turdl3
2002
set aside takes on whether the game is good or whatever. the rating is tied to how much i loved it as a kid, i havent finished replaying and there are more important things to discuss anyway:
mario goes to fucking JAIL. you ever think about that? i mean sit down, and really think about it. i think our society has normalised the fact that mario goes to jail in super mario sunshine. dude literally gets taken to court and handed a sentence. this would NEVER happen in a mario game today. and here it is, in the first 10 minutes. then he has to do community service??? THEY EVEN MADE WANTED POSTERS. i think if you suggested this as a plot for any big nintendo IP you'd get laughed at. can you imagine the next pokemon game starting like this? this game came out in 2002, and truthfully, i am nowhere near old enough to remember people's immediate reactions to it. but i think more games should send their protagonists to jail. ignoring that the plot here is a retread of one of the greatest written games of all time, sonic adventure 2, which came out a year before sunshine, this was a very bold move for the series.
i had to look up the name of the wonderful writer who decided to send mario to jail - makoto wada. interestingly, this is his only writing credit for a mario game (besides 2000's mario artist for the 64DD). can you imagine the state of the mario canon if it was left in his hands? you know those joke games with fake box art with like, "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud". you ever think about how mario sunshine was officially that, way back?
the rest of the game no doubt delivers on its bizarre premise, as mario is made to clean up psychedelic goop for a good 20 hours, ride a soluble yoshi, become an eel dentist among many other things, before finally topping it off with flipping bowser out of his bathtub. but really, mario sunshine deserves to go down in history as the game that dared send gaming's biggest icon to the slammer.
mario goes to fucking JAIL. you ever think about that? i mean sit down, and really think about it. i think our society has normalised the fact that mario goes to jail in super mario sunshine. dude literally gets taken to court and handed a sentence. this would NEVER happen in a mario game today. and here it is, in the first 10 minutes. then he has to do community service??? THEY EVEN MADE WANTED POSTERS. i think if you suggested this as a plot for any big nintendo IP you'd get laughed at. can you imagine the next pokemon game starting like this? this game came out in 2002, and truthfully, i am nowhere near old enough to remember people's immediate reactions to it. but i think more games should send their protagonists to jail. ignoring that the plot here is a retread of one of the greatest written games of all time, sonic adventure 2, which came out a year before sunshine, this was a very bold move for the series.
i had to look up the name of the wonderful writer who decided to send mario to jail - makoto wada. interestingly, this is his only writing credit for a mario game (besides 2000's mario artist for the 64DD). can you imagine the state of the mario canon if it was left in his hands? you know those joke games with fake box art with like, "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud". you ever think about how mario sunshine was officially that, way back?
the rest of the game no doubt delivers on its bizarre premise, as mario is made to clean up psychedelic goop for a good 20 hours, ride a soluble yoshi, become an eel dentist among many other things, before finally topping it off with flipping bowser out of his bathtub. but really, mario sunshine deserves to go down in history as the game that dared send gaming's biggest icon to the slammer.
2001
I coincidentally happened to play this a few days after playing Sin & Punishment for the first time. These are the same fucking game. Yeah okay, one's a rail shooter and the other is a rhythm game, but let's look past the superficiality of "they look and play completely different". Released within a year of each other, amateurish 90s anime dub included, they're heartfelt, passionate spins on their genres in the most ridiculous ways possible. They're each like 1-2 hours long with a nice arcade tightness, and yet that 2 hours is jam-packed with setting after setting and fight after fight. Uncontainable fever dreams. Oh, and you'll be grooving hard to both.
Seriously, the soundtrack here is incredible. It's all just one band? And yet they genre-hop like nobody's business. Does Eurobeat even normally have guitars? The answer to that question of course being: Fuck you, this is a Gitaroo, they're not even remotely the same thing. The band here, COIL, (no, not the one that did "The Ape of Naples") completely understands that, and it's easy to believe that they've become one with the Gitaroo and are the coil pickups facilitating the fucking lightning beams shooting out of the thing. One of the songs here is literally just... Just. The Radiohead song. That song fucking owns.
Gitaroo Man's ONE flaw is that it has too much confidence in the Dualshock 2. That controller fucking sucks and tilting the stick even just a couple millimetres will ruin any inputs here. After like an hour of struggling on the final boss, I booted up PCSX2 (which has recently had some of its input lag fixed? cool) and beat it first try, no issues, on an actually good controller. I read online a bit and saw people having more success plugging in a Dualshock 1 too. Maybe they should've shipped a plastic Gitaroo.
I gave Sin & Punishment a 4.5 too but honestly it's tentative and shorthand for "I think it's fucking amazing but I don't know exactly how it'll hold up for me on replays". Just know that these are the best kind of game. I wish I had a dog that could turn into a boombox.
