Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger You never know. It could happen. It would be far from the first time a game gets lost in the shuffle (again in this case) when there's a lot of other games to play. Also, it'd be surprising if something new didn't pop up that gets released that we didn't know about. I also forgot Forspoken, which is a day 1 for me unless it becomes clear it's a turd before it gets released.

Yeah, I do have a lot to play. I definitely won't be bored. It was exciting as I was making the list though knowing how much fun I should have. Thanks, btw.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Platform: GBA
Time to Completion: 24.5 hours (much of this spent chasing optional content; it's probably a 15 - 20 hour game normally)

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap was the final Zelda game developed by Capcom in a collaboration with Nintendo that resulted in Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons on the GBC and the local multiplayer title Four Swords on the GBA, with Mega Man maestro Keiji Inafune stepping in as producer. The game released in 2004 on the GBA just weeks before Nintendo officially launched their now-iconic Nintendo DS handheld (in Europe and Japan; NOA actually delayed the launch of the game into early 2005 to avoid distracting from the launch of their new hardware), and despite enjoying strong reviews, it had a bit of its thunder stolen as a result, much like Metroid: Samus Returns, which launched on the 3DS just a few months after the explosively popular Nintendo Switch. Nevertheless, the game has enjoyed a strong reputation with Nintendo fans over the years, and I've wanted to play it for a long time, and finally had the opportunity to do so!

How does it fare?

The Minish Cap's setup isn't really dissimilar from other 2D Zelda games in the series, although a few elements initially seem quite distinct. We learn at the beginning of the game that the Minish people (known to the Hylians as the Picori, and which are thought by many of your townsfolk to be an ancient myth altogether), gifted a young hero in the past with a sacred weapon known as the Picori Blade and a golden light in order to drive back the "darkness" that was swallowing the world. The Picori Blade was subsequently sealed in a box and stored in Hyrule Castle. A tradition developed that whoever won the swordsmanship content during the annual Picori Festival in Hyrule would be allowed to touch the sacred blade.

When the game starts, you learn that Link, a simple peasant's childhood, is also somehow childhood friends with Zelda, the young princess of Hyrule. In a charming sequence, you visit the Festival with Zelda before attending the sword-touching ritual. The victor of the competition, as it turns out, is the dark sorceror Vaati (a character so obviously evil looking that you have to wonder how incompetent the Hylian king's security truly is), who proceeds to break the Picori Blade and turn Princess Zelda to stone in his assault. You discover that Vaati is searching for the "golden light" that the ancient hero used to vanquish evil, and Link is tasked with setting out on an adventure to restore the broken Picori Blade and save the princess once it's revealed that only children are able to see the Minish.

In a concept reminiscent of modern Nintendo classic Super Mario Odyssey, Link explores the Minish Forest and rescues a sentient hat named Ezlo, who, we discover, has also been cursed by Vaati and agrees to help Link on his quest to restore the Picori Blade. The Minish people, as it turns out, are an ant-sized race who live undetected among Hylians, borrowing their walls, cupboard space, and so on to establish a sort of shadow society throughout Hyrule. Ezlo's magic allows Link to use magic portals throughout Hyrule to physically shrink to Minish proportions, which will prove to be an invaluable tool in their quest.

So, different from normal Zelda games, but also structurally similar, except Vaati replaces Ganondorf, the Picori Blade replaces the Master Sword, and the Light Force (or "golden light") replaces the Triforce. 2D Zelda games were all pretty distinct from one-another leading up to the release of A Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo, where the series forged a now utterly classic formula, tone, and identity that were missing in the series' earliest entries. Post-ALttP, however, all single-player focused Zelda games hued closely to the structure established in that game, and this was especially true of the 2D games that followed it, which largely filtered the design of that classic through the sieve of various transformative gimmicks. In The Minish Cap, that gimmick relates to changing Link's dimensions to solve puzzles in dungeons and especially throughout the overworld of Hyrule.

I have mixed feelings about the way this gimmick is implemented, however. While it's certainly clever how environments are effectively layered on top of one-another (the way you interact with Hyrule Town normally, for example, is wildly different than the way you explore it when Minish-sized), I found the focus on continually returning to magic pedestals to stumble around the same environments in different sizes to be a tad repetitive. I also had an issue with how some of the puzzles as implemented, as several of them require trial-and-error and don't adequately signal to the player what they're supposed to do. Now, this is par for the course for Zelda games, but there were far too many moments in The Minish Cap where I genuinely had to question how people were supposed to get through this game without significant trial and error. And it's not even just the size-changing sections that suffer from this! There is, for example, a moment early in the game where guards won't let you leave Hyrule Town for some reason, why stymies progress. So, what you're supposed to do is going to a particular dojo, learn the sword spin attack, then return to a particular guard who didn't have unique dialogue previously, talk to him again, and then demonstrate the sword spin attack in front of him. Moments like this are dotted throughout the game, and they really break up the flow of the gameplay.

