Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD and Dyspraxia
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We give our thoughts on Astro Bot, Black Myth Wukong, Star Wars Outlaws (that turned into a bit of an off topic tangent sorry), Warhammer Space Marines 2, Gundam Breaker 4 and Visions of Mana
Plus we discuss the future of Sony after Concord’s failure and the PS5 Pro reveal and talk about the the movie trailers for Minecraft and Sonic 3 as well as where Alan Wake and Control stand after the Annapurna interactive walkout
“BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE”A very long in development sequel, Tim Burton now returns to direct a follow up to his 1988 film, Beetlejuice, which surprisingly manages to get most of the cast back, bar a few exceptions; one which we will go into detail on, which will affect the review.
Suffice to say, this is a full-on true sequel, and I actually found it interesting where Burton has decided to expand upon.
I actually went into this film rather cynically, I felt that it was only coming out because Dumbo failed and Burton needed something that was guaranteed to make money no matter what, and I was especially worried because most of the trailers I saw didn’t give away much of the plot and were very coy about what was going to be in the film (at least the ones I saw in cinemas were this way).
Going through the plot for this film is going to be a bit weird, because there’s quite a lot going on. It mainly centres around Lydia and Delia, played once again by Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, who travel back to the film from the first movie, along with Lydia’s daughter, Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega, for the funeral of Charles (the husband and dad from the first movie). Meanwhile, we also have a woman from Beetlejuice’s past, sucking souls away in the underworld and coming after Beetlejuice (once again played by Michael Keaton), and Beetlejuice is again trying to finish off what he started with Lydia in the first movie.
There are a few plot points that go on around Lydia getting married to a producer named Rory (Justin Theroux) as well as Astrid have a quasi-romance with a local named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) but this all brings me to a major point of this movie: there are WAY too many plot points. They at least have resolutions to a certain extent, so nothing gets lost, but the film is a bit more concerned about giving Keaton more to do.
Keaton is on form as Beetlejuice once again, it’s obviously been a long time between movies, so I was concerned, and he obviously has a very different look now than he did in 1988, but the makeup does make it so he looks like the original character.
And again, they got most of the cast back. Obviously, some actors couldn’t come back. I imagine at the time of filming Alec Baldwin was going through too much legal trouble at the time to want to do this movie. I think it was a fine decision to write them out, since otherwise you would have to explain why ghosts are now ageing.
The obvious one who didn’t come back was Jeffrey Jones as Charles Deetz, who Burton ethically couldn’t bring back, so his character was going to be killed off in between movies. In this case, Burton decided to use it as the inciting incident. They had to do this in a way that acknowledged the crimes that he was convicted of, so the death they give him is excessively violent, which I thought would be all well and good, but they show his picture so much in the movie, not just on the gravestone, but to a point where it made me think, ‘Why didn’t they just have him run off with someone else between movies?’ because now we’re getting so many reminders of the man that played this character, and we don’t want to be reminded of this guy! That being said, I think Burton handled this well.
I think all of the cast gave excellent performances, considering the ridiculous nature of some of the things that they have to do, particularly Keaton himself.
Jenna Ortega who gained recent fame from the Scream movie, as well as the Wednesday Netflix series did well, and I particularly enjoy newcomer Willam Dafoe who gets to ham it up in a way that does this film a service.
The biggest problem I had with this movie wasn’t the humour- which actually succeeds on a few levels, one scene in particular had me in hysterics- and it’s not the length of the movie, it’s paced quite well and comes at about 1 hour and 40 minutes, it’s that this film has to really rush its climax because there is too much going on! There are three antagonists- that is WAY too much for the runtime and I only really liked one of them; the other two are so underdeveloped that I didn’t really care. The other issue is that Burton didn’t really know how to end this movie, so some of the plot points kind of just stopped without a satisfying climax, so they had to just pull something out of thin air, which kind of works in a Beetlejuice movie, but I still felt it was a bit rushed. It reminded me of another Burton film, which is Batman Returns, which had a similar issue.
One thing that I really loved in this movie were the set designs and the costumes. The Spirit World is really expanded upon in this movie, and they manage to do a good job updating some of the original designs with modern technology. If anything, I think that this should get some nominations in the technical category when award season comes around.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I would say it’s a mixed bag. It’s got some good humour in parts, the casting is very well done, the first two thirds are well done- but the downside is that by the time you get to the third act, there’s a bit too much going on, so it makes the ending feel rushed.
(available for PlayStation 5 and PC)
Concord is the latest Sony Live Service game made as part of PlayStation Studios, this one coming from Firewalk Studios, a relatively new studio that Sony initially signed an exclusivity deal with before outright buying them- something that I took a lot of interest in, since it seemed very unlike Sony to buy a studio without seeing a single game that they had made.
Sony’s Live Service initiative hasn’t been going very well, it’s only success so far has been Helldivers. Concord had a lot of marketing around it, it even opened the last state of play, but when the trailer was uploaded online, it became one of their most disliked videos ever- people were not happy that this game was coming out, especially considering that it didn’t look like there was much to this game.
It’s basically a hero shooter, similar to a game like Overwatch (more comparisons with that to come) set in a pretty generic sci-fi universe, with a clear influence from Guardians of the Galaxy.
You get a few modes at launch, but you’re mostly playing Team Death Matches, though I managed to get into a few games of what in most shooters is called ‘Kill Confirmed’ (i.e. you have to pick up the person’s dog tags for your team to score the point, you don’t get points for the kill alone).
I played Concord in both the beta and the full release, but rather annoyingly, my progress from the beta didn’t carry over to the full release. I also noted that you don’t get many rewards from it, which is extra annoying because to access the beta on PlayStation requires you to purchase the digital deluxe version, which I did.
I’ll point out that this game won’t score well today, as I deleted it quicker than almost any other Sony first-party game I’ve put on my PlayStation.
But, of course, we have to go through the game and discuss what went well and what didn’t.
This might be due to the fact that I played this game via a PlayStation that was connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, but I never noticed any framerate drops even when there was a lot happening on screen, except for when there were connection issues, which is something that I can’t say for Overwatch! But judging by the play count that was on Steam, this might be due to the fact that there aren’t enough players on there to push their system to the limit.
I’m thankful to say that the microtransactions aren’t too high this time, but the reward system has a mixed feel to it.
On the one hand, the game does give you a variety of tasks to do to earn currency. The downside is that they don’t change all that often and they can be quite specific, to such an extent that I was never going to try and attempt them because it didn’t suit my playstyle.
I also thought that the rewards just weren’t worth it. The cosmetics are just rubbish. It might be due to the fact that I was playing it at launch, but there wasn’t much variety there and it takes ages to unlock them! I’d never thought I’d miss the Loot Boxes from Overwatch.
