VIDEO GAME: Wonder Boy – The Dragon’s Trap (2017)

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Wonder Boy: The Dragon's TrapYear: 2017Rating: E10+Time Played: 306 minutes / 5.10 hours Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is one of those games that I learned about through a YouTube video and realized I already picked it up for free from the Epic Games Store. The revamped art style was intriguing, and the gameplay felt somewhat modern—even if it had changed little from the original SEGA Master Drive. All things considered, it was a fairly fun playthrough, and I got my money's worth (despite not spending any to buy it). The form change mechanic made the progression through this game even more interesting. Once I'd figured out how to play as one of the animal-based forms, I'd have to learn the next one and start my learning all over. Granted, the better armor and weapons I gained along the way made this easier each time. And with each new form, I'd find some other area of the map that I could now...
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VIDEO GAME: Figment (2017)

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FigmentYear: 2017Rating: E10+Time Played: ~5 hours With a name like Figment, I knew I was stepping into a world filled with imaginative elements. Exploring the mind in an action-based puzzle platformer was definitely the safe choice genre-wise and allowed for plenty of creative worlds to visit. I went into this game thinking it was just going to be a pun-filled series of levels that drew heavily from Inside Out (2015). However, the twist near the end elevated this game to something deeper and darker than I expected. This was despite some of its other, more annoying flaws. Visually, Figment looks great. Despite how everything moves, it doesn't quite have that "Flash game" feel because all the art is so well done. Of course, it also makes navigating around the world a little challenging at times because it's not clear if there are places where the character can go or not. Game-play wise, Figment isn't too difficult. The combat is simple, but just...
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VIDEO GAME: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (2011)

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Kirby's Return to Dream LandYear: 2011Rating: E10+Time Played: ~6.50 hours While I'm all for franchises trying out new things, there's something about returning to the core mechanic that makes a great game. Kirby's Return to Dream Land took the fundamentals of a Kirby game and amped up the cool factor while still maintaining that classic Kirby feel. Granted, as Nintendo delved further into gimmicks on their consoles, their franchises had to adapt as well. Return to Dream Land is no exception, but at least the base game is the standard Kirby formula. Admittedly, one of the more "fun" aspects of this game is the super-powered abilities Kirby can use. While they do often require shaking the Wiimote to use, their increased power put a smile on my face. As far as couch co-op goes, this game is better than most. My daughter played a lot of this game with me as Meta Knight, and there wasn't much of an issue where she...
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VIDEO GAME: Mega Man ZX Advent (2007)

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Mega Man ZX Advent Year: 2007 Rating: E10+ Time Played: 410 minutes / 6.83 hours One hallmark of the Mega Man franchise is the ability to absorb the powers of each boss and use them against other enemies. It's interesting that in the decades of this franchise's history that there have been so few opportunities to actually turn into these bosses. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't realize Mega Man ZX Advent was referencing the character introduced in Mega Man X7 until I was almost through playing the game. In a sense, this is the first game where you play as Axl the whole way through. Story-wise, there's nothing terribly interesting to write home about here, and the voice acting feels shrill from the DS speakers—both of which are made worse when you have to replay cutscenes near the endgame because you failed to pass the long gauntlet. Still, the draw here is the almost Metroidvania-like collection of boss abilities that help unlock other...
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VIDEO GAME: LOVE (2019)

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LOVEYear: 2019Rating: ETime Played: ~1 hour When it comes to retro-inspired video games, most seem to pull their influences from the 8-bit or 16-bit systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis. Rarely have I seen something that seems to take their cues from further back in the video game pantheon. For all their limitations, Atari or Commodore 64 games still had a distinctive style that made them stand out prior to the boon in the home gaming space dominated by Nintendo and Sega. LOVE feels like an extremely polished Atari game—which is both a good and bad thing. Platformers have always been a simple game to make on limited hardware. All you need is a few pixels that the player can move around on the screen and a variety of platforms to jump onto. LOVE takes this common idea and puts it into a mostly monochromatic, heavily pixelated space that could have been pulled straight from the home video game...
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VIDEO GAME: Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022)

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Kirby and the Forgotten LandYear: 2022Rating: E10+Time Played: 15+ hours Kirby and the Forgotten Land is an interesting outlier for one of Nintendo's longest-running franchises. Most of these games transitioned from 2D platformers to 3D space in the Nintendo 64 era. Games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time flawlessly made the jump into the next dimension. Even Metroid Prime successfully brought that franchise into 3D space with the Gamecube. 30 years after its debut, Kirby finally made it to 3D with Kirby and the Forgotten Land. The game structure is the same as any other Kirby game. Each world is broken into a series of themed levels, followed by a boss at the end of the world. Kirby can inhale enemies and replicate their abilities. The final boss is a literal god. Where previous Kirby games maintained some of their puzzle simplicity by being in two dimensions, Forgotten Land allows more exploration in 3D space while...
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VIDEO GAME: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)

