The legend of Battle Garegga

Some games maintain an aura of silent legend without receiving significant critical praise. Battle Garegga, a 1996 scrolling shooter by Raizing/8ing, has retained that legendary reputation for twenty years.

Few outside the hardcore shoot-em-up scene have heard of it: If Gradius is the scrolling shooter bible, then Battle Garegga is its Necronomicon. Devoted fans speak with equal reverence about the game as they do about its mad author, Shinobu Yagawa. Every moment of Battle Garegga feels distinctly planned, as Yagawa’s phantom hands pull players this way and that.

Battle Garegga has style. While the visual design itself is a bit murky, the game’s aesthetic dodges tropes that modern shoot-em-ups fall prey to. Many players have lamented that traditional shoot-em-up “spaceships and warplanes” aesthetic has been replaced by cute anime girls in an appeal to anime pop culture. Not so here.

Battle Garegga veers instead toward a neo-WW2 aesthetic, a world of dehumanization, mass industry, and bleak factory landscapes punctuated by bright explosions. If that were all, Battle Garegga would fall victim to the same bland realism that plagues many modern titles. What’s interesting is that the game also has a strong fantasy component, feeling like an understated steampunk world.

This nod towards the unrealistic is no surprise, considering Raizing/8ing’s previous game, Kingdom Grand Prix, was high fantasy, a rarity for the genre. Many of the boss designs in Battle Garegga are absurdist industrial monstrosities, such as the spherical fortress MadBall, or the arms-akimbo Junkey Monkey. Battle Garegga is gritty and industrial, yes. But thoughtlessly realistic it is not.

This is underscored by the selection of playable characters. Four of them are fighter planes, but the other four (secret) characters return from Kingdom Grand Prix. They are, in order: a warrior, a sorceress, a samurai dragon, and a necromancer. I cannot stress how much their inclusion adds to the game. The latent steampunk trappings would amount to little without the ability to fly through as the samurai dragon Miyamoto or necromancer Bornham. Each character has their own playing style, able to be subtly altered for speed, size, and color by pressing a different button during character selection.

Equally important is the soundtrack. I have very little to say about it that won’t be immediately apparent upon listening. It’s energetic, upbeat, intense, varied. And its one of the few videogame sountracks that’s completely listenable outside of the game it’s featured in. Battle Garegga, in my mind, is defined by its music.

I think the jewel in Battle Garegga’s crown, though, is that it’s also a very intuitive game. Yes, Battle Garegga’s systems are complex, with seemingly limitless depths to be exploited. But on a surface level, Battle Garegga asks you to do two things: Shoot enemies and collect point medals. These are very satisfying, very primal videogame objectives.

And there’s a whole lot to shoot. One could almost call that Shinobu Yagawa’s calling card. Other programmers will usher enemies in from one side and then the other in an orderly fashion; from the very first second of gameplay, Battle Garegga gives you plenty of targets and a frenetic sense of disorganization. There are massive explosions, and too many enemies to initially keep track of. Items are constantly filling the screen; players must race to collect what they need. Even without worrying about deeper systems, Battle Garegga feels rich, considered, and sufficiently overwhelming.

Battle Garegga rewards players at every skill level. Certainly it’s a difficult game. The new PS4 port, courtesy of M2, does a lot to mitigate this difficulty through alternate modes and settings. If you’ve never played Battle Garegga, or if you’ve only dabbled in it as I have, I encourage you to try it in MAME, or create a Japanese PS4 account in order to download it. After all, this is the sort of game that could keep you going for twenty years.

West-washing the world’s games

“I can’t remember the last time I played a Japanese game,” my friend Mike said to me.

Our tastes are largely different. He plays primarily open-world games, racers, and first person shooters, pillar genres of “western” game design. It’s true that I tend more toward Japanese games, and occasionally games that are garishly and loudly Japanese. So his statement should have been unsurprising. We just have different tastes. But it was when he said it that surprised me.

I asked him what game we’d been playing.

“Mario Kart. Ah, yeah. Yeah. I didn’t really think about it, huh? I meant really Japanese games, you know?”

In Mike’s defense, Mario is difficult to pin down as Japanese. He’s an Italian plumber, after all, and basically the Mickey Mouse of videogames. He’s so famous that he can’t be said to belong to one culture at all–he’s globally recognized, and every tuned-in culture likely has “their” version of Mario, the same as they have “their” Mickey Mouse or McDonalds.

