The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD – 12 years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/28/2025
Posted in: Nintendo, Retro Consoles, Wii U. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: HexaDrive

Release Date: 09/20/2013


Available Exclusively On

This is a game I have been trying to finish for years. I started the game three times on a Dolphin emulator and lost my save (I never owned a Gamecube growing up), and I finally gave up. I wound up selling my original Wii U before this game was released and missed out, but now that I have a Wii U again, I can finally complete the game, and I sure did, but with a walkthrough because boy, oh boy, is this game more massive than I ever imagined. While Nintendo games tend not to be very story heavy or deep, Wind Waker HD does have a small story that seems to only have a cut scene every 10 hours of gameplay when you hit a new section of the story. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like much is going on until the final chapters of the game, but that’s okay. We all play Zelda for the gameplay and atmosphere.

There is a lot to dissect with this game. The premise of the game makes you think this is a simple “kids” adventure due to the bright and colorful graphics and Toon Link design. You start out on an island and get to know the gameplay loop just like in any Zelda game. You fight an old man to learn combat, you pick up pigs to learn that you need to solve puzzles, and you eventually swipe grass to get rupees, which is the in-game currency (and like in every other Zelda game). Once you get aboard the Red Lions, you will set sail on an eye-wateringly large ocean that is divided into a grid system. You need to use the Wind Waker to change the direction of the wind; otherwise, going into a headwind will cause you to barely move at all. This is the first insanely annoying thing about this game. If I had the Gamecube version this alone would make me quit playing. Why is this a thing? At least in the HD version you can get the Swift Sail in an auction long before you would in the Gamecube version which not only lets you move faster but also lets you ignore the wind direction.

With that first annoyance aside, Wind Waker is a true adventure. You can sail anywhere and see an island, jump on the island, and see what it holds. Most of the time you will need an item to solve its puzzles, but some of them don’t need one. There are 28 squares to discover in the game, and you can do this right off the bat if you want to, but it’s best to leave the sailing discoveries for when you have the Swift Sail. One baffling design decision was the need to feed a fish in each square that will mark on your map the island that’s there. I felt this took away the adventure and discovering-for-yourself part of the game, as once you enter the square on the map, it should unveil what island is there. This is one of many tedious side quests that just aren’t needed. The upside to this is that every fish will give you a hint about the island on the square, but I felt this wasn’t really needed as they are pretty vague anyway.

Like many other Zelda games, there are dungeons to explore that advance the quest further. You will sometimes have a red circle on your map that points to where you need to be, but sometimes the way to go is rather vague and hard to figure out. You will get lost quite easily during certain portions of the game. I feel the dungeon design for Wind Waker isn’t as good as previous or later games. The early ones are very short, and they all feel rather labyrinthine and hard to navigate later on. Some of this is remedied with pots you can jump into to warp to other parts of the dungeon, but they need to be discovered and uncovered, so even these are hidden around, which is annoying. Most of the puzzles in the dungeons vary, using the same ideas throughout the game, such as lighting sticks on fire, platforming, combat, block pushing, etc. The puzzles vary greatly, and no two are usually alike, but I did find some elements within that bring the experience down a tad. Platforming isn’t great in this game. There’s no jump button, but Link will just hop right off the ledge with nary a breath on the analog stick. This caused many deaths and the restart of combat sequences. When you die, you restart that room, but if you lose all your hearts, you head back to the beginning of the dungeon, and every enemy respawns.

Combat is actually pretty good this time around with a lock-on system and some fast-paced animations and action. Swiping three-button to five-button combos is swift and fast, and you can even do a 360 swipe. When you lock on, you can use items without having to manually aim, such as the grappling hook to get items from enemies or bombs. Many enemies can be dodged or avoided, but boss fights are pretty unique despite being pretty easy. It’s the usual three-round ordeal after finding out what the attack pattern is and how to actually harm the boss. Dungeons play out just like other Zelda games with small keys to open doors to advance through the dungeon, and these are acquired through puzzles or combat. The goal is to get the Boss Key, but you also will acquire items to advance through the dungeons and explore islands on the overworld map.

Most of the side quests in Wind Waker are pretty tedious and are needed to be completed because the infamous final section of the game requires you to pay Tingle a large amount of rupees to decipher the Triforce maps. This has been reduced a lot in the HD version by about a third, as well as the horrendously tedious quest itself of getting 8 Triforce shards and only three Triforce maps. I don’t understand these things in Japanese games. There’s also another tedious section in the form of a boss rush in which you need to defeat all four bosses a second time, but at least they’re easier and don’t require as many hits. With that said, there are also treasure maps, nearly 50 in the HD version, that lead to heart containers and rupees. The rupees are much needed for the end of the game as well as for buying some heart containers by either paying to do mini-games or using the auction house. Everything is eventually connected, and while a lot of the content is optional, it does make the endgame easier if you just complete most or all of it.

This can extend the game time by nearly 20 hours when doing so. I spent more time exploring, finding treasure maps, completing side quests, getting heart containers, etc., than on the main quest itself. I had a lot of fun doing all of this. Not much feels like a chore, outside of some quests being nearly impossible to figure out without a guide. Digging up treasure chests gets old after a while, but it’s doable. I didn’t care for the submarines or the infamous combat gauntlet of 50 rooms of enemies towards the end of the game. The reward is well worth it, but it did feel tedious. Despite the minor issues, the dungeons and islands all feel different. There are so many different puzzle types and platforming sections that you can shake a rupee at it; it’s absurd. Let’s also talk about the titular Wind Waker itself. This is a conductor’s wand that’s used to make songs you find throughout the world that are needed to advance in dungeons and do things like change the direction of the wind and cycle night and day, which are also used for puzzles. It’s fine, but not nearly as memorable or as special as the Ocarina. You use the gamepad touch screen to swipe the direction of the arrows, and the songs will show up on the touch screen for easy reading, but I found the Wind Waker not as memorable or interesting as the Ocarina. The game would have been fine without it.

The visuals of the game really come to life, making this one of the most iconic and artistically unique games ever made. There was a lot of backlash back in the day with the cell-shaded art direction feeling too “kid-like” when many gamers wanted a darker, more mature Zelda adventure. The HD version makes the colors pop and come to life outside of bringing many quality-of-life changes to the game itself. Many critiqued the game for having too much bloom effect, but I didn’t mind it so much. Things from increasing the wallet size to using the gamepad as a navigation tool for the map and item management really go a long way in a game where you use these things constantly.

Overall, Wind Waker HD adds a lot of changes to make the game more enjoyable and really enhances the visuals to an eye-wateringly beautiful level. The core game itself has some issues, such as the early dungeons being short and easy, the weird late quests tedium, such as the Triforce shard and map quest, and the repeating boss fights, but this was significantly made more tolerable with these being cut down. Having access to the Swift Sail much earlier in the game helps quite a bit too. I found the Wind Waker itself wasn’t a very exciting object and doesn’t match the greatness of the Ocarina. It honestly could have been scrapped, and the game would have been just as good.

Many of the side quests can be tedious but are doable, but a lot is easy to miss without a guide. The many treasure maps, chests, heart containers, and secret items will be totally missed on your first playthrough without a guide. I highly recommend a guide on the first playthrough to get to see most of the game. I found the story forgettable, and while the combat is better than previous games, it’s still nothing special. In the end, Wind Waker as a whole is a love-it-or-hate-it type of game due to the vast ocean you need to explore, which puts a literal ocean between you and the main quest that drags everything out to a 40-50 hour adventure.

