sturdyserpent
181 reviews liked by sturdyserpent
You know what? I don't hate it, but it is kinda stinky. If we really are of the belief that games are an art form, then games should be attempting to tackle tough subject matter when it's in an appropriate setting. Passive medium is just unable to create the same level of uncomfiness that the more active role a player takes in a video game ever could, in my personal opinion. However, the execution needs to be done well. I think this game falters a good portion of it's ideas, but there were bits that I found to be quite interesting buried underneath it all.
Had the game focused more on the 2nd half where the environmental storytelling in the apartment was front in center, I think it would have faired a lot better. They could have easily still made an entire Silent Hill mental unrest and anguish fun time run around scary monster game with the huge overflowing baggage of shit built into that part of the game without the bullying arc. I can't really talk about the latter half section without the use of a spoiler tag, but it was fairly unsettling way to convey neglect and the negative feelings surrounding it without hitting you in the face with a car. Had it been fleshed out a lot more and not rushed to oblivion, it would have been more effective. Part of it may have been uneasiness by seeing an environment like this in real life, maybe it hit a little close to home for me. But, it really seemed like they played around a lot more in this segment and it came across a lot better in my eyes. It is however, the shortest segment, which kind of sucks.
As others have pointed out, the bullying aspect of the game is quite too literal, too surface level, too on the nose. These are important themes to talk about, but it's done in such a ham-fisted way that it comes across as goofy at times, with some unstellar voice acting to add onto it. It has nothing really to do with how cringe the teenagers are in this game, because teenagers are indeed cringe. And if you say that you weren't cringe as a teenager, you're just lying, man. Just because kids today call each other Ohio as an insult, doesn't mean we weren't gallivanting around in our own emo tumblr phases worshiping Let's Play Youtubers who are still working and streaming this game as we speak. Social media and how it can affect someone with a need for validation is a very real issue that definitely still affects adults, but it's an issue that has been fumbled so many times in other media already, in the same traps that this game falls into. It's personally more than just receiving mean comments in a Xitter reply and could have been much more explored as to why It affects Anita specifically. Instead, they just used the most generic insults ever and skirt over the issue almost entirely to get to the better stuff, where you're meant to just jam Anita's isolated feelings into her trauma together like putting a hot dog into a sandwich bun. I have played cute indie games that were able to convey these messages about isolation and communication in a much better, more subtle way. It's obvious to see what they were going for and the ending is okay for what it is, but it's basically just a smiley face platitude. The game just can't get more than a box cake version of the "You Tried" cake from me.
It plays mostly fine, but chugs in some areas where the walls around you are morphing into scary game goop, which is unfortunate as I'm sure it would look neat had it worked properly. The monster is fairly cool, but the monster is also the bane of my existence. The last chase scene might as well have had Benny Hill music playing over it for the same effect, since it's so hard to navigate and the whole segment has to be redone if you die. It loses the scariness of it quite quickly and becomes a nuisance instead. While I was sighing in frustration, Anita was having a full on asthma attack the entire time until I muted the dialogue and lived in peace and tranquility for the rest of the section.
I feel like if this was a game I paid for, I would be a lot harsher for sure, but it is free and extremely short so it's not like it super wasted my time. Now please like this review, it would make me very sad if you did not do so.
Had the game focused more on the 2nd half where the environmental storytelling in the apartment was front in center, I think it would have faired a lot better. They could have easily still made an entire Silent Hill mental unrest and anguish fun time run around scary monster game with the huge overflowing baggage of shit built into that part of the game without the bullying arc. I can't really talk about the latter half section without the use of a spoiler tag, but it was fairly unsettling way to convey neglect and the negative feelings surrounding it without hitting you in the face with a car. Had it been fleshed out a lot more and not rushed to oblivion, it would have been more effective. Part of it may have been uneasiness by seeing an environment like this in real life, maybe it hit a little close to home for me. But, it really seemed like they played around a lot more in this segment and it came across a lot better in my eyes. It is however, the shortest segment, which kind of sucks.
As others have pointed out, the bullying aspect of the game is quite too literal, too surface level, too on the nose. These are important themes to talk about, but it's done in such a ham-fisted way that it comes across as goofy at times, with some unstellar voice acting to add onto it. It has nothing really to do with how cringe the teenagers are in this game, because teenagers are indeed cringe. And if you say that you weren't cringe as a teenager, you're just lying, man. Just because kids today call each other Ohio as an insult, doesn't mean we weren't gallivanting around in our own emo tumblr phases worshiping Let's Play Youtubers who are still working and streaming this game as we speak. Social media and how it can affect someone with a need for validation is a very real issue that definitely still affects adults, but it's an issue that has been fumbled so many times in other media already, in the same traps that this game falls into. It's personally more than just receiving mean comments in a Xitter reply and could have been much more explored as to why It affects Anita specifically. Instead, they just used the most generic insults ever and skirt over the issue almost entirely to get to the better stuff, where you're meant to just jam Anita's isolated feelings into her trauma together like putting a hot dog into a sandwich bun. I have played cute indie games that were able to convey these messages about isolation and communication in a much better, more subtle way. It's obvious to see what they were going for and the ending is okay for what it is, but it's basically just a smiley face platitude. The game just can't get more than a box cake version of the "You Tried" cake from me.
