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  1. Aside from a little taste of the franchise with Travis Strikes Again two years ago, fans have been waiting a decade for another mainline entry in the No More Heroes series. With creator Suda51's signature sense of outlandish style, No More Heroes III reunites fans with Travis Touchdown, Sylvia Christel, Shinobu and more, along with a whole new collection of enemies to slaughter as Travis once again wields his beam katana on a bloody path of destruction. Perhaps even more than previous entries, No More Heroes III is set to polarize players between those that love Suda51's insane game design and those that want a more conventional action-adventure. Whichever camp you ultimately fall into though, there's no denying that this is a hell of a ride. The game opens with an E.T. style prologue where a young boy discovers a small alien on Earth and helps send him back into space. Twenty years later, that alien returns fully grown and ready to conquer the planet with an army of alien "superheroes." Travis Touchdown once again takes up his beam katana to stop them, though he must rise through the ranks of the top ten Galactic Superhero Rankings before he can take on the leader. It's an insane, bizarre story filled with Suda51's signature charm. Travis regularly breaks the fourth wall to talk about what gamers like and don't like, and the writing is littered with pop culture references and seeming nonsequiturs. Plot points jump around so quickly that oftentimes you'll be left wondering what just happened, but overall it works when you just let yourself go along with the crazy flow of things. That said, it definitely feels like No More Heroes III turns the crazy up to eleven, and even with that in mind it can be jarring at times. The previous games were plenty crazy in their own right, but still had some sense of narrative structure. This game gets so out there at times by introducing and rapidly dropping concepts that it doesn't always quite stick the landing into a satisfying conclusion. Like the previous games, No More Heroes III is a third-person action game with a relatively simple overworld to explore and minigame side jobs to tackle. Fighting with the beam katana feels great. Travis tears through enemies with flashy panache and it's always satisfying to execute a finishing blow or defeat an enemy with a pro wrestling throw. Travis can also use four Death Glove skills to mix up the action further, and you can customize your glove with skill chip buffs such as increased heavy attack power or extra time to counterattack when you execute a perfect dodge. Combat looks wild but it's ultimately pretty easy to pick up and learn, and you'll have a blast dodging enemies and stunning them into a suplex finisher. In some ways it feels like combat has been simplified and it does get a bit repetitive at times, but then again the series was never about memorizing elaborate attack combos so much as the satisfaction of ripping apart enemies with bloody attacks. You'll need to take on a handful of designated matches before you can challenge another boss, but aside from fighting you might also want to occupy your time with side job minigames to earn money and skill points. Like previous games these minigames are intentionally ridiculous—one has you picking up trash in alligator-infested waters while another is literally just mowing the lawn—and having something else to do to break up the action is nice. The downside is that there are only a handful of minigame types that are repeated several times. More variety and particularly more personality in the minigames would have been great. In fact, that is, surprisingly, one of the major faults of No More Heroes III—the environments, the alien bosses, and even the basic missions and minigames don't have as much personality as previous games. The bosses in particular are a bit disappointing. Although each fight is preceded by a short cutscene or two to introduce the characters, they just didn't have that much impact, which is a shame. The assassins of the first No More Heroes game were a bit more grounded and were better for it. In No More Heroes III, the alien "superheroes" are outlandish and so sometimes come off as inconsequential. The battles themselves regularly defy expectations, but I only found myself engaged with some of the alien characters. No More Heroes III is a good fifteen or twenty hours long, depending on how much time you spend on the more repetitive aspects. You do have to dive into them at least a little to earn money for the next boss fight, but thankfully it never feels very grindy. If you want to explore everything the game has to offer though you'll have to settle for these optional battles and mini-games, or taking on a higher difficulty level—there aren't really significant options to change up the gameplay in the post-game or new game+ features. As mentioned the combat is beautifully stylish, sometimes edging on over-designed but still just cool to look at. The colorful yet eclectic art style just works for No More Heroes III—the game oozes style and weirdness in equal parts. The boss designs are unique and flashy, though again don't have quite the same personality as previous games' bosses, but I can at least say that every boss fight is a visual spectacle. The constant pop-in while you're riding around town on Travis's bike is annoying but ultimately doesn't hurt the gameplay. The soundtrack is solid even if there are only a few standout tracks, and the voice work does a fine job of bringing these crazy characters to life. No More Heroes III is exactly what players should expect from a Suda51 game: it's absurd, wild, often confusing, and undeniably stylish. When you're in the thick of combat and especially when facing off against an alien boss, it's a blast to hack and slash away with the beam katana. The game can also vary wildly from those highs to unpolished lows when it comes to minigames or environment design, and occasionally the insanity goes so far off the rails that it's hard to appreciate. Still, No More Heroes fans should enjoy the adventure despite, or perhaps because of, all of the madness. Rating: 8 out of 10 Superheroes
  2. Sometimes all you want out of a game is a serene experience, something with which you can relax and not feel stressed out about. Hoa's vibe fits that bill, with an extremely chill atmosphere and a gorgeously soft, dreamy art style. In this case though, the game might be a little too relaxed, leading to somewhat bland gameplay design. I'll get the obvious out of the way first: Hoa is a beautiful game. The hand-painted artwork is reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's work, and just like many of their animated features Hoa has a wonderfully serene atmosphere that just makes you want to take a stroll through nature. Aside from the gorgeous backgrounds, the game's characters are also delightful, from the tiny fairy protagonist to the massive creatures you'll encounter. The animation is a tiny bit choppy but for the most part it's easy to ignore as you walk, jump and swim through lush environments. The orchestral soundtrack is just as stunning, full of soothing emotion with just a touch of melancholy. At a glance you might assume that this game wouldn't have much storytelling at all, but the creatures you encounter do speak and the first thing you learn is that you've just returned to the land after an unspecified absence. Your goal seems to be to reconnect with the creatures you once knew but the actual story is purposefully vague. Although you're left in the dark for much of the game the ending still has a good impact and a valuable message. Hoa is pretty much purely a platformer—there doesn't seem to be any way to die or fail in the game, and the only enemy you encounter just pushes you away instead of damaging you. What that means is that Hoa is a relaxed, chill experience. When the adventure begins all you can do is jump and you have to find some creative ways to overcome obstacles, but gradually you unlock new abilities that add slightly more complicated platforming challenges. The game is never all that difficult though, certainly not to anyone that has played virtually any platformer before. Jumps, double jumps, pushing rocks—there aren't exactly any breakthrough platformer ideas at play here. To be fair though, even if the game is pretty simple it generally does its simple gameplay elements well, which might make Hoa well-suited to younger players. There are a few flaws and quirks that bring down the experience though. Despite being a fairly simple platformer where all you really do is jump and move around, the controls can be slippery, which doesn't feel great for some of the more precise platforming sequences. The game's extremely short length might put off some players as well. You can easily finish in just two hours, maybe three at most, and since there are no additional or optional regions of the game there's not much replay incentive. Each region is also fairly small and relatively linear; sometimes you might have a choice of going left or right, but in the end you have to go down both paths anyway. Finally, the game did have a glitchy issue on the Switch which almost spoiled my whole playthrough. At one point I fell through the scenery and had to reload the game, but it just put me in a black void (there are also no manual saves, just autosave checkpoints). I fixed it by starting a new game then reloading again which put me back on course, but that was still a pretty sloppy glitch to deal with. Hoa is a gorgeous game with a fantastic soundtrack that doesn't quite have the gameplay to back it up. There's nothing wrong with a short, relaxed platformer, but in Hoa's case some tighter controls and more engaging gameplay elements, whether in abilities or just the chance to explore optional areas, would have done wonders for the experience. If you don't mind the lack of challenge though, Hoa is a beautiful little stroll of a game. Rating: 6 out of 10 Butterflies
  3. WarioWare's unique brand of charming chaos comes to the Switch with WarioWare: Get It Together! Like past entries in the series, the game is made up of hundreds of microgames—extremely short challenges that usually task you with completing one simple goal, but in just a few seconds. The hectic energy that comes from trying to frantically adapt to new gameplay goals every few seconds makes for a madcap experience. Get It Together! spices things up by including two-player co-op which, as you might expect, doubles the chaos. It's good fun for fans of the franchise, even if some new features aren't all that interesting. Story mode (which is actually required to unlock new microgames) begins with Wario and his eclectic group of friends finalizing a new WarioWare game. Unbeknownst to them, the game is riddled with bugs and pulls the entire group into the game itself. Now they'll have to complete microgames to squash the bugs and escape. As usual, each new collection of microgames focuses on a specific character and comes with a short, typically wacky intro video. It's not like anyone is playing WarioWare for the storytelling, but the totally outlandish sense of humor and style is always delightful. This series is clearly Nintendo's developers' opportunity to get weird, and it's always fun to see what they come up with. What makes Get It Together!'s microgames unique is that the characters are participating in the microgames directly, and each one has a different set of abilities. Wario, for example, has a jet pack to move freely around the screen and can hit things with his familiar shoulder bash. 18-Volt, however, doesn't move at all and instead tosses discs to hit objects on screen. So in Get It Together!, not only are you adapting to different microgame rules every few seconds, you're also adapting to different character controls, which makes the action even more chaotic and wacky. The good news is that the controls are never complicated—at most you're just moving and pressing A for some kind of attack/interaction, so every character is easy to pick up quickly. You'll still likely fumble the controls every so often, especially if the microgames are moving at a high speed, but it's hard to stay frustrated at such a clearly silly, light-hearted game. That said, not all of the characters feel totally equal in terms of abilities or value. The ones that move freely are almost always going to feel like the best candidates for any given microgame, while the more unique characters sometimes don't even feel fast enough to complete a challenge. It would be a big task to make sure every single character is perfectly balanced in every situation, and in a way the discrepancies almost add replay value as some characters feel like you're playing on "hard mode," but it's still jarring when you first try these characters out. Co-op is the other key aspect of Get It Together!, and if completing microgames solo is wacky and challenging, completing them with a friend is pure chaos. It's a perfect party game vibe as two players scramble to get something done in just seconds. Once again not every microgame is perfectly balanced around having two players—some become trickier, some just make player two feel like an afterthought—but getting a friend in on the action is still a lot of fun. Get It Together! also features a variety of party games, most of which support up to four players (on the same system or over local wireless). This selection of minigames is pretty underwhelming though. Many of them are fine but rather bland, like a volleyball game, though a couple do shine, including the ones that actually have you competing via the story mode's microgames. None of these four-player games feel like they have the staying power of an actual multiplayer-focused game like Mario Party, but they're still good for a bit of goofy party fun. The only online mode included in Get It Together! is the Wario Cup, a weekly challenge mode that allows you to upload your score to ranked leaderboards. On one hand it's a rather underwhelming use of online gameplay, but the constantly changing challenges can give you a reason to keep playing every week. You can also improve your score by upgrading your characters (which involves buying items with coins you earn by playing the game), which feels like the definition of tedious busywork, but if you want to tackle it you'll have plenty of reasons to come back to the game over and over. WarioWare: Get It Together! boasts the same chaotic fun and energy of past entries in the series, with the added benefit of two-player wackiness. Controlling characters directly is a unique twist that makes the microgames even more challenging and varied, though it's hard not to play favorites when some characters feel objectively better. Even if some of the side modes are underwhelming, the core microgame action is hectic and entertaining—exactly what you'd want from a WarioWare game. Rating: 8 out of 10 Microgames
