Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@nessisonett Interesting, I may have a butchers at VF1.

Game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Played on: Nintendo Switch

The year is 2017. The day is march 3rd. The time is 00:30. You've just picked up your switch from a midnight launch and you turn it on. You then install the best game on the console at that point. Vroom in the night sky The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You turn on the game and your jaw drops. I wasn't one of those people as I got the game a year after it was released but my reaction to the game was very similar to what I just described. Here is my review of my 4th favourite game of all time, Breath of the Wild.

The Story
Starting off with the thing I most dislike about the game, the story. Link (yes, this is THE link, you don't choose his name) wakes up in this cave called the shrine of resurrection. You're told by this old man who is revealed to be the ghost of the former king of Hyrule, King Rhoam, that you were asleep because of a big battle against Calamity Ganon who has taken over Hyrule Castle. Your mission is to free these big robot animals called the divine beasts, gain the powers of the beasts pilots, the champions and face ganon in Hyrule castle. The reason I hate this story is because it does a lot of implying. You might talk to an NPC and they'll say "Woah! You're the hero from 100 years ago! It was so cool when you did that thing with the thing!" You see what I mean? There are cutscenes that kinda explain what happened but my problem is that clears throat THEY'RE OPTIONAL! THEY MADE THE STORY OPTIONAL! Even then, it doesn't even tell you what happened in the battle against Ganon 100 years ago! They tell you what happened beforehand!

The gameplay
This is the first open world Zelda game and in my opinion, this should be the direction the series goes in the future. I could never get into the older Zeldas but for some reason, this one really gripped me. You can climb literally anything if you have a lot of stamina and defeat any enemy if you have good weapons and a lot of health. You find weapons across the map and they can range from a Tree Branch to the ultra powerful Lynel Crusher. One problem is, to stop you from using one weapon religiously, the weapons break. A lot of people framed this as a bad thing but I have to vehemently disagree with that. It forces you to plan and think of creative solutions when a weapon breaks. It’s kinda like Skyrim except the horses can’t climb mountains. This game plays so well. From climbing cliffs that seemed unclimbable to perfectly dodging a Lynel's attacks to deflecting a laser right back into a guardian's stupid one eyed face. It all feels luscious.

The music
Usually in Zelda games, the music is really memorable and epic but botw said “No.” The music is only saved for battles, story moments and dungeons. Sometimes when you’re walking around in the overworld, little piano tunes kick in. The reason that botw has very little music is because in the world of the game, everyone’s dead. This means that the music is less epic and more slow and piano heavy. I actually really like this change.

The graphics
I could lie and say that this game runs terribly but I won’t. The game runs at an almost solid 30fps at 900p. This might be a turn-off for some people but the frame rate only really dips when there are a lot of effects on screen like in the Korok Forest. The game also has a really nice cell shaded art style. It looks like Skyward Sword and Wind Waker had a baby and some locals in the game are breathtaking.

Extra little bits that I couldn’t really fit into any of my usual categories so I’m just writing them here so yeah
This is the first Zelda game to have full voice acting. A lot of people are torn on this choice (including me). Some characters are really good like Revali who sounds just as cocky and arrogant as he looks. Some characters aren’t so lucky. Specifically Zelda. Her voice actress says every line so dramatically and she sounds like an american trying to do an accent that sounds somewhat like a British accent but not quite. It just doesn’t sound good. No hate for the actress, she tried her best.

Conclusion
Overall, while there are a few minor problems, this game is still a masterpiece. It's a piece of art. The amount of work that was put into making this game is astounding. Is it my favourite game on the switch? No, but it's the second best!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
10/10 Outstanding
Pros
Drop dead gorgeous graphics
Fun combat system
Massive world that’s fun to explore
Lots of secrets to discover

Cons
Poorly executed story
So, so voice acting

this took me way too long to write and I don't know why

@Jackpaza0508 A lot of people dislike Zelda's english va, and I can kinda see it, but I still liked her interpretation of the role. Then again, as a fellow American, fake foreign accents don't bother me nearly as much as they bother a lot of non-Americans.

As for the story, it's another contentious aspect of the game. I actually really like how it tethered the main narrative to optional exploration missions, as it leans into the game's focus on design freedom. In general, I tend to think that story-telling-heavy open world games, like The Witcher 3, would often be better off as more linear experiences, instead of spacing out the story bits that everyone plays for with a ton of padding.

I agree it was an impressive effort by Nintendo. With that said, it's not a trick they can repeat any time soon. It'll be interesting to see if Nintendo can improve on their game design with subsequent Zelda sequels, or if future entries will be swallowed by BotW's shadow in much the same way past 3D Zeldas were often unfavorably compared to Ocarina of Time.

Definitely your best contribution thus far!

I'm guessing BotW2 is high up on your list of upcoming games?

@themcnoisy A lot of older 3D games continue to shine despite the increasingly archaic nature of their design, but I feel like old fighting games, like old racing games, are more susceptible to just becoming... outdated. Interesting purely from a historical point of view, or for a brief nostalgia trip for increasingly old gamers who probably loved them as children.

Annual sports series like Madden are the worst, though, IMO. They become outdated, unloved trash the moment a new entry comes out.

@Th3solution Cracking piece on Bound back there, buddy! You might not have realised the game was a PlayStation exclusive, but I didn't realise it even existed 'til you mentioned it recently, so I'm grateful for your efforts to increase its exposure (especially since, as you say, it's something a bit different). I'm also grateful for your handling of the subject matter; I like to think of myself as a somewhat sensitive and open-minded chap but, if I'm perfectly honest, I think I'd still instinctively react against the idea of playing a ballet game. Case in point, even when reading your review, I heard my inner monologue cheekily quip, "Isn't sauté something you do to potatoes?" but your convincing praise of the game's interpretation of the art form had me subsequently chastising such an off-hand dismissal.

