Closing Out a Dismal Year

2016. A year to forget for so many reasons. Reasons beyond my own lack of effort within the written entity that is Beat All Games; reasons I wish not to discuss as this is not that sort of forum. I will, however, discuss my perceptibly poor output when it comes to finishing a wide variety of video games just so I can whinge over all the details. 2016 and only, what? Ten games? Pitiful. My most pitiful year to date. But only pitiful in the face of games conquered. It was still a productive year in games played and games thoroughly enjoyed. It's just, so few reached the finishing line creating the illusion I'm no longer the prolific player I once was. Though, to be fair, I don't think I've ever considered myself a prolific player. Otherwise, I'd probably jump on the Twitch train and that just isn't for me.

Ten games isn't enough to allow for any sort of traditional year end list with any real substance so I'm unsure which direction to take this post. Suppose I can just top five it and be done with it. Eh, sounds good since I really don't have much else to say.

5. Evoland
-Not a great game by any means, but does exactly what it set out to do. Unfortunately, the game loses it's way in the second half where the "evolution" factor takes more and more of a back seat.

4. Comix Zone
-Long a favorite on the Genesis, but also, long a notoriously difficult beat 'em up. A unique classic, really.

3. Earthlock: Festival of Magic
-There's so much that angered me, but there's also so much that I loved. It was a tricky balance: was there enough of the good to outweigh the bad? Yes. Yes there was.

2. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
-I almost feel like this one's getting the spot by default. Don't get me wrong, TTYD is a fantastic game, and far far superior to its predecessor. At the same time, it's not that different form the original and faces a lot of the same issues. The number two spot comes simply because of this year's low count in games beaten I fear.

1. 12 Labours of Herucles: The Cretan Bull
-It's great fun. It's wildly addictive. It's bright and colorful. It's easy to learn but can be tricky to master. It simply understands the fundamentals of what makes a great game and keeps all the unnecessary fluff out of the picture. More to the point: I want to play more of these games.

And with that, this mess of a year is done, or at least it will be in a few hours. Good riddance.

SNES - Super Mario All-Stars

Haiku-Review:

and so the story begins,
the birth of remakes -
how I hate remakes

Additional Comments:

First things first, I seriously did not expect another Mario Christmas, but here it is - another Christmas Mario. I decided, very last minute mind you, to clutch out some sort of Mario game. Not exactly my first pick but for the sake of traditions, I knew Super Mario All-Stars was something I could pound through relatively quick, until I realized what I was dealing with and then I began second guessing myself. As Christmas Eve entered the wee hours of the night and I was still pushing through Super Mario Bros. 2, I wondered if I could seriously manage to complete the game while still dealing with, you know, holiday related nonsense - though fortunately for me, and for the sake of Beat All Games, I have very little holiday nonsense I have to deal with these days.

Now on to more serious stuff. Super Mario All-Stars more or less birthed the now shitty tradition of Nintendo and countless other companies rehashing the same material over and over again in the form of remakes instead of coming up with an original thought. Doesn't even have to be an original thought outside of the franchise - keep pumping out Mario games. However, back in the 16-bit era, Super Mario All-Stars was a thing of wonder. We suddenly got to see our 8-bit favorites jump from four color mediocrity to brilliant flash. I remember the first time I beheld Super Mario Bros. with cool new backgrounds, but it turned out to be a passing fad.

To this day, I still like the 16-bit backgrounds that breathed new life into all the levels, but the games lost their charm. Both Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2j lost their originality and now feel like bad hacks even though they're the original games. Of course, the physics tweaks don't help, but I'll touch on that a bit later. At the time, for sure, the games felt fresh in their new clothes, but over time, I've come to realize Super Mario All-Stars is a poor recreation of the original games. It's the same problem every remake faces, be it games, movies, whatever. Remakes fail no matter what. There are few if any remakes that I have ever felt worked. As far as games go, I don't believe there's a single remake that works. Every remake I've ever played has either been trash or completely unnecessary. They're proof positive that they exist simply for cash. The whole concept depresses me just thinking about it.

But the thing is, when Super Mario All-Stars first came out, I believed in the game, probably not as much as others because I still felt very attached to the NES originals save SMB2j since the game was practically an unknown up until that point in the west. Of course, I was a kid at the time, but I think part of my buy in to the game was because everyone else was bought into it as well, and why like bland 8-bit scenes when we could appreciate these vibrant new palettes? Except, deep inside, I felt like the game was a swindle. Apart from SMB2j, I quickly saw that the game had little to no merit.

Granted, I never owned the game as a kid, but I distinctly remember renting it one time, checking out the updates in each game, spouting child-like rage at SMB2j and then never having the desire to play it again. To me, Super Mario Bros 2j was interesting, but total garbage, not to mention ridiculously difficult, and the rest of the game? Well, I preferred my good old NES carts hands down. To this day, I still prefer my NES carts. If ever I wish to play an NES Mario game, Super Mario All-Stars isn't even remotely an option, because it's nothing more than designer fad.

It's disappointing to talk down about a set of Mario games; the original quartet of Mario games at that. Albeit, SMB2j is a shit game, and SMB2 is questionable at best in terms of Mario-ness, it's still a great platfomer, but SMB and SMB3 are fantastic classics. SMB3 especially, for me, is a top game that can easily outclass most any video game. Fortunately, the SMB3 remake is steeped in relative sameness and only endures graphical enhancements. Though I will say, the king transformations, while cool to see nods to other SMB titles, are a total disappointment. The original transformations are so superior. I mean, come on, a seal flipping his crown around on his nose, and now we have...what? A random SMB2 nobody, a discolored Dino Rhino or a Yoshi with a fat lip? It's the same issue all over again - the utter removal of everything that made the original so quaint and endearing. It's bullshit!

A lot of that, I admit, can be argued as personal qualms over artwork and general distaste towards remakes. Ok. But let's dig a little deeper. Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2j are a total joke. It's been a few years since I played the original SMB, so perhaps I'm a little rusty, though I played SMB2j a year ago so.... Plus, I've been spending a good amount of time on Super Mario Maker where the general physics have been tightened up across the board so there's a good chance my baseline for Mario physics is greatly skewed in error. However, these two games feel completely wrong. There's a strange meshing of loose physics with stiff rigidity. I can't fully explain it. The much hated ice like physics of Mario is there, but somehow Mario's become prone to wooden awkwardness. I've never felt more uncomfortable controlling Mario. It's like playing a third rate platformer that never garnered any popularity thanks to how awful it plays. I don't get it either. Why did they fiddle with the physics? Thing is, I don't recall this ever being an issue when I was young, and perhaps it was because as a kid, I could easily be fooled. We had no internet to verify our suspicions. Without A/B'ing a game on the spot, shady physics doctoring was all just hearsay. I had both an NES and an SNES, so I suppose I could have tried way back when, but there was no suspicion to begin with because we were so entranced by the new beauty of the Mushroom Kingdom. Dirty tricks were the only thing at play, and we missed it.

Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 don't really suffer the same effect. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say the physics are pretty much dead on, except SMB2 did feel a tad sloppy. I don't think such was the case, and it may have been my negative impressions from the first two games playing tricks on me, but it is a possibility. SMB3, however, did show off a bit of the darker side when it came to question blocks, bricks, and the like. Much like SMB/SMB2j, SMB3 suffered from this weird block repulsion that appeared to affect general momentum. As a result, I played most of the game as small Mario - placing precedence on momentum over power-ups. Honestly, the levels played faster and easier this way. The repulsion effect, which basically repels Mario at an incredible downward speed after hitting a block, would completely break my rhythm. This isn't the first time I've seen the effect as I'm familiar with it from my SMW hacking days. I remember coding custom blocks and dealing with this exact issue if I forgot to insert a bit of code that would affect Mario's y speed.

All in all, the game is a joke. I recall enjoying it for what it was as a kid, but always having reservations about it over the years. Even when friends would bring it up in conversation as a great collection that existed on the SNES and how it improved the original games, I'd nod in agreement and offer my praises for including SMB2j, despite hating that game, and the wonderful graphical overhaul each game received - namely Super Mario Bros. It felt wrong to criticize the game not only because it's Mario, but because it was a statement by Nintendo saying they not only respect their roots, but wished to give them a dazzling new set of clothes and set 'em loose upon the 16-bit generation in style. But now, I'll criticize the hell out of the game. It's something that should have never existed. They should have sat on the games and then released them as a collection - not as remakes, but as a collection somewhere down the road, like on the GameCube, like they did with the Zelda games. It's the only acceptable form. Instead, they fucked up four perfectly good games, well, three good games.

And with the SNES sound font, the music is not even worth looking into despite it all being classic video game tunes. I especially hated the sound effects used in these games as it made the whole game sound artificial, almost plastic. Everything has a solid thonk instead of a nice squish. It's wrong. It's more than wrong. This whole game is an egregious mess and Nintendo should be fucking ashamed they ever released it and tricked all of us gullible nitwits into thinking they vastly improved the original gems which were fucking perfect as they were. Fuck you, Nintendo, and fuck remakes!!! What a shitty Christmas....

Rating: 1 giant Bowser portrait out of 5

XB1 - Earthlock: Festival of Magic

Haiku-Review:

O, silly rabbit,
don't you know Trix are for kids?
Oh! wait, wrong rabbit

Additional Comments:

Here's to hoping I can recall everything I wished to discuss, but considering how much time has elapsed since I finished this game, the details are anyone's guess.

Acquired through Games with Gold, I pounced on this game immediately since there are so few RPGs on the XBox One. There are a couple that came out over a year ago that piqued my interest but just never got around to picking them up. Certainly, making a game free makes it so much easier to nab a game. And though I initially had doubts based on a few pics, after a few quick minutes of  in-game footage, I was sold. Old school RPGs seem to be such a rare thing outside of PCs. Why is that? When did console users choose to scorn turn-based RPGs other than the miserable pieces of crap starring the same old emotionally abused androgynous jerk-offs that Squaresoft keeps passing off as Final Fantasy?

