Why do we do it, why do we enjoy it?

I have a confession to make: I’ve kind of been stuck on what topic to write about. Every couple months or so I like to do a post on something that has gained my interest, but lately I’ve been struggling to finish anything. At first I was going to write about remasters and remakes, and the fine line between preserving gaming history and rewriting it for better or for worse. Then my focus shifted on Zone of the Enders 2, since Armored Core 6 has just released and with them both being about giant robots, I saw an opportunity to lavish praise on a game that you should really play if you haven’t already. Finally I thought screw it, and was going to go for the low hanging fruit by talking about the latest season of the anime Baki, which has some absolute pearls of dialogue such as “they weren’t even aware of the fact that they were unconscious.”

But what is at the heart of all this when you really think about it? At the heart of this website that you are reading these words on? Video game discourse of course! And it is everywhere, discussing all manner of video game related things. No game is too obscure to not have a fan breathlessly gush about it in an article, and no gameplay change is too small to not warrant a video explaining the latest updates a new season brings. Everything is analysed and discussed and argued, but why though? Sure, there are reviews to influence a purchasing decision and news sites to tell us all the hot new releases, yet we sometimes seek videos and articles on games we’ve already bought and beaten. And it’s not like talking about video games has any real practical application, you can’t prevent mould buildup in your house with the fact that you know Jonathan Blow’s Braid is actually about the atomic bomb.

So why not actually just play Braid again instead of looking up stuff about it online? One somewhat cynical answer is that we are looking for others to validate our opinion. When we feel positively about a game it can be reassuring that others share our viewpoint — especially from those we respect — and in a strange way it confirms that our happiness towards something was right, even though that shouldn’t actually make any sense. If we’ve had a negative experience with a game, however, there certainly can be a catharsis in hearing someone express the same hatred towards it. I remember how relieved I was when I saw the Zero Punctuation on Ni No Kuni, since I wasn’t the only one who thought the game’s combat was a hybrid monstrosity that should have been put out of its misery.

Though, beyond just the simple gratification of hearing people agree with us, there are other reasons why video game discourse exists. It can help us to solidify opinions or feelings we have that we can’t quite complete on our own. Bioshock Infinite is a standout example for me, since I was swept up in all the per-release hype and couldn’t put into words why I was left a little cold when I hit credits. What helped me was Matthewmatosis’ Bioshock Infinite Critique, which did put into words all the ways the game had felt lacking to me. While exposing yourself to too many opinions can run the risk of muddying yours, they can often be used to aid in shaping and defining our own experiences.

And then there are games which beg for discourse, beg for minds to ruminate and discuss their cryptic meanings. Signalis is absolutely one of those games, because even when I completed my playthrough and had my own thoughts on it, I wouldn’t say that I felt satisfied so to speak. Indie Xplorer’s A Complete Story Breakdown of Signalis really made me appreciate the game on a whole other level, pointing out details and story threads that I would have never discovered on my own. In this way, discourse can actually be a part of the intended experience. Developers aren’t ignorant of the fact that their games will be dissected to death, so why not give them plenty to dissect?

My final reason is that discourse can give you new insight on a subject you had previously thought you had all figured out. Sexuality, Gender and Kojima Productions by Transparency is one such opinion piece. It takes the humorous scene where Sam Bridges in Death Standing punches the player for looking at his crotch, and manages to make the solid argument that it creates some unintentional commentary on how Hideo Kojima sees objectifying men compared to objectifying women. I adore these kinds of videos and articles because they can completely change how you perceive something, challenging you to think more critically.

I suppose when I talk about video game discourse, you could really broaden that to any discussion about any hobby, such as films, books, music, sports or Japanese cartoons about big muscle men punching each other absurdly hard. Yes, video games aren’t important when compared to stuff like having a decent wage to live on or your physical and mental health, but like many other seemingly frivolous joys they give flavour to our lives. And people like sharing in that joy (or that hate), people like to obtain a greater understanding, or fashion an entirely new one. And it can be great to express those views, seeing our thoughts materialise into something that others can read or watch. In Nier Automata you are asked a question: do you think video games are silly little things? I hope that by reading this you now know my answer.

A chunky single player offering in my fighting game?

Now there’s a few gripes about World Tour that I need to get off my chest first, so I’ve made a list of them for your convenience. Number one: opponents that are several levels below you can do (and take) more damage than your sad excuse for a fighter can manage for some reason. Number two: you can only level up one playstyle at a time, which is just restrictive in an anti-fun kind of way. Number three: having to constantly return to Masters gets tiring quickly, especially when the payoff is just Blanka shouting “this technique will surely give your opponents a shock, UWWAHGG!”. Number four: plane tickets are a resource so plentiful that I struggle to think why they are included in the first place. Number five: the mission design can entail such riveting escapades as you running into a guy and him telling you to fuck off until nighttime, which you do only for a new guy to tell you to fuck off until daytime. And finally number six: the overall arcing story suffers from the usual fighting game issue of having to juggle an oversized cast, so you end up with a supposedly emotional scene with a character that you’ve spent maybe an hour with at max.

So despite all of its irritating quirks, I actually ended up really liking World Tour. I know the scene of fighting game single player modes isn’t exactly popping off these days, but I would rate World Tour as one of the best. I would even put it above NetherRealm’s work, because while the stories of Injustice and Mortal Kombat do their best to be epic, cinematic and all that, I do have to roll my eyes when all of the fights just so happen to take place in the exact same handful of locations. While the world in World Tour isn’t exactly a world (more like a city and a half), it’s still big enough that you could be throwing down anywhere, from alleyways, to rooftops, to trains, to parks and beyond.

