Gravity Rush Remastered has a lot of obvious problems. The controls can be a little sluggish for the complicated aerial acrobatics the game demands, the camera often shows you walls or floors instead of the enemies that are bombarding you, and some of those enemies will often be stuck in the geometry, sometimes to the point where all their weak points are hidden by a wall and they are effectively invulnerable unless you can coax them out.

The game originated on the Vita and while it was polished for PS4 the graphics are technically unimpressive, with simple geometry and limited draw distance. The story is kind of all over the place and leaves a lot unresolved by the end of the adventure, with underbaked characters and weird digressions into doing chores for strangers and at least one big revelation that the character sees but the player never does.

I love it without reservation.

Gravity Rush Remastered is a game that achieves greatness by doing certain things so well that none of the rest of it matters. It leans into its strengths and doesn’t linger on its weaknesses and in doing so it creates a gaming experience that’s not just worth visiting but stands head and shoulders above many of its better rounded peers.

Aesthetically what Gravity Rush lacks in technical wow factor it more than makes up for in charm. The game is clearly designed to be like an anime TV show, with 21 missions corresponding to 21 episodes, and cut scenes presented as frames of a manga, sometimes with small amounts of animation. Adding to the anime style, far off areas aren’t fogged out but rather sketched, like they’ve been penciled in by the animator but not fully inked or colored yet, a gorgeous and charming effect. The city where the game takes place is one of those 18th century European locations where so many anime shows occur, with peaked roofs, cobblestone squares with fountains, and lots of alleys and side streets. There are a few other areas as well, also with styles heavily influenced by anime, and there are steampunk elements with big airships and video screens. It all combines into a wonderful fantasy locale that feels both charming and lived in. The music is phenomenal, with each part of the city having its own wonderful theme, and it compliments the environment perfectly. The charm of the world made me want to get lost in Gravity Rush Remastered, and much of my time with the game was spent whooshing about the rooftops gathering gems and enjoying the sights and sounds of the city’s districts, a dumb smile plastered across my face. The city isn’t too big either, focusing on being fun to navigate than being sprawling and overwhelming, and the placement of power-up gems on every surface heavily rewards exploration of the various areas.

A charming city alone wouldn’t be enough to make me fall in love with a game, though, and it’s far from the only thing Gravity Rush Remastered has to offer. I mentioned above that the controls can be stiff, and they can, especially when trying to fight flying monsters that dart out of your way. There is an upside to the janky controls though, and the game uses them to make you feel in tune with the character, who is massively powerful but not not always entirely in control of that power. Flying through the sky, limbs akimbo, Kat often seems like a student driver in control of a high performance vehicle, always on the edge of disaster. When she takes off near other people she lifts them into the air and flings them alongside her, while they scream in fear and surprise. Try not to think about where they land, or in what condition. Kat also has limited flight power and, at least early on in the game, will have to plummet towards the earth for a bit before she recharges, often in mid-air, and can take off again. This gives the flying a rhythm of moving towards your goal, falling out of control, and recovering to fly towards the objective again. It’s unique and very fun after you get the hang of it. It also introduces a consistent low grade tension to the game where you’re always trying to accomplish small goals, like picking up a specific gem or killing a specific enemy, before your powers run out and you have to back off. That’s great game design, because you’re constantly thinking about and engaging with the game’s systems even when all you’re trying to do is fly up to grab some gems atop a skyscraper.

In addition to the very fun gameplay Gravity Rush has wonderful characters. I said that they are underbaked, and I do feel like they are, but that’s partially because I wanted to get to know each of them better. Kat herself is one of my favorite game protagonists of all time. She’s strong and brave but also vulnerable and goofy, and she’s a lot of fun to spend time with. I didn’t realize how tired I was of space marines until I took control of a girl who, yeah, is a super heroine, but also loves ice cream, takes discarded furniture to build an improvised home in the sewers, and is downright rude to cosmic beings (but also feels bad when she hurts their feelings.) Kat’s friends are also charming and fun, for the most part, and I often took the time to seek them out for optional dialog between missions.

Finally, Gravity Rush Remastered avoids the most obvious pitfall for a charming game with janky controls by being easy. I don’t think I died once during the entire experience, and most missions were, frankly, a breeze. Health gems are dispensed liberally, enemies are often pretty lazy, floating in one place and not attacking very much, and pretty early in the game you get devastating super attacks that obliterate even bosses. When an encounter was feeling frustrating I relied on those special attacks to thin the enemy herd or drain the boss’s life meter, cheerfully cheesing my way through what might be choke points in a tougher game. I’ve often said that if a developer can’t make a game feel precise and tuned it should at least be easy to avoid frustrating the player with unfair encounters they have to repeat over and over, and Gravity Rush Remastered does just that. It’s a charming light adventure, that let me play at my own pace and see the ending without having to throw my controller at the wall.

It's rare these days that I find a game that makes me want to play it compulsively, drawing me in no matter what my mood or other options available at the moment are. Gravity Rush Remastered was such a game, and having beaten it I intend to go back and mop up side quests and maybe even grab the platinum, which is also quite rare for me. The game is just so charming, so pleasant to play, look at, and hear, that I find myself wanting to go back to the world again and again just to spend time there. To me, that’s the highest praise a game can earn.

Needless to say I will be getting the sequel.

I can’t stop thinking about the Nintendo Switch.