Ok, Earthlock technically isn't an old school RPG, but it appears to have far more kinship with RPGs of yore than today's overblown trash. Despite separating itself from its ancestors, especially through the use of 3D maps and environments, Earthlock kept stirring memories of Chrono Trigger. Perhaps it was the same cliché tropes used over and over again, and true, those same old tropes become tiring, but at the same time, they help to invigorate the game through lapses of nostalgia. Unlike numerous other titles that attempt to reap the benefits of creating Chrono Trigger 2.0 or Final Fantasy IV reimagined, Earthlock distanced itself by creating an entirely alien environment. It still rehashed the same old kernels of the old world sowing the way for the new world through magical destruction - here the case being eternal day/eternal night and the same characteristic party sporting the same conventional traits saving the fate of the world by using the tools of the past. It's all been done before, and quite possibly, to death. But there was enough of a rift among the pedestrian RPG outline through imaginative details elsewhere in the world to make it feel different enough.

Unfortunately, Earthlock nearly shot itself in the foot right out of the gate. The beginning of the game felt laborious enough to warrant it undeserving of my time. The initial character we're introduced to, Ive, is a such an eye-rolling, self centered, twat that I nearly put the game down for good before I even made it five minutes in. Throughout the whole of the game, I loathed anytime a cutscene popped or I had to make use of her because of how despicably arrogant she was. Of course, she's the king's daughter, so what can you expect, but still, there's no getting around how off putting a character of this caliber is and having to deal with her the entire game absolutely killed much of the praise the game could have gotten. Ive is easily one of the worst characters I've come across in any game, equatable to Kara from Illusion of Gaia. Given the game's introduction, I had to seriously question the game's intentions when they wished me to rescue her from the wreckage. Fuck her! I don't want that contemptuous bitch in my party. It's moments like these that make me hanker for freedom of choice and lend me to admire many of today's western RPGs. I don't have to suffer through bullshit because of lack of choice. If the choice existed to help Ive or to simply walk away, I would have walked away in a second. Up until that point, or even throughout the rest of the game, there was never a moment that nudged me into accepting her despite her personality deficiencies. And it's hard to invest oneself into a game that has such a disagreeable character. Some level of empathy must exist, especially in story rich or character heavy games, to agree to or accept the circumstances as presented, but when a character like Ive exists, much like Kara, it's hard to overlook and can inevitable affect the enjoyment factor of the game. Although you do get Taika out of the deal, so....

Earthlock was lucky to win me over with a variety of mechanics, namely the talent board and bond system, but characters continued to be a stumbling block for the game. Each one of them felt vapid, and despite all efforts to differentiate themselves from RPG stereotypes, still fell subject to their cliché personalities. Gnart, who may have been the most dynamic characters was also one of the most tiring only because he followed the typical goofball sidekick trope thrown in for comedic effect - sure, he had some knowledge and an intriguing past, but he's liable to open mouth insert foot for a non-quality laugh to help lighten the mood and make us say, "Oh, you silly rabbit. You and your silly stories." It's stale, and it's unfortunate since out of the whole lot, Gnart's histroy, as well as that of his people would easily be the most interesting to read up on.

Olia, on the other hand, comes off as a waste. She brings brute muscle, which from a gameplay aspect is greatly welcomed, but her story is done to death. Squaresoft has given us enough of the brooding heroes who'd rather keep their past to themselves while we as players struggle to connect with these detached individuals. You're giving me nothing to work with here outside of strong-arming the competition. Eh, I suppose that's enough.

But enough of weak character portrayal. Let's delve into actual gameplay. Upon first glance, Earthlock feels a bit too rigid and leans far too much on traditional RPG values. Nothing exactly wrong with that, but it certainly did little to help sell the game. Sure, I started out by whining how so few traditional turn-based RPGs exist these days on consoles, but at the same time, I don't wish to play the same old tiring mechanics. Developers need to integrate new ideas to help invigorate old traditions and Earthlock failed to do that upon initial inspection. But once you get into the game and some of the more interesting mechanics open up, Earthlock begins to set itself apart. True, likenesses of the talent board or bond system have shown up in past titles, but they felt fresh, locked into a combination that helped us to look past the tried and true mechanics of the RPGs of yesteryear.

However, Earthlock definitely made some missteps in its hopes to individualize itself. Crafting was likely the biggest misstep of all as it completely nullified the use of the shop system. Despite my natural tendency to steer clear of shops in RPGs simply to increase the difficulty, I found the shop system in Earthlock to be completely unnecessary. If I can craft anything and everything and I can easily obtain any of the crafting materials from the various denizens of the world, why would I ever stop at the local market? Something few games have ever managed to properly balance is the coexistence of crafting and shop systems. More often than not, one negates the other and Earthlock may have been the greatest example of this problem.

Not only did crafting bring down the world market, but crafting befell its own niggles. At first, I kind of liked the idea of growing a garden from which I could craft various ammos or potions - all items of which I pretty much never used throughout the entire game, but I'll come to that later. It gave the game a tiny slice of a Harvest Moon feel. I hate to admit it, but Harvest Moon, or similar games have a joyfully addicting quality to them, so to see Earthlock integrate this, even on a bare minimum level, was cool. Turns out, I used the garden for nothing more than an achievement hunter effect. When that's the case, it should be blatantly obvious the mechanic was added without much forethought. Honestly, it was boring as hell to sit there clicking on plants for close to an hour or more trying to mutate a certain species only to find out after turning to GameFAQs to see if I was victim of a bug, that for one single mutation, they completely deviated from the norm in that you had to kill an optional boss. What the fuck? If Ive didn't annoy the piss out of me enough, shit like this happens - counter-intuitive garbage that suddenly diverges from everything we've learned up until that point.

What's more, the game suffered from various other counter-intuitive faults. Another one that nearly sent me over the edge was figuring out how to use my fifth through eighth abilities. The tutorials describe, fairly well, how to use the various menus and actions but failed to mention how to reach your next page of abilities. With my abilities tab grayed out, I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that I could still press the tab to find more abilities. Grayed out means the operation has come to an end; there's no more forward momentum here. It's the fucking clock in Where's Waldo? all over again. They're going against everything we've ever learned in gaming over the past 30 years. I only realized how to use those abilities by sheer accident after having left the room for a couple minutes and upon returning, picked up the controller and accidentally nudged the joystick in the right direction. That then led me to spend the next several minutes trying to replicate my accident. All be told, this event didn't happen until well over halfway through the game, so yea, I spent well over half the game believing the tutorial lied to me - that it was written for the PC version and they neglected to translate this one section for the Xbox.

And it doesn't end there! Figuring out how to upgrade Pat to Pat 2,0 was a total nightmare. I have all the necessary ingredients but...I can't craft the fucking token!? Oh! I've got to remove the original tokens. Well, that's real fucking obvious!

It's sad. There's many aspects of the game I loved, but far too often the game hit me out of left field with some half-assedness. And it's simple things they managed to botch. Fortunately, nothing's game breaking, but the annoyance level some of this stuff managed to induce is astronomical. Many of these faults so nearly made me shelve the game, but many of these things happened so late in the game that the time invested would prove nothing but waste and I hated the prospect of walking away from it when I was that far into the game - like I had reached a point of no return and was relegated to accepting my fate. Besides, the good qualities continued to coax me on - qualities like making best strategic use of the various bond configurations or the fact that I was playing a turn-based RPG that didn't rely on cyclical healing. Sure, healing was critical in certain battles, but it wasn't an absolute that I had to rely on throughout the entire game unlike most turn-based RPGs. And while most battles were nothing more than tests to dole out damage as fast as possible, a number of battles popped up that allowed me to make use of some of my other abilities thus forcing some underlying strategy throughout.

However, that being said, many abilities came off as superfluous. As mentioned before, how crafting ammo was a complete waste, I found few battles where a reliance on ammunition was a thing. The trade off for job swaps forcing me to lose a turn typically wasn't worth it, nor was the time spent crafting the ammo to begin with. Same can be said for the other characters. I pretty much ran all the characters on the one job I was comfortable with and stuck with it. The mere fact that that can be done makes the whole system moot. But then, without relying on cyclical healing or some sort of deeper element system, there was never really hope for such a system. If I can dole out enough damage with a sword just as quickly or more so than a gun, so be it. Of course, the argument can me made that it's all there for personalized customization. Fair enough. But I think with the job, or stance, system, the intent was for a more robust strategy allowance, which in my opinion backfired. They could have handled everything just as easily if everything was simply a single set of abilities allowed by a given character. I suppose it can be thought of as an offense/defense stance used in older RPGs, but at least there, you didn't have to waste a turn choosing your stance before you can make use of your allowed abilities. Instead, it seems to help fill out a common theme of implemented mechanics without much forethought.

Finally, on a personal note, I found the graphical style irksome. I loved the locale design and enemy design, but found the character design unnerving. It reminded me of the character design in Twilight Princess. Something about their looks is so off putting, and sadly with a number of characters already annoying me for one reason or another, the art direction made everything all the more tougher to digest.

I'm sure at the time of play a number of other details existed that I could have easily harangued over, but I doubt I'll remember them. They were likely minor anyways, at least compared to what I've covered here. Besides, I know what I have gone over were the major talking points I wished to hit up anyway. Perhaps I should keep a running log as I play, but alas, that would make all of this feel too much like work instead of a hobby with no return.

Suppose the last thing I can hit up is the soundtrack, but honestly, I can't remember a lick of music. I recall the music being sweet on the ears, but nothing really stood out. I know there were a couple tunes in the game I enjoyed but they obviously didn't leave a lasting mark. After refreshing myself with the soundtrack on Eiko's channel, it's sad that that's the case as there are certainly some nice gems stuck in there such as Vast Canyons, Sweltering Desert, or Dreamless Grotto, which after hearing it again I recall this being my favorite track in the game. Ah well, typical RPG fare.

Nano-Win:

One thing I did like about the game was the usage of Kickstarter funders' appellations for the ghost tag side quest. If was always interesting to see what quirky named individuals I'd come across next and a handful of them gave me a good laugh.

