Grand Theft Auto IV Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/3/2024)

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Grand Theft Auto IV

Developer: Rockstar

Publisher: Rockstar

Genre(s): Open-World, Third-Person Shooter

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Release Date: April 29, 2008

Have we all collectively performed a 180 regarding the legacy of Grand Theft Auto IV? At its release, this entry in the chaotic video game series that facilitates every gamer’s darkest, antisocial impulses was welcomed into the Met Gala of gaming on a rolled-out red carpet. After establishing itself as one of the most prolific and influential series across the previous array of video game consoles, how could the rabid gaming consumer base not refrain from salivating at the prospect of a next-generation GTA game? While the 3D open-world template of the series evolved throughout the trilogy of games released for the PS2, plenty of rudimentary presentational sniggles still persisted with the hardware. Grand Theft Auto, along with the open-world genre on the whole, could’ve benefited greatly from being developed on superior pieces of technology because its ambitions transcended the confines that restricted the sixth generation of consoles. With the borderline cinematic framework that the seventh generation’s graphics supplied, the realistic rendering of the citywide bloodbath gamers could commit in a matter of a few minutes would really give everyone’s parents a valid reason (in their minds) to start picketing once again in an attempt to preserve the fading sanctity of childhood innocence. However, one prevalent criticism of GTA IV that only became more pervasive as the years passed is that perhaps the game was bogged down by its attention to cinematic realism. Vice City and San Andreas had established a sense of buoyancy that complemented the free-flowing nature of the open-world genre, and the comparatively subdued graphics and mechanics contradicted the desired evolution that fans had anticipated. Sure, GTA IV was still a colossal hit whose adulation rivaled that of the previous PS2 titles, but the exhilarating fun factor that the PS2 games sought to develop was sort of lost with the developers striving for artistic deliberation. However, the two words at the end of the last sentence are exactly why I’ve come around to lauding GTA IV as a pillar of creative commentary and gaming narrative.

Something that I often harped on pedantically regarding GTA IV from the get-go is the game’s continuation of the numerical titles. Obviously, if you’ve been counting, GTA IV is the sixth entry in the series, and Vice City and San Andreas received far too much widespread critical acclaim and financial success to be relegated to the status of subgames. The validity of the numeral in the title could still be sustained on account of GTA IV being the fourth 3D GTA game, pretending that the primitive first two GTA games evaporated from existence. It could be that every mainline title in the series is connected by the setting of Liberty City, the familiar urban environment that GTA IV has chosen to update with the visual sheen of advanced graphics. Still, how could anyone possibly decipher what real-life urban area the first two GTA games were emulating from a painfully constrictive, 90-degree top-down angle? Really, the pattern that connects GTA IV to its predecessor last used a Roman numeral in its title is the shared pessimistic disposition toward the often romanticized ideal of the American City.

Specifically, GTA IV comments on how it pertains to the fabled “American Dream,” channeling F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 21st century with the same amount of critical venom. Compounding this thesis in GTA IV is how especially fallacious America’s promises are for those migrating to its supposedly lucrative soil as immigrants. Namely, if you’re a thirty-something Serbian man named Niko Bellic, who has just finished his six-month maiden voyage to the land of liberty (relating to the country as well as the city) to start anew. Upon docking the frigate on the offshore Liberty City harbor, Niko is cheerfully greeted by his pudgy, former Serbian immigrant cousin Roman, who drives Niko to his apartment with the rapturous aura of a chariot taking Niko to Shangri-Las. To his dismay, the state of Roman’s compact, cockroach-infested apartment located under the train tracks in the southern region of the borough of Broker is more like Shangri-Lousy, affirming Niko’s suspicions that his cousin was embellishing his American lifestyle and he’s just as much of a doofus as he was in the home country. To magnify the already substandard conditions of Roman’s living space, Roman is steeped in debt to the locally operated Russian mob thanks to his frequent gambling habits. Not only does American life not come with the privileges of “Barbara with big titties and Stephanie who sucks like a vacuum,” the constant prying eyes of organized crime place a looming cloud of danger over the heads of these two Slavic cousins. Niko’s honest assessment of the circumstances he finds himself in Liberty City is that they are not too dissimilar to that of his homeland, except that he assumes that he at least won’t have to duck and cover due to a midnight bombing. Roman’s crappy American existence being plopped onto Niko as a welcoming gift only scratches the surface of the disappointment he is about to endure.

But Liberty City isn’t necessarily indicative of the entirety of the land of the free and the brave, nor is it Rockstar’s mirrored microcosm of the country displayed in a fully fabricated, end-all American urban environment. Players of GTA III tended to jot down contextual hints that Liberty City was Rockstar’s rendering of New York City due to it sharing some stark similarities in its fractured, multi-burrough architecture and generally smoggy, congested city atmosphere associated with America’s most populated metropolitan area. Rockstar never explicitly stated that Liberty City in GTA III was a polygonal parody of The Big Apple but upon inspecting the layout and topography of GTA IV’s map, they no longer have to. Narrowing the scope of the game’s setting to a singular city after exhibiting a grand tour of notable West Coast zip codes in San Andreas might seem like a regression unfitting for GTA IV’s newfound, next-generational capabilities. However, I must impress on the full scope of this map’s full ambitions: Liberty City is now a bonafide recreation of New York City to every last minute detail. If calling it an exact replica is too hyperbolic, then it's at least the most realistic and intricate depiction of New York City seen in gaming thus far. At the beginning of the story, Niko is restricted to a rough amalgamation of the Long Island twin boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens sandwiched together as the borough of Broker, with the Coney Island Ferris wheel and wooden roller coaster as prominent backdrops from the street view of Roman’s apartment. Once Niko and Roman are forced to flee Roman’s humble abode in Hove Beach, the player will receive a taste of the northern industrial borough of The Bronx as Bohan, and then the voluminous glow at the heart of the city with Manhattan repurposed as Algonquin. The suburban Staten Island should’ve ideally rounded out all five boroughs here but was swapped in favor of bridging Algonquin to the adjacent state of Alderney. Whether it be the isolation, relative insignificance, or an inspirational nod to The Sopranos, it must sting for Staten Island residents to see their legitimate slice of New York life get axed to instead exhibit an area modeled after Jersey City. Still, the meticulous mapping of the metropolitan area arguably the most synonymous with American urbanity is undoubtedly a substantial leap in evolutionary feats for the open-world genre. Some will bemoan the fact that the entire city is shrouded in that dour graphical haze that permeated throughout the seventh generation of gaming. However, how GTA IV uses this aesthetic exudes the cold atmosphere similar to GTA III’s depiction of Liberty City, so I’ll take it as an example of an artistic choice rather than hopping on a trend. What exactly are the developers suggesting about NYC with this continually glum aura, though?

