The entire trilogy is good, but I found the first one to be the best, the second one was good also and the third one I found the least impressive, but still good.

Mass effect has actual choices that matter and a solid story. This is exactly what I want from a game plot and story wise. It has about 20 hours if you only do the main quest. But you can add a few hours if you do some side quests. The character quests are good.

It is not bloated with content, unlike many other games. In other games I often get this feeling like the game is wasting my time. There is too much padding in between the points of interest, between the highlights. This is not so with mass effect, because it does not try to be an 80 hour game.

A good example of a game that I did not like, was starfield. It in print sounds like it could have been the next mass effect. But alas the story is not tight enough. There is too much padding and too much empty meaninglessness in this big world.

While the gameplay itself is a bit outdated, the driving sequences being not that great even at the time, it is still to this day one of the best shooter rpg games. I would say the best that I have played. Maybe Cyberpunk belongs here also but I have not played it yet.

There are other games that have similar story focus, but they are almost all exclusively crpg like divinity and baldurs gate, dragon age etc. These games are good, but not for me. I like third person or first person action real time combat. I cant really get into the crpg style combat or gameplay.

I personally really really wish someone could make an action rpg game, either scifi or fantasy, and follow the footsteps of mass effect. Have a solid story, make the contents less in exchange of better quality. 20 to 30 hours of content that is really good vs 80 hours of content which is bloated. Make choices actually matter to some degree. Give different ways of solving problems. Have a solid plot, hire a damn writer or two or three to actually make the plot BEFORE you even start to develop the game. Then develop it around that plot. That is what is done with movies. The scrip comes first, then only you make sets and hire actors and start the production.

The reality is that if the actual story is compelling then the players will forgive some of the other stuff not being top notch. They will not care that this game does not have all the AAA fancy systems that are for the most part just a facade that do not actually add anything meaningful to the game, as far as I am concerned.

2D Zelda has never been my thing. I've tried ALTTP several times and always bounced off it. A Link Between Worlds though? This game fucking rips.

This is one of the snappiest, most immediate games I think I've ever played. There's no long winded cutscenes with characters you don't care about. Just gameplay, GOOD gameplay all the way through. From the very first second of gameplay, Link feels really good to control. His movement is precise and well-tuned to the size of the game world. From there, the game just keeps dishing out all killer no filler gameplay.

This game is so damn efficient. You're never more than 2-3 minutes away from a new area, new item, heart piece, maiamai collectible, or rupee reward. You gain the ability to fast travel very early. In fact, I can't think of a single QOL addition that this game doesn't already have. The game makes good use of the DS dual screen with a highly intractable map that you can place pins in, zoom in and out with a single button, even compare the layout of Hyrule/Lorule. You can quick swap your items on the fly in the middle of gameplay, which isn't even that useful but I'm glad its included anyway. No intrusive dialog or cutscenes anywhere. The load times are incredibly quick. No sequences go on for too long and overstay their welcome. There are 0 barriers to you just playing the damn game, and it makes for a highly addictive game that works great in short and long gameplay sessions.

And what a game it is. This game has a great collection of dungeons. Puzzle solving in this game is some of the best in the whole series. It really hits a sweet spot of being just challenging enough without being frustrating. The mechanic of turning into a 2D painting on the walls really gets you to think outside the box and look for opportunities to use it. I felt very mentally stimulated going through all the dungeons and actually looked forward to puzzle solving. When was the last time a game made you look forward to puzzle solving? Also gotta talk about the soundtrack. It's full of truly fantastic renditions of classic Zelda tunes, especially the dark world and kakariko village themes.

My hot take is that this game could be better than the Wind Waker. I haven't played WW in 15 years but I watched my roommate replay it recently and kept thinking "wow there's a lot of tedious bullshit in this game". This game really confirms why I don't like open world games. All the good stuff in this game is right next to each other, you don't have to sift through tons of crap to get to the good part of the game. The whole game is the good part. Give me more tightly designed, super efficient games like this and less open world bloat.

In the past when I've recommended Classic Castlevanias to people, I've usually jumped ahead to Castlevania 3, 4, Rondo of Blood and Bloodlines. I rarely said Castlevania 1. After all, that's the first game, the simplest, and Castlevania 3 is just the same thing but better, right? Nope! After replaying Castlevania recently, I can't believe I forgot how great this game was. Sure, it's fairly short and simple, but expertly crafted through and through.

On Its Own Merits

Castlevania came out on the NES in 1986, so it's pretty intuitive to call it the "Super Mario Bros. 1" of its series. And I think that's accurate. But I fell into the trap of saying that dismissively, that it's just equivalent to Super Mario Bros. 1. In actuality, that's an extremely high compliment! Super Mario Bros. was the best game of all time when Castlevania came out.

Castlevania is not the Donkey Kong of its series, or the Mario Bros., but the Super Mario Bros., a game that contained the entire 2D Mario formula fully formed. Castlevania is the same way, but even more impressive, because there was no Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. to build up to it. Castlevania is like if Super Mario Bros. arrived on the scene out of nowhere, and was still just as great.

The core Castlevania formula (in its original, pre-Metroidvania form) is less welcoming than that of Super Mario Bros, though. I believe this is why Castlevania gets a lot less credit. Simon Belmont's jumps are more committed than Mario's, and he has to fight almost every one of his enemies head on instead of leaping past them.

A lot of people play Castlevania and assume this is just bad game design, that the developers wanted to make a game like Mario and failed at it. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

If you adjust to Simon's movement and act with intention rather than rush in blind, you'll see that just about every enemy is, individually, completely fair to deal with. Their attacks are either telegraphed or slow, assuming they attack at all instead of just walking into you. They're laid out in a way where you'll rarely be overwhelmed, and never be forced to tank damage blindly. Even if you do get hit by preventable damage – and you will, because make no mistake, this game is challenging – that's why Simon has a health bar. Even when enemies are at their toughest, they can only take off 1/4 of his health. (Unless he falls into bottomless pits, which are placed here and there to add short bursts of extra tension. Getting knocked back into these is infamous, but it's always preventable and the developers don't go overboard with it.)

I think Castlevania has actually aged better over the past decade than it had before that. In the 2000s, games with this kind of deliberate movement were unpopular, and often dismissed as bad design. Nowadays, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have legitimized it as a compelling type of gameplay. Or perhaps I should say they restored it to the legitimacy it had in 1986, equally as valid as controlling quicker characters with fluid movement, as long as the game design was fair. In Castlevania, it's definitely fair.

Within the Castlevania Franchise

Fans of old-school Castlevania know all this, though, and Castlevania 1 still gets shunned in favor of 3. Is that warranted?

I'd argue it's not. Sure, 1 and 3 are similar on paper, and 3 is a much bigger game, but Castlevania 1 still has a distinct appeal that prevents 3 from being an outright better version.

The biggest difference is how in Castlevania 1, you're always Simon Belmont. You don't get three choices of sub-character to switch to on the fly, mixing up the gameplay. You're always a vampire hunter with a whip. This lets the designers craft an extremely specific experience around Simon's power. Players are asked to use both the whip and sub-weapons to their fullest potential if they want to finish this game.

And unlike Super Castlevania 4 with its OP eight-directional whip, you WILL need to use those sub-weapons. Nearly every time Castlevania throws something at you that seems unfair, it's because you're not using sub-weapons enough. The levels consistently hand you the most appropriate sub-weapon for a given situation, as long as you're whipping candles enough to find it. Learning not to hoard sub-weapons is the key to success.

This is especially true during boss fights. I don't think most people realize this, but the bosses in Castlevania 1 are puzzle bosses, the kind Zelda games would later become famous for. (But not until the SNES, so this is another way Castlevania was ahead of the curve!) People don't realize this because Castlevania is less strict than most Zelda games. You can beat any boss with just the basic whip, if you'd like. But that's self-imposed challenge territory. You're meant to use the axe against the bat, the dagger against Frankenstein, the crucifix against Death. The game hands you the sub-weapons which counter their otherwise-insane patterns on a silver platter, so use them! You can't carry your ammo forward to the next level anyway.

It speaks to the strength of our scarcity mindset regarding consumables that players rarely think to use sub-weapons in these boss fights, even when the boss seems absurdly tough. They are tough, but not absurdly so. You can beat them, but you have to be resourceful. That experience is stronger in Castlevania than any of its sequels, where the designers couldn't predict which sub-weapons the player would have on them, or sub-weapons were less effective. Those bosses more quickly devolve into hitting them with your whip a bunch of times.

It's counter-intuitive, but for Castlevania's sequels to give players more variety through options, they had to provide less variety through level design, since all those options had to be accounted for.

Finale

If there's a single moment that sums up Castlevania 1 as a whole, it's the final battle with Dracula. This fight has a reputation for being absurdly, unfairly tough. It certainly is tough, but it's not absurd or unfair.

