Not even the term "roguelite" feels appropriate anymore. I'd say Hades is closer to a roguelite-lite, because now the meta-progression is the main event and the actual randomized dungeon crawl more of an afterthought. In hindsight, I'm surprised it's taken Supergiant, who historically develop games for the sole purpose of padding out a seemingly pre-written script, this long to make this game, since they're now given infinitely more nooks and crannies to cram situational dialog into. Critiquing it as a roguelike wouldn't be fair; it's not even trying to deliver a fulfilling, high skill-ceiling experience that hinges on the player's ability to take advantage of good luck and creatively adapt to overcome misfortune. It's addicting, yes, but for all the wrong reasons- instead of embracing the arcade philosophy of only giving players enough motivation to break through to the next level on their own, it buries its gameplay shortcomings under a mountain of extrinsic reward. It's specifically designed to be too hard with no upgrades and too easy with upgrades, in an effort to dripfeed the player story details in a way that appears natural. Though, it seems like this approach requires a substantial amount of willful ignorance to actually be effective. For me, at least, finally beating Hades (the guy) felt like less of a monumental accomplishment and more of an item on a checklist that I'd crossed off before being carted away to the next stop on the assembly line, which nullifies any potential benefit of the roguelike structure. That's not to say the concept is broken at its core, and it's hard to deny the appeal of the dynamic hubworld and the overall level of contextualization given to a traditionally abstract genre. I can certainly imagine falling in love with this game if it really did feel like all the dialog corresponded 1:1 with your actions, but I'm skeptical that this accurately describes every fan of Hades. Not to pluck my own lyre, but NPCs consistently felt behind the times for me, still praising me for reaching Elysium after I'd already escaped the Underworld several times, for instance. And it's not like the writing is exactly stellar- Zagreus's near constant quipping tells me that Supergiant's not fully confident in a tone that's more comedic than their previous games. But then again, this is all stuff that, in my eyes, would only serve to elevate an already good game and not to excuse combat that's fundamentally a slog. I don't think I have a single compliment for Hades's action gameplay, but despite runs that always feel the exact same, upgrades that are all roundabout stat modifiers with no room for personality, and non-boss enemies that never pose a threat, what's most offensive to me is that Supergiant hasn't at all evolved since Bastion. It's the same weightless, uninspired, utterly boring mashfest that it's been for the past decade, entirely inexcusable. Or maybe my heart only has enough room for one randomized trek through the realm of the undead.

It's an absolutely perfect adaptation to game mechanics from something that isn't a game. First you're taking your time, looking up everything in the guidebook to make sure you make no mistakes. Then you're strategizing about which rule checks are worth skipping because they take too long to warrant worrying about the fine they might cost you. Before you know it, it's second nature. You know that Bostan is in Republia and that the line on the MOA emblem goes diagonally from bottom left to top right. On top of this, the game is so good at increasing its complexity- each new rule fits in flawlessly with the existing mechanics, with the difficulty curve, and with the story events.

Like any great game, it feels worth mastering, but it by no means stops there, because you're in Arstotzka, a world where you're never commended for doing anything correctly, only reprimanded for doing things incorrectly. A world where you're fined heavily for the act of decorating your workspace. A world where conducting an X-ray to verify someone's sex and seizing someone's passport without any real justification aren't gross violations of rights but simply burdens, items on a checklist that must be done. Ultimately, Papers, Please is about being molded into thinking, acting, and making decisions like a robot. Come across a moral dilemma and you'll more than likely make your choice on whether or not to admit someone just based on if you've exceeded your protocol violation warning limit for the day. Human beings aren't human beings in Arstotzka, they're means to an end. Through this theme, not only does the game perfectly encapsulate both bureaucratic labor and authoritarian government as a whole, but it comes to the conclusion that no other game with moral dilemmas has been able to quite reach. When working as an immigration officer, there are no people. There are only sets of information which may or may not line up, the specific details of which are so irrelevant towards whether or not someone deserves to pass that they might as well be randomly generated.

And yet, somehow, the human side of Arstotzka shines through. Jorji is more than fine with playing the immigration game, applauding you for working such a difficult job whenever he's denied entry and vying to have more convincing papers next time. Calensk tells you that you'll earn a bonus for detaining more people, and yet he's unable to pay you fully the first few times because he had to spend more money taking care of his family than he anticipated. Even Dimitri, the man in charge of overseeing your position, the man who's forced you to become this robot, will give you a game over if you follow protocol and refuse to let one of his friends into the country. Like the rest of the game, this characterization is so effortlessly natural. The game's mechanics already made going back to get all the medals and endings worthwhile, but picking up on these details adds an additional, equally fulfilling layer. This all culminates in what I think is the high point of the entire game, and what's probably the most optimistic of the major endings. You've just grinded out nearly two-hundred credits to escape the country and are now at the hands Obristan's immigration officer with your family. But you're not denied entry, like you so very much deserve to be, you're let in. Why? Maybe the officer didn't notice your passports were forged, or maybe he inferred the situation that you were in and took mercy. Either way, it's because he's a human being, not a robot, and now your family's safe. Thanks for playing, roll credits.

The "New" was only ever entirely literal: disappointingly, that subseries was essentially a Mario highlight reel rather than anything actually new. Of course, novelty isn't tantamount to quality, but it often feels like Nintendo's only strength as a developer in the modern age is their willingness to experiment. We'll never see another first-party Nintendo game that's not painfully easy and overtutorialized, or one that pushes its mechanics and is at all willing to punish you, or even one that feels mysterious, but buy a Nintendo console and you'll still always end up with a handful of exclusives that are at least fresh conceptually. Just... without "Mario" in any of their titles. Galaxy is far from my favorite Mario game, but it's the most recent one that actually felt like something new, which is concerning considering that it released when most of this site's userbase was still in diapers. We're in the mid 2020s now and traditional, lives-and-continues-based 2D platformers are basically dead and buried, but here comes Super Mario Bros. Wonder with what seems to be a singular, concentrated effort to be new and not just New. You can turn into an elephant in this one!

Unfortunately, though, the elephant powerup is even more emblematic of the entire game than anyone could've anticipated. It looks completely unique to Mario, and, I guess, technically, it is, as he's never had an upgrade that requires him to reload his projectiles before, but does it actually change the gameplay in any meaningful capacity? No. It's just another way to break blocks and attack enemies horizontally. The whole game is preoccupied with appearing new instead of actually being new, and, I mean, it succeeded in this regard, considering I actually bought it after skipping both New Super Mario Bros. U and Bowser's Fury. Wonder flowers feel less like a central gameplay hook and more like short bonus sections that are part of already minuscule levels. The only way they were ever gonna work from a mechanical perspective was if they all happened during high-pressure situations and forced you to adapt to unpredictable twists on the fly (although that would just be a rehash of Wario Land 4) and the only way they were ever gonna work from a spectacle perspective was if they actually went all in. For every wonder section that genuinely took me by surprise- switching the point-of-view to top-down or putting me in outer space or making Mario really, really tall- there'd be five that would just turn the level into an autoscroller, or just make the enemies bigger, or just move the geometry around more than usual. Too often, it's weird in the same way that Mario Land 2 is weird: visually, and that's it. Ultimately, it's far prettier than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but it's no less bland.

