turdl3
2023
ok lets see, this is one of those temtems yeah? cyber sleuth? …palworld? no guns in this one?
i was a bit optimistic when starting the game up, despite getting jumpscared by a botw stamina bar when hitting the run button. never do this, please. but the tone was ultimately set by the soothing vocal song signalling everything’s going to be alright. sure, i believe you, game i’ve just met for 10 minutes. on that note, there’s a gimmick here where vocals come in when you do the obligatory mega evolution/z shmove/dynawhatever mechanic. or limit break if i wasnt trying to pigeonhole this into pokemon so badly. other jrpgs learn from this please! im deducting points tho because the audio is clearly too high quality to be coming from a cassette player. da diegetics...
upon setting out, you realise you’re going to spend a lot of your time in a fairly humdrum open world, encountering wooden npcs, getting into double battles (colosseum/xd fans eat your heart out) where your monsters have like 8 moves each (half of them unusable while you watch your AP bar filling), being rewarded with like 5 different currencies stuffed into the same menu as your level-up moves. a type system where hits aren’t merely “super effective”, they cause shit like stats dropping, contact damage being taken, induced type changes, leech seed, you name it. and you get some bonus AP? did that sound overwhelming? should pokemon be overwhelming?
a looooot of thumb twiddling in a game where i had both difficulty sliders turned all the way up anyway. i think pokemon is smart in being dumb. you get 4 moves. they are always accessible (unless you have 0 pp. but then you just have to get it up) and predictable. you only get exp and money. i didn’t find the strategising in this game particularly rewarding or necessary, so a lot of the complexity just felt a headache to trawl through. your tms can only be sorted alphabetically, and you get so many of them that i just… stopped wanting to look there. yes my room is still messy.
idk. id probably forgive the excess here (it is an open world game) if i had a stronger reason to keep going. i found the writing somewhat stale, but the political bent funny. area music unmemorable but still vibey. quests sorta boring, but passable. the monsters are cute. i like them. i could finish this and have a decent time. but i probably wont! (it is an open world game)
oh also they added scald to this game. and made it 90 base power. im just saying.
i was a bit optimistic when starting the game up, despite getting jumpscared by a botw stamina bar when hitting the run button. never do this, please. but the tone was ultimately set by the soothing vocal song signalling everything’s going to be alright. sure, i believe you, game i’ve just met for 10 minutes. on that note, there’s a gimmick here where vocals come in when you do the obligatory mega evolution/z shmove/dynawhatever mechanic. or limit break if i wasnt trying to pigeonhole this into pokemon so badly. other jrpgs learn from this please! im deducting points tho because the audio is clearly too high quality to be coming from a cassette player. da diegetics...
upon setting out, you realise you’re going to spend a lot of your time in a fairly humdrum open world, encountering wooden npcs, getting into double battles (colosseum/xd fans eat your heart out) where your monsters have like 8 moves each (half of them unusable while you watch your AP bar filling), being rewarded with like 5 different currencies stuffed into the same menu as your level-up moves. a type system where hits aren’t merely “super effective”, they cause shit like stats dropping, contact damage being taken, induced type changes, leech seed, you name it. and you get some bonus AP? did that sound overwhelming? should pokemon be overwhelming?
a looooot of thumb twiddling in a game where i had both difficulty sliders turned all the way up anyway. i think pokemon is smart in being dumb. you get 4 moves. they are always accessible (unless you have 0 pp. but then you just have to get it up) and predictable. you only get exp and money. i didn’t find the strategising in this game particularly rewarding or necessary, so a lot of the complexity just felt a headache to trawl through. your tms can only be sorted alphabetically, and you get so many of them that i just… stopped wanting to look there. yes my room is still messy.
idk. id probably forgive the excess here (it is an open world game) if i had a stronger reason to keep going. i found the writing somewhat stale, but the political bent funny. area music unmemorable but still vibey. quests sorta boring, but passable. the monsters are cute. i like them. i could finish this and have a decent time. but i probably wont! (it is an open world game)
oh also they added scald to this game. and made it 90 base power. im just saying.
2023
(try playing this at https://neal.fun/password-game/!)
—
the password game takes the ripe joke of having to obey increasingly specific password requirements when signing up for a site and runs with it. it is divided into levels - “rules” - that you have to follow, a new one revealed once you fulfil all pre-existing ones. at least 5 characters? sure. a special character? you got it. an emoji for the current phase of the moon? uhhh… the notation for the winning move in this game of chess? uh oh….
