Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022)

February 28, 2025February 28, 2025 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Kirby is a series that I’ve always wanted to love more than I actually did. The cute, pink, puff ball is just so endearing. I have fond memories of playing Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland and Kirby & the Amazing Mirror a bunch when I was a kid. The games are always so vibrant and joyful. But after a couple attempts at playing Kirby: Planet Robobot as an adult, I figured I had outgrown the series. It was an extremely well-made game with a ton of charm and creativity, but the lack of challenge or any meaningful friction meant I found myself growing bored after playing for more than a few minutes. Kirby: Planet Robobot is often discussed as the pinnacle of modern Kirby games, so I decided that my time would be better spent playing other platformers. That was until Kirby and the Forgotten Land was revealed, the first time Kirby would truly jump into 3D.

The primary issue I have with most Kirby games is the lack of friction. The games are meant to be introductory platformers for children and new players, so it is understandable that they are designed to be extremely easy. But you can often just float over most of the levels, and Kirby’s powerful abilities mean most enemies are barely a threat. Kirby is also a fairly slow-moving protagonist, so the act of going through levels can feel lethargic and boring. I want to be clear that I don’t think that this is a fundamental problem with the Kirby series, it is Nintendo’s introductory-level platformer and designed so that children can play successfully. I just prefer the elevated challenge and speed of series like Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country.

Despite my reservations about the Kirby series, I wanted to try Kirby and the Forgotten Land because I love 3D platformers and wanted to see how the pink protagonist would fare in this new environment. I have to say, the jump to 3D did wonders for Kirby. The additional complexity of 3D environments suits the series marvelously. The game maintains the slower pace that the series is known for, but 3D levels allow for more engaging exploration and more creative level design.

The game takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where genetically mutated animals have taken over what’s left of the civilization. The setting is quite different from the normal fantastical Kirby affair, and I loved the juxtaposition of Kirby’s silliness with the more grounded environment. The first major zone is a derelict city that is now overgrown with vegetation, and each following locale is an equally surreal place for Kirby. I particularly enjoyed the amusement park and its numerous attractions; riding roller coasters and exploring dimly-lit funhouses was a blast.

The levels are in the “course clear” category, meaning they are fairly linear platforming challenges with a goal at the end. While I do think Kirby would thrive in a more exploration-driven open environment like in Super Mario Odyssey, I also think that maintaining the linearity from the 2D entries in the series was a good idea for a first foray into 3D space. You can tell that a ton of love and care was poured into the levels in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. There are so many little details and things to discover. The world is just so vibrant and charming to spend time in.

An aspect that I loved about the level design is the creativity. Nearly every level has some unique idea or gimmick that is central to its design and theming. I love the escalation of each idea through individual levels. For example, navigating a simple maze in the dark evolves into a pitch-black funhouse with narrow ledges, creeping enemies, and moving obstacles. There’s a handful of “Mouthful” abilities that let Kirby utilize common real-life objects. You can use vending machines to shoot cans at enemies and destructible terrain, or use traffic cones to smash through leaky pipes and launch upwards, or zip around a race track as a Kirby/car amalgamation. Not only are these abilities fun departures from standard gameplay, their inherent visual goofiness fits Kirby perfectly.

Even though the levels are relatively linear, there is incentive to explore. In every standard level there are hidden Waddle Dees to be rescued who can later be found in your hub town. Furthermore, there are secret challenges that will reward you with even more Waddle Dees. I think encouraging exploration is a great thing when so much heart and detail is poured into these levels. My one complaint is that some of these secret challenges are quite obtuse and are difficult to discover on your own. If you miss a challenge, you only get to see it revealed upon clearing the stage, and even then, only a single challenge is revealed at a time. Meaning if you miss a few challenges, you may be replaying the same level three or four times searching for its secrets. I think just revealing all of the challenges upon first completion of the stage would be a happy medium between letting the player discover things on their own and preventing having to replay the same level over and over.

The exploration aspects tie in quite nicely with how progression works in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. As you rescue Waddle Dees, the hub town will slowly expand and add new features. There are collectible trophies in capsule machines, mini-games such as fishing, consumable items to purchase like health and attack boosts, and coliseum to challenge a gauntlet of bosses. But the big addition is the blacksmith. Here is where you can upgrade Kirby’s classic copy abilities to more powerful versions of themselves. Not only are these raw damage increases but they also modify the abilities with additional effects. Bombs become homing explosives that track enemies, the drill ability creates buzzsaws that bounce around the arena, crash slows time in addition to its traditional massive damage. All these upgrades are fun to experiment with, especially because the game is lacking some classic abilities such as stone and beam.

The main resource to power-up the abilities are stars that are earned by completing Treasure Road levels. These are separate stages from the main levels. They are typically very short and require the player to clear the stage using specific copy abilities or Mouthful abilities. I quite enjoyed doing these because they forced me to experiment a bit and can provide a decent challenge if trying to beat the target time. You aren’t required to beat the target time to earn your reward, but I found it very fun to optimize and learn how to get the most out of my abilities in these 30-second challenges.

Like any Kirby game, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is extremely easy. But the level design, exploration aspects, and progression kept me from getting bored like I did when playing many of the 2D Kirby titles. There’s even a difficulty selection when you are starting a new file which is a great addition. I would’ve loved to see an “very hard” option because even hard mode was a bit too easy for a majority of its play time. I think Kirby has the capability to be an excellent 3D platformer/brawler, and the post-game showcases that untapped potential.

The fairly extensive post-game has remixed levels and amped-up bosses that I thoroughly enjoyed. The bosses in particular were so much more challenging than their base-game forms. And the final coliseum challenge was a real gauntlet that had me sweating on its secret final boss. Moving into 3D space allowed the developers to get creative with boss movesets and really force the player to learn how to position and dodge. And I loved experimenting with the different copy abilities to see which ones fit my playstyle and which ones thrived against certain bosses. That being said, the vast majority of regular enemies, mini-bosses, and bosses outside of the post-game were pushovers. To be fair, that is to be expected in a Kirby game, but I would’ve loved some more difficulty options to appeal to players who want a bit more challenge.

I’m glad that despite my hesitations around the Kirby series that I decided to give Kirby and the Forgotten Land a chance. It’s a delightful switch-up from the traditional formula and the new 3D environments mesh wonderfully with the slower pace of Kirby. It’s apparent that a ton of care and love was poured into the world and levels of this game. Each stage is a delight to explore, even if the game is a bit too easy. It is for these reasons that I give Kirby and the Forgotten Land an 8/10. I hope the future of Kirby holds more games like this one, because I want more.

Stephen’s Favorites of 2024

January 1, 2025 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

I feel like 2024 was the first year where I at least tried to keep up with recent releases. I wanted to highlight the games from this year that were my absolute favorites. Of course, as someone with a full-time job, a family, and other hobbies, I didn’t get to play every major release of this year. There were plenty of games on my radar that I didn’t get around to such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Lorelai and the Laser Eyes, and the remake of Silent Hill 2. Here are all the 2024 releases that I managed to play:

Now let’s get into my favorites of the year.

UFO 50

UFO 50 is a truly unique experience and we may never see anything like it ever again. It’s a collection of 50 retro games made by the fictional company UFO Soft. It’s an absolutely astonishing collection in both breadth and depth. Every classic genre is included, but no entry is a simple imitation of an actual retro game. Every game has a unique twist. There are so many gems in the collection. You could easily sink hundreds of hours into UFO 50 and still have games you’ve barely touched. The creators behind UFO 50 describe it as a blend of retro aesthetics with modern game design knowledge, and they absolutely nailed that aspiration. Read my full review here.

Astro Bot

Astro Bot may not be the most innovative game out there, but damn is it fun. The joy I got from exploring its wonderfully detailed levels was reminiscent of playing Super Mario Galaxy as a kid. Every level had some sort of set piece, theme, or unique power-up that had me smiling. And I loved visiting the hub world to try to identify all the robots dressed up as classic Playstation characters. Astro Bot is just wholesome fun. Read my full review here.

Balatro

Balatro is the most addicting game on my list. In this roguelite deck-builder you play poker hands to score points. As you progress through a run, you can modify your deck in a multitude of ways. The main way to increase your score is by acquiring jokers which vary wildly in their effects. The sheer randomness of Balatro is what makes it shine. There are so many different ways to build a successful run and every time you play, you’ll think you found a new overpowered combo. Read my full review here.

