What I'm Playing (Volume 160): Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

 

Kirby 64 is a side-scrolling platformer released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. The plot features Kirby attempting to track down all of the pieces of a shattered crystal, because what's a video game without some crystals?

I absolutely loved that HAL decided to use the D-pad rather than the control stick for movement in this game. Can we please stop pretending that analog sticks are useful for 2D platforming? The advantages of analog sticks are that they allow for a wide range of movements, as well as for shades of movement (slightly tilting up will result in a slower walk speed, etc.). That's great and all, but it's really only useful when you have need of more than 4 (or 2, in the case of racing games) directions. It was a little weird at first when I picked up the Nintendo 64 with my hand on the left part of the trident, but I quickly grew accustomed to the grip and was grateful for utilizing the N64's surprisingly solid D-pad.

The gameplay itself is fine. It plays and feels like a Kirby game, with only a few small additions. The most notable new inclusion is Power Combos, a mechanic that allows you to combine two different powers together to create a new and improved power. In traditional games, for example, swallowing a rock type monster enables you to use Kirby's power to turn into a stone and smash down onto his enemies. Using power combos, however, you can swallow the powers of two rock type monsters, enabling you to turn Kirby into a giant rock boulder instead! Other examples include ingesting bomb and fire type monsters to produce larger, flaming bombs than would otherwise be possible. While this is interesting an new, it's pretty rare that the combined powers are much better than the original ones, and the mechanic left me wanting for a more varied playstyle to develop based on these powers. For example, they could have made it so that some elements were more effective against enemy types than others, or given you a wider range of possible outcomes depending on which order you swallow them (swallowing bomb then fire gives you the same outcome as swallowing fire then bomb). There is one powerup (bomb + bomb) that is so far and away superior to the rest of the options that you should do almost anything to obtain it, including just skipping all of the other powers entirely. It feels like a good idea that provides some fun in experimenting with different combinations, but ultimately lacks the sophistication to provide a play experience that's sufficiently different from other Kirby games to be memorable.

The poorly refined Power Combo mechanic is matched by some dull and repetitive level design that makes the game less interesting than it ought to be. The bosses are all just ok and are far too easy, even without the use of the Power Combos. I was left wanting a bit more diversity and challenge from this title, although I do think that 2D platformers tend to skew too far towards being difficult, so I'm generally ok with the difficulty here, particularly as an entry point for young gamers who want to learn the basics of experiencing the genre.

The game feels too short, even for a 2D platformer. I would have enjoyed having another world or two, but on the other hand, only would have wanted them if they offered a new challenge or take on the genre which the previous worlds lack.

The look of the game is good, for a Nintendo 64 game. I'd gladly take the look and feel of the Kirby games on the Game Boy, NES, or SNES (especially the gorgeous Kirby's Adventure or Kirby's Dream Land 3) before this one, but it's a faithful adaptation of the Kirby style with some chunky looking polygons that fit the era just fine.

The music is generally good, but doesn't quite reach to the heights of previous Kirby games. Nothing really to see here.

This is a perfectly fine game that's plagued by a bit of a lack of imagination. Rumor has it that the game was developed under a pretty significant time crunch to complete it on time after several revisions to the game, and that fits pretty well with the experience I had with it. There are several good ideas here, but none of them are implemented in a creative enough way to make this worth playing for most people. I'll give it a 7.5/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game from a series I just can't quit! Until now. Because I'm out of games. But here's a little teaser...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 159): Civilization VI

 

Civilization VI is a 4X strategy game in the long-running series of Civilization titles. 4X, for those who are uninitiated with the genre, refers to (generally) turn based strategy games in which you must compete with other players to excel at the four x's, explore, expand, exploit, exterminate to become the dominant player in your universe.

I have a Ph.D. in political science. I have an armchair fascination with political and military history. I love strategy games. And yet, I had never sunk any time into Sid Meier's legendary Civilization series until very recently. I never owned a copy of the game, I had slid away from PC gaming in recent years, and had plenty of other games to keep me busy, but this title was always on the edge of my mind. Then, Epic Games gave away this entry in the series for free a few months back, and I added it to my mental queue. When the time is right, I was going to give it a shot.

When the time became right, I quickly discovered the reason that this game had endured for decades, and it can be expressed in three words - one more turn. The game is designed both to engage your brain for the present turn, but also to allow it to wander towards a point in the future when you will be able to truly unveil your brilliant strategy to all the world. It does this with a genius system of research and civics which allows the player to direct his civilization towards a specific technological or political goal at all times. The game begins in the ancient era, with you struggling to ward off barbarian attacks and accomplish simple feats such as figuring out how to make pottery, and developing a system of irrigation to improve your farming. But you'll quickly be presented with a bombardment of options for how to develop your civilization, and realize that you can't be the best at everything. Determining your planned end game, while warding off the attempts of your foes to dominate you, will demand that you direct an inordinate amount of effort on developing in a few key areas, rather than accomplishing them all at once. With so many pots on the fire, you'll always want to be playing for the next big pop of achievement, whether it's improving your nautical mastery so that you can sail away from the shallows and across the wide ocean, or developing your civilization's mastery of ballet.

Winning the game requires that you achieve one of the end-game conditions, or can endure until the final turn with the generally most impressive civilization (while thwarting your opponents' attempts to win the game outright before then). The conditions that will immediately end the game are divided into several categories, cultural, religious, military, and scientific. Winning the game with culture demands that you develop your civilization's production of great works of art, music, and archaeology to the point that other civilizations view yours as the dominant one and begin to adopt your cultural practices. The religious victory will be triggered when more than half of the world follows the religion that you have founded. Military victory is the most straightforward-crush your opponents' civilizations with your military might and conquer the world! The scientific victory requires you to achieve certain technological achievements into the post-modern future, including landing on the moon and starting a martian colony.

As a professional political scientist, the thing that I adore the most is how nicely the game simulates the real experience of leading civilization throughout history. One way in which it does this is forcing the player to think about path dependency, an idea that argues that each civilization or outcome is as much dependent on the decisions that led up to the current situation as it is about current decisions. Once set on a certain path, it is very difficult to depart from it, and this game nails that idea. If you've spent time becoming a scientific powerhouse and ignoring your culture and civic institutions, you won't be able to get the kind of support from the state that you may need to accomplish your goals. If you never spent time learning astrology (a religious perk), then your sailors will take more time to be able to learn how to navigate in deeper waters away from familiar coastlines. Each civic and technology that your develop will shorten the time necessary to develop later discoveries, and keeping your end game in mind is helpful in plotting the shortest path to achieving your aims. In addition to path dependency, the game also forces you to appreciate the value that technology brings to human life. The game begins with you landlocked, with the wheel barely invented, and as a result, your experience is bound by what is directly near you, geographically speaking. But, as you develop your technology, you'll spread far and wide throughout the world, seeing more of it, and being able to travel further and further each turn.

