A Subjectively Objective Review of Video Games Released in 2023

by Jed Pressgrove

The Best Year in Gaming History or: Eating a Filet Mignon at McDonald’s

You might have read 2023 is one of the greatest years for video games or the best year of them all. You have maybe further noticed that the cited evidence for this claim involves a striking number of sequels* and remakes** — perhaps more sequels and remakes than you have ever seen acclaimed in a single year. Here’s an incomplete list of the sequels and remakes people often mention:

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Resident Evil 4

Super Mario RPG Remake

Baldur’s Gate III

Metroid Prime Remastered

Dead Space

Spider-Man 2

Alan Wake II

Final Fantasy XVI

Amnesia: The Bunker

Diablo IV

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

God of War Ragnarok

Octopath Traveler II

Street Fighter 6

The Talos Principle 2

Pikmin 4

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

Mortal Kombat 1

System Shock

One might get the excitable impression that the greatest game of this greatest of years should be something that can be considered a sequel AND a remake. The obvious stance follows: Resident Evil 4 is the 2023 Game of the Year. Besides its coveted status as a sequel and remake, this GOTY candidate is appropriate for two other reasons:

1. The original Resident Evil 4, released in 2005 on the Nintendo GameCube, was widely considered the 2005 GOTY. It’s also one of the most influential games of the 21st century (quick top 5: Resident Evil 4, Dark Souls, Minecraft, PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, and Grand Theft Auto III).

2. The remake doesn’t change “too much” about the original but tweaks things that some people complained about (e.g., Leon, the hero, can move as he aims his gun; he stood in place while aiming in the original).

UNFORTUNATELY, I cannot deem Resident Evil 4 the GOTY of 2023 because playing it is the equivalent of eating a filet mignon at McDonald’s.

Imagine the scene: You’ve been driving for hours. You’re desperately hungry, you need to piss soon, and your tank is past half empty, so you take the next exit with a gas station. You notice the station has a McDonald’s. “Gee,” you say to yourself, “it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten Micky D’s.” You go inside, expecting to order something lame but edible like a Double Stack or Chicken McNuggets. Instead, you’re shocked to find a new promotion: the Filet McNon for $8. You slap yourself in disbelief. You know it’s an absolutely awful fucking idea, but you can’t help it. You order the Filet McNon and specify medium rare. You get the steak in about seven minutes. It looks like a filet mignon, but it doesn’t smell or feel or taste like one (it’s certainly not medium rare). But because you were ravenous, you inhale the Filet McNon and tell other people, “It’s good for fast food.”

This story sums up what the gaming world has done: exalting a game that resembles Resident Evil 4 but has been divorced of its humor (the remake’s self-seriousness is embarrassing), its original thrills (the introductory village battle now seems stilted), its rough edges (how about that quick-time-event fight with Krauser?), its bells and whistles (The Mercenaries is the greatest extra mode of all time), and the personal auteurist stamp of director Shinji Mikami. The Resident Evil 4 remake is a counterfeit product that disposes of creative authorship and threatens to rewrite history with its perfunctory doppelgänger of a title. Developer Capcom stopped caring about making good games years ago; the company is on the lookout for the most convenient moneymakers, fruit that hangs just inches above ground. The familiar is considered fresh.

*It’s not unusual for a proclaimed greatest year of video games — or any normal year — to feature numerous sequels. Three popular years are 1998, 2004, and 2017, all of which had their fair share of sequels. For those curious, here is my personal top 10 for each of those years:

1998

1. Fallout 2
2. Starcraft
3. Final Fantasy Tactics
4. Radiant Silvergun
5. Metal Gear Solid
6. Resident Evil 2
7. Parasite Eve
8. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
9. Metal Slug 2
10. Mario Party

2004

1. Metal Gear Solid III: Snake Eater
2. Cave Story
3. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
4. Ninja Gaiden
5. N
6. Katamari Damacy
7. Doom 3
8. X-Men Legends
9. Half-Life 2
10. Alien Hominid

2017

1. The Norwood Suite
2. Nier: Automata
3. Splasher
4. Pyre
5. West of Loathing
6. Golf Story
7. Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
8. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
9. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
10. Steamworld Dig 2

**While remakes aren’t new in gaming, the demand for them has increased considerably in the last few years. People practically beg for game remakes on social media.

For the Love of Heaven, You’re Not SquareSoft

Playing Sea of Stars is like opening an ornate can of sardines — no beautiful packaging can elevate such a dull meal. The game’s presentation suggests Chrono Trigger on steroids. The graphics and sound effects are undeniably detailed, but all the audiovisual proficiency in the world means zilch when the vision amounts to easygoing nostalgia for the 1990s. This is no Iconoclasts, whose pixel art depicted the bizarre, provocative effects of supernatural creation. Sea of Stars is pretty in that predictable video-game-industry way: It wants you to cheer on the developers for their hard work behind the scenes.

At least Sea of Stars is visually competent. For all its pride about the 16-bit era, it forgets the adult melodrama in Final Fantasy IV and VI, the spirituality in Earthbound and Illusion of Gaia, and the constant plot twists of Chrono Trigger. The story in Sea of Stars has the dramatic intensity of a paddle-ball demonstration and the psychological insight of an episode of Barney & Friends. Any narrative that allows a character as foolish as Garl to flourish can’t be taken seriously.

The combat in Sea of Stars showcases the lowest form of inspiration. SNES RPGs introduced several notable tweaks to turn-based battles — ideas like Final Fantasy VI’s character-specific mechanics and Super Mario RPG’s timed button presses have profoundly impacted the genre. In recent history, Zeboyd Games and Terry Cavanagh have made turn-based fights more urgent and calculative with entries like Cosmic Star Heroine and Dicey Dungeons. Sabotage Studio, the team behind Sea of Stars, only musters an encyclopedic approach that echoes what has come before: combos, interruptions, and so on. The developer’s one noticeable wrinkle to tradition is a resource called Live Mana, which flies out of struck enemies and can be absorbed by your party members to boost their attacks — a reward system that attempts to conceal its mindlessness with flashiness. Even more disappointing is the paltry number of techniques for each character. No amount of daydreaming about the SNES days can rescue Sea of Stars from mediocrity.

The Gaming World’s Memory Continues to be That of a Hamster

Baldur’s Gate III has impressed me far more than Baldur’s Gate II, which has always been the blandest of revered RPGs. But the praise for it has been comical and ahistorical. Phrases like “unparalleled level of freedom” and “It’s everything you’ve ever loved about any roleplaying game, with +1 to all stats” imply nobody remembers the first two Fallout games, Planescape: Torment, or The Witcher II and III, not to mention classics like Earthbound and Chrono Cross. Back in 2019, many people acted like Disco Elysium was God’s long-delayed gift to RPG fans; four years later, Baldur’s Gate III seemingly erased Disco Elysium’s existence. Going by some reviews, one might think the game invented voice-acted dialogue during cutscenes!

A Zelda/Mario/Fire Emblem Realization

After subjecting myself to the clichés, contrived surprises, and clunky innovation of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Fire Emblem Engage, I think we need a superhero who kills off media franchises. Or maybe a demon who corrupts them with modernism. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Online Divorce Court. Super Mario Liposuction and Fitness Journey. Fire Emblem: Polyamorous Pickleball.

Where will these franchises go next? More importantly, why care? These games have lost their elegance and exhausted their potential. You can’t even compare them to corporate property as limited as James Bond. At least the eternal spy movie phenomenon reflects something about politics, sexuality, and culture. I encourage all souls to stop feeling obligated to pay allegiance to neverending sagas. The less time we dedicate to the old, the more chances we have to discover greatness.

My Unranked Top Games of 2023

Mr. Platformer

Starts as an ode to Pitfall. Ends as a troubling avant-garde revelation about the hollowness of completionism. Super Mario Bros. Wonder wishes it had as many compelling jumps. Terry Cavanagh is the best auteur in video games.

Boneraiser Minions

Another Vampire Survivors follower, only this time the imitator surpasses the popular landmark (and with no sleazy overlong allusions to casino games every time you open a damn treasure chest). Whereas Vampire Survivors featured a fairly predictable leveling system, Boneraiser Minions encourages mad-scientist ingenuity with its intimidating slew of crossbred demonic helpers, bizarre relics, and environmental traps and bonuses. This is what playing as the Necromancer in Diablo II should have been like. And yes, Boneraiser Minions has enough juvenile sex puns to make one wonder whether the developer is in junior high school.

Baldur’s Gate III

Baldur’s Gate III rejects its predecessor’s biggest weakness: those real-time skirmishes in which dull-looking avatars awkwardly swing their weapons at one another until someone perishes. The turn-based contests in Baldur’s Gate III marry the high-stakes drama of an XCOM firefight with the kookiness of an experimental puzzler. And while the writing can be quite goofy — I despise the Telltale-Games-esque messages about whether your party members approve of your decisions — the outlandish scenarios are charmingly depicted.

Gravity Circuit

Mega Man remade into a cathartic beat-em-up. The whole point is the style with which you pummel the nuts, bolts, and other components out of irritating robotic forces. The Capcom fanboys who complained about my damning Mega Man 11 review should expose themselves to the precarious levels and chained attacks of Gravity Circuit. The only thing that dampens the action is superfluous character dialogue.

Pseudoregalia

“Game feel” is one of those tortured gaming phrases that can haunt anyone who has a smidgen of dignity. Pseudoregalia nonetheless brought the term to mind because no 3D platformer has ever felt this precise and dynamic. I would rather play Pseudoregalia than any of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 games that inspired developer rittzler.

Void Stranger

A sense of ominous nihilism hangs over this enigma. Not since Solomon’s Key have single-screen quests aroused so much curiosity about secrets that may or may not exist. Once you become accustomed to the puzzles, you find a tree that offers the option of rest. Resting literally closes the game. When you return to Void Stranger (perhaps bringing the vestiges of your own dreams into the game world), you see visions of a time when the protagonist isn’t trapped in stacked basements. But the nightmare again surfaces and the puzzles shift and any confidence you may have had about grasping the meaning of it all vaporizes. A part of me doesn’t want to peel back the layers of Void Stranger. The mysteries are enough.

Pizza Tower

This is psychologically unstable art drenched in pop smarts. What if the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog was a sign of excruciating anxiety? What if the transformations of Super Mario Bros. were feverish and awkward instead of empowering? Pizza Tower exposes the feigned emotions of big-budget games as dog treats for stressed-out populations. It acknowledges the insanity of life and gaming. I get nervous looking at it.

