Yeah, World Tour is kinda mid, but you can also hit cops in the spine with a spinning bird kick. What am I gonna do, give this a three? C'mon.

I am so exceptionally unskilled at fighting games that I've never in my life been able to clear a single CPU match in Street Fighter 2 on normal difficulty. I am not made for these kinds of games, but much like shoot-em-ups, I keep trying. I don't talk to very many people and, though I'd like to, I play games with fewer still. The extremely small group I've discussed playing Street Fighter 6 with have all said similar things about their own skill level, but thanks to "modern controls," we all have a Street Fighter we can finally enjoy. Not that a simplified control scheme has benefitted me so tremendously that I don't start hyperventilating whenever I see someone play as Zangief (people saying he needs to be buffed scare me because they understand this game in ways I never can), but it is nice to have a Street Fighter I can comfortably play with others at my own skill level and feel somewhat competent about it. And hey, actually being able to finish literally anyone's story mode is invaluable to me.

I still hesitate to call this "the best one" since a lot of 3's feel and aesthetics nudge it out for me, even if I am categorically worse at that game. A lot of the music is kinda flat for me, and I'm not really digging the character creator, at least not as a tool for making convincing human beings. If you desire a fighter that resembles a podracer pilot then hell yeah, you've never been more equipped to see through your sick fantasies and I am genuinely happy for you. I want to play as a cute kickboxing girl who wears cute clothes, and it took me three hours before I found a good looking top and I had to travel to freaking Mexico and get beat up by a literal child to get it. Outfits also fit horribly on everyone. Everything is too baggy, and I'm sure it's to account for the uh, wide variety of body shapes people will be rolling with. Necessary compromises, but I can't help but feel like some of the custom character features are a bit lacking.

None of this is enough to totally pull me out of World Tour, of course. Interacting with the Street Fighters™ is a lot of fun, and no doubt you've already seen dozens of silly text message exchanges floating around out there already, assuming you aren't already teaching Ryu how to use a phone or striking out with Juri at this very moment. The matchmaking lobby - which also uses your custom character - has some real PlayStation Home vibes and I'm way into that, too. Remember to greet your friends with a tomahawk buster directly to their face, as is customary in Metro City.

Speaking of, I appreciate how significant Metro City and Final Fight's lore is to the story. You can also play Final Fight in the game, but why the hell would I do that? Final Fight sucks! I like everything that's in Final Fight, but I hate playing it, so hey, I'm getting the exact amount of Final Fight that I want in my diet. Mike Haggar is rich in protein.

God, why did I write that. Take that out. Remove it from the review.

I don't have any complex thoughts on arcade mode, in the usual sense of me finding it very difficult to articulate my opinions on what does and doesn't work about fighting games. There's no shortage of writers on this site who have both the eloquence and knowledge to run circles around anything I could possibly type up here, but suffice it to say I find it very good and I've had a blast testing out each character and seeing who gels with me. I was adamantly in the anti-Juri camp for years. Hated her design, I think feet are disgusting. Put some shoes on that Juri. But playing as her in arcade mode and a few online matches and being called a dumb bitch loser by her in World Tour has turned me around. I am now pro-Juri and I pray I do not regret this change of position. Cammy is my favorite character series-wide and I've found her to be just as enjoyable to play as she always has been, and Kimberly has been a lot of fun too.

I still don't think I've narrowed down my "main" just yet, and even though I feel confident in my opinion of Street Fighter 6 at this point in time, I'm going to be playing a lot more of it. One of those rare games where I can see myself coming back to it throughout the year and for which there won't be a true end point, so much as I eventually taper off and find that I'm not picking it up anymore. Nevertheless, leaving a review now as I have put a significant amount of time into this and feel unwavering in my assessment that they made a damn good Street Fighter.

Edit (6/16/23): I've been playing more of this and I regret leaving such an early review. I've removed the score and will be making an additional log when I complete it that adds on top of my thoughts here.

I try not to let contrary opinions about media affect me. It's an awful trait, one that stems from tying part of your identity to a product. There's plenty of games I care deeply about, but if someone else doesn't like them, that's not a personal slight against me. Likewise, if someone enjoys something I passionately dislike, it doesn't make their opinion any less valid than my own. Of course I'm not perfect, I slip up sometimes. We all do. The important thing is having enough self-awareness to catch yourself doing it, pull back, and evaluate whether it's worth it. 99.99% of the time, it's not.

Bloodborne is the .01% exception.

I've beaten this game about four times now, and each completed run has only reaffirmed my belief that this is the worst entry in the Souls series. I'm sorry, I mean "Soulsborne", because apparently it's so good that it's now suffixed at the hip with the overarching franchise's namesake. Despicable. Feels about as good rolling off the tongue as "Metroidvania," and is about as unearned. I genuinely cannot enter into the same headspace as everyone else. Have we played the same game? This is one of - if not the best game From has ever put out?

Bloodborne feels like the byproduct of a rushed development. Locations and mechanics are so woefully underdeveloped that it simply feels incomplete. Take combat, which is designed to be more fast-paced compared to previous Souls titles. Trick weapons provide more utility and varied movesets, making each new weapon more impactful than the myriad swords you loot in Dark Souls, and gone are shields (ThEy EnGeNdEr PaSsIvItY har har har) in favor of sidearms, which can be used to initiate parries with a very generous window. A quick step was added in place of a roll, at least while locked on, making dodging and weaving between enemies more snappy. All of this contributes to a combat system that feels more aggressive than previous Souls titles, one that asks the player to unlearn the tired strategies they've relied upon for three games now.

The problem is that very little about the game is actually balanced around these drastic changes, and it's apparent that From is not nearly as willing to evolve their approach as they expect their players to be. The camera and targeting system become even bigger liabilities here than they have been. Lock on to any large aggressive boss and you'll see what I mean, it just spins around like a whirling dervish, all chest fur and particle effects. Apparently Dark Souls 2 is bad because of the way enemies track you, something Bloodborne doesn't do? Blood Starved Beast would like a word with you, and he'll pivot 180 degrees on a dime to tell you. To be fair, this is only really an issue with a few late game bosses, whereas most encounters seem to be reused or rejected concepts from previous Souls games. I was surprised to see people had trouble with Rom or The One Reborn when they're quite literally Phalanx and The Tower Knight from Demon's Souls, only now you can run around them like Sonic the Hedgehog.

The lock on system is more consistently problematic with mobs. Boy I sure do love targeting the guy to my right instead of the one immediately in front of me. Hey this guy is charging right at me, I should lock on and side-step him and oh no, I'm now locked on to something on the other side of the floor. A lot of Bloodborne's difficulty feels imbalanced, if not artificial, like the solution to the game not being hard enough was to just overwhelm the player with a bunch of bullshit ambushes in areas where the geometry and camera do not get along. The advice I often hear is "well then don't lock on," except the game clearly wants me to by including the quick-step as a targeting-only feature. Also, completely disengaging with a system that is bad isn't really the solution people seem to think it is for the system being bad.

