Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger Thanks for the help! I think I've understood how to add images. Your instructions were easier to understand than you think. I've watched TheRadBrad's Lost Legacy playthrough on YouTube already, so I may pass on playing that one. Did you take that image yourself in photo mode because it looks great.

@RogerRoger Damn it, I will promise if I want to promise!

Seriously though, not sure why I threw in the promise, but oh well. It will likely be at some point this year though, as like I said earlier, FPS games are good pallet cleansers. The list ahead of it is fairly long though, so who knows when it will be...

Finish my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn
Guardians of the Galaxy
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep
Horizon Forbidden West
Deathloop
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut (2nd playthrough of the game)
Assassin's Creed Valhalla's DLC (never played any of the DLC)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2nd playthrough as well)
Mass Effect 3

I could always squeeze in Killzone Shadow Fall in between something like Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima. Who knows, and kind of who cares right now.

@RogerRoger Ah okay, that's nice. Looking forward to reading your other reviews as well! It's always nice to see how well games have aged after a long time since release. I actually still have one first-party title left to play on my Vita and that's Unit 13 by Zipper Interactive. I did give it a try months ago and found it to be fun albeit a bit too simple for a third-person shooter. It's just too bad that Sony shut down that studio because I would've loved to see more games like this on the Vita from them.

@DominusPlatypus No worries, happy to have helped! Fair enough regarding The Lost Legacy. Thanks to the cinematic nature of the series, I'd guess that watching a playthrough is more of a viable option than with most other games. And thank you, yes, that is my screencap! Thought it was an appropriate image to use as an example, given the topic in hand.

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@KilloWertz Alright, jeez! When we get to late November and you still haven't played Shadow Fall, I'll start relentlessly hounding you about it, whining "But you promised!!" until you boot it up. Happy now?!

Blimey, you've got more than enough to be getting on with this year, though! Best of luck!

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@LtSarge Thank you! Yeah, one of the biggest lessons I've learned posting here is that opinions can and will change over time. So often people (myself included) say things like, "That game is 100% awesome, totally love it, it's perfect in every way!" only to then, when others reply about how awful said game really is, reveal that they played it once when they were eleven. The process of going back, rediscovering older games and then re-evaluating them is really interesting to me (as well as tons of fun).

I very nearly purchased Unit 13 the other day! Heard good things about it, but wondered whether its praise is thanks to the absence of comparative competition. Ended up opting for the Vita port of Need for Speed: Most Wanted instead, as its performance is apparently excellent, and I have a severe lack of driving games in my collection. If you return to Unit 13, please share your thoughts, if possible!

@RogerRoger You never know. It could happen. It would be far from the first time a game gets lost in the shuffle (again in this case) when there's a lot of other games to play. Also, it'd be surprising if something new didn't pop up that gets released that we didn't know about. I also forgot Forspoken, which is a day 1 for me unless it becomes clear it's a turd before it gets released.

Yeah, I do have a lot to play. I definitely won't be bored. It was exciting as I was making the list though knowing how much fun I should have. Thanks, btw.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Platform: GBA
Time to Completion: 24.5 hours (much of this spent chasing optional content; it's probably a 15 - 20 hour game normally)

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap was the final Zelda game developed by Capcom in a collaboration with Nintendo that resulted in Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons on the GBC and the local multiplayer title Four Swords on the GBA, with Mega Man maestro Keiji Inafune stepping in as producer. The game released in 2004 on the GBA just weeks before Nintendo officially launched their now-iconic Nintendo DS handheld (in Europe and Japan; NOA actually delayed the launch of the game into early 2005 to avoid distracting from the launch of their new hardware), and despite enjoying strong reviews, it had a bit of its thunder stolen as a result, much like Metroid: Samus Returns, which launched on the 3DS just a few months after the explosively popular Nintendo Switch. Nevertheless, the game has enjoyed a strong reputation with Nintendo fans over the years, and I've wanted to play it for a long time, and finally had the opportunity to do so!

How does it fare?

The Minish Cap's setup isn't really dissimilar from other 2D Zelda games in the series, although a few elements initially seem quite distinct. We learn at the beginning of the game that the Minish people (known to the Hylians as the Picori, and which are thought by many of your townsfolk to be an ancient myth altogether), gifted a young hero in the past with a sacred weapon known as the Picori Blade and a golden light in order to drive back the "darkness" that was swallowing the world. The Picori Blade was subsequently sealed in a box and stored in Hyrule Castle. A tradition developed that whoever won the swordsmanship content during the annual Picori Festival in Hyrule would be allowed to touch the sacred blade.

When the game starts, you learn that Link, a simple peasant's childhood, is also somehow childhood friends with Zelda, the young princess of Hyrule. In a charming sequence, you visit the Festival with Zelda before attending the sword-touching ritual. The victor of the competition, as it turns out, is the dark sorceror Vaati (a character so obviously evil looking that you have to wonder how incompetent the Hylian king's security truly is), who proceeds to break the Picori Blade and turn Princess Zelda to stone in his assault. You discover that Vaati is searching for the "golden light" that the ancient hero used to vanquish evil, and Link is tasked with setting out on an adventure to restore the broken Picori Blade and save the princess once it's revealed that only children are able to see the Minish.

In a concept reminiscent of modern Nintendo classic Super Mario Odyssey, Link explores the Minish Forest and rescues a sentient hat named Ezlo, who, we discover, has also been cursed by Vaati and agrees to help Link on his quest to restore the Picori Blade. The Minish people, as it turns out, are an ant-sized race who live undetected among Hylians, borrowing their walls, cupboard space, and so on to establish a sort of shadow society throughout Hyrule. Ezlo's magic allows Link to use magic portals throughout Hyrule to physically shrink to Minish proportions, which will prove to be an invaluable tool in their quest.

