Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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Great thoughts on Paper Mario, @Ralizah! Once I'm done with Seven Sirens it'll likely be my next Switch game. Anyhow...

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4) - The first part in a massive remake of the JRPG classic, and my first time with it in any form.

Time to get to work.

Gameplay

• Taking on more of a level based approach, most chapters are pretty linear affairs with pretty rigid progression outside of the occasional chest or other treasure right off the beaten path (it's generally more segmented off than even FFX, though this wasn't a problem for me. In fact X is my favorite FF, and this is my favorite since). That said, every few chapters take place inside a town, and these are a bit more open in that they always feature optional sidequests to complete, and sometimes even an arena, giving you opportunities to get useful gear or do some level grinding if you think you need it (though I never felt the need to grind myself, I did complete all sidequests I ran across, and did each available arena fight once).
• Also in towns (& in a few other areas) you'll run into Chadley, a character who will reward you with unique materia for completing certain sets of goals during battle, and new summons by defeating them in boss fights.
• Combat is mostly real time, with you being able to freely run around, dodge attacks, and use basic attacks at will, though each character has an "Active Time Battle" gauge that builds over time (faster if you're dealing damage), and only once one of it's bars are full can they use an item, magic, special ability, or summon (by opening the command menu the action slows to a crawl, giving you a taste of the title's turn based roots), meaning you can't spam items/magic willy nilly. Summons are powerful, but can only be called upon during boss fights & a few other large battles.
• Even regular battles can be quite engaging, but I must give special props to the boss fights, which are generally fantastic. A couple of the later ones I sort of just powered through with frequent healing as there was so much going on, such as the final boss, but they're generally really engaging fights that are fun to figure out.
• In addition to leveling, you can power up by upgrading your weapons & using materia. While different weapons have different strengths, you can upgrade them as you go along, so sticking with your starting weapons is entirely doable (it's recommended you switch out from time to time though, as using new weapons is how you learn new special attacks).
• As for materia, they are items that slot into your equipment that let you use magic, can increase your stats, or make available some other ability/buff, which you can only use while it is equipped (while earlier weapons tend to have less slots for materia, they obtain more via upgrading). You can buy materia from shops/vending machines, but I got enough through just playing (some are found along the main path, just off the beaten path, or by completing sidequests) that I rarely did this.
  
  
  Didn't take any battle screens, so here's a couple random pics.
• The fighting is usually broken up by light puzzling (such as looking for a switch to unlock a door, or moving containers with a giant robotic hand) which provides a nice breather. I also enjoyed the occasional bike segment. There are a few other minigames along the way as well, such as the surprisingly fun darts game in "Seventh Heaven" (disappointed that you couldn't play the pinball tables, though).

Audio/Visual

• The game's large budget is very apparent as this is one of the most graphically impressive JRPGs I've ever played. There are times when you'll run across the random element that looks incomplete, but for the most part it looks great, especially at night. Some of the set-pieces, particularly in the final chapter, were the most I've been wowed by a game's visuals in quite awhile.
  
  
  Some impressive night lighting...
  
  ...with the occasional incomplete textured item.
• Aesthetically I think it looks great. Though the main cast still has a few anime-ish elements to their designs that make them stand out amongst the NPCs that largely play straight, making them any more realistic wouldn't feel right and the balance they struck I think is the right decision.
• While some of the locations aren't that interesting (such as the sewers), in general the more contemporary/steampunk/sci-fi setting is still pretty fresh for a JRPG, and I think infinitely more interesting than the standard fantasy worlds of classic FF. I really liked some of the areas too (such as Wall Market, the Train Graveyard, the Shinra Building, and the trippy final chapter).
• The music quality is top notch & I loved the fact that you could collect music discs (however the jukeboxes were few & far between, without much range).

Story

• It has an interesting set-up for a JRPG given the setting, and while it seemingly starts out pretty grounded (considering), naturally things start to get out there by the end. A lot of gripping story threads are begun, but as this is just the start of a larger tale, most mysteries are left unresolved, a few even introduced in the game's final moments.
• I'm conflicted on Cloud himself, as he's not particularly interesting character personality wise. He clearly has a mysterious past that's responsible for his stoic personality that I'm itching to learn more about, and he does some badass things, but as a human he's only beginning to open up by the end.
• Tifa & Aerith are nice enough (with Aerith having an interesting backstory of her own & Tifa is just nice to have around), but it's Barrett that absolutely steals the show in terms of personality (and it's brilliant how he loudly sings the classic Final Fantasy fanfare theme upon some victories, keeping it alive in an organic way). Red XIII is pretty cool too, though we don't get much of him here.
• While I don't dislike it, I'm not a huge fan of the "choose your own Waifu" approach to the romance elements in the game. I much prefer a strong central romance in a game if it's to feature one (such as Tidas & Yuna, keeping to FF), and while Cloud's choices may be whittled down if it goes on to adhere to the original story pretty tightly, there's some rumblings that it may go on to change things up.
  
  Make up your mind, my man.

Conclusion

• With satisfying combat, some of the best boss fights I've experienced in recent memory, wonderful worldbuilding, an interesting story setup, and high polish all around, this has quickly become one of my favorite FF titles, and is currently in the running for the best game I've played this year.
  
  The sun sets on an epic adventure (screenshot not actually from the game's final moments).

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@RogerRoger 😂 Great review of that Bond game, Rog. I really need to play one, at some point, someday. No idea where I'd start. What would be the ideal James Bond game for a newbie to this surprisingly diverse world?

