Video Game Reviews (lots of good-to-great games this time)
Titles covered: Ori and the Blind Forest, Luigi's Mansion 3, Paper Mario: The Origami King, New Super Mario Brothers U, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Demon's Souls.
Ori and the Blind Forest (****)
Side-scrollers have enjoyed a rebirth on the indie gaming scene, with many small-time developers producing “artsy” platformers with innovative gameplay. While usually enjoyable, many of these are very lightweight games, either due to their brief playtime (Limbo, Lost Winds, The Swapper) or arcade-style structure (Super Meat Boy). Ori and the Blind Forest is the first I’ve played to really feel like a “full” adventure game (granted, I still haven’t played Hollow Knight or Cuphead).
Ori is very much a descendant of Super Metroid, featuring a huge labyrinth-like world containing differently-themed subareas. Many areas seem inaccessible at first, but gradually become available as you expand your repertoire of powers. Where Ori differs substantially from its Nintendo ancestor is the balance between combat and platforming. Ori’s platforming is very difficult and intricate, seemingly taking cues from Super Meat Boy. As a concession to the high difficulty, one of Ori’s main powers is the ability to spend energy to create checkpoints at will. Of course, you lose that ability during the “escape” sequences, which are especially brutal and may require a few dozen attempts. The combat, meanwhile, is much simpler. Your basic attack automatically “homes” onto the enemies, so a lot of combat is pretty button-mashy.
The visual story-telling is fantastic. I loved the expressiveness of the characters, the art style, and the seamless transitions between cutscenes and gameplay. Many of the most effective moments are entirely visual. The silent villain's arc is especially effective, and made me the most emotional. On the other hand, I didn’t get much out of the gibberish voice-over narration. Most of it could have been cut.
On the whole, I’d rank Ori and the Blind Forest very highly. The gameplay is highly addicting and the level design is very clever. It’s a very long, meaty, and satisfying artsy adventure that rises above the crowd of indie artsy adventures.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 (**** and a half)
THIS is the Luigi’s Mansion that we needed in 2001!
Let me explain. In 2001, Nintendo launched the Gamecube, which was relatively unsuccessful in the US market. Part of the problem stemmed from the lack of a clear system-selling launch title. With Super Smash Brothers not quite ready for launch (and lacking a good single-player mode), the de facto Nintendo launch title was Luigi’s Mansion, a fun little rental that could be beaten in a few sittings. It was cute, but not the exciting introduction the system badly needed.
But… imagine if Luigi’s Mansion had been a more extensive adventure with much more variety, more challenging puzzles, a lengthy quest, multiplayer modes, killer atmosphere, and a severely epic tone? Hell, let’s ditch the “mansion” and go bigger: Luigi’s Haunted Skyscraper of Doom! If the Gamecube had opened with that, maybe (just maybe) game critics would have shut up about Halo long enough to give some attention to Nintendo’s little cube.
Anyway, that game came out 18 years later as Luigi’s Mansion 3, a sequel to Dark Moon (which I haven’t played, as I never had a 3DS). It’s fantastic. It’s atmospheric, spooky, creative, and filled with great ideas. Luigi’s own arsenal of moves and gadgets is upgraded, and every floor has an interesting theme with new enemies and puzzles. The game also challenges you to explore every nook and cranny, by adding collectible gems and Boo ghosts. The only thing that’s missing is a cross-game achievement system… (C’mon Nintendo, your rivals did that forever ago!)
I recommend this game because it’s a game with wondrous new sights and sounds around every corner. Even though the core mechanics are pretty simple, the constantly-changing scenarios make it feel fresh and new. You’ll reenact movie genres on one floor, use a chainsaw against killer plants in another, and then run through a dabbing dance troupe. My favorite bit was a “magic” themed floor which combined traditional illusions with reasonable-feeling hotel layouts, and ended in a bossfight that required you to watch the enemies closely for “sleights of hand.”
