Fire Emblem: Route the Enemy

It's a tough topic to crack every time I work retroactively through a franchise or through the general chronology of gaming, is it fair to review a title based upon how much better its successors are in their respective elements and takes on the formula of games beforehand? My answer to this question is generally, well yeah. This ranges in severity and reason based upon limitations of tech and what was generally accepted within media at the time of release, but generally speaking I critique media that I engage with in the year that I am doing so. If I were to play Pong in the newly minted 2024, I don't think I'd be quick to call it the greatest thing since sliced butter. Therein lies a major qualm with Fire Emblem: Awakening, it's 2019 (eventual) successor did just about everything better.

I didn't grow up an Emblemy-boi, not really touching the series outside of Smash Bros until Three Houses dropped as a worldwide phenomenon in the fresher days of the Nintendo Switch. I mention this to say that the Fire Emblem formula and tactics as a whole was greatly lost on me in my early days of gaming. I played a metric ton of RTS' and shooters, but didn't come pre-booted with the intrinsic knowledge of THE GRID. What Awakening doesn't do well is offer players any real ideology as to why things are the way they are and the way things should be. I had no idea that S ranking my social links meant I was locked in to a marriage, sorry not sorry Sumia but I had to reload a save when I found out you and Robin were tying the knot. I was completely in the dark about the second generation units and the way to obtain them, not understanding if stats were any better or if they were worthwhile as characters to unlock. There were several missions that I missed out on recruitable characters because I wasn't briefed on the fact that Google Chrom had to be the one talking to them. On top of all of this, between missing out on certain powerful allies and offspring of my own militia, the class system made no real sense to me? I got my characters to level ten and then bought advanced seals to upgrade them to new classes, but did that really do anything? I don't know! Maybe I'm spoiled again here by Three Houses, but having one upgrade for each unit made levelling feel almost pointless, I got them to their one spot and then had no real interaction with their well-being outside of sending them off to the frontlines. There's a theme here with all of this, and its a general lack of information to people who were fresh to the game. I was enjoying my time with the majority of the first half of Awakening until its cracks began to show, and the lack of information was the first domino to really fall.

The plot of Awakening falls apart hilariously fast, and I'll avoid spoilers here but as soon as I realized the direction that Chrom and the Funky Bunch were headed into I did an exacerbated eye roll and pounded eight mountain dews. I applaud Three Houses (and NOT Engage) for its ability to create a grounded interpolitical storyline and stick to it, of course 3H has a story grounded at heart in the supernatural, but all the way into the end it managed to keep the Edelgard-centric conflict in its heart. Where Awakening lost me on the story element was trying to do a Final-Fantasy-esque "There's an even bigger bad" and then have you chase the literal and proverbial dragon for a little too long. I don't know, the plot device Awakening uses just becomes pretty tired after the amount of media I've engaged with the literal exact same concept. You can tell the character writers of Awakening got really excited at the concept of having their main villain being an all knowing omniscient who liked to twist his mustache and say "tee-hee" not unlike comic book baddies in the days of yore.

The story was pretty milquetoast, but man the characters even more so... but there is good!!! Robin, an avatar character with actual dialogue... and personality??? It's doable! Wowza! Gee-Willkers! Woah nelly!! I appreciate after Alear and Byleth having a character with actual agency in a story that they were the center-piece of. While Robin and Chrom are effectively equally important to the movement of the narrative, the former matters more to the fate of the world (though Chrom is still yet integral.) Having the two develop a sort of bro-mance relationship was neat, like Claude and Byleth in the Golden Deer route of Three Houses, except this time I heard more direct motivation and general intelligence out of the character I controlled. Unfortunately this is refreshing because silent/player-driving protags in the current gamerspace oft fall victim to becoming boneless. Robin actually being able to debate strategy and plot with Chrom was pretty neat. Unfortunately though they're like the only two characters in the entire game who were really worthwhile to talk to.

The majority of the rest of the roster falls victim to "type-cast" disease which is a fate shared by many a Fire Emblem character. You can boil down a resoundingly large amount of your allies to their one gimmick or shtick, giving me as their commanding officer no real reason to care for them or keep them around. Maybe I'm spoiled by games that have done party-driven casts better like Mass Effect or Persona, but man it's harder and harder with every Fire Emblem I play to care even a smidgen about half my roster, especially in a game where they don't really interact outside of the poorly written supports. It's like that meme of Patrick coming home in Spongebob and lifting up his rock-house to say "WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE." That's how it felt when I'd scroll through the roster to add members to fight in my mission. Half of the characters I legitimately forgot about (I had no idea who Stahl was in the postgame credit sequence for example,) and then the rest were simply employed just because of their combat ability.

The laundry list would be too long if I went through them one by one but there were a few so hilariously poorly written that I have to name. First is Tharja, who I thought about romancing with Robin because a friend told me she was neat. She was not neat, she begins her first support link with Robin informing him that she watched him sleep through the night and counted his breaths. RED FLAG. I gave up on her and romanced Olivia thereafter. Kellum wanted you to remember in every single opportunity that he was easily forgotten. Lon'Qu was scared of women, because tee-hee haha, women scary!!! If he wasn't a good unit I would have cast him aside. And seriously, who the f*** is Donnel??? For the first time in my experience with a Fire Emblem, and this is as someone who has beaten Three Houses eight times, I got up during the credits sprawl when it informs you of the post-game happenings of your party and went and got some water and used the restroom. Even with a mobile console in my hands I couldn't be asked to care about this cast. Character writing in this game felt half-baked at best, giving us a cast of one dimensional "friends" who felt like they came out of a gimmick-generator rather than a team trying to put together a memorable roster of allies.

I have smaller qualms with Awakening that have effectively been fixed in the titles (that I've played) since this release. First is the most apparent and biggest issue I had outside of the absent depth of the characters, and that was the lack of any sort of hub zone with your party. What Three Houses did with Garreg Mach, and even Engage with Somniel, was create a place for you to soak in and exist with your party. I'm all for moments in games that lend you time for character exposition and events that humanize the cast outside of its main characters. Three Houses having areas that allow you to dine, sing, train, garden, and even sip tea with your peers was a great way to make them seem important and give weight to the downtime in between pivotal moments within the narrative. In Awakening you're jumping from one big story moment to the next, no real time in between, with the only exposition you get being the supports and barracks moments you get from pairing people up on the battlefield. The bottom line is that I wanted to find reasons to care about my fellow soldiers, even if their stories and personalities were half-baked, but I wasn't given the real room to do so.

I have other issues with things like weapon-repair being fiscally unrealistic and the Predator-like AI that hunted your healers/support units as if they were a hawk finding mice on the open plane, but those pail in gravity with what I've written above.

