Thursday, February 20, 2025

Mega Man 7 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/9/2025)












[Image from glitchwave.com]


Mega Man 7

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: May 24, 1995


Haha...what?!

Does Capcom mean to tell us with Mega Man 7 that Mega Man X WASN’T intended to be the changing of the guard into the next generation? Are they really pushing their shitty 1995 Buick Roadmaster up a hilly country road when it’s out of gas after they’ve purchased a strapping new automobile that’s completely fueled up? Is it sentimentalism that keeps Capcom from pulling the plug on the original Mega Man series, a sextet of NES titles that were beaten into a vegetative state of creative burnout due to oversaturation? Did they really think that shifting the series to a console that doubled the visual capacity with a seventh entry would make a difference? Whatever the impetus was, digging up the classic Mega Man series that was presumably dead when Mega Man X hit the scene has me befuddled to Hell and back. Coexisting alongside its evolved descendant like how monkeys still roam the Earth after we humans still reign supreme is a nice gesture, but what exactly can the classic series do to prove that the X series hasn’t condemned it to obsolescence? It doesn’t help that Mega Man 7 is not a particularly well-regarded entry to the classic series, so the case for its continued lifespan isn’t holding up all that well. However, even though it doesn’t hold a candle to the highest points of the X series, I’ve found that Mega Man 7’s ill-repute among its classic series peers can be heavily disputed.

Simply because Mega Man 7 shares a kinship with the primitive classic series doesn’t mean it’s restricted to sharing their 8-bit modesty. Due to existing on the same 16-bit system, Mega Man 7 borrows an abundance of presentational flair from Mega Man X. This is immediately apparent when the game begins with a cutscene sequence that sees Mega Man having a conversation with Roll and a new character named Auto, complete with scrolling text on screen contained in speech bubbles. Once the conversation stops, Mega Man is thrusted into the chaos on the futuristic city streets in a prologue level, an introductory standard stripped from the X sub-series. While the cinematic touches and expositional sequence put it on a relatively equal standing in narrative richness to any of the X games, Mega Man 7 does not choose to channel the sharper, slightly more mature aesthetic of the classic series’ offspring. Mega Man 7 still exists in the same timeline as the unrefined NES games with the same diminutive robot boy seen a century before Dr. Light advanced his darling automaton with that extra X chromosome, so the aesthetic needed to reflect the jejune status of our hero that we likely forgot since the first X game was released. The result of this consideration is a bright and colorful aesthetic akin to the lightheartedness of a Saturday morning cartoon, with the 16-bit graphics of the NES animating the pixel art to a discernible degree. As for Mega Man’s design, the developers found it essential for him to share that look of passionate, heroic determination as his X alter ego. In execution, the boyish baby fat of Mega Man’s face makes his serious visage resemble that of an annoyed Butters from South Park. It makes me want to give Mega Man a noogie, not treat him seriously as the savior of the cyber age.

Other than the animated visual overhaul and the marginal strides to elevate the narrative to be on par with the X games, Mega Man 7 is predictably the same old song and dance as any other Mega Man game. Eight robot masters must be vanquished and their powers will be downloaded into Mega Man’s all-purpose arm cannon, and checking them all off on the blue bomber’s hit list will unlock Wily’s fortress where Mega Man will confront the mustachioed menace. However, one change to the series’ formulaic arc found here is that only half of the robot master roster is available at the start. The opening cutscene explains what seems like an arbitrary, insignificant monkey wrench into a Mega Man tradition, in that only four robot masters beckoned to Dr. Wily’s command to tear up the city brick by brick if he did not make his presence known for six months (on account of being incarcerated). On one hand, only offering half of the lineup initially severely limits the possibilities of the progression trajectory. On the other hand, I suppose that the suppressed selection connotes that finding one of these robot masters’ weaknesses is a one-and-three chance instead of the usual one-and-seven, so the suggested progression course is quicker and easier to start.

Once the player finds the intended trajectory, they’ll find that Mega Man 7’s levels are perfectly cromulent and outstandingly diverse as always. The rubber of Turbo Man’s spare tires will bounce Mega Man into the hazardous spike pits if he collides with their conveyor system, while the refuse of Junk Man’s stage is being collected as a shelter for groups of repugnant little robot cockroaches. Freeze Man is the exhausted, yet effective snow stage, while the Jurassic Park jungle with robotic dinosaurs that Slash Man operates prolongs a pattern of humid environments usually prevalent across every X entry. The buoyancy of the liquid physics in Burst Man’s stage and how to calculate Mega Man’s jump force in relation to how far he will sink is a genuinely clever innovation on the standard water level. The standout level in Mega Man 7 for my money is Shade Man’s, for the bat and zombie-infested Halloween town is the series’ first stab at a horror-themed area. Sue me, I’m a sucker for spookiness. As for their weapons, each of them falls nicely in the middle of the spectrum between the orgasmic bodaciousness of the Metal Blade and the pitiful, horribly conceived Top Spin. Burst Man is an advancement on Bubble Man’s conceptual identity, as his liquid globules are dense enough to ensnare enemies and lift them to the great unknown or trap them to the ceiling. Cloud Man is evidently of the cumulonimbus variation, for Mega Man can condense the power of his lightning into an energy blast the size of the charge shot. Spring Man’s coils can be charged to unleash two simultaneously, and I guess Shade Man’s sonar blast is shrill enough to warp a robot’s circuitry. Slash Man’s weapon is especially notable not only because it compensates for Mega Man’s lack of close-ranged offense, but because it looks like Mega Man is bitch slapping his enemies. Pay your respects, Dr. Wily.

Some of the common negative discourse surrounding Mega Man 7 is that the game is far too facile to uphold the blistering Mega Man standard of difficulty. I criticized Mega Man 5 for loosening the classic difficulty grip on the player, but Mega Man 7 is comparatively a brisk walk in the park. Enemy placements are reasonable, level hazards are manageable, and the stage gimmicks such as the reappearing block platforms aren’t nearly as demanding as they used to be. Truthfully, the quality-of-life enhancements are quite refreshing. The level of accessibility on display feels far more organic than when Mega Man 5 attempted to ease the pain of steep difficulty because of the refinement that comes with the advanced hardware of the SNES. The inherent upgrade in graphics and mechanics aids Mega Man 7 while Mega Man 5 felt like a deliberate digression, especially since it was released after Mega Man 4 which was the quality peak of the NES titles. It’s not to say that the fifth entry in the classic Mega Man series failed miserably on all fronts in smoothing out Mega Man’s difficulty curve, for Mega Man 7 decides to reinstate some of that game’s ideas on hardware that complimented them. Firstly, in the first four robot master stages, letters that spell RUSH are scattered somewhere in the obscured corners of the area. Mega Man veterans should recognize that these four letters form the name of Mega Man’s trusty, robotic red pooch. Mega Man will still summon Rush on occasion to trampoline him on out-of-reach platforms with his trusty coil apparatus, but all of Rush's other applications have to be found on the field like collectibles. The process of uncovering these auxiliary utilities requires the same meticulous exploration as finding any health upgrade or special abilities in an X title, and it encourages a more intimate engagement with the level along with a replayability incentive. The selection of optional gadgets obtained through exploration is also marvelously vast. For one, if the player collects all of the letters, it will unlock a combined version of both the jet and power suits seen in the previous Mega Man game, which is definitely handy during a few platforming sections in Dr Wily’s castle. Depending on how you eradicate a spherical miniboss in Shade Man’s stage that is shaped like a pumpkin, the routes its explosion unveils will lead to two separate gadgets, which will of course encourage the player to revisit the stage to unlock the one they missed on the first go-around. Finding Protoman and defeating him in a friendly duel will even warrant him anteing up his shield, blocking all pesky projectiles from grazing Mega Man. It’s such a nice gesture on his behalf that I feel obliged to send him a fruit basket as a token of my gratitude.

Protoman is so charitable to Mega Man now, figuratively giving him the shirt off his back in the shape of his shield, that one could forget that he was once his rival who formerly antagonized him at inconvenient moments. The developers figured that a new character should fill the rival role’s vacancy in the form of Bass, another humanoid robot who dons black armor instead of blue. He, along with his own canine companion, Treble, (get the reference?) makes his acquaintance with Mega Man during the prologue and states that his order of business is to stop Dr. Wily, and his assessment of Mega Man’s ability to conquer the mad scientist depends on whether or not the player can defeat him at this moment. His motives are vague, but Mega Man recognizes that Bass is fighting for the same cause and treats this mysterious stranger as a worthy ally. However, Mega Man’s naive trust in the good in his fellow robot comes to bite him in the ass when he allows Bass to recuperate from his wounds in Dr. Light’s lab. Bass ransacks the place and steals potent upgrades designed for Mega Man and Rush, and Mega Man storms Dr Wily’s castle to retrieve them. Maybe it’s just because I’m cynical to the core, but I’m not sure how effective Bass is as an antagonist. They prop him up as the classic series’ iteration of Zero, but the red rogue already had a relationship with X before the events of the game’s prologue. Establishing trust immediately without earning it is the first rule in the book of duplicity, and I wish I could express this knowledge to Mega Man before he made a fool of himself letting this jerkoff walk all over him.

However, I wish that the souped-up fusion fight with Bass and Treble was the penultimate fight of Mega Man 7, and it’s not because Dr. Wily’s fight is predictable and boring as always. Dr. Wily is evidently cross at the fact that the X series ousted him from the limelight as the series’ abiding main villain, and a scorned Wily makes for an especially spiteful encounter at the game’s climax. The first stage where Wily is hopping around in a hefty mechanical skull on stilts has a perfectly learnable attack pattern. However, the subsequent section where he’s riding around in a floating capsule fires artillery that seemingly could only be dodged with the slowed-down special effects seen in The Matrix. Wily fires four energy balls with three different kinds of elemental properties, and the suggested tactic during this boss, no joke, is to collide with the electrical ones because they deal less damage to Mega Man. Sure, one can hone their dodging prowess and evade the balls with grace and proficiency with practice, but who has time for that? To make matters worse, the capsule’s weaknesses only shave slivers off of its stocky health bar, so the player is forced to tank an inordinate amount of damage in order to survive this grueling test of endurance. Mega Man 7’s Dr. Wily is not only the definitively hardest iteration of the mad doctor, but he has joined the ranks of bosses that have angered my dentist in how they make me grit my teeth down to the pulp in frustration. It sufficiently made us all respect Wily’s authority once again, that’s for damn sure. It even aggravates Mega Man so much that he decides to forgo his laurels as he shockingly plans to execute Wily once and for all, but this decision is ultimately thwarted. Kill him, Mega Man! Paint the walls of his fortress with his blood!

While it may seem like Wily has bested us all with his zooming energy balls that have the indecipherable pattern of a swarm of flies, there is a hidden method to utilize against Wily’s unforgiving onslaught. Unless the player has the manual on hand, which I don’t, they won’t know that pressing select in the main menu will access Auto’s garage, a one-stop shop for any conceivable item in the Mega Man series. Here, Mega Man can stock up on energy and weapon tanks, and guzzling them like beer at a frat party is the only way the player will withstand Wily. Unfortunately, Mega Man can only have four of each item at a time, and insisting on buying more than the maximum allowed will cause him to be chastised by Auto for “being greedy.” Do you know what I’m up against, you fat green dope? Miserly business practices aside, the shop is a genius point of innovation. The bolt currency is plentiful and the energy tanks on the field are too sparse to rely on, so the player is more than compelled to visit this service to stand a fighting chance. Maybe check to see if the open sign is on so the player will be aware of its existence, Auto?

