My hunger for Gamerscore is still ravenous. As you can tell by my maxing out Edith Finch in an hour.
Well… this is the part where I’m supposed to break down, right? “I played every Rare Replay game and went CRAZY” should be the title of the video, shouldn’t it? I was waiting for that shoe to drop, but that’s not what happened. Once I launched the app, cashed in my final stamps, and played the credits, I felt happy and accomplished. I attribute that mostly to the order in which I finished the games. Nuts and Bolts was breezy with its light requirements. I enjoyed it more than I expected, and more importantly, it let me play how I wanted to. I experienced that pained feeling numerous times during the challenge, so if I finished with Perfect Dark Zero or Jet Force Gemini, I’m sure my attitude would be different.
To be clear, this is not something I recommend to anyone without a lot of time on their hands. You could be doing anything else, like contributing to society. Still, I learned a lot about the history of an important game studio and got some fun stories out of it. It was always going to be a good feeling when I deleted the various Rare titles from my Xbox. But instead of a “good riddance,” it was a thankful parting of ways. Plus, any rando who looks at my profile now is going to do a double take. That’s fun to picture.
Here are a few ways in which my beliefs were challenged in the midst of the journey:
1. Rare is not a monolith. From the outside, it’s easy to generalize about the company’s games, usually involving its “charm.” Looking deeper, though, that charm has several distinct flavors. Depending on who is leading the art, music, writing, and design decisions, the whole experience changes. I learned to differentiate the Rare that gave me warm feelings from the Rare that ticked me off.
2. It’s okay to cheat at old games. I often held onto residual thoughts that beating a game with save states or other “enhancers” doesn’t count. I went into this a while back, but I changed my tune. Whatever gives you the most fun is the best way to play, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. Could you imagine playing Underwurlde without cheats? You would die in real life. Games like that allowed me to let go of those gatekeepy feelings. Some old games are just terrible, and you don’t need to respect them if they don’t respect you first.
3. It pays to have friends. I’m not just talking about Imaginary Player 2, but also about the hundreds of other lunatics online who had guides just waiting on TrueAchievements. Without those resources, the challenge would have been over before it started.
4. Maybe I’m more of a Banjo-Kazooie fan than a Rare fan. The three Banjo games were my favorites of the 30, and I had grievances with most of the others. Ten years ago, everyone lauded Rare’s glory days, then they started tearing down a lot of those games. The original Banjo-Kazooie has held up the best in my opinion, whereas the concept of Donkey Kong 64 makes me break into a sweat.
5. Gamerscore still makes me happy. What can I say, big numbers are great.
We have to talk about the other side of the journey now, that being the arc of Rare itself. The collection stops at 2008, and the releases since then has been mixed, to say the least. After Nuts and Bolts, the studio put out three Kinect Sports games. I’ve never seen a Kinect in real life, much less used one, but I feel comfortable saying that those games weren’t what most people wanted to see, and it didn’t help the narrative of Xbox not having a clue. In most people’s eyes, Rare was languishing, bearing no resemblance to the company Microsoft bought. I remember people getting pumped when Rare Replay was announced, though. Maybe a look backwards would inspire better use of their IP. If nothing else, it would be fun to have them all available on modern hardware. That excitement stuck with me, drawing me to the collection as one of the first things I installed with my console.
After Rare Replay came Sea of Thieves, a live service game that helped establish the story that genre often goes through: It started kind of empty but bounced back and landed in a healthy place. Every E3, Microsoft makes sure to add a segment about all the new stuff added to the game. Unfortunately, Sea of Thieves never interested me. Rare has been cramming pirates into most of their games since Donkey Kong, so it’s great that they get to realize that theme in a big way. I’ll always be a single player first and foremost, though, so even with Game Pass access, I just don’t see myself ever trying it out. With the only posts on Rare’s website this year dedicated to Sea of Thieves, it’s hard for me to get excited.
Rare is working on another game, though. Or… was? I’m talking about Everwild, revealed in the pre-pandemic days and disappeared since then. A Grubby individual said that the project has been scrapped and restarted with leadership changes. That being the case, I don’t even see reason to dig up the trailer and speculate about it. It’s kind of a phantom game. I tried clicking on it on Rare’s site, but it just took me back to the homepage. Maybe it comes out and is great, maybe it never resurfaces. It is what it is, but I wish I could be more optimistic about the studio’s future output.
Which of these clowns could come back for an encore?
As for Rare’s historic franchises, everyone agrees that they aren’t getting the attention they should. Microsoft owns a staggering amount of gaming IP, but resources aren’t unlimited. No matter how much sense it makes to bring something back, you need peoplepower and money to make it happen. They could gut everything next year and make it a Call of Duty studio, we don’t know. In a slightly more ideal world, though, Microsoft is more interested in taking advantage of its catalogue. I’ve ranked the stars of Rare Replay by how much sense a comeback would make – from least to most.
IP From the 80s: The most iconic elements of Rare’s Thatcher era are Sabre Man and Jet Man. Even they are perhaps less iconic than Rare thinks. Jetpac Refulled was the way you revived old games in that era. Now, the gaming public has focused more on 90s properties and later for its nostalgic fix. Revitalizing the 8-bit era is kind of played out now. Nintendo has had success with its 99 series. I can see a Jetpac 99 game in my head, but Microsoft is never going to fund that. For these guys, I think Rare Replay was their swan song, and that’s maybe more than they deserve.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies: When Nuts and Bolts, of all games, is ridiculing the idea of a Grabbed by the Ghoulies 2, the prospects aren’t looking good.
Kameo: Xbox could benefit from having another character in the spotlight, especially a female one to contrast its muscly space marinesin green armor. But Kameo’s fantasy world is both too generic and unattractive, and that action-adventure style doesn’t fit in the portfolio naturally right now. They also have multiple flavors of fantasy between Fable, Elder Scrolls, and Avowed. Yes, I had to look up the name of Avowed.
Blast Corps: When I imagine modern Blast Corps, I just see Teardown. And if Teardown exists, do we need Blast Corps? I could only see it if we wrap back around to destruction powered by The Cloud.
Conker: Conker has a little bit of value as a mascot, because you can never have too many of those. But you know those people who say all the great comedies “couldn’t be made today?” Well, in this case, that’s correct. They put Conker in Project Spark, which failed, and greenlighting a full Conker game today would be an insane idea. Conker is nothing if he isn’t offensive, and corporations the size of Microsoft do not want to be offensive. Open and shut.
Battletoads: This is awkward. The Battletoads reboot that released just a few years ago had all the impact of a pine needle in a swimming pool. I didn’t touch it, and I only heard from people who didn’t like it. I’m sure some folks enjoyed it, but I don’t think the game met expectations. Beat ‘em ups have become a weirdly crowded genre in recent years. If you’re getting a few friends together to play through one of them, you are absolutely going to pick Streets of Rage 4, Shredder’s Revenge, or Scott Pilgrim before Battletoads even crosses your mind. You have to be great to stand out as a beat ‘em up. I don’t think Battletoads was ever going to get there. I just hope it didn’t send a message against other Rare series.
Viva Pinata: Okay, this one actually makes way too much sense. When I was playing Viva Pinata, I sometimes thought that it would be much better with a mouse and keyboard. With Microsoft now pushing Windows gaming as much as console, this is a great opportunity. Unlike beat ‘em ups, the simulation genre just keeps getting bigger. When Viva Pinata was coming out, the industry viewed casual gamers differently. The audience is now even bigger and more engaged than ever. We saw dozens of trailers for farming games this summer! If Microsoft had their own in-house take with those marketable characters, it would be a gigantic success. I will do anything to get an audience with Phil Spencer to pitch this. The only thing they would have to change for today’s market is the ability to marry your pinatas.
Killer Instinct: The seesaw tilts back again; the FGC is an incredibly tough market to penetrate. It’s even harder to stay in rotation. Your mechanics have to be solid from the jump, your online must be functional, and a roadmap of updates is essentially required. The last Killer Instinct in 2013 pretty much followed that model with seasonal characters including guest fighters. From what I can gather, it ended in a pretty good place, and there was a groundswell of demand for a new entry in the last year or so. It would benefit Microsoft to have a fighting game in the spotlight again. Smash is obviously gigantic, and with Sony behind EVO, Xbox seems behind in the fighting department. Like I said, though, doing it right is not easy. I hate to say it, but Killer Instinct is not as iconic as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, which can have new entries every few years. Without the data from the last game, I don’t know what the move is, but it could pay off in theory.
Perfect Dark: Out of every Rare franchise, Perfect Dark is the only one confirmed to be in any kind of development. We saw a flashy announcement trailer, but like Everwild, there has been uncertain progress. If they keep throwing money at it until something ships, it will probably still be pretty fun. I’m expecting a linear campaign (hopefully better than Perfect Dark Zero’s) and a big focus on multiplayer. Looking at that trailer again, I see a serious tone, red-haired Joanna, and no aliens in sight. Safe to say this won’t be like the original Perfect Dark. If it’s not in continuity with any previous game, it would make three totally different interpretations of spy shooter. You have to wonder what actually defines the series behind a catchy name and a logo. Will it even be like the trailer? I would like to play it, but I’m not anticipating it for years.
...for there were no more worlds to conquer
Banjo-Kazooie: Yes, I’m putting a new Banjo-Kazooie ahead of a game that actually exists. You can clearly see why in my rankings. But it’s not just me that thinks this way. Every year, people get their hopes up for Banjo and Kazooie to come back. The characters are still appealing, and more family games would be a boon to Xbox. Once again, I have to squint at the signals reaching Microsoft and deduce how they’re interpreted. Did they see Yooka-Laylee and assume that everyone who would buy Banjo played that and got their fill? What about Banjo and Kazooie coming to Smash? Did they not read into the massive demand for that deal to be inked? Did they not see everyone lose their minds with excitement when they were revealed? Do they just think Minecraft is enough for the kids? Banjo still won’t go away after all these years, and I just want them to give it a chance. People have floated Toys for Bob as a potential developer for it. They’ve shown excellence working with two very different styles of 3D platformer: Crash and Spyro. They could do Banjo well, but I think there has to be a certain cheeky quality to it. That’s what made Rare stand out at its height, and you can’t just copy it in a different studio. I don’t know the best way to make it work. I just know that if it ever happens, I will be there.
After everything, I bought a copy of Rare Replay on disc secondhand. There is no practical reason to do that. But one day, when my hair is gray and my Game Pass subscription is long gone, I may get nostalgic for this absurd year in my life. Maybe I’ll pop it in and revisit my favorites… or maybe I’ll check out the franchise’s worst games again and wonder why I ever put up with them. And I might have to dip back in once GoldenEye gets added, damn it.
Thank you for reading my biggest blogging project to date. I hope you have a fantastic day. Once again, here is the ranked list of my experiences in this crazy adventure.
Tinykin is Pikmin… isn’t it? I mean, what else could it be? You’re a little guy in a big world building an army of even littler guys to perform tasks for you. It seems very cut and dry. That’s what the trailers may have led you to believe, but Tinykin’s similarities with Pikmin are only skin-deep. In Tinykin, there is no time limit, combat, resource management, or tactics of any kind. It has none of the things that make Pikmin… Pikmin. In actuality, this is Tinykin’s great strength. The two games sprout from the same idea, but Tinykin reimagines it in the context of a 3D exploration platformer, to great success.
The player character is Milo, an explorer from a donut-shaped planet seeking to learn more about humanity’s past. When he learns that humans actually originated from a place called “Earth,” he ends up shrunken down and stranded there. Luckily, he befriends a species called Tinykin that can help him collect parts to the machine that will get him home. Each part is in a different room of the house, which has turned into cities for a society of bugs.
Once you enter a room, you’re pretty much set loose. You’ll need to collect a number of items and solve puzzles to get the machine part, but these can be done in any order. How you approach exploring is up to you. The level design is quietly the best aspect of Tinykin. Fundamentally, every level is four walls with a bunch of stuff around them. With such an open-ended structure, this could easily lead to an aimless experience. However, the opposite is true. No matter where you are at any moment, the game organically leads you on. This is thanks in part to the bright yellow pollen everywhere begging to be collected. You’re also opening shortcuts constantly, allowing you to easily return to any place. Tinykin is built for players who love wiggling into every nook and cranny of an environment. I never paid any heed to my actual objectives when starting a room, I just set about exploring, and things usually took care of themselves. 3D platformers rarely pull off open levels of this style, but Tinykin makes it look effortless.
Traversing the rooms is a joy due to Milo’s own tools and the Tinykin themselves. Early in the game, Milo gets a “soapboard” that speeds him up. He can even do kickflips with it! He also has a bubble that lets him float across gaps. Collecting enough pollen in every room upgrades the length of time the bubble lasts, so by the end, you can cover vast distances without touching the ground. As with their inspiration, there are several varieties of Tinykin with their own specialties. Purple ones move objects, reds blow things up, blues conduct electricity, and so on. My favorite, though, is the green species, which forms a ladder. You can simply hold the button and they stack up beneath Milo. Once enough are in your crew, this gives you an edge in reaching higher platforms. Tinykin cocoons are scattered around the environment, and popping them to grow your squad is good fun – even if they give you more than you need. I played the whole thing with a mouse and keyboard and still felt remarkable control over every aspect of the game.
Beyond the main objectives, each room has side missions to complete, extending the fun. The reward is purely collectible, but I still enjoyed completing the ones I came across for their own sake. You can also find lost letters and hidden NPCs if you really love picking things over. In that time, you can really appreciate the game’s presentation. The placement of real-world objects is inspired, the art style is expressive if familiar, and the music and sound effects are delightful. The game is only between five and eight hours, and that’s perfect for what Tinykin is. I was engaged the whole time, my only frustration coming from a cutscene that erroneously would not give me control back. I just kept quitting, trying again, and mashing keys until it finally worked. Also, there are bugs everywhere with things to say, and I just couldn’t care about whatever bug society/religion they had going on. Fortunately, you don’t have to engage in conversation 99 percent of the time.
Because Tinykin is not Pikmin, it is free to pursue different goals and succeeds on nearly every front. I was not expecting it to be so much of a platformer, but I very much enjoyed the results. And with the surprise announcement of Pikmin 4 coming next year, Tinykin can exist in its own space without being upstaged. I would like some DLC with an extra room or two to push the level design even more. Right now, though, Tinykin is a brief but memorable experience to satisfy the collector’s itch. It’s a true Game Pass Gem.
Here we are. 50 blog posts! It took a good half-decade to reach that milestone, but at least the quality now is much better than it was at the start. I’m following up my previous post with another list of games: my top 50 of all time. Well, sort of. I limited my selection to one entry per series for variety’s sake. In other words, a game on this list also represents my favorite in that franchise. I think you get the concept by now, so let’s get into it.
Do me a favor when you’re reading this: See if you can spot some patterns and maybe give a recommendation for something I might like!
The Wii is home to an unending pile of minigame collections. For my money, this is the best of all of them. WarioWare has always done well as a sneaky tech demo for whatever harebrained play method Nintendo dreams up. Where Wii Sports showed how motion controls can mimic real-world activities, Wario takes a hard left into absurdism, going absolutely crazy with every possible way you could use a Wiimote. Before each microgame, a pose will flash on screen for you to mimic. Both your mind and body have to adjust to a new game every few seconds, leading to madcap fun. Whether you’re mimicking an elephant, waiter, bodybuilder, or couch potato, there’s no denying that Smooth Moves is a lot of joy in a small package. If the short campaign and high-score chasing aren’t enough, the multiplayer modes provide even more hilarious ways to play.
For a good many people, the tower defense genre begins and ends here. Divorced from the end product, Plants vs. Zombies is a goofy idea. But the more you dig in, the more genius it is. The plant kingdom provides tons of silly ideas for weaponry. When your arsenal is filled out, you have a lot of potential for synergistic strategies. The artwork is expressive and communicates exactly what each unit does at a glance. The game’s casual approach makes it easy to pick up no matter how long it’s been. Plants vs. Zombies is a fantastic choice if you need to chill out. Either put on your own music or enjoy the catchy tunes inside the game. The franchise was strong enough to birth mobile sequels and several multiplayer shooters, but for me, nothing beats the original.
When my life flashes before my eyes, an uncomfortably long time will be spent in front of Picross games. I’ve cleaned out thousands of puzzles across a half-dozen titles, but my favorite is Picross 3D: Round 2 on the 3DS. It was only put on my radar because of the Quick Look back in the day, but once I was hooked, holy cow, I was hooked. Picross 3D effectively has you become a sculptor, chipping away blocks until only the final image remains. On top of that, you’re working with two colors at once. Whereas more complex Picross rules scare me in 2D, I found the 3D version immensely rewarding to complete. The art style is adorable, and the rotating selection of music covers all sorts of genres. I cleared every puzzle in the game without mistakes, and no puzzle game has quite scratched that itch since. Based on the rest of the list, I have no choice but to conclude that it’s my favorite 3DS game.
