Review

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

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One of the game’s that I wish I spent more writing an extensive review for is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. Looking back, I really should have highlighted how the game’s design led to organic adventure, discovery, and creativity. I consider Breath of the Wild to be a marvel of game design, and it remains as a barometer of quality for open world games. Predictably, I was endlessly excited for its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I was optimistic that despite reusing the map and world, Tears of the Kingdom would do enough to differentiate itself from its predecessor. After spending dozens of hours adventuring throughout Hyrule again, I can confidently say that Tears of the Kingdom is a marvelous sandbox to inspire creativity, yet its recycled world stifled the lure of adventure.

There’s no denying that Tears of the Kingdom is a wondrous playground for players to discover. It follows in the footsteps of Breath of the Wild; you can walk, climb, or glide anywhere that your heart desires. This is a level of freedom that I greatly appreciate. The player is left to craft their own path. The environment subtly piques your curiosity, pulling you towards interesting landmarks and mysterious areas. While there are quests to nudge the player along, many will find themselves constantly being sidetracked as they stray off the beaten path. This is the magic of Tears of the Kingdom.

One could make the argument that while Breath of the Wild had a massive world to explore, it was fairly empty. Aside from few major towns, the game was dotted with the same objectives such as the bite-sized puzzles that were Shrines and Koroks. Tears of the Kingdom expands on that same world while also filling it with many more things to do. For example, you can explore many of the new underground caves and wells that exist within Hyrule. These winding passages are filled with valuable resources and dangerous monsters. Moreover, they often play a pivotal role in the expanded quest log of Tears of the Kingdom.

There are a ton of side quests to be sucked into while playing Tears of the Kingdom. Some of them are just short tasks to collect some items or kill some monsters, but I found that most quests were more expansive and told a story. I felt like I was playing a vital role in rebuilding Hyrule by assisting its inhabitants. The quests are intelligently designed to feed into the game’s main attraction: exploration. Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t fall into the modern convention of overusing objective markers and waypoints. Instead, the characters will describe their plight and have the player use their brain to solve the problem.

While it may not be revolutionary, I can appreciate the trust placed in the player to figure things out on their own. It’s far more immersive to be told about a monster camp alongside the mountain road and going to find it yourself rather than simply following a glowing arrow to the objective. The main quests also felt like classic The Legend of Zelda adventures. The dungeons themselves were short and underwhelming, but the quests leading up to those dungeons were superb journeys. They are legendary expeditions through the epic land of Hyrule.

 The key distinction between Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild is the new set of abilities at the player’s disposal. There are four key abilities: Ultrahand, Recall, Fuse, and Ascend. These abilities are cleverly utilized and emphasized to increase the player’s motivation to make use of them. The most pivotal of these skills is Ultrahand, which lets the player attach materials together to build contraptions. The world is filled with Zonai Devices which act as battery-powered pieces of technology that can be used when building machines with Ultrahand. While I don’t have the creativity as many of the engineering-minded players, I still enjoyed building makeshift cars, planes, and other contraptions.

Ultrahand is extremely entertaining to experiment with. This was especially fun during the first hours of the game when I was still learning how everything functioned. There’s a wonderful comedic effect when one of your ideas literally bursts into flames. The outcome of building a sketchy vehicle was gratifying no matter the outcome. I either would laugh at the resulting chaos of my shoddily built mechanism. Or I felt pride and astonishment in the nature of “I can’t believe that actually worked”.

The genius of Ultrahand is how ubiquitous it is throughout the game. Initially, I was a little worried that such a creative idea would not be emphasized, but I was proved wrong. Many of the puzzles present in the game are reliant on Ultrahand. Shrines are specifically designed to teach you new combinations and mechanics. Moreover, you have to build vehicles to transport Koroks, which almost always results in a comedic sketchy-space-program wherein you launch Koroks into the stratosphere via rockets. Even basic traversal throughout the world was assisted by the use of gliders and other vehicles.

Fuse is another one of the key abilities of the game. It allows the player to meld items to weapons, shields or arrows. This is a pretty great concept, as it allows the player to come up with some creative weaponry or tools. Like fusing a rocket or bomb to your shield to blast off above enemies. Additionally, it means that defeating dangerous enemies yields resources are directly useful to crafting powerful weapons. Unfortunately, the implementation of Fuse is a little clunky as it requires frequent navigation through multiple menus to utilize fully.

I’ve never felt that the overarching plot was an important aspect to The Legend of Zelda games. The charming characters, wondrous landscapes, and enchanting towns have always been what made these games feel fantastical. The same goes for Tears of the Kingdom. I loved visiting all the locales and seeing how the various peoples have been faring. Each race is going through a crisis, and I greatly enjoyed the subsequent adventures to assist them. The central plot fits The Legend of Zelda perfectly. The cyclical battle of good and evil is core tenet of the series. However, it had some strange pacing issues due to repeated cutscenes. Additionally, the memory sequences don’t have to be found in chronological order. Which is a fine decision, but there’s a lack of subtlety that makes the major plot twist incredibly obvious if you find certain memories first.

While I do love Tears of the Kingdom, I felt enormously fatigued and burnt out after playing it for a few dozen hours. While that is a solid amount of time to invest in a game, it is paltry compared to the time I spent exploring Breath of the Wild. For a game of this size, I was disappointed by how quickly I felt that I had experienced most of what it had to offer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a phenomenal game and achievement, but I can’t help but feel that it would have been better served to have its own world rather than reuse the one from Breath of the Wild.

This duology of The Legend of Zelda games hinges on the intrinsic value of exploration. The combat, puzzles, and other aspects are solid foundational pieces, but the main draw of these games is satiating the desire to adventure across a grandiose fantasy land. The world of Tears of the Kingdom is slightly remixed from its predecessor, but most of the major areas and landmarks remain in their general neighborhood from Breath of the Wild. While Hyrule is undeniably denser with quests, caves, and other threads of adventure, it’s still the same world. The feeling of discovery is dampened when I’ve already visited all the major areas a few years ago. I spent over a hundred hours exploring this world in Breath of the Wild, I was not keen to spent another hundred hours retreading the same ground.

There are two new major zones in Tears of the Kingdom, however neither felt comparable to the original diverse biomes of Hyrule. The Depths is the first major area, a pitch-black underground cavern that mirrors the world above it. I enjoyed exploring the Depths and the unique challenges that it poses. Slowly maneuvering through the dark by using whatever means of illumination you can find is a fun departure from traditional exploration. Despite that, I felt that the Depths were fairly barren. There isn’t much to be discovered in such a massive area, and 95% of my time down here spent was gliding between Lightroots to provide some light.

The other major addition is the Sky Islands. Far above the ground are ruins of an ancient civilization. Similar to the Depths, I felt that these were a great concept but they had lackluster execution. The islands are fairly sparse, and many of them follow the same basic templates. Navigating these floating islands is an engaging puzzle, but I felt disappointed by how few unique islands there were. The best and most comprehensive set of islands is the tutorial area of Tears of the Kingdom, which only further set me up for disappointment when no other islands matched that initial standard.