After several years of trusting that Mega Man 7 “sucks big dinosaur balls,” I’ve come to find that this crude assessment of the game’s quality is totally undeserved. It’s a refined Mega Man experience in all contexts. Thanks to the advancements found on the SNES, the mainline Mega Man series can flourish with colorful pixel art, greater accessibility, and more nuanced level designs that reward the player handsomely by exploring them. By borrowing assets from the X series, Mega Man 7 still doesn’t stack up to the advancements of that series because it's inherently shackled to the exhausted properties of the mainline series. Still, anyone arguing that any Mega Man game from the NES is better than this one is smoking the nostalgia pipe. Hell, I think Mega Man 7 is better than the third X game released the same year. NES enthusiasts are adamant, man.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Super Mario Land Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/2/2025)













[Image from igdb.com]


Super Mario Land

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: Gameboy

Release Date: April 21, 1989


“Mario on the go” was likely a captivating prospect for any wide-eyed gamer in the late 1980s. We take the novelty of mobile gaming for granted these days because of the technology’s mass ubiquity. However, back when playing video games from the comfort and convenience of your living room was still a radical notion we were still trying to mentally process, expanding the player’s gaming autonomy to a portable unit fitting in the palms of their hands was the next logical stride in gaming technology. Mario was the frontrunner in representing the revolutionary NES when it debuted, so Nintendo figured it was obvious to also ignite the reign of the original Game Boy with their trademark tubby plumber in Super Mario Land. Through an objective lens, I’m certain the novelty of it had tons of gamers forming congested lines outside of their local retailers, salivating at the possibility of sinking into hours of gaming during long car rides, Sunday morning church services, and using it as a tool to avoid talking to creepy Uncle Clancy when dragged to a family reunion. While I’m sure the prime age demographic at the time has sweet, nostalgic memories of the grey, stocky rectangle, my younger, non-rose-tinted perspective along with decades of hindsight behind us leads me to claim that mobile gaming has only caught up with the standard of console gaming pretty recently. For several generations, mobile gaming was a graphical and mechanical compromise to efficiently render the transportable equation of the system. The contrast between the capabilities of console gaming and its nomadic equivalent was especially apparent when the mobile game came from a franchise with a console representative, acting as the “inferior version” of its homebound peer. With only the first Super Mario Bros. to compare (because the American SMB 2 is a different breed altogether and SMB 3 was only out in Japan at the time), I can claim with confidence that this relationship is not a relevant factor.

The one inherent downgraded aspect of Super Mario Land is the visuals. The original Game Boy subtracted three-fourths of the NES’ 8-bits to a meager two, which resulted in tarring the primitive pixels in a murky haze of black and white like the earliest of films. Given that every game released on the Game Boy couldn’t ascend over the minimal presentation, factoring it into the quality of Super Mario Land is a moot point. What concerns me is how Mario’s simplistic running and jumping-intensive gameplay translates from Super Mario Bros., and it’s practically identical. However, I still wouldn’t call the successful translation commendable as it carries the same issues that were present in Mario’s older console debut. Mario’s acrobatics are heavily subdued by the rigid controls. Oftentimes, the only way to accurately land Mario on a platform is to mash the directional pad (even though I’m admittedly not playing this game on an original Game Boy) like flattening hard Play-Doh and even then, the result of what was intended isn’t guaranteed to be in your favor. While this is obviously an objective flaw, it’s a “sins of the father” scenario and my stance in evaluating Super Mario Land is how it stacks up with its console cousin. With this in mind, there is no significant decline. Still, the developers desperately need to apply oil to the control scheme for future entries.

While this review includes constant comparisons to Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Land is directed like a spinoff of the core Super Mario titles on the NES. In the nature of a spinoff, Super Mario Land features plenty of stark deviations from the regular course of Super Mario Bros. properties. For one, the setting isn’t the standard stomping grounds of the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario Land transports our hero to the kingdom of Sarasaland, a desert realm with pronounced Egyptian iconography. The torrid, sandy environment allows for an entirely different ecosystem of enemies than that of the green, hilly Mushroom Kingdom–including fire-spitting rattlesnakes and sentient miniature versions of The Great Sphinx. The hostile Easter Island heads may throw off the enemy theme’s cohesion, but when is the mainline Mario series ever going to insert something this kooky into the mix of standard enemies? Sarasaland also sees plenty of Mario enemy standbys roaming around like the goombas, koopas, and bullet bills to retain the series’ identity, but the foreign location still alters some attributes of the familiar foes. When a Koopa Troopa exploded after Mario had stomped on it, it certainly caught me off guard. The princess whom Mario excavates a dozen incorrect castles trying to save isn’t the blonde bimbo with the pink dress. Instead, it’s her spunkier brunette counterpart Daisy situated in the damsel in distress position before she solidified a position in the series as Peach’s permanent sporting event partner. On another note, it is so fitting for Luigi that his (non-canonical) girlfriend is simply Mario’s sloppy seconds. Rescuing Sarasaland’s royal highness will have Mario climbing between the dunes on the surface and the ancient crypts underneath, exhibiting the same dichotomy as the overworld and the sewers in his home city. Between platforming through dirt and sand, Super Mario Land incorporates something wild that the series hasn’t dabbled with since. Mario will either fly a biplane or steer a submarine and use their respective projectiles in an auto-scrolling space shooter segment a la Gradius. Not only is the gameplay shift a nice change of pace, but the image of tiny little Mario piloting these military vehicles is adorable. With all of the diversity that Super Mario Land displays, it’s a wonder why Nintendo felt the need to plagiarize another game’s properties to make the American Super Mario Bros. 2 different from the first one.

The biggest surprise I never expected from Super Mario Land is how accommodating the game is, a gameplay attribute that it certainly did not pick up from any Mario game on the NES. Considering that Super Mario Land acts as a primitive version of a game already synonymous with the growing pains of gaming’s history, I fully expected the developers to bombard the player with a merciless streak of challenging obstacles and harsh penalties. To my surprise, Super Mario Land was as sweet and smooth as a strawberry daiquiri. Platforming has its deadly hazards, but is always clear and fair to the player. Enemies are placed modestly around and are manageable to either confront or evade. Even with reasonable obstacles to handle, the game obliges the player with plenty of aid to keep them on their feet. Climbing the top section of the tower at the end of each level is guaranteed to net the player some reward, even if they can’t time the flashing ladder to the position of their liking. Stacking up a whole inventory of lives is one thing, but something accommodating that floored me with its inclusion is a continue system. If the player earns enough points on the field, the game will recognize their achievement and compensate them by respawning Mario at the beginning of the world. I never had to expend my points because the influx of lives kept me afloat, but I’m delighted that this safety net exists on principle. One would think that the game would be especially arduous due to its short length, but the developers decided to treat the experience like a rollercoaster: a brief, yet joyous ride that will ideally warrant another trip around.

Despite the reputation handheld games have garnered, Super Mario Land is definitely not a digression from Super Mario Bros.. Looking past the monochromatic restrictions of the visuals, every other aspect of the game showcases an evolution for the series. It wisely deviates from the arcade difficulty penalties that plagued the Super Mario games on the NES, and there’s far more fresh gameplay and foreground features than what is usually found in modern Mario titles. The game is afflicted by horribly stiff controls like its older Mario brethren, which is still inexcusable. All the same, is it a bold statement to say that Super Mario Land is BETTER than the high-end console counterpart? No, because it should be readily apparent to everyone.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/25/2024)













[Image from hubworldhq.com]


Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

Genre(s): Metroidvania

Platforms: DS

Release Date: August 25, 2005


Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow was so bloody good that Konami had to make like Steely Dan and “do it again.” After an unfortunate streak of lukewarm entries to the long-running series that adopted the Metroidvania makeup of series staple Symphony of the Night to varying degrees of inferiority, finally hitting that high note again with another game of the same ilk was a relieving accomplishment for the struggling developers. Evidently, Aria of Sorrow’s esteem became a lighting-in-a-bottle scenario, hence why the subsequent entry in the series is a direct sequel that preserves the previous game’s characters, narrative arc, and practically the same title. After all, if you reeled up a whopper of a fish after trudging through several grueling hours of catching guppies and minnows, why would you wish to chuck it back considering the logically low likelihood of capturing another one? Direct sequels in any entertainment medium are so commonplace that not extending the attributes of one’s intellectual property is market suicide. In the case of Castlevania, however, choosing to continue Aria of Sorrow with a direct sequel is quite peculiar. Konami has repelled the idea of a Castlevania game promptly transferring the story and characters of the previous entry over since the second-ever game in the series, Simon’s Quest, made a mockery of the first game’s glorious side-scrolling action by slowing things to a sludgy crawl. Since then, however, the patterns of what properties generally carry over in a direct sequel have been better defined over time. With hindsight and maturation of the medium, perhaps Aria’s successor won’t proverbially borrow its expensive Porsche and obliterate it in a fiery crash not knowing how to steer it. Most fans will be relieved to hear that Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is Aria of Sorrow 2.0 in every context of a typical direct sequel, complete with all of the flourishes of familiarity that made Aria of Sorrow an exemplary Castlevania title…for better or for worse.

So how is our favorite effete, bleach-haired Latino one year after his episode of internal strife? He’s quite peachy, actually. He’s successfully suppressed his vampiric urges that come with being the reincarnation of the fiendish Count Dracula, living a tranquil existence in Japan with his best friend Mina. In a sudden flash as if merely mentioning his demonic destiny has jinxed him, yet another pretender to the throne has come to kill Soma and absorb the potency of his birthright. Like people from New Jersey who tend to exude the stereotypical personality traits of the state’s citizens when other people from Jersey are in their vicinity, unleashing conflict back into Soma’s life by sicing hostile enemies on him has reawakened his soul-sucking powers, much to Mina’s chagrin. To continue making Mina (and Arikado) fret, Soma is rightfully peeved at this modest assassination attempt and confronts the cult connected to it located in a fortress that resembles Dracula’s castle. One might negatively comment on the lightning-quick pacing that immediately catapults the characters into the thick of things, but skipping any introductory pleasantries is the suitable choice for the story. Because we’ve already been acquainted with many of the characters through Aria of Sorrow, we can move past the formalities. All that was necessary was to methodically lead Soma to this game’s intricately designed estate by interrupting his frivolous afternoon with Mina. Were there really any players clamoring for Dawn of Sorrow to start us off with Soma and Mina shopping or having a spot of tea in a cafe?

