WWD2

Of all the Pokémon games I’ve played in my life, starting from Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon Sword and Shield is the fastest and most linear experience in the series, and that very fact just gets on my nerves. It’s a bit hard to describe: the game rushes the player from one gym to the next without much room to breathe. It does this in a number of ways, the first of which is generally placing only one short route between towns and gyms. Generally in the series, the routes are long and connecting, and are fraught with random encounters to strengthen your Pokémon. Sword and Shield offers an extremely compressed version of this, going as far as to remove the randomness of random encounters by making the Pokémon visible while walking around in the bushes, and therefore avoidable. A quality of life improvement by some standards, but searching for specific Pokémon and battling through all the ones you had no desire to catch again (Pikipek, anyone?) was a great way to level up your party without going out of your way to grind for Experience Points. Now that the dregs are visible and therefore avoidable, the player ends up with lesser experienced Pokémon going into the gym challenges. Simply put, there’s not much time or space to catch Pokémon. To avoid an issue where there are an extremely limited amount of Pokémon available throughout the game, there is a grab-bag of wild Pokémon of all types, sizes, and levels in an area called The Wilds. It’s a relatively large field with tons of tall grass teeming with a seemingly misfit band of Pokémon in each patch. The whole thing takes away the exploration element in catching Pokémon: for example, you can catch a Vulpix within a stones throw of a mob of Wingulls. A problem with this concept, however, is that in other Pokémon games, the progression associated with further exploration prevented players from catching powerful Pokémon too early in the game. But here, the Onyxes and Machamps roam freely alongside the Pidoves and the Oddishes, so to avoid allowing players to catch high level Pokémon too early in the game, there exists a cap on the level of Pokémon the player can catch, which corresponds directly with the highest level gym they’ve beaten. It’s a disappointing, band-aid solution to a problem which deserved more attention. Of course, with the exception of a somewhat lackluster plot (especially after Pokémon Sun and Moon’s riveting story), the rest of the game is very well done. After all, it *is* a Pokémon game. However, the whole experience felt like a downgrade from previous versions, and it just seemed as though there was less love put into it than in entries past.

I understand the Scott Wozniak school of thought that this game is chock-full of flaws and that it effectively killed the Chibi-Robo! series. And while I agree with many of the criticisms the Woz poses, in a vacuum the game is not that bad. Looking at it as nothing more than a 2D platformer for the 3DS, in many ways it misses the mark of a quality video game, but there is still fun to be had with the title. To first address the issues with this game that have been talked to death, the destination wheel is the most mystifyingly stupid game mechanic I have ever seen in terms of level progression. It's the type of gimmick that exists only to have something unique about the game on the back of the box. It also would appear to be a money pit, what with the ability to buy destination wheel panels. It doesn't add anything to the game, it's stupid, end of story. A specific game mechanic that made me want to put my head through a plate glass window was the submarine. My God, the submarine levels. The sub doesn't go anywhere until a solid two seconds after moving the circle pad, and then it goes really slowly. It feels like you're constantly wrestling with the controls, and if there was a moment of frustration that really stood out to me during the game, that was it. And of course, the way the game sets up the final boss probably prevents most people from fully completing the game. It should force you to buy a part of the giant Chibi-Robo after each level to indicate to the player that the coins will be necessary later on. I remember from The Darkest Age of Nintendo, Scott complained about the plug attack being split into two separate moves, and while I think that's fair criticism, I did not find it that annoying, I thought the whiplash was actually used in very fun ways besides just attacking. In certain levels, the player has to swing themselves over a large chasm by latching onto the ceiling, swinging forward, letting go, and catching the ceiling farther down. It was certainly difficult, but I loved seeing those elements in the game just because it was very fun. The hover ability of the whiplash is also helpful if the player happens to miss a jump and needs to find a way to correct it midair. In terms of the ziplash, I absolutely agree that the aiming of the attack was either uncontrollably fast or painfully slow, overall I found it fun to collect blue orbs and see how far my attack could go. The ricochet effect that the game uses so often for the ziplash not only forces the player to think outside the box to collect certain items, but also is just really fun. Maybe I'm too easy to please, but I thought it was a nice touch. The level themes are extremely generic and don't add anything to the story (which is already extremely barren) but the level design always seemed to lend itself well to the game. Each level was somewhere between a Mario game and a Genesis Sonic game in terms of linearity, which considering the fact that your ziplash can be used to reach out-of-the-way areas seems appropriate. But the same generic blocks and set pieces appear in all levels regardless of the world theme. In other words, the theme of a world equates to a different backdrop to the same set pieces that are consistent throughout the game. It certainly kills the immersion, but it's probably better than sacrificing level design for the sake of a world theme. Objectively speaking, this is not a very good game. But if you watched The Darkest Age of Nintendo and the game still entices you, then you would probably enjoy the game. As Scott Wozniak himself conceded, some games aren't for everyone, and just because the general consensus is that this game is bad doesn't mean you might not **** some fun out of it. I know I did.