The controls can be a little weird sometimes. It's a game that thrives on strategy and thoughtfulness, not on its UI or the controls. Commanding your troops to move and attack can be wonky, and the game is so deep that novices may not realize why they can't do something that they think they ought to. There are good resources in the game for learning these, but it just takes a lot of play to get up to speed.

I won at least one game using each win condition, and enjoyed most of them. The one that was dull was the religious victory, which feels like an addition that wasn't particularly well thought out. Developing your religion gives benefits, but it seems too easy to counter your opponents' attempts to spread their religion, and if two or more civilizations are spreading religions, it's nearly impossible for either of them to win.

The game's AI is also really dreadful. I'll give an example to illustrate. I was playing on a pretty high difficulty level in a game, and had war declared on me by two civilizations early in the game. So I developed my military, sailed across the sea, and crushed them. Neither of these civilizations had built their military in the slightest (something that you might think would be important before declaring war), so they rolled over easily. With two of my five competitors out of the way, I noticed that another civilization lie directly to my west, that 40% of my conquering was completed already, and declared war on that civilization. I conquered that one, moved to the west some more, conquered the fourth, and finally turned my eye towards the last other civilization left in the world, the one that began the game directly bordering me. Conquering these four civilizations had taken me about 150 turns. What, do you think, the remaining civilization had been up to in those 150 turns? Building up walls on their cities in preparation? Developing their military to stand against me? Garrisoning troops in all of their cities? Racing me to develop their culture for a win condition before I could turn my greedy eyes on them? No. They just were peacefully sending trade routes into my territory for 150 turns, with no culture to speak of, a small handful of ancient military units, no navy, and no religion! Any creditable leader would have prepared, but the AI in this game just doesn't think that way. This game will entertain when playing against AI for a while, but it eventually becomes pretty dull. Playing with real people is the way to go.

I really, really enjoyed this game, despite some of the minor flaws. It's super fun, and actually promotes real thought in the player. I haven't played any other titles in the Civilization series, but when they come out with the seventh entry in the series, I'm going to be there. I'll give it a 9.2/10.

Up next is a quick little title I squeezed in during some downtime. Check back soon for a review!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 158): NBA 2K20

 

I happened to get this game for free from PS Plus, and being a sucker for free stuff and sports games, I had no choice but to give it a spin. 

I reviewed NBA 2K19 last year, and was expecting a minor revision for this year's title. Boy, was I surprised! NBA 2K20 fixed almost everything that was broken in the previous year's title, and absolutely astounded me with its overall quality. My main three complaints were that the game did little to approximate the varied styles of different NBA teams, that the game modes with micro-transactions were so dependent on using cash to compete that it was an obvious cash grab for people with little self-control, and that the defense was too predictable and easy to exploit, even on very high difficulties. Let's visit each in turn for 2K20.

Unfortunately, they really continued to fail to replicate real NBA style and rotations here. They still just default to the top rated players for starters for each team, regardless of how the real teams use them. My example last time of the Clippers bringing Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell off the bench in real life but starting them in the game continues to be relevant here. What's more, the style of each team is basically identical to the rest, depending solely on player tendencies rather than on the philosophy that undergirds each team. There's no differences between Houston, San Antonio, and Denver in this game, and that's a real shame for NBA fans.

The micro-transactions, on the other hand, have been greatly improved. The game is far more generous with daily gifts than it was previously, and it feels like skilled "free" to play (as free as a $60 game can be) players have a shot against their deep-pocketed rivals. I built a solid team with little effort, and was competitive in the games that I played.

The defense, however, was the single biggest achievement here. They COMPLETELY overhauled the defensive schemes of the AI, and it feels like a totally different game as a result. Defenders handle picks much more skillfully than they did in the previous year, and that injects a great amount of realism into the title. Real teams generally handle screens in one of three ways. They can trail behind the ball handler, bothering him from behind and keeping him from shooting threes, but allowing straight line drives at the rim. They can go under the pick, preventing the ball handler from driving but allowing him to stop and shoot open threes. They can also switch the pick, which allows teams to stop the ball handler from driving or from shooting threes, but opens up the possibility of the screener rolling towards the basket with a smaller man defending him. It's a magnificent game of rock-paper-scissors, and watching skilled defenders, ball handlers, and roll men navigate this dance is one of the joys of watching live basketball. But in the previous game, the defender would basically always get stuck on the pick and both the screener's defender and ball handler's defender would chase him around, opening up wide open opportunities for the screener. Now, the defenders will change their strategies, causing the offense to have to think about the appropriate strategy to deal with it. If they switch, you'll need to punish the smaller man in the post with your big. If they trail, you'll need to charge towards the rim while your big pops towards the three point line, opening up a three or a dunk. And if they go under, the ball handler will have to step back and knock down the open triple reliably. They've also greatly improve defensive rotations for situations where you beat your man, forcing you to think ahead and pass where the defense won't have a chance to get, or make the extra pass to keep the defense on its heels. It's really a magnificent overhaul, and I loved the chess match involved in playing offense in this game. That's not to say there aren't still some unpredictable things that happen (particularly when you're playing defense), but they've made great strides.

The MyPlayer mode's story was honestly pretty boring and not as engaging as the excellent iteration in 19, which was lame. But I enjoyed the actual game play much more, so I'll take that trade.

Commentary is excellent again, with a wide range of commentators and guest commentators holding down the mic. There's definitely some repeat stuff from 2K19, but that's ok.

I was extremely impressed by this game, and think it's one of the best sports video games, ever. It has a few rough patches here and there, but it's a solid improvement on an extremely good title. I'll give it a 9.3/10.

Up next is a game from a series I've been wanting to try out for a long time, but only did in the last few months. Here's a teaser...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 157): Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

 

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a tactical RPG for the Nintendo Switch. An early title for the Switch developed by Ubisoft, Kingdom Battle places you in a mashed up world of the Rabbids and Mushroom Kingdom, and lends you control over Mario and friends, as well as some Rabbid friends doing their best imitations of their Mushroom Kingdom counterparts, as you attempt to right the world to its proper state. 

The gameplay is fun and engaging, but not always balanced the best. Similar to other tactical RPGs, you command each unit during his or her turn on a grid, and attack or trigger abilities as needed to turn the tide of battle in your favor. The balance issues stem from a variety of issues, but the single greatest issue is the tremendous reliance you'll place on luck to carry you through missions. In games like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics, hit percentages will be in the 80-90% zone for most abilities and attacks, making your choices more about ensuring that you're not venturing out too far for kills and control of more territory. In Kingdom Battle, however, your hit rates will either be 0%, 50%, or 100%, depending on your position and the amount of cover your opponent has. This is compounded by the fact that each weapon has a random chance of triggering a game-changing status effect on your opponents, and some of these random chances are as low as 30%! Unfortunately, triggering these status effects proves essential to clearing some of the missions, so you're really just rolling the dice on these sometimes, which seems inimical to the "tactical" nature of the genre. I tried a mission, got wiped, tried again and got a bit luckier with status effects, and basically cleared the impossible mission unscathed. There are ways to rig the scales in your favor, but most of these are later in the game when you've more fully developed your characters, and some players may quit in frustration before that point (I know my kids did).