I did like the game though overall, but I don't see what makes it so "special" after playing an infinitely better game within the franchise. Though the 3DS is a flawed system in that it's mobile and can only push its processing power so far, I liked how Awakening's movies pushed it to its limit. The little moments that you get seeing Chrome and Lucina within the game's CGI was pretty dang cool, a maneuver I'm sure wasn't easy but I felt paid off pretty well. Tactics games existing on a grid only allow the in-game engine to tell certain levels of story through actions built into the game itself. Taking short spots to act out certain integral plot elements within the mini-movies gave these short events within the narrative some extra weight.

Outside of Chrom/Robin being pretty great characters and the neat use Intelligent Systems got out of the 3DS, I liked the ability to play without permadeath as I understand that was mostly foreign to the series beforehand. Call me a noob if you want, but I'm glad I got to retain my entire roster throughout the random 2% hit crits by the enemies, I still played long battles and powered on against the odds, I just did it in a realistic use of my time. On that note, I felt like the levels were appropriate in length, though the win-conditions were hilariously limited (route the enemy versus defeat the commander,) I felt like I didn't spend an egregious time on any map or have to navigate through unscrupulous environments.

While I am glad I've played Awakening and I'm even more glad it "saved" Fire Emblem, which gave me one of my all time favorite titles, I don't think it's really the bees knees. Three Houses is just a better game (in my opinion, because this is my review) overall and I can't foresee any reason to crack open Awakening in favor of it. While my first-half experience with it was pretty great and I had it temporarily ranked as a 4.5/5, that greatly waned as the plot moved along and the narrative suffered from its lack of legitimate ambition. I can't recommend anyone play Awakening, but if you have a 3DS I imagine this is a game you may already own.

"Haahahahaha how the f*** is cyber bullying real hahahaha just walk away from the screen like just close your eyes"

It's always tough to take apart RGG's games in a review setting because I don't like to divulge spoilers, so I will remain abstinent in doing so here, but Lost Judgment is a tremendous step up from its predecessor while also suffering from the same good 'ol RGG trappings of years previous. What began as a mundane story investigating the gossip heavy bullying scenes of a yuppie high school in Ijincho quickly developes into a multi-faceted Batman-esque snafu stretching multiple generations. As is tradition with RGG, the spider-webbed nature of the story will grasp you as soon as you start to put the pieces of its mystery together. Moral greys run amock around both Yokohama and Kamurocho, forcing Yagami to side with previously sinister factions and tackle what it truly means to be just. He's a detective, lawyer, and ass-kicker all in one within this story, something that the previous title didn't hit all in one go to the degree I'd looked for.

As is second nature with the Like a Judgement games, therein lies a strong supporting cast that cascades the emotional moments into memorable sequences. Strong characters like Higashi, Suigura, the Genda Law crew, and Kaito are a fitting cast for Yagami's brazen attitude towards solving conflict, each lending a unique approach and a fresh state of mind to problem resolution. Mix this in with some of the best voice acting I've heard in a game in a long time (Greg Chun reprises his role as totally not Kaname Date, Steve Blum as Higashi, ProZD/Sungwon Cho as Tesso all for example) and you have one of the better crews in contemporary media. Just two short games spent with this crew and they feel familiar, like friends that are legitimately down to ride and invested in Yagami's mission and detectively mantra.

I enjoyed the game overall bigtime, however the typical Yakuza/RGG trappings hit me like a wall of bricks. Ah yes I do enjoy running to my objective to see every street obstructed by four to five hooligans in which I will beat the exact same way each time. Ah yes I do enjoy having to fight through four hundred miscellaneous members of "insert bad gang here" before the ending credits. Ah yes I do enjoy employing the same asinine sneaking mechanics and going through some slippery parkour sequences that felt like jumping through zero gravity bubbles of molasses. Even with an elite story, magnificent supporting crew and another excellent display of protaginism with Yagami, the issues I have with RGG still remain as an indictment onto my enjoyment of the game. For any fans of RGG at large I recommend Lost Judgment, and if you haven't played any of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon titles, Judgment and Lost Judgment are a good place to start.

I jumped for joy at another chance to get back into my 2023 Game of the Year in Final Fantasy XVI with the surprise announcement of this DLC at The Game Awards. Imagining I was in for a brief experience, and with a three-four hour runtime I was, I'd hoped that Echoes of the Fallen with its bombastically vibrant trailer would capture the jaw-dropping magic that the main title was able to do. Generally it speaking it did, but there did exist flaws within this short DLC that I found unfortunately a little too much to ignore.

Visual Clarity is a big thing for me in games, I really like being able to see the ooh's and ahh's but not at the expense of mechanical understanding and movement within an encounter. FFXVI had a few moments in the eikon fights that I legitimately could not tell what was going on, it's something I struggle with in games and FFXVI was a prime example of where this happens. Echoes of the Fallen contains a few miniboss fights with a major boss at the end. The first miniboss was mostly alright but again just awkward enough in the amount of touhou level mechanics thrown at you that I got hit by moves I thought I normally wouldn't. Where it really got bad was in the last fight against the big bad, I almost threw my hands up in the air in a bout of intensified confusion because of all the visual clutter. I loved FFXVI, I love the scale of these fights, but there's only so much purples/reds/yellows that I can take coming at each and every angle all the time before my ability to follow what's going on is completely lost.

Outside of slight complaints, the location itself was really neat, the runtime probably perfect for a near to end-game DLC addition, but the visual overload and combo-locking bosses was unfortunately not my cup of tea. Once more, Masayoshi Soken delivers a fantastic (yet short) soundtracking experience, the ultimate boss theme being one of the cooler tracks in the entire game. I recommend this if you're playing through FFXVI, but maybe not a must-see for players thinking about getting back into it.

Super Mario AlrightPG

Disclaimer, I wasn't alive when the first iteration of Bing Bing Wahoo man's mighty adventures through RPG-dom first erupted into the hands of SNES players in 1996. I came around a little after, dodged out on JRPG gaming almost entirely until I discovered an indie title by the name of Final Fantasy X. Jokes aside that's the tie in to SMRPG, while FFX isn't as hardcore of an entry into JRPG's like a Shin Megami Tensei might be, it's no cakewalk. On the other side, SMRPG is a Squaresoft title originally crafted to serve as baby's first JRPG and it... feels like it. The takeaway that you can get from my review going forward, and my utmost qualm with the title is that it is ultimately too surface level of a game.

There's a lot to like though, and I'll start with that first. Hey you know what Square did really good back in the day? Write video games. Mario and the gang are notoriously unremarkable characters in the realm of quotables or narrative sequencing. "Your Princess is in Another Castle" has been a gaming meme since Mario first hit the big time in his own original release outside of being Jumpman. You've never expected a big story out of Mario nor an elaborate Metal-Gear level speech, and that's alright.

