Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/18/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Developer: Dennaton

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Genre(s): Shoot 'em Up, Multidirectional Shooter

Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4, PS Vita

Release Date: March 10, 2015

It’s telling how monumental Hotline Miami was in the indie circle last decade when a sequel was made a mere three years after its release. Because of their shoestring budget with a working team that could likely have fewer members than a book club, indie games very rarely receive sequels, much less in the normal development period usually taken for their triple-A peers. In the case of Dennaton’s visceral, sleazy, neon-glowing love letter to the excessiveness of the 1980s, its visionary tackling of the top-down shooter resonated strongly enough in the greater gaming zeitgeist to warrant a sequel almost immediately. While I’m sure the fans were stoked to slaughter legions of bald Russian mobsters again, I’m not thoroughly convinced that Hotline Miami was longing for another go-around. It may be unfair to state this with years of retrospection to look back on since Hotline Miami became a smash hit, but Hotline Miami is the kind of title that produces spiritual successors due to how revolutionary its gameplay was. We can use games like Katana Zero and Ruiner that aped Hotline Miami’s precision-based action formula as concrete evidence of my claim, or games such as Furi and Hyper Light Drifter that exude the same extravagant, retro aesthetic. With its impact ringing in the ears of inspired indie developers, is a sequel to Hotline Miami really necessary, especially since Jacket’s harrowing plunge down the city’s seedy underbelly was neatly wrapped in a blood-soaked bow? Considering the content in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Dennaton wasn’t even convinced that they needed to pack in several painstaking hours of development time to produce a follow-up.

Let’s quickly recap Hotline Miami’s gameplay loop that set the indie sphere ablaze. The player is dropped into an enclosed area, mainly via a swanky vehicle that Don Johnson would likely be driving in Miami Vice, and is tasked to kill every living, breathing creature within its walls with a tactful array of melee weapons and firearms. The core stipulation at play regarding this mission is that the player cannot sustain any semblance of harm. Receiving any kind of damage will stop the player in their tracks, and they will be forced to restart the level from its entrance, or at least from the last floor they’ve cleared. The core concept of Hotline Miami’s gameplay is as solid as quartzite, and its relative simplicity lends well to player enjoyment and emulation from other indie developers. Still, no sequel should simply be content to coast entirely on its predecessor, regardless of its steadfast refinement. The obligatory quality-of-life improvements that Hotline Miami 2 adds to the first game’s fine formula are minimal, but are nonetheless appreciated. Firstly, whenever the player is brandishing a gun, an icon in the bottom left corner now indicates the type of ammunition they’re currently using. It may already seem obvious to the player which type of gun they are using, but in an environment where lightning-fast reactions are key to survival, the player cannot waste even a second wondering what their current ammunition consists of through guesswork. In instances where the player stalls ever-so-slightly in these tense situations, the blowback they are likely to receive from an enemy is not always guaranteed to be fatal. If the player is nicked by a pistol bullet in Hotline Miami 2, there seems to be a chance that they’ll be able to continue their murderous rampage relatively unscathed. They’ll spurt a pint of blood onto the floor, but not enough to render them unconscious, apparently. One might play through the game to its entirety and never even notice these alterations, but it’s nice to know that the developers put even a modicum of consideration into improving their product, as minuscule as it might have been.

Given the minor changes made to Hotline Miami’s formula in this sequel, one might assume that it's a modest rehash of its predecessor that could’ve arguably been better suited as glorified DLC. In regard to every other aspect of Hotline Miami 2, the developers have stretched the parameters of the series to its breaking point. In a literal sense of this statement, the levels in Hotline Miami 2 are far more spacious than those of the first game. The game is mostly set in the foreground of Florida’s southernmost major metropolitan area, but the enemies have evidently picked less dingy, back-alley architectures to establish a stronghold. I’m no architect, but I can discern an expansion in cubic diameter compared to the relatively confined spaces that comprised the previous game’s levels. Some levels in Hotline Miami 2 even divert away from the Sunshine State all the way to the middle of the Pacific in Hawaii. I’ll divulge the context behind this chronic shift in setting soon, but for now, I’d like to use these new, sprawling types of environments to illustrate the fundamental issue in expanding the space of a Hotline Miami level.

Using the Hawaii levels as an example, the lack of defined walls in these outdoor settings greatly increases the rate of vulnerability, positions that are especially worrisome in a game that harshly penalizes the player for any amount of damage they receive. Lest we forget that the enemies in Hotline Miami are hopped up on speed, which gives their fire rate deadeye precision. Even in the enclosed areas set in buildings, the settings are so expansive that they’ll still have to acclimate to dealing with a bevy of blind spots around every corner. I was dusted by the spray of a shotgun blast from an enemy that I couldn’t conceivably catch from my viewpoint too many times to count, and it pissed me off royally. One could argue that all the player needs to do is learn the layout of every enemy’s trajectory and snipe them swiftly with this information, but enemy placement seems to be an inconsistent variable. Not to mention, every inch of each level is crawling with enemies like spiderlings hatched from an egg, so every angle of the level is a possible point of being executed in a flash. On top of obscuring a vital amount of the player’s view needed to detect enemy movement, Hotline Miami 2 adds plenty of level gimmicks that muddle their line of sight to a greater extent in the name of diversifying the series' formula. By far, the level “Seizure” suffers the most from this initiative. The dimly lit aura of a nightclub may be appropriate for the decadent sleaze Hotline Miami exudes, but this type of environment is anything but practical as a level. Maybe I would’ve eaten more carrots over the course of my life if I knew I’d be struggling immensely trying to acclimate to Hotline Miami 2’s misdirection. Trial and error was a relevant gameplay factor in the first game, but the guesswork involved with the sequel’s levels makes the majority of them unnecessarily demanding.