But it’s been weird, seeing this trend from Japan’s complete dominance of console gaming to a sort of coup by western game developers. In large part I suppose that’s due to the Xbox brand: gamers can play a largely western catalogue of games on an American-made console. It’s also due to the lopsided categorization: Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield, Forza; these are all considered “our” games, despite being from three different countries. Meanwhile, Japan is just Japan.

Many gamers seem content to let Japan just be dead. After all, where are all the Japanese role-playing games? We have The Witcher (Poland), Elder Scrolls (US), and Dragon Age (Canada). This despite the massive number of Japanese role-playing games that get released on 3DS and Vita to critical acclaim. Well, those are handhelds, they don’t really count. Small in size, they’re assumed to be small in scope.

I suspect that much of the American gaming public is holding their breath for Final Fantasy 15. SquareEnix have been in and out of gamers’ graces for a while. Can the Japanese prove they’ve still got it? The massive success of Dark Souls and Bloodborne should prove that they have, in fact, got it. Nevermind that both series are wrapped in the bleak cloak of western fantasy; us westerners wouldn’t accept anything less.

If Final Fantasy 15 flops, will American gamers write off Japanese role-playing games entirely? That’d be a very sad thing, with Persona 5 just over the horizon.

Dragon Quest 7: Fragments of an Epic Adventure

Dragon Quest 7’s 3DS remake trades adventure for accents and accessibility

To read reviews of the 3DS remake, you’d think Dragon Quest 7 on Playstation was a plodding bore. It ain’t so. Dragon Quest 7 was and is a succession of beautiful, melancholy fables.

I don’t think I ever fully understood the purpose of Dragon Quest’s town stories before playing it. Each town acts as its own bite-sized JRPG so that you can come home after a busy day at the office and make real progress. And each story is so damned compelling, in large part, because of the Playstation game’s translation.

Many JRPGs are stripped of ‘offensive’ content or altered so that they make sense to a western audience. Dragon Quest 7 instead provides a very literal translation, but one that’s clear and concise. It feels in many ways like a modern translation of a literary or religious text. Since that’s what we’re dealing with here–fables where rain turns men to stone, a town is turned into animals, or a young boy is raised by wolves–the original translation is vital for establishing the tone of the game.

The 3DS remake, in contrast, injects such a heavy dose of colloquialism and accent into the dialogue as to be insufferable. For example, when multiple characters say they need to “put their skates on.” Maybe the translations were this excessive in the other DS remakes; I don’t know. What I do know is that here it feels especially egregious. No dialogue box can go without multiple injections of old-timey slang.

Instead of feeling like holy fables, passed down over generations, these stories are chopped up bedtime stories, stripped of their original meaning. By cutesying themselves up, they lose their pathos.

But there’s more about this remake that grates. The opening hours of the game have lost a very great deal. Originally, Dragon Quest 7 required 4-6 hours(!) of exposition before letting players fight even one measly slime, time spent exploring the first island and its ancient ruin. The ruin acts as the game’s first dungeon–it has no enemies, but it is large and there are numerous puzzles to solve. Exploration is a meaningful part of the adventure, and it establishes the pace of the game. If that opener sounds boring, well, it’s not. It’s just slow, contemplative even.

The remake’s stripping down of this dungeon, on the other hand, is incredibly lame. There is no opening dungeon within the ruins, and there are no puzzles. Your characters go back and forth, fetching items and having them translated. In all it takes about two tedious hours to get through this opening segment. You get all the worst parts and very little of what’s interesting.

Much is lost. The sense of exploration and anticipation over hours of gametime, that slow burn of an opening as the player works their way deeper and deeper into the torchlit ruins. And then finally, once they’ve solved the trials, assembled tablet shards together on a pedestal and proved their heroism, they’re whisked away.

To where? Somewhere far away, somewhere strange, another land. They’re off their quaint fishing island and walking through a dark forest, when there’s a screech from the trees and–suddenly, finally, after all. this. time.—

A SLIME ATTACKS.

Trackmania Turbo runs laps around me-too modern racing games

I remember cramming Super Mario Kart in the cartridge slot of my Super Nintendo, so many years after my brother sold his. Hearing the notes of its MIDI theme again was like sucking in air, or discovering a scratched and scraped action figure in the basement. Seeing Koopa Troopa, Toad, and Bowser drive past their pastel mountains, my pupils constricted to dots, and I remembered that this was it. No other game has ever, will ever capture that feeling of channeled chaos—because Super Mario Kart already captured it, perfectly.

