The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/28/2022)

{Image from igdb.com]

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: GCN

Release Date: December 13, 2002

It’s hard to imagine now, but The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a hotbed of contention among Zelda fans when it was released. The zealotry of Ocarina of Time fans certainly contributed to the manic adulation surrounding Zelda’s first foray into the third dimension, so a rational business move for Nintendo would be to cater to those same people. It’s apparent from the teaser trailer at the Spaceland event that Nintendo considered making Ocarina of Time 2.0 to placate their most rabid consumers, but this was when Nintendo still had an inkling of integrity. The Wind Waker exemplifies the wonky experimentation of the Gamecube era better than anything else. On the surface, The Wind Waker was a stark deviation from Ocarina of Time in every way possible, which did not sit well with Ocarina of Time fanboys. My older cousin, who played Ocarina of Time at the optimal time in his life as it became his favorite game, gave his Gamecube away after the Wind Waker did not meet his expectations. Critics adored the Wind Waker even at its dispirited launch and lauded it as a more-than-worthy addition to the franchise. However, it did not quite dethrone Ocarina of Time as the pinnacle of Zelda's adventures, much less as the king of the video game medium. Over time, the fans started to share the same sentiments as the publications, appreciating the risks Nintendo took to prevent the series from getting lost under Ocarina of Time’s glory. Because The Wind Waker was my first Zelda game, I could not discern the differences between it and previous entries, but I continue to admire its unique quirks after playing through the other main titles. However, there is unfortunately still plenty to fault The Wind Waker for past its superficial qualities.

The most glaring difference that initially upset Zelda fans was obviously the graphics. Everyone assumed this game's visuals would be different from the blocky polygons of Ocarina of Time. Still, no one expected the visuals that The Wind Waker presented. Cel-shaded graphics were not introduced in the sixth generation of gaming (see Mega Man Legends from 1997 for the earliest known example). Still, the superior graphical capabilities made the style more ubiquitous. One consistency with cel-shaded graphics is that they make any game more vivacious, sacrificing realism for stylistic pomp. Zelda fans were not keen on this artistic decision as they complained that the graphics made The Wind Waker look too puerile, diminishing the grandiose tone of the fantasy epic that Ocarina of Time conveyed down to a light-hearted Saturday morning cartoon. Since when was The Legend of Zelda synonymous with being dark and brooding? If anything, the warmer, brighter tones to Wind Waker’s aesthetic recall the more whimsical nature that Miyamoto attempted to exude for the very first Zelda game on the NES. Even without comparing it to previous titles, I can’t understand how someone couldn’t be enraptured by The Wind Waker’s aesthetic charm. All the colors of the Crayola box pop with the same amount of visual flair without one color bleeding into the others and making it an incohesive splatter painting. Everything from the green, rupee-filled grass to the rippling blue waves of the sea are so visually striking, and even the drabber colors that make up the island formations manage to be captivating. The colorful tone also persists, whether the atmosphere is jubilant or tense, showing a sense of consistency. The Wind Waker’s exuberant style demands your attention and is a visual splendor. To this day, The Wind Waker is still the most attractive Zelda game.

Higher visual fidelity has also made the denizens of Zelda’s world much more expressive, namely the series staple, tunic-wearing hero of time. Like many, if not all, of Nintendo’s mascots, Link is not a dynamic character. His leap into 3D made him more realized in a physical sense, but his warbled interjections were even less coherent than Mario’s. I suppose this is understandable because, unlike Mario, Link is not a pronounced, single character. With a few direct sequels as exceptions, the elfin Aryan boy in each game is not the same, just a different heroic avatar with the same name and sense of fashion. The Wind Waker’s Link is yet again a different iteration of Hyrule’s prodigal son, and his vocabulary has not transcended his neanderthal-like yelps and grunts. However, his varied facial expressions, thanks to the exultant visuals, make him more emotive, thus exuding more of a personality than usual. Whether it be feelings of joy, fear, shock, disgust, etc., Link wears every emotion on his sleeve, expressed through his round, cherubic face.

Link also probably seems more personable here because his character gets more exposition. Instead of immediately being summoned to action after someone discovers he’s the chosen hero, the player experiences his roots for a little longer. Little Link lives a humble existence on Outset Island on the southside of the sea with his younger sister Aryll and his grandmother. His grandmother only puts the iconic green tunic on him for his eleventh birthday because she’s a traditional woman who enjoys the customs of the old world. Little does she know, the green tunic fits her grandson better than she thinks. However, Link’s epic quest to earn the right to wear that tunic is not the usual mission involving the Triforce or the other two people who possess two-thirds of it. Link’s sister Aryll gets captured by a giant bird who drags her off to the Alcatrazz-like Forsaken Fortress across the map. The bird mistook her for another young girl named Tetra, a pirate captain whose crew coincidently anchored offshore from Link’s home. Together with Tetra and her swabbies, Link sets far off to rescue his sister from the gripping talons of the massive bird. Unfortunately, being underprepared, Link fails the prison break operation on his first attempt. With the aid of a talking red boat referred to as “The King of Red Lions,” Link prepares more thoroughly by directing towards finding the three pearls that will unveil a power to defeat the bird and its master, Ganondorf. As unusual as Wind Waker seems, the plot's offbeat premise quickly crawls back to something that reminds us that it’s back to the old Zelda grind after Majora’s Mask. Nintendo isn’t eager to step out of their narrative comfort zones, and the Zelda series is as guilty of formulaic stories as the Mario series. The smidge of deviation presented here in the typical Zelda premise at least makes enough effort to offer something relatively interesting.

What is most interesting about The Wind Waker is the fantastical world that Link resides in. The people who reside on these islands seem familiar with Hyrulian customs, but the last time I checked, Lake Hylia’s dam did not collapse and flood Hyrule, for it never had one in the first place. For the first time since Zelda II on the NES, a mainline Zelda game takes place after the events of the first game in the asinine Zelda timeline, and it's a new age for the franchise. The Wind Waker is set hundreds of years after the events of any Zelda title. The kingdom of Hyrule was evidently destroyed in a biblical deluge that would capsize Noah along with his arc. In the wake of this apocalyptic scene, Hyrule has been reduced to a chain of islands situated in an ocean that stretches out to what seems like an eternity. Familiar enemies present in previous Zelda games have been subject to a redesign, evolving for these dire circumstances like a Darwinist case study. The Buzz Blobs from A Link to the Past and the ChuChus from Majora’s Mask have fused into an electrifying creature that runs the gamut of the whole rainbow. Peahats now make a pitiful, squeaky cry when they die like curb stomping a dog’s chew toy. Moblins look like they live off the shores of Haiti and the Poes and Redeads look like they spent plenty of time in the sun before they died. Zoras and Kokiris have been wiped out, and the Gorons are now as rare as unicorns. However, two of three of the focal races of the N64 Zeldas have now adapted to fit this climate. The Kokiri are now dendriform dwarves called Koroks and Zoras are now the avian-human hybrid Rutos. Yes, the fish-like Zoras are now bird people in a land almost entirely by water. Try to make some sense of that! As for Link, he seems to prove much worse in a watery world like this. Wind Waker Link cannot swim underwater like his uncanny ancestors, for the developers did not want him to leisurely swim through the vast waters to his destination, like the bridge between Lake Hylia and Zora’s Domain. Instead, Link will doggy-paddle with his head slightly above the water until he gurgles and the breathing gauge depletes. Link is confined to the surface of the water, with the nebulous depth of it expanding the breadth of the location.

Link’s intended traversal method is sailing via his crimson, bearded boat. It’s only the most natural method of traveling through a large body of water. After acquiring the sail on Windfall Island, the player assigns it to one of three buttons on the Gamecube controller and keeps it on the base of the KRL boat to accelerate with the wind. The game's map isn’t as large as it might seem, but the widespread length of the open waters compared to the sparse ratio of land in between makes it seem overwhelmingly immeasurable. Those who bothered to play The Wind Waker after their initial upset often had new grievances about the game’s sailing mechanic. Because the land on the map is scant, all notable areas are an arduous hike (or swim in this context) away from one another. Sailing according to the wind’s direction will move Link’s boat around 10-15 MPH, so arriving at one area from across the map will take approximately 10-15 minutes in real time. If that already sounds like a slog, the vacuous nature of the open waters also connotes that nothing will interrupt the trip except a few sharks and Octorok attacks. Many people have criticized The Wind Waker's oceanic hub as a boring, glacial waiting game, but I think it’s magnificent. Maybe it’s my romantic side talking, but the KRL boat rippling through the deep, blue ocean waves with Link’s green cap waving in the wind is a grand, majestic scene. The magnitude of the sea, coupled with the triumphant musical track that accompanies Link as he sails, exudes the epic scope of adventure better than any other Zelda game. It’s like the jubilant feeling of the first time Link steps out of the Kokiri Forest to Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time but extended for the entire game. The monumental scope of adventure is never lost on the player when sailing on the Great Sea, even though I did take full advantage of the unlocked teleportation option for convenience.

The Great Sea also makes exploration much more engaging than any other Zelda title. In the previous games, the player had to search every nook and cranny in Hyrule to find any special items, for there is a leveled depth to excavation on land with plenty of ground to obscure an object from sight. Except for sunken treasure whose relative position glimmers from beneath the sea floor, the vacancy of the wide, open sea gives the illusion that there is nothing underneath the water. If the waters are so empty, then surely the player can assume that any slab of land in the midst of it is comparatively sumptuous. Every island in the Great Sea can be conspicuously seen from miles away, alluding to at least something potentially notable. In between the island civilizations across the entire map lie several isles with something to catch the player’s interest. These assorted atolls and cays might be distracting on the way to the main goal, but isn’t that the beauty of exploration? With the map's perimeter covered almost entirely by sprawling waters, any land mass in it is like a point of respite. Usually, some point of interest will net the player a reward for dropping their proverbial anchor on the shores of any of these small isles. I always felt more invited to explore the Great Sea than Hyrule or Termina because the juxtaposition between land and sea made exploration simpler. That, and the open parameters of the sea exude a sense of freedom that hasn’t been felt since the first Zelda on the NES.