This has got to be one of the most boring Sony first-party games I have played in a long time. It is dull, dull, DULL!
The big problem is that the character variety means that matches usually play out the same, and the lack of game modes at launch means you’re stuck, playing a hero shooter where there’s not much going on.
I actually think that the game is really stupid to lock a few modes behind Level 6- people will put this game away before they get to that point, and you’re not missing much if you unlock it.
But it’s also just not very new-user friendly. Again, if I compare it to Overwatch (which this game is very clearly trying to emulate) that game is very good at creating a variety of gameplay styles, so there is always one character that is going to fit you. It also, as a result, makes it very newcomer friendly!
Because of the lack of variety, it’s not very friendly for those wanting to pick up and play. There were many instances where I was so bored of constantly being killed because I couldn’t get to grips with the character that I had to pick because someone else took my main. I was often just begging for the match to be over so I could go and do something else!
I couldn’t tell you anything about these characters. It’s not as if they’d have to do much to make them work- Overwatch, despite the fact that they have spent a lot of money on animations and comics that flesh out the characters, realise that it’s not necessary to feel the variety.
The developers clearly put a lot of effort into these characters, and they’re putting in new cutscenes to expand them each week, but it’s boring and generic. There’s the one with the big gun, the cowboy character, the guy who looks like a living cactus who is kind of the cover star, the only one I remember the name of is Moka, and I only liked her because she had a newcomer friendly weapon of the rocket launcher.
Even then, the powers they have are rubbish! Moka has one where she gets to slam her fist into the ground, but I only ever killed one person because it never worked as intended. They’re pretty crap!
None of them have any personality. I will admit that I find some of the designs pretty cool, but even then, they almost feel AI generated. Like someone typed in ‘do a visually distinct yet generic sci-fi setting’, which also extends to the maps that you fight on. They all look the same! The only difference is what colour the sky is.
Concord is obviously a massive punching bag for Sony at this point, and I suspect that they will drop it very quickly, but it’s all because this game is very bad. The game is uninspired, it doesn’t work very well, the character variety isn’t there… Yeah, the framerate is alright, but it’s in service of a game that I don’t want to be playing!
It’s a mess. Pure and simple. I think if Helldivers 2 hadn’t been a success, Sony might have been looking at getting rid of the Live Service Initiative altogether.
Despite all of its faults, I would still recommend Overwatch 2 over this, because I can’t recommend this under any circumstances.
We give our thoughts on first 6 episodes of Bungo Stray Dogs to see if it holds up 8 years after debut.
(available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Nintendo Switch version used for this review.)
Cat Quest 3 is the latest entry in the indie-action RPG series made by The Gentlebros. The big difference this time is that we’ve moved to a pirate setting! If you’ve played any of these games before, the gameplay is pretty similar. You explore dungeons with a ranged weapon, a melee weapon, and spells- this time they’re mostly pirate themed like cutlasses and revolvers. We also now have pirate ship battles, to add a bit of extra flair to the game.
So, Cat Quest 3 is trying to be a bit more ambitious by the fact it has a bigger world, and it has added a few extra elements that weren’t there previously. You don’t need to have played Cat Quest 1 or 2 to understand this story- there’s a few hints and callbacks to the other games, but for the most part, it’s its own story and you can jump into it without any knowledge of the previous games.
The game revolves around a pirate cat and his ghostly companion who travel the Purribian (yes, there’s a lot of cat puns in this) to find the treasure known as The Northern Star, a mythical treasure said to grant wishes, whilst they also deal with the villainous Pi-rat King and his band of Pi-rats (yes, pirate rats) and of course, he has a bunch of extra pirates that are trying to impede your paths via the boss fights. My personal favourite was the leader of the metalhead pirates, Captain Meow-tallica.
Nothing grandiose in this one, but it did remind me of the old school Super Nintendo RPGs, particularly Secret of Mana.
You’re free to explore the world at your own leisure, but the game does send you down certain paths at certain times if you’re just following the main story. I think this game has achieved a small but well-designed open world. I’m not sure that it will appease everyone, however, especially considering that outside of some of the optional side quests, the game is lacking in a few areas.
Cat Quest 3 is a beautiful looking game; I won’t deny that. Everything is very well designed, and I think it even looks better than the previous two entries.
While I’m talking about graphics, I also want to mention the soundtrack, which is an excellent swashbuckling affair and matches the environment brilliantly.
Everything feels very well put together, and almost has a hand-drawn quality to it, particularly the character outlines. There are some really brilliant character designs, too.
The combat is really fluid and smooth, it can be quite challenging at times since you often have to shift between it being a more directional movement in the overworld and in some dungeons it almost becomes a side-scroller. But overall, it’s really good once you get the hang of it. The spell and weapon variety are matched well. You will often get duplicates of weapons and spells, but what this game does brilliantly is every time you get a duplicate it levels up the current weapon- so your inventory won’t fill up and you won’t have to keep selling weapons you already have.
You also level up pretty quickly, so you’re going to gain rewards to help you experiment with different combinations- of which there are a lot to work with. I mostly worked with the lightning spell since they worked with my combat style and matched with my character, but for the most part I did feel like there were ways to change up if you wanted to.
I will stress, however, some people have commented that the game has balancing issues, but if that is the case, it’s not something I experienced- but it’s probably correct, since that’s not a field that I’m an expert in.
While this is a relatively small open world, it also feels pretty condensed. It’s pretty good for the size of game we’re after, and there is a good deal of exploration, but you’re not going to be looking for map fragments, it’s pretty much filled out when you start the game. It’s not as if you’re looking for loads of different settlements either, there’s one town in the entire map, so you’re mostly looking for dungeons and optional boss fights- which you should definitely aim to do, since it will get you the best gear and spells.
Here’s the problem I found since the map is small, it’s very easy to wander into areas where you’re under-levelled. I did it on several occasions, but sometimes I was able to persevere and beat the boss, but I ran into a few areas where I had to go away and level up so I could fire more spells.
I’d also like to stress that I think that this isn’t too big of an issue. If anything, it should teach you to play the game more conservatively and to grind a bit before you head out into the wider world.
The side quest variety is alright in the game, but I found that they would ask you to go to a location that you really aren’t ready for at that point in the story.
If you’re doing a bunch of side quests and optional bosses, this game will run about 10-15 hours, which I think is a pretty good length for the game. It does risk overstaying its welcome, but I think it works for the most part.
