Super Mario Bros Wonder (Switch) – Classic Mario, but with enough tweaks and new mechanics to make it feel completely fresh. Most stages have unique Wonder gimmicks, and just about all of them change the stage in a really fun way. My favourite by far are the musical stages, which have enemies singing and bouncing along to the music. Happily played this one to 100% completion.
Mega Man X DiVE Offline (PC) – It’s a lot of fun and I really like the fanservice (of course). However, the story is just so boring and there’s so much dialogue. I’ll keep playing it to 100% because of that “a lot of fun” part.
Mega Man Battle Network (GBA) – There’s something to be said about the simplicity of the first entry in a series. Yes, it lacks the quality of life improvements from the sequels, but it also doesn’t have nearly as many gimmicks layered on top of the core gameplay. I had a great time revisiting it!
Super Mario Bros Wonder is -as anyone could have predicted- a very good video game. Will it stand the test of time? Who knows! But my knee-jerk reaction now that I’ve 100% cleared it is that it’s the best 2D Mario since… Super Mario World, I suppose. It’s almost definitely one that I’ll be replaying on a semi-regular basis.
One of the new gimmicks in SMBWonder are badges. You’ll collect these over the course of the game and equipping them will grant your character some kind of special ability. You can only use one at a time, but you’re free to swap it out at any time on the world map, or if you lose a life in a stage. The abilities that badges grant range from allowing you to hold R to deploy a parachute, to hinting at secrets, to giving you a Super Mario Galaxy-esque spin-jump, to giving you a free super mushroom at the start of every course.
Most of the badges have some kind of practical use, but one stuck out to me as totally weird: the invisibility badge. All that this badge does is make your character invisible. Which makes the game way harder to play, being a platformer that requires a certain amount of precision. I guess maybe it also makes you immune to enemy attacks? I honestly don’t know; I never used the thing outside the two short challenge stages that force you to equip it.
Gal Guardians: Demon Purge (Switch) – Ran this one into the ground with the 100% clear. Read many more words about it here! Somewhat spooky.
Pikmin 1 (Switch) – It feels a little rough, coming directly from the incredible Pikmin 4, but man, it’s still such a good game. Would have been nice if Nintendo had added a few of Pikmin 4’s quality-of-life features for this re-release. Oh well! No spooks here.
Mercenary Kings: Reloaded Edition (PC) – After a little over a year of playing it on and off, it’s finally done! A little grindy, yes, but despite that, it was still pretty fun. And I got a nice, long YouTube series out of it. Hardly spooky at all.
Another Nintendo Direct today! Though it seems like it really hasn’t been that long since the last one…
Anyway, like last time, instead of typing out a sentence of knee-jerk reactions about every game like I used to do, here are some more in-depth thoughts about the two new Mario series games announced during this Direct:
Princess Peach: Showtime! isn’t quite the sequel to Super Princess Peach that I’ve been longing for, but it is the princess’ first starring role since then. I think. I also think that this looks like it could be a pretty good game! I’m still not sure what kind of game it is (platformer? adventure? mini-game collection?), but I’m certainly interested by all the different transformations.
It’s also worth noting that this one is really about Peach getting her actual own adventure. I particularly like the fact that there’s a new villain and Peach is getting to be the hero to a different kingdom’s people. Yeah, the story will likely have the depth and complexity of a kiddie pool, but at least there will be a whole bunch of new characters! Saving Toads from Bowser should be reserved for the traditional Mario platformers moving forward. At most.
I like how some Nintendo remakes will add an “HD” or “Remaster” or whatnot onto the titles, and some don’t. That’s how you know that the remake is there to actually replace the original game. What that actually means… I have no idea. I’m just typing nonsense as it enters my brain at this point.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a continuation of Nintendo’s best effort to revive their GameCube library at the highest price points possible. Following the (somewhat expensive) ports of Metroid Prime and Pikmin 1 & 2, I’m actually surprised that this game is getting a full remake. Especially since the original Paper Mario never got that treatment. Of course, I’ll absolutely buy this and enjoy the heck out of it. It’s Paper Mario; even the bad ones are fun. (But this is a very good one.)
As always with remakes, I’m hoping that there will be more than a simple audio/visual upgrade here. There were plenty of things I didn’t recognize in the trailer, which seems like a good sign, but it’s likely just because I haven’t played the game since 2004.
Final Fantasy XVI (PS5) – While I don’t think it’ll make the list of my favourite FFs, I did thoroughly enjoy this one. The combat is exciting, the story is great, and it’s easily got the best Cid in the franchise. Also, Torgal! Can’t forget Torgal!
Paper Mario (N64) – I sometimes wonder if the reason that I hate the modern Paper Marios less than most people is because I’ve never really revisited the original. Now I have! And, well… I think I get why people want a “true” sequel. It’s got an excellent foundation, but I did get annoyed by a lot of little things throughout the journey. Like how slow Mario is, and the limited inventory, and the booooring Peach segments.