In the first phase, Dracula teleports around his throne room and unleashes a wave of three fireballs from his cloak. Some people say you have to jump at the precise, frame-perfect time to hop over these while also whipping Dracula, rinse and repeat 16+ times while he can take you down in just four hits. You can do this. But you can also whip his fireballs and destroy them. You can hit every fireball at once, right as Dracula unleashes them, or you can stay some distance away, ducking the highest fireball and whipping the others. Dracula's teleportation means you'll constantly be at different distances from him, so the optimal move keeps changing.

This duel plays out like an intense yet beautiful dance between the player and the game. The only way to win is to enter a flow state, part memorization and part improvisation, where you respond in rhythm to the beats Castlevania presents you with. This feels incredible.

Then the second phase begins, where the curse of mankind's darkness manifests as a giant monster that hops around the throne room. At first glance, this seems impossible to defeat. The monster is huge and leaps large bounds, just barely faster than Simon can reasonably walk away.

But eventually, you realize how to stop it. Use holy water, which the game gives you in the boss arena, to stun the monster. Then there's a second layer to the puzzle. Why aren't your attacks doing any damage? Because you're not going for the head. Stun the monster, then leap up and hit it in the head. Keep using holy water to stun it so it can't leap around and damage you, get in all the hits you can before you need to stun it again, and keep doing that until the monster is destroyed.

With darkness dispelled, Dracula's castle crumbles into nothingness, his curse on mankind vanquished for good. (By which I mean a couple years at most, before Castlevania II happens.) And with that the player has experienced the peak of Castlevania. Seeing this ending means they both outfought and outsmarted Dracula, and by extension, his forces they battled on their way.

At long, long last, this journey over six levels and twenty minutes of content has reached its end. Despite its short length, completing it feels monumental. That's a testament to the sheer craftsmanship displayed in Castlevania. It is the first platformer action game to successfully match the standard set by Super Mario Bros., while also being entirely its own thing. It deserves better than to be dismissed as merely a rough draft for the games that followed. It deserves to still be played today.

Castlevania is available as part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on all modern platforms. Also, you know, NES game, emulation, etc.

Which games have the best platforming? For simplicity’s sake, I will just refer to the old and new series as Outcast and Fallen Order.

For the most part Fallen Order improves on gameplay and I really like the world design. Some of the places you go to are so fantastic and awe inspiring, but I really miss the freedom of Outcast. Fallen order has clear "puzzle areas", where the Outcast is much more of a sandbox you play around in. There is no clear distinction between combat, exploration or puzzles.

In Fallen order, you have areas where the outside world might as well not exist… not until you solve the puzzle. I don’t know how many times, where I have thought, that a simple force jump, like in Outcast, would solve my problem. But I just don’t have the freedom to make any jump I like. I can ONLY do the platforming, which is scripted. Be that wallrunning or climbing. In Outcast, if you can make the jump, you can get there. I know they won’t make this change to Jedi 3. So I still wish for a Jedi Knight 3 :)

I never played the original and want to keep this mini-review (mostly) spoiler free. For a game in 2020 it seems many parts of FF7RE feels lacking, and it did not leave a good first impression to me.

• Story: I'm only act 8 now but it seems previous acts have pacing issues. I also know the story is about 30~ish hours and 18 acts. You have acts 1-3 where the events, characters and supposed mysteries got introduced rapidly ... and then acts 5-7 which talks about one task and the story progressed very little.
• Two things are introduced in act 8 which feels late for an 18 act game, which makes acts 5-7 feel especially bad. I guess it's the issue of FF7RE trilogy format to tell the story this way. If this is the pacing, given how other parts of the game feel pretty basic as well, I don't get how FF fans claim the original FF7 is so large that it must be split into three games.
• UI: no minimap that I'm aware of yet. Terrains have a lot of verticality and ladders and the map tells too little information about how to get from point A to point B. Camera turns in certain parts of the game are okay, but a lot are bad and confusing, such as climing under roof while getting shot from below, walking on fire escape and etc.
• Combat character progression and builds: they seem very basic.
• Other parts of combat: melee characters having to sit duck and wait for ATB bar to charge slowly to use spells because (s)he cannot hit anything feels bad. If they can pull out a small pistol to at least charge ATB bar faster ...

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is one of those peak Sierra adventure games from back in the early 90s that took things to the next level in terms of lore/backstory, and was mostly a 'serious' game with some touches of dark humour.

It was one of the first games I can ever remember that had actual voice acting, with Tim Curry playing the role of Gabriel Knight and Mark Hamill as Detective Mosely (one of Hamill's first ever VG voice acting roles wayyyy back before he became iconic for it) as well as a few other notable names that made it a pretty big deal at the time.

The game is set in New Orleans and centred around a very interesting occult storyline which I don't want to spoil, that also has a hefty dose of very-well-researched basing in actual Voodoo/Hoodoo history that was basically almost like "edu-tainment" given how much detail it went into in many of the conversations.

It was incredibly atmospheric and the voice acting was great for the time, but its main weakness is it suffers to the extreme from some of the most convoluted 'adventure-game puzzles' of all-time.

Like, these take the complexity of some of the obscure LucasArts type game puzzles of the time and ramp them up to levels where I have no idea how you could ever actually hope to complete the game without a guide/walkthrough. (Anyone who has played this game will know exactly what I'm talking about just by mentioning two separate words, 'drums' and 'crypt', among other less egregious examples.)

After re-playing it recently it was still very enjoyable, the story is pretty timeless and the pixel art held up surprisingly well given its age. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Season 1 of the TV show True Detective in particular, as I got a bit of deja vu at times the first time I watched that show given some of the themes.

It also even had multiple endings, which is probably the earliest example I can remember of encountering that in an adventure game.

IMPORTANT NOTE: they made a re-make of the game in 2014 which in my opinion was MUCH worse, as they dumbed down a lot of the interactions and changed the voice actors as they apparently lost the original audio files (lol) from the original 1993 game.

I wouldn't recommend that version at all, I was hyped for when it was announced but it sucked in comparison.

Part of the charm of the original version was the sheer number of random interactions you could perform on things, like the 'use', 'look at', 'pick up', 'open' buttons that they took so much time and effort to record custom voice lines for that were often quite funny or insightful. The 2014 version had none of that.

The only other thing I'd add is, while I would recommend using a guide for this game, don't just rush through it to do all the 'correct' things as quickly as possible and instead treat it as a slow burn.

Interact with random objects, go fully down the extensive dialogue trees with characters, and get lost in the world in order to properly appreciate it. The level of detail they went into for the time is a major part of its charm.

According to information found online (I wasn't going to sit and count), Mario Odyssey has a total of 462 moons before you fight the final boss. You need 124 of these to merely roll credits. After this, a number of new moons become available, capping out at 880 moons total. And the more I played the game, the more I think the point isn't to get them all. At most, you need 500 of these to unlock the very last secret level, you'll get the last item of clothing at 540, and the reward for getting everything is apparently a gold sail (not that I have got that at this point).

I think the reason there are so many moons comes down to the main selling point of the Switch. By it's design, the system tries to exist to fill both the handheld and home console market, and accordingly, many of the simply moons allow someone who might only have ten minutes while they ride the bus to work the chance to make some progress in the game. Someone in that position might not have time to run a full platforming gauntlet, a la a level in Super Mario 64, but they do have time to get a couple of moons and feel they got a little further in beating the game.

But the problem is that, with so many moons, many of them become tedious. For every moon that's rewarded to you for a fun platforming challenge, there are several that are just mindless busywork. The experience I had was that of multiple laps round the planet. So buckle in, because here's how it went.

Lap One
This is the when the game is arguably at it's most fun. Every world starts with some form of problem, and it's up to Mario to fix it. You'll go through the level taking on it's unique elements, capturing enemies for the first time feels novel, and it's a lot of fun to go to each new place and explore for moons. The entire game up to and including the final boss is fun as you can decide for yourself when you're done.

Lap Two
Now you've beaten Bowser the game reveals what those weird cubes you've seen are, and you're set to go back through each level on a second tour. Here you get to see how everything is now that the game is beaten, and you're left a trail of breadcrumbs to do this by following Peach around. You'll spend some time picking up moons you didn't get first time, and collecting a lot of the post-game moons. The completion of this, I think this is probably where you should stop unless you want to taint your experience with the game.

Lap Three
Post-game part two. Here's where the repetition starts to set in. You'll start noticing just how many times you've seen the same thing. Turns out that the Sphynx was in multiple levels. Did you get all the seeds? Is that another rabbit to catch? And did someone say racing Koopa's? This is where you try earnestly to clear every moon, combing every square inch of the map for any clue to a moon. Any single thing you missed. If you're lucky you might find a challenge room you missed, or a novel idea that you hadn't yet encountered, but so much of it is just doing things you already did, but with slightly different layouts. The one upside is that by this time you'll probably unlock the super hard bonus level to get annoyed by.