If you’re just going for the main story, this game is woeful! You’re looking at around 5 hours. If you’re doing that, however, you’re probably playing on the easiest difficulty, because otherwise you’d have no chance of beating the final area, since you will be ridiculously under powered.
I’d like to add that I didn’t really feel up for doing much of the post-game content. I also think that the game doesn’t have a story that motivates you to keep going. There isn’t much happening in the story other than the pirate’s ghostly companion is hiding some of his true motives for why he wants to reach the Northern Star.
By the end of it, I thought I got the basic ending for my efforts and hadn’t really done enough to gain the True Good ending- turns out, there’s only two endings and I had in fact got the Good ending. Basically, the main story isn’t where most of the fun lies in this game, since the story is not really anything to write home about, but it’s pretty good for the job it wants to do.
This one was a weird one, the game doesn’t give you healing straight up, and you have to acquire it. I assumed the game would give you a healing item or do something similar to Hollow Knight, where it is limited, but you can refill it by doing continuous attacks. It’s instead, locked behind a spell and I think that that is a real mistake, because in my experience it came about halfway through my gameplay.
I would stress that it might not be a con for some people, but it’s a major one for me, since I think the game is built around the possibility of being able to heal, and some of the bosses hit like trucks! If you want to have a good time with this game, I would recommend going out of your way to get that spell.
Cat Quest 3 is a good game, and I enjoyed my time with it. I wouldn’t say it’s a great game. It’s not up there with the greatest indie titles out there, but it’s a fun, enjoyable experience and I had a fun time playing it, and I do think it was one of the best indie titles that I’ve played this year, but I think that’s down to the fact that I haven’t played many indie games this year.
It’s a fine experience, but I think the storyline needed a bit more work and I think it’s a little too easy to wander into areas where you’re over-levelled. Overall, it’s pretty good and I would recommend trying this one out.
“THE CROW”I don’t even know why I’m bothering. This movie was awful, and I hated it. Sorry, that’s not very useful criticism, so I’ll get down to the nitty gritty. This is a remake of The Crow from 1994, which starred the late Brandon Lee. Personally, I really quite liked that film.
This film is directed by Rupert Sanders, and if you don’t remember him, he directed the not very good Ghost in the Shell movie and the Snow White and The Huntsman film, which I didn’t really like either.
This film follows a very similar plot to the original, you have Eric (played by Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) who, after a romance, are killed by a gang lead by Danny Houston. Eric vows his revenge, and thus becomes The Crow to seek it out.
If anyone’s wondering, was this film made to stick close to the comic? The answer is absolutely not- it strays even further from the comic than the 94 film did.
It was so draining. None of the characters had any personality whatsoever and the dialogue is awful. Everyone is trying to give a good performance, but they’ve been given awful direction and an awful script to work with. There’s no style to this movie, which is the biggest thing. Say what you want about the first movie, but there’s a distinct style there.
Bill Skarsgard doesn’t even have much of the makeup on. I really think they were trying to sell the film on his image, so they didn’t want to change his appearance too much… There were several sequences where the makeup would really vary on how smeared it was.
The main problem I have with this movie is that it’s not fun! The first movie at least had some fun, but there’s nothing like that here. It’s a dull, dull experience. They are trying to give a bit more airtime to the romance between Eric and Shelly, but that falls flat, and doesn’t serve to make either of them any more likeable.
The villains are probably the worst part of this movie. There’s no explanation behind their motivations and why they’re doing what they do. That would have been fine if they were just a bunch of thugs who got off on murdering people, but they added a paranormal element to it which doesn’t work because it’s incredibly underdeveloped. I suspect a large portion of this movie was left on the cutting room floor during the development process.
The film has an 18 rating so they can get away with some gore, but it never looks very real or even wince-inducing. It looks terrible.
Some of the action sequences are shot alright but they’re not great, if I’m honest. The only highlight was the Opera scene, and even then, it wasn’t very good since the editing in it was all over the place.
As I mentioned before, it is so dull beyond belief. This feels like one of the most paint-by-numbers movies I have ever seen. They somehow got themselves in a position where they don’t want to be tied to the original, but they want to capitalise on the name brand recognition, and it ends up appeasing no-one.
“ALIEN ROMULUS”Alien Romulus is the latest in the Alien franchise, though unlike recent entries, this one does not have Ridley Scott in the director’s chair- he’s now in the role of producer, with Fede Alvarez taking over as director. In case you’re wondering, he’s the guy behind the Evil Dead film from 2013 and Don’t Breathe. What he brings to the table is very interesting, since Alien Romulus has really had an interesting reception upon its early screenings, and previews were quick to point out how good the practical effects were.
If you haven’t seen the other films in the franchise like Prometheus or Alien Covenant, don’t worry, since this film takes place in between Alien and Aliens, so you only really need to have seen the original movie if you want some background.
The film follows a group of young people trying to get away from a mine colony ran by Weyland-Yutani, with the group ran by Rain (played by Cailee Spaeny) and her android brother Andy (David Jonsson) who need to steal a group of cryo-tubes in order to survive the full trip to their home planet and go to steal some from the supposed abandoned space station Romulus. However, it’s become very clear that Weyland-Yutani has been doing some research on the Xenomorphs here, and all hell breaks loose upon the group’s arrival.
I don’t want to go too much into spoilers since there is so much that goes on in this movie, but I will say that there is some really good stuff here! For one thing, I like the relationship between the central main characters, and the crew as a whole are all relatively strong characters, so you want to see them all do well.
The plot itself does a really good job setting up a domino effect that means the characters don’t have to be incredibly stupid in order for hijinks to ensue- and the performances are damn great across the board, too! I think special mention has to go to David Jonsson who does a brilliant job with the difficult role he has to play.
The thing you have to do in this scenario is once again, make the Xenomorphs feel almost unbeatable. They do an excellent job with this, and there’s some real tension in this movie which has been missing from the franchise for quite some time. There’s also a second antagonistic figure with the sinister android, Rook, who for the most part is played by Bilbo Baggins himself, Ian Holme, and does a really good job!
I have to point out that the thing that makes this film work so well is the use of practical effects. The set design is excellent, and I really appreciate how much effort has gone into it considering they were trying to minimise the use of green screens as much as possible. There’s also great work done on the Xenomorphs that gives them a great sense of weight- I really hope the set designers and production team do well in next year’s award season, because they’ve done an excellent job with this film.
I also really appreciate that this film avoids going back to Prometheus, for the most part. I know people like it, but I’m not in that camp, and I’m glad we got an Alien movie that avoids what was added in that movie.
