Super Mario Bros. 2 (JP) - Thoughts

If you've ever wondered what a "proper" Super Mario Bros. sequel might look like (one thoroughly scrubbed of its Doki Doki quirkiness) then behold—your monkey's paw wish has been granted! Released less than a year after the original, Super Mario Bros. 2 on Famicom Disk System was the true successor to the platforming classic, the sequel the West was sadly robbed of. Or at least, that's what die-hard fans would grouse, before finally getting their mitts on the Lost Levels version of the game in the All-Stars collection. Nowadays you won't find too many folks urging others to play—let alone purchase—Super Mario Bros. 2 in order to complete their Super Mario adventure. And with good reason too: Super Mario Bros. 2 is a lackluster expansion pack of levels designed to be as rude as possible.

Before the proliferation of romhacks, Super Mario Bros. 2 carried an intriguing promise: it quite literally offered more Super Mario Bros. There are more levels, more hazards, more secrets, more enemy types, and even more characters—well, one more character. Luigi finally differentiates himself beyond his white painter overalls, leaping higher and further than Mario at the cost of his brake speed. He's a cool addition that transforms the Mushroom Kingdom into a low gravity ice rink, making the game a tad easier due to his ability to reach numerous ledges Mario otherwise struggles with. However, his inclusion oddly replaces the 2P option—which isn't that big of a deal, as I can hardly imagine more than one person per household actually wanting to play this game.

Early on (ie the third item box of 1-1), you'll be clued into Super Mario Bros. 2's new tenet: trolling. Poison mushrooms are a "power-down", bottomless pits are now ubiquitous, and there are hidden warp zones that can send you backwards through the game. Expect frequently tight gauntlets of piranha plants and fire bars to test your reaction time, as well as the occasionally hammer bro you can only bypass with a risky leap. But the worst offenders have to be the hidden blocks and repeating mazes, which will terrorize you as early as 2-2 and 3-4 respectively. It's funny that two decades before amateurs could flood Mario Maker with belligerent kusoge, Nintendo was playing the original offender, gleefully toying with its audience.

Super Mario Bros. 2 may be billed as a game "for super players" but that's a touch misleading; 2 isn't a challenging game insofar as it's a rude one. That doesn't mean it's not difficult—it most certainly is—but like Battletoads, the largest hurdle is the amount of rote memorization required to beat it. Power-ups are not only few and far between but are commonly hidden, making the game's trickiest stages (primarily World 8) feel impossible until you sniff them out. Likewise, the game isn't shy about throwing blind jumps at you—especially whenever the super spring is involved, meaning you'll have to intuit where you are offscreen. Perhaps what clinches Super Mario Bros. 2 as more "rude" than "challenging" is the paltry amount of lives you have to beat it with... unless you know of the (intentional!) 1-up trick at the start of the game.

Despite Super Mario Bros. 2's obsession with screwing you over, the level design actually ranges from "okay" to "pretty good." Stylistically, the stages are hewn straight from the first game: you have underground levels (with more pits), tree top levels (with more pits), castles (with more pits) and annoying underwater sections (with more pits and now koopas!) Because of this, I don't remember entire stages as well as their troublesome sections, like the brutal koopa hops of 4-3/8-1, the fake dead end of 5-1, the Groundhog's Day loop of 5-3/7-2, the stratospheric leaps of faith of 7-3, and the insidious secret exit to 8-2. Ironically, the common element between these sections is that they contain one of more of the aforementioned trolling devices—repeating mazes, hidden blocks, and blind jumps.

That's why I don't think Super Mario Bros. 2 is necessarily bad for including anti-player gimmicks—it's just that they'll chip away at your patience with a diamond pickax every time they're used. If you're more resistant to tilt and enjoy repeatedly running levels in the pursuit of perfection, then great! There's a good chance you'll like Super Mario Bros. 2 more than its admittedly tame predecessor. But my problem is that "trolling" is all 2 really brings to the table. Sure, there's Luigi and super springs and wind and more aggressive piranha plants... but none of those dynamically change the way you play (well, besides Luigi). Audibly, visually, and mechanically, you're essentially playing the first Super Mario Bros again, but this time with a pitiful "new" coat of paint and a penchant for cruelty. As an adolescent I dragged the American 2 for being too different, but now near my mid-30s I find the sameness to be the most disappointing thing about this sequel.

To its credit, Super Mario Bros. 2 does add in a couple of bonuses for skillful players: namely, World 9 and Worlds A-D. I like World 9 as a hyper-difficult achievement, granting folks that beat the game on a single continue only one life to make it through a surreal, underwater-only series of stages. What makes it work for me isn't just the inverted palette but that it feels like a goofy victory lap rather than a punishing final challenge. Worlds A-D on the other hand, are a fine inclusion (they're a smidge harder than the regular stages) but they unfortunately hinge on the player completing the game eight times. I could understand maybe beating it as both Mario and Luigi once, but requiring quadruple that amount is just tedious busywork. One could argue it offers good practice for making it to World 9, but I was able to get there on my third attempt as Mario—all the other five runs did was solidify my opinion on Super Mario Bros. 2 even further.