if i was meaner i would be assigning this a rating and docking it some points. this was definitely intended to get increasingly ridiculous to play into the joke, and not as a game structured for anyone to beat. the dev admits as such on twitter. theres an entertaining level of entropy to the whole game the further you get in due to how the “rules” all have to be fulfilled at once - i had to start accounting for boron in my answer because i was forced to move my bishop during a previous level (the algebraic notation for this beginning with a B). lets hope that youtube url you need doesnt contain a C, M or X because youre going to fuck up your roman numeral multiplication that way!! and you can pad your answer with special characters if you know the fire is coming…
its a decent quick laugh. again, i would most likely be rating this negatively as an actual game due to an unsatisfying luck factor (rule 24 is so unfair!!) but theres enough novelty here to be funny to show friends and gauge reactions as they delve further. and i had a fun enough time trying to optimise an “ideal run” through it. so i bear no ill-will
—
the password game takes the ripe joke of having to obey increasingly specific password requirements when signing up for a site and runs with it. it is divided into levels - “rules” - that you have to follow, a new one revealed once you fulfil all pre-existing ones. at least 5 characters? sure. a special character? you got it. an emoji for the current phase of the moon? uhhh… the notation for the winning move in this game of chess? uh oh….
if i was meaner i would be assigning this a rating and docking it some points. this was definitely intended to get increasingly ridiculous to play into the joke, and not as a game structured for anyone to beat. the dev admits as such on twitter. theres an entertaining level of entropy to the whole game the further you get in due to how the “rules” all have to be fulfilled at once - i had to start accounting for boron in my answer because i was forced to move my bishop during a previous level (the algebraic notation for this beginning with a B). lets hope that youtube url you need doesnt contain a C, M or X because youre going to fuck up your roman numeral multiplication that way!! and you can pad your answer with special characters if you know the fire is coming…
its a decent quick laugh. again, i would most likely be rating this negatively as an actual game due to an unsatisfying luck factor (rule 24 is so unfair!!) but theres enough novelty here to be funny to show friends and gauge reactions as they delve further. and i had a fun enough time trying to optimise an “ideal run” through it. so i bear no ill-will
not going to give a proper review for this. i typed up my delirious shopping list and am not going to edit it. sorry. the ultrahand glue fumes got me.
as someone who dropped botw after a few hours, this still does a lot of the same stuff i dont like but i kinda kept playing it anyway. no real reason. im just a fan of retreading stuff out of peer pressure
leaving this as “complete” even though i still have to do some endgame stuff please dont tell the backloggd police. itll be accurate by tomorrow i swear. (its all good now)
things i liked:
Sound Design - he goes pitter patter!!
Graphed icks - i think this “cel shading” thing shows promise !
Polish - theyre juggling all of the variables. x, y, z, omega, backwards w, all those letters. other games fall apart when you click to fire the gun. which is more relatable to me but we cant have that now
Music in the Towns - cool stuff, heard an erhu in there a bunch. good instrument, checks my box
Main Abilities - the phys gun thingy is a good gimmick to centre a game around. the other 3 are also good like the rewind time one. now i finally understand king crimson kinda. the botw ones are lame and i cant pretend im jojo in that one
Moon Logic needed to get to the Dungeons - this is good it feels like im really in a legend of
things i kinda liked but kinda didnt like:
Combat - yeah i could do something GOOFY with the phys gun or i can just mash Y a bunch with the weapon im already holding. “weapon durability” is not real anyway you get 1000 knives (rip goat) you can all fuse together with the 5349022 different body parts looted in your backpack. the mokoboboblins all act the same, the like likes spit a few balls at you with the energy of a pensioner. but hitting things with a stick is visceral and timeless so its all good (i do not beat pensioners with sticks)
Sky Islands - theyre samey but a good change of pace. i would see them and have to open the map to be like “have i actually been to this one” because theyre just not visually distinct.
Devices and Gadgets - this is like fine but my approach to anything is never going to be to open a huge ass menu and sift through it, if you already give me the planks and wheels i need to do [TASK] at [LOCATION]
Story - the “memories” part of this game actually gets cool once it gets going. but until then its all just kinda monotonous and i dont care about any of these people. sorry for your kingdom or happy that happened
Dungeons - some of this is fun but if i wanted to visit 5 rooms and call it a day id go to a museum
The World - its too big but theres some cool stuff. this doubles for real life
things i didnt like:
Shrines - you didnt need to make them all look and sound the same. only 10% of these are actually really any fun, im not a preschooler anymore. come on guys i thought people were telling you this 6 years ago
Music Elsewhere - not against a minimalist impressionist thing but both this and the botw ones still just go in one ear out the other
Depths - not fun to navigate, the rewards arent cool, it all looks the same. i see why it wasnt advertised much lol
Cutscenes - hmm this is a non linear game so to ensure people get the memo we will give the same speech at 4 different mandatory locations - “game design” and “narrative effect”. im good
Voice Acting - you can switch to japanese though
Quests - kinda boring
Materials Menu - this is soooooo big lmao. the up button menu is unusable if you dont sort it by “most used”. there was something better that couldve been done here. sorry ill end the review now that its getting to nitpicks
it may have strayed from the series roots, but theres still a bunch of different collectibles and you can make wheely cars that go FAST so whos to say if banjo kazooie: nuts and bolts is really bad. also im pretty sure they play the among us theme in the shrines so i see why the kingdom is malding
as someone who dropped botw after a few hours, this still does a lot of the same stuff i dont like but i kinda kept playing it anyway. no real reason. im just a fan of retreading stuff out of peer pressure
things i liked:
Sound Design - he goes pitter patter!!