It all feels so animated and alive, bursting full of people that are exercising, resting, fighting, mediating, waiting to fight, juggling, watching you do a Spinning Bird Kick and getting really hyped about it. It kind of reminds me a little of New Donk City from Mario Odyssey, just with a lot more graffiti, gang violence and introspective speeches about the “meaning of strength”. The transition from exploration to fights is also a technical marvel, with the amount of work that had to be done in order to avoid the camera getting stuck in geometry or making sure that there’s enough space to fight being extremely impressive. Of course, the fighting in World Tour is Street Fighter 6 fighting, which is pretty damn good, so I can’t be that upset when a random punk decides to sucker punch me in the back, because then I get the opportunity to put in some practice. The ability to switch playstyles and moves also opens up the floodgates for some real depraved shit, like linking Kimberly’s izuna drop into Marisa’s superman punch and then into Manon’s grab.

But what really surprised me about World Tour is how it teaches you to be better at fighting games. Those bastard roombas aren’t just there to be a whacky enemy to fight, they also teach you the importance of low attacks. The flying drones show you what attacks are good anti-airs and the fridges (yes you read that right) test your ability to punish from a distance. Even your less rectangular-shaped opponents will do things like spam projectiles from a distance, or constantly try to grab you, or jump all the goddamn time. While playing against other people is still the best way to improve your skills, this is the closest to actual human behaviour I’ve ever seen a fighting game AI get to.

The greatest praise I can give World Tour, however, is the fact that you can play this mode exclusively and still feel like you’ve gotten the Street Fighter 6 experience. World Tour isn’t some throwaway option that the developer chucked in just to meet some requirement, it has real effort and passion behind it. And for me personally, having a mode where I can cool off after some intense ranked matches is very welcomed indeed. Too many modern fighters these days depend on the online multiplayer being the main draw, so it is refreshing to see a refocusing on this kind of stuff.

I can’t believe this ended up being my takeaway from Street Fighter 6, but what has got me the most excited about the future of the series, is the thought of where a mode like World Tour goes to next!

Hello, and welcome to the eighth instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Rose-engine Games’ shit-is-locked simulator Signalis.

Low-poly beauty…that’s good.

With seemingly every indie game under the sun ransacking people’s nostalgia for the 8 and 16-bit era, we are now seeing the quaint and blocky PS1 style showing up and saying “hey, you remember when games looked like this?” Naturally it benefits from visual touches that weren’t possible back then, you need only to look at the part where your character goes down an elevator and see how the shadows move to know that shit isn’t possible on a PlayStation One. Animations are slick, especially when you reload your gun with bullet casings emitting smoke particles as they fall to the ground. And the combat music sounds like a robot plummeting down some stairs that are made entirely of saucepans, but in a hauntingly good way.

I get it, you like the number six…that’s bad.

At this games creation a terrible curse befell the developer which prevented them from counting beyond the number six. Six planets, six keys, six photos, six stone plates, six cards, six spears, but you know what I had to do more than six fucking times: go back to the save room to free up inventory space. That’s because – you guessed it – you’re only able to carry a maximum of six items. Yes, limited inventory exists to force the player to make difficult choices, and yes, they do actually explain why you can only carry six items, but in the end all it did was grab the pace of the game and put it in a headlock for a minute.

Come for the horror, stay for the abject misery…that’s good.

It’s strange to give a thumbs up for something that made me feel so utterly hopeless, but here we are. You follow the story of Elster, a robot looking for a lady in a mining facility that has come down with a case of the killer zombie machines. Even if you haven’t played this game, you already know Elster isn’t coming out of this with her love in her arms skipping away into the sunset, but still, Signalis has a way to make you feel even more depressed than you initially braced yourself for. This tragedy extends to everyone trapped in Signalis’ nightmare, with some accepting their dire fate while others hold out for help that will never come.

The door prompt can be a fickle soul…that’s bad.

Of all the horrid mangled shells of humanity that roam Signalis’ broken and desolate hallways, none stuck fear into my heart like the unassuming door does. I don’t know if this is some sort of bug or I was trying to enter at the wrong angle, but the prompt for the door just wouldn’t appear sometimes. It’s a small annoyance when you are just doing some exploring, but it grows into a very big one when you’re running for your life and the door just decides to not open because it thinks you should take some damage, you know, to keep things fair for the monsters I guess?

Survival horror planning pleasure…that’s good.

The hallmark of a good survival horror for me is planning your routes, that mental gymnastics of trying to find the most expedient path that also manages to hit every room you need in order to complete your task. Scanning the map and trying to remember which room had what items and what enemies before heading out for another run is something I find quite absorbing. Signalis even has the body-burning mechanic which it has pilfered from its many influences, adding another layer of intriguing decision making to the process.

The roll of the dice that is wandering enemies…that’s bad.

The fact that monsters tend to patrol around a room somewhat isn’t a big deal if you’re gunning down everything. However, for those who are trying to play Sam Fisher style, you can just straight up run into enemies which leads to getting a big old whack on your noggin, or at the very least alerting everyone to your presence. This is more down to the fact that enemies can wander too close to doors, which usually ends up with you having to make a hasty retreat and wait until for a few seconds until they’ve waddled away from the door.

Puzzle design that hits the sweetspot…that’s good.

It’s a tight line to walk to have puzzles that are solvable by the average cretin (by which I mean me) but also give you the satisfaction of feeling smart. Most of Signalis’ puzzles are memorising a thing you saw a few rooms ago and using that information to open the safe or lay the cards in the right order or put the rings on the right finger and so on. Thankfully, all documents are stored in a database once you’ve read them and can be accessed during a puzzle if need be. You even get an item that lets you take pictures (if want to know how many it takes, the answer is in the third paragraph), cutting down on backtracking time.

Yes Signalis, I want the item that I’m standing right next to…that’s bad.