And outside of the wonder sections, there really just isn’t all that much to talk about. The badge system makes Mario’s moveset loose and flexible akin to something like Yoshi’s Island, but it’s missing the level variety and mechanical experimentation that made that game work. A few stages have bonus exits, but they lack any of Super Mario World’s pseudo-puzzle solving or sense of mystery. What’s left? The fact that it has a handful of decent stage-specific mechanics? (All of the other New games do, too.) Those one-screen puzzle levels? (Didn’t care for them in Mario Maker, still don’t here.) The weird, Dark Souls-ass asynchronous co-op? (I refuse to pay for Nintendo’s online service, so I can’t comment.) How every individual world feels like its own little adventure? (Alright, I admit it, I liked this one.) If you’re not going to be new, you could at least be cohesive- I’m a big fan of both 3D World and Odyssey, but I’d hesitate to call either of them particularly revolutionary, instead focusing on being a conduit for co-op shenanigans and a modernization of Mario 64’s mechanics, respectively. Besides being bright and colorful, is there a similar underlying summary that you could apply to Wonder? More and more, it feels like Mario is becoming Kirby: not striving for anything beyond a vaguely pleasant experience and producing no bad games, but no great ones either. Maybe my standards are just too high- after all, we don't expect Star Wars or The Simpsons or Halloween to be cutting-edge anymore, even though they were at one point, so why should we Mario? But, in 2024, this franchise is unrecognizable from the one that gave us 3's level map and World's secret exits and 64's moveset. And that just saddens me more than anything else.

Thirty-five odd years ago, the first Metroid proved that game design wasn't an exact science. Corridors that led to nothing, rooms that looked identical, enemies that could damage you in loading zones. All horrible ideas, stuff that would end up making the game understandably impalatable to the modern tongue, but also important, essential, even, to characterizing a truly hostile world. Later entries in the series significantly neutered this feeling, creating environments that players weren't only comfortable traversing, but staying in for extended periods of time, meticulously collecting every health tank and missile upgrade. It seems apparent that trying to make something genuinely alien will always be at odds with "good" game design, which typically revolves around the familiar, the intuitive, and the satisfying, but it's still a shame that the original Metroid's vision never wound up fully realized.

Until now, that is, and from Adult Swim of all publishers. The Rain World mantra is simple: you don't belong here, this world owes you nothing, and it will give you nothing that you don't take for yourself. You probably won't beat this game, and you definitely won't get 100% map completion. You'll have to excuse the obvious hackery of mentioning both Metroid and Dark Souls in the same review, but it's enchanting the way a first playthrough of Dark Souls is enchanting. A world as harsh as it is beautiful, with the desire to learn more about it your only motivation through its crushing difficulty. But, by comparison, even Lordran offered more kindness. At least, there, stairs were built for your feet and ladders for your arms. There are no bonfires in the rain world, instead your only points of safety constrained, metallic cages, as if complete isolation from the outside world your only true protection from it. Play perfectly for an entire cycle and you still might die to something outside of your control, right before getting to the next shelter. That's bad game design, just like any unfair mechanic is, but Rain World has loftier ambitions than being a well-designed game. Traditionally, unkillable enemies exist to be defeated later in a cinematic, cathartic payoff, but here, predators never stop being terrifying. Neither do heights, neither does the open sky, and neither does rain. Terrain should subtly guide you to where you're supposed to go next, and entrances to new regions definitely shouldn't be unceremoniously hidden in plain sight. We wouldn't want players to miss something important, would we? My only nitpicks come from the few concessions to this mentality. Mainly, the map, which too often serves as a nondiegetic crutch for players to lean on. It's hard to imagine anyone being able to complete the game without it, but that really only reinforces my argument. What's less understandable is the inclusion of the yellow ghosts, which seemingly show up when you're playing badly in order to patronizingly point out food and enemies.

But assessing Rain World's flaws truly puts its monumental strengths into perspective. Because what's possibly more impressive than everything that went right is the sheer amount of things that could've gone wrong. The game could've used upgrades to create a concrete sense of progression, an artificial way to counteract being at the mercy of your environment. The experience could've been cheapened with side characters or a more explicit narrative. If the enemy AI was even slightly more predictable, or the creature design not consistently haunting, then the exhilaration of a chase would've been greatly diminished. If there wasn't an enormously deep bag of tricks to figure out, both regarding how the game works at large and what your character is capable of, then it wouldn't be able to require so much creativity in its minute problem-solving. Things might've gotten stale if every single region didn't have a distinct way to throw you even further out of your element. And none of this stuff would've mattered if each and every screen wasn't individually memorable in how it tests a specific part of your skills, and yet meticulously constructed to feel naturalistic. Locations effortlessly fit together to paint a world where you don't belong, but also one that you can conquer if you're clever, persistent, and lucky enough. As it stands now, Rain World is a supreme balancing act, its resounding success as improbable as the survival of a slugcat in the wild. Undoubtedly one of the premiere achievements of the generation, and, hopefully, one of the most important.

Remember that moment in Breath of the Wild's tutorial where you have to chop down a tree and then use it as a bridge to cross a river? Remember thinking 'woah, that was neat!' and then not doing that again for the rest of your 80-hour playthrough? Remember when you unlocked Revali's Gale and then realized you would never have to actually work to gain height again? Remember how everyone, even Breath of the Wild's biggest fans, unanimously considered Eventide Island the best part of the entire game?

It wasn't until I played Rain World, a game so dedicated to its survivalist philosophy that it forces you to become intimately familiar with every facet of how its world works if you want to make even the slightest bit of progress, that I fully realized why all of this stuff bothered me so much. At first it was simple: what good was one of the most robust physics systems ever conceived without any challenges that tested your mastery over it? But Rain World, by counterexample, honed this down, helping me understand just how much Breath of the Wild takes every opportunity possible to provide you with means to avoid actually feeling like you're part of Hyrule. The first item you're handed prevents fall damage from ever being an issue. Beating any of the Divine Beasts "rewards" you with ways to avoid engaging in climbing and combat for the rest of your adventure. Harsh climates may pose a threat at first, but, quickly enough, you'll find clothes that (using a menu!!) completely neutralize them. There's a difference in philosophy here that doesn't necessarily come down to their respective levels of difficulty: Breath of the Wild gives you abilities, while Rain World gives you tools. Breath of the Wild makes you lord of your environment, while Rain World puts you at the mercy of it. I could grasp why so many were enchanted by the former, but, for me, Rain World was enchanting, and Breath of the Wild was boring. Why would I chop down a tree and waste my axe's durability when I could, with the press of a button, raise a magic platform out of the water and use that instead? Obviously, the game deserved credit for even allowing you to do any of these things, but I'd rather see a Hyrule where Link felt just as governed by the forces of nature as everybody else.

