Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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So, June 11th 2020. The date of the PS5 reveal event. There were a lot of games shown including Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Resident Evil Village, Gran Turismo 7 and DeathLoop. However, aside from Miles Morales, most of my favourite games were actually indie games! Games like Little Devil Inside, Stray (which I’m hoping is in the Annapurna event), Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Solar Ash and my personal favourite, Bugsnax. After 6 months, I got a PS5 and got the game with my PS Plus subscription. So did I like it? Well, I’ve put 20 hours into it, done everything and got the platinum trophy. Of course I liked it.

Game:Bugsnax
Played on: PS5

The Story
In this game, you play as a news reporter who has been sent to an island called SnakTooth Island to interview a famed explorer called Lizbert Megafig. However, your ship crashes on the island and you fall off a cliff. You then meet up with a guy called Filbo Fiddlepie (yes, all the names are this dumb and I love them). He’s the (self appointed) mayor of Snaxburg. Snaxburg is a town that Lizbert and her partner Eggabell built for people who are moving to the island. He tells you that everyone has left the town and Lizbert has gone missing and is presumed dead. He tells you that there are creatures scattered around the island called Bugsnax that are bugs that look like food and make everyone happy. He says that if you catch a lot of bugsnax and help everyone who left the town with their problems, they might move back and help solve the mystery of where Lizbert went. When you eat a Bugsnak, you forever change a limb into the food that the snak was based on. You don’t eat them in the game as it’s established early into the game that your character is allergic to them so you have to feed them to your friends. This is absolutely horrific and it’s even worse on PlayStation where the snax make noises through the controller when you feed them to people, making you feel absolutely horrible. By the way, did I mention that every character is an elmo-looking thing called a grumpus?

The Gameplay
This game is mainly about catching the titular Bugsnax. You have a lot of tools like a basic trap for catching smaller snax, a bug net for catching stunned snax, a sauce slinger which launches sauce that will lure bugsnax into different areas, a launcher to launch traps in the air and catch flying snax, a trip wire to stun fast or aggressive snax and a snakgrappler which lets you grab stunned small snax from far away. Catching each bugsnak is its own puzzle. Some might require you to just plop a trap down and wait until a snak gets close while some are a bit more complex and require you to use multiple tools + harness the elements. With the trip shot, if you place it on a fire, the rope becomes fiery and you can use that to defrost frozen bugsnax or melt big blocks of ice.You also have a buggy ball which is a hamster ball containing the game’s main mascot, the strabby. It’s very cute. You have a laser that you point to make it go places. If you smother it in sauce, some snax might chase it! There is also a scope you can use to scan snax and get some info on them like the sauces they like and even get a Horizon Zero Dawn style trail that lets you see the walking pattern of the snak that then lets you place traps or sauces. This is a really cool feature and lets you plan your capture. You can also scan characters which then lets you see the characters that they like or dislike. You don’t have to do this but it’s very fun to read the descriptions of the characters.

The other story thingies
Another part of the game is helping people out. There’s Beffica who wants to spy on everyone and find their deepest, darkest secrets, Chandlo who wants to become super buff, Gramble who doesn't eat bugsnax and wants to keep them as pets (a very unsubtle vegan allegory), Cromdo who wants to make as much money as possible with scams, Floofty who wants to experiment on the process of being turned into bugsnax/snakification and their brother Snorpy who is a major conspiracy theorist and wants to find out whether the “Grumpinati” are real or not. Every character is great and all of the side stories are awesome. They're also pretty funny at times. From Cromdo’s saying “Life is like a box of trash. You always know what you’re gonna get, trash.” to Gramble’s insult to another character “You don’t know a thing about love! That’s why your wife left you!”. Pretty sure that last one wasn’t supposed to be funny but who cares? Not me!

The Dualsense
Oh yeah, this game’s on the PS5. This game isn’t a next gen graphical showcase as much as it is a Dualsense showcase. Kinda like Astro’s Playroom but the dualsense support is a bit less excessive. Each gadget has a different trigger effect. Like I said with astro’s playroom, It’s really hard to explain without feeling it for yourself. The triggers in this game are especially hard to describe, so I won’t mention them here. The haptic feedback is also used in full force here. When there’s a thunderstorm, you feel the thunder from inside of your controller, when you get hit by a hostile bugsnak, you feel the thud, etc.

The bad stuff that I don’t like
Firstly, there’s no fast travel. This game is set on a big island. Do you see the problem here? This makes every play session feel like a chore as some of the locations you visit are pretty large which means it might be hard to remember where the exits are. Finding the last few bugsnax to 100% the game is also very tedious with re-coloured bugsnax and really hard to catch bugsnax. These are my only problems with the game.

Conclusion
So, is this game with characters called Wambus, Clumby and Beffica Winklesnoot worth your time? Yes. It is. An overall fantastic game, Bugsnax is very much worth being on your PS5 (or PS4, both versions are very similar).

Pros
-Fun characters with surprising depth
-A weirdly gripping story
-Mind Boggling puzzles
-Cool Dualsense use

Cons
-No Fast Travel
-Some tedious final Bugsnax

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
9/10 Excellent
this is my longest review to date. christ, I need a life. this'll also be the last review remake for a while because I wanna get the mario galaxy review done.
one of the people working on the game also said that the game is similar to bioshock so I made this

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Toejam and Earl

Platform: Sega Genesis (also played on: Wii virtual console and Nintendo Switch via the Sega Genesis Classics collection, which is the version the screen captures in this review are pulled from)

Completion Status: Fully completed, probably thousands of times over. I can't even imagine how many hours I've spent playing this game.

Autobiographical Note: I've played this game so many times primarily because it's my mother's favorite video game of all time, and one she's endlessly interested in replaying. Considering we don't share a lot of interests in common, it has become a unique bonding tool over the years.

Toejam and Earl was released on the Sega Genesis in 1991 (so this year is its thirtieth anniversary). The primary creator and head developer of the game, Greg Johnson, initially conceived of it while working as a developer at EA. Having been a fan of the classic PC game Rogue, he wanted to combine the structure and design of that game with light science-fiction ideas, and developed the concept further after relating it to a friend, Mark Voorsanger. The two went on to start an independent development studio, Johnson Voorsanger Productions (later renamed Toejam and Earl Productions). Development staff primarily consisted of people Johnson had worked with previously at EA, and his connection to the industry allowed him to pitch the game to Sega, who ultimately ended up publishing the game.

