So, I’m writing another favourites list, not on Notes or using Topsters but on my own, broken down genre by genre; a 1-25 numerical list doesn’t do my thoughts on everything justice and let’s face it: that’s boring.

I’m more experienced in some genres than others and I’m a child of the 2000’s so please don’t cry if your favourite overlooked gem on the Amstrad that only you, your cousins and your uncle ever played doesn’t top any of my categories. I’m going to be omitting Puzzle games and JRPG’s and a few other genres too because I simply have not played enough to give it the proper thought, plus a Fighting section comprised entirely of Tekken wouldn’t be very interesting. Some games I can’t pin a genre to as well so I left them out; what do you call Ocarina Of Time? Action & Adventure? RPG? I don’t have a clue.

Enjoy.

3D Platformer

1: Super Mario 64

Being born in 2000, I was alive for the latter half of the 3D platformer boom and played many titles in the genre but as of now, my heart is set on SM64 as the top dog. I wish I had a more shocking and refined gem to put here but I’m not above saying it as it is and recognising the classics. It feels almost superfluous to even talk about how good this game is, you’ve all played it anyway.

I didn’t play Super Mario 64 in its entirety until I was an adult and since then I’ve been revisiting the game regularly. It controls really well to this day, has lots of fun levels and getting 100% is a lot more manageable than it is in, say, Super Mario Odyssey; I prefer shorter games to longer ones.

Some might put Odyssey in SM64’s place but I found that game to be too easy and the gimmick was never used to its full potential.

2: Ratchet & Clank 2: Locked And Loaded (Going Commando)

When I was growing up, the glorious trifecta of GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox reigned supreme, with the PSP, GBA and the DS on the side for those of us who needed to evolve Machoke into Machamp or to play Vice City at school. Sony’s premier platformer franchise on PlayStation 2 was Ratchet & Clank: a relentlessly charming, sometimes cynically humoured shooter/platformer hybrid that brought child Lawrence hours of fun. Much like the rest of PlayStation, I’ve always felt this series fell off after the PS2 and never quite hit the same.

The Ratchet & Clank quadrilogy on PS2 are all worth playing but after a marathon a couple of years ago I’ve decided the second one is my favourite, closely followed by Gladiator, which is #4. As the games went on they became more about wave-based shooting and frantic combat than platforming; the first game is a little clunky and unrefined and R&C 3 is an awkward mix of new and old but Locked And Loaded and Gladiator are the best of traditional and shooter Ratchet & Clank respectively.

3: PoP: The Sands Of Time & Warrior Within

Probably one of my more controversial retro gaming opinions here, I think Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within is extremely underrated and every bit as good as The Sands Of Time; I’ll try to put only one game per spot from now on but I seriously can’t decide which of these I like more. These 2 games give me fuzzy, nostalgic feelings.

I grew up playing both. At home I had The Sands Of Time and Warrior Within I played when at extended family’s house because I was much too young for it… but with the ‘supervision’ of older cousins, it couldn’t be helped. The Sands Of Time has the better atmosphere, one of gaming’s great love stories and superior platforming but Warrior Within has this dark, grungy, Middle Eastern gothic aesthetic with brutal, gory combat, a fucking sick soundtrack and a story that means a lot more to me as an adult. It was panned back in the day for being ‘edgy’ and… well, yes, it is but there’s more to it than that and 2 decades later, I find it super evocative of those times.

Ubisoft need to stop pissing about and make another 3D PoP game.

2D Platformer

1: Donkey Kong Country

This was a very easy pick to be quite honest. I’m going to expose myself to flak as a retro man and say that I broadly have a preference for 3D games over 2D: there’s only so much you can do with a game in the 2D space in my opinion, so it takes a lot for this kind of platformer to really hook me and DKC just makes me smile every time I play it. Donkey Kong Country’s one flaw is that the hit detection can be a bit suspect, other than that? I think it’s the perfect sidescroller.

Many people prefer this game’s sequel and that’s a fantastic game too, DKC2 has the more interesting level design, a sharper difficulty, even more impressive visuals and overall excels in the variety department, however, I find the difficulty erodes that sweet, comfy feeling I get when playing a classic platformer and DKC2 will never have the associated CO-OP memories with my mum either.

2: Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Many prefer Sonic 3, some may even choose Sonic CD or Sonic Mania as their favourite but it has to be Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for me; this is the entry in the 2D Sonic franchise I have the most hours in, even if the sequel is arguably better.

Sonic 2 refined the gameplay of the original while vastly improving the level design and gave us some of the most iconic stages on the Mega Drive. As always with this series, it’s got plenty of rough edges and many would point to the Shinobi games or Ristar as better titles but they aren’t as unique or as stylish as Sonic. If the original Sonic trilogy hadn’t been re-released ad nauseum, I think they would be scrutinised and picked apart less by the internet; I never see people going back to discuss what a shit game Super Mario Bros. 2 is in the same way that they rip apart the original Sonic, yeah, I said it. Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z don’t remember how good pre-Xbox 360 Sonic was and it shows.

3: Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood

Rondo Of Blood is my favourite Castlevania game and easily one of the hardest games I’ve ever finished; I did it as Richter, not Maria and good God was it an arduous task. This game opens with an Orthodox prayer and you’ll need it because to conquer Rondo, you’ll have to embark on a theosis of your own.

It’s not all about challenge though, Rondo has a beautifully realised 16-Bit world, great music, fairer boss fights than some of the older games and multiple paths and playable characters for maximum replay value. This game’s modern PlayStation exclusivity and origins on a console that never released in Europe can make it a pain in the ass to get a hold of legitimately today but trust me, it’ll be worth it. I’m still furious they sullied my favourite Belmont with the abysmal Castlevania Nocturne on Netflix based on this game.

Strategy And Tactics

2: Crusader Kings 2

The strategy umbrella is quite niche so I decided to combine tactics, RTS and grand strategy all in one with this section.

When I tell people my favourite grand strategy game I usually say Hearts Of Iron 4, partly because it’s the one I tend to reach to first and also because I feel obligated based on my mammoth playtime… but I’d still say Crusader Kings 2 is the one, deep down. Compared to the sequel, Crusader Kings 2 is ugly as sin, obtuse and borderline hostile to the player but if you can get over all that it’s a deeper game with more focus, sharper mechanics and despite the popularity of CK3 with YouTubers, this one has the wackier options as well; I have sealed portals to hell, fought off Aztec invasions of Europe and become immortal in CK2 before.

This game started my grand strategy obsession back in 2016 and is one of those titles that instantly brings me back to a specific time and place in my life. As a teen my adult tastes were beginning to form and after heavy days of study and itchy secondary school jumpers, CK2 was the game for me. I still play it more than the third game.

2: Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is my favourite RTS game ever made by a wide margin. The scale of this game, intricate balance of its original 3 factions and the dedicated modding and PvP communities for it ensure that it will probably stay that way forever too.

Forged Alliance is a standalone expansion to the original game which is itself a spiritual successor to 1997’s Total Annihilation. Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance -like the rest of this community, I will pretend SupCom 2 never happened- are games focused on massive scale and WMD’s. Maps are enormous and facilitate units on land, air and in the sea as well as extremely powerful experimental units and you can also build stuff like nuclear weapons and long-range missile silos. The story is nothing to write home about but the 3 factions: UEF (United Earth Federation) Cybran Nation and the Aeon Illuminate are all balanced in really interesting ways; the UEF has the best naval forces, strong sentry turrets and its units are very tanky to make up for their reliance on conventional ballistics so they are my favourite. This game had a decent Xbox 360 port which I have great memories of, PvP-ing with my mates.

Forged Alliance adds a fourth faction: the Seraphim but they aren’t as well balanced and are probably the least popular.

3: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Up until 3 weeks ago I would’ve told you that XCOM: Enemy Unknown was my favourite tactics game and given you a whole explanation about its merits over the sequel, the dated original and other titles I’ve played in the resurgent tactics genre… but then I gave Three Houses a try on a whim and it’s one of the best games I’ve played in years.

I reviewed this game less than a week ago so I don’t want to talk about 3H at length again here but to summarise its best bits, 3H is rich in depth, highly customisable, has incredible replay value and oozes charm like an overstuffed pie.

First Person Shooter

1: Halo 3

It seems inevitable that whenever you profess your love for Halo on the internet, a flock of PC supremacists will insist to you that Half Life 2 was better, retro people turn up their noses at Xbox, Call Of Duty fans will insist that classic CoD was better and the general gaming public regard Halo as the brainless Mountain Dew series with Master Chief on the cover. These people are wrong. The truth is… you just had to be there, in Halo 3’s prime on Xbox 360 it was the game everybody had, it was a wellspring of everlasting fun and it made me friends who I wound up eventually meeting in real life and continuing to play online with for another 15 years. Halo 2 had the better campaign and Halo: CE is arguably more iconic but Halo 3 is the most complete and well-rounded Triple-A FPS game I ever will play.

Halo was always the methodical and strategic counterpart to CoD’s twitchy, hyper-fast gameplay, Halo is about map control, seizing power weapon spawns and trying to put together a deadly weapon combo like the Plasma Pistol and Battle Rifle or the Energy Sword and any indoor space, or the Xbox 360 headset and language that got you hit with the Code Of Conduct and banned for a week. But more than anything, Halo 3 was a party game: a game about sharing your maps and game modes and not taking things too seriously. The Master Chief Collection version of Halo 3 reduces the most community-centred FPS experience in Triple-A history to essentially a texture pack.

2: TimeSplitters 2 & Future Perfect

Please don’t make me choose between them.

TimeSplitters was the wondrous culmination of all the lessons the ex-Rare employees of Free Radical learned making GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark meeting the new and improved technology of the PS2; the result was the Nintendo 64 FPS formula reaching perfection before fading away for good. TimeSplitters was a nightmare for publishers and under constant behind the scenes conflict throughout the trilogy; as it turns out, it’s almost impossible to market an FPS game set across all of human history but strong word of mouth and high review scores kept Free Radical’s baby going.

A TimeSplitters revival failed to make it to shelves not once but twice and the fan-made TimeSplitters Rewind took so long to come out that most people forgot about it by the time it launched… and I haven’t tried it because it kind of looks cheap and amateurish if I’m being harsh and honest.

3: Arma 3

I’m very partial to a good tactical shooter/mil-sim game and for me? The pinnacle of that subgenre is Arma 3. I have over 1000 hours in this game and there was a time where me and my former mates’ mod list was over 150GB. Aside from that, I’ll always have fondness for Arma 3 because it made me a PC gamer; I got my first rig specifically to play this game, HOI4 and Space Engineers.

Arma 3 has a reputation as this super hardcore mil-sim game and while that is true, it’s also basically like a mil-sim Gmod with packs made for every franchise possible and with maps imported from all over; a classic recipe for fun is to download all the Halo mods and plug the UNSC and Covenant faction into a random mission generator, throw on a suit of Mjolnir and suddenly, you’ve got a realistic Halo game. The only side-effect of playing a lot of Arma is you get the worrying ability to recognise weapons systems and fairly obscure AK models.

Third Person Shooter

1: Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet is one of Capcom’s more forgotten franchises and there hasn’t been a new one in 13 years so let me pitch Lost Planet to you like this: do you like Monster Hunter? Do you like shooters? Do you think flying mechs with gatling guns would make Monster Hunter more fun? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you’ll enjoy Lost Planet. The first game was a story-focused title with a surprisingly fun, tacked-on multiplayer so Lost Planet 2 in 2010 was turned into a full-blown, Western-style CO-OP TPS with bombastic boss fights and an improved online experience, again, you sort of had to be there at the time but this game was amazing with friends.

While you can find LP2 on Steam it is no longer for sale which is tragic and I have no idea if the online infrastructure would work on old hardware any more; the first game is also worth playing but Lost Planet 3 was a plodding stinker of a game. The series was put on ice after critics hated the second and third games.

2: Resident Evil 4

I can practically feel the tomatoes whizzing past my head as they’re launched at me by the audience.

Resident Evil 4 is the favourite Resident Evil game of people who don’t like Resident Evil and don’t know anything about the franchise either. It’s a revolutionary title with extraordinarily fun gameplay, fantastic replay value and satisfying combat… but it’s also spectacularly ugly, turned Leon into a stupid dudebro and set up RE to become a franchise of 6/10 brown shooters for the next 12 years until RE7 put it back on track. I do love this game still but it’s taken me a long time to reach that conclusion and I roll my eyes when people name it the best Resident Evil game when I’m not sure I’d even put it in the top 3.

I’ve never understood how people whinge and moan about tank controls in classic Resident Evil when RE4 has them too and it’s even worse because you can’t see anything without being on a constant swivel. Sometimes, I wonder if people even tried the tank controls at all for more than 5 minutes before complaining; tell me you died to the window dogs in the East Wing L-Corridor without actually saying you died there.

3: Vanquish

Vanquish came out at a time when the market was saturated with third person shooters: Gears Of War was at the height of its popularity, Lost Planet was very much still alive and other series like Army Of Two were making ground as well. While those shooters were muddy brown, slow and often cover-based, Vanquish was fast, stylish and colourful as Platinum’s Games often are; it was also around this time that publisher Sega seemed to be finally recovering from the misfortunes they suffered 9 years prior with the death of the Dreamcast.

Truth be told, I haven’t revisited Vanquish since I played it back in the day but I really enjoyed seeing others discover this cult-classic when it was remastered a while ago, it truly deserved better when it was originally launched.

Open World

1: Crackdown 1 & 2

Back in the Xbox 360 era, before Don Mattrick had a Wii-induced psychosis around the year 2010 and decided that mature video games weren’t the future of a video game console sold on its mature image for a decade, Microsoft’s console was firmly the first among equals. With Halo 3 on the horizon and play testers being a bit lukewarm on the game the decision was made to entice players to buy Crackdown with bundled in codes to the Halo 3 Beta codes. This helped the game immensely and Crackdown was the 51st best selling game on 360… but in my opinion, it didn’t need any help. This open world crime fighting extravaganza where you play as super soldiers with upgradeable stats and transforming cars is a classic of the era.

Crackdown 2 is a bit more complicated but considering the game was rushed out to market after the original developer collapsed? I think it’s a worthy sequel and the zombie hordes at night were great fun to plough through. These are both 360 must haves and even better if you can play them with friends.

2: Far Cry 2

Today, Far Cry is one of the most tedious, unimaginative and milked-dry franchises out there but its beginnings were a lot more experimental.

The original Far Cry -which I somehow haven’t played- was a sort of unofficial rival to Crysis and up until the parts where you fought mutants for some reason, it was a lot more grounded; I’m one of those people who thinks Crysis was a bit crap so I have to assume Far Cry 1 is better.

Far Cry 2 -actually Far Cry 3 and with no connection to the original- went in another direction: gritty, dirty reality. Far Cry 2 sees you playing as one of a wide cast of mercenaries in a corner of Africa ripped to shreds by poverty, conflict diamonds, foreign interference and warfare, you fight for factions nobody has heard of for goals nobody believes in and kill soldiers that nobody will remember in a quest to bump off a notorious arms dealer. Weapons rust and fall apart, injuries are fixed with that trademark Far Cry grossly animated first-aid and the contrast between the lush jungles, savannah and desert with the dilapidated shanty towns and ruined cities make this a deeply immersive and striking campaign.

Far Cry 2 also had a brilliant multiplayer with an insanely deep map creator; me and my mates actually ran the only active lobby on Xbox multiplayer for probably 6-12 months in the mid-2010’s, logging on every day with new map rotations and seeing a lot of returning players. If you were playing FC2 around this time on 360/Xbox One then hello again, we probably met without you knowing it.

3: TLoZ: Breath Of The Wild

Breath Of The Wild has featured in my lists before and I’ve recounted my reasons why as well so I won’t go too in-depth; I’m sure everyone has played this game by now anyway, this is the Resident Evil 4 of the Zelda franchise: the one people who haven’t played a single other Zelda game swear is the best in the series.

To cut a long story short? I wouldn’t be a gamer anymore if this didn’t come out and as much as I hope this version of the series dies off on the Switch 2, it’s a modern classic and fully deserving of every bit of praise it gets.

Survival & Crafting

1: Subnautica

Subnautica holds a few prestigious accolades in my personal gaming recollection: the Game Preview on Xbox One was the first game I ever bought with my own money when I was 16, it’s easily my favourite indie game ever made… and Subnautica is the only game that frightens me. Not shock from jump scares, legitimate fear. I can happily play Resident Evil until the cows come home but Subnautica is a game I can only handle in short bursts. Deep, dark, vast water has always bothered me: the bit in Twilight Princess where you sink into the Lakebed Temple boss room makes me uneasy to this day and the monster that kills you in out of bounds water in Jak 3 used to scare me as a kid… and Subnautica is all about this sort of thing.

Subnautica is the best game in this genre because it actually gives me something to do, I’m not told to ‘let me imagination run wild’ or some nonsense like that, your character is stranded on an oceanic world infested with plague and nightmarish sea creatures; uncover the truth of the civilisation that once flourished here, cure the plague and escape. Between you and freedom are deep, pitch black waters, slender snake-like sea monsters that roar at you and try to swallow your submarines whole and translucent blue, even bigger monsters that scream at you and countless more fauna you wouldn’t want to bump into on a night time swim.

