Metroid Dread is a 2D Metroidvania game developed by MercurySteam and published by Nintendo. It was released in October 2021 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. MSRB is $60. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'm mostly going to show screenshots from the first 3 areas of the game and only talk about the early plot. … Continue reading Metroid Dread: A Modern Classic
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is an Action RPG developed by Nihon Falcom and published by NISA. It was released for the PlayStation 4 in February 2021 and later for the PC, Stadia, and Nintendo Switch in July 2021. I played the Nintendo Switch version. Ys VIII really impressed me last year with its slick combat, … Continue reading Ys IX Monstrum Nox – The Goth JRPG
We're in the home stretch, and it'll be a double-header this time! Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission were both Game Boy Advance games developed within 2 years of each other, and were released during the series' brief renaissance of the early 2000s. Metroid: Zero Mission is a remake of the first NES game with … Continue reading Fusing The Best Parts of Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission
Super Metroid sits on a golden pedestal, inside a sacred chamber, deep within the revered temple of Retro Video Game Classics. To approach, one must meditate for seven days, chanting the ancient mantra: atmosphere, exploration, powerups, backtracking... atmosphere, exploration, powerups, backtracking... once you've cleansed yourself from the impure, hand-holding world of Modern Gaming, you may … Continue reading Super Metroid: A Critical Second Look
On the eve of Samus' new outing on the Nintendo Switch, I thought it would be fun to look back on some of the Metroid games and give them solid critiques, starting with this game. As with A Link Between Worlds, I played Samus Returns before I started reviewing games. However, unlike A Link Between … Continue reading Returning to Metroid: Samus Returns
Happy 35th Anniversary, Zelda! To celebrate, I thought it would be interesting to take a peek at a Zelda game that showed Nintendo in the middle of a metamorphosis. In the mid-2010s Nintendo was transitioning from a gameplay formula they had been using and refining since A Link to the Past in 1991, where Link … Continue reading Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and Between Formulas
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a puzzle platformer developed and published by Nintendo. The game arose from the Captain Toad levels in Super Mario 3D World. It originally released on the Wii U in December 2014. Later Nintendo ported the game to both the Nintendo Switch and the 3DS in July of 2018. MRSB is … Continue reading Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is Classic Nintendo Fun
As we discussed in a previous post, Hideo Kojima is the first game designer to create a Postmodern video game. Postmodernism is an artistic movement that began in earnest in the late 20th Century, though its roots go all the way back to the 1910s with Dadaism and Surrealism, such as Rene Magritte's The Treachery … Continue reading Hideo Kojima, Part 3: Deconstructing Video Games
In 2012, Kojima said in an interview with The Guardian that he has a highly active imagination, and that even in adulthood he has to keep his mind from wandering off and making its own stories. He even paused during the interview to discreetly share what was going through his head at that very moment … Continue reading Hideo Kojima, Part 2: The Surreal Art of the Visual Metaphor
Hideo Kojima's Instagram bio states, "Game Creator: 70% of my body is made of movies." As we've recently learned, Kojima's love for movies runs deep into his childhood. It has stayed with him through difficult times like when his father passed away, or when he was striving to make it as a game designer. They … Continue reading Hideo Kojima, Part 1: How a Film Geek Makes Video Games