Animal Well

Animal Well is a surreal metroidvania. It’s a labyrinth full of mystery. Figuring out how to explore and interact with the world and the animals was enthralling. Without any guidance, the world is up to you to discover. Secrets upon secrets are layered atop each other, some requiring a dedicated community to unearth. It’s one of the most atmospheric games that I’ve ever played with ethereal visuals and echoey auditory effects. Read my full review here.

Pikmin 4 (2023)

January 1, 2025 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Pikmin has always been a series that has had underwhelming sales numbers. The cutesy aesthetics paired with the horrific reality that you will lead your squad of adorable little guys to their brutal demise means that the audience for these games is limited. I suspect people are discouraged by the time limit or the stress of having your pikmin get eaten, electrocuted, lit on fire, or otherwise killed. After the long hiatus following the release of Pikmin 3, it feels like Pikmin 4 is an attempt to appeal to a larger audience. In some ways, this is a fantastic thing. Pikmin 4 is the biggest, most complete game in the series. On the other hand, the concessions made in hopes of attracting new players actively harm the game.

Like every other game in the series, Pikmin 4 is a real-time-strategy game where you grow hordes of cute creatures known as pikmin to complete tasks for you. They are fairly brainless, so they form a symbiotic relationship with the player. You lead them around and command them to fight enemies, retrieve treasures, and carry pellets back to base so that more pikmin can sprout. Individually, each pikmin is weak, but as an intelligent swarm they can conquer the environment and tackle massive foes.

The most impressive aspect of Pikmin 4 is its scale. This game is bigger than its three predecessors combined. And it combines all the elements from the previous games to deliver the most complete experience. Every zone is a sprawling playground to explore with dozens of treasures to find. Caves make a return from Pikmin 2, but are intentionally designed rather than relying on randomized layouts. Challenges from Pikmin 3 are now woven into the main campaign and are honestly my favorite aspect of the whole game. Every type of pikmin makes an appearance. It’s genuinely impressive how much they managed to squeeze into this game.

The larger areas don’t feel overwhelming as they are somewhat split into smaller zones. As you explore there are predetermined spots for you to move your ship and the pikmin’s onion to, making it easier to haul treasures and grow more pikmin without having to run all the way back to the original landing site. Much of the game’s content is also found in the caves. While I wasn’t a fan of caves in Pikmin 2 due to their repetitive nature and random layouts, I think Pikmin 4 executes on the idea much better. They have intentional design to challenge the player on their puzzle-solving, combat, and navigation skills. I still much prefer the open surface areas to caves, and I do think that Pikmin 4 has a handful too many caves, but the dungeon-crawling they provide is a fun detour from the open-ended exploration.

Aside from caves, there are also Dandori challenges to be discovered as you explore. Dandori is the art of strategizing and executing a plan for maximum efficiency. To me, this is one of the strongest aspects of the Pikmin series. Dandori challenges come in two forms: time trials and battles. The time trials are 5–10-minute challenges in a small arena where you have to strategize how to get all the treasure as fast as possible. I loved solving each of these challenges like it was a puzzle. Figuring out where I should start, which pikmin to pluck, which enemies to defeat, and what order to do things was quintessential Pikmin. Getting all the platinum medals on these time trials was challenging but achievable, and it was my absolute favorite aspect of Pikmin 4.

The Dandori battles on the other hand had a major flaw in their execution. These battles are similar to the time trials, but you are facing an opponent with their own army of pikmin. You both try to collect treasures to gain points, and it is a frantic experience as treasures and enemies frequently respawn. There’s also power-ups and items to sabotage your foe. I really like the idea behind these battles and there is an extra layer of depth as you have to consider which treasures are worth fighting over. But the big issue I have is that for some reason these battles have a split screen view. Half the screen is dedicated to the AI opponent’s point-of-view. It makes playing these battles feel super claustrophobic and hard to tell what’s going on. I don’t think I ever looked at the opponent’s screen to see what they were doing. At the very least, this should have been a toggleable feature so I could turn it off and focus on my own strategy.

Another major shakeup to traditional Pikmin gameplay is the inclusion of night expeditions. These are missions solely focused on defending your base from enemies. You command a new variety of pikmin, called glow pikmin, which excel at combat. These missions are fairly short and aren’t particularly difficult, but I did enjoy taking a break from normal daytime exploration to partake in some frantic defense. Ultimately, I think Pikmin 4 attempts to appease every aspect of the series’ fanbase. Between the combat focused night expeditions, optimization heavy Dandori challenges that require multitasking, dungeon crawling caves, and the laidback exploration of regular areas there is something for everyone to enjoy.

Not only does Pikmin 4 impress with the scope of its gameplay, but it also is one of the best-looking games on the Nintendo Switch. The environments, characters, and creatures all look fantastic. More importantly, I love the environments of the game. Every area is obviously inspired by micro-slices of Earth. A backyard garden becomes a massive area to explore. The shifting tide on the beach leads you to climb a sandcastle. My favorite area is the inside of a house. Figuring out how to navigate the furniture in the living room and kitchen is a great mix-up from the more naturalistic environments that Pikmin is known for. I really do love the focus on the environments created by humanity. It inspires imagination about what sort of life exists at the micro scale on our planet. Who knows, maybe there are little aliens running around collecting bottle caps and buttons when we aren’t looking.

Despite everything that Pikmin 4 does right, it also makes a ton of mistakes in an effort to appease new players. The issues are immediately apparent from the start as Pikmin 4 has one of the most painful tutorials I’ve ever played. The game takes forever to let the player start playing. And when it does, it constantly wrests control away from you to give you a tutorial on even the most straightforward of mechanics. Even after the tutorial the game throws giant text boxes on the middle of the screen during gameplay. After playing for 30 hours, I don’t need my vision obstructed by a tip telling me that there are pikmin at my base ready to be plucked.

There’s just too much talking in general. The original Pikmin was an isolated, alien experience. After every day the characters talk on and on about nothing. Despite the large cast of characters, I can’t remember anything about any of them. In Pikmin 4 you take the role of a member of the rescue corps on a mission to rescue characters stranded on Earth. The rescue corps sets up a base where everyone you rescue hangs out. I appreciate the idea of having a cozy hub to hang out in, but it’s extremely barren and all the characters just feel like they are stapled on. I wish some temporary buildings or structures would be built as you progressed. Like having shops for items, upgrades, and cosmetics rather than just having those characters stand around in the open. I would have loved it if this hub had some personality.

Gameplay wise, there’s a wealth of issues. First and foremost is the control scheme. The game forces automatic lock-on on the player, with no way of toggling it off. The result is that many combat encounters are dumbed down to a single button press. You no longer have to aim your cursor; the game takes that skill out of the equation and guarantees that your thrown pikmin will land on target. The mechanic also becomes unwieldy during late-game encounters with many enemies because the automatic lock-on is incredibly “sticky”. A frequent annoyance is trying to prioritize a high-threat enemy but the game decides to prioritize random treasure or other tasks.

Pikmin 4 provides the player with a massive toolset. There’s a robust upgrade system that not only increases your health and elemental resistances, but also provides utility such as calling all idle pikmin to your side. There’re purchasable items such as bombs and stunning lightning to be used on tougher enemies. But the biggest addition to your arsenal is Oatchi. Oatchi is an alien dog trained to assist in rescue missions. Listen, I love dogs, and it’s hard not to love Oatchi, but Oatchi borderline breaks the game.

The problem with Oatchi is that Oatchi is too good at everything. Oachi can fight enemies and can defeat most of them single handedly. Oatchi can carry heavy objects. You can ride on Oatchi’s back with your squad of pikmin. This is particularly useful because it makes it remarkably simple to have your squad of pikmin avoid enemy attacks. In previous games, having a squad of 100 pikmin could be unwieldy to control, but now it’s a breeze with Oatchi. You can also charge at enemies which deals damage, stuns them, and flings your entire squad of pikmin on their back. The vast majority of enemies are decimated by the combo of being stunned and having 100 pikmin attacking them. It genuinely feels like the game isn’t designed for the havoc that Oatchi can wreak. It’s until the final boss of the post-game that I encountered an enemy that felt designed with Oatchi in mind.