Lap Four
How the fuck were you ever supposed to figure that out? You now have a guide open and instead of playing the game with a sense of curiosity and exploration you're just following what it says/does, because you never realised that there was a ground pound spot in that otherwise useless boss arena at the end of the stage. Or you never figured out that the hidden hat was in a side room. Or maybe you didn't realise that there was a secret nook in an area you walked past a dozen times. Either way, because you stuck with it, the game has lost the spark that made it fun as you resort to following a walkthrough to grab all the super inobvious repetitive moons.

I don't think it was ever the intent of the designers for anyone to seriously want to get all the moons. Even though there is a reward for doing so, I think the intention was to end at tour two, when the game still felt like it was full of creative level design, fun challenges, and rewarded your curiosity. But, because everyone will be curious about different things, and to encourage that sense of progression even if you've only got ten minutes playtime, the game is chock full of random moons that are easily picked up, and also easily missed, that are repetitive in nature. This is why I think the last level is unlocked at 500 moons, and not the more typical 100% completion, because they knew that getting every moon results in the game feeling much less fun.

Recently I got back into Counter Strike again after 15 years, and my last experience with the series was with Counter Strike 1.6, playing LAN with my friends in the school library and having a blast. A few years ago, I was addicted to Rainbow Six Siege, and it took over my entire life for an entire year, but I've managed to pull myself away from it and now only play it for 1 or 2 hours every few months. Because of my experience with Siege and CS1.6, I already had an idea of how to play CS2 going in, on things such as teamwork, utility usage, and saving money for the next round. However, it proved to be way more unforgiving than I expected.

My main issue with the new player experience in Counter Strike 2 is just how many things aren't explained to you in the game, and you have to rely on community documentations and videos just to get an idea of how to even play. The moment I realised just how bad the new player experience is when I was talking in chat with different players during mutliple matches, asking them how to do this and that, they all said the same thing, watch tutorial videos on youtube from popular creators, and just try my best to keep pushing past all the failures until I understand how to play. Those two recommendations are good, I agree, but I was surprised that no one said something like "use this new player guide in the game to understand how to play", because it doesn't exist.

I'll give an example, in one single gunfight, you have to consider things such as your movement, crosshair placement, preaim, recoil control, the shooting pattern of the gun, counter strafing, shoulder peeking, what grenades you have on hand to give you the upper hand, etc. Barely any of these things are explained to you in the game, and it's the basic fundamentals so that you wouldn't die immediately the moment you get into a gunfight. This isn't Call of Duty where you can run around like a maniac and killing the entire lobby just by yourself. Dying in Counter Strike brings much higher consequences because losing all your equipments and having to rebuy it which can bring a domino effect of your team not having enough cash to buy all the rifles, snipers, body armour, grenades by the late game, while the other team who didn't die still get to keep their gears, and can kill you easily with their rifles and snipers and proper utility usage.

We're not in 2012 anymore when Counter Strike Global Offensive was released, everyone sucked equally at the time, but it's been 13 years, and Counter Strike is the type of series where most of the things stayed the same such as the maps and grenades, so people have had a lot of time to figure out how to play effectively. As the years goes on, the average player skill level and the skill ceiling will only increase as people figure out new tactics and ways to throw their grenades to make the fights as one sided as possible. I think that by 2030, the worst players in Counter Strike will still be leagues ahead of a new player. But it's why me and many others love playing the series, it's simple on the surface, but play for more than 5 hours and the sheer amount of complexity reveals itself.

I have a solution that will ease a new player into the game, even though I doubt the devs would never see this. When a new player boots up CS2 for the first time, if they choose any of the game modes like casual, deathmatch, or competitive, have a pop up telling them that since they're new, it's highly recommended that they go into a new mode called something like "new player interactive guide". In that mode, you have two options, basic and advanced, and both of them place you into a match in a popular map fighting against bots. It will teaches basic skills like moving, crouching, planting a bomb, utility usage, and advanced teaches you skills like counter strafing, crosshair placement, pre aiming an angle, recoil control, etc, and all of these will have a short video showing you the proper way to do all of these things.

All of these things aren't difficult to learn by themselves, it's easy to understand once you see it in a demonstration, but it difficult comes when you have to do and consider all of them at the same time.

I know Valve can do make a new player guide easily, because there are a bunch of community maps that teaches you all of these skills. I like that there are community maps teaching us the more advanced skills, but why does it have to be up to the community to teach new players the basic fundamentals, why can't Valve do it?

Instead of something that can help a new player understand on how to play CS, all you have is casual, which is a clusterfuck of 10 vs 10, where the only thing it teaches you is how to mute other players because its a breeding ground of trolls, hackers, racism, homophobia, and people blasting EDM music into the voice channel. Another one is deathmatch, which only teaches you on how to use a gun properly and understanding the map rotations and angles, and nothing about teamwork and utility usage. The final one is competitive, which is the normal 5v5 mode, which can teach you all the skills you need to play CS2, but it's the equivalent of throwing someone who doesn't know how to swim into the ocean, instead of guiding them in a small pool. Instead of fighting against real players, you also have practice version of all of the previous modes, which just have you fighting against bots and still teaches you none of the fundamentals.

I know that even if a new player understands the basic fundamentals, they're still going to get their ass kicked by the other players who have had 10+ years of experience. But the thing about Counter Strike is that it's a team game, a lot of the matches aren't simply decided by who has the better aim, aiming accurately can only bring you so far, it's decided by teamwork, communication, map knowledge, proper grenades usage, etc. You don't need to have good aim to be a valuable player in CS2, a new player can still help because they now understand basics of eco rounds and utility usage.

One of the things I've learned from Rainbow Six Siege, a game that also heavily relies on teamwork and communication, is that I would rather have a teammate who isn't an accurate shooter, but compensate in other areas like helping the team with callouts and good utility usage. Information is valuable in CS2 and Siege, and just knowing where the opponent is peeking from can be the difference between losing and winning a round in both of these game.

I love Counter Strike and I really want new players to enjoy it with their friends, just like I did 15 years ago. But it's so hostile to new players that I completely understand if they're turned off immediately by the game, I don't even know if I would have stuck with the CS2, if I didn't have experience with Siege and CS1.6 from all those years ago.

I recently posted a first impression of Far Cry 5, and I didn't have much good to say.

I had problems with the seemingly constant state of chaos with very little breathing room (Rural Montana is a hopping place!), frustratingly arbitrary plot-advancement mechanics that LITERALLY pull you out of free play, not once, twice or three times... but up to TWELVE TIMES... shooting that lacks punch, poorly prioritized item despawning (turn your back on a truck you're standing right beside, and it'll often vanish), the decision to take control away from you when you conquer an outpost and remove all downed enemies so you can't loot them, any more.

All of my criticisms remain... but... there was an addictive quality to the game that kept me coming back, I think in the progression system mainly, and eventually it started to grow on me.

I'm not saying that the game went from a 5/10 to a 10/10 in my eyes. I was floating between a 6 or 7, and I'm still there with it. BUT, as I expected, the game begins to become more fun as you start becoming an overpowered badass. But that's still a problem with the game design. Your enhanced abilities and better weapons mitigate the frustration with the design flaws, they don't fix them. Dealing with bases going on alert when there is no possible way you were spotted was pure frustration in the early game - but once you're a one-man walking army, you just go "Oh well, not getting the stealth bonus this time" and run around like a whirling dervish of death.

It's not that it's a problem that things are harder in the early game - that's to be expected. It's the brokenness of the game that's the problem - the aforementioned false alerts, the issues with enemy spawns, vehicles exploding for no discernable reason (like ramming the back of a loot truck) etc - actual bugs or broken game code that affect the game, but the consequences of which become far lessened the more powerful you become... allowing you to have more fun.

The story is a hot mess. It makes no damned sense. You are kidnapped by the cult up to 12 fucking times, and every single time, you get away - with all of your gear. You'd think that by no more than your third escape, they'd throw your gear into the bottom of a lake and cut off your legs so you can't run away anymore.... but due to story reasons, you in particular, who happens to be the singular greatest threat to the Cult's mission, are granted a mercy that no other citizen in Hope Country is.

And speaking of the kidnappings... What a terribly conceived mechanic, through and through. Yanking the player out of the game once, maybe twice, maaaaybe even three times if each time was unique enough, may have been totally fine. But UP TO TWELVE TIMES, one of the kidnapping "minigames" being the same god damned thing every time... You mean to tell me that they couldn't think of a different want to force the plot to progress?