The set-up for the game itself is simple enough. Aliens Toejam and Earl are traveling through space, accidentally drive their ship into a small space rock, and then crash onto Earth. The ship splits into ten pieces across the planet, and so their ultimate task in this game is to collect all ten of the ship pieces so that they can reconstruct their vehicle and go back to their home planet. This is accomplished across a set of 25 levels that, in the game's primary Random World mode, are almost all procedurally generated, although there are a LOT of patterns and commonalities that one eventually notices with the game's levels. The player progresses between levels by finding an exit elevator that will transport them to the next level (loading almost all takes place quickly in-between levels, making gameplay itself an uninterruptedly fluid experience). Think about the time-traveling phone booth in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and you have basically the right idea, except you're merely traveling through space instead of time. Levels themselves are arranged in such a way that falling off one will drop you into a random spot in the last level, so that there's a sense of verticality or ascent to your journey across Earth.

There is also a Fixed World mode where the maps and locations of ship pieces in the levels are the same every time. This is useful, I suppose, for people first learning the game and trying to understand its unique (and often downright weird) mechanics. But as with any other rougelike game, Toejam and Earl gains its appeal (and endless replayability) from its primary game modes, which challenges the player to forge a position of strength from the chaos of its randomly generated content.

Toejam and Earl can be played in single-player as either of the aliens, but, at bottom, it's designed to be a co-op experience, even being described by the developer as a "two-player game with a one-player option." It's a perfectly functional experience in single player mode, but the fun of the game is primarily found in the cooperation needed to get both aliens back to their home world safely, and even in the occasional emergent competitiveness over resources. To understand the nuances of this game, one must understand, variously, the way lives/HP/promotions work, the role presents play throughout the game, and how these aspects intertwine with the game design.

So, to basics: Toejam and Earl operates on a lives system. Each character begins with three or so lives at the start of the game. If you run out of lives in single-player, or both in coop, it's game over. If one player runs out of lives but the other has extra lives in stock, the dead player's ghost can borrow lives from the living player (the surviving player must agree to this exchange, of course). There are two ways in which to gain extra lives in this game: the first is to open the Extra Life present, which is one of the rarest and most valuable present types in the game. The other is to be promoted to a higher rank. As the player gains ranks throughout the game, they will usually acquire one extra life every two promotions or so. Promotions are acquired when a player hits certain score thresholds, and points are gained by uncovering portions of the map and opening presents. One point is awarded every time a map square is uncovered, and two points are awarded whenever a present is open. In this way, the game ingeniously transforms the classic mechanic of score chasing into something actually meaningful within the game itself. Promotions are also obtainable via certain presents, which will bump you up to the next score threshold automatically when opened.

Awarding points for uncovering map squares (each level's map is divided into a sort of grid, and, as soon as you enter the boundary of a square, what's contained in that space is unveiled on the map) also incentivizes exploration, but so does the prospect of finding presents and money, both of which are critical enough to the game that they warrant separate discussions. I'll start with money, since there's less to talk about. Throughout the game, Toejam and Earl will find dollar bills lying on the ground. These are useful for mail-ordering presents from mailboxes and interacting with certain friendly Earthlings (such as the Opera Singer, a portly woman decked out in Norse garb who, when gifted three dollars, with sing a loud tune that kills every enemy on screen). The most important friendly Earthling in the game, though, and the character you'll like want to save your money for, is the Wiseman (AKA the "Carrotman"), an eccentric old man who dresses up in a carrot suit and will identify your presents for you for $2 a pop.

The Carrotman is actually crucial to almost any successful run of this game. Identifying presents might not sound particularly important at first, since you identify presents by opening them anyway, but there is a very particular present that can and will ruin any positive progress you make in a run. But first, I should shift over to a generalized discussion of presents. Presents litter the Earth in Toejam and Earl, and until you either identify one with a Carrotman or open it, you have no idea what item a type of present contains. Thankfully, types of presents always contain the same item, and a successful run of the game almost necessitates finding powerful gear for the game's often challenging final set of levels.

Presents don't always contain items that are beneficial, though, and the risk and reward of opening presents is a part of the fun tension of your average play session of this game. You might open, say, a Doorway, which will teleport you to a random spot in the level; this can drop you right next to a level's exit elevator or instead drop you on an island disconnected from the rest of the level, forcing you to jump off to the previous level. You might open Tomatoes, a medium-range weapon you can use to defend yourself against hostile Earthlings (the Slingshot is an upgraded form of the Tomatoes present, and allows you to sling tomatoes almost all the way across the screen, which can allow for safer sniping of powerful enemies from afar). But you can also open stuff like the Raincloud, which places a storm cloud over your heard that randomly shocks you and removes HP from your health bar, or the Total Bummer, the second worst item in the game, which immediately kills your character. Managing these goofy items, knowing when best to use them, and understanding the assortment of gear you'll need in your inventory to stay alive adds a deep layer of strategic depth to the gameplay. Particularly considering you can share the opened present by doing so if you're on the same screen as the other player (the screen smoothly shifts between split-screen and non-split-screen depending upon how far away you are from the other play). This can obviously be good, as it allows you to double the effectiveness of good items by applying them to both players, but accidentally opening bad presents can also, surprise surprise, turn out poorly. You'll need to use good judgment on which items to open immediately and which to save for yourself (sometimes, if a mole is going to steal your presents anyway, it's better to open a good present rather than losing it to an enemy, even if it means the other player loses out on the immediate benefits).

But let's talk about that awful item I was alluding to earlier, though. I speak of the Randomizer. What does the Randomizer do, you might ask? Well, it doesn't hurt you. Not directly, anyway. What it does, do, however, is randomize the identities of all your presents, turning them all unidentified. If this happens extremely early in the game, it's not a big deal, but it's a killer later on for several reasons: if you've been squirreling away strong presents for the endgame, you'll suddenly be at the mercy of fate. Moreover, the Wiseman disappears from the game almost entirely after level 15, making it where you're likely to randomize your presents over and over as you open presents blindly, hoping to find Icarus Wings (which allow you to fly over the level for a limited period of time), Super Hitops (which allow you to spring), Extra Lives, Promotions, Boomboxes (which cause all enemies in range of its music to dance compulsively for a limited period of time), etc., entering into a nasty cycle that inevitably leads to frustration and death. And, worst of all, it effectively wastes every single dollar you've spent on the Wiseman until that point, which is dangerous given money itself is a limited in-game resource that must be carefully invested.

