#its a good game but by being so middling its a bad sequel and it doesnt deserve that

[ganondoodle]

you know, you could argue that totk is just "one bad game" in a series that doesnt have to mean anything for the future, and i should jsut move on and wait for the next one, and generally id agree, but these days i cannot help but feel like its the beginning of the end, so to say

we are seeing it in every type of media, be it series, games, movies, that stories that say anything are too risky so they go for generic slop instead- the recent news about pixar wanting to focus "mass appeal" (despite their reasoning being completely hypocritical?) is just yet another proof of that being a trend that doesnt seem to stop any time soon

and one of the problems that brings with it, besides just being boring, is that "generic mass appeal" stuff ... ends up turning around to repeat tired old stereotypes that often leads to really problematic framing (like even childrens cartoons featuring war somewhere in the middle east against evil arabs .. just like, as a backdrop), bc "mass appeal" in general really means "average white person able to spend money", which isnt the majority of people but its the ones who this is targeted towards and more often than not made by, and, no matter how much some people want to pretend its possible, its impossible to make anything that doesnt say anything, theres nothing non political, if they think something is non political its bc its aimed at them and they agree with it

thats what makes me so anxious about the future of the zelda franchise, bc, while its always been a problem, totk especially.. is exactly that imo, its generic and a boring good vs evil with no nuance to be found if you are in the target "mass appeal" but as soon as you arent, or know about the most widely used ways of framing, its kinda scary how clearly it turns into a white god appointed savior against the evil arabs imperialism simulator, and it might not have been intended as such, its so normalized that its considered simple and standard.. (i know i go on alot about it, and i dont mean media has to be sanitized uwu perfect and not feature anything problematic- i mean this as a critique of how its presented, it expects and wants you to agree with it, its not like a cautionary tale about serious things like some movies ARE, its a fantasy game 'aimed at kids' ..)

and if its true that they outsourced the writing for the game .. for the sequel to breath of the wild, one of their most successful games ever, then what does that mean for the future? that doesnt sound good at all

with the trends of the dominating media, and how totk turned out, i feel like we are seeing the start of a downfall into 'generic slop' that makes them more money more safely than anything more unique or interesting for the franchise like its happening with everything else that isnt indie

if all that wasnt the case i might not be so focused on it, i might be able to move on much easier, but i cant, i care deeply about it and i feel like im clawing at sand slipping into a giant garbage disposal, im not thrilled and excited for the next game like i was just a few years ago, or direct for that matter, im afraid of what they will do next, and i dont think thats good, and i dont think im the only one either, hyperfixation (special interest?) or not

[kosmonauttihai]

So I have Thoughts about the shape of Samus's helmet visor.

The appearance of her suits in general varies slightly in each game, even without an obvious big plot reason like in Fusion, but considering the suit is part of her body and responds to her thoughts and emotions, at least some of these slight changes might be diegetic, too, and subtly indicative of things relevant to the game's plot (spoilers for those, btw) and how she feels about it.

Throughout the games, there's overall a progression of the visor going from a simple shape, wide and rectangular around the eyes (with rounded corners in the first game), to more of a triangle with sharp edges and notches. .

Metroid 1 .

Metroid: Zero Mission .

Metroid Dread

There are some interesting out-of-universe implications, too, but focusing on the in-universe ones - while early games Samus isn't exactly naive and insecure, life experience does bring confidence in what you can handle, and I personally like to think that Samus's age in Zero Mission and in Dread is early twenties and mid-fourties, respectively (or whatever's the equivalent of those ages for her, considering she is a Chozo, too, and may not age at the same pace as most humans), and she certainly has reason to become more emotionally closed off and disillusioned as she faces more betrayals and loss of loved ones. .

Metroid Prime .

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

After Prime 1, if we go through the games in story order, the middle of her visor starts to tilt down a bit more and the outer corners up, gaining a subtly fiercer look. You could even think of the extra angles the visor shape gets in the Prime sequels to represent her outlook on her career gaining more complexities; old enemies becoming victims to new, increasingly eldritch ones, and allies trying to use the same hazardous resources the enemies are wreaking havoc with. Phaaze and the Ing being threats to the rest of the universe but also really just doing what's their way of surviving.

The notch at the middle is rectangular, a shape associated with stability, though. Things aren't turned too upside down yet, and it also resembles the visor on the Galactic Federation soldiers' helmets, as Samus is working in cooperation with the Federation at the time and is still on good terms with them.

(I don't think it's been made clear yet where Prime 4 fits on the timeline, and we don't know much about its story yet, but fwiw the visor shape seems to be the same as in the other Prime sequels.) .

Interestingly, the notch in the middle is inverted in the Dark Suit. At this point Samus isn't working for the Federation, but is on a new, personal mission. .

The most narrow her visor gets is in Samus Returns, where it also looks uncannily like Dark Samus's visor, because Samus is kind of the bad guy of Metroid 2's story (at least until the worst guy shows up). Metroids are dangerous, but it's not their fault others want to use them as weapons. Samus isn't ignorant of that even at the beginning, but she convinces herself this must be done, until she gets to the last one and has to confront what is happening - she is once again in the middle of a massacre, where the last survivor is a young child who in their innocence tries to befriend the terrifying alien responsible, only this time she isn't the child. .

The original Metroid 2's visor is more what now seems like the visor's baseline shape, but considering the only point of reference at the time was Metroid 1's design, this change, too, was a distinct step in the darker and edgier direction in that context. .

Super Metroid's visor having that "baseline" shape again resembling Zero Mission's is because the game is older than ZM, SR, and the Prime series, but going in story order and treating the remakes as Metroid 1 and 2, it still kind of makes sense it goes back to that shape. Samus's mission in Super Metroid is to rescue the Metroid larva, an innocent kidnapped by her worst enemy who will undoubtedly use it to hurt other innocents - a pretty straightforward good vs evil setup.

That along the way she kills a bunch of creatures that would perhaps also count as innocents (R.I.P. Crocomire, who gets in the way but doesn't even attack until the player does, and may have had no affiliation with the Space Pirates at all) doesn't catch up to her until the SA-X shows up in her old suit, looking and acting like the killing machine she was, as if to mock how easy it was for her to forget things aren't so simple when she was the one with superior firepower. .

And Other M may be Other M, but the design detail of having Samus's visor show so much of her face and be less opaque a lot of the time does fit her being more emotionally vulnerable, and having more trouble protecting herself from and suppressing how much she shows the effects of old and new trauma. .

The Fusion suit has several features reflecting her being a Metroid now, including her helmet seeming to have fangs on the sides. The notch extending from the top of the visor shape in the middle is sharp, too, as opposed to the rectangle notch in the Prime suit's visor. Along with the outer corners of the visor being tilted up, it also makes it look a little like there's another set of fangs biting into the visor from above, making her helmet like a Metroid larva that's enveloped her head.

Samus joining the species of the dangerous creatures she has fought for years, and has then come to see in a more sympathetic light that's still tainted with guilt of being responsible for their extinction and not being able to save the last of them… isn't exactly voluntary or without some crisis of identity. Maybe the Metroid part of her swallowing up the rest is a a little what the situation feels like to her, and something she fears becoming more than a metaphor. .

The Metroid suit, on the other hand, she dons after embracing that Metroid side of herself, welcoming letting it take over if that's what it takes - and turns out it doesn't, Metroid Samus is still Samus. The sharp notches are now extending down from the bottom of the visor and up from the outer corners. They're no longer biting into the window of who Samus is inside, the visor now has fangs. .

Metroid Dread also has Samus dealing with her Chozo heritage at its focus, and the shape of her visor in her standard suits resembles a bird in flight. .

Dread's visor also reminds me of the Light Suit's. I think it's pretty likely Samus sees parallels between the Luminoth and the Chozo, and wants to help them like she might feel she couldn't help her own people. But without the sharp beak, the shape in flight doesn't look so much like a bird. Perhaps a moth instead? This is a suit she only wears while representing the Luminoth as their champion and gives back at the end of the adventure, but despite everything that happens in Dread, when her suit returns to regular levels of Metroid, the bird visor is still there.

Also it's interesting that the first game where her design hadn't quite gotten to its iconic look yet has the only particularly rounded visor, despite how round, smooth shapes are found prominently elsewhere on her suit, and the shape language of character design usually associating rounder shapes with heroes and sharper ones with villains. Round = friendly, sharp =dangerous etc. I'm sure it has to do with some contrast making things more visually interesting, too, but I can also fit the contrast being between the general silhouette of the armor and the window into the person inside it with the above.

The suit is durable and powerful, sure, but the toughest component is still Samus herself.

[citrusella-flugpucker]

So, I've long held that I always thought Ralph Breaks the Internet was... adequate. Not good. Not bad. Just... okay as a sequel. And I think, catching it on Disney Channel today, that I've figured out why that is.

It's because every one of its big ideas could be an interesting hook or element in a WIR sequel on its own.

Vanellope feeling stifled in her role and considering going Turbo (and how that's both similar to and different from previous documented instances of going Turbo (i.e. on the Sugar Rush end, there's no reason the game will go out of order if she happens to disappear from the random roster))

Ralph becoming heavily emotionally dependent on maintaining his friendship with Vanellope and keeping it as-is, and having to work on that

Ralph going Turbo (though maybe not like he did to cause Sugar Rush to go out of order--and doing it again after the first movie would need care to not feel like a rehash)

The internet (though I wonder if the particular execution of the internet not being as interesting may have to do with Rich Moore IIRC openly not really understanding the internet, circa 2012/2013)

Sugar Rush steering wheel breaking/figuring out what to do about it

Engagement farming (that part where Ralph tries to get TubeTube views, though here I mean it more broadly in the sense of "trying to get people to engage with something"--I could even see the specific engagement farming of dated-by-2018-standards memes feeling funny and timeless if the person doing them was not Ralph; for instance, if Litwak (who's past middle-age by RBTI) decided to try to do some to increase foot traffic at the arcade or something lol)

Viruses and glitches (though like Ralph going Turbo, it would need care to not feel like some sort of rehash of Vanellope and the Cy-Bugs)

The B plot with Hero's Cuties as parents/parent figures to the Sugar Rushians

Not Oh My Disney, the Princesses, or... nnnngh... the Slaughter Race Princess Song™. They just really only "work" in a very particular treatment of the plot and would be uninteresting or bad on their own (at least in the context of a Wreck-It Ralph sequel--maybe they'd be fine in a different movie entirely).

But anyway, the problem, I think, that brings the movie down to "adequate", that makes me not enjoy it as much or feel the magic I felt with WIR, is that the movie shoves all of these individually interesting thoughts together in a way that makes it feel cluttered and unfocused.

In essence, the movie can't pick a lane, I guess is what I'm saying. It wants to do too many things, and the way it does too many things results in an experience that doesn't feel as nice as the tightly interconnected A and B plots of the first movie. Whereas if it maybe picked fewer things from the list (or even just one thing) that it was able to execute well, maybe it would have felt like a nicer experience for WIR fans in particular?

TL;DR: Maybe RBTI would have felt nicer as a WIR sequel if it tried to do... less?

[breadknight-likes-things]

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, Is A Double-A Delight.

I was a big fan of the first Warhammer 40K Space Marine game back in 2011. While it could be argued it was a fairly middle of the road action game relying on it's license, it knew full well each and every part of that license to use, and it knew what parts of its gameplay to focus on to maximize the fun. I barely knew what Warhammer 40K was back then, I barely know what Warhammer 40K is now, but I know that in this long belated sequel, the developers still know how to make a fun video game. Space Marine was a game about wading into a big ocean of aliens and slashing and blasting. Space Marine 2 is a game about wading into an even thicker ocean of aliens, and blasting and slashing. It rips, it tears, it's just a great time all around. Combat is crunchy and visceral, the number of bad guys on the screen is absurd, but you always feel about on par with them in terms of strength. Despite always being wildly outnumbered. The story is simple, and easy to follow for the most part. Aliens have invaded one of the many human settled worlds, and you have to drive them off. There's layer upon layer of Warhammer 40K lore that I simply don't understand, but that unfamiliarity helped with the tone and setting this game is going for, on my end. Why are there flying babies with cybernetic eyes floating around? Why does every building look like a church? Who the hell is Primarch Gulliman? Who cares? All these things and more are lovingly detailed, absolutely insane, and add a level of texture to the game and story that so many other games could only hope to bring to the table. There are parts of this game I find flaw with. The second enemy type was not as fun to fight as the first one, a flaw similar to one in the first game, for example. The new aliens are nowhere near as silly and fun as the space Orks that I remember so vividly from the first game. Here we have "The Tyranid", an army of insectoid style aliens prone to swarms that boggle the mind to witness. You won't believe how many of these guys this game can render at once. Even still, they lack the comedy of the "what if ten million drunk Soccer Hooligans got together and started a bloody crusade?" Orks, but they're an impressive sight nonetheless. Space Marine 2 is short, its tech isn't the fanciest in gaming, and even at only about eight hours the back half of the game starts to wear out it's welcome by the end. Still, it's one of the best experiences I've had in gaming this year! It's a bloody, silly, and visceral good time. If you like action games as much as I do, it's a very easy recommend from me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to look up whatever the hell the "Omnissiah" is on a Warhammer 40K Wiki.

[alliumdykes]

Omg hi ur so sexy and awesome hahaha talk about the game How Fish Is Made hahaha

Omg wow hi person who totally isn't me I'm going to talk about How Fish Is Made and its semi-sequel/next chapter The Last One Then Another.

Spoilers under the cut, this is very long.

Ok so I just LOVE this game sm. Like I am luring you in with haha funny joke for my long-ass essay rant explination thingy.