There is plenty of fun to be had here, though, and the good far outweighs the bad. The game gives you a tremendous amount of control over customizing your characters actions in comparison to some of their more traditional tactical RPG cousins, and that opens wide ranges of gameplay options that you just can't find in the competition. For example, in a game like Fire Emblem, each character gets a distinct turn with a movement first and then an action (attack or an ability). Attack first, and you can't move, and if you move out of attack range, you can't attack! In Mario Rabbids, each character gets a "turn" that can be ordered in any way you want. Want to unleash your ability and then run away? Feel free! Want to move and then attack? Go ahead! Want to move, attack, and use an ability in a single turn? Go hog wild! Perhaps more impressively than this is the back and forth nature of the tactics, which allows you to go back and forth between character actions to create the perfect strategy. To give an example, you can move Luigi into a sniping position and trigger his ability, which will cause him to fire a shot at an enemy as soon as they move into view. Then, you can have Mario fire his weapon, which has a 50% chance of bouncing an enemy into the air. Upon that successful bounce, Luigi will automatically fire at the bouncing enemy. Upon the enemy landing, Luigi (who still has not technically used his "attack" command, can now attack them at will, despite the fact that he's already moved and used an ability, and someone else has already taken some actions of their own. This opens up a huge world of strategic interactions and gameplay that allows you to totally customize your experience and play style to your liking.

The character development system is a little shallow, but still fun. You have an upgrade tree that requires you to purchase new skills using orbs unlocked from winning battles, and these skills can get pretty outrageous, at times. For example, Luigi's skill that has him automatically firing at moving enemies can be upgraded so that it will trigger two, or even three times following its activation! The game also allows you to re-spec your skill tree whenever you want, allowing you to experiment with different builds and strategies, depending on the level. It does get a bit tiring needing to respect after basically every level (yes, this is mostly necessary), but having the option to do so is a nice touch. There are only about 15 different skills, however, so you'll mostly just be upgrading these to higher levels. It's not as deep as a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, but the depth of the tactical gameplay makes up for it.

The game's graphics are really nice, with a good merging of the Rabbids and Mario universes into one cohesive style. As you move through the world, you'll find artifacts of the Rabbids world strewn throughout the Mushroom Kingdom, and witness the contentious Rabbids squabbling with each other off to the side.

The music is...ok. It is immediately recognizable as a Grant Kirkhope effort (famous for Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64), and there are touches of nostalgia here and there for fans of those classic games. But they just hue too closely to the themes and approaches from these games to be novel, and boy do I hope you like to hear the same instruments arranged for the same purposes as in his previous work.

On the whole, I very much enjoyed this game. There are a few areas that need some improvement, but it's a great deal of fun set in a colorful and imaginative universe, and it's really a must own for Switch owners who are fans of the genre. I'll give it an 8.9/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is another run through a sports title, so stay tuned! Here's a teaser...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 156): Ratchet and Clank

I began Ratchet and Clank around last Christmas, and was very close to beating it in January when disaster struck. My laser on my PS2 went out. Despite all the cleaning I could do, I just couldn't get this game to load up (or any game, for that matter). Couple that with an insane market for PS2 stuff when COVID hits, and I was simply stuck. But I got extremely lucky to find a working PS2 Slim for $10 on OfferUp in July, so I finally had a PS2 again and was back in business.

I had never played any Ratchet and Clank games before this one, so I didn't know quite what to expect. The story is a time honored tale of greedy capitalists exploiting the planet for their own profit, the type that can only be told by for profit corporations developing TV hows, movies, and video games. There's nothing particularly memorable about it, despite it's typical early 2000's attempts at humor that appeal primarily to teenage boys. There's nothing wrong with that, but it definitely struck 33 year old me as a bit cheesy.

The controls and gameplay here are actually very good. It's a mid generation game for the PS2, and they had clearly learned some lessons from other games on the console that had already been released. Much like Insomniac's previous Playstation property Spyro, the game is a 3D platformer that has you exploring open 3D environments and collecting tons of stuff. Unlike it's peers, Ratchet has a significant number of weapons you can select and use, opening up a wide world of possible options in combat. Some of these aren't particularly useful, but there's enough diversity and quality here that you can tackle situations with a variety of strategies that keeps game play fresh and interesting. There are some situations that are more frustrating than fun, however, as 3D platforming has always been a little sticky in terms of communicating depth and distance to the player on a flat TV screen. The camera is also a little wonky at times, but is not noticeably worse than its peers. 

The game still looks very good today, which is an achievement for a title that's nearly 20 years old and is rendered in 3D! The cartoony art style helps, as does the extra few years of experience learning about tips and tricks to get the most out of the PS2.

The music is not noticeably good or bad. You'll get the typical range of environmentally influenced themes here depending on your biome, but there's nothing to really discuss.

Ratchet and Clank is a fun game, but not particularly memorable. It'll distract you for an hour at a time, and you'll enjoy it, but it's not a classic for the console. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

I teased the wrong game last time, so check my Tekken 7 review for the teaser!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 155): Tekken 7

 

Tekken 7 is the newest edition in the long-running 3D fighter series. The series is a personal favorite of mine, starting with some epic showdowns in Tekken 2 on my friend's Playstation. Tekken 3 solidified the series for me as an all-time classic, but I honestly fell off a bit after that. I got into RPGs and retro platformers, and my fighting game time was most spent on 2D fighters like Super Smash Bros. and Street Fighter. But I always intended to get a copy of Tekken 7 and try it out, and Amazon had a really cheap price on it a few months back, so I jumped on it and went to work.

At it's core, 7 feels like Tekken, but there are certainly some substantial editions. Tekken has finally jumped on the "meter" bandwagon so popular with just about every fighter out there, which allows fighters to build up a power meter that they can spend to unleash moves that are more powerful than usual. This feels a bit cheap and hackneyed, as I felt that Tekken was significantly different from its 2D peers to give a unique experience. It also suffers from the fact that the super moves are a bit more muted than its more colorful 2D cousins, so they don't pop in quite the same way. Tekken, and other 3D fighters, have always leaned far more towards the "realistic" side of fighting, with the ability to manuever more freely, and reduced numbers of fireballs and magical effects for everyone. Tekken is certainly more experimental than its 3D peers like Dead or Alive or Soul Calibur, but its grounded in a way that Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, and Marvel v. Whoever are not.

But the fighting system is still strong, and the vast majority of your favorite characters are back again, so it's hard to complain too much. The game also looks better than ever, with smooth animations and delightful character models.

The single player story mode is ok, but not quite as fun as a game like Mortal Kombat XL. There are plenty of modes to play in, so you won't be lacking for things to do.

The online multiplayer is actually very good, with very little lag. I played far more online multiplayer than is typical for me with games, and enjoyed it a ton.

