Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 includes all prior DLCs from previous editions of the game, and I felt my coverage wasn’t finished until I discussed all of them, too. This time, we focus on Ada Wong, the mysterious spy that Leon keeps running into. First in Raccoon City, then here… What was she up to? Time to find out.

Separate Ways

    Oh, she knows how to use those just as well as Leon!

Ada’s quest isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation; it follows the events as she witnessed them, and her part in them. She’s responsible for a few problems Leon encounters, and saves his life more times than he knows. She can meet the merchant to buy weapons, upgrades to her attache case, and first aid kits, but the menu to upgrade guns is not available. You remain at a disadvantage since you can get all the guns you want but no improvements in firepower and efficiency. Ada has a knife too, but she starts with a Blacktail and a Shotgun, and can buy a unique weapon, the Bowgun (a crossbow, powerful but its ammo is rare and takes up inventory space). Her unique skill is the grappling hook, which she can use to reach high ledges or jump through windows; it’s only usable in specific places, though.

We see from the start that Ada is working under Albert Wesker. Does she know about his plans? That he wants to create a virus that will wipe out several billion people? She sneaks into the village from the first two chapters of the original quest. She’s there at the same time as Leon, who is already mowing through zombies. Ada is tasked by Wesker to ring the church’s bell, which will calm down the Ganados. Logically, Leon should be hearing a second shooter in the area, but he doesn’t.

Sorry, I'm not dressed for church; that's okay, I'm not here
to hear the hymns anyway.

She finds the Insignia key on a rooftop and the emblem for the church’s door. Yep – she’s the one who rung that bell that made the zombies go away while Leon was fighting them. In-between chapters, we get a recap showing that everything Leon learned on his own, Ada (and the organization she works for) already knew. She knows that Las Plagas are controlled through sonic frequencies, akin to dog whistles. It’s implied that all the key items that Leon took forever to find were so because Ada was using them first. She'd hide them off the beaten path, so Leon would take longer to finish his mission – otherwise, his heroic resolve would mow everything down before she could fulfill her goal.

She may not be the one to deal the finishing blow to the big
players of the Las Plagas conspiracy, but she still deals
with major threats in each of her chapters.

She must get into contact with Luis Sera, who has been captured by Los Illuminados. He's the one to will hand over to her the master Plaga sample. Ada starts in Mendéz’s home, follows Leon's path, and ends up saving him from the village chief. Bullets through the window, right in the guy’s back. This leads to her getting knocked out by Ganados and almost offered as sacrifice, but she kill her captors and finds her way back. She gets the key in the barn, reactivates the lift and heads over to the shack, killing an El Gigante on the way for sport. She arrives right after the cabin brawl, and confirms with Luis that he's her contact. However, he doesn’t have the sample yet…

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Chapters 4 and 5 today? Let’s try. There’s a LOT here.

The Terminally-Kidnapped Girl

IT'S HOT IN HERE! Why does a castle in the modern age
need a foundry?

The last piece of the chimera insignia is at the end of a foundry over lava, accessible through a cart. I’ve stopped wondering what isn’t in Salazar's castle. The insignia is placed and the blocking columns goes away; Leon and Ashley access a second cart, taking them to yet another building. More exploration ensues, including areas where Leon can partake in “shooting range”-style minigames to earn bottle caps. Mostly bragging rights rewards. There's 5 of those and they’re alright, but I was focused on finishing the plot for these articles.

You can't even do anything with the bottle caps afterwards.
Can't even sell them!

Good thing those armors are old and break with just a few
bullets, huh?

Further down, the two encounter more suits of armor possessed with parasites, some of which animate and attack. This is the only section where this enemy appears properly, by the way.. One thing I noticed while watching the longplay I use for screenshots is that when you know what’s coming, you can easily tell Ashley to stay somewhere safe while Leon deals with approaching threats. However, when you don’t know, she’s by your side as you destroy various horrors, and she becomes another variable in the fight. Her smaller health bar makes her a prime target.

Ah yes, the classic difficulty spike of "Just throw more
tough enemies at the hero".