But still, as you say, it sounds like ABZÛ and ADR1FT and all those other short-but-sweet indie games you mention, to the point where it feels inevitable that they'd get around to doing "the ballet one" to go alongside "the underwater one" and "the space one" and "the one where you're dead" (makes you wonder what's left to adapt; here's to a meaningful, soul-searching take on doing the laundry, I guess). As an experience, you could probably take out all the ballet-specific words from your review and replace them with a similar game's theme, and you'd still be accurately capturing my takeaway feelings.

Which means I'm not surprised by your final score, even though, as I was reading, I expected a seventh or eighth tutu to make an appearance at the end. Really enjoyable, well-formed thoughts!

***

@themcnoisy Hey, don't knock cardboard box suits! Although I'd draw the line at wearing gloves on your feet, that's just madness. Sorry to hear Virtua Fighter 2 hasn't stood the test of time, but at least you giving it a shot has given the rest of us a good laugh!

***

@Jackpaza0508 Yeah, I agree with Ral, this was your best review to date! And I'm not surprised it took you longer to write, because Breath of the Wild is a pretty huge game, with tons of stuff to discuss. I like how you haven't shied away from picking a side on some aspects (the game's approach to storytelling, the breakable weapons, the voice acting, etc.) whilst acknowledging that there's wider disagreement. Coupled with your scene-setting opening paragraph, it makes your piece all the more personal, and therefore all the more effective. Great use of screencaps, too!

@RogerRoger it's in preparation for VF5 remake. VF5 is great, well worth a go although it was 2 generations back. The latest Soul Calibur and Tekken games are better for sure so looking forward to seeing what the Yakuza team have added.

@RogerRoger @Ralizah Glad you guys enjoyed my review! I was gonna review Mario Odyssey but I finished BOTW very recently and thought I'd give it a review. Yeah, the BOTW sequel is very high on my anticipated games list

@themcnoisy @RogerRoger Thanks for reading, guys. It was an enjoyable game and could have been great if it just had a little more meat on the bone. In the end it was a tad shallow. But still completely worth a few hours just to have enjoyed the premise.

@themcnoisy Ah, of course! Thought I'd seen the series' name floating around recently. Here's hoping you have better luck with the sequels in the run-up to the remake!

So I've just written my best review. The one that has taken me the longest out of every game I've ever reviewed. Where can I go from here? I could go from my 4th favourite to my 3rd favourite game and review Spider-Man 2018. Nah, that'll take too long....

Ah. I've got it.

Game: Peppa Pig: The Game
Played on: Wii

I've spent most of my time reviewing a good game, why don't I review an abysmal one instead! Recently, I was looking through my wii game collection and found this... thing. I had this game when I was very young and remembered liking it. However, my tastes have changed very much. So here's my review of one of the worst games I've ever played. Peppa. Bloody. Pig.

The Gameplay
Peppa Pig: The game is a minigame collection for very young children. It has games such as "Pop bubbles" "Flip pancakes" "Build snowman" "Hide and seek" "Colouring" and "Make a parrot say things". Almost every time you play one of these games, when you press the A button, the game counts the button press but the action on screen doesn't happen until a few seconds later. The only fun game on this... thing is happy mrs chicken. In this game, you spam the A button to make a chicken lay eggs while a fart noise plays every time she lays one. This is the only good one as the controls are never delayed. The worst game has to be the pancake flipper. In the game, you pour pancake mix into a pan, flip the pancake, land it on the pan and put it on the plate. This would be fine but sometimes, you flip the pancake and it goes flying while sometimes, you flip it and it barely goes anywhere! Also, the pancakes burn if you don't flip them and for some children, it might be hard to know when a pancake is ready since toddlers are dumb. In the bubbles game, peppa and George are naked in a bath and it made me very uncomfortable when I first saw it.

The Graphics
This game released in 2009 and since it's the late 2000s, you'd think it would be in widescreen, right? WRONG. It's in 4:3. That's probably because this is actually a port of a DS game. The animations are also very rigid and stiff. The show's animation is actually fine so it's a shame they didn't just get the animators from the show to make the cutscenes. Seriously, look up a longplay of the game and look at the animations.

The music
All the music in this game is terrible. Every song is just a terrible 10 second midi loop and when you play the games for a while, the songs become annoying to the point where you swear you're going insane.

Conclusion
Did this review go quickly? It should have as there really isn't much I can say about this game. Overall, Peppa Pig: The Game is a terrible DS port and just a terrible game.

Pros
Happy Mrs. Chicken is kinda fun?

Cons
Grating music
Noticable control delay
Terrible, rigid animations
The pancake game. Just, the pancake game.

⭐⭐☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
2/10 Terrible

why did I write this LOL

Played via the new Mass Effect: Legendary Edition release.

Platform: PC, PS4 (version played) and XboxONE
Release Date: January 2010 (original game) / May 2021 (remaster)

***

I have a lot of problems with Mass Effect 2.

There's no doubt that, from a technical perspective, BioWare's space-faring RPG sequel is far more polished than its predecessor, even if such results are likely thanks to undeniable gameplay oversimplification and linearity. Boasting such prior pedigree means that, when played via the Legendary Edition, there are fewer new bells and whistles to highlight; we're definitely talking more "solid port" than "full remaster" here. The upshot is that we're left with the same ol' game to discuss.