The Fall – 11 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/24/2025
Posted in: Linux, Mac, Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, Retro Consoles, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Wii U, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Over the Moon

Developer: Over the Moon

Release Date: 05/30/2014


Available On

The idea of robots taking over humans has been an age-long discussion, but what if they were designed to help us instead, no matter the cost? That’s the idea that The Fall presents to players. You play as a pilot who has crash-landed on a planet, but his AI known as A.R.I.D. (autonomous robotic interface device), kicks in and uses the advanced smart suit to basically puppeteer the pilot’s body around trying to find medical attention. The pilot lands on a derelict planet run by an AI called the Caretaker, who is examining and studying ARID for unknown reasons. The story, despite being very short, is done very well thanks to excellent writing and voice acting. Not a single line of dialogue or moment is wasted. This is an incredible premise and idea that I want to see more of. The Fall is a Metroidvania-lite, but with its own identity. Something that the genre has seen little of today with the explosion of indie games being produced.

The game is surprisingly complex for what it is, with a pretty advanced control layout. You can walk around in a 2D plane, but jumping and combat are limited. You must use the flashlight on your pistol or light the path ahead, as the game is very dark and is mostly underground. When you shine your light over objects, a context piece of text will appear describing it or allowing you to interact with it. The majority of the game is puzzle-based, relying on an inventory system to combine and interact with the right object. The game is broken up into sections, with the longest being the testing center that the Caretaker puts you through. Many puzzles are actually quite fun and clever, but a few can take a weird obtuse angle and make little sense on how they are solved.

Combat in The Fall is crunchy and powerful but very limited. Other androids will try to attack you, but very limitedly and only during scripted events. You can hide behind cover and pop out to deliver a headshot. You must switch to the laser sight for better accuracy. You can sneak up behind enemies and kill them or advance on them as they will take cover as well. The shots are impactful and crunchy. The combat doesn’t overstay its welcome and is used at the right times. Of course, you can’t use your gun for the first third of the game, as abilities need to be unlocked, such as faster fire rates, the gun itself, and other suit abilities.

Sadly, the game features a lot of backtracking, meaning you will be going from one end of a level to the other quite often, and this is the most tedious part of the game. I understand that this is part of a Metroidvania, but you aren’t going back to a level once you have the upgrade and can access new parts of a level. You just run back and forth finding parts of a puzzle, hopefully having the correct part, only to realize you don’t or it’s for another puzzle somewhere else. It’s not game-breaking, but it does get old pretty quickly. Once you have read all the text and discovered every part of the level, the adventure part of the game kind of disappears, and all that’s left is the tedious process of solving puzzles and running around.

The atmosphere and graphics are fantastic even today. The game has a surreal feeling of almost transporting you to the world thanks to its great sound design and visuals. While there is a lot going on in the foreground, most of the atmospheric stuff comes from what’s going on in the background. A lot of the background stuff can give you a visual cue as to what’s going on just from one glance. A giant cavern, the outside of a spaceship through the windows, etc. The few occasions with spoken dialogue are great, and you really hang on every word thanks to the great writing.

Overall, The Fall is a fantastic atmospheric Metroidvania-lite with great writing and tense gameplay with gun sections that don’t overstay their welcome. ARID is a great character despite being a programmed robot, and the ending of the game is well worth your time. This game was one of the few indie games that marked the “indie revolution” of the early 2010s and helped kickstart the Wii U eShop for being known as a great indie platform.

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Undying Flower

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/17/2025
Posted in: PC Reviews, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: indie.io

Developer: Calcatz

Release Date: 05/16/2025


Available Exclusively On

Have you ever regretted your final moments with someone? Most of us don’t know when those final moments are, and when the time comes, it’s too late. The story of Undying Flower takes things a bit further and asks, Would you ever forgive yourself for killing someone you love? That’s the first question asked when starting the game. We are talking to a girl’s head with two flowers on the sides. She asks us questions that we don’t have answers to. In fact, we don’t even know this person. Who are we even? Without spoiling the story, we are a scientist who is experimenting on this little girl. Or at least that’s what it seems. I’ll leave you with this: The story is pretty good, and the ending was great and satisfying. Most of these short indie games usually falter quite a bit on the story, but this one was well done. There are enough twists here that in the 2-3 hours, you will be hooked.

There’s not too much gameplay here either, but that’s par for the course for most indie adventure titles. While not quite visual novels, they feel more like interactive stories than games, and that’s fine, but these are difficult games to get right. The story, setting, atmosphere, and characters need to hook you right away. While there are only two characters in the story, don’t let this perturb you. This means the short story can laser focus on just these two characters. The girl and her grandpa. What unfolds gameplay-wise is walking around a room and interacting with highlighted objects. We zoom to the two faces. We can hear Her Story or His Story. They are really short. Just a few sentences to give you the context of this object. This really helps build this moment in these lives that we are witnessing. The writing is really well done and strays away from the abstract poetry that most indie adventures tend to lean towards. Each face will show different animations of emotion based on how you answer them, but the answers don’t really change the story.

There are a few rooms with objects you interact with. This takes up around the first half of the game. The second half involves a puzzle in which you select mementos to create a memory based on the statement the girl is telling you. I found this too abstract and nigh impossible to get the combos right. Thankfully, after one minute the help kicks in, and if you get objects right, they will turn green. You’re not just selecting the memories you went over but creating new ones with these, and then these get added to the pool of selections, making it a convoluted mess. Thankfully this section is short, but afterwards most of the gameplay is done, and the final 20-30 minutes are just narrative.

The visuals are great, with a lot of abstracting black and white with splashes of color. While the female scientist model doesn’t look great, the rest of everything does. The art style is superb, with some amazing orchestral melodies and harmonies playing to tug at your heartstrings at the right moment. What helps is that this story is very relatable. Anyone as a teen can relate to what the girl is going through with her grandpa; we have all been there. We have also all beat ourselves up over something we blamed ourselves for that was out of our control. This can really hit home for those that have experienced anything similar to the story.

What’s here is a short narrative piece with relatable subject matter. With fantastic music, great visuals, solid writing, and a laser focus on just two characters, we go through a roller coaster of human emotion. Don’t come in expecting a ton of gameplay, and give the matching puzzle at the end some grace, and you might just wipe away some tears at the end.

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Silent Hill: Origins – 18 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/06/2025
Posted in: PlayStation 2, PSP, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Climax Group

Release Date: 11/06/2007


Available On

Silent Hill was nearing the end of its life back in the mid-2000s. The series peaked with Silent Hill 3, and it seemed that Konami and Team Silent just struggled afterwards. While Origins was supposed to bring the series back to its roots and feel similar to Silent Hill 2, Origins was the first Western-developed game in the series, which was done by the now-defunct studio Climax Group. The game went through development hell, being cancelled as a clone of Resident Evil 4 and then rebuilt within less than a year to feel more like the first two games in the series. Climax Group succeeded in capturing the haunting and surreal atmosphere of Silent Hill, including some great new monster designs, but faltered in a lot of other areas.

