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What are your thoughts and feelings on Luigi's Mansion 3? I can't wait to play once I am off work. I enjoyed Dark Moon, but the first game was probably the fastest returned game ever.
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As a fan of strategy and puzzle games, Howl may have been tailor-made for me. Add in the beautifully unique "living ink" art style and you've got a game that I couldn't pass up. But while Howl does scratch a satisfying puzzle itch, it also left me wanting a bit more. In the world of Howl, people who hear the howl of a cursed wolf are turned into one themselves. You play as the Prophet, a deaf woman immune to the howl who uses her wits and her bow to fight the beasts and rescue innocent villagers while searching for a cure to the werewolf plague. The story is presented like a fable, narrating each new leg of the journey that the Prophet undertakes. It's a clever way to portray the story, though sometimes it might work against itself. There were plenty of times I found myself not taking in the narrative at all since I was just focused on the gameplay and ignoring the brief voice overs at the start of each stage. Howl challenges players with a satisfying blend of planning and prediction. On each turn, you can plan up to three actions (later upgradeable to six actions). You can map out where you move or attack with an arrow, push, or use unlockable ability, then press X to let the turn play out. The catch is, the wolves and beasts will also move, but you don't get to see exactly what they'll do. There's an indicator that shows they will act, but you need to predict where in order to avoid them or intercept them with one of your attacks (on easy mode, you'll also be able to see exactly where they move). If you get hit your turn will immediately end, and you only have two hit points, so can only afford one mistake. With these limitations, you'll need to make it to the goal alive, while slaying beasts and rescuing any innocent bystanders before they're turned into werewolves. It's a bit tricky to grasp at first, and admittedly Howl doesn't do a great job of explaining its mechanics sometimes, but having relatively few tools at your disposal makes for a super satisfying challenge. There's no better feeling than when everything lines up just right and you breeze through a level, slaying each beast along the way. Your unlockable abilities also add another thoughtful dimension to the gameplay. You can only use them on specific rounds (then they go on cooldown for one turn), which means you have to be careful when using them. Howl essentially distills turn-based strategy games down to a quick puzzle game, which is sure to satisfy fans of the genre. That said, the game also gets mildly repetitive, even across its brisk five hour length. By the end of the adventure, the levels are still engaging and challenging, but there aren't quite enough new ideas thrown your way, even with new monsters to fight. There's another odd wrinkle about Howl that isn't necessarily a negative, but it is strange: you have a goal for reaching the exit in a certain number of turns as well as a goal for defeating every monster in a level. The catch is, you frequently can't do both in a single attempt. Oftentimes, reaching the goal quickly means bypassing enemies, and defeating them all usually requires a slower, careful approach since you don't want to get hit yourself. The good news is that Howl doesn't require you to do both in one attempt. You can play through a level once to do it fast, then do it again to kill everything, and you'll get full credit. On one hand, it's nice to have that flexibility, since completing these goals earns you currency for upgrades, but it also means you'll oftentimes play a level multiple times to do everything, which adds to the game's repetitive feeling. Plus it's just surprising that there isn't some kind of "perfect run" award for killing everything in a set number of turns, like I would expect to see in a game like this. Ultimately though, players might enjoy having more accessible goals laid out by the game rather than relying on a single ideal strategy for each level. Howl's "living ink" visual style is a blend of hand-drawn 2D art with a watercolor/parchment design, which makes for an incredibly striking look. Ultimately it's fairly simple—there's not a ton of variety in the beasts or environments—but even if the game isn't throwing a lot of new designs at you it still looks beautiful in motion. The soundtrack is subtle, but it suits the game. For a strategy/puzzle-focused game like this you don't need a lot of music distracting you, and what tunes Howl does feature complement the visuals nicely. Howl is a smart blend of strategy and puzzle design for a fresh and engaging experience. It's a bit too repetitive for its brief length, and the game's concept probably could have sustained a longer game, but players will still enjoy the challenge of predicting and avoiding attacks while finding openings to hit back. Puzzle fans interested in a brisk game will surely enjoy Howl's siren call. Rating: 7 out of 10 Howls
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One part cozy fishing game, one part restaurant management sim, one part underwater adventure story—Dave the Diver may look like a simple game on the surface, but once you dive in you'll find a wealth of gameplay to enjoy. The blend of genres is almost at risk of tipping this boat over, but ultimately it stays steady for a uniquely engaging experience. You play as Dave, a scuba diver who, at the behest of his business partner Cobra, explores a strange, magical portion of the sea known as the Blue Hole, where fish from all over the world can be found. This turns out to be the perfect opportunity to open the ultimate sushi restaurant, so Dave spends his days diving and catching fish and his nights helping to run the restaurant. That's just where the story starts though, and you'll quickly discover there is something else lurking beneath the waves. It's a fun, light story that works perfectly for the gameplay format. The writing is absolutely charming, filled with humor that pokes fun at tropes, other games, and Dave himself. There's nothing too dramatic, but it suits the vacation vibes of the game perfectly. The core gameplay loop of Dave the Diver is split into two parts: each day, you can dive into the water twice (during the morning and afternoon) in order to catch fish, load up your inventory, then return to your boat. At night, you'll help run the sushi restaurant by setting the menu based on what fish you've caught, then by serving the food to hungry customers (thankfully, you don't have to prepare the sushi as well). The game is built upon this relatively simple but extremely addictive gameplay loop. Catching bigger or rarer fish allows you to serve better dishes, which earns you more money, which can be used to upgrade your diving equipment or eventually upgrade the restaurant with a staff and other food sources. This progression is carried out at your own pace, but the game does a fantastic job of keeping the loop simple, engaging, and rewarding. There's also plenty more depth to the game than it might initially appear. At first you're armed with just a harpoon gun, but you'll gradually unlock more weapons and other means of catching fish. Your prey will also get bigger and more complicated as you run into fish that bite back—including massive sharks—so those upgrades become critical. You don't have a health bar per se, but while underwater you're limited by your oxygen tank. If it runs out it's game over, and getting hit will deplete it quite quickly. Despite all that, the act of swimming through the ocean on the hunt for specific fish to buoy your restaurant is a wonderful balance of calm zen and thoughtful challenge. Since you can only carry so much, oftentimes you need to think ahead about what fish you really need to grab. The environment of the Blue Hole is also semi-randomly generated, so you always have to do a bit of exploring, and that process really allows you to take your time and just enjoy the colorful underwater world. Just this main gameplay loop would be engaging enough as is, but the developers have absolutely packed the game with sub-objectives and side content to ensure you can make any dive worthwhile. The fish you catch are rated on a one to three scale, so you might try to catch the best quality (generally by catching them with a net or other non-deadly means). You can take photos underwater at specific areas. The items you collect underwater can be used to upgrade your weapons. There are optional side objectives like catching 10 of a specific type of jellyfish. Dave the Diver even provides a handful of mini-games. On top of all of that, you'll occasionally run into special challenges, like puzzles, chase sequences, and other alternate gameplay modes. The variety in this game is pretty incredible, and might even be excessive at times since some of the features aren't as well fleshed out or satisfying to play. Combat, for example, is actually pretty tedious in this game. The main quest boss fights aren't too bad, but the optional ones are particularly frustrating due to the inherent clumsiness of underwater controls. The limited movement feels fine when you're just catching fish, but not so much when you're trying to dodge a massive beast. The most egregious fights are optional, thankfully, but overall Dave the Diver's combat features are far less rewarding than the other parts of the game. At a glance, you might assume this is a relatively short or mid-length game, but reaching the end of the main story is actually pretty involved. You'll end up spending quite a lot of time exploring the depths in Dave the Diver. However, the game never really feels long. Even when you've got a pile of little tasks to take care of, the game manages to avoid ever feeling tedious. Instead, you'll likely be excited to dive in day after day to gather more fish and generate cash for the restaurant. You can also keep playing long after the main story is done, and creating the ultimate sushi joint is an engaging and addictive enough task that you may feel compelled to do just that. In terms of graphics, Dave the Diver does more with less. The vibrant underwater landscapes might not have been half as charming if not for the retro pixel art aesthetic, which has a lovely balance of rough, jagged design and colorful detail. Nowhere is this more true than the short animated scenes that play out anytime you upgrade a sushi dish or craft a new weapon. And kudos to the developers for making so many different types of fish all generally recognizable even with pixel graphics. You might not remember the names of each one while you're playing, but they all look distinct, which is helpful when you're on the hunt for a specific one. The music fits the game nicely as well. For the most part, it's a pretty chill, zen soundtrack, which is perfect when you're just exploring the sea, collecting everything you can get your hands on. I don't know what it is about fishing games in 2023, but Dave the Diver is another splash hit for the genre. This game is teeming with things to do, from going on a relaxed dive for fish sightseeing to keeping the sushi restaurant afloat. It's the kind of game that perfectly captures the "one more round" mentality to keep you hooked, and you'll surely enjoy every minute of it. With so much content, some aspects end up feeling a little shallow, but the overall experience is deep, rewarding, and always engaging. Rating: 9 out of 10 Starfish
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Welcome to the 7th Annual Ninfora Game Awards, written, directed, produced, and catered by yours truly. It's pretty incredible how consistent the Switch has been through its lifetime. We're close to wrapping up its seventh year on the market and it had arguably its best year since its first, which isn't particularly surprising considering both years had a powerful combo of new Zelda and Mario games. Outside of those heavy hitters though was a year packed with fantastic games, so I hope you enjoyed the Switch's 2023 as much as I did. The "Should've Been on the List Last Year" Award: Tunic First off, an omission from last year: Tunic. I am but one gaming-obsessed man and can't always play every new release in a timely manner, so Tunic missed getting any recognition in the last Ninfora Game Awards. I still want to recognize it though, because this loving throwback to classic gaming takes the retro vibe to a delightfully inventive level, not through graphics or gameplay mechanics but in the broader way you solve the game's puzzles. The less said the better, so go ahead and give it a go if you enjoy classic adventure/Zelda experiences. Best Second Life: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective It's always a bit disappointing when a game you love seems to get passed over or ignored by the larger audience, so imagine my delight when Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective got a second chance in the spotlight with this Switch version. With style and charm, Ghost Trick puts a clever spin on the classic detective story formula, weaving together clever puzzles and memorable characters into a one-of-a-kind experience. Hopefully not too one-of-a-kind though, because I'd love to have a sequel or spiritual successor. Best Lovecraftian Horror: DREDGE How do you get me to care about a fishing game? Fill it with horrific monsters pulled from the deep, apparently. Although on the surface DREDGE is essentially a fishing simulator—complete with gradual upgrades that allow you to catch bigger, more varied fish—the game's setting and presentation make it far more than a sim game and instead offer an experience that will easily have you hooked. Best Gameplay Mashup: Dave the Diver That's right, two fishing games on this list. I'm as surprised as you are, but when developers make a fishing game as charming as Dave the Diver, I can't help but give it some recognition. And again this is far more than an excuse to sit back and fish. Dave the Diver combines scuba diving with serving sushi in a frantic restaurant a la Overcooked, then manages to sprinkle even more gameplay mechanics and humor on top of it. With so much depth to this game, it's an easy recommendation for fishing or fish aficionados. Best Surprise: Super Mario RPG Nintendo loves keeping its in-development games close to the vest, so it's always a surprise what will be announced in any Nintendo Direct video, but this remake was particularly shocking. Although Super Mario RPG has been re-released on Virtual Consoles and the SNES Classic, getting a full visual upgrade and gameplay adjustment to Mario's first RPG adventure was exciting news. And while the new features are a welcome shakeup, the core adventure is the main draw as it remains a hilariously quirky, odd, and fun game. Best Encore Performance: Theatrhythm Final Bar Line Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is up there on the list of most surprising delights for 2023. I definitely did not expect the 3DS Theatrhythm games to get a sequel on the Switch, nor did I expect the button-only controls to work as well as they do, both from a rhythm gameplay perspective and a challenge perspective. In the end, the input method doesn't even matter though, because