Resident Evil 2: Faking the Remake

by Jed Pressgrove

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

The more I reflect on my experience with 2019’s Resident Evil 2, the less I consider the game a remake of the 1998 original and the more I think of it as a sequel to Resident Evil 4.

In a years-old tweet that is now unavailable, critic Zolani Stewart said, “Everything is Resident Evil 4.” Those words, perhaps sarcastic, have reverberated in my head since I read them. In cumulative terms, I have spent entire days playing through Resident Evil 4 on a variety of difficulty settings; topping my high scores on all four levels in The Mercenaries, the unlockable Resident Evil 4 mini game; running through the abysmal Resident Evil 5 with a variety of friends; and striving for the biggest combos, again with different friends, in Resident Evil 5’s The Mercenaries mode. Additionally, I have completed Leon’s quest in Resident Evil 6 and dabbled in the campaigns for Chris and Jake. On top of that, I have analyzed and tested countless third-person titles that mimic Resident Evil 4.

We are what we play. I’m now hardwired to be relaxed, confident, and comfortable when I play a game that evokes Resident Evil 4 and its innumerable children. 2019’s Resident Evil 2 was like getting on a bicycle. I shot, outmaneuvered, and outfoxed my various opponents with little trouble or fear. I was predestined to feel good about what I was doing. Resident Evil 2 doesn’t remake so much as reuse, rechew, reheat, reapply, reissue, retread, reemploy, recall, reecho, rebottle, recopy, reload, redeliver, recite, reacquaint, reiterate, recirculate, regurgitate, reduplicate, reexpose, reinsert, remanufacture, repackage, and resell.

Despite Resident Evil 2’s faithful dedication to the basic style of Resident Evil 4, not one moment in the game came close to generating the tension and shock of Resident Evil 4’s introductory village setpiece. Resident Evil 2 borrows from Resident Evil 4 without understanding why the latter was a show-stopper. An over-the-shoulder perspective and pinpoint aiming must come with pressure on the player. When he directed Resident Evil 4, Shinji Mikami grasped this simple concept and, in turn, threw everything and the kitchen sink at us. But when Capcom produced Resident Evil 2, the company lacked Mikami’s principle, and instead oversaw a pandering, slow-paced affair that wouldn’t intimidate a nincompoop.

In her review for Kotaku, Heather Alexandra senses this misstep. “It is easy—too easy—to feel powerful in Resident Evil 2, as both the cameras and controls encourage a confident push forward that the original did not always compel,” she writes. “While the Racoon Police Department is dark and foreboding it never feels as harrowing as it did in the original.” As Alexandra remembers, 1998’s Resident Evil 2 operates like a merciless vice grip, subverting the expectations of anyone who had conquered the first Resident Evil, crowding the screen with zombies. 2019’s Resident Evil 2 is more akin to a middle-aged creep with a thin mustache and deep pockets who sprints over to massage our egos. “You can do this, see?” the smarmy creep reassures us. “You’ve played Resident Evil 4 and a thousand other games like it. Why not one more, for old time’s sake?”

Later in her review, Alexandra loses me. She argues the expanded role of Mr. X in 2019’s Resident Evil 2 propels the remake into “brilliant and horrifying” territory:

Like getting chased by Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7 or enduring the ever-possible ambushes of Resident Evil 3’s titular Nemesis, there’s a great sense of disempowerment that comes from being plagued with an implacable foe. Resident Evil 2 almost uniformly empowers the player elsewhere, but that changes whenever Mr. X is around. Knowing that there is no safe spot, knowing that he will find you and you will need to deal with him is panic-inducing. While he sometimes can feel more like nuisance than menace—especially when you simply want to finish a puzzle—his inclusion and the execution therein helps elevate Resident Evil 2 to a genuinely terrifying experience. When it lands its punches, Resident Evil 2 hits like a champ.

The fact that one knows Mr. X will come ruins what made him notable in 1998. In the original Resident Evil 2, Mr. X inexplicably appears in a subsequent playthrough after the end credits roll. In 2019’s Resident Evil 2, he pops up in the initial playthrough like a fact of life. A surprise turns into a gimmick. That’s not hitting like a champ. That’s telegraphing like an amateur, especially when we don’t have to contend with awkward 1990s survival horror controls and shifting camera angles.

Mr. X never touched me in the new Resident Evil 2. And that’s because ideas like Mr. X don’t work in a game that strives to be Resident Evil 4 more than it wants to match or surpass 1998’s Resident Evil 2. We shouldn’t allow Capcom, which should face criminal charges for its commitment to unoriginality, to cheapen the meaning of remake.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested Shinji Mikami helped produce 2019’s Resident Evil 2. This error has been fixed.

Remembering The Wretched Firewatch

Note: This is an open letter to Chris Bateman at international hobo. All replies are welcome.

Dear Chris,

More than a year ago, you responded to my 2016 review of Firewatch with a letter titled “A Tale of Two Walking Simulators (1): Firewatch.” Before I respond to your thoughts on my review and Firewatch itself, I must say that nothing between 2016 and today has convinced me to stop hating the term “walking simulator.” I don’t believe it’s an acceptable descriptor, as you suggest. I believe it’s an abomination similar to Metroidvania (which gives too much credit to Castlevania), roguelike (used by, for the most part, people who have never played Rogue and thus don’t know what it’s “like”), shmup (toddler’s gibberish), and Soulsborne (what did Bloodborne even accomplish that warrants this reference?). The only game I’ve played that follows the implications of “walking simulator” is Manuel Samuel, a comedy in which the player controls the individual legs of a contemptible rich snot.

At the same time, I realize you are more interested in the games that get the clumsy label rather than the clumsy label itself. I, too, admire Proteus, which I called the ninth best game of the 2010s. Dear Esther? Not so much. I wasn’t fond of Gone Home, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and What Remains of Edith Finch for various reasons. But I do try to recognize titles in this genre that don’t receive the attention they deserve. On that note, if you haven’t played Cosmo D’s brilliant games — Off-Peak, The Norwood Suite, and Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1 — they come with my highest recommendation. If only those games, along with Proteus, could steal the spotlight from inferior critical darlings.

I appreciate your complimentary tone about the conclusions in my Firewatch review. I appreciate it all the more considering that I don’t think the review is one of my stronger articles. I still feel the review’s proclamations in my bones, though. While I agree with you that Firewatch’s subject matter is less juvenile than that of your average “recycled action movie,” Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman’s handling of the subject matter doesn’t strike me as that mature, especially with the loony Vietnam vet stereotype tying everything together. The game doesn’t really confront anything outside of the lurid elements of its farfetched plot. It makes references to early onset dementia because the creators were too scared to depict it (“It is impossibly hard,” the text-heavy introduction impotently declares). It teases sexual chemistry between two people because the creators lacked the basic inspiration to showcase human interaction. The dialogue demands our attention when we play, but there’s no meaningful takeaway from the words.