So what I've learned over time, after many, many runs with this classic game, is that any good playthrough is at least partially contingent on both players working together to identify as many presents as possible in order to suss out which one is the Randomizer. Typically, this involves us opening the first five or six unique presents we encounter early on in order to thin out the pool of possibilities a bit, because money is almost always very limited in this game (until you don't need it anymore, then you can't walk ten feet without tripping over dollars). When I play with someone else and we both happen upon money in the same area, we basically agree to allow whoever has an odd amount of dollars to pick it up, because that'll allow the person to identify at least one additional present with the Carrotman. After first finding the Carrotman, if the Randomizer isn't identified, then it is silently agreed that no other random presents are to be opened until we can collect enough money to try and find it at the next Carrotman. It can be a frustrating process carrying around loads of unidentified presents, not being able to pick up new presents because you can't use and don't want to drop anything, but the risk of opening a Randomizer almost always outweighs the immediate need to sate one's curiosity.

I've mentioned some of the friendly Earthlings in this game, but there must be some reason I'm so terrified by the notion of not knowing what presents are and not having a fully stocked inventory to lean on as the game goes on, right? As it turns out, Toejam and Earl are very squishy, vulnerable, slow aliens, and Earth is full of terrifying abominations that want to eat you. Early on, you mostly deal with annoyances: Lil' Devils, who run around with pitchforks and poke you in the butt for minor damage; Hula Girls, who will cause the player to stop and compulsively dance for a random period of time, leaving them open to enemy attacks; Moles, who burrow under the earth and like to steal your presents (Moles and Hula Girls make a terrifyingly effective duo); swarms of Bees that will sting you for moderate damage; Cupids who will shoot you with arrows and reverse your controls for a period of time; etc. Most of these enemies drop off as the game goes on and the real players come out, though: Boogey Men, who are often disturbingly common in late-game sand biomes, are fast, invisible enemies who will sneak up on you and inflict pretty massive damage (hordes of these things will burn through your lives in the blink of an eye, which is why carrying some sort of weapon to defend yourself with is so important); Mimics, which camouflage themselves as mailboxes and will murder you if you get near them (patience can be helpful with these; if you stop to watch a mailbox for a few moments before approaching, you'll often see it shift its eyes if it's actually a Mimic); Chickens, which seem like a joke, but clusters of them wearing hardhats will use bazookas to pelt you with tomatoes, making them dangerous foes; and so on. The most dastardly foe is also the rarest, as he only starts appearing on level 17 and disappears entirely by level 22, but any level he's on is going to be a tense experience with a lot of hiding and running. I speak, of course, of the Phantom Ice Cream Truck. This ghostly vehicle pops in and out of existence, and you won't even know one is around until you see it materialize in a burst of smoke, barreling toward you and honking its horn. It's the fastest enemy in the game and will take off roughly half your life bar in a single hit if you're at full health, so stumbling across one of these without an escape plan of some sort can quickly lead to a game over.

Your reward for muscling through this panoply of early 16-bit horrors and obtaining all of the ship pieces (the last of which is always on level 25; if you're missing more than one ship piece on that last level, then you have to begin the tedious process of jumping down level after level, checking your status screen each time to see if a ship piece is present) is a fun victory lap where you get walk your characters down a chunk of Funkotron after they return back home. While there is technically nothing to do here but walk around, every one of the probably 50+ unique aliens you'll encounter in the street will have some unique piece of dialogue to read if you approach them. Your lap ends when your characters reunite with their respective families and the words "THE END" splash across the screen. It's a fairly satisfying way to cap the two hours or so it usually takes to complete the game, no matter how many times you've done it, although it's undoubtedly most delightful the first time you actually manage to return to Funkotron.

Some runs of this game are obviously more fun than others, depending on both luck and player skill, but the charming presentation helps to carry the game even in its more irritating moment. The sprite work is simply phenomenal for the year it was released, and a lot of care is taken with the animations of every character in this game to give them a unique identity, from the tippy-toe sneaking of the Boogey Man to the manic prancing and cackling laughter of the insane Dentists who like to poke you with their drills. The main characters are superbly animated as well, and you really get a sense for the momentum and weight of the both of the characters based on how they walk. This carries over into the sound design as well: when you character drink Rootbeer, for example, they're occasionally burp for a period of time. They'll shout our excitedly when they pick up money, and even tell you not to pick up more food when your HP bar is full (by exclaiming out loud about how full they are). Even the loading screens in the elevators between levels are fun, as different skits will play out between the two characters via dialogue boxes.

Another pronounced aspect of TJ&E is its funky, very early 90s hip-hip vibe, and the music is a big part of that. While a bit simple thanks to the age of the game and limitations of the hardware, the groove of the music still holds up today. The OST itself is very limited: seven tracks total, with only five of them being regularly recycled across the levels you play on, but given each run of the game is only 1.5 - 2 hours long, the experience doesn't last long enough for the music to grate. Considering how many times I've played through the game, you'd think I'd get sick of listening to these tunes, but I still like them.

In many ways, the legacy of this title is clear. It's an extremely early and very successful example of a now prevalent subgenre among independent developers: the rougelike. TJ&E adopts most of the features associated with that 1980 classic (random items, random levels, permadeath, management of limited resources, etc.) while streamlining and recontextualizing them in a way that made it where normal gamers and families could enjoy them. The dank dungeon-crawling normally associated with the genre was traded for colorful and vibrant open-air levels. The game itself was quite a looker at the time of release, and even now, its detailed sprite art and unique character animations continue to be incredibly charming, which is a big change from the very basic looking games previously released in that genre (Rogue itself is an ASCII game, and thus, like the later Dwarf Fortress, looks like hell). TJ&E has remained a widely loved cult classic for decades, and still remains the best game in the long-running series, despite recent attempts to revive this original style of gameplay in 2019's Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove. While its sheer weirdness might prove to be a barrier to some modern gamers, and it could probably benefit from a remaster that adds some QoL improvements (being able to see the Carrotman on the map like in the 2019 game would be a godsend, considering how difficult he is to find sometimes), persisting with it and learning its patterns proves to be incredibly rewarding, and it's a game I'd recommend to almost anyone, even those, like me, who are usually repelled by the rougelike formula.