Dr. Mario 64 (N64) – It’s weird that I’ve never played this before, right? Anyway, it’s Dr. Mario. Played the classic mode a bunch, and story mode twice.
Akane the Kunoichi (PC) – I remember playing the demo of this waaaaay back on Xbox 360. It’s a very 2011 indie platformer. Which is to say that it’s very simplistic in both visuals and gameplay. Not bad, but nothing special.
Peglin (PC) – Peglin a while, Peglin forever!!
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) – What an incredible ride. In my opinion, there’s absolutely no competition for Game of the Year 2023.
Normally, when there’s a Nintendo Direct, I like to write down all my knee-jerk reactions while watching it. You know, give my honest first impressions of all the trailers shown. But I find that lately those reactions have either been “That looks great, I’m going to buy it,” “That looks great but I don’t have time to play it,” or “I have no interest in this.”
So today I’m going to do it differently. While there were plenty of cool-looking games in today’s Direct presentation, only two really made my pants get tighter. So I’ll just post the trailers for those and maybe some words, too.
A remake of Super Mario RPG is on the way! This year! In November!
Now, I’ve played this game at least a dozen times through over the years, so I’m really hoping that it’s going to have a little more than a touched-up paint job. There appear to be fully-animated cutscenes and a redone soundtrack, which are very nice to have. But otherwise, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly faithful to the original. At least, at a glance. I haven’t done a frame-by-frame analysis yet.
So what would I like to see changed? Well, maybe… better mini-games? Yeah, that would be really good. It would be nice if the puzzles were remixed, maybe some new spells would be nice. Definitely some additional text clarifying what some of the existing spells actually do. I don’t think there needs to be any new towns or dungeons or whatnot, but it would be great if some of the maps saw a little bit of change. Just to keep things fresh, you know?
Actually, a great example would be the sunken ship dungeon. When replaying the original game, I can just walk straight to the end, bypassing all the puzzles and monsters, and input the password (PEARLS) to the boss room. I would like for at least the password to be changed so that I’d have to engage with the dungeon as intended on my first playthrough of the remake. Ideally, the password is randomized every time, or the individual puzzles are changed so that learning the password is exciting again. Nothing that would materially change the dungeon itself, just some tweaks to make it feel fresh even for people who have already played the game into the ground.
Super Mario Bros Wonder, the first new Super Mario game since 2017, and the first new 2D Mario game since… 2012? Unless you count Super Mario Run, which I kinda don’t. I’m not really a big fan of the title, but man does the gameplay ever look solid!
Also, I have so many questions. Why does Mario turn into an elephant? Do the other characters turn into elephants, or do they all get their own animal? Are there more, unrevealed playable characters? What’s the deal with all those chatty flower-things? Why is there a goomba wearing a Toad hat? Is this game just one massive drug trip?
Fortunately, I won’t have to wait long to find out, as SMBW is due out in October of this very same year. How nice! While I was expecting something more along the lines of Odyssey 2, this is also very good. You will hear no complaints from me.
Ghost of Tsushima (PS5) – I wasn’t too sure about this one for the first few hours, but it really grew on me over time. An excellent game in most regards, though it does feel very repetitive, as open-world games usually do. My favourite parts by far were the side-stories of Jin’s allies. Folks who ignore side-quests in games would absolutely be missing out on the best parts of this game. Norio and Masako in particular were characters that I really liked adventuring with. Platinum trophy’d.
Super Mario Land 2 (GB) – Yes, again. But this time, the colourized romhack! It’s… the same game, but looks nicer. Also, you can be Luigi!
Resident Evil 4 (PS5) – Everything I could have hoped for. It’s generally a very faithful remake, but remixes a lot of the content in different ways to keep veterans of the original on their toes. That plus a whole bunch of new elements, and MUCH improved boss fights across the board. Basically exactly what a remake should be, in my opinion. It also fleshes out the story and characters way more than the original, which is definitely a nice-to-have. I’ll absolutely be playing this a few more times before the year is done.
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) – You know how in FNAF, there’s “the one you shouldn’t have killed”? Well this is “the one I shouldn’t have played.” To be fair, it wasn’t that bad, and while I did enjoy some of my time with it, it was an absolute struggle to play much more often than I would have liked. Also the ending was poop. The biggest shame of it all is that I likely would have been totally ga-ga for this game if I’d played it back in 2004, but it just feels rough in 2023.
Picross S6 (Switch) – What more can I say than “it’s more Picross”? No, like, literally, it’s exactly the same format as the last two but with different puzzles. Which is all I ask for, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting review.
Kirby’s Dream Land (GB) – With the release of the Game Boy Online app on Switch… I took the opportunity to revisit some old favourites.
Uh, so this happened over a week ago. I watched it on my work laptop, to take advantage of the second screen, but I also can’t access WordPress from said laptop. So I wrote down all these notes while watching and only now have gotten around to publishing them.
Pikmin 4 – I like the music. New onion design? Ice pikmin… cool. Ooh! A pupper pal! Dungeons are back? Overall, it looks like another Pikmin, which is good since we haven’t had one in 10 years.