Aside from Oatchi, another major addition is the inclusion of ice pikmin. This new type of pikmin can freeze bodies of water if enough of them are occupying it. This is a great strategic addition as it creates traversable paths for your squad, but at the temporary cost of dozens of pikmin. In combat, ice pikmin are extremely overpowered as they can rapidly freeze enemies. This is balanced by having ice pikmin do less damage, but just a handful of them is enough to freeze enemies while the rest of the squad deals the damage. They are at least somewhat kept in check by the fact that your supply of ice pikmin is limited until very late in the game.

I think there was massive potential with providing the player all these overpowered options such as items, Oatchi, and ice pikmin. It could be framed that beating the game is a foregone conclusion, but maximizing your efficiency to do it quickly is the point. There’s only one Oatchi, so choosing what to have them do could be an interesting decision. Picking the optimal place to use items to save time could be fun. Ice pikmin would be more balanced by their lack of damage if you had to go quickly. But unfortunately, I don’t think Pikmin 4 does a good job at encouraging this efficiency by default.

For a game that emphasizes the concept of Dandori, there is very little need for speed outside of the Dandori challenges. There is no day limit in Pikmin 4. Every individual day has a timer, but it’s irrelevant since you can just end the day and start a new one rather than risking running out of time while doing a task. Dandori challenges and some of the post-game content are my favorite aspects of the game because they do put some pressure on the player. Having to think about the best way to use the tools available to you and what route to take is engrossing even if the combat is on the easier side.

The major flaw of Pikmin 4 is that it lacks an edge. There’s no element to provide friction that inhibits the player from just steamrolling the whole game. The wealth of new tools makes most combat encounters easy. Without a time limit there is no need to optimize and think about how to tackle exploration efficiently. There’s not even a significant number of puzzles like were present in Pikmin 3. As I played, I often felt that I was just going through the motions, that the game just kind of plays itself. I really would’ve appreciated something that made the moment-to-moment gameplay a tad more thoughtful. I’m ok with the game being relatively easy, but there still needs to be a threat to keep the player engaged.

The Pikmin series is one of evolution. You could never say that it’s stagnating or failing to implement new ideas. I love the grandiosity of Pikmin 4; it certainly feels like the ultimate Pikmin experience. But the lengths gone to attract new players makes the experience feel neutered. The automatic lock-on, the drawn-out tutorial, the lack of an overarching time limit, and the overpowered tools that the game provides all dull the edge that the series once had. It is for these reasons that I give Pikmin 4 a 7/10. Every game in the series has something to offer, and while Pikmin 4 may lack friction, it’s a solid collectathon with a ton of content.

UFO 50 (2024)

December 29, 2024 / stephensopinions / 1 Comment

You stumble across a dusty cardboard box in an abandoned storage unit, inside is a retro video game console along with 50 games from a company you’ve never heard of. That’s UFO 50. A collection of 50 retro games from an alternate universe, each showing the progression of the fictional developers UFO Soft. The games range from platformers, to sports games, to fighting games, to shmups (shoot-‘em-ups), to puzzle games, to strategy games, each with a unique twist or gimmick. The real developers of the UFO 50, Mossmouth, claim that these are retro games with modern design sensibilities, which I think is a perfectly apt description.

Retro games are notoriously difficult and are oftentimes clunky to play. UFO 50 does a fantastic job at maintaining a reasonable level of difficulty without making these games frustrating to play. Many of the games in the collection have slow movement, punishing mechanics, or initially uncomfortable control schemes. But it doesn’t take long for each title to click, and once you figure out how to play the smart design begins to unveil itself.

Each game in the collection has something that makes it stand out. There’re no straight up clones of actual retro games, although some of the games do feel at least inspired by classic titles. Take one of the earlier games in the collection for example, Magic Garden. It takes elements from Snake and Pacman as you lead friendly slimes to safety and use power-ups to clear out evil slimes. But Magic Garden is its own game, shepherding slimes to the scoring zone and collecting power-ups has intricacies as you are encouraged to take risks and let a ton of slimes occupy the board before chaining together multiple power-ups for an exponential score increase. There’s an edge of risk and reward if you want to maximize your points.

There’s an absurd level of variety available in UFO 50. I’m extremely confident that there is a game in the collection for everybody. And for $25, you really can’t go wrong. And don’t think that these are just short little arcade games either. There are fully fledged RPGs and metroidvanias that take hours to complete. Many of these titles could easily be standalones. Mini & Max for example is a genius little metroidvania in which you try to escape a supply closet by shrinking down and exploring the shelves and talking to the micro-civilizations that are invisible to the naked eye. Grimstone is a turn-based RPG that is over a dozen hours from start to finish. You could play UFO 50 for 100 hours and barely scratch the surface. If you truly want to 100% complete the collection, you are looking at 300ish hours. Personally, I have not clocked even remotely close to that number but this is a game that I am planning to play and revisit for a long, long time.

A smart decision was made to give every game some reasonable milestones to achieve. Every game has a simple challenge to earn a “gift” which goes into the little house on the console which is cute. You earn a gold trophy for beating each game. And you can earn the “cherry” by completing whatever additional challenge there is after completing the game, usually this is getting a high score or something along those lines. I think these tiers of achievements makes every game more approachable and presents attainable goals as you slowly get better at each game.

I loved the dedication to the fictional company of UFO Soft. Each game has a short blurb about its development and it’s fun to recognize the fictional names of the developers in the credits of each game. There’s a handful of sequels across the collection, and I enjoyed the references to the company’s other games as I played. It was interesting to watch UFO Soft evolve in design and technology. It was a brave decision by Mossmouth to have the first game in the collection be Barbuta, an esoteric metroidvania with no music, no color, painfully slow movement, unfair traps, and no quality-of-life features. But it was the perfect origin to the UFO Soft mythos. A game developed by a sole employee with extreme technical limitations and no game design experience. Following the evolution of UFO Soft is a journey of its own, and there’s a layer of secrets to be discovered for dedicated players.

The presentation of the collection is fantastic the whole way through. Mossmouth had to make sure every game fit its respective era and chronological place in the collection. All the games look good for being retro games and have distinctive designs and characters. But what I really want to highlight is the music. Oh my god. There are so, so many excellent tracks in this game. In the alternate universe where UFO Soft is real, I could easily see these tunes being as memorable as classics like the Super Mario Bros theme is to us.

I think that the size and breadth of the collection is the greatest strength and weakness of UFO 50. While it is exciting to boot up the game and choose from 50 games, not having to commit to any given game, I also found myself treating each one as disposable. Since the games are difficult and often have unconventional control schemes, I found it very easy to not give each game a fair chance. Dusting off a cartridge and playing for 5 minutes before exiting and trying something else was a common occurrence initially. After noticing this pattern, I forced myself to try to give every game more attention. I’m still working through the majority of the collection, but I am glad that I slowed down to really appreciate each game. The downside is that some of the games never do click, even after putting time into them. Planet Zoldath and Combatants are examples of games that I think are just not very good.

Since I think that it can be a bit intimidating to know where to start with such a massive collection, I wanted to share some of my favorite games that I’ve played so far. While part of the beauty of UFO 50 is that everyone has different favorites, I did want to highlight these five games. Hopefully these suggestions can give you some options to try if you have trouble choosing where to begin.

Party House is the first game in the collection that really clicked with me. It’s a deck builder where you are trying to throw the ultimate party. By spending popularity to add new guests to your rolodex you try to accumulate more popularity and cash every night. After 25 nights you have to have 4 “starred” guests attend your party to win. There’s a good amount of decision making involved, but what makes Party House interesting is its “push your luck” mechanics. Troublemaker guests typically earn more popularity and money, but more than two of them at once will cause the cops to show up. And there’s also the decision of when to stop spending popularity on normal guests and when to start acquiring the “starred” ones. There’s a lot of delicate choices to balance, and Party House is a ton of fun.

Night Manor is a point-and-click horror game that takes place in a disarrayed mansion filled with trash and fungus. You have to figure out a way to escape while avoiding the zombie-like man infected with fungus who is hunting you. If you run into him, your cursor jitters to simulate the terror your character feels, making it harder to click on doors to escape as he chases you through the manor. Old point-and-click games often have moments of ridiculous leaps in logic, but Night Manor avoids this with its puzzles. I found that everything made sense and I couldn’t put the game down until I played through the whole thing over the course of a few hours. There’s also a story to uncover through notes of what happened at the manor which was fun to discover.