The developers also seem to subscribe to my statement that Hotline Miami is a game that should ideally generate copycats because that’s the conceit that drives the sequel’s narrative. Jacket has become an urban legend since his solo adventure down the rabbit hole of a Miami mafia conspiracy, and his actions have resonated strongly with several of the city’s citizens. A director has been tasked to dramatize the events of the first game through his film titled “Midnight Animal,” using a slovenly man in a pig mask to play Jacket. Putting a cherry on top of the ultraviolence in this film is a good ol’ fashioned rape scene, the most scandalous talking point on the sequel’s graphic content and something I’m almost certain Jacket did not commit. Whether or not the heinousness here is fabricated for shock value on the director’s part, its inclusion is intended to highlight how the severity of these actions is lifted once it’s revealed to be an artistic display in the realm of fiction. However, the veil of celluloid fantasy is blurred when Jacket’s actor, Martin Brown, starts expressing serious intent for real violence, which results in getting him gunned down on set by the film’s lead actress as an act of self-defense. Jacket’s impact doesn’t stop there, as the sequel also dedicates a considerable chunk of screen time to four friends who espouse Jacket’s radical methods. When they all attempt to execute a mission of political upheaval as Jacket did, let’s just say that their results are unfavorable compared to their inspiration. Manny Pardo brandishes the respectable badge of the Miami police force, but he’s eventually revealed to be a notorious serial killer who stalks the city streets. We now get to experience the downfall of the super jingoistic Jake, who was briefly mentioned in the first game. We also see the trials and tribulations of the red long-haired man, who goes by many aliases, as he storms the Pacific front of Hawaii earlier in the 1980s. Between all of the fresh-faced psychotics and fleshing out the stories of supporting characters, there’s an investigative journalist named Evan Wright attempting to make sense of Jacket’s criminal past and the mimicked occurrences of late. Me too, dude.

Hopping to and fro from protagonist to protagonist may diminish any impact of their story arcs, but each character essentially provides the consistent standard of Hotline Miami’s gameplay. Some exceptions where the player is given the same choice of specializing in a quirk that’s granted by a mask depend on the characters, such as the distinctive attributes of the four “fans.” However, the game still tends to forgo the freedom of choice in many instances. Namely, when the player is forced to alternate between the four friends in their climactic level of “Death Wish,” an epic endurance test of a level divided into four sections, where each participant gets their time to shine. Each portion of this level is daunting in its own right, and imagine how excruciating some of the sections are when the player sticks to the specialties of one mask as they would in the first game. This level and “Seizure” are on my Hotline Miami shitlist for imposing the steepest stipulations across all Hotline Miami chapters.

Before anyone attempts to wrap their heads around this jumbled mess of a narrative and streamline it to a point of cohesion, I advise approaching the “story” of Hotline Miami 2 from a different perspective. Linearity and conciseness are evidently not relevant factors to Hotline Miami 2, given how the game teleports from character to character without letting their individual arc breathe for a second. My summation is that Hotline Miami 2’s narrative is not intended as a typical story, but as an essay with each character’s arc as an argumentative body paragraph with a thesis that connects them all. The thesis in question relates to the subject of violence, specifically, violence in the media, and how it can leave a lasting impression on the audience that consumes it. The four “fans” who emulate Jacket’s actions right down to storming the base of the Russian mafia are a given, but I don’t think the developers are suggesting that Miami, or the whole world, was a halcyon utopia before Jacket corrupted it by blowing the brains out of an incalculable number of Russians. “Beard” was putting lethal holes into Russians way out in the Pacific four whole years before the thought of doing so ever crossed Jacket’s mind, and Jake was a contemporary of Jacket’s whose anti-communist fervor ignited a bloodbath whose onus fell completely on him and him alone. The rogue cop, Manny Pardo, can’t resist abusing his badge and creating carnage, and Martin Brown’s lack of capacity to understand the difference between fictional violence and the real thing is disturbing. With these characters, Hotline Miami 2 seems to suggest that humans crave violence and hold a disposition to enact terrible instances of it on the slightest whim. It’s the most primal unit of our ID that we cannot suppress, no matter how base and undignifying it may be. However, some may argue the productivity of that violence depending on the character, for one could justify the intent of someone like Jacket or Beard, whereas there is no excuse for someone like Manny or Martin. Still, at the end of the day, violence is a disgusting mistress no matter its impetus. Solving the crisis of having several unhinged reprobates by disposing of them with a nuclear blast may be a bit dramatic for my tastes, but I suppose it complements the apocalyptic undertones woven in the fabric of Hotline Miami.