Power Rangers Megaforce is a cash grab. It feels soulless and uninspired by the source material. It’s a repetitive hack and slash with fighting mechanics that never should have made it out of the alpha testing phase. Don’t waste your time or money on this one. I did not watch Power Rangers as a kid, but I’m pretty familiar with the story. I can’t say the same about Access Digital or Digital Works. The characters are completely devoid of their personalities from the show, even in the cutscenes. There’s a menu option which gives brief descriptions of each character, and while they’re relatively accurate, none of it shows in the game. Jake never drags Noah into anything, Gia and Emma’s relationship is nonexistent, none of that. Also, here seems to be the best place to pose this question: if the show emphasizes friendship and teamwork, why is this not a co-op game? In each stage you can switch between Power Rangers using the L and R buttons, but that’s it. Sure, sometimes one Ranger comes out of nowhere and kills enemies, but it feels like the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds more than actual teamwork. There is a metric ton of superfluous garbage thrown into the game. Take Gaori coins, for example: scattered throughout the level, yet there’s no way to spend them. Also throughout the level is random commentary from the inactive Power Rangers. I never thought I would say this, but I desperately need the Power Rangers to shut up. Every two seconds or so, one of them will say one of a few lines of dialogue, sometimes pertaining to what you have to do in a certain section, but most often it’s not. The constant chatter adds nothing to the game, it adds nothing to the story, and it is never used to develop the characters into what Saban originally intended. Another tacked on addition to the game is photo morphing. Take a photo of your face and watch a cheap animation play over the photo, turning you into one of the Power Rangers. Not only is this cheap and stupid, but it’s also contradictory to the story. In the game, you have agreed to fight alongside the Power Rangers against the forces of evil. But then in that animation, you become one of the pre-existing Power Rangers. So am I one of the established Power Rangers or am I an ally of the Megaforce? The face photo thing detracts from the game more than it adds to it. My primary issue with combat in Power Rangers Megaforce is that the Power Rangers “lean into” their attacks. What I mean by this is that the animations are slow, each strike carries the Power Ranger forward a little bit, and it is very difficult to turn around. And when hordes of enemies drop in to surround you, your attacks make your six extremely vulnerable. Or at least they would with competent enemies, which leads me to my secondary issue with combat: the enemies are all the same. I mentioned that this game was a repetitive hack-and-slash, and the reason for that is largely due to the fact that throughout the entire game you won’t see much more than green ninja guys coming at you. Sure, there are blue ones and red ones sometimes, but they don’t provide much additional challenge. I went through entire stages without taking one hit. Sometimes the enemies don’t know which way to face and beat the ever-living crap out of a wall that I was standing on for a brief moment. To quote Jakes only combat dialogue line, “The bugs are too much for me, man!” (There are no bugs for the Power Rangers to fight throughout the game. Maybe a voice actor saw the gameplay and blurted that line out?) I mentioned earlier that this game was a cash grab. And I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s a rushed game based on a popular franchise, no. I mean it’s a cash grab in that it takes a page from the HyperScan’s book and uses cards you can scan into the game. Power Cards are integral to experiencing the full game, and you can find them in certain parts of the stages. But apparently the only way to use the Power Cards was to buy them in stores. I haven’t been able to find any Power Rangers Megaforce card packs online, and I know that the game was bundled with a few cards, but it doesn’t change the fact that the game operated heavily on physical dlc, which is the epitome of a cash grab. Fans will hate this game because of how distanced it feels from the Power Rangers Megaforce TV show. People who are indifferent to Power Rangers (such as myself) will hate it because the bad fighting mechanics and messy presentation make it a bad game at its core. Either way, this game is not worthy of its space on your game shelf.

At its core, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is a great game. Everything you’ve ever loved about a Zelda Game is here: compelling storyline, great character development, well-designed game mechanics, all of that. But Holy Mother of Mayonnaise, this game has absolutely NO business being on the Nintendo Switch. It’s no secret that the Joycon motion controls completely blow. But this is a motion control heavy game, particularly in terms of attacking with specific motions. The game is far from unplayable, but I’d say to expect the Joycon to read your motions correctly just south of 60% of the time when attacking. Also, when using equipment which requires you to aim, or even when looking around in first-person mode, keep your thumb on the Y button, because you’re going to have to readjust the gyroscope just about every time. Overall, this is a great game and deserves the accolades it has received, but if you can play it on the Wii, do yourself a favor and play it there first. Otherwise you might risk having a sour taste in your mouth about a brilliantly designed game.

Generally speaking, I have no problem with games with absurdist plots (I always took a Wozniakian liking to the original Chibi-Robo) but the plot to this rhythm game felt a bit more like a distraction with how strange and out-of-pocket it was. While the plot has no bearing on the gameplay, it just felt like one long non-sequitur, and the fact that the things PaRappa says in cutscenes are silly but apparently trying to sound inspiring makes me feel pretty disconnected from the character. I try not to fault gameplay when I’m just really bad at it, but for a rhythm game the timing of everything seemed…off. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re listening to a song and pick up on the beat, you’re able to predict the rhythm the lyrics come in at. But during the game, the button presses (or PaRappa’s “rapping”) come in too early for the established beat. It doesn’t render the game unplayable, far from it, but you kind of have to abandon following the rhythm of you want to progress. This game DOES get a number of things right, hence the cult following it has gained over the years. The songs are catchy, particularly the first one, and the game compensates for the extremely difficult levels by only offering six of them. It also has a pretty intuitive practice section, which I got a lot of utility from. I could really only see a PS1 collector picking up this game, but to be fair it’s a pretty important title to have to make a collection feel complete, since it was pretty significant back in the consoles heyday. However, if you haven’t played PaRappa the Rapper as a casual PS1 owner, you’re not missing out on much.