Nano-Rant:

Fix your fucking bestiary, and while you're at it, get some decent QA to proofread your text. There's nothing that will drag down the integrity and professionalism of a given game more than spelling and grammar mistakes. *Proofreads above editorial and hides* Eep!

Rating: 3 hogbunnies out of 5

PC - 12 Labours of Hercules: The Cretan Bull

Haiku-Review:

work is never done
so says the adage of yore;
no thanks to yon bull

Additional Comments:

First, it should be noted that I've been miserably slow at updating Beat All Games. Thanks to my tardiness, my exact memories of these games are fleeting. This game, along with Wheely and the next title that I'm going to try and wrangle out of my procrastination and general lack of passion towards writing such long winded tirades other than using it as an outlet to write something, were all completed two or three months ago. Only for the approaching end of the year I realized I should at least try and slap some sort of structured anger or appeasement. I doubt I'll even manage a Christmas Mario this year. Such tragedy. Though, admittedly, in addition to my growing apathy, my neglect has been spoon fed by the fact that I've been playing games as of late that are either entirely open ended and/or have a good many hours of gameplay present before any sign of an end is near. And anyone who's familiar with my particular way of playing games, a 40 hour game, for example, can easily be dragged out to 120+ hours over weeks and weeks of game time. No wonder attention to Beat All Games has dropped.

But enough of that. I present another in a series of fast growing favorites: 12 Labours of Hercules: The Cretan Bull. If it wasn't for a room full of games that I wish to play, and my desire to mix things up from title to title, I'd probably play every 12 Labours titles in a row. Sure, they're all essentially the same, but they're all so damn fun and addicting. As much as the first game enticed me with simple gameplay, the sequel cemented my love for the series. I feel foolish to say as such, but the games are executed so well. Perhaps because they still have an air of guilty pleasure wrapped around them. It's that hard to explain mobile gaming polish that coats the presentation that makes me ashamed to admit how wonderful the game is, but gameplay and execution shall always trump all and the devs seem to know a thing or two about gameplay.

Other than a new story, Hercules trying to capture the rambunctious Cretan Bull that's terrorizing the lands wherever he goes, there's very little in terms of new gameplay here. But that's fine. Why fix what isn't broke? Sometimes we genuinely do want more of the same. Hell, just look at some of the classics like Mega Man or Sonic - very little changed over the course of the first few games. When things finally began to change in dramatic fashion, hoping to freshen what the developers considered old hat, well the series, in my opinion, took a massive nose dive into a heaping pile of cow dung. If it works, let it be, and 12 Labours is doing exactly that. What is changed is small, but clearly impactful. New and interesting minigame boss fights, the ability to build outposts to advance your workers further into a stage, or even the new puzzle piece extraction to add a dash of collection mechanic. Nothing here is major, but it's all enough to make the game feel fresh despite being nothing more than additional levels that could have easily been tacked onto the first game as DLC. Too much change and surely the game would have taken on too much of a different feel; losing that special quality that makes 12 Labours what it is. For anyone who's ever wondered why Capcom created Mega Man 9/10 or Sega created Sonic 4, it's exactly for those reason, I should suspect. Of course, I don't have the inside scoop, so I could be talking out my ass, but still. There was a quality to the original games that people loved and desired more of just as they do with 12 Labours, again, so I would suspect. Either that or the developer is stuck in a developmental rut, but you know what? If that's the case, I say thank goodness for ruts.

Unfortunately, because of the striking similarities between games, there's very little else to talk about that I haven't already talked about previously. Perhaps I can groan over the puzzle piece mechanic insomuch that for the first two worlds, despite knowing puzzle pieces existed and somehow collected a couple by sheer happenstance along the way, I had no idea what I was truly seeking. For a while, I expected the various sparkles or targeted animations to be a clue as to their whereabouts but I was wrong. Eventually, I had to enter a stage and simply take in the detail. There I sat scanning the landscape for I don't know what. Once I realized what the pieces looked like, they turned out to be quite easy to pick up over the course of the game. Still, I wish there was some sort of device in place that introduced us to the concept. Everything else within the game is very intuitive, however that was the one mechanic that felt like a missed opportunity.

The only other thing worth noting, perhaps, is the difficulty when it came to expert mode. Compared to the first game, this one felt a lot easier. Could be that I knew what to expect and how to handle the game; that I had a better understanding of the necessary strategy to overcome situational obstacles. But then, it's also been over a year since I played the first title, and if other games have taught me anything, is that I easily become rusty after mere months of absenteeism. Maybe time strategy games don't befall the ills of prolonged absence. Makes sense since the game is devised around strategy and not skill. Still, with some of the additional elements in The Cretan Bull, there's enough to throw me off my game. Poke and prod at any number of hypotheses, but I can't help but feel the true state of the matter is that the sequel is simply easier. Unlike the first game where a number of levels tested my problem solving skills as well as my patience while under the constraints of a demanding clock, only a small handful of levels proved to be of the same caliber. Be aware I use comparison lightly here as even the difficult stages proved easy compared to the difficult stages in the original game. I believe there was only one that was truly comparable to the original game in the number of replays attempted. Perhaps some of the new elements not only added to the complexity and depth of strategy, but counterbalanced the difficulty as an unforeseen side effect. Who knows?

Whether the game built on the original, which it did, or simply stalemated the franchise, which it didn't, The Cretan Bull validated the franchise and its future, which at this point, I believe consists of four more titles. I know I have the third and fourth already in my Steam library and honestly can't wait to play them, even if they are more of the same old same old. As long as the same old same old keeps up the same level of fun and excitement, than more power to them. Hell, I'm not even mad that most of the soundtrack is the same - it's a fantastic soundtrack. More 12 Labours as is, with minimal but poignant alterations and/or additions and I'm all over it.

Rating: 4.5 waterslides out of 5

Flash - Wheely

Haiku-Review:

don't fret little car,
consumers are all just bums...
racing - there's a thrill!

Additional Comments:

I always feel I must predicate any lengthy flash-related essay with a myriad of justifications. Why do I always feel guilty of playing flash games? Because they're juvenile? Simplified? Typically representative of low quality output by bedroom developers? Perhaps, but perhaps juvenile or simplified games can be enjoyed for what they are. Low quality output on the other hand - eh...

One day, mixed among my recommended videos on YouTube was a video for an LP of one of the Wheely games - it might have been the fourth one, but I'm not entirely certain. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it. It was a short four or five minute playthrough of a cutesy point and click game that some how sold me enough on the idea to seek out the series and give the first game a go. Maybe it was just because it was a simple point and click series that embodied the absolute definition of casual game. Whatever the case, there was something about it that made me believe it was a worthy flash game, even if it appeared to be directed at an audience of four-year-olds. If anything, the one thing that stuck out is that it appeared as though the developer went out of his way for all the little details - that he chose to make something bespoken of quality, even if he's popped one or two of these games out every year for the past few years. It didn't immediately scream shitty Microsoft Paint drawings quickly embedded into some javascript in 48 hours so I can pop off my 145th game of the year. This is how the vast majority of flash games come off and Wheely took the effort to prevent itself from crossing that line and proved that simplicity doesn't necessarily equate to crap.

I remember reading a fantastic article several years back articulating the complexities of the hows and whys a given movie review is presented as it is, i.e. how some blowhard B-movie cheese can actually garner a decent review. The article's writer expressed his (or her) opinion that reviews should take into account whether or not the product accomplished exactly what it set out to do. If it was meant to be nothing but cornball camp, did it at least pull out all the stops to be the best damn camp it can be? Other than being of the opinion that all reviews should be argued as such, no more so than here. To the average gamer, and probably a wide spectrum of people beyond, Wheely is likely a pointless endeavor either meant purely for pre-Kindergarteners or simple drivel to plaster on Newgrounds, Kongregate, or other such Flash sites where it can further contribute to a plague of over saturation. Except, Wheely, in my book, hits all the marks it set out to, and perfectly at that.

Wheely, an obvious nod to Lightning McQueen, consist of (mostly) one screen puzzles - move the eponymous car from point A to point B while maneuvering around simple obstacles so he can make his way from a tired showroom floor to the day of the big race. Wheely's aspirations are admirable considering he's become last year's model - a victim of price reduction time and time again, proving he's no longer the chic auto he once believed himself to be. But forget materialism or consumerism. Instead, Wheely turns to ambition, to prove to himself as Red would come to learn in Shawshank Redemption - get busy living, or get busy dying. Who wishes to rust away as they're put on year end manager closeout special buy 99% off dealer's choice everything must go extravaganza only to watch everyone turn their heads towards other, more appealing buys?

The difficulty is hit and miss as the levels seem to progress more in favor of continuity between levels. I respect and appreciate that, but it does manage to fracture the gameplay a bit. There are a couple balance puzzles that are interesting, and at least a step up in difficulty compared to some of the earlier levels, but there's no solid progression. Granted, given the size of the sprites and the fact that most everything is confined to a single screen, it can prove restricting on what can be done. However, for the most part, I think the developer did a fair job with the levels at hand.

Honestly, it's hard to criticize the game only because the game is exactly as advertised...at least in the general presentation. Dig a little deeper, and it's a different story. My experiences with the game were unfortunately bitter as I had to shuffle through a few different sites before I finally found a version that I could get through without bogging my laptop down to an absolute standstill. The issue seemed reminiscent of a memory leak, eating up gargantuan amounts or RAM at an exponential rate once I got to about the seventh level. First attempt, I made it to Level 9 before my computer became frozen in time. Next two attempts - each on differing sites - I made it as far as Level 7 and began chucking F-bombs at a children's game as the lag became utterly disgusting. Using the air pump before the giant saw blade tore Wheely asunder was a venture in total futility.