Edit: Also Master Mode is ridiculous LMAO it's fun though
Edit 2: Upon further reflection yeah this is one of the best games I've ever played. Also I may have unfairly trashed the Dualshock 2 a good amount, it may have just been my setup or me having to get used to using it for this game specifically
Seriously, the soundtrack here is incredible. It's all just one band? And yet they genre-hop like nobody's business. Does Eurobeat even normally have guitars? The answer to that question of course being: Fuck you, this is a Gitaroo, they're not even remotely the same thing. The band here, COIL, (no, not the one that did "The Ape of Naples") completely understands that, and it's easy to believe that they've become one with the Gitaroo and are the coil pickups facilitating the fucking lightning beams shooting out of the thing. One of the songs here is literally just... Just. The Radiohead song. That song fucking owns.
Gitaroo Man's ONE flaw is that it has too much confidence in the Dualshock 2. That controller fucking sucks and tilting the stick even just a couple millimetres will ruin any inputs here. After like an hour of struggling on the final boss, I booted up PCSX2 (which has recently had some of its input lag fixed? cool) and beat it first try, no issues, on an actually good controller. I read online a bit and saw people having more success plugging in a Dualshock 1 too. Maybe they should've shipped a plastic Gitaroo.
I gave Sin & Punishment a 4.5 too but honestly it's tentative and shorthand for "I think it's fucking amazing but I don't know exactly how it'll hold up for me on replays". Just know that these are the best kind of game. I wish I had a dog that could turn into a boombox.
Edit: Also Master Mode is ridiculous LMAO it's fun though
Edit 2: Upon further reflection yeah this is one of the best games I've ever played. Also I may have unfairly trashed the Dualshock 2 a good amount, it may have just been my setup or me having to get used to using it for this game specifically
2000
damn they got sin AND punishment? talk about stacked
2020
people are fairly harsh on this i think since it's the new craze and it's not mechanically up to snuff (did anyone play this thinking it was going to be some bemani shit? well ok i realise the irony in saying that given it being a ddr clone)
that being said i cant exactly rate this higher LOL, the songs aren't particularly great and it practically requires being modded to play comfortably. the appeal is just in seeing funny character designs go beep boop ba beep boop basically. which is an ok way to kill an hour or two really
that being said i cant exactly rate this higher LOL, the songs aren't particularly great and it practically requires being modded to play comfortably. the appeal is just in seeing funny character designs go beep boop ba beep boop basically. which is an ok way to kill an hour or two really
2017
This review contains spoilers
I asked someone what A2's entire deal was and they said it's in the Japan-only play. So is that like DLC? But it's not DL, so it's just C. Oh well, that couldn't have gone anywhere else in the game. What do you mean you didn't enjoy playing Asteroids 500 times?
+0.5 for Keiichi Okabe
+0.5 for Keiichi Okabe
1999
I called this game comfy and one of my friends called me a freak. I don't care, it's comfy
1994
This review contains spoilers
My feelings on this game are complicated. My rating probably doesn't reflect that, but that's because I genuinely think this is impressive for a 1994 SNES JRPG in many ways, but also shows its age in a few others. People may raise their eyebrows upon finding out that I gave Octopath Traveler the same rating here, a game that apes this one nearly 25 years later, manages to say far less in 4x the time and in general plays it a lot safer. It's very formulaic, tells 8 very unnoteworthy stories, and half-heartedly ties them together at the end. But why couldn't I stop playing it? I put 80 hours into it in the week it came out. Live-A-Live, on the other hand, I felt a bit fatigued by in about 15 hours.
I don't want this review to be a full comparison of the two, but Octopath has had 25 more years of JRPG innovation to reflect on, and its gameplay systems reflect this. This simply isn't a fair comparison but I'm not some timeless entity, I'm just some gamer in 2021. Live-A-Live is a far more ambitious game, and accomplishes a lot more when you're not bogged down in battles (which unfortunately makes up a non-trivial fraction of the game). My favourite scenario was Cowboy, no doubt for its swift pace and sensible balance between story and gameplay. Ninja, on the other hand, was an absolute chore. Keep that emulator speed-up button nearby.
Combat isn't actually bad at first. Each character has a fun variety of moves, moving around on the grid is novel and plays a nice role in some fights, and certain things have been streamlined for the player's benefit. Three of the scenarios and the final stretch though, throw a LOT of encounters at you. Many of these are very easy to deal with, it just gets tiring fairly quickly. For every second you spend smiling at Live-A-Live's tributes to all these different genres, you will spend 5 more fumbling for the "run" option, or beating an enemy you have killed 50 times before. Many JRPGs circumvent this by keeping their encounters interesting, allowing the player to skip them in certain cases, or just making them incredibly quick to breeze through. This is by no means a unique criticism, and many games have it worse than Live-A-Live, but the added moves that come with the grid combat or many enemies doing nothing interesting, make it tiresome in this case.