This is a fine adaptation of Tekken, but there's nothing really special about it that makes it stand out from the previous 6 (plus tag spin-offs). If you like Tekken, you'll like this game. If you've never played it, it's super fun and easy to start, but extremely difficult to master, so give it a shot! I'll give it an 8.8/10.

The next game up in What I'm Playing is teased below. Check back soon!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 154): Gran Turismo Sport

 

Sorry for the long break, faithful reader! I have been working on another (paid!!!) video game reviewing project, and as such this blog has suffered. But I have several finished games in the can, and hope to catch up a bit in the next few weeks. On to the review!

Gran Turismo 3 was the second game I bought for my shiny new PS2 (after Marvel v. Capcom). When you're young, and you have very little money, you play games to death and Gran Turismo 3 was my most-played PS2 game for a very long time. I still remember every curve to every track in that game, and despite the fact that I'm not really a car guy, I greatly appreciated the love for cars that oozed out of every pore of that game.

Cut to 2020, and I was feeling a brand new Gran Turismo experience, facilitated by a delightful 9.99 deal for the reasonably new Gran Turismo Sport on Amazon. Sport is considerably different than the other Gran Turismo games, as it's focused primarily on online multiplayer. This is probably a smart decision for the developers, as online multiplayer is the feature that gets people to stick to a game, engage in microtransactions, and, perhaps most importantly, berate their friends until they're playing it, too. Gran Turismo is a smart choice for online multiplayer as well, given the lack of organized esports for racing games in general, the ease of adapting a racing game to a professionalized online sports experience, and the success of other sports simulation games in the same arena (NBA 2K, FIFA, Madden, etc.). The other big change up for Sport is its focus on VR. I don't have Playstation VR, but boy would I like to try this game in VR. It's astonishingly lifelike and beautiful, and I don't know if there's a genre of game with more ability to mimic real life than racing simulations. Give a man a steering wheel, a chair, a copy of Gran Turismo, a headset, and it really would feel like driving an actual car.

Much of the criticism of the game when it came out was for the lack of a serious single player campaign, for which Gran Turismo is well known. This is pretty fair, and is the primary reason why I didn't buy it when it came out. It's not that hard to slap together 50 cups composed of courses you've already developed with cars you've already included, and I think not including a mode like this was a mistake. Following the release, however, they have added this feature in, improving the game's accessibility to a wider range of players, and giving novices the ability to hone their skills before jumping into the online modes. However, slapping a single player mode in the game makes you realize why they didn't do it at first-the game's economy just isn't built for single player.

The old Gran Turismo experience had you starting the game with a beater on simple cups, building up funds to get the car you need for the next cup or earning that car as a reward for clearing cups, and upgrading your cars along the way. Sport features an economy that will be familiar to those who've played primarily online experiences recently-daily login bonuses of cars for those who drive a certain number of miles. What's more, these cars are randomly selected, and apparently done so without the slightest consideration of the player's level. Very early on, I received a $1,000,000 car as a random reward, something that would have been unthinkable in the older games. What's more, there are no longer any specific rewards for completing a cup, likely due to the fact that the existing system is already very generous.

All of this combines to create a game in which you're heavily at the mercy of RNG for which cups to do next, the shop is far less important than it's ever been, and you miss out on the periodic boost of endorphins that comes with finishing a cup. Add to that the fact that the vehicle upgrading system has been significantly simplified to accommodate new players, and you have a single player Gran Turismo experience that feels disjointed and out of sorts compared to its predecessors.

With all that being said, the game is still extremely fun. The engine, as you'd expect, is tremendous. The game is beyond beautiful. There are tons of courses to race on, and the online experience is excellent and generally devoid of the rancor and bullying you'll occasionally find in other games. There's a huge selection of cars for any fan, although the persistent online experience has had some licenses lapse, removing certain cars from the shop. But, they add new ones as well, so this is probably a wash, in total.

This is an excellent racing game, but it left me wanting a more traditional Gran Turismo experience. The game is designed for an excellent online and VR experience, and it delivers on both (I'm having to trust other reviewers on the VR experience). The single player mode is clearly patched in as best they could, but leaves a lot to be desired. I'll give Sport a 8.5/10.

I've already teased my next game to be reTROviewed here, so stay tuned!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 153): Dr. Mario 64

Dr. Mario 64 is a puzzle game released for the N64 in 2001. Developed by Nintendo, it is an enhanced remake of Dr. Mario, one of my all-time favorite NES games (I ranked it 8th on my list of top ten NES games). So, what does this one add, compared to it's classic progenitor?

First, most importantly, and by far best, Dr. Mario 64 uses the native four controller ports on the N64 (a greatly underappreciated feature) to allow four players to play Dr. Mario at once. In a day and age where we can now have 99 players playing Tetris against each other, this could seem pretty underwhelming. But in 2001, the opportunity to play a really good puzzle game with several players is awesome, and we still use this version in my house today. It used to be the case that we'd have entire mornings of playing Dr. Mario on the NES in my house, but with only two players, there's a lot of downtime and controller passing involved. This game allows you to have four at once, which is a really nice feature.

Other than that, it's pretty much just Dr. Mario (nothing wrong with that). There are some new music tracks, new backgrounds for your play field, and characters you can pick from (these are entirely aesthetic). There's a story mode that will be familiar to those of you who have played the story mode in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, in which you play a series of games against increasingly challenging AI opponents. There's a tiny story here, but for the most part, it simply lets you feel a sense of progression and challenge against tougher opponents, and an endorphin rush when you beat the game. There are a few other ways you can play Dr. Mario as well, but for the most part these are gimmicks that will distract you for a round or two, only to return to the classic action.

The music is really good, featuring arrangements of the songs from the original as well as some original tracks. The arrangements are nice, although you'll probably, like me, end up listening to "Fever" over and over again. You can't really improve on it that much!

The graphics are nice, and are a good adaptation of the classic game. There's some Paper Mario-ish character illustrations of the main characters that will react when you do good plays, win, or lose, but this is, again, just garnish on the original game.

This is a game that would be very thin as a single player experience, and is absolutely geared towards party fun. It has all of the advantages of the original Dr. Mario, including the opportunity to handicap players according to their ability, and it's a great time with multiple players. I can't help but feel that I should have gotten more out of this, but I'm also grateful for the chance to play Dr. Mario with my wife and two of my many, many kids. I'll give this game an 8.8/10. If you like Dr. Mario, and have several people with whom you like to play, this is a must-buy.

Up next is a game I'd been looking forward to for a long time, and have already finished. Check back soon (?) for a review!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 152): Mario Tennis

Despite my love of Mario Golf, I've actually spent precious little time with the tennis side of the Mario sports universe. I love Mario Tennis: Power Tour for the Game Boy Advance, but my experience with Mario Tennis on home console basically consists of getting slaughtered by my cousin at his house, turning it off, and going back to playing Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64. But, I was feeling some Mario sports action, and figured that if I was going to play one, I should go back to the beginning, rather than jumping into Power Tennis or Ultra Smash. 