10/10

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Finally managed to nab myself PS5, so thought I'd give some impressions of the console itself, as well as my first full game for the system - Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

The PS5
I...have always had mixed feelings about this console. PlayStation has never been my go-to brand for gaming (usually that's Nintendo - though PSone was my first ever console), and in recent years I've been moving towards PC for most things that aren't on Switch (that said, I'm a big fan of some PS exclusives such as Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank - so would pick up a PS5 regardless). With consoles becoming ever-more-similar to both each other and PCs, and with diminishing returns on hardware evolution, I did wonder how the next gen systems could excite me. I managed to pick up an XBox Series S earlier in the year and - although I think it's a neat piece of hardware and I really appreciate the new suspend feature - it as always felt like no more than a hardware upgrade to me and, to be honest, I've barely touched the thing since.

Aesthetically, I did not like the design of the PS5 when it was revealed. We've all seen the memes - it just seemed a bit too outlandish and bulky a design to fit comfortably in my living room. That said, the look has really grown on me - and I can actually say I'm a fan now. Looking back, every PS design since the PS2 has been downright boring, and I appreciate that Sony have gone with something quite different this time around (particularly after a generation in which every company, including Nintendo, just released a black box. I had even more issues with the controller design at reveal. The contrasting white and black (black dungarees on a white shirt) just looked...off. That said, this has also grown on me. I appreciate that Sony have now released alternative colours but...to be honest, I prefer the white and black now.

Speaking of the controller...now that I have my hands on it, it has quite a bit more bulk to it than the Dualshock 4. This was offputting at first - Dualshock 4 was always my preferred controller over the Xbox controller last gen due to the slimmer design, and that was already larger than the Dualshock 3 before it. That said, I've become accustomed to the Dualsense now and will happily use it over the Dualshock 4. I received 2 Dualsenses with my console - and will have to say I'm a little disappointed with the quality control here. One of the controllers seems to have a slightly shallower square button, so it's missing a lot of the tactile feel to it - I'm not sure if this is significant enough a problem to get a refund, but it's something that is really noticeable to me as a gamer. This is disappointing as, in all my gaming history, I've never really had problems with controllers (not even joy-con drift, with Switch being my platform of choice for the past 4 years) - so to have something like this right out of the box came as quite the shock.

However, that said, the controller is the real star of the show here. There's not much to say here that hasn't already been said - but the rumble is insane. I've always kinda appreciated the HD rumble of the Switch but it wouldn't even come up in conversation as a selling point for me...but here, I'm constantly impressed by the rumble effected that the Dualsense is able to produce for a variety of different situations. Moreover, this is accentuated by the adaptive triggers.

UI-wise, things are pretty decent. I've always preferred the much simpler UI of Nintendo Switch to PS's and Xbox's more bloated counterparts. It did take a while to learn to navigate this UI - especially considering the different submenu that you get when pressing the PS button (previously this would just take you to the main menu). That said, everything is snappy and easy enough to find, and the in-game progress tracking / guide feature does seem pretty neat (even if I don't have PSPlus to make use of it). My one disappointment is that we don't have a suspend feature like Xbox - that would make this the definitive next-gen console for me.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with this hardware. Although PC is my go-to system for third-party games (which aren't on Switch), I'm even tempted to consider picking them up on PS5 for the controller support and the snappiness of the console itself. Sony have done a great job of making this console stand out from both Xbox and PC, and I'm quite happy that the legacy of consoles lives on.

Finally, a comment on Astro's Playroom. This is a neat tech demo that takes things a step further by creating a collectathon platformer around the Dualsense's features, peppering a number of PS legacy references around. And it's all free (I'm looking at you, 1-2-Switch...). This was pretty neat to get a feel for how the Dualsense works. That said...I felt like I'd seen everything after the first world, and haven't touched it since. Still a great freebie though.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

I picked this up as my first game - not only because it was the game I was most excited about for the PS5, but because of the timeliness in which I managed to get the console.

I'm quite a fan of Ratchet and Clank. Perhaps not my go-to platformer, but it's probably my most-played Sony franchise outside of Uncharted, and I've previously played the original trilogy, Size Matters, Tools of Destruction, and the PS4 remake/reboot. I find them all to be expertly-crafted and addictive experience, and, although the series has evolved over time, a quite consistently good series of games that doesn't change too much from one entry to another. The new rift mechanic looked pretty cool, but I did not expect this to revolutionise the series.

Based on this - I was a bit sceptical about the asking price of £70. £70 is a lot for any game - but as someone who has never paid more than £30 for a R&C game, and knowing how short they are, I was concerned that I wouldn't be getting my money's worth. As mentioned, I'm a Switch and PC over PS gamer as well, and I tend not to buy my PS games at full price so that was an additional shock for me. That said, I'm sure there are many people unwilling to pay full price for Nintendo releases which I do on a frequent basis...

Rift Apart is very much an evolution of its predecessors - everything good about the previous games is here: the unique worlds, the chaotic gunplay, the platforming. However there are two significant evolutions here: the cinematics, and the controls / general sense of movement. The first is rather simple to explain: this game feels like an interactive movie, and Insomniac have simply knocked it out of the part with respect to presentation and storytelling. Cutscenes are gorgeous and well-directed, and the in-game graphics look just as good. My only criticism here would be that maybe the game is lacking a bit in some of the humour of earlier titles...but it's humorous enough, I think, and I don't mind the game taking itself a bit more seriously at times for the sake of a greater overall story. Cutscenes are greatly enhanced by the Dualsense's enhanced rumble features, convincing me further that this rumble is the future for immersive gaming.

On the second: Ratchet and his new other-dimensional counterpart Rivet feel greater to control than ever. The rifts are much more of a gameplay gimmick than a revolutionary feature, but the ability to boost around and rapidly teleport through rifts during fast-paced combat and platforming adds so much fluidity to the experience - it can be truly breathtaking. The minute-to-minute gameplay is enhanced further by the Dualsense - not only is the weapon selection as diverse and creative as ever, but the adaptive triggers in combination with the control scheme ensure that each weapon feels truly unique.