But I love this game. The feeling of being in the machine. It's both organic and mechanical. It makes the machine feel biological and man-made at the same time. But also neither. It feels wrong. All the fish you meet NEED to know if you choose up or down. It's the most important choice you make. You MUST choose up or down. It leads into a debate about if you should choose up or down, fishes telling you to choose up while another yells at you to choose down because their so smart they were stuck.

You find a fish whos in fear, they can't choose up or down? Do they go up with their best friend? Or down with the rest of their family? They need you to choose for them. You fall down flesh tunnels, fish seeing frozen fish and calling it art. Its so disgustingly human in some way. At one point you need to open a gate, but a fish is stuck in the gears, thinking there was a way to beat choosing up or down. And technically they did. But not through escape. but from being killed by you, you have to kill someone to progress. And you have no choice.

You enter a room full of water, but you can't swim. you can never swim. you must flop.You meet a fish whos tongue had been devoured by Cymothoa exigua, who sings you a cheerful song about how you just have to live with the bullshit that you are put through. After you are put through the song full of parasites there you must continue on your journey. You enter a room full of fish eggs everywhere and you are forced to stop. you get a dialogue text saying "Why do you deserve it? Will you be able to live with it? Try and try and try and try and try again. Ah, those double action hinges have always been there, just for you, right? You'll come back. Everyone does. Weak. Or you'll go looking. one way or another, right? Weak." Before your forced to keep walking, thinking about what you were told. I like to think its some meta-commentary thing, about how we will go look for another ending of the game, if you do something different you will get another, better ending.

This can also be interpreted as how in life if we make a choice, we could choose one. but in the end we will always want to see what happens if we choose something else. Maybe if I did this instead it'll of end out better? Maybe if I do this in this way instead of that it will be better! but it doesn't matter.

You enter a room, with lights and a fish in the middle. They say this is about conviction. But also. They're just a fish in a room with intimidating lighting, they acknowledge this. How do we know that they know it? They just look smart.

When you finally make the choice a fish whos seen the amount whos gone up and down. You ask the fish to go up or down, they say that whatever one they go through that they will tell you what they see. but you don't.

You go through. You get a message that I transcribed here. I like to think that the monologue is about the selfishness that comes with grief. That you feel that you've had it the worse, what you have gone through is worse then what everyone else has gone through. no one else has gone through the same suffering that you have gone through. but its not true. its rude and selfish.

You can get two endings, a large blob when you go up and you become apart of a sandwich if you go down. I think this is meant to be that no matter what you choose, their as bad as each other. But you have a choice, the only good thing is that you have a choice.

Ok now onto The Last One Then Another.

This takes place after the first, and your in a large blob no matter if you choose up or down. You free the blob and start to (quite literally) consume bits of dead fish around you, gaining enough to burst through a shut door. a fish asks to come with you. you can say yes and consume the fish, or you can just leave. this is the only time you can do this, the only time you don't have to consume.

You go to a boat or bathtub (I'm unsure) and you follow the light to a bloody bandaged head where you can only see an eye and the mouth of the man. You can rather leave or consume. You aren't large enough to consume though. so you must leave. You go through this fleshy tunnel where there's a fish feasting on a birthday cake. You have the option to leave or consume. Although but you have to consume to progress. You go back to the main area where a whole is opened in the middle. You go down to see just the eye of the bandaged man after consuming a small fish.

The man tells you a joke that goes like this "Three men are in the hospital. The first man cries 'I lost both my hands, they told me I'll never work again!' The second man wails 'I lost both my legs, they told me I'll never work again! The third man? He rejoices 'I lost my hearing, they'll never be able to tell me I'm fired again'" before laughing and just sitting there.

You go through a thing where it's only able to fit a specific size, you go into a room, with fish parts, a bunch of mouth wash and a fish covered in mouth wash. The fish cries for you to take them with you. Saying that choosing up or down was stupid. or was it left or right? They can't remember. So you take them with you. You go back to the main area and go up to the bandaged and what do you do? You consume him. You have no choice. You must consume.

You then change into a first person perspective cutscene, your a person on a ship giving pain killers to a bandaged man without both hands, without both feet and with no ears. A Deaf man who has no hands and feet, like each of the men in the joke. You feed the man painkillers with the first option being the same mouthwash in the room near the bathtub boat thing. You feed the man the painkillers then get an ad for mouth wash. and then the Cymothoa exigua in friend-os mouth appears asking you to wishlist the game mouthwash.

I like to think the second part/chapter is about over consumption. You must consume consume consume. And the choice you made that was extremely important doesn't matter, because all you must do is consume.

Anyways thats my thoughts :3

[rriavian]

ooooo this ask game has a lot of good ones. How about:

🐌 What is one of your smallest writing goals?

👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

🐌 What is one of your smallest writing goals?

My aim is to finish a few smaller projects in the first six months of this year. I’ve got some prompts in my inbox that I’m finishing fics for (all smaller stories) and I'd like to keep to a goal of regularly filling prompts this year.

I’ve also got another Corintheus ficlet I want to finish, and Cursed is a shorter piece. So a rough goal is the get those two out for February and then do the rest in whatever time they need :)

 👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

I think my bad habits are the other sides of my good habits, if that makes sense? The billions of ideas I’m always having can mean that unless I catch that wave when it happens, it feels like I’ve not done anything with that thought and just stalled instead. My own brain can quickly swamp me, and that can make me then struggle to finish. So I’m trying to pace myself better and be less stressed about ‘right now immediately’.

I also tend to write a little chaotically. Prose out of order, leaving rough sentences/ideas as place holders, but this doesn’t always work for longer projects. It can leave some tricky bits to clean up at the end. I can dip back in and be like aha! I know exactly what this needs, but it can also trip me up and stall me.

I’ve got a relatively flexible style, I’ve taken some different approaches in different fandoms and/or fics. Though Baiting the Trap and its specific tone/style was very much something I’d already practised in another series. Just not as explicit and not quite as poetic (the Corinthian’s POV naturally seems to be very lyrical, though not in the same way as Dream's). 

To keep flexibility I like to shake things up and do something completely new to keep myself from losing an edge and getting lazy. Not that I think I am a lazy writer, but I have ways to make sure I’m taking the same care and thought every time. Prompts from other people really help with this as I love considering new angles and tropes.

When something is hard/new I think we go more carefully, and are forced to be more novel, and I really really like improving my skills by doing that. It’s helped me write some of my favourite work.

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

There are two secret Corintheus fics I wrote alongside those for Corintheus week that need a last edit before posting but I’m being very quiet about what they are :) should be a nice surprise! I’m also very proud of my Corintheus ‘divorce au’ that I still need do some work on before I post. I think the one I’m most excited about is probably role reversal au because when finished it’s going to be the longest fic I’ve yet posted that’s not split into a series. It'll also be the longest fic I’ve written in years.

It’s quite ambitious, and will probably have a sequel. I’ve planned the second arc out because I had to split the original fic in two. There’s lots of threads as well as other relationship dynamics and subplots. It’s about Dream and the Corinthian of course, but also very much about how they interact with other characters. Death shows up quite a lot, but I would say that Lucienne and Gault are the other really major characters in the fic.

I’m also branching out into other parings/writing some more gen fics. And, as an honourable mention, what was intended as the last two parts of Baiting the Trap have both been written for over a year and every single day I just want to share where it’s going. Unfortunately there’s at least two more in the middle, which I’m also excited about, but when I get to it I’m going to feel so relieved. 

Oh! And the Corintheus seduction au! Goodness I’m excited about everything aren’t I? Though I guess that sums me up! Thank you so much for your questions I hope you enjoyed my answers :)

[televinita]

Reading Triage

Well it's been almost a month since the last (library) one, so off we go; lots to be immediately excited about!

1. Hurricane Summer - Asha Bromfield: current read, roughly 50% in. It's painful how awful some of her relatives are, and I'm baffled that she gets so upset about her aunt calling her a slut for super innocent behaviors only to...immediately get frisky with the first boy who charms her?? Truly not beating the allegations here -- but it's also incredibly beautiful writing about a setting and culture I truly don't think I've read before (Jamaica, especially from the perspective of a Canadian citizen).

[edit: loved it]

2. Even If It Breaks Your Heart - Erin Hahn: 60% done but I've been working on this one for 3 solid weeks now, struggling thru first audio and then ebook on phone, then learned that county next door FINALLY bought a physical copy after all. Part of the struggle is formatting, but the rest is that it wants and deserves to be 4 stars so bad, but the You'd Be Mine-levels of jackhole in this love interest are dragging it down.

[edit: it did not get better but I finished]

3. Queen of Junk Island - Alexandra Mae Jones: so damned pretty that I'm reading it despite the fact that it's literally just a mid-2000s queer YA novel that had to wait until its author was old enough to publish it in 2022, in terms of both being set then and having its entire focus on becoming aware of/coming to terms with her non-straight sexuality. Which was absolutely never the kind of book I looked for. But I REALLY want the story of them cleaning up the family cottage from all the trash a previous renter left there. (side note: how did I manage to randomly pick two Canadian authors from my shelf browsing??).

[edit: worst book of the year with zero competition]

4. The Wishing Game - Meg Schaffer: I kicked it back unread last time but my request in the county next door has just come through. I really hope I love this one. Everyone I trust does, and it really seems up my alley, but I'm so terrified of reading this at the Wrong Time and it coming up short that I'm actually scared to start.

[edit: it was really lovely! glad I got to it]

5. Liar's Beach - Katie Cotugno: seems like a good summer YA thriller, and it has a sequel (companion book?) coming out in August.

[edit: I have read so many YA horror/thrillers this summer but I didn't quite get to this one. Later!]

6. The Dare - Natasha Preston: I'm expecting even less from this one than The Haunting, but it was available so what the hell. And at least this one actually takes place in summer.

[edit: least interesting of the 4 I've read from her, and an I Know What You Did Last Summer knockoff, but still worth it]

7. Between You, Me & the Honeybees - Amelia Diane Coombs: I don't like "our families are business rivals" stories, but I DO like stories about teens who would rather stay home and work for the family business than go to college, and this cover is so pretty that I'm ready to give it a shot.

[edit: the rivalry wasn't even an issue for me, and though I did have other things that weren't my favorite, this was an incredible YA contemporary]

8. The Spellshop - Sarah Beth Durst: releases in 2 days and will be bumped to IMMEDIATELY NEXT in the queue as soon as my library makes it available (I'm first in line). I'm trying to contain my excitement and moderate my hype levels but it's too pretty!!!!

[edit: five solid stars, everything I hoped for and more, one of the best books of the year]

9. (MAYBE) The Middle of the Night - Riley Sager: I don't think I'm high enough up in the request line to get this by the end of the month, but if it does happen to come in, this is the other book I'll drop everything for to read ASAP. My interest in this is mostly FOMO, and I'm kind of annoyed to have been caught up in it because EVERYONE reads his books immediately upon release, but I do generally enjoy them.

[edit: didn't arrive in time but definitely coming in August]

10. (MAYBE) Out On A Limb - Hannah Bonam-Young: I have read surprisingly little straightforward adult romance this year and I'm kind of missing it. I've had this hold paused for a bit but I might be ready to un-pause it soon.

[author's note: but then I wasn't!]

BONUS: AUDIOBOOKS

The Hundred and One Dalmatians - Dodie Smith (it is so hard not to shorten the title to 101!): a reread of a book I remember surprisingly little from for something I put on my "Top 100 Books Of All Time" list at age 19, but still remember fondly, because I got desperate & squirrelly for something to help me fall asleep.

[edit: not sure it would still make the list now but still really enjoyed]

2. Marvel's What If... Loki Was Worthy - Madeleine Roux: library doesn't have a physical copy, which is annoying because I hate reading on my phone but I also don't know if I can tolerate an audiobook that doesn't have the Correct Voices (though I really liked the 5 minutes of sample I heard), so I've been having to juggle this one until I can get both formats at the same time on Libby, to switch between them.

TBQH, my excitement for this has died down a little since I found out about in December (didn't release until April), but at this point I've been waiting long enough that I just kind of Want To Know.

[edit: what a fun cracky time, recommended]

[mk-wizard]

Top 10 Media that would benefit from spinoffs

After doing my last article, it got me thinking about specific lore I didn't put on the list because most of it is good the way it is, BUT that doesn't mean the lore should not be expanded. Note that there is a difference between a spinoff and a prequel or sequel. A spinoff is a story that takes place in the same universe as the main story of a media, but it is independent from the main story. It is it's own thing with its own unique set of characters with their own arc kind of like Star Wars Rebels, The Bad Batch, Family Matters, Picard and the video game Alien Isolation. Sometimes, they can happen before, during or after the main story, but they are still independent from it. The great thing about them also is that they keep lore alive without breaking it (most of the time) and even if they fail, it's no big deal because the main story still remains intact.

Note that there are spoilers ahead and I will not count media that already has spinoffs like Resident Evil, Jurassic Park, Robocop, Terminator, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, most Marvel media and anything else that has side stories. Anyway, onto the list.

1- The Brendan Fraser Mummy featuring anyone BUT the O'Connell's - I think the third film should be retconned and reinvented as a spinoff. In fact, I could think of so many spinoff ideas for this series because there are so many mummies to unearth out there and they don't even have to come from Egypt which is pretty cool. While I think the O'Connell family's finished after the second film, you can still do things with Jonathan Carnahan (Evelyn O'Connell's brother), the Medjai or just use new characters entirely. Plus, you can still do it now. I say we go for it! By the way, I know people think the Scorpion King is a spinoff series, but actually, it is a prequel at best and it failed because it had no mummies. And yes, that matters. The franchise is literally called "The Mummy", so it needs to have a mummy.

2- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air featuring Hilary and Ashley Banks - I think this series could have benefitted from a spinoff featuring the secondary characters. Specifically, Hilary and Ashley who went on to become roommates in the last episode. The Banks sisters are very underrated as characters as is their dynamic because those few times we did see the two of them together, they played well off each other. Plus, in times where Ashley really needed her, Hilary was a good big sister. I think a spinoff sitcom featuring Hilary and Ashley's new life together while also building up their lives as grown women would have been great to see and maybe, we can still see how it all worked out.