You play as Travis Grady. A truck driver who is passing through Silent Hill hits a girl in the middle of the foggy road. As you get out, you end up rescuing a girl from a burning house only to realize you were trapped in an occult scheme and need to save the girl from being sacrificed to a god. Sadly, the story is very vague, and there isn’t much in terms of explanation. There are only a few pre-rendered cutscenes, and in-game cutscenes are very sparse and don’t explain much. This could have been fleshed out more if Climax had more time on the game. The story is mostly forgettable despite having the ingredients for something great, such as returning characters. This is supposed to be a prequel to the original game, after all.

Disappointing story aside, the game at least looks and feels like classic Silent Hill. With fixed camera angles due to the lack of a second analog stick, Origins lets you flip the camera behind Travis with the L button and lock on to enemies with the R button. The controls work surprisingly well despite some weird camera quirks, like when the camera flips around and you’re pressing the analog stick in one direction, it will flip the controls on you, making you change the direction you are pressing. Small rooms can feel cramped, and enemies can be off camera and hard to see, including items. Origins has a lot of melee weapons because Climax thought it was a good idea to focus on more combat than exploration with this game. It just doesn’t work well. To compensate for missing items Travis will look at objects of interest, but it doesn’t work out super well most of the time as he will also look at doors which is useless. At least there are frequent save icons (red triangles) because this is a portable game after all. You need to be able to save often.

Shooting is fine thanks to the lock-on mechanic, but ammo is very sparse, and it’s better saved for boss fights or if you get ganged up on. Melee weapons are breakable. This makes the game insanely frustrating. Instead of having a single well-balanced weapon like in Silent Hill 2, you have to run around the town searching in nooks and crannies for as many melee weapons as you can pack. These all have different durability, and some heavy weapons are smashable and are one-time use. You will end up with enough weapons to pack into a small U-Haul. I mean, you’re carrying around IV poles, filing cabinets, and weight sets. It makes no sense and is insanely silly. I can understand wandering around the town for consumables like health drinks, first aid kits, and the ever-rare ampoules, but Climax screwed up twice and added a stamina system. This doesn’t do anything except make you run slower every 10-15 seconds and is insanely annoying. You have to use energy drinks to recover right away or stop and let Travis catch his breath. This can be annoying when running from enemies.

I also didn’t like how many enemies you ran into and the difficulty. Sure, in Silent Hill it is recommended to run from most enemies when able, but there are just way too many, and Climax opted to make them more aggressive like in the first game. They will always bee-line towards you no matter how far away you are and won’t stop chasing you. This leads to enemies mobbing you with 4-5 straightjackets on your tail. If you stop to fight, you are instantly dead. The game gets progressively more difficult and unbalanced as the game moves on, with trying to reserve as many of the big items for boss fights more difficult. At least the monster designs are cool and in line with the previous design DNA of the series. New enemies like the Remnant, which is invisible except for just a metal cage around their chest, and the Two-Back, which is a grotesque pile of flesh. These are inventive enemies, but they just aren’t fair to fight.

Puzzles are in line with previous titles in that they are pretty tough and require quite a bit of thinking. You usually find a manual or instructions and must flip switches or place objects in a certain order. Some of them get pretty out there, such as one puzzle that requires algebra to solve. You will definitely need a walkthrough for the first playthrough and put puzzles on the easiest difficulty, but it’s debatable whether or not this game is worth revisiting. Navigating the world is similar to previous games, with a large map that has red lines for areas you have visited. You can try doors, and if they are locked, they will get a red squiggle, and doors that open get a red line. Important items are marked on the map, and objectives are circled. It’s a little cryptic on where to go sometimes, and with a lot of enemies around, and some areas they respawn, it can be maddening. There’s also a new element thrown in that lets you transport to the Other World via mirrors and is required to solve puzzles. The Other World has more powerful monsters; they are more aggressive, and everything is rearranged with new areas opening up and others being blocked. The Other World looks awesome and captures the look and horror of previous games.

I really wanted this game to be better. I was sucked into the world and atmosphere of the game. The haunting music is just as good as previous titles, with Akira Yamaoka returning to do the music. The industrial and surreal soundtrack will get your blood pumping. The game also looks amazing on the PSP, being one of the most impressive games in its entire library, but it’s not a super fun game to play. If the combat was better, I could forgive the harder puzzles and the shortcomings of the story and lack of more interesting events. You mostly just go from area to area fighting a boss and enemies just to do it all over again. The areas aren’t super interesting in and of themselves, as they are areas we have seen already. There’s a hospital, an apartment complex, a motel, and a theater. The most interesting part of these areas was the Other World versions. I liked that there were some Easter eggs thrown in, such as multiple endings, extra options for a new game, and little tidbits like gory scenes, but it’s just not worth it. The game is mostly enjoyable on the easiest difficulties to counterbalance the poorly thought-out combat. At least the game isn’t too long, running at around 6 hours or so with a walkthrough.

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American Arcadia

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/29/2025
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Raw Fury

Developer: Out of the Blue

Release Date: 11/15/2023


Available On

There’s been an ever-increasing discourse between the people and corporate America. American Arcadia takes the worst of this and shows us the ugly side of being slaves to mega corporations. With clear inspiration from The Truman Show and Walt Disney’s vision of “The World of Tomorrow” and his original vision of Disney EPCOT, American Arcadia is a dystopian trip down 70’s lane with fantastic voice acting, a riveting story, and great pacing.

You play as two main protagonists. Trevor Hills and Angela Solano. The game has two perspectives. Trevor’s gameplay is a 2D side scrolling platformer similar to games like Limbo and Inside, and Angela’s more puzzle-heavy first-person sections have inspiration from 70s spy movies, not to dissimilar from No One Lives Forever, but without any shooting. Angela is a stage tech for the corporation Walton Media (clearly a dig at the Walt Disney Company) who ends up being recruited by an activist group called Breakout, and you end up helping Trevor escape where he lives while trying to shut down the corporation. The game’s pacing is fantastic. Constantly giving you new scenarios and never getting old or boring. The story is always moving and evolving as you’re playing with events unfolding with each character as you play the other. A lot of times there will be cool split-screen sections in which you need to do tasks with Angela while controlling Trevor on her monitor. I don’t want to give away too much plot to have this make more sense, but it’s really cool and well done.

Trevor and Angela are likeable characters, and while not super original, they leave an impact, including on the villains. There are sections of the game that teach you organically about the world of American Arcadia, including the lives of Angela and Trevor. Trevor’s sections are full of fast-paced platforming and push puzzles. These are not super complicated, but they are fun and help break up the chase scenes. Angela’s sections include quite a few puzzle types, from sliding puzzles and quizzes to some that are completely unique. This includes mostly hacking things to help Trevor get through areas. This was one of my favorite gameplay ideas. You can press a button to enter the camera mode. This changes the perspective of Trevor’s sections and you must manipulate electronics around him to get past guards and obstacles. Every single scene gives you something new. I can’t state that enough. There were a couple of frustrating sections in which I realized I was analyzing the scene wrong. Jumping onto the wrong platform, running in the wrong direction, etc. Nothing was ever so annoying that I wanted to quit playing. I do think the game should have given a couple of hints if you keep doing the same thing over and over and dying, but again, it’s not a big deal.

Visually, the game has a great sense of style. Inside of Arcadia, the world is stuck in the 70s. There are a lot of panning vistas of cool interior designs while Angela is in the present day, and it’s all less interesting to look at. I’m not a fan of the character designs. They are very blocky with no noses. It’s a bit off-putting, but the rest of the game looks great. I feel the biggest issue is that the game is too short. You can finish the game in about 4-5 hours, depending on how much you get stuck on the bigger puzzles. While the entire game is explained well and it feels like nothing is left out, I wanted to know more about Angela’s childhood and backstory, as we get to know mostly about Walton Media and Trevor.