My Heart’s Not in Zelda or: Nobody Saves Gaming Culture

by Jed Pressgrove

And then I woke up.

– Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones), in the film No Country For Old Men.

Tears of the Kingdom led me back to a feeling I had in 2017 with Breath of the Wild: an absence of heart. Not having heart is the ultimate game killer. “No más,” said pugilist Roberto Durán to the referee in 1980, ruining one of boxing’s most anticipated rematches. I understand Durán when I ponder how my time with Zelda has ended two games in a row. The phrase has nothing to do with inability — Durán had notched one win against his opponent, Sugar Ray Leonard, and wasn’t losing by much in the rematch — and everything to do with a lack of investment.

Tears of the Kingdom is not unlike many modern big-budget video games: mechanics upon mechanics, curios upon curios, waypoints upon waypoints. All the crap you pick up is not actually crap, yet nothing feels essential. Outside of a few idiosyncratic enemies and a curiously placed shrine, I don’t admire anything I have discovered.

A game like this should have exciting action. Nevermind that Tears of the Kingdom reuses many thrills from its predecessor — the monster killing is mundane and emotionally vapid compared to that of several titles indebted to the Zelda series (e.g., Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls, and Hyper Light Drifter). Link might have early god-like potential (most shrines are a cinch with Ultrahand and Recall), but the proposition of breaking the game is not anymore interesting than it was in Scribblenauts or Hack N’ Slash.

After a period of amusement using the new powers, a sense of pointlessness emerged as I realized I was traversing a world with a consistent stream of moderate intrigue, nipping at an ever-dangling carrot. The caves and the sky islands are merely extra content, distractions from the reused setting and the awful story. In this collection of locations, there are no high points or low points, just a bunch of mid points. Nintendo straps you to a bed and plugs 10 IVs into your veins. You’re always getting injected, always feeding, but you’re never satisfied or healed, like a junky with no god and a patient with no timetable for discharge. Almost every experience amounts to a nice plateau, so when one has a rare sensation that registers between an above-average thrill and a very good rush, one might feel wowed.

The world of Zelda is purgatory made ultra consumable.

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In Desert Golfing, I am on hole 1401, 3653 strokes. In front of my ball is a sand shed with a sharply angled roof. Then the land flattens and stretches a little more than halfway across the screen before revealing the hole. On the other side of the hole is the steep edge of a fat hill.

I now look at hole 1402, which sits on top of the fat hill. Exasperatingly, the hole resides on the edge of a ridge. There’s no space to the left of the hole for the ball to sit, meaning the ball will roll down back toward the tee if it doesn’t land in the hole, and to the right of the hole, the ball has little room to travel before it would fall off the other side of the hill into a moderately shallow crevice. Past this crevice the ball would go off-screen, triggering a restart.

I would prefer not to deal with 1402, but it’s against the rules to see any new part of the desert before putting the ball in the hole.

This far into the game, I’m more fascinated by what the next section of land will look like than I am by how many strokes I will use on a hole. After all, I’ve hit hundreds of hole-in-ones at this point.

I’m well over a 1,000 holes in and have only seen water about 10 times. I have seen one rock. I used about 30 strokes hitting my ball into the rock, pushing it yard by yard until it fell into the hole first.

Desert Golfing isn’t open like Tears of the Kingdom, but it has a more curious and delightful exploratory philosophy. There’s an invitation to see Desert Golfing’s world, one screen at a time, this eternal sand trap, this place of triangles and other geometric shapes, this landscape of slopes, recesses, 90-degree walls, and clusterfuck canyons, this setting of meditation and self-determined pars and everlasting training, this neverending stretch of orange, this magnificent ode to random generation that resembles a natural progression of geological erosion.

I appreciate and anticipate every part of Desert Golfing’s setting. Spoiled, I take the environmental offerings of Tears of the Kingdom as a given.

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I wish Tears of the Kingdom would overwhelm me, plunge me into doubt and hopelessness, confound me. Progress seems predestined despite the ridiculous number of variables at play. Death in Tears of the Kingdom is irrelevant. I die and return to a nearby checkpoint, perhaps with more hearts than when I crossed the same spot. Every navigational challenge is no more than a temporary annoyance. The answer to everything is immediately apparent. I always know I’m capable of advancing. So what’s the point of moving forward?

Tears of the Kingdom specializes in deliberate predictability. Like Breath of the Wild, it sees itself as a survival test. But I consider myself foolish, not resilient, for engaging with the game’s dull and awkward routines. I have come to despise every jump, every instance of climbing or gliding, every swing of a weapon, every time I have to access a power or an item from a menu. I know why people dedicate themselves to Ultrahand wizardry: Without that novelty, Tears of the Kingdom is monotonously superfluous.

I knew something was dead wrong after I joined forces with bird boy Tulin. Tulin is an amateurish gimmick. He’s positioned as an essential part of the greater mission, but his status as a CPU-controlled juvenile gives off the odor of God of War trendiness. His wind gust ability epitomizes tortured design: To activate this underwhelming technique, Tulin must be close enough to Link to summon the almighty on-screen button prompt. It actually requires two button presses for Tulin to unleash his special move. The utter inelegance of the controls and the one-note personality of the sidekick speak to Nintendo’s low creative standards, which doom what should have been an enlivening ascent into the sky.

The idiocy of this scenario — naturally, Nintendo has the gall to label Tulin and other helpers as Sages — inspired me to take a break from the main story and wander about. After hours of the isomorphic caverns, dime-a-dozen enemy encampments, uninteresting wildlife, and silly side quests, I said to myself: NO MORE!

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To see consumerism as a kind of longing for spiritual connection in a world that has less and less space for the sacred, the mysterious, the luminous, opens up the idea of what we do in the games industry as more than straightforward game material. We touch on much deeper longings, fantasies, and desires. We sell dreams.

– narrative designer Meghna Jayanth.

Transforming into a horse that crushes monsters with its hind legs represents a more interesting fantasy than the Ultrahand prospect of constructing a flying car, mecha, or giant rotating flamethrower. I’ve used countless vehicles and contraptions in games, but I had never assumed the role of a violent stallion, a deranged mermaid, or a toxic slug until I played Nobody Saves the World.

Unlike Link, the titular protagonist of Nobody Saves the World is void of distinguished features. The eye sockets of this freak are empty. He is pallid and scrawny. He slaps his hand at opponents like a child. He is a joke, a winking reference to the modest saviors of countless fantasy games.

But he can shape-shift into other beings and wield their most lethal tactics and attacks. As in Tears of the Kingdom, your initial efforts with all the abilities involve minor growing pains. Nobody receives experience points by killing enemies in particular ways and doing other things, like opening chests. (You’re reading that right. You get rewarded for finding rewards.)

Nobody Saves the World and Tears of the Kingdom appear quite different. Their systems, structures, and capabilities don’t bear much similarity. Neither do their audiovisual styles or storytelling approaches.

Yet their ideologies match perfectly. They romanticize and fetishize the lone hero. One who saps the resources around him like a ferocious anteater, demolishes habitats as if justified by divine right, and rubs shoulders with glorious destiny. These heroes are successful in the most self-righteous, circular manner possible. Their dominance receives comprehensive, immutable backing by thematic suggestions about lowly beginnings, working one’s way up, and earning the respect of people. Contra pushes machismo. Hades worships rebellion. Zelda and Nobody present phony holiness as a sacred goal.

Beyond all my misgivings about the mechanical, kinetic, and environmental limitations of Tears of the Kingdom and Nobody Saves the World, I am most tired of their veiled and deceptive ego-building effect which leaves me hollow and aimless, notwithstanding the digital riches they can grant to me. In our slumber as gamers, kingdoms are forever customized for our fleeting happiness.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Weirdness as Formula

by Jed Pressgrove

Since the release of Super Mario Bros. during the 1980s, Mario games have moved away from hard-nosed platforming and aesthetics that elicit a mixture of emotions, morphing into a franchise that peddles a smarmy brand of joy. Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn’t alter this business plan. It frequently reflects the series’ evolution toward back-patting game design.

The pandering in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is over the top, like a person who compliments you 30 times within minutes of meeting you. When you stomp an enemy, text like “Good” and “Great” explodes into existence near your mind-blowing (read: largely routine) actions. After entering a new world, you get a Wonder Seed — an item you collect to open up paths in the world map — handed to you. Some stages amount to excuses to give the player more Wonder Seeds, offering no resistance, no adversaries, no puzzles, no thinking. At no point did I lack lives, flower coins (used to purchase badges, extra lives, etc.), or Wonder Seeds. There’s an abundance of riches, a dearth of obstacles to progress, a feeling nothing can stop Mario. The tech industry might label this a streamlined, optimized user experience.

If you have difficulty, you can wear a badge for various advantages. One badge triggers an alarm when you’re near important items, another adds extra blocks throughout a stage to make platforming easier, and so on. Forgive yourself for assuming that some badge abilities, such as the parachute hat and grappling vine, might need to be strategically selected to complete mandatory segments of the game. The powers are optional and only necessary for the Badge Challenge levels, all of which pose little issue and allow the player to die without actually losing lives.

Nintendo plays it safe with the curveballs in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Every main stage contains a Wonder Flower that, when touched, turns the game wacky for temporary thrills. Placing all Flower-induced quirks aside, Nintendo’s telegraphing of any incoming weirdness robs the proceedings of awe. One might even predict a twist based on a level’s enemies, structure, and title. Like Doom (2016) and its suspense-killing Gore Nests, Super Mario Bros. Wonder announces and warns us of its craziness. (Readers who complained about Wonder Flower twists being spoiled by reviewers fail to realize a lot of things, including the truth that Super Mario Bros. Wonder dampens its own potential irony, as well as minor facts of Western society life such as freedom of the press and the right to critically talk about specific parts of a game without including a warning for people who constantly bombard themselves with information, who never think that perhaps NOT CONSUMING any written or audiovisual material about Super Mario Bros. Wonder could result in a more surprising experience when they finally play the game.)

The Wonder Flower dynamic nods to the Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy level in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, the kookiest Mario title of them all. The distinction between touching Wonder Flowers and touching Fuzzies is illuminating. In Yoshi’s Island, the Fuzzies populate the environment as a menace. You avoid them and their disorienting consequences unless you want to be deviant. Unless you want to get messed up and stumble around. The Fuzzies are the most compelling drug in video game history (even Jet in Fallout 2 can’t compete), backed up by a wonky, mind-in-the-gutter aesthetic. Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy has reverse-psychology genius, a superego-versus-id truth.