I believe I finished the game on Kongregate, thanks to their cookies autosaving whatever level I was on, though I initially sought the game elsewhere due to the lag being so awful there, though it was no different anywhere else. Through personal tyranny of will, I decided to push through best I could, even if it meant restarting Level 7 multiple times until the lag was tolerable enough to work with. Once I pushed through Level 9, the issue disappeared, so I'm not entirely certain what was going on and based on a couple of LPs and some comments here and there, no one else seems to have experienced this awfulness. Thing is, I've never experienced this with any other Flash game, and Wheely brought my laptop to its pitiful knees no matter where I tried it. So whether it was a memory leak or some sort of malware piggybacking the game, it completely ruined my experience - an experience I'm quite certain would have been favorable in the game's lighthearted simplicity as I fully respected the game for what it was. But with all the trouble I had to deal with just to play a ten minute time waster built in the Flash medium, it's hard to heap praise of any kind. Instead, I find the game flawed and egregious and the developer should be ashamed if it truly exists in this condition. If, however, it was merely a fluke between the game and my own hardware, well, it's a shame. Although, I did run one attempt on a desktop; suffering the same deplorable conditions, so...for the moment, all signs seem to point to bullshit on the developer's end. Ah well.

Nevertheless, I probably would try out another Wheely title simply out of curiosity. Consider it personal interest in seeing how the developer grew the series - if any sense of complexity ever enters the equation or he simply stuck to his guns with one screen puzzles. I've seen some screen shots of the other games, and like I said, I learned about the series by watching an LP of the fourth(?) installment, and from what I saw - no change. If anything, I hope the bullshit lag is rectified.

Nano-What?:

Seriously, there's a level that is literally nothing but changing your paint, tint, and wheels? Why wasn't this simply an optional customization menu at the beginning of the game so we can all choose our personalized Wheelys from the get-go? I felt any attachment to Wheely as a character was lost since it happened in such an arbitrary way at such an arbitrary time - like an afterthought shoehorned in without any real thought.

Rating: 2 sunglasses adorned lorries out of 5

GB - Nail 'N Scale

Haiku-Review:

occupation Q:
I've a pocket full of nails;
carpenter, I'm...not?

Additional Comments:

Along with Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2, and Tetris, Nail 'N Scale is one of my all time favorite Game Boy games. Part of my original collection as a kid, I remember long car trips giving these four games intensive play time - far, far more than the other few games I had, although I recall putting my fair share of time into NBA All-Star Challenge as well. I always enjoyed early era Basketball games. But that's another story, though if I ever get around to commenting on David Robinson's Supreme Court, I may just get a chance to tell it. Ah, memories.

Unlike either of the SML titles, I never made the headway in Nail 'N Scale that I did in the other two as a kid, at least nothing to boast about. Although, gaining access to Wario's castle but failing to finish it was never anything to boast about, so touché. Nevertheless, I never let the daunting task of facing Nail 'N Scale's harsh realism of one life to live do me in. Never give up! Never surrender! (Wait. Why do I know that quote from a lame, lame Tim "the Toolman" Allen movie? Ugh.) Still, the man does speak the truth. Except, eventually after having to repeat the first few levels for the nth time as you continue to try and figure out the best route in one of the later levels only to die from a combination of frustration, exhaustion, and stupidity, such sentiment is meaningless. I'll damn well give up if I choose. Hold the boat. There's a stage select ability? Why am I only just now realizing this some twenty-something years later? And of all places, I find out about it in the manual, something I know I looked at time and again years' past as I was one of those humdrum types that always found delight in leafing through the manuals. Chalk that one up to gross oversight. Sheesh.

Two larger than life railroad spikes and an affinity for high jumps (or frustratingly close but no cigar jumps in 1P Hard) is all our hero needs to scale these impossible towers. In many ways, Nail 'N Scale reminds me of Milon's Secret Castle - a good deal of navigating simplified, yet difficult block puzzles littered with one hit beasties that resurrect after a few short seconds. I've never liked the concept of enemies that can resurrect on screen like that. It's always felt like a lazy approach to difficulty, especially when you're trying to line up a jump or javelin throw only to die from an enemy suddenly coming back to life. It's annoying. I wouldn't say it's unfair, as it's never exactly unfair, but there is definitely aggravation under certain situations lest you keep moving.

Also like Milon's Secret Castle, Nail 'N Scale has a large focus on destroying blocks in order to advance, although often is the case in this game, you don't want to destroy the blocks. This calls for either clever hoarding and usage of white spikes or incredible fleet of foot. In 1P Easy, this isn't so much the case as you can afford to take your time and strategize. 1P Hard doesn't allow for such luxuries with a 3 minute timer and, especially in the late game stages, the timer really hammers on the pressure to make quality jumps on your initial attempts. Stages that specifically call for climbing inverted slopes or staircases are pure misery. That 3 minute timer isn't helping anybody as you really need to be on your A game with button presses to make those impossible jumps in quick succession. Oh, and as I mentioned before, your jump height has been nerfed in 1P Hard, so yea.

Point was, destroying blocks, and there's a lot of puzzles built specifically around this gimmick. Some involve creating staircases out of solid walls. One particular late stage has a number of hard blocks interspersed throughout the wall which makes overall wall destruction a true test. I still have no idea what the proper solution is and relied on hoarding exploding spikes from previous stages. Other stages consist of puzzles where you carefully have to navigate mimic-like blocks and figure out the proper pattern of block to destroy in order to advance. I found these stages to be the most devious, yet the most enjoyable.

Overall, the game is a typical action/puzzle game with a very bouncy, and if it wasn't limited to Game Boy's gray-scale color scheme, I'd imagine beautifully vibrant feel. It's also a lost gem, in my opinion at least. I rarely, if ever, see the game brought up in Game Boy game discussions and it's a shame. For me, it's up there with the best of the best as far as Game Boy titles are concerned and a definite recommended play for anyone who's into action/puzzle games. If anything, it damn near exemplifies the block puzzle/platforming genre. But it's not without its faults. It is, however, accompanied by an expected bouncy soundtrack. with tunes like Stages 1-9 or Stages 21-29. Looking back on my youth, I must have had that first tune ingrained in my head given how many time's I'd have to restart the game from the very beginning. And that is the game's true flaw, except for that damnable stage select that managed to escape me all these years.

Nano-Rant:

There is, however, one other flaw that really got on my nerves - something I never experienced as a kid because, well, I just never made it far enough into the game to know. The latter bosses have some really questionable hitboxes. A couple of them, namely the final boss, Lore, left me confused during my initial playthrough on 1P Easy. Apparently, I was taking the wrong approach to the boss despite it working...technically. Though painfully slow, my plan of action was entirely based on hitting a collision box from the wrong angle that apparently appeared on certain frames as nothing more than a pixel or two in width. It wasn't until 1P Hard, several battles in, when I finally realized how you're actually supposed to defeat him - that my directional focus was entirely incorrect. I only learned the proper way because the 3 minute timer forced me to try alternate methods.

But the bosses alone don't suffer from questionable hitboxes. There are a couple enemies here and there that also felt cheap or slightly off when it came to perceivable hit compared to actual hitbox. This mostly involved movement and may have been more a limitation of the Game Boy itself in regards to rotational figures where the hitbox appeared to be slightly ahead of the sprite by a few frames. Regardless, I never found it aggravating, just unfortunate on a few occasions. The hitboxes on a couple select bosses though...that's a different story.

Nano-Win:

Finally getting past the beginning section of Stage 39 after which seemed countless attempts. That's win enough.

Relying on a strategy that is used literally nowhere else in the game. Ugh.

Rating: 4 Mojo Jumps out of 5

NES - Marble Madness

Haiku-Review:

Forty-five degrees?
Ninety? What's the difference?
Controller nightmare!

Additional Comments:

For the record, no, this was not one of the "select" titles I've been putting around with for the past few months. Honestly, that'd be right sad; then again, given the madness of Marble Madness...maybe not. End game disappearing block bridge... Holy cow! Does the madness ever end!?

Marble Madness was another one of those game I often picked up as a rental when I was young, as I thoroughly enjoyed the premise, however failed to make any decent headway in the game. Maybe because I only had a rare weekend to give it my best, only to be daunted by the frustrating cohesion, or lack thereof, between an isometric view and an x/y axis joypad. Playing the game now, I found 90° instantly comfortable, or at least the more tolerable of the two. I wouldn't exactly term it "comfortable" since my left hand began to suffer from some serious carpal tunnel like symptoms - something of which I've rarely, if ever, experienced in any other game. Maybe some slight cramping over extended play sessions, but the severity of which I was creaming the diagonal axes trying to maneuver a solitary marble over single width zigzags was pure torture.

I don't remember suffering that much when I was a kid. Reasonable explanation would simply be: I was a kid, but I vaguely remember preferring the 45° setup and holding the controller at an angle back then as well. Maybe that's why I sucked so bad at the game back in the day. Using 45° is a mindfuck. Trying to constantly remember if down is indicative of down or left, or is it right, is a total nightmare. I jumped right into 90° this time around and played it through to the end before I tried to give 45° a solid effort again. Nope. Forget it. My solid effort lasted all of a single stage. I'll take shooting nerve pain and a more sensible controller layout, thank you.

Of course, any chiding of the controls must be accompanied by a proper caveat. After all, Rare did the best they could considering the game is meant to be played with a trackball. Credit must be given for at least offering a 45° option to counter the stages' isometric builds. Besides, Rare did a, pardon the pun, rare thing with Marble Madness. They successfully made a brilliant NES port of an arcade game, even if the arcade game slightly predates the system entirely so you have to wonder if praise is really warranted. With a five year time span, you would think a flawless port should exist without question. I don't know, but thankfully, trackball or not, this one is damn near flawless.

Despite any grumbles I may have regarding the controls, or the fact that long ago, I just sucked at this game, I still love this game. Hell, I loved this game as a kid, even if I never made it past the fourth stage, and that was when I was lucky enough to even make it to the fourth stage. There's something wholly fascinating about Marble Madness. It's almost like there's a kinship with miniature golf, and in many respects, reminds me of another game I loved playing a few short years later on the Apple IIGS: Will Harvey's Zany Golf. These are two classic games where the main mechanic is moving a ball around wildly absurd layouts, be it Marble Madness's nod to M.C. Escher or Zany Golf's anything goes motif. Except, unlike a presumed mini-golf emulation, Marble Madness allows for total control of the ball throughout the entire stage.

