In Defense of the Mario Galaxy Movie and the New Way of Adapting Games

Recently, the Mario Galaxy Movie released to a bad critical reception and a positive audience reception. You can bet your back pocket I was there on day 1. It's interesting to me how there's been a surge of video game movie adaptations recently, and somehow the Galaxy one is my favourite. Either that or Detective Pikachu. That one was quite good, but I suppose I'm stretching the limits of the words "recently". That film came out in 2019. 

This never-ending sugar rush of a film doesn't have as many quiet moments as this promo material would have you believe.

Now, some background on me. I have a university degree in filmmaking, and have formally studied film since 2018. Does that make me the be-all-end-all? No. But it's important to remember that I do have an actual interest in the subject. I'm not just a Gamer waltzing on in and talking on the quality of movies with zero interest in the artform. I think that's important for you to know.

Especially because I'm about to fight on the side of the fanservice slop.

Video games and movies are very different, and the way they tend to deliver their stories is also very different. This builds up an expectation. A player probably expects the story to be partially delivered by or during a mission/level, the movie watcher expects a cohesive narrative to unfold before them. Generalizing, but you get what I mean, right? Different forms of delivery. Early video game films got around this by taking the vague concepts of the game and basically just doing whatever with it.

I like this movie a bit. Product of its time, feels like it's embarrassed by the source material a tad. Inventive in its own right. Badly paced.

The adaptations were made NOT for enthusiasts of video games, but for general/family audiences who only vaguely knew or cared about the source material. Postal, Hitman, Resident Evil, Ratchet & Clank, Warcraft, Mortal Kombat. Nobody liked these. The fun of the interactive element was lost. Not just that, but the games listed with actually solid stories got most of the goodness scraped out by the movie-length runtime. A 4 hour long video game would be considered short, but that's a monstrously long film.

Fans of the game would know the story was abridged or neutered, and film critics could probably feel that something was missing, though not anything in particular. Stuff like this is why I am very opposed to the idea of becoming a film being the final frontier for a game. Like being put on the silver screen somehow legitimises it. It wasn't art until we put our incredibly stock characterisation and storyline over something far more interesting!

Now, let's skip a few decades. Two movies release that, I think, mark a distinct change in the video game movie. 2025's "Five Nights at Freddy's 2", and 2026's "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie". Both of these are sequels that have a far lower critic score than their first films, diehard fans of the franchises (at least on social media) seem to mostly love them, and both are just crammed to the brim with homages and references to video game stuff.

And, I think they're far better off for that.

To the average moviegoer, "We found one, a real one!" is unassuming dialogue. 

The biggest weakness of the 2023 Mario Movie for me was the storytelling quality. I do not like Illumination's movies at all. They're cheap, generally unfunny, have predictable and passé storytelling. As generic as kids movies get. The worst of Pixar and Dreamworks might be more offensively bad, but their best put it into perspective. Show a kid Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Monsters Inc, and they should come out the other side with a greater appreciation for life itself. Show them Despicable Me, and they'll be pacified for 90 minutes. 

I have no idea why Nintendo chose Illumination of all studios to handle the god damn Mario movies, but I digress. If there's one thing the Minions fellas can actually do well, it's fun action. Amongst all of their films, it's their absolute strongest suit. I did just shit on Despicable Me, but it doesn't surprise me that their most popular franchise is the one essentially about cartoon spy action.

The first Illumination Mario movie tries to juggle a backstory for the plumbers, a bunch of references from across the series, and is missing large chunks of story because they obviously cut a lot of musical numbers because test audiences didn't like them.

It's been long memory holed... But I never forget!

 We all remember scenes like "The Illumination Dog Scene" and the "I think you're nuts! Scene". It has to slowly inch its way into being a movie about Super Mario in the most predictable way possible. By contrast, the Galaxy movie is very light on story. It seems to me that most critics would rather have a very standard story with poor writing and characters instead of having just the action. Personally, I don't fully get it. It's not telling anything groundbreaking. Is the attempt at storytelling really THAT good in the first one that missing it in the second is a massive fail. "Oh, they could improve! Start telling better stories!" You ever watched their output? They do whatever is needed to complete the movie as cheaply as possible and spend big on marketing. If they knew they could just skip the "telling a story" part and guarantee sales, they'd have done that long ago. Quite frankly, it makes a far more watchable film. Silly action scenes and Nintendo references are clearly the highest ambition.

To return to FNAF2, that's a movie that completely abandoned the general audience. Because the canon of the FNAF movies was set in stone by the first, it has to twist the events of the movie to bring Mike into the office for some classic animatronic action. I'd say it tries a lot harder to be an "actual movie", but there is meticulous setup just to make sure that he awkwardly hides behind a Freddy mask to fend off the withered animatronics. The scene is so unbelievably stupid if you haven't played the games... But if you haven't played the games, what are you doing watching it?

Going to make this clear: Not a critique shield! I don't mind if you hate these two movies. They're not very good from a traditional standpoint, that's for sure. In the case of Blumhouse's Freddy movies, the critique might actually go places. The FNAF2 movie is heavily influenced by feedback on the first one. It's scarier, has more jumpscares, has more animatronic action. They didn't listen to movie critic feedback. The FNAF fan feedback was far higher priority, and I really can't blame em. If they went all-in on trying to get a high Rotten Tomatoes score, you'd just be left with a completely fine 6.5/10 movie that critics would say "Was fine." before promptly forgetting about it. Fans who actually cared would be left with a film that doesn't play up the aspects of the games they find fun and appealing. Nobody wins.

The Jim Henson Company did an unbelievably good job capturing how these guys look.

Neither movie is fully artistically bankrupt! In the case of the FNAF movies, the physical animatronics are impressive as all hell, and basically worth seeing the movie for. For the Mario movies, they're straight up the nicest looking films by Illumination. But the art serves the purpose of fan wish fulfillment, not making a masterpiece...

There's an obvious counterargument. Should people not demand more from their films? Demand they be challenged instead of catered to? In most cases, I'd say yes. But if someone wants to be challenged they should just play the game the movie is based on. These movies shouldn't be treated as the legitimate version. The experience of "Five Nights At Freddy's" can really only be captured in video game form because it was designed around a completely static, faceless player character. The tension and risk of losing just isn't there in a film that progresses whether or not you do anything. That is the intended delivery method.