As par for the course regarding any sequel, Hotline Miami 2 is bigger than its predecessors, but unfortunately, in all of the wrong ways (no pun intended). The sequel proves that it’s difficult to augment the game’s tried and true formula significantly and produce a product of higher quality as a result, so the developers compensated for a dearth of mechanical inspiration by expanding some of the facets that should’ve been left alone. Widening the parameters of each level and adding arbitrary conditions does not result in a more engaging experience, nor does broadening the story's scope to incomprehensible heights equate to genius narrative building. All it amounts to is frustration, and not the organic kind that marked the first game’s success. Still, despite Dennaton’s efforts to bloat the series like Violet Beauregarde, the fact that they couldn't adulterate Hotline Miami’s foundation too drastically means that the game still retains the addictive essence of the first game, just with a few additional pounds attached. Besides, pretension in a medium generally perceived as a pedestrian time-waster inherently elevates its artistic potential, even if it's unsavory. As long as there is still a game to be played, all instances of auteurism are acceptable, and Hotline Miami 2 skates on this line by the skin of its teeth.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/7/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: Game Boy

Release Date: June 6, 1993

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a little weird. This peculiar statement might be disputed nowadays due to the iconic series plunging down rabbit holes that delve deeper into surreal and abstract territory. Still, Link’s Awakening is the first instance of Nintendo’s seminal high fantasy series diverting from its conceptual confinement as the interactive version of the archetypal epic narrative told throughout time. Considering that Nintendo tends to be as attached to the standards of storytelling like an infant to its mother's breast, I can’t do justice in illustrating how refreshing it is whenever one of their franchises flees the coop of conceptual captivity and starts sprouting some radical ideas into the mix that spruces up the fixed formula. Frankly, a smidge of fresh ingredients added to the pot per entry isn’t asking for much. Because Nintendo tends to be adamant on sticking to traditions, any instance where the familiarities are twisted even slightly is a holy gift from God. Tweaking the established properties of Nintendo’s heavyweights seemed to be the secondary selling point of the original Game Boy, other than its obvious portability. To sell a system with inferior hardware to its homebound counterpart, Nintendo had to brew its creative juices to offer something intriguing. Like the Super Mario Land titles, Link’s Awakening intermingles some quirks with the recognizable Zelda fare. Surely, despite its streaks of creativity, Link’s Awakening still can’t possibly hope to match the magnitude of the grandiose, 16-bit series staple that is A Link to the Past, right? Right? Well, even though Link’s Awakening is being supported on a system that a modern graphing calculator could outperform, do not assume that Zelda’s handheld debut is merely an odd alternative tailor-made for lengthy car rides and or the funeral services of great aunts and uncles.

Simply setting a Zelda title outside the parameters of the glorious and all-too storied kingdom of Hyrule is enough to give any Zelda fan such as I a throbbing anticipation boner, and attempting this digression for the first time must’ve been especially arousing for a handful of gamers back in 1993. Instead of waking up in a bed to the call of adventure, Link is found washed ashore on an unknown beach after his ship is capsized by a mighty bolt of lightning during a tempestuous storm. Unconscious with a pint of salty seawater likely clogging his lungs, a girl named Marin arrives and awakens the hero of time from his drenched stupor. She informs him that he has luckily landed on the shore of Koholint Island, the interim setting where Link’s Awakening is paving new ground for the franchise. However, even without a moment to be gracious that he’s not a bubbling corpse floating face down in the ocean, Link desperately wishes to return home to Hyrule. To his chagrin, travelling back from whence he came is not as quick and easy as a click of the ruby slippers. In order to send Link back to familiar territory, he must find eight sacred instruments scattered throughout the island’s temples and conduct a rousing solo symphony to wake the Wind Fish hatchling in the giant, polka-dotted egg that sits atop a volcano. Only with the Wind Fish’s lucidity will Link be transported back to his homeland. Instead of a heroic epic with the magnificent stakes of saving the world, Link’s Awakening is presented with a man-versus-environment sort of conflict, forcing him to adapt to an uncharted land whose context implies he’s in survival mode. Downscaling the scope of a Zelda adventure could arguably risk underwhelming players who have grown accustomed to the formidable task of preventing the world from plunging into unfathomable darkness. Personally, dialing down the majesty of the typical Zelda adventure showcases a range of narrative potential that is often undermined with the cycle of resplendent triforce matters.

Still, I doubt any veteran Zelda fans would be fooled into thinking that Link’s Awakening provides a drastic shift in the standard series narrative by twisting the premise. If you’ve paid close attention, you’ll realize the instruments are surrogates for the triforce pieces, judging by the number of them needed for the orchestra and their MacGuffin roles that pinpoint every significant milestone in the game’s progression. Essentially, the player is still on the same overarching quest that Hyrule has consistently mandated, but the vital differences lie in the finer details. On the surface, traversing through the island nation of Koholint from a top-down angle, screen by screen, will remind any seasoned Zelda fan of exploring through the pixelated planes of Hyrule. Once they spend enough time in this queer little strangeland, its personality will start to flourish.

