Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Dead Space
Somebody wake me up when they update this with Gyro Aiming. 120fps could also be possible on PS5 Pro a year or so from now. But at this point, that's neither here nor there. I have seen it run at a fake 120fps and it's beautiful, ultimately making it a smoother more life-like experience. Gyro aiming + 120fps would make it feel more modernized and more next gen, breathing much needed life into what otherwise is an XBOX360 experience with a new lick of paint...

Resident Evil 4
Gyro controls are a mixed bag. When you increase both aiming sliders to max it becomes doable, but also oddly enough jerky...Definitely not on par with the likes of Quake 2&3 and Power Slaves Gyro aiming, but still more intuitive, precise and more enjoyable than analog stick aiming. Unfortunately, the right stick, when controlling the camera from left to right becomes janky-fast and practically broken. Any work around? I guess it doesn't really matter seeing as how i dropped out 2+ hours in and am waiting for the VR Mode this Winter. It will be the ultimate way to experience RE4R, no question and will be considered one of the greatest VR titles ever made.

DOOM Eternal
Dropped out 3 hours in. If they updated it with Gyro aiming I'd be on board. As is, it looks spectacular running at 120fps, love the haptics & Adaptive triggers too. If you've got a good OLED TV, than the PS5 version is a no brainer and completely stomps the PS4 version for the above reasons alone.

Klonoa Reverie
Very disappointing, after falling in love with the Wii remaster of the original Klonoa back in 2008. Reverie's muffled annoying JPN voice acting from the PS1 original creates a disconnect between character interactions and completely takes me out of the experience, or at least the cut scenes. And Klonoa jumps like a grasshopper. Jumping doesn't feel as enjoyable or intuitive as the Wii version...Plus, the visuals look like Gamecube.5...The Wii remake/remaster looked beautiful for what it was back in 2008, just a couple of years when Gamecube was replaced with Wii, but that's because Klonoa Wii was just 1 generation behind XBOX360 & PS3. Reverie on the other hand looks like it's about 3 generations behind, besting Gamecube-tier visuals, but worse than PS3. it still looks impressive at times regardless of it's limitations, but also unimpressive, a little sterile and bland...especially for Klonoa 2.

If they updated Klonoa 1 with the Wii versions Voice Acting, Teenage Klonoa and even 120fps(Controls would feel more responsive, motion blur almost gets sliced in half, motion clarity doubles and of course becomes smoother) setting, I'd jump back in.

@NeonPizza You can play DOOM Eternal with gyro on PC and Steam Deck, you know.

@Ralizah
I don't have a PC for gaming.
Are you referring to XIM Matrix Gyro aiming or did the developers update the PC version with Gyro?
Best case scenario? VR-ify' DOOM Eternal for PS VR2.

@NeonPizza PC games on Steam don't need to be updated to support gyro. If you're using a controller that supports gyro, you can configure pretty much any game to support it through Steam, and then customize the settings to your exact liking. That's what I did with RE2R, for example. Made headshotting zombies so much easier.

IMO if this is an important thing to you, you're doing yourself a massive disservice not getting a gaming rig.

@Ralizah
I actually planned on getting a PC, with an RTX4090, but that's a whopping $5000+ cad and considering how little i game outside the Switch, I'm not sure it would be worth it. I could always just settle for a lower tier graphics card like a 3070-4070, which will still be at least 2-3x as powerful as a PS5. I want to be able to run most of my games at 120fps, and whenever a title requires you to aim I demand quality Gyro, always.

Do you use the Duel Sense with your PC when it comes to Gyro, or a different controller all together?
The new Series X(slim/refresh)'s will finally be including Gyro & Haptics now, so that's another one to consider for PC, but it wont be out until late 2024.

But ya, I could always just get a good PC for 3rd party titles & VR(Quest 3) with Steam and just strictly use the PS5 for PS VR2, seeing as how the majority of Sony's exclusive for me personally are about as appealing as a bag of 10 year old crusty chester cheeto's that have been nesting under a sofa.