It plays mostly fine, but chugs in some areas where the walls around you are morphing into scary game goop, which is unfortunate as I'm sure it would look neat had it worked properly. The monster is fairly cool, but the monster is also the bane of my existence. The last chase scene might as well have had Benny Hill music playing over it for the same effect, since it's so hard to navigate and the whole segment has to be redone if you die. It loses the scariness of it quite quickly and becomes a nuisance instead. While I was sighing in frustration, Anita was having a full on asthma attack the entire time until I muted the dialogue and lived in peace and tranquility for the rest of the section.
I feel like if this was a game I paid for, I would be a lot harsher for sure, but it is free and extremely short so it's not like it super wasted my time. Now please like this review, it would make me very sad if you did not do so.
The Swapper
2013
Similar to Unmechanical I played recently, The Swapper is a game I've had since near the start of the PS4 era yet never got around to playing until 10 years later. Equally like Unmechanical this game is also a sci-fi puzzle game but I feel overall though this is a much tighter and more interesting experience.
The Swapper uses cloning as a way of providing plenty of puzzles as well as a background for it's narrative of something weird and sinister happening at a deep space mining outpost known as Theseus. Your unnamed character finds a gun that allows them to create multiple clones of themself that copies their movements. This gun also allows your character to swap consciousness into the clones leaving your original body behind. There is some simple philosophy raised as the game progresses about what constitutes a mind and the morality of using the swapper though it's all surface level questions raised as you progress chasing after another astronaut that is talking to you and themselves at the same time.
The game is essentially a series of puzzle rooms off of a fairly linear path to collect orbs that allow you to open doors to progress. Rinse and repeat. It feels a little Metroidvania in the absolute barest sense that there is a map with locked doors. The puzzles are simple in a way I appreciate in that they are all fairly logical. Making clones at distances, swapping between them to hit switches etc. There are a few additional mechanics involving coloured lights limiting where you can create or swap clones as well as some artificial gravity to both mix things up and make the puzzles a bit harder. Most were fairly straight forward but a couple did stump me for a while until I realized the solution was much simpler than I thought, I just wasn't thinking laterally enough. The Swapper isn't perfect, some of the puzzles even when you have figured out what you need to do can be messed up by one poor placement forcing you to start the whole process over again can be a little frustrating at times but this is a minor complaint for other wise fairly consistently balanced puzzle design.
As good as the mechanics are the aesthetics of a game help bring it all together thematically and this game has a fantastic atmosphere, like a mixture of Aliens and The Abyss. The design, use of lighting and music create a great feeling of loneliness and fear despite it being a puzzle title that the thought of being isolated in space or under the sea can produce. What is more impressive is this was made entirely by two university students, as per Wikipedia:
"The Swapper was a project made by two University of Helsinki students Otto Hantula and Olli Harjola in their spare time. The Swapper was backed by the Indie Fund, the 6th indie game title the fund has supported. Rather than digital textures, the game features handcrafted art assets and clay which forms the various game levels."
I didn't notice it at the time playing but it actually makes a lot of sense for the visual style here.
The Swapper is only a few hours long, I finished it in a day which is either going to be a positive or negative for you but personally I puzzle games should be short and sweet so they don't out live their welcome. If you've got a spare afternoon or weekend you could do far worse than this atmospheric narrative based puzzle game.
The Swapper uses cloning as a way of providing plenty of puzzles as well as a background for it's narrative of something weird and sinister happening at a deep space mining outpost known as Theseus. Your unnamed character finds a gun that allows them to create multiple clones of themself that copies their movements. This gun also allows your character to swap consciousness into the clones leaving your original body behind. There is some simple philosophy raised as the game progresses about what constitutes a mind and the morality of using the swapper though it's all surface level questions raised as you progress chasing after another astronaut that is talking to you and themselves at the same time.
The game is essentially a series of puzzle rooms off of a fairly linear path to collect orbs that allow you to open doors to progress. Rinse and repeat. It feels a little Metroidvania in the absolute barest sense that there is a map with locked doors. The puzzles are simple in a way I appreciate in that they are all fairly logical. Making clones at distances, swapping between them to hit switches etc. There are a few additional mechanics involving coloured lights limiting where you can create or swap clones as well as some artificial gravity to both mix things up and make the puzzles a bit harder. Most were fairly straight forward but a couple did stump me for a while until I realized the solution was much simpler than I thought, I just wasn't thinking laterally enough. The Swapper isn't perfect, some of the puzzles even when you have figured out what you need to do can be messed up by one poor placement forcing you to start the whole process over again can be a little frustrating at times but this is a minor complaint for other wise fairly consistently balanced puzzle design.