The tool used to traverse the waters is the game's namesake: the wind waker. Although it sounds like the name fitting for a weapon of mass destruction, it is this game’s instrument item like the ocarina before it. However, the wind waker is only an instrument in an abstract sense of the word. It’s a glittery silver baton that does not produce any sound itself but conducts the rustling wind as if its continual blustering is a sustained single note made to be manipulated. Songs on the Wind Waker can be performed in either 3/4, 4/4, or 6/4 with a bouncing metronome at the top to competently play the conductor role. The few notes confined to certain movements on the C stick may seem relatively restrained compared to the free-reign flexibility of the key-shifting ocarina. Still, no other musical apparatus seems appropriate for control like a baton. Control seems to be what the wind waker revels in. The ocarina used music as a key to unlock the secrets of Hyrule, but the wind waker allowed Link to become the supreme master of the Great Sea’s most powerful element. Songs in 6/4 are long and similar to the temple songs from the two previous 3D Zelda games, but as Link is now a conductor, playing them in the temples is a collaborative effort. Songs in 4/4 include the power to teleport to a few specific locations on the map and to control some characters, almost like hypnosis. One song in 3/4 is the Wind Waker’s rendition of the “Song of Time,” but the other 3/4 song, “Wind’s Requiem,” is the most essential song to conduct and the earliest that Link can play. Simply put, playing it conducts the wind to blow in whichever cardinal direction. Link can use for platforming challenges involving the leaf item, but it will mostly be used to change directions while sailing.

Conducting the wind, while I question the logistics of it at times when Link is underground or in a temple, is an interesting way of deviating from the ocarina with the same type of item. However, it gets irritating how frequently the Wind Waker must be used throughout the game. Link only needed the ocarina for select moments in both the N64 Zeldas, but the wind is ostensibly a beast that is a challenge to tame. Keep in mind that the KRL boat’s maximum speed is about 10-15 MPH with direct cooperation with the wind, displayed by a translucent arrow on the back of the ship. The boat’s speed will decline significantly if Link deviates slightly from the wind's trajectory. Charging in the opposite direction of the wind will make the boat come to a screeching halt. There are eight cardinal directions to choose from after playing the “Wind’s Requiem” for a reason, and the game expects the player to commit to one. Forget attempting to circle around an island without having to redirect yourself every few paces. The constant re-correction is maddening.

Inventory maintenance takes a step down in The Wind Waker compared to the previous two 3D Zeldas. Zelda staples like bombs, arrows, and the boomerang return, along with a few new additions like the paraglider leaf. The hammer from A Link to the Past returns, and the young cartoon Link here must be eating his spinach because he can carry the Adult Link items from Ocarina of Time like the iron boots and Hookshot with no strain. It isn’t the number of items that is overwhelming, nor is it the way these items are organized on the menu. Rather, it’s the constant rearrangement of items between the three assigned buttons on the controller, especially while sailing. Cycling through Link’s inventory would be a common affair in the previous 3D Zeldas that could sometimes be irksome, the same as on land in The Wind Waker. However, the items present some odd confinements of being out at sea. I’ve expressed before that the wind must constantly be managed, and not having the sail equipped makes the act of sailing futile, so two out of three buttons will be solidified as those particular items at all times. The last button of the three will juggle several items in Link’s inventory. Items like the boomerang and arrows can be used by Link while the boat is moving, but the KRL boat has fashioned other items as part of its own arsenal. Bombs will be shot and launched from a cannon while the grappling hook becomes a crane used to lob up sunken treasures. Unfortunately, on top of the constant pausing, the roulette of items for the other button breaks the pacing of the already leisurely speed of sailing. Attacks from various things in the water happen frequently but can simply be bypassed without difficulty. Humoring the sea enemies by stopping will usually result in conflict between the sail and the direction of the wind. Anything the player has to do on the water that involves halting their momentum, except for docking the boat on an island, causes too much friction.

Combat seems to be emphasized higher in The Wind Waker than in any Zelda game before it. One console generation was all it took for people to get comfortable with 3D combat, and now Link is a green, pint-sized gladiator. Z-targeting has shifted to L-targeting on a Gamecube controller, and the developers felt like the series has graduated from having a fairy partner to highlight enemies. The King of Red Lions does enough as it is. As one can tell from Link’s sword training on his home of Outset, his array of moves has not shifted. Rather, he’s improved his dexterity with his weapon. Link's newfound nimbleness allows him to not only slash his sword more quickly but counter the enemy's moves with something else other than his shield. While facing an enemy, the A button flashes, and Link performs a stunt where he rolls in a circular motion, slashes from the back, or leaps over the enemy’s head and whacks them from above. Enemies in The Wind Waker seem to roll up on Link in packs, or at least more so than the enemies did in the N64 Zeldas. More durable enemies like Moblins and the mini-boss-like Darknuts are more common and serve as the juggernauts in the mix. These congested enemy swarms are most likely to challenge the more dexterous Link, but it reminds me that The Legend of Zelda is not a series whose strong suit is combat. The combat in each Zelda title, including The Wind Waker, has been competent, but enemies are only intended to serve as a puzzle or a slight obstacle. Disposing enemies is far too easy because the games, especially The Wind Waker, are too lenient with error. An army of enemies isn’t all that imposing when all the damage they can muster barely depletes one health container. The only combat challenge I ever found was fighting a cluster of Darknuts, only because their compact closeness made it hard to poke at their weak points with a counter. I don’t expect Zelda to be like Dark Souls, but the developers shouldn’t have pussyfooted with the combat considering they made a greater effort to emphasize it.

The Wind Waker is also paced strangely. Except for Majora’s Mask, A Link to the Past established a formula for progression that maintained prominence in Ocarina of Time: three elementary dungeons to uncover three of the same kind of jewel, a midpoint rising action, several “adult” dungeons that are more challenging, and finally a climax in Ganon’s fortress. The Wind Waker can’t decide whether or not to stick with this structure or mark its own path like Majora’s Mask. From the start, the first Forsaken Fortress “dungeon” is essentially a farce. The first dungeon of a Zelda game serves as a glorified tutorial to slowly attune themselves to the basic layout of the dungeons. If Forsaken Fortress is intended to retain this, it’s a terrible first dungeon. Stealth is seldom an aspect of the Zelda series, and in the few sections where stealth is applicable, it’s usually well into the game when the player is well acclimated with it. Forsaken Fortress is an inappropriate precedent for the rest of the game. The remainder of Wind Waker’s first half seems loyal to the Zelda formula. The spiritual stones from Ocarina of Time have been refashioned like everything else in this game as “Goddess Pearls,” Link must collect three of them scattered across the sea to unlock the temple where the Master Sword is placed. One would assume three dungeons coincide with the pearls, and the first two fulfill those expectations. However, the quest for the last pearl is an anticlimactic trek back to Outset Island, where a mystical fish simply gives the player the last pearl. The Tower of the Gods, the immaculate temple unsurfaced by the three pearl’s collective power, is a satisfyingly lengthy real dungeon. Still, it already feels like a midway point because the early objective of retrieving the pearls has already been completed. Cruising back to Forsaken Fortress with not only the Master Sword but a pack full of other items to rescue Aryll again is incredibly satisfying. The player was once so naked and defenseless here, but now they get to revel in smashing Hemlock’s head in with the skull hammer like a watermelon. However, it’s a shame that the game never reaches a climax as exhilarating as this, and it’s only at the rather prolonged halfway point.

After the resolution of the Aryll arc, The Wind Waker decides to commit to the franchise's tried and true story of the Triforce and the three prophetic figures involved. It’s revealed that Hyrule was not demolished but is being hidden underneath the water from Ganondorf as a means of protection. The kingdom has been kept in a state of purity like a cryogenic chamber, and Link must defeat Ganon so Hyrule can resurface. Link was a given for the player even before he knew his destiny, and the King of Red Lions mentions that Hemlock’s master is Ganondorf, but what about the princess of the series namesake? Unfortunately, the game goes about revealing Zelda in the worst way possible. The Wind Waker’s quainter graphics give more personality to Link and to every other character as well, old and new. My favorite new character in The Wind Waker is Tetra, the pirate gang leader who has been collaborating with Link to save his sister. She’s a tough, snarky lass full of piss and vinegar, the kind of girl who would drink any man under the table, except she's only eleven. After Ganondorf unveils Tetra’s identity, swimming down to Hyrule’s perpetual state of glory affirms Ganodorf’s suspicions as Tetra transforms into a cel-shaded Zelda. All her spunk is gone when she does this, making me realize that Zelda is like a dry sponge. At least Princess Peach has that airheaded bimbo aura going for her. Keeping to Zelda traditions has ruined one of the franchise's best characters. As for the reveal of the Hyrulian King being my boat, I was neither surprised nor moved in the slightest.

The game's second half continues to emulate a traditional Zelda plot structure. As most of the dungeons in the second half of Ocarina of Time are “adult” versions of their past counterparts, the same can be said about the pairing of dungeons in the Wind Waker. Both pairings, however, are not centered around an elemental theme but around two characters from two different Great Sea tribes. Medli is a Ruto girl whose presence is heavy on Dragon Roost Island when Link uncovers the source of the great Valoo’s distress, and Makar is a stubby little Korok who Link retrieves from the dankest pits of the Forbidden Woods. Link discovers that both of them are estranged Zora and Kokiri sages who have the power to replenish the Master Sword’s power. They also play the harp and violin, respectively, so Link takes his conductor role literally and figuratively to accompany both sages in these temples. Fear not, for these dungeons do not fall under the category of dreaded escort missions. Neglecting Medli and Makar will not result in a failure, but Link must use the “command melody” for their constant collaboration. It’s an inventive way to spice up the typical Zelda dungeon, but only to some extent. Overall, the few dungeons that Wind Waker has are merely adequate. I like the Water-Temple-esque design of the Wind Temple, but nothing else about any other dungeon really stands out compared to the previous games.

That being said, I’d much rather endure even the most mediocre Zelda dungeon compared to the absolute drudgery the developers came up with after the Earth and Wind temples. Unlocking the Triforce pieces in previous games was directly tied with beating the dungeons, so the player never gave them much thought besides the ultimate Zelda Macguffin. To replace what would be the third dungeon in any other game, the developers thought it would be fun for the player to set off and scope out eight individual triforce pieces all over the Great Sea and the charts that reveal their locations. It sounds like a grand pirate adventure, fitting for the game’s prevalent theme of sailing out at sea. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It isn’t. At all. I know a fetch quest when I see one, Nintendo, and you can’t mask it with the allure of pirates. Surveying the entire sea with little direction just to find the charts in bland mini-dungeons hidden in opaque corners of the map results in the most grueling, tedious, and cumbersome section throughout the entire series. To add insult to injury, Link can’t even decipher the charts when he finds them. Remember Tingle from Majora’s Mask? The map guy hoisted in the air via a red balloon who had a serious case of arrested development? Out of all the characters, it had to be this creepy little fucker to survive the cataclysmic washing of Hyrule. Tingle has reinvented himself as the Great Sea’s ultimate shyster, taking advantage of apocalypse inflation and charging 398 rupees per chart. If my math is correct, that’s 3,184 rupees, more than quadrupling the total amount of rupees Link can hold in Ocarina of Time. Tingle adds a layer of grinding already enervating fetch quest, and I wish I had the option to leave him in his cell to starve to death. I abhor this section of the game, and Nintendo owes everyone an apology.

