Mario Kart DS - Thoughts

Mario Kart DS seriously tested my patience at times. I think it's leagues better than the first three entries, but it is not a kind nor forgiving experience. DS is like a parent you can never please, unhappy with your performance in spite of you trying your best. Some days it'll let you get away with a sloppy corner or two, but most of the time it will stare down its nose, scoffing, "You call that a drift boost?" If you can ignore its harsh grading, Mario Kart DS is a fun little package with good ideas. However, if your heart's desire is the hallowed three stars, prepare for that dream to be laughed at and spat on.

Mario Kart DS is the last game in the series to use the classic drift boost system, and I'm not sad to see it go. You activate it by alternating left and right while drifting, but it's never been something I could consistently pull off in any of the titles. Its problem is less that the maneuver is difficult to perform and more that it's unclear what separates a successful boost from a failed one. Even when I'm confident in a corner, boosting is always a gamble; take too long to perform the action and you'll find yourself off course, careening towards a wall. And though I appreciate the dexterity required to pull it off, boosting every race can physically wear on the thumb—especially if you're using the 3DS's jagged d-pad.

Inconsistent boosting wasn't a huge deal for the earlier titles—64's rubberbanding is a bigger bur—but the difference between those games and Mario Kart DS is the punishing ranking system. To be as efficient as the game thinks you should be, you'll not only have to get accustomed to drift boosting but also come to terms with the fact that you're going to lose. A lot. To succeed you'll have to stay within the bounds of the course, bump as few walls as possible, and keep a hold of 1st place for the majority of the race—and even then might only qualify for two stars. On top of that, blue shells will show up on every race (with 4-6 of them in the worst scenario) and DS's red shells have developed a nasty tendency to curve into your side, bypassing whatever defensive item you're holding. Now matter how many hits you suffer—and trust me, you'll suffer a payload—you still have to place first or you can kiss those three stars goodbye.

In theory, I don't think there's anything wrong with including a system that ranks you based on how well you did. But the ranking in Mario Kart DS is a pile of garbage straight-up crapshoot. It's fickle, punitive, and apathetic to your excuses, even if you get bumped off the road or sent spiraling into a pit by a lightning bolt. The ranking system won't acknowledge that you got blue shelled on Baby Park of all things (seriously, that track is 50 second long!), or that you kept getting fake item boxes so you had no way to avoid four red shells in a row—you perform up to the game's expectations, or run the entire cup over again. But the worst part about all of this—the thing I absolutely cannot stand—is that you are given no feedback as to what you did wrong. There's no score, time tally, or track-by-track rundown—just a simple grade, devoid of context. Was it that thwomp you ran into? The mud you slid across in Wario Stadium? Should you have drift boosted more? Mario Kart DS cares not for your cries; you will receive that two star rating and stew in solitude, left to ponder where it all went wrong.

Most of the time though, you know where it all went wrong—you were blue shelled (then red shelled) right before the finish line. Or you tried to cut a corner and ran into a chain chomp. Or you bumped into two walls over the course of an entire cup. But what's frustrating is that, akin to the drifting, the ranking feels unclear and arbitrary in its stringency. Sometimes you can slip into a pit, crash into a snowball, and rarely boost all lap... and nevertheless clinch a three star victory. It feels great when you succeed, but it makes your defeats all the more crushing, since you can rarely identify a mistake that wasn't present in your other victories. You don't learn how to play the game better as much as you just randomly manage to achieve three stars, which will happen more often should the blue shell forget to show its ugly face.

On one hand, Mario Kart DS's ranking system gives the game more longevity, providing a suitable challenge that will even give experts a run for their money. But on the other hand, it completely forgets that Mario Kart isn't about perfection—it's about fun, chaos, and a keeping sharp eye on the road ahead. Once you apply a rigorous formula that makes no exceptions or excuses, it turns Mario Kart into an RNG-heavy pain-in-the-ass with the odds feel stacked against you, given that you have to run not one but four flawless races in a row. You can gloat about being good at the game until you're red in the face, but that won't change the fact that some some victories will unequivocally be stolen from you. And that sucks. You might still snag a gold trophy in the end of course, but if you set your eyes any higher, prepare for the game to fight back with a dispassionate cruelty.