When it comes to picking up items, video games usually either do it automatically once you’ve pressed the button, or they will freeze time with a “yes or no” prompt appearing. Apparently Signalis wanted to do it some accursed third way in which time doesn’t stop but you still get the “yes or no” prompt anyway. It’s a system that’s the worst of both worlds since you can’t pick something up in a hurry and you don’t get a little breather to decide you next move either. And don’t say it adds realism since you’re making the choice in realtime, because in the real world I make the choice to pick up something when I first see it, not by going right up to it and gawking at it for second.

Endings that will ignite discourse for days…that’s good.

After finishing Signalis and staring out of a window for a while in a haze of sadness and confusion, I looked online to get some answers and eventually stumbled on a two-hour long video detailing everything that was fact and theorising everything that wasn’t. I always think that I’ll never get drawn down the rabbit hole whenever games like these come out, since I’ve done it for so many in the past, with Dark Souls, Nier: Automata and the Metal Gear series to name a few. But here I am once again, going down that hole, and it has been fascinating to hear everyone’s differing opinions on what it all means. For me, Signalis is about the importance of individualism, and you could even say that the game’s premise is individualism striking out against a power that sees the people under it as anything but individuals. Signalis leaves so much to interpretation because the creators want your own take on it, not to force feed you an opinion.

Nowhere can burn in hell…that’s bad.

Truth be told when I got to the middle part of this game in which you find yourself in a location called Nowhere, I almost quit the game. As all my previous problems culminated into a particularly annoying sundae, the cherry on top was the fact that there is no map for Nowhere. And wouldn’t you know it, the camera will switch positions as you go through doors to make it even more confusing to navigate. I know being lost is kind of Nowhere’s deal, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious to go through, and it also retroactively makes me hate Silent Hill 1 for inspiring it.

So is Signalis good or bad?

Raw and uncompromised, Signalis plays by its own rules which can come across as almost antagonistic to the player, yet its ability to take from so many influences and fashion them into its very own thought-provoking piece is extremely condemnable. Most will either bounce off it hard or fall deeply in love with it, but a divisive game is usually an interesting one.

Hello, and welcome to the seventh instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Tango Gameworks’ proof that not every game needs to be a loot driven, battle pass grinding live service: Hi-Fi Rush.

It looks so goddamn amazing…that’s good.

If we go by the ancient gaming texts when measuring visuals and divide them into technical quality and artistic quality, on the technical end sits the Demon’s Souls remake while on the artistic end now sits Hi-Fi Rush. Not since Cuphead have I seen a game nail its source material so throughly. Everything in Hi-Fi Rush has been designed around its comic book influences, with even light and shadow being heavily stylised. It’s the kind of game that actually made me do the E3 demo thing of panning the camera across the environment just to soak it all in. And even better, much like other titles which prioritise style over realism, it will continue to look great for years to come.

But I want to look cool now…that’s bad.

Before I even started playing I knew there was a way to customise your outfit and eagerly awaited for the option to do so. Turns out I was waiting the entire game, because you only get the choice once you beat the final boss. I know this was likely done so that the player wouldn’t waste all their earnings on the dumb shark costume instead of useful things like extra moves or health upgrades, but this could have been remedy by adding an extra currency exclusively for cosmetics.

Another example of genre plus rhythm mechanic working wonders…that’s good.

Hi-Fi Rush as you likely know, has attacks, jumps and pretty much everything tied to the beat of the music. Or in other words: Hi-Fi Rush rewards players for not mashing buttons in a panic to get combos out as fast as possible. I say reward because you can still mash if you’d prefer, but hitting on the beat increases damage while also building meter and building meter lets you do special moves for even more damage. It’s a good middle ground that doesn’t come across as openly hostile like in say BPM, where a lack of rhythm is followed by a lack of being alive.

Cool moments, masked by QTEs..that’s bad.

During some boss fights you’ll be asked to hit a line of buttons much like you would do in Gitaroo Man as a way of dealing a cinematic strike. These parts aren’t exactly taxing, but it does mean your eyes will be stuck on a parade of X and Y button prompts (and maybe even a RB button if the game is feeling fancy). This issue reaches its height when you are blowing up a giant robot with an equally giant laser gun, all while staring at the bottom third of the screen.

The humour hits…that’s good.

While humour is subjective, I am of course extremely funny (as well as handsome, smart and great in social situations) so obviously I know comedy, and Hi-Fi Rush did indeed make me laugh several times. First impressions would have you believe that most of the gags would be of the slapstick variety – and there are plenty of those – but Hi-Fi Rush also delves into the darker humour of companies treating people like expendable resources instead of…you know…people. It’s not exactly highbrow stuff, but sometimes seeing a barely conscious person get their face slammed up against a retinal scan is all you need for a good chuckle.

Dialogue that refuses to be skipped…that’s bad.

Now you might say I asked for this when I decided to play on hard mode, but during times where you are in control of your character and dialogue is playing, that particular dialogue is unskippable. Not really a problem on lower difficulties, but because I was playing on said hard mode, if I was stuck on a tough fight I would have to wait out this dialogue before I could start the battle again. The time spent waiting around could be hiding some background loading but the result was me hearing the same joke over and over again, wishing that I could just get back to playing the game.

Combat that keeps getting sweeter the more you play it…that’s good.

If you want to know why I’m such a huge fan of this genre – which is categorised as “character action” I do believe – it’s the clear growth in ability your character goes through. This is a game that gives you a grappling hook within the first few hours and adds from there with teammate assists along with purchasable moves and buffs. But it was when I reached stage 10 (the one with Invaders Must Die as the music) that everything started to come together, as my mastery of the combat reached its high point.

You saved the day…poorly…that’s bad.

Again, you can say that I brought this on myself by selecting hard, but upon beating the final boss with a total of 19 deaths at the end, the game took a poor view of my performance and slapped me with a D rank. As much as this stung, this isn’t necessarily me wanting the mechanic to be removed, just presented a little differently. Instead of every death bringing down your score, there could be a big bonus for completing the level without dying once, as a way of not souring victories that came with a lot of game overs.