Graphed icks - i think this “cel shading” thing shows promise !
Polish - theyre juggling all of the variables. x, y, z, omega, backwards w, all those letters. other games fall apart when you click to fire the gun. which is more relatable to me but we cant have that now
Music in the Towns - cool stuff, heard an erhu in there a bunch. good instrument, checks my box
Main Abilities - the phys gun thingy is a good gimmick to centre a game around. the other 3 are also good like the rewind time one. now i finally understand king crimson kinda. the botw ones are lame and i cant pretend im jojo in that one
Moon Logic needed to get to the Dungeons - this is good it feels like im really in a legend of
things i kinda liked but kinda didnt like:
Combat - yeah i could do something GOOFY with the phys gun or i can just mash Y a bunch with the weapon im already holding. “weapon durability” is not real anyway you get 1000 knives (rip goat) you can all fuse together with the 5349022 different body parts looted in your backpack. the mokoboboblins all act the same, the like likes spit a few balls at you with the energy of a pensioner. but hitting things with a stick is visceral and timeless so its all good (i do not beat pensioners with sticks)
Sky Islands - theyre samey but a good change of pace. i would see them and have to open the map to be like “have i actually been to this one” because theyre just not visually distinct.
Devices and Gadgets - this is like fine but my approach to anything is never going to be to open a huge ass menu and sift through it, if you already give me the planks and wheels i need to do [TASK] at [LOCATION]
Story - the “memories” part of this game actually gets cool once it gets going. but until then its all just kinda monotonous and i dont care about any of these people. sorry for your kingdom or happy that happened
Dungeons - some of this is fun but if i wanted to visit 5 rooms and call it a day id go to a museum
The World - its too big but theres some cool stuff. this doubles for real life
things i didnt like:
Shrines - you didnt need to make them all look and sound the same. only 10% of these are actually really any fun, im not a preschooler anymore. come on guys i thought people were telling you this 6 years ago
Music Elsewhere - not against a minimalist impressionist thing but both this and the botw ones still just go in one ear out the other
Depths - not fun to navigate, the rewards arent cool, it all looks the same. i see why it wasnt advertised much lol
Cutscenes - hmm this is a non linear game so to ensure people get the memo we will give the same speech at 4 different mandatory locations - “game design” and “narrative effect”. im good
Voice Acting - you can switch to japanese though
Quests - kinda boring
Materials Menu - this is soooooo big lmao. the up button menu is unusable if you dont sort it by “most used”. there was something better that couldve been done here. sorry ill end the review now that its getting to nitpicks
it may have strayed from the series roots, but theres still a bunch of different collectibles and you can make wheely cars that go FAST so whos to say if banjo kazooie: nuts and bolts is really bad. also im pretty sure they play the among us theme in the shrines so i see why the kingdom is malding
2002
sick as hell, and you know i sat my zoomer ass down and listened when this 20 year old game insisted that it was the future. but the whole time i was thinking about how i spent my 2020 seeing this game's composer tweet about funky femboys, and this dj professor k rp account that was warning people not to get vaccinated, in character. i think hes still going. people were @ing him going JET SET RATIOOO.
this is to say that the actual future just confuses me. but the game itself makes it clear it's not about the future future anyway. just what we choose to do to shape it. im taking that as another reminder to be less online.
i spent all my teen years listening to cibo matto (still lives in my heart) thanks to jsrf, even though i wasnt able to actually play it back then. it simply looked like the coolest shit, and id enjoyed the first game too. having finally played it in 2023, as an adult, was a bit anticlimactic for no particular reason? - it's everything i expected. it's the sequel to jsr, it's bigger, badder, but still a fun little thing about skating around tagging shit to funky music. all those songs id heard thousands of times, finally sounding off with full context. neat mini dj mixes for each chapter. it really did end up being the coolest shit.
fuck exclusives lol. theres some irony in no one being able to play a game all about the undying rebellious spirit because they dont happen to own a 2 decade old slab of plastic with a particular brand stamped on it. my uncle had an xbox but he wasnt cool enough to carry this game. unfortunate. and this shit still carries itself more like the dreamcast than it does xbox anyway. wheres the french guy on twitter begging #BreakFreeJSRF.
it's cool that video games can affect us even when we've yet to play them. jsrf ended up being as important to me as a lot of games i actually played growing up. always the game i was going to play one day, always that game in the future. and when the future finally came, there was that satisfaction of seeing all these disparate things id absorbed by osmosis, allowed to move and flow together for the first time. theres that song i spent so many years listening to. those character designs id adored from afar. that refinement upon the first game everyone would go on about. i still lost my mind a bit in the sewer level, as you do, but it was all in good fun.