It’s now less than a month until it’s release and while I have a pre-order placed I am growing less and less excited for the thing as the date draws near. Zelda looks cool, but I have known about Zelda for years, and Mario also looks very exciting, but is a long way off. Other than that...there’s Snipperclips which seems like a neat little game, and everything else seems more ridiculously overpriced the more I think about it. I’m not even a particularly price sensitive gamer, but $50 for Bomberman and $40 for Street Fighter II in 2017 offends me on a philosophical level. The thought of spending that kind of money on games whose assets are literally decades old (or at least look like it) makes me feel taken advantage of and exploited. Arms seems like a $20 game, though maybe there’s hidden depth there, and 1 2 Switch is something I have no interest in and will never play. Beyond that there’s the full priced port of Mario Kart 8, the full priced semi-sequel to Splatoon (which admittedly could be worth if it there’s a ton of new content), and a whole lot of ports of old games and promises of more down the line.

When the launch lineup is significantly improved by ports of Little Inferno (which launched with the Wii U as part of a much more impressive lineup) and World of Goo (A [good] game so old I played it 4 apartments ago) you know things are dire.

I know there will be more titles later and eventually the system will likely have enough to justify a purchase, but I want to be excited now and I’m just not. Part of buying a new system is that feeling of excitement. PS4 had it with Resogun and shiny versions of current games like Battlefield 4. Xbox One had it with Dead Rising 3 and Killer Instinct. Breath of the Wild will likely be better than all those games, but it is surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.

It doesn’t help that Nintendo has stayed completely silent about its Virtual Console plans (something that could get an old gamer like me pretty revved up if there’s a good selection done right, and justify the purchase on its own) and that they’ve been unclear about exactly what they’re going to port over from the Wii U (Smash Brothers seems like a no brainer, but I’d also love to see Bayonetta 2 and of course Mario Maker make the leap.)

Switch defenders are like “There’ll be enough to play. Zelda will take you a month and then there will be Arms and other games…” but I remember the N64. That kind of release schedule only works if every game on the schedule is good and, more importantly, if you like them all. I like to have a selection of options as to what to play next, not be waiting for whatever game of whatever quality happens to come out.

Add in that using the Switch will apparently be, interface wise, way behind the curve (no achievement system, the social features not fully ready at launch and going through my phone rather than the system) and it just adds up to something I feel like I’m buying almost out of obligation or reluctant acceptance rather than excitement.

And the truth is I don’t need a Switch. I have a PS4 Pro and an Xbox One and an absolute ton of games to play on them. Hell I have PS3 and Xbox 360 games I still want to get around to, so it’s not like I’m hurting. But I want a Nintendo system that’s more exciting than the 3DS (which is seriously underpowered) and I’m into the Switch’s idea of a console you can play on the subway or in the back of a cab. I want to be excited by the Switch, and I’m an easy target with relatively deep pockets. I should be at least part of the demographic Nintendo is aiming for.

I guess fundamentally more than anything the problem is that I feel like Nintendo does not respect or care about its customers. It gouges them on price for games and accessories, it is always tight-lipped and secretive, it hates offering discounts and seems to go out of its way to avoid making things convenient (tying games to accounts rather than systems? That's unpossible), and while it makes some truly spectacular games it seems to do everything it can to make the experience around playing those games as hostile as it can.

So why keep the pre-order at all? I’m not sure. Part of it is nostalgia, since I grew up on Nintendo and its IP; part of it is true admiration for (some) of the software they produce, which really is peerless, and part of it is just hoping against hope that they’ll change and evolve.

A large part of it is just that I have the money right now and I do want to play Zelda (and hopefully some virtual console bangers.)

But if the disaster of the Wii U, a system that sold so poorly that they abandoned software development for it after 3 years, didn’t humble them and make them more consumer oriented, then nothing will. Nintendo is going to do what Nintendo wants. It's not going to start having a good e-shop with account tied purchases. It's not going to start putting stuff on sale like Microsoft and Sony do, or lowering prices as the generation goes on (An Xbox One can now often be had for about $200, and it was $500 just 3 years ago, AND it's the new improved S model.) It's not going to turn Virtual Console into what we all want it to be and it's not going to stop pushing half-baked features for its consoles that never get more than a handful of games. Buying an unexciting Switch is the price I have to pay to get at the good Nintendo games and I guess I'm willing. For now. But if money was tighter or I was just a little less invested in playing video games I wouldn't, and that's something Nintendo should think about. Though they definitely won'.t.

I have been anticipating the Nintendo Switch since the first rumors of NX were announced. I didn't buy a Wii U when it launched because I couldn't afford it at the time, and I never got around to getting one because there was never a good deal at a time when my budget would allow a purchase. But I miss Nintendo games on the big-screen (I have a 3DS), and I found the idea of a unified Nintendo platform with all their games on it extremely appealing, so my hype levels on the NX console were pretty high. Even when the (low-powered) specs more or less leaked it didn't kill my excitement because I don't come to Nintendo for cutting edge graphics and the idea of the unified platform was still extremely appealing. After Nintendo more or less took 2016 off on the Wii U, and didn't put out much for the 3DS that year, I got excited because I thought about all the awesome things they would be cooking up for the Switch and the plethora of great Nintendo experiences I could look forward to in 2017

I watched the teaser announcement and it looked good, and then I sat down to watch the full reveal, excited to see everything Nintendo had in store and...