As good as the mechanics are the aesthetics of a game help bring it all together thematically and this game has a fantastic atmosphere, like a mixture of Aliens and The Abyss. The design, use of lighting and music create a great feeling of loneliness and fear despite it being a puzzle title that the thought of being isolated in space or under the sea can produce. What is more impressive is this was made entirely by two university students, as per Wikipedia:
"The Swapper was a project made by two University of Helsinki students Otto Hantula and Olli Harjola in their spare time. The Swapper was backed by the Indie Fund, the 6th indie game title the fund has supported. Rather than digital textures, the game features handcrafted art assets and clay which forms the various game levels."
I didn't notice it at the time playing but it actually makes a lot of sense for the visual style here.
The Swapper is only a few hours long, I finished it in a day which is either going to be a positive or negative for you but personally I puzzle games should be short and sweet so they don't out live their welcome. If you've got a spare afternoon or weekend you could do far worse than this atmospheric narrative based puzzle game.
Persona 3 Reload
2024
Never played but obligated to give it a 10/10 because of how much enjoyment I get from joining a new MegaTen server, making a joke about how Persona 3 was the first Persona game, turning notifications on my phone, and then shoving it up my ass
When this started with the suicide hotline number I thought, "ah, I'm no doubt in for a thoughtful and nuanced depiction of mental illness!"
At one point there's a scene where the main character freaks out about her follower count and people commenting, like, "no sexy pics no followers!!!" and i refuse to believe no one on the dev team said "hey is this stupid? is this fucking stupid you guys?"
At one point there's a scene where the main character freaks out about her follower count and people commenting, like, "no sexy pics no followers!!!" and i refuse to believe no one on the dev team said "hey is this stupid? is this fucking stupid you guys?"
Super Mario Bros. 3
1988
By 1988, Nintendo was pretty much ready to leave behind the lives system that had become such an integral part of video game identity. Having limited continues was an imported concept from arcade machines that didn’t really suit home console gaming in the first place, but it was the most convenient way for developers to work around the lack of save features of early generation hardware, as well as the relative brevity of the games due to their software restrictions. This rings especially true for action-oriented games like platformers. The first Super Mario Bros. is a prime example for this and arguably had the most accomplished implementation of this design philosophy at the time. Nintendo had no reason to fix an issue and at first glance it doesn’t look like they tried. You still start your adventure with a limited number of lives, the game still resets you to the beginning when you’ve lost them all, and there is still no save feature to be found whatsoever. However, once you start playing, you’ll quickly realize that this time, the developers really do not want you to run out of lives in the first place. The game throws so many possibilities to obtain extra lives at you that it sometimes felt like I was being showered in 1-Ups.
Every three completed stages net you at least one live guaranteed, and up to five if you time all your final jumps correctly. Incidentally, the most natural way to finish the stage already coincides with the perfect timing, so most players are going to get the best results more often than not. Additionally, Spade and N-Spade Panels with mini-games are sprinkled regularly between levels to give you even more chances for extra lives and other bonusses. The card mini game in particular is very simple to memorize as it does not reset after a failed attempt. Hidden 1-Up Mushrooms are much more common than in previous games and several levels can even be exploited to get infinite lives, with some of the easiest and most obvious methods available in the entire series. And even if you lose all your lives, the game still cleverly lets you preserve progress via unlocked shortcuts in the overworld.
Of course, an abundance of extra lives does not negate difficulty and there are still plenty of challenging courses in Super Mario Bros. 3. But for the first time, a difficult section does not automatically turn into an absolute roadblock for progression until you overcome it. Not only does the game offer far more multiple routes and shortcuts inside the levels themselves, but it also extends the same principle to the game as a whole. The addition of the overworld map often gives you the option to choose between branching paths and sometimes permits you to skip certain levels altogether. Many of the remaining mandatory stages can also be bypassed with overworld items like the cloud, the Music Box, or the P-Wing, if you know how to use it properly. Most importantly, the new item inventory allows you to tackle the same level differently each time. Having multiple Power Ups makes their advantages much more context sensitive, like how the frog costume is specifically designed to facilitate movement in underwater stages. All this leads not only to much easier but also more individualized playthroughs. The game wants you to see everything it has to offer, but at the same time lets you decide to a large degree which of its parts you want to engage with. All subsequent Mario platformers embraced this open and welcoming approach to game design even further, but it was already fully articulated for the first time in this installment thirty-five years ago. The whole concept is so antithetical to the lives system that it makes me wonder why the series kept using it to this day, even though lives have ceased to be a relevant aspect of the experience for decades.
