive. I'll become a glorious Summah sausage and ascend to a higher state of Summah serenity as I'm consumed by hungry beach goers...
As with other games in my 2024 Summah series, I've put Slipstream up to the tried-and-true criteria of the Summah Index scale, with additional buoyancy testing that required me to visit the majestic rolling waves off the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, where I threw my PlayStation 5 into the ocean. It sank like a damn rock. I need my PS5 back. if anyone knows how to get my PS5 back please get in touch with me
uhh, it's summah. its a summah game. if anyone knows experienced divers in the san diego area leave a comment on my web portal
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1995
Well guys, I'm sorry to say it, but Bug! sucks.
I wish the news wasn't so tragic. I had such high hopes for Bug!. After all, the titular character was at one point considered in competition for the Sega Saturn's mascot, along with Astal and Pepperouchau from Clockwork Knight. Three titans vying for the top spot, because it's not like Sega had any other mascot they could've used as the system's flagship character. I mean, why would you make a Sonic game for your new console when you could make two Bug games instead, Sega?
It's actually a little known fact that Bug! was originally intended to be a Sonic game, but Sega wisely decided that Sonic the Hedgehog, a successful and well respected character loved by millions of children all over the world, shouldn't be in any bad video games. Still, that didn't stop them from sneaking Sonic into one of the bonus stages (which are locked by a character who looks like he should be on a tasteless mug in Disco Elysium) and it's actually remarkable how much more fun the game looks when there's a character on screen whose movement isn't squirrely. Bug jogs around on mostly narrow platforms, which locks your otherwise four-directional 3D movement to a track. The idea was to keep Bug's movement controlled and safe while playing up the 2.5D element, which was more impressive at the time. In practice, it just means snagging on corners a lot. The camera also does that thing where it hard whips in one direction when shifting your movement, which I find disorienting and annoying.
At some point it starts to feel like Bug's sole purpose in life is looking dumb as fuck and showing off his succulent ass. Sometimes I like to imagine what this game would've been like with Sonic as the lead character, completely unchanged, just shaking his massive cans right in your face... Why, it would've been the killer app the system needed!
How Long to Beat Dot Com has Bug! pegged at 5 hours, which is surprising for a game that's divided into six worlds with three levels and one boss each. Doing the video game math, that divides into 12.5 minutes per level on average, which is much too long for a platformer. I wish I could go back in time and tell Realtime Associates, developers of Elmo's Letter Adventure, Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt, The Land Before Time: Return to the Great Valley, Casper: Friends Around the World, Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal, Magic the Gathering: Battlemage, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill, Maniac Mansion (on the NES), and Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans to tighten up their game.
Bug! also has a sort of Gex-like quality to it, with it's lead character quipping during levels, which are set on various movie sets, a slight contrast to Gex's adventure taking place inside a TV. At several points while playing this game I thought "gee, I could be playing Gex right now. Realtime Associates, developers of Tails and the Music Maker, also worked on Gex 64: Enter the Gecko." These are the sort of internal dialogs I'm having with myself all the time, like "drink more" and "buy a copy of Inca." Although sometimes the voice in my head gets me to do bad things, like spend a whole morning playing a terrible 2.5D platformer for a system that, despite its reputation and a mascot like Bug, has a lot better games for it. Whatever. I burned this onto a CD-R, which is the exact level of respect it deserves.
did you know that Bug! actually reviewed well at the time? it was only because of YouTube influencers that popular opinion on the game changed
I wish the news wasn't so tragic. I had such high hopes for Bug!. After all, the titular character was at one point considered in competition for the Sega Saturn's mascot, along with Astal and Pepperouchau from Clockwork Knight. Three titans vying for the top spot, because it's not like Sega had any other mascot they could've used as the system's flagship character. I mean, why would you make a Sonic game for your new console when you could make two Bug games instead, Sega?
It's actually a little known fact that Bug! was originally intended to be a Sonic game, but Sega wisely decided that Sonic the Hedgehog, a successful and well respected character loved by millions of children all over the world, shouldn't be in any bad video games. Still, that didn't stop them from sneaking Sonic into one of the bonus stages (which are locked by a character who looks like he should be on a tasteless mug in Disco Elysium) and it's actually remarkable how much more fun the game looks when there's a character on screen whose movement isn't squirrely. Bug jogs around on mostly narrow platforms, which locks your otherwise four-directional 3D movement to a track. The idea was to keep Bug's movement controlled and safe while playing up the 2.5D element, which was more impressive at the time. In practice, it just means snagging on corners a lot. The camera also does that thing where it hard whips in one direction when shifting your movement, which I find disorienting and annoying.
At some point it starts to feel like Bug's sole purpose in life is looking dumb as fuck and showing off his succulent ass. Sometimes I like to imagine what this game would've been like with Sonic as the lead character, completely unchanged, just shaking his massive cans right in your face... Why, it would've been the killer app the system needed!
How Long to Beat Dot Com has Bug! pegged at 5 hours, which is surprising for a game that's divided into six worlds with three levels and one boss each. Doing the video game math, that divides into 12.5 minutes per level on average, which is much too long for a platformer. I wish I could go back in time and tell Realtime Associates, developers of Elmo's Letter Adventure, Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt, The Land Before Time: Return to the Great Valley, Casper: Friends Around the World, Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal, Magic the Gathering: Battlemage, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill, Maniac Mansion (on the NES), and Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans to tighten up their game.
Bug! also has a sort of Gex-like quality to it, with it's lead character quipping during levels, which are set on various movie sets, a slight contrast to Gex's adventure taking place inside a TV. At several points while playing this game I thought "gee, I could be playing Gex right now. Realtime Associates, developers of Tails and the Music Maker, also worked on Gex 64: Enter the Gecko." These are the sort of internal dialogs I'm having with myself all the time, like "drink more" and "buy a copy of Inca." Although sometimes the voice in my head gets me to do bad things, like spend a whole morning playing a terrible 2.5D platformer for a system that, despite its reputation and a mascot like Bug, has a lot better games for it. Whatever. I burned this onto a CD-R, which is the exact level of respect it deserves.
did you know that Bug! actually reviewed well at the time? it was only because of YouTube influencers that popular opinion on the game changed
2022
"RUUUUBYYYYY! My hands are stuck in the garbage disposal!"
Larry Davis was kind enough to gift me Night Signal after playing through Home Safety Hotline together, and even though this is an earlier work of his, I continue to be impressed by what Nick Lives is capable of with a few hunks of clay and a wet paper towel.
Though the two games share some similarities, most obviously with the main loop revolving around completing a bestiary of weird and often goofy entities (in this case represented by a TV guide), Night Signal is far more action-oriented. Each loosely connected night follows the same pattern: adjust the rabbit ears on your TV and click through channels to expose strange broadcasts, some of which invite hostile beings directly into your living room that must be zapped away with a remote. Each night opens up new channels, which requires the player to be more aware of where hazardous channels are located while searching for new signals with unknown properties. Maybe it's a friendly orb that floats around the room while "revealing truths," or maybe it's a dude with a flattened head that causes your ceiling to cave in-- oh DAMNIT, i summoned hands again!