As it stands, American Arcadia is one of the best games in this category. With constantly evolving gameplay ideas, fantastic voice acting, a riveting story with twists and turns, and a fun art style, there’s not much you can’t like. Going between Trevor’s 2D sections and Angela’s first-person sections is a lot of fun, and you never know what’s coming next.

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Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/21/2025
Posted in: Nintendo, Nintendo Consoles, Retro Consoles, Switch, Wii U. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 02/12/2021

Available On

There was never a time when a mainstream Mario platformer was bad—2D or 3D. In the early 2010s, Nintendo was dialing back the more open 3D Mario adventures in favor of more linear 2.5D platforming titles. This was sparked by the popularity of the New Super Mario Bros. series, which then spun off two 3D Mario games that were kind of in between that and Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario 3D Land was a 3DS exclusive, and while a lot of fun, it was way too easy and felt more for kids. The levels were super short; they could be completed in a matter of a couple of minutes, and overall, the game was a nice weekend rental. Mario games are something you don’t really need to 100% complete, as there isn’t any reward outside of personal satisfaction, but Nintendo also tried to change that with Super Mario Galaxy. The reward is the challenge.

3D World is 3D Land’s bigger console cousin. Released for the Wii U two years after 3D Land, and being the only mainstream 3D Mario title on the system, it was a huge success. Implementing a four-player couch co-op mode and introducing new power-ups while maintaining the short levels from 3D Land seemed to be a perfect match for most people. The game pushed the Wii U to its limits and looked fantastic, and it still holds up today on the Switch. Bright, colorful visuals similar to Mario Galaxy were a winning combination. The game’s world map has the same standard Mario layout we’ve seen since the beginning. You navigate a map in 3D that has each has a stage you can enter. There are some small things to do on the map, like enter slot machines to win power-ups and coins, bonus stages, Toad houses with presents, etc. These are neat but don’t really add anything to the game overall. The 3D map works well and is fine and gets its job done.

Mario can store one power-up while also using one in this game. Power-ups are suits with some old and a new like the Cat power-up, which allows you to sprint faster, swipe at enemies, and run up walls, which not only opens up new gameplay possibilities but can also make levels and challenging spots easier. Each stage flows like a typical Mario game. There are constant obstacles to jump across, pits to avoid, enemy patterns to learn, and coins to collect. Coins are simply used to give you lives. 100 coins equals one life, so don’t feel obligated to hit every single question mark block. Some of the later stages can be really tough, but nothing that can’t be managed if you are careful. What makes Mario games so beloved is how well balanced everything is, and there’s always something new coming at you. No two levels are the same. While many obstacles and hazards are the same, they are always used in unique ways. This is just the Mario design language that has been unable to be replicated to this day. It’s literally perfect. You also get to ride a water Plessie, which has his own levels and areas. He’s a bit tricky to learn how to ride and steer, but the sense of speed is awesome.

There is a huge variety of levels ranging from lava, ice, clouds, mountain peaks, and many other types of terrain. Big cities, dark mansions, spooky caverns, underwater caves. I can’t think of a single type of level that isn’t in this game. Most levels flow similarly, though. You get a couple of sections that show you what to expect in the stage. Is there a lot of platforming, enemy stomping, running, and dashing? Each level has three hidden green stars to collect and a stamp. This is your completionist objective to get them all. You do have to get some extra stars, as later boss stages require unlocking them with stars. Some of the stars are very well hidden or incredibly tricky to get without dying. If you die, you keep everything you found and can restart at the checkpoint or back at the beginning of the stage, but they are so short that this isn’t a huge deal. Of course, there are the occasional levels that are incredibly frustrating. Either a group of enemies is just in the wrong place or something just isn’t designed well within the level.

Mario can attack enemies with stomps, but if you have a power-up, you can attack from a distance or with swiping. The Fire Flower can throw fireballs, the Koopa suit can throw boomerangs, and the Tanooki suit can give you some extra distance, and if you die at least five times, you get the white Tanooki suit, which makes you invincible. This is optional as a box that sits at the checkpoint. This is great to use if you just want to power through a level and get the stars and stamp. Just remember if you get a single hit, you lose the power-up, and another hit makes you tiny. Three hits and you’re done. The boss fights are really disappointing, incredibly easy, and repeated often, which seems to be a trend with 3D Mario games at this time. I keep saying Mario, but there are other characters, and they all feel different to play. Luigi jumps higher, Peach jumps farther, and Toad is faster. Some secret areas require specific characters or multiple characters to activate. In single-player you can pick up the new cherry power-up to multiply yourself for these puzzles. However, controlling a bunch of characters at once is tricky.

Bowser’s Fury

If you don’t 100% the game, you can blow through the entire thing in less than 6 hours. It’s a very short game. Thankfully, the Bowser’s Fury DLC was included, and this is like a whole new mini Mario adventure on its own. You break away from the classic linear levels and are dumped into a small 3D map that has islands that play out similar to the 3D World levels. You can explore the areas surrounding these islands for small mini-games that award Cat Shrines, which are the new stars in this DLC. You need 40 to fight the final Bowser boss, but there are 100 in total. It’s a massive DLC that’s pretty much another game all on its own. There’s no new focus on new power-ups. They just took the 3D World stuff and threw it into an open-world design, and it works.

The start of each “stage” is marked by a gate you can walk through, which will tell you what the Cat Shrine goal name is and how many are left. Each island has five Cat Cards you can find, which will award a Cat Shrine. Each new run in the level allows for a new way to navigate the level. One might be platforming focused, while the next gives you a helicopter box, and you have to fly around the small island finding a key to open the cage to the Cat Shrine. The levels are just as well designed as the main game, and the final few stages are tough but fun. The new element here is that Bowser is a massive Kaiju monster, and every few minutes a rainstorm starts, and Bowser will start throwing stuff at you, and this also opens up gameplay opportunities. There are Bowser blocks hidden around some islands, and if you stand by them while Bowser is out, he will breathe fire on them and break them, usually revealing a Cat Shrine. The number of shrines hidden throughout this DLC is massive, and it can easily take a good 6 hours just to find all of them with a guide.

Once you do get enough Cat Shrines, you can fight Bowser in a new Giga fight. There’s a massive Cat Bell at the center of each of the three islands, and when Bowser comes out, this will light up and ring. Grab it, and you will grow into Kaiju Mario and can brawl Bowser. Here you need to dodge his attacks, swipe at him in any of the power-up suits, and power stomp him when he’s belly up. Throughout the storms, if you clear a lighthouse while he’s out, it will take some health away so he’s easier when you fight him. This is a really clever way to change up the gameplay, and this is something that has never been seen in other Mario games before.

Of course, the same old bosses from the main game are found throughout the DLC, which sucks, but you get Bowser Jr. to tag along with you, and he can assist in combat, or you can tap on giant question mark graffiti icons to get a power-up. A second player can control Bowser Jr. too, so this is obviously a more single-player focused DLC. In this DLC you can hold as many of each power as you want. Since you are on a giant set of islands, the entire game takes place in the ocean, so to get across large distances, you can use a Plessie, who also has his own sprinting mini-games to get Cat Shrines.