That brings us to the biggest part of this:

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the Most Accurate to Source Material Video Game Movie of All Time

It's a big statement, but I can back it up. Of course, a big fan of Super Mario Galaxy is going to point out how the movie doesn't do a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the game. I'm about to be quite rude to a game that many people hold near and dear. People vastly overexaggerate how atmospheric Mario Galaxy is. Most of the game is upbeat music, with Mario whooping and cheering with joy as he long jumps and spins to cross colourful floating platforms. It does have moments of quiet atmosphere, but I feel its moments are few and far between.

I don't even think it's the most "atmospheric" Mario game. Not when 64's isolated world had people going mad, creating fiction about the game having apparitions that personalised the game to the player's taste. And the scary piano. Don't forget that.

Don't get me wrong. The game is better than the film, better written than the film, and game Mario is acted better than film Mario. 

The movie is quite literally structured like a Mario game. Characters go through an action set piece that fulfills the role of "a level" and are then greeted with a powerful enemy to beat. Level -> Boss. I can't believe they managed to get away with this, but in a way it's kind of incredible. It kinda proves what I mean by "You can't truly capture a game in movie form" because they managed to match it almost exactly to the video game structure and it doesn't have the same feel at all once you lose the interactive element. Having "levels and bosses" becomes a lot more nonsensical without lives, difficulty, and progression.

It elevated the watching experience for me. What other context or point in history are you gonna be able to see a movie that's like this? If you wrote an original script that looked like this, you'd be shot. Or laughed out of the room. Or shot, laughed out of the room, and then shot again. The intellectual property of "Super God Damn Mario" has finally lead someone to faithfully adapt the experience of playing a game to movie form and it SUCKS! Maybe we should just stop doing it.

Then on the subject of Rosalina's Story. If you know anything about Miyamoto, you'll know that he didn't like Rosalina's story in the original game. It was added behind his back, and only stayed in the game because they didn't have the time to remove it. Anyone with this knowledge would know that the chance of the story being authentically in the film was already gone when "Shigeru Miyamoto" appeared on the screen. Also, would you really want the people who made Secret Life of Pets to take a crack at adapting a heartfelt story like that to the silver screen?

Steam blows out of Shiggy's ears whenever he remembers people actually like it when Mario games have a story.

Movie adaptations of video games are not impossible to make good, but a big studio is not gonna do it. For some unknown reason people really like the Sonic movies, despite Sonic in those movies being one of the lamest characters put to screen, and the films being filled with hallmark-tier scenes that are as stock as stock gets. I guess it is true that people just want scenes of Sonic and Tails having dance-offs with Russian stereotypes instead of doing the things they do in the games. Sonic's movie outings have more in common with those 2/10 live action smurf movies. They're embarrassed that the Sonic Adventure games are so unabashedly cool and fun that it took them 3 whole movies to actually put a song from the games into the movie, then the microsecond after they play "Live and Learn" they cut to Gerald Robotnik spanking Ivo Robotnik. Because they can't imagine people actually caring about those games.

I went on a big ol rant there, but point is I'd rather have a movie understand what is fun about a video game and replicate that, than have a movie that pleases movie critics by being exactly what they'll understand and expect. I've studied film, and the more you study, the more you realise no artform is inherently less sloppy than another. If you want the wonder and mystique of Mario Galaxy, just play the game! If you're really upset that they flubbed the "chance" to adapt it, and you'll never get to see your favorite part of the game faithfully recreated as a movie: Think about your biases. Why is a movie the elevated form here? Imagine if someone said Ratatouille on the PS2 was the superior form of experiencing Remy's story? You would think they were an idiot. It goes both ways.

Super Mario Galaxy is a game. 

A Video Game.

You're allowed to be disappointed in Illumination, but really, you should be more proud of the people who made this game such a memorable experience for you.

The Big Catch & its Tacklebox have Lured me in

 I want this blog to be a pleasant, positive place where I can also be harshly critical of things. My last two blog posts have been very critical, so I feel like making something incredibly upbeat, and a little bit timely, too! After all, where's the contrast in only making negatively-slanted blogposts? I'm a fully rounded human. I'm going to talk about The Big Catch for a bit. I don't expect this to be a particularly long blog post, but that is also good contrast with the rest of these tall, tall, text towers.

"Tall towers, you say?"

I am lucky and blessed enough to have backed The Big Catch back in 2022. The game's graphical style, music, presentation, and hypothetical gameplay shown in the trailer sold me on it immediately. I had little reservation about backing it at the tier that got you a demo early. Then known as "The Toybox". Little else happened on my end of this bargain until the glorious summer of 2024 where said demo released... To literally everyone. This was a controversial move at the time, but really smart. Because otherwise right now I'd be talking about how fun it is to live in CuthbertLand and ride all the cool rides that you can't go on because you didn't back the game.

After all, I still got to play it.

Considering the developers are currently showing the game off at Pax East (AT TIME OF TYPING), this is the perfect time for YOU, the reader, to play the demo and if you enjoy it you won't have to wait a crazy amount of time to experience the full game. I love this god damn demo. You may also wonder why you should even bother with the demo if the game's coming out soon. With most demos, they'll just let you play about 5-10% of the game and cut you off before it gets really good. The Tacklebox demo has entirely unique levels and structures, and hell, you don't even play as the main game's protagonist. 

I can't believe the game actually looks like this. It makes me so damn happy. Just LOOK at it. It's like a magazine screenshot for an unreleased title.

Beneath sunny orange mornings and pale blue evenings, you'll be collecting a bunch of fish. 26 fish, to be exact. There's also almost 700 coins to find. But it's not collectables that makes something good. The game's gameplay is the only reason that 100%ing this demo was one of my favourite game experiences of 2024.

Obviously, from this point onwards, my writing is kind of like spoilers for the demo. I consider discovering the hostile and evil world of The Tacklebox to be one of its greatest assets. Considering it's entirely free to download. Why are you still reading this? Go download the thing already! Okay, I see. You've already played it, and didn't enjoy it as much as I did, or you want to know more about it before you spend your hard-earned time on something.

Okay, so the primary thing I really dig about this game is how brutal it is. I think it will surprise people considering they referred to the game as being "expressive", which it is, but not in the way people expect from a 3D Platformer. You hear "expressive" and your mind conjures up the image of Mario in Mario Odyssey crossing any wall he feels like by throwing and bouncing off of his cap. Which I do agree, is a rather fun style of play. I like it. 

