Sights & Sounds
- Even though it's been about 4 years since I played the prequel (on Switch), I didn't notice much graphical improvement in SMB4. The parks, skyboxes, and fans all look comparable to my eyes. Reflections and lighting are maybe a little nicer. The players themselves do look a touch less cartoonish, but still quite cartoonish
- I assume this change was to accommodate the addition of actual former MLB players to the game and make them more identifiable, but I don't know if that was truly necessary. If you put a hat and cleats on an overweight Dominican man with an overgroomed beard and stick him in a baseball sim, I'll probably put two and two together and figure out it's David Ortiz. It doesn't have to be all that faithful to reality. For the less popular retirees, this effort feels even more wasted. I wouldn't be able to identify JJ Putz or Brad Radke if they were standing in front of me in full uniform
- As you navigate the menus (something you'll do a lot of if you like custom teams and/or leagues), you'll often have "Super Mega Radio" droning in the background. While some of the DJ's quips and stories are funny the first time you hear them, you'll quickly grow tired of the repetition. What's worse is the music, though. It's a collection of what I assume are songs performed by studio artists recorded for the sole purpose of this game. Most of them are awful. While studio artists are often very talented musicians, it's evident why they usually don't write music themselves
- The sound design is still great. The screaming whistle of the ball as it slices into an outfield gap will always sound amazing, and the rocket launch sound when you truly obliterate a baseball consistently manages to activate every dopamine channel in my brain
- I do wish the triggers for the crowd jeers were a little better. It's funny to hear a fan yelling "Put a coat on that hanger!" after you get punished for mislocating a slider. It is, however, weird to hear the same quip on any high breaking ball when the batter swings and misses

Story & Vibes
- It's an arcade baseball sim. There's not a story. Throw and hit the ball
- Being a very casual game with a difficulty you can fine-tune at any moment, the vibes are relaxed and even a little comforting if you're a baseball fan

Playability & Replayability
- It's all the same stuff you saw in SMB3, but with the addition of former major leaguers. There's a mode dedicated to the teams rostered by real players, but that appears to be the only addition. I only booted it up long enough to throw a 100mph fastball at Keith Hernandez's head in order to fulfill a long-abiding dream
- I stuck with franchise mode for this review because it's the most in-depth, and I did see a few improvements over SMB3. The chemistry system allows you enhance player traits by maximizing their positives and minimizing their negatives if you have enough players with the same personality. The shuffle draft option helps make the first franchise mode season a bit better as you don't have to make it through the playoffs to hit free agency. Additionally, removing much of the RNG from the re-signing process has made it much easier to construct a consistent team. In all, these QoL enhancements were appreciated
- The rest of the game, though? It's all basically the same as its prequel. It's still fun to blast 500-foot nukes. It's still fun to obliterate pitchers by planting a comebacker in their dome or mushroom garden. It's still fun to make a logo that looks like a penis going into a butt and plastering it on all your players' hats and jerseys. But I could have had all that same fun in the previous game, too
- The arcadey nature of the game makes replayability appealing. It's pretty easy to just boot it up, play a game in 20-30 minutes, and go do something else. Hell, you can even suspend the game if you want to come back later

Overall Impressions & Performance
- While the QoL improvements are nice, I just can't help but feel that this could have been DLC. It's a single new mode, a graphical update, and some franchise mode improvements baked into the old forumla and released for full price. Unless you're planning on sinking time into your custom team, I don't think I could construct a convincing argument to move you towards purchasing this game
- As an American, I'm in love with American things like Hollywood, frying foods that shouldn't be fried, and baseball. But even to me, bringing in former MLB players feels like a waste of time, money, and effort. Simply constructing one team of legends (like Babe Ruth or Willie Mays) would have been a sufficient addition. Placido Polanco, LaTroy Hawkins, and Gene Tenace don't really move the needle on my "experience" meter
- Thankfully, connecting your Steam and EA accounts will automatically log you in, preventing you from having to otherwise mess with EA's login process. Performance-wise, the game ran quite well with no stuttering or crashes