More traps around the castle, like a falling ceiling that can be stopped by shooting at four red lights. And what about that giant drill taking up a hallway? One tower contains a giant Novistador nest. As she ventures through that room alongside Leon, Ashley gets taken (again!!) by one of those flying insects. We chase her captors through a tower with a giant mechanism, over a long bridge, and into another castle area where we fight TWO Garradors. This game has a pattern with major mooks; introduce them in a fight with just one, have a second battle with another on harder terrain (like a small cage, or a tight ravine), and later, pit Leon against two of them.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’ve already gone through the basics, so I guess we can focus on the plot starting here – unless we have new gameplay elements coming soon…

Rescuing Ashley

If you need a better look at those... uh... growths,
go back to my title card in Part 1.

While making his way back to the village church, Leon finds Los Illuminados' insignia behind a waterfall. He had to kill a ton of Ganados to get to it, too; but it will let him open the church and save Ashley Graham. This chapter sees our first encounters with enemies who, after their head has been blown off, will have it replaced by a squirming creature popping out of their body with eyes, scythe arms, and limbs moving erratically. Those fucked-up things are the actual Las Plagas. In every crowd of enemies, there’ll always be a few that will pop out. These “heads” have long range due to their tendrils, so it’s best to stay away and shoot them; using the knife means being within stabbing distance, and they freaking hurt.

Las Plagas control their hosts, which is why Ganados have enough intelligence to devise simple plans like taking ladders to sneak into houses from the top floor or sneak behind the hero for an attack. These aren’t “zombies” by the modern definition of a risen undead. They’re zombies in the traditional voodoo meaning of people who've had all their free will ripped out of them. Yikes. I’d argue it’s even darker than zombies who are just undead or diseased.

These things can't even go "Gigante Smash!". 0/10.

Leon uses a boat to get back to the holding area seen before, and follows a different path that leads him to camps surrounded by cliffs. He witnesses a bunch of Ganados pulling out something large using ropes. The thing reveals itself to be an enormous, human-shaped monster, nicknamed El Gigante, which kills every Ganado that brought it out. Wait, how can Las Plagas cause the existence of monsters this fucking big??

Waggle to kill! Waggle! To! Kill!

Dealing enough damage to El Gigante causes its parasite to erupt from its back. Since the monster falls to its knees, Leon can climb on its back and slash at that weak point with his knife! This isn’t an easy battle, but El Gigante is killed. (For bonus points, if you saved a dog in Chapter 1, it comes back to help you in this fight.) Leon follows the trail back to the church, enters using the insignia, solves a color puzzle, and finds the girl’s cell. First mistaking him for her captors, Ashley throws a plank at him, but he explains that he’s there to save her.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is an M-rated Wii game, so expect a lot of
family-unfriendly violence and horror.

This year, I had another Wii game in the plans, and as time went on, I wondered if I would have the time to play (and finish!) it in time. But! I got lucky; I finished the game, and now I can cover it. There are Wii games that I’ve owned for a long while now – almost as long as this blog has existed. Some games have waited in the collection, untouched, for nearly 10 years! One notable title in there is today’s title, the Wii rerelease of Resident Evil 4; I bought that one at a convention in… uh… early 2016. Yeah. I was long overdue to give it a chance. RE is one of those franchises I haven’t touched at all yet, and I recall that was my specific intention when buying that game, way back.

And yet, it took this long. But here it is! Finally! And I can experience this franchise through one of its best games! Only one issue: Since I don’t know much about the franchise, if this is the fourth (…technically sixth) game in the series, I probably need to read up on a bit of lore. But thankfully, not too much, as the story here is removed from much of the connections with the Umbrella Corporation, which stands front and center of the first three games.

However, we are still dealing with zombies (but not the type you might think), and we have the protagonist of Resident Evil 2 making a comeback, with a new role gained through his status as a heroic survivor. However, do note that I am covering the original version of 4, not the remake released in 2023; my research revealed that there are many differences between the two, some minor, some significant. I’ll stick to the story in the original.

One Hell of a Promotion

Let’s recap Leon Scott Kennedy’s backstory: On his very first day in the Raccoon City police force, the promising rookie ended up in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by the Umbrella Corporation. Their experimentations on biological manipulation and viruses of all kinds had the side-effect of creating zombies, which broke out and attacked the Midwestern city. The infected destroyed everything, with Leon as one of the few to make it out alive.