when you're jamming to classic Final Fantasy tunes you can't help but be swept up in the epic music. Best Origin Story: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon The little peek of Bayonetta Origins hidden within Bayonetta 3 left plenty of players confused, and although Cereza and the Lost Demon is a far cry from the usual Bayonetta experience, it's a beautifully engrossing adventure in its own right. Not many games bring storybook presentation to life with such a richly colorful, surreal setting that's ripe for exploration. Although I'd still like to see action-adventure Bayonettas, Origins proves there's plenty of room for gorgeous spin-offs as well that are packed with the witch's signature style, just in a different format. Best New Retro Experience: Sea of Stars I'm breaking my own rules just a little here to highlight Sea of Stars even though I didn't actually play it on the Switch this year. Still, the retro-inspired game has a lot going for it, including an engaging and unusual combat system and delightful 2D graphics. Shockingly, the writing may be the weakest link in this RPG, but the way that Sea of Stars takes inspiration from classic games while still adding new ideas makes it a highlight of the year nonetheless. The "Put a Ring on It" Award: Fire Emblem Engage Fire Emblem Engage seemed to come out of nowhere and passed by almost as quickly since it was released so early in the year. It also had the unenviable task of standing in the shadow of Three Houses, a particularly large and complex Fire Emblem game. Despite all that, Fire Emblem Engage delivers a richly engaging strategy experience, one that is open to even more team-building possibilities thanks to the ring system, so it's well worth committing yourself to hours and hours of tactical action. Best Hope for a Franchise Revival: Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp Sure, I know it's still pretty unlikely, but this is the best position the Advance Wars franchise has been in for years. Re-Boot Camp may have been a relatively no-frills remake collection, but even having an Advance Wars release in 2023 has me pining for a larger return of the series. Hopefully Re-Boot Camp's straightforward but rich strategy gameplay, easygoing cast of characters, and endless potential for strategic content has lit a fire under other players as well. Best Alien Dog: Pikmin 4 You may have played a Pikmin game before, but have you played one with an alien dog as a companion? Pikmin 4 finely tunes the Pikmin formula into possibly its most polished state yet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the most difficult or complex Pikmin game, but the satisfaction of setting your Pikmin on their little tasks and seeing everything fall into place is always an incredibly rewarding experience. Doing it all atop a big fuzzy dog is an extra bonus. Best Comedy: Shadows Over Loathing Shadows Over Loathing does everything its predecessor, West of Loathing, did but in an even bigger and sillier package. In any other situation a game packed with visual gags, puns, and goofy jokes would get tiresome quickly, but Shadows Over Loathing makes it work in a hilarious way. Some RPGs you play for the deep gameplay mechanics, while others you play to see all the goofy ways your character can walk across the screen. Best Musical: Figment 2: Creed Valley A musical game—not a rhythm game like Theatrhythm—could easily be designed around a quick laugh, so for Figment 2: Creed Valley to once again play the musical card on an emotional story is a big swing that plays out well. Although the combat and puzzle design leave a little something to be desired, the catchy, clever tunes propel this game beautifully. Best Drama: This Way Madness Lies It doesn't get much more dramatic than quoting Shakespeare and fighting monsters to save the world, right? This Way Madness Lies is an insane mashup of genres and influence that comes together shockingly well for a quick, engaging RPG adventure. The combat and exploration is solid if bareboned at times, but the game's unique premise is more than enough to keep you hooked until the final bow. Most Wonderful Game: Super Mario Bros. Wonder If there's one thing you can count on from Mario titles, it's that they'll be joyful adventures. Colorful, bubbly, and bursting with the fun of playing video games. Super Mario Bros. Wonder manages to turn this franchise philosophy up to eleven with a game filled with 2D platformer creativity to the point that, even though it's a fairly average length for a Mario game, I felt like it ended far too soon and all of its creative ideas could've kept going for world after world. Whether you're playing solo or with friends, you always know you're in for a fun, creative, wonderful time with every level of Wonder, and isn't that a mark of quality all games should aspire to? Best Remaster: Metroid Prime Remastered As you can see from the rest of this list, this was not an easy category to win. Sure, Metroid Prime Remastered doesn't add or change too much from the original GameCube game, but when the original is already one of the best games released in the 2000s, why mess with perfection? In the grand scheme of things, a visual upgrade isn't the most vital change for a video game, but being able to re-experience Metroid Prime with graphics that feel at home on the Switch makes for an incredible time and only serves to highlight how incredibly polished and well-realized the original game is. Now if we could just get some Metroid Prime 4 news already… Best Journey: Octopath Traveler II Everything about the first Octopath Traveler resonated with me perfectly, from the HD-2D art style to the turn-based combat system to the unique anthology structure of the narrative. At the time, I didn't have major complaints about the experience, but Octopath Traveler II is one of those games that comes along and polishes the concept of its predecessor to an even more brilliant shine. The combat remains as engaging and thoughtful as ever, the new characters are just as charming, the visuals are still beautiful, and the little ways that each character's journey is tied to the others creates an even more rewarding narrative. In a different year this would have been a shoo-in for my Game of the Year, and the fact that it's not just speaks to the quality of games released in 2023. Game of the Year: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Apparently the best way to follow up a massive, breathtaking game like Breath of the Wild is to do it again, but bigger. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom strikes a perfect balance between the familiar and unfamiliar by letting you play in the massive landscape of Hyrule once again, but this time with new toys that truly let you run wild. It's a smart approach that embraces the freedom that made BotW so magical and challenges you to think up your own clever, creative, and ridiculous solutions to all manner of situations. TotK is not just a bigger game than its predecessor, it's a deeper and richer game, one that will completely consume you with its promise of adventure and exploration around every corner. The best part is, the game 100% delivers on that promise, and follows up an all-time Zelda title with yet another one.
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Digital: Available Now Physical: Feb. 22nd | https://metroid.nintendo.com/ Suit up for an iconic adventure Intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran receives a distress signal from a wrecked frigate in orbit around planet Tallon IV. Upon investigation, the frigate reveals itself to be a Space Pirate research vessel home to terrifying genetic experiments using the mysterious Phazon substance. There, Samus encounters her nemesis, Meta Ridley, whom she pursues to the surface of Tallon IV. It’s up to her alone to explore the planet’s interconnected regions, investigate its dark secrets, and end the intergalactic threat posed by Phazon. Experience this critically acclaimed first-person adventure like never before with remastered visuals, audio, controls, and more *About from Nintendo.com
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Persona 5 is a game that just won't quit, having spawned an enhanced re-release, a rhythm game, a Musou game, and now a tactical RPG. The good news though is that this cast of characters is so charming that they can easily be dropped into any new setting and continue to thrive, which is definitely the case with Persona 5 Tactica. This game is clearly made for Persona 5 fans interested in dabbling in strategy gameplay, so while the tactical elements could have been better fleshed out, hanging out with the Phantom Thieves again is a blast. The game takes place after the events of Persona 5, and although new players might be able to jump into Tactica without any extra context, it would definitely be better to have already met these characters in their original game. After all of their adventures though the group finds itself pulled into another reality called a Kingdom, where they meet an oppressive overlord subjugating the people. They team up with a new playable character named Erina, a rebel fighter, and the crew must battle their way out of the Kingdom and figure out what brought them here in the first place. The whole storyline feels right at home in Persona 5—in fact, if the game were a bit shorter, it practically could have been a side story or DLC, at least story-wise, since it's still about changing hearts and standing up to oppressors. Ultimately though, the plot survives on the strength of the characters, including the new ones, all of whom are still a ton of fun to interact with. The gameplay is turn-based tactics with a cover system, similar to XCOM or Mario + Rabbids. With a team of just three characters, you'll want to move from cover to cover to take out enemies without exposing yourself to counterattacks too much. Curiously, standing near any kind of cover grants you a defensive boost—even if the wall is behind you and the enemy is in front of you, you still gain the benefit. The catch, however, is that hitting an enemy that doesn't have cover (or an enemy hitting you outside of cover) will grant a "One More" bonus attack, giving the attacker a full extra move/action. So the key here is setting up and chaining together One More attacks to take out enemies efficiently. You can knock enemies out of cover with a melee attack, but the more efficient move tends to be using your Personas' magic attacks to push/pull enemies or inflict status ailments that render them vulnerable. Hitting a vulnerable target will down them, allowing you to perform an All-Out attack by surrounding the enemy, which will deal damage to anything within the triangle of your three characters' positions. In practice, the tactical gameplay flows quite well, nice and smoothly. The default difficulty level is actually pretty easy for seasoned strategy players, but since this whole game is really meant for Persona 5 fans it makes sense that they would keep things relatively simple. Plus, chaining together One More and All-Out attacks is immensely satisfying, even if you're rarely required to think too hard about your actions beyond ensuring your characters always have some degree of cover. Each character also has slightly different abilities—Ryuji's shotgun can hit multiple enemies, for example, and each spell element will inflict a different status ailment—so you can mix things up a bit depending upon who you use, but the game never gets very difficult, so you don't need to concoct very specific strategies. Naturally, Tactica weaves in some elements of the Persona series as well. You're able to collect, fuse, and equip different Personas to gain access to additional spells/passive abilities, plus equipping a Persona grants a stat boost. In this game, everyone has a main Persona (including the main character with Arsene) but everyone can also equip a sub-Persona for those benefits. You'll of course want to fuse Personas together to make stronger ones and constantly rotate out the Personas you're using to ensure your characters are as strong as possible. Although Tactica doesn't worry about elemental resistances or weaknesses, it's still satisfying to spend time carefully fusing together Personas and crafting your ideal team. While Tactica does a good job of introducing Persona players to the basics of strategy gameplay, it never quite fleshes things out to the kind of fully brain-tickling experience that players familiar with the genre might have preferred. There's very little variety in the main objective of each stage, or even the bonus sub-objectives. There's not much enemy variety, and again things like elemental weaknesses never come into play—unless you do anything obviously silly it's pretty hard to lose a character mid-battle, and even if you do you can swap in one of your reserves for free. The map design also gets pretty repetitive. The real shame is that there are a handful of times that Tactica does get clever, like in an optional mission where you have to get a character all the way across the map in a single turn, which requires you to thoughtfully map out One More attack opportunities to chain together movements. The bulk of the game, however, plays things pretty safe and simple, and although there's nothing wrong with the gameplay, it rarely gets a chance to truly shine. Tactica isn't nearly as long as the main Persona 5 game and can be finished pretty comfortably in around 25 hours, including optional content. There is a New Game Plus mode though which is probably necessary if you want to try to fill out the entire Persona compendium, and the multiple difficulty levels can add some replay value. There's also paid DLC if you want a little more action. Ultimately though, Tactica has a solid length for maintaining momentum while still giving you plenty of opportunities to fuse Personas and experiment a bit. Although it's not the same style as the main game, the presentation of Tactica is still pretty sharp. The characters have a more cutesy, Chibi-like style, but their distinctive characteristics and personalities still shine through. The menus are also wonderfully stylized with that distinctive dynamic look. The only downside here is that the game has some loading times that are just a bit too long. The music is just as jazzy, catchy and energetic as anything in Persona 5, and with a pretty decent variety no less. Persona 5 Tactica is an excellent introduction to strategy games for fans of the Phantom Thieves. The blend of turn-based tactics and Persona elements may not be quite as deep as it could have been, but the resulting gameplay is still engaging, even if it's clearly meant for new players in the genre and rarely throws anything truly tricky at you. Still, Persona 5 fans should love having another adventure with the familiar crew. Rating: 8 out of 10 Personas
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🔗https://year-in-review.nintendo.com/en-us/ It's that time of the year again where we look back at all the fun we had with our Nintendo Switch systems over the past year. What will your Nintendo Switch Year in Review be like? Post yours below! Here's mine... *Click to Enlarge* *NOTE: LoZ: ToK would have been listed here, though while I do have it, I've still yet to play it. Also, this reminded me I still need to get Metroid Prime: Remastered.