ultimately id have liked to vibe to it all as the 14 year old spacing off to Skate 2, and not the 24 year old with nothing going on. but this works too.
this is to say that the actual future just confuses me. but the game itself makes it clear it's not about the future future anyway. just what we choose to do to shape it. im taking that as another reminder to be less online.
i spent all my teen years listening to cibo matto (still lives in my heart) thanks to jsrf, even though i wasnt able to actually play it back then. it simply looked like the coolest shit, and id enjoyed the first game too. having finally played it in 2023, as an adult, was a bit anticlimactic for no particular reason? - it's everything i expected. it's the sequel to jsr, it's bigger, badder, but still a fun little thing about skating around tagging shit to funky music. all those songs id heard thousands of times, finally sounding off with full context. neat mini dj mixes for each chapter. it really did end up being the coolest shit.
fuck exclusives lol. theres some irony in no one being able to play a game all about the undying rebellious spirit because they dont happen to own a 2 decade old slab of plastic with a particular brand stamped on it. my uncle had an xbox but he wasnt cool enough to carry this game. unfortunate. and this shit still carries itself more like the dreamcast than it does xbox anyway. wheres the french guy on twitter begging #BreakFreeJSRF.
it's cool that video games can affect us even when we've yet to play them. jsrf ended up being as important to me as a lot of games i actually played growing up. always the game i was going to play one day, always that game in the future. and when the future finally came, there was that satisfaction of seeing all these disparate things id absorbed by osmosis, allowed to move and flow together for the first time. theres that song i spent so many years listening to. those character designs id adored from afar. that refinement upon the first game everyone would go on about. i still lost my mind a bit in the sewer level, as you do, but it was all in good fun.
ultimately id have liked to vibe to it all as the 14 year old spacing off to Skate 2, and not the 24 year old with nothing going on. but this works too.
1999
ahhhh i wish this had anything more to it because id eat up this concept and i love their outfits and everything. the best part of this game is pretty easily the promo art though. it doesnt actually flop terribly but theres so little content and what is there is hard to get excited over.
very small pool of fairly unremarkable samey songs, basic ass gameplay (which people hate on too much tbh - bust a groove was even less of a rhythm game than this) that makes more sense on a dance mat than it does a dpad. really cheap graphics (even comes across on the cover being a real photo lmao). way too easy.
id say it earns its kusoge status but in a fairly sad way. really easily sounds like a "fuck we need money BAD" cry for help than anything else. but also satan and schezo are quirked up in this one
very small pool of fairly unremarkable samey songs, basic ass gameplay (which people hate on too much tbh - bust a groove was even less of a rhythm game than this) that makes more sense on a dance mat than it does a dpad. really cheap graphics (even comes across on the cover being a real photo lmao). way too easy.
id say it earns its kusoge status but in a fairly sad way. really easily sounds like a "fuck we need money BAD" cry for help than anything else. but also satan and schezo are quirked up in this one
2016
at chapter 3, quite stuck wanting to shelve this because for as well written as it is, the very methodical slice-of-life it's serving is just something im struggling to stay engaged with at this moment. i see it's going somewhere interesting, and that it wants me to stay attentive with the mystery bent, but im just kinda involuntarily zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz currently, which is sad.
im not a huge slice-of-life person, and i feel like all the works ive engaged with have some level of mischief, zany antics, all that. at least some source of tension. there's some banter between the characters here, but it's very real and subdued. people carry themselves here like they would in real life, with little tension or drama, interspersed with some pretty descriptions about flowers. reading this feels like people-watching from a park bench. or looking at still-life paintings. not things im inclined to do, but understand. so it feels wrong really saying anything about this besides "its just currently not for me"
im not a huge slice-of-life person, and i feel like all the works ive engaged with have some level of mischief, zany antics, all that. at least some source of tension. there's some banter between the characters here, but it's very real and subdued. people carry themselves here like they would in real life, with little tension or drama, interspersed with some pretty descriptions about flowers. reading this feels like people-watching from a park bench. or looking at still-life paintings. not things im inclined to do, but understand. so it feels wrong really saying anything about this besides "its just currently not for me"
1995
Struggling to think of another game on this site where every review seems to acknowledge it sucks and then gives it a 3+ anyway
2023
I think this is the first game since Simpsons Hit & Run which encourages you to hit all the NPCs to hear unique dialogue. I'm probably wrong so don't embarrass me in the comments. Thanks.