The moment Subnautica 2 leaves early access it’s getting reviewed, I can’t wait to play it.

2: Minecraft

It’s hard to describe to anyone who wasn’t there how rapid and all-consuming the rise of Minecraft was.

It started as a whisper: my friend downloaded one of the beta versions on his laptop and was telling me about it on Xbox Live sometime in 2011, then the mainstream publications began to shout about this ugly looking block game from Sweden and how addictive it was, then YouTube picked it up and a gaming revolution began; one by one, sales records were broken, ports were released and the landscape of gaming was upended forever. I still remember the day Minecraft reached Xbox in early 2012 and the game was the perfect bonding tool for me and my new classmates -who later became my teenage years best friends- when I moved across the UK to a big city.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours in Minecraft across many different versions and although the game has gotten a little too overstuffed, over-optimised and corporate for me today, I still log on a few times a year to potter about and enjoy being in that comfy world again.

3: Terraria

I don’t hear many people talking about Terraria anymore; this is a game more famous perhaps for how many ‘final update’ announcements it’s gotten over the years before continuing on anyway. Regardless of its fading popularity in comparison to its ‘rival’ Minecraft, Terraria has always been a game of a different sort. Rather than building for building’s sake, or exploring with an option to fight one or two bosses, Terraria is all about housing NPC’s hunting down dozens of bosses and seeking awesome new weapons.

Far from ‘2D Minecraft’ Terraria is a combat-centric adventure… or at least it was back in the day when I was into it. I don’t have people to play with anymore and Terraria is a bit sterile on your own so for now, this one is staying in my past, a great game though.

Action And Adventure

I know this is a bit of a nebulous genre but I’m going to define it as third person games with a cinematic bent… I think we instinctively know what type of game this is.*

1: Batman: Arkham City

This is another one of those games that instantly takes me back to a specific time and place in my life; when Arkham City came out I was 11 years old, still living in my childhood town in the West Midlands, which is the best part of the UK because it doesn’t feel like the locals want to bang your head in with clubs like Wales, people are friendly unlike smarmy Southern England where everyone behaves like the Malfoys from Harry Potter and unlike ‘teh Norf’, being from the Midlands isn’t people’s entire personality.

Anyway, before I turn any more of my countrymen away from the Journal, Batman: Arkham City is the best superhero game ever made. This game isn’t filled with Ubisoft tedious bollocks like Sony’s Spider-Man games and it even has the late, great Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman, the Arkham series pioneered that hand to hand combat system that so many games still use that relies on parrying and building up a large combo meter as well. Listen, I hate superheroes too… but Batman is the exception and the Arkham trilogy are essential titles from the last 20 years of gaming.

2: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I say it every time but for those of us just joining us on the Journal, I don’t like Sony very much, I think after the PS2 they mostly couldn’t find their way until The Last Of Us made them a load of money and the decision was then made to produce boring Oscar-bait from then on. All that being said, the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s working-it-out phase did produce some games I’m quite fond of and the Uncharted trilogy is the jewel in that particular crown. I wish this was the series that got milked dry and not God Of War or TLoU.

Uncharted 2 is the best of the series. It doesn’t have that dusting of “We wish we were making films instead.” Like Uncharted 4 and it isn#t as janky as the original game or as ‘meh’ as Uncharted 3; I love how you go to corners of the world not often depicted in video games in this one and the big set-piece on the train is a highlight of this era of gaming for me.

3: God Of War 3

I’m struggling to think of more games for this section as of now and I haven’t played enough in the genre for a hack ‘n’ slash top 3 so I’m going to show my appreciation for God Of War 3 here.

I had a PS4 briefly during the late-1010’s and Covid so while we were all under lock and key, I decided to play through the God Of War games, among others; I had the demo disc for the original on PS2 but I was too young to ever be allowed the genuine article. I’m pleased to say I enjoyed all 4 mainline titles (Ragnarök wasn’t out yet) but God Of War 3 was my favourite. All the boss fights in this game are incredibly memorable, I love the brutal QTE finishing moves and the remaster is quite stunning. Gameplay doesn’t really evolve much over the course of the trilogy but it didn’t need to: it was fun on the PS2 and it stayed fun until Kratos’ rancour was over.

Racing

1: Forza Horizon 4

There are racing games with better soundtracks than Forza Horizon 4, Gran Turismo might have the better driving and Australia might be more exotic… but Horizon 4 brought open-world racing to the UK and for that reason, it hits different. A British developer making a British racing game focused on British car culture, the results were fantastic. Forza Horizon 4 has Top Gear missions, classic British-made car models and the map is a wondrous pastiche of rural Britannia.

Horizon 4 has long since gone unlisted thanks to the ass-ache of car manufacturer licensing but you should absolutely track yourself down a physical copy if you own an Xbox, this game is an authentic feeling slice of the UK with mud, rain and grey skies included. The roads are more interesting than in Horizon 5’s Mexico and unlike in Horizon 3’s Australia, you won’t be driving upside down.

2: Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

Rockstar are too high in the fumes of the old and reeking Grand Theft Auto Online to ever bother returning to Midnight Club but as sad as that is, we still have a full series of fantastic racing games to return to.

Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition is frequently frustrating and the randomness of falling telephone poles and the occasional bus can make races exceedingly irritating but you’ll keep playing anyway because this tough-as-nails racer’s sharpest edges are softened by smooth driving, deep car customisation and an atmosphere drenched in 2000’s tuner attitude. When that soundtrack is booming and you’re storming down the road at ridiculous speeds in a classic Supra, there’s nothing else quite like this game, the amount of content on offer for a game of this era too is seriously impressive.

3: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was so good Nintendo had to shift the next game: Mario Kart World into a new subgenre as to not live under this game’s shadow forever.

With a lavish total of 96 tracks, 48 racers and 24 cups, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is stuffed full of 2 console generations worth of DLC and updates. Of course the Battle Mode could be better (like anyone plays it anyway) and they probably could have gone all the way and continued supporting the game into the Switch 2 until every track ever made was included but as it stands? I don’t think there’s any debating that Mario Kart 8D is the best game in the series and gamers seem to agree because this is both the Switch and the Wii-U’s best-selling title. I hope we see this level of support for MK World across the life cycle of the Switch 2.

VR Games

1: Blade & Sorcery

I’ve mostly given up on VR ever going anywhere these days but I have to admit, the temptation to buy another headset and play more Blade & Sorcery is always there.

Blade & Sorcery is VR’s everything game: like Gmod or Arma 3. It centres on dungeon crawling and fantasy magic and melee combat but you’ll find yourself wielding lightsabers, guns and all manner of other murderous implements after a quick trip to Nexus. I have over 100 hours in this game which I mostly spent LARPing as a Greek hoplite, enjoying some archery -a skill which I almost became a qualified instructor in some years ago- and even battling Sith aboard the Ebon Hawk.

I’m not entirely sure if I can keep away from B&S forever and if you own a VR headset and somehow haven’t played this one then you’re seriously missing out, it’s great fun to pick out actual medieval fencing techniques and to recreate them in battle, or to try and pull off flamboyant moves without slow-motion. I thought development was over which is a reason I let my headset go but ever since I’ve been watching on in agony as cool stuff continues to get added with me having no way to experience it. Bugger.

2: Hotdogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (H3)

Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is like the firearms equivalent of Blade & Sorcery, only with the enemies as walking, talking, sentient hotdogs.

Any gun you can think of is in the game and if it somehow isn’t? There’ll be a mod for it. I used to have a great time unwinding on the firing range in this game shooting some of the WW2 era weapons like the M1 Garand or the PPSh-41; there is also a very fun, objective-based game mode where you choose a map and a difficulty and then keep capturing enemy zones for as long as you can with a random weapon you get out of a mystery box at the beginning; throughout you earn money for more hits at the mystery box and for upgrades like new sights or extended magazines, it’s addictive.

There are some funky options in here too, one of the Christmas updates added in a Metal Gear Rex boss fight in a Wintry map and fighting it with a Stinger missile launcher was unironically one of the most awesome things I’ve ever played.

3: VTOL VR

Like millions of other boring British men before me, I think fighter jets and WW2 fighter aircraft are the coolest things ever, so discovering VTOL VR: a sim-cade flight game based all around vertical take-off and landing aircraft -in layman’s terms, jets that can hover and take off straight upwards- was sort of a dream come true.

This is another mod-centric game where essentially, the developer provides the aircraft, tools and tutorials but the community builds the missions, which are integrated into the game with an easy to use menu; you pick what player-made missions and campaigns you want off a list, download them in the in-game briefing room and then you’re off. There is a steep learning curve to VTOL VR and being shot down and spinning towards terra firma can make you feel violently ill but get over all that and you have an unforgettable gaming experience. I used to play this with some friends and running a night mission where we managed to sink an aircraft carrier and shoot down a swarm of enemy fighters is a gaming memory that probably won’t ever leave me.

Western RPG

1: Oblivion & Morrowind

It’s cool to hate on Bethesda today but the fact of the matter is no other company before or since has managed to replicate the sheer scale and immersion of Tamriel across all its different renditions; The Witcher 3 may be better written and virtually every other RPG has better combat but none of them absorb you into another world and let you be who you want to be in quite the same way that The Elder Scrolls does.

Oblivion is the more accessible of these 2 classics: especially now it’s been remastered and drops you into the Tolkienesque province of Cyrodiil in the midst of a demonic invasion. Your goal is to restore a lost emperor to his throne and to fight back the forces of the invading Deadra.

Morrowind is old and positively hideous but it’s also a more thorough red role-playing game and contains the best main quest Bethesda have ever written. This game tasks you with getting to the bottom of a mythical plague afflicting the strange and hostile province of Morrowind while navigating the intricacies of interspecies relations, faith and cut-throat local politics.

2: Mass Effect 2

Long ago in the gilded age of the 2000’s, Bioware knew how to write video games and great characters: not walking labels or standard bearers of cultural warfare but actual, likeable, complete characters with personalities beyond their sexual preference. The height of Bioware was Mass Effect 2, which took the brilliant but clunky original and gave it a dash of cover-based shooting and ironed out some of the more tedious RPG elements to make the gameplay more enjoyable; PC players protested but the fact of the matter is ME2 was ‘consolised’ for the better and was a roaring success.

In ME2 you take control of Commander Shepard who is resurrected after a deadly ambush on his ship by a shadowy criminal empire in order to build an elite time of allies new and old in order to defeat an alien species abducting scores of human colonists, presumably in-league with the sinister Reapers.

3: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I didn’t want Bioware to have 2 entries so I’m sticking TW3 here. I’ll continue to insist that this game was a fluke from an otherwise middling developer but there’s no denying that The Witcher 3 is the most significant Western RPG of the past decade. There are a mountain of subplots and side-stories and schemes going on in this game but the gist of The Witcher 3 is that Geralt must track down his surrogate daughter: Ciri amidst an invasion by both a tyrannical empire and extra-dimensional forces.

The world of The Witcher is an intriguing pastiche of Slavic folklore and history which I find myself appreciating a lot as both a history enthusiast and a former Russian Studies major; Nilfgaard evokes the Holy Roman Empire and its constant meddling in Polish affairs and which the Medieval Czech state of Bohemia was a part of, the merchant city of Novigrad bears a strong resemblance to the Russian republic of Novgorod and the city of Gdansk who both traded with the German states along the Baltic sea and Novgorod even fought off a crusade. There is all sorts going on here: pagan imagery as Poland and Lithuania were pretty much the final countries in Europe to be turned to the light of Christendom, a DLC set in a Frankish kingdom, Baba Yaga inspired crones but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how good this game is.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

Subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below. I also run a science fiction publication where I publish stories roughly every week, I encourage you to give it a read.

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When I was growing up with the PlayStation 2 -the last good PlayStation- the GameCube and original Xbox, third party controllers were exclusively built out of plastic that felt as if it was formulated in a man’s shed in Durham and they were only ‘decent’ in the same way that off-the-shelf white bread is definitely baked by real people or that your Deliveroo driver definitely has the right to reside in the UK. What I’m trying to say is the situation has improved and we’ve come to a point where I’ve actually used third party controllers more cost-effective and enjoyable than the real thing.

The original Nintendo Switch was never that ergonomic or comfortable to use handheld but it was small enough and light enough that I could overlook the issue; 90% of my Switch gaming was done in the docked mode anyway so I never bothered to improve the situation, however, the Switch 2 is significantly larger and heavier so in the year and a bit since launch, I’ve tried a few times to use it undocked and failed. Let’s be honest here, we in the English-speaking world are among the unhealthiest countries on Earth and most people seem to be nursing some kind of long-term health condition and I’m no different, I have a recurring RSI in the tissue between my thumb and index finger in my right hand that gets inflamed when I have to pinch or press in certain ways with my thumb, so the Switch 2 always causes me genuine pain to use undocked.

I went looking for a solution and here is what I found.

Getting To Grips With It

I’d show you the box but they stuck my address right on the front and I don’t fancy doxing myself.

The Savage Raven -which I’m sure was the name of a soldier I had in Peace Walker- is a dockable grip for the Switch 2 with a set of detachable handles: the Snap Grips, which are the smallest and most flush with the Joy-Con 2’s rectangular design, the Trigger Grips, which are medium-sized and concave akin to the DualSense and there is also the Plus Grip which is the largest and feels convex similar to the original Xbox Duke or S gamepad. You can get the handles in black, classic neon blue and red, neon blue and purple or in some special edition colours like Tetris, which is full of little blocks but I went for the neon blue and red because in my eyes, that’s the Nintendo Switch colour scheme as God intended; I’m still a bit miffed that the console is all black so I seized the chance to reintroduce some colour.

You attach the Savage Raven by slotting your console into the grip and then snapping on this arm, which has its own locking switch that tightens everything up.

I’ve read some reviews that people couldn’t work this locking clasp or couldn’t pull it off to mount the console in the first place but I read the instructions and managed it easily so I suspect this might be a case of RTFM.

On the other hand, swapping the handles is genuinely quite fiddly. Instead of a button or a lock to keep them in place they rely on a directional rail: pull the handles down to detach and push them up into the rail to mount them on the grip.

Because there isn’t anything going on here mechanically it relies on brute force to work, this can be fiddly and dangerous to the health of the console; I had images of my Switch 2 flying through the air and suddenly finding myself a few hundred pounds poorer. Definitely do this over a soft chair or assist your child with it if the console is theirs, if you have a screen protector -and you really should for any device of this nature- then it is a bit easier if you stabilise your grip by touching the screen. Be sure to curse the design of the handle mechanism afterwards and to give the protector a good spritz with a screen cleaner now that your grubby fingertips have been all over it.

The material of the handles feels pleasant to hold: a light, slightly textured plastic akin to the DualSense; the fact that this £25, third party grip mechanism replicates the feel of Sony’s gamepad should tell you everything there is to know about that corporation’s attitude towards the physical experience of playing video games, if recent news hadn’t already.

A Weakest Link

I tested all three grips on a mixture of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Splatoon Raiders and there was a clear loser.

The large Plus Grip feels pleasingly substantial to hold and fit my hands best; I am an Xbox refugee after all. However, the size is a double-edged sword, it shifts your grip further outwards while simultaneously adding weight to the console so while you’re using the Plus you feel the Switch 2’s weight more acutely on the wrists and forearms after a while it will strain them. I’ll keep using this grip but mainly for text-heavy, less reflex-based games like Fire Emblem or slower-paced platformers: games where I can put down the console from time to time to watch cutscenes or don’t need to access the triggers as readily.

The medium-sized Trigger Grip was my all-round favourite of the trio. While I preferred the convex shape of the Plus, the Trigger -funnily enough- allows you to access the shoulder and trigger buttons more easily, which is important for me as a serial reviewer of retro shooters; the improved weight distribution over the Plus resulted in zero strain on my forearms or wrists and these handles look less silly when the console is docked too.

The Snap Grips are the worst of the bunch by far and besides children or those who are especially petite, I don’t see anyone getting much use out of these. They are the lowest profile of the grips and apparently fit nicely into the brand’s hard case offerings but I’m not brave enough to take the £400 Switch 2 out into the world with me so it’s a moot point. These add nothing more than a bit of extra bulk onto the standard Joy-Cons. I’ve heard that Savage Raven by Skull & Co. have had quality control issues before and it seems that hasn’t changed because to top it off, one of my Snaps is wobbly on the rail straight out of the box. I won’t be using these again.

Yay Or Nay?

Overall? I’d have to say I’m quite satisfied with my purchase. I recommend the Neo Grip.

There’s no fixing the fact that the Switch 2 strains the boundaries of what I would call a handheld console; it is certainly portable and you absolutely can use it in your hands but like a laptop or a tablet, this isn’t a device I ever see myself using at a bus stop or at a busy train station. All that aside, the Neo Grip significantly increases my comfort. Before I could only manage 30-40 minutes playing the Switch 2 in handheld mode but just testing these grips, I was able to play a pair of 90-minute gaming sessions pain-free.