Trackmania Turbo, though, comes dangerously close. Recently released to no fanfare whatsoever by developer Nadeo and publisher Ubisoft at a budget $40 price point, Trackmania Turbo is the latest in a long line of cult racers that I have never played. The title screams shovelware, the box art screams shovelware, the unfocused aesthetic screams shovelware.

But Trackmania may be the single most exciting racing game since Super Mario Kart first red-shelled the world 24 years ago. Here’s why:

The feel of the wheel

Trackmania Turbo knows there’s more to racing than simulation. On a television screen, it’s not enough to be realistic; one must be extra-realistic, surrealistic, impressionistic. No amount of gear-shifting or cockpit detail can compensate for the raw speed and heft of a car hurtling through space. Trackmania feels fast, intense, weighty. These cars scream around turns. They are precise, but oh so arcadey. The exaggerated physics are outrageous and only add to the fun. Trackmania captures the impression of racing. Instead of fiddly gear-shifting engineers, we are invited to become howling children enjoying our very first rollercoaster ride.

Falling into flow

On the first level, your car falls into a nosedive from a helicopter. Your wheels spin at max speed as you hit the half-pipe that begins the track. You whip around barriers into your first U-turn and nudge the brake, which sends your vehicle into an intensely satisfying drift. Should you slam into a barrier (it happens), the brake acts as a totally garbage reverse button. Don’t use it. Hit the restart button instead. In an instant, you’re counting down, 3-2-1, and back in the race. There is no loading to interrupt your retry. Feel the flow.

Simple, difficult pleasures

Being that accelerate and brake are the only two core buttons, you might think Trackmania Turbo is easy. Ain’t so. Despite its simplicity, this is an incredibly challenging, precise racer. So when you hit that barrier, you already beefed it. You might get the bronze; hypothetically speaking, you might even get silver. But you aren’t getting gold, and you won’t be satisfied with your run. Hit the restart button. It’s the right thing to do; you will feel good about it. Because you’re playing a game that’s easy to learn and hard to master, and you will enjoy the road to mastery.

Tracks and tracks and tracks

There’s a lot to master: Trackmania Turbo shipped with 200 tracks. I assume that many of these are fan favorites from early Trackmania games, because they’re very, very good. The tracks start out shorter in length. Most are one lap only; many are only 30 seconds long. They’ll keep you very busy. There are four different track types: Grand Canyon Drift, Down and Dirty Valley, Rollercoaster Lagoon, and International Stadium.

These tracks are not humdrum ovals. They are massively staged, with landscapes stretching into the distance. These are the type of track where you will ramp over a valley and through the ring of a giant pink donut, or corkscrew up roller coaster rails before flying off and latching onto their magnetized underside. Don’t think Forza. Think Hot Wheels meets F-Zero. More than anything, these tracks remind me of the stage design in Super Monkey Ball—these are tracks you’ll remember. Oh, and there’s a random track generator. And a track builder. And you can play other people’s custom tracks. That’s a lot of tracks. That’s a trackstravaganza.

Co-op romance and bromance

And those 200 tracks? Every single one is available in the brilliant Double Driver mode. Two drivers team together to control one car, their inputs averaging out to control where the car moves. It is a mode that should not work, yet works flawlessly. Racing games are a very binary genre; strictly speaking, there is only one “right” move. So when you’re both double driving, you’re co-testing your ability to both be totally right at the same time. And once you sink into the groove, you’ll perform incredibly. My single proudest trial time was set in double driver with my girlfriend. We absolutely crushed. We are the best.

Hundred-player online insanity

At its core, then, Trackmania Turbo is a time trial game. You race against staff ghosts, earn a good time, and then race against your own ghost. This type of gameplay can lead to some pretty lame online: download a ghost, race a ghost, snooze away. This game, though. This game.

Trackmania drops you into online matches with upwards of 100 other players, all racing at the same time. They’re real-time ghosts, displaying their usernames overhead, swerving into walls, careening over barriers, hurtling into the abyss. It’s pure madness. But since this is a time trial game, they don’t actually mess you up. You have 5 minutes to race your best lap, with as many retries as you need. Once you finish a lap, you start again and keep going. This works brilliantly because you can jump into a game at any time, and you never have to sit out. You are always racing, you are always learning, and you are always having a good time.

