It recently dawned upon me that Teslagrad 2 came out about a week ago, but then I noticed that the main character, Lumina, was actually one of the starting characters from World to the West, a mostly forgotten title that was dubbed "a standalone followup of Teslagrad." I find this description to be rather misleading despite the relationship, because I don't think the two play or feel similarly at all. The original Teslagrad was a fairly compact and straightforward 2D metroidvania platformer; sure, it wasn't anything groundbreaking at the time and some of the boss fights were annoying, but it knew exactly what it wanted to be and accomplished just that in its short runtime. World to the West on the other hand, is much more ambitious, focusing on the exploration of a sprawling map in a connected top-down overworld (think: 2D Zelda dungeoneering set in a faraway landscape), but with its own twist of simultaneously utilizing four different protagonists to thoroughly comb the different environments and save the world from imminent destruction. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a glaring fundamental issue: at no point does your gang of four ever feel like a cohesive unit.

Every character essentially acts on their own; they have their own separate health gauge (with any health augmentations only applying to the character that collects said powerup), they all have their own save data of collected totems that can be used as fast travel/checkpoint poles, and you can only control one character at a single time. To switch between characters, you must backtrack to any totem and switch-off at those points to other characters which may be located anywhere across the map depending on where you left them beforehand. The result is that World to the West feels less like a Cookie & Cream like, which requires simultaneous juggling of multiple entities on the same screen to clear paths, and instead functionally resembles Donkey Kong 64 and its respective character-swap system.

It's a real shame, because on paper, it's actually pretty fun controlling each individual protagonist. Your four different characters all have different abilities and physiques to take advantage of varying scenarios across the map. Lumina the Teslamancer can quickly blink through bars/over gaps and power switches, Knaus the orphan can tunnel under hazards/walls and ice skate across water, Miss Teri the explorer has a scarf to grapple across ledges and can mind-control local wildlife to do her bidding, and Lord Clonington the pugilist can shatter barriers and quickly scale walls. In practice, however, the circumstances often interfere with your degree of control; every environment should be navigable by each protagonist, but that doesn't mean that every protagonist can reach that destination within each particular sector of the map alone. Oftentimes, the different paths that the protagonists must take are greatly stratified to the point where individual characters must backtrack several rooms down to access a completely different path for the same destination. The resources for all characters are too spread apart here for everyone to fully function as expected on each screen, and this flaw is further exacerbated because many of the necessary paths are gated by character specific obstacles that require you to travel out of your way to steer other protagonists that already have their pathing figured out elsewhere. The map is also quite bare and doesn't show any symbols to indicate specific protagonist-coded obstacles, so you may want to keep a notepad on hand so you don't forget about what lies in the way and can clear the necessary obstacles as soon as possible.

To sum this issue up, obstacles are often strewn about "unrelated" paths that block off other characters, and are not telegraphed in advanced or even marked upon discovery, which means that you have to further backtrack to totem poles to switch characters. That's of course, assuming that you've already made it to said totem pole with the necessary character to break down said barrier, because totem pole progress is character-specific, so chances are, you'll have to figure out another path just to get that character to the necessary checkpoint to begin the process anew. It's this vicious cycle of having to constantly check the scant map and slowly moving characters back and forth between new checkpoints that you know exist but don't have saved (because the story chapters just focus on one or two characters moving around specific sections of the map at a time), and then ferrying across every single character to slowly inch across the overworld once you figure out your new destination or need to collect another battery (15 required to unlock a mandatory gate) to progress the plot. Do you enjoy playing the same map four different times just to get your whole party from point A to point B? That's what this felt like the entire time.

The payoff just isn't there to justify this padding. Outside of the scripted story events where a couple characters interact at any given time to unlock new abilities, there's never any sense of camaraderie between your four protagonists; you can talk to any unused character while they're resting at a specific totem pole, and that's all the extra dialogue you will ever get. Since characters generally end up traveling their own paths between each destination (with the common exception of removing barriers for other characters, one step at a time), there's never any sense of cooperation outside of those scant moments and it feels less like Dungeon Duos and more like Octopath Traveler. The pacing feels like the final nail in the coffin here, with the first eight chapters just focusing on one or two specific characters at a time and making sure the player understands the abilities of each character; you don't really get let loose until chapter nine, which ends up taking over 50% of the run time since it then becomes mandatory to more thoroughly explore the overworld with the full party available to reach the final chapter. It's over in a flash once you've reached this point of no return; the final boss is fairly straightforward (and I would argue, easier than many of the story fights earlier on) and the dialogue-free ending cutscene afterwards leaves a lot to be desired.