The elevator thing is funny, and reminds me of games where characters can survive all sorts of ridiculous stuff, but die the moment they encounter in a small decline in their environment. I do have to thank you for the amazing mental image of Pierce Brosnan jumping up and down in a state of sweaty terror on a moving elevator because he's afraid he'll die if he doesn't. I'll admit: I'd have called it quits the moment I encountered that particular... ah... design choice. You're truly a dedicated connoisseur of interactive James Bond experiences.

Although, to be fair, if this were Connery, I'm not sure he'd mind a quick tussle in the back seat of a car as a reward for completing a difficult mission, although it does make it less "suave super spy" and more "horny teenager terrified of trying to sneak his girlfriend into the house."

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, Rock Man sounds rather like someone who would shoot boulders at people, doesn't he? The name was an awkward attempt at sounding cool with an English name: it's actually a reference to the phrase "rock and roll," which is why his sister is named "Roll." That latter name was never changed in English. I'm pretty sure I remember reading some Capcom exec changed the English title (and, resultantly, character name) because he realized it would sound stupid in English speaking countries.

And yeah, Capcom did an amazing job scouting voice talent back in the PS1 days.

RE: Origami King, looking back at the stream footage, it seems like they completely removed setpieces and narrative crucial to the build-up of that one colored pencil boss. Otherwise, all I can say about it is that the game is significantly more fun to actually play than it is to watch someone play.

I can't complain about the difficulty, either. The last boss I fought wiped me a couple of times before I figured out a strategy to take it down, and I still maintain that the ring battles are more interesting than 'Pressing A to attack.' I've also died more in TOK than I did in the entirety of TTYD, and they're not what I'd call unfair deaths.

And yeah, in terms of both the song and the atmosphere created by the animation, I get a distinct Disney vibe from Wind's Nocturne as well. I love the Lunar games. Once I'm through with this next set of JRPGs, but before the SMT-fest that's coming next year, I need to revisit the first two games.

@RR529 Great FF7R review! I'm glad there's finally one up. I was planning to write one, but no review of mine would ever measure up to the fullness of my feelings about this game, so I'm glad someone else took up the challenge. I've felt for a while like the art of the boss fight is an important one in JRPGs, and that's probably the best aspect of FF7R: the boss fights are bombastic, challenging spectacles that blow anything comparable in the original out of the water.

And yeah, the presentation is interesting. Most of it feels super premium and SO visually rich, but then you get something like a background that could have been ripped from a PS1 game, or Aerith's really terrible looking flowers.

It's fine, though. The parts of the game that are important look amazing.

RE: the "choose your own waifu approach," I thought it was interesting how they kind of left the romantic elements in the player's hands this time around, which can lead to some radically different cutscenes. It makes me wonder how much more involved The Gold Saucer will be in the Remake, considering that was the only section of the game that seemed to take your interactions with the characters into consideration.

I will say this, though: Squeenix could have pitted them against each-other, but they wisely chose to emphasize the growing friendship between Tifa and Aerith this time around, and I'm glad they did. There's some friendly competition over Cloud in the game, but it never... turns ugly, which seems to be the case in so much media with more than one romantic interest.

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DOOM 3: BFG Edition

Platform: PC

Playtime: 15 or so hours

DOOM 3 was released in 2004 by id Software for the PC. A reboot of sorts, the game treads similar ground in terms of subject matter to previous DOOM releases, but distinguished itself with its dramatically improved id Tech 4-powered graphics and notable changes to pacing, level design, and overall atmosphere. The version of the game I recently played, however, was the 2012 BFG Edition for PC, a sort of HD remaster of the original that also makes certain controversial changes to the original game. I did previously play the original DOOM 3 when it was still a new and highly advanced PC game, so I also want to briefly compare aspects of the two releases.

In the first of its many innovations, DOOM 3 (as well as the BFG Edition) is something of a story-driven experience. You, of course, fill in the shoes of the nameless Doomguy, a random space marine who discovers that he's very, very good at killing demons. As with previous games, you're a random nobody, but there's actually a supporting cast of characters you'll kind of come to know over the course of your adventure. Three personalities stand out: Dr. Malcolm Betruger, the primary antagonist of the game, who is corrupted by demonic influences after being transported into hell during one of his teleporter experiments, and who masterminds the invasion of the UAC facility on Mars by the hordes of hell; Thomas Kelly, your commanding officer, who works in tandem with Doomguy to try and curb the demonic invasion; and Counselor Swann, who was sent to investigate the curious goings-on and the UAC base and eventually find himself indirectly butting heads with Sergeant Kelly.

And what curious goings-on there are. Previous games in the series never really give the player a sense of what happened in the build-up to the apocalyptic events that take place, but the same absolutely cannot be said for DOOM 3. In a heavily System Shock 2-inspired change of course (like Bioshock, the entire game feels like it was heavily influenced by the design of that legendary horror-scifi-fps-rpg), DOOM 3 includes a massive amount of narrative and worldbuilding via the use of audio logs found around the base. The scientists and marines locked inside of this base have noticed weird and alarming goings-on leading to the invasion that starts off the game for months, and, lacking any other outlet, they start spilling their guts into their audio diaries. To be honest, I always find the use of audio logs to be a lazy and inorganic method of worldbuilding and storytelling, but the technique wasn't overdone in 2004, and I can buy that people trapped in a stressful environment like this might record their feelings of apprehension over various events happening around them.