3- Sailor Moon spinoff featuring Sailor Chibi Moon - I love Sailor Moon, but while I am one of those fans who believe it should have ended with season 3, that doesn't mean the lore should have ended altogether there. I think they had the right idea about making stories where Chibiusa was the focus, but they should have taken the plunge even deeper. I think Sailor Chibi Moon should get her own spinoff series where she is saving the Earth while standing on her own two feet without being in her mother's shadow. I would even age her up a little. Now, hear me out. This is NOT a sequel series, but a spinoff still because it is not featuring the main original cast. This is a secondary character with her own team. It is a new Sailor Moon and a new story which I think still has potential.

4- Lord of the Rings spinoff exploring the stories of the secondary and tertiary characters and more - Ok, Rings of Power was a dud, but the idea of exploring the stories in this lore is not a bad idea. Did you know that there are entire areas in Middle Earth that mirror Asia, Africa and more? I would love to see a spinoff that explores what was going on in those parts of the world or seeing the tragic story of what happened to the dwarves in the Mines of Moria kind of like how Star Wars did Rogue One. Or a spinoff series telling the story of Gollum and his descent into villainy. With the right team and creators, you can make the LotR lore into a much bigger world.

5- Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs spinoff featuring only the Dwarfs - Disney was onto something when it gave Aladdin and the Little Mermaid their own spinoff TV series that explored the lore and worlds afterwards. To be honest, I think they should do the same thing with the dwarves of Snow White. After all, the dwarves themselves are heroic, entertaining and beloved by fans. Plus, considering that the story is German, it would be very interesting to make use of German lore. It could be fun and great for kids while also appealing to adults. I mean, look at how great the spinoff media featuring Tinkerbell and the fairies was.

6- Dead Island spinoff featuring side stories - Like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and many other horror genre games, this franchise would have benefitted from having spinoff media because it did have the good bones to make some. In a zombie outbreak, you can make so many stories featuring random people trying to survive. The only condition here is that it has to happen on an island which within itself is doable because there are many tropical islands. Or perhaps an artificial island like a rig or a secret one with labs. This is one of the greatest franchises and the most it has is one DLC and a franchise we waited too long for. It deserves more.

7- Dying Light spinoff featuring original side pieces - Like Dead Island, this game had many stories happening in the background, but we didn't get to see them. Also, it only has a DLC and a single sequel. I would love to see more side stories that fill in missing gaps and feature fan favourite secondary characters. Or even new characters we can relate to.

8- King of the Hill spinoff featuring Luanne's family - King of the Hill is one of the best animated sitcoms that was adult without being dark or mean spirited yet at the same time, funny without being silly or over the top. It also had an amazing cast of characters that grew into their own namely Luanne who eventually married and had a child. Her story is compelling enough as it is as she went from coming from a broken home with abuse, alcoholism and worse, to creating a loving family of her own. She's a survivor who came out on the other side without being broken thanks to extended family. Speaking of which, I admit it would not be the same without the original voice actress (rest her soul), but the character herself is relevant especially because in many ways, Luanne mirrors Hank. I think she and her family would be awesome to see in their own warm hearted and funny sitcom.

9- Team Fortress 2 spinoff media featuring the Medic - It is no secret that the Medic is quite possibly the very best part of the game. Yet he is also the most sidelined for some reason. I think the Medic deserves his day not just as a member of the team, but in the spotlight in any media frankly. It can be his own comic, his own show, his own movie or even his own game. The Medic has shown time and time again that he is not to be underestimated. I can think of 101 stories to write about him alone though the one that most often comes to mind is a sitcom/action/comedy show about his life after the war as a married man and father.

10- Disney's Tangled the series spinoff featuring Cassandra- While Rapunzel's story is done and over, Cassandra's is not. She went from being a friend, a villain, a secondary heroine to a travelling adventurer. She was not only a good foil to Rapunzel as a sisterly figure, but also a great character in her own right. She is a woman of action with a tomboyish streak, but is open to meeting the right guy (though she won't say it). She is also a strong female character who isn't a Mary Sue or tries to upstage or replace Rapunzel. Not even when she went bad for a while. Cassandra fit neatly into the lore of Disney's Rapunzel and I would love to see where her own independent story goes and maybe, we should. She is a truly unique female character in the lore of Disney as it is as she is not a princess, she was born out of wedlock and it was her own mother who abused and abandoned her.

Anyway, that is my list. What is yours?

[noelle-holi-gay]

i just. finished reading the last chapter of dream come true and like. god. theres a lot to unpack.

first off i was always a krerdly believer for the series. ever since we saw berdly being a fucking disaster and ask everyone but kris out i was cheering for him to ask out kris. and oh boy you fucking did it. you actually fucking did it im so happy and grinning like an idiot even though berdly asking kris out actually made me die of secondhand embarrassment. the little cringefail gamers going together. what a dream. also kris in a dress supremacy lets fucking go im bad at visualizing stuff in my head but they mustve looked so gender and i am envious.

also a mini fangame thing for the actual epilogue????? oh my god im actually gonna explode. like actually so so so so excited for it.

and finally. i just. want to express my disbelief at how its finally ending. i remember meticulously going through the deltarune tag because i just got sucked back in and i wasn't there for the initial chapter one release of deltarune so i wanted all the content i could get my hands on. and of course there were already some chapter 2 stuff in there, and i saw dare to dream, and thought "oh, that's a nice suselle fic, i'll go check it out" and i fell in love with it. just good pining and fluff, with a little bit of worry about carol in the last chapter but like. ok. and you uploaded a sequel and i was ecstatic and you kept writing. and writing. and writing until eventually we're waist deep into your own headcanon lore with whole new characters and dark worlds and it was just. amazing. actually one of my favorite fic series i've ever read, deltarune or otherwise. every chapter you put out somehow outdid the last and its been such a joy eagerly awaiting the next update and godddddd i cant believe it's finally over.

thank you so much for it all. i genuinely cannot express enough how much dare to dream means to me. the hit of serotonin every time i get the little notification in my emails. me actually having to stop in the middle of reading chapters and walking all over the room. rolling and squealing and flailing in my bed at fuck o clock in the morning. trying to guess what happens in the new chapter and searching through my playlists for mood appropriate music to read to and then changing it when the epic battle turns into a reunion and then lore exposition. its been such a wonderful ride and im looking forward to the epilogue and your future works as well because whatever you decide to put out next, im sure it's gonna be a great one.

im gonna CRY!!! im gonna CRY!!!

Thank you so much for the kind words, and thank you so much for sticking with the fic this long. God, I was already pretty emotional just posting that chapter, and then all of you fuckers have been so goddamn NICE! I'm scheduling this for tomorrow because of the spoilers, but as of time of writing, I haven't even read through all the comments yet, and i just KNOW its gonna fucking destroy me

Anyway. Yeah the Krerdly thing was a looooong game and im so glad I got to pay it off like this here lmaooo

[orphancookie69]

Now Watching: The Super Mario Bros. Movie!

Mario has been on a roll this year, anyone else thinking we should quit our day jobs and become plumbers? Between Universal Studios adding “Mario Land” and the movie debuting on 4/5 in theatres everywhere...don’t even get me started on the amount of games from the franchise that are selling hand over fist. Let’s talk movies! 

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

So, before I watched this movie-I have played the games for my whole life, my parents played the game before me. This game came out in 1985, which puts this on the radar of my parents growing up-and then on my radar in childhood. My nephew is avid gamer, who has done everything mario related. He has either played or watched youtube for gameplay footage, and even just went to Universal Studios. So, you have Mario on 3 generations. His current favorite game is Super Mario Maker 2. 

This game, turned movie, can almost be too iconic to succeed. I meant what I typed, I know the phrase is “too big to fail”, but I mean what I type. One question I had before was: who was the target customer? Was it my parents who played the OG game? Was it me who played the current game with extended storylines? Or my nephew who has probably watched more people play it more than he has actually played it? 

This is your spoiler alert. Here I will go into some things I loved and did not love about this movie. 

There was so much movie in such a little time. While there are a lot of games in the franchise, from my knowledge of the mario universe-they covered the following game: Mario Kart, Super Mario Odssey, Luigi’s Mansion, Yoshi Island, and so many more. The movie is 1.5 hours long. Some references to the games were more subtly referenced, and others were like watching a video clip from the games. 

The movie itself is well made, the actor list is not a bad mix. The story is not untrue to the base material. The mixture of real world and game world is a little odd, but kind of necessary. In game, there is no question of why you are there. In the movie they have to establish why humans are in the video game world. The movie needed to be a little bit longer to kind of establish the brothers. Yes you know the brothers, but when you are changing the story-you have to explain it. 

While you are normally helping to rescue the princess, the tables are turned. I wonder if that would of been the case if we weren’t in a time of feminist trying to dominate the world. Music is all over the place, half the time it is video game classic tunes and the other half its oldies over the generation. There is even a beastie boys song in the movie! 

There is a lot of movie, in too short amount of time. In my opinion, I don’t feel like Nintendo struck the “classic kid movie balance” in putting jokes for the adults but keeping the movie kid friendly. It was definitely more for the younger to youngest generation, the older generation is too busy adulting to keep up with the ever continuing story. For me, there are some things that are “classic mario” that I would of loved to see more. I did not see enough ghosts or yoshi’s. I know there is a lot of types of being in the universe and its hard to show them all in 1.5 hours, but if it was done differently-you could of slowed it down and maybe had a sequel. 

While I do love this era of gaming turned cinema, not every game is successfully turned into a movie. I would say this game was middle of the road, while I have heard good things about D&D being turned into a film. 

Did you know if you look up Mario games, there are 50+ games in the franchise? IMDb gives this a 7.5 out of 10, and a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. Would I recommend this movie? It is not bad for older kids. Older people will not totally understand everything, but like anything that makes money these days-its about targeting kids and getting adults to pay for them. Have you seen this movie? What would you tell someone who hasn’t seen it? Inquiring Minds Want To Know. 

[derkastellan]

Quick tour of the Gold Box games (Part 1)

So, given how much time I spent on the Gold Box games lately, I wanted to share some notes on the games, maybe also some relevant bits.

Pool of Radiance

Overall style: Mega Dungeon and Sandbox.

Overland Map: Traverse on grid, random and hidden locations

Quirk: Extensive level scaling which ups the challenge, especially in the beginning.

How does it fit in the line: This is probably the hardest title until the very end of the series. You find your bearings with the engine, its quirks, how the spells work, you have to sort out effective combat tactics. And then you're set. It's a great intro to both the Gold Box line and AD&D, but it surely does not tutorialize you. At. All.

Variety: You get the feeling of visiting many varied locations, some quests/sites have a different feel, some missions bypass the focus on combat. They crammed a lot into this one. Due to the limitations of the early engine you still feel like you battled a lot of the same enemies, over and over, and in waves. Still, many challenging set piece encounters that break the mold.

Notable NPC: Cadorna the Traitor.

What I think: See this article.

What can we learn from it: Healthy mix of environments. All missions lead to the end goal, but not all derive from the same big bad. Good, explorable individual locations. How to vary the same enemies into evolving encounters that keep challenging you. And it really did a good one on backtracking - more of that would have done the series good.

What it could have done better: Give a tutorial or intro to the game, or guide you at the start. Maybe. Sometimes figuring stuff out the hard way is also very rewarding.

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Overall style: Separate locations, spanning multiple maps each (episodic).

Overland Map: Point crawl. Mid-game, additional optional locations become available to explore.

Quirk: Cameo by Elminster... if you happen to know him.

How does it fit in the line: Curse of the Azure Bonds feels like a sequel. It is not as tight as POR, nor as focused. It evolves the engine somewhat. You get a bit of a feel for the politics / conflicts south of the Moon Sea.

Variety: Yes, there are many varied locations, but to me most of them don't have much flair. Dracandros' tower and the thieves' guild / sewers at the beginning seem most memorable in terms of dungeon design. Definitely a lot more variety in enemies. It has a damn beholder - probably one of the most complex monsters in the whole line.

Notable NPC: Dragonbait, the saurial paladin whose emotions you can smell. (Nacacia, my ass!) He's on the cover, too.

What I think: COTAB feels a bit weak compared to POR. It starts a trend in Gold Box games' dungeon design - you can enter a lot of rooms in a non-linear way, but most of them feature just unrewarding combat you may skip. And you want to skip lots of it, really. Most of the game I don't remember, having played it one week ago. In POR, set piece encounter rooms often featured some reward - a clue, a story, a piece of gear, needed money and XP. You often had to do many of them, anyway, might as well tie them up in a good way. Not in COTAB - they just feel so skippable! And while you may spend your sweet time exploring optional stuff and could do the middle part in any order, the game rubs a recommended order in your face, so it narrowly escapes feeling linear after all. (The illusion wears thin but holds, I guess.)

What can we learn from it: COTAB tries its best to keep the point crawl lively by tying stories to each leg of the journey, and tries to avoid being too repetitive by making routes previously traversed safe.

What it could have done better: While it works for COTAB, the idea of "the GM can do things to me" bonds is... highly questionable. The party suffers "consequences" for things they never intended to do and had no chance to avoid - and for example gets banished from a whole country. In the context of a CRPG that's no big deal. But in your campaign, this could suck big time.

Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Overall style: Separate locations, spanning typically a single map each (episodic).

Overland Map: Huge map. And yet almost completely unused except for conveying amount of travel needed - there's only one location you visit which isn't a city and it is in the most obvious place imaginable.

Quirk: We're the heroes, and we're gonna walk into every house in town. Oh look! We surprised some spies!