The Snap Grips feel like a sneaky ploy to get you to pay the extra tenner to get the hard case with the Neo Grip and £25 for a load of plastic is a little bit dubious but at the end of the day, the results speak for themselves.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

Subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below. I also run a science fiction publication where I publish stories roughly every week, I encourage you to give it a read.

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There was that initial flurry of quality in the early months: Mario Kart World was without question my favourite game of 2025, Donkey Kong Bananza wasn’t quite as good as Super Mario Odyssey in my opinion but I was still pleased and booting up Tears Of The Kingdom’s Switch 2 upgrade -a game I have to this day not finished- quickly hammered home the dramatic leap in power. There have been quite a few good ports to the Switch 2 since and Age Of Imprisonment ended up overshadowing the impotent Metroid Prime 4 for me… but 2026 has been bleak. Pokopia is a cosy game and I detest cosy games, Star Fox was aggressively 7/10, Splatoon Raiders was much better but nothing I’ve read has had much nice to say about the new Yoshi so I didn’t buy that one.

This drought of Nintendo goodness has had me looking back to the original Switch library for any delights I might have missed, an experience helped by the Switch 2’s ability to run Switch 1 games at 1080p, and (mostly) 60FPS in handheld mode.

If you’ve been reading the Journal since the primordial era of Spring 2025, back when things were a bit more directionless here, you’ll remember that I’ve been making an effort to incorporate JRPG’s into my diet. Last April I had a solid time with Xenoblade Chronicles X but being a masochist, I decided to play it on the Wii-U where the grind is extreme thanks to a lack of online mode; halfway through and 35 hours in, I tapped out but am determined to give it and the wider series another go later on a Switch 2 Edition. Apart from that and a little bit of Final Fantasy XII on PS2 as a kid, which I never really got into and traded in, this genre is an untapped field for me. I haven’t played Final Fantasy 7, Earthbound, Phantasy Star, Chrono Trigger: none of it. To me, JRPG’s have always been that genre that weebs like where the games on original hardware always require an IMF loan to purchase and the completion times on HowLongToBeat.com are always in the triple digits.

I like to think I know a good game when I see one, regardless of the aesthetic, so I’ve been doing my best not to judge the anime games before I try them… even if decades of witnessing weeb cringe both online and in the wild have hardened my heart.

A certain treasured, long-time reader and funder of the Journal has been requesting Chrono Trigger and that review is coming, I promise but until then, I’ve been researching other games under the JRPG umbrella so that when the time finally comes, I actually have the tools to appreciate Chrono properly. This led me to discover Fire Emblem: anime X-COM, sort of. The few snippets of gameplay I saw intrigued me and with an open mind, I bought myself a copy of Three Houses and decided to dive in completely blind. The results have been a pleasant surprise.

Triple Entente

Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes place on the continent of Fódlan during an age of unprecedented peace between the Adrestian Empire: a lush, ancient state whose capital is the largest city in Fódlan, The Holy Kingdom Of Faerghus: a cold, rugged Kingdom with deep chivalric values and the Leicester Alliance: a confederation of nobles who rule over a temperate territory… and presumably a football team in terminal decline as well.

Where once the 3 great states of Fódlan fought each other they now co-exist, sharing a religion, a desire for cooperation, rigid social hierarchy and a spirit of friendly rivalry.

In the middle of all this sits the Garreg Mach monastery which is neutral ground between the 3 empires. Garreg Mach is the seat of the Church Of Seiros and also houses the Knights Of Seiros: the most elite fighting force on the continent who use the monastery grounds as a sort of boarding school/military university for the young men and women hoping to one day join its ranks. The prospective students are drawn from all 3 nations who each make up the 3 separate houses of the monastery: House Black Eagles from the Adrestian Empire, House Blue Lions from Faerghus and House Golden Deer from the Alliance. The 3 houses live, study, train and sometimes even elope together but regular mock battles keep the spirit of competition alive.

Centuries of the status quo, changing attitudes across the nations towards the Church Of Seiros and the suffocation of commoners under the noble class as well as competition between those nobles over the coveted magical crests -inherited through blood- are beginning to threaten the peace.

It’s amongst this backdrop that you take control of Byleth -who can be male or female- a young mercenary of murky origins and the newest, youngest professor and house tutor at Garreg Mach; at the beginning you’ll choose one of the titular 3 houses and experience their version of the story. Each run takes at least 40 hours and there are 4 distinct routes, so that’s a lot of bang for your buck.

For my first playthrough I pledged my allegiance to Black Eagles. I chose this house primarily because my favourite colour is red, Edelgard wasn’t boring like the Blue Lions’ Dimitri or irritating like Golden Deer’s Claude and perhaps most importantly: Edelgard is pretty. Don’t you judge me damn it; I couldn’t pick the Leicester Alliance’s House Golden Deer because I grew up an hour away from the real English Leicester on the train, so I find the name to be really funny.

In 3 Houses you can romance characters including the head of your chosen house, so the Crusader Kings 3 section of my brain imagined my descendants upon the Adrestian throne one day, marching the red banner into the heart of the other 2 nations just as their old man would have wanted.

I’m not the biggest consumer of fantasy, especially not Japanese fantasy; Berserk is one of only a small handful of anime I’ve watched to completion and I am a fan of Howard’s Conan The Barbarian stories; everyone has watched The Lord Of The Rings as well. Other than that? Not much. As someone with an eye more towards the historical though I really enjoy the world of Three Houses. The class divide colours every interaction in the game, architecture is vast and pious, faith is a spiritual centre for some characters but merely an obligation for others instead of an object of mockery for all, like it is in most Western properties today.

It’s probably obvious to some of you who read me by now that I am a Christian, capitalising the word ‘God’ on Substack almost feels like the bit in Inglorious Basterds where the bloke holds up his fingers in the wrong way to order more pints. What kind? Well, I’ll leave that up to you to guess. Anyway, what I’m getting at is, fictional religion or not, it always bothers me when faith is treated as an object of ridicule in media and that breaks my immersion, so Three Houses nails it on that front. The entire game succeeds at immersing me in fact, most anime/JRPG’s I see are full of weapons that are so obviously impractical I can’t take them seriously, characters who the writers try too hard to make cool, ones that have zero goals and etcetera, so it’s refreshing to play Fire Emblem and see that even the game’s mythic weapons are relatively tame and that even minor characters have a little something to discover. A sword that sparks with lightning? A sword that doubles as a whip? I’ll take that over whatever the hell Cloud Strife is holding, even his name is insane.

Tonally, Three Houses can be a bit all over the place. They try to do that Harry Potter thing where the students get older, less idealistic and world-weary, coupled with a darker colour palette as time marches on but this heavy atmosphere is quickly dispelled when you invite Petra for afternoon tea and that same jolly music plays; try as I might, I can’t remain downbeat as Hubert visibly and humorously strangles his love for the food in the Dining Hall as you eat with him, nor when Ferdinand and Spoiler are cleaning out the stables and murmuring about what a shitty job you’ve assigned to them. The characters in this game just ooze charm.

Scoping Out The Field

In terms of presentation, I unfortunately have to say that Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a bit of a mixed bag, I’m not going to be too harsh on it though because this is an early Nintendo Switch game -released in July of 2019- being played by me on the successor console.

The main issue I have with the presentation of most Nintendo Switch games isn’t the framerate or the textures but the lack of anti-aliasing, which is a technique used to smooth out jagged edges. This entire library is plagued with serrated shadows and stepped silhouettes; if it wasn’t for this and a general lack of post-processing and particle effects, I think the gap between the Switch and the competition wouldn’t be as pronounced. A lot of games these days go for a zoomer-y, cartoonish Fortnite aesthetic anyway, so as an owner of a beefy PC, a PlayStation 5 and a day one adopter of the Switch 2 after loving the original, I have to tell any fanboys out there that the Switch was never as behind as you think. Playing Switch 1 reminds me of having a weaker PC back in the day and having to turn the anti-aliasing, shadows and particle effects down to low.

Anyway, I love getting off-topic today, Three Houses suffers these same issues as well as some less than ideal graphical quirks and design choices of its own. Facial animations are horribly stiff and lifeless, there is noticeable pop-in while you explore Garreg Mach between battles and a lot of cutscenes use these panoramic 2D backgrounds that look to be a much lower resolution than the rest of the game, they range from about passable to utterly dreadful.

There isn’t anything too visually impressive to note in Three Kingdoms but I will say that playing it on the Switch 2 makes loading times rapid and a lot of the attack animations in this game are very satisfying; having an enemy attack Edelgard, bounce off her tower shield for 0 damage and then seeing the critical animation trigger before she hit them for a one-hit KO was a persistent source of dopamine in my run. Other highlights include Wyvern or Pegasus cavalry who slam into enemies for devastating damage and Dorothea’s Thoron spell that’s essentially a laser beam, awesome.

The best feature of Three Houses’ presentation is its use of zoom levels and scale. On the outside, this game looks like another X-COM or squad-based tactics title where each character on the grid represents themselves alone but this is just an abstraction, zoom all the way in and you’ll see that every character is leading a band of troops: a band of troops which you can replace with more specialised units, upgrade and who even have their own stats and levelling system. That’s how deep this goes. I routinely enjoyed zooming all the way in during the climactic third act of the game to see rival generals facing off with each other and massive, late-game battalions standing side by side ready for the next wave of foes.

With such a huge roster of characters it’s inevitable that not all of them get the depth, attention and voice direction that you’d see in, say, a Bioware game (back when they knew how to write) but there were performances in Three Houses I loved nonetheless.

Of the 3 house leaders, I found Dimitri’s performance to be the most engaging, in the particular story route I took he almost ends up like a Venom Snake/Big Boss-style character and the actor: Chris Hackney -who I’m just now discovering voiced Rauru in Zelda and Rusty in Armored Core- shows some impressive range. His portrayal of Dimitri in the final act of my run sold me on choosing the Blue Lions on my next playthrough. Other highlights include Hubert: Edelgard’s shadowy spymaster and the best mage in Black Eagles, he’s played like a more murderous Severus Snape; Dorothea: a tart-with-a-heart-type character is one I like too, she ends up as a protective matriarch but starts the game as a bit of a two-timer, there is a wonderful warmth to the way she is played. Finally, another favourite of mine was Petra: a royal hostage in-line to the throne of the archipelagic Kingdom of Brigid who sometimes struggles with the language of Fódlan, she’s played a bit like a fish out of water but also has this funny competitive streak that is played just over the top enough to add some nice comedy, she reminded me a little bit of Worf from The Next Generation at times.

Some of my least-preferred performances in this game were Bernadette: the anime shy-girl trope played with a bit of an irritating cadence and without much change as the game goes on and Jeralt: Byleth’s father. This second performance feels phoned-in and flat which is a big problem because come Chapter 9, Jeralt has to carry a major plot moment and the lack of passion combined with his limited screen time made it fall flat for me. I don’t think I’m dropping a major spoiler here by saying that there is a time skip about halfway through the game -as was revealed in some of the trailers- splitting Three Houses into a Part I and Part II, I found myself impressed with how many of the actors and actresses managed to add just a touch of maturity and age to their performances without altering the soul of their character.

Truth be told, I was too focused during play to hear and to process much of the music in Three Houses: that’s why I love strategy and tactics games so much, they’re engrossing but there were a few pieces that stood out to me. I will be making timestamps out of a single video because I have stumbled across spoilers for routes I haven’t played yet when looking for specific music.

Scales of the Goddess is the music that plays in Part II’s Garreg Mach. The sorrowful singing and militaristic snare drum beats add a weariness to the song that fits perfectly with Part II’s atmosphere and evokes the planning rooms and general meetings that fill your time between paralogues and main chapter battles. The social-sim elements really slow don in the second half and this more sombre tune is a better backing for the myriad of class tweaks and equipment adjustments you’ll get up to.

Paths that Will Never Cross is a combat theme that plays when you cross blades with a prominent general in the enemy’s army. This is a tune you’ll come to associate with anxiety and the need to lock-in, as Zoomers put it; when you hear this an opposing general is within range of your team and will launch -or defend- an attack after some dialogue, as these are the most powerful units on the field you’ll sit with crossed fingers hoping that your unit doesn’t get one hit KO’d. If your archer or mage is the one in the firing line then start praying.

Dwellings of the Ancient Gods plays during missions where you journey to a ruins area called Zanado near Garreg Mach. Fódlan is a continent filled with folklore and heaving with history, especially in this place, so I love how this music evokes the ancient and mysterious; there is a combat variant that plays when the camera zooms in to show your units giving or receiving an attack and not only does this sound great but I find it genius how the sound is mixed in such a way for this transition not to feel jarring.

Should you choose to romance a character in Three Houses, the very last scene before you get your ending stats and see the credits roll will be a sweet encounter with your chosen spouse. I spent somewhere in the region of 2 and a half hours fighting the final boss, desperately trying to keep my team alive but alas, I ran out of Divine Pulse -more on that later- and watched on in horror as my whole team besides my chosen romance and the essentials were wiped out. After being focused for so long I was genuinely feeling a bit drained, the sweet, balmy melody of A Place To Rest and the heartfelt romance was the perfect note to end my first Fire Emblem adventure on.

There is about 3 hours of music in Three Houses, much of it is route exclusive so I’m certain I’ve missed some of the best.

Hammer And Anvil

From a gameplay perspective, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a mixing pot of several genres; this is part tactical strategy game, part JRPG and part social-sim.

I have read opinions from some long-time Fire Emblem fans lamenting the spillover of school mechanics from Persona into this game and most fans seem to regard Fire Emblem: Engage as the better combat experience but I have no skin in the game, Three Houses has been my first Fire Emblem. I’ve never played Persona and to be honest that series holds almost zero appeal to me so if you didn't like P5R and are on the fence about this game as a result then I wouldn’t worry too much; all the social and academy stuff takes a backseat in Part II of the story anyway.

Gameplay in Three Houses is divided between the academy and battles. In the academy, to the ongoing march of the calendar you’ll grow the bonds between you and your students, try and poach prospects from the other houses, harvest ingredients, share cups of tea, train up your skills and more; battles are played on a grid like most other tactics games but what sets Three Houses apart is the absolutely staggering number of classes and loadout customisation you can get up to.

If you‘re used to Western tactics games like XCOM then let me give you the numbers: in XCOM: Enemy Unknown with full DLC, there are 6 classes, in XCOM 2 that number rises to 9 and in Three Houses, right out of the box… there are 40 classes.

What this plethora means is that there aren’t any terrible characters because with enough effort and a little bit of cash spent on the items needed to put students in class certification exams, anyone can be made useful. Part of the reason why, after somewhere in the realm of 40 hours played and one route already finished, I’m so eager to dive back into 3H is the depth and freedom of this class system. By the time I fully realised the extent of what you could do, my run was almost over. I can imagine experienced players having a lot of fun trying to do cavalry-only runs or a team composed entirely of mages and I didn’t grind levels at all but by the end my Byleth was a one-shotting, fireball flinging demigod on the battlefield. I can only imagine what the min-maxers among you could achieve with careful study of the game’s systems and targeted character development.

There is also a separate levelling system -a running theme in Three Houses- for the academy phase: your professor level. The more activities you partake in at Garreg Mach and lore books you find, the more your professor level rises and the more activity points you get. It’s a strong feedback loop that ensures the more interested you are in the social elements, the more you get to actually interact with them.

While I came to truly enjoy the academy downtime and would encourage you to see all there is to offer in regards to character interactions and paralogues -this game’s equivalent to Bioware’s loyalty missions- there are undoubtably some flaws that need to be corrected in the upcoming Fortune’s Weave.

For one, the menus are seriously lacking on some modern quality of life features: the lack of a repair all option in the blacksmith was a constant annoyance throughout my campaign, I wish incompatible weapons picked up by a character were immediately sent to storage at the end of a mission and there is no sell all valuables option for the bullion you pick up. Additionally, the way the facilities and options available to you at Garreg Mach are conveyed to the player at the beginning is much too overwhelming. I don’t know why all Japanese games think the best way to teach the player are those multi-page pop-up windows full of text and pictures but I wish it would stop. The info dump is so severe I completely glazed over and I only remembered the Advice Box mechanic existed just before the final mission.

Combat in Three Houses is a near-flawless experience with all the tools you need to get the job done readily available. I had a conversation a few days ago where I realised Fire Emblem might be seen as a series of hard games, especially as tactics and strategy titles don’t tend to put much effort into acclimating newcomers but let me assure you that this isn’t the case: I played on Normal difficulty in Classic mode (which adds perma-death for characters) and I only was Game Overed twice, the first was when I sent Edelgard to her death on accident, forgetting I had no Divine Pulse left and the second was against the final boss, which I can’t complain about, it should be the game’s peak of challenge. “Divine Pulse?” You might be thinking, well, that’s another mechanic that makes Three Houses a rather fair experience. Divine Pulse is essentially Forza’s rewind feature put into a turn-based tactics game: you get a certain number of charges -which increases as the game goes on- and with them you can turn back time as many turns as you’d like, even back to the beginning of the level if you so desire; if Byleth or your house leader: the two characters that must survive every mission are killed then you are automatically prompted to use it instead of going straight to the Game Over screen. As well as all that, you can easily check enemies’ ranges before you make your moves, every battle opens with the opportunity to adjust your party’s loadouts and starting positions in case you forgot something and you can even swap weapons and consumables between units in combat and out of storage from Byleth. Truly, if you lose in Three Kingdoms, it never feels unfair.