On one hand, I admit that it is pretty cool playing what is essentially the earliest Mario romhacks ever made, especially by the "casual-friendly" Nintendo. But on the other, I judge Super Mario Bros. 2 so harshly because players nowadays are spoiled for choice. There are plenty of good hacks for purists that want something similar but more creative (Super Mario Unlimited, New Mario Bros) as well as hacks that allow you to better show off your Mario mastery (Super Mario Forever/Frustration, Rohrleitung Gate). The best reason to play Super Mario Bros. 2 over anything else is to learn about a forgotten relic in history, a kind of "what if Nintendo turned nasty?" And even then, I'd suggest playing the (improved) All-Stars first, whereupon you'll quickly realize Howard Philips was right—not having fun is indeed, bad.

When I claimed that Super Mario Bros. 2 was literally "more" Super Mario Bros., I neglected to add that it's more obnoxious, more difficult, and way more tedious. The game plays with physics in interesting ways via Luigi and the wind mechanic, but all that really amounts to is needing a finer degree of precision—and a lot more memorization—to master it. Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn't offer a new dimension of freedom like 3 does, nor a compelling new playstyle like with the American 2. Its strength lies solely in its mischievous level design, and even then you have to have a high tolerance for stupid deaths if you wish to see the end. When viewing the Super Mario Bros. franchise as a whole, I don't think you can argue that 2 deserves any spot other than the rock bottom.

Forza Horizon - Thoughts

After careening through six Mario Karts straight in a row, I wanted to take a break and play something more on the simulation side. I gave franchises like Gran Turismo and Forza some serious consideration (and purchased a good number of them), but what really captured my curiosity was the Forza Horizon series. Forza Horizon 5 was soon to release so talk of the game was bubbling up everywhere—and as someone that's only dabbled in arcade and kart racers, I figured there was no better time to strike than now. But anyone that knows me can attest to the fact that I have a bit of a chronological obsession, a problem that would undoubtedly nip while vacationing in sunny Mexico. So instead I stayed in the states, booting up my Xbox 360 to return to where it all began: scenic Colorado.

I'll be frank: the first Forza Horizon is a great game. But its greatness takes on a different form compared to the fiery excellence of other titles like Spelunky and Doom. Horizon offers a subtle and warm enjoyment, radiating contentment like lounging outside on a breezy Spring afternoon. It rejuvenates not with spikes of energy but gentle massaging, applying just enough pressure to exfoliate your worries away. Horizon grips your attention tighter than other laudable diversions like Bejeweled, Hexcells, or Wordle, but it's similarly prone to meditative trances, where minutes just drift away. "Pleasant" is perhaps the best word I'd use to describe Horizon—it carefully soothes like a much-needed phone call from one of your parents.

I'm hammering on this point because honestly, there's not really a lot I can do to describe what gives Forza Horizon its ineffable magic. The game looks great despite being a decade old, the soundtrack is loaded with bangers, and there's enough content to keep you sated for forty hours—or more! But at the core of the experience is a simple promise: you can drive around to your heart's content. Naturally, there's a lot more to Horizon than that—collecting cars and dominating races are also huge draws—but the game excels most from the freedom it hands you. One moment you can be cruising around looking for collectibles, and then the next you can be slamming headfirst into a guard rail during a haphazard street race. Horizon doesn't bring anything new to the open world formula (especially since Burnout Paradise came out four years prior), but somehow manages to feel fresh and rejuvenating, even if "open world driving" isn't your cup of tea. A big part of is the aforementioned indescribable magic, emanating a tinge of... authentic homeliness, I suppose. Though that could just be my rural New York roots coloring the experience more fondly.

Another reason for my fondness is Forza Horizon's ingenious approach to custom difficulty. Rather than throwing the nebulous "easy/medium/hard" metrics at you, Horizon lets you manually tailor how realistic you want your racing to be, rewarding you with additional credits for each handicap removed. This is an absolutely brilliant approach that keeps the ball in the player's court, letting them customize their experience beyond cranking up the CPU's cheatometer. Of course you can still do that—expect the AI to maintain impossible leads on Hard and above—but modifying your own controls to increase the difficulty helps to keep races interesting, and more importantly: RNG-free.

While driving around Colorado is an exquisite experience, I have some gripes with the systems that surround and unfortunately pinch the game. Forza Horizon's biggest issue is its menus—more specifically, how obtuse they can be at times. Obviously the "pay real money to fast travel anywhere" feature is a terrible inclusion, but it's the game's needlessly restrictive behavior that's worse. For instance, once you start a race you won't be able to tweak AI difficulty, modify driver aids, change cars, or purchase new upgrades/vehicles without first backing out. And then you'll have to load the world map, start the race again, load the race data, and then you can change what you need to. Several times I wanted to test out a handful of cars for a particular track (or at least nudge the AI difficulty up/down) but each instance required a multi-minute load time, even with the game installed on my hard drive. Therefore I settled on a handful of vehicles as my dependable go-tos, ironically betraying the collectible mentality of the Forza series.

Another problem I routinely ran into was trying to figure out what cars were viable for which events. Some of the descriptions are self-explanatory (it's not hard to guess what's required for a "Toyota only" event) but there were a bunch I had no clue for, like decade-specific events, price-specific events, and drivetrain-specific events to name a few. Horizon will notify you whether or not you need to buy a new vehicle, but you won't be able to see an eligibility list—that is, unless you personally drive to the event to start it (which incurs yet another load time.) And while the game is nice enough to let you purchase directly from the eligibility list, you can't manually tweak the cars or even take them for a test drive!