Not unlike extravagantly detailed settings in big-budget releases, the “beautiful world” in Firewatch is a distraction from the game’s fundamental lack of humanity. Notice, too, that we can go on about the pretty colors and pretty trees and so forth, but we have trouble answering this question: what does the setting communicate? As we both agree, it’s relentlessly artificial. I would argue it’s far worse than a national park in the United States. If you wander from the prescribed paths in Yellowstone, you might end up on an animal’s dinner menu. In Firewatch, there is no danger, there is no wild, there is pretty imagery that fails to convey why people find the natural world spiritually rejuvenating.

The camera mode in Firewatch is an insult. Do we have nothing better to do than take fake pictures of fake woods with a fake camera and show them off on social media, the fakest of all communities? According to the creators of Firewatch, we should marvel at the fakeness because it is there to be consumed and recorded and gawked at. But again, I ask, what does it mean? What are the artists trying to do?

My best guess is they were setting the table for nihilistic shock value, which is the very card Rodkin and Vanaman played in The Walking Dead. The beautiful world — the one we were encouraged to fetishize with the camera — goes up in flames. Cue our emotional devastation. That is, if we’re not keen about the tricks that Rodkin and Vanaman like to pull. If we have any exposure to the masterpieces of “literature, theatre, or film” (to borrow your examples), we will likely stop caring about the characters and story in Firewatch once it goes off the rails into risible B-movie territory, well before the disastrous finale. So our main attachment to Firewatch ends up being the pretty woods, and boy, do they burn well, says Rodkin and Vanaman.

This is why it would have been a critical failure on my part to overemphasize the beauty of Firewatch’s setting. I would have been selling the crud that Rodkin and Vanaman want everyone to swallow. My issue as a critic in this context has little to do with the possible aesthetic glory of a “walking simulator” and everything to do with my distaste for charlatans who wouldn’t understand Mother Nature if a moose attacked them as they gazed at a mountain in Montana. If you want aesthetics, play Proteus or Off-Peak. If you want to watch trash burn, play Firewatch.

Sincerely,

Jed Pressgrove

Having It Both Ways in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

by Jed Pressgrove

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

You can solve the problem with the touch of a button. This is the everlasting refrain of the tech industry and a concept that has informed video game design, from the charming erasing methods in Mario Paint to the infamous “Press F to Pay Respects” prompt in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The notion has special relevance for game remakes because of its role in 2009’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. By pressing a button in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, the player can swap between the pixelated graphics of The Secret of Monkey Island and the hand-drawn visuals of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

What does having this ability mean, ideologically? At first glance, it seems that tech has made our world better again. With the touch of a button in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, we can:

1. Table any complaints we might have had about The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition failing to match, preserve, or otherwise acknowledge the aesthetics of the original The Secret of Monkey Island.
   
   
2. Make immediate comparisons between the original and the remake — imagine the time you can save as you form your own evaluations of the original and the remake!(!!!)
   
   
3. Show our grandchildren (if we ever have any) and our grandparents (if they’re not dead) how neat it is to switch between the pixelated graphics of The Secret of Monkey Island and the hand-drawn visuals of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

[The above list IS NOT exhaustive. If you have anything to add to it, please shoot me an email at pressgrove84@yahoo.com. Make sure to title your email with the following: “GAME BIAS READER’S SUGGESTION: List of Things We Can Do by Pressing F10 in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.” I may never read or notice the email if you don’t use that title.]

Here’s the upshot about the power of that button: if you don’t feel led to praise the remake’s visual, audio, and interface changes, you will feel led to praise the remake anyway because, as a nifty product, the button allows you to place aside any reservations about the remake with instantaneous access to the original. It reminds me of a 2016 video by James Rolfe, a.k.a. Angry Video Game Nerd, called “Star Wars – Are the Special Editions bad?” In this video, Rolfe analyzes various alterations that director George Lucas made in his “Special Edition” versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, and comments on how those alterations provoke arguments among Star Wars fans. Close to the 8-minute mark, Rolfe says the following (bolded emphasis is mine):

Anyway, the Special Edition changes are not all bad. It’s kind of a mix. If it were up to me, I’d keep some of the changes, but discard lots of the rest. It would be nice if we all had the chance to customize our own Star Wars movies. Want to keep Jabba [in Star Wars: Special Edition] but don’t want Greedo to shoot first? Imagine that: an interactive Blu-Ray edition where you get a menu, where you can check all the things you want, then sit back and enjoy your customized version of a classic saga.

As I listen to Rolfe chuckle like a gee-golly character from a 1950s sitcom, I must admit that at some point I do think, “It is nice we all have the chance to see both versions of The Secret of Monkey Island with the remake.” And when I compare The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition to something like Star Wars: Special Edition, I do consider the former more respectful of history and artistry, not to mention more accommodating for people, like me, who want to know what a piece of creative work actually looked like when it came out.

What if The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition had lacked the magic button? I would be writing a more dismissive article at the moment, chanting something along the lines of “How can you remake something that is a legitimate top 10 video game of all time? You capitalistic swine!” I would skewer the new graphics, pointing out that they’re inferior to the hand-drawn brilliance of The Curse of Monkey Island, that they merely look “clean” compared to the more expressive pixel-based visions in The Secret of Monkey Island. I would explain how the remastered organ music for the church scene sounds sanitized and less menacing. I would throw the remake a bone for having some of the best voice acting in video games, while also bringing up the fact that the writing is so outstanding that LucasArts doesn’t need to, again, copy what made The Curse of Monkey Island a great sequel.

It’s almost as if that button cheats us out of passionate reactions. I find the description of the game on Steam most telling: “Purists will also delight in the ability to seamlessly switch between the updated hand-drawn re-imagining and the original classic version.” Indeed, I’ve not noticed any purist movement to condemn The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. This is not to say no purists have voiced their dissent. The most prominent and obvious purist is Ron Gilbert, who represents one-third of the holy trio (Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman) that created The Secret of Monkey Island. Gilbert, unlike Schafer, argues classic games should be untouched just like classic black-and-white movies should be untouched. During an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Gilbert takes no prisoners:

It’s true that you can often switch back to the original graphics … but that is also true of colorizing black and white movies. You can always watch the original, but that doesn’t make colorizing it any less of an artistic sin. Saying you can switch back to the original art feels like a cop-out.

That same Rock, Paper, Shotgun article has another provocative gem of a quote, but from the opposite side of the aisle. I can’t tell you who said this quote, as the editor of the article doesn’t appear to understand the importance of clear attribution. It would be logical if the quote came from producer Craig Derrick. In any case, below is the quote, with its most significant part bolded:

Once we started getting the original code up and running on the new devices, we discovered we could put the new art on top of the old and then transition between the two seamlessly. It was a perfect A-HA moment, a bit of a gimmick, a way for people to see the work we were adding and quite frankly the backbone of the entire project. I honestly don’t see why anyone remastering a classic game today wouldn’t use this idea.