Is just one guy really enough to save the President's daughter?
I mean, when that one guy survived a zombie apocalypse...
BTW, big thanks to the World of Longplays YouTube channel
for their playthrough.

For these efforts, he got a significant promotion; he was recruited as an elite agent for the US government, usually assigned to missions that involve similar cases of bioweapons and other bioterrorism. Sounds like a fun life. The events of RE4 take place six years after RE2, with Leon being driven through the woods of Spain by two local agents. His mission? Rescue Ashley Graham, the President’s daughter. She was kidnapped in the area, and he knows roughly where to look. He can handle this on his own, as long as he stays in contact with mission control Ingrid Hunnigan, who’ll send a helicopter as soon as the girl has been rescued. Leon is dropped past a wooden bridge, with one shack nearby and a remote village down the road. Ingrid helpfully sends him (well, you) a “playing manual” to learn the basics.

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #3

I'm still working towards the next major review, so in the meantime, I'm taking today for another review of games I played on the Nintendo Classics. This time, I'm doing something different; two different consoles! Today, we're starting on known ground with the SNES, and then moving on to games from a console I've never played, the Sega Genesis!

The SNES: Fighters

I found out there was an undercurrent I hadn't heard about from the SNES era: The massive success of Street Fighter II Turbo led to a swath of copycats trying to hit the same level of fame by repeating the formula. But it's like I said a while ago: "If you follow the leader, you stay behind them". I bet you haven't heard of these games!

I mean, it does look a lot like Street Fighter II...

Fighter’s History: Developed by Data East, first released in arcades in 1993, then for the SNES in 1994. Play as one of nine fighters from around the world, each with their own reason to be in this competition; and learn to use your moves against each opponent. This game reminds me of Street Fighter II Turbo in terms of setting; it does try to set itself apart with new mechanics, however. One such mechanic is the “weak point” system, where you can temporarily stun a fighter once per round by hitting their weak point. But with that aside, it didn’t feel too revolutionary or special on its own – in fact, it looks so much like Street Fighter that Capcom sued Data East over it, though Data East won the suit by claiming that several elements in their game were inevitable for the genre.

Oh yeah, that's not Ryu at all.

Tuff E Nuff: Another trend-chasing “clone”, released in 1993 and featuring only four fighters. In 2151, the world is in shambles after an apocalyptic war. Something about one powerful guy rising above all others using technology and becoming like a god, and setting up a worldwide tournament to find the strongest among the survivors… I guess. Anyway, you can only play as one of four different characters, going up against the other three as well as seven additional opponents in Story Mode. It’s… well, if we put aside the stupid story and the lack of playable characters, this one just doesn’t catch my interest at all. It fares even worse than Fighter’s History.

Quick Review: Spaceport Hope

A courier investigating a strange, multi-planet conspiracy!

Just the first blood. Slugs are great first enemies.

Developed by team BitClub, published by them and Sunken Treasure Games, and released on April 15th, 2016, Spaceport Hope is a platforming action shooter with very light Metroidvania elements. Your character is a courier (…no name given, who cares about names anyway), and he lives in a town on a planet led by a nebulous Government that seems to also rule over several planets in the system. At the beginning of the game, he is tasked with delivering a crate of medicine to the Spaceport Hope space station. However, the load turns out to be contaminated by radiations, which gets the hero in trouble. To clean his record, he must escape, investigate the situation, and find the true culprits. This adventure will take him to every planet and make him encounter pirates, hackers, and perhaps even worse.

"Shoot till their HP falls to 0." Easy to do with the base gun.
Also, monster, alien, animal, or just some random human
doing their job (that involves shooting back at you), no
matter! Shoot to kill either way!

The controls: The arrows to move, A to jump (with the ability to double jump), S to shoot. Q and W to cycle between weapons, E to interact with stuff. F to open the inventory of items, and G to open the weapon menu and toggle which guns to add to the weapon cycle. You can always shoot upwards, and downward while in midair. Your starter gun has infinite ammunition, and you find new weapons over time, with plenty of ammo lying around to reload.

A big dinosaur with poisonous spikes in the metro
tunnels. Just another day in this solar system.