I also don't think it holds up very well in challenging fights. Live-A-Live doesn't have many of these, but I had a notably easier time with the final boss after intentionally letting half of my party die, due to how enemies take turns in this game.
That's my main issue here, but I've also had a few too many moments aimlessly wandering about to trigger whatever event I need to carry on. Many games are worse than Live-A-Live at this though, this one's pretty reasonable.
Moving onto strengths:
Shimomura absolutely kills this soundtrack. All these great battle themes ("Difficult Fight" is one of my favourite JRPG battle themes ever at this point), she knocks it out of the park with these wildly different styles, it's genuinely hard to believe that these all come from the same game. You have, what, traditional Chinese, traditional Japanese, spaghetti western, rock, mecha anime opening, some cool atonal stuff, church organ shit? The last Shimomura-composed game I played was Radiant Historia where she got way too comfortable with her orchestral sounds and I can barely remember any of it honestly. There were moments in Live-A-Live where some songs were played a bit much, but overall this is a very strong showing sonically.
Narratively, this game feels like a response to the JRPG landscape of its time. "You guys like paying tribute to fantasy settings," it says, "why not try out any of these?" Live-A-Live doesn't try to tell the greatest stories ever told. These are stitched together "example" works of each represented genre, little appetisers — the Cowboy scenario isn't going to rival The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It throws these tight packages at you, and bails once you start getting used to your surroundings. I can see this not appealing for some people, as playing mini-tributes to these different genres may seem pointless when compared to something more cohesive and focused. But from the different textbox stylings to all the little secrets hidden in each chapter, it just feels exciting sampling these 7 different games. You're training these martial artists to carry on your legacy. Now you're storming a stronghold as a ninja, deciding who lives and dies. Now you're hunting for food as a caveman. And once the actual story emerges to tie this all together, you really appreciate the scope of this game. The final scenarios actually tell a pretty great story (for a 1994 JRPG at least). But you're deep enough into this game by that point that you probably stopped caring about having an actual overarching plot.
(I typed that entire paragraph not remembering what "vignettes" are called. I'll just leave that there.)
I really respect this game for its ambition, and it's definitely successful for the most part. Unfortunately, I think this is one of those where I'll have more fun reflecting on it rather than replaying it. But maybe the day will come when I'll want to kick Odie off the table again.
I don't want this review to be a full comparison of the two, but Octopath has had 25 more years of JRPG innovation to reflect on, and its gameplay systems reflect this. This simply isn't a fair comparison but I'm not some timeless entity, I'm just some gamer in 2021. Live-A-Live is a far more ambitious game, and accomplishes a lot more when you're not bogged down in battles (which unfortunately makes up a non-trivial fraction of the game). My favourite scenario was Cowboy, no doubt for its swift pace and sensible balance between story and gameplay. Ninja, on the other hand, was an absolute chore. Keep that emulator speed-up button nearby.
Combat isn't actually bad at first. Each character has a fun variety of moves, moving around on the grid is novel and plays a nice role in some fights, and certain things have been streamlined for the player's benefit. Three of the scenarios and the final stretch though, throw a LOT of encounters at you. Many of these are very easy to deal with, it just gets tiring fairly quickly. For every second you spend smiling at Live-A-Live's tributes to all these different genres, you will spend 5 more fumbling for the "run" option, or beating an enemy you have killed 50 times before. Many JRPGs circumvent this by keeping their encounters interesting, allowing the player to skip them in certain cases, or just making them incredibly quick to breeze through. This is by no means a unique criticism, and many games have it worse than Live-A-Live, but the added moves that come with the grid combat or many enemies doing nothing interesting, make it tiresome in this case.
I also don't think it holds up very well in challenging fights. Live-A-Live doesn't have many of these, but I had a notably easier time with the final boss after intentionally letting half of my party die, due to how enemies take turns in this game.
That's my main issue here, but I've also had a few too many moments aimlessly wandering about to trigger whatever event I need to carry on. Many games are worse than Live-A-Live at this though, this one's pretty reasonable.
Moving onto strengths:
Shimomura absolutely kills this soundtrack. All these great battle themes ("Difficult Fight" is one of my favourite JRPG battle themes ever at this point), she knocks it out of the park with these wildly different styles, it's genuinely hard to believe that these all come from the same game. You have, what, traditional Chinese, traditional Japanese, spaghetti western, rock, mecha anime opening, some cool atonal stuff, church organ shit? The last Shimomura-composed game I played was Radiant Historia where she got way too comfortable with her orchestral sounds and I can barely remember any of it honestly. There were moments in Live-A-Live where some songs were played a bit much, but overall this is a very strong showing sonically.