It’s not entirely perfect, there are some lines of dialogue that don’t entirely land, and if anything, I felt that the film added on a climax that it didn’t really need- especially considering that the end of the movie really felt like they went for shock value for the sake of it, which I didn’t think entirely worked. It also made me question certain aspects about how this affects the lore that was established in the series.
Trap is the latest film from director M. Night Shyamalan, which built up a decent following before release due to its trailer, which gives away one of the major hooks of the film. Since that hook was in the trailer, I will be detailing that in the plot summary, but for the purposes of this review I won’t be giving away anything else spoiler-related.
The film centres around a character named Cooper (played by Josh Hartnett) taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert for her favourite pop star, Lady Raven (played by Saleka Shyamalan, yes, the director’s daughter). Cooper soon notices the increased security, and some information is revealed by a guy working at a merch stand that the whole concert is a trap to catch a serial killer known as The Butcher. The twist- Cooper is the killer. This is confirmed to us through security footage on his phone in the trailer.
That’s the basic premise- it’s about Cooper being able to get out of the building without being sussed out by the police. The antagonist in this film is a criminal profiler played by Hayley Mills who is basically running the operation. It’s a Shyamalan movie, so I’m not concerned by the lack of realism- while a profiler would definitely be consulted in this kind of operation, they certainly wouldn’t be at the scene.
I was surprised by the lack of hokey dialogue in this movie that Shyamalan is known for; while there definitely are some examples, certainly coming from the character at the merch stand, which isn’t a complaint because he is one of the best parts of this movie!
I will say for the record, this isn’t a bad movie! It’s probably one of Shyamalan’s good movies. But that being said, I’m one of the people that thinks he’s only made three good movies, with only two of them being great. The one thing he has never been good at is comedy, and it’s really hit or miss in this movie.
There are some aspects that work, however. For one thing, it’s clear that there’s a lot of input to make the concert seem realistic. I’ve never been to a pop concert, but I have been to quite a few stadium shows, and they did a good job mimicking that aspect. I also think they did a good job with Lady Raven’s music for this film. There is definitely a bit of Lady Gaga influence in there, and it captures what is going on in music right now.
The biggest issue with this film would have to be that I think it goes on too damn long! I understand why they did it, but it’s very clear that they didn’t really know what to do for the last act of this movie. There are several times where I thought ‘this is where the film must end’ only to find it being dragged out more. I was surprised to find out after I got out of the cinema that this is only an hour and forty-five minutes long, but it feels like it goes on for two and a half!
Trap feels like a movie that was made to be a short film but was extended out to be a feature length production. Josh Hartnett is the standout performance, and he does very well playing both parts of his character. Even though the film went on for too long, there are some scenes towards the end in which he really sells the tension.
Personally, that’s one of the things that did it for me- there is a real sense of ‘what’s going to happen next?’. I will say that while there is another twist in the film that comes later on in the movie, it’s not a major twist and it doesn’t shake up the plot too much, so it’s not in line with Shyamalan’s more famous twists. However, I sort of feel like it relies on information that we weren’t exactly privy to.
Shyamalan has made some good and bad movies, and I think this falls under good. It’s not an intense movie, there are some good performances, and he does a good job making this thriller where the protagonist is the bad guy. On the other hand, it does have some hokey dialogue, though he is getting better at that, and overall, it’s a much tighter production. I will say, I think the whole thing left me feeling entertained by the end of it.
It’s not a great movie, in fact, out of all of the good Shyamalan movies, I think I would put this in fourth place, since if I was to compare it to The Visit, I think that was more entertaining than this. Still, it was a decent movie, and I would recommend going to see it in the cinemas if you can.
(available for Nintendo Switch only)
As a way to keep Nintendo fans happy in the final year of the Switch, Nintendo has decided to bring out a small package release which resurrects their Nintendo World Championship brand. Though an official competition hasn’t happened since 2017, Nintendo wants to replicate the speed running effects of that competition for everyone, using several games from the NES. The game boasts a total of over 150 challenges in over 13 NES games- which includes Super Mario Brothers 1-3, both the USA and lost level versions of 2, Zelda 1 and 2, Excitebike, Ice Climber, Balloon Fight, and Kirby’s Adventure. A decent selection of games, though a couple of them do stand out for me.
Obviously Nintendo didn’t want to include third parties, so they couldn’t reflect the original World Championships cartridges that were given out, which meant that they couldn’t include Tetris or Racer.
The number of challenges vary throughout games, with exception of the lost levels, the Mario games get a ton of challenges, whereas Excitebike only gets a measly 5 challenges. All of the challenges range from Normal Difficulty, to Hard, and then Master. Each game comes with a Legend challenge, as well as a guide on how to get it as quick as possible. For example, the Super Mario challenge is to beat the entire game in one go, and the guide lets you know which Warp Pipes you have to use to get to World 8 as quickly as possible, and beat the game. At the time of writing, the best time I managed for that challenge was 7 minutes and 7 seconds.
Your time is measured up to each millisecond, I noticed challenges where the ranks differed by 10 to 20 millisecond. The ranks range from C at the absolute lowest, to the highest which are A++ and S ranks- which are very hard to get.
The challenges really do range in time quality, for example, one of the first ones you unlock is to get the first mushroom in Super Mario- you’re looking at about 4 to 6 seconds for this one.
I would say your enjoyment of these will depend on your nostalgia for NES games. I don’t have much nostalgia for them, I didn’t really play them until I had a Wii and had access to the virtual console. But surprisingly, I was getting into some of the speedrunning aspects like beating my own time!
Your best time is saved, if you don’t achieve it in Single Player mode and instead get it in Championship or Survival mode- but not if you achieve it in Offline Party mode.
The game comes with Speedrun Mode, Survival Mode (which takes on an elimination moe with 7 other ghost players) and World Championship Mode, where you’ll be putting in your best time possible and then comparing that with the rest of the world- and it also gives a separate rank for people competing that were born in the same year as you.
As expected, the emulation quality is actually quite good. If you ever look at footage of WiiU virtual console NES games and Nintendo Switch Online NES games, you can definitely tell that the emulation quality has gone up.
As far as I’m aware, the NES Remix team has made this game, and they obviously know how to get the best out of these sprites. Though, unlike NES Remakes, they don’t have to go back and make a bunch of new assets for this.
As for the challenge quality, well, it ranges on which game you pick. But if you stick to the games you already like, the challenges are really good. They’re relatively simple and really reward people who play these games a lot. It’s also rather telling that most of my best times early on before I looked up tips to get better were for Kirby and Mario, because they were the NES games I’ve played the most.
Weirdly, I’d say that probably the best amount of top quality challenges that provide challenge and fun comes from Super Mario Brothers 2 USA, and because of it I gained a new appreciation for it.
