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Princess Peach: Showtime!

Princess Peach: Showtime! is an action-adventure game developed by Good-Feel for the Nintendo Switch. In this game, Peach embarks on a series of stage plays and performances to rescue the Sparkle Theater from its captors with the assistance of the theater’s guardian, Stella. The story unfolds as Peach battles Grape, a wicked sorceress, and her minions, the Sour Bunch, who have taken over the theater. Along the way, Peach gains the power of Sparkle, allowing her to transform into various costume-like forms, each with its own unique gameplay style. These forms include Swordfighter Peach, Detective Peach, Patissiere Peach, and Kung Fu Peach.

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a 2024 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix. It serves as a sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and is the second installment in a planned trilogy of games that remake the iconic 1997 PlayStation classic, Final Fantasy VII.

The game’s storyline picks up immediately after the events of Remake, following the party’s escape from the dystopian metropolis of Midgar. Players primarily control Cloud Strife, a former Shinra soldier who joins the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. Their mission is to prevent the megacorporation Shinra from exploiting the planet’s life essence, known as the Lifestream, as an energy source. Along the way, they must also confront Sephiroth, the legendary SOLDIER who seeks to unite with the Planet for greater power.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth features real-time exploration, combat, and character development. The game expands upon the original while reimagining key elements, offering players an engaging experience as they journey across the Planet to thwart Shinra’s plans and face off against Sephiroth.

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Tekken 8

Tekken 8 continues the tragic saga of the Mishima bloodline, and its world-shaking father-and-son grudge matches. After defeating his father, Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya continues his conquest for global domination, using the forces of G Corporation to wage war on the world. The game’s story mode, titled “The Dark Awakens,” takes place six months after the events of its predecessor and focuses on the final confrontation between protagonist Jin Kazama and his father, Kazuya Mishima. Meanwhile, an additional story mode delves into the ancient history of the Mishima Clan and the resurrection of Heihachi Mishima himself.

The post Tekken 8 first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

The Good:

• The sense of atmosphere and horror is masterful
• Really pushes the edge of graphics capabilities
• Clever callbacks to other Remedy games

The Bad:

• The thought space is a clever idea that’s not as good in execution

The Ugly:

• Someone spilled a couple of drops of wokeness into this lake

Alan Wake II

Alan Wake II is a surreal horror story about a malevolent Dark Presence, powerful enough to use fiction to reshape reality but dependent on the creativity of a human author to provide the new narrative. The character Alan Wake is an author caught up in the Dark Presence’s ploy to enter the real world and remake it physically.

In the original game, the Dark Presence trapped Alan’s wife in the “Dark Place” (Think the Upside Down from Stranger Things) to draw him in, then used her as leverage to make him write (sorry if this is a spoiler, but you should play the first Alan Wake the first game before reading this if you don’t like it). Alan’s power to rewrite his story was limited to the rules of the horror genre, which is not known for its happy endings. In a last act of desperation, Alan defeated the Dark Presence by writing an ending that set his wife free but left him trapped in the Dark Place.

Fast forward thirteen years (the same number of real-world years between the release of Alan Wake and Alan Wake II), and Bright Falls once again finds itself host to supernatural events that signal a return of the Dark Presence.

Alan Wake II introduces a new protagonist, Saga Anderson, a young black female FBI agent. She is partnered with agent Alex Casey, the detective whose life became inextricably intertwined with Alan’s fiction during the first game’s events.

For the first part of the game, players play as Saga, though at a certain point, Alan Wake re-enters the story and becomes a playable character as well. Players will then switch back and forth between the two, eventually allowing them to switch between them at will, playing through each one’s unique but interwoven story.

Alan Wake II’s Story

The central narrative of Alan Wake II is a complex, self-referential tale designed to defy the player’s expectations. In one of the narrative’s more meta components, within the story, the story’s story itself is discussed and dissected.  Alan Wake is both a character and the author of his own story.

He has the ability to alter the narrative to change outcomes but is otherwise constrained by the clichés and tropes of the horror genre, for if he deviates too far, the changes that he makes will not hold.

Confronting Enemies in Alan Wake II

While set up as a third-person shooter and classified as survival horror, Alan Wake II tries its best not to conform to any one genre of game.  Combat is only one part of the gameplay.  A good portion of the game is also comprised of investigative work, a variety of puzzle-solving, and interactive cinematic cutscenes.

Most of the enemies are ghosts or the feral “Taken” (ordinary people whom the Dark Presence has corrupted). They are shielded by an aura of darkness, making them invulnerable to conventional weapons.

Players must utilize light sources such as a magical flashlight (which uses consumable batteries), flashbang grenades, or road flares to dispel the darkness. Weaker enemies are outright destroyed by the light, while others need to be killed by physical weapons after the shield is gone.

To do this, players will have access to handguns and other firearms that can be acquired along the way, but because this is a survival horror game, players will be constantly on the verge of running out of needed items.

There simply are not enough munitions in the game to defeat all of the enemies with direct confrontation. Players will have to rely on stealth or occasionally just run for their lives to get to safe spots where the light is too bright for the darkness to enter.

Alan Wake’s Puzzles

As mentioned earlier, Remedy really likes to use the video game medium to present an experience that wouldn’t work as well anywhere else. Although there are some straightforward solve-the-clue-for-the-password-type puzzles, the developers also like to use gameplay loops and optical illusions to keep the player mentally off balance. For example, one area is mostly flat and open, with some free-standing walls to walk around. Players have to weave their way around the walls in a particular order or risk passing the same identical space repeatedly for infinity.

The Mind Place and Writers Room

Both Saga and Alan have special rooms to which they can retreat during the game, and while they both serve the game mechanics as surrogate menu systems, each also offers their own unique gameplay and narrative opportunities.

Character Progression

Although it’s a very minor component, Alan Wake II provides opportunities for character progression. However, rather than being earned through experience or completing missions, improvements in capabilities and weapons come through discovering hidden objects or symbols within the levels. Players who take the time to search every nook and cranny will be rewarded with a slightly more manageable horror experience.

These elusive upgrades are perhaps the only element that lends any replayability to Alan Wake II, as once you’ve experienced the story, there’s not much else to go back for.

Case Board

Investigations on the case board use classic police drama visuals like push pins and yarn to connect Polaroid photos, bad photocopies of documents, and handwritten notes. Players need to arrange these elements in the proper order to complete each case. This can sometimes be frustrating because the placement isn’t always obvious or intuitive.

More often than not, investigations devolve into randomly trying to stick the evidence to the board to find the correct spot. In some instances, casework is an entirely optional part of the experience; if the player can figure out what to do next simply by picking up clues from the dialogue, then they never need put pin to cork.

However, there are times in which progression is completely dependent upon assembling the case on the board.

Controlling Alan Wake

This game uses typical twin-stick third-person shooter controls for combat and getting around. There aren’t any awkward gamepad mappings, and for the most part, both the movement and aiming controls are simple and intuitive.

Regarding other activities, the controls are a little less so.  Moving the cursor around area maps and case boards with a control stick feels clumsy and unrefined. These interfaces were obviously designed with keyboard and mouse controls in mind and not reimagined for a game controller experience.

Graphics

Alan Wake II is a beautiful game. Each environment is unique, fully detailed, and carefully thought out. Everything from tree branches to mud puddles looks so realistic that it’s easy to forget they’re works of art rather than real organic things. Character models are similarly convincing, with well-articulated motion capture that extends all the way down to facial expressions and lip movement.

Shadows play a big part, not just in the visual style but also in its narrative. The interplay of shadows and light is almost breathtakingly dramatic, thanks to ray-tracing and volumetric lighting effects.

However, Remedy is known for marrying live-action recordings with its game graphics. Many of this game’s cutscenes feature the live actors the in-game models were based on, and this jarring back and forth serves to throw the fidelity gap between the computer-rendered and real people into sharp relief.