After finally completing the arduous fetch quest and forgetting everything else in The Wind Waker up to that point, Link descends back into Hyrule to face Ganondorf in his quarters. Again, The Wind Waker’s Ganon’s Tower takes a note from the previous two 3D Zeldas. Multiple rooms with various items or dungeon-themed challenges are presented and can be completed in any order. Four bosses from the previous dungeons are at the end of their respective sections, and then Link fights Phantom Ganon in a maze-like section. It’s here in The Wind Waker when this collective of tropes and elements from previous sections in the final part of the game grew tiresome. The challenges here are brief and substandard compared to the ones in Ocarina of Time, and the bosses, upon repeat, can be defeated in less than a minute with the Master Sword. I enjoy the added narrative with Ganondorf’s final boss here, and the team effort to defeat him with Zelda harkens wonderfully back to the collaborative tasks with Medli and Makar. However, I still can’t help but feel underwhelmed. Perhaps this is because Nintendo Power described Link’s final blow to the head as “shocking,” but isn’t that exactly how Link defeated him in Ocarina of Time? What was more shocking was encountering Puppet Ganon, the boss before Ganondorf. The mirage of the Dark, Gerudian King expanding into a monstrous form in the spacious, ominously-lit room affected me much more. That, and the Puppet Ganon boss assuages that challenge I had been yearning for, resulting in the winner for the best boss in the game. I suppose I can be glad that the finale results in Zelda transforming back into Tetra as she sails with Link to colonize Hyrule in a new space rather than resurfacing the old one. The themes of nostalgia from Ocarina of Time are overt, but I am still satisfied with how The Wind Waker portrayed them and with this resolution.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker did not affirm everyone’s disappointments after the initial upset it caused. It’s an exemplary addition to the Zelda series, but I feel as if the game is always a bridesmaid and never a bride. It’s consistently listed as one of the greatest Zelda games but never takes the top spot either in a publication or anyone's personal favorite. Hell, The Wind Waker is seldom crowned as the best game on the Gamecube. The Wind Waker is my fourth favorite Zelda game behind three other 3D titles, and Ocarina of Time is one of them, as much as I hate to admit it. Wind Waker’s problem is that it can't decide what Zelda experience it wants to be. Like Majora’s Mask, it’s quirky and unconventional, offering something fresh and daring. All the while, it still suckles at the teat of the conventional Zelda tropes and arc of Ocarina of Time. The ending result is an awkward mishmash of some of the absolute best qualities seen in the series and some of the absolute worst. I wish Wind Waker committed to being unorthodox because the unusual aspects are where the game shines like the sun on the surface of the Great Sea. However, I am still not giving clemency to the early Wind Waker naysayers who would not give this game a chance from the get-go. The positives are so ubiquitous that they (almost) dilute the less-than-savory ones, and its unmistakable charm is certainly one of them.

(Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/31/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

Category: Remastered Port

Release Date: September 26, 2013

In brief, I will highlight a few key differences on the Wii U HD port. Usually, I never bother to delve into how a port marginally alters aspects from a game’s original release, but The Wind Waker HD improves upon every single grievance I had with the game to an incredible degree. Changing directions while sailing is but a mere switch on the gamepad, being hoisted through the water results in moving at twice the speed of the original, and the gruesome Triforce fetch quest at the end only requires the player to find three charts instead of a whopping eight. Link can now even take selfies with the pictobox. Neato! Besides the jarring bloom effect slightly diminishing the effervescent graphics, The Wind Waker HD turns The Wind Waker into my second favorite Zelda title behind Majora’s Mask with its changes. It’s too bad that my Wii U vanished into thin air years ago, so I’ll have to stick with the Gamecube version that I grew up with.

Bubsy 3D Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/27/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Bubsy 3D

Developer: Eidetic

Publisher: Accolade

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: November 25, 1996

I couldn't think of anything succinct or constructive to say about this legendary piece of shit, so here’s me spitballing my stream of consciousness on Bubsy 3D:

“I take back every criticism I gave to Super Mario 64. Mario’s first 3D outing may look like a Rankin Bass production, but it looks divine compared to the Klasky Csupo fever dream here that I could have done a better job at programming.”

“I could move more fluidly than Bubsy if I was hit by a semi-truck and had a Redwood branch shoved up my ass through every subsequent physical therapy session.”

“Is Bubsy voiced by Roseanne Barr? No wonder everyone hates her.”

“Those accolades on the box on some of the most hilariously bullshit or misquoted blurbs I’ve ever seen. Did the guys who wrote those get fired and or bullied into suicide for giving this game the only praise it ever got? Edit: they are both still alive and healthy, family men, but they should still be ashamed of themselves.”

“Ooooh, I get it! It’s supposed to be the dadaist version of Super Mario 64. Very clever, guys. Nice use of irony.”

“The Charlotte Bobcats must have changed their name to make damn sure that they would never be associated with Bubsy, lest they suffer from more humiliation.”

“This game makes Custer’s Revenge tasteful by comparison. That game might have raped indigenous women, but Bubsy 3D raped every one of our senses.”

“Sony must have bombed so hard with this game that they spent the next two console generations compensating for it by offering a myriad of solid 3D platformer franchises, the clear winner over Nintendo overall. In that case, thank you, Bubsy 3D.”

Actually, no. Fuck you, Bubsy 3D. You make me (literally) sick.

Yoku's Island Express Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/14/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Yoku's Island Express

Developer: Villa Gorilla

Publisher: Team17

Genre(s): Metroidvania, Pinball

Platforms: PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One

What is it with Metroidvania games and bugs? Are we extrapolating that Hollow Knight’s grand success has to do with its cast of hand-drawn creepy crawlies as opposed to its myriad of other positive attributes? Did Ori and the Blind Forest capture everyone’s hearts because the titular wooded area was an ecosystem consisting mostly of insects? I don’t like bugs, and I’d be willing to bet that I’m preaching to the choir with this statement, so it’s assumed that their presence in both games I’ve previously mentioned does not contribute to their acclaim. However, indie developer Villa Gorilla assumed that bugs were the most likely factor in attributing the boom in independent Metroidvania games and released Yoku’s Island Express. While bugs are not an original aspect to the Metroidvania genre, certainly, the game’s odd pinball mechanics will inspire feelings of both interest and befuddlement. Pinball is a game with restrictive controls in a confined, almost quarantined space, so how can it competently mesh with the expansive, layered Metroidvania genre? Yoku’s Island Express’s fusion is admirable only because it seems absurd. We collectively assumed that this combination was unfathomable, and now the gaming industry has found a developer foolish enough to waste their budget on something unfeasible. However, Yoku’s Island Express’s master crafting of these elements was quite a surprise.

One of the alluring factors of Yoku’s Island Express is its winsome protagonist. Seeing his bright, open-mouthed smile on the cover, how could you not fall in love with Yoku? The little guy is just too damn cute. I have to ignore that Yoku is a dung beetle and his trusty rolling sphere is presumably a polished piece of shit, but realizing this did not stop me from beaming with glee at Yoku or this game in general. The game is simply too vibrant to resist. The developers might have taken obvious inspiration from Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest but radically altered the tone of those games. The sunny, bubbly atmosphere of Yoku’s Island Express is a stark deviation from the sublime, dour one conveyed in the previously mentioned Metroidvania titles. Color choices pop with consistently bright contrast, and character models have an endearing quality without sacrificing refinement. The animal NPCs speak in a garbled gibberish like the villagers in Animal Crossing, and Yoku quietly chirps as he’s knocked around while panting excitedly like a dog as he moves. While the sources of inspiration for this game are obvious, Yoku’s style and direction expel a feeling of warmth I’ve never received from a Metroidvania game. It’s the difference between putting a song that is most notably performed on a minor scale and shifting it to a major scale.

Yoku’s Island Express draws so many comparisons to Ori and the Blind Forest, particularly because both of their worlds are so similar. The island alluded to in the title displays an eclectic range of climates with a large body of water as an outlying barrier. Between the sandy shores at the bottom to the frosty peaks at the top lie grassy hills, drylands, wetlands, etc. It fits the quota of the Metroidvania genre, whose intrigue is based on a diverse array of locations. However, the big question that arises with Yoku’s Island Express isn’t if its world is vast enough to hold the Metroidvania mantle but how one traverses through it with the pinball mechanics. Surprisingly, the pinball mechanics are interwoven nicely into the design of Yoku’s world. The developers understood that crafting the world into a glorified pinball machine would conflict with the expansive nature of the Metroidvania game, so they used the pinball features sparsely. Yoku moves left to right as freely as any other Metroidvania protagonist, but that’s the extent of his innate movement. Pinball bumpers are everywhere, with blue representing the left bumper and orange representing the right. They are often portrayed as springs that lift Yoku from the ground, catapulting the little guy to a higher area when triggered. More traditional pinball sections involving bouncing Yoku around enclosed areas are still commonly placed. Still, they are sectioned off enough from the rest of the world to not ruin the cohesiveness. Most of these sections also unlock passageways, with touching a series of identical keys being the main trajectory. I went from questioning the practicality of pinball in this kind of game to embracing it. The developers understood that traversal was a core mechanic of the Metroidvania genre, and using pinball bumpers to carry the player to higher, unexplored places is genius.

Of course, the prime design philosophy of the Metroidvania game is locking those unexplored areas with a myriad of obstacles. Yoku’s Island Express offers only a few MacGuffins to bypass these impediments, but the few here are used frequently. The island’s currency is a mixture of tropical fruits that range in value, and either thirty or eighty of them at a time are needed to unlock the ramps that shoot Yoku upward. Acquiring these fruits is no problem as they are scattered around the island, and they appear from the springy bumpers in the pinball sections. A difficulty may arise where the fruit limit might exceed the amount Yoku can carry at a time, so Zelda-esque wallet upgrades are essential and an incentive to explore the island more thoroughly. A streamer Yoku finds early on can be blown to open cases and vases to collect more fruit and alert any drowsy NPCs (I just kept blowing it because it’s so cute. God, I love Yoku). The fish that latches itself onto Yoku’s ass so he can swim underwater and the sootling that allows Yoku to latch onto purple plants and swing on them are the core traversal upgrades, and finding paints to color Yoku’s ball will be needed for a few sidequests. That’s pretty much it. The upgrades may be minimal compared to other Metroidvania games, but then so is the utilization of pinball. The fusion of both genres trims the fat of both genres, making something more manageable.