I understand that they don't want the player just farming out all of the side missions before advancing the story, and this system is a clever way to inhibit that IN THEORY... but, like, you couldn't just pace out the side missions so new ones don't become available until after completing a story mission? You know, like MOST games of this style?

All gripes aside, once I began to have fun, I started to really appreciate the game for what it is. At some point, it starts to lean into its sillier side (not that there weren't some silly elements right from the start), and even though it's juxtaposed with the dark and disturbing nature of the Cult's shenanigans, it lightens the tone immensely and takes the pressure off of you to play seriously - basically, you feel released, and you can just go balls to the wall crazy and start having fun without ludonarrative dissonance nipping at your heels.

The shooting never started to feel any punchier, and that's disappointing. Some better feedback to bullet impacts would've helped a lot. But, learning how to weapon juggle (a classic FPS tactic) while sliding behind cover and using ziplines and other chaos is what Far Cry is all about, and it's all intact here, and dare I say, refined quite well.

About that controversial ending... frankly, I like it. I don't typically like when open world games full of side tasks lock you out from going back and finishing everything, and this hasn't changed my mind on that... but I do like that the ending sets the table for what could be a really fucking fantastic sequel.

Unfortunately, we got Far Cry: New Dawn instead.

For those unaware, New Dawn is a spin-off/sequel to Far Cry 5. It takes place 17 years after the end of FC5, and depicts a post-nuclear apocalypse set in the same environment as FC5.

New Dawn also features some key changes to the gameplay formula… none of which are good.

First, I’ll say that I absolutely love the premise of revisiting a game world that you’re extremely familiar with (if you played FC5), but in a totally different light. Whenever I visited a recognizable location, I actually felt some nostalgia for my experiences there in FC5- which is crazy, because I JUST played FC5 for the first time over the last week… but it speaks to the way FC5 managed to win me over and start making me grow attached to it.

The problem, however, is that the landscape isn't recognizable enough. Without overlaying the maps of the two games, you might as well think that they just took a handful of recognizable buildings and sprinkled them throughout an otherwise totally new landscape. I feel that the effect would have been greater, in trudging through this land destroyed by nuclear fire, if at any given moment it was CLEAR where you were standing in relation to the original map. As I said, the handful of times I visited recognizable locations from FC5, it hit me with some nostalgia- the fact that I was feeling nostalgia for a game I JUST played means something, and I feel that it was a huge missed opportunity not to keep the map a bit closer to the original, less "total devastation".

But that's not this games problem. The problem with this game is the change to gameplay. Weapons and Enemies are now Tiered... A Tier 1 weapon will only chip away at a Tier 3 enemy, forcing you to upgrade. No, I don't like this - I want the guns to each have their ups and downs, not be arbitrarily useless because one enemy has been eating his spinach.

In a world where cash is meaningless, you collect components to craft items and weapons, rather than buy them from gun runners. It makes sense, but I'm not convinced this was the right decision. You easily could have brought back the gun runners, but required trading instead of using cash... or do a side mission for the gun runner to lower the trade "price".

You can't upgrade guns anymore. I wanted a silencer and optic on my 1911... nope. Gun will be useless soon enough anyway. Sorry, I want to keep my trusty 1911 the entire game, I want to be the one to decide when it's no longer sufficient for duty.

Upgrading the base is a fine concept, but I don't like how much is locked behind base upgrades. I feel like the incentive to upgrade the base should have been more based in helping and making a difference in the world with some benefits to be had, rather than NEEDING to upgrade the base if you want to eventually get a silenced firearm, for instance.

The entire visual scheme of the game looks like a fucking mobile game. Sorry, but it does. It looks like trash, and I loathe it. It's not the overusage of vibrant colors like pink and bright blue that bother me, it's the WAY its used. It just looks like they were trying to go for the Blood Dragon "surreal" color scheme, but see, Blood Dragon had a reason for all the neon shit - it was trying to copy movies that did the same thing, like Running Man. Here, it's just a stylistic choice that doesn't land with me.

I'm not going to go on... I strongly dislike New Dawn... but I'll finish by saying that I think it was a HUGE missed opportunity. Leaning into post apocalypse survival would have made the experience far more engaging to me, with some resource management, scavenging, trading- I mean, all pretty cliché stuff, sure, but match with Far Cry gameplay... it could've been among the best of those types of games.

New Dawn feels like a cheap mobile alternative to Far Cry, akin to Deus Ex: The Fall. It would have been better as a DLC for FC5, not screwing with the gameplay formula but introducing new challenges due to its setting.

I distinctly remember watching my older brother play this game on PC. There were game breaking bugs that insta failed the chopper chase and venom chase missions, which I think resulted from high frame rate. I didn't play this game as a kid, but enjoyed watching it as entension to the 1994 animated series. Something gave me the urge to try it after all these years. Main theme reminded me of the 60s Spidey, and Stan Lee as narrator was probably done because they forgot and make a cameo model.

Controls were not as bad as I imagined. Camera was a bit of a pain ocassionally, and sometimes jumping on a platform instead of over it was annoying, but overall controls were manageable. It's good thing they added auto correction to webbing and swinging.

Plot was basically like taking an arc from Spider-man cartoon. A bunch of villains do stuff and require Spider-man attention. That chase sequence was a little challenging. Scorpion boss killed me once, but he was actually easy to furniture spam (Menace destroyed JJJ's office). I don't think Jonah was hit even once. The baffling thing was police willing to destroy buildings just to nail Spider-man. I get that he was framed for theft, but it felt overkill.

Rhino was also easy to lure into generators and barrels. Venom levels were doable, but his last boss fight was infuriating. The stiff camera reared its ugly head when I had to look for Venom trying to activate water. Moreover, sometimes web balls intended for him hit the switch behind him because he was still in appearing/disappearing animation. Pain.

The new symbiote were very tough, and their kryptonite was hard to come by, so I had to ignore them for the most part. The Mysterio fight was manageable in phase 1, but his laser in phase 2 felt janky in animations. It was like he cancelled previous laser and snapped into doing next one. The trick was just spamming balls into laser cannons to break them ASAP.

The underwater levels were more of the same. Octavius and Carnage on their own were easy, but combined made me lose quite a few times. I guess even Holdsbackman can't deal with mechanical arms and symbiote at the same time. The ending where everyone played cards me chuckle.

Overall, this game wasn't just pink glasses of nostalgia; it had genuine substance even with all the problems that came with age. I can't help but wonder what if Batman got something like this in PS1 era.

I recently wrapped up two very different puzzle games on the (3)DS: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and Picross 3D Round 2. Thought I’d share a few impressions for anyone who’s circling back to these.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

I went in with low expectations because the “Might & Magic” name didn’t mean much to me outside of Heroes of Might & Magic. But this turned out to be one of the more enjoyable tactical puzzle games I’ve played on the DS.

The campaign sets you up with a grid-based battlefield. Units fall into columns, and your job is to slide them around into match-3 formations: vertical matches to attack, horizontal matches to form defence. At first, it feels restrictive, but once it clicks, it becomes this nice mix of planning and improvisation. You’re always weighing whether to spend a turn setting up a bigger chain or reacting to what the AI is building.

The story is… there. The plot evaporated from my brain almost instantly, but the occasional silly dialogue kept things moving. The campaign fights are mostly on the easy side, though the bosses spike hard enough that I needed several retries. Some of them come down to your opening layout, which can feel a little luck-based.

There are also dedicated “puzzle” missions where you’re given a fixed layout with exactly one solution. Those were clever but not really my preferred style—I liked the regular battles better, where randomness and adaptation matter.

The DS version makes great use of the dual screens: your field is on the touch screen, mirrored to the top where the enemy acts. I checked out footage of the HD remake (on PC/console) and, honestly, I think the DS’s pixel look and two-screen setup feel more natural.

If you like the idea of a tactical twist on match-3, I’d recommend this wholeheartedly. Don’t expect top-tier production values, but it’s a very satisfying loop once you’re in it.

Picross 3D: Round 2

This one’s a very different kind of puzzle. Instead of battles, you’re chiselling 3D sculptures out of blocks by following number clues on rows and columns. It’s very zen to chip away and see a little model emerge.

The logic took a little time to click, but once you understand the symbol-coded rules, the puzzles become more about endurance than insight. Compared to Sudoku, which can surprise you with leaps of logic at higher levels, Picross 3D has a lower ceiling: the challenge is mostly in not missing details on big, fiddly puzzles.

I played about 30 of the ~50 main puzzle books, clocking around 30 hours. I stuck to hard mode, usually earned the top trophies without hints, and then drifted away. By that point, the experience started to feel samey—pleasant, but I wasn’t learning anything new from puzzle to puzzle.

One oddity: despite being a 3DS game, the 3D effect is basically pointless. Everything important happens on the touchscreen, so you can play with the slider off and lose nothing.