I think this is also where Night Signal kind of falls apart for me. Walking around feels like wading through mud, and I was constantly snagging on objects because I gently brushed against them. This makes sense if you're trying to punish the player for carelessly summoning enemies or otherwise add tension to combat, but when even basic navigation feels this poor, it makes me glad Nick Lives transitioned to a more menu-based interface for Home Safety Hotline.
That said, the core idea of managing an increasingly complex and hazard-ridden sequence along with Nick Lives' unique sense of humor and style carry the game. Things like needing to check in on Beezle's channel to prevent him from phasing through your door and biting into your head like an apple, having your vision obscured because a monster began filling your home with steam, or finding something new that you can't immediately ascertain the effect of only to realize it too late add up in very interesting ways. This might come across as a derogatory comparison depending on my audience, but I enjoy games like Five Nights 2 specifically because they give you too much to deal with. Night Signal is not quite as complex or urgent, but it taps into that just enough to appeal to some very particular tastes. If you make a glorified stress simulator with some horror trappings, I'll show up with my own fork and knife.
Like Home Safety Hotline, a "making of" document opens up once you complete the game, and being able to see what inspirations, techniques, and limitations inform Nick's vision and design ethos is neat, and it's impressive to see how well his ideas came together with so little at his disposal. Sure, Night Signal may trip over itself (and the GOD DAMN COFFEE TABLE) with its controls, but Pokemon Channel by way of The Dark Eye is such a good concept, it's well worth the price of Larry Davis' admission.
Larry Davis was kind enough to gift me Night Signal after playing through Home Safety Hotline together, and even though this is an earlier work of his, I continue to be impressed by what Nick Lives is capable of with a few hunks of clay and a wet paper towel.
Though the two games share some similarities, most obviously with the main loop revolving around completing a bestiary of weird and often goofy entities (in this case represented by a TV guide), Night Signal is far more action-oriented. Each loosely connected night follows the same pattern: adjust the rabbit ears on your TV and click through channels to expose strange broadcasts, some of which invite hostile beings directly into your living room that must be zapped away with a remote. Each night opens up new channels, which requires the player to be more aware of where hazardous channels are located while searching for new signals with unknown properties. Maybe it's a friendly orb that floats around the room while "revealing truths," or maybe it's a dude with a flattened head that causes your ceiling to cave in-- oh DAMNIT, i summoned hands again!
I think this is also where Night Signal kind of falls apart for me. Walking around feels like wading through mud, and I was constantly snagging on objects because I gently brushed against them. This makes sense if you're trying to punish the player for carelessly summoning enemies or otherwise add tension to combat, but when even basic navigation feels this poor, it makes me glad Nick Lives transitioned to a more menu-based interface for Home Safety Hotline.
That said, the core idea of managing an increasingly complex and hazard-ridden sequence along with Nick Lives' unique sense of humor and style carry the game. Things like needing to check in on Beezle's channel to prevent him from phasing through your door and biting into your head like an apple, having your vision obscured because a monster began filling your home with steam, or finding something new that you can't immediately ascertain the effect of only to realize it too late add up in very interesting ways. This might come across as a derogatory comparison depending on my audience, but I enjoy games like Five Nights 2 specifically because they give you too much to deal with. Night Signal is not quite as complex or urgent, but it taps into that just enough to appeal to some very particular tastes. If you make a glorified stress simulator with some horror trappings, I'll show up with my own fork and knife.
Like Home Safety Hotline, a "making of" document opens up once you complete the game, and being able to see what inspirations, techniques, and limitations inform Nick's vision and design ethos is neat, and it's impressive to see how well his ideas came together with so little at his disposal. Sure, Night Signal may trip over itself (and the GOD DAMN COFFEE TABLE) with its controls, but Pokemon Channel by way of The Dark Eye is such a good concept, it's well worth the price of Larry Davis' admission.
1997
Grandia stands in such stark contrast to many of the big, bombastic RPGs of its era. Opening on the quiet port town of Parm, protagonist Justin and his surrogate little sister Sue are swept up in an adventure to find a set of legendary armor pieces, which consist of pots and pans. Your first full day of adventure in Grandia ends the way most do: dinner with your friends, talking about all the fun you had and what the next day might bring. There's no bombing run here, no sense of immediacy, no clearly identifiable threat beyond the military - largely composed of pretty boys and goofballs - digging around in some nearby ruins. Grandia's first call to action takes place after several hours of being a kid, and the true breadth of the world-ending threat the party inevitably has to face down isn't revealed until nearly two-thirds into the game.
This is a game that rides on charm for so much of its playtime, and damnit, it works. Grandia's wide-eyed optimism and "one world, one people" themes steep it in an earnest hopefulness that I can't get enough of, and unlike many other RPGs, the plot is driven less by reaction and more by proactive characters driven to go to new places and experience new things.
That's not to say the adventure isn't without hardships or moments of self-doubt, but the way they manifest feels emotionally impactful and earned because Grandia does such a good job at investing you. Sue's dependency on Justin, for example, culminates in a scene that not only reminds you she's just a kid, but punches you squarely in the gut for good measure. It is then followed by Justin's fatherly stand-in, Gadwin, imparting his most cherished skill and bidding the party farewell, bookending a bittersweet moment with something uplifting as he expresses the upmost confidence and pride in Justin's abilities and heartfelt appreciation of his heroic deeds. It's a very Freddy Got Fingered "proud" scene. He gifts Justin and Feena a LeBaron so they can cross the sea of mermaids. Great stuff.
Sadly, combat is where I start to slide off Grandia and lose my way from all this sugary sweetness. It has a real bell curve quality, starting off very one-dimensional and restrictive, with basic attacks and the occasional special being your bread and butter for hours until spells unlock. The middle portion of the game is where combat is at its best, as you start to unlock combination spells based on how much you use particular elements. There's also a sort of "active time" battle system that involves cancelling opponent's moves and interrupting attack animations with counters, so metering out what moves you use becomes an important and engaging element of managing enemies and maximizing damage.
Unfortunately, by the later parts of the game this system starts to feel tired, and much of the end game enemies and bosses boast significant resistances to magic and weaknesses to physical attacks, resulting in a slide back to mashing out basic strikes as the most efficient means of piling on damage.
Magic and special attack animations are also lengthy, almost ridiculously so, and as they amp up deeper into the game, it starts to feel like too much of any single encounter is just spent waiting. The final boss of the game put my party to sleep and spent three whole uninterrupted minutes issuing debuffs. Once I was released, I just mashed attack and melted his HP. A profoundly anti-climatic end. The late game also has you retreading several areas with enhanced versions of familiar enemies being the only differentiating factor between trips, and it just starts to drag. While I appreciate the slow pace of Grandia's story, I wish other elements were snappier, or at least better about keeping their momentum.
There's also a ton of slowdown, which is a consequence of relying upon fairly complex 3D geometry for the game's environments. The trade-off is that Grandia looks great and oozes character, so I can't complain too much, but rounding corners and dodging elaborate 3D hazards makes the game grind and you can feel it. I assume the HD version plays much more smoothly, but wouldn't you know it, in my haste to buy up Sega Saturn repros I totally forgot that existed. Whoops!