So, different from normal Zelda games, but also structurally similar, except Vaati replaces Ganondorf, the Picori Blade replaces the Master Sword, and the Light Force (or "golden light") replaces the Triforce. 2D Zelda games were all pretty distinct from one-another leading up to the release of A Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo, where the series forged a now utterly classic formula, tone, and identity that were missing in the series' earliest entries. Post-ALttP, however, all single-player focused Zelda games hued closely to the structure established in that game, and this was especially true of the 2D games that followed it, which largely filtered the design of that classic through the sieve of various transformative gimmicks. In The Minish Cap, that gimmick relates to changing Link's dimensions to solve puzzles in dungeons and especially throughout the overworld of Hyrule.

I have mixed feelings about the way this gimmick is implemented, however. While it's certainly clever how environments are effectively layered on top of one-another (the way you interact with Hyrule Town normally, for example, is wildly different than the way you explore it when Minish-sized), I found the focus on continually returning to magic pedestals to stumble around the same environments in different sizes to be a tad repetitive. I also had an issue with how some of the puzzles as implemented, as several of them require trial-and-error and don't adequately signal to the player what they're supposed to do. Now, this is par for the course for Zelda games, but there were far too many moments in The Minish Cap where I genuinely had to question how people were supposed to get through this game without significant trial and error. And it's not even just the size-changing sections that suffer from this! There is, for example, a moment early in the game where guards won't let you leave Hyrule Town for some reason, why stymies progress. So, what you're supposed to do is going to a particular dojo, learn the sword spin attack, then return to a particular guard who didn't have unique dialogue previously, talk to him again, and then demonstrate the sword spin attack in front of him. Moments like this are dotted throughout the game, and they really break up the flow of the gameplay.

Which is unfortunate, because when the game is good, it's quite good. Several of the puzzles in this game are also quite clever and give the player satisfying "A-ha!" moments when figuring them out. The dungeon design itself in this game is rather excellent for a 2D Zelda, with strong themes, surprisingly multi-layered dungeon design (something I also found enjoyable in the much newer A Link Between Worlds on 3DS), and unique progression mechanics that lean heavily on integrated puzzle design over the 'lock and key' design of ALttP's dungeons. My favorite dungeon, for example, sees the player traveling throughout and opening shutters that stream sunlight into the dungeon to open and close various paths, with the ultimate goal being to shine sunlight onto the dungeon boss who sits frozen in a block of ice in the very first area. It's very cool, and far more reminiscent of the complex puzzle design in the 3D Zelda games.

The other primary gimmick in The Minish Cap are kinstones. These colored rocks are designed to interlock with complimentary pieces, and pretty much everyone in this iteration of Hyrule knows about and collects kinstones. Link will acquire these through a number of means: as random drops, loot from treasure chests, prizes for completing mini-games, etc. If you can do something in the game, chances are there's an opportunity to find a kinstone. Find an NPC with a matching kinstone piece, and you'll unlock stuff throughout the game: new areas (some which are required to beat the game, so it's not REALLY an optional mechanic), new NPCs and shops, treasure chests, rare monsters who will drop better loot, etc.

They replace almost wholesale the traditional side-quests you'll encounter in your average Zelda game. Not all kinstones are created equal, of course: some are much rarer than others, and rarer kinstones, when paired with their complimentary piece, will unlock better rewards. The trouble is that you don't really know who has what until you get close to them, and some NPCs don't even become available for kinstone trading until later in the game, so you'll be constantly visiting with EVERY NPC in this game any time you revisit an area to see if you can match stones with them and unlock anything new.

So, this is already a kind of mindless system, but what makes it worse is that, once you're a fair way into the game, it won't even be worth engaging in most of the time, because most of the stuff you unlock isn't worth going for. Once you unlock some of the optional gear upgrades in the shop, you have no real use for money. You'll be able to collect large amounts of shells through some of these rewards, but shells are common loot drops anyway, and they're only used for a meaningless figure-collecting gacha minigame that is a horrible grind not worth engaging in. Unfortunately, there's just enough worthwhile upgrades and new areas locked behind this system that it's not really worth ignoring.

The Minish Cap is a really attractive GBA title. The upgraded specs over the older GBC are immediately felt, as this game is filled with chunky, detailed, and superbly animated sprite art that really brings the game's world to life compared to Capcom's much more visually basic Oracle duology. Art design-wise, like the NDS Zelda games, it feels like it borrows heavily from The Wind Waker's aesthetic, where everybody is pastel-colored and distinctly child-like in appearance. There's also some impressive Mode 7-like visual effects that give a sort of 3D feel to certain sequences, and effective environments really bring the evocative, Borrowers-esque vibe of the Minish world to life. It's a great technical showpiece for what the GBA was capable of.

The music is your usual Zelda fare: not exceptional, but appropriate at setting the mood and complimenting the action on-screen. I'll link two of my favorite tracks from the game: an atmospheric remix of the Zelda 1 dungeon theme, and a version of Zelda's theme that fits with the tone of this game.

Overall, The Minish Cap was an enjoyable and unique 2D Zelda that, despite some flaws, manages to upstage many of Nintendo's own in-house developed Zelda titles. The plot itself feels a bit undercooked and lacking in an emotional core, and it's a shame that brand new villain Vaati is never given the chance to make more of an impression than he does, but it works for the sort of simplistic adventure narrative this game is going for, and, despite my gripes, the game is a largely delightful experience. Particularly for those who just want a solid 15 - 20 hour dungeon crawler broken up by solid, conceptually-unique puzzles. You probably know what you're getting if you play a 2D Zelda game, and this entry doesn't subvert expectations in any way.

7.5/10

@Ralizah An enjoyable read, as always, and a nice history lesson for somebody like me, who's only ever really regarded the Zelda series in passing. Thanks for sharing!

I'm glad the wait turned out to be worthwhile for you. I'm also glad that the game (mostly) demonstrates the value in occasionally allowing an "outsider" to take a swing at a tentpole I.P. because sure, Nintendo might've been burnt before with those notorious CD-i games, but it's often a healthier and more beneficial decision in the long run. As familiar as some structures may seem, the idea of something other than "Ganondorf is up to his old tricks again!" must be as appealing as you've made it sound.