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Ever since it was first announced, Mineko's Night Market has been turning heads for being an adorably cozy sim game bursting with charm and, more importantly, cats you can pet. Collecting materials, crafting items, and chatting with local villagers just hits differently when paired with a cute and cuddly art style and a silly sense of humor. However, the final product isn't quite up to scratch thanks to some repetitive gameplay loops and stuttering purr-formance on the Switch. You play as Mineko, a young girl who has just moved to a new island with her father. The island is cozy but is feeling a bit decrepit these days, so to inject some life into the village Mineko participates in the weekly Night Market, where she can sell any of the items she's crafted or collected, hopefully to help revive the island's community. That sounds like a heavy task for a young girl, but the writing keeps things light and goofy with a lot of comedic dialogue, especially surrounding Mineko's friend Bobo, who is obsessed with finding the mythical giant cat named Nikko, supposedly hidden somewhere on the island. The kids aren't the only ones interested in Nikko though, leading to some scraps with shadowy agent figures who are caging cats and conducting their own investigation. The whole plot has the feel of an 80s kids movie, in a good way. Precocious kids battling bumbling adults always makes for a fun time, plus the writing is focused on fun, silly humor which makes for an easy-going, goofy adventure. Like most sim games, the core gameplay loop is all about collecting resources, crafting/selling items to earn money, then buying more equipment in order to collect more resources. Mineko can craft various items to sell at the night market, thereby expanding the influence of the market and attracting more booths and more opportunities for you to buy items yourself. There's a nice zen quality collecting items day after day in anticipation of the weekly market, though the game does start off pretty slow. At first, there are only a couple of things to collect/areas to explore, plus you're severely limited by your stamina meter (which you can recover by eating up to three times per day). It's not uncommon for sim games like this, but the first in-game week or so really feels like you're just spinning your wheels until something happens. Even when you do start to unlock more options, the cost of new equipment can be pretty high, again meaning you have to take a slow and steady approach to progression. I'll also say that I played on the 1.0.6.0 patch, which made some progression elements easier/less expensive than the original launch version of the game, and it still felt like it took a long time to unlock new things. It doesn't help that Mineko's Night Market doesn't run super well on the Switch. I only had one instance of the game freezing up, but the frequent loading screens are noticeably long and, more obnoxiously, would constantly stutter, so even the cozy background music would stop and start while the game struggled to load the next area. The game's framerate is overall a bit choppy as well, though the sloppy load screen is easily the most annoying flaw since it comes up so often. The crafting side of the game is pretty satisfying at least. Every item you create requires a little minigame, and the more complex the item the more complex the minigame. It's extra satisfying to craft a "perfect" item, especially since they'll sell for more money. Sure it can be a bit annoying at times that there are very few ways to collect resources or ingredients outside of just grinding away at chopping wood, breaking stones, or fishing, but that's the core of a sim game anyway. Mineko's Night Market might feel a bit slow paced even by the genre's standards, but once you're up to speed on how the game works it can be relaxing to collect, craft, and sell over and over. The core of this game is cozy, casual progression. However, the game also has a variety of little annoying quirks that add up quite a bit. The UI doesn't feel well adapted to a controller at times—navigating your inventory is clunky and definitely feels made for a mouse and keyboard. Too often the game makes you do things one at a time. When selling items outside of the night market, for example, you can either sell an item one at a time or all at once, with no option to select an amount. Maybe you want to just sell some excess wood for a little extra money, but now it becomes a hassle. You can't queue up multiple crafts either, and need to enter the menu every time you craft an object. The game's pause menu/journal also isn't very detailed. Every villager will have a variety of quests for you to tackle, but your journal doesn't track all of these side quests easily. Occasionally, Mineko will face off with the shadowy agents and need to sneak around, freeing caged cats. It's a cute mechanic at first but isn't super fleshed out and gets a bit tiresome in the game's finale. Ultimately, there's nothing that ruins the experience, but there are enough flaws that you might want to paws and consider waiting for hopefully further patches to iron out some kinks. The presentation is undoubtedly the highlight of Mineko's Night Market, and likely what drew in most players to begin with. The stylized visual and character design, warm colors, and scratchy pencil/paint aesthetic makes the game look like a gorgeous picture book come to life. The village and night market obviously get the bulk of this visual design love, but even the forests and caves you explore for resources have their charms. The whole visual design is utterly charming and perfect for the chill, cozy vibes of the gameplay. The soundtrack is super cute as well and feels like the perfect comfortable, homey accompaniment to the artwork. Mineko's Night Market is a lovely example of a cozy life sim that doesn't rely on the usual farming formula. Collecting resources and crafting items to sell makes for a tidy gameplay loop, though it takes some time to get off the ground at first and then becomes a bit of a waste once you have sufficient funds for all of the upgrades. The experience isn't without its flaws, most of which aren't major on their own but do add up, however the meow-velous artwork and music help lift up the experience. It may be worth waiting for news of another patch to fix up some of the game's troubles running on the Switch, though. Rating: 7 out of 10 Cats
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Back in 1996, something magical happened. Square, at the time the definitive RPG developer for creating the likes of Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana on the SNES, partnered with Nintendo to turn everyone's favorite mustachioed plumber into an RPG hero. For my child self, it was a mashup I had no idea I wanted, but ended up absolutely loving. Familiar Super Mario characters and enemies were translated into an entirely different kind of Mushroom Kingdom, and the result was a quirky, engaging, and all-around delightful RPG. 27 years later, new players will find all of that unique charm perfectly preserved with a shiny new modern presentation to complete the package. The story begins with Princess Peach once again kidnapped by Bowser. Naturally, Mario rushes off to save the day, but upon confronting King Koopa, a giant sword crashes into Bowser's Castle, flinging Mario away. Now Mario must get to the bottom of this new threat and rescue Peach again. The overarching story is decent enough, but it's the little character interactions that make Super Mario RPG so charming. The writing has a zaniness to it that perfectly dates it as a mid 90s game, and I mean that in the best way possible. It's cartoonish but it suits the new larger-than-life characters as they spit out silly slang in a fun way. The writing never takes itself too seriously and it's all the better for it. In terms of gameplay, the timing-based combat was a fresh idea back in 1996, and while it has become a standard for all of the Mario RPGs, it's still a nice, rewarding way to make turn-based battles a little more engaging. The original game was always an excellent RPG for beginners: it has the standard hallmarks of RPG design with just enough depth to keep things interesting without overwhelming novice players with stats, effects, or character-build options. Instead, it's a streamlined yet wonderfully addictive RPG experience. This Switch remake preserves that core gameplay structure perfectly but adds a few new features that actually make the game even easier. Perfectly timing your hits now deals slight splash damage to other enemies on screen. It also feels easier to perfectly block enemy attacks, though that might just be more gaming experience on my part. Timing your hits or blocks will also charge your Triple Attack Gauge which, once it hits 100%, can be used as a powerful special ability to hurt enemies or boost your team, depending on which characters are active in your party. Once you have more than three characters, you can also swap characters mid-battle, even if they've been knocked out or afflicted with a status ailment. Some of these features you can sort of choose to avoid, but overall Super Mario RPG is extremely forgiving on the player even on the normal difficulty mode (there's also an easy mode). If it introduces new players to the wonderful world of RPGs, all the better, but veteran players might wish for a bit more challenge to dig into. There is, however, new post-game content that is definitely made for the toughest players. Select bosses are back for a rematch, and these fights are no joke. The flipside is that some of them almost require a specific strategy since they can be so punishing, and being funneled into a singular tactic doesn't make for the most interesting fight, but for the most part the post-game battles add a nice bit of challenge to fully test your Super Mario RPG skills. The only other addition that makes combat a little harder is the special enemy variant, which looks the same as any other enemy but is a little beefier than normal. It's nice to have some tougher encounters now and then, but even these new enemy varieties won't test your skills too much. One thing that was a ton of fun to rediscover with Super Mario RPG is how varied the game actually is. It's constantly throwing unique little scenarios, challenges, and mini-games at you beyond the usual explore, fight monsters, fight boss RPG formula. Stumbling into interesting game mechanics virtually every time you explore a new region helps keep the game flowing beautifully, almost to a fault since the game is on the short side for an RPG. Even with the new post-game content I finished the game in around 15 hours, which seemed to pass in a flash. Still, 15 excellent hours is arguably a better bargain than a 50-hour RPG that overstays its welcome. For anyone that played the original on the SNES, the revamped graphics and rearranged soundtrack will 100% blow you away. This remake lovingly preserves the spirit of the original's art style, down to Mario's squat proportions and the somewhat bulbous appearance of a lot of enemies. The SNES game's visual style was so distinct that even this highly detailed remake can't quite capture the oddly tactile feel of the original, but the end result on the Switch is still a gorgeous game that is further enhanced by some fancy animated cutscenes. The new soundtrack is simply stunning and manages to further polish an already fabulous selection of video game tunes. Plus, you can swap between the new and original soundtrack in the pause menu in case you want to compare. Super Mario RPG is an SNES classic for a good reason. The original game was weird, funny, charming, and delightfully engaging, especially if you were only beginning to dip your toes into RPGs, and this remake has done a phenomenal job of preserving that experience. The core gameplay has aged wonderfully, and although veteran players might have preferred a hard mode, the new additions add a touch more depth to the combat and ensure any level of player can make it through the adventure. Super Mario RPG on the Switch is an utter delight that can't be missed by new or returning players. Rating: 9 out of 10 Stars
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2019's Blasphemous was a stylish action-adventure game that blended Metroidvania gameplay with some Soulslike influence, resulting in a compelling experience that could also be extremely punishing at times. Blasphemous 2 brings players back to the twisted, macabre world, but manages to avoid the pitfalls that made the previous game frustrating. You once again play as The Penitent One, a masked warrior who battles his way through the world of Cvstodia to stop the reawakening of The Miracle. Like the first game, the grotesque, dark Catholic iconography is stunning, but still presented in a jumbled, confusing way. Maybe you just need to play these games back to back to fully grasp the story and lore, but right out of the gate Blasphemous 2 throws so much terminology at you that it's hard to keep any of it straight. It doesn't help that the game is frankly overwritten, with awkward flowery language that needlessly complicates the story. Still, even if you don't always understand who the characters are, the game has an undeniable atmosphere and gravitas that is always compelling. Blasphemous 2 follows the same Metroidvania formula as the first game, but adds some fun new features. First and foremost, you can choose what weapon you start with: a standard broadsword, a heavy mace-like censer, and a quick, light rapier and dagger. You don't have to worry too much about this first choice since you eventually unlock all three weapons, but it can color your first hour or so of the game. More importantly, having three weapons, each with unique properties and special abilities that can be upgraded, adds a nice degree of depth to the combat without overwhelming you with options. You can swap between all three weapons at any time, so there's a lot of freedom in how you approach battles. Maybe it's specifically because of that freedom, but combat as a whole feels more accessible in this game. You don't need to master tricky maneuvers or parrying mechanics here. Instead it's pretty easy to dodge enemy attacks and hit back when you have an opening. This also means that basic enemies can be a bit boring at times since dodging is so important, leading to frequent repetitive cycles of dodge-slash-dodge, but bosses still offer plenty of challenges and will likely require plenty of retries. Thankfully Blasphemous 2 is also pretty generous with save points, so there's not too much retreading needed if you die. However, in Soulslike fashion, you do lose a little something when you die: your max Fervor (or mana) will be reduced until you can recover it. Additionally, you'll accumulate Guilt when you die, which increases the EXP and currency you earn from killing enemies but reduces your defense, creating a risk/reward system. The game doesn't do a great job of explaining this mechanic or showing it clearly on screen as you play, but Guilt can be extremely important to monitor, especially if you're re-attempting a boss over and over. And just as a concept, it's a neat way of giving the player some control over the difficulty of the gameplay, albeit in a somewhat confusingly complicated way. Blasphemous 2 also has a nice degree of customization options to give yourself various buffs. You can equip rosary beads for some basic bonuses—physical defense, elemental defense, earn more EXP, etc.—and you can equip figurines for things like damage bonuses. Equipping multiple figurines of the same type can also grant a bonus effect. The boosts to your abilities aren't always 100% clear but in a game like this any little bit extra helps. Naturally, you'll acquire most of these upgrades by exploring the extensive, interconnected map of Cvstodia. The platforming and exploration side of the game is nicely polished in Blasphemous 2. Gone are the cheap deaths of instant-kill spikes or pits, and the fairly generous save points and warp points mean you're never too isolated, though it takes some time to unlock such warp benefits. The first section of the game is also fairly open and gives you three targets you can tackle in any order—once again the game gives you a bit of freedom without overwhelming you with choices, which is nice. The movement upgrades like double jumping are relatively standard for a Metroidvania but they're used well in a variety of platforming challenges that help give the exploration side of the game some depth. The wide variety of side quest items you'll find while exploring also makes filling out the map incredibly compelling. Granted, you probably won't know what to do with most of the items you find at first, and again the game is happy to leave you confused on this account, but it's still nice to know that the knicknacks you've acquired will have some use at some point, if you can ever figure out what that is. Blasphemous 2 also isn't a terribly long game, and even filling out the map completely should only last 15 hours or so, which feels like just about the perfect length for keeping the sprawling world engaging from start to finish. The pixel art style is back and it's just as gorgeous as the first game. The religious iconography, twisted into a bleak, grotesque world, makes for a beautifully engaging setting, complete with eerie characters and stylish environments. The developers struck a perfect balance of creepy and compelling. The soundtrack also suits the setting well, adding to the ominous religious atmosphere nicely. Blasphemous 2 has somewhat softened the edges of its predecessor, largely for the better. There's still a blend of Soulslike influence and core 2D platforming, but overall the experience leans more toward Metroidvania gameplay—meaning an emphasis on exploration—rather than punishing the player with intricately difficult combat or platformer obstacles. The result is a more balanced experience that still has plenty of bite and challenge, all wrapped up in a beautifully dark, grotesque package. Rating: 8 out of 10 Blasphemies