  4. Hello Neighbor was an inventive but ultimately flawed stealth/horror game about investigating and escaping a creepy neighbor's house. Despite an engaging premise and stylish aesthetic, the gameplay was a bit of a mess. However, the game still did well enough to spawn sequels and spin-offs, which brings us to Secret Neighbor (developed by Hologryph and Eerie Guest Studios and published by tinyBuild Games), an asymmetric multiplayer game where six players attempt to sneak through the neighbor's house, collect keys, and unlock the mysterious basement door. The catch? One of you is secretly the neighbor. Similar asymmetric multiplayer games have flourished recently thanks to the inventive challenge of outwitting your opponents using different abilities or skills. Secret Neighbor has some of that as well—you're able to choose to play as one of several kids, each with a different set of abilities. One can craft items, for example, while another has more inventory space than others, perfect for collecting all the keys necessary to unlock the basement. The keys themselves are randomly placed throughout the various playable maps, so you always have to poke around corners and shelves to find everything you need. Initially you're armed only with a flashlight to further emphasize that sense of eerie foreboding when you don't know who or where the neighbor is. So the premise itself is solid, but much like Hello Neighbor, the game falls apart in the nitty gritty details. The controls are a chore to use and you'll constantly be fighting the cursor to actually pick up the item you want. Sure this adds to the sense of urgent dread but it's also just a pain in the butt and awfully tedious. Like Hello Neighbor, the environments are incredibly stylish but after one or two play sessions you'll realize just how bare each room actually is. For the amount of stuff you can pick up or interact with, there's very little that actually has any value or purpose. Part of that is just to make you sift through junk to find keys, but again that's just not all that fun after a while. The physics can be awfully inconsistent as you try to throw or drop objects, and the default settings are a bit nauseating (thankfully you can tone down the motion blur and head movement, though). The biggest issue with Secret Neighbor though is in balancing. The neighbor is ridiculously overpowered compared to the children. He can pop out of disguise at any time and grab a kid. Once he's got hold of one, he just needs to keep hold for several seconds and the kid is captured or eliminated from the game. There's actually very little that the kids can do in response to this. If all of the other four kids team up to toss objects at the neighbor they can stun him, but it's difficult to aim and arguably more difficult to coordinate with other players. Even when you do manage to keep the neighbor stunned for a while, it's hard to then also search for keys (and leaving just one or two kids to keep an eye on the neighbor probably won't cut it). The neighbor has a handful of tools at his disposal as well, but these are almost unnecessary given how overpowered he is compared to the kids. The experience just doesn't feel balanced or totally thought out, sadly not unlike Hello Neighbor itself. The game definitely wants you to keep playing over and over as much as possible, and offers incentives with a huge variety of cosmetic unlockables for every character (including the neighbor). By collecting coins in the game you can spend them on clothing and costumes. The costs are astronomical compared to how much you earn in a typical match so clearly the developers want you to get hooked, but a compelling gameplay system might have done the job better. Just like Hello Neighbor, Secret Neighbor is an interesting concept that just doesn't seem to be fully thought out. The challenge of working together and dancing around a single dangerous opponent falls flat when the two sides feel so imbalanced. Even just exploring and collecting keys is a bit janky and boring thanks to clumsy controls and a lack of compelling object interaction. You're better off taking the game's advice to heart and avoiding this neighbor entirely. Rating: 4 out of 10 Neighbors Review copy provided by publisher Secret Neighbor is available now on the Switch eShop for $19.99.
  5. Cris Tales has been advertised as an indie love letter to classic JRPGs, and it's not hard to see why. Time travel, unique battle mechanics, gorgeous artwork and music—I'm not describing Chrono Trigger, these are all aspects of Cris Tales, a game that clearly shows an incredible fondness for the genre while still attempting bold, innovative twists of its own. Not all of those quirks work out perfectly, but one thing's for sure: this game is made for JRPG fans. You play as Crisbell, an orphaned young woman who unlocks an incredible power as a time mage. She is able to see the past, present, and future, and even rewrite future events by changing things in the present. As is always the case, there's a terrible threat to the whole world—in this case it's the Time Empress—so Crisbell sets out on a quest to stop her and aid all the people of this beautifully illustrated world. The story and setting are fun even if the writing can be rather cheesy at times. The banter among your characters is a bit tropey and there are some predictable plot twists, but the magical, fairytale quality of Cris Tales still makes it easy to lose yourself in the narrative. Crisbell is a likeable protagonist and it's fun to just go along with the gorgeously designed ride (also there's a talking frog). Crisbell's time manipulation abilities extend to the very appearance of the game. When you're walking through a town, the screen is split by a triangular formation to represent the past on the left, the present in the center, and the future on the right. It's an awfully stylish way of representing Crisbell's time magic and plays into several light puzzles—something you need to progress has been lost in the present, but perhaps you can jump to the past and grab it before it disappears? If anything this time manipulation mechanic is underused over the full course of the game and could have been put to even more inventive uses, but it's still a clever concept that makes for some uniquely striking artwork. Cris Tales is a turn-based RPG with timed actions like Paper Mario—press the A button at the right time while attacking and you'll deal more damage, while defending and you'll take less—but the time mechanics have a unique effect here as well. Your party is always in the center of the screen and enemies appear on either side. Crisbell is able to send enemies on the left side of the screen into the past, or enemies on the right into the future. You can combine this with other characters' abilities for powerful effects: one of your allies, Wilhelm, is able to send out plants that can hit multiple enemies, but they need time to grow. By manipulating time, Crisbell can activate the plant immediately to devastating effect. Changing time will also affect enemies though—a meager wolf pup might not be too dangerous in the present, but sending him into the future causes him to grow into a full-fledged beast. It's a wonderfully unique battle concept that is rife with possibilities. And yet, it doesn't feel like Cris Tales goes all in on its own concept. You'd assume time manipulation would be the key to battle, and certainly the key to most boss fights, but the truth is it's just as easy to fight normally most of the time (granted there are battles where you do have to change time to expose enemy weaknesses). The thing is, changing time is time-consuming. Since Crisbell is the only one to do it, you have to wait for her turn in the battle order to often set up and then execute these combos, and oftentimes that time is better spent just attacking normally. To be fair it might have felt too tedious or repetitive to set up time combos in every battle, and even if you aren't using time manipulation battles are still entertaining, but it's kind of a shame that the most unique aspect of the combat system doesn't feel all that vital. Cris Tales also features some old fashioned JRPG quirks, which may grate on some modern players. Battle encounters are random, so sometimes it feels like you're inundated with them and sometimes, when you just want to level up, it feels like you can't find a monster anywhere. There's no auto-save system sadly, though you can save on the overworld and save points are fairly common in towns and dungeons. Speaking of which, the dungeon design is satisfying when Crisbell's time powers have an effect on the environment, but there are also plenty of dungeons that are just standard mazes—go down this path to find a treasure chest, the other path leads forward, etc. Cris Tales has a solid grasp of JRPG fundamentals, but doesn't always know when to push the envelope forward and really delve into new territory. I do have to mention that the game suffers from some pretty frustrating load times. That old necessary evil, the loading screen, not only pops up frequently but can last a good 10 seconds or more—honestly it feels like an eternity when you're just entering or exiting a battle. The game as a whole is also somewhat slow paced and these frequent breaks just seem to draw things out further. Cris Tales is a decent length but not too long for an RPG. A good 20–25 hours should see you through the whole game, and while there are a handful of side quests available there really aren't too many opportunities to tread off the beaten path and explore. The adventure as a whole actually feels rather compact: enter a new town, discover some problem or concern, traverse a dungeon to fix it, then move on to the next. It's a formula that makes sense, but again it might have been nice to spice things up a bit. Hopefully these screenshots have already made it clear but Cris Tales is an absolutely gorgeous game. Every single screen feels like a beautifully crafted painting, and seeing it all in motion is even better. The fairytale vibes paired with simply stunning character and environmental designs is beautifully unique and truly makes it a joy to explore every new city—plus you get to see the same city in three different time periods for even more incredible detail in the artwork. The art style feels simultaneously whimsical and ornate yet very much founded on geometric shapes for a controlled yet stylish aesthetic that apparently I can't say enough about as I continue to ramble. The soundtrack is equally wonderful, ranging from sweeping piano tracks to heart-pumping battle tunes that perfect the majestic and magical fairytale vibe. The voice work also does a good job of bringing the characters to life—some can be rather melodramatic, but the voice acting does make everything feel more animated. Cris Tales truly is a charming take on the JRPG genre, one that clearly draws inspiration from the classics and yet happily tries new things as well. The stunning artwork is naturally the first thing players will notice, but it's not the only thing that makes the game special. The time manipulation gameplay is clever, engaging, and rewarding, even if it feels like it falls to the wayside at times in favor of more basic story, puzzle, and battle mechanics. A bit more boldness in making its most unique features more prominent would only have bolstered the game. Still, Cris Tales provides a lovely JRPG adventure that is well worth the time. Rating: 8 out of 10 Time Mages
  6. The free Pokémon TV app is now available on Switch... While it's cool to see more streaming apps on Switch, where's Netflix? ...And wasn't Disney+ supposed to come when they announced the app? BTW, I feel they should have put the app's name on PKMN TV's Switch icon. It's basically just the mobile app's icon.
