Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@Ralizah I'm just glad it was Daisy catching strays and not Rosalina! You gave her the compliment she deserves. Unfortunate to hear of your experience the game overall though. At least it was mostly just a case of disappointment rather tthan he game itself being totally unfun. Somewhat surprised however as I've seen many tout it as one of the best iterations of 2D Mario there is, but it doesn't sound like any of your criticism was necessarily undeserved. Wish you'd have had a better time with it, but I'm glad you can still appreciate it for what it is! I'll have to give it a go at some point when the price goes down a bit, haha.

@Tjuz LOL

It is kind of a shame Rosalina isn't here. Although I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much, since characters don't really control differently. And I suppose the less Nintendo dilutes Galaxy's legacy by using Rosalina as spare cast fodder, the better.

I think it's a decent game when put up against other 2D Marios. Currently, I'd rank them:

Yoshi's Island > SMB 3 > NSMB U Deluxe > Wonder > NSMB U > SMB 2 > NSMB2 > Mario Land 2 > NSMB > World > SMB > Mario Land

It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. Things just... should have evolved more since the 90s, like they did with 3D Mario.

@Ralizah This reply made me wonder what games Rosalina does even show up in as a playable character. I've only ever seen her in Mario Kart, though I have to admit I haven't played all that many Nintendo games of the last decade. I've been playing bits of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope over the last few weeks and there I've finally been introduced to Rabbid Rosalina. I was... disappointed to say the least I did not get the real Rosalina as a character, but I guess a version of Rosalina fused with Rabbid DNA will have to do? Eh? At least she puts Rabbid Peach in her place. That little... 😉

@Tjuz She's in the majority of spinoffs. Mario Party. Mario Golf. Mario Tennis. Mario Strikers. Mario Kart. etc.

She's also in Smash Bros. and a playable character in Super Mario 3D World.

Thankfully I ignore almost all of the spinoffs. Don't like sports, and Mario Party is something that requires a very specific environment to be enjoyable.

@Ralizah I suppose I'm just unlucky having bought the Mario Party on Switch that doesn't include her then! Like really, they included Birdo? I have no words to describe how that makes me feel. Never really played any of the sports ones like Golf or Tennis though, so makes sense they would've passed me by. I think the only sports game I've played would've been way back on the DS with Mario & Sonic Olympics. Smash Bros is sadly a franchise I've never really gotten into even though I've been interested. Mostly because anyone I know would not have a great time playing that, haha.

@NeonPizza You can play DOOM Eternal with gyro on PC and Steam Deck, you know.

@NeonPizza PC games on Steam don't need to be updated to support gyro. If you're using a controller that supports gyro, you can configure pretty much any game to support it through Steam, and then customize the settings to your exact liking. That's what I did with RE2R, for example. Made headshotting zombies so much easier.

IMO if this is an important thing to you, you're doing yourself a massive disservice not getting a gaming rig.

@NeonPizza I use the DS4 for my gyro-controller needs. Works well. I've never used a Dualsense.

I'm growing to really like the Series X controller, so I'm pretty stoked they're finally making them gyro-enabled. At last, I'll be able to play all of my PC games with the same controller!

Okay I laughed pretty dang hard at that final part because I can relate to that so much thanks to a number of acquaintances... And I say that as a vegetarian too

Poor you for Daisy fans being so... Rabid and poor Daisy for having fans like that.

I'm surprised she has fans at all really as I don't recall seeing her in any of the Mario games I have played... Just knowing she existed for some reason and was trotted out on occasion exactly like you described.

Also I've known from previous conversations that you didn't like World but... Wow I didn't know you disliked it THAT much. That's heresy among the Mario fanbase isn't it?

Also that Odyssey boss fight sounds awesome.

@HallowMoonshadow lol I'm into fasting and keto and am probably insufferable about it, so, you know, I can't judge too much.

It's not uncommon with fans of niche characters like that. Or niche products. There's a hipster-ish appeal to being really devoted to something that's not popular, and it tends to make it where the fandom gains fervor over time.

Yeah, it is. Not just among the Mario fanbase, either. Most people like to act like the SNES was this absolute goldmine, and I think it's primarily nostalgia tbh. We went with SEGA that gen, and coming back to the SNES years later, some games absolutely deserve their hype (Yoshi's Island and Final Fantasy VI immediately come to mind), but others just seem sort of... mid. Super Mario World is the epitome of mid. The music is dinky and weird. The worlds aren't nearly as creative as in SMB3. There are way fewer power-ups than in SMB3. The boss fights still suck. Ghost Houses were the worst addition ever to a platforming series (yeah, dude, I really wanna spend ten minutes figuring out how to escape a room in a MARIO game). Fewer minigames. The controls are weird and feel much less tight. I 100%'d that entire game, and I just don't understand the love for it.