The Sky Islands also exacerbate a returning issue from Breath of the Wild: gliding is too ubiquitous of a travel method. Using the glider to fly over terrain, monsters, and obstacles, is probably the least satisfying way to traverse the world. But it is the easiest. It’s a well-known phenomenon that players often opt for the simplest or most optimal strategy, regardless of how fun it is. Game designers should be well-aware of this fact and ensure that the most optimal strategy is the most entertaining strategy. It’s more appealing to talk to characters, fight monsters, and traverse terrain on foot rather than simply flying over everything. This issue is worse in Tears of the Kingdom is because there are so many methods to ascend upwards: Sky Islands, Skyview Towers, vehicles, and falling debris all provide a simple means of getting far above any obstacles.

 There’s no doubt that Tears of the Kingdom is a magnificent game. But six years after Breath of the Wild, I can’t help but feeling like I wanted more out of its sequel. The new abilities such as Ultrahand are incredibly fun to play with. And the main quest delivers some magical adventure and discovery. But in a game where exploration is king, I wasn’t especially compelled to revisit the same world I had already spent dozens of hours in. It is for these reasons that I give The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a 9/10. It’s a phenomenal experience and a glorious sandbox, but it’s not as revolutionary as Breath of the Wild.

Resident Evil (1996)

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The genre of survival horror has become synonymous with Resident Evil. It is one of the most storied and recognizable franchises in video games. But I had never played or engaged with any of its numerous titles in any way. With the recent resurgence and renaissance of Resident Evil, I figured I had a unique opportunity to experience not only the series, but survival horror as a whole. I could take a journey through the life and evolution of the genre. Starting with its genesis in 1996.

I was surprised how engaging I found Resident Evil to be, despite its age. The mansion is a terrific environment to explore. Every room is full of secrets that you have to probe for. It’s a labyrinth that you must delve deeper and deeper into if you want to escape. It’s a giant escape room filled with zombies and other horrific creatures. Resident Evil mastered the feeling of tension. Simply walking down hallways or dealing with a single enemy is a stressful affair.

The inventory system plays a large role in the tension. Even playing on Easy Mode, the player only has 8 inventory slots. You have to juggle numerous items such as your weapons, ammo, medicine, herbs, and key items used in puzzles. You can’t drop items, so you should almost always have a free slot or two open in case you find valuable items. The reason this system provides so much tension is that you have such limited resources at your disposal.

Ammo and healing items are relatively sparse. Zombies are threatening as they can deal massive damage if they latch onto you. Every time you encounter an enemy you are given a choice: fight or attempt to dodge. Fighting is a surefire way of making it through without taking damage, but ammo is precious and you could find yourself in situations where you run out of ammo permanently. Dodging enemies is risky, as you could get caught and sustain immense damage. The limited inventory also means you can’t carry everything with you at once, so you have to make strategic choices have how many healing items and weapons you want to bring.

You can only save in designated safe rooms, and depending on which version you are playing, it also requires a limited item to save. Having limited saves means you are less likely to save at every opportunity. Which then means that dying will set you farther back as you are saving less often. This contributes to the feeling of tension and danger as you explore the mansion. It’s a constant balancing act of risk and reward. Will you play on a knife’s edge to preserve resources, but risk dying and facing a massive setback? Or will you engage in combat to guarantee your safety but risk running out of ammunition for later scenarios?

Part of the reason why avoiding zombies is so inherently risky is the control scheme. Resident Evil utilizes tank controls, a system that is antiquated by modern standards. In this scheme, the player controls the character relative to the character’s position rather than the camera. This definitely takes some getting used to, and I still didn’t feel 100% comfortable using this system even after completing the game. But tank controls are necessary when you consider that Resident Evil uses a fixed camera system.

The player does not control the camera. Instead, every room has a few preset camera angles that get swapped between depending where you are standing. Tank controls are almost a necessity when using fixed camera angles, because holding forward will still move your character forward regardless of the camera angle. It would be awkward and jarring to have a movement system based on the relative position of the camera when the camera is swapping angles constantly. The benefit of using fixed camera angles is that it allowed for more detailed backgrounds as they can just be static images rather than rendered environments. Additionally, Resident Evil utilizes its camera angles to hide enemies around corners, leading to additional tension and caution.

Despite it being the first survival horror game, I did not find Resident Evil to be that frightening. And honestly, I’m pretty easily scared when it comes to video games. There were times playing Subnautica or even Outer Wilds that I was petrified of progressing forward. The primary reason that I did not find Resident Evil to be scary lies in the difference between horror and terror. Resident Evil relies primarily on horror. Horror being the shock and revulsion of seeing zombies, giant spiders, snakes, and other creatures.

Terror is a stronger emotion that horror. The initial shock of seeing something horrifying wears off. But the deep-rooted anxiety and unknowing of terror never lessens. It’s hardwired into humans as a survival trait. Resident Evil does have its terrifying moments, like when you enter new areas or have to turn a blind-corner knowing that a zombie is waiting for you. But more than terrifying, I would describe Resident Evil as tense. Navigating the cramped labyrinth of the mansion is stressful. Trying to figure out how to escape while backtracking through narrow hallways is tense because a single enemy can be devastating.

While horror isn’t something that always resonates with me, it’s only fair to mention that Resident Evil is ancient. I wasn’t particularly revulsed by most of the enemies, and I believe a lot of that has to do with the dated presentation. Zombies or giant spiders aren’t particularly scary when you can count how many polygons they are comprised of. The game looks great for its era, but I found it difficult to be truly immersed and horrified by its dated visuals.

Another aspect of Resident Evil that feels like it’s a product of its time is the writing and voice acting. It can be hard to take the cutscenes and story seriously when it feels like a low-budget horror movie where the actors were hired off the street. More often than not, the story sequences are comedic. The voice acting is so bad that it feels like an intentional parody. The overarching plot is decent mechanism to provide context of the mansion and its secrets, but I never felt drawn to keep playing for the story.

Despite its age, I greatly enjoyed playing Resident Evil. While many of its systems today feel dated, they all work in harmony to provide a cohesive experience. In a world of action games, it’s refreshing to play a game where even the most basic of enemy is a real threat. While I did not find Resident Evil to be very frightening, it certainly was tense. I’m excited to play the rest of the series and see how it progresses over time.

Inscryption (2021)

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You are trapped in a dark cabin in the woods, playing a game of cards that determines your fate. Inscryption blends a multitude of genres to deliver a game that you never know where it will lead next. Tension permeates the experience as you attempt to unravel the dark secrets hidden within. Inscryption is a truly unique experiment, and it all revolves around a simple card game.

In every act of the Inscryption, you will be playing some variation of the titular card game. The card game itself starts remarkably simple. Whoever deals five damage more than their opponent first, wins the game. Cards have the basic stats like attack and defense, as well as special abilities. It’s all straightforward and easily understood by anyone vaguely familiar with trading-card-games. While I appreciate that the game starts simple and gradually gets more complex, I also think that it is almost too easy to find the winning strategies that almost guarantee success.

You sit across from a mysterious and deranged figure, who sets up tabletop adventure in which you traverse encounter to encounter playing cards. As you defeat his scenarios, you are also given the opportunity to improve your deck. Gaining new cards, adding stats to existing cards, combining cards of the same type, or sacrificing a card to give its ability to another card are some options that you may encounter.

Once I understood the basics of the game, I found it a bit repetitive. It’s pretty easy to leverage events to power-up a single card or two that let you win each round almost immediately. The central card game is just too simple. I never felt like I was building a coherent deck that relied on a synergistic strategy. Instead, I almost always found myself making use of totems to boost the ubiquitous Squirrel card, as it was needed as the foundation to summoning any other creature. After that, I just needed to stall until I drew one of my boosted cards to wreak havoc.