@NeonPizza I use the DS4 for my gyro-controller needs. Works well. I've never used a Dualsense.

I'm growing to really like the Series X controller, so I'm pretty stoked they're finally making them gyro-enabled. At last, I'll be able to play all of my PC games with the same controller!

Okay I laughed pretty dang hard at that final part because I can relate to that so much thanks to a number of acquaintances... And I say that as a vegetarian too

Poor you for Daisy fans being so... Rabid and poor Daisy for having fans like that.

I'm surprised she has fans at all really as I don't recall seeing her in any of the Mario games I have played... Just knowing she existed for some reason and was trotted out on occasion exactly like you described.

Also I've known from previous conversations that you didn't like World but... Wow I didn't know you disliked it THAT much. That's heresy among the Mario fanbase isn't it?

Also that Odyssey boss fight sounds awesome.

@HallowMoonshadow lol I'm into fasting and keto and am probably insufferable about it, so, you know, I can't judge too much.

It's not uncommon with fans of niche characters like that. Or niche products. There's a hipster-ish appeal to being really devoted to something that's not popular, and it tends to make it where the fandom gains fervor over time.

Yeah, it is. Not just among the Mario fanbase, either. Most people like to act like the SNES was this absolute goldmine, and I think it's primarily nostalgia tbh. We went with SEGA that gen, and coming back to the SNES years later, some games absolutely deserve their hype (Yoshi's Island and Final Fantasy VI immediately come to mind), but others just seem sort of... mid. Super Mario World is the epitome of mid. The music is dinky and weird. The worlds aren't nearly as creative as in SMB3. There are way fewer power-ups than in SMB3. The boss fights still suck. Ghost Houses were the worst addition ever to a platforming series (yeah, dude, I really wanna spend ten minutes figuring out how to escape a room in a MARIO game). Fewer minigames. The controls are weird and feel much less tight. I 100%'d that entire game, and I just don't understand the love for it.

And, being brutally honest? While I put it ahead of SMB1 and SML in the interest of objectivity, I will happily replay those games over SMW any day. It's just such a disappointment.

Odyssey is filled with cool boss fights tbh. I have a few issues with it (the forced motion gesturing to pull off certain moves can bite me), but the more time goes on, the more I'm impressed with it.

I could get into how Super Mario 64 is also an overrated POS compared to later 3D Marios, which is also controversial, but I at least recognize its place in history. The game quite literally was one of the first to show off the potential of 3D movement from a third-person perspective in a major release. It was practically an 'inventing sliced bread' moment for the industry. And it got SO MUCH right out of the gate. So while I have a love/hate relationship with it, I do deeply respect what its creators accomplished with it.

SMW, though? It did almost nothing better than SMB3, and a lot that was worse. I don't think it'd be half as loved if most of the people who moan about it hadn't grown up with it.

@Ralizah Really enjoyed your review of Super Mario Bros. Wonder back there! I should preface this reply by admitting that I gave the game a shot last week. Played through its first couple of levels, grudgingly smiled at its nonsense, got bored of its gameplay, and was about to dismiss it as yet another "Nintendo never innovate; why is another average release getting perfect scores?" anomaly when I went behind a bit of scenery, found a hidden path and stumbled across Captain Toad. Instant GOTY. 12/10.

The contextual groundwork you lay in your opening paragraphs is very welcome, especially to somebody like me, who holds that aforementioned apathy towards 2D Mario (and who literally said "This isn't as good as 3D World, is it?" out loud whilst playing Wonder's first level). To that end, I'm pleased to see that Wonder doesn't besmirch the legacy of the 2D games, even if it didn't manage to raise that legacy's bar in any meaningful ways. Okay, so its Badge mechanic might dilute some of the characters' individual charms, but it appears to be doing so in the name of universal accessibility, and I'd find that a difficult goal to be mad at (irrespective of execution). Its level design might be bland, but it's in service of the Wonder Flower gimmick, and judging by the small handful of those transformations I saw... well, I reckon I'd find that easy to forgive, too. And whilst I didn't play long enough for the talking flowers to become an irritant (actually found 'em more than a little adorable) at least they came with a mute button!