The Big Catch does NOT play like that. It's expressive because you have a lot of movement options and methods of approach, but the game still really wants you to nail the platforming before you're allowed to pull any fancy tricks. You are given a lot of tools that give your little reptile/bird/rabbit/creature a lot of length in jumps, but few that give significant height. Most of your height is gained via the environment around you. Wallrunning/jumping, swinging, spinjump-groundpounding into angled slopes, etc.

Eventually, you will fall. When you lose minutes of progress in a single failed jump; Will you shut off the game or focus up for your next attempt?

That's the thing. The game's actually a game about freerunning and parkour more than traditional platforming. It aligns it closer to Mario 64 than Odyssey. But the actual tone of the game is something else. Straight-faced and mysterious. The incredibly weird world of the game is played completely straight. No tongue in cheek "Why are we looking for FISH in a DESERT?" type dialogue. You are here to earn your damn scales. 

It's quite refreshing to me, because I swear to god most of the indie 3d platforming revival have been a bunch of quippy jokers. I don't hate quippy jokers, because at the end of the day I am also a quippy joker, but just because A Hat In Time did it, doesn't mean everyone had to. Not to say the full game is gonna be entirely the world's most serious game ever, because I reckon it'll probably have more writing than this, but the currently established tone is very much up my alley.

The scale of this world is beautiful and intimidating. You're gonna have to climb those for fish, soon.

I mean geez, I spent 12 hours on my first 100% playthrough. I've played it through a few times since. A couple of all fish playthroughs. Tacklebox has eaten more time than many, many games I actually bought with real money. But, with the full game (seemingly) on its way later this year, I've been thinking about how similar to the demo the game is actually gonna be.

This might be complete speculation, but I feel like the Tacklebox's towers (some of them are really, really, hard) were designed to test the limits of what new players would find enjoyable. Each area tests something slightly different about the game, hailing to the roots of the demo as a backer exclusive tech demo thing. Not dissimilar to what we used to get at E3 back in the day.

I know for a fact they used the Tacklebox as a way to test out performance, and seemingly patched optimizations in to both it and what will become the main game simultaneously. I actually didn't notice this, but the game ran super badly at launch. Hell, it struggled on Steam Deck. Doesn't anymore. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not fuckin Digital Foundry. I don't care about framerates. I'm wondering what pieces of the demo's design are gonna end up in the final game.

One of the rare times the fish is found in water. I like how rarely this game is actually about fishing.

A lot of people complained about the game's high difficulty, but truth be told, most of the game's areas aren't actually that hard. The thing is, a lot of people are instinctively going to head directly towards the tallest structures they can see, and the issue is the game never lies about how large a thing is. Along the way, they likely pass by many smaller structures that'd actually give them an adequate place to practice. Is this the game's fault, or the player's fault.

I reckon the final game's gonna give you a map, and some character will likely recommend a good starting point after the tutorial. I'm hoping for a vague, Shadow of the Colossus-type map. The lack of fast travel (Something the full game will definitely have) makes the exploration of the Tacklebox have a similar feel. You want to explore a place again? You have to go there. I like that for the size the Tacklebox has, but I reckon the full game's scale will make that unwieldy and annoying...

For most people. I probably won't use it.

The island where a central enemy bombards you the whole time you're on it, so you have to move incredibly quickly or die is probably my favourite area. It's quite tucked away, so you might miss it!

I hope the final game still has an abundance of evil towers to climb. I'd be happy enough if the full game is exactly like tacklebox with 3x the number of locales. I hope the game keeps the mysterious vibe. See, I have a lot of hope. I'll probably be overjoyed to see any new part of this game. Look at Yo Noid 2.

Hell, just look at how good the damn game PLAYS. This game just lets you fucking MOVE. The backflip, wallrun and spinjump are like utter crack cocaine to the system. Surfing the sands between locales is swift and satisfying. You can kinda just book it in and out of anywhere as you please, which gives the game a lot of energy. Finding my own skips and ways around the landmarks of the map has been a joy.

It's also interesting that this game is so Zelda-y. It's a 3D platformer game with a lot of tonal hallmarks of the Zelda series. The most obvious is the Wind Waker/Spirit Tracks sounding sand surfing music. It's a very on-the-nose homage saved by the fact it's genuinely so pleasant in it's own right. I cannot lie; first time I played the demo and it kicked in, I felt goosebumps. It was the moment I knew for sure it was going to be a memorable experience, so I suppose it has some sentimental value already. I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Especially 2024 nostalgia.

No loading screens, just LOD models.

If you come away from this article, try the demo and hate it. Fair enough. Not all of my friends actually gelled with it that much. Some people found the game too loose for the precise platforming. Some people didn't like how punishing it felt to fall. Some found some of the music too repetitive for areas you spend a long time in. Some just didn't find the main character's appearance appealing. Interestingly, some of their critiques I agree with.

In the game's tutorial, there's a part where you have to nail a relatively precise wallrun twice in a row. You have to do this in order to get out of the starting area. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time falling down, failing, and I was getting annoyed. I think about the fact I could've shut the game off in anger at any moment. Writing off The Big Catch as a waste of my kickstarter money. But I didn't. I pushed through, nailed the wallruns (a valuable skill in the literal whole entire rest of the game), and went on to enjoy the rest of the game's world.

Yeah, I got a little annoyed when I fell, but I quickly realised that each time I got back up it took me less and less time. Because I didn't quit, falling being a knife's edge became part of the appeal. Risky jumps became fun jumps. Then, just today, as I finish writing this...

I have no more space to play. On and off, across the last 10 months, I returned, did a few 26 fish runs, but I refused to delete save files that were 100%ed. I want to go back, but it only feels right to leave the game here, with 30 whole hours of total playtime. That's my original save file on the left. I'll leave the game like this and wait patiently for the full thing to release.

I think it's about time somebody else played this damn game, anyway. You up?

The Zelda Series Needs to go Back to go Forward - A Far Less Adaptable Formula

The Legend of Zelda is my favourite video game series of all time. Not exactly a controversial or particularly "out there" choice, I know. But most of my favourite videogames are standalone games, specific entries from a series, or don't have enough titles to be considered a series. But what sort of Zelda fan am I? If you've been on the internet long enough, you'll know there are many different types of Zelda fans! You can't just put em all into one box.