I'm going to invoke Dark Souls 2 again, that rascal, that perennial black sheep. It's remarkable to me how the B-team had the wisdom to let the player warp to any location from a bonfire, and while removing the ability to level up at them as well was a step in the wrong direction, at least jumping between areas didn't feel sluggish. Bloodborne, on the other hand, makes you warp back to the Hunter's Dream for everything. You can't even rest at a lamp post to restore blood vials and quicksilver bullets. Want to replenish your inventory before a boss? Fuck you, back to the Hunter's Dream. The original Dark Souls may not have let you warp until halfway through the game, but that at least made sense with how its world was laid out, how it was meant to be explored. Bloodborne is just inconvenient for no reason.

One of the more interesting deviations from the norm, however, is its setting. Yharnam's makes a solid first impression. The opening "dungeon" is vast, and similar to the Painted World in Dark Souls in that it feels as if it was designed in tandem with Bloodborne's core mechanics. The city streets are laid out in a way that presents satisfying arenas to test out Bloodborne's snappy new combat, and its non-linear design allows you to just get lost, find some sub-quests, and take on one of two different bosses in any order you please. Unfortunately, the game immediately loses this sense of design, reverting back to very rote by-the-numbers dungeons that feel more at home in past entries. There's a distinct lack of location variety too, with some of the more interesting dungeons either being painfully brief or entirely optional. Most of your time will be spent in the streets of Yharnam, and god damn does it start to drag. If you need a break, you can always check out the Chalice Dungeons, which are randomly generated excursions featuring high value loot and challenging new encounters. Except that's a lie, most of them are not randomly generated and are designed to appear procedural, which is to say they're made to be shitty on purpose.

Well shiiit, what about multiplayer? Everyone loves multiplayer in Souls games. Well guess what, there isn't any. And no that's not because I'm replaying this in 2022, long after Bloodborne could reasonably be expected to be active. It was always like this. There's like, maybe two covenants and they they lack any interesting conceits. You can still invade or summon, but even at release it didn't seem like anybody was bothering. I'm not sure I've ever been invaded in this game, and I could probably count the amount of real living breathing co-op partners I've found on one hand. Of course it also suffers from some incredibly bad netcode, but hey, that's par for the course.

Look, I'm a Dark Souls 3 apologist. I was singing Dark Souls 2's praises before it became vogue to reevaluate it. I just don't "get" the appeal of Bloodborne, maybe, but I just wrapped up getting the platinum trophy and played this game to completion at least three times before that and I still find myself walking away thinking it's just a bad game. It feels like it needed another year in the oven or at least two dozen community mods before it approaches playability. And yet, everyone eats this game up. They can't get enough of it. So good it's not just Souls, it's Soulsborne. I feel like my head is a gigantic tumorous mass of eyeballs that permit me to see this game for what it is, though the truth has only driven me to madness, leaving me a derange piteous creature waiting to be euthanized.

Never point the Frogun at that which you aren't willing to destroy.

Todd and Lily Hopps have been kidnapped by Beelzebub, leaving their young daughter, Renata, unattended with the frogun. Renata doesn't practice good frogun safety, so she immediately sets out - finger on the trigger - to save her parents. The frogon's tongue can be used as a tether, allowing Renata to cross deadly chasms, ensnare enemies and objects, and fling herself head-first into walls. It's fine, she has a helmet.

Personally, I find the frogun (short for "frozen yogun") to be a really interesting hook to build a 3D platformer around. In practice, snagging parts of the geometry to both attack and maneuver feels very intuitive, and the way in which the game gradually ramps up its difficulty forces you to constantly reconsider what the frogun is capable of and how you can use it both to fully explore and exploit your environment. I could see this being a hell of a speed run game, because even I, an ignoramus, was able to utterly break a few levels by licking things I wasn't supposed to.

The discussion around this game often paints Frogun as being maliciously difficult and I was warned about a noticeable spike in the third world, but to be honest, I don't think it is. At least not until the final world, which is a bit of a stinker. It's here where Frogun's slow camera starts to get in the way, and long stretches of precision platforming over bottomless pits becomes too frequent and results in too much lost progress upon failure. While others may apply that criticism to the entire game, I do not. I found Frogun to be challenging in places, but to such a degree that it remained engaging rather than frustrating. Rather than bemoan each new wrinkle Forgun introduces, I instead found myself compelled to better learn how the game operates, and I appreciate how often it teaches the player through its design rather than rote tutorialization (though it's not lacking in it, either.)

That's not to say Frogun is some near-flawless gem. Boss battles are tedious, requiring the player to dodge attacks during protracted phases of invulnerability before being presented with a brief window in which to do damage. I am not a fan of bosses that operate under this logic to begin with, but Frogun's are especially irritating given how long each fight drags on for. The game is also pretty glitchy. I saw a number of instances where the wrong animation would play when exiting cutscenes, occasionally had the timer stop on 0:00 (which is beneficial if you're going for the time trial medals) and had the game fail to count coins several times. Frogun was made by a very small team, and given the prevalence of these bugs, it is surprising that I didn't run into anything that seriously inconvenienced me or broke the game.

Outside of gameplay, Frogun has an adorable aesthetic, and is clearly going for a sort of early PSX platformer vibe, which I think it nails. Only complaint here would be the sound mixing, which for some reason is really incredibly loud. I like the music, just don't need it blowing my eardrums out.

Frogun may not be the second coming of 3D platformers, but I do think the animus surrounding it is a bit silly. It's a challenging game, but I would not describe it as being inaccessibly so. Far be it from me to deny anyone their opinion, I just think it's really funny that people see this cute and unassuming game and become so enflamed by it that they want to jump Renata's ass. I don't see the same flaws, you won't find me caving the frogun in with the heel of my shoe, but I'm also not going to stop everyone from having their fun. 3.5/5 video game, I won't interfere.

"Old man gave me the frogun in grade seven. Seen a lot of action. 9-meter tongue. Safety always off." - Renata

BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?

Ok, look, I decided to forgo the bit this time because Frogun is so controversial. You can't just go outside anymore with a mason jar, collect pollywags, take them back home and watch them grow into Summah frogs. People are trying to harsh my Summah vibes, they won't let me go exploring random caves I found off the side of the road, just me and my hat and pistol. What is the world coming to? A world without Summah? Horrible.

Like every game on my 2023 Summah Games list, I have subjected Frogun to a battery of tests to determine its value as a Summah game. These tests included habitually licking Frogun, and reading every negative review to Frogun to see if it was capable of maintaining its sunny disposition.

Frogun scored an 8.1 on the Summah Index scale, making it a game with above average Summah vibes. The sunny vistas, the buzzing of bugs, and sense of adventure are certainly enough to make this a Summah game, but I am happy to report that repeated verbal abuse did not break Frogun's spirit. However, I did get my tongue stuck in my PS5's disc tray while attempting to administer the lick test (I bought it digitally.) I am still trapped, please send help.

Super Mario Sunshine is so explicitly Summer themed that even its cover exudes powerful waves of Summah energy. From its very premise - which sees Mario and Peach travel to the perpetually sunny Isle Delfino to enjoy a much-deserved vacation - to its world design and water-based gameplay, it is as blatantly Summah as any game could possibly be. Naturally, ending my 2023 Summah Games Series with Super Mario Sunshine seemed like a no-brainer. Seemed like a real good idea at the time.

The Summah is so cancelled, man.