Diluting the elements of both the pinball and Metroidvania genres also reduces Yoku’s Island Expresses. A regular game of pinball grants the player three balls, and the player must rack up as many points with them as possible before all three balls inevitably fall between the bumpers at the bottom, ending the game. Metroidvania games, on the other hand, are adventure games to meet a goal. Some progress may be lost upon death, but the player can infinitely respawn at any given checkpoint. One genre is blunt and absolute with its margins of failure, while the other is more liberal and forgiving. The way that Yoku’s Island Express attempts to find a compromise between the two makes the game easy to a fault. Thank god the game offers unlimited continues, but dying is also not a consequence. Under the main bumpers in the more pinball-latent sections where a black pit of oblivion would be in a normal pinball game are a patch of thorns. A few fruits will be taken away, and Yoku will make noises of discomfort, but that is all that happens. Beating the pinball sections is ultimately made facile because removing the consequence of failure diminishes the skill associated with the game of pinball. All the player accomplishes in these sections normally associated with high levels of reaction times and precision of pinball boil down to a breezy task. Purple plants are used as autosaves in the field, so why couldn’t Yoku respawn at one of these after falling into the prickly patch too often? Implementing this would’ve made for a meatier compromise.

The pinball sections of Yoku’s Island Express are fun enough upon the player’s first go-arounds, but integrating them into the overlay of the game's world fails to recognize one aspect of the Metroidvania genre: the backtracking. A Metroidvania world’s immensity relies not only on the wonders of discovery but also becoming acquainted with areas that have already been scouted. Like in any other Metroidvania, the player must backtrack to procure items, collectibles, and unexplored ground that was once inhabited by an obstacle. I don’t mind crawling back to a discovered territory as Yoku, but my only wish is that I could bypass the pinball sections after completing them. Doing the same challenges just to retreat from point B back to A is tedious. The player will unlock an island transit system that blasts Yoku from barrel to barrel like Donkey Kong Country on three different lines, but the full convenience is negated by the fact that Yoku can’t exit the transit until they reach the end of the line. Imagine riding a bullet train whose itinerary goes from Miami to Boston and not being able to stop at any of the major cities in between. Also, the world map is difficult to discern because the player cannot zoom in, only zoom out to better see pinpointed objectives. I usually don’t begrudge backtracking in Metroidvanias, but the quirks of Yoku’s Island Express irk me a bit more than the average game.

Yoku’s Island Express is also a short game that is light on plot. I’ve failed to mention it before, but the “express” portion of the title refers to Yoku’s job as the island’s mailman, passed down to him by the previous mail taker at the beginning of the game. The only instances where Yoku delivers mail come with side quests involving stuffing envelopes in red mailboxes across the island and delivering some overdue packages to three NPCs. Otherwise, the game presents Yoku with a task with epic proportions as the main quest. The last God of this world has taken refuge on this island from an evil entity known as “the God Slayer.” The giant toad-like avatar has been injured by this foul creature, and Yoku must band together to eradicate the God Slayer. Once Yoku rounds up these warriors, the God Slayer reveals itself as Kickback, the bloated creature aiding Yoku on his quest. He unsheathes his claws and attacks the vulnerable deity. After Yoku and his friends stop him, the island is at peace, and Yoku can continue his postmaster duties. It might seem like a high-stakes story, but its curt pacing makes the plot practically ephemeral. With both the mail portion of the game and the epic overarching plot fighting for precedence, it’s hard to determine what the prime focus of Yoku’s Island Express is. At least the developers implemented a well-executed final boss fight with the pinball mechanics, something not even Ori and the Blind Forest could do. What was that game’s excuse for not having any bosses?

I suppose the effectiveness of basing a Metroidvania game around bugs and other small creatures is that their world is a microcosm. Below the surface beneath our feet lies a realm as vast and diverse as the world we know, albeit under a smaller scope. A bug’s world is organic and awe-inspiring, something game developers try to exude in the Metroidvania genre. The pinball mechanics of Yoku’s Island Express were a puzzling change of pace from the tropes and settings already established in the genre. Still, the developers understood both genres adequately to make for a fresh and tasteful take on the Metroidvania title. Yoku’s Island Express is a charming, unique title that falls under the rare category of game that warms my heart. However, the brisk ease of comfort associated with that sense of warmth is also somewhat to its detriment.

...

I want a Yoku plushie. Do they make those?

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/12/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Developer: Traveller's Tales

Publisher: LucasArts

Genre(s): Action-Adventure, 3D Platformer

Platforms: PC, GCN, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, DS, GBA, PSP

Release Date: September 12, 2006

Most people would probably ask why Traveller’s Tales would develop a lego game revolving around the notoriously maligned Star Wars prequels before the gilded original trilogy. The correct answer to this question is that the first Lego Star Wars game was a loose tie-in with the release of Revenge of the Sith in 2005, the last of the prequel trilogy created so George Lucas could pay off his yacht. Some may still find it insulting that the three movies that tarnished the Star Wars name were given precedence over the holy trinity of films even with this fact in mind. Fear not, overzealous manchildren; basing the original trilogy of Star Wars movies on the second Lego Star Wars games is a decision that shows a high level of respect for those films. You see, video games have more leeway to expand on compared to films, learning from the mistakes of the previous title while simultaneously augmenting the aspects that already worked. Traveller’s Tales knew that the first Lego Star Wars would be rough, so why not base the initial project around the inferior prequel trilogy around it and use that experience to craft something better for the original trilogy than the sequel? Hindsight could only create something superior, right?

As one could probably guess, setting the original trilogy as the game’s premise has the inherent advantage of familiarity. For example, the game’s hub outside the three films is set in the Mos Eisley Cantina, a raucous saloon placed on Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine. It took me a little while to recognize the hub in the first Lego Star Wars as “Dexter’s Diner”, even though I had seen Attack of the Clones before playing that game. The Cantina, on the other hand, is so ingrained in the fabric of Star Wars as a brand that I’d be able to recognize it without ever viewing the first film. Those first few notes of that jaunty cantina music can strike up, and I will immediately associate it with the dimly lit watering hole in the heart of the sandy metropolis. Besides its high discernibility, the lively atmosphere of the Cantina is the optimal place for all of George’s multi-million dollar creations in Lego to roam around aimlessly. Other Lego characters will even fight each other to enhance the authenticity of the Cantina. The basis of the hub remains the same, but the Catina outshines the previous hub of the first game with flying colors simply by being associated with warmer Star Wars memories.

Regarding warmer Star Wars memories, Lego Star Wars II also benefits its story mode levels deriving from a much better source: the original Star Wars trilogy. The stories presented in the three films are one of the prime factors in what cemented Star Wars as arguably the biggest film franchise to ever exist. Spoiling the newer prequel trilogy (god forbid) at the time of the first Lego Star Wars release might have been a risk when playing the game, but everyone who is playing through the second game will most likely already be well aware of what’s happening. It also helps that the events of the first three movies make sense as opposed to the jumbled nonsense Once again, the story is told via the body language and facework of the characters without any dialogue, like a film from the silent era. However, Lego Star Wars II includes the characters making wordless warbles for a heightened sense of emotion in lieu of not having any spoken dialogue, and it’s honestly a welcome addition. Depicting these three movies in Lego is inherently silly, so the utterances add to the light-hearted nature of the game. The three films are portrayed the same as the prequel trilogy from the previous game. Three different areas of the Cantina are dedicated to each of the three films, divided evenly between six episodes that tell the film's story (the original trilogy would be damned if one film was unevenly split like with Attack of the Clones!)

In the first Lego Star Wars (especially in multiplayer), being forced to play as anything but a Jedi knight was a disappointing affair. One might think this problem would persist in the original trilogy due to the Jedis being wiped out by Order 66 during Revenge of the Sith and only having an elderly Obi-Wan with force powers to control for one movie. Original trilogy characters like Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and an uninitiated Luke Skywalker control the same as the gun-wielders from the first game, and droids C-3PO and R2D2 are just as clunky and helpless as they always were. However, this was never a problem as it was in the first game because at least I’m more familiar with these characters and like them as opposed to, say, the black guy who guards Padme on Naboo or the color-swapped droid clones of C-3PO and R2D2. Most levels in Lego Star Wars II only offer the characters listed above, with a few exceptions here and there. Still, their constant presence helps the players establish a core dynamic between them. Plus, Han Solo’s double shot with his blaster pistol makes him feel brisk and lively, and Chewbacca’s new ability to rip the arms off of enemies never gets tiring. Playing as the droids still suck, but at least the team will offer another character to play as most of the time.

Of course, I’ve only listed what makes the original trilogy better than the prequels, and that stance will not win me any awards in journalistic insight. How does Lego Star Wars II expand on the first to make for a better game? Well, the changes are only slight but are apparent nonetheless. Lego Star Wars II is much more puzzle-oriented than the previous game. Cues relating to a specific character like the glowing force indicators and the droid doors made up the slight obstacles of the first game, which are still present in this game. Lego Star Wars introduces what I like to refer to as “collection puzzles,” which become utilized much more frequently in subsequent Lego games. The game presents a wide space for the player to gallivant about with a main goal or trajectory in plain sight. To achieve this goal, the player must complete a line of tasks in a specific order. Some require building things out of Legos in a pile (which every character can do now thanks to the new stacking mechanic) or character-specific moves. After a long stretch of circuity, the main goal will be accomplished, and the player can move on to the next block of the level. These sections are more involved than choosing a character for a split second and pressing a button but aren’t as engaging as the developers hope they would be. Their busywork design and lack of puzzle-related acumen make them more tedious than anything, and their widespread presence in these levels pads them to unreasonable lengths.

Any vehicle level in Lego Star Wars II is also worse than the previous game. Vehicle levels in the first game offered some of the steepest challenges and removed the breeziness of infinitely respawning seen in every other level. These levels in Lego Star Wars II, on the other hand, are designed exactly like every other level in the game but with driving or flying at the helm. The puzzles and action in these levels are also limited due to being unable to switch between characters, so what the developers offer results in boring tedium like collecting energy balls. Not even tripping up Lego At-At Walkers on Hoth is all that thrilling. The only level in the game that gets it right is the level on Endor, where the player rides on zoom bikes, but only because the level provides a hybrid of vehicle and foot sections.

