Video Game Reviews, including some recent 2022 titles
Titles Covered: God of War Ragnarock, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Stray, Kirby Star Allies, Kirby and the Forgotten World, Mario Strikers Battle League, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Live a Live
God of War Ragnarock (****)
Is it better for a game to have a small amount of great content, or an incredible amount of good content?
Consider the game Portal, which is basically a half-hour tutorial followed by two hours of awesome gameplay. I enjoyed it, but also had to ask “Is that all?” But for those who didn’t want to spend a lot of time on video games, maybe Portal’s approach was perfect. If you’re that sort of person, you might not love God of War Ragnarock.
God of War Ragnarock is a huge game, but one without the usual huge game tricks. The “open world” areas can be traversed quickly, the cutscenes aren’t overly long, the combat is fast-paced, and NPCs will help you get past the puzzles if you seem to be stuck. There are no procedurally-generated dungeons, and not much need to grind for resources or money (you’re basically level-capped until you advance the story anyway). So the fact that I sunk dozens of hours into this game is a pretty impressive testament to how much content it has.
Gameplay is very similar to the previous 2018 God of War game, but with a lot more stuff. There’s a crazy number of enemy types, and tons of minibosses and bosses. There’s more combat movies, and a lot more choices for your character build (and sidekicks), which can honestly get a bit overwhelming. I personally preferred the simpler choices in the previous game, in which newer equipment was strictly better. Now, there’s a lot more granularity to the game, and I was probably supposed to fiddle with it a lot more than I did. Regardless, I think everyone can carve out their own playstyle, using what they feel comfortable with and ignoring the rest. For example, there’s a shield that’s better at… well… shielding, so I greatly preferred it over the shields built for fancy moves and parries. Despite some grumbling at features I was too clumsy to use, I still managed to beat most of the game on the second-hardest difficulty setting, and only needed to tune down the difficulty for some tough optional fights.
(The post-story Berserker King will drive you nuts on any difficulty, though. Seriously, the Valkyrie Queen felt like a cakewalk after fighting that jerk.)
The story is… well, it’s a video game story, so it needs to drag things out and give you excuses for more fighting and more levels. Sometimes the game does go too far in that direction, which is particularly noticeable in the second Atreus level. That said, the writing and acting are very good, with unique characterizations and a number of touching moments. Even the villains are interesting, particularly the smooth-talking godfather-like Odin. The writing might not be high art, but it’s about on par with good summer movies, and that’s a huge step up from your average video game script.
God of War Ragnarock is a game that truly looks like it must have cost all the money in the world to make. Geez, every world even has its own ecosystem with unique plants, bugs, and critters running around. Even the stuff that’s just background scenery is so detailed that I often mistook it for part of the level. Yes, this can be a bit much, and yes, it feels “padded” with a lot of material that could have gotten cut, but sometimes I’m in the mood for something big, and God of War Ragnarock is really, really big.
Disney Dreamlight Valley (***)
Kat and I don’t play the same games very often. She finds most of my video games too difficult, and I literally fall asleep watching her play Animal Crossing. But we both managed to get hooked on Disney Dreamlight Valley, a fairly versatile social simulation game anchored by its strong brand recognition.
For the record, the fact that I'm giving this game 3 stars probably speaks more highly than it might seem; I gave the Gamecube Animal Crossing one star.
Naturally, your interest in this game will depend on how much you enjoy Disney/Pixar films. There are quite a few characters, each with unique quests and interactions with each other. This provides a lot of clever bits, since you have people from different time periods and parts of the world all living together. Thus, you get Ariel and WALL-E trading collectibles from the “human world,” Scrooge McDuck challenging Ursela’s business dealings, Goofy constantly annoying Scar by offering him food not fit for lions, and Woody trying to help Remy cook (and failing miserably, as toys can’t taste food). Villains are also present, but they’re more rude and troublesome neighbors rather than serious threats.