Given that Koholint is an island enclave surrounded by water, the environment of the setting is more tropical than Hyrule, which is enclosed by a mountain range. Link can revisit the southern shores where he was fortunate enough to be washed upon from the drink to further explore what lies between the sandy dunes. The villages directly north of the crashing waves are incredibly tranquil, probably due to each abode being spaced out by another square from its nearby neighbors. A cemetery located near the central district of Koholint features some strikingly eerie trees where hostile crows can be found perched on their branches. The atmosphere of Koholint can shift from peaceful to disquieting at the drop of a dime. Yet, the shift in mood is never jarringly sudden, making the player startled by the subtle changes if they pay attention. In my perspective, the inclusion of Mario properties, such as Goombas and a docile chain chomp named BowWow that Link borrows to clear away the wild vegetation in a swamp, is the most unnerving aspect of Link’s Awakening. Link apparently drifted so far away from Hyrule that he’s been sucked into a dimensional rift that caused an uncanny quasi-crossover. Despite the many peculiarities one will find around the island that instill a sense of Link being trapped in uncertainty, there are admittedly plenty of geographical similarities to Hyrule. The apex elevation point of the land where the Wind Fish egg sits comfortably is located in the north at a twelve o’clock angle like Death Mountain, which shadows the castle domain located only a few blocks south. However, the castle is as abandoned as the ruins located east of the presumably once-royal estate, bearing no significance as the land’s capital like the regal fortress at the center of Hyrule. While Koholint setpieces may connote strong structural similarities to the standard stomping grounds of the Zelda franchise, one core difference, besides Koholint’s general atmosphere, is that the world map is far more compact. One might negatively attribute this factor to the fact that the original Game Boy could only render so much inside its black and white mechanical and physical confines, but the limitations at play here make the map more succinct. There isn’t a single square of wasted space across the entirety of Koholint Island, giving the player a better opportunity to become more intimately familiar with their surroundings. Since A Link to the Past had already impressed us with its sprawling amplification of Hyrule, it’s honestly refreshing to explore an area scaled down more modestly.

While Koholint Island is comparatively less spacious than Hyrule’s 16-bit overhaul in A Link to the Past, do not conflate the relative ease in navigation with ease in progression. Ostensibly, in order to cause the player as much confusion and instability as the would-be green protagonist is probably feeling, the developers have formulated an invisible haze around Koholint that clouds the player’s sense of orienting themselves to the narrative’s direction. Pixelated Zelda titles tend to be notably obtuse, but Link’s Awakening is borderline ethereal in directing the player towards the main objective. The island’s few, yet charming, denizens will offer hints to the desired destination, but their directions are still clouded with too much subtlety to be of any helpful aid. It’s like asking someone to point in the direction where Las Vegas is located and getting a response saying that it’s a city in Nevada. An owl occasionally swoops down and sends Link on the correct path, but he still obscures too much information from the player for me to label him as his guiding light. Whether or not the locals are acting difficult to scorn the outsider or their manner of speaking doesn’t communicate clearly to Link because he’s a foreigner, finding any indication of the whereabouts of each instrument’s location can often feel as frustratingly hopeless as trying to find shelter in Siberia during a blizzard. A large chunk of the game’s progression runs concurrently with a trading sequence involving several needy Koholint citizens. It begins with Link winning another Mario trinket in the shape of a Yoshi doll during a crane game, and the line of bartering from then on is an exhausting one. The process of finding the specific NPC who asks for the specific item and then stacking over fifteen of these interactions on this initial encounter is an endeavor so circuitous that it would be better fitting for an optional side quest rather than the primary objective to further the story. Sure, the alarming lack of guidance in Link’s Awakening does a fantastic job at fostering that sense of freeform exploration that spurred the series creation, but executing that ethos here in particular feels like one of those off-kiltered days in the woods where Miyamoto ventured too far from home and became frantically lost when the sun set on him. A walkthrough would be a vital auxiliary piece of aid to accompany Link’s Awakening, like with any game. However, what the player truly needs is one of the developers by their side, pointing out not only what to do and where to go, but also the rationale behind their design decisions.