Couch multiplayer monster mash

Many people who play Trackmania Turbo will be disappointed by the game’s versus multiplayer. They’ll play the splitscreen, realize it’s pretty meh, and not play any of the other modes. Do not be this person. Do. Not. Because the best mode is Hot Seat, where players take turns instead of racing at the same time.

As single cars or double drivers, 1-16(!) players take turns racing to see who can score the best time. So what, right? Here’s the rub: Each player has a limited amount of gas. After each person races, the person in last place keeps running the track until they pass another racer or get eliminated. If that player ranks up they stay in the game, and the new last place player has to run.

There are so many reasons I love this mode. I love that the person who performs poorly gets to run the race repeatedly, encouraging them to gain skill as they race and re-race. I love that there’s a palpable tension as players race to stay alive, rankings shifting and rivalries changing. I love that players can take a break to regroup and appreciate the crashes while they wait for their turn to play. I love how much smack talk this mode encourages—even the announcer talks smack. Sometimes he changes accents. Sometimes he’s actually massively encouraging.

You can feel that this is where the team at Nadeo put their multiplayer resources. Hot Seat mode is glorious, practically cementing Trackmania Turbo as the must-have multiplayer party game this generation. And the best part is, you don’t need more than two controllers to realize the mode’s maximum potential. I could write an essay on why this mode is so good.

What I really mean to say

Only time will tell if Trackmania Turbo is worthy of all the memories it’s rekindled, and solidify whether this is my favorite racing game since Super Mario Kart. There are contenders for that crown: Crash Team Racing, F-Zero GX, Burnout Revenge, Sonic All-Stars Transformed. Let that list decide whether you can be interested in Trackmania Turbo. But if you love manic single-player time trials or no-holds-barred multiplayer grudge races, Trackmania Turbo is absolutely essential. Don’t be fooled by the bland name, the shovelware cover, or the fairly average review scores. In an era of blandly realistic racing simulators, Trackmania Turbo makes everything else eat dust.

Breaking into scrolling shooters

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you probably know that I love, love, love scrolling shooters. A while back I even wrote a massive post about scrolling shooters — I wanted to pick apart the genre in a scholarly way, highlighting notable games and asking questions that would get people thinking about them on a deeper level.

Well, I feel the need to add onto that article. Many of the games I listed in my original article are super rare and super expensive, and it doesn’t do anyone any good to appreciate them theoretically. More than any other genre, scrolling shooters live or die by the fundamental “fun-ness” of play. To that end, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite affordable and available shooters. These are shooters I would vouch for no matter what, but they’re also fun and accessible picks that won’t put a hurt on your wallet.

– PC –

Cho Ren Sha 68K

I’m not much for classics, but Cho Ren Sha is everything you need and nothing you don’t. Every element feels perfectly balanced, as if the creators knew exactly what they wanted before they started programming. Colorful enemies, blazing-fast gunfire, powerful tunes, and a brilliantly simple powerup system (choose: bomb, powerup, or shield!) come together to make for one of the all-time greats. If Cho Ren Sha has a fault, it’s that it only has one background… but hey, it worked for Galaga.

Price: Free

Alltynex Second

Spaceships with gimmicky weapons are a time-honored scrolling shooter tradition, and Alltynex Second brings the heat with *three* separate gimmick weapons in one ship. Normally that would be enough to tank a game under its own excess, but Alltynex Second pulls it off wonderfully. The homing shot takes out small enemies, the power beam tears through bosses, and the laser sword cancels enemy bullets as it hacks away at their mechanized faces. There’s more than a little bit of hack-and-slash DNA in this one, and cutting apart enemies piece by piece never loses its appeal.

Price: $8 on Steam

Crimzon Clover: World Ignition

“World Ignition” is more than just a flashy subtitle. When Crimzon Clover exploded onto Steam, scrolling shooter fans went totally bonkers. That’s because Crimzon Clover nails every aspect of bullet hell design—hardcore action, non-stop explosions, over-the-top visuals, and an endless supply of glittering point items. There’s a wealth of content, with four different arcade modes and two novice modes for people (like me) who just aren’t that great at bullet hell games. Crimzon Clover demonstrates yet again that a one-man indie can outperform even the biggest studios. If you want to experience for yourself the intricacy and adrenaline of bullet hell shooters without the costly import prices, Crimzon Clover is unmissable.