That being said, there are a few games here that are from parts of Nintendo that make me wish they scrapped them or added some third party choices to take the edge off them being here- I’ll get to that in the CON section.
This is probably my favourite part of the game, as mentioned before, you’re playing an elimination round with seven other players Replays- this is to ensure that there isn’t any lag, which you can’t afford to have if your game is relying on speed running.
You compete with other players in a series of challenges that alternate every Monday, which is the same with the World Championship mode. The challenges do coincide with that mode as well.
It is split into two divisions- Gold Division and Silver Division. It obviously takes the replay data of people who have done well in the Gold challenges and the people who didn’t do quite (but not terrible!) as well for Silver. I certainly found it easier to win Silver.
Half of the players are eliminated each round- 4 players in the first round, 2 players in the second, and then you compete with the last one for the top spot.
Gold really took me a long time to earn since it had a challenge where I had to learn a couple of tricks to beat the Master Level challenge that came with it, but I managed to pull it off in the end. I kind of wish there was a way to do multiplayer with your friends, but as a whole, I think Survival Mode was a good compromise, and it was the one I felt was most addictive. There was a lot of risk and reward to it, and it could really sting when you get eliminated!
World Championship Mode is quite interesting, because the rankings are kept separate from the main game. Though if you do achieve a higher best time in that mode it does turn up as your personal best replay in Speedrun Mode.
Obviously, it was good fun because I did spend a lot of time trying to get the best possible time, which resulted in me getting the top 16 in 1990-born players for completing the first level of Super Mario Brothers in the shortest time, which required me replaying that level A LOT.
You will want to get in the top 20% of the World Championship modes, because one of the collectible pins is locked behind it.
I like the fact that players that have done very well will have to repeat their times in order to rank well on the board, but you actually have to wait to get your rankings. When the challenge changed up, I had to wait a couple of hours before the results were accumulated. I was very nervous about achieving a better time in Speedrun or Survival mode because I might not have been able to replicate it again in Championship and it wouldn’t reflect my time. I wouldn’t mind if it became your personal best in Speedrun mode as well as becoming your best time in Championship mode.
It also means that there are no leaderboards to compare yourself with other people- which shocks me that that is an omission. There are leaderboards for World Championship mode, but not for every challenge. I have definitely heard other reviewers say that this is an issue for them as well.
This is the Offline Multiplayer mode. You play with a bunch of people and can either choose to do individual challenges where you can do whatever you want, or choose from a selection of pre determined party packs, these include things like First Time Speedrunners, beating some Boss Fights from Super Mario Brothers, in fact we did an entire challenge based off Boss Fights, including a few of the Legend Challenges in a row.
Party Mode does give you an estimate on how long each of the packs’ multiplayer sessions are going to go, and for newcomers it does allow a practice go before you try the real thing- annoyingly, it is there by default so we played it a few times without wanting to. I played this with my colleagues Reece, Elliot, and Ren, and we were mixed on the experience. I think it takes the right group to do it, because I noticed none of us were really into NES nostalgia or micro challenges. We couldn’t really get into the multiplayer aspect that a game like Mario Party would give us.
But there was another big problem. The screen size they give you when playing with 4 players is WAY TOO SMALL. This happens in Survival Mode too, but in that you can change the screen size for yourself. That option isn’t here in this mode and I think they should have made the screens a lot bigger, since I was struggling to see what I was doing in many sections, and as a result, I was doing a lot worse that I would in another mode.
The screen size didn’t help, even with a big monitor in docked mode. I think if we were to play this thing in portable, it would have been impossible.
If you’re not into World Championship Mode, I think Speedrun Mode won’t hold your attention too long. Once you get an S rank in about everything, there’s not much time you can shave off after a certain point. Without an Internet connection, this game has a very limited appeal.
This is a problem I noticed since nostalgia covers can really blind us. Not everything Nintendo brought out in that time period was a complete 10/10. Some of the games here are obvious classics and definitely deserve their place. Kirby’s Adventure and the Mario games with the expectation of some levels are really good.
But I noticed that some of these games haven’t aged as well. I won’t say too much against Metroid, since I did enjoy most of my time with the challenges, though the controls aren’t as great as I remembered, and it doesn’t help that the Gameboy Advance Remake just got put on Nintendo Switch Online and I just did a full playthrough of that.
Kid Icarus isn’t as good as people remember it- ti does have some good qualities, and I enjoyed some of the challenges, but it was also one that I’d only go back to if it turned up in World Championship or Survival Mode (which it did in the second week and was one of the hardest challenges to do).
The big offenders for me, were Ice Climbers for the terrible jumping physics, Balloon FIght, which controls appallingly still to this day (I’ve never understood why people enjoy it), but the prize for ‘I Never Want to Do This Unless I’m Forced To’ goes to Excitebike. I never want to play the original anymore. I would have taken the original Punch Out over this. It made me feel as though Nintendo really should have got out their cheque book for some third party games like MegaMan 2 or Castlevania.
I’m glad I played this game for an extra week, because I feel like in the second week the lustre was starting to come off it. I felt that the games were addictive, and this was a good way to play these games. If you don’t enjoy playing these games on NSO, there are still some issues. I think SIngle Player has limited appeal, and you have to be with the right kind of people for multiplayer.
That being said, I did go back to play Survival and World Championship mode quite a bit! SO I do think that this was a good game, but only if you think this game will appeal to you. If you don’t think you’ll like it, it won’t surprise you.
I think on a personal level, I’d give it an 8/10, particularly because of my experience in the first week playing, but I’m going to lower my score for the general public.
I do want this to sell well, because I would like to see Nintendo do this for their other consoles.
We chose our favourite anime of the spring season.
We talk about Digimon, GTO, One Piece and Jin Roh as they reach their anime 25th anniversary.
(available for Nintendo Switch only)
So, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD was announced alongside a bit of a filler lineup for what will probably be the final calendar year of the Nintendo Switch, since Nintendo has promised to reveal the console’s successor within the fiscal year, meaning the latest we will see it is March 2025.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD comes into a very crowded market, Nintendo has now shown up with a much bigger lineup of first- and third-party games that are coming out for the console later this year- so how does Luigi’s Mansion 2 stack up amongst them? Considering that this is a port of a 3DS game, granted, it’s one that has been cleaned up quite a bit, so much so that you could call it a remake instead of a remaster- but it is still trying to remake a game that is often considered the worst of the trilogy. It’s also being put alongside the third of this series on this console, which I think is the best one.