Needless to say, I could not be bothered to 100% this game. There's a nice little backstory regarding the land's lore revealed from collecting all the different batteries, but I was absolutely exhausted from having to play the same areas over and over again within such a short time span and my goodwill only eroded every time I had to backtrack further to find alternative paths of travel. It definitely doesn't help that a lot of the unlockable treasure chests scattered throughout just provide coin that as far as I can tell, serve no use other than buying maps to find more batteries that I'd naturally stumble upon through discovery anyways. The lack of meaningful interaction between the cast and the underwhelming send-off was just the cherry on top of this unrealized jumble that could have been so much more. Thankfully I'm still looking forward to Teslagrad 2 from the little I've played so far, but as it stands, this will remain the tale of how the West was lost.

A return to form for Rain Games. While World to the West stretched its exploration to the limits of tedium, with tons of tiring backtracking inbetween and a lack of a satisfying finish to tie things up, Teslagrad 2 feels much more like the true successor to the original metroidvania puzzle platformer thanks to its snugly contained world and understated narrative. This time however, there's a lot more depth to the package thanks to the emphasis on movement mechanics. The game does a great job wordlessly demonstrating all the different uses of each unlockable ability through classic obstacle escalation (starting with simple polarized magnets, then introducing polarity tunnels, ziplines, throwable magnetic blocks, and much more), throwing the player into a variety of different situations that facilitate the usage of these different tools. As a result, it feels less like trial and error and more like a constant stream of progression. Furthermore, it's great at keying you in on the multifaceted nature of your unlocks, such as being able to use the magnetized throwing axe as both a door destructor and as a pivot that you can launch yourself off of to reach new heights. The highlight here is the slide tackle, which once unlocked, allows you to quickly traverse boost rails and loops/valleys to quickly shoot yourself into the air or across vast expanses. It's not afraid to lean into this momentum-focused exploration either, with some optional time trials that unlock even more hidden abilities like directional blink and double jump that certainly aren't necessary to clear the base game, but become super useful if you're just looking to fly through the environment and find every hidden battery.

There's only a few minor complaints this time around. Firstly, there's no fast travel, so backtracking upwards after falling a bit can take a bit more time due to less of an emphasis regarding vertical movement potential. This is at least mitigated thanks to all the secret tunnels, waterfalls (allowing quick blinking through water), and ziplines that can be activated to quickly backtrack this seemingly expansive world while stumbling upon secrets along the way. Secondly, boss fights have been mostly improved with the addition of shield generations before each fight, allowing you to take a second hit (so there's a bit more leeway, giving you more time to adapt to boss strategies on the fly), though the fights are still mostly quite static (dodge a wave of attacks and strike back, rinse and repeat) and require a lot more waiting than anything else. Finally, the slide tackle and the ground-pound are mapped to the same key, which can make momentum conservation a little more tricky when you're trying to retain your sliding state but suddenly grind to a halt and shoot downwards once there's enough height between you and the ground. I did eventually get used to this, but it would have been nice if there were any ability to separate the two actions from the same input and allow for separate rebinds.

Regardless, this definitely feels like a step forward from the original Teslagrad, which felt somewhat unassuming and at times felt a bit awkward and sluggish given the emphasis on magnetic puzzle solving over platforming in a fairly linear environment. The richly detailed backgrounds and the heavy environmental storytelling via the collectible batteries and various heirlooms in the backdrops further compliment the game's confidence; it's fairly comfortable leaving the player to their own devices and letting them explore the playground at their own pace, with tons of toys to mess around with. It definitely helps that the time trials come with fantastic bonus incentives, and that completing all the trials also unlocks a secret map for scrounging those last pesky batteries, as is the hidden boss that serves as its own reward once you've experienced all that the world has to offer. The price tag may seem steep to some, given that it only took me 6 and a half hours to 100%, but the joy of zipping around the world is more than enough incentive for me to consider a future replay. It's a more than worthy send-off for Lumina's journey that will remain as one of my favorite surprises of 2023, and definitely one of the better metroidvanias I've ever played.