That phrase resonates because it calls attention to the publicity angle behind The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. The gimmick is related to the “sin” that Gilbert mentions. The gimmick washes one’s hands of blame (a strategy Pilate would endorse). The gimmick, most powerfully, nods to us when we talk about the critical necessity of holding onto video game masterpieces in their pure form. As a gimmick, the touch of a button doesn’t just amount to convenience — it justifies the advancement and use of tech, which, we are told, always has a potential solution for our troubles, practical or philosophical. George Lucas got it wrong. The “Special” in “Special Edition” should address more than technical details. It should put deep ethical cries about preservation on mute.

Rethinking My Stance on Remakes

by Jed Pressgrove

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

When I read my review of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D from six years ago, not only do I experience that writer’s pain that comes with recognizing the inferiority of one’s previous work, but I also find my article’s optimism for the remake hard to stomach. There is context for that optimism. The remake allowed me to play Majora’s Mask all the way through for the first time. The refashioned Moon, with its ever-present and twisted stare, stirred my anxiety throughout the game as I’m sure the original Moon would have. The remake doesn’t botch what makes the story of Majora’s Mask so affecting. But even considering these factors and others, there’s a nagging sense that my review failed to underline the disappointing reality about Majora’s Mask 3D.

Why did it take the hackneyed 3D gimmick for a game as fascinating as Majora’s Mask to reach a wider audience? Why does the remake water down the kinetic momentum one could achieve with Link’s various forms in the original (whether with Deku Link’s hopping or Zora Link’s swimming)? Why can’t there be a faithful translation of a well-regarded sequel within a storied, beloved franchise?

These questions and others didn’t cross my mind when I wrote the piece. On some level, my article dismissed the value of having an accurate port of Majora’s Mask due to my distaste for the blocky polygon aesthetic that characterized countless titles on fifth-generation consoles. This bias caused me to fall into a trap: I bought into the notion that newer technology improves old games. I threw, however inadvertently, history and artistry into the trash.

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Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is one of my favorite games from the 2010s. It is a remake, but unlike Majora’s Mask 3D, it is a remake of a game, Fire Emblem Gaiden, that hasn’t been released in the United States. A devil’s advocate could excuse my enthusiasm for Shadows of Valentia based on the fact that I might’ve never gotten the opportunity to experience Gaiden. I also hold that the new components within Shadows of Valentia — from the rewind mechanic to the anime cutscenes — are, for the most part, well executed.

Still, I come back to the comments section of my review for Shadows of Valentia. Here, Ronaldo Villanueva, one of the most insightful game critics I know, tells me why his familiarity with Gaiden impacts his assessment of Shadows of Valentia. Ronaldo believes Shadows of Valentia has less strategic depth than Gaiden and backs up his contention with several examples.

It’s impossible for me to say whether I agree with Ronaldo. Gaiden remains elusive. But his hesitation to approve certain elements of Shadows of Valentia gives me pause, and makes me wish that the game industry cared more about broadening access to games like Gaiden, if only so we can have more provocative debates and a shared sense of the past.

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Whether we’re talking about Majora’s Mask 3D, Shadows of Valentia, or Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey, many game remakes play it safe, notwithstanding their various tweaks to original works. They adhere to the basics. They admit their predecessors were special. They serve as proxies. They want to be seen as logical updates, not daring revisions. (Note, too, that even though my review for Slant says that Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey is “the ultimate version of a pop masterpiece,” the fact that I use the word “version” implies that, to some extent, I’m talking about a product, thus contradicting my goal as a critic to look at games as more than products.)

Shouldn’t a game remake actually remake more of the material? The best film remakes do, from John Carpenter’s The Thing to David Cronenberg’s The Fly to Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. The best cover songs do, from Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou” to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Not only do these examples in the film and music spheres implement a number of substantial changes to their inspirations (can you even imagine Franklin not spelling out the word “Respect” in her version of the Otis Redding tune?), but they also register as quintessential representations of the personalities and styles of the artists that brought the remade things to life. The best justification for a remake lies in the remake’s overall individual quality, as opposed to any gap that the remake might fill in a market.

This last point is especially interesting to ponder when we analyze the 1994 Game Boy remake of Donkey Kong (which I will refer to as Donkey Kong 1994 from now on). Donkey Kong 1994 is the greatest game remake I’ve played both because of how good it is and because of how much it distinguishes itself from the 1981 original. The first four levels of Donkey Kong 1994 follow the lead of Donkey Kong, but in a delightful twist, the rest of the game amounts to about 100 distinct levels that go far beyond the vision of the arcade classic. Mario is a much different animal in Donkey Kong 1994. Showing off acrobatic abilities that would appear two years later in Super Mario 64, Mario had never been as agile before the Game Boy remake. In addition to adopting ideas that we just don’t see in the typical Donkey Kong or Mario game (like needing to find and carry a key to a door to advance in every level), Donkey Kong 1994 includes a way for Mario to create temporary ladders, bridges, and springs, a proposition that could be as straightforward as it could be janky. All of these elements, and others I haven’t mentioned, lend an air of experimentation and surrealism to the proceedings. Playing Donkey Kong 1994 is like entering a parallel dimension and discovering what the weirdos in another reality get to experience instead of the original Donkey Kong. The game bucks trends, stimulates the imagination, defies expectations, conjures new history. It’s neither an improved version of Donkey Kong nor a chance for latecomers to see what they missed back in 1981. Donkey Kong 1994 shows us what a remake can be made of.

Super Mario All-Stars: Aesthetics Be Damned!

by Jed Pressgrove

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

We often praise Super Mario Bros. for its gameplay and forget about the power of its graphics. Take another gander at level 1-1. The pixel art, while not crude, is loud. There’s a roughness and hardness to the world. The ground seems impenetrable. The clouds look like they’d stop airplanes. Without this overall aesthetic of solidness, I doubt players would feel as empowered and elated when they shatter brick blocks. The abstract appeal of becoming a large Mario is to impose one’s physicality on ostensibly unshakeable matter. As you run through 1-1, the flat aspect of the visual style bolsters the everyman’s surreal fantasy. A fully grown Mario rivals the size of clouds and small hills.

The color palette in 1-1 is limited but effective. The unvarying blue is pleasing, welcoming. Along with the greens, the blueness provides a lively contrast to the drab mustard brown of the blocks beneath and above Mario. In other words, there is hope and fun to be had within the unbending, dull status quo.

Without the picture that 1-1 paints, level 1-2 would have far less visual and emotional significance. As a juxtaposition to 1-1’s vision of an exciting dream, 1-2 functions as a wake-up call to danger. The black abyss. The blocks and Goombas drained of their original colors. The coins, pipes, and Mario himself may retain their brightness, but in general the inviting hues of the previous stage become a distant memory in mere seconds.