The Wonder Flower has no psychological or philosophical whimsy to it. We are encouraged, instructed, even mandated to find the flowers, consume them, and have our high. Nintendo fulfills its promise of gameplay wrinkles to the consumer, stage by stage. The player, even the dunce in many instances, gathers the rewards (Wonder Seeds). The Wonder Flower, this engine of innovation, becomes part of a familiar cycle. I began taking for granted the short musical bridge initiated by the collection of the plant, that sonic reminder of one’s entry into wonderland. But in Yoshi’s Island, you’d have to be numb to listen to that demented horn sound upon colliding with a Fuzzy and not be struck, or tickled, by the absurdity.

The magical effects of Wonder Flowers vary. They transform enemies, platforms, Mario, and more. The game repeats some of these ideas to capitalize on untapped hijinks, only to the further detriment of surprise. In World 1, the Bulrush Coming Through level boasts a mostly innocuous stampede of bulls. This is followed later by the more challenging Bulrush Express, but the conceptual repetition prevents astonishment. Similarly, every battleship stage leans on the same predicament: Bowser targeting the player via a reticle. The significant delay on the villain’s explosive shots undercuts any sensation of danger. These episodes amount to dull bureaucratic formalities.

At their best, Wonder Flowers provide an abrupt break from the standard platforming (as when Mario is controlled from a topdown view) or provoke us to believe a particular type of Mario could punctuate an entire game. Wubba Mario, or Red Goo Mario as I like to say, epitomizes this latter possibility. Wubba Mario slides along walls and ceilings with marvelous, slimy tactility. This version of Mario is not merely fun to control. It’s placed in environments and situational drama that push us to immerse ourselves in a different style of play. Too many other times Mario’s transformations register as gimmicks as opposed to exciting fragments of a hallucination. Rolling around as a spiked ball is a hollow God Mode. Scooting about as a spongy platform in confined spaces leads to unimaginative solutions. Hiding behind trees as a Goomba is Metal Gear Solid for dummies.

The criticisms above may embolden the Nintendo fans — or, worse, those “it’s not made for you” people who would struggle to criticize a McDonald’s hamburger — with their digital water pistols. The aggressive accessibility and cheeriness of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, these ingenious folks would argue, is there for the kids, as if:

• Five-year-olds didn’t fall in love with the less patronizing original Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
• Children only gravitate toward the lighthearted, gentler things in life.
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s invincibility options aren’t enough — every player, no matter their age or brain development, needs to be showered with infantilizing yelps of praise and gifted scores of Wonder Seeds.
• Sharing a personal opinion on a game is committing a grave crime against mass marketing and consumerism.

BUT IF I HAD CHILDREN!

Sure, not going to lie, I would jump at the chance, jump like Mario, to play Super Mario Bros. Wonder with my hypothetical kids, because I was married once, for four years, with a stepdaughter and stepnephew and stepniece, and a sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and we would convene to play Nintendo games, my personal favorite being Bowling from Wii Sports, because I had this wrist rotation that guaranteed a strike, and I love being the winner, doesn’t matter if my opponent is a seasoned veteran or a child not old enough to sniff high school, does not matter, my self-esteem needs victory and praise, as well as irritation and frustration and indignation from my competitors, ANYWAY, we all played New Super Mario Bros. Wii one time, and even though I consider the New Super Mario Bros. series to be profoundly unessential, just an excuse to say you’re playing a traditional Mario game in the 21st century, I got a kick out of hearing my sister-in-law remark about her fumbling throughout New Super Mario Bros. Wii while her son tried to show her the ropes, and it was a blast guffawing with my family members while hopping around and dying as Mario and Luigi and Toad and blah blah blah, hell, I was a kid once and would play the battle mode in Super Mario Bros. 3 religiously with my younger sister, yes, little girls play video games, it’s not a big deal you conservative and liberal and moderate reprobates, so yes, indeed, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is most likely fun for kids, who also hold McDonald’s in high regard, thanks for the revolutionary and enlightening thoughts, you insightful scholars of media markets!

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The second half of Super Mario Bros. Wonder flirts with excellence.

The better half couldn’t have come at a better time: World 3, Shining Falls, is the nadir of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The locations in Shining Falls are more like amateurish demos than fully realized stages. The Sugarstar Trial: Across the Night Sky features the worst Wonder Flower effect of the game: a constant flow of shooting Super Stars that allow the player to mindlessly run through everything. Similarly disappointing is Hoppycat Mario. This form revolves around a great idea (ultra high jumps), but multiple levels do nothing remotely intriguing with the ability. World 3 defines anti-climactic with its final stage, which features basic follow-the-coins jumps. The least Nintendo could have done is transcend a moderately interesting Super Mario Maker fan creation.

World 4 saves Super Mario Bros. Wonder by giving the game a compelling sense of place. The map for World 4 evokes desert mirages and teases hidden corners of ancient architecture. The best level, The Desert Mystery, has Mario ripping the bandages off mummies and pulling cords to manipulate stage elements like platform height and item placement. These mechanics enrich the setting’s personality, inviting you to engage in a sensational type of archaeology. The level climaxes with the task of chasing a rogue Wonder Seed to foreboding techno music. Finally, Super Mario Bros. Wonder subverts its cautionary, ingratiating tendency of handing everything to the player.

The last two worlds, Fungi Mines and Deep Magma Bog, continue to push the exploratory inventiveness of World 4. They deepen the feeling that Mario could get lost. They highlight the difference between manufacturing content and designing environments as convincing illusions, vessels of atmosphere, and lived-in habitats. They have unforgettable identities, just like Pipe Land did in Super Mario Bros. 3. They’re quirky, precarious, and foreboding. Matter-defying rifts, collapsing columns, fossilized dragon bones, moving doors with monstrous jaws — such characteristics vivify these places given to ruin, corruption, and destruction.

Different factors water down the immersive spells of these worlds. Nintendo packs in far too many levels like the Badge Challenges, KO Arenas, and Break Times, these feeble and emotionally inert odes to tutorialization, stat-based achievement, and designated relaxation. The graphics, while full of neat details, look like what we should expect from Mario, especially if earlier this year we walked out of a theatrical showing of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. As surreal as Super Mario Bros. Wonder strives to be, its rounded aesthetic is so carefully processed and on brand that the darker moments of the game pull their punches, akin to brothers facing off in a mixed martial arts contest who can’t help but think about their worried mother.

There is no truth in advertising: The concept of “wonder” should entail the exact opposite of the foreseeable, the explainable, and the comfortable. As with the last two Legend of Zelda games, Nintendo neither redefines nor refines its intellectual property. It reinforces its myths and upholds its by-committee values. Super Mario Bros. Wonder achieves an appreciable number of impressive moments because child-like experimentation remains a talking point for the company. If only Super Mario Bros. Wonder could let go of the Pavlovian design strategies, it’d be a near masterpiece.

A Shrine Tale

by Jed Pressgrove

The shift from dungeons to shrines* in the The Legend of Zelda series smacks of creative convenience. Shrines give the developers freedom to throw in whatever puzzles or enemy encounters they want without overarching context. Everything in a dungeon, ideally, works together like the instrumentalists in an orchestra. However small the dungeon elements might be, they create something bigger than their sum. A dungeon needs vision. A shrine doesn’t. And so the shrines in Breath of the Wild seem less like an art and more like the scattered ideas of game design students.

Immediately following the transition from the Great Sky Island to the ballyhooed open world, Tears of the Kingdom plays into the worst disposable tendencies of the shrine paradigm. What does it say when a 2023 Zelda title — a good six years removed from its predecessor’s experimentation — dedicates an entire shrine to a contrived lesson on item throwing? It reeks of inefficiency, as you would hope the lengthy introductory tutorial would fully cover something as rudimentary as item throwing. And it doesn’t suggest adventure, neither in terms of being rewarded for wandering about, nor in terms of being stimulated by curiosity or surprise. Maybe the point is to celebrate the player’s ability to follow basic instructions. Upon completion of the task (i.e., dismantling a stupid robot standing on higher ground in the middle of a room), a voice remarks, “You have proven your mastery,” which is akin to giving someone a college degree because they can zip up their pants.

The second shrine I visited proved just as perfunctory. Its hurdles involved rehashed Ultrahand lessons from the Great Sky Island — fusing logs together for Link to walk across or climb, and crafting a raft with fans to travel on water. These mind-numbingly vapid challenges, like the item-throwing routine, say more about the smarmy design philosophy of modern-day Nintendo than they do about the setting of Tears of the Kingdom. As in Breath of the Wild, Nintendo appears frightened of letting players off the leash at the beginning. These games are as unconfident and repetitious as they are grandiose. The initial shrines in Tears of the Kingdom point to the company’s conservatism as much as the open world hearkens back to the conviction of the original Zelda on the NES.

Then something magical happened. As I scaled a mountain to draw closer to a third shrine, I found myself in the clutches of the morbidly fascinating Gloom Hands. These hands reach out of puddles that spread like a virus. It’s like a child’s nightmare, this idea of strange hands touching you, pulling you, kidnapping you to hell to do God knows what. I was able to shake loose of the hands and arrive to the Morok Shrine, but the undying threat of the hands foreshadowed an hour-plus purgatorial struggle I would have in the glorified mini dungeon.

— – <<—

Let me back up. When you leave the Great Sky Island, you have the choice of following the main quest marker. I considered this option for about five seconds and became sickened by the thought of continuing down a preset path after complying with the bureaucratic orders of the Great Sky Island. Anything to escape the game’s eye-rolling storytelling seemed sexy. This early decision to ignore the larger goal meant I would not attain the handy paraglider, which would have rendered the Morok Shrine as dull as the other shrines I had the displeasure of discovering.

Without the paraglider in Link’s possession, Morok Shrine’s platforming becomes treacherous. Particularly early on when one has not had much of a chance to gain extra heart containers to lessen the probability of deadly injury.

The subtitle of Morok Shrine is “A Bouncy Device.” It sounds innocuous and fun, but I nonetheless felt nervous after reading the words. I sensed potential destruction, however playfully constructed. The first part of the shrine made me unclench. Just a square platform rising quickly out of the floor. A higher point unreachable without upward momentum. I timed it so the platform propelled Link to the next floor mid-jog.