The last thing I wanted this game to be was more Breath of the Wild (in my eyes there was already far too much of it) and, at first glance, it is. Same Link, same Hyrule, same aesthetic, same general structure. Squint and it passes as an extensive set of DLC for the 2017 release, but, it's only a few hours into the Great Sky Islands when these potential fears get put to rest for good. For me, it happened as I walked out of the penultimate tutorial shrine, stepped onto a Zonai Wing, and used it to fly all the way back to the Temple of Time. Because here's the big open secret that nobody (except for me, apparently) wants to admit: traversal in Breath of the Wild sucks. Having to walk every five seconds to manage your stamina isn't fun, climbing isn't fun, and hopefully I don't have to tell you that fast travel isn't fun. Y'know what is fun, though? Shield surfing. Even though it's generally impractical, usually ending in a broken shield rather than any sort of speedy forward movement, I still found myself doing it nearly every time I was on top of a steep enough hill. Something about just letting it fly and relinquishing control over to the game's physics and hoping for the best never got old, and Tears of the Kingdom is like if they designed an entire game around shield surfing. Zonai Devices are essentially adaptations of traditional Zelda items into the open-air formula, as each has a specific intended use- a spring helps you gain height, a wheel moves objects, and a head targets enemies- but can be creatively applied to other, potentially unrelated scenarios. Whereas Breath of the Wild felt like a set of mechanics without any real structure to encourage you to get the most out of them (and that was a large part of its mass appeal, I get it) Tears comes with one built in. Whenever you're running or swimming or climbing a long distance without first constructing some kind of car or boat or hovercraft, you're losing. And while these vehicles could have just turned out to be another way to bypass Hyrule's rules, they're really the opposite, as Link never feels more at the mercy of his environment than when he's piloting one. Gliders have to be initially propelled in some fashion since they can't gain momentum from a sitting position, fans move your craft in circles instead of forward if placed at a slightly off angle, wheels get caught on awkward terrain, boats are in danger of sinking if their cargo isn't balanced correctly. Controlling a vehicle always means going toe-to-toe with the game's physics, and it's the simple fact that nothing seems to work perfectly that makes this game great. Ultrahand was a turn off at first because of how long it felt like it took to build anything, but, somehow, even this flaw turns into a strength. I often found myself getting impatient and slapping a vehicle together haphazardly, which tends to lead to the most entertaining results. The best parts of the open-air Zeldas are when a harebrained scheme somehow works (or fails in humorous fashion) and figuring out the nuances of how every device works by watching them move around in ways I didn't expect is some of the most pure fun I've had with a game in a long time. Likewise, it's no surprise that you can't purchase any specific device individually and instead have to work with what the gacha dispensaries provide you with, as it's really about making-do rather than having a clean solution for any particular problem. If Breath of the Wild was about giving you ways to manipulate your environment, Tears of the Kingdom is about giving you ways to be manipulated by your environment.

But, perhaps the bigger accomplishment here is that Tears somehow manages to justify reusing Breath of the Wild's map. Since the main theme this time around is efficient traversal, an entirely new Hyrule would have likely resulted in players neglecting vehicles to exhaustively explore each region first, whereas now you're already familiar with points of interest and the onus of enjoyment is shifted from the destination to the journey. And if you've forgotten where you should be going, the game makes sure to remind you, as the bubbulfrog and stable quests, which you'll want to activate ASAP, are located in Akkala and Hebra, two of the last areas I went to the first time I played Breath of the Wild, respectively. You're essentially nudged into doing a breadth-first search of the world instead of a depth-first one, and when your players are reaching the exterior of the map before the interior, you're free to fill that interior with... challenges! Despite my Breath of the Wild veteranship, my first dozen or so hours of Tears had me run up a tree to escape angry bokoblins, struggle against a stone talus in a cave because I was used to fighting them in open areas, and be genuinely perplexed on how to reach a floating shrine. Likewise, I actually felt like I had to prepare and come back to the siege on Lurelin Village, the Great Deku Tree quest, and that test-your-strength bell ringing minigame. It never gets especially difficult (not that I expected or even wanted it to) but there's clearly an effort to set up hurdles that players may not be able to jump on their first lap around the track. And while you could argue that these are simply iterative improvements, to me they're complimentary to the vehicle construction's philosophy of being restricted by the wild instead of empowered by it. Fuse does a good chunk of the heavy lifting here, and marks a shift away from pure sandbox and towards survival-sandbox, as all it really is is menu-free crafting. It's not only enjoyable on a base level, fostering experimentation for both useful and useless combinations to the same degree, but it also provides a sense of scarcity that wasn't really present in Breath of the Wild. Gems are no longer abstract materials that exist only to be sold or traded in exchange for armor, but real objects that have a real effect when fused. Drops from keese, chuchus, and moblins actually feel valuable. Elemental arrows aren't gifted via chests, but created on the fly depending on the situation. This time around, you scavenge with purpose. Out of bombs? Find a cave. Need stronger weapons? Kill stronger monsters. Want to upgrade your battery? Test your luck mining Zonaite in the depths. Revali's Gale exists in this game, though you don't perform it by waiting for a cooldown and then holding the jump button, instead by burning a pinecone using wood and flint that you had to harvest from somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, the presence of unlimited fast travel, universal menu use, and generous autosave means that this survivalist mindset isn't seen through to its fullest potential. It feels like a very Miyamotian design choice to subtract as little from a character's inherent moveset as possible in between games, so hopefully the next Zelda will star a new Link (on a new, more powerful console.) But one persistent ability stings more than the rest: the paraglider. Replacing it would've been easy- a shield fused with some kind of cloth could have been made to have the same effect, and I can only imagine how much more interesting this game would've gotten if descents actually took planning. But, even when you get to the point where nothing can realistically touch you, your other powers never stop feeling like tools and not abilities. There's a reason why this game's runes don't have cooldowns- all of them require external factors to actually be useful. Whereas Sheikah Slate bombs provided a consistent source of weaponless damage, stasis could be used on enemies directly, and cryonis, while requiring a body of water, always produced a static pillar indifferent to its source's movement, their Purah Pad equivalents call for more awareness. Ultrahand necessitates an understanding of how environmental building blocks could potentially fit together to achieve a specific goal, fuse relies on extrapolating an object's behavior and reasoning out as to how it would work when attached to a weapon or shield, and ascend extends your arsenal of means of creative traversal, asking you to survey the surroundings around a height that you want to reach without having to climb. Maybe I'm just lacking a certain creative ligament, but recall's main use for me was to retrieve devices that fell off of a cliff as I was trying to use them, which, to be fair, happens all the time, but it's still disappointing that there's not much to it outside of the puzzles designed around it. Even so, it doesn't break the throughline that happens to be my best guess as to why I enjoy messing around with the chemistry system in this game so much more than in Breath of the Wild: everything you're able to do here comes directly from the world itself.

