there's a lot of different things i want to touch on for this and feel it very important to hit them all in the face of what is otherwise a frigid cold response from my friends in contrast of the critically warm reception mario odyssey has received otherwise. let's just jump right into it one piece at a time and bounce around like a plumber's boot off a hat phantom.

first off, i really loved the game. i loved the experience, and i had a tremendous time sifting through each world's nooks and crannies all the way up to the climactic end. each world feels so creative and bustling with energy and soul that mario games have lacked for, frankly, a decade, his previous entries in 3d on handheld and wii u feeling sucked dry of anything interesting. i loved the various enemy times and playing as them, i loved solving all of the double puzzles locked behind pipes and doors.

when it comes to moon collecting, the most important thing to keep in mind is how odyssey is neither aligned with 64/sunshine nor galaxy/everything else. each world is nonlinear but, rather than individual missions, the worlds are sandboxes outfitted with buried gems for mario to hunt. i like this. i like challenging the boundaries of level design and movement mechanics to reach interesting spots, and i like being rewarded for that. in odyssey, it's a moon or coins, but in duke nukem 3d, it was a message from the level master telling me i "shouldn't be here". and that was enough. i guess it explains why i loved botw, too and, like botw, you are not required to find every single moon on earth to beat the game. (i did anyway, because it was fun!) the only real offenders to this are the consistently boring moons--oh great, time to follow the dog around aimlessly. oh great, time to chase a bird around aimlessly. oh great, time to roll a rock around--you get what i'm saying? i did love tracking down captain toad, though...

i really enjoy physically playing as mario, too. no game from nintendo will ever feel as tight as 64 again, but it's a good compromise over the dreadfulness of his recent 3d games--even galaxy. the dive in particular is a lot of great fun. the worst aspects come crawling out occasionally, though--mario is SO damn slow, especially if you've mastered how to fly through games like sunshine. nintendo's insistence on motion controls is just ass, too. it's assy.

anyway, that's enough praise. this isn't a five star review.

outright, the soundtrack is garbage. absolute, pure fucking garbage, consistently letting me down over and over so many times i can't help but wonder of koji kondo's begging to be released. the best hit to come out of this mess of production is the surfer rock steam gardens theme, oddly complementing an atmosphere unlike surfer rock whatsoever with an incredibly catchy bassline and other organ wobbling. the rest is terrible. cascade kingdom is actually outright offensive, this generic galaxy ost leftover that's SO DUDE EPIC WOAH nonstop over and fucking over for however long you spent in that kingdom. this isn't terrible in galaxy itself when you're in and out of a level pretty quick, but when a game is designed around keeping the player busy in one locale for an extended period, god fucking damn does it start getting grating. another absolute shitter is a theme used much later in a lava area. it sounds, shit you not, like someone just searched "epic mario theme metal cover" on youtube. it's laughably cheesy buttrock. i'm not done, one more--there's a theme at the end that's apeing anime EDs in such a bizarrely american way that the whole thing falls apart and feels ridiculous. why wasn't jump up super--nevermind, it's all stupid.

other niggling things. like i mentioned, repeat objectives are ass. i don't want to break a rock on every world. i don't want to walk your dog aimlessly. this is boring. the bosses are also all really, really easy, and it's unfortunate that the "true" versions of them is locked away for post-game. i think the most frustrating aspect of it all is this treatment of the player like they're braindead--there are CONSTANTLY signs teaching game mechanics thrown around everywhere from the beginning (understandable) to the very end (what the fuck?) and when you read them, their "tip" is stapled onto your screen until you play out your monkey role for peanuts. it gets better. every time you transition to a new world, you have to mash through your partner explaining, for the tenth time, a game mechanic that's very, very difficult, such as "jumping" or "running" or even "jumping and running". it's such a joke.

all of that criticism to say--mario odyssey is far from perfect. all the more to say--it's still ridiculously, ridiculously fun, constantly inventive and creative with itself, and an overall joy to play through and experience. it helped me through my encounter with covid, and then some.