While real actors certainly do a much better job conveying emotion than their digital avatars, the frequent switches between the two are jarring and immersion-breaking.

Sound

Alan Wake II is a masterclass in sound design. This game features incredibly effective use of multi-channel surround both for establishing atmosphere and for spatial awareness.

Each setting has its own unique soundscape, whether it’s wind whistling through trees, gentle rain hitting concrete at night, or the otherworldly whispers of the dead somewhere in the periphery.

The effects themselves are well-chosen and perfectly implemented. Something as simple as the sound of the water being disturbed somewhere just over your left shoulder as you carefully tiptoe through a flooded basement will likely make the hairs stand up on the back of your head.

Alan Wake II’s original score is nothing short of a phenomenon.  Far from a simple backdrop for various sequences, the music is woven into the narrative.  Each song’s lyrics tell a part of the story, sometimes even serving as clues or instructions for what to do next.

The game designers use a broad spectrum of styles, from etheric trance with crystalline female vocals to pop ballads with compelling hooks and even Swedish metal with melodic vocals and absolutely blazing guitar solos.

As an aside, the metal parts are performed by Poets of the Fall as their in-game altar ego band, Old Gods of Asgard.

Presentation

The horror part of this survival horror game is predominantly psychological. While there are enough elements of gore to justify the Mature rating, the game relies more on atmosphere and disorientation to make your skin crawl.

A pervasive sense of dread and unease is reinforced with dark visuals and creepy sounds throughout. The jump scares are wickedly well-timed to take advantage of quiet disarmed moments, and even the player character will sometimes express shock at them.

Performance

This game offered a relatively polished experience in its initial release build. There were very few obvious bugs or glitches. We only encountered one game-breaking bug during one of the last scenes that required us to reload the game to proceed.

Final Thoughts

Our playthrough clocked in at just over fifteen hours, but it was so densely packed and thought-provoking that it felt like a much longer experience.

This game absolutely deserves the awards it received for best narrative and art direction. Between the foreboding atmosphere, eerie content, and jump scares, the game did more than enough to earn its “horror” label, but the action sequences were also compelling and fun.

Without giving out spoilers, the “Summoning” sequence was one of the coolest things we’ve played in years. The convoluted story eventually rewards you for your time and attention and almost perfectly pulls off the “nothing is what it seems” motif. Despite its flaws, this is one of 2023’s best games.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Barring any deeper investigation into development and casting than what you see below, Alan Wake II rates delightfully low in wokeness. While our playthrough did not necessarily encompass 100% of the optional content, the authors were obviously more concerned with writing a compelling story than advancing a political or social agenda. Every woke element observed feels perfunctory rather than passionate.

On the one hand, Saga is an ever-present reminder that someone caved to pressure to forcibly “diversify” the cast, but on the other hand, it ceases to be distracting very quickly and does not hinder the story or gameplay.

DEI

• Okay, so let’s talk about the big ol’ elephant in the room, Saga Anderson, the black female FBI agent who is the player character for half of the game. Make all the arguments that you want that this was some kind of random creative choice, but we’ve got screenshots that say otherwise. At some point after creating and initially casting the character of Saga Anderson, the developers decided to (or were forced to) race-swap her from a white woman to a black woman to check a box. She’s supposedly a descendant of some of the all-white cast of the original game. We get it, Remedy. There were quotas to be met, and screechers would take away your birthday presents if you dared release a game with an all-white cast in 2023.  While it’s obvious, due to her supposed heredity alone (but mostly because we actually know who the original actress was and have a picture of her in-character with a name label), this role was originally written for a white woman, the writers have retconned a hinted relationship between her and the elusive character Mr. Door to possibly explain her skin color.

Anti-White Racism

• During one of the last sequences in the game, as Saga is struggling against her own inner thoughts, she refers to Alan Wake writing her into the story as “another white asshole deciding what I get to do; how I get to do it.” A single little sliver of anti-white racism is apparently supposed to lend to Saga’s authenticity as a “real” black woman in 2023. Reverse the races in that comment, and there’s no way Epic Games would have dared publish this game.

Misandry/Toxic Feminism

• When we’re first introduced to the character of Saga Anderson, she’s riding in a car with Alex Casey on the way to Bright Falls to investigate a ritual murder. Just before they arrive, Alex places her in charge of the case.  Five minutes later, at the crime scene, the sheriff’s deputy tasked with escorting them assumes that Alex Casey, the male senior agent, is in charge of the investigation and asks him how he would like to proceed.  Saga takes the opportunity to shame him for the assumption, and we are then treated to an awkward moment where the deputy begins stammering excuses and apologies. How dare he assume she was not in charge of the investigation that she literally was not in charge of six minutes ago?

Gay Agenda

• The female agent from the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) finds an opportunity to casually mention, with all the subtlety of a “You know how I know you’re gay?” joke, that she has an ex-wife. It’s completely irrelevant to everything, but box ticked, I guess?

The post Alan Wake II first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

The Good:

• Visuals and audio are faithful to the original
• New features add to the experience without taking anything away

The Bad:

• Minor performance issues

The Ugly:

• Nothing

Super Mario RPG

Arte Piazza, the developers responsible for the Dragon Quest remakes, helmed this remake of the 1996 classic turn-based JRPG first developed by Square-Enix for Nintendo and released in the U.S. as “Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars.”

Mario players once again set out to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser only to discover an even meaner foe, Smithy, has taken over Bowser’s castle and is using it as the beachhead for an interdimensional invasion.  One of Smithy’s lieutenants shattered the star road into seven individual stars, and without it in the sky, peoples’ wishes can no longer come true. 

To save the day, Mario must team up with both new and familiar characters, including a runaway Princess Peach and even his now down-on-his-luck archnemesis, Bowser, to reunite the seven stars and expel Smithy from this dimension.

Players control Mario as he treks across several continents, searching for the seven star fragments, which have all inconveniently fallen into dangerous places and attracted the attention of boss-level enemies. 

Play On, Player – Gameplay

As a turn-based RPG, the action is menu-driven rather than driven by action, and the game still manages to reward player reflexes with the “Timed Hits” system. Hitting the “A” button at the right moment during an attack will greatly increase the damage done, and likewise, figuring out the right moment when being attacked will greatly reduce the damage taken. It’s a simple mechanic, but it’s extremely effective at keeping the player engaged in the game’s multitudinous battles. 

A “Mario” game wouldn’t be a “Mario” game without its platform elements. However, the traditional ¾ isometric view and Mario’s overly twitchy motion make it difficult to judge jumps, meaning even the most seasoned players will find frustration with what would be simple platforming in any other Mario title. This is one of many aspects where, for better or worse, the remake remains fully faithful to the original. 

The minigames in Super Mario RPG are, unsurprisingly, reminiscent of some of the minigames from other Square RPG contemporaries, such as Final Fantasy VI (1994). To give players a chance at better finish times, higher scores, and bigger rewards, most, if not all, of the minigames can be repeated as needed. 

ArtePiazza did a fantastic job preserving the look of all of the minigames, but of particular note is the minecart minigame, which still resembles the Super NES “Mode 7” rotation and scaling effect.  If you know, you know.

In addition to the copious mini-games, Super Mario RPG is sprinkled with puzzles that must be solved for game progression and obtaining special items. Players who aren’t dirty rotten lowlife pond scum cheaters who would never dream of Googling the solutions might want to have a pad and pen handy to help with some of the puzzles because, in true old-school fashion, the game doesn’t just “remember” clues for you when trying to solve a multi-part puzzle. Forget or neglect to write it down, and it’s back to the beginning to re-examine the clues.

For the Nerds In The Hizzy – Graphics

When Super Mario RPG (1996) came along, Nintendo and Square used the best technologies available to them at the time. The game cartridge was built with the SA-1 enhancement chip, which is like an additional CPU that triples the clock speed of the SNES, among other things.  

