Superliminal is a physics-based puzzle game with a lot of unique and surprising mechanics that I’ve never experienced in anything else I’ve played before. However, in some ways, it feels more like a tech demo than a game. It’s a hodgepodge of interesting ideas that don’t really make a coherent experience. I feel like there was a lot of potential for Superliminal to be something more impressive than it currently is. Upon completing it, it fails to leave much of an impact, despite clearly attempting to do so.

Writing about how this game’s mechanics work is a huge pain because they’re really difficult to put into words. Essentially, the game is about utilizing your visual perspective to manipulate objects and the environment to solve puzzles. For example, one of the earliest things you can do in the game is increase or decrease the size of objects by moving them closer or farther away from you. You can then use those objects as platforms or move them over walls. This is just one of the many perspective-based mechanics that the game utilizes. These mechanics are very cool when experiencing them for the first time. I definitely said “wow” and “woah” out loud as I experimented and learned about how they worked as well as what I could do with them. The problem is that as the game goes on, these mechanics are constantly discarded without ever being expanded upon. As a result, nothing really leaves a lasting impression in this game. I feel like I’m at a funhouse at an amusement park when I play Superliminal, constantly switching from one neat looking attraction to the other.

The game does have a story, but it doesn’t go anywhere or have anything really interesting to say. Its key message falls flat because it’s meant to coincide with the developers’ assumed difficulty of the game. The thing is, the game isn’t really hard, and it’s super short. As a result, the core theme of the story just feels like preachy rhetoric. It comes off as desperately wanting to leave some sort of emotional impact on the player, but its attempts to do so just don’t really pan out. There are sections of the game that have some darker narrative implications and the game does a great job at setting up a tense atmosphere during these sections, to the point where they border on horror. But these sections never go anywhere beyond presenting new mechanics, and as a result, they’re discarded and abandoned alongside them.

Superliminal just feels like a presentation of neat ideas and that’s about it. Since it doesn’t really push its mechanics beyond just figuring out how they work, nothing really sticks with you after having played it. This combined with its low difficulty and short playtime causes it to feel like a game that you just quickly move on from. It isn’t memorable beyond the novelty of its mechanics. It’s a decent way to kill two hours, and that’s pretty much the extent of what I can say about it.

While in the middle of my Cult of the Lamb playthrough, my power went out for 4 hours. In that time, I had nothing to do except go on my phone but eventually it died. I remembered my 3DS was fully charged and so I decided to look through my DS/3DS games to see if I can be productive and replay something I hadn't in a while. Decided on the original New Super Mario Bros, since I hadn't played the series in years. After playing through the first world, my power came back on not long after. Decided to continue replaying this even with the power back on so here we are.

The New Super Mario Bros games were not games I ever truly loved. Yes, by the time 2 and U came out, the series became super stale. But even with DS and Wii, I never found them amazing at all. Replaying DS, this seems to still be true for me. In fact, this may be my least favorite of the bunch, at least next to 2 for several different reasons. Even despite that however, it's still a fun time overall and worth coming back to for a certain addition I'll talk about later.

First thing you'll notice when playing the game, would be its graphics. Personally, I always thought the NSMB games had a fine enough artstyle tho I much prefer how the sprite-based games looked in the past. DS though is sadly the ugliest in the series now. It was certainly a marvel back then but nowadays, just looks kinda ugly a lot of the time compared to the other titles.

Level design-wise, the game has plenty of levels that actually are pretty memorable. The sewers level, the giant wiggler level, the pipe maze level, the fucking brutal 8-1 level with the birds. I wish more of the levels were memorable like these, since a large chunk can be forgettable but I was surprised just how many I ended up remembering. This game also added the star coin collectable and honestly, they can be a tremendous pain in this game. They don't hide them behind invisible walls like future game but some of them require a powerup from other levels or toad houses and it can be frustrating. Same with the secret exits (which came back from Mario World). Like a third of those require the aforementioned outside powerup and they're a pain. I do recommend going for 100% tho cuz once you beat the game, you can actually buy bottom screen skins with any star coins you have and I never knew this and it's awesome. Such a great reward for going out of your way to get them.

