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c7thetumbler · 10 months ago

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Quick Game Reviews: February 2024

Ayo, let's keep this train rollin!

Shorter month and I didn't have the sudden influx of games from the winter sale, so not a whole lot, but a few worth talking about I think. Also I did get lazy with the banner

Image from the promotional screen shots on the steam page

Quake II: Expansions and 64 (Steam)

I did them all!

At the time of the last Blog post I had only played through the base game and a little bit of Call of the Machine. I won't spend too long on it, but about halfway through Call of the Machine I was very much over it. It's definitely possible that by focusing so hard on doing all of the Quake II content I burnt myself out on it, and that these weren't meant to be played so close together. It's also possible that having an entire lifetime of experience with games and going back to this one kind of ages its gameplay and makes it less fun? Not sure.

That is to say, these expansions weren't bad. They definitely realized that restarting your loadout was a more fun way to play and allowed you to ramp up, as well as refining level design to be harder and more interesting. That being said, It gets very same-y very fast and the levels were getting so complicated that using the compass to find out where I was supposed to go turned into an instinctual habit after every skirmish. There was a lot of back tracking, which for the most part they mitigated by releasing some enemies or changing the level somewhat, but also a lot of "look for this one thing you push against or shoot that you may not know about" that was more frustrating than interesting.

Narratively they were all pretty fun; the mission objectives, as obtuse as they could be, did a good job of tying into the feeling that your were progressing through alien bases and environments, getting closer and closer to your ultimate goal. All in all, if you like the base Quake II game and want more of a challenge, they're going to scratch your itch, but be prepared for some frustrating quick loads and jump/navigation puzzles.

Separately, Quake II 64 was interesting because due to the limits of the N64 the levels were much more concise and focused. It's definitely the shortest of the Expansions, each one of the others rivaling the length of the base game while 64 takes about 2-3 hours, but it was interesting seeing how they managed to accommodate console players while still having a faithful experience. It did however have some frustrating moments I can't imagine were fun on a controller.

Image from the Shadow costume DLC page on steam

Sonic Superstars (Steam)

This one. Oof.

So to kick it off: I paid $30 for this game. That should've been its launch price, as while it *technically* has more zones than the other classics (11 vs 8), three of those zones are 1-offs with only one act, and several of the acts in the other zones are gimmicky.

It's greatest crime however is that clearly the developers knew what made a classic Sonic game. The movement feels pretty good; Sonic's drop dash makes a return from Mania to become his unique gimmick vs the other characters, and it works really well vs. His old gimmick of activating w/e shield he had or shining. However the levels just... aren't that good. There's a few in there that are fun to run around, but a lot have gimmicks that are pervasive through the whole level and just aren't that fun. For example, the Press Factory Zone has two Acts, where Act 1 has a giant press in the background that slams into the ground at regular intervals, causing your character to jump up higher than usual involuntarily if they were on the ground. This was clearly fleshed out in the level's design, but it's just not *fun* to have to deal with. Act 2 changes that with a death machine that kills you instantly if you don't push buttons scattered throughout the level frequently enough, which just kinda sucks as a mechanic. I don't want to be panicking through the whole level and wishing it was over, but that might just be me.

This misunderstanding of what makes classic Sonic fun (and I believe a focus on single screen multiplayer) also led to it's most talked about issue: the boss fights. They suck. Like the best ones are bad, and the worst ones are some of the most frustrating experiences I've had fighting Bosses in video games. Worse, these bosses are at the end of every Zone, and at least half of the Act I zones also have bosses. I believe that this was an opportunity to slow down and have all multiplayer characters on the screen doing something at once, but it just isn't what I'm here for in a Sonic game.

The Final boss in all 3 "stories" is different per story, but none are less frustrating than the others. They all rely on instant death mechanics, have way too much health, have long phases where the player cannot do damage, and absolutely no rings in them (sans the last boss) to help you through, so you run out quite quickly. I spent several hours between all three of the bosses, and would not be surprised if it made up roughly half my playtime. They were also seemingly allergic to letting you use Super <character> in most fights as well, clearly thinking "Oh that trivializes it" and intentionally extending invincibility times long past their visual iframes (over twice as long, in some cases) in order to prevent cheese.

Did I have some fun with it? Yes, but only in the moments where it let me run through the levels without getting slammed by some bizarre gimmick or boss, and those aren't that common here. I'd pass on this one; Sonic Mania + is still peak classic Sonic and I don't think it's going to get beat anytime soon

... anyway I 100%'d it

Screen shot from the Steam Page

Bots are Stupid (Steam)

I played this one for like maybe half an hour before realizing I wasn't in the mood to play a lemmings game. I have no strong opinions on this as a result! Seems fun enough if you're into that.