Once the player manages to locate their destination through traversal that feels like spelunking without a flashlight, they will fortunately be treated to what is definitively the finest roster of dungeons the series has seen thus far. Whereas the overworld in Link’s Awakening is unforgivingly ambiguous and A Link to the Past’s dungeons tend to be overly convoluted, the inverse seems to be the case regarding both games’ attributes. The winding labyrinthian constructs that house the various instruments aren’t necessarily straightforward, but none of them involve design gimmicks that are so leftfield that make the player scratch their heads in bafflement until they start bleeding, like the outside forest maze of Skull Woods or the multiple slippery floors of the Ice Palace in A Link to the Past’s latter dark world half. The gimmicks that diversify the dungeons of Link’s Awakening are consistently approachable and do not divert out of the box of dungeon parameters to work with too drastically. For example, the tasteful double entendre of “Key Cavern” involves managing the many metallic door and chest openers that fall from the ceiling upon defeating a block of enemies. “Catfish’s Maw” features both Cheep Cheeps and Bloopers as the aquatic enemies to contend with in this submerged dungeon, and Turtle Rock (no association with the dungeon from A Link to the Past, thank God) features segments where the player has to draw the remainder of the block’s floor by manually pushing around a device that resembles a Roomba. The one exception in Link’s Awakening that does break beyond the boundaries of conventional dungeon traversal is Eagle’s Tower in the northeastern mountains of the island. Here, only the impact of a hefty, green, and black sphere is enough to break the columns that structurally support this stone tower. I struggled in figuring out that razing the top half of the dungeon with this gleaming, glassy globe was the primary objective at hand, and configuring the possible directions to transport it proved to be equally as challenging as any of the harder dungeons in A Link to the Past. Still, the unconventionality of Eagle’s Tower is more enthralling than any dungeon from that game because it’s so satisfying to coordinate the ball’s location with the column and then smash it to smithereens. Hints given by the owl effigies erected across a few of each dungeon’s corridors are far more straightforward than the riddles of their flesh-and-blood counterpart, as long as the player finds the beak that allows Link to communicate with them. Overall, the dungeons of Link’s Awakening excel over the lineups in its console predecessors because of their consistency and balanced difficulty curve. Still, I do not appreciate progression points being impeded by bomb walls with imperceptible cracks, an unfair mark of early Zelda that the developers evidently did not reconsider yet, and that almost ruins the stellar streak in Link’s Awakening.

Much of the progression in each of Link’s Awakening’s dungeons is also contingent on the item that Link receives. Similar to the strengths of the contained areas that they are obtained in, the doodads that make up the space of Link’s trusty bag are equally as exceptional. The collective of items here doesn’t rewrite the content of Zelda's arsenals, but Link’s Awakening warps the way each item is utilized, which in turn makes it refreshing. In Link’s Awakening, the titular hero isn’t confined by a magic meter with a finite source of energy. Because the typical restriction has been lifted, Link is free to use magic items like the Pegasus Boots and the Magic Rod (although this item is obtained too late in the game to go buck wild with it) more liberally than ever before. Other items, such as the separate bag with the magic powder, not only illuminate dim sections of dungeons, but they can also ignite enemies in flames by sprinkling it on them, as if it has the same divine properties as holy water. The quest of collecting twenty seashells to upgrade Link’s sword isn’t nearly as stringent as the chain of trading sequences, for Link only has to collect four-fifths of the total of them scattered across the island. Somehow, the boomerang has transformed from an early game projectile compensation tool to an enemy-shredding powerhouse, the Zelda equivalent to Mega Man 2’s Metal Blade with inexhaustible energy (provided Link keeps catching it on reentry). Lastly, the one truly original item in the game that is the crown jewel of Link’s arsenal is the Roc’s Feather, which allows Link to manually jump to hop over gaps and essentially increase the capabilities of his overall mobility. If giving Link an ability that he struggles with in the astronomically more advanced 3D Zelda games doesn’t sell the player on Link’s Awakening, I don’t know what would.

To my dismay, Link’s Awakening is beset by an unfortunate case of DKC syndrome, even though the game predates Rare’s Donkey Kong resurrection title by a year. This term was coined (by me) to highlight a game in which the bosses are laughably easy, especially when compared to the levels with meaty challenges that precede them. Up until this point, the Zelda franchise hadn’t suffered from this awkward contrast, but Link’s Awakening proves to be a trendsetter for the worse. Given that the first boss is a repeat of Moldorm from A Link to the Past, the boss that every fan unanimously despises, it sets a terrible precedent. Still, future bosses such as the languid shooting section of Hot Head’s fight and the brief hacking of the Angler Fishes’ shiny protuberance elevate the doofy Moldorm into the ranks of a competent boss fight. Yikes. The giant, creepy face that is Facade is an especially new low for Zelda bosses, for I was flabbergasted that the intended method for defeating it was to simply keep dropping bombs on its immovable face. Only with the game’s final boss, the shadowy nightmare that resides in the deep recesses of the Wind Fish egg, does the challenge intended for a boss fight come to fruition. The phantom figure will use its amorphous physicality to transform itself into the shape of many formidable boss fights from the series’ past, and the last phase of the fight will test the player’s proficiency with the Roc’s Feather like an Olympic jump roper. Admittedly, while the final boss of any game should ideally be the most challenging, all of the substantial effort needed to beat it should not be allocated entirely to it.