I still don’t think I’ve fully elucidated the extent of Rockstar’s efforts to recreate New York City for GTA IV’s world map. For those who have never visited or are completely unaware, New York City exhibits such a confounding amount of hustle and bustle that it has been dubbed “the city that never sleeps.” One can infer from the city’s perpetual state of insomnia that its cacophonous vibrancy is ceaseless, and therefore will always prove to be an overwhelming setting to exist in. Even for those who comfortably live amongst the neverending soundscape of chatter and the honking of car horns, none of them are willing to contend with the rat race of its street traffic. There’s a reason why every New York resident has thigh muscles made of steel and or a storybook of bizarre encounters on the subway. Even the zen patience threshold of a devout Buddhist monk would snap like a twig amid the non-stop wall-to-wall congestion of vehicles. Because the name of the game is Grand Theft Auto and not Grand Theft MetroPass, Niko is forced to become another brick sealed into the stiff cement of traffic. Not only is avoiding head-on vehicular collisions much more difficult than in any previous GTA game, but New York’s street schematics are anything but straightforward. Navigating through any of these boroughs more serpentine than a dragon’s small intestinal tract is a dizzying escapade liable to drive the player mad. Not to mention, GTA IV’s driving mechanics have been adulterated by the game’s realism initiative, buttering the controls that inflict realistic, dire consequences to those who drive erratically like a GTA game would normally warrant. Apparently, seatbelts are also a foreign concept to our Serbian protagonist as well, so get ready to witness Niko violently ejecting himself from the driver’s seat when hitting another car as an example of the game’s ragdoll-intensive physics engine. As frustratingly complicated and frankly dangerous the roads are for the player, their design emulates the hectic drive of New York City as genuinely as possible. I’d claim that this facet of realism is too imposing on the game’s enjoyment factor because I started to dread getting behind the wheel when every island borough was unlocked and each trip required crossing a bevy of bridges to venture between them. However, the developers show some awareness that driving through NYC is admittedly excruciating and provides innovative conveniences like the modern GPS tool that directs Niko to his waypoint objective and the ability to catch a taxi cab. Still, I must remind everyone what the name of this game is and how this map discourages players from engaging in it.

If the core gameplay of Grand Theft Auto isn’t literally snatching vehicles for joyrides, one could argue that it's the third-person shooting gameplay that facilitates the franchise’s freewill imperative. Across the 3D PS2 trilogy, the gunplay had improved from unwaveringly clumsy in GTA III to a point of sharper efficiency with the requisite addition of the target system in Vice City and San Andreas. Still, defending oneself with the protagonist’s roulette of firearms always required them to expose themselves to the firepower from the enemy’s opposition. Years later during the next console generation, the ubiquity of ducking behind cover among games in the third-person shooter genre most likely caused a lightbulb to appear over the heads of the developers at Rockstar. During missions that involve Niko being pinned down by various goons in an alleyway or building complex, he is the first GTA protagonist who can take advantage of shielding himself behind a pillar or a vertical grounded structure and conduct business from a relatively safe position with the press of a single controller button. Of course, enemy AI wisely recognizes that they can also use the cover that the environment organically provides, so combat during these sections tends to divert into a tense waiting game. Once one of these moles briefly peaks its head above the barrier to aim their weapon at Niko, this opportune moment allows the player to practice the nifty augmentation to the targeting system. Upon locking onto a target, the cursor can now move slightly to hone in on a specific piece of anatomy. Needless to say, enemies are likely to falter much quicker due to the greater assurance of executing headshots. Enemies will also stagger vigorously even if Niko’s shot wasn’t fatal because realism begets writhing in pain upon one’s flesh being pierced by hot lead. The ragdoll physics that cause enemies to stumble and fall upon being shot not only provide instances of physical comedy but they’re indicative of how agreeable the overall combat is in the player’s favor after taking too severe a risk by standing out in the open like a sitting duck for three straight games.

It’s most fortunate that the GTA series has finally honed its shooting gameplay to a point of comfortable competency because the vast majority of the game’s missions will involve Niko being catapulted into these perilous situations. Because absconding to America hasn’t automatically granted Roman the “Life of Riley,” his financial outlet to support his meager living is managing a taxi cab company operated out of Broker, which Niko assumed he would work at as his cousin’s subordinate. However, the constant harassment towards Roman by Russian mafia lieutenant, Vlad Glebov, allows Niko to earn a living the GTA way: climbing up the crime world ladder by stacking a body count. However, Vlad’s bullying towards Roman crosses the line when he starts making sexual advances toward Roman’s girlfriend and secretary Mallorie, and Niko permanently subdues him for his lecherous behavior and simply for being a repugnant human being overall. Niko’s actions here absorb his employment to Vlad’s crime boss: the irascible, volatile Mikhail Faustin who commands Niko to kill on command with disturbingly little consideration. Faustin’s right-hand man, Dimitri Rascalov, eventually has Niko return the favor of mindless murder to their boss after his tyrannical power streak goes too far, killing a rival mob boss's son in cold blood. However, Dimitri’s true motivations for what seemed like a debilitating, yet dutiful decision was to usurp the crime throne for himself and launch a full-scale manhunt for Niko’s head in the interest of friend and business associate Ray Bulgarin, a former employer of Niko back in Europe who seeks revenge after fingering Niko for a coincidental cargo freight mishap. After Dimitri sets Roman’s home and business ablaze, the cousin’s refuge in Bohan allows Niko to become acquainted with some of Mallorie’s neighbors. Poser philanthropist Manny, Catalina’s spiritual successor Elizabeta along with her prime drug peddler Playboy X, and Irish criminal Patrick “Packie” McReary, all provide Niko with work committing acts of ultraviolence so he can sustain livability in Liberty City. The last character mentioned even introduces Niko to his (literal) crime family with their own story arc, which eventually leads Niko to work for the Italian Mafia. The Italians are also at war with the Russians over control of the city’s organized crime, and Niko gladly sides with them as an outlet to stick it to Dimitri for causing him and Roman so much strife.

What I’m trying to illustrate by detailing Niko’s journey through Liberty City’s illegal underbelly is that no matter who is assigning Niko odd jobs, they will involve Niko barricading himself behind sheet metal or solid concrete to deflect the whizzing bullets from a small army of enemies on most occasions. However, I can confidently state that once Niko progressively shifts to another employer, the game naturally increases its difficulty curve. The legions of armed goons Niko tackles when servicing Elizabeta are more formidable than the ones he’s hired on to kill for Faustin, and the same rate of increase applies to when Niko starts to mow down suited thugs for the mafia. The fluctuating difficulty curve that all three GTA games on the PS2 practically etched into the open-world code through habitual persistence is rearranged into something neatly structured. Exceptions that disrupt GTA IV’s harmonious flow pop up now and then, and my pick for the steepest mission is when Dimitri kidnaps Roman as bait to lure Niko into an abandoned warehouse guarded by at least fifty of his cronies. The bank heist mission with Packie and his family is the notorious pick for most players, but I argue that they are conflating difficulty with the length of the mission. San Andreas was littered with feats of endurance similar to GTA IV’s bank heist, but a mission of this caliber seems excessive in GTA IV because the game’s missions are tied down to a cinematic construct. Between the commonplace duck and cover missions, GTA IV often features shorter missions with only one objective to further the plot. I’d normally decry these types of missions as nothing but lazy filler, but the character preambles before each mission are consistently entertaining. In fact, GTA IV’s writing is so razor-sharp that it distracts the player from noticing when the mission objectives start to blur together. Still, whether or not a mission asks for considerable effort from the player or to complete a cursory task, GTA IV is far easier than any of its PS2 predecessors. Forward aim while shooting in a vehicle, body armor having distinctive attributes removed from one’s health, and only losing a sum of money upon death as opposed to stripping the protagonist of their entire arsenal also greatly factor into GTA IV’s agreeableness.