I saw the bouncy device. A heavy-looking spring full of pressure. It indeed bounces when Link’s weapon strikes it. Not a complicated solution. Move the contraption closer to the ledge of the upper level with Ultrahand, situate the hero on top of the spring, swing the ungodly big stick and spear combination to activate the spring, and boost Link to the next floor. Push Link forward during the jump, or you will die an embarrassing death like I did, crashing back down into the very thing that was supposed to deliver you to new heights.

My second attempt was successful, though Link sustained significant injury because I failed to dive right after I cleared the ledge in midair. On subsequent tries, I became a master of this little dive — if you didn’t know any better watching, you would think Link is instantly magnetized to the floor. (The paraglider would have made this skill irrelevant and undiscovered.)

—

The final floor almost stumped me, thrusting me into a cycle of restarts that attracted me like an irresistible merry-go-round, where my stubbornness felt like drunkenness; where my realization that the shrine, by design, required the paraglider compelled me to keep going against the grain; and where my memories of hardship in games as diverse as The Talos Principle and Ninja Gaiden floated in the background, inspiring me to prove, yet again, some silly point about my ability to overcome doubt, perplexing circumstances, and brick-wall opposition.

To the left, the final floor presents a pair of fused-together bouncy devices behind bars, which only open when a ball is placed in the middle of a recess in the floor. That ball is located to the right across a pit on a higher floor. To retrieve it, you must launch Link across the pit using another bouncy device propped up at a diagonal angle on a ramp. This stunt doesn’t demand more than simple aim. Link will not take damage, regardless of whether you dive or press no button.

Shooting the ball over the pit to the recess in the floor is easy. But the return trip for Link means almost certain death without the paraglider at this early stage. More heart containers would solve the issue, but I only had four. Being launched from the higher floor triggers fatal fall damage for this most sensitive version of the princess-saving son of a bitch.

The easiest way to shoot Link back across the pit is to utilize a ramp. You fit the bouncy device into the crevice of the ramp so that the launchpad faces your destination, stand Link on the pad, and whack the spring. Because of the ramp’s sharp upward angle, this method killed me multiple times, even with a dive.

I could have joined a Reddit discussion, asked why Nintendo would place this shrine in plain sight after the player leaves the Great Sky Island, and permanently degraded myself, even under the guise of anonymity. Instead, I opted to die multiple times while attempting different launch methods.

I reasoned that if I could launch Link with the spring on the floor with a less extreme angle, perhaps the pointy-eared rupee rubber wouldn’t perish from the impact to the lower platform, as he would not fly as high into the air. This not-so-brilliant idea presented three issues. First, the spring had to be angled so that Link would clear the conspicuously placed railing at the edge of the higher floor. Second, even if the angle allowed Link to avoid contact with the railing, he might still hit the wall below the edge of the lower floor, causing the otherwise silent protagonist to let out a pathetic, futile yell as he plummets to the abyss. Third, how would you create an angle in the first place without a ramp?

My answer to that question was as embarrassing as you might guess: drop a few shields from my inventory and fuse them together to form a pallet that could help support a lower angle for the launch. My ingenuity was never rewarded, mainly because the makeshift pallet couldn’t remain steady enough throughout the spring’s abrupt initiation.

Like many puzzles in life, the solution turned out simple, though arriving at it required me to destroy Link’s body a number of times. Just use the ramp, and dive into the lower floor as soon as you pass over the pit. When successful, you lose all but one-quarter of a heart. From there, you must make one final significant vertical jump with three stacked springs, which must be positioned close to a wall so that you can move forward a couple of feet in midair, just enough to catch the edge of the highest floor. If the stacked springs sit too close to the wall, Link’s momentum will be stalled ever so slightly, resulting in probable doom.

The torture of solving Morok Shrine in this way ranks as one of the greatest experiences in a Zelda game, in the most counterintuitive manner possible. It puts your gaming life in the most ironic of contexts. It puts hair on Link’s chest. It puts the Tears in Tears of the Kingdom.

*Yes, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have dungeons, but they’re secondary now, and seemingly only included out of obligation.

TO BE CONTINUED …

This is the third part of an ongoing critical series. Click here to read the second part, “The Legend of Tutorialization.“

The Legend of Tutorialization

by Jed Pressgrove

Like its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom bars entry to Hyrule until the player completes a glorified tutorial. If a so-called open world game must include this type of contrivance, the initial trial should be brief, as in Fallout 2 or Dark Souls, for two reasons:

1. The shorter the delay to the meat of the game, the better.
2. Replaying a tutorial on subsequent playthroughs is tedious.

I criticized Breath of the Wild for the trite battles and busywork in its introductory Great Plateau area, which takes about an hour or two of your time (if not more if you want to explore—an urge that isn’t rewarded with anything particularly interesting). Seven years later, Tears of the Kingdom presents the Great Sky Island. I again question the use of “Great” as an adjective, because there’s nothing spectacular about being locked into an educational portion of a game whose design otherwise preaches freedom—especially when you must interact with a former Hylian ruler named Rauru, who has the personality of an ironing board.

Similar to the Great Plateau, the Great Sky Island has shrines where Link gains powers, though these locations must now be visited in a specific order. As Rauru nudges you to the next shrine, you run into puzzles on the island that require new skills (primarily Ultrahand). Along the way you encounter peaceful robots who relay helpful tips and malicious robots who allow you to practice the unimaginative combat system.

The script gives an explanation for this environment, but that doesn’t take away the manufactured stench of the area. Obviously the game needs to introduce mechanics, but I would prefer a concise training sequence from Rauru. The lanky fellow might show irritation as Link commits errors with the complex Ultrahand ability. Anything to decrease the extended blandness. (For all the complaints that could be directed at the more linear Zelda titles, I appreciate the sense of discovery involved with locating a special item in a dungeon and the simplicity of a quick message about the artifact’s capabilities.)

Thankfully, Link’s main powers in Tears of the Kingdom outshine what he could do in Breath of the Wild. The abilities lend a more surreal tone to the adventure. They go well beyond the activities one would envision in a dream about Link. They even correct some of the dubious qualities of Breath of the Wild. I recently visited Wikipedia because I couldn’t remember all the powers from Breath of the Wild. But these four I won’t forget.

Ultrahand

You can build complicated contraptions (just browse YouTube) with this superglue ability, but you don’t have to be perfect with it to solve certain puzzles, so Ultrahand has a comical jankiness to it that recalls Scribblenauts. While Ultrahand brings the most mechanical possibilities to Tears of the Kingdom, it’s my least favorite of the four, mainly because of the awkward controls. My main irritation: Waggling an analog stick to unglue parts is inefficient and silly. Should have been a button press. I also don’t have much of a desire to build things outside of situations where I need to. Frankly, I would have preferred Nintendo to reinvent the game’s stale combat. (It’s no surprise two of my favorite Zeldas, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess, emphasize the intricacies of swordplay.)

Fuse

The simplest of the four, but it goes a long way toward eliminating one of the limitations of Breath of the Wild: the uncreative weapon-breaking system that could pass as parody. Fuse permanently welds items together for various bonuses, including magical effects, higher attack power, and, most importantly, extra durability. If you combine the right items, certain weapons can last quite some time. That’s enough to warrant praise alone; the experimentation with different amalgams adds intrigue. Fuse makes chests more attractive. In Breath of the Wild, I started ignoring many chests because the items I discovered disintegrated so easily. In Tears of the Kingdom, I’m curious about what I might find and manipulate with Fuse. Exploring the advantages of fused materials pays off when you face monsters with unique weaknesses, creating a stronger dynamic between the hero and the random elements scattered throughout the world.

Ascend

Ascend feels like a satirical wrinkle about the tension between the desire for convenient exploration and the limits of logic. Blasting Link through a ceiling qualifies as the goofiest action in any Zelda. It’s as exciting to misuse as use: I’ve inadvertently thrusted myself into places that had nothing to do with my original intentions. After you use this skill, the game asks if you want to go through with the ascension, in case your aim was terrible or you see a massive problem waiting for you above. I find it almost impossible not to go through with the process every time. The option to back out of consequences robs the game of irony.

Recall

Although time manipulation isn’t an original concept for the Zelda series, being able to isolate a rewinding effect on an object introduces novel game-breaking possibilities. Recall is thus a double-edged sword. Undeniably fascinating to play with, but when used on items in conjunction with Ultrahand, many of Tears of the Kingdom’s shrine challenges become repetitive jokes.

– — — I … ——…

Sometimes tutorialization seems to never end in modern games. An hour or two (Zelda), a baker’s dozen (Persona 5), 20+ hours (Xenoblade Chronicles 2). Part of the issue lies in developers’ and gamers’ confusion about the value of mechanics. The more mechanics, the more depth. Even if this assumption is true (it’s not—a simple session of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker has more depth than most video games for social and psychological reasons as much as mechanical ones), we run into the predicament of games taking on too much or, as we would say in Mississippi, getting too big for their britches. Too many games are counterinstinctual, turgid, overambitious, and trendy. And games need to be accessible for financial and philosophical concerns. So tutorials overstay their welcome. The manual never died. It transformed into an obtrusive, virus-like guide within games. These eyesores, earsores, and brainsores are accepted because people feel empowered when they get to do extra things in games. Look at me I’m a builder chemist craftsman cook and photographer in an action game I finally appreciate things that I never could in real life I finally have depth

—- —- —-

I dive off the Great Sky Island. In the wilderness. Happy to leave behind the lessons. Stoked about the real game. I find a few shrines. They want me to fight single enemies and build rafts. They want me to learn things I’ve already learned.

TO BE CONTINUED …

This is the second part of an ongoing critical series. Click here to read the first part, “Why Isn’t Zelda Smarter?”

Why Isn’t Zelda Smarter?

by Jed Pressgrove

For a name associated with greatness, Zelda isn’t the sharpest tack at the start of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The scenario begins with Zelda and Link investigating a cavern under Hyrule Castle. The obvious question—why the hell would only two people, including the kingdom’s most important person whose life was recently in grave danger, delve into an unexplored dark place suspected as the source of new evil?—is never answered.

Atmospheric, creepy music attempts to set a serious tone, but I’m more immersed in my own impatience listening to Zelda’s gratuitous gasps and digesting her monotonous, incredulous comments about how deep the cavern goes.

