Sometimes Jeff just sounds like such a downer. How can you hate a game with controls so sharp that simply running and jumping around is fun in and of itself? Mario Sunshine is probably the weakest of the 3D Marios, but that control scheme is just incredibly satisfying and there are a lot of really unique worlds and challenges. It does suffer from some repetitiveness and collect-a-thon-ishness, and the weird tone of the story and cut-scenes is off-putting, but there is absolutely joy to be had here.
It is a bit disappointing that there were not substantive upgrades here - I would've loved to see a full-on remake of SM64 along the lines of the treatment that Crash or Tony Hawk got recently. SM64 certainly deserved it. But the fact that this is selling gangbusters shows Nintendo knows what it's doing. I love all three of these games so I may pick this up.
I generally dislike the extra padding in these games. Boss battles, collecting stuff, weird minigames. I just want pure platforming challenge and that's all. I wish some indie dev would make a whole game in the style of the backpack-less levels from Sunshine - if they can nail the controls as well as Nintendo.
Watching the GOTY debate now. Jeff's reaction to Outer Wilds is pretty strange to me. I think he was just becoming a parent so he could have been stressed and time-bound about because of that, which could have added to the frustration. I understand about not seeing the writing - I think I read some of the writing in the museum but the significance didn't hit me for a while because I didn't realize that there were more spiral offshoots that appeared which you can read. I guess I could understand his stress about the time loop too, if he came in knowing that. I didn't, and at the beginning I found that I died far earlier than the 22-minute loop, so it took me a while to even realize it was there. In the early stages of the game 22-minutes is plenty enough to get a good look around. It's only later, when you know what you are doing, that you realize that there are specific timed challenges that can be a pain.
Here's the part I don't understand. Jeff keeps on saying how he lands on a planet and finds "nothing". But there's never nothing. He means in video-gamey terms that he was not making specific progress that he could note. But what about the sheer joy of exploration? I was not making any progress in the game for quite a while, but I was exploring, and I just kept on finding more holy-shit moments that were unlike any other game I had played. Even without the log, or the writing, or any dialogue really, I would've still wanted to explore these worlds because of the ambition and creativity that went into creating them. My mouth was agape with wonder *many* times in the first couple hours.
Ahh this game seems right up my alley! I love this recent trend of games set in colorful alien planets inspired by 50's/60's sci fi art. I hope it comes to Switch.
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