If you’re feeling like your engagement with GTA IV’s missions is starting to wane, the game offers a plethora of momentary distractions as par for the open-world course. Similar to Call of Duty around the same time, GTA recognized that there are certain perks to modernity. The developers could implement fresh features that extend the parameters of the player’s total activities as technology progresses in the real world, no longer having anachronisms to be mindful of while developing a period piece. Because GTA IV is set in the late 2000s when the game was developed, Niko owns a fully functional, customizable cell phone with a digital screen and camera. It goes without saying that this device is far more practical and accessible than that brick with an antenna CJ was lugging around the state of San Andreas. Another aspect of the then-current technological landscape is the addition of internet cafes, rows of computers available at all times of day for a small fee of one dollar per visit. Here, Niko can sift through emails, look at car listings, and even interact with strange women on a primeval dating site before such platforms took the world by storm. It’s just a shame that all of these technological advancements implemented in the GTA universe are just as endearingly antiquated as the intentionally quaint facets of the retro culture showcased in both Vice City and San Andreas as of writing this review. Fortunately, GTA IV also features new “timeless” activities, for lack of a better word. Minigames unseen in any prior GTA game include pool, darts, and bowling, whose mechanics are all at least competent enough to win a majority of the time. Niko can visit the city’s various watering holes to drink himself stupid, which then can result in a drunk driving sequence if he hops back into the vehicle he arrived in. If I’m not mistaken, this specific element of GTA IV’s gameplay garnered the biggest backlash from irate parents, who protested that the ability to drive while intoxicated somehow topped all immoral activities one could partake in across the series. With some perspective, it could also serve as a cheap simulation to teach younger gamers how affected one’s ability to drive is while under the influence, but I digress. The coolest new addition for my money is going to a comedy club, for both Ricky Gervais and Katt Williams essentially perform an exclusive set for the game in a motion capture suit. Helicopters have totally overtaken jets and commercial planes as the flying vehicles to jack due to the sensitivities of a certain event that occurred in NYC earlier that decade, and the strip clubs are more immersive thanks to the upscaled visuals. Don’t worry, Niko still isn’t allowed to touch the strippers wearing nipple tassels in the backroom, so another “Hot Coffee” minigame moral panic isn’t necessary (discounting how realistic the sex looks with the prostitutes now).

These frivolous activities aren’t solely offered to let the pent-up and guarded Niko unwind. Rockstar is apparently a firm believer in the “the more the merrier” sentiment, and they convey this theory through another new overarching, optional mechanic. From time to time, Roman will ring up Niko while he’s out on the town if he’d like to engage in one of the aforementioned activities with him. If Niko complies and nothing goes horribly awry during the outing, Roman will express his satisfaction by giving Niko a “thumbs up” which increases his “friendship meter.” As the game progresses, Niko will extend his cellular number to other people whose relationships can be strengthened through spending time with them. Niko merely tolerates the brash adrenaline junkie Brucie for Roman’s sake, as he combats Brucie’s obnoxious posturing with comments on how it's all compensation to mask his deepest insecurities. Niko rather gels nicely with level-headed pot-dealing rasta man “Little Jacob” whose thick Jamaican verbiage eludes even the subtitles. The pessimistic attitude of ex-con Playboy X associate Dwayne practically makes him a kindred spirit to Niko. The crass, ill-tempered Packie is the only McCreary brother to join Niko outside of business hours, but his younger sister Kate is a dateable character who catches Niko’s affections. The date-oriented outings function the same as hangouts with the bros, with the only difference being that Niko can press his luck for some hanky panky upon completing the date. However, Kate’s adulthood chastity streak practically makes her eligible for nunhood, but there are plenty of other girls who will fuck Niko’s brains out after an enjoyable evening. Michelle is a girlfriend given to Niko automatically to test the waters of this new mechanic, who perhaps submits herself to Niko too quickly that it verges on suspicion. If there is one feature of GTA IV that is infamously derided, it’s definitely this one. Sure, spending time with mates is an ideal facet of a prosperous life that increases the immersion into reality that the series has always sought to emulate. However, if one’s friends are as needy and entitled as the ones in Niko's contact list, I’d rather live as a lone wolf. Again, these interactions are optional, and maxing one’s relationship to Niko does come with legitimate benefits. Still, it’s not as if Niko can turn his phone off to halt the incessant phone calls from these select people, which always seems to occur whenever Niko is nearing the start of a new mission. What infuriates me the most about these distracting little excursions is that every friend insists that Niko chauffeur them, and they actually have the fucking gall to complain if he’s a smidge tardy. I apologize, but I thought Niko was the new kid in town who isn’t privy to Liberty City’s perpetual ongoings. What city do they think this is? Wichita? Perhaps to make this mechanic less grating, Rockstar should’ve taken note of Persona’s social links and let Niko have sole control of who he hangs out with and when rather than being bombarded with requests at inopportune moments.

Even though they can be annoyingly inconsiderate, I still enjoy spending time with these secondary characters in GTA IV. Each of them exhibits unique personality traits with a dynamic and personable aura that heightens their charisma, and the less likable ones (Brucie) at least offer consistent amusement. Still, all of them are as lifeless as mall mannequins compared to the Niko tree that they all branch from. On paper, Niko is yet another example of an archetypal protagonist serving as the focal point of a wild, high-octane crime story. He’s another useful idiot in the crime world whose livelihood is contingent on obeying the assassination tasks given to him by the scum of society with no questions asked. One could initially write Niko off as another murderous sociopath with little consciousness of his actions, but Niko is surprisingly more complicated than calculus with layers of richness stacked higher than a red velvet wedding cake. Like CJ, Niko is a product of his environment but is far more aware of how his unfortunate upbringing affected him. Besides the fact that his formative years were spent in a third-world country where he lived without electricity until he was twelve, Niko is among the generation of post-soviet youths to unwillingly participate as soldiers in the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s once the nation of Yugoslavia dissolved into six sovereign countries. He might not have sustained any mortal injuries during this tumultuous era of Eastern Europe’s history, but the atrocities he witnessed and was forced to commit were abominable enough to permanently fracture his soul. Anytime Niko waxes poetic about his experiences, namely in the scene where he discusses them with Faustin’s wife or when he reveals what really happened to Roman’s mother, I feel as if an anvil has plummeted on my stomach and I’m about to be sick. Because the war has irreparably scarred Niko, a thick callousness to all amoral human behavior has coated his persona. This is how he thinks nothing of performing deplorable tasks for money, and why he laughs in the face of any adversary’s intimidation tactics. Niko’s been through the wringer, and he’s come out of it as spiritually broken as a glass menagerie after an earthquake. Yet, despite his nihilistic disposition, Niko is known to exhibit signs of compassion towards others. While Roman’s oblivious optimism often irks Niko, he would never compromise his thick and thin, brotherly loyalty to his cousin for any profit. He’s friendly towards those who do not antagonize him, and he’s probably more honest than any of America’s notable presidents whose legacy is defined by that positive character trait. See how lovingly Niko treats the heroin-addicted teenage girl Marnie encountered during a “stranger mission” despite her hostility and pathetic desperation and tell me with a straight face that Niko isn’t an upstanding citizen given the right circumstances. With all of the blood that he regularly spills during the missions stacked against him, I guess no one can definitively say. Yet, this quandary caused by character complexities is exactly why Niko is bar none GTA’s greatest protagonist. Also, Niko’s dry wit he consistently brandishes while bantering with any secondary character makes him the funniest GTA protagonist as well. Sorry, CJ. The bar set by the emotionless Claude was buried under the sea floor at the start, but Niko skyrockets the standard of GTA protagonists over the moon. He’s going to be a tough act to follow.