But, uh, DOOM games have always been about the gameplay. Fast, fierce games with marines and demons and hell; the series has always had a very METAL identity. And now players were being given a sequel where they were being asked to slow down and appreciate the ambiance. Even as a person who loves story-heavy RPGs, I found myself quickly growing impatient with the countless audio logs where a spooked scientist would ramble about weird behavior among the higher-ups and spooky sounds at night for a minute at a time, and even moreso with the logs where some technician would start discussing some highly technical aspect of the UAC facility's operation. You don't actually have to stop when you're listening to one of the logs, of course, but good luck trying to concentrate on Dr. Spooks-a-Lot whimper about his personal problems with you walk five steps away from the location you retrieved the log and get ambushed by demons. Perhaps this was the intended playstyle. It would explain why the game feels like it almost completely lacks music (even the ambient moans and screeches of DOOM 64). No time for moody or exciting tunes as you're listening to logs, or listening to NPCs talk, or listening to some sort of automated display. There's a LOT of listening in this game.

Which, to be fair, ties into the original design philosophy of this game. DOOM 3, much to the chagrin of long-time fans, has always been more of a slow paced game. I mean, it's still a shooter (you tote around a rocket launcher, for god's sake), but DOOM 3 has always been a game designed to get you to stop, or at least slow down momentarily. Which is where the first conflict with BFG's changes come into play. The original DOOM 3 famously included a flashlight as an item in a separate weapon slot, meaning the player can't illuminate shadows and use a gun at the same time. Players have joked for years about DOOM 3 Doomguy being too stupid to duct-tape his flashlight to the muzzle of a gun, but, in the context of this game, the decision was the correct one. The player could, theoretically, just charge through the entire game with a weapon equipped, but that's a very easy way to run headlong into the waiting claws of an imp. The player had to stop and scope out their surroundings a bit before proceeding, which tapped directly into the pacing and tone of the game.

In DOOM 3: BFG Edition, the player has a flashlight mounted on their armor, which can be activated independently of anything else they're doing. Meaning they can simultaneously see in the dark AND use their weapon. I imagine this change in the 2012 remaster was made after years of loud fan complaints about this design choice. But I want to reveal an open secret of sorts, here and now, to anyone listening. An inconvenient truth.

The loudest voices on the internet are usually the ones not worth listening to.

Look, I get the frustration with a DOOM game being a slow-paced horror affair, but, for better or worse, that was the direction the game took, and any QoL changes that conflict with the core design philosophy are not necessarily going to lead to a better game. DOOM 3 was clearly designed around the limitation of not being able to see clearly in the dark environments, and strapping a flashlight to your shoulder kind of ruins certain setpieces in this game as well. For example, in one section, you're in this lab, and some sort of conveyor device is dragging a luminescent tube through an expanse of darkness. The intention of this segment is clear: you're supposed to stick by it and shoot at the enemies who pop out at you from the surrounding darkness when they become illuminated. But the omnipresent flashlight makes this segment pointless. You can just barrel through this location with your flashlight turned on, quickly dispatching the enemies waiting to jump out at you before they know what hit them.

The changes to ammo availability also somewhat goes against the design philosophy of the original. In the original, you actually had to scrounge around to find enough ammo to feel comfortable creeping further into the UAC base's winding corridors. Hunting around dingy rooms for scraps of ammo to use against monsters is a time-tested horror game tradition. For whatever reason, though, the game likes to utterly overload the player with ammo. And not even just shotgun ammo. I was never out of heavy arms, and never felt any particular reason to conserve my ammo and actually, I dunno, fall back on my handgun or other smaller weapons, because the game stuffs its environments with so many high-level goodies. Scarcity confers value on resources and also incentivizes certain types of behaviors. I was always loaded to the teeth, so the only incentive I had to poke around most of the time was to find audio logs where someone would whine for five minutes about their personal problems with the chain of command. That is to say, no such incentives existed.

Which isn't, of course, to say that the game's horror trappings are always effective. DOOM 3's reliance on generic spooky locations, monster reinforcements that often pop up out of the shadows, random jump scares like demonic cackling that will issue when you enter a room, and hammy intercom taunting from Dr. Betruger throughout the game (the dude actually says "Your soul will be mine!" at one point during the game, like Shang Tsung from the Mortal Kombat movie, lmao) gives the game something of a haunted house flair to it. Not like an actual haunted house, mind you, but rather, like one of those places where you pay to walk around so that people dressed up like zombies or mad scientists can jump out at you and try to scare you. This impression is strengthened as you bear witness to plot events throughout, but always from a safe distance, like in a separate room where you're separated by a pane of glass.

Speaking of ammo, I just want to say that I don't like whoever decided it was a good idea to rob me of all my carefully cultivated BFG rounds near the end of the game and make me start from scratch (for plot reasons). The ammo balancing leads to me building up a healthy collection of arms, of course, but those unused BFG rounds still haunt me.

DOOM 3's weapons game is pretty strong, although not revolutionary. Nearly all of the old weapons return here sans the super shotgun (the normal one in DOOM 3 feels sort of... piddly... I didn't use it much). There are two new additions, though: a machine gun, which is really effective against smaller enemies when you don't need the power of the chaingun, and grenades, which... honestly, only got used when there was a long hallway and something slow coming toward me, because these do splash damage, and a LOT of enemies in this game like to aggressively charge the player. For immediate long-range devastation, a rocket launcher was always preferable, and for anything closer, chainguns and beam rifles are just safer.