Style is amazing as hell from the cutscenes to the pixel art, plus there's a thumping OST in there. Full eyes, full ears, mid game.

I was pretty pumped for this one but can't help other than feel utterly let down by the actual gameplay itself. It's decent enough but over the 5-6 hour runtime, despite some pretty cool platforming ideas, it doesn't ever truly break out of the box in a way that is exciting or satisfying, nor does it scratch the metroidvania itch very well, as everything is pretty much discoverable on your first time through.

There are also some...interesting...design/balance choices. You have a health/energy bar which refills by hitting enemies, or when you hit zero you can regen some. You also have to use this bar to damage certain enemies, which honestly, I think is a pretty cool idea. However, the rate at which you lose/gain back energy/health is weirdly disproportionate.

In one boss fight, you can only trigger a damage phase on the boss by hitting him with a special attack that drains your energy. However, the rate at which you regen this energy from hitting the boss, as well as his projectiles, is not enough for what you actually need for the fight. The solution is in a damage phase to pause actually doing damage in order to dump all of your energy/health to zero and then use the regen ability to get enough back. This is incredibly backwards and weird and feels much more like an oversight in encounter balancing than a purposeful strategy.

9 Years of Shadow has the outline of a fantastic game but unfortunately it comes off like a term paper written at the eleventh hour - the introduction and main ideas are fantastic but...shit, it's due at midnight so let's throw this conclusion on there, a few block quotes, make those periods into 16-pt font, and pray that 9 and 2/3rds pages will count for 10. Have we tried bolding the title?

I played this on Game Pass before it was removed and I have to say, this game is kind of all over the place. While there are some overall interesting situations in the game (like the larping scenario for example) too much of the game is either unbelievable or unrelatable from a character perspective.

Why would this person do that? Why does no one care about that? Why would this person react this way in that situation? I was asking these questions a lot through the game.

I can take the unbelievable sci-fi super power stuff but the characters and overall story needed more work...

I was able to get my hands on a WIP machine-translated copy of the original Slime Mori-Mori thanks to Nick, check out his work!

This is honestly a very solid foundation for the Dragon Quest Heroes spinoff series. You play as the iconic blue slime, living out their quiet rural life amongst other friendly slimes when suddenly, the Plob show up and kidnap everyone from your village and it's up to you, the hapless and adorable squishy hero, to rescue everyone and repair your village while beating the Plob at their own game of discovering the world's many secrets. If you've played the DS sequel to this (Rocket Slime), then this basically controls the same; you can stretch out your slime's body and let go to perform an Elasto Blast, which propels you into enemies, obstacles, and other objects and will often shoot them into the air, where you can then catch, carry, and throw these objects and enemies to your delight. The Elasto Blast is both your main form of attack as well as a movement and object interaction tool in this sense.

The original Japan exclusive Slime Mori Mori focuses on dungeon traversal; your Slime buddies have all been boxed up within the various ecosystems scattered across the giant island, and it's your duty to break open these boxes and send them home by either carrying them back to the entrance, or throwing them onto balloon lifts and train cars headed back. The backbone is solid enough strictly speaking, but as someone coming from many hours spent in Rocket Slime, this is where the lack of quality of life starts to show a bit. All of the balloon lifts and many of the train cars/cargo floats have a capacity of one, which means you can only chuck one passenger/object/monster on at a time and have to wait around a little for the next transport to come about. In the case of balloon lifts, this wait is exacerbated since it respawns off screen and you have to meander about in a separate area of the dungeon before it comes back. Dungeon exploration in general has some great ideas, but again, when comparing to its successors, becomes a bit rote. A lot of the exploration boils down to carrying over Bomb Rocks from other rooms to blow up barriers, or collecting an assortment of other objects elsewhere and bringing them over to statues to imitate their object order and unlock doors. The actual puzzle combinations outside of these two interactions are quite interesting though; there's a lava area where you have to drop loose tiles from an above floor to create platforms for traversal, there's a beach area with water spouts and sand where you can bury yourself to flip enemies and travel under tunnels, and so on so forth. It does suck a little that some progress isn't saved, such as the poppable Plob balloons that block progress in the mountain zone, but this is generally a trifle once you figure out the dungeon layout as is.

