Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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I Am Setsuna

Completion: Main Story with a few extras
Time: 25-30 hours
Genre: Turn-based RPG in vein of Squaresoft SNES titles.

World
SNOW. LOTS OF SNOW. I get that’s this game’s visual style but, my god, snow gets boring after a while. There is brief respite from snow every now and again when you venture indoors but these are always also lacking in colour too.
I don’t think this should’ve gone the Pokémon route of forcing in unfitting locations like a random desert but I do feel they could have given more variation without breaking the melancholic vibe. You do go to locations like caves and watery areas but they’re still mostly white and blue.
Later on you gain access to the travel the whole world, except there’s no map, the towns often share the same models and everywhere looks snowy/mountainous. It’s incredibly easily to get lost at that point.
That all said, the actual areas you visit are pretty and quite a bit of detail looks hand painted.

Characters
Your main party all have good motivations to be with you (except the last one) and all have great side plots. I feel the only character who drops off is Nidr who starts great but quickly devolves into just voicing what your mostly silent protagonist wants to say.
My main issue with this cast is how dry most of them are. There is no humour until you meet your fifth character. The plot and setting is meant to miserable but it can get quite oppressive without a little light relief along the way.
Luckily the characters do work well together and are believably written. I ended up quite fond of a few of them.
Normally I really dislike silent protagonists, but it felt like less of an issue here because you had a lot of moments with dialogue options so he never felt truly silent. I would have preferred he have his own personality but that might be just me.

Plot
As I say, very dreary. You can tell this plot was inspired by Final Fantasy as there are many similarities, especially with FFX.
I found it good overall, nothing mind-blowing but it works well. The end section (basically everything from the final save point) had perhaps a bit too much going on. It felt like too many twists were crammed into a short timeframe, but they were straightforward and clear enough that it wasn’t confusing.

Gameplay
The game has a similar tutorial issue to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, where it throws a bunch of walls of text at you with a lot of nouns you already know but now are capitalised and mean something different.
An easy one to get is a Talisman, which equates to an accessory which will give you boosts. These are boosts to things like Fluxes, Momentums and Singularities.
A Flux I never properly understood but it kept happening after battle.
A Momentum is a timed button press during an attack to add something good to the attack.
I think a Singularity was a randomly occurring state of battle which offered buffs but they often weren’t particularly helpful.
During the tutorials this was kind of confusing, I really think a practical demonstration would have helped. I did get the hang of it over time, and the game is forgiving enough to let you get by without fully getting it.
The battles themselves play similarly to Chrono Trigger in that it’s an ATB system where the layout of your characters and the enemies affects the battles. Also, like Chrono Trigger you can perform combo abilities where if 2 or 3 characters are ready to go they might be able to pull off special moves together.
I may have been missing something but I couldn’t find a way to read enemy’s elemental weaknesses. This was quite an issue as basically almost all enemies look snowy, so it would be easy to assume everything’s weak to fire. In the end I just threw together a party of physical attackers and ignored weaknesses.
I did find however that some abilities, particularly a couple belonging to the protagonist, vastly outclassed everything else. In the end I felt like my team had two really useful characters and a dud. And by useful I don’t just mean they hit hard as handily status effects, buffs and debuffs are all useful. In fact, most bosses can have status effects and debuffs inflicted on them which was lovely.
I did find the battles quite engaging, especially towards the end. The game was fairly easy and never felt like I had to grind outside of the battles you would find naturally.
The dungeon layouts gets very predictable after a while. It’s probably a good thing you don’t have a map because I fear the layouts would look similar throughout. Basically they are all filled with similarly sized (roughly screen size) open areas with thin paths between. These small open areas typically have monsters roaming which will attack if you get close. This does mean you can avoid them, however it’s best not to as you not only get experience but also loot to sell. This loot is acquired in an interesting way where the nature of the kill (overkill, killed with a momentum attack, killed with an elemental attack etc) offers different loot. Selling this loot not only earns you money, but the specific loot sold allows you you acquire new Spritnite (yay, another random word to learn!) which is essentially Materia from FFVII. This was an interesting mechanic to encourage you to vary how you attack. It was initially overwhelming to have so many different random items but it does funnel them to a different section of your bag so it didn’t lead to a messy inventory.
Most Spritnite is specific to a character, although some are universal. They offer battle commands or passive abilities. This segmenting of characters into more defined roles was very satisfying to me as I love FFIX with its characters having predetermined “job classes.” You do have some agency in which abilities from that class to equip, and agency in which party members you include.

Overall
Consistent dreariness in plot, setting and cast make this game distinct and focused but also relentless in its melancholy.
The battle system is fine, with perhaps too many bells and whistles for a 25-ish hour RPG.
If you like white and blue, this is the game for you.

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DOOM 3: BFG Edition

Platform: PC

Playtime: 15 or so hours

Completion status: Main campaign only so far

DOOM 3 was released in 2004 by id Software for the PC. A reboot of sorts, the game treads similar ground in terms of subject matter to previous DOOM releases, but distinguished itself with its dramatically improved id Tech 4-powered graphics and notable changes to pacing, level design, and overall atmosphere. The version of the game I recently played, however, was the 2012 BFG Edition for PC, a sort of HD remaster of the original that also makes certain controversial changes to the original game. I did previously play the original DOOM 3 when it was still a new and highly advanced PC game, so I also want to briefly compare aspects of the two releases.

In the first of its many innovations, DOOM 3 (as well as the BFG Edition) is something of a story-driven experience. You, of course, fill in the shoes of the nameless Doomguy, a random space marine who discovers that he's very, very good at killing demons. As with previous games, you're a random nobody, but there's actually a supporting cast of characters you'll kind of come to know over the course of your adventure. Three personalities stand out: Dr. Malcolm Betruger, the primary antagonist of the game, who is corrupted by demonic influences after being transported into hell during one of his teleporter experiments, and who masterminds the invasion of the UAC facility on Mars by the hordes of hell; Thomas Kelly, your commanding officer, who works in tandem with Doomguy to try and curb the demonic invasion; and Counselor Swann, who was sent to investigate the curious goings-on and the UAC base and eventually find himself indirectly butting heads with Sergeant Kelly.

And what curious goings-on there are. Previous games in the series never really give the player a sense of what happened in the build-up to the apocalyptic events that take place, but the same absolutely cannot be said for DOOM 3. In a heavily System Shock 2-inspired change of course (like Bioshock, the entire game feels like it was heavily influenced by the design of that legendary horror-scifi-fps-rpg), DOOM 3 includes a massive amount of narrative and worldbuilding via the use of audio logs found around the base. The scientists and marines locked inside of this base have noticed weird and alarming goings-on leading to the invasion that starts off the game for months, and, lacking any other outlet, they start spilling their guts into their audio diaries. To be honest, I always find the use of audio logs to be a lazy and inorganic method of worldbuilding and storytelling, but the technique wasn't overdone in 2004, and I can buy that people trapped in a stressful environment like this might record their feelings of apprehension over various events happening around them.