None of my complaints are enough to completely offset Grandia's positives, and though I've griped at length about the shortcomings of its combat, it did remain enjoyable through most of the 50ish hours I put in. What I really adore is the story, the worldbuilding, and the small touches like eating dinner that help connect you to your party members. This is an easy 4/5 for me, with the one caveat that the game gives you a muscle mom that can drop kick enemies and do the JoJo's "ora ora" flurry attack and it TAKES HER AWAY after mere hours. Look, I have THOUGHTS and OPINIONS on rotating RPG parties, but this is unforgivable. Minus .5 stars. As a true Milda enjoyer, I am being lenient.
This is a game that rides on charm for so much of its playtime, and damnit, it works. Grandia's wide-eyed optimism and "one world, one people" themes steep it in an earnest hopefulness that I can't get enough of, and unlike many other RPGs, the plot is driven less by reaction and more by proactive characters driven to go to new places and experience new things.
That's not to say the adventure isn't without hardships or moments of self-doubt, but the way they manifest feels emotionally impactful and earned because Grandia does such a good job at investing you. Sue's dependency on Justin, for example, culminates in a scene that not only reminds you she's just a kid, but punches you squarely in the gut for good measure. It is then followed by Justin's fatherly stand-in, Gadwin, imparting his most cherished skill and bidding the party farewell, bookending a bittersweet moment with something uplifting as he expresses the upmost confidence and pride in Justin's abilities and heartfelt appreciation of his heroic deeds. It's a very Freddy Got Fingered "proud" scene. He gifts Justin and Feena a LeBaron so they can cross the sea of mermaids. Great stuff.
Sadly, combat is where I start to slide off Grandia and lose my way from all this sugary sweetness. It has a real bell curve quality, starting off very one-dimensional and restrictive, with basic attacks and the occasional special being your bread and butter for hours until spells unlock. The middle portion of the game is where combat is at its best, as you start to unlock combination spells based on how much you use particular elements. There's also a sort of "active time" battle system that involves cancelling opponent's moves and interrupting attack animations with counters, so metering out what moves you use becomes an important and engaging element of managing enemies and maximizing damage.
Unfortunately, by the later parts of the game this system starts to feel tired, and much of the end game enemies and bosses boast significant resistances to magic and weaknesses to physical attacks, resulting in a slide back to mashing out basic strikes as the most efficient means of piling on damage.
Magic and special attack animations are also lengthy, almost ridiculously so, and as they amp up deeper into the game, it starts to feel like too much of any single encounter is just spent waiting. The final boss of the game put my party to sleep and spent three whole uninterrupted minutes issuing debuffs. Once I was released, I just mashed attack and melted his HP. A profoundly anti-climatic end. The late game also has you retreading several areas with enhanced versions of familiar enemies being the only differentiating factor between trips, and it just starts to drag. While I appreciate the slow pace of Grandia's story, I wish other elements were snappier, or at least better about keeping their momentum.
There's also a ton of slowdown, which is a consequence of relying upon fairly complex 3D geometry for the game's environments. The trade-off is that Grandia looks great and oozes character, so I can't complain too much, but rounding corners and dodging elaborate 3D hazards makes the game grind and you can feel it. I assume the HD version plays much more smoothly, but wouldn't you know it, in my haste to buy up Sega Saturn repros I totally forgot that existed. Whoops!
None of my complaints are enough to completely offset Grandia's positives, and though I've griped at length about the shortcomings of its combat, it did remain enjoyable through most of the 50ish hours I put in. What I really adore is the story, the worldbuilding, and the small touches like eating dinner that help connect you to your party members. This is an easy 4/5 for me, with the one caveat that the game gives you a muscle mom that can drop kick enemies and do the JoJo's "ora ora" flurry attack and it TAKES HER AWAY after mere hours. Look, I have THOUGHTS and OPINIONS on rotating RPG parties, but this is unforgivable. Minus .5 stars. As a true Milda enjoyer, I am being lenient.
Arcade ports of this era were all about compromise, though the greatest loss from the arcade version of Turtles in Time to the home console is one that wouldn't manifest until arcade emulation became more ubiquitous. I'm talking of course about being able to mash the insert coin button to blast "LET'S KICK SHELL LET'S KICK SHELL LET'S KICK SHELL LET'S KICK SHELL"
Of its other key differences, the only ones I really view to be detrimental are the lack of four player co-op and a general preference for the look and sound of the arcade original. Otherwise, TiT on the SNES actually makes a lot of changes I'd view as additive. New bosses, the inclusion of Mode 7, and being able to throw Foot soldiers at the screen without an element of randomization give it enough of its own identity to make it worth playing now, even with the arcade version being equally accessible.
I have a lot of fond memories of playing this back in the day, in particular going to the fairgrounds to see Grave Digger and almost peeing my pants because Grave Digger is awesome and scary, then going back to my friend's house to play Turtles in Time and check out the PS1 sample disc with the Final Fantasy VII demo on it. I now have my own copy of Turtles in Time and the very same sample disc, but pre-gaming with videos of Grave Digger on YouTube just isn't the same. Did make me pee my pants this time, though. Now i gotta see a urologist. i hate getting old
Of its other key differences, the only ones I really view to be detrimental are the lack of four player co-op and a general preference for the look and sound of the arcade original. Otherwise, TiT on the SNES actually makes a lot of changes I'd view as additive. New bosses, the inclusion of Mode 7, and being able to throw Foot soldiers at the screen without an element of randomization give it enough of its own identity to make it worth playing now, even with the arcade version being equally accessible.
I have a lot of fond memories of playing this back in the day, in particular going to the fairgrounds to see Grave Digger and almost peeing my pants because Grave Digger is awesome and scary, then going back to my friend's house to play Turtles in Time and check out the PS1 sample disc with the Final Fantasy VII demo on it. I now have my own copy of Turtles in Time and the very same sample disc, but pre-gaming with videos of Grave Digger on YouTube just isn't the same. Did make me pee my pants this time, though. Now i gotta see a urologist. i hate getting old
2003
Sonic Heroes marks a transitional moment for the franchise, being the first mainline 3D game to not release on Sega's own hardware and the start of a downturn in overall quality for the series. It was also the first mainline Sonic game I realized was bad while playing it, but that was back in 2003, and twenty years is more than enough time to unburden myself with the expectations that led to that creeping sense of disappointment.
I didn't come here to hate Sonic Heroes, my intention was to experience it "as-is," but right off the bat I noticed things that were questionable. Why is Team Rose placed third from the left on the Team Select screen when hers is the easiest campaign and the one with the tutorial? Not only is that unintuitive, but no kid in the early 2000s was going to buy a Sonic game and not play as Sonic immediately... Maybe Team Dark, because they're edgy and cool (Shadow doesn't practice good firearm safety and says "damn"), but certainly not Rose.
Not that I would frame Sonic Heroes as being a hard game, at least not in any way that feels intentional. Most of the frustration comes from a reliance on context sensitive gimmicks and gameplay that just feels fundamentally broken. Take Casino Park, where the player is forced to navigate several pinball tables in typical Sonic fashion. The physics on these tables is complete nonsense, like the game is trying to calculate player position using random variables, resulting in drag that feels wildly inconsistent with anything happening on screen. These poor physics carry into the special stages, which take place in winding tubes as the player chases down a Chaos Emerald, something which is made unnecessarily difficult as the player's momentum is randomly halted on straightaways and declines, models hitch on turns, and bursts of speed send them to the ceiling where directional inputs are no longer read. It's worth noting that Adventure had similar problems in levels like Lost World and Final Egg, but it feels so much worse here.