Lego Star Wars II provides far more collectibles and other features unseen in the first. The complete roster of unlockable characters is just as vast, but we also get the chance to create our own characters in the hub. Both players can save one character that will either be a gunslinger or Jedi and use them in free mode. It sounds cool, except that the player will have to swap out their creations constantly to do the character-specific parts. Other game modes are offered, but the only one that resonated with me is the bounty hunter mission,s where Boba Fett and his merry band of bounty hunters will hunt down a character in a level for some profit. At the end of the game, a Lego City level that looks like someone rendered a basic Lego playset is available to destroy for potentially a million studs. Oh, and Indiana Jones is an unlockable character, a paradox between him and Han Solo for sure. All of this incentivizes the player to play beyond the story, but it’s all window-dressing at the end of the day.

Lego Star Wars II’s superiority over the first game is entirely unfair. Not only does it get the privilege of being a successor with more polish and pomp, but it’s guaranteed that people will like this entry more than the first one simply due to the source material. However, that seems to be the prime appeal of this game. Unfortunately, Lego Star Wars II did not jump at the chance to improve upon the foundation of the first game, relying too heavily on inherent advantages. Lego Star Wars II is like a cocky rich kid who applies for a job and believes he has a better chance at getting it due to the prestige of his parents over a less fortunate candidate. In the context of this game, it’s like both candidates got the job and shared the workload. Lego Star Wars II is just more of the same, which puts the entire Lego game series into perspective.

F-Zero X Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/6/2022)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

F-Zero X

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Racing

Platforms: N64

Release Date: July 14, 1998

Have you ever seen how video games are portrayed on television or in advertisements? They're practically portrayed as visual, interactive crack. Two kids will be sitting in front of a TV with their drooling mouths agape and their pupils sinking into the whites of their eyes to the point of non-existence. A cacophony of erratic button tapping will be performed by several pairs of thumbs moving so wildly it's as if they have their own wills. Their borderline hypnotized faces are brightly illuminated by the coruscating glow of the television, which is shaking violently in pain from not being able to withstand the unmitigated awesomeness of the game. Upon the climax of the players finishing, they will hoot like owls with megaphones, and the TV will ignite in a roaring flame. Sounds fucking radical, doesn't it? Alas, to my knowledge, this experience has never occurred a single time while someone has been playing video games. Companies exaggerate gaming thrills to make them more alluring to children, while television frames this scene as gaming being dangerous and addicting. Some may claim that this elated moment is meant to represent an internal feeling while playing video games, but the realistic level of stimuli while playing video games cannot match the exaggerated depiction. One video game that attempts to simulate the bodacious media-portrayed embellishment of gaming is F-Zero X, the N64 sequel to the futuristic racing launch title for the SNES. F-Zero X is the story of how an ambitious, albeit glaringly flawed, 16-bit racing game became the most thrilling video game of the 20th century.

Besides Star Fox, F-Zero was the one new Nintendo IP on the SNES that greatly benefited from the jump to 3D. F-Zero's ethos was beyond the capacities of pixelated arcade-style racing, and it's a shame that the confinements of the SNES could not support F-Zero accordingly. As bold as the first F-Zero was, a racing game of its caliber was impractical on a 16-bit console. "Mode-7" graphical capabilities were impressive enough, but they are superfluous when the gameplay feels so muddled. I'd state that Nintendo should've held off on developing F-Zero until they were ready to jump to the third dimension, but one always learns more and grows from their mistakes instead of their hindrances. In 3D, the potential that F-Zero had can be fully realized. As it is, 3D F-Zero seems to be fairly minimal. It's a good thing that F-Zero's pixelated visuals weren't a grand spectacle because they couldn't have been rendered efficiently in the early 3D era. Tracks mostly look a paved gray with only a smidge of color variation for split seconds in the passing view of the player. The machines all have a plethora of colors and designs, but they all have a shared, gauche look of a sanded-down soapbox derby car. Fortunately, F-Zero is not a series that needs spectacular visuals. The racing courses that would be drab in a typical racing game compensate greatly with impeccable design. Leaping to 3D now allows F-Zero to diversify the layout of its courses. Loops, pipes, rotating tunnels, and steep jumps caused by vacant pits in the tracks are gripping enough to ignore the lackluster aesthetic. Plus, encountering all of these attributes at the blazing speeds of F-Zero implores the player to learn each track's layout to master them, demanding more intrigue to make it through them unscathed. Also, the addition of an analog controller is a godsend, as well as the buttery-smooth framerate that supports the blisteringly-fast action of F-Zero. I can't think of another N64 title whose frame rate was this crisp and responsive, and the game probably would've been unplayable without it.

Before the player can press start at the opening menu, a thunderous guitar lick worthy of Bill and Ted's "excellent" air riffage sounds over the N64 console logo. The intro will jumpstart the hearts of any player, but it's merely a sampler of what they'll be hearing throughout the game. I normally don't talk about a game's soundtrack in my reviews because that aspect of a game can be discussed exclusively on its own merits. However, I must untangle the music in F-Zero X because it is a huge factor in what makes the game so exhilarating. Ripping guitar licks that fall somewhere on the spectrum of speed metal accompany the races of F-Zero X marvelously, something of the guitar work of a Joe Satriani or Jason Becker. The finger-snapping virtuosity synonymous with the genre is perfect for a lightning-fast racing game like F-Zero that requires as much proficiency to play as the music that accompanies it. Also, I'm pretty sure this game is the only Nintendo soundtrack to feature guttural vocals. Fucking wicked. My only complaint is that the music makes the game much harder due to melting the player's faces off.

F-Zero X also must be set a few years after the first F-Zero because enough time is needed to pass for the sport of futuristic, high-octane racing to catch on. The first F-Zero supplied a paltry four characters for the player to choose from, but F-Zero expands the roster of playable characters, totaling to an exuberant thirty. Captain Falcon is still the face of the franchise, and the other three F-Zero mainstays return, but they've all got a lot of competition to contend with now. F-Zero X's bountiful cast of characters runs the gamut of mutated animals similar to Pico like Billy the ape and Octoman the humanoid octopus, old timers like Silver Neelsen and Dr. Clash, women (gasp, it really is the future!) like Jody Summer and Kate Alen to characters like Baba and Beastman. They look like Captain Falcon with a wardrobe change. Also, is that Fox McCloud's dad driving the Little Wyvern machine, and why is he a human? His overall look is too uncanny to be a mere coincidence. Each character comes with their own machine and stats, giving the player ample chance to become familiar with one or more of these to fit a racing build that suits them. A wider roster is more exciting, but the minimalist qualities of the game sort of diminishing the potential of having a wide selection. Even though none of the characters speak and their visages are obscured by their vehicles, I want to know more about them and their histories. Character bios often seen in fighting games would've been interesting to peruse in another menu, but I guess the developers would then have to delve into James McCloud's messy and shameful sexual history with a fox.

Even though all 30 characters will be present in every race, the player only has a small fraction of the roster available. Without resorting to putting in the "unlock everything" cheat code (which I'm guilty of doing, give me a break here), the player will have to unlock the roster via the fair method by placing first in the game's grand-Prix mode. Three cups, with an extra two unlocked as the player progresses, are presented to the player with six races each, and each subsequent cup gets more challenging. It's here in this grand-Prix that I'm reminded that the goal of F-Zero is not to outspeed the competition but to survive them. As I've stated, all thirty racers are accelerating on these tracks simultaneously. A large number of machines are in close, narrow spaces trying to pass each other. F-Zero acted like a bout of high-octane bumper cars, but F-Zero X is similar to a mosh pit caught up in a tornado. All the while, all of these racing contenders have to navigate the hazardous pratfalls that each track possesses. Normally, a grand-Prix featuring six races would be more accommodating because it gives the player enough chances to not have a perfect run and still win. This leeway is still present in F-Zero X, but the strict margin of error when racing combined with how many opportunities the player has to make a slight but fatal mistake makes having to run six races consecutively feel like a test of endurance. Offering rewards like expanding the roster and unlocking new cups is at least an enticing incentive, but the arcade difficulty brought over from the first F-Zero still makes the experience vexing.

F-Zero is still hard as nails, but unlike the first game, F-Zero X gives the player more tools to use. While playing on regular difficulty, I was confused and slightly irritated because I could seemingly never get to the same speeds to pass the racers in the top tier. I thought I was missing something crucial, and pressing the B button answered my questions. In the first F-Zero, the player's machine would be given a slight boost after passing the first lap, and F-Zero X greatly expands on this by granting the player a manual boost feature that is ready for the player to use the rest of the race after the first lap. This option makes a difference as it is the only way to win any race in the game, but the player cannot use it excessively. Using the boost at inopportune times will most likely result in the player slamming their machine into a wall or careening off a ledge and losing a life. The player must know the best spot to use a boost when they are memorizing the layout of the track. Secondly, the boost rate is limited as it coincides with the machine's health bar, which can only be restored while driving on those colored patches. A mosh pit between thirty combatants going hundreds of miles per hour may sound extremely overwhelming, but there's always that one beefy guy in every pit who commands the space with his tenacity. F-Zero X's equivalent to the audacious spin kick is another spin move where a player's machine can be shifted into a projectile weapon, whirlwinding into the others, knocking them into walls or off the track completely. It takes a certain proficiency to execute, but it is vital to winning as the boost move. The game even points out a specific target by flashing "rival" over the fiercest competitor and rewards each execution with a gold star, accumulating to an extra life with five. Boy, howdy, is this game vicious!

F-Zero X also has other game modes like timed races and a mode exclusively featuring the attack move, but the one that bewilders me is the multiplayer option. I stated in my review of the first game that it would have benefited from one. I realize now that being able to play with multiple people would imply that someone would play this game casually with others, and F-Zero is the least casual racing series known to gamers. It's probably why F-Zero lies dormant in Nintendo's archives while Mario Kart can make the same high earnings by releasing the same game ad nauseam. F-Zero may have improved significantly with its first 3D title, but the relenting challenge it takes simply to be competent is enough to deter most gamers from playing it. I say to hell with those people and that Mario Kart is for pussies. F-Zero X took something that was essentially a tech demo to test a gimmick on the SNES and turned it into one of the most engaging racing games I've ever played. I might have chipped a few teeth in frustration when I lost all my lives in a grand Prix or wasn't able to swerve around the tracks at first. Still, overcoming the challenges the game presented eventually almost made me feel as elated as someone playing video games in a commercial feels. F-Zero X is gnarly, dude.