Thinking back to our recent Shadow of the Colossus discussion, however, I'm sorry to hear that a lot of the game's puzzles weren't just head-scratchers, but entirely devoid of any direction. It's a shame that such moments drag down the other puzzles that you actually enjoyed, and that a better overall balance couldn't be struck. Same with the implementation of the kinstones, as I like the sound of the system on paper, but agree that having to approach and trade with every single NPC across multiple return trips would become extremely tiresome. It's been thought out 90% but lacks that final bit of polish.

Great presentation, though! The screenshots look gorgeous (where'd you get them from?) and the music you've embedded sounds lovely. I might end up tracking down a full playlist on YouTube at some point, as I've been finding myself in the right headspace for GBA tunes a lot recently.

Anyway, despite its flaws, I smiled when I saw the word "delightful" in your conclusion; means you should remember the experience fondly and sometimes, that's all we can ask for!

@RogerRoger Thanks!

Yeah, the CDi games are a bad joke, but the third-party collaborations with other companies have mostly turned out really well (there was also the modern collab on Switch with the developer of Crypt of the Necrodancer, which shocked people at the time; giving a gigantic Japanese developer a swing at Zelda is one thing, but some tiny, no-name Western indie dev?). Nintendo's recent GOTY nominee Metroid Dread was also developed by a third party. Nintendo's own design principles have been so thoroughly celebrated and cooked into the brains of budding developers over the years that there are probably a ton of third-party collabs they haven't explored yet that would turn out well.

Most of the puzzles aren't bad, but classic Zelda games do well when they minimize the amount of time that you spend out of dungeons, and those overworld puzzle sequences really drag the pacing down a lot. The worst was this sequence where you, and I'm not kidding, literally have to hunt down people who never returned books to the library, so that the librarian can store them all back in the bookcase, you can shrink down, climb the bookcase, and visit the Minish sage who lived in a portion of the bookcase that became inaccessible when certain books were checked out.

Of course, these people aren't generally difficult to find, but each one, and there's three or four of them, have their own associated puzzle sequences where you have to find the right place to shrink down, and then follow a particular sequence of paths through town in order to reach their homes.

Like, it's all very clever, but I really just wanted these sequences to be over.

The dungeon puzzles are great, though. Really like those.

Yeah, the kinstone system... I mean, there are certain conveniences that make it a little less irritating. For example, if you walk up to someone, a visual indicator will tell you if they have something to trade or not, so you don't have to, like, talk to EVERYONE ALL THE TIME, but you do have to approach them, and it's still kind of irritating. At least it's not as annoying as the trading sequence in Link's Awakening, but, man, I'd rather just have normal side-quests.

I'm using an emulator set-up on PC that allows me to easily take screenshots. I even set it up so that, when I'm playing with my controller, sound gets piped in through headphones when they're connected. Very tickled with how it turned out. I think I bought the game on the Wii U VC, but I'd rather play it on PC for ease of use and the ability to screenshot. I'll likely do the same with the rest of my home console games: I've already ripped all of my PS2 discs and have set them up in my emulator frontend now. With PCSX2's ability to increase the internal resolution of games played on it, screenshots will look even better.

Full playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66C3A99730C3F3F2

Yep, I'm pretty happy with it, when all is said and done. I ripped on how similar a lot of these games are to ALttP, but I can see why they keep using the template established by that game: it works so well. This is no exception. During my free moments, I couldn't wait to get back to it. I won't say it couldn't have been a much better game, but I'd also by lying if I said it isn't already great entertainment as is.

I've really been drawn back to the GBA lately. Hardware itself was never great (the best way to play GBA games is on an NDS, because the original GBA lacked a backlight, and the SP revision will pain anyone with adult hands, and also lacks a headphone port), but for being one of Ninty's shortest-lived handhelds, it certainly developed a great library.

@Ralizah Indeed; perhaps it's a direct result of the CD-i fiasco that other Nintendo partnerships have been kept on track, to ensure faithful final products that uphold a brand's reputation by sticking to some general design rules. Can't say I blame 'em and hey, the results speak for themselves, but you're right, there are still plenty of partnerships I'd love to see; after all, every brand has some wiggle room.

Good grief, that library puzzle sounds needlessly obtuse. Not least because you'd think the Minish sage would be more accessible with fewer books on the shelf blocking the way, right? Surely the puzzle should've been that Link had lost his library card, so he'd have to run around, encouraging NPCs to check out books on his behalf and clear him a path?! See, and now I'm furious with the logic of the whole damn exercise. That never bodes well. I wouldn't have lasted five seconds playing this game!

The visual indicator for the kinstones sounds like a lifesaver (and timesaver) but you're right, it still doesn't change the fact that you had to bounce between all those NPCs.

Oh blimey, yes, I'm very envious of what that software does to older games, particularly PS2 ones (there's only so much a component cable can do, y'know). You look up some gameplay footage or playthroughs on YouTube and it's almost like these content creators and streamers have been granted exclusive access to a secret, unreleased remaster or something, and then you see "PCSX2" in the description and the penny drops. You're gonna love going through your PS2 backlog and, should you end up writing any reviews about them, I'll look forward to seeing those screenshots!

Thanks for the playlist! Been listening to a bit already, and "14: Inside A Cave" is an early favourite!

And yeah, despite not having many GBA games, I adore each and every one in my collection (even the ones I can't complete)! Been meaning to write about a few recently myself. I've never had the (dis)pleasure of playing on an actual GBA console; only ever had a DS Lite, which makes them look so crisp and clear (probably because it keeps the screen relatively small).

@RogerRoger Nintendo seems to finally be a bit more open to partnerships and collabs for basically the first time since the late 90s/early 00s now. They veered away hard from that and went full protectionist until only a few years ago.

Well, the sage is apparently only accessible if you use certain books to climb up and across the case to his abode. It's silly, and a spot of irritating busywork, but I also kind of appreciate them keeping to the theme. Surely there'd have to be an easier way to get up to him than tracking down four separate checked-out books, though!