And, as I say, I have a lot of problems with Mass Effect 2 (which I'll start calling ME2 from here on out). It gets underway by destroying the Normandy you worked hard to make a home during the first game, and killing your Commander Shepard in the process. Fast forward two years, and Shepard's corpse is being reanimated by a heinous terrorist organisation called Cerberus. How heinous are they? Well, I'm against the death penalty and yet, when I met some of them back in ME1, they became the only NPCs I executed on moral grounds... and yet here, in a game which promotes itself as being all about personal choice, I'm locked in to being one of their agents. Oh sure, I can complain about them in almost every conversation, but my words always fall on deaf ears. I'm still wearing their colours, and going where they tell me to go. My first destination turns out to be an illicit nightclub.

Seriously, it's like this game is trying to make me hate it.

Identity Crisis: Despite promises to the contrary, custom faces are still deformed when imported from the first game, meaning I had to reconstruct mine from scratch.

The issue of false freedom is the game's biggest weakness. I understand the realities of development, and don't usually have a problem with the mere perception of choice being used to dress a scripted window, but ME2 puts me (as Shepard) in an uncomfortable starting position and then spends the rest of its time blocking off avenues of possible reasoning in order to cajole you down its narrative corridor. When old friends show up to express disgusted dismay at my Cerberus shenanigans, I'm not allowed to explain myself; instead, I'm given less-than-eloquent options to either make excuses for my new allegiance, or start an argument with them. In one example, it's impossible to part on good terms.

When you're playing a choice-based game but largely agree with the overall direction of the plot, you don't notice these constraints as much, and you're able to get caught up in the illusion. Throughout ME2, I felt as though BioWare wanted me to play as an ends-justify-the-means renegade, when all I actually wanted to do was to fly my fancy new Normandy back to Earth, beg forgiveness and start using my testimony to make arrests. No such luck; no matter who I spoke to, their assumptions overrode my intent.

There are other places where ME2 goes ahead and locks you into a particular course of action whilst claiming otherwise. Towards the end of the core game's story, you're subject to arbitrary time limits as you hurtle towards a finale which, for the unprepared, could prove fatal. Ensuring the survival of your entire crew requires you to complete missions and trigger events in a very precise order. It really is no choice at all, especially when you consider (and get told by some of the game's loading screen tips) that you won't see large parts of the next game if you let anybody die... and c'mon, who's gonna want to risk skipping content like that? Such a structure seems clever on the surface, and should be praised for its realism, but it practically demands consultation of a guide, a process which shatters immersion. Ultimately, you end up playing "your" game in the exact same way as everybody else.

And what's wrong with that, eh? I mean, this is a linear corridor shooter, isn't it?

Cover Story: Welcome to how you'll spend 80% of your time, complete with stupid enemies who can never hit your clearly-unprotected melon of a head.

The previous game's balance of activity variety has been sacrificed to the gameplay gods in favour of some easy-to-produce, stop-start shooting. Biotic powers and gadgets make a return but, along with the weapons themselves, they've been significantly simplified. You can't mod anything any more; you just find generic damage upgrades in the field, automatically applying them wholesale as you trot in a straight line towards each shooting gallery's final target. Whether playing a major mission or indulging in a side quest, almost everything will eventually crescendo towards a familiar "Blast that thing!" showdown.

It gets worse. Try leaving cover in a firefight and you'll invariably get stunlocked into an early grave, whilst breaks between battles are overstuffed with tedious and repetitive hacking minigames (the kind that games used to get eviscerated for including). There are instances of imagination peppered throughout, mostly thanks to the inclusion of new, larger enemies for infrequent boss battles, but even some of these make one too many comebacks. Everything about ME2 comes across as one-note. It's a very nice note to listen to at times, I grant you, but you can't compose a full and rich symphony without the rest of its scale and so, as my forty-four hour playthrough dragged on, I got bored hearing it.

Like a Boss: It was exciting the first time, interesting the second, and wearing thin by the seventh, but I'd still always welcome the opportunity to tangle with these targets.

When you're not holding back hoards of gun-totting lifeforms, wandering about the small handful of reduced hub worlds doesn't compensate for the absence of the Citadel and, whilst your Normandy might now be a couple decks larger, you'll mostly be using it to launch probes and strip-mine planets for their natural resources, which is a stupefying exercise in patience-testing (and yet essential if you want to craft the upgrades necessary to keep everybody alive). On paper, ME2 might be a bigger game than ME1, but it somehow manages to make the galaxy feel smaller.

At least you've got a cool crew to keep you company, although they're not without their faults. The arrival of the most interesting addition, Legion, heralds the start of the endgame's forced timer, leaving you little chance to form a substantial bond with them... and then there are the women. Whether it's the "born to be perfect, so I look like a Barbie doll" Miranda, the "supposed to be old and wise, but still shaped like an hourglass and dressed like a prostitute" Samara, or whatever the heck is going on with Jack, there's an adolescent streak of sexism permeating their designs to a distracting degree, as the camera follows them around from angles implemented to satiate the straight male gaze. Such juvenile nonsense was problematic a decade ago, but is outright offensive nowadays, cheapening some well-written and (very) well-acted characters in textbook cases of what I affectionately call the Jeri Ryan Effect.

I promise you, I made a note to mention this long before last weekend's headlines; this isn't me jumping on any kind of bandwagon. And I do respect some of the reasonable counterpoints to such criticism, given that I'm a lifelong Tomb Raider fan an' all. It's just that, after spending the entire game rejecting the advances of these talking centrefolds, I was left with the familiar feeling that, once again, ME2 wasn't made for me, and that I was somehow playing it wrong.