Enemies don’t show health on screen as a bar that gradually decreases; instead, when you hit an enemy, a number flashes showing how much health it has left. That’s for regular enemies; bosses have the classic health bar. Most enemies and bosses have gimmicks we’ve seen before, but I can let that slide personally. The game isn’t easy per se, it’s very easy to land in a situation with too many enemies and you never have so much HP as to feel comfortable for too long. Thankfully, save points serve as respawns, and they heal the Hero anytime he touches them – but they’re also sparse enough that going back to them can be tricky.

Dangerous laboratories? Sure. Hey, I'm trying to make sense
of a situation in which I was framed, I'll visit every place that
can help me!

The Metroidvania side? While it’s among the keywords for the game, that aspect is underutilized. You never really upgrade your base abilities to access new areas, and thus you rarely have reasons to return to previous dungeons. You will be coming back to previous areas occasionally, but it will usually be because the plot opened a new dungeon in the area. A few moments do require the Hero to purchase (or find) items beforehand – like scuba-diving gear to visit an underwater dungeon, or a gas mask to bypass a wall of poisonous gas. But you’ll gather enough money from killing enemies and looting chests that getting those items shouldn’t be an issue.

Some boss battles get pretty tough, like when they have a
weak point that doesn't show up frequently. Like this guy.

As soon as you can travel through space, you have access to several minor dungeons with a handful of extras to look for, like additional health and other items you can use to get deeper into the game. You’ll also often find data to access other planets, so there are indeed pans of this universe that you won’t see until you’ve gotten to that point in the story.

Gotta love those ledge-camping enemies that foirce you to
juml in place shooting till they're dead, 'cause if you touch
them you'll get hurt.

Is Spaceport Hope amazing? Nah. Is it bad? …Not at all, actually! It ranks firmly in the “okay bordering on good” category. It doesn’t set out to break any ground and reinvent its genre; it just features very common gameplay elements, but executes them well. There’s variety in the enemies and bosses you can encounter, with many of them requiring specific strategies to deal with. You can find a decent choice of weapons, difficulty progression is steady (though, genre-wise, it feels purely like a shooter platformer and the Metroidvania aspect is barely there). I didn’t run into any gameplay issues, everything worked right. The sprite art is pretty good, and the music is alright. The story is generic, but not terrible. In short: Not a must-play, but its quality and its low price make it plenty accessible if you’re looking for another run’n’gun-like platformer.

Spaceport Hope is available on Steam for 1.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Guns of Icarus Online

For a moment, I was afraid I’d have two game eulogies this year; turns out, there’s only one (it’ll come later in this set of Quick Reviews), but... today's title has definitely seen better days.

Enemy on the left! Uh... how do we say left on a ship
again...

A creation of Muse Games released on October 29th, 2012, Guns of Icarus Online is a multiplayer game about operating steampunk airships and going at war against other factions. Before I start, I want to say that, like pretty much every multiplayer-only game in my collection, this one has been sitting a long time unplayed; I received it in a Humble Bundle back in February… 2017. At a time where I can safely assume the game was a lot more active. And though it’s still receiving occasional updates, unless I’ve played at a particularly slow time, the playerbase appears to have gotten low - the most I saw on my first session was 9 players online at a time.

Say hello to my friend Mortar! You've already met Gatling.

The game features multiple factions warring over a large map, taking, stealing and reclaiming territories, similar to other multiplayer games I’ve played in the past (such as For Honor). However, combat is exclusively dogfights. Each airship has a crew of four, the captain steers (forwards, backwards, turning left or right, and ascending/descending), while the other three can man the ship’s weapons or fix any machinery that gets broken by enemy fire. You don’t need to have four human PCs on one ship; all it takes is one. However, the captain must always be a human player, so if you’re on your own, your job is automatically to drive. I imagine the big interest in this one is to have a full team of four communicating and coordinating their efforts to both get to the guns in time to shoot down enemy ships that come close, and repair what needs to be. The tutorial focuses a fair bit on repairing and maintaining the ship, with piloting as its final course.

Hell yeah, I'm on fire! Wait... No! Ahh! I'm on fire! Ack!
Quick, the extinguisher! My gun is on fire!

There's a wide variety of battle types and matchups. The friend I played with and I went through two modes that could be played between the two of us; together as a team against CPU enemy ships, whichever team destroyed three ships of the opposing team won; and me versus him, attacking each other across the desolate deserts, broken cities, and graveyards of giant dead machinery. (And him wiping the nonexistent floors with me, ‘cause he has more experience with driving/piloting games than I'll ever have – but hey, I got to test the game, that’s what matters!)