This art is so cool. Putting this here so that this is the embed thumbnail. 

Some of us love the 2D games to death, some think the series died at Twilight Princess. Some really like the Zelda Timeline and think it's the coolest thing since sliced moblin. Good thing that a modern man like myself is easily able to compress a lot of opinions into one convenient image. Introducing: The Tier List! 

Yeah, I'm a "Majora's Mask" type fan. I'm a bit of a "Zelda Boomer" because I don't tend to like the remakes/remasters. Especially not MM3D & WWHD. But that's a topic for a different blog post. (They make the game worse and/or uglier!)

So, yes. I like the Zelda series both old and new. So what's the deal with "formulas" here? No game series really starts out with a formula. The first two Zelda games march to the beat of their own drum, but you explore an overworld, and get items that allow you to explore more of the world. Link to the Past ends up setting the first "Zelda Formula" in place, by having a more involved story, and a slightly more linear structure. Interestingly, Link's awakening makes the dungeon structure even more linear, and the story is the most involved story yet. Still, side activities in the open world gradually reveal themselves to the player the more progress has been made, similar to Link to the Past.

Then, the series goes 3D for the first time. The fifth* Zelda game! It continues to have a heavily involved story, going for a much grander and less cerebral tone than Link's Awakening, but opening up the dungeon order a little. At various points in the game, the next dungeon you do can be whichever you happen to stumble into, which feels suitably adventurous and dynamic. Not like Navi's gonna let you forget what the developer intended next dungeon is, though.

Some people call Navi hate forced, and to an extent, I can see what they mean, but is is annoying when she tells you about something you were already doing.

For the next 19 years, that's basically what A Zelda Game was like. Of course, each has its own individual permutations, but "What OoT and LttP Did" really stuck. Zelda games were a consistent mix of action, adventure, puzzles, and combat. One of the things that sticks out to me about the series is how it doesn't really excel at the stuff it does, but is more of a jack of all trades. You can find better action, better stories (usually), and better puzzles in other games. But the way the series manages to tie all these gameplay ideas together into one clear adventure is so effortless that it's easy to forget how difficult it is to design!

But that's why the Zelda series is most associated with "Adventure". That's the primary feeling and function for everything else. After the release of Skyward Sword, which, I'm going to be honest, barely feels like an adventure because the overworld is all corridor, seems like Nintendo wanted to reexamine what Zelda games were really doing. They'd not done anything seriously different in a while, and the Wii U still hadn't had its own real Zelda game. Time was running out.

Somebody! Anybody!! Goddess of Time, help us please! We need more time!

Long story short, after a delay from 2015 to 2016, and then another delay to 2017, we were blessed (or cursed!) with Breath of the Wild. The most popular Zelda game of all time. No items, micro-dungeons spread across the map, physics based gameplay systems, the entire world is open to you from the very start. Interestingly, they claimed the concept was a return to Zelda 1's gameplay structure, but I don't think that's even close to accurate. Zelda 1 actually stops you from going to certain places if you don't have the right items.

Breath of the Wild is a new formula entirely, don't let that little NES thing fool you. Chopping down trees? Not something that happened in Zelda 1. What even was that thing, anyway? When will someone leak it? 

Breath of the Wild's main tie back to previous Zelda games is its emphasis on adventure. That, again, is it's strongest point. Exploration and experimentation. Of course, it wasn't long until they added the Motorbike to the game. Probably one of the most fun things in the entire game. I love the motorbike. One of the things I liked most about the game was how you could combine its systems together to solve problems in bonkers ways. 

Wasn't long before a sequel was announced. One of the few times in the Zelda series where they actually create a direct sequel with the same art style. In BotW tradition, the game was delayed multiple times until 2023 where it finally released. It's a very polarizing game. It's designed around a very specific way of playing, my way of playing. So I adored my time with the game.

Seriously. Tears of the Kingdom is some of the most fun I've had with any video game. A twisted, science experiment adventure, allowing me to fuck around with every single element of the game's engine. Creating whatever I wanted, using as many zonai parts as I could. Fusing and combining the weirdest stuff possible. It was a dream come true. I could truly do anything I wanted. A sorta-structured-sorta-not-magical-techno-swordsman-adventure. I adored it.

Of course, my enjoyment of the game was entirely pure. By the way... Have you met my husband?

But of course, I have to look at the game outside of its vacuum. It was not released as a standalone title, it's a sequel to Breath of the Wild, but it doesn't care about the story of that game in the slightest. It seems entirely uninterested in what sequels normally offer, instead doing the fresh start type thing typical of other Zelda titles.

It's even further away from what the series is. It's batshit insane. It's respectable that it's one of the best functioning physics sandboxes ever coded. They leveraged the opportunity to use Breath of the Wild to create a truly unique experience. But they also didn't want to talk about Breath of the Wild at all. The game forgets its meant to be a sequel an awful lot. Almost as much as it forgets to be a Zelda game. A truly once in a lifetime game.

You see, that's the problem. Once.

I don't want another game like Tears of the Kingdom. I feel like we have stretched how sandboxy you can make an adventure like this before it all becomes meaningless. The only further step you can take is to allow the player to alter the game's code, and at that point the game is even more "as only as fun as you make it". If you want to play a game that's like that, Double Fine's "Hack 'N' Slash" exists. 

It's not very good. Interestingly, it's also a Zelda parody. Did they know?

Tears of the Kingdom has better dungeons than Breath of the Wild, but they're not exactly masterpieces. The dungeons of OoT, Wind Waker, Etc have generally been more compelling to me. The limits you have as a player create more interesting puzzles. You are too free to do whatever you want in TotK. You can skip all the dungeons in the game and go straight for the final boss. Combining ascend, a box, and recall gives you the ability to bypass most heights and ledges in the whole game.

The issues with a game with no limits and no intended order is that it's hard to craft a a good story around that. You have to make a story that truly bends to the player's will. Very hard to craft an epic tale that can meander like that. Nearly impossible. But Nintendo is not committed enough, and just uses the linear story structure anyway. TotK takes so many risks, and so few at the same time.