Elsewhere amongst the cast, EA splashed the cash to secure some major talent, and I'm happy to report that folks like Martin Sheen and Carrie-Anne Moss were worth every buck, lending real weight to their lynchpin roles. It's also a delight when the owner of the greatest voice in the world, Shohreh Aghdashloo, portrays a Quarian admiral in one of the third act missions. Overall, I can't fault the game's production values, and it's to be applauded that such quality is maintained across the numerous DLC expansions (all of which are included in the Legendary Edition). There's only one that feels a little cheap; a series of point-to-point, dialogue-free sojourns called "Firewalker" which serve to correct the core game's absence of vehicular mayhem by introducing the M-44 Hammerhead, an anti-gravity descendent of the much-maligned Mako. Trust me when I say that its underwhelming debut is vastly improved by its further involvement in the "Overlord" assignment.

Firewalker With Me: Chucking this thing around is still a sketchy prospect, and can lead to all sorts of calamity, so its shared heritage definitely checks out.

Combining a spectacular sandbox, unique platforming puzzles and new environmental takedowns with a gut-wrenching slice of story, "Overlord" is one of the few times ME2 fulfils its potential. In fact, I'd argue that all of the game's triumphs are courtesy of its DLC packs. Additional squadmates Zaeed and Kasumi can be picked up almost immediately, the latter triggering what is perhaps my absolute favourite Mass Effect mission, packed with obvious developmental effort and stylish flair. "Lair of the Shadow Broker" adds a truckload of depth and humour to Liara T'Soni and manages to be a grin-inducing rollercoaster ride, despite also including some solemn story beats along the way. "Arrival" should be the last thing you experience, as it acts as a tense and foreboding prologue to Mass Effect 3. It's all, in a word, awesome.

And it's all accompanied by some fantastic music, as well. ME2 had already given the series' trademark synths a bit of a boost, but the compositions for the DLC provide a glimpse at the sense of sweeping, epic scale that would eventually envelop ongoing events.

Honestly, being able to sound more positive about ME2 is a relief. Maybe it is me. Maybe I'm taking a lot of BioWare's choices too personally, even though I'm supposed to; the game is all about personal choice, after all, and yet pretending you're walking anything other than a predetermined path would be utter folly. Do you want to be a hero? Do you want to save everybody? Do you want to see everything the next game has to offer? These aren't the kinds of questions one should be leaving open-ended (as demonstrated by the handcuffs thrust upon you if you answer "yes" to any of them). Thanks to the technological limitations of these kinds of games, better decisions impact the how and why, not the what.

Most of the ME2 DLC understands this, but the core game does not. It wants to convince me that being Han Solo is preferable to being Luke Skywalker, despite one being a selfish letch and the other a selfless avatar of hope. It wants to argue that the ends justify the means, without presenting a sufficient counterpoint or morality play to effectively explore such a stance. It wants to restrict your choices, whilst simultaneously claiming to be expanding them. It further divides the fictional universe you're supposed to be working to unite. It doesn't make me stop and think about anything. It doesn't scratch the itch to boldly go. All it does is trigger my anxiety, as I triple-check whether or not I've researched the right armour plating for the Normandy, lest my complacency kill a beloved character.

I come back to my opening statement; I have a lot of problems with Mass Effect 2. It's necessary groundwork for what's to come but, more often than not, I found said ground to be a waist-deep quagmire, and therefore a struggle to get through. It's why I always leave a lot of the game's DLC missions 'til the very end, as their engaging quality stops me from succumbing to burnout and sinking into the mud. Without them, I'd be cursing ME2 with a much lower score.

And then, even worse, I'd miss out on playing the trilogy's best game.

Mass Effect 2 = 7/10

@RogerRoger Wonderful ME2 review and very thought provoking. Reading it made me analyze my memories of the game, which I think now in retrospect after seeing your take, was highly tainted by not having played the first game before it. In fact I’ve never played the first game. And it might have been my first BioWare game ever, not counting first Dragon Age Origins which I jumped off after the first couple hours. So I think my adoration for ME2 may have been the novelty of the game, despite the fact that the ornamentation of narrative choice might have actually been more illusion than I realized at the time. Coming off of a diet of more narratively linear games, I don’t think the extent of funneling through to one basic set of storyline and social relationships was clear to me at the time.

I have fond memories of the game. If I ever get around to it, I’ll definitely be playing ME1 first and I’ll have the experience of narrative choice games like Detroit Become Human, Until Dawn, and Persona 5 to compare branching storyline features (or lack therof). Look forward to hearing how you get along with the ‘piece de resistance’ of ME3. Are you going to roll straight into it or do you have ME burn-out yet?

@Jackpaza0508 The Nintendo Wii was filled with... unique experiences. Although, honestly, I'd be more surprised if a Peppa Pig game turned out to be competent at all, lol.

@RogerRoger Wonderful takedown. I haven't played it since it first came out, but you hit on almost every element I hated about this title: the dumbed down RPG mechanics, the more shootery game design, the weirdly unsatisfying structure that forces you to play it in a certain way, the lame resource-mining minigame, etc. It's good to hear about the DLC, though! I've never played a single piece of DLC from this series. Your relationship with this title reminds me a bit of my own relationship to Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, where I strongly disliked elements of the base game but felt like the excellent post-launch DLC support at least partially redeemed it, in some respects.

The artificial player choice issue is one that plagues a lot of games from this era, IMO. And, yeah, when only one sets of choices allows you to see broad swaths of the third game, there really only is one set of correct choices to adopt, which makes that element of the game worthless.

It's nice to hear someone else point out the clear issues with this game, because there was a long time where you couldn't do that without being considered a sort of contrarian. Hell, the orthodoxy, even today, is that ME2 is the true classic of the trilogy, surrounded by two lesser experiences.

I'll be sure to keep your recommendation about which DLC to play last in mind when I get around to this collection.

Amazing job with the review, as always. It sounds like you really love ME3. Maybe I missed out by skipping out on that game when this one burned me.