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Back in 2011, just before the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, the DS got one of its best puzzle/mystery games. Directed by Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney games, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective puts players in the incorporeal shoes of the recently deceased and offers one not-so-simple goal: find out who you are, and why you died. What unfolds is a clever, charming, and completely engrossing detective adventure. As the story begins, you've already died, and now inhabit the world as a spirit. Ghosts tend to lose the memory of their lives after death though, so you're left in the dark regarding who you are or how you got here. The catch? At dawn your spirit will disappear forever, so you only have one night to solve the mystery of your own past. Another helpful ghost guides you through your newfound "Trick" powers though: by possessing objects, you can interact with the world and move about. By connecting with the spirits of other recently deceased people, you can turn the clock back four minutes before their death in the hope of changing their fate. Like the Ace Attorney games, there is a fantastic supporting cast of characters to enjoy here, including a chipper young detective, an excitable little dog, and a novelist frantically writing into the night. There's so much personality and charm in every interaction that the quirky dialogue is always delightful and engaging. More importantly, Ghost Trick tells a fantastic detective story with just the right balance of twists and turns that keep you guessing in a wonderful way. Mystery story fans simply can't miss this one. The puzzle gameplay has a simple elegance to it: you can only possess and interact with so many objects on screen, but activating the right ones at the right time makes for satisfying challenges. Sometimes you'll need to line up several Tricks to reach the desired outcome, like an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. Sometimes your timing is critical, even to the last second before disaster strikes. Oftentimes, even making mistakes will yield helpful clues. There's no built-in hint system here, but the level of difficulty feels nicely balanced even without it. Since you can always rewind the clock again anyway, there's very little penalty for failure, and since there are only so many objects to possess it's pretty easy to work out some trial-and-error if you truly don't have any idea of how to move forward. Ultimately, the puzzles provide just the right amount of thoughtful interaction to spice up the core detective story that unfolds as you progress. The one thing that truly set Ghost Trick apart when it launched on the DS though? The animation. The game had incredibly smooth animation, even on the DS's relatively simple hardware and pixel-y graphics, and the developers clearly had a ton of fun incorporating detailed movement into every scene they could, whether it was from a lanky detective dancing down the stairs or a panicky public official having a heart attack. It was super impressive to see what the developers could do on the DS. All of that lovely animation is back for this Switch version, and while it is perhaps a little less novel on this kind of hardware, the visual spectacle is still phenomenal. The smooth and crisp animation is a huge part of the game's overwhelming charm and personality, and it looks fantastic in HD. The soundtrack is no slouch either, with just the right catchy background tunes that wriggle into your brain while you're focused on solving puzzles. The adventure should last you around 12 hours, maybe a little more if you get stuck often, but either way the story moves at a brisk, satisfying pace. The downside of story-centric puzzle games like this is that there's not a ton of inherent replay value—unless, like me, you wait ten years to experience the story all over again—but still, the quality of that first playthrough is well worth the cost of entry. This remake also adds some small bonuses and unlockables. For one, there's a jukebox to listen to both the original music and the remastered soundtrack, which is pretty fun. You'll also unlock illustrations while playing, which let you revisit characters and locations. More importantly, completing the game unlocks concept art, which is always cool to see and helps put you in the mindset of how the developers crafted these lovely animations all those years ago. Finally there is an achievement system which is really only there for completionists, and there are sliding tile puzzles that unlock additional illustrations. The tile puzzles are an odd addition and a bit tedious to complete just to see more illustrations, but they're there if you want them. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was a DS cult classic for good reason. It told a fantastically engaging detective story with some of the best animation available on the DS, and the puzzle gameplay was clever and inventive without ever feeling tiresome. It's wonderful that the game has gotten a second life on modern systems. Although the additions, aside from the visual upgrade, are relatively simple, the core experience is so highly polished that anyone who is even remotely a fan of mystery stories should love Ghost Trick. Rating: 9 out of 10 Tricks
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WarioWare's frantic microgame formula is back for round 2 on the Switch, but this time the key to the action is motion controls. WarioWare: Move It! will have players shaking, shimmying and squatting to complete hundreds of microgames, either solo or with a group in local co-op. As you might expect, the action is incredibly silly, hectic, and even a bit of a good workout if you're playing for a good stretch of time. Although I'd argue WarioWare games hardly need a story to justify any of their crazy microgames, in this one Wario and all of his usual buddies are off on an island vacation. On the island, Form Stones (aka Joy-Cons) are key to mysterious rituals guarded by native spirits, and naturally Wario gets mixed up in the action when he starts hunting for ancient treasure. It's a simple but fun setup for the fast-paced action to come. As the game's title suggests, motion controls are the main feature here. You'll need to hold your Joy-Cons in a variety of poses to complete each microgame. In one, you may need to hold your arms out in a T pose and rotate them like clock hands. In another, you might put your hands on your hips and jump up and down. Another form, the Ba-KAW, imitates a chicken by putting one hand on your nose and the other on your rear. Most of these forms you can get away with by staying sitting down, sure, but the whole point of the game is to move around a bit, so standing (with ample room around you) is really the way the game is meant to be enjoyed. And it sure is a lot of goofy fun to be flailing around wildly to complete each microgame. Like all WarioWare games you only have a few seconds to understand each microgame and complete it, so adding motion control just makes things even crazier. Even in the story mode, most stages feature multiple Forms, so you need to be ready to adapt quickly to whatever the game throws at you. As always, the microgames are wildly inventive and weird—one has you catching fish between your legs by squeezing them together—and the chaos is perfect for playing with some friends. That said, motion controls can be a little iffy at the best of times, and putting them into a game where you need to react and move as quickly as possible does lead to some obnoxious or frustrating microgames. Some of the Forms were also just a little odd to me—even when imitating the pose on screen they didn't quite register correctly 100% of the time. Some microgames also require you to press a button on the Joy-Cons, and good luck understanding which to press in mere seconds, especially when you're holding the Joy-Cons in some unusual way. But in the end, WarioWare is such a low-stakes experience that it's hard to get too frustrated by some wonky control inputs. Plus, when you're playing story mode, you can earn a second chance instead of getting a game over by striking a pose, as indicated on screen, so the game is at least forgiving in that regard. The single-player content is fun but the multiplayer side of the game feels like more of the main experience, or at least you should be playing the story mode with friends, passing around the Joy-Cons between levels. There are a few multiplayer modes available here, including a Mario Party-like board game—which manages to be even more chaotic than usual Mario Party, so definitely don't get too hung up on winning in this mode—classic marathon or PVP modes, and a 2v2 mode which requires you to fool the other team. It's a solid selection of game modes and of course the microgames keep things utterly wacky at all times. You'll also unlock a few other bonus modes after finishing the story, some of which are single-player and others co-op. Overall, Move It! definitely caters to group play, so be aware if you're only playing solo you're only getting a handful of modes to enjoy. There are also a surprising lack of unlockables, aside from the microgames themselves of course. I would have expected to have collectibles to uncover, even if just for fun or completionist's sake. In classic WarioWare form, the game's presentation ranges from fun, bubbly cartoon designs to the utterly bizarre, and fans probably wouldn't have it any other way. The core cast of characters and locations look good, and the wide variety of art styles in microgames adds another layer of craziness to the experience. The music is fine, though never really the focus when you're trying to concentrate on each new microgame's challenge. Kevin Afghani has also taken over the role of Wario from Charles Martinet, and again he's clearly drawing from Martinet to keep the same spirit of the character alive, which works well. WarioWare: Move It! is another fun, goofy, chaotic entry in the series, and the added wrinkle of motion controls makes things especially wild. The motions might not feel 100% smooth all of the time, but there's enough wiggle room that it still works overall. Although the single-player content is a little bit light compared to the multiplayer side of the game, if you get a group of friends together, WarioWare: Move It! can be a blast. Rating: 7 out of 10 Microgames
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This Way Madness Lies feels like it was created by randomly selecting three elements and mashing them together: magical girls (a la Sailor Moon) battle eldritch monsters inside of Shakespeare plays. The craziest thing might just be the fact that this combo works. It's an utterly bizarre RPG that is also utterly charming, largely thanks to the fact that it in no way takes itself too seriously. You play as a group of students in the Stratford-Upon-Avon Drama Society who perform Shakespeare by day and battle monsters by night. Not just any monsters—the girls enter alternate worlds of Shakespearean plays, where beasts are wreaking havoc. The developers at Zeboyd Games clearly had a ton of fun with the concept and are happy to break the fourth wall at times for a winking joke. During the Shakespearean dialogue, you can swap to a more modernized version instead, which is not just modern but also filled with slang and humor, which is a great touch. You'll surely appreciate all of the many, many Shakespeare references more if you're already a Bard buff, but even if you're not it's an enjoyable romp. Although our heroes gradually uncover a more nefarious threat at the heart of all of the monster attacks, the story is never taken too seriously. That suits the game perfectly though; this is a light, breezy RPG that doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. The gameplay is extremely similar to Zeboyd Games' last title, Cosmic Star Heroine. This is turn-based RPG action, but rather than just mashing A to execute normal attacks or occasionally casting spells, each character has a list of abilities. Each ability can only be used once before it needs to be recharged by resting (aka defending for a round). This encourages you to be much more thoughtful with how you attack in every battle and offers tons of customization. Each girl has a wide variety of abilities, and although each character falls into roughly archetypal RPG classes—one character has a lot of elemental attacks, one has a ton of healing, etc.—you can play around a lot with various strategies and combos, perfect for players that like to experiment. Early on you're required to use certain parties of characters, but in the latter portion of the game you can choose who to use, which is when you're really free to customize your battle strategy. Thankfully the entire team levels up at the same time, so there's no danger of one character falling behind if you don't use her for a while. Each girl also learns Traits, which are passive buffs that increase stats as well as grant special effects, such as increased healing power. Each character can only equip three at a time but you'll gradually unlock a lot, so you're encouraged to swap frequently. The downside here is that you're probably always going to use the newest Traits since they grant bigger stat boosts, which feels limiting. It'd be nice if the special effects and the stat boosts were separate, though the game might be too easy at that point. And frankly, the game is already somewhat easy on the Normal difficulty level. You recover all health between battles, and if you're even a little strategic about fighting monsters efficiently you should have no problem in any battle. The good news is that you can turn up the difficulty at any time to suit your challenge level. The exploration side of this RPG, meanwhile, is also a bit bare-boned. There's a bit of adventuring needed in these plays/dungeons—turning switches, fighting special monsters to unlock the path forward, etc.—but it's kept to a minimum for the most part. It's still an enjoyable adventure, but it would've been nice to see more depth to the environments. Like Zeboyd's previous games, the artwork here is all 2D sprites, and with several games under their belts now their 2D style is pretty nicely polished. There's a simple charm to the real-world environments, but the magical settings of the plays and of course the monster sprites have a colorful, engaging personality. The music is solid as well, and also does a good job of mashing up various influences into a unique new sound. When I called the game light and breezy I'm not exaggerating: This Way Madness Lies is a sub-10 hour RPG, which is pretty quick for the genre. It doesn't feel too short though. You'll end up leveling up and earning new attacks and Traits seemingly every other battle, but there are still plenty of opportunities to use them and experiment. The game is lacking in side quest content, but replaying on a higher difficulty with different attack strategies could be worthwhile. This Way Madness Lies is a completely unexpected but entirely charming RPG. The combination of influences ends up working together quite nicely, and the underlying Zeboyd RPG formula keeps every battle engaging with plenty of opportunities for customization. Put aside your fears of reading Shakespeare in class: anyone looking for a relatively quick, casual and funny RPG ought to give this a try. Rating: 8 out of 10 Plays