Narratively, this game feels like a response to the JRPG landscape of its time. "You guys like paying tribute to fantasy settings," it says, "why not try out any of these?" Live-A-Live doesn't try to tell the greatest stories ever told. These are stitched together "example" works of each represented genre, little appetisers — the Cowboy scenario isn't going to rival The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It throws these tight packages at you, and bails once you start getting used to your surroundings. I can see this not appealing for some people, as playing mini-tributes to these different genres may seem pointless when compared to something more cohesive and focused. But from the different textbox stylings to all the little secrets hidden in each chapter, it just feels exciting sampling these 7 different games. You're training these martial artists to carry on your legacy. Now you're storming a stronghold as a ninja, deciding who lives and dies. Now you're hunting for food as a caveman. And once the actual story emerges to tie this all together, you really appreciate the scope of this game. The final scenarios actually tell a pretty great story (for a 1994 JRPG at least). But you're deep enough into this game by that point that you probably stopped caring about having an actual overarching plot.
(I typed that entire paragraph not remembering what "vignettes" are called. I'll just leave that there.)
I really respect this game for its ambition, and it's definitely successful for the most part. Unfortunately, I think this is one of those where I'll have more fun reflecting on it rather than replaying it. But maybe the day will come when I'll want to kick Odie off the table again.
2018
This fucking game
Just not as good as 1 or 2. The Japanese version is really easy until the literal last screens of the game (where it's still very manageable), and the American version would actually be better were it not for the limited continues. Still probably one of the NES' best platformers due to the level of polish here, and the game is impressive visually and mechanically. The level design didn't really leave much of an impact (though it's not bad at all), and the music was... there. 1 and 2 are simply far more memorable and satisfying games.
The soul makes up for the clunky platforming and the slowness getting from place to place. It's a fun time, and the fan translation does a great job at reflecting the charm on display here. Definitely recommend playing if you want a change of pace and a comfy world with a colourful cast
its ok but they totally stole that lightning gimmick from spectre knight's stage in shovel knight
2021
Nothing about this game stands out. The platforming and action technically work but it doesn't have any of the pizzazz its contemporaries/inspirations have. The music is not offensively bad but man there is absolutely nothing memorable there. One of the songs in Chapter 7(?) was kinda good? Oh yeah and there's a story here I guess? At least the art is good.
The first half is not very fun. Not because it's hard or anything, you just don't have much to play with, and the lacklustre level design/enemies do not make up for that. By the time you get the dash, you've already played most of the game. It's also at this point where it starts picking up, and the last couple of levels are actually kinda fun! But it's over by then. I don't really see why they give you this stuff throughout the game and not from the start, since it just leaves the earlier parts feeling more boring.
The checkpointing is also a bit weird, but nothing egregious. None of the special weapons feel satisfying or memorable. Parrying works but isn't really satisfying either.
When I wake up tomorrow, the only thing indicating that I ever played this will be this review. So I'm just leaving it here for my own sake when I inevitably go "Huh, Cyber Shadow, I don't really remember that, maybe I should replay it?"
The first half is not very fun. Not because it's hard or anything, you just don't have much to play with, and the lacklustre level design/enemies do not make up for that. By the time you get the dash, you've already played most of the game. It's also at this point where it starts picking up, and the last couple of levels are actually kinda fun! But it's over by then. I don't really see why they give you this stuff throughout the game and not from the start, since it just leaves the earlier parts feeling more boring.
The checkpointing is also a bit weird, but nothing egregious. None of the special weapons feel satisfying or memorable. Parrying works but isn't really satisfying either.
When I wake up tomorrow, the only thing indicating that I ever played this will be this review. So I'm just leaving it here for my own sake when I inevitably go "Huh, Cyber Shadow, I don't really remember that, maybe I should replay it?"
The most masturbatory sci-fi I've ever witnessed. During this immense narrative juggling act, it still remembers to have a really fun cast of characters, and presents this all with the most beautiful art in video games. Though there are definitely nitpicks to be made here. The combat is very easy, even on Intense. The blistering pace of the plot can reduce the impact of some key moments. Some of the music here is awesome, and some of it is some pretty generic orchestral stuff.
All that being said, I highly doubt I'll ever play a game like this again. While the whole thing was a great ride, I would give anything to experience the utter confusion of those first 10 hours again.
All that being said, I highly doubt I'll ever play a game like this again. While the whole thing was a great ride, I would give anything to experience the utter confusion of those first 10 hours again.
2008
you did not experience this game if you didnt get dick pics thanks to the mugshot feature
Soul