  7. From Nintendo.com: As much as I'd love to show you the trailers, Youtube won't let me embed them because they're marked as "Mature content". You'll have to look them up yourself. Anyway, as for the game itself: What is "No More Heroes"? Good question. It's a series of hack-and-slash action games created by Suda51, with a strong emphasis on over-the-top boss battles, pop-culture references, and satire of the modern game industry. Throughout the course of each game, Travis Touchdown must work menial part-time jobs in order to earn enough money to enter the next ranked assassin battle. Upon defeating each assassin, Travis's rank will increase, whereupon he must repeat the process over again until he becomes Number One. Of course, this being a Suda51 game, you're not supposed to play it for the gameplay. You're supposed to play it for the bizarre writing and the quirky meta-humor. In fact, one of the things about Suda51's games is that it's often difficult to discern whether something is an actual flaw. The first No More Heroes game, for example, has a massive wide-open city to explore, but almost nothing to do in it besides drive your motorcycle to your next job or assassination gig. Did the developers run out of resources to add more things to do in the city, or is it meant to be a satire on the over-saturation of open-world games? Do I have to play the first two games to understand the plot of this one? Probably not. Hell, the trailers even say that it's designed to be enjoyable for people who are new to the series. However, it's worth mentioning that despite being mostly self-contained, a major plot point in Desperate Struggle was the result of a series of optional side-missions in the first game, which makes much more sense for players who didn't skip it. Who knows if there'll be a similar twist in this one? What about Travis Strikes Again? Unlike the rest of the series, TSA is a top-down beat-em-up spinoff with a much simpler gameplay loop of traversing through bizarre worlds based on indie games. While still considered canon, it primarily exists to set up the Suda51 Cinematic Universe. That being said, screenshots and trailers for NMH3 have confirmed that certain features from TSA will be making a comeback, most prominently the Death Glove mechanic that allows you to equip certain strategic skills to augment your beam katana and wrestling attacks. So, who else is hyped for this game? I know I am!
  8. It can't be easy to stand out from the crowd of indie games released every week, but a cyberpunk story told with a comic book aesthetic awash with neon colors is certainly one way to draw the eye. But while Foreclosed promises a stylish adventure at a glance, a closer look only unveils flawed game design and poorly executed gameplay. You play as Evan Kapnos whose identity was recently Foreclosed. In this cyberpunk world, that means he essentially doesn't exist anymore and any rights or belongings he had are cut off—he's stripped of his job, brain implants, and access to the city's cybernetic features. His only hope is to find the cause of the Foreclosure and stop it before he's completely deleted. It's an interesting and compelling premise that immediately puts you in a tense, hurried adventure, but the game does absolutely nothing else interesting with its cyberpunk genre and instead immediately relies on familiar tropes—evil megacorporations, shadowy helpers, etc. What's worse is just how poorly the story is written. The game will throw information at you in confusing, looping dialogue trees that provide far too much detail with little context, and Evan himself is practically a blank slate devoid of personality. There is a solid premise here, but the execution stumbles terribly. Unfortunately that's more or less the issue with the gameplay as well. A blend of stealth, hacking puzzles, and third-person shooter mechanics add up to an incredibly dull action experience. The stealth mechanics are woefully basic and you're never really given interesting tools to use while sneaking around (even in a game filled with cybernetic powers). Being spotted is generally also instant-death so it's a slow, tedious affair to creep through rooms. The puzzles are as bare-boned as possible and even calling them hacking challenges is overstating the game's mechanics. You either punch in a series of directions on the D-pad or just need to find a few nodes in order to open a door. The shooting mechanics are the most frustrating and disappointing though, mainly because this is where the bulk of the gameplay is and can lead to some extremely tedious battles. First off, the aiming controls are pretty awkward and can't find a good balance between small stiff movements or terribly loose wide swings. This can be particularly frustrating since enemies are absolute bullet sponges and you pretty much have to land headshots to take them down with any sense of efficiency. Enemies will pepper you with bullets so quickly though that you have to carefully duck behind cover and peek out for headshots. Enemies also outnumber you massively and often come with a few waves of reinforcements that drag the fight out even longer. These shootouts are challenging for the wrong reasons. You're not pushed to find clever ways to move around or take out targets, you're just popping out of cover to fire off a few shots then ducking back down while your health replenishes. It's terribly repetitive. Throughout all of this Evan only has his pistol, but you can augment it with upgrades as well as cybernetic abilities such as a temporary shield or the ability to telekinetically lift and slam enemies. Sadly these upgrades are not the boon they ought to be and only add the barest amount of spice to the monotonous shooting galleries you're forced to play through. Most of the effects aren't very powerful, or at least aren't more effective than a clean headshot. Not only are the abilities fairly underwhelming, they also come with a costly heat sink system where, if you overheat your cybernetic implants, you're left dazed and vulnerable for a few seconds. It's meant to force you to play thoughtfully, but it really just makes using abilities a chore. On top of all this, I did run into a few buggy problems while playing. One was almost comical—falling from a ledge that I clearly wasn't meant to fall from, landing me in a blank void—except for the fact that restarting required replaying a substantial section. The game autosaves, but not frequently enough to make restarting convenient. The game's presentation is perhaps the one shining aspect of Foreclosed, but even this comes with some significant caveats. The comic book style is cool but if anything underused—there are times where the panels of the "comic book" are tied together in interesting ways, but the majority of the game is just played in a standard third-person perspective. The art design is pretty repetitive as well, with the same generic gunman for all enemies and not much variety in scenery. The voice acting is a real disappointment. It feels like the developers were going for a gruff, gritty protagonist who's curt with his words, but the actual acting comes off as lifeless and dull, which does no favors for the already underwhelming script. Foreclosed has huge style points going for it as you initially boot up this third-person action game, but sadly that style is just window dressing for an unsatisfying mix of shallow gameplay elements. A couple of interesting ideas isn't enough to carry the entire game, and the tedious, uninventive shooting gameplay will only bore you or frustrate you. It's a short adventure, but even three or so hours is perhaps too long to spend with Foreclosed. Rating: 5 out of 10 Foreclosures
  9. It's probably just a coincidence that a game about taking medicine came out during a global pandemic, right? Tin foil hat aside, Vitamin Connection takes players on a microscopic journey inside of living bodies to eradicate viruses and bacteria and help heal the hosts. The big hook of the game though is the co-op gameplay that has two players piloting the same capsule ship in a real test of cooperation and navigation. It's an inventive concept that feels like it could only happen on the Switch. You play as Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl, tiny vitamin personifications that pilot a capsule ship to help heal the Sable family. Your first mission is to cure a little boy so that he can go on the field trip he's been looking forward to, and from there the story gets surprisingly stranger. The game has a strong Saturday morning cartoon vibe, from the rather cheesy interactions with talking viruses and bacteria to the colorful and stylish vignettes of the Sable family. The writing in Vitamin Connection is cute and overall rather forgettable, though the turn toward the end of the game that takes the story into a grandiose sci-fi adventure is something I can honestly say I did not see coming. The gameplay is all about navigating the (mercifully nondescript) innards of your human hosts to cure what ails them. The capsule ship moves forward automatically but you can move around the screen, tilt the ship to squeeze through narrow passages, and fire lasers to defeat harmful viruses. After the first level you'll also gain the ability to grab things with an extendable claw like those maddening arcade games. The navigation aspects of Vitamin Connection feel a bit half-baked. While moving through the body you'll find forks and twisting passages, some of which take you to dead ends, but it never feels all that special to pick a direction and explore. You always have a marker telling you the general direction of where you need to go, and in the end these levels aren't that big anyway so it doesn't take long to check every passage. The unique hook of all of this is twisting and rotating the ship through passages with either the shoulder buttons or physically rotating the Joy-Con. Maybe motion controls have just been on the market for too long but this doesn't feel like an exciting selling point anymore, and though it's used well in Vitamin Connection it doesn't feel noteworthy. However, if you do explore everything and collect all of the stars in a level you are treated to a bonus level, so there is some incentive to poke around as much as you can. The hazards and puzzles you find while exploring aren't too complicated either. Your laser has a cooldown limit so you can't fire it constantly, but it's also not so short that you have to be particularly careful. There are only a couple of enemy types and they're pretty basic, and other hazards aren't terribly complicated either, like breaking through colored barriers with the correct side of the capsule ship. Every time you reach a critical destination, you'll have to clear up whatever is hurting the human by completing a short mini-game. These mini-games vary wildly in quality—some are simple but fun, such as the table tennis one, while others are kind of bland, such as a mini-game where you navigate a short maze by rotating your ship around corners. Far from being exciting challenges or checkpoints of progress, these mini-games just feel like chores. The main selling point of Vitamin Connection is the co-op gameplay though. In co-op, both players pilot the same capsule ship and have to coordinate and communicate carefully to make it through hazards unscathed. When you're trying to aim a laser but your partner is moving the ship erratically, things get a little kooky. It's chaotic but really feels like how the game is meant to be played. Solo these challenges aren't much to speak of, but with a friend even basic obstacles are an opportunity for fun (and perhaps equal parts frustration). Clearing the main story will only take a few hours, but there are several bonus features here. As mentioned you can unlock bonus levels by thoroughly exploring each of the main levels, plus there's a New Game Plus mode that adds some subtle changes so it's more than just a replay option. If you take the time to explore everything the game has to offer you'll be kept decently busy. The visuals of Vitamin Connection are pretty charming—the microscopic characters are pretty cute in their cartoon designs, the scenery is colorful though not super detailed (again that might be for the best given the game's setting) and the cutscenes with the Sable family are delightful. The developers also clearly took special care in building up a robust, chipper soundtrack. There's a mix of J-Pop, hip hop, and more standard video game background music to be found here, and it definitely keeps the energy up in a fun way. Vitamin Connection feels perfectly at home on the Switch thanks to its co-op focus and suspiciously familiar ship design. Like the early Switch eShop games, Vitamin Connection seems to explore a distinctly Switch-based experience. That said, the heart of the gameplay is perhaps a bit too simple, and only the charm/chaos of playing with a friend spices up the experience. But if that co-op experience is what you're looking for, Vitamin Connection is the right prescription. Rating: 7 out of 10 Vitamins