If you’ve played the original Luigi’s Mansion 2, it’s pretty much the same deal. You’re doing these Ghostbuster style levels and solving various puzzles with a bit of basic combat. The big difference this time is unlike Luigi’s Mansion 1 and 3, the game is divided into a mission structure, which are often quite short- you’re looking at about 15-to-20-minute missions, which is because it was originally made for the 3DS and was taking portable playing into account.
However, the Switch is part home console, so sometimes you’ll be playing this on your couch. In that sense, I don’t think it has worked very well.
I’ll give praise where it is deserved, Tantalus Media has done a great job updating it for the Switch. Nothing against Next Level Games who developed the original, they did a great job at working with what they had, but Tantalus has upgraded the game extremely well.
It doesn’t look as good as Luigi’s Mansion 3, but it does stand up with various other Switch games.
The one big problem it has though, is because it doesn’t look as good as Luigi’s Mansion 3, it does fail to impress in other regards. The main issue is the lighting, which was one of the biggest complaints it had when it came out- it felt like they had lost some of the atmosphere that the original had. I think when you blow it up to HD, it’s even more noticeable.
That being said, there are some good aspects to it also. I do think that the ghosts look slightly better this time, and they fit in a bit more than the designs in LM3. Though I don’t think the mansions look very good in the update. There are 5 mansions in total, and personally I don’t think they look that great in the update. They don’t look bad though, and I commend the team.
Luigi’s Mansion games traditionally have great soundtracks, and this one is no different. Personally, I think with all things considered, they’ve done a very good job updating the sound quality- some of those 3DS games really required headphones to get the most out of them, so getting an updated soundtrack is pretty good!
I will give credit that in every sense, this is a Luigi’s Mansion game. I do enjoy the combination of light combat and puzzle solving that the games provide. They also have very fun environments to explore!
However, I don’t think that the mission structures work. They work while I’m on the go- but when I’m at home, the tediousness really sunk in, especially considering that there’s not that many of them. They’re very repetitive, so you don’t necessarily want to go back and redo any of them unless you want to 100% the game. I just didn’t really enjoy it a lot of the time as a result.
Some of the missions were really good, but I didn’t feel the need to redo them, even if I enjoyed them, and the bad ones were really a slog.
This one really got on my nerves. I know the missions aren’t very long at all, but I found that most of them had little to no checkpoints, and that meant that I had to do the missions from the start every time! That made me put the game down on several occasions- this could have been an added quality of life improvement.
If they wanted to make it so that dying would affect your score, then they could have made it so that the timer keeps going when you come back from the checkpoint.
The only way you avoid it is to collect the Golden Bones that Polterpup provides you (yes, this is the game he was introduced in), but I only found that on a few occasions.
It also doesn’t help that upgrades are tied to collecting money in game, so you could be repeating levels to get more money for those upgrades. Which again, if you die on them, you’ll be repeating them a lot.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is not a bad game, it’s above average. But I don’t see why anyone was really wanting this one to come back. It’s a fine game, but the mission structure makes the game feel broken up too much. But I did enjoy the main aspects of the gameplay, the controls were fine enough (although I don’t think the gyro is as good on the Switch version), but I don’t understand why it exists, other than for Nintendo to have something to release in June because they couldn’t find a third-party game to publish.
I could get behind a remake collection of Luigi’s Mansion 1 & 2, because then you would have the entire trilogy on one console, but as it stands, I don’t think there’s a point of getting this game when Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a lot more beginner friendly.
“A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE”A Quiet Place: Day One is, as implied, a prequel movie set on the first day of the invasion from the movie A Quiet Place. It centres around a terminal cancer patient, Samira (played by Lupita Nyong’o), who wants to make a trip into New York city to get some pizza. Trust me, that makes sense in context. It basically follows the thread of, if you had only so long left to live, how do you spend your time?
The supporting cast is rather revolving. The most prevalent person is Eric (Joseph Quinn), a British law student studying in New York, who surprisingly, doesn’t show up until about halfway through the movie. As implied, this doesn’t involve the cast from the original movie or the sequel- there’s virtually no returning actors except for Djimon Hounsou.
John Krasinski doesn’t direct this one, though he does hold a writing credit- direction this time falls to Michael Sarnoski, who previously directed the film Pig, but otherwise, doesn’t have many other films directing to his legacy, he’s mostly known for shorts and TV series. That being said, this is his best movie! Granted, it’s a short list, but he does take to this franchise rather well.
The film continues its tradition of making sound scary. I think it’s actually kind of good that they managed to make a new setting this time. The other films did have some suburban settings, but they were mostly in depopulated areas. New York City provides an interesting location, and the film opens with a fact about the average sound output of New York, which is renowned for being a very busy and loud city, hence the nickname, ‘the city that never sleeps’. It’s used to the film’s advantage, and it allows for some great ideas. One of the most notable scenes, in my opinion, involves the mass walking sequence, which was used in part in the trailer. The way the tension was built in that scene was excellent!
I have to give some props to the actors; Lupita is really becoming one of my favourite actresses right now. I’ll say this again, the actors do take very well to a movie where they have to convey pretty much everything they do with facial expressions and gestures.
I’ve gone on about A Quiet Place when I reviewed the past two movies, and I might repeat myself quite a bit. But I really like both of those movies and I thought that they nailed the very experimental style and setting. One of the things I feared that the prequel movie might end up doing was that it would over explain what the invaders were about. We still don’t actually know what they are- we assume that they’re aliens, but they could be extra-dimensional or something else; but the fear comes from the fact that we don’t know much about them, which I think is a strength.
Fortunately, the film doesn’t go into the identity of the invaders, it just keeps up the same information that we learnt from A Quiet Place Part 2, which is that they fell from the sky, and if they hear you, they will kill you.
If I was to compare Day One with the other two movies, I do think that it feels like it’s trying to fit in too many sequences, which I think is a weakness. It was as if they really wanted these aliens in New York, so we have to come up with reasons why we’re in dangerous situations- and while none of them are too contrived, some of them are borderline.
I think the theming around terminal illness, in reflection, is executed very well, which is something that often isn’t very well handled in a lot of movies.
Plus, I have to give credit- this film has one of the best final shots and I really loved it.
“THE BIKERIDERS”The Bikeriders is a film that is very much a passion project from creator Jack Nichols, and is based on a book by Danny Lyon, where he interviewed and took photos of several biker gangs in Illinois. The story takes place between the late 1950’s and the early 1970’s.
It centres around the social club of bikers, led by Johnny (Tom Hardy). Inspired by Marlon Brando movies, and a slow descent into thuggery with the influence of outside members.
The film has a larger, more central focus on a gang member Benny (Austin Butler), and his relationship with Kathy (Jodie Comer), who acts as a sort of narrator for large parts of the movie.