I'm not sure what it is, but I will say that a lot of the weapons don't have the visceral punch they did in some of the previous games. The chaingun, especially, feels less impactful compared to the one in DOOM 64.

With that said, the last weapon you get in this game, the Soul Cube, is pretty fun. Every five kills or so, you can use this supernatural cube...thing to instantly kill nearly any enemy in the game. It works quite well when you gun down a bunch of smaller enemies on the way to something particular large and annoying, and then take it down with your Rubiks-Cube-of-Death. It even replenishes your HP!

The level design in DOOM 3 can feel a bit claustrophobic throughout (there's a distinct lack of wide-open arenas to run around like in previous DOOM games, opting instead for cramped hallways and rooms loaded with boxes and industrial equipment. This fit, perhaps, with the slower, more horror-based pacing and tone of the original, although it gives it a different flavor than traditional DOOM. The levels start off almost painfully linear, although the maps do eventually increase in complexity and require some backtracking. This is perhaps a good thing, given the frustrating lack of maps (!) in this game. I rarely got lost, though, and backtracking is typically fairly limited and streamlined compared to what you might find in other games (or, indeed, other DOOM games)

One of the strongest aspects of DOOM 3 is the enemy variety. Almost all of the classic enemies return, often in reimagined form, in addition to a host of new additions.

There are zombies in this game now. A lot of them. Like, classic Romero-type zombies that stumble around and barely know how to even use tools. These are easily dispatched. The demon soldiers are back as well, though, and there's also a lot of them. In an interesting change of pace, you can actually hear their radio chatter when they're in the area nearby, although nothing intelligible is ever said. These guys can pack pistols, shotguns, shields, or, annoyingly, even chainguns. Thankfully, no matter how potent their firepower, it's relatively easy to put them down.

The version of the Arch-Vile that shows up in DOOM 3 is a massive pain in the ass, though. Previously, they only had the power to resurrect fallen demons, and although their attack was un-dodgeable, you could prevent it by breaking line of sight with them. These guys have no such limitations: they continuously spam spells that summon new demons and their attack is now this devastating column of fire that can hit you from several feet away. Very irritating. I used my strongest weapons to put them down ASAP when they showed up.

Lost Souls also get kind of an interesting change. Instead of being flaming skulls like in previous games, they're now fleshy, eerie humanoid faces that fly around and try to bite you. Thankfully, these nuisances have been vastly nerfed compared to previous games, and they hardly register as a threat unless they flank you while you're fighting something else.

The best redesign in DOOM 3, IMO, is the way the Pinky demon was changed. The mostly harmless, melee only enemy from previous DOOM games that was only dangerous amongst an encroaching horde of demons has been reimagined as something more feral and less bipedal, like a large, demonic dog. I remember the first one you encounter in the game scared the crap out of me when I was younger. In an intense setpiece, the thing violently starting ramming itself into the locked door leading into the room your character is in, warping the metal, before moving over to a glass pane and shattering it with a charge, forcing the panicked player to quickly dispatch it. 15 years on from when I first played it, there's not so much panic now, but it's still a cool moment.

Certain other designs tend to stay constant throughout the series. The Revenant, for example, is STILL just a skeleton with rocket launchers on its shoulders, although its lower half is covered in translucent skin instead of gore like the original design. Their missiles are particularly difficult to hit in this game, since they seem to move away from your bullet fire. I have to resort to spamming my pulse rifle in a circular motion to destroy their projectiles.

Imps are also broadly similar in design, although their appear WAY more often in DOOM 3 (seriously, you can't go more than a couple of rooms without running into an Imp in this game; they're easily the most common type of enemy) and if they get close to the player, in kind of a cool change, they're crouch down and pounce.

Barons of Hell, Mancubi, and Cacodemons return without huge alterations, although the Cacodemons are much faster and flit around a lot this time.

DOOM 3 introduces the Wraith, a smaller, melee-only creature that teleports around the level, trying to catch the player off-guard along with the Cherub, which look like small, winged babies that like to flit toward the player and bite them. There are also at least two new spider-like enemies that show up, often swarming the hallways ahead of you. They don't take a lot to kill, but they can easily overpower a less cautious player.

The Commando returns from DOOM II, although his form and function are so different that he's basically a new enemy. Anyone who has played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is likely to get flashbacks to that game's eponymous monstrosity as this muscular hulk charges toward the player and tries to impale them with a large tentacle arm. These games react so quickly and aggressively that I had an issue with them throughout the game. As soon as I saw one of these, the rocket launcher came out.

The game has a handful of boss encounters. While they still show up sort of randomly, I'd say these fights are more engaging and memorable than boss encounters from previous DOOM games, and can actually require some modicum of strategy. Crucially, their difficult isn't dependent on being impossible to dodge when hiding behind a column of some sort. So, yeah, this is definitely the strongest DOOM game to date on that front.

The soundtrack in this game is extremely ambient, like DOOM 64's. Now, that worked for DOOM 64 because of how silent that game was when you weren't fighting demons, but this is pretty much environmental noises: the game. There's so much whirring and buzzing and narration in the background that it can be hard sometimes to even find a quiet place to listen to an audio log. Going to youtube, the soundtrack isn't half-bad, but I'd be lying if I said I even noticed music throughout this game, so I'm going to call this the weakest DOOM game for me on that front. Aside from the decent main theme, you're never going to hear anything that gets your blood pumping, or even much that's particular atmospheric, since you're so busy listening to everything else in this game.