Seaside Drive is a stylish shmup, but you can only move left and right as you drive your car down the road. As you dodge projectiles and enemies you have to move back and forth quite a bit to keep up your meter. You build up charge by skidding to the left, and expend charge by shooting and driving right. The higher the meter, the more damage your shoots do. I love this game because it seems crazy difficult at first, but I quickly learned how to maneuver and overcome the challenge. It’s so satisfying to clear the stages that were giving you a hard time without getting hit at all. Seaside Drive also has incredible aesthetics and one of my favorite songs in the whole collection. It’s a slick, stylish, and fun to play shmup with perfectly tuned difficulty.

Devilition is my favorite puzzle game of the collection that I’ve played so far. A grid is filled with villagers and demons and you have to place pieces that kill the demons. The twist is that your pieces have to act like a chain reaction, each one can only be set off if hit by another. You have to keep track of what pieces you’ve placed and how to connect the chain. There’s 10 rounds and any pieces that you don’t use carry over to the next round, encouraging you to be efficient in your placement. I enjoyed watching the Rube Goldberg machine go off and clear the demons off the board as I prayed that I didn’t mess up and miss a crucial link in the chain.

Waldorf’s Journey is a platformer that takes place entirely within the dream of a walrus. It’s reminiscent of a golf game as you charge up and launch Waldorf the walrus across gaps and try to precisely maneuver him to land on tiny patches of ice. You really have to master the momentum as you use your flight meter to propel Waldorf forward. It’s tempting to fly as far as you can on every jump, but it becomes incredibly difficult to slow down enough to safely land. There’s a few different power-ups and items to help you along as you inch towards revelation at the end of the dream. I also love the visuals, music, and minimalist story in this game as well.

I think UFO 50 is a game that I am going to be playing for the rest of my life. Or at least for a very long time. The breadth and depth of this collection is unmatched. After dozens of hours played, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what UFO 50 has to offer. The fictional history of UFO Soft ties the whole thing together beautifully. It is for these reasons that I give UFO 50 a 9.5/10. UFO 50 is a paradise for fans of retro games with its dedication to melding retro gaming experimentation with modern design considerations.

Balatro (2024)

December 28, 2024 / stephensopinions / 1 Comment

Balatro is the video game equivalent of crack. Every aspect of this game makes it hard to put down. It’s easy to spin it up for “one quick round” and look at the clock to realize that hours have passed. Balatro is a roguelite deck-builder that is about playing poker hands to score points, as well as using a variety of modifiers to multiply those points. There’s a wonderful level of random chance that influences every run that influences the player to experiment with all sorts of different builds. Even after spending dozens of hours playing poker hands, I still feel the draw of Balatro to see what kind of strategy I can cook up.

The structure of the game is that you play poker hands to try to accumulate points and surpass a threshold to complete a round. Typically, you get 4 hands to play per round and 3 discards to try to put together higher scoring hands. After each round, you visit the shop to spend money earned on modifying cards to increase your points. The cornerstone of these modifications are the joker cards. You can hold 5 joker cards that vary wildly in the bonuses that they provide. From simple bonuses like multiplying your hand’s score or giving you extra discards, to more specific bonuses like increasing the base chips and multiplication of Aces or Fibonacci numbers.

There are so many jokers to stumble on and it is incredibly engaging to try to find the synergies between them. My highest scoring run consisted of a multiplicative joker that increased its multiplier every time a card was added to the deck along with another joker that added a card at the start of every round. This was further enhanced by two of my other jokers that copied the effects of other jokers, leading to a rapidly climbing multiplier. Aside from jokers, there are also planet cards that permanently increase the base point value of certain poker hands. There’re tarot cards that provide a variety of effects from buffing individual cards to giving you more money.

All these options provide a fantastic system for decision making. Every time you visit the shop after a round you have to weigh what bonuses you want and whether or not you want to gamble on booster packs and hope there is something good inside. You want to have a healthy amount of money to earn interest and allow for big purchases later. There’re so many factors at play that you have to consider. Sometimes you have to make short-term purchases just to get you through the next few rounds while hoping you stumble upon better options. The randomness isn’t frustrating, it’s what makes the game so compelling. Every time you get a run going, it feels powerful. Being forced to experiment with whatever the game throws at you leads to incredible moments.

Each run is structured into 8 “antes”, each ante having 3 rounds of increasing point requirements, the last of which being a “boss” with special effects. After completing the 8th ante, there’s an option to continue with your deck in endless mode. Initially, I found myself always going into endless mode to see how far I could take my deck. I discovered that the score requirements quickly begin to scale exponentially, leading to most of my runs sputtering out around ante 11 or 12, no matter how good they were. At first, I was frustrated by this, but I soon realized it is a blessing that the endless mode scales exponentially. At some point, your build is essentially complete so you are just going through the motions every round. Most of the fun decision making happens much earlier in the run, so dragging out the endless mode wouldn’t be enjoyable. And having a concrete goal of completing the 8th ante means you can take short-term risks and attempt non-optimal builds as you don’t need to scale exponentially to win.

The one problem that I have with the gameplay of Balatro is that the early rounds are fairly boring and repetitive. You need to save up money before you can buy anything, so you are often stuck playing high-value hands like flushes and straights to clear the first few rounds. You are at the mercy of the shop to have some decent jokers to get you through ante 2. You don’t have the money to reroll or gamble on booster packs unless you are truly desperate. It’s hard to alleviate this issue without the developer placing a finger on the scale and tipping the odds in the player’s favor early on. My suggestion would be to have the cost of rerolls scale by ante. That way players can actually afford to reroll the shop a few times early on to fish for usable jokers while simultaneously increasing the difficulty in later antes.

The issue with the early game is only made worse as you turn up the difficulty. There are eight difficulties and over a dozen decks to choose from. I mostly enjoy how the difficulties were designed as they rarely equate to “score more points”. Many of the difficulties add modifications to jokers that make them unsellable, or cost money every turn, or expire after 5 rounds. This adds an additional layer of decision making on which jokers you want to purchase. The problem is that on the highest difficulties you really need everything to go right early on to have a successful run. I don’t think it’s the end of the world because it is still a ton of fun to try to scrape by with suboptimal choices, but I do wish there was something to make the first couple antes more engaging.

Part of what makes Balatro so addicting is its presentation. The game looks great, even on mobile platforms. I love looking at the distinctive design of all the jokers. But the animations and sound effects are really what makes Balatro tick. Watching the game emphasize every card and joker as the score climbs up is addicting. Your deck becomes a Rube Goldberg machine of multiplying bonuses that is fun just to watch unfold. The game cleverly doesn’t tell the player the final point value of the hand they are about to play, leaving the player to watch and wait with bated breath as the score rapidly grows. I particularly love that when a single hand surpasses the total point value necessary for a given round, the score display lights on fire. It’s a really satisfying touch.

It’s hard to explain why Balatro is so addicting, but beware how difficult it is to break free from the grasp of Balatro. The pure variety and allure of creating an overpowered deck fires all the right synapses in my brain. The dopamine of watching the score skyrocket is addicting. There’s so many different decks, difficulties, and challenges that force you to play with all the different options available. It is for these reasons that I give Balatro a 9/10. I would say it’s the perfect game to play a quick run when you have time to spare, but it’s so fun that I’d have a hard time putting it down after a single run.

Max Payne (2001)

December 26, 2024 / stephensopinions / 1 Comment

Older games are often rough around the edges, and I was concerned when I needed to download a 3rd-party mod to even run Max Payne. But the little bit of research that I had to do to get the game running was well worth it, because Max Payne is an absolute classic. It’s an old-school FPS that makes you feel like an action movie hero, while simultaneously gripping you in its noir narrative and setting. For its time, it was a technically impressive game that made clever decisions to hide its shortcomings. Despite a few hiccups with the difficulty design, Max Payne is an excellent game, even to this day.

After his wife and infant child were killed by drug addicts in a burglary a couple years ago, Max becomes an undercover DEA agent. He gets a lead on the source of the drug known as Valkyr, a mysterious substance that makes people enter a zombie-like state. Max hunts for the truth during a historic blizzard in New York City. It escalates from mob drug war to full-blown conspiracy as Max spirals in his quest for vengeance.