But, uh, DOOM games have always been about the gameplay. Fast, fierce games with marines and demons and hell; the series has always had a very METAL identity. And now players were being given a sequel where they were being asked to slow down and appreciate the ambiance. Even as a person who loves story-heavy RPGs, I found myself quickly growing impatient with the countless audio logs where a spooked scientist would ramble about weird behavior among the higher-ups and spooky sounds at night for a minute at a time, and even moreso with the logs where some technician would start discussing some highly technical aspect of the UAC facility's operation. You don't actually have to stop when you're listening to one of the logs, of course, but good luck trying to concentrate on Dr. Spooks-a-Lot whimper about his personal problems with you walk five steps away from the location you retrieved the log and get ambushed by demons. Perhaps this was the intended playstyle. It would explain why the game feels like it almost completely lacks music (even the ambient moans and screeches of DOOM 64). No time for moody or exciting tunes as you're listening to logs, or listening to NPCs talk, or listening to some sort of automated display. There's a LOT of listening in this game.

Which, to be fair, ties into the original design philosophy of this game. DOOM 3, much to the chagrin of long-time fans, has always been more of a slow paced game. I mean, it's still a shooter (you tote around a rocket launcher, for god's sake), but DOOM 3 has always been a game designed to get you to stop, or at least slow down momentarily. Which is where the first conflict with BFG's changes come into play. The original DOOM 3 famously included a flashlight as an item in a separate weapon slot, meaning the player can't illuminate shadows and use a gun at the same time. Players have joked for years about DOOM 3 Doomguy being too stupid to duct-tape his flashlight to the muzzle of a gun, but, in the context of this game, the decision was the correct one. The player could, theoretically, just charge through the entire game with a weapon equipped, but that's a very easy way to run headlong into the waiting claws of an imp. The player had to stop and scope out their surroundings a bit before proceeding, which tapped directly into the pacing and tone of the game.

In DOOM 3: BFG Edition, the player has a flashlight mounted on their armor, which can be activated independently of anything else they're doing. Meaning they can simultaneously see in the dark AND use their weapon. I imagine this change in the 2012 remaster was made after years of loud fan complaints about this design choice. But I want to reveal an open secret of sorts, here and now, to anyone listening. An inconvenient truth.

The loudest voices on the internet are usually the ones not worth listening to.

Look, I get the frustration with a DOOM game being a slow-paced horror affair, but, for better or worse, that was the direction the game took, and any QoL changes that conflict with the core design philosophy are not necessarily going to lead to a better game. DOOM 3 was clearly designed around the limitation of not being able to see clearly in the dark environments, and strapping a flashlight to your shoulder kind of ruins certain setpieces in this game as well. For example, in one section, you're in this lab, and some sort of conveyor device is dragging a luminescent tube through an expanse of darkness. The intention of this segment is clear: you're supposed to stick by it and shoot at the enemies who pop out at you from the surrounding darkness when they become illuminated. But the omnipresent flashlight makes this segment pointless. You can just barrel through this location with your flashlight turned on, quickly dispatching the enemies waiting to jump out at you before they know what hit them.

The changes to ammo availability also somewhat goes against the design philosophy of the original. In the original, you actually had to scrounge around to find enough ammo to feel comfortable creeping further into the UAC base's winding corridors. Hunting around dingy rooms for scraps of ammo to use against monsters is a time-tested horror game tradition. For whatever reason, though, the game likes to utterly overload the player with ammo. And not even just shotgun ammo. I was never out of heavy arms, and never felt any particular reason to conserve my ammo and actually, I dunno, fall back on my handgun or other smaller weapons, because the game stuffs its environments with so many high-level goodies. Scarcity confers value on resources and also incentivizes certain types of behaviors. I was always loaded to the teeth, so the only incentive I had to poke around most of the time was to find audio logs where someone would whine for five minutes about their personal problems with the chain of command. That is to say, no such incentives existed.

Which isn't, of course, to say that the game's horror trappings are always effective. DOOM 3's reliance on generic spooky locations, monster reinforcements that often pop up out of the shadows, random jump scares like demonic cackling that will issue when you enter a room, and hammy intercom taunting from Dr. Betruger throughout the game (the dude actually says "Your soul will be mine!" at one point during the game, like Shang Tsung from the Mortal Kombat movie, lmao) gives the game something of a haunted house flair to it. Not like an actual haunted house, mind you, but rather, like one of those places where you pay to walk around so that people dressed up like zombies or mad scientists can jump out at you and try to scare you. This impression is strengthened as you bear witness to plot events throughout, but always from a safe distance, like in a separate room where you're separated by a pane of glass.

Speaking of ammo, I just want to say that I don't like whoever decided it was a good idea to rob me of all my carefully cultivated BFG rounds near the end of the game and make me start from scratch (for plot reasons). The ammo balancing leads to me building up a healthy collection of arms, of course, but those unused BFG rounds still haunt me.

DOOM 3's weapons game is pretty strong, although not revolutionary. Nearly all of the old weapons return here sans the super shotgun (the normal one in DOOM 3 feels sort of... piddly... I didn't use it much). There are two new additions, though: a machine gun, which is really effective against smaller enemies when you don't need the power of the chaingun, and grenades, which... honestly, only got used when there was a long hallway and something slow coming toward me, because these do splash damage, and a LOT of enemies in this game like to aggressively charge the player. For immediate long-range devastation, a rocket launcher was always preferable, and for anything closer, chainguns and beam rifles are just safer.

I'm not sure what it is, but I will say that a lot of the weapons don't have the visceral punch they did in some of the previous games. The chaingun, especially, feels less impactful compared to the one in DOOM 64.

With that said, the last weapon you get in this game, the Soul Cube, is pretty fun. Every five kills or so, you can use this supernatural cube...thing to instantly kill nearly any enemy in the game. It works quite well when you gun down a bunch of smaller enemies on the way to something particular large and annoying, and then take it down with your Rubiks-Cube-of-Death. It even replenishes your HP!

The level design in DOOM 3 can feel a bit claustrophobic throughout (there's a distinct lack of wide-open arenas to run around like in previous DOOM games, opting instead for cramped hallways and rooms loaded with boxes and industrial equipment. This fit, perhaps, with the slower, more horror-based pacing and tone of the original, although it gives it a different flavor than traditional DOOM. The levels start off almost painfully linear, although the maps do eventually increase in complexity and require some backtracking. This is perhaps a good thing, given the frustrating lack of maps (!) in this game. I rarely got lost, though, and backtracking is typically fairly limited and streamlined compared to what you might find in other games (or, indeed, other DOOM games)

One of the strongest aspects of DOOM 3 is the enemy variety. Almost all of the classic enemies return, often in reimagined form, in addition to a host of new additions.

There are zombies in this game now. A lot of them. Like, classic Romero-type zombies that stumble around and barely know how to even use tools. These are easily dispatched. The demon soldiers are back as well, though, and there's also a lot of them. In an interesting change of pace, you can actually hear their radio chatter when they're in the area nearby, although nothing intelligible is ever said. These guys can pack pistols, shotguns, shields, or, annoyingly, even chainguns. Thankfully, no matter how potent their firepower, it's relatively easy to put them down.

The version of the Arch-Vile that shows up in DOOM 3 is a massive pain in the ass, though. Previously, they only had the power to resurrect fallen demons, and although their attack was un-dodgeable, you could prevent it by breaking line of sight with them. These guys have no such limitations: they continuously spam spells that summon new demons and their attack is now this devastating column of fire that can hit you from several feet away. Very irritating. I used my strongest weapons to put them down ASAP when they showed up.