There is some good news though: the new courses are pretty good! Every cup has two tracks that can compete at the top of the Mario Kart echelon, balanced with a good amount of turns and fair stage hazards. Not only that, but quite a few tracks have some fantastic, fresh themes that are worthy of praise all on their own—Waluigi Pinball, Tick-Tock Clock, and Luigi's Mansion are what I'd deem the most memorable. Mario Kart DS is also the first (sorta second) appearance of retro courses, a much-needed inclusion that bulks up the game. Sadly, the retro line-up here is largely unimpressive; tracks from Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit are flat as a sheet of paper, dominated by boring straightaways and peppered with corners that have been neutered of their danger (due to DS having better controls). Plus the track selection is exceedingly dull: the Shell cup features not one but three intro tracks, and there's nothing exciting or noteworthy in the final retro cup.

Last but not least, Mario Kart DS's most notable feature is probably its Mission Mode: solo challenges that place you in a variety of wacky events, ranging from "race against the clock" and "collect coins" to "drive backwards" and "shoot baddies with shells". I think these are mostly... fine, I suppose. Every now and then there's a cool alteration or mechanic (like the boss fights) but some missions really don't work well within the Mario Kart framework, requiring too much precision or relying on luck. Yet the bigger sticking point for me is—you guessed it!—the ranking system. Some missions will gladly hand over three stars on a first or second completion, while others will see you running the course over and over, cutting off tenths of a second in the hopes of appeasing the go-kart gods. And similar to the ranking system in the grand prix, you're never given a threshold to hit nor told what you're doing wrong; you either do well, or run it again and again and again and again.

For casual play, it's hard to beat Mario Kart DS. It has a good selection of original tracks, a sizeable mission mode, and single-cart multiplayer to keep amateur drivers entertained. But beneath the exterior is a condescending ranking system that blends F-Zero GX's perfectionism with Mario Party's adoration for RNG-determined winners. It creates a foul mixture, the video game equivalent of dousing ice cream in ketchup. For some people that might work (or even sound appetizing), but it's undeniably a hard form of entertainment to stomach. Even when you finally net three stars in everything, you won't be relieved—you'll be angry and tired, sapped of your adoration for the franchise. Who knew that including a harsh grading system in a series that's all about enforcing equitable treatment would be about as fun as professionally speedrunning Candy Land.

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Images obtained from: nintendolife.com, gamereactor.com, eurogamer.net, twitter.com

Dragon Age: Inquisition - Thoughts

Despite having played only two entries, Dragon Age has built up an intimidating aura for me. It's a series that augurs gloom and frustration, rivaling (and at times surpassing) the most vexing games on the NES. The first two Dragon Ages are long, hazardous affairs that will have you routinely rifling through your inventory and nervously stockpiling potions, because you've experienced firsthand how ruthless the journey can be. Time and time again, you'll suffer that one downed party member or mis-timed spell that rapidly results in a team wipe—seriously, just look at the sky horror fight from Dragon Age 2. You may not rack up as many "game overs" as other notorious classics, but fights are both long and swingy, making defeat more crushing than whenever Simon Belmont accidentally slips into a pit.

So naturally, I went in trepidatious of Dragon Age: Inquisition. And while it's more difficult than any of the Mass Effect titles, it was also much, much more lenient than its ancestors. Potions are limited but always restock at camp, fights don't drag for nearly as long, and you won't have to deal with a figurative flood of reinforcements raining down on you like in Dragon Age 2. There are some unfortunate downgrades with the transition to open world, but Inquisition remains the "friendliest" Dragon Age, being easy to understand while simultaneously offering loads of tactical depth to sink your teeth into. And your chompers better be sharpened because there is a ton of Inquisition to devour—arguably far too much.