Ramps and boost pads frequently send the player towards precariously placed platforms and rails misaligned, or fire them directly into the path of an enemy. Automated sections like the "balloon catch" sequence in Rail Canyon should behave with some level of predictability but will often spit you out with such force that you completely overshoot platforms and fall into a pit. Even simple things like grabbing something in flight formation feels so finicky that it's like trying to thread a needle getting the hold prompt to appear. Sonic Heroes is so sloppy that I started questioning if what I was playing was even a finished product. I'm dumb as hell, it wouldn't be the first time I mistakenly put a beta onto my Wii's hard drive, so I backed out and began playing off my physical copy... Nope, turns out that's just Sonic Heroes!
Even the systems core to Heroes feel poor. The team mechanic, which has the player constantly swap between speed, flight, and power formations lacks any sense of rhythm and adds nothing to the Adventure-style platforming. The action of changing formation often feels arbitrary, a needed step to clear some copy and pasted challenge as you make your way through perfunctorily designed levels. At no point does switching from one class to another create a sense of flow, and given your partners propensity for getting knocked out, sometimes this mechanic doesn't work at all as you're stuck waiting for them to get their ass up.
The rote and thoughtless level design makes every stage a slog to get through, and worse still, many of them can take 7 or 8 minutes even when you're playing efficiently. Padding the average clear time is an excessive amount of combat encounters which stop the player and force them to clear out waves of enemies to unlock doors or release switches. Combat - like everything else in this game - feels weightless and slippery, and rarely demands more than mashing the B button, at least until the late game where enemies are mixed in that require one formation to stun and another to damage, which feels bad for all the aforementioned reasons.
Even the bosses feel lazy. Two fights against opposing teams that can be won in about 10 seconds if you mash B while in flight formation, two bosses that are just normal enemy gauntlets, and three chase-style bosses that play like total crap. Egg Emperor is the bane of my existence, because he does this fun thing where if you get too far away he'll ram you and if you stick too close you'll smack into him while taking a ramp over a pit and die. He also has an absurd amount of HP because of course he does. Five minutes on a boss in a Sonic game puts me firmly in "existence in pain" territory, but how's that different from playing the rest of Sonic Heroes, really?
Prior to release, I was excited to see the series returning to more abstract environments reminiscent of the Genesis games, and the promise of pure platforming over gimmicks like emerald hunting and shooting had me glued to magazine previews all the way up to launch. Disappointment may have colored my opinion of Sonic Heroes back in 2003, but I'm not so slavishly tied to expectation now, and I still think this game is complete dogshit. There's a total lack of care here not only in how its designed, but how functional it is. Plagued with bad ideas and busted mechanics in near equal measure, perfectly propped up as the first domino in a long, continued line of failures that would follow.
I've noticed that Sonic fans have begun adopting this theory that popular and critical reception of the series soured due to 2010's YouTubers, an argument eerily similar to that of Prequel Trilogy fans who insist nobody disliked those movies until someone made a 70-minute Phantom Menace review. Fans who are too young to remember these games might get a pass here, but you shouldn't trust anyone with a Sonic avatar (including me), especially not those making a disingenuous attempt at franchise rehabilitation. The series earned its reputation after a string of mediocre-to-bad mainline releases prior to 2010, starting with Heroes and running through Unleashed. You don't even have to look very far to find out what critics thought of these games at the time, and the general temperature of the series beyond that was pretty low. Take it from me: I was there.
Sure, there's some bizarre nostalgia now for Shadow the Hedgehog as evidenced by fans hooting and hollering over the appearance of the Black Arms in Sonic x Shadow Generations, but very few people liked that game back in 2005. I've seen no shortage of insistence that P-06 "proves" that 2006 was a good game that needed more time, as if the underlying ideas and circumstances behind it were anything other than rotten from conception to release. The Werehog in Sonic Unleashed was a point of mockery and scorn before anyone got on their little YouTube soapbox to moan about it. You don't need to do historical revisionism to validate your like of something commonly accepted as mediocre or bad, and I promise it's perfectly fine to play games that are deeply flawed. Just enjoy crap.
What I'm trying to say is: I hate Sonic Heroes so god damn much oh my god, this series was never good, i just want to FUCK the SHIT out of big the Cat
I didn't come here to hate Sonic Heroes, my intention was to experience it "as-is," but right off the bat I noticed things that were questionable. Why is Team Rose placed third from the left on the Team Select screen when hers is the easiest campaign and the one with the tutorial? Not only is that unintuitive, but no kid in the early 2000s was going to buy a Sonic game and not play as Sonic immediately... Maybe Team Dark, because they're edgy and cool (Shadow doesn't practice good firearm safety and says "damn"), but certainly not Rose.
Not that I would frame Sonic Heroes as being a hard game, at least not in any way that feels intentional. Most of the frustration comes from a reliance on context sensitive gimmicks and gameplay that just feels fundamentally broken. Take Casino Park, where the player is forced to navigate several pinball tables in typical Sonic fashion. The physics on these tables is complete nonsense, like the game is trying to calculate player position using random variables, resulting in drag that feels wildly inconsistent with anything happening on screen. These poor physics carry into the special stages, which take place in winding tubes as the player chases down a Chaos Emerald, something which is made unnecessarily difficult as the player's momentum is randomly halted on straightaways and declines, models hitch on turns, and bursts of speed send them to the ceiling where directional inputs are no longer read. It's worth noting that Adventure had similar problems in levels like Lost World and Final Egg, but it feels so much worse here.
Ramps and boost pads frequently send the player towards precariously placed platforms and rails misaligned, or fire them directly into the path of an enemy. Automated sections like the "balloon catch" sequence in Rail Canyon should behave with some level of predictability but will often spit you out with such force that you completely overshoot platforms and fall into a pit. Even simple things like grabbing something in flight formation feels so finicky that it's like trying to thread a needle getting the hold prompt to appear. Sonic Heroes is so sloppy that I started questioning if what I was playing was even a finished product. I'm dumb as hell, it wouldn't be the first time I mistakenly put a beta onto my Wii's hard drive, so I backed out and began playing off my physical copy... Nope, turns out that's just Sonic Heroes!
Even the systems core to Heroes feel poor. The team mechanic, which has the player constantly swap between speed, flight, and power formations lacks any sense of rhythm and adds nothing to the Adventure-style platforming. The action of changing formation often feels arbitrary, a needed step to clear some copy and pasted challenge as you make your way through perfunctorily designed levels. At no point does switching from one class to another create a sense of flow, and given your partners propensity for getting knocked out, sometimes this mechanic doesn't work at all as you're stuck waiting for them to get their ass up.
The rote and thoughtless level design makes every stage a slog to get through, and worse still, many of them can take 7 or 8 minutes even when you're playing efficiently. Padding the average clear time is an excessive amount of combat encounters which stop the player and force them to clear out waves of enemies to unlock doors or release switches. Combat - like everything else in this game - feels weightless and slippery, and rarely demands more than mashing the B button, at least until the late game where enemies are mixed in that require one formation to stun and another to damage, which feels bad for all the aforementioned reasons.