I'd love to see a proper update to this game. I know there are a number of games in the marble genre that are fairly recent; most come off as shovelware titles and lack that endearing impact that the original marble contraption game had. Plus, most of the one's I've come across seem to take a smidgen of inspiration from Super Monkey Ball. While I understand it's a fantastic series, I've yet to play it, but I've watched enough footage of the games to notice a considerable gap in how the games are approached and for me it feels...off. Looks fun, but feels off. At least nothing out there today is attempting to emulate the ZX Specturm port of Marble Madness. *shudders*

Don't have much else to say. It's a short game, tough as nails insomuch that you're fighting the controls more than anything, and a fantastic reminder of sometimes the simplest games can be the most entertaining. It's not a game for everyone, but for anyone who has even the vaguest interest in puzzle games, though I certainly wouldn't label it as such, it's a highly recommended play. And to cap it off, it comes with a fantastic soundtrack; again, surprisingly faithful to the arcade original, though in my opinion this particular version is the best of the whole bunch. To be fair, I've only heard snippets from the other ports, mostly of the catchy Beginner Race, although, there's something wholly intriguing about the NES version of Practice Race. Something about it just pops that doesn't come across in any of the other versions and it's a tune that's stood the test of time, at least for me, despite its almost mind numbing simplicity.

A quick aside: I do wish there was a mode that allowed you to run the stages without a timer. Consider it an easy mode v. hard mode with timer. Never mind that I personally find most of the difficulty in the controls, but I can't help but feel the game is bloated with classic early video game era artificial difficulty via an unnecessary timer. Some may consider this a baseless gripe - me simply whinging that the game is too hard. On the contrary, I think the game can easily survive on the difficulty offered in the levels themselves. The stupid disappearing bridges at the end of the Ultimate Race are proof enough. But then again, the game is kind enough to start you back at the point of impact should you explode your marble. Without a timer, a lives system would perhaps need to be questioned though, which would only reinforce the idea of artificial difficulty concepts, so...I don't know. Perhaps a timer is the best way to handle the situation without allowing the game to be too easy. But would it be too easy? Eh...maybe.

Rating: 4 nihilistic black marbles with a death wish out of 5*

*And over the edge he goes...

A Big Ol' Five!

Go away...I'm busy!

Yea, it's been quiet leading into a fifth year anniversary. So what? I'm having too much fun playing a few select titles with no real end in sight. So it goes.

XB1 - Pneuma: Breath of Life

Haiku-Review:

a self dialogue
to ascertain existence:
je pense, donc je suis?

Additional Comments:

It's funny. Upon playing Myst, I found the game massively underwhelming and generally lacking as far as gameplay is concerned. Still, there were certain qualities that were hard to ignore or deny as anything but exemplary. Unfortunately, those elements didn't exactly factor into the fun department.

I've found, however, as time drags on, I often find my thoughts returning to Myst. Maybe because I've had a urge to play Riven for the past couple of years but for some unknown reason, keep putting it off. Maybe because in the back of my mind, I keep telling myself that exploratory puzzle games are indeed of a fascinating breed of video games that I actually do enjoy; disparaging thoughts on Myst be damned. Maybe because games like Pneuma: Breath of Life come out and I think to myself, "How could I ever dislike something like that - something that appears to be steeped in esoteric mystery and unnerving loneliness? Both setting and mood styles that I wholeheartedly love yet somehow find myself disappointed time and time again by most games that graciously embrace it. But... But looking at a couple brief teasers of Pneuma and I can only believe my opinions are occluded with sheer nonsense. Myst wasn't a terrible game, and by no means will Pneuma be either. After all, it's bathed in fantastic emptiness and clever puzzle solving. Right?

Pneuma is certainly beautiful; perhaps one of the most beautiful games I'm ever come across. It might even be tempting to say it's too beautiful - the whole thing glossed over in an extra coating of sheen that treads on the outer bounds of graphical overkill. It reminds me of Forza Motorsport 6 where beautifully realistic graphics have been replaced with models that look like they're encased in Saran Wrap reflecting everything and anything under the sun with prominence, giving everything an off putting plastic look. I hate the look of Forza 6, and very nearly hate the graphics of Pneuma, but fortunately, this game only looked over the precipice instead of making a leap of faith into the idea that maximum gloss, flare, and reflection shall rule all when it comes to digital beauty. Still, the amount of reflection is a bit on the obnoxious side. But then, I suppose were supposed to accept Pneuma's world as brand spanking new and we need to witness as much sparkle and glitter to verify the idea. But the question begs, is the world the latest figments of Pneuma's mind made real mere seconds before you witness them as appears the case in the opening segments? Are we exploring something that's centuries old, or more? Doubt it as the idea of a weathered look is obviously foreign. Is it simply an anomaly of space and time similar in respects to the world of Myst?

But graphics are merely dressing and should only mildly affect the game as long as everything else is in order. Unfortunately, like Myst, Pneuma falls short in the game play department, perhaps even more so. For starters, I'd hesitate to say there's any sense of exploration. Unlike Myst, Pneuma is extremely linear, be it advancing from point A to point B in each of the stages or overcoming the next obstacle that stands in your way. If anything, exploration is limited to the idea of viewing an arcane Greco-Roman world with no backstory besides that questioned by the invisible protagonist, or anything you, the player, may wish to inject or possibly infer from the various paintings throughout the stages, pass by as you continually advance forward. Essentially, exploration is as prevalent as it is in a linear walking simulator. If it wasn't for an occasional puzzle to break the monotony, I'd swear Pneuma is no better than a walking simulator to begin with.

Except the puzzles are a total mixed bag. There's never anything that's going to force you to put on your thinking cap, but there are a few that are indeed clever nonetheless. Not exactly in how they're executed, but within their mechanics. I think this is one area where Pneuma really falls flat. Instead of fleshing out some of the more interesting mechanics, the game instead attempts to throw out fresh concepts for each puzzle. Ok, the main sight mechanic is tackled in various ways, but sadly, I think it stumbles as each eye puzzle becomes more of a test of inconvenience since the game's camera is tied to the protagonist. Having to walk around without being able to see where you're going isn't enjoyable, even if there's no inherent danger to be found. It's just annoying. But still, like the various eye puzzles, I'd like to have seen an evolution of depth in some of the more interesting puzzles or gimmicks like the Rubik's room, the binary gates, the flipping steeple, or the tetromino bridge. When it comes to complexity, I feel as though there's only one puzzle that accomplished this successfully: the four rotating towers. Unlike most of the puzzles in the game, that's one of the only ones where it felt like a lot of thought went into it without relying on the increasingly annoying line of sight gimmick or slapdash obstacles like the moving bookshelves that seem completely devoid of ingenuity. Speaking of lack of ingenuity, the sundial puzzle left me scratching my head. It came across as a checklist item - something simply existing because it was desired with no thought as to the why or how.

While a couple puzzles took a little longer to complete than I'd like to confess, very few felt comparative to the more involved puzzles found in Myst. Looking back on Myst, one thing I liked about that game is that puzzles or objects in one location affected objects in another location which gave everything a feeling of dependence. It helped make the world feel like a complex web as opposed to a series of singular events, each of which opens the gate to the next event. As such, Pneuma didn't have the same persistent feel that Myst had which hampered much of its immersive effect. Again, this all traces back to the idea that Pneuma is no better than a walking simulator.

What I found to be the most interesting thing about this game is that it appeared to make all the same inroads as Myst while also making the same missteps as Myst. It makes me wonder if this is simply a result of the genre but then you consider stuff like the 3D Zelda games and have to wonder how they can make puzzles not only fun but carry substantial weight. Why do these esoteric first person puzzle games fall short? Only theory I have is that the limited gameplay forces higher expectations. Perhaps it's just that - I'm expecting too much from these games. But Pneuma left me feeling hollow so it obviously failed somewhere.

One place it didn't fail though is the music. Extremely atmospheric, the music is phenomenal. Again, like Myst, it helps drive home proper mood of solitude, secrecy, and inquisition. It plays off Pneuma's chatty self examination questioning not only his existence, but the world's existence, and what it means to exist. Too bad the game doesn't quite play into the hand of Cartesian philosophy as much as Pneuma's incessant ramblings would lead you to believe. Instead, it plays as a distraction for an alternative to Philosophy 101 with a couple interesting puzzles, one fantastic puzzle, and a whole lot of freshly polished marble reflections.

Nano-Rant(s):

Again, similar to Myst, I found myself faced with a puzzle that I guess is simply beyond my reasoning. Much like a puzzle in Myst that I happened to solve via dumb luck, here too, I solved a certain puzzle by total happenstance and haven't the slightest clue how to actually solve it. I must have spent close to an hour trying to figure out how to manipulate the solution until I eventually forced the answer by unknown means. I still have no idea how to solve the puzzle, but at least the developers had the sense to make it one of the optional puzzles.

And speaking of optional puzzles, the scavenger hunt isn't exactly intuitive. At least every other puzzle in the game, even the aforementioned crap that I solved by total chance, had a degree of intuitiveness to it. Sure, it can be argued that the Roman numerals hint at the solution, but if you happen to miss the other plaques on your initial playthrough, the puzzle's going to go right over your head especially since there's no other puzzle that has any sense of world connection and Pneuma spouts off some nonsense about the solution being in the belly of the beast as soon as you enter the room. Again, I must have spent a good hour in that room trying to do every conceivable button combination on each of the paintings throughout the room because I fully expected the solution to be in that room. Too bad the load times in the game are fucking miserable and turn the puzzle into a complete chore to accomplish.

Also love the fact that there's a collectible trinket in each stage that serves no purpose whatsoever because Xbox didn't get the relative achievement that PlayStation and Steam got. There's not even a story tie-in. Way to make the game feel like it has even less purpose than it already has.

Rating: 2 forbidden fruits out of 5

PC - Evoland

Haiku-Review:

not so much a game
but a nostalgic voyage
down memory lane

Additional Comments:

"...despite my criticisms toward digital purchases, this "teaser" more or less convinced me it may be worth purchasing after all. We'll see though. We'll see...." 