Going into SMRPG I was curious if Square and Nintendo EPD had made a full length experience with the beloved red plumber that was captivating throughout. I think I got that, there existing a plethora of moments within the shorter runtime that I chuckled or smiled at the interpretive ways they weaved storytelling into Mario's lexicon. My favorites were the moments where Mario had to explain the plight of the story thus far to allies and he would emote topsy-turvy: spinning around and morphing into different characters to convey his message rather than speak. His party members in Peach, Geno, Mallow, and Bowser were cracking sly jokes or utilizing ridiculous humor in dire situations. Other times I chuckled included Peach's ill-fated marriage, the dissolution of the not-so-powerful rangers, and Bowser's "recruitment" of Mario into his army. Not only were the written moments pretty funny, but the unwritten as well. About two-thirds of the way through the game you must use cannons to traverse a rocky landscape, and if you accidentally send Mario the wrong way he'll run in place Looney-Tunes style before hoisting himself back up to safety. It's events like this in a Mario title that give the little guy and his team the personality they need to make these games fun. Mario is fun, fun is Mario, that's what its about.

There is a power giving a little narrative spunk into a Mario game, moreso than ever existed before, but was it enough? That's a tough question to answer, but I felt like it wasn't. The narrative was simply uncompelling, but I'll give them credit for trying something new outside of the "Bowser is the big bad trying to ruin the day" schtick, but honestly that's been more successful to tickling my "that's good enough" meter. I didn't get the villain at all, his motives were clear yet served as the exact same motivation that Bowser has in every title.

The stars that you're tasked with collecting seem to hold little intrinsic value to the people safekeeping them, perhaps the fallout of having a JRPG with this short of a runtime (sub fifteen hours, mine ran more with AFK time.) I don't really know what compelled Mario and company to move on in this game other than the fact that there was a big bad and monsters in the world as a result, I guess after typing that out loud that was pretty much it... Difficulty in the march towards the end didn't seem to spike, neither did the stakes at hand. Danger is a fantastic narrative tool in storytelling, upping the consequences of failure as your party reaches their ultimate encounter with the paramount evil gives you a motive in and of itself outside of the immediate "bad guy" mystique. When your ragtag group of miscreants is in their glorious battle with the fate of the universe on the line, the tremendous implications of success should guide them to victory. With SMRPG, this consequence doesn't exist in a level of stakes that is interesting nor engaging towards the story. Now as I wrote above it may be unfair to hold a Mario title up to this expectation because of the general milquetoast of the stories in his journey thus far, but with Squaresoft DNA and the acclaim I'd heard this game given, I expected pretty much anything more.

Generally speaking, the writing in this game was good, the narrative mediocre at best, but an unfortunate miss for me was in the addition of Mallow and Geno as party members. Smash playing SMRPG fans I weep for you, as you watched your hopes and dreams perish in the lines of duty when Geno was included as a Mii Fighter costume into SSBU, I did the same when Dante met the same fate, but Geno is a patient of Surface-Level-itis as well. I get why the character exists from a lore standpoint, and the point at which he's introduced to the party felt like I was a kid watching one of my toys come to life as well, but outside of that he's just bland. He's a puppet with a neat design, but he doesn't really bring much to the table outside of being a vessel for the resolution of the story, and the way his arc ends just had me in a realm of confusion. I felt like there was supposed to be a heartfelt moment there but I effectively rolled my eyes and thought of the thousand games that have done that narrative technique better.

Unlike Geno, who I felt was mostly bland, Mallow just kinda sucks and mostly because he's a pointless unit that is outclassed by everyone you get as a party member. Damagewise? Use Geno or Bowser. Need a healer/magic user? Use Peach. He's cute and sure Nintendo really succeeds in the kawaii-factor, but he's ultimately pointless and the arc he embarks on in finding his true family was dealt in such a surface-level manner within the story that I found it hard to care. Why am I typing all of this about a game I called surface level? A Mario game at that? I don't really know, but here we are, enjoy your stay. I'm still not quite sure why you end up going to Nimbus-land or whatever it's called and I was just there in the game yesterday, but for whatever reason it was the McGuffin needed for it's-a-me-a-Mario guy to save the world.

Combat is basic and inoffensive, definitely the right caliber for a simple game designed to introduce a younger audience to JRPG's. You can get through the entire game through physical DPS (source: me) and basic healing through bosses with Peach or items. Normally that would become grating for me, but as I've mentioned already the runtime wasn't long enough for any legitimate monotony to set in. Battles felt a little long in the early sections but with Geno and Bowser in the party, it was generally a couple turn affair. That being said, the splash damage and perfect guard timings that use the action button felt unnecessary and often awkwardly inconsistent. It's another moment where I applaud the effort and vision, though I don't think it came together at the right level.

Despite knowing that she's an industry legend, and the soundtrack to the youth of many generations of gamers, I hadn't quite fell in love with a Yoko Shimomura-composed game yet... until SMRPG. She did an incredible job marrying so many different influences and sounds into a series with an already impressive soundscape. The silly and jovial of Mario was orchestrated to a superb extent to fit within the realms of the journey that exists within a JRPG. Towns got fitting town themes, bosses got an appropriate (yet recycled) boss theme, the zones each had a sonic vibe that matched the environment... everything clicked. Couple this with another great optimization and graphical touchup job by Nintendo and you had a game that was simply gorgeous on the eyes and ears.

Though I felt like it missed the mark for me overall, it was generally speaking a good enough game. I liked hunting for the easter eggs and references in regards to other Nintendo IP's and I enjoyed my time with a piece of history, but it isn't a game that I ultimately believe fits the billing its been given. I recommend SMRPG to anyone chasing the nostalgia, but honestly speaking there are better JRPG games, and better Mario games out there to play right now.

Yeah this is actually pretty dang good.

Although the narrative is a lot tighter and more inconsequential than the three mainline titles released previously, ODST hits everything in stride in its sub four hour runtime. A tight package running on a familiar engine sees you take the role of a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers as opposed to the series mainstay Master Chief, tasked with delivering a promise on a seemingly suicidal mission. In your way stands the Covenant and a plethora of secrets and hints as to what happened to your peers.

Marty O' Donnell delivers another masterclass in the soundtracking department. In lieu of grandiose symphonic arrangements that detail the epic overcoming of a greater force, ODST is accompanied by a more ambient jazz and lower-fi rainfall of fittingly cozy songs. Everything just feels right for the delapidated city and downpour. In a game where you're playing as a normal soldier in the world of Spartans, Hunters, and the Flood, you need the entire environment to make you feel literally and emotionally grounded, and that's exactly what Marty was able to do.

The city of New Mombasa, formerly visited in Halo 2, is dark and dank with mystery abound. Even though the experience is short, being able to shoot and weave through the metropolis with a different set of weapons was the approach this title needed. Of course you get your warthog-led Halo moments like your engagement in the zoo and on the highway towards the end of the game, but the majority of ODST is seen through the eyes of the troops on the ground, as ants in a greater colony's conflict.

I was legitimately surprised with how well ODST held up and actually felt good in the current gamesphere to play. Not long after playing the beloved Halo 1's and 2's of the world, I find myself grateful for ODST and the solidly solemn experience it provides.