Even the bosses feel lazy. Two fights against opposing teams that can be won in about 10 seconds if you mash B while in flight formation, two bosses that are just normal enemy gauntlets, and three chase-style bosses that play like total crap. Egg Emperor is the bane of my existence, because he does this fun thing where if you get too far away he'll ram you and if you stick too close you'll smack into him while taking a ramp over a pit and die. He also has an absurd amount of HP because of course he does. Five minutes on a boss in a Sonic game puts me firmly in "existence in pain" territory, but how's that different from playing the rest of Sonic Heroes, really?
Prior to release, I was excited to see the series returning to more abstract environments reminiscent of the Genesis games, and the promise of pure platforming over gimmicks like emerald hunting and shooting had me glued to magazine previews all the way up to launch. Disappointment may have colored my opinion of Sonic Heroes back in 2003, but I'm not so slavishly tied to expectation now, and I still think this game is complete dogshit. There's a total lack of care here not only in how its designed, but how functional it is. Plagued with bad ideas and busted mechanics in near equal measure, perfectly propped up as the first domino in a long, continued line of failures that would follow.
I've noticed that Sonic fans have begun adopting this theory that popular and critical reception of the series soured due to 2010's YouTubers, an argument eerily similar to that of Prequel Trilogy fans who insist nobody disliked those movies until someone made a 70-minute Phantom Menace review. Fans who are too young to remember these games might get a pass here, but you shouldn't trust anyone with a Sonic avatar (including me), especially not those making a disingenuous attempt at franchise rehabilitation. The series earned its reputation after a string of mediocre-to-bad mainline releases prior to 2010, starting with Heroes and running through Unleashed. You don't even have to look very far to find out what critics thought of these games at the time, and the general temperature of the series beyond that was pretty low. Take it from me: I was there.
Sure, there's some bizarre nostalgia now for Shadow the Hedgehog as evidenced by fans hooting and hollering over the appearance of the Black Arms in Sonic x Shadow Generations, but very few people liked that game back in 2005. I've seen no shortage of insistence that P-06 "proves" that 2006 was a good game that needed more time, as if the underlying ideas and circumstances behind it were anything other than rotten from conception to release. The Werehog in Sonic Unleashed was a point of mockery and scorn before anyone got on their little YouTube soapbox to moan about it. You don't need to do historical revisionism to validate your like of something commonly accepted as mediocre or bad, and I promise it's perfectly fine to play games that are deeply flawed. Just enjoy crap.
What I'm trying to say is: I hate Sonic Heroes so god damn much oh my god, this series was never good, i just want to FUCK the SHIT out of big the Cat
TBD
I think Internet Games Database should make a listing for that game I'll totally make one day but haven't gotten around to yet, it's just as real as Petscop because I drew a few pictures for it.
1995
Would you believe you can find sealed copies of Zoop for the Sega Genesis for just $17?
Something people won't tell you about collecting old games is how much they stink. Ebay is a grabbag of odors, and I've smelled it all, from the urine-rich stench of Goodwill games to the gritty, hard texture of cigarettes soaked into the pages of ratty old manuals. I have a box of CIB PlayStation Underground discs that I transferred to CD sleeves because the cardboard cases absorbed something best described as "haunting." Zoop also has a malodorous quality, a mustiness which tells you immediately that someone's been harboring a box full of unopened copies for nearly 30 years, sitting on them while waiting for the Zoop train to roll in. Perhaps that's why unopened Zoops are so cheap. Imagine inheriting unsold backstock of this game and carrying it around for years, a literal burden and a figurative curse... Well, I'm always happy to house unwanted games, even if it smells like someone Zooped in here.
I actually have two copies of Zoop. The first I developed a sort of sentimental attachment with, and I couldn't bring myself to open it and rob my life of some little piece of purity. It's now in a protective case and placed as a display piece on the top rung of my retro shelf. However, I always intend to play the games I collect, and at $17 a copy, buying a second Zoop was no big deal. The Genesis aftermarket is in such a state that most sealed games run a couple hundred at minimum, but this is the Zoop market, and I'm buying and trading on it all day.
Peeling back the shrink wrap on a new Genesis game is a special feeling, one that I immortalized by recording my first ever unboxing video. Please consider subscribing and donating to my Patreon, every little bit helps, i've been having to see a doctor a lot after filming that, he said he's never seen a gut biome like mine and he's gotta do all kinds of tests and it's getting really expensive
As for Zoop itself, it's pretty straight-forward. The player is represented by an arrow confined to a grid and needs to match colors to clear rows of encroaching pieces. Clear a set number of "zoops" and you move on to the next stage. Zoop's simplistic nature makes it easy to pick up and play, but it never finds the same cathartic rhythm as games like Tetris, partially due to it's squishy, "zoupy" controls. To be fair, the lack of firmness may be due to the soft nature of the Genesis' D-pad. Maybe this is the worst console to play it on, actually. Bad fucking news for any nitwit who bought two copies of Zoop.
I do actually like this game's aesthetics, it's about as 90s as you can get with its sharp color contrasts and use of simple yet striking geometric shapes. Even the font treatment is playful in a way that's very evocative of the era. Sure, it looks as simple as it plays, but I've actually grown to like my display copy as a sort of artistic statement, and it's enough of an eye-catch to serve as a great conversation starter.
"Why do you own a copy of Zoop?"
"I made a list of every game I owned, and someone jokingly said I didn't have one."
"Kind of an over-commitment to a bit, don't you think?"
"Yeah."
"... It really stinks in here."
"Yeah..."
Something people won't tell you about collecting old games is how much they stink. Ebay is a grabbag of odors, and I've smelled it all, from the urine-rich stench of Goodwill games to the gritty, hard texture of cigarettes soaked into the pages of ratty old manuals. I have a box of CIB PlayStation Underground discs that I transferred to CD sleeves because the cardboard cases absorbed something best described as "haunting." Zoop also has a malodorous quality, a mustiness which tells you immediately that someone's been harboring a box full of unopened copies for nearly 30 years, sitting on them while waiting for the Zoop train to roll in. Perhaps that's why unopened Zoops are so cheap. Imagine inheriting unsold backstock of this game and carrying it around for years, a literal burden and a figurative curse... Well, I'm always happy to house unwanted games, even if it smells like someone Zooped in here.
I actually have two copies of Zoop. The first I developed a sort of sentimental attachment with, and I couldn't bring myself to open it and rob my life of some little piece of purity. It's now in a protective case and placed as a display piece on the top rung of my retro shelf. However, I always intend to play the games I collect, and at $17 a copy, buying a second Zoop was no big deal. The Genesis aftermarket is in such a state that most sealed games run a couple hundred at minimum, but this is the Zoop market, and I'm buying and trading on it all day.
Peeling back the shrink wrap on a new Genesis game is a special feeling, one that I immortalized by recording my first ever unboxing video. Please consider subscribing and donating to my Patreon, every little bit helps, i've been having to see a doctor a lot after filming that, he said he's never seen a gut biome like mine and he's gotta do all kinds of tests and it's getting really expensive
As for Zoop itself, it's pretty straight-forward. The player is represented by an arrow confined to a grid and needs to match colors to clear rows of encroaching pieces. Clear a set number of "zoops" and you move on to the next stage. Zoop's simplistic nature makes it easy to pick up and play, but it never finds the same cathartic rhythm as games like Tetris, partially due to it's squishy, "zoupy" controls. To be fair, the lack of firmness may be due to the soft nature of the Genesis' D-pad. Maybe this is the worst console to play it on, actually. Bad fucking news for any nitwit who bought two copies of Zoop.