Conquering the final boss should feel victorious, but the narrative of Link’s Awakening conversely suggests otherwise. In plenty of instances leading up to excavating the interior of the giant egg shell, NPCs and bosses warn Link that finishing his quest will result in the disappearance of Koholint Island. The setting is but the fabrication of the Wind Fish’s coma dream, explaining the illogical traversal and the myriad of Mario properties. One usually wouldn’t put any weight into the words of menaces, but they speak not out of deception, but of fear. When Link frees the Wind Fish from its indefinite slumber, the player witnesses Koholint Island disintegrate before their very eyes, transporting Link to a scene where he’s supporting himself on a wooden slab of his ship to keep himself afloat in the ocean. All the while, Koholint's NPCs, like Marin, whom we've come to know and adore, fade away into the ether of Link's hazy memory. Usually, I’d be lambasting any piece of media that decides to end with the revelation that it was all a dream because it’s the most contrived plot device imaginable. However, in the case of Link’s Awakening, the reveal of Link’s actual whereabouts is quite effective. I don’t buy the stance that he’s the game’s true villain or that he’s acting as a useful idiot for the Wind Fish, for I get the impression that all of the narrative context that would lead any player to that conclusion never even occurred in the first place. Seeing Link still in peril after the events of that fateful storm, when we were so confident that he had at least found somewhere with a solid footing, gives the player total narrative whiplash. His continual state of uncertainty leaves us with a potent sense of dread, and the juxtaposition to the whimsy and wonder of Koholint makes the reveal all the more devastating. Existentialism is a theme that the more unorthodox Zelda titles often explore, but Link’s Awakening presents such heavy themes in the bleakest fashion.

Farore, Nayru, and Din have all but abandoned Link, leaving him in the uncaring arms of lands outside of Hyrule that have evidently caused our hero much strife. For the player, Link stepping outside of Hyrule to a godless realm that exists in the metaphysical space of unknowing is exactly what the franchise needed. Despite how abstract the peculiar land of Koholint is in navigating it, it doesn’t distract from how this island provides the Zelda series with a burst of creativity that Hyrule wouldn’t allow, which extends, but is not limited to, the items, dungeons, and atmosphere. Let us not forget that Link’s Awakening is no less grand in length and content than A Link to the Past, despite that it was designed for a system with less functional power than an Easy-Bake Oven. That alone is impressive enough to elevate Link’s Awakening beyond any of its console predecessors. Decades onward, Link's Awakening maintains its allure because it's still one of the more unique adventures the series can offer. It's a Zelda Adventure oozing with personality and mystique.

Spyro the Dragon Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/3/2025)

[Image from igdb.com]

Spyro the Dragon

Developer: Insomniac

Publisher: SCEI

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: September 10, 1998

In the league of PlayStation exclusive 3D platformers in direct competition with Mario on the N64, Spyro the Dragon was as decorated a soldier as Crash Bandicoot in the bloody battle to dismantle Nintendo’s console market supremacy. Sure, we cannot discount the valiant efforts of the whole roster of PS1 platformer exclusives like Tomba and Ape Escape, but Spyro is the only other representative on the console that matches the renown of the orange marsupial. Not only were both series perceived worthy of receiving the trilogy treatment on their debut systems, but the retrospective, nostalgic ardor from those who fit the young demographic at the time of the PS1’s campaign is equally as fervent. When those kids reached adulthood two decades later and the Crash trilogy was remade for modern gaming standards and sensibilities, the same paint job was given to the Spyro trilogy only a year later due to the vociferous clamoring of fans–who stated that neglecting to revamp Spyro’s three PS1 classics would have diminished the impact of the N. Sane trilogy by proxy. Crash and Spyro have had genuine collaborative tie-in titles in the past, and their respective developers of Insomniac and Naughty Dog, acknowledged the association between their PS1 mascots when they sparked the same tongue-in-cheek rivalry for their following properties: Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. Needless to say, with all the evidence at hand, Crash and Spyro are like brothers from different mothers. They are like Metallica and Slayer: two separate entities with their respective icon statuses that are consistently grouped by a similar objective during their period of inception. The last parallel I’m going to connect to Crash is that the course of Spyro’s PS1 trilogy shares the same progression arc exhibited per entry as the bandicoot’s. In saying this, one could infer from this statement that Spyro’s self-titled debut is rough, blunt, and rudimentary, and you’d be correct. However, the first Spyro the Dragon game manages to evoke all of those substandard adjectives in a completely different way than that of the first Crash game.

My personal history with Spyro also shares similarities to Crash, as I was introduced to both franchises with their more lukewarm, post-original developer entries in the subsequent console generation on account of having the undeveloped motor skills of a toddler during their PS1 prime. Sorry to soil the fanbase’s illusion that both series are of an unequivocal repute, but I’ve always preferred Crash to Spyro–and it’s not as if I’d put the de facto face of the PS1 on my Mount Rushmore of gaming franchises. The reason why I give Crash a slight edge over his plucky purple compadre is that the Spyro games verge towards a jejune tone and atmosphere. Both series may target a prepubescent demographic, but the kooky, Looney Tunes aura emanating from Crash is more appealing to a general audience than the “once upon a time” storybook construct that comes with a child-friendly game revolving around a dragon. Still, at least Insomniac modestly attempted to balance the sugary sweetness of their work with some self-aware, borderline satirical elements that subvert the classic fairytale tropes, and three years before Shrek would become synonymous with this formula, I might add. This subversion is apparent from the anachronistic microphone seen in the corner of the news interview taking place with some dragon elders. The interviewer asks the scaly beasts about a potentially menacing character named Gnasty Gnorc, but one of them confidently assures the man that Gnasty Gnorc is too “simple and ugly to be a threat to the Dragon Kingdom.” However, the green ogre in question responds to this slander by firing a series of energy blasts from his morning star scepter that immobilize all of the dragon elders in a crystalized casing. However, the hazardous beams either missed the young Spyro due to his smaller physical stature, or Gnasty Gnorc didn’t bother targeting him because he misjudged him by his size. If the latter is the case, Spyro is going to make Gnasty wish he hadn’t settled for a half measure, for now he’s on a quest to free his brethren from their glassy prisons and incinerate Gnasty Gnorc for his transgression against the Dragon Kingdom. Spyro the Dragon’s premise is a Saturday morning cartoon cliche akin to an episode of He-Man, whose exposition is rushed during this introduction. Still, at least there’s a touch of levity, so it doesn’t veer too heavily on the spectrum of a sincere epic or too deeply into the territory of a schmaltzy fairytale that its presentation would imply.