Still just as smooth and enjoyable, Halo 3 with a group of four is a must-play experience for everyone. As time marches on, the effect that Halo has had on the gaming world proves itself to be more and more profound. Short and sweet, we completed this in two quick sessions with enough laughs to wrap a Halo Ring.

Levels sequence like butter and there's no sequence or encounter that lasts too long. Gone are the forced respawns on teammate death, and back in is the "get safe to spawn" system, making the co-op experience much better than its predecessor. In Halo 3 you get perfectly designed levels coupled with the best arsenal of weapons the series has to offer. An underrated change from Halo 2 to 3 is the opposition you play against in the campaign, going from elites to brutes makes for a much easier experience in which you are targeting an enemy with lower mobility and a health pool as opposed to the unending shield bonanaza you had previously. I cannot overstate how much better this makes running through fights.

Legitimately everything about the campaign experience of Halo 3 is good, in my opinion the best there ever been in an FPS. Legendary moments, infinitely memorable voicelines, great characters, Halo 3 has it all.

Persona 5: The Enemy is Spawning Reinforcements

The doctor is in, and he prescribed just what we needed: Another Persona 5 Spinoff! And the results are... it's kinda good?

Atlus and the Persona team have been on a meteoric uptick since the dawn of the millennia with the rise of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei around the world. With each installment seems to come more and more in the way of commercial and critical success. Persona in particular has made massive improvements from game to game, demonstrating the labor of love that the team puts into development and the reasons why it takes so many years to push a title out. Though my experience with Atlus is limited to a handful of SMT titles and a mishmash of mainline and spinoff Persona titles since Persona 3 Portable, I feel like its safe to say I've experienced the "best" that they've had to offer. This preamble is included in a review of their latest endeavor in Persona 5 Tactica to set the scene for why this game exists: because Persona 5 prints money. The sexy jazz chic that accompanies the user-interface, music, character design, and plot of Persona 5 acts to consumerism like water to a thirsty plant. Everything about the style of Persona 5 screams for the masses to purchase and enjoy, it's an attractive sheen to a video game that I haven't seen to this caliber before.

Much like the last two mainline titles, Persona 5 got a sort of re-release with additional content, known as Persona 5 Royal. Atlus' Persona team knew they could go further, with now eight-plus million copies sold between Royal and its original form, and embarked on a journey to Spaceballs-esque Yogurt-merchandise the series. On top of this it also got a rhythm game, a mobile game, a musuo title (which was effectively a sequel and also really damn good,) and now a Tactics game. Did people collectively groan when this was announced and not a sixth mainline title? Yes! Did people (like yours truly) also reluctantly excite themselves when they realized they got to spend more time with Joker and the gang? Also yes.

So Persona 5 Tactica, what's it about? Well Joker and the crew have found themselves in another metaverse of sorts, after a trip to their favorite hideout Leblanc takes them to Leblanc... in another world. Their journey quickly introduces them to new characters and a fresh dilemma attached: Erina, a new party member, and Toshiro, a member of the Japanese Government who conveniently has amnesia that totally will not set the stage for the entire story (wink wink.) Your party jumps on a quest soon enough to right this world from its wrongs and as one might guess, discovers that the perilous journey they are on stretches far and beyond their original intentions. Who are the villains of this world, and why do they hate Toshiro so much? Why does his intuition and story have so much gravity on the story? Is there a deeper evil at heart? You'll find these out in a near twenty hour campaign, which I found to be the perfect length for this kind of game.

Gameplay in Persona 5 Tactica is respectfully fairly simple for a Tactics game and... I'm VERY thankful for it. Tactics games in general seem to cater toward the hardcore thinky kinds of gamers who like to strategize and weigh numbers against other numbers and set the stage for long intensively thought out battles. It makes sense, you're basically wargaming and there's a lot of fun probably to be had in the set up and engagement of intricately devised stratagems. While I'm a fan of this in theory, I discovered pretty quickly after playing Tactics Ogre sometime in the recent past that there was a limit for me in how serious I liked pre-planning and number crunching my battles.

Persona 5 Tactica takes a page out of the Fire Emblem and recent Triangle Strategy books by crafting an experience that is gratifying when done correctly but mostly pretty simple. Each character has their three basic avenues of attack: their gun, their physical attack, and the Persona that they carry with them as they did in the main game. The unique part in Tactica is that these Persona's can be equipped with other Personas that you find and fuse on the field. No longer is Joker the only one who can use multiple types of moves, but your entire party. I liked this because you could augment certain characters to be more malleable to your playstyle. Anne could be your defacto support character if you wanted, she could also be your magical heavy hitter with several styles of attack beyond her normal fire.

Combat takes place on small to medium scale levels that are fairly light in terms of environmental design. They play to the themes of the dungeon and narrative at large but ultimately don't get very creative, which honestly I found to be pretty excusable. Win conditions for said engagements mostly boil down to defeating all of the enemies on the map, destroying a capture point or boss, or getting your party to the opposite side of the map to "escape." While this can sound monotonous and at points could be where the game seems to be padding for content, I didn't find it to be too egregious in the long run. There are only four or five enemy types outside of bosses that bring their own skills to the fray: normal grunt types, brutes that counter jump any time they are attacked, umbrella wielding phantoms that block encounters from a certain direction, support types, and lastly enemies who switch locations when they are initially attacked. Again while the variety here isn't anything of note, the game was short enough that I felt the enemy variety wasn't a grand issue.

To defeat enemies you have to take advantage of Tactica's surface level combat system. Any enemies or allies who are positioned along cover will take greatly reduced damage, thus is it is smart every turn to position yourself as necessary. To remove these people from cover, you must either knock them away with a physical attack or use an elemental move. Once done, any enemy standing freely is subject to a critical hit that allows you to move one more time. You are actively encouraged to chain these as much as possible (some side quests will force you to take out an entire level in one turn for example,) so that you can take advantage of the triple-threat mechanic (this games version of the all-out-attack) and further your location on the map towards the end-goal. Unlike other contemporary tactics games that rely on you exposing enemy-type weaknesses (Fire Emblem) or managing a living battleground (Advance Wars,) Persona 5 Tactica's combat effectively boils down to chaining moves through your whole party to end battles as quickly as possible. Each map has a reward that gives you a fiscal incentive if you are able to beat them in a pre-determined amount of turns as a bolster to this ideology. Very little pre-planning is required, simply just updating your weapons with every story arc to make sure they're powerful enough and also checking your Persona levels with Personas you've picked up from side content or the main story is all that is really needed.

So after the long tirade about what the meat and potatoes of Tactica are, what are the constants that keep it distinctly Persona? Much like the last major spinoff in Persona 5 Strikers, this game is not composed by long-running series legend Shoji Meguro. While that comes off as a red flag initially, I was very happy to discover that the soundtrack, while maybe not Shoji levels, was pretty dang good all around. The distorted guitar heavy soundscape matches the sinister vibes of the enemies and plight at hand. The between bits and moments at Cafe Leblanc and in repose feature the lower energy jazz that we're all fans of as well. Best part though is that the hero of Persona 5's most epic moments, Lyn, reprises her role as the most electrifying voice in gaming at the moment and provides even more incredible songs to add to the Persona 5 catalogue.