Note that all these grievances have a commonality: they burden you with load times that keep you from playing the game. Forza Horizon would undoubtedly be improved if these problems were fixed, but at worst they render your experience inconvenient—not insufferable. Plus I imagine the more one knows about cars and racing, the more these issues would come across as speedbumps rather than roadblocks. The core of Horizon itself—the controls, the engine, the visuals, the music, the atmosphere—are all encased in solid gold, not only standing the test of time but managing to frequently impress a full decade later. Forza Horizon is a stunning, priceless package; I feel as though I've missed out on nothing by jumping into the first entry instead of the fifth.

I would have never expected Forza Horizon to be the ideal dessert to my painfully fickle Mario Kart entrée, but here we are. Horizon showed me the perks of serious racing without including too much simulation to drag down my integrity, keeping my cruise light, breezy, and blissful. Plus I got to learn a little more of the automotive world, realizing which manufacturers and models I prefer (Audi R8 GT baby!), as well as which types of vehicles and events I detest (hatchbacks and rally racing—it's not fun sliding around everywhere.) I enjoyed my time with the game so much that I went out of my way to complete every racing event, as well as drive across every road. Even after exhausting the non-repeatable content, I didn't feel like the game dragged on too long or lacked enough to do—Forza Horizon was genuinely the perfect drive.

---------------------

Images obtained from: amazon.com, forzamotorsport.net

Mortal Shell - Thoughts

Whereas some games wear their Dark Souls inspiration on their sleeve, Mortal Shell fashions its entire suit out of From Software's fabric. Most of the series' staples are here: a grim fantasy world, trigger-focused control scheme, laborious combat, corpse runs, bosses with esoteric names, experience that doubles as currency, lore through item descriptions, et cetera, et cetera. But to Mortal Shell's credit, it applies some creative twists to the well-worn genre, generating new mechanics in the process. It's a neat and ambitious game... that unfortunately feels like an unbalanced tech demo in the end.

Surprisingly, Mortal Shell offers that rare introductory Souls experience that few games nowadays provide, where the opening hours feel like bullshit. You're given no direction, no estus flasks, and a forest littered with nasties that want you dead. As if that wasn't bad enough, Mortal Shell doesn't even offer a class, weapon, or item selection at its start—nor are you able to level your stats! It's like being dumped naked into 1-1 of Demon's Souls armed with only a longsword, and the best moon grass you can find is half as effective as the crescent variety. But you better learn to love that eighth moon grass because it's the best healing you'll find for the entire game.

You're not left entirely defenseless however, as Mortal Shell provides an new way to shield: hardening. By holding LT you can innately block any type of attack, transforming your flesh into an impenetrable statue à la the tanooki suit. This ability is also on an extremely generous cool down, allowing you to counter every other combo made by your opponent. It's a bit tricky learning to rely on it as a Souls vet, since it's best used in the middle of an attack animation to avoid interruption. Plus your impulse will likely be to mash roll or parry—both of which can be done here in addition to hardening. It's a cool mechanic though, and is super gratifying to pull off in the nick of time.

Another unique aspect about Mortal Shell I liked were the titular shells. While you can't choose what build you start as, there are three inhabitable bodies you can stumble upon out in the wild: one with high health, one with high stamina, and one that offers a compromise between the two. You may not be able to level these husks in a tradition sense but you can still dump your souls tar into their individualized skill trees wheels. Though I found the wheels to be underwhelming (a 5% resistance buff upon taking damage... hooray...), it was an interesting way to portray character growth beyond the trite "watch number go up."

The way Mortal Shell handles items is ingenious too—on paper. Every item you stumble across will have an unknown use until you consume it, incentivizing you to experiment with everything you pick up. The more you use an item the more familiar with it you'll become, eventually upgrading its potency to a second tier. I thought this was brilliant when I stumbled upon the tarspore—consuming the fungus can transform it from a poison edible to a poison-immunity treat once it hits familiarity. But every other item in the game is mundane by comparison; their effects become a tiny bit better once you cross the familiarity threshold. Considering how low-impact most of the items are already (I get health back for a single parry?), their evolved forms didn't do much to convince me they were even worth using in the midst of combat.

Early on, when your ass is being repeatedly handed to you, you'll probably stumble upon a mighty realization: dying is kind of... good? Not that being sent back to a checkpoint feels rewarding—it's frustrating as hell—but dying creates a statue of your shell you can reclaim for full health upon return. As you can already survive one ejection per life, your stone corpse serves as a second full heal waiting out on the field. Factor that together with the Eredrim shell's massive health pool (seriously, the dude's a tank), and you won't need consumables to win battles—as long as a copy of your corpse is nearby, any fight can be won through endurance alone. (Well except the last boss... you have to learn to roll for that obnoxious hopping dingbat.)

Combat is fun for the most part, as enemies run the gamut from slaughter-fodder to competent swordsman to "oh no not this guy!" But the problem with Mortal Shell's bestiary is that there's just not enough variety. The three arcs of your journey each feature a different—but small—set of enemies to clash swords with, but they're reused so many times that combat becomes stale and repetitive, your blade worn down to a nub. Given how sluggish and costly parrying can be, skipping encounters is often the safer option later on, especially during a gland run. Plus I didn't find much of a reason to fight foes once Eredrim was fully upgraded. Sure, I could funnel his tar into the other shells and try them out, but as soon as the going got tough I would revert back to the ol' dependable-Venerable. 