Zelda looks amazing. Mario looks fantastic. Splatoon 2 seems like an enhanced version of the original from what people are saying. Arms...well given that Jeff said he never felt the need to play it again after trying it I am not too hopeful. 1, 2, 3 Switch looks really dumb and I would be very surprised if there are more than 20 microgames (Which is what those things are) on that $50 disc.

And that seems to be it other than a port of Mario Kart 8. So 1 game they were already making for Wii U, 1 enhanced version of an old Wii U game, 2 originals that look decidedly B-team and 1 Mario game that looks amazing, but isn't coming out until the end of the year.

This is the bounty that the combined development focus on one system gets us?

In the first year Wii U had Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Wii U, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101 (second party, but still), Wii Sports Club, Wind Waker HD, and Super Mario 3D World (slightly after first anniversary.) Now maybe there will be a bunch more Switch stuff announced this year (such as at E3) but the Switch lineup definitely doesn't seem much better than the Wii U lineup, and it's not like the Switch seems so much more powerful that the argument of "Well the development teams had to be much bigger" makes a lot of sense.

It just seems like the benefits of combined development...don't exist? Now maybe this is because Nintendo is still supporting the 3DS (even though they are impossible to get in North America) or maybe it's because Nintendo is looking down the line and prepping stuff for 2018, but my Switch hype levels have fallen off a cliff. I want to play Zelda and then...there's nothing I'm excited about until Mario (which I'm really excited about but is at the end of the year if it doesn't slip.) They haven't even leveraged the Wii U library by porting over stuff like Bayonetta 2 and Smash Brothers, and my secret hope of a robust and awesome virtual console system (Which I would happily spend HUNDREDS of dollars in) doesn't seem to be happening.

Plus paid online. Plus expensive accessories...

But more than anything it's the software lineup that has me disappointed and confused. If you're a Nintendo only gamer who has stuck with them through the Wii U's shameful last year you have to be looking at this and just hoping that Zelda lasts you basically a whole year.

I'm still hoping the Switch succeeds. I have one pre-ordered and I really want to play Zelda and am very excited about that Mario game. I even hope that Arms is cool, even though it looks...dumb. But I also have an Xbox One and a PS4, and my gaming slate is full of exciting releases this year and I have a massive backlog. I'm not relying on Switch for anything, it's just an added bonus at a time when I have a good amount of money lying around and no Wii U to play Zelda on. If Nintendo wants to make this thing something other than Wii U 2.0 it needs to step up its development and give us something more than 2 games to be excited over.

Oh, and 3rd Party development so far is...unexciting. There are some decent RPGs coming at some point, but most of the third party stuff is either small scale/ports (I can't wait to play an inferior port of Steep on my Nintendo Switch!) or just weird. I mean they announced a version of Street Fighter II for this thing. Street Fighter II! I'm sure it will be cool and I might even get it, but when one of your big third party titles in 2017 is Street Fighter II you know you're reaching like one of those Arms characters.

I picked up a PSVR today like a lot of people (well, Amazon dropped it off) and after messing around with Superhypercube for a little bit I decided to give Harmonix Music VR a chance, since I just wanted to enjoy looking at the pretty scenery for awhile. The beach mode was...just ok...with some nice visuals but nothing particularly mind blowing.

Then I tried easel mode and...boom. Mind blown. Using two move controllers you draw 3D lines (or other shapes...it comes with multiple brushes) with one hand and you can move your creations around the space with the other. You can toss the shapes, pull them towards you, play with them like they were actual objects. It works pretty darn well within the somewhat limited confines of PSVR and it did a really good job of convincing my brain that I was in an actual physical space.

I was blown away. And I'm not someone who gets blown away. I said "Wow" and "Holy crap." I jumped out of my chair so I could paint over a larger area. I grinned like a maniac, made virtual shapes and tossed them away only to make more, while some pretty decent tunes blared in my ear.

Nobody seems to be talking about this...experience (calling it a game is a little bit overselling) but for me it made VR click in a way that none of the videos or descriptions or other stuff I messed around with did. It made me glad I got my VR headset because even if this first generation doesn't have any true "killer apps" I at least now understand what makes VR so cool and how it works. I think it's also a fantastic "Show off app" to get other people to try VR, since it requires zero gaming skills and is appropriate for all ages.

I am super impressed and am definitely going to be spending more time with this thing.

It's getting a lot of flack in reviews and I guess I get that because it's just a tech demo, not really a game, but for $15 I definitely have no regrets. And it made me feel a lot better about the $400 I dropped on the headset itself.

It really was an awe inspiring experience. I'm still kind of elated like half an hour later and I can't wait to get back into it tomorrow night. Obviously I can't promise your experiences will be the same, but if you find yourself with a PSVR and wanting a cool...thing...to do with it, I'd highly recommend this.

I went from "I guess this is kind of cool" with Superhypercube (which is definitely neat in its own way) to "Whoa! VR is the future of entertainment!" in about 15 minutes.

It's early days right now, but I can't imagine that 5 or 10 years from now there aren't going to be life-changing VR experiences. In 10 years we went from PS1 to Xbox 360, Imagining a leap anywhere close to that for VR is...almost scary.

Forza Horizon 3 is out and as far as I'm concerned it's spectacular. It has great graphics, tightly honed gameplay, and probably the best open world driving map of all time, but while I really like that stuff it's not why I love the game.

I love Horizon 3, and in fact that whole Horizon series, because it's the only non-kiddie game I can think of that is focused around the singular mission of showing the player a good time.