I personally thought that this film was an interesting one based off the trailers alone, and I think that the trailers didn’t prepare people for how violent the movie actually was. For one thing, the film is very much a piece about the descent of people into thuggery, but I was given the impression that Danny was always a thug with a code of conduct, especially with some of his actions towards the end of the movie.
Granted, there are some embellishments on the true story, I’m almost certain that some names have been changed and there is some poetic licence- but I do think it captures that portion of history quite well. This film could have been a character piece, but the film jumps around a bit too much for that. For example, Michael Shannon is in the movie for a brief period, but I completely forgot he was in it! They did a very good job of making him almost unrecognisable.
The standout who I haven’t spoken about yet is Norman Reedus, playing the character Funny Sonny. Norman Reedus really looks like he was born to play this kind of character. He was one of the standout parts for me because of how infectious he is, he looked like he was having the time of his life!
Tom Hardy also gives a great performance, and he was finally given a script that suits his performance style quite well and has stopped being miscast as a comic book villain. I also think Austin Butler is a standout in this, too, between this and Elvis he has really become an actor that I’m looking out for these days! He’s definitely showing that he has a lot of versatility- especially since in this he plays a quiet character, so a lot of his emotion and performance comes through his facial expressions. I kind of wish there was a little more time devoted to the relationship between Benny and Kathy, since it only really becomes an important part of the film towards the end and is glossed over for the most part. They did a decent job of it, otherwise.
The film doesn’t overstay its welcome, while there are some things that could be expanded on, the runtime is only 2 hours, which I think is to its benefit. I was definitely feeling the film starting to drag towards the end, but it finishes just in time that it wasn’t an issue. While I said the film was about thuggery, I will say it wasn’t a majorly graphic film, which might have been because of budget or classification reasons, the team might have wanted to do more gory effects, but minds were changed last minute.
Personally, this isn’t the kind of film that I usually enjoy. But, if I look at it objectively, I think there are many things of merit in this film. I think that the cast works very well, and they give excellent performances, and if I had to say anyone was underdone in this, it was Jodie Comer, who’s character felt like an afterthought at times. Which is a shame, because when she’s on screen, she’s excellent!
The Bikeriders is a good movie, but I’m not sure I could go ahead and say it was great. I think that’s because it could have delved into the characters more. It’s clearly a passion project, but I would also say that while he has achieved many things, I don’t think he managed to fit everything he wanted into this movie.
“INSIDE OUT 2”Inside Out 2 is the sequel to Pixar’s 2015 movie, Inside Out- which I’m assuming most people reading this review have read since it made a ton of money in the box office at the time. In case you don’t want to go back and read my review for the previous film, I really liked it! It was creative, imaginative, and the casting was good too. But when I watched it, I never thought, ‘this is something that needs a sequel’… maybe a couple of shorts, but not a sequel! In fact, we got that when Pixar made the short ‘Riley’s First Date’. Not a bad short, but not particularly good, either.
But Pixar really likes doing sequels to pad out the catalogue while they work on original ideas, and I certainly feel this is the case with Inside Out 2. I think it’s interesting that while they kept the original cast, they changed the director, this time it’s Kelsey Mann (he wrote for The Good Dinosaur and some Pixar shorts) instead of Pete Docter.
I’m kind of wondering if Disney thinks that this film will succeed on name value alone, because I have seen next to no marketing. It obviously worked in the few days before I went to see the film as it was reported that the movie had been a high grossing movie and was set to be one of the biggest box office draws of 2024 so far.
If you recall the Puberty Button from the end of the first movie, this sequel’s plot basically deals with that. We get four new emotions, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Houser), who are now all causing havoc with Riley’s emotions at a weekend away on an ice hockey camp. With Anxiety thinking the emotions Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger are interfering with her plan, she sends them away whilst retrieving Riley’s sense of self. If that sounds a lot like the last movie, don’t be too surprised- I get a sense that the instructions for this movie were to play it safe.
That’s not to say it’s bad, in fact I thought it was quite good and there’s a sequence in particular towards the end of the movie that was really well handled- but I do feel like it’s a film that isn’t trying anything as bold or as interesting as the first movie. In fact, it borrows so much from the first that apart from the emotions, there isn’t much of anything new here. Even then, a couple of them feel a bit sidelined- Envy doesn’t get much to do in this movie and Ennui is just there for ‘don’t care about the world’ teenager gags. This is really centred around Anxiety, so it’s good that Maya Hawke is very good in the role, which is great considering this is her first voice acting role.
The returning cast are as good as ever, top props to Amy Poehler as Joy and Lewis Black as Anger- although I will say that in his case I get a sense that the volume button was turned down with him.
The biggest thing I was thinking of in this movie was that this was kind of a vague premise to work with, and that there was perhaps a bolder movie in here somewhere that got scrapped at the last minute. If anything, it feels like a video game that has downloadable content added to it: here’s a bunch of ideas that we had for the original Inside Out that we’re now going to cram into this one. I also didn’t like that the beginning of the film relies on some of the characters kind of regressing from their arcs in the first movie.
That being said, with Anxiety being the slightly antagonistic force in this really glues the movie together. I will say that the designs of the characters are excellent, too. The new characters get really good designs and Embarrassment was a good one in particular. In terms of animation, this looks great, especially considering there were a few sequences where the team was able to be slightly more experimental.
Despite the fact that a few things are repeated, the jokes are fresh and new. But one of the jokes that was repeated was that stupid gum advert jingle that is now stuck in my head again!
“UNDER PARIS”Under Paris is a French production that has gone straight to Netflix in the UK and other countries, and I believe it got a short cinema run in France. I’d heard about this film but I hadn’t paid much attention to it- I have to be honest, despite the fact that I’m a huge fan of sharks, I’m not as much of a fan of shark movies, they just never seem to take into account shark science and have to really resort to sci-fi nonsense to make it work- or at least make up for the fact that they’re making up a reason as to why the sharks are going nuts.
I think they often don’t understand that one of the things that made Jaws work was the fact that we went for quite long periods in that film where there were no kills. Before I tell you, think about how many characters die in Jaws. I’ll tell you: it’s only 5! It has a very reserved body count. Technically, it was meant to be slightly higher, but go and read about the film’s production or watch some videos about it and you’ll find out why.
Under Paris got my attention because a lot of people were saying it was the best shark movie since Jaws, and granted, that’s not a very high bar- but I wanted to see it and decide for myself.