Before you cry foul about including a trilogy of games, I’m specifically not doing that. I’m only talking about the first Spyro the Dragon, which I find to be the most polished, focused, and fun. People call me crazy for that opinion, but it’s true! All I want to do is run around as Spyro and collect gems. I don’t want to do minigames or play as worse characters. All you have in the first game is Spyro’s moveset and the level design, which complement each other excellently. Spyro 1 always keeps the momentum going with levels that are both wide and straightforward. Rooting around for every last gem is no trouble at all for me. That’s helped by the Reignited quality of life improvements, including better fast travel and the ability to sniff out collectables. Not to mention, the graphical overhaul is fantastic. Character animation is an enormous step up from the PS1 version, and the art style is a fairy tale dream. In my experience, there’s not an unpleasant moment in all of Spyro the Dragon.
Ah, the subject of my first blog post. Admittedly, I haven’t touched the game since then. Working from five-year-old memories, I was impressed with the game’s rendition of a setting that’s rarely explored in open worlds. Seeing the various districts of Hong Kong made me yearn for more titles to step beyond the same few American cities we always see. There’s a great sense of escalation in the story as you move up from small-time collection to Triad mastermind. At the same time, Wei’s position as an undercover cop leads to a myriad of enjoyable side activities. The moment that sticks with me the most is a side mission where you must intentionally fail at karaoke. The quest giver is a terrible singer, but if his girlfriend sees a beefcake like you bomb, she’ll think that bad singers are still sexy. It’s straight out of a Yakuza game, and Sleeping Dogs does a similarly good job of balancing silly and serious. Whether you’re jumping through hoops for the platinum trophy or just driving around causing chaos, Sleeping Dogs is a great execution of the open-world crime formula. The lack of a sequel is sad indeed.
I dare anyone to play Forza Horizon and not enjoy it. Even for me, who was never interested in realistic driving games, the newer titles encourage jumping in. However you like to drive, the game supports it. Traditional racing, speed challenges, jump ramps, drift zones, and royale are just some of the options to get your heart pumping. It all goes down in a sprawling, gorgeous open world. The fifth entry highlights Mexico, taking you through jungles, deserts, and volcanoes. The game rewards you for driving off the beaten path. In fact, you’re rewarded for just about anything. Horizon’s progression keeps you engaged without leaning hard on microtransactional nonsense. The game gives you the space, but you get to personalize it and find your own fun. Car lovers and car-curious people alike can get hours of fun out of the sandbox. Personally, I hope the festival never has to end.
3D platformers have found their audience again, and A Hat in Time deserves a good amount of credit for that. Its platforming mechanics are great – especially the dive jump – but the levels love to mix up what you’re doing each time. The presentation and set dressing endear you to whatever task Hat Kid needs to do. Train mystery? Spooky horror? Housekeeping race? The game mixes things up far more than it initially lets on. Lots of those moments are also tense platforming challenges that match the story’s insanity. Each location invites you to take minute and soak in the atmosphere, even if things can get a little too cute at times. When you tire of the game’s original content, Steam workshop support breaks it wide open in all the best ways. I regret waiting as long as I did to play A Hat in Time. Out of the major 3D platforming revivals released that year, it’s my favorite in terms of structure and execution. It was made by genre fans, unattached from any historical IP or resume. Now, Hat Kid is as beloved as some of those classic characters. What an accomplishment!
Picking a favorite Metal Gear game is hard because they all have something to offer. Is it 5 with its expressive playground? 2 or 3 for their winding narratives? Or Revengeance, living in its own fanatical world? Ultimately, I think I have to land on the PS1 game. It has an aura of class that hasn’t been replicated. I played it alongside my brother – as you know, the buddy system is probably the best way to experience MGS. “H” button or no, adapting to the controls can be a challenge. Still, the game is packed with one iconic moment after another, each still leaving an impression all these years later. It’s the contrast of ambition against technology that I find so fascinating – characters give long monologues about philosophy, but they can only do it by wiggling their heads like puppets. Shadow Moses is an all-time great setting. It’s been graphically reimagined at least three times, but its original blocky form is still the most resonant. In a series that mimics other art forms with mixed results, the story is on the level of airport literature: filled with twists, but mostly coherent in the end. Whether you play on the level of superspy or barely trained monkey, chances are you’ll be doing impressions of Snake and friends for a while after.
Speaking of stories, Grim Fandango has one of the best in its genre. Of the myriad adventure game protagonists, few develop an actual character arc like Manny Calavera. From a self-interested travel salesman to a heroic defender, we get to see how his journey through the underworld changes him, and vice versa. He meets so many colorful and tragic characters along the way. They’re talking skeletons and freaky demon creatures, yet they’re written with more humanity than NPCs in most other games. The art design is fantastic. Its Mexican-inspired architecture and color scheme imbue the world with a sense of hyperrealism, and the prerendered environments truly feel explorable. My favorite section, Rubacava, is a massive city full of people to meet and puzzle threads to pull on. The puzzles themselves are not always Grim Fandango’s strongest point – the alien rules of the underworld make for unclear mechanics at times – but truthfully, those moments don’t stick with me as much as all the beautiful things about the adventure.
Similar to Metal Gear above, the GameCube Animal Crossing has been surpassed a hundred times over by its sequels, to say nothing of all the indie games it inspired. So many more features, quality of life improvements, and opportunities for self-expression were added. But if I’m honest with myself, that first release has the all-important vibes that I don’t get anywhere else. Animal Crossing has quite a few ideas that were dropped and never revisited again. Remember the lottery, or unlocking NES games? That alone makes it interesting to go back and check out. You can have more villagers in your town than in any other entry, and they somehow feel more alive here. The chunky characters and isometric view give the world a toyetic quality, and the music often sounds like someone dinking around on a Casio. Yet, Animal Crossing’s comforting style holds up as one of the leading forces in the low-poly artistic movement. In a world where social media and FOMO have somehow turned the series into a competitive game, I’m content to fill out my tiny house here and go fishing. Some simple pleasures never get old.
Kirby games share 90% of their DNA with each other, but each entry tries something a little new to set it apart. Out of them all, the one that’s most consistently successful is Planet Robobot. This is the one where Kirby is in a mech! What takes it beyond a gimmick is that the robot can also copy enemies’ powers. There are great puzzles built around those mechanics, and the solo Kirby sections aren’t shirked, either. New abilities like doctor, poison, and ESP are good additions, and the game sees the return of some long-absent powers. The reliable Kirby music has an electronic flair that suits the mood without being overbearing. Lastly, the final boss is unreasonably epic even by Kirby standards. Basically, Robobot executes on everything you would want from a sidescrolling Kirby game.
I find that people get most attached to “underdog” franchises. For decades, Mother has been the premiere example - always on the periphery but stuffed with so much oddity and charm that those who love it really love it. I’d like to think that I would be a fan no matter its popularity, though. My sense of humor lines up very well with the game’s. The graphics and characters contribute to a cozy mood most of the time, but the story will occasionally turn into real creepy territory. So while EarthBound looks childish at first glance, the stakes are always real. The battle system is not complex, but it’s got enough offbeat ideas to carry it. Any RPG where enemy encounters are visible is better for it. No matter what time in your life you play it, Earthbound is nostalgic. An unassuming thing in the real world will bring up memories of the game. Mother 3 is a better experience in almost every regard, but it feels incomplete without first saving the world in EarthBound.
You might count this as a cheat because it’s technically two games in one. The LEGO community seems to have mostly forgotten that, so I’m saying it’s fair game. Your favorite LEGO game will probably correspond with your favorite movie franchise, and when The Complete Saga came out, Star Wars was everything for me. I could play the stories of all six movies and make up for my lack of purchasing power with the game’s robust completionist offerings. Unsurprisingly, it shot up to my top 3 at the time. I’ve played each level endlessly and could probably do so in my sleep now. The Complete Saga has a purity in its charm that eroded in the dozens of games that followed… or maybe we just got older. LEGO games are inherently repetitive, but in a comforting way. The sounds and rhythms are ritualistic and somehow meditative. Am I assigning too much meaning to a kids’ game? Certainly, but realizing years later that thousands of people did the same was a gratifying moment.
I go back and forth on whether Portal or Portal 2 is the more perfecter game. The first sets the stage with genius implementation of puzzle mechanics, but the sequel blows the possibilities wide open and expands the world. It’s engaging to play with ideas like light bridges, laser beams, and gels. As always, Valve knows how players think and uses it against us in the best ways. If that’s not enough, co-op adds a second set of portals and strains relationships. The story in Portal 2 sends things into fully offbeat territory with its own dark comedy style. Celebrity voice work can be hit-and-miss, but Stephen Merchant and J.K. Simmons are both endlessly funny. As a comedy fan, I still think that the writing in this series holds up after years of memes. It’s oddly befitting of a physics playground that teases you to subvert Aperture’s controlling eye.
So many adventure games set off with a great concept for puzzles, only to get bogged down in the execution phase. Not so with Day of the Tentacle. Exploring one location over three time periods, the dysfunctional comedic trio of protagonists have to complete tasks by juggling items and ideas between them. What makes it work so well is the design’s knowledge of point-and-click pitfalls. The game has clear signposting, so you can easily see how one puzzle will give you progress towards the next. Untangling a spaghetti knot of threads is my favorite part of these games, and most of Day of the Tentacle feels interconnected like the Rubacava section of Grim Fandango. Unlike that game, though, the rules are much clearer. Day of the Tentacle is explicitly styled after a classic cartoon, and even if that sort of logic is silly, it’s at least familiar. Adventure games will always have a spot in my heart, and this is one of the best titles from their golden age.
My enjoyment of Luigi’s Mansion 3 was immensely improved by playing it in co-op, and I wouldn’t want to play it any other way. These games are full of secrets and environmental gimmicks that can be messed around with to increase your money. That’s fun on its own, but balancing it against an impatient partner adds a fun madness. I was Gooigi, the unsettling gelatinous clone of the green plumber. With the ability to squeeze through bars and pipes, Gooigi is essential to the puzzles of the haunted hotel (one of the great horror locations). Working through brain teasers together is always a blast, and no one challenge is too hard. Minus some awkward moments of back tracking, the pacing is great. Impossibly-themed floors are added every 15 minutes or so, and seeing the next thing is always tantalizing. But Next Level’s greatest strength is in animation. The Mario cast has never been so expressive, and I have my doubts that even the upcoming movie can match it.
My favorite games often hit a recessed center of the brain that I couldn’t even identify before playing. In Donut County, you move a hole under things so they fall in. Then your hole gets bigger and can fit more things. That’s it. Somehow, that supports nifty mechanics like setting your hole on fire and launching things out of it. While you’re wrecking the lives of cute postmodern animals, you get to enjoy a charming story involving some filthy racoons. It’s a game that can be completed in just a sitting or two but is nonetheless pleasurable at every minute. I enjoy it so much that part of me wants to check out the creator’s new game, Neon White, despite having absolutely nothing in common with the thing I like.
On the total opposite side, XCOM 2 is a complex game full of interlocking systems that takes dozens of hours to finish. Yet its high-stakes tactical battles kept me glued to the screen for more than two campaign playthroughs. Even on more chill difficulty levels, the alien opposition tends to be overwhelming. Sometimes, you’re just screwed, but keeping tabs on every option to take and putting each to proper use is intensely validating. So is training no-name rookies into unstoppable killing machines. Each person’s playthrough of the game has its own memorable characters and moments formed completely organically. To make XCOM 2 really sing, I recommend pumping it with mods. I used it to add celebrities into my squad as well as overwrite some of the music. Let me tell you, Metal Gear Solid 5’s deployment music over the equivalent screen in this game is essential.
Kentucky Route Zero was completely off my radar before its final release, but eventually, it became the best book I read that year. It didn’t start out that way, though. In the first chapter, I was purposefully skipping dialogue that didn’t seem interesting to me, at the surprise of the characters themselves. At some point, though, that dynamic flipped. When I accidentally skipped something later in the game, I was shaken and upset. That kind of turnaround is rare for any narrative, and it’s all due to its storytelling chops developing in real time. There’s plenty of outlandish stuff in Kentucky Route Zero, but no one within the world seems to mind it. These elements are mysterious instead of goofy. You often have moments to sit and reflect on whatever just happened, and even if these somber moments don’t make immediate sense, they are nonetheless affecting on an emotional level. I also love the creators’ penchant for experimentation in viewpoints as the game winds on. Like any good story, different people will take different things from Kentucky Route Zero. I know that the next time I play it, I’ll be a different person, too.
Control is just as weird of a game, if not weirder, but these writers are half-winking at you the whole time, and that’s just fun. This is a place where a plastic flamingo or old telephone can host otherworldly power. Taking that power for yourself means flying around and chucking garbage at smoke monsters, and that’s also just fun. What Control’s combat lacks in polish it makes up for in spontaneity. Enemies will pop up in tons of random places, giving opportunities to capitalize on level geometry for your assault. Ultimately, it was seeing the next crazy thing that kept me invested in exploring The Oldest House, and the game almost never disappoints in that regard. It’s also the rare case where I actually like going after lore documents scattered around the place – even if they could have scaled back on the number of them.
HypnoSpace Outlaw is difficult to describe without sounding crazy. You sleuth around a fictional Y2K-era internet filled with bizarre people’s equally weird pages. Although the game is set in an alternate universe, each HypnoSpace user is nonetheless based in reality. Every piece of text is reminiscent of one you’ve no doubt seen online. Someone like Zane might start out as a simple assignment, but you could easily get attached to the little piece of garbage. The writing does a great job at conveying a multitude of voices. Just like on the real internet, it’s easy to spiral into interconnected rabbit holes, and doing so is required to advance. Exploring HypnoSpace as the story continues is both gratifying and immersive. Clearly, I enjoy goofy games, but there has to be a point to them. HypnoSpace Outlaw clears that bar with gusto, inviting you to practice online empathy in an age where the practice is all but forgotten.
Troidlikes and I have a messy history, but it was finally at Ori and the Will of the Wisps that I acquiesced. That’s because it’s better than 99% of troidlikes. It’s visually stunning, obviously, and the world is a joy to navigate. Ori is a master of momentum. You’re asked to string together jumps, grapples, bashes, glides, and more to reach out-of-the way areas or just to show off. I especially enjoy the time trials, which feature intense races against ghost data. The progression is very strong, not only in Ori’s abilities but with the evolving town as well. You have plenty of incentive to fill out every corner of the map. The troidlike boom is slowing down a bit, but at the end of it all, Ori and the Will of the Wisps will still be the gold standard for this genre in my eyes.
Never has a peripheral control scheme been so effectively used as in Before Your Eyes. At least, that’s what I would like to say, but my webcam wasn’t behaving at the time I played it. So, instead of the game tracking every time I blinked, I just hit a button using the honor system. Even so, the method of control is intensely immersive. Living through a multitude of vignettes is pressured with the knowledge that you can only stay as long as your eyes are open. The story is barely feature-length, but it nonetheless rounds out its principal characters while giving you some meaningful-feeling choices. It’s a narrative that’s almost too sad to bear, but most people will find something to latch on to. I know I was able to connect much of it to events in my own life. Before Your Eyes is best experienced with no knowledge at all, so that’s all you’re getting for now. And I hate being that guy, so you know it must be special.
Nintendo has published countless 2D platformers, and Tropical Freeze is the best one. Not sorry. The level designers at Retro studios prove to be masters in their art at every opportunity. Basing a stage around one mechanic is common practice now, but in Tropical Freeze, you almost don’t even notice they’re doing it. Every challenge feels naturalistic, expertly laid out for Donkey Kong’s platforming abilities. Stuff is always blowing up in some manner, keeping things dynamic. That explosive energy is balanced with secrets around every corner. It’s a challenging game – at a level that feels right for me but can be lowered with in-game items. Also, it’s got the best soundtrack of the year it came out, and any year for that matter.
Another Wii U favorite, and one that exemplifies the peak of kart racing today. I immediately have to take back what I said about Donkey Kong’s music, because Mario Kart 8 came out the same year and its soundtrack is unparalleled. Whoever made the choice to go with big band jazz did the world a great favor. The game’s a looker, too, but it’s all about the feel of racing. I usually stick with the same build each time, so I often forget how much control you have over your vehicle’s attributes. Antigravity is an enjoyable but unintrusive gimmick that adds variety to tracks. Mostly, it’s an excuse for crazy set pieces like driving straight up a waterfall or splitting the road back-to-back. Every course offers something unique. There are few, if any, stinkers in the bunch. Admittedly, I have yet to bite on the new DLC tracks, but their existence at all is proof of Mario Kart 8’s enduring popularity. This is the game where you can destroy a blue shell. Justice is sweet.