I haven't touched this game since 2002, and to be perfectly honest, I didn't think very highly of it back then. I was extremely excited for it leading up to release though, as I'm sure plenty of people were considering this was the first big follow up to Super Mario 64. It is somewhat hard to factor out my disappointment when viewing it through the frame of being 64's direct sequel, so I'm going to state up front that I'll be making numerous direct comparisons between both games to elucidate why I think Mario Sunshine just does not work mechanically and feels bad to play.

Episode 1: Blob Mario is On The Loose

Super Mario 64 released in 1996 and was one of the first major 3D platformers - this is an almost unnecessary statement of fact, but I need to establish the premise that Mario 64 plays extremely well both for a product of its era and for its place in the history and development of 3D gaming. A lot of thought went into designing a control scheme that was both intuitive and felt good to engage with, and Nintendo succeeded so well that Mario 64 established a foundation for 3D platformer controls much in the same way the original Super Mario Bros. served as a watershed moment for 2D platformers.

By contrast, Mario feels notably "off" in Super Mario Sunshine. There is no longer any predictability to his movement, he neither feels like an extension of the player nor a character with his own distinct physicality. Mario is a blob. He animates with so much bounce and jiggle that you might think he's composed entirely of some viscous substance, and though charming from an animation standpoint, he controls every bit as goopy as he looks. This results in an awkward delay to his movements, and the bounding nature of his weight results in numerous misfires when jumping. Try to jump onto the top of a nail or any similarly small object and you'll see what I mean. You'll probably overshoot or undershoot several times before finally dialing it in. Worse case, you'll slide off the damn level.

Perhaps they didn't see the need to refine these controls, or otherwise opted not to intentionally in consideration of F.L.U.D.D., Mario's water-firing backpack and the biggest mechanical addition to Sunshine over its predecessor. F.L.U.D.D. can spray water, which is useful for clearing goop, triggering events, and uncovering blue coins (we'll get to those.) He can also turn into a jetpack, which the player will likely rely upon heavily during platforming sequences. It becomes apparent that F.L.U.D.D. serves as a band-aide for Mario's poor physics when you enter the "secret" stages, which remove F.L.U.D.D. from the equation and force you to jump around the old-fashioned way.

If you sink enough time into Mario Sunshine, you might actually pick up on all its idiosyncrasies and gain some dominion over the beast. You might even start to think it's better than Mario 64. I once got locked inside of a Suncast jumbo storage shed with two crates of graham crackers, and I learned to like them so much that I still eat an entire pack for lunch pretty regularly. This is a psychological phenomenon referred to as the "mere-exposure effect," in which we develop a preference for something due to our familiarity with it. You have been conditioned!

Episode 2: Camera Catastrophe

One thing both games have in common, however, is how the camera is treated as a semi-physical object which occupies the same space as Mario. As such, it has a tendency to get caught on geometry. This is a nuisance in both games, but I would argue it's substantially worse in Sunshine due to it the complexity of its stage design and greater abundance of geometry.

Sunshine attempts to correct for this by providing some level of transparency when the camera hangs behind something, but the way this is implemented - by showing Mario's position, dropping out surrounding platforms, and unhelpfully highlighting NPCs, enemies, and objects with vague question marks - is such a half-measure that its inclusion feels utterly worthless. Trying to wrangle the camera using the C-stick even manages to feel worse in practice than using the Nintendo 64's C-buttons, something I wouldn't have thought possible without getting my hands on Sunshine again.

There is an overall lack of consideration in how levels are constructed, and so the camera will often snag right near the start of platforming sequences or when manually aiming the camera to survey the environment. During Episode 1 of Sirena Beach: The Manta Storm, the camera got stuck on a palm tree while Mario was using his jetpack to douse manta rays, which then multiply like Gremlins. As I was trying to get my bearings, Mario fell onto several manta rays, which caused him to leap back into a puddle of goop, which then caused him to bound forward into more manta rays. Mario's screaming was deafening. I still hear it when I fall asleep.

Episode 3: The Blue Coin Economy

In true collect-a-thon fashion, you enter a variety of different stages all connected by a hub world, but unlike Mario 64 where stars can mostly be collected out of order, Sunshine locks you into a more rigid structure. This is because each area tells its own story, like Noki Bay, whose waters have become toxic and require several attempts to purify, gradually changing the level over time. This is a novel concept which consequently boxes the player into completing a set number of episodes in each world. Not only can you not skip Shines which you might simply find unenjoyable to collect, but you must defeat Shadow Mario in each world in order to complete the game. The 50 Shine minimum to see Sunshine's end credits does not translate to "any 50 Shines will do" and instead means "these specific 50 shines, at least. You can get more for like... fun, I guess?"

There is nothing more "fun, I guess?" than the Blue Coins, which seems to be the one universal sore point for Mario Sunshine even among its defenders. There are 30 of these hidden in each level, and every 10 collected earns you another Shine. Functionally, these are meant to encourage the player to more thoroughly explore each level, drawing them to points of interest that each episode's required path might otherwise force them to skip. This is yet another consequence of the more linear nature of Sunshine. You might end up missing whole chunks of levels because you're never asked to go there, so blue coins provide motivation to branch off, beckoning to you and appealing to that dark desire that exists within all of us to do everything, to do it all.

You should not, though. Please exercise some self-restraint. Sometimes I want to drink an entire 8-pack of NOS, but I don't because I know it would be bad for me. Likewise, you should NEVER collect blue coins. All these get you is a post card at the end of the game. You could just look that up on the Internet. Here, I'll even give it to you free of charge.

The problem with blue coins isn't necessarily how many there are, but that they only contribute to 100% completion. There's no reason to interact with them whatsoever because - as we've established - you cannot complete the game by collecting any Shines you please. If you were to cash in half of the total number of blue coins, then the resulting 12 Shines earned mean absolutely nothing despite the effort it took to collect them. This issue could've been entirely side-stepped if blue coins served another purpose, like upgrading F.L.U.D.D. or unlocking some other form of bonus content which progressively opens up the more you cash in. This would not only keep the incentive to collect them but make them even more worthwhile as skipping any would not be so detrimental.

Oh, and you can't check to see what blue coins you've earned in what levels, the game only marks which levels you found every blue coin in and how many you have total. This just makes hunting for them even more of a pain without a guide and a spreadsheet to track them with, so you don't get confused. Some blue coins also appear only in specific episodes, so you need to make repeated trips into levels as well.

While I think the blue coins speak to larger issues with Sunshine's overall design, they are optional, and I am by my own admission hyper-fixating on them. I guess that's what I get for collecting um... 70% of the things.

And not to be entirely negative, I will say that there is some strong level theming in Sunshine. All of it feeds back into that core Summer aesthetic, placing a focus on locations like sun-bleached villages, beaches, a harbor, and a hotel/casino among other places, rather than adhering to tired tropes like desert or ice levels. Although there is one lava level, Corona Mountain, which is pretty much a straight line with really tepid challenges that ends in a flaccid boss fight. Bit anti-climatic.