With all this, it's obvious that the next Zelda game wasn't going to be what we expected at all. Honestly, the fact the final Switch 1 Zelda wasn't TotK is still pretty wild to me.

Echoes of Wisdom released in 2024 to a polite applause. But the choices it decided to make are very interesting to me. It has pieces of heart, linear dungeon order, items in the dungeons. It's far from the best that the series has to offer, but it represents something important. They went back. Less freedom, more linearity. It's not perfect, though. You can use a combination of Water, Beds, and Guay to solve basically the entire game.

"Hey guys! It's me, Guay. Cuthbert's Favourite Zelda enemy. Only appeared in OoT & MM, TP (with a crusty disgusting design), and Skyward Sword (with a bad design) until a truly magical re-appearance in Echoes of Wisdom, where my amazing flight ability allowed Cuthbert to skip many of the game's trials, tribulations, and puzzles. Caw!"

There really appears to be an attempt to marry the old Zelda fundamentals with the new, Create YOUR solution gameplay. Was it successful? Kinda. I don't think it was a particularly well received game but I enjoyed it. It's just interesting to me that the first game they made after Tears of the Kingdom is a game that retreats back to old elements. If I had to guess, Nintendo attempted to design a game more open and free than TotK, but ran into the brickwall of that being impossible.

This is where the inevitable Switch 2 Zelda is so interesting to me. Of course I'm sad that it is inevitably going to cost 90USD, but Mario Kart fans have dug everyone else's grave and I don't wish to derail this post into pricing concerns. We could be getting a game far closer to OoT, or we could end up with Breath of the Wild 3. 

If it's the former, I think the series is saved. The game is going to sell well regardless of what they do, so they'll take the lesson of whatever they put out as "What they should do from now on". This also means that Breath of the Wild 3 could release and, even as a fan of the gameplay format, I will not be interested in anything remotely like that. I want a NEW artstyle. A NEW gameplay style. I know Nintendo's thing is meant to be innovation, but sometimes their "innovations" are really not super innovative.

Like, the worst part of Echoes of Wisdom are the Echoes themselves. They're not as engaging or as fun as Dampe's creations or activating the sword mode. They're also not as interesting as it's very hard to combine them, and you're usually best served by just doing what works. Unlike making crazy contraptions in TotK, it just isn't as dynamic. And, Unlike the OoT style of game, it doesn't make you use your brain.

But I don't just want them to make exactly what they made before. There is no more damaging adage to video games than "If it ain't broke... Don't fix it!" This is something that holds best for functional things like screwdrivers and cupboards. Not video games. There's a lot of value in games feeling different. If you don't like Tears of the Kingdom, it's likely because it's too similar to Breath of the Wild. Aonuma said that Breath of the Wild was the series standard going forward, like what Ocarina of Time was. 

In retrospect, the 25th Anniversary feels a bit like a goodbye.

Now, maybe I'm just unimaginative. But I feel able to imagine new games in the Ocarina of Time format. I can picture new items, new dungeon themes. I can picture where I would personally take a game afterwards from Skyward Sword's release. I can't imagine making something interesting in the Breath of the Wild format after Tears of the Kingdom. Like, what? Do you want a game about digging for dungeons underground with Minecraft-style digging? Is that how sandbox you want to go? Seems that Donkey Kong already stole that thunder. Nothing I can think of is as interesting to me as something more linear.

In a way, it's basically time for a new formula already. If they don't want to go back to OoT, that's fine. (It's not. I'll miss that type of game!) But we need a worthwhile replacement. Mario's here doing a great job innovating on what people loved about Mario 64. Never feels like any new Mario thing treads on the toes of something that came before it. I love 64 the most, but Sunshine and Odyssey are also superb. I don't think the Zelda team needs to fear losing the novel aspects of the series.

This game will probably be good. But will more freedom make a platformer more fun? Is maximum freedom actually fun?

If a game doesn't present any friction to a player; A faultless game that exists entirely as a toy to be messed with. What is the point of the game design part? I love making my own fun with a game, but I need some collaboration from the game's side, too! Imagine a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master who just let you do whatever you felt like, even to the logical extreme. Just lets you pass any gap, any crevasse, any combat encounter at your will. That's what the Zelda series could become. Does anyone actually want to play a game like that?

Or, are people going to enjoy a game that hands them puzzles they can't cheese, unlocking new items and ways to interact with enemies/the world across the whole playthrough. A story that progresses the way the developers intend instead of requiring you to get lucky with the order in which you locate story pieces. A game that encourages the player to enjoy the world they're playing in. To care about the characters along the way. Give people a truly unforgettable experience. Maybe even go harder on the combat. I don't know, I'm not Nintendo.

And for FUCKS sake, man. Don't have the characters ask "Demon King? Secret Stones?" 4 times in a row. 

demise? amber relics?

Hades II: A Pre-Release, Post-Purchase, Pre-Mortem. I Still Don't Like the Game.

Hades II, or Hades 2, as I will type it from now on; is the most disappointed I've been in a game for a while. That's a zinger of an opening line, I know. But it's true. It's definitely improved over the development time, don't get me wrong! It's improved a LOT. In fact, a number of complaints from my Early Access launch Steam Review have been fully addressed since. I can't stress this enough. In fact, I'm going to structure this entire post around the topics listed in my review from last year. Today, we're gonna talk about  about which parts of this review are still dead on, and which are wildly inaccurate.

5.3 hours was all I could stand at a certain point.

Is there still grinding? Yes. Plenty of it. Do I still hate it? Yes. Enough said.

They added a LOT of different currencies, and I was MAD!

As you can see, at launch you were only able to gather 1 type of material (seeds, minerals, etc) per run. This was excruciatingly annoying and I'm very glad you never had to deal with it. Equally, BOOM, BAYBEEE, I WAS RIGHT ON THE MONEY WITH THE SECOND HALF! They didn't change it until the first major update of 2025, but better late than never! Now all the materials appear on every run, and my Stockholm Syndrome from the previous glacial pace allows me to enjoy the modern day tortoise pace.

I was very proud of coining "Dust or Toilet Paper" at the time...

Dust or Toilet Paper fortunately doesn't exist anymore. They literally removed the thing I called "dust" from the door item pool, and the item formerly known as "Toilet Paper" has had a value increase, and doesn't seem to appear as much. Though, I think this ties into another aspect of the game's twisted progression system. I mention that tier 1 boons and centaur hearts are rare commodities, and when I play the game now, sometimes I don't get too many, but they're just not as rare.

