Pages

August 27, 2014

A Look Back On: Mario Pinball Land

Part 1 here, Part 2 here


Oh boy... When you begin a career as an Internet reviewer, I like to think that there are works you want to do immediately. You start thinking about the jokes way ahead of time, you start imagining the kind of praise - or insults - you'd throw at the work you're reviewing. There's a film/album/game/whatever that you might have enjoyed before, but years later you see more and more of its flaws, until you realize that game just wasn't very good. Or maybe you realized it was utter crap. You prepare yourself for the day you'll get revenge, thanks to a nasty review.

Mario Pinball Land was one of those games. I really wanted to review this one, because I utterly despised it. Put the blame on my bad luck, but I have never been very good at this GBA game. I suppose it's because of the crappy pinball mechanic, but there's many other reasons. The story, the little there is, is stupid (Mario would have been a lot more efficient in normal form than in ball form), the controls are messy, the difficulty is insane - but for that one, we can also blame the stupid controls.

I reviewed this game fairly early for my blog, because I knew how unnerving it was. Writing a bad review feels good; it lets you release all the anger you had towards the work, you insult it through the post, find ways to show how utterly stupid the work is... There's something oddly therapeutic to this. It's like punching your pillow: It doesn't hurt anyone, and it often makes for a good show.

There's many more awful games coming to Planned All Along. I've been itching to review one of the games I bought at the end of July, but I have some reviews planned before that one. Let's say it's gonna be quite a fun review...

No comments:

Post a Comment