Overall, Super Mario 3D World feels great to play and is a lot of fun, especially with four players. My biggest gripe is that the game is way too easy and the stages are too short. After Mario Galaxy, I feel like the series hadn’t quite hit that stride until Odyssey came out. The physics of the game also feel a bit off. I often had some perspective issues where I fell off ledges and misjudged jumps because of the camera angle. These are just level design quirks that were overlooked or couldn’t be helped. I also dislike just how repetitive and easy the boss fights are. By the 6th world, I kind of felt like I was done with the game, and the final areas dragged a bit. Bowser’s Fury is a fantastic DLC that feels like it bridged the gap between 3D World and Odyssey. Overall, this is a solid game packed with content.

Reviewed On

Switch 2 Pro Controller
Docked

Mario Kart World

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/17/2025
Posted in: Nintendo Consoles, Switch 2. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 06/05/2025


Available Exclusively On

It’s baffling to see a game like Mario Kart lead a system launch, and while I’m not the biggest Mario Kart fan, I do enjoy them. They are fantastic to look at, with great controls, characters, and charm that very few other kart racing games have been able to copy. With this being a launch title, it needs to wow everyone and sell consoles. While Mario Kart 8 was ridden on for two console generations (yikes), this is the first new Mario Kart in over a decade. I do understand that this is a game that will get better over time, and while what’s here feels small in comparison to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, in due time this will be the definitive Mario Kart game, but the design changes that Nintendo made will require me to tell you to hold on to your copy of MK8D. Don’t toss that out just yet.

We will get the elephant in the room addressed now. There is an open-world aspect to the game, but it’s not what you would think. The idea of Mario Kart World is to meld races together into one seamless track rather than having individual tracks, and this doesn’t feel like it was executed well enough. I like this idea, as it helps the series evolve in a major way, and it feels good, but it means that some tracks feel slightly less unique as they need to fit into the world. There is more than just the track. Everything that you see outside of the track you can drive on, but at what cost?

Of course, there’s no story here, but you get plenty of new characters, returning and brand new to the series, as well as some unlockables. Your usual contenders are here: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, Wario, Waluigi, Bowser, Toad, Toadette, Donkey Kong, baby versions, etc. New characters include more obscure enemies and side characters like Pauline, which makes sense, but now we have Cow, Cheep Cheep, Lakitu, Nabbit, Monty Mole, and many more. These are odd choices, and I’d rather have more guest characters, but it’s neat that they are including other characters and not just playable characters from previous games. You can also pick many new vehicles with four different stats to look for. Handling, Acceleration, Weight, and Speed. Everyone will have their favorite, and the vehicle stats determine how you drive it. Handling allows for better drifting and how well you stay on the track around corners, acceleration will get you out of crash recoveries faster, and top speed will make it more difficult to get caught up to when you’re in first place and benefit on longer stretches. Vehicles transform like before into watercraft and aircraft, but I’m sad to see there is still zero customization. Let us make our own vehicle and decorate it. This is a huge missed opportunity, but one that can be added in at some point.

Racing itself feels as good as always. The sense of speed is great; vehicles drift and hit objects with a satisfying feeling. Speed boosts, ramps, jumps, and everything else that you run over and smash into are here. Many power-ups return, such as the colored shells, bananas, mega mushrooms, you name it. Nearly every item from past games makes it here, making this the biggest arsenal of power-ups in any Mario Kart. New items are fun, such as the hammer, which will knock opponents out and make them road obstacles; the ice flower, which slows you down; the coin shells, which will leave a trail of coins; and dash food, which is the new major item and is related to the Free Roam mode. This will give you a huge speed boost and change your outfit on the fly as long as more are unlocked. Power-ups give a huge strategic advantage on the road, with players having their favorites. You can still throw in front or behind you for various advantages. Combat on the road has never been better.

There are now new platforming elements tossed in, such as rail grinding and wall riding. This allows new vertical movement on the track. You can press the left stick left or right while jumping off a rail to wall ride, so it’s simple and easy. This is also used in Free Roam to get to hidden areas. This is a more advanced movement, but it’s really satisfying when you do it. Vehicle control in general feels better than ever, and everything just feels weightier, but not in a bad way. The updated physics really help, and you can feel it everywhere, from how you hit objects to the way water makes your car bounce. A huge update is the doubling of opponents on the track from 12 to 24. This does feel more chaotic but makes more sense with the tracks feeling wider and larger as a whole.

This leads me to the Free Roam mode and the Knockout Tour mode. The biggest addition is the Free Roam mode, and this is used to unlock new outfits by finding specific Dash Food spots with each character. You can select any character from the map, and you will instantly warp to that character. The major focus here is the P Switch missions, which kind of train you on how to play the game and learn more advanced movements and tricks. These are switches hidden around every course and are a lot of fun, but there is no reward for them outside of stickers. There are also Peach coins to collect and question mark panels to find, which also give stickers. This isn’t enough for a Free Roam mode. The world, despite looking good, feels empty and boring. There’s nothing to do outside of the collectibles. Once you find all of those, that’s it. There’s zero reason to go back in.

This leads to the Knockout Tour mode, which is a series of continuous races that link one track into another. This is essentially Elimination mode from Burnout if you are familiar with that. It’s a long endurance race that usually lasts around 5-6 minutes, and it’s a lot of fun. It allows a longer game of tug-of-war with opponents and really puts your skills to the test for a longer session. This mode is a lot of fun in multiplayer mode, which is the meat of the game. While finishing every cup in single-player is fun and helps you learn the courses, multiplayer is where most people will come back to. Both online and off. This also introduces the new Game Chat feature with video and audio, and it can be a blast to use. The course design is still top-notch despite needing to bleed into other courses. This allows for terrain regions from desert, beach, snow, ice, and various other types of terrain. The map makes sense and looks like a “world,” but it’s still very small and limits the amount of tracks available. I’m not sure if the sacrifice of more tracks was worth it to have this open-world design.

Sadly, many diehard fans will attest to this open-world design. It will mean adding more sections to the world to add tracks, and maybe one day we will get all of our favorite tracks back, but in an open-world form. There are a lot of little details added into the maps that you don’t notice before, like on the Mario Bros. Circuit, you can drive through a gas station and pit stop. There are food carts, vendors, downtown shopping areas, and other traffic driving on the roads outside of the courses. It is almost there and in some spots can feel alive, but something is just missing here to make it feel like a robust open world. I also feel like just one new mode is a crying shame, as more modes could have made up for the lack of tracks and middling free roam mode.

Visually, the game is fantastic. Clearly taking advantage of at least most of the Switch 2’s new hardware. Great lighting, full 1080p on handheld, highly detailed models, better textures and physics, and even HDR support. This is definitely the Switch 2’s killer app…for now. As the game stands now, it’s also not worth $80. There isn’t $80 worth of game here, but hopefully that changes with more updates added in. Sadly, this is a game that only time will tell to determine if it’s worth the money you paid and being Nintendo’s only major console game at the moment. Free Roam is a nice touch but lacks content, and Knockout Tour is the standout mode here. There are a lot of characters to unlock and many outfits, so there’s something here for everyone. Just don’t toss out that copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe just yet.