Don't get me wrong, I like most video games and I think most video games are designed to be enjoyed by players, but they are often designed to be enjoyable through providing a satisfying challenge or a horror experience or a meaningful story. They don’t just want to be pure ‘fun’ they want to do other things as well.

The Forza Horizon series wants to do some of these things (it can definitely be challenging) but it all takes a backseat to fun. Forza Horizon is like a solicitous host who is constantly freshening up your drink, asking if you need anything, and suggesting cool things the two of you can do. At times it can feel overwhelming and almost smothering (the map is so full of objectives and the radio is constantly chattering on with more) but it’s also really nice to feel like the game genuinely likes you and wants you to be happy.

Everything about Horizon seems designed around the goal of pleasing the player. The setting is a fun and welcome car and music festival that can only exist in a video game because it features all the cool stuff (well the PG rated cool stuff) about a festival (great tunes, a wonderful vibe, a ton to do and see) with none of the drawbacks. There’s not a skeevy drug dealing dude or disgusting porta potty to be seen on the whole continent. The characters in Horizon all like you and are congratulatory and excited for you whatever you do. This has gotten to be more and more true as the series has advanced; with the first game featuring some rivals who would taunt and challenge you as you rose through the ranks while the third iteration just features a super chipper lady lieutenant who cheerfully does all the work while you claim all the glory. In the back of my mind I always feel like she’s going to angrily quit or at least demand a raise when I run off to irresponsibly street race while she manages the construction of a festival expansion and the hard work of clearing things with the local authorities, but instead she just gently chides me with a chuckle. And then my good ol’ boy Aussie mechanic calls to tell me he finished fixing up a car I found. For free.

In Forza Horizon 3 you get money, XP, and thousands of fans even when you bork up a race and come in last. In Forza Horizon 3 you get skill points for clean racing AND for slamming into breakable objects. In Forza Horizon 3 everyone in the digital world is happy to go at your pace and do whatever you feel like. If you pass another driver on the road you can race him or tell him to follow you and help look for collectibles and whatever he’s up to he’ll stop and join in your reindeer games. In Forza Horizon 3 nobody yells at you even when you slam into their family van while trying to go sideways in a drift zone on a public road. In Forza Horizon 3 every few races you get a wheelspin that can grant you hundreds of thousands of credits or free cars with absolutely no narrative explanation. The universe just loves you and wants you to be happy so it gives you things.

Most games don’t have that vibe. In shooters everything is trying to kill you. In fighting games everything is trying to beat you up. In sports games your opponents are trying to defeat you. In puzzle games the solutions are often obtuse and difficult and yeah they might make you feel smart, but they’re going to make you work for it. Forza Horizon doesn’t want you to work for it.

In that way it’s a lot like games made for children, but it’s designed and balanced for adults. It doesn’t hold your hand the way a children’s game does, the graphics aren’t cutesy and Forza can be pretty tough if you want it to, but it has the same attitude of positivity and wanting to make sure the player enjoys himself. It reminds me of Kirby’s Epic Yarn or Yoshi’s Woolly World; games that were soft and cuddly and pleasant above all else, with challenge taking a back seat to enjoyment and a friendly vibe.

I wish more games took this approach. We all remember how annoying it was when actors with ‘tude screamed at and degraded us in games like Sewer Shark and ESPN Extreme Games. Why did it take this long to show that the opposite could be quite pleasant?

Life is hard. Games are an escape. Sometimes it’s cool to have a serious or intense story and an atmosphere of foreboding, but frankly just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I don’t like feeling wanted and admired.

Forza Horizon 3 is a fantasy. A fantasy version of Australia. A fantasy where you own a garage full of rare and valuable cars and all you have to do to get more of them is drive around a little. A fantasy where radio stations have recognizable formats and play mostly good music instead of computer programmed top 40 lists. Why not make it a fantasy where being the boss comes with all the perks and none of the responsibilities and all your employees think you’re amazing even though you never share any of your vast wealth and incredible luck with them?

Let other racing games worry about sending the cops after you or making you race for hours before you can earn a used Subaru. Me, I’m happy taking a vacation down under where people don’t just smile and hand me a vegemite sandwich, they give me free cars! Lots of them!

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONFESSION IS SO DANK IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE WITH A SERIOUS MEDICAL CONDITION OR A WEAK STOMACH. IF YOU ARE PREGNANT, MAY BECOME PREGNANT, OR IF YOUR MOTHER WAS AT ONE TIME PREGNANT WITH YOU, YOU SHOULD NOT READ THIS CONFESSION. THIS CONFESSION IS SO DANK IT HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CAUSE MEDICAL PROBLEMS, INCLUDING DRY MOUTH, TOE JAM, TENNIS ELBOW, WATER ON THE KNEE, SAILOR'S COCCYX, KLINGON TONGUE, DANCING LIVER and WANDERING NOSE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Every gamer has games she hasn't finished. It's inevitable that some games will lose your interest before the end, or have a difficulty spike you can't overcome, or just be lost in the shuffle when something new and shiny comes along to occupy your time. You won't 'beat' everything you play.

Most gamers have a backlog. Games they bought on sale, or just because they wanted them, but never got around to playing. For many this backlog can reach hundreds of games, which they'll "get around to playing some day" even though games keep coming out and they keep buying them.