@Jackpaza0508 My apologies, I missed your Peppa Pig review up there! For the record, your exasperated approach made me laugh out loud, multiple times, so I hope that goes some way to help make playing and writing about the "game" a worthwhile endeavour!

***

@Th3solution Thank you for reading and replying! I'm glad I didn't offend your nostalgia for the game, as I gather it can be quite strong for some. From experience, I find it common for folks to say "the second is my favourite" quickly followed by "and it was the first one I played, too" (or indeed, that it was the first RPG they'd ever played) and in those cases, like yours, I totally understand and respect how BioWare's ambitions and narrative complexity would've impressed. Because it is a grand adventure, in terms of story, and its cast of characters are (mostly) well-written and memorable as a result.

Give it a couple years, or wait 'til you've got a big enough gap in your backlog, then pick up the Legendary Edition in a sale and start from the beginning. I'd love to know what you retroactively make of the first game, as well as whether your fond memories for the second still ring true. Have you played ME3 before, or did you just enjoy ME2 in isolation?

As for me, I've already devoured fourteen hours of ME3, and I'm hungry for more. Shows you how effective that ME2 DLC was, as well as how much I'm fascinated by ME3.

***

@Ralizah There, y'see? We do exist!

All joking aside, when dealing with such "controversial" opinions, meeting a like-minded individual can be a rare pleasure, so I'm properly made up by your reply (both because of the sanity check you've given me, and because I might've broken your cycle of supposed contrarian shame). I love how passionate people get about Mass Effect simply because, at their best, they can become very personal games; for all my favourite moments, there are hundreds of others, championed by thousands of different gamers. I think that's why I notice contrived nonsense like the Suicide Mission a little more, because you invariably start to hear the same story more often than not.

But it's also why I'll respect anybody's take on the series, because it'll mean so much to them.

This wasn't the first time BioWare rescued a Mass Effect game with superb DLC, either, so look forward to that concept making a comeback. Good to know other developers have managed to do the same elsewhere; I also thought very highly of the Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus post-release content, despite finding the core game a slog. It's rare, but it can happen.

Not quite sure what you'd make of ME3, so I hope we're all still here when you get around to your playthrough, because I'd be fascinated to see what side of the fence you fall. Right now, I'm analysing a heck of a lot of my old, somewhat contradictory opinions towards it.

Anyway, that's the next review's problem. My thanks for your reading and replying, as always!

@RogerRoger I certainly did play ME3, and enjoyed it just fine. I even spent a little time with the online multiplayer, if I recall correctly.

My ME3 experience was also positive and I never quite understood the backlash about the ending. Perhaps since I hadn’t seen narrative choice and alternative endings done extravagantly before then i wasn’t disappointed. I always meant to go back for the DLC (The Citadel, is it called?) which was BioWare’s own great redemption story in how well they recaptured the good graces of the fandom who were bitter about the ending.

Of course, unfortunately, those good graces were quickly dashed to pieces when Andromeda underwhelmed. They’re still working on their redemption arc part II.

But yes, I liked ME3, though I never quite felt the awe and wonder that I did with ME2. But, as you say, there is a ‘first exposure’ bias that might explain it. I’m sure when I read your ME3 review then I’ll be swayed to reconsider the accuracy of my rose-tinted memories and elevate ME3’s status in my mind.

@RogerRoger Thanks for the feedback man! Glad you enjoyed my review of peppa pig: the... "thing." I definitely enjoyed writing it! Great review of ME2 as well! However, despite my profile picture, I've never played a mass effect game so I can't agree or disagree with any opinions haha.

Btw, I'm working on a Spider-Man review! Stay tuned for that!

@Th3solution Cool, and I'm glad you enjoyed playing it, especially if you played it at launch amidst all of its immediate controversy. I was a latecomer to the entire trilogy myself and so, whilst I do have fond memories of my first playthrough (because they were also some of the first choice-based RPGs I'd ever played), I was spared having to play ME3 in any kind of "incomplete" form. It's good, and interesting, to know that it was possible to actually like the game at launch!

And yeah, whilst ME3 eventually received a sizeable amount of DLC, it's the final Citadel pack which swooped in and saved the day. Even folks who rate ME3 as their least-favourite of the entire trilogy invariably consider the Citadel content to be amongst the all-time greats.

You make it sound like I'm out to indoctrinate people! Don't let me change your mind, especially if doing so damages your happy nostalgia for that sense of awe and wonder!

***

@Jackpaza0508 No worries and, likewise, thanks for reading my latest contribution! Do you think you'll ever get around to playing Mass Effect someday? Your avatar is hilarious, and always makes me smile when I see it, so I'm grateful you chose it despite not being a fan (yet)!

Looking forward to your Spidey write-up, especially after you enjoyed Miles Morales so much!

@RogerRoger I don't have any plans to play ME since it just doesn't really interest me much. Someone posted the gif of the head spin in the comments of the legendary edition reveal and I thought it was really damn funny so I made it my profile picture. Btw, the spidey review won't be coming for a few weeks since I have a lot more to say about it than botw.

@Jackpaza0508 Fair enough; then I'm even more grateful for you bringing that GIF to the masses!

No pressure on the Spidey piece, but I'm curious to see what you're gonna say now! Writing takes as long as it takes, so I just hope you're happy with it before posting. Best of luck!

Nintendo Switch Online and Its Exclusive Free-to-Play Battle Royale Games

Nintendo Switch Online, Nintendo's paid online service for the Nintendo Switch, has arguably gotten off to a rocky start and encountered a lot of pushback from players online who complain about the lack of features that have been standard for these services since Xbox Live launched back in the increasingly distant past of 2002 (god, I feel old), the spotty implementation of cloud saves (they work great for 99% of games, but, for whatever reason, a small handful of Nintendo games that would benefit most from cloud saving don't support the feature; go figure), and the sparse selection of retro games they've made available to subscribers as an alternative to the sort of modern-gen offerings players enjoy via PS+ and Xbox Live Gold. Nintendo has had a few cool week-long trials for select third party games, but, otherwise, there wasn't a lot of carrot at the end of that stick.