  10. Two humans, a host of demons, and Satan walk into a bar. That's not the setup to a bad joke, it's more or less the premise of Afterparty, another story-driven game from developer Night School, the team behind Oxenfree. Like that game, Afterparty is light on gameplay but heavy on storytelling as the two protagonists try to find a way to escape Hell while hopping from one night club to another, sampling all of the cocktails that demon bartenders offer. It's a unique and witty adventure, even if all of its gameplay elements don't quite land perfectly. You play as Milo and Lola, two childhood friends who have just graduated college and are ready to take on the world…until they die. The pair don't even remember how it happened, but now that they're in Hell they're forced to go through processing to receive the terms of their eternal damnation. However, they come across a lucky loophole: it's possible to escape Hell if you're able to outdrink Satan himself. Thus the two friends set off on a bar-hopping adventure to find a way into Satan's killer party and challenge the big man to a drinking contest. As you might imagine based on the premise, the story is pretty silly and the developers clearly had a lot of fun writing this bizarre setting. Demons are casually drinking with the souls of the damned, cracking jokes and even a few fourth-wall-breaking one-liners. And the humor is actually really solid in Afterparty. It can be hard to make jokes land well in games sometimes but there's some great witty lines here that are genuinely smart, charming, and entertaining. And on the other side of the coin, Afterparty handles its drama quite well. Sometimes there's such a focus on comedy that the drama feels a bit unearned, as in two characters just start arguing seemingly out of nowhere, but overall it has believable weight and will draw you in. It's not hard to care about Milo and Lola, as individuals, as friends, and as humans trying to escape eternal torment. Dialogue is the main focus of Afterparty, and for the most part is the only real gameplay element of the adventure. You always have two dialogue options while talking, but you can also order drinks from the bars that grant new options, typically with wacky effects. One drink might make you talk like a pirate, another will make your dialogue flirty or witty, etc. The idea of altering your dialogue options is fun and provides a ton of replay value, though in practice the alcohol lines in Afterparty are pretty underwhelming. The drunk lines are pretty much just an optional feature—they don't have much real impact on how you progress through the story. It's a bit disappointing, since it felt like the game was setting up the player to have to find the best drink for each situation, but in practice it's just a minor feature. The only other times you have real gameplay interaction are during the drinking games, which are also rather basic and underwhelming. The controls are understandably tricky during these portions—the characters are drunk, after all—but even so, it makes the games kind of obnoxious to play. Additionally, the most recent patch version of Afterparty seems to be a good improvement over the launch version, but it still has some slight technical issues, including long load times, occasional framerate drops and small animation errors. Otherwise the visual design of Afterparty is a fun mishmash of foreboding Hellscapes and dive bar chic. Dark, bleak towers are contrasted next to neon light signs for local pubs, and the effect is pretty funny. The demons are more goofy than threatening, which gives the adventure a ton of charm. The scenery can be a little repetitive since you have to revisit places sometimes, but the aesthetic is still fun. The top notch voice cast is also doing a ton of work to bring out the game's quirky personality, and everyone nails their role. The background music isn't much but that's only because there's so much dialogue that you'll only ever really focus on the voice acting. Afterparty is a smart blend of comedy and drama, wrapped up in a totally unique setting. If anything the game could've explored its own concept more, with more exploration of Hell and more consequences for your choice of drinks, but even so there's an enjoyable adventure and an entertaining story being told here, even if you take only a single 5-hour playthrough and not a second to see all the little options and changes possible. Rating: 7 out of 10 Cocktails
  11. So many truths in this video, don't lie.
  12. More than any other Zelda game, Skyward Sword felt tied to the console it was released on. The motion controls of the Wii—as well as the enhanced abilities of Wii MotionPlus—were a fundamental aspect of the game that guided both combat and puzzle design. The Switch, of course, also has motion controls, but for the Wii that aspect was always front and center given the unique design of Wii remotes and nunchuks. So it's particularly gratifying to see how well The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD holds up after ten years and a leap to a new console. The focus on motion controls might seem odd and it may not be as revolutionary of a Zelda game as its followup, but the core spirit of adventure is still alive and well. In the somewhat convoluted Zelda chronology, Skyward Sword is the earliest tale and tells the origin story of the Master Sword as well as the earliest incarnation of Link and Zelda's intertwining fates. Zelda has a lot more personality in this game compared to previous adventures (while Link is still a silent protagonist) and there are a couple of standout side characters as well, including the pompous Groose and creepy villain Ghirahim. This still isn't the type of game to bombard the player with lengthy cutscenes, but when cutscenes do pop up they're often filled with charm and gravitas, making this a particularly engaging Zelda story. The fundamentals of Skyward Sword are still classic Zelda, though with the hindsight of Breath of the Wild it's fun to see little examples of how that game's philosophy originated here. This adventure is still linear but there's a bit more emphasis on large environments that give you some opportunity to explore at your own pace. Link has a stamina gauge in this game that forces you to put a little more thought into how you move through an environment and/or attack enemies. Some items are upgradeable with materials you can collect while exploring. Replaying Skyward Sword is a good reminder of how each Zelda game builds off of its predecessor. But enough about Breath of the Wild. Skyward Sword is a wholly entertaining Zelda adventure in its own right thanks to a smart blend of classic Zelda elements and motion controls. On one hand, you have dungeon designs and items that are right at home in most any Zelda game. What makes Skyward Sword unique, though, is how both combat and puzzles are framed around motion controls to add just the right twist to make that game design feel fresh. Slashing your sword with a physical swing of your arm or carefully adjusting the aim of your bow is just as much fun today as it was ten years ago. It also certainly helps that this game features plenty of great dungeon designs, in no small part due to how interconnected the puzzles and overworld are. In many cases just getting to the dungeon feels like half of a dungeon in and of itself, which gives the whole game a nice momentum that makes it hard to put down. There are also some great boss fights (as well as a couple of not so great boss fights) that put the game's motion control-focused items to good use. If there was one small annoyance I had to point out though, it's that flying through the sky still feels rather boring. The aerial portion of the map is just too sparsely populated to be all that engaging to explore, and getting from point A to point B is still pretty dull. Skyward Sword certainly isn't the only Zelda game with this fault though, and a boring minute or two in the sky doesn't diminish the rest of the experience. So what's new with Skyward Sword HD? Well first and foremost is how the motion controls hold up with the Joy-Cons, and ultimately it works rather well. The sensation of swinging a sword still feels solid (though I have to air a small gripe as a lefty: using the right Joy-Con feels off to me compared to using the Wii remote in my left hand) and you're now able to freely move the camera with the right control stick which is a nice little improvement. Skyward Sword HD also features button controls, which don't give you that satisfying level of immersion but still get the job done. You swing the sword by flicking the right control stick which never felt quite as accurate to me as the motion controls, but the game is still comfortably playable with this setup. The downside is that now you have to hold the L button in order to move the camera, which is clunky. The other changes are relatively minor but all of them are welcome. The game now autosaves so you don't have to rush to a bird statue every time you want to stop (though of course you can also just put the Switch to sleep these days), your helper Fi is no longer quite so keen to interrupt you constantly with advice (though she can still help if you specifically ask her to), and you no longer have to sit through an item description every time you pick one up (which was a frankly mind-boggling feature of the original game). It's a lot of little quality of life improvements but they all add up to make the adventure better than ever. Unfortunately, one of the biggest additions is locked behind the Loftwing amiibo, but if you get your hands on one it's a handy way of quickly transitioning from land to sky—another welcome improvement. Like a lot of HD upgrades, the visuals of Skyward Sword HD essentially look like how you remember the original game in your mind: without the jagged edges of pixelated effects of an SD game and instead bursting with color and stylish impressionist-painting visuals. The original game looked good on the Wii, but the transition to HD is an obvious improvement and manages to adapt the art style without losing too much of that cool painted effect. Some of the character models are still a bit blocky, but the style of the game easily outweighs those small technical drawbacks. The soundtrack is also just as much of a blast here as it was ten years ago, with majestic ballads and thrilling adventure tunes galore. Nothing has actually been added to the length of the game, but Skyward Sword is still a solid length Zelda adventure, particularly if you take the time to hunt down all of the optional collectibles. There's also Hero Mode that opens up once you've completed the game once, which is essentially a Master Quest or hard mode. Zelda fans should enjoy the extra challenge though. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD brings a welcome selection of improvements that will hopefully help introduce this 10-year-old game to new fans. Even veterans will appreciate revisiting one of Link's more unique adventures, with its more precise approach to combat and inventive dungeon designs that still cleverly revolve around motion controls. Most of all, the HD facelift makes the colorful art style shine more than ever before. Pop on your green tunic, strap on your sword and leap into another fantastic, whirlwind Zelda adventure with Skyward Sword HD—you'll be glad you did. Rating: 9 out of 10 Loftwings