The graphics were pre-rendered on a high-end workstation and digitized as sprites, giving everything a smooth, rounded 3D appearance. Character movement was super smooth and almost artificially quick, perhaps in an attempt to maximize the additional processing speed of the SA-1.  

For this remake, the spirit of that visual style was carefully preserved. The character models all have plenty of rounded geometry, and although they’re now being rendered in real-time, they still move in the slightly awkward, slightly too fast way that gave the original game such a distinct feel.  

I’m Forever Yours, Faithfully – Sound

Composed by Yoko Shimomura, the iconic music of Super Mario RPG (1996) was just as top-notch as every other aspect of the game’s design. was.  Shimomura has returned for Super Maro RPG (2023), and every single composition has been remade, reorchestrated, and respected to such a degree that, if you were a fan of the original, you might be tempted, at times, to think this is what it sounded like all along.  Even better, the game menu has a setting to switch back to the original SNES soundtrack at any point.

What Did They Mess With?

A testament to the effectiveness of ArtePiazza’s minimalist approach is that it’s easy to forget that Super Mario RPG is a remake at all. That being said, changes have been made.  

In the original, many of the more important story beats were conveyed by various characters performing comical pantomimes of previous events, which were really just moving the same character sprites around the screen. While the remake preserves most of these perfectly, and they’re just as funny as they ever were, certain significant events, such as Mallow’s Introduction and chasing Croco the Thief around Mushroom Town, have now been transformed into fully animated cutscenes.

In addition to sprucing up the graphics and sound, there are several subtle quality-of-life improvements. Players can now travel to any previously visited location directly from the map screen rather than having to trek all the way back to an exit from the area like in the 1996 version. This is an enormous time saver. 

As the story progresses, your party will grow; however, only three party members can actively participate in battle at one time. When your party size grows beyond three, the additional members will be held in reserve. In the original game, reserve characters could only be swapped outside of battle. In this remake, however, reserve characters can now be swapped into your active party right in the middle of battle rather than just between fights. This makes it much easier to recover from a mistake if you are fighting something with a large type advantage and forgot to choose the right active party beforehand. 

Another minor addition is a “Breezy” (easy) mode, although the default difficulty is not very punishing to begin with.

One of the best improvements in Super Mario RPG is the new post-game content that was added to give the game some replayability. In this version, after the credits roll, you’ll be invited to go back and play through a new cutscene where, now that you’ve restored the Star Road, several bosses have had their wishes come true, making them considerably more challenging and offer even greater rewards for defeating them. 

Even the secret Final Fantasy boss has a new form.  Beware. These bonus boss fights are very hard. You will not be able to brute force your way past them. Each can only be defeated by a boss-specific strategy that takes time to untangle. Even if you are a filthy cat-turd-eating cheater and look up the solutions, you’re still in for a challenge.

You Had One Job

Although it is very rare, the game suffers from occasional slowdown and frame skipping. This happened only two times during our playthrough and lasted for a combined total of only five or so seconds, but it was noticeable. Given the simple geometry of the characters and environments, it’s difficult to understand how any part of a game like this would still be unoptimized at release. 

Final Thoughts

This remake brings an RPG classic to a whole new generation who may have missed out on it. While it no longer stands out as a state-of-the-art experience, the original design was one of the most highly polished JRPGs of all time, and this light-touch remake allows that to shine through unhindered by its modern reinterpretation. Super Mario RPG is one of the most enjoyable JRPG games ever made and should not be missed.

WOKE ELEMENTS

There are no woke elements in Super Mario RPG.  

• Although it’s not the ultimate objective, Mario does, in fact, rescue Princess Peach. Princess Peach joins the player’s party as a usable character but isn’t portrayed as anything other than feminine and supportive of Mario. Her powerful healing abilities, like “Group Hug,” are far more useful than her offensive capabilities.

• There’s a comedic scene where two male characters try to kiss Princess Peach, but she sees it coming and jumps out of the way, so they miss and end up kissing Mario on the cheeks instead, but this is done for comedic effect; they’re revolted when they discover what happened. If the writers wanted this to be woke, they would have implied that one or both of them found it unexpectedly enjoyable.  

• The main antagonist, Smithy, is a living weapon, and all of his henchmen are living weapons. The goal of his conquest is to turn everything into weapons. If you squint and cock your head, this might look like an anti-military or anti-civil-defense agitprop, but Mario and the entire crew use weapons, including Geno, whose weapons are literally guns. Furthermore, Smithy is just a cranky, angry guy who doesn’t really resemble any real-world person or ideology.

The post Super Mario RPG first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Robocop: Rogue City

In 2019, Teyon brought us Terminator: Resistance, which set the new standard for what a movie-licensed game could achieve. With Robocop: Rogue City – a love letter to the first two Robocop films’ dystopian vision of future Detroit, they’ve done it once again.  

When the developers transformed the world of the film into a virtual space for players to explore, no detail, no matter how small, was missed. The story picks up where Robocop 2 left off. Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has successfully shed the blame for the failed “Robocop 2” cyborg going rogue, and they’re just as determined as ever to replace the decrepit Old Detroit with the corporate-run Delta City.  

They also still have an outsized influence on the Detroit Police Department and control of Robocop himself.  In the opening mission, a local gang attempts to get the attention of a new bad guy, creatively called “The New Guy,” by hijacking a local TV station and taking hostages. 

At the culmination of the hostage rescue, Robocop experiences a memory that causes him to hesitate, requiring his partner, Detective Anne Lewis, to step in.  As a result of this “defect,” Robocop is fitted with a new chip that will monitor and try to prevent these “glitches” from happening. If they can’t be stopped, OCP has promised to shut him down for good.

In this first-person shooter, players take on the role of the titular cyborg, Robocop, as he investigates this new threat to Detroit and tries to understand the nature of the “glitches” that are causing him to lose control. To do this, players will have to shoot and punch the hell out of a lot of bad guys and leave a gory mess of broken bodies in their wake. While combat makes up the bulk of the gameplay, players will also need to participate in other police work, such as investigating crime scenes, issuing citations, and even rescuing a cat. 

Nostalgia Factor 9

Several locations from the films have been lovingly transformed from a series of disconnected sets into three-dimensional spaces for players to navigate. For example, the police station lobby, locker rooms, lockup, gun range, and garage all have real locality now.  

For fans of the films, it’s like a non-stop easter egg hunt.  Robocop works in some of his most popular lines from the films, but they’re incorporated, so naturally, it doesn’t come across as hamfisted. If you’re familiar with Robocop 2 (1990), it’s hard not to snicker as you hear him quote cheesy aphorisms when he issues citations.  Everything’s here, from the 1986 Ford Taurus police cars to the “really $h!tty gas mileage” SUX 5000, from Robcop’s Auto 9 pistol to the Cobra Assault Cannon.  Ever fantasized about going up against an ED-209? Now’schance.    

Seeing Is Believing

Nearly every conceivable step was taken to recreate the atmosphere of the films. The set lighting and the lens filters are enough by themselves to convince you you’re in that world, but the developers went all out. 

For example, when the player switches to Robocop’s scanning mode, they’re treated to a near-perfect re-creation of the first-person sequences from the films, down to the artificial scanlines which slightly darken the screen and the crosshair boxes that form around targets as the computer recognizes them.  Even the streets of Old Detroit are filled with rain-glistening concrete and puddles that reflect the street lights. They’re strewn with litter and garbage that has convincingly collected in the corners and around fences.

In action, the re-creation is just as stunning. When you fire the Auto 9, its muzzle flash flares out in an X-shape. The impact of bullets hitting a soft target is just as wildly exaggerated as the overdone squibs from the films, as is the blood spray and gore that erupts as three-burst rounds chew through a body.