“People have been falling ill after coming into contact with the gloom drifting from these caverns,” Zelda observes as she continues the inadvisable descent with Link, who, in line with tradition, remains speechless like the story pawn that he is. “Though here it seems almost misty and not concentrated enough to harm us.”

This last optimistic observation comes about a minute after her more worrying line, “This strange gloom keeps getting thicker.” Either the script team can’t understand basic contradictions in writing, or Zelda is a bonafide dullard.

An on-screen message instructs me to swing Link’s sword with the Y button. Conspicuously, this text prompt stays up for a while. I feel teased, as though the game makers know Zelda is irritating and would make an attractive target, but no amount of hacking can stop this NPC damsel in her tracks.

I see three one-eyed bats. At last the game offers a distraction from Zelda’s grating dialogue. I annihilate the vermin. Before I can congratulate myself for conquering this trio of winged dummies, a cutscene initiates. Zelda runs to the hero and says, “You’re not hurt, are you, Link?” No, he just completed the simplest tutorial sequence in the world with a high-powered sword and myriad heart containers.

After this less-than-minor brush with danger, Zelda has a series of Da Vinci Code moments, connecting the dots between images on the walls of the cavern and her knowledge of Hylian history. Soon she whips out a Switch-shaped device and takes pictures of her discoveries. “It’s so easy to record,” she says, channeling her inner tech bro. “You point it and click.” (How despicable that Nintendo markets itself within a game destined to sell millions.)

The princess tells Link to keep going deeper—something she has said ad nauseam, as if the writers intend a perverted metaphor. I run ahead as Link. An ominous red substance marks the air. Another cutscene triggers: The two approach a horrifying green spiral. Zelda, in patented clueless fashion, says, “Let’s continue, Link. But we must be extremely careful.”

On cue like a silly horror movie, bad things start happening—the corpse of Ganon reanimates, shoots red junk at Link’s arm and sword, and proclaims his power while calling out to Zelda and Link.

And Zelda, showing a level of stereotypical obliviousness only rivaled by Mila Kunis’ character in the risible 2015 film Jupiter Ascending, asks, “How do you … know our names?”

—- —- —

I expect more intelligence from the introduction of the one zillionth entry of a franchise that its creators and fans treat as sacred entertainment. (Say what you will about the less advanced Zelda II: The Adventure of Link or A Link to the Past—they had smarter openings.) When Breath of the Wild graced our lives seven years ago, I thought the Second Coming had occurred judging by people’s enraptured responses. And if one didn’t know any better, the responses this month would indicate a Third Coming has transpired. Yet even a casual analysis of Tears of the Kingdom’s intro can underline the mind-numbing potential of its regurgitated plot. Zelda hasn’t learned anything. Link can’t say anything. And we, as players, dare not denounce this exercise in arrested development. We are expected to welcome the stupidity of this badly written, lazily designed initial salvo. Save the ostensibly birdbrained princess, Nintendo says. So I kick off my individual journey in the open world environment, hoping for better things to come.

TO BE CONTINUED …

The Hero (Gamer) Worship of Fire Emblem Engage

by Jed Pressgrove

Any RPG lover knows the prophesied hero. A person, often of modest origin, destined to defeat evil.

With the protagonist Alear, Fire Emblem Engage delivers the most annoying version of this character yet. Alear’s personality, flat as it is, doesn’t raise unique objections. The problem comes from the companions Alear meets on the journey.

Each time a new party member enters the picture, Fire Emblem Engage pummels its audience with depictions of awestruck, surprised, even groveling individuals who have awaited a being called the Divine Dragon. When people learn Alear is the Divine Dragon, they become part of an apologetic mass, begging the chosen one to excuse their ignorance. Read the Bible. Not even Christ received this consistent level of absurd reverence. God knows people are different. Outside of the blatantly wicked, there are doubters, skeptics, and the hardheaded. Fire Emblem Engage denies this reality.

Alear becomes the unfortunate victim of hype, which destroys any chance of Fire Emblem Engage rising above good-versus-bad cliches. Atrocious red-and-blue hair aside, Alear isn’t the most insufferable subject in the long history of juvenile video game storytelling. But she irritates one the way other things do because of exaggerated praise. Harry Potter. Lady Gaga. Star Wars. The Legend of Zelda. Coffee. The clueless, one-dimensional script of Fire Emblem Engage places Alear in the company of such ballyhooed imperfect things that nonetheless gain almost infinite notoriety thanks to automatons with no apparent life perspective, i.e., fans and addicts.

The decision from publisher Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems to put Alear on a pedestal might cause a person to scratch their head until the skin turns red. Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the predecessor to Fire Emblem Engage, became the best-selling entry of the tactical RPG franchise, and featured one of the most complex, conflicted heroes in video game history in Dimitri. Dimitri’s response to his inner demons turns him into a figure of camp—in startling contrast to the treatment of Alear. Fire Emblem: Three Houses also resists convenient morality. Its linking of war to education pits teachers against students. Its portrayal of religion and atheism defies easy conclusions about blame. Why did the creative minds—if I might stretch the definition of that phrase—behind Fire Emblem Engage conclude that hero worship was the correct path, narratively or financially, for this sequel in the beloved series?

The answer seems to be: They’re banking on the undying fragility of gamer egos. Many gamers feed on groupthink (see the constant pearl-clutching over game review scores), instant gratification (see the game design principles behind recent hits like Hades and Vampire Survivors), and tradition (see the idiotically predictable plot of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom). In a cynical move, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems offer Alear as an embodiment of this gaming culture, complete with nostalgic references to previous Fire Emblem characters and scenarios, divorced from their complications.

One might find hope for future Fire Emblem sequels given the lukewarm reception to Fire Emblem Engage’s story. But when we wait for a sequel to fix what was wrong with a game, it’s time to reevaluate our allegiance to a franchise that has no end (that which has no end has no dignity). As long as people clamor for more of the same, thematic insults like those in Fire Emblem Engage are cards that game companies are willing to play.

Metroid Dread Review or: Why Do We Play Metroid Today?

by Jed Pressgrove

“Why” … what does that word mean? I forgot.

– Henri Dickson, in the 1965 film Alphaville.

The moving walkway. You stand to save energy. You walk for what feels like superhuman speed. The convenience almost thrills you. Why toil when you can do next to nothing?

The original Metroid, released in 1986, was like being lost in a labyrinthian airport. It could dampen your mood for days, raise the question of why you bother playing. Uncaring, ruthless, and maddening, Metroid didn’t promise fond memories. It wasn’t cool, but cold. Samus, the protagonist, left no hints about her impressions of her purgatorial fate. No voices guided her. Caution was paramount.

During my last session with Metroid Dread, I felt the conveyor belt effect. I traveled between three settings like a wealthy American millennial in Europe without obligation. I gained three new abilities in around 15 minutes, which brought to mind the satirical comment on gaining power in Guacamelee 2. I received health and ammo bonuses almost every time I killed something — if by some unholy luck I didn’t, I could thrust Samus’ arm into one of the numerous statues that fill depleted meters like no-cost gas stations. A computer named Adam told me what to do and what to expect next. First class. Sky miles. Comfort plus. Might as well have been a private jet.

– —- — —– —

Why play Metroid Dread on the Nintendo Switch?

Not only is Metroid not going anywhere, but I’m pretty sure 2D Metroid isn’t going anywhere either.

More than anything else, Metroid Dread feels like going back to a place of comfort after a long time away.

I can’t think of a 2D game that feels better to control.

The typically stoic Samus has a lot more swagger in her step this time around.

I’m not a speedrunner, but the open design of ZDR seems to offer plenty of potential to optimize and exploit the game.

With a magnetic sense of style and atmosphere, Dread puts the Metroid series on the right path, maintaining the ideals of the original games with modern sensibilities and technology.

It’s a game that looks at what people enjoy about this enduring formula—exploring a convoluted space with interlocking architecture and being rewarded for carefully studying and exploiting that space—and goes “OK, what would make you happier?” 

Metroid Dread perfects the Metroidvania formula.

A magnificent deity told me to play Metroid Dread and spread the good news.

— — – – —– —

What a time it was when one could enter “Justin Bailey” as a password in the original Metroid to take control of a more powerful and more scantily clad Samus.

The motivation for using this password varied:

1. A lot of gamers had a fetish for cheating back in the NES days. The Justin Bailey password felt like cheating.
2. Showing the trick to one’s (presumably ignorant) friends garnered cool points.
3. You wanted to give yourself another opportunity to spread and buy into the myth that Justin Bailey was the name of someone important to Metroid’s development.
4. The game was difficult and exacting. The password provided relief, an alternate reality to the constipated search for upgrades in a demanding maze.
5. Did I mention Samus showed more skin?

What if we could enter “Justin Bailey” as a code in Metroid Dread? Why would we use it?

Samus today already feels more like a privileged superhero than a tough bounty hunter (particularly when we acknowledge the ongoing Smash Bros. series). In Metroid Dread, she can put Usain Bolt to shame before bursting into the air like Superman. She can infinitely chain together jumps that have destructive power when she collides into enemies or certain ceilings and walls. She can dash forward and backward with blinding speed. She can build up an arsenal of missiles that would make Iron Man nod. By the time she acquires all her abilities, the player should feel like a god, as if the ultimate Justin Bailey code has been initiated.

Contrast this with Metroid Prime. Even with all the upgrades, the situation remains bleak and frustrating unless the player rises to the challenge. Recall the late room in Prime where one must ascend by jumping on a series of small platforms as Metroids — sporting different colors and thus requiring Samus to manually switch to different weapons for maximum effectiveness — pester the heroine, sucking her life away or, worse, causing her to take a demoralizing fall to the floor, a forced restart to the precise hopping. It takes will and accuracy to pass such a test with only a double jump, and this is without speaking of the preceding boss or the incoming final battle, both arguably more trying than the platforming section.

Metroid Dread doesn’t understand how to make history like Metroid Prime — how to burn itself into the collective player’s heart, how to prod the collective player’s imagination. The intention of Metroid Dread, notwithstanding the tone of its title, is to please.

—- – — – —- —

“I wonder if I can parry it,” I said to my 43-year-old friend’s 27-year-old roommate as I, a proud 37-year-old, fought an optional boss in Elden Ring, which should be called Dark Souls 6.

Did anyone see the gaming world’s obsession with parrying on the horizon? If only these parry worshipers had been around during the 1990s, when artful but unpopular fighting games like Weaponlord and Street Fighter III strayed from convention and demanded that the audience learn a tricky defensive mechanic.