Nothing a little percussive maintenance can't solve.

The tutorials cover every position, so you should know how to operate no matter where you land on a team. You have Practice options to play on your own, summoning enemy ships at will to train yourself, or playing against CPU pirates. Multiplayer has 5 modes allowing for varying numbers of players and teams (2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2v2, 4v4, and King of the Hill Mode can be an 8-player Battle Royale). There’s even Skyball in there – whatever that is.

I do wish there was a mini solo campaign to this thing, it
would be interesting to have. I could have taken more
piloting skill tests like this one at the end of the tutorial,
where we're driving through canyons.

Add to this a ton of options for your secondary tools when driving and many choices to customize the look of your personal ship (though a lot of cosmetic stuff is locked behind real money) and weaponry loadout (lots of different gun and ammo types). Like I said earlier, I can imagine what Guns of Icarus was like at the height of its popularity, and even a few years after that; the concept is interesting, the controls and mechanics take some getting used to but can make a seasoned player a definitive threat on a map, and there are enough lore and details to have players care at least a little about the story.

Hello, pirates. Time for you to go down.

However, though I still linked to it and tell its current price at time of this article’s publication, I don’t know if I can “recommend” it, not nearly 13 years into its existence and with such a massively decreased player base. Unless you buy copies for all your friends as well, but even then, I don’t know how much mileage one can get out of it at this point. Same for the update, Guns of Icarus Alliance, advertised in the base game.

Still, if you’re interested, Guns of Icarus Online is available on Steam for 4.99$ USD. I also don’t know how much longer still it’ll be available for purchase, after all this time. But hey – not a eulogy for once!

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #2

Outdated image!

I was planning on continuing these articles under the Nintendo Switch Online denomination, but then Nintendo decided to change it due to the upcoming release of the Switch 2; they are now known as the Nintendo Classics (...even though it includes stuff from the SEGA Genesis, and a lot of third-party games released on retro consoles). Oh well! I'll manage. Just a quick name change, right?

I was hoping to cover a different console for the second such article in a row, but as it turns out, the NES section has most of the shortest games among the Nintendo Classics, so – might as well do this again! For the foreseeable future, I might try to release full articles covering the short games from just one console, at least as long as it will be possible. I'll cover games from other consoles soon enough!

Sports

Go Canadians Go! ...Oh wait. Canada isn't one
of the two teams here.

Ice Hockey: Released in January 1988 in Japan and two months later in North America, this title is self-explanatory – you play a hockey team in a match against another. You choose your team (one out of six), then the opponent, the speed of the game, the duration of the match. After which, you can change the layout of your team of five; the goalie never changes, but the other teammates can be slim and weak but fast, average all around, or stocky and slow but strong when brawls happen. Yep, there can be brawls in this game. Aside from when you’re put in control of the goalie, you swing the hockey stick with A, and swap to another teammate with B. It’s a complicated game that requires way more skill than I’m likely to ever have, and I doubt I’ll play it beyond these first few tests. Though, I am told there’s a decent number of extra little programming details, like the crowd noise being louder when the game is a close one.

Gaming Memories: Duck Hunt

(Doing one of these as I'm still getting this month's reviews finished!)

Wham, bam! If I could shoot that damn dog I would too!

One of the release titles for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Duck Hunt is also the most famous NES game using the NES Zapper. When the trigger of that device shaped like a firearm was pulled in front of a CRT screen, the game would show a split-second screen where it detected roughly the location shot, compared it to the locations of possible targets on the screen, and applied results afterwards.

In Duck Hunt, there are three games modes, though the first two are repeats. You and your dog go out in the field and shoot at ducks. They fly around the screen, and if you manage to shoot one, your dog holds it up triumphantly. If you fail, the little shit laughs at you instead. In Game A, only one duck appears in each round of a level; in Game B, it's two. Game C swaps it all out for clay pigeons instead. In every level, you have to successfully hit a certain number of targets in order to gain access to the next. Like many games at the time, there was a limit; after Level 99, the game rolled back to Level 0 and broke shortly afterwards.

