GameClub Game #1:
Mystical Ninja starring Goemon denies me of my usual stream-of-consciousness style for reviewing by positioning itself right in the middle of the quality scale. It excels at nothing, attempts nothing to excel at, and sleeps well in the warmth of anti-critical faux-nostalgia from those who did or don't have fond memories of the N64. I always say that boring games are worse than straight up bad games because they siphon every interesting quality out of a video game and instead of ruining them or bolstering them, mitigate them with a mind numbing lack of knowledge or ambition. This game is exactly that; a stepping stone for more ambitious devs to use as a reference point in what to avoid in design.
Every area in Goemon is stretched a mile long in an attempt to pad playtime. This would be fine, if Goemon and his peanut gallery had any sort of movement options to offer the more interested player a more enticing relationship between world and control, but they don't. Every ability and action is supplemented with 4 useless button presses in order to initiate when they could be delegated to 1- and are even further delayed by pointlessly long unattractive animations. This would be fine if the abilities and actions served any other purpose than to open locked doors in different ways or cease the delay of your movement forward, but they don't. Even when you do get abilities that allow you to circumvent the intended solutions for said lock-and-key puzzles, you're about 30 minutes from being rid of the game. On top of that, you can't enact any ability while moving, even ones that Make the player Move. It's pretty darn silly and I can only assuming intentionally stifling. I would be able to forgive these bouts of boring, standardized gameplay if the game kept up its witty, absurd comedy that is present within the first 10 minutes, but it doesn't. What I thought might be a middling gameplay experience upheld by its writing and gags immediately becomes a middling package wrapped up in a tone deaf bow.
The best joke in the game is when it introduced its secondary protagonist by throwing him out of a restaurant for streaking. That's the first cutscene. Everything else the game considers funny is on part of the pressured, underpaid localizers to erase any kind of marginalized hate terms slung at minority groups that Japan loves to hate. I can appreciate this game's dedication to recreating and paying homage to Japanese culture, accurate depictions of real locations, but it all falls apart when I look up "Mystical Ninja Goemon Okama."
The game isn't worth it and only offers a couple catchy songs, nicely baked-in cool bounce lighting in some areas, and it's overall visual dedication. Other than that, everything about Mystical Ninja Goemon deserves to be ignored. It brings to light no interesting conversation and even trying will be a waste of energy as I could just spend that energy forming a cooler conversation about a better game.
I don't really have much interesting to say, but neither does the game.
So middle fingers up, this shit is Goemid. It's not Mario 64 meets Ocarina of Time. You don't even know what that means. You don't even want that shit. Go to work.
Mystical Ninja starring Goemon denies me of my usual stream-of-consciousness style for reviewing by positioning itself right in the middle of the quality scale. It excels at nothing, attempts nothing to excel at, and sleeps well in the warmth of anti-critical faux-nostalgia from those who did or don't have fond memories of the N64. I always say that boring games are worse than straight up bad games because they siphon every interesting quality out of a video game and instead of ruining them or bolstering them, mitigate them with a mind numbing lack of knowledge or ambition. This game is exactly that; a stepping stone for more ambitious devs to use as a reference point in what to avoid in design.
Every area in Goemon is stretched a mile long in an attempt to pad playtime. This would be fine, if Goemon and his peanut gallery had any sort of movement options to offer the more interested player a more enticing relationship between world and control, but they don't. Every ability and action is supplemented with 4 useless button presses in order to initiate when they could be delegated to 1- and are even further delayed by pointlessly long unattractive animations. This would be fine if the abilities and actions served any other purpose than to open locked doors in different ways or cease the delay of your movement forward, but they don't. Even when you do get abilities that allow you to circumvent the intended solutions for said lock-and-key puzzles, you're about 30 minutes from being rid of the game. On top of that, you can't enact any ability while moving, even ones that Make the player Move. It's pretty darn silly and I can only assuming intentionally stifling. I would be able to forgive these bouts of boring, standardized gameplay if the game kept up its witty, absurd comedy that is present within the first 10 minutes, but it doesn't. What I thought might be a middling gameplay experience upheld by its writing and gags immediately becomes a middling package wrapped up in a tone deaf bow.
The best joke in the game is when it introduced its secondary protagonist by throwing him out of a restaurant for streaking. That's the first cutscene. Everything else the game considers funny is on part of the pressured, underpaid localizers to erase any kind of marginalized hate terms slung at minority groups that Japan loves to hate. I can appreciate this game's dedication to recreating and paying homage to Japanese culture, accurate depictions of real locations, but it all falls apart when I look up "Mystical Ninja Goemon Okama."
The game isn't worth it and only offers a couple catchy songs, nicely baked-in cool bounce lighting in some areas, and it's overall visual dedication. Other than that, everything about Mystical Ninja Goemon deserves to be ignored. It brings to light no interesting conversation and even trying will be a waste of energy as I could just spend that energy forming a cooler conversation about a better game.
I don't really have much interesting to say, but neither does the game.
So middle fingers up, this shit is Goemid. It's not Mario 64 meets Ocarina of Time. You don't even know what that means. You don't even want that shit. Go to work.
SkyZ
1 month ago