But I don't actually think that's the game adjusting the way it handles rewards. I think the game slowly gives you better stuff the longer you've played on a file. In middle 2024, I watched a friend of mine, who we'll call Blake, play a LOT of Hades 2. Even back then, Blake seemed to get better door rewards than I was getting. He had about 15 extra hours over me. Nowadays, because I have much more time on my file, I feel like I get rewarded properly now. 

Do note this is not backed up by actual statistics but layman observation.

They also sped up the default dash startup, and character movement's in a pretty good spot. The game also has more aggressive weapons in the game than available at this point, and aspect upgrades which allow for better offensive play. Generally, the weapons in 2 are far more about ranged play, which was why the dash was weaker, and the cast is designed to hold rushdown enemies at bay.

I'd say the main caveat with designing the game this way is that careful ranged play isn't quite as gratifying as going all in. Because the player has access to so much range so consistently, enemies often have their own ranged moves, because they have to!

I often find the best way to clear a room is to spend a lot of time charging up your longest range attack, waiting for enemies to approach, dropping the cast to hold them in place, then going to the other side of the room and charging again. This is the fastest way to clear a room, but it also has the downside of being the one where you are likely to take the least amount of damage. Wait that's an upside. It's also the one that uses the resources the game gives you the most effectively. That's also an upside... Hmm... Omega moves are easiest to charge when you are as far away from enemies as possible.... Also an upside. 

You can't see it, but there are some projectile shooting guys off screen to the bottom left.

The downside is that the camera is more zoomed in than the first game, meaning you are often attacking enemies and being attacked by enemies that are offscreen. I cannot stress how bad of a choice it was to give the game with so many ranged attacks a SMALLER field of view! They clearly can tell it's suboptimal, because there's fights where they pull the camera back a bunch!

Is it too late to say "Full Spoilers for Hades 1 & (what's in) 2"? Because that's all I'll be spoiling today.

If you're having trouble seeing the difference, I have your back.

I hope Hades 2's HUD is a work in progress. It's so bulky and ugly in comparison!

It's a tad muddy due to the overlap, but look how much smaller Zag is than Mel on the screen. Yes, she's doing a standing up animation, and he's crouching a bit, but you can just see so much more of the game. Want that to be clearer?

FIXED Hades 1 for you, Supergiant. Hire me?

Here you go! On this one I zoomed the Hades 1 screenshot to match the viewport of 2, with the Hades 2 screenshot just SLIGHTLY faded in so you can see no foul play. Okay, yeah, the Hades 1 screenshot IS being taken during a boss fight. Let's have something more comparable in scale to Hades 2's boat. Like... another boat perhaps?

Hades 2 brings back GBA style screen crunch. A #y2k throwback we can all appreciate!

No matter how you slice it, it would be nice to have a wider view of the game about reading enemy tells and dodging projectiles from said enemies. The enemies all have exaggerated tells on purpose, this is so they're readable at any size. People comfortably played the first Hades portably on the original switch. Readability was clearly not an issue with the first game.

So, in short, I don't think the moment-to-moment gameplay is an improvement over the first, and changes are either sidegrades or downgrades, in my opinion. Back to the format!

This is something they've improved upon. Many of the game's boons have had changes to names and descriptions to make them clearer. I definitely feel more confident in what I'm picking, even when a new god shows up. I also wish to use this time to shoutout Hephaestus and the rework to make him more defense oriented. They managed to make a "Forge Metalworking" themed guy's upgrades feel substantially different from a "Fiery Hearth" themed lady's upgrades. That is worthy of praise! Speaking of them...

World 2 (Underworld, not surface) is still my favourite area in the game for the same reasons. Scylla and the Sirens is a superbly presented boss fight. I don't like all of the game's music anymore, though. Outside of the first world, I think the surface worlds have incredibly weak music. It's unfortunately too normal sounding but I know what they were thinking. The idea since Hades 1 was to give the Surface a very different and more traditional orchestral sound, compared to the bardic techno metal of the Underworld. This makes the 2 or 3 surface songs in the game hit incredibly hard in the context of Hades 1's ending.

This stark difference unfortunately stops working when very literally half of the game is on the surface. I'm not even gonna talk about how the surface being an area you can just go to now undercuts the first game's story... Yet.  None of it is actually bad music. It's not badly composed at all. It sounds great. Doesn't fit the game, nor do much for me personally. Am I a good enough music guy to articulate why I feel this way? I just used the phrase "good enough music guy". Do you really think I'm qualified to properly critique the Hades 2 OST? Let's consider this my biggest nitpick and move on.

I already mentioned I like the new characters. This is still true, basically. I don't really hate any of the new characters currently, and believe that most of the missteps come from the return of older characters. To put it frankly, I don't like the design direction they were taken in. Nor the general rendering on the portraits. Let's take Zeus as an example.

Taken on its own, the art at the bottom is wonderful. It shows an expert use of lighting, reflections, texturing, etc. It's all proficient. I like the top art so much more. It's far less busy, the pose is more dynamic, there are sharper lines, and quite frankly the personality conveyed by the first art is far more accurate to the type of guy Zeus is. Even though he's dealing with an all out war, he's still pretty peppy. The grumpy, aristocratic face of the sequel's art feels like a mismatch. Besides, the look of characters in game looks a hell of a lot more like the top art.

Some of the art added in during early access I really really liked. This one is one of them. I was watching Blake play the game at the time, and when we saw an assist door in the final world, we couldn't contain our excitement. I saw this art and was like "WOW! This is so cool!" What does it look like now?

It just isn't quite the same. There's a raw edge that's lost with the excessive lighting. Strong shapes hidden beneath the blur and the rim lighting. But I'll concede, the lighting around the torso on the final one looks great. I mainly wish they kept the coldness in the face. I loved how hollow and empty he looked. But okay, you definitely shouldn't mix art styles on the renders. One more.

Okay, I'll be real. I thought this one was finished when I first saw it. This is Echo! Contextually, this character is a wisp of some kind. Forever lamenting, the only things she's able to say are things that Melinoë has said to her. I think the way she twists the meanings of previous phrases to create responses is quite novel! She's an enjoyable character. I think this original artwork creates a really strong impression. It looks just the right amount sketchy to really sell Echo as a unique being, but without looking out of place amongst the fuller pieces of art.