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Super Mario Bros. Wonder Year: 2023 Rating: E Time Played: ~10 hours For decades, it's felt like the true innovation of the Mario franchise has been with its 3D titles. It almost became a running gag that the most creative Mario levels were the ones made by fans in Super Mario Maker. Then along came Super Mario Bros. Wonder. While each Mario game has had its own gimmick to make it interesting, this one went all out and had an entire game filled with gimmicks. Each level has something unique to experience, and you never quite know what's coming next. Everything in this game is so bright, crisp, colorful, and whimsical. Nothing overstayed its welcome. If anything, I wanted to replay levels because the transformation caused by the Wonder flower was so fun that I wished there was more of it. Some of the Wonder sections were legitimately hilarious, while others really broke the mold for what a Mario game could do. That the core...
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VIDEO GAME: Gato Roboto (2019)

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Gato RobotoYear: 2019Rating: ETime Played: 210 minutes / 3.50 hours Here’s the hook: you control a cat who can also pilot a mecha robot. That’s Gato Roboto. It’s a simple Metroidvania, both in length and graphics, but the charm of the concept itself makes it worth a play-through. It almost reminds me of Earthworm Jim (where a worm pilots a humanoid power suit) without all the weird gross-out elements. Despite its straightforward concept, Gato Roboto has a bit of a learning curve. Fortunately, given enough time and practice, it can be beaten in a couple of hours. Your mileage may vary given how used to Metroidvanias and Souls-like games you are. Plot-wise, Gato Roboto has some amusing little twists and turns that help drive the game forward. I love that the principal antagonist is a rat/mouse in a variety of mecha robots. There isn’t too much backtracking/looping involved here, which usually lengthens how long it takes to get through a Metroidvania—thus the...
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VIDEO GAME: Super Mario 3D Land (2011)

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Super Mario 3D Land Year: 2011 Rating: E Time Played: 676 minutes / 11.27 hours There are few certainties in this life, but one of them is that Nintendo usually releases a Mario game to show off their new hardware. It might not be right at the launch, but it's usually within the first few years—like Super Mario Odyssey. The Mario game that rolled out alongside the Nintendo 3DS was none other than Super Mario 3D Land. While it showed off the capabilities of the 3D screen that doesn't need special glasses, its levels rehashed a lot of what had already been done in Mario games before. Sure, the 3D effect in this game is quite striking. For handheld hardware, the game looks gorgeous. The thing is, it added nothing to the gameplay other than a third dimension to the visuals. And it's not like its predecessor, the Nintendo DS, couldn't also handle some level of 3D Mario platformer since it had Super Mario 64...
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VIDEO GAME: Deepest Sword (2021)

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Deepest Sword Year: 2021 Rating: E Time Played: 41 minutes / 0.68 hours There are plenty of reasons I like Deepest Sword. It’s a simple gameplay gimmick with wide-ranging applications. It’s a quick play-through that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Most of all, it has a cute pixel art aesthetic and amusing dialogue for the dragon at the end of each level. There was a lot of love and care put into a game like this, and it shows. It almost feels nostalgic for the little freeware games I used to play growing up and I can half imagine it sitting on some floppy disk in my parents’ basement. As a physics-based puzzle game, the challenge scales with the size of your weapon. Each level increases the length—and by proxy the weight—of the sword. After the first few levels, I was hooked. While it uses basically the same layout for each level, the limitations of my sword forced me into different paths that led to the...
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VIDEO GAME: Fez (2012)

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FezYear: 2012Rating: ETime Played: 312 minutes / 5.20 hours When it comes to indie games, I appreciate how much can be done with minimal graphics. These pixel-based games have a charm that’s difficult to get right but really shines when they’re successful. Fez is such a game. As a puzzle platformer, the genre isn’t original. However, pivoting in 2-D planes to create a 3-D game is an ingenious way to expand the gameplay. Of course, this also makes it a little difficult to keep track of where you are and where you’re going. But with such relaxing visuals and sound design, spending extra time in this game isn’t a bad thing. There are limitations to the pixelated style that make navigating the half-dozen worlds difficult to memorize. Sure, there are gimmicks in each world that define how you move around it, but knowing where to go to solve a larger puzzle within the game can be challenging. That there are so many...
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VIDEO GAME: Mega Man X Dive (2020)

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Mega Man X Dive Year: 2020 Rating: T Time Played: 23,340 minutes / 389.00 hours Having played almost every single Mega Man X game, the one thing I felt was missing from these games is the variety of player characters. Sure, you can start playing as Zero in Mega Man X4 and as Axl in Mega Man X7. You can even play as Vile in Maverick Hunter X (a Mega Man X remaster). But what if you could play as the Mavericks? Heck, what if you could play as Mega Man from other Mega Man franchises? Mega Man X Dive delivered on this premise. As a free-to-play mobile gatcha game, most of the gameplay was rather shallow once you'd gotten through all of it. The new content wasn't much different from previous events, boss rushes, or speedrun challenges. At a certain point, all I was doing was collecting resources to power up the characters and weapons I had obtained. I'm disappointed that the end-of-service is...
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VIDEO GAME: Hue (2016)