Why play Metroid Dread on the Nintendo Bitch? To parry, to go Will Smith on something, of course!

—————

Here’s how innovation works for undying franchises: include an idea that isn’t new to video games but can be marketed as a fresh feature for the series. Many gamers eat up this bastardized, dishonest sort of creativity. In this case, Metroid Dread steals well-worn concepts from the survival horror genre with its inclusion of EMMIs, gangling killer robots that slink about like ravenous animals. EMMIs are indestructible (at first) and can murder Samus in one hit, demanding the heroine to avoid being detected or, if detected, to run away until the machine loses track of her or, if caught, to execute a perfect parry during a quick-time event to stun the robot.

Although Metroid Dread adopts survival horror conventions, it fails to produce tension, much less dread, with its counterfeit suspense. The EMMI encounters suffer from predictability: EMMIs are relegated to demarcated zones and even show up on the in-game map. Bye bye to the notion of getting caught off-guard. The pointlessness of Samus’ cloaking ability further confirms Metroid Dread’s forced trendiness. I rarely, if ever, had to cloak the heroine to advance in an EMMI zone. And fear not if an EMMI executes Samus. The game will respawn the bounty hunter right outside of the EMMI zone, where you can dust yourself off for another exciting time with a rote trial-and-error sequence.

The EMMIs mostly provide an excuse for Metroid Dread to indulge in 2.5D shenanigans. EMMIs can be annihilated by a special cannon that Samus can only access and use when confronting EMMIs — how’s that for a contrivance? (One must destroy a Central Unit, a sitting duck of an adversary, to activate the cannon.) When Samus utilizes the cannon, the game switches to a tortured 3D perspective, demanding the player to line up a laser light on the target’s head. After you obliterate the EMMI’s helmet, a fully charged shot to the head ends the robot’s existence. The climactic scenario is always the same: run away from the EMMI until you can stand about a screen’s length from the robot — which, thanks to a pandering design choice, moves slower and behaves more idiotically when Samus has the cannon — and then blast away within the goofy camera angle.

– — – — – – – — – — — – –

you really shouldn’t can’t you be more objective people have been waiting on this sequel for decades the EMMIs provide a nice change of pace the game is quite challenging some of the best boss battles of all time you really shouldn’t the parry is well incorporated Samus has never felt better finally we get some voice acting that doesn’t suck and that carries dramatic weight the bosses are boss you really shouldn’t developers work extremely hard you are just judging us for enjoying something this game wasn’t made for you watch your tone Samus moves with grace at last you really shouldn’t the polish reminds me of the hard work behind games what’s wrong with the mechanics you are a contrarian the bosses will make you think twice about your skills you really shouldn’t the story is actually intriguing and if you pay attention to the lore you must not like Metroid the game isn’t broken so what’s the problem you are miserable you really shouldn’t did you even get past the halfway point the bosses remind me of how hard developers work day in and day out you probably are getting paid by an opponent of Nintendo you really shouldn’t

—- —- — —–

About seven hours into Metroid Dread, I finally experienced anxiety during a battle with the stupidly named boss Experiment No. Z-57. This creature takes up the center of the background, recalling the classic third-stage boss from Contra III: The Alien Wars, and unleashes sweeping claw and beam attacks, the latter of which demands some nifty jumping for Samus to avoid getting burned by the lethal pink goo on the ground left behind by the foe’s projectile vomit. The most ingenious part of the fight occurs after the player launches an all-out assault on the monster’s appendages: from the extreme right end of the screen, fans unleash artificial winds that will push Samus into a boobytrapped wall if she doesn’t sprint. While Samus runs in place, waves of bullets glide toward her, leaving only tight windows for her to fit through to avoid damage. The player must utilize the heroine’s ability to string together spinning jumps to pass through these narrow passages unscathed. As some have remarked, this section of the boss fight evokes Flappy Bird’s emphasis on undulating evasion.

Outside of this twisted battle and the final villain, the bosses are pedestrian in Metroid Dread. The major bosses bleed out plenty of health and ammo, limiting the possibility of a “How can I ever get past this?” type of mental block. The developers should be ashamed of the mid-bosses, which don’t put up much of a struggle and return for flaccid and monotonous follow-up bouts after their unsuccessful first appearances. Throughout these encounters, I never ran out of missiles, as one can greatly increase Samus’ missile capacity with minimal exploration.

I question publications like Polygon that describe the bosses as “brutal” in a world where From Software titles enjoy massive popularity. The statement that every boss “presents unique challenges” smacks of disingenuous hype given the obscene number of Chozo Soldier skirmishes. None of the bosses rival the multi-level insanity and ever-shifting weak points of the Diggernaut from Metroid: Samus Returns, released just five years ago. Metroid fans appear to be as forgetful as my 92-year-old grandmother.

The most unappealing part of the bosses is the junctures where one must tap buttons during telegraphed moments of shoehorned cutscenes to deal damage or a final blow to an opponent. I never expected the Metroid series to blandly copy Resident Evil 4, to champion lazy, isomorphic action over mood and atmosphere.

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I played Metroid Dread because I want to believe in Metroid. Despite not being as popular as The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros., the Metroid saga has illustrated the potential of pop video games as much as any series. The 1986 original is the loneliest of platformers. Metroid II: Return of Samus, with its emphasis on hunting, demonstrates how a sequel can put players deeper into the shoes of a character. Super Metroid symbolizes bigger and better. And Metroid Prime redefines the very notion of perspective in multiple ways.

It’s thus unfortunate Metroid Dread takes after the 2017 remake Metroid: Samus Returns, which trumpets the lie that modern technology and design trends automatically translate to superior experiences. Moreover, Metroid Dread’s story — which builds up to a risible and trite “You’re my daughter” revelation before the concluding fight with Raven Beak — resembles a half-assed salute to the wannabe cinematic aspirations of the video game medium.

These are not the most troubling points. That people have unironically referred to Metroid Dread as a Metroidvania underscores the ultimate problem: Metroid has devolved into an imitation of an imitation of itself.

Dissecting the origin of the term Metroidvania highlights the scam some people are promoting with their praise of Metroid Dread. The clumsy phrase gained popularity after the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which many suggest was the first Castlevania that combined the non-linear exploration of Metroid with RPG features. This false history lesson receives its most appalling exposure in Wikipedia’s Metroidvania entry: “However, Symphony of the Night distinguished itself from prior non-linear platformers via the incorporation of console role-playing elements with the means for the player to improve their character’s attributes through an experience system.”

The first issue is obvious: Symphony of the Night, released in 1997, wasn’t the first game that married Metroid’s non-linear progression with experience points. It wasn’t even the first Castlevania to do this; see 1987’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.

The second issue relates to the tendency of gamers and critics to overemphasize mechanics and lose sight of the emotional meaning of pop games. Metroidvania conveys nothing about what the original Metroid achieved emotionally. Symphony of the Night’s legacy is excessive content — the fake ending, the upside-down second castle, the staggering array of items (many of them pointless) — whereas Metroid’s place in history has as much to do with how people feel (confused, hopeless, isolated) while they play the game as it does with anything else.

As a production associated with the deception behind the Metroidvania movement, Metroid Dread can’t live up to its title. Its feeble understanding of dread boils down to its restrained survival horror homages and Empire Strikes Back esque plot twist. Its world — a nonlinear realm that nonetheless pushes the player in logical directions for the streamlined completion of a primary campaign — continually reveals its developers’ fingerprints so that the main sense we have throughout the game is that the whole thing was worked on. And its heroine is little more than a slick avatar, a superstar skin.

– — — – — — — – –

Dear Adam,

I am not faced with overwhelming power. I am not helpless. I am not backtracking. I am not disturbed. I am not concerned. I am not searching. I am not stuck. I am not lost. I am not pondering. I am not alone.

I am enslaved to the ring of a seven-letter word.

DEDICATED TO JEAN-LUC GODARD

Jetboard Joust Review (Switch) or: When Dreams Reappear

by Jed Pressgrove

“It’s not been vivid for years, because I’m not having a nervous breakdown. That’s when you get these really vivid electric dreams that are probably in their own way your subconscious trying to save your sorry ass. If only we paid as close attention to our dreams since the Pleistocene period as we have the global economy for the last 20 years. But the global economy is supposed to be relevant, right? Well, fuck the global economy. Why should we discard a third of our lives?” – Jim Harrison, in an interview with Salon.

After the end of each stage, the background devolves into a pixelated blur teeming with anxious energy. Even when a text summary appears — showing the number of individuals saved and the number of coins earned — and even after the summary is replaced by a between-level upgrade menu, the background continues to bug out, but without being a distraction. It’s like the subconscious of the average human being, trying to pipe up and say this is not real and here is what’s real. Jetboard Joust reminds me games could once be likened to dreams (as opposed to constantly updated downloadable lifestyles). Dreams with odd details. Dreams with absurd logic. Dreams that only take over our lives for moments, their echoes in our minds afterward being as sweet as, if not sweeter than, the act of playing them.

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More than 30 years ago, Skateboard Joust came to the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad GX4000. Developed by a youngster named James Closs, Skateboard Joust is a single-screen action game that hasn’t gotten much attention over the years, which makes it all the more interesting that now, a little over 20 years into the new century, one can play Closs’ sequel, Jetboard Joust, on the Nintendo Switch (or on one of the overglorified, overpriced wannabe PCs that people call game consoles).

Unlike its predecessor, Jetboard Joust is a horizontally scrolling shooter that follows in the footsteps of 1981’s Defender. Jetboard Joust’s hero, who rides a souped-up hover board, must battle waves of invaders while protecting innocents from abductors. If kidnapped, the innocents transform into aggressive brutes that hunt the protagonist. A level ends when every foe dies. Battle takes place along a horizontal plane that acts as a loop when the player flies off the edge of a displayed map — fly off the right side of the map and one immediately appears on the left side of the map, and vice versa.

If you’ve not played Defender, it’s possible you’ve run across one of its many children, like Sega’s Fantasy Zone (notable for its exuberant tone and pastels) or Housemarque’s Resogun (a flashy update of the superior arcade classic) or even Stargate, also known as Defender II. With this legacy in mind, Jetboard Joust might seem like a Defender clone that’s late to the party, especially given that Skateboard Joust didn’t concern itself with traditional shooting. But Jetboard Joust is no mere imitator. Because of the design of the jetboard vehicle, there’s a sense of gravity to the hero’s movement which separates Jetboard Joust from Defender’s more straightforward flying. If one stops moving the analog stick on the Switch controller in Jetboard Joust, the hero’s position inches downward. If one changes directions, momentum must be rebuilt. The jetboard is subject to minute directional influence.