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If the first two levels of Super Mario Bros. demonstrate how sights inform feelings, then those same levels in the Super Mario Bros. remake from Super Mario All-Stars demonstrate how the game industry tries to anticipate and exceed consumer expectations. For the consumer’s sake, a remake shouldn’t change too much, particularly when it comes to holy gameplay, but the product should look new and exude contemporary logic. Let’s imagine for a moment what a consumer, as a consultant to Nintendo, might have said about the visuals of the first two levels of the original Super Mario Bros.:

There’s nothing going on in the backgrounds.

The ground looks like building blocks.

The color scheme is too simple.

It looks like Mario is as big as clouds.

There’s not much detail.

Everything looks hard as a rock.

In the Super Mario All-Stars remake of the NES classic, a type of order has been applied to the stages. In level 1-1, there are humongous, pillowy clouds — with patronizing smiley faces, no less — and towering hills in the background, so Mario can never look too big when compared to the features of the landscape. In the foreground, Mario and his enemies clearly travel on top of grass, and in case that’s not convincing enough, you can also observe brown soil. Every once in a while, Mario will pass by a patch of tall grass blowing in the wind. The original 1-1 resembles a dream, but the remade 1-1 resembles a bonafide environment that can impress boardroom fellows and unthinking spectators.

With level 1-2, the remake doubles down on its rejection of emotional potential in favor of more rational visual presentation. The pitch-black darkness is gone. Instead, the background recalls the aspects of a mine: a wall of rocks, wooden beams, clumps of vegetation, and lanterns. While the blocks and Goombas have a bluish-gray hue as in the original Super Mario Bros., the increased visibility of the stage provides a newfound comfort that lessens the sense that Mario has entered a very dark place. Because one can see as many details in 1-2 as one could see in 1-1, the contrast between the stages is severely compromised. As a result, the transition to 1-2 in Super Mario All-Stars registers as natural and normal and explainable. The uplifting tone of 1-1 is dampened, as opposed to being stamped out.

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The most egregious aesthetic misstep in Super Mario All-Stars comes in World 8 of the Super Mario Bros. 3 remake. The original World 8, appropriately named Dark Land, is one of the most intimidating settings in video game history. Both the world map and the levels within Dark Land utilize black to an astounding degree, as if a shadow-spreading virus has infected everything. At one point in the segmented map, the player can only see Mario thanks to a spotlight. No Mario experience is as dread-inducing.

Super Mario All-Stars revises this unforgettable location. Call it Not-So-Dark Land. As with level 1-2 of the Super Mario Bros. remake, the darkness of World 8 is watered down. The evidence begins with the initial world map screen. In the original Super Mario Bros. 3, pitch blackness hangs around the fires that light up the paths that Mario must traverse. In the remake, the only black that can be seen is outside of the very frame of the map!

The remake’s failure is more obvious in World 8’s introductory level. In the original Super Mario Bros. 3, this level’s absence of light is so perpetual that you can’t distinguish the outlines of black objects like Bob-ombs and cannons unless an explosion occurs. In the Super Mario Bros. remake, a shadowy haze hangs over the top of the stage, but otherwise, you can see quite well. Check out the grass. Check out the soil. Check out the dormant volcanoes. No fear, no mystery, no inconvenience. The Bob-ombs have been made purple, for crying out loud.

From there, the remake’s World 8 interpretation, if you can even call it that, gets worse. Most levels are quite visible, raising the question of why Nintendo continues to bother with the Dark Land moniker. Due to an out-of-place background and heavy usage of the color green, a later stage looks like a jungle from a different world. In another head-scratching example, the remake retains most of the darkness in one level but destroys a strong element of dissimilarity by replacing white sand with yellow sand.

There is no credible artistic reason for these changes. Only two conclusions make sense to me. First, the makers of Super Mario All-Stars were deathly afraid of contrast. Second, the makers of Super Mario All-Stars wanted to make World 8 more approachable and digestible. Either explanation points to a lack of courage, if not a lack of appreciation for an all-time great platformer.

The Best Video Games of 2030

by Jed Pressgrove

While all the other game critics scrambled to play as many 2020 titles as they could for their usual lists, I decided to do something a little different this year — namely, time travel. I won’t bore you with the technical details of this endeavor, as I know all of you are thinking the same thing: “Really???? What about the games in the pipeline?!” Below are my picks for the greatest video games of 2030. I have seen the future, and it is good.

1. Hellfight: Like a Rogue – If there’s one thing that Hellfight: Like a Rogue teaches us, it’s that there can be truth in advertising. This blistering release from independent developer Big Colossus Studios is a roguelike in which you fight your way through Hell. Of course, you will die many, many times, but that’s more than OK. Here, death acts as an informant to the player, unveiling the intricacies of enemy attack patterns, the wanted and unwanted effects of power-ups, and the tricks to avoiding devilish traps like spikes and bomb radiuses. More than anything, to advance through the lair of Satan, you will need to learn how to dash a bunch of times. As if the tantalizing action of Hellfire: Like a Rogue weren’t enough, Big Colossus throws in a cast of lovable demons who talk to the hero, Lucipher, after he messes up and gets killed. The character development and storytelling point to a universal truth: we’re all just big kids in a dark playground, flipping the middle finger to our dads and running over to mommy for wise words and protection.
   
   
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake Remake – According to the Wikipedia of 2030, although Final Fantasy VII Remake was the most innovative remake of the greatest RPG ever, it left players wanting more after its last act. Square Enix initially flirted with the concept of remaking the remake, leaving audiences breathless across the world, but the creative team behind the project dissolved to everyone’s collective disappointment. But then, in 2029, it was announced that the first of 10 parts of Final Fantasy VII Remake Remake would be coming in 2030. I managed to get my hands on it, and boy, are you in for a treat in 10 years. Remember how Final Fantasy VII Remake translated the first five hours of Final Fantasy VII into 30 to 50 hours of content? Well, Final Fantasy VII Remake Remake turns the first five hours of Final Fantasy VII Remake into an 80-hour epic of moral ambiguity and carefully outlined traditional sidequests. The additional time with the characters reveals their innermost thoughts, as in the segment where Cloud, troubled by what could be called television static, follows Sephiroth through a labyrinthine alleyway for 10 hours, only to learn later that he actually walked three feet away from Barrett and the rest of the gang during a sort of brainfart that lasted a mere two seconds. And yes, while Barrett is a cartoonish stereotype as he was in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake, this time around we can definitely see how much he really, really loves his daughter and really, really hates corporate power. So it all balances out.
   