Lost Souls also get kind of an interesting change. Instead of being flaming skulls like in previous games, they're now fleshy, eerie humanoid faces that fly around and try to bite you. Thankfully, these nuisances have been vastly nerfed compared to previous games, and they hardly register as a threat unless they flank you while you're fighting something else.

The best redesign in DOOM 3, IMO, is the way the Pinky demon was changed. The mostly harmless, melee only enemy from previous DOOM games that was only dangerous amongst an encroaching horde of demons has been reimagined as something more feral and less bipedal, like a large, demonic dog. I remember the first one you encounter in the game scared the crap out of me when I was younger. In an intense setpiece, the thing violently starting ramming itself into the locked door leading into the room your character is in, warping the metal, before moving over to a glass pane and shattering it with a charge, forcing the panicked player to quickly dispatch it. 15 years on from when I first played it, there's not so much panic now, but it's still a cool moment.

Certain other designs tend to stay constant throughout the series. The Revenant, for example, is STILL just a skeleton with rocket launchers on its shoulders, although its lower half is covered in translucent skin instead of gore like the original design. Their missiles are particularly difficult to hit in this game, since they seem to move away from your bullet fire. I have to resort to spamming my pulse rifle in a circular motion to destroy their projectiles.

Imps are also broadly similar in design, although their appear WAY more often in DOOM 3 (seriously, you can't go more than a couple of rooms without running into an Imp in this game; they're easily the most common type of enemy) and if they get close to the player, in kind of a cool change, they're crouch down and pounce.

Barons of Hell, Mancubi, and Cacodemons return without huge alterations, although the Cacodemons are much faster and flit around a lot this time.

DOOM 3 introduces the Wraith, a smaller, melee-only creature that teleports around the level, trying to catch the player off-guard along with the Cherub, which look like small, winged babies that like to flit toward the player and bite them. There are also at least two new spider-like enemies that show up, often swarming the hallways ahead of you. They don't take a lot to kill, but they can easily overpower a less cautious player.

The Commando returns from DOOM II, although his form and function are so different that he's basically a new enemy. Anyone who has played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is likely to get flashbacks to that game's eponymous monstrosity as this muscular hulk charges toward the player and tries to impale them with a large tentacle arm. These games react so quickly and aggressively that I had an issue with them throughout the game. As soon as I saw one of these, the rocket launcher came out.

The game has a handful of boss encounters. While they still show up sort of randomly, I'd say these fights are more engaging and memorable than boss encounters from previous DOOM games, and can actually require some modicum of strategy. Crucially, their difficult isn't dependent on being impossible to dodge when hiding behind a column of some sort. So, yeah, this is definitely the strongest DOOM game to date on that front.

The soundtrack in this game is extremely ambient, like DOOM 64's. Now, that worked for DOOM 64 because of how silent that game was when you weren't fighting demons, but this is pretty much environmental noises: the game. There's so much whirring and buzzing and narration in the background that it can be hard sometimes to even find a quiet place to listen to an audio log. Going to youtube, the soundtrack isn't half-bad, but I'd be lying if I said I even noticed music throughout this game, so I'm going to call this the weakest DOOM game for me on that front. Aside from the decent main theme, you're never going to hear anything that gets your blood pumping, or even much that's particular atmospheric, since you're so busy listening to everything else in this game.

DOOM 3: BFG Edition on Steam features achievements, but good luck unlocking them if you like to take screenshots. For whatever reason, in a widely documented bug that was apparently never patched out, taking screenshots in this game via the Steam overlay triggers an anti-cheat measure that disables the player's ability to unlock achievements.

Technically, DOOM 3: BFG Edition barely feels like an upgrade from the original, being a very slight HD remaster that allowed the game to run smoothly on modern operating systems and widescreen displays. Texture work is still very low-res, too, which becomes clear if you try actually examining most of the displays in your environment. With that said, DOOM 3 was a massive techncial achievement when it first released thanks to a combination of cutting-edge graphics and excellent art design, and, thanks to that, the game still looks really good today. In some ways, the original looked even better: in addition to the shoulder flashlight, the game has been brightened a bit overall, dulling some of the raw dread provoked by its corridors, destroyed by demons and caked in thick shadows But the overall artistic direction still results in a world that's easy to lose yourself in.

What else to mention? DOOM 3: BFG Edition adds in a new autosave system when you hit certain checkpoints in a level, which might have been useful on consoles, but on PC, where you literally only need to hit F5 to quicksave at pretty much any given point, it felt... needless. I guess the good thing is that the player almost never has to worry about losing much progress.

I wasn't sure where to fit this in, but I also really like the security robots in this game. There'll be these interesting setpieces throughout where you'll activate a little security robot, and it'll lead you through the darkness (in the original DOOM 3, anyway). In an amazing turn of events, though, the cute little guys are also armed to the teeth with machine gun rounds, and will viciously mow down any monster that happens to be in its pre-programmed path. I think you're supposed to defend it from enemies, but I found that they killed enemies so quickly that they barely needed any input from me. Granted, I also contributed, as it wouldn't be fair to let them do all the work.

Oh, and, when it comes to difficulty settings, go with Veteran. The only real difference between the difficulty settings (other than the bottom one, which appears to be some sort of safety mode) is in how much damage you take from enemy attacks, and, on the Marine difficulty (or, god forbid, the even lower Recruit difficulty), you can shrug off most attacks with ease. Combine this with the ease of access to health packs and healing centers, and the ammo strewn literally everywhere, and you wind up with a pretty radically easy game, devoid of much of a sense of danger. Veteran difficulty alleviates this by actually making it dangerous to take damage, although it doesn't seem to balance anything else. For all intents and purposes, it's this game's Normal difficulty.

I was curious how I'd feel about this game. Ultimately, while I think it's an interesting experience in its own right, it's easy to see how this would disappoint someone looking for a DOOM experience in the vein of the previous games. This has all the trappings of DOOM, but it's missing the attitude. Additionally, the HD remaster, while probably a better fit for modern PCs, feels like it's at war with itself, and dialing back elements that made the original DOOM 3 so controversial. But, well, no superficial change is going to alter the fact that this is more horror than it is metal. I'm glad I got to experience it again, though, and I'm hoping to complete its expansions sooner than later.

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Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

I had been wanting to play this action JRPG for several years but had never been able to find a reasonably priced copy; I almost caved for the digital Wii version through the Wii U eshop until this was announced. This game was, without question, well worth the wait. After a little over 100 hours with this amazing game, I have a LOT to say about it.

Note: I have not yet played Future Connected and will not be covering that at this time; I'll be doing a shorter write-up on it when I get around to it later this month. Taking a bit of a break first.