Your character is a Mary Sue, and I don’t mean that as a generic insult. Basically, you create a hipster avatar of yourself (seriously, all the customizable options make you look like a 20-something hipster), and go around being the awesome person that all the Disney characters turn to for help. It’s a silly fantasy, but an effective one, and the plot is just interesting enough to give the game a sense of purpose. You arrive to find the valley sparsely populated and taken over by magical “night thorns,” and gradually spend time unlocking more areas, bringing in more characters, building an economy, and slowly advancing the plot.
The gameplay is primarily centered around resource collection and management, with a few puzzle elements. The game is fairly casual: no time limit, no chance of death, and character energy is easily replenished by returning to your house. You can’t lose the game, though your efficiency and ability to keep track of many objectives will determine how quickly you progress.
Disney Dreamlight Valley is a pretty good social simulation game. It has a lot of content, the character interactions are fun and inventive, and the gameplay has just enough depth to it that I was rarely bored. That said, I probably wouldn’t be playing this game if it was based on a franchise that I didn’t like or wasn’t familiar with.
Stray (*** and a half)
Stray is a game that benefits heavily from its high concept premise and theming. First of all, you play as a cat. No, not a cartoon cat who moves like a human. You’re a realistic cat who runs quickly on all fours, jumps, claws, meows, and curls up in a ball just like any common pet. That’s enough to inspire some curiosity, but it may seem limiting as a videogame premise. Then, we introduce the second part of the premise: you’re in a moody sci-fi post-apocalyptic city filled with sad, sentient robots. And you’re a cat. With those two ideas together, you have a killer premise.
And yes, Stray does well with its premise, using realistic animations, well-detailed settings, and excellent sound effects and haptic feedback. The Dualsense controller actually feels like a purring cat! But as far as gameplay, Stray is a bit less impressive. It’s mostly a simple platformer-puzzler. To achieve the cat’s nimble movement, your controls are somewhat on rails: you can’t fall, and locations that allow jumps are pre-determined. The game tends to switch between being a straightforward “casual” experience with strong story elements (similar to Journey, Heavy Rain, or The Wolf Among Us), and being a more standard modern videogame with collectibles, free exploration, and RPG-like quests. Both of these styles work, but I wish there was a way to blend them into a more cohesive experience.
If you played as a normal human in Stray, I imagine it would just be another kinda-interesting indie game. But playing as a cat gives it fresh game mechanics and a unique feel, so I recommend at least giving it a rental.
Kirby Star Allies (** and a half)
I’ve had somewhat mixed opinions of the Kirby games. Sure, they’re cute, and probably not worth complaining about. Yet, they don’t leave much of an impression on me, being easy, lightweight gaming experiences. Unfortunately, that’s more or less where “Star Allies” lands.
To be fair, there are a few features that stood out to me. The optional “puzzle rooms” are pretty clever, and make interesting use of the various character abilities. There’s some pretty funny things you can do with your team of “allies,” such as rolling into a giant ball and knocking everything over. The final levels are pretty good, and the multi-part endgame boss fights are somewhat challenging. It actually gets pretty epic and exciting towards the end!
Otherwise, Star Allies struck me as a pretty mediocre game. There’s not much challenge, not enough interesting parts, and the copy abilities feel unnecessary for most of the game. The idea of taking 3 allies into battle has some occasionally-realized potential, but it also makes it hard to tell which character you are. Most boss fights just break down to button-mashing, or hiding until the CPU characters beat the boss for you.
Star Allies is OK, and gets a lot better in the final world, but it’s not one of the high points of the series. For a better Kirby game, keeping reading…
Kirby and the Forgotten Land (****)
Now THIS is what I like to see! The Forgotten Land is easily the best Kirby game since “Epic Yarn” and probably a new high point of the entire series. It uses the smooth 3D platforming style of recent Mario games, but works in Kirby’s transformations in a way that makes them feel more consequential than ever.
One of Kirby’s signature features is the ability to “copy” powers from his enemies. What I liked about Forgotten Land is that the levels are clearly designed around the copy abilities. This applies most explicitly to quick challenge levels, which teach you advanced techniques for each ability and give you time to really practice them. Even the more open and flexible levels base their designs around tricks you can do with each ability, and make sure to hand you that specific power repeatedly.