Episode 4: The Mario Narrative

Some (me) might call Mario Sunshine an embarrassment and a gross misstep in the mainline Mario series. And some (me) might have even hated it so much at the time of its release that they traded it in for pennies on the dollar to a GameStop the second they finished it. Those very people (ME) may have even checked Ebay since then and lamented the fact that they could've swindled some poor fools out of 75 bucks a few years ago before 3D All-Stars brought prices back down to a more "reasonable" 40$.

We all make mistakes. Even Nintendo.

That's something I've chewed on while reflecting on this game. Would I think so harshly of it if it weren't a Mario game? It would still be bad, certainly, but it wouldn't betray a level of trust or an expectation of quality which the larger Mario series had set. Even a game six years its senior and which released on the edge of 3D gaming hitting the mainstream manages to outstrip it in structure, level design, and even controls. Perhaps that just speaks to how impressive Mario 64 is, but it's not unreasonable to think Nintendo could top it given the time and advances in game development. In 2002, Mario Sunshine downright hurt. Even so, I don't think it's appropriate to grade it on the Mario Scale.

Even if you chalk some it up to a difference in vision - due either to Miyamoto desiring something unique or Koizumi's directorial style - simple things like the way Mario plays should feel far more refined. Instead, Sunshine is sloppy game, one that uses Mario 64's bones and constructs them into something familiar but all too crude.

BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?

man i don't give a shit

About a year ago I'd never even heard of Koudelka, but that's the thing about being friends with TransWitchSammy, you're gonna find yourself waking up at 3 in the morning with "play Koudelka, it's peak...!" being whispered from your vents.

It's actually surprising that it's taken me this long to discover Koudelka and actually commit to playing it, because it's such a mish-mash of my favorite fifth generation design tropes that it seems made for me. Survival horror exploration, JRPG combat, haunting pre-rendered environments, a story told with maturity and supported by excellent voice acting...? Shit, it's even got music by Hiroki Kikuta of Secret of Mana fame, and he wrote, produced, and directed the game!

It's clear Kikuta had a well-defined vision for what he wanted Koudelka to be, being so involved with the project that he embedded himself in vocal recording sessions, opting to have all releases of the game share the same English dub. Vivianne Batthika (Koudelka), Michael Bradberry (Edward), and Scott Larson's (James) vocal performances are excellent, at times loud and theatrical in a way that suits the sort of "stage play" quality of the game's cutscenes. Character models are scarcely more detailed than those in Metal Gear Solid, rough and limited in all the ways you'd expect from this generation. Metal Gear Solid's workaround was the Codec, which used cut-outs to help connect the player to the characters, but Koudelka rarely zooms in on its characters to show us their emotional state (outside of FMVs, which are used whenever the action becomes more complex) and instead lends weight to the actor's performances with body language. Kikuta's choice to have his cast further embody their characters through mocap gives Koudelka a look that's so rarely seen on the PlayStation.

Softening up the image with a good scanline filter is something I would definitely recommend if you plan to play Koudelka through emulation, which you almost certainly would have to do since Price Charting pegs loose discs at around 142$. Maybe I'm spoiled, but the low-fidelity models can clash against the densely detailed backgrounds when viewed raw, and like most PlayStation games, there's a lot of dithering. Hitting Koudelka with a good shader can help desaturate some of the colors, and I feel a more muted pallet makes the game look even better.

As impressed as I am with the story, performances, and presentation (after shaders), the gameplay itself leaves a lot to be desired. Navigating the mansion is pretty typical survival horror fare, but there is a distinct lack of puzzles that the player needs to directly interface with to solve. For example, you might find a lock that requires an understanding of the Greek alphabet to open, but Koudelka and her companions will simply glean the answer from a note and apply the solution automatically. There's a puzzle involving some very basic math to change the counterbalance on a scale and another that requires you to rearrange the position of some dolls, and that's about the most you get. At least doing laps through the monastery feels good even if there isn't much meat to the progression. The frustrating thing is, you can see the frame of a good survival horror game in here, Koudelka just doesn't embrace it.

Likewise, the JRPG battle system is good but very dry. You navigate a sort of chess board where your position relative to the enemy's becomes a strategic factor... except magic and ranged weaponry is so grossly overpowered that by the middle of the game you'll probably have everyone outfitted with firearms and advanced spells, allowing you to comfortably take pot shots from the back row. Most battles devolve into spamming your more damaging moves, and while you can spec your characters however you wish, the short list of spells the game provides you bottlenecks your ability to craft particularly unique builds.

Koudelka has all these survival-horror and JRPG elements but it doesn't commit hard enough to either for my tastes, and so it rides out a lot of its short runtime on vibes and good storytelling, which is fine, but there's a better game here that just didn't coalesce.

I could go on, but at some point I'd just end up paraphrasing most of TransWitchSammy's video essay, which you should probably watch instead. She gets into a lot more detail about the production of the game, its themes, and stuff like the soundtrack (which is great), and I'd definitely defer to her as the resident Koudelka expert. I may keep going and give Shadow Hearts a shot, because I am interested in experiencing the series' transformation from this gloomy, mature story about religion, loss, and love to whatever goddamn goof-ass antics act as the driving force behind From the New World.

In the pantheon of seminal masterpieces that shaped the industry which Weatherby completely slept on (I was too busy playing Sonic Heroes, probably) The Sands of Time has been among the most interesting to finally loop back to. Nowadays, it might be easy to take what it's doing for granted. Clambering up crumbling ruins, dashing across walls, and swinging along busted piping is pretty bog-standard movement tech, but Sands of Time established this type of traversal so well that in terms of responsiveness and feedback, it doesn't feel like the industry has come that far since 2003.

The Prince's movement feels precise and deliberate, and progression is dependent entirely on how you position him and the timing of your inputs. Really, there might be an argument here that games have moved backwards, as titles like Uncharted come with far fewer fail states, and parkour mechanics in games like Assassin's Creed feels more automated. However, those games have more going on, whereas Sands of Time firmly roots itself in exploration and movement, making it a far better translation of the "cinematic platformer" to a 3D space than games like Tomb Raider. Which are bad. Evil, some would say.

Unfortunately, combat is the polar opposite, being a grotesquely clumsy affair. Geometry frequently obstructs the camera, and the Prince will too often fixate on enemies and fight back against your inputs as you try to point him towards a more immediate threat, resulting in this feeling of whiplash as you no longer feel in control. Combat is rarely challenging outside of these annoyances and remains rudimentary throughout the entire adventure, and in addition to just being boring, the game also likes to dump an obscene amount of enemies on you during every encounter. You run into combat encounters more and more as you near the end of the game, and at a certain point they feel less like a pace breaker and more an outright impediment, keeping you from the parts of the game that are actually fun. I'd prefer a more complex system with a greater enemy variety, but in lieu of that, I'd rather nothing at all than what Sands of Time actually provides.

It's such a shame, because the rest of the game is pretty damn good and would otherwise be one of the easiest 4.5/5's I've logged on the site. An endearing masterpiece that has weathered the test of time. But ah, whoops, I gotta jump off this guy's head and slash him in the back- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's another guy- oh wait there's- oh wait...