Amongst Mortal Shell's (many) shortcomings, the worst has to be its scarcity of locales. There are only four major zones in the game, each split up into three similar-looking subregions. The Seat of Infinity is the only zone of the four I'd readily call awe-inspiring: it's an expanse of pitch black stones carved into looming, brutalist architecture, bending even gravity to its will as you venture deeper inside the ominous Dim Gate. Unfortunately area drags on for forever, emulating the charred remains of Lost Izalith. Yet compared to the other areas it's the crowning jewel of Mortal Shell; the three remaining zones are a gigantic swamp, featureless cave, and some chilly catacombs. Each are comprised of muted, featureless corridors that often blend into one another, with the swamp being worst labyrinth of the lot—which is an egregious sin for a hub world to have! Toss in a washed out color palette, dearth of shortcuts, and the aforementioned enemy problem, and you'll be happy when the adventure is finally over.

While Nioh still retains the top spot as the premier 3D soulslike, Mortal Shell is a confident runner-up that's not without its flaws. Its merciless start offers no options other than "gitting gud", but as long as you can endure the initial beating you're bound to find something you enjoy. The combat has its foibles but is solid for the most part, and while its reuse of enemies was tiresome the placement of them was often devious, if not clever. I maintain that it's worth a playthrough for die-hard fans of the genre, as it's the closest a game has gotten to loyally copying Dark Souls. And hey, if that doesn't tickle your fancy—at least Mortal Shell can reveal all the things From Software does right by occasionally showing you what could go wrong.

Paper Mario: Color Splash - Thoughts

Never have I played a game so irresistibly charming that tries its damnedest to be mediocre. Paper Mario: Color Splash may be a better game than Sticker Star but it fails to learn nearly half of the lessons it should have. Every step forwards is proceeded by a baffling stumble backwards, punishing you every time you start to have fun. I don't fault anyone for being lured in by Color Splash's gorgeous visuals and toe-tappingly phenomenal music, but player beware: beneath the captivating aesthetic is the same exact crummy design document that sunk Sticker Star like a stone lobbed into a lake.

Or rather—a rock, eh? Eh?!!! Get it?!!!!!! 

Lord almighty do I loathe Paper Mario: Color Splash's obsession with rock paper scissors. Anyone that's played the game knows what I'm talking about—and likely feels the same. The best way to earn coins in Color Splash is to enter into one of the eight (!!!) rock paper scissors tournaments that pop up on the world map. Blatant hints are provided to assist you in the first two battles, but you're on your own for the third—and as the game progresses, the hints grow vaguer, culminating in a tournament that's entirely dependent on chance. Gone is any semblance of strategy; you either know the outcome of a match before it starts, or are helplessly beholden to a random roll. Does that sound fun?

Because it's not. The first tournament is entertaining in a kitschy way (given how seriously it's presented), but the novelty wears off quickly. I avoided the Roshambo temples after conquering the first two, but restocking my arsenal later on got so expensive that I'd be a fool not to do them—a single tournament can shower you in thousands of coins. Plus, seeing as a goddamn minigame quiz show was mandatory for progression, I assumed the Roshambo temples were as well. Only at the gates of final level did I say "screw it", ready to incur the wrath of an impossible boss fight as long as it meant I could maybe skip playing rock paper scissors for the 50th time.

For those familiar with Sticker Star, you're likely to notice two big red flags from that last paragraph: the need to restock and being unaware of what's mandatory for progression. Color Splash thankfully improves on its predecessor in both categories... but I wouldn't call either of those problems "fixed." Attacks continue to be consumable resources but they're cards now instead of stickers, meaning you won't have to deal with gigantic adhesives clogging up your inventory space. And in the main hub is a handy toad that'll clue you into what Thing you need next, avoiding the urge to keep a walkthrough open at all times. Buuut you'll continue to fiddle with deck management more than you should (largely from wanting to retain stronger cards for boss fights), as well as repeatedly backtracking to Port Prisma to check if you have the right Thing or not. Intelligent Systems keenly demonstrates that acknowledging a problem is not quite the same as addressing it.

In regard to boss fights, Color Splash likewise makes a minor improvement. What were once one-note fights (er, one-sticker fights) have transformed into actual battles that require proper healing and paint management. That is, until a specific event happens and you're forced to use the Thing that beats the boss—or face annihilation. Again the root problem is sidestepped, transforming "fights where a Thing trivializes a battle" into "fights where a Thing is mandatory for victory." And I mean mandatory—bosses are literally impossible to beat without their weakness! I would've readily taken reduced damage, or a penalizing status effect, or a difficult-to-dodge mega-attack over the brick wall that is invulnerability. It's a shame too because besides that prickly point, most of the boss fights are clever and fun (Wendy, Roy); the final boss in particular is a great duel, solely because no one particular card is required to beat it.

Another aspect Color Splash aims to improve but eventually bungles is its world map. Zones in Sticker Star were quarantined off like blobs of paint on a palette, locking you into exploring them one at a time. Color Splash mixes this up, adding multiple exits to every stage so that paths encircle the entire island. It starts off promising enough, feeling like a nonlinear adventure where you can solve things out of order, but the freedom is fleeting—you'll soon noticed that zones are still quarantined off, blocking you from making progress unless you tackle stages in the right order. This is especially apparently halfway through the game, where you're yet again traversing through stages in a boring linear fashion, with any secret exits tacked on in the most half-assed, shiftless way (Mossrock Theater).