Enter our first game: Tetris 99.

It's probably fair to say that when Tetris 99 was first revealed in a Nintendo Direct in very early 2019, the internet reacted with almost universal bemusement. Many saw it as the 'jump the shark' moment for the battle royale craze when Tetris, of all games, was getting in on the act. Yet, at the same time, it made a weird sort of sense: of course it would be a Nintendo console that got an exclusive battle royale version of Tetris. When a lot of us downloaded the game initially, I imagine most of us expected we'd play it a few times and then set it down, never to return. Tetris is good fun, but it's also Tetris. How much more blood could you possibly wring from that stone? (a similar mindset prevailed, I think, when the transcendent Tetris Effect was first revealed during an E3 preshow)

That... didn't happen. For a couple of reasons.

First is the design of the game itself. Now, the basics of competitive Tetris, where you clear lines in order to pile garbage blocks on your opponent's screen and force their pile to the top of the screen, are old hat at this point and go back, at least, to Super Tetris 3 on the Super Famicom. That is the basic strategy of Tetris 99 as well, but there are also a few strategic nuances to it that make it a more engaging experience overall. So, per the name, you're playing with 99 other people in your matches (generally; sometimes a game seems to start with a few empty slots if it can't find unengaged players quickly enough). You CAN manually target individual players, but this is tedious and wastes time. Instead, Tetris 99 uses the system's right stick to flip between a few different target pre-sets: you can hit people randomly, which often isn't a bad idea at the start of the game if nobody is targeting you, as you gain attack bonuses when you're targeted by multiple people (which can open up a risky strategy where you deliberately draw heat to buff your offensive capabilities before going to town on a target). You can choose to target people who are targeting you, with the idea being that you can take the heat off yourself if you pile junk on them faster than they can pile it on you. You can target players with the most badges, which is risky, but I'll explain what badges are in a moment. And, most usefully, you can target players who are closest to dying in order to push them over the edge.

Now why would you want to be the one to push random players over the edge? This is where badges come in, and it's how Tetris 99 incentivizes more aggressive play. If you're the one whose junk kills a player, you're awarded with badges (well, you earn a fraction of a badge when you kill a player, and killing multiple players will add up to a full badge; they build up to a maximum of four, I believe), and the more badges you have, the more junk blocks you'll be able to send over to your opponent's side. If you plan on winning a game, you'll inevitably be facing off at the end against a small number of similarly skilled killers who have full, or close to full, badges, and you'll only be able to win if you're able to give as well as you're getting from them. This strategy isn't without risk, though, because, remember, targetting players with badges is also a preset, and your opponents will often try and nip the risk you represent in the bud by taking you out before you collect too many badges. But if you play it safe and avoid earning badges early on, and you're up against a player with multiple badges at the end, then you're at a structural disadvantage to a most likely very skilled opponent.

How you clear lines also has a level of strategy to it, because, as garbage piles up in the queue, it's unable to release on you if you keep clearing lines, and will even go down gradually. So while it's tempting to structure your grid so that you only get full Tetris line clears with long pieces, the risk here is that, if you're targeted by an aggressive opponent, you won't be able to adequately defend against their onslaught thanks to your manufactured reliance on a single tetrimino. So you'll want to learn how to T-spin and vary up the composition of your pile a bit in order to be able to maximize both your offensive and defensive capabilities. It's also beneficial if you build up combos of line clears in order to overwhelm your targets with junk.

This is what makes Tetris 99 work so well, because every choice you make is subject to risk-and-reward dynamics that make it where you're never truly safe, and there are upsides and downsides to both aggressive and defensive play. Of course, even in the free version, there's more to Tetris 99 than the simple battle royale mode. There's also a team battle mode, where you pick a color/element and then fight with your comrades to take down your other opponents, although I found this mode to be a bit more simple than the battle royale mode. There is also a mode that only unlocks once you achieve Tetris Maximus by defeating everyone else in one of your games. This mode is a variant of the battle royale mode, but you only play with other people who have also achieved the rank of Tetris Maximus at least once. So, basically, it's a battle royale mode where you're only up against other skilled players, which is nice for the people who are excellent at the game and consistently outlive their opponents on the normal battlefield.

The second reason is the solid post-launch support the game enjoyed. Now, online events are obviously nothing new for battle royale titles, but the eventual implementation was, I think, pretty brilliant, and, let's be real, most of us expected them to quickly abandon the game, because it was a weird gimmick meant to sell people on an unpopular online service. Tetris 99's first event came a month after its initial launch in the form of the first Maximus Cup. The rules for this event were simple: for three days, starting on a Friday and ending on a Sunday, players would compete in an event to try and achieve first place. The 999 players who achieved first place the most would be rewarded with 999 My Nintendo Gold Coins, which is equivalent to $10 USD in eshop credit. Not necessarily the biggest prize in the world, but it was going out to a lot of players, and nobody is going to sneeze at free money. It seemed like a fun, simple, meritocratic competition.

And I'm sure it was for the 999 or so ultra-skilled Tetris players out there who were probably raking it in every time. Now, I don't play a bad game of Tetris, and I managed to win my fair share of games, but there's clearly a skill gap between normal Tetris players and the sort of people who win competitions and rack up line clears so quickly that it'd make your head spin. So, once the second Maximus Cup came and went and I still hadn't performed well enough, I was about ready to hang up my hat when it came to future online competitions in the game.