At the core of Dragon Age: Inquisition is a troubling question: what content is worth experiencing? You are presented with a lot of quests in Inquisition, but outside of the main story bits (which require levelling up to access) you are left on your own to explore the world. While each locale has a main objective woven into it, these are often vague and imprecise: "go stop bad guys" or "look for grey wardens" or "find out what the bad guys are doing here." Questlines in previous games were more rigid and direct, telling their own little story or wrapping up in unexpected ways (I was woefully unprepared for Gaxkang). Meanwhile in Inquisition you'll run into quests frequently and randomly, covering your map in objectives that have the most tenuous of stories attached to them.

And though not all the quests are pointless (I enjoyed a couple of the companions' missions) it's difficult to tell which quests will be meaningful as opposed to those that sorta just... end. I played a ton of this game—over 100 hours worth—scouring the world for interesting stories... but there's honestly not that much that I can recall. There was that one haunted mansion, the barbarians in the swamp, the flooded town, and... that's mostly it? Everything else was an outpost you needed to attack, a corpse you needed to investigate, or an item you needed to collect. Occasionally you come across some cool moments, like stumbling upon a dragon nest in a coliseum or exploring a temple frozen in time, but these aren't storylines as much as they're just "neat" events you'll gradually forget.

The main story on the other hand fares much better in comparison, telling a riveting tale that outdoes both Origins and 2. Where most other games skirt the religious implications of being the "Chosen One", Inquisition embraces it wholeheartedly, acknowledging that some interesting problems arise from your deific duty. Do you actually think you're ordained by the Maker? Do you think it is your duty to right the wrongs of the world? Would you play kingmaker and willingly let a ruler whom opposes you fall? Additionally, Inquisition bears some fascinating lore implications for the Dragon Age universe, but almost all of it is constrained to the main story and subsequent DLC. If you stray off the main path, prepare for a lot of bland fetch quests with mundane conclusions, which only serve one purpose: to feed you XP for the long road ahead.

I'm of two minds about Inquisition's combat: on one hand it's very accessible and well-balanced, but lost are the explosive moments from launching key spells. That trade-off was inevitable if the series ever sought to shake its CRPG roots, but it renders a lot your abilities as low impact. Enemies are still able to shred through HP like tissue paper, mind you, so you'll just have to be more active about using your abilities; no longer can you rely on the tried-and-true "hold the choke point and fireball everything." And while there are a couple of death-dealing combos you can discover (Hidden Blades + Mark of Death = 80k damage, RIP last boss) for the most part you'll have to rotate through abilities more often in order to survive. It keeps combat interesting, but piles more busywork onto the player.

Thankfully, Inquisition offers the console player a saving grace: finally you're given the ability to control the pace of battle with a tactical mode! This feature pauses the battlefield and lets you direct party members where to go, which spells to use, and whether to hold their ground, letting you finally control the fight from an overhead perspective. Ironically it's not needed for most of the battles, but its addition is more than welcome in the harder encounters. Dragons in particular have been made more fun than frantic, thanks in part to being able to tell your mindless allies to get out of the goddamn breath attack range. They'll still get blasted occasionally, but at least now you can tell yourself, "I really should've started this fight in tactical mode."

But tactical mode comes with a trade-off: you can no longer customize companion AI, nor bring more than eight abilities into battle. Note that you can alter whether an AI uses an ability or not, as well as learn as many spells as you want, but those two restrictions keep combat from feeling truly free. It can be nice not having to deal with a laundry list of if-then statements, but conversely, it's frustrating to have no control over which target the mage places barrier on, or whom the rogue puts to sleep during combat. Likewise, locking the toolbar to eight powers renders levelling up past 20 as moot, as most of your abilities have been set in stone and already upgraded. Neither of these are detrimental—I'd sacrifice tweaking AI priorities for tactical mode in a heartbeat—but they narrow combat ever so slightly, streamlining the game so it won't appear too complicated.