Final Verdict
5/10. If you have SMB3 already and don't care about custom teams or franchise mode, you can safely leave this game unbought. You already own 95% of SMB4. Maybe consider upgrading if the franchise mode enhancements seem appealing, but otherwise, this is merely a more expensive version of a 9/10 arcade baseball sim

Sights & Sounds
- Presentation is where the meat and potatoes of this game lie. GNOG is an audiovisual feast
- Each level depicts a puzzle resembling a robotic face that opens up as you solve its puzzles. Each of these is vibrantly colored and full of character. They actually reminded me of the unfolding Micro Machine and Mighty Max playsets from my youth (or the Littlest Pet Shops and Polly Pockets my sisters played with)
- I can only imagine how nice this would be to play in VR, but I'm sadly lacking a headset. There's a certain "tactile" feel to the puzzles that would have been enhanced in a VR setting
- The soundtrack is amazing. I wound up flipping on noise cancelling and boosting the volume so I could enjoy the tunes a bit better. The tracks start out subdued at the start of each level, but solving the level's central puzzle will net you a (heavily synthesized) vocal performance from the puzzle head and send the song into its crescendo. This was a nice reward that actually had me looking forward to solving each puzzle
- The sound effects are also superb, with every one of your actions triggering some bit of delicious ear candy

Story & Vibes
- Not sure that a narrative is the point here. It seems like you're maybe helping the character from the intro puzzle either pack or unpack, but it's not clear
- The vibes are consistently playful and exuberant as your eyes and ears experience what amounts 90-minute DMT trip (sans the seemingly life-altering revelation that turns out to be nothing important when you sober up)

Playability & Replayability
- Gameplay in GNOG consists of unlocking and completing 10 different "puzzle heads" that center around a central theme or concept. For example, one level sees you fixing a stereo by tuning and aligning it components and setting levels abstractly. Another sees you guiding a burglar through a home, stealing things from each room along the way
- Bookending these levels are the intro to start the game and a redux/epilogue of that same level at the very end
- None of the puzzles are tremendously difficult, and I was able to trial-and-error myself through all of them. Some of the achievements are well hidden, though, or may center around optional actions you may not try. A guide may be necessary to figure those out if you can't piece them together from their descriptions
- Having 100%ed the game, I think I've seen enough that I don't feel a replay is necessary

Overall Impressions & Performance
- While GNOG is a beautiful piece of interactive art, those searching for satisfying or tricky puzzles may leave a little disappointed. Any difficulty arising frome these levels comes from the ambiguity in how to approach them rather than any logical difficulty. For example, it's fairly obvious from the opening of the candy shop level that you're meant to make candy and sell it to customers. Unfortunately, I spent about 10 minutes stuck trying to sell to the customers before realizing that I needed to stock the candy behind the counter first
- To put it briefly, GNOG is a wonderful and impressive art piece, but it is only a mediocre puzzle game
- I can only comment on the non-VR version, but it ran extremely well on the Steam Deck. I really need to start playing these visually-focused games on a larger screen...

Final Verdict
- 6/10. While not bad by any stretch, GNOG simply won't satisfy those looking for brain-teasing puzzles. It will, however, make you curious about ayahuasca. Maybe look for a sale if you're interested in this trippy audiovisual toy

If you've read this far, feel free to check out my ongoing Steam Game Giveaway list here on Backloggd

The review is below, but when you're done reading, check out my Perpetual Steam Game Giveaway list and think about picking up a free game. Just added a few more