Which is unfortunate, because when the game is good, it's quite good. Several of the puzzles in this game are also quite clever and give the player satisfying "A-ha!" moments when figuring them out. The dungeon design itself in this game is rather excellent for a 2D Zelda, with strong themes, surprisingly multi-layered dungeon design (something I also found enjoyable in the much newer A Link Between Worlds on 3DS), and unique progression mechanics that lean heavily on integrated puzzle design over the 'lock and key' design of ALttP's dungeons. My favorite dungeon, for example, sees the player traveling throughout and opening shutters that stream sunlight into the dungeon to open and close various paths, with the ultimate goal being to shine sunlight onto the dungeon boss who sits frozen in a block of ice in the very first area. It's very cool, and far more reminiscent of the complex puzzle design in the 3D Zelda games.

The other primary gimmick in The Minish Cap are kinstones. These colored rocks are designed to interlock with complimentary pieces, and pretty much everyone in this iteration of Hyrule knows about and collects kinstones. Link will acquire these through a number of means: as random drops, loot from treasure chests, prizes for completing mini-games, etc. If you can do something in the game, chances are there's an opportunity to find a kinstone. Find an NPC with a matching kinstone piece, and you'll unlock stuff throughout the game: new areas (some which are required to beat the game, so it's not REALLY an optional mechanic), new NPCs and shops, treasure chests, rare monsters who will drop better loot, etc.

They replace almost wholesale the traditional side-quests you'll encounter in your average Zelda game. Not all kinstones are created equal, of course: some are much rarer than others, and rarer kinstones, when paired with their complimentary piece, will unlock better rewards. The trouble is that you don't really know who has what until you get close to them, and some NPCs don't even become available for kinstone trading until later in the game, so you'll be constantly visiting with EVERY NPC in this game any time you revisit an area to see if you can match stones with them and unlock anything new.

So, this is already a kind of mindless system, but what makes it worse is that, once you're a fair way into the game, it won't even be worth engaging in most of the time, because most of the stuff you unlock isn't worth going for. Once you unlock some of the optional gear upgrades in the shop, you have no real use for money. You'll be able to collect large amounts of shells through some of these rewards, but shells are common loot drops anyway, and they're only used for a meaningless figure-collecting gacha minigame that is a horrible grind not worth engaging in. Unfortunately, there's just enough worthwhile upgrades and new areas locked behind this system that it's not really worth ignoring.

The Minish Cap is a really attractive GBA title. The upgraded specs over the older GBC are immediately felt, as this game is filled with chunky, detailed, and superbly animated sprite art that really brings the game's world to life compared to Capcom's much more visually basic Oracle duology. Art design-wise, like the NDS Zelda games, it feels like it borrows heavily from The Wind Waker's aesthetic, where everybody is pastel-colored and distinctly child-like in appearance. There's also some impressive Mode 7-like visual effects that give a sort of 3D feel to certain sequences, and effective environments really bring the evocative, Borrowers-esque vibe of the Minish world to life. It's a great technical showpiece for what the GBA was capable of.

The music is your usual Zelda fare: not exceptional, but appropriate at setting the mood and complimenting the action on-screen. I'll link two of my favorite tracks from the game: an atmospheric remix of the Zelda 1 dungeon theme, and a version of Zelda's theme that fits with the tone of this game.

Overall, The Minish Cap was an enjoyable and unique 2D Zelda that, despite some flaws, manages to upstage many of Nintendo's own in-house developed Zelda titles. The plot itself feels a bit undercooked and lacking in an emotional core, and it's a shame that brand new villain Vaati is never given the chance to make more of an impression than he does, but it works for the sort of simplistic adventure narrative this game is going for, and, despite my gripes, the game is a largely delightful experience. Particularly for those who just want a solid 15 - 20 hour dungeon crawler broken up by solid, conceptually-unique puzzles. You probably know what you're getting if you play a 2D Zelda game, and this entry doesn't subvert expectations in any way.

7.5/10

@RogerRoger Thanks!

Yeah, the CDi games are a bad joke, but the third-party collaborations with other companies have mostly turned out really well (there was also the modern collab on Switch with the developer of Crypt of the Necrodancer, which shocked people at the time; giving a gigantic Japanese developer a swing at Zelda is one thing, but some tiny, no-name Western indie dev?). Nintendo's recent GOTY nominee Metroid Dread was also developed by a third party. Nintendo's own design principles have been so thoroughly celebrated and cooked into the brains of budding developers over the years that there are probably a ton of third-party collabs they haven't explored yet that would turn out well.

Most of the puzzles aren't bad, but classic Zelda games do well when they minimize the amount of time that you spend out of dungeons, and those overworld puzzle sequences really drag the pacing down a lot. The worst was this sequence where you, and I'm not kidding, literally have to hunt down people who never returned books to the library, so that the librarian can store them all back in the bookcase, you can shrink down, climb the bookcase, and visit the Minish sage who lived in a portion of the bookcase that became inaccessible when certain books were checked out.

Of course, these people aren't generally difficult to find, but each one, and there's three or four of them, have their own associated puzzle sequences where you have to find the right place to shrink down, and then follow a particular sequence of paths through town in order to reach their homes.

Like, it's all very clever, but I really just wanted these sequences to be over.

The dungeon puzzles are great, though. Really like those.

Yeah, the kinstone system... I mean, there are certain conveniences that make it a little less irritating. For example, if you walk up to someone, a visual indicator will tell you if they have something to trade or not, so you don't have to, like, talk to EVERYONE ALL THE TIME, but you do have to approach them, and it's still kind of irritating. At least it's not as annoying as the trading sequence in Link's Awakening, but, man, I'd rather just have normal side-quests.