Some people use HD texture packs to make their old games look far newer than they actually are, but I'm pretty satisfied with upressing and a spot of anti-aliasing to smooth out the image a bit. Really helps with these old games, and, honestly, they look so much better running on my PC than on my TV on the real hardware. Amusingly enough, back in the day, pre-rendered elements were used to hide the visual deficits in games running on crappy hardware, but now, when emulated, those are the aspects of these games that look the worst, compared to the actual in-engine 3D bits that looks nice when you're increasing the resolution of them.

Yeah, unless you're into hardware modding, you basically can't get a fully satisfying GBA. The closest you can get to that is the AGS-101, which was a revision of the GBA SP that replaced the frontlit screen of the original (which made it pretty dim in darkness, all things considered) with a proper backlit screen, but you still had to deal with the cramped form factor and lack of a headphone jack. The original model is much comfier, but, of course, didn't have a lit screen at all, so you had to play in direct sunlight if you wanted to see anything. The Game Boy Micro was cute and had both a backlit screen and a headphone jack, but it was barely bigger than the cartridges the games came on and had an absurdly tiny screen.

Nintendo really didn't think through those console designs, lol.

@Ralizah Yeah, I don't remember them being particularly open during the GameCube and Wii years. There were some partnerships they chased during the N64, if I recall correctly, and obviously there was that whole third-party push to try and boost the Wii U early on, but they seem to have learned to play well with others recently, as opposed to trying to force others to play well with them.

Oh, that makes more sense, kinda. Maybe. Ish.

I didn't know that, about older games using pre-rendered elements to hide their shortcomings. That's definitely gonna be a nightmare when upscaling on an emulator, for sure. It must be a tricky thing to get right on a game-by-game basis. When you pop a PSone disc into a PS2 or PS3, you're given a smoothing option which apparently combats texture and geometry warping, but I've always thought it makes my games look worse. I'm sure there are others it helps, but I'm just not playing 'em!

Yeah, I always thought the original GameBoy Advance looked really comfortable, whilst its subsequent iterations most certainly did not. I hope that, if they ever release a "GBA Classic" or something, it's the original size and shape, just with a backlit screen. Depending on the games they include with it, I could see myself reaching for my wallet since, as you say, no third party has ever gotten it quite right.

Although I hasten to add, I'm perfectly happy with my DS Lite and original cartridges! Always worth repeating for fate's sake, as I'm dreading the day it finally craps out on me!

Despite marketing claims to be "a home console in your pocket", major multi-platform games always appeared to play it safe on PS Vita. More often than not, the most powerful dedicated handheld ever created found itself sharing a bespoke, downgraded portable version of a blockbuster with its rival, Nintendo's 3DS. Sometimes this was perfectly fine; a unique, well-made companion game could end up enhancing an anticipated release, doubling the available fun at launch (Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate springs to mind) but other times, it felt frustrating to know that, as you poked around sparse environments and chatted to low-poly character models, the hardware you held in your hands was way more capable.

Or was it? Surely, if the Vita was such a powerhouse, it would be easier for developers to just copy the same code over to a cartridge and go for an early lunch, right? And easier means cheaper, too, which would please any big brand publisher looking to capitalise on a lucrative licence. So it begs the question, why didn't the Vita play host to more direct ports of AAA games?

Let's ask Spider-Man. He'll have the answer... or rather the answers, plural.

***

Platform: 3DS, DS, PC, PS3, PS Vita (version played), Xbox360, Wii and Wii U
Release Date: June 2012 (most versions) / November 2013 (PS Vita)

***

Because it was never that easy.

Accompanying the reboot movie of the same name, The Amazing Spider-Man game carpet-bombed every available platform in June 2012. The "main" version was developed by Beenox and featured a return to a sprawling New York City sandbox for Spidey to swing around, after the hero's linear outings Shattered Dimensions (2010) and Edge of Time (2011). Nintendo's consoles were unable to cope with their impressive approximation of the Big Apple, however, so Beenox also cut together a limited slice of the game for the Wii and 3DS. They removed the free-roaming map in its entirety, and simply had Spidey selecting the same indoor story missions from a menu in his apartment.

This isn't what the PS Vita would also receive; instead, it would get the "main" version, complete with all the bells and whistles of its HD home console counterparts. Cool, right?!

At the end of 2012, the Wii U was launched and, a couple months later in early 2013, The Amazing Spider-Man showed up for it, this time in full. All the while, the Vita was kept waiting. Sony's second handheld had been available since late 2011 in Japan, and February 2012 worldwide, so where was Spidey? Well, he finally arrived in November 2013, a date which made him seventeen months late to his own party. In the time it took Beenox (and support studio Mercenary Technology) to get The Amazing Spider-Man working on Vita, an entirely new console had come along and gotten itself a port. Yeesh.

***

Because the hardware couldn't handle it.

When I say that the developers got The Amazing Spider-Man "working" on Vita, I'm being generous. For the most part, during the indoor, linear story missions, the game's performance is passable, if a little underwhelming. Objects in the distance are reduced in resolution, making some of the supposedly spectacular rooms an overly-pixelated disappointment, but some light transitional juddering is easy to overlook, and the action flows well enough. It's when you venture out into NYC that things become increasingly difficult to defend (and remember, the inclusion of this playground is what kept Vita Spidey from sharing with his stunted Nintendo siblings on that initial launch date).

Blatant object and texture pop-in becomes an inescapable part of Spidey's urban crawl, with pedestrians, traffic, park trees and some other significant geometry flickering in and out of existence in a forty-foot bubble around you. Soar up high and featureless grey skyscrapers all start to blur together, whilst the framerate tanks faster than the 103rd Armoured Lightning Division. It feels like you're trying to play a modern PC game on a Windows 95 machine, and your ability to execute precision moves will be hampered as a result.