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For whatever reason, this has been a big year for bringing GameCube games to the Switch. I'm not complaining though—revisting these titles is a blast, and with Pikmin 1+2 added to the system, players can now enjoy the entire mainline Pikmin series on the Switch. And while the edges are noticeably rougher than the new Pikmin 4 from earlier this year, both of the GameCube Pikmin games are still a joy to play. Pikmin 1 obviously feels a bit dated and more basic since it was the first—you only had three types of Pikmin to use!—but the strict 30 day time limit still makes it a unique and challenging entry in the franchise. The story begins with Captain Olimar crash landing on a mysterious planet. The rough landing has left his ship in pieces—30 to be precise—and he'll need to recover at the very least the essential parts to escape the planet before his life support system runs out. Thankfully he discovers the tiny Pikmin creatures to help him explore, battle monsters, and recover all of the parts of his ship. Nighttime on the planet is too dangerous to explore, so Olimar and the Pikmin will need to get as much done as possible during daylight hours. After Pikmin 4, it's easy to forget how unforgiving the original Pikmin game was. The average player is going to need to get very comfortable with losing Pikmin, because the harsh environment and ravenous monsters make it extremely easy for them to die. To be honest, it's a little refreshing to go back to a game where Pikmin death feels like it has stakes, and maintaining a constant supply of backup Pikmin is a real necessity. The challenges you face are relatively simple compared to later games, but it also makes every encounter with a creature feel intense and dangerous, especially for the larger boss monsters. And hanging over your head throughout the whole adventure is the 30 day time limit, which adds pressure but isn't actually super demanding. Maintaining an average of one ship part per day is a pretty fair challenge, but just knowing that there is a limit adds a fun sense of urgency beyond simply finishing the game quickly. It's also cool to have multiple endings possible depending on if you collect all 30 ship parts, just the essential parts, or fail to collect enough parts at all. I won't spoil it, but that bad ending is rather bleak. There are of course elements that scream "this is a 22 year old game." The Pikmin's pathfinding is pretty poor, and stragglers will frequently get caught on ledges or corners. In fact, Pikmin are pretty dopey in general here, and rescuing them from drowning themselves or blowing themselves up on bomb rocks is a bit of a hassle. Perhaps most importantly, while the game has received a bump up in resolution, it still looks pretty rough—do not expect the same level of ground-up rebuilding that was seen in Metroid Prime Remastered. A bit more of a visual upgrade would've been great to see. Still, Pikmin 1 remains a fabulous experience that strikes a wonderful balance of simple mechanics and challenging strategy gameplay. Pikmin 2 picks up the story directly after the first game. Olimar returns home only to find that his company has gone bankrupt and is now in deep debt. However, if he returns to the mysterious Pikmin planet to collect treasures, he'll be able to reverse the company's fortunes. This time his co-worker Louie accompanies him, which allows you to split up actions between the two leaders, ostensibly allowing you to do twice as much each day. The other major addition is the cave system, where time stops and you'll need to navigate each floor, collecting treasure and battling creatures along the way. The focus on caves in Pikmin 2 changes the focus of the strategy gameplay from managing your time to managing your Pikmin. There's no time limit underground, but you also can't easily restock your Pikmin, meaning each death is even more costly than usual. There are few things worse than getting to the bottom of a cave only to find you don't have enough Pikmin left to even carry the treasure. So while it may seem like Pikmin 2 takes it easy on the player by removing the strict 30 day time limit, there are still some excellent challenges to sink your teeth into. Cave floors are also semi-randomly generated—the floor layout and placement of treasures/monsters are random—which means you have to be able to adapt to anything the game throws at you. That kind of fluidity gives Pikmin 2 even more replay value than its predecessor. There are also some fun additions and welcome refinements in Pikmin 2. The pathfinding system is much more efficient here, leading to far fewer stragglers. There's a lot more variety to the monsters and hazards, which keeps you on your toes. Plus there are two new types of Pikmin, adding even more opportunities for tricky challenges (and opportunities for you to run back to your ship because you didn't bring the right Pikmin for the job). There's also a ton more writing in this game thanks to the descriptions of each treasure and the extensive bestiary, which is a welcome expansion of the franchise's sense of humor and personality. The first game thrived in an isolated, slightly eerie atmosphere, but adding more depth to the story in Pikmin 2 was definitely the right call. The visual design is also a bit more elaborate, though like Pikmin 1 it would've been nice to see a more significant visual overhaul for this Switch version. Pikmin 1+2 remains as joyous as the original games were on the GameCube. It would've been great to see a more thorough remastering with redone visuals and bonus content, but the core experience is still a ton of fun and the stricter challenges of Pikmin 1's unforgiving world and Pikmin 2's tricky, randomized caves offer a nice contrast to Pikmin 4's lighter, easier approach to Pikmin wrangling. Whether you're coming back for a return trip 20 years later or playing these for the first time, Pikmin 1+2 are well worth plucking on the Switch. Rating: 8 out of 10 Pikmin
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It's hard to believe that it's already been about 17 years since the release of New Super Mario Bros. on the DS, which at the time was hailed as a return of 2D Mario platforming, and that the last NSMB game was released 11 years ago. Mario is so ubiquitous in the world of gaming that it's easy to forget that mainline games can be released rather sporadically, but that's all the more reason to stop and take notice when a new title is released and promises wonder and fun in every level. And I'm happy to say Super Mario Bros. Wonder is just as delightful and imaginative as its title suggests. Let's address the Elephant Mario in the room: Charles Martinet is no longer the voice of Mario, Luigi, or any other character in the franchise. The news sounded like it could be a shift for the series, but if you aren't paying close attention you might not notice the voice actor change in Wonder (it helps that, as usual, Mario & co. don't say much). The new voice, Kevin Afghani, clearly models his performance on Martinet's and does a great job of keeping Mario's spirit of fun and whimsy alive through the brief voice lines. There's another large bit of voice work featured in Wonder thanks to the talking flowers scattered through each stage that comment on what's happening or offer encouragement. It seemed like a strange feature when the game was first released, but once you're deep into the action of the game their presence isn't all that noteworthy. They'll occasionally add some fun quips, but just as often you'll probably just kind of forget that they're there. Thankfully though you can turn the voices off if you don't like them. Story-wise, Wonder is pretty classic Mario: Bowser is up to no good and it's up to our favorite mustachioed heroes to stop him. However, this game also includes Princesses Peach and Daisy as playable characters (a first for Daisy, in a mainline Mario platformer), as well as Blue and Yellow Toads, Toadette, and a bunch of Yoshis and Nabbit, who act as an Easy Mode and don't take damage from enemies. So in the end, Wonder splits the difference nicely between a classic Bowser bad-guy story and adding a bit of a fresh twist with more playable characters. That's really the core of what Wonder is all about: classic sensibilities but presented in a fresh, fun way. The 2D platformer gameplay here feels like it could be pulled out of any title in Mario's history, and features the hallmark tight controls, fluid movement, and beautifully balanced difficulty and progression that is perfectly designed to ease players into the experience. Stomping Goombas and reaching flag poles is as simple and satisfying as ever, whether it's in a grassy plain, desert, or snowy mountainside. For new players, there's really no bad place to start in the Mario series, and that remains true with Wonder's gradual approach to adding in new challenges only after you've mastered the previous basics. On the other hand, Wonder is more than happy to throw some wild, wacky scenarios at the player as well. Not in terms of difficulty or challenges, but just in terms of unique, flashy moments that help break up the core platforming action. All of the main levels feature a Wonder Flower, which transforms the stage in some bizarre way. It might cause a herd of enemies to rampage across the screen so you have to run ahead of them, or cause the warp pipes on screen to wiggle around like inchworms, or it might transform your character in some way. You never know what's coming next with a Wonder Flower, and the developers clearly had a lot of fun dreaming up wild new effects. There's a ton of variety to the Wonder effects and they'll keep you on your toes in an exciting way. It's really great to be continuously surprised by a game like this. In fact, there's a ton of variety to the game as a whole. Thanks to the Wonder Flowers, the game is constantly throwing new ideas at you to keep the adventure feeling fresh and vibrant. There are also numerous shorter challenge stages to break up the action of the main platformer levels. On one hand, it's a bit of a shame that the classic level structure feels a little bit short-changed in Wonder, and aside from the super secret extra-difficult bonus level you're not going to face wildly challenging platformer design, but overall the experience is still so vibrant and engaging that it's hard to be too upset. Additionally, a lot of the shorter challenge stages are Badge Challenges, which reward you with an equippable Badge that augments your abilities in some way. Most of them add helpful bonuses, like the ability to float through the air or a higher jump, while others feel more like an extra difficulty mode, such as the Badge that causes you to never stop running. Generally you'll probably stick with the helpful Badges, but the more complex ones could make for interesting challenge runs. Wonder also puts a slightly different spin on multiplayer by allowing you to play with friends locally, online, or with random players online. No matter the situation, this game has removed collision, meaning you can't pick up another player and toss them into a pit (I mean, toss them to a ledge to help them, of course). Instead everyone operates independently, but you can still help each other a bit. When you're playing online you'll see other players as ghosts, and if they die you can revive them by touching their ghost within a few seconds. You can also place standees that have the same effect. You'll also see standees frequently used to offer a helpful hint about a hidden item or a clue for reaching a secret area. It's cool to have this level of cooperation with other players in a Mario platformer, though purists might want to play solo so as not to spoil any hidden secrets for themselves. Despite the wide variety of level designs, Wonder does feel like it's a bit on the short side. It still takes a good eight to ten hours to finish the game, and around twice that to uncover every little secret possible, but overall the experience feels too brief. However, that may also just be an indication that there are so many great ideas constantly rotated through the game that the experience never gets old or stale. And if you finish the game 100% and still want to play, you can always jump online and help shepherd other players through by reviving them or dropping standees. Much like its gameplay, Wonder's presentation beautifully balances classic sensibilities with stylish new ideas. The game fully resides in Mario's fun, bubbly vibe, but there are also tons of little touches that add personality and charm to the experience (something that later NSMB games might have been lacking). The elephant power-up alone is kind of charmingly goofy, plus there are Wigglers on rollerskates, colorful Wonder effects and the aforementioned talking flowers. The little details of the playable characters' movements feel more energetic and varied. It's vibrant and lively and joyous while still feeling right at home in a 2D Mario platformer. The soundtrack is excellent as well, perfectly matching the excitement and energy of the whole game. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a delight. It's playful, flashy, and knows how to build upon the core Mario platformer mechanics intelligently to create surprising and engaging new scenarios. The Wonder Flowers add a seemingly endlessly inventive flair to the typical 2D platformer experience, and it's hard to play through many of these levels without a big grin on your face. Sure the challenge level might feel a little light for longtime players, and the adventure ends all too soon, but ultimately all of the bouncing, coin-collecting, and Koopa-stomping adds up to a wonderful time. Rating: 9 out of 10 Wonders