Standing Your Ground – Gameplay

Robocop is a bullet sponge. He doesn’t crouch, he doesn’t have a dodge mechanic (well, not really),  And, while not invincible, he can take quite a lot of punishment before going down. This encourages players to stand their ground and rely on targeting and quickly taking out threats rather than zipping from cover to cover to survive an encounter. As a result, battles feel slower-paced and more contemplative than many other FPS games. 

The controls felt tight and responsive. For the most part, the aim assist worked well and was nearly transparent to the experience. However, it does have the tendency to work against the player at times. This is most evident in situations where an enemy is standing next to something explosive. If you try to move the reticle over the explosive, you’ll feel the aim assist fighting with you to keep your weapon pointed at the enemy.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Just as much care was put into the audible as the visible when creating this experience. Every little whirr and whine of a servo motor has been re-created, along with the unique sounds of each weapon being fired and the impact of its bullets. Perhaps the most delightful sound is the simple “thuck” of Robocop’s footsteps. 

Musically, the soundtrack is brilliant. Most of it is original and fits the action beautifully. While they did license the original theme, they showed restraint when using it, which made it all the more impactful. It’s only heard in a subdued piano rendition that plays over the title screen and in full during a climactic battle at the end. This was masterfully done. 

The game takes full advantage of multi-channel surround sound to create an atmosphere with constant low-level noise and effects. Character voices properly pan around according to the camera orientation.

Progress Not Perfection

Each action, whether it’s blasting a gang member, finding bits of contraband, or issuing a ticket for parking in front of a hydrant, earns players experience points, which can be spent on improving various attributes like armor or engineering. As these attributes are leveled up, there are also special abilities granted, such as being able to open a safe without finding the combination or revealing the locations of hidden items on the map. This fairly basic mode of progression gives the player a little control over things without turning them into chores.  

Players will also have the ability to upgrade the Auto 9 pistol using “motherboards” salvaged from bosses and found in R&D labs. It’s not just about increasing damage or reload speed either – you can also get full automatic fire and armor piercing, and for no reason other than the fun of it, you can increase the amount of gore shown when you blow away a bad guy.

The balance of progression is so well done it’s hard to overstate. With many games, it’s easy to peak early and take all of the challenge out of the game or peak late and give you awesome abilities you can only use once or twice before the end. Here, it felt like you were able to make Robocop into an unstoppable juggernaut at just the right point that you were able to maximally enjoy it.

Glitching Isn’t Just For Robocop

It’s, perhaps, ironic that Robocop glitching is part of the story’s main plot because this game has its share of trouble with stability. The PS5 version has nearly constant visual artifacts and other issues. The PC version, which this review is primarily based on, fares a little better in that these issues are a bit more sparse. The way telephone cords are rendered is so hilariously bad it’s hard to tell if the rendering is bugged or the developers just ran out of enthusiasm. Most of these problems are benign and only occasionally distract from the action, but there is one progression-breaking bug where an NPC gets stuck in a floor if you approach the objectives in the wrong order. Our playthrough required reloading an earlier save that lost about an hour of progress. 

Story: How It Started

It’s important to put the source material in perspective to understand what Teyon has done here. So let’s start with Robocop (1987), the film. Robocop’s veneer of ultra-violent action was so flashy that it nearly drowned out the themes that were really at its heart.  For all of its gore, it was also a cynical admonition of corporate greed, capitalist excesses, and the dangers of corporate lobbying, along with an existential examination of what it is to be human. 

Released during the Reagan years, when the US had emerged from an economic slump very reminiscent of the one we’re experiencing here in the early 2020s, Robocop’s writers were obviously trying to be critical of American Exceptionalism by taking some of the liberal bugbears of the day and extrapolating them to the level of ridiculousness. Good examples of these are the film’s fake commercials for cars with intentionally bad fuel economy and sunblock that will definitely give you cancer with repeated use but is the only thing to protect you against the sun now that the ozone layer is gone. 

These criticisms were so unrealistic that they became comical and ironically resonated with many of the people the writers were trying to lampoon. Instead of a poignant morality tale, its anti-capitalist message became a parody enjoyed by capitalists the world round. As for the existential question of whether Robocop is still human, the emphasis on ultra-violent action sequences left only enough screen time to examine it in the shallowest of terms.

Story: How It’s Going

Teyon has succeeded at something very difficult with Robocop: Rogue City in that they have managed to faithfully re-create the film experience while still telling an original story that fits in perfectly with the themes of the first two films. The surface story is still that of a dystopian world of greedy men wielding the power of their wealth and corporations to play God. The cynical parodies of capitalist excesses have barely changed. This is to say that the writers stuck with the elements from the films without trying to legitimize them as serious criticism. There’s even a mission about Sunblock 5000, which is all the more hilarious, considering we all know the panic about losing the ozone layer was silly. 

Where the story really shines is in the additional time the writers were able to devote to the existential question that Robocop faces about whether he is still Alex Murphy and whether he is still human. Rather than just telling you the answer, you’ll be asked to discover it for yourself – your responses will determine the outcome.

While the game offers you choices that have some impact on which epilogue scenes you’ll see, there are no branching paths or major divergences that would make a compelling case to keep playing after the credits roll for the first time. A low replayability score is not necessarily a negative in this case, as the game gives you ample opportunity to see and do everything in a single play-through.

Final Thoughts

Robocop: Rogue City is an excellent example of what time and passion can do for a video game. It’s a well-known stigma in the industry that movie-licensed games are generally crap, but this game defies that trend in all of the best ways. With tight shooter controls, a good variety of gameplay types, and a quality story that respects the source material and brings it to life, this game is a must-play for fans of the genre and fans of the films alike, and we are thrilled to mark it as Worth it.

Woke Elements

It may be a bit controversial, but I’m going with “none” on this one. While there are definitely some anti-capitalist themes, they are hilariously disingenuous to the point where I believe they were genuinely intended as the parody they ultimately are, and much more so than in the original 1987 film. If the writers were trying to sneak woke elements into Robocop: Rogue City, I expect they would have tried to introduce more relevant criticisms instead of carrying forward with the ones that were already there in the twenty-six-year-old source material.

When the original film was released, Detective Ann Lewis’s depiction of a tough female cop was somewhat novel. Despite that, the character did not exhibit the woke character traits of being masculine, being the physical equal of a man, or being a lady boss. If the writers had wanted to make this story woke, they would have had to change those things, but they did not. In Rogue City, Ann Lewis is still a tough cop and commands the respect of everyone in the precinct, but she is still ultimately feminine and doesn’t have to be built up by tearing down the men around her.

Finally, I appreciate this game’s acknowledgment of Christianity. Many games about the future of the United States either pretend that Christianity never existed or stand up some thinly disguised surrogate for Christianity at which to lob one-sided criticisms. Rogue City doesn’t have a religious aspect, but there were three things it did to acknowledge Christianity indirectly. Firstly, there’s a mission where you’re asked to find a VHS tape in a rental store, and the clue you’re given is that the title has something to do with The Bible. The character who gives this clue does so matter-of-factly, as though he expects everyone to have a general working knowledge of biblical phrases.  Secondly, during a prison riot, as you’re walking through empty rooms on the way to your destination, there’s a leather-bound Holy Bible sitting on one of the counters by itself. No context is offered. It’s not next to the Quran or other religious symbols. It’s not sitting next to a pile of drugs. It’s just simply there, acknowledging that it exists. And lastly, when the characters say “God,” the subtitles properly capitalize the proper noun. This doesn’t mean the writers are Christians or even theists, but it does mean that they didn’t intentionally use bad grammar just to be derisive.