Outside of the music, the returning cast acting just like they did in the mainline titles and Strikers felt like coming home again. Dialogue was chirpy and quirky as it should be, and the same voice actors coming back to lend their talents gives this title extra kick. It was nice to hang out with everybody's favorite idiot in Ryuji who was constantly making himself out to be the fool once more, and also to experience the jests about Morgana being a cat. Every release that has me coming back to the cast of Persona 5 gets me to smile in the same way, and I love it.

Now with the above you may think I'd rate this game a little higher than I did, but unfortunately there was a little bit of a burnout in this off-kilter return to Persona 5. The main gripe I have was the way the title ended and that comes in two forms: the enemy encounters and the tires falling off of the plot. As per usual I wont divulge too much detail about the story but I felt like the game kind of ran out of ways to wrap itself up and made the entire last kingdom/chapter a necessity that it really wasn't. You're thrown into loads of levels that have the party fighting familiar bosses and foes with the difficulty tuned a little higher than what you'd already encountered. Going through the same bossfights and mechanics for each chapter that I already had however many hours ago felt like I was retreading content for the sake of runtime, and that never feels good. Bosses had too much health and the mechanics asked of the player to defeat them were greatly uninteresting. Outside of the way that Tactica ends, it also rubbed off on me in the way it always had a surprise up its sleeves. I really really really hate the "gotcha!" moments in games, and Tactica's vice was to consistently spawn enemies on top of the ones already on the field. The novelty can be engaging or interesting when used in moderation, but it felt like every single level past the midpoint of the game had Futaba screaming something along the lines of "BE CAREFUL, THE ENEMY IS SPAWNING REINFORCEMENTS" so much to the extent that I would wane my movements towards the remaining visible enemies on the map because I knew that a new wave was on hand every single time. This doesn't make the game harder or more interesting to tackle, it only brings a new element of tedium along.

The story was alright, not special. The actual levels were alright, not special. The enemies were okay, not special. The villains were decent, not special. The ending sequence was unfortunately frustrating and a little sloppy. It's with this that I give this game the rating I do. I'm glad we got it, and I had a lot of fun playing it, I just wish I spent the last quarter of the title doing something more engaging and interesting. While I was okay with the game not heading in a grandiose direction like Royal and Strikers, I think it could have done more with its small-scale story writing. My expected ceiling of this game wasn't too high, and it was almost there. I feel like with a few different calls in terms of game direction and narrative sequencing, I'd be higher on Tactica than I was.

I can't recommend Persona 5 Tactica to tactics genre loyalists, but I can and would recommend it to fans of Persona 5 and Persona 5 accessories.

Yeah man, this sucks.

Congratulations soldier, you have graduated suma cum update and are at the top of your class at Activision. As part of your duties, we will now implore you to launch the current iteration of Call of Duty. You have clicked "Call of Duty" in your steam launcher, now that you have loaded the game, please restart so you can install another update. After this you must navigate through a menu filled with more tiles than a Home Depot. Congratulations soldier, you have located Modern Warfare III, please wait as we restart the game once more so you can magically be teleported a la horadric cube into what we hope is the right game. Now, in your best David Byrne impression please jest aloud "that is not my beautiful wife" as you gaze at the familiarly unfamiliar menus. Surely you have loaded into the same game right, everything looks similar but... it feels a little off? You look more and let out a "this is not my beautiful house" as you open up the weapons loadout menu for multiplayer. It's okay though, the game may require jumping through more hoops than a dog agility course, but at least you got to something worthwhile right? Oh no you gaze up at the product you have purchased with seventy hard earned United States Dollars and relent "where is that large automobile?"

This game sucks man.

Let's start with the campaign, or rather the first red flag of many that draped the release line of Modern Warfare III. Gaming journalism in the tail-end of 2023 is effectively meaningless, trusted content creators are really the only place I'll look for reviews in, and even then I take my own favorites with a grain of salt. I know why SkillUp doesn't like something, and at this point after however many years of experience in the field he has, I know why Jeff Gerstmann may not like a title. It's with following creators like this that you can form a benchmark in gauging new releases. Publications like IGN, Gamespot, and even my former flame in Gameinformer have greatly lost any credibility that they had in a reduction towards meaningless clickbait laden SEO borne ad revenue vulturing. This isn't a joker moment essay on the industry, it's just an introduction to the doom and gloom that surrounded the singleplayer content of MW3 before it came out... again. Just about every media outlet and individual that had an advance copy seemed to approach the campaign with a heightened degree of malaise that was greatly foreign to the the series thus far.

It's short, like real short. I beat it in two days as I had obligations going on but it could easily be done in one sitting. At the end of the day, this isn't a big issue as first person shooters ultimately run a serious risk of monotony (see my recent review of Nightdive's Quake II,) and all things considered short games when paced well can out perform some of my favorite longer titles (Looking at you Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.) The problem is that MW3's singleplayer is like a McDonald's McBurger order that they somehow managed to completely destroy. A McBurger doesn't have the best ingredients and it surely doesn't have to last, but man at least fucking do it right. This campaign jumps more sharks than Will Smith did in 2004 with next to zero exposition as to the legitimate motives of the antagonists, reasonable efforts by the "good guys" or a fitting ending. That McBurger you want has mayo on it, they forgot the cheese, and they didn't even include the fries in the order. You're so sad you don't even go back, you're out of money because you don't have your card on you and the fourteen cents in the cupholder won't get you another McBurger. Gas is running low and you just have to get home. That's how MW3 felt like with Like a Dragon: Gaiden on the horizon. The campaign was so extremely sad as a user experience that I wanted it to be over with almost as fast as it started.

Careful Snake, this is a sneaking mission!

Why was every level a sneaking mission in MW3? Why was I as the player so greatly enabled to sneak and silent kill my way through the entire game? I didn't see Hideo Kojima in the staff credits. Each level design felt like an afterthought, almost as if Activision was trying to resurrect a playable singleplayer experience like it was a Beatles song written over fifty years ago. Wait... that happened? And it was kinda okay? Oh. Seriously though, sneaking my way through some poorly designed open-zone maps that had a hard focus on not engaging in an all-out firefight against your enemy felt like a massive antithesis to the Call of Duty I grew up on, and even experienced last year with the re?release of MW2. You could tell some guy in the board room in the fourteenth hour of crunch was implored by upper management to add some variety to the environmental experiences of MW3. "HEY HOW ABOUT A WATER LEVEL, HOW ABOUT A SNOW LEVEL, HOW ABOUT... MAKAROV RUNNIN' AROUND" he frantically says as bits of hair fall from his scalp. He spins around in his Steelcase Series 2 3D Airback Chair beating his chest and slamming his eighth cup of coffee within the hour. Did I mention this man is a literal chimpanzee? It was nice seeing the familiar faces from the franchise heretoforth in Ghost, Soap, and Price, but its clear they just needed the guys to do a few more things for a few hours with no real end point for some campaign content. I am not joking with you when I say that the entirety of this game could not have happened and I believe the geopolitical state of the world within Call of Duty would have remained the exact same. You know it's bad when the McGuffin's in the story don't even lead anywhere with any legitimate credence or point.