And, being brutally honest? While I put it ahead of SMB1 and SML in the interest of objectivity, I will happily replay those games over SMW any day. It's just such a disappointment.

Odyssey is filled with cool boss fights tbh. I have a few issues with it (the forced motion gesturing to pull off certain moves can bite me), but the more time goes on, the more I'm impressed with it.

I could get into how Super Mario 64 is also an overrated POS compared to later 3D Marios, which is also controversial, but I at least recognize its place in history. The game quite literally was one of the first to show off the potential of 3D movement from a third-person perspective in a major release. It was practically an 'inventing sliced bread' moment for the industry. And it got SO MUCH right out of the gate. So while I have a love/hate relationship with it, I do deeply respect what its creators accomplished with it.

SMW, though? It did almost nothing better than SMB3, and a lot that was worse. I don't think it'd be half as loved if most of the people who moan about it hadn't grown up with it.

@RogerRoger lol thank you. A Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker 2 would be a day one buy for me. Absolutely loved the original. And yes, as much as I enjoyed this, 3D World still stomps this game. It's crazy to me people were angry about it on the Wii U. Now that people got their sandbox Mario with Odyssey, I've been happy to see folks going back and appreciating it for the wild, creative game it is.

I guess the thing for me is that you already have Nabbit, who literally can't take damage, from what I hear, so I'm not sure why they needed a second layer of accessibility mechanics. Or have the badges available in a separate mode. It's such a bummer that the characters all play the same.

With regard to the level design, it's hard. Like, the levels themselves are nothing special, but literally every one has a Wonder Flower that does something crazy, which kinda makes every level memorable? I dunno. I prefer when the creativity is injected into the stage design itself versus setpieces, personally. Designing levels around setpieces is something I've always criticized Naughty Dog for, and I won't stop just because Nintendo is doing it now with my beloved plumber.

"written a harsh review about a delightful experience" is about as good a summation as any of what I wrote. I stand by everything I said. But... it's Mario. It's fun. And it's beautiful. I enjoyed pretty much every moment with it. So despite walking away being pretty happy with it overall, there's still so much to criticize.

I guess I feel like a 2D Mario game in 2023 shouldn't have some of the shortcomings this one does. Especially the total lack of boss diversity. Is there some unwritten law somewhere that states that 2D Mario games have to have crappy boss fights? Because the people at Nintendo adhere to it like someone is gonna shoot them if they inject an ounce of creativity in those. It's weird. Especially when the 3D games do such a good job with it.

New 2D Mario and Sonic games releasing so close together is very funny in general. I was kinda curious about your reaction to Superstars. Have you not played it yet? You're about as devoted a Sonic aficionado as anyone I've ever met, so I kinda expected you to be all over it.

Thank you for reading, and the delightful commentary!

Ha! Granted over here in the UK we had a more limited lineup with the games but I've said before I had a SNES growing up but I could only play it for like an hour at most before I got bored with it and would then ignore it for days at a time.

Only with the PS1 (and Resident Evil) being the gateway that actually made me interested in gaming. The game I probably played most on the SNES was SMB3 and even then I never got too far into it.

I wonder if my general disinterest in Mario as a whole stems from my days as a Teen with a SNES...

And I'm just realising your stance on SMW is quite similar to my thoughts on FF VII Ral

@HallowMoonshadow I hated the All-Stars versions of the NES trilogy lol. Something about the music and controls on SNES vs. the NES originals just feels bad. Def. try SMB3 on the NES instead one day if you get a chance.

I've always been a gamer, although I will say the PS1 is also when I became more passionate about it. Still a top three console overall for me. I LOVED the early days of the Playstation brand.

lol come on, don't do FFVII like that. SMW does almost nothing to improve itself over its predecessors. FFVII is, at the very least, more of a SM64-style experience: a radical, groundbreaking release that arguably aged poorly in a number of respects, and people who grew up with it will never truly understand the criticisms of people who played it years later, because it's their gaming safe space.

@RogerRoger Yeah, it can be... illuminating going back to older games. Some stuff never took off, but it aged SO well. Like the bizarrely good and prominent voice acting in cult PS1 survival horror JRPG Koudelka, for example, on a console where you got precious little of that. And then other stuff you remember loving can be... so bad. That was my experience with Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I was shocked at how bad it was when I replayed it several years ago.