And what a world it is! Caves were a no-brainer for a sequel, but their implementation here is fantastic. Add an underworld and all of a sudden your overworld doesn't feel bland anymore; constantly checking just around the corner for ways that natural features might open up or connect to others. Bubbulfrogs, at first, felt too carrot-on-a-stick-y to me, but the reward for collecting them is so insignificant that their main purpose instead becomes just to mark caves as fully explored on your map. Unless, of course, you go for all of them, which I personally have no desire to do. If you imagine a scale of collectables from shrines, which you're given enough tools to find all of without an egregious time commitment, to koroks, which you should be institutionalized if you even consider 100%ing, caves sit comfortably in the middle. Their quantity is limited to the point that they're all sufficiently detailed and memorable, but high enough that I feel like I could replay this game and still make significant new discoveries, which was very much not the case for my second run of Breath of the Wild. That sentiment also extends to the depths, which is the only location in either of these games where Link actually feels out of his element, and thus automatically the most enjoyable to explore. In the dark, surrounded by bizarre, hard-to-internalize geography, with tough enemies and an actually punishing status effect... or, what would be one if the game didn't chicken out and make gloom poisoning curable simply by going outside. Though, that's really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the not-so-invisible hand of modern Nintendo's design philosophy inevitably making its presence known. Every beach has a sail, every hill a sled, every sky island enough materials to get to the next without hitch. When vehicles are this fun to use by themselves, I don't mind all that much, though it does occasionally feel like I'm just doing something the game wants me to do instead of playing by my own rules. It bothers me more in shrines, which, unfortunately, took a massive hit in between games. I've always held the opinion that they don't have to contain amazing puzzles, but should instead serve to prod players towards ways of interacting with open-air mechanics that they might not have thought of themselves. Unfortunately, here, they're neither, being solvable about five seconds after you walk in the door, and teaching you things that you'd already known, or, even worse, wish you'd discovered yourself. I felt pretty damn clever the first time I fused a spring to my shield and surfed on it to gain height, but that feeling was diminished when I was given a pre-fused spring/shield after beating a combat shrine. There's enough going on in the overworld at this point that I'd honestly have been fine if shrines were done away with altogether, except for maybe those mini-Eventide immersive sim ones, which were great all the way through. The lost koroks and crystal missions (because, let's be real, they're the same thing) turn out to be better puzzles than anything inside a shrine without even needing a loading screen or a change of scenery. Didn't think it was possible, but the story is somehow also a downgrade. Breath of the Wild's memories meant that Zelda herself could be characterized in a variety of ways depending on which order you found them in. It didn't do much for me personally, but at least it was going for something. Tears's just feel like watching a series of cutscenes out of order, and by the time you've seen two or three of them you know exactly where the story's going, and also that it's godawful. I'm not sure if it's the dreadful voice acting, or just holdovers from Skyward Sword's writing staff, but it's bizarre to see a series struggle this hard with sentimentality when it used to come so naturally to it. Chibi Link waving bye to his grandma while leaving Outset Island makes me feel more than all of the cutscenes in both of these games do combined. Not that it actually matters, of course, until it starts affecting the gameplay. Locking you into scripted sequences for every Divine Beast was already an egregious clash against player freedom, but they at least made sense logistically. Link could easily reach Vah Medoh by himself if it was in this game, and you actually can get to the water temple (and possibly the others... I didn't bother to check) without completing the corresponding sidequest, only to be arbitrarily rejected from starting the dungeon. Considering the sages only grant you slightly better versions of things you can already do, going through the dungeons without unlocking any of them could've been an enjoyable challenge on subsequent playthroughs. Unfortunately, it's not the only aspect of the game left out of the player's hands.

Waypoints still have no place in a Zelda game. Sidequest lists still have no place in a Zelda game. Loading screen tips still have no place in a Zelda game. And don't get it twisted: this is my favorite game with "Zelda" in its title since '02, but it's still not a Zelda game. Breath of the Wild's marketing as a modern reimagining of Zelda 1 has always struck me as phony, because, aside from not being confined to the series's formula, they're not at all alike. That game, to me, is characterized less by unlimited freedom and more by the fact that you had to find everything yourself, whereas every point of interest in both of the open-air Zeldas is signposted to some degree. Even if you love these games, you have to admit that the appeal has shifted. It's not about exploring to learn more about the world anymore, it's about exploring to find unique scenarios. Aside from a certain way that the depths and overworld are connected (that took me an embarrassingly long time to put together) there's nothing to figure out here. I don't want Impa to tell me that geoglyphs should be viewed from the sky, I want to see them on the ground and logically reason that out for myself. Talking to villagers used to be one of my favorite parts of Zelda games, but now it's something that I actively avoid doing. But this general overhaul isn't my problem; my problem is that Nintendo thinks that no aspects of the previous games are worth carrying over. What if certain caves had Dark Souls-style illusory walls, and you could get the Lens of Truth at some point to see through them? What if there was one guardian left alive in the deepest wilds of Hyrule that you could just stumble upon? What if there was an especially difficult, especially complex shrine somewhere in the world that no NPC even hinted at? Why is there still no hookshot? It feels like Nintendo's terrified to implement anything unique that some players might miss, but the point of a world this vast should be to conceal secrets. I want to travel to a far-off outskirt of the map and find something that doesn't exist anywhere else. A Link to the Past gives me that feeling. The Wind Waker gives me that feeling. Neither of the open-air games do. The closest Tears comes is with the Misko treasures (which are much more fun if you haven't found the hints leading to them) and the costumes in the depths (which are much more fun if you haven't found the maps pointing to them.) And not because of the reward, but because they're housed in cave systems and defunct buildings that are architecturally distinct enough to feel memorable. Exploration in this game is far more varied than in Breath of the Wild, but this Hyrule still doesn't feel mysterious. I can't help my mind from drifting back to Rain World, which went the distance to fill every corner of its universe with unique entities that most players won't even see, let alone meaningfully interact with, part of the reason why it'll continue running laps around every other open world until the end of time. This game consistently delighted me, but it never enchanted me. We may never see a traditional Zelda again, and, if we don't, I'll genuinely feel like something is missing from the series (alongside an actual soundtrack.) If Tears of the Kingdom was, like, 20% more cryptic, I think it'd be my favorite game of all time, but, if I'm being honest with you, it comes pretty close anyway.