If I keep harping on it, I might sound as bitchy and ill-mannered as the Prince himself, who spends most of the game being a misogynistic pissant. Look, he grows by the end, it's about the journey. Yeah ok sure he forcefully kissed a woman who (at that point in time) did not know him, then rewound time to undo it, but that's because he knew it was wrong! Uhh... I'm not gonna think too hard on that one. I'm not saying you can't have your protagonist be unlikable and learn nothing - hell, I love Popful Mail! - but I did find it a little funny how many times I leaned back and thought "wow he really said that." Dudes need to be in therapy, but they too busy playing with their daggers of time.

I could definitely see myself revisiting The Sands of Time in the future, even despite how much I think combat steps all over the experience. It feels as good to play today as any of its imitators and there's no denying its significance in gaming history.

Let's go back to my place, we'll put on some Koji Kondo and drop Wonder Seeds.

I'm not sure which is a greater triumph: the fact that Nintendo put out a good 2D Mario game for the first time since World released in 1990, or that they've finally started to release worthwhile hardware in the Switch's twilight years. Pikmin 4 and Mario Wonder have both swooped in during the 11th hour to justify buying this thing back in 2017. Better late than never, I suppose.

I ran through Mario World not more than a month before picking up Wonder, and while I wouldn't say Wonder topples it as my favorite 2D entry in the series, it does come awfully close. Platforming feels incredibly tight, every character has the right amount of weight and momentum, and levels are thoughtfully designed around unique gimmicks to keep the game feeling fresh every step of the way. I was also not expecting the Wonder Seeds to come with as much variety as they do. Not only do they heavily alter a significant portion of each course, but Wonder is pretty good about making them unique to the courses they appear in, even in the rare instances where certain ideas and mechanics are reused. My personal favorite comes pretty early with the Piranha Plant Parade.

There are a number of smaller courses that lack Wonder sequences, like badge challenges and Wiggler Races, but they never feel lacking for it. I could do without the "search party" levels, though. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to design stages where you have to habitually jump around looking for hidden blocks like you're playing The Lost Levels, but I wound up pulling a guide open for these just to expedite the process. If Nintendo removed these and retooled a couple of the secret world stages (the one where you have to bounce on bubbles to navigate your way over a pit as a Goomba is heinous), then this might be a perfect 5/5 for me.

Wonder almost earns that half star back with its roster of playable characters. Of course, you've got Mario, Luigi, Peach, and (THREE!!) Toad(s), but they finally put Daisy in one of these games and I'm ecstatic about that. She's my favorite Mario character, which I know might be a weird thing to say considering most characters in these games have little personality past saying "wowie zowie" (big Zappa-heads, these guys) and their own name like a Pokemon. I just get this weird energy from Daisy. Peach will spend all afternoon baking you a cake, but Daisy will just drive to Kroger in her Ford Taurus that hasn't had an oil change in six months and buy you a sheet cake, start eating it in the car, then mash the two ends of the cake back together and crudely smooth over the icing to hide what she's done. I "fuck with that," or whatever the hell it is you kids say.

Unfortunately, the Yoshis (and Nabbit) are lackluster as they can't make use of power-ups. In the past, I've lamented the fact that I like Yoshi but he's never the star of good games, so it's disappointing that he and his multi-colored brethren have these arbitrarily imposed gameplay limitations in Wonder. Don't really care about Nabbit, far as I'm concerned there should be a wonder sequence where he's placed in a hydraulic press.

Mario Wonder is pretty much a must-have for the Switch and one of the best games released all year, and I think it's safe to say it breaks into my top five entries in the series. High praise from someone who ordinarily needs very little reason to dunk on Nintendo and drag them through the mud, but even I've got to admit they've put out something wonderful here.

With the release of Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe I knew I had two options: drop about sixty dollars on the rerelease that adds big garish black outlines to the characters as if something about the original's presentation made the action inscrutable, or put the iso of the original on my Wii's hard drive and play a much better looking game... With the Wiimote sideways. Well shit, that was a pretty easy call all the way to the end.

Frankly, I've found a lot of Nintendo's rereleases on Switch to be pretty uncompelling and settled on discomfort. I should get a pro controller if I'm going to play more Wii games, holding the Wiimote sideways might be the single worst way to experience any Nintendo game. What a garbage setup, with its prank D-pad and hard edges digging into your palm... At least Return to Dream Land plays well and is so enjoyable that even despite this horrid controller setup, I often found myself thinking "damn, this might be as good as The Crystal Shards."

Return to Dream Land is about as straight-forward a Kirby game as it gets. At least in single player. I get the feeling one of the big draws to this one is playing with friends, but nobody is willing to come over and watch Kirby and Meta Knight smooch with me. Tragic, I know. On some level, Return feels antiquated, with only Super Abilities and a very minimal amount of Wiimote waggling offering anything new to the typical Kirby formula, but I think adhering to tradition makes Return comfortably nostalgic.

That adherence to expected gameplay and inclusion of co-op makes this a friendly entry point, too. Not that most people reading a Backloggd review will struggle with Kirby's notoriously easy brand of gameplay, but I grabbed a copy of Deluxe for my niece after learning about how much she adores Kirby, and she's had a great time playing it with her mom. I'm 36 and had just as good of a time playing this hunched in front of a CRT. That's uh, the power of Kirby.

I'm sure anyone in their 30s is more than sympathetic to the difficulties of making friends. Work beats you down, leaves you worn out, and schedules are hard to line up when those in your orbit are also trying to pay the bills and feed a family. People grow apart, they change, and eventually you stop hearing from your friends you used to play Halo with in high school.

Not that those four years were some kind of halcyon, but I do pine for those nights when my buddies and I would lug CRTs two neighborhoods over on foot with Xboxes and copies of Halo 2 in tow. There are many aspects of my teenage and childhood years that I think are best left behind and which I don't envy younger generations for missing out on, but setting up LAN parties is my "walked ten miles both ways in the snow," a sick point of pride for a moment in time that can never be experienced again by young or old. Four greasy, pimple-faced teens huddled around CRTs in a dark and tiny apartment bedroom shooting rocket launchers at each other in Beaver Creek, the way Peter Moore intended... I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss nights like that.

The CRT I have now weighs well over a hundred pounds, and since I'm built like a teacup pig, I won't be carrying that over to anyone's house, even if I had someone's house to go over to. So, while I cannot recreate the sensation of playing Halo 2 with friends back in 2004, I can at least experience the single-player campaign on period appropriate hardware, and that's something; and for what it's worth, I had a really good time going back and revisiting this game for the first time since release.

For the most part, Halo 2 is just more Halo, only with the added level of production you'd expect from a follow-up to one of the most popular and profitable games of its time. The set pieces are bigger, levels more varied, there's more guns, more vehicles, and they even paid big bucks to get legendary comedian David Cross to voice a character. Oh yeah and Michelle Rodriguez is here-- BUT HAVE YOU SEEN MR.SHOW!!?

