Strap in for my tiered ranking of every Metroid game — from the ones I struggled to make it through to the ones I wish I could experience for the first time over and over again.
Tag: review
Twelve Reasons Why Twelve Minutes is the Worst Game I’ve Ever Played
Twelve Minutes does not have that excuse. As far as I can tell, it was created by a team of adults. No nepotism magicked it into existence, or gave it a starring role in Annapurna's 2021 lineup of games. It's sheer existence is a mystery — or, at least, a web that wouldn't be worth my (or anyone's) time to delve into. Because, put simply, it's the worst game I've ever played. And here are twelve reasons why.
The ’18 Best Games of 2018: Part I
If that title sounds like a lot, don't worry—this is a two-part list, and if you're pressed for time, either half should be an enjoyable respite from the apocalyptic rain of acid and flames that, if anything, should bring 2018 to a close. In the grand tradition of Mario Kart's Nitro and Retro halves (well, since Mario Kart DS at least), I'll be listing the best games I've played this year in two halves—first, games released in 2018; second, games released elsewhere (well, mainly in the past) that I first played this year. And maybe the sum of the two will be a bit long, but hey, there's a really awful pun near the end of this one (can you spot it?), and you can go grab some popcorn at the intermission.
You Might Have Missed: Night in the Woods
About an hour into Night in the Woods, a modern adventure game from a small team called Infinite Fall, Mae Borowski reuintes with her high school bandmates for practice. Since she'd left for college, their drummer—Casey—had disappeared, and their guitarist and singer, Gregg and Angus, had recruited another old classmate named Bea to take both … Continue reading You Might Have Missed: Night in the Woods
You Might Have Missed: Hollow Knight
My favorite moment in Hollow Knight came about a quarter of the way through my forty hour playthrough, when I descended through the Fungal Wastes and found myself in a giant pit at the center of a hidden village. Three mantises—for Hollow Knight's kingdom of Hallownest is a land of insects and bugs—sat on tall wooden … Continue reading You Might Have Missed: Hollow Knight
You Might Have Missed: Rune Factory 2
A game’s qualifications for this loosely-defined series of mine usually begin and end with my belief that not enough people have played it. And while Rune Factory 2 is far from an indie game, I doubt the cross-section of audiences that enjoy both intensive dungeon crawling and Harvest Moon-style farming-and-relationship simulators is all that large. … Continue reading You Might Have Missed: Rune Factory 2
Your Name: A Film on Reality, Seen through Fantasy
Your Name (Japanese title: Kimi no Na wa) is one of those rare pieces of art that defies genre classification—that breaks every assumption and expectation of science-fiction, fantasy, and coming-of-age narratives, and that takes our reductionist approach to film and fiction and shows that nice, convenient labels are never necessary in creating powerful works. It simultaneously melds body-swapping and time … Continue reading Your Name: A Film on Reality, Seen through Fantasy
An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part V: The Heroes’ Legacy
So Breath of the Wild is the apex of open-world design. It's filled with secrets, and it makes exploration itself feel rewarding. Its narrative has depth and resonance, and its characters feel three-dimensional and relatably real. It takes the tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction to a new level—depicting a world not irradiated and destroyed, but retaken by wilderness. And in … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part V: The Heroes’ Legacy
An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part III: Into the Wild
So Breath of the Wild is open world in the best sense of the term; it presents you with a vast world to explore, where everything you see can be reached, every mountain climbed, every river sailed, every canyon traversed... but so what? I've extolled its world design and its exploration mechanics and rambled about its well-crafted mapmaking, … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part III: Into the Wild
An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part II: “Open World”
In modern game design, "open-world" has become something of a buzzword; after series like GTA and Elder Scrolls popularized the genre, developers (especially Ubisoft) embraced it and began to churn out game after game after game in that mold. Open-world games, in short, discard the notion of linear progression and instead throw the player into what is … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part II: “Open World”
Sunset Over Ithaca 