zones
7 reviews liked by zones
Mahjong Soul
2019
Made Washizu my fucking bitch
Somehow the weakest Picross game I’ve played. Something about the large majority of the puzzles being similar anime girl faces gives the puzzles a distinctly samey feel that really drills home the dull nature of Picross. I fucking love Picross so that’s definitely something that strikes me as irksome. That alongside baby music and character art that really just feels weak and you have an underwhelming package that does the Picross name an injustice.
Pizza Tower
2023
idk if this game is quebecois but it feels quebecois
Banjo-Tooie
2000
I really like the fact that this game was released on 2000. It's like the game of the future.
Me: "The world is a cruel and unjust place. There is no harmony in the universe. The only constant is suffering."
minutes later
Me: "OMG, tanned Cirno."
minutes later
Me: "OMG, tanned Cirno."
This review contains spoilers
The Kirby series is always a joy to return to every few years because these games are just so unapologetically happy. It's hard not to have a smile on your face the entire time you're playing, because the gameplay, characters, and environments are all so cute and cozy. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the series' biggest departure from its formula to date, but that core principle still remains intact.
When I first started the game, I was a bit disappointed, it seemed as though the already simple gameplay had been simplified even more. Each powerup essentially only has one or two attacks now due to the new 3D control scheme. But the new upgrade system adds a lot of depth to each of these abilities, and while your options are still more limited, it still feels true to the fundamental Kirby combat experience.
In classic Kirby fashion, while the game starts out with a fairly simple plot about Kirby trying to rescue his kidnapped friends in the strange new world he's arrived in, things go absolutely off the rails in the game's finale. It's insane how within the span of 10 minutes the game's plot goes from "save the Waddle Dees" to "An alien god with immense psychic and interdimensional power came to Earth thousands of years ago, threatened to wipe out all life on the planet, but was captured and then experimented on by humanity, giving them the power to traverse dimensions and leave Earth behind. The animals still on Earth eventually evolved and gained sapience, devoting themselves to that same alien god, who opened dimensional portals to enslave whatever extraterrestial life it could suck up so that it could eventually be reunited with its other half, become whole again, and finally be freed. Kirby must now stop this ancient alien god from crashing two planets into each other in a last ditch effort to defeat its foes."
In the classic Kirby experience, while the base game is extremely easy, the postgame does pose a decent challenge. And, as ever, it culminates in a final boss rush. Speaking as someone whose earliest gaming memories consist of trying for hours to beat Super Star Ultra's True Arena (notably its souped-up version of the final boss) I had gained an arrogance later in life that these Kirby boss rushes were never that hard and I just struggled because I was a literal child. In comes this latest game's final boss rush to snap me back to reality in the best way possible. I can't remember the last time a Kirby game nearly made me want to smash my controller with rage, but here we are, and I'm elated to say I finally conquered it and achieved 100% completion.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is easily one of the best Kirby games, and if you're a longtime fan, it's a must-buy.
When I first started the game, I was a bit disappointed, it seemed as though the already simple gameplay had been simplified even more. Each powerup essentially only has one or two attacks now due to the new 3D control scheme. But the new upgrade system adds a lot of depth to each of these abilities, and while your options are still more limited, it still feels true to the fundamental Kirby combat experience.
In classic Kirby fashion, while the game starts out with a fairly simple plot about Kirby trying to rescue his kidnapped friends in the strange new world he's arrived in, things go absolutely off the rails in the game's finale. It's insane how within the span of 10 minutes the game's plot goes from "save the Waddle Dees" to "An alien god with immense psychic and interdimensional power came to Earth thousands of years ago, threatened to wipe out all life on the planet, but was captured and then experimented on by humanity, giving them the power to traverse dimensions and leave Earth behind. The animals still on Earth eventually evolved and gained sapience, devoting themselves to that same alien god, who opened dimensional portals to enslave whatever extraterrestial life it could suck up so that it could eventually be reunited with its other half, become whole again, and finally be freed. Kirby must now stop this ancient alien god from crashing two planets into each other in a last ditch effort to defeat its foes."