If you’re intimidated by the genre or are concerned about difficulty though I have a few tips. Firstly: turn off Classic mode, the way perma-death is implemented feels incongruent anyway: Caspar died in combat about halfway through Part I for me yet he was still mulling around the academy before suddenly vanishing; you aren’t missing out on much if you choose not to enable it. Certain missions will have your team start separated or be designed in such a way that you’ll feel tempted to split off into 2 groups to attack 2 separate targets. Don’t do it. In my experience this was a bit of a noob trap and even got my prized healer: Linhardt killed in the penultimate mission and I sorely missed his abilities in the upcoming final boss.

My favourite part of any strategy or tactics game is experimenting with my approach: seeing what works and what doesn’t, any title that allows for me to do that on a large scale is something I’m going to love and Three Houses scratches that itch better than any other game in this genre ever has for me. Eventually, I settled on a sort of armoured spearhead with Byleth and Edelgard: each equipped with shields as the tip of that spear. With their massive health pools and one-shot potential, these two would advance into the thick of dense enemy formations while my 2 cavalrymen: Ferdinand and Spoiler would dash around sniping enemy mages who were a threat to their defences; softer units with high damage potential like Bernadette and Petra were brought in to finish off enemies that survived my two tanks and to keep the heat off Linhardt, Dorothea and Hubert who boasted potent, long-range magic but were almost certainly dead after a single hit in the late-game.

The combat in Three Houses was a pleasure throughout but of course, I do have some nit-picks. For some reason, diagonal tiles are not considered adjacent when launching attacks, so there were times when I was forced to use Byleth’s signature sword: an extendable blade that can only be repaired by waiting out portions of the academy or using a rare material, against enemies centimetres away from me. Something I wish the game made more clear is the rock, paper, scissors system at play regarding the unit types. Generally speaking, in Three Houses, archers beat cavalry, cavalry beat infantry, infantry beat archers and mages are vulnerable to everyone but can hit enemies at extreme range and cut through the armour of heavy infantry more easily than the rest, you’ll work this out eventually but it was the one thing I needed and that information was never included in the mountains of tutorial text. I can’t comment too much because the Black Eagles don’t have their own flying cavalry character (and I wasn’t aware enough of the class system yet to spec anyone that way until too late) but most experienced players consider wyvern and pegasus riders to be overpowered.

Disestablishmentarians

My thoughts on the story of Three Houses and specifically its Crimson Flower route will be split into a spoiler-free and a spoiler-full section with a spoiler-free conclusion at the end, be sure to keep an eye out for the warning.

The post-prologue cutscene where you first arrive at Garreg Mach gives a nice overview of the characters you’ll be meeting throughout Part I.

I have a lot of praise to give for this game’s characters and storytelling so I’ll front load my complaints before we get into the good stuff. The biggest flaw with Three Houses' story -some might say, the biggest flaw with the whole game, actually- is that Part I plays out almost the same no matter which house you pick: the same missions on the same maps and unravelling the same conspiracy. Part I, especially if you go Black Eagles, tends to take longer than Part II as well so this adds some unwanted friction to replaying the game. A way to speed up or skip the early, tutorialised sections of Part I would have been nice but I understand why things turned out the way they did, you have to assume each of the 4 routes will be someone’s first. The slowness of replaying Part I on other routes compounds the second issue with Three Houses’ story: no matter which of the 4 routes you choose, you won’t be getting the complete story in one playthrough. I don’t mind this in principle but there were quite a few loose threads left hanging after I rolled the credits which could have been tied up. Since Part I has you fighting a few different enemy factions and I’m assuming you’ll learn more about the others on separate routes, I ended up thinking “Well, what happened with those people then?”

Like I said, Part I mostly follows the same general setup for each house: the Western Church have some kind of religious disagreement going on with the mainstream Church Of Seiros which is gradually becoming more violent, meanwhile the mysterious Flame Emperor and their loyal Death Knight along with a cohort of soldiers and whatever other unscrupulous allies they pick up are working to destabilise the church and to weaken the long peace. This first 50-60% of the game will see you unravel this mystery as Archbishop Rhea gradually comes to rely on you above the other professors; you’ll learn a lot about the history of Fódlan and of the 3 empires, all of which muddies the water the more you play. If the Church is a moral compass for the continent then why does it readily execute its prisoners? Why are Hubert and Edelgard always hiding something from you? What do other people know about Dimitri that you don’t? The atmosphere of suspicion is nicely written.

The social elements are more prominent in Part I and the cast of characters are younger and more impressionable at this point too: most of them are 16-18 pre-time skip and are young adults in Part II. This makes interactions lighter and allows you to get to know who these characters are before they really get put through the ringer. It would take another 20 minutes on top of this already long review to tell you everything I liked about the entire cast so if you couldn’t tell already, I’ll be recommending you play this one and see for yourself.

Hubert and Petra were my favourites in the Black Eagles, I’ve already spoken about their voice performances but I love how Hubert is a pragmatic and cynical foil to Edelgard: he is a man who knows well the rot that has been allowed to fester in the Adrestian court while she has this idealistic vision for the Adrestian Empire. Petra is endearing and is one of the more subtly tragic characters in this game, the more you learn about her the more you realise she’s been nothing but a tool of diplomacy for her whole life and carries the cross for a country she’s barely even lived in.

Towards the end of the first half you’ll have one big moment and one big twist. The big moment lands with all the impact of an early game Bandit on Edelgard’s tower shield unfortunately but I found the Flame Emperor twist to be quite well done: not KOTOR I level but a memorable moment. I came into the game blind and expected it to be a predictable three-way war scenario but that’s not what happens at all. I still saw the general gist of how things went coming but nonetheless, there are lots of surprises in this story and I wouldn’t be too comfortable in your assumptions if the story doesn’t grab you right away.

Part II is entirely dependent on your chosen route and I’ll leave the nitty-gritty for the spoilers section but it took me about a week to get through part I and just 3 days to finish part II. The pace, the combat, the drama: everything gets taken up a notch post-time skip and it made Three Houses impossible for me to put down; just like a certain other famous Nintendo IP with a sword-wielding hero and a mid-game time skip, I think everything that happens later is when the game really sets you loose and leaves you to it. There was a lot of armies moving on huge paper maps, narration and campaign talk which I must admit is the kind of thing that gets me weak at the knees.

WARNING - SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

Finally, I can stop being vague and give you the full-scoop about what I thought.

The bland voicework behind Jeralt and his lack of screen time meant that I felt absolutely nothing when he was killed off; they ham it up with the sad music in the academy and set up this revenge mission against Kronya but I was more interested in recruiting her for the team truth be told. I’m assuming this is covered in the other paths but I still don’t get what the whole issue with the Western Church was. Another minor criticism I had of the story is that it felt like Golden Deer and the Leicester Alliance don’t really have anything to do. I know their route is very popular and again, I won’t know more until I actually play their house but from a Black Eagles and Crimson Flower perspective, it felt like Faerghus and the Church were the real enemy and the attack on the Alliance was put in there just to get them out of the way.

On the topic of getting people out of the way… what on Earth happened to Manuela and Hanneman? They just vanish at the end of Part I and are never seen again. I never felt Jeritza's allegiance was ever fully explained either.

Frontloaded complains once again out of the way, Part II of Crimson Flower had me hooked, for about 3 days all I wanted to do was play Three Houses. The battles get so much more challenging and therefore more fun: I loved that Paralogue where you have to defend the mountain castle against that army from Almyra and conquering Derdriu almost felt like a Total War siege in its scale and drama. Three Houses never lets you feel like you made the right choice on this route either. From the moment I chose to side with Edelgard against Rhea I was questioning the decision.

And this feeling of unease only grew heavier and heavier as we Order 66-ed Garreg Mach and the church.

This is the first time in years in a video game where I’ve felt genuinely guilty for my actions; I felt misled in games like Spec Ops: The Line and could stand by my controversial decisions in other RPG’s but having Jeritza kill Flayn and then his own sister in battle felt dreadful. I find Japanese games/anime are usually as heavy-handed as possible with their themes and what they want you to feel but the the grimness and the fact that the fallen are rarely dwelled upon after the battle made 3H an effective anti-war narrative for me.

Listening to Hubert wax venomous about the coming internal power struggles and knowing for myself across history the fate of prominent generals with inconvenient sway over the throne, I became disillusioned with the future I’d helped usher in and suspected that once Edelgard died, Fódlan under the Adrestian Empire would descend into the same noble feuding that had dominated politics forever, only with crests removed. For all Edelgard’s trauma and hatred for crests and the upper classes, it’s telling that nobody else in the game really shares her sentiment; by the end, I started to think that the Empire was being wielded as a weapon against Edelgard’s trauma rather than against the church.

Did mine and Edelgard’s great conquest create a better, more equal world like she imagined? I very much doubt it but I suppose we’ll find out the fate of Fódlan and which route was canon in Fortune’s Weave.

SAFE - SPOILERS END HERE

After literal years spent on the battlefield, commanding troops, accruing scars and leaving a bloody trail in the history books, I decided that my Byleth would forsake the long knives and dark shadows of the Adrestian Court and marry not Edelgard… but Petra.

History’s greatest generals -especially the victorious ones- rarely survive the arena of politics: Georgy Zhukov found himself in dead-end postings for the rest of his military career and George S. Patton found himself the single casualty in a low-speed car crash shortly after WW2, considering Hubert implies over and over again he’d like to see you dead in the Crimson Flower campaign… I thought it would be best not to have my Byleth tempt fate.

Narratively, I thought Petra and Byleth are alike in many ways if you choose the Black Eagles’ Crimson Flower route: you are both rootless tools of Edelgard and Hubert, no matter how well treated the pair of you are, neither of you can convincingly claim allegiance to any of the 3 nations without facing scrutiny and in a way, you are both foreigners to the ways of Fódlan; Petra may be a foreigner to the continent but Byleth has no knowledge of the world outside of the battlefield, in essence, you are both between cultures and ways of life.

Apart from all that, well… Petra works for me.

Sorry… one moment.

Alright, I’m better now.

A Dark Horse

I’ve been aware of Three Houses for a number of years but I had no idea the game was this good; I’m kicking myself for not getting over the anime aesthetic and trying it earlier. I don’t say this often about anything released in the past 10 years but truly, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is one of the best games I’ve ever played and has me re-evaluating my top 10… and I’m saying this after having played only 1 out of 4 routes of this quest.

It’s certainly not the prettiest game ever made, older FE fans may prefer a more undiluted experience and strategy/tactics games aren’t for everyone but they are for me damn it, I’d say this is a top 5 game for the Nintendo Switch, maybe even top 3; I replayed Metroid Dread last year and wasn’t as enamoured with it as I was on my first go… but that’s a review for another time.

Anyway: play Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I don’t care if you don’t like strategy games and I don’t care if you don’t like anime, I’m the biggest anime hater you could find but I absolutely adored playing this and I had to impose a curfew on myself to stop playing the game and write this review before the other 3 routes steal the rest of my gaming time this Summer.

TL;DR: Fire Emblem: Three Houses won’t blow anyone away with its presentation and those who want a complete story will have to stomach multiple playthroughs… but that won’t be an issue. This is an amazing video game full of depth, charm and intrigue. Put it in your basket the moment you get the funds.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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The Dreamcast is no stranger to great survival-horror titles. Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, 3 and Dino Crisis all came to the DC in perfect ports of the superior PC versions thanks to the console’s on-board Windows CE software and it even received its own -prior to the death of the console- exclusive entry in the RE series in the form of Code Veronica: a divisive Resident Evil title that nonetheless sits comfortably in my top 3 for that franchise. I’m of the opinion that Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare for Dreamcast is a good game as well. On the more obscure and expensive end of the spectrum we have some truly weird titles like D2, with its FPS elements and Illbleed: one of the only 2 games developed entirely by Climax Graphics. The other game birthed by this studio and the topic of today’s article is 1999's Blue Stinger, one of the Dreamcast’s 15 launch titles here in the UK.

Blue Stinger has never been re-released or remade: this is a true DC exclusive; its developer has been defunct for almost 25 years so I doubt that will ever change and this game isn’t among the best-sellers on the Dreamcast either so today, I hope to introduce you to something you’ve never heard of and perhaps you’ll decide to check it out in future.

What Is Blue Stinger?

Blue Stinger is yet another Sega-exclusive title that’s not easy to define; it’s a survival-horror game that doesn’t try to scare you, an action game where you rarely have the resources to go postal and a third-person shooter with no aiming system and extensive melee options. This clashing trio of genres encompasses everything both bad and good about Blue Stinger. This is a messy experience, often amateurish but it remains consistently fun despite that fact. If I had to compare this game to others you might have played, I’d say Blue Stinger plays and feels like a mix between Dead Space and Dead Rising with just a sprinkle of Code Veronica: you kill mutated enemies for money and can cash in that money for better weapons and more supplies but it also has a quirkiness to it like Dead Rising and the thoroughly weird Christmas-y atmosphere in some areas give it that Willamette feel.

This is quite a long intro, feel free to watch it but the gist of Blue Stinger’s premise is that a meteorite crashes on the Yucatan Peninsula in the year 2000 and leaves a giant crater behind along with a new island: Dinosaur Island, named that because it’s the same size as the meteorite which wiped out the impressive lizards. Kimra, a shady bio-tech company, sets up a facility on the island for its research purposes and it grows into a small city in the 18 years that follow.

One day in 2018 a mysterious bubble appears around the island and the facility is overrun by monsters.

Eliot Ballade is an Emergency Sea Evacuation and Rescue Organisation veteran and gets stranded on the island when the ‘bubble’ bisects his boat and a mysterious entity pulls him ashore. Shortly after coming ashore you meet Dogs Bower -yes, that’s his name, Dogs- and you control the pair for the rest of the game, swapping between the two on the fly as you explore the island. It’s a novel concept that makes what could have been the usual 2-campaign structure a bit more interesting: it’s a bit like Resident Evil 5 only less crap and more technically compromised.

I normally don’t delve too deeply into regional differences but Blue Stinger is one game where its Japanese version is much different from the one the rest of the world got: arguably a whole different genre, in fact.

In the West, Blue Stinger uses a typical sixth generation camera which sits behind the player, trailing you as you explore Dinosaur Island but in Japan the camera flits and pans about the 3D environment from fixed points similar to Code Veronica. If you do plan to check out or emulate Blue Stinger for yourself -and if nothing else, it will be an experience unlike any other I can assure you- then you should should know that each has the effect of emphasising one side of Blue Stinger over the others; Western Blue Stinger feels more like an action game whereas Japanese Blue Stinger retains more of that survival horror DNA. Neither camera system is implemented particularly well so this will have to be a decision based on preference.

How Is Blue Stinger?

Blue Stinger is a notorious ‘marmite’ game among fans of the Dreamcast: you either love Blue Stinger or hate it but for damn sure, you won’t forget it.

There is a lot of fun to be had here but unfortunately, a lot of Stinger’s tediousness is front-loaded. The first 2 hours of the game bombard you with maddening music, an overly long introduction and an obnoxious stamp hunt in a supermarket where you fight the camera more than the monsters but make it through that and things get a lot smoother from then on, particularly if you scrape together enough scratch for some better weapons. The Freezer is when Stinger starts to get better, remember that if you play it.

For about 90 minutes all you will hear is this song on-loop at high volume. Blue Stinger’s audio mixing and design is dreadful, any hope the music had at being enjoyable is obliterated by it playing constantly, drowning out dialogue, sound effects and more; you can’t even escape in the menus, it is overpowering. Nowhere in this game will you find a quiet moment and I don’t mean that as a compliment, it is just too much. I enjoy Blue Stinger but for this reason alone, I can only tolerate playing it in short, 1-2 hour bursts.

At the very least there are one or two nice tracks in here, this one plays in the Brain Area, which is your base of operations and pretty much the only safe place on Dinosaur Island.

Anyway, you didn’t click on this to read about the music in an obscure 1999 Dreamcast horror game, let’s get to the meat and potatoes. I’m never quite sure whether Blue Stinger is ahead of its time or woefully inept which is the kind of ramshackle charm that makes it so fun.

The way forward is relentlessly vague and difficult to find so I’d recommend a guide handy while you play this one; I chose to use one from 1999 on GameFaqs: from the year before I was even born. This omnipresent, linear progression paired with the freedom you have to roam previously unlocked areas and to grind money from the respawning enemies gives Blue Stinger a level of freedom that almost reminds me of many modern games; I’m not going to compare Blue Stinger to the likes of Breath Of The Wild but there is something modern Zelda-like in the way that you can veer off-course at will to gather more dosh and potentially stumble upon hidden boss fights. I’ve been rewarded with all sorts of freebies this way.

Blue Stinger is a bit like Metal Gear Solid in the sense that you’re mostly led around by a supporting character over the radio, in this game it’s Janine: a fellow survivor with a leg injury who stays in the Brain Area. Janine calls every once in a while to tell you what to do but getting it done is entirely down to Eliot and Dogs.