Going to be honest, I didn't even look at what this game was when I bought it, I just saw it had Nine Inch Nails and Number Girl. Wtf kinda game has Number Girl. All the licensed music was used perfectly, and the combat was shaping up to be something really special if it didn't turn into pure LT RT LT RT chaos. But that's the fun of proudly showing your rough edges. And that particular mechanic getting stronger over the course of the game was something something themes of the game yadda yadda ludonarrative etc
Though the writing did irritate me for a good chunk of the game, but I came back round to it in the final stretch which is done really well. It revels in some very predictable humour but the odd line still got me and it just feels like so much creativity was squeezed into this regardless, that I'd have to be trying not to enjoy this. Especially loved it committing to its rhythm thing so hard that a lot of the cutscenes were satisfyingly choreographed and the levels themselves pulsated and everything. I got another Necrodancer sequel in the weirdest way possible
It's fun. It's just a fun fucking game. Now to go back into my cave and await whatever indie stuff is slated for 2023 because we sure aren't seeing shit like this from AAA again any time soon. Call me if some shit like this gets dropped out of nowhere again like a headfirst bumbling Chai
Going to be honest, I didn't even look at what this game was when I bought it, I just saw it had Nine Inch Nails and Number Girl. Wtf kinda game has Number Girl. All the licensed music was used perfectly, and the combat was shaping up to be something really special if it didn't turn into pure LT RT LT RT chaos. But that's the fun of proudly showing your rough edges. And that particular mechanic getting stronger over the course of the game was something something themes of the game yadda yadda ludonarrative etc
Though the writing did irritate me for a good chunk of the game, but I came back round to it in the final stretch which is done really well. It revels in some very predictable humour but the odd line still got me and it just feels like so much creativity was squeezed into this regardless, that I'd have to be trying not to enjoy this. Especially loved it committing to its rhythm thing so hard that a lot of the cutscenes were satisfyingly choreographed and the levels themselves pulsated and everything. I got another Necrodancer sequel in the weirdest way possible
It's fun. It's just a fun fucking game. Now to go back into my cave and await whatever indie stuff is slated for 2023 because we sure aren't seeing shit like this from AAA again any time soon. Call me if some shit like this gets dropped out of nowhere again like a headfirst bumbling Chai
2019
This review contains spoilers
Celeste is a game about climbing a mountain. From what I observe generally, people see that, play it, get to the Summit chapter, conclude with "yeah that was pretty good, a bit heavy-handed with the main metaphor, but it was pleasant enough" and move on. Maybe they'll try some B-side bonus content, maybe they'll play a bit of the PICO-8 original, but most people I've seen are happy enough leaving that as the experience. The story is over, right? Why keep playing? She had to overcome the mountain, and she did just that. That's the end of it.
But what if you kept going?
What if you came back with the 4 Crystal Hearts for Chapter 8, with Madeline revisiting the mountain an in-game year later? She had no real reason for being there in the first place, and now she's there again. Why are you still there and not playing something else? Was it the gameplay that was so intricately crafted, Maddy's still updating it years later to improve the feel on a microscopic level? Lena Raine's shimmering arpeggios? The friendly cast of faces Madeline met with, brought to life with voices that were actually ridiculously elaborate in implementation? A perhaps too simple and saccharine approach to mental health draped in pastel colours, that made for a warm and relatable enough environment you could maybe appreciate nonetheless? Even from this game's biggest detractors, I still usually hear "it's so polished tho". The amount of care that went into Celeste fires through on all cylinders.
Okay, but what if you just kept going.
What if you did all the B-sides. And now the C-sides. Every strawberry. The golden strawberries too maybe? That one achievement where you get 6 strawberries back to back? Speedruns? Custom levels?
Completionism is pretty normal territory for people that really like a game, and Farewell muscles its way in as one more thing to check off the list. Some time long ago, Celeste stopped being a game primarily about climbing a mountain for these people, as they had found themselves consumed in every bit of the experience. Trying to fill that cake Madeline bakes at the end with as many strawberries as they could. Really milking that climbing action.
Not moving on.
So isn't it funny that Farewell's a story about grief, pelting Madeline every few minutes with "hey, you should move on now"? Part of Her gives up with reasoning as to why she shouldn't be using her psychic mountain climbing powers to spend the entire chapter chasing after a bird. She met Granny, she climbed that mountain, these were events in the past. She should just move on now. You're still playing Celeste, named after the mountain you're meant to be climbing, even though you painstakingly covered every inch of it already. "The mountain looks like a molehill from here," she remarks, even though you're still playing Celeste.
Madeline contorts herself in dashes and obscure movement techs, in order to scrape through the most pulverising screens the game now has to offer, because you just can't get enough of the climb. Even when there's no mountain left, when she's lost in dreams of exploding puffer fish, flying jellyfish (...green moose, guava juice), as the game is throwing literally every gimmick you've seen up to this point while introducing new shit at the 11th hour, glitching out, putting up barriers, demanding wavedash finesse, it's hard to stop playing. I quite like it giving you a Crystal Heart that doesn't count at one point, to tie together the completionism with grief further. "Empty Space". Maybe depicting grief with even more shmovement thandysphoria depression and anxiety in the main game might be just as whitewashy, or worse. It still feels well-intentioned enough, ending on a really sweet note, and there's no "omg selfies #buzzed YOLOOO!!" talk going on this time. Sorry Theo.