I feel like I'm going crazy here. Does this look awful to anyone else? I know this is mean, and a cruel thing to say about a piece of artwork, but I'm pretty sure the person who drew this one also drew the work in progress. The subtle pink lighting to add a bit of volume has turned into a Barbie Blast, making part of the image hard to read. The general lack of colour contrast makes it harder to read at a small size, and hitting it with the ol "black and white" test paints it in an awful light.

"it's really fucked up man" - Blake

This was the positive section of the review, originally. How times change!

"Back to negativity!" Whew! Was starting to get worried.

This part's interesting. So, near the start of the game the game has a litany of annoying interruptions. Small things that exist to disrupt or outright end runs. In retrospect, these clearly exist as pieces of storytelling to demonstrate what our Heroine is up against. I'll call it a bad first impression, eh? Eris was especially frustrating, and her little interruptions are still in the game, for some reason. Hades 2 is clearly very concerned about having to actually write reactive story dialogue if the player gets to Chronos fast enough.

Yes, theoretically somebody good enough to do a hitless Tartarus/Chronos fight could beat them, but by that point they don't actually have to plan any dialogue around it. That's someone who's breaking the game's storyline. In general, the game is very determined that the player experiences stuff in a specific order. Even moreso than the first game. I think trying to insert a linear style of story progression into a game genre with random elements is a miss.

I think having random story events in a roguelike that doom your run that go away when you've played more is a lame fucking way to gatekeep your final boss from being seen too early and undermining your story. Unluckily for Hades 2, I beat the final boss pretty quickly, to the point where I got dialogue about Melinoë being unsure of her ability to win against Chronos. Which she fuckin shouldn't be! She's done it! A similar thing happened to me in the first game, where I managed to beat Hades so fast that the hub dialogue pool had to catch up, and I was still getting dialogue where the characters were acting like I hadn't succeeded yet.

But I suppose this is the sort of topic for the final section of the review.
 

Hades 2 is gonna need to pull some big tricks for 1.0 to nail the story.

For their 4 pre-Hades 2 titles, the story has been built around the gameplay. Potentially "Gamey" elements were always part of that game's world. The story is improved by the gameplay. A symbiotic relationship. In Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, a blunder where dialogue comes up that contradicts gameplay would be inexcusable. They keep it airtight 100% of the time.

But then Hades 1 isn't. However, I feel a tad merciful because it's their first try at a game this long, with this much dialogue. There's much more upkeep to deal with in a game with SO much dialogue and SO many characters and SO much player skill diversity. But it's the kind of thing you'd want expanded upon or fixed in a sequel. As of now? It's worse for it! I hope they do make dialogue and story more reactive to your choices.

Everything I said about the story back then, I still agree with. Melinoë's main personality trait is that she's Dutiful. When I was watching him play during a recent update, Blake mentioned that Nemesis would be a more interesting protagonist because she's more disorderly, she's a underdog compared to Mel, who's basically just doing what she's meant to be doing. I feel more compelled by every character outside of the main one, thus far.

Actually, might have to make an exception for Odysseus. All he's done the whole game is give me reports on shit I just saw. I thought he was hot at first, and yeah! He is. But alas, his actual story purpose currently seems to be a very handsome waste of time. 

yeah alright buddy how about me and you go "make some reports" if ya know what i mean

But no matter how I feel about it now, the narrative is the one that could change the most. Yes, currently it is the least interesting Supergiant game as a narrative to me. But these developers aren't stupid. Supergiant is a team full of greatly talented people; Even if I think they made a huge error making a sequel to Hades instead of something new. Despite my digressions, I have some trust in them!

The main part of the game's story missing at this point seems to be the endgame to the story, but there's a chance they pull some TRULY unbelievably cool stuff after you defeat Chronos/Typhon. They could turn this story around 180 degrees, completely re-contextualizing all the events leading up to now. 

Sticking point. How are they gonna let you keep replaying the game? It'd be cool if they had a definite, canon ending and a non-canon way to replay the runs if you found them fun. But that'd be lazy for Supergiant standards. They always make their mechanics tie into the story. A time loop, perhaps? You wrap around to the start of the game again? But with all your old unlocks? It'd be the same twist as the first game's THERE IS NO ESCAPE, where the game over text informs you the true nature of the world. Hades 2's game over says TIME CANNOT BE STOPPED. So if that's the case with this one? We might be in for a timeloop.

My friend Blake thinks it's going to be a similar flow to the first game's ending, saving one frozen character at a time, bringing them back to the Crossroads, and ending with saving Zagreus. Probably requiring you to defeat the final boss about 10 times, give-or-take, and ending with all the characters in the crossroads, and Chronos still mad about it. We both agree that if they went this direction it would be incredibly boring, but I cannot deny this is exactly how it is being set up as of now.

Allows you to replay the game, get more postgame conversations in with beloved characters, Chronos and Typhon can still be bosses, but nowhere near as much of a threat! With Mel's task now being to keep going around, defeating them to keep them weak. A bit like a less intelligent version of the first game's genius justification for postgame.

Speaking of THERE IS NO ESCAPE, I genuinely think one of my biggest issues with Hades 2 is how it kind of makes the first game's story worse in retrospect. Like, what do you fucking mean there was a way for Zagreus, hell, even Hades! To make long trips to the surface and nobody fucking told them. Their curse, binding them to the underworld made for some of the most emotional, heartwrenching parts of the first game's story, and now it's completely undercut because now there's a cure in a witch's cauldron that requires some flowers. 

It would be cool if the game's ending was evil, and locked the player out of playing the game again on their file. Personally, I'd be impressed and enthralled by an ending of such brash caliber. Because I genuinely DO NOT expect them to do it. Even as I write this down here. I think it's impossible. It would annoy too many people to be unable to play their game again. But when you kill time? When everyone is safe? They'd surely all be frozen in the crossroads! Perhaps it's something bittersweet that I'm not ready for.
 

The game that hands me dialogue like this? Do I really trust it to stick the landing? I suppose I did complain about Odysseus telling you things you'd already seen, but that was because I wanted him to do something more interesting! I don't want characters to actually spoil me!