While most players sympathize with Niko and grant him positive merits as a human being, his true incentive for coming to America is one marked by vengeance. After dumping Vlad’s body into the harbor, Niko reveals to Roman that the real reason for shipping off overseas is to enact revenge on one of his old Serbian friends during the war who sold his platoon out for a sum of money. Niko was one of three survivors of the ensuing massacre, and he figures that the possible perpetrator of the unforgivable betrayal now lives somewhere in Liberty City. Niko’s goal is sidelined until “Michelle,” who unsurprisingly reveals herself to be a federal agent after a miserably bad performance while “undercover,” intercepts Elizabeta’s cocaine raid. Elizabeta will never see the light of day, but Niko is given an ultimatum to cooperate with a disguised intelligence unit to avoid jail time or deportation. For his efforts, working with UL Paper shows their gratitude by locating the man Niko is seeking. However, Florian Cravic, a flamboyantly gay man who legally changed his name to Bernie Crane, is not the man Niko is looking for. It’s really hard to believe that this guy shares the same harrowing experiences as Niko, to be frank. By process of elimination, Niko figures that the culprit is Darko Brevic, and Niko must get involved with a topsy-turvy diamond racket for the Italian Alderney City mafia. Eventually, they perform that favor for Niko and fish the European vermin out of whatever hole he resides in and must answer to Niko for his sins. In this moment, Niko can choose whether to cathartically execute Darko, or spare the pathetic junkie wastrel who has managed to carve out a worse fate than death for himself.

This arc-fulfilling moment, along with several other instances beforehand, highlights that life is a series of choices of one’s own volition. Besides deciding whether or not to put Darko out of his misery, which leaves Niko empty inside anyway, providing critical options to the player that affect the outcome of the story is immediately granted again in the game’s final mission. Niko evidently forgot to give the Italian mafia a two-week notice of resignation because as far as mob boss Jimmy Pegorino is concerned, he’s still on the family’s payroll. Niko refuses to adhere to Pegorino’s demands on principle, but the other factor of working with his arch nemesis Dimitri makes this deal out of the question. However, the game lets the player choose between the two outcomes of Niko’s predicament: to defy Pegorino or to swallow his laurels and cut a deal with Dimitri for the sake of his employer. Given that the mere mention of Dimitri’s name causes Niko to erupt in a fiery rage, I realize it's nonsensical for him to engage with the borscht-eating scoundrel professionally. However, the route where Niko lowers his guard to Dimitri leads to the only sensical outcome that puts a period on this story. Dimitri will still screw Niko over and cut him and the mafia out of the profitable heroin deal. To further show that this man has no limits to his duplicity, he hires a hitman to shoot Niko during Roman and Mallorie’s wedding reception. Roman is accidentally shot and killed instead, which lights a furious fire under Niko’s feet to finally pursue Dimitri and bring him to justice. With Little Jacob’s assistance, Niko shoots down Dimitri’s escape chopper and delivers the finishing blow to him on the islet where the “Statue of Happiness” landmark resides. If Niko instead plans to kill Dimitri on the ship that Niko arrived in at the very beginning of the game, Pegorino takes it upon himself to perform a drive-by shooting for Niko’s insubordination and Kate dies instead. Pegorino is swapped for Dimitri in this instance.

Besides the fact that killing Pegorino is fairly anticlimactic and Niko’s relationship with Kate is budding and uncertain, Roman’s death is the sensible outcome between the two potential tragedies that end GTA IV. Not only was Roman a central character as soon as Niko’s boat docked, but he’s the optimistic ying to Niko’s despairing yang. While both characters live in the same unideal situation, Roman embraces every bit of his life with little to no complaints. Roman adores the opportunities that living in America has given him even if they don’t match the ecstasy of excess. He expresses to Niko that he should adopt the same attitude not only to make the expedition here worth the effort but to truly shed the crushing weight of his Serbian past. Throughout the game, Niko has only allowed his past to shape his present, which has only resulted in more baggage with fatal repercussions. Once Roman has been ousted from Niko’s life as a result of his actions, he fully submits to Roman’s optimistic ideals and quits the crime life for good. As much as Roman was depicted as a bumbling fool for the entirety of the game, his outlook is surprisingly the wisest way to interpret the American ideal. This nation can’t entitle you to excellence, but it will at least give anyone the chance to alter the conditions of your life for a more promising tomorrow.

The three GTA games on the PS2 were the cutting edge of video game advancements, so much so that they all suffered from biting off more than their hardware could chew to some extent. Now that a succeeding generation could prosper with those games as a template, I can empathize with the prevailing disappointment that piled onto GTA IV. Unlike the previous games that astounded gamers because they were before their time, GTA IV is a product of its time and all-pervading peculiarities of the era. Given that I’ve been known to vocally disparage many seventh-generation practices and that GTA IV is rife with them, I should persist in lambasting this entry. However, Rockstar manages to grasp all of the aspects of this era of gaming I find unsavory and cultivate them into something surprisingly masterful. There isn’t a single space of land in Liberty City that is wasted, and the writers have written a story of the same spellbinding magnitude as the Martin Scorsese films and HBO crime dramas of where its inspiration stems. I still find some elements of GTA IV to be more objectionable than in San Andreas, and some are so jarring that I don’t care if it's for the sake of artistic integrity. Still, how many triple-A developers are willing to alienate some of the gaming audience to fulfill their desired vision for their work? Not too many, I presume. I tip my hat to thee, Rockstar.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/27/2024)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Developer: Sora, Bandai Namco

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Fighting

Platforms: Wii U

Release Date: November 21, 2014

A surge of existentialism washed over me when I first played the fourth Super Smash Bros. title during its release date back on November 21, 2014. I’ve commented in my reviews of the previous Smash Bros. games that every entry stamps a milestone of Nintendo’s history since the previous title was released on the former Nintendo console. Of course, six-and-a-half years since the release of Brawl on the Wii isn’t just a lengthy swathe of time reserved for Nintendo to advance their IPs and introduce new ones. Time is a constant that alters the circumstances of the world for everyone. Back in March of 2008 when Brawl finally saw the light of day, I was but a pre-teen boy in the sixth grade, the perfect age demographic to anticipate the next Super Smash Bros to the point where it was infiltrating my dreams. When the fourth Smash Bros. game emerged to represent the Wii’s successor on the aforementioned date in my first sentence, I was 18, almost 19, nearing the Thanksgiving break portion of my first semester of college. I became a legal adult that year and realized how my time as a teenager had all but passed since Brawl became an encapsulating source of joy as a twelve-year-old. My pubescent years were formative to how I perceived the world. I was a completely different person when Smash 4 came out, and the prominent sense of cynicism I had adopted during the growing pains of adolescence had affected my gaming habits. For two years of high school, until I graduated, I practically left the gaming world behind in favor of indulging in other interests of mine such as music and film. My intention in sharing this revelation is that I assumed that Nintendo’s brand had evolved at the same rate of rapidity as my life. New releases from Nintendo hadn’t been a concern of mine since I purchased an Xbox 360 in 2009 and joined my friends in the expletive-filled trenches of online gaming and Nintendo Power became a glad-hand, corporate shill of its former self. Upon playing Smash 4, I expected that I’d be alienated by all of the new Nintendo content the game would be highlighting and that playing it would serve as an educational tool for all that was trendy with Nintendo. Sadly enough, Smash 4 rather conveyed to me that poor Nintendo was experiencing a dry spell and only a crumb of the content represented was unfamiliar to me. Still, at this point, Nintendo could supplement their fallow streak of tepid splashes in the gaming zeitgeist by scrounging up a wider array from gaming’s past.