  -Lifted from my remarks on Evoland Classic

Well then...huzzah! My selfish material ways have, at least temporarily, subsided enough for me to venture further into the realm of digital purchases so that I could finally advance beyond the mere demonstration of Evoland into the full blown game. But the gnawing question on everyone's mind - well, maybe not everyone's mind, but for sure, my mind: was it worth it?

Knowing I'm just repeating myself, it's worth noting that I love the concept behind Evoland. After playing Classic and now the full game, I still love the concept, except...I'm not sure Evoland delivered the concept in the best possible way. Evoland Classic, essentially a short play demonstration of the full game, introduces the concept of RPG evolution by steering the player from a primitive Game Boy-esque action/adventure game through to a 16-bit top down RPG. Despite a couple minor personal grievances concerning extraneous material, Classic managed the evolutionary trope perfectly. It accomplished exactly what it set out to do. Enter Evoland proper.

Obviously, Evoland follows Classic to a T - after all, it's the same game, up until the latter half of Classic at least. Here, Classic deviates from what eventually became the official play route of the full game. Besides, Classic had to explore an ending of it's own. The full game takes the reins and further ventures into the RPG genre, introducing 3D models, side quests and mini games, complex boss fights, and its own take on the tried and true Diablo formula. Unfortunately, as the game ventures further along the RPG evolutionary timescale, the game begins to feel more and more hollow.

It's hard to pinpoint this empty feeling as the game's sole focus is about the development of the RPG genre over time as opposed to an actual story. However, there is a story embedded into the game. I can only assume this was done in hopes of deterring the game from becoming a pure abstraction of itself. Players need a hook to keep themselves invested in a game, at least in an RPG. Otherwise, the whole experience becomes droll at best. Not much is to be expected as far as story, considering the game opens up with offering our hero the ability to walk right and then to walk left. Where do you go from there? Especially when the game continually breaks the fourth wall with each graphical upgrade or other such historical innovation. Perhaps that's part of the reason while the game feels so hollow at times. There's no true investment in the world as the game feels less of a game as opposed to more of a study on gaming history in general. But the question prevails, is that a proper definition of the game as well? It should be, but it isn't.

But I could overlook the entire meta aspect of the game and focus my attention on what plot does exist within the constantly developing architecture of the game world. Whether I'm fighting monsters in a turn-based battle system across the overworld, administering wounds in the action/adventure segments, or slicing up eyeballs in the Diablo cave, I'll appreciate the story for what it is as the game wishes to express it at that given moment. In many respects, this is my big problem with the game. There's times where the game seems to hit its stride as certain play styles relate better to the game or story at hand while at other times, certain game styles seem to exist just because the developer likely had a list of things from the evolutionary chart of RPG games that he wanted to hit up, or deemed important to the cause. Whether or not he could relate them to the story made little difference. The result is a disjointed structure that instills apathy in the player. Other than seeing how the developer implemented certain key aspects of the ever evolving RPG genre, I have no incentive to accomplish anything, and never is this more true than in the Ruins of Sarudnahk.

Obviously, Diablo was an important presence in the grand scheme of RPG styles and I think Evoland pays a nice tribute to it, but in a microcosmic contextual view, as per the good of Evoland, it fails. That's not to say it shouldn't exist, it should, but it should also relate to the story as much as every other element relates to the story if the game is indeed attempting to put any merit into the story. The Ruins of Sarudnahk was nothing more than an empty playing experience because nothing meant anything other than some quirky, nerdy jokes and a necessary ingredient to achieve 100% status in the end credits. Of course, any other part of Evoland could be argued to befall the same pointless existence, but most every other locale or style seemed to have at least a drop of substance.

In the end, Evoland becomes a tale of two premises at loggerheads fighting over the intended point of the game. Are we, the players, playing a conceptual, piecemeal stroll through the early years of RPG goodness or are we playing a terribly cliché, good vs. evil parable that happens to be swaddled in a perpetually amorphous shroud of key RPG likenesses from throughout the years? I would play either. Sure, each option would inherit obvious flaws depending on how you hoped to perceive the game yourself, but at least each option would be stable. Instead, the game is an odd mix of the two; never quite sure how it wants to approach the next evolutionary element - story enriched or merely a surface element to tick off a developer's check box.

I still enjoyed a majority of the game, even if it felt vacuous at times. All of the pre-3D elements were well done as was the Sacred Grove - likely the best area in the game. While the rest of the game slowly evolved from one element to the next or awkwardly flopped from one element to the next - turn-based overworld vs. action/adventure dungeons and the clumsy usage of inventories, or rather faux inventories, the Sacred Grove took advantage of properly meshing two elements into a unique dimensional shift puzzle. I would have loved to see further implementation of this throughout the rest of the game between some of the other styles. If anything, I could imagine it giving the game a much needed shot of innovation above and beyond history repeating.

Perhaps I'm attempting to read too much into Evoland, or I expected far too much out of it. Perhaps the game is meant to be nothing more than a hollow affair accompanying our trek through 20 years of RPG evolution. If that's the case, I can only apologize for my own interpretation. In many ways, I'd rather that be the case than having just played a disappointment in comparison to the free demo. I tend to imagine my enjoyment of the game is fictitious, based on what I imagined the game was going to be as opposed to what it is in reality. My willingness to like the game boiled with such intensity that I overlooked all of the glaring flaws voluntarily. Perhaps there was truth to all those mediocre reviews I read some years back and intentionally disregarded them because I wanted to believe that they just didn't "get" the game. It's disheartening because Evoland Classic gave me such high hopes and gave me reason to ignore many of the more dismal reviews.

However, I must make it clear that most of my general disillusion occurred upon finishing the game when I realized I somehow missed out on a proper gaming experience somewhere along the way. It wasn't readily apparent and only upon reflection it hit me how devoid of actual substance it is. Until that point, fantastic game, as long as you accept the fact that you're shallow. Guess my advice is don't finish the game or else fall prey to how artificial the whole experience is. Maybe the best way to sum it up is that on the whole, Evoland lacks that certain soul that appears lacking in so many of the games crafted in RPG Maker - an intangible quality that's terribly difficult to describe but noticeably absent when such is the case.

The music is typical RPG fare, but to play into the hands of an ever evolving style, uses multiple versions of each song befitting to each stylistic cue, be it 8-bit, 16-bit or one of the more modern incarnations. Generic or not, I enjoyed the approach and appreciate the soundtrack for what it is. And honestly, when done well, I enjoy generic RPG fluff. A personal favorite would probably be Overworld [16 Bit]. Airship is fairly pleasant as well.

Interestingly, a sequel came last year and much like I was with this game initially, I'm intrigued. Even after my disappointment in Evoland, I'm strangely positive about the sequel. It looks promising, but then, I could be just as naïve as I was going into this game; under the influence of grand illusion invoked by my own personal hopes and desires for an "evolutionary" style gaming experience. I suppose as I already said after having played Evoland Classic; musing on whether or not I'll buy the full game, here too it's only appropriate to say, "We'll see..."

Nano-Rant:

Previously discussed within my comments for Evoland Classic, I feel I must touch on this again as I find it to be an incredibly poor design choice. Secret passages hidden behind nondescript walls. There's a reason why all the great RPGs place tiny tell-tale signs of where a secret passage may lurk. Nobody wants to spend endless amounts of time attempting to enter every 16x16 tile hoping a secret may exist beyond. Except, the full game kicked it up a notch over the demonstration with one particularly nasty example.

While not a spot on definition of what I'm already driving at, it essentially falls under the same category. I spent forever trying to figure out how to get to a particular chest in Noria Mines, fully expecting it to fall victim to more invisible passageway bullshit that's already rampant throughout the rest of that particular dungeon. Nope. Turns out I had to fall down a hole, which I would have never expected because upon accidentally being swept into one of the holes by a menacing whirlwind, I quickly learned to tread carefully and beware the gaps in the floor. This harkens back to one of my biggest issues with Where's Waldo? where once the player learns that something is inherently bad the player will ignore it from there on out. You can't teach the player one thing and then suddenly play the old switcheroo. Sure, the game just places my character back at the beginning of the room - there's no real punishment from falling in one of these holes, but it's still equatable with failure. Why am I going to voluntarily place myself into a situation of failure? It makes no sense, even for the purpose of exploration. It's simply dickish design and nothing else.

Rating: 2.5 DVD Players out of 5

GEN - Comix Zone

Haiku-Review:

the 90s explained
through video game artwork
plus bonus CD!

Additional Comments:

Unfortunately, those who buy the game used and those who play it on emulator will likely never experience the bonus CD that originally came with the game - a collection of songs from various artists on the American Recordings label. While some stuff is typical 90s alt-rock fare, there's some great songs on there too. Still love Laika's "44 Robbers" and MC 900 Ft Jesus' "Buried at Sea." But alas, none of that has any actual bearing on the game, and after all, that's what's important.

Comix Zone is yet another game I played quite regularly in my youth. It's a unique, stylized brawler set within a comic book drawn by the game's protagonist. The stages consist of pages broken down by panels inhabited by denizens that are drawn to life by the comic book's antagonist who now exists in modern New York City. Good god, that's some heavy shit right there. It's like a nightmarish revision of A-ha's video for "Take On Me." Unfortunately, due to its caustic difficulty, I rarely made much headway back then. My best guess was I made it to the arena in Tibet, perhaps a couple panels after if I was lucky. At least that's as much as I experienced that rang vaguely familiar.

Perhaps a bit tangential, but completely relevant all the same, whenever I return to a game from my childhood that happens to suffer from notorious difficulty, it always amazes me how much more patience I used to have. Comix Zone is the epitome of a practice makes perfect game, and these days, I've found my joy for these types of games has dearly waned. Yet, I think this may be a common phenomenon among a large number of gamers.