I'm using an emulator set-up on PC that allows me to easily take screenshots. I even set it up so that, when I'm playing with my controller, sound gets piped in through headphones when they're connected. Very tickled with how it turned out. I think I bought the game on the Wii U VC, but I'd rather play it on PC for ease of use and the ability to screenshot. I'll likely do the same with the rest of my home console games: I've already ripped all of my PS2 discs and have set them up in my emulator frontend now. With PCSX2's ability to increase the internal resolution of games played on it, screenshots will look even better.

Full playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66C3A99730C3F3F2

Yep, I'm pretty happy with it, when all is said and done. I ripped on how similar a lot of these games are to ALttP, but I can see why they keep using the template established by that game: it works so well. This is no exception. During my free moments, I couldn't wait to get back to it. I won't say it couldn't have been a much better game, but I'd also by lying if I said it isn't already great entertainment as is.

I've really been drawn back to the GBA lately. Hardware itself was never great (the best way to play GBA games is on an NDS, because the original GBA lacked a backlight, and the SP revision will pain anyone with adult hands, and also lacks a headphone port), but for being one of Ninty's shortest-lived handhelds, it certainly developed a great library.

@RogerRoger Nintendo seems to finally be a bit more open to partnerships and collabs for basically the first time since the late 90s/early 00s now. They veered away hard from that and went full protectionist until only a few years ago.

Well, the sage is apparently only accessible if you use certain books to climb up and across the case to his abode. It's silly, and a spot of irritating busywork, but I also kind of appreciate them keeping to the theme. Surely there'd have to be an easier way to get up to him than tracking down four separate checked-out books, though!

Some people use HD texture packs to make their old games look far newer than they actually are, but I'm pretty satisfied with upressing and a spot of anti-aliasing to smooth out the image a bit. Really helps with these old games, and, honestly, they look so much better running on my PC than on my TV on the real hardware. Amusingly enough, back in the day, pre-rendered elements were used to hide the visual deficits in games running on crappy hardware, but now, when emulated, those are the aspects of these games that look the worst, compared to the actual in-engine 3D bits that looks nice when you're increasing the resolution of them.

Yeah, unless you're into hardware modding, you basically can't get a fully satisfying GBA. The closest you can get to that is the AGS-101, which was a revision of the GBA SP that replaced the frontlit screen of the original (which made it pretty dim in darkness, all things considered) with a proper backlit screen, but you still had to deal with the cramped form factor and lack of a headphone jack. The original model is much comfier, but, of course, didn't have a lit screen at all, so you had to play in direct sunlight if you wanted to see anything. The Game Boy Micro was cute and had both a backlit screen and a headphone jack, but it was barely bigger than the cartridges the games came on and had an absurdly tiny screen.

Nintendo really didn't think through those console designs, lol.

@RogerRoger I like the format of this piece! It creates a unique rhythm that I liked, and engages the curiosity of the reader.

The Vita was a curious beast. Exclusives optimized for the hardware like Gravity Rush were genuinely impressive at the time, showing off visuals and game design that simply weren't possible on the 3DS. On the other hand, ports like this just sort of highlighted the gulf in specs between it and home consoles at the time. It sort of shares that in common with the Switch, where you'll go back and forth between: "I can't believe a game that looks like this is running on a portable console!" and "I... can't believe they tried to get a game that looks like this running on a portable console."

I take your point about it not being a particularly good game to play in short bursts, but I guess I just never really thought of my handhelds as systems to play in short bursts between other activities. I mean, they can be, and that's a massive part of the appeal, but, for me, the allure was always more about being liberated from the tether of a television. Being able to take a game anywhere with me makes it more intimate.

The actual open-worlding sounds... painful. It would probably have been better off as a higher-resolution, higher fps take on the 3DS version. Most games that released on both platforms were usually far better experiences on Vita (despite my open preference for Nintendo's handheld, there were a few games where I looked at the 3DS version of a game and thought: "Nah, I'm pulling out the Vita for this one").

Kudos for sticking with it, though! There is, perhaps, something to be gained from experiencing a wildly technically inferior version of a game that everyone else avoids. There can't have been very many people who played through the late Vita port of a licensed Spider-Man game. You're one of the few humans in this world who gets to carry the hidden knowledge of what such an experience is like firsthand: take pride in that unique suffering!

...

Great piece, as always. And the screenshots look... well, very illuminating. How'd you capture them?

@RogerRoger When the device a game is on ends up heavily influencing the experience, for better or worse, you kinda can't treat the software as if it's abstracted from the machine it's running on. Anyway, I'm a big fan of talking about games in terms of their historical context, which includes the devices that host them.

Haha, I saw that 'most powerful dedicated handheld line' and couldn't resist thinking: "Well, axtually, the Switch Lite is a dedicated handheld and is also way more powerful," but I get where you're coming from. A dedicated handheld that was only a dedicated handheld and not a budget revision of a device marketed as a home console by Nintendo. But yeah, one can recall the other easily, as both carried the flame of hosting home console-esque experiences on a handheld device.

Given it's Gravity Rush 2's fifth anniversary, I'm actually mulling over playing both games again on my PS4. I never fully beat Gravity Rush Remastered, and I'd love to get the platinum trophy for both games. As much as I love the series, I always felt a little betrayed that Sony moved development of the sequel over to the PS4, but now I'm just sad that it's gone and we'll never get another Japan Studio game again.