A note on graphics and performance: absolutely flawless. Years of growing into a gaming enthusiast (particularly with the move to PC gaming), I've become more acutely aware of things like resolution and framerate...probably to my detriment, to be honest. But I must say, this game felt absolutely flawless in terms of graphics and performance. I chose the performance option with raytracing, and honestly never felt the need to experiment with other options. The visuals looked great on my 4k TV - supposedly the resolution falls somewhere in the range of 1080p and 1440p but honestly I thought it looked fantastic at all times. The performance was flawless - not once did I notice the game dropping below 60 fps, even in incredibly intense scenes with Ratchet launching dozens of projectiles at multiple enemies in all directions. Truly amazed by how well this game looks and performs.

Finally, a note on the new setting and characters: I absolutely adore Rivet as a counterpart to Ratchet and really hope that she appears in future entries. Same absolutely goes for Kit and...and even Emperor Nefarious, and Captain Quantum and...well, Insomniac just know how to write new characters. The dimensional rift concept opens up so many opportunities for the series and its setting and I can't wait to see where this series goes moving forward.

Bottom-line: this is a game that could not be done on anything other the PS5, which I'm really happy to see. The performance is remarkable and the controller in particular enhances the experience massively, and the rift mechanic was pretty cool if not mind-blowing. A definite must-have experience for the PS5 IMO.

Was it worth full price? Eh...hard to say. I'm happy I bought the game, but I certainly won't make a habit of buying PS5 games for £70...I simply can't afford it. That said, as my first true PS5 experience, and for such a fantastic game, I'm willing to settle on the price of admission for now.

If you have a PS5, go get this!

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@timleon I've heard a lot of praise about the DS5's rumble features. It's interesting to see Sony taking controller gimmicks so seriously with the PS5. To be honest, their entire strategy of leading with exclusives that show off features of the hardware seems downright Nintendo-esque to me. Although it sounds like Sony went the extra mile in this regard: HD Rumble has never done much for me, but maybe I'll become a believer in improved rumble when I experience the improved haptics on PS5.

I'm glad the console has made such a strong impression on you (although I'm not sure how I feel about aspects of the UI requiring active PS+ memberships to work properly; I'm surprised you're not subbed yourself!). It feels like both Sony and Microsoft have made an effort to ensure that their systems are up to snuff this go around (whereas, you know, the PS4 and Xbone were kind of lacking hardware-wise even when they first released). Makes me wonder if there'll even be a reason to sell a "Pro" model of the PS5, although I do still hope there's a slim variant, because the PS5 is a pretty intimidatingly massive beast of a console!

Great write-up on Ratchet and Clank as well. The price tag might be high, but you need something shiny to play on your new console, right? It sounds like a right proper showcase for the potential of the new hardware. Some games are just fantastic 'first games' to play on a piece of hardware, and it sounds like Rift Apart will be one of those games for action-platformer fans on PS5.

It must be difficult to become acutely aware of performance metrics as a Nintendo fan. I getcha, though. The community focus on framerates and frame pacing and resolution and so on really makes the old days when we were happy to play stuff like Shadow of the Colossus and Ocarina of Time at 15fps feel like a different universe entirely, eh?

Good contributions!

@RogerRoger

@Arugula was the account deletion. I was curious myself, and thanks to our habit of responding to everyone in this thread, it took only a moment of detective work to figure out. No idea what precipitated it, but it's always sad to see an active member of the community adopt the nuclear option.

And while it's a minor inconvenience fixing the links, I've found at least one review I somehow passed over when I was creating the directory so far, so it all works out.

ZTD was an interesting game, because its mere existence was a sort of miracle to begin with. It was the third game in Kotato Uchikoshi's cult classic Zero Escape series, which started with NDS exclusive 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. 999 featured a shockingly complex and adult story for that platform, and made use of the design of the system in a mind-bendingly ingenious way to do stuff that'd have been impossible in other mediums. This, obviously, generated positive word of mouth, and the series gained prominence in the West when its sequel, the arguably even better Virtue's Last Reward launched on 3DS and PS Vita in 2012. It was still niche, but it was reviewing extremely well and helping to solidify a passionate Western fanbase.

How passionate they were in Western territories became clear after it came out that the planned sequel (VLR ends on a sort of cliffhanger meant to tease the third entry in the series) was put on hiatus indefinitely due to low series sales in Japan. A number of fans banded together (a movement they dubbed "Operation Bluebird") to boost visibility of the series and its fanbase on social media and to pressure the publisher to greenlight the final game in the trilogy. It seems to have been at least partially responsible for Spike Chunsoft finally greenlighting the game, which was finally revealed to be coming in 2016.

The end result was... mixed. The resulting game made a number of changes that resonated poorly with the fanbase. For example, the previous two games were partially visual novels: 999 used sprites, and VLR used static 3D models. But ZTD had bigger ambitions: it wanted to be more cinematic in its approach, with the story being developed in full 3D cutscenes. But the quality of the animation was iffy, to say the least, with robotic character movements and character models that were creepy for the wrong reasons. This seems to have been a result of both a low-ish budget (cinematic games obviously require more of a financial investment than VNs primarily consisting of static 3D models) and the animation work being farmed out to a different developer, Chime.

The bigger issue, though, is that the tightly written conspiratorial science-fiction narrative that wound its way through the first two games wasn't up to snuff in this entry. The game tosses out some truly nonsensical plot beats near the end, and the twists aren't nearly as impactful as they were in previous entries.

Not only that, but a number of returning characters were characterized so differently that they were barely recognizable. Although this is at least partially explained in-game.

With all that said, the game opted for a unique structure where you experienced small flashes of memory in a non-linear manner (the characters' memories are constantly being erased every ninety minutes or so) and have to reconstruct the larger narrative from there with the help of an elaborate timeline, which was a controversial but, imo, really interesting decision. The puzzle-heavy escape room gameplay the series was known for was still fun. And it still had a lot of the fun (mildly pretentious) philosophical material that made previous games so unique.

You'd think it was pure trash based on the way people react to it, but there's absolutely a really good game in there. Frankly, it's still a pretty decent one, and only falls short because it's not masterful like previous entries.

But, woops, that wasn't even the game I reviewed, and I got lost on a tangent. Sorry. It's one of my favorite series, so it's easy to get side-tracked. I'm definitely pulling from this post a bit if I ever get around to properly reviewing the game (which I 100% will if The Nonary Games collection is ever ported to the Switch).