In other horror games the enemies drop nothing and for the most part never respawn but in Blue Stinger they erupt into showers of coins after death and for all the awkwardness of the camera and the troubling lack of an aiming system, this does make killing enemies in Blue Stinger satisfying. Limbs pop off, heads go flying and blood spurts out, it’s quite the spectacle. Enemy variety is strong too with progressively larger and more mutated humanoid creatures making up the bread and butter of your foes alongside mutated crows, fish and even some more wacky dangers like giant hermit crabs using entire vehicles as shells and laser shooting drones.

You’ll be kept happy with a stream of automatic shotguns, gatling guns and karate kicks with which to fight back against the hordes. Weapon variety is not a weakness of Blue Stinger.

Their niches aren’t as aggressively defined as they might be in a modern game but swapping between Eliot and Dogs generally means swapping between a lighter, faster and more melee-focused playstyle and one that sacrifices mobility and flexibility for heavier firepower; Eliot has a few heavy hitters like the Napalm Launcher but his movement speed is cranked up higher and he gets a variety of melee weapons because he needs to make up for his arsenal of weaker guns. Dogs’ shirts are high, damage, high risk melee options and his starting Bowgun is powerful but slow making him vulnerable early on but once you find more weapons and engage mutants in less tight quarters, he really comes into his own.

At the beginning of the game, I was playing as Eliot about 90% of the time but now, about halfway through, that split is closer to 50/50.

Chalk And Cheese

To tell you the truth, Blue Stinger doesn’t play very well: the camera is jank, the aiming is bad and it’s trying for 1 genre but hitting 3 different ones, however, this game is full of that intangible thing we call heart: this is a supremely entertaining experience made by developers who earnestly wanted you to have a good time. Some brief flashes of frustration haven’t at all smothered that feeling for me. As far as cult-classics go, this is as cult as you can get.

You don’t know how deep this rabbit hole goes. Eliot, Janine and Dogs are voiced by the same actors as Sonic, Rouge and Eggman in Sonic Adventure, are you getting what I’m saying? Blue Stinger has foul-mouthed Eggman!

What enhances all these coincidences are the bizarre voice direction choices littered throughout the game. This isn’t bad in a Resident Evil way, where the voice actors sound like Martians mimicking humans from memory, rather, this is bad in a 2011 YouTube Poop kind of way: there are unnatural gaps between voice lines, replies that seem completely out of place and delivery that’s composed of pure ibérico ham. The performances are perfectly fine and the facial expressions are good enough for the era, it just feels like the editor was on a mission to make the game profoundly unserious.

From what I know of the development of Blue Stinger, this Japanese team drew inspiration from Hollywood so there are flashes of genuine brilliance here but so much is lost in translation. Regardless, the bond between Dogs and Eliot is actually one of the best parts of Blue Stinger: through dodgy translation, YTP editing and the trials of wonky gameplay, you still find yourself getting attached to this pair of nob heads: they bicker over Janine, roast each other and each fill their archetype perfectly; Eliot is altruistic and plucky while simultaneously not being annoying and he comes across as a tad full of himself while Dogs is foul-mouthed and grumpy but not to the point where it gets annoying. If Chris Wood-field and Jill Wooden-tine could launch a franchise then these boys could have too.

Stinger’s humour isn’t all at the game’s expense either, once you enter the commercial district you realise that the only entertainment they have is a pub, a strip club and an arcade, that tickled me.

The Ugly Duckling

Is Blue Stinger a top 5 Dreamcast game? Probably not. Is it one of the top 3 survival-horror games on the console? Well, to be honest, it’s hard to even give it that label, I wouldn’t say so. Besides the fact that it runs smooth and never crashes, Blue Stinger is a bit of a disaster design-wise; we’ve talked about the gameplay already but the pacing is a mess too: you spend the entire first half of this game getting to the local pub and jumping through convoluted hoops to get around the barricade between you and that district of the city. The funniest part of all this is that… it just doesn’t matter. Blue Stinger has been forgotten by the general public but it’s a staple among Dreamcast fans, why? Because there’s simply nothing else like it. This game and its lovable stupidity have never been recreated. Many would even call this their favourite game on the platform.

I’ve played better survival-horror games and horror-action titles but there is only one Blue Stinger.

If a few of you choose to seek out Blue Stinger then I wouldn’t be surprised if out of those few, at least half bounce off the game. This absolutely is not a title for everyone… but it is one for me. Blue Stinger has a so-bad-it’s-good reputation but I’m going to be kinder to it than that: this is a good game that was one lock-on mechanic and a better camera away from being a great one.

Games like this are what keep me so in-love with the Dreamcast. It has a library full of exquisitely weird games and diamonds in the rough; love them, hate them, you won’t forget them.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

Subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below. I also run a science fiction publication where I publish stories roughly every week, I encourage you to give it a read.

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The Master System may have flopped in North America but it was beloved in Brazil and Europe; the Mega Drive did well pretty much everywhere but Japan, however, the Sega Saturn did terrible everywhere and although it did outsell the N64 at home, it was by a pretty narrow margin. The PlayStation is universally celebrated as the vanguard of 3D gaming and the Nintendo 64 is home to a smaller library of critical darlings, great FPS games and innovative exclusives but the Saturn? Nobody outside of Sega die-hards, JRPG enjoyers and Shoot ‘Em Up enthusiasts talk about this console.

There are countless reasons the Saturn failed outside of Japan: it wasn’t just the lack of Sonic and the sting of high prices can be offset by deals and bundles but all of that has been covered to death online, if you really want my brief summary then it’s this: the Saturn fundamentally failed because it didn’t have the games people wanted, it didn’t have the games people wanted because Sega’s inner workings were comically disharmonious, the console was hard to develop for and the best games never left Japan. Arcades were going out of fashion in the West and this was a console built to bring that experience home.

Get back on topic, Lawrence… what I’m really here to discuss is my experience with what is arguably this console’s most defining title: Nights Into Dreams.

Nights Into Dreams is a rare breed: a truly unique video game that’s nothing like anything else I’ve ever played. I bounced off this title hard on the first try but having returned in the past few weeks, it really clicked with me. In many ways Nights Into Dreams is the Sega Saturn distilled into its essential essence: quirky, unconcerned with the direction of other mascots and only truly appreciated by the few, not the masses.

What Is Nights Into Dreams?

Nights Into Dreams is one of those games that doesn’t fit neatly within genre boundaries, as such, no label feels adequate to describe it.

In this game, you’ll avoid obstacles, master movement mechanics and fight bosses like a 3D platformer while you battle against the clock, build a score multiplier and aim to top the leaderboard like an arcade racer; there are also air combat/arcade flight combat game elements in here with Nights having to fly rings around enemies to destroy them and around projectiles to deflect them. I’d go as far to say Nights captured the appeal of skateboarding games before they really caught on as well.

Here’s the genre I’ll assign it: Nights Into Dreams is a Nights game.

The plot of Nights Into Dreams is that Nightopia -the world where dreams come from and where we go when we sleep- is ruled over by the tyrannical Wizeman who is conspiring to capture the essences of the human emotions: ideya in order to gain enough power to merge Nightopia with the real world and rule over it all. Meanwhile, in the waking world, two young kids: Claris and Elliot lay down to sleep racked with anxiety and are plagued by nightmares. Their courage: the one emotion Wizeman cannot steal, allows them a degree of autonomy in the dream world which they use to free Nights.

Nights is one of Wizeman’s Nightmaren creature-minions but Nights rebelled against Wizeman and was imprisoned; when Claris or Elliot unleash Nights at the beginning of each stage, the purple being is free to fly across the stage and destroy the Ideya Capturing devices to cleanse it of Wizeman’s control.

What I adore about this premise most is that to a child, Nights could absolutely be real.

Think about it: we’ve all dreamt about video games, haven’t we? If a child dreams about Nights after playing this game, where it is explicitly stated to be a creature that exists only in the dream world then doesn’t that mean Nights is technically real? The in-game lore aligns with the real life experience… damn it, I want a dream about this game.

I think anyone with even the faintest interest in this game should give it a go purely for the wonderful presentation’s sake but you should be warned that replaying the levels and aspiring to higher scores and an A-rank are where the magic happens. If you’re looking for a complex story, mountains of levels or thrilling combat then Nights isn’t the game for you. This is a deep experience, not a broad one.

How Is Nights Into Dreams?

Bouncing off Nights Into Dreams is almost a rite of passage for new Saturn owners at this point; my story isn’t unique online and judging by the game’s inability to entice new owners to the console back in the day, it isn’t unique to the general public either.

So, what do you actually do in Nights?

Ostensibly, the goal of Nights Into Dreams is to progress through the game’s 8 stages -divided between Claris and Elliot’s 4 dreams each, the latter’s being more difficult- and to defeat Wizeman and the Nightmaren. To do this you need to achieve a rating of at least C on every stage which unlocks the final boss. The goal of each stage, which is divided into a handful of courses, is to gather 20 ideya orbs and deposit them in that course’s Ideya Collector.

Once the Ideya Collector has been destroyed, all of the ideya orbs in the course turn gold and are worth double score; it’s at this point you can either finish the course by returning to the start point or continue to run against the clock and rack up a high score. Since each course has a 2-minute timer and simply destroying the Collector isn’t going to give you a rating above D, this creates a tense, speed-based game flow where you rush to destroy the Ideya Collector as quickly as possible then loop the course as many times as you can optimising the best routes for ideya collection and loops to fly through in an attempt to get the coveted A rank.

If you run out of time though, you lose it all so you have to be boosting with the B-button as much as you can.

It’s hard to explain this game without making it sound overcomplicated. The first 2 minutes of this clip show the gist of it.

One of the reasons people tend to bounce off Nights is that they don’t get that this is what you’re supposed to do, for sure, if you mess around long enough then you’ll work it out and the loading screens drop you hints but this scoring system and gameplay loop is unlike any other game most have played. It’s easy to point the finger and accuse people of not reading the manual or playing tutorials but there lies another issue: nowhere in-game is anything explained to you in-depth and the jewel case edition of Nights: the one that the overwhelming majority of people own, has no manual.

Another reason many drop Nights Into Dreams -and the main reason I flaked off this game at first- are the horrendous boss fights at the end of each stage. These range from the incredibly easy Gillwing to the snore-fest that is Gulpo and some like Jackle are absolutely infuriating. The boss you get at the end of each stage is completely random and there are 6 of them in total, not counting Wizeman as the final boss. If you’re bad at fighting one of them there’s no way to practice and if you lose? Your entire run is down the drain, you get nothing.

I got an A rank on Stick Canyon once: the hardest level in the game and lost to Jackle after. I’ve never managed that A rank again, fuck Jackle.

Speaking of Stick Canyon and Soft Museum: stage 3 for Elliot and Claris, these pair are incredibly gimmicky and irritating, a pretty bad flaw considering there are only 8 stages in the whole game. Whereas the previous 2 stages for both kids reward looping the course over and over and test your reactions and ability to dodge enemies -who take away precious seconds of time rather than health in Nights- Soft Museum and Stick Canyon are over-long, tedious affairs. The former rations out ideya and can get you caught in bouncy hallways where you get stuck between springy objects, unable to escape quickly while the clock ticks ever downwards and Stick Canyon locks you into linear rail sections where you ride a grill-thing and collect ideya with no control over its speed. It’s hard to run courses more than once or twice on these stages so getting a high score feels difficult and ultimately kind of cheap; in a game where the liberating freedom of flight is a large component of the enjoyment, it baffles me that Stick Canyon ever made it past play testing.

The Turn Around

For many months I didn’t touch Nights Into Dreams again after my first attempt and I busied myself with Saturn Resident Evil and Sega Rally instead along with playing on other platforms… but this wasn’t my usual routine of deciding I don’t like the game and remembering only the irritating bits. As my time away increased I began to look back on my brief flirtation with Nights very fondly.

Say what you will about its gameplay, Nights Into Dreams possesses a top-tier soundtrack which would easily land in my top 20 if I ever had to compile such a list. Paternal Horn is such a joyful tune that it’s hard not to feel joyous when you’re hearing it, even if your current run isn’t going very well, Message From Nightopia is the first tune I think of when someone mentions this game and Suburban Museum is pure whimsy.

Even if you ended up not liking Nights you got a nice album to play on the dashboard… which the Saturn was the first console to implement by the way.

As frustrated as I was with Nights’ somewhat opaque scoring system and the design of certain levels, what really stuck in my mind was how enjoyable the act of flying through its better stages felt. I’ve read stories online of people never making it past the first couple of stages in this game because they were too busy just enjoying the sensation of flight in a video game as kids and really, is that such a strange thing? I never made it past Home Bay in Ecco The Dolphin as a kid -and it’s a good job I didn’t- because the joy of flitting about in the ocean was too intoxicating and this type of gameplay is what Pilotwings 64 is built around. I completely understand it.

Nights Into Dreams was bundled in with the Saturn 3D Control Pad and is generally thought of as the best way to play the game. I don’t own one yet but I already get a lot of joy out of Nights, I can’t imagine how much I’d love it playing with the optimal equipment.

To cut a long story short? With basically nothing coming up on the gaming calendar that I’m particularly excited for and the actions of Sony and Microsoft putting my enthusiasm for modern gaming at a ten year low this past month, I was called back to the Saturn and to Nights Into Dreams by the sweet allure of arcade fun… and it absolutely delivered. The frustrations are still there and Nights probably isn’t my favourite Saturn exclusive but top 3? Certainly and my heart has softened to its sense of vivid fun.

An Essential Sega Game

In my opinion, Nights Into Dreams is an essential Sega game up there with the likes of Sonic The Hedgehog, The Revenge Of Shinobi, Yakuza 0 and Out Run on the list of games from this console maker-turned-publisher that are must-plays. Not all of you will like this one and thanks to the state of game preservation and the ephemerality of digital ownership, I can tragically say that most of you will never even get to try it either.

A Japanese-only PlayStation 2 copy, the original Saturn version or a Steam game key off a dodgy website are your only options for playing Nights Into Dreams today; don’t count on emulation because the Saturn was notoriously difficult to program for, so that makes it a pain in the ass to emulate too.

Regardless of how, I think every gamer should give this -and not the widely panned sequel on the Wii- a try, it’s a slice of flawed joy in an industry that’s gotten so rotten and joyless that even providing physical copies of games is too generous to manage.

I miss games that were made to make you smile.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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Feel free to go back and read this for context if you’d like but that article no longer reflects my views on the Saturn; in this past year and couple of months I’ve really come to enjoy this console and have amassed quite a few games for it. Today, I want to walk you through my Saturn hardware and software library and casually share my thoughts on it all and this early 3D-era as a whole.

I hope you enjoy.

About That Label…

I go to great lengths never to call myself a video game/console collector but inevitably, when I refer to my stock of games as a ‘collection’ people put 2 and 2 together and I’m referred to as such; I don’t take offense to that, how were you supposed to know? But it’s a label I don’t want to be associated with.

What are video games and video game consoles for? They’re for playing: they’re not for sticking in display cases so you can take pictures, they’re not for sitting on and waiting for the value to climb like a commodity and they’re not for taking the disc drive out, replacing it with an SD card reader and fitting a bunch of tacky LED lights; consoles are for playing. I buy consoles to use them, I buy video games to play them and I buy CRT’s to display those games as they were intended, not blocky and hideous on an LCD or OLED panel.

Most collectors don’t seem to share my sentiment.

Retro gaming has never been more expensive and a big reason for that is these collectors. They buy every colour of the same console just to say they have them, they buy rare and valuable games for bragging rights and with the hopes of selling them on later when almost none still exist in the wild… this pisses me off. When I look at a photo like the one above I don’t see a cool console collection, I see 1 console and 3 spares: spares that will never be opened by an ecstatic kid on Christmas Day, consoles that will never be played until the laser gives out, consoles that will never be enjoyed by 2 young siblings sat on the floor with a controller plugged into port 1 and 2. The last models of most retro consoles rolled off the production line decades ago and all of this stuff is of finite availability; there isn’t enough in the world for everyone who wants one of these old consoles to own one but if you’re not selfish, if you share and are willing to open up your hoard to others, just enough exist that more people can experience the joy this hobby brings.

You are not a bigger fan of X console because you bought every colour, you don’t need 4 GameCubes or every version of the Wii. Stop being selfish.

Now For The Good Bit

Here is my Sega Saturn: and in damn fine shape too. It’s a Model 1 which you can tell by the ovular buttons and some differences internally.

Cosmetically, save for a bit of dust it’s accumulated since I bought it in late-2023, I’d describe my Saturn as mint condition. Internally? I suspect I might run into some problems in the future.

I’m grateful that -unlike my very temperamental Dreamcast- my Saturn still reads games quick and smooth; the fact that one side of the casing feels a bit loose and creaky suggests to me that there might be a missing screw which indicates it was refurbished at some point, I’ve not had a reason to ever open my Saturn up and check for myself though. Unfortunately, I have a constant, low buzzing audio issue when I play my Saturn. I swapped from the standard Saturn SCART cable to a third-party S-Video connector recently to see if that fixed the issue and while it was a massive improvement, I do still hear that buzzing, albeit faintly. This is a concern because the proximity of the Saturn’s AV port to the power cable one means this is probably a worn out capacitor in that area; at some point in the future, I expect it to fail and for Lawrence to need to open up his Saturn and solder on a new one.

