thealexmott
BACKER
This review contains spoilers
200 hours.
152 Shrines.
147 Bubbul Gems.
139 Side Quests.
120 Lightroots.
60 Side Adventures.
58 wells.
31 Old Maps.
15 units for Link's house.
6 Monster Medals.
4 stars on every single article of armor/clothing.
1 fully-upgraded horse.
And like 275 Korok seeds.
After all of that, I've finally rolled credits on TotK. I'm gonna have to sit with this for a bit before I write anything regarding this incredible journey or its phenomenal climax.
And after I do that, you'd better believe I'm gonna get every last Korok seed and track down the last couple of Addison locations. This game rips.
Original May 14th review:
If any of these goobers saying "$70 DLC" or "SAME GAME" has enjoyed more than one Yakuza game in their life, I swear Iwata's ghost is gonna haunt them for that double standard
I love Kamurocho! I enjoy seeing it evolve and change throughout the series. So why do people suddenly have an issue when Zelda does it?
TotK has fixed every issue I had with BotW. The variety of enemies and NPCs has drastically expanded, the world feels more live-in, the successors to Divine Beasts are a huge improvement, the original map has been remixed and effectively tripled in size, and the DIFFICULTY. It's actually challenging this time!
I'm 30 hours in, and am confident this is gonna be an all-timer for me. Just pure joy incarnate.
152 Shrines.
147 Bubbul Gems.
139 Side Quests.
120 Lightroots.
60 Side Adventures.
58 wells.
31 Old Maps.
15 units for Link's house.
6 Monster Medals.
4 stars on every single article of armor/clothing.
1 fully-upgraded horse.
And like 275 Korok seeds.
After all of that, I've finally rolled credits on TotK. I'm gonna have to sit with this for a bit before I write anything regarding this incredible journey or its phenomenal climax.
And after I do that, you'd better believe I'm gonna get every last Korok seed and track down the last couple of Addison locations. This game rips.
Original May 14th review:
If any of these goobers saying "$70 DLC" or "SAME GAME" has enjoyed more than one Yakuza game in their life, I swear Iwata's ghost is gonna haunt them for that double standard
I love Kamurocho! I enjoy seeing it evolve and change throughout the series. So why do people suddenly have an issue when Zelda does it?
TotK has fixed every issue I had with BotW. The variety of enemies and NPCs has drastically expanded, the world feels more live-in, the successors to Divine Beasts are a huge improvement, the original map has been remixed and effectively tripled in size, and the DIFFICULTY. It's actually challenging this time!
I'm 30 hours in, and am confident this is gonna be an all-timer for me. Just pure joy incarnate.
Mute kid starts a rock collection, then takes a nap. After waking, decides he's too old for dumb rocks, he collects coins now.
2014
Insatiable longing for Silksong can lead a person to some desperate choices
This is it. This is the one.
Pokemon romhacks are omnipresent. There are at least 150 on Backloggd and over 1000 on PokeHarbor. Most often, fangames attempt huge changes to their base games, sometimes creating an entirely new adventure, but the three versions of Shin Pokemon are much more restrained, focusing instead on surgical alterations to Gen I that largely maintain the original experience as opposed to supplanting it.
This has been attempted before, most notably with Pokemon Red++, but even that sought to modernize Gen I. There's obviously nothing wrong with that, but Shin Pokemon isn't interested in adding abilities, held items, or new evolutions. Rather, it's all about making the definitive Gen I experience.
The full list of changes can be found here, so I'm just going to go over the major selling points. A toggleable Hard Mode means the trainers actually make intelligent decisions now. Unless you overlevel, you can't just spam attacks and expect to win. Speaking of overlevelling, there are fantastic options that allow customization of your game, including auto-trainer level scaling, trainer team randomization (which does not affect key battles such as gym leaders), and wild encounter randomization. What's key about this is that it's not your standard randomizer, you're not going to run into a Mew on Route 2. Instead, Pokemon are swapped with a comparable counterpart with similar stats and evolution status. For example, between Pallet Town and Viridian City, the Pidgeys and Rattatas in my game were replaced with Vulpixes and Mankeys. The randomization is consistent, tied to your save file so it's not constantly shuffling. This kind of replacement creates an engaging remix of Gen I while still feeling more like an official release than a wacky hack. Now this does mean that sometimes you'll fish up a Charmander with a Super Rod, but all in all I thought it was very well-implemented.