As the plot unfolded, layer by layer, I was also impressed by the thematic consistency. The weight of the guilt that Max carries because of the murder of his family turns him into a relentless hunter. He is haunted by hallucinatory dreams where he is the one pulling the trigger during the tragedy. As the blizzard progressively worsens, so does Max’s mental condition and grip with reality. The narrative benefits from its noir styling. Max narrates the events with melodramatic descriptions and the presentation embodies the dreamlike yet brutal characteristics of classic noir films.

Despite its age, Max Payne visuals hold up remarkably well. 3D graphics were still in their infancy, so the developers decided to forgo cutscenes for comic panels. This was a clever choice because these stylized comics have aged so much better than cutscenes from that era. It also plays wonderfully into the noir theming and surreal elements of the plot. The setting is also quite memorable. New York City in a blizzard is one of my favorite environments to explore. The snow-covered rooftops, empty streets, icy docks, and rundown apartments are wonderfully atmospheric and filled with little details. I quite liked how many of the locations had radios or televisions that gave news updates on the “historic storm”. These little flourishes gave the world more credibility.

The presentation and story aren’t the only elements that are impressive despite their age, the gameplay also holds up well. It’s a classic FPS, shooting waves of goons as you move from room to room. But what makes it special is the inclusion of bullet time. At the press of a button, you can slow down time to dodge bullets and return fire. You also can quickly roll or dive in all different directions. Combining the dodge with bullet time can make for some cinematic moments as you burst through doors, diving in slow-motion and raining bullets on mobsters. It also adds a layer of fun complexity to otherwise simple gunplay. Bullets have actual velocity rather than instantly doing damage when the trigger is pulled. Staying in motion, utilizing bullet time, and leading your shoots is crucial to success. I found this fast-paced action to be very fun.

My only complaint about the gameplay is the adaptive difficulty implementation. I don’t hate the idea of tuning the difficulty based on how the player is doing, but in Max Payne it can drastically affect the experience. The game adjusts enemy damage, enemy health, player health, and other factors to extreme degrees based on how frequently the player dies. I found if I was doing too well basic enemies would suddenly become superhuman threats. The game flow is dramatically altered when multiple shotgun blasts from point blank can’t fell a single foe, but a single shot from their rifle kills you instantly. Luckily, you can save and reload as frequently as you want, so after a few deaths and reloads the enemies become manageable again. But still, it’s jarring to experience such sharp spikes in difficulty.

I was pleasantly surprised by my time with Max Payne. Every element was well done. The exciting story, the meaningful and thoughtful themes, the memorably moody setting, and the thrilling gameplay were all impressive. Despite the questionable inclusion of adaptive difficulty, I genuinely had a ton of fun with Max Payne. Which is not something I can say for many other games from its era.

Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024)

December 12, 2024 / stephensopinions / 2 Comments

I usually stay away from massive JRPGs unless I really am hooked by the premise. It’s hard for me to want to sink 80+ hours into any game as an adult with a family, job, other hobbies, and a massive backlog of other games I want to play. But Metaphor: ReFantazio caught my eye. I loved my time with Atlus’ Persona 5 so a similar game set in a more mature fantasy world sounded right up my alley. Metaphor: ReFantazio presents a fantastical world and delivers on a phenomenal turn-based combat system. Unfortunately, as a lengthy story-driven game I was quite let down by the lack of nuance in the plot and the writing in general.

The world of Metaphor: ReFantazio is one filled with discontent. The country is thrown into chaos when the king is assassinated and his successor, the prince, has been missing for a decade. A military general, Louis, admits to killing the king and attempts to seize power for himself but is thwarted when a magical force using the voice of the late king announces that the next king will be chosen via the will of the people. Whoever has the most support after a few months will be king and wielder of the powerful royal scepter.

Racial strife, religious fanaticism, and national security are the most prevalent drivers of this world’s electorate. Louis promises to use his military might to protect the country from monster attacks and proposes a form of social Darwinism such that only strength matters rather than race. Forden, the leader of the church, is the other most prominent candidate. He appeals to people’s religious beliefs and seems to want to uphold the status-quo. The main character joins the royal tournament and is motivated by a fantasy book presenting a utopian society. He wants to join people of all tribes together regardless of class and race and create a utopia.

I quite enjoyed the ideas behind the political themes of Metaphor: ReFantazio. The portrayal of how people are driven to support politicians based on anxiety, fear, and anger felt especially apt as elections are taking place around the world. An objectively evil person such as Louis could become a front-runner because people are afraid for their security and want to overthrow the rotten status-quo no matter what it takes. And Forden uses his position of power in the church to manipulate people, not to mention his involvement in a shadow government that tries to rule the country from behind the scenes. But unfortunately, I think these themes never get explored past surface-level political analysis.

There’s a lack of nuance and thought-provoking questions that makes the world too black-and-white. It is obvious that Louis is a chaotic and evil villain. And Forden, despite appearing orderly, is highly manipulative and power-hungry. On the other hand, the main character is presented as perfectly righteous. It’s never in question if Louis or Forden are correct. The main character never has to answer how they will solve any of the difficult problems in the world. He repeats ad nauseam how everyone must come together. His vision of a utopia is nice, but I wish there was some actual nuance here.

I think the story would have been improved by not having Louis and Forden be so comically evil. Obviously sacrificing the weak so the strong can thrive is bad, but if Louis presented his social Darwinism as a merit-based system that anyone can succeed in it would be more nuanced. Moreover, if Forden leaned more into maintaining the status-quo, despite its faults, to maintain order and peace then we could analyze if that goal is worthwhile. And the main character’s utopian views needed some sort of flaws such as their difficulty to achieve. There should be some actual question to what is best for the country. A chaotic revolution that destroys social norms, the status-quo being upheld no matter what, or an idealistic utopia that struggles to answer hard questions. If I’m going to spend 80 hours engaging in a story, I want that story to make me think. And the lack of nuance in Metaphor: ReFantazio led to it not being very thought-provoking.

The issue with the storytelling is made worse by the repetitive writing. I understand these kinds of games are supposed to be story heavy but there were times I was mentally begging the characters to shut up. It’s rare that anything of substance is said, and most of the time characters are just repeating information that you already know. I can’t imagine counting how many times a character said something along the lines of “we have to stop Louis” or “we need to help everybody”. It’s cheesy, repetitive, and I am utterly exhausted by the power-of-friendship trope.

There are some exciting story sequences that showcased the potential that Metaphor: ReFantazio had. There are plenty of twists and turns that motivated me to see the game through to the end. The plot massively accelerates in the final quarter. The middle chapters of the game in comparison were slow and uninteresting. One of the earlier chapters takes place in the desert town of Martira where children have been going missing. This particular sequence was my favorite in the game as it was excellently paced and was a self-contained story with clever writing. The following couple of chapters were boring, forgettable, and lacked any sort of personality. Ultimately, the game is at its best in the beginning and at the end as it drags massively during the middle sections.

The strongest aspect of Metaphor: ReFantazio is its combat. I know turn-based combat isn’t for everyone, but I personally love a game when a game makes me think and strategize. What stands out to me about the combat in Metaphor: ReFantazio is the versatility. You have four characters on the battlefield, each with their own class and moveset. You get four actions per turn, but if you hit an enemy weakness or pass a character’s action it will only consume half an action. Moreover, there are synthesis skills that require two characters of specific classes that are highly impactful but cost two actions. Between basic attacks, single-target attacks, multi-target attacks, synthesis skills, buffs, debuffs, status effects, support skills, passing, and blocking there are so many potential ways to plan out a single turn. Which is important because battles often only last that long.

I played the game on hard difficulty and I found it to be vital to try to win most basic battles in a single turn. The combat is extremely volatile, meaning it is as easy for the enemies to kill you as it is for you to kill them. I found that letting the enemies have even a single turn could be catastrophic. Every battle became a puzzle of how to defeat all the enemies before they could retaliate, and to do so while using a minimal number of resources such as mana and items. Bosses are the exception to the single-turn combat as they have higher health but tend to telegraph their assaults. They often have multi-turn setup that can be interrupted or dealt with via debuffs and taunts. I enjoyed how every fight felt like it was on a knife’s edge, a single blunder could lead to a party wipe. But the versatility of tools that game gives you makes it so these tense encounters rarely feel unfair.