So is Hi-Fi Rush good or bad?

I’m not gonna lie, the bad points I’ve listed here have felt especially petty, which speaks to the quality of this game. Hi-Fi Rush manages to blend music and combat into a refreshing yet oddly nostalgic cocktail, while also showing the world why games like these should still exist.

Turns out I still like Halo.

I suppose this day had to come sooner or later, the day when I bid my old, dusty PS4 farewell and purchase a new, sleek, next-ish gen console with a fan that isn’t slowly destroying my hearing. And in a last-minute twist I’ve switched my allegiances from Sony to Microsoft, because they lured me in with the sweet, sweet promises of Game Pass. Which also means I’m one step further towards the future of owning none of the media I play, watch or listen to, but hey, that Hi-Fi Rush looks pretty cool right?

And you can’t have an Xbox without Master Chief grumbling about needing a weapon, so the very first game I downloaded for my new console was Halo Infinite. Exclusively the multiplayer mind you, since I ducked out of the story around Halo 4, when the writers realised that there was actually no story left and reverted back to the Covenant being bad again. Right off the bat Infinite has reined in the “just add more detail” mantra of 4 and 5, with the Spartans in particular befitting hugely from some cleaner designs.

In many ways Halo Infinite is still Halo, with grenades being flung about the place at the merest hint of an enemy, teammates accidentally running over their allies, and getting called slurs while someone teabags you – though this time its written in the text chat rather than screamed over a mic, so I guess we can call that progress? One familiar friend I sought after in every match was the Battle Rifle, because while Halo puts the Assault Rifle as the poster child of the series, the BR is my go-to gun on the battlefields of multiplayer. I hung onto that thing like my life depending on it, because in the majority of matches I played, it did.

To give credit, Infinite has made some quality of life changes which might have appeared in Halo 5 but I didn’t play that one, so they’re new to me. Allies and enemies now have either a friendly blue outline or a not-so-friendly red outline, meaning your chosen colour for your Spartan can now be shown in team games. That outline also highlights players, which aids in identifying far-off foes with even a small sparkle being emitted when they’re aiming straight for your cranium. Weapons, vehicles and power-ups are not only now marked on the map, but also have a timer over them to help newer players learn where the hotspots of conflict are likely going to be. Your fellow Spartans also shoutout (in the most generic voice they can muster) key information, such as alerting you when an enemy is using a powerful weapon. Topping it all off – since this is a competitive online shooter that released after Apex Legends – you can now helpfully ping enemies for the convenience of your team.

I’m having fun relearning skills that I haven’t used for years, balancing the violence triangle of guns, melee and grenades that takes me wistfully back to what I’ve always enjoyed about the series. But what I think separates Halo from other first-person shooters, mainly your Call of Dutys and your Battlefields, is the lengthy time to kill. Everyone has a shield which needs to be destroyed first before you can land that juicy headshot – power weapons can obviously insta-kill, but they’re the exception that proves the rule. As a result, getting dropped on by the enemy isn’t the fast track to death that it might usually be. This places less of focus on sight lines and twitch reactions (which is good because my reactions aren’t getting faster) and more on how you use that triangle I mentioned earlier to take down your enemies.

What definitely isn’t in that triangle is mobility, because the game has a goddamn grapple hook and only lets you use it a limited amount of times if you happen to spawn with it or find it on the map. Yes, I know having a grapple hook as a core part of the player’s moveset would likely create some major headaches in the balancing department, but my counter argument is that shooting yourself through the air is really, really, really fun and I want to do it a lot more. Once again the ghost of Titanfall 2 haunts my dreams and damns my soul.

That obvious misstep aside, I’m glad that I can leave the series on a high note instead of the wishy-washy mess that was Halo 4, because this isn’t me re-becoming that devout Halo fan I once was. Instead, this is more of a quick dip back in to nail some people with sticky grenades, ride gunner in some Warthogs and hear Jeff Steitzer’s voice when I get a double kill. That isn’t to say I’ll never go back to it (I’ll very likely will), but my attention has already been wrestled away from Infinite with the ’80s drenched murder mystery Paradise Killer – thanks Game Pass.

Hello, and welcome to the sixth instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Daisuke Amaya’s 2D jump and shoot game Cave Story.

The world building is well built…that’s good.

When introducing the player to a whole heap of places, people, etc., care needs to be taken in order to not overwhelm the player. Cave Story starts off small (in a cave as the name would suggest), with the player having no idea of who they are or what they are doing, which eventually branches out into stopping an evil scientist from unleashing an army of rabid bunny people on the world from his floating island. But what’s so great about Cave Story is that while it does indeed have a satisfying story (that’s the second part of the name holding true), it also leaves little gaps here and there for the attentive among us to clue together past events.

Your jump is not made for platforming…that’s bad.

Kind of a sticking point for when you’re making a platformer, since navigating platforms pretty much exclusively relies on jumping. And the jumping in this game is not great, with your little robot guy having a very floaty arc while also retaining a lot of momentum when landing. This culminates in a strong feeling of uncertainty, as you throw yourself at the top of a tiny floating box hoping that your metal ass won’t slide straight off it. The jetpack almost seems like Daisuke saying “yeah, I know the platforming is kind of garbage, but now you don’t have to worry about it as much.”

This game has got character for days…that’s good.

When Cave Story gave me the option to turn down the first boss’s offer to fight them and then the boss said that was cool and simply left, I knew I was in for something special. There are certainly some chuckles to be had during your adventure, but what really surprised me is how much depth there is to the characters despite the brief amount of time you spend with them. Take King for example, who initially comes across as an overbearing and somewhat callous leader. Yet, when you dig a little deeper you realise that he cares deeply about his people, and is struggling to fill the shoes of the recently deceased Arthur, who is praised in the village as a true hero. For all of its cute visuals, Cave Story isn’t shy about tugging on the heart strings by depicting death as quick and brutal.