I spent seventy hours last year playing Soul Hackers 2 in a mostly lukewarm experience and I legitimately think it was a better use of time than the two half afternoons I spent on the MW3 campaign. It's not just bad, it's aggressively uninteresting and that is one of the larger indictments you can have on a game with a budget of this caliber.

You decide the campaign wasn't for you, so you load up the mulitplayer, which is more or less the only reason you bought the game. Excited you are to play the old Modern Warfare II maps that you played in 2009 when you were much younger and the world was much more innocent. I'm kidding by the way, as a Metro Detroiter at the time the world was decidedly not better, but whatever. You remember all those broken lobbies on Rust that you got north of 100 kills on because some guy who had computer skills seemingly more insidious than Mr. Robot and wanted to level up quick? Yeah, Rust is back baby and it... sucks! I love going back and playing some Shipment on MW2 (2022) because the gameplay loop fits, its quick and really doesn't overstay its welcome. Everyone has the same sightlines and there are legitimate places to hide if you need a breath. It's such a tight experience because it has been optimized to be so, and even then its only really fun in bursts. Well, Rust is back and it sucks.

The immersion you have in breaking the "Wow Modern Warfare 2 (2009)'s maps kinda suck" was a moment I had way too quickly in MW3 to enjoy the rest of the game. They're unfair a lot of the time, boring, and you'll play them NONSTOP because there were 0 (Zero, nil, nada) new maps in the release of MW3. How lazy can you be to cook up a bad at best singleplayer with zero new content in the environmental design of the multiplayer? Sure it felt cool to quickscope some dudes on Highrise for a few minutes, but then I realized that you could and would be killed from everywhere just like you were back in the day. I'm not old, but I'm not a spry slide canceller either. I can hold my own in most FPS' quite well, but it was clear I hadn't studied the blade as well as the other folks loading in to this game with the optimal builds to abuse some genuinely miserable design on these maps. Rust gives you no moment of reprieve or a place to even think of setting up, Invasion takes approximately forty years to travel from one point to the end (that is if you are going mach 3.2 in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird,) Afghan rewards camping more than an REI, and Terminal has spawns that could have been better created by a Hainan black crested gibbon (yes I did have to give "species of gibbon" a google") given fifteen minutes in a world editor. The bottom line here is that the maps are nostalgic and varied, sure, but they don't feel good to play in the modern gamesphere. The temporal shift I feel in jumping from MW3 back to MW2 in regards to map design is colossal.

And then you load into the map.

I'm convinced you could watch the entirety of One Piece's 1075 current episodes in the time it takes to kill someone in MW3. I don't even know who this rewards? Getting the drop on one person or a group should be a vindicating experience to the predator stalking their prey, and in most games it is. In Modern Shitshow 3 you could read every accepted book within the expanded Warhammer universe before an assault rifle mag could take down two to three enemies. This was the most immediate shellshock to me coming from MW2 the day before, even moreso than the poor design of the retro maps. I kept shooting, I aimed well, I checked the time and four hours had passed, the same guy was still in front of me. I can't conceive of a reason to bump this up from where it was at in MW2 and even MW1 (2019.) I don't know who this benefits, because it surely isn't those who have the skill. Gunfights in MW3 feel more like they do in an Apex Legends or something where it's not necessarily the drop you get, but how you engage after the drop, which was never Call of Duty to me. Several times in my few days of playing have I been shot and had a full opportunity to disengage prone and run to cover because the enemy didn't account for the four hundred and fifty years that were required to kill me. With the first bullet of your magazine, a nineteen year old Lebron James is the first pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2003 NBA Draft. By the time you've killed the guy, he's now thirty eight and in his sixth season with the Los Angeles Lakers. I streamed this to friends and family alike in discord calls to confirm whether or not my suspicions about how poorly tuned this felt was just on me or not, and the resounding takeaway was Time to Kill (TTK) was simply way too long. In the time it took to write this review I have listened to aespa's 4th Mini album "Drama" twice through, this is not enough time to have killed someone in MW3.

I have three hundred something hours in MW2 over the last two-ish years and I unlocked just about everything I needed to outside of battle pass added content. The big billing was that I didn't have to unlock the guns that I had unlocked in MW2 once more in MW3, which is... good. But why do I have to unlock perks again? More on that in a second. Why do I have to unlock the same exact killstreaks (by grinding levels) once more? Did my operator (of whom I play the same exact one) forget the phone number to his VTOL guy? Does it really require fifty more levels or however much it actually is to relearn this all? It's stuff like this that clearly indicates to me that MW3 is the money hungry cash grab it appears to be, dangling enough in front of the player to make it seem familiar, but taking enough away that they feel the need to get it all back. Oh even more fun, all those guns you still have, remember that? None of your loadouts carry over so I hope you either took screencaps of your ten classes from MW2 or remember every single change you made to tune and augment your weapons, because haha pranked! Tee hee! Silly you!!! Those didn't carry over! After attempting to re-create my go to classes from MW2 I gave up and realize my enjoyment of the game shouldn't rely on living in the past (ironic ain't it,) and that I should give the new guns a try. Same as it ever was.

I'd just like to make fun of this game's "perk" system real quick before I close out. Instead of having perks like you've had since the original CoD: Modern Warfare back in 2007, you have... equipment! It all does the same shit, but check this out... it's gear! Because "Scavenger" was too familiar with the player, you now have twinkles space dust rubs fingers in the air does a mystifying spin in my pointed cap and robes "Scavenger gloves!" Thats right perks were too reasonable so we've subbed them out for gloves, boots, vests, and headsets? I couldn't tell you what does what (outside of boots) because I don't care anymore. I am completely indifferent to this experience. As soon as I unlocked the Gunner Vest I put it on, because it is Overkill from the last few games, allowing you as the player to carry two primary weapons. This was a non negotiable for me in MW2 because I like to have both my close and long range options offered. I mistakenly thought this might resuscitate my enjoyment of MW3 from its Mariana-Trench level grave but it didn't, because it turns out a dilapidated McBurger is still a dilapidated McBurger. In equipping my vest, just like real life, I couldn't wear boots anymore. My #xXxT4CSPRINTxXx wasn't as long as it used to be pre-vest, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. At Max Boot level, again because perks are too hard to use and make no sense, you gain the ability to SILENTLY MOVE WHEREVER YOU WANT. Because that's fair! Level to win! Max level you become Psycho Mantis!