With the evolution of game design theory and principles, we've moved from score based games to story driven games. In score based games, lives are your sole focus as you have so many attempts to rack up the highest score possible. Story driven games place emphasis on story and adventure. Lives are old fashion and have no place here. Instead, the ability to save your progress runs rampant, which many people condone as a general easing of difficulty. This has led to the popular belief that today's games are far too easy compared to yesterday's games. In many respect, this is true, but I think it's important to understand why this is true. The 8-bit and 16-bit era of video games can almost be considered the gawky teenager in the video game timeline. It was a transitional period between placing weight on score or story. As a result, developers were clumsy with how to handle key aspects of gameplay in terms of difficulty. I believe Comix Zone is one such game. Why? Because you're only given a single life in a brutally tough beat 'em up that has a fairly strong emphasis on story. It becomes disheartening to see the unsuspecting world about to endure the full wrath of Mortus' mutant villainy for the nth time.

There's no room for error in this game. Unlike, for instance, the Double Dragon series, you have to be on your A game at all times. Comix Zone requires a lot of baby steps and repetition. I remember this being the case when I was young. Come to think of it, Volgarr the Viking reminds me a lot of how Comix Zone operates. Instead of busting heads, you need to fully evaluate the situation set before you and figure out the best method to advance while losing little to no health. Unfortunately, Comix Zone places a few obstacles in your way, some literal.

The only thing that matters in this game is health and you must ensure you're doing everything possible to retain as much of it as you can. Tanking is a dangerous endeavor even if you happen to have an extra ice tea on hand. You can't afford to smash the attack button irresponsibly because you don't care how much of a dick Styx, the pogo stick monk, is; there's a pretty good chance the next panel is going to contain a heavy concrete door that you're going to have to bust down and sadly, you're out of explosives. Doors, barrels, grates, and other obstacle laden bullshit is the real bane of Sketch's existence. Unless there's a trick to destroy the obstacle or you happen to have some extra dynamite on hand, you're going to loose a good bit of health in your attempt to remove the barriers. This is so...stupid. But hold on! There's another method. Sketch has the amazing ability to rip sheets of paper from the very fabric of his new existence inside his own comic book and make deadly paper airplanes. How meta! (And what's that? Paper Airplanes? Funny how those hints work out.) Except, doing so depletes a good portion of Sketch's health as well.

So, recap. Tough as nails enemies are sure to give your health the old one two, but at the same time, you need to ensure you have more than enough not just to survive the stage, but to break down any upcoming obstacles. And for the really annoying stuff, you can always fire off a paper airplane, if you have more than enough health to handle the strenuous task of ripping apart the paper made space-time continuum. Thank goodness for a hefty helping of ice tea conveniently misplaced around the neighborhood. Except that brings up an additional level of aggravating decision.

For every time I've ever complained of a limited inventory in which items are fairly important, I must apologize. Heck, I just did so for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Comix Zone takes limited pocket size to a whole new level. Sketch has three slots that can be filled, and sadly, Roadkill, Sketch's pet rat that is impressively useful at any given moment, takes up a slot. So really, you only have two slots to play with unless you're confident enough to make more than enough headway without replenishing your health, therefore not requiring Roadkill's ability to sniff out a few extra ice teas from the inter-dimensional page of Sketch's new reality. But even with that cocky attitude, you may still need Roadkill to throw a few unreachable switches. Decisions, decisions. Because, you know, I'd really love to haul around a superhero icon along with some explosives and an extra ice tea - three items that could likely place me on the path to victory. Do I ditch the explosives and accept the fact that I'm going to take a nasty hit to my health when I have to break down that door or leave the superhero behind and just hope that Kung-Fung isn't at much of an RNG asshole as he usually is?

Simply put, it's all evaluation, strategy, and careful repetition. Once you know the optimal method to tackle a stage it simply comes down to dealing with everything's rather clunky hitboxes. Additionally, I feel using a six button controller might have a slight advantage over using a three button controller. As a kid, I always used a three button, since that's all I had. On my recent playthrough, I briefly tried a six button setup but reverted back to a three button since that's what I always played with in the past. However, a six button controller allows to have manual blocking at your disposal which I believe may be infinitely more helpful, at least compared to the so-called auto-blocking, that honestly, I question how helpful it actually is.

Despite the game's brutal difficulty, two of the three bosses are surprisingly easy, one of which is the final boss. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Mortus may be the easiest foe in the game. It's always a shame when the difficulty ratio of level vs. boss is upended far too much in one direction or the other. Although Kung Fung is a miserably taxing miscreant to face, he balances the stage sufficiently. Mortus plays as nothing more than anti-climactic fodder. The real challenge for me was realizing that some mystery switch suddenly appeared so that I could release Alissa from her nuclear goopy doom. That's an embarrassing way to achieve the bad ending. I had to end up looking up how to achieve the good ending because I expected something far more complicated than a simple switch magically appearing next to Alissa's imprisonment. Of course, it's so obvious now, but at the time I felt like a total idiot. Well, to be fair, I still feel like a total idiot, and as such have confessed as much in words to live in eternity.

Tough or not, I still think Comix Zone is a great game. I recall enjoying the game as a kid, and I still enjoyed it today. Sure, it's not the end all be all brawler. So many other titles easily top it, however, Comix Zone does the genre fair justice. And besides, it offers up one of the most unique approaches to the genre by placing the player inside a comic book where at times he may even find himself having to bust down the white space barriers between panels. The paper and drawing elements, be it Roadkill shredding the page in search of hidden items, or Mortus' giant hand quickly penning in some new baddies, are done superbly well. Also, considering it's on the Genesis, some fabulous throaty growls, and thick, chunky riffs are to be expected, and are they ever. Some noteworthy stuff includes Episode 1, Page 1-1 and Episode 2, Page 1-2. Heck, even the Sega Logo is badass.

Rating: 3.5 100 pound mozzarella donations out of 5

GC - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Haiku-Review:

who's this Mario?
you mean Murphy? Gonzales?
Mustache? Marty-O?

Additional Comments:

Having taken this long to finally post something from the GameCube is completely unacceptable. Case closed.

Moving on: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The much needed upgrade to the original Paper Mario while somehow feeling exactly similar to the original Paper Mario. Ok, that's not entirely true, but one has to admit that there's an uncanny amount of déjà vu rampant throughout this game. Fortunate for me, the first time I played this game, back in '06 if I recall, I had zero inkling of any similarity between this game and its predecessor. For one, I never played the original Paper Mario, and two, I had little to no knowledge of its existence, period. In fact, I hadn't even played the Mario RPG grandfather, Super Mario RPG, beforehand. Therefore, everything presented was an entirely fresh set of ideas. I knew of Super Mario RPG, so the idea of a Mario RPG wasn't mind blowing, but the presentation and execution of The Thousand-Year door certainly was.

The Thousand-Year Door instantly drew me in, and I loved every minute of it. The locales were so unique, the populace, the story - you mean Bowser isn't the antagonist? Oh wait, was that a spoiler? While steeped in Mario lore, the game felt altogether disconnected from typical Mario fare, but not in a bad way. Somehow, the X-Naut army felt right at home in the Marioverse as did the Shadow Sirens, the Punis, or even an entire stage centered around wrestling. That is about the furthest thing you can get from Mario, unless you take into consideration that Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was portrayed by famed wrestler Captain Lou Albano. Perhaps Glitzville has genuine purpose after all.

Eventually, I shelved the game, unbeaten. I don't recall the exact reason, but my post on Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 has some plausible insight. Also, if memory serves, I think it also had something to do with Gloomtail. I vaguely recall struggling against him and finally said that's enough. Although, after my recent playthrough, I haven't the faintest idea why Gloomtail would have griefed me so badly. After beating Gloomtail, I questioned my rather ambiguous memories, though I specifically recall opening the Thousand-Year Door while at the same time never having fought Bowser and Kammy. Therefore, Gloomtail proving paramount in my decision to prematurely shelve the game all those years ago seems highly credible if not embarrassing. Oh well.

Nearly ten years later, I finally decided to finish the game once and for all. First thing I noticed is that save files can almost be interpreted as mini time capsules. So, that's what I was using as a gaming alias all those years ago? I'll be damned. I was aware of a few other alternates from some old game saves, but that one certainly caught me off guard. But that's all rather tangential to the greater topic at hand.

Beginning anew gave me a fresh perspective on this game. I was well aware of the similarities between Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door when I did my Paper Mario run despite it being a number of years since I last played this. As I wandered around certain areas in the original title, memories of The Thousand-Year Door would suddenly resurface. Having only been a year since I played Paper Mario, memories of that game are a bit more prevalent and I found it rather uncanny how much parallelism exist between the two games. I don't think this is particularly bad, but there are times when it felt a little lazy, for example Toad Town's sewers and Rogueport's sewers. When I first played this game, I loved the idea behind Rogueport Sewers, but after having played Paper Mario, they've sort of lost their charm because they've become cookie-cutter. A number of elements had now become cookie-cutter which in my opinion, sadly, hurts the overall panache of the game. Fortunately, The Thousand-Year Door's improvements over the original title at least allowed for this new found disappointment to fade into the background, but it was still close enough in proximity reminding me that a lot of the presented material is just rehashed Paper Mario with a sweet, succulent glaze.

General facsimile or not, I am curious about these so-called improvements. Everything...or most everything I hated about the original Paper Mario either went the way of the dodo or was thankfully improved. It was important to slip in "most" as there are a few nagging holdovers that are still beating the game down with their inane stupidity and implementation - looking at you Zess T.'s useless duplication of Tayce T.'s recipe fetch quests of futility. Why in the name of all that is good game design this still a thing? But I'll come back to that, and besides, at least they got rid of Chuck Quizmo.

The two most important improvements in this game are easily coin replenishment and experience gathering. Coins were damn near impossible to gather in the first game, but here coins are nearly a dime a dozen. I never actually had to grind for coins despite having a bevy of badges to buy in the endgame for 100% completion or even fetching ingredients to fulfill Zess T.'s recipes. Through the natural course of play I typically had a sizable bank account on my hands and if not, I could easily rake in a few hundred on a quick trip through the Pit of 100 Trials in my latest attempt to venture to the deepest unknown of Rogueport Sewers, usually without success. Shucks. But my attempted bravery came with a extravagant cash reward and some experience to boot, so I'll take it. And because of the constant increase in difficulty and a number of aborted attempts as a result, it never felt like the truly unnecessary grinding present in Paper Mario.