There are still people who try to gaslight by saying Sonic was never good, and that’s too bad. Those people have clearly never played Sonic Mania. It’s a glorious tribute to everything about the hedgehog in his early chubby years. The first half of each zone is mostly faithful with some updated ideas. In the second half, though, the mechanics go absolutely wild in the best ways. The same applies to the soundtrack, which is a perfect modern interpretation of the classic SEGA sound. Most importantly, Sonic feels like he should. You could roll right into Mania from your fancy Origins collection and be right at home. The physics are the exact right match for the level design. Each playable animal brings something unique to the table while retaining the awesome sense of speed. The only weakness in Sonic Mania is the sense of longing for more once the game is done. It’s a beautiful and engrossing title that could only be made by true fans.
The thing you like BUT TWISTED!! Such an overdone trope, and one that I don’t have patience for. But OMORI isn’t like that because it’s sincere. On the surface, it’s an Earthbound-inspired RPG that’s worthwhile even without the layer of horror that occasionally peeks in. Every NPC is some goofy shape and has something equally silly to say. OMORI’s humor is just as funny as its horror is scary. The silly adventure portions get you heavily attached in the characters, so you’re all the more invested when the time comes to uncover what happened outside of the dream world. Like I said, the scary elements aren’t just played for shock value. It’s a deeply involved story that kept me pushing through because I was dying to know where it would go next. There’s so much content I didn’t see because it involves going after a bad ending, and I would never do that for these kids! The game’s art and music are reminiscent of older things while unmistakably affirming their own style. A lot of players will attest that just one image or tune will send them reeling back. I’m not sure if I’ll replay OMORI any time soon, but the time I spent with it is unforgettable.
Banjo-Kazooie is my favorite platformer of its era because it makes a big impression in a short time. It’s a quirky world filled with goofy characters and googly eyes on practically everything. The dynamic between braggadocious Grunty the witch, earnest Banjo the bear, and abrasive Kazooie the bird is a memorable one that propels you through their conflict. Unlike so many 3D platformers of the time, the world design of Banjo-Kazooie is the exact right size for me. You can do a lap around each in just a few minutes, but fun challenges are peppered everywhere. Traversing these worlds is fun because of Banjo and Kazooie’s moveset, which takes full advantage of their combination. The few difficult parts aren’t so extreme – especially on the Xbox remaster which lets you keep collectables between deaths. Banjo-Kazooie is a comfort game for me, where I can zip through stages with increasing efficiency and ace the quiz board at the end.
I have great memories with every Smash entry, but it only feels right to award the biggest and baddest of them all. Ultimate brings back every character from the series and realizes crossovers that were thought impossible. I was jumping out of my chair when Joker was revealed, and Banjo sent me through the roof. I didn’t even buy any characters after that because I was totally satisfied. When I first played Ultimate, I stuck with my old standbys: Kirby, Ness, Duck Hunt, etc. But the redesign of Zelda was so appealing to me that I made a conscious effort to try her out. At first, we didn’t gel at all, just like in the other games. But I stuck with her, and I quickly learned to love her playstyle as she became my true main. As someone who never has the mindset for fighting games, this was a gratifying taste of what others experience. To me, though, Smash is better the more insane it is. Bring on the items and the unhinged stages. Ultimate has you covered with a staggering array of options so that no two matches are ever the same.
The third Phoenix Wright game surprised me with its ability to wrap disparate threads into a satisfying trilogy. All the characters are fun as ever, and the story gives a lot of room for them to bump against each other. I also reversed course on an opinion I had from the earlier games: that the stakes are less interesting the more literal ghosts factor into the plot. Not only did the supernatural parts add to the story here, they led to exciting revelations that I was able to foresee. It’s a real thrill when your half-baked theory turns out to be spot on. In the end, though, this is like Return of the King winning all of those Oscars. It’s really about the whole trilogy, which is a great ride. Even if you don’t think you would enjoy this kind of game, just give it a try.
All right, this could constitute another cheat for including Hitman 1 and 2 under the umbrella. I’m just going for it because who’s gonna stop me? There is technically a “right” way to play these games, but they are more than happy to encourage you to play the wrong way. My favorite missions are in larger-than-life locations with awful people just begging for the piano wire. 47 is a weird alien man, and the writing gets so much mileage out of it that it’s impossible not to love him. The best goofy kills could fill a book. Once you decide to play the “right” way, though, Hitman becomes a whole new experience. Going after silent assassinations can be maddening, but each time you learn a little more about AI patterns and the map. I earned the platinum last year, and I felt like every hour I put in was rewarded. If I didn’t have everything packed up at the moment, I would be playing the new map right now.
Is it heresy to call Okami my second-favorite Zelda game? I love when abilities double for puzzles and exploration, and the celestial brush is the perfect implementation. Summoning the elements with a simple motion never gets old. Fittingly, the world is rendered in a gorgeous inky style that grows even more beautiful once you restore nature. I was more than happy to stick Ammy’s snout into every corner of the map for the platinum trophy, even making a spreadsheet to keep track of all the missable stuff. That’s how dedicated I was! People complain about Okami’s length, but it never once bothered me. The story always has stakes that keep you going. And since we’re not liable to get any more Okami sequels, I like that this is basically three adventures in one.
I’ve probably written more words hyping up Desperados 3 than any other game on the site. To avoid becoming a broken record, I’ll just say that it’s a strategy game that always challenges you to use every tool in the arsenal. It encourages you intrinsically with its quick save implementation. It contains a mountain of scenarios for stealth afficionados wanting the most out of their experience. If you want more elaboration on what makes it so great, you can look up my previous writings, as I will evangelize Desperados 3 to anyone who will listen.
Pikmin 3 hits the Goldilocks spot between the compressed first and sprawling second games, pleasing everyone. It eases off on the strict pressure by letting you extend your limit of days the more fruit you collect – and really, there’s no danger of running out. The puzzles involving different Pikmin types and captain strategies are inventive. Optimizing your run each playthrough is the heart of Pikmin, and 3 brings it back to the forefront. Where the game really shines, though, is in the bonus modes. I love routing out challenge stages for the fastest times, which makes you into a master strategist. My very favorite mode, though, is Bingo Battle. Call me crazy, but I would play that before any Splatoon or Mario Party game. It’s a mode where your careful planning can get thrown into chaos in an instant, but reacting to that and screwing over your opponent in return is even better. What a great game!
The early Mario RPGs expand his world beyond floating platforms into a place where quirky characters get up to crazy stuff. In Thousand Year Door alone, there’s a Pianta mob, a floating wrestling federation, and another train mystery. As it turns out, Mario doesn’t feel that out of place interjected in these scenarios. The main story is just the tip of the iceberg for what the game has to offer, however. There’s a robust cooking system, dozens of sidequests, minigames, a challenge dungeon, and more flavor dialogue than you could imagine – and you’re not asked to engage in any of it if you don’t want to. While the battle system is iterative on the first Paper Mario, it’s still accessible and fun, and the party members leave a much stronger impression. Fans of the series still miss Thousand Year Door’s depth and willingness to experiment. In retrospect, it’s almost like the developers knew they wouldn’t get that opportunity again and left such a big game to explore for years after the fact.
Anodyne is something you’re not likely to come across unless you were seeking it out. It throws its weirdness right in your face, transitioning between a low-poly overworld and top-down pixelated dungeons. I’m so glad I gave it a chance. Enough time spent in the game will lead to unforgettable moments with unexpectedly funny characters. Nonetheless, they aren’t exactly functioning well. An air of melancholy hangs over the whole thing, aided by the dampened color palette. The question of purpose is pervasive; more specifically, what happens if you fail at or reject your purpose. Anodyne 2 is a small game that uses every part of itself for maximum impact. If you’re willing to get on the ride, I promise that every stop is one to remember.
Chrono Trigger is king of the classic JRPGs because it does everything right. Every party member is excellent both in combat and narrative. That’s bolstered by dual techs which have them team up for sweet attacks. Even in tricky battles, the game always communicates what you need to do. It’s a time travel adventure, yet the plot threads are all kept in order, and each era has its own storyline to enjoy. So, an engaging team of characters, accessible combat, and a sensible story. Few JRPGs can hit all those marks at once, least of all Chrono Trigger’s own sequel. Because it’s so hard to find flaws in the game, placing it so high is almost a boring choice. But search me, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be here. Honestly, the Chrono Trigger soundtrack on its own would still rank in the top 20.
Likewise, Hades is arguably the best of its own genre, the roguelike. So many of these games fail to click because losing everything is demoralizing to me. Hades averts this on two fronts. First, the ludicrous potential for different builds gives each run a different flavor. Second, the House of Hades is something you look forward to each time your run ends. Turning in your gains to upgrade yourself, advance quests, and improve the space ensures that you’re never stuck in the roguelike rut. The volume of dialogue is enormous, all well-written and voiced. I was rebuffed at first when I learned that the game isn’t “finished” until you do 10 successful runs. But once the first was done, the others followed just like that. In retrospect, that requirement made me really appreciate the nuance in Hades. As much as I respect the game, though, I never went back after credits rolled. I was satisfied with where it landed, and I know that it’s always there if I get the urge again.
I think I screwed up with my 2018 Game of the Year. At the time, I liked God of War the best, sure. But when it comes to my desire to replay and excitement for the sequel, Marvel’s Spider-Man is so much higher. I’ve loved Spider-Man since I was a kid, and Insomniac’s version does well at molding something unique from all his incarnations. New York is an open world full of side activities, but sometimes I don’t even need to do them. Just swinging around and sightseeing is plenty engaging. You’ve got to do it every time you put on a sweet new suit at least. The orchestral theme that kicks in when Spidey gets any sort of momentum puts a smile on my face every time. Just as enjoyable is the story, which highlights the important core characters, develops a sympathetic antagonist, and throws in some extra bad guys just for fun. It’s a game I never get tired of and a fitting tribute to my favorite hero.
NieR: Automata is not always the most engaging moment-to-moment, be it in combat in or in questing. It’s a massive credit to the story, then, that I never once thought about stopping. The first chunk of the game is exciting in its own right, already including bombastic set pieces and contemplative character moments. Side content presents many moments of introspection, either darkly funny or just plain depressing. As the game hurtles towards the final ending, though, the pressure explodes. Revelations abound as you watch a tragedy in motion that’s already too far along to stop. Every time you know what to expect, Automata pulls the rug out in some jaw-dropping way. Chasing after the 20-some joke endings is fun as well, and often brings the game’s comedic voice to the forefront. As much as I love the game, playing it again wouldn’t feel right. If you know, you know.
I never would have cared about Persona if not for its slamming music and eye-popping aesthetic. The presentation was so appealing to me that I just had to try it. I wasn’t expecting to get sucked in for a 75-hour playthrough that wouldn’t let me go. The character dynamics are a treat, especially when you meddle in their lives for social links. While it’s not always concisely told, the story is resonant. If nothing else, it is great at making the bad guys real scumbags. The intricacies of Persona management are not that interesting to me, but I could squeak by on easy and soak up everything else. Persona 5 is amazing at establishing a vibe you want to settle down in. Not every moment lands, but the mark it made is indelible and something I think about to this day.
Every Yakuza game is great, so picking a favorite is tricky. Ultimately, I have to go with Yakuza 0, because it has everything. Two intertwining narratives with high stakes. Eight fighting styles with spectacular heat actions. Some of the most wonderfully detestable villains in the medium. Real estate, cabaret management, pocket racing, dancing, bowling, karaoke, and more nutty side stories than you can handle. Furthermore, this is a prequel that actually works. New fans often start with 0 because there’s no baggage from previous stories to worry about. The characters set up here give more context to their fleeting appearances in the original Yakuza. There’s a warm glow to the 80s setting that intoxicates you, keeping you glued to your seat like in a windowless casino. Kiryu and Majima are both in top form here, and overcoming the slow start leads to a gripping conclusion to their origins. This is the game that let Yakuza break out, for good reason.
I don’t think you can play PaRappa the Rapper and not be charmed on some level. He’s a rapping puppy! Somehow, that’s one of the least ridiculous things in his world. It’s full of bizarre 2D animal creatures that are mostly unhinged, but also have some serious flow. The storyline of the sequel features noodles taking over the world, with only PaRappa’s rhymes able to save the day. It’s a step away from the more down-to-earth plot of the original, but number two is my favorite for some key reasons. First, the timing inputs are much more lenient. Second, every track in the game is a stone-cold classic. Jams front to back, with a different groove each time. That makes replaying stages a blast, where you can also notice the silly background events that happen during the songs. All the PaRappa the Rapper content in the world adds up to just a few hours. That said, I don’t know what else I could want from him that isn’t in his final game.
Conversely, I desperately want another game like Star Fox 64. The second (released) game in the series is still better than every other entry. But I’m officially resigned to the idea that Star Fox 64 is singular, never to be replicated. Nearly all of that is the production value. This is the era where it’s perfectly fine to have spaceships made of four polygons, with your imagination filling the blanks. Every voice line is etched into my head so deeply that hearing the uncompressed versions sound wrong. It’s a pulpy adventure populated by talking animals, yet the tone is perfect. There’s an excellent balance of characters playing it straight and cheesing it up to a hilarious degree. In terms of gameplay, the Arwing is a dream to control, boasting acrobatic techniques and potent firepower when upgraded. The other vehicles also exist. But Star Fox 64’s best idea is its branching progression. By giving you multiple outcomes to most missions, it rewards skillful and observant play. Those dynamics spice up each of my many playthroughs. Most recently, it was the 3DS version – an admirably faithful remake, but something in me will always be drawn to the 64-bit release.
Psychonauts was one of my favorite games when I first played it, but I was kind of scared to go back to it in case it had aged poorly. The long-awaited sequel assuaged my anxiety by playing wonderfully and doubling down on the heart and creativity that made the original a cult classic. Experiencing the interconnected story of the Psychonauts in each brain world is a great idea that reframes the same events through many lenses. It’s another game that preaches empathy and learning from one another… while also having a cooking game show with the audience as the ingredients. Each mind is inspired – my favorite being the library – but I loved the real world just as much. It pays to go everywhere, talk to everyone, and use every power for every morsel of content you can find. Revisiting Psychonauts was an enormous success. It’s almost sad that sequels are the exception rather than the norm for Double Fine, but whatever comes next gets my automatic attention.
Cuphead moves so fast that you don’t often get the opportunity to sit and absorb the stunning animation. But when you do, the near-perfection is all the more apparent. Cuphead is a gorgeous tribute to classic animation with a ludicrous devotion to the era’s processes as much as its style. A more seasoned studio would know to never try such a thing for cost and scheduling reasons, but this small team of developers hits the mark dead-on with every frame. It also helps that Cuphead is an immensely satisfying game to master. A mixture of skill, strategy, and knowledge is needed to defeat each imposing boss, and every time a hurdle is cleared is electrifying. And the music, of course, is right up my alley. I can recommend the energetic soundtrack to anyone regardless of their ability to run or gun. If you judge a product on how well it achieves its vision, you can’t find any shortcomings in Cuphead.
To rank this high on my list, you have to be pretty special. Tetris Effect is the most special version of, arguably, one of the few perfect video games. To say Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris somehow feels less accurate than to say he discovered it, that it was always a foundational element of our world. Tetris Effect is this idea incarnate. It presents Tetris as the unifying link between all people in the universe. It is about nothing but simultaneously about everything, about joy and love and spirit. You’re enveloped in blistering images and supportive lyrics, and it’s up to you what to make of the mess of feelings that follow. The speed of the game oscillates depending on the moment, one of the few things keeping you from fully giving over to the trance. Challenge modes add a twist on block dropping if you want things to get really crazy. I make sure to play through Tetris Effect at least once a year, usually twice. Everyone loves Tetris, and this is a Tetris that speaks to everyone. It’s timeless.
Katamari doesn’t care about your hour count or squeezing maximum engagement out of you. It doesn’t care about a rich story. It doesn’t even care about power-ups or minigames. All Katamari cares about is making the one act of rolling as fun as humanly possible, and on nearly every count, it succeeds. Picking up consecutively bigger objects never, ever gets old. The simple geometry of everything allows for a lot of stuff on screen, but it also contributes to a distinct look that still looks appealing. The King is a hilarious jerk, and in this first game you can get him to eat his words with a good enough score. Even with only three main locations to roll around, the stages are varied enough to prevent it from being a problem. The music… all you need to say is “Na naaa” and I’m finished for the rest of the day. Katamari is yet another timeless game, concerned only with putting a smile on your face.
Wind Waker is a tremendous game, but that is less important than what it represents to me. That’s a great wide ocean with islands to explore, people to meet, and treasure to find. At the time, I had never known such a sense of open adventure. The flaws that bothered other players simply never wore on me. The HD version on the Wii U, though, addresses those flaws, making the journey even better. Using the GamePad to swap items and check the map is huge. The faster sailing is a treat for those who need it. Miiverse (R.I.P.) made me go after the unreasonable quest of photographing every character in the game thanks to players sharing their own images. The characters are what give Wind Waker life thanks to eccentric designs and expressive animation. Learning more about them with their figurines is delightful. Underneath it all, though, Wind Waker is still an excellent Zelda entry. Puzzles aren’t as numerous, but they’re inventive, and the combat spectacle is ratcheted up. Not to mention, it’s one of the prettiest games Nintendo’s ever created. In 50 years, it will still look great, and it will probably still be my favorite Zelda.