One more aspect of the gameplay I wanted to get into were the powerups. 80% of the game you'll be seeing the fire flower which is a good powerup of course. The other 20%, you'll see the three new ones (and the classic star I guess) and I gotta say they're not that great. The mega mushroom is a great concept and is fun to use but is barely in any levels naturally. The mini mushroom is also not used that much and I honestly never liked much just because it's so floaty. And the shell is just obnoxious since you start moving on your own the moment you hit top speed and you have to manually stop to get out of your shell. I'm sure it's super fun when speed running but alas, it just annoyed me more than anything. This is another thing I think future games did better, especially WIi, that one has a great selection of powerups.

I really don't have much to say about the soundtrack. It's alright at best I think and it doesn't help the 1-1 theme gets reused in Wii. I did actually like the map theme for world 7 though, something about that feels so nostalgic. This game is somewhat nostalgic to me since I remember seeing a classmate play this on field trip bus ride when I was 8 and thinking it looked so cool. Never ended up playing the main campaign until after I played the other 3 NSMB games but my memory of that bus ride is engrained in my memory, and part of me thinks that classmate was on world 7 that day which might explain why the song feels so nostalgic. Either way, besides that one song I really like, never cared for the game's ost sadly.

This is all fine and dandy, but the real reason I think someone should come back to this one is its multiplayer modes. Minigames are a blast to play, even if most of them are ported straight from 64 DS, but there are a couple new ones which is nice. I probably played these more than the actual game back in the day. The Mario vs Luigi mode was also a lot of fun back in the day too. The goal was to get the most stars and you could steal them from the opposite Mario brother. Was just really fun constantly screwing the other person over. Though I guess since (most of) the minigames are in 64 DS and future games had multiplayer in it's campaigns, these aren't amazing reasons to come back to NSMB DS specifically, but it's still a nice little package of multiplayer goodness overall.

Like I said, was never a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, and while this still rings true...I'd say this was still a fun time overall. Would be fun to replay them all but I'd have to spread them out considering how samey they are lol.

Full Moon Full Life

94 hours lead to this moment of re-experiencing that final 1 hour of me just non-stop crying especially in the last 15 minutes of the game. This game specifically means a lot to me and it getting this beautiful remake made with love means a lot to my heart.

Replaying this reminded me of this of how much of its characters and themes resonate with me and I still think about it to this day even though it's been years since I've played the original. It almost felt like a whole different experience, knowing what was going to happen, being older now playing this with a different mindset in my current life and still it has me thinking about it to this day especially playing this remake. I knew what was going to be happening towards the end of the game, but I still broke down in tears.

Even after finishing this game 2 hours ago, writing this while my mind is still fresh off it is just insane, it's so difficult to describe how much I love this specific game in the series so much. Even being older now experiencing this, there’s a lot going in my head on what I’m thinking about on persona 3, that makes me feel like I’m playing it for the first time again, going through all these emotions and the journey of this game all over again. Even after finishing writing this review that helps me spread out my thoughts, I will still be thinking about this game because of how much it has affected me and because of how much I love it. There is just so much to talk about from the beginning months to the end game months, the social links you do every time and how it corresponds with the story overtime and the characters joining SEES, etc. Aigis arc throughout this whole game and experiencing it again, this whole story arc in general. Getting to talk about Aigis and think about her even more would distract me for hours on end because of how much I love her. Aigis is one of my favorite characters ever and is my whole heart. Being able to have so much self-growth, to grow beyond her own insecurities and failures, to be able to start living life.

This game just speaks to you on everything, the relationships you make through life, the hardships you go through, the mental thought process on the complexity of life and much more represented through its themes and characters. Death is always present in our life that happens and can be without warning and not just that but our own personal commitment to our own life. We all deal with it but it's different in how we all respond to it and how it affects our lives. Being able to look forward and to keep going despite hardships and whatever we are going through in life with all our different situations.

The ending scene they remade in reload was much more intimate, affectionate and very emotional. I loved every second of it and cried my heart out. I fucking love this game man.

"Not everything needs to be for some greater purpose. Just caring about someone can be enough. That's all we need to give our lives meaning..."

Memories Of You