In many ways, I don't understand it. This is likely the longest review I've written on this site, but everything above is just an attempt at rationalization as to how this game was able to capture me for four months of nightly sessions when I got sick of Breath of the Wild about a third of the way in. I bounced between an eight and a nine throughout my playthrough, but I don't think I can earnestly not consider this game one of my favorites when it contains so many activities that I just love doing. I love exploring caves. I love trying new fuse combinations. I love picking up korok hitchhikers. I love gathering my party of sages. I love putting my map together in the depths. I love sailing to new sky islands. I love chucking shock fruits at a lizalfos standing in a knee-high pond until it dies. I love watching bots take out monster camps for me. I love using Sidon's ability and making my water warrior marbled gohma hammer do 200 damage. I love riding a Half-Life 2 airboat through flooded tunnels. I love perching a Zonai Cannon on top of a hill at just the right height to stunlock an ice talus. I love driving a monster truck around and sniping bokoblins with Yunobo. I love ascending to the top of mountains. It's not the risky endeavor I asked for back in 2020, and it's still far cry from Nintendo's best sequels- Majora's Mask, Yoshi's Island, and even Mario Sunshine- which may straight up piss off faithfuls of the original. I have a hard time imagining any fans of Breath of the Wild outright disliking this game, though it has succeeded in converting a skeptic in yours truly to the religion of open-air Zelda. It's nowhere near perfect, but perfection is overrated anyway.

Y'know Chrono Trigger? It's a true classic, but despite being a millennium-spanning, astoundingly scored, perfectly paced epic, it only contains a single line of dialog that I actually remember. There's a little girl standing in an item shop, who, when spoken to, simply exclaims: "Don't overdo it!"

In Earthbound, after Ness obtains the eight melodies, he's transported to Magicant, a realm constructed as a physical manifestation of his memory. This world isn't what you might think based on its premise. Instead of portraying flashbulb memories, the kind commonly believed to shape a person's psyche, the stuff in Magicant seems almost unimportant. We don't learn Ness's origin story, we learn about snowmen that he built and comic books that he read as a child. Magicant isn't filled with the memorable, but instead the arbitrary, a perfect encapsulation of the game it's contained in.

That's not to say Earthbound is forgettable in any capacity. For my money it's the single most enjoyable journey ever captured in a video game, but, amazingly, the sequence of events is hardly its most memorable aspect. Earthbound isn't one of my favorite games because of Buzz Buzz or the Runaway Five or Saturn Valley or Moonside or Dungeon Man or Giygas's incomprehensible attacks, but because of the stuff that happens in between. Video game comedic writing reached its pinnacle here, and yet the citizens of Eagleland hardly ever tell jokes. Instead, the game's humor primarily comes from unconventional word choice or sentence flow. Animals don't get defeated, they "become tame," enemies approach with their "cohorts," and instead of a game over, you "get your head handed to you." Crows are spiteful, moles play rough, flies are no-good, and mushrooms are ramblin' or even struttin'. A guy in the lobby of a Fourside skyscraper simply states "I'm an elite businessman who works in Mr. Monotoli's office" and it's somehow hilarious. Why would he tell me that? How is so so confident in assessing himself as elite? Wouldn't an elite businessman have anything better to do than stand around and talk to elementary schoolers? Earthbound is typically seen as a child's perspective of the adult world because of stuff like Onett's police force and the Happy-Happy cult, but I'd argue that this theme is more prevalent in its everyday text boxes. No matter how zany or off the cuff any line of dialogue is seemingly written, it's delivered in such a plain, matter-of-fact tone, like this is simply elite business as usual.

This juxtaposition of the absurd with the mundane is so integral to Earthbound that I'm genuinely baffled by those who complain about the game's habit of inconveniencing you. Actually, 'habit' is the wrong word here, because that implies it's not deliberate and that Earthbound doesn't take a great amount of pleasure in bringing itself to a screeching halt. In my Mother review I talked about that game's usage of practical jokes at the expense of the player, a concept that ends up being much more effective here, due to the increased scale. This time, it's established that you're the chosen one on a continent-spanning quest to eradicate the embodiment of evil from the universe, in other words, it's a typical JRPG. But, fans of typical JRPGs don't want to have to withdraw money from an ATM or rely on a deliveryman to store unwanted items. And for good reason, stuff like that would detract from the adventuring, the battling, the questing. Earthbound acknowledges this, and instead seems to question which side is more valuable, which side you're going to take home with you when all's said and done. What do you remember more? Actually fighting Master Belch, or having to stand still for three full minutes in order to get to him? Earthbound's soundtrack is, in my opinion, as essential as any in gaming, partly because of how much it embraces this theme. Hotel music that's eerie instead of welcoming. Desert music that's groovy instead of hostile. Christmastime music that's lonely instead of jolly. Maybe, just maybe, your own home sounds less like anyone else's and more like the overworld of your favorite Famicom game. What exactly DO we take away from our life experiences, anyway?

For having such a focus on inconvenience it's ironic that Earthbound features several quality of life elements that are still missing from modern JRPGs. Encounters that you'd be able to win in one turn are skipped from the overworld. Enemies avoid you once you've defeated the dungeon boss. Multiple normal battle themes. It doesn't feel like it should take an Orange Kid to figure this stuff out. Maybe an Apple Kid, but still. These improvements aren't the game's only twists on an established genre. Limited, character-specific inventories mean that you can't win battles just by hoarding a hundred potions and you're rewarded for taking the time to plan out who carries what. The rolling health bar creates legitimate panic moments where you're left scrambling through menus, trying to use Paula's dying breath wisely. Earthbound's battles are genuinely fun, but the game's sole blemish remains its inability to shake certain JRPG customs. There's too many abrupt difficulty spikes, too many obnoxious status conditions, too many painful dungeons. It breaks my heart, but I can't recommend the game to any and everyone like I can with a Chrono Trigger or with a Mother 3.