Part of what makes the combat so enjoyable is the adaptability brought by the class system. It may genuinely be my favorite class system in any game ever. There are over a dozen base classes, each with higher tiers that can be unlocked. Any character can be any class, and you are heavily encouraged to experiment with the different classes. Every character can inherit any skills they’ve unlocked from any class. If you want to inherit some elemental magic on your knight to give them some offensive options, go right ahead. If you want some healing spells on your buffing character, no problem. Every character levels up their class mastery independent from their actual level, making it easy to switch around and make use of the flexibility that the system affords.

There’s a lot of smart quality-of-life features that prevent potential frustration. When you max out a class’s level, any additional experience gained creates an item to be used freely on other classes. This prevents the issue of feeling the need to switch classes the moment you hit max level on a class so experience doesn’t go to waste. You can also switch classes and inherit skills freely, not needing to go somewhere specific. You are only constrained by a resource called Magla, which prevents you from unlocking every class and inheriting every skill but I never came close to running out of Magla. Another major quality-of-life feature is the existence of overworld combat.

When exploring a dungeon, you can strike enemies before engaging them in turn-based combat. If you are significantly higher leveled than the enemy, they will be defeated instantly without having to spend time in turn-based combat. This is a huge time-saver and I’m extremely grateful for its inclusion. If you aren’t a much higher level, hitting enemies enough will trigger an ambush, dealing a big chunk of damage and stunning them to start the battle. Conversely, if an enemy hits you then you will be ambushed instead, letting the enemies have a turn before you. Because of the volatile combat, being ambushed is extremely catastrophic and often leads to just having to reload from the last save. While I appreciate the benefits from overworld combat, I wish getting a hit a single time didn’t effectively lead to a game over. The third-person action isn’t fantastic, and it doesn’t need to be, but a lot of emphasis is placed on it which I find odd.

My other major issue is with some of the late game boss battles. Many of these bosses have ways to give themselves a ton of extra actions per turn, making them extremely dangerous without hyper specific strategies to counter them. They also are effectively immune to most status effects and can clear any debuffs and buffs easily, further pigeonholing what you can do. I found myself relying on setting up a 1-shot (or close to it) to attempt to burst the boss down before they could do any of their ridiculousness. There are also a few late-game abilities that feel almost necessary to counter the wealth of actions that these bosses can have.

Atlus’ style of JRPG is famous for their emphasis on time-management via the calendar. Metaphor: ReFantazio follows this trend and ultimately makes some great improvements. Every major section of the game gives the player a limited number of days to complete the main dungeon before the story continues. Any time not spent doing the main dungeon can be spent doing side quests, conversing with followers to improve your relationship, improving your “royal virtue” character traits, and travelling between locations. I generally enjoy this format as it makes downtime feel valuable rather than a chore. Choosing what to focus on and optimizing your time is a form of gameplay rather than just feeling like a checkbox.

What makes Metaphor: ReFantazio stand out compared to Atlus’ previous titles is the game’s road trip structure. You and your party are a globetrotting crew in your magical legged landship, called a Gauntlet Runner. Traveling from a major hub city to towns and dungeons takes time, so you have to plan your routes and time your departure based on weather and other factors. The Gauntlet Runner also serves as a cozy hub during travels where you can cook, read, and converse with allies. I quite liked the structure opposed to staying in a more static location like Tokyo in Persona 5.

Another improvement that I am happy about is that improving follower relationships no longer relies on choosing the “correct” answers during conversations. You get bonus Magla for doing so, but you don’t feel the need to look up a guide to make sure you don’t mess up and waste time by picking the wrong dialogue choices. Moreover, the game is fairly lenient with time in general, and unless you majorly mess up you should have plenty of time by the end of the game to do every side quest and max out every relationship. The major downside to the calendar system, in every Atlus game, is that there tends to be a lot of downtime. Time between dungeons and story sequences can get tiresome if you have too many days in a row of talking to followers and doing other miscellaneous stuff. I would have appreciated a brisker pace in some sections of the game.

I was a little disappointed by the presentation of Metaphor: ReFantazio. The orchestral soundtrack is solid, and I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of Esperanto chanting. I do prefer the jazzier soundtrack of Persona 5, but I can’t complain about the music in Metaphor: ReFantazio. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the visuals. I think the character designs are wonderful, and the animated cutscenes are also incredibly well done, but the graphical quality during normal gameplay is awful. Everything just looks muddied and dull. Many dungeons take place in the same environments rather than unique and memorable locations. Which is a shame because the world is conceptually interesting. There are plenty of wondrous places that aren’t conveyed properly through the outdated visuals.

Ultimately, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a lengthy story-driven game. And while the story has some good ideas, it ultimately failed to provoke thought or inspire nuanced political analysis. Luckily, the game does deliver on strategic combat and a wonderfully adaptable class system. It is for these reasons that I give Metaphor: ReFantazio a 7/10. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a great JRPG. The problem is that I don’t think this genre is for me.

Astro Bot (2024)

December 7, 2024 / stephensopinions / 1 Comment

Astro Bot is a game for people who love gaming. Not only is it a technical marvel, but it lives by the ethos that games should be fun. While I personally love experimental and mature games that toy with inspiring other emotions such as rage or sadness, the unbridled joy that Astro Bot brought me reminded me of playing games as a kid. It’s reminiscent of all-time greats such as Super Mario Galaxy. It’s a modern day classic that I’m already eager to revisit in a few years’ time.

Astro Bot starts with your Playstation-shaped spaceship being destroyed by an alien and having all your robotic allies scattered across the universe. You crash land on a barren planet and have to visit different galaxies and planets to rescue the little bots and repair your spaceship. Each level plays out as a fairly linear course-clear style stage with hidden collectibles scattered about. Astro Bot clearly takes inspiration from Super Mario Galaxy with its approach to level design and reliance on interesting power-ups.

Most levels are a straightforward 3D platforming affair, but there is almost always a power-up or gimmick to keep things fresh. My favorites include the mouse backpack that lets you shrink and explore the nooks and crannies of the level, goggles that let you briefly slow time to avoid speedy obstacles, and a chicken jetpack that blasts you skyward at dizzying speeds. There’s a ridiculous amount of creativity on display in the levels. Each one is like a giant set piece with fantastic theming and spectacle. Whether it’s freeing chained-up starfish, jumping into the mouth of a giant singing tree, or hunting for treasure in sandy villages and stumbling on a Djinn in a lamp, Astro Bot is absolutely brimming with memorable ideas and I don’t want to spoil too many surprises.

Not only are the levels filled with spectacle, but there is also an unparalleled attention to detail. The developers had a penchant for showing off the physics on tiny objects. Levels are filled with things like acorns, confetti, gems, bolts, and other objects that move seamlessly as you wade through them or forcefully launch them. The game also frequently has destructible environments and set pieces that show off the sophisticated physics. The sound effects as you move about on different surfaces is sublime. Astro Bot makes fantastic use of the PS5 controller’s haptic and audio feedback to really immerse the player. The rain effect in particular is very slick.

I love collectathons and games with a good hub world, and Astro Bot combines those aspects brilliantly. As you play levels you will be rescuing little robots who will come back to the initially barren crash site. Many of these bots are cameos from classic Playstation games, but they don’t feel like cheap references. Many of the references are fairly obscure and even I had trouble recognizing some of them. But aside from the referential costumes every character has their own comedic blurb that makes it seem like the developers of Astro Bot actually played these games and aren’t using them as cheap references. Furthermore, you can spend coins you collect to acquire accessories for the bots. For example, you can get a cardboard box for the Solid Snake bot to hide underneath. I quite enjoyed walking around the hub world and taking in the characters and scenes from Playstation’s past. It feels like a love letter to gaming.

The one fault I have with Astro Bot is perhaps not a fair one. Because comparing any game to Super Mario is putting it up against the best of the best. But Astro Bot is clearly Playstation’s version of Super Mario, so the comparison is necessary. The main character, Astro, doesn’t have nearly the same movement complexity that Mario has. Astro can run, jump, punch, spin, and briefly hover using lasers. But it doesn’t feel like there is anything to master. I remember playing Super Mario Sunshine a bunch as a kid and trying to master my control on momentum to backflip, wall jump, and hover up to ledges that seemed out of reach. Mario’s moveset is far more complex and the reliance on momentum allows for more mastery for advanced players.