Having said that, it's still playable, and none of its technical struggles caused me any progression problems, so perhaps Beenox should be applauded for that, at least. When you find yourself saving a victim from muggers in a back alley, and the Vita is no longer rendering anything beyond a few graffiti-covered walls and hoodie-wearing thugs, things stabilise and almost become smooth, but then back up you swing and the pixelated PowerPoint presentation starts all over again. There were also a small handful of amusing glitches which, despite their impact on immersion, I always kinda enjoy. One of the city's numerous bits of busywork tasks Spidey with picking up sick civilians and carrying them to ad-hoc medical centres dotted around the map, but at a certain point all the tents, ambulances and doctors that comprise said centres just stopped loading for me. The objective icons were still there, though, and still worked, resulting in the unfortunate impression of our Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man being rewarded for dumping these poor people in an abandoned car park and leaving them to die alone. That's how you hero in New York!

***

Because too much needed to be cut anyway.

So yeah, the free-roaming map has all of its varied distractions present and correct. There are 700 comic book pages scattered about to collect, which you'll be prompted to snag as you pass by. Your allies will also alert you to points of interest, which include Oscorp Lab infiltrations to unlock new upgrades and abilities, photo journalist assignments, three different flavours of crimes to interrupt and two types of back-and-forth retrieval. It's plenty to be getting on with, just as you'd expect from a game of its ilk.

And yet, despite some whispered claims to the contrary, this isn't the full home console experience; a lot still needed to be cut. A quick comparison of trophy data tells me that, as far as the core game is concerned, I'm missing a pair of boss battles tied to substantial side quests, as well as extra video challenges and races. And then there's the DLC, which had been steadily showing up on other platforms since June 2012 and got itself included on the disc when the Wii U came along. You'd think, after such a long delay, it'd all be part of the Vita version at no extra charge, but alas, think again. No sign of a playable Stan Lee here.

***

Because some design trends just don't work on handheld.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a game of two halves. When you're not trying to keep your sandbox tidy, you're locked into relatively lengthy, linear sections of cinematic stealth-action gameplay. These levels are often divided into sections by checkpoints or quick changes of scenery, but they can still take thirty to forty minutes a piece, especially when bookended by first-person cutscenes packed with exposition. Sometimes, you'll even find yourself leaving a particular building, satisfied with what you've accomplished and ready to roam, only to be pursued by a giant boss which immediately demands your attention.

The thing is, this kind of game design doesn't suit the pace of on-the-go gaming. Whether thanks to a train pulling into your station or a low battery notification, it's never ideal to interrupt a chapter of semi-decent storytelling mid-stride and come back to it hours later. I always play my handheld consoles in short bursts (no matter my actual location or schedule) and therefore found it jarring to keep picking up, putting down and picking up again something which I was supposed to be immersed in for hours at a time.

The irony is that, in spite of the game's atrocious performance when Spidey is out and about, patrolling the mean streets of New York and checking optional objectives off of your to-do list makes for an absolutely ideal handheld gaming activity. You can spend a couple minutes breaking a police deadlock, or waste sixty of 'em rounding up every last detention facility escapee. It's the perfect gameplay template for those who enjoy the flexibility of a portable PlayStation, so I can at least understand why the attempt was made, irrespective of the results. Almost makes me feel sorry for any Spider-Man fan stuck on 3DS without a virtual city to carry around a real one (and yeah, I say "almost" because, thanks to that specific omission, their version of the game probably ran way better).

***

Because it was a waste of gimmicks.

Yeah, I know I complained when Killzone: Mercenary managed to shoehorn every single one of the Vita's party pieces into its campaign, but I also kinda respected it for doing so; being an exclusive, it had to be a showcase for the hardware, after all. The problem with porting a game from elsewhere is that there's a danger any sudden implementation of the touchscreen, camera or gyroscopic sensor is gonna seem obligatory at best, and could be annoyingly obtrusive at worst. Imagine my shock, then, when I realised that The Amazing Spider-Man was entirely devoid of such gimmickry... well, not quite entirely, but it might as well be. During the photo journalist assignments, you can aim Spidey's camera with motion controls, and focus its lens by pinching the front screen, but additional button inputs are readily available, too.

This might seem like a point in the game's favour, and I'd argue that it is, but I'd also argue that it betrays the Vita's awkward place in gaming history. Without spending extra to develop a bespoke Vita version, what unique selling point did the console offer these multi-platform titles? If you could replicate most of a PS3 game, and more people had a PS3 already anyway, why bother with both? Would customers really double-dip for the convenience of portability? From a business perspective, it's kinda doubtful, and it's not like the Vita's sales numbers were encouraging penny-pinching publishers to take the risk regardless.

***

All of the above was a lot of conjecture on my part; none of it should be taken as a serious, de facto answer as to why more AAA games weren't ported to PS Vita wholesale. We all know better than to expect licence-milking industry executives to be bothered by such trivial questions as "Is the game any good?" and "Does it run well?" but I found it an interesting thought experiment to write up after having played such a rare case study, and I hope you've found it equally interesting to read.

The biggest problem is that, on balance, I reckon The Amazing Spider-Man is a good game. It separates itself from the movie by telling a conjectural follow-up story and, in a surprising example of licencing limitations actually being of benefit, isn't constrained by the expectation to authentically replicate any famous faces or voices; instead, Beenox simply adopts some of the aesthetics and backstory to put their own self-contained spin on a sandbox Spidey adventure. As much as I kinda liked The Amazing Spider-Man movie, I forgot all about it when playing this game, swinging around as giant killer robots rampaged through Central Park and mutated monsters mucked about in the sewers. The stealth mechanics are snappy, brawls use a competent copy of Rocksteady's counter-based combat system from Batman: Arkham Asylum, and some of the boss battles were appropriately epic.

And honestly, I don't even regret getting it for my Vita, as opposed to tracking down the (considerably cheaper) PS3 version. Not least because I can now caution any curious webhead who happens to be crawling past in preparation for a trip down memory lane.

Get the game. Enjoy the game.

Just do so on one of the platforms it was originally designed for.

@RogerRoger I like the format of this piece! It creates a unique rhythm that I liked, and engages the curiosity of the reader.

The Vita was a curious beast. Exclusives optimized for the hardware like Gravity Rush were genuinely impressive at the time, showing off visuals and game design that simply weren't possible on the 3DS. On the other hand, ports like this just sort of highlighted the gulf in specs between it and home consoles at the time. It sort of shares that in common with the Switch, where you'll go back and forth between: "I can't believe a game that looks like this is running on a portable console!" and "I... can't believe they tried to get a game that looks like this running on a portable console."