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Although Detective Pikachu on the 3DS was important enough to get a movie adaptation, it took about five years to get a sequel. The tiny private eye is finally back though, as Detective Pikachu Returns continues the narrative of the first game with a brand new mystery and new Pokémon to meet. Like the first game, this title is squarely aimed at young children, so expect less of a Phoenix Wright experience and more of a Dora the Explorer one. The story picks up two years after the events of the first game, and both Detective Pikachu and his human partner Tim are now well-recognized figures in Ryme City, the town where humans and Pokémon coexist. Don't worry if you aren't familiar with the premise though, the opening prologue of Detective Pikachu Returns includes a convenient recap of the first game. Now, however, Tim and Pikachu find themselves enmeshed in a new mystery, starting with the theft of a precious jewel. The premise remains awfully charming. Seeing humans and Pokémon interact outside of a training/battling setting is always cute, and the balance of Tim interviewing human witnesses while Pikachu interviews Pokémon witnesses has a lot of potential for fun storytelling. However, like the first game, Detective Pikachu Returns is truly only meant for young players. Arguably extremely young, because the game walks you through each clue/plot point so slowly that it's actually a little maddening as an adult. It's almost insulting when you hear a clue or piece of information, then the game turns to you and asks if you understand that clue, despite it being very clear. The overarching storyline through each case that Tim and Pikachu tackle is also extremely basic, with such predictable plot twists that it's hard to even call them twists, but at least this game continues the storyline of Pikachu's origins and Tim's missing dad. If you aren't an adult playing the game alongside a young child, reading all of the extensive text for them, you're probably not the target audience here. The gameplay in Detective Pikachu Returns has all the basic elements of a detective adventure, though boiled down to extremely simple parts. You'll investigate crime scenes, interview witnesses, then piece together deductions based on the clues you've amassed. Again, the game walks you through these clues in an excruciatingly slow way, plus all deductions are multiple choice questions anyway, usually with just three or four options, so you're never going to be thinking too hard about figuring out the answer. It's a basic, hand-holding journey through a detective story that is only going to capture the attention of a quite young crowd. Detective Pikachu Returns at least does have one notable feature. Pikachu will occasionally partner up with another Pokémon in order to use their unique skills. There's nothing too elaborate here but it's nice to have something to break up the long dialogue sequences of the game, and highlighting other Pokémon is a fun touch as well. There are also a few minor action moments, things like mashing the A button until a meter fills, but these add little excitement to the adventure. The game is roughly the same length as its predecessor, about ten hours or a bit longer, though there are fewer cases to solve this time. Instead the individual cases are longer, which also means a bit more mindless running back and forth and scenes/clues that are stretched out a bit too long. There are also side quests in Detective Pikachu Returns, though they're pretty underwhelming as well since they generally just require you to talk to one character then talk to another one—not the hardest detective work around. The game's presentation also leaves a lot to be desired. The art style here is perfectly bland, as if the developers didn't want to incorporate any kind of unique detail or flair to the graphics. Without the Pokémon characters the game would be devoid of virtually any visual personality at all. The soundtrack doesn't do a great job of adding pep to the experience either, while the voice acting is awkwardly inconsistent. The main characters sound fine—and it's still hilariously weird to see Pikachu talk with a grown man's voice—but a lot of the side characters deliver flat, dull voice lines. Detective Pikachu Returns is a completely by-the-books sequel to a quirky Pokémon spin-off. For this second adventure though, the novelty has worn off a bit and the incredibly basic mystery story comes off as a bit grating. Young Pokémon fans may certainly enjoy it, but it's a shame that the developers didn't deliver a game that could appeal to all ages and offer some actual depth. Rating: 6 out of 10 Cases
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I'll start off by saying I haven't played one second of League of Legends. The entire MOBA genre holds little interest for me, but Riot Games has figured out a clever way of expanding their game's universe to new customers through the excellent Arcane series and through spinoff games. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story requires no prior knowledge of LoL to enjoy, but leverages that wealth of lore and worldbuilding and combines it with developer Airship Syndicate's strategy-rich gameplay for a wonderfully engaging RPG. Ruined King quite smartly balances out its myriad references to the LoL backstory with its own narrative, meaning you don't need to know anything to jump right in. Sure you might enjoy the nods and references more as a fan, but even new players will be quickly endeared to this likable cast of characters, from a pirate queen to a wandering swordsman. They're all given room to develop and grow through the course of this spinoff story, ensuring that this is a complete, rewarding narrative on its own even without the main LoL content. The story begins with Miss Fortune, the new ruler of the town of Bilgewater by way of hostile (re: violent) takeover. Strange ghostly mists start spreading across the sea though, bringing death and destruction. A handful of champions come together to investigate the source of the deadly fog, leading to a story that pulls the past forward in a new light. Again, it's a fun story with a great cast of characters and is a blast completely on its own. Characters are well realized and their banter is always fun to hear, especially since the conflict brings together some unlikely allies. If anything, it helps that there's an entire LoL foundation to build upon, even if you aren't familiar with it, because it makes the world feel more fully realized and alive. The gameplay in Ruined King heavily recreates the formula of Airship Syndicate's previous game, Battle Chasers: Nightwar. Both games have an RPG dungeon-crawling vibe, and use a similar battle system that requires some degree of strategy—this is not a "mash A to get through it" kind of turn-based RPG. Instead, turn order plays an important role. Each character has a handful of basic/instant attacks, but the real damage dealers (and vital healing or shielding effects) are special abilities, which cost mana and take time to cast, as reflected in the turn order at the bottom of the screen. The wrinkle here though is that instant attacks will build up Overcharge, which is temporary extra mana, meaning the best way to manage your mana is to build Overcharge so you're not using much actual mana in each battle. Special abilities can also be used in either the Balanced, Speed, or Power Lane, changing the ability's strength and cast time. You can also upgrade your abilities which sometimes yields special effects depending on which Lane it's cast in—a healing spell might also cleanse debuffs if used in the Speed Lane, for example. Enemies sometimes have barriers that can only be dispelled by hitting them in a specific Lane, and some of your attacks also have the ability to push back an enemy's turn which is always fun to mess around with. Finally, there are hazards and boons that appear in the turn order, and you may want to time out your attacks in order to reap the benefits or avoid the pitfalls. Success in battle relies upon weighing all of these small effects and making combat choices as efficiently as possible, which makes even normal battles thoughtful and engaging. It may sound like a lot to consider in this description, but when you're in the thick of things it's a ton of fun to plot your moves and see your plans pay off. Every battle becomes a satisfying strategic challenge, which is also rewarded in the bonus EXP you can earn for playing efficiently. Every time you upgrade an ability you also have an option between two effects (and you can change your mind at any time), leading to a lot of variety even with relatively few abilities per character. Each character is also so unique that you can build interesting parties with any combination. Maybe you risk not having an actual healer but instead use Braum's shield ability to mitigate damage. Maybe you go all in on status effects with Pyke. Each character has little effects that they can build up on themselves or on enemies, so you're constantly tracking how far along everyone is during battle and when is the most opportune time to use powerful abilities. All of these options add so much depth to the gameplay, ensuring each player can devise unique strategies, virtually all of which are viable. Veterans of Battle Chasers: Nightwar may also be pleased to hear that the normal difficulty in Ruined King is notably easier than Nightwar's. That game was happy to make you work hard for every little victory, but Ruined King feels much more approachable to any level of player. If you do want that extra challenge though, there are different difficulty levels to keep combat interesting no matter your skill level. The production values of Ruined King are also excellent. The art style retains Airship Syndicate's (and director Joe Madureira's) distinctive look, but it feels perfectly at home in this LoL world. The environments are sprawling but filled with detail, and the same goes for the carefully designed characters. Everything has a slightly grimy, ocean port vibe to it, which perfectly suits Bilgewater and the creepy, ghostly mist at the heart of the story. And the comic book-style cutscenes are gorgeous, infusing just a bit of motion to still images, which creates a vivid, memorable effect. The game also features some excellent voice acting, perfectly bringing these characters and their massive personalities/egos to life. The soundtrack is solid as well, even if it's somewhat overshadowed by the top notch voice work. Ruined King feels like a pretty compact, quick RPG, but the truth is it will still last you a good amount of time. Even getting through just the main story will take a good 25 hours or so, and of course as an RPG there are a variety of side quests you can tackle which typically yield valuable rewards—seeing those stat numbers go higher always makes the side venture worthwhile. However, Ruined King is a lengthy game on the Switch for another, less fun reason. Even with the 1.7 patch, the game runs pretty poorly on the Switch. There are some shockingly long load times in this game. Most are long but tolerable—20 or 30 seconds maybe—but for some of the larger hub areas you could be staring at the loading screen for a couple of minutes. That also includes starting up the game as well. That kind of flaw is annoying but tolerable if not for the other major issue: the game can crash surprisingly frequently. Every few hours of play, perhaps especially because of the clunky loading during those busy hub areas, the game crashed on me. Thankfully there is a fairly frequent auto-save system, but needing to restart the game so often, especially with the lengthy load screens, was incredibly disappointing. Don't worry if you're not a League of Legends fan—Ruined King: A League of Legends Story perfectly stands on its own as a rich turn-based RPG set in a wonderfully realized world. Even without knowing all of the backstories and references, it's easy to love these characters and love the strategy-rich combat that allows for a ton of fine-tuning variety to suit your interests. Unfortunately, the game has a real rough time on the Switch, which almost makes it hard to recommend if you have access to another system, but whatever platform you play it on and whether you're a LoL fan or not, Ruined King is an RPG well worth enjoying. Rating: 7 out of 10 Stories
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"Cozy" games have become a genre unto their own, but Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery might blow them all out of the water. Cozily, of course. With its gorgeous, Studio Ghibli-like aesthetics and relaxed approach to gameplay, Behind the Frame is an eye-catching experience, though entirely too brief. You play as a young woman who is working on a new painting and spends her days posted up next to a bright window with a view of her elderly neighbor, who is also a painter. Scattered around her apartment are little hints of the larger story at play, and you'll need to gradually explore all of them to find the inexplicably hidden tubes of paint that allow you to progress. Unearthing the woman's backstory might be more important than finishing her painting, though. Not surprisingly, there's more going on here than it seems at first. While the narrative's twists and progression aren't wildly unexpected, the simple character study at the heart of Behind the Painting is nevertheless an emotionally engaging little story. The gameplay is not at all interested in challenging the player or making them work to progress. The painting and sketching mechanics are extremely simple: just pick the right color in the right spot, or when sketching just run the pencil/cursor across the screen until the image appears. The game's puzzles require a tiny bit more thought, but are still pretty simple with obvious clues. Since you're so limited on where you can move or what you can interact with, it's extremely easy to figure out each step of every puzzle. No one should be playing Behind the Frame for complex game design, though. This is a leisurely stroll of a game, a calming little exploration of creativity. That said, it is a bit disappointing that the experience is so short. The main game is barely an hour long, and that includes clicking on just about everything to see all the optional text. This version of the game also adds an epilogue, but it's also quite short and, while pleasant, doesn't add too much to the larger story. The controls are also a touch finicky, clearly due to the game's PC/mobile roots. Controlling the cursor with a control stick doesn't have the smooth immediacy of a mouse or touch controls. Thankfully though nothing in this game requires dexterity, and you can always play in handheld mode to use the touch screen. The presentation is far and away the highlight of the game. The hand-animated visuals feel straight out of a Studio Ghibli film or similar anime, and paired with the warm, relaxing soundtrack it's the perfect setting for a peaceful little adventure. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery is a beautiful and calming experience, even if it's lacking more typical gameplay structures. Even the puzzles it does have are fairly basic. Still, players looking to relax for just an hour or two should enjoy this cozy and colorful game. Rating: 7 out of 10 Paintings