The legacy of Luigi’s Mansion has been redeemed. It’s gone from being an underwhelming oddity to a must-play. Now, let’s get a walkthrough Luigi's Mansion haunted house at Universal Studios!
Paper Mario: The Origami King (****)
Hot damn, how are there so many great games on the Switch?
Paper Mario is a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG, and known for being a very silly and self-referential version of the Mario mythos. The series is widely considered to have peaked on the GameCube with “The Thousand-Year Door,” though I also mildly recommend “Super Paper Mario” on the Wii for its sheer weirdness. I’ve heard mixed things about the 3DS/WiiU entries, so I never played them, and jumped into “The Origami King” not entirely sure what to expect.
Its… kind of amazing.
The Origami King is a huge game, for starters. Seemingly simple quests usually turn into huge multi-dungeon escapades filled with puzzles and exploration. The breadth of settings is very large, and usually manages to put a unique twist on the usual videogame cliches. For instance, the stereotypical “ninja” level is a theme park escape room experience.
The level and scenario design is a lot of fun. It has just enough open-world atmosphere to encourage some exploration (there’s even a miniature version of Wind Waker), while keeping things straightforward enough to provide a sense of constant progress. Your progress is rewarded with new levels that are consistently fun and often surprising, so there’s a strong motivation to see what new shenanigans the game has to throw at you.
As for combat, The Origami King maintains the timed-button presses of early Mario RPGs, along with some very light RPG elements. However, the main focus involves manipulating the battlefield using a Rubik’s Cube style puzzle. For the first hour or two of the game, these puzzles are so easy that they feel pointless. Then, they start getting harder, at which point you might find them interesting, or might find them very frustrating. For me, it was a bit of both. I have no skill with these sorts of puzzles (seriously, it’s embarrassing), but I still didn’t find the battles overly difficult. You can half-ass the puzzle, use powerful items and equipment to make up the difference, and just “git gud” at blocking attacks. So I guess I didn’t love the puzzle battle system, but wasn’t put off by it either.
The many boss battles are a whole different story. They use the same basic controls as the regular battles, but involve plotting a path for Mario around the battlefield to line up the perfect attack. I enjoyed these a lot, and admired the thought and creativity that went into each boss fight.
Beyond that, The Origami King keeps up the tradition of funny and creative character dialog. In particular, I enjoyed seeing recurring villain Kamek as a much-put-upon villain sidekick, and segments that explore the psychology of characters that are literally just sentient bombs. And then there’s Olivia, the fairy sidekick, with an excitable and naive mindset.
So, yeah, The Origami King is pretty awesome, and easily worth a purchase. It’s definitely the best that the series has been since the Gamecube era.
New Super Mario Bros U (** and a half)
It’s basically the same thing as New Super Mario Bros Wii.
There’s a part of me that says “But you really liked New Super Mario Bros Wii! And this is basically an upgraded remix of Super Mario Bros 3! What’s wrong with that?” NSMBU is slightly more challenging than recent entries in the series, it has plenty of content, and it takes the best ideas from previous games of the series. But it was also the fourth in a sub-series of Mario games that were generically named and themed. Frankly, the “new” Super Mario Bros. series was never really anything new, and by the fourth installment it was getting really old.
Also, it doesn’t help that the powerups are somewhat lacking. I never really got a handle on the new flying squirrel suit, and the baby Yoshis are kind of a pain to constantly grip onto. I did appreciate the challenging level design, but it kinda ran against the multiplayer feature, since many levels are much too hard with multiple casual players. That said, the option to play as Toadette (better handling, and the only good new powerup) and Nabbit (no damage taken) offers a concession to your casual gaming friends.
Ultimately, this was just an idea that ran thin, especially in a world with more original platformers. Not bad, but nothing special.