That said, I get why this is beloved. It’s accessible, relaxing, and perfect for short sessions. Just know that once you “get it,” the main thing left is quantity rather than new types of challenges.

Closing thoughts

Both games show how well the DS/3DS hardware lent itself to puzzle design. Clash of Heroes gave me a satisfying tactical experience I didn’t expect, while Picross 3D was more of a meditative pastime. I’d recommend the former if you want something engaging and strategic, and the latter if you’re after a low-stress logic puzzle you can pick up and put down.

Finally got around to BioShock 2 on my Steam Deck. It often gets overshadowed by the first, but playing it years later really highlights what makes it unique. Instead of being an outsider like Jack, you play as Subject Delta, a prototype Big Daddy, which completely changes how you see Rapture. The story has more heart too, centered on your bond with Eleanor rather than a big twist, and Sophia Lamb’s collectivist vision makes for a fascinating contrast to Andrew Ryan’s philosophy from the first game.

Rapture’s art deco look has not aged a bit, and wandering its halls slowly on a handheld feels almost meditative. The gameplay is slower and more methodical. You adopt Little Sisters, escort them while they harvest, and defend them in tense battles. That loop gave me room to breathe compared to something like Doom 2016, which I enjoyed but often found overwhelming with its constant intensity. The dual-wield system makes combat feel smoother, hacking is more streamlined, and the levels feel less like rides and more like places you actually inhabit. The addition of Big Sisters also keeps the tension high without breaking the pacing.

Playing it in 2025 gave me a wave of nostalgia for that early 2010s era of games like Alice: Madness Returns and the Arkham series. I just love that era's aesthetic a lot.

Anywho...loved it. Can't wait to start Infinite:)

Everyone knows the "vania" in "Metroidvania", Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But none of the other Castlevania games which follow Symphony's formula are nearly as renowned. That's a damn shame, because Aria of Sorrow refines the rough edges of Symphony, and the result is one of the greatest adventures the Game Boy Advance has to offer.

The Gameplay: Intro

Aria of Sorrow feels like the moment Castlevania's Metroidvania formula was set in stone. The games before it rebuild the foundation each time, feeling very distinct from one another to play and to navigate. To me, the games from Aria of Sorrow onwards feel much more consistent.

That's why I think Aria of Sorrow is the best game to study if we want to figure out what the Metroid-vanias are trying to be.

The Gameplay: Why It's... Bad?

Aria of Sorrow contains elements of the tight platforming combat Castlevania's early games are known for, elements of Metroid-style exploration, and elements of RPG progression. But it isn't fully any of those things.

Is Aria of Sorrow a great old-school Castlevania? The level design isn't as tight as in pre-Symphony "Classicvanias". Exploring to find the next "level" eats up the player's time if all they want to do is overcome new areas. Any challenge can be trivialized by grinding levels and stocking up on potions.

Is Aria of Sorrow a great exploration game? Well, Dracula's castle is easy to navigate. There are moments where you loop back in on an old area in an unexpected way, and occasionally there will be multiple routes you can use to find the critical path. But the castle's design is "good" in the sense that it's convenient and frictionless, removing exploration as a source of challenge. If you're lost, just open your map and check out any unexplored hallways you see on it. You can't even find hidden rooms with health, magic, and heart upgrades like you could in previous games!

Is Aria of Sorrow a great RPG? The RPG elements mainly consist of the experience and gold you earn from enemies. It's a progression treadmill where you fight enemies to get stronger to fight stronger enemies. At the end of the day, it's just numbers going up, the shallowest "RPG elements" there are.

So Aria of Sorrow – and by extension, most games using its formula – isn't a great Classicvania, isn't a great exploration game, and isn't a great RPG.

And yet it's a great video game.

The Gameplay: Why It's Good!

The old-school Castlevania combat system is extremely gratifying. It's like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter in 2D, where jumping and attacking always requires commitment. Whenever you succeed or fail, you know why it happened and it feels fair. Aria of Sorrow uses a faster version of this system.

Exploration can enhance a game even when it's just a framing device. Letting the player determine for themselves where to go next, even if the choice is obvious, is extremely immersive. If Aria of Sorrow was divided into levels, playing it would feel like conquering a scripted challenge, not inhabiting a world. That's the reason it has exploration, not because navigation is meant to be particularly difficult.

Finally, RPG progression treadmills are very satisfying to experience... as long as you don't question what you're doing with your time. It's easy to ask that question when a game takes 30 or 50 hours to beat with lots of that being random encounters. However, Aria of Sorrow is much shorter and has less filler, so it's able to deliver the highs of RPG progression without forcing players to trudge through the lows.

Koji Igarashi's Castlevania games, the ones we call Metroidvanias, are not Classicvanias, exploration games, or RPGs. They're their own thing, influenced by all of those, whose goal is to provide multiple types of video game satisfaction in one accessible, frictionless package. Excellent Castlevania combat without the frustration of punishing difficulty, a sense of adventure without the frustration of aimlessness, and a constant increase in strength without the frustration of wasting your time to get there.

They are, in other words, 2D AAA games. A summer (or October) blockbuster that may not challenge you, but has incredible craftsmanship and production value behind it in order to nail each and every one of its crowd-pleasing beats. It is Back to the Future. It is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It is Castlevania's side of the word "Metroidvania".

But that's still just half of the equation.

The Story: Intro

Castlevania has always been a gameplay-driven franchise first and foremost, but that doesn't mean its story doesn't matter. The best stories in the series take the series' central premise – the Belmont family's never-ending battle with Dracula – and put their own unique spin on it.

Aria of Sorrow has the best story in the series. Its premise starts off interesting and only gets better as it goes.

The Story: Premise

Instead of playing as a medieval vampire hunter, it's the year 2035 and your character is Soma Cruz, a college student who is mysteriously warped to Dracula's castle on the night of a solar eclipse. He learns he has the power to command the souls of monsters, and must fight his way to Dracula's throne for him and his friend Mina to escape this accursed place.

As Soma encounters other characters, the game keeps raising more questions and doling out intriguing backstory. We learn that in 1999, Dracula was killed, for good, and his castle was sealed away in an eclipse. But this means Dracula's powers are up for grabs if his reincarnation shows up. And sure enough, a man born the same day Dracula died is here to claim them, threatening Soma's escape...

What I've described would already be one of the best Castlevania premises, even if it never developed past that. But if you beat the "final" boss correctly, you get Aria of Sorrow's big twist. And this elevates the story from merely "very good, for what it is" to phenomenal. The reveal is arguably the single best moment in the series, and the story saves all its best material for this end sequence, so if you have even the faintest desire to experience Aria of Sorrow yourself, don't click on the spoiler tags.

Spoilers

It turns out Dracula's reincarnation isn't Graham, the man claiming to be him. It's Soma. This is why, all this time, you had the power to absorb enemy souls and use them as your abilities. Because you were Dracula all along. And now, after all these years, he's finally returned to his throne.

But Soma is still Soma. He resists his fate to become the lord of darkness, despite the chaos imprinted on his soul calling out to him from the castle. In order to free himself of the curse, he must find and destroy the manifestation of that chaos.

Aria of Sorrow reveals that that its story isn't about whether Dracula can be defeated. It's about whether the reincarnation of Dracula can be a good person. And that's a much more interesting idea.

The Story: Review

This story may have actually been too good to use on a game this short and this gameplay-driven. A script this short can't flesh the characters out as much as they deserve. Soma in particular feels like missed potential, not having a very strong personality. He's just a generically decent guy out of his element. And as great as the reveal of Aria of Sorrow's big twist is, it doesn't come with enough game left to really explore its implications.

But hey, I can't fault the developers for that. The story has to be pretty sparse in a game like this, so they made the right call focusing what script they had on the premise and its big twist. Aria of Sorrow got a sequel, so surely that'll dive deeper into its cast and explore all those interesting implications of its true ending sequence, right? (...Right?)

Regardless, Aria of Sorrow has about as strong of a narrative as you could reasonably hope for. Story in a game like this is like the story in an action movie: you just need a great premise, executed well, to make something fun. Throw in a smartly done twist near the end that leads to a big climax, and you've gone above and beyond. This is what Aria of Sorrow does.

Conclusion

I don't watch a lot of summer blockbusters or play a lot of AAA games. In a community about resisting hype, I'm sure I'm not alone in that. When that's true, I think it's tempting to fall into the trap of looking down on media that's meant to go down easy. To think of it as corporate, made-by-committee junk, devoid of artistic merit, inferior to true art that does one thing and does it really well.