   
3. Animal Crossing: High on Life – On a sociopolitical level, 2030 was dreadful and frightening to behold on multiple fronts. As such, it’s nice that Nintendo cranked out this latest Animal Crossing sequel that, unlike previous entries, allows the player to engage in human-animal marriages. In a terrible year like 2030, this is what the doctor ordered. Similar to its predecessors, Animal Crossing: High on Life lets people get away from current events and turn their brains off in the late hours of the night and tend to their precious hamlets full of characters that look like toys that we used to play with when we were 2.5 years old. There was another neat thing that I noticed about playing Animal Crossing in 2030: you never knew when an affable Democratic politician in the U.S. would namedrop High on Life on social media. Despite the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor in 2030 seemed as wide as the distance between Pluto and the sun, all of this made me feel warm and bubbly inside.
   
   
4. Sprinkler Repairman – It was good to see that indie devs could still throw a decent curveball a decade from now. In the delightful and socially conscious Sprinkler Repairman, you help middle- and upper-class households maintain the lifeblood of their lawns. The intuitive (read: very easy) puzzler gameplay is a blast for all ages, but more significantly, as you visit neighborhood after neighborhood, you observe how segregated the world is. Most of the families in Sprinkler Repairman live by families with similar characteristics. When the protagonist utters his final line, “Man, we are separated,” you can’t help but feel a tinge of regret, despite how fun and solvable the majority of the game is.
   
   
5. Life As We Know It Is Over Part 2 – Based on the articles that I came across in 2030, Life As We Know It Is Over revolutionized storytelling in gaming in 2026. How? From what I could tell, the game had a nihilistic and apocalyptic plot, characters who put the T in Tragedy, and enemies that were a cross between zombies, vampires, and federal legislators. This material overwhelmed many a gamer, leading them to discover feelings that they never knew they had. Thus, Life As We Know It Is Over Part 2 was created as an attempt to top the emotional roller coaster ride that was Life As We Know It Is Over. Now, I can’t say whether this sequel was indeed better than the original, but I was moved by a scene in which Casey, a 20-something skateboarder-turned-revolutionary, compared the bloodsucking zombified vampire things to the American government of the early 21st century, right before putting a bullet in the brain of Jacob, a 40-something turncoat who, interestingly, was the protagonist for the first 15 hours of the game. My only question after seeing the closing credits of Life As We Know It Is Over Part 2 was whether the story was over or whether Life As We Know It Is Over Part 3 would peek its head around the corner in 2035.
   
   
6. Smash Bros. vs. Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat vs. Tekken vs. Virtua Fighter vs. Samurai Shodown vs. Dead or Alive vs. Primal Rage vs. UFC Legends – This unbelievable gem has almost everything a fighting game fan could want. I say almost because right before I had to come back to 2020, I learned that Smash Bros. vs. Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat vs. Tekken vs. Virtua Fighter vs. Samurai Shodown vs. Dead or Alive vs. Primal Rage vs. UFC Legends would have a second season featuring new characters like Shigeru Miyamoto, Kind Akuma, Mike Tyson, and Raiden As Played by Christopher Lambert. Damn!
   
   
7. Ori and the Lost Sack of Opioids – This delightful sequel takes the platforming genre to new heights, marrying in-depth exploration to passionate commentary on the anomie of humankind. The guardian spirit Ori finds itself traversing a bureaucratic modern world where everyone is looking for a way out through government-approved pharmaceuticals. As Ori backtracks through medical facilities, local pharmacies, wild college parties, and the human body itself, the player is able to grasp the logistical, political, and psychological complexities of the opioid crisis. A Metroidvania for the times.
   
   
8. Gun Nut 2.0 – Ever wonder what it’s like to have to clean a 9mm Glock after you shoot a lot of stuff? Gun Nut 2.0 takes its 2027 predecessor’s basic VR premise to fascinating extremes. At one point, you have to visit store after store in a desperate search for bullets of a certain caliber, asking employees what day and time they think they’ll receive their next ammo shipment. In a groundbreaking twist, Gun Nut 2.0 even has built-in features to relieve cognitive dissonance for left-wing players who are against guns in real life but love to imagine themselves blowing crap (and people) away.
   
   
9. Assassin’s Creed: The Great Depression – If you love history, you already know Assassin’s Creed is a gift from the gods. With a fidelity that recalls unforgettable literary classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road, Assassin’s Creed: The Great Depression highlights how cool it is to plop one’s self into a different place and time and slit throats like a bad MF. You can also freely enter Tour Mode and watch how people survived in the Dust Bowl. Attention to detail = empathy.
   
   
10. Madden NFL 30 – This one deserves special mention for the “Life of a Player” mode alone, where every life decision can impact whether a particular player will enter and remain in the NFL. You start off as a soon-to-be draft pick who, among other things, must consider the potential consequences of broadcasting himself hitting a water bong on TikTok. If a team drafts you, the possibilities are endless. You can play your position well to land a big contract, only to stop putting forth any effort on the field after you get paid. You can throw your teammates under the bus after a reporter asks you what happened in an embarrassing loss. You can spend your free time being a role model, traveling to schools across the country to inform kids about the dangers of peer pressure and egotism. Madden NFL 30 captures everything that is inspiring and disappointing about big-name athletes, while also being incredibly dull as a football game in video game form.
    

Galaga ’88: When an Arcade Masterpiece Should Be Left Alone

by Jed Pressgrove

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

Galaga is the perfect pop game sequel. Though a fixed vertical shooter like its predecessor Galaxian, Galaga is a more exhilarating, dynamic affair. Single shots are a thing of the past. Enemies zip onto the screen in graceful sychronization as opposed to automatically being in rows. Bonus stages emphasize accuracy and provide a suitable break from the game’s kill-or-be-killed paradigm. The aesthetic of the main ship evokes the offensively minded X-Wing from Star Wars rather than the more passive Enterprise spacecraft from Star Trek. Most importantly, players can double their firepower by allowing a ship to be taken hostage and then freeing it. With all of these changes, director Shigeru Yokoyama produced one of the most beloved games of any era and made Galaxian a forgettable footnote in the history of shooters.

Galaga ’88 wants to be a superior version of the 1981 masterpiece. The title says it all. The reference to 1988 is not just technical acknowledgement of the approximate time of the release. The citation of the year is a way of telling us that the game is for people of a modern age with more sophisticated demands. As consumers, we go to a car dealership with the expectation that we will see the latest year’s offerings on the lot. Newer is sexier. Look at how the sports video game market persists.

Galaga ’88 must live up to the braggadocious implications of its title, to its suggestion that the mega pop hit Galaga has been reincarnated in a superior body. (Some might claim that Galaga ’88 is only a sequel, but this idea overlooks Gaplus, the 1984 follow-up to Galaga that didn’t reuse its immediate ancestor’s title.) The souped-up presentation of Galaga ’88 reveals the desperation of a development team attempting to top a lean mean classic. Now the player’s ship takes off from a futuristic platform, as if we need that continuity in a gallery shooter. Now the ship has to go into warp drive for the next stage to begin, as if a simple change of levels isn’t enough. Now imagery in the background changes, as if the modest space setting of Galaga wasn’t convincing. Now the bonus stages are referred to as “Galactic Dancing,” which is just about the corniest term one could use for such a thing, and become nauseatingly precious when the musical compositions by Hiroyuki Kawada add contrived levity to the proceedings.