Earthbound has my favorite ending out of any, uh, thing ever. And as you might guess, this isn't because of Giygas, although trauma as the final boss of memory is particularly clever, but because of what transpires when he's been prayed away back to whatever dimension he came from. Any promise of a hero's welcome for saving the universe and stuff is put on hold while you're given your final task: walking home with Paula. Retracing your steps back to Twoson and then Onett and realizing that every single person along the way still has their own problems, their own stuff going on, their own lives outside of your little adventure, and the game's true focus becomes crystal clear. And then, Fuzzy Pickles. The cameraman is covertly Earthbound's biggest stroke of genius. Even if he wasn't reincorporated in any capacity, he wouldn't stick out. He'd just be another Mother-ism, a triviality that you may or may not find funny. But, as it stands, the reveal that his pictures decorate the end credits is the most vital part of the whole experience. For a game so insistent on questioning how and why we make memories, the realization that you've been doing it the entire time is the perfect conclusion. The importance of a good upbringing (i.e. a good MOTHER) has always been central to the series, but it's here where this thesis advances. If there's one thing to take away from Earthbound, it's that, while we do stand on the shoulders of giants, those giants may very well be a lot smaller than we realize.

Bottom line? It's the best one they is.

The story's honestly pretty inconsistent- certain quests are hallmarks of great worldbuilding and genuinely tough moral dilemmas, while others are forgettable, thinly contextualized busy work. However, what they all have in common is a set of mechanics that end up causing a pretty huge disconnect between the player and the main character. Geralt has to pay attention to environmental storytelling to figure out what exactly he's dealing with during each mission while I don't- I just have to hold "L," tap "A" when I'm next to something that's glowing red, and then listen to what Geralt tells me. Geralt has to evaluate whether or not he's currently strong enough to take on a particular contract while I can just look at what level the game says I should be at before I do it. Geralt has to strategize about the best way to prepare for each monster encounter while I just have to follow the instructions that pop up on my screen. In short, I'm not actually the witcher, I'm just watching him work, and this is a flaw that the game's top-notch presentation doesn't make up for. It's a game that doesn't have much room for player input in general, with the exception of its dialogue choices, which, to be fair, it excels at. The harshest insult that I can throw at The Witcher 3 is that it's basically a Telltale game where your choices actually matter, and there's far, far worse things for a triple-A title this monstrously large to be.

Chrono Trigger is a bad game to spiritually succeed- not because I consider it insurmountable, but because there's not really anything to succeed. Its greatness mostly stems from an intangible combination of structure, pacing, and presentation instead of any single concrete gameplay or narrative hook. From a game design standpoint, the lessons to take away from Chrono Trigger aren't exclusive to JRPGs, as evidenced by the fact that New Game Plus, as a concept, is now a mainstay across a wide range of genres. Fortunately, Sabotage has a good track record here, considering The Messenger was a Ninja Gaiden clone that played nothing at all like Ninja Gaiden, and this game similarly manages to avoid feeling derivative. Chrono Trigger's combat was fun but not particularly deep or complex, and instead focused on trying to make fights feel dynamic and fast-paced by expanding on Final Fantasy's ATB system, a feat that it accomplished better than most actual action RPGs from its era. Sea of Stars opts for a more standard turn-based approach, and borrows inspiration from Chrono Trigger's fluid character positioning, the Mario RPGs' action commands, and, against all odds, Octopath Traveler's lock/break system, and it actually ends up working out great! There was clearly real thought put into how all of these ideas fit together in ways that might not be obvious at first. For example, the Koopa shell special move from Mario & Luigi is repurposed here, but the fact that enemies aren't in static positions means that using it requires foresight about how long it'll take to hit each one in order for it to be most effective. Underlining these three core mechanics is the fact that health and mana pools are both small, but easily replenished. You die in three hits but are revived automatically after a few turns, regenerate magic on using normal attacks, and can swap out party members freely. It's a really unique combat system where you really feel like your decisions cause the flow of battle to turn on a dime. Missing a single action command can, and often does, mean that your opponent's turn isn't skipped, which means he hits and kills you, which means you lose. And so, with this solid foundation in place, Sea of Stars then expands on its gameplay throughout the course of its runtime by doing... absolutely nothing. There aren't any status effects, every piece of equipment just boosts one of your stats, and enemy variety is extremely low. The only two things you can do to your opponents during your turn is damage them or delay their turns, which means the gameplay plateaus in complexity once you get all your party members about halfway in. It's a bizarre, extreme example of constructing a genuinely compelling set of mechanics, and then missing the landing and letting your game slip into the doldrums anyway. But it's not like it tried and failed here: the game isn't boring because of balance issues or some other oversight, instead it feels like the dev team came up with the battle system and then immediately gave up. And, even more strangely, this sentiment feels like it applies to every other area. The combat is great mechanically but battles are still bland. The pixel art is outstanding but there's pretty much zero optional content or NPC flavor dialog, meaning that locations look pretty but have no texture. The music is solid but the story is barebones (mostly comprised of endless Proper Noun namedrops that I haven't been given reason to care about) and characters have no personality, so none of the narrative beats feel memorable or climactic. What makes this game so uniquely disappointing is that it seems like every aspect of it that Sabotage actually gave a shit about turned out great, but they just put in zero effort everywhere else. In hindsight, I regret calling Signalis "rudderless," because by copying an existing experience you're at least going for something. This game feels like a rough sketch of a JRPG with only a few portions colored in and no apparent plan to fully capture the genre's likeness. And, really, that's about as far from Chrono Trigger as you can get.

You're trying too hard, bro! More or less, the main reason as to why I'm generally disinterested in modern horror games, which tend to serve as vehicles for cryptic lore dumps for YouTube analysts to pore over rather than fright-enhanced decision making. I don't want mindfuckery, I want regular fuckery, something that I was hopeful would be present in this kind of return to form. This game was sold to me as the best of Resident Evil meets the best of Silent Hill, but, in reality, it's the worst of both: Resident Evil's cramped item management without any of the brilliant circular level design that makes Spencer Mansion thrilling to route through even after dozens of playthroughs, and Silent Hill's scary-because-it's-scary imagery without any of the dread that defines each and every one of Harry Mason's fog-enveloped footsteps. Instead, we've got jumpcuts to character closeups and spooky stanzas of poetry, pulsating masses of flesh on the ground, and handwritten notes conveniently censored at the most ominous places- surface-level stuff that makes horror games effective for people who don't understand what makes horror games effective. I'm not engaged enough to decipher your jumbled-up story, I'm not interested in your generic sci-fi setting, and I'm not even scared! But, maybe if I actually felt like the character I was playing as, I would be! Fast movement speed and wide hallways make enemies pitifully easy to juke, and thus not at all intimidating. Exploration isn't exciting or intriguing because of how straightforward it is on a grand scale. Plentiful items and infinite saves mean there's not any pressure on you even if you do wind up making a mistake somehow. I initially chalked this all up to misguided attempts at balance, but they get harder and harder to defend once you realize that all you're really doing is (often literally) opening up a locked door just to find a key for another locked door somewhere else on the map, which makes the experience feel more like a parody of classic survival horror games rather than an earnest attempt at recapturing the magic. I hardly took out any enemies, I didn't burn a single body, and, on several occasions, I killed myself on purpose because doing that was quicker than having to run back to the save room to retrieve the specific contextual item I needed, which is about as damning as you can get for this kind of game. The only strategy to pick up on is keeping nothing at all on your person in between storage box visits so that you can handle when the game inevitably dumps five key items on you in successive rooms. Mikami's rolling in his grave!