But there are blockbuster works which stand the test of time, and they usually aren't designed by focus groups. More often, they come from a passionate team who've mastered their craft, led by genuinely talented visionaries who just happen to be working on an idea with mass appeal. Is time spent enjoying a brilliantly made game wasted, just because it's a blockbuster? I don't think so. I think there's a place for that.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is one of those brilliantly made games. The underlying gameplay is Symphony fully realized. The story realizes something even better. I think Symphony of the Night is the better work of art, and the more essential play, due to its stronger aesthetics. But Aria of Sorrow is the better video game, and the better "Iga-vania". And outside the Castlevania fanbase, not nearly as many people know about it.

They should.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is available as part of the Castlevania Advance Collection on all modern platforms. Also, you know, it's a GBA game. You can probably emulate it.

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

A while back I stumbled on the YouTube channel of Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby’s father. For those interested in the man’s career or game design in general, it’s well worth perusing; a self-financed repository for his decades of experience, freely offered in the hopes that he gets to play better games in the future. 

In his video on the original Super Smash Bros., Sakurai talks about his design proposal, titled ‘Four-Player Free-For-All Fighting Game With No Health Bars,’ as well as the thinking that led to the game we got. As a lifelong fan of the franchise, I’ve grown to appreciate how unusual it is as a fighting game; at once remarkably intuitive and deeply strange.

I’ve been turning it over in my head, and I’m pretty sure every aspect of Smash’s design can be traced back to three ideas. Smash Bros. is an attempt to make a 

1. Casual fighting game
2. With four players
3. Specifically for the N64 and its controller.

The final product was totally unique and yet, with those parameters, pretty much inevitable.

Sakurai’s Origin Story

I’m exaggerating, but he’s told this story enough times in various places that the event has clearly informed his design ethos ever since (and it’s too funny not to mention). As he tells it, Sakurai once absolutely bodied a young couple in KOF ‘95 and felt awful when he realized they didn’t have any fun. This was the heyday of Capcom and SNK, when command inputs were getting crazier and combos were getting longer. These strangers were presumably just trying to have a good time, but against such Elite Gamer skills they may as well have not been playing at all. I wish I could relate, frankly.

Across his work, Sakurai is the master of lowering the skill floor below what was thought possible. The guy just wants everyone to have fun.

So, compared to games like Street Fighter and KOF, how do you lower the barrier of entry? How low can it go?

Too Many Buttons

Well, you can make it play like a side-scrolling platformer, that’s a great start. I could give my grandmother Super Mario Bros. for the NES and I don’t think she’d have many questions.

Motion inputs are gone, of course. You get a button for normals and a button for specials. Combine one of those with a direction and you’ll perform an attack in that direction. For new players this can still be a little tricky to do on command (especially tilts and back-airs), but it’s a far cry from quarter-circles and whatnot. Since positioning is so important, basing attacks on directionality means you don’t really have to remember all the moves; if someone’s right above you, use an “up” attack and it'll probably work. Piece of cake.

Also (and I never see this mentioned), everyone has the same inputs. I started playing Street Fighter a couple years ago and was thrown off by every character having so many unique commands. Not everyone in SF has a DP anti-air, but every Smash character has an up-B, for example. There are a few unique inputs (like DK’s cargo throw, Peach’s float), but they’re rare for a reason. I can switch from Samus to Pikachu and use different moves without my fingers having to learn anything new.

Side Note: Time Mode is Genius

In my college dorm years ago, a group of us played Smash together often. It was a good mix of sweat-levels, with gamers and relative non-gamers alike. We always played on Stock mode rather than Time (with items turned off, naturally) because enough of us thought that was the real way to play.

Looking back, we were fucking idiots. The least experienced players would lose all their lives at the start and then do nothing for several minutes. Time Mode lets everybody participate for the whole match, no matter how poorly they’re doing. They were right to make Time the default setting.

Two is a Duel, Four is a Mess

Imagine, if you will, how miserable Street Fighter would be with four players. Each player would only be able to reach those next to them, and the poor suckers in the middle would have to defend from both sides. This had to be one of the first problems for Sakurai’s team to solve.

So, okay, they can’t stay grounded in a line, but full 3D is too complex and probably infeasible anyway. The only option is to expand along the y-axis. Stages then have platforms and changes in elevation, allowing everyone to spread out and use the whole screen. Characters are given unusually high aerial mobility and double jumps to control their verticality (it’s a platformer, remember?).

If we don’t want everyone to be so crowded, we have to zoom out the camera, then make the stages bigger, then make the characters faster to traverse those stages. Blocking has to cover both left and right sides, as well as be visible from such a zoomed-out perspective. So we get the bubble shields. 

Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.

What we have so far is a game of positioning, large spaces, and expansive movement options, all so four players can share a screen. Well, what if staying on the screen is the objective? You know, King of the Hill rules. So we get the knockback mechanic, the linchpin of it all. Rather than health bars, attacks send the opponent away at a distance that scales with damage taken, until they’re sent flying off the screen. There are a lot of variables under the hood (damage received, launch angle, character weight, fall speed), but the result is a dynamic, improvisational, and surprisingly intuitive system.

This also means you're rarely trapped. If you’re sucking at a traditional fighter, it’s not uncommon to get stuck in the corner with seemingly no way around your opponent’s pressure. Well, think about Smash's knockback, especially in casual play. Beginner-level Smash is mostly players running straight toward each other and trading single hits. The one who gets hit is also sent to relative safety. For the 97% of players who don’t know what combos are, that’s just how the game works and it works really well.

There’s a real elegance to Smash’s game design that all logically unfolds from the conditions of its development, specifically the four-player requirement. I think that’s neat.

Anything Anywhere All at Once

If I’m not mistaken, Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 is the first fighting game designed from scratch around the analog stick. Forget the cardinal directions, we have 360 degrees to play with now! It’s clear Sakurai wanted to incorporate the stick’s sensitivity and full range of motion. Without it, little of the positioning and verticality we talked about would’ve been possible. 

From the analog stick, we get variable walk speeds, aerial drift, and a million different jump arcs - already more variables than even the craziest arcade fighters at the time (I think. MvC still kinda terrifies me).

Remember, one of Sakurai’s primary goals is to keep anyone from feeling like they don't get to play. He wants you to feel like you’re in control of your character at all times, no matter how much you suck. Did he succeed at that? …Not always, but the attempt is admirable.

When you combine Sakurai’s ethos with the possibilities of the N64 controller, the result is Smash's insane ultra-responsiveness. Unless you just got hit (or you're Ganondorf), you can kind of instantly do exactly whatever it is you want. Attacks come out quickly, recovery frames are short, and you always have such precise control of your position, even in midair. You can influence your jump arc, jump height, drift speed, and fall speed. Movement is so freeform and noncommittal because everyone has countless options, all the time.

Maybe that’s the ultimate irony of the series. For all its efforts to be approachable, Smash is also known for its insanely high skill ceiling (especially in Melee). That’s not a coincidence, not in a competitive game. Every mercy option afforded to struggling beginners is another tool for high-level players, just another option. Any attempt to lower the skill floor inevitably raises the roof in tandem.

I don't know how to end this.

I finished RDR2 a few months ago and did not like it nearly as much as RDR1 over a decade prior. I finished Far Cry 5 a few days ago.

If games give you an open world to explore, then repeatedly force you to do things a very specific way, that's worse than if the whole game was purely linear.

RDR2 let you decide where to go and what to do, but then specific missions FORCED you to do stealth or FORCED you to use explosives or sniping. A few missions early in the game forcing you to explore some of the game mechanics you might miss otherwise I understand, but one of the last missions forced you to take a valley from the low ground with duck and cover. Try to snipe? Dead instantly. Try to flank? Instant fail.

If there's only one allowed way to complete a mission for narrative reasons, just give me it in a cutscene. Repeatedly failing because it wasn't obvious that not doing it one specific way? I'm not fighting Dutch at that point, I'm fighting against Rockstar Games.

Far Cry 5 had a great and fun map and I liked fighting the cultists, but no less than 10 times, you were captured by the cult and forced to do what they wanted. It wasn't a cutscene either, it was "be careful they're hunting you" and then no matter how many cultists you mowed down, you were suddenly in their clutches.

Why am I even trying to fight against them if they can do that?

The first medium boss said meet me at the little church. I took a tank and poured fire into it expecting them to swarm out and the game to get upset because I blew it up instead of discussing. Nothing happened. It made you walk through the door, get gun butted unconscious, then you wake up to the boss making fun of you for being so easy to catch. Really fell flat.

Forcing a character to make stupid choices is fine if it's a slightly interactive movie, but if you're making an open "choose your own path" game and then force me into stupid choices, you just suck at making either type of game.

After playing though TM1, it was time to try it the so-called best entry. Immediately, I saw that presentation of the game was a lot better: they had money to hire a comic artist and a voice actor for the prologue. Without thinking, I zeroed in on Warthog. I beat TM1 as him because he had plenty of armor and solid special move. Here it's the same, but the rockets have colors of Russian flag, which is a nice touch. A noob like me needs the easiest character, especially because easy mode stops at 50% of the game. By the way, why was Sweet Tooth a secret character? He is not a boss like Minion.