The most indirect aspect of Dawn of Sorrow is that Konami forced fans to purchase an entirely separate console from the one that housed Aria of Sorrow. Dawn of Sorrow was a game on the Nintendo DS during its first full year as Nintendo’s handheld representative, succeeding the final console brandishing the Game Boy moniker of which the previous three Metroidvania Castlevanias were released. The aspect of the DS’ legacy that most gamers will immediately recognize is the dual-screen gimmick, and Dawn of Sorrow certainly takes advantage of its idiosyncratic functions as a quality-of-life feature. Now, the player can see Soma in action on one screen and quickly glance at the map and character status menu from their peripheral. Displaying both the gameplay screen and the paused reference one simultaneously allows the fluidity of gameplay to be uninterrupted, even if squeezing the entire space of the map into a screen cut in half will make the player squint so hard that they’ll pop a blood vessel. Another deserving credit to the DS that is less obvious is that it was the first Nintendo handheld system that could competently render 3D graphics, albeit with polygons that will remind players of the blocky and anatomically bloated visuals of the N64 and debut Playstation era. Still, if we use Symphony of the Night as an example, games that adhered to the pixelated recent past released on these 3D trendsetters were beaming with glossier sprites and setpieces beyond what the staunch 2D systems could ever dream of depicting. Finally, Dawn of the Sorrow is the successor to Symphony of the Night on par with that game’s striking visual splendor. Considering that the developers were forced to creatively compensate to divisive degrees due to the GBA’s comparatively lackluster hardware, the advancement in handheld hardware the DS provided was probably a huge relief. Some sprites are even copied and pasted from Symphony, which is something I noticed when I encountered a howling wolf enemy. However, one creative liberty that Dawn of Sorrow takes with its visuals is adopting an anime aesthetic for the cutscenes and character’s faces alongside text boxes. It’s pleasing enough, but the anime art style is a bit too commonplace across the video game medium whereas the spellbinding, gothic watercolors of Ayami Kojima’s work were distinctly Castlevania.

Given that the remnants of Dracula are being suppressed in Soma’s body like vomit, the magnificent estate that usually accompanies his reemergence is also subdued by proxy. Fear not, for this continuity convention does not inhibit this uncanny setting from exhibiting the same breadth and Metroidvania allure as a bonafide castle. For starters, the winter wonderland directly outside the premises is especially fetching with the moody blue color palette complimenting the white snow that is beautifully blanketing the ground. One might also notice the subtle hint of 3D architectural models with the Bavarian buildings in the background. Other than the seasonal shift surrounding the entrance, this incarnation of a labyrinthian Castlevania setting features the typical districts that usually comprise The Count’s castle. “Subterranean Hell” is the watery cavern section located in the southern region where Mermen leap from the surface, the “Wizardry Lab” is the place allocated for morbid scientific experiments, and there is naturally a clocktower where Medusa Heads will bat Soma around like a floating stampede of zebras. One particularly notable district in the eastern section is the “Condemned Tower,” a lofty vertical stretch that spans the longitudinal length of the entire estate with the “Mine of Judgment” below it attached to the equation. The map is standard fare for the series, and maybe the narrative stipulation of it serving as a loyal reproduction of The Count’s Castle excuses its lack of inspiration. All that matters in a Castlevania setting is if the castle fosters the utility-gated Metroidvania progression smoothly and coherently, and there aren’t any major objections to this rule present in Dawn of Sorrow. The various warp gates between every district are also as convenient as ever, namely, to teleport to the “Lost Village” entrance and purchase potions and mana restoration items from Soma's bald acquaintance Hammer.

Speaking of sticking to series traditions, Soma’s special ability to absorb his enemies’ souls that defined the mechanical brilliance of Aria of Sorrow naturally returns. Get ready to become a compulsive trainwreck once again, for collecting the orb-shaped essences of the enemies and using them as Soma’s auxiliary weapons and skills at the low likelihood of obtaining them when slain is only one degree lower than Pokemon on the scale of gaming stimuli. However, the dopamine rush of collecting may prove to be less strong for returning players, for the bestiary of monsters roaming around the castle has barely been altered from the previous game. I’m unsure as to whether or not there are any quality-of-life enhancements for any particular enemy soul that was transported from Aria. The soul set actually organizes the souls by their categorization instead of dumping them all into one scroll, but I’m referring to the enhancements of the souls themselves. I cannot comment whether the sonic boom shriek of the Mandragora seedling decimated enemies to this extent in Aria, nor do I know if the chauffeuring of Soma by the Bone Ark palanquin was so superb that he should feel obligated to leave a tip for their services. Still, these are some of the exemplary souls that stood out to me and found a solid footing in my revolving arsenal. However, what I am confident is a fresh utilization of the souls that debuts in Dawn of Sorrow is the process of soul transfusion. Across the hall from Hammer in the “Lost Village,” an intentional angle of which I’m sure he spends an inordinate amount of time gawking at her from afar like a peeping tom, is Yoko Belnades who conducts this new mechanic. Bringing her the excess souls that are congesting Soma’s inventory will allow Yoko to craft them into various weapons, provided that Soma also has a similar tool to work off of. Instead of having to find the upgraded versions of the swords, axes, etc. on the field later in the game when their stronger offensive powers are needed, the player can simply find a combination leading to the more formidable weapon’s creation by coinciding a number of souls to their weaker equivalent and teleporting to Yoko’s shop. The player can also dispose of unwanted souls that tend to pile up with the constant cutting down of common enemies, but tossing them seems wasteful. With this blacksmithing perk provided by Yoko, the challenges of the later portion of the game can be handled by matching the necessary firepower. Exploration is a tenet of the Metroidvania genre that always titillates me, but I can’t say that scouring every corner of the map for a particular weapon is a sizable portion of that joy. My monetary tip given to the Bone Ark guys extends to Yoko for this convenience.

Having a superior weapon through the soul-crafting process doesn’t automatically render Dawn of Sorrow as breezy as a Sunday stroll through the countryside. Overall, I’d state that Dawn of Sorrow’s bosses are a more tenacious bunch than the crop of formidable baddies that Aria showcased. The trickster Zephyr will momentarily freeze Soma in time, which will give him ample opportunity to slash at the protagonist with his oversized Freddy Kreuger fingers. Abaddon, a demon from biblical folklore, masterfully conducts a plague of locusts with a baton to swarm Soma in flocks that need a significant amount of practice to avoid. Aria of Sorrow breached the bounds of its relatively smooth difficulty curve once Soma danced with Death, and the Dawn of Sorrow version of the long-standing Castlevania boss is equally as punishing with his swift scythe swipes and summoning magic beast skulls to bite off chunks of Soma like a crocodile. In addition to their aggressiveness, the graphical superiority of the DS has made some of these bosses truly grotesque and nightmare-inducing. I now understand why Balore chose to shroud most of his face in the shadows in Aria because now, we see that the brute is horrifically deformed. I can’t even do Gergoth justice in describing his physical form, for the monster is composed of nothing but pulpy, pixelated viscera of an indiscernible, freaky-deeky degree. His fight involves an exhilarating segment where his monstrous mass caves in the top floor of the Condemned Tower, crashing through each floor below until both he and Soma have to continue the fight on the ground. Still, my favorite boss trick is from the creepy Puppet Master, who will transport Soma to the painful impalement of an iron maiden if the player doesn’t catch the gangly arm holding the voodoo effigy before it enters the torture device. On the other end of the spectrum, the boss with the least appealing battle conditions is Rahab, who will only emerge from the water to take a breath in a flash while Soma is floundering at the pool’s surface. The game should’ve given Soma the soul that allows him to walk through water before this fight, not as a reward for completing it. Still, I can’t let this irksome fish soil what is a solid lineup of fantastically putrid and engaging Dracula underlings.
Well, I guess I should disclaim that each boss in Dawn of Sorrow is an invigorating challenge on paper. Each boss actually becomes incredibly irritating, but it’s obviously not due to a prevalently shoddy quality across the bosses. Each passageway to a boss’s arena is locked by a magic seal that Soma must find on the field like a rare item. I wish their interactivity was subdued as a meager special key because their utilization extends to what is quite possibly the most ill-conceived mechanic that the series has ever produced. To finish any of the boss battles in the game, the seal emerges and forces the player to recite its pattern as the battle’s coup de grace. If the player stumbles, they’ll be penalized with replenishing a bit of the boss’ health and prolonging the fight. Even though the player can commit these DS stylus swipes to memory in a practice menu, these sporadic sequences prove to be nothing but jarring, screeching halts to the flow of combat. Did I mention that these sequences are timed, and require the stylus to draw these zigzagging lines precisely? With all of the conditions at play, the most likely occurrence is that the player will accidentally fling the stylus across the room due to the tension of the fight, the suddenness of the sequence, and the strict time constraint. Plus, the seal sequences are completely superfluous to the player’s skill at conquering the boss, so the wedge they act as to artificially inflate each fight’s difficulty is particularly insulting to the player’s abilities. If Nintendo issued a mandate for Konami to implement stylus controls to highlight the DS’s mechanical capabilities, couldn’t they at least have used it for some soul powers instead of this pace-breaking, asinine chore?

Between all of the exemplary bosses whose soul powers keep the Metroidvania progression flowing, there are still the narratively relevant antagonists in the midst. Like the secondary characters who appear around the castle like Julius and Arikado, the members of the “With Light” cult will appear around unassuming corners just as episodically. Unlike Graham who held the persona of a mysterious stranger, encountering Celia or any of her peers will put Soma on high alert to evade any bodily harm they might attempt to inflict on him. However, what mirrors Graham with these new antagonists is that they share the exact same motivations for antagonizing Soma. Celia’s cronies, the dim pyromancer Dario and the so-smug-that-he’s-incredibly- punchable Dmitrii share the commonality of Graham’s birth year of 1999, the year that Dracula was officially ousted by Julius Belmont. Like Graham, they figure that this happenstance entitles them to Dracula’s immense power and are salivating at the chance to kill Soma to obtain it. Sorry to disappoint you boys but even without using Graham as an example, this is not how the reincarnation process works. We don’t know the precise age of Soma but considering he’s depicted with youthful characteristics and that his best friend is a teenager whom he’s grown up with, he was born sometime later in the 21st century. There is no correlation between Dracula’s demise and the births occurring in the same year. Also, the slayer of Dracula does not inherit his powers by defeating him, otherwise, Julius would become the thing that he seeks to destroy. Complications of their plan aside, without the mystery behind Graham’s intentions, multiplying him with two separate characters who make their motives clear from the start doesn’t really hold my interest in the moments of encountering them. Plus, their respective boss battles aren’t exactly all that stimulating either.