I do actually like this game's aesthetics, it's about as 90s as you can get with its sharp color contrasts and use of simple yet striking geometric shapes. Even the font treatment is playful in a way that's very evocative of the era. Sure, it looks as simple as it plays, but I've actually grown to like my display copy as a sort of artistic statement, and it's enough of an eye-catch to serve as a great conversation starter.
"Why do you own a copy of Zoop?"
"I made a list of every game I owned, and someone jokingly said I didn't have one."
"Kind of an over-commitment to a bit, don't you think?"
"Yeah."
"... It really stinks in here."
"Yeah..."
The last time I went to Disneyland, I spent all day stopping my niece from shoving her head between bars on bannisters and queue railing, got an ear infection, and had to make a multi-state drive home because Southwest cancelled all their flights. I had to work the next day.
Now, I'm not saying Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken is the worst 16-bit Disney game, but as far as capturing the "magic" of Disneyland, it's a lot like watching a Defunctland episode about my blown out eardrums.
Working your way through each themed land is actually a cute concept for level progression, even if riddling Frontier Land with incomplete rollercoaster tracks reads as a questionable choice for an official game advertising a real-world theme park. Mickey lacks the ability to jump on enemies, maybe that was going a little too far. You wouldn't want to encourage kids to butt-stomp cast members in real life, that'd raise your worker's comp premiums, so instead Mickey knocks enemies off of attractions by chucking balloons at them, which is much more responsible and even-handed.
In practice, this is your typical video game "charge shot," but getting out a limp uncharged balloon comes with an unpleasant delay, and Mickey has a general sluggishness about him that makes platforming feel awkward and unsatisfying. The slowness of everything causes the game to drag despite levels not technically being very large, and occasionally your progress will grind to a crawl even further by some gimmick or hazard that expects more precision than the chunky controls are able to accommodate. I know the real Big Thunder Mountain Railroad has gusts of wind that will blow your ass all the way back to the start of the queue, but I don't know, maybe you didn't need to put that in your video game, too!
Apparently, the plot of this game is that Pete has tricked all of Mickey's friends into thinking it's their off-day, so instead of practicing for a dance routine to entertain guests, they all disperse around the park and goof off. And Mickey, this rat, this fucking scab, has to go around and get them to go back to work. I just got done playing Forspoken and here I am assuming the role of a massive asshole YET AGAIN! There's no winning in my life. I sit down on the weekend to play something and it's like "ok, so in this game you're a middle manager," fuck off
Hyperbole aside, it's hard not to feel sour on Tokyo Disneyland when my experience with other Mickey games of the era are defined by the likes of Castle/World of Illusion, the Magical Quest series, and Mickey Mania. All of those play much more smoothly and do more interesting things. On some level it feels unfair to hold Tomy and Graphic Research to the same level as Capcom and Sega circa the early 90s, they just weren't in the same league and frankly, Tokyo Disneyland is impressive when you consider it was sandwiched between two Derby Jockey titles and a pachinko game.
I very rarely regret having a game in my collection and Tokyo Disneyland ain't it, I'm very pleased with it on the shelf because even if I don't think it's particularly great, it is very novel, especially considering it's a Mickey Mouse game that never came stateside during an era where Mickey games were at their peak popularity. I'm just glad HaroKid - who picked me up a copy after falling off unfinished track on the real Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Tokyo Disneyland - didn't have to fork over too much up front.
Now, I'm not saying Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken is the worst 16-bit Disney game, but as far as capturing the "magic" of Disneyland, it's a lot like watching a Defunctland episode about my blown out eardrums.
Working your way through each themed land is actually a cute concept for level progression, even if riddling Frontier Land with incomplete rollercoaster tracks reads as a questionable choice for an official game advertising a real-world theme park. Mickey lacks the ability to jump on enemies, maybe that was going a little too far. You wouldn't want to encourage kids to butt-stomp cast members in real life, that'd raise your worker's comp premiums, so instead Mickey knocks enemies off of attractions by chucking balloons at them, which is much more responsible and even-handed.
In practice, this is your typical video game "charge shot," but getting out a limp uncharged balloon comes with an unpleasant delay, and Mickey has a general sluggishness about him that makes platforming feel awkward and unsatisfying. The slowness of everything causes the game to drag despite levels not technically being very large, and occasionally your progress will grind to a crawl even further by some gimmick or hazard that expects more precision than the chunky controls are able to accommodate. I know the real Big Thunder Mountain Railroad has gusts of wind that will blow your ass all the way back to the start of the queue, but I don't know, maybe you didn't need to put that in your video game, too!
Apparently, the plot of this game is that Pete has tricked all of Mickey's friends into thinking it's their off-day, so instead of practicing for a dance routine to entertain guests, they all disperse around the park and goof off. And Mickey, this rat, this fucking scab, has to go around and get them to go back to work. I just got done playing Forspoken and here I am assuming the role of a massive asshole YET AGAIN! There's no winning in my life. I sit down on the weekend to play something and it's like "ok, so in this game you're a middle manager," fuck off
Hyperbole aside, it's hard not to feel sour on Tokyo Disneyland when my experience with other Mickey games of the era are defined by the likes of Castle/World of Illusion, the Magical Quest series, and Mickey Mania. All of those play much more smoothly and do more interesting things. On some level it feels unfair to hold Tomy and Graphic Research to the same level as Capcom and Sega circa the early 90s, they just weren't in the same league and frankly, Tokyo Disneyland is impressive when you consider it was sandwiched between two Derby Jockey titles and a pachinko game.
I very rarely regret having a game in my collection and Tokyo Disneyland ain't it, I'm very pleased with it on the shelf because even if I don't think it's particularly great, it is very novel, especially considering it's a Mickey Mouse game that never came stateside during an era where Mickey games were at their peak popularity. I'm just glad HaroKid - who picked me up a copy after falling off unfinished track on the real Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Tokyo Disneyland - didn't have to fork over too much up front.
TBD
Sure, I could get into what little is known about Sonic Crackers, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is how an extremely early alpha build of what would become Chaotix only plays marginally worse than the finished product.
It's still neat as hell that this is out there. I think the Sonic series has played a significant role in people's fascination with video game prototypes, and this might just be the earliest available build of a Sonic game, being in an even more bare and unplayable state than the infamous Simon Wai beta. The most complete zone, which is an industrial themed stage with a vertically oriented level structure, has several variations depicting it at different times of day, and much like Chaotix, it has you darting back and forth as you scale repeating chunks of geometry. It makes sense here where you'd want to pitch the whole dual momentum gimmick, but it's a little depressing to know level design didn't evolve much.
The second zone is carnival themed and largely unplayable due to busted collision issues, and there's a couple overhead maps that seem like they would serve a sort of "adventure field" function but were ultimately scrapped. That's about it. Very novel as a proof-of-concept, though I'm surprised anyone at Sega looked at this and thought "yeah I'll greenlight that" instead of immediately throwing whoever programmed this garbage into an agony booth. I suppose condemning Chaotix to the 32X is meeting in the middle.