A key contributor behind my newfound love of the Sega Saturn was getting this: the Model 2/Japanese controller.

This is one of the greatest controllers ever made, to the extent where every third-party controller maker sells a version of the Saturn pad today and many fighting game players swear by this peripheral as the best way to play the genre. Even if they’re not a direct rip-off of the Saturn pad, most modern controllers made for playing them will use this same 6-button layout, aside from how perfect that layout is for 2D and fighting games, the D-pad on this thing is a masterpiece, it’s so wonderfully smooth on your thumb and it clicks in each direction like a joystick. This has never been topped.

I used to own the Model 1/Western Saturn controller, I put off buying this one for ages and was convinced the Model 1 was fine and wasn’t harming my enjoyment of the Saturn… I was very wrong.

Nights Into Dreams

I’m going to work across my shelf from right to left, that makes Nights Into Dreams first.

This here is the jewel case version of Nights Into Dreams, you can get it in a standard Saturn tall case but it’s significantly more expensive that way and the early PAL Saturn cases are awful anyway, I prefer the jewel. Nights comes in these 2 versions because the jewel case variant was bundled in with the 3D controller, which I unfortunately do not own.

I’m actually cooking up an article about this game for the weekend so I won’t go into too much depth here. Nights Into Dreams is completely unlike any other game ever made: it’s a bright, uplifting buffet of platformer, skateboarding game and racing elements that’s easy to learn but hard to master. Nights Into Dreams is a very love it or hate it sort of game and there have certainly been sessions I’ve cut short because of the awful boss fights but regardless of all that, this is a must-own for the console.

If I want to play some Saturn but don’t know what to put on, Nights is my default pick, it is the Sega Saturn on a disc, no other title represents what this console is about better.

Gungriffon

If Armoured Core and MechAssault on the Xbox are the Call Of Duty and Halo of mech games then the mainline MechWarrior games and Gungriffon are the Operation Flashpoint and Arma 3.

Gungriffon is a mech simulator set in 2015 (or 2075 in PAL, for some reason, I’m going to ignore that) where WW3 has broken out between 4 military factions, pitting the nations of the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia against each other. Gungriffon has an 8 mission campaign that sees you fighting from Ukraine and across Russia to Mongolia and eventually China. On top of that you have the mandatory Sega scoreboard.

The controls in Gungriffon are almost too complex for their own good but once you master piloting your AWGS: your Armoured Walking Gun System, which includes the ability to fly, a whole arsenal of weapons and a high speed booster mode, pulling off stylish kills is incredibly satisfying. You come to appreciate the weightiness of the AWGS’ depiction, as opposed to the mechs in something like Armoured Core which almost drive like people in suits, these are giant hulking beasts of metal: your guns boom and blast viciously, enemies erupt in smoke and fire and raining down missiles on enemy tanks from above is the best feeling ever. Considering the Saturn’s dubious reputation for 3D graphics, the models in this game look impressive too. About the only complaint I have is that there is a seriously nasty difficulty spike once you reach China.

Gungriffon’s sequel unfortunately never escaped Japan, so I’ll have to import that someday or get a translated copy off Etsy. I consider this game to be a bit of an underrated gem, Gungriffon is rarely spoken about with reverence by the cult of Saturn but it comes with a seal of approval from me, especially as this game is only £25-35 complete-in-box in PAL territories: peanuts by Saturn standards.

Panzer Dragoon

Besides Nights, I’d wager that Panzer Dragoon is probably the Saturn’s most iconic IP and easily the one that’s most well-known out of the franchises that began on this console.

Where do I start with this one? What an experience. This is a game I’ve not owned for very long and I’m annoyed I was talked out of getting it earlier. Everything I read online said it’s pretty but unremarkable, that you’ll finish it in 1h 30m etc. but boy do I not care, Panzer Dragoon is magical.

Panzer Dragoon is set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where mankind lives in the ruins of a once great civilisation, waging war on each other with air ships and atop armoured dragons in an ecosystem populated by the bio-engineered monsters this civilisation once unleashed in their final war. The game begins with an unknown rider of a Blue Dragon bestowing his mount upon the player in his final moments where it leads you into battle against an evil empire and their attempts to harness ancient technology for no good reason. The art direction is remarkable, the 3D graphics are stunning for the Saturn and the soundtrack? Absolute bliss.

A small taste, the entire list of music deserves your time.

In terms of gameplay, Panzer Dragoon is a little bit like a cross between Space Harrier and Afterburner II: it takes the varied stages and boss fights from the former and the missile targeting mechanic and general movement-feel from the latter. The innovative part is that this game is fully 3D and you have lots of camera control with the ability to aim behind and to your sides as well as the option to zoom in and out, plus there is some narrative depth with impressive FMV cutscenes.

Panzer Dragoon gets criticised for its length but you probably won’t beat this on your first attempt, especially not unless you can hit over 90% of the targets in each stage for more continues and besides, this is 1.5-2 hours of absolute joy; being overly concerned with game length and longevity as opposed to quality and artistic vision is how we ended up with the likes of modern Far Cry and Crimson Desert. I love this game and I can’t wait to grab the sequel in the near future. Financially I had to make a choice between getting this game and the ‘new’ Star Fox. I feel I chose right.

Sega Ages Volume 1

No Sega console is complete without some top-notch ports of their arcade hits and thanks to the then-cutting edge power of the Saturn, we got Sega Ages Volume 1: Afterburner II, Space Harrier II and Out Run in arcade-perfect glory; in fact, Out Run is even better here than in arcades because it includes a 60FPS mode.

This is a bit of a funny one because there were no further Sega Ages Volumes: this is it, the one and only, I think that’s a damn shame because Sonic Jam and Sega Ages prove that the Saturn had the capacity to not only provide arcade-perfect action but added bonuses too. I believe there are more of these re-releases in Japan but as of writing I lack the Action Replay 4M cartridge along with the recommended 60Hz switch hardware mod recommended to play imports.

Of the 3 games in this compilation, Out Run has always been the star of the show for me. For quite a long time, this, Wipeout and Virtua Fighter 2 were the only Saturn games I owned so I got really addicted to it, though I’ve never made it to the end. I detest this word but Out Run is just such a vibe: the music, the gorgeous red Ferrari Testarossa and of course the timeless gameplay make this a game I’m willing to stick on any time.

I quite like Afterburner II but it feels primitive when stood alongside Panzer Dragoon and to be honest? I’m not a fan of Space Harrier II, even when I played it as a kid on Mega Drive compilations it didn’t do much for me.

I wouldn’t call this one a must-own, especially as these games are playable in many other places individually but I enjoy sliding Sega Ages out from my shelf from time to time for another crack at finishing a run in Out Run or if I want to give Afterburner II a spin.

Sega Rally Championship

I’ve made my love for Sega Rally Championship clear on a few occasions in the past so I won’t spend a huge amount of time on this… plus I think everyone knows how good this game is anyway.

Sega Rally Championship sees you competing across a handful of courses: Desert, Forest, Mountain and the hidden Lakeside track in either the Lancia Delta HF Integrale or the Toyota Celica GT-Four to get the best lap times. You can do Time Trials, practice runs, choose between a Manual or a baby-I mean Automatic and you can even play in split-screen if you so desire. This is another title that spits in the face of those who say the Saturn couldn’t do 3D properly and the car handling is unbelievably good for a game of this age. A near-arcade perfect port.

This is probably my favourite game on the Saturn and while it’s not full of content, the simple joy of driving, taking in the soundtrack and trying to beat yourself and the programmed-in times on the leaderboard is more than enough to keep me happy.

Sega Rally is one of the best games for the Saturn as well as one of the cheapest; if you own the console, this game is essential.

Resident Evil

Believe it or not, Resident Evil’s Saturn port is my favourite way to play the game; aside from some technical improvements, there is actually a bit of extra content in here too.

What can I say about Resident Evil that hasn’t already been said? What an absolute classic.

I’m sure you know what this game is about by now but if you’re unfamiliar with the original Resident Evil then the premise is that you play as Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield, two members of S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team: a kind of Japanified expert force above the local SWAT and are sent to investigate the disappearance of the missing Bravo Team in the fictional Arklay Mountains on the outskirts of the -also fictional- Raccoon City. It turns out that a recent string of grizzly murders in rural Arklay and the disappearance of Bravo Team are the result of a deadly virus that turns people into zombies, the epicentre of which is a mysterious mansion in the woods. Alpha’s mission is to rescue Bravo Team and uncover the truth.

Resident Evil was a pioneer: it birthed the survival-horror genre from the primordial soup of Alone In The Dark and Sweet Home, Resident Evil masterfully side-stepped the limitations of the hardware with its pre-rendered backgrounds and its puzzle box formula became the blueprint for every survival-horror title since. Today this game is mostly used as the butt of jokes by people who have never even played it but if you can get past the GCSE Drama-level voice acting and not be a baby and learn to use tank controls, what you’ll find within is a game that is just as liminal, isolating and unsettling as it was 3 decades ago.

The Saturn version includes a golden Tyrant fight for Chris, the franchise’s first ever Battle Mode and numerous minor graphical improvements, all that combined with the much superior Saturn controller make this the better version in my opinion. This D-pad doesn’t look and feel like pressing in kernels of sweetcorn like Sony’s do.

Exhumed

Exhumed, also known by its much lamer North American name: Power Slave, is a fascinating game because it came out on the PlayStation, PC and Saturn but all 3 versions are completely different; this one is generally considered the best, outside of Night Dive’s remaster of course.

The Sega Saturn isn’t really known for its FPS games, in fact, the Saturn version of Doom is notoriously dreadful and the Nintendo 64 steals the show for this generation in the FPS department but that isn’t to say there aren’t good ones here. Exhumed, along with the fantastic Saturn version of Duke Nukem 3D, is one of the premier FPS experiences on this console.

The plot of this game is batshit insane. Essentially, alien invaders are trying to resurrect King Ramses in order to harness his power and conquer Earth. You are a lone spec ops commando who has crashed in the ruins of the ancient city of Karnak and must defeat the invaders and recover the body of Ramses guided by the spirit of the Pharaoh himself…. you’d think this game is ripping off The Mummy but it actually predates that film by 3 years. A coincidence? Or Ra’s intervention? I’ll let you be the judge.

There’s a lot more going on with Exhumed than your average shooter because this game is a Metroidvania.

There are no episodes, linear levels or missions to select, you roam around Karnak which is complete with its own hub world, traversal abilities and backtracking sections defeating bosses, acquiring upgrades and if you want the good ending, you’ll look for the radio transmitter pieces too.

Exhumed is a bit awkward to control, the platforming is annoying and the shooting feels a bit limp but I admire it for its unique ancient Egyptian theme, metroidvania structure and the fact that it’s one of like, 3 decent FPS games on this console.

Wipeout

Wipeout is one of those games that means a little something extra to us in the UK.

This title was made in Liverpool by Psygnosis and was a launch title for the PlayStation before making its way to the Saturn later on. This game was playable in night clubs to promote Sony’s console and it along with its sequel: Wipeout 2097 helped expose the rest of the world to the 1990’s UK’s vibrant underground and electronic music scenes. This pair probably did a lot for Jungle and early Drum ‘N’ Bass.

The premise of Wipeout isn’t particularly deep or revolutionary but it is tantalising and poses the question every man watching another boring year at the Monaco GP has asked himself: what if Formula 1 but missiles? Better yet, the cars in Wipeout fly and along with the usual cornering you can tilt the nose up and down to get better lift and to enable a smoother landing after long jumps. Wipeout is F-Zero’s darker, more British-er cousin.

To be entirely honest, the Saturn version of Wipeout is inferior in almost every way to the one on PlayStation: the difficulty in creating transparency effects means the energy shields look like your car is caught in a fishing net, the framerate is inconsistent, the draw distance isn’t great and the pop-in is quite bad… but it’s still Wipeout. The awesome tracks, banging, dark electronica soundtrack and the grungy atmosphere are all here, even if you’ll be regretting buying the more expensive, inferior Saturn version. I’ll still hold getting to play using this controller as an advantage over the PlayStation port… but I can’t think of any others besides that.

Wipeout doesn’t hold a candle to Sega Rally Championship in my opinion but I prefer this game when I want a more relaxed, less demanding driving experience.

Virtua Fighter 2

Virtua Fighter 2 is to the 3D fighting genre what Super Street Fighter 2 is to 2D fighting games: this is the granddad, the blueprint, the game Tekken, Soul Calibur and all the others aspired to be. It spurred strong early sales for the Saturn and turned heads with its stunning, vibrant 3D graphics.

Virtua Fighter 2 has no narrative to speak of: this is a simple, highly-polished and perfectly executed port of the arcade original.

VF2 on Saturn runs at a silky smooth 60FPS at all times and features all the characters, stages and modes you expect it in a fighter of this era; to ensure the framerates stay butter, the backgrounds are in 2D rather than 3D but… who cares? The game looks stunning anyway.

Tekken and Soul Calibur have always been my fighting games of choice so I can’t say I have much attachment to this one and I don’t play it much because playing against the CPU in fighting games is a bit of a miserable experience but every now and then the urge arises and I jump back into that classic VF2 goodness. This is an exceptionally well-playing game even today and has aged much better than Tekken 1, which was admittedly created to be a sort of Konami, off-brand Virtua Fighter until Tekken 3 surpassed it. This is a Sega game so of course, that soundtrack worms its way into your head and you can’t stop listening to it on YouTube for a week after you play.

One day I really need to get myself -or find a PDF of- the VF2 manual and see if I can learn a character and take them through the Arcade mode, I’ve never reached Dural before, the CPU get tough as nails a few fights in.

My Collection Philosophy + Future Pick-Ups

Here’s the part where I start to get all pretentious and verbose.

I’ve owned the Saturn for the better part of 3 years but I only have 9 games, why is that? Some of this is the price of Saturn games: this is a notoriously expensive library but that’s overstated in my opinion: the core exclusives are very affordable and of course, it took me a few years to appreciate the Saturn but that isn’t the full reason either. The truth is, I have no desire to own every game for each system (with 2 exceptions, which I’ll get to someday) neither do I care about owning copies of NBA Jam, FIFA games from 1998, crappy 3D platformers and so on. Trying as best I can not to sound like a total wanker, I’d rather be a video game sommelier than a collector.

Anyone can buy piles of crappy games off Ebay but it takes a lot of research and commitment to build a truly interesting and unique collection of titles; that’s what I’d rather have: a selection of titles made up of stone-cold classics, weird but fascinating ports and hidden gems you might not have heard of but will be glad you discovered. Games everybody has heard of, games nobody has heard of and games you didn’t know could be played here, that’s the library I try to build with each console. I hear people in other mediums refer to something as “Me in a song.” Or “Me on a plate.” Well, I think your games shelf should be a spectrum of experiences that reflect your taste in games: you on a shelf.

With all of that out of the way, here are some games that interest me on the Saturn that I plan to pick up in future, if you’ve played any of these or have some suggestions then let me know!

Dark Savior

Panzer Dragoon Zwei

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Virtua Cop 2… With The Gun

Guardian Heroes

Deep Fear

Dragon Force

A Distant Third

The Sega Saturn was utterly crushed by its rivals in the console war of the mid-late 1990’s; this console didn’t even sell one third of the Nintendo 64’s numbers which itself only sold about 33% of what the PlayStation did. To say the Saturn was a distant third is underselling it, this thing wasn’t even in the race. Despite all that, the Saturn isn’t mocked alongside consoles like the Atari Jaguar or the Virtual Boy, in fact, the Saturn has a fiercely loyal and enthusiastic following but why is that?

Let me take you back to something Reggie Fils-Aime said in 2017.

The crucible of the early 3D era was not fair to the Saturn but time has been kind to Sega’s awkward black box.

Where the PS1 and the N64 are desperate to impress you with their new-fangled cutscenes and 3D graphics, usually at the expense of the framerate, the Saturn is unconcerned with such trivialities and delivers smooth, instant, challenging arcade gameplay. The games are fun, the games are a battle: a battle not against bad performance and horrible controls but against high scores and quick times. Better yet, the deeper you go with the Saturn the more you realise that it had the library to compete with the other two but its hands were tied by a bitter feud between Sega’s American and Japanese branches. For every great Saturn game that came West, 5 more of a similar quality never left Japan. If you happen to have native-level fluency in Japanese or are open to importing games and fan-translations then you will go on quite the journey with this platform.

Enjoying the Saturn is an exercise in constant friction: its arcadey games aren’t for everyone, most of the ports of familiar PlayStation games were shoddy jobs and the prices sting but for those who crave the purity of old gaming and a library where even its greatest games are obscure then this is a platform you can fall in love with. The fact that I can open up someone’s top 10 Saturn games and only know what 4-5 of the entries are delights me.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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Sega’s anthropomorphic blue eulipotyphla (there’s a word nobody has written in a game review before) has sold millions of video games across his 3 decade history and while the blue blur has some real stinkers under his belt I’m firmly against the common internet opinion that Sonic wasn’t ever any good; the original trilogy + Knuckles and Sonic CD are some of the finest 2D platformers ever made and the Sonic Adventure games, while not as influential or beloved as Super Mario 64, are still a pair of thoroughly enjoyable 3D platformers that I hold a lot of nostalgia for.