DOOM 3: BFG Edition on Steam features achievements, but good luck unlocking them if you like to take screenshots. For whatever reason, in a widely documented bug that was apparently never patched out, taking screenshots in this game via the Steam overlay triggers an anti-cheat measure that disables the player's ability to unlock achievements.

Technically, DOOM 3: BFG Edition barely feels like an upgrade from the original, being a very slight HD remaster that allowed the game to run smoothly on modern operating systems and widescreen displays. Texture work is still very low-res, too, which becomes clear if you try actually examining most of the displays in your environment. With that said, DOOM 3 was a massive techncial achievement when it first released thanks to a combination of cutting-edge graphics and excellent art design, and, thanks to that, the game still looks really good today. In some ways, the original looked even better: in addition to the shoulder flashlight, the game has been brightened a bit overall, dulling some of the raw dread provoked by its corridors, destroyed by demons and caked in thick shadows But the overall artistic direction still results in a world that's easy to lose yourself in.

What else to mention? DOOM 3: BFG Edition adds in a new autosave system when you hit certain checkpoints in a level, which might have been useful on consoles, but on PC, where you literally only need to hit F5 to quicksave at pretty much any given point, it felt... needless. I guess the good thing is that the player almost never has to worry about losing much progress.

I wasn't sure where to fit this in, but I also really like the security robots in this game. There'll be these interesting setpieces throughout where you'll activate a little security robot, and it'll lead you through the darkness (in the original DOOM 3, anyway). In an amazing turn of events, though, the cute little guys are also armed to the teeth with machine gun rounds, and will viciously mow down any monster that happens to be in its pre-programmed path. I think you're supposed to defend it from enemies, but I found that they killed enemies so quickly that they barely needed any input from me. Granted, I also contributed, as it wouldn't be fair to let them do all the work.

Oh, and, when it comes to difficulty settings, go with Veteran. The only real difference between the difficulty settings (other than the bottom one, which appears to be some sort of safety mode) is in how much damage you take from enemy attacks, and, on the Marine difficulty (or, god forbid, the even lower Recruit difficulty), you can shrug off most attacks with ease. Combine this with the ease of access to health packs and healing centers, and the ammo strewn literally everywhere, and you wind up with a pretty radically easy game, devoid of much of a sense of danger. Veteran difficulty alleviates this by actually making it dangerous to take damage, although it doesn't seem to balance anything else. For all intents and purposes, it's this game's Normal difficulty.

I was curious how I'd feel about this game. Ultimately, while I think it's an interesting experience in its own right, it's easy to see how this would disappoint someone looking for a DOOM experience in the vein of the previous games. This has all the trappings of DOOM, but it's missing the attitude. Additionally, the HD remaster, while probably a better fit for modern PCs, feels like it's at war with itself, and dialing back elements that made the original DOOM 3 so controversial. But, well, no superficial change is going to alter the fact that this is more horror than it is metal. I'm glad I got to experience it again, though, and I'm hoping to complete its expansions sooner than later. 6.5/10

@RogerRoger

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DOOM 3 - Resurrection of Evil expansion pack

Platform: PC

Playtime: Took roughly six hours to complete on "Veteran" difficulty

This expansion for the original DOOM 3 is included in the BFG edition, along with a new expansion pack, which I'll play next.

Resurrection of Evil is set shortly after the events of the original DOOM 3. You play a new marine who discovers an ancient, demonic artifact that accidentally re-opens a portal to Hell again (whoops!) Gameplay is largely the same as the base game, although with two new weapons (three if you include The Artifact) and, mercifully, with far less of the audio log bloat. Things progress along at a nice clip in this expansion, and, for that reason, I actually kind of preferred it to the main campaign.

So, one of the new weapons you unlock is the Super Shotgun, returning from DOOM II and 64. It's not quite the powerhouse that it was in those games, but it still packs a punch, and despite the long and frequent reloading times, it's a great option when you need to bumrush a smaller enemy and dispatch them quickly. But, since it only holds two shells at a time, and fires both shells at once, you won't want to use this if there's more than one enemy in close proximity.

The other weapon is a lot more creative. It's called the Grabber, and if anyone has played Half-Life 2 and remembers that game's Gravity Gun, it's sort of like that, although more limited. You can grab some objects in your environment and use the gun to propel them into enemies, which usually kills the smaller ones. Speaking of small enemies, you can actually grab the lost souls with this gun, which is hilarious. Finally, you can use it to toss enemy's projectiles back at them. Specifically, the fire and plasma balls the Imp, Vulgar, and Hell Knight like to toss at the player. This is kind of clumsy, though, and the game still rains so much ammo down on the player that they're never wanting for massive firepower. I was actually able to use the Grabber to maneuver some crates in such a way as to reach inaccessible doors, although, unfortunately, they never opened to me. I was hoping it would be used for environmental puzzles, but, alas, that never really ended up working out.

Finally, you have The Artifact, a gross, beating heart that gains powers when you slay the Hell Hunter bosses who are pursuing you in this game. There are three of these big boys, who you fight in surprisingly Zelda-esque encounters (they have specific patterns and weaknesses to be exploited; you can't just mindlessly shoot at them), and each time you unlock a new power via the heart. The first boss grants you the ability to activate bullet-time, slowing the world around you to a crawl so that you can safely dispatch multiple enemies at once. The second power is one that grants you the berserk status effect, meaning that you can run around killing enemies in one punch with your bare fists. Finally, the third boss taken down grants you invulnerability for that period. All of thes abilities are cumulative each time you activate the artifact, so, after it's fully powered up, you're slowing down time and invulnerable, smashing enemies left and right with your unstoppable death punches.