Oh, totally, I'm a big fan of 'portable-friendly' game design, even on home consoles. Certainly on any device that can be used away from the house, as some people really do use it as a way to pass the time on buses and such. Personally, I'm too self-conscious to play video games in public, but I've also always been a person who's borderline neurotic on that front with everything. It's become a running joke in my household that I must be 'hiding something' because I close my laptop when anyone's walking nearby and practically break out in a cold sweat any time someone asks to use a device of mine.

I've become a bigger fan over the years of playing games on... shall we say... sub-optimal platforms at times. Partially as a check on any tendency toward performance snobbery that might possess me, and also out of pure curiosity. Everyone knows Resident Evil 2 ran fine on a PS1, but how much more fascinating is it that the game was ported to the N64, despite the vastly different storage capabilities of that system's cartridges? Ditto with Witcher 3 on Switch, and Spider-Man and Resident Evil Revelations 2 on Vita.

I feel so stupid for asking. I literally have thousands of screenshots in my Vita's image gallery. I guess, since I just never bother exporting those pictures to my PC these days, I kinda... didn't think about the fact that you could do that.

Mass Effect Andromeda (PS4) - Review

The Mass Effect series is a Sci-Fi action RPG about exploring planets, befriending alien races and saving the universe from destruction. It’s an extremely beloved franchise, mainly thanks to its trilogy of titles where your choices matter and they carry over to the next game as well as a vast cast of memorable characters. However, today we’ll be looking at the series’ latest entry, Andromeda, which wasn’t received particularly well when it launched in 2017 due to many technical issues. The question is then, how well does this game hold up years later?

Unlike the previous games, this one doesn’t take place in the Milky Way galaxy, but instead in Andromeda. The alien species of Milky Way have joined together to create a project called “The Initiative” where the purpose is to explore a new galaxy. You’ll be playing as Ryder, either male or female, who later on becomes the Pathfinder. The goal of the Pathfinder is to find new planets for The Initiative residents to settle on. When you arrive to Andromeda, you’ll learn that the trip has taken over 600 years, the majority of the residents are still in cryo-sleep and you’ve encountered a hostile alien race. On top of this, you’re forced to land on a planet which you thought was habitable based on prior research but apparently is not. Your job then is to find a way to fight back against this new alien species and restore the previously thought habitable planets to a better state.

The reasons behind leaving isn’t actually explained in the main story but instead through unlocking fragments of your AI companion’s memories as you progress through the game. As a Pathfinder, you have an AI implanted in you in order to perform tasks that a regular human isn’t able to do. That’s how you’ll be able to restore the planets as they all contain so called Remnant technology that is able to terraform the planets and the only way to access the technology is through your AI companion.

Throughout your journey, you’ll meet several characters that will join your team. To begin with, you have two human teammates, Liam and Cora, that were with you as you arrived in Andromeda. Later on you’ll befriend Vetra; a turian, Drack; a krogan, Peebee; an asari, and lastly Jaal; who’s an angara, one of the new alien species that you’ve discovered in this galaxy. Contrary to the previous games, you have a much smaller crew overall and besides your teammates, there are also Kallo and Suvi; the pilots, Gil; the engineer and Lexi; the doctor. Because of how small your crew is this time around, it’s been very easy forming strong bonds with them and at the end of the game, you’ve basically become a family.

This is the one of the key improvements from the main trilogy that makes Andromeda stand out to me. The games used to constantly introduce new characters and that made it hard for me to become attached to everyone. Andromeda focuses on fewer characters and ultimately the results turns out much better. Add the fact that you can spend over 60 hours playing this game, doing epic story missions, memorable loyalty missions with your teammates and general side quests that genuinely felt meaningful, and you’ll be spending a lot of time getting to know your friends.

This brings me to my next point, which is that this game does an outstanding job of feeding information to you about your teammates in a natural way. This mostly happens through chatter, which occurs when you’re out exploring planets in your Nomad vehicle or on your spaceship the Tempest. Your teammates will constantly have new things to talk about and as you pair them with other members, they will have different things to say. This aspect truly brings the game to life and makes for a more immersive experience.

Speaking of planets, another thing this game did a better job at compared to its predecessors was making huge open worlds that were more detailed and filled with meaningful things to do. That’s always been something the previous titles haven’t been able to achieve. After all, the series is all about exploring a galaxy with different planets, which gives you the expectation that there will be massive areas to explore. They tried doing this in the first Mass Effect, but the planets were mostly empty. That’s not the case at all in Andromeda and I can say that I absolutely loved exploring the open worlds in this game. As you progress through the story, you’ll discover planets with different biomes such as desert, ice, jungle and bog. You’ll be able to help out the inhabitants with various missions, clear our enemy bases, and ultimately restore the planets to a better state.