Yet another problem Color Splash kicks further down the road is its random encounters—more specifically, making them meaningful. In Sticker Star, there's really no reason to fight enemies when you're armed with full health and stickers. However in Color Splash, battling will occasionally increase the maximum amount of paint you can hold, which is (sadly) as close to the concept of "levelling up" as the game gets. But after the first handful of expansions, upgrading your paint bucket hardly provides a benefit—the last few increases I got were a paltry 3% each. While paint is valuable early on, helping transform blank cards into better cards, powerful attacks eventually require so much paint that a single turn can deplete most of your chromatic stock. Therefore it's often better to stock up on paint-refilling green mushrooms and simply avoid battles—rendering the fights as superfluous as they were in Sticker Star.

But hey—at least Sticker Star gave numerical feedback for its battles!

Whoever thought it was a good idea to nix the damage numbers in Color Splash is a categorical fool. Depriving an RPG of such key information sends the player spiraling into an abyss of increasing uncertainty: does a hammer do as much damage as a jump? Does a fully painted jump do as much damage as an unpainted big jump? What about three half-painted hammers compared to a quarter-painted huge hurlhammer? A fire flower to an ice flower? A fire extinguisher to a lemon? Even when you manage to grasp one card's strength relative to another, you're still holding on to a formless adjudication that can never be tallied. Without a baseline of data to help determine the proper card for the situation, you'll just choose whatever card feels right.

But it's not like Color Splash requires a serious level of planning anyway. The gameplay here doesn't fare any better or worse than Sticker Star, as both suffer deeply from a simplified and recycled bestiary. Most of the fights boil down to "what attacks don't I want to waste," given that most of the enemies are a droll variation of one another. Maybe the shy guy will have a straw sticking out of his gob, or a crease across his middle, or a cardboard shield—all you really have to pay attention to is whether you should jump or hammer them. If that doesn't sound all that exciting, it's because it's not; the enemy gimmicks are mildly entertaining for the first encounter, but fail to distract from the fact that you're fighting the same overused archetypes over and over, attacks and health pools all vaguely blending together.

Color Splash's pathetic bestiary unfortunately extends over to its NPCs as well, seeing how Prism Island is home to a cabal of low-effort NFT Toads. Occasionally they'll wear a little hat, or a different colored vest, or maybe even some sunglasses—but they're all the same, bland, neutered creature in the end. Ironically a good chunk of them possess distinct personalities (the captain, the foreman, the bridge-loving toads), showing that Intelligent Systems (or at least the translation team) still yearn to tell stories. It's just a shame that the game has sterilized of any sort of visual whimsy—a problem which similarly plagued Sticker Star. But hey, at least the Koopa Kids are back this time!... again! A first for a Mario RPG Paper Mario game!

I do apologize for the unending comparisons to Sticker Star, but it's honestly hard to analyze Color Splash independent of the flawed ancestor it shares so much DNA with. I honestly feel that Color Splash is the better of the two, largely thanks to its crisp visuals, witty writing, and alarming creativity. Jokes land successfully more often than they don't, and there's a lot of fantastic paper-craft gags that reveal a stunning attention to detail. Plus I could gush about the music all day, about how it majestically evokes the chromatic tone of each colored star's episode perfectly, culminating in an energized boss theme which utilizes each episode's motif. I'd even go as far as to say that Color Splash is an aesthetic masterpiece, blowing the first three Paper Mario games out of the water...

... It's just that when it comes to the gameplay, everything comes tumbling down like a house of cards.

Just like Sticker Star.

Diehard Wii U fans may rightfully gush over Paper Mario: Color Splash's vibrant art style and charming script—but I'm unable to call it a good game, given the encyclopedic tome of annoyances and missteps. Every controllable aspect of the game is glaringly flawed—and I didn't even touch on how pointless the shy bandit is, or how annoying Kamek is, or the unforgivably stupid decision to make ally cards flee in boss fights! Those are the encounters where you need allies the most! If this blog post comes off as more negative than the one I wrote for Sticker Star, chalk it up to growing older, writing more honestly, or just a bur in my boot; the important takeaway is that neither game holds a candle to the Paper Marios of old. I mean, is there anyone that even prefers the rudderless direction the series is taking?

Worst of all is that Color Splash isn't just bad—it's bad in spite of its good parts, smothering whatever redeeming qualities it had in boneheaded decisions. It's a meticulously-crafted still life caked in dirt, a twinkling star strangled by needless smog.

---------------------

Images obtained from: nintendo.com, geekdad.com, theyoungfolks.com, expertreviews.co.uk, mariowiki.com

Snakebird - Thoughts

Snakebird is a mischievous, downright evil game. Whereas most puzzlers try their best to ease the player into their mechanics (and occasionally struggle to live up to their potential), Snakebird deems all filler as fat, trimming itself down into a lean meal of pure muscle. Within minutes you'll be in the thick of it, left to your own devices to figure out the intricate mechanics of this cruel, blocky world. A creeping frustration will mark the start of your downward tumble into insanity as you bang your head against one "impossible" puzzle after another, exacerbated cries of "HOW DO I DO THIS?" leaking from your lips. Do not let the charming art style and cute birds fool you—Snakebird is forged from raw nightmare fuel.

On its surface, Snakebird is simple—deceptively simple. Your gluttonous snakebirds have only two objectives: eat all of the fruit on a level, and then escape through the rainbow portal. For each piece of fruit a snakebird consumes it will grow by one block, allowing it to reach new areas and bridge wide chasms. While this doesn't sound too bad, remember that gravity is an omnipresent menace, requiring your snakebirds to be anchored by at least one square or face plummeting to their doom. Like I said, it's an uncomplicated premise, but the way Noumenon Games designs their stages will wring every ounce of brainpower out of your feeble little mind.