The game was designed this way on purpose, you unlock powerful boosts, items, and cards after playing a few rounds. It becomes difficult to lose without a blundering horribly. The game was intentionally made easy so the player can progress the story. But when the central mechanic is playing cards, and I master the card game after only completing 25% of the game, the following 75% can get a bit dull. The game does mix up the decks periodically throughout the course of the experience, which is a welcome change to keep things fresh.

While I found the card game itself to be a little too simple, there is more to Inscryption than playing cards. You can explore the claustrophobic and dingy cabin, interacting with objects in hope that they will help you escape. This was the strongest aspect of Inscryption. The atmosphere and anxiety of playing cards when you are trapped. Every draw, every move, every decision brings you closer to being a victim. Your only hope is to use the cabin’s secrets to your advantage.

The card game pairs well with the atmosphere. It’s designed to be tense, to be played on a knife’s edge. The metallic tinker on the scale as you take damage is chilling feedback that you are a single mistake away from having your candle blown out. The nature of sacrificing cards to summon more powerful ones means you are always careful about what cards you are playing, as momentum plays a pivotal role in keeping your side of the board healthy. In the most desperate of situations you can utilize items, many of which have horrifying implications. Even though I knew it was just a game, I always felt a sense of revulsion whenever I used a pair of pliers to rip out a tooth to add a point of damage to the scale.

Inscryption is cloaked in layers upon layers of metafictional storytelling and genre switching. The nature of the game slowly reveals itself as the player progresses. In an effort to remain spoiler free, I will not delve deep into this aspect of Inscryption. I enjoyed going down the rabbit hole of Inscryption and revealing the deep dark conspiracies within.

Uniqueness is becoming more and more of a virtue as I play games. The ability for a game to be different. To be weird. To experiment. Inscryption is that kind of game. It may not have the best deck-building or card game mechanics, but the context around that simple card game is what breathes life into Inscryption. It is for these reasons I give Inscryption an 8.5/10. If you are even vaguely interested in Inscryption, don’t read or watch any more about it and play it for yourself.

God of War Ragnarök (2022)

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Despite its faults, I gave the revival of God of War a glowing review. It was an excellent game in many regards and had masterful presentation. Four years later, I don’t feel nearly as positive about its sequel, God of War Ragnarök. While it’s not uncommon for a sequel to regress or diverge from the original, that’s not the case here. Instead, God of War Ragnarök is a victim of being overly safe and designed-by-committee, with little to give it an identity of its own. Sure, it’s a competent video game and it’s undoubtably well-made, but its lack of originality makes it unremarkable. Moreover, God of War Ragnarök is bloated and desperately needed more revisions and editing to make it a leaner and more cohesive experience.

Before I dive into the individual systems, I want to make clear that many of these exact same flaws also existed in God of War. While it feels unfair to judge the sequel harsher for the same faults, it’s important to recognize that games don’t exist in a vacuum. Context is important. Being a sequel, God of War Ragnarök should have its own identity but instead it just feels like more of the same. In the four years between the releases, I don’t feel like any significant improvements were made. The combat and RPG mechanics are slightly better than its predecessor, but the story and writing definitely took a dip in quality. The pacing in particular feels bizarre.

God of War Ragnarök starts off strong, throwing the player into a thrill ride of exciting story sequences culminating with a spectacular boss battle. After that, the game’s pacing takes a nose-dive. While the first game in this saga had some slow pacing at times, it was far more character driven than plot driven. The singular goal of reaching the top of the mountain always loomed, and everything in between served as a way for characters to grow and develop their bonds. God of War Ragnarök instead tries to cram many plot threads and events into a single game.

The main plot of God of War Ragnarök focuses on its namesake, Ragnarök. The characters of the game desperately attempt to avoid the fated event and its consequences. It introduces tons of new characters, motivations, relationships, and moving pieces. I think this Norse chapter of God of War would have benefited from being a trilogy instead of a duology. While I understand that the developers did not want to stretch this story over a decade of real time, I think the pacing of God of War Ragnarök would have benefitted heavily from this. The first game in the Norse saga was a slow burn, a character driven adventure, so most of the actual plot of the story had to be stuffed into God of War Ragnarök.

While I believe that God of War Ragnarök would have benefitted from having a sequel to scope its story, it admittedly has other bizarre pacing issues. While the game starts strong, it slows down tremendously for dozens of hours then races through the climax. It spends too long on these “slow-burn” character building moments that no time is left for the actual plot. I was let down by the abrupt ending, which was the result of dozens of hours of build-up culminating in a rather lackluster couple of boss fights.

Where God of War Ragnarök does make strides is its combat. While it does not reach the complexity of other character action series like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, or even its predecessors in the God of War series, it does manage to be fun. There’s a beauty in simplicity, and God of War Ragnarök manages to keep things straightforward and approachable while also providing some advanced techniques for more experienced players. While the first game in the Norse saga was debatably too simple, God of War Ragnarök introduces some key changes and combat options. First in foremost, the player starts the game with multiple weapons unlocked, allowing for some more experimentation right at the beginning. Unlocking new techniques using experience makes a return, and you can disable certain techniques if they disrupt your flow.

Being able to stack elemental damage to inflict status effects is emphasized, encouraging the player to swap between their weapons for big damage. Runic attacks make a return but have much higher cooldowns, meaning that they are no longer a spammable win condition but instead supplement your moveset. The most important change wasn’t to the combat itself, but in the boss variety. God of War Ragnarök has tons of bosses. Fighting unique mythological beings is much more engaging than fighting the same troll mini-boss over and over again.

Unfortunately, there are a few returning problems in the combat. First and foremost being the camera. It follows the player too closely in an over-the-shoulder 3rd-person view. You can’t see anything behind you, and you have to rely on directional indicators for incoming attacks. These indicators are unreliable and it’s impossible to tell what kind of attack is incoming. Is it a projectile? Or an area-of-effect blast? Or an unblockable attack? Or a standard strike? All these things require different reactions but you never know which it is or how long it will take to reach you. Once you see one of these indicators you pretty much have to stop your combo and maneuver and dodge away from where you are standing. It interrupts the flow of combat pretty badly.

My other big issue is one that plays a larger role on the higher difficulties. Enemy hyper-armor. The ability for certain enemies to shrug off your attacks and continue as if you were a fly buzzing around them. Enemies that are a higher level than you are have the nasty tendency of being doused in hyper-armor, making it impossible to pull off combos on them. You have to rely on an overly safe style of play to defeat these foes. Moreover, it creates an inconsistent experience because a level 3 draugr will easily be combo’d by the player, but a level 5 draugr does not even react to your hits. This isn’t a huge issue on normal difficulty as you will most often be at similar levels to the enemies, but it quickly gets out of hand when attempting the higher levels of difficulty.

The concept of levels itself is strange in the context of God of War, and I maintain that the Norse saga would have been much better off leaving out the majority of its RPG elements. I think that God of War Ragnarök does better than its predecessor because it has streamlined the enchantments and accessories a tad bit. Furthermore, stats and set bonuses actually feel like they have an impact in combat. However, I still find all of this to be unnecessary in a game like God of War Ragnarök. Shoehorning in RPG elements doesn’t feel like it adds anything except for time wasted staring at your inventory menu. Quests are intrinsically rewarding if they have a fun boss or interesting story line, I don’t need a cooldown-boosting pair of pants to make it worth my while to explore.