What I'm talking about tonight, however, is something altogether darker. I'm talking about the games I bought but have abandoned all hope of ever playing. They may still be in the shrinkwrap, or be on some online service never downloaded, or even be installed on a hard drive, but I know I will never play them. Over my years as a gamer and collecter I have acquired many such games. More than I care to admit. I am not going to talk about each game I've 'abandoned' but will describe some categories, and the reasons why I know I will never go back to play these games I spent money on.

1. THE DOUBLE DIP

The double dip is the easiest to understand reason why a game might be put aside, never played. Put simply, a better version came out. An example from my collection is the Last of Us. I bought it around the time it came out for the PS3, but things got busy and it was never the right time, then GTA V came out and then the 8th gen consoles, and I never got around to playing it. A year after the first release a remastered version came out for PS4, and people said it fixed frame rate issues and had a better multiplayer population at that point. So I waited for a sale, bought the Remastered version, and played through that. My PS3 copy remains in the shinkwrap and I can’t imagine a circumstance when I’d actually play this. This has happened for other games as well, generally when the upgraded version can be had cheaply and features a large upgrade. I always wanted to play Gravity Rush, but I’m never going to play the copy I got on VITA because I’d rather play a game like that on PS4, which is now an option. I think anyone who has a significant backlog has felt the call of or even fallen victim to the double dip. In the end if I’m going to play a game I want to play the best version available for the systems I have, especially if the upgrade isn’t particularly pricey.

2. THE OBSOLETE

I’m not the kind of gamer who has to play things right when they’re released. I’m happy going back to play older games, but certain games just aren’t worth going back to. The most obvious example is sports games, which get replaced with the newer option every year (or two). If I’m going to get into Madden it’s not going to be with last year’s copy, even if I happen to have picked one up cheap. I got the EA UFC game for $10, never played it, and now with UFC 2 out I never will. The same is true of the dead online game. This might be a game that’s actually dead, with servers no longer online, but more usually it’s just a game with no active population playing it. It’s pretty rare for this to happen to me, since I don’t buy online focused games unless I want to play them immediately, but it's not unknown. I bought R.I.P.D. very cheap on sale, but after trying to find a game on PS3 to play God Mode with, and failing, I never even bothered with R.I.P.D. (it’s apparently a terrible game anyway.) Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West looked interesting to me, and I acquired a copy somehow (maybe through Playstation Plus?) but I imagine the servers are long deceased and I’m never going to boot up my old PS3 to find out. It had its time and place, and I missed it.

3. THE MEDIOCRE

I collect games somewhat compulsively, especially when they’re very cheap. I like having a large library of games to pick from, and I try to play a variety of games (when I have time) not just the big hits. This can be a good thing. I had a lot of fun with Conan on the 360, of a type I might not have with a better game. I also enjoyed the heck out of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, even though reviewers didn’t. Was it as good as Arkham Asylum? No, but it was fun in a different way, and to me it was a solid B+ to Arkham’s A. However, while I like playing “B-tier” games and I have a nice collection of them, I am extremely unlikely to go back a generation to play them. While I like retro and older games, I have limited time and I’m not going to spend it playing through a lengthy but poorly regarded adventure like The First Templar or the Cursed Crusade. Not when my backlog is full of better games to play. If I’m going to play a 360 era cover shooter it’s going to be Binary Domain, not Inversion and, despite my love of Insomniac, not Fuse either. I played Uncharted 4 already, and Gears 4 is coming out this year, so it’s not like we’re lacking for modern incarnations of this genre, and there needs to be something special (like a famously bonkers story) to pull me back to older hardware.

The mediocre category is the hardest to define, because there are plenty of games from my backlog I will probably never get to even if I don’t think of them as being “mediocre” in the way that Fuse or Inversion are. My backlog keeps growing and time keeps on ticking forward. Will I ever get to Far Cry 3? I’d like to think so, but it’s likely I won’t at this point. That doesn’t make it a mediocre or ‘abandoned’ game, though, just a game I never got around to playing.

THE UPSHOT

I’m sure if anyone reads this far they’re likely to want to lecture me about how this shows I should buy fewer games and stop wasting my money. That’s a fine sentiment, but I don’t feel that way. The truth is, I enjoy buying and collecting games, physically and digitally. I get a pleasure out of looking for deals, and building a library, that’s somewhat independent of whether I actually play the games in question. Will I ever get around to that $9 copy of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands that I bought in 2011? I don’t know, maybe, but I enjoyed buying it and having the option anyway, and it didn’t cost very much.

The truth is, I don’t want to change. My video game spending isn’t out of control and it doesn’t consume a huge part of my income. While I buy games to play them, I don’t always get around to it, and in some cases I never will. I enjoyed the buying, the feeling of possibility an an adventure not yet embarked on that comes with owning a new game. I like having a collection to choose from and I’m willing to accept that sometimes the spending is frivolous and wasteful. There are lots of frivolous and wasteful ways to spend money, and bad habits that are more harmful than collecting video games. So the dankest confession of all is that even though I’ve bought a fair number of games I know I’ll never play I don’t regret it and I don’t intend to change.

P.S. Oh, and for those about to suggest that I sell the unplayed games, by the time I get around to being confident I won't play something it has generally lost all its value. I could gather up the titles I know I never play and take them to a Gamestop or something and maybe get $50-$100 in credit, but it wouldn't be worth it, at least not for me. For that kind of return I'd rather just leave them in my collection.