I have zero willingness to max out my rank in this game or really dedicate any more time to the multiplayer experience of MW3 because just about every element of it is somehow more magnificently frustrating that I could imagine. I would sooner pay someone an exorbitant fee to slap me as hard as they can when I wake up every morning then spend another hour playing on the same exact maps I spent hundreds of hours on fourteen years ago with a shooter experience this poor.

Dobby can't be hurt anymore, Dobby is a free elf. I am Dobby.
This game sucks man.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: Thank You Kazuma Kiryu

Ryu Ga Gotoku's flagship franchise continues on its emblazoned warpath through the current landscape of gaming, faithful to a unique approach at telling the story of organized crime in contemporary Japan. What I expect in entering a Yakuza/Like a Dragon is an excellently penned multi-faceted tale of deceit and treachery written with as many twists and turns as a late stage Shin Megami Tensei dungeon coupled with some of the most frustrating combat on the market. Lo and behold, I got that with The Man Who Erased His Name. Is this expectation fair? I think so, did it alter my enjoyment of the game? Not really?

Like a Dragon Gaiden (I'll just call it LADG) serves as a storytelling tool to explain the location and whereabouts of the famed Dragon of Dojima between The Song of Life (Yakuza 6) and Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7,) a game in which Kiryu is effectively non-present. Given the results of the ending of the sixth installment, he dons a fake name and skips town under the alias Joryu. My run-through of the first few chapters of LADG left me with a few qualms, mostly because it felt like I was getting the typical Yakuza formula of breadcrumbing plot in the introductory sequences under the guise of aimless action. You're tasked with taking on miscellaneous jobs and helping around several locations that don't immediately feel like they are transitioning the plot and location of Kiryu from one game to the next like this title is intended to do. Before the Yakuza magic picked up and I was able to identify where the plot was going in relevance to Yakuza 7, I felt like I was too engrossed in the menial and irrelevant for my liking.

The ship rights itself eventually but the second and third chapters largely were a waste of runtime in my humble opinion. There's a section within one of these chapters (nursing a headache so I have forgotten which exactly,) in which you have to help the woman who is assisting you in pointing you in the right direction on your mission. For intel and a safe roof over your head, she requires Kiryu to assist her in building up her network of mostly homeless informants (reminiscent of the Florist and other informant types in the previous entries.) To do this you must assist the denizens of Sotenbori with various tasks that range from getting things out of trees to taking photos of clowns. This isn't bad on paper but the required Akame Points (Akame being the woman you are assisting) to hit rank 10 of the arbitrary story-gated ranking system took wayyy too long and greatly inflated my run time. Unless I was doing something very wrong, which is very possible, I was not a fan of the time dedicated to sprinting all over Osaka to buy people food at various Poppo Mart's just to hope that I would soon be able to move on with the story. I get the importance of helping out in terms of the narrative, but it ran its course and greatly detracted from my enjoyment of the game.

The combat sucks, that’s it, that's the verse.

I had my score of this game a notch lower as a result of the above, but in typical RGG/LAD/Yakuza fashion, LADG resolves itself in an incredible way, tying in the closing sequences of Yakuza 7 and a look into the Dragon of Dojima's immediate future with the franchise. I won't divulge spoilers per usual, but I found myself doing my hardest to hide the waterworks as we at long last have seen Kiryu at his most vulnerable emotionally. Years and years of his life (and our lives as the audience) plays out on a small screen in his hands, leaving him to watch as he learns how the world has moved both with him and around him. For a man who has made a career out of his stubborn valor, it was great as a spectator to get to see him stripped apart at his most relatable and human.

I would absolutely recommend this title to anyone who is a fan of the Like a Dragon franchise. It's a great way to wrap up story of Kazuma Kiryu as our primary protagonist, and a very strong glimpse at what RGG has in store.

Truly one of the games of all time.

I grew up on first person shooters but came into the genre after the boomer shooter took off, missing out on classics like DOOM, Wolfenstein, and relevantly Quake. It's with this lack of affinity for a bygone genre that I've tried to sort of retroactively understand the hype behind such a landmark franchise. Sometime last year I played the Nightdive remaster of Quake I and had an alright enough time, and with some time to kill I figured it would be a good excuse to delve even further into one of the titles that made id the mammoth of influence that it is today.

Quake II being on Gamepass was the perfect pricepoint for its shorter runtime, with players seemingly clocking in at an average of seven hours. I didn't keep track of my own runtime with the game, but ultimately I felt like even that was too long. I appreciate the legacy of titles like this, but going back and playing them has felt more like a chore than an enjoyable experience as they are intended to be. The levels are intricately designed, which is neat especially for a game of this caliber originally released into to the world in 1997, but it comes with the unintended risk of turning the campaign into a McGuffin hunt. One thing leads to one thing that leads to one thing that leads to one thing... which isn't abhorrently bad game design but feels like it is uneccesarily dragging the game along.

My main qualms with Quake II outside of the monotony of its enemy encounters and the needlessly intricate level sequencing is that the combat didn't feel... good. As an avid Unreal Tournament enjoyer, and a mostly-fan of the recent Doom iterations, I love a good run and jump shooty mcshoot game. Freedom of movement in FPS' creates a level of player agency that makes the titles enjoyable, in lieu of staying stagnant and mowing down enemies as they appear, you are crafting intricate patterns throughout the arena's space. in Quake II you have this, somewhat, but there was a severe lack of reasonable health options. Many encounters in which I thought I was jumping and avoiding attacks well left me beaten and battered. Instead of being able to leap around and take advantage of the game's attractive movement, I was greatly limited to hiding around pillars and firing in between enemy volleys.

Quake II is a game that I understand, but do not enjoy overall. I get that the legacy of this game is far stretching and is probably a magnificent achievment in the first person shooter genre at the time, but it is unfortunately not a title I found myself engrossed with enjoyment in. I can't recommend Quake II unless you're looking for a nostalgia trip or on a quest to understand the history of the genre.

Super Mario Bros. Wonderful

I've played a lot of games this year, Backloggd says sixty five to be exact, ranging in terms of emotional scale from the ever-so-jubilant We Love Katamari all the way to the anxious and heart wrenching Final Fantasy XVI. Throughout all that I'd played, I felt like I had hit every nook and cranny of gaming that I'd set out to touch since I started the year with Crisis Core all the way back in January. There are a few titles I was looking forward to wrap up the year, but I was satiated with my enjoyment of the year thus far. On a whimsy before the release of Like a Dragon: Gaiden, I ordered a copy of Super Mario Bros Wonder. This was a game I had told at least five people who asked me if I would play it that I hadn't planned on it because the 2D Mario's weren't necessarily my cup of tea.