The Select button gets a lot more to do here, showing an extra options menu (where you can turn Hard mode, better trainer AI, obedience level caps, and Nuzlocke mode on and off), swapping between a second inventory (THIS IS HUGE!!), auto-selecting HM moves, and, when combined with another button like a hotkey), using your bike or rod without requiring any menu navigation. You can also hold B to run, doubling your speed, but this also works while surfing AND while biking! This is arguably my favorite improvement, as it's become second nature to increase the speed of Pokemon games ever since the Dodrio Mode in Pokemon Stadium's Game Boy Tower. What I always disliked about that, however, was mangling the god-tier OST. With the ability to run and to bike at 2x speed, I felt no need to rush any more than that. This is the ideal speed for Gen I, they absolutely nailed it.
Moves get a little bit of a makeover here, but nothing crazy. The most critical change here is that outside of a Pokemon's 4 move slots, a fifth "Field Move" slot has been created, allowing a Pokemon to learn a single HM for overworld use only. I LOVE not having to sacrifice an attack slot for Cut, this is an incredible inclusion. Beyond that, moves in-battle are more repaired than revised. Focus Energy and Rage actually do what they're supposed to, multi-turn attacks like Wrap and Fire Spin telegraph the final turn and allow switching out in order to avoid infinite trapping, though the game also allows running from a trainer battle (counts as blacking out) if you legitimately get stuck.
There are a couple of new features added, but they're tastefully done and don't drastically affect the original experience. If you're interested, I'd highly recommend reading through the full breakdown of alterations and giving the game a shot. This is the most I've enjoyed Gen I since the Game Boy days, and it deserves all the attention and praise it can get.
Pokemon romhacks are omnipresent. There are at least 150 on Backloggd and over 1000 on PokeHarbor. Most often, fangames attempt huge changes to their base games, sometimes creating an entirely new adventure, but the three versions of Shin Pokemon are much more restrained, focusing instead on surgical alterations to Gen I that largely maintain the original experience as opposed to supplanting it.
This has been attempted before, most notably with Pokemon Red++, but even that sought to modernize Gen I. There's obviously nothing wrong with that, but Shin Pokemon isn't interested in adding abilities, held items, or new evolutions. Rather, it's all about making the definitive Gen I experience.
The full list of changes can be found here, so I'm just going to go over the major selling points. A toggleable Hard Mode means the trainers actually make intelligent decisions now. Unless you overlevel, you can't just spam attacks and expect to win. Speaking of overlevelling, there are fantastic options that allow customization of your game, including auto-trainer level scaling, trainer team randomization (which does not affect key battles such as gym leaders), and wild encounter randomization. What's key about this is that it's not your standard randomizer, you're not going to run into a Mew on Route 2. Instead, Pokemon are swapped with a comparable counterpart with similar stats and evolution status. For example, between Pallet Town and Viridian City, the Pidgeys and Rattatas in my game were replaced with Vulpixes and Mankeys. The randomization is consistent, tied to your save file so it's not constantly shuffling. This kind of replacement creates an engaging remix of Gen I while still feeling more like an official release than a wacky hack. Now this does mean that sometimes you'll fish up a Charmander with a Super Rod, but all in all I thought it was very well-implemented.
The Select button gets a lot more to do here, showing an extra options menu (where you can turn Hard mode, better trainer AI, obedience level caps, and Nuzlocke mode on and off), swapping between a second inventory (THIS IS HUGE!!), auto-selecting HM moves, and, when combined with another button like a hotkey), using your bike or rod without requiring any menu navigation. You can also hold B to run, doubling your speed, but this also works while surfing AND while biking! This is arguably my favorite improvement, as it's become second nature to increase the speed of Pokemon games ever since the Dodrio Mode in Pokemon Stadium's Game Boy Tower. What I always disliked about that, however, was mangling the god-tier OST. With the ability to run and to bike at 2x speed, I felt no need to rush any more than that. This is the ideal speed for Gen I, they absolutely nailed it.
Moves get a little bit of a makeover here, but nothing crazy. The most critical change here is that outside of a Pokemon's 4 move slots, a fifth "Field Move" slot has been created, allowing a Pokemon to learn a single HM for overworld use only. I LOVE not having to sacrifice an attack slot for Cut, this is an incredible inclusion. Beyond that, moves in-battle are more repaired than revised. Focus Energy and Rage actually do what they're supposed to, multi-turn attacks like Wrap and Fire Spin telegraph the final turn and allow switching out in order to avoid infinite trapping, though the game also allows running from a trainer battle (counts as blacking out) if you legitimately get stuck.
There are a couple of new features added, but they're tastefully done and don't drastically affect the original experience. If you're interested, I'd highly recommend reading through the full breakdown of alterations and giving the game a shot. This is the most I've enjoyed Gen I since the Game Boy days, and it deserves all the attention and praise it can get.
2021
The game begins by dropping your car at the top of an active volcano. I obviously tried to drive the car straight into the lava, but the game FADES TO BLACK BEFORE YOU REACH THE HOT MOLTEN GOODNESS. What is the point of all the realistic graphics if I can't even melt my car???