It's a Saturday in August 2016, which means, for me, it's the perfect time to mess around with PS1 racing games, a group of games I find more fascinating than good, but enjoy playing just to look at how games used to be and explore the weird oddities that don't really exist in today's more polished video games.

Today I messed around with two titles: Hi-Octane: The Track Fights Back and Toy Story Racer. Both were picked up digitally on PS3 for under a buck during the big digital PS1 sale last year.

Hi-Octane: The Track Fights Back

Hi-Octane is a futuristic battle racer, in the vein of Wipeout, which came out on PlayStation a few months earlier.

This was a very early PlayStation game and oh boy does it show. Beyond the barely there presentation (The game has a menu straight out of the CD-I era, and while it has a good suite of options like single race, championship, racing a ghost, and battle mode, it makes no real attempt at story or even character) the graphics are bad and as far as I can tell there's only one music track, on a pretty short loop (despite being a CD game the ROM is only 35 megabytes). Most notably the draw distance is truly hideous, with the track blatantly popping into place about 100 feet in front of your car, far enough that you can generally navigate it okay, but giving the already unappealing graphics a very shoddy and unfinished feel.

The tracks themselves are all named after evocative locations like Shanghai or New Chernobyl, but lack distinctive features and all come off as "Generic Future Race Track #2" or GFRT #4. The cars are apparently lacking in textures and definitely lacking in character, with generic shapes like "big van" and "standard future car" mixing with only slightly more interesting fantasy vehicles like an X-Wing/Tie Fighter Interceptor hybrid.

How does it play? The controls are a bit floaty but not so bad that you can't get a handle on them after a few races. It's a combat racer, which means that you're often getting shot by machine guns from the back, and you need to worry about managing your shields, ammo, and fuel in addition to racing and collecting other power-ups, but the gameplay is neither notably good nor terrible. It's just a clunky early 3D racer. The AI is pretty bad, though, so it's not hard to pull off victories on some of the twistier courses where it gets caught up on corners.

A couple things worth noting. 1) You can turn the sky texture off and on in the options. I don't know why, though I suspect it has to do with 2) which is that this is a game by Bullfrog, and was on PC before being ported to Playstation (or maybe co-developed.) I suspect that helps explain the terrible draw-in (which might have been better on a PC) and perhaps the sky texture option, which might have helped with PC performance? Doesn't explain the single song soundtrack, though.

I never figured out why this game is subtitled "The Track Fights Back." The tracks do have some interesting elements to them, like shortcuts and areas to recharge shield or weapons, as well as hidden power ups, but I didn't find any hazards, and it's not like these were particularly new ideas. F-Zero (a MUCH better game) had shortcuts and shield recharge areas at the launch of the SNES.

Oh, and as far as I can tell there is no way to exit a race until all computer players have finished, which can take awhile. Overall Hi-Octane is a mildly interesting curiosity, but not something I can see a lot of people having really cared about, and a game that was rendered totally superfluous by the existence of Wipeout.

Toy Story Racer

Toy Story Racer, on the other hand, was a very late Playstation game, released in 2001 about 6 months after the launch of the PS2. It's a Mario Kart clone featuring the cast of Toy Story, from Buzz and Woody to Rex and Bo-Peep. What a difference a console life cycle makes! While Hi-Octane felt like a barely held together pile of code, Toy Story Racer features the rock solid graphics of late PS1 games, with much higher rez textures and some decent lighting effects. There's no real pop-in and the tracks are all very distinct and clear real world locations, while the racers all look great.

Toy Story Racer was made by Traveller's Tales and by 2001 they knew how to make a Playstation game. It features great presentation with voice clips from Toy Story, an interesting and vast progression system, lots of content, and awesome track fly throughs before you start each course. I couldn't find a way to turn the sky off, though.

The thing is, there's not much to say about Toy Story Racer. It's a very competent kart game with all that entails: including nice looking tracks with short cuts, power ups and weapons, and an Etch-A-Sketch that appears to point you in the right direction if you get off course. I'm sure a lot of kids have fond memories of playing the game when it was released, but it also launched onto a platform with a ton of games, many of which were better. Toy Story Racer is no Crash Team Racing, for example, and there are literally hundreds of other racing games for the PS1, almost all of which were released earlier. Playing it in 2016 it's just mildly entertaining, and not nearly as interesting as the weird and kind of broken Hi-Octane, which I spent more time with.

Overall

I had a decent time messing around with these two games. I enjoy looking back at the PS1 era, which to me is in many ways the worst but also most interesting era in gaming, and these two racing games provided decent bookends. Toy Story Racer is by far the better game, but there's something about Hi-Octane that gives it a shabby charm, like an old car with a mismatched door and big rust spots that seems held together with duct tape but somehow still runs. Would I recommend picking either up? Toy Story Racer might be worth a play if you're a huge fan of the movies, but even then you're better off just watching the trilogy and playing Mario Kart or CTR. Hi-Octane is a goddamned mess and I cannot recommend it for anything beyond a curiosity. I got my 96 cents worth of fun out of both of them, though, so if you are interested and see them super duper cheap I'm not going to try and stop you.

Until next time, I'll be here playing old Playstation games and wishing that I could turn the sky off during heat waves, or when it's heavily raining. Stupid real life should come with a fully featured options menu!