One of the biggest sources of the game’s bloat is the traversal. Getting from Point A to Point B in God of War Ragnarök is painstakingly slow. Like its predecessor, God of War Ragnarök makes frequent use of walky-talky sections and wall-climbing to pad out the space in between combat encounters and major story moments. I don’t mind having characters talk to each-other during their adventures, but when time spent in combat is dwarfed by time spent mindlessly climbing walls, it’s gone too far.

I understand that some of these sections are meant to hide loading screens, but this was a poor choice. Consider that the amount of climbing and walking can never be shortened, but load times can be massively reduced by newer hardware. This is blatantly apparent as God of War Ragnarök can be run on both the PS4 and PS5, and the PS5 players have to suffer due to the PS4’s technical constraints. If it takes the PS4 one minute to load a new environment, they had to make the climbing section at least that long to compensate. The PS5 can load in half the time, but it doesn’t matter as the game was designed around the slower load times of the weaker hardware.

While I praised the first game in this saga for its use of the single-take cinematic shot, I think the novelty of this has worn off. The immersion that this effect brings is simply not worth the trade-offs. I think that you could argue that most of my complaints with the game could be attributed to the dedication of maintaining this single shot. The camera being too claustrophobic in combat may be because zooming out would break the consistent over-the-shoulder camera angle. Poor pacing could be a result of not being able to utilize traditional cutscenes to cut out lengthy filler and skip to the point. Traversal is frustrating because you have to go slowly in order to avoid loading screens as that would break the immersion.

Furthermore, the number of resources spent in development to maintain this effect and work around its pitfalls could have been spent elsewhere. More time could have been spent refining core systems rather than being so adamantly tied to a gimmick. In retrospect, I don’t think the cinematic benefit of this single-take camera shot was worth it in God of War either. However, at least that game can take credit for originality. God of War Ragnarök doesn’t have the benefit of being the first game to implement this effect. It’s something that we’ve seen before. It’s no longer new or unique. The effect is frequently broken anyway as the player will constantly being opening their menu at their quest log, gear, and map.

More than anything, God of War Ragnarök needed an editor. Simply put, it’s bloated. The unnecessary RPG mechanics, the time-wasting climbing, the poorly-paced story sequences that went on for far too long, the single-shot cinematic effect, the dozens of collectibles that litter the map; there’s just so much extraneous fluff. Realizing what components exist to serve the core domain and what features detract from the experience is a vital skill that’s necessary when creating any form of media. Addition by subtraction is a well-known concept. All these features could have been iterated on, refined, or outright removed for the betterment of the final product.

Despite all of this, God of War Ragnarök is still a good video game. But not a great one. It is still technologically impressive. It has gorgeous environments and stellar animations. The combat is weighty, flashy, varied, but deceptively simple. The setting and premise are intriguing. The writing, despite taking a step back from its predecessor, is still leagues better than most other games. The plot was captivating even if it was poorly paced and had a rushed final act. But I wish these positives were further elevated, rather than having to sift through hours of monotonous tedium to get to the soul of the game.

God of War Ragnarök is a victim of high aspirations and poor planning. There’s too many systems and ideas at work here, bloating the final experience. Cramming two games of plot into a single game resulted in poor pacing. The insistence on being cinematic hampered many gameplay elements. Solid combat isn’t enough to carry the game when the player has to climb dozens of literal walls to get to it. It is for these reasons I give God of War Ragnarök a 6/10. I wish there was further refinement and editing to remove superfluous aspects, as being a more focused title would have benefitted God of War Ragnarök greatly.

Super Mario World (1990)

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My earliest memories of playing video games were sitting in the back of the car on a road trip playing Super Mario World on my Game Boy Advance. While I hold more nostalgia towards GameCube games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and of course Super Mario Sunshine, there’s something about Super Mario World that is special to me. Surprisingly, I have never revisited the game over the years, but after replaying it recently I was blown away with how excellent it was. Many games from its era are dated, overly difficult, and hard-to-control relics that are better left in the past. But Super Mario World is a joyful masterpiece.

Everything about Super Mario World exudes charm and personality. Being the launch title of the SNES, it made use of the expanded color palette and sound system. There’s a plethora of enemies and characters, each wonderfully designed to fit their environment and taking on personalities of their own. Super Mario World was Yoshi’s first appearance, and there’s a reason why everybody loves Mario’s dinosaur companion.

Yoshi is now an iconic character, and much of that can be attributed to how integral he was in Super Mario World. The game takes place in Dinosaur Land, the home of all different kinds of Yoshi. Mario travels from section to section, comedically toppling castles and rescuing Yoshi eggs. The world itself is vibrant, colorful, diverse, and full of secrets. While each world has an overall theme, the levels themselves also distinct archetypes. There are traditional levels, underwater adventures, fast-moving contraptions with ropes and saws, castles with lava and deadly smashers, and mysterious ghost houses. This variety keeps things fresh and avoids the repetition that may come from themed worlds.

Another aspect that really sets Super Mario World apart from its predecessors is how it handles secrets. While early Super Mario games did have secrets within levels, you could only hope to get some coins, a 1-Up, or to find a Warp Pipe to let you skip to future worlds. Super Mario World instead focuses on secret exits that reveal hidden levels. Finding all the secret levels is a great motivator for exploring and engaging with stages instead of blazing towards the finish line.

 These secret levels make the overworld of Super Mario World feel more interconnected. Secret levels can open up alternative paths through the world, which is a great reward for discovering hidden exits. Moreover, there are five routes to Star World, which acts as a central hub that makes it faster to travel around the map.

For being an early SNES title, I was surprised with how smooth the gameplay was. The controls are fantastic as they balance precision and the momentum-based movement that Mario is known for. In the early Super Mario games, Mario would have a hefty amount of momentum, making precise jumps more difficult. While momentum is still present, it does not feel like you are slipping around on ice at all times anymore. Super Mario World is easier than its predecessors because of this, but I wouldn’t say the game is a pushover either. There are plenty of more challenging levels that will test your mastery of platforming.

The biggest strength of Super Mario World is its simplicity and charm. It makes full use of the expanded color palette and music capabilities that the SNES offered. It’s easy to take these things for granted today, but at the time Super Mario World was so much more vibrant, colorful, and visually pleasing than other games. The levels are absurdly creative, making use of a huge variety of enemies, obstacles, and settings. Every single level is memorable for its own reason, and there was not a single level that I disliked. Not to mention the music from Koji Kondo is masterful as always. The catchy and famous main melody of the game is frequently reused in recognizable but unique ways depending on the level’s setting. An echoey version is used in caves, a slower-tempo and grandiose version is used in castles, the athletic piano version that we all know as quintessential Mario is used in the obstacle courses.

While Super Mario World may seem simple by today’s standards, it set the gold standard for platformers going forward. It’s just pure fun to explore the levels, uncover secret bonus levels, and master the movement and courses so you can speed through. The vibrant visuals, memorable music, imaginative environments, and clean controls make Super Mario World the purest kind of game. It’s a classic game that has aged gracefully, and its one that everyone should experience.