While the movement is simpler, I do think the game benefits from Astro’s fragility. Getting hit once will reset you back to the latest checkpoint. The level design and simple movement lend themselves to a fairly laid-back experience, but you still have to be careful. The game is fairly easy, but it has an edge because a single mistake means death. There are some challenge levels and gauntlets that are decently difficult. Overall, I think the difficulty was tuned quite well for being a family-friendly platformer.

While playing Astro Bot I really didn’t want the experience to end. It’s an absolute joyous adventure that celebrates gaming and the philosophy that games should be fun first and foremost. While Sony has recently focused on more mature storytelling games, I hope Astro Bot signals that there is still a space for polished platformers and collectathons. The variety of levels, attention to detail, spectacular power-ups, and love for older titles makes this a game nobody should miss out on playing. It is for these reasons that I give Astro Bot a 9.5/10. There’s no doubt in my mind that Astro Bot is a modern classic.

Metro Exodus (2019)

November 15, 2024 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Immersion. That’s what the Metro series is about. Making the player feel like they are in the underground tunnels under a post-nuclear-war Moscow. I was concerned, but also excited, when I learned that Metro Exodus would take us to the surface and open up the world. Despite seeming overly ambitious, the developers delivered on a world just as detailed and immersive as its predecessors. But despite their success in world building and immersion, I felt that the gameplay and story could be very rough and unrefined. As a fan of immersive games, I wanted to fall in love with Metro Exodus, but I just couldn’t.

I almost immediately dropped Metro Exodus while playing through its first chapter. I stuck with it because I wanted to complete the series and I wanted to give the game a chance. I’m glad I did because the beginning of the game is not at all reflected in the rest of the game. The game starts in the tunnels of Moscow with our main character Artyom on a quest to find proof of life outside of Moscow. This chapter is filled with a ton of dialogue and slow-paced gameplay as you crawl or slowly walk along restrictive paths. Action is constantly interrupted and control is wrested away from the player to play cutscenes and hear more blathering. To make matters worse, despite the focus on narrative storytelling in this chapter, the story feels incredibly rushed. Artyom discovering the train and the radio station feels like a massive coincidence and plot contrivance and feels ridiculous. Tutorials and opening chapters are often poorly done in games, but this chapter in Metro Exodus was particularly awful.

Luckily, the game’s best chapter immediately redeems the awful introduction. Artyom and crew leave Moscow by train and arrive in the tundra area known as Volga. This is an open area with freedom to explore as you please. It’s an incredibly detailed area with a ton of side stories to naturally discover. You deal with a church of extremists who believe that all technology is evil, bandits who enslave prisoners, and of course radioactive creatures. What makes Metro Exodus excel here is its immersion.

The game takes great strides to immerse the player in its world. The UI is minimalist so you are always looking at the world rather than a mini-map or objective marker. The map and your goals are printed on a clipboard that you can pull out. The compass is physically attached to Artyom’s wrist rather than being a UI component. Movement is purposefully sluggish; this isn’t a fast-paced arcade shooter and you aren’t superhuman. When entering radioactive areas, you need to wear a mask and constantly replace its filters. The mask can also get muddied or cracked and need to be cleaned and repaired. Ammunition, filters, and medical supplies are fairly scarce so you are discouraged from wasting any supplies. A single bad encounter can leave you without resources.

The dedication to making the game so immersive is what makes Metro Exodus enthralling. Trudging across the tundra without surplus health kits or ammunition leads to careful and thoughtful gameplay. Even basic encounters are tense as they could massively drain your resources. The relief that I felt whenever I would come across a safe house was massive. These little shacks are peppered throughout the world and they provided me with a sense of safety with their warm light and respite from the harsh world. Taking a few minutes to sit in the warmth, replenish my supplies, and listen to an audio log while in these shanties were some of my favorite moments in the game. While the areas following Volga don’t quite reach its heights, I do think they are varied and have interesting twists on the formula.

Outside of its immersive elements, I was a little let down by Metro Exodus. The gameplay and story have some significant issues that I found it difficult to look past. It’s ok that the gameplay was basic, I wasn’t looking for a fast-paced DOOM style shooter. The guns feel impactful and shoot-outs can be wonderfully tense because of the implications on your pool of resources. But it’s not ok that the gameplay is just… boring. I found that shoot-outs were few and far between because the game discourages you from killing human combatants. Humans also had poor AI that waffled between standing in the open to be killed and having superhuman accuracy that can shoot you through walls from a mile away. And non-human enemy encounters are repetitive and feel a bit janky.

The thing is that Metro Exodus, through various means, encourages the player to play stealthily. Because of the emphasis on resource management, it feels risky to get yourself into direct combat. Why waste bullets and health kits when you can just sneak around and avoid combat altogether? I don’t hate stealth in video games. It’s fine to supplement other systems and it can be very fun on its own like in series such as Metal Gear Solid and Dishonored. But stealth in Metro Exodus is barebones. It boils down to sneaking from cover to cover as enemies look the other way. There are never any new tools introduced other than the decoys you have access to from the very beginning of the game. If you want to avoid combat, be prepared to spend a long time slowly walking.

I think stealth could’ve been more interesting without even needing to introduce new features. Trying to sneak around but getting caught and having to rely on shooting your way out could be a fun gameplay loop. The more enemies you avoid, the more resources you save. But there would still be intense and chaotic gun fights if you got caught. But the moral system in Metro Exodus discourages you from getting caught at all. If you want to get the “good” ending in every area and the finale of the game then it’s incredibly risky to kill any enemies. I didn’t know which enemies are ok to kill without repercussions without looking it up online, so I just avoided killing anyone that I didn’t have to. This encourages a lot of reloading of saves whenever you get spotted. Not only is this boring, but it’s immersion breaking.

Maybe it’s entirely my fault that I would reload saves to prevent myself from having to shoot enemies. Maybe I should’ve just let the game play out and got into more shoot-outs. It probably would’ve been more fun. But the game actively punishes the player with dire story consequences if they kill anybody. At the very least, the morality system in Metro Exodus is much less obtuse than its predecessors, making it easier to get “good” outcomes in each area. But still, I felt like the game is discouraging the player to play naturally.

I quite liked the general direction of the story and how it weaves its narrative into each of the major areas. The game focuses on themes of guilt and morality and what humanity will do if nobody is watching. Some groups blame technology and things they don’t understand for the apocalypse. Some groups take advantage of others and utilize slavery to get ahead. Some groups form childish tribes and treat the world like high school cliques because they never grew up. Society has to relearn morality. It’s a fantastically thought-out world with complexity and depth to it, but the story itself fell flat for me. Metro Exodus has a serviceable story that is severely hampered by two major blunders: Artyom being a voiceless protagonist, and the voice acting in general.

I understand the desire to have Artyom be a stand-in for the player and their decisions. But having Artyom be silent for the entire game leads to many stifled interactions that feel unnatural. Characters talk at you and have pauses where Artyom would respond if he could. I frequently found myself zoning out as characters would monologue for upwards of 10 minutes. These conversations were meant to be 2-way, and would be much more interesting to listen to if Artyom could actually speak for himself. The Witcher series showed us over a decade ago that the player could make moral choices for the main character even if the main character also speaks for themself.

The bigger issue I had with the story is the quality of the voice acting. Nothing pulled me out of the moment more than comically over-the-top Russian accents. At times the characters’ accents feel like a parody. There’s also plenty of awkward pauses leading to disjointed conversations. I also have a suspicion that dialogue lines were recorded 1-by-1 and stitched together because many lines have disconnected delivery from the previous line. I also had issues with bits of dialogue playing over each other making it difficult to parse what any of the characters were saying. I really don’t know what happened here but I was regularly distracted by all these issues with voice acting and scripting. It’s a massive shame because Metro Exodus has an interesting premise. Moreover, when immersion is the game’s key aspect it is unfortunate that the quality of voice acting regularly broke my immersion.