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Hue Year: 2016 Rating: E Time Played: 270 minutes / 4.50 hours The strength of a 2-D puzzle platformer boils down to how well its gimmick works. In this genre, you move from point A to point B and collect items in tough spots for an added challenge. It's how BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! works, and it's how Gris works. If the puzzle aspect is lacking, then the game just becomes a platformer. And making an interesting platformer is its own challenge. Fortunately, Hue has a well-done puzzle gimmick. Using colors to solve puzzles also gave this game a natural difficulty curve that was satisfying to complete. I'll applaud Hue for having some semblance of a plot that explains why changing the colors of the background is the main mechanic. I'm not wild about the student falling in love with her professor, though. It's also obvious that these sections of exposition could have easily been edited out since they occur in corridors that are just long...
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VIDEO GAME: BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! (2019)

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BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: 511 minutes / 8.52 hours While I was aware of the BoxBoy! series of games on the Nintendo 3DS, I didn't try any of them until BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! released on the Switch. As a puzzle platformer, this game uses the most simple of mechanics in a variety of interesting ways. The cute little box characters were fun to control and none of the puzzles were ultimately impossible. The challenges definitely kept me playing all the way until the end, providing just enough mental stimulation to re-play levels immediately after clearing them. I rarely finish games completely anymore, but BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! had just enough in-game motivation for me to reach 100% in a mere 8.5 hours. It might lean heavier on the "puzzle" side of "puzzle platformer" but this just meant I had to think outside the box (ha ha) if I wanted to solve each level with the minimum number of blocks. I was...
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VIDEO GAME: Hollow Knight (2017)

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Hollow Knight Year: 2017 Rating: E10+ Time Played: 2,712 minutes / 45.20 hours Every once in a while, I come across a game that hooks me right out of the gate. The music, ambiance, and gameplay mixed in a perfect combination that encouraged me to keep playing. Despite the sharp difficulty curve I encountered for the main bosses, the stakes made me continue the journey all the way to its conclusion (at least one of the few different endings, that is). There is nothing more rewarding than feeling so close to defeating a boss, only to mess up and need to try again and finally succeeding. For an affordable indie game, Hollow Knight is filled with content. Even if I found myself stuck at a particular junction, I could merely explore some other facet of the gigantic map until my skills improved to the point where I could defeat the roadblock in my way. All the while, I marveled at the unique visuals for each...
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VIDEO GAME: Dead Cells (2017)

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Dead CellsYear: 2017Rating: TTime Played: 10+ hours For years, I saw many people praise Dead Cells for its flashy, fast-paced gameplay. I stayed away from it for a long time because I wasn't used to playing roguelike games and didn't like the idea of losing all my progress when I died. Eventually, Dead Cells went on sale on the Nintendo eShop, and I picked it up. Then I didn't put it down again for days. It turns out the right roguelike structure is an addicting combination of steady progress and mastery of the gameplay. The fact that you "lose progress" in Dead Cells is a bit of a misnomer. I appreciated the upgrade system that allowed me to eventually win enough times to get all the way to the end boss and defeat him, thus unlocking even more of the game. Of course, I had to grind for a while to "get gud" before I could even finish the first level (at...
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VIDEO GAME: Gris (2018)

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GrisYear: 2018Rating: ETime Played: 3+ hours Much like Journey, Gris is an incredible fusion of art and video game. Taking a watercolor aesthetic and hauntingly beautiful music in stride to tell a subtle story of loss and recovery, Gris ended up being a relaxing trot through its geometric world for me. Unfortunately, much like Journey, the amount of effort that goes into making this game look beautiful was also probably why it ended up being so short. Even if I broke up the platforming gameplay into a few hour-long sessions, I could easily complete it in a long evening. In the end, the platforming of the game is relatively simple. There’s a couple of puzzles that took me a moment to figure out, and I still haven’t found all the hidden items, so I might come back and do a second play-through to complete it fully. The fact that I wanted to play it again shortly after reaching the end credits is...
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VIDEO GAME: Owlboy (2018)

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Owlboy Year: 2018 Rating: E10 Time Spent: 5+ hours I had seen a video of some Owlboy gameplay a while ago that made the game look interesting enough to buy. The retro 16-bit-style graphics were what drew me to this adventure platformer. Now that I’ve played through it, I found it to be somewhat…disappointing. Sure, the visuals are quite striking, and each location certainly has some elemental charm to it. Additionally, the story is relatively simple but also charming in its own way. In the end, though, I don’t think I’ll give this game an additional playthrough. This is mostly because—without trying—I collected almost everything in the game in my first go. First off, this was a fairly short game, which I should come to expect from independent game developers. After all, Cave Story and Undertale weren’t terribly long, but perhaps I’ve been spoiled by games like Hollow Knight. Secondly, even up until the last boss, I could never quite get the hang of the...
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