Nintendo Switch 2

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/10/2025
Posted in: Hardware, Nintendo Consoles, Switch 2. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

We finally made it. It took over 8 years, and what feels like a whole life ago, to get to the sequel. With all of Nintendo’s success riding on the back of the Switch. 2017 was a tough year. The first year saw little fanfare and releases for the console, and slowly but surely, the system skyrocketed to become the single best-selling console of all time, outpacing the almighty PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS. Around 2020 people wanted a Switch Pro, but instead we got other typical iterations of the Switch, such as the Lite and OLED. Both of these models were met with plenty of enthusiasm, but we saw no raw spec upgrade for the system. Ever. What people wanted was divided. Some wanted Nintendo to reinvent the wheel again like they did nearly two decades ago with the Wii, and some others just wanted more of the Switch, but just better. We got the latter.

Some Tech for Your Brain

The Switch 2 wasn’t announced with open arms. Not entirely. A lot of outcry has been about pricing, game ownership, and specs. What we got spec-wise was more than expected from Nintendo. While not quite surpassing the competition, it puts it right there next to them. The Switch 2 boasts a custom Nvidia chipset with Ampere technology. This puts the Switch 2 in the same ballpark as the RTX 2050 Mobile series GPUs, but it’s not a 1:1 scale. What mostly holds is back is the weaker CPU which is the same as the Switch1. Despite a more powerful next-gen GPU the CPU being weak means that games will need to be well optimized to push everything to the GPU as much as possible. Nintendo’s power was obviously scaled back for mobility, but the system uses more modern technology while docked, such as HDR, ALLM, VRR, and higher refresh rates, as well as PCM Linear 5.1 surround sound. We finally get more onboard storage at 256 GB, so a micro SD card isn’t an immediate purchase. However, Nintendo locked a lot of users out, as you can’t go grab that 128GB SD card that’s been sitting in a drawer. You need express-rated SD cards, which are quite pricey right now. While this isn’t a proprietary storage solution like Sony used to use, it does limit a lot of people and requires you to shell out more money for an already expensive console.

Unboxing a Slate

The unboxing experience isn’t anything special, and I’ve mentioned this with other modern devices. The focus is less consumer waste, less cardboard, no polystyrene, and fewer things to throw away. You get all the same things you got with the original Switch: Two Joy-Cons, a dock, an HDMI cable, a power cable, and Joy-Con straps. While these are essentially the same, they are also updated and new. For example, the power brick is now a detachable USB-C cable so you can replace the cable if it fails. The Switch 2, however, needs a more powerful power supply. The Switch 1’s 15 measly watts won’t suffice anymore. The Switch 2 uses 60W, so you will need to upgrade your power banks and charger adapters. If you have something like a handheld gaming PC, those will be more than enough, as they are usually 65W. The dock is new and updated. There is now a built-in fan, so it’s bulkier, but there is now a back cover that comes completely off, revealing the same ports: HDMI, USB-C, and LAN. We also get two USB-A ports on the side. It feels nice and solid, but it is not backwards compatible with the original Switch.

Hardware Overview: Joy-Cons of Madness or Greatness?

So, to get the biggest question out of the way, it’s uncertain if the new Joy-Cons will drift, but there are no Hall Effect sensors in these. They are apparently built from the ground up to avoid this, but only time will tell. With that said, they are slightly larger than the original ones and are much more comfortable to hold. The buttons are less mushy and have a more tactile click. Sadly, there’s still no real D-pad, but the clickiness of the buttons makes it feel a bit better. Here’s the other big question. What’s the deal with those magnets? It’s a real gamble, and somehow Nintendo pulled it off. They are incredibly strong. There is a new “trigger” switch on the back of the JCs that you pull, like ZL or ZR, and this activates a plunger that pushes the JC away from the console. The electrical connection is now a new connector slot that also adds stability. It’s a very satisfying feeling, and the new JC animations that play are nice. It’s such a strong magnet that you get a physical and audible snap when connecting them. There is an ever-so-slight wobble when twisting the system slightly, but it’s not noticeable when actually playing. We will see over time how these hold up mechanically. The JCs new controller dock is nearly the same, but it’s taller than wide. I still had hand cramps when using this thing, and sadly, I never really used it for the original Switch. This was reserved for people who used the JCs as a controller and, for the most part, was stored in a drawer for the last 8 years. The same will happen to this one.

Hardware Overview: Upgrade or New Machine?

The tablet itself looks nearly identical to the OLED tablet, but larger, with a 7.9″ LCD. While it’s not OLED, it does feature HDR and 120 Hz, just like you would get on the TV, which is on par with the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck OLED has a 90 Hz OLED display with HDR, and while this is a very nice LCD, it’s still not as crisp and vivid as an OLED display. It feels heavier and very solid. All of the ports and buttons are in the same place as the OLED model, but there are a few tweaks. There are now intake vents on the bottom of the system on either side of the USB port. This allows for more efficient cooling. The system is really quiet when the fans are kicked on. The kickstand is now a round plastic piece rather than a solid flap. It extends out more, just like the OLED, so this is a great improvement. The micro SD card slot is also behind here, and the system now takes express micro SD cards, which are a bit pricier than standard cards, but I’m sure the prices will quickly drop by next year. The game card slot has a pull-out flap that now has a metal box that sits over the game card. I’m not sure what this metal reinforcement was for, as I have yet to get ahold of a Switch 2 cart. One of my favorite new features is the USB-C port on top of the unit, which will help relieve strain on the bottom port when playing while charging or lying down. This seems like a feature taken from the handheld PC scene. Overall, the tablet itself takes the age-old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and I’m glad they went this route.

Software Overview: The Account Transplant

Nintendo has never been well known for efficient online features, and using their account features is an absolute nightmare. Don’t get me started on the Switch 1’s parental controls and ownership of digital games nonsense. With that said, this account transfer is similar to that of smartphones. You have to connect both units to a charger (super annoying), and you just begin the transfer on both devices. Now this initial transfer has to be done when initializing the system. If you cancel it, you have to reset the system back to factory defaults; there’s no option in the settings to do this. You can also do a server transfer if your Switch is dead or you no longer have it. This is to remotely wipe your Switch 1 once it’s connected back to the internet. This transfers all account stuff, offline saves, and digital game and DLC ownership. It does not transfer actual game data. You have to redownload everything. The third option is obviously for new Switch 2 owners without a Nintendo account, and you start from scratch. You can also just not do a system transfer if you have NSO (Nintendo Switch Online), as all your saves are in the cloud anyways, but it will still require you to make the Switch 2 your primary Switch device. This was a very painless process, and I had zero issues.

Software Overview: The Use Experience

It’s to no one’s surprise that the UI is mostly the same. It’s the same boring row of icons with a black or white theme. Yeah…no themes still. The UI is more “Nintendofied” this time around with cute sound effects for every system icon, and there’s an RGB-outlined swirl when you hover over something. It’s also snappier and more fluid, but it’s still the most basic UI of any modern Nintendo console. Thankfully the eShop has been completely fixed. It’s a new interface with videos that instantly load when hovering over icons, and it feels fluid. I also noticed the algorithm for recommended games has been immensely improved. No longer will you get shown mostly hentai or alarm clocks. It’s refreshing to see this, but overall the eShop hasn’t changed much, but it didn’t need to. It worked; it was just dog slow and locked up the Switch sometimes. There are new icons at the bottom of the screen now with Virtual Cards and GameShare; these are the only two major software updates the Switch 2 got. There’s also a new button on the Joy-Con, a C button, for Chat. This pulls up GameChat. Nintendo has finally gotten on board with live video and messaging.