Bowser’s Fury (2021)

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After playing Super Mario 3D World, my primary complaint was how disjointed the experience felt. Other 3D Super Mario games felt like a coherent adventure, while Super Mario 3D World feels a series of fun but unrelated obstacle courses. Bowser’s Fury is a game that was packaged alongside the Switch port of Super Mario 3D World, but that’s not the only game that it takes inspiration from. Bowser’s Fury is a glorious marriage between the platforming excellence of Super Mario 3D World and the open-ended collectathon adventure of Super Mario Odyssey. It’s a relatively short game, but Bowser’s Fury is a massive success.

Bowser’s Fury is set in one giant area, an ocean dotted with islands and partially covered in black ink. Bowser has gone berserk and you have to collect Cat Shines to revert him to his usual self. Each island is like one of the levels from Super Mario 3D World, a short challenge that usually is focused on a unique gimmick. Additionally, the islands have five Cat Shines each, meaning the player gets to revisit each island multiple times. The islands morph with each subsequent level, retaining their core theme and gimmick but changing up the layout to accommodate for different objectives.

The ability and necessity to revisit areas is a massive improvement over Super Mario 3D World. Instead of every level being a one-and-done affair that is easily forgotten, the designers are able to evolve on the ideas and gimmicks that make each level unique. You get to fully explore these dense areas and really familiarize yourself with them. They feel like real locations rather than artificial obstacle courses.

Another aspect that contributes to the adventure of Bowser’s Fury is the world. As previously mentioned, the whole game takes place in a single area. While not all the islands are immediately accessible, you will quickly uncover them. Getting between the main islands is a breeze, as Plessie makes a return from Super Mario 3D World. Plessie acts as a mode of transportation across the giant body of water, and she is a ton of fun to ride. She’s fast, handles well, and is always available no matter where you are. She will pop up out of the water seamlessly, without any need for the player to summon her or go to limited predetermined locations where she resides.

Like many other 3D Super Mario games, many of the Cat Shines reside not only in the main levels, but in side challenges and secrets hidden around the map. These are usually quick trials like racing Plessie through an obstacle course or catching a rabbit running around on the lake. These little side missions also contribute to the feeling of cohesion, as you can find these little distractions while exploring the greater world.

A central aspect of Bowser’s Fury is when Bowser gets furious. He is a behemoth in this game, always residing in the center of the map, occasionally awakening to cause terror. When Bowser emerges from his slumber, the sky goes dark in a torrential downpour and fire balls rain down as the colossal Bowser towers above you and spits his fiery breath at Mario. It really is a phenomenal sight to see, and it makes the game much more frantic while Bowser is awake.

While you could just hide from Bowser until he goes away, but I found it much more fun to engage with the more difficult platforming challenges that Bowser creates. Dodging the raining fireballs and fire breath make things more challenging, but Bowser also causes giant obelisks to be lodged in the ground. These can act as additional platforms and shields from his attacks. It can be fun to dodge all the chaotic madness using these temporary platforms, and after collecting a single Cat Shine Bowser will temporarily halt his rampage and go back to sleep.

The other method of dealing with Bowser is to fight him directly. Across the world there are a few Giga Bells, power-ups that transform Mario into a giant to contend with his equally goliath foe. Battling with Bowser is enjoyable, and it slowly ramps up in complexity as the game progresses. These Kaiju battles visually fantastic, even if they are similar to Bowser battles from past games.

While I generally enjoyed Bowsers constant looming presence throughout the game, it also has a fair share of issues. The first being that Bowser can get irritating when he starts to appear more frequently at the end of the game. While I enjoy the additional challenge of dodging his attacks, sometimes it can get annoying when he seems to appear during every single level. On the flip side, many Cat Shines require Bowser’s presence to acquire. This is also frustrating as it led me to abandoning levels halfway through to scramble to get to where I needed to be for these time-limited Cat Shines. And at the end of the game, I had to literally just sit still and wait for Bowser to show up for the last five or so Cat Shines. Lastly, whenever Bowser appears there is noticeable performance drop.

I enjoy the inclusion of Bowser and his rampages; they definitely make for some fun platforming and cohesive theming across the game. I’m not sure how I would feel about it if Bowser’s Fury was a much longer game. It only took me a few hours to beat with couple more hours to 100% complete it, and a popular opinion that I have been seeing is that many people want the next Super Mario game to be an extended version of Bowser’s Fury. While I can agree that this is a great foundation to build off, I think the format would outlast it’s welcome if it was any longer than the short romp that was presented in Bowser’s Fury.

A totally open world Super Mario game with no world or level selection would be fantastic, but even in Bowser’s Fury I felt there was a lot of filler or repeated Cat Shines. For being such a short game, I was disappointed with how many of the objectives were identical to one another. There were so many Rabbit chases, Bowser blocks, Lucky Island Cat Shines, Plessie speed challenges, and so forth. There wasn’t a great balance between the number of core platforming levels and these side missions. I love exploring and completing optional tasks, but I think Bowser’s Fury just has too many of them in relation to how short the game is.

Bowser’s Fury is an immensely successful experiment. It meshes classic Super Mario platforming and the giant, open-ended exploration from Super Mario Odyssey. The singular area scattered with short levels is a fantastic formula. Bowser himself was a fun gimmick for a majority of the game, and I would love to see an expanded upon game with big areas and gimmicks similar to Bowser’s reign of terror. It is for these reasons that I give Bowser’s Fury a 9.5/10. While it had a few flaws, I think Bowser’s Fury is the sensational appetizer for what’s to come next.

Super Mario 3D World (2013)

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In a series that is home to some of the greatest and more influential games of all time, Super Mario 3D World seems a little underwhelming at first glance. It’s less adventurous than Super Mario 64, less experimental than Super Mario Sunshine, and less grandiose than Super Mario Galaxy. What Super Mario 3D World does have going for it is its simplicity. In fact, it is the most direct translation of the 2D Super Mario titles into the 3D space. From start to finish, Super Mario 3D World is a smorgasbord of fun ideas and classic platforming.

There’s no denying that Super Mario 3D World is closer to the original 2D Super Mario games than its 3D counterparts. Every level is a one-and-done obstacle course that ends with a goalpost. This is in stark contrast to other 3D Super Mario games which almost always reuse the same areas for multiple levels. And many times, those levels aren’t straightforward obstacle courses, but require exploration and puzzle solving. But in Super Mario 3D World, pure platforming is the main focus of the game.

While there are a few collectibles in every level, three Green Stars and a stamp, the levels are short and linear. This is not a bad thing by any means, and it allows the team of developers to design a much more curated experience. There are nearly 120 levels in Super Mario 3D World, and almost every single one introduces a new idea or concept. While many of these ideas are borrowed from previous titles, there are a few stand out new inclusions. The Cat Suit is an important new power-up that is showcased. Captain Toad makes his first appearance in the short puzzle-platformer diorama levels. And the Double Cherry makes for some engaging challenges as you control multiple clones at once.

The most surprising aspect of Super Mario 3D World is just how good all the levels are. In a game brimming with ideas and content it’s crazy that not a single one is a clunker. The level of polish here is unfathomable. The gimmicks don’t necessarily feel gimmicky because they don’t change the way Mario is controlled. The game never strays away from the pure platforming bread-and-butter than it is so committed to. It’s an insanely well-curated collection of all the best concepts from the Super Mario series.