One thing that’s impressed me is the game design. There are five primary planets that you’ll explore and at first you’d think they’ll all be massive in scope. The first two planets are, but then you get to the third one and you realise that it’s very small. So small that you don’t need a vehicle to traverse it, you can just walk around. That’s something that I appreciate as it’s such a breath of fresh air compared to sticking to a strict formula. Because the last two planets are also fairly large in size, so I was very glad to see that they made the third one small. And I’ve also noticed other great aspects of the game design. Throughout the game, you’ll be restoring the planet by connecting Remnant structures. At first you do this by solving Sudoku puzzles (which I absolutely adore!) but later on you don’t need to do anything other than activate them with the push of a button. In the final phase of restoring the planet, you’ll gain access to a Vault and here you’ll have to do different things each time in order to clear them. Again, I just like the fact that the game doesn’t follow a strict level of design of forcing you to do the same thing over and over. It kept my playthrough interesting from beginning to end.

Subsequently, I just loved being a Pathfinder in this game compared to a Spectre in the previous ones. Each time you build a new outpost on a planet or rescuing an alien species, you'll be praised by your leaders. Because the work you're doing is actually meaningful: you're contributing to the survival of your people. That's why I find the missions and the side quests in this game to be more satisfying in general compared to the main trilogy. Getting constant praise in this game for all the work I've done as a Pathfinder just motivates me even more to keep playing.

Moving on to the gameplay side of things, once again, it’s a vast improvement compared to the predecessors. The series has always been a cover-based shooter with limited movement and that’s something that I didn’t really like. However, Andromeda has added the ability to jump, hover and dash, and those three things alone make the gameplay so much better. You’re allowed to move around more freely, which makes battles more dynamic. On top of this, you’re also able to hotkey three weapon abilities to the shoulder buttons. Since I decided to focus on a biotics build, I had powers such as singularity, shockwave and charge mapped and all of this combined made for some truly exhilarating battles, which I will demonstrate below:

Another thing worth mentioning is that this time around, you don’t choose a class from the beginning and stick with it until the end of the game, like in the previous titles. Instead, you have access to all of them at any time and depending on which areas you decide to spend your skill points on, you’ll increase the rank of that class, granting you more powerful stats. So as I previously mentioned, I went with a biotics build, which enabled me to level up the Adept class that specialises in biotics. At any time though I can switch to another one, for example Vanguard, and use it instead. In other words, you can focus on multiple classes and there’s even an option to switch classes during battles. This is a huge change for the series’ formula and a most welcoming one for people who want more choices in terms of combat styles.

In terms of music, the series really isn’t known for its soundtrack as there are barely any standout tracks to begin with. The only song I remember from the trilogy is the “Uncharted Worlds” theme that you hear when navigating the systems. There is a theme like it in Andromeda, but I didn’t find it as memorable.

One thing I’d like to close off with before the verdict is this game’s messaging. The most important thing this game teaches you throughout your playthrough is to respect and befriend all kinds of species (the real world analogy being the different human ethnicities). This was true of the original trilogy as well, but the fact that you arrive to a new galaxy together with other species and then discover a new species that’s already cautious of other ones due to a poor encounter with a previous one emphasises this aspect even more. As a human, we’re helping out other species we arrived with because we’re in this together, so it doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are. If an asari and a human are in danger, I wouldn’t simply choose to save the human just because I’m a human. Everyone is treated as an equal. And then showing the new species that not all species are bad shows that we can form strong bonds despite all the bad stuff that’s happened. I just love this game’s messaging, it teaches you this so naturally that it absolutely doesn’t feel forced and because you’re spending so much time with the game, it just grows on you. I feel like if there ever was a cure for racism, this game would be it. I’d just let those kinds of people play this game and see how their view of the world changes.

So as an overall package, I found Mass Effect Andromeda to be the best game in the series. While I didn’t like the story as much as in Mass Effect 3, the game delivers much improved character interactions, more open worlds with lots of things to do in them and a massively improved gameplay system. It took me 66 hours to complete the story and the majority of the side quests. You could easily finish it in 20-30 hours, but I highly encourage you to spend more time with it. Because unlike the previous Mass Effect games, which would only take around 30 hours to complete, you can spend more time getting to know the characters better and the world around you in general. That has always been something I’ve wanted to do more of in the series, so I’m glad that Andromeda is much longer than its predecessors. Some games just get more appealing to play if they take a long time to complete (Persona, Trails of Cold Steel, Mass Effect and so on).

To round off this review, I’d like to show a clip of one of my favourite moments in this game and hopefully you’ll get a better idea for why I love it so much.

@LtSarge Nice review and appropriate since the EA Play is on sale, and I was considering subscribing to 3 months with the thought of trying to get through the Mass Effect trilogy again and maybe even finally try Andromeda.

@LtSarge Outstanding write-up and screenshots! This is definitely one I've heard a few people say wasn't as bad as its reputation suggested for years now, so it's definitely going on my to-play list after I play through the remastered trilogy.

I guess the flipside of that is that ME Andromeda has been perpetually cheap for years, so finding a copy to add to my PS4 backlog shouldn't be difficult at all.

I'm glad to hear they spruced up the planet exploration with some variety. While the planet exploration was a cool idea in ME1, you're right that it always landed you on the same patch of samey wasteland with an enemy encampment to explore. They should have improved on this system in ME2, but instead they opted for the lame minigame where you scanned planets to collect resources.

Will absolutely be adding this to my eventual to-play list for when I clear through the remastered trilogy.

@LtSarge Good review! Just the video of the bar fight alone makes me want to replay it!

Apologies for the late replies everyone. I haven't been in the mood to talk about the game the last few days due to fatigue after having spent so many hours playing it as well as writing the review.