I’ve not gotten around to Frontiers yet but everything I’ve heard suggests that’s a fun Sonic game too.

If you’re around my age then I can almost guarantee that your first encounter with classic Sonic was on the Sonic Gems Collection and Sonic Mega Collection for GameCube, these contained basically every notable Sonic game released up to that point bar Adventures 1 and 2; combined with the Sega Mega Drive Collection on PS2, these cemented my love not only for the blue hedgehog but for Sega as a whole. Even with Sega gone from the hardware business I turned up my nose at Mario as a kid: I swore that Mario had nothing on Sonic and would rewatch my Sonic Underground VHS tapes over and over combined with Sonic X on Jetix (there’s a name you’ve not heard in 20 years) I was a soldier in a console war that my side had already lost.

Those from a generation or two before me might have experienced Sonic at home on his native Mega Drive (for the sake of my own sanity in this article, I’ll only be referring to the Mega Drive by its original name, used here in the PAL regions and Japan and not by the name of Phil Collins’ band) and played with that wonderfully comfortable 3-button controller. You might have even owned Sonic Jam on the Saturn.

I’m willing to bet that almost none of you, save perhaps for my surprisingly large Brazilian subscriber base (olá amigos) experienced Sonic for the first time on the Sega Master System. “The Sega Master System?” You might be asking in the USA, with your car that turns like the Titanic and between mouthfuls of hamburger and bald eagle screeches. “What’s that?” The Master System was the NES’ competitor, it was good too: excellent, actually.

Nintendo used dodgy, manipulative tactics to strangle the SMS in the cot in the US market but in Europe and Brazil especially, this console did really well; it has better processing speeds, better graphics and in my opinion, a better controller than the NES and to the delight of a Saturn and Dreamcast owner like me, the Master System’s games are incredibly cheap. It was truly the NES’ equal.

Shortly after Sonic’s release on the Mega Drive in 1991, an 8-Bit version for Master System also found its way to shelves, many people prefer this version and many others claim it strips away what makes the game special. I don’t tend to cover the 8-Bit era on the Journal because it’s been done to death and I’m sick of the whole 80’s nostalgia thing but I’ve not seen a single article about this game on Substack and the Master System is an underrepresented console in general so this time? I’m happy to be the standard-bearer.

Eggsploiting Nature

Sonic The Hedgehog hails from a time where the video game spoke for itself: there is no opening cutscene or text crawl, just the welcoming jingle of your Master System…

and then it’s into the game. 1 D-pad, 2 buttons and a cartridge, gaming doesn’t get any purer than this.

The premise of 8-Bit Sonic The Hedgehog is the same as its 16-Bit counterpart on the Mega Drive: Dr. Robotnik (a doctor of what?) is harvesting the innocent wildlife of Sonic’s world and using them to power his robots. It’s up to -and I quote- ‘the real cool hedgehog with the spiked haircut’ to travel through the game’s 6 zones: Green Hill, Bridge, Jungle, Labyrinth, Scrap Brain and Sky Base, freeing the captured wildlife and defeating Robotnik wherever he rears his ugly head.

If -and I assume most people are- you’re familiar with Sonic’s Mega Drive outing then you might be scratching your head at that list of zones “Jungle? Bridge? Where is Spring Yard?” Well, that’s the best part of Master System Sonic: this isn’t some compromised demake like Out Run or Shinobi, neither is it a barely functional, over-aspirational 8-Bit title trying to be something beyond its technology, Sonic The Hedgehog on Master System is its entirely own game built from the ground up for the console sharing only a name, mechanics, premise and protagonist with its more well-known counterpart. If you buy this today, you’re not checking out a half-baked curiosity version of the original or an old-school oddity, this is a fully worthy entry in the series that stands on its own 2 feet.

Given this game is literally running off about half the processing power of the Sonic The Hedgehog you know and love you might expect the real goal of the game: collecting the Chaos Emeralds for the true ending, to be missing. Once again, you’d be wrong, in no way is 8-Bit Sonic half-baked.

It’s undeniable that much of Sonic’s attitude and the rebellious tone doesn’t survive the halving of Bits but the physics and animations here are impressively untouched and if you stop for long enough Sonic will still do that thing where he gets all testy and leers at the camera. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken vinyl but emphatically: it is all here, just not in the way you’re used to.

I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee)

In the introduction I mentioned that the Master System has ‘better graphics’ but it and the NES are both 8-Bit consoles, so what does that actually mean? Well, the Master System has a palette of 64 colours and can display 31 simultaneously on-screen; the NES had a colour palette around the same size but it could only display 25 simultaneously, this essentially makes the Master System library 6 colours more vibrant than Nintendo’s machine. That doesn’t sound like a lot but in-practice, games on this console can look stunning compared to those on the NES.

Getting back on topic, I mention all this because Sonic The Hedgehog tends to land in people’s top-10 best looking SMS games and for good reason: areas of this title look very appealing on a real CRT TV and when not played through an RF cable. Whenever I return to this game I’m always shocked how pristine Sonic’s sprite looks too; Mario on the NES looks like someone subjected him to taxidermy a week too late but Sonic? Look at him, he’s radiant blue.

Yes folks, that is genuine transparency in an 8-Bit game, something that, to my knowledge, the NES was incapable of. It might be dithered so much it looks like a chess board (Sega Saturn fans reading that sentence) but for the standards of the time this is jaw-dropping to see on a home console.

A more impressive feat though is that nowhere in 8-Bit Sonic The Hedgehog will you see slow-down or flickering sprites besides when Sonic picks up a shield, where I assume it was intentional. There’s a lot of talk these days about games coming out broken or with glitches and how “It never used to be like this.” But let me tell you, as someone who plays these old consoles almost daily, games being broken was the norm back then, so Sonic on Master System deserves praise for being a well-made piece of software.

Speaking of things that were the norm back in the day, as always, this is a Sega game with a superb soundtrack, perhaps not as iconic or top notch as its Mega Drive counterpart mind you but still packed with more than a few catchy tunes. Let’s have a listen.

Of course, the iconic Green Hill Zone is fully replicated with the Master System sound chip and yes, of course, it’s an absolute banger. I think many modern video game melodies wouldn’t survive the trip backwards through time but Green Hill Zone is such a timeless bop that it very much does. Remix it, demake, I love it all the same.

Bridge Zone is an original song and level for 8-Bit Sonic The Hedgehog and while I find it to be the weakest zone in the game from a gameplay standpoint this tune is incredibly catchy. Every time I come back to SMS Sonic, this one gets stuck in my head.

The best song in Sonic The Hedgehog 8-Bit is this version of Scrap Brain Zone; I like this one so much that I actually prefer it to its 16-Bit equivalent. The Mega Drive Scrap Brain Zone sounds quite sinister but this one just screams final level. Brilliant.

The Tortoise And The Harehog

The biggest departure 8-Bit Sonic makes from the Mega Drive game is that the signature speed is de-emphasised in favour of more traditional platforming, this was almost certainly a decision necessitated by the technical constraints of the Master System.

It’s often overlooked today but you have to see Sega as an arcade-first developer rather than a console one; the goal of Sega’s consoles was to bring the arcade experience home at competitive prices and their game design philosophy reflected those arcade leanings, that’s why the Mega Drive has a faster processor than the SNES for quickly-scrolling screens, that’s why its sound chip is so bassy and distinct and that’s why, eventually, their hardware business didn’t survive the death of the arcade and the ascendence of the console as the primary home of video games. Sega games are loud, bold, easy to pick up and hard to put down because that’s the type of game that hoovers up your £1 coins.

What I’m getting at is, for better and for worse, 8-Bit Sonic is a very un-Sega game. Sonic’s usual speed isn’t possible on the hardware and neither is the classic 3-lane design of his stages or the addictive, arcadey loop of finding steep slopes and tall loops to build up your speed, instead, each level plays closer to something like Marble Zone on the Mega Drive with a few ramps here and there to roll down. That’s a statement I know will repulse some and enthral others.

On one hand, I think this version of Sonic The Hedgehog is a better platformer than its more famous counterpart: you don’t run into things you had no chance of avoiding, you don’t have those moments where you lose all control and can do nothing but watch Sonic spin through a loop and get carried by his inertia and neither do you have to tolerate the waiting at the likes of Marble Zone’s lava platform rides and moving traps in a game about going fast. But on the other hand… isn’t all that stuff what we’re playing Sonic for?

Let me be clear, I adore Sonic The Hedgehog but it was never the best platformer, there are plenty of arguably better games in the genre on the Mega Drive: Aladdin, Castle Of Illusion (which also has an entirely different version on SMS which I own and enjoy) and the likes of Earthworm Jim and Vectorman are just a few but the reason we love Sonic The Hedgehog: the reason Sega’s iconic mascot has persisted these 35 years, surviving infamous turds like Sonic ‘06 -a game so bad it caused me to sell my 360 as a kid in 2007 and stick with the previous generation until 2009- and the putrid Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric is that, love him or hate him, you’ll never out-hedge the ‘hog. No other platformer feels or plays like Sonic does. Compared to the Mega Drive Sonic, this version does feel much less revolutionary and more akin to a standard platformer on a console full of good platformers. It’s like if Nintendo made Sonic for the NES: better crafted and well-paced… but despite what Huey Lewis says, it is not hip to be square.

Let’s talk about the difficulty. Sonic The Hedgehog on Sega Master System is a strange case because I don’t know whether to tell you it’s much easier or much harder than on Mega Drive. There is a case for both, let me explain.

Sonic for the Mega Drive is certainly the more consistent and well-crafted challenge of the two versions. Green Hill Zone is a safe tutorial level where you learn how to pilot Sonic in an environment with minimal risk to your pool of lives; if you do happen to fall into spikes or lose a life, it’s easy enough to find an extra or to pick up 100 rings. From then on: through Marble, Spring Yard, Labyrinth, Star Light and Scrap Brain, the challenge (mostly) follows a gradual increase until the end of the game.

8-Bit Sonic is much different. Green Hill and Bridge Zone are extremely easy, then Jungle Zone, Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone are what I’d describe as at an average level of difficulty: you could lose a few lives here and there but I doubt most experienced platformer players will find much to struggle with, then we have Sky Base Zone and the final boss. I’ve played through this game -collecting all the Chaos Emeralds too- twice this week for the review and despite reaching the final fight with Robotnik armed with an extra continue and a pool of 8-10 lives… I just cannot beat him; it was a similar story last time I ran through this game about a year ago.

This absolute beast on YouTube makes the fight look piss easy and the first phase is: you just hug the wall at the back of the arena, bide your time and attack Robotnik when the energy beam shuts off and returns to its starting position in front of his glass pod but then in phase 2 it chases you around the arena shutting on and off at random intervals. I’ve beaten the rest of this game 4-5 times only to get clobbered by this final boss at the last hurdle every time.

I try to keep a level of decorum in these reviews but fuck this 8-Bit bald bell end and his stupid smile. I can’t beat this bastard! I’ve beaten Castlevania, every Dark Souls game, most of Ninja Gaiden on the NES and Halo: Reach LASO but this here has defeated me.

So, what can I say about the difficulty? Sonic 8-bit is definitely easier but I can’t finish this one, Mega Drive Sonic is harder but I can beat that one. I don’t know what to think.

To finish on a less foul-mouthed note, I much prefer how the Chaos Emeralds are gathered in 8-Bit Sonic. Rather than those irritating Special Stages, here they are hidden away in each level. The first couple are quite obvious but Scrap Brain and Jungle Zone’s emeralds are very easy to miss and it actually feels rewarding to grab these things, rather than a roll of the dice and your luck dealing with the physics in a platformer from 1991. There are still Special Stages in this one but they’re for hoovering up rings and getting more continues.

Blue On Blue

We’ve covered the premise, presentation and gameplay and have now arrived at the million pound question: is Sonic The Hedgehog for Sega Master System better than on Mega Drive?

The internet loves to deal in absolutes but I am not a Sith and neither will I claim that one of these is outright better than the other. Their pros and cons balance each other out well.

Sonic on the Mega Drive is full of questionable level design choices and the Special Stages aren’t fun to play but the presentation and the seismic impact it had on the industry cannot be overstated, plus the difficulty is much more finely-tuned. The highs of 16-Bit Sonic are higher but the lows are crushing too… looking at you, Labyrinth Zone.

Sonic on the Master System doesn’t have that same rebellious attitude and experimental feel, its levels are quite mundane and the game is (until the last 10 minutes) much too easy but the level design is tighter, it cuts out the annoying Special Stages and the fact that controlling Sonic feels the same despite the hardware gap is undeniably impressive.

I still prefer Mega Drive Sonic The Hedgehog. I don’t think it’s objectively better but it is the version for me. I believe both of these games are on the Sonic Origins collection but make sure you try the Master System version of this game, not the cramped Game Gear one.

Long May He Spin

Now to get a little bit serious but I promise this does circle back round to Sonic.

Mortality has been on my mind a lot lately, since starting this Substack in January 2025 I’ve lost 2 pets to mysterious diseases and one uncle to a rare and aggressive form of cancer; another looks to be going that way too. My own parents aren’t getting any younger and the realisation now that I’m 26 that the people who raised me probably won’t be here when I’m 46 is beginning to set in. I was morphed into such a Sega fanboy as a kid by my mum’s love for the Mega Drive; I was always gifted these Mega Drive Collections and my older brother always told me stories of my mum having to beat Goro for him on the Mega Drive’s Mortal Kombat port in the 90’s. A few years back, before I dropped out of university I even used a chunk of my student money to get her a Mega Drive for Christmas where we played Sonic 1 and 2 together until the wee hours of the morning.

Sonic The Hedgehog on Mega Drive has been ripped apart by the internet in the past 20 years and Sega’s contributions to console history have been largely forgotten by younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha retro gamers -who got into the scene watching people like Scott The Woz and JonTron rather than AVGN- but to me? This is a game I’ve been playing since I was 4 years old and memories of CO-OP-ing Sonic with my mum for hours are ones I will keep forever. There is a certain cabal of video games I intend to introduce my children to early if I’m ever fortunate enough to have them and the original Sonic trilogy is certainly on that list.

35 Years on, Sonic The Hedgehog is the ozymandias to a dead console manufacturer and a subject of ridicule by those who have built their own digital empires on the industrial infrastructure he and Sega helped create. Sega exist as a mere rump state, now known better for publishing the ailing Total War franchise and the Yakuza games, which have veered far off-course into parody.

There were many better platformers on the Mega Drive. Few talk about them anymore. Sonic hasn’t lived forever because he has the best games or the most gripping narratives, Sonic lives on because these games are singular in their design, rebellious in their nature and absolutely unforgettable for those who have enjoyed them. Design conventions and measures of quality change with the times but individuality and genuine style is immortal.

Go and enjoy a chili dog.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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You spot one of the classics in your Steam library or sitting on your shelf and you click on its page or pluck that box out from your collection and dust off the cover art. As you look at past screenshots or maybe rifle through the manual (if it’s old enough to still have one) fond memories come back and you think to yourself. “That’s my weekend sorted.” So you hit the Install button or put the disc in your console. You watch the progress bar crawl up or listen to the laser in your console travelling back and forth along its rail and suddenly, a flood of repressed memories come crashing in.

“Oh no… I’ll have to replay that part, won’t I?” This list is dedicated to those tedious openings, those insane boss fights and those painful levels that remind you why you don’t replay this one quite as often as your other favourites.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - Gravedigger Fight 1

I’m beginning this list with the inspiration for this entire article: the first encounter with Gravedigger in the original Resident Evil 3, also known to me mentally as “That bit with the fucking worm.” I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of replaying this particular section on my PSP this week.

Some way into Resident Evil 3, you’ll have gathered all the parts to repair the tram and escape Downtown Raccoon City but Jill and the other survivors’ scavenger hunt and the resulting gunfire and explosions have attracted worse monsters to the area; in that typically Resident Evil-style of escalating tension, the streets begin to fill with Brain Suckers (guess what they do) crows, the Cerberus dogs and of course, Gravedigger.

Your first fight against the monster sees Jill activating two switches to lower a ladder in order to escape the arena, simple enough… on paper. Juggling tank controls, annoying camera angles, trying to safely activate these switches and handling Gravedigger’s massive damage makes this section extraordinarily frustrating unless you practice standing in the specific, diagonal spot that allows you to trigger these switches from further away than usual.

Without fail, I always die at least twice on this part and I’m a seasoned player of this franchise.

Dark Souls (Original Release) - Blighttown

Today, on modern versions of Dark Souls, Blighttown is a bit of a difficulty speed bump for newer players but otherwise? It’s relatively unremarkable: the obligatory From Software poison swamp area. Watch your step and enter from The Depths side instead of the Toxin Blowdarter-infested shortcut beneath Firelink Shrine and you’ll do fine… but for those of us who played Dark Souls back in the day, on the Xbox 360 and PS3, this area is infamous.

Blighttown’s agonising framerate on the 360 and PS3.