A merciless save system…that’s bad.

Autosaves are a luxury we take for granted these days, with seemingly every step towards progress being saved for our convince. But Cave Story is here to remind you that you should save as often and as soon as possible, unless you want to collect that health upgrade for a second time. And hey, just because you beat a boss doesn’t mean you’re safe to relax, since there’s still those insta-kill spikes to jump over on the way to your next save. I know this might be a contentious point, but the game doesn’t have enough damn save points, especially towards the end when Cave Story kind of forgets the whole save thing entirely. Even if you argue that the lack of saves are there to preserve the challenge, it still doesn’t change the fact that you have to mash through the same dialogue boxes over and over again. That is, if you happened to buy Cave Story on anything but the Nintendo Switch like I did.

The remastered soundtrack is killer…that’s good.

Remastering a soundtrack always comes with its concerns, especially with the disappointing Demon’s Souls remake’s music still fresh in my mind. But Danny Baranowsky of Super Meat Boy and Crypt of the Necrodancer fame managed to take the original and remix it into an absolute banger. It provides a unique twist on Amaya’s work while not outright replacing it, which I honestly think is the best result. Both soundtracks deserve their place in the spotlight and it’s likely that your personal preference is going to be mainly down to which one you heard first. The plus versions of Cave Story contains the option to pick either, but regardless of which one you choose, these songs are sure to get firmly stuck inside your head. Oh, and there’s the “new” soundtrack, which is if you took the original and then let someone with only a Nokia 3310 compose it – it is pleasant in a quaint sort of way.

I can’t get that item without dying…that’s bad.

I have a personal beef towards health and power-up items that drop from enemies into places that you can’t reach. The last area in particular is guilty of this sin, by having all those gleaming weapon-upgrading triangles blasted out of enemies, fall into spike pits like how my tears fall down my face when I see such a thing. And in the early game when you don’t have the jetpack, health can just float an inch or two out of your grasp, just to piss you off even further. But lets try having these items disappear in front of you because the fucking game won’t let scroll through the text boxes fast enough!

So nice I played it thrice…that’s good.

Do I like Cave Story? Well, I did complete it almost three times and I’m now eying a fourth playthrough, so yes I am enjoying the game quite a bit. Cave Story strikes that sweet spot of being a breeze to finish when you know what to do, but with plenty of grit to its challenge to keep things interesting. And unless you look up a guide, there’s zero chance that you are going to get the best ending on your first try, so a second playthrough is pretty much a necessity. But there’s also choice in how you obtain items, with players who take the harder option netting bigger rewards at the end. As a matter of fact, the most powerful gun requires you to hold onto the second worst gun (the worst being that piece of shit Bubbline) until the last third of the game.

Unlocking Curly’s Story made me question things…that’s bad.

A moment of me cursing my OCD since I need to unlock everything in a game for some damned reason. And one of those things is Curly’s Story in which you play as the girl robot instead of the boy robot with some minor differences in the dialogue. And to unlock Curly’s Story you have to get a certain item of hers, one that made me take a long hard look in the mirror after I obtained it. Even worse, I now have an achievement carved permanently into my Steam profile called “Panty Raider” which has a higher unlock percentage than the achievement for saving Curly. Perhaps Cave Story is right: humans truly are terrible creatures.

So is Cave Story good or bad?

There are times in which I have a seething hated for this game, as it makes me question on whether facing down whatever twisted challenge it decides to throw at me is actually worth it. But after surmounting its gauntlet and being treated to its sparse but devastatingly effective storytelling, I’m confident in saying that Cave Story is a game that I’m truly going to miss when I’m done with it.

Should a successor branch out to something new, even if it alienates fans?

At the start of the month I often have a rummage through the old PS Plus bucket to see if anything catches my fancy, which it did by a game called Axiom Verge 2. As someone who hasn’t played the first Axiom Verge my expectations for the sequel, was that it was a Metroidvania and I was in the mood for a Metroidvania. Which might have been a privileged position, because to my surprise this game seems to be pretty divisive. A lot of the ire towards Axiom Verge 2 seems to come from Axiom Verge 1 fans taking umbrage with the dramatic shift in pace and tone. The first was well known for its surreal and often nightmarish locations along with showering the player in firearms in which to fight bosses that had dramatic and menacing entrances.

While the second has – relatively – more grounded locales to explore that deemphasises combat by reducing your arsenal to a boomerang and an ice pick, with bosses that kind of just waddle onto the screen with barely any fanfare. While Axiom Verge 2 is unmistakably an Axiom Verge game, right down to the crunchy sound effects waging war on your eardrums, it’s just a different kind of flavour of Axiom Verge. But this brings up the question: how faithful should a sequel be? I suppose the obvious answer is that a sequel should be an improved version of what came before, addressing issues and expanding on what was good in the original. Yet, the problem with this line of thinking is that it results in sequels without much of an identity of their own. The Bayonetta series always springs to mind in this regard, with Bayonetta 2 certainly sanding down some of the rough edges of its predecessor, but at the same time, a lot of the good it has is the very same good that could be found in Bayonetta 1. For all of its many faults, at least you can say Bayonetta 3 was trying to do something different with its combat system.

Axiom Verge 2 in many ways goes against what is expected of a sequel, taking on the old adage of addition through subtraction. While it is human nature to view addition as always better, there are many examples of where taking away has lead to improvement. Now, Overwatch 2 could be called a sequel in the same way a slingshot could be called heavy ordnance, but one thing I did appreciate is the reduction of certain mechanics, namely anything that slows, stuns or blocks. But when you say that Mei’s freeze gun no longer freezes people, it is easy to understand how that can be perceived as a negative, yet the overall result is matches that flow far better due to changes like these. Again, you can point the finger at the expectation that sequels should be bigger (and theoretically better), but as Potemkin from Guilty Gear will tell you “numbers only say so much.”