And yet they kept inventory management complicated—and it sucks.

More than any other game, Dragon Age: Inquisition bogs down your inventory with a ton of clutter. There are dozens of mods, sigils, runes, recipes, remains, and accessories that you'll gather on your journey, and they all take up precious inventory space, requiring frequent trips back home (or at least a vendor). There's plenty of cool gear to happen upon, but the vast majority of it will be a waste of time, thanks in large part to the shoddy UI. The menus are cumbersome to navigate, take forever to load in, and you can't compare unequipped items to one another—hell, you can't even compare stats when looting a chest! Plus you have to endure a loading screen every time you want to access your storage container, and there's no way to sort the damn thing! Whatever open-world gripes I have may be up for debate, but you will never be able to convince me that Inquisition's inventory even approaches the word "decent." How the older games manage to be superior in this regard is beyond me; trudging through your inventory is hands down the worst part of Inquisition.

Runner-up to that terrible accolade is the similarly terrible crafting system that's been senselessly tacked on. Potion brewing was a part of both Origins and 2, but Inquisition steps it up and lets you forge new weapons and armor... which means there's scores of raw materials to gather. It's downright incomprehensible how the game expects the player to keep track of what minerals do what, where to find most of them, and what schematics even utilize them. Buying schematics is an alarmingly dumb process too, as you're not given any details about the item besides its nebulous "tier" ranking. Worse yet is once you dig into the system you'll be overwhelmed with a bevy of mediocre options, most of which fail to compete with the game's unique drops. You honestly only need it if you're underleveled; the less time you spend in the forge, the better.

The last aspect that'll drain you of time is the war table—a feature I'm torn on, like with a lot of things in Inquisition. On one hand the war table features some of the coolest choices and flavor text you'll encounter in the game. On the other... well, it doesn't really do much. Sure, you can send spies to investigate an outpost, rendezvous with seedy figures, and blackmail religious officials into obedience... but it'll just result in riches, treasure, or influence (perk XP) most of the time. Like I said in the Mass Effect retrospective, I typically find the decisions you're forced to make more interesting than their outcomes. But that's not true in all cases, as Inquisition has shown me—sometimes you need something more than "new horse unlocked!" to feel like you've made a difference.

I spent a long, long time with Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I'm not sure it bodes well that I don't have any strong feelings coming out of it. There's definitely plenty that I appreciate—tactical mode, party members, the tremendous worldbuilding—but it took the franchise formula and added a bloat that's hard to overlook. It doesn't feel like a leap forward for the series as much as a side step, one that's overly proud of the size of the footprint left. And while I'm excited where the Dragon Age narrative is heading, I feel strangely disconnected from a lot of my decisions in the game, possibly due to the war table dulling expectations. I wouldn't hesitate to call Inquisition a good game, but it did leave me with a strange feeling, one that lingers like chalk on my tongue: was this truly the experience BioWare wanted to make? I mean, is this really where modern Dragon Age is headed?

Y'know, it's funny: Mass Effect: Andromeda tried its absolute best to copy Dragon Age: Inquisition, when Inquisition is barely worth copying in the first place. It's like cheating on a test by cribbing answers from a B- student.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

If you had told me the Titanfall developers would go on to make a game that blends Sekiro, Uncharted, and Metroid Prime 3 together, I would've said "there's no way that can work" before pre-ordering the hell out of it. However, if you added "... and it's a Star Wars game!", I would've been considerably less eager. That's why Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order completely flew past my radar; Star Wars is as unappealing to me as bug-eyed highschool anime girls are to others (which yes, I did watch all of Clannad). I don't have a problem with people that are drawn to it, but personally I've grown bored of evil empires and jedi mind tricks long before The Force Awakens was even in production.