The lone bright spots are the traditional puzzles, which, although are few and far between, frequently nail the physical satisfaction of fiddling around with a piece of old, analog equipment that you're half familiar with and half in the dark on. If this game had understood its strengths better, it would've been a fully-fledged point-and-click or even a Myst-style free-roaming puzzler. The actual survivor horror feels tacked on, as though it's obligated to be this kind of game because it's attempting to tell a story in the same emotional vein as the Silent Hill series and the player needs to have something to do before being shown the next deep, thought-provoking cutscene. I can't even say that it understands the classics from a visual standpoint, forgoing the fixed-camera perspective that gives each of Resident Evil's individual rooms a distinct cinematographic personality and instead opting for a generic top-down approach that makes every location feel the same. Though, that's not to say the art direction itself is bad. In fact, it's phenomenal, and easily the standout of the game's features, but it doesn't make up for how bland everything else is. At some point, this one demoted itself in my eyes from 'mostly boring but worth playing just for the aesthetic' to 'downright painful.' Maybe it was after the game pretentiously transitioned into a first-person walking simulator one too many times. Or, more likely, it was when some of the small details- red-light save screens, items conveniently located right on top of their respective instruction manuals, and even the sound effect of equipping your pistol- started feeling less like homages and more like creative crutches, indicators of an entirely rudderless experience. I really feel terrible for ragging on something that's evidently a passion project and extremely competent from a technical standpoint, and I sincerely hope the devs keep at it. But, man. I wish I got anything at all out of this. The one game I've played that's managed get this done, I mean, spiritually succeeding an era/genre rather than a specific series by remixing several blatant inspirations so proficiently that it ends up feeling like something entirely new, is still Shovel Knight, but I'm not sure the world's ready for that conversation quite yet...

The plot's nonsensical, the horror's infrequent, the campiness is unbearable at times, the puzzles are out of place, the atmosphere doesn't compare to its predecessors', and, above all, it's a complete betrayal of the grounded nature that made classic Resident Evil so great. In one fell swoop it utterly decimated the chances of fixed-camera survival horror ever being a big deal again, but, damn, it was worth it. And if you look closely, Resident Evil is still there. Awkwardly moving backwards to make space between yourself and a slow-moving enemy. Desperately scavenging for health and ammo. Internally debating whether or not to use a green herb now or risk trying to find a red one later. Layered on top of these preexisting niceties is perhaps the greatest work of classical game design of all time. The ultra simple shooting mechanics expertly intersect with a constant clip of gameplay twists, some more noticeable than others. There's the phenomenal setpieces, of which I don't think there's a single misfire, but what's possibly more impressive is the less obvious stuff. The variance in terrain- some portions open, some portions closed off, some with a focus on verticality, some with crevices to hide in and debris that obstructs your vision, others where you have no choice but to face your fears head on. Despite the blistering pace, every single area feels memorable, like it has its own tangible identity... not simply as battle arenas, which is a trap that subpar shooters end up falling into, but as real locations, places you've truly passed through on your mission to rescue the president's daughter. Enemy types aid this by weaving in and out of your story, reappearing just when you've forgotten they exist, this time with a new weapon, or with a helmet on, or paired with a more threatening group. Skilled players will line up a whole hoard of enemies to hit them all with a single kick, shoot their projectiles out of the air instead of dodging them, and rely on using the knife just to preserve that tiny bit of ammunition. But, most importantly, they'll adapt. Cultists chatter and chainsaws whir in the distance. It's a ten-out-of-ten game, it has to be. So forgive me if I don't have the heart to rate it that way.

It's amazing how much you can get done with just a little bit of unconventionality, isn't it? Killer7 dares to take the mere act of walking from one place to another and render it unrecognizable. What's usually a two-stick process is now mapped almost entirely to the "A" button, denying the player control over both the camera and the path your character takes. This game's tutorial mission scrambled my brain- not because walking is at all complicated, but because it's such a radically different approach from everything else I've played that I couldn't comprehend it at first. Hardly ever being responsible for the direction that your Smith goes in makes it that much more difficult to create a mental map of the area, even when frequently consulting the actual in-game map. Trying to decipher spacial layouts in Killer7 is as tricky as trying to decipher the game's overarching plot, and I often found myself stopping to take aim when there weren't any enemies around just for a more orthodox camera perspective. And, clearly, this was a deliberate trap. In the collective mind of the Smith syndicate, the world only makes sense when viewed through the scope of a rifle, a detail that's communicated entirely through gameplay and embellished through audiovisuals. The simple geometry and basic color gradients of every environment seem to mock you, claiming that they're not as complicated as you think they are, and the haunting laugh of every Heaven's Smile adds that extra bit of disorientation. Given how effective this one facet of the game is, then, it's such a shame that the rest of it is just so conventional. I shoot enemies in their glowing weak spots. I solve puzzles that I'm given the answers to. I'm never tasked with managing the mutual vitality of the Killer7, nor do I even choose my Smith based on the situation that I find myself in. Conforming to the standard structure of ending most levels with a boss battle is the most poorly considered of these decisions, as the lack of any mobility whatsoever means they're all simultaneously painful yet far too easy. The one exception is Andrei Ulmeyda, who represents an exciting chase through an arena that was actually built to take advantage of how moving around works. Ulmeyda Intercity, in general, seems to have been lifted from a much more cleverly designed game, mainly due to how it reevaluates how horror should operate in the context of Killer7. It's pretty unconventional for a game's scariest level to be its least confined, isn't it? Unfortunately, this game isn't all that weird, despite how desperately it wants to convince you otherwise. Samantha, for instance, abstractly transitions between various erotic fantasies and/or stages of adolescence whenever you see her, and only allows you to save your game when she's an adult-slash-French-maid. Leaving such a vital part of the game to an unreliable character is a stroke of genius, especially when you consider how much of a relief finally reaching a safe zone in a stressful game can end up being, but it's all rendered pointless by the fact that the map tells you where you can and can't save, allowing you to ignore Samantha's whims entirely while planning your path. But, I suspect, fans of this game will consider any non-thematic analysis of Killer7 to be equally pointless. I won't pretend to be smart enough to fully get what Suda is ultimately grasping at, though I will say that fate and control are far and away some of the least interesting themes for video games to cover, even back in 2005. Nor will I pretend to care all that much- thematically rich or not, the game's still boring, and in my eyes, anything that demands a deeper look is obligated to contain more replay value, not less. I've almost certainly only been made dumber by the amount of times I've heard Leon S. Kennedy's corny one-liners, but I'm not sure if I'll ever return to this (according to Suda acolytes) incredibly intellectually rewarding work. For better or worse, I no longer get that DS feeling...