well first off, and this one's on me, i made the mistake of stopping and resuming months in-between with an inventory full of items i had no idea what on earth to do with. how many of these keys have i already used? the game certainly wasn't going to tell me. after stumbling around aimlessly for 5 minutes i decided to just throw in the towel and go ahead and write out the thoughts that created the months long gap in the first place.

i do not understand resident evil 2 whatsoever. it seems to be a game about making very little sound, given the presence of enemies drawn towards loudness and the domino effect of one loud disruption awakening several enemies around. so the goal is to not shoot your gun, basically. okay, and i got through the west wing not doing so at all, bobbing and weaving inbetween these undead assholes in narrow corridors and taking a few punches along the way. but hey, no big deal, i've got a ton of ammo now. like, a ton ton ammo. should i even have this much? well, why would i spend even a single bullet if it means causing the aforementioned dominos to fall and make things even harder on myself? but now i'm brought to an even bigger problem: why is the gun here at all if i'm incentivized not to shoot it? is this why gunless horror like amnesia exists?

i'm viewing resident evil 2 in the same lense as i view dishonored, and in that latter game, you have a bunch of crazy ass killing tools at your disposal while the game actively incentivizes you NOT to use them. sounds familiar, right? but the difference between this and re2 is that it's still fun to sneaky sneaky stealth rat your way around guard patrols and navigate levels, while in this game it's excruciating to fumble around tight hallways and screw around with this shephard simulator. that's actually exactly how i felt when circling the shotgun room--leading sheep. and i bet that, in the same way dishonored's stealth appeals to me, re2's sheep herding appeals to others.

but again, not to me. i'll stick with re4.

what an unfortunate release date hylics has: october 2nd 2015, just seventeen days after the release of undertale. it is an unfortunate competition they two unwittingly found themselves competing in, though only one even aware of it at all. the public can really only handle one type of hyper fixation on a release of its genre/medium at a time as far as discussions go, and undertale was a ridiculously long lasting one--hylics didn't stand a chance. yet it is interesting to see both in the context of what toby fox has previously said on his making of undertale: he thought of it simply being a Cool Little Indie RPG destined to obscurity to all but Cool Little Indie RPG Playing People. this didn't happen, and it was instead hylics' fate to sit on the same trophy shelf as barkley: gaiden and space funeral.

but none of this is a bad thing as long as every devs' bills were paid. as far as art goes, there's a space for both. hylics certainly wields a unique aesthetic unlike just about anything else bar the few other claymation focused video games. it's that clay aesthetic meshed with the mspaint binary brush that creates very interesting, captivating environments and designs. the world only gets weirder with those that inhabit it, both you, spontaneous bathtaker and couch sitter that you are, and the enemies, npcs, and companions scattered around. you look weird--they talk weird. the sort of incomprehensible waxing of incomprehensible poetry happens quite a lot throughout hylics, and it serves to complement the times in which the game loosens its shoulders a bit and plays a joke completely straight.

hylics has a good sense of humor, and it's got an even better combat system. just that it works, really, and is more mechanically stimulating than space-bar-to-win off or the forgettably standard system of aforementioned space funeral, or the complete absence of any system at all like a la ib. you've got an array of spells that can be expanded on the more and more you... watch television, and there's a number of strategies you can pursue to take on enemies (or i assume, anyway. there's a lot of spells. i just kind of used the sleep one a lot). the actual pacing from enemies beating you down to you beating them down to then a good middle ground of eventual but distinguished progress until finally becoming a beat down champion is... really, really good! so good that the game doesn't drag its heels even once, the moment to moment happening at just the pace you want it at.

that said, not all of my thoughts are glowing. while the writing is a balancing act of mostly gibberish and occasional surrealistic zings, it's also all not really too interesting. there's never any sense of stakes or even a "thing" that hooks you. the cast of hylics sort of do things arbitrarily until it's the end. maybe that fits the overall feel of the world, but it's also kind of boring in itself and leaves you feeling nothing much post ending. i don't know, it was just a general sort of "well, i guess that's it then." compare and contrast with, say, barkley and the absolutely insane buildup to its conclusion, and said conclusion being delivered via pure chaos. meanwhile, hylics is... again, just arbitrarily over. perhaps the most offensive part of the game is its real lack of character from the characters! as in, no one in your party says a damn thing once they join your crew. actually, there's one moment very early on in which a character DOES... and then never again. that sucks, man. paper mario: ttyd had this shit figured out. barkley had it figured out. final fantasy games older than any of these had it figured out, jesus. have them talk.