A little while later, while driving through a cloud of kicked up dust, the commentator shouted "WOOOO RIGHT INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM!!" Gamers, I furrowed my brow so hard at him. It was a dust cloud! There is no eye! The eye is the calm area in the middle of a tornado or something, a phenomenon in which the center of the destructive force is the safest place to be! That doesn't apply to the current situation at all!
I generally try not to be a Surly Nitpicky Gamer Boy™, but a lot of big budget AAA games really do bring it out of me. I get it, it's very pretty and the cars go fast. But I finally tried Ridge Racer Type 4 a few months ago, and the cars in that 26-year-old game not only felt better to drive, but it had an actual visual identity that was beyond cool. This is just boring!
A little while later, while driving through a cloud of kicked up dust, the commentator shouted "WOOOO RIGHT INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM!!" Gamers, I furrowed my brow so hard at him. It was a dust cloud! There is no eye! The eye is the calm area in the middle of a tornado or something, a phenomenon in which the center of the destructive force is the safest place to be! That doesn't apply to the current situation at all!
I generally try not to be a Surly Nitpicky Gamer Boy™, but a lot of big budget AAA games really do bring it out of me. I get it, it's very pretty and the cars go fast. But I finally tried Ridge Racer Type 4 a few months ago, and the cars in that 26-year-old game not only felt better to drive, but it had an actual visual identity that was beyond cool. This is just boring!
Well. Now I know.
2023
I cannot emphasize enough just how hungry I am now
1983
Uhhh this kind of rules?
Look, I have no delusions about being cool. When I was a kid, my dad was getting his PhD until I was like 9 years old, so I often found myself killing time in empty classrooms on Oklahoma University campus. That meant 30-60 minutes of just me and some chalkboards. For most kids, I assume that would mean a whole bunch of doodling. But for this radical 90s youth, it meant coming up with the most complicated long division problems I could and seeing how fast I could solve them.
I think basic math is fun! Sue me! My wife and I often watch 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and compete with each other for points throughout the episode. The 2-player mode of DK Jr. Math gave me the same vibes, but with some NES jank thrown in, and being limited to using single-digit numbers for each step of your equation. I had a great time!
The single-player mode was extremely anxiety-inducing at first while I tried to figure out if I remembered how to do this kind of math without being able to write down remainders, but once I got the hang of it, I knew this was exactly the kind of edutainment that little Alex would have loved. This is absolutely not for everyone, but tiny geeks and nerds (both currently and formerly tiny) will have a blast.
Look, I have no delusions about being cool. When I was a kid, my dad was getting his PhD until I was like 9 years old, so I often found myself killing time in empty classrooms on Oklahoma University campus. That meant 30-60 minutes of just me and some chalkboards. For most kids, I assume that would mean a whole bunch of doodling. But for this radical 90s youth, it meant coming up with the most complicated long division problems I could and seeing how fast I could solve them.
I think basic math is fun! Sue me! My wife and I often watch 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and compete with each other for points throughout the episode. The 2-player mode of DK Jr. Math gave me the same vibes, but with some NES jank thrown in, and being limited to using single-digit numbers for each step of your equation. I had a great time!
The single-player mode was extremely anxiety-inducing at first while I tried to figure out if I remembered how to do this kind of math without being able to write down remainders, but once I got the hang of it, I knew this was exactly the kind of edutainment that little Alex would have loved. This is absolutely not for everyone, but tiny geeks and nerds (both currently and formerly tiny) will have a blast.
2021
Bumped this up to my #2 of all time after this replay. Reviewing it is incredibly daunting for some reason! We'll just say that the sheer scale and scope of its wacky creativity bring the purest joy to my jaded millennial heart, and that in a post-Yooka-Laylee world it's delightful to have a long-awaited 3D platformer actually turn out amazing.
Probably my favorite story of any game too. Raz and Lili win Cutest Couple forever.
Probably my favorite story of any game too. Raz and Lili win Cutest Couple forever.
While I was playing Frog Detective 3, my wife was doing a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle but still wanted to hear all the dialogue, so I had to come up with different voices for each character, and reading it out loud in my basic American accent is how I realized just how Australian some of this dialogue is
10/10 for coziness, would narrate again
10/10 for coziness, would narrate again
2020
Using pointer controls with a Joy-Con makes me miss the Wiimote. The sensor bar was so crucial! There was a reference point at all times, so when you pointed at the screen, the cursor actually showed up where you wanted it to! The Joy-Con work well enough for short bursts of movement, like a shake or a gyro aim assist, but the pointing is just not happening.