Celia’s invested interest in slaying Soma stems from her righteous belief that the world stands in a state of purgatorial chaos because there isn’t a penultimate exemplar of evil to balance God’s divine good. After finding that her two candidates are nothing but chumps, she cleverly tries to unleash the beast within Soma through other methods. Firstly, there is the slaughtering of a human being in cold blood, which is something that only an unholy entity would have the capacity to do. If Soma kills Dario during his second fight instead of pulling out the fire demon inside him that is reflected in a mirror and vanquishing it, the murder of this man will ignite a bloodlust in Soma and lead him to the dark side. Speaking of the dark side, the other tactic to trick Soma into embracing his (literal) inner demon is similar to how The Sith from Star Wars recruits naive Padawans. Celia leads Soma to a room in the Garden of Madness where she reveals that she’s conducted a ritualistic sacrifice using Mina as the subject. The sight of his best friend’s lifeless body dangling from an overgrown plant naturally infuriates Soma, and his intense rage is enough to let loose the tremendous evil that resides in him. If he preemptively has Mina’s charm equipped, he’ll be able to see that this is a ruse plotted by Celia and that it’s Dmitrii who has shapeshifted into Mina. Plan C from Celia isn’t an attempt to manipulate Soma, but it is the most shocking maneuver. In the catacombs of The Abyss, Soma will find that Celia has been sacrificed, and the result of this blood ritual has transformed Dmitrii into a Lovecraftian juggernaut as the game’s final boss. Discounting how the final boss elevates Dmitrii as the game's primary villain, we aren’t totally certain whether or not this was a calculated process on his part–gaining the gumption to murder his superior for his own gain. There stands the possibility that Celia executed herself as a last-ditch effort to give Dmitrii the strength needed to maximize his copycat demon soul. If Celia’s devotion to her cause results in doing something this drastic, provided this is really the true context of this event, then she’s miles more interesting and scary as a Castlevania villain than Dracula ever was.

Well, that perfectly met all of my expectations. To no one’s surprise, Aria of Sorrow’s direct sequel exhibited all of the outstanding elements of its direct predecessor that revitalized the fanbase’s enthusiasm for the Castlevania franchise. The problem is, that most if not all of the outstanding elements present in Dawn of Sorrow were merely transported from Aria, and it barely does much to discern itself, likely in the fear of diverting too harshly and failing to capture the same magic. Konami should’ve known that the same joke told twice isn’t as funny the second time and applied that rule of thumb to Dawn of Sorrow’s development. There are plenty of genuine quality-of-life enhancements present throughout, such as the utilization and organization of the souls, the exquisite boss battles and the graphical enhancements they display, and a puzzling main villain who will make me ponder on the game after I’ve finished it. Not even the magic seal mechanic is dumb enough to ruin everything else. Still, I can’t shake the feeling of deja vu that leaves me underwhelmed. Like the covetous wannabes who accost Soma for his power, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is kind of a copycat of something more genuine. I can’t completely write off Dawn of Sorrow because it’s still an objectively more pleasant and well-refined experience compared to Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance. Let’s just hope, oh God, the recycling process doesn’t persist in the subsequent DS Castlevania titles.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Beyond Good & Evil Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/22/2024)













[Image from glitchwave.com]


Beyond Good & Evil

Developer: Ubisoft

Publisher: Ubisoft

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, GCN

Release Date: November 11, 2003


Remember when Ubisoft still had an inkling of integrity? Several gamers just guffawed with a confident, sneering "No!" to my rhetorical question, but I'm being serious. Perhaps those who would hypothetically treat my question with a sense of derision just aren't old enough to recall when Ubisoft wasn't synonymous with bloating the open-world genre and crafting some of the most trite and forgettable sandboxes in gaming. Ubisoft has lost all of its humanity to the point where they've forgotten the definition of "fun" altogether. Before the company became as depressingly sterile as EA, they used to churn out quality interactive experiences. 2003 was evidently such a strong year for the developer that one particular game fell under the radar behind the third mainline Rayman game and the acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Some might express skepticism that a title from one of the biggest gaming conglomerates in the Western Hemisphere could have slipped into relative obscurity. Alas, Beyond Good and Evil is a textbook example of a video game cult classic. As per the definition, it bombed from a commercial and financial standpoint, but it highly resonated with a devoted, niche audience that still echoes its greatness from the mountaintops. Admittedly, the game eluded me during the year of its release, so perhaps I’ve inadvertently contributed to its commercial failure–and I will start harboring feelings of guilt that I transformed Ubisoft into the microtransaction machine they are today due to a lack of interest in their artistically driven titles from yesteryears. However, I subscribe to the adage that it’s better late than never, and it was finally time to rectify my aloofness and treat myself to a certified gem. After playing it, I’ve hiked up to the peaks with my gaming brethren to scream Beyond Good and Evil’s name in doing my part to pronounce its existence.

Despite what the title may allude to, Beyond Good and Evil has no connections with the collection of philosophies published by Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil is staunchly in the science-fiction genre in terms of its thematic makeup. The elevated depiction of our future or the lofty and hypothetical, yet likely feasible concept driving the science fiction plot is a homeland war against alien invaders. The once-tranquil world of Hillys [Hill-iss] is trying its best to blockade the constant stream of attacks perpetrated by the parasitic DomZ, blanketing their population in a protective forcefield for safe measures to ward off the interplanetary pests. In wartime, one group of victims whose struggles are often overlooked are the helpless and clueless children caught in the middle of violent strife. In what is either off the coast of Hillys’ oceanside or a district entirely below sea level, a lighthouse is refurbished as an orphanage to shelter those who are the most vulnerable to the grizzly horrors of war. Jade, the game’s protagonist, is the co-proprietor of the orphanage along with her anthropomorphic boar “uncle” Pey’j. However, maintaining the livelihood of the lighthouse along with its junior tenants isn’t her only claim to fame as she has more occupations than a card-carrying con artist. Jade’s real passion is photojournalism, and she wishes to put her freelance lark to practical use by taking photographs that will win her the Hillys equivalent of the Pulitzer prize. The opportunity for journalistic glory comes knocking at her door when the Iris Network assigns her espionage work looking into the shady activities of the Alpha Section, the mercenary group with a stronghold control over Hillys and their efforts to combat the DomZ who have labeled Iris as a terrorist group. With the aid of the Iris Network’s intel and resources, Jade will scour the frontlines of every area with congested Alpha activity to blow the lid off of their clandestine corruption and cause an uprising on the streets of Hillys. As intriguing as the prospect of exposing the powers that be is, I wish the game kept the mystery of the Isis Network’s claims suspended a bit longer. Plus, that wish extends to depicting the Alpha Section a little less obviously as fascist evildoers. What kind of organization represents itself with a menacing skull as its emblem and expects to maintain a mirage of benevolence? Perhaps the developers should have implemented a few of the grey moral area philosophies from the book that share the same name in the story, and then maybe the events of the game would remain unanticipated.

In terms of its video game genre, Beyond Good and Evil is resolutely an action-adventure game in the vein of the 3D Zelda titles. As par for the 3D Zelda course, Beyond Good and Evil’s world of Hillys facilitates a free-flowing progression, yet with a relatively restricted design with defined parameters. Traveling through deep waters via Pey’j’s hovercraft may conjure up comparisons to The Wind Waker, but Hillys hardly enables the magnitude of a high seas romp. Really, the vacuous nature of the dense oceanic body surrounding Hillys is more similar to how Ocarina of Time used empty space as an uninterrupted medium between all of the notable destinations. Only in the case of Hillys, the seemingly endless waters are a more naturalistic way to render the vacant area that comprises the foreground rather than Hyrule Field’s sprawling barrenness on land. Hillys is essentially divided into three separate sections–northern and southern areas with a canal as the manmade transit connection between them. In the midst of the canal lies the Pedestrian District, the downtown epicenter of Hillys with enough hustle and bustle that it’s reminiscent of how the area around Hyrule Castle existed as its own sector separated from the outside hub. Given that this slice of metropolis life is situated in the center of the map, Beyond Good and Evil understands the nucleus model of a Zelda-esque world map splendidly. In addition to its astuteness, Beyond Good and Evil understands through hindsight that the outer region of the nucleus shouldn’t have a radius surrounding it that stretches for what seems like miles. The greatest point to the sensibility of Hillys’ design is that its entirety is succinctly compact, with any possible landmark being conveniently conspicuous from anywhere on the map. One destination to another in Hillys is approximately one minute away (in-game time), even without using the inexhaustible jet propellers of the hovercraft. Posturing the capabilities of 3D graphics had become unnecessary since the release of Ocarina of Time a generation prior, so the developers thought it was wise to highlight a restrained convenience that Hyrule Field was too busy trying to prove itself worthy of inducing awe to consider. Even though Hillys is as condensed as a made-for-TV edit of Pulp Fiction, I never grew tired of seeing the same setpieces as I quickly spanned the angled dumbbell shape of the map. The concentrated cut of Hillys that is available is still stunning, with whimsical fantasy elements juxtaposed with the electric atmosphere of futurism consistently generating curiosity.

Perhaps pacing to and fro from one end of the dense overworld to the other never became grating because the game diverts to cloistered subsections of Hillys often enough to progress the story. If you understand the tropes of Zelda and have been following the connections I’ve been making, one could already surmise that the pivotal progress points located in the various architectures around Hillys are Beyond Good and Evil’s “dungeons.” They’re one of my favorite staples of the Zelda series, and playing a game that emulates Zelda’s basic gameplay components made me salivate at the prospect of experiencing a crop of dungeons under a fresh IP. However, the reason why I put quotation marks around “dungeons” is because Beyond Good and Evil has its unique interpretation of Zelda’s labyrinths. In Zelda, the objective of a dungeon section in the most general of terms is unraveling the layers of the interior area via key collecting, puzzle solving, and natural exploration to uncover the boss battle core that serves as the dungeon’s climax. There is plenty of peeling to be done with Beyond Good and Evil’s dungeon sections, but the goal of excavating the premise is not to vanquish a mighty foe who either possesses a vital MacGuffin item or is a scourge affecting the morale of the dungeon and its outside vicinity. Enemies such as the booger monster and the gangly, sentient elevator unit serve as bosses with their sturdier health bars and considerable strategy needed to defeat them. Still, their encounters seem incidental just to check off the box of this video game trope.

I mentioned before that Jade’s assignment is to use her journalistic acumen to dig up dirt on the Alpha Sections, and infiltrating their various strongholds that assumedly house all of their shameful secrets is an integral step in tearing down their influence over Hillys. Iris intelligence will give Jade the coordinates to where they suspect the Alpha activity is at its most egregious, and snapshotting a photo of this scandalous deed with Jade’s camera is the dungeon’s primary objective. As simple as zooming in a camera lens and pressing a button sounds, it’s the circuitous route that leads to the Kodak moment that comprises the meat of the dungeon crawling. The towering Nutripils factory that used to produce Hillys’ favorite synthetic caloric supplement (and most plentiful health item), the “K-Bups,” has been abandoned since production significantly halted once the war began. Due to its lack of upkeep, Jade must reconfigure its array of electrical circuits so the transportation contraptions can lift her to the higher floors of the soaring establishment where the Alpha Section’s human trafficking operations are conducted. The radiantly red and spacious slaughterhouse is divided into three separate sections, all leading to the cavernous center of the building that all expose the Alpha’s allegiances to the Domz from three different angles. Excavating through the sublime, luminous interior of the Black Isle volcano’s lower base is performed before Jade gets her espionage assignment, but it still features the roundabout, puzzle-based progression of the other dungeons nonetheless. One might think that only offering three main dungeons would leave me unsatisfied since I tend to rag on Zelda titles that present a conservative number of them compared to games like OoT which featured almost a dozen. However, the few dungeons that Beyond Good and Evil display are an indication that the developers had a quality-over-quantity initiative at work because each of them is equally spectacular. Loads of engaging puzzles and route diversions matched with the sheer length of traversing through them make each dungeon equivalent to an artisan dessert–rich enough to satiate anyone’s appetite.