The real breadwinner of the original game however, has to be the over-the-top boss fights. Some of my favorites here include a fight against two twin Plobs (one with a fire gauntlet and the other with an ice sword) who attempt to take you down simultaneously but are susceptible to team damage (so it's more fun dodging their attacks and watching them actively interfere with one another), and a turtle monster who, upon realizing that you're using the sand to flip and damage it, floods the room with water to prevent burying and forces an old rival of yours to appear to help you out with fireballs and aerial dodging, transforming the fight into almost a pseudo shmup. Some of the fights do phone it in a bit (i.e. the 2nd golem fight in the secret forest is more or less a juiced up version of the 1st golem fight with slightly tougher attacks), but in general, these boss fights are exemplary of the cartoony and vibrant charm of the series. They're absolutely ridiculous and don't try to take themselves seriously whatsoever, and are a great diversion from the often repetitive dungeon crawling.

Again, my main reservation here is less that the game sucks, and more that it's just quite overshadowed at this point by its successors. I don't find the dungeon exploration very externally rewarding unfortunately; you can send some monsters and materials back to help repair the town or sell materials for money, but outside of some permanent health bar capacity/wallet upgrades and a few unlockable minigames, there's not a huge incentive to keep grinding out materials unless you really do care that much about fixing up your town as a good citizen. Dungeon exploration is also held back a bit by the arbitrary time limit (which will end your run if you're there past nightfall), so it does become necessary to keep an eye out on the day-night cycle gauge if you don't want to spend another 100G buying time sand as a fail safe. Having said that, the tank/ship battles in the later installments are a welcome improvement in tying all the different adventure game elements together, and definitely add more meat to the bone on what is already a pretty promising beginning to the series. It doesn't take too long to run through the whole game (maybe about 10 hours or so for my first playthrough), and while I admit that I can't comment too heavily on the dialogue due to the limits of the machine translation, the classic happy-go-lucky appeal of Rocket Slime is all still there with surprisingly well animated and colorful visuals. If you're a fan of Rocket Slime looking for more content, then I'd recommend giving this a shot just to check out its humble beginnings, and definitely don't be afraid to ask for help if you get stymied by the translated hints.

While going through Warioware: Touched! last year, I had my fair share of criticisms, mainly that the game felt somewhat trivial since every microgame was some form of poke + drag (or in the case of the mic games, just yelling til I won). On a surface level, it would appear that the other major Nintendo minigame collection series, Rhythm Heaven, falls into the same trap, since every game appears to be tap and flick, but I don't find that to be true. Quite the opposite in fact, as Rhythm Heaven DS is extremely challenging, yet super satisfying and fair.

Rhythm Heaven succeeds where I think Warioware: Touched! falls flat, because the former is much more subtle about mixing up devices to introduce an organic difficulty curve than the latter. Every minigame's gimmick is conveyed via some combination of call & response, memorizing rhythmic motifs, and recognizing appropriate audio & visual cues. This difficulty then gets ramped up, both within minigames and throughout the game's progression, by introducing new or different elements that alter how the mechanics are presented and utilized in some fashion, but ultimately retaining the core fundamentals. For instance, you might have to play "in the dark" for certain sections of minigames and rely heavily upon audio cues, or have to deal with sudden (yet firmly telegraphed) tempo shifts with tougher rhythmic variations, or even shift the backing melody or player actions to the off-beat to keep the player honest and in-tune with the minigame's workings. This, combined with the simple yet realized controls of tap, hold, and flick (lending itself naturally to syncopation from tap/hold + flick alongside quick note playing from tapping) allows for a much more robust toolkit and strengthened intricate designs for a broadly diversified minigame ecosystem. Even if all these different rhythm games revolve around the same theme (i.e. finding the natural flow and beat in simple and often mundane tasks), they all manage to stand out from one another despite seemingly simple controls because the rhythms at which they are executed from one another can be so drastically varied and iterated upon.