So how should I go about collecting thousands of star bits to feed my hungry Luna babies?? I played through the game completely in handheld mode. Touch is completely accurate, but it presents its own challenges since you can't aim and use all the controller functions simultaneously. There were countless moments when I wanted to sweep my index finger across the screen to swipe up those delectable space candies, but I was in a boss fight or a sequence that didn't allow for pauses in movement or jumping. Oftentimes, I'd risk it and swipe anyway. I recklessly died dozens of times due to my insatiable greed, wistfully remembering the days of being able to run, jump, AND point my controller accurately at the screen all at once. I didn't appreciate the Wii Remote enough while I had it. And now, here I am, praying that the Switch 2 dock functions as a sensor bar for Joy-Con 2s with IR somehow crammed next to the shoulder buttons.
Anyhow uhhh this version of the game is very pretty and it's still a great time, shame about the pointer controls though!
So how should I go about collecting thousands of star bits to feed my hungry Luna babies?? I played through the game completely in handheld mode. Touch is completely accurate, but it presents its own challenges since you can't aim and use all the controller functions simultaneously. There were countless moments when I wanted to sweep my index finger across the screen to swipe up those delectable space candies, but I was in a boss fight or a sequence that didn't allow for pauses in movement or jumping. Oftentimes, I'd risk it and swipe anyway. I recklessly died dozens of times due to my insatiable greed, wistfully remembering the days of being able to run, jump, AND point my controller accurately at the screen all at once. I didn't appreciate the Wii Remote enough while I had it. And now, here I am, praying that the Switch 2 dock functions as a sensor bar for Joy-Con 2s with IR somehow crammed next to the shoulder buttons.
Anyhow uhhh this version of the game is very pretty and it's still a great time, shame about the pointer controls though!
2022
This review contains spoilers
On December 23, 2022 I wrote the following: "The day has finally come. Let's not kid ourselves. This was always going to be my GOTY 2022."
I then added: "EDIT: Had a great time with it so far, but uhhhh definitely gonna pause and wait for a patch. This cake is tasty, but it's not exactly done in the middle."
It's now July, and Sports Story has been looming over my head ever since it shadow-dropped back in December. It had been one of my most-anticipated titles ever since it was announced, but the state it launched in was pretty bleak. I told myself that I’d wait for updates and then I’d play the game once it was finished, but the devs put out 5 updates pretty quickly, and we’ve had nothing but radio silence since February 24th.
Sadly, I think this is as “finished” as we’re gonna get.
Over the past week I committed to finishing the follow-up to one of my favorite games of all time, no matter how disappointing things got. And they got pretty disappointing!
Now, a lack of polish and an abundance of bugs aren’t the only things that set Sports Story apart from its immaculate predecessor. Everything the previous game did has been reimagined, but unfortunately it’s a downgrade in every regard. The golfing mechanics were great in Golf Story, but features like curving the ball, adding spin, and altering the height of your shot arc have been completely removed. Your control over the ball has been neutered while courses have become more complicated and unpredictable. The caverns golf course is the low point, where it’s unclear which obstacles will trigger hit detection and which ones are floating above the field of play. It’s baffling that the devs felt the need to re-invent their golf controls instead of just keeping them as they were. The one interesting thing they’ve done is include different types of balls with effects like bouncing towards the pin, being unaffected by wind, or bouncing on water. I enjoyed each of these and used them when I could, but each special ball is a rare consumable item, so once you’ve used them, they’re all gone (until the final area where you can purchase them, but they’re quite pricey). The number of obtainable golf clubs is also sparse, which was such a highlight in the previous game. The concept of meaningful upgrades seems to have been an afterthought here, and that doesn’t just apply to the golf, your equipment is extremely limited for EVERY sport.
Now we’ve got to address the other titular sports contained in the game. It’s abundantly clear that the devs spread themselves too thin by trying to create compelling mechanics for too many sports. Or rather, I should probably say the “dev”, because contrary to the ragebait articles which did the rounds earlier this year, there seems to be a total of one programmer at Sidebar Games. I’m sure you’re aware of the secret dev room easter egg, where a team complains of being overworked while poor management constantly changes plans. Since the game was in such a bad state, players assumed that this was left in the game by actual miserable employees, but from everything I can find online (as well as the game’s credits), this game was made by one programmer, one composer, one lead artist, and a team of 5 additional artists. That’s it! So it’s important to realize that the narrative spun up by a handful of articles which told a tale of a large team being abused by inept leadership is nothing more than fantasy. In truth, this game is a sad tale of a single dev spreading themself too thin. Where they were able to master Golf Story’s mechanics in 2017 (there are definitely some BIG OPINIONS about Disc Golf out there, but I felt it was intuitive and I quite enjoyed it), the task of handling golf, tennis, cricket, soccer, baseball, BMX, fishing, running, volleyball, and a little bit of RC racing proved to be too daunting. I’ll address each of them briefly.