If I had to say what I felt was the best shark movie since Jaws was, I would have to go with the Australian film Open Water (2003) which really showed the realism, or the Blake Lively movie The Shallows (2016) which I previously reviewed, – even though I don’t understand why the shark wants to attack the humans when there was a perfectly good whale carcass…
Under Paris does have an English dub, but I wouldn’t recommend it, since the lip synching is terrible, so I would recommend watching this with subtitles. I only made it a few minutes through the movie before I made the swap.
I don’t want to give away too much of what happens, but the basic plot is about a shark scientist, who after losing her entire team including her husband to a shark attack, is called in to investigate another potential shark in the river, who also might be using the catacombs.
Despite what some people have said, it’s not really doing many things different from other shark movies. They do resort to a lot of sci-fi nonsense later on, which I don’t think justifies it, and they don’t explain why saltwater sharks are suddenly able to survive in a river- which, yeah, it’s deep, but it’s not that deep. Before anyone brings up that whale that swam up the Thames, I’ll remind you that it didn’t live!
It borrows quite a few beats from Jaws, particularly from the Mayor of Paris, who is trying not to create a panic before a major triathlon (this film was obviously trying to coincide with the upcoming Paris Olympics, which they do mention, but probably couldn’t get the licence to include it in the film).
I found it interesting where the antagonistic aspect of this film comes from, and I’ll be interested to see how audiences take this, considering while the mayor is one of the main bad guys in this movie, she kind of becomes a secondary bad guy, and it becomes an ecological group who became the antagonists. They basically feel like a mix between PETA and Just Stop Oil. While I don’t think the portrayal is meant to attack those groups, since I think that their inclusion is meant to show how arrogance blinds you to dangers, I certainly wonder how it’s going to play out- especially considering how the protagonists of this film are some shark scientists and a bunch of police officers.
As for the shark effects, they’re fine. It’s obvious for most of the movie that it’s CGI, but it looks good. The sharks definitely look as though they fit in the environment for the most part, and some of the scenes in the catacombs are really tense as a result of how good the effects are, which is backed up by this film’s soundtrack, which I found excellent.
Here’s the thing, I don’t think that this film succeeds in several regards. While I do think they’ve done an excellent job with practical effects, some of them look a bit ropey, especially in a bright setting. One kill in particular looked really ridiculous.
The triathlon aspect towards the end of the film felt like a contrivance of ‘how do we get a load of people to be swimming in the river to up the body count?’. Despite the fact that they try to bring in some shark science, it does eventually turn back into typical movie monsters.
That being said, this has one of the most bat-shit insane endings to a shark movie I have ever seen, and I think that’s one of the things that is a major strength of the movie, but I do also wonder if this is meant to be a cap off to the storyline or if it’s a build to a potential franchise.
(available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X & S, and PC. Nintendo Switch version used for this review)
Little Kitty Big City opened a Nintendo Direct recently, and sort of looked like a cross between Stray and Untitled Goose Game. It’s essentially a game where you play as a cat that’s been knocked out of a high rise, and you have to figure a way back there by completing certain puzzles for various animals around the city, with parts being locked off until you gain new abilities.
It’s very simple, and in terms of game length, it’s not particularly long. It’s still well put together, being made by Seattle-based Double Dagger Studio, who do an interesting cartoony art style, that I like.
The game does try to give you a bunch of extra challenges to do, some of which are useful to unlock extra parts of the city, and eventually getting back to your house in the high rise, but once I figured out what particular item I needed to get back, I just focused on getting that and finished up my playthrough. I did miss a couple, but I was surprised that I didn’t actually miss too much by the time I was done with my playthrough.
The cat actually controls very well, you get a decent jump and you hold it down to do an extra wide jump, you have to learn how to crouch and pounce to get birds- whose feathers are used as currency, you get some extra emotes for the cat (outside of a few puzzles, they’re a little useless), and yes, in the Switch version, you use X to meow.
My favourite aspect of it is that the left and right triggers are used to swipe using the cat’s left or right paw. You’ll also need to pick certain things up, for example, there’s a bird I found that ruined a smartphone and can’t tweet anymore, so you have to steal another person’s phone and give it to the bird- I’ll leave you to figure out how you get the phone off them!
There are also a lot of optional challenges that use trigger buttons, like landing all of the footballs in goals that are around the city.
The city itself is interesting to explore, the environments don’t change all that much, but for a small open world, it’s actually really fun to explore.
The puzzles are mostly alright, I barely had to look up a guide for the unnecessary ones, though there are a few times where it’s easy to become stuck on what to do next- particularly when it involves parts of the city you can and can’t go to.
I think my favourite puzzle was reuniting the ducklings with their father, that one was fun! I will say that depending on how many puzzles you decide to do, does affect the final portion of the game in an interesting way.
Little Kitty Big City isn’t too expensive, at least in terms of paying for a luxury… On Steam, it’s currently £20.99, though it’s actually not very long at all- I think you can beat this game in about 3 to 4 hours if you’re not going for everything.
Weirdly, I went through the game with the perception that the Untitled Goose Game was longer, but to my surprise, they actually have about the exact same length depending on which method you want to play the game in.
If you think that that length of play is too dear for £20, then I would say skip this one until there’s a price drop, since there’s not too much that you can do to artificially lengthen the game. I did a few puzzles and achievements and got all of the fast travel points before I got to the final portion of the game, and getting back to the high rise doesn’t actually end the game completely, you can go back down to the city immediately and finish off what you need to do to check off your list.
The only thing I didn’t do was get all of the big collectibles in this game, and that was the hats, and there’s a reason for this: the cat looks ridiculous in all of them, and I never equipped any of them. Mainly it’s due to my aversion to animals wearing human clothes, but I couldn’t be bothered going around for all of these. If you have a need to collect all of these, more power to you.
I can’t speak for the other versions, because even though at the time of this review, this game is available on Game Pass, I didn’t download the other versions for this review. But I did see footage of those versions, and I had a bit of envy- because the framerate on the Switch is significantly lower and suffered a lot more with performance. Obviously, the Switch’s age is playing a factor in this, since a lot of releases this year have had issues when it comes to Switch, HOWEVER, I wouldn’t expect that a game like Little Kitty Big City would have these kinds of issues. I had slowdown on a couple of occasions, and while the framerate would usually stick at a good 30FPS, it did actually chug in a couple of areas.
Little Kitty Big City is a good, small, cosy game, and if you like that, it’s pretty good. I personally thought that it was an alright experience, but not one I wanted to 100%. I’m glad I played it, but it’s not the best indie game I’ve played and I think that for Nintendo Switch owners, there’s a lot of games like this that run a lot better- if you want a good cosy game that has animals in it, I recommend Spiritfarer! If you’re playing on a different platform and want a good cat game, I still recommend Stray.
