MERCURY STEAM HQ, 2015:

“Alright team, time to plan this Metroid II remake. And I want to say up front: there’s no bad ideas in brainstorming! So, what‘s on your mind?”

“Hmm…well first, how about we make the game look like dogshit? Just real gross. Muddy colors, weird blurry lighting and totally indistinct area themes. I want the player to feel totally lost in an endless maze of poop caves. And while we’re at it, since past Metroid games did such a good job immersing the player in their worlds, what if for this one we took the opposite approach. Shoot for a really unconvincing 2.5D aesthetic with incredibly blocky level design, that way the player is constantly reminded they’re playing a game. Like, the monochrome Gameboy original should feel more immersive than this.”

“That’s brilliant, Dave. Sarah, you had your hand up?”

“Yeah well I was just thinking, what if we made the level design like, way worse? Metroid II split its map into these open, easy-to-digest chunks that have aged pretty well all things considered. So why not throw all that bullshit in the trash and replace it for something really cramped and labyrinthine? Just really arduous to navigate, make exploring feel like a hassle. Maybe instead of interesting power-up gating we also could just fill the map with power bomb tiles, so exploration just becomes a dull game of spamming the scan pulse every few steps.”

“I like where your head is at, Sarah. Who else?”

“Well while we’re talking about the original, I’ve been looking at some reviews and it seems like a common complaint with that game was that the Metroid boss fights got kind of monotonous after a while. So I was thinking—and hear me out on this one—what if we made each Metroid encounter take like twice as long? And not because it’s any more engaging or anything, just way more tedious. Like, half of their new attacks make them invincible so most of the fight is just running around wasting missiles while you wait for an opening. And then make the player do that 50 times. Maybe instead of having them ambush you in interesting locations we could also just place each one in a big game-y boss arena and give the player a grating beeping notification every time they’re near one. You know, that way they never feel any sense of surprise or any illusion this is a believable fragile ecosystem and not a checklist of Goombas for them to stop. It’s not like that’s thematically important to Metroid II or anything.”

“Goddamnit Brian, you’re a loose cannon, but maybe that’s just exactly we need for this project. What next?”

“Well, grinding for health and ammo was always really annoying in previous games. So let’s exhaust that by really spreading out the recharge stations. That way if you need a refill after a boss you have to run around the entire area. Oh, and then let’s make enemies not always respawn when you leave a room, so when you inevitably do have to farm it’s super inconvenient. Fuck it, let’s even add a third type of meter while we’re at it to triple the grinding!”

“I’m gonna be honest Larry I didn’t 100% make out what you said because I was doing coke off Brian’s desk, but fuckin sure dude put it in the game!”

“Hey boss, I was just replaying the GBA games and noticed how fluid their combat felt. So I was thinking for our game we could add this melee counter move to really fuck up the pacing. That way instead of being able to quickly move and shoot your way through enemies, every single goddamn one requires you to stop in your tracks and wait for their attack animation to start so you can do your stupid fucking parry move. Y’know, that way the movement and exploration never get too exciting. Wouldn’t want that in a Metroid game! Then let’s make every enemy have a ton of health when you try to kill them without the parry so players are locked into having to play this way. And—what the hell—let’s not improve enemy variety at all, so you’re stuck seeing the same 20 or so guys without any change in strategy the whole time.”

“Leslie, you son of a bitch. I think you’ve just cracked this thing wide open. In fact, I’m giving you a raise and some of this desk cocaine.”

Did not complete

The most striking thing about AM2R is certainly the story behind it. There’s something uniquely compelling about a passion project 10 years in the making, tragically cut down before it’s prime that’s clearly resonated with a lot of people, including myself. The most striking thing about actually playing AM2R is just how damn polished it all feels. The pixel art is stunning, it runs like a dream, and the smoothness of the controls rivals even Zero Mission. The quality of the world design in particular really grabbed me, each area has such a distinct and well-conceived theme with some of the more creatives puzzles I’ve seen from this series. It’s borrowing the gated funnel structure of Metroid II, but the addition of a map (and notably, no map stations) makes exploration feel incredibly fulfilling and the most player-driven it’s been since… I dunno, Super? It’s clear the team working on this were incredibly devoted to making the best possible version of this game they could and I think they succeeded. I don’t play a ton of fan games myself, but the ones I have played have never been even close to this level. This is on par with any official Metroid release, and in some areas even surpasses them.

Where I’m less sold on Another Metroid 2 Remake is, funny enough, as a remake of Metroid II. Which is to be expected, honestly. I don’t think you actually can remake Metroid II without fundamentally ruining most of the things that make it interesting. The obscure graphics, the awkward music, the monotonous structure, the claustrophobic screen crunch, all that Gameboy jank was such an integral part of Metroid II’s deliberately uncomfortable atmosphere. Any additional layer of polish you add on top of it only serves to strip it of its identity. This isn’t to say AM2R doesn’t have an identity if it’s own—it has loads!—but it’s not the same identity, it’s not even in the same ballpark. Most of the time, I forgot I was even playing a remake of Metroid II at all.