Image from the screenshots on their steam page

Plants vs Zombies: GotY (Steam)

Gonna post this screenshot to show just how long it took for me to re-pick-up a shelved game I promised I would 100% later:

I got this mid 2010, and finally decided to revisit it now. And I did it! I 100%'d it! I couldn't do it back then, when I was a dumb little...

17 year old...

.. Old popcap games hold up better than wine. You should play it, and no other PvZ entry, and I'm done with this review actually

Screen shot from the Steam Page

moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Steam)

This is a modern rerelease of an old anti-rpg that was on Playstation, brought to you by the brilliant minds behind Chibi-Robo, Little King's Story, and Captain Rainbow. I hadn't even heard of this before some friends started playing it on Discord and I was like "Oh my god I love these designers!"

It's got everything I like about those games aesthetically: Wacky character designs, a strange world, some funny and obtuse dialog and all of that can range from very funny to mildly unsettling (in a positive way). You play as a young kid who got isekai'd into a SNES styled RPG world, and you must find "love" to progress through and I assume escape. You can do this by helping out the NPCs of the world and by saving the souls of the "monsters" that the original protagonist, the brave knight, killed to level up and exp. Getting love levels you up and allows you to stay awake for longer, allowing you to travel further into the world and well into the night in order to solve all the problems and puzzles of the people inside it.

It's fun, but it can get a bit... complicated and confusing. While the charm of the characters and world had me coming back quite a lot, I found myself stuck with no clue how to progress after a while, and often wasted entire in game days waiting for something to happen or trying to activate an event, only to be incorrect as to what that event was. Eventually I looked up a spoilered guide to help me along, but even that was tricky to follow and involved waiting for a number of in-game days to do something I never would've thought of, and eventually I put it down. Someone more patient could probably get a lot of fun out of this game, and indeed I did while I was still able to figure out what to do, but eventually it gets a bit too unclear for its own good

As the image says, this is from the thumbnail to the games announcement in a Nintendo Direct

Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch)

It is wild that after writing that review for Sonic Superstars, I have to come out and say that it'd still be a better bang for your buck than this one.

Don't get me wrong; it's a pretty fun game to play in bite-sized pieces and when it was new on the GBA it was definitely worth it. Now though? It's a very weak entry that doesn't really stand out among the multitude of much more clever puzzle platformers that have released in the 20 years since.

I give Nintendo a lot of flak for their pricing structure, from Pokemon always overcharging for any classic rereleases (when they even bother), Link's Awakening releasing for the full $60 price tag, DK Tropical freeze selling for MORE than it did on its original console despite not adding anything other than an easy mode. They're an easy target for this kind of criticism, and it's well deserved.

This one though is especially egregious. The original GBA game had a scoring system that, while archaic, combined collecting all of the collectibles and racing against the clock into one system. Rather than modernizing it by adding any sort of friend leaderboards or nuance to scoring that makes it difficult to level out, they removed it entirely. Instead, there's your normal mode where you have lives (that actually serve no purpose) where you collect all of the things, and then a new TIME ATTACK mode, which has to be entered separately and does not consider your times in the levels otherwise. You also have to unlock it by beating the game. If you're a 100% freak like me, that means you have to replay the game a bare minimum of twice.

It's pure padding for the sake of it, and it shows. Additionally (and spoilers I guess), apart from a small file screen reward for 100%ing the normal levels, there is absolutely nothing for getting all the time attack medals. It's a huge waste of time, and feels like a mobile game with its simplicity.

In terms of improvements, there's very little. The game looks fine, like any other modern Mario spinoff, but that's where it hurts. SMRPG remake made a point to stick to original style to make a great modern imagining, Mario Wonder heavily stylized itself to stand out against its other 2D platformer outings, but this game chose to be exactly what you'd expect with little attention to flair or style. Where the tiny in-engine cutscenes of Mario running after DK on a flat plane and yelling 14 times on the GBA was quaint, here they're lazy and hollow, especially when they did bother to render out the other cutscenes. It's definitely better looking than the faux 3D the GBA had to go for, but again fails to stand out against any recent Mario game, with even Super Mario Party feeling like it made more of a point to portray character expression than this.

... Oh, There's 2 more worlds. Gameplay, right, I should talk about it. There are 6 levels, 6 plus levels, 2 boss fights, and 2 extra levels per world. Generously, that's only 30 additional levels, which sounds like a disservice to say "only", but consider that most levels consist of mainly 2 screens area to traverse and take a couple minutes max. These new worlds aren't really ground breaking either; The one they like to show off in promotional videos revolves around a windy flower mechanic which is interesting, but not expanded upon well. The other one is an ice world, where the gimmick is that you slide. It's as fun as it sounds.