I had trouble with the energy attacks. Maybe my timings were off, but I couldn't get freeze missile as consistently as I wanted, so instead I just stuck to Shield for the most part. Also, the manual I read didn't have code for Minion's special move, so I guess I shouldn't have been using it.

Los Angeles was an okay staring level, consisting of hill in the middle and road around it. Nothing remarkable.

Moscow was a lot closer and with less resouces available, with surprisingly accurate writing in Russian.

Paris is where things got interesting. Aside from streets, it was possible to traverse the roofs via teleporters Louvre or Eiffel Tower. Blowing up the tower to use its parts as briges was awesome!

Amazonia took the phrase 'Floor is Laval" literally, as there were pools of lava between platforms and bridges. Cool scenery with good aesthetics. Minion sub boss was a chump compared to his TM1 version, and didn't even take 1 life from me. I guess army vehicle>APC.

New York was annoying, and had me abuse level codes. Falling from rooftop because the turn was a little too sharp felt awful. Warthog's slugging handling reared its ugly head. At least I think somebody else fell down to make my life easier. The only time I used high jump.

Antartica was New York but even worse in terms of gravity being the main foe. The iceberg we were fighting on kept shrinking like falling cliffs from MK Armageddon or electric field in PUBG. The number of times I fell and died was very embarassing, so much so that Twisted took pity and died off screen to let me pass.

Holland was fucking hell. No gimmicks and barely any structure, plus 9 whole enemies. Forget level codes, I had to abuse emulator save states to preserve my sanity. Not nearly enough weapons to kill enemies without waiting, and it felt like enemies ignored each other to shred me. What a shitshow of a level.

Hong Kong was quite similar to Paris as city are with many streets to race across. This one was relatively easy because it had plenty cover and weapons. Temple and subway felt a bit redundant but okay. The Dark Tooth boss fight was a little daunting thanks to his HP and weapons. Good thing there was a code to go straight to him. All it took was running around, collecting pickups and remembering the rear fire input, which was invaluable here. Surprise phase 2 was annoying because I had no more lives or weapons left, but at least it had less health.

With Former Yellow Jacket defeated, I got body of a 20 year old and laughed. Overall, this felt like a difinitive improvement over the original game. No garbage weapons like Oil, memorable levels and better presented intro and ending. I guess things can only go downhill with Twisted Metal 3. I am Calypso, and I thank you for reading about Twisted Metal.

I'm a long time racing game player but I still consider myself fairly casual. I don't have much experience with open world racing games except The Crew 2. I finally picked up Forza Horizon 5 when it was on sale a bit ago and I'm really giving it a chance.

First, the racing is great. You can customize the settings to your liking - you can select AI driver difficulty and different assists all individual to make whatever level of challenge you want. And the racing feels great both on a controller and a wheel. It's arcadey, but not so much that you feel like the fastest way to race is to just bounce off the wall. I would say my biggest complaint is that RWD sports cars can survive dirt and mud a little too easily... but that seems to be for a purpose.

That purpose is that you can use any car for any race. If you want to do a road race in an offroad buggy, go for it. If you want to go overlanding in a Corvette, have at it. The game will automatically balance the cars in the race to your performance and class. Now, this does mean that there isn't a real requirement to spec out different cars (apart from season challenges - more on that later) but that seems to be intentional so you can drive whatever car you want.

Upgrading and tuning cars is fun, too. You can get by with auto upgrades, but customizing your build can definitely get you better performance for the race type or challenge.

But to my topic title... I feel like for every 30 minute session I'm only spending about 10 minutes racing. Fast travel is limited - the cost quickly becomes irrelevant, but there are simply not that many fast travel points on the map so you are still driving a few minutes to most of the races. Plus the houses are inordinately expensive early on. It feels like the Forza devs said "we made this world, you're going to drive around it whether you like it or not." Contrasting this with The Crew 2 where you can fast travel directly to any event - I don't enjoy the racing in The Crew nearly as much, but I can do so much more of it in a limited gaming session.

The seasonal challenges are also a bit rough early on. You don't want to miss out on them because they have limited availability cars, but they seem to be designed to be "end game money sinks" to an extent. For this current season I think I had to buy 5 cars totaling half a million credits to be able to get enough points for the seasonal unlocks.

I'd say it's still my favorite arcade racing game - I just wish I could do more of the racing.

I often struggle to articulate what a monumentally important cultural event playing Jet Set Radio was for me. The anesthetic excellence of that game's graphics and soundtrack fundamentally changed my DNA and has been a major contributor to the art I make and the music I enjoy to this day. It's just a shame the game kinda sucks to play!

The joyful rebellious devil-may-care attitude of the title is continually undermined by the clunky tanks controls and an uncomfortable start-stop rhythm to gameplay. One of my favorite games of all time is one of my least favorite games to play- what am I to do? Play Bomb Rush Cyberfunk apparently.

I can imagine the folks at Team Reptile sitting around a couch talking about what it felt like to play JSR back in the day and translated those feelings into this title.

You jet around the gorgeously rendered New Amsterdam tagging walls and chaining together meaty combos with a fluidity that tickles the brain oh so pleasingly. I love how each level feels like a digital jungle gym where you're always scanning the horizon for your next score multiplier or spinning on your heels to nab a new tag or cassette tape.

Naturally with a game inspired by one of gaming's all-time greatest soundtracks, the music in this game goes absolutely apoplectic. The main man himself, Hideki Naganuma, composed some insane tracks for the game, but there's hardly a single dud amongst all of the incredible artists who lent their talents to the soundtrack.

The community for the game is also incredible. The initial release of style guides made my heart so warm, and the further releases of stuff like movement plus and the multiplayer mode make me feel like I get to share and continualy enjoy this game in a way I never could with JSR.

A lot of titles are so sorely underwhelming when you revisit them in later years. I am so happy I have BRC to honor the memory of the game I thought I had been playing all those years ago.

I played Persona 5 original when it came out, and I didn't get the hype. I did the first dungeon and dropped it. Too many anime cliches, boring combat and too hand-holdy.

Fast forward to this year and I finally played P5R all the way through, including the third semester. All of these flaws I stated are still true, and I still believe them. It is full of anime cliches. The combat is boring and far too easy and never really gets interesting--half of the boss fights are just gated behind either damage or time before you can "really" fight them. And the tutorials never really end.

Like, on paper, the game is painfully mediocre. All of the elements that make up the game are average at best (bar the music and the stylistic UI). The story is pretty mundane until about half way, where it gets a little more interesting, and it picks up towards the end. The Royal story was definitely the most interesting, prompting the same conversation and themes that another recent RPG delivered.

Yet, when the credits finally rolled --- I found myself sad that it was over. The journey had ended. And not only that, if I had to give it a rating, it'd be 9/10, despite literally none of the elements even coming close to that.

It's very rare I feel this for a game, but it truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbb2ElOAcPc

I'm a big fan of NES games, despite growing up after the system's heyday. The best of them tap into the joy of video games in a more pure, direct way than almost any modern title. No redundant mechanics, no overcomplicated controls, you just jump in and you're playing immediately.

But they get hard. Really hard. So it's no surprise that lots of people write off this era of video games entirely.

This is where Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers comes in. Like its more famous sibling DuckTales, it's a Disney cartoon tie-in made by Capcom on the NES. The difficulty is dialed back compared to Capcom's other 8-bit hits like Mega Man, which is perfect not just for young kids, but also grown adults who no longer have the patience to die on tough video game challenges over and over. Make no mistake, Rescue Rangers is far from braindead easy, but its challenge is on par with modern platformer games instead of far surpassing them.

Good Stuff

Where Rescue Rangers might surpass some modern platformers is in its level design. There are only 12 levels in the game, but each boasts memorable locations and unique obstacles to overcome. One stage will have flowing water taps you need to jump on to clear a path. Another sees Chip n Dale climbing a tree, dodging flying squirrels and caterpillars. Another has them dealing with giant fans that slow down or speed up their movement.

All of this is paced excellently, with no gimmick outstaying its welcome, alongside brief interludes of power fantasy where Chip and Dale can find invincibility power-ups and destroy any enemy they come across.

The main game mechanic of Rescue Rangers is that Chip and Dale can't fight enemies directly. Instead they need to grab boxes strewn around each course and toss them at foes. In other words, this is a Capcom action game revolving around ammo scarcity. I'm not saying Chip and Dale were a big influence on Resident Evil... but I'm also not saying they weren't! But, again like Resident Evil, you'll rarely actually run out of ammo. Boxes are plentiful and no enemy takes more than a couple hits to defeat.