Perhaps it’s the name that’s the true culprit in all of this, since when you pick up a game called Axiom Verge 2, you expect more of what you enjoyed about the original. Somewhere in a parallel universe, Axiom Verge 2 might have gone under a different name and I do wonder if that would have made people be a little more forgiving of its differences. I mean, nobody ever complains that Bloodborne strays too far from the Dark Souls formula because it is clearly labelled as something different, despite there being many similarities between the two. On a cynical level, you could say that reusing a name guarantees a returning audience, we do live in a world where a name is so important that developers are outright just remaking games, so they can use the same title after all. I haven’t even played Resident Evil Village yet, but I’m going to play the Resident Evil 4 remake day one, not because I think it is going to a like-for-like copy of the original, but because it has Resident Evil 4 in the title.

When it comes to Axiom Verge 2, it can be easy to sit there, holding a glass of 1811 Chateau d’Yquem, pinky extended, claiming that the ignorant masses just don’t understand the value of something different, but I’d like to believe we’ve all had that moment where more of the same would have suited us just fine. I remember passing up Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts because they put cars in it, and I didn’t want cars in it, I wanted the game I played as a kid but with prettier graphics. Though, many years removed from that feeling, I tend to side with sequels going in an unexpected direction rather than just adding to what was already there. Not to mentioned that developers these days are so damned skilled, that they usually succeed in bringing most of their ambitious plans to fruition at game one. Back a number years ago, sequels were usually a way to fully bring together concepts that didn’t quite reach their potential the first time around. Look at the Uncharted series for example, if Naughty Dog never went back to it, it would consist of a single mediocre game with some nice water tech instead of the blockbuster romp its known for today.

I understand the disappointment with Axiom Verge 2, there’s almost this unreasonable sense of betrayal when a developer decides to venture too far from its roots. But in the end I think the medium is a richer place with sequels like these, because after all, Axiom Verge 1 still exists, ready for you to play it, and after enjoying Axiom Verge 2 so much, I might just do that.

Hello, and welcome to the fifth instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is one of Blizzard Entrainment’s most mismanaged IPs ever: Overwatch 2.

The new lick of paint is quite nice…that’s good.

The first bite is with the eyes as they say, and it was a small but pleasant surprise that yes, Overwatch 2 does look a teeny bit better than Overwatch 1, with improvements made to lighting and texture work. I appreciate the more compact and cleaner HUD elements that provide improved clarity in the heat of battle, and added effects such as a large glow around players who are healing help you read the situation quicker. The second less well known bite is with the ears, and the redone effects of the guns simply makes the act of firing feel better, showing just how a little tweak to the audio can go a long way.

This game made me hate radial wheels…that’s bad.

Since I’m one of those degenerates that plays Overwatch on console, I use a controller, and so I find myself up to my eyeballs in radial wheels. Radial wheel for your emotes, radial wheel for your voice lines, radial wheel to inform your team to group up in which they will subsequently ignore. And now we have a radial wheel for the clumsily implemented ping system. I mean holy bananas Blizzard, who in the chaos of battle is going to have the time to hold left on the D-pad and then select the “there was an enemy just here” option, when at any second said enemy could be running up to you with the intent to shoot your face off.

Hooray! Finally some new content…that’s good.

Yes! Cats and dog are finally working together, it’s snowing in Hell and there is new stuff to enjoy in Overwatch! New Heroes such as Junker Queen from the Coalition of Mad Max Fans (i.e. Australia) and Kiriko of the United States of Wall Climbers (i.e. Japan) give returning players something to sink their teeth into. New maps give off a strange – but welcomed – sense of unfamiliarity as you learn their layouts. And lastly there's a new mode called Push, in which two teams fight for ownership of a giant robot who is eternally enslaved to push either a blue wall or a red wall.

Though the new content is very late to the party…that’s bad.

Yet, with all this praise of the new stuff comes the nagging question of “why did it take so long to arrive?” The answer is Blizzard wanted to justify the existence of a sequel (and as such, a new way of monetisation), which did benefit the company, but did not benefit the fans who decided to stick around for the years where Overwatch was bereft of any meaningful changes. To make matters worse the game isn’t even finished, with the co-op story – in which the sequel was wholly advertised on in the very first place – yet to be released.

Supports have seen some love in the health department…that’s good.

As someone who has put the most time into the Support class (because let’s face it, no one wants to play as the healer in Overwatch), I really, really appreciate the new change that all healers automatically recover health after a certain amount of time. It removes the need of having to stay glued to a teammate and sometimes even lets you run the offensive game on people. And what I love the most is that my Zenyatta can now kick your Genji off a cliff, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOU GENJI PLAYERS DESERVE FOR CONSTANTLY SPAMMING THE “I NEED HEALING” LINE AS YOU RUSH STRAIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE ENEMY TEAM LIKE A DUMBASS! So yeah, good change.

Prepare to grind for those Heroes folks…that’s bad.

It's all sunshine and rainbows now if you’ve purchased the original Overwatch, since you have access to all three new Heroes right from the get go. But as additional Heroes come in, Blizzard (in between fighting off lawsuits) is going to be asking for some serious commitment in order to unlock them. Overwatch is very counter-pick dependent, so the thought of not of having access to every Hero sounds less than ideal. It’s a bad move, since it sours the idea of getting back into the game when a new Hero drops. Even worse is that brand new players have to play a 100 matches to unlock all of Overwatch 1’s roster, so if you don’t own the original, you are essentially getting the worst experience possible.

Tanks now feel like a, well, like a tank…that’s good.