Don't believe me? Out of its 50+ levels, it's Level 2 that's your first impasse—one of the game's introductory puzzles! And the experience doesn't get easier from there, oh no; expect to be stymied frequently, even multiple times within the same stage. You'll contort your snakebirds into painful configurations in order to reach sequestered fruits... and then realize you've gotten them permanently stuck (Level 11, 42). Or you'll spend half an hour reverse engineering how to reach every piece of fruit... but fail to plan an escape route back to the rainbow portal (Level 21, 45). Should you even chance upon the rare "easy" puzzle, expect Snakebird to throw a curveball soon after, leaving you more stumped than the remains of a lumberjack's rampage (Level... well, every level).

What truly catapults Snakebird into the lunatic stratosphere are three brain-bending mechanics that get slowly introduced. The first is the ability to control multiple snakebirds, dynamically changing how you move about the world (Level 19, 26) while also tacking on more ways you to get yourself stuck (Level 17, 20). The second is some good old fashion box pushing, which will rankle you beyond belief as you struggle to transport the stubborn squares from point A to point B (Level 23, 39, *1). And third is playing with position-swapping portals, which require as much terrifying foresight as you can imagine the mechanic implies (Level 38, 44).

While the odds may be stacked against you, at least you always have the "Undo" button in your back pocket, allowing you to backtrack all the way to your very first, naïve move. Without it the game would be hilariously unplayable, given how often your snakebirds worm their way off of cliffs or jam themselves into a corner. The only downside is that you have to mash the backwards key in order to return to "safe" point on the longer levels, forcing you to relive all of the turns you wasted putzing about. The "Undo" button is still a much appreciated, integral mechanic—I just wish it was a rewind function with a preview instead.

If it sounds like I reviled my torturous time with Snakebird, the opposite is actually true—I greatly adore and respect the game! It may have been unexpectedly brutal but it's never cruel for the sake of it; Snakebird treats you as an adult, letting you know early on that it's going to take your time with it seriously. To use a sour but effective phrase, Snakebird is the Dark Souls of puzzlers: you either adapt to its stubborn rules or scamper away with your tail between your legs. The stages themselves are truly impressive, often containing a singular solution with very little wasted space or structural red herrings. It's an utterly phenomenal video game from a design standpoint alone—and probably the best 2D puzzler I played since The Swapper—but heed the warning I've been echoing this entire entry: Snakebird is not welcoming, soft, nor remotely pitying. Some of the latter stages are so difficult (curse that final level!) that you may find it easier (and quicker!) to chew through an ingot of pure iron.

Snakebird is a brilliant puzzler but I was nevertheless relieved to finally be done with it. This goddamn game has haunted me for far too long—I've been trying to beat it since 2016! Well, not actively—more like once a year until I get overwhelmed—but its presence has weighed heavy on my prideful mind, holding me back from exploring games like Baba is You, Recursion, and Magnibox. "How are you going to bridge this gap?" It would jeer when I ran out of all feasible options, "Which snakebird should eat the fruit? How do you wriggle out of this spot? How are you going to move this box across the entire level?" Snakebird is deceptive and malicious, but like any good villain it's also exceedingly smart—so smart that I can think of few games as downright sinister as it. So congratulations Noumenon Games; I can only hope you're using those dastardly brains of yours nowadays for good and not ill—because lord help us if you aren't.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) - Thoughts

When it comes to Super Mario Bros. 2, opinions are usually split in one of two directions: either it's the black sheep of the series, or it's one of the most innovative titles in the 2D franchise. For me, I've always drifted towards the former—the Mario series is rooted in momentum based platforming, so why include all this turnip tossing? Doki Doki Panic's fingerprints were too large, too extraneous; the once-pristine waters of platforming had been muddied by root vegetables, key escorts, and dimensional doorways. As a sequel, Super Mario Bros. 2 may not have strayed as far as Link's Adventure, but it was similarly fated to live in the shadow of its younger siblings. Charitably, Super Mario Bros. 2 was an ambitious anomaly. Critically, it was a bizarre offshoot.

However, that kind of puritanical thinking is woefully outdated, especially given the smorgasbord of entries found across the (nearly) forty-year-old franchise. Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually more of a "loyal platformer" than Donkey Kong '94, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG, or even Super Mario Sunshine—hell, it's more like Super Mario Bros. than the arcade progenitor is! The eccentricity that made Super Mario Bros. 2 an outlier ironically works to its advantage, giving it a more colorful, charming, and memorable identity than that of its Japanese counterpart—or even the entirety of the New series! Super Mario Bros. 2 may not be the ideal sequel that 3 ended up being, but nor is it a mediocre outlier as I once narrowly thought in my youth.

It's simply a good game, all things considered.

As an adolescent, what I disliked the most about Super Mario Bros. 2 is that you no longer defeat enemies by stomping on their heads. This creates a noticeable change in rhythm, where the accuracy of your throw now takes priority over the momentum of your jump. The game feels less speedy, less urgent—and the lack of a time limit means you can scrounge for mushrooms or farm hearts at your leisure. While I no longer defensively correlate "different" with "bad", I still feel that Doki Doki Panic's framework makes for a poor Mario game.