Halo 2 certainly makes a strong first impression. The opening cutscenes jumping between the UNSC celebrating Master Chief's victory and Thel 'Vadam's punishment for allowing him to destroy Halo sets up the game's main conflict wonderfully. I was initially led to believe that The Arbiter would serve as the main antagonist of this story but was surprised (at least in 2004) when the game relinquished control of him to me. Introducing a deuteragonist and cutting Master Chief's screen time by about half was a bold choice, but one that I think pays off, as The Arbiter is a vastly more interesting character. The way in which his faith is shattered as he learns of Halo's true purpose, and his fight to expose the Hierarchs for their deception gives him more depth than Master Chief, who mostly shows up to say cool guy stuff like "I'm gonna need a gun B-)" and "Sir, finishing this fight." Perhaps there's something to criticize there about how little character Chief actually has, and how he could have been used to better effect in exploring the uneasy alliance that begins to emerge between the UNSC and rebelling Elites, but my vague recollection of Halo 3 tells me that I'll eventually get what I want, and there's still a lot more narrative here to sink into than the anemic story of the previous game.

I have more mixed feelings about Halo 2's gameplay, however. The opening few missions are the strongest, and the game wastes little time in introducing new weapons and vehicles for you to play with. Some may lament the loss of the Starship Trooper inspired assault rifle, but I personally favor the more focused burst action of the battle rifle. If that doesn't do it for you then you can always pick up an SMG and, through the power of dual wielding, it can as powerful as a single gun! Even the Covenant get some new weapons, like the plasma sword which can one-shot most enemies when timed right, and vehicle sequences are better about offering multiple rides, affording the player some freedom in how they have their fun. As good as these weapons and vehicles may feel, none of it would work if they weren't complimented by good level design, and for most of Halo 2, that is the case.

Things really start to drop off towards the end of the game. Levels design starts to backslide into Halo 1 territory, with identical hallways and samey arenas that break any momentum the player may have been building, reducing what should be the most climatic moments of the game to a total drag. It doesn't help that the Brutes - who effectively replace the Elites in the end game - are profoundly spongy and present in great numbers, which causes every firefight to be protracted just beyond the point of being fun. Master Chief's last level sends him through the corridors of the Covenant's stronghold during a Flood attack, and nothing about the level is set up in a way that encourages you to be an active participant in the fight. Just avoid combat and run to the goal. Boring.

There may be good reason for this, however. Enough has been written about Halo 2's underwhelming conclusion, but a significant amount of cut content has bubbled to the surface in recent years to imply that the game was at one point much larger in scope. Take the opening sequence in which Master Chief "returns" the Covenant's bomb, which in the original gameplan would've instead saw him boarding and infiltrating their ship, or Alphamoon, a level that was far too large to reasonably ship. To quote Chris Butcher while talking about Alphamoon: "We were building stuff that just couldn't be played, in any engine, we built, and detailed, and went a huge way down the path with a whole bunch of environments and levels for the game that just totally didn't make it."

However, of Halo 2's cut content, Earth Ark is the most relevant to the final product's abrupt ending. Originally conceived as an ending to Halo as a series (there was no plans to make another game at that point in time), Earth Ark would've sent the fight back to earth for three final missions that would alternate between Master Chief and The Arbiter. A complete walkthrough of how these missions would have progressed can be read here, but my personal opinion is that it would have been a vastly more interesting conclusion to Halo 2, and arguably more than what we eventually got in Halo 3. It's a shame that development troubles and a prevailing need to actually ship a game resulted in a truncated conclusion to Halo 2, having a clear adverse effect not just on the narrative but the quality of gameplay during these final missions.

It's fun to think about this theoretical "true" version of Halo 2 and how it would've radically altered the way the franchise developed, but doing so is a exercise pleasant yet pointless as reminiscing on high school LAN parties. It also should in no way be taken as a sweeping condemnation of the game we got, which I think is very good despite circumstances leading to a compromised end product. It also has David Cross in it, which is at least worth a full star. Oh and Michelle Rodriguez, who is worth like, I don't know, 1/6th of a star. The system doesn't let me go that low so I'm going to round it down to zero.

There was a brief period after playing the original Jet Grind Radio where I got into roller-blading. It was some monkey see, monkey do shit. Despite my trim build and regular exercise, I've never been particularly athletic, so sticking wheels under my feet was never a good idea. I remember skating by a neighbors house, their daughter was outside playing in the front lawn, and I recall thinking "kids are very impressionable, don't do any tricks, just skate by all safe-like." I immediately caught a crack in the sidewalk and was vaulted forward, crashed full-force into the cement, bruising several bones pretty badly in the process. The girl ran away crying. I never skated again.

I was unfortunately not part of the original Xbox's target market (my hands were too small to properly hold The Duke), so I missed out on a lot of great sixth gen games. One of those blind spots was Jet Set Radio Future, a game I always regretted not having a chance to play back in the day.

Less of a sequel and more a follow-up, JSRF retells the story of the first game, employing many of the same broad plot beats and themes. More rebellious and articulate in its purpose, Future pushes everything the first game set out to do forward, from its gameplay to its music, and most of all its spirit. Saying a game has "soul" is often met with a lot of eye-rolling, one of the many well-worn rhetorical arguments that people treat with little meaning. I find all this nitpicking about how people employ language in critique to be a bit silly, but none moreso than this, as the insistence for its disuse implies that games are so inherently passionless, so much a product, that they are incapable of expressing the spirit of those who create them. Not only does Jet Set Radio Future beat with Smielbit's signature funk, but it is also alive and buzzing with the spirit of hip hop culture, embodying its four major elements: MCing, rapping, break dancing, and graffiti.

Jet Set Radio - hosted by DJ Professor K - is more than a pirate station. It's revolutionary radio, a call to arms, inciting to action the youth of Tokyo-to to rebel against the sinister Rokkaku Group, which seeks to control speech and expression. Rokkaku's tactics are definably authoritarian, using a corrupt police force to exert their will through violence and manipulation. The rudies of Tokyo-to fight back by overwhelming Rukkaku's control through art - through tagging - and though Professor K spins the music that acts as a soundtrack to their rebellion, he also jockies knowledge. Knowledge of greed and oppression, making known the evils of the world and those who wish to do evil. Knowledge is itself the fifth element of hip hop, and arguably the most vital.

Tagging serves as one of the primary mechanics that ties player action directly to its hip hop roots. Graffiti is an art form, you're told this up front (before being warned not to actually vandalize anything as the Sega corporation really would prefer not to be held liable because you spray painted Sonic taking a fat rip off a bong on the side of the Whole Foods), and it is the rudies main weapon against Rokkaku's censorship. Blotting out consumerist propaganda, washing out the drab uniformity of police colors with your own mix of neons, taking out tanks and helicopters...

Late in the game, Rokkaku tries to turn the rudies tactics against them. Painting over their graffiti with their own hideous tags, even creating their own mechanical copies of you Beat and Yo-Yo to control them by proxy. It is in essence a representation of how corporate interests co-opt culture, and how they lose all sense of what makes that culture special in the process. It's not art, it's a product, it exists not for the sake of expression but for profit and power. You see Gouji Rokkaku in his weird modern art installation, playing his dour music while insisting it's the only thing the people of Tokyo-to will be listening to, the music of the "future," carefully curated by him alone. Paint that motherfucker up.

Even dance culture is well represented here, with each character having their own distinct style that harkens to specific subcultures and groups. When not grinding and tagging, characters sway to the rhythm, retro futurism dancing alongside the gothic, grunge, and punk. Most levels are designed in a way that is highly conducive to losing oneself in the flow of grinding, skating off walls, and flying through the air, and for as complex and large as many of them may be, exploration never feels like something that requires much thought or any effort beyond letting the level take you where it may. In this sense, break dancing, or "B-boying," feels present not just in the way the characters move while idling, but in how the game plays.