The attention to detail is especially evident within the remix microgames at the end of each five game minigame chain. These finales add a fresh coat of paint to the previous four microgames (and once you get past the initial 30, sometimes even more than just four) and putting players' execution and knowledge banks to the test while ferrying them between the different concepts with ease. There's an overlying melody to the whole affair, just played with a different filter for each specific minigame type, and moreover, they're linked in a way where the players can recognize the carried-over beat and be in specific positions where they're ready to quickly adapt to the new control scheme. For instance, consider Remix 8: the ping-pong into vegetable slice looks intimidating at first, but once you realize that swiping the paddle in the former has the exact same rhythm as swiping to slice vegetables in the latter, then it's merely a case of recognizing the visual/audio disguise and maintaining your composure. Another example that comes to mind is within Remix 10, where there's a section transitioning from the snowboarding minigame to the choir kids' Glee Club. Normally, you'd think that there would be some issues immediately flashing into Glee Club, since you can't possibly know what's coming up without prior experience and not holding your stylus on the screen will result in your Choir Kid automatically singing as per the control scheme of hold and release to play notes. However, this is accounted for with the lead-in snowboard minigame, because the last few frames of that section telegraph a jump, which requires the player to hold down the stylus on the screen and then flick and release. Since the jump hasn't occurred yet, the player should still be holding down, and this transitions naturally into the Glee Club's neutral state, where they can then release the stylus to the telegraphed beat and proceed onwards. It's little moments like these that make all the different jumps between previous minigames feel seamless, and transform the remixes into challenging, yet extremely fulfilling victory laps.

My only outstanding complaint is that certain minigames require considerably more accuracy and precision to master than others, and are often far more finicky about their timing requirements without obvious visual/audible feedback regarding slight misses, which can make repeated plays for that Superb/Perfect ranking a bit obnoxious. Glee Club and Moai Doo-Wop 2 are two of the more infamous culprits, to where some users have even created strategy guides. I can certainly relate, as it took me over 8 tries on Glee Club to snag a superb before I realized that the tight timing during the quick notes in the middle of the track was the section that was stumping me, since being off by just a hair there doesn't result in the other Choir Kids giving you the stink-eye. As a related aside, I did have a bit of difficulty with Rockers 2, since this minigame introduces the use of the L/R button as a whammy bar and feels a bit out of place, being the only minigame that doesn't exclusively use the touchscreen and forcing me to bend my left hand around to access the button. That said, I'll choose to chalk that one up to a skill issue since the unlockable Technical Guitar Course afterwards gives you plenty more opportunities to get used to this mechanic. Regardless, I find Rhythm Heaven to be a very honest and approachable set of minigames despite the level of mastery often required, and I can easily see myself coming back to this one to spend more time honing my skills. It's a complete and realized package that's truly the epitome of doing a lot with very little, and I eagerly look forward to testing my mettle with the remaining games in the series.

It feels weird to try and review one of my favorite games of all time - if Baldur’s Gate is the game of my childhood, the Souls games are certainly the games of my “modern” era - as there are so many feelings and thoughts and ideas just wrapped up and tangled on top of one another, like a giant ball of yarn that’s been growing for years. It becomes hard to unpack everything without turning either into rote descriptions of “I like X thing about game,” or spilling out saccharine word vomit and dumb shit like yarn ball metaphors and “modern gaming eras” escaping, when they should be locked up permanently. Regardless, I wanted to try and tackle the challenge of reviewing my favorites, or at least unpacking my experiences with them for myself, so here I am. I’m not going to go into some ontological or Derridean critique of Dark Souls. I think enough people have deconstructed this game for a lifetime. This is just my perspective on my experience with the game, all cliche and platitudes included.

For a long time, I didn’t really think I liked hard games. I grew up playing NES and all that, but I don’t really think that crossed my mind back then; I would gladly smash my head against something over and over without the thought of it being too hard. It was just the game. So when Dark Souls came out and all I ever heard about it was how hard it is and punishing and impossible, it was a definite no - I didn’t want a hard game, because, after all, I played games for fun. The games I enjoyed were all adventure and discovery, full of blasting enemies with magic, exploring fantastical worlds, and slicing my way through a story whether heroic or grim. None of these things were ever how Dark Souls was described to me, even by friends who loved the game, so I just ignored it and passed it off as something I would never play.