That's not to discount everything Super Mario Bros. 2 brings to the table, however. Besides the vegetable pitching, there's distinct themes to each world, plenty of secrets to scavenge for, the aforementioned key caretaking, and a versatile bestiary that's sprinkled throughout the adventure. No longer must you wade through repetitive castles and topple marginally different psuedo-Bowsers—Super Mario Bros. 2 boasts a wide variety of bosses that require different approaches, an achievement the series wouldn't top until Yoshi's Island. Even the multitudinous Birdo duels are always exciting, thanks in no small part to the alterations made to her arena each fight.

But by far the best thing Super Mario Bros. 2 brings to the table—which the franchise foolishly leaves behind—is its quad of playable characters. I didn't find much value in the choice as a kid (Luigi was the only one I played), but bouncing between the protagonists really livens up the gameplay. They're a well-rounded cast that's distinct from one another without requiring that you learn a completely new playstyle. Plus you can tailor your choice on a per stage basis, effectively nullifying tricky sections. Can't quite jump on the fish in 5-1? Zoom across with the Princess! Want to easily reach the secret mushroom in 2-3? Jump sky-high with Luigi! Need to dispatch a boss quickly? Switch to Toad! Unsure what's ahead of you? Well-rounded Mario to the rescue! My only complaint is that I wish you could change characters after losing a life—something the All-Stars version wisely remedies.

Despite the vast number of changes Super Mario Bros. 2 introduces, one thing it maintains is its predecessor's knack for exploration. You won't be jumping down pipes and headbutting blocks for goodies however—instead you'll peek into jars and slip through doorways into the ephemeral Sub-space. There's not much to talk about with the former—most of the jars are copy-pasted bore-fests—but the door-conjuring potion is an excellent addition, letting you manually choose where to explore. Sniffing out mushrooms is an entertaining diversion, as even when you fail to unearth one, you can still harvest the nearby coins.

... Except the coins kind of suck this time around. In Super Mario Bros. they're the promise of a reward, scattered throughout stages to incentivize jumping while simultaneously building towards a 1-up. In Super Mario Bros. 2, they're the chance of a reward, easily farmed in Sub-space for the sole purpose of feeding them to a capricious slot machine. And unless you're rolling cherries, expect to walk away empty handed most of the time. I concede that gambling is a more... exciting alternative to fractionally collecting 1-ups, but I prefer the dependability of the old system—especially when you're in dire need of an extra guy.

Likewise, stars and hearts are useful powerups that have been rendered unfortunately unreliable. With no way to track when the next one will appear, you either have to make an educated guess or hope one will pop up when you need it. Similar to the slot machine, this isn't a massive foible; I just prefer openly predictable systems to (seemingly) random ones. In fact, there's not really anything I'd categorically claim as "bad" in Super Mario Bros. 2—the game just makes a lot of strange decisions is all. The level design is occasionally strange as well: 6-2 is so short that it feels unfinished, one path in 7-2 is notably harder than the other, and the precision required for 5-1 could make the Lost Levels blush.

Note that the worlds in Super Mario Bros. 2 still blow the first game out of the water. Whereas I had to rummage to find notable stages in Super Mario Bros., its successor won't leave you wanting. There's climbing sections, bomb puzzles, sandy excavations, magic carpet rides, ice rink races, and more platforming than you can shake a carrot at. While I find the base gameplay of the original more entertaining moment-to-moment—controlling classic Mario is like wrangling a wild beast—Super Mario Bros. 2 offers a hell of a lot more to the player on their first playthrough. Subsequent playthroughs are... less compelling, even with alternating characters, but not every game needs to endure a dozen replays to be considered worthwhile.

One of the few upsides of growing older is learning to appreciate the things you've previously dismissed. Although Super Mario Bros. 2 remains one of my least favorite Super Mario games, it's a lot better than I previously thought. I've learned to accept the change in gears, appreciating how it trades the frantic momentum of the first for a more relaxed, varied, and lob-heavy playstyle. Plus its four playable characters give it a depth that I can only hope the 2D series embraces again some day. I may not always be in the mood to return to Super Mario Bros. 2, but whenever I do, I never have a bad time.

Hollow Knight - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

In spite of its gloomy demeanor, Hollow Knight is a blindingly brilliant game. Name any aspect—music, visuals, gameplay, ambiance, boss fights—and Hollow Knight not only delivers on that front but does so with an enviable finesse. It's a carefully crafted experience that's breathtakingly massive, lasting longer than most Metroidvanias without ever slowing down or losing its grip on your curiosity. In spite of its monstrous size, Hollow Knight develops slowly, maturing from an exploration-focused platformer into a behemoth of buttery-smooth combat. What I appreciate most however, is that it rarely holds your hand—instead, it shoves you off of a steep cliff, hurtling into the dark unknown.

At first, it can be hard to acknowledge what makes Hollow Knight so damn special. Its intro is dusty and modest, calmly welcoming you to its kingdom and preventing you from getting lost or diving too deep. Within the first few hours you might feel that the color palette is lacking, that enemies are devoid of flavor, and that your moveset is disappointingly simple. Even after your first few bosses, you may remain vaguely unimpressed, skeptical how this little bug of a game could even challenge the gods of the metroidvania genre.