Whatever the reasons may be, Nintendo’s willingness to let players skip most of the content speaks volumes about the team’s confidence in their game design. You may be able to bypass many of the challenges, but the developers know that if you enjoy the game, you’ll most likely want to discover everything it has to offer. If anything, the reduced pressure from the fear of losing progress by dying increases the players’ willingness to engage with the game. There are too many great ideas to mention, but I think what impressed me the most is how Super Mario Bros. 3 constantly questions and reinvents the notion of what a Mario level can be. The first game had some variety in its level structures, namely in the underwater courses and Bowser’s Castles. But that variety pales in comparison to sheer creativity that is on display here in any single given world. There are horizontally and vertically structured stages; levels that let you move freely and levels where you are being moved on predetermined paths; courses that rely on speed and others that have timing-based challenges; linear gauntlets and levels that are structured more like open ended spaces to explore. Some stages even break entirely with the familiar structure of obstacle courses and play more like convoluted labyrinths or veritable puzzle boxes. And while many games have a lot of different mission types that still always play out in the same way, here every element is affected according to the structure of the level. Like how respawning enemies pose a very different kind of challenge in maze-like levels than in linear courses, or puzzle boxes give you an infinite number of Power Ups since they are usually required to reach the finish line. You simply never know what the next level has in store. And by drastically reducing the fear of losing, curiosity and the joy of discovery can finally take over to become the main driving factors for making progress.
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Every three completed stages net you at least one live guaranteed, and up to five if you time all your final jumps correctly. Incidentally, the most natural way to finish the stage already coincides with the perfect timing, so most players are going to get the best results more often than not. Additionally, Spade and N-Spade Panels with mini-games are sprinkled regularly between levels to give you even more chances for extra lives and other bonusses. The card mini game in particular is very simple to memorize as it does not reset after a failed attempt. Hidden 1-Up Mushrooms are much more common than in previous games and several levels can even be exploited to get infinite lives, with some of the easiest and most obvious methods available in the entire series. And even if you lose all your lives, the game still cleverly lets you preserve progress via unlocked shortcuts in the overworld.
Of course, an abundance of extra lives does not negate difficulty and there are still plenty of challenging courses in Super Mario Bros. 3. But for the first time, a difficult section does not automatically turn into an absolute roadblock for progression until you overcome it. Not only does the game offer far more multiple routes and shortcuts inside the levels themselves, but it also extends the same principle to the game as a whole. The addition of the overworld map often gives you the option to choose between branching paths and sometimes permits you to skip certain levels altogether. Many of the remaining mandatory stages can also be bypassed with overworld items like the cloud, the Music Box, or the P-Wing, if you know how to use it properly. Most importantly, the new item inventory allows you to tackle the same level differently each time. Having multiple Power Ups makes their advantages much more context sensitive, like how the frog costume is specifically designed to facilitate movement in underwater stages. All this leads not only to much easier but also more individualized playthroughs. The game wants you to see everything it has to offer, but at the same time lets you decide to a large degree which of its parts you want to engage with. All subsequent Mario platformers embraced this open and welcoming approach to game design even further, but it was already fully articulated for the first time in this installment thirty-five years ago. The whole concept is so antithetical to the lives system that it makes me wonder why the series kept using it to this day, even though lives have ceased to be a relevant aspect of the experience for decades.
Whatever the reasons may be, Nintendo’s willingness to let players skip most of the content speaks volumes about the team’s confidence in their game design. You may be able to bypass many of the challenges, but the developers know that if you enjoy the game, you’ll most likely want to discover everything it has to offer. If anything, the reduced pressure from the fear of losing progress by dying increases the players’ willingness to engage with the game. There are too many great ideas to mention, but I think what impressed me the most is how Super Mario Bros. 3 constantly questions and reinvents the notion of what a Mario level can be. The first game had some variety in its level structures, namely in the underwater courses and Bowser’s Castles. But that variety pales in comparison to sheer creativity that is on display here in any single given world. There are horizontally and vertically structured stages; levels that let you move freely and levels where you are being moved on predetermined paths; courses that rely on speed and others that have timing-based challenges; linear gauntlets and levels that are structured more like open ended spaces to explore. Some stages even break entirely with the familiar structure of obstacle courses and play more like convoluted labyrinths or veritable puzzle boxes. And while many games have a lot of different mission types that still always play out in the same way, here every element is affected according to the structure of the level. Like how respawning enemies pose a very different kind of challenge in maze-like levels than in linear courses, or puzzle boxes give you an infinite number of Power Ups since they are usually required to reach the finish line. You simply never know what the next level has in store. And by drastically reducing the fear of losing, curiosity and the joy of discovery can finally take over to become the main driving factors for making progress.