All of this is of course accompanied by some of the best music you've ever heard in any damn video game. Hideki Naganuma's score is an inseparable part of Jet Set Radio's identity, but alongside him are the likes of Richard Jacques, and artists such as Scapegoat Wax, Chibo Matto, and Guitar Vader. You need not look much further for Jet Set Radio Future's hip hop cred than The Latch Brothers, however, which was founded in part by Mike D of the Beastie Boys, and who contributed several songs to the game. I've written before that I have very little sense over what makes music good, and I struggle to articulate why certain songs and artists appeal to me, so I find it difficult to talk about Jet Set Radio Future's soundtrack without linking to specific examples that I think are strong indicators to its overall quality. Frankly, I shouldn't even be talking about music culture, but hey, this would be far from the first time I've dived into a subject I am wholly unqualified for.

Jet Set Radio Future is unfortunately not without its flaws. There's a couple levels that I think are actually fairly weak. Fortified Residential Zone is a primarily vertical level that tasks the player with disarming blue and red bombs, but most of the geometry looks very samey and the camera has a habit of locking into a more cinematic point of view on a couple rails which interferes with the timing of jumps necessary for progressing. Fall and you lose a bunch of progress. You're given half an hour before the bombs go off, and it's practically an admission that the level is not as intuitive to navigate as it ought to be. Highway Zero is also a fairly uninteresting level that is remarkably empty compared to others, and which feels a bit incomplete.

However, JSRF's greatest problem is its performance, which is downright dismal. It is constantly dropping frames, and it severely messes with the pace of the gameplay. To be fair, I played this on an Xbox 360 and I don't know if the poor performance is the result of wonky emulation or not. Maybe someone can clarify for me. In any case, Jet Set Radio Future is a game that desperately needs an HD remaster, or at the very least ought to be added to Xbox's growing backwards compatibility list. Original Xbox games (as far as I'm aware) do not get the frame boost treatment in the way other Xbox libraries do, but I'd have to imagine the Series X is a powerful enough system to allow JSRF to settle on a consistent 30fps, and I'll settle for that.

In Future's closing moments, DJ Professor K explains that greed and oppression can never "extinguish the yearning for freedom felt in the hearts of all mankind." The more authoritarians seek to control others, the stronger that desire for freedom becomes; but in times of peace, graffiti will remain to remind people of their passions.

Jet Set Radio Future is hip hop. Me? I'm rocking the four tenants of Weatherby: putting on skates, not putting on safety gear, catching air, and making landfall.

My bones hurt.

It's good to be playing new games again [Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space...]

2002's Metroid Prime was my introduction to both the Metroid series and the search-action genre it spawned, and as far as first impressions go, I can't fathom it going much worse. I had such an unpleasant time with the game that I convinced myself I just didn't like the genre as a whole and cordoned myself off from it for nearly two decades. However, after playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night back in 2019, I finally found the motivation to sit down and run through the classic 2D Metroids, and I thought they were pretty damn good.

I think it's important to reappraise things. After all, people grow and tastes change. I thought I hated Metroid, but now I am one of the initiated, immersed in Samus Aran's struggles and excited to get lost in strange, alien worlds with her. With the announcement of Metroid Prime Remastered, I thought "Holy shit they're charging 40$ for this, huh?" and went back to picking lint out of my belly button between rounds of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. About two weeks later I saw actual footage from the game and realized it was a more substantive overhaul than I initially thought, and I shifted my thought process to "you know, there's no better time to replay this game than now." So I promptly bought a site-to-store copy from Wal-Mart which was cancelled because they ran out of stock, then I drove over to Gamestop and they were also out of stock, then I called the other Wal-Mart in town and they were out of stock, and then I went to Target and they had precisely one copy left which I bought for full price along with a Spectra Pro Controller because I refuse to ever play another game with those dogshit Joycons ever again and oh my god finally... Metroid Prime. It's been a long road.

Metroid Prime's opening aboard the space pirate's research station is one of the most iconic sequences from gaming's sixth generation. Every beat was immediately recognizable, as comforting and familiar as visiting a childhood home. Even the ensuing two hours on Tallon IV are remarkably smooth, with near perfect pacing and excellent level design that subtly guides the player onto the game's critical path, acclimating them to Samus' ever-expanding kit of suit upgrades in a way that is deliberate yet never overstated. Needless to say, I found a good groove with Metroid Prime early on and started to question what negatives I ever saw in it to begin with.

Having finished the game only a couple weeks prior, my friend Larry Davis has been pontificating to me about how bad Prime is. Worse than Other M, even! I disagree with that because not a single minute of Other M is good, and I've encouraged him to go through the arduous process of whipping a Wii out and refamiliarizing himself with that nightmare, but his greater point that Metroid Prime is a game that only becomes more agonizing the further you progress is one that I agree with 100%. The Phendrana research facility was my personal turning point, and the area that I feel highlights a shift in Metroid Prime's rhythm that is for the worst and which persists until the credits roll.

Backtracking is a pillar of this series, and it is not something I have an issue with inherently, but the way it manifests in Prime feels like it exists to pad time. Upon gaining the thermal visor, you must trudge your way back out of the research facility and march a considerable distance across the map to find your next objective, with little changing along the way other than a few rooms now have the lights off. Whereas the opening two hours has very fluid and naturalistic pathing that doesn't tread on your agency, the remainder of Prime sees you zig-zagging between distant locations with very little sense of where or why. It's like someone at Retro threw a dart at a map to determine where your next upgrade is, with even less consideration given to making the run there enjoyable.

Making things even more tedious is the fact that most areas are designed around specific one-time combat encounters and events. What was once a thrilling set piece is now a hassle that far more encourages you to simply zip past enemies and carry on, assuming you even can as a considerable amount intentionally create bottlenecks to force you into a fight. Unfortunately, combat feels patently underwhelming. Enemies are incredibly spongy and derivative, and the only real strategic element late in the game entails switching to the correct color-coded beam to take out elemental-infused rehashes of previously fought pirates and Metroids. Fun fun fun fun.

Metroid Prime Remastered does make a number of improvements over the original game, at least. The most obvious is in appearance. This might be the best-looking game I've played on the Switch. Environments feel much moodier and more atmospheric, and I really love the soft lighting of locations like the Chozo Ruins. Metroid Prime has always had good art direction, but the increased fidelity really helps it shine. I can only imagine how much better this would look on current hardware, but it's impressive for a game that's a generation behind. That said, I have heard from at least one friend who is far, faaar more familiar with Metroid than I am that the filters for the various visors are straight fucked. He claims the thermal visor made him physically ill, and although I did not have quite that severe of a reaction to it, the processing going on for the thermal and X-ray visors is so intrusive that they rob them of their functionality.