Mario Tennis is a Tennis game that mostly shies away from some of the more arcade-like additions in the Game Boy Advance game, preferring a more simulation style to the gameplay. No flaming or tornadic tennis balls here! You can hit several different kinds of shots with two buttons, depending on the order you press them. You can hit lobs, drop shots, top spin, back spin, and smashes, and even a beginner will be able to be playing competently in minutes. As with real tennis, the big advantage that you get is if you can set your feet a bit, drive through the ball, and strike with power and control. So the game is basically trying to keep your opponent on the move by sending the ball as far away as possible, making them hit weaker returns, while you gradually grab the advantage. It feels like real tennis, which is the main hallmark of why these Mario sports games are so very successful.

Unfortunately, this is a really thin game, single player wise. They put time and effort in making sure that the tennis engine was right, but there isn't a ton else to do in this game besides play standard games of tennis. You have a set of three tournaments which increase in difficulty, but you can easily clear all of these within an hour. There are very few unlockable characters, and they are really easy to get. You also have your standard ring attack mode (like in Golf), and can play in singles or double. Weirdly, the doubles tournament mode cannot be played coop with a friend. In comparison to Golf, which had several modes and (most importantly) multiple distinct courses, this is a pretty basic game. While the comparison to Golf is a little unfair (there's only so much you can do with a tennis court), the comparisons to the handheld Mario Tennis from the same era are more damning. In Power Tour and Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color) have long and rewarding RPG modes in which you train up your character through the ranks to become the best in the world. They basically have the same physics, too, so there's really no reason that they couldn't have included some more depth on the single player side in the 64 version. 

Playing, with friends, however, is far more fun. You can play in doubles matches against the computer, there are plenty of different characters with different play styles available, and head to head tennis is just more fun against a real human than it is against a CPU. The game uses the 64's native 4 controller ports well, offering a lot of party fun for a console that is well known for it. This is where the deep and well-tuned game play pay off, but I can't help but feel that there was more that could have been done with this game. 

Graphically, the game looks nice. It's an N64 game, so don't expect too much. But the courts and characters are brightly colored and charming, and the game runs very smoothly.

The music is your typical late '90s early 2000s Camelot game, composed by Saturaba. It's not as good as the music in any of the Mario Golf games, but it's solid.

All in all, I was left a bit dissatisfied by my experience here, but if the game did not have the word "Mario" in the title, I think I would have been more appreciative of what they've accomplished, so I have to try to be fair. They made a game that was explicitly intended to be accessible to a wide group of people, playable with multiple friends, and that feels like tennis. They accomplished all of these goals. I just wish that they had gone just a bit farther with those goals, as this could have been a really tremendous game, much like Power Tour. But they what they delivered is good, so I'll give this game a 8.3/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I picked up in a lot a while back and had been meaning to give a try for a while. Check back in soon for my next review! Teaser below:

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 151): Batman: Arkham Origins

TRO is back at it again with yet another Batman game! I still don't know what took me so long to try these out...

Batman: Arkham Origins is the third game in the Arkham series, although Origins, true to its name, comes first in the timeline. Origins has all of the hallmarks of a game that is destined to fail. It's a third game in a series that came very quickly after the first and second (2009 to 2013), it's the biggest game of all of them in terms of geography, development was handled by a studio different than the previous two, the writing staff changed, the voice actors changed, they added a multiplayer feature, etc. ad nauseam. There are a lot of areas for this one to disappoint, and so I was looking forward to this one least of all.

So how did it actually stack up, once I experienced it? The gameplay is still remarkably similar to the gameplay in City, with an open world for you to explore (Gotham City this time, rather than Arkham City), enemies everywhere to defeat, missions to complete, more minor crimes to investigate, and a sinister plot that threatens the future for all of Gotham City's innocent citizens. The plot basically begins with the idea that Black Mask (Roman Sionis) has placed a huge bounty on Batman's head, and hired the best assassins in the world to carry out the hit. For various reasons, this plot point didn't remain the central idea, but I don't want to spoil it. It was actually ok, but it wasn't the most convincing plot twist I've seen.

The world you explore just doesn't seem quite as delightful as the one in City. You now have a fast travel feature, which is nice, but the actual city is poorly designed and uninteresting. Some of the textures look PS2-esque, and the snow in particular is just a flat white carpet that coats everything. I kind of wonder if they set the story at Christmas just so they didn't have to use more detailed textures. There are also a lot of technical problems with the game in comparison to the smoothness of the other two. There are times when you'll get "stuck" upon going  to a new area, and it will take a while to load. There's also a lot of slowdown and lag at certain parts of the game than there was in the previous two. It's pretty clear that this was a different team programming the game, and they weren't able to optimize it quite as well as the original studio. The levels are also not quite as fun to return to, with only a handful of secrets riddled throughout once you obtain all of Batman's technology.

Combat is still an absolute blast, and is the main reason that I was ready to dive back into a third Batman game. The animations are basically identical to City, but it was so good then that it's hard to complain. The boss fights, however, were much superior to those in either of the two earlier games.

Batman's progression system is a delight in this game, and is more detailed and fun than in the previous games. His progression seems more impactful here, and you can unlock additional upgrades by progressing through different achievement lists in the game. This encourages you to play around more with all of Batman's abilities, and creates a more convincing narrative reason why Batman should be advancing in skills throughout the game.

The writing, which I was nervous about, is actually excellent. The game definitely leans in to the age old Batman tension of "is this psychopath actually making things better"? Of course, as usual, the answer is yes. But interactions with Joker, Anarky, and James Gordon in particular will really make you question the effectiveness of Batman's interventions into the world of Gotham City. This narrative trend also works due to the brutality of Batman's fighting, feature arm and leg snapping, frequent taunts about whether or not a criminal will ever walk again or need to be fed through a tube, etc. The voice acting is also quite good, despite featuring an all-new cast.

The secrets in this game aren't quite as clever as City, but I didn't mind that. There's something fun about collecting all of the trophies, and if it's too hard, it's not fun anymore. There were also way too many in City, so I actually got all of them this time. There's also a more serious narrative journey attached to these trophies, as they're now encrypted datapacks containing extortion files for Gotham's residents. This was a really nice change.

The music in the game was just fine. It's your typical Batman music, and I enjoyed it.

While I was expecting to be disappointed by this game, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not a great game in the same vein of the earlier two, but it actually improves on a handful of things despite wacky technical issues. For a game that could have failed so mightily, it was impressive that they were able to turn in such a high-quality product. I'll give it an 8.5/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a quick little jaunt through a game that was far quicker to beat than I expected. Tune in next time!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 150): Star Wars Episode 1: Racer

If I had been carefully preparing for my 150th edition of What I'm Playing, I would have prepared a special review for this moment for my faithful reader. But alas, I simply followed the stirrings of passion and selected a game in a genre I have been feeling lately, and the result is that the 150th review here is Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, a game about which video game historians largely shrug. 