Except when one performs a joust, which comes with the freeing, momentary feeling that the game’s laws of physics no longer apply. During this maneuver, the jetboard achieves its own version of warp speed, turning itself into an unstoppable bullet that can, if leveled up, annihilate many enemies upon impact. As the jetboard inflicts major damage to everything in its path, the hero jumps and performs a forward flip so that he can land on the board at the end of its vicious propulsion.

A version of this exhilarating technique first appeared in Skateboard Joust. As RealGenericDemon shows in his video, jousting is the primary way to obliterate enemies in Skateboard Joust, and so the player has unlimited jousts. But in Jetboard Joust, the player can only perform a limited number of jousts, as the game would have zero challenge otherwise. This mechanical twist helps ensure the sensation of an outstanding release — the jousts in Jetboard Joust are cathartic and orgasmic, even when poorly aimed with no threat extinguished.

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At their best, video games exist in our lives as fantasies and nightmares, rather than addictions that have a sort of logical add value and turn us into another statistic (“Why yes, survey, I do spend on average 40 hours a week playing this particular online game.”). Hours played doesn’t matter with great games. Lesser games require as many of our hours as possible because there’s nothing special about them when we don’t play. A great game maintains a place within us, however modest, as we go about our days doing other things. Contrary to what the industry tells us, we need time away from games for them to be special. Call it the truth of the arcade.

We should welcome games that haunt us long after we’re done with them. That is when we are the most alive. That is when our souls are trying to tell us something is very right or very wrong or both.

When the final level of Castlevania: Bloodlines uses the concept of graphics against us — splitting the screen into three parts and thus scrambling our perception of the avatar and the space it moves through — we should celebrate that surreal discombobulation after we turn off the game and continue our day, perhaps while we curse our inability to progress through the challenge.

Similarly, when that specific alien in Jetboard Joust emits a blaring sound that conceals the cries of our friends being ripped from the earth — those annoying meowing whines, not unlike the baby’s yelping in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, that we learn to take as signals to spring into heroic action — we should cherish how confounded that noise makes us, yet how aware we become of our vulnerability and impotence. A nightmare within a fantasy.

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The hero’s method of violence in Jetboard Joust doesn’t have to involve bullets. The most interesting weapons deviate from the shoot-’em-up mold. Take the Gravity Hammer, which brings about devastation with a circular attack. If an enemy finds itself within the appreciable radius of the hammer swing, it will go for a ride, as the hammer drives its targets downward after a successful connection, slamming them into the ground. With proper timing, the hammer can obliterate or at least profoundly injure several invaders at once.

Then there’s the Rotovator. This huge spinning saw blade, which extends outward for a brief period, injects an eye-to-eye brutality into the game in the same way that the chainsaw makes Doom more up close and personal. The Rotovator sounds like nasty anger when engaged. It gives one an intimate (but purely abusive) bond with those it traps in its savage cycle. That same bond can backfire, holding one in place as whatever fiend eats away the hero’s health faster than the blade can deliver victory.

Another standout is the Poison Pump, which leaves behind gaseous clouds that slows down and drains the life out of attackers who fly into the gas. A tool for those who wish to be more defensive and diabolical, the pump works especially well against the aliens that abduct your friends. Abductors move straight up, just asking for a cloud of gas to wait above them.

These same weapons can and will be used against you by malevolent forces. I commend Closs for this most irritating element. Imagine a Contra where one must face the spread shot. Imagine a God of War where three demons from a long distance wedge boomerang axes into your body with startling accuracy. What was once cool becomes exasperating when the shoe’s on the other foot, as when a rival in chess pins your knight to your queen or king, or when you run into a screen in basketball, losing a precious step with a sharpshooting opponent.

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To not dream is to lose sight of purpose and possibility. But the game industry, in its all-consuming greed, doesn’t give a flip about our imaginations as artists, critics, or audiences. Everything must be rational, objective, scalable, and upgradable. Games are to be the stuff of our lives, not the stuff of our dreams.

As such, video games have evolved into online services in the 21st century. These services reflect a scheme of the larger tech industry, where we’re supposed to think of tech as a permanent, indispensable extension of our bodies and personalities. The pernicious business model behind online games attempts to remove the potential for artistic failure or critical interpretation. That is, if a part of an online service offends some people, or if some aspect is half-baked or unfinished, the developers can release a patch. If baby needs pacifier, baby gets one. Artistic conviction and execution have been replaced with public relations and the appearance of good intentions. And the gaming press — a lapdog’s lapdog — has allowed the corporate interests behind online games to call into question the very point of criticism. Reviewers gave up when they started asking, “Are our reactions to newly released games valid given the reality of patches?” A better question: Why should people pay for or play unfinished games while they serve as unpaid testers?

Jetboard Joust, for all its admirable qualities, still exists within the wretched ecosystem set up by unholy computer nerds. My Switch keeps telling me I should install a patch for Jetboard Joust, but I don’t comply. I hang onto the original dream of the older James Closs. I will not discard it.

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What’s a modern game without resource management? Probably a more focused affair that doesn’t mindlessly replicate some version of that numbers game we have to play in real life to keep a roof over our heads. But I’ll give Jetboard Joust this much: its weapon degradation and repair system ingeniously demands kinetic artistry.

Weapons can be repaired if the player spends money on upgrades between levels, but there’s a better way of keeping one’s weapons in good condition. Any enemy that rides a jetboard will drop what is curiously labeled an “armor” bonus. If collected, the dropped item will slightly restore a weapon’s constitution. The more of these bonuses you can snag, the better off your weapons will be, and the less money that needs to be spent on repairs.

The catch: these bonuses must be snatched quickly. After a board-riding villain dies, the item drops to the ground and takes a short single bounce into the air before falling off the screen and being lost to that infamous 2D video-game hell that we all know about but have never seen. The bouncing aspect, coupled with the trickiness of rebuilding momentum when one switches directions on the jetboard, inspires a scrambling brand of play that can lead to breathtaking saves. Eyeing these precious power-ups in their floaty grace while attempting to execute efficient routes toward the bottom of the screen brings to mind the frantic lunacy of juggling the different-colored bells in the 1985 vertical shooter classic TwinBee. Somewhere Eugene Jarvis smiles as Jetboard Joust forces one into a breathless, Neanderthalian desperation.

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It’s not unlike finding yourself in the middle of a mess that you feel monumentally compelled to clean up because if you don’t the whole world will see and you will be exposed as a fool never to live down the chaos associated with your clumsiness and idiocy and you will never get the stench of your own shit off your hands and everyone will remember your silly naked body, too.

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As in Spelunky, Downwell, and an embarrassing number of other recent games, Jetboard Joust involves a level-by-level descent toward more dangerous predicaments, such as a fight with a giant fish that will utilize awkward hesitations like a crafty boxer before rushing forward like an autonomous battering ram. Similar to the loop of Hades, the player chooses a path toward a particular randomized stage based on the upgrade that would await them. In Hades, this system turns players into junkies who need “just” one more hit — the ability to know beforehand how you can level up the protagonist in mere minutes proves to be an irresistible enticement to keep descending.

But Jetboard Joust’s path selection allows for more long-term planning. On the level select screen, the player can study how the routes branch out all the way down to the floor of a given world. Every juncture features an emblem that represents a different bonus, such as an extra joust or new weapon. This quasi-omniscient view should encourage careful decisions. At first glance, one might be tempted to head down an immediate path to the right because of a single attractive upgrade, but one would be better off taking the less sexy path to the left, as completing the level in that direction would open up a longer route leading to multiple rare bonuses. Jetboard Joust’s constant alternation between strategic contemplation and devilish aerial action creates an otherworldly groove of forethought and instinct.

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I stare at the level select screen. The slow pounding of drum and bass transfixes me more than it should, as my reality outside of the game lacks such a trusty beat. After about five minutes of doing nothing on the screen, the music halts. I hear the dull hum of fast tapping. It sounds like a busted machine unable to scan anything despite manic effort. Is this panic-inducing audio the intention of James Closs? Or is it a mistake, a glitch that can be smoothed out if I accept the downloadable patch the Switch keeps informing me about? The answer doesn’t matter. The din complements the dreamlike state the game puts me in, functioning as an unanswered wakeup call.

DEDICATED TO ABC

Final Fantasy VII Elongated

by Jed Pressgrove

Note: This is the final essay of a seven-part series on game remakes. Check out the rest of the series here.

Video games — they once resembled dreams stitched together by sorcerers and madmen. This was still the case when Final Fantasy VII became a phenomenon in 1997. That sixth sequel impacted the presentation of turn-based combat forever with a camera seemingly possessed by a restless demon. As players transitioned from screen to screen in Final Fantasy VII, they never knew from what angle they would observe a new segment of an expansive world. The combination of crude polygons and pre-rendered backgrounds further cemented the unorthodox nature of the game’s visual style, as evidenced by the moments when one, in attempting to locate the path forward, would have to stare at the screen for a bit or perhaps fidget about in order to identify a stray piece of debris over which the avatar could traverse. Even at its worst, Final Fantasy VII transfixed me like a beautiful nightmare. If escapism is the only goal of video games, Final Fantasy VII extended a surreal vision that could sweep us away from our cares on Earth.

Final Fantasy VII Remake, on the other hand, has the ever-present stench of reality and conservative logic. The very design of it reminds us that, in this era, big games must fit into big trends in order to make the most profit. The camera, the most revolutionary part about Final Fantasy VII, is the most predictable aspect of Final Fantasy VII Remake, because the game intends to be more like a typical 3D action title. Now we, the players, wield significant control over perspective, as demanded by recent tradition. Gone also are the strange makeshift pathways of the 1997 original — the predictable trails of Final Fantasy VII Remake scream that they were put in place by a game development company, as opposed to sparking our imaginations about the idiosyncratic characteristics of the dystopian setting. And without the dynamic framing of the original, a warehouse looks like just another warehouse, a sewer looks like just another sewer, and so on.