The bosses are also a big highlight. Each one is memorable, well-designed, and features a solid selection of attacks that can be reasonably dodged with some skill (there is an achievement for taking no damage). They’re somewhat similar to the epic bosses in more mature action games such as Devil May Cry or Dark Souls, albeit much easier. Kirby is still a pretty easy game, even in “wild” mode, though it puts up just enough of a fight to make things interesting. I would have welcomed a 3rd (harder) difficulty setting, though the post-credits world somewhat fulfills this purpose. It’s basically remixed levels with more enemies, very few health items, and much harder bosses.
Despite all that praise, I don’t think Forgotten Land is quite a top-tier game. The level design is a bit tame, and the main quest only stretches across 6 worlds (about 24 levels and 6 boss fights). There are lots of bits that made me think “hey, that’s pretty clever!” but nothing really blew me away.
All in all, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a really fun experience, especially for kids and casual gamers, winning “Best Family Game” at last year’s Game Awards. The game could be fairly compared to Super Mario 3D World, being a perfectly charming and smooth experience that consistently entertains.
Mario Strikers: Battle League (* and a half)
I hadn’t planned on playing this one at all, but decided to give it a chance since my daughter saw it at the library and wanted to play “Soccer Mario.” I gave it a try, and while I didn’t hate it, I realized again why I can’t get into sports games or games with sports-like structure (such as most fighting games). It’s not just the theming, it’s the gameplay.
Too many moves, not enough scaffolding. I was bummed with Strikers before I even finished the tutorial, because it goes on forever and crams in a ludicrous number of moves. I found myself literally losing the tutorials because the moves were too difficult or too hard to keep track of. If a game must have so many moves, I prefer games that “scaffold” their dense systems by gradually introducing abilities over a few hours of actual gameplay.
Bad single-player. You have to control an entire team of 4 players at once, which distances me from the characters and gets confusing. Also, there isn’t a story or adventure mode. You play soccer matches and then… play more soccer matches?
Competition over experience. To be fair, Nintendo at least tries to spice things up by adding in items, themed arenas, and colorful characters. At the end of the day, though, I want to play games to have an interesting and fun experience, not to just beat someone (or the computer), and I don’t feel that I get much out of these sorts of games. This is also why I honestly don’t care about e-sports.
So… if you’re into sports games or online competitive games, maybe “Strikers” is for you, but I don’t think it offers much to everyone else. In addition to my basic gripes with the gameplay, the Nintendo polish and quality isn't quite there. Arenas have no effect on anything, you play teams with "clone" characters during the cups, the goalie mechanic feels random, etc. etc. etc.
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (**** and a half)
Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong games are underappreciated. Yes, critics awarded both games moderately positive reviews, but didn’t really give the big ape their full attention. Maybe we only pay attention to platformers when they’re indie and artsy?
Anyway, Tropical Freeze is a classic platformer, similar to the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy on SNES. Not much story, pretty simple, but nonetheless very engaging thanks to the cool environments and fabulous level design. It’s the sort of game in which the technical depth of your basic running and jumping challenges removes the need for any complicated game mechanics. “Feature creep” is avoided, with only two alternate playstyles (mine carts and rockets) providing a change of pace.
The level design is fan-freaking-tastic. Every level is layered in fresh ideas, beautiful backgrounds, and a world that feels completely alive. Obviously none of the environments are realistic, but a tremendous amount of work goes into making the platforms feel like features of the landscapes, structures, and machines that inhabit this world. The intensity of these worlds is also amazing, as you dodge falling volcanic rocks, outrun runaway blades in a sawmill, climb up an active avalanche by grabbing onto pieces of a destroyed bridge, or flee from a gigantic octopus. There were so, so many bits that made me scream “HOLY COW! WHAT IS THAT?!”
And then, there’s the soundtrack. Veteran composer David Wise returns (after leaving Microsoft-acquired Rareware), and wrote a soundtrack consisting of 5 hours of varied and catchy music. What an overachiever!