It's surprising that none of this has been mined by the bloodsuckers at Sonic Team, who have apparently scratched through the bottom of the barrel and are now incorporating even more obscure beta/prototype elements in their games in a desperate attempt to claw at whatever nostalgia is left. It's not that they have no new ideas, just that 80% of them hinge on you remembering a thing and clapping because you saw that thing again. But maybe it's just a matter of time. I feel like one of these two Zones is either going to show up in a future game or someone will yank all the assets out and do a fan game that serves as a sort of "what if" look at Sonic Crackers had it been built upon in a more linear fashion.
Not rating this because c'mon, it's an alpha build.
It's still neat as hell that this is out there. I think the Sonic series has played a significant role in people's fascination with video game prototypes, and this might just be the earliest available build of a Sonic game, being in an even more bare and unplayable state than the infamous Simon Wai beta. The most complete zone, which is an industrial themed stage with a vertically oriented level structure, has several variations depicting it at different times of day, and much like Chaotix, it has you darting back and forth as you scale repeating chunks of geometry. It makes sense here where you'd want to pitch the whole dual momentum gimmick, but it's a little depressing to know level design didn't evolve much.
The second zone is carnival themed and largely unplayable due to busted collision issues, and there's a couple overhead maps that seem like they would serve a sort of "adventure field" function but were ultimately scrapped. That's about it. Very novel as a proof-of-concept, though I'm surprised anyone at Sega looked at this and thought "yeah I'll greenlight that" instead of immediately throwing whoever programmed this garbage into an agony booth. I suppose condemning Chaotix to the 32X is meeting in the middle.
It's surprising that none of this has been mined by the bloodsuckers at Sonic Team, who have apparently scratched through the bottom of the barrel and are now incorporating even more obscure beta/prototype elements in their games in a desperate attempt to claw at whatever nostalgia is left. It's not that they have no new ideas, just that 80% of them hinge on you remembering a thing and clapping because you saw that thing again. But maybe it's just a matter of time. I feel like one of these two Zones is either going to show up in a future game or someone will yank all the assets out and do a fan game that serves as a sort of "what if" look at Sonic Crackers had it been built upon in a more linear fashion.
Not rating this because c'mon, it's an alpha build.
2023
This review contains spoilers
If your perception of Forspoken is entirely predicated on pre-release trailers, you might be forgiven for thinking the game's greatest sin is its Whedony dialog. Lines like "I just moved shit with my mind!" clung to this game like a grease stain prior to launch, and Forspoken's subsequent underperformance wasn't the least bit surprising. If you're anything like me, you probably thought the derision was a little overblown and that the clunky dialog might be made up for by a satisfying gameplay loop. After an interminably long opening and upon being released into the open world of Athia, it is... at least for about three hours.
The playful banter between Frey and her magical talking vambrace named "Cuff" dries up after Frey realizes her wacky isekai adventure is actually worse than being a homeless three-strikes recipient in New York. She then dedicates the majority of the game to finding a way home, often at the expense of others, becoming so single-minded and selfish that she frequently jumps down the throats of Cipal's downtrodden yet kindly inhabitants, paying back their generosity with contempt.
Granted, the game makes a point of Frey's troubled background, her difficulty connecting with others, and adds a bit of tragedy on top of that when an orphan dies as collateral during an early battle in Cipal's lower city. The problem is Forspoken expects you to relate to and sympathize with her, and when she throws her walls up and becomes spiteful to those who are in no way responsible for her trauma, it just starts to become draining. Twelve hours in and she's still telling people who are trying to help her that she doesn't care what happens to their home or whether they live or die. That's your protagonist and your window into Athia. I'd rather her be a massive dork with bad one-liners, that's actually more endearing than lying to children and being a dick to cats.
This all came to a head for me during a particularly nasty scene where Frey engages in some one-upmanship after another character's father dies. Her entire personality at this point devolves to "my trauma power level is higher than yours," and it's suffocating. A good story can track the regression of a character's mental state, but Forspoken is completely lacking in the necessary nuance, instead wallowing in Frey's misery and confining her actual growth to the final two chapters of the game. This is especially funny as it's communicated during a series of flashbacks depicting Athia's downfall, and during this whole sequence Frey is going "oh my god, these poor people, they're all being slaughtered" like oh ok now you care I guess, or maybe the problem here is she can't tell them to eat shit because they're ghosts, I don't know!
The plot is also extremely predictable. I understand that sometimes the audience needs to know more than the protagonist so that the story can move forward, but when it gets to the point that you're twenty steps ahead at all times, it feels like the main character is just a moron. Frey keeps falling for the Son of Sam routine, constantly being goaded into killing Tantas - high witches who govern Athia - despite her protests.
"Hey, we're near the Tanta's castle. Perhaps you should confront her, knock another off the list. Think of it as self-preservation, they are trying to kill you, after all..."
"No. No, I'm NOT killing anyone else; I'm taking this sap and I'm curing Break Bob and going home."
"Ok. What if you tried to reason with Tanta instead?"
"Ohhhhyeah..."
Anyway, you kill her!
One of the story's final twists is that your cuff is a corruptive and manipulative entity, but at no point do the interactions between Frey and Cuff actually convey that some sort of corrosive force is overtaking her or leading her off the path through anything more than very mild suggestion. In fact, it really just seems like Frey is following her own personal trajectory and is independently foolish and miserable.
Though Gary Whitta helped Square develop the "germ of an idea" that became Forspoken, his contribution to the final product seems to begin and end with the foundational lore of Athia. In an interview with Video Game Writing 101, he explains that at some point during development the story was jettisoned completely and reworked as an isekai, but due to scheduling conflicts, Whitta was unavailable and unable to work on the story further. Beyond that, I can't imagine what happened that led to the story taking the shape it did, but the lack of nuance, humanity, and general thinness of the narrative hurt the game in some incredible ways.
Unfortunately, the story isn't the only thing that's "thin." Cipal, which acts as the main hub and respite for the player, feels empty. Sparsely populated by your typical stilted video game NPCs going about their rigidly programmed routines. This is where I need to shoulder some of the blame here, because admittedly, I didn't really bother with side quests after taking on two in the early game which reminded me of your typical quest in Final Fantasy XVI. I made the decision to not do that crap again. I took some pictures, and I fed some sheep, and at the end of the sheep feeding quest Frey told the nice young man who was showing me around to go fuck himself, so... you know. I'm good.
The open world is divided into different regions, as is commonly the case in these kinds of games, but there's little to distinguish them outside of minor topographical changes (one area has more water, one has more rocks) and whatever color they decided to over-saturate them with. They're littered with points of interest, but it's all the standard fare... Here's a watch tower, here's a combat challenge, here's a locked puzzle chest... The labyrinths and cat collecting were the only things I went out of the way for, because I think labyrinths and cats are cool, and because the former is the most efficient means to level up and get good gear. Everything else "is what it is," and Forspoken largely fails to incentivize you with fun or meaningful tasks.
Actual navigation feels good at first. The "magic parkour" system has you flinging yourself off trees and doing crazy stunts as you glide around the world, but it also struggles with small objects like curbs and tiny rocks. Frey frequently snags on small yet abrupt inclines which disturbs the flow of movement, and I frequently got stuck in seams and surfaces that while appearing at a scalable height were in fact not designated as a navigable piece of geometry. The game will thankfully dislodge you, but my appreciation for what Forspoken was doing with movement weakened the more I played. It just doesn't feel like it's "there" just yet, but the idea is good.