Sights & Sounds
- Peglin is one of those cases in which I shied away from the promotional art but really liked the in-game visuals. Lots of charming little pixel art characters populate the forests, caves, and castles that dot the land. The Peglins (the little green goblin guys) are particularly cute with their floppy ears and little bags full of orbs
- The music is excellent. I thought that this was the type of game that I would mute while playing and instead listen to an album or a podcast, but I'm glad I tuned in to the game. The regular "fights" are backed by what sounds like great music from a platformer, while the boss battle themes sound like the corresponding songs from a JRPG
- The sound design was also quite good. In a game with extremely repetitive actions (all you do is aim and fire orbs), poor choices in sound effects have the potential to render a game too annoying to play. It's an odd compliment, but Peggle did a good job of choosing sounds for the constant reload, launch, ricochet, and explosion sound effects

Story & Vibes
- Is there a story in this game? I'm genuinely asking. If little goblins are going around attacking forest creatures and well-populated castles, they have to have some motivation, right? Not really
- There's tiny crumbs of world-building occasionally, but beyond that, this is a roguelike that doesn't appear to even bother with a framing story. Some may think a small narrative would be unnecessary in a game like this, but it's still a little disappointing string a few successful runs together and still learn nothing about why you're doing what you're doing
- The vibes are extremely chill since the gameplay isn't very active and the soundtrack is good. I could see this becoming a rainy day game. With so much of the game owing to luck (no one can really predict where the ball will go after the second ricochet or so), there's fun little successes and disappointments to keep things interesting, too

Playability & Replayability
- What's in a name? Well, in this case, a reference to the legendary Popcap game Peggle portmanteau'd together with the word "goblin". That second part's irrelevant to the gameplay, but the first part clues you into the core mechanic. Peglin is Peggle, but with a tasty roguelike RPG zing to it
- Like many roguelikes that take a page from Slay the Spire, Peglin maps are comprised of sets of branching one-way "trees" that intersect at symbols representing battles, slightly harder battles, shops, treasure rooms, and mystery spots. Regardless of the choices you make, however, all paths converge on the boss (picked from a small pool of them, it seems) you must defeat to progress to the next level
- Like Peggle, aiming the ball while trying to hit multipliers and simultaneously clearing as many pegs as possible is still your main objective, but instead of points, you do damage, and multipliers are crits. How much damage you do is highly dependent on the interactions between the special orbs and items you buy or otherwise find on your run. You can also level up your orbs to do more damage and add effects to them
- Failure is part of the game in roguelikes, but I'm having a hard time seeing the reward cycle in Peglin. There's no metaprogression, and with only 3 classes to unlock at this point, there's not a lot to try to chase down
- I often found it hard to get a good run going in Peglin. Sure, some synergies are extremely powerful, but the RNG deciding how where, how, and why certain items and orbs show up means that you'll often wind up with runs that go nowhere. My typical experience was finding a few pieces of a cohesive build early, then never seeing a relevant item or orb again. I'd then try to switch over to a backup plan and die before I could get my damage high enough
- Those rare runs were everything seems to go right, though? They're a good time. For example, I had a run with incredibly high DoT, a large number of crit pegs, and the ability to pierce an additional enemy with each crit. Most fights ended in a couple turns
- The replayability is a mixed bag. As much as I felt motivated to chase down those fun runs, they were unfortunately rare. And with no metaprogression and everything already unlocked, they kinda felt like a waste of time
- There is a challenge mode called Cruciball, but I haven't given it a try yet. Maybe when I make more items available in it (done by beating a run with that item first), I'll give it a try

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I really wanted to like this game more than I wound up enjoying it. It's very fun when things are going well, and I love the core gameplay loop. But a roguelike really needs to give you some reason to keep coming back
- Despite my complaints, I still wound up with an overall positive impression and think that it's a game worth playing. It's fun to buildcraft and strategize in Peglin, and the core pachinko gameplay is addictive in its randomness. I know the game is still in early access, so a lot could change, but I hope effort is put into trying to hook players rather than trying add more items or orbs. I think that would just compound my issues with the game
- This is an excellent Steam Deck title. I can easily see myself wanting to boot this up while traveling

Final Verdict
- 7/10. [insert overdone joke about sexual act here]