With the Tank class now flying solo, this opens up the opportunity for them to become even more beefier. As the Tank you are bestowed the power of a leader, the one pushing your comrades towards victory, the unshakeable rock that centres the team. Conversely, when the enemy Tank rolls up on you, there’s this sense that a huge threat is upon up, and with a healer backing them up, they can be a real tough cookie. And you know I’m serious when I use the words “tough cookie” because no one would ever use that phrase lightly.

The queues are long for both Damage and Tank now…that’s bad.

Since now the Tank class is down to singles and everyone wanting to be the funnest class (you know, Damage), unless you want to play as the aforementioned least-popular-class-in-the-game Support, you're looking at a hefty wait time. You can play Open Queue, but of course it’s mostly full of impatient people who don’t want to play Support. Overwatch 2 feels even more geared towards Role Queue than its predecessor, so it is almost a must at this point if you’re looking for the ideal experience – or at least if don’t want to hear people complain about why there isn’t a healer on the team.

Shield-topia is no more…that’s good.

I remember – many a moon ago – playing a match on Temple of Anubis. And what stuck out in particular with this match is how it represented everything I hated about Overwatch 1. Two teams, absolutely bathed in shields, just continuously firing at each other, not moving a damn inch as the time ticked down to zero. Overwatch 2’s shield usage has been dramatically reduced, resulting in firefights that are a lot more dynamic. Chokepoints are no longer the ultimate fun killer they used to be, and the overall faster pace is so, so welcome.

Enjoying this game is like eating a delicious chocolate cake that someone has spat on…that’s bad.

The term unethical consumption comes to mind when playing this game, mainly because Activision Blizzard is getting buried under an avalanche of lawsuits due to some let’s say questionable behaviour. It’s one thing to wonder if the multi-billion dollar company that made the product you’re using is treating its staff like garbage, but it is another to actually know that‘s the case. This unfortunately taints all of the excitement of Overwatch 2 with an undercurrent of guilt.

So is Overwatch 2 good or bad?

In so many ways Overwatch 2 is made for the That’s Good, That‘s Bad format, since every moment of praise can be countered with a moment of disdain. It all comes down to the fact that these changes (while renewing my enjoyment of the game) should have come far sooner. And Activision Blizzard’s contempt for the player (and its staff) isn’t making Overwatch 2 any easier to like.

Hello, and welcome to the fourth instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Awe Interactive’s rhythmic rogue-like first-person shooter BPM: Bullets Per Minute.

Shocker: the music is ear candy…that’s good.

It would quite embarrassing if the game about shooting to the beat had a soundtrack that wasn’t fun to shoot to the beat now wouldn’t it? Luckily when it comes to the music, BPM knocks it out of the park with the ball shredding a guitar as it soars through the air. The thumping heavy metal will certainly get the pulse rising, which is good because as rogue-likes tend to be, you will be hearing these songs a lot, especially the first track. Progressing isn’t just satisfying because the game makes you earn every new level, but also because it means audibly feasting on another excellent song serving by Sam Houghton and Joe Collinson.

I have no idea what this item does…that’s bad.

I know some developers are intentionally vague in order to prod the player’s curiosity, but it would be nice if sometimes I could get a decent explaining of something. Such as when I equip a shield and the description of its effect is simply “cleaving.” What does cleaving do, hell, what does curse do, and what’s the difference between the Precision and Range stats? Some mechanics are explained easily enough so it is kind of baffling as to why instances like this crop up. It adds some unnecessary frustration to any new player’s experience, and it discourages experimentation when you are far into a run.

Damn this gameplay is addictive…that’s good.

The hallmark of any good rogue-like is that one-more-run feeling you get when you fail an attempt, that push to try again because you believe you could do better. This is pretty much down to its central mechanic: matching your shots, reloads and dodges to the beat of the music. BMP is a game that absolutely sells itself on its gimmick (a very good gimmick mind you), which turns an otherwise humdrum FPS into something truly engaging. And the way your gunfire acts as another layer to the music that you have control over is the icing on the cake. I would sometimes shoot and reload down empty hallways simply because it sounded just so damn cool.

Easy mode is some kind of prank…that’s bad.

An easy mode where a single shot can do a quarter of your health is…let’s say a bold choice to make. There is a practice mode but it only gives you access to the first four levels, so you need to put it on easy if you actually want to see credits. It’s the inclusion of the word “easy” that really boils my noodles to be honest, since if it was just named "normal" you could make the argument that a high level of challenge is the standard for the game. But easy mode as it stands feels like the developer almost taunting you, lambasting your lack of ability to even beat the mode for little babies.

The art style is certainly unique…that’s good.

I know this is going to be a divisive opinion, because it is a divisive art style to be sure. Yet, I really dig the look of coating the entire level in a singular colour, which really helps to enforce an oppressive atmosphere. Deep blood reds, smokey yellows and stark greys being almost the extent of BPM’s colour spectrum unquestionably creates an intense look, with even the lighting itself pulsing to the rhythm of the beat. It adds up to something that perfectly blends with the unrelentingly difficult gameplay.

But sometimes I wish I could see more than just the art style…that’s bad.

This is an issue mostly with stages that use warm colours since the various enemies you fight also use warm colours. As you can imagine this makes things difficult to take in as you are whipping your gun around to set your sights on the next target, or at least trying to. It gets even worse when you construct a build that involves constantly firing multiple giant fiery projectiles, which renders the screen so intensely bright that even the lava from Dark Souls 1 would be impressed at its retina-scorching ability.

The game’s got some spice when it comes to variety…that’s good.

The absolute poison of rogue-likes is a lack of diversity in runs, but BPM has no such issue. Things start out fairly normally on your first few tries but then you start to see variations in the levels and even the bosses. Icy floors, pitch darkness and reduced gravity are all challenges that can be thrown at you, while bosses can changes to their attacks, health and behaviour depending on which variant you get. Additionally, you’re able to unlock different characters with their own unique play-styles and load-outs making sure there is plenty of reason to dive back in.