@Th3solution Thank you! I think you could probably play through the entire trilogy in three months for sure, so go for it! If you have the time to play Andromeda as well, then that's just icing on the cake!

@Ralizah Thanks! Yeah, in the back of my mind, I've always thought this was going to be a good game despite what others have said. Because the main complaints have always been about launch issues, but it's been five years since the game launched so surely they've polished it since then. And while I did encounter several bugs, the majority of my 60+ hours with the game was experienced without any issues. Some may not remember this, but even Mass Effect 2 had numerous bugs. I vividly remember getting stuck on one planet and not being able to progress, so I had to revert to a previous save file.

Keep in mind though that you're still scanning planets for XP, minerals and so on in Andromeda. But I rarely felt the need to do that. While I do want them to remove this aspect of the series in future entries, I think it's needed for the increased immersion, i.e. you're exploring many systems with planets in them.

But yeah, definitely give this game a go after you've finished the trilogy. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on it after giving it a proper try.

@Bentleyma Thank you! And yeah, I couldn't believe they actually had a scene like that in this game. It just made me love it even more!

@RogerRoger Thanks, I appreciate the kind words!

I actually really enjoyed romancing Peebee and seeing her character grow throughout my playthrough. Even though I don't know what it's like romancing the others, I get the feeling that she has one of the best character developments among your teammates. At first she was simply with us so that she could continue her research since we were looking into the Remnants anyway. Towards the end, she saw us as her family and she finally managed to open up to a close relationship with somebody else, even though she was afraid of letting somebody into her life again. It was just so nice seeing all of this develop during my playthrough.

Haha, that's a really good video and fitting music to that scene! I agree, the game desperately needed more music but I feel like that's true of the entire series anyway. Hopefully they'll focus more on this aspect in the next game!

Up until ME3, I've only used the Soldier class throughout the series because I preferred keeping the gameplay simple. However, by that point, I desperately needed some changes to combat and so I decided to give biotics a try. It was seriously so much fun, it's basically like having superpowers and I highly enjoyed using them in both ME3 and Andromeda. I can't imagine playing through Andromeda without biotics, it would've been so boring for me.

Something that I just now realised is, maybe I've been playing a lot of these games wrong by not choosing the "superpower class". Another series that comes to mind is Borderlands, which also has classes. I've also always used the soldier class there but after having played through the Mass Effect series, maybe the push I need to finally finish Borderlands 2 (as it's one of my New Years resolutions) is restarting it one last time and choosing the class with superpowers instead. You've definitely given me some things to contemplate on now after this discussion!

@RogerRoger Great piece! A lot of people don't seem to understand the sentiment, but some games are just far more impressive experiences on handhelds vs home consoles, even when they're technically lesser experiences in terms of raw specs. There's just something exhilarating about playing a game away from the TV that didn't feel like it should have been possible. Particularly years back when the Vita was still alive and handheld gaming platforms still had dedicated libraries.

I've never played Burnout Paradise, so maybe this game would feel less samey to me. It's great to hear it performs well on Vita, though, and mostly holds up as a technical showcase on the system. I imagine that the game probably looks great shrunk down on a small OLED screen.

You've really been on a kick with these Vita games lately! There's an unfortunate lack of Vita reviews, so I'm actually a fan. Have any other games on the system lined up?

Polar bear... assassins?

I get the sense 2020 would've been particularly rough for you if you'd been an American.

Handheld consoles can really be made to sing, but they usually require a decent amount of effort and optimization when it comes to home console ports. A big reason you stopped seeing that as much with a lot of Vita ports, IMO, is because the culture of multi-platform game development that became standard during the seventh gen made developers less eager to create bespoke ports of their games.

I gotta say, I really wish I'd gone physical with the Vita! It was just so tempting to d/l games on it, though.

I guess the good thing is that, now that I've hacked my Vita, I can use a MicroSD card to expand my storage and have my entire library on the console all the time.

Fair enough. Like virtually every other social and political institution in this country, the way law enforcement is handled is in need of drastic reform that it won't get for generations, if ever.

I recall you started TGAA1, and got at least two cases in, I believe?

You know, I don't think I ever realized just how many Spider-Man games there were out there.

I loved Gravity Rush, liked Golden Abyss, and wanted to like (but really, really didn't) Tearaway, so it'll be interesting to get your perspective on those games.

@RogerRoger I do think we've arrived at the point where most companies simply wouldn't develop much for something like the NDS if it was around today. You saw that shift with the 3DS, frankly. While it had a pretty massive library of amazing exclusives, the sheer scope of its software lineup was still pretty vastly reduced from the NDS before it, and the biggest reason for that is that NDS launched before the seventh gen took off, and 3DS arrived at the tail end of that generation.

And, you're right, the Vita being a pretty beefy handheld at the time would've tempted companies to do as little as possible to adapt their games to the hardware. This is probably the biggest way in which the "portable PS3" reputation it had worked against it.

My regret is most born out of the loss of the resell value for those games. In terms of user-friendliness, digital is a million times easier on Vita. I went with one of those insanely expensive 32GB cards when I first got the system, and then, a year or two ago, hacked the system, installed custom firmware, and replaced it with a 400GB MicroSD card. Lemme tell you: you'll never, ever run out of space with one of those. The sheer amount of stuff you can do on a hacked unit is pretty astonishing, honestly, even if you don't delve into the obviously illegal piracy side of the equation. The biggest appeal to me, for example, was that I was able to complement all of the PS Classics I bought on PSN with rips of my own PS1 collection, turning the Vita into a true portable PS1.