There is only one word I associate with Super Mario Galaxy, and that word is joy. It’s a cosmic adventure that takes Mario to places all across the universe. The first Galaxy title has a nice split between exploratory areas and linear platforming challenges. Each galaxy has its own memorable visual style, often taking full advantage of the outer space theming. At the time, it felt like Mario could go anywhere, and seeing each new playground was a thrill. Galaxy’s big idea is gravity, and the way this affects Mario’s control is great. He feels a lot lighter than usual, giving you lots of maneuverability in the air with the versatile spin move. I love stringing long jumps to make Mario bounce like a frog, or maximizing my height with some tricky wall jump maneuvers. The movement hides opportunities for depth behind deceptively simple controls. That makes the third or fourth playthrough, where you can push the game’s boundaries, just as fun as the first. Galaxy also incentivizes replays with more secrets than you might expect. Every time I play it, I find a new hidden alcove with a 1-up or something. On a similar topic, star bits are the most enjoyable collectables in any game. You’re rewarded with them just for fooling around and seeing what you can do. Collecting them with the cursor is awfully satisfying, as is the noise that accompanies it. Galaxy’s sound and music is phenomenal – the sequel may have more orchestral performances, but what’s here is groundbreaking and awe-inspiring, conveying a multitude of moods for any given moment. Super Mario Galaxy takes something from every great Mario adventure and makes a beautiful cross-section of everything to love about the series – and, by extension, video games themselves.
Well, a whole lot has changed around here since my last blog post. I’ve fallen very far behind on the soft monthly cadence for posts I set for myself because in the past few months, my attention has been pulled in other directions. Those include more music, books, and a frankly alarming number of video games. Believe me, I’ve written plenty of first paragraphs about whatever title I was playing at that time, but my motivation was usually squeezed out like sponge water. While schedule slips are nothing new to me, I ought to fight through the writer’s block and put something out there. Now is the destined moment.
As of the day of this writing, I’ve crossed 50 games beaten on my running list. That’s embarrassing on its face, especially since in my 2020 wrapup, I said I would never reach that milestone again. The fact that I did so in half the time says… something, I’m sure, but I don’t feel like I’ve wasted as much time as I probably have.
I’m also reaching another milestone: 50 blog posts on this account. My very first was in 2017, about earning the platinum trophy in Sleeping Dogs. I’m certainly not as prolific a poster as some other users I could name, but I think it’s worth celebrating the milestone anyway. This will be my 49th post, so based on the title, I’m sure you can do some complex math and predict what will come next.
Here are the first six months of my 2022 in video games.
You know when you’re recovering from the holiday season, and you want something light to distract yourself? Strikey Sisters was that game for me. I first heard of it from a My Life in Gaming video about a whole pile of retro and retro-inspired Switch games. Oh, side note – I suggested that the Me Life in Gaming boys collaborate with Giant Bomb in the site survey, so I’m at least partly responsible for that happening! Anyway.
Strikey Sisters is a brick breaker with dashes of action elements that make it quite addicting. You move your little witch girl as the paddle, and you have to time swipes at the ball to give it some real potency. There are also enemies roaming around, which drop power-ups that can change the flow temporarily. There are even boss fights, which I have to imagine is not a common feature in brick breakers. The last boss caused me a whole lot of pain, and the dialogue sequences were certainly skipped through, but there’s a lot of charm here in a very cheap package. Great pixel art and arcade challenge make this one a winner if you find it on the eshop.
If I had to nail down my own Guilty Treasure, it would almost certainly be the Traveler’s Tales LEGO games. For my particular generation, you would be hard-pressed to find more iconic shared memories around gaming. While those titles were always popular, they would never come up in any best-of lists or anything like that. In my personal history, I fell off around the second Indiana Jones. That is, until last December. LEGO Batman 2 was a Game with Gold, so I tried it out for old time’s sake. That almost immediately segued into scooping up nearly every LEGO game during the next sale and convincing several of my friends to do the same. Now I’m sitting on all these bricks, and I don’t know what to do with them.
LEGO Batman 2 itself is a weird transition between the classic structure I loved so much and what the games eventually evolved into. Chiefly, it features an open-world LEGO Gotham City for the first time, but it feels quite lifeless. The pace of each story level is great, with enjoyable puzzles in Gotham’s most important locales, but the open world doesn’t retain any of that. Naturally, you’ll just fly everywhere with Superman (blasting the John Williams theme as you do, of course) to each of the hundreds of gold bricks scattered around. This is also the first time they violated the sacred law: LEGOs Shalt Not Talk. The writing is fine for what it is, but my heart will always belong to the nonverbal comedy of the originals. As it turns out, the LEGO Boomer archetype is pretty common, which makes me feel like I’m not alone. So yeah, an average one of those, but I still got 100% because… well I just can’t not.
A nifty puzzle game that juxtaposes simple line art with nice 3D environments. The rules are well-taught, and nothing overstays its welcome. It's easy to imagine a ton of hair-pulling puzzles with these mechanics, but it hits a nice balance of challenge. The only time I had to give up and cheat was the very last puzzle, which itself was cool enough that I didn’t mind. And it gives you all the achievements just for playing through! Wow!
I’ve already put a whole post’s worth of words towards Fallen Order. Suffice it to say that Jedi: Survivor is one of the titles I’m most anticipating. This game has some rough edges, to be sure, but the opportunity to fix them all in the sequel is very exciting. As I said in the full review, good Star Wars content can have a spillover effect and pull you back into that galaxy. I really connected with Cal, Cere, and Merrin. It’s the quintessential 4/5 game that, if they focus on the right things, could easily become a 5/5 next time.
I have a lot of down time at my job, so I figured I might as well put it to use with some portable gaming. The Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 is living on my Switch, and the first one I cleared from it is number 7. The first thing I think about when I remember Mega Man 7 is getting all the extra items hidden in each stage. It adds replay value, and they’re all straightforward to find, but I’ve never needed all that extra stuff to look out for in my Mega Man. I prefer him to rely on nothing but his wits and the boss weapons. But honestly, it doesn’t matter that much.
The second thing I think about is the last fight being a pain in the ass for no good reason. For the life of me, I don’t understand how to consistently dodge its attacks, and it has like 150% too much health. The third thing is that after you finally take down the boss, this is where Mega Man is fully prepared to blast Wily’s skull open once and for all. Collecting upgrades, the dissonant tone… Mega Man X elements bled back into the classic series, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I really like how this collection handles save states, though. You get one at every checkpoint, which hits a great balance between encouraging skill and not forcing you to replay parts over and over. It’s true that not relying on save scumming forms a stronger connection with a game, but I have plenty more to say on that subject later. For now, let’s talk about a game where save scumming is part of the design!
Desperados III by Mimimi Productions was one of my surprise favorites the year it came out. I was excited to check out its predecessor, and it’s the exact same thing. Taking the same concept from samurai to cowboys… I think we’ve got a Magnificent Seven situation here! While I prefer the setting and characters in Desperados III, Shadow Tactics is tremendous in its own right. With a team of up to five characters, you infiltrate enemy strongholds and take them out piece by piece. This gameplay loop is what makes the process so fun to me. Each of your characters has a handful of abilities that serve different purposes in manipulating guards. The game lays out the rules very logically, so you always feel equipped to handle whatever challenge the level design presents. Overcoming a seemingly impossible obstacle comes from finding the one weak brick you can exploit and turn into your enemies' annihilation. It's always a satisfying process no matter how many quick loads it takes. Missions also vary your team makeup, forcing you to come up with new strategies.
Getting through a mission the first time is tough enough, but once you do, the game reveals a bunch of additional challenges that are even harder. I love this choice because it lets the first playthrough be free of stress to play a certain way. Shadow Tactics seems niche at first glance, but anyone with the right mindset should be able to get tons of enjoyment out of it. The only points I deduct are for a few things that were done slightly better in Desperados III. I later purchased the standalone expansion, Aiko’s Choice, which takes place before a pivotal moment in the story. I was expecting a little more, I guess – it’s just three additional levels with some interstitial sections between them. I’m glad that the studio is continuing with this style, but I would have liked for some more new ground to be covered. Recently the whole shebang was on sale for a crazy discount, so if that ever happens again, I will personally message you angrily until you buy it.
I’m a Marvel person, okay? The DC universe has never felt cohesive to me, probably because it’s stitched together with various characters the publisher bought up along the way. So when you turn that world on its head, it’s not that interesting to me. Inevitably, these cracked mirror universes involve superheroes punching each other, and here Superman has gone bad. It’s an idea we saw several times before Injustice and even more times after it. The Superman I identify with simply wouldn’t be evil. Not even the writer for the acclaimed Injustice comic series believes in the premise. The idea that Superman has to kill people to be interesting is fallacious.
Anyway, I played through the Injustice story mode because the game was free on PSN some time ago. The dated-looking character models are one thing, but the fighting is still strong. NetherRealm knows what they’re doing. Obviously, it doesn’t feel as good as Mortal Kombat 11, but it’s still fun for an afternoon of comic violence. Faced with subsequent fighters, though, I don’t think it’s worth seeking out for the story alone. The cutscene compilation videos do well for a reason.
Warner Bros. strike number two: I don’t like Lord of the Rings. I tried reading it in high school and I absolutely couldn’t stand it. I haven’t seen more than five minutes of any of the movies, all of which over my brother’s shoulder. I watched him play Shadow of Mordor, which was fun in a trashy sort of way, but far from faithful to Tolkien. The question, though – is my love for LEGO games stronger than my dislike for Lord of the Rings? The answer, it turns out, is yes.
LEGO Lord of the Rings is somewhat notorious for being delisted from digital storefronts. It is, however, backwards compatible with an Xbox 360 disc. Because the LEGO sickness ran truly deep at this point, I ordered a copy before it got more expensive. And… I got 100% again. Coming out the same year as LEGO Batman 2, the open world is a little better in this one. It’s an abridged version of Middle-Earth with plenty of crap to find, but it can also be totally ignored by following the dotted line along the Fellowship’s journey. It was the mechanics in this one that I found weak. You have dozens of random items to find and craft, which doesn’t integrate with the formula very well. Equipping these is a waste of time and finding them just feels like extra busywork. The voice audio comes directly from the movies, which gives less creative license for jokes. But in a franchise that is much too long for me, seeing the story so truncated worked surprisingly well. Unfortunately, this is by far the glitchiest of anything I’ve played this year. Bosses freezing up, characters flinging into outer space, and a flashing colors issue that could seriously harm photosensitive people is just the more egregious among them.
When Death’s Door came out last year, I thought it looked really neat, but I had a feeling that it would come to Game Pass eventually. Waiting wins again! It’s got responsive controls, pretty graphics, and solid challenge. Obviously, it's very Zelda-inspired, with more of a twitch action bent. It's a fun world to explore. A map would have been appreciated, though, to stop me from getting turned around. You can sniff everywhere to improve your stats, or you can just grind against the more difficult fights. I never felt like victory was out of reach, which is critical to keeping me engaged against a formidable foe. So, yeah, highly recommend this one. I was hoping to like Tunic just as much, but I’m beginning to suspect that I just don’t like games with a lot of mysteries. Only put like 2 hours into that.
Gorogoa has you solve puzzles by moving panels on a 2x2 grid. Its big hook is delving through the vignettes' layers for new discoveries. That's helped by the appealing art and sound. It’s very short, but there are moments of friction. You're left entirely to your own devices, so if you're not clear on what to do the game won't spell it out (apart from highlighting areas of interaction). However, that just makes overcoming those puzzles all the more satisfying. The story was a miss with me - not looking to feel anything while I'm doing puzzles - but it’s worth a play.
Tim Rogers’s review of DOOM memorably labels Rogers as a DOOM Poser. After plowing through the modern PC release on the easiest difficulty and with mouselook enabled, all I have to say is… damn, it feels good to be a poser. Bumping the difficulty all the way down has become increasingly appealing to me in genres I consider outside of my main wheelhouse. In DOOM’s case, especially due to the image of Doomguy as an unstoppable demon-killing machine, it just feels right. It feels right to never switch from the beautiful shotgun and melt demons into pools of flesh with a single click. It feels right to whip the view around with unintended speed. It’s almost more DOOM than DOOM! I don’t even know what that means! When you aren’t doing that fun stuff, you’re running around mazes like a rat searching for keycards. That part isn’t my favorite.
This is a rhythm game where the gimmick is pastiches of retro games. It’s fun to spot the references, but there’s just something about the whole package that feels off. For one thing, the soundtrack doesn’t really match with the games parodied on screen, which isn’t bad in itself. I had an issue where the button inputs were slightly desynced from the music, though. If I focused on the timing, I was fine, but that meant I wasn’t listening to the tracks at all. I also kind of hated the story, which was usually light and attempted comedy, but occasionally became dark and meanspirited. It overstayed its welcome by a large margin. When I beat story mode, I unlocked another set of songs set during my least favorite part. Yeah… no thanks.
Here we go, everyone, the first ever 3D Sonic game (by technicality)! Yuji Naka’s reputation is pretty much shot at this point, but I have to admit there’s something about NiGHTS that still interests me. It’s not the gameplay, which is pretty inscrutable most of the time. There are certain games that are designed for chasing high scores but forget to make playing them fun. Check and double-check. Still, I find the dream world visually appealing. NiGHTS is a neat-looking character. The (very light) story is fun. So what if I have no idea how I’m doing any of the things I’m doing? Obviously, that means I got poor ranks my first run through the levels – poor enough that the last one wasn’t unlocked. I had a better handle on things when I went back to improve my scores. However, the last level is identical for both the boy’s and girl’s side of the story, so I definitely only did the one side. I enjoyed NiGHTS and I can’t wait to never play it again.
The SEGA train keeps on rolling along with the Switch version of an arcade classic. I appreciate M2’s SEGA AGES releases on Switch. They add a bunch of extras to tweak, and it’s clear that the developers have a lot of reverence for these titles. I love Space Harrier as a minigame in the Yakuza series, but I hadn’t buckled down and made it all the way through. I had some extra assistance from the rerelease’s checkpoints, but that doesn’t change the fact that Space Harrier is just an enjoyable pick up and play experience no matter how it’s presented. And that music… classic!
When you think of the mainline Sonic games, 3D Blast doesn’t come up very often. Still, I decided to be charitable to it before playing Sonic Adventure. You know... it's Sonic 3D Blast. It's not going to change your life. This "director's cut" is really cool, though. The control has been improved, which alleviates a lot of the frustration with the level design. But if you really hate the idea of exploring and grabbing birds, it's still not going to be for you. I appreciate the password feature and level select, which ratchets down the pressure by a lot. But for the life of me, I couldn't find the last two emeralds needed to get the true ending. Music remains the highlight of the whole experience, but of course that wasn't changed. I wish more developers would go back and revisit their old releases like this. This particular developer went on to make those LEGO games but wasn't a great boss and crunched his employees. Dang it.
When I played the original Phoenix Wright trilogy, I put a year’s break between each entry to avoid getting burnt out. It had only been a few months since then, so would I get tired of the newly translated historical spin-off? Absolutely not. Exploring a new time period is exciting, and the game always keeps one foot in what I love about the series. Unlike earlier Ace Attorneys, these trials usually have juries. They won't impact your deductions often, doing so with brief segments where you must convince them to lean in your favor. This is a nice twist, but the best part is how no one vetted these jurors for impartiality. That means more voices added to the trials that alter the way proceedings unfold. The big addition to the investigation stage comes from Herlock Sholmes. Sholmes is hilarious as a slightly mad take on the great detective who always deduces incorrectly. Fixing his mistakes is dead simple, but it's gussied up with so much theatre that it's always a pleasure. A lot of times when I play these, Phoenix will say that he knows the answer, prompting me, who does not. But in some of the cases here, I figured it out before Ryunosuke. That was a great feeling and a mark of success for any mystery story. Plus, like the rest of the franchise, the soundtrack is full of instant classics.
If you played Peggle, you probably enjoyed Peggle. This is just more Peggle. It’s fun. I’m not gonna hurt myself trying to describe Peggle when I’ve got so many other games to cover.
I'm really only here for the story mode - I suck at fighting games and I don't like grinding for gear, either. From that perspective, this is an improvement over the first Injustice. The fidelity is obviously much nicer, and the game is very pretty during fights. Character designs are hit and miss. Some, like Scarecrow, work, but I don't know what's going on with Joker or Superman. The movesets do well at capturing the essence of each hero or villain. For anyone really into DC, this will be extra fun. But I gotta say, the evil Superman shtick was even worse this time around. Everyone is so angry, ready to beat each other to death for the flimsiest of reasons. Comics can be dark, but Superman is supposed to be the light that inspires everyone else. Obviously, this Superman is as dark as it gets. He doesn't have a character arc, which is the most disappointing thing. Would his defeat, imprisonment, and reunion with Supergirl cause him to do any reflection? Nope, he's 100% tyrannical from start to end.