Software Overview: DRM is the Future

Nintendo has two new features to implement further DRM; however, one problem is solved with this. The virtual cards are both cool and annoying. This leads to the new Game Key Cards that you can get physically but have no game on the card. This feels like Code-in-a-Box with more steps. It’s cool that you get a tangible item like a physical box, but it means nothing once the service shuts down. The Virtual Card system has fixed the parental control problems that plagued the original Switch. You now can just lend the digital game to a family member that’s in your family group. This is good for 2 weeks, and then you can renew it. This means your Switch doesn’t have to be the primary Switch that your child will use if you end up buying games on your account so they can use them. However, if you want to then play the game, you must revoke the card to load it onto your account again.

Nintendo has also implemented some way to brick your console and disable it remotely if you are caught hacking the services or modifying the Nintendo services in any way. This has been a misleading piece of info stating you don’t own your Switch 2 and will be bricked if you modify the firmware. This has been possible since consoles could connect to the internet. The Xbox 360, for example, would disable your Xbox account and ban it from the servers if you installed a mod chip and went online or hacked into games too often. This has been a standard practice since the mid-80s.

Software Overview: The Games: Updated and New

Let’s talk about why you even got this thing. The games. The launch lineup is really weak. One of the worst of any console launch, but the games themselves are fairly strong. With Mario Kart World leading the pack for Nintendo and Cyberpunk 2077 and Fast Fusion being the third-party showstoppers, if you really want to take advantage of the Switch 2’s hardware, these are the games to get. Some Switch 1 games got full Switch 2 upgrades, with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom leading the pack there, and a few others got free updates, such as Super Mario 3D World, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, and Super Mario Odyssey. The Switch 1 games aren’t always going to transition to the new system very well. If the Switch games didn’t support scaling in any way, the game could look more blurry and ugly even in handheld mode. Some games are going to need updates and will make a lot of Switch 1 games either unplayable or less enjoyable than the original console. Games that had unlocked frame rates or locked frames, like 30 or 60, will enjoy more stable gameplay. Some Switch 1 games are already getting these benefits without any update, including faster load times.

For 120FPS there is only one game that supports this and that’s Welcome Tour via a mini-game. The only confirmed game to have this feature is Metroid Prime 4 as of this writing. This is something that even the PS5 and Xbox Series X don’t have much of. Only Switch 2 games support HDR, VRR, and ALLM. These also have to be programmed into the game and not many currently support this with the small launch lineup that we got. I found that games do look and play great like you would expect and HDR works fine even on the handheld screen. While it’s not quite a vivid as an OLED it’s quite a crisp screen and looks good.

Early Adopters Need Patience

Just like with the Switch 1 early adopters need to be patient. While we have an entire backlog of Switch game to still play, there are some that don’t work, need patching, or simply will never work or get patched. Don’t throw away your Switch 1 just yet. There is an anemic Switch 2 game offering right now, and unless you really want any of those games, holding off for a year wouldn’t hurt. However, there’s also nothing wrong with getting one just to play Switch 1 games as a lot do run better. There are other issue like a lot of third-party controllers no longer work and need patches. All of my 8bitdo controllers don’t work or have issues, but they have already released firmware updates for many controllers. HDR isn’t perfect and needs some patching as well. The display itself only has 450nits which isn’t good for proper HDR. It’s better on the TV, but what’s currently available isn’t looking good.

See You In 2033

In the end, the Switch 2 currently offers a lot of value for mostly newcomers; those who skipped the original Switch. There’s also no loss in upgrading sooner rather than later because all of your games will work as long as they don’t require features from the Switch 1 that didn’t carry over. Yes, the launch lineup is weak and small, but the hardware is a massive upgrade over the original, and we should see some great things from Nintendo over the next couple of years. This will be a slow burn just like Switch 1 with only a couple of first party games announced for release this year. This is sadly due to Nintendo having to play catch up with their tech that’s been around for five years already. The Joy-Cons are more enjoyable to use and the mouse mode works surprisingly well, and the handheld display is great. We sadly don’t get much of a UI overhaul, but at least the eShop works as intended. It’s the Switch 1, but better which is what everyone wanted.

Avowed

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/06/2025
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox Series X|S. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Published: Xbox Game Studios

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Release Date: 02/13/2025


Available On

I have been longing for a cozy Western RPG. I can sink into them for weeks at a time and get lost in their lore, characters, world, and story. Skyrim, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Fable. These are just a few series that have given me worlds to do this with, and these are harder to come by these days. Avowed looked promising, but after Obsidian’s disappointing The Outer Worlds, I wasn’t so sure about this one. It looked like it played like a more modernized Skyrim, but a brand-new world is something that’s hard to get right. It was tried with Kingdoms of Amalur and failed miserably. The game world needs to feel interesting and nearly be a character in and of itself. For me, gameplay can normally come second to this because without something to be invested in, there’s nothing worth playing.

Avowed has a very interesting idea. You are Godlike. You are born in Eora, the same universe set in the Pillars of Eternity series. Specifically, you are in The Living Lands. You assume the role of an Aedyran Envoy for the empire to trek across the land and negotiate ways to have them join the empire. You also need to find a way to stop the Dreamscourge. This is a disease that is turning people into mindless “zombies,” for lack of a better term. You end up gathering four party members along the way while running around four large maps full of side quests, hidden treasures, and new Godlike powers to discover. The flow of the game plays out like most modern Western RPGs. You have a main quest, but if you see a landmark out in the distance, you can go there, and there might be a side quest. There are also bounty hunts for extra coin and better gear.

The combat system is similar to that in other first-person Western RPGs like Skyrim. You swing a sword or cast magic, hold down the attack button to do a powerful attack, and can block with a shield or larger weapon. What’s different here is the abilities you can acquire by leveling up and using ability points to unlock them. These can be bound 1-6 or by using a wheel as well as binding your companions’ abilities to order them to do things on the fly. The combat system has weight and can feel good in the beginning of the game, but it clearly has its flaws and gets old after quite some time. This is due to combat happening constantly and enemies being damage sponges. Skyrim and Oblivion worked because combat was over fairly quickly, and it wasn’t too frequent unless you were in a small dungeon. Despite having varied ability upgrades like adding splash damage, poison, or having effects last longer, I never felt powerful enough in this game. The Godlike abilities even feel useless. Even with fully upgraded equipment, I always felt like every enemy was a sponge unless I fought enemies that were at a much lower level than me if I went back to early maps. It doesn’t help that abilities use up essence, which runs out fast unless you have potions, which are expensive, and you can’t craft them unless you are a Druid. Lame.

This is all due to the game using equipment levels instead of player levels, which I absolutely hate in RPGs. This means no matter how many abilities you have, no matter how much you’ve dumped into attribute points, you will never be able to do any damage until your equipment level meets or exceeds the enemies in the area. This means upgrading armor and weapons, and each level has three tiers. Higher tiers and legendary equipment require rare items. This means hunting these rare materials down either in shops or in drops from enemies or certain chests. This requires looking it up online and constantly halting story progress. You can craft weaker materials or rarer materials, but it’s still a grind. I hate these multi-tiered systems that are there just to add to the grind. You can also use food items to cook food for temporary boosts in battle. Legendary equipment can only be upgraded with specific items too. There were many points that stopped my game because I didn’t have enough money to buy a higher-tiered weapon to advance through the next area. I then had to do things like side quests, bounty hunts, and just sell random crap to grind for coins. The economy system is very much broken in this game, thus the many mods out there that balance it out more. Rewards are piddly scraps even for beating large bosses.