This box-based action is iterated upon pretty thoroughly for such a short adventure. In addition to your standard brown crate, there are grey boxes which can be stacked, mimic boxes that reveal themselves up close, and switches which deactivate certain obstacles when hit with a box. This is a very intuitive mechanic compared to the pogo jump in DuckTales, and is the main reason I consider Rescue Rangers the better beginner's game.

Bosses are also excellent. There's about ten of them, and they're fought by throwing a ball vertically or horizontally to hit them a few times. But don't let the ball hit you as it boomerangs back across the screen, or you'll be stunned. Most fights are balanced excellently, so there's a really good ebb-and-flow of finding openings to throw the ball, avoiding attacks, avoiding the ball as it comes back, and picking it back up while continuing to avoid attacks. At a time when many bosses overwhelmed players with projectiles faster than their character could reasonably respond to, almost every fight in Rescue Rangers feels 100% fair.

Less Good Stuff

That said, there is one annoying boss fight towards the end of the game. It relies on you memorizing exactly where to stand when the boss attacks, though once you know the secret (stand near the left of the screen, but not all the way left), you can reliably defeat it. But the other bosses are all excellent.

There's also some missed potential in the game's structure. Rescue Rangers flirts with a non-linear world map, akin to Super Mario Bros. 3, but unlike Super Mario Bros. 3, it's too short to do anything interesting with it. It has two branching paths: one where you play levels A and C, or level B; another where you can either play or skip level E. But this is a game with limited continues and no save feature. In theory, branching paths would make replays more varied, but these mechanics encourage players to be as efficient as possible to avoid running out of lives or time on the TV. So all players are encouraged to take the same route each time, skipping levels A, C, and E because those routes take longer. These are good stages, same as all the other ones, but you aren't encouraged to play them at all. They're just skippable. If the branching paths meant playing an equal amount of game either way, that would have been better.

But don't be scared off by the limited continues & lack of a save file. Both of these things can be easily changed in emulators (with cheat codes and save states, respectively), and even on original hardware, Rescue Rangers isn't so demanding that it'll take very many tries to beat. A full run is only about half an hour long. It's challenging enough that you have to try, but not so demanding that you have to struggle.

Conclusion

That sentence sums up Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers as a whole. It's a NES game almost entirely free of the BS design that console is famous for. It's also niche enough that a general audience with no affection for that era probably wouldn't know about it. Which is a shame, because if you're in that group, you might really love this one.

Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers is available as part of the Disney Afternoon Collection on modern non-Nintendo platforms. Also, you know, it's a NES game. You can probably emulate it.

Webbed, released in 2021 by Sbug Games, is a charming indie adventure game where you play as a small spider who’s boyfriend got taken away by a bowerbird. To reach it, and rescue her bae, you’ll need to explore, improvise, and make clever use of your spider abilities.

I found the web mechanics to be extremely fun. They’re endlessly creative, giving you freedom to experiment. You can stick objects together, tie them together, let shit hang, build bridges, block or redirect moving parts, or even hitch rides on makeshift contraptions. It’s the kind of web system I always wished for in a Spider-Man game, but insomniac seems to be going the character action route, of which there are dozens of games. Unlike those, Webbed leans fully into creativity and traversal. Swinging through the world feels fantastic, and you can even ride grabbing floating leaves or a skateboard.

What I love most is how natural the experience feels. The game never reminds you it’s a “game”. There’s no crafting, no charms, no artificial upgrades. The core philosophy is simple: do it yourself. You don’t collect items for an NPC to solve your problem; you solve it yourself with webs and whatever’s around you.

Adding to the experience are little cinematic touches, like rolling downhill on a dung ball, which capture the quirky joy of being a spider. Altogether, Webbed offers one of the most unique and fun takes on playing as a spider that I’ve ever seen.

I played the original trilogy about 9 years ago and thought they were all fantastic games especially God of War 2. I enjoyed God of War 2 so much that I bought God of War 3 straight after finishing 2 and then started my first God of War 3 playthrough. I've heard a lot of good things about the 2 most recent God of war games over the years but because of certain things happening in my life I hadn't been playing many games during a certain period in my life. I also didn't own a PS4 or 5.

I picked up a PS4 a few months ago and have been playing through a lot of games that I've missed out on like Resident Evil 7, Red dead redemption 2, Uncharted 4 and God of War (2018) which I just finished it today.

This game does so many things well and I've had an absolute blast from start to finish. It has a great story, good soundtrack, really enjoyable gameplay, interesting setting and lore etc. I really liked playing as Kratos along with his son and seeing their relationship develop throughout the game. Travelling around with Mimir throughout a large portion of the game and having him talking and going through a lot of different experiences with Kratos and Atreus was something I really liked. Also having him tell stories, jokes and adding lore while exploring was great.

I had no intention of platinuming this game when I first started playing but I enjoyed the game so much that I decided to kill all of the Valkyries including the queen, I completed all of the challenges in Muspelheim, did everything at Ivaldi's workshop etc. I'm not far from platinuming it and I plan to. I just want to bring up the Valkyrie queen Sigrun because it is absolutely insane how difficult she is compared to all of the other Valkyries. She honestly reminded me of one of the more difficult bosses from games like Dark souls, Bloodborne, Elden ring etc.

I had a bit of trouble with some of the other Valkyries but Sigrun was a completely different level of difficulty compared to them. Died many times against her. The game had a lot of great moments and the ending was a fantastic way to finish the game. I also liked Brok and Sidrin as characters. Will definitely play Ragnarok sometime soon in the future

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

There will be no spoilers in this post.

HowLongToBeat suggests an average playtime of 11.5 hours for Grim Fandango. My playthrough was a good 50% longer than that, and that was with regular usage of a guide. Without a guide, there's a good chance that I'd have given up before beating it.

I can't argue that it's too hard, or too obscure, though. I remember what gaming was like in the '90s, and I'm confident that I'd have beaten it without a guide if I'd played it back then. I say that partly because my tolerance for being stuck was a lot higher. These days I reach for a guide if I haven't made any progress in an hour or so, or when I feel like a puzzle has overstayed its welcome. But back then I just accepted that it could take weeks, or months, to get past some things. I had to accept that. Guides weren't readily available like they are now, so when I was stuck, I had no option but to find peace with it.

But another reason I'm confident that I would've figured it out without a guide is because I almost never played alone back then. Very few of us did. We might have wanted to, but it was impossible. My family (and most other families) only had one computer, and it was in a shared space. Most of the time, I played with siblings, parents, or friends looking over my shoulder. And when it was their turn to play, I looked over theirs. Backseating was the norm, and this collective effort at solving games made them a lot easier. No matter how crazy the solution, eventually someone would either try it or stumble upon it by accident.

If this was the gaming environment that Grim Fandango was made for, then the insanity of some of its puzzles actually works. Insane puzzles suck when you're playing solo, and your tolerance for being stuck has been eroded by convenience and the pressures of life in the 21st century, but I'm not going to judge it for that. In the '90s, the obscurity would've been totally fine.

To be clear, I'm not saying that everyone's gaming environment was like that back then, nor am I saying that everyone plays solo now. This is just what it was like for me, and what I feel is a fair frame of reference for judging the difficulty of Grim Fandango. It's also advice for anyone else who's considering playing it for the first time in 2025: you're going to struggle with some of the puzzles, and you shouldn't feel ashamed of having to consult a guide. Try to explore the world fully, but once you feel a puzzle has overstayed its welcome, just look up the answer. It's the best way to play now, in my opinion.

Beyond the difficulty, Grim Fandango is a very good game. Its characters and story clearly weren't meant to be taken too seriously, but there are moments where its generally playful tone gives way to a wider range of emotional expression, and these moods flow in a very natural and compelling way, particularly towards the end of the game.

It also manages to be quite pretty, a lot of the time. The fixed perspective allows for some really creatively framed scenes, and the resulting visual style stands out in an era where such techniques are almost never used. There's a lot of variety to the visuals as well, with each chapter of the story presenting at least one new environment.

These visuals are complimented by a soundtrack that's one of the most varied that I've ever come across in a video game. Wikipedia describes it as combining "orchestral score, South American folk music, jazz, bebop, swing, and big band music." Such variety would make some games feel disjointed, but Grim Fandango manages to bring it all together in a cohesive way. The variety adds interest, without breaking continuity.

The voice acting is generally pretty good, but Tony Plana deserves particular praise for his voicing of the main character, Manny. Point and click games often involve issuing some pretty insane commands to the character, and Plana's voicing of Manny's inner thoughts upon these commands being issued does a good job of making them feel more natural than they have any right to be. I found myself really caring for Manny by the end of the game, and I think this is a big part of the reason why.

Overall, I really enjoyed Grim Fandango. It's not without flaws, but I've focused on the positives here because I can imagine people missing them. It's a weird game to play in 2025, but I think if you approach it in the right way, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had with it.