Even putting aside its fame as "the Zapper game", Duck Hunt is perhaps also well-known for having editions where it was packaged on the same cartridge as another game; on my personal copy, Duck Hunt came second, and the other game on it was Super Mario Bros. 1 (which I therefore had twice).

This is "Gaming Memories" for a reason; it's less a review proper of the game, and more a chance for me to reminisce on my experience with it, however far back in time that was. The reason I remember Duck Hunt so well is that, unlike pretty much every single other NES game I owned, it was super easy to teach to my parents. Almost like a precursor to Wii Sports Bowling, there wasn't much to explain, and then we could all have fun together. Just aim at the bird and shoot! Works for me. My parents were never big on gaming (well, aside from casual stuff and the aforementioned Wii Sports), so having even one video game to play with them was great.

On the plus side, Duck Hunt reentered public consciousness when the dog, aided by a duck, made it into Smash, of all things. Hey, every dog has his day. It was good practice for Banjo & Kazooie.

Year Plans 2024: What I've Missed

Last year, I made a list like this, going over all the games I had planned to cover during the year but didn’t; that meant playing roughly an hour of each of them, and collecting my “first impressions” (by default of not having enough time to play through their entirety, like I try to for regular reviews) into a single article.

I thought I had done poorly this year, but no – when compared to 2023, where I had 14 games I hadn’t played through, this time around I have 17, which… yeah, it’s more, but it’s not that much more. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t hit my goals, but then again – I did overshoot while setting up my Year Plans. I won’t explain my method in depth, but it’s more than just “roll for a random number”. As usual, I’ll be setting this up in time for my retrospective, next week.

One thing I noticed when going back over the titles I didn’t play this year: I had a lot of RPGs in there. When I was picking these games, I also stumbled on a few two-game franchises and put the whole franchise in there to make it simple. So yeah, I had a lot of stuff to check out. Opening with…

The variety

Wait till they toss in bugs! And fire! And MORE!

Starting with a funny puzzle game (that I had almost forgotten about!), Girls Like Robots is a creation of Popcannibal. In this game from 2014, we seat girls, robots, nerds and various other characters (with the loadout changing at every chapter) to reach as much happiness as possible. Girls love to sit next to robots, but a robot cannot stand being surrounded by four girls. Nerds like edges, corners, and robots, but girls don’t like them. Girls and nerds like pie, but robots don’t! New requests, character interactions, and rules get added regularly to shake things up. It’s fun, and gets surprisingly tricky even an hour in.

Gaming Memories: Starfox

Haven't done one of those in a while... (I'm doing doing this one because the game I'm planning to cover next is taking me longer than I expected.) Anyway!

Starfox

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

March 1993

The Super Nintendo was an impressive console on its own for the time, home to many technological advances. With the gift of hindsight, it feels like where the greatest updates happened. Most distinctly, the in-between from an all-2D to an all-3D. Most games on the SNES were still pretty clearly 16-bit, 2D entries. Some games played around; Donkey Kong Country is not any less impressive nowadays when you take into consideration its release date, but the trickery of turning all 3D assets into 2D sprites to create the perfect illusion was genius. Super Mario Kart had 3D tracks, but the racers were still obviously 2D. And then, we had the first actual 3D games.

And in that field, Starfox was a pioneer. Like a glimpse into the future. Its hardware had to be tailor-made for it, too, requiring an extra processing chip in the cartridge to make these graphics run right. And do they? Well... We do have true polygonal 3D on the screen, but everything is cut down to allow the console to run it; lowered framerate and resolution, and the models are about as simple as can get, but IT WORKS. The more demanding parts of the game cut on those elements even furtther.

Starfox is the story of the Lylat System's Fox McCloud, who is sent on a mission with his colleagues Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad (the latter of whom keeps getting into trouble and we hate him for it). The task is to deal with the ominous Dr. Andross, who has his sights on multi-planetary conquest. The gameplay involves shooting at threats by aiming at their red-and-yellow weak points. The boss battles are fairly impressive considering the technology.

The structure of the game is also quite odd, split into three routes of differing difficulty, letting you have a tailor-made experience based on what you think you can do. (Did I ever play any other set of levels than on Easy? Maybe I did try them, failed pitifully, and stayed in my lane. I was young, after all.) Top this off with two bonus levels, and you get something special. It always ends in a fight with Andross, and that pristine white polygonal face with bright eyes, spitting white bricks at your Arwing, is still to this day one of the most iconic sights in the franchise. I did defeat this guy.