Can I just take a moment to express my utter disgust at the fourth entry’s name? Instead of continuing the pattern of finding synonyms for melee to convey how rambunctious the bouts between Nintendo’s characters are, the developers opted for a god-awful pun that will never hesitate to make my tongue shudder upon saying it. I’d snarkily ask how hard it is to find a thesaurus (quarrel, skirmish; I’d be over the hill if the game was called Super Smash Bros. Donnybrook.), but really; I admit that “Smash 4…” may be an appropriate title from a practical standpoint. The corny wordplay is actually used to differentiate between the console release of Smash 4 on the Wii U and the handheld version of the game on the 3DS. Yes, Smash 4’s greatest point of innovation is that one finally could kick the shit out of Sonic as Mario (or vice versa) while on their morning commute, during a hearty bowel movement, or if they’re feeling reasonably antisocial around a family reunion. In the time that I had turned my head away from Nintendo, what astounded me when I shifted my gaze back was that a handheld system could competently support a Super Smash Bros. game in its three-dimensional splendor. As novel as a mobile Smash Bros. game is, I ultimately decided on the console version because the impetus to purchase every subsequent Nintendo console is based entirely on its Super Smash Bros. entry (for me at least). That’s why the Wii U version is also going to serve as the base for this review. While sticking with the blocky piece of hardware that is confined to a home television isn’t as hip or convenient, rendering any game on a console as opposed to a handheld is always going to come with a few nifty perks. For one, Smash 4 on the Wii U is the first game in the series depicted in glossy HD, truly a landmark feature that ushers it into the modern age of gaming. Obviously, high definition helps all of the characters we adore shine like diamonds, especially since Brawl had adopted that murkier shade that seemingly plagued every game in its generation. On top of that, the developers decided not to let the natural 720p visual fidelity simply speak for itself, as they rendered Smash 4’s graphics with cel-shading. Like with most video games rendered in this animated aesthetic, Smash 4 looks lively and effervescent. One cannot discern every seam of Mario’s overalls anymore, but applying a realistic graphical tint to a game revolving around a collective of Nintendo’s cartoonish characters duking it out was always a misguided decision on Brawl’s part.

But the charming, buoyant visuals are but a mere perk of Smash 4. I think it goes without saying that the core aspect of Super Smash Bros. that causes fans to hyperventilate is the prospect of who is going to join the Smash Bros. roster among Nintendo’s revered cabinet of characters. As far as broadening the representation of a franchise that already exists within the Smash Bros. canon, everyone could figure that Mario and Pokemon would again be the highest priority for another character stimulus. Fan favorite fully evolved water starter Greninja from the (then) latest iteration of Pokemon games will now swiftly swing past unsuspecting combatants with his slippery, amphibian reflexes akin to the Japanese agents of ninjutsu his name alludes to. For Mario, Super Mario Galaxy offers its entry exclusive; the mother of the cosmos Rosalina, who is accompanied by one of her squishy Luma guardians she can use as an accessory for long-range damage. Technically, the implementation of the Koopalings hovering around in their mechanized clown cars as skins for Bowser’s legitimate son, Bowser Jr., swells Mario’s representation and the total roster with EIGHT characters. To my surprise, the preexisting franchise that exports (technically) its characters as prominently as Nintendo’s top-earning captains is Fire Emblem. If what was a Japanese-exclusive series merely represented in Melee as a lark or an eastern brag has surpassed its obscure status and has been promoted to an executive position among the likes of Mario and Pokemon in the time I was estranged from Nintendo, five total representatives in Smash Bros. seems like enough logical evidence to infer it. Anyways, the gender-neutral sorcerer Robin revels in summoning elemental spells to damage foes from a distance, while Lucina is essentially a gender-swapped Marth. I groan at the continued influx of clone characters seeping into Smash Bros. after I thought they had learned their lesson from Melee. Dr. Mario’s significant footnote as the first returning character to Smash 4 after a one-game absence conveys that they’ve learned absolutely nothing. At least Dark Pit, the edgy, mirror image foil to Kid Icarus’s protagonist, Pit, offers a noticeable level of variation on the saintly original. Speaking of Kid Icarus, the fully-characterized goddess Lady Palutena from Uprising extends the presence of her series as well, now that a new entry has given the series more than one personable character in the first place.

The slew of new characters that are bound to generate more excitement are ones that represent a deferred Nintendo IP, and the ones that the developers have chosen to further highlight their illustrious history range from essential to…interesting. The first trailer for Smash 4 saw a male villager from Animal Crossing snatching up Mario in his bug-catching net, and the representative from Nintendo’s homespun simulation series can be adjusted to several other shades of the avatar if the base male doesn’t fit your fancy. I can’t imagine anyone clamoring for a reminder of Nintendo’s whole peripheral fitness craze that came with the casual audience of the Wii, yet both the anemic male and female Wii Fit Trainer is here to pump you up and remind you to stretch your calf muscles. Representatives dug up from Nintendo’s archives are the plucky Little Mac from Punch-Out, as well as a combination of a familiar basset hound attached to a mallard as a combined duo called “Duck Hunt.” Shulk from Xenoblade Chronicles seems to be the sole representative from a franchise that debuted during the timespan between Brawl and Smash 4’s development, and his status as a proper Nintendo brand figure is debatable.

While digging deeper into Nintendo’s vault for some fresh faces is neat, Brawl showcased an exhilarating evolutionary aspect of the series by including Sonic and Solid Snake. The category of characters that fans expressed the greatest excitement for were the potential third-party gets, and Smash 4 has acquired two that rival the reputability of the ones from Brawl. Nintendo’s partnership with Bandai Namco for the task of developing Smash 4 practically calls for their mascot, Pac-Man, to enter the fray, and the 3D iteration seen in Pac-Man World is the choice depiction for the seminal, pie-shaped glutton. One of my wishlist characters, Mega Man, is the other gaming icon visiting from beyond the Nintendo pond, and his inclusion is the one announcement that sparked ecstatic feelings within me. I’m glad that Nintendo and Capcom have let bygones be bygones (look up “the Capcom five” for a quick laugh) and settled on an agreement to let their robot boy out to play, who is a requisite third-party pick as far as I’m concerned.