How does it fit in the line: As a game Gateway seems considerably less complex, it feels almost like a tutorial to the other games. You spend considerably less time on each location, making each feel even less memorable than COTAB locations. Given the restrictions of character import/export you should play Gateway right after COTAB. Could of course be considered its own line.

Variety: Quite a bit, it reuses a lot of stuff all over. You don't spend enough time anywhere to let it bore you, anyway.

Notable NPC: Krevish, the harmless-looking fighter. He actually has quite some useful stuff to say over the course of the game.

What I think: This is the tutorial for gold box games you never got. The game is easier, features difficulty controls. It is actually fun in its own way but also rather simple - it's essentially a MacGuffin hunt with some clues, and if you fail to decipher the clues, you can traverse the map and ask a friend. A super quirky sage friend.

What can we learn from it: Gateway, by virtue of having a big map, helps us envision the sheer size of the frontier. Different regions of the map have matching encounter tables - something you quickly learn if you travel through the Troll Moors...

What it could have done better: Gateway should have utilized that map better, placing locations in the wilderness you need to look for. Instead it opted to place practically all its crawling in cities - and adding some "cities" / "dungeons" off the world map on islands. In comparison, POR's overland map was smaller and more condensed, and yet there was plenty of original content to discover, including randomly placed monster lairs. What seems bizarre are all these city maps that double as explorable dungeons, so you get attacked by barbarians or stirges on your way to the inn.

Secret of the Silver Blades

Overall style: Mega Dungeon all the way.

Overland Map: None. Instead you have a central teleport hub you can use to avoid traversing the huge ass dungeon over and over. Only Gold Box title without an overland map, and it shows.

Quirk: Enormous plot convenience with a wishing well oracle that can generate riddle answers for money and has teleporters wherever you need them to break the game into manageable chunks.

How does it fit in the line: Even at the time, I read a review of the game that was rather dismissive and biased me against it. It is, in a sense, the most linear of the games. On the other hand, it broke the mold in making all these maps that were not simple 16 x 16 grids but huge-ass sprawling and branching dungeons to explore and map out by hand.

Variety: The game sends you through a sequence of locations - ruins, mine, dungeon, glacier/frost giant village, boss castle. Each area is themed. It sticks to its themes well, and yet that makes it feel less varied, somehow.

Notable NPC: Vala, the original plate mail bikini girl. To complement her picture (eyes up here, buddy!) you get a combat icon that shows a lot of mid riff. No wonder she takes way more damage than my (overleveled) party!

What I think: This game shows the importance of imagination in early computer RPGs. It might have fared better and distracted better from its linearity if these locations featured in a modern remake in third person or 3D style. But by lacking any overland map and you returning to this village for resupplying the game feels smaller than it is. It actually took me the most time to beat due to its sheer size. And it still feels like you're nowhere, getting nowhere. They tried to break the mold on this one, but psychologically they failed. You need to manage your players' perceptions, too.

What can we learn from it: Most people probably would get bored of the same Mega Dungeon sooner or later, no matter how much variety you contrive for it. (Leaving "Diablo" aside, an entirely different gameplay experience.) It's not that they failed to try for variety, they really tried, it's just the psychology of the whole thing. Which tells us that in RPGs, the setting matters a lot. If you feel cramped into this tiny nowhere psychologically, the actual total size of the combat maps doesn't matter much. The story feels terribly local and limited through the way it is told. The game itself is massive.

What it could have done better: Lots, actually! - Combining size with lots of random encounters is rather tiresome! I kept lowering the difficulty to finish combats faster and since the manual said it lowered the likelihood of encounters. - The game treats giants as regular encounters, making you wade through hill, fire, frost, and cloud giants like they are a nuisance. By the end, even three Ancient Red Dragons at once become a mere blip on the difficulty curve. This shows us rather neatly why even AD&D 2e did a rebalancing there. If ancient dragons feel like somewhat challenging enemies, then it reduces the sense of adventure. - The game massively relies on a particular sort of enemies in mid- and end-game: Monsters with flesh-to-stone gazes. If you don't have mirrors, this is basically a save-or-die encounter and winning initiative is extremely important. If you have mirrors and equip them in time, it trivializes a lot of encounters instead. It's rather satisfying to turn a medusa to stone, though. (The Gold Box games do not consider the penalties, I think, for fighting while averting your gaze.) Most sought item in the game: Reflective magic silver shield - total: 1. Save-or-die needed to go away and won't be missed. 5e does this much better. - Iron golems suck big time.

[ganondoodle]

as i was awake in the middle of the night for like 2 hours bc i felt sick i had more somewhat random totk thoughts

one being that i really hate how raurus response to concerned zelda is, after sonia died in that almost funny how little impactful it was way, "im sure you are here for a reason" (actually, i hate how often this sentence is used in general to .. idk i guess its supposed to be inspiritational???)

bc what does that mean actually? him saying that to someone who got there absolutely by accident really just sounds like "i dont care go figure it out yourself bc i dont want to think about anything concerning you or your troubles lol" i guess its meant to sound like OOOOH fate has BROUGHT you here bc you have to furfill a role you dont know yet (spoiler its being a sacrifice girl with no personality) and besides me hating the 'inescapable fate' trope in general (at least the way its usually done in these games, which is not to struggle against it but willingly accept whatever you are told and pretend thats good) its really jsut goddamn boring and is really only an excuse to well .. ignore her and her trouble; shouldnt you, if you were actually such a cool guy like the game wants me to believe so bad, do everything in your power to get zelda back to her own world before shes pulled even further into the war you caused now that her only ""mentor"" that could help her get more use of her pretty much useless sudden powers is gone too?? i know shes basically dead wife sonia replacement (can of worms ugh) but it still grinds my gears whenever i think of that cutscene, bc i cant help but hear it as the lamest excuse in existence to not care about her and just kinda .. see what happens which in this case means leave zelda completely on her her own since both rauru and mineru die as well (honestly shouldnt rauru have thought about like .. any plan to defeat gan besides dying himself, given hes the oh so cool and goodest guy king whos only mistake was not stabbing gan the second he stepped into their kathedral castle thing, like even if you had a plan it can still fail but it seemed like he just kinda went in with a handful of people that didnt seem to know each other at all, never got names or faces -or unique voices for that matter- to fight gan face to face inlcuding the girl that came from a different time and had nothing to do with any of this conflict and couldnt even really control her sudden new powers just seems pretty stupid)

thought 2

how totk really feels like botw but for the people who didnt like shiekah tech, its not a sequel, its botw again, but version of only sonau, its like a pokemon game that had two versions but one has weirdly incoherent story and acts like the other never existed jsut as a whole its like retreading the same points but worse, all shiekah tech that was so integral to the world and had such a long history just vanishing and no one caring about any of it like it never happened, HELL the titans were called divine beasts in english but i guess they werent divine or important enough to keep around LOL champions WHO and isntead a never before seen or even heard of race for that matter showing up and planting their ass in every place the shiekah were before, dare i say it feels weirdly manipulative, like either them or some outside force erasing every fact about the ancient shiekah and replace them with sonau stuff bc they are the hot new shit now

this is a point that just doesnt stop bothering me, how the shiekah tech seemed so carefully designed and integrated into botws world and story, its a difficult to keep balance after all, integrating high tech stuff into a medieval setting, but they made it work! and then totk comes around and throws a bunch modern day tech into it puts some vague greenish stone filter on its exterior and call that even better more ancient tech; why did they even bother to make pottery inspired laser shooting spider legged robots so well integrated when they throw a car and rockets into the next game without a thought and call it a day, what was the fucking point

it feels like someone was dead set on having a set of legos thrown into the game it had no place in, if you want players to build whatever they want make a building game instead!! especially if you are just gonna throw it in with seemingly no consideration how out of place it feels togehter with the fACT THAT YOU ALREADY HAD AND ANCIENT HIGH TECH CIVILIZATION WITH A VERY DISTINCT AESTHETIC THAT WAS ALREADY WELL INTEGRATED INTO THE WORLD YOU ARE PLANNING TO REUSE WITH ALOT OF MYSTERY AND UNKOWN STUFF ABOUT THEM TO EXPLORE FURTHER YOU COULD HAVE USED!! but i guess they just "didnt want to play with you anymore" and that so much so that they went out of their way to erase every trace of it, i dont think the words shiekah tech are ever used in the game, and the purah pad and her towers just drive me more isnane bc they are the same shit but called different and also much worse, liek the purah pad isnt some more developed shiekah stone, no its a glorified camera with a teleport function and thats it

(i know i said this before but i really cant stand how obsessed every single NPC is with sonau shit, you get told to your face every second line of dialog that they are so cool and are so mysterious that it just makes me annoyed of them even more, the game is obsessed with shoving them everywhere and telling you over and over you too should obsess over them, they werent weird like that about the shiekah stuff in botw?? the biggesst talking point in botw was calamity ganon ..... which makes sense and in totk its like ... gan is mentioned what, in a newspaper article??? once???and then not even by name i think???)

aside from that big point which will never let me go, its also just .. its not moving forward anything, it actively walks BACK the progress that was made in botw, call me dumb but i dont really count moving one step up in the social roles of each race as a character development (for the side characters like the champions desc- ahem SAGES) but mainly zelda ... god how dirty she was done, totk pretty explicitely makes her regress any development she made in botw aside from she likes link uwu and some people like her too, but also not enough to notice that that weird zelda being all evil and weird isnt her (INLCUDING THE CHAMP- SAGES WHO YOU ARE SUPPOSEDLY FRIENDS WITH??? you dont have to be a genius to pick up on that my god, were you all given the mc dumbo potion or what)

she gets put back to square one, back into the little itty bitty princessy maiden role forced upon her by her royal parentage, this time rauru edition, back into a white little dress, back into the scared puppy eyed teenager, back into a situation she cant handle, back into losing everyone around her (tho honestly botw made me care more about rhoam than totk did about rauru), back into being forced to do a big sacrifice- but worse actually

in botw she went to FIGHT AND HOLD GANON IN THE CASTLE SO LINK HAD TIME TO RECOVER AND IT WOULDNT DESTROY THE LAND!! and you are telling me in totk rauru takes up her botw role and she bascially killed herself to ... restore the mastersword.

......... she ... she did that only to be a glorified version of the stone pedestal in the forest. and then she gets returned to normal itty bitty girly no problem via magic sparkle beam at the end and

DOESNT

EVEN

REMEMBER.

it really is just botw but worse, you even get yet another ghost king of hyrule to guide you around (rhoam did it better fight me ... we dont talk about the questionable choice to make himself darker skinned when posing as just some guy)

i honestly dont think i was ever truly taken aback by anythign that happened in botw, while in totk, the further i played, the more i had to fight with myself to keep the feeling of unease, disappointment and betrayal down

its such a god damn shame, totk should have stayed a DLC, i will forever mournfully dream of a game that explores more of the ancient shiekah, doesnt erase integral parts of the world, developes characters more instead of making them regress back and make them end up even less developed than at the start of the game, dives into buried secrets and mistakes of dark pages of history without giving into a weirldy nationalist(imperalisitc?) narrative and lets characters have some agency for once

if it werent for the yiga i might have actually considered refunding the game, just to be at peace with myself

anyway, aboslutely incoherent word vomit.

[jcmarchi]

Sand Land Review - Devil’s In The Details - Game Informer

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Sand Land Review - Devil’s In The Details - Game Informer

Sand Land is experiencing an oddly timed resurgence. Its creator, Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), recently passed away unexpectedly, effectively pointing a spotlight on his 24-year-old creation just as it was being adapted to film, anime, and video game. The video game has been my entry point into this world with characters, vehicles, and architecture that all resemble Dragon Ball beyond even just an art style, and I enjoyed the opportunity to live in a brand new Toriyama world and story. Other elements of the game, like its animation and performances, vacillate between high and low quality, but ultimately, Sand Land is the kind of experience I want from adaptation – the opportunity to spend time in a big, realized world with a story that pulls you all the way through.

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The Sand Land video game functions as both a retelling and a sequel to the 2000 manga. For franchise newcomers like myself, this is a fantastic entry point, but there is a jarring line in the narrative between old and wholly new. Moving beyond the borders of the Sand Land region, on a basic level, doesn’t make sense considering the world built up to that point. But, overall, I like the plot and was locked in to see where it was going early on, even if the characters lack depth. Outside of the overt bad guys, no one learns much in Sand Land, and its characters are basically fully defined from their first line of dialogue. Rao, however, stands out as a smart and committed do-gooder who is quickly accepting of everyone despite their differences – a rare character trait for someone whose accurate, uncreative nickname is “old man.”

As Beelzebub, son of the demon king Lucifer, you decide to assist a human in bringing water back to a dehydrated world. This entails exploring large, open worlds with a collection of vehicles that you can call at any time. Swapping between a tank for skirmishes and a motorcycle to speed across the dunes is a quick process, but you do it so often that I admit getting frustrated with the slightly cumbersome swapping system. I also didn’t love that swapping between vehicles basically requires a full stop. It may sound like nitpicking, but every encounter in the game requires frequent vehicle swapping.

Fighting enemies using your collection of vehicles is a highlight and, understandably, the focus of the game. Despite the focus on vehicle combat, the action feels closer to a third-person shooter and does a good job painting control styles between disparate vehicles. I favored the tank with its powerful guns and strong armor, but the jumping tank used to leap up mountains and the mech used to punch other robots are fun in their own way. Upgrading and customizing them is a slow process, and I rarely felt I was making big, impactful improvements by leveling up or swapping out vehicle parts, but I was always eager to check the garage and see what I could do to inch up my stats.

The process of upgrading the town of Spino is similarly rewarding as completing sidequests (many featuring genuinely interesting little stories and characters) brings new people to the growing town. Saving a painter in the middle of the desert, for example, opens up a shop where you can paint and decal your vehicles. You can even decorate the town with furniture, but I admit little interest in that aspect since all of my resources went into improving my vehicles.