Are there flaws? Well... The difficulty is very high, though this can be alleviated by either playing the new “Funky” Mode (which I didn’t), or buying items with banana coins. Also, my major complaint with Donkey Kong Returns is back: repetitive minigames. Frankly, they’re not nearly enough fun to justify their large presence (1-2 on every single level). Also, the game could use perhaps 1 or 2 more worlds.
DKC Tropical Freeze is easily one of the best 2D platformers of the past decade, outpacing its other Nintendo competitors (such as New Super Mario Bros. and Kirby). One of the best things I can say about this game is that I ended up setting God of War Ragnarok aside so that I could complete all the optional goals in Donkey Kong.
Live A Live (***)
Released only in Japan in 1994, this unusual RPG got a remake in 2022. Live a Live is a collection of chapters set in different time periods, each one focusing on a different genre and unique game mechanic. The result is that none of these chapters are meaty enough to truly achieve greatness, but as a group they make for an interesting collection of experiments.
Since this is basically an anthology of mini-RPGs, I’ll rank each chapter from worst to best:
Distant Future: Sigh… This one has almost no gameplay aside from the final boss, at which point you suddenly have to learn how your character fights. Until then, you mostly just move in and out of an elevator to trigger a few lines of dialogue here and there. This is all very frustrating, because the story concept of the chapter is pretty cool. Distant Future could have been developed into a great puzzle adventure, but instead feels like the concept pitch for a game that never actually got made.
Street Fighter (“Present Day”): The smallest chapter. It’s not boring, but also doesn’t have much meat to it. You fight several bosses who are all about the same difficulty, with no chance to explore, level up, or mess around with equipment. That said, I did like the mechanic in which you could learn moves from your opponents.
Wild West: This chapter is brief and the first half is mostly cutscenes. Given the slow pace of the story scenes, this can get boring. Fortunately, when the game finally opens up, it has a cool timed segment and a very solid ending. The animation of bandits getting dispatched by your “traps” is a real highlight.
Imperial China: Good, but repetitive. This one has one of the most dramatic stories, and also features an interesting mechanic in which you level up your opponents rather than yourself, eventually letting one of them take over as your successor. The dialogue is pretty good, as is the music. However, there are simply too many battles and too few enemy types, so this one gets very repetitive.
Prehistoric: This one is fun, but weird. The story is entirely nonverbal and consists of grunting, gestures, and cryptic pictograms. The combat involves using your pet gorilla to throw poop at people. The main quest is to rescue a nearly-naked cavegirl from some guy with a lizard on his crotch, and then have wild cave-man sex at the end while your sidekick gets a harem of several bikini-clad pink gorillas. No, I’m not joking about any of this. Gameplay wise, I enjoyed the wide variety of enemies and challenging combat, even if the level design is pretty basic.
Middle Ages: One of the most beautiful chapters, held back by an excessive random encounter rate. The music is by far the best in the game, and feels more like a “full” composition rather than a short loop. The landscapes look great and the gameplay follows a more traditional RPG format than the others. The story concept is very interesting, but I really didn’t like the weird dialects. It sounded like they were trying to emulate Shakespeare, but didn’t have the right actors or writers to pull it off. The reuse of this map in the endgame chapter (Dominion of Hate) is slightly better, largely due to the open world approach and epic ending.
Anime (“Near Future”): Given my ambivalence towards anime, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. It feels the most “complete” of all the chapters, giving you time to understand the game world and figure out all your characters. The story is ludicrous, but also manages to juggle self-parody and sincerity pretty well. The opening theme song gave Kat and I a good laugh.
Edo Japan: This one really surprised me, as many people online hate it and find it overly difficult. Edo Japan is the most efficient and well-designed chapter. The dialogue is succinct, and the level design and scripting are excellent! Exploring the castle felt like a bold experiment in semi-open level design, as I encountered all sorts of surprises and felt excitement every time I’d find a secret door, alternate path, or a cool new idea (the clocktower puzzle!). You can fight your way through everything, or sneak/run past the guards, and the game does a good job of providing a balanced experience either way.