Positives

• The worlds of both the Bionis and Mechonis are vibrant, varied, and teeming with life (Okay, this last point covers the former). They especially pop with all the graphical updates in the Definitive Edition, especially when compared with the original Wii game and the 3DS port. The game looks better in docked mode (as with many Switch games), but handheld mode is perfectly playable.
• The soundtrack is phenomenal; I've been listening to it at work on and off for years (Yes, long before I played XC; trust me, this isn't the first game this has happend with. ). It's one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming IMO. While I did opt to play through with the original soundtrack this time around, I did go back and listen to some of the new redone DE pieces. In some cases I think the original soundtrack is better, but in others the remastered track is better. This really depends on taste.
• While it starts out as your typical revenge story, the plot eventually becomes more than that and is one of the better ones I've experienced in a JRPG. There are definitely some curveballs thrown at the player throughout the campaign, some of which are quite emotional. Looking back, there is some foreshadowing of things to come, but it's hard to catch unless the player 1. has been paying attention, or 2. has played the game before.
• This is only one of a handful of RPGs that I've played where I genuinely cared about all the playable characters in the party. Their personalities, motives and mannerisms are fleshed out quite well.
• In that same vein, many of the non-generic NPCs also have some unique personalities and qualities. In a couple of cases, I had wished a few of these characters had also been playable.
• Much of the dialogue, both in cutscenes and during battle, is thoughtfully written, emotional, entertaining, and/or funny. The English voice acting in this game, outside of a couple of odd moments, sounds convincingly natural and not wooden.
• The Arts system in this game has a gradual learning curve, but the game (as well as the tutorials) is excellent at easing the player into the action. It's fairly easy to learn, but it does take some time to master depending on the character. Each character plays differently and has a different role to fulfill depending on their arts and, to an extent, how the rest of the three-party lineup is currently set up.
• Skill trees for each character are fun to experiment with and can unlock different methods on how to use a character. Fiora is especially quite a powerhouse if set up correctly.
• There's quite a variety of weapons and armor to equip onto characters. And if something doesn't match, there are ways to change the looks of armor or a weapon (I didn't bother with this much; usually I just hid the headgear) while keeping the stats and effects of the original equipped item. This is a nice carryover from Xenoblade Chronicles X.
• Right before the events of the game, a Homs settlement, Colony 6, was completely destroyed. At a certain point in the game, an optional side activity in which the player can repair and rebuild this area is unlocked. (This took me a bit; I admittedly skimmed through these menus when the prompt first appeared - it was late - and didn't realize you actually had to talk to Juju to get this going...ugh. XD). There are many benefits if the player upgrades and completes Colony 6, such as being able to access certain shops, unlocking new quests in Colony 6, and being able to recruit NPCs from other settlements to help bolster the population.
• There is a lot of late-game content, such as more quests, Arts upgrades to earn via defeating enemies, and insanely powerful unique world bosses to track down (or run from).
• I didn't really bother with using the gem machine very much, but it is a nice option for those who want to craft their own gems and use them to augment their gear. However, many quests give out decent gems as well.
• Nopon are one of the best fictional races out there. Change my mind.
• Dickson's death scene is one of the best I've seen in all of gaming.
• The events after defeating Zanza really make the player think. While I liked the ending, it took a bit to digest what all happened to create the universe that the Bionis and Mechonis reside in. Was the universe that Klaus, Meyneth, and Alvis came from really destroyed? Or did something else happen? Since Alvis is basically a computer, is this some sort of...sentient simulation? Hmm....

Neutral

• The side quests in this game have some great flavor text and do help to make the NPCs the player interacts with more organic; some even border on emotional if some chains are unlocked and completed before certain in-game events. However, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the quests are either "Kill X amount of enemies" or "Gather 5 pieces of X material". This gets a little old after a while. I suggest not selling too much of a "useless" item as it may come in handy for a quest later.
• The affinity charts take some getting used to and can be a bit confusing. I didn't really consult these much outside of checking the main party's affinities for each other to try and unlock some Heart to Hearts (which is basically extra character building dialogue).

Nitpicks

• I really wish that some quest chains weren't tied to affinity links which can only be unlocked by talking to certain NPCs. Plenty of exclamation points indicate quests in any given area, but not all quests appear until certain NPCs are spoken to. I'm used to needing to complete certain quests to unlock more, but this was a new one on me. While I tend to talk to at least most NPCs in any given game, this game has so many that I didn't realize how important it was to talk to ALL of them until it was too late.
• Swimming in this game is slow. In a couple of areas when I knew the current lead character would be swimming for a bit, I'd turn on auto-run and go off and do something. I really wish there was a way to speed this up.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is, without question, one of the best games I've played in recent memory. It is easy to recommend for action JRPG aficionados, those looking for an amazing, lengthy story, and for those who want a large world to explore with a ton of collectibles and side content. With graphical updates, a largely rescored soundtrack, some QoL improvements (from what I've read), this is the best way to play this game to date.

Seriously, Nintendo of America, what were you thinking? Thanks to all the supporters of Operation Rainfall, this game was not just a sad footnote in Nintendo's library.

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Paper Mario: The Origami King

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Completion: Beat game (normal ending, not 100%); roughly 35 hours. I imagine closer to 45 or 50 hours if someone wants to 100% it.

Paper Mario: The Origami King (referred to as TOK henceforth) is the sixth game in the Paper Mario franchise (seventh if you include the 3DS crossover game with the Mario & Luigi series) since the series started in 2000 on the N64. The series has gone through some pretty radical changes over the years: the story-driven, turn-based JRPG series from developer Intelligent Systems has slowly but inexorably drifted from its roots over the years, causing some level of dismay with long-time fans. TOK follows this tradition, being something more of an adventure game with puzzle-based combat. Despite this, I feel like the game is still satisfying to play off the back of an acknowledged classic like the Gamecube's Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (my main reference point for this series other than my almost six year old partial playthrough of Paper Mario: Sticker Star on the 3DS).

The game's premise is an unusual one, and it immediately drew my interest when the first trailer dropped. Mario travels to Princess Peach's castle after he is invited to celebrate an Origami Festival in Toad Town. The town and castle seem abandoned however, and things go from normal to apocalyptic quickly when he discovers that Princess Peach has been folded into origami and inculcated into a bizarre origami cult by a sentient origami entity known as King Olly. King Olly has also partially folded Bowser and has gradually been kidnapping and folding his minions. Mario discovers a sympathetic ally in the form of Olivia, King Olly's sister, who is horrified by the imperialistic and destructive aims of her brother. Mario, an incapacitated Bowser, and Olivia escape from the castle as a number of brightly colored streamers wrap around the castle, rip it out of its foundation, and relocate it to a volcano. Separated from Bowser, Mario and Olivia, alongside a variety of companion characters they meet along the way, set out to to destroy the enormous streamers, which originate from a variety of locations around that section of the world, so that they can confront King Olly and hopefully rescue a world that is quickly falling to Olly's origami army.

It's impossible to discuss this game without also addressing the controverises surrounding it, so I find it best to get those out of the way first. The first of these is the combat system itself, and the progression mechanics tied into it. Like other recent entries in the series, TOK ditches a traditional XP system, so your characters don't gain levels as a result of battling. What you do gain, however, are coins (and confetti, but more on that later). You need money for pretty much everything in this world, and certainly, if you want to fill out the in-game museum (again, more on that), you'll need to do quite a bit of battling to gain the funds needed to buy expensive treasures. Money can also be used to buy badges which boost your stats and more powerful attacks in order to handle the increasingly powerful enemies you'll encounter across the game. Health upgrades aren't purchased, but can be found in your explorations. The cumulative result, I feel, is something approximating the feel of the character building you'd experience in an RPG, albeit more streamlined than what fans of the older games might be used to. A common complaint about the Paper Mario games since Sticker Star is that there's "no reason to battle," which certainly doesn't hold true here. You'll need money to buy weapons, to gain access to plot-important areas, etc. What the game perhaps doesn't do is provide an incentive to endlessly grind enemy encounters in order to max our character levels, which I don't personally mind. Nobody deliberately seeks out every Moblin in BotW to kill. I also don't recall people trawling the levels of 3D Mario games for enemies to kill. The lack of traditional RPG mechanics might not be ideal for certain people, but I strongly resist the notion that it makes battling enemies "pointless," or that it's even problematic game design.