I take your point about it not being a particularly good game to play in short bursts, but I guess I just never really thought of my handhelds as systems to play in short bursts between other activities. I mean, they can be, and that's a massive part of the appeal, but, for me, the allure was always more about being liberated from the tether of a television. Being able to take a game anywhere with me makes it more intimate.

The actual open-worlding sounds... painful. It would probably have been better off as a higher-resolution, higher fps take on the 3DS version. Most games that released on both platforms were usually far better experiences on Vita (despite my open preference for Nintendo's handheld, there were a few games where I looked at the 3DS version of a game and thought: "Nah, I'm pulling out the Vita for this one").

Kudos for sticking with it, though! There is, perhaps, something to be gained from experiencing a wildly technically inferior version of a game that everyone else avoids. There can't have been very many people who played through the late Vita port of a licensed Spider-Man game. You're one of the few humans in this world who gets to carry the hidden knowledge of what such an experience is like firsthand: take pride in that unique suffering!

...

Great piece, as always. And the screenshots look... well, very illuminating. How'd you capture them?

@mookysam Thank you! Although thinking about it, my cautionary tale would only be of real use to the most determined of webheads, as the game (along with all of the Spidey games published by They Who Must Not Be Named) got de-listed a while back, and is difficult to track down as a result.

Yeah, it was the LEGO games I was primarily thinking about back there. Like I said, those weren't too much of a problem for me, because it meant I got two different versions of something I was looking forward to, and could play them back-to-back without fear of identical repetition. It's still odd, though, because the Vita was supposed to be capable of so much more, and it shines a light on some of Sony's marketing hype for the machine when you realise that, actually, it fared better when presenting lesser versions of a game well, rather than greater versions of a game badly. I do love my Vita, always have, but you're absolutely right about it being an "awkward, undefined midway point" of a console, bless its heart.

And yes, I think you've just identified one of the major reasons why the Vita wasn't more successful; its third-party library was either safe and underwhelming, or pushing the console's capability beyond its comfort zone, and neither approach sold well enough to justify continued investment and refinement. I mean, there are some brands that transcend quality and top the charts regardless, and Spidey's certainly one of 'em, so for him to arrive so late and fall so flat says it all, really.

Thanks again for reading, and glad you enjoyed some of my savage honesty!

***

@Ralizah My thanks! Yeah, I've reviewed a couple of open-world Spidey games before, and wanted to take a different approach this time, so I'm grateful for the feedback. Parts of it ended up being an analysis of the Vita itself more than anything, which I enjoyed thinking about.

Gravity Rush is on my "must replay this year" list because, whilst I remember really enjoying the experience, its details are hazy. It's gonna be interesting comparing the different approaches to making a game succeed on the Vita, rather than just trying to make it work. And yes, I've seen a lot of discussion drawing parallels between the Vita and the Switch (just before posting, I went back and edited one of the opening lines in the above, because I initially called the Vita "the most powerful handheld ever created" without acknowledging how the Switch has blurred the distinction in recent years). I guess The Amazing Spider-Man is kinda like the Vita's answer to The Witcher III on Switch, which I recall you reviewed a while back, astounded that the game even runs on the hardware at all, let alone how well (or badly).

That's a nice way of looking at handheld gaming. Honestly, despite it being true that I only play them in shorter bursts, I was trying to be a bit objective with that point, because I'm super-precious about my handhelds, and they never leave my apartment. I still think that it would've been better had Beenox broken up the long, linear story missions into smaller chunks, simply because it'd then be a matter of player choice to complete one, two or seven of 'em in a single session.

And, er... "pride", yes, let's use that word!

It's the flaw in my curiosity about such things; when I was reading about the game and realised it'd been ported to Vita, I was all, "How would that work? Would it even be playable?!" and watching clips on YouTube didn't answer every question I had, so in that instant it became inevitable that I'd end up playing it for myself someday. I've learned to surrender to such moments!

The Vita has a hidden screenshot function. You press the PS button and Start at the same time, and it takes a snapshot of the screen, saving it to the console's Photo app. There are then multiple ways to get them off the flippin' thing, and all of 'em are needlessly complicated, but it's doable. Let's just say that my PC's Vita screenshot folder will never be as extensive as my PS4 or PS5 ones!

@RogerRoger When the device a game is on ends up heavily influencing the experience, for better or worse, you kinda can't treat the software as if it's abstracted from the machine it's running on. Anyway, I'm a big fan of talking about games in terms of their historical context, which includes the devices that host them.

Haha, I saw that 'most powerful dedicated handheld line' and couldn't resist thinking: "Well, axtually, the Switch Lite is a dedicated handheld and is also way more powerful," but I get where you're coming from. A dedicated handheld that was only a dedicated handheld and not a budget revision of a device marketed as a home console by Nintendo. But yeah, one can recall the other easily, as both carried the flame of hosting home console-esque experiences on a handheld device.

Given it's Gravity Rush 2's fifth anniversary, I'm actually mulling over playing both games again on my PS4. I never fully beat Gravity Rush Remastered, and I'd love to get the platinum trophy for both games. As much as I love the series, I always felt a little betrayed that Sony moved development of the sequel over to the PS4, but now I'm just sad that it's gone and we'll never get another Japan Studio game again.

Oh, totally, I'm a big fan of 'portable-friendly' game design, even on home consoles. Certainly on any device that can be used away from the house, as some people really do use it as a way to pass the time on buses and such. Personally, I'm too self-conscious to play video games in public, but I've also always been a person who's borderline neurotic on that front with everything. It's become a running joke in my household that I must be 'hiding something' because I close my laptop when anyone's walking nearby and practically break out in a cold sweat any time someone asks to use a device of mine.