Around this time, my friend was selling his modded 3DS system. I had just recently been thinking about 3DS homebrew, so it was perfect timing. I went through a lot of frustration, technically unsavvy as I am, getting everything working. Then, there was the familiar moment of having everything to choose from but no strong desire for any of it. I finally landed on Ultimate NES Remix, a mishmash of the two NES Remixes released on the Wii U. I only played the first one when it came out, which picked from mostly crap games for its challenges. Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, and Pinball did not make the cut for the “ultimate” version, tragically. Even with titles I really enjoy, like Kirby’s Adventure and Punch-Out, I didn’t feel the same novelty I did back in the day. Doesn’t help that I can play the full games on any device I want now. It feels like watching movie clips online, but sometimes the clip is mirrored because it’s a Remix.
Mario Kart 7: the one before Mario Kart 8. I did buy a cart of this one because I like Mario Kart. Tragically, as so often happens in this industry, the sequel overwrites the previous one. 7 is great, but I’ve spent so much time with the perfect racing feel of 8 that coming back feels unimpressive. There’s no Waluigi, even though they have his track. I don’t even like Waluigi, but that feels personal, right? What did Waluigi do? Something perverted, no doubt. The tracks in 7 are good on balance, but the best ones are either already remade in 8 or will be DLC soon. But you can’t be a bee in Mario Kart 8! Only stupid Waluigi.
21. Pokémon Legends: Arceus – March 1
“What could possibly get me to care about Pokémon again?”
I asked that question last year and landed on several answers: Either a remake of Diamond and Pearl, a new Pokémon Snap, or any kind of game that made me feel like Pokémon actually existed as natural creatures. They quickly called my bluff by releasing all of these. While I ignored Snap and left Shining Pearl is in its case unopened for now, I did play through Legends. Pokémon fans (whose standards are inscrutable to me) largely seem to celebrate it. It pushes some much-needed advancements onto the series, but there is still a ways to go.
Let’s start with the graphics and performance. Arceus looks like a Wii game. Scratch that, I’ve played Pokémon games on the Wii that look better. The comical pop-in makes the Switch look like an even worse performer than its reputation suggests. Despite that, the strength of Pokémon designs is enough to somewhat sell the illusion of a living world. It helps that the majority of monsters come from the time I was most invested in Pokémon. It’s charming to encounter them in their natural environment up close. I haven’t done so in such an open game before. The weakest parts of Arceus are the ones that stick closely to the series formula. I haven’t felt engaged by Pokémon battles for a long time, and the battles here are turned to 11. I know fans that have a disturbing depth of knowledge about Pokémon mechanics; meanwhile, I can only remember about half the type matchups. Every time I threw out my Pokémon, either it would die in one turn or my opponent would. It was like a samurai duel where the fastest creature would mercilessly cut down their enemy. Even as my leveling fell behind, I was able to eke out victories. It was fun being challenged like that, but I got the sense that the system wasn’t working as designed. I don’t know how you could possibly untangle Pokémon battles and reinvent them, but I’m ready for a bigger change. And the story… well, I couldn’t tell you about the story because I was actively looking away from the screen and button mashing while it happened. While the Pokémon in Arceus are more real, the human element becomes more and more artificial with each iteration. Arceus didn’t fully reignite my love for Pokémon, but it did convince me that there’s still a spark that can cause the franchise to evolve.
This iteration of the LEGO formula is a big improvement over the previous Batman game. I know I said I’m not a fan of the wider DC universe, but LEGO is the great equalizer where anyone can fit in. This goes for a kitchen sink approach where your party can pretty much do anything at any time. As a result, the puzzles feel a little less deliberate than before. Still, more characters get a chance to shine as you control both the Justice League and the Legion of Doom. The well of cameo heroes and villains goes deep, and there are guest appearances by the late Adam West and Gilbert Gottfried, and, more questionably, Kevin Smith and Conan O’Brien. I played plenty more open-world busywork here, but the environments are more polished than the first attempt. Of course I had to 100% it, what do you take me for, a fool? Right now, I would recommend this as the LEGO Batman to play.
Whatever opinion you have about the Sonic Adventure games will invariably set off a land mine within the internet. For all its awkward technical elements, "so bad it's good" voice acting, and general age, the game shocked me with how fun it still is to play. This is the only 3D Sonic in my eyes that attempted to translate the 2D level design, and it does so with remarkable success. Sonic's levels are very replayable thanks to extra paths that reward you for mastery and zippy controls. While there are the big set piece moments that play themselves (I put the controller down and Sonic ran away from the whale anyway), they’re used as punctuation between exploratory sections where you can still test your speed. I also want to challenge the narrative of "Sonic good, everyone else bad." I enjoyed the campaigns of every character save for Big. And if you skip all the custscenes, Big's story is like 20 minutes. The flaws of Sonic Adventure are obvious and well-known. It could use a remake that streamlines a lot. But in its ideal state now, on PC with the Dreamcast Conversion mod, there's a good amount of joy still to be had.
The Gunk feels like a missed opportunity. It has serviceable puzzle-solving and light exploration, which can feel rewarding. That said, I always felt distant from the world somehow. I needed some more impact from sucking up the gunk. The dialogue is sometimes humorous, but the characters are rather one-note. It's written with a British dialect in mind, yet the actors don't have the accent. It's a short game, so you won't be angry about wasting your time. It just took me a lot of sessions because I wasn’t being engaged the way I was hoping to.
If you live outside of Japan, you can only buy the Great Ace Attorney games bundled together. I strongly suggest playing them back-to-back, as the momentum from the first story carries into the second, leading to an exciting conclusion. Great Ace Attorney 2 puts a lot of focus into revelations. The narrative is full of backstories and betrayals that give more weight to the already-endearing characters. My favorite part of the series is always the last case, where plot threads converge and the smuggest villains are battled. Even if some things push the suspension of disbelief, I loved how the story concluded. I was glued to the screen so much that it’s silly to remember I was hesitant to play a game without Phoenix Wright in it.
I felt bad for not playing 3D Land since I’ve finished the rest of the 3D Mario games. It’s fun and engrossing even when you mean to just get through a few levels. The unfortunate problem is that it ultimately hasn’t left a strong footprint. Some of its mechanics were taken from Galaxy, and everything new it does was repackaged and refined in the sequel 3D World. The return of Racoon Mario also wasn’t the slam dunk they were hoping for. In short, there’s nothing you can point to and say, “that’s my favorite thing that’s only in 3D Land.” If you don’t care about that and just want a great platformer, I can’t remember a bad moment in the whole adventure. I wasn’t pushed to go through its second set of worlds, though.
Oh yeah… this is where things get interesting. As superfans might remember, last year I set the goal of getting all the achievements in Rare Replay, which also means 75% Gamerscore in each of the included Xbox 360 titles. I took a break around the N64 last year, and I picked up the challenge again around this time. I won’t go into too much detail on this list, because I plan to give it a massive write-up when I do finish (hopefully not too long now). I do have some high-level thoughts I can preview here, though.
Jet Force is kind of a bummer because there's no half-commitment. Beating it and getting 100% is functionally the same thing. The process of replaying levels with all the characters to track down all the junk is arduous and sometimes frustrating. It was definitely designed for the strategy guide. Boss fights are also a crapshoot due to unclear hitboxes, though placing the character on a rail there is a good choice. I do appreciate the new controls, which maps more sensibly onto a modern controller. Despite ample ideas, the experience is just not smooth enough for what's asked. I hate to be the “hasn’t aged well” guy, but here we are.
This updated release is moves well and doesn't waste your time. There are so many guns here, and the majority are fun to use. I also enjoy the length of the campaign levels; they become quite fast once you learn them. The Goldeneye style of difficulty, adding extra objectives, is still an inspired idea that should be more common. And if you're here for multiplayer, it includes a paralyzing amount of customization. The only knocks I have include a lack of signposting in certain missions causing me to wander around and the fact that the story lost me pretty early. The audio mix wasn't great, so I'm not sure if I missed some key lines or if we really did just end up in new locations without explanation. I appreciate the desire to freshen things up unbound from the 007 license, but I prefer espionage to aliens.
The kindest thing to say about Grabbed by the Ghoulies is that it's hardly aged at all. Its cel-shaded graphics are still appealing, and the gameplay is almost always functional. The flip side of that is, it wasn't exactly lighting up the world when it first came out, either. Rare's obligatory charm is present, of course. However, despite the many flavors of challenges attempting to diversify the experience, you really are just doing the same thing the entire time. Fighting is not precise due to the quasi-dual stick control scheme. While you can get the hang of it and eventually master the game, not enough variety justifies its already short length. And if you're someone who hates a lot of weird cartoon vocalizations, steer clear of Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
Kirby is one of the first franchises I felt real ownership over when I was a kid. Its highs are awesome, and its lows are still pretty good most of the time. Forgotten Land is theoretically a huge shift for Kirby: the first 3D title in the main series. In practice, it still feels like Kirby… in a good way. Your selection of copy abilities is leaner than what you might be used to, but each is thoughtfully adapted to the third dimension. On top of that, you have mouthful mode, where Kirby takes on the properties of increasingly strange objects. Forgotten Land defies the reputation of simplistic design by rewarding players who pay close attention. Every level has secrets that require smart usage of the mechanics to uncover. Building a town of Waddle Dees is delightfully adorable, although these are the same creatures Kirby has no problem massacring any other day. Finally, the story takes more of a back seat this time… until the last moments, where it speeds away like a truck. Kirby has always been great as something that can captivate kids but still engage more experienced players. After diminishing returns for a period, this entry is a strong sign that things are on the upswing again.
I have to save my full thoughts on Perfect Dark Zero for its own dedicated blog post. In fact, I’ve already written it in full and will release it when the time comes. Let’s stay at the highest level possible:
If you play the campaign once, Perfect Dark Zero is a C- shooter that doesn’t capitalize on its own series.
If you achievement hunt, like my dumb ass committed to, you’re facing a time sink the likes of which I was fully unprepared for. I’ll explain all the tribulations down the road.
And maybe it was just because I was looking up a lot about it, so it got in my algorithm, or maybe it was anticipation for the upcoming Perfect Dark… but I saw a weird amount of other content around the game pop up while I was playing it. A weird synchronicity of the universe? Perhaps. I’m just glad it’s firmly behind me. Forever.
I don’t know how much I can contribute to a discussion about NORCO. I don’t remember everything about the plot beats nor the themes. I have no background in Christianity, so all the allusions to that scene flew right over my head. I do remember strong characters and moments, though. Each of the party members you gain and lose is entertaining, especially the detective in the last act. The cult of Best Buy shirt kids is funny, but it hits especially hard at a phenomenon that is only becoming more dangerous as social media mutates into unrecognizable forms. NORCO has a good mood throughout its short runtime and hits a pretty good range on the aesthetic/didactic scale that I have just invented to judge these narrative games.
This was the week where I was visiting family, so I only had my Switch and laptop with me. I decided to bust out some really short games living in my backlog that I had ignored for years. That started with the sequels to To the Moon, which rustled up a lot less attention than the first title as far as I’m aware. I don’t even remember buying them, to be honest.
Finding Paradise came out at a time when the indie revolution was in a totally different place, yet it still feels quite old. The RPG Maker graphics are cheap-looking, and the dialogue has a strong tinge of fan fiction style, if you know what I’m talking about. I felt like I was retreading a lot of the same ground from the first game. This time, though, there’s no novelty to it. While the series has a great science fiction premise, it would be better in the hands of more proficient writers. I love to write, but like I said at the top, sometimes it’s hard as hell to get it done. I don’t mean to insult anyone. But their style hasn’t changed, and the artificiality of each line keeps me from truly investing in these characters.
Okay, then… what if we got rid of all those characters? Impostor Factory begins seemingly disconnected from everything, starting on a supernatural mystery scene that gradually folds back into the overarching plot. That said, it doesn’t actually advance the plot, serving as backstory instead. To the game’s credit, I enjoyed the comedic moments more here. They just tend to be inserted in what would otherwise be the most dramatic scenes. It’s an odd choice. My biggest takeaway from the narrative was one that has nothing to do with science fiction. The protagonist is put in a heartbreaking situation that could really happen, and I wondered what I might do in her place. After that, the story devolves into simulation theory, alternate selves, and a whole mess of stuff I just wasn’t into. I think I’m done with this series. It’s spun its wheels for too long, and the world is moving around it.
I got all the way to the last boss the first time I tackled Mega Man X, but I couldn’t quite get over the finish line. Since it’s a quick playthrough, I had no problem making it back in one sitting. This time, I begrudgingly made sure to get all the upgrades, making quick work of Sigma’s early forms. No need to get into that rant again. You don’t need me to tell you this, but Mega Man X is fun. Common consensus tells me it’s actually the best of the whole X subseries. Basically, I don’t need to make time to try the other ones. It’s also more approachable than a lot of the other Mega Man games I’ve played, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I go back for another round in the future.
If Mega Man X is too much roman numeral for you, try Mega Man 10! I heard that people like 9 more than 10, so I played 10 first because I’m weird like that. And tragically, having played some of 9, I can’t differentiate them in my head. I can’t remember which levels go to which game. I suppose that’s part of the reason 10 didn’t have the same impact. Mega Man 11, though… I like that one a lot. They should make a Mega Man 12. Is that too much Mega Man? Probably too much for this blog post.
Another one I got close to the end of and fizzled out. But that was so long ago in my gaming development. I’ve beaten Celeste multiple times now! Surely Meat Boy would be chump change. I gotta say, the fact that I could use my same cloud save from like eight years and three machines ago is so nice. I only needed to complete a few levels and then the final boss. It took a little while, to be sure, but my powers ensured that I won in the end. Meat Boy is slippery, so getting a handle on exactly how he will behave is tricky. Then again, it had been a long time. I learned that defeating a game you almost beat in the past can feel more rewarding than finishing one all at once. And I did it all with keyboard controls, despite the game strongly recommending against it. That’s how I started, and I’ll be damned if I give into pressure now. All the extra hard levels, though… nah, I’m gonna give that a miss.
Rounding out the most productive week in my gaming history is another SEGA AGES release for the Switch. I love the music and vibes of OutRun, but I wasn’t drawn to it as much as Space Harrier back then. Firstly, I thought the time limit was really strict in the arcade version. Second, the animation of the car flipping over is weirdly horrifying to me. That’s not even a thing with me in other media, it’s just that specific crash. Anyway, I gave myself the assists I needed and took a nice cruise through the landscape. Look, it’s 50 games, not all of them are going to have some big story attached.
Side note: I’m playing the SEGA Genesis Picross game at the moment, and the use of OutRun music while solving puzzles really adds to it.
Now back in my own home, I fired up the GameCube for the first time in a while for a game club on the My Life in Gaming Discord server. The first time I tried Rogue Leader, years ago, I couldn’t get anywhere. I put in the cheat to unlock all the levels, and surprise surprise, that didn’t help me. As a more dedicated and skilled individual, I defeated the Empire after a still-significant amount of struggle. One mission I fought against was with the Star Destroyer. Then, in the penultimate level, there are two of them! This is getting out of hand!! (This is a Star Wars joke) The final run at the Death Star II was especially frustrating since you have very limited room for error before you or the Falcon get blown to smithereens. Frustrations with mission design aside, Rogue Leader still looks great, especially for a launch title. The glow up from the first Rogue Squadron is staggering. While I doubt that I’ll be returning to achieve… any… medals, I could see myself tooling around and shooting TIEs on a rainy day.
When I play old games for the first time, I'm always bracing to put up with some frustrating edges that modernity has sanded down. Surprisingly, though, Max Payne is as fun to play now as when it came out more than 20 years ago. I played the Xbox port, and while I was prepared to deal with set checkpoints, quicksaving is retained and lightning fast. Everything should have quicksaves! This relieved so much pressure and gave me room to experiment with the mechanics. Bullet time is slightly more than a gimmick. You can use it to get the drop on unsuspecting goons and make yourself survive longer.
Another way Max Payne has survived the test of time is through its graphic novel presentation. They're obviously more cost-effective than fully rendered cutscenes, and the few in-engine scenes that exist reinforce the decision with their goofiness. The level design is also strong, with naturalistic environments that leave room to explore while also funneling you to the next shootout. Well, this was what I thought until I got to the dream sequence where you balance on a tightrope maze of blood with a baby wailing at you. That's like a trifecta of frustration. And just when I thought that was the low point, you do it again in slow motion! That indiscretion aside, the unconventional choices in Max Payne set it apart, giving it an instantly recognizable identity that insulates it from the tides of time.