I remember when Mr. Driller came out in the U.S. in 2000. I had already moved on to the Dreamcast by then but for some reason I picked it up for the Playstation (possibly it was cheaper, or I just preferred the Playstation D-pad) and I played the heck out of that game. I loved everything about it from the cheery graphics to the upbeat soundtrack to the fact that it had a weird story tie in to Dig Dug. Mr. Driller was my jam for a quick arcade fix that summer and I was fully on board as a fan, excited to see what would happen next with the franchise.

Of course what happened next were a bunch of ports to various systems I didn't play and that didn't seem to move the series forward appreciably, many of which never made it to the U.S. I didn't get any of them, since reviews were generally tepid, but I would still pop my Mr. Driller disc into my PS2 and play it from time to time. It was by far my most-played game utilizing PS2 backwards compatibility.

Of course over time I played it less and less, and Mr. Driller sort of dropped off my radar, but then, in 2008, I heard about a little game called Mr. Driller Online, coming to YOUR Xbox 360 console. I was fully on board from the get go. Ryan didn't like the game, but while I respected his opinion, nothing was going to stop me from drilling back in. I got it as soon as it was available (staying up late for the store refresh even) and I tore into it. Despite the low-res graphics and the busted online functionality (in a game called Mr. Driller Online even!) I loved it. I was back in the land of blocks, getting those great cascade combos, finding air bubbles, and just having a fantastic time.

I would play that version of Mr. Driller off and on until the end of the Xbox 360 era, less and less as time went by, but it never left the hard drive of my 360.

Recently I was looking at the available downloads on my Xbox One, and I noticed that Mr. Driller Online was available in backwards compatibility. I brought the cursor over to the tile on the screen and put my finger over the A button, ready to grab it, when I had a realization.

I don't want to play any more Mr. Driller. I've played enough. I have my memories and I had my fun, but I'm done. Done with Mr. Driller. Even though I could snag the game for free and jump back in...I don't want to. I feel like the best case scenario is disappointment. Worst case, I would tarnish memories of a game that at one point was among my very favorite arcade-style games of all time.

16 years ago I played Mr. Driller for the first time and formed what I thought would be a lifelong bond. 8 years ago I relived the magic. Now, I'm done.

I'm not usually like this with games. I love revisiting old favorites and playing retro stuff, but something about Mr. Driller resonates within the context of a place and time (or two places and times, technically) and I don't want to go back.

If I'm lucky I have decades more of life ahead of me. I never want to stop playing video games, of course, and maybe in another 8 years there will be some new version of Mr. Driller on the Xbox Two and I will get the urge and dive back in. This kind of thing can be hard to predict. But for now, I'm done. Goodbye Mr. Driller. You're not a game that seemed fun at the time but in retrospect was not so good. I totally respect what you did. You're not a game that got old because you were never young. You were an arcade game (sequel to DIG DUG) with 2D graphics released in 1999. You were born retro. You're just a game I grew out of for reasons I can't articulate. Thank you for the fun times and the memories. I hope you never stop drilling. I just can't follow you anymore.

Like a lot of video game players I started when I was young (back in the NES era.) Back then memory restrictions meant that most games were pretty short, but limits on lives and continues, and the sheer punishing nature of early game design, meant that they mostly took a very long time to finish. If you got a new game you knew it would be weeks or months until you saw the end, if you ever did. Games were by their nature long, and that's how I liked them. I can remember not using the warp pipes in Mario 1 or the whistles in Mario 3 because I didn't want to shorten the length of my game and get to the ending faster than necessary.

Just like we thought of "fun size" as a misnomer for candy bars, we thought of "short and sweet" as an inherently false claim about a video game.

I continued playing games through the subsequent eras, switching up my gaming habits from time to time but never stopping, and one thing remained true for my entire gaming life. Length meant value, and value was good.

Now I'm not saying that I never enjoyed a short game. I loved the original Metal Gear Solid, which is only a handful of hours, and of course a short, great, experience (like Panzer Dragoon Orta) was always preferable to a bad, long game, but all things being equal I wanted my games to last as long as they could and while I could imagine a game outstaying its welcome it was rare that a game ever did.

I wasn't the only one who thought this way. Games routinely advertised their length on the back of the case, with phrases like "Eight huge worlds to explore" or "100 hours+." Reviewers rated games on "lasting appeal" and short games were said to be "just worth a rental," which was also what was said about games that were just bad or not fun. It was widely accepted that length and amount of content were a positive in a game, just like great graphics or exciting gameplay.

Now that I'm getting older that's no longer the case. I don't have the time to play games that I used to, and my patience is a little thinner for pedestrian games in general. I've shot a million guys with AK-47s before, so unless you're doing something interesting with it I just find it kind of boring. Over time, so slowly that it was barely perceptible, my view changed, so that the 100+ hours that was once a selling point just seems like a huge commitment that I don't want to embark on. I'd love to play the Witcher 3, but with the DLC alone being 30 hours I know that I probably won't be starting it any time soon, let alone finishing.

In fact games that are just normal length, of 10-20 hours, are starting to turn me off. I started The Division a few months ago and I liked it okay, but the idea of plunging back in and going through the rest of that content just leaves me feeling exhausted. I played Uncharted 4, and I really liked it, but I couldn't help wishing it was a few hours shorter. Each new "no, it turns out the treasure's really over HERE" twist brought on mixed feelings and by the end of the game I just wanted it to be over. I have come to accept that I likely won't finish Far Cry Primal and to appreciate the time I did enjoy with that game, before it turned into a slog.