Combat in the realm of a Zelda dungeon mostly serves as a supplemental component to traversal. This is especially the case for Beyond Good and Evil, where combat is so tangential that the player cannot even unsheath Jade’s skinny, lightsaber-esque Dai-jo baton unless in the presence of an enemy. At times when enemies spontaneously swarm Jade, slicing and dicing them with the Dai-jo is usually a quick and simple process, even if the player doesn’t blow them away with a charged blast. Pey’j can even perform a hefty percentage of the legwork if the player triggers his partner function, causing the ground to quake with the boosted impact of his nifty jet shoes which momentarily catches enemies in a vulnerable airborne position. Many enemies are dispatched not through aggression, but rather through calculated puzzle-like methods–such as pushing the weeble wobble robots into the electrical fence impediments to kill two birds with one stone. As opposed to combat, the aspect of gameplay that tends to take center stage in Beyond Good and Evil is the element of stealth. Given that Jade is sleuthing in enemy territory, the connotations of covert spy work imply that she must remain a fly on the wall–lest she suffer the consequences of trespassing. Sizeable swathes of each dungeon are dedicated to silently stepping around the Alpha Section stormtroopers who stand guard over their operations. They’ll unwittingly give Jade her window of opportunity to dart around them by pacing through the corridors of the facility or changing their idle position by rotating in place, and the trajectory of their movement serves as pronounced cues for the player to discern and act accordingly. If the player is feeling confident enough or the armored dope is being a tad unyielding with his line of sight, stealthily walking up to them and kicking the green oxygen tank on their backsides will incapacitate them due to the sickly-looking gas that spurts out of it. Kicking it again while they’re running around in a blinded frenzy will cause their entire suit to malfunction and explode, which is always a comically macabre affair. Even if the player doesn’t take the risk to execute this act of killing, it’s unlikely that remaining stealthy as intended will cause the player much aggravation. As stated before, the patterns of the guards pacing routes and marching in place should be easily perceptible. If the player makes a mistake acting too eager, the penalty for compromising Jade’s position is rather tame. Scurrying away to a darkened corner of the map causes the guards to send a drone to hunt Jade down. If she isn’t caught in its laughably limited scanning zone, the guards assume that the intruder has been dealt with and return to their posts unphased. I’m almost so appalled at their laziness to the point where I feel obligated to report it to the bald big cheese who commands the Alpha Sections. Despite the lenient penalty for exposing Jade to the enemy, the elongated stealth sections are smooth and agreeable enough that the player ideally shouldn’t have to experience the guard’s lackadaisical defensive measures anyway. However, what confuses me is that in some areas, a floating turret will shoot Jade dead in her tracks immediately if she is detected. Shouldn't this apparatus ideally be everywhere as a part of their overall security system?

As full-flavored as Beyond Good and Evil’s dungeon sections are, locating the photo ops without culminating in a final boss to cap them off is rather anticlimactic. After finding the evidence needed in the slaughterhouse, Jade had to retread her steps to exit the premises, which had the bothersome feeling of incompleteness even though I knew I had done the task thoroughly. For Beyond Good and Evil, the fulfillment of a job well done does not occur until Jade returns to the hidden headquarters of the Iris Network behind a secret passage in the Akuda Bar and they provide her with the tangible reward of pearls. Between hoarding the breaded Starkos health items and increasing Jade’s maximum health with the “PA-1s,” the primary collectible in Beyond Good and Evil are the glimmering, blue-hued white pearls. The RPG mechanic of increasing Jade’s health may be another aspect reminiscent of Zelda, but a shiny collectible that blocks progression with an arbitrary number is a condition pioneered by 3D Mario. Once Jade collects enough for the game’s satisfaction in multiples of five or ten, Jade must take the hovercraft across the street from the lighthouse to the Mammago Garage. Here, the rasta rhino mechanics will augment Pey’j’s piggy hovercraft with features that will allow Jade to reach the further stretches of the overworld, provided that Jade offers them their asking price of pearls for their services. Ideally, each addition to the hovercraft should be implanted between infiltrating the Alpha Section strongholds, for they are the keys to unlocking access to the next base of their operations. The targeted missiles will snipe down the security sentry barring access to the Nutripils Factory, and the manual hop ability is needed to bypass the red lasers surrounding the border to arrive at the slaughterhouse. You know me, I adore a game whose progression incrementally unravels a la the Metroidvania genre, and facilitating this from a collectible model like a 3D platformer in the way that Beyond Good and Evil does showcase a naturalistic evolution for this gaming trope. Yet, the satisfaction usually felt by increasing a character’s travel capabilities is somewhat diminished because the Iris Network rewards Jade with an exorbitant number of pearls to earn the next hovercraft part after she completes a dungeon. Are each of these still shit tests to prove Jade’s worth like the first dungeon was? Don’t they know that Jade having as many of these as possible is vital to their cause?

It’s also a shame that the Iris Network simply keeps progression flowing so starkly like this because it deletes the player’s incentive to earn pearls through other sources. They might be banned by the Alpha Sections, but the enforcement of their new decree seems to be as successful as prohibition because several residents still possess these illicit gemstones in spades. There are a total of 88 pearls to collect in the game, and plenty of them have to be obtained outside of the standard story trajectory. In the Akuda Bar, Peepers will host three rounds of thimblerig for one, and Francis the Shark will forfeit his pearl if Jade beats him in a high-stakes game of futuristic air hockey. Driving up to sandy dunes in the overworld will cause Jade to get mugged by a looter, and chasing him down to the dead end of the river rapids cave tunnel will retrieve their pearl along with every cent they stole. Other opportunities to earn the main collectible that tests the ripping acceleration of the hovercraft are the races, and one pearl is naturally the prize for finishing in first place. Jade is evidently still on retainer for a National Geographic type of publication, for they’ll reward her with a pearl if she fills a roll of camera film with newly photographed creatures found across the ecosystem of Hillys. Located in the back alleys of the Pedestrian District are the Alpha Section’s subordinate areas of operation where there is bound to be a pearl or two lying around. Hmmph, hypocrites! These are my favorite optional ways of increasing my pearl counter, for they act as truncated versions of the main dungeons. Still, even for the sections of gameplay that stray away from the main course, I found every secondary mode to be both appealing and agreeable on their individual merits.

Those in disagreement with me on Beyond Good and Evil’s gameplay variety tend to state that the game should’ve stuck to one gameplay mode because everything they attempt is undercooked. Still, even among the harshest of critics, they tend to accede to the fact that what keeps Beyond Good and Evil from devolving into an unfocused mess is the impeccable characterization holding it together. Jade is an exemplary protagonist, and I’m not going to undermine her with the “for a female” disclaimer. She kicks major ass like Lara Croft, but there is something more substantial about Jade that supersedes putting a woman in the typically-male heroic role instead of a damsel in distress. Her photography is a vessel for her search for the truth, illustrating traits of integrity and honesty. Her orphanage showcases her compassion towards others, and the fact that she knows the name of seemingly everyone roaming around the Pedestrian District displays gregariousness. Her credentials for a humanitarian award are lovely and all, but what elevates Jade as a character is how all of the objectively admirable characteristics are mixed with tasteful moments of levity–like when she chases Woof around the lighthouse for the K-Bops in his mouth and calling Pey’j an “old fart” as playful banter. It also helps that Jade isn’t supporting the game alone with her charisma, as the salt-of-the-earth tech wiz Pey’j is almost equally as charming in his own right. The presence of their character dynamic while on the field together never ceases due to constant interactions between them, and it exceedingly aids their likability factor as characters. When Pey’j is captured by the Alphas, the secondary role is fulfilled by Iris informant Double H. He may not have the storied history with Jade as Pey’j does, but I find the man who attributes his chivalrous attitude to the teachings of the fictional Carlson and Peeters philosophy book to match Jade and Pey’j’s geniality. In the raging debate of how women are depicted in video games, we often forget that exemplary characters are not defined by their intrepid feats, but by how nuanced they are akin to people in real life as Beyond Good and Evil shows us.

Unfortunately, the commendable character writing is almost compromised by Beyond Good and Evil’s climax. In the search for Pey’j and all of the orphans that the Alphas unceremoniously abduct from the lighthouse, Jade travels to the DomZ base on the moon via Pey’j’s hidden spaceship called The Beluga. It’s here in this alien hive stripped from the same set as a level in Perfect Dark where it’s revealed that the Alphas have been abducting the citizens of Hillys so the DomZ can feast on their life force. It’s also on the dark side of this celestial body that Jade finds a lifeless Pey’j, and freeing him from a cocoon casing doesn’t make a difference. However, the devastating scene of seeing our porky friend flatlined is negated entirely when he soon recuperates totally unscathed because of a special ability Jade has to resurrect dead people. Huh? During what is one of the steepest difficulty curves I’ve faced in a while, the DomZ High Priest final boss keeps referring to Jade as “Shauni” which further implies that she’s not a regular human being. Jade stops the succubi menace, frees the orphans, and overthrows the Alphas as the prominent governing force of Hillys with the photographic evidence she’s been collecting, but I couldn’t help but focus on what was revealed about Jade during this climax instead of the happy ending. Giving Jade these extraordinary, supernatural abilities is unnecessary overkill to highlight positive traits relating to her. The enormity of her capabilities now verges her into Mary Sue territory, and that’s never a tasteful solution to compensate for a lack of nuanced female characters in any medium.

Beyond Good and Evil is a game that throws everything and the kitchen sink at the wall and sees what sticks. In my time with this underrepresented gem, I found that everything the game attempted was acceptable because they proved to be competently controlled and executed. Still, I wonder if the ease of each of the modes that the game tackled was due to the developers refining them to perfection, or because they didn’t enable the same robust skill ceiling as other games that feature the same types of gameplay. Even if the games that Beyond Good and Evil borrows from already do what it does better, namely Nintendo’s franchises, even those who feel underwhelmed admit that it’s all packaged in something with considerably more character and story substance than any of its influences. I’ve discovered that Beyond Good and Evil is an example of a cinematic game, injecting the strengths of film that video games up until this era were deficient in and rounding out the medium as a result--even if the game has noticeable holes in these departments. If the game garnered enough attention at its release, maybe it would've served as the example for the next generation that laser-focused on implementing cinematics in gaming. We’re on the wrong timeline, folks.