And thanks! Toejam and Earl is a game I have such a long history with that it's weirdly a bit difficult to convey my feelings for it. You know how some pieces of media embed themselves deeply in the fabric of your larger life? This game is like that for me.

Putting that history aside, though, I do think it nails pretty much everything it was going for game design-wise, and is one of the few games I find to be endlessly replayable.

I know most people think about Sonic games when they think of the Genesis, but, for me, this is the game that really defines the system in my mind.

We don't have the cartridge anymore, but I've found a Sega Saturn-styled controller called the M30 that can be used on the Switch, and it just works so perfectly with this game. Obviously nothing beats playing on the original hardware, but it's a close second-place for me.

I'm curious about what your bad Carrotman joke was, btw.

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ONE WEEK IN: A Monster Hunter Stories 2 Impressions Piece

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Monster Hunter Stories 2 (MHS2) is a newly-released (July 9th) console-exclusive sequel to Capcom's 3DS/mobile turn-based JRPG spinoff of the Monster Hunter series, Monster Hunter Stories. The original Stories did well enough in Japan but never really managed to sell as well as the mainline 3DS Monster Hunter games overseas. Of course, that was back in 2017, and since then Capcom has massively expanded the overseas reach and appeal of this franchise with hit entries like Monster Hunter World on PS4/Xbox One/PC, which has become their best-selling title to date, and Monster Hunter Rise on the Nintendo Switch, which is on-track to become their highest-selling single-platform release to date. Will that translate at all to the sales of a turn-based, story-driven JRPG, though? Time will tell, but Capcom is certainly putting in the work.

For anyone who has played the original release, the first immediately noticeable alteration is in the aesthetic design of the game itself. The original Stories opted away from the stylized realism of the mainline Monster Hunter games and instead went with an anime-inspired artstyle for human characters where everyone looked like a child. MHS2 maintains the anime-inspired visuals, as they're a part of this spin-off series' identity, but, per the Capcom leak, we've learned they redesigned the visuals to feel less childish in order to make the series more attractive to adults and Western audiences. While I can't say whether this will actually succeed for others or not, I can say it was a roaring success for me! MHS2 is a beautiful game and, freed from the tiny environments and technical limitations of the 3DS, it stands out as one of the best-looking exclusives in the Nintendo Switch library, combining vibrant characters and detailed monster models with lush environments that feel like they could have been ripped from Nintendo's Breath of the Wild. Part of this is also undoubtedly the high-ish resolution the game is running at all, although that might not have ultimately been the best decision for this game (more on that in a minute).

One of the strongest aspects of this game is the monster design. Truth be told, it can be difficult for newcomers to the monster-collecting JRPG scene to design creatures that don't feel like bootleg Pokemon, but MHS2 benefits from generations of creative monster designs poached from the mainline games. These designs, unlike the character design style for anthropomorphic characters (including Felynes, the intelligent bipedal cats in the Monster Hunter universe, who look much less cat-like and more distinctly cartoonish now), maintain the stylized realism of designs in the mainline games. The animation work for these creatures is excellent as well.

In MHS2, you play as a young denizen of Hakolo Island, grandchild of Red, a legendary monster rider. Riders, in the lore of Monster Hunter Stories, use magic Kinship Stones in order to forge bonds with newly-hatched monsters and fight alongside them. This culture of reverence and respect for monsters puts them at odds with the much more common monster hunters, who see monsters as foes to be defeated and utilized for resources. The two groups come to blows at the beginning of the game when a mysterious event triggers unusually aggressive behavior in wild monsters and triggers the mass vanishing of Rathalos (great, winged wyverns, akin to traditional dragons, that are regarded by many with great fear as Kings of the Sky), including Guardian Ratha, Red's famous Rathalos who was considered by locals to be the guardian of Hakolo Island. Ratha leaves a lone egg, and many fear the mysterious events portend the arrival of Razewing Ratha, a mythical creature that legend warns will destroy the world with its Wings of Ruin. You escape capture from monster hunters who want to take custody of the egg and prevent the awakening of a potentially world-ending threat with Ena, a Wyverian girl who knew your grandfather and wishes to protect Ratha's offspring. You set off on a quest to learn the true nature of what's happening and, if the young Rathalos inside the egg is, indeed, Razewing Ratha, how to seal its power without having to kill it.

The baby Rathalos does indeed hatch, and it's suitably adorable for the brief period of time it remains young, but the Stories games are not only JRPGs, but monster-collecting JRPGs ala Pokemon, Digimon, and Shin Megami Tensei, so as you play through the game you'll be able to collect a diverse lineup of monsters to fight alongside you (80+ have been confirmed to be in the game, which is on the low side for a game in this genre, unfortunately). Riders need to bond with a monster when it's born, so instead of enslaving wild creatures you come across like in Pokemon, you instead follow monsters back to their nests in their dens and steal their eggs (curiously, even mammalian monsters lay eggs, although I guess it beats ambushing monster mothers as they're giving birth and ripping the babies out of them, lol). Hatch an egg, and the monster inside will become your "monstie" (the insufferably cute term these Stories games use to refer to your monsters, presumably because they're monsters that are your besties). The chance that a monster retreats to its den is, unfortunately, pure RNG, although you can increase the chances of this happening by using paintballs on them or sometimes breaking certain parts of their body (more on that in the next paragraph).

Battles in MHS2 are traditional turn-based affairs like in a Dragon Quest game, although the mechanics of the battle system itself are fairly unique. Sort of like the weapon triangle in an older Fire Emblem game, attacks in MHS2 can be one of three types: speed attacks, power attacks, and technical attacks. The difference here, and what gives the battle system an almost marmite quality (I wasn't a fan of it in the original, but I've learned to warm up to the system in the sequel), is that if you and an enemy are targeting one-another, whoever uses an attack that the other is weak to will be able to prevent their foe from acting at all. It's very much like a game of rock/paper/scissors in this sense. Speed beats power, power beats technical, and technical beats speed, and a helpful little illustration on the battle screen allows you to double-check this before committing to an attack. The game uses a line of sight to tell you who an enemy is targeting, and if you choose to directly attack an enemy that is targeting you, a "Head-to-Head" encounter is initiated. If both of you choose the same attack type, the H2H is considered a "draw" and you both take damage. Otherwise, whoever chooses the superior attack prevents their opponent from moving at all. If this were purely up to RNG, it'd be a nightmare, as all battles would come down to luck, but, thankfully, monsters in this game all have a preferred attack type and will reliably choose to attack that way the majority of the time, which makes most wild monsters in this game a piece of cake to defeat once you know their attack affinity, since you can get away with always choosing the attack type they're weak to.