Which sounds really negative but honestly I… don’t really care. Much like Zero Mission, what we have here is such a thrilling, enjoyable experience on its own that I’m more than willing to put asides any shortcomings it has as a recreation of a game that I’ve already played and still have full access to. Judged on its own merits, what we have here is a Metroid that feels great to control, offers a brilliantly thought-out and realized world, and adds in a wealth of new ideas I haven’t seen before. I can’t really ask for more than that. AM2R is a blast, and absolutely deserves a spot on the shelf with all the other Metroids—and not too far from the top of the pile either. This is the real deal.

Oh yeah and fuck Nintendo lmao

Recently bought a 2Ds and was struck with the sudden, insatiable urge to play some Pokémon, so this is what I’ve been up to for the past 2 weeks. I have A Lot of grievances with how this franchise has handled itself in the jump to 3D (I know, shocker) but for my money this is probably the best of the post-B2W2 outings. At least, I’m assuming it is, I still haven’t played Scarlet and Violet because I refuse to learn what “terrastilizing” is. ORAS isn’t without its problems of course—the cutscenes and general handholding are as overbearing as ever, and there’s some pretty egregious difficulty pacing issues. But the structure and general aesthetics of Hoenn are just so many leaps and bounds ahead of anything else this series has put out since XY first drunkenly stumbled onto shelves that it still manages to squeak by as a pretty likable Pokémon game. It’s kind of a testament to how fundamentally decent a lot of Gen 6’s features actually were—movement feels great, super training and the new EXP share provide nice if messy quality of life features, and I always forget just how much I adore fairy types. When you put that engine in a game with actual level design, it’s a surprisingly good time. Go figure! Megas are still stupid as fuck but ehh whatever, I can’t die on every hill. Pretty chill game to nuzlocke too, for what it’s worth. Just try not to lose half your team to Wally like I did. Shoutout to Clucky Balboa the Blaziken—he’s a real one.

Coming off AC7, I went into this game with very middling expectations which were quickly blown out of the water.
PW just absolutely oozes passion and feels about as close as a fan-game can get to the 'real thing', so you can imagine my surprise when the credits roll and seeing the dev team was literally three guys and a dream.
If you're a flight-action fan, you know we don't get to be picky, so breathe a sigh of relief that there are fans out there keeping the genre afloat and crafting completely unnecessary tunnel-runs.
Plus, because this is a small indie project, they can throw in cheeky shit like a genuine Pearl Harbor bombing mission and anime mission intro easter-eggs.

A really loving fan successor to Ace Combat, it’s really good! At its best it looks, sounds and plays exactly like a hypothetical Ace Combat 8, with some pretty good ideas of its own like multiple weapon modules and greater air target variety with the airships. In particular I loved the AOA limiter, a lot more intuitive and free than the PSMs of AC7, and insanely fun. Boss fights are also pretty creative here with their railguns, which are a much needed complication from the standard dogfight. The music is also great. A lot of the time you completely forget that this is an indie game, which is a sign of how competent the execution is.

It has some limitations compared to AC, however. Mission variety is not nearly as good as AC5 or 7, with this feeling like a spiritual sibling to AC6 with its grand and expansive missions that largely just have you blowing up either air or ground targets. Tastes differ but in my opinion variety is king in these kinds of games, and some curveballs like AC7s stealth-spotlight mission or AC5s undercover camera mission would have been welcome.

The story feels like a very conscious tribute to AC0 but it’s unfortunately much weaker. The Federation’s characterisation is weaker than Belka and Crimson 1 doesn’t even compare to Pixy’s level of character arc. Crimson 1 in particular felt like a big misstep, the climactic final battle and emotional farewell to him feeling completely out of nowhere given his 5-10 minute total screen time.

Two glimmers of greater things are Prez and Conquest mode. If the fanbase’s fixation with Prez proves anything it's that these games (AC included) could really benefit from some elaborated character interaction. The fact that this entire character is locked behind 2-seater planes is a laudable commitment to realism but it also feels a bit wasteful. Similarly, Conquest mode makes me imagine a potentially better version of itself, with AC7s plane-building mechanic built in and a lot of extra unique scenarios, dilemmas and decisions that would make each run feel more unique and like a full-fledged roguelike. Regardless, it's fun and keeps me booting up the game every now and then for a run in a way that AC doesn’t really do.

If I ever bought a VR headset, this would probably be my #1 stop. Doing those AOA manoeuvres in VR would either be the greatest thing ever or make me instantly throw up, maybe both.

A rare breed of maximally-political video game that is seemingly unashamed to throw around terms like 'traditional conservative' and literally laugh in the face of anarchists, even if it isn't entirely sure of what these words mean or imply. Essentially the Metal Gear Solid 4 of the Ace Combat franchise - throws ideas up into the air and then scrambles desperately to pick them up whenever they create conveniently-epic but emotionally/politically-incoherent "moments", perhaps best embodied in a late-game cutscene where two preteen girls grab a glock and shoot up a hard drive of flight data based on a king-turned-pilot in order to preserve the dignified human memory of a monarch who ran bombing missions during the Strangereal World's equivalent of the Kosovo War. Moreso than other Ace Combats, 7 is adamant in siloing fighter jets away from the universe they exist in, licensing and lionising pilots as apolitical titans of the sky who are simply following vocational orders from higher powers - something the godless unmanned drones could never understand.