Friday, January 24, 2025

Team Fortress 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/17/2024)













[Image from glitchwave.com]


Team Fortress 2

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Genre(s): First-Person Shooter, Class Shooter

Platforms: PC

Release Date: October 10, 2007


“Oh man, *insert popular online shooter game* was my shit back in the day.” Over the past few years, I’ve heard something of this extent spoken by young adults around my age regarding their favorite online multiplayer shooter games from their adolescence during the period when these types of games were dominating the greater gaming landscape. Usually, the subject of the statement in my quoted first sentence is reserved for series like Call of Duty, Gears of Wars, Halo, or any of the grittier, military-oriented COD copycats that splintered from the woodwork. Surprisingly, I rarely ever hear Team Fortress 2 uttered as the choice representative during this era that took place roughly between 2007-2013. Valve’s contribution to this gaming trend was equally as hot of an item as any of the aforementioned titles, so it’s quite puzzling as to how it comprises a low chunk of aggregate data on my hypothetically constructed pie chart. Hell, it was the only online multiplayer shooter that I actively played in my spare time without my friends involved, even though it served as a great game for cultivating fond gaming memories with my mates. Despite the fact that TF2 is technically among the era-defining entries, its legacy is entirely separated from the collective of its peers. TF2’s rabid fans transformed the game into a raving cult phenomenon that ravaged several circles of the internet in ways that extended far beyond what was actually in the source material. Of course, any rampant presence of something endemic to the world-wide-web connotes that nerds have to be involved, and that’s ultimately the correlation I was arriving at in regards to TF2’s particular player base. TF2 resonated with me where the other games of its ilk didn’t because it seemed like it was one of the only online shooters that catered towards staunch gamers instead of impressionable recruits. I don’t mean to express any notion of elitist posturing toward “casual gamers”, but there are clear reasons why I couldn’t echo the enthusiasm for any of the other online shooters of the era. TF2 was anything but drab and formulaic. Veteran gamers needed an online shooter with some pizazz, proficiency, and personality, and TF2 resonated with several gamers because it was one of the only online shooters that offered something of those substantial merits.

I realize it’s unfair to compare the graphics and gameplay of two games with a giant wedge of a whole gaming generation between their releases. Obviously, TF2 is leagues glossier and generally more dexterous than “Team Fortress Classic” molded from a Quake mod when FPS games were still in their primordial, developmental stages. The points in discussing TF2’s presentation will pertain less to objective advancements and more in regards to the conscious decisions made by Valve to spruce up their property. For instance, cel-shaded graphics are a wonderful voluntary graphical sheen that gives any 3D game a hint of effervescence. My inherent fondness for that particular aesthetic may indicate a bias, but I believe that the choice to render TF2 with a more buoyant color scheme is a distinguishable trademark. Oftentimes, FPS games are gritty and realistic to exude the appropriate mature, gung-ho atmosphere fit for bloody, weaponized combat. When the visuals sparkle due to the cartoonish tint of cel-shaded graphics, the unflinching violence of a typical FPS game is exaggerated to a humorous degree. Bloodshed is splattered on surfaces like splashes of red paint, and any character that meets an unfortunate fate with any type of explosive combusts dramatically as their various pieces of anatomy spill out onto the pavement like shattered glass. Each character can ceremoniously cheer or taunt with the press of a key/button, but they’ll all be uttering emphatic voice lines on the field regardless without deploying a manual trigger. TF2’s jubilant mood is far more inviting than the typical online FPS games that treat every victory or failure with grave solemnity.

As silly as TF2 is on the surface, the game still fosters an enriching experience for the most seasoned online FPS experts. I think the prime example of TF2’s dedication to the craft is that each of its maps is designed exclusively with one game type in mind as opposed to squeezing the feasibility of several different game modes onto one map like COD tends to do. TF2’s veiled premise that rationalizes the conflict between the two feuding factions pertains to the color-coded RED and BLU. They are rival corporations who are competing in heated bouts of capitalist control over a bevy of lucrative, marketable territories to expand the breadth of their business and increase the rate of commerce. Because the premise essentially boils down to annexing territory, each archetypal game mode in an online FPS game is centered around the overarching conflict. The “capture the flag” game that is commonly associated with games of the genre is contextually constructed with the flag as a briefcase containing classified business documents that would devastate the conglomerate’s operations if they were seized by the competitor. Absorbing control points also carries capital connotations in TF2 with maps such as “Granary” and “Well,” and even attempting to procure uncharted real estate in “Hydro” will be met with a conflict of interests like two dogs fighting over a single bowl of food. The attack and defense dynamic that occurs in maps such as “Dustbowl” and “Gravel Pit” imply a scheduled match like a sundown duel in the wild west. The solidified roles of either team here suggest that company executives have proposed a gentlemanly bet between them with their property as the wager instead of an everflowing stream of chaotic back-and-forths. More importantly from a gameplay standpoint, each map in TF2 is wonderfully symmetrical. Besides the color coding that represents either team, both of the industrialized fortresses of “2Fort” are identical, facing parallel to one another with a topped wooden truss bridge connecting the two opposing sides. This way, those on the offensive for either side have an equal standing during the infiltration process. It is not to say that the design of this map is simplistic to a fault for the sake of player equity. Players can take the inconspicuous route in the sewers and emerge in the far corners of the opposing base, and the more agile classes can jump on the top of the bridge and then onto the exposed decks on the opposite side. The control point maps share the same general design philosophy of an identical essence as “2Fort,” with both teams having two layers of territory before meeting at a neutral zone ripe for the picking. The multi-phased “Hydro” will plop players on either team into coarse, uneven stakes for a five-stage streak but hey, it’s not as if either corporation has stamped their brand logos on any of the fertile grounds yet. Simply put, every map in TF2 excels because the developers have made a meticulous effort to craft locations that foster a fair and feasible playing field for the specific game mode designed around them.

Do you think that these entrepreneurial fat cats fight to preserve their capital gains? Hell no! As Black Sabbath once stated in their song “War Pigs,” people in positions of power and opulent wealth hide themselves away and treat people like pawns in chess. The pawns in question on the frontlines are nine different hired mercenaries, each providing a distinctive talent in the effort to protect or procure valuable properties. In my humble opinion, TF2’s direction regarding how they treat the selectable characters in their class-based FPS game is the highest mark of excellence the game bestows. Whereas most online shooters feel it apropos to reduce their selection of playable characters to the contents of their arsenal and their set of specific combat skills, TF2 injects an overdose of personality into each individual mercenary to the point where they completely supersede their class designations. In saying that, their unique array of combat specialties is still equally as pertinent to their identities as their personable characteristics.

Scrolling from left to right on the character select screen, the first class of the gung-ho offense category is The Scout. This brazen, boisterous Bostonian is the youngest of the nine mercenaries, and his youthfulness ostensibly plays a hand in his notably spry physicality. The Scout is the quickest mercenary by a wide margin, zooming through the maps in a flash of the enemy’s peripheral. His advanced nimbleness also gives him the unique distinction of a double jump, making him the only practical class to use for an airborne advantage. Whether it be due to his fresher knees or the in-your-face, Dunkin' Donuts coffee-fueled attitude associated with the people of his home city, The Scout rushes through every combat situation with a blunt and direct manner. His scattergun is devastating at close range, and the metallic bat he’s probably had since his first game at Fenway Park will BOINK and BONK his enemies to death swiftly like a ninja. The caveat to Scout’s incredible speed is that he requires a range so close that he’ll need to breathe down the necks of his enemies in order to ensure accuracy. He carries a pistol to compensate for his blast radius the length of a school ruler, but reliance on this pea shooter will likely result in imminent death. Any class that fights with weapons requiring long-ranged precision will groan when this hyperactive kid lunges at them like a cheetah, but it’s wise for The Scout to steer clear of any classes using automatic weapons.

Continuing with the offense category is another man from the States, but on the opposite spectrum of age and more ambiguously American. The Soldier is the only one who we can presume has a seasoned amount of combat experience among the nine classes, and his exorbitant time in the US Army has shaped his persona as an indefatigable trooper of war with a sense of pride in his country and uniform that verges on nationalistic fanaticism. His time on the front lines has also unscrewed a few bolts in his brain, so he’s often inexhaustibly rambling intensely or maniacally screaming his war cry. The man is mad enough to strap a rocket launcher to his right shoulder and blast it with impunity all across the battlefront. I guess reducing his foes to a gluey red paste with his weapon of choice makes it easier to use his shovel to put their remains into a mass grave. Due to a combination of his bulkier body frame and the massive explosive ordinance he lugs around, The Soldier is a class that trades speed for sturdier, hard-hitting aggression. Keep in mind that anyone playing as this class must aim the shells for critical effectiveness, even though the radius of the splashback will still foist a fair amount of shrapnel damage. Stockier, slower characters will feel the explosive wrath of the stars and stripes, but good luck targeting The Scout while he’s zipping around like a roadrunner. On another note, should I feel embarrassed as a Soldier “main” to never have mastered the rocket jump technique using self-inflicted splashback?

We then switch from two American Joes in this ennead to someone of an untraceable, mysterious origin. The Pyro’s enigmatic nature is something that perturbs his fellow mercenaries. Discounting the jumpsuit and gas mask that obscure and muffle all personability, his/its pension for setting his enemies ablaze with a flamethrower is the cruelest method of execution fitting for a cold, emotionless psychopath. If one manages to elude the roaring, gas-powered flames, The Pyro’s axe will gruesomely cut them down, which doesn’t bode well for his image and reputation. In my experience, The Pyro is the prime beginner-friendly class. His physicality is balanced in all regards and his flamethrower will decimate all health bars complete with collateral still charring the enemy even when they manage to escape the inferno blast. I’ve often decried The Pyro as the class that newbies use as a crutch, but the concealed killer does have his blind spots other than the literal limited line of sight under his gas mask. He’s not particularly speedy and he’s rather confined to close quarters similarly to The Scout. However, the consequences of invading The Pyro’s personal space will prove far more severe than with his quicker offense class peer.

The class that begins the defensive trio is a lesson in tasteful representation. If one is going to diversify their cast with a token racial minority, it’s suitable to give them an unorthodox ethnic background to distract the developers from piling on abject racism in an effort to lightheartedly jab at one’s cultural makeup. I can’t comment on the percentage of black people that comprise Scotland’s total population, but the one-eyed Demoman certainly embodies several of the stereotypes from the northern region of the United Kingdom. He’s a churlish drunk, and the majority of his language would be considered obscene if it weren’t spoken with an unintelligibly thick accent. The Demoman consumes such an alarmingly abundant amount of straight whiskey that he always has a broken bottle at his disposal to crack in half and use as a makeshift shank. Because of how often he’s sauced, it might disturb some people to know that the “demo” portion of his job title is the prefix for “demolition.” The Demoman is an explosives expert, and he’s one class that the player will have to spend an exorbitant amount of time playing as him to hone that expertise. Despite how stacked the skill ceiling is for the Demoman, one who specializes with him will be especially deadly with ricocheting explosive capsules and stealthily placed sticky bombs. Or, you could be one of those dickhead Demomen who plants sticky bombs on the opposing team’s spawn door. You know who you are.

Next, we come to the class that’s The Scout’s polar opposite in physicality and The Soldier’s in cultural ideologies. The “Heavy” is a character whose class designation speaks for itself. This dim Ruskie is like if the corporations shaved a Kodiak bear and gave it a hulking minigun, a terrifying combination to face on the field for anyone involved. It’s shocking enough how this man’s bare hands are as effective as melee weapons as an axe or a shovel. However, The Heavy is not a thoughtless thug. Something is endearing and cuddly about his personality underneath his mammoth exterior, which is probably why he’s been the de facto face of TF2 since its launch. Still, always be cautious of the largest class who also brandishes the most substantial health bar. That is unless you’re playing as a faster class that can run circles around him. The Heavy’s imposing might matched with his glacial rate of movement tips both scales to make for a class with stark strengths and weaknesses.