My other disappointment in the first title regarding experience was also duly rectified. Finally, no matter how weak an enemy is, you will always get at least one Star Point, at it should be. This gives every battle a semblance of purpose. So now, even while I'm having to trek all throughout the lands for the umpteenth time to get another fucking golden leaf or coconut, if I accidentally fall into battle with an annoying species of piranha plant, I'm cool with it because at least I know it moved me one hundreth of a degree closer to leveling up. Yea, that's still sad in the grand scheme of things, but it's better than wasting three minutes of my life for no reward whatsoever.

Another improvement was the distribution of Star Pieces and badges throughout the land. It may have just been a result of knowing that I should be on the lookout for these items with Paper Mario still fresh in my memory, but at the same time I felt like I was able to keep relative pace along the way in regards to collecting these items much better than before. It felt like I always, or at least usually, had the tools necessary to gather all imminent hidden items in a given area instead of having to wait several chapters down the road before I could collect things. Of course, I still had to return to previous areas and spin jump the floors on occasion but it didn't seem as prevalent in this game.

I also have to commend the improved mini games. Is improved the right word? Let's just say the mini games and leave it at that, because in my opinion, the mini games in Paper Mario were a joke. Here, they play like actual mini games and for the most part, are enjoyable to play. And on the subject of mini games, this brings up the obvious innovations of Mario's new found acquirable skills: Paper Mario, Plane Mario, Boat Mario, and Tube Mario. Although their initial wow factor wears off after several hours of play - why does Tube Mario's directional controls suck so much? - their implementation is so perfectly fitting. Plane Mario and Boat Mario is especially awesome, and in many ways, I wish they had done a little more with each, well at least Boat Mario. Although, the final slog through the waves outside Pirate's Grotto is simply delightful. But what makes these four skills amazing is how they further reinforce the whole paper-thin notion. A paper airplane in a game based around paper? Last time I saw this level of logical cleverness was in Comix Zone (hint hint).

Story depth is another area that's been greatly improved, and I don't mean the general plot that Mario's working his way through, but the level of backstory connected to the world. In your average Mario game, I'd find this unnecessary and frankly, unwieldy. But given that this is an RPG, backstory can only help. It enhances the immersion factor of the overall game world be it Grifty's tales of historic tragedy that lays the foundation of the Thousand-Year Door and Crystal Stars, or Luigi's negligent exaggerations of his own adventure to save Princess Eclair. Without adding extraneous gameplay, the world has suddenly become so much more interesting. Instead of just whipping up a handful of generic Crystal Stars needed to safeguard impending doom or whatever, they instead have a tale of woe that's not only connected with them but with the world at large. This gives a much needed importance to the Crystal Stars as opposed to collecting another set of seven "things" just for the heck of it because otherwise gamers might realize the plot is nothing more than thinly veiled gobbledygook to tide over forty hours of gameplay.

But there are a few miserable quirks that managed to find their way into the sequel as well. The game still has a general sluggishness to it. However, I didn't find this to fault the game anywhere near as bad as it did in Paper Mario. In Paper Mario, slow was the word of the day and damn near every single element of the game dragged. Here, traversing the word felt slow at times, even with Yoshi, but it was never exactly a nuisance. And although the battles played out exactly as they did in Paper Mario, they never felt anywhere near as lethargy induced, especially once you started making use of some very convenient badges that sped up battle tenfold. The only element that truly felt reminiscent of the slow tedium of the first game was the micro-game actions that were used to either boost or make use of a specific attack or special in battle. Some of them are just so annoying that I never bothered using that particular move; some are aggravating, like Vivian's Fire Jinx, a move I relied on quite often thus having to bear the awfulness that is that move's micro-game far too many times. Stuff like that turned battles into ventures of exasperation. At least I'm getting my single Star Point for these sufferings. Hmm, I'm starting to think a solitary point is merely a slap in the face.

One of the worst offenders of the game, as mentioned before, is Zess T. Tayce T. was already a horrible design decision that existed in the first game, and for some reason it was carried over into this game and slightly expanded upon. As I mentioned in my write up for Paper Mario, the concept of recipes in and of itself is not so much the issue as it is the hours of hoofing it around the world over and over again to collect the necessary ingredients because my goddamn inventory can only hold ten fucking items...unless I managed to pick up the Strange Sack in the Pit of 100 Trials. Even then, twenty slots isn't exactly a godsend. Why can't items stack like in any normal, well-designed inventory system, or is that simply far too logical? I could easily live with a limited inventory if item stacking could exist. Please, let me place all those necessary cake mixes into a single inventory slot instead of filling my entire sack to the brim. I get it, we can only hold ten (or twenty) items no matter what they are, but it's asinine in my opinion.

What makes things worse is Zess T. uses dishes as ingredients more so than Tayce T. This is just annoying as the potential ingredient list grows exponentially. Without a guide in hand, there's no freakin' way I'd experiment with countless possibilities for hours on end. Hell, it takes hours on end just to collect all the necessary ingredients and complete all her available recipes even when using a guide. A far more convenient way would be able to dump a boatload of ingredients off at Zess T.'s house whenever I'm in the neighborhood which would then stock her pantry from which I could pull whatever ingredients I might want to make use of. Sure, it wouldn't solve the blind experimentation, but it would cut down on necessary travel time and allow me to stock certain items for key dishes that I might wish to prepare. Otherwise, the whole system is rather pointless. Why bother jumping from locale to locale on an epic fetch quest time and time again just to make the only useful dishes Zess T. has to offer when I can just buy some Ultra Shrooms and Jammin' Jellies and make a few Jelly Ultras? Well, I guess Whacka Bumps and Golden Leaves are free, so there is that, but do I really want to travel through Twilight Trail again? Even if there's a chance to pick off an unsuspecting Amazy-Dayzee? Eh...ok, but expect a good amount of grumbles to accompany the excursion.

Even with the few nuisance carryovers from the first game, the improvements in The Thousand-Year Door over Paper Mario are palpable. Everything that makes this game work helps it shine far and above its predecessor, even if the game feels like a near facsimile of it 90% of the time. They realized (most of) their faults and tidied them up giving the game life. Unlike Paper Mario where I had to step away for a few weeks while working my way through Shy Guy's Toy Box, I tackled The Thousand-Year Door without break. I never hit a rough patch, even while fighting my way through some of the torturous errands in the end game to obtain 100% completion. Which reminds me of one final, and glorious improvement over the original: the ability to carry on after you beat the game so you can tie up any loose ends. I wasn't aware this was the case at first and only found out when I wondered what would happen if I clicked on my save after finishing the game. Considering I had one final element to complete, something I thought I flat out missed during my playthrough and accepted as such, I was finally able to cross off that final item even after I beat the game. Happy days!

All in all, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a great game, a massive improvement over the original, and generally a must play game. It still feels a bit too unique to be considered a proper RPG, but the elements are there, so even a die hard RPG fan can appreciate the game. More than anything, and it's possible it's nothing more than my imagination cleverly tricked by all the appealing elements of the game, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as slow as Paper Mario. That alone is a massive selling point for this game. And guess what? It's got some great music and atmospherics as well. But why would that ever be challenged? Personal favorites include Rogueport Sewers, Glitzville, and X-Naut Fortress.

Nano-Rant:

I do have a couple additional gripes. One's out of personal stupidity while the other's out of straight up developer stupidity.

As mentioned, there was one final thing left on my checklist that I failed to cross off by the time I beat the game. I had one final entry left in Goombella's tattle log. It was frustrating the hell out of me, especially since I looked up online what I was missing and ended up misreading it thinking I was missing an alternate Bowser fight. As I said, my own stupidity. Turns out I was overlooking Gus - a potential battle that is literally planted in front of you from the very beginning of the game. Expecting some sort of story tie in, I just kept paying him his stupid toll and never bothered to pick a fight. Boy, did I ever have egg on my face.

But then, there's the real crux of evil lying in the underbelly of this game. It's not Bowser, or Sir Grodus, or even the Shadow Queen. It's the goddamn Trouble Center. Fuck that place. Everything I hate about Zess T., and her inability to hop on down to the local supermarket for some fresh ingredients despite living right next door to the fucking store, the Trouble Center takes that entire experience and kicks it up a notch, or rather a ton of thorny, rash-inducing notches. Fortunately, most of the troubles are pretty tame and quick to finish, but then there are some troubles that make you want to pull your hair out, like Bub-ulber's sudden gluttonous urges or General White's wanderlust. Are you seriously going to have me trek to every single locale in the game to find this asshole? Wait, he even revisited Goldbob? Are you fucking kidding me? This entire trouble has essentially become moot, except wait, I have the package. Fetch quests are one thing, but having the player bounce around the game while adding zero merit, even as a side quest, is flat out garbage. It's a waste of time and nothing more. Side quests, while purely optional, should at least enliven the overall experience in some way. This enlivens crap. Seriously. This is the developer running out of ideas and saying, "Hey, let's make the player visit every location again for the nth time because we already know they'll never tire of zipping in and out of Rogueport Sewers or making use of Cheep-Cheep Blimp because they already have to do this tiresome bullshit for countless other meaningless side quests." Brilliant!

Nano-Win:

But fear not. I won't end this post on tidings of misery. There's a couple unexpected surprises that came with this game as well.

First, a bit of a personal surprise because I realized I missed a number of things during my initial playthrough back in '06. One such thing was Ms. Mowz. I had no idea Ms. Mowz could become a partner, but what really fascinated me about her is that she's a complete overhaul of what was essentially the I Spy badge in Paper Mario.

Secondly, I love the 2-D Bowser levels. Even if they're short, easy, and add no real value to the game, the premise of them is just awesome. I wish there was one for every chapter.

Rating: 4.5 crickets out of 5*

I combed through Hooktail Castle on multiple occasions throughout the course of the game, including using Ms. Mowz, trying to find this mysterious cricket because I'm too thickheaded to realize it's a byproduct of a SFX badge. I don't use them and therefore would never put two and two together. Oh well.