Farewell is a message to those fans ultimately. Not the ones that just dipped after beating it, but the ones that really exhausted that damn mountain. It was originally intended to be played after beating every C-side, though it pops up innocuously for anyone newly done with Chapter 8, only unceremoniously gating them halfway through (and requiring 15 Crystal Hearts, as opposed to 23). This is maybe my biggest complaint, as the only warning sign here saying "hey, maybe don't play this until you've worked through all the content?" prior to that is the fact that Madeline is just chilling in the 7C scenery upon starting it — something only people that already played 7C would catch onto.
Despite the stellar rating curve on the left there (which I suspect has some survivor bias), I'd say Farewell is a bit more polarising in how it's been received, judging from people's reactions online. It's obscenely difficult and seriously expects you to master some fairly obscure movement, introduced with as much grace as exploding fish to the face, as per how I expect the average experience went for a lot of people:
"Oh cool, I unlocked Ch 9 after beating Ch 8."
"Why is this so fucking hard? What is all this shit?"
"I need FIFTEEN HEARTS to get past that gate? After all that?"
(if they actually went and did that) "This game has WAVEDASHING??"
Such a clumsy way of going "oh anyone can play this but uh, actually no, sorry. It's for the hardcore fans lol". Farewell just ends up recontextualising all that "optional" stuff as a much more integral part of the game. It's titled and presented in such a way that anyone can clearly see that this is now that resolving piano chord at the end of it all, giving Celeste an air of finality, but its deceptive title of "Chapter 9" just works against it when there's a sea of content directly preceding it.
Despite all of that though, I'm confident in saying that this is my favourite part of Celeste. The twinkly luminous environs, the music ebbing back and forth from foreign to familiar as new motifs are weaved in with old... Madeline's just zooming, wavedashing, wallbouncing off of the most disjunct objects in this spaced out dreamy... aquarium... techno-observatory? I love how that visual style comes together when there are like 4 different themes being patchworked together. Every 5 seconds you're demanded to do some nebulous, evil oneiro-parkour, but you can't stop. You made it this far and you're not missing that last screen, damn it. Dash, dash, scrape against spikes, die. Just in this zen stupor, set to these spaced out surroundings, retooling yourself again and again. This was my 3rd playthrough of this game over the last 5 years, and my 2nd time ending on Farewell. It really truly feels wrong to me to actually stop playing at any point before Farewell. It's one of the most beautiful endings to any game I've played, and one I keep feeling eager to come back to in spite of thousands of deaths.
Happy 5th anniversary Celeste. Farewell for now.
--------------------------
A couple notes:
- I don't actually know why this is listed separately on IGDB. It's literally a free update and part of every Celeste copy, and you can't play it separately lol. I appreciate it because it feels disconnected and separate enough to the main narrative, but it'd be like if the third semester in Persona 5 Royal got its own page. That shit would have like a 4.9 average. Scary.
- They're very different ultimately, but the whole experience of physics-platforming as a girl in a surreal dream world and constantly being met with the most devious screens makes me think of Umihara Kawase. That game/series is awesome and I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. More games like this please.
But what if you kept going?
What if you came back with the 4 Crystal Hearts for Chapter 8, with Madeline revisiting the mountain an in-game year later? She had no real reason for being there in the first place, and now she's there again. Why are you still there and not playing something else? Was it the gameplay that was so intricately crafted, Maddy's still updating it years later to improve the feel on a microscopic level? Lena Raine's shimmering arpeggios? The friendly cast of faces Madeline met with, brought to life with voices that were actually ridiculously elaborate in implementation? A perhaps too simple and saccharine approach to mental health draped in pastel colours, that made for a warm and relatable enough environment you could maybe appreciate nonetheless? Even from this game's biggest detractors, I still usually hear "it's so polished tho". The amount of care that went into Celeste fires through on all cylinders.
Okay, but what if you just kept going.
What if you did all the B-sides. And now the C-sides. Every strawberry. The golden strawberries too maybe? That one achievement where you get 6 strawberries back to back? Speedruns? Custom levels?
Completionism is pretty normal territory for people that really like a game, and Farewell muscles its way in as one more thing to check off the list. Some time long ago, Celeste stopped being a game primarily about climbing a mountain for these people, as they had found themselves consumed in every bit of the experience. Trying to fill that cake Madeline bakes at the end with as many strawberries as they could. Really milking that climbing action.
Not moving on.
So isn't it funny that Farewell's a story about grief, pelting Madeline every few minutes with "hey, you should move on now"? Part of Her gives up with reasoning as to why she shouldn't be using her psychic mountain climbing powers to spend the entire chapter chasing after a bird. She met Granny, she climbed that mountain, these were events in the past. She should just move on now. You're still playing Celeste, named after the mountain you're meant to be climbing, even though you painstakingly covered every inch of it already. "The mountain looks like a molehill from here," she remarks, even though you're still playing Celeste.