  13. Can't get your hands on the recent limited edition Game & Watch releases? No sweat, just grab the Piczle Puzzle & Watch Collection for the same experience! Well, digitally, at least. This collection from developer Score Studios and publisher Rainy Frog brings together three puzzle games that look like they're played on old fashioned Game & Watch systems. It's a cute, cheeky concept that is backed up by some excellent puzzle game design. First off, I have to commend the developers for leaning into the concept of this "collection" of Game & Watch titles so much. When you first boot up the game you're treated to an unboxing video of each of the three games, and you can even flip through little instruction manuals. Once you start actually playing, the games are displayed on a faux LCD screen and you can see the surrounding console—the buttons on screen even react when you press the actual buttons on your controller (in fact you can also press these fake buttons using the touch screen). You'll also see the old fashioned "animation" that flickers between two poses on the fake screen. There's a lovely attention to detail which helps balance out the fact that there's not a ton of fancy visual design otherwise. The whole concept of Piczle Puzzle & Watch Collection is pretty charming and definitely scratches an itch for old school fans, even if you can't hold the games physically. The Collection is made up of three puzzle games: Piczle Cross, Piczle Pattern, and Piczle Loops. Cross is a picross or nonogram game, a puzzle format that has had a fantastic surge of activity on the Switch and is, as always, a lot of fun. It's awfully satisfying to just plow through one puzzle after another—it's the perfect game to kind of tune yourself out to the world and just play. There are over 200 puzzles in Cross, all of them are on 10x10 grids, and half of them require fewer than 3 mistakes to beat while the other half won't alert you to any errors you make. It is presumably by design that Cross feels a bit dated in terms of nonogram games—it doesn't have any of the quality of life features that have made picross games a bit more accessible, which is a bit of a shame. Still though, even if some aspects of the puzzle design feel a bit stiff, Cross is still wonderfully engaging and will keep you well occupied. The second game, Piczle Pattern, is a bit more unique. While Cross gives you hundreds of puzzles to tackle, Pattern offers only one, but the catch is that you can keep replaying to try to perfect your skills. The objective here is to turn every square in the grid black, but of course it isn't that simple as you can only "flip" colors in a cross pattern, so you'll often end up turning a few black squares back to white as you try to flip them all. It's another classic puzzle design that would feel right at home in a larger game like Zelda or Professor Layton, and perhaps because of that it feels a little bit shallow. There's not as much replay depth to Pattern compared to the other two Piczle Puzzle games. In some ways it feels like the kind of puzzle you do once and then forget about. There's an alternate mode that starts you off with a random selection of squares already black which adds some variety and challenge, but overall Pattern just didn't grip me. Last but not least there's Piczle Loops, which is another take on a classic puzzle design but one that I wasn't familiar with previously. The goal is to create one long loop around the squares on screen, but the numbers in each square give you a hint about whether or not a line can pass by that square. For example, if there's a 1, only one side of the square will have an adjacent line. It has a bit of a Minesweeper feel to it, and just like picross or sudoku there's an engaging level of depth hidden under the relatively simple premise. It requires forethought to keep all of the little clues in your head, and it's super satisfying when things click into place. As is always the case with puzzle games, the eureka moment when you figure it out is a lot of fun. Loops features 72 puzzles, though by and large they're more challenging than Cross, so you'll probably end up playing both for an equal amount of time. Beneath the slightly goofy premise of the digital Game & Watch console, Piczle Puzzle & Watch Collection is a smart selection of puzzle challenges. Pattern is perhaps not quite as engaging as the others, but Cross and Loops more than pick up the slack with challenging and addictive puzzles that scratch that itch for finishing one puzzle after another. Picross fans would do well to give this a try and perhaps discover a new puzzle obsession with Loops. Rating: 8 out of 10 Puzzles Review copy provided by publisher Piczle Puzzle & Watch is available now on the Switch eShop for $7.99, on sale for $6.99 until August 8.
  14. New Pokemon Snap Gallery Thread A place for players to share their photos and galleries for the new Pokemon Snap Game.
  15. The constant stream of remaking/remastering classic games has now reached all the way back to 1986's Alex Kidd in Miracle World, originally released on the Sega Master System. Alex Kidd was essentially Sega's platformer star for a good few years before Sonic the Hedgehog took that crown, and Miracle World was the game that started it all. Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX recreates the original experience with HD graphics and reimagined music, but the slippery, bland gameplay feels straight out of the 80s. Like most 80s games there's only a basic story to Miracle World DX, but the gist is that a villain named Jaken the Great has taken over the land and you, as Alex Kidd, must use your martial arts prowess to stop him and save everyone. A classic good vs. evil story with few twists or turns. It feels pointless to be too critical of the storytelling in such an old game though—it may not hold up today but it was a good enough background plot at the time. The gameplay in Miracle World DX is classic 2-button platforming. You move, jump, and punch enemies or blocks as you try to reach the goal of each level (which in this game is a piece of food). All the basic platformer building blocks are there—you even have occasional alternative challenges like underwater levels or riding bikes/piloting aircrafts—and yet Alex's movements are so obnoxiously slippery, enemy hitboxes are so frustratingly big while Alex's attacks are so infuriatingly short, and levels are so tediously designed that the game is utterly discouraging to play. The weirdest part is that the game's marketing boasts tighter, more fluid controls, and yet moving and jumping as Alex Kidd feels anything but smooth—too fluid, maybe, as you skid into enemies or into hazardous pits so easily. A big part of what makes Miracle World DX feel tedious can really just be chalked up to the game's 80s origins, when unforgiving difficulty was a conscious choice to ensure gamers kept playing the game over and over and slowly mastered its quirks. Retro purists may enjoy that sense of difficulty here, but anyone not prepared for that kind of cruel difficulty will feel frustrated. The game does offer an "easy" mode alternative that allows you to play with infinite lives and eliminate the concept of game overs, yet this solution goes way too far in the opposite direction. Now the game's difficulty is almost inconsequential—when you die you'll restart at a nearby checkpoint so you'll easily brute force your way through the game. Some sort of happy medium in the difficulty options would have done wonders. There are also a number of just plain odd design choices that again, may be due to 80s game design philosophy, but feel totally out of place in 2021. Bosses aren't just combat encounters, some are rock-paper-scissors games that essentially just feel like raw luck that can eat up your extra lives (if you're not playing on infinite lives mode). It's a quirky design choice that definitely feels unique but also definitely doesn't feel fun or rewarding—it's just made to force the player to replay portions of the game. Miracle World DX perhaps caters too much to the original game and its fans, making the experience feel too dated and esoteric to be fully enjoyable for new players. The graphics are the one area that saw plenty of remastering polish, and the result is admittedly quite nice. There's a lot of cartoony charm in the modern graphics while retaining a classic appeal. There's a somewhat strange hazy effect to the visuals that makes everything seem slightly out of focus, but it's not a huge issue. And easily the coolest aspect of the game is that you can switch to the retro graphics at any time to see how far the visuals have come. It's literally just the press of a button (ZR), so it's easy to hop back and forth anytime you like. The remastered music isn't half bad either—considering the age of the original tunes the overall soundtrack holds up pretty well. Miracle World DX is an extremely short game that only feels longer thanks to the amount of dying/retrying you'll have to do—when you play with infinite lives on, the tiny length of the game is apparent. Still, if you play with the normal difficulty mode you'll end up spending a lot of time mastering the gameplay's frustrating quirks. Finishing the game also unlocks a boss rush mode and a classic mode but neither are huge incentives to dive back into this adventure. Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX is ultimately too faithful to the original game, a game that is woefully dated by modern standards and needed fresh remake features to make the concept shine once again. Rather than polishing and updating the formula, this remake just dusts off a game design that doesn't really work anymore. There are some fun ideas here, such as the variety of vehicle levels, but everything else about the game is just a slog. Anyone that has fond memories of the original may enjoy revisiting the gameplay with shinier graphics, but new players will find very little to love here. Rating: 5 out of 10 Miracles