Because the roster is gargantuan at this point, Smash 4 unfortunately had to trim down some selections from the roster. The licensing rights for Solid Snake evidently expired, the afterthought of Wolf to include another villain wasn’t expanded upon, and the saddest omission is the Ice Climbers due to some technical discrepancies in the 3DS version. How else are the couple going to pay the bills if they’ve been axed from Smash Bros.? Deleting the trio of pokemon commanded by a Pokemon Trainer has been slimmed down to a solo Charizard, which is a commendable shift on all fronts. One might be wondering why I’ve neglected to mention a missing Lucas, who is probably absent so Nintendo can backpedal and create a Mandela effect for American audiences knowledgeable of Mother 3’s existence. The reality is that he’s merely unavailable on the base roster. Another innovation Smash 4 debuts is expanding the total number of playable characters beyond the confines of in-game unlockables to the realm of DLC, and Lucas soon became purchasable as supplemental content for a small fee. Suspending the brief absence of Lucas is certainly relieving, but I was really jazzed when the DLC granted both Mewtwo and Roy a second wind after I expected them to be indefinite Melee exclusives. But let’s be real here: the full potency of DLC is not limited to resurrecting old fighters. The possibilities of DLC content that made every fan erect with anticipation was the prospect of doubling, no, tripling the number of third-party characters. Firstly, Smash Bros. was practically the only crossover fighting series that Ryu from Street Fighter was denied entry from up until this point, so he’s a shoo-in. Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and “Dante in drag,” aka Bayonetta, are certainly bound to shock and awe. Concerning the unorthodox foreign guests invited to the shindig via DLC, I mentioned when speaking on Brawl that Nintendo seemed to neglect the movesets of both Sonic and Snake comparatively to their own flesh and blood IPs. Considering Cloud’s super move meter that the player can manually charge and Bayonetta’s slow motion counter maneuver with an incredibly long window of sluggishness for those entrapped, the developers overcompensated and put some serious juggernauts for Nintendo’s characters to watch out for. Oh, and I guess adding the therianthropic dragon Corrin also made for a neat DLC purchase, even if it means that Smash 4 will be bursting at the seams with Fire Emblem representatives.

The developers thought that both versions of Smash 4 sharing the exact amount of characters was an inalienable factor that should bond the two. Regarding the stages, however, the selections couldn’t have been any more dissimilar. Unfortunately, I think the Wii U version received the short end of the stick with its new stages. No, the Wii U version does not suffer because the developers proposed to create stages “based on console-related games” and “handheld titles” for each version respectively. Where the enhanced graphical power of a fully-fledged home console is a blessing for the Wii U version, the developer’s inability to restrain themselves from crafting stages that flaunt the superior hardware equally amounts to a curse. The majority of Smash 4’s stages on the Wii U are a collective of the busiest, bothersome, and bombastic 2D fighting arenas across the entire series. Firstly, a select few stages in Smash 4 bring out a colossal, antagonistic character related to the series the stage stems from, and their presence has designated their arenas as “boss stages.” Ridley, Metal Face, and my arch nemesis, The Yellow Devil, will join the player who tests their might in their domain like a yappy little mutt submitting to the alpha dog who bites them on the nape of the neck. Beneficial as these bosses can be, I can’t think of anything more distracting or unfair than an outlying contender introducing themselves with neutral stakes in the battle at hand. They supersede the element of a regular stage hazard to the point where they eclipse the bout entirely, and no one signs up for Smash Bros. to fight giant NPCs like its Monster Hunter. This isn’t to say that the other stages introduced in Smash 4 don’t include features that will prove fatal if the player isn’t fearfully cautious. The WarioWare-inspired stage “Gamer” emulates a common sensation of staying up past one’s bedtime as a child to covertly play games or engage in some other activity while the tension of being caught by a parental figure looms overhead. The arena is the room of the hyperactive video game savant 9-Volt, but the fighters are the ones who pay for his disobedience. His mother’s watchful gaze will stun anyone in its sight and deal out an inordinate amount of damage. The “Peckish Aristocrab” is sure to knock the block off of any contacting fighter in “Garden of Hope,” and the eclectic array of Pokemon types found in the “Kalos Pokemon League” will inconvenience everyone with their elemental abilities. As fervent as the opposition towards scrolling stages as the Smash Bros community has vocally expressed, the pervasive complaints have not halted the production of them for future Smash Bros. releases. I didn’t mind the scrolling stages in Melee, but now I regret not standing valiantly with my Smash brethren to protest Poke Floats and Icicle Mountain when they were relevant. Their scrolling stage offspring featured here in Smash 4 is significantly worse, unchecked by the developers as if they are totally unaware of how maligned these types of stages really are. PAC-Land is a faithful depiction of the arcade game of its namesake, but the journey through the three levels doesn’t exactly gel with the flow of combat in a fighting game. Likewise, taking the player on a grand tour of a Star Fox level in “Orbital Gate Assault” is fine and dandy rendered in the rail shooter genre, but the extreme firepower of an ongoing space battle encompassing both the foregrounds and background of the stage practically makes surviving the stage the objective. A Smash Bros. depiction of “The Great Cave Offensive” hides all pretenses of glorified stage gimmicks as the first legitimate novelty stage. Still, one doesn’t have to settle for Punch-Out’s “Boxing Ring” or the curved “Mario Galaxy” for a fight with no distractions to speak of. Somehow, the new implementation of the “omega stages” displays an understanding from the developers that Smash Bros. fans simply wish to duke it out on a still platform suspended over oblivion with a Smash Bros. franchise theme in the background as a wallpaper.

I didn’t make the correlation between Sakurai’s relationship with Kid Icarus: Uprising when I first played Smash 4. Upon playing Uprising for the first time last year, I stated in my review that the game was so exemplary that Kid Icarus should headline the next Smash Bros. game with the popular IPs serving as opening acts. Of course, this statement was somewhat glib because realistically, placing Kid Icarus front and center in a Smash Bros. game would’ve been career suicide for Sakurai. However, besides the gorgeous (and exceedingly large) Palutena’s temple immaculate enough to be the subject of a Sistine Chapel painting by one of the Italian Renaissance masters, Sakurai integrates features from his misunderstood bundle of joy into minor facets of Smash Bros. such as the items. The blustering Ore Club, the mannered X Bomb, and the handy back shield all appear from Pit’s sole 3D iteration to highlight Uprising’s existence. Smash 4 also includes Link’s Beetle and the Gust Bellows gadgets from Skyward Sword as complementary offensive tools, as they were arguably the most admirable aspect of that particular Zelda title. The charging Cucco chickens and bombchus from the respected, older Zelda titles also appear as items too. The chain of fireballs that rotate clockwise in Bowser’s Castle from the first Super Mario Bros. game is weaponized like a sword, the beehive the Villager unknowingly knocks out of trees in their Animal Crossing community will swarm fighters with irritating stings, and the Boss Galaga ship that sucked in the player’s ship in the classic Namco arcade title will abduct a fighter and carry them off-screen. Sakurai takes further opportunity to extend the occupancy of Kid Icarus: Uprising in Smash Bros. by adding supporting characters from the game like Phosphora and Magnus as attacking assist trophies, as well as other notable secondary figures from Nintendo’s other franchises like Ghirahim from The Legend of Zelda (Skyward Sword), a Starman enemy from Earthbound, and the Chain Chomp tethered to the ground by a stake from Bob-Omb Battlefield in Super Mario 64. I recognize maybe a couple of the new Pokemon that emerge from their pocket-sized cocoons, for I abandoned that franchise long before I passed by Nintendo entirely. Still, whenever I’m feeling freaky and decide to press the on switch to unleash the items, I become well acquainted with Pokemon like Zoroark and Abomasnow because of getting upset at their pension to dish out far more damage than should be allowed. This is discounting the fact that most of the new additions to the Pokeball item are vigorous legendary Pokemon, who seem to appear as frequently as the regular Pokeballs despite their synonymous status with rarity. Still, it doesn’t seem to matter because every item I’ve mentioned in this paragraph offers enough combative potency for the player to use as a crux to victory. The items the series has stacked since the first game have officially overstepped the boundaries of supplementing the combat to overshadow it completely to total reliance. Fortunately, honest players should find the base combat using only the character's movesets to be far more agreeable than the flighty controls in Brawl. It feels as if the developers have finally honed the pacing and balance of combat they’ve always wanted.