The battle system itself is fascinating, and probably unlike anything one has ever encountered in a video game before. Mario stands in the center of a stage, surrounded by concentric rings where enemies are situated. You will have to move the rings to line enemies up in certain patterns so that Mario's attacks can attack them. Not only does lining them up efficiently give Mario the ability to kill them sooner, but you're also granted damage multipliers for doing so. The puzzles at the beginning of the game are a bit obvious and mindless, but the complexity of these timed ring puzzles increases as the game goes on. While there are some issues with this system (I'm not really a fan of how you only ever unlock more powerful boot and hammer attacks; although, thinking about it, outside of special attacks, almost every fight in TTYD devolved into boots and hammers as well), but I do like it makes every encounter something engaging, as the fights in TTYD got a bit mindless over time. Mario can pay coins to toads in his audience, who will solve the ring puzzle for him to varying degrees of completeness, depending on how much is paid, although I almost never opted for this.

Battles against the awesome, gigantic bosses feature a unique system of their own. This time, Mario is on the outside of the rings, with the boss in the middle, and the plumber has to set up a path through the rings ahead of time. Not only does Mario need to navigate to the center of the area, but he also frequently needs to be positioned in a certain way to attack the boss efficiently. Bosses in TOK are a lot like Zelda bosses insofar as they have specific weaknesses to be exploited and attack patterns to be anticipated. Just running up and randomly attacking them might eventually kill them, but it'll lead to an unnecessarily drawn out battle. In that respect, the boss fights are another area of TOK that feel puzzle game-inspired.

On that note, while it's true the bosses here aren't memorable personalities like you'll meet in TTYD, they are quite fun to fight. You'll go between vellumentals, enormous elemental deities that you need to beat to obtain their special powers, and enormous, sentient office supplies that belong to the "legion of stationary." While I'll admit it seems quite stupid initially for Mario to fight against staplers or boxes of colored pencils, these objects are characters in their own right, possessed of specific personalities, and the set-pieces and dungeons leading up to your encounters with them are often creative and incredibly fun, and even a bit foreboding at times.

Speaking of which, the player will also explore a fair number of dungeons throughout the game, and they feel rather like streamlined Zelda dungeons in terms of their puzzles, numerous enemy encounters, hidden heart upgrades, bosses, and theming, which fit well alongside the game's more action-adventurey approach. To be honest, TOK makes me wish Nintendo would expand the paper spinoff approach to other franchises. I'd LOVE a Paper Zelda game.

The other primary controversy in this game stems from Nintendo's now-infamous policy that developer Intelligent Systems is apparently not to create any original in-universe characters for this game, or for future Paper Mario titles. This... I feel, is a more valid complaint. TOK is a colorful, imaginative game filled with fun writing, great humor, and some superb characterization at times, but the main leg up I feel a game like TTYD had over this is that there are simply aren't a ton of interesting NPCs or even party members to meet in this, which does detract from the appeal of this game. The game's cast of important NPCs is dominated primarily by toads, and is utterly lacking in the vibrant array of unique designs and separate races that proliferated in TTYD. Almost none of the characters you meet (aside from Olivia and King Olly, who are alien to the Paper Mario universe in a very fundamental sense) have a distinct name: you'll find a Bob-Omb as a companion, but he just looks like any other Bob-Omb and insists that this is his name (in a perhaps cunning loophole to Nintendo's corporate restrictions, Olivia ignores this and continuously refers to this particular Bob-Omb as "Bobby"), since Bob-Ombs apparently seem to sublimate their individual identities in a collective identification (there's actually a rather shocking plot twist that, interestingly, dives a bit into the nuances of Bob-Omb psychology, which is weirdly fascinating).

The developer seems to take this as a challenge, however, and goes out of its way to allow Mario the opportunity to interact with a variety of Bowser's underlings (traditional Mario enemies), who are now on the run and attempting to evade the Folded Soldiers that are terrorizing this world. As a result, while it lacks the vibrant individual personalities of some previous titles in the series, the game works well in exploring the mindsets of Mario's classic foes outside of the context of a platformer. Since pre-established in-universe characters are still allowable, of course, you also interact with characters like Luigi, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Kamek. I do sort of miss the more character-oriented focus of TTYD, but, honestly, I feel like TOK still has enough fun dialogue and interesting interactions that the game still felt like it had something of an identity, unlike the dispersonal toad hell of Sticker Star.

One of the central complaints about this series is how it has gone from being a series where the characters happen to be stylized as paper beings to being a series ABOUT paper, in some sense, and TOK leans extremely heavily into this element as well. TOK's characters are distinctly aware that they're made out of flat paper, and that their world, more broadly, is one of flat paper constructions. Really leaning into this worldbuilding is what allows the gradual encroachment of King Olly's origami army, which is constructed entirely out of unwilling paper victims, to feel as apocalyptic and uncanny as it often does. It also imbues the Legion of Stationary bosses you fight throughout with an aura of danger that one wouldn't normally associate with staplers, hole punchers, boxes of colored pencils, etc. Which is to say: I'm OK with the change to paper beings becoming somewhat self-aware of their own papery metaphysical nature. Like Media Molecule's Tearaway, the style extends to the entire world the characters inhabit, which feels like one made out of arts and crafts. This is a style employed in a few other Nintendo games as well (recent Yoshi games, in particular, come to mind), but there's a pleasing coherence of theme, story, and aesthetics here, since TOK leans into the 'paper world' concept so completely.

Despite the somewhat more childish premise and tone of TOK in general compared to TTYD, the game is strangely replete with tragic and emotionally potent story beats. I never expected a cutesy adventure game about adorable papercraft characters to have such a high body count by the end, frankly, although I guess it does fit with the underlying body horror this game is filled with (ever seen a giant monster constructed out of the punched out faces of your friends? Paper Mario has, and, even with them being made of paper, it's still horrifying), and the overall creepy tone of King Olly and his borg-like origami cult as well. This is one of those children's games that gets creepier and darker the more you think about it, which I thought was an interesting change of pace for the series. TOK's ending, in particular, is hugely bittersweet (and inspired quite a few tears from my eleven-year-old gameplay companion), which is an interesting contrast with TTYD's much more generic happy ending. The game can be surprisingly thoughtful insofar as it portrays characters grappling with issues related to personal identity, meaning, and death.

None of this, of course, should be taken to mean that TOK is a primarily grim experience. Like TTYD, this game is filled with jokes and humorous situations, often to the point of being something akin to slapstick. And as with that game, TOK can be funny without being obnoxious about it, and the script still manages to maintain a sense of perspective about what's actually at stake for these characters on their adventure. Although I would argue that much of TTYD's biting, often savage wit is missing here: it's a funny, charming game, but it lacks the whip-smart dialogue of its GameCube predecessor.