Galaga ’88 is an attention whore that, despite all of its cute little bells and whistles, has never gotten the attention that Galaga has received over the decades. Perhaps that’s because greater simplicity reigns supreme in the arcade, but Galaga ’88’s new gameplay ideas also lack inspiration and creativity. As in Galaga, you can fuse together two ships for more bullets, but the dual ship in Galaga ’88 can be transformed into a triple ship. Although this concept might seem cool on the surface, Gaplus already had a tractor-beam trick that could triple one’s firepower and then some by adding enemies alongside the main ship. The other problem is that Galaga ’88 makes the triple-ship process overly simple: two ships can be selected, with the loss of one life, before the beginning of the first stage. This means the triple ship can be achieved quickly, and the increased bullet coverage turns the first few stages into a mindless shooting spree.

Another wrinkle in Galaga ’88 is the inclusion of scrolling stages. Let me repeat that with more truth. Another wrinkle in Galaga ’88 is the inclusion of utterly uninteresting scrolling stages. The enemies and obstacles in these segments don’t get my blood pumping at all, as their patterns and positioning pose little danger compared to the threats in Xevious, which preceded Galaga ’88 by a few years. The absence of a provocative power-up system, as in 1985’s Twinbee or 1989’s Blazing Lazers, also does no favors for the action here. Most egregiously, scrolling stages don’t fit the fixed-shooter formula of relegating the player to movement along a single horizontal plane. When you combine movement restrictions with perfunctory enemy encounters, you wind up with padding and zero emotional resonance. In this pitiful context, the entire point of having scrolling stages with a ship — to create an illusion of flight and momentum — is lost.

Even if Galaga ’88 is viewed uncritically, it still resembles an awkward, behind-the-times missing link between the fixed shooter and modern vertical shooter. There are bosses, but they move, spray bullets, and spawn minions in primitive and embarrassing fashion. There are branching paths, a la Darius and Star Fox, but they amount to a negligible sense of adventure. Consider this thought experiment: if Galaga ’88 had been the original Galaga in 1981, it would seem far ahead of the curve, born from the unusual whims of a mad game designer. Galaga ’88 wants us to imagine what could have been. As romantic as that proposition may seem, it requires us to disregard the history of video games so as not to notice that we’re looking at a bunch of wallpaper.

What Do Video Game Remakes Say?

by Jed Pressgrove

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

It catches my attention that a significant portion of the film-watching audience lets out a groan whenever it hears about a classic movie being remade. A number of people will even act like they’ve swallowed puke after one mentions the very idea of a movie remake. This type of reaction goes beyond personal taste. That so many show obvious repulsion speaks to a culture larger than the individual, a culture that holds particular works of art sacred.

Even though video game fans can be among the most rabid fans of anything on this planet, I don’t see as much dismay among gamers when, say, another Resident Evil remake is announced. It’s of course possible that some of us are so jaded about the greed of the game industry that we can’t be bothered to become disgusted by such an announcement — particularly when the announcement comes from Capcom, a company whose output suggests that it can’t grasp the principle of leaving a good game alone. But given the extremely warm reception to remakes like Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII Remake, a great many players are not cynical about industry trends, much less critical of the notion of tampering with masterworks.

Game remakes often arrive with similar justification. Game consoles have short lives, meaning that countless people may never experience the original versions of all-time significant releases. Companies, or one of their unpaid shills on social media, can simply remark that the industry is broadening the contemporary audience’s exposure to the classics — and updating that which no longer works, that which has aged too much.

Indeed, if historical appreciation were the point, there would be more emphasis on faithful, painstaking restoration of the games in question. The industry and fans, by and large, share a conviction that modern technology and modern design norms can improve games created with older technology and older design norms. Or if you want to get right to the point: modern games are inherently superior. Now you might say, “That is a revolting thing for the industry to push!” Well, not if you ask those who call these remakes brilliant and needed. There’s a big market for remakes of what we might call canonical games. Compared to film lovers, gamers are strangely willing to accept, or even request, remakes of canonical works. The explanation for these contrasting behaviors lies in a simple cultural difference: the gaming world doesn’t revere or respect that which it claims is great. I think about all the years I listened to people say Final Fantasy VII is the greatest RPG of all time, only to see glowing approval in 2020 for the remake of the supposed existing masterpiece. At best, greatness in games amounts to socially reinforced dogma with an expiration date. At worst, it is forgotten or discarded history.

Perhaps there’s something likable about the lack of sacredness in the gaming world, especially if we argue that art and entertainment shouldn’t be a religion. And yet there’s a rigged nature to the promotion of video game remakes, a religious tautology that tells us that today’s productions are better. How are they better? Ask no more:

Smoother polygons.
Smoother controls.
Smoother translations.
Fully animated figures.
Fully orchestrated music.
Fully tested experiences.
More items.
More songs.
More enemies.
More dialogue.
More minigames.
More mechanics.
More characters.
More voice acting.
More sound effects.
More detailed sprites.
Bigger worlds.
Shorter loading times.
Streamlined menus.
Flexible save systems.
Hints.
Maps.
New visual effects.
New settings.
New story.
New engine.
New levels.
New quests.
New game plus.
Redone.
Revamped.
Reworked.
Revived.
Reimagined.
CONTENT.
BE CONTENT.
BE CONTENT WITH CONTENT.

Try arguing with the bullet points above, you no-good consumer morons! That’s what video game remakes are saying to us.

An Essay Series on Video Game Remakes

by Jed Pressgrove

Below are links to all of the essays of my series on video game remakes. The series ended March 31, 2021. As always, thank you for reading.

What Do Video Game Remakes Say?
Galaga ’88: When an Arcade Masterpiece Should Be Left Alone
Super Mario All-Stars: Aesthetics Be Damned!
Rethinking My Stance on Remakes
Having It Both Ways in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Resident Evil 2: Faking the Remake
Final Fantasy VII Elongated

Paper Mario: Sticker Star, The Most Underrated Pop Game of the 2010s

by Jed Pressgrove

During the 2010s, the game industry fed audiences at a gluttonous rate. Major releases often propagated open world ideology, which tells us that more is better and that we can obtain ultimate freedom in games. With a religious dedication to Content, numerous titles operated like buffet restaurants, offering constant character progression through the accumulation of experience points, comprehensive maps that reduce the likelihood of delayed gratification, and cookie-cutter tasks that sometimes reward the player for just showing up to the party, so to speak (in Fantasy Life, the common act of entering a shop and talking to a clerk is, ridiculously, a “quest”).