Basically, If you've ever played the GBA version of this, give this a pass entirely; you're better off not spending any money for an essentially identical experience with practically no gameplay improvements or additions. If you've never played it before, it is worth no more than $10, and given that it's a $50 Mario game with a physical cartridge release, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

That price is also taking into account that you, yes you, right now, can find and emulate GBA games *for free*, so like if you really want to fill in your Mario experience with some classics... it's right there, you can just do that without waiting for Nintendo to sensibly price their game.

Image from the promotional section of their steam page

Corn Kidz 64 (Steam)

I'm not really sure what the Corn stuff is about, nor if there's some deeper lore or aesthetic this game is referencing, but it's an N64-style 3D collect-a-thon so yes absolutely I'll give it a go.

I spent a surprising amount of time on this one; it's a lot more involved and fine-tuned then a lot of my recent Indie 3D platformer experiences, which I enjoy. It reminded me a lot of playing Banjo Tooie as a child, where the world had a lot of different platforming challenges and some parts of it need to be unlocked or activated before you can progress or understand what you're supposed to be doing. The humor's very N64 Rareware as well, combined with some early 2000's teenage looks and jokes.

The game itself only consists of 3 worlds: a tutorial, the second world (which is where you spend most of the game) and a final linear challenge world. Despite that though you'll probably be spending a good amount of time looking for everything in order to progress out of the second world and to the final level, and the game doesn't over or under-stay its welcome. My only complaint is that sometimes it's very unclear what you're supposed to do next, and if you're not paying very close attention to the world you may miss a platforming challenge that leads you to the next thing you need to collect, or you may see something that you can't interact with yet but seems like you may be able to. It could do with a couple more hints, in my opinion.

It's a very good callback to old N64 era BK and Conker, and for only $7 it's definitely worth a purchase!

Image is official promotional material, though I found it on the Splatoon Wiki

Splatoon 3: Side Order (Switch)

This one snuck up on me, which is a pleasant surprise. My favorite part of Splatoon has always been the side content and single-player stuff, and the Octo Expansion in Splatoon 2 was my favorite content in the series so far, so I was excited to see this had dropped. And it did not disappoint! There seems to be a trend where DLC with Pearl, Marina, and Agent 8 is the best content in the Splatoon series, and the replay-ability on this one is welcome.

To summarize, you must ascend a spire in Marina's new game project (They even show you her laptop, which has splatooned Unity & Premier Pro interfaces while explaining plot), with Agent 8 and the Pearl drone. The tower is 30 floors tall, 3 boss fights, and each floor has 3 options for what upgrade and challenge you want to take. Upgrades take the form of Color chips, which you place in your Palette to add or increase your abilities to make the rest of the ascension better. It is incredibly Slay the Spire, but instead of different characters and cards you have different palettes, and it's always worth grabbing the color chip whereas skipping cards in StS is a must.

It starts out pretty tough (after the tutorial), but not so bad it's discouraging. There are several currencies and key items; Membux are essentially score you are rewarded with (harder floors give you more) that you can spent mid-run on Vending machines (rest floors) to get different side weapons, specials, or chips. Prlz (like Pearl) are the reward currency you get upon ending a run, where your chips and membux are converted to score and then to Prlz, which you then spend on hacks Marina has that unlock more stuff for future runs and make them easier. Locker Keys are given every time you clear a boss fight for the first time per palette, with 3 keys available per palette and each palette has its own favored color chips, main, side, and special weapons that represent a Splatoon character. These keys unlock lockers that contain some goodies like more palettes and lore rewards. There's a lot of content there.

I had a lot of fun with this one! The variety in color chips and palettes helps carry the repetitive nature of ascending the tower, and the number of unlocks ensures that for the most part you wont run out of reasons to keep playing until you've beaten the boss with all the palettes. I will say that there is an issue with the number of different bosses though; there are only 3 sub bosses (floors 10 and 20), and only one top boss who has no variety, which gets very tiring when you have to beat him no less than 12 times. The floor variety will also see you getting a lot of repeats, but the difficulty levels and randomized objectives carry those a lot better.

If you have Splatoon 3 already and enjoyed the single player content, this is more good stuff. That being said, the $30 expansion pass on top of the $60 base game is steep, so if you're not into Splatoon already then this is probably also not gonna scratch any itches.

#game reviews #splatoon 3 side order #sonic superstars #corn kidz 64 #mario vs donkey kong #moon remix rpg adventure #plants vs zombies #quake ii

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