  16. Is there a better time capsule for the early 2000s than a video game about skateboarding? Best of all, that game is good. Really good. There's a reason the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise spawned such a run of sequels, and it's because it came out of the gate with two fantastic games that found a perfect balance of simplicity and challenge in a stylish package. 20 years later, developer Vicarious Visions has lovingly remade that experience with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, which is just as sharp, fun, and addictive as it ever was. If you never played the Tony Hawk games back in the day, this remake makes it abundantly clear why they're so lauded. Even twenty years later the games show off some absolutely brilliant arcade sports game design. Pulling off tricks and chains of combos is engaging and challenging but not so tedious that it ever feels discouraging. You're always going to want to get back on the board and give it another try, and then when you pull off that massive combo and watch your score skyrocket it's an incredibly satisfying feeling. There's a good variety of tricks available but not so many that you're forced to memorize long chains of combos. The environments are just the right size—big enough to encourage exploration, but also dense enough that you can find great spots for combos all over. The variety of objectives ensures you're not just holed up in one corner of the map racking up points but are actually encouraged to explore and experience the game to the fullest. THPS1+2 tightens things up with a few upgrades to the originals, and the developers were smart enough to keep them small yet impactful. Things like reverts and wall plants—introduced in later games in the series—make it easier to maintain long chains and feel like natural additions. Most importantly, none of these little tweaks change the fact that the controls are wonderfully responsive and engaging. If you do find yourself struggling, though, there are plenty of assist options as well as a helpful tutorial in case you haven't been to the skate park in a while. Outside of the core gameplay mechanics, the game adds a ton of content to keep you busy. The old guard of skaters is present and accounted for, but there are also a ton of fresh faces to play as. A new challenge system earns you experience points for unlocking items in the store as well as the opportunity to add new tricks to your character's repertoire. You can create your own skate park with a pretty robust editor. And last but certainly not least, you've got the multiplayer options: local split-screen and online competitions with leaderboards can provide a near endless string of one-up-manship as you finesse your skills. With two games in one and so many characters, it'd be a pretty huge—but satisfying—task to really do everything the game has to offer. If you've played any multi platform release on the Switch, you won't be surprised to see that the visuals take a hit on Nintendo's platform. You don't get to enjoy the crisp 4K clarity of the other consoles, but THPS1+2 doesn't look bad at all. The textures are muddier, sure, but that really doesn't impact the experience. More importantly, the soundtrack is well preserved here, with a fantastic selection of punk/ska/rock songs that will take you right back to your childhood, as well as some solid new additions. Even if you didn't grow up with this music, its energy and excitement is the absolutely perfect backing track for pulling off insane tricks and combos in one location after another. It shouldn't be terribly surprising since these games are 20 years old, but it's still a testament to their quality that visual fidelity has zero impact on how fun and addictive Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 is. The gameplay has the perfect balance of simplicity and depth that makes it a blast whether you're dropping into the half pipe for the first time or are already a pro. The incredible amount of things to do between these two games, not to mention the online/multiplayer features, is sure to keep you kickflipping for weeks. Rating: 9 out of 10 Skateboards
  17. You know you have something special on your hands when you're playing a game and thinking "I have no idea what is going on here but I must continue playing." Everhood defies explanation—I'm not even sure how best to categorize it in terms of genres—but it crafts an amazingly bizarre and compelling experience. Most importantly, it's not just weird for the sake of being weird. There's a lot of care and charm put into making Everhood as strange and engaging as it is. You play as Red, a wooden doll dressed all in—you guessed it—red. One of your arms is stolen by a blue gnome on the orders of Golden Pig, some sort of leader/tyrant, which sends you on an adventure across a strange land of odd creatures to make yourself whole once again. Early on, you'll feel like you have no idea what is happening, but just going with the flow of the game can be a lot of fun. One moment you're having a dance battle in a nightclub, the next you're exploring a castle or completing a long trading quest chain. There are definite Undertale vibes in Everhood's tone and aesthetic, but Everhood really stands on its own feet when you uncover the deeper themes of the game and learn more about what's actually going on. And although Red is a classic silent protagonist, the side characters are a joy to talk to and are almost always weird and funny. The game's story is surreal and mysterious and completely compelling; it's the kind of game that is just a joy to lose yourself in and let your mind wander through the possibilities presented to you. The actual gameplay is a fantastically odd blend of rhythm and bullet-hell, with a smattering of other genres thrown in at times (at one point you compete in a cart racing tournament, for example). When you engage characters in battle you'll enter a combat screen that looks kind of like a Guitar Hero fretboard. Rather than hitting the "notes," though, you'll be dodging attacks by moving left and right or jumping over them. The attacks come in time with the music, but your movements aren't necessarily dictated by the rhythm—sometimes you can hang out in one lane for a long stretch of time with only a few attacks coming your way. Overall though, it's definitely a blink-and-you'll-die kind of game since you have to be quick to avoid the constant onslaught of attacks. Though thankfully if you get hit you only lose a bit of health, which will naturally regenerate if you avoid taking more damage, so while the game is challenging it balances itself out with somewhat forgiving recovery mechanics. This is definitely the kind of game you have to play to understand, but when it clicks with you it's an absolute blast to deftly avoid attacks while a frankly fantastic soundtrack of songs plays. There's a simplicity here—just moving and jumping—that is awfully satisfying when combined with the stylish graphics and music. You'll also eventually gain the ability to fight back by absorbing and deflecting enemy attacks, which adds a whole new layer of strategy and intensity to the battle system. When you have to focus on offense as well as defense the gameplay really gets frantic—this is the kind of game that's hard to play for a long stretch of time lest you strain your eyes too much by focusing so intently. As already mentioned Everhood is an aural treat, and the visuals aren't half bad either. The pixel art style combined with the game's quirky aesthetic makes for a lot of fun character designs, and the battle visuals are positively psychedelic (though you'll usually be far too focused on the battle to fully take them in). The environments are super plain, but it suits the game's weird sense of style. It also makes sense that Everhood would have a strong soundtrack given the focus on music and rhythm in its battle system, but what's really impressive is how varied it is. From hard rock songs to more folksy tunes, there's a wonderful breadth of music styles present here, and every single one of them sounds fantastic. Everhood lasts around six or seven hours, which feels like a good length for the adventure. There are different difficulty options that you can change at any time, though these only affect how much health you have and how quickly you regenerate, so you still have to be quick on your thumbs during the harder fights. There's also a New Game+ mode and potentially alternate endings if you take the time to track them down. Everhood is easily one of the most unique games to come out this year, and one that absolutely merits looking into. Playing is believing when it comes to the game's surreal story and intense but satisfying rhythm-based gameplay—any description I can provide won't fully capture the strange and entertaining journey that Everhood will take you on, but if you're willing to try something bizarre this game is a must-play. Rating: 8 out of 10 Songs
  18. Mario and friends return to the links once again with a handful of new gameplay modes in Mario Golf: Super Rush. Sometimes it feels like Mario sports games are released constantly, but it's actually been seven years since the last golf game, and 18 years since the last console Mario Golf game. Has all of that time between entries led to a massive overhaul of the gameplay structure with innovative new features? Well, no, not really. Super Rush does contain a story adventure mode where you play as a Mii character who joins a golf club in the Mushroom Kingdom. There is an RPG-like progression that allows you to level up your stats as you compete with familiar Mario characters and take on unusual golf-based challenges. This provides a good introduction to the game's mechanics, but too often the adventure is tediously slow and repetitive. For example, you may be required to do a practice run on a course before you're allowed to compete on the full 18 holes, so you're just forced to repeat the same holes, sometimes multiple times. Maybe the game just wants to ease players into things but it's excessive. What's worse though is when the difficulty goes in the opposite direction. There are a couple of shocking spikes in difficulty due to novel new gameplay mechanics like cross-country golf (or XC golf). Despite the slow, repetitive nature of adventure mode the game really doesn't prepare you for these sudden challenges. There are also a few seemingly half-baked ideas thrown in that aren't so much difficult as just jarring and unusual inclusions, and the way side characters enter and rapidly exit your Mii's story is unsatisfying to say the least. Ultimately the adventure mode has some interesting ideas but doesn't develop them fully and instead focuses on more boring aspects of the golf gameplay. Like most Mario sports games, the golf gameplay finds a happy medium between detailed mechanics and outright cartoony design. You've got stuff like Pokeys mucking up the fairway and special shots that can blast opponents' balls into the rough, but the core gameplay is a solid take on golf video games. You have a good amount of control over how to hit the ball and observe the course, but not so much nitty gritty details that it ever feels overwhelming. In this game hitting at full power is always a bit of a risk as your ball has a higher chance of hooking or slicing, but that might be a risk you're willing to take to gain a few extra yards. The power/aiming mechanics feel a bit simplified from past games but there's still room for strategy, even if it does feel tuned for an inexperienced golfing audience rather than the pros. Super Rush does introduce a few wacky game modes though, in true Mario sports game fashion. There's Speed Golf where you're scored on your time, not strokes (though each stroke adds to your time), so the focus is on fast, precise shots and not taking too long to line up your swings. Every player plays concurrently so it's also possible to mess with your opponents by purposely trampling over their ball and knocking it into a hazard. It's fun to see a focus on speed in one of the most leisurely sports around, though all the time you spend running to the ball can be tedious after a while. There's also Battle Golf which is similar to Speed but takes place in an arena with multiple holes. By being the first to sink a shot in a hole you claim it, and first to claim three holes wins. Again, it's