150 games is a big milestone for me. The reason I love this blog isn't because of the traffic that it gets (not much), but because of the memorializing of my dedication, 4 years back, to tackle my backlog and track my opinions of a wide range of video game history. There have been many effects from this. My League of Legends career has taken a nosedive. My skills at a wide range of video game genres, but particularly 2D platformers, have increased tremendously. I know a whole lot more about a ton of games and series that I had never had the time nor inclination to complete before. And I know more accurately how far I still have to go to experience many of the big tentpoles in video game history that I have not yet touched. And while my backlog hasn't actually shrunk (I don't think) due to my ever expanding collection of physical and digital games, I have actually completed a metric ton worth of video games, most of them of good to great quality. According to the tool I use to track this kind of thing, I have now completed 367 video games in my life, so about half of those have been finished in the last 4 years, and that's an under-counting. I took a long break from blogging during a crazy time in my life, even though I was still completing games in that time. I completed and reviewed a bunch of games under different names, like my Pi Reviews. Through it all, I absolutely enjoy video games more than I did when I started, and that's saying something! So I am grateful to this blog for entirely selfish reasons, and hope that someday more readers may find joy in the games that I've highlighted here, or enjoy my writing at least. Anyway, enough reTROspective!

Star Wars Episode 1: Racer is a game that I had when I was a teenager, and I always enjoyed it. But I would always get stonewalled halfway through the second cup, when my podracer simply wasn't good enough to win anymore, and I could no longer win any credits from earlier races. This was still early internet time, for me at least, and I don't think I ever thought to look it strategies for completion. I just took it as a game that was too hard for me, and retired it.

Revisiting it as an adult, however, with the resources of the internet and my increased wisdom, I was finally able to complete the game. The key to understanding the mechanics of the game actually come from the basic theme of the podracer section in the movie on which it is based, and if you just treat the game like it's Gran Turismo, you are bound to fail.

Racer has a lot of good qualities, but the best quality it has is how excellently they translated the film's tone and character into a video game. The film tells a story of a young boy involved in a high stakes and lethal sport, completely out of his league due to his biology but given an edge by a mystical force beyond his control. This sport is one in which the vehicles driven are constructed flimsily out of desperation and cast-off parts. It's a battle in which there is no affluence, and so your guts and mechanical jury rigging ability matter far more than skill or finesse.

Racer creates a unique upgrading environment in that there are a lot of parts available, but only a limited amount of money you can earn. Each race will pay off once, and one time only. You can't just grind the same races over and over again to get more money. What's more, the parts you purchase will become damaged over time, so if you upgrade too many parts too quickly, you'll wind up with a rotting podracer around you, depreciating in quality over time without any money with which to upgrade. The key to playing the game is, thus, to understand that it takes place in a universe of scarcity, and to act appropriately.

The basic way this is done is by buying used, damaged parts, and sticking entirely to parts within a few classifications. You can buy droids that will repair your ship, but you can only have four of them. As such, the wisest thing to do would be to select four categories to upgrade on your ship, have the droids constantly maintain those, and realize that your racer will just suck at everything else. It's better than having it suck at everything, after all, and that's the reality you'll face if you try to build a pod that's fully upgraded in every area.

The downside to all of this is that without the internet, I don't think I ever would have figured this out. Maybe it's in the manual. I don't know.  But the game gives you very little inclination of what anything does in the game, and it's impossible to assign your pit droids to particular parts or to even have any idea what pit droids do. Discovering this magical strategy took research on my part, and that's never fun.

Even with this strategy, it's still brutally difficult to control these stinking podracers. I know that's part of the messaging of the film, but it feels too difficult. I had maxed out steering with the character with the highest steering, and I was still smash into walls on the most tame of turns, necessitating my coming to a complete stop to navigate turns. In the end, I compromised by just slowing down by laying of the gas, and rubbing my way along the outside of the turns until my craft was finally too damaged to continue, at which point I'd smash the thing and get a fresh one. They created a mechanism by which you can repair damaged parts during a race, but it slows you down like crazy, and my experience was that it was better to maintain high speed until you smash rather than slowing down constantly to fix all of the damage. Your ability to get your top speed WAY higher than any other racer also encourages this strategy, as it's really easy to catch up on a straightaway, even if you crashed too many times and have fallen behind a few places.

The selection of tracks is pretty disappointing. There are a lot of retreads with sections that are different from their previous incarnation, much like a game like F-Zero. But I think they could have done a lot better than they did.

The music is generally good, with excerpts from the film. You can't complain about John Williams, even if it is a little emotionally manipulative and repetitive at times.

Graphically, the game looks nice, even today. They did a great job of translating the high speed action of podracing to the N64, and there's no slowdown to speak of. You'll get to explore plenty of other planets as well, and each has its own unique look and feel to it. There are some textures that look cheap and super polygonal, particularly the plants, but compared to its peers this is a fine graphical effort.  

With a little better communication of core mechanics in game, this game had a chance to be really excellent. But the ludicrous incentives of the game cause it to be less fun than a racer that rewards skill and punishes high speed insanity, and this one definitely encourages the latter. It's good, solid fun with some really creative ideas behind it. But a few flaws keep it from becoming an excellent game, and instead, it's just another N64 racing game. I'll give it a 7.8/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is yet another Batman game. I have a problem.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 149): Pikmin

Pikmin is a real time strategy game developed by Nintendo and released for the GameCube in 2001. My first exposure to this game was when I borrowed my friend's Cube and the game for one day in the summer. He promptly, as was my experience with borrowing things, asked for it back, so I wasn't able to get too far in it then. I also tried playing it through with my son when he first moved in with us, but wasn't able to get too far before I was a little frustrated and he was very frustrated, so we made our amiable peace with not finishing it and went back to playing Lego Batman (or something of that ilk). However, with a substantial chunk of my backlog cleared and a free CRT ready to go after yet another play through of Link to the Past, I was ready to dive back into my old foe and give it a go.

You control Captain Olimar, some sort of space explorer. His rocket is struck by a meteor and crashes on an alien planet with a toxic atmosphere and all kinds of hazardous life forms. He is able to befriend one of the species of life on the planet, however, the plant like and innocent Pikmin. These chaps are the lowest item on the food chain and are desperately looking for a leader to help them access their untapped potential and be able to do more against the more physically imposing fauna on the planet. They are also good at destroying obstacles that stand between you and your ship's parts that are inconveniently strewn around the island, and also at carrying those parts back to your ship to get it in a state of repair that will allow you to escape the planet and reunite with your wife and children.

The game is split into thirty days (they're about a half hour long in real time). There are 30 missing parts necessary to restore the ship to full function, and the more you get, the better your ending is. So, you need to shoot for about 1/day in order to get the ship back fully in order. You can order your Pikmin around and have them attack enemies, throw them across gaps, and leave them to complete tasks while you take a separate team of Pikmin to another area of the level. There are three types of Pikmin, each with their own special sets of abilities that will allow you to solve all of the different puzzles and hazards on the island. You can grow more Pikmin by bringing food back to their bases, and managing how many of each kind you have available to you will be critical to being able to restore your ship to full function.