It’s especially opportune for Smash 4’s platform fighting gameplay to feel so adroit and nimble because it doesn’t have the spectacle of a Subspace Emissary campaign to fall back on. Miyamoto pulled the plug on offering another side-scrolling story mode because, and I quote, “people were uploading the cutscenes on YouTube and spoiling it for others.” I’d poke fun at Nintendo’s supreme leader for being a fuddy-duddy luddite except for the fact that I watched the Subspace Emissary’s cutscenes exactly in this fashion because the ache of experiencing the game in some capacity was paining me. I was not disappointed that another Subspace Emissary wasn’t awaiting me on the menu, for Smash 4 still supplies plenty of new ideas intended to accentuate the essentials of Smash Bros. while the Subspace Emissary admittedly distracted from them. The difficulty of the tried and true Classic Mode is split into specific 0.10 decimals points, and conquering the randomized challenges in the harder regions of the scale will unlock an additional boss fought after Master Hand that will even prolong the climax of Classic Mode into a whirlwind of another level to be finished. The trophy gallery’s visual representation of highlighting information on the history of Nintendo’s various franchises and their characters is displayed as a museum exhibition with the best sense of organization thus far. For fresh features unseen beforehand, the player can create their own fighter using a Mii, rounding out the total roster with a character whose moveset is in conjunction with shooting, brawling, and sword tropes as the collective “Mii Fighter” figure. I’d protest this feature in Smash Bros. because my own creations are usually my standby fighter in any other game in the genre, but I suppose this factor of Nintendo history should be featured in some sort and this is the most creative way to implement it. Other than the character customizability, the other new subgame is something I do not recommend trying. “Smash Tour,” a minigame that mirrors the board game gameplay of Mario Party, is by far the most half-assed, boring, long-winded, and unfair extra mode featured across any Smash Bros. game. The fact that it’s featured so prominently on the main menu signals how much faith the developers had in this, which is just embarrassing on all fronts.

It’s about time that Nintendo recognizes that the demographic for their Smash Bros. series can be likened to a group of cats. You can buy your feline friend a bed advertised as state-of-the-art in kitty comfort, but the ungrateful furball will always tend to rest inside the box that the expensive piece of furniture came in. Because the fourth Smash Bros. title didn’t expand on the narrative-intensive campaign that Brawl offered as what seemed to be a vital point of progress in the series, I assumed that Smash 4 would take the time to emphasize the basics of Smash Bros. to craft a game that would make the hardcore Melee purists get with the times and update their Smash Bros. habits. In the finished product, the developers perhaps injected too much content into its base with the items, stages, and unnecessary features to the point of an overdose. I don’t think Smash 4 is going to make the Melee loyalists trade in their CRTVs anytime soon and put away their Gamecube for the (then) newest Nintendo console. Still, those who give every subsequent Smash title a trying chance will find it smoother and more complementary as a bonafide fighting game than Brawl. That is if one manually omits all of the excess themselves, which is a conscious effort I did more fastidiously than in any Smash Bros. game before. I guess this results from a series that only accumulates properties and ideas instead of picking and choosing them to indicate the full extent of how Nintendo has grown. After all these years, Nintendo's history is getting too prodigious to curate in one game.

Paper Mario: Color Splash Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/20/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Paper Mario: Color Splash

Developer: Intelligent Studios

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: Wii U

Release Date: October 7, 2016

I’m going to need a stiff drink to get through this one…

After Nintendo defecated all over the Paper Mario franchise with Sticker Star, my hopes and dreams to experience a fresh, new game in the series that recalled the JRPG genre format of the previous titles I adored as a child were dashed indefinitely. Playing the abysmal excuse for a Paper Mario game that Nintendo slopped onto the 3DS was the closest I have come to a “monkey’s paw” scenario in gaming. Some divine, sadistic force technically granted me my wish but tossed a litany of loopholes into their wish-making magic that would make me regret that this desire ever crossed my mind for the rest of my life. If Sticker Star was nothing but a torrent of grief, pain, and disappointment, why did I even think to entertain the notion of playing its direct follow-up on the Wii U: Paper Mario: Color Splash? Like a devout religious man who has faced a hardship so agonizing that they wonder if their God has forsaken them, I still have not renounced my faith in Paper Mario. Plus, I seem to be more gullible than I let on. I allowed the hearsay from the internet to convince me that Color Splash was a significant improvement on Sticker Star and that it at least made some headway into emulating the old Paper Mario guard we knew and loved. This collective of people must reside along a river in Egypt because I now know from firsthand experience that they were all in denial.

One aspect I will give Color Splash a bit of credit for is that the game introduces its source of conflict in a manner atypical to a mainline Super Mario series standby. In fact, Color Splash’s premise is surprisingly a bit morbid. On an ominous night with inclement weather, Peach delivers a letter from the distant land of Prism Island to Mario’s residence. Mario leaps out of his chair upon seeing that the latter is composed of a dead Toad, who has been drained of all its color and folded to fit an envelope like some mafioso threat. Shocked and horrified, Mario and Peach set sail to Prism Island to uncover the source of this transgression delivered to them by mail. Upon docking their boat on Port Prisma’s wharf, Mario and Peach witness a disquieting scene where the islet is empty and splotches of its color have been muted to a blank, ghostly white. We then catch a Shy Guy in the act of sucking the paint out of the Toad they arrived here with as the victim of a grizzly murder, giving us the impression that he and his savage race of hooded menaces are the ones responsible for all of these bizarre killing sprees. As lifeless as their empty sheet bodies are flattened on the ground like an unfolded burger wrapper, the status of their mortality is not set in stone. After toying around with a mechanism at the center of the plaza, punching in its code unlocks a paint can located in its center. Huey, the floating, sentient paint can with a color-oriented name the developers thought would be more clever than it actually is, will use his anatomical form to house paint for Mario on a mission to collect the seven color stars and restore this land to its radiant self. While Color Splash’s opening sequence fumbles back into reintroducing undesirable aspects present in Sticker Star, the Shy Guys committing what can be best described as arts and crafts vampirism is a genuinely interesting set-up. Hell, if the commander behind this paper toad genocide is General Guy from the first Paper Mario instead of Bowser, I’ll donate my own blood to Shigeru Miyamoto.

Alas, as the game progresses, all of the unsavory little snippets from Sticker Star become more pronounced. Upon exiting Port Prisma, I don’t even know what expletive I shouted when I saw that progression through Prism Island would be mandated by a map grid as it was in Sticker Star. I hate having to repeat myself, but implementing a feature as streamlined as this in your subversive subseries intended to distort the typical tropes of the most recognizable character in the gaming medium is completely counterintuitive. But wait, the world map grid isn’t constructed like the ordinary constricted linear path that we all saw in Sticker Star. As Mario completes the main objective and the grid extends further across the map, one may notice that its trajectory is a tad asymmetrical. Mario’s journey through Prism Island will have him running all over creation, zigzagging around as carefree as a giddy schoolgirl. While I can almost appreciate the developer’s efforts in averting the congested, block design that boxes in the levels of a “world,” their attempt is laughably tepid. Wearing a bowtie to work instead of your regular necktie isn’t exactly a bold example of sticking it to the man, guys.