Like seemingly everyone in the gaming world I grew up around Mario. I sat on the ground watching my brother play through SM64 and Sunshine on our CRTV, constantly laughing and smiling in joy at the fun little Italian man doing his fun little thing with all his triple bing bing wahoos and all. We had all the Smash Bros., all the Mario Karts, the Mario Parties... we weren't unique in that aspect but the point is that Mario effectively was present throughout my entire childhood. When the 3D Allstar collection released during the COVID times, I sat alone in my apartment in North Dakota and smiled from ear to ear reliving my childhood in the first two 3D titles and then playing Galaxy for the first time. To add, Odyssey is one of my all time favorite titles. This all written to drive the point home, Mario to me is like a warm glass of happiness. Each time I load up anything Mario related, be it a party game, a 3D title, or a 2D sidescroller, I find myself simply happy to be alive.

With my new copy of Wonder and some time to kill, I booted it up and reconfigured my Switch audio to work through my PC, jumping into the 2D world not really sure what to expect. I saw the Direct where Mario turned into an elephant, I guess that was all I knew... and I can't say that was the most exciting aspect to me. Immediately though, I felt the Mario Magic. What I got in Wonder's short runtime was a game that set what it needed to do perfectly. To start, I've had a bone to pick with the processing power on the Switch in several games I've played recently, most critically was Master Detectives Archives: Rain Code in which the frame dropping and aliasing nearly drove me to a fervent rage. In Wonder there is none of that, rather an engrossing colour palette rich in every single detail you could want out of a Mario game. The bright hues of the greens and yellows speak volumes of jubilee and warmth into a game that is intended to exude such a feeling. The darker levels bloom with intriguing blacks, nefarious greens, and harrowing fires that dimly guide you along your journey. This game is beautiful full stop, and it runs perfectly. I don't like that this is something I have to worry about with a console in the current year, but it is, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder passes with flying colours. The six worlds you pass through are all resoundingly different in their thematic presentation, a showcase at the environmental design expertise that Nintendo retains in house.

Another element of Wonder's full suite that I fell in love with was the audio design. Though Martinet has sung his swan song as the red capped runner, the new talent feels just the same. Outside of our main protagonist, the sounds of each level across the varied worlds was appropriately done to make them feel unique from one another, and also fun within the moment. There lies a level early on in which you run along musical blocks as a cacophony of flowers sing you a song, I cracked a smile and trotted through like I was the king of the castle. This is just a short example of what is in store in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, there's a plethora of moments that remind you why we all cherish the franchise so much. This game and Mario in general is simply life-affirming in the its presentation, especially in the aural landscape. Whether in the Desert, in the Petal Isles, or stopping by the Fungi Mines, you are accompanied by a musical counterpart perfect for your journey.

All this being said, the real success of a 2D Mario title is how it handles simple 2D platforming, a genre it helped pioneer and innovate way back in the eighties when the famed plumber first hit the (small) big screen. It's safe to say that Mario still does the running, jumping, crouching, and scurrying he has always done, but in Wonder you have a few different avenues to take to complete your journey. Enter badges, a unique ability system that gives the player some agency into completing levels and obtaining the Wonder Seeds necessary to advance and beat the game. These badges range in relevancy/necessity from things like having a vine that attaches to walls when you hit the trigger button, to being able to jump hire with an additional float at the top to having a magnet that snatches normal and flower coins alike. I used the aforementioned jumping coin for most of the runtime, outside of levels where a specific badge was required, because it augmented the 2D scape in the way I felt most driving. I appreciated this quite a bit, as I feel like 2D games often can fall into a realm of monotony or awkwardness in the way that they force the player to navigate. This is Nintendo and Mario though, so I should have known better, as they manage to innovate both in 2D and 3D realms with every new Mario titles in ways that reinvent the genre.

Level variety and design both were clearly handled with legitimate thought and care throughout the entirety of Wonder. Though levels often felt familiar, no two truly felt the same. Of course you're utilizing the same platforming mechanics to survive hazards, but there was a significant degree of brainstorming put into making things feel different. Many types of levels exist: Racing Challenges, Enemy Elimination Challenges, Jumping to the Beat, Boss fights, Simple Platforming, and they're all spaced out with effective perfection. At no point did I hit a rut of levels within a world that felt too much like another. Whether I was tasked to run, swim, or fly, I was fighting a new enemy or using a new power to succeed. Mario as a franchise has always been about creating the new out of the familiar, and making sure that no two moments are specifically the same, and that nail is hit with tremendous precision once more in Wonder.

I absolutely recommend Super Mario Bros. Wonder to anyone with a Nintendo Switch, an affinity for Mario, or a liking for 2D Platformers. This was a title that managed to make me smile through every moment I spent, and to me that gives a title an invaluable level of credential.

A magnificently frustrating experience on Legendary, Halo 2 was and still is a landmark achievement in both first person shooters and in science fiction.

While being one shot off-screen by Jackals with beam rifles was eternally frustrating, I had a blast getting giddy everytime Master Chiefs one-liners were soon to appear on screen. Each playthrough of Halo 2 feels like I'm transferred back to myself nearly twenty years ago when I experienced it for the first time.

The HD Touchups with the anniversary edition bring out the intricate lore and rich intrigue that the Halo universe holds. Cutscenes get a massive lift with the new graphics, though they feel now like they did to me way back when. I played in constant awe of the way familiar faces like Miranda Keys, Sergeant Johnson, and the Arbiter looked like with a fresh coat of paint. This game is beautiful, and even though its now nine years old in the anniversary iteration, fits like a glove in the current gamesphere. Another anniversary touchup that I greatly appreciated was the soundtracking. While Marty O'Donnell's initial flight was superb at the time, the updated soundfront and songs breathe a new life into the game that the annivesary desperately needed.

My qualms with H2A really just rest in issues I had with the main game (co-op deaths reset you to checkpoint on legendary for example) thus I cannot detract the anniversary for this per se. Overall I had an amazing time taking that trip through my childhood once more and had the right person to play with. I had a blast setting up cheese strats to hit checkpoints or avoid entire encounters because we were overwhelmed by enemy forces or low on ammunition, its occurrences like this that make the older school FPS' as fun as they are.

I'm glad I got to "Finish the Fight" once more.

Cocoon is a gorgeously presented nothing-burger of a game that utilizes fairly intricate sequencing and light puzzling to manifest a rather milquetoast experience.

I'm not a fan of puzzle games in general, so take this shortform review with whatever grain salt you wish, but I grew bored pretty quick and the allure of the world's mystery fell flat as I continued through each zone. I can't overstate how beautiful Cocoon is, and how well the sci-fi adjacent soundtrack pairs with the actions and intrigue of the landscapes you are walking, jumping, and teleporting through, but that is effectively the only thing I enjoyed about it.

When I find myself growing tired with a game, I ask myself "why?" Why am I continuing with it, why am I pushing forward? I didn't really have an answer with Cocoon other than that it was a lazy Sunday with nothing to do and no plans made, so I pushed through. The monotony wore and wore as I went on and regretfully was too much for me to find really any enjoyment out of it. Though the environments were lush and there was clearly love put into it, I felt Cocoon was overall a drab experience.