In the classic Kirby experience, while the base game is extremely easy, the postgame does pose a decent challenge. And, as ever, it culminates in a final boss rush. Speaking as someone whose earliest gaming memories consist of trying for hours to beat Super Star Ultra's True Arena (notably its souped-up version of the final boss) I had gained an arrogance later in life that these Kirby boss rushes were never that hard and I just struggled because I was a literal child. In comes this latest game's final boss rush to snap me back to reality in the best way possible. I can't remember the last time a Kirby game nearly made me want to smash my controller with rage, but here we are, and I'm elated to say I finally conquered it and achieved 100% completion.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is easily one of the best Kirby games, and if you're a longtime fan, it's a must-buy.
Space Station 13
2003
A superficial description of SS13 would say that it is an online role playing game played in rounds that last around an hour (sometimes a little less or a lot more depending on the gametype.) where you play as a crew member on a quirky and chaotic spacestation. Your job could range from a doctor to a security officer or even a clown, and each of these jobs is given enough depth to feel like it could be a game all on its own, but what really set it apart for me back when I played it as a kid was the dynamic nature afforded to its mechanics by its community.
If you rolled playing as the captain, you could steer the round into any flavor you wanted, deciding to rule with an iron fist and focus on delivering harsh sentences to undesirable troublemakers didn't always result in a full brig and a peaceful station but it did always result in exciting multifaceted conflicts. Traitors planting bombs to serve as diversions from their true objectives would turn into complex rebuilding efforts with random no authority cooks and barkeepers being conscripted as emergency paramedics and engineers. Potentially uneventful shifts as a janitor could turn into a desperate struggle for survival hiding from aliens and trying to not run out of oxygen all while dragging the naked corpse of an assistant to the cloning bay. Every round felt different from the last, and this ceaseless variety is something that I think has more or less been preserved to this day, but I can’t help but feel that my best times with the game are long behind me.
I still come back to it every now and then, but I’ve never been able to recapture that feeling of playing a game where the world so often felt not only dynamic, but truly alive. On youtube you can find a dozen videos with hundreds of thousands of views showing the game off, but back when I first heard of it that wasn’t the case. You had to find it for yourself, and that made it a lot easier to sacrifice a bit of my round if it meant everyone else that found the game got to have a little bit more fun, and I may be making shit up, but I think this went the same way for a lot of the people I played with too. It’s a bit harder to take having my head lopped off with an esword in stride when there’s now a high chance that the person who did it may have learned to play it not because of their own interest in it, but because they were told about it by a youtuber who constantly regurgitates memes from /pol/
If you rolled playing as the captain, you could steer the round into any flavor you wanted, deciding to rule with an iron fist and focus on delivering harsh sentences to undesirable troublemakers didn't always result in a full brig and a peaceful station but it did always result in exciting multifaceted conflicts. Traitors planting bombs to serve as diversions from their true objectives would turn into complex rebuilding efforts with random no authority cooks and barkeepers being conscripted as emergency paramedics and engineers. Potentially uneventful shifts as a janitor could turn into a desperate struggle for survival hiding from aliens and trying to not run out of oxygen all while dragging the naked corpse of an assistant to the cloning bay. Every round felt different from the last, and this ceaseless variety is something that I think has more or less been preserved to this day, but I can’t help but feel that my best times with the game are long behind me.
I still come back to it every now and then, but I’ve never been able to recapture that feeling of playing a game where the world so often felt not only dynamic, but truly alive. On youtube you can find a dozen videos with hundreds of thousands of views showing the game off, but back when I first heard of it that wasn’t the case. You had to find it for yourself, and that made it a lot easier to sacrifice a bit of my round if it meant everyone else that found the game got to have a little bit more fun, and I may be making shit up, but I think this went the same way for a lot of the people I played with too. It’s a bit harder to take having my head lopped off with an esword in stride when there’s now a high chance that the person who did it may have learned to play it not because of their own interest in it, but because they were told about it by a youtuber who constantly regurgitates memes from /pol/