hylics is definitely captivating besides the missteps in writing. my eyes glazed over at the top steam review going "lololol drugs" because hylics is genuinely just bursting with creativity of its own right and really doesn't deserve to be dude weeded. it's smartly designed, appropriately paced, and you feel like you got something cool out of it even if the finish line only comes and goes.

good lord, did they fire their writer after the initial game's launch? i bring this up because i pulled up my old review for the seal the deal dlc and found that i held the exact same sentiment, and now i'm scared that the original game is actually just as bad in that department. what on earth? why is nearly every line that comes out of every npcs' mouth some boring, self aware comment? hilarious only to time travelers from 2014 who unfortunately did not set their calculations correctly landing in this dump of a decade. when it's not meta pun haha funny, it's just... nothing. they don't say anything funny or interesting; just nothing.

"it's a 3d platformer, are you playing for the dialogue?"

of course no one's playing a collecathon for enriching writing, but then this begs the question: why is it even there at all, then? how about just have them fucking gagged? the cat models certainly look visually appealing, at least.

and they and a select few posters (and some stickers--most won't age well at all. a few have already spoiled) are the only visually appealing aspects here in this clustered mess of saturated colors mixed with black. black and grey. for as vibrant and noisy as this dlc's stage is, you'd think you'd spend a lot less time staring at black corridors and black floors and black walls. that, and trains: you look at a lot of trains.

god, it's just not fun to navigate the city, either. call it "open world" but it's no more that than any fucking super mario sunshine level--except those are actually much more fun to play around in considering you generally have a better idea of where to go and what to even do there while a hat in time is content to rely on either its press-lb-to-find-next-objective hat or--frankly--the incredibly insulting help kiosk that offers the player an assist mode under the guise of accessibility. oh blow me, you designed a sandbox with windows xp era mspaint color palletes and, like, bear traps and you have the gall to--oh, nevermind.

what else? god, the dlc loves reusing parts of itself over and over and over again. there's all these merchants scattered around selling five things that have you just sitting there waiting for the purchase animation to finish--gets real old when you're just buying food for 10 hatkid bucks. there's this long tunnel where you have to bob and weave in between trains and i swear to god i think they make you trudge through there like four different times (and two of them failed to spawn any trains at all until i was halfway through when suddenly they'd all just burst out from the woodwork as if i triggered some tripwire).

anyway, it's a dlc about jumping on trains and staring at walls. very creative. i suppose when you stop hard crutching all of your level and character designs off of established gamecube games, you dry the well faster than you realize.

let's be straight forward. pistol whip is incredibly fun. reaching for a common vr cliche, you do feel like a genuine badass as you frantically point in all directions to clear your screen of well dressed adversaries. the obvious analogue is john wick, something pistol whip's achievements are more than happy to endorse, but it definitely feels the same. gameplay's solid and frantic and sweaty and exciting, some levels genuinely leaving me on my back. i always keep coming back for more gunning--more than i can say for beat saber.

let's hit the critiques. the music sucks--absolutely. pistol whip prides itself on hard hitting electro, but its selection seems to stem but from the worst of generic american EDM producers in a way that makes me frown at the idea of replaying most of these horrid levels. and believe me, i love electronic music--i cut my teeth on justice and sebastian and soulwax and jackson and--very few songs are emblematic of these, instead quite generic and obnoxiously drop heavy. there are a couple of really solid songs... that's it. a couple. an additional critique, and quite minor, is that a lot of the level design blends together. i swear to god, i've seen the same default_town_square setting in four different songs, and it gets old. i'd appreciate some variety.

bottom line--it's definitely fun to play. i just wish the music were better.