Yet when Fallen Order came to Microsoft's Game Pass, it was hard to ignore it—especially after getting rave reviews from my friends. And while the game hasn't shifted my opinion on the franchise as a whole, it does make a serious argument for being the best video game bearing the Star Wars brand.

One of the best things Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has going for it is that it's (mostly) untethered from any of the movies, letting the player run around the universe and meet brand new characters. This keeps the experience feeling fresh as you're not tasked with blowing up the Death Star for the 100th time, but instead retracing the steps of a jedi master, taking you from subterranean alien dens to the top of a gargantuan world tree. There's a good variety of planets that manage to feel distinct from one another, though they're all winding mazes of predominantly one color. Their labyrinthine nature shouldn't be understated either; expect to stare at the map often if you want to hunt out secret areas and power-ups.

Unfortunately, Fallen Order is pretty barebones when it comes to power-ups. There's the ever-important estus upgrades stim cannisters, focus upgrades, health upgrades, and... that's basically it. A majority of the goodies you'll scavenge are mere codex entries and cosmetic options, which—while neat—don't expand your gameplay options nor add a strong incentive to keep exploring. Really, the best thing about opening those space-chests is that it's one less spot that'll distract you on the hunt for stim cannisters. There's also a number of mandatory upgrades that'll expand your traversal options, but I didn't really find any of them clever or unique enough to comment on.

But Fallen Order doesn't really need to be clever or unique to do well, an approach it takes with its parry-heavy combat. It's unfair to weigh it against Sekiro as both titles were in development at the same time, but the comparison is unavoidable: Fallen Order plays like a slightly sloppier Sekiro. The key word there is slightly as you can still enter a room and dispatch half a dozen storm troopers without breaking a sweat, but I never really felt confident in my parrying. It was hard deducing when to counter certain attacks due to the small delay in blocking, or if parrying would even work at times—it generally felt like a crapshoot against creatures larger than you. Sekiro may have suffered from a block-spam problem, but Fallen Order's alternative is to make blocking feel like a gamble; halfway through I stopped caring about attacks slipping through my defenses and focused more on offense. Also the input for healing can sometimes go ignored too, which just makes Sekiro shine that much brighter in comparison.

Note that receiving the "runner-up" award for parry mechanics is still an achievement unto itself. Fallen Order's encounters are rarely something you'll shy away from, as you'll be champing at the bit to flex your skills. Both the enemies and the player dish out considerable damage, making fights meaningful and delicate, rarely lasting more than twenty seconds. Throw in some nifty force powers that let you toss obnoxious snipers off cliffs, as well as a diverse cast of imperial henchmen to learn, and Fallen Order stands tall on its combat alone. Sadly boss fights are few and far between, with most of them being regular enemies with souped-up health. I think it's neat how bosses can get thrown at you at unexpected times, but if you're expecting climactic fights to close out your adventure through each world, know that Fallen Order doesn't play by those rules.

Combat may be at the heart of Fallen Order, but you'll be spending just as much time climbing across ruins and scavenging through downed ships. Fallen Order's levels are massive, multi-layered beasts that can be hard to read at times; the mandatory path is always easy to find, but backtracking can feel like untangling an elaborate knot of pathways. On one hand each planet is a marvel of intricate level design, but on the other you'll be aching for a quicker way to move around (given that there's no fast travel). Again, this isn't an issue that pops up if you play the game as a linear campaign, especially since Respawn is pretty good about giving you something to do on your way back to your ship. Once you venture out on your own, however, be prepared to circle back through a lot of familiar areas and enemies.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order delivers a good time, whether you're a fan of the franchise or not. There's exploration and puzzles for adventure fans, quick and flashy combat for action fans, and a decent chunk of cutscenes for those in need of a reason to push on. I may have spent an inordinate amount of time griping about Fallen Order's problems, but they're minor things, no worse than a dent on your bumper. The campaign presented here is admirable; Respawn Entertainment is slowly cementing themselves as one of the best single player developers in the AAA scene.