TOK's world is reasonably large, interconnected (one larger publication misreported it as being an "open world" game, but progression through the game's landscapes is still as linear as it ever was in previous games), and utterly filled with interactivity. The origami menace has savaged this delicate paper world and left it with holes everywhere. Mario carries a bad of confetti with him at all times, and he can use it to fill in these holes to uncover secrets and advance through plot-important locations. Confetti is everywhere in this game, and you'll need to constantly be collecting it to fill up your confetti bag so that you're prepared to paper over holes you find.

When you're running around these large environments, there are a few different things to do. You'll encounter simple environmental puzzles to solve in order to find chests that contains collectibles. You'll encounter different minigame activities. And you'll be finding tons and tons of hidden toads.

Running around looking for toads sounds horrible, like Sticker Star nonsense. But... it's really not. It's fun. Part of that is just how much variety there is in terms of how you find them. ANYTHING can be a toad in this game. Various animals in your environment can be toads. Toads can hide under rocks and behind walls. Fish you catch can be toads. Things you buy can be toads. Sometimes it's just a matter of running up to something and hammering it to reveal the toad. Sometimes they're simply hidden. Sometimes there's an environmental puzzle required to catch them.

Some toads you find will be important and run back to town to open shops and services, such as research centers, locations that serve as shortcuts between major zones, item, accessory and weapon shops, a museum, and a battle center where you can practice various functions related to the puzzle battles you'll so often engage in. Others will join your audience in battles, and, for a price, will help you in various ways.

Finding toads awards you toad points, which you can use to unlock art pieces at the museum. The museum also hosts 3D models you can find in chests throughout the environment, origami toad models you unlock throughout the game, enemy models more generally, music tracks from the game (which requires the player to fill in all of those holes located throughout the world, as I alluded to earlier), etc. Rather like in Animal Crossing, I'm finding the gradual development of my museum to be reward enough to consistently engage with the environments. And there's so much to engage with, considering nearly everything in this game feels like it can be collected or reward the player in some way. It's all a bit skinnerian, of course, but it works well in the context of this game.

The art design and general aesthetic sense present in TOK is phenomenal. Rather like Tearaway or the recent Good-Feel Yoshi platformers, the entire world looks like it was constructed in an arts and crafts class, and nearly every aspect of the environment relates back to the concept of paper in some way. Combine this with the detailed, often dense environments and the overall polish of the product, and you have one of the prettiest games on the Nintendo Switch. This primarily shines through when the game is docked, but it still looks vibrant and clean when undocked as well.

Musically, this is a high water mark for the series, with diverse and frequently evocative tracks setting the mood for your adventure. A track is worth a thousand words, so I'll link what I feel are some of the game's better compositions below.

Given the series' checkered reputation as of late, along with my own experience with the disappointing Paper Mario: Sticker Star, I approached The Origami King with some level of trepidation, but I was surprised to discover what turned out to be one of Nintendo's best releases of 2020 and one of their better Switch exclusives overall. The Origami King might not be the JRPG long-time fans were hoping for, but it is also absolutely undeserving of the cold reception many have greeted it with. While, pound for pound, I'd say The Thousand Year Door was still a better game overall, I think anyone willing to look past its change in genre will find a consistently creative, engaging, and delightful first-party release.

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The Wonderful 101: Remastered (Switch)

This game...is an interesting one. It's an action game at its core, but it throws in some mechanics from other genres. Overall I liked my time with the game, but there were a few things that hold it back from being a true classic in my book. It doesn't truly feel remastered, more like a slightly altered port.

Note: There is a multiplayer mode, but this was something I did not try and will not be covering here.

Positives

• The game's setting is wonderfully wacky and insane, much like the comic book source material it loosely borrows from. It's all just so goofy, in a good way. Enemy names are hilarious, the heroes are over the top, and there are some very crazy situations and moments. Typical Platinum.
• Graphically, the game is gorgeous.
• The plot is your standard "Heroes save the world from an alien invasion" fare, but it is an enjoyable one. It isn't meant to be taken too seriously, though there are some somber moments related to backstories of some of the main characters. Few heroes don't have some tragedy in their background.
• There is some character development in the game. None of it is too deep in most cases, but what is there is appreciated.
• The dialogue is witty, hilarious, and entertaining all around. Some of it nails the T rating quite well.
• For the most part, the different missions in the game are fun. The controls and structure of missions (particularly later in the game) are shuffled around and feel like different genres. Want an on-rails shooter? Check. Escape sequence? Yep. Light puzzle elements? Present.
• Many of the boss fights are flashy and feel epic due to the sheer scale and action happening on-screen.
• Some of the music, particularly the main theme, is really catchy and fits the game well.
• There are hidden collectibles and members of the Wonderful 100 to find in the different levels, as well as space vegetables; the latter can be added to a mixer to create different useful items. This all adds to replayability.
• There's also an in-game shop where currency earned from missions can be spent. The player can buy useful items, new Unite Morphs, and containers to augment their abilities and game experience.

Neutral

• Standard combat in this game isn't always very fun. The controls take some getting used to and can change depending on the mission. Unite Morphs are great when they work, but using the Wonder Liner (how you activate powers, weapons, and abilities in this game) for morphs not assigned to buttons can be a chore. Some morphs are really hard to pull off as the color changes to another you aren't going for. There were several fights where forming the right morph took many tries as the game just didn't recognize what I was trying to do.
• While the final boss fight was fun overall (and the ending IS very much worth seeing), this dragged on WAY past its welcome. The mission ending clocked this one in at 51 minutes, but that doesn't include all the retries for quick time events.
• QTEs (quick time events) were a mixed bag for me. Some of these were fun (and the failure clips are hilarious). Unfortunately, some of the QTEs that require the Wonder Liner are easy to fail thanks to the faulty recognition system. Others...I was mashing the A button on my poor Joycon like crazy and STILL failed repeatedly on more than one occasion. This is extremely frustrating; not being able to progress in a game and having to repeat something OVER AND OVER again thanks to a scripted event you can't get past isn't skill, it's just a button-pressing show for the sake of it. Oh, and your health is penalized in some cases, risking a possible death/lower score.
• While the shop is useful, some things, particularly healing items, seem unreasonably expensive.

Negatives/Nitpicks

• To be frank: the camera in this game is terrible. Sometimes the Wonderful 100 are behind objects, sometimes the camera is too zoomed in for you to see the action or draw the Wonder Liner properly, and the camera controls for some up close sections in general are atrocious. The game isn't unplayable, but this fault is very noticeable at times.
• Some deaths, especially later in the game, feel a bit cheap. It also feels a bit unfair that some of these are tied to how many times a player fails QTEs.