Spyro the Dragon also greatly differentiates itself from Crash Bandicoot in its direction. They’re both undoubtedly 3D platformers, but Spyro was conceived after Super Mario 64 had defined the course of the genre with its collectathon format and was obliged to follow suit. The Dragon Kingdom, facing a crisis of stasis, is divided into five major districts, with Gnasty’s industrial island fortress rounding that number to six as the climactic ending area. Each of these six hubs features around three to four sub-areas that branch off of the central sector, similar to the winding floors of Peach’s Castle in Super Mario 64, except that the transportational medium to these forking paths is gateway arches instead of portal paintings. However, even though the player can clearly detect what the hub area is by its relation to the levels that stem from its perimeter, none of the medians fit my definition of a typical hub. A hub should be a place of respite separated from the action of the levels in its close, yet distinctly defined, borders. Yet, the objective of rescuing the ensnared dragon elders is still a relevant task between arch traveling, with the chaos of enemy activity still functioning as a background noise, or so to speak. The continual action that seeps into the hubs may illustrate how rampant Gnasty’s influence has become with all of the adult dragons out of commission, but I think the cohesion is intended to represent the encompassing level design at play. Including the hubs, Spyro’s areas all display a freeform design that gels beautifully with the collectathon format. A moderately straightaway path will lead Spyro to a podium that will transport him back to the hub he came from, but each area provides plenty of opportunities to divert from this eventual destination and will often reward the player with additional gems or finding dragons frozen in concealed locations. The districts of the Dragon Kingdom even supersede the first PlayStation’s graphical restrictions. The near-sighted graphical fuzz that usually limits the player’s line of sight is washed away, and levels like “Cliff Town” and “Haunted Towers” implore everyone to take advantage of the graphical unclouding by gliding to the location in the distance after looking at them from a prime vantage point in awe. Impressive as the landscapes are from a visual standpoint, their lack of graphical haze could mislead the player into conflating their splendor with their expanse. Even with their intricate, exploration-intensive designs, each level in Spyro the Dragon is likely going to be an ephemeral excursion. The majority of the dragon statues tend to be along the beaten path to the exit, and the alternate routes tend to circle around to the same conclusion anyway. Only on rare occasions will freeing a dragon require a keener exploration effort, such as darting around the tracks of “Tree Tops” or hugging the edge of a cliff in “Dry Canyon.” I’m not suggesting that Spyro the Dragon should’ve implemented the abrupt boot-out system that artificially prolonged each area in Super Mario 64, but I’d gladly trade the defogging of the visual distance in exchange for expanding the total breadth of each area.

Then again, perhaps having the levels load in real time as the player traverses onward and forward would be especially jarring with Spyro’s physicality. Gliding is an innate ability for the little dragon that could, and it’s quite complementary to be able to see the platforms from afar so Spyro can elegantly soar to them from his position. I’d describe Spyro’s sky-skimming as graceful if it weren’t for the fact that the player cannot command Spyro to stop in mid-air, so a miscalculated trajectory can often lead to Spyro falling into the abyss below the clouds. His offensive headbutt maneuver, where he lowers his head and places his horns front and center like a battering ram, can also be quite precarious with its ramming speed and inexhaustible energy. This is why it’s essential to alternate between Spyro’s charge and blowing a blast of fire out of his nostrils, a close-ranged dragon staple with a more stable attack momentum. Still, even though Spyro’s abilities can potentially result in him overreaching past a solid footing, controlling him overall is comfortably smooth as silk. His general physicality isn’t afflicted with the same stifling rigidity akin to Crash in his first outing. However, even with his superior control scheme right out of the gate, Spyro’s mascot appeal is reduced by a few unfortunate characteristics. Downscaling a dragon to a winsome size is a brilliant prospect that would win over anyone, but Spyro’s inherent advantage in the charm department is spoiled whenever he opens his toothy mouth, revealing himself to be a dork who says overbearingly optimistic one-liners. I’d grab a beer with the silent goofball Crash without question, but I’d be afraid that Spyro would fink me out to the authorities for public intoxication.