Building games around certain gameplay features is always how Ninty does things. They said it quite explicitly when talking about Splatoon. It's why they cobbled together the fairly strange setting where you're playing as intelligent squid people in a post-post-apocalypse, since they thought up the movement/battle mechanics first. It's a style of design I tend to think is good in terms of leading to cohesive experiences, but... I dunno. I play Mario for fun levels, not for constant weird gimmicks.

"As a long-term fan of its first-party games, do you feel that Nintendo listen to fan feedback, and incorporate it into their sequels?"

Depends on the property. They've quite clearly taken the reaction to previous games into consideration when designing new Zelda games, for example. Twilight Princess' dark, realistic style was explicitly a response to the outcry over the cartoon stylings of The Wind Waker, for example. And it does strike me that the Zelda game we got immediately after Skyward Sword was Breath of the Wild. Skyward Sword was heavily criticized for how little room there was for player agency or freedom. Whereas BotW... well, I think everyone knows by now that it's one of the most free-form AAA gaming experiences ever.

Monolith Soft is also pretty good about this, I think. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, for example, addressed nearly every issue people had with the previous game.

Broadly, though, I think Nintendo just sort of does what it wants, and players go along with it. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. They're definitely the least crowd pleasing of the big three manufacturers.

Well, I look forward to your eventual Superstars review. I'll probably grab it myself once it drops in price a bit, since it looks more like what I want from the series than recent 3D games OR something like Mania.

Alan Wake remastered review. - A very solid scary action title from Remedy Entertainment

Right so first some background. So Alan Wake remastered is an action game from Remedy Entertainment, the developer behind the first Max Payne games and some other titles such as Quantum break and Control. Now Alan Wake was first released in 2010 as an Xbox 360 exclusive game. As Alan Wake remastered was released in 2021, the title came to the PlayStation platform for the first time which was very good news to me as I did not own a Xbox 360 but was interested in the title back then. Now what do I think about Alan Wake remastered?

I think the game did not disappoint me at least. I did not have very high expectations but I was delightfully surprised by what I found out to be a delightful experience.

I think in general the game reminded me quite a bit about an early and maybe more elaborate version of an entry in the Silent Hill series which is a very good thing in my opinion. I think the game keeps you on your toes most of the time. I in general find it cool that at least I became more and more interested in the characters and the Bright Fall location as the game progressed. I don't think that it is an overstatement to state that Bright Fall becomes almost the main attraction of the game in the end actually.

Maybe the main drawback of the game I would say is that some combat encounters can feel a bit frustrating, mainly because of a lack of ammunition in some places. But it does not bring the game down much in my opinion.

@oliverp I enjoyed what I played of the game back in the 360 days. Currently have Alan Wake, the American Nightmare DLC, and Control in my Steam library, and will probably be exploring those on Steam Deck soon. Like Silent Hill, the setting is definitely a focus of the game, and both tap into a vein of inspiration from the work of Stephen King (although AW definitely moreso than SH).

Thanks for sharing!

Finished up Valkyrie Elysium (PS5) yesterday. It's a bit brief by RPG standards (I finished it in just about 20 hours, & I believe even managed to get the best ending), but that wasn't a big deal because there's not much story to it (most world building & background lore is relegated to environmental pickups called Hollow Blossoms & Verdant Blossoms which give you notes about the state of the world, and the latter particularly are important for getting the best ending. Also, you learn most of the deeper aspects about your party members by completing each of their own side quest lines, though I don't think these effect ending outcome).

Combat is really quite fun & snappy (you can lock on & zip to enemies from quite a distance away), and there's a lot of different ways to get the edge on your enemies (each enemy type is weak to one of the ten or so different weapons you collect, and each also has one of 5 elemental weaknesses, which you can take advantage of with magic attacks. Also, each of your party members has an elemental affinity & summoning them to fight by your side will coat your weapon with their element & amp the effectiveness of your magic attacks of the same type), with bosses usually having different points you can attack & dismember from them. That said, at least on Normal I was able to get by easily enough just by taking advantage of element weaknesses (I usually only took the time to take weapon weakness into account as well during boss fights).

It has a few small issues, like the fact that it doesn't feel buttery smooth 100% of the time (this is a very mid budget cross gen title, so the PS5 shouldn't have any issue at all), but the drops weren't as noticable as they were in Star Ocean: the Divine Force (which I also really enjoyed, BTW), so not a big issue. Also, you can only have so many weapons, magic, items, etc. equipped to their various quick access slots, so in the latter parts of the game I often had to pause at the start of nearly every single combat encounter in order to reassign slots (usually magic, since there are only 4 quick access slots, but 5 element types + healing magic, the latter you'll want to have equipped to a slot at all times since use of healing items negatively affects your mission completion grade if that matters to you. Grades don't effect which endings you have access to though, so it's not a big deal if you don't grade well).