This is all horrendously OP. of course, which is why some pretty strict resource requirements are imposed on the player. In order to activate The Artifact one time, you need to absorb a human soul, which you'll only find via standing over the corpses of various dead marine comrades that you routinely encounter across the game. You can also only hold up to three souls at a time. This requirement helps the player to not abuse The Artifact, but it still really helps out in a pinch.

Otherwise... yeah, it's more DOOM 3, but with fewer frustrations involved. 7/10

@RogerRoger I should re-watch it, too. In general, I need to rewatch, replay, and reread a bunch of my favorite things. I press on too much with what's new, aside from a few classics.

So, this Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II. Is it... worth experiencing? I've never heard of it. My experience with SW games has been limited to Galactic Battlegrounds from way back when I was in my Age of Empires phase. I really need to go on a good SW game-playing binge.

And yeah, I'm actually really looking forward to nu-DOOM. I've had DOOM 2016 for years, but just never got around to playing it. I think the release of Eternal is really what pushed me: the game just looks phenomenal, but I wanted a sense of where the series had come from first. I think it's fair to say I've achieved that perspective.

RE keyboard play, I think the big issue for me with the keyboard is that, largely growing up as a console gamer, I grew accustomed to the shape and feel of a controller. Hitting random keys on a long board just feels alien to me. The precision of aiming with the mouse makes up for it, though.

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Paper Mario: The Origami King

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Completion: Beat game (normal ending, not 100%); roughly 35 hours. I imagine closer to 45 or 50 hours if someone wants to 100% it.

Paper Mario: The Origami King (referred to as TOK henceforth) is the sixth game in the Paper Mario franchise (seventh if you include the 3DS crossover game with the Mario & Luigi series) since the series started in 2000 on the N64. The series has gone through some pretty radical changes over the years: the story-driven, turn-based JRPG series from developer Intelligent Systems has slowly but inexorably drifted from its roots over the years, causing some level of dismay with long-time fans. TOK follows this tradition, being something more of an adventure game with puzzle-based combat. Despite this, I feel like the game is still satisfying to play off the back of an acknowledged classic like the Gamecube's Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (my main reference point for this series other than my almost six year old partial playthrough of Paper Mario: Sticker Star on the 3DS).

The game's premise is an unusual one, and it immediately drew my interest when the first trailer dropped. Mario travels to Princess Peach's castle after he is invited to celebrate an Origami Festival in Toad Town. The town and castle seem abandoned however, and things go from normal to apocalyptic quickly when he discovers that Princess Peach has been folded into origami and inculcated into a bizarre origami cult by a sentient origami entity known as King Olly. King Olly has also partially folded Bowser and has gradually been kidnapping and folding his minions. Mario discovers a sympathetic ally in the form of Olivia, King Olly's sister, who is horrified by the imperialistic and destructive aims of her brother. Mario, an incapacitated Bowser, and Olivia escape from the castle as a number of brightly colored streamers wrap around the castle, rip it out of its foundation, and relocate it to a volcano. Separated from Bowser, Mario and Olivia, alongside a variety of companion characters they meet along the way, set out to to destroy the enormous streamers, which originate from a variety of locations around that section of the world, so that they can confront King Olly and hopefully rescue a world that is quickly falling to Olly's origami army.

It's impossible to discuss this game without also addressing the controverises surrounding it, so I find it best to get those out of the way first. The first of these is the combat system itself, and the progression mechanics tied into it. Like other recent entries in the series, TOK ditches a traditional XP system, so your characters don't gain levels as a result of battling. What you do gain, however, are coins (and confetti, but more on that later). You need money for pretty much everything in this world, and certainly, if you want to fill out the in-game museum (again, more on that), you'll need to do quite a bit of battling to gain the funds needed to buy expensive treasures. Money can also be used to buy badges which boost your stats and more powerful attacks in order to handle the increasingly powerful enemies you'll encounter across the game. Health upgrades aren't purchased, but can be found in your explorations. The cumulative result, I feel, is something approximating the feel of the character building you'd experience in an RPG, albeit more streamlined than what fans of the older games might be used to. A common complaint about the Paper Mario games since Sticker Star is that there's "no reason to battle," which certainly doesn't hold true here. You'll need money to buy weapons, to gain access to plot-important areas, etc. What the game perhaps doesn't do is provide an incentive to endlessly grind enemy encounters in order to max our character levels, which I don't personally mind. Nobody deliberately seeks out every Moblin in BotW to kill. I also don't recall people trawling the levels of 3D Mario games for enemies to kill. The lack of traditional RPG mechanics might not be ideal for certain people, but I strongly resist the notion that it makes battling enemies "pointless," or that it's even problematic game design.

The battle system itself is fascinating, and probably unlike anything one has ever encountered in a video game before. Mario stands in the center of a stage, surrounded by concentric rings where enemies are situated. You will have to move the rings to line enemies up in certain patterns so that Mario's attacks can attack them. Not only does lining them up efficiently give Mario the ability to kill them sooner, but you're also granted damage multipliers for doing so. The puzzles at the beginning of the game are a bit obvious and mindless, but the complexity of these timed ring puzzles increases as the game goes on. While there are some issues with this system (I'm not really a fan of how you only ever unlock more powerful boot and hammer attacks; although, thinking about it, outside of special attacks, almost every fight in TTYD devolved into boots and hammers as well), but I do like it makes every encounter something engaging, as the fights in TTYD got a bit mindless over time. Mario can pay coins to toads in his audience, who will solve the ring puzzle for him to varying degrees of completeness, depending on how much is paid, although I almost never opted for this.