The mode changed with the third cup, however. Maybe Nintendo was tired of giving out free money, or maybe they noticed engagement wasn't as high as they would have liked, but the "top 999 players earn eshop money" thing was quickly abandoned, and the third event featured a prize available to everyone who played. Players would earn a certain number of points each time they completed a match during this cup, contingent on how well they performed, and once they earned 100 points, they unlocked a snazzy Game Boy theme for Tetris 99. And when I say snazzy, I mean it. To this day, that first GB-inspired theme is probably my favorite: not only for the nostalgia factor, but also because of how thoroughly it transforms the look and sound of the game, with authentic sound effects, music, and chonky pixel art for the tetriminoes.

Future cups (there have been twenty of them thus far) featured a variety of themes, usually tying in with major first-party Nintendo releases on the system. It's a smart bit of cross-promotion, since it gets people playing Tetris 99 again, AND it helps to advertise a new or upcoming product that Nintendo wants to flog. These have ranged from giant releases like Pokemon and Animal Crossing to smaller and most niche ones like Ring Fit Adventure and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The last one happened rather recently, in March, to promote the release of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, although, regrettably, I missed out on that event and theme.

While the game has largely stayed true to its promise of being free-to-play for NSO subscribers, and there aren't any predatory microtransactions that I'm aware of, a one-off DLC pack that added support for a traditional offline marathon mode, an offline variant of the battle royale mode where you play against bots, and local multiplayer modes was added. The biggest incentive they've use to push this pack, IMO, is locking two of the daily missions behind the single player content. But I should probably explain what I mean.

So, Tetris 99 features a system where you can earn tickets to 'purchase' extra themes and even a few of the special event themes. These tickets are obtained by completing whatever the daily challenges are. True to the name, daily changes cycle out each day, and task the player with completing a task of some sort. Sometimes these are insanely easy ("Play Tetris 99 online three times"), and other times maybe not so much (the T-spin challenges are a bit annoying, which you'll understand if you're not a Tetris master and have attempted to master the art of setting up a proper T-spin). Anyway, only two daily challenges are available for the free online content, with two additional challenges locked behind single player DLC content.

The game also features a leveling system, because literally everything has to be an RPG these days. Although the only tangible benefit to leveling up in this game is unlocking additional icons the player can attach to their profile, presumably for bragging rights. It's kind of a pointless feature, IMO, but I suppose there are people out there who feel like they're accomplishing something by seeing their rank tick up the more they play.

The next game I want to discuss is sort of unique in that it only existed for six months before being yanked permanently offline. This wasn't because it was a failure, of course. I'm talking about the (now infamous) case of Super Mario Bros. 35, by far the biggest casualty of Nintendo's bizarre approach to celebrating the iconic Italian plumber's 35th anniversary. So, for those not in on the Nintendo loop, part of the celebration of that anniversary was a free-on-NSO battle royale variant of the original Super Mario Bros. game. 34 miniaturized video streams on either side of your own display showed what other surviving players were doing in their own games. Like in Tetris 99, the goal was to outlive opponents by piling enemies onto them, which was done by killing enemies in your own game. Also like Tetris 99, the player could either target specific players or use similar pre-sets to target specific categories of players, such as people who were already targetting you or people with the most coins.

The goal of this game was to both not die and not let the timer run out. The timer, which never reset when you finished a level, ticked down and could only be increased by finishing a level (which added 15 seconds to your timer) or killing enemies (which added 1 second per enemy killed, unless you combo'd them with successive mid-air stomps and/or items like koopa shells and invisibility stars, with generous time bonuses being added when the player killed numerous enemies in quick succession). The risk/reward element of targeting other players, or even attracting attention, should be clear here: more enemies means more opportunities to die, but also more opportunities to increase your timer.

Of course, in SMB, power-ups weren't super common in levels, so the item roulette mechanic was added. For twenty coins, a player could activate a randomizer that would randomly spit out a power-up. This could be anything from a mildly useful mushroom to screen-clearing POW Blocks or even invincibility stars that'd allow the player to tank huge waves of junk enemies sent by other players. Oftentimes, the item roulette would be your only defense against otherwise inescapable enemy patterns, so maintaining a healthy buffer of coins whilst also managing the timer were both critical elements of skilled play in this game.

This structure seemed like a cool spin on the game design of the original Super Mario Bros. initially, but the cracks quickly began to show. SMB is a platformer and wasn't created to be a competitive experience, and so a rigid competitive structure didn't work as well for it as something like Tetris, for which PvP modes were already a thing. Gaining extra seconds on the timer was usually a pretty simple thing, so matches would frequently drag on for unacceptably long periods of time and matches would end up being wars of attrition between two players waiting for the other to screw up. Additionally, the SMB 35 didn't load levels sequentially like in the original game: levels had to be unlocked, the conditions for which were often obscure, and because players would vote for which level they wanted to start playing on and usually hadn't unlock multiple levels, level queues were established that often sent players to the same two or three levels over and over as they continud to kill enemies and add to their timers.

Alas, the game was only online for six months or so before Nintendo decided to pull it, on the same date that they delisted the digital version of the 3D All-Stars collection. Their rationale was that the software was meant to be a temporary part of a celebration event, but even if players didn't pay for SMB 35 directly, it's difficult to see their approach to it as anything other than weaponizing FOMO to sell NSO subs, in the same way that they weaponized FOMO to sell tons of copies of the 3D All-Stars collection.

The last game is one that was added to NSO only recently. Yet another battle royale experience in the mold of Tetris 99, the classic game being rejigged to facilitate multiplayer bloodshed this time was the arcade classic Pac-Man.