__________________
More Super Mario reviews
Super Mario Bros.
More NES reviews
Castlevania
The Legend of Zelda
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy XVI killed Final Fantasy for me, and while I think I'll ultimately be grateful for that it's been exhausting to process.
In the early hours, I was delighted--finally, a new story I can get invested in with this series, one that's told coherently, with characters whose relationships I can follow. And while Active Time Lore™ was appealing to me up front--"remembering" my experiences with XIII and XV--I rarely even utilized it and could follow along just fine, only dipping in for deep dives driven by my own curiosity. Up front I had lamented the complete move to action combat, but I also braced for it knowing it was something they had been toying with already, and for what it's worth they managed to create a solid loop that expands into some decent variety over the course of the campaign, for a while.
But little by little, the foundations of my excitement began to crumble. A lot has already been said about FF16's treatment of women and its slavery/class narrative struggles, all criticism thoroughly justified. For me, it's how the game treats Jill specifically that paved the beginnings of its road to ruin. It's actually hysterical how much of an afterthought Jill is to the story they're telling, especially given that she's standing with you for nearly all of it.
It comes to be almost like a challenge the game puts forth to see how much worse her treatment can possibly get, to the point that it culminates in putting one particular endgame sidequest--which gives Jill an emotional moment with Clive and puts her "permanently" in your party until you proceed with the finale--behind another sidequest related to Clive's father. It is so easy to see a situation in which players put off that sidequest, imagining it to be a nice "final" one to go for, only to discover another with a key party member hidden underneath it--one where half the reward becomes potentially pointless as putting her in the party "for the rest of the game" might be actually zero time. And neither quest is marked with a signature plus-sign that indicates where the Real Rewards are, the "good stuff" like increasing how many potions you can hold or the ability to smith a weapon if you do hours of additional content to get the required crafting items from special enemies.
It sounds like a lot has been said about the game's sidequests as well. Here are my two cents: when FF16 sidequests are good, they are far and away the best content you can find in its runtime. Not because you get two more max potions, but because they spend more effort filling out the details of the world and some of the characters' relationships. They can be the strongest indication that the developers behind this world do actually like the people in it, can relate to their struggles and offer them glimpses of hope and camaraderie. But the sidequests are set up for failure from the start. They're introduced as strictly tedious chores, outside of one early on that gives the faintest hint of new character information after you've done the riveting task of finding a bag of supplies. And even when the narrative quality of the sidequests improves, that quality is still buried under artificial lengthening, long and unchallenging fights [I hope you like the raw feel of the combat a lot!], running [or fast traveling] back and forth.
Which is a long way of saying--by the time I reached the final barf-up of sidequest icons before the game's conclusion, it broke my heart but I was done with them. Full disclosure, in the face of my frustration a friend told me Jill had a sidequest dedicated to her amongst all these potential weeds, so when none of the quest descriptions suggested as much I straight up googled to find which quest it was. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it's because they didn't barf up all the icons up front.
This was the pivotal moment for me. Suddenly my mind was racing as it tried to reconcile what I had experienced for the past 45-50 hours. I marched on with the finale, trying to enjoy the "emotional payoff" of the story, but I was distracted by a dreadful feeling that dove into some weird kind of spiritual emptiness. And when the credits started rolling, I suddenly knew I had lost something and somehow hadn't seen it coming.
It took all that to realize what Final Fantasy as a series has truly meant to me. My first Final Fantasy experience was the now oft-maligned Final Fantasy VIII, which I still adore to this day. I rented Brave Fencer Musashi because it looked and sounded cool, but I maybe played it for half an hour tops because it came with a demo for FF8 that I immediately obsessed over, replaying a number of times before I had to return the demo along with the game I was supposedly renting. It was over for me. I would save money and get the full game in short order, and the next year saw both a heavy discount on Final Fantasy VII at a local store as well as my newly developed awareness of console emulation on my family's PC, opening the doors to all the SNES RPGs I couldn't afford. Super Mario RPG helped me discover RPGs, but Final Fantasy shot that appreciation into the stratosphere.
There are plenty of game series or creators that mean a lot to me, but Final Fantasy was probably the only one where my fondness went largely uncontested. I had my ups and downs with the games, but my love for them remained. It's also the only series that served as a foundational block for some of the closest friendships in my life, and while those relationships quickly didn't rely on those games, I don't know that they would have had that potential without that foot in the door.
I couldn't stop loving Final Fantasy games for a little over a decade, and then I played Final Fantasy XIII and experienced its relentless, nonsensical terminology. And Final Fantasy XV and its disinterest in anything beyond "vibes" of riding in a car across endless stretches of nothing. Yet I still loved Final Fantasy, still had expectations that when a new one came out I would be playing it. So what happened--why is that feeling now gone? Why wasn't this the result of playing XIII or XV? I would have initially guessed it's the aforementioned struggles with coherence that actually served as distractions, and that in the moment of playing both of those games I was convinced I was having some manner of a good time.