Part of the reason why levels could be so refined is partly due to Mario’s reduced movement options. The side-flip and long-jump were drastically reduced in effectiveness, while the triple-jump was removed altogether. These constraints allowed the designers to make levels with a much clearer intended path. You cannot use advanced movement techniques to skip obstacles, and levels are much more linear. While I do think that I enjoy how polished the levels feel as a result of these movement limitations, it ultimately comes down to preference if you enjoy this style compared to all the other 3D Super Mario games.

Levels in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Odyssey are free-roaming affairs. Many times, you don’t even know what your goal is. Exploring the environments was open-ended, and led to freestyling as to how you would approach the level. This is also reflected in how the camera works in these games, as you can rotate the camera to get a better look around. This is opposed to Super Mario 3D World which has locked camera angles so that there is never a doubt that the player has a good view of the action, but also is restrictive and prevents exploration.

While I did love playing Super Mario 3D World, it lacked the sense of adventure that makes the Super Mario series my favorite. I prefer the wide-open stages that you revisit many times and become intimately familiar with as opposed to the linear and restrictive levels that are present here. Moreover, Super Mario 3D World lacks cohesion and visual theming. While Super Mario Galaxy had mostly linear levels, it had the consistent context of exploring tiny planets. Levels made sense in that context, and they had visuals to support that theme. Super Mario 3D World just feels like a collection of artificial levels.

Most of the stages are floating islands of toy-like cubes. They don’t feel like real locales, and they lack the planetoid context of Super Mario Galaxy. I think having backgrounds and visual flair that made the levels feel more authentic would have gone a long way to making Super Mario 3D World a more immersive adventure. Moreover, while there is a world map to traverse, there is no cohesion within the worlds. The desert world doesn’t have mostly desert levels, the ice world doesn’t have more snowy levels than average, the worlds don’t group levels in a meaningful manner.

The most unique aspect of Super Mario 3D World is the inclusion of multiplayer. The fixed camera, simplified levels, and more basic controls all make a multiplayer experience possible. While it’s been a while since I played it with others, it can be a blast to partake in the sheer chaos of Super Mario 3D World multiplayer. I found that the game is much harder when trying to coordinate with your friends. And it can get competitive as you try to earn more points than your fellow players.

One thing that I felt I should mention is that in the recent Switch port of the game the movement speed has been noticeably increased for some reason. I don’t know why this decision was made, or if it was even intentional at all. But either way, you move much quicker than the original version of the game and this sometimes trivializes some speed-based obstacles. Additionally, you no longer have to collect Green Stars all in a single attempt but they are saved once you clear a level. While both of these changes make the game easier, I don’t think they are game-breaking.

Super Mario 3D World is the most consistent of the 3D Super Mario games. It’s a collection of some of the best ideas that the series has, and it’s executed superbly. The pure platforming may appeal to fans of the series who miss the old, 2D Super Mario days. Personally, I missed the sense of adventure and exploration that the other games in the series offered. While I had a lot of fun with Super Mario 3D World, it’s definitely my least favorite of the series. Of course, few games could ever compare to the excellence that is the Super Mario catalogue.

Fire Emblem Engage (2023)

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Fire Emblem Engage feels like a celebration of the series as a whole. It includes references and characters from all the past entries for fans of the series to relive their favorite games. Aptly, this celebration of Fire Emblem is a summary of the ups and downs of the series. Rarely, if ever, does the series meld strong gameplay, an engaging overarching story, well-written dialogue, and complex characters. Fire Emblem Engage may have some of the best tactical gameplay in the series, but it has a painfully generic story paired with cringe-worthy dialogue.

Like its predecessors, Fire Emblem Engage is a top-down strategy role-playing game. You recruit an army of units, each with their own abilities, class, and stats. The premise of Fire Emblem Engage is that you are a Divine Dragon, a benevolent deity of the land who has been asleep for a thousand years. The evil Fell Dragon has also awoken to oppose you and is pillaging the land in search of powerful artifacts. These 12 artifacts are known as emblem rings, and each host a legendary hero known as an emblem. The primary reason that I consider Fire Emblem Engage to be a celebration of the series is that these emblems are heroes from past entries.

It does feel like fan-service to have the main characters from every other game play such prominent roles here, but they do provide interesting gameplay opportunities. As you acquire the emblem rings, you can equip them to your units. They can then utilize powerful abilities just for having the ring equipped, and can then “engage” for 3 turns, unlocking even more abilities and special weapons and attacks.

I quite enjoyed the strategic depth that emblem rings provided. You have to decide which units are best suited for which rings. You can use a ring to support a unit’s weakness, for example using the ring that increases speed on a slow unit to make them much faster. Or you could use a ring to further bolster the strengths of your units, like using the defense ring to turn a bulky unit into an unkillable juggernaut. Additionally, knowing when to engage is important as well. The engage attacks in particular are critical to success, and they can only be used once per engage.

Moreover, units can inherit certain skills from the emblems. Some of these skills are weapon proficiencies that allow the unit to reclass. Other skills are passive bonuses. Units earn points while battling and can spend those points on skills from the different emblems. It can be fun to build units however you want with the combination of reclassing, inheriting skills, and equipping emblem rings. A complaint I have about this system is that many of the inheritable skills are prohibitively expensive for the power they provide, so many of my units ended up just inheriting the same few skills.

Another issue with the emblem system is that it can be extremely confusing at first. The game has a lot of terminology that isn’t consistently used to explain how the system worked. Gaining skills when you equip an emblem, sync skills, inheritable skills, engage attacks, bond points, SP, bond rings, etc. The game doesn’t explain some of this very well. For example, equipping an emblem gives you some skills, but not all of them as some must be inherited. Which ones must be inherited is never clear.

Along with emblem rings, Fire Emblem Engage has a few other interesting additions to make gameplay more interesting. The first is the reintroduction of weapon advantages along with the new break mechanic. When a unit initiates an attack against an enemy and has a weapon advantage, they will break the opponent’s stance. This prevents the opponent from counterattacking, and also prevents them from counterattacking on the next attack you perform as well. This encourages smart planning to perform actions in an intelligent order to reduce how much damage enemies can inflict back on you. Furthermore, the enemies can also break your units’ stance, which discourages slower and risk-free playstyles.

Another important addition is the introduction of chain attacks. Certain classes, such as Swordmaster or Warrior, have the innate ability to perform chain attacks. When they are positioned in range to attack a foe, whenever an ally attacks that foe, they also have a chance to deal 10% of the opponent’s health. This is another strategic element that encourages foresight to maximize damage. It can be especially powerful when planning your squad around it and investing in skills to maximize the chain attacks.

The combination of emblems, stance breaking, and chain attacks makes for a game where the player phase is emphasized. What I mean by this is that the player has tons of tools to inflict massive damage and eliminate many enemy units in a single turn. But the enemy also has access to all of these options as well. Many other Fire Emblem games reward safe gameplay, and one form of this in the past was to rely on using your strongest unit to be put barely within the enemies’ range to bait the enemy units to attack them. Many times, this would cause enemy units to simply kill themselves while attacking your best character. This is a slow and uninteresting tactic.

Fire Emblem Engage prevents this because even your best units can be stance broken to stop them from dealing damage. Even your tankiest units will get torn apart by the consistent chip damage of chain attacks. And all of your units are susceptible to devastating engage attacks. The best strategy that I found was to setup your formations in a way that would allow you to wipe out large swaths of enemy units in a single turn. The mechanics that are present, as well as the map design, heavily encourages the player to make use of all of their tools to make big moves rather than slowly chipping away at the opposing forces. I love this aspect of Fire Emblem Engage.