I'll admit, even though all of these NSO battle royale titles have seemed strange to me, Pac-Man still struck me as an odd choice. Perhaps the enduring legacy of that retro classic bumped it to the top of the list, but wouldn't something like Galaga be easier to rework so as to be fitted into this increasingly absurd mold? Nevertheless, as of April 2021, Pac-Man 99 was officially a thing.

I've played it a number of times now, and, like the others, have come in first place at least a few times. I don't really think it has as much viability to maintain interest in the long term as Tetris. Tetris 99 works well because its gameplay organically jives with online competitive chaos, and the abstract nature of Tetris lends itself nicely to a variety of unique themed events. The way you play Pac-Man is substantially altered by the shift in game design focus, at least, in a way that feels like there is also some strategy to it.

Pac-Man 99 sees you playing a game of Pac-Man alongside 98 other players, and the goal, as with the other games covered in this post, is to stay alive until the very end. Your interference with other players is more akin to SMB 35 in that you send enemies to harass them. These enemies are sent whenever you've ingested a power pellet and eat a ghost. Every time you eat a ghost, a multiplier ticks up, and if you can keep that multiplier going by perpetually keeping yourself in a powered-up state without running down the timer, you'll send progressively more obstacles to your enemies. There are a limited number of power pellets and available ghosts per board, of course, and once you eat enough normal pellets, you'll unlock a fruit near the center of the stage that sends you to the next board.

There are a lot of other factors to consider when playing, though. For one thing, hunting down ghosts when powered up would take too much time if they were all just running around individually. Each time you progress to a new board, there'll be a group of sleeping ghosts on either side of the board. Interacting with them causes them to latch onto a nearby ghost in a long train. Now, normally, even after latching on, you're unable to interact with them, but when you consume a power pellet, the sleeping ghosts become edible along with the regular ghosts, which means you can run Pac-Man into them and consume 10 - 20 ghosts at a time. The big multipliers come in if you're able to advance to other boards and consume more of these ghost trains without your timer running out (eating more power pellets resets the timer and will allow you to maintain your multiplier).

So, that's nice and all, but it sounds more like a score attack game and less like a battle royale. Where the battle royale element comes into play is that the ghosts you eat cause jammer Pac-Men to go to other players' boards. The weaker jammer Pac-Men are see-through, but with white outlines, and while they won't actually damage you, each one you run into will cause your Pac-Man to slow down, which can be dangerous if a ghost is hot on your tail. The REAL danger, though, are the red-outlined jammer Pac-Men that only seem to appear in the second half of any given round of Pac-Man 99. These obnoxious enemies are slower than their white jammer counterparts, but they're able to kill you on contact, and, unlike the ghosts, can't be eaten after Pac-Man has consumed a power pellet, but instead freeze in place until the timer runs down. This is often problematic if they've frozen in locations that you need to be able to pass through, so there's some additional strategy in making sure you have a clear path to the board-wiping fruit before freezing them. Eating a fruit causes these menaces to vanish from the board, until a new set of red jammers appear, at least.

It's not entirely clear what causes red jammers to appear from enemy attacks versus white jammers, but I imagine badge count contributes significantly to the number of red jammers that will flood an opponent's board when you gobble ghosts. Like Tetris 99, these badges are earned by successfully KOing a player with an attack.

Another crucial gameplay element I'd like to discuss is the way in which you can customize what happens when Pac-Man eats a power pellet. So, like in the previous games, you get all the regular presets for targeting enemy players with the right stick, but you also have another layer of pre-sets that control the duration of your timer and the strength of your attacks after ingesting a power pellet. You have four options here: Standard (no benefits or drawbacks), Faster (doubles your Pac-Man's speed, but drastically reduces your attack power when eating ghosts and attacking other players), Train (doubles the number of sleeping ghost you'll attach to nearby ghosts, but also generates white jammer Pac-Men on your board), and Stronger (permanently reduces Pac-Man's speed and the duration of your pellet power, but also doubles your attack power when eating ghosts). You can freely switch between these presets depending on how you're tackling a match, and it'll pretty drastically change your approach overall.

I guess, since I mentioned speed, I should address it here. Pac-Man, at the start of a round, will begin at speed 1, and gain speed each time he successfully eats all of the smaller pellets on a board. Gaining some speed over the course of a game is crucial, because ghosts also speed up as the game goes on, and you'll want to be able to outrun them. You're also automatically granted a speed boost and instant access to the board-wiping fruit whenever you spawn into a board without smaller pellets to collect.

Like with Tetris 99, there's also single-player DLC to be purchased that gives you access to other gameplay modes: in this case, a time-attack mode, a score attack mode, and then an offline battle royale mode with bots.

While easily a stronger overall experience than SMB 35 was, as mentioned before, I don't feel like this game will have as much staying power as the Tetris variant. Still, it's a very cool spin of traditional Pac-Man gameplay. While I do feel like this model is starting to become a little stale, I do love the transformative effect it has on a variety of older games, and I'm hoping I at least get a Galaga 99 before Nintendo decides to permanently retire this line of software.

Probably shouldn't have read that Mass Effect 2 piece of yours @RogerRoger as you know I haven't played any of 'em/know diddly squat about the series beyond it's revered staus (and have yet to read the one you did for the first game too or anythimg else that's been done here for a while (my bad))...

... But I really enjoyed it and how at odds the design seems to be with the freedom of player choice (You in particular) and streamlining the space adventures of Commander Shepard. The DLC sounds good though from what you've described and the shot in the arm the game needed to correct the lack of choice.

I wonder if that has anything to do with Dragon Age Origins only coming out only a couple of months before it (and presumably the second DA already in production by this point too) that forced them to cut things? Maybe having to make ME2 run on PS3 added a spanner into the works too?

As always you have some cracking screenshots to accompany it and I like the banner you have going for both pieces too, really makes them stand out and look even more professional.

Really good stuff Rog