Seems like most shortcomings have a trade-off, which might explain why you ended up feeling like you'd written a harsh review about a delightful experience (at least, I know I've found myself in a similar position before; apologies if I'm projecting here). I will agree that the elephant was a bit of a disappointment, though. I also found it weird when my Toad remained trunk-ated (ba-dum-tssh) back on the overworld. I'd have preferred power-ups to remain in the levels, especially considering you can store a spare.

Your comments about the soundtrack are somewhat similar to the reaction Sonic Superstars has been garnering, by the way. By all accounts, that game's music hits some real high highs, but also some real low lows, and therefore settles for being "fine" overall. I find it interesting (and funny) how both games, released so closely together, share such a specific criticism!

Superb review, Ral. Your skills, insights and humour are as sharp as ever. Huge thanks for sharing!

@RogerRoger lol thank you. A Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker 2 would be a day one buy for me. Absolutely loved the original. And yes, as much as I enjoyed this, 3D World still stomps this game. It's crazy to me people were angry about it on the Wii U. Now that people got their sandbox Mario with Odyssey, I've been happy to see folks going back and appreciating it for the wild, creative game it is.

I guess the thing for me is that you already have Nabbit, who literally can't take damage, from what I hear, so I'm not sure why they needed a second layer of accessibility mechanics. Or have the badges available in a separate mode. It's such a bummer that the characters all play the same.

With regard to the level design, it's hard. Like, the levels themselves are nothing special, but literally every one has a Wonder Flower that does something crazy, which kinda makes every level memorable? I dunno. I prefer when the creativity is injected into the stage design itself versus setpieces, personally. Designing levels around setpieces is something I've always criticized Naughty Dog for, and I won't stop just because Nintendo is doing it now with my beloved plumber.

"written a harsh review about a delightful experience" is about as good a summation as any of what I wrote. I stand by everything I said. But... it's Mario. It's fun. And it's beautiful. I enjoyed pretty much every moment with it. So despite walking away being pretty happy with it overall, there's still so much to criticize.

I guess I feel like a 2D Mario game in 2023 shouldn't have some of the shortcomings this one does. Especially the total lack of boss diversity. Is there some unwritten law somewhere that states that 2D Mario games have to have crappy boss fights? Because the people at Nintendo adhere to it like someone is gonna shoot them if they inject an ounce of creativity in those. It's weird. Especially when the 3D games do such a good job with it.

New 2D Mario and Sonic games releasing so close together is very funny in general. I was kinda curious about your reaction to Superstars. Have you not played it yet? You're about as devoted a Sonic aficionado as anyone I've ever met, so I kinda expected you to be all over it.

Thank you for reading, and the delightful commentary!

@Ralizah Everything's of its time (for better or worse) but it's gratifying to see so many retrospectives out there nowadays, encouraging re-evaluation of games that might've gotten a bum rap at launch. It's also why I enjoy replaying old favourites, because opinion is fluid, and should be a two-way street.

Nabbit might be great an' all, but spare a thought for the poor five-year-old who really wants to play as Luigi (because green's their favourite colour or something) and can't, because he's too vulnerable to survive the first couple stages. It's giving the people what they want, I suppose. You're right, though; Nintendo have gotten very creative about levelling the playing field before, always in a cohesive way that makes sense in-universe, so it's a shame that they've had to opt for a "one size fits all" approach.

Yeah, I think I recall some of your previous comments regarding set-pieces. Sounds like they came up with the concept of the Wonder Flower first, and then built the whole game around it, which is admirable in some respects (stops it from feeling like a tacked-on gimmick) but could definitely lead to over-reliance and complacency. Why design a brilliant stage if you're just gonna turn it on its head after thirty seconds?