I've become a bigger fan over the years of playing games on... shall we say... sub-optimal platforms at times. Partially as a check on any tendency toward performance snobbery that might possess me, and also out of pure curiosity. Everyone knows Resident Evil 2 ran fine on a PS1, but how much more fascinating is it that the game was ported to the N64, despite the vastly different storage capabilities of that system's cartridges? Ditto with Witcher 3 on Switch, and Spider-Man and Resident Evil Revelations 2 on Vita.

I feel so stupid for asking. I literally have thousands of screenshots in my Vita's image gallery. I guess, since I just never bother exporting those pictures to my PC these days, I kinda... didn't think about the fact that you could do that.

@Ralizah That's a good point. I also noticed that we have very few Vita reviews in this topic, so I figured it'd be helpful to talk a little about the console in conjunction with its games. I don't feel the need to give context about the PS4's capabilities, for example, because it's kind of a given that everybody here has one and knows what it can (and can't) do!

Darn, I forgot about the Switch Lite! [hangs head in shame] Although...

...thank you for effectively demonstrating that there's a limit to how specific you can make a description before it becomes too unwieldy!

I very nearly grabbed Gravity Rush Remastered instead of planning to replay the Vita original, but my desire to spend more time with my Vita this year stopped me (and yes, it stings that A: the Vita lost a great exclusive and then B: we lost Japan Studio entirely). That being said, if I have enough fun, I can totally see myself grabbing Gravity Rush 2 at some point, as I've never played it before. If you do end up giving them a second shot, I'd love to read your thoughts. No pressure, mind!

Same. I think I tried playing my PSP on a train once, but I got really self-conscious and uncomfortable, so didn't make much progress on... oh, it must've been a Star Wars game (because hi, I'm RogerRoger). I also don't like sharing my tech either, although I'm at a slight advantage given that I live alone. Nobody can see me fastidiously clean my Vita after every single session, even if I was only using it for ten minutes and didn't have to touch the screen. As a fan of cinematic games, I do appreciate longer sequences that hold my attention, but do agree that it's better when things can be broken up into smaller chunks, without shattering immersion. Life always seems to roll on around us regardless!

For me, there's an element of "Well, I've got all these consoles, so I might as well use 'em!" alongside that same curiosity you describe. With regards these third-party, multi-platform licenced games, I try to avoid duplicates of truly identical titles; it's one thing if you've got a PS3 game and its DS counterpart, because they're gonna have to be totally different gameplay experiences, but when you go from a late-gen PS2 game to its slightly-fuzzier-but-otherwise-identical PSP port I find that there's less to be learned, no matter how impressive some of the technicalities might be. But yeah, the bigger the difference in hardware, the more interesting some versions become. I had no idea Resident Evil 2 made it to the N64, for example! How'd they manage that?! Now I'm gonna have to look up a comparison on YouTube!

Don't feel stupid; because it's a hidden function, I always forget that the Vita can take screenshots, too. You can't export them to a PC any more, either, not unless you've still got the old media management proprietary program installed, and even then it might not work. I had to connect my Vita to my PS3, copy them over, and then use a USB to get them from my PS3 to my PC. Phew!

Mass Effect Andromeda (PS4) - Review

The Mass Effect series is a Sci-Fi action RPG about exploring planets, befriending alien races and saving the universe from destruction. It’s an extremely beloved franchise, mainly thanks to its trilogy of titles where your choices matter and they carry over to the next game as well as a vast cast of memorable characters. However, today we’ll be looking at the series’ latest entry, Andromeda, which wasn’t received particularly well when it launched in 2017 due to many technical issues. The question is then, how well does this game hold up years later?

Unlike the previous games, this one doesn’t take place in the Milky Way galaxy, but instead in Andromeda. The alien species of Milky Way have joined together to create a project called “The Initiative” where the purpose is to explore a new galaxy. You’ll be playing as Ryder, either male or female, who later on becomes the Pathfinder. The goal of the Pathfinder is to find new planets for The Initiative residents to settle on. When you arrive to Andromeda, you’ll learn that the trip has taken over 600 years, the majority of the residents are still in cryo-sleep and you’ve encountered a hostile alien race. On top of this, you’re forced to land on a planet which you thought was habitable based on prior research but apparently is not. Your job then is to find a way to fight back against this new alien species and restore the previously thought habitable planets to a better state.

The reasons behind leaving isn’t actually explained in the main story but instead through unlocking fragments of your AI companion’s memories as you progress through the game. As a Pathfinder, you have an AI implanted in you in order to perform tasks that a regular human isn’t able to do. That’s how you’ll be able to restore the planets as they all contain so called Remnant technology that is able to terraform the planets and the only way to access the technology is through your AI companion.

Throughout your journey, you’ll meet several characters that will join your team. To begin with, you have two human teammates, Liam and Cora, that were with you as you arrived in Andromeda. Later on you’ll befriend Vetra; a turian, Drack; a krogan, Peebee; an asari, and lastly Jaal; who’s an angara, one of the new alien species that you’ve discovered in this galaxy. Contrary to the previous games, you have a much smaller crew overall and besides your teammates, there are also Kallo and Suvi; the pilots, Gil; the engineer and Lexi; the doctor. Because of how small your crew is this time around, it’s been very easy forming strong bonds with them and at the end of the game, you’ve basically become a family.

This is the one of the key improvements from the main trilogy that makes Andromeda stand out to me. The games used to constantly introduce new characters and that made it hard for me to become attached to everyone. Andromeda focuses on fewer characters and ultimately the results turns out much better. Add the fact that you can spend over 60 hours playing this game, doing epic story missions, memorable loyalty missions with your teammates and general side quests that genuinely felt meaningful, and you’ll be spending a lot of time getting to know your friends.

This brings me to my next point, which is that this game does an outstanding job of feeding information to you about your teammates in a natural way. This mostly happens through chatter, which occurs when you’re out exploring planets in your Nomad vehicle or on your spaceship the Tempest. Your teammates will constantly have new things to talk about and as you pair them with other members, they will have different things to say. This aspect truly brings the game to life and makes for a more immersive experience.