I wanted to like Metro Exodus more than I did. I love games that can truly immerse the player in their worlds. And Metro Exodus does put in a ton of effort to fill its world with details and it’s clearly designed to engross the player through minimalist UI and dangerous environments. But the underwhelming gameplay, stiff morality system, and poorly executed story left me disappointed in Metro Exodus. I hope other studios take inspiration from the immersive aspects of Metro Exodus as the poor execution of the concept left me wanting something more.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (2021)

October 4, 2024 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a game that’s better than the sum of its parts. Which is really important because none of the individual aspects of the game are standouts. There’s perfectly serviceable combat, platforming, exploration, and story, but there aren’t really any surprises or “wow” moments. It’s a game that feels reminiscent of classic, Playstation 2 era, adventure games. While being fairly derivative, Kena: Bridge of Spirits somehow feels endearing. I actually enjoyed my time with the game which can be partially attributed to the game’s smaller scope and wholesome vibes.

The game follows Kena, a spirit guide on a journey to learn more about her abilities to usher spirits into the afterlife. She travels to a remote village beset by famine and magical corruption. The populace has been entirely wiped out, and only spirits remain. It’s Kena’s duty to clear the corruption and guide the regretful spirits into the afterlife to help restore the natural order of life. I thought it was a touching story that dealt with loss, regret, and acceptance. There’s a sense of melancholy as you explore what was once a bustling town full of life, and moments of sadness as you learn the fates of the spirits that you’ve been assisting. But it’s also uplifting and endearing as you are ultimately helping the spirits accept and move on.

The most striking aspect of Kena: Bridge of Spirits is undoubtedly its visuals. The world is an absolute treat to look at. Towering canopies, twisted roots, rushing waterfalls, and dense underbrush are intertwined in a way that feels like a genuine forest. The world feels serene and natural thanks to its thoughtful environmental design. The lighting is also superb as streaks of light cut through the trees and illuminate the path during a thunderstorm. Graphically, the game has the Pixar movie-esque style to it that is wonderfully animated and rendered beautifully, especially in cutscenes. There’s no question that the presentation is the most impressive aspect of Kena: Bridge of Spirits.

Gameplay wise, Kena: Bridge of Spirits has a healthy mix of combat, exploration, platforming, and puzzle solving. While all these components were competent, they each had their own flaws. The only aspect that tried to do something new was how puzzles used the cute creatures called Rot. The Rot are little black puffballs that follow you around and assist you as you free them. You can command them to move blocks around and can occasionally fuse them together to create a spiritual dragon to clear away corruption. I loved seeing the little creatures but I felt that they were underutilized in puzzles. I didn’t feel like there was a meaningful difference between having the Rot move a stone block instead of just doing it as the player character like in most games. As a whole, the puzzles were extremely simple.

Platforming faced a similar issue of simplicity. There was some potential here as the game introduced some fun ideas such as using your bow to slingshot you to glowing flowers, rotating floating blocks so that you could use them as platforms, and introducing a dash that sends you through spiritual portals. There were moments that I felt like there could’ve been some excellent race-against-time sections as you rapidly used your tools to levitate blocks, dash through portals, and sling across gaps. Or there could’ve been more puzzle-platforming focused sections of rotating platforms in the correct order. But those moments never really came to fruition unfortunately. Moreover, double-jumping feels awkward because the second jump almost entirely halts your momentum. It makes it easy to misjudge jumps and honestly just feels bad.

I found exploration to be mostly enjoyable because of the environments. There’s a good amount of stuff to find without feeling overwhelming. But a lot of the rewards were fairly disappointing. Meditation spots are thematically nice and increase your total health which is great. Finding hidden Rot around the world also feels good and collecting a bunch gives you more energy to use in combat, great. But I honestly didn’t care for finding the dozens of different hats that you can put on your Rot. Sure, it’s a cute touch. But it is purely cosmetic and I couldn’t help but be deflated whenever I found a secret passageway only to be rewarded with a random hat. Worse still, the most common reward is money. And money’s only use in the game is to purchase hats. So, if you don’t care too much for these trinkets then a majority of the game’s rewards are going to be meaningless for you.

The one exploration reward that I thought was interesting was the Spirit Mail. Collecting these allows you to enter homes in the village that have been beset by corruption. You can clear out the evil energy, restoring that home and the surrounding area to a more serene state. I wish they did more with this. I love the idea of reviving the village, but aside from getting rid of some evil vines and bramble there isn’t any gameplay element tied into this. There are some static blue spirits standing around but they don’t move and you can’t interact with them in any way.

Imagine this: after cleansing a building in the village, spirits are freed that act as shops to spend your money. It was such an obvious idea to me that I’m shocked it’s not in the game. It solves a multitude of issues that I had. The village would feel more alive, Spirit Mail would feel more rewarding, you’d have actual upgrades and equipment to spend your money on, and combat progression would feel better with these upgrades. I even think it’d increase the emotional impact of the game’s ending as you free these spirits that have been stranded instead of moving on to the afterlife. Maybe the developers didn’t want players to have weapon upgrades to spend money on, but I found it so odd that 3 of the major collectibles in the game (Spirit Mail, hats, and money) had no gameplay implication whatsoever. I genuinely think adding some shops as a reward for finding Spirit Mail would have been a major improvement.

The most fleshed out aspect of Kena: Bridge of Spirits is easily its combat. Kena has the classic options of light attack, heavy attack, dodge, and shield. As you progress through the game a few more options become available such as the bow, bomb, and dash. Furthermore, you can spend experience to unlock bonus attributes such as a stronger shield, more arrows, or bombs releasing mini-bombs upon detonation. But the best way to deal massive damage is through the Rot abilities. As you hit enemies with your basic attacks you will build up a resource called confidence. One confidence can be spent to unleash a devastating melee attack, a piercing arrow, a time-slowing bomb, or it can be used to consume limited health flowers scattered around the arena.

All of these considerations play into the flow of combat in Kena: Bridge of Spirits. I found it enjoyable to dodge, block, and parry enemies along with dealing some damage with all my tools while building up confidence to burst down enemies with Rot abilities. Enemy design is also quite varied so that you are always on your toes. You really have to make use of all your tools to dispose of the variety of threats the game throws at you. It sounds silly, but I was impressed that even with a large roster of foes there was not a single one that I thought was annoying or poorly designed. But where I think combat really shines is the boss battles.

I think the difficulty curve pertaining to the boss battles is going to be a huge negative for many players. For a game that presents itself like a Pixar movie, the bosses can be quite challenging. Don’t go into Kena: Bridge of Spirits thinking it is a game for little kids as the bosses will humble you, even on the “normal” difficulty. But it’s hard for me to begrudge these unexpected difficulty spikes because the bosses were my favorite part of the game. They follow the same flow of regular combat but are much more challenging. Additionally, most bosses have some briefly exposed weak points that you can target to temporarily incapacitate them. It’s a great way to encourage the player to stay perceptive and get rewarded with small windows to deal big damage.

Even though I did have fun with the combat, I do have a few small complaints. For one, the camera can get a bit annoying with multiple enemies. It has the tendency to soft-lock itself onto the nearest enemy which isn’t always what I want. I think the camera should’ve stayed in control of the player for the most part. My other issue is a lack of progression for melee attacks. Towards the end of the game it felt like basic light and heavy attacks did pitiful damage to bosses to the point it wasn’t worth the risk of getting close. I defaulted to using arrows and bombs until I could stun the boss and then used Rot abilities to deal the majority of damage. I think the idea of having a blacksmith or something in the village like I mentioned earlier could’ve allowed players to specialize into stronger melee attacks.

There’s something about Kena: Bridge of Spirits that feels like an adventure game from the Playstation 2. And not in a bad way. I think it may be because so many modern adventure games put more emphasis on story and massive scope. Kena: Bridge of Spirits feels more personal and endearing. It has a story, but it doesn’t talk at the player for hours on end. It has an open world, but it’s much smaller and more segmented than most modern games. And I appreciated that the game wasn’t bloated with unnecessary junk. It’s maybe a dozen hours long and quickly moves through new areas, enemies, bosses, and tools. In a landscape filled with 50-hour open world games, I’m glad to have smaller scoped adventures like Kena: Bridge of Spirits.

While Kena: Bridge of Spirits doesn’t do anything particularly groundbreaking, I still had a great time with the game. I looked forward to cozy mornings with a cup of coffee and exploring its gorgeous natural landscapes with my crew of Rot buddies. I think there are clear improvements to be made across all gameplay aspects, but as an entire package I think Kena: Bridge of Spirits is fun. It is for these reasons that I give Kena: Bridge of Spirits a 7.5/10. If you are tired of grandiose open worlds and dialogue heavy adventure games, Kena: Bridge of Spirits presents a tighter and more personal quest.