Sometimes, Beelzebub progresses without a vehicle, and these sections are generally annoying without ever being too difficult, thankfully. Beelzebub is a powerful demon with a literal garage of armored weapons in his back pocket but insists on occasionally sneaking around for interminable stealth sections. These parts of the game feel like they’re from a different era of video games that we have left behind. The hand-to-hand combat scenarios aren’t as bad, but I was always eager to be back in a tank.

Sand Land has its shortcomings and feels a little overlong despite seeing credits around the reasonable 20-hour mark, but it maintains a charm throughout. Toriyama’s fun sense of humor is front and center with Beelzebub taking on the adventure primarily so his dad will give him an extra hour of video game time every day. I may not have had strong connections with most of the cast and was annoyed with a number of specific sections, but I liked spending time in Sand Land (and beyond) and seeing my garage upgrade and grow.

[glassmarcus]

Jet Set Radio is the ultimate ANTIFA propaganda

*Played and Written in July 2023

Jet Set Radio has punk hip hop energy seeping out of every pore of its being. It goes against the grain in every way. The art style sets the game apart, not just by having distinct and bold character designs, but also through its rough cell shading effects. The music not only slaps, but slaps from a different angle than any of its contemporary's music. This is mainly due to none of it's contemporaries having Hideki Naganuma blessing the OST with the Stankest Funk imaginable. It's a story about overcoming evil and corruption, not through violence like most games, but through embracing art and humanity. Jet Set is counter culture and you can feel it in every aspect of the game. The gameplay even remains distinct from other skating games by being kinda bad. And while I am being snarky here, I do actually think there is some merit to this sardonic comparison.

Jet Set Radio doesn't feel good to play. It's nice to listen to. It's nice to look at. But the controls are too tanky and the mechanics are too unreliable. The camera gets caught on every corner you turn on. It's never clear when you will be able to spray paint due to poorly communicated context sensitivity. Animation cancels and decent acceleration are nowhere to be found in a game about moving around a city expertly. Timers exist....for NO reason. It all comes together to make a rather frustrating experience. But eventually I got used to it, and it became fun when I knew where I was going and wasn't being chased by the cops. Stringing together jumps to tag up a sign 3 stories high is fun no matter how wonky your controls are. It's too bad that you are pretty much always being chased in this game. Every time you start to get the hang of how this clunky game works you get swarmed by pigs and play time is officially over. There is no way to fight these blue bastards off. You just need to runaway and then come back. Only running away is always a crucible due to how slow you start skating. And most of the time you need to execute 5 -10 motion inputs while standing still to post graffiti and all you can do is pray you don't get dog piled in the middle of the animation. It's an issue that only gets more bothersome as the game progresses. You are being pursued by cops with whips, jet packs, helicopters and machine guns and it starts to feel like every step you take is being monitored and every action you make is rejected. They completely ruin this game...but also elevate it.

I hate cops more than ever after playing Jet Set Radio. Paying any amount of attention to the news and being a minority pretty much placed me in the ACAB camp by default. But I think I'm ascending to another level now. I could feel the radicalization occur within me during my playthrough. Seriously, why are there so many of them? Can't you allocate your resources somewhere else? Go actually help someone instead of trying to murder me for painting on the side of a building likely created through unethical means. These are some of the most effective fun vacuums I've ever come across, and they perfectly reflect how lame authority can be in real life. On an aesthetic level, everything in Jet Set is peak. And the cops actively keep you from enjoying that. Did I have fun playing this game? Not really. Did it communicate its message successfully. Damn right it did.

I don't think the game is bad on purpose or anything. But the feeling of being annoyed by the authorities while you are just trying to express yourself is captured so well and so authentically, that the game isn't wholly allowed to be fun most of the time. So in a way, Jet Set Radio is sort of perfect despite not actually being a good video game. I haven't played Jet Set Radio Future, because no one has, but it apparently fixes all these issues. And I'm pretty sure I would enjoy the sequel a bit more. But after playing the Original, I feel like I'm 10% more likely to spit on an officer's shoes and I get the feeling Future wouldn't have accomplished the same thing. Video Games are art. And I think games can be being exceptional art by doing things outside of being an exceptional game. Jet Set Radio is now my go to example of this.

[cielospeaks]

short review of g f

so sevil part 2 event!!!!! hoo boy this one was actually really surprising (in a good way). like honestly

so im just kinda gonna list things

-the new friend (galanthalus i think?) gosh he gave me the biggest turnaround. like his story started out with ??? narrator who is uneasily calm in a heckscape with gratuitous ultraviolence and 99.9 percent of the time in this game that means that ??? is going to be the stereotypical "ow the edge unhinged uncaring murderous nonhuman something from another world" (ie the imposter girl from the ninetales events, morgan, etc. you know the cringe gratuitous violence scenerey chewing and not in a good way villans that this game keeps having to try and stop ppl from liking them more than the protagonists but it never works). but then the turnaround reveal that it was just a kid who was trapped in the sword for being not human and had been tortured and overlooked by everyone for centuries just bc he suited their needs? the biggest turnaround. and that the ??? who was talking to him/answering his questions wasnt a condescending big bad but keral who stayed to keep him company out of kindness????? and that both her and krel kinda let him be their child they never had and want to let him go back and live in the world?????? bro......

anyways tldr galan was a very pleasant surprise writing wise and i support him. also he lowkey reminds me of idunn and i dig that so much

-the arc of the main trio! ofc it was very depressing but im glad they didnt go for an ending where "everyone survives everything is fine uwu!" bc i feel like that sort of thing, tho it could happen bc of how op the main cast is, it would make all their suffering and pain feel trivialized and thrown out, and itd make me hate the main cast more (they already made themselves dislikable enough imo, with them guilting sevil to stay towards the middle just bc they didnt want him to leave, with no thoughts abt how hed feel. and that being said i love that the reason he stayed was to help galan, not bc he was guilt tripped into it). like it is really sad what happened, esp to krel at the very end, but it did feel conclusive which was nice (please no sequel. this was a good ending. we dont need a sequel to ruin it, i am looking directly at the knights and perfetto events. and maybe a sideye at the robomi ones for the unnecessary prophecy stuff)

-the side character development! like despite the angst, it all felt very organic (with sevil's story already having that old timey gin tama-ey feel it all seemed to make sense in the setting and not come across as cringe or insensitive angst). esp bc we didnt know a lot abt the characters in the first event, as they werent playable and didnt appear that much (they didnt even get journal entries either smh). so hearing more abt their backstories made them feel a lot more fleshed out. it was sweet seeing them stay to help w galan also, i do wish they were playable tho but it does make sense theyd be npcs

-have not seen gacha sevils story but im hoping its good! itd easily put him with caro and main gacha sturm of characters id really want (not to mention limited studra too ofc)

-and ofc. from kisumiverse side, i feel like kisumi is trying to resist the urge to punch danchou and co. in the face the whole time, while trying to be supportive of sev. who, to be utterly fair, is so wrapped up in his problems he doesnt necessarily notice kisu until towards the end. kisu doesnt want him to apologise as she sees that it isnt his fault, just asks him to take care of himself, and he realizes that he has a genuine alive friend in kisumi. its just a fun "friends dealing with grief and loss and the cycle of grief together" story.

-and then theres also the ending trope which is actually like tooth rottingly cute. "my sister and brother in law died and left behind a child that i am raising alongside my best friend" for some like slice-of-life hallmark movie angst-with-a-happy-ending. like literally. i feel like the sevil + galan + kisumi (w the father daughter too bc theyre cool) could be the casts in some heartwarming family movie or something

anyways this event, easy 9/10. maybe even 10/10. like i dont think g f could have a better event. zodicas was eh (playable ragazzo was easily the best part), knights was really meh, dont talk to me abt the perfetto one, i honestly dont mind no robomi bc the last one had elements i dont care for, everything else was just really bad except the really middle of the road collab and the slightly not so bad but also not impactful one w the grimmir squad. but yea this event is easily the best that theyve had in the last few years

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Need for Speed Heat

Back to the Streets

EA, are you trying to become my favorite evil corpo? Come on, don’t be shy. Just admit it. You’ve stopped the production of live-service games, you’re releasing rich single-player experiences, you haven’t laid off an entire studio in a while. Wait, don’t tell me. Do you have a crush on me?

Why, EA, I am flattered. Truly. But I must say, I’m not much into the whole corporate type. All those fancy business suits and trunks full of cash aren’t really my thing. I’m more of an indie sort of girl. So while I do appreciate your efforts, I think I’ll have to turn you do—

Hold on, what was that sound? Is that an engine revving up? Did I just hear police sirens in the distance? Whoa, where are all these neon lights coming from? And the smell of burning tires, good lord! Is it? Could it be? No. Oh, no.

Fuck me.

I’m a millennial, alright? However I grew up in a household without any gaming consoles and our first PC came in sometime in the early 00s. Need for Speed: Underground was one of the first games I laid my hands on (not counting Flipper). I’m pretty sure my dumb ass didn’t know what Lil Jon was rapping about, but it sure sounded cool! And the cars, they go vroom vroom!

You know where this is going. The Fast and the Furious movies were just coming out and the hype around street racing was at its peek. Underground laid the foundation for my love of the series and by the time Carbon came out I was an outright zealot. I was in love with tacky decals and the flare of nitrous long before I learned how to drive. Long before I realized I was a bad driver!

However as the 00s neared their end, my adoration slowly died down. EA being EA thought it would be a grand idea to keep releasing one Need for Speed game per year, while continuously molesting its studios. What bugged me even more than the sameness of it all was the direction they decided to take the series in.

In 2010 Hot Pursuit came out. An homage to the series’ roots, the game was praised by both fans and critics alike. It bored me out of my fucking mind. Someone has to sit me down one day and try to explain the appeal of this game. A multitude of sequels followed in its wake, but I just couldn’t be bothered.

I know what you’re going to say. Trends change and franchises need to grow. Need for Speed can’t just be about street racing. Even I would have eventually grown bored with it. However, dear reader, change is not what I’m advocating against. Case in point, Pro Street. That game didn’t have open worlds or cop chases, and it didn’t need to. What it did have was crisp controls, colorful tracks, diverse challenges, an insane customization system, and all of that spray-painted with graffiti and in tune to some electro-pop. What I’m saying is that it had character, a concept none of its successors really understood.

So, yes, Hot Pursuit was boring. No, the constant showering of high-performance cars does not turn me on. No, I don’t want to keep driving along the same generic mountain roads. I need a sense of place, a context! I need a game that has it’s own identity, not just photo-realistic graphics. I need a progression system that’s palpable, not a conveyor belt of super cars that all handle the same.

With as many NFS games as it was churning out, EA didn’t really care about preserving the older titles, as long as you were buying the new ones. Underground, Most Wanted (2005), Carbon, all fell to the wayside. I hung up the keys of my Toyota Supra and looked into buying a public transport card. Long gone were my street racing days, occasionally coming back to mind like flashes of neon glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

Until…

I’m getting to Heat in a moment, I swear.

Behold, a new challenger steps on to the scene! After half-bludgeoning its studios to death, EA decided to groom the upcoming Ghost Games as its main Need for Speed studio. Some middling games (and years full of torture) later, Ghost Games revealed its new NFS game in 2019. But this wasn’t going to be just another NFS game. No, no, we’re going back to the streets, for real this time. Back to being an aspiring nobody behind the wheel of some battered Civic looking to score it with the big league. Yes, street racing is making its long-awaited comeback to the series!

At least that’s what they were saying. Oh, believe me, I was skeptical. It’s been so long since EA did Need for Speed right that I took every announcement with a pound of salt. But beggars can’t be choosers, and since we certainly aren’t getting any re-releases of the old games, I might as well give Heat a try. So I did.

I’ll give Heat one point straight away - it knows its target audience. It does just about everything it can during its 10 minute intro to milk your nostalgia to the last drop. You start the game behind the wheel of some overpowered monster of a car, one whose likeness you won’t be seeing again till late game. The race goes awry (as it always does), the cops bust the average Joe you were playing as, leaving him to limp back to town with his pride shattered. It’s all pre-rendered footage, but what we can’t have in FMVs, we can make up later in stupidity, right Heat?

Then the game cuts and you’re in some garage inhabiting the floating body of an FPS camera. You turn around to meet papi— I mean, Lucas the owner, and then bam! Heat hits you with a character selection screen. Come on, champ, you didn’t seriously think you were playing as Joe?

Heat lets you pick from a roster of 12 characters which is diverse enough, I guess. I certainly wasn’t expecting EA to license MetaHuman just for Need for Speed. I’m here to customize cars, not people, however I was still pleasantly surprised by the addition. Seeing your character interact with others on screen feels more natural than viewing everything from the lenses of your bobbing camera body.

Then I spent the next 20 minutes picking out bucket hats. Unashamedly. No, Ghost Games didn’t have time to develop a character creator, but an outfit picker? Man, we gotta have that! It’s a silly little indulgence, probably there just for EA to strike some deals with clothing brands, but one I liked none the less. Any game that lets me make my character look like a complete idiot gets points from me.

Lucas lets you pick from 3 cars, and of course there’s one American muscle, one Japanese import and one European classic. Oh, I can feel the Carbon tingles come over me again! I must say, I was tempted by the BMW, but just couldn’t resist the Mustang. One paint job and two white strips along the center of the car later, and we were ready to go!

This is peak fashion right here.

This is where I really start to judge Heat - the moment those wheels hit the tarmac and the game lets me loose behind the steering wheel. The world is something that can make or break a Need for Speed game and Palm City certainly had a lot to prove. Thankfully it did.

This is a superbly crafted map. I like just about everything it has to offer. Palm City itself is more than just a mesh of copy-pasted buildings. It feels like an actual place people could live in, with its sprawling boulevards, long overpasses connecting the beach to the glistening downtown, seaside walkways and quiet suburbs hidden in between.