Super Mario Sunshine Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/26/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario Sunshine

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: GCN

Release Date: July 19, 2002

If the premise of a summer vacation-themed mainline Mario game sounds bizarre to you, you’re not alone. For some reason, the launch of the Gamecube marked a slight experimental age for Nintendo as they catapulted their mascots in unorthodox directions after keeping things relatively straightforward on the N64. Their bold decisions drew a sizable bit of ire from fans still enraptured after the significant splash Nintendo made in the first 3D era. They wanted more of what was offered on the N64 but with better graphics, and they threw up in their mouths when Nintendo refused to accede to their expectations. Nintendo’s flagship series usually only represent a console generation with one title. The company delivered its uncompromising creations to its fanbase with the same blunt directness of a disgruntled cafeteria worker serving food. The disappointed reactions to The Wind Waker are the more notable example, but fans weren’t pleased with Super Mario Sunshine. If Nintendo were willing to piss off Zelda fans with the warmer cel-shaded aesthetic of the Wind Waker, then their Italian gold-winning stallion was not immune from being put through the test chamber either. Fans eventually came to adore The Wind Waker after the initial upset dissipated in time, but Super Mario Sunshine has always been somewhat of an acquired taste. Besides being bewildered by its odd premise, most people see Super Mario Sunshine as a sophomore slump, a rough spot between Super Mario 64 and every subsequent 3D Mario game released afterward. I might be blinded by nostalgia, but I’m of the opinion that Super Mario Sunshine is not an awkward road bump in 3D Mario’s evolution but an integral game in improving the 3D Mario formula.

It's possible that what initially upset people most about Super Mario Sunshine is setting the game away from Mario’s regular stomping grounds. Super Mario is a franchise marked by familiarity, and deviating so far from the Mushroom Kingdom will naturally make some fans weary. Nintendo created a new tropical playground for Mario to galavant about in Super Mario World but then backpedaled by claiming that Yoshi’s Island was an island territory owned by the Mushroom Kingdom set off the mainland shore. Mario’s fans eagerly look forward to seeing how gaming’s legendary crown land improves with the graphical progress of every subsequent entry, especially since it looked so coarse and lumpy in Super Mario 64. Nintendo, however, felt it better to give Mario’s vast, hilly homeland a well-deserved break to explore new territory. Sunny Isle Delfino is not only a vacation destination for Mario and company but a vacation for the player after exhausting the typical Mushroom Kingdom setting. While this island is not the same Koopa-infested, quasi-psychedelic commonwealth with a plethora of geographical terrains, the vacation resort theme still captures the light-hearted vibrancy that makes Mario so alluring. People often venture out to these places on their vacations because the sun-drenched shores exude a sense of breezy frivolity, something just as applicable to the accessible Super Mario franchise. Super Mario has always felt like a ray of sunshine, and now the franchise offers a setting that overtly revels in nothing but jaunty warmth.

Of course, the game wouldn’t be enticing if it merely simulated Mario on his vacation. This isn’t Nintendo’s take on the abysmal, mind-numbing Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure with Mario at the helm. As carefree as Mario’s venture to Isle Delfino was intended, he is swiftly reminded that rest and relaxation are never on his itinerary. Mario is swiftly accosted by the Isle Delfino police force as soon as he sets foot on the island. Mario has been falsely accused of vandalizing the island by littering it with a sticky, iridescent goop that may or not be noxious to the island’s denizens or have a detrimental influence on the environment. Nevertheless, Mario wrongfully gets the book thrown at him and is sentenced to clean up his supposed mess with a high-powered AI water pack called F.L.U.D.D. Until Mario meets his community service quota, he will not be able to leave the island. The real perpetrator of the crime is “Shadow Mario”, an uncanny doppelganger colored in a translucent deep blue. Mario attempts to track him down to prove his innocence, but the phantom clone decides to pull an obligatory power Mario series power move and kidnap Princess Peach. As silly and forced as the initial source of conflict is, anything is preferable to the most tired of Mario plots that Super Mario Sunshine quickly devolves into. Not even the sheer will to modify Mario’s typical attributes in this entry could keep Nintendo from burrowing back into their coziest of comfort zones.


The opening cutscene also could argue that too much ambition might be Super Mario Sunshine’s downfall. Hearing every character's speaking dialogue in the opening cutscene is sure to grab everyone’s attention and raise some eyebrows. Voice acting is not new to the Super Mario series. Princess Peach had a few spoken lines of dialogue in Super Mario 64, and who could forget Charles Martinet’s expressive grunts, hoots, and slightly racist warbles as Mario? In Super Mario Sunshine, the extent of voice work is amplified to the point where every character in the opening cutscene utters a competent line of dialogue in a cinematic fashion. The level of voice work is probably more shocking in retrospect. More voice work was a logical step to 3D Mario’s evolution because Super Mario Sunshine presents a clear reason why it never progressed past this point. Text dialogue in mainline Mario games is simple to a fault. In a series that insists on exhausting the same plot in each entry, a few lines of straightforward text is all the game needs to at least set the scene. Super Mario Sunshine’s problem is that delivering this curt dialogue vocally sounds hilariously amateurish, as if the script was written by a fourth grader and delivered by a voice cast that sounds like children doing impressions of adults. The voice work is exclusive to cutscenes and would often be criticized for inconsistency, but I’m thankful that the rest of the game regresses back to text accompanied by some vocal sounds for the characters. The voice acting here is a testament to the fact that some video game series shouldn’t have spoken dialogue for the sake of progress for the medium.

Super Mario Sunshine also doesn’t seem very stimulating considering its premise. What was Nintendo smoking when they thought their next mainline Mario title should involve him doing high-stakes janitorial work? If I didn’t know any better, I’d probably be revulsed at first glance, but do not be misled by starting impressions. Super Mario Sunshine is cut from the same cloth of the 3D collectathon platformer ilk that Super Mario 64 established. Isle Delfino is separated into seven unique levels, with the hub of Delfino Plaza serving as a reposeful middle ground between them. Each level has eight objectives that will reward the player with the core collectible that must be heavily accumulated to progress through the game. To fit the tropical theme, the series star icon has been shifted into a sun-shaped “shine sprite,” which carries the same value. 3D platformer fans can rejoice that Super Mario Sunshine is another branch in the line of Super Mario 64’s offspring and that the sludge Mario must wash away only serves as an inconvenient obstacle to Mario completing his objectives. While Super Mario Sunshine might sound exactly like Super Mario 64 on a mechanical basis despite its quirks, the game deviates slightly in its direction. Instead of stumbling upon the main collectibles by exploring the stages, the titled shine sprites in Super Mario Sunshine are acquired in numerical order. Shine Sprite #1 of the level acts as the first “episode,” and every subsequent episode continues a loose narrative of how the area becomes cleaner due to Mario’s influence. Opening the level even gives the player a vague overview of what their objective is and where it is located. Bianco Hills is being terrorized by a giant, flamboyant, untethered, speedo-wearing Piranha Plant named Petey Piranha, who Mario fights twice to expunge him from the quaint village. The haunted hotel that overlooks Sirena Beach is open to Mario indefinitely after erecting it in the level’s first episode, and cleansing Noki Bay’s toxic waters is an ongoing arc in its respective level. One might argue that this linear approach to the levels is restrictive and streamlined, but the progression works with the game’s narrative. Each area gradually worsens as the player collects the shine sprites, meaning Mario has completed his sentence-driven service. Completing a more proportioned task also better compliments the boot-out system, something jarring from Super Mario 64 that Super Mario Sunshine continues to employ.

I always marvel in disbelief that the Gamecube was only one console generation after the N64. 3D graphics evolved past the growing pains of endearing amateurishness to a standard of believability in a measly five years. The transition between the fifth and sixth console generations is the largest leap of graphical progress that gaming has and will ever see. Many fifth-generation franchises that continued into the sixth generation were noticeably more refined in their sequels, but none of them highlighted a contrast so starkly as Super Mario 64 and Sunshine. Super Mario 64 was primitive even compared to all of its 64-bit contemporaries, the oldest and ugliest out of the rest of the ugly ducklings. The revelatory transformation of this foul-looking fowl wasn’t a surprise, but how radically it happened and in the short amount of time it did. Rudimentary edges that made the foundational polygons visible in Super Mario 64 have been sanded off to silky, buttery smoothness. Everything in the background, from the tall bell towers in Delfino Plaza, the countryside homes of Bianco Hills, to the scalable palm trees of Pianta Village, is discernible even from the furthest points away. Objects in the foreground like various fruits or those manholes with shine sprites painted on them no longer require squinting and or the use of one’s imagination to effectively determine what they could be either. Crashing water from the beaches flows and ripples to simulate its movement in real life, and enemies seem more vigorous and imposing. Mario and his friends went from looking like a child who drew and modeled them to resembling a professional artist's rendition. Super Mario Sunshine is the first Mario game that resembles a fully realized rendition of what fans visualized Mario and his world for several years. It only took the second 3D generation to make it a reality. Isle Delfino is a gorgeous resort that uses the higher graphical fidelity to effectively convey not only that colorful, light-hearted atmosphere of being on vacation but what the Mario series exudes in general. The series has been this effervescent since Super Mario World 2 on the SNES.

It’s no secret that I was unsatisfied with how rigid and unresponsive Mario’s controls were in Super Mario 64. The game could look like a microwaved claymation Christmas special all it wants, but I draw the line at Mario controlling like a paralyzed 1960s android. Mario’s acrobatics in Super Mario 64 was ambitiously varied but using felt far too stilted with the primeval 3D controls. Only one generation later, Mario executes the same moveset with the grace of a ballerina. Mario can still soar to extraordinary heights upon three consecutively timed jumps, but with a better sense of trajectory to avoid missteps with overwhelming velocity. His super backflip can no longer be done by crouching, but leaping backward after building momentum feels second nature now. With an additional spin move in mid-air, the player can do by playing with the control stick. Wall jumping no longer requires pinpoint precision, and the game is more lenient with penalizing the player by bumping Mario’s dome on platforms. Punching and kicking are no longer a part of Mario’s offensive means, but the more natural jumping controls diminish the necessity to use them. Mario’s ground-pounding move makes its gilded return as Mario’s ass makes more violent shockwaves on the shores of Isle Delfino than it ever did in his homeland. A new trick Mario learned for his vacation was the slide move, something used similarly to the roll move in 3D Zelda games that the player will most likely use constantly to increase their momentum. Mario looks like a mental patient constantly leaping on his crotch, but doing so feels liberating. The shackles that Super Mario 64 put on Mario’s standard mobility were a shame considering Mario was the one who revolutionized video game controls. Super Mario Sunshine evolves the chubby plumber’s moveset established by Super Mario 64 so drastically that he’s never felt more comfortable and capable, not even in any of his 2D outings. The player will feel inclined to bounce around with Mario and feel as gleeful as he does.