The post Robocop: Rogue City first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

The Good:

• Gameplay is refined and extremely fun
• The story is fully fleshed out and well-paced

The Bad:

• Feels unfinished, technically – tons of minor bugs and glitches
• Dull, repetitive boss fights

The Ugly:

• If you’re playing woke bingo, you will run out of cards

Spider-Man 2

Set directly after the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 is a third-person action game set in a near-future aspirational vision of New York City.  Players will switch between playing as Spider-Man and Miles Morales to accomplish the mutual and exclusive goals each of them have throughout the course of the game. Players will fight street thugs, solve puzzles, collect and upgrade equipment, and try to thwart the mysterious plans of Kraven. Where they follow their individual goals, Miles uses his superhero duties as an excuse to procrastinate on writing his college entrance essay and also to support the underprivileged community with missions like saving a music museum dedicated to musicians of color. Peter Parker will complete experiments for the Emily May Foundation to generate clean energy with wind power and develop GMO crops to feed the homeless.

Story: The Gift of Gab

One of the things that sets this series apart from other action games is just how much story it manages to squeeze in while still providing extremely well-refined and varied gameplay. In games like Assassin’s Creed, the story and dialogue are concentrated around cutscenes and maybe a handful of set-piece events, but in Spider-Man 2, the dialogue almost never stops. Every fight, from the iconic plot-centric boss battles to the generic street crime skirmishes, is filled with constant commentary or repartee. Every time you pick up an object or come close to a side objective, someone has something to say. Even just traversing the city from one objective to the next, Spider-Man and Miles can’t go more than a couple of minutes without audibly musing or getting a cell phone call that furthers one of a dozen concurrent story threads.  

It’s difficult to decide which is more impressive – the sheer volume of non-repetitive dialogue or the fact that all voice actors sound on top of their game (no pun intended – well, maybe a little).  Aside from being laced with woke ideology, the content of the dialogue is very well written. The jokes land perfectly, and the drama is only hamfisted when it’s serving some ESG quota. Otherwise, it comes across as sincere and realistic.

Gameplay: So Many Options

Just because the game is story-centric doesn’t mean the developers let the core of the action slide.  While the bulk of gameplay is still combat-driven, the game never misses an opportunity to introduce a new type of interaction. This often happens in the form of minigames, such as solving puzzles to splice plant genes, isolate chemical compounds, or find hidden items, but it also manifests in races on the ground and in the air or controlling drastically different types of drones to train AI models or repair a broken security system. And the list goes on and on.

Gameplay: Traversal

Getting around in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 can be a sheer joy. Web-swinging through the streets has a rhythm that feels almost natural. As if that wasn’t good enough, the new web-wings ability, which turns the spider suits into wingsuits, gives players even more crazy-fun ways to zip around skyscrapers, across bridges, and over the bay. 

The ability to fast travel is locked behind completing a certain number of side objectives in each borough of the city. This is a fairly organic way to make sure players don’t start skipping chunks of the environment until they’ve had a chance to see and experience it.

Gameplay: If You Can’t Be Original, Be The Best

This game borrows most of its combat system (as do many other third-person action games) from Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), so the attack-dodge-parry combat isn’t new or unique, but this implementation does set a high bar among imitators. As with environment traversal, there’s a rhythm to combat that just feels right when you manage to sync up with it. Wade into a crowd of a dozen thugs unprepared, and you’ll get your butt handed to you, but get into the groove, and you start to feel unstoppable. 

The game still offers its share of cheap deaths from baddies that have attacks that can soak up half of your health in one shot if you don’t manage to parry or get out of the way fast enough. While frustrating, it also incentivizes the player to take a more frenetic and aggressive approach on the next attempt. 

The player and the enemy aren’t the only elements of combat. There are always environmental actions available to give the player an edge in combat  Sometimes, it’s just loose objects scattered around that you can web up and throw as projectiles, and sometimes, it’s something specific to a boss fight, like a water pipe, or a trapdoor. 

Several enemies are immune to direct attack, meaning that you constantly have to adjust your approach – for example, enemies with shields can’t be defeated head-on, so you have to get behind them to do any damage, and enemies with hand weapons can only be hurt by special attacks or a well-timed parry.

Boss fights are a little repetitive and predictable.  Every boss has to be defeated three times per encounter, and while there’s some variation in what environmental advantages can be used, there’s otherwise very little variety in the combat. In this, the designers clearly chose cinematics over gameplay.

Gameplay: Shhhh Be Very Quiet

During sneaking sequences, it’s up to the player whether or not the character is discovered.  If discovered, the enemies will attack until they’re defeated, or the player manages to break line of sight long enough for them to lose track. The stealth mechanics here are nothing new (most again taken right out of the Batman Arkham games), but they are well-implemented.  For instance, enemies have realistic lines of sight and respond somewhat convincingly to distractions. Environments are arranged to give the player plenty of opportunities to strategically separate the bad guys and use silent takedowns to incapacitate them.

Audio: A Feast for the Ears

The audio production is nothing short of fantastic.  The high-quality voice acting is mixed perfectly with the sound effects and music and is never difficult to understand. Full advantage is taken of multi-channel surround sound setups, not just to provide convincing ambiance but to give players positional awareness.  The music is well orchestrated and borrows heavily from the most recent Spider-Man films while still delivering unique performances. The Spider-Man “theme” gets multiple context-based renditions, including a rhythm-action game they managed to slip in.

Technical Evaluation: A Spider Web Full of Bugs

As polished as much of this game is, it was also released clearly unfinished. Minor bugs and glitches are evident throughout. If you’re curious why it was dinged for performance and technical issues, a fairly comprehensive list exists here. While disappointing, they amount to annoyances more than hindrances.

Final Thoughts

From start to finish, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is paced like an Avengers film; the action and story comprise a flashy, dense, nonstop feast of dopamine.  It’s clear that a lot of the right kind of passion, i.e., art, voice acting, complex storytelling, gameplay design, environment design, and audio design, went into this project. Unfortunately, a lot of the wrong kind of passion – DEI, decolonization, misandry, and a litany of other woke concepts also found their way into this virtual world.  It presents an Overton Window in which non-woke, non-leftist ideologies don’t even exist. As great as this game is technically and as fun as it is to play, it amounts to 20-ish hours of woke propaganda targeted at young people. Don’t let your children play this without at least first discussing that superpowers and future tech are not the only things in it that are at odds with reality.

WOKE ELEMENTS

To the writers, the true villain of this story is not Kraven or Venom; it’s whiteness. The reason this game gets such a high wokeness score is because it is fundamentally a story about decolonizing Spider-Man, and nearly every part of the narrative supports this though it isn’t necessarily obvious while you’re playing. You’ll find a lot written about “decolonization” online, and like all politically controversial topics, there is little consistency in how it is meant and how it is applied.  James Lindsay delivered a speech about wokeness that addresses decolonization if you want a based opinion, but it basically means removing white people from positions of power, public life, and, to some, from existence.  

Spider-Man’s woke slant is not worn on its sleeve. The writers didn’t try to make either Spider-Man gay, plaster the environments with pride flags and trans-rights slogans, or stop every five minutes to acknowledge the indigenous peoples that used to inhabit New York.  Everything it does is subtle, almost subliminal, and many players will, no doubt, brush off what they see as innocuous or coincidental, if they even notice it at all.  When I tell you this game ranks high on wokeness, I won’t be shocked if some readers who have already played it are dismissive or skeptical. You won’t necessarily be dealing with it the whole time, and that seems to be the point.

Spider-Man 2 resists the temptation to depict racial inequality between Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Indeed, without making Miles literally homeless, it would be difficult to depict him as less privileged than Peter. There are indirect inferences to racial inequality in the way that a music museum seems to struggle, specifically because its theme is “musicians of color,” but in thousands of lines of dialogue, no one cries “racism” out loud. If anything, Miles’ advantages over Peter (still has one of his parents and isn’t dirt poor) are meant to bring balance to Peter’s one advantage of being white – this is what the woke call “equity.”