Golf: Downgrade in every way, as previously stated. Omnipresent frame stutters often occur while lining up a shot, so there were a few times where I completely missed a shot simply because the game froze for a second while I was swinging.
Tennis: This is the one that the most time is spent on (other than golf, of course). I managed to get the hang of it by the end of the tennis storyline, but it’s largely unresponsive. The ball would frequently clip right through my character while I was swinging, yet sometimes I would hit a ball that had already passed me. You’re unable to aim your shots for the most part, only hitting a ball with a maximum angle of about 10 degrees to either side. When you’re trying to whack a ball past an opponent, it would have been nice to do something other than hit it straight forward. Scoring is also glitched, because if a ball is hit out of bounds, but bounces off the back wall of the arena and ends up hitting the net on their opponent’s side of the court, the person who hit the ball OOB will still get the point. It just feels bad to play.
Cricket: I still don’t understand cricket! An entire match is never played, you'll bat and you’ll block, but that’s it. Like tennis, the hit detection is rough, with balls sometimes passing through the cricket bat unfazed.
Soccer: This one’s bad. There will be small challenges where you freely run around and kick something into a makeshift goal, and those handle just fine. But most of Sports Story's soccer activity is set up like penalty kicks, which are aimed and kicked with golf mechanics, often with a LOT of wind. They feel really bad and are the only challenges I ended up skipping.
Baseball: Funnily enough, the in-game sports corporation PureStrike apparently hates baseball, so owning a bat is illegal. There are batting cages (and a tiny bit of cheeky lawless outdoor baseball) in the game, but just like tennis and cricket, swinging and hitting a ball is neither consistent nor engaging.
BMX: It’s Excitebike for the NES. There are multiple lanes and you drive left to right across raised platforms, obstacles to jump over, and boosts. The momentum is really weird though, if you failed on your first attempt at a challenge but ran out of time while still going fast, your second attempt will start you with whatever speed you had built up at the end of your previous try. The biking as a whole is fine, but there’s one really weird problem: Your objective is to finish races before the clock runs out. If you crash, you start again from the beginning, but the clock keeps going from where it was. However, it is IMPOSSIBLE to complete any of these races (with maybe one exception where there was time aplenty) after resetting this way, as there is simply not enough time left over to run the track. Definitely worse than Excitebike!
Fishing: This is done quite well! The mechanics for spotting, baiting, hooking, and reeling in fish vary for different species and you have to plan accordingly for each fish. It’s legitimately quite clever and didn’t feel like any other fishing minigame I’ve played before. This one impressed me!
Running: It’s the BMX minigame, but more baffling. As with the bike controls, you hold B to… pedal? There are running challenges in the regular levels where you just move around like normal, but suddenly when it’s a left-to-right footrace, it handles like a bike. It’s weird!
Volleyball: Another entry that’s sparsely explored. It handles fine, but it’s very bare-bones and it only happened like twice.
RC Racing: This is barely here, I’m not sure it really counts as a sport. It’s fine!
The vast diversity of activities is, in theory, a good thing! I definitely understand what they were going for, but they simply bit off more than they could chew here. Much of the game becomes filled with fetch quests, feeling quite similar to the low points of Sierra adventure games of yore. There’s a long late-game trade sequence in particular that is the worst kind of obtuse. For example, two identical NPCs are standing right next to each other and ask for vague help. It turns out they’re not conjoined twins, they’re glued together, and you need to pour oil on them to free them. Roberta & Ken Williams, eat your heart out.
But while King’s Quest games can be saved by charming dialogue, Sports Story somehow let me down hardest in this department. In my 3 playthroughs of Golf Story, I constantly laughed out loud through the whole journey. I adored every word, loved the characters, and was fully engrossed in the story. But this time? It is SO. BLAND. The last game had a fantastic rivalry with Lara, a hilarious relationship with an incredibly reluctant coach, a compelling late-game antagonist in Max Yards, a sleazy deal-with-the-devil situation with Lucky, and practically every other side character left an impression. But here? If you had told me this dialogue was written by the dev a decade before Golf Story while they were still finding their voice, that would have made complete sense to me. Any returning character is a shell of their former self, and I often couldn’t tell if the game was being legitimately serious or if the seriousness was meant to be a joke. There were maybe 5 times when the text made me smile, yet they went crazy hard on the sheer amount of dialogue this time. There are VHS tapes you can rent and TV shows you can watch which each drastically overstay their welcome with uninteresting stories, and any conversation you finish can NOT be skipped if you accidentally enter it a second time! There is a LOT of prattling on, and you’re gonna sit through it all, whether you like it or not. Though the dialogue when the houseboat was docking was legitimately great, and a good chunk of the final major area mercifully had some of that Golf Story charm, the writing as a whole isn't something you enjoy, it's something you endure.