Although at the beginning the game only generates races in Palm City itself, the map extends much further than that. Heat doesn’t wall off parts of the world behind progression. All of it is available to you at once, so you are free to ditch the campaign and go cruise around the countryside by yourself. However if you do decide to follow the breadcrumbs laid out for you, Heat will slowly introduce you to Palm City before it starts fanning out. It’s a seamless way to get you accustomed to the game without caging you in, and there’s a lot to discover once you do get going. There’s a huge raceway behind your safe house, a space shuttle launch site, a forest recently devastated by a fire, an abandoned quarry, etc.

What’s equally important is the size of the map. Modern triple-A games have developed a wearisome habit of stretching their maps into oblivion, but Heat got the balance right. There’s not too much content if you want to make it into a 20h experience, but more than enough if you’re eager to dig in. There’s a huge quantity of events and together they make use of just about every tight corner, every mountain slope, every bare piece of highway the map has to offer. The variety is excellent and Heat makes sure you get to experience all of it.

Just your average view of Palm City.

And of course it’s pretty. I feel that statement might be redundant at this point. EA’s studios have been polishing the franchise’s graphics for years now. However it’s not the graphics, but the different weather effects that give the world a whole new level of depth. Port Murphy feels a lot different when you come up to it on a sunny morning than on a murky afternoon. Likewise, are you climbing up Cloudbank on a dry midday or is the pouring rain making your night ride even more treacherous? Couple this with the choice to switch between night and day and all of a sudden each location has multiple facets for you to experience.

This is what Need for Speed games are all about for me - pulling up my BMW in front of the safe house on a bright summer day, as sea gulls coast in the distance and “Tu Manera” fires up the radio. I relished exploring every bit of this world. Instead of fast traveling, I’d take my time driving from one race to another. That’s how I fell in love with Carbon in the first place, slowly learning different parts of the world and eventually being able to find my way without the assistance of the mini-map. I could still navigate parts of Palmount City to this day. There’s nothing more satisfying in these games than realizing you recognize a street corner and knowing exactly where to go from there.

If there’s one aspect of the exploration I must criticize, it’s the mini-map. As much of an expert on Palm City as you might become, you’re still clueless at the beginning of the game and need the mini-map to guide you to your destination. This is one of the essential features of these games. What bothers me is that the mini-map is the only thing you can rely on for navigation. If you want to know where to go, you have to keep glancing at that bottom-left corner of the screen. This is an awful way to play the game. Instead of having both your eyes on the road and savoring the world around you, you’re forced to avert your gaze from the content that actually matters.

The game sort of offers an alternative. Quest markers and manual waypoints exist as permanent banners that float in the sky. You can make your way to them, in theory, by driving long enough in their general direction. However they are fundamentally inaccurate and can have you driving in circles, not to mention that Ana’s face looming in the distance is nothing short of terrifying.

What I would have liked is something that doesn’t break your immersion and is equally reliable. How about an arrow at the center of the screen which points to where you need to go according to the route computed by the mini-map? Or anything else you can come up with. Keep the mini-map by all means, it still needs to be there to resolve ambiguities, but give me more natural way-finders that don’t take me out of the experience.

A perfect day to fire up the engine.

Heat fills its world with an ample amount of events to keep you busy. There are more or less 4 types of events for you to engage with: race, drift, off-road and time trials. Races are your standard affair - fight your way up a pack of 8 and finish in 1st place. They come in two varieties: circuit and sprint. None of this is new, but I do find it interesting how these races are distributed. Circuit races are almost exclusive to the day, while sprints make up most of your night events.

It took me a while to truly appreciate this detail. In the context of the game, day races are legal and sponsored events attended by professionals. If you want to win, you have to master every corner, and that’s when the nature of the race comes into place. Of course it’s a circuit race, the game is giving you more than one chance to learn and overcome the track.

On the other hand, night races are illegal. You don’t have the luxury of barricades; a pickup truck could come at you from any corner. Also, you’ll probably have the police breathing down your neck, so it doesn’t make sense to race in a circuit. Everyone involved just wants to rush to the finish line and disappear around the nearest street corner. These races aren’t about mastery. They are about survival.

All together races make up close to 70% of the game’s overall events. This is an absurd ratio considering that Heat had more variety at its disposal, so it’s good that plain old racing never gets old. One of the reasons for this is car handling. Being the billionth NFS entry, Heat boasts some nuance in this regard. None of the cars I drove felt quite the same on the road. I would charge my Mustang into corners and slam the handbrake to slide through the competition, where my BMW would require more gracious handling to squeeze its way through.

The second reason has to do with difficulty and, boy, does this game have some crazy difficulty spikes. I started the game on hard and had no troubles until I hit performance rating 200. That’s when things started getting out of hand. Before if I botched a corner, I could always count on catching up with the competition on the next straight. You can forget about that after rating 200. If you’re not driving pitch perfect corners, every corner, then you’re not driving to win. I’d have to enter a race with a rating 30 above the minimum requirement just to have a chance, and still feel like the opponents’ cars were the ones 30 ratings above mine.

This caught me off guard at first, however I have to admit I grew to love it later on. I’m not playing Need for Speed games for realistic driving mechanics, but I do love me some challenge. Some of my favorite tracks in the entire game are the once I had to attempt over and over again, until I finally got to experience the triumph of finishing in 1st place.

The problem that eventually becomes apparent is that the difficulty is far from well-balanced. As you fight your way up to performance rating 300, you’ll notice the difficulty slowly receding to what it was at the start of the game. You’ll occasionally run into a couple more teeth-grinders, but not much more than that. What’s worse is that two races with the same performance rating often present different levels of challenge. You never know what you’re up against. Even more bizarrely, this difficulty phenomenon only applies to race events. I would regularly enter drift and off-road events under-leveled and get out on top without feeling I was overreaching.

Out of my way!

Time trial events are exactly what they appear to be. You have to complete a course in a set amount of time to earn bank. You race alone with a ghost car following behind you, re-enacting the time you have to beat. However what makes these events truly special is that the tracks are insane. The courses are narrow, winding, demanding your full concentration and meticulous braking. None of the standard race events test your ability to control a car as much as these do. Some time trials, like “Up Up and Away”, made me fear for my car’s suspension.

Off-road events are the awkward newcomer to the series. Quite evidently, Heat isn’t a Colin McRae game, so I was curious what it had in store. The answer is not much. Don’t expect to find a self-contained version of Dirt in here. The physics simulations are no where near a true rally game. The cars fly over the terrain without much obstruction, and you have a higher chance of losing control of your standard racer driving down wet tarmac than of your jeep sliding through mud.

Still… As much of a gimmick as they are, off-road events can be loads of fun. They are few and far between, enough to be considered a palette cleanser. Driving off-road in Heat made me feel like I was given the cheat codes for the game. I’d send my Subaru storming down paths that would make all my other vehicles crawl to a halt and laugh as a madman as the scenery flew by.

Moreover, off-road events are some of the more inspired ones. The game has you racing across beaches, under bridges going through wetland, down forest paths you didn’t even know were there, all while intersecting bits and pieces of tarmac just so you could remember what civilization looks like. Lots of collectibles and additional activities are only accessible off-road giving you even more of an incentive to snoop around. The mini-map also handles itself beautifully. While in other vehicles it will never lead you off road, but switch over to your designated mud collector and all of a sudden it’s guiding you across hills and meadows.

If I were to complain about one thing, it’s that off-road events are way too easy. Admittedly, this is one of the reasons why they work so well for unwinding, but I wish Heat twisted my arm just a little. I would sometimes finish a race with the next person being 1-2 km behind me. I got so used to beefing up my car for race events that I’d enter off-road ones obliviously over-leveled. It’s only when I intentionally started skipping engine upgrades that I felt the competition slowly catching up with me.

Even though I enjoyed them, I don’t know if off-road events have much of a place in the series. They seem like an awful lot of effort for what is ultimately a bite-sized piece of entertainment. I have no idea how much the physics engine would need to be revamped to support more nuance, nor how that would impact the arcade-style handling that makes up the rest of the game. Then again, if Forza can do it…

Aw, I didn’t bring my swimsuit.

Unlike off-road, drift events feel right at home in the series. Although not present in every installment, they have still undergone a significant journey from where they started off in Underground. I can’t say I was much of a fan of those earlier renditions, but my mind was thoroughly changed by Pro Street. That was the first game in the series to introduce a more realistic drifting model and I loved it to pieces. Thankfully Heat continues exactly where Pro Street left off.

I admit, that introductory tutorial was quite rough for me. It took me some time to get back into the groove of things, but afterwards I found Heat’s drifting to be some of the most satisfying I’ve had the pleasure to engage with. To pull off a continuous drift, especially around those long U corners, requires meticulous handling of the both the gas and the steering. There’s more technique on display here than on all of the other events combined.

So after the tutorial ended, I gleefully hopped over to the dealership and got myself an RX7 (like the basic bitch that I am). I equipped it with drifting gear back at the safe house, rolled it out of the garage and set it out on the streets… Only to find out I could barely get a hold of it. It had none of the restraint of the tutorial car and it kept miserably over-steering in each corner. That other RX7 performed just fine, so it must be me, right? I went online to search for help.

Turns out you shouldn’t equip your drift car with drift gear. No, no, instead you should put on showcase gear. What’s showcase gear, you ask? Well, it’s somewhere in between your pure race and pure drift gear. How are you supposed to know that? Beats me! This all terribly reminds me of wheelies in Pro Street. To get any lift out of your car, you had to go into the advance settings and tweak your suspension accordingly. Did the game indicate that you needed to do this in any way? Of course not, fuck you.

Unfortunately, Heat’s bullshit doesn’t end there. God forbid, next you have to exit the garage and open up the special numpad menu. I repeat, the special numpad menu. Inside there are additional car tuning options which are not available in the garage. What the actual fuck, Heat? Why are these particular options only available once you’re in the open world? Was this menu patched in later? Sure enough, when you make your way through the very intuitive n u m p a d m e n u and tune your steering sensitivity and down force, you’ll be able to drift. Hooray!

Thank you internet, imagine if I had to sit there and figure out what the different suspension and tire kits were for. Like what the hell is speedcross? Or what’s the actual difference between race and on-road gear? Or why would I ever equip drag— Drag? Wait a minute, Heat, do I smell cut content?

Whenever you preview an event from the map, you’ll be presented with a quartered rectangle indicating the type of car you should bring along: race, drift, off-road and, yes, the ill-fated drag. This is only one of the many signs pointing to Heat’s unfinished state. I’ve no idea why drag events were cut, but you can see their ghostly remnants all over the game, from the unused gear to the long stretches of road begging to be burned upon. Considering the race events’ unquestionable dominance, I would have appreciated one more event type to play around with.

It’s like I’m in the canyons again.

Heat has a simple, yet effective progression system tying into its events - two currencies and a day and night cycle. During the day participating in events earns you cash which you can use to buy everything from cars, to upgrades, to those illustrious bucket hats. On the other hand, racing during night grants you reputation or, as the game likes to call it, rep. It works the same as XP, unlocking higher level events, more powerful parts and meaner cars.

I understand Ghost Games did something similar in Most Wanted (2015) where rep was gained by performing special activities and used to unlock additional car parts. This works so much better in Heat. The day and night cycle feed back into each other, with both currencies essential for your progression, and that’s not mentioning how perfectly they fit within the larger context of game.

Up until the end of the main quest, which comes at you around rep level 30, I had absolutely no need to grind. If you follow newly generated events as they appear on the map, you’ll slowly rise through the ranks as intended. However Heat does take the possibility of grinding into account. At some point I started noticing exclamation marks over events I already completed. Turns out you can compete in them again with a higher performance rating, granting a higher reward to go along. This is a pretty good fail-safe if you don’t want to be bothered with some of the nutcracker races I mentioned before.

Once you approach rep level 40 and start tackling end-game content, you’ll do have to engage with some amount of grinding. On one hand, it seems the devs didn’t bother putting that much content into later parts of the game. On the other hand, your super car spendings won’t cover themselves. Thankfully those exclamation marks are there to save the day and cause of the overall abundance of events, I didn’t mind jumping into old ones. As you repeat an event more and more, Heat does gradually decrease the winnings, meaning you can’t theoretically grind your way into infinity. This is alright as you’ll never need to go that far, and cash and rep are plenty even if you get busted a lot. Speaking of which…

Suck it, losers.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of differences between day and night events. Most importantly, night events are illegal, meaning there are no barricades blocking you off from the traffic. Passers-by become bowling pins and ambulance cars start looking like bull's eyes, so of courses those polite officers eventually come after your ass. I laughed when I saw my first cop in Heat. Look at that precious thing in its tiny patrol car! Let’s see what sound it makes when I give it a little crack. Except I was the one to receive all the cracking.

I’ll tell you, dear reader, the shock was immeasurable. I got so used to smashing cops in Carbon like empty beer cans that I just couldn’t get my head around what was going on. What do you mean I’m not doing any damage to them? Did they steel those patrol cars against concrete walls before they came after me? What do you mean my car’s at critical health already? There’s no way I’m getting busted, I just got started. Wait, don’t push me into that building. Wait, where did that other cop come from? No, don’t you box me in, you mother fu—

Yeah, I got my ass handed to me by the cops. Multiple times. It became a regular occurrence, to be frank. Heat instilled the fear of law and order into me. It was something I was actively worried about in the beginning. I couldn’t just go rampaging around town willy-nilly. I had to keep peeking around every corner for any sign of those rotating lights. And you know what? That’s how it should be. You should have the fear of the cops etched deep into your bones. They shouldn’t be laughable piñata dolls. They should be the force of reckoning raining down upon you. And my god, in Heat, do they.