One of the woke categories that Spider-Man 2 scores some points in was surprising to see in a video game at all.  That is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Google has memory-holed most articles that aren’t fawning endorsements of this concept so it was difficult to find a good one to share. Chances are you, however, have already encountered it and know exactly why it’s a plague on the corporate world, but if you would like an elegant and clear primer on it and how it relates to wokeness, you are encouraged to watch the James Lindsay speech linked above as it also touches on the elements of DEI.

On the surface and taken a piece at a time, the woke elements are scattered and appear unrelated.  Moreover, the sheer volume of dialogue effectively dilutes the woke parts, as prolific as they are, blending them in with what is an impressively large tapestry of narrative.  Despite the laundry list of problems, narratively speaking, the game isn’t all bad. There are great themes of friendship, familial loyalty, mentorship, honesty, and redemption throughout. Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, there are undeniable patterns that reveal the woke parts are not innocuous. 

As a game marketed to young people, the most immediately troublesome parts are the messages it sends to girls about boys and boys about themselves. For example, Peter’s self-effacement goes beyond healthy humility, and MJ’s beyond expressions of her own insecurities.

Some understanding of Venom is necessary for the context below. It is a symbiotic alien creature. Very analogous to demonic possession, Venom can take a person as a host and affect the person’s mind, blending his thoughts with theirs. This also causes them to lose most of their inhibitions. Since Venom is a creature of pragmatic self-interest, it magnifies a person’s aggression, anger, and resentment while suppressing empathy and compassion. Most of the words they speak are still their own but without a filter.

Anti-2nd Amendment

• While fighting a group of thugs looting a gun store, Peter monologues about how irresponsible it is to have a gun club in the middle of New York City, implying that the owner is at least partly to blame for the crime.

Anti-capitalism/Pro-communism

• Peter lectures, “Profit shouldn’t be part of the equation when it comes to basic human necessities.” Here, he’s referring to a non-profit being morally superior to other tech companies because it open sources the spliced genomes of modified plants. This is done expressly to make them available to feed the homeless for free as opposed to profiting from them the way normal corporations do.  How a homeless person is going to use an open-source gene sequence to grow food for themselves without the need for equipment, specially educated personnel, land, and raw materials is not fully explained.
• There’s a podcast that you will hear snippets from between missions and while traversing the city.  In one of these, the caster, Dana, laments getting cut off while having a riveting discussion about “philanthropy and using the means of production for good.” This is a blatantly Marxist concept.

DEI

• Sometime before Aunt May’s death in the first game and the start of this one, Norman Osborn, Harry’s billionaire father, set up a non-profit think tank in the middle of New York City called the Emily May Foundation to celebrate her legacy.  While Harry’s father set things up, Harry himself “changed a couple of things” when he recently took it over.  He casually mentions that he “Installed a diverse board to keep us on track.”  “Diverse” in this context refers to basically anyone who is either non-white, non-straight, or female. Harry’s change can only mean one of two things. The first one is that he fired any straight white males who were already serving on the board in order to replace them, and the second is that there was no board, to begin with, and no straight white males were considered for positions. Either way, this is anti-white racism doled out as casually as choosing the color of the floor tiles. Not to mention the naivety that comes with hiring people on the basis of something other than their qualifications and thinking this is going to keep things “on track”. 
• It isn’t just the board of Emily May that’s “diverse.” With the exception of Harry, Peter, and Dr. Curtis Connors (a.k.a. The Lizard), who is there as a short-lived plot device, there are no white males working at Emily May. In fact, out of the sixty or seventy people you see milling around, there are no white males in the building at all. This is subtle but 100% intentional.
• There’s a point after Peter is merged with Venom when the symbiosis is nearly complete, so Peter’s inhibitions are gone.  He begins ranting about how he is the only hero and that he has to save everyone. It’s a rare moment where the dialogue takes a turn for the awkward because there really isn’t anything in the plot up to that point that supports him having that belief, even subconsciously.  When Miles confronts him in order to bring him back to himself, he says, “I’m trying to save you, Peter!” Peter answers, “I’m the hero, you don’t save me, I save you!” Suddenly, the awkwardness of this left turn in the dialogue makes sense. The writers are tacitly apologizing for legacy Spider-Man being a White Savior.  This is the notion that much popular fiction depicts white people as the only ones who can be endowed with special powers to save everyone else as a way to promote white supremacy.
• Additional items can be found in the [Spoilers] section below.

Misandry

• In the opening sequence, Peter is fired by his black female boss. If the roles had been reversed and a white male had fired a black female for the same infraction, we would be reading about how “problematic” this game is in the actual New York Times.
• MJ, in an act of feminine chivalry, offers to pay Peter’s mortgage for him. (His altruistic Aunt May mortgaged the house and donated all of the money to a homeless shelter before she died. Since his lady boss fired him, he can’t pay the mortgage.) Later in the story, she uses this to emasculate him.
• During a fight scene when Miles has just met Felicia (a.k.a. Black Cat) five minutes prior, they’re confronted by an enemy vehicle with a turret on top, causing Miles to panic and ask Felicia what he should do.  Felicia tells him, “You got webs, use them,” which his panic has obviously made him forget. This is a blatant attempt to make Miles appear weak and uncertain and show how cool and collected Felicia is.
• In one scene, we’re treated to a sparring match in which a female soldier uses brute strength to overpower a male soldier who easily has a seventy to ninety-pound weight advantage over her. She knocks him to the ground and gleefully kicks him in the ribs over and over. In real life, a single punch from this man would probably have caved in her skull. As a bonus, the scene is on a loop, so she kicks and mocks him over and over indefinitely until the player triggers the next event.
• Upon their first meeting, the main antagonist, Kraven, explains to Peter that he “hunts that which man most fears.”  Kraven is using the term inclusively – when he says “man,” he means mankind.  Peter’s witty retort is, “He’s hunting failure? Intimacy?” implying that these are exclusively masculine fears.
• During a mission, MJ finds out that one of the Hunters has a lady boss, and she uses this, along with her sudden fluency in their language (deus ex machina much?), to impersonate his boss over the radio in order to learn the location of an access code. Once he tells her where the code is, she piles on a little verbal abuse and belittlement. Lest we mistakenly believe she was just being nasty to sell the part of a gruff paramilitary boss lady, she immediately remarks to herself it felt “kind of nice” to emasculate him.
• MJ is completely aware of the fact that Venom is altering Peter’s behavior; however, when he calls her to tell her the good news that he was freed and apologizes, she urges him to “go on,” as though she’s owed a more groveling apology.
• Peter’s character is a model of humility and selflessness. Throughout all three games that make up this series, he could hardly have been more empathetic and self-sacrificing.  This makes what happens when MJ is caught by Venom and turned into the symbiote monster “Scream” all the more disgusting. The character only exists for the duration of a fifteen-minute boss fight, but the entire point of it seems to be the diatribe of feminist grievances and attempts to emasculate Peter that plays out in the background as MJ (as Scream) lobs verbal abuse at him. Here are some highlights:
  • “I’m done begging for validation from you…or anyone!”
  • “For once, it’s not about you!”
  • “I’m finally in control.”
  • “I live in your shadow.”
  • “You just want to stay the stronger half.”
  • “You always patronize [me]!”
  • “You can’t keep a job.  You can’t pay the mortgage.”
  • At one point, Peter starts to say, “I always fix things,” then catches himself and amends it to “We always fix things,” before descending into sickening self-effacement where he apologizes for things that he didn’t do and that are not even in character for something he would have done off-camera.
    • “I’m sorry, I was wrong. You don’t have to trust me, but trust yourself.” 
    • “You’re right. I was selfish. I was so wrapped up in my own life I never thought about yours.”  