Years into the future, we may look back at 2010s pop games and find that many of them blur together like Marvel Universe movies. Paper Mario: Sticker Star, though, will be among those works that shall not be mistaken for any other. Sticker Star was the rare 2010s pop game that went full throttle with an unusual concept with little regard for whether people found it easily digestible. By and large, people didn’t give Sticker Star the credit it deserved. It contradicted what they were used to. It didn’t feed them like the typical 2010s pop game.

The (Consumable) Concept

Sticker Star revolves around the collection of stickers. Without them, Mario can’t defeat foes or access numerous locations. The kicker is that every sticker can only be used once, and Mario’s sticker album has limited space. Luckily, you see stickers everywhere. They’re plastered on buildings, trees, the ground, you name it. All Mario has to do is pull the sticker off whatever it’s stuck to.

Peeling a sticker comes with comic satisfaction. In cartoonish fashion, Mario puts some muscle into it. The player must hold a button to watch Mario tug and tug and, finally, snatch a sticker from a surface.

There’s a distinctive feeling attached to this action of holding a button, a strong sense that there’s a struggle in motion, however silly it might be. I can’t help but think that, in this small but significant respect, Sticker Star outclasses other pop 2010s games. One of the biggest trends of 2010s gaming was the need to hold down a button, whether to open a menu, enter a building, or initiate just about any other trivial activity you can think of. This trend, which continues to this day, tends to be annoying, if not stupid, in its unnecessariness. In 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, for instance, you must hold a button to pull a switch, yet the game gives no visual evidence that the protagonist must exert any extra energy to perform the menial task. No such disconnect exists with Mario’s sticker-pulling. Holding a button in Sticker Star is not merely about the game following a dimwitted fad — the requirement comes across as an essential way of communicating that the stickers really stick. It even lends suspense to the proceedings when baddies inch closer to Mario as he yanks on an adhesive label.

In a curious departure from modern inventory and menu design, Sticker Star doesn’t provide any description of its most special stickers, which are a slew of random real-world objects — from a bowling ball to a fan, from a radiator to a guitar. In many cases, the purpose of a special sticker is self-explanatory. Even a person with a sorry imagination could guess what a baseball bat would entail. But with certain finds, there’s a bit of mystery as to what the effect of the sticker will be. Ingeniously, the ambiguity both arouses the player’s curiosity and sets the stage for ironic visual punchlines when the stickers’ powers are revealed.

A Bold Revision of Turn-Based Combat

In the style of Super Mario RPG and the first two Paper Marios, touching enemies in Sticker Star initiates turn-based combat, and timed button presses lead to more effective offense and defense. Sticker Star has a distinctive take on this classic system: with the exception of running away, every action requires the use of one sticker, so if you run out of stickers, you can’t attack or heal. In most turn-based RPGs, efficiency is a goal. In Sticker Star, efficiency is a necessity. Wiping out enemies in a single turn not only saves stickers but also gives Mario bonus coins. Coins are for two essential things: (1) purchasing more stickers and (2) triggering a slot-machine minigame that can, if played successfully, allow Mario to use multiple stickers in one turn.

Fascinatingly, there are no experience points in Sticker Star, so success in combat is always a product of skill and, when particular enemies have resistances or weaknesses to certain stickers, thought. Sticker Star rejects the comfortable, widely approved notion that players should always grow more powerful to the point where they don’t even have to pay attention to the battle system. Grinding as we know it doesn’t exist in Sticker Star.

This provocative creative spin on a well-worn idea was a disappointment for many players and critics. Instead of recognizing the different philosophy of Sticker Star’s turn-based system, they focused on how the game didn’t meet their predictable expectations. This quote from Ben Lee’s review at Digital Spy represents a common line of thinking about Sticker Star:

But while the battle system is enjoyable, the battles themselves are let down by the fact that there’s no character progression at all. Mario never gains experience or levels up, and health increases are periodically found rather than earned. Mario copes with increasingly tougher enemies by picking up better stickers mostly while you’re exploring the world, which makes engaging in battles rather pointless.

The stickers being disposable also introduces a couple of problems. Firstly, you may feel inclined to save your best stickers for a tough fight or impending boss. This means that dealing with non-threatening encounters takes longer than it should as you’re deliberately using your worst stickers.

Secondly, battles don’t always reward you with stickers, so in most cases, fighting will slowly deplete your album. There are more than enough stickers in levels for this not to be a huge issue, but getting nothing useful out of battles inspires you further to avoid enemy encounters.

There are multiple problems with this passage. As I suggested above, the point of battling is to accumulate coins through efficient usage of stickers so that Mario can be prepared for more difficult segments of the game. You don’t always know what stickers will be the most helpful in a given level or boss fight, but maintaining a varied collection of stickers and figuring out which ones lead to the fastest destruction of your opponents is the challenge. Without that challenge, one would sleepwalk through Sticker Star, and the game would have little to distinguish itself from countless pop games.

“[D]eliberately using your worst stickers” is the exact opposite of what one should do in Sticker Star. Owning and using less-effective stickers results in inefficiency, which means fewer coins and a more depleted sticker collection. One’s strategy should be to remember the types of attacks that tend to do well against enemies with similar traits and to, accordingly, stock up on such stickers, whether by revisiting locations (stickers reappear in the same places after you exit a level) or going to a shop. Don’t waste your inventory space on stickers that don’t have broad applicability. The disposability of stickers is indeed a problem, as Lee states, but it’s a problem that can be solved with knowledge, experimentation, and intuition. Rather than getting stronger artificially through experience points, you get better by drawing on your literal experience as a player.

At one point in Sticker Star, I found myself low on coins and in need of certain stickers. I ended up looking for battles with four or five enemies at a time, knowing from previous engagement that I could take them all out with a single turtle shell attack and rack up dozens of coins in a snap. This is not to say I never avoided battles like Lee. Sometimes, to preserve your number of stickers, avoidance is key. What do you need more? More stickers or more coins to buy different stickers? This is the central management conflict in Sticker Star that influences whether a fight is worthwhile.

The unique appeal of combat in Sticker Star goes beyond mathematical considerations. Although Mario RPGs have always emphasized active button pressing during turn-based battle, Sticker Star takes the feel of it all to another level, and I’m not merely talking about the rhythmic timing involved with the many techniques. There’s a much different sensation when you jump on an enemy using a regular boot attack versus a steel boot attack. The former has an appropriate lightness and momentum to it, while the latter carries an illusion of extra weight coming down when performed — a delectable feeling that is noticeably absent in 2020’s Paper Mario: Origami King. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when you fail to execute a particular type of hammer attack, the weapon snaps in two, and your very finger is left with a resounding sense of flimsiness. Because of this profound tactility, I have rarely felt as impotent playing turn-based games as I do when I screw up in Sticker Star.