Madeline contorts herself in dashes and obscure movement techs, in order to scrape through the most pulverising screens the game now has to offer, because you just can't get enough of the climb. Even when there's no mountain left, when she's lost in dreams of exploding puffer fish, flying jellyfish (...green moose, guava juice), as the game is throwing literally every gimmick you've seen up to this point while introducing new shit at the 11th hour, glitching out, putting up barriers, demanding wavedash finesse, it's hard to stop playing. I quite like it giving you a Crystal Heart that doesn't count at one point, to tie together the completionism with grief further. "Empty Space". Maybe depicting grief with even more shmovement than
Farewell is a message to those fans ultimately. Not the ones that just dipped after beating it, but the ones that really exhausted that damn mountain. It was originally intended to be played after beating every C-side, though it pops up innocuously for anyone newly done with Chapter 8, only unceremoniously gating them halfway through (and requiring 15 Crystal Hearts, as opposed to 23). This is maybe my biggest complaint, as the only warning sign here saying "hey, maybe don't play this until you've worked through all the content?" prior to that is the fact that Madeline is just chilling in the 7C scenery upon starting it — something only people that already played 7C would catch onto.
Despite the stellar rating curve on the left there (which I suspect has some survivor bias), I'd say Farewell is a bit more polarising in how it's been received, judging from people's reactions online. It's obscenely difficult and seriously expects you to master some fairly obscure movement, introduced with as much grace as exploding fish to the face, as per how I expect the average experience went for a lot of people:
"Oh cool, I unlocked Ch 9 after beating Ch 8."
"Why is this so fucking hard? What is all this shit?"
"I need FIFTEEN HEARTS to get past that gate? After all that?"
(if they actually went and did that) "This game has WAVEDASHING??"
Such a clumsy way of going "oh anyone can play this but uh, actually no, sorry. It's for the hardcore fans lol". Farewell just ends up recontextualising all that "optional" stuff as a much more integral part of the game. It's titled and presented in such a way that anyone can clearly see that this is now that resolving piano chord at the end of it all, giving Celeste an air of finality, but its deceptive title of "Chapter 9" just works against it when there's a sea of content directly preceding it.
Despite all of that though, I'm confident in saying that this is my favourite part of Celeste. The twinkly luminous environs, the music ebbing back and forth from foreign to familiar as new motifs are weaved in with old... Madeline's just zooming, wavedashing, wallbouncing off of the most disjunct objects in this spaced out dreamy... aquarium... techno-observatory? I love how that visual style comes together when there are like 4 different themes being patchworked together. Every 5 seconds you're demanded to do some nebulous, evil oneiro-parkour, but you can't stop. You made it this far and you're not missing that last screen, damn it. Dash, dash, scrape against spikes, die. Just in this zen stupor, set to these spaced out surroundings, retooling yourself again and again. This was my 3rd playthrough of this game over the last 5 years, and my 2nd time ending on Farewell. It really truly feels wrong to me to actually stop playing at any point before Farewell. It's one of the most beautiful endings to any game I've played, and one I keep feeling eager to come back to in spite of thousands of deaths.
Happy 5th anniversary Celeste. Farewell for now.
--------------------------
A couple notes:
- I don't actually know why this is listed separately on IGDB. It's literally a free update and part of every Celeste copy, and you can't play it separately lol. I appreciate it because it feels disconnected and separate enough to the main narrative, but it'd be like if the third semester in Persona 5 Royal got its own page. That shit would have like a 4.9 average. Scary.
- They're very different ultimately, but the whole experience of physics-platforming as a girl in a surreal dream world and constantly being met with the most devious screens makes me think of Umihara Kawase. That game/series is awesome and I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. More games like this please.
2002
Imagine being Super Princess Peach and trying to be a mascot platformer centred around an emotions system just 3 years after this and being worse in every way lmao.
I don't have much to say about this. Definitely an oddity in having a full English dub and text, but the game informs you that the Japanese dub is a stand-in when you start it, and that the English dub is the original one. The animations, credits and main theme are also all in English... but the game only came out in Japan. Lol. Huh
Some funny dialogue in here, cool songs and art (that looks a taaad bit dated but still). But when it ended I didn't exactly feel myself begging for more. Worth a play
I don't have much to say about this. Definitely an oddity in having a full English dub and text, but the game informs you that the Japanese dub is a stand-in when you start it, and that the English dub is the original one. The animations, credits and main theme are also all in English... but the game only came out in Japan. Lol. Huh
Some funny dialogue in here, cool songs and art (that looks a taaad bit dated but still). But when it ended I didn't exactly feel myself begging for more. Worth a play
This review contains spoilers
you ever get 60 hours into the 4th entry (i had a wii u) of a series you have a long history of liking, but you're finding yourself reaching for auto-battle and auto-optimise and beelining through the main quest because you just feel drained?