Super Mario 3D World (*** and a half) + Bowser’s Fury (****)
Out of all the generically named and themed Mario games of the 2000’s and 2010’s, Super Mario 3D World is probably the most distinctive. Yes, it takes its basic concepts from Super Mario Bros 3, and yes, the worlds are thematically all over the place, but the unique 2D-3D hybrid gameplay gives the game a cool angle. Basically, it’s a game with linear side-scrolling levels (like the original Mario games), but with just enough Z-axis movement to make it feel fully 3D. This also keeps the characters in the multiplayer mode from crashing into each other all the time. Super Mario 3D World is a game with lots of pizazz, with its jazzy music and funny catsuits.
And then there’s Bowser’s Fury. I wondered exactly what this was. A minigame? A new level added to the end of “3D World”? Nope, it’s basically a whole new game, albeit a short one. It’s selectable from the start menu and offers a new campaign and quest. The entire game takes place in a fully open world, with platforming challenges worked into the various structures and islands. The goal is to collect as many “Cat Shines” as possible to subdue Bowser, who periodically rises from the center of the world to rain hot death on you. Each area of the world has quite a lot to do, often gaining new enemies or features when you revisit them. It’s somewhat similar to Mario 64, if all the bite-sized painting worlds were cobbled into one gigantic world.
Honestly, I loved Bowser’s Fury. The level design is brilliant, and the music is also amazing. Despite its short length, I actually found it more fun than 3D World.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (*** and a half)
Yes, it’s good. No, it’s not nearly as good as the first game.
Making a sequel to a really great game can be difficult because if it’s too similar, the sequel will feel redundant. And so, it makes some sense that the developers wanted to rework the game mechanics of the original Xenoblade, despite them already being near-perfect. Unfortunately, this brought some problems.
For starters, the battle system is too complicated, requiring the game to be constantly introducing tutorials throughout the entire game. The system is actually a lot of fun, but it takes too long to learn, introduces some concepts much too late, and doesn’t feel as satisfying as the more down-to-earth system we got in the original Xenoblade. Also much too complicated: the pokemon-like “blade” characters. Again, there’s fun to be had because the blades themselves are creative characters with unique appearances and quests and such. However, getting and upgrading them is a royal pain. Most of them are acquired using random “loot boxes,” you have to choose who they’ll be assigned to before you know what they do, and the upgrade tracks sometimes have bizarrely specific requirements that you’ll probably miss due to the massive amount of stuff to keep track of. And then there’s the “artificial blade” (i.e. robot) who’s a fun character, but got immediately shuffled out of my active party because I just didn’t feel like learning an entirely new upgrade system.
OK, that’s a lot of harping on the bad stuff. There’s also a lot of good stuff. The world design is fantastic, with huge sweeping vistas, believable towns, and a huge number of hidden locations to find. The “pouch” system allows usage of regular marketplace items, which lets the designers create a world with a semi-realistic economy. In other words, you never run into a town that only sells weapons and armor, or one in which the fruit stand is a non-interactive facade. This impressive level of detail is one that most designers either don’t have the time to develop (raises hand…) or don’t bother to.
The sidequests are very lengthy, and in some ways improve on the original game. The original Xenoblade mostly had relatively simple sidequests that asked you to fight a certain number of monsters (or acquire their drops), which served as a substitute for random encounters. The sequel takes a very different approach, giving you the choice of completing the main quests with random encounters, or doing enough side quests and merc missions until you’re overleveled and the random encounter monsters just let you pass. It’s an interesting balance, and it mostly works (excessive aggro ranges aside).
The visuals are a huge upgrade from the original game. The muddy textures are gone, replaced with crisp and clean graphics. The music is even more impressive, with amazing choral work and vibrant orchestrated scores composed in a very classical style. Seriously, this might be one of the best videogame soundtracks I’ve ever heard. The story is creative and has a lot of great characters (particularly Pyra, Morag, Nia, and Zeke after he stops being dumb comic relief), though the plot is very uneven. Sometimes it’s riding high, with emotional moments and interesting sci-fi ideas. The beginning of the game is intriguing and the last few chapters blew me away. However, the dialogue flows too slowly, the middle of the story gets lost, and most of the villains are ridiculous anime tropes with confusing powers.