And the GLITCHES, man. It’s hard to tell what’s an honest oversight and what just was never finished. Where you have to stand in order to press A to interact with things or people varies wildly. I got locked on a black screen while entering an area and had to reset. I made it to the other side of a crevasse (where I apparently wasn’t supposed to be) and when I spoke to a character there, the game tried to move me back across the chasm to where I was before, but my character wound up trying to walk into the abyss for a full minute before the game allowed the conversation to continue. There are a surprising amount of typos and misspellings. I accidentally blew up a button I needed to push by throwing a golf ball at it, meaning I could not complete the quest without resetting the game. (WHY WAS IT EVEN CODED TO BE BREAKABLE) Loads of purchasable items seemingly do nothing at all, including “Junk” which you can buy from popcorn machines (?!?!?) which only has “Junk it up” as a description. In Golf Story, every item has a purpose. But here you can quite easily waste all of your money on useless crap. There are entire quests which are inconsequential as well. Does anyone have a clue if something happens after you rescue all the flamingoes?? The aviary lady said she was going to be able to sell the building and all its birds now, but there’s no player reward of any kind.
And to TOP IT ALL OFF, the climax is as underwhelming as you could possibly get. The story just kind of quits, with a prominent character telling you “okay, you finished the other stuff, now there’s a big sports competition!” But unlike Golf Story’s championship at the Blue Moon Dunes, there’s barely any time spent building to this event, and you’re not directly competing against anyone. There are no clearly-defined stakes, no rivalry, no antagonist. Some mystical creatures randomly show up as you golf your way through non-golf scenarios, with seemingly arbitrary points being awarded, and then… you just win. I have no idea if there’s even a way to lose here, there was no target score or anything. I just... finished a list of uninspired tasks.
There are glimpses of something greater here. I really did want this game to be a masterpiece, but we got a rough draft of an ill-conceived idea. I’ve put in my time, and I will now refrain from ever touching this game again.
Oh, and the post-credits scene was arguably the most clever and funny part of the whole game. Shame it’s teasing a sequel that will likely never exist!
I then added: "EDIT: Had a great time with it so far, but uhhhh definitely gonna pause and wait for a patch. This cake is tasty, but it's not exactly done in the middle."
It's now July, and Sports Story has been looming over my head ever since it shadow-dropped back in December. It had been one of my most-anticipated titles ever since it was announced, but the state it launched in was pretty bleak. I told myself that I’d wait for updates and then I’d play the game once it was finished, but the devs put out 5 updates pretty quickly, and we’ve had nothing but radio silence since February 24th.
Sadly, I think this is as “finished” as we’re gonna get.
Over the past week I committed to finishing the follow-up to one of my favorite games of all time, no matter how disappointing things got. And they got pretty disappointing!
Now, a lack of polish and an abundance of bugs aren’t the only things that set Sports Story apart from its immaculate predecessor. Everything the previous game did has been reimagined, but unfortunately it’s a downgrade in every regard. The golfing mechanics were great in Golf Story, but features like curving the ball, adding spin, and altering the height of your shot arc have been completely removed. Your control over the ball has been neutered while courses have become more complicated and unpredictable. The caverns golf course is the low point, where it’s unclear which obstacles will trigger hit detection and which ones are floating above the field of play. It’s baffling that the devs felt the need to re-invent their golf controls instead of just keeping them as they were. The one interesting thing they’ve done is include different types of balls with effects like bouncing towards the pin, being unaffected by wind, or bouncing on water. I enjoyed each of these and used them when I could, but each special ball is a rare consumable item, so once you’ve used them, they’re all gone (until the final area where you can purchase them, but they’re quite pricey). The number of obtainable golf clubs is also sparse, which was such a highlight in the previous game. The concept of meaningful upgrades seems to have been an afterthought here, and that doesn’t just apply to the golf, your equipment is extremely limited for EVERY sport.
Now we’ve got to address the other titular sports contained in the game. It’s abundantly clear that the devs spread themselves too thin by trying to create compelling mechanics for too many sports. Or rather, I should probably say the “dev”, because contrary to the ragebait articles which did the rounds earlier this year, there seems to be a total of one programmer at Sidebar Games. I’m sure you’re aware of the secret dev room easter egg, where a team complains of being overworked while poor management constantly changes plans. Since the game was in such a bad state, players assumed that this was left in the game by actual miserable employees, but from everything I can find online (as well as the game’s credits), this game was made by one programmer, one composer, one lead artist, and a team of 5 additional artists. That’s it! So it’s important to realize that the narrative spun up by a handful of articles which told a tale of a large team being abused by inept leadership is nothing more than fantasy. In truth, this game is a sad tale of a single dev spreading themself too thin. Where they were able to master Golf Story’s mechanics in 2017 (there are definitely some BIG OPINIONS about Disc Golf out there, but I felt it was intuitive and I quite enjoyed it), the task of handling golf, tennis, cricket, soccer, baseball, BMX, fishing, running, volleyball, and a little bit of RC racing proved to be too daunting. I’ll address each of them briefly.