Controls are improved as well, though with a couple important caveats. By default, the game now has dual stick support, allowing you to play Prime like a normal first-person game. To be fair, in 2002 this sort of control scheme had yet to be codified, and I can only think of two games off the top of my head that supported it: Quake 2 for the PS1 and Timesplitters, I believe, although if you wanna stretch it, GoldenEye technically did if you wanted to do some real freak shit and whip out a second controller. (Correction: Halo: Combat Evolved predates Prime by a full year, and I consistently forget this.) However, you can tell that Prime was not built around this more free-wheelin' control method given how targeting still seems to be the most efficient way to approach enemy encounters, though having total control over the camera otherwise makes exploring Tallon IV feel more immersive. On the other hand, I do have some beef with how combo-weapons are mapped. You have to charge your weapon and tap the missile fire button, which requires you to awkwardly paw the controller with your middle finger on the trigger and index on the bumper. This is opposed to, for example, just having it set to charge a combo-weapon by holding the bumper itself. It's archaic and unnecessary and dampens its utility in a fight, which - in all fairness - is probably the point.

By hour four of ten in this game that has no business being longer than five, I started to think about how Metroid Prime is so clearly a game made by an outside studio, not because I have that knowledge in my head already but because that's how it feels. There's a reverence for the material, but a lack of understanding on what makes Metroid feel good that can only be communicated through its shortcomings, and the way it fumbles crucial elements like the routing of its critical path. Playing this again 21 years later has not given me an appreciation for Metroid Prime outside of the quality of life and graphical improvements the remaster has made. It has only reminded me of why I steered clear of the series and genre for such a long time after. Two stars for being Metroid Prime plus an additional half star for looking purdy.

We eat the sacred cow and together we burn.

Batman has always been my superhero of choice. I'm pretty sure my mom still has pictures of me absorbing the 1960's show six inches from the damn screen, my eyes like thin sheets separating the Batusi from my brain. This hyper-fixation on Adam West's rippling physique resulted in me developing a very narrow taste in superheroes. Burt Ward's dog food is the only brand I'll feed my pup, that show still has me all fucked up!

One of the few Marvel heroes to break through and leave some sort of impression on me is Spider-Man, which is great because nobody seems interested in making good Batman games anymore. Rocksteady has been engaging in self-sabotage for almost a decade, but at least I can count on Insomniac to put out a good game, even if it maybe trends a bit too close to the previous Spider-Man and it's (better) expansion, Miles Morales. I wasn't on Backloggd dot com when I played them, so I never had a chance to share my thoughts. In short: they're both very good, quite possibly the best Spider-Man games to have been released up to that point.

The first 60% of Spider-Man 2 plays it incredibly safe. It's more of the same, albeit with fewer gadgets and less superfluous challenges scattered throughout New York. Although you now have two Spider-Men you can freely swap between - assuming this doesn't crash the game, which happened to me frequently - Spider-Man 2 feels much more focused than the previous entry. I think Insomniac learned a lot of good lessons from Miles Morales, which similarly trimmed a lot of fat and was far better paced and more manageable for it. There's also a whole lot less time spent paling around with the cops. In fact, they're practically non-existent now, unless you count the ghost of Jefferson Davis haunting the halls of his son's mind.

Things really pick up in the later half, however. The Symbiote suit comes with several new powers for Peter which helps refresh his gameplay, and the story picks up and veers into some very goofy territory that results in some really fun set pieces and battles. My only complaint here is that Venom spends a little too much time as a slobbering rage monster and that Tony Todd is severely under-utilized. Also, you know, heavily basing everything off existing stories and then not crediting those authors is kind of a dirty move. Sorry Donny Cates, all your ideas have been syphoned out of your head and are no longer yours... Just like Riddler's Box from the hit movie Batman Forever! Ohh... Batman...

Traversal is also as good as it's ever been, and I think this was already a strong point of the first game. The inclusion of a wingsuit initially feels as though it might trivialize navigation, but once you understand how it can be used to build or maintain momentum, you can chain it into swings and start doing some really crazy acrobatics. It's also useful for bridging the river that separates the two islands or maneuvering over open spaces like the park and suburbs of Queens, which means no more awkwardly swinging through trees. Everything just feels a lot more fluid.
 
Side content is more of a mixed bag for me. The Emily-May Foundation quest is dull and is mostly used to support a core plot thread about Peter and Harry's startup. It's a little more believable when Peter is actually helping with the Foundation than simply paying lip to it, but tepid shooting sequences and clunky gene splicing minigames aren't my idea of fun. I am also generally not a fan of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man missions, most of which I found to be trite in their efforts to tug on your heart strings. The Internet absolutely lost it over Finding Grandpa, but I could not get past Gramps' put-on frail old man voice which sounded about as good as something I'd do as a joke. Perhaps I'm a heartless monster for not getting misty-eyed about it, I ate some of the Burt Ward dog food and it might've done something chemically to my brain.

That said, the mission with Howard's pigeons is a highlight and was actually emotionally moving, and none of the side quests are so abundant or tedious as to be annoying. I was able to platinum this game without it ever feeling inconvenient to do so which is a marked improvement over the first Spider-Man.

Much like the gameplay, the overarching plot of Spider-Man 2 struggles to get going and only really picks up in the second half of the game. Maybe it's because I don't recognize any of these people anymore, but I had a really hard time getting invested in the interpersonal drama of Peter, Harry, and Mary Jane, which the game sinks a considerable amount of time into slowly developing. Some of that is to do with Scott Porter's performance as Harry, which makes the character sound a bit too phoney. He's very chipper, really leans into this "yeah, we're going to save the world! Let's go, team!" attitude that doesn't feel genuine. My friend Larry Davis also pointed out that he looks a lot like Matt Johnson from Nirvana the Band the Show and I can't purge this from my mind, so I need to pass the curse onto all of you. A lot of what Harry's arc is building up to does pay off in the end, but it's hard to unpack all of that without getting into spoilers. Spoiler is a character from Batman, she later becomes Robin and then a corpse.

Mary Jane is at least given more to do, although her atrocious stealth sequences are back, and I don't know who the hell asked for more of them. She's got a stun gun now, but these missions are still so tedious. Just the shallowest take on stealth you could possibly imagine, but even sneaking around as the Spider-Men feels like it has regressed and is nowhere near as enjoyable as it was in the last two games. At least Miles can turn invisible, which speeds things up, and I don't think any of these sections have automatic fail states if you're caught, so nothing's stopping you from getting into a brawl.

Speaking of Miles, I think I prefer his side of the story and find him a far more interesting character than Peter. This has been the case for me since Miles Morales, and I really liked seeing how his character, relationships, and powers evolved in this game. His struggle for revenge against Martin Li threatens to pull him into places just as dark as where Peter goes when dressed in the Symbiote, and this pent-up aggression is explored in more compelling ways. I also think Insomniac has done a better job of embodying what it means to be a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" in MIles, whereas Peter is a bit more absorbed in his own world. The story does play with the idea of Peter possibly passing the torch onto Miles, and if the third game embraces that more fully by making him the lead, that'd be alright by me.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 might be the best in the series, if only marginally so, but it has left me excited to see where Insomniac goes with the third and presumably final entry. Even if it ends up just being more of the same, that still means we'd be getting a great game. Or they could fuck it all up, give Spider-Man the Spider-Mobile and force you into a ton of shitty tank battles with it under Green Goblin's city-wide fart cloud.