Not only is F.L.U.D.D. Mario’s tool for power washing, the jet-powered backpack also complements Mario’s improved portability. The standard nozzle on the pack will shoot water upward with the player able to change its direction and trajectory to aim, but not its angle. When Mario needs to squirt something quickly with a little less accuracy, the player can lightly tap the button to eject water in lighter spurts, which is what the player will be doing to deal with most enemies and goop directly in front of them on the ground. The base nozzle is mainly used for cleaning and offensive purposes even though it can turn the field into a slip and slide, but F.L.U.D.D. is equipped with three other alternate nozzles to further highlight the capabilities of the device. The hover nozzle is available once Mario receives the water pack and is, in my opinion, the most useful of the secondary nozzles. Once Mario is airborne, the nozzle will propel Mario over in the air for a brief period by shooting two spouts of water at the ground, either to maintain height or cross over a gap. Not only does this nozzle grant Mario greater traversal distance, but it will also aid in course correcting the player if they make a mistake with platforming. The other two alternate nozzles eventually unlock by finding their respective boxes in the field. The rocket nozzle will build up water and shoot Mario upward to staggering heights upon climax. The turbo nozzle acts as a speed booster whose wicked propulsion will accelerate Mario across the water like a makeshift jetski or create a powerful enough force to break through blocked-off doorways. Unlike the hover nozzle, I only find the other two nozzles useful occasionally. After using the other two nozzles for the one situation, it would’ve been nice to have every nozzle ready in Mario’s arsenal after using them for the first time. Some may argue that juggling through four different nozzles via the X button would be a pain, but the inconvenience of finding a crate with the hover nozzle after using the others proves to be far more vexing. Besides that one grievance, F.L.U.D.D. and his wide utility are a welcome addition to the Mario franchise, for it greatly expands on the fun factor of Mario’s already aerodynamic range of movement. Plus, he limits his vocal input on the field to a minimum, unlike some of Link’s partners.

Super Mario Sunshine also gets a familiar visitor to the island that I think most fans will appreciate. Yoshi’s minimal presence in Super Mario 64 as a completionist easter egg is one of the most vocal complaints that even diehard fans of the game share, so Super Mario Sunshine rectified this by giving everyone’s favorite green sidekick in Mario (fuck Luigi, I guess) more screentime. After catching Shadow Mario with a Yoshi egg in the hub, the egg will hatch the spry, puffy-cheeked dinosaur. As per usual, Yoshi’s stomach is rumbling, and he must devour everything in sight like a hungry black hole. Besides grappling with enemies with his whip-like tongue, the Yoshi’s found in Super Mario Sunshine must subsist off of an appetite for fruits found on the island, lest he dies of scurvy or something. Pressing the button usually reserved for F.L.U.D.D. while riding on the Yoshi will make it spit a jetstream of juice as long and violent as blasting water with F.L.U.D.D. Yoshi’s juice comes in three different colors depending on the last fruit he consumed, but it all does the same thing. Like the F.L.U.D.D. nozzles, Yoshi is only useful in certain circumstances. Missions that include the adorable, multicolored beast usually involve vomiting juice on fish to transform them into platforms or dissolving a pulpy growth obscuring a passageway. Yoshi sure isn’t intended to accentuate Mario’s range of movement because his flutter kick feels uncomfortably restrained. It also doesn’t help that in a game surrounded by water, Yoshi will disintegrate when he comes in contact with it like he’s the Wicked Witch of the West. Most fans see the inclusion of Yoshi as a mark of an exceptional Mario title, but his presence in Super Mario Sunshine is more of a hassle than a perk. The sunny, tropical setting of Isle Delfino should fit Yoshi like a glove, but Yoshi’s awkwardness and haphazard utility makes him seem like a fish out of water here.

But what is Super Mario Sunshine if not an instance of a stranger in a strange land? As unfamiliar as Isle Delfino is to Mario and every franchise fan, the island’s more concise and concrete design makes this vacation destination more comfortable. Super Mario 64’s hub was set in the Mushroom Kingdom, but can we say that any of the various paintings acting as the levels were teleporting Mario to locations situated just around the corner? Most of Super Mario 64’s levels were playgrounds that had familiar attributes but were suspended in ethereal oblivion that obscured any surroundings. Isle Delfino, on the other hand, is mapped out accordingly, and I’m not referring to the crudely drawn map in the pause menu. Mario warps to each area via a passageway in the wonderfully detailed Delfino Plaza hub, but the player can at least marginally discern where the level is located about everywhere else on the island. The Ferris wheel in Pinna Park is seen clear as day from Bianco Hills, and the Serena Beach hotel is so close to Pinna Park that it seems feasible to swim over to it. Isle Delfino is much more of a realized world than any iteration of the Mushroom Kingdom. Isle Delfino would make for a fine open world if only it didn’t conflict with the episodic progression of each level. I was always impressed at how the developers constructed a smattering of different levels under a specific theme without making the game boring and formulaic. Repeating a beach level with both Gelato Beach and Serena Beach may point to exhausting the constraints of the theme, but both settings exude a different aura and offer completely different missions (and it helps that the focal point of Serena Beach is the hotel in the center for most of the missions). Missions, where Mario uncovers a secret passageway where he must do some linear platforming to get to a shine sprite at the end, may arguably ruin the consistency. Still, I choose to see them as portals to more surreal, incomprehensible dimensions like Homer in that one Treehouse of Horror episode. Isle Delfino is the first time Mario engrosses the player with the setting, a cohesive world that greatly achieves its intended atmosphere.

Ironically for a game whose setting presents itself as gleefully tranquil, Super Mario Sunshine is the most difficult 3D Mario game. Despite all of the refinement the developers made to Mario’s movement with the added crutch of F.L.U.D.D., it does not make for a smoother Mario experience. I commented that the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario 64 felt like it was greased up like a slip-and-slide, causing Mario to trip and tumble to his death numerous times. Now, I’m convinced that Mario needs to invest in more adhesive-friendly shoes. Mario is still clumsy, but it only matters in certain instances, like the secret area challenges or the sparsely-spaced giant mushrooms underneath Pianta Village. Water surrounds the resort and acts as a safety net whenever Mario missteps and careens to the bottom. This is why more platforming-centric levels like Ricco Harbor and Noki Bay involve ascending tall cliffs for a steep penalty. However, starting again from the drink is only a mere inconvenience. Instead of being subject to a constant barrage of slapstick deaths, Super Mario Sunshine is more calculating with its punishments. Some episodes across every level involve some of the hardest tasks Mario has ever had to accomplish. The bloopers Mario surfs on in the red coin mission of Ricco Harbor are perilously fast, and one tiny collision will kill Mario on impact even after he’s collected every red coin. In Gelato Beach, Mario must roll a mammoth-sized watermelon down a hill and across a beach full of ravenous Cataquacks who will pop the overgrown fruit like a balloon and make Mario retrieve the watermelon from its origin point. A secret-themed level in Pianta Village involves navigating the chasms in between the blocks of ground via being chucked by the burly dopey Pianta natives. Unless the player possesses pinpoint accuracy and a Ph.D. in physics, the dopey islanders will heave Mario to oblivion. Hidden shine sprites around Isle Delfino, like the poorly designed Pachinko machine and ruthless lilypad section, will disintegrate players' spirits as quickly as the leaf does in the toxic stream. Super Mario 64 was inherently unfair due to being unrefined, but the more deliberate difficulty seen in these episodes exposes the developers as cruel sadists.

Do you want to know what makes these levels especially sadistic? Most of them are required to finish the game. Super Mario Sunshine forsakes the cumulative total of main collectibles needed for progress. It forces the player to experience every area's episode up until the seventh episode involving chasing down Shadow Mario and spraying him like a shower in the county jail. One of the greatest reliefs of Super Mario 64, or most other 3D platformers, is that the player has a choice of which areas to explore while ignoring the less savory ones as long as their amount of that collectible meets a quota by the end. Super Mario Sunshine’s streamlined methods show conspicuous holes that raise many issues. What incentive do I have to play the secret levels or collect the blue coins if only certain sprites count towards unlocking the game’s final level? Why should I waste my time with the eighth episode of an area when completing the seventh episode was all I needed? Shouldn’t each of the same collectibles be of equal value? Until a certain point in the game, more of the game does unlock after certain milestones. Multiples of five shine sprites will unlock a new level until the player reaches ten sprites when a cannon becomes available to blast Mario to Pinna Park. The first episode reveals that Shadow Mario is Bowser’s son Bowser JR, the obvious favorite of the Koopa King’s children, considering he shares his father’s name, is being manipulated by Bowser to capture Peach under the guise that Peach is his mother. This interaction turns into a heated Jerry Springer moment where Peach merely ponders this revelation instead of denying it, and Mario gets so angry that he power sprays with F.L.U.D.D. her like the whore she is (only kidding about that last part). After this seminal scene, the game’s progression flatlines, and the player must find the remaining areas through curiosity, breaking the game’s overall pacing. Forced progression with this type of game contradicts the initiative of the collectathon platformer and is the main inferior aspect to Super Mario Sunshine compared to Super Mario 64.

It’s difficult to state whether or not Super Mario Sunshine improves on boss battles either. Raising the bar from Super Mario 64’s stale, repetitive bouts is not a hard task. Still, I’m not confident in calling most of Super Mario Sunshine’s duels “boss battles” by traditional definitions. Petey Piranha and King Boo provide the standard 3D platformer fight of waiting for a weak point to exploit three times, but the others are oddly executed. The electrifying Phantamanta that eclipses the hotel in Serena Beach divides into smaller, sprightly versions when sprayed, and the fight ends when every speck of the wispy ray scattered around the beach is hosed down. Gooper Blooper’s tentacles can be brutally severed by Mario, but only pulling on his mouth in the center to the point of snapping will defeat him, which proves to be an easier loophole in fighting him. Bowser’s robotic visage at Pinna Park has to be shot down with rockets while riding a rollercoaster, and the eel that causes Noki Bay to become sickly doesn’t attempt to eat Mario while he cleans his rotten teeth. The final fight against Bowser doesn’t involve physical contact like pulling his tail, but toppling over the giant, suspended bathtub he’s soaking himself in with rocket-boosted ass crashes at the four corners of its foundation. I appreciate the ingenuity of these encounters, but they are so unconventional that they lack the impact that a typical boss battle tends to have.