Starfox secured a spot for itself in fans' hearts, and would only grow from there, though later entries in the franchise would experiment more with genre and tech (...not always to the best results, as the Starfix game on the Wii U can attest). We even recently got Starfox 2, finally "released" first on the Super NES Classic Edition, then later on the Switch. For what it's worth, I keep fond memories of that one, and it's one of those games I grew up with that I'd happily go back in a heartbeat to see if I can fare better... if I didn't already have a backlog of 230+ games to get through, that is...

Quick Review: Mirror's Edge

Run Faith Run!

Brace for landing.

Developed by DICE, published by Electronic Arts (should I be worried?) and released to Steam on January 13th, 2009, Mirror’s Edge is a first-person action/parkour game set on the rooftops of a cyberpunk dystopia. The brightest one I’ve ever seen! Faith belongs to a group of people known as the Runners, who spread information and fight the powers in place. Faith is tossed into a dangerous situation when her sister Kate, a “Blue” (read: A cop, Runners don’t usually like those), is framed for the murder of mayoral hopeful Robert Pope. Hoping to prove her sister’s innocence, Faith runs off with a paper found on the scene, not counting that this also paints her as a suspect. And the Blues have no intention of keeping her alive for questioning...

Late into the game, you start getting chased by unstoppable
parkour experts just like you.

This game feels like a culmination of several gaming experiences I’ve had in the past year. Gameplay is very parkour-heavy, featuring an agile, quick and resourceful protagonist, who can out-speed most threats before her. Controls reflect this, giving her a very wide array of moves that make the experience feel awesome. Jumping, drop-rolling, coiling up, crouching, sliding, climbing, wall-running/jumping, ziplining, and so much more. Any décor elements you can use to progress (jumping pads, planks, doors, pipes, gutters, etc.) turn red when you come close. It’s up to you to figure out your way around.

Yeah, better run in the opposite direction.

Better not get hit for a few seconds... easier said than done.

As for the Blues... You can beat up an enemy, steal their firearm, and do some shooter action if you want – but you’ll have to ditch the gun to resume parkouring. And enemies come in groups, so running is the better solution. Combat is avoidable, but you may have to defend yourself and kill. You don’t have a life bar; instead, colors drain out of the screen the weaker Faith gets. She heals by spending some time without getting hurt.

Now I'm armed! ...But I can't jump for crap.

Oh, and we ride a train at some point. That sequence ends
just close to a Final Destination death, I swear.

What sets this one apart from other parkour-heavy games? The first-person view. Seeing every movement, jump, cool action as if you were there, a sensation that no other game in this sub-genre has given me. (That, and vertigo.) It also means that when you lose, you feel it. The sound design will remind you of your mistake. Every time I caused Faith to fall from a rooftop... I’ll hear those crunches in my nightmares. Coupled to the amazing look of the city, the story and how it’s presented, the game feels very cinematic in execution. (Cutscenes between chapters switch to a 2D animation style.)

The idea is great and lends itself to a unique experience. The freedom of movement is excellent and the parkour is satisfying, the music is great, and the city is gorgeous. Okay, you mostly see rooftops, but every now and then we get variety, so that's cool. I'll say that I greatly enjoyed my experience, even going back to finish the game before posting this article.

Although, the first-person view has its flaws; among others, it often makes it difficult to judge jumps properly. How many times I died because I was just short of the other ledge... Another flaw is that the game is very trial-and-error; try until you succeed. At least it’s lenient with many checkpoints. The game is somewhat short, beatable in three hours, but it'll take much longer due to repeated attempts at finishing each mission (it took me seven), since it's so tough. This also makes the game, at the same time, very linear; you can’t really “explore” the rooftops, there’s usually a clear path from point A to point B and you don’t have much else in the way of options. The only noteworthy forks in the road are the side-quest of finding three suitcases hidden in every “level”. Parkour is so much stronger than the shooting segments, yet there's more of the latter near the end.

But yeah, all in all, I'd say it's worth your money. Mirror's Edge is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD. A (debated) sequel, Catalyst, was also released in 2016.