Gay Agenda

• Black Cat, Cat Woman analog and ex-girlfriend of Peter Parker, reveals through the course of conversation that she’s bisexual now. Just in case the player didn’t catch it the first time, the dialogue gratuitously works her “girlfriend” in several more times, as well as getting Miles to virtue-signal his allyship when he characterizes his motivation for saving her from the hunters as “We’ve got to get you back to your girlfriend.” 
• In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), when Miles attends a local fair at a park, we’re introduced to a lesbian couple, and the game makes sure we have a conversation about it. In this game, Miles revisits that same park to complete a mission. Standing in the exact same spot is one of the girls from the first game, and out of an entire crowd of people with whom he is familiar, Miles singles her out to ask about what else, where her partner is. This is done in order to remind us that she’s a lesbian and that Miles is an ally.

Atheism is not a religion

• The writers use the diminutive lowercase “g” when using the proper noun God.  This is not just bad grammar; it’s the hallmark of a zealot who does not believe his/her religion is a religion.

[Spoilers Warning] Do not read below if you don’t want spoilers. [Spoilers Warning]

[Spoilers] DEI

• Lest you think the early reference to the White Savior trope was isolated, the game ends with Peter quitting his role as Spider-Man and passing the torch to Miles.  The only way to completely avoid the White Savior trope is to not tell stories with white heroes or to diminish their roles to sidekicks and supporting characters.
• What Marvel presentation would be complete without post-credits scenes? This game has two. One is to set up the next game’s villain, and the other is to complete the pattern of “decolonization” by introducing Cindy Moon, a character that fans will know as Silk – essentially a female Spider-Man.

The post Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Platform and Version Reviewed:

PS5 Version, on PS5

The Good:

• Solid core gameplay

The Bad:

• The story lacks substance and context

The Ugly:

• Girl boss syndrome

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

Set in 861, during the reign of the Abbasid Caliphate, Basim Ibn Ishaq is a young street thief trying to survive in a cruel world.  His nightmares are host to terrifying Jinni (Genies).  Basim aspires to join the secret and mysterious Hidden Ones but is initially rejected, driving him to foolishly try to sneak into the Caliph’s house to steal an artifact that the Hidden Ones’ enemy, The Order of the Ancients, is about to make off with.  When Basim touches the artifact, he is dazzled by a holographic animation of two people fighting. However, before he can escape with it, he is caught by the Caliph and only survives because his partner, a girl named Nehal, kills the Caliph.  While this brings the fury of the Caliph’s house, it also earns him the attention of the Hidden Ones, and he is whisked away to begin training as a Hidden One himself.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a third-person sandbox game set in and around 9th-century Baghdad. The story unfolds from the perspective of Basim, who also appeared as an NPC in 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.  As the name suggests, the players will use stealth, cunning, and combat skills to eliminate enemies of freedom and the enemies of the Hidden Ones. However, much like your high school history book, the game aspires to be a historical reference.  As players walk the streets of this interpretation of ancient Baghdad and its surrounding farms and villages, recreations of actual places are accompanied by markers that encourage the player to dig deeper into their real-life history by reading snippets penned by professional historians.

Story: Less is More

From its roots as a straightforward adventure series, Assassin’s Creed has been pushed into the realm of RPGs with each successive title. This culminated in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020), a 60+ hour adventure featuring dozens of fetch quests, crafting challenges, side missions, and presented the player with an ever-increasing difficulty that required leveling up to overcome. On the surface, this meant that the series was delivering tremendous entertainment value because of the sheer volume of content in each entry, but it was becoming an interminable grind-fest that was difficult for players with busy lives to complete quickly enough to still remember what was going on by the end. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, thankfully, ditches or drastically reduces nearly all of the RPG elements for a leaner 20-ish hour adventure that more closely resembles the original Assassin’s Creed (2007). 

Story: But Sometimes Less Is Just Less

Narratively speaking, veterans and newcomers to the series are likely to have very different experiences owing to the fact that the game’s story and its terminology are all built around a context that is completely absent. There’s nothing to explain why dying is called “desynchronization,” and the cutscenes and missions all point to a larger backstory that never sees the light of day. Likewise, If you don’t go into this game already knowing what The Animus is or that the game’s true setting is the genetic memory of some person in the future, Mirage will do nothing to enlighten you. 

While this is obviously part of the minimalist theme of the design, there are numerous plot elements that simply don’t make sense without this knowledge, and the conclusion of the story loses nearly all of its meaning because of this omission.  

Then there is the power struggle between the two secret societies, “The Hidden Ones” (a.k.a. Assassins) and “The Order of the Ancients” (a.k.a. Templars/Abstergo), which receives no justification or rationalization whatsoever. The titular “Creed,” which explains why the Assassins do what they do, is also entirely absent. As a result, the player is left with little to no idea what principles make the Assassins more morally praiseworthy than their opponents.

Gameplay: Remaining in the Shadows

The core gameplay of Assassin’s Creed has always been sneaking around and killing “bad guys” or the people who guard them. And in this respect, Mirage brings the goods.  Almost every mission has you scoping out a carefully crafted location to figure out how to get in without being seen and get to your objective without being caught or at least without getting killed.

When it comes to stealth, Mirage is much more forgiving than its predecessors. Alerting a single guard no longer magically announces your presence to every guard in the area. Line of sight plays a more realistic role. This means that a single screw-up doesn’t necessarily have to send you all the way back to your last checkpoint to try again. There are no shortages of tools and opportunities to stay in the shadows while completing your missions, provided you have the patience.

When the Controller is the Enemy

One of the game’s greatest weaknesses is the unrefined controls. They often lead to more of a fight with the controller than with the enemy. Combat controls sometimes feel like wading through mud. It’s unclear whether this was done intentionally to discourage open confrontation (it is, after all, supposed to be a stealth game) or if this is just the result of poor implementation.

Even outside of combat, there are moments where the game jarringly shifts a camera angle on you, which confuses the direction your character is moving, and you end up getting entangled in a wall you didn’t mean to climb or leaping in the wrong direction, etc. It’s very immersion-breaking when you have to stop, analyze what went wrong, and then back Basim up like he’s a semi-truck that took a wrong turn down an alley.

Finally, there is a single action button mapped both to pick up objects and to interact with them. When the designers place pick-up objects next to a bench, your character must go through a multi-second sit-down animation if you accidentally hit the button at the wrong time. It can really interrupt the flow of the action when you’re running for your life, and Basim decides to sit down and take a load off. 

Sound Judgment

This series has never been known for its audio quality, so it’s no surprise that there’s nothing special here. The music is fitting but forgettable. The voice acting is professional, but there are no particularly inspiring performances.  What’s more, the audio mixing is terrible.  Background noises and music easily drown out the main dialogue, even with a full-range surround setup with a center channel devoted to voice.  Ironically, there’s a “voice enhancement” setting in the options menu, which is off by default but brings the balance almost up to where it should have been by default. This setting was never needed in previous titles.

Final Thoughts

The Assassin’s Creed formula was very much in need of a trim, and in many ways, Mirage delivers on the promise of a more accessible, more action-oriented experience. Unfortunately,  it also feels like they cut too deeply, leaving out important story context that will leave first-time players wondering what the point was. History buffs who enjoy Assassin’s Creed for the opportunity to walk through approximations of real historical locations may be let down by the ridiculous glazing-over of the true position of women in 9th-century Baghdad. 

Woke Elements

The woke elements in this game are mostly concentrated in a few cutscenes and some mission dialogue.  The game is so light on story, to begin with, that they just aren’t a constant annoyance, and they don’t really interfere with the pure enjoyment of finding the best and sneakiest way to slip past or kill every bad guy in the way of your goal. As much as they would probably have liked to have done more, the setting went quite a long way to stop the dialogue and scenario writers from incorporating more woke elements.  The ancient Middle East wasn’t really compatible with woke thinking.