im done with the 20 year long chain attacks that all play out the same, the comically bad villains with horrendous dialogue, the music that feels like all the composers went "another xenoblade game, sure", this ai generated journey through "maktha wildwoods" or "erythia sea", your ethels and your miyabis and your mwambas or the countless side characters i have lost track of, the 6 buttons in combat that all exist to be pushed in very unsatisfying ways, the classes in which you pick your favourite shade of blue, red and green (they're all the same shade of blue, red and green)
to be fair i also didnt care for any of 2's plot or characters either. or x's for that matter. the worlds/combat/music there still felt top notch and i came out of those games still greatly having enjoyed them. those games actually felt fun to play. but i was also a good deal younger so idk
this has shaped up to be my danganronpa v3 i think. that was ironically a game i really liked, but my experience with this just reminds me of how a lot of people talk about that. im a few hours into chapter 6 and im thinking of calling it quits. idk. not marked this abandoned yet because i havent decided.
that one sequence everyone talks about is legitimately that good though, and pretty much the only time i felt i was getting some pay-off from this game
im done with the 20 year long chain attacks that all play out the same, the comically bad villains with horrendous dialogue, the music that feels like all the composers went "another xenoblade game, sure", this ai generated journey through "maktha wildwoods" or "erythia sea", your ethels and your miyabis and your mwambas or the countless side characters i have lost track of, the 6 buttons in combat that all exist to be pushed in very unsatisfying ways, the classes in which you pick your favourite shade of blue, red and green (they're all the same shade of blue, red and green)
to be fair i also didnt care for any of 2's plot or characters either. or x's for that matter. the worlds/combat/music there still felt top notch and i came out of those games still greatly having enjoyed them. those games actually felt fun to play. but i was also a good deal younger so idk
this has shaped up to be my danganronpa v3 i think. that was ironically a game i really liked, but my experience with this just reminds me of how a lot of people talk about that. im a few hours into chapter 6 and im thinking of calling it quits. idk. not marked this abandoned yet because i havent decided.
that one sequence everyone talks about is legitimately that good though, and pretty much the only time i felt i was getting some pay-off from this game
2004
I don't care for Katamari Damacy as a game. This isn't me trying to be a smart ass or writing a joke review where I rate a game highly while jokingly ripping on it. I just simply don't experience any feeling of zen or childlike wonder that others get from this. It all just amounts to being a decent distraction and then the urge to play something else after about 30 minutes for me. I even tried the sequel, We Love Katamari, with a similar reaction there - I just don't think Katamari is for me, and I've accepted that.
The high rating is because this is a strong contender for the best soundtrack I've ever heard, and experienced in a game. Roll Me In and Lonely Rolling Star in particular are two of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. I try not to act elitist about game music (there's a lot of great stuff out there!) but Katamari Damacy sets that bar comically high, and it's funny seeing what other games have by comparison. I think a lot of people have felt this way and tried to look for more shibuya-kei and picopop that is even half as good as this. Were you able to find any? Any recommendations if you have? Serani Poji has some nice stuff but ughhhh the Katamari Damacy soundtrack is so hard to match.
This feels like a cry for help and my own way of saying that Persona 5 invented jazz music or "I don't like rap but Persona 3-". But like, unironically, and for Katamari Damacy, and for this brand of pop. Help. Please
The high rating is because this is a strong contender for the best soundtrack I've ever heard, and experienced in a game. Roll Me In and Lonely Rolling Star in particular are two of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. I try not to act elitist about game music (there's a lot of great stuff out there!) but Katamari Damacy sets that bar comically high, and it's funny seeing what other games have by comparison. I think a lot of people have felt this way and tried to look for more shibuya-kei and picopop that is even half as good as this. Were you able to find any? Any recommendations if you have? Serani Poji has some nice stuff but ughhhh the Katamari Damacy soundtrack is so hard to match.
This feels like a cry for help and my own way of saying that Persona 5 invented jazz music or "I don't like rap but Persona 3-". But like, unironically, and for Katamari Damacy, and for this brand of pop. Help. Please
what 0 pussy does to a mf
EDIT: I have found out 5 minutes after posting this review that Emperor Xianfeng had 18 consorts, so this is a historically inaccurate version of events. I apologise for this grievous error and will strive for due diligence on fact-checking for future reviews. Sorry for all who were misled, and I will leave this up for posterity.
EDIT: I have found out 5 minutes after posting this review that Emperor Xianfeng had 18 consorts, so this is a historically inaccurate version of events. I apologise for this grievous error and will strive for due diligence on fact-checking for future reviews. Sorry for all who were misled, and I will leave this up for posterity.
2022
This review contains spoilers
They really locked Pokemon's finest hour of storytelling behind a really ugly and kinda okay open world game
I respect the indie dev grindset vs soulless corporate looking games like temtem
I respect the indie dev grindset vs soulless corporate looking games like temtem
Now that the dust has settled can we admit that all the people that said yanny were in on some sort of weird joke, because its so obviously laurel like what the fuck. I will flame you in this comments section if you still want to entertain that its yanny in 2022. No way youre still going to be claiming that its yanny