cool to see a wacky, active take on the golf formula, and Battle is even more directly competitive than Speed so it can make for some truly outrageous multiplayer moments. It does feel like Battle isn't as fleshed out as it could be, though. Only one arena—with a couple of rules options—limits some of this mode's replayability and variety. In fact, the game as a whole feels like it could use a bit more variety, and that may be because there are already free updates planned to add more characters and courses. Additional free content is great, but it would have been even nicer if the base game felt a bit more fleshed out. Super Rush includes both traditional button controls and motion controls. As you might imagine, the motion controls feel like a novelty—fun to play around with, but not something you're likely to devote a whole afternoon of play time to. Still, it's nice to have the option when you want to mix things up a little bit. Story mode will last you around seven or eight hours, but of course a Mario sports game is defined by its multiplayer replay value. In Super Rush's case that includes online modes, which are fairly stable for the most part and are off to a decent start in terms of community size. Of course it wouldn't be a Nintendo online experience if there weren't annoying little quirks like forcing you to kick everyone out of your lobby when you want to change your selected rules, but for the most part it works smoothly. Super Rush has the carefully curated, glossy visual style you'd expect from a Mario game. The courses look good—not many standout elements, but good—but the clear winner for visuals is the costume design. Wario and Waluigi are looking dapper as all get out, while Toad's sweater vest is an ace choice. In fact, it's almost weird that there is so much less detail in the scenery compared to the costumes, but maybe that's too much to ask for from a Mario sports game. The music, meanwhile, runs an impressive gamut of catchy songs that help keep up the energy of the wackier game modes. Mario Golf: Super Rush hits par, but can't quite sink a birdie. The slightly adjusted golf mechanics still work well, and the addition of Speed and Battle Golf makes for some entertaining multiplayer mayhem, but an underwhelming story mode and good but not great course design leaves the experience feeling mild. Super Rush is a perfectly serviceable Mario Golf game, but a more ambitious hole-in-one attempt might have made for a more interesting time on the links. Rating: 7 out of 10 Clubs
  19. Part visual novel, part action/platformer and, frankly, entirely bizarre, World's End Club takes players on a supernatural journey with a group of elementary school students. Originally released on Apple Arcade, the game is now available on the Switch with additional content. An extended ending doesn't change much about the game's tedious writing or gameplay flaws, though. You play as Reycho, a member of the Go-Getters Club. The group of students is on a school trip when disaster strikes their bus and they're all knocked out. When they wake up, they're in an abandoned amusement park where a creepy clown named Pielope tells them they must play a Game of Fate against each other to survive. Somehow the story manages to get weirder from there. For most of the game you've just got to be along for the ride because there are so many crazy ideas stacked on top of each other here that each new plot twist feels like it's completely out of left field. That sense of uncertainty can keep you engaged for a while, but ultimately World's End Club just feels like too many ideas stuffed together without a strong cohesive element to keep you invested. In theory that cohesive element is meant to be the characters, the club members who often talk with one another, argue about what to do next, and have their own intertwining backstories. Early on they all feel like cliché character tropes that can be seen in similar games or media, but by the end of the game…well, they haven't developed much. At least, most of them go through predictable small moments of character growth, but overall it's just not that interesting, especially when contrasted with the bizarre setting and larger story playing out that is too often pushed to the backburner in favor of children discussing their crushes. The game is also long-winded and repetitive, which makes the visual novel portions awfully hard to sit through at times. However, World's End Club does feature some more traditional gameplay elements. Occasionally the game becomes a side-scrolling action/platformer, complete with enemies, puzzles, and even some stealth sections. Although Reycho generally feels like the main character, you get to control others as well, and each one eventually unlocks a unique special ability. Reycho, for example, can pick things up and throw them, thereby defeating enemies or knocking loose unreachable objects. These action sequences feel completely terrible. I might assume the main issue stems from the game's origins on a different platform, but that couldn't be the sole reason that the movement feels so uncomfortably slow and stilted, or how your jumps are stiff and awkward, or how special abilities feel clumsy to use most of the time. Granted, the visual novel side of the game is clearly the focus, but if a game is going to include these kinds of action sequences they should at least have some basic competency, especially when one hit will kill you on normal mode (you do restart fairly quickly, at least). This also all culminates in boss fights that are as tedious as they are boring. All of the platforming and action elements of the game feel sloppy and drag down the experience. At some points in the story you're able to choose your path as the group of students decides to split up. In a rare show of competent game design, World's End Club gives you some agency and your choice feels like it has an impact. That is, until you reach the end of the game and discover that, in order to reach the true ending, you have to go back and replay all of the branching paths anyway. It's very strange that the game negates the concept of choices there. Ultimately World's End Club clocks in at around nine or ten hours, and like most story-heavy games there's not much replay value here. The game's presentation is at least one area that feels solid. The colorful art style does look good, at least for the main characters who all get to enjoy fairly distinct designs. And the contrast of cute chibi characters with a fairly bleak and bizarre story definitely gives the game a unique atmosphere if nothing else. The scenery can be pretty bland at times and the inherent repetitiveness of the characters just standing around talking to each other can be tiresome though. The voice acting does give the cast of characters some personality, but much like the writing the voice work leans too hard on cliché, played-out themes. The soundtrack isn't half bad though and has some solid music choices. World's End Club is a strange mishmash of ideas, none of which is fully baked. The visual novel elements at least make sense as a game, even if it doesn't always make sense as a story, but the action/platformer segments are completely ill-thought out and would be disappointing to play in a game 30+ years old, much less one released this year. Its okay presentation isn't nearly enough reason to sit through the clumsy gameplay and a story that never feels like it reaches its potential. Rating: 5 out of 10 Clubs
  20. I'm not sure what it is that makes speeding through an obstacle course as quickly as you can so much fun, but I'm glad to have another excellent example of the concept on the Switch. Cyber Hook, from developer Blazing Stick and publisher Graffiti Games, challenges players with 3D platforming/parkour in minimalist environments where all you need to focus on is how to perfectly time your momentum to reach the goal. If you're feeling the need for speed, Cyber Hook fits the bill perfectly. Surprisingly Cyber Hook does have a bit of a story. You're trapped in cyberspace and a friendly program aids you by showing you how to move around, how to collect crystals, and how to fight back against the malevolent program hunting you both. In reality though, the story is pretty inconsequential. You'll get small dialogue scenes every time you clear a new section of levels, but ultimately this game is focused on fast-paced 3D platforming. Not surprisingly, Cyber Hook's gameplay is based entirely around a grappling hook mechanic. With it you're able to latch onto any blue or purple surface nearby, then use your momentum to keep moving through the stage. You're also able to jump and double jump as well as briefly slow down time to make it easier to line up your grapples. Finally you can shoot to destroy green blocks in your way. Other obstacles though, like red blocks, can't be destroyed and are deadly to touch. It's also worth noting that the game has gyro controls but these can be turned off. That's essentially it for gameplay mechanics, but the game throws a huge variety of challenges at you with just these building blocks. Moving smoothly with the grappling hook is definitely challenging at first, and the game's sense of weight and momentum can be tricky since it's possible to stop almost on a dime sometimes, but once you get the hang of it it's immensely rewarding to be able to sail through a level at breakneck speed. It has the flow of parkour which is just a ton of fun to experience in a first-person platformer. And although the game is definitely challenging it never feels too punishing—it's possible to correct mistakes, and your actions don't have to be so precise that completing a level feels too discouraging. Unfortunately there's no way to skip a level if you do get stuck, but at least it's possible to unlock a new section by collecting crystals (which are earned based on your time in a level). Cyber Hook is clearly made for speedrun fans, and to that end it's also cool to see that there are plenty of ways to "sequence break" a level. You don't need to step on every platform or swing on every available object in a level—sometimes you can bypass chunks of the level entirely—and learning these little tricks by mastering your grappling skills and timing is a blast. And if beating your own high score isn't enough incentive, there's an online leaderboard so you know how you stack up against other players regionally and worldwide. I should mention though that while the game generally ran smoothly I did have a few random crashes. Thankfully the game auto-saves when you finish a level but the crashes came up a little too often. The game's presentation is stylish and minimalist, which ultimately suits the gameplay—you don't want to have any question about whether a platform is safe or a hazard in a game like this. The 80s cyber-retro aesthetic is sleek and colorful, and even if there isn't any variety throughout the game it's still a great backdrop while you're focused on speed. The music isn't bad either and has a similar energetic 80s style, but given the nature of the game it might have been nice to hear more variety as you play levels over and over. Cyber Hook focuses entirely on creating fun ways to absolutely fly through a level, tapping into that headspace that enjoys racing against the clock. More importantly, it does so with a small but versatile set of tools that is easy to pick up but challenging to master, and physics that make moving around just plain fun. If you enjoy speed-based platformers or are looking for a parkour kind of game, Cyber Hook will certainly hook you. Rating: 7 out of 10 Hooks Review copy provided by publisher Cyber Hook is available now on the Switch eShop for $14.99.