This doesn't sound particularly engaging, but there are a LOT of nuances to the gameplay here. Let's start with more basics: you'll always fight alongside your active monstie in a battle. Since these are independent creatures with wills of their own, though, their decisions are AI-controlled, and, in general, they'll attack with whatever attack type they have an affinity for. This would make it difficult to fight alongside them in battles where you run into monsters who tend to use the attack type your active monstie is weak to, but, thankfully, you can swap out your monstie once per turn with another monster in your party (like in Pokemon, you'll be able to maintain a party of six monsters at all times, although it's effectively only five you're able to actually choose, as the sixth slot is permanently occupued by the story-important Rathalos you save at the start of the game), which gives the game a crucial team-building element. And, unlike Pokemon, it actually matters, as you can't just blow through the game with one or two strong monsters.

While the AI controls what your monstie does in general, you'll build kinship with them in battles by winning H2Hs, especially if you and your monster engage in the same type of attack and attack the enemy simultaneously. As your kinship meter fills, you'll be able to direct your monsties to perform certain skills or abilities. Unfortunately, you'll share party space pretty much constantly with AI-controlled NPC allies who aren't able to be directed in any way. It's like I've gone back in time to 2006, when party members in Atlus' Persona 3 on PS2 were entirely AI controlled.

Actually, I want to gripe about this a minute. So, one of the ways the game balances out its unique battle system is by making it where you don't immediately lose if your HP drops to zero. Instead, you have a lives system. Until you return to a town or settlement, which replenishes your lives, you're allowed to die three times before the game boots you out of the battle (which is designed to emulate the gameplay of mainline Monster Hunter, where you can die three times before failing a hunt). Well, fine. Unfortunately, whoever your AI ally is at the time also has a life system, and if they (or their monstie) dies three times, you're also punished by losing the battle. The problem is that, since you have no control over what they do, a bad run of luck can lead to an enemy monster frequently targeting your ally, and your ally making foolish choices that easily lead to them dying, like choosing attack types poorly or not using skills to defend against powerful enemy attacks.

I mentioned dens before, and they function as the equivalent of dungeons in this game. As you're exploring out in the field in a given area, randomly generated monster dens will appear. Raiding them will always lead you to a monster nest at the very end, which you can scavenge for an egg. The stats of the monster in a given egg are randomized as well, so you're given multiple draws most of the time, and, once in a while, you'll pull out shiny eggs that house monsters with superior base stats and/or genetic traits (more on that soon). If the monster is away from its nest, however, time passes with every egg you find, and if you scavenge too many times, you'll usually end up attracting the attention of the monster that laid the eggs in the first place, and it'll ambush you.

Anyway, these dens are ALL over the place, and they randomly generate every time you leave and re-enter the field from a town or settlement, so if you're mildly OCD like me, you'll end up with more of these eggs than you know what to do with. Normal dens have eggs of common monsters with a low level of rarity, but every once in a while you'll stumble across golden dens that feature rare monster eggs. There are also Everdens, much larger, non-randomized dungeons where you can collect bottle caps, which function as a premium currency that you can use with a special vendor to collect stat-increasing items, rare equipment, and (more importantly) use to upgrade your stable so that you can house more monsters.

And you will end up with a LOT of monsters. Usually multiple monsters of the same type, which seems annoying at first, as there doesn't seem to be any reason to have five Yian Kut-Kus at any given time. This is where genetics and, eventually, the Rite of Channeling come into play. Each of your monster features a gene pool that determines their abilities, both passive and active, with many of them not unlocking until higher levels. This seems to be random, but the game introduces a system hours into the game whereby you can choose to fuse your monsters together, which donates one of the genes of the sacrificed monster to the recipient's gene pool. Granted, this horrifying process does seem to be at least slightly at odds with the focus on bonding and friendship in the narrative, but it's a system with a lot of depth to it that'll allow you to make your monsters as strong as they can be. It's certainly a great way of clearing up the clutter of having multiple monsties in your stable. Worth mentioning is that you can both introduce new genes and 'stack' copies of existing genes to strengthen abilities your monsters already have. You can also obtain bingo bonuses (lol) by lining up certain types of genes in a row, which will strengthen all of the genes in that line. There are also rare rainbow genes that act as a wild card, as they can combo with genes of any element and magnify the gains of bingo bonuses.

Also at odds with the game's bubbly image are the more traditional MonHun elements that carry over in terms of armor and weapon crafting. Like the mainline games, certain weapons work better against certain monsters. In this case, the game helpfully remembers which weapons are effective or ineffective against certain parts of a monster's body. There are six weapon types, two of each belonging to one of three categories: slash, pierce, and blunt. You'll want one weapon from each of the three categories. They all have strengths and weaknesses that I won't get into here, but using effective weapons make it more likely that you'll break off pieces of a monster's body. As in the mainline games, you'll use these pieces to craft stronger weapons and armor, so some of the classic gameplay loop is still here, meaning your rider is, functionally, as much a monster hunter as any of the people they're running from. It's a solid system, though, and I'm glad it was integrated into this game.

Before I move on from gameplay, it's also worth mentioning rider skills (and my own gripes about those). As you navigate the various landscapes in this game, you'll encounter areas that require certain types of monsties to access. A chest on an island in the middle of a lake will require a swimming monstie, for example. If a shortcut is only accessible via jumping, you'll need a monstie that can jump. While this does make monsties useful outside of battle and serves to diversify them a bit, it also, early game at least, severely limits the variety of teams the player can build. Granted, none of these seem to be required for main story quest completion, but you'll be missing out on a ton of optional materials if you don't build your team at least partially around rider skills. I guess you could technically ignore them initially and come back and scour the same area later with a separate team of monsters in order to collect all of the materials, but this seems inefficient.