The audio of Sticker Star further punctuates failure. When your hammer breaks, a sound effect suggesting immense clumsiness rings out. Even more devastating is when the standard battle music devolves into a bastardized, bizarro version of itself when Mario is near death. An awkward, ominous form of the previously upbeat melody is accompanied by an unpleasant pulsating bass line that evokes sloppy drunkenness. Although the timing for Mario’s moves doesn’t change here, the disturbing sonic transition can very well affect one’s performance as a distraction. The potential disorientation here is almost as powerful as the dynamics of the “Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy” stage in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. But unlike that SNES classic — which delivers its druggy experience with an altered soundtrack, wavy visuals, and inexact controls — Sticker Star achieves a similar effect with sound alone.

Boss battles represent another area where Sticker Star doesn’t care about the tenets of a traditional RPG. Unless you can identify a sticker that cripples the abilities of a boss, the game’s bigger fights are grueling and unforgiving. This characteristic of Sticker Star is considered a grave sin by more than a few critics. Here’s what Philip Kollar said in his Polygon review:

Boss battles also become more dependent on these item-based solutions. An ink-spewing squid at the end of one area is nearly impossible to beat if you don’t bring along a sponge sticker to soak up its attacks. Mixing combat and puzzles is a problem because it happens without warning and without a way to call up new stickers during the fight. If you enter a boss battle without the single specific sticker needed for victory, you might as well reset the game and try again. At least “Thing” stickers can be purchased in the town hub and replaced in your book after you’ve used them, so it’s not difficult to prepare once you know which sticker is needed.

While this analysis is more level-headed than others, Kollar’s suggestion that certain stickers are “needed” to advance in each boss encounter is not accurate. With a well-stocked inventory (i.e., plenty of health-restoring mushrooms, weapons that allow for higher combos, and special stickers), I defeated multiple bosses without exploiting their weak points, and the tension that came with these hard-earned wins recalled the suspense of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’s Bonetail fight, the most difficult and meaningful conflict in that now-classic sequel. In fact, it could be argued that knowing which sticker to use against every boss in Sticker Star takes something away from the emotional potential of the game. If one, as I did, manages to eke out more than one nail-biting victory against Sticker Star’s bosses, one will be that much more relieved and jubilant when an optimal weapon is utilized. Many great games, from Castlevania III to The Witcher 2, are worth playing precisely because they scoff at our desire to dominate the competition as a prophesied hero would. I put Paper Mario: Sticker Star in the company of those works, which is a most unusual distinction for a Mario spinoff.

A World Ripe for Exploration and Satire

Despite its lackluster reputation, Sticker Star received a fair bit of praise for its level design. Stages are almost like toys that Mario can manipulate and break. Sticker Star’s visual style, which draws heavy attention to the paper- and cardboard-based artificiality of the environments, practically dares players to go wild with Mario’s hammer with the hope to find new routes or uncover items by busting up some contrived piece of the world. The game doesn’t skimp on variety, either. There’s an Egypt-inspired Yoshi sphinx structure with numerous nooks and crannies, a mansion that recalls the setting of the original Resident Evil, and a rafting adventure that has Mario facing the background, foreground, or the side of the screen as he rides a set of logs and dodges everything from floating barrels to Shyguys swinging on vines. There’s only a few missteps, like the ski lift level that essentially recycles a banal flying Goomba obstacle and a second rafting stage that features an underwhelming conflict with a giant fish.

At the same time, Sticker Star can demand an exhausting amount of backtracking, almost as an ode to the sigh-inducing back-and-forth traveling in the unforgettable Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. Some of the pathfinding in Sticker Star involves head-scratching and pedantic solutions. In one level, ice must be melted to advance, but even though several stickers involve heat, only one of them will work for the puzzle. In most cases, the sticker must fit snugly into a specific space to bring about a new path. Yet, confoundingly, in a handful of situations, a sticker that would otherwise seem to have the wrong width and height is actually what needs to be used. The most extreme nuisance is Sticker Star’s third world, which demands Mario to hunt down and chase individual moving pieces of a yellow caterpillar. If you lack patience here, you won’t experience a significant chunk of the game’s levels, so as unrepentantly tedious as the quest is, it functions as a rite of passage, testing one’s gumption and will and highlighting Sticker Star’s rejection of both linear and open world design. (And once the ordeal is over, you’re rewarded with an amusing scene of the reconstructed caterpillar circling his treehouse like a furious train.)

If nothing else, the rough side of Sticker Star is worth enduring for the opportunity to see more of the game’s hysterical irreverence toward video game norms. To advance in World 1-5, Mario must set off an over-the-top chain reaction that has everything from trees to mountains to clouds toppling into each other like dominoes — the wacky sight reminds us that game environments are but grand contrivances, whether to gawk at as dynamic visual marvels or to influence with preposterous authority. World 3-4 has an area where Mario can use a bowling ball sticker to knock over some pins, but the ball, instead of rolling on the ground, flips in midair toward the pins for a strike. Afterward, a pair of instant replays underline the absurdity of the moment, lampooning the excitable pride that both developers and gamers take in awkward-looking imagery (I think of pretentious sports simulations and their ultimate failure to resemble reality). Within the aforementioned Resident Evil esque mansion, you enter a hallway to see a giant stapler crash through a window from the outside. As parody, this scene calls out the cheap thrills that typify the overrated survival horror genre. Sticker Star thumbs its nose at the sacred.

A Message to Sticklers for RPG Conventions

As weird as Sticker Star can be, it marked a return to the turn-based RPG combat that its predecessor, Super Paper Mario, abandoned in favor of pedestrian action platforming and gimmicky perspective-switching exploration (Fez before Fez). And yet, Sticker Star’s lack of experience points and lack of detailed storytelling made the game a false RPG to many. As I’ve suggested before, stakeholders in the gaming world sentimentalize the definition of “RPG” based on their subjective (and most likely nostalgic) histories with games. With this in mind, Sticker Star, despite adhering to a number of conventions that people associate with RPGs, is what I would call an unsentimental pop RPG.

The most powerful evidence of my claim lies in how Sticker Star mocks the fetishization of overblown spectacle that was popularized by the summons abilities of 1997’s Final Fantasy VII. The epitome of Final Fantasy VII’s bloatedness is the Knights of the Round summon, which lasts more than 60 seconds (what’s more, the player must invest hours in a banal chocobo racing and breeding minigame to even attain Knights of the Round). Although no attack in Sticker Star matches the ridiculous length of that spell, I couldn’t help but think about Knights of the Round and its ilk when I finally unleashed the goat sticker, which calls up a gargantuan version of the barnyard creature that chomps down on Mario’s enemies eight times to accordion music. The jaws of this humongous goat stupidly take up the entire screen. This evidence of artistic desperation, however sarcastic, should forever tie Sticker Star to the RPG, the most overly revered of all video game genres.