It seems very unlikely. But I like to believe in Supergiant! It'd just be nice to have this out here as a bit of a time capsule.

In the end, all I want is Supergiant to make a new setting again. I loved their other settings. Hades 1 & 2 have my least favourite stories out of their games. I know that statistically their most played game of all time is Hades 1. I get the feeling a lot of people never went back to play their other games. This is why I have avoided talking too much about Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. If you have only played Hades 1 or Hades 2. Play Supergiant's other games. I cannot stress how important they are. Okay, Blake likes Hades 1's story more than some of their other ones. But the point is that I forced him to play all of Supergiant's games after he beat Hades and he loved them. You will probably love them, too!

This is the end of the article. But like all good games, you can keep going into the post-article, if you so wish. Sure, the writing isn't quite as good down here, and it's a lot more scattershot than tightly refined... But it's more content, right?

i just really, really hope they don't keep making metaprogression roguelikes based around different global mythologies. every time i see someone request it i feel confident they only played hades. why's hades 2 even called that. surely it should be called chronos? pull a "riven: the sequel to myst". it's not like they'd have trouble selling it. or anything at all for that matter! hades was such a huge success that them doing an immediate sequel is a bit of an innate dissapointment. i really wouldn't have minded if there was a 1 game gap between hades 1 and 2 because i feel like there would've been a nice break from the series and it would've been nice to see the characters again! As it stands, the original Hades is so damn long to actually complete that most people who are playing 2 don't have the "One For The Ages" achievement for completing the post game story. The people who have actually exhausted everything that can be seen in Hades 1 is pretty minuscule. I'm sure some people were still working on it (it takes a fucking LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME TO DO) before they dropped a sequel which naturally will take attention away from the postgame because it's a whole new game.

also this is petty as hell but does anyone else feel like melinoe's design is just not quite there? like it has just a few too many colours and shapes upon it to really feel cohesive in the same way that zagreus was. i have to ask because i'm into men and zagreus is like mega hot to me and i'm wondering if that's swaying my opinion. blake understands my dilemma. blake's a pseudonym for one of my friends and my favourite thing about it is that it's exceedingly obvious who it is provided that you know him. when he was playing hades 1 for the first time, i felt like that shrek 4 rumplestiltskin gif because he promised to play pyre next. is hades 2 going to have a moment as cinema as hades letting you past for free on your 10th victory? because that's probably my favourite moment in the game. i wonder if supergiant will ever make a short game again. a short game with an ending. for what it's worth, In The Blood is absolutely incredible, but the pyre credits theme Bound Together will forever make me weep. i literally can't keep myself together on a full listen. it's their least bought game, man! why? why must i live in a world where everyone's played hades but nobody played pyre!

i didn't want to make this a main point in the article because hades 2 gets really frequent patches. (good! they're bein true to their word!) but the chronos fight has forever had terrible visibility issues. it's a whole lot of gold and black upon gold and black. they did actually try to fix them, but that second arena being that huge ass clock is the most unhelpful thing i've ever seen for making it readable. it's so messy! the first game's final boss was genius because you were playing as red/black characters on a white snow background. at no point did i ever think "oh man i can't see what's going on!" because it was always clear. Phase 1 chronos can attack you from off screen sometimes which kinda feels like bullshit but i did enough camera complaining earlier. phase 2 also has that one attack where it's a few rings going inwards and it's unclear whether you should be on the rings or off because it's pasted over a clock background and possibly has other hourglasses and golden projectiles soaring over it. it's a gold ring, by the way. he also has an attack that 1 shots you if you're hit by it and you have to get to a circle in time. it's not usually that difficult but they recently changed the circle to red to make it easier to see but now it looks like you shouldn't go in there. Remember when you couldn't pause the fight? you used to be unable to pause the chronos fight. if you had a delivery or a family emergency of some kind you had to either let your baby crawl off the counter or forfeit the run. all for a mildly amusing joke. they've since kept the joke, but not the unpausing. good! i am shocked they ever thought that was a good idea. 

i hope the "post-article" joke carries my sentiments on the weird endless summer hades 1 has (and hades 2 will INEVITABLY have because the game feel allergic to a real formula mix-up). i have so many unorganized thoughts on both games that i really couldn't find the right place for. like, for instance, how annoying i find the keepsake level up to be. it takes SO long in both games! i could talk about how ugly and hard to read the arcana menu is, but the reason i didn't is because there's no way they're putting that shit in the final game. it looks terrible and makes choosing and upgrading cards hard to read. it was literally better back in the earlier beta, and it was bad there, too! i suppose it matches the ui in hades 2 which i'm eagerly awaiting a 2nd pass on as a whole. it's huge, chunky and made out of rounded corner squares. it's the most boring hud in a supergiant game! oh and how much i hate the chaos redesign in hades 2. it's so lame. you know what makes me think of chaos? expensive fitted suits. good one guys. where is my unknowable flesh pile? he's too knowable now.

i was thinking recently about what i'd want a hades 2 to be, and i came to the conclusion that i'd honestly want it to be a completely different genre to the first game. imagine that! it continues the story, but isn't just the same type of game as the first game. a bunch of this game's bosses would hit a lot harder in a game structure where you only fight them once a playthrough. I feel like the first game had better ideas for bosses that feel right fighting them over and over again. They're eventful but not overdramatic. They're trying to bring out a huge feeling of awe with Typhon, but i know that eventually i'm just gonna be back to back loop-killing that motherfucker and that really takes a lot out of the moment. the cerberus fight in the underworld feels stupid after a bit because you aren't having to "put him down" or something that might make the fight actually important, but basically just clearing fleas off of him. this is why scylla works so well for this game! she and her sirens are eventful and fun, and it feels like they'd have good reason to return and fight you again. does make me wonder if hecate is some sort of twist villain... why is she going out of her way to disrupt mel on every run? she gives her reasonings but they feel mega contrived for the roguelike format. like yeah no shit i can beat your test at this point! this is the type of boss that works really well in games with linear progression!

with all this said. i wish supergiant the best. i also wish them smooth development so that they can complete hades 2 and then make a game for me again. like, a 4-15 hour game? that'd be the dream! i don't want them to feel pressured to make longer and longer games forever. i just want them to try new things, take some risks... and consider using the scribbly art style from the beta portraits! i hope people dont hate me for this article