The following class is a lesson in irony, I think. We return to the American men on the team to the beer-drinking, steak-eating, geetar-playing Engineer from the Longhorn state of Texas. Despite the lowbrow connotations of his background, this good ol’ boy arguably has the most white-collar job of the bunch. Playing as The Engineer is an entirely different ballpark compared to most of the other classes. The wrench and pistol are technically practical weapons in combat, but they prove to be insufficiently stacked against the military-grade firearms used by the other classes. Fortunately, The Engineer can put his academic credentials to good use in this corporate bloodbath. Anyone playing as this class will spend their time constructing a sentry gun that guards either the valuable land or documents. At first, the automated security apparatus will adorably shoot a single bullet from two feet off the ground, but expending his supply of metal will upgrade the little tyke into a sturdy mechanical beast complete with heat-seeking missiles. Metal can also craft dispensaries for health and ammunition, plus two-way teleporters for his lazy teammates. Still, maximizing the potency of the sentry gun should be every Engineer’s highest priority. Considering how many players actively choose The Engineer and stand guard in their bunker maintaining the upkeep of their sentries, it’s evident that The Engineer is an invaluable asset to any TF2 match.

Are Germans the nationality commonly associated with the mad scientist trope in fiction? The Medic’s conceptual makeup should be rooted in the legend of Dr. Frankenstein if anything. Any possible real-life connections to Germany regarding an eccentric, bespectacled doctor who conducts biological experiments would be ugly and tasteless. Let’s just say that I hope The Medic doesn’t own a property in Argentina. Problematic inspiration aside, the first support class acts similarly to The Engineer in that the player will take a secondary position in combat. The Medic’s primary function on the field is to provide medical aid to his fellow mercenaries, spurting the wispy energy from his medi gun onto his comrades that not only revitalizes their health bar but exceeds their maximum health capacity. If The Medic tethers his medicine ray to a particular player for a substantial stretch of time, he can engage an “ubercharge” that will grant invulnerability to him and his target in a brief, electrifying blaze of glory. Pair this feature with either The Heavy or The Soldier and see everyone on the other team scurry away like a pack of rats. Also, if someone catches The Medic on his vulnerable lonesome, know that his bone saw deals the highest critical damage among the TF2 melee weapons.

If The Medic is too submissive for your liking, the other support classes offer that head-on, pugnacious element of battle. Yet, The Sniper obviously engages in the sport of murder from a safe distance. The Aussie receives an inordinate lack of respect among his fellow mercenaries, labeling him as a vagabond loser who sleeps in a van down by the river. Perhaps his impersonal relationship with his teammates stems from his equally impersonal murder methodology. The Sniper’s role is fairly self-explanatory. Use his sniper rifle from an inconspicuous viewpoint to dispatch members of the opposing team, and targeting the vital organs such as the brain ensures a critical hit. The Sniper’s effectiveness as a class depends on a number of variables. The slower mercenaries are obviously ripe for picking off, while it’s a vexing task trying to shoot at The Scout while he’s hippity hoppiting about. In addition to the walking speed of his targets, a number of the maps are simply incompatible with his gameplay style. The outer decks of “2Fort” are practically built to accommodate The Sniper, but anyone attempting to scope around the congested, industrial space of a map like “Granary” is in for a rough time. His auxiliary submachine gun and machete are not to be taken lightly during any personal approach, but one clearly can’t plow through the enemy opposition with them.

Last, but certainly not least, we come to the class that is arguably the inert koala shagger’s Achille’s heel. Glass Joe may represent the embarrassing stereotypes of the French that I’m sure they’d like the world to forget, but The Spy embodies all of the classic associations with the European nation’s people. He’s snooty, rude, and pretentious, yet he exudes a smokey, noirish, and sophisticated swagger that adds to his intended mystique. He also has the most complicated gameplay style across the nine mercenaries. The objective of The Spy is to stealthily navigate around enemies, eluding their suspicions that he is of the opposition. The Spy can momentarily render himself invisible, but a more enduring tactic of deception is to disguise oneself as another class wearing the opposing colors. The other team will see The Spy totally wearing the form of an enemy class, but any of his teammates will see him attaching a cardboard cutout of another classes face–implying that the enemy team is a bunch of unobservant nincompoops. He carries a fairly effective revolver, but his idiosyncratic weapon is a butterfly knife. With a combination of his veiled trickery and this sharp object, intimate range with the opponent’s backsides will trigger a downward stab that guarantees instant death. The Spy also has a sapper tool in his arsenal used to cause sentry guns to malfunction and then explode, but executing this feat of sabotage will compromise The Spy’s position. Actually, there are several ways to inadvertently expose The Spy on the field, which is why it will take hours upon hours of practice to become an effective silent assassin. When the player reaches that point, no other class feels as satisfying to master.

While TF2 at its launch was already brimming with enough effervescence, it retrospectively seemed vanilla as the years rolled onward. To maintain user interest, Valve injected their online class-based brew-ha-ha with a smorgasbord of updates on a biweekly basis. These updates included a myriad of additional content of all varieties. Not only did the developers add several maps to spruce up the tactical range of the game types, but some maps were designed with the advent of a fresh, new game mode. “Payload” involves progressively moving explosive cargo into the other team’s base, “King of the Hill” sees one team defending a single control point in a test of endurance, and “Arena” is a deathmatch with no respawns. Valve never added any new mercenaries to the roster, but they sure augmented the nine classes that were already available. Each class was given plenty of alternatives to each of their weapon slots, plus modifications to the tools already in their arsenal. I’m so glad that “jarate” has been introduced to the greater gaming lexicon, even if I become nauseous whenever the Sniper pelts me with this piss cocktail. Several alterations to each class were strictly cosmetic, including a vast selection of hats that everyone went bananas over like a Black Friday shopping swarm. In retrospect, our collective fervor for these arbitrary pieces of clothing is a little embarrassing. Still, it indicates Valve’s dedication to showering the fans with a constant stream of exciting new features. It was a mark of benevolence unseen by any other online FPS game.

But how does TF2 stand when Valve has forsaken it to prioritize their massively profitable PC game-curating application? Not very well, to be honest. Truthfully, I haven’t played TF2 for well over a decade, when the game still bore some relevance and when all of the previously mentioned updates occurred. The impetus for this review was upon hearing that TF2 is now plagued with game-breaking bots that are infecting the game like cancer, rendering it unfit to play. The vocal community of TF2 players has echoed their grievances about the sorry state of their beloved online FPS classic with the trending hashtag “#saveTF2”, and this outcry encapsulates my point on TF2 more than my insight and experiences ever could. Despite how long in the tooth TF2 is getting to be and how many spiritual successors have taken the reins of class shooter stardom, several gamers are still devout TF2 players nonetheless. Can you blame them for keeping the faith alive? How many other online FPS games feature map designs this exquisite with a cast of characters, not just classes, that can be best described as the boxers of Punch-Out!! butchering and berating one another? My personal relationship with TF2 is ultimately superfluous. The fact that the community surrounding this game is still as zestful as it once was despite Valve attempting to shelve it into the dark corners of their archives is the real testament to its greatness.

Crash Twinsanity Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/14/2024)













[Image from igdb.com]


Crash Twinsanity

Developer: Traveller's Tales

Publisher: Vivendi

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, GCN

Release Date: August 30, 2004


Ladies and gentlemen: I give you my favorite Crash Bandicoot game. No, there isn't a single hint of jest or deceit in my voice as I'm being absolutely sincere. Some franchise fans might burn me at the stake for championing a post-Naughty Dog Crash Bandicoot game as the one to rule over them all, but I stand tall on my blasphemous opinion with full conviction. Every game that comprised the original Crash trilogy on the first Playstation console is a solid example of a 3D platformer that embodied the essence of the genre in its infancy, even if the first game adopted some seriously stern and punishing elements that were soon removed in the sequels. Still, even with its tight, straightforward platforming goodness, the PS1 Crash Bandicoot trilogy left me a tad dissatisfied. The sum of Crash’s parts was more than the titular character’s acrobatic acuity, and the zany cartoon elements of the characters, story, and setpieces were always being subdued to amplify the platforming gameplay. Sure, I’ve argued that gameplay should be prioritized over every other aspect when it comes to a video game. Still, the world is already overflowing with platformer mascots whose gameplay already channeled Crash’s in the flat, pixelated plane and became much more engaging when they transitioned into the third dimension. One silver lining of a developer selling the rights of their beloved IP is that the new people in power have fresh perspectives on how to approach it, and Traveller’s Tale learned from the dull uncanniness of Wrath of Cortex that the Crash franchise needed some nip and tuck. What resulted with Crash Twinsanity is a bullseye on what I had yearned for with this series. However, even though this game technically scratches that itch, Crash Twinsanity is only my favorite Crash Bandicoot game judging on its conceptual and presentational attributes because the whole product is admittedly a hot mess.

While the mission of Crash Twinsanity is one of deviation, the game still recognizes that it’s a subsequent entry to a franchise by continuing precisely where the previous game ended. Cortex and Uka Uka are seen floating in a body of water in a block of ice that puts them in a state of paralyzed preservation, which was the outcome of achieving full completion to Wrath of Cortex. Cortex miraculously manages to drift to the humid tropical land of Crash’s residency on Wumpa Island which dissolves his frozen cell. His first idea in enacting his revenge mission is to assault the unsuspecting Coco skipping nonchalantly on her property. Cortex renders her as stiff as a taxidermied squirrel and borrows her clothing to use as a disguise, duping Crash to follow him thinking it’s his sister. Whether or not Cortex actually decided to shift his blaster to the skull setting, either outcome will likely generate ire from the ESRB either way. As one would’ve expected, Cortex sheds his ruse when he successfully leads Crash into an obvious trap with the cavalcade of Crash baddies and another mech that Cortex is gauging its functionality on with its ability to squash Crash. One might think beginning the game with Crash’s mortal nemesis as the tutorial boss sharply peaks the game narratively, but Cortex isn’t truly an antagonist in Crash Twinsanity much less the main one. Soon after, two intergalactic bird creatures appear from a space wormhole and inform Crash and Cortex that their objective is to annihilate the Wumpa Islands and pluck Cortex’s brain from his ear holes. Honestly, if they’re really capable of eradicating the island that Cortex has failed to destroy countless times, all the usefulness that Cortex’s grey matter could serve is as the protein in a pot of stew. Of course, the direness of this threat creates a common enemy between the unlikely pairing of Crash and Cortex, so they must band together to ensure that Crash’s homeland lives to witness a new tomorrow and that Cortex isn’t condemned to be a drooling imbecile (more than he already is, anyway)--hence the “twin” part of the title. The primary antagonists of Twinsanity may present themselves at what seems like random happenstance, but the narrative needed something outrageous to make the archrivals of the series put their differences aside and collaborate.