It's been a while since I've written a truly blasphemous review on this site, so I'll be blunt. I think Mother 3 is fundamentally the least interesting game of the trilogy, which breaks my heart more than any part of its story. Opening your inventory and seeing that key items are separate from regular ones is all it takes to realize that you're now playing through the type of RPG that Mother 1 & 2 were parodying. I've long theorized that nearly every game that claims to be inspired by Earthbound is actually inspired by Mother 3. Humor that stems from out-of-place characters or moments and occasionally produces laughs, but never ends up being broadly funny in the sense that Earthbound is. An unwillingness to inconvenience the player so as to not detract from its grand message, which never ends up feeling as worthwhile as Earthbound's ruminations on memory, connections, and life experiences. I won't deny that Mother 3's story is unique or well put together, or that it ends on the perfect note, but I will say that I'm rarely ever moved by traditional narratives in video games. The deliberate non-stories of the first two games, in my opinion, are what made the series special. It's admirable that Mother 3 rejects so much of its predecessor, considering Earthbound was pretty much a remake of Mother, but I question what it takes and what it leaves behind. Ditching the formula means that the sequence of events didn't have to revolve around collecting MacGuffins, again. Six fully playable characters means that they could've been grouped up into unique combinations throughout the course of the game, instead we spend the bulk of it with the same four. Only having two PSI users means the rest of the party could've grown in interesting ways through battle, instead Duster and Boney never gain any abilities besides the hardly ever useful ones they start with. The game's one mechanical bullseye is the music battle system, which is nothing short of miraculous. It combines with the rolling health meter to add another layer of decision making, it lets you blast through early encounters on a replay, and it cleverly ties difficulty into presentation. Structure-wise, the buildup to New Poke City remains the game's highlight, partially because of the final characterization of the man himself. As Lucas's thematic parallel, Pokey is unwilling to let go of either his childhood or his meta-status as the guy from Earthbound. I can take a hint, Itoi, but, what am I supposed to say? Without the help of any dead moms, fascist regimes, or unstoppable forces of industrialization, I get more emotional at Earthbound's credits than I do at Mother 3's. And that was sort of the point, wasn't it?

If you're as disillusioned with the state of video game comedic writing as I am, then I can't recommend Moon enough. The Undertale inspiration is beyond apparent, but, thankfully, Toby Fox-esque dialogue isn't. Instead, it's written more like a golden age point-and-click, in which every character subscribes to the same sort of backwards logic that you have to make sense of in order to progress. This degree of committal, to me, is what separates retro quirk from modern indie quirk, which typically means presenting the player with a series of jokey, half-sarcastic statements that more often than not clash with the setting rather than characterizing it. And the setting's really everything in Moon, which tasks some kid (who I named "Sirloin," for some reason) with collecting love from the citizens of Love-de-Gard through various means. The more love you get, the further you can venture outside without having to sleep, which gives you more leeway into tracking the villagers' day/night and weekly schedules and allows you to reach new locations on your own accord. The same giddy feeling of planning out how to be in the right place at the right time that would later make Majora's Mask great is present here, but it's also amplified by the fact that you have to earn the ability to even be there. You're not guaranteed three full days, you have to work your way up to that point first. Moon's other stroke of genius comes with it being solely composed of sidequests that all reward you the same thing. Hit a wall in a typical point-and-click and you're done progressing until you eventually flail towards the correct answer, but getting stuck in Moon simply means you get to pursue a different avenue to obtain love. Your character's slow movement speed also gives you plenty of opportunity to consider possible solutions, more or less diffusing the feeling of wasting your time that usually comes packaged with any contextual puzzle game. The cherry here is the game's story, which you really have to stumble upon all by yourself. It's all about collecting love, until it isn't, of course, and it's easy to see how railroading could defeat the entire purpose.

Where Moon succeeds on a mechanical front, however, it often disappoints in the satiric sense... or, at least, that's what the first few hours led me to believe. It starts off as a surface-level subversion of JRPG tropes, positing a protagonist that's really a bully and monsters that are misunderstood animals, but, eventually, the hero fades away from the story, allowing Sirloin to create one of his own. Moon isn't simply a base parody or some milquetoast statement on love being the most important power of all, but a past tense coming-of-age story, a portrait of a very specific type of innocence loss using the framework of video games. We've all been there. Believing that L was real, that the truck in Vermillion City was blocking something important, that Sephiroth could be recruited into your party, or that Sonic was an unlockable character in Melee. The idea that games extended beyond the walls of your TV, housing unexplainable worlds where anything and everything could happen. Judging by Minecraft's Herobrine, this is a phenomenon that transcends both generations and philosophies of game design. But, at some point, we lost the ability, or perhaps the willingness, to reenter this state of mind. Play enough games and you realize there's a limit to what they're capable of, that there are certain rules that all developers more or less follow. This is what the fake/real dichotomy on the cover art refers to, and it's also something that's baked into how Moon works at its core. Learn enough about this world and you begin to find out that there's more to it than meets the eye, doing this also gives you the ability (or, the desire) to spend more time here. Spend too much time here and the seams start to show. Routines become too predictable, dialogue repeats itself, and the solipsistic nature of video games fully sets in. What adds to this is how consistently it subtly hints towards the boundary between fake and real. Take, for instance, this line. One on side of the spectrum, it serves to characterize Minister's anality (think "always watching, Wazowski") but on the other, it's a nod towards his ultrasimple AI. After all, any game trying to create the illusion of real characters would certainly avoid directly stating that doing X will always cause someone to do Y. Moon's puzzles also frequently point towards this separation. In gamespeak, someone telling you to look at a painting means that the player is supposed to physically study its graphical asset for clues, but in Moon, you actually have to literally position your character in front of it and wait for a few moments. This one briefly stumped me- I had to come back to it after awhile to figure it out, in other words, I was effectively punished for being on the "fake" end of the spectrum. I could harp on how Moon could've given you a few more reasons to hang out in town, or how the clock stops feeling like it matters too soon, or how it contains the most banal fishing minigame yet conceived by man, but it's hard to argue against how elegantly it ties its themes into how it plays. There's a reason why the tone's so somber, and why so many of the characters are trying to reignite some long lost spark. The Sirloin that your Gramby knew and loved is gone, replaced by a ghost wearing his clothes, while she lies in bed, Claire de Lune softly playing in the background. Once that dragon's slain, there's no going back.

Stop browsing Backloggd, and go to bed!