Also not really an issue, but I get the feeling that a 5th party member was planned but cut at some point. There are enemies that are weak to Darkness, and while you do have access to Dark magic to counter them, there is no Dark element party member you can team up with to get the boosts you can get with the other element types. Plus, none of the bosses are weak to Darkness, even though there are a few that aesthetically/thematically SHOULD be (they're usually weak to something random like Lightning, or even weirdly enough Light, which is thematically their own element).

Anyways I picked it up during the PS Store's Black Friday sale for $30 (it also came with a free copy of one of the older Valkyrie Profile games, which I'm not sure if I'll play), and am glad I gave it a go.

@RR529 Nice write-up. I've gone back and forth on Valkyrie Elysium a few times. It sounds fun enough, but also short and apparently narratively unremarkable, so probably something I'll snag when it's $10 or less in a sale.

Would you say combat is more hack and slash, or deliberate like a Souls-style action game?

@Ralizah, definitely more hack & slash. You'll sometimes be facing up to a dozen enemies at a time, occasionally coming in 4 or 5 waves, & the higher your combo count the more souls & gems (upgrade materials) will drop upon an enemy death.

As I mentioned in the main writeup, you can tether & launch yourself towards enemies from pretty far away as well, that way you can quickly get from one to another if need be. This mechanic is also used for some platforming in the level design (though only the first region, which you visit in chapters 1 & 2, really has the verticality to make it a regular part of the gameplay loop. It's used much more sparingly afterwards, usually just to grab a collectable on the occasional ledge or some such).

Mighty No. 9 for Wii U. The game is a 2D action platformer, and is basically a spiritual successor to Mega Man. The player controls a robot called Beck, who has to defeat the 8 robot masters before defeating the final boss. Each time he defeats a robot master, he'll gain access to that boss's ability.

I was one of the backers of the game back when it was on Kickstarter, but I lost interest before the release, and didn't get around to playing it until now. So, was it any good, or did it make me cry like an anime fan on prom night?

Overall, it wasn't great. The biggest issue with the Wii U version was the performance. It suffers from slowdowns and lagginess, despite it being a 2D game with fairly basic graphics. The game has plenty of precision moments where one wrong move will drop you into a pit or a deadly obstacle, so I died more than a few times due to performance issues. The loading times also felt fairly slow, especially for this kind of game where I'd want to quickly get back into the action when I die. I also had one glitch that caused me to fall down forever, forcing me to have to restart that level from scratch.

In terms of level design, most of the levels are fairly unremarkable, with clunkiness in places. There's a few levels that at least try to mix things up, but even they run into issues. One of these levels is basically a large loop, where you can go either left or right (instead of the standard "go right" levels) and eventually get back to the original position. That should have been a fun level, but a lack of checkpoints along with instadeath traps makes it more frustrating than anything. There's also a couple of levels that require the use of moves that previously weren't needed before that moment (that the player may well have not used yet), with instadeath awaiting if the player messes up.

One aspect where Mighty No. 9 differentiates itself from Mega Man is with its dash ability. When dashing, Beck can move quicker and cross large gaps easier. The dashing goes well with some parts of the game, but there's some places that feel as if it doesn't fully fit in with the level design. The dashing mechanic is also used with the combat. After dealing enough damage to an enemy, it goes into a "weakened" state where the player is supposed to dash into it to finish it off. That can be a bit tedious though, particularly when you accidentally collide with a non-weakened enemy as you're trying to dash into a weakened enemy.

One positive about this game is that the main theme is great. Most of the other tracks are alright, though some of them are fairly forgettable.

So in conclusion, I'd definitely suggest avoiding the Wii U version due to the performance issues. If the performance is any better on other platforms, then expect the game to be a mediocre Mega Man-like game if you do decide to play Mighty No. 9.

@Jimmer-jammer Hey buddy, really fantastic review! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It’s extremely well-written and I appreciated the description and the clear outlay of your concerns with the game (and praise for it too). I’ve played neither AW2 nor the first game and I feel like I more lucidly understand the series and its strengths and shortcomings from your review than from anything else I’ve read about it.

And just in case you worry that your brutal honesty about the game’s undue hype is unfairly turning people away from playing it, I am actually still curious to try the series. Even if they are 7/10 games, there’s plenty to like about them, it seems. There’s plenty of 7’s that I adore and hold dearly in my historical catalog. If anything, your review may have heightened my curiosity even more. The only part that really is a deterrent is the report about the bugs. I don’t want to deal with that. Hopefully they are patched eventually.