the 'abandoned' status isn't quite accurate--i'm pretty sure i did absolutely everything possible in this hollow retreading of hoenn years ago when i was a child and, indeed, had it set to 'mastered' but i give up on this recent replay. pokemon diamond (and pearl, assumedly) is honest to god one of the most boring rpgs i've played. worse, i remember feeling this way as a kid after following the hypetrain for months on months before release, stalking serebii for scraps of information and discussing the impending release with my online friends at the time, only to end up with a game that felt like one i had already played before: pokemon ruby.

i mean, is it doing much else? it's got snow. that's about it. night time. uhh. a physical special split. the little things are indeed little because, overall, it is a mess of uninteresting environments pitting you against trainers with one type of mon and bad guys that use creatures from the same pool of, like, five. and you know what? i probably shouldn't replay pokemon ruby because i bet it's just like that, too. but then, it was novel, and i bet for people who play diamond first, it's novel here, too.

i don't know, these fucking games don't do much. you catch pokemon, you fight everyone you see, your creatures become too strong and unstoppable until the very end when suddenly the elite four is about twenty flights above you. and i just do not have the patience to grind my way through it. maybe if the writing was interesting or funny or curious or anything other than--i get it. this is designed to be a child's literal first jrpg. pokemon ruby was literally my first jrpg. but god is it bland. god, and isn't the dialga reveal bland, too. now that's one thing pokemon ruby performed better, i'd say.

music's good. pixel art as far as pokemon is concerned: very good! pixel art as far as tile sets are concerned: very bland! and samey, and whatever else. i don't know, i felt exhausted playing this and that goes double for writing.

a definitive vr experience and one of the best games out there for it, but that doesnt absolve it of some of its issues (which is understandable--it is an early access title after all). combat ranges from either feeling excellent and extremely responsive to weird, floaty, and weak, and it all depends on what weapon you use. daggers, short swords, shields, hatchets--anything that's not too big works well. you stab, you swing, you slice, and it all has impact and visceral. in contrast, long swords, warhammers, claymores--these feel like garbage. they don't really SWING like you expect them to, and it ends up feeling floaty and weird. if you pretend the heavier side of weapons have a heavy feeling to them, they definitely work better, but not great. the warhammer in general just ends up doing things you don't expect it to, and not doing things you do expect. the spear sucks at stabbing particularly, but it's actually really fun to use as a two handed staff instead. archery is neat, but the limited arrows is kind of garbage and collecting more off the battlefield sucks, too. you can mod that out, but you really shouldn't have to.

anyway, your experience will vary, but it's a great feeling game at its core--it needs to be, considering there's no story or progression or anything else. you get gameplay, and it's gameplay for the pure sake of it, and it feels damn cool. my favorite and personal recommendation is to use dual hatchets and just rip and tear.

for reference, this was on the oculus rift s. i wonder how some of these weapons feel on the index.

ohhhhhh i get it now. "git gud" means grind souls for leveling or just stop fighting a boss and do something else so you can come back a few hours later and mindlessly wallop it without competition. story telling is nice and, bonus, thematically on point with the gameplay considering they're both as obtuse as possibly allowed. art direction's nice, especially when i have to turn off every light in the house just to see where i'm going in certain areas since miyazaki and co. believe eye strain to be a worthy opponent for gamers everywhere. music's gre--actually, is there music in this game? i wouldn't know considering my seven hours were spent in near silence and i'm pretty sure i didn't accidentally mute the thing. anyway, i'm sure dark souls, like many open world rpgs, is just amazing if you literally have no other funnel for your time and you get a huge kick out of replaying entire drawn out sections repeatedly just for the chance, the mere opportunity, to maybe get a hit in on whatever boss you're totally not killing in the next two hours. it's kind of like "getting good" at an instrument or program but the only thing you have to show for it is steam play time and std signs beginners will ensnare themselves on that you laid in the beginning area.

asshurt aside, i am genuinely glad a game like this has resonated with so many people but it's absolutely never going to resonate with me. a stupid cooperative system, tedious death design, and a massive japanese hard-on for trial and error smothers the fun i initially had and renders this game less an interesting rpg and more a higher budget I Wanna Be The Guy.