Battles against the awesome, gigantic bosses feature a unique system of their own. This time, Mario is on the outside of the rings, with the boss in the middle, and the plumber has to set up a path through the rings ahead of time. Not only does Mario need to navigate to the center of the area, but he also frequently needs to be positioned in a certain way to attack the boss efficiently. Bosses in TOK are a lot like Zelda bosses insofar as they have specific weaknesses to be exploited and attack patterns to be anticipated. Just running up and randomly attacking them might eventually kill them, but it'll lead to an unnecessarily drawn out battle. In that respect, the boss fights are another area of TOK that feel puzzle game-inspired.

On that note, while it's true the bosses here aren't memorable personalities like you'll meet in TTYD, they are quite fun to fight. You'll go between vellumentals, enormous elemental deities that you need to beat to obtain their special powers, and enormous, sentient office supplies that belong to the "legion of stationary." While I'll admit it seems quite stupid initially for Mario to fight against staplers or boxes of colored pencils, these objects are characters in their own right, possessed of specific personalities, and the set-pieces and dungeons leading up to your encounters with them are often creative and incredibly fun, and even a bit foreboding at times.

Speaking of which, the player will also explore a fair number of dungeons throughout the game, and they feel rather like streamlined Zelda dungeons in terms of their puzzles, numerous enemy encounters, hidden heart upgrades, bosses, and theming, which fit well alongside the game's more action-adventurey approach. To be honest, TOK makes me wish Nintendo would expand the paper spinoff approach to other franchises. I'd LOVE a Paper Zelda game.

The other primary controversy in this game stems from Nintendo's now-infamous policy that developer Intelligent Systems is apparently not to create any original in-universe characters for this game, or for future Paper Mario titles. This... I feel, is a more valid complaint. TOK is a colorful, imaginative game filled with fun writing, great humor, and some superb characterization at times, but the main leg up I feel a game like TTYD had over this is that there are simply aren't a ton of interesting NPCs or even party members to meet in this, which does detract from the appeal of this game. The game's cast of important NPCs is dominated primarily by toads, and is utterly lacking in the vibrant array of unique designs and separate races that proliferated in TTYD. Almost none of the characters you meet (aside from Olivia and King Olly, who are alien to the Paper Mario universe in a very fundamental sense) have a distinct name: you'll find a Bob-Omb as a companion, but he just looks like any other Bob-Omb and insists that this is his name (in a perhaps cunning loophole to Nintendo's corporate restrictions, Olivia ignores this and continuously refers to this particular Bob-Omb as "Bobby"), since Bob-Ombs apparently seem to sublimate their individual identities in a collective identification (there's actually a rather shocking plot twist that, interestingly, dives a bit into the nuances of Bob-Omb psychology, which is weirdly fascinating).

The developer seems to take this as a challenge, however, and goes out of its way to allow Mario the opportunity to interact with a variety of Bowser's underlings (traditional Mario enemies), who are now on the run and attempting to evade the Folded Soldiers that are terrorizing this world. As a result, while it lacks the vibrant individual personalities of some previous titles in the series, the game works well in exploring the mindsets of Mario's classic foes outside of the context of a platformer. Since pre-established in-universe characters are still allowable, of course, you also interact with characters like Luigi, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Kamek. I do sort of miss the more character-oriented focus of TTYD, but, honestly, I feel like TOK still has enough fun dialogue and interesting interactions that the game still felt like it had something of an identity, unlike the dispersonal toad hell of Sticker Star.

One of the central complaints about this series is how it has gone from being a series where the characters happen to be stylized as paper beings to being a series ABOUT paper, in some sense, and TOK leans extremely heavily into this element as well. TOK's characters are distinctly aware that they're made out of flat paper, and that their world, more broadly, is one of flat paper constructions. Really leaning into this worldbuilding is what allows the gradual encroachment of King Olly's origami army, which is constructed entirely out of unwilling paper victims, to feel as apocalyptic and uncanny as it often does. It also imbues the Legion of Stationary bosses you fight throughout with an aura of danger that one wouldn't normally associate with staplers, hole punchers, boxes of colored pencils, etc. Which is to say: I'm OK with the change to paper beings becoming somewhat self-aware of their own papery metaphysical nature. Like Media Molecule's Tearaway, the style extends to the entire world the characters inhabit, which feels like one made out of arts and crafts. This is a style employed in a few other Nintendo games as well (recent Yoshi games, in particular, come to mind), but there's a pleasing coherence of theme, story, and aesthetics here, since TOK leans into the 'paper world' concept so completely.

Despite the somewhat more childish premise and tone of TOK in general compared to TTYD, the game is strangely replete with tragic and emotionally potent story beats. I never expected a cutesy adventure game about adorable papercraft characters to have such a high body count by the end, frankly, although I guess it does fit with the underlying body horror this game is filled with (ever seen a giant monster constructed out of the punched out faces of your friends? Paper Mario has, and, even with them being made of paper, it's still horrifying), and the overall creepy tone of King Olly and his borg-like origami cult as well. This is one of those children's games that gets creepier and darker the more you think about it, which I thought was an interesting change of pace for the series. TOK's ending, in particular, is hugely bittersweet (and inspired quite a few tears from my eleven-year-old gameplay companion), which is an interesting contrast with TTYD's much more generic happy ending. The game can be surprisingly thoughtful insofar as it portrays characters grappling with issues related to personal identity, meaning, and death.