The size to threat ratio is a little unusual…that’s bad.

There are many unique things about BPM, and one of those things is the fact that the most dangerous foes in the games are also the smallest, which is something I don’t think the developer intended. There were builds I was running in which I could absolutely shred bosses in seconds with ease, but when it came to anything that was tiny and flying, I would be shook to my core with fear. And so we find ourselves in the strange situation where a colossal stone man is less of a challenge than a room full of flies who ceaselessly pelt your ass and manage to skilfully dodge your every shot.

So is BPM: Bullets Per Minute good or bad?

If you can get over the difficulty wall that you’ll face plant into when starting this game, there’s a lot to dig into here. Its challenge will make mastering the gameplay be extremely rewarding and the different variations of levels and bosses adds a nice uncertainty to runs. If you do bounce off the game at least you’ll get a fantastic soundtrack out of it.

Hello, and welcome to the third instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Daniel Mullins’ deck builder Inscryption.

Major spoilers ahead by the way, so if you're going to play Inscryption, do so before reading this!

I made a card with a robot that has a gun called Dr. Help You on it…that’s good.

As you unwind the ball of tangled jewellery that is this game, you’ll discover that it’s more than just about playing a card game in a dank cabin against someone who sounds like a low-pitched klaxon. Your adventures will see you journey into a retro 16-bit top-down world to challenge the four Scrybes and prove your mastery of a children’s card game, and eventually you’ll find yourself in a high-tech dungeon crawl against a DM who is about as good at coming up with names as they are as good at not being a complete asshole. There’s plenty of fun and interesting ways Inscryption puts several dents into the 4th wall without it ever undermining itself, which is quite the balancing act.

The live-action parts have a university film student vibe about them...that’s bad.

There is one exception to that 4th wall breaking that I did not much care for, however, which is when the game pulls all the way back to reveal that you’re playing as some guy called Luke Carder (I assume that the name Derick Deck-builder had already been taken). What gets my knickers in a twist about these sections is that they are just so tedious to get through, and they aren’t particularly well acted either. By the time I was pulled away from the part of the game I was actually invested in for a third time, I was seriously thinking about skipping the whole section just so I could start playing again.

The true Inscryption starts at Kaycee’s Mod…that’s good.

Far from being a game with a couple of neat gimmicks, Inscryption actually has an addictive card game nestled at its centre. And fortunately, once you've complete the story you get access to Kaycee’s Mode, which allows you to play Leshy’s version of the game as much as you like. Featuring new cards to collect, new challenges to tackle and even a secret boss, means that I’ll will be dipping back into Inscryption now and again to complete another run. No matter how good a story is in a video game, sometimes you just want the pure, unadulterated gameplay without having to skip through dialogue informing you that your deck composition sucks.

But there’s no Kaycee’s Mod of the P03 section…that’s bad.

As I mentioned before, the final act of Inscryption has you trapped playing the dungeon-crawler edition of the game, and it is quite possibly my favourite part. So it’s a shame that it doesn’t receive a Kaycee's Mod version like its Leshy counterpart. It would have been a treat to go back and amass new cards, face harder challenges and defeat its very own super hidden boss. I understand that perhaps Daniel couldn’t commit the resources for all of that, but still, I can dream…I can dream.

Disturbing, funny and heartfelt: Inscryption has got it all…that’s good.

What impressed me about the story is how effortlessly it can switch gears from a comedic Yu-Gi-Oh reference into a character’s frantic final moments before they are wiped from existence, and not have either part devalue the other. Inscryption for the most part is a dark and gruesome game, as evidenced when you use pliers to perform some impromptu dental work, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make you laugh or even feel a little sorry for the denizens of its world. Daniel Mullins has a great ability to blend several tones together without the result becoming horribly jarring mess.

The puzzles are a little inconsistent…that’s bad.

What do you want the puzzles to be Daniel? Do you want them to be fun little diversions to vary up the gameplay or do you want them to tie down the brain and punch it repeatedly in the frontal lobe. Inscryption can never to seem to make up its mind, with puzzles that are so easy they almost seem like an intentional joke, to puzzles that had me floundering around like a fish asked to explain the inner workings of the hadron collider. Some of the simplest ones sat only a mere few steps away from the most complex, which probably caused me the most puzzlement of all.

An ending about knowing when to say goodbye…that’s good.

When the world of Inscryption slowly gets deleted byte by byte, you are left playing cards as usual with the three remaining Scrybes, and it’s a wonderful moment as you see them deal with the eventual end. Even Leshy, who had been nothing but a tormenter to the player shows a glimmer of humanity, as he laments about not being able to play with you longer, admitting that your presence gave him a sense of fulfilment. But it’s Magnificus who comes across as the most tragically desperate figure, as he tries to play on in spite of the world falling apart. His last action to shake the player’s hand is ultimately unsuccessful as he disappears forever.

It doesn’t know when to stop digging the rabbit hole…that’s bad.

That’s kind of the thing about these games, there always needs to be another layer to be uncovered. The final layer of Inscryption is the resolution of those live-action scenes with Luke, and it turns out that the floppy disk contains something bad. As to what that bad actually is, who knows? It’s something that I suspect the game wants fans to piece together, but to be honest I couldn’t care less what it is. I got my ending when Inscryption was deleted, not when a game company sends someone to kill a card-obsessed influencer because of something I can’t be bothered to find out.

So is Inscryption good or bad?

When making something as experimental as this game, the higher the chance an element will prove irksome. Yet, this is a gamble that absolutely pays off with Inscryption, with constant (and usually delightful) surprises keeping me enthralled. And in the end, all the gimmicks are backed-up by a very good card game.