Girl Boss Syndrome

• For a series that prides itself on its historically based fictional narratives, which incorporate real places and people from history, the writers are playing fast and loose with the role of women.  As politically correct as it is for the Western world to pretend otherwise, women are second-class citizens in Islamic societies even today. Twelve hundred years ago, it was measurably worse. In fact, the Abbasid Caliphate was particularly known for eliminating women’s roles entirely from public and political life. Despite this fact, in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, women openly operate businesses and hold positions of celebrity and authority.
• This doesn’t just apply to Basim’s two main “mentors” but other figures significant to the plot as well. To say more would risk spoilers.

Misandry

• Basim might be the protagonist, but from the first scene, he’s getting hen-pecked by his female “friend” Nehal. He is insulted and spoken down to for his successes and his failures alike. There’s a moment towards the end of the game that may cause you to want to reevaluate this situation, but there’s no getting around the unanswered toxicity that Nehal represents.
• Roshan is Basim’s next girl boss after he parts ways with Nehal and trains to become one of the Hidden Ones (Assassins).  There are men in positions of authority with the Hidden Ones, but their roles are relegated to the background, and whenever they’re in Roshan’s presence, they show deference to her, even though some appear to outrank her.
• To its credit, the game does eventually, reluctantly acknowledge the physical disadvantages that women have against men in combat.

Subliminal Trans Agenda?

• There’s a point in the story where we discover a character has a split personality, with the other personality being the opposite gender.

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Platform Reviewed:

Nintendo Switch

Hardware Detail:

Launch model Switch

OEM Pro Controller

The Good:

• Quick, reactive controls
• Caters to multiple skill levels but is still very challenging
• No stage timers

The Bad:

• Talking Flowers

The Ugly:

• Nothing

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that proves the genre still has new things to show us.  Players embark solo or with up to three player companions at once across eight worlds to save the Flower Kingdom from the machinations of Bowser, the evil king of the Koopas, his wannabe supervillain son, Bowser Jr., and his host of new and returning minions.  Each thematic world has a unique terrain and region-specific level design. In addition to Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Toad, players can also choose to play one of two other Toad characters, four Yoshi characters, or The Nabbit.

The story is ridiculous, which is par for the course for a Super Mario Bros. game, and it’s okay if you’ve totally forgotten it sixty seconds into the first stage.  This time, Bowser has invaded the Mushroom Kingdom’s neighbor, the Flower Kingdom, and stolen the Wonder Flower, which has transformed the houses and castles spread throughout the kingdom into sad and dreary places. However, you won’t be rescuing a princess this time. While rescuing a princess is traditional for the series, this isn’t unprecedented either. As far back as Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988/NES), Princess Peach has joined the adventure as an active player character.  

In this iteration, the  Flower Kingdom is ruled by Prince Florian, but you won’t be rescuing him either.  Instead, the royal caterpillar, who dreams of becoming a larger caterpillar someday, will accompany you on your quest to save his kingdom from Bowser’s clutches.

What’s New? What’s The Same? What’s Better?

Super Mario Bros. Wonder isn’t just a new coat of paint slapped on an old game. The innovation is woven into every aspect of the gameplay itself rather than just presenting a handful of new power-ups, for example. 

Although new power-ups are most definitely part of the game, most of the innovation is in the “badge” system.  As you progress through the game, you’ll find, earn, or buy badges that will grant additional mobility or some other type of advantage. That said, only one badge can be active at a time, so there’s a strategy for figuring out what the best badge is for a given situation. Need a specific power-up to get to that secret area? You can turn all the power-ups into the ones you need. Need the ability to jump just a little bit higher to get to that out-of-the-way platform? There’s a badge for that, too.

Controls

The Super Mario franchise has always been known for its smooth and intuitive controls. In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the controls have been tuned to what feels like perfection, besting even the efforts of the most recent prequel, New Super Mario Bros. U (2012/Wii U). Players are never left to feel like they are fighting the device or fighting their intuition to make the character do what they want. If you screw up, it’s because you screwed up, not because the input device stymied you. In fact, the controls most closely resemble those of Super Mario World (1990/Super NES), which was a 16-bit masterpiece of golden era platformer perfection.

Although multiplayer closely resembles that of its predecessors, Super Mario Bros. Wonder offers a  handful of subtle tweaks that make all the difference. Playing with four people is still a chaotic mess, but it’ll more often end in a room full of people laughing hysterically than grinding their teeth in frustration.

The biggest single improvement is the fact that, with the exception of Yoshi, the players don’t interfere with one another onscreen.  You’re never going to miss a jump because someone else bounced on your head or go careening off into the blue because another player happened to hit you from below. On the other hand, players who actually want to interact directly can use Yoshi characters, which the other players can ride to impart a little invincibility and coordinate tricky double-jumps.

It’s All About The Game

For fans of the series, game progression is a familiar formula, although there are plenty of twists to keep this from feeling like deja vu.  Individual stages are grouped into “worlds” with a common theme, like the desert or the clouds. As usual, players don’t need to complete every stage to finish the game, and there are alternate paths for those who seek them out.

This being the Flower Kingdom, everything is plant-themed, so progression depends on earning “Wonder Seeds.”  Most stages will award one seed to the player just for completing the stage and another for finding a hidden Wonder Flower, which unlocks a different version of the stage with added challenges. Some seeds are simply given away just for making it to a new world, and others are sold in shops so they can be earned by collecting the new purple Flower Coins spread throughout each level. Additionally, many are hidden in cleverly hidden secret areas and secret exits.  

A certain number of Wonder Seeds is required to unlock the final stage of each world. With so many ways to earn Wonder Seeds, the player has the freedom to choose the path that matches their ability rather than being forced to play harder levels that then become a frustrating barrier to progress. Additionally, each level is helpfully labeled with a difficulty rating in order to make these choices obvious.  

The main object in each world is a “Royal Seed,” which is one of six flower-themed MacGuffins that unlock the final confrontation with Bowser.  Not every world follows the same formula. Sometimes, just finding your way through a tricky puzzle will be enough to net you the Royal Seed at the end without having to fight a boss for it.  

If you’re a completionist or a Mario “veteran,” there are plenty of secret areas and challenges to test your mettle.

A vestige from their roots as an arcade game, where it was important to limit the time taken by each credit, side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. games have traditionally used a timer. When time runs out, you lose a life and have to begin again. While, in the past, this helped to keep the action constantly moving and added pressure when trying to find a secret or work out how to do a tricky jump, Super Mario Bros. Wonder does away with this, leaving the player free to hunt for secrets without fear of the clock running out.

If there’s one single, very minor element of this game that becomes annoying over the duration, it has to be the Talking Flowers that are now spread throughout the stages. These will occasionally offer hints about secret areas or speak words of encouragement, but they will also express a range of emotions and try to tell bad jokes. They can detract from the experience sometimes more than they add to it, but thankfully, there’s a setting to mute them, so no harm, no foul.

Hearing It Out

The music is new but with enough classic elements like reworked melodies and passages from older titles woven in to satisfy the staunchest of fans.  Though you’ll find orchestral scores, the soundtrack doesn’t confine itself to any particular genre; gamers will be treated to everything from heavy metal to disco to sitar music.  More than once, I found myself smiling and nodding my head or tapping my foot to the beat while I was playing. The music is also dynamic, often changing according to what a player is doing.

Final Thoughts

For a series celebrating its 38th anniversary, Super Mario Bros. Wonder feels impossibly fresh. Everything from the sound effects to the character animations has been subtly crafted to evoke nostalgia, but there’s nothing actually old about it.  Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn’t just hold up to its impressive pedigree but raises the bar as well.

Woke Elements

While some might argue that making Peach a playable character instead of the more traditional damsel in distress, as I stated before, it’s not without precedent. With no real story to speak of and no other obvious ideologically driven elements, we’re going to err on the side of this decision being less about agenda and more about freedom of gameplay.

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