I suppose what ultimately matters more when discussing Color Splash’s world is the content and quality of each of the areas inside the map. The first area outside of Port Prisma, “Ruddy Road,” recalls the mild and breezy grassy plain trope that has served as the starting section of the first chapter throughout the series. Because of Sticker Star, however, a concern now arises if this chapter is ever going to deviate from this thematic setting. It turns out that the level theming for each of Color Splash’s chapters doesn’t abide by the restrictions of standard Mario themes. However, many of Color Splash’s chapters are fairly reminiscent of The Thousand-Year Door, and this is hardly an instance of glowing praise. The flat grassland of “Ruddy Road” will lead to the “Indigo Underground” where the progression from the previous level almost mirrors that of traveling from World 1-1 down the pipes to the dark and damp sewers in the original Super Mario Bros. Eventually, the chapter-ending goal is located in a foreboding tower. Sure, both of the classic Paper Mario games (and Sticker Star…) feature this thematic arc as their first chapter, but the stark similarities between Color Splash’s future chapters ring an eerie sense of commonality with The Thousand-Year Door. I don’t think it's a stretch to compare the gladiatorial match between Mario and a swarm of enemies in “The Golden Coliseum” to the WWE smackdown of Glitzville, briefly placing the regular flow of combat in the frame of a stage for violent entertainment. To get to each island level of the fourth chapter, Mario must sail on the “Violet Passage” on a sea vessel commanded by a band of Toad pirates, whose uniform at least discerns them from the copied and pasted Toad models reused from Sticker Star. There’s also a faction of Toads who operate a rail line, but there are no quaint, Agatha Christie mysteries to be solved. Implementing those into the chapter would take a considerable amount of intricate narrative unraveling, something only the classic Paper Mario games were evidently capable of executing. This isn’t what we meant when we requested a Paper Mario game similar to The Thousand Year Door! Even in emulating some of its distinctive chapter themes, none of these wannabes could hope to match their influences because they are ultimately bogged down by Sticker Star’s formula of traversing through linear levels to obtain a Macguffin with the occasional RPG fight in between. Playing a remixed version of the first level from Super Mario Bros. 3 with the dimensional shifting mechanics from Super Paper Mario in “Green Energy Plant” is relatively neat. Still, it’s also based on a level from another fucking Mario game!

While the field gameplay follows the same objective as in Sticker Star, Color Splash implements a new mechanic that coincides with its stark overall theme. To make Prism Island shine again like the fourth of July, Huey imbibes Mario’s hammer with his ceaseless storage of paint that generates from his paint bucket body, allowing Mario to double his idiosyncratic weapon from the Paper Mario subseries as a crude, blunt paintbrush. Unsightly white spots will be filled with a downward whack, and little increments of the restoration process will be compensated with a paltry sum of coins. The lurid shades implanted in Mario’s hammer are the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, and the player will have to recollect their elementary school education of which combination of these colors mix to make the secondary colors of orange, green, and purple. Unless you are color-blind, finding the appropriate hues to fill in these splotches won’t be an issue. However, the incentive to fill in every colorless crag of Prism Island’s areas is practically nil as they aren’t impediments to progression. All the player gets for being meticulous is an unnecessary surplus of coins and an arbitrary completionist percentage. One new mechanic that does coincide with progression is cutouts, snipping out full outlines of land with a giant pair of scissors to prolong the apparent Staples sponsorship. Unfortunately, the cut-out mechanic directly involves the usage of the gamepad outside of the general function of a standard controller, forcing me to interact with a clunky apparatus more intimately and causing me great duress as a result.

To elongate my pain, swiping the attack cards used during combat also involves expending more unwanted engagement with the gamepad. What are attack cards, you may ask? In lieu of Sticker Star being old hat, the sticker mechanic has simply been rebranded as cards that Mario shoves in front of his face during battle like he’s hiding that he has a royal flush. Apparently, the developers all think we are small children who are easily fooled, for the card system is essentially identical to one of Sticker Star’s most befuddling and flawed mechanics. The saving grace with the cards is that Mario no longer has to weed them from the field, as they are rewarded to Mario for the clean-up job with his paint hammer among other methods like hitting blocks and winning battles. It’s quite fortunate that the cards are at least in abundance because the waning color meter on each enemy is not an efficient visual aid to gauge their health, forcing the player to use overkill attacks to ensure victory. Still, I will never be able to stomach their decision to relegate basic combat to a series of items no matter how comparatively plentiful they are. The action commands are relatively more involved during combat than in Sticker Star, but they never ascend over timely pressings of the A button. The game also provides little motivation to humor the combat just like Sticker Star, for there is still no RPG-oriented incremental stat increase. Funny enough, Color Splash does include a health upgrade for Mario every time he completes a chapter. Why increasing Mario’s longevity isn’t contingent on something such as experience points like in any other RPG game is beyond my understanding.

To my chagrin, the “things” from Sticker Star also make their return in a collector’s card format. They no longer have the power of a total trump card but are still incorporated into the boss battles nonetheless. The mighty foes who serve as obstacles to acquiring the Big Paint Stars for the Port Prisma fountain are none other than the Koopalings, and I couldn’t be less enthralled to see them. When did Bowser’s little bastards become synonymous with banality? Having other series regulars like Petey Piranha and Kamek here reflects poorly on them by associating with the seven standby boss battles for modern Mario fare. Since the Koopalings are here to cause chaos, Bowser can’t be far ahead. It’s revealed that the Koopa King dipped his shell into the rainbow pool in the fountain to see what his backside would look like with a radiant glow of seven different shades. However, Bowser’s disturbance caused the colors to mix, which resulted in a Bowser coated in black paint conjuring up the idea to render this world as colorless as he. Oh, and he also contractually kidnaps Peach, because of course he does. After creating a rainbow road from the combined power of all the fountain’s stars after they return to their rightful positions, Mario gets a lift up the eye-catching arch from Luigi of all people to fight the Koopa King in his fortress situated above the clouds. “Black Bowser” sure looks insidious, and it’s apparently the most evil form that Bowser has ever taken. You see, we’re expected to believe that the coagulation of the colors has unleashed some tyrannical, demonic force possessing Bowser to do its bidding. Are we supposed to believe that Bowser has always been nothing but a rival for Peach’s affections like Bluto and has never thought of world domination beforehand as a primary goal? Hardly.

Despite the pervasive backlash, Intelligent Systems and Nintendo thought it would be ideal to replicate Sticker Star onto a home console. Everything that made Sticker Star appalling shifts over without considering how they impact the experience, regardless of how the fans reacted to these new implementations with utter contempt. Given that Color Splash makes the same mistakes twice over, I’m entirely convinced that Nintendo keeps cranking out Paper Mario titles to spite consumers because all of the changes they’ve made are so minute that it feels like they’re mocking us. Still, I’m sad to say that all of those changes are what ascends Color Splash over the pits of despair and into the realm of stark mediocrity. I have to accept that Paper Mario is now the Olive Garden of the Italian plumber’s subseries, dishing out bland, cheap imitations of the finest cooking I’ve ever eaten.

Oof, madone!