Golf: Downgrade in every way, as previously stated. Omnipresent frame stutters often occur while lining up a shot, so there were a few times where I completely missed a shot simply because the game froze for a second while I was swinging.
Tennis: This is the one that the most time is spent on (other than golf, of course). I managed to get the hang of it by the end of the tennis storyline, but it’s largely unresponsive. The ball would frequently clip right through my character while I was swinging, yet sometimes I would hit a ball that had already passed me. You’re unable to aim your shots for the most part, only hitting a ball with a maximum angle of about 10 degrees to either side. When you’re trying to whack a ball past an opponent, it would have been nice to do something other than hit it straight forward. Scoring is also glitched, because if a ball is hit out of bounds, but bounces off the back wall of the arena and ends up hitting the net on their opponent’s side of the court, the person who hit the ball OOB will still get the point. It just feels bad to play.
Cricket: I still don’t understand cricket! An entire match is never played, you'll bat and you’ll block, but that’s it. Like tennis, the hit detection is rough, with balls sometimes passing through the cricket bat unfazed.
Soccer: This one’s bad. There will be small challenges where you freely run around and kick something into a makeshift goal, and those handle just fine. But most of Sports Story's soccer activity is set up like penalty kicks, which are aimed and kicked with golf mechanics, often with a LOT of wind. They feel really bad and are the only challenges I ended up skipping.
Baseball: Funnily enough, the in-game sports corporation PureStrike apparently hates baseball, so owning a bat is illegal. There are batting cages (and a tiny bit of cheeky lawless outdoor baseball) in the game, but just like tennis and cricket, swinging and hitting a ball is neither consistent nor engaging.
BMX: It’s Excitebike for the NES. There are multiple lanes and you drive left to right across raised platforms, obstacles to jump over, and boosts. The momentum is really weird though, if you failed on your first attempt at a challenge but ran out of time while still going fast, your second attempt will start you with whatever speed you had built up at the end of your previous try. The biking as a whole is fine, but there’s one really weird problem: Your objective is to finish races before the clock runs out. If you crash, you start again from the beginning, but the clock keeps going from where it was. However, it is IMPOSSIBLE to complete any of these races (with maybe one exception where there was time aplenty) after resetting this way, as there is simply not enough time left over to run the track. Definitely worse than Excitebike!
Fishing: This is done quite well! The mechanics for spotting, baiting, hooking, and reeling in fish vary for different species and you have to plan accordingly for each fish. It’s legitimately quite clever and didn’t feel like any other fishing minigame I’ve played before. This one impressed me!
Running: It’s the BMX minigame, but more baffling. As with the bike controls, you hold B to… pedal? There are running challenges in the regular levels where you just move around like normal, but suddenly when it’s a left-to-right footrace, it handles like a bike. It’s weird!
Volleyball: Another entry that’s sparsely explored. It handles fine, but it’s very bare-bones and it only happened like twice.
RC Racing: This is barely here, I’m not sure it really counts as a sport. It’s fine!
The vast diversity of activities is, in theory, a good thing! I definitely understand what they were going for, but they simply bit off more than they could chew here. Much of the game becomes filled with fetch quests, feeling quite similar to the low points of Sierra adventure games of yore. There’s a long late-game trade sequence in particular that is the worst kind of obtuse. For example, two identical NPCs are standing right next to each other and ask for vague help. It turns out they’re not conjoined twins, they’re glued together, and you need to pour oil on them to free them. Roberta & Ken Williams, eat your heart out.
But while King’s Quest games can be saved by charming dialogue, Sports Story somehow let me down hardest in this department. In my 3 playthroughs of Golf Story, I constantly laughed out loud through the whole journey. I adored every word, loved the characters, and was fully engrossed in the story. But this time? It is SO. BLAND. The last game had a fantastic rivalry with Lara, a hilarious relationship with an incredibly reluctant coach, a compelling late-game antagonist in Max Yards, a sleazy deal-with-the-devil situation with Lucky, and practically every other side character left an impression. But here? If you had told me this dialogue was written by the dev a decade before Golf Story while they were still finding their voice, that would have made complete sense to me. Any returning character is a shell of their former self, and I often couldn’t tell if the game was being legitimately serious or if the seriousness was meant to be a joke. There were maybe 5 times when the text made me smile, yet they went crazy hard on the sheer amount of dialogue this time. There are VHS tapes you can rent and TV shows you can watch which each drastically overstay their welcome with uninteresting stories, and any conversation you finish can NOT be skipped if you accidentally enter it a second time! There is a LOT of prattling on, and you’re gonna sit through it all, whether you like it or not. Though the dialogue when the houseboat was docking was legitimately great, and a good chunk of the final major area mercifully had some of that Golf Story charm, the writing as a whole isn't something you enjoy, it's something you endure.