It’s more likely that Spyro will deplete his stock of lives when the player gets overly eager with his abilities, rather than facing off against the smattering of enemies. The invasive goons in the Dragon Kingdom are abundant in numbers across the magical realm, sometimes even lining up in unison so Spyro can knock them down like bowling pins with his headbutt charge. On the basis of an individual encounter, each enemy is fairly predictable in their attack patterns, with the trick between all of them being whether or not their armor is impenetrable to flames or physical buffeting. If the player doesn’t seem to catch on to this pattern of enemy defenses and they harm him as a result, Spyro’s health system is one of the series’ most idiosyncratic properties, and it’s surprisingly disturbing. While not uttering a single word could make the player question his role as a bona fide character, Spyro is accompanied on his quest by his dragonfly friend/pet Sparx. This glowing bug functions as a refurbished Aku Aku from Crash, a floating augmentation to the protagonist’s health that acts as a shield. Where they differ is that Sparx is a health reserve granted to Spyro automatically instead of an earned perk that can be easily relinquished. Sparx’s base color is a radiant golden, but as Spyro takes damage, his healthy glow will diminish to a sad blue to a sickly green. After that, he’ll realize a pattern and leave Spyro to save his own hide, and Spyro suffering one more hit after Sparx abandons him will result in his death. To either convince Sparx to return or replenish Sparx’s vigor beforehand, Spyro must prey on the small, gentle animals located in packs around the field known as “fodder.” Once Spyro butchers them like the apex predator he is, Sparx will consume the butterfly that pops out of their lifeless bodies to regain his golden sheen. Ghastly ghouls and demonic hellspawn are known to devour souls, but this innocuous-looking insect performs this barbaric act in droves in the name of protecting his buddy. If the player finds this method of regaining health unsettling, it’s unlikely that they’ll have to murder these cute little creatures all that often on account of the game’s general ease. I should also add that enemies are known to drop orbs whose accumulation increases Spyro’s number of lives, so there are more than enough tools offered to keep Spyro afloat in tandem with the unlikelihood of exhausting them.

Spyro the Dragon’s progression difficulty could also be described as leisurely to a fault, but I think the more applicable term is unimpactful. In order for the balloonist to whisk Spyro away on his gallant hot air contraption, Spyro needs to collect a certain amount of the game’s various collectibles to satisfy him. In addition to using Spyro’s magic touch to free the dragon elders, Spyro must also collect the colorful quantity of gems and retrieve dragon eggs from veiled thieves wearing burqas who operate on the field alongside the enemies. Acquiring these collectibles should come naturally through standard traversal, but the player can sign up to do the “flight” stages that involve collecting or extinguishing a series of the same objects or enemies in a sequential order under a time limit. The rhythmic pacing of these optional levels is probably the most demanding the game gets with its typically lenient error margins. Hell, one might become slightly irritated by the swift darting of the thieves while pursuing them, and the irritation might escalate to overzealous anger due to the cheeky bastard’s taunts and chortles. The process of obtaining these secondary collectibles in of itself is not an issue, but how the process overrides finding the dragons on the field in engagement and value. Every collectathon’s main collectible should be the primary focus that furthers the story, and muddling its impact by mixing its importance with all of the others diminishes its impact and relevance.

The facile factors of Spyro the Dragon I’ve discussed before could be excusable from a certain perspective, but the game’s “bosses” are downright embarrassing. I put the term bosses in snarky quotation marks because imposing baddies in gaming that conclude every milestone usually involve direct conflictive contact on the part of the protagonist. For Spyro, every arena is a curved track for the youthful dragon to chase them down like common thieves. To make the encounter even less stimulating, every one of Gnasty Gnorc’s cohorts falls with only a couple of headbutts or singes from Spyro’s fire breath. Surely, the big, stinky cheese in charge of the anti-dragon operation should warrant an epic duel as the game’s climax, right? Wrong. All that Gnasty Gnorc’s narrative significance does for his final “battle” is make the track that Spyro chases him on slightly longer. Two scorching fire blasts are all it takes for the unsightly green ogre to perish, and the anticlimactic scene had me astonished in disbelief. People tend to criticize Crash’s bosses for not being Herculean enough compared to the levels that precede them, but at least they inarguably fit the definition of bosses as opposed to the piddly, inconsequential pursuits that comprise every notable bit of progress in Spyro the Dragon.

It should be no wonder that fans often speak of Spyro in the same excitable breath as Crash Bandicoot in the ranks of PlayStation platformer mascots. While Crash Bandicoot was placed on a higher pedestal in Sony’s minds due to predating Spyro by a few years, Spyro’s whimsical adventure through a graphically alluring fantasy realm with an adorable (as long as he keeps his mouth shut) purple lizard at the helm places it on equal measure with Naughty Dog’s work in terms of a shared accessible, lighthearted charm. Comparisons between the two are also derived from their first entries’ amateurish lack of polish. However, whereas Crash’s rough template beats the player to death with harsh, unflinching demand, Spyro’s conversely relaxes them to the degree of being ineffectual. Because the game is a little too light on difficulty, level length, and substantial boss fights, the entirety of Spyro the Dragon comes in one ear and quickly exits the other. If this was a concentrated effort on Insomniac’s part to cater towards an extremely young audience, I should warn them that dumbing down the content will wear thin on even the most impressionable children. Still, if we use Crash’s evolution through three entries as an example, perhaps broadening Spyro’s formula through its sequels will conjure up something more resonating.