But it's now been literal months since I wrapped up XVI, and I feel I can more accurately pinpoint that, at the end of the day, even though I do not particularly like XIII or XV, I had an emotional reaction to them. I can poke fun at terms like L'Cie and Fal'Cie while marveling at XIII's clever battle system and beautiful sights. I can say however many times I like that XV's narrative left zero impression, but I will genuinely never forget the weirdo end-game side dungeon that I accidentally discovered, or buying soundtracks from other games in the series and putting them on for long car trips, or even just the meta insanity of putting out a game and expecting people to watch a prequel movie or potentially play a free beat-em-up for narrative clarity, like it was already worthy of that kind of dedication.
Almost as a defense mechanism, while watching FF16's credits I thought about Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I enjoyed a fair amount, so surely Final Fantasy isn't dead to me, but at the time it only made it worse. Sure I enjoyed it, but it was a different spin and presentation on a story I already loved, setting its laser sights on one of Final Fantasy's most iconic locales in Midgar. And in that focus they made some missteps--most notably the train graveyard sequence, a tedious expansion of a 2-3 minute moment in the original game. And now, as my brain dwells on that immediate gut reaction during the credits with the pondering that's occurred since, I've come to realize that it's because Final Fantasy XVI could have been practically any game released by a big studio in 2023, something I one thousand percent cannot say about XIII or XV.
As game development costs have increased exponentially, so too has the need for developers of massive commercial games to find ways to extend them under the false pretense that longer games with more content, prettier content, are inherently better or more worthy of purchase. And Final Fantasy--a series that has leaned into its bombastic production--is certainly not immune to that. Based on how Square always says their games underperform, they're even less likely to pivot to leaner, stronger experiences. The sidequests, as presented, are a solution to a game development "problem." Long dungeons with numerous repetitive encounters are another. Barely-interactive prolonged QTEs with elaborately produced cinematics are yet another. And Final Fantasy XVI indulges in all of these things.
At the end of the day, giving Jill a more impactful character arc--or just, I don't know, more to actually do in a game in which she's constantly present--both wouldn't have made a big difference to me with this particular title, and was also never going to happen. Not when it's easier to design a sidequest in which the player travels to three distinct locations and delivers items to NPCs and then reports that they did that and probably gets another goddamn meteorite; when it's easier to make another "castle" dungeon where you push a door open, kill some bads, walk down some stairs, kill some bads, climb up a ledge, kill some bads, and so on; when the budget is "better spent" creating a Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired spectacle shitstorm that refuses to end [shoutout to the Titan eikon fight!], because how else will people know their money was justified.
And so that special bond is gone. The Final Fantasy Experience now feels like some focus-tested husk. And that's ultimately fine. There are countless indie RPG developers interested in creating the sort of magic they grew up experiencing, whether it be Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or whatever, and while most will fail others will succeed in genuinely speaking to and understanding that era with their own spin. Hell, Square themselves is publishing those sorts of games, and creating them with smaller teams. So when I wish to dive into that kind of game, I will not struggle to find one. Doesn't mean some small part of me won't feel lost.
In the early hours, I was delighted--finally, a new story I can get invested in with this series, one that's told coherently, with characters whose relationships I can follow. And while Active Time Lore™ was appealing to me up front--"remembering" my experiences with XIII and XV--I rarely even utilized it and could follow along just fine, only dipping in for deep dives driven by my own curiosity. Up front I had lamented the complete move to action combat, but I also braced for it knowing it was something they had been toying with already, and for what it's worth they managed to create a solid loop that expands into some decent variety over the course of the campaign, for a while.
But little by little, the foundations of my excitement began to crumble. A lot has already been said about FF16's treatment of women and its slavery/class narrative struggles, all criticism thoroughly justified. For me, it's how the game treats Jill specifically that paved the beginnings of its road to ruin. It's actually hysterical how much of an afterthought Jill is to the story they're telling, especially given that she's standing with you for nearly all of it.
It comes to be almost like a challenge the game puts forth to see how much worse her treatment can possibly get, to the point that it culminates in putting one particular endgame sidequest--which gives Jill an emotional moment with Clive and puts her "permanently" in your party until you proceed with the finale--behind another sidequest related to Clive's father. It is so easy to see a situation in which players put off that sidequest, imagining it to be a nice "final" one to go for, only to discover another with a key party member hidden underneath it--one where half the reward becomes potentially pointless as putting her in the party "for the rest of the game" might be actually zero time. And neither quest is marked with a signature plus-sign that indicates where the Real Rewards are, the "good stuff" like increasing how many potions you can hold or the ability to smith a weapon if you do hours of additional content to get the required crafting items from special enemies.