  21. I've seen this question making the rounds on the net for a few days. Tho, I think this opinion is minor, most who play Metroid titles are going to get this game no mater what. Where you stand with the $60 price of this game? ($79.99 up here in Canada)
  22. Kaze and the Wild Masks takes such direct inspiration from 90s platformers that if I didn't know better I would have thought this was a rerelease of a forgotten 15+ year old game. Kaze wears its love for the genre on its sleeve, hitting all of the familiar beats of a 2D side-scrolling platformer and recreating that vibe perfectly. Throughout all of that though, the game could have taken a bit more time to come up with some new ideas as well. You play as Kaze, an anthropomorphic rabbit who, after finding a mysterious ring, must rescue her friend Hogo's trapped spirit and stop the chaotic spread of vicious fruits and vegetables rampaging across the Crystal Islands. The game's intro doesn't give you much more to go on, but you can fill in more bits of the story as you play and uncover artwork/story scenes that provide more background information. It's still not a robust story but if Kaze is going for a 90s aesthetic it really doesn't need much more context than: run forward and avoid obstacles. Kaze's platformer gameplay feels straight out of the 90s, particularly the Donkey Kong Country games. Enemies are sparse but it's one hit and you're dead (you can get an extra hit point if you grab a heart in a stage), Kaze's sense of weight and momentum feels similar, and there are even barrel-like propulsion crossbows in some stages. In every level your goal is simply to reach the end, but there are extra challenges along the way, such as collecting letters that spell out K-A-Z-E (an obvious homage to DKC's K-O-N-G letters) as well as two bonus rooms in every level that provide an extra challenge and reward you with collectible gems. Throughout all of this you'll be challenged with perfecting your timing as Kaze's run, jump, and hover-fall abilities (think Dixie from DKC2) provide a limited skill set that you'll have to master to survive the myriad hazards thrown your way. In addition to all of this, there are also the masks referenced in the title which transform Kaze and provide additional abilities. The bird mask allows her to fly, the shark mask allows her to swim, etc. These transformations add a bit of spice to the game though they're only used in specific levels—they aren't like Mario's power-ups which you might collect and use in various situations. Early on the masks' appearances are infrequent but by the end they become a focus and really put you through your platformer paces. Kaze is a sharp platformer and the developers clearly understand the genre well, which perhaps makes it more disappointing that the whole game feels a little too derivative of its influences. Nothing in the gameplay design feels terribly off—there's some annoyance with Kaze's sense of momentum, or lack thereof, which is tricky to control at first and you can easily undershoot platforms before you fully get the hang of it, but overall there's a good sense of polish to the game. Yet nothing feels particularly fresh or exciting either. The level design is smart with a decent sense of variety and ramps up its difficulty nicely—barring one or two frustrating difficulty spikes—but in terms of set-piece moments there wasn't anything in this game that doesn't feel like it hasn't been done numerous times before. There's certainly something to be said for doing something familiar and executing it well, but I would've liked to see Kaze go a step further than that. It's not too long of a game, particularly if you're not pursuing all of the optional collectibles. A good five or six hours should see you through the adventure, perhaps more if you need to shake the rust off of your platformer skills, since many of the later levels do get challenging. The fact that every level has only one checkpoint can be tricky, but there's also an easy mode that adds more if you need it. Grabbing every collectible will definitely take more time to complete though, and you may even be rewarded with an extended ending if you take the time to do so. Kaze keeps it old school with its visual design as well, favoring pixel art over more modern 3D models. The effect looks great, with Kaze herself feeling like a quintessential 90s mascot character, and the violent veggies are undeniably charming enemies. The environments, though, leave something to be desired beyond the typical field, tundra, and volcano settings with their simple platformer scenery. The soundtrack is solid, though it too never quite finds its standout moment. Kaze and the Wild Masks is a highly polished take on 90s platformers, from the no-frills core mechanics that still provide tons of challenges to the plentiful collectibles and bonus challenges. The game ultimately relies too much on those 90s design conventions and never quite finds its own voice, but that doesn't change the fact that Kaze is an engaging blast from the past that old school fans will absolutely enjoy. Rating: 7 out of 10 Masks
  23. ...and also to PS4, 5, and PC. But not to XBox. Discuss.
  24. An unusual photography-themed spin-off of an incredibly popular game franchise is made and just a short 22 years later, it gets a sequel. Based on the gameplay mechanics of this new Switch game though, you'd never think two decades have passed. New Pokémon Snap is very much a love letter to fans of the first game, one that largely transports the same experience of the N64 game into a modern console with just a handful of new features. Pokémon shutterbugs probably wouldn't ask for anything more, though. New Pokémon Snap takes place in the Lental region. You play as a child—as always—ready to assist Professor Mirror with his research in cataloging photos of Pokémon in their natural habitats and potentially solving the mystery of Illumina Pokémon. There's barely a reason to pay attention to the story of most mainline Pokémon games, much less a spin-off like this, and you're really not missing much if you fast-track through all of the story scenes. The game does feature some voice acted cutscenes though, so there's a decent degree of presentation and flair at work here. Like the original Snap, your goal is not to catch or train Pokémon but to capture photos of them. Your character rides in a fancy bubble car that automatically moves forward. You have 360-degrees of movement to look around and snap photos while Pokémon are in view—at the end of the level the professor grades you on your photography skills based on things like the size of the Pokémon in the photo (pictures taken from up close score better than ones from far away), whether the creature is facing the camera, how they're posing, etc. Since you have such limited windows of opportunity to snap a pic, you have to be quick on the draw and ready to capture just the right moment as the car moves you through the level. You also have a few ways of interacting with the Pokémon to try to get a better shot. You can once again throw fruit at Pokémon to draw their attention (and the game makes special mention that these are fluffruit that do not actually hurt the Pokémon, though it still doesn't feel great to beam Pichu in the head), as well as play music or throw special lumina orbs to draw out the luminous effect that Professor Mirror is looking for. These options give a nice degree of control to the player without totally inundating you with things to keep track of while you're in a level. A major theme of the game is taking the time to experiment and see what happens, and these interactive elements are perfect for just that. New Pokémon Snap has an unusual mix of being both a very relaxing game and yet also quite a frantic one. The whole premise is chill and soothing—it's like being on an easygoing, low-energy amusement park ride. At the same time though, you'll be whipping the camera around to find the perfect shot of any Pokémon in sight, oftentimes just missing something interesting so you know you'll have to replay the stage to see it again. The game's no cakewalk if you're trying to grab the perfect shot, and there's a surprising degree of dexterity required for what is essentially a rail-shooter. In the end though, this is the kind of game you play at your own pace and can just enjoy while taking a leisurely cruise through Pokémon-packed environments. This game also takes advantage of the Switch's motion controls. They're optional and are actually off by default, but when you want to quickly snap to the perfect angle for a shot you may want to turn them on. It's a little tricky at first, but you can also adjust the sensitivity to find the right sweet spot for yourself (you can also adjust the sensitivity of the camera's movement with the control sticks, which you definitely should do). Not surprisingly, this game is really all about replay value. Just getting through the main story does take a good bit of time, around eight to ten hours, but that'll only be scratching the surface of New Pokémon Snap's content. Each Pokémon actually has four possible poses to capture, some of which require inventive use of your fruits and orbs to get the Pokémon to move or act in a certain way, so there's plenty of variety to every Pokémon you encounter. The game will also throw little optional side quests at you, and by increasing your research level you can replay levels in slightly different ways. You can also share photos online—or save them to your Switch system and post on social media like any other Switch screenshot—so there's an extra incentive to take interesting photos and show off a bit. If you dig into it and don't mind the inherently repetitive nature of the game you can easily spend a lot of time here. The game's presentation is pretty charming—the art style is somewhat limited by Pokémon's familiar style which is colorful but not super detailed, but New Pokémon Snap still looks great, and it's just fun to see these Pokémon wandering around in crisp HD environments. The soundtrack is solid as well. As you might expect it has a pretty chill, relaxing vibe which is a natural fit for the gameplay and helps you get in the zone for snapping photos and also just zone out while playing. New Pokémon Snap is essentially a continuation of everything players enjoyed about the N64 original—it's a quirky spin-off that is far more charming than you might initially expect. It's fun to see Pokémon from this other angle, one that allows you to just live in their world for a bit, and the gameplay is still engaging enough to keep you invested, especially if you're the type to chase high scores. Still, New Pokémon Snap requires a certain casual, patient approach that doesn't mind a healthy dose of repetition, but if you're on-board with it this is another endearing Pokémon photography adventure. Rating: 8 out of 10 Snaps
  25. The Wonder Boy/Monster World franchise continues to see some love after the remake of The Dragon's Trap as well as the brand new entry Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom released in the past few years. Somewhat confusingly, those two games were handled by different developers, and now this remake comes from yet another. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World is a remake of Monster World IV, originally released on the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis) in Japan. It was a Japanese exclusive for several years before getting a port in 2012, and now gamers can experience a remastered version with updated graphics and sound. Though many elements of the game can feel dated, there's a nice bit of gaming history to enjoy here. You play as Asha, a young girl who embarks on a quest to become a warrior and save the kingdom by rescuing the four spirits. It's a classic heroine tale that features few frills to spice up the backstory or plot, and just a handful of cardboard side characters to fill out the scenery. It's a fine adventure story for what it is, though. Asha in Monster World features a mix of platforming and action/adventure gameplay. Asha has a sword and shield to fight with, and you'll also gain a pet Pepelogoo, a blue creature that can be used to float over gaps, double jump, and activate environmental effects such as hitting distant switches, blocking fireballs, or freezing into a block of ice that you can push around. You can purchase equipment to increase your attack power or max health, and you can also increase your health by collecting life drops that are littered throughout the game. There's a decent bit of imaginative game design here that still resonates in 2021. Some of the mechanics are undeniably simplistic, such as Pepelogoo's controls which are a bit clunky or at least inefficient—picking up the blue creature every time you want to double jump is a bit annoying—and the game has a bad habit of poorly explaining your next objective, but overall there are solid platformer challenges and adventure elements to enjoy. You do have to sit through some tediously empty environments, most likely a holdover from old hardware that wasn't able to process as much on screen at once, which means needlessly long and barren corridors at times, but there's still a certain charm to the old fashioned design of the game. One of the most valuable new features is the ability to save anywhere. Though to be fair, Asha in Monster World is overall fairly easy and you aren't likely to run into too many game over scenarios, not with health elixirs so common. The game is also on the short side, just five hours or so to complete in full with little reason to revisit the adventure, unless you want to challenge yourself to collect every last life drop available. The game's presentation has seen the most obvious upgrade from its Mega Drive roots, trading pixel artwork for 3D models and updating the music with a remastered soundtrack. There's something to be said for the classic 2D sprite look that just doesn't come across in the more smoothed over 3D design, but Asha in Monster World still looks good, and the remastered music sounds great—it also has the benefit of having a pretty solid soundtrack to begin with. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World is a 90s game revival that I imagine few people were clamoring for, but is still worth checking out. The presentation has a colorful modern overhaul and while the gameplay certainly feels dated it still has a simple charm to it. No matter what your experience is with the Wonder Boy franchise, Asha in Monster World provides a nice little window into gaming's past. Rating: 7 out of 10 Monster Worlds
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