As a long-term fan of its first-party games, do you feel that Nintendo listen to fan feedback, and incorporate it into their sequels? Or do they just do their own thing from game to game? It's just surprising to me that such a successful series can keep upholding the specific shortcomings you mention, and largely get away with it every single time (your objective criticism notwithstanding). I'm guessing it must be similar to a lot of things, whereby feedback is acknowledged and perhaps even engaged with, but then the sales numbers and wider creative vision allow them to take the hit anyway.

No, I haven't played Sonic Superstars yet. It released three days before Spidey. Normally I'd have tried to cram it in regardless, but money's tight and so I decided to be smart about it, so that I could A: enjoy it without a looming deadline, and 2: get it a little cheaper someday. It worked out for the best anyway, considering how the Sonic Frontiers story DLC kicked my butt a couple weeks beforehand (to the point where I couldn't even finish it) and then I saw reviews saying Superstars gets brutal towards its endgame. The sting of defeat is still pretty fresh, so another Sonic-related slap might've done lasting damage. But yes, it's still very uncharacteristic of me to skip a new Sonic game! I think it's the first one I've missed since Lost World got locked to the Wii U. Got around to it eventually, though, so I'm sure this'll be no different!

Ha! Granted over here in the UK we had a more limited lineup with the games but I've said before I had a SNES growing up but I could only play it for like an hour at most before I got bored with it and would then ignore it for days at a time.

Only with the PS1 (and Resident Evil) being the gateway that actually made me interested in gaming. The game I probably played most on the SNES was SMB3 and even then I never got too far into it.

I wonder if my general disinterest in Mario as a whole stems from my days as a Teen with a SNES...

And I'm just realising your stance on SMW is quite similar to my thoughts on FF VII Ral

@HallowMoonshadow I hated the All-Stars versions of the NES trilogy lol. Something about the music and controls on SNES vs. the NES originals just feels bad. Def. try SMB3 on the NES instead one day if you get a chance.

I've always been a gamer, although I will say the PS1 is also when I became more passionate about it. Still a top three console overall for me. I LOVED the early days of the Playstation brand.

lol come on, don't do FFVII like that. SMW does almost nothing to improve itself over its predecessors. FFVII is, at the very least, more of a SM64-style experience: a radical, groundbreaking release that arguably aged poorly in a number of respects, and people who grew up with it will never truly understand the criticisms of people who played it years later, because it's their gaming safe space.

@RogerRoger Yeah, it can be... illuminating going back to older games. Some stuff never took off, but it aged SO well. Like the bizarrely good and prominent voice acting in cult PS1 survival horror JRPG Koudelka, for example, on a console where you got precious little of that. And then other stuff you remember loving can be... so bad. That was my experience with Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I was shocked at how bad it was when I replayed it several years ago.

Building games around certain gameplay features is always how Ninty does things. They said it quite explicitly when talking about Splatoon. It's why they cobbled together the fairly strange setting where you're playing as intelligent squid people in a post-post-apocalypse, since they thought up the movement/battle mechanics first. It's a style of design I tend to think is good in terms of leading to cohesive experiences, but... I dunno. I play Mario for fun levels, not for constant weird gimmicks.

"As a long-term fan of its first-party games, do you feel that Nintendo listen to fan feedback, and incorporate it into their sequels?"

Depends on the property. They've quite clearly taken the reaction to previous games into consideration when designing new Zelda games, for example. Twilight Princess' dark, realistic style was explicitly a response to the outcry over the cartoon stylings of The Wind Waker, for example. And it does strike me that the Zelda game we got immediately after Skyward Sword was Breath of the Wild. Skyward Sword was heavily criticized for how little room there was for player agency or freedom. Whereas BotW... well, I think everyone knows by now that it's one of the most free-form AAA gaming experiences ever.

Monolith Soft is also pretty good about this, I think. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, for example, addressed nearly every issue people had with the previous game.

Broadly, though, I think Nintendo just sort of does what it wants, and players go along with it. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. They're definitely the least crowd pleasing of the big three manufacturers.

Well, I look forward to your eventual Superstars review. I'll probably grab it myself once it drops in price a bit, since it looks more like what I want from the series than recent 3D games OR something like Mania.