The SpongeBob games of my youth were primarily on the PC. They were very different from the console titles, yet shared the same names, which made talking to other kids about them confusing. Regardless, Truth or Square was another Game with Gold fairly recently. I figured it was better to play it for a few hours than let it sit there. Made by the studio that created the most renowned SpongeBob games, Truth or Square has a distinct air of limited time and budget. Under those restrictions, it’s commendable that there are no major issues I ran into. Each level is loosely themed around an episode of the show, with the premise being a trip through SpongeBob’s memories to find where he hid the secret formula. Truth or Square is the perfect example of a game that I never would have paid for but ended up with anyway. I have a lot of those, and this is a fine one of them.
As the culmination of the entire series thus far, Skywalker Saga is very successful at updating the overused LEGO template while not throwing out anything that makes it fun. That starts with the ability to toggle mumble mode for the classic LEGO experience. Shockingly, though, I stuck mostly to the voice acting. It's much more effective at using lines from the movies than prior attempts. Having the Clone Wars actors helps, too. The lower camera angle and humbler pool of powers grounds Skywalker Saga more than any previous entry. Instead of playing with toys from up high, you're given a minifig's-eye view, immersing you into the galaxy. My major criticism is the uneven distribution of levels. Every movie has five, but many are short vehicle stages. The levels are all shorter in general, making the stories even more abridged than usual. In Phantom Menace, for example, three out of five take place during the movie's climax. True, nothing much happens in Episode I until then, but this isn't their first time adapting these movies.
If you're into hunting for collectables, you will experience a veritable feast here. For the first time, I actually prefer the open world parts to the bespoke levels. That’s because they just made Super Mario Odyssey within the Star Wars galaxy. I appreciate how the designers let you make your own fun by exploiting Boba Fett’s jetpack or lifting droids with the Force to sequence break areas. You’ll run around nearly every planet from the movies, scooping up over 1000 special bricks and gazillions of studs. Your favorite Star Wars character is playable, even if it’s one of the really obscure ones. The scope of exploration is gargantuan, far beyond anything that’s been in the series before. And while I happily threw away many hours hopping between planets and snooping around, I want to stress that I will only do this once. If they make a game of the same scale in Middle-Earth or something, I’m not biting. Reporting has made clear that these games are not being made sustainably for employees, so here’s hoping that things improve and the scope creep is resolved. The series has a special place in my heart. I want the best for the passionate people who create it.
No one is going to hate me for this, are they? Alright, I’m just gonna say it. Everyone who got hurt in this game deserved it and I’m glad they died. Yes, yes, it’s a seminal title for the medium, Roger Ebert, etc. But every creature, from the biggest Colossus to the smallest lizard, pissed me off. I tried to go into every encounter with an open mind, and some were mostly great fights. However, there was almost always something that got in the way of the fun. I hated when the game took away control at the worst times and threw me off Colossi to repeat the same arduous process to get back on. I dreaded having to manipulate their AI in very specific spots that didn’t work half the time. I pointed and laughed when I felled the beasts, which is obviously the opposite of the intended reaction. Bluepoint’s rendition of the world is undeniably beautiful, but I got turned around so often I nearly gave up. And don’t get me started on the worst boss of them all, the horse. Games with a higher purpose tend to get more slack for their moment-to-moment play, which I usually grant. They also tend to control in more unusual ways. I’ve played countless third-person action titles with swords and climbing, so I’m not willing to forgive the unresponsiveness. I see what you’re doing, Shadow of the Colossus, but I respect you a lot more than I like you.
It's.... well, it just isn't good. Right away, you'll notice how poor the physics feel. Everyone has seen that you can stand at a 45-degree angle and spin dash up a slope. Beyond that, Sonic's rate of acceleration feels terrible. The strong control felt in the classic series is nowhere to be seen. Episode 1 is like a cover band, rehashing old zones and bosses cheaply and much worse. The new gimmicks are never exciting, either. It's not the worst Sonic by any stretch, but Mania effectively wiped it from existence, which is for the better.
AKA: It’s Rewind Time. I didn’t feel like getting whupped over and over, so I cheated my way through it. The first Streets of Rage is no one’s favorite anyway, right? It’s clearly a very basic beat-em-up, but you travel through fun locations in the city. The music is boppin’. But like with a lot of old games, I don’t think your guy has the finesse to avoid all the attacks from enemies. That’s why I was fine using the tools the Genesis collection gave me. There are a whole bunch of other titles in that collection that are good fodder for lists like these, but this is pretty much it for now.
Talk about a pleasant surprise. No one was expecting much from this before release, but I played it on Game Pass and enjoyed almost all of it. Without the Gunn movies, I doubt Guardians of the Galaxy would have any brand recognition. The game is beholden to the films, but it sneakily unveils its own version of the team that I might prefer depending on the day. I initially bristled at how talkative everyone was, but that gave way to respect at the massive volume of lines and the consistency at which they are delivered. The game part of the game is perhaps least impressive, with enemy variety especially dropping off a cliff by the end. Admittedly, I got distracted and took some long breaks before I finally reached credits, but the story fully hooked me in the last hours. If you can forgive some occasional bugginess and derivative character designs, I strongly recommend experiencing Eidos’s take on the Guardians.
"DEDICATED TO EVERYONE WHO LOVES GAMES AND CHARLES DARWIN"
Now that's something I haven't read before. Infinity Gene's gimmick of near-constant gameplay evolution is intriguing, even if it feels a little basic in practice. You start off shooting those iconic little aliens, but you soon take on titanic battleships and unnerving life forms. My biggest problem is reading it - everything is white, so in the very common occurrence where the screen is plastered with enemies, keeping track of their shots is near-impossible, which leads to a good deal of questionable deaths. Fortunately, you evolve options to help you out, and checkpoints are placed so that most people should be able to get through. This was another one from Games with Gold.
After a momentary distraction, it was time to return to 3D Sonic. Even without putting my hands on the controller, I had seen Sonic Adventure 2 so many times that I already had big opinions on it. Yep, they didn’t change. If there’s a way for Sonic stories to take themselves seriously and pull it off, you won’t find it here. The plot is a tonal mess and filled with holes. So is the previous game, but Adventure 1 is more openly fun, or at least it seems that way to me. The only time I want to see these cutscenes is if Eggman pisses on the moon. I skipped them this time.
Sonic’s level design is already a significant departure from what I like about Adventure 1. His levels are all tubes that funnel him forward and favor twitch timing. You really have to go out of your way to find anything off the critical path. Tails’s levels are just as narrow, only significantly slower and you have to listen to beeping the whole time. The Knuckles stages are worse than their previous iteration not only because of their huge sizes but because the radar tracks only one emerald piece at a time. I forgot to mod the game to fix that. The room for expression is gone in all three styles. When I see the lifeless level design in something like Sonic Forces, I feel like it all comes from here. The soundtrack is also not as good!
Lastly, I know a lot of Sonic fans started out with Adventure 2 and they think Shadow is the coolest character. I’m here to break a hard truth to you. Shadow is quoted as saying, “I’m the coolest.” As everyone knows, claiming you are cool actually means you are not cool at all. Sorry.
We’re well into the second decade of retro revivals occupying a significant portion of the gaming landscape. Over the years, it’s become clear that the factor to make them succeed isn’t the developers coming back to their old ideas, but the passion surrounding the experiences of the retro age. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is about the best you could possibly hope for when it comes to celebrating the Ninja Turtles and their beat-em-ups. I don’t care that much about the Turtles outside of the first movie and some of the comics, but even a layman can tell that Tribute Games put 110% love into Shredder’s Revenge. The animation is beautiful enough to convince you the actual cartoon looked good. Its visuals pop off the screen, and every character is brimming with personality. Fighting is simple enough to enjoy if you haven’t played games in years. At the same time, exciting mechanics like super meter and co-op moves mean nuance is there for those that want it. The music by Tee Lopes, while stylistically different, is always up-tempo and driving. He was an appropriate choice, because not since Sonic Mania has a game so brazenly and delightfully reveled in its retro roots.
Another retro collection that had just been sitting on my Switch. I worked on all the games in it over time. For me, the Contra series will always have a strong association with This Is the Run. Unlike that, I don’t need to beat it all “legit,” so I liberally used save states to get through most of them. I’ve gone back and forth a lot over save states and whether they count for beating a game. Ultimately, I landed on this: If I want to experience the releases people label as important, I’m fine doing so as a tourist. I can experience the ride and be done without hating myself. For my first playthrough, I think that is the most fun way I can do it. And if it’s not fun, why bother? I’m not trying to prove myself to anyone. Finally, those games aren’t going anywhere. For titles I really connect with, I’ll be happy to revisit it down the line in a harder fashion. Whew, sorry for the rant. I chat with a lot of people who can get gatekeepy at times, so I had to put it all out there.
The standout title in the whole Contra collection is Hard Corps, as I’m sure many will agree. It’s one giant clap back to the ex-Konami staff who went over to Treasure. There’s a new wild boss fight every few minutes, and the creativity never ceases to surprise. The American version decided to spit in your eye with one-hit deaths. If you’re not into save states, the collection also has the friendlier Japanese version, and the European version where everyone is a robot. The other Contra games are fun, too. I like Operation C a lot, considering most Game Boy versions of popular franchises were steep downgrades. Contra is simple and cheap at times, but the series is a good way to kill half an hour. And you can actually buy these, not just… subscribe to them.
9800 words later, it’s 50 mini-reviews in the books and a blog debt repaid in my eyes. If you read the whole thing… I simply don’t believe you, sorry. I will not be doing this for the second six months of 2022, but I will do it for another list of 50 games. This was a lot more work than I had expected, and I haven’t even begun the next one, so you may be waiting a bit for it. In the meantime, be kind to your fellow person, enjoy your gaming, and let me know what you thought. Bye!
Talk about putting the card before the horse! Wait, wait! Oh god, don’t leave!
I recently spent my gaming time bouncing between two very different games developed by the same studio. On Nintendo Switch, the most forward-thinking and unique entry in the Pokémon series yet created. On 3DS, a bizarre downloadable title that mixes horse racing with card strategy. Pokémon Legends has a far greater budget and aspiration than Pocket Card Jockey, but for some crazy reason, I felt more motivated to return to the much simpler game. And return I did, again, and again, and again… With the 3DS eShop now on borrowed time, Pocket Card Jockey is definitely a title to keep your eye on for any panic-buying you might do in the near future.
You begin the game as a rookie jockey, and in the first taste of the game’s humor, you are immediately bucked off your horse and trampled to death. Fortunately, a grouchy angel grants you a second chance at life, and to make things easier, he combines racing with the jockey’s only other interest, solitaire. You are now equipped to raise a series of quirky horses, meet more wacky characters, and hopefully take home trophies along the way. The tutorial section of the game hooked me with its glib attitude. In any other game, the player character would be a driven hero with lifelong dreams of rising in the racing world. This jockey doesn’t particularly care at the start, treating racing like a half-assed hobby. I was smiling through their entire bickering session with the angel. The talking tutorial horse is also entertaining, with dialogue written in a comedic, naturalistic style. In Pokémon Legends, I was actively looking away from the screen and button-mashing whenever a story sequence started. Pocket Card Jockey’s writing is a lot more fun to read, and it gets out of the way soon enough. This game is goofy, and it’s not afraid of that.
The solitaire game in Pocket Card Jockey isn’t the same one I played as a kid. According to ten seconds of research, this is closer to a version called Freecell. Columns of cards are presented all face-up, with the goal being to clear them away. As you pull cards from the draw pile, you can remove ones that are adjacent in value. In ideal scenarios, you can bounce between big combos that go like Q-J-10-J-Q-K-A or such, and this releases a lot of dopamine. Of course, sometimes the cards are simply uncooperative. If you need a 4 or a 5, the game is often happy to mockingly serve you every other card. Situations like these can be infuriating because solitaire as a game is ultimately based on lucky guesses. It's hard to feel like you as a player made a mistake when you don’t have the information needed to make the best decisions.
However, there are ways to influence how challenging the solitaire puzzles will be. Your horse has a preference for where to run on the course, designated by three tiers of comfort zones. The closer to the sweet spot and the inside track, the more cards you have to contend with. That comes with an increased reward, however. Your horse will also generate energy at a higher rate, which determines its final speed. Clearing the board in high level comfort zones also stops your horse from losing stamina on that turn. Whatever stamina is left in the final stretch can be used for speed bursts like in Zelda. So, between each round, you can use points gained from solitaire to move your horse where you see fit, converting the remainder into energy. This is a nice risk system on paper, but to win the big races, maximizing your energy is required. You practically need to stay in those zones and risk lady luck eviscerating you.
The homestretch of each race also runs the gamut of emotions. This is the only part of the game where you control your horse semidirectly. I say “semi” because the animal is far from responsive. There are occasions where you maneuver your steed around the competition, using your stockpiled stamina to its fullest effect, and win the race in a photo finish. It’s just as exciting as any racing game out there. If you did really well, your horse will smoke the other racers in a satisfying bit of domination. But if you enter the homestretch already surrounded by other speeding piles of meat, good luck. Many times, I’ve been trapped in the horse wall with no warning, powerless to do anything to escape. There is a special card you can obtain that allows you to push through, but of course this is dependent on chance. That really grinds my salt lick, because it invalidates all the strategy and execution of the entire race in an instant. And there are times when the tutorial horse says you did literally everything right, but the other horses just had better stats. Why did I even enter the race, then?
You can improve your own horse’s stats by collecting experience cards during the race. Your leftover stamina also contributes to leveling up. A separate bar lets your horse learn skills that can give you advantages in the race, like showing potential moves. Again, picking up these cards is largely happenstance, so you can lose a race with nothing to show for it. I think at least a little guaranteed experience after every race would have helped ease the frustration. Here’s another fun fact: Pocket Card Jockey is the only game on the 3DS eShop with the tag of “Breed,” although I know for a fact there are some Fire Emblem games it could apply to. You can pair up your retired horses and race their stronger offspring. By the time I looked into this option, I was already wearing thin on patience, and the game was still giving me new unique horses. But for the folks who just can’t get enough, there’s a nice bit of replay value. Finally, there’s a shop where you can spend your winnings on cheat items to turn luck in your favor. If you keep losing, you can’t afford the means to stop losing. [Insert social commentary here] The prices start reasonably enough, but eventually balloon to such comical levels that even winning every race in a row wouldn’t be enough to afford one of them. It’s an option that’s taken away from the player at the worst time.
Since you read everything up there, you are also probably thinking “Wow, he complained about literally every aspect of Pocket Card Jockey.” And that is technically true, but I only have those complaints because I’ve played the game ad nauseum. What kept me glued to the handheld despite the more-than-occasional frustration? Flashing back to playing solitaire on the floor at the age of seven, I think I know. If you play traditional solitaire, with three-card draw like you’re supposed to, you don’t actually win very often. The odds are against you, but you persist because it’s fun to see how far you can get, and eking out the odds feels all the more exhilarating. It’s a feeling that’s baked into nearly every single-player game - as it should be, considering the game is named for being alone. Like traditional solitaire, Pocket Card Jockey is perfect for killing a few minutes. Races are just the perfect length to run while dinner cooks, during work, or before surgery. But it’s hard to stop at one, like it’s hard to stop from eating the entire bowl of popcorn in five minutes. The game is flippant, but I still felt bonds forming between me and my horses, their stats shaping personalities in a way that Pokémon could learn from.
Pocket Card Jockey is a simple game, but it hooks you for longer than it has any right to. The game is cheap on the eShop, and it even has a demo. The dual-screen form factor works perfectly for this game, but a port to Switch would also be welcome. It was apparently released on mobile platforms at some point, but I couldn’t find it on the Play Store. In other words, Pocket Card Jockey should be on your list of software to look at before the 3DS eShop goes away. As for Game Freak, playing two of their titles simultaneously like this has made me a little melancholy. I enjoyed Arceus enough, but I think there’s farther to go still in improving the series. I might save my further thoughts for another blog post. That said, we can all agree that another Pokémon generation this holiday is overkill, right? I understand that the series needs to keep on pumping, but that comes at the expense of bizarre experiments like Pocket Card Jockey, and I think that’s a shame.
On Tuesday, EA announced that Respawn entertainment would continue to stake its claim in the Star Wars universe with a whopping three games in development for the license. At first blush, this may seem like a surprisingly heavy commitment with a studio that only has so much development bandwith. However, this move fits right in line with how Disney is shepherding Star Wars and the rest of its brands. Having spent the Disney era flipping between excitement and exhaustion, one truth is clear to me, a truth the executives also know: Star Wars is all about momentum. A good piece of Star Wars content makes the brain crave even more of the iconic sights and sounds of that universe. Inversely, a lousy piece of Star Wars media can sour the brand in the future.