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ONI: Road to be the Mightiest Oni turns the classic hero's adventure on its head: in this game you play as a demon, training to become stronger so that he can defeat the human warrior that wiped out your demon friends. Although the premise seems a bit silly, the actual narrative is surprisingly heartfelt. Unfortunately, repetitive gameplay elements and lackluster combat options make experiencing that narrative a chore. In the game's opening credits you see the human warrior Momotaro destroy a whole host of oni. You play as Kuuta, a demon who survived the battle and now seeks revenge. On Kisejima Island, Kuuta pairs up with a spirit named Kazemaru and the pair train to become stronger. For some reason there's also a lone girl named Kanna who lives on this island full of demon spirits. The premise of the game sounds like it should be a comedic or at least tongue-in-cheek setup, but ONI actually tells a pretty somber, melancholy story. Kuuta at first begrudgingly befriends Kanna, but their conversations are really the heart of the narrative. Although Kuuta doesn't say much, you get to see him open up a bit through this friendship. It's not nearly as fleshed out or in-depth as it probably ought to be, but ONI's story of vengeance is still surprisingly thoughtful. The gameplay essentially distills an adventure game down to a brisk 7 hour game. You've got the whole island to explore, but it's not very big and is divided into three sections, so you need to clear each region in turn. You can wander a bit and collect mushrooms (currency), but there's very little to buy. You can also collect wayward spirits to increase your maximum HP (Zelda heart pieces style), though the process is significantly more obnoxious and tedious in ONI. Spirits are hidden just about everywhere, but when you find and catch one you'll soon be pursued by a large, invincible demon. Your only option is to run to the nearest Jizo statue to turn them in and increase your HP. The problem is that doing this 56 times is insanely repetitive and tedious. Kuuta moves pretty slowly and, in general, fleeing from an invincible enemy isn't terribly engaging. It's a tedious chore to increase your HP rather than a rewarding challenge. If you had more control over how or when the demon appeared there could have been more of a satisfying strategy element to it, but as it is this whole upgrade system feels too simple and too repetitive. Unfortunately that's a theme for the core combat gameplay as well. In each region of the island you'll talk to a phantom and then tackle some kind of battle scenario. Kuuta has a club, a special attack that requires time to charge, and Kazemaru's ability to hold or stun enemies. It's a pretty bare-boned combat system but to be fair ONI does a decent job of mixing up the objective of each mission. You usually have to defeat every enemy, but sometimes you're in the normal 3D view and sometimes you're in a side-scrolling perspective, or even an overhead view. Sometimes you need to keep Zenisuke, the merchant, alive through the battle. And of course there are also boss fights which are a little different and a little bigger. Even with these different battle modes though, ONI is sadly an incredibly repetitive game. There's a small variety of enemy types, but even so Kuuta's combat skills generally involve mashing that attack button and occasionally dodging enemy attacks. There's very little depth or thought put into it, but some of the fancier enemies do take quite a lot of hits, which makes for a terrible combination: lackluster but drawn out combat. Even the special attacks you unlock don't add much variety or engagement to the combat system. ONI just feels like a first draft kind of game that needed more time to create a unique and interesting gameplay loop. Other aspects of the game aren't super solid either. The controls are surprisingly clunky. The 3D action-adventure genre is simply too old at this point for clumsy camera controls to be acceptable, and while ONI's aren't horrendous, there's definitely room for improvement. Most of all, the game is sorely lacking some kind of lock-on aiming system. Instead you have to slowly swing the camera around the battle arena. Controlling both Kuuta and Kazemaru at the same time is also a little more awkward than it should be. It's a cool concept to have one character hold an enemy in place so the other can swing on it, but the execution isn't quite smooth since it restricts your already limited camera control and it's hard to both attack as Kuuta and move Kazemaru at the same time. The game's presentation also has some stumbling moments. The art style isn't bad at all. The colorful demons are fun and the island, though small and fairly simple, has a nice energy to it that suits the melancholy tone of the story. There's not a lot that makes the art style pop, but it still gets the job done. However, the frame rate does struggle a bit on the Switch. It's not game-breaking but it's pretty noticeable in busy environments like the forest or when there are a lot of enemies on screen. The soundtrack is also pretty unique, as each region of the island has its own song but they're songs with lyrics, not just background music like most games. The problem is, it's just one song for each region, so they get insanely repetitive quite quickly. Hearing the first few lines of a song every time you to return to the island from a phantom trial is kind of maddening. As mentioned, ONI clocks in at around 7 hours or so, but even that relatively short game length feels drawn out. The content of the game just doesn't suit even that modest game length. There are also some side quests that yield simple rewards like new weapons or increased power for your special attacks, but they still don't make the game much longer and are also fairly basic tasks. ONI: Road to be the Mightiest Oni has some fun, novel ideas but never manages to make them shine. A demon for a protagonist has a lot of potential for a story, but even the introspective, melancholy cutscenes fall flat. Controlling two characters in battle could lead to a ton of combat and strategic possibilities, but it's used for the most basic functions here and also leads to some awkward controls. The island and game as a whole is relatively small yet still manages to overstay its welcome. ONI is still an okay experience but clearly could have easily been so much more. Rating: 5 out of 10 Onis
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Developer Asymmetric is back with a follow up to their 2018 stick figure RPG hit West of Loathing. Shadows Over Loathing offers the exact same sense of humor and goofy fun as its predecessor, but now in a 1920s eldritch horror setting instead of the Old West. It's also a notably longer game, which just means more room for puns, sight gags, and fourth-wall-breaking jokes, wrapped up in a wonderfully engaging open-world RPG setting. As the game begins, you're traveling to Ocean City to search for your missing Uncle Murray. He sent you a cryptic letter just before his disappearance, and now it's up to you to uncover the shadowy truth at the heart of all the strange occurrences happening in town. The early 20th century Lovecraftian setting is great and opens the door for a ton of humor. You've got prohibition-era mobsters to deal with, sure, but you've also got vampires and goblins, as well as unexplainable shadowy black rifts in space. The possibilities are endless here, and the developers have taken advantage of that to create another hilarious game. Comedy in video games can be a tricky path to navigate, but the Loathing games handle it perfectly with a wide variety of visual gags, puns, and just generally absurd scenarios that are sure to make you chuckle. The story's ending is perhaps not quite a perfectly satisfying conclusion to the eldritch setup of the opening, but the game's humor and charm keeps the writing's momentum going anyway. There's nothing better than being delightfully surprised by the humor in a video game, especially when that game allows those insane jokes to exist as both one-off gags as well as core elements of the gameplay. Take the three playable character classes, for example. You've got the Pig Skinner who specializes in Muscle for physical attacks, the Cheese Wizard who uses Mysticality for magical attacks, and the Jazz Agent who relies on Moxie for ranged attacks, typically of a musical nature. It's all extremely silly but it also functions as a full RPG experience. You'll want to cater your equipment and weapons to best support your chosen character class. At the same time though, you might want to balance all of your stats so that you can overcome various skill checks, which frequently allow you to either bypass a fight with a more clever solution or solve a side quest. The three stat system keeps things simple and easy to understand but still allows you to experience all of the adventure and exploration you'd expect out of an RPG. And boy did the developers up the ante with Shadows Over Loathing. The world feels significantly bigger and absolutely packed with little things to discover. Sure, not all of it is super elaborate or terribly important—oftentimes your reward is a bit of XP and an item to add to your already cluttered inventory—but it's still a blast to wander around each map and see what kind of trouble you can get yourself into, whether it's helping a bunch of kids verify the existence of various cryptids or getting something to eat for a man who refuses to stop sitting on a mailbox. It's almost overwhelming to have so much content to explore and a ton of dialogue to read—there's plenty you're likely to miss on a single playthrough, in fact—but again Shadows Over Loathing does a great job of playing into the open-world RPG formula while still keeping things relatively straightforward and easy to track. The side stories have depth without feeling like you're bogged down in tons of unnecessary details. It's sprawling but manageable, which is a perfect formula for adventure. The combat system is the same turn-based battle structure as the previous game, and once again it is arguably the weak point of the game. Early on these battles can feel overwhelming, when you only have a single attack and few items at your disposal, but very quickly they become so easy that there's not a lot of point in engaging with them. It's fun to level up your abilities and unlock new ones, but when you can spam one or two to wipe out enemies in a single turn—sometimes even bosses in a single turn—there's not a satisfying balance to the challenge. Since the main draw of the game is the humor though, it is perhaps appropriate that the so-so combat system pushes you toward finding clever solutions rather than brawling with every enemy you meet. It can certainly be more satisfying to take out a room of vampires by cheekily fiddling with the environment rather than casting a magical cheese spell on them a couple times. The stick figure artwork is a huge part of Shadows Over Loathing's charm. It's the perfect way to tell players to stop focusing on visuals and pay attention to the writing, and all of the silly, absurd scenarios are only heightened by the simple, goofy art style. That said, there's more visual variety in Shadows Over Loathing than you might expect at a glance, and the developers really get their mileage out of what appears to be very simple graphics. Meanwhile, the soundtrack has no lo-fi restrictions and features some catchy and haunting tunes that suit the setting nicely. Even more than the previous game, Shadows Over Loathing feels like a full RPG experience, which means a fairly lengthy main adventure and a ton of side quests. You could probably rush through the main story in ten or twelve hours, but the real heart of this experience is in uncovering all of the little tasks and secrets you can find, and you're always richly rewarded with a deluge of items and jokes. You do occasionally need to make firm decisions as well, so replaying the game could well be worth it to try out a different class and see how some side quests play out differently. Shadows Over Loathing is a perfect follow up to West of Loathing. It draws out the comedy RPG formula into an even bigger adventure without sacrificing any of the humor or charm that makes the experience so unique and engaging. The combat still isn't quite as balanced as it could be, but some easy fights are a small price to pay for the inventive and endlessly goofy adventure that awaits around every corner in Shadows Over Loathing. Rating: 9 out of 10 Hats
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Site: https://www.fallguys.com/en-US Price: FREE (In-App Purchases) Multiplayer: Cross-platform (Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, PC) Fall Guys is coming to Switch on June 21st and will be going FREE to PLAY! I've never played Fall Guys, but it looked like a lot of dumb fun. Since it's going F2P, I'll check it out when it hits Switch. I've always wondered why it wasn't F2P to start with...? If you pre-register (It's FREE) you will unlock rewards if any of the goals are met... *See link in Tweet*
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Despite the perfect reason to stick to a trilogy format, the Trine series continues with the latest entry, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy. Not that I'm complaining per se; Trine 3 was a rather awkward attempt at changing the formula, but subsequent games have returned to the roots of what makes the Trine games so entertaining: inventive puzzle-platforming that is as much fun to play solo as it is to play with friends. A Clockwork Conspiracy once again stars Zoya the Thief, Pontius the Knight, and Amadeus the Wizard, who are now famous in their kingdom as the heroes of Trine. However, when they're invited to a celebration held in honor of their great deeds, they find it was all a ruse to capture them and frame them for destructive plots across the land. Naturally, the trio fights back against the clockwork army to restore order and their good names. Trine 5 may add a little more flavor to the storytelling this time around, but it essentially sticks to the franchise's formula. It's not a super elaborate plot and even the villains are somewhat basic, but there's a simple charm to a straightforward good vs. evil story. More importantly, the light banter among the three protagonists always adds a fun bit of levity and charm. Like its predecessors, Trine 5 is a 2.5D side-scrolling puzzle-platformer, with some combat mixed in as well. Each of the three characters has unique abilities that help them move through the environment. Amadeus can create boxes and platforms, Zoya has a grappling hook, Pontius has a shield that can reflect projectiles, etc. Navigating each level requires using all of their strengths, oftentimes in clever combinations. A Clockwork Conspiracy has some particularly inventive and challenging puzzles. There are some new abilities here and most of them add a ton of depth to the gameplay and offer what seem like game-breaking skills but are actually put to use in delightfully clever ways that constantly keep you on your toes. All of the Trine games have their share of tricky or elaborate puzzles, but it really feels like the developers upped the ante in this one. It's a good thing, then, that you're also able to adjust the game's difficulty to suit your skill level. Both the combat difficulty and puzzle difficulty can be adjusted, which is a great way of accommodating a wide range of players. One of the best things about the Trine series is the fact that the puzzles rarely have a single solution. The game always rewards inventive players, and oftentimes your clumsy, awkward solution works just as well as the "correct" path. Sometimes finding the sneakiest or silliest way forward is half the fun in Trine games. To aid you, you can also upgrade each character's abilities, typically granting new uses or effects. In A Clockwork Conspiracy it feels like the majority of upgrades are focused on combat upgrades, but there are several that give you new ways to approach platforming as well, and thus give you even more tools for solving or breaking puzzles. There's another aspect that hasn't changed in the Trine series, unfortunately: the combat continues to be underwhelming. Part of the problem may just be the fact that the puzzles and platforming are so engaging that any battle is going to feel lackluster, but once again in A Clockwork Conspiracy you'll find yourself stuck in battles that are repetitive, drawn out and simply unexciting. Even with more combat ability options, fighting is never engaging in this game, it just feels like a chore you need to get through to get back to the interesting parts of the game. Trine 5 even adds some elaborate boss fights, which are a bit nicer since they include some puzzle-like elements, but overall the combat is still easily the low point of the game. A Clockwork Conspiracy of course features multiplayer as well, like its predecessors. Both local and online multiplayer are available here, though local feels like the more natural fit since you should be talking and interacting with your allies directly to figure out solutions. The best part is that the game specifically alters puzzles to account for multiplayer, so it feels like a slightly different game when you're playing with friends. The Trine series has one more aspect to its legacy, and that's a beautifully polished visual style. It's a classic fantasy setting but rendered in beautiful detail with hazy, dream-like lighting and colorful scenery. A Clockwork Conspiracy's art design is just as lovely as any of its predecessors, though it seems like the game struggles just a bit on the Switch. Any close-up shots reveal some fairly flat textures, and I experienced frequent pop-in on the lighting effects, creating an annoying strobe-like effect during cutscenes. The overall visual design is still a treat to see, though. The soundtrack and voice work are also delightfully charming. The characters' voices and expressions are so familiar at this point that it's nice to hear them again, and the music sets a nice cozy atmosphere for puzzle-solving. Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is a welcome continuation of the franchise. There are new features and new challenges to tackle here, but fundamentally it's more of the same experience, which isn't a bad thing at all since the puzzle-platforming experience continues to be engaging, challenging, and inventive. This game's puzzles in particular shine with some tricky scenarios and solutions. The combat system remains the weak link of the franchise, but some lackluster battles never dull the excitement of working your way through a particularly difficult puzzle in the beautifully rendered world of Trine. Rating: 8 out of 10 Puzzles