On top of that, the equipment system itself is frustrating. Items like rings and signets only offer minor stat boosts, and armor only reduces damage and determines your stamina fatigue rate for the most part. You can use the same piece of armor through an entire map as long as you upgrade it. There’s not much fun in that. There are ranged weapons like flintlocks, bows, and rifles, but the reload time is very slow, and I found them useless unless you are specializing in those weapons. There are also elemental “grenades” that can be used to break barriers leading to hidden areas or damage enemies. Sure, it all works, but is this system fun and engaging? No. It felt like schoolwork trying to balance out my build.

A lot of the open areas have enemy groups, but they never respawn. Once they are dead, that is it for the game, so this requires you to go everywhere in the game and forces you to pretty much complete every quest, which is annoying. There are fast travel points scattered throughout, and the campsites are an isolated instance where you craft and upgrade. Exiting here allows you to change the time of day and whether to warp back to the last spot you were in or continue on. Side quests show up as blue exclamation marks on the map, and these are fairly uninteresting. They are just there for enemy fodder and don’t add to the lore like Bethesda games do or even The Witcher. Some games use these to expand on lore, like discovering a folktale in games like The Witcher or having individual side quests help explain or tell the smaller details in the lore itself through the mission. These are also usually clearly crafted and feel much different from main missions, but here you are just running around killing everything and collecting something for someone, which leads to a boring dialogue session.

That leads me to the lore, world, and characters themselves. The Living Lands look pretty but aren’t anything special. It’s stuff we have seen numerous times in Western RPGs. A volcanic area, jungles, giant mushrooms, medieval towns, dwarves, massive trees with twisting roots, etc. The game doesn’t have a particularly unique art style and looks like generic European fantasy. It’s not bad at all, just nothing special. The races in the game are the most original part. Outside of dwarves (who don’t look right, by the way), humans, and elves, there are the Orlans, who are a cat-like race, and the Aumaua, who are scaly, amphibian-like creatures. These two races were very interesting to see, and the NPC companions are really interesting to learn about and talk to. You can get to know them more in camp via a very long dialog tree that you unlock after major story events. Kai is a smart-mouthed Aumaua, Marius is a disgruntled dwarf, Giatta is a proud wizard, and Yatzli is a sassy and frisky Orlan wizard. The other NPCs, such as faction leaders, bosses, and various others, are pretty much forgettable. I never cared to finish out all dialogue options with most characters.

This is also an Unreal Engine 5 game, so it’s poorly optimized. While the visuals look good and there’s a lot of detail in everything, unless you have a modern PC, it will run like crap and rely heavily on frame generation. Lowering settings won’t give you much room to work with, and like other UE5 games, it is very VRAM dependent, which heavily affects performance. Anything under 8GB is pretty much useless. However, if you can use frame generation with AI upscaling or just run at 1080p or lower, the game does smooth out and play fine.

That leads to the overall world and wraps back around to the first question. Does this give me the warm, cozy Western RPG feeling from a game that I can’t wait to get back to? No. I couldn’t wait for this game to end, and it felt like it dragged out more and more as the game went on, mainly due to constantly having to upgrade my equipment, and getting the resources to do that was a long grind. I never looked forward to the next area, as every 50 feet was just another group of damage-sponge enemies. While there are plenty of enemy types, they are forgettable and fall under the same European RPG tropes, such as giant spiders, golems, generic enemies in armor, elementals, bears, etc. None of the enemies really stood out, nor did the bosses. Nothing in this game feels unique. Just copied and pasted from other games. Even with a more refined first-person combat system, the abilities don’t add much, and you just never feel like you’re getting the edge on enemies. Finding that really cool rare weapon behind a puzzle in the game doesn’t give you an edge. It might just be a weaker unique weapon that you need to upgrade more, which requires grinding for more materials. Sometimes these are worth more in gold than in use. It’s a crying shame that Avowed’s unique story and premise went to waste on such an unbalanced and generic game.

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Keyboard & Mouse

Onimusha: Warlords – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/02/2025
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Release Date: 01/15/2019


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Onimusha was a third-party PlayStation 2 exclusive franchise that did very well back in the day. I remember seeing these games on shelves for years at Blockbuster and game stores, and they never caught my interest until the third entry. Onimusha is essentially a Samurai Resident Evil with 3D polygonal characters over pre-rendered backgrounds and tank controls. In 2019 an HD remaster was released that vastly improved the game and made it more playable thanks to modern enhancements. These include things such as up to 1440p resolution, texture filtering, a 16:9 aspect ratio, re-recorded voice acting and soundtrack, and improved controls. You can now control characters with the left analog stick, which removes the tank controls. You can also switch weapons on the fly rather than through the menus like in Resident Evil. This bumps the score up quite a bit and makes it enjoyable to play.

You play as a samurai, Samanosuke, whose clan is at war with Oda Nobunaga. Oda is killed in battle, and he swears allegiance with demons to come back to life and take over Samanosuke’s clan. It’s a very paper-thin story and not very interesting, given that a quick run-through of the game is around 4-5 hours (3.5 with a walkthrough). There’s not much time to tell a good story. Sadly, even the characters aren’t anything to care about, as there just isn’t any backstory to them. The boss designs are cool, but the enemies feel like generic zombie samurais and monsters. The only really cool design is Guildenstern, who feels like something straight from H.R. Giger. The enemy variety is enough for this type of game, as you need to learn enemy attack patterns, so too many enemies would make the game more unbalanced.

The combat consists of a single attack button. You can lock on to enemies and do three-hit combos as well as block. It’s punchy and feels good, and each of the three weapons feels good to use. Enryuu is a heavy flame sword, Shippuu is a very fast double sword, and Raizen is a medium-speed short sword. Each weapon has an elemental attack attached to it that does massive damage and uses blue magic, so you only get a couple of uses, and each weapon has its own meter; it’s not a shared pool. You can gain more magic only from enemies dropping orbs or magic fountains near save points. So use it sparingly on bosses or to get out of a tough spot. You also use these magic powers to unlock doors to progress through the game. It’s imperative you focus on upgrading your magic first, or you will get progress locked and have to grind enemies. Enemies do respawn, which is annoying, but it’s needed to gain more red orbs to upgrade magic and weapons.

Armor isn’t upgradeable, but you can find two different sets of better armor in the game, but they are locked behind some puzzles. Some of the best items and jewels, which are used to upgrade max magic and health, are locked behind puzzle boxes. Clues are found in the form of books, and they can be kind of vague to decipher, but it’s manageable. There is a decent map system, so you can either look up a labeled map online or make one yourself. Like Resident Evil, you need to memorize landmarks to get around the game, as every room has a fixed camera angle. There is a bonus arena mode in which you descend 20 levels of waves of enemies to get a key to unlock the strongest sword in the game, but it’s not until just before the final boss, so this is mostly useful for second playthroughs. The arena is incredibly hard, so I recommend playing the game on easy first and then doing another playthrough on a harder difficulty.

Overall, Onimusha was a good attempt from Capcom to create another sub-genre of their Resident Evil games, and it was mostly successful. A simple but solid combat system, fun and challenging bosses, and well-designed levels will give you a fun weekend. Just don’t expect a complicated story and interesting characters.

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