Speaking of planets, another thing this game did a better job at compared to its predecessors was making huge open worlds that were more detailed and filled with meaningful things to do. That’s always been something the previous titles haven’t been able to achieve. After all, the series is all about exploring a galaxy with different planets, which gives you the expectation that there will be massive areas to explore. They tried doing this in the first Mass Effect, but the planets were mostly empty. That’s not the case at all in Andromeda and I can say that I absolutely loved exploring the open worlds in this game. As you progress through the story, you’ll discover planets with different biomes such as desert, ice, jungle and bog. You’ll be able to help out the inhabitants with various missions, clear our enemy bases, and ultimately restore the planets to a better state.

One thing that’s impressed me is the game design. There are five primary planets that you’ll explore and at first you’d think they’ll all be massive in scope. The first two planets are, but then you get to the third one and you realise that it’s very small. So small that you don’t need a vehicle to traverse it, you can just walk around. That’s something that I appreciate as it’s such a breath of fresh air compared to sticking to a strict formula. Because the last two planets are also fairly large in size, so I was very glad to see that they made the third one small. And I’ve also noticed other great aspects of the game design. Throughout the game, you’ll be restoring the planet by connecting Remnant structures. At first you do this by solving Sudoku puzzles (which I absolutely adore!) but later on you don’t need to do anything other than activate them with the push of a button. In the final phase of restoring the planet, you’ll gain access to a Vault and here you’ll have to do different things each time in order to clear them. Again, I just like the fact that the game doesn’t follow a strict level of design of forcing you to do the same thing over and over. It kept my playthrough interesting from beginning to end.

Subsequently, I just loved being a Pathfinder in this game compared to a Spectre in the previous ones. Each time you build a new outpost on a planet or rescuing an alien species, you'll be praised by your leaders. Because the work you're doing is actually meaningful: you're contributing to the survival of your people. That's why I find the missions and the side quests in this game to be more satisfying in general compared to the main trilogy. Getting constant praise in this game for all the work I've done as a Pathfinder just motivates me even more to keep playing.

Moving on to the gameplay side of things, once again, it’s a vast improvement compared to the predecessors. The series has always been a cover-based shooter with limited movement and that’s something that I didn’t really like. However, Andromeda has added the ability to jump, hover and dash, and those three things alone make the gameplay so much better. You’re allowed to move around more freely, which makes battles more dynamic. On top of this, you’re also able to hotkey three weapon abilities to the shoulder buttons. Since I decided to focus on a biotics build, I had powers such as singularity, shockwave and charge mapped and all of this combined made for some truly exhilarating battles, which I will demonstrate below:

Another thing worth mentioning is that this time around, you don’t choose a class from the beginning and stick with it until the end of the game, like in the previous titles. Instead, you have access to all of them at any time and depending on which areas you decide to spend your skill points on, you’ll increase the rank of that class, granting you more powerful stats. So as I previously mentioned, I went with a biotics build, which enabled me to level up the Adept class that specialises in biotics. At any time though I can switch to another one, for example Vanguard, and use it instead. In other words, you can focus on multiple classes and there’s even an option to switch classes during battles. This is a huge change for the series’ formula and a most welcoming one for people who want more choices in terms of combat styles.

In terms of music, the series really isn’t known for its soundtrack as there are barely any standout tracks to begin with. The only song I remember from the trilogy is the “Uncharted Worlds” theme that you hear when navigating the systems. There is a theme like it in Andromeda, but I didn’t find it as memorable.

One thing I’d like to close off with before the verdict is this game’s messaging. The most important thing this game teaches you throughout your playthrough is to respect and befriend all kinds of species (the real world analogy being the different human ethnicities). This was true of the original trilogy as well, but the fact that you arrive to a new galaxy together with other species and then discover a new species that’s already cautious of other ones due to a poor encounter with a previous one emphasises this aspect even more. As a human, we’re helping out other species we arrived with because we’re in this together, so it doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are. If an asari and a human are in danger, I wouldn’t simply choose to save the human just because I’m a human. Everyone is treated as an equal. And then showing the new species that not all species are bad shows that we can form strong bonds despite all the bad stuff that’s happened. I just love this game’s messaging, it teaches you this so naturally that it absolutely doesn’t feel forced and because you’re spending so much time with the game, it just grows on you. I feel like if there ever was a cure for racism, this game would be it. I’d just let those kinds of people play this game and see how their view of the world changes.

So as an overall package, I found Mass Effect Andromeda to be the best game in the series. While I didn’t like the story as much as in Mass Effect 3, the game delivers much improved character interactions, more open worlds with lots of things to do in them and a massively improved gameplay system. It took me 66 hours to complete the story and the majority of the side quests. You could easily finish it in 20-30 hours, but I highly encourage you to spend more time with it. Because unlike the previous Mass Effect games, which would only take around 30 hours to complete, you can spend more time getting to know the characters better and the world around you in general. That has always been something I’ve wanted to do more of in the series, so I’m glad that Andromeda is much longer than its predecessors. Some games just get more appealing to play if they take a long time to complete (Persona, Trails of Cold Steel, Mass Effect and so on).

To round off this review, I’d like to show a clip of one of my favourite moments in this game and hopefully you’ll get a better idea for why I love it so much.

@LtSarge Nice review and appropriate since the EA Play is on sale, and I was considering subscribing to 3 months with the thought of trying to get through the Mass Effect trilogy again and maybe even finally try Andromeda.

@LtSarge Outstanding write-up and screenshots! This is definitely one I've heard a few people say wasn't as bad as its reputation suggested for years now, so it's definitely going on my to-play list after I play through the remastered trilogy.

I guess the flipside of that is that ME Andromeda has been perpetually cheap for years, so finding a copy to add to my PS4 backlog shouldn't be difficult at all.

I'm glad to hear they spruced up the planet exploration with some variety. While the planet exploration was a cool idea in ME1, you're right that it always landed you on the same patch of samey wasteland with an enemy encampment to explore. They should have improved on this system in ME2, but instead they opted for the lame minigame where you scanned planets to collect resources.

Will absolutely be adding this to my eventual to-play list for when I clear through the remastered trilogy.

@LtSarge Good review! Just the video of the bar fight alone makes me want to replay it!