None of this, of course, should be taken to mean that TOK is a primarily grim experience. Like TTYD, this game is filled with jokes and humorous situations, often to the point of being something akin to slapstick. And as with that game, TOK can be funny without being obnoxious about it, and the script still manages to maintain a sense of perspective about what's actually at stake for these characters on their adventure. Although I would argue that much of TTYD's biting, often savage wit is missing here: it's a funny, charming game, but it lacks the whip-smart dialogue of its GameCube predecessor.

TOK's world is reasonably large, interconnected (one larger publication misreported it as being an "open world" game, but progression through the game's landscapes is still as linear as it ever was in previous games), and utterly filled with interactivity. The origami menace has savaged this delicate paper world and left it with holes everywhere. Mario carries a bad of confetti with him at all times, and he can use it to fill in these holes to uncover secrets and advance through plot-important locations. Confetti is everywhere in this game, and you'll need to constantly be collecting it to fill up your confetti bag so that you're prepared to paper over holes you find.

When you're running around these large environments, there are a few different things to do. You'll encounter simple environmental puzzles to solve in order to find chests that contains collectibles. You'll encounter different minigame activities. And you'll be finding tons and tons of hidden toads.

Running around looking for toads sounds horrible, like Sticker Star nonsense. But... it's really not. It's fun. Part of that is just how much variety there is in terms of how you find them. ANYTHING can be a toad in this game. Various animals in your environment can be toads. Toads can hide under rocks and behind walls. Fish you catch can be toads. Things you buy can be toads. Sometimes it's just a matter of running up to something and hammering it to reveal the toad. Sometimes they're simply hidden. Sometimes there's an environmental puzzle required to catch them.

Some toads you find will be important and run back to town to open shops and services, such as research centers, locations that serve as shortcuts between major zones, item, accessory and weapon shops, a museum, and a battle center where you can practice various functions related to the puzzle battles you'll so often engage in. Others will join your audience in battles, and, for a price, will help you in various ways.

Finding toads awards you toad points, which you can use to unlock art pieces at the museum. The museum also hosts 3D models you can find in chests throughout the environment, origami toad models you unlock throughout the game, enemy models more generally, music tracks from the game (which requires the player to fill in all of those holes located throughout the world, as I alluded to earlier), etc. Rather like in Animal Crossing, I'm finding the gradual development of my museum to be reward enough to consistently engage with the environments. And there's so much to engage with, considering nearly everything in this game feels like it can be collected or reward the player in some way. It's all a bit skinnerian, of course, but it works well in the context of this game.

The art design and general aesthetic sense present in TOK is phenomenal. Rather like Tearaway or the recent Good-Feel Yoshi platformers, the entire world looks like it was constructed in an arts and crafts class, and nearly every aspect of the environment relates back to the concept of paper in some way. Combine this with the detailed, often dense environments and the overall polish of the product, and you have one of the prettiest games on the Nintendo Switch. This primarily shines through when the game is docked, but it still looks vibrant and clean when undocked as well.

Musically, this is a high water mark for the series, with diverse and frequently evocative tracks setting the mood for your adventure. A track is worth a thousand words, so I'll link what I feel are some of the game's better compositions below.

Given the series' checkered reputation as of late, along with my own experience with the disappointing Paper Mario: Sticker Star, I approached The Origami King with some level of trepidation, but I was surprised to discover what turned out to be one of Nintendo's best releases of 2020 and one of their better Switch exclusives overall. The Origami King might not be the JRPG long-time fans were hoping for, but it is also absolutely undeserving of the cold reception many have greeted it with. While, pound for pound, I'd say The Thousand Year Door was still a better game overall, I think anyone willing to look past its change in genre will find a consistently creative, engaging, and delightful first-party release.

8/10

@RogerRoger Great write-up! I own Tomb Raider Anniversary on my PS2, actually, but I wasn't aware it was part of a larger subset of games. I think I'm one of those people who forgets there are apparently a huge number of TR games between the first three and the reboot trilogy, although these reviews make me want to go back and actually play through the series. Weren't there rumors of a Tomb Raider collection coming out on modern platforms? Maybe the exclusive DLC for Underworld will release on that.

As to the exclusive DLC itself... I wasn't aware there was a history of Microsoft paying for Tomb Raider exclusivity beyond RotTR, although it doesn't surprise me, as they were deep in the thick of that sort of moneyhatting in the seventh gen. The fact that next-gen Sony is looking to replicate that strategy for PS5 concerns me slightly.

I also genuinely had no idea there were Tomb Raider games on the NDS. Looking at footage, Underworld on that platform actually seems like a surprisingly decent 2.5D version of the game. I have to admit: I sort of miss bespoke handheld versions of bigger console games.

By the way, it sounds like you aren't particularly enjoying Final Fantasy VII. It's probably a bit rough from a modern standpoint. It's oddly appropriate to play it alongside a Tomb Raider collection, though, because Lara Croft and Tifa Lockheart are two of the most iconic female characters from that console generation.

As always, your writing is extremely funny. Keep it up!