I actually do own 5 or so physical Vita games, tbf. It's obviously not as nice as your collection, though, which you clearly love deeply.

The third case in Adventures is probably a top five case for me in the entire series. It actually went to places that I was a little disappointed Farewell, My Turnabout in the second game shied away from, and was incredibly memorable as a result.

Yeah, it'd be fitting for you to own Spider-Man's entire video game career, I think.

I expected to enjoy Tearaway a lot, honestly, so I was a little floored by how boring I ended up finding it. Pity, too, since it's a great showpiece for the system's capabilities.

@RogerRoger I think the design of the Switch was primarily motivated by problems mostly unique to Nintendo. Given:
a) Nintendo will never abandon handheld gaming tech, given that's where their bread has ALWAYS been buttered. Just compare the frankly gargantuan sales of most of their handheld consoles over time to their shrinking home console sales prior to Switch, aside from the Wii.
b) Nintendo proved with Wii U/3DS that they can no longer simultaneously juggle two concurrent devices with their own respective libraries.

Developing a hybrid was, frankly, their only good option at that point.

It's a happy accident, IMO, that the appeal of this design resonated so much with their base that it actually ended up leading to dramatically improved third-party support. Because it took years for major publishers to stop distancing themselves from Nintendo after the Wii U disaster.

Yeah, in terms of Sony and the Vita, I think it took them awhile to really fully realize they weren't interested in pursuing portable gaming tech any more. The way they advertised the Vita was kind of a side-effect of that. Reporting has suggested there was deep skepticism about the device before it even launched, so it's no surprise that Sony pretty much abandoned first-party software development on it after that first year or two and left it to indies and Japanese companies to float the device along for the rest of its lifespan.

I dunno, man. That 32GB memory card investment was painful. The smart move, realistically, was probably what you ended up doing: buying big games physically, and then downloading smaller stuff on a cheaper card. But I knew there'd be a lot of stuff I wanted to download, and I'd personally regret it if I cheaped out with the memory. I guess it all worked out in the end, even if I ended up having to do something I'm not fully comfortable with to achieve it (thankfully, Sony is totally apathetic about people modifying their Vitas, so I'm not too worried about the CFW triggering an account ban like it undoubtedly would on something like the PS3).

Indeed, I have my full PS1 library on my Vita AND PC now. It's quite cool. PC is technically the better place to play, since you get the benefit of upscaling games, it's easier to take screenshots, etc., but yeah, I can't resist finally having playable portable versions of PS1 games that were never uploaded to PSN.

The games I own are:

• Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars
• Corpse Party: Blood Drive
• Demon Gaze
• Persona 4 Golden (the first game I bought alongside the system, in fact!)
• Valkyrie Drive Bhikkhuni

I also bought a Senran Kagura game physically on the system, but I sold that years back.

For a period of time, it really was the go-to hardware for the sort of bizarre Japanese games that used to proliferate on Sony's home consoles.

I think the bigger issue for me is that Tearaway is utterly shallow once you rip away the gimmicks that drive the game and look past the (phenomenal) presentation. MM's game live or die on how deeply you can immerse yourself in the "creative" aspects of them, and that sort of approach really just didn't resonate with me. It'll be interesting to see if you end up falling in love with it like a lot of people did, though.

Mega Man Powered Up

Platform: PSP

Mega Man Powered Up is one game I've wanted to play in this series for years, but never really had the opportunity to do so until now, as it's one of a handful of PSP games that never enjoyed a digital release on PSN, leaving it stranded as an out of print UMD release on a long-dead handheld. MMPU is a full remake of the original NES Mega Man game (the one that nobody likes and was pretty much forgotten about after the release of the amazing Mega Man 2) that manages to impress in a number of ways. It's one of the only Mega Man games to enjoy fully voice-acted dialogue, for example. Not hard when the original Mega Man didn't even have any dialogue in it, you might say, but that's where I'll stop you, because Capcom went the extra mile of including a surprisingly large amount of dialogue in this release. You actually get a proper story set-up this go around, brief exchanges before boss fights that develop the personalities of each Robot Master, and so on.

Pretty much every aspect of the original game was re-evaluated or touched-up in some way. The game's default mode offers more player-friendly level layouts, story events, and so on, but you can also play in a mode that preserves the game design of the NES original. As in later games, collectibles are incorporated into the game's various stages, incentivizing the player to return to previous stages with newly acquired weapons. And these collectibles aren't just ticking off items on a checklist, either: the game actually features a surprisingly robust lever editor that is unlocked as the player finds new modules to use in it through the game's various levels. This ancient PSP title from 2006 even featured the ability to share and download levels you've created with other players.

To be honest, the amount of optional content in this game is almost overwhelming. I haven't touched on the large challenge mode, either, or the fact that it includes two new Robot Masters, or the fact that, amazingly, you can play this game through with at least eleven unique characters, including the eight Robot Masters, Proto Man, and Roll, and they all have unique dialogue/plot events for their playthroughs! You can even unlock optional costumes for Roll. A completion rate counter in your save file will helpfully remind you of how far you are from seeing everything the game has to offer, which might end up being a bit maddening for completionists.