At this current moment, I’ve achieved 100% LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga again, to no one’s benefit. I’ve been keeping up with The Book of Boba Fett, despite having no interest in the show before release. I even put Solo on my watchlist, because surely it can’t be all that bad? The start to this current Star Wars kick is a video game, one that is very relevant to this moment. It’s none other than Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Taken on its own merits, Jedi doesn’t quite warrant one of my writeups. There’s nothing I could say about playing the game moment-to-moment that isn’t apparent from looking at footage. But in the game’s context within the development of the Star Wars brand, we can appreciate what the game did. Fallen Order is a franchise flashpoint that helped herald an unambiguous trade of prestige away from Star Wars feature films and towards traditionally “lesser” storytelling media.
The Disney era of Star Wars is full of tumult. At certain times, it’s practically a period of civil war. We live in a nostalgia-driven culture, and no company has a greater breadth of nostalgic IP than Disney. Walt himself practically invented selling that feeling to the masses. But while the ultra-safe The Force Awakens began Disney’s stewardship with a complete commercial success, future movies saw diminishing returns. The initial high of Star Wars being back wore off. That paired with two filmmakers vehemently attempting to undo each other’s work caused the sequel trilogy to end with a thud. The Rise of Skywalker climaxes the hastily-branded Skywalker Saga by calling the bluff of everyone saying, “They can’t do worse than the prequels!” To disclose, I never saw the movie myself, but when my brother described people walking out of theaters in the last ten minutes, I decided that I didn’t need to make it happen. (If you are a defender of the Rise of Skywalker, by all means let me know. You would simply be the first person I’ve ever seen hold that position.)
But if the state of movies under Disney’s Star Wars was rocky in those years, video games were a black hole. The voices of LucasArts fans cried out in terror the day the exclusive rights to Star Wars games were contracted to Electronic Arts. At the start of 2019, what fruit bore from that deal? Multiple canceled projects, an underwhelming reboot of Star Wars Battlefront, a sequel to that reboot which sparked an industry-wide revolt against loot boxes, some mobile games, and Darth Vader in The Sims. Even LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which EA was not involved in, is much worse than the other LEGO Star Wars games. And I would know, I have a degree in LEGO games. As far as game enthusiasts were concerned, the EA deal was a horrible decision.
First impressions of Respawn’s contribution to the portfolio were not promising, either. It began with Vince Zampella awkwardly dropping the title from an audience seat at E3. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a name ravaged by focus groups. It’s a very bad name. The premise for the game, a Jedi on the run between prequel and original trilogies, was one already worn thin in the extended universe. Then, the project went dark. Respawn was well-liked then – seriously, Titanfall 2’s campaign is a 10/10 – but EA, as usual, projected a desire to undermine its own studios at every turn. Ah, hell, why not use another hackneyed Star Wars reference here? As Respawn soared down the Death Star trench, watching all its friends go down in flames, it launched that one-in-a-million shot and saved the universe. Not only is Jedi: Fallen Order a good game, it singlehandedly rekindled EA’s interest in narrative single-player titles. Now THAT is a feat.
Fallen Order largely keeps that dangerous balance between familiar and different that is tantamount to selling fans on current Star Wars. Sure, you go to Kashyyyk for about the millionth time in a video game. But you also explore brand-new planets that meaningfully add to the Star Wars mythos. Cal Kestis starts his journey on Bracca, breaking down wrecked remnants of the Clone Wars for scrap. We’ve seen Rey do this in The Force Awakens, but here Respawn shows us the organized effort that would be necessary for the Empire to totally bury history 20 years after it formed. On Zeffo, Cal encounters the ruins of an alien race that leads to yet another perspective on the Force. Their massive puzzle tombs are unlike anything seen in the universe so far. The climax takes place in an imperial base beneath the seas. Not only is it visually striking, but it also fits right in with the Empire’s penchant for installations that look cool, safety be damned. Respawn even blends the old and new by taking Cal to planets first seen in The Clone Wars animated series. The only time Fallen Order feels pandering is with its few extended cameos of movie characters. These were of course spoiled by marketing, and it feels like the writers blew their load too early by not trusting their story to have a fulfilling arc without franchise icons.
The thing is, the characters introduced in Fallen Order are strong enough. The student/mentor/funny alien dynamic isn’t exactly revolutionary, but there’s enough spin to invest players. Cal and Cere share a self-hatred over their perceived failures during the Jedi purge. They’ve both regressed and lost touch with the Force. How can a teacher guide a student on a path she herself has given up on? The answer here is a lot less muddled than whatever Luke Skywalker ended up with. Compared to most funny aliens, Greez has a surprising number of dimensions. He’s a pilot, cook, gambler, gardener, germaphobe, and in love with Yaddle of all beings. This elevates him from being a simple chauffeur, and while his arc isn’t dramatically played out on screen, his dialogue always has a humorous heart. Merrin is a character I’m desperate to see more of in the sequel. Despite being the apparent sole survivor of a genocide, she has a sly prankish streak, and her interactions are adorable. Sadly, she joins just as the game is ending. Finally, like any Star Wars thing worth its salt, Fallen Order knows which villains to give pathos to and which to make hand-wringingly evil.
Fallen Order’s story leaves plenty of loose ends for a sequel, but it was in the act of play that I was most anticipating a follow-up. As I said, it’s a good game, well-designed and engaging. I didn’t say it was polished. Weird animations happen with just a little prodding. Dialogue can sometimes play in the wrong context. Physics behave uncontrollably during supposedly automated set pieces. Debra Wilson’s powerful performance as Cere is slightly undercut by her character model’s bulging frog eyes. On a macro level, Fallen Order’s design is cobbled from other popular third-person games, which can lead to incongruity. I have yet to play a game where I enjoy the corpse run mechanic, and Fallen Order didn’t convince me. Thankfully, it’s not annoying in this game, but it’s not meaningfully additive. You temporarily lose your experience until you land a hit on the enemy that did you in. Fallen Order is a linear game, so you would almost certainly be going back that way anyway. That and the whole bonfire mechanic feel like they were only included because From games are in vogue. As far as combat goes, I’m honestly too bad at this type of game to give meaningful critique. I enjoy the lightsaber styles, and the only thing I ask for is the ability to cut more things in the sequel.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is not quite its best self, but it still proved everyone wrong. So, where are we now? Fallen Order on its own would not have been enough to counteract The Rise of Skywalker, but fortunately, another lauded piece of the Star Wars puzzle released in 2019. It’s a little show called The Mandalorian. Their combined success was able to capture that momentum and refocus Disney’s attention towards their until-then neglected markets. Remember when they said Rian Johnson would be directing his own trilogy of Star Wars movies? Meaning he would have directed as many as George Lucas? Everyone seems to have forgotten about that. If I were Johnson, I would not want to look at a spaceship ever again, nor would I need to. According to Wikipedia, while Star Wars films are in some measure of preproduction, the earliest is scheduled for 2025. That’s quite a shock considering the yearly releases Disney was aiming for.
No, television and games are where the new money is, and can you blame them? There are many compelling reasons to go that route. They’re cheaper than movies, and they come out more often, meaning Star Wars is on consumers’ brains more frequently. By magnitudes, they are easier to create during a pandemic. Story-wise, they fill in aspects of the Star Wars universe that were unsatisfied by the main saga. Turns out, people like both doing side quests themselves and watching someone do them on TV. There are at least seven Disney Plus series being worked on, which means none of them have the weight of the entire brand on their shoulders.
And shall we count the upcoming games? Ubisoft’s open world title, Quantic Dream’s Eclipse, the Knights of the Old Republic Remake, Zynga’s free-to-play Hunters, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and now these three newly announced games from the ever-expanding Respawn umbrella. This is Disney acknowledging what everyone else already knew: It was stupid to ink that EA exclusivity in the first place. How many of these games will actually be good? It’s impossible to say right now, obviously. But if nothing else, they show that Star Wars is a franchise that supports diverse interpretations. None of these will play like the others, and that variety is how you keep as many people as possible invested in the brand. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a good game, but while playing it you can’t help feeling like the sequel will be a great one. We’re stuck with this franchise, so we might as well get the best content we can out of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my LEGO bricks.
2021 was a year where a lot of things changed for me. I spent the first months of the year freezing my rear off in a warehouse. Then, I spent the rest sweating it off in Florida. I ultimately internalized that you can’t predict what’s going to happen – you just gotta roll with it. Not only did this very website see some big changes, but I stepped out of my comfort zone for trying new games. Oftentimes I was rewarded, and sometimes I ran away screaming in terror. This list of ten is a blend of old faithful and eye-opening surprise. Start your engines!
Genesis Noir is a game with a vision. Accordingly, you are gonna see some stuff should you play it. With a color palette of mostly deep blues and white, the game has a watch peddler endeavor to save his love from a jealous murder. To do so, he must search the universe for clues from the big bang to the big crunch. In each segment, you see a snapshot of cosmic history and play with it in a unique way. The word of the day here is variety. Genesis Noir keeps shuffling you along to the next weird or interesting thing around the corner. While always retaining the point-and-click style, the methods of interaction are constantly changing. This lets your part in moving the universe forward become somewhat toyetic. The game switches frequently between camera angles and settings, yet the striking art style keeps things in the same world. Yep, it’s another one of those games where any screenshot could become your desktop wallpaper. Its music is also standout. Lonely saxophone notes, improvised duets, and world-shaking symphonies all enhance whatever moment is unfolding. I don’t think Genesis Noir sticks the landing – its message becomes muddled with new plot elements that minimize the initial setting. Plus, the general brisk pace of the game can make getting stuck on puzzles even more aggravating than usual. That said, I still have to appreciate the game for synthesizing some of my favorite tertiary interests into a mostly cohesive experience. If you want the highest possible number of concepts jammed into a three-hour session, Genesis Noir is your ticket.
2021 was the year I soured on time loops as a concept. After I bounced off Outer Wilds, which still had some rad ideas, in 2019, I feel like the floodgates opened for aggravating, tedious games that could never live up to Bill Murray crashing down the moon – that’s how it went, right? Anyway, I changed my mind after playing through The Forgotten City mere weeks ago. It casts you back to the time of the Roman Empire, where a small group is trapped under the law of The Golden Rule: Any sin committed will imprison the whole city in gilded statues. Most of the game is talking to the citizens and using your knowledge from previous loops to solve their plights, but the story’s compounding surprises are the real draw here. As you might guess, things are not what they seem on the surface. But where so many time loop stories fumble the inescapable infodump, The Forgotten City draws you further and further in as you dig through its layers. Quests are interweaving and nonsequential, which lets you explore at your own pace. However, what makes The Forgotten City the definitive time loop game is that you never need to repeat progress. First, you carry items between loops, so you won’t have to worry about scrounging inside the same hiding places. Second, once quests are complete, you have the simple solution of just delegating a guy to do it for you. The length of each loop is very long – I only reached its natural end once, and I played just six loops in total before reaching the true ending. In other words, The Forgotten City embraces time loops’ best qualities without any of their pitfalls. In the process, it also offers a crash course on ancient history and the coolest “final boss” I faced this year.
Because the Yakuza franchise historically changes so little between entries, iterations just add more and more to the gumbo of game flavors. That pattern was subverted last year when the series went RPG, so I was happy to return to familiar territory with Lost Judgment. We’re back to 3D brawling, unchanged sans a new fighting style that slams foes’ faces cathartically into pavement. Nearly everything from the first Judgment returns, but now there is skateboarding, dancing, and a Detective Dog. Terrific! The plot crosses two cities as a bullying investigation inevitably spirals into a network of conspiracy and cover-ups. I often got lost as to who was Evil and who was Evil, But We Still Like Them, but I didn’t really mind. The story’s best addition is a rival character for Yagami who challenges his beliefs on a fundamental level. Also, he vapes. The returning squad of buddies don’t get much in terms of new arcs, but damn if I don’t love seeing them line up and crack their knuckles before a dramatic throwdown. Again, the storytelling is not perfect – most female characters are still not given enough agency – but watching the narrative unravel is as gripping as ever. Of course, the side activities are for some the real draw of Yakuza. Lost Judgment has a sequence of high school investigations that should more than satisfy. Of the ten available clubs, I only reached the second, and that was in postgame! Each seems to have its own associated minigame and substory, yet it’s almost completely optional. If I had infinite time to play games, I would definitely hop back in and see where this all leads. I hope this is not the final entry in the Judgment series, but if it is, at least it will end on a strong note.
The only hesitation I had about Metroid Dread was that it couldn’t be just another troidlike. One look at the indie market and it’s obvious that the genre’s quality has exploded in the years since Metroid Fusion. Releasing a safe or underwhelming entry would reflect poorly on Nintendo. Fortunately, Dread manages to carve out its own space while staying undeniably true to the franchise’s sensibilities. Its control is perfect. Samus finally feels appropriately heavy and maneuverable. As her powers grow, every button on the controller is put to use intelligently. The game is most demanding in boss fights, where reaction time and pattern recognition makes the battles more akin to Cuphead than any previous Metroid title. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed mastering these – it’s truly more about skill than time spent digging for supplies. That’s not to say that the level design is de-emphasized. In fact, it’s more intelligent than ever. You often feel like you’re sneaking out of bounds, yet you’re precisely where you’re supposed to be. Smart sectioning of the world prevents potential hours of confused backtracking, and generous checkpoints keep challenge high and frustration low. I know it’s not to every player’s liking, but it hit the absolute perfect balance for me, who finds these games to be an acquired taste. The only area Dread comes up short is in its title. The robots that chase you in certain zones are a fun challenge, but they don’t get all the way to being creepy. Their behavior is unreliable, which makes dealing with them kind of a crapshoot. That aside, Metroid Dread is my favorite in the series and an exciting step forward. It exemplifies that in gaming, no dream is ever truly dead.
It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of an Undertale-related project because you don’t have overinflated hype coloring your expectations. For my money, Deltarune’s second chapter is hands-down the funniest thing I played all year. And it didn’t even ask for my money! There’s nothing better than villains having fun, and that’s true here for the team of Queen and Berdly. An insane computer who drinks battery acid from a martini glass, Queen is all about collecting “willing peons” and robotizing the world. Meanwhile, we all kind of understand that Falco Lombardi and Revali are related, but Berdly is like the younger cousin that even they find obnoxious. Always boasting of his smarts and superior gamer skills, he’s really nothing more than a pathetic dope. What makes these villains so entertaining is that they have collectively half a foot in reality. They have no self-awareness but no problem dropping in bizarre objects or doing “trucies” to get what they want. The party proper gets some good moments as well, like when an opportunity to temporarily split up doesn’t go as planned. On top of all that, there’s a Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes reference in 2021?! I was floored. Chapter 2 reintroduces consequences for killing or sparing your foes with a town that’s populated by your recruits. As expected, the pixels are pretty, the puzzles are clever, and the tunes are jammin’. All of this for the low price of zero dollars, tax included! But extrapolating development time is a little concerning. We’re potentially looking at a massive RPG made on a longer scale than Kentucky Route Zero. How Toby Fox plans to handle all that remains to be seen, and I confess I don’t really give a hoot about the overarching story. As long as the goofs are there, count me in.
In 2021, we finally saw the legendary rebooted Hitman trilogy conclude. The best part is that all three games’ content can be housed under one launcher. That’s hundreds of hours of assassinations, infinite when considering community-made challenges. Does Hitman 3 by itself bring my favorite maps of the trilogy? Not exactly; there are some great ones like Dartmoor, but the locations leans a little too hard into story scripting for my liking. It’s weird that IO openly said that Absolution-style linearity was the wrong choice for Hitman, only to end their trilogy on a poor man’s Uncharted 2 train mission. But I find it difficult to conceptualize Hitman 3 as a separate game. It’s so wrapped up in my innumerable time with the trilogy, spent learning routines and conquering mastery challenges, that I view it as a great capstone to bring the whole package together. I got the platinum trophy in this one, but I didn’t come back for nearly any of the live content. With more maps planned for next year, that could change. It’s difficult to say much new about Hitman because it’s another game we take for granted. In a world where stealth is often relegated to massive open worlds that don’t benefit from it, we have a silly, flexible sandbox that rewards you for any dumb idea you can think of. It was a long time coming, but IO finally reached the success that they deserve out from under a publisher’s thumb. The fact that they are trusted to revive the Bond license says everything about their skill at translating the spy fantasy into an interactive medium.