Price: $10 on Steam

Also try: Danmaku Unlimited 2, Hydorah, Jamestown, and Kamui

– Xbox 360 –

Score Rush

Score Rush combines all the best elements of Geometry Wars with the kaleidoscopic gunfire of a bullet hell. Twin-stick controls, 4-player multi, and tons of psychedelic particle effects make this an incredibly fun and accessible shooter. It’s just about the only scrolling shooter that you can have an entire room of friends playing in no time. Such is Score Rush’s simplicity and curb appeal—when I think of no-brainer 360 purchases, Score Rush is at the top of the list.

Price: $1 on Xbox Live Indie; Free on PC

Raiden Fighters Aces

Raiden Fighters Aces offers a rare glimpse into what scrolling shooters looked like just before bullet hells changed the genre completely. There aren’t any intricate patterns of slow-moving bullets here—In Raiden style, the action is blisteringly fast, emphasizing twitch reflexes and wide dodges in order to avoid enemy sniper shots. All three Raiden Fighters games are included on-disc, and between them there’s a massive number of playable ships, each with their own weapons, stats, and bombs. And that soundtrack, holy crap. What it lacks in melody it makes up for in raw intensity.

Price: ~$15

Deathsmiles

I could tell you all about what a great developer Cave is and blah blah blah but instead I’ll say that this game features a giant rotting cow named Mary as an end of level boss, and I think that really says everything right there. Deathsmiles’ Halloween motif leans cutesy rather than gory, but underneath the cheese is a smart shooter that cuts through the typical bullet hell crap. Level select, per-level difficulty select, and simplified bullet patterns mean that you don’t have to be an absolute monster to beat Deathsmiles. Even so, there’s more than enough for players to bite into as they gain skills and start chasing high scores.

Price: ~$10

Also try: Akai Katana, Ikaruga, and Chronoblast

– Playstation 3 –

Zanac X Zanac

Allow me be a crazy person for a second and tell you that one of the best scrolling shooters on PS3 is actually an enhanced port of an NES game. Zanac is a thing of subtle beauty, by which I mean it’s actually kind of hideous and could easily fool you into thinking it’s total garbage. But oh man, don’t tell that to Zanac. Because Zanac hears. What sets Zanac apart from other scrolling shooters is that it features randomized waves of enemies, sent by the AI that is Zanac. How many shots you’re firing, what powerups you pick up; everything is analyzed by Zanac and every game of Zanac is customized to kill you, specifically. The powerups in this one are just incredible—absolutely top of class. Plus there’s a really sweet challenge mode that could keep you playing, like, forever. Oh, and also a really good Playstation version included called Zanac Neo. Yeah, there’s that, too.

Price: $6 on PSN

Under Defeat HD

Under Defeat boasts the sort of elegant beauty that you’d never expect from a scrolling shooter about World War II helicopter pilots. Every scene is bursting with detail, and the stunning particle effects and dynamic smoke highlight the action across stages of forested gun-emplacements, massive naval fleets, and bombed out military bases. Even though the game takes place in a fictitious alternate timeline, a strong sense of realism makes Under Defeat extremely compelling. The “lean into your shots” control scheme is novel and fun, and the scoring system utilizes the player’s vulcan, cannon, and rocket powerups in a simple and satisfying way. To top it off, this version also includes a widescreen, twin-stick mode with a remixed soundtrack courtesy of the always-great Yousuke Yasui.

Price: $10 on PSN

Gradius V

Gradius V may be the ultimate sidescrolling shooter. I don’t mean that it’s the best, or that it’s my personal favorite. What I mean is that Gradius V seems to carry the entire legacy of the genre on its shoulders as you play—It’s monolithic, majestic, and impossibly slick, with tight level design and spectacular boss battles. It’s also ruthlessly difficult, requiring players to memorize certain routes to make it through. That’s all part of what it means to be a Gradius game. But the system of unlockable continues means everyone can eventually play Gradius V to the end, and really, I’d say this is the best game in the series since the original Gradius codified the genre in 1985. Play them both.

Price: $10 on PSN

Also try: Castle Shikigami 2, Velocity

– Wii (and Wii U) –

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Blast Works

I’m not sure I can call Blast Works a great game; hell, I’m not entirely sure I can even call it a good game. What it is, though, is a uniquely fun game, thanks to an irresistible premise: Blast Works is essentially Katamari Damacy as a scrolling shooter. Every enemy you kill can be latched onto any side of your ship; they contribute their firepower to yours and also act as a giant meat shield. By the end of the stage, you’ll feel like the end of level boss, because your fighter craft will be have a hundred other guns attached to it. All that craziness, plus the game has a robust level and ship editor. Blast Works is fun with friends as well, and… that’s why you bought your Wii, isn’t it? Ah, you were in it for Wii Fit. Nevermind then.