So, this all sounds fine and dandy, but are there any downsides?

Well, yes.

The biggest marmite element of this game will be its overtly cutesy aesthetic. It feels like the original Mega Man if it was viewed through the lens of a cartoon aimed at small children. All of the characters have been reimagined in adorable chibi form, even in the game's 2D portraits. The majority of the in-game dialogue is deliberately campy. Even the OST has lost a lot of its 8-bit edge, with the remixed tracks smoothing out the rough corners and making everything sound much friendlier and approachable in the process.

Listen briefly to the theme for Cut Man's stage in the NES original for example:

Now compare to the version in Powered Up:

All of the tracks are like this. They don't sound... bad, but they sound inappropriate for a 2D Mega Man game. The combination of the new visual style and remixed music often gives the game a somewhat bland feel that robbed some of the enjoyment from it for me.

Even putting aside the aesthetic, though, there's no getting around the fact that Mega Man 1 is almost unquestionably the worst game in the series. The changes made to this remake help, but oftentimes it just feels like they're smearing an excess of lipstick on a pig. This would have been a great opportunity to ditch some of the unfriendlier aspects of the original. Does Guts Man's stage REALLY need to center around infuriating insta-death sections where you have to precisely jump on and off moving platforms before they dump you into a pit? Did the profoundly frustrating Yellow Devil boss, which is even more frustrating in this version than in the original since I couldn't replicate the Thunder Beam pause glitch that made him bearable in the NES game, really need to be here? It's great that the game has so much stuff to do, but if the core experience is unsatisfying, piling on a metric ton of padding (very well done padding, mind you, but still padding nonetheless) isn't going to fix it.

Powered Up remakes of Mega Man 2 and on could have been amazing fun, but, unfortunately, MMPU ended up selling pretty poorly on PSP, so plans for more remakes in the same vein were quickly canceled, which is a shame. Mega Man Powered Up is the best version of a fundamentally mediocre game, and is filled with cool ideas and a surprisingly robust level of polish for such an old handheld game. If you like Mega Man 1, it's a must-own. If you don't, it's still an interesting remake in its own right, and one of the more interesting PSP-exclusive games. Let's hope this gets remastered or something so that it's not trapped on a dead console forever.

6.5/10

@RogerRoger Great review of Need for Speed! It's nice to know that the game holds up well on Vita despite the AI's rubber banding and the game's focus on the social aspect. I actually have a digital copy of Most Wanted because EA gave it away (along with a few other titles) years ago but I still haven't played through it because it takes up so much space. However, your review has made me more interested in giving this game a go, especially since I haven't played the console version of Most Wanted. Would be really cool to experience a game like this on the go, for sure!

@Ralizah Excellent write-up! I really enjoy reading reviews of titles that I haven't heard of since it lets me learn something new and this time, I learned that Mega Man 1 got a remake, which I had no idea about! It sounds like the best way to experience the first game even though the music doesn't feel appropriate compared to the original OST and the art style is more chibi. It's too bad that it's not available digitally as I would've loved giving it a try on Vita.

Speaking of Mega Man though, I've been browsing the Wii U eShop the past few days and noticed that there are tons of Mega Man games on there. It sounds to me that you really like this series, so do you have any titles that you would recommend getting on there? I have the Mega Man 1-6 and Mega Man X 1-4 collections already, and most of the games have been ported to modern consoles anyway. But there's apparently a subseries called "Mega Man Network" on GBA and those games are available on Wii U eShop. Are they worth getting would you say?

@LtSarge Thanks! Yeah, Mega Man Powered Up has been pretty thoroughly buried, so it's unfortunately very easy for even people who love Mega Man games to be entirely ignorant of it if they never owned a PSP.

The Battle Network games are actually JRPGs, and not really what I'm looking for from this series, so I bounced off the first one pretty quickly. They do have their fans, though. If you end up grabbing it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

In terms of the Wii U eshop, I know the four Mega Man Zero games are available on there, and that's a very decent spinoff series. The first one is especially distinct, and almost has a Metroidvania-esque structure to it.

Otherwise, the best game from a modern standpoint is probably Mega Man 11. But if you want something a little simpler and more akin to golden age games, Mega Man 9 and 10 are both excellent as well. Those should be available on modern platforms via the second Anniversary Collection.

And, while it's really dated from a modern standpoint, I'd be remiss not to shill for Mega Man Legends, which featured a ton of voice acting, really strong cutscene direction, and surprisingly complex character models for a PS1 game way back in 1997. That's available as a PS1 Classic on PSN.

@Ralizah I might give the first Battle Network and Zero games a go just to see if I'd like them more than the main series. Because in all honesty, I've played the first couple of NES games and the first Mega Man X and these games are just too difficult for me. I actually already own Mega Man 9, 10 and 11, but I do want to try out more of the older games before I get to the ones that really appeal to me, you know?

Legends sounds really interesting but apparently it's only available on NA PlayStation Store, which is too bad.

@RogerRoger Yeah, it was the Vita version. I had to look up the reason online because it was such a long time ago: https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/6/7345193/mirrors-edge-garden...

That would also explain why I have a digital copy of Mirror's Edge on PS3, even though I already own the game on 360 lol.