Combat functions a lot better, with the parkour movement and spellcasting giving it a sort of dance-like quality. However, despite getting some good mileage and a handful of terrific boss encounters out of this, combat doesn't feel like it truly opens up until right near the end of the game. It takes you nearly 40% of the story before you get the second elemental skill tree, with water and electricity elements unlocking so late that you're practically railroaded into the end game with little opportunity to experiment. The game knows this too as it starts dumping a ton of mana (your skill currency) on you leading up to the final boss so you can actually buy things before the game wraps up.
Every part of Forspoken is lacking in the care and attention it needed. This is a game where your Cuff verbalizes context clues to guide the player, yet the game frequently pauses to tutoralize you through pop-ups all the way to the last chapter. Where every moment of investigation, every conversation with an NPC, every disengagement from a scripted event comes with several seconds of stillness as the game considers restoring control. Small things that just don't feel good but add up to pure annoyance are then compounded by the bigger problems, like the insufferable character writing, the emptiness of the world, or the bizarre pacing of systems. There is not one grain unmarred, and whether those imperfections are a laundry list of catastrophic problems or confined to a single asterisk depends on what you're looking at.
Forspoken would be such a better game if it's biggest problem was Frey saying "I just moved shit with my mind! Yeah, I guess I do that now...!"
The playful banter between Frey and her magical talking vambrace named "Cuff" dries up after Frey realizes her wacky isekai adventure is actually worse than being a homeless three-strikes recipient in New York. She then dedicates the majority of the game to finding a way home, often at the expense of others, becoming so single-minded and selfish that she frequently jumps down the throats of Cipal's downtrodden yet kindly inhabitants, paying back their generosity with contempt.
Granted, the game makes a point of Frey's troubled background, her difficulty connecting with others, and adds a bit of tragedy on top of that when an orphan dies as collateral during an early battle in Cipal's lower city. The problem is Forspoken expects you to relate to and sympathize with her, and when she throws her walls up and becomes spiteful to those who are in no way responsible for her trauma, it just starts to become draining. Twelve hours in and she's still telling people who are trying to help her that she doesn't care what happens to their home or whether they live or die. That's your protagonist and your window into Athia. I'd rather her be a massive dork with bad one-liners, that's actually more endearing than lying to children and being a dick to cats.
This all came to a head for me during a particularly nasty scene where Frey engages in some one-upmanship after another character's father dies. Her entire personality at this point devolves to "my trauma power level is higher than yours," and it's suffocating. A good story can track the regression of a character's mental state, but Forspoken is completely lacking in the necessary nuance, instead wallowing in Frey's misery and confining her actual growth to the final two chapters of the game. This is especially funny as it's communicated during a series of flashbacks depicting Athia's downfall, and during this whole sequence Frey is going "oh my god, these poor people, they're all being slaughtered" like oh ok now you care I guess, or maybe the problem here is she can't tell them to eat shit because they're ghosts, I don't know!
The plot is also extremely predictable. I understand that sometimes the audience needs to know more than the protagonist so that the story can move forward, but when it gets to the point that you're twenty steps ahead at all times, it feels like the main character is just a moron. Frey keeps falling for the Son of Sam routine, constantly being goaded into killing Tantas - high witches who govern Athia - despite her protests.
"Hey, we're near the Tanta's castle. Perhaps you should confront her, knock another off the list. Think of it as self-preservation, they are trying to kill you, after all..."
"No. No, I'm NOT killing anyone else; I'm taking this sap and I'm curing Break Bob and going home."
"Ok. What if you tried to reason with Tanta instead?"
"Ohhhhyeah..."
Anyway, you kill her!
One of the story's final twists is that your cuff is a corruptive and manipulative entity, but at no point do the interactions between Frey and Cuff actually convey that some sort of corrosive force is overtaking her or leading her off the path through anything more than very mild suggestion. In fact, it really just seems like Frey is following her own personal trajectory and is independently foolish and miserable.
Though Gary Whitta helped Square develop the "germ of an idea" that became Forspoken, his contribution to the final product seems to begin and end with the foundational lore of Athia. In an interview with Video Game Writing 101, he explains that at some point during development the story was jettisoned completely and reworked as an isekai, but due to scheduling conflicts, Whitta was unavailable and unable to work on the story further. Beyond that, I can't imagine what happened that led to the story taking the shape it did, but the lack of nuance, humanity, and general thinness of the narrative hurt the game in some incredible ways.
Unfortunately, the story isn't the only thing that's "thin." Cipal, which acts as the main hub and respite for the player, feels empty. Sparsely populated by your typical stilted video game NPCs going about their rigidly programmed routines. This is where I need to shoulder some of the blame here, because admittedly, I didn't really bother with side quests after taking on two in the early game which reminded me of your typical quest in Final Fantasy XVI. I made the decision to not do that crap again. I took some pictures, and I fed some sheep, and at the end of the sheep feeding quest Frey told the nice young man who was showing me around to go fuck himself, so... you know. I'm good.
The open world is divided into different regions, as is commonly the case in these kinds of games, but there's little to distinguish them outside of minor topographical changes (one area has more water, one has more rocks) and whatever color they decided to over-saturate them with. They're littered with points of interest, but it's all the standard fare... Here's a watch tower, here's a combat challenge, here's a locked puzzle chest... The labyrinths and cat collecting were the only things I went out of the way for, because I think labyrinths and cats are cool, and because the former is the most efficient means to level up and get good gear. Everything else "is what it is," and Forspoken largely fails to incentivize you with fun or meaningful tasks.
Actual navigation feels good at first. The "magic parkour" system has you flinging yourself off trees and doing crazy stunts as you glide around the world, but it also struggles with small objects like curbs and tiny rocks. Frey frequently snags on small yet abrupt inclines which disturbs the flow of movement, and I frequently got stuck in seams and surfaces that while appearing at a scalable height were in fact not designated as a navigable piece of geometry. The game will thankfully dislodge you, but my appreciation for what Forspoken was doing with movement weakened the more I played. It just doesn't feel like it's "there" just yet, but the idea is good.
Combat functions a lot better, with the parkour movement and spellcasting giving it a sort of dance-like quality. However, despite getting some good mileage and a handful of terrific boss encounters out of this, combat doesn't feel like it truly opens up until right near the end of the game. It takes you nearly 40% of the story before you get the second elemental skill tree, with water and electricity elements unlocking so late that you're practically railroaded into the end game with little opportunity to experiment. The game knows this too as it starts dumping a ton of mana (your skill currency) on you leading up to the final boss so you can actually buy things before the game wraps up.
Every part of Forspoken is lacking in the care and attention it needed. This is a game where your Cuff verbalizes context clues to guide the player, yet the game frequently pauses to tutoralize you through pop-ups all the way to the last chapter. Where every moment of investigation, every conversation with an NPC, every disengagement from a scripted event comes with several seconds of stillness as the game considers restoring control. Small things that just don't feel good but add up to pure annoyance are then compounded by the bigger problems, like the insufferable character writing, the emptiness of the world, or the bizarre pacing of systems. There is not one grain unmarred, and whether those imperfections are a laundry list of catastrophic problems or confined to a single asterisk depends on what you're looking at.
Forspoken would be such a better game if it's biggest problem was Frey saying "I just moved shit with my mind! Yeah, I guess I do that now...!"