Price: ~$5

Sin and Punishment 2

This game is just bonkers. Sin and Punishment 2 is like a rail shooter, lightgun game, and scrolling shooter fused together and jacked up to eleven. There are a bajillion things to shoot at, and the level designs are truly inspired. There’s an overgrown ruin of destroyed Tokyo, a hoverbike chase on a not so abandoned highway, and a flight down a literal water tunnel, where giant morays and enemy ships burst through the walls of water to attack. That’s to say nothing of the bosses, which are massive, frequent, and phenomenal.

Price: ~$15

Wii Virtual Console

There aren’t many great retail shooters for Wii, but it still has one of the best collections of scrolling shooters on any system thanks to the Virtual Console. There are sooo many great and otherwise hard to find games; hell, it was the Wii Virtual Console that got me deeply into shooters in the first place. Take to the skies in your mech and blow apart neo-feudal Japan in MUSHA; headbang hard with the heavy metal soundtrack and awesomely mythological monsters of Lords of Thunder; destroy cute-em-up baddies as a Turbografx-16 videogame system itself in Star Parodier. And while you’re at it, definitely try out Gate of Thunder. It’s my favorite sidescrolling shooter of all time.

Price: $8-9

Also try: Blazing Lazers, Fantasy Zone, R-Type and R-Type III, and Soldier Blade

Those are my personal picks for fun, affordable scrolling shooters. Hopefully you discovered a new favorite or added something to your never-ending list of games to check out. Narrowing down this list was tough; scrolling shooters are a huge genre dating back to gaming’s infancy, and I had to cut a few of my absolute favorites. Maybe I missed a few of your favorites, too.

On that note, I’m gonna turn things around and ask you: What’s your favorite scrolling shooter?

🌟 Hatsune Miku ~ World is Mine 🌟

The #1 princess in the world… right?

 

you invade our lands; you savage our people; you call us slime

The politics of Hatred

“At the end of the day you, gamers will judge if we were able to do a game that’s simply fun to play,” reads a press release from the developers of Hatred, a game about killing everyone you meet and then yourself. The trailer shows brutal stabbings and shotgun executions of civilians and policemen; the developer’s website describes it as anti-trend, a reaction to games “heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art, rather than just an entertainment.” Because the real way to create a mass-murder game that’s just entertainment is to infuse it with a politically charged message of artistic and authorial intent, obviously.

Members of the gaming community expressed outraged that Valve removed Hatred from Steam Greenlight after a petition was signed against it. There’s a constant worry among gamers that outsiders are going to take their videogame guns away, as if there’s any actual danger of violent games going extinct. Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Destiny, Halo, Hotline Miami, Tomb Raider, Last of Us, Battlefield — videogame nice guy Nathan Drake makes a charming quip before gunning down two hundred nameless soldiers. Violent games aren’t going anywhere.

Case in point: Hatred is now back up for votes Steam Greenlight.

Mario Kart 8’s first DLC brings Hyrule Castle and Mute City to the Mushroom Kingdom

An in-depth look at Nintendo’s “Super Smash Kart” DLC

Mario Kart 8 is a big, bold, beautiful game. The track design is unmatched and the handling is sublime… but it was always lacking something. That something is levels, characters, and karts from other Nintendo properties like The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, and Excitebike, all added with this new DLC. Cross-over tracks are a long overdue addition, considering how well Nintendo has crossed-over its games in Super Smash Bros. We’ve entered the era of Super Smash Kart—but what all does this DLC add to the already great Mario Kart formula?

Bayonetta 2 and the magic of doing the exact same thing, better

I’ve been playing a lot of Bayonetta 2 recently. I think I’m approaching the final act, having just resolved the main source of conflict and uncovered the big bad. All this in just three days of playing at breakneck speed — pretty crazy, considering I don’t even like the first game all that much.

Sure, the first Bayonetta is good. I can appreciate what it’s going for, what people are praising when they call it the best brawler ever. But it just doesn’t feel right to me. It doesn’t gel. Everything pushes me out of the groove: the story is a bloated mess, end-of-stage grading is overly punishing, and enemy attacks are intrinsically awkward in a way I can’t put my finger on. I shelved the game halfway through.