The gameplay is very fun and engaging, with clever puzzles that will make you think (but not too hard). The controls can be a bit wonky at times, and the Pikmin can be extremely stupid, both of which are frustrations. You can control 100 Pikmin at once, but being able to select that one kind you want for solving a given puzzle is the biggest frustration in the game, particularly during the boss fights. You'll end up losing hundreds of Pikmin, if you're anything like me, just fighting controls and having them get squashed, eaten, drowned, or lit on fire by some monstrous beast. There is absolutely a degree of difficulty modifier that Nintendo gets here, though. RTS games are intended for PC, or at least for consoles with mouse support. There is absolutely no qualifier for that statement. When you consider that fact, Pikmin looks reasonably good compared to competitors in the same genre on console. The C-stick is used to good effect to control them en masse, and the game is generous in the amount of food you're given to grow more, so prepare for a Pikmin holocaust (over 800 died during my 30 days on the planet). You can also just take out whatever kind you need for a given puzzle so that none of them are out of place, but that seems like an inefficient solution, particularly when some challenges require the use of multiple kinds of Pikmin. All in all, the controls are clunky and you'll fight them, but they did enough to put an acceptable RTS interface onto a console, and that is definitely an achievement.

The game is remarkably effective at storytelling, using only brief journal entries between levels and the unspoken narrative of existence on the planet as storytelling tools. You will genuinely begin to care about your Pikmin apart from the value that they provide to you. They sprint to you excitedly and squeak happily when you call them down out of the base. They easily become distracted and you must gather them all together again to keep them on track. You feel awful when they are harmed or killed during your adventures, and feel a real moral quandary about sacrificing their happiness for a greater mission. And at the end, you can see that all of the heartache, toil, sacrifice and loss were worth it in the growth of your little ones from defenseless victims to seasoned adults capable of defending themselves against the dangers of a vicious planet. It's a twisted kind of metaphor about parenting, and the kind of story that can be told more effectively by experience, rather than by dialogue, lending itself well to the video game format.

The music is charming and delightful. It's more of an ambient background amidst the relentless action of the game, but it does its job effectively.

Technically speaking, the game is excellent. Despite controlling 100 Pikmin at once, there is absolutely 0 slowdown. The game still looks nice, using its cartoony art direction to give it a timelessness that other games of the era lack. The maps are very large, and you have several of them to explore.

All in all, this is an excellent concept that really belonged on PC. The controls will absolutely frustrate you, and there is no way around that. But if you come with an open mind and an appreciation for what console RTS ports looked like before this, I think that you will find a charming, fun, and original game that tells a rich and vibrant story. I'll give it an 8.8/10.

I have finished SO many games in the last week it's crazy. Here's a teaser for the game that's coming up next...

-TRO 

What I'm Playing (Volume 148): Mega Man 11

Mega Man 11 is the latest in the Mega Man series, which the long time reader of this blog will know is one of my personal favorites. It's quite different in form from Mega Man 9 and 10, which both went back to an NES-style presentation. This one looks more similar to Mega Man 8 in it's 2.5d style.

The look itself is actually really nice. They gave some great detail to all of the characters, and despite the facelift, it still looks noticeably like a Mega Man game. They used the opportunities afforded to them with greater technology to improve some of the visuals significantly. My favorite of these changes is the new and distinct looks that Mega Man will get when he swaps Robot Master powers. These are no longer simple palette swaps that change his colors and nothing else. The Blue Bomber can now have crazy head gear and alterations to his cannon with each form, and some of these are really great. Fuse Man's power is my personal favorite...

Anyway, the game controls and plays really nicely. It feels like a Mega Man game in its controls, and that's all anyone was asking for. They've included a new system in the game called the Double Gear, controlled with the shoulder buttons. Mega Man now has a meter that gradually recharges over time and which allows him to either slow down time (I used this one way more frequently than the other one) or power up his attacks considerably. This power was very easy to forget about, save for in really tough situations in which it became apparent it was needed. It felt like it was available a bit too often to be balanced, so a player could easily be spamming the power throughout the level if they weren't used to a more traditional Mega Man experience like myself. The best parts of the Double Gear system were the level design choices that clearly expected you to utilize this power, but those are largely few and far between. This is mostly window dressing on an existing formula, rather than a drastic sea change.

The level design here is very good, and feels like an authentic Mega Man experience. It never quite gets to the point of the true classics (2, 3, X), but it's really good. The levels, though, feel pretty thin, especially in comparison to some of the newer Mega Man games. There are literally 0 secrets within the levels, which is one of the best new innovations to come to the series. So, without secrets, how does Mega Man develop (aside from gaining new Robot Master powers)?

There's an in-game shop present that allows you to buy E-tanks, extra lives, weapon energy tanks, and upgrades for Mega Man. Unfortunately, the economy for these upgrades is all kinds of screwed up. You can get hundreds of the currency every level, and each upgrade is super cheap. The upgrades are very impactful, too, which makes your progression feel cheaper than it ought to. What's more, there are certain days in which items go "on sale", making them even cheaper than normal. It feels like this happens every other day, too, although I can't confirm that for sure. As a result, the difficulty of the game is abnormally reduced by the presence of all of the lives and E-tanks you could ever want, and the game never really feels difficult as a result.

I didn't really notice the music at all, to be honest. Mega Man's sounds, and the sounds of his enemies, are much higher in the mix than any of the music, so most of it drones on in the background. This is really disappointing, as the music in the Mega Man games is really what separates them from some of their competitors.

The pace of the game is really good, and I'm very grateful that they didn't try to pack in a bunch of extra content for the sake of content. It's about the length you'd expect from a Mega Man game, so a skilled player can easily complete it in under an hour and a half without rushing.  My first run probably took me 3 hours or so. They do include a lot of fun content in the extras, with some speedrunning and boss rush challenges that are very fun.

On the whole, this is a quality Mega Man experience, continuing a line of quality that has been unbroken in the classic Mega Man line (I have never reviewed a classic Mega Man game lower than an 8.0/10). It's very fun, despite a disappointing soundtrack and a broken economy. I'd definitely recommend it to any fans of the Blue Bomber, and hope Capcom can continue to give us solid Mega Man titles for years to come. I'll give it an 8.1/10.

Up next is a title that has been in the queue for years, so I'll be very glad to add it to the "completed" column in my spreadsheet. Check back in a week or so for a reTROview!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 147): Paper Mario

Paper Mario is a turn-based RPG for the Nintendo 64, and one of the few RPGs, period, that released for that console. It was developed by Intelligent Systems, longtime Nintendo collaborators best known for their work on the Fire Emblem series. The game follows Mario's attempts to rescue Princess Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom itself from the tyrannical reign of, you guessed it, Bowser! Can't these people ever come up with another plot?