But gradually as you plumb its depths, Hollow Knight will start to click. You'll emerge onto the rain-soaked streets of the City of Tears, amazed at the game's quiet melancholy. You'll delve into the unnerving Deepnest, aghast at the size of the maze before you. And once you fell the Broken Vessel (or best the first arena challenge), you'll begin to understand how truly invigorating the combat feels. Time and time again, Hollow Knight will surprise you in miniscule ways, frequently eliciting an unexpected "wow that's cool!" or gasp of "oh I see!" Whereas some games suffer a death by one thousand cuts, Hollow Knight epitomizes the inverse, soaring high off one thousand plaudits.

Of these accolades, one of the most refreshing is how the game handles customization. Along with your standard energy & hp upgrades, you can uncover charms hidden throughout the Hollownest—ability-changing modifiers that range from minimal to revolutionary. You can only have a handful equipped however, with impactful charms taking up more space than simpler ones. At first this system appears unremarkable (one of the first charms you get is just a compass) but by the end you'll have a wealth of options. Should you make a magic build? Focus on melee? Defense? Minion spam? What about a glass cannon that can't heal? Charms allow for a variety of playstyles, and my favorite thing is that you'll always wish you had space for just one more.

Likewise, I adore the mapping system, although I understand the criticism against it. Hollow Knight treats mapping as a privilege, not a right—in order to receive even a bare-bones outline of the zone you're in, you have to sniff out the hiding spot of a particular vendor. While he's never too far off the beaten path, this adds to Hollow Knight's labyrinthine nature; you're better off memorizing room layouts as well as optimal routes, even with the map secured in your back pocket. I can see how this can be frustrating to the less-directionally inclined, but I absolutely adored etching this world onto my brain. Most of the rooms have at least one aspect that helps make them memorable (enemy, background, tricky section) and the pin system wisely reminds you which spots to return to in the future.

Capturing the magic of the world map best, in my opinion, is a late-game side mission where you have to run from one end of the Hollownest to the other—without taking damage. What's great is that the path isn't immediately obvious; there are several dozen rooms between you and your objective, and only by recalling what's in them can you plot the safest route. Should you risk fighting tougher foes for a shorter journey? Is the northern section of Queen's Gardens safer than the southern section? Are there any charms that can help you? It's an arduous journey that will reveal how much you know about the game's world, and it's one (among a myriad) of reasons why I enjoyed my playthrough so much.

Combat is another one of Hollow Knight's strong suits, and it's the aspect that evolves the most over the course of your journey. Like with the exploration, it's nothing remarkable at the start—all you're really doing is smacking foes with a single blade strike. But by end you'll feel like a subterranean samurai, dispatching foes with an awesome speed and grace. Seamlessly, you'll learn to blend spellcasting with charged techniques, figuring out how to dash in as well as dancing atop an enemy's head. Yet Hollow Knight's staggering bestiary will keep you humble—especially when it comes to the bosses. Anyone that has faced NKG and lived to tell the tale knows that this game has some of the hardest, frantic, white-knuckled boss battles the metroidvania genre has ever seen. Even though there's a few stinkers, the majority of them provide a delectable dance you'll be yearning to savor again.

Lastly, a cool ability unique to Hollow Knight is the Dream Nail: an ethereal blade that can peer into the mind of creatures both living and dead. Gameplay-wise it does very little—it physically lets you access a couple more boss fights and new areas—but it deepens the already-rich atmosphere of the world, enticing you to Dream Nail enemies and bosses just to see what they're thinking. Plus later on, it gets the ability to create custom checkpoints, which is a skill so useful that it practically feels essential for every large-scale metroidvania going forward.

For all of Hollow Knight's many, many achievements (I didn't even touch on how utterly majestic and passionate the soundtrack is) perhaps the biggest knock against it's clearly a child of the Souls school. There are plenty of parallels you can draw between the two: healing that leaves you vulnerable, corpse runs, a dying civilization, light vs dark, the final battle with a tragic figure, etc. Likewise, the Knight's agile abilities are reminiscent of Super Metroid, with Mantis Claw echoing Samus's infinite wall jump and the Crystal Heart working as a horizontal-only shinespark. Of course, Dark Souls and Metroid don't have a perpetual patent on these systems; I'm merely pointing out that Hollow Knight owes much to its spiritual forebearers.

If that sounds like a weak criticism to you—honestly, that's because it is. Hollow Knight brings enough personality and new concepts to the table that I think it's pretty easy to overlook its soulsian tropes. The detailed setting alone keeps the game from feeling like an uninspired knock-off; I can firmly remember more about the Hollownest than Metroid Dread's ZDR. Hollow Knight also features an extensive and lore-filled postgame centered around increasingly-difficult boss gauntlets, which I'm frankly not sure I'll ever beat (besting NKG was enough excitement for me.) Still, it's cool to see how Team Cherry has supported the title post-launch, and that they're as passionate about the game as its most ardent fans are.

I don't believe any piece of media is "perfect", but Hollow Knight is one of the blessed few to come shockingly close. It's an experience that you can't help but think back to, ruminating on all the cool things about it and the different ways it surprised you. You'll discover bizarre secrets, witness character deaths, rescue a maiden, get robbed, uncover a zone below the lowest point on the map, and much more; Hollow Knight is teeming with events humbly waiting to be stumbled upon. It's an experience that's centered around discovery, offering a seemingly dead world you'll realize is burdened by loss, regret, and broken dreams. Throw in a solid amount of customization and some of the fiercest boss battles ever made, and it's hard not to overstate the appeal of the game. Ultimately however, how much you end up getting out of Hollow Knight depends on how deeply you want to dig—and the greater the effort, the greater the spoils.