A charming, clever pastiche of late 90s Internet portals that’s a lot of fun to explore. It has so many interesting little niches of story, and I love how novel the delivery of the main story is. I also had a lot of fun falling into some of the same habits I did then; never would have guessed a game would let me remember the thrill of stumbling on an unlisted invite-only file sharing service and then downloading every song I could find that sounded interesting. And the music included here is so pleasantly odd and nonetheless catchy.

My only real complaint is how intimidating this can be at first, and how tedious some of the late game stuff can be when I know what page I need but can’t remember how to get there again without just looking it up. Still though, what a deep, thoughtfully crafted rabbit hole this is!

I really wanted to love this and kept waiting to change my mind about it. It was mostly a tedious frustrating slog all the way through, though.

It’s rare that I’m disappointed on every level by a game like this. The most unexpected frustration was how technically broken the PS4 port seems to be. I had less play-affecting bugs with Cyberpunk near launch than with this. It’s a bad sign if I’m this often unsure if the game has busted again or it’s just another tediously implemented joke. Usually it was the game getting into a bugged state that required a quit and reload, and in the process usually losing several minutes of progress thanks to the busted checkpoint system. I also haven’t seen such long, stuttering load screens on PS4 since Bloodborne near launch. As a fun send off, the final set piece broke in three different ways, requiring a start from scratch each time.

But maybe the gameplay is fun enough to suffer through that technical mess? No, unfortunately it’s not. It’s a mix of the kind of tedious adventure game that nearly killed that genre and platforming that controls terribly despite the needlessly challenging insta-death perils everywhere. I’m not a platforming expert, but I beat Celeste without assists and found this 100x more maddening, and with none of that game’s clever level design or fun.

But maybe the writing is worth it? Still a no. There are a handful of genuinely hilarious jokes, but overall the writing goes for quantity over quality; why tell one great joke when you can think of ten mediocre ones instead? It’s also given to the sort of hat-on-a-hat type humor that thinks a character named Lord Biggles Scat-Muncher Hoppinsforth the IV is very funny. Worse is its take on irreverent fourth wall breaking; I love knowing satire that has fun deflating self-regard (e.g. The Looker’s recent skewering of The Witness) but it doesn’t work when the parody is clearly just as impressed and self-satisfied with its own genius as its target is, and even less when it’s primarily pointing out obvious, well-trod criticisms made more cleverly elsewhere.

The best way I can think to describe this game is by first going all the way back and quoting my review for the Wii game:

"It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin."

All of this is gone, except for the stats (and even those can be adjusted to basically make every character whatever you want them to be). Everything else just...gone. No more sidekicks in general, no unique special shots, no character-specific items, no theme music for goals, no unique dodge techniques. Personality has at least survived with some things like animations, but it's all aesthetic and there's essentially zero gameplay differences between the tiny roster of 10 characters.

Quoting from my old review again though:
"My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward."

This has at least been changed. No more spamming super strikes for 5 easy goals. Now you can only do them when a special item appears, and they only give you 2 goals. They still kind of break the pace when using them (unskippable 30 second or so cutscenes), but generally they're a big improvement here.

Anyway moving on to things unique to this game - Holy shit the way they handled customisation. So they have some pretty cool ways to alter the look of your side of the field, things like the look of the goal posts, the electric barrier pattern, the scenery items outside the barrier etc. But you can ONLY do these as part of a striker club. And only the leader of a striker club can alter them. Like you can still use your clubs field outside of club mode, even in story mode, but for some reason there's no way to just...make field designs you want. It makes zero sense. Have it so you can only use your clubs field specifically when doing club matches, but why the hell would you not let us make our own fields for single player and quickplay matches?

You might think "Well I'll just make my own private club so I can make a field how I want". Except nah, because on top of the obvious disadvantage you'd be in for ranking with a club with only 1 member, you can't actually do proper club matches like this (which you need for currency to buy customisation parts). The characters you can select in club matches are exclusively the ones the players of a club have registered as their character in said club (including their gear). So you can use YOUR character, but if you're the only one in a club it'll fill the last 3 with random characters, none of which have gear. So your only choices are to join a club and let the leader pick all the customisation options for you, or be lucky enough to be the head of a club with 19 other people (and hope they bring in good characters to use).

Also club mode launched without even having a current season lmao. Why?!

Anyway here's just a random list of other complaints:
-Zero content. 10 characters. 5 stadium themes that have zero gimmicks (may or may not be a positive to some people), and all the actual pitches are just plain grass. The only single player mode is now a simple bracket tournament with 3 matches across various cups.
-The inclusion of more timing based elements for things like perfect passes and perfect shots sounds good on paper, but in reality it just results in WAY too many goals. Especially combined with being able to min-max any stat you want. Having a max shooting stat with a perfect shot (honestly not hard at all to time) results in a goal from anywhere almost automatically. 4 minute matches will take at least twice as long thanks to the amount of goals.
-Items have been reduced to just the basic 5.
-Stadiums are tiny now.