Instead I find myself more and more drawn to games that offer bite-sized experiences. Sometimes, like in Ape Escape 2 or Trackmania Turbo, this means distinct levels with clear goals where you can make progress in half an hour or 45 minutes and put the game down satisfied, to pick it up later. Sometimes, like with Inside or Abzu or Firewatch, this means a game that is itself a short experience that tells a contained story. I've played these types of games since they started getting popular in the 360 era, but I've always treated them as palette cleansers; something quick to play through between the big, in depth, meaty experiences I thought I craved.

Now I'm ready to accept that's not the case. When I have some time to play something I actually prefer that it be short rather than long. I make a good living so spending $20 on a few hours entertainment isn't a big deal to me, but even if I had a lot less money I think I'd still prefer the more compact experiences (I just might wait for them to drop in price before jumping on board. Fortunately these days if you wait a few months or a couple years at most, everything gets cheap.)

It's not just that I can finish the games, it's that I've come to realize that most video games have a lot of padding. Whether it's grinding for resources, fighting the same enemies in roughly the same environment over and over, or traveling around a big open world from one point of interest or mission to another, there's a lot of time in games that's just kind of wasted. Sometimes this provides pacing, like the long (skipable) car rides in L.A. Noir that showed you the city and gave atmosphere, but often it's just there for the sake of extending length. I don't understand why so many games have time-sink crafting systems (I'm not talking about something like Minecraft where you can make something truly creative and interesting) and bad checkpointing will put me off a game quicker than just about anything.

Short games tend to be all meat and no gristle. They don't have tedious repetitive side quests. They don't have stories that take forever to get going and drone on and on. They don't make you fight the same enemy 400 times, even after it has long moved from being a challenge to being a chore. Looking back over the games I've finished in the last few years, with a few notable exceptions I've gotten just as much satisfaction from the short compact experiences as from the sprawling ones, only the short ones didn't make me feel like I was compromising something else in my life to be able to play them.

So, at least for now, I am accepting that I'm a "bite-sized" gamer. No longer will I buy a lot of big sprawling games and let my backlog swell with games I don't have any time to play. No longer will I look at a 4 hour game as "less than" a 15 hour game, even if the short game does everything it wants to and wraps things up in time for dinner.

The truth is that looking to length as necessarily implying value is silly. A long movie isn't inherently better than a short one. A good book wouldn't be made better if you added a hundred pages of padding. And the same is true of games. Call of Duty gets a lot of flack for 5 hour campaigns, but those five hours are full of hand-crafted content and thrilling moments. They are tight and quick and fun and there's nothing wrong with that.

Abzu, which I played on the PS4, is easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. The visuals are, frankly, perfect. They're stylized, with a sort of art deco look to the fish, so they don't suffer from the uncanny valley, and, from what I could tell there were no issues with frame rate or slowdown no matter how many fish are on screen at once (And at times there are thousands) creating a smooth, well-animated, well-lit, gorgeous experience. Add in what has to be one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, and you get a game that, in my opinion, sets the standard for the current generation. I didn't boot up this game expecting to be blown away (reviews have been good but not spectacular) but I finished it in one sitting and I can honestly say that, visually at least, there isn't a single wrong step.

That's not to say it's a perfect game. It has very limited gameplay; just some items to collect and some switches you have to hit (in such a basic manner I wouldn't even call them puzzles.) The controls are pretty good but sometimes the grab fish button is a little finicky, and there are a couple parts that drag along a little too long, which is tough in a game where the aesthetics are basically everything.

That being said, if the idea of a chill underwater exploration game appeals to you at all, or you just like amazing aesthetics, I can't recommend this game enough. Something like Uncharted 4 might be more technically impressive, but it's always going to suffer from being not quite as detailed as the realistic images it is trying to portray, and as technology advances and leaves the PS4 behind. Abzu won't age in the same way because it serves its style perfectly. It will be just as gorgeous in 30 years as it is now (though maybe less impressive.)

Also, I would love to see a version of Abzu for VR. I want to be in that gorgeous world, maybe more than any video game world I've ever seen.

PART II

The comparisons between Abzu and Journey and Flower are pretty obvious, and I don't think I need to go into those. I would like to compare Abzu to another game that came out recently, though.

Inside.

Please do not read further if you don't want spoilers.

I certainly didn't see a connection between Abzu and Inside when I first started playing. Inside has an oppressive atmosphere and is 2D, while Abzu is very laid back and full 3D. As I played and got deeper, however, the connection grew. Both games feature a lone character with no offensive capabilities going deeper and deeper into an environment. Both feature spectacular aesthetics. Both feature relatively light puzzle solving, though Inside's are much more complex and difficult than Abzu's, and both are more about seeing what's next than the gameplay per se. Both have collectibles. Both have you uncovering weird and kind of disturbing technology as you go deeper (and in fact there is imagery in Inside that reminds me of Abzu's alien pyramid thingees.) Both have moments when you travel inside a foreboding alien structure. Both feature weird transformations (Inside into the blob thing, Abzu when you are revealed to be some kind of robot.) Both have parts where you seem to die but wake up underwater and can continue. Both have endings where you smash a bunch of stuff, including things that were once threatening, and semi-loop back to where you started.

Now obviously these games have a lot of differences too, but I couldn't help thinking of Inside over and over again as I played through Abzu, and they are both short, satisfying, experiences for $20. It's interesting to me how two games that clearly set out to do completely different things can end up converging in so many ways.

One more similarity. I loved both games.