It sounds like a lot has been said about the game's sidequests as well. Here are my two cents: when FF16 sidequests are good, they are far and away the best content you can find in its runtime. Not because you get two more max potions, but because they spend more effort filling out the details of the world and some of the characters' relationships. They can be the strongest indication that the developers behind this world do actually like the people in it, can relate to their struggles and offer them glimpses of hope and camaraderie. But the sidequests are set up for failure from the start. They're introduced as strictly tedious chores, outside of one early on that gives the faintest hint of new character information after you've done the riveting task of finding a bag of supplies. And even when the narrative quality of the sidequests improves, that quality is still buried under artificial lengthening, long and unchallenging fights [I hope you like the raw feel of the combat a lot!], running [or fast traveling] back and forth.
Which is a long way of saying--by the time I reached the final barf-up of sidequest icons before the game's conclusion, it broke my heart but I was done with them. Full disclosure, in the face of my frustration a friend told me Jill had a sidequest dedicated to her amongst all these potential weeds, so when none of the quest descriptions suggested as much I straight up googled to find which quest it was. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it's because they didn't barf up all the icons up front.
This was the pivotal moment for me. Suddenly my mind was racing as it tried to reconcile what I had experienced for the past 45-50 hours. I marched on with the finale, trying to enjoy the "emotional payoff" of the story, but I was distracted by a dreadful feeling that dove into some weird kind of spiritual emptiness. And when the credits started rolling, I suddenly knew I had lost something and somehow hadn't seen it coming.
It took all that to realize what Final Fantasy as a series has truly meant to me. My first Final Fantasy experience was the now oft-maligned Final Fantasy VIII, which I still adore to this day. I rented Brave Fencer Musashi because it looked and sounded cool, but I maybe played it for half an hour tops because it came with a demo for FF8 that I immediately obsessed over, replaying a number of times before I had to return the demo along with the game I was supposedly renting. It was over for me. I would save money and get the full game in short order, and the next year saw both a heavy discount on Final Fantasy VII at a local store as well as my newly developed awareness of console emulation on my family's PC, opening the doors to all the SNES RPGs I couldn't afford. Super Mario RPG helped me discover RPGs, but Final Fantasy shot that appreciation into the stratosphere.
There are plenty of game series or creators that mean a lot to me, but Final Fantasy was probably the only one where my fondness went largely uncontested. I had my ups and downs with the games, but my love for them remained. It's also the only series that served as a foundational block for some of the closest friendships in my life, and while those relationships quickly didn't rely on those games, I don't know that they would have had that potential without that foot in the door.
I couldn't stop loving Final Fantasy games for a little over a decade, and then I played Final Fantasy XIII and experienced its relentless, nonsensical terminology. And Final Fantasy XV and its disinterest in anything beyond "vibes" of riding in a car across endless stretches of nothing. Yet I still loved Final Fantasy, still had expectations that when a new one came out I would be playing it. So what happened--why is that feeling now gone? Why wasn't this the result of playing XIII or XV? I would have initially guessed it's the aforementioned struggles with coherence that actually served as distractions, and that in the moment of playing both of those games I was convinced I was having some manner of a good time.
But it's now been literal months since I wrapped up XVI, and I feel I can more accurately pinpoint that, at the end of the day, even though I do not particularly like XIII or XV, I had an emotional reaction to them. I can poke fun at terms like L'Cie and Fal'Cie while marveling at XIII's clever battle system and beautiful sights. I can say however many times I like that XV's narrative left zero impression, but I will genuinely never forget the weirdo end-game side dungeon that I accidentally discovered, or buying soundtracks from other games in the series and putting them on for long car trips, or even just the meta insanity of putting out a game and expecting people to watch a prequel movie or potentially play a free beat-em-up for narrative clarity, like it was already worthy of that kind of dedication.
Almost as a defense mechanism, while watching FF16's credits I thought about Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I enjoyed a fair amount, so surely Final Fantasy isn't dead to me, but at the time it only made it worse. Sure I enjoyed it, but it was a different spin and presentation on a story I already loved, setting its laser sights on one of Final Fantasy's most iconic locales in Midgar. And in that focus they made some missteps--most notably the train graveyard sequence, a tedious expansion of a 2-3 minute moment in the original game. And now, as my brain dwells on that immediate gut reaction during the credits with the pondering that's occurred since, I've come to realize that it's because Final Fantasy XVI could have been practically any game released by a big studio in 2023, something I one thousand percent cannot say about XIII or XV.