The Wonderful 101: Remastered is, for the most part, a fairly decent game, though one that isn't exactly easy to recommend in some cases. I could see more casual gamers having some trouble with this. Fans of Platinum and action games and the other genres that are mixed in (Real time strategy, on-rails shooter elements, light puzzle elements, etc.) may have a great time if they can get past some of the design issues. Difficulty settings are thankfully an option, so those who want to try to experience the game without too many headaches do have the option to play through on "Very Easy". (I started on Normal, then downgraded to Easy at some point)

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Paper Mario: the Origami King (Switch)

Gameplay:

• It continues the turn from JRPG to Action Adventure the past couple games started, and it's really starting to feel comfortable in it's new role.
• Gone is the level based progression of the past couple games, replaced with a more proper overworld to explore, and dungeons best described as traditional Zelda lite. You'll still be exploring it in a pretty linear fashion, but each area is large and full of secrets to find.
• The most prominent secret to find are the hidden Toads (they are hidden in creative & imaginitive ways, and while some will return to Toad Town or some other Kiosk out in the world to open up a shop, most will join your in battle audience, which you can pay to help out during battles), who often have a humorous zinger they utter before running off. You also unlock Toad Points for every one you find, which you can spend in the Museum in Toad Town to unlock concept art (which is a feature I always love seeing in games).
• Other things to find are Treasure Chests & "?" Blocks (which house coins or collectable trophies which can be viewed in the Museum), Not-Bottomless Holes (these are filled in with confetti, which you get when defeating enemies or by hammering objects in the environment, and you get coins for doing so. Sometimes a new path is opened up when you fill one in as well). Lastly you have HP Up hearts, and much like Heart Containers in Zelda, they increase your maximum HP when collected (they come in +5, +10, & +20 varieties, increasing your base 50 HP up to a maximum of 200, and for every 20 HP increase your attack power increases as well, which allows you to defeat some weaker enemies in the overworld without having to enter a battle). If you miss any, you can talk to the "Love Toad" in Toad Town (he has to be rescued first, though) who will give you hints as to where missing HP Up hearts are.
• Regular battles come in 2 flavors. The most common are turn based battles with Mario at the center of a ringed arena, and you have a small window of time to manipulate the rings and line (or group) up the scattered enemies. It's more of a puzzle game in that respect, where if you solve it you get a power boost and often get to defeat all enemies without them getting a turn, and if you fail you're going to take some damage before trying again (you can spend coins in battle to increase the amount of time you have to solve the puzzle, or you can have the Toads in the audience help you out by throwing you items and/or partially solving the puzzle. The more you spend the better their help is, and I assume the help is better the more Toads you have rescued). The other type of battle is against big paper mache enemies (called paper macho here), which occurs in real time in the overworld. The name of the game here is to get out of the way when they charge you, then whack them with your hammer (they have a weak point on their back that makes it easier to take them out if you hit that first). These are rarely just out there though, and are often scripted encounters.
• Boss battles as well come in those two flavors as well. The puzzle bosses change things up by having the boss at the center of the arena, and you have to manipulate the rings in order to set up a path for Mario to follow to safely get to the boss to attack. Each boss usually has a unique gimmick of it's own on top of this, resulting in the most engaging & unique encounters of the game. The Paper Macho bosses happen in real time and are often really impressive in terms of scale (these are a nice change of pace, and I enjoyed them as well)
  
  
  Examples of both puzzle & real time boss encounters.
• Your base hammer & boot attacks are unlimited, though you can obtain more powerful versions as well. These have a limited number of uses, though once you obtain one once you can buy more from the Toad Town shop. These get better as you go on, with the hammers & boots you find in one area generally being better than the ones you found in the previous areas. Some have unique effects though, such as Ice or Fire variants that can have an elemental advantage, or reward more coins during battle.
• There are also items you can use in battle (or sometimes outside as well). The most common are are mushrooms which restore health, but other Mario staples such as Fire & Ice Flowers, POW Blocks, & Tanuki Tails show up as well & do as you'd expect. I honestly only ever used Mushrooms.
• In some regions you will have a partner who will join you in your adventure (and battle). They all only have one attack, and it'll either hit or miss. They tend to get more useful the further you get though. The first one refuses to join you in dungeons, and their attack is a single target move that seems to have a 50/50 chance of hitting. The later ones tend to follow you into dungeons, and have multi target attacks that seem to get more reliable.
• You can buy accessories that help you out in battle or elsewhere. Battle accessories can increase the maximum time you have to solve puzzles, increase your HP during turn based battles, or decrease the damage you take. Other accessories have useful effects outside of battle (such as increasing the range at which you can collect confetti or giving you discounts at shops), or are just fun (such as changing your confetti to Sakura petals or enabling retro jump & coin sounds).
• There is the occasional minigame to take part in as well, whether it be fishing, shooting gallery, or even a game show segment. I found these to be hit or miss, with some I enjoyed (like the shooting gallery), while others I hated (well, just the game show segment).

Audio/Visual:

• It's a really sharp looking game, with an amazing sense of aesthetic. Everything looks to be made out of some sort of paper craft, and every region is a joy to explore due to some creative theming, whether it be a theme park based on feudal Japan, an open sea segment that's a clear homage to Zelda (particularly the seafaring games), or even paper craft renditions of famous Mario locales such as Bowser's Castle.
  
  
  Some great vistas await.
• I think it was a brilliant move to make the enemies origami versions of all the classics, as this frees up the wide gamut of Bowser's minions to appear as friendly NPCs. While there are still lots of Toads, you'll find yourself visiting a Monty Mole village, a shrine popular with Koopa Troopas, and more (other Mario staples such as Luigi & Birdo show up ocassionally as well). It really seems like they're getting pretty good at working with the "core Mario characters only" rule, and I hope they can continue this trend in the future as long as the rule persists (if anything, Odyssey should open up their options considerably).
• It has good music selection as well. I'm not one to pay much attention to music in games, but it definitely had some beats I was bopping along to.

Story/Writing:

• While Toad Town is preparing for an Origami festival, the Origami King, Olly shows up to capture Peach's castle and begin his plan to transform the entire world into Origami. After Mario escapes with the help of Bowser & Olivia (Olly's sister), he goes on an adventure to stop the dastardly king. It's not a terribly deep narrative, but it's surprisingly touching in places, and can even get unnerving at others. It's not as involved as the older JRPG entries (or Super Paper Mario), but it's definitely a couple steps above your typical Mario platformer (or Sticker Star, for that matter), which is appreciated.
• The humor can be pretty good in spots, and at times it seems like they're giving a sly middle finger to the restrictions in place (such as when Olivia tries to find a name for Bob-Omb, and eventually repeatedly calls him "Bobby", even though he officially doesn't have a personalized name).

Overall

• I really enjoyed my time with this. While I can see why some would say the battling becomes tedious, I think the puzzle aspects make them engaging in their own right (especially the bosses), and I think it's becoming much more comfortable in it's new Action-Adventure role, despite a few stumbles here & there. I'd place it just under the top tier of Switch exclusives (below Odyssey, BotW, & XC2, same place Luigi's Mansion 3, Link's Awakening remake, & DKC: Tropical Freeze, above Kirby Star Allies, & Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3).
  
  You're back on top, Paper Mario.

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Indie Wave!

A Short Hike (Switch)

Gameplay

• A simple 3D platformer in which your only goal is to scale the tallest mountain on the small island the game is home to, Hawk Peak. You play as Claire, a humanoid bird, who has the ability to jump & glide, and in order to scale the peak you'll need to collect Gold & Silver Feathers scattered about the game world (Gold ones add an extra jump for every one you find, while Silver ones increase the size of your jumps & glide speed). There is no time limit & no danger, it's just a hike you take at your own speed. The platforming & gliding feels great, but there's an optional speedboat minigame I thought was a tad clunky to control.
  