As I mentioned before, the game is gorgeous and well-animated, and the resolution of the Switch version is surprisingly high. While demanding games on this system typically target 540p in handheld and 720p when docked, MHS2 targets native 720p in handheld and around 900p when docked, which yields a clean, attractive image, especially when played on something like the Switch Lite with its pixels more densely packed on the smaller screen. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of performance stability. The perhaps ambitious resolution targets, alongside a bizarrely uncapped framerate, causes the framerate to weave like a drunk throughout the experience, and you'll go from low-to-mid 40 fps in small, enclosed locations, to what feels like low-to-mid 20s in dense town areas. It never tanks to the point where I found it actively detrimental to the experience of playing the game, but it's worth keeping in mind for those who are sensitive to framerate fluctuations. The game is also available on Steam.

Music is another strong point for this game, much like the most recent mainline entry. I'll go ahead and link a few pieces I've encountered so far.

I was a tad apprehensive about certain aspects of this release going in, but, so far, it's looking like a superior console exclusive, and one of the many jewels of Nintendo Switch's surprisingly strong third-party showing in 2021. It probably won't sell a tenth of what the next Pokemon generation sells, but, in nearly every regard, it shows what's possible on the Switch hardware with just a little effort.

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Before 2007, Mario had been to every place you could imagine. Boring grassy plains, hot deserts, icy tundras, haunted mansions, sunny holiday islands… prison. But there’s one place he never went to. Space. The final frontier. That was until he actually did, and is his intergalactic journey good? No, it’s fantastic.

Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Played on: Nintendo Switch (through port)

The Story
This game starts with Mario visiting the star festival. This is a festival that happens every 100 years. In this festival, a special comet flies over the kingdom and star bits fall from the sky. This is until the festival is interrupted by bowser. In Mario games, Bowser usually kidnaps the princess, right? Not in this one. Instead, he kidnaps the castle with Peach inside. I’m not kidding. He lasers it from out of the ground and sends it up to space. It’s up to Mario, these star children called the Lumas and a new princess and friend to Mario, Rosalina to save the day. The story is simple and gets to the point. There are also these book chapters you unlock through the game that give you some background for Rosalina and the lumas. This is nearly the best part of the game. It’s super emotional and charming. Please read the storybook if you play the game.

The Gameplay
This is mario’s best linear outing ever. Yes, it’s even better than 3D World and I adored that game. This game uses a hub world which is pretty odd for a modern Mario game (sure, the game’s nearly 14 years old but you get what I mean). In this hub world, there are rooms that include telescopes that lead you to galaxies. In these galaxies, there are missions. This is kinda like Mario 64 and Sunshine. There are also trickster comets that give you challenges to complete. Some involve beating a boss with one hp while another requires you to beat a level in a specific time. At the end of each mission, there’s a star and you need 121 to 100% the game. Once you beat the game 100%, “you can now play as Luigi!” and you have to get all of the stars as Mario's taller, floatier brother to get the true ending. In this game, Mario’s in space. That means that he makes use of the different gravity in space. You can do extra long and high jumps and there are these gravity changing spots that make for some great puzzles. Mario can also perform a spin attack that can attack enemies and also give him a double jump. In the Wii version of the game, you shook the controller to perform a spin attack but in the 3D All Stars port, it’s mapped to a single button press. Mario just controls really well in this game. Not as well as another Mario game but I’ll talk about that in the near future. Overall, yep. The gameplay is good.

The Music
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE SOUNDTRACK IS BRILLIANT. HOLY BLITHERING BEES EVERY SONG IS AMAZING. Ahem, this game’s soundtrack is fully orchestrated. Recently, I’ve learned to love orchestral music. From the Sonic 30th Symphony to the Zelda Symphony. The most iconic song is obviously Gusty Garden Galaxy. The fact that an amazing song came from such a middle of the road level baffles me. It balances epic and whimsical so well. There is no way you haven’t heard this song, it’s that iconic. There’s also the observatory theme. This is just a very calming song. Just like GGG, there is no way you haven’t heard this song before. There’s a reason why Nintendo included the soundtrack feature in 3D All Stars, and this is why.

The Graphics and Aesthetics
I played this game through the stellar, if a bit scummy 3D All Stars collection so the game ran at 60fps in 1080p. Somehow, this nearly 14 year old game still holds up today. Each galaxy in this game has a different artstyle. A good example of this is HoneyHive Galaxy. This galaxy has a forest theme. It’s mostly brown and green but it sticks to that. Another thing that sticks to things is a sling pod. If you like those, sling pod galaxy is for you. It’s in deep space and there is no land. To get the star, you have to carefully sling mario on these sticky things called slingpods. These grab mario and you can pull them to launch him, kinda like a slingshot.
This last bit gets a bit spoilery, if you haven’t played this nearly 14 year old game, don’t read this bit.
The very last galaxy is a favourite of mine, Bowser’s Galaxy Reactor. This is a culmination of everything you’ve learned. This includes changing gravity, avoiding lava, avoiding tornadoes that launch mario and kill him and avoiding black holes. It’s a clash of different styles, ice, lava, space junk, a crumbling castle. You’d think they don’t fit well together but that’s dead wrong. As it’s a gauntlet, it feels more like you’re travelling through all of the galaxies you’ve visited. It gets a pass from me.

Conclusion
Mario’s first trip to outer space (if you don’t count any of the rainbow roads in Mario Kart) is a magical time. While it is pretty linear, most of the levels just need you to go from point A to point B, it uses that limitation and gives you a metric butt tonne of creative, beautiful level designs, fun gameplay with a surprisingly useful spin attack and a soundtrack that is literally one of the best ever made, Mario Galaxy is a worthwhile game that gives you about 13 hours of fun.
However, this is not mario’s best outing. In the words of Yoda “There is another.” My favourite game of all time, Super Mario Odyssey. That’s coming soon, stay tuned.

Pros
-Stellar music
-Fun gameplay
-Unique gravity mechanic
-Creative level designs and aesthetics
-Surprisingly good graphics for a Wii game
-The Storybook, just The Storybook

Cons
-Most missions are basic “point A to point B” designs
-Dumb story, even for a mario game

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
10/10 Outstanding

This was a long time coming. I spent a lot of time playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, trying to cope with the extreme heat in the uk, going on walks and watching tv that I completely forgot I was writing this piece. It was also my birthday recently. Sorry to keep you waiting!