Then there’s the “insanity” part of the title’s punny portmanteau, which is the aspect of Twinsanity that jolts my jaded heart with sheer delight. Overall, I’d prescribe the Crash Bandicoot series with adjectives such as kooky and lighthearted, with the influence of iconic Warner Bros. cartoons from a bygone era being pumped into its veins. I’d prescribe the same adjectives to the varied Looney Tunes shorts, but their mirth extends beyond simple lightheartedness. The slapstick hijinks of Bugs Bunny and Company have never ceased to make me guffaw like a babbling idiot since childhood, and Twinsanity is the first game in the series to elicit the same uproarious response. Despite the creepy implications that Cortex has stripped Coco naked, his impromptu deceptive crossdressing is a classic standard from the Looney Tunes trope catalog that always deserves a chuckle–especially considering how unconvincing it is. Cortex commenting that he’s ruined the lives of so many that he can’t be bothered to remember everyone he’s wronged is a comically villainous line, and performing Avada Kedavra with his laser pistol on a humble farmer for withholding a crystal in exchange for a chore is such a dark, leftfield curveball for a franchise with a young and impressionable demographic. Barging through a burlesque house (that looks like a hen coop, mind you) with Cortex lasciviously asking “Are those real?” followed by “Mother?!” is equally as hilarious as it is inappropriate. Is this the game that prompted the birth of the E10 rating? Come to think of it, every moment I’ve listed in conveying Twinsanity’s hilarity involves Cortex in some capacity. As much as I adore Clancy Brown, his insidious depiction of the mad doctor is a tad ill-fitting for a game that relishes in silliness. Lex Lang chews the scenery in his debut as Cortex and as a result, he places Cortex among the ranks of Paper Bowser in the glorious echelons of bad guy buffoons.

The twin connotation also extends past Cortex collaborating with Crash in the narrative sense. The two are just as tightly connected as a pair of twins conjoined at the hip, or at least they are during the sections that involve using both characters simultaneously. Actually, the dynamic is less of two equal contenders combining their strengths and more like Crash using Cortex as an all-purpose tool–negating all of his scientific prowess and humiliating him to the nth degree. Hey, if Cortex wasn’t so stubborn and released his grip from the crystal that Crash was holding, maybe the orange marsupial wouldn’t be forced to use him to increase the range of his trademark spin move and swing his skull downward like a hammer. Perhaps his grip isn’t too tight, for Crash can manually fling Cortex from his grasp whenever to either pull a switch or pulverize a distant enemy with his zapper. Other forms of the Crash and Cortex collaboration include sections where Crash has to clear a path of hazards for Cortex who is otherwise occupied with either being chased or the debilitation of a swarm of bees stinging the everloving shit out of his face. In a section taking place in a sewer, Cortex will squeeze himself into a barrel and allow Crash to roll him through the looping pipe system in order to progress. By taking a long gander at Cortex’s ass (yes, that is seriously what happens), a lightbulb strikes above Crash’s head to use Cortex as a snowboard to quickly and comfortably (for him) to travel the steep and perilous slope to his next destination. In some moments, they quarrel so hard in close quarters that they will form a spherical concentration that will roll at the player’s command like the ball sections from Wrath of Cortex. While the last collaborative mechanic mentioned is the only one that’s been proven to work from a previous game, all of the ways for our boys to play together that the developers conjured up are still splendid–and Cortex suffering from a constant slew of indignities is only a fraction of the joy they elicit. The parallel bridge sections require acute reaction time to keep Cortex out of harm’s way, and the electric, madcap energy of the snowboarding sections makes them one of the most enjoyable downhill acceleration segments I’ve played in recent history.

Unfortunately, the half-baked aspects of Twinsanity’s gameplay tend to become apparent whenever either character is flying solo. Crash’s moveset hasn’t been augmented, but his general movement in his jumping and darting around obstacles has a slight hint of hesitation as if he’s lost his confidence. This caused many missteps while platforming, and they naturally led to chipping away at the life counter. In the few instances where Cortex is on his lonesome, his gameplay involves ranged shooting combat with his zapper. When the CPU Cortex uses it, he’s a sharpshooter. However, with the targeting system in place for the player, the glowing crosshairs need an unclear level of distance for accuracy. It’s a good thing then that the player is catapulted into a solo section with Cortex only a handful of times, but those few instances of running and shooting are rather uninspired. Surprisingly, the secret third playable character outside of the odd couple duo is the one with the most agreeable gameplay. Twinsanity introduces Nina Cortex into the colorful cast of Crash Bandicoot characters, a younger female relative of Cortex whose specific kinship to the evil scientist is vague. She’s playable during a single section, but the lengthy period when she zips through the rooftops of the academy she attends never inconvenienced me with any glaring issues like the other characters. Maybe the developers had to sacrifice her voice to ensure that her gameplay was solid.

For the most part, the player will have to get accustomed to Crash’s comparative lack of grace because he’s front and center throughout most of the game’s levels. Twinsanity features four distinct worlds that more or less fit the kookiness of Crash Bandicoot. The standard series setting of Wumpa Island starts the scene with Crash navigating around the tribesmen led by Papu Papu who are out for Crash’s blood for some inexplicable reason. The Iceberg Lab houses Cortex’s colossal scientific facility at the central base of the sturdy frozen formation, with penguins flying on jetpacks circling its perimeter. The Academy of Evil is the series' first crack at a Halloween-themed level, and the bizarro version of Wumpa Island called “Twinsanity Island” retains the Burton-esque aesthetic qualities of the previous world. More important than how these levels look is how Crash progresses through them. Twinsanity marks the first time in Crash Bandicoot history that a game flirts with non-linear level design, which is a monumental shift for a series synonymous with stringent level linearity. Well, this is technically true to some extent. The player is given a modest spatial range to roam around but once they find themselves on the trajectory towards one of the three levels per world, the path becomes rigidly straightforward as per usual. The free space the game facilitates mostly points towards the gathering of the multicolored gems, rewarded through discovery or a platforming puzzle section rather than breaking boxes. I recommend leaving these gems alone, and not only because collecting them this time around only rewards the player with meager extras in the menu. Straying from furthering the story can consequently punish the player with its shoddy checkpoint system. Some checkpoints are greater than other than Twinsanity, and the ones that engage the autosave sequence will catch Crash even when he exhausts all of his lives. What the game doesn’t inform the player is that each of these autosave boxes directly coincides with a specific level. For example, I finished Iceberg Lab and was curious to see what was beyond the trajectory because of a trail of wumpa fruit. Unbeknownst to me, I had rediscovered the autosave box for “Ice Climb” and was forced to retread this level and every other one leading up to it. The unfair penalty I had experienced aggravated me enough to completely write off the pinch of nonlinearity the game offers.

Inadvertently rewinding the game is merely symptomatic of the fact that Twinsanity is rife with glitches. Crash will often fall through invisible holes in platforms while jumping, and hitboxes are highly questionable. Getting too close to Coco once Cortex paralyzes her again in a cutscene not only killed Crash, but the game reverted to two autosave boxes as a result! I could only laugh at the absurdity of what had just occurred, even though the prospect of completing the previous levels AGAIN still had steam jetting out of both of my ears. It’s a shame that Twinsanity in particular is buggier than the Louisiana Bayou because the game’s difficulty curve is rather reasonable. Nothing in Twinsanity matches the strict precision of “The High Road” or “Piston it Away,” but perhaps the altered design of Twinsanity calls for different challenges. The levels in Twinsanity tend to be longer than those in the PS1 entries, so endurance is usually an element of the challenge rather than rigorous bouts of platforming. This aspect of Twinsanity’s gameplay is showcased to its fullest with the climax of “Ant Agony,” a luminescent laboratory gauntlet that stretches onward for what seems like ages. The elongated levels are probably the reason why Aku Aku’s boxes are more prevalently scattered, but it doesn’t explain why the invincibility period upon stacking three of them doesn’t account for nitro crates and TNT like before. Is Aku Aku’s magic waning with every entry? Regardless, all Crash needs is the hit insurance Aku Aku still provides and he’ll survive the long treks with moderate platformer obstacles. However, despite Twinsanity’s general lack of singular challenges, I swear that the homicidal walrus chef is the fastest pursuer of Crash thus far in the series.

As depicted in the early cutscene where Cortex leads Crash to his trap, the colorful cast of Crash’s secondary villains (and a pissed-off Polar with a baseball bat) are all here alongside Cortex to attempt another shot at thwarting the bandicoot. Once Cortex and Crash make their unorthodox bond, the other baddies still harass Crash to procure a treasure rumored to exist from the two intergalactic parrots. Only a handful of notable Crash bosses step into the ring with the bandicoot, but the few that confront him provide what are arguably their best encounters. Outsmarting N. Gin is more interesting than clogging another one of his mechs with wumpa fruit, and Dingodile’s multifaceted duel with his flamethrower is such an exhilarating fight that raises the bar for Crash Bandicoot boss fights. I do wish that N. Brio was more involved in his tag team with Entropy other than flopping around the ice crag while inflated to stall while the time manipulator recharges his shield, however. Fresh faces to the series also provide substantial fights like the sentient ancient Tiki monster and Madame Amberly, the headmaster at the academy and Cortex’s former pedagog. “Crybaby Cortex” may catch on as a mainstay series nickname. As for the twin parrots in the main antagonist role, they crawl into a titanic mech to squash Cortex and Crash when they deny the mad doctor’s apology for transporting them to the outer reaches of the cosmos when he was but a scientific wizkid. While the scope of the fight is appropriately formidable for a finale, the way it progresses is anticlimactic. The Nina and Cortex portions of this three-way shared fight are fine, but Crash snapping off the last few units off the mech’s health bar with his own mechanical marvel is too hurried and simple for the scope of the scene. Still, the ultimate fate of the parrots in the end cinematic is one last moment to make the ESRB uncomfortable for good measure.

The game that Crash Twinsanity reminds me the most of is Conker’s Bad Fur Day. No, Crash has not developed an acid tongue or a taste for alcohol; rather, it’s the tone and direction of the game that draws this comparison. Rare used the source material of a cuddly red squirrel not only to pervert him for laughs but to make a statement on the stagnation of child-friendly 3D platformers with a piss-take to send it off with a high salute. Due to the well-documented rushing of the developer's time and budget, I know they had unfulfilled ambitions for Twinsanity that connote an attempted earnest effort. Still, regardless of what their intentions were, Twinsanity still exudes a facetious and irreverent attitude if the constant jabs at the series if the fourth-wall-breaking fashion and total warping of the series attributes were any indication. Twinsanity practically serves as a “post-Crash” game that is aware of the IP’s limbo status and parodies its lingering existence. All of the patchy, glitchy blips only make a greater argument for taking the piss out of the series instead of invigorating it. Traveller’s Tales knew that Crash Bandicoot died when Naughty Dog buried it in their backyards. If the industry insists on digging him up for profit, they might as well make a Weekend at Burnies scenario out of it. Still, whether or not the game is as tongue-in-cheek as I credit it, an unruly, bonkers Crash game was the perfect direction that finally let the silly spirit of series flourish. Lord, why was Wrath of Cortex the Crash Bandicoot game I grew up with and not this one.

Mega Man 7 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/9/2025) [Image from glitchwave.com ] Mega Man 7 Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Genre(s): 2D P...