Even though random encounters where two parties stand on opposite sides of the screen were a long-established staple of RPGs by 1997, Final Fantasy VII made every battle appear like a thrilling riff of a larger operatic conflict, with its ever-shifting vantage points and the unmistakable melodramatic flare of Nobuo Uematsu’s theme. But for not insignificant stretches of time, combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake struck me as disposable, familiar, emotionally inert. Before I started Final Fantasy VII Remake, a friend told me the game’s action recalled the work of Platinum Games. I found his comparison fitting but also a bit charitable during the first 10 hours of my time with the remake, as I spammed a rolling attack and triple slash technique with Cloud, obliterating most obstacles without having to think. The traditional turn-based system of Final Fantasy VII was never that mindless or soulless for any extended portion of the experience, but the modern audience has been conditioned by the game industry and the lapdog press to put up with a game that takes 10 hours to have a semblance of strategic depth.

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For decades, the game industry has propagated the notion that more hours equals more epic. As a remake of one of the most epic RPGs of the 1990s, Final Fantasy VII Remake finds comfort in this widely accepted lie, for the lie allows Square Enix to cling to a simple type of PR. That is, the public, in all likelihood, won’t accuse Final Fantasy VII Remake of being less epic than its predecessor. What took five hours in Final Fantasy VII takes, at a minimum, 30 to 40 hours in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Nevermind that Final Fantasy VII Remake holds the dubious distinction of rivaling the pretension of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film trilogy, which transformed a 300-page children’s book into an eight-hour cinematic endurance test. In the 21st century, content is everything, and everything is content.

Let us count some of the ways that Final Fantasy VII Remake is needlessly longer:

The principal characters don’t shut the hell up. Simply put, if you gleaned from Final Fantasy VII that Barrett (who still evokes racial stereotypes) loves his daughter and hates corporate power, you will really glean from Final Fantasy VII Remake that Barrett loves his daughter and hates corporate power. Key to my irritation here is that I don’t know these characters any better than I did before. They’re just more garrulous. Final Fantasy VII’s terse dialogue — epitomized by Cloud’s self-centered, apathetic style of communication (“It’s not my problem”) — carries greater psychological force.

Throwaway characters are treated like figures of intense fascination. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie have expanded roles, yet they don’t translate into something more than another guy, a joke, and a female horny for Cloud, respectively. In particular, it’s embarrassing how the game struggles to give Wedge purpose. In one preposterous scene, we are to believe that Wedge, a non-threatening individual in every respect, intimidates two soldiers to the point where they open a gate that they’re supposed to guard with their lives.

Numerous segments of the game force the avatar to walk. One of the silliest things about contemporary games is their insistence on taking away the player’s ability to run while certain narration occurs, as if the mechanical restriction somehow deepens one’s sense of immersion or one’s appreciation for the storytelling. Final Fantasy VII Remake employs this constraint so frequently, so gratuitously, that a significant amount of time could have been saved by eliminating or amending every such sequence. (Also note the bizarre scenario in which we can only take slow steps as Aerith when she attempts to save Marlene. Here, the mechanical limitation clashes with the supposed dramatic urgency of the moment, raising the following questions: “Does Aerith actually want to save Marlene in time? Or is she just an imbecile?”)

Cloud’s mental instability is comically, tediously overstated. In its first five hours, the 1997 original contains instances where Cloud appears to experience either flashbacks or hallucinations, but these jarring segments are spaced out so that you can almost forget that they even happened until the next one springs up. This restrained approach builds gradual intrigue. Final Fantasy VII Remake spoils the concept, however, by liberally peppering the proceedings with TV static to depict Cloud’s mental status. This cliched, risible visual technique would only be acceptable during a show-and-tell session for an elective course at an unaccredited institution of higher learning. Furthermore, the incessant Sephiroth references are overkill at worst and fan service at best. None of these scenes have the sobering, mysterious effect of the theatrical angle from which we witness Cloud succumbing to the attack of a ghost version of himself in the &$#% Room of the 1997 original.

Obligatory fetch and extermination quests have been included to check a box. Planescape: Torment and The Witcher III have proven that we can do much better than Final Fantasy VII Remake’s side missions, none of which lingered in my mind after I completed them. More insulting than the banality of these quests is the “mommy says” patronization of Tifa. “It’s all right,” she tells Cloud. “All you have to do is do good work. It’ll all pay off, I promise.” Of course, some desperate fan might defend the inorganic busywork as an illustration of Cloud’s mercenary status, as if any intelligent person would need a plethora of dime-a-dozen sidequests to understand that part of Cloud. The quests’ primary purpose is to reinforce the marketing illusion that Final Fantasy VII Remake is “bigger” and “different” than its predecessor.

Scenarios are stretched out for no good reason. Earlier I implied Final Fantasy VII Remake is cut from the same cloth as The Hobbit film trilogy. Indeed, transforming the cross-dressing episode from the 1997 original into a bloated series of events — which includes a multi-stage arena tournament (reminiscent of an entire chapter in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door), an anti-climactic meeting at Don Corneo’s mansion, and an over-the-top dance number — reeks of Peter Jackson syndrome. Or how about the expanded train graveyard level? There, we are treated to a laughable, unnecessary tale about ghost children that just want to play with someone (a far cry from Final Fantasy VI’s ghost train story, which homed in on the tragic grief of the knight Cyan). We also get to see a tired sexual fantasy in motion: Tifa and Aerith hold onto Cloud’s arms in fear. The fantasy is amplified by the fact that Cloud proclaims his lack of interest in ghosts and doesn’t want to be touched by either woman. The classic chauvinistic tautology says that men shouldn’t care about the lowly concerns of women, who, paradoxically, throw themselves at men that much more when men don’t care. While the 1997 original featured a love triangle of sorts, it wasn’t as regressive as the Tifa-Aerith-Jessie fan club in the 2020 revision, where Cloud is almost like John Holmes in a 1970s porno: a man wanted by all.

Upgrading weapons is presented as an activity of cosmic proportions, rather than as a simple submenu. Do we need a sort of mini-tribute to the sphere grid of Final Fantasy X just to take advantage of skill points? This criticism might seem petty, but I loved the economy of the 1997 original’s menu system, where windows open and close with efficiency, where I don’t have to wait for an extra screen with complex imagery to modify equipment.

Boss battles are overused and overstuffed. A number of bosses are quite inspired in Final Fantasy VII Remake. I’m thinking of adversaries like Eligor, who brings gravity to an otherwise perfunctory level; Arsenal, who, more than any other opponent, requires timely character switches in a memorable duel of attrition; and Tonberry, a classic WTF foe from the 1997 original that becomes a greater annoyance. Other high-profile battles should have been deleted or made more concise. The Hellhouse, for instance, is part of the cross-dressing quest, which worked much better in its shorter, quirkier form in the 1997 original. I found Sephiroth underwhelming — he never defeated me despite his multiple forms, and I merely reused strategies that proved fruitful against previous bosses. The greatest offender, though, is Whisper Harbinger. I don’t see the appeal or accomplishment in beating the same crap over and over again in multiple overblown phases. The battle also involves unskippable cutscenes, which is unforgivable whether one survives or not. Certainly, when one locks horns with a physical manifestation of destiny itself, one should expect a huge conflict, but Whisper Harbinger is a candidate for the most monotonous boss battle in history.

I could go on about more, like the awkward, poorly designed bike-riding mini-games, or the longer distances between locations and how, to avoid the utter boredom of on-foot travel, the player must pay for Chocobo rides. But I now want to conclude by focusing on a provocative thematic thread in Final Fantasy VII Remake, an idea that had incredible moral and political potential.

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As with other elements mentioned above, the introductory Mako Reactor mission is lengthier in Final Fantasy VII Remake. But the extension is warranted, particularly after Cloud is separated from Avalanche. Here, through Cloud’s eyes, we can grasp on a more personal level the human misery caused by Avalanche’s actions as a political group. This is where Final Fantasy VII Remake’s more grounded depiction of Midgar and lack of a dreamlike aesthetic can register as an artistic advantage.

The 1997 original suggests more than once that Avalanche’s violence should raise moral questions. If you speak to a youngster outside the Seventh Heaven bar, the person mentions that innocents were killed due to Avalanche’s mission. Another notable observation occurs before Jessie’s death, when she says, “Because of our actions … many … people died … this probably … is our punishment.” The problem is we don’t see much suffering after the Mako Reactor explodes, so we are allowed to acknowledge the philosophical dilemma without feeling uncomfortable.

This is not the case in Final Fantasy VII Remake, where the increased number of NPCs hammer home the consequences. There is injury, traumatization, confusion, hopelessness, and a general feeling that Hell has come to Midgar. Frankly, I was stunned. At the time, it seemed the “Remake” phrase in the title was partially referring to a more visceral confrontation with the sociological ramifications of a revolutionary’s fantasy. I wondered, “Where will the game go from here?”

The answer is that Final Fantasy VII Remake, unlike Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (forget the movie!), goes on to pay less attention to the lives destroyed by the explosions and such, and Avalanche stumbles upon a rather easy way to brush aside the suggestion that what they’re doing might be immoral. After the plate drops on Sector 7, Tifa begins to suffer from guilt about the lost lives. “It was us,” she says. “We did this.” Later, Barrett puts an end to this kind of self-reflection when he says, “But if we stop now … they’ll never let us live it down.” The heroes’ ultimate justification is that even if they are wrong and need to rethink their strategy, they can’t let the corporate powers that be spin the narrative. Additionally, none of the Shinra villains are people that we can identify with. They’re one-dimensional monsters, and players are supposed to feel righteous as they defeat everything in their path in the closing chapters.

To my even greater disappointment, the game’s main storytelling achievement ended up being more about a promise regarding possible deviations from the established mythology of the 1997 original. Because Cloud and company defeat destiny itself — the very thing that presumably controlled the events of the 1997 original — we learn that characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Zack don’t have to die like they once did. I’m sure this revelation has Aerith fans drooling over the prospect of Aerith avoiding that fatal blow from Sephiroth. My reaction, however, to Final Fantasy VII Remake’s conclusion was “That’s it? A sort of comic-book retconning is supposed to be impressive?”

So now, after the elongated version of Final Fantasy VII’s first five hours, we are all supposed to wait, like good little consumers, on the fulfillment of a promise that things can be different in Final Fantasy VII Remake. But I must ask: Why does anything need to be different? And does “different” even mean “worthwhile”? Any remade art must answer those two questions. Final Fantasy VII Remake, as a whole, could make us wait years for the answers. I find that monumentally ridiculous.