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With its emphasis on creating shortcuts to return to checkpoints more easily, the Souls-like genre has ended up as a natural fit for Metroidvanias, spawning a whole subgenre of its own that has steadily grown in popularity. Ghost Song was originally launched as a Kickstarter back in 2013 though, when the gameplay blend was a little more fresh, and finally saw release in 2022. Perhaps if it had come out earlier its gameplay wouldn't feel quite so derivative. You play as Deadsuit, a humanoid figure wearing armor, or perhaps you're the armor itself, come to life in some way. The opening is purposefully vague and draws players into a narrative of mystery and melancholy as you explore a derelict planet. Eventually you'll find a group of humans who crash landed and need help collecting replacement parts, and it becomes your job to aid them. Ghost Song does a solid job with atmosphere—this is a gloomy world and even the survivors you find have a pervasive melancholy and strangeness surrounding them. The NPCs all have quite a bit of dialogue as well, fleshing out their individual personalities and backstories. The atmosphere and NPC stories never quite coalesce into an engaging narrative though. The mysteries are just a bit too vague and the characters too long winded to create a rewarding plotline, which isn't helped by a rather anticlimactic conclusion. The Metroidvania influence is clear right away: this is a side-scrolling adventure game and you'll gradually gain new abilities that help you explore the planet fully. There are plenty of secrets to uncover as well as optional weapons and upgrades that you can equip. However, Ghost Song also has a no-nonsense Souls-like influence: even normal enemies can be quite deadly, and if you do fall you'll lose all of your NanoGel (necessary for leveling up and buying items) and will need to go back to the place you fell to recover it. You'll even have reduced maximum health until you can repair it at a specific station. Essentially, you're punished heavily for dying so you're instead encouraged to progress slowly and carefully. The one feature that actually feels novel in Ghost Song is the overheating system. Fire your blaster for too long and it'll turn red hot and overheat, reducing its effectiveness for a short time. However, the upside is that your melee attacks are stronger when you've overheated, so ideally you'll balance your ranged and melee attacks to maintain maximum effectiveness in battle. It's a cool concept that is overshadowed by the unforgiving difficulty of the game, though. Since dying is such an issue, you'll probably stick with the safer ranged attacks more often than not, even while overheating. Too often it's just not worth the risk of taking damage yourself to mix it up with melee attacks. This is especially a problem because every single enemy in Ghost Song is a damage sponge. Even the very first enemies you encounter require so much damage to defeat that the flow of the gameplay is sluggish, starting and stopping every time you run into a single enemy. This is even worse for boss fights, which go on and on in unsatisfying tests of patience more than skill. The exploration/platforming side of the game doesn't quite feel ideal either. Your movement is oddly stiff, especially early in the game before you get any kind of upgrades like double jumping. It's another reason why melee combat doesn't feel great: you don't really have the dexterity to run up to an enemy, attack, and dodge away smoothly, so that whole half of the combat system comes off clunky. The biggest faux pax with exploration though is the forced backtracking. Every time you pick up a replacement part for the human ship, you have to bring it back to them. For really no specific reason, fast-traveling is locked during these segments, so you just have to go back on foot. Perhaps if the map significantly changed, opening up/blocking off segments to make things more interesting, this forced backtracking would have felt more engaging, but as it is it kind of just feels like padding. The game's presentation is also a bit mixed. Ghost Song has distinctly detailed scenery that makes for some good environments, but they're also surprisingly repetitive. Despite some color-coding, different regions of the game kind of blend together into similarly blobby caves and corridors. The character and monster design also leaves something to be desired. They're bleak and gloomy, which is appropriate for the setting, but also somewhat lacking in personality. The soundtrack is unsurprisingly moody as well, which again suits the setting but doesn't result in many engaging or memorable songs. Ghost Song is a serviceable Metroidvania but doesn't quite manage to stand out in the increasingly indie-populated genre. Mixing in punishing Souls-like elements doesn't add much novelty to the experience either. The most unique aspect, the blend of ranged and melee attacks, is ultimately underwhelming as the strict penalties for dying mean you're encouraged to take it safe with ranged attacks most of the time anyway. Ghost Song still has decent Metroidvania fundamentals, but it lacks the critical spark to make it a must-play game. Rating: 6 out of 10 Ghosts
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As the wait for Metroid Prime 4 stretches on, Metroid fans will have to content themselves with simply replaying one of the best games of all time. Metroid Prime was an absolute shock when it first released in 2002, partially because, not counting the simultaneous release of Metroid Fusion, it had been about eight years since the previous Metroid game (can you imagine waiting such a long time for more Metroid?) and partially because putting the Metroid formula into a first-person adventure seemed unfathomable. The doubters were proven wrong though, and now new players can enjoy revisiting the absolute magic of Samus's premier first-person quest with Metroid Prime Remastered. First, a quick rundown of the original game. As the original foray into first-person Metroid gameplay, you might imagine there were some flaws to work out over time, but the truth is the GameCube original was completely outstanding. The first-person shooting worked nicely even with the more tank-like controls of the GameCube's unique controller, and the opportunity to explore and discover secrets in a 3D world was enchanting. Metroid Prime masterfully translates the joys of Metroidvania exploration into a 3D adventure, with hidden items, backtracking, and massive bosses. Swapping among different arm cannon beams and visors was a smart, fluid way of incorporating familiar Metroid elements while making it all feel natural in a 3D environment. Investigating every little detail and creature with the scan visor was immensely satisfying and added up to a great sense of storytelling and depth while remaining mostly optional for anyone not interested. And of course, the sense of isolation and exploration was perfect. Even without the upgrades that this remaster brings, the core Metroid Prime experience absolutely holds up as an engaging, exciting, and mysterious adventure. And all of the upgrades in Metroid Prime Remastered simply make the experience better. The HD overhaul is the biggest and most obvious change, but it's still hard to overstate how amazing this new version of Metroid Prime looks. Fans of the original will be stunned when they see familiar locations brought to life with more detail, more complex shading and particle effects, notably on Samus's visor. In fact, new players may be shocked that this is all based off of a 20 year old game at all. You'd be hard-pressed to find the "seams," so to speak, that show that this was originally an SD game from three console generations prior. It helps that the game runs at a silky smooth 60FPS, meaning there's no choppy animation and in fact virtually no load times as you move from room to room (a small improvement over the original game). It's also a testament to how excellent the original game's art style and art direction was that it all translates into HD visuals with such stunning clarity. The controls are the other major addition to Metroid Prime Remastered, and no matter how you like to play you'll find accommodations here. Traditionalists will be happy to find a "classic" control scheme that mimics the original GameCube's. It's great to have as an option, though anyone used to the kind of dual-stick FPS controls that have become standard with shooters will be happy to find a more modern control system as well, which allows you to move with one stick and aim with the other, using ZR and R to fire your beam and missiles. Despite not being the original intent for the game, this dual-stick setup works wonderfully and many players will probably prefer it. Finally there are the gyro controls, which inch a little closer to the Metroid Prime Trilogy's IR controls on the Wii. Perhaps if you're a seasoned Splatoon pro you'll be happy with the motion-controlled gyro aiming here, but ultimately it doesn't feel as smooth or natural as it should be. The Wii's IR controls worked beautifully but here the gyro aiming never quite feel natural. There are a couple other small changes that consolidate various little differences between the GameCube and Wii versions as well as the North American and Japanese versions. It's nice to have more little options but they don't fundamentally affect the experience. The only other notable addition is the extended gallery that adds even more lovely concept art to enjoy. Metroid Prime Remastered takes a masterpiece and makes it even better. Upgraded visuals and control options may seem like superficial changes, but they do an excellent job of making Metroid Prime at home on a modern system, and they're well worth the return to the planet of Tallon IV. Even without considering the original game's age, the visuals look fantastic on the Switch and hold up against any other recent release. Metroid Prime was an unprecedented joy when it first released in 2002, and Metroid Prime Remastered keeps that experience alive in a beautiful way. 10 out of 10 Metroids
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What do you do when you find yourself overwhelmed by the expectations of others? If you were in The Artful Escape, you'd go on a psychedelic space-trotting adventure to find your own path in the universe. This is a stylish and, despite the surreal alien environments, sincere exploration of self-doubt and self-expression, though as a game it does feel disappointingly simple. You play as Francis Vendetti, a teenage musician who is living in the shadow of his famous folk singer uncle. On the 20th anniversary of his uncle's legendary album, Francis is set to make his career debut at a concert in his small hometown. The problem is, everyone expects him to sing folk music like his uncle, but his heart is set on wild, space opera guitar jams. That's when Francis meets a cosmic rock star and jets into space for a mind-opening journey. It's a well-told story of artistic expression, doubt, the fear of living up to others' expectations and the importance of finding your own path in the world (or universe). The message might feel a bit one note—more time might have been spent on the other characters Francis meets, for example—but it's a worthwhile and meaningful message all the same. In addition to the story, the surreal, psychedelic visuals and rocking soundtrack are the true stars of The Artful Escape. The colors are mind-bending and the alien landscapes are beautifully bizarre, though also familiar enough that they're easily navigable. Not surprisingly there are some excellent tunes to be found here, both emotional folk ballads and slick guitar licks and electronic melodies. The music that you play and have control over is a bit too oversimplified, but the soundtrack still has some awesome songs. The voice work is also top notch and even features some recognizable actors who do a fantastic job of bringing this surreal and story-heavy experience to life. It's good that the story and presentation are so strong in The Artful Escape, because the gameplay is practically nonexistent. There are occasionally some light 2D platforming sequences—Francis can jump, double jump, and play a guitar riff for an extra boost in height—but these are extremely simple and the penalty for failure is minimal. The platforming controls are fine and decently fluid, but there's never any obstacle that will even remotely challenge the player. You'll often face branching dialogue choices, but these are just for flavor. Aside from picking a new name and similar little details, your dialogue choices don't matter. Finally there are the guitar performances, which allow you to hit A, X, Y, L, and R to play different notes on the guitar. Sadly you don't really get to make your own music—sometimes you can freely riff but there's not a lot of variety with five notes—and instead the guitar sections are a simple Simon Says game. Another character (or alien entity) plays a short sequence of notes and you repeat with the aforementioned buttons. And don't worry, it's as much a visual puzzle as an audio one, since there's always an indicator on screen to show what buttons/notes are being hit. These play-and-repeat sections are okay but like the platforming they never grow into anything challenging or complex. Keeping the game accessible to any level of player is all well and good, but it makes for a lackluster gameplay experience. The game also clocks in at a pretty brisk four hours or so, with basically no replay value to speak of. The Artful Escape is a gorgeous and affecting experience that weaves a relatable story around stunning visuals and music. You don't have to be a musician to appreciate the emotional turmoil at play here, nor the importance of self-identity. As a game it comes up lacking by quite a bit, with only the most basic of gameplay elements included, but if you don't mind a gameplay-light experience you'll at least enjoy The Artful Escape's undeniable style. Rating: 7 out of 10 Guitar Solos
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