Another great gameplay addition is the emphasis on bosses. In many older Fire Emblem games, bosses would just sit still and essentially be punching bags. They were tougher than the average unit, but they would rarely move, making it easy to strategize to defeat them. In Fire Emblem Engage, most bosses will eventually start moving and begin to go on the offensive. In addition to this, they often carry emblems that allow them to utilize engage attacks and special abilities. Furthermore, they all have multiple Resurrection Stones, meaning that you have to deplete their health bars two or three times to defeat them. I love because boss fights feel like a genuine puzzle now as you have to find a way to burst down the boss before they can deal huge damage.

My only big complaint when it comes to gameplay is the amount of downtime between chapters. This was a much larger issue in Fire Emblem Three Houses, so I am glad to see that the social sim aspects were toned down. However, I still found there to be a lot of busy work to be done between chapters which bloated the length of the game. Things such as exploring the battlefield post-battle to collect resources, collecting resources at your home base, participating in mini-games to boost stats, listening to support conversations, inventory management, and watching battles in the arena to gain extra experience, there’s just a lot so much busy work that needs to be done after every battle.

I ignored the mini-games and most of the resource collection portion of the game barring the forge. But I still felt like I spent a ton of time doing menial and tedious tasks. The actual tasks are pretty quick, but between excessive menu navigation and loading screens, a lot of time is wasted. I found myself spending 30 minutes to an hour between each chapter depending how much inventory management and arena training I needed to be done. And that’s after ignoring all the mini-games like cooking and strength training. It’s just a lot of time to be spent on by far the weakest aspect of the game. None of these tasks, barring support conversations, are enjoyable, they are a time sink meant to pad out the game.

I can appreciate the inclusion of post-battle exploration and the home base of the Somniel. These both bolster the world building and can go a long way to make Fire Emblem Engage feel more immersive. I mentioned this in my review of Fire Emblem: Three Houses as well, but I think a large portion of why social sim aspects feel unsatisfying is that they are an ever-present chore list. Compared to a game like Persona 5, the social sim aspects of Fire Emblem Engage are unlimited. They are omnipresent chores that must be done after every battle for full optimization. Yet in Persona for instance, these kinds of tasks are extremely limited so they feel much more satisfying to participate in and reap the benefits from.

My biggest gripe for Fire Emblem Engage is by far and away the story and characters. From the very start of the game, it is obvious that Fire Emblem Engage is going to lean heavily into anime tropes and dialogue. From the very first seconds you are dubbed the chosen one, and everybody loves you. The main character never has to earn trust or credibility, they are an infallible and honorable hero who is universally beloved. Every plot twist is painfully predictable and can be seen from a mile away. The writing is painful at times, it takes itself very seriously despite there being zero moral ambiguity or interesting conflict.

The Fire Emblem series rarely puts out a game with a good story. They all follow the same template of war that has been spurred on by dark forces that have manipulated powerful nations. The series would benefit from not relying on this formula for every entry. The games that do have a more memorable story typically deal with real conflict and push the evil dragon narrative to the very end of the game. Take for example Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which dealt with racism, oppression, and genocide. There were often moments of moral ambiguity as nations that were on your side also committed heinous acts. The characters had to struggle with real issues as opposed to the blanket “good vs evil” plot of Fire Emblem Engage.

It’s disappointing that Fire Emblem Engage does actually have a decent theme, but it’s not apparent until the very end of the game. Family is the driving force in Fire Emblem Engage. Whether it’s the desire to have a family, the drive protect your family, or dealing with the repercussions of your families’ actions, the characters and plot are centered around kinship. Honestly, when I was looking back at the story of Fire Emblem Engage I was shocked that there was a cohesive motif at all. But I am glad that the theme is present. I wish they didn’t wait until the very last seconds of the game to reveal the motivation behind the cast of villains, because it could have made plain evil characters at least a little more empathetic.

The last flaw that I’d like to mention is a weird one in the context of recent Fire Emblem. The user interface. Recent entries in the series have had stellar design in this department and could easily convey tons of information in relatively little space. There’s a lot of stats, abilities, weapons, and so forth that need to be easily understood. Personally, I had some trouble finding specific information that I was looking for. For example, how much SP my character had. Or how much SP it cost to inherit a skill. Or which skills were even inheritable. These are all critical when trying to build a character and I couldn’t find any of this anywhere except for when in the skill inheritance menu which only can be accessed in the ring chamber. It’s not a major issue, but it was odd than a franchise that typically is phenomenal in this department made such obvious mistakes.

I suppose that it is appropriate that a game which celebrates Fire Emblem summarizes the series as a whole. The few games that have a great plot tend to have weak gameplay, and the games which have the best tactical gameplay have embarrassingly bad stories and writing. Fire Emblem Engage has some of the best gameplay in the series. The player and their opposition both have numerous tactical options to leverage, leading to interesting gameplay scenarios. Unfortunately, it was painful to sit through many of the cutscenes and exposition dumps because it was so bland and trope-filled. It is for these reasons that I give Fire Emblem Engage a 7.5/10. If you value tactical gameplay like I do, Fire Emblem Engage is one of the best titles available. If you want a great story to along with it, you will be sorely disappointed.

Astro’s Playroom (2020)

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One of the biggest surprises when I started up my Playstation 5 for the first time was Astro’s Playroom. Not that the game existed, but simply how much effort and soul went into making it. I expected a short tech demo, showcasing the haptic feedback of the controller. Astro’s Playroom is much more than that, and despite it being a short game, it’s one that nobody who owns a PS5 should miss. 

Astro’s Playroom is a celebration of everything Playstation. It’s a platformer with a few short levels, but each of these levels is packed with references and homages to Playstation’s past. There are a ton of cute little robots acting out scenes from classic and obscure games alike. There are tons of collectibles that showcase old Playstations and their respective peripherals. Finding puzzle pieces unlocks murals that celebrate Playstation throughout the years. 

The levels themselves are creative, varied, and enjoyable to traverse. There are four main areas along with a small hub world and a final boss battle. Each of the main areas has four levels, and those levels alternate between traditional platformer and more gimmicky concepts. The levels are extremely short, but I found them to be great nonetheless. They are visually engaging and packed to the brim with secrets, collectibles, and fun scenes. The gimmick-based levels utilize the motion controls of the new controller in creative methods, and they work well.

I was impressed with how well Astro’s Playroom showcased the new features of the PS5’s controller. Even after playing a few more PS5 titles, few utilize the stellar haptic feedback like Astro’s Playroom. The dynamic rumbling can really add some phenomenal textural feedback to the player. I distinctly remember a certain part of the game when I was holding on to a moving platform because the rumble had a very distinctive clicking sensation. If it had just been a standard rumbling, it would not have stuck out in my mind at all.

Astro’s Playroom is a short game. It only took me a few hours to complete it and find all the collectibles. This is not a bad thing. It’s a short but sweet experience. I’d love to see a more expansive version of Astro’s Playroom, but there would need to be an overhaul of the movement mechanics. Movement is super simple, you can walk, jump, and briefly hover. This is fine for a quick and free title that comes included with the PS5. But to compete with other major 3D platformers, Astro would need more complex movement to keep traversal interesting.