As game development costs have increased exponentially, so too has the need for developers of massive commercial games to find ways to extend them under the false pretense that longer games with more content, prettier content, are inherently better or more worthy of purchase. And Final Fantasy--a series that has leaned into its bombastic production--is certainly not immune to that. Based on how Square always says their games underperform, they're even less likely to pivot to leaner, stronger experiences. The sidequests, as presented, are a solution to a game development "problem." Long dungeons with numerous repetitive encounters are another. Barely-interactive prolonged QTEs with elaborately produced cinematics are yet another. And Final Fantasy XVI indulges in all of these things.
At the end of the day, giving Jill a more impactful character arc--or just, I don't know, more to actually do in a game in which she's constantly present--both wouldn't have made a big difference to me with this particular title, and was also never going to happen. Not when it's easier to design a sidequest in which the player travels to three distinct locations and delivers items to NPCs and then reports that they did that and probably gets another goddamn meteorite; when it's easier to make another "castle" dungeon where you push a door open, kill some bads, walk down some stairs, kill some bads, climb up a ledge, kill some bads, and so on; when the budget is "better spent" creating a Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired spectacle shitstorm that refuses to end [shoutout to the Titan eikon fight!], because how else will people know their money was justified.
And so that special bond is gone. The Final Fantasy Experience now feels like some focus-tested husk. And that's ultimately fine. There are countless indie RPG developers interested in creating the sort of magic they grew up experiencing, whether it be Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or whatever, and while most will fail others will succeed in genuinely speaking to and understanding that era with their own spin. Hell, Square themselves is publishing those sorts of games, and creating them with smaller teams. So when I wish to dive into that kind of game, I will not struggle to find one. Doesn't mean some small part of me won't feel lost.
Signalis
2022
for me the takeaway was lesbians are the most powerful force in the universe
Starfield
2023
I recall saying "I can't do this anymore" to my screen and then uninstalling after 5 hours of gameplay.
Donkey Kong
1994
Less of a Donkey Kong Eighty-One remake and more of a Mario Sixty-Four premake. The arcade classic entirely revolves around precise platforming under an extremely restrictive moveset, and while some familiar physics quirks remain, DK '94 instead opts for a loose, flexible approach. The one major feature that survived the porting process is the scale of each level, but while the original saw its single-screen stages as linear paths for Jumpman to run through as an ape hurls the kitchen sink at him, the Game Boy edition treats them more like open-ended jungle gyms. The Super Mario 64 comparison is half literal and half figurative: the game features primitive versions of both the side and triple jumps, but these moves are representative of a design philosophy that allows skilled players to cruise through each exit on their own terms. Theoretically, this should clash with the fact that DK '94 is, indeed, a puzzle platformer, but the puzzles in question generally lack a single, strict solution and mostly serve to add variable state to otherwise simple level layouts. This means that they hardly ever slow Mario down, and instead just create another set of tools for players to improvise with while routing through each stage. The microscopic scale justifies itself here- not only because of the pick-up-and-play nature of handheld gaming, but because being able to see most, if not all, of the course at once lets you immediately plan out which parts of it you're going to attempt to skip, bolstered by the return of Lady's lost items as sub-objectives. And of course, this was Nintendo during its apex years, so it's a forgone conclusion that every individual level mechanic in here is introduced and combined with every other one flawlessly. Interestingly, observant Marioheads might notice that this game also features some experimentation with non-failstate punishments that would later define the Wario Land series. Most notably, if Mario falls from a high drop, but not one large to kill him, he'll enter a roll when he lands. This not only leaves him exposed to enemies, but also drops the item he's holding and denies the player control for a few seconds. In a game where quick, stylish traversal is the greatest reward, awkward, time-wasting mistakes may actually be worse than death. Just a fraction of the ingenuity that makes up, in my opinion, the very best OG Game Boy title.
Rain World
2017
Man I love having to cover a super-long and distance with no food, unprecise controls, dangerous ennemies and a time limit.
I really love some elements of this game, and I get why so many people love it : the environments are gorgeous, the atmosphere on point, and the concept of a "metroidvania" with a living ecosystem where you play as your own part of the food chain is simply brilliant.
Unfortunately the frustrating controls, inherent unfairness and obscure mechanics all combined prevent me from appreciating this game as much as I'd like to, and that second trip to the Shaded Citadel was the last straw (pretty huge straw I must admit).
I'd still recommand it if it looks interesting to you but it truely saddens me that it wasn't for me.
I really love some elements of this game, and I get why so many people love it : the environments are gorgeous, the atmosphere on point, and the concept of a "metroidvania" with a living ecosystem where you play as your own part of the food chain is simply brilliant.
Unfortunately the frustrating controls, inherent unfairness and obscure mechanics all combined prevent me from appreciating this game as much as I'd like to, and that second trip to the Shaded Citadel was the last straw (pretty huge straw I must admit).
I'd still recommand it if it looks interesting to you but it truely saddens me that it wasn't for me.