The combat is similar to that in Super Mario RPG, albeit with a different view perspective. While Mario RPG uses an isometric faux-3D style, Paper Mario's view is from the side and mimics the look of a 2D platformer, more similar to the style seen in Mario & Luigi. You have the chance to time buttons and inputs correctly to increase your damage on your attacks, or reduce it on the enemy's attacks. You also have flower points that can be used to attempt more powerful special attacks, and a new resource that allows you to tap into the various star powers you'll learn along the way. The combat is slightly more fun than in Super Mario RPG, in that you have more ways of increasing damage than just pressing A at the right time, but not quite as fun as the highly interactive and engaging system in Mario & Luigi, particularly defensively. There's a really nice system of attacking types that you'll need to use strategically to defeat the various enemies that will keep you thinking and needing to swap in and out your various allies. So, for an enemy with spikes on it, you won't want to use your jumping attacks, but for your shelled enemies, you will.

The game's plot and story are extremely simple and predictable, but pleasing nonetheless. You'll get the beats you expect, and you'll enjoy them just like I did. The highlight of the game, from a writing standpoint, is the great cast of supporting characters you'll attain throughout your journey. These are, in keeping with the tradition of having Bowser in your team in Mario RPG, all representatives of the typical bad guy races in the Mario universe. You'll get a Goomba, a Boo, a Koopa, a Parakoopa, and more. All of them are super cute and have their own uses in battle, so you'll end up using all of them at least a handful of times throughout the game. You can have one ally active at once, which keeps combat simple. Each character also has their own uses outside of battle that you can use to solve the various puzzles separating Mario from his beloved princess. Someday he'll get off the hook and she'll make him an honest man!

The puzzles are simple and fun, and are definitely designed for a player who is new to the RPG genre, which is exactly how this entire game is designed. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems absolutely wanted to make a game to introduce RPG mechanics to RPG neophytes, and you can tell. Everything is as simple as possible, and it's a nice entry point for those unfamiliar with the genre, but who already know a bit about Mario.

The character building and progression system is pretty weak, and is one of my biggest complaints with the game. You can equip badges on Mario, but can't really adjust anything about your allies, aside from two big chunk "level ups" that you find throughout the game for each of them. These badges are pretty pedestrian. Most are special attacks that underwhelm, or little perks that underwhelm, or bigger perks that are way too expensive. There's very little you can do to make Mario feel different between playthroughs, which drastically reduces the replay value of this game compared to other RPGs. There's also a lot less role playing, which intrinsically reduces the fun of the game for me, for whom character development means a ton. All of this can be forgiven due to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems branding of this game as a starter RPG, but what I find more difficult to forgive is the throttling of leveling up.

Like some other games the experience you get from each enemy is affected not only by the strength of that enemy, but also by your overall level. You need 100 experience to level up, and each enemy will contribute a small chunk when you defeat them. A simple koopa, defeated while you are level 1, will grant (just a hypothetical) 2 experience, but if you level up to level 2, you only get 1 experience from that. Worst of all, if you are level 3, you'll get 0 experience (you should never, ever, get 0 experience for defeating an enemy). All of this serves to give you a functional, if not technical, level cap for each part of the game until you can venture to new worlds and find stronger enemies that will actually give you experience to continue your development.

Part of the fun of RPGs to me is the ability you have to grind to feel extremely powerful. Games with heavy grind systems with huge payoffs and lots of customization in character development (Bravely Default, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy V, etc.) are far more rewarding to me than a simpler RPG, particularly when you have level caps like this. Level caps in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics actually don't bother me overly much because they serve a purpose in game (encouraging you to try to level up your weaker characters rather than only relying on stronger ones) and because there are actually ways in which you can be building and developing your characters even when they're at their level cap (i.e. jobs systems). But Paper Mario totally lacks the ability to develop your characters at all aside from the simple level up system and the gear you'll obtain along the way just by completing the story, and so the level cap here just serves as a means to control the difficulty curve, which to me subverts the very nature of the RPG itself as an art form. At least in simpler games like Dragon Quest you can grind away at a wall you've hit, but here the only answer is to better craft your strategy.

The visuals in this game are excellent, and are some of the most delightful on the N64. Intelligent Systems did a great job of creating an iconic look that aged really well, and there are plenty of little delightful paper-themed winks to the player, such as when Mario slides easily under the covers when he's resting. Paper Mario also takes a significant number of design cues from Super Mario Bros. 3, including the sprite work, curtains on the main title screen, star rods, etc. These cues are really nice and make Paper Mario feel like it has a connection to the broader Mario universe.

The music here is good. There's nothing that will particularly get stuck in your head, but there are plenty of solid tracks.

The length of the game isn't too long, and is a real breath of fresh air to those tired of massive RPGs (me). There's very little fluff here, and the game will easily be over in 25 hours, even if you take your time.

All in all, Paper Mario is a quality game, and the best RPG on the N64 by a mile. I can't help wondering, though, how much better this game would have been with a few different choices. There's absolutely nothing about this game that's better than Mario & Luigi, and it does enough worse than Super Mario RPG (which came out four years earlier) that I really just feel let down by the game, particularly by the character progression system. This game is worth owning and playing, and would be solid for a child getting into RPGs for the first time or a true Mario fan, but not better than some other entry-level RPGs like Pokemon. I'll give it an 8.0/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I'll tease below. See you soon!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volumes 145 & 146): Metal Slug 2 & Metal Slug X

I almost never review multiple games in one post anymore, because I would get a little lazy back when I used to do that sort of thing. But with these two there's really not any other option. Metal Slug X is an enhanced version of Metal Slug 2 in more than just the dope name, but they're so extraordinarily similar that it makes sense to discuss both in one go.

The action is is more of the same from my Metal Slug review, but the action is bigger and better than ever. The visuals are functionally the same, but there are a lot of new sprites here that are in keeping with the delightful art style of the original. Metal Slug X adds even more enemies, animations, and powerups, and is unquestionably the game to play if you have to pick one. In both games, you can now choose from one of four characters. They all play the same, but it's a nice touch.

The humor still works great here, and is dialed up a notch if anything. They tell a really silly and fun story here with identifiable characters and some real plot development with essentially no dialogue, and that's quite an achievement. There's a great twist in the story that comes during the penultimate mission that will substantially change the tone of the game, and it's definitely worth playing til the end to see it. The twist comes along with a change in art style as well, becoming more sinister and brutal. It's a great maturation of the series, and gives it a bit more depth than Metal Slug.

It's still a quarter muncher, but it's a bit fairer than the first game. They had to make their money off it, but good play is rewarded a bit more in this game than in the last. It's not a fair game, but it's a ton of fun and that's good enough to bump it up a few notches from the first. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

Up next is a game I've already teased in a previous post, and which I've already finished, so check back tomorrow! I've been on a torrid pace with clearing out games in June, so I'm going to have no problems hitting my goal of 30 by the end of the year.

-TRO