Another king has more or less sewn up this game's ideology, so I won't bore you with The Implications (if any) of what this game's story chaotically tries to talk about. Mission 16: Last Hope - wherein a global communications outage renders your IFF useless during a mission to save a defecting general - is a real tragedy, though: a mission that perfectly captures the tone of the franchise's overarching "we're all blind pawns on the world's stage" themes in its gameplay, but is then almost immediately nullified by an announcement an hour later that you've unlocked some United States Air Force emblems to plaster all over your fictional fighter jets. No other real-world nation is represented in the game, and coupled with the game's recent Top Gun: Maverick DLC, it's hard not to think the franchise has set a hard course in the opposite direction of highly-conscious predecessors like Electrosphere and The Belkan War. The great thing about these games, at least, is that they have played exactly the same for over 20 years - you can pick and choose the ones that suit your preferred interpretations of strangereality and be none the worse off for it.

When THATCHER'S TECHBASE accidentally landed me in a bunch of newspapers and magazines last year, one question came up in every interview - "Do you think politics belong in video games?". The smart-arse non-committal wise-guy pseud-response I gave people went something along the lines of: well, games are art and art is personal and the personal is a product of the environment and environment is a product of political decisions and therefore every video game is political on some level, blah blah blah, etc. etc. etc. A nice vague answer the stands safely beyond reproach, a politican's response to a question about politics. Ace Combat 7 kinda throws that question into inverted flight by showing us what happens when affairs of state are injected directly into the Unreal Engine, bypassing environmental and personal factors to create pure political product. Sure, Call of Duty and its alikes have pulled this trick before, but they didn't lay down explicit dogma; it was all just set-dressing to make the murder more satisfyingly "real"istic. Project Aces have actually dared to pull up a pulpit here, and throughout the game's latter half I desperately waited for a series-trademark rug-pull moment where we'd learn it was all just a lesson in the blinding effects of radical-technocratic nationalism or whatever political theory the game was mulling over in that particular moment... but it never came. At least the game ends with Reiko Nagase descending from Heaven to tell you how sick your post-stall maneuvers were. That's something I can really believe in.

an excellent collection of 'moments' (if you ignore that its pastiche/regressive nostalgia, they're all ripped off whole-sale from past entries in the series, which uniformly executed them better) but a legitimate trainwreck of a narrative built on one flimsy justification after the other. i unfortunately lost a lot of my goodwill and charitability towards the game in the last quarter of this meandering, directionless, and deeply hypocritical/ill-considered work. would rather be playing this over 5 but it's not saying much. ive said it before but AC's base of mechanics are in my wheelhouse entirely, and without very much in the way of improvement or alterations to the formula i'll end up looking to other factors in assessing any given title here but man this was such an exhausting disappointment im not even sure i want to unpack it, i'm not sure it's worth my time. a mess in every single way.

okay maybe there's one thing i want to address. there's a bit in ace combat zero that i love; a faceless and nameless belkan squadron intercepts your sortie. at first, the player is led to believe they are yet more threats to quarrel with, but the squadron instead begins attacking the enemies you had already begun duelling - belkan bombers who intended to bring a fiery end to the war through means of nuclear self-immolation. in keeping with ac0s themes, how you engage with this neutral squadron is up to you - and their names are never revealed, ultimately buried by nuclear ash in the annals of history. but they were lone actors in a campaign marked by a quite complicated and nuanced war effort, singularly opposed to a crime against humanity at the hands of their nationalist, authoritarian generals.

ac7 ends up making the argument that belkans are innately evil warmongers who just cant stop engaging in conspiracy and stirring international conflict as revenge for the past lol. you can see how the person behind ac5 spearheaded this games script. any game that earnestly tries to make the argument that drone warfare is bad but fighter jets are cool and good should probably be laughed at. doubly so if the protagonist fights for the in-universe analogue for america against these drones, which are manufactured by an antagonistic state for which drone warfare would only be beneficial in reducing the casualties of war. triply so if the in-universe america analogue was repeatedly shown in the campaign to be obscenely incompetent and corrupt, forcing convicts to be conscript forces, and this goes unquestioned. or if a late-game mission involved you and your band of unlikeable cronies raiding and indiscriminately tearing through an independent separatist state filled with refugees to 'stock up on supplies' with no oversight from higher authorities, and this was the narratives stab at posturing moral ambiguity. but yeah man drones are bad

i dunno man AC3 and 0 are proof you can have it all in this series. cohesive and fantastically considered storytelling, tight core gameplay that has been tweaked to serve the titles themes, immense replayability…so much of that is neutered here, and even if i only craved the simplicity of arcade sensibilities i could still turn to ace combat 2 or x instead. understandable how AC7 managed to find a new audience, but an exasperating disappointment for series veterans.