Summer vacation sucks, or that’s my clever tagline for Super Mario Sunshine. Surprisingly, a game involving Mario cleaning up sticky sullage on an unfamiliar island after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit doesn’t suck. As odd as Super Mario Sunshine appears, it still emanates the pervasive charm of the Super Mario series. Isle Delfino is as lively and captivating as the classic Mario setting we’re all familiar with and is the closest a Mario setting has come to coherent world-building, a vital step in progress for level design in a Mario game. Mario, as a character, literally makes leaps in progress by feeling as fluid as the water that jets out of his mechanical backpack buddy. He finally looks like we’ve all imagined him as a realistic human being. As much as Super Mario Sunshine attempts to separate itself from Super Mario 64, I can’t help but compare the two based on how radically the former builds on the latter’s foundation. 3D Mario’s footing that Super Mario 64 invented is reinvigorated to a point of not only competency but to a degree of excellency. Super Mario Sunshine’s creative ambition may have proved too big for its britches at certain points, but besides a few egregiously broken challenges, Super Mario Sunshine's differences preserve its intrigue. It’s funny to me that the irregular Super Mario Sunshine is a far more exemplary 3D Mario title than the game that translated all of Mario’s familiar hallmarks into 3D, but that’s the beauty of a sequel.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/17/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Developer: Inti Creates

Publisher: Inti Creates

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One

Release Date: July 10, 2020

I was a little worried when a sequel to Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was released in the short period after the release of the first game. The first Curse of the Moon was created as a lark, an appetizer to whet the appetites of what Igarashi thought would be the delicious main course (Ritual of the Night). He seemed to have underestimated the loud stomach growls of the 2D platformer Castlevania fans because people seemed to salivate more at the prospects of a game that emulated classic Castlevania. Once Ritual of the Night was released a year later after Curse of the Moon, it seemed like Igarashi’s work was done, and Castlevania fans could breathe a sigh of relief that the new Bloodstained IP released two games that covered all bases of the Castlevania experience. While browsing the PSN store for sales, coming across Curse of the Moon 2 unexpectedly made me facepalm. The gaming industry never knows when to quit. A fun little tribute to one of gaming’s most illustrious series is now its own franchise that seemed to be on the same path of fizzling out, eventually being forsaken like its inspiration. With the first game practically perfecting the flaws of the NES Castlevanias, a sequel seemed totally unnecessary for anything else but to milk the Castlevania fans dry. Because I am one of those fans, I decided to see if Curse of the Moon 2 was worthy of prolonging this revival franchise.

Direct sequels were not a common practice in Castlevania’s initial run. The first Castlevania was the only sequel that continued the story of the first game before the developers explored the realms of prequels, remakes, etc. Curse of the Moon 2 continues the story of the previous game, which only Simon’s Quest has done throughout Castlevania’s entire run. Some may also recognize familiar characters from Ritual of the Night, but Curse of the Moon 2’s continuity lies entirely with the previous Curse of the Moon title. Dominique, a central character from Ritual of the Night, uncovers a harrowing castle being constructed by the demon legions. She sets Bloodstained’s overzealous hunter Zangetsu up to the task as he and his team prepare to endure another eight levels to vanquish the demon lord. Curse of the Moon 2 does not offer an intricate story, nor does it retain an ongoing arc presented by the first game. However, it further solidifies Zangetsu’s role as the franchise's resident demon killer by continuing something already established.

Despite all the comparisons I’ve made so far, we can thank the lord that Curse of the Moon 2 is nothing like Simon’s Quest. The experimentation made to make Simon’s Quest discernable from the first Castlevania failed miserably, and Konami learned never to make that same mistake. I’m happy to report that Curse of the Moon 2 does not have Zangetsu visiting cookie cutter towns, being subject to jarring day and night transitions, or humorously giving bosses the cold shoulder like a scorned girlfriend. It was clear from the quality of the first Curse of the Moon that Igarashi knew which Castlevania games to emulate, and Simon’s Quest was not one of them. Curse of the Moon 2 is more of the fast-paced 2D platforming action like the previous title, and this sounds promising in theory. However, Curse of the Moon 2 is practically indiscernible from the first game to the point where I forgot that there was two Curse of the Moon games, and I wasn’t playing DLC. In fact, if someone made me do the Curse of the Moon Pepsi challenge with both games side by side, I’d probably guess the wrong one. Every single graphical and mechanical property returns without any differentiation. Classic 2D Castlevania wasn’t confined to the NES as the formula surpassed the 8-bit era with many entries. Why couldn’t Curse of the Moon 2 the presentation of a 16-bit game like Super Castlevania IV or Bloodlines? Blasphemous achieved this revival style only a year before Curse of the Moon 2, borrowing some obvious presentational influences from Rondo of Blood. Was there a crunch time that forced Igarashi to release each Bloodstained game each year after the first Curse of the Moon? I’d be more eager to play something in the vein of an untouched Castlevania aesthetic, but the reusing of 8-bit graphics here already sets a sense of fatigue.

The gameplay also has not changed in the slightest from the first game. If you like 8-bit Castlevania and were enthralled by the updated sheen of modern gaming hardware presented in the first Curse of the Moon, then the sequel will gladly not subvert your expectations. Considering how Curse of the Moon 2 makes no effort to expand on the foundation of the first game, the same gameplay was to be expected. The one aspect Curse of the Moon 2 takes to at least deviate slightly from the first game is offering a whole new roster of characters for Zangetsu’s posse. Three new faces offer their services to our protagonist as the three previous characters did, but with an entirely different array of skills. Dominique jumps with less gravity than Miriam before her, but her choice of weapon with a long range of attack is a spear instead of a whip. The spear’s base movement feels more restrained than the whip. Still, it compensates for this by acting as a pogo stick that attacks enemies from above like Shovel Knight (or Duck Tales, the specific inspiration referenced in Shovel Knight). She also serves as the team healer with her special moves, giving an individual character a smidge of health or resurrecting them after they’ve died. Robert is an old gunslinger whose bullets do middling damage but compensate heavily with their high range. Lastly, everyone’s favorite new addition to the roster (me included) is Hachi, a corgi that pilots a burly mech suit. Besides the obvious reason this little scamp has dazzled every player, the mech suit can glide, has twice as much health, and its bulky nature makes it less susceptible to blowback coil upon taking damage. I’m impressed that the developers conjured up three more characters that fit a unique team dynamic like the ones in the first game, but it's far more unbalanced here. I never wanted to stop playing as Hachi because he became an overpowered crutch, which made the points where I couldn’t play as him more difficult than losing a character in the first game.

A nitpick I had with the first Curse of the Moon was that it wasn’t too difficult. I’ve aired my grievances about how relentless classic Castlevania is, but the difficulty is one of the most vital factors in recreating a genuine Castlevania experience. Refinement inherently makes the experience smoother, but separating the blowback mechanic from the regular difficulty settings will naturally entice even experienced players into making the game more facile. Curse of the Moon 2 finally makes an effort to evolve the first game by more accurately exuding the feeling of “NES hard”. The player no longer has the option of pussyfooting through “veteran” difficulty by omitting the blowback feature, as Curse of the Moon 2 makes it requisite for the normal difficulty. The levels also accommodate a sturdier challenge by offering more calamitous sections with more bottomless pits and crowded screens. Difficulty curves progress gradually, even though the fiery fifth level, “Chains of Fire,” feels leagues harder than the previous level. Some screens are so chaotic that they can extinguish all four characters in a flash if the player isn’t careful. Alternate paths are almost places of respite, but they are even harder to access because they all involve Dominique pogoing off a series of candles, which is always finicky. While I felt tenser and more frustrated with Curse of the Moon 2 than its predecessor, I rarely ever felt cheated by any inconvenient deaths or was too overwhelmed by what I was facing, unlike in Castlevania III. The game presents the player with plenty of support to make sure they stave off getting decimated. The asinine score from the first game has shifted into an extra life bar fueled by every source of points. Checkpoints are made clearer and are represented by taller candles that ignite upon contact, like the checkpoints in Shovel Knight. The only difference is that I’d never chance to break the checkpoints in Curse of the Moon 2 for extra rewards.

Curse of the Moon 2’s bosses is also more defined. Each boss in the first game’s health bar was obscured, causing the player to hack away at them in a frenzy. Visually apparent health bars accompany every boss in Curse of the Moon 2 so that the player will know how much health a boss has and how much damage they are doing to it. Thank God the developers decided to change this because they’ve amplified the overall difficulty of the bosses. Even if the player could go to town on these bosses with Zangetsu’s sword, the bosses do not present a copious window of time to do so as the player must wait for golden opportunities to attack. Every boss in Curse of the Moon 2 is guilty of this, whether it be the ghoulish tongue of the Drago-Symbiote or the fiery phallic point of the Gladiator Dozer. Still, the worst offender is Titankhamun, the ancient Egyptian-inspired boss of the sixth level. This colossal-sized sarcophagus cannot be reached unless the player jumps onto quickly moving platforms that emerge from the sand. Their position on these platforms will most likely be compromised by the onslaught of projectiles from every corner of the screen. As a frame of reference, Gremory, the final boss of the first game, offers his first phase again as a boss in this game, and the player will notice how easy defeating him is compared to the new bosses.

Curse of the Moon 2 is also meant to be replayed more than once, and it finally gives the player some incentive. The developers implored the player to finish the first Curse of the Moon multiple times, but playing through the same game to achieve middling rewards was not worth the effort. Finishing Curse of the Moon 2 once will unlock more “episodes” that involve different circumstances. Unlike the different outcomes of playing the first game, these episodes streamline the process of receiving a new ending. If the player collects the pieces of a mystical sword called the “Zanmatou” across corners of three levels, this will unlock something totally unexpected from this series or Castlevania for that matter. Zangetsu and company will prepare their launch to the moon via a space shooter sequence that feels as out of place as the one from No More Heroes. The final chapter involves a random roulette of every character across both games to face the real final boss. Curse of the Moon 2 offers much more than the first game, but the means to unlock all of it is ultimately the same tedious process. The player should be able to collect all of the Zanmatou parts during their first playthrough to unlock the full ending as an addendum, but the developers did not think this through.

I really don’t have much to say about Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 because it’s almost the same game as the first Curse of the Moon. My fears were affirmed as Curse of the Moon 2 does not make any progress from the first game. Doing so might have been a hard task considering the first game was already the pinnacle of Castlevania. Hence, the only way Curse of the Moon 2 would stand out was to borrow the aesthetics of a 16-bit Castlevania game or at least ground that hadn’t been tested yet. The developers, however, thought it would be better to churn out the same game and hope for the same impact, but it never works like this. The only discernible appeal that Curse of the Moon offers is a higher difficulty curve and new characters, but they aren’t enough to justify the game’s existence. The Bloodstained franchise reminds me more of Mega Man than Castlevania, a series of 8-bit 2D platformers on the NES that burned itself out by releasing too many formulaic titles. If the potential Curse of the Moon 3 ever exists and it looks exactly like the first two, I will be forever shaking my head in disappointment. If you liked the first Curse of the Moon, Curse of the Moon 2 offers the same quality Castlevania tribute, but I’m not as easily pleased.