In contrast, Persona 5 Strikers gave me something familiar, but presented in a considerably new way. If you thought that the Dynasty Warriors thing would be a weird fit for Persona, know that the experience is shockingly close to Atlus’s breakout RPG hit. Art design, UI elements, animations, character representations… seeing Strikers so faithfully translate the visual panache of its inspiration lends an authenticity that is not always a given. The story is more than an excuse to get the Phantom Thieves back together, instead expanding on themes from Persona 5 with new characters I actually enjoyed. It doesn’t take a genius to see where the plot lines will end up, but I was having enough fun with the team that I didn’t care that much. While plenty of content is available, you won’t need to put off your career plans to finish this one. This works perfectly as a legitimate sequel to Persona 5 – it’s just an action game this time. Can it be hokey and a little mindless at times? Sure, but I feel like RPG fans are in for that sort of thing anyway. The social aspect is the big sacrifice here, but there is still a generous number of interactions with your friends, complete with optional quests that strengthen your bonds. So many mechanics do return from the 2017 game that the experience feels consistent and like a real continuation. My love for Persona 5 is tied to its look, sound, and spirit, not so much its genre. This was everything I could have asked for as someone who wanted to stay in that world but interact with it differently. If you aren’t quite ready to let go of the Phantom Thieves yet, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
I never considered myself to be a car person. But look around and you’ll realize that 999 out of 1000 cars we see in everyday life are boring as crap, designed to fade from your memory as soon as they exit your vision. Forza Horizon can turn regular commuting Joes or even – gasp - public transit riders into car appreciators by painstakingly replicating hundreds of real-life gas guzzlers. Then, it throws all those cars into a gigantic, breathtakingly pretty open world that contains literally something for everyone. Maybe you’re like me and split your time between campaign races and exploring the festival. You could try for high scores on PR stunts, beat other players’ challenge cards, or go royale in The Eliminator. No matter what you intend on doing, you’ll most likely be distracted by a million other things on your way there. These games throw you new cars and currency like rice at a wedding. And every character over your radio loves to tell you how you’re the greatest racer of all time, and our best friend, and we love that you drive like a psychopath, actually. For a racing casual like myself, it’s exactly the silly concession needed to keep me around. I spent many hours on Forza Horizon 4’s Steam version early this year, and I was ecstatic about the surprise announcement of the fifth game. Having gobbled that one up, too, it’s hard to say which I prefer. At their bones, they admittedly are basically the same thing. You really can’t go wrong, and I’m looking forward to whatever comes next for the festival.
So when I said start your engines earlier? That was foreshadowing!
When I said eye-opening surprise earlier? That was also foreshadowing! Any game built around a unique control method can go one of two ways: disaster or masterwork. While it’s absurd to say, the only game to make me cry is controlled purely by blinking. By tapping into a webcam, or through the honor system, Before Your Eyes uses eye tracking to tell a story that could be told through no other medium. As you relive your character’s life, each blink advances to a new memory. You will literally fight your own body trying to keep your eyes open and stay in the moment just a little longer. Ultimately, though, you must give in and let it pass. The game immediately establishes imagery that follows you through the years. It’s always recontextualizing those symbols so that just a silhouette immediately triggers something in your brain. Fantastic vocal performances ground the story’s emotion into reality. In the story’s climax, as my emotional defenses felt mounting pressure, the moment building and building, ever on the precipice, it only took one blink, one microsecond for my senses to register what was happening, and the dam broke. The game appeared written for me, about my life and my family, but I’ve seen others react the same way. Before Your Eyes is at once universal and specific, telling a more personal and immersive story than most films could hope to achieve within the same runtime. It often seems like these artsy-fartsy games are everywhere. But if I must champion one thing this year, it is this. Buy it and play it as soon as you can, then make some calls to loved ones.
Omori hung over me like a cloud for most of the year, posing some very heavy questions for this list:
One, can I justify putting it on my year-end list when it missed 2021 by one week?
Two, if we accept that, can I justify making it my game of the year?
These questions will have to be circumvented with the coward’s way out. Yes, I’ve already dedicated another blog post to the game, but not repaying respect to such an affecting piece would feel wrong. As I said then, Omori is the real Mother 4. One of my pet series, Mother always slammed strangeness and darkness together into a quirky cocktail that goes down rough. Omori is the result of pushing that to its conclusion – a horror RPG. The wackiness is still here, and the game made me laugh far more than it made me recoil. I loved the dynamic between the party, which sold a real friend group with all its foibles. The setting of a dream world leads to ridiculous, hilarious characters. At the same time, the darkness is always threatening to take over, and not knowing when makes it all the scarier. But there’s a maturity in Omori’s horror that wasn’t present in, say, Toby Fox’s embarrassing early rom hacks. Its purpose is not to be cruel or shocking, but to confront honest trauma, as much as you can in RPG Maker. When I was freezing in that warehouse, as lonely 14-hour workdays stretched interminably, my mind drifted back to those kids, determined to do whatever I could to help them through it. There are many hours of content I will never see simply because they lead to the bad ending, and I refuse to let that happen. Omori is a true spiritual sequel, adapting and reinterpreting the soul of a game that I will never forget. List or no list, it’s just something you ought to dig into.
This year, I finally watched the Double Fine Adventure documentary, which follows the development of Broken Age and the many speed bumps along the way. In it, you can see Tim Schafer as a director who loves nothing more than stuffing far-out ideas into his work. You can also see his soul die a little every time Double Fine has to make a compromise to keep the project, and the company itself, alive. It’s a firsthand account of how game development is often ugly and heartbreaking. Crowdfunding Psychonauts 2 after that seemed, at the time, like we were in for a rerun. And that could have been the case if not for Big Phil Spencer scooping up Double Fine. However you feel about acquisitions, it’s fair to say that Psychonauts 2 is the absolute best version of itself it could be. In 15 years, gaming has advanced exponentially, and the team’s ideas have bloomed. There is nothing but passion pouring out of the game. Whether you’re progressing through its mind-blowing brains or exploring its expansive overworld, Psychonauts 2 always seems to be winking at you about the next trick it has up its sleeve. My favorite world comes near the end of the game, where a library come to life transforms into a paper city on a sea of ink. I’ve come to love how connected each character is to the main story – we see how one difficult event years ago changed all of them in different ways. There is a clear emphasis on Raz using his powers to help people, and it’s appropriately called out when he doesn’t. Even with the amount of new blood, it’s true to the groundbreaking vision of the original Psychonauts. Some story revelations may cause a double take, but the writing ultimately pulls it together for a touching conclusion. The only thing I’m not fully on board with is the entire franchise taking place over a few days. That’s one wild week for Raz. Psychonauts 2 is the ideal of every game I want to see made in the future: creatively uncompromised, accessible to all, and made without harming employees. It’s been a long time in the making, but how often do we get a project that fully delivers on years of anticipation? Duder, you’re looking at it.
While a lot changed in 2021, one thing that didn’t is my love of writing stuff on here. This is my fifth year-end list on the site, and each time it becomes more enjoyable and rewarding. I’ve also written about a number of these titles in further detail already, so scroll down through the blog if you missed those posts. And while you’re at it, slam that follow button, I guess? Does that matter? I’ve got some big plans for the new year, so stay tuned for that. Until then, happy holidays and enjoy game of the year!
Okay, full transparency here: I’ve been trying to write something about Genesis Noir off and on since I played it in August. As so often happens, nothing stuck. But I’m giving it one last try here because it’s an interesting game that deserves to be talked about. Since it’s possible that something else could push it off my year-end list, I want to give it its due here.
Point and click. Jazz music. Astrophysics. Genesis Noir synthesizes my tertiary interests so well that I must love it, right? You inhabit the lonely No Man, a watch peddler caught in a love affair with the alluring singer Miss Mass. When rival Golden Boy shoots Mass with the Big Bang itself, No Man sleuths through the history of the universe to find a way to save her. The vignettes take you through the cosmos’s early moments, the formation of solar bodies, the emergence of life, and beyond. You essentially get the cliff notes version of Astronomy 101, all filtered through an awe-inspiring visual style.
As we’ve found, Game Pass is a good home for arty games, and the art is absolutely the reason to play Genesis Noir. An evocative palette of deep blues and gold highlights soaks the universe in moodiness. The commitment to a few colors makes moments when the game breaks out of them so much more effective. Environments are rendered in 3D, but objects have thick outlines that ground them and trick you brain into seeing them as traditional animation. As you can tell by the pictures in this blog, Genesis Noir employs a truckload of potential camera angles and scenarios. If there is one thing to expect, it’s dynamism.
That dynamism is both Genesis Noir’s greatest strength and the element it depends on the most. Often on a minute-to-minute basis, Genesis Noir shows you a parade of cool stuff. No Man starts in a dark city fencing his timepieces, but he’ll visit the primordial ooze, a research station on Jupiter, the space-time continuum itself, and everywhere in between. Appropriately, your method of interaction with these spaces changes just as often. One section has you influence primitive organisms’ reproduction to kickstart evolution. Another is simply throwing down notes for an improv jam session. We’ve been taught by plenty of games to expect a repetitive gameplay loop stretched over many hours. The complete inversion of that ethos here is refreshing. The quick pace is not only engaging on a gameplay level, but it inspires fascination with our universe. It’s a game that seems created for me, specifically, and when Genesis Noir is at its peak, there’s nothing quite like it.
That’s not to say the game doesn’t have its follies, however. For all my excitement about the game’s pacing, it has moments of drag. Several times, a puzzle would stretch on too long or I would get stuck. Because I had been trained to expect a faster progression, these instances made me lose my patience faster than normal. The game’s minimalism in dialogue also made things more difficult sometimes, as I lacked feedback on some of the more complex puzzles. These became trial-and-error, and that’s never something you want in an adventure game. The unclear communication was felt big time in the ending choice, where my selection had the opposite outcome than I intended. One sentence explaining the decision would have made things a lot clearer and given me more ownership over the conclusion. But to paraphrase Bugs Bunny, “Ehhhhh, it’s Noir, doc. What’d you expect, a happy ending?”
The road to that ending became bumpy and prolonged with some weird turns in story. I understand what they were trying to do for the most part. The visuals and sound during this part are the most stunning in the game. However, the climax is heavily disjointed from the love triangle murder that kicked off the game. To avoid spoilers, I’ll use an analogy. Imagine if in Mario 64, after the second Bowser fight, Mario forgot about the princess and entered the skateboarding tournament with his new friend Gordy. Would I want to see that? Sure! But it’s not what I was invested in. It feels like Genesis Noir transfers to a second plot at the last half-hour, only clumsily connecting the two at the very end. During this time, the player gets a lot of supposition and theorizing about The Meaning of Life. This isn’t something I ask for in my media, especially since the conclusions reached are so often ephemeral. Ultimately, I think the storytellers overreached here, albeit in front of an unforgettable light show.
Look, if you’re an art hater, run away from Genesis Noir as fast as you can. But for anyone else, it’s a game you really should experience. The number of ideas crammed into these two hours is – pun intended – astronomical. To see a game that I might have made, done better than I ever could, is thrilling. While not every element of the piece is successful, the fact that it was executed at all is as miraculous as any one of the cosmic forces that brought us here to enjoy it.
Sometimes, finding Game Pass titles is like the candy in line for the cashier. You think “why not, I’m already here” and throw it in your download queue. That’s the case for me with Rain on Your Parade, a comedic puzzle game made by Unbound Creations. The most reductive way to describe Rain on Your Parade is Untitled Goose Game, but you’re a cloud. While the inspiration is pretty clear, I found that the game showed enough creativity and silliness to push through to the end.
So what do you do as a cloud? Well, you precipitate. When you enter a level, you will have any number of missions represented by stars. These are often things like rain on everyone, break stuff, and so on. Only a designated few are required for advancing to the next stage, with the rest being optional or even hidden. I generally did every mission I could because I’m OCD like that. Doing so will reward you with cosmetic items, which I will get to later.
Nobody start singing. I mean it.
But it’s not just rain that will fall from your cloud, Cloudy. You will unlock abilities such as snow, lightning, and tornado. Some levels will also have containers of other liquid, like oil that can be left in a trail of fire. These abilities allow for more complicated objectives like pushing a snowballed person down the stairs or burning a barn. In certain stages, your water is limited, and you must ration it out. Other times, you can pour to your heart’s content. This inconsistency bugged me a little, and I would have preferred to just keep it unlimited. There were also some issues where one power seemed the most obvious for accomplishing an objective, but it wouldn't work. Some more feedback in these cases would be welcomed, as the correct answer wasn't always clear. Heck, just let both solutions work.
As you progress through the game, however, sandbox-style missions become more of the exception than the rule. The developers must have thought the gameplay was becoming stale, because they threw in everything and the kitchen sink. Minigames include bowling, tower defense, and breakout. There’s a Metal Gear stealth mission complete with codec calls. There’s even a stage where you get points for not moving, just floating there for however long you want. Well, I didn’t say all of them were sensational hits. The variety a small stroke of genius – If the game stuck to one style throughout, it would be difficult to keep a player’s attention for all 2-3 hours. But since the game has players wondering what’s next, it retains interest a lot better. The art and modeling in the game is rudimentary, but it’s spread across so many environments and scenarios that it’s ultimately charming.
The jokes are rarely this bad, but not that far off.
Wrapping around the entire experience is the game’s tone, which may be a make-or-break point for many people. It’s completely comedic and winks at the player every chance it can get. The handful of characters that pop up love to poke fun at the fourth wall. With an affinity for older Rareware games, I can deal with it, but I know people who can’t stand that bit. The game is purely goofy, and it loves throwing in nods to other games, television, and even some YouTubers I noticed. You can put all sorts of silly hats and accessories on Cloudy, and there’s even a photo mode for whatever reason. On top of everything, there’s a Princess Bridesque framing device that I could do without. Grandpa’s jokes aren’t funny, and the in-game story is already so ridiculous that it doesn’t need the help.
It’s obvious that the developers had fun making Rain on Your Parade. The game’s lean budget is spread over so many varied moments that it’s easy to share in that fun. Its popcorn-sized levels are perfect to throw on for a few minutes while you’re waiting for your patches to download. Should you play this with kids? I’m hesitant, as most kids I’ve met hate puzzles and would rather play Minecraft. But if you can force them to stick with it, you’ll get some wholesome if unpolished entertainment. Rain on Your Parade gave me more than I expected, and that’s a pretty good deal for a candy bar.
NOTE: This blog series will proceed on a rolling basis as I play more games that I think are a good fit. I don’t have any planned right now because I’m playing Forza instead.
It takes a game like Unpacking to fully understand the possibility space of the modern games ecosystem. The title sums up, in a single word, the entire experience. In Unpacking, you take all sorts of household items out of moving boxes and place them in a home as you follow the path of one woman’s life. It’s a concept that fits into what I’ve started calling “alt-dev.” Many indie developers are pursuing games that are nonviolent, art-focused, emotional, and often at least a little queer. The fact that they can find strong audiences is a positive sign of gaming’s life as an artistic medium. Even better, in my opinion, is how a service like Xbox Game Pass puts games like Unpacking at the fingertips of potential players.
Thinking about it, moving is a real-world activity that perfectly translates to a video game difficulty curve. For almost everyone, changing homes becomes more arduous each time as they accumulate more and more crap they need to account for. So it is in Unpacking – you start as a little girl moving into her first bedroom, where your chief concern is where to situate your stuffed animals. As years go by, boxes stack higher, roommates come and go, and you’ll be shuffling items through multiple rooms as you set up your new digs. It’s been six months since I last moved, and the replication in Unpacking is intensely accurate. You can tell which objects are carried forth as sentimental objects and watch some wear down over time. Seeing someone’s life this closely is a rare intimacy. There are sparks of environmental storytelling that are exciting to find, as there is little contextualization outside of them. While I was fully convinced of my shared human experience with the main character, though, I felt more like a hired mover, someone along for the ride, than the embodiment of her. I mean, I don’t even wear bras.
Unpacking’s art style is a total success at fostering that all-important vicariousness. At least four people contributed pixel art to the game, but the depiction of objects is among the most consistent I have ever seen. There are hundreds of them, and nearly all are instantly identifiable. It taps into the recesses of your brain, which facilitates an organizational flow state. This is true 98% of the time; some objects I couldn’t identify and had to click around until the game determined they were in the right place. But to maintain such an appealing and holistic style is no mean feat.
One big tentpole of alt-dev is that the in-game characters are gamers, too. In this case, it’s some more fun storytelling. The woman is clearly a ride-or-die Nintendo fan, going as far to buy a little tray for GBA games. I chuckled when I plopped my GameCube next to my roommate’s PS2, and I was impressed how the artists could interpret around 20 pixels from the box art of The Simpsons: Hit and Run. The idea had not occurred to either me or the developers that a player might not know what a GameCube is until I saw a horrifying tweet about it. Organizing my games is something I take weird pride in, so representing that experience here struck a chord with me. It seems like eventually, she leaves behind the Gamer Lifestyle, which supposes the ridiculous premise that anything could be more important. But the biggest shock was the abandonment of alt-dev’s number one credo: Animals Are King. If you’re an indie game, falling on the wrong side of Can You Pet the Dog is marketing suicide. However, the woman never owns a pet, despite all the accompanying items that would make for interesting unpacking. I suppose allergies can’t be helped.
If I’m riffing right now, it’s because Unpacking really is as simple as its concept. Either you’re into it or you don’t care that much. People who love organizing their Animal Crossing house will get a kick out of it, but it’s not a concept with terribly wide appeal. The story won’t stir any great emotions, either, despite its enjoyable arc. As a Game Pass title, Unpacking is a nice way to spend a free afternoon, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to add it to a wish list. That’s just me, though. If you don’t mind a lot of clicking and you want to relive some of the biggest moments in your life, it’s worth a download.
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