Eventually I learned how to handle them. No, you can’t face off with a cop, you idiot. Fold your tail between your legs and run! Managing cops in Heat is a game of crowd control. You have to be aware of how many there are around you and how many are about to pop around the next corner. You have to be smart about how you evade them. Don’t smash into them, don’t let them make you smash into something else, don’t let yourself be boxed in. Keep a lookout on your surroundings. Jump pads are your best friend. Go where the cops can’t follow you. If your car is fast enough, try to ditch them on the highway. And know your nearest gas station, for the love of god!

Get chased enough times and you’ll eventually start noticing the patterns. That doesn’t mean that heat 5 chases start being any less vicious, they always are, but you will be able to predict your way out of some predicaments. E.g. right after you’ve evaded them, the game will spawn columns of cops patrolling around your last known location. It’s easy to spot their trajectory on the map and slip by undetected in the opposite direction. Likewise, cops are polite enough to announce when they’re going to ram you, so you can use that to pull off a sharp turn or hit the breaks as hard as you can.

The algorithm can be annoying at times. After heat level 4, the game just keeps throwing them at you. Sometimes this is called for. You can farm heat by buzzing back and forth the same speed trap, but the game doesn’t let you enjoy exploits like that for long. You’ll eventually aggravate the operator, making her use her otherworldly powers to conjure up a patrol car right in front you. However at other times this happens at random, spawning cops out of the blue and forcing you to swerve off the road into the nearest ditch just to avoid being spotted.

Some nights you win…

High heat events are a beast of their own. You’re not really meant to engage with them early on. Heat 3 cops and higher are not to be trifled with and best avoided by your low rating vehicle. Enter late game though and you’ll need to get your hands dirty if you want to top off your super car. Building up heat level 3 is sure enough, but heat level 5 is not so easily achieved and requires a considerable time investment. Things don’t get easy once you’re there as the events match your current performance rating and the cops are at your throat the moment you launch.

When it comes to the best gear I don’t mind that the game walls off the cream of the crop, but high heat events are nothing if not unforgivable. As I said, you need to grind heat just to get a chance to compete, but you can’t simply crash through cops to do so. You need to conserve your health and items for the big event, meaning that grinding needs to be conducted slowly and methodically further increasing the downtime. The events themselves are ruthless, both from the perspective of your unwavering opponents and the merciless cops. If you lose or get caught, you have to repeat the entire process all over again. What’s worse, you’re not allowed to restart the event even when you’re not being chased, as you can with all others in the game. Come on, Heat, give me a break!

The only time I considered the cops to be a nightmare, and not an excellently crafted challenge, is during nightly drift events. Heat, this is not ok. As I said, the best tactic against the cops is to run, but you can’t do that while drifting. Performing a successful drift means pulling off a continuous uninterrupted slide around a curve. Sliding is not akin to running away, not in the least. You won’t be loosing anyone at that speed. What’s worse, a lucky cop (or more likely two) will be able to trail behind you at ease and keep knocking at your rear, breaking your drift combo over and over again.

Not only can’t you win the event at pace, you have to lose the police afterwards as well. Do you know what it’s like to lose cops in a drift car, Heat? It’s a fucking nightmare! It’s a drift car, it slides! It slides if the wind blows against it a little harder, not to mention if some asshole is ramming into it. You can’t even reliably retry the event with a bruised ego. The game always spawns patrol cars along particular curves, meaning some events are doomed from the start. If the track goes by a gas station, be sure a cop will be waiting for you to show up. Why aren’t there any off-road races during nights? I’d love to see those mother fucking Corvettes try to chase me through the forest.

…some nights you lose.

It’s good that the gameplay throws such a strong emphasis on the cops as they also present the main conflict of the story. We’re introduced to our antagonists right from the start, lieutenant Frank Mercer and his ruthless squad of deputies, keen on abusing all their might to rid the streets of those pesky—

Hold on, Heat, what are we doing? I know police violence is a serious issue in the States and I’m certainly not here to defend the cops. However, Heat, is this really the hill you want to die on? Oh no, the honest tax-paying street racer is getting harassed by the police again! Will these fascist pigs ever let me enjoy my fundamental rights to crash through everything that isn’t a solid wall? Most of you probably don’t think that police violence is a laughing matter, and I’m with you 100%. That’s why I find it particularly troubling that Heat tries to look at it from the moral high-ground of street racing.

Look, Need for Speed just isn’t the franchise to tackle this topic. You simply cannot make a case for street racing in real life. If this were the real world, my MC would have had her driver’s license revoked the first time she got busted. The only thing she would have been allowed to drive afterwards is a tricycle. This is why the franchise has always been camp as hell, with dumb story lines that never took themselves too seriously. Street racing is something that’s only allowed to exist and look cool in fantasy land. So bringing in the sensitive matter of police brutality into it… Ugh.

Ok, at least it’s not saying anything that I fundamentally disagree with. Cops equal bad, alright, let’s move on. Heat, what else do you have in store for me? Who is this character I’m supposed to be building up a crew with? Ana? You cool, Ana? She’s not cool, she’s not!

The Rivera siblings hold the emotional core of the story: Ana, the racer who appears in the intro, and Lucas, the mechanic who treats you to your first car. Ana is all fired up about making it into the big league, while Lucas is done with his reckless past and would just like to grease his hands on my a— on some cylinders. Naturally the game couples you with Ana, her being the like-minded street racer who’ll help you tear up the town.

Tear up my brain cells more likely. Dear lord, this woman is a car crash. She pulls you into her street racing scheme without so much a second thought and continues to batter you with her ludicrous ideas to get acclaimed. She constantly calls you up to whine about whatnot. She harasses you even while you’re trying to save her from the cops. At one point she makes a grand speech about making something of her life with street racing. I was waiting for her to divulge how we’re going to save this town using the power of street racing and friendship, but alas. Seriously, what hellish mind thought up this woman? Why can’t we hang out with Lucas more? Is he single? Did I ask that already?

What’s up for tonight, Ana? Breaking the law, you don’t say.

When you think about it, it’s weird how your MC doesn’t really have any emotional ties to the Riveras. You’re just an outsider to all of their drama, an accidental tag-along that occasionally comes up with vague encouragements. I should have minded the disconnect, but strangely I didn’t. There’s something about the female voice actress, Jamie Gray Hyder, that clicked with me. To my ears she managed to perfectly convey the barely concealed sarcasm of someone who deals with idiots on a daily basis, all while wearing sunglasses and a bucket hat indoors. What’s worse, I’m not even sure I’m imagining it.

There were times where I was honest to god convinced the MC was low-key making fun of Ana. E.g. there’s a piece of banter that becomes available after you’ve beaten the main quest. Ana calls you up to tell you how she triumphantly humiliated her ex, only for the conversation to reveal that the aforementioned humiliation consisted of one text message and that she dropped and broke her phone afterwards. Your MC patiently nods along and cheers her up as if talking to a child. I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.

On another occasion you get to hear all about her chicken burger induced diarrhea. The writers must have been having a laugh, right? Then again, even Lucas catches the idiot disease eventually. He starts off as a former hotshot, now a sensible and restrained mechanic, only to give in to Ana’s bullshit. By the end he’s the goofy guy who can’t drive a car no more, so he calls you up hoping you’ll distribute fliers for his shop to your cool new big league friends (who you never get to meet btw).

Look at these three geniuses.

The game throws in some side characters to give you a break from the Riveras, with middling results. Dex is the first from the bunch and the only thing you can make out about him is his undeniable crush for sexy garage man. Lucas and Lucas’ daddy issues are all Dex ever talks about, so much so that even me, another one of Lucas’ fangirls, couldn’t take it any more. That said, I was surprisingly pleased to see him pop up again after the last story mission. Proximity breeds familiarity, I guess, and I found the last couple of races he organized with the Riveras to be absolutely adorable. Although it would have been nice if the three of them didn’t always fight for last place, but maybe I’m asking too much.

The drift guy (whose name I can’t remember, so let’s just call him that) goes by remarkably fast. He comes off quite likeable after that initial drifting tutorial and continues to be so even as you destroy all of his high scores. Following Dex’s reappearance, I was waiting for drift guy to make a comeback as well, but to no avail. It’s a shame, considering he’s the most down-to-earth of the entire cast and someone I’d actually want to grab a beer with. I mean, imagine sitting over a drink with Ana, Jesus.

That just leaves me with one more guest driver to cover. By the time the elusive hacker chick rolled up in her pickup truck, I was already used to the game’s feeble attempts to portray more believable characters. I was certainly not ready for FBI cross-country dodgery. My girl looks like she never got out her Matrix phase, and sadly I can relate. If this were any other NFS game, her kind of buffoonery would fit right in. Unfortunately as a follow up to drift guy, she sticks out like a clown at a funeral. In some other game I would have loved listening to her signature deadpan and watching her evade the Feds using her mythical off-road powers.

I’m not sure the cop characters deserve much recognition. Shaw’s your stereotypical psycho cop, there to laugh maniacally and do all of the worst shit you expect of him. Torres might have been a good secret villain if the plot made any (less) sense. Frank Mercer though, I’ll never forget. At the climax of the final mission you have to chase the man down in his stolen M3. Yes, it’s that M3. A bit of a weird place for a cameo, but maybe I’m missing the larger context of the franchise’s ongoing story (if there is such a thing). Anyway, in a moment of utter madness, Mercer launched the M3 up a ramp from the top of a hill and flew over a valley like Icarus taking his very last breaths. What’s worse, I’m not even sure it was scripted. We were just racing down the mountain when the poor bastard decided his best chance of losing me was skydiving.

Hold on, Captain Niobe, while I put on my Trinity cosplay.

Although I’m critical of it, Heat’s story ended sooner than I would have wanted. The game tried to emphasize the Riveras’ crusade against the cops, but all I could see hanging was the juicy carrot of racing with the big league. Say Ana, what are these crews I keep hearing about? When are we going up against them? Can we form our own crew, minus you of course? Then it unceremoniously ends and all that’s left of “the big league” are glowing arrows pointing towards the multiplayer. Oh, ok…

To the game’s credit, there’s quite a bit of content after the final story mission. For starters, there are those Dex + Rivera races I already mentioned. Hacker chick comes back for one last race before she escapes the Feds into the underbrush. There’s a series of so-called Discovery events which take you along the outskirts of the map and those heat 5 events only make sense once you’ve gotten your hands on a super car. The banter is also surprisingly good, with characters no longer barraging you with quest reminders, but actually checking in with sometimes hilarious pieces of dialogue.

What stole the show, to my surprise, were activities and collectibles. It’s been a while sine I played a game that handles these so well as Heat does. Usually when you reach the point where you have to collect an X amount of Y to get an achievement, the game becomes a slog. Thankfully Heat found a way to avoid that. Instead of making them available all at once, the game slowly unlocks new activities/collectibles as you level up. Although this is meant to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed, I still did at first glancing at all the markers muddling the map. Relief came in when I actually started poking around the world. You’ll clear most of them just by driving from race to race and encountering them alongside the road. When you get to mopping them up in late game, the leftovers are significantly less formidable.

Both activities and collectibles come in 3 varieties, the former consisting of speed traps, drift zone and long jumps, while the latter is made up of billboards, flamingos and street art. There’s some culling to be made here, for sure. The only one I’d call objectively shit content are the flamingos, being nothing more than purposeless pick-ups. Graffiti might seem like the same thing, but I beg to differ. Not only do they exist as actual pieces of art inside the world, but upon being found, they are unlocked and added to your decals repertoire. They are all beautiful and unique pieces of art you would gladly put up on your car. Billboards and long jumps are, again, kind of the same thing, billboards providing the mindless satisfaction of pure destruction, with long jumps requiring some more thought and build-up to a perfect lift-off.

The ones I enjoyed the most were drift zones and speed traps. Drift zones make up for a lack of actual drift events, with a staggering 35 to 16 ratio. Each zone encompasses a couple of curves which is nowhere near a full-on event, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in challenge. To get 3 stars on some of these you need to spend time perfecting your corners, figuring out the best ways in and out of a curve and learning how to drift close to edges for that sweet proximity bonus.

Speed traps sound basic in theory, but check the global achievements chart and you’ll see that they are the ones people struggle with the most. For starters, yes, 3-starring them requires the investment of a super car, but that’s only the beginning. Not only do you need to develop ridiculous speeds, but the lead-up to some of these is particularly tricky. A 120 degree corner doesn’t seem all that intimidating if you’re going into it driving 200 km/h, but bump that speed up above 300 km/h, and all of a sudden every twitch of the steering wheel could send you flying off the road.

What is that? A bird?

Now all of those drift zones and speed traps would have been fine and dandy if it weren’t for one thing - the fucking traffic. Oh, I understand why it needs to be there. First, from a believably perspective, you can’t be driving around a ghost town. Second, you need a couple of wild cards to spice things up. Racing around night wouldn’t be nearly as exciting if there weren’t any occasional passers-by to look out for. However we’re not talking about a couple of vehicles here and there. The streets are littered with these vermin.

If you’re trying to 3-star some of the more difficult activities, you’ll get all too familiar with the spawning algorithm. I’ve had some of the nastiest car crashes doing speed traps. A good chuck of them are nigh impossible when the game consistently keeps generating 5 vehicles on the same stretch of road. How can I hit 338 km/h if my passage is essentially blocked?

Driving in the opposite lane is generally a recipe for disaster. Over-passing even a single car can be a gambler’s game. Dead angles, sharp corners, elevation differences - these are all instances where you can expect someone to pop up from the opposite direction, as they most often do. I flew over inclines and slammed straight into lorries, I got knocked over by incoming traffic, I watched helplessly as my car drifted sideways into unsuspecting vans. No wonder there are so many ambulance cars driving around - someone needs to mop up after your street racing brethren!