Take for example the 3D entries of Super Mario. They are simple, approachable, and easy to grasp. However, there are plenty of extra mechanics like triple jumps, side flips, long jumps, slides, and momentum. Traversing the environments in Super Mario games is like exploring a playground. As you master the movement, you can find shortcuts and more easily navigate obstacles. Astro’s Playroom feels like it’s on rails in comparison. It’s not egregious since the game is so compact and there are plenty of gimmicky interludes to mix up the movement. If there were to be a longer sequel to Astro’s Playroom, I’d love to see some more intricate movement.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Astro’s Playroom. It’s an approachable, charming, and enjoyable bite-sized game. Not every game needs to be an expansive behemoth, and I love when games have a more focused approach. While it doesn’t have complex movement, Astro’s Playroom is a joy to explore. It is for these reasons I give Astro’s Playroom an 7.5/10. It’s not a game that is going to revolutionize platformers, but Astro’s Playroom is an excellent romp through imaginative environments. 

Control (2019)

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I can appreciate when a studio tries to do something different. There are tons of well-made games out that are completely risk-averse, they just combine proven ideas and concepts in a slightly different way. As a studio, Remedy has always impressed me with how they were willing to develop games around wacky concepts. While Alan Wake had grating combat, the setting and atmosphere were unmatched. Control is Remedy’s latest creation, and it fully dives into the untapped genre of New Weird. Sadly, Control was as disappointing as it was exciting.

It is undeniable that Control is fully committed to creating an unforgettable world. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman looking for her brother who went missing when they were children. Her search led her to the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), a mysterious government organization whose mission is to study paranormal occurrences. The game opens when Jesse stumbles into the brutalist concrete structure where the FBC is headquartered.

What makes Control so intriguing is its setting. The juxtaposition of the boring office building with its contents of horrifying and extradimensional objects is incredibly engaging to explore. Reading the logs of the workers here as they treat the paranormal as if it was just another day at the office is my favorite aspect of the game. Control is very obviously inspired by existing ideas like the SCP Foundation and House of Leaves. It does a great job at bringing these ideas to life. I loved seeing everyday objects like rubber ducks, refrigerators, and standing fans locked away in containment. Reading how they are extraordinarily dangerous and should be treated with extreme caution and learning how the building that the FBC resides in is a living labyrinth is just such a phenomenal experience.

Exploring the oldest house itself is a highlight of the game. Finding little secrets, reading documents, and taking in the environment is great. The game has no mini-map or quest markers, which is appreciate. Naturally reading signs and using landmarks to navigate is far more engaging than staring at a marker. I will say that the map itself is pretty hard to parse, it doesn’t show elevation or overlapping levels very well. While I love being able to navigate without relying on maps, I do wish it wasn’t completely worthless.

The core of the gameplay in Control is its combat. It plays as a third-person-shooter, and in all honestly it can be described as serviceable. You have a gun that can change into five different forms. Additionally, you unlock powers like telekinesis, mind-control, shielding, and levitation. I appreciate that the combat is fast-moving. Moving around makes it difficult for enemies to hit you or pin you down. Additionally, enemies drop health when killed so you have to keep moving to reacquire some valuable health. It all works fine, but it feels like it is missing something.

The best part of the combat is that it simply feels good. Picking up and launching pieces of the environment sounds and looks phenomenal. The destructible environment is top-tier. Everything can be ripped from its hinges, thrown, and explode. Wreaking havoc around the FBC and watching enemies get obliterated by fire extinguishers, fax machines, or chunks of concrete is addicting. It is a feast for the eyes and ears.

A big issue with the combat is that the telekinesis ability, called launch, is just way too powerful. I love that the dominant strategy utilizes launch as it is the best aspect of the combat. But it’s too dominant. Most enemies can be killed in a single usage of launch. And there is never a shortage of stuff to launch. The only weakness is that it uses energy, which needs some time to recover when you run out. What ends up happening is that in every single encounter in the game, with no exceptions, is that you spam launch until you run out of energy. Then you use your gun of choice until your energy recovers so you can spam launch again. The guns are pitifully weak when compared to launch. If some of the other powers or the guns were stronger, some alternative strategies could have been viable and fun to try.

Another issue with the combat is that the enemies are boring. For some reason, in a game centered around the paranormal and extradimensional, most of the enemies are boring humanoids. Many of them function as regular humans with guns. Others have some supernatural powers. They rarely pose a threat, and it’s just baffling that in a game with such brilliant concepts that they leaned on humanoids. Again, the combat is fine. It’s serviceable. But most of the time it boils down to “spam launch at the red guys”.

Mirroring the disappointing combat, the main story also fails to capitalize on the excellent concept that Control has. Jesse has some compelling motivation to delve into the FBC. And after experiencing paranormal events in her childhood, she feels at home at the FBC. But the actual story involves a lot of running around to find something, realizing its not there, and then going on a wild goose chase. Control has such a cool concept, but it feels underutilized in the main story. The side stories go farther into the weirdness that Control should exemplify.

After reading the dossiers and documents that uncover the lore of Control, I expected more of the narrative of Control. I expected layers upon layers of conspiracy. I wanted to be shocked. But the main story was normal, not paranormal. The ending in particular was extremely unfulfilling and doesn’t even try to answer the few interesting questions the game asks. In a game with such a fascinating setting and weird concepts, I was extremely disappointed that the driving forces behind the plot were an evil red presence and a good blue presence.

While I can appreciate the fact that Control tried to do something different with its concept, it falls into the pitfalls of many modern games. Bloating the game with random mechanics is never a benefit. There’s no reason for Control to have crafting system. Finding a secret to only be rewarded with a meaningless “House Memory” crafting material is deflating. There’s also upgrades to weapons and abilities to be found, but sorting through a menu to find the “more damage” augmentation is tedious. Not to mention there is a pointless carrying limit, meaning that you frequently have to sift through your inventory to dump the bad upgrades.

Another bit of bloat is the random quests. The side quests in general are great. They delve deep into the lore and world of Control. But for some reason there are random radiant quests. These randomly pop up and have you chase down groups of randomly spawned enemies. There are also expeditions and board containment quests that also are randomly generated to acquire more upgrades and crafting material. These just feel like bloat that water down the experience.

One of the single most disappointing aspects of Control for me was how poorly it utilized its naturally horrifying concept. It is missing the element of cosmic horror, fearing the unknown and unknowable. Jesse is just so powerful that it’s hard to be scared of anything that could be lurking around the corner. None of the enemies, aside from some optional side quest bosses, invoke that feeling of terror. Moreover, Jesse’s reactions to the world itself makes it hard to ever be truly afraid. After cleansing a cursed television that mind-controlled people and watching their heads explode, Jesse’s reaction could be summed up to “Huh too bad”. The was a unique opportunity here to lean into the natural anxiety and fear that the unknown instills. Unfortunately, Control does not even scratch the surface of these ideas.

I love that Control leaned into being different and weird. It’s not afraid to hide lore in tucked-away documents. It stays away from many modern conventions like quest markers and mini-maps, and the game is better for it. But while Control has a unique concept and setting, it just doesn’t bring these ideas into the gameplay or story. Nothing is egregiously bad, but it feels like a waste of such a creative setting. It is for these reasons I give Control a 6.5/10. Control could have defined the genre of New Weird, but instead it’s a serviceable 3rd-person-shooter in a unique universe.