What's GOOD about the game? Well... it still plays fairly well I suppose. There's still a lot of personality in animations (though I think the amount of possible goal animations per character have been drastically reduced?).

Umm... I dunno what else. This game is such a shell of its former self. They seemed to bank literally everything on the idea people would love being part of a club online, and maybe if you have 19 friends to join that'd be the case, but for anyone who has to resort to joining random open clubs, it's just a bad game with basically nothing to do.

Oh golly gee do i have a LOT to say.

Wii Sports was never a top tier franchise, but considering this is a billion dollar franchise and contains two of the best selling games of all time, you'd think nintendo would put at least the bare minimum effort with this one. But they didn't even do that.

For the few positives, the game on a technical level looks decently nice. I think bowling is still as fun as ever and swordplay was actually improved with the addition of different swords, so that's nice. Also the online connectivity isn't that bad, it's above average for the windows xp level switch online.

But that's about it. There are lots of problems with this game that makes it not only easily the weakest Wii Sports game, but also just a super lame party game.

First off, and most subjectively, this game is a creative wasteland. And I don't just mean the ubisoft-ass sportsmates that effectively replaced the miis, though I hate those about as much as everyone else. The appeal of the miis, ESPECIALLY in these games, are that they could look similar to real people in your life. And that suspension of disbelief is much easier with a blank slate design like the miis rather than the more involved, but soulless sportsmates. But it's not just them.

Spocco Square is also just a really lame location for these sports to take place in. In the last game, Wuhu Island felt like a lived in resort because most, if not all, of the sports were framed around this island. Spocco in comparison really suffers in this regard. I don't think people play soccer, field golf, or SWORDPLAY in a shopping mall.

That is a huge letdown, but I am willing to look past these sorts of things if the game is at least fun. But it really isn't. Barring bowling and chambara the rest of the sports just don't really hold up.

The controls on a lot of these are fairly clunky compared to resort as a result of the nature of the joycons. They just don't feel as accurate as the motion plus did, at least not here. Volleyball is easily the weakest here with you just needing to make very slight hand motions to win. I don't think volleyball was built for this kind of game.

This game also suffers in sports variety. There are 6 sports (right now) and three of them are tennis, volleyball, and badminton. If these were all crammed in the same game in order to fit the shopping mall theme, then maybe that's a sign that the idea isn't that great.

To return to the Wii sports resort comparion, that game not only had 12 sports but most of them contained different side modes like 100 pin bowling and swordplay showdown. Apart from the shootout mode for soccer and some minor player counts, this game lacks the side modes that other wii sports games have. You just have the one super short gameplay loop. Take it or leave it.

And to top all of this off, this game released in a half baked state. And not just in the stuff I mentioned before. Golf, the first major post launch update, is not coming until september. Which is a system that always works for these games accept for Mario Golf, and Mario Tennis, and Kirby, and Arms, and basically every other game except Smash and Splatoon. And not only that but even though the game itself isn't $60, the game does come with a leg strap peripheral like Ring Fit adventure. That doesnt work until july. GREAT.

Alright, this is easily the longest review I've made on here and its for a fucking wii sports game lmfao. Bottom line is that this game just feels so empty and soulless compared to Wii Sports Resort, or even other party games on switch like Mario Party Superstars or Clubhouse Games.

Please just get the latter, it has more games, it's $10 cheaper, and it gets golf day one instead of months after launch.

Children of Llullaillaco were three Inca kids found in the Northernmost part of my Country. They were human sacrifices that took place in a religious ceremony at the top of a cold mountain, were they were buried alive.
One of these children was a high-born lady, destined from birth to become a sacrifice for the gods.
The other was a random kid they found in the streets of the Empire, while the lady was well dressed and clean, the boy was blindfolded, wore rugged clothes and fought nails and teeth to save his life.


The vivid mummies of Llullaillaco are one of the most well preserved of all times, they don't look dead or ancient. They are just sleeping children.

While I was playing this game I found small parallels between these stories. In my head it felt like the boy (who looks just like the mummy) was given one last chance to save his life and that of the Maiden. The desperate running, the way he swung his sword not as a skilled swordsman, but as a kid trying to fend off something he doesn't quite understand. It felt personal, yet distant. Like the events of Llullaillaco only happened a mere 500 years ago, right were I live.

The tale of Ico unequivocally places the player on the shoes of a kid; He runs like a kid, fights like a kid, jumps as a kid and even sits as one. Every mechanic is built in service of this: The combat is simple, doesn't have a Health bar cause' it doesn't need to. The tight jumps where you need to catch the maiden, where you are at the edge of your seat waiting for your joystick to just slightly vibrate is executed masterfully.

This 20 year old game creates an immersive and rich experience, polished by the subtle art of subtraction. Ico tells the story that those kids never had. I'm not sure if Fumito Ueda was inspired by the Childrens of Llullaillaco, but his team manages to tell a tale where for about six hours-

You were there.