• The thing is, while there is a signposted path to take to the top (with just enough Gold Feathers along the way, you don't actually need any Silver Feathers I believe), the island is a small open world filled with people to help, secrets to find, & minigames to play, and it's best bits are often just exploring around, or making up your own path. You only need 7 Gold Feathers to reach the top, but by the end I had 11 Gold & 2 Silver (collected more Gold after the fact, which you may see in some of my screenshots).
• As for the minigames, I ran across races, a variant of volleyball, fishing, & a speedboat segment, and they're all simple but fun (being good enough will often net you a Gold Feather). Completing quests for people (really relaxing & simple stuff, like picking up all the litter on a small island) will often net you Gold Feathers as well. You can also obtain optional equippable items such as a bucket to water flowers (which act as springs launching you to higher ground when bloomed), a shovel to dig up treasure, or a picaxe which you can use to open up shortcuts to various points on the island.

Audio/Visual

• The game has an overhead/isometric view, and it's full of vibrant colors. Whether it be white sandy beaches, autumnal foliage, icy peaks, stormy shores, and more, this small world packs a lot of biomes, many you'll miss if you don't get out & explore.
  
• The game has a pixelated sort of retro 3D look (think PS1 or DS), though it looks good as it's intentional. Furthermore, you can make it look cleaner & sharper in the settings if the standard look isn't doing it for you (which is what I did).
• The musical tone fits the game & the areas well. It really helped set the mood in spots.

Story

• You're off to summer camp and awaiting an important call, only to learn that there's no reception out here in the boonies, except that is on the island's highest point, Hawk Peak. Thus your journey begins, and who knows, maybe you'll commune with nature along the way. It's a very simple set up with very little words along the way, but man is the ending evocotive. I inexplicably teared up at the end in a way a video game has never before made me.
• Some of the characters you meet along the way have tiny little narratives of their own that are tied into their minigame or quest if you take the time to get to know them (as an example, there's a character scalping Gold Feathers, selling them for over 2 times the price that the Visitor's Center does, but he's doing it because he's behind on tuition, and you can actually pay it off for him, which then ties in to another character's quest), which is a neat little touch.
  

Overall

• A Short Hike was a joy to play. It may indeed be short (I finished it in probably under 2 hours, and if you speed through it, under 1 hour isn't undoable), but despite the speedboat clunkiness, the vplatforming controls are spot on (once you have a good number of Gold Feathers, scaling & soaring through the game's vertical world is one of the best feelings I've had playing a game. It's very Nintendo-like in the sense that getting from one place to the other is fun in and of itself), and it's brief narrative hits hard.

Gato Roboto (Switch)

Gameplay

• A standard "Metroidvania" that's a clear homage to Metroid in particular, though with your playable character being a cat. If you've played one before this won't be radically different, with it playing host to 5 or 6 interconnected "zones", and by obtaining upgrades along the way you'll be able to access later areas & go back to grab collectables you missed out on earlier. The upgrades you get are pretty standard fare, such a Screw Attack like move & Missiles as examples (though your missile supply is unlimited here, there's a cooldown meter so you can't spam them).
• It does differentiate itself in a couple ways though. Most notably you can exit the power suit and run around as Kiki (the cat), who is quick, can climb up walls, and fit into tight spaces (there's even a dedicated meow button!), but has no offensive capability & dies in one hit. Naturally there are times when you'll have to leave the suit behind and look for a way forward as Kiki (with one of the game's zones almost entirely revolving around that). Other times you will use other vehicles, such as a submarine, as your power suit doesn't play nice with water.
  
• Otherwise, the game controls are mostly good, though I felt it was a tad floaty. It's a pretty breezy time mostly IMO, though bosses can be a step up in difficulty (usually took me 5-6 times to beat them, with a few exceptions). As for the collectables you have Heath Modules (increase maximum "NRG", lol), Cartridges (more on these later, but there is a character who will upgrade your basic shot if you collect enough), and Data Logs (more on these later).

Audio/Visual

• It uses a minimalist black & white art style, though sprites are well animated, and I felt like it did a good job of making each of the zones feel distinct (you're not going to quit playing and wonder if you're in the Aqueduct or the Ventilation area when you come back). Plus it has a handy map.
• The aforementioned Cartridges unlock different color palettes for use, such as Gameboy (pictured below) & Virtual Boy inspired looks.
  
• The soundtrack fits the game pretty well I'd say.

Story

• A space soldier (Gary, I think) recieves a distress signal from a military research facility, but on his way to investigate Kiki steps on the controls, causing the ship to crash land and Gary to be injured, thus it's up to our plucky feline friend to complete the mission.
• Along the way you'll run across Data Logs (just one or two per zone, with some being along the main path, while others are more hidden), with messages left by the staff of the research facility before things went bad. They're a nice way to add some narrative to the proceedings without bogging it down with text & exposition
  

Overall

• This was nice "Metroidvania" comfort food. Granted, the Switch is full of indie "Metroidvanias", but I think this was a good one, and don't play a ton of indies anyway so I had a good time with it.
  

Waifu Uncovered (Switch)

Probably the only screenshot I can post here, lol.

Gameplay

• A pretty standard sh'mup in terms of gameplay, it's Arcade Mode features 7 levels of bullet hell action (while Story Mode features 8), with all the typical upgrades (wave shot, move speed, etc.) accounted for and they carry across from one level to the next, so you'll become progressively more powerful during a run. While you'll eventually play through all levels by the time you're through, you'll have the option to play an easier or harder level after you clear a level, so no two runs have to be exactly alike. I found it works pretty well for the most part, but I was never able to clear Story Mode, as it features tag team boss fights (which are way too chaotic) & you heal less health in-between rounds.
• It's levels feature artwork of anime style women in the background, and for "story purposes" (more on that later) the more enemies you defeat the more uncovered they become. Once they've become suitably stripped you fight that level's boss. While it starts off in "Censored Mode" (where their most intimate bits stay covered up, mostly), the game's most prominent unlockable is an "Uncensored Mode", which as advertised features the women's breasts fully exposed when activated. It should be noted, given the title's theme, that despite the aesthetic direction of the title, it was developed by a western studio and all women are explicably said to be over 18 (with the majority being in their 20's). I figured it should be brought up since it would be the concern of some.
• It features a ton of unlockables outside of the "Uncensored Mode", including various ships with different stat focuses (though I always did best with the initial all rounder), a One Finger Mode that lets you play with only one finger on the touch screen in handheld mode (I didn't try this, but I believe it features a special hot dog shaped ship, for some crude innuendo), as well as a Gallery which allows you to view the women (covered or otherwise) once you clear their level once in either Arcade or Story mode.

Audio/Visual

• It's clear that the women are the focus of the game as they are presented pretty well (though your average Japanese developed visual novel has better art), while all the enemies you face look like flash animated knockoffs of emojis & memes (flying cartoon poop, asteroids with off brand "troll faces", etc.). It's clear they were just quickly thrown together to give you something to shoot at as you get to the "good stuff".
• It has exactly one song, and while it's pretty peppy, you'll probably be tired of it after one run.
• To it's credit, I never noticed any notable slowdown, even when the screen is absolutely cluttered.

Story

• Aliens are invading & have infested the clothes of women the world over! You play as a Ninja Horse (a ninja with a horse's head) flying around in a ship to fight them & save the women. It's absolutely absurd, but I guess it kind of has to be in order to justify the goings on. Nothing more to it than that.

Overall

• It's fun as a novelty just to have something so shamelessly crude & mature (immature?) on console (particularly a Nintendo one), but if I didn't get it for "free" (I got it with gold coins), I probably wouldn't have bothered.