And the GLITCHES, man. It’s hard to tell what’s an honest oversight and what just was never finished. Where you have to stand in order to press A to interact with things or people varies wildly. I got locked on a black screen while entering an area and had to reset. I made it to the other side of a crevasse (where I apparently wasn’t supposed to be) and when I spoke to a character there, the game tried to move me back across the chasm to where I was before, but my character wound up trying to walk into the abyss for a full minute before the game allowed the conversation to continue. There are a surprising amount of typos and misspellings. I accidentally blew up a button I needed to push by throwing a golf ball at it, meaning I could not complete the quest without resetting the game. (WHY WAS IT EVEN CODED TO BE BREAKABLE) Loads of purchasable items seemingly do nothing at all, including “Junk” which you can buy from popcorn machines (?!?!?) which only has “Junk it up” as a description. In Golf Story, every item has a purpose. But here you can quite easily waste all of your money on useless crap. There are entire quests which are inconsequential as well. Does anyone have a clue if something happens after you rescue all the flamingoes?? The aviary lady said she was going to be able to sell the building and all its birds now, but there’s no player reward of any kind.
And to TOP IT ALL OFF, the climax is as underwhelming as you could possibly get. The story just kind of quits, with a prominent character telling you “okay, you finished the other stuff, now there’s a big sports competition!” But unlike Golf Story’s championship at the Blue Moon Dunes, there’s barely any time spent building to this event, and you’re not directly competing against anyone. There are no clearly-defined stakes, no rivalry, no antagonist. Some mystical creatures randomly show up as you golf your way through non-golf scenarios, with seemingly arbitrary points being awarded, and then… you just win. I have no idea if there’s even a way to lose here, there was no target score or anything. I just... finished a list of uninspired tasks.
There are glimpses of something greater here. I really did want this game to be a masterpiece, but we got a rough draft of an ill-conceived idea. I’ve put in my time, and I will now refrain from ever touching this game again.
Oh, and the post-credits scene was arguably the most clever and funny part of the whole game. Shame it’s teasing a sequel that will likely never exist!
“As I continued to play, I found that Super Mario Bros. 2 asked me again and again to take a leap of faith and that each of those leaps resulted in my immediate death. This was not a fun game to play. It was punishment. Undeserved punishment. I put down my controller astonished that Mr. Miyamoto has chosen to design such a painful game.”
— Howard Phillips, 1980s Spokesman for Nintendo of America
Yeah I think I'm with Howard on this one, but it was pretty cool to finally be able to finish this with an actual NES controller through the NSO. Can't say it's a good game, can't say it's a bad game, but I can definitely say it's an evil game!
Shigeru Miyamoto invented Kaizo Mario in 1986.
— Howard Phillips, 1980s Spokesman for Nintendo of America
Yeah I think I'm with Howard on this one, but it was pretty cool to finally be able to finish this with an actual NES controller through the NSO. Can't say it's a good game, can't say it's a bad game, but I can definitely say it's an evil game!
Shigeru Miyamoto invented Kaizo Mario in 1986.
1997
It's somehow both hilarious and charming to hear the constant pitter-patter of tiny feet throughout every single race
2023
This review contains spoilers
Pikmin 4 isn't just a great entry in the series, it's a series of glorious payoffs from its predecessors. Every kind of Pikmin is back. Caves are back. The bad ending from Pikmin 1 (?!?!?) is back, and there's an entire post-game mode that functions like DLC for that game. There's a bonkers final boss fight and loads of challenge modes. But most of all, LOUIE IS BACK THAT WRETCHED SACK OF PUTRID TONSIL STONES I HATE HIS STUPID GUTS WE SHOULD HAVE PUSHED HIM OUT THE AIRLOCK TO ASPHYXIATE IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE I HOPE HE STASHED SOME SNAGRET EGGS ON THE SHIP AND FORGOT TO EAT THEM SO WHEN HE GETS HOME THEY CAN HATCH AND PECK OUT HIS EYES IN FRONT OF HIS FAMILY
Also Oatchi is cute!
Also Oatchi is cute!