When making my own RPG, I established a guideline that beating a villain in a boss fight must give the player the option to permanently kill them if you decide that they are too dangerous to be left alive. This emphasized that you, the player, were the main character. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would have really benefited from such an approach. As is, you’re stuck playing a likable but very childish character who doesn’t experience enough growth.
Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is good enough that I played it all the way through, which is saying a lot given how absurdly long these games are. The wonderful graphics, music, and fun quests kept me engaged. However, more casual players might be put off by the dense gameplay systems and certain story aspects.
Demon Souls revisited (***)
I’m revising my original 2-star review of Demon Souls. I previously rented the game and hated the first few levels. I’m not the only one who had that experience. The “Zero Punctuation” review pretty much summarizes everyone’s first attempt at Demon’s Souls, and Sony themselves passed on publishing the game because their President tried the game and absolutely hated it.
How can a game be worthy of hate, and yet also kinda great? Let me explain.
The first real level has many obnoxious “noob” traps that swiftly kill a player, even a skilled one, if they don’t know exactly what to expect. For example, at the top of the castle walls, the player will see a knight who looks similar to other knights they have already fought. However, this one particular knight is nearly impossible, and will repeatedly send the player back to the beginning of the level. Or you’ll wander into a room filled with barrels (similar to other scenery you’ve been destroying) and they suddenly explode. Or you’ll be fighting some guys on a bridge and a dragon appears out of nowhere and burns you to a crisp. In most video games, cheap deaths wouldn’t be a big deal. You’d just go back to the last checkpoint and try again. But Demon Souls has no mid-level checkpoints, which can make it very frustrating and repetitive (Dark Souls is much better with checkpoints, shortcuts, and level design in general). Oh, and you can’t level up your character at this point in the game either, so forget that idea. After finally beating the first level, I entered world 1-2, which is entirely insta-kill dragon-fire bridges. That was where I gave up.
(And yeah, and Demon’s Souls started the bizarre “we’re going to force you to play the story campaign with online multiplayer” feature of the series)
Now that I’m a Dark Souls pro, and have resigned myself to the fact that these obtuse games require a walkthrough… I actually like Demon Souls. I still maintain my criticisms of the opening. The first few levels are OK once you know what to expect, but they do a really shitty job of welcoming new players. Once you get past that, the later game introduces much more interesting levels. The highlight is definitely the Tower of Latria, a spooky horror-themed area with Mindflayers and Gargoyles. I also really enjoyed the mining world and the first level in Shrine of Storms. When you eventually return to the first world and assault the castle, you’re powerful enough to waste those chumps who gave you a hard time before, and plow through their defenses in level 1-3. You can imagine them shouting “He’s getting through! Nothing can stop him! ARGGGGH!” And then there’s World 5 which… I’ll be honest, World 5 is absolutely terrible, aside from the interesting final boss.
A lot of your experience will also depend on your character build. Long story short: pick “Royalty” class and play as a mage. You’ll have more fun that way. Being a warrior can be fun too, but it forces you to deal with the weapon upgrade system. This is a major headache that sends you hunting for 40+ different upgrade materials, mostly obtained from non-respawning crystal lizards that always run off a cliff and disappear forever. Ugh!
(Dark Souls fixed this too. The weapon upgrade system is streamlined, upgrade materials have guaranteed availability at some point in the game, and the crystal lizards don’t run off the map.)
Thus, Demon’s Souls is a very mixed bag, oscillating between the best experience ever, and the most obnoxious experience ever. The awesome parts tend to revolve around the combat system, magic, graphics, atmosphere, boss fights and the good levels mentioned above. The shitty parts tend to revolve around the difficulty, weapon upgrades, frustrating levels, and the entire world/character tendency system (a morality system without actual moral choices).