Intersections are your worst enemy. Not only do cars come at you out of nowhere, they also stop in the middle of an intersection like a deer caught by headlights. What are you doing, friend? You don’t just block intersections like that! Am I missing something? Is this an American thing? Did the same driving school also teach you to suddenly switch lanes when someone’s approaching from behind? Bitch, do you ever check your review mirrors? Who’s issuing driver’s licenses to these people? And I thought I was the hooligan.

Son of a—

After some time with the game, I realized none of the activities and collectibles were initially visible on the map. No, a DLC came out a couple months after launch allowing you to reveal their locations. I’m sorry, but how exactly did people live without this feature? Did those poor pioneers have to check behind every fence in the game in search of flamingos?

Speaking of DLC, Heat offers two so called Black Market DLCs. One gives you an Aston Martin DB11, while the other a McLaren F1. You have to complete 6 contracts with each car, each contract consisting of 2 series, and each series of multiple challenges and events. The events can be race or drift, while the challenges usually involve completing certain activities with certain requirements. Later contracts even make use of high heat races, meaning you’ll have loads more content on your hands.

I got the DB11 as part of a discount I was buying the game at, which would be considered a pretty generous offer if it weren’t for the fact that the DB11 is a shit car. Aston Martin, I sure hope this model handles better in real life, cause in the game it’s stiffer than my grandmother’s back! I had to equip drift tires just so I could get a little slide out of the corners.

Considering Black Market events are so varied, you’ll often have to re-spec that DB11, which is a bit tedious, if not a considerable money spender. What bothered me more is that Heat genuinely expects you to be able to drift in this goddamn car. Remember how I told you I had to tone down my RX7 so it wouldn’t over-steer? Well, for the DB11 it’s quite the opposite. Either you’re maxing out those drifting configurations or you’re not drifting at all. For me, the hardest drifting event in the entire game was with the Aston through the shipping yard. As if it weren’t hard enough tightly squeezing the DB11’s fat ass between piles of containers and not scratching a single one, the event also demanded a ludicrous score in order to complete it. Afterwards, I spent restless nights wondering if the game would try to make me tune the car for off-road as well.

I ended up not getting the McLaren F1 DLC, as I concluded I already milked more out of the game than was intended, though maybe that was a mistake considering they named the DLC “The Greatest Car in the World”. That might be so, but I have to wonder if these people ever drove the Ford GT. Watching the GT’s precious little spoiler go up and down on its own invigorates my soul more than baby seal videos. Does the F1 have an automatic spoiler? No? Didn’t think so.

I like to think Aston Martin paid for this endorsement.

Heat boasts around 127 cars for you to call your own. While the number feels more than sufficient, the initial choice between a muscle, a tuner and an exotic might give you a false impression of variety. If you were wondering who the main sponsors were, there are 14 BMWs, 13 Porsches, 11 Lamborghinis and 8 Ferraris in this game. Unless you’re a car aficionado, you won’t know, nor care about the nuances between the many different BMW M-whatnots and Porsche 911-who-gives-a-fuck. They’ll just appear as copy-pastes taking up space in the dealership. I did register a fair choice of old-school muscle cars, but the Japanese selection is quite meager, with the exception of Nissan’s strong 14 car line-up.

Before buying a car the game lets you know how much you’ll be able to customize it on a scale of 1 to 10, from a vanity point of view. I appreciate this kind of upfront information. A car with a higher score will have loads of spoilers and bumpers and side skirts at its disposable, while ones with a lower score will only allow limited tinkering. For those looking for more detailed customization options, there’s no such thing as body sculpting, but the game does offer additional quirks like neon lights, coloring tire smoke, adjusting the sound of the exhaust, etc.

The one editor which reigns supreme above all others is the decals editor. We’re talking Pro Street levels of depth here. The editor divides your car into regions: front, hood, roof, sides and rear. You can slam an insane amount of decals on each region, scale them, rotate them, move them around, adjust layers. If you’ve got the imagination, the sky’s the limit. It’s only tricky if you want your design to span more than one region, but even that’s manageable. Trust me, I’ve sprinkled a galaxy’s worth of stars across my BMW.

The best aspect of the decals editor are the community wraps. Each time you edit decals on your car, the game bundles and saves those changes into a so-called wrap. All wraps created by all users are automatically visible to the entire community. You can browse through them and apply any one on your car. This is an amazing feature, especially if you don’t feel like doing your own paint job or you saw a particularly cool design online. What’s more, the game can be modded to replace existing decals with whatever image you desire. This can be a daunting task, requiring the use of both Photoshop and the Frosty Editor. Luckily, modded decals get saved into wraps as well, meaning you can apply someone else’s unabashed anime homage (and defile your car for all eternity).

Performance parts could have been a simple affair, but Heat decided to throw in some curve balls. Most parts are easy enough to pick, but you’ll have to make up your mind regarding other ones. Suspensions, tires and differentials are the ones that lean your car towards a specific handling profile, but you don’t have to invest all 3 in the same category, rather construct whatever hybrid suits you best. Swapping a turbo makes your car feel noticeably different, and there’s even some nuance to picking a gearbox if you’re interested in fine-tuning your acceleration and top speed.

The one addition I found confusing were the engine swaps. There’s a ton of videos online comparing different engine models, but generally you just want to buy the most expensive one. I say the addition is confusing because it seemingly only exists as a money sink. Performance parts for one engine model don’t match another, so you have to equip your car anew each time you swap an engine.

Besides that, there are 2 slots for auxiliary items divided into actives and passives. Most of these are cop related: take less damage from cops, do more damage to cops, etc. Repair kits were a must have for me, as well as the radar disruptor which I found to be absolutely OP. It severely limits the detection range of the police’s radar, meaning you’ll not only be harder to detect, but will also be able to slip away more easily. Pair that with a fast enough car and, heat 5, you’re on!

Some of the auxiliary items are related to nitrous and, I have to ask, does nitrous serve any purpose in this game? It certainly didn’t feel so at the beginning. The starter packs are miserably useless, and not just objectively. Whenever you hit that nitrous switch, the camera zooms out, making it seem like you’re lagging even more behind your opponents. Nitrous only starts being handy ones you’ve unlocked the ultimate parts. The 5 x 3lb tanks are plentiful enough to be abused and switching on the 15lb big boy made me fear for my life.

Come on, Cupcake, smile for mama.

I wouldn’t have much more to say about the customization options if it weren’t for one thing tripping them over - the UI. My god, is it a mess. The key bindings are an arrangement of oddities you’ll get all too familiar with. I know I’m approaching this critique from a keyboard perspective, but still! Ghost Games, at least some of your staff must have played games with a mouse and keyboard before. They must have, right?

I already mentioned the insanity of the numpad menu. Other than additional configuration options, it also holds a list of on-going quests. This is the only place in the UI where you can find this information. Heat, couldn’t you have put it like anywhere else? I swear, some chief creative director must have gotten a full sized keyboard for the first time in his life and been blown out of his mind with it. Who the fuck else would think the numpad menu to be intuitive?

I also talked about the exclamation marks which pop up above old races when they become available for higher performance ratings. When this first happened, I had no idea what was going on. No, Heat, I don’t keep track of all of the event markers on the map. When I see an event standing out like that, my first assumption is that it’s a special kind of encounter and not an old one I already completed. Maybe I could have figured it out hadn’t my mind completely glossed over the goddamn N U M P A D prompts instructing you to cycle through the different variations of the event.

But why am I holding myself back? Let me bring out my mighty friend, the bullet list:

The first time I wanted to pause the game, I kept smashing the Esc key, just like any other sane person. Except, no, if you want to bring up the menu, you need to press Tab. Tab? The fuck?

There are absolutely no options for sorting or filtering. Each time you want to look through clothes, cars, rims, graffiti, etc. you’ll be forced to go down the same elongated lists, over and over again.

The game keeps track of how many specific performance parts you own. Whenever you want to equip one, it asks you if you want to buy a new or re-equip an existing one. However, it never tells you from which car it’s stealing the performance part from, nor does it give you any convenient shortcuts for swapping entire suits of gear from one car to another.

The same applies for vanity parts. I.e. you don’t have to buy new parts, just equip old ones. However, the interface is completely different. Not only does the game not tell you if you already own a vanity part, it also lets you buy a duplicate that you’ve already got equipped at the moment! If you want to check which vanity items you’ve got on you, you need to press Q and then X to remove any given item. Very intuitive, yes.

Some cosmetic changes, like neon lights, aren’t displayed during customization, but only once you’ve exited the garage.

When tuning the sound of the exhaust, you’re able to rev up the engine to hear the results. However, holding the arrow up key also moves your cursor in the customization list. Every. Single. Time.

Keyboard shortcuts make the otherwise excellent decals editor into a frightening experience. The bottom bar shows a dizzying array of commands at all times. It’s incredibly easy to mistake controls and do something unintended. Thank god Ctrl + Z works. If only holding down Ctrl wouldn’t also pan the camera within the editor…

The X key is the placebo for everything. You press X to remove vanity items. You press X to add new decals. You press X to exit the game from the main menu. You press X to scratch that itch deep up your ass. No, Ghost Games, the X key on the keyboard is not equivalent to the A/Cross button on the gamepad.

Press X to pay re— no, wait, to add decals.

When stripped of the incomprehensible UI, there are parts of this game’s presentation that are worth applauding. The loading screen, for example, is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a game. Each time you exit the garage, your car is seamlessly transported to a dark room with lights pulsing along the walls and the ceiling. The music you were listening to a moment ago kicks in even harder. The camera pans around your car showing off your design under the changing lights. Then, right as its about to end, the camera centers behind your car. The mirage of the loading screen pops like a bubble, and all of a sudden you’re parked in front of the garage in the open world. It never gets old.

Similarly, while you’re out in the world, you’re able to switch from day to night on the click of a button. When you do that, the camera pulls back and rolls around your car, transporting you back to the imaginary room with the throbbing neon lights. It doesn’t linger there for long before rolling one more time and putting you back where you were, changing the time of day in the process. Whenever you end the night, either by returning safely to the garage or getting caught by the cops, the transition is accompanied by equally elaborate sequences. Either you have the pleasure of watching your rep fill up with your earnings or you’re forced to swallow the bitter pill of being escorted by a cop away from your wrecked vehicle.

No less important to the overall feel of the game is the soundtrack. If there’s one thing EA has a good reputation for, it’s their taste in music. Whoever’s been working in their music licensing department for all these years needs another raise. I love Need for Speed soundtracks, I play them all the time. They’re filled with music I wouldn’t usually listen to, but that inevitably grows on me over the course of the game.

Even before Carbon cemented things, earlier games unofficially divided their cars into 3 categories: tuners, muscles and exotics. Along with these 3 types of cars there were also 3 music genres accompanying them: rap, rock and electronic. Pro Street started muddling the water a bit, and after that, it’s a blank slate for me. I was curious what Heat had in store after all these years. The initial car selection made me think we were going back to Carbon’s way of things, but, boy, was I wrong. Rap and electronic are still there, but rock has been swapped out by latin music. Imagine my surprise at hearing Inna out of people! Now, my knowledge of Spanish starts and ends with por favor, meaning I’m not much of a fan of latin music. However, this is Need for Speed, so it didn’t take long for me to start acquiring some new tastes.

Instead of dividing songs by car types, Heat divides them according to the time of day. The daily playlist is filled up by most of the latin music, meaning it’s fervently upbeat, while the nightly one is more gloomy and aggressive, matching the constant threat of the police. There’s also a playlist for the garage, which is laid-back and soothing, helping you wind down from the pressure. Each playlist perfectly accentuates the mood their respective setting is striving for. Besides that, there are tons of tracks to get hooked on. During the day I’d patiently wait for that one Cardie B verse, while the night had me chanting to Machine Gun Kelly out of all people.

Now, I know what most of you are going to say. Who listens to Need for Speed soundtracks when you can just play Spotify? How long is this game anyway? You’re not going to keep listening to the same 50 songs, are you? I get what you’re saying, however I find the soundtrack to be an essential part of a game’s identity. If you’re gonna swap out the music, you might as well do that with the entire art style. I don’t mind the repetition, besides, you loose a lot of the little touches when you forgo the in-game music. There’s no automatic volume change when hopping in and out of menus. There’s no switching of tracks when you enter an event, start being chased by cops or go back to the garage. All of this makes the music diegetic, firmly grounding you within Heat’s world.

Now this speaks class.

Gee, I’m so glad EA has gotten a hold of itself. Finally, we can receive high quality games that aren’t infected by any of the plagues of modern monetization. Sure, Heat is rough around the edges. It has gaping holes were content should have been, but we can fix that. What’s important is that we’ve found the right formula and know where to go from there.

Right, Ghost Games? You did so well, EA might even give you more leeway with the next Need for Speed. Imagine that! Ghost Games? Your there? Where have they run off to? They must be busy working on the next game, those rascals. Let’s see what Google says. Ghost Games studios…

Disbanded!? EA! No! We said we wouldn’t do that any more. Bad, EA! Bad! What do you mean you couldn’t find enough talent to build a studio in Sweden? Don’t you bullshit me, EA, all of the kids want to make games nowadays. You just can’t be pleased, can you? Make a good game, disband a studio, make a bad game, disband a studio. What’s that? I shouldn’t be worried because Criterion will continue working on the franchise? Sure, EA, go ahead and let Criterion parade Ghost Games’ limp body across the streets. That’ll make things better.

Oh, I feel so filthy now. Why did I indulge in your flattery even for a little? That’s it, down you go. You heard me, down to the bottom of the list of existing game publishers. Yes, even bellow Ubisoft. Ok, maybe not bellow Activision-Blizzard, but don’t you take that as a compliment! No, I won’t be bought with an anime Need for Speed. Why don’t you pump that cell-shaded tire smoke up your ass! Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel the need to wash myself.

Rum-dum-dum…