In late 2019, I saw a commercial for a game called Sekiro. I impulse bought it. I knew Sekiro was supposed to be a hard game, but it reminded me of the Tenchu games that I used to rent from Blockbuster as a kid and nostalgia won me over. It destroyed me, but I loved every second of it. I found out it was from the same people that made Dark Souls, and I finally decided that, what the hell, if I can beat Sekiro I can beat Dark Souls. So after a few months, I bought that too. Then I lost my job.

Compared to hours of LinkedIn and Indeed every day, I found that Dark Souls did not measure up in difficulty. It was my reprieve, and I devoured it. I huddled on my couch playing handheld on the Switch, well into the night almost every night. I could not put it down, and while, sure, I did find the game to be difficult, I approached it in the same way that I approached my NES games when I was a kid. I just took the game for what it was and ran with it. Shockingly, Dark Souls wasn’t just a combat simulator with reflex checks and hair-pulling moments - it was an adventure and a new world to explore, and I wanted to see and experience everything.

Obviously, looking back with hindsight, it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at myself being surprised or shocked by the game, seeing as exploration is one of the pillars of Dark Souls’ design, but I just didn’t know. I think that’s one of the things that made the game and experience so special to me, as I was just able to enjoy this gaming cultural behemoth without any of the white noise contamination that I have now. Everything was unexpected, and I was just able to connect with a new world on my own terms and at my own pace, making the entire experience an exercise in solitude and intimacy - further driven home by the same themes being woven throughout the landscape of Lordran and my time spent there. Immediate and total resonance with a piece of art or media is rare and one of the most powerful things a person can experience, and I guess, in a very crude way, that’s why I love the Souls games - they just make sense to my brain in almost every way. That isn’t to say I don’t have criticisms or flaws towards these games, on the contrary, the games I love most are the ones that I can be the hardest on. However, all those things fade away the moment I hear that haunting menu theme.

A ship descends on rocky crusted earth.
Alien, yet familiar excitement;
A world I have dreamt to explore preserved.
Nostalgia, though not mine, still existent,
Somehow shapes me - I acquiesce and bend.
Intensely immersed; Samus' view as mine,
Pounding drums smash my ears as I begin;
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

Through lava and ice, water, steel, and dirt,
Freedom and exploration - heaven sent.
Boss fights were fun, though some of them sure hurt;
the Omega Pirate, I do resent,
Power Missiles to the face said "get bent."
Definitely was humbled by the mines,
but in adversity, I stayed content -
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

In ranking Metroids, I'd put Prime in first.
Though I love Dread and its gameplay augments,
Exploration and atmosphere are worth
More to me by far, one-hundred percent.
I'm glad that I got to experience,
Finally after waiting so much time.
Reputation deserved and I'm content.
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

Prime 2 and 3 - continue the ascent,
Remaster them both, so I can spend time
Writing more poems, reviews to be penned -
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

I may return to this at a later time, but I feel pretty disappointed with it right now.

The idea of the setting is cool, but as every other Team Ninja game I've played before, the levels are completely bland and uninspiring, which is also somewhat of a double-edged sword in this one as they want you to clear them in order to raise your power level to fight bosses.

The bosses themselves are okay, but there's no intimacy to any of them or weight that makes them feel exciting, which is a huge step back from Stranger of Paradise that, for all its other flaws, had some amazingly fun boss fights.

I don't believe Wo Long is necessarily a poor game or anything, but I just can't find myself wanting to play it when there's so much more out there that does excite me. I will just leave my review with a sophomoric: does not pass vibe check.

There are almost 600 reviews already but not one sonnet. So here goes:

A brutal axe slashes right at my face.
I knife parry while dynamite explodes
then whirl around and empty clips with grace;
blasting at filthy parasites exposed.

Heart attacks wait around every corner;
each encounter abounds with gripped tension.
Static no more - frenetic, sans torpor,
yet more options to fight apprehension.

This time I have a friend, not a burden;
a teammate that I miss when she is gone.
Each NPC became their own person,
fleshed out, built up, and much improved upon.

Despite a taste for slower paced RE,
this remake scores a big BINGO from me.

I have pulled up to a Waffle House drive-thru in a Scorpion. I have blown up the lobby of Peach's Castle. I have wielded a hammer in the Mines of Moria. I have caved skulls beneath the city of Theed.

But most importantly, I've returned home to Lockout and Blood Gulch. Halo Infinite is now truly great.