Blighttown was a horrendous, stuttering onslaught of dark walkways, instant-death pitfalls, poison damage and quite frequently, PvP encounters for those with the cajones to tackle this death trap in human form or without online mode turned off. For my 12 year old self, playing Dark Souls when it was new, Blighttown was the bane of my existence: an unclimbable, rickety mountain which I time and again failed to summit.

Blighttown’s saving grace is that on modern hardware with stable performance, it’s quite a fun area to explore and sexy spider lady: Quelaag is one of the more enjoyable fights in the game. Once you get down into the swamp beneath the wooden walkways, you can claim a Dragon Scale which can be used to upgrade the legendary Drake Sword noob weapon, gain access to a Pyromancer in a game where that branch of magic was seriously overpowered and should you choose to, you can even veer off the main path and go exploring the secret Ash Lake area which takes you far below Lordran into the most ancient part of the world.

Shout out to Maneater Mildred.

Super Metroid - Maridia

Super Metroid is one of those retro Nintendo titles that I feel very comfortable calling a masterpiece: the soundtrack and atmosphere are chilling, the gameplay is tight and easy to pick up with a high-skill ceiling due to hidden movement options and it laid the groundwork for a genre that, in my opinion, still hasn’t managed to step out from under its shadow.

My one complaint with this game is that controlling Samus is rather stiff and fiddly, this isn’t a deal-breaker for most of the game… except in Maridia.

Maridia is an underwater maze of sinking sand, grapple hook sections and high-damage enemies that’s annoying to traverse, confusing to navigate and thanks to an eerie soundtrack oppressively lonely and claustrophobic in feel. This is a sewer level and a maze at the same time, great! Most experienced Super Metroid players will know either the layout of Maridia or the wall jump technique that makes this area significantly less painful but for a first time player, this can sometimes be the end of the road; I was enjoying Maridia so little the first time I played Super Metroid that I put off playing it for days between sessions while I was there and I had a friend who even dropped Super Metroid over this area.

I’m very good at the wall jump these days so Maridia doesn’t bother me but I can’t deny that my gut still sinks a little when I arrive there.

Halo: Combat Evolved - The Library + Two Betrayals

Bungie’s original Halo game built the Xbox brand and was the next step in the evolution of console FPS games after GoldenEye; the perfect mix of narrative, exploration, next-gen presentation and great gunplay make it an enjoyable classic to this day. Those of you who know Halo will also know that Combat Evolved’s second half is much weaker than the first and this 2 mission stretch is the culprit.

Bungie introduces The Flood: a grotesque, fleshy, cosmic horror enemy type that consists of the reanimated corpses of both Human and Covenant soldiers… then gets you sick to death of fighting them immediately. The Library is CE’s longest mission and takes you through an onslaught of Flood in the same handful of copy and pasted corridors over and over, fighting until you never want to see them again.

After The Library you have Two Betrayals which takes a similar approach: it’s the earlier Assault On The Control Room mission but backwards and with, as you probably guessed, more Flood added, including the notorious rocket launcher Flood who can murder you in one shot with pinpoint accuracy from long range.

In my opinion, Bungie never quite managed to get The Flood right in the Halo trilogy: in Combat Evolved they weren’t fun to fight, in Halo 2 they were too tough, especially on legendary difficulty, which is a herculean task to beat in Halo 2 and in Halo 3 they were too easy but this is their worst version.

I adore Halo 1 but to be perfectly honest? I often don’t bother with the second half of the game these days. Shout out to who suggested Cortana from Halo 3: a level with a similar premise and issues that would’ve made the list if I hadn’t imposed a limit of 1 per series.

LoZ: Majora’s Mask - Great Bay Temple

Ocarina Of Time isn’t just one of the most popular Zelda games, it consistently ranks in the top 3 of the best games ever made too and was one of the top-sellers on both N64 and 3DS, as such, the maligned Water Temple has become the poster child for hated Zelda dungeons… but Majora’s Mask: Ocarina Of Time’s enigmatic sequel, has the worse water-based dungeon, in my opinion.

Great Bay Temple: Majora’s 3rd out of 4 dungeons and explored mostly in Link’s fast-swimming Zora form is an ugly, confusing maze of underwater currents, bolted sheet metal and coloured pipes. To top it off, the boss of this dungeon: Gyorg, on the original N64 version, is utterly infuriating to fight and I distinctly remember it prompting a rage quit from me when I first played this game.

Steps were taken to make this dungeon less confusing and irritating on the 3DS but I can’t vouch for that version since I’ve never played it. Coming off the Great Bay, which was my favourite area in the game, I was really disappointed with this dungeon and it remains one of the key reasons why I’ve never managed to finish a second playthrough of Majora’s Mask… I know it’s been requested though so maybe this year.

That funky, fish bone guitar you get as a Zora is awesome.

Super Mario Bros. - The Castles

Super Mario Bros. is probably the most important game ever made. When console gaming looked to be on its last legs and PC gaming outside of Europe was extraordinarily niche, Nintendo created what was supposed to be the last hurrah for their cartridge based games before shifting to the Famicom’s new disc system, instead, Super Mario Bros. became their beachhead into the US market and the NES revived the North American games industry; today, they are known for stubbornly holding on to the cartridge format where others abandoned it long ago.

As fun and as iconic as this title is, there is one part of it I think we can all agree is bullshit: the castles!

Early in Super Mario Bros. the castles are enjoyable, tricky platform challenges with spinning bars of fire, pools of fire and fire-breathing Bowser at the end of each fiery fortress… did I mention there’s fire in the castles? As you progress through the game’s 8 worlds, mini-puzzles are added to each of them and by ‘puzzles’ I mean long, trial and error sections where you have to guess the correct jumps and paths to take through the castle, otherwise the timer runs out and you lose a life; the only way you get through is by constant repetition, a good memory or by pausing the game and looking it up on your phone.

Time to call Nintendo Power.

Super Mario 64 - Top Floor

I’m going to keep this list to one entry per-franchise but I tend to consider 2D and 3D entries in long-running IP’s to be their own series, so that’s why you’re seeing Super Mario 64 here.

It’s hard to overstate the importance and seismic impact of SM64 on the industry: it set the bar for 3D platformers and a new standard for 3D video games as a whole, it carried the sparse, early Nintendo 64 on its back as new titles were slow to release and third party developers defected to Sony’s PlayStation; while the dated camera system and stiffer movement can be a pain today, Super Mario 64’s levels are still a treat to play… until the last few, anyway.

The top floor of Peach’s Castle is home to the two most insipid levels in Super Mario 64: Tick Tock Clock, which is a tricky pain in the ass with unforgiving, long falls and an annoying gimmick and Rainbow Ride which is a course I have some fondness for but it generally ranks among the least-favourites for its difficult 100 coin challenge and tedious carpet rides. The hidden Wing Cap level up here is also infuriating and failing it dumps you back in the courtyard outside.

Let’s a-not go!

Metal Gear Solid - Nuclear Warhead Storage Building

Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil are permanently locked in a mortal struggle for my position as #1 favourite franchise: Metal Gear Solid has a consistently higher quality but it also never experimented or had quite as many spin-offs as Resident Evil has; I’ve replayed Resident Evil more and think that those PS1-era Resi games have aged better than MGS1 but the nature of MGS as a narrative-focused series sort of guarantees less replay value… I could debate this forever, the point is I’ve played MGS1 many times and I still love it… except for this specific room.

A little while before the famous Psycho Mantis boss fight, Solid Snake finds himself in a room where dismantled nuclear warheads and other radioactive material are being kept. Over CODEC you are informed that shooting these hazardous materials will trigger an incident and kill everyone in the room… so just be careful, right? Wrong. You will not be allowed to equip and use any weapons in this room but the enemy guards will.

If Solid Snake is caught, the enemy will fire on you, triggering the radiation and forcing you to watch Snake die a slow, painful death to radioactive gases; you cannot escape the room after shots are fired and retreating to safety doesn’t stop the gas.

The stealth in this warehouse isn’t difficult but the consequences for failure are rather irritating on repeat playthroughs.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - Zadornov Escape Missions

I know this is another entry in the MGS series but… damn it, I’ve broken the rules, I really wanted to mention this one though.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is my second favourite game in the entire franchise, this PSP title -ported to consoles later with the HD Collection- is a direct sequel to the Metal Gear Solid you’ve never heard of: Portable Ops. and an indirect sequel to MGS3, set in 1974. Peace Walker follows Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller as they establish their own PMC: Militaires Sans Frontieres: an inexplicably French-named unit based on a disused oil rig off the coast of Costa Rica. Peace Walker sees Big Boss and MSF tangled up in the Cold War espionage of Latin America and Snake’s continuing efforts to come to terms with the events of MGS3.

The management elements, fantastic gameplay, bite-sized missions, fun boss fights and online CO-OP make this an essential MGS title… but the final act is ruined by these damn Zadornov missions.

MSF Captive Vladimir Zadornov keeps escaping the brig and it’s up to Snake to bring him back home over and over and over again, this leads to you trying to find him hidden across a plethora of reused levels until finally, you trigger the requirements for the game’s final boss. So tedious.

Sonic The Hedgehog - Labyrinth Zone (Mega Drive/Genesis Version)

The original Sonic The Hedgehog trilogy + Knuckles and Sonic CD (yes, I will be defending that game, thank you very much) are a set of titles I think all gamers owe it to themselves to play and every time I pop one of these into my Mega Drive -or Master System, the 8-Bit versions are great too- I can’t help but feel the sting of what we’ve lost in regards to Sega’s exit from the hardware business.

Or perhaps the company’s near-collapse was deserved retribution after subjecting us to Labyrinth Zone?

The original Sonic The Hedgehog’s fourth zone takes the blue blur to a flooded labyrinth where you have to battle treacle-slow movement, irritating spike traps and a limited air supply in order to succeed. This slow, meandering gauntlet is tricky, unforgiving and worst of all: boring and tends to rank among the most disliked zones in all of 2D Sonic. The only saving grace is that, as usual for a Sega game, it has a great soundtrack.

The tragedy of Labyrinth Zone is that it didn’t have to be this way. If you play the Sega Master System version of Sonic The Hedgehog then the Labyrinth, while not one of the better levels, is much less tedious.

Sonic Adventure - Big The Cat’s Campaign

3D Sonic has quite the tumultuous history seeing both the dizzying heights of the Dreamcast days where Sonic Adventure was -and thanks to its botched GameCube port remains- a compelling reason to own Sega’s sleek white machine and seeing widespread mockery both from critics and players; even the once-beloved Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 fell victim to the internet’s ire but I want it to be known that the Dreamcast version is superior and that I love both of these games.

At least, I love Sonic Adventure besides Big The Cat’s campaign.

Sonic Adventure sees you playing as a whole cast of different characters with each of them giving their own perspective on the wider story and providing a unique gameplay style, not every campaign is a hit but they’re so short (about 2 hours each) and the idea so novel that it makes the game feel consistently fresh. For some reason, Sega decided that a campaign based around fishing was what the 3D rendition of their 2D platforming mascot needed. As Big The Cat you will go level-by-level catching his missing frog with a fishing rod… and it’s as fun as it sounds.

I played Sonic Adventure extensively during that formative 6-10 years age bracket so unfortunately, I can’t hate this big purple monstrosity, his fur looks too soft and his manner is too affable.

Jak II - Racing Missions

Jak II: the second entry in the Jak And Daxter series is a notoriously difficult video game and is generally considered the hardest PS2 game that doesn’t belong to an obscure genre. I grew up with Jak II and yes, of course I never beat it; I think my childhood disc is broken but I still own it, I need to put it through my resurfacing machine and have a go at Jak II as an adult.

This whole game is tough but what takes the cake for me are the racing missions. These damn things gave me a phobia of the whole racing genre which didn’t leave me until a friend convinced me to play Forza Horizon 4 with him and I got addicted to it.

Vehicles in Jak And Daxter are -mechanically and literally- floaty: they’re rocket-powered flying bikes and cars, this makes them both hard to handle and completely unlike the cars you’ll drive in a genuine racing game, on top of this, traffic density is quite high, you can swoop down to the ground to get past this but that usually results in Jak splattering a pedestrian which gets the Krimzon Guard on you: this game’s equivalent to GTA’s police.

To quote the AVGN, my thoughts on Jak II are simple “Good game, but holy fuck is it hard.”

Donkey Kong Country - Mine Cart Carnage And Mine Cart Madness

Donkey Kong Country is probably my favourite SNES game: it’s the only one I played during my formative years where the SNES was before my time, it has unbelievably good visuals for the hardware, one of the greatest soundtracks ever composed and a perfect balance of challenge and fun; I’ve never beaten the second game because it became such a brutal, difficult slog to play that I ran out of steam, yeah, yeah Scanlines is a scrub.

I like every level in DKC… except for its two outliers: the dreaded minecart levels.

As tight and as brilliant as DKC feels to play, I think most players would agree that hit-boxes and platforming can sometimes feel a touch off, thanks to the large sprites and visual style, this makes the minecart levels intensely difficult; unless you jump at the very last pixel on some of these pits, you will phase through the edge of the upcoming platform and die. Combine this with high-speed, surprise enemy encounters and twisty, curvy track layouts and you have a recipe for 10 lost lives.

I once played DKC cooperatively with my mum… it became a solo endeavour after world 2-2 where the first minecart level appears.

Half Life - Zen

Zen is the quintessential shitty FPS level: the green-orange stain at the end of an otherwise fantastic shooter.

Half Life’s most outstanding feature is perhaps its atmosphere and how well-crafted the narrative is; in a game with 3-armed extra-terrestrials, the government murdering innocent scientists and a potential invasion of the planet Earth on the horizon, Half Life manages to make the player feel consistently trapped and claustrophobic, pitting you against a plethora of alien baddies without ever feeling campy or losing its grounded tone… until the end.

The final stretch of Half Life takes you to Zen: a separate dimension filled with tedious platforming, crap boss fights and a confusing layout that grinds the pace of the finale to a screeching halt. By this point, Half Life has exhausted all its ideas and for an FPS game the shooting in Half Life has never been all that spectacular, so what follows is hopping platforms and dumping ammo into enemies you’ve already killed a hundred times until you come up against the dreadful final boss.

I’m in the minority of people who prefers Half Life to the -dare I say it- obscenely overrated sequel but Zen is indefensible.

The Last Of Us - Chapters I-IV

A few months ago, having failed to get into the game a number of years ago, I played and finished The Last Of Us for the first time. I broadly enjoyed my time with the game but I didn’t think I had much to say about it so I didn’t write a review; this entry on the list, roughly speaking, will outline why I bounced off it so badly the first time.

From Pittsburgh onwards, The Last Of Us represents a near-perfect meld of technology, storytelling and gameplay in a way that only our medium can achieve and this game pretty much single-handedly pushed the PlayStation 3 ahead of the Xbox 360 in the waning months of the 7th generation of game consoles. My issue with The Last Of Us, however, is that it just takes so damn long to get good.

This might be an unpopular opinion but I didn’t care when Joel’s daughter died, or when Tess died and the gameplay of The Last of Us is nothing spectacular, so for those opening chapters I mostly found myself restlessly running through things as fast as possible and wondering if my second attempt at appreciating the game was a lost cause. I turned out to be wrong, thankfully.

The Sims - Being A Brokie

Much like Gen Z, early on in any The Sims game, your only chance at being able to live in something larger than a shoebox is shacking up with a tribe of fellow bottom tax brackets and slumming it together in a property that’s more student flat than a good home. While this arguably helps to drive the meme-worthy carnage the series is known for it can also be quite tedious.

With nothing but a basic career in place, not enough money to really make your house a home or to go out and do things other than cover the basic needs of the household, the early Sims can have a tendency to become an endless quest to scrape together what meagre funds you can get.

Child me once had to be off school for over a month after a surgery and I spent most of this time on the original Xbox playing The Urbz (someone please comment if you’ve played it, I’ve never met another person in my life who’s played this version of The Sims) grinding away at the motorcycle shop mini game for cash and having Glasgow showers in the sinks of public toilets while working towards furnishing for my in-game flat.

Art really does mirror life.

Every Fighting Game - Labbing/Learning Combos

There is a certain sub-section of the fighting community I like to call the scientists. If you’ve ever been in the FGC then you’ve met the type: the sort of guy/lass who has 1000 hours on the game but a low rank and never leaves the lab, the sort of player who can nail all the hard combos but has zero fight IQ, the sort of player who can tell you the properties and frames of every move in their character’s arsenal but can’t break grabs. For these people, learning combos and labbing new ones is the best part of the game but for the rest of us? This is tedious, boring busywork.

I’ve had the privilege of facing some competitive-level Tekken players in my time and I always got the same advice: your defence is good and your timing is tricky… but you have the worst combos ever. I really could not be bothered to go and learn this stuff; what they don’t tell you about getting good at fighting games is that you need to spend double the time you play online matches rinsing and repeating combos ad infinitum and it is mind-numbing.

If you’re a ‘scientist’ then I have massive respect for you.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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With no incumbent, theatrical Bond, No Time To Die almost half a decade old and the last, non-smartphone James Bond game releasing all the way back in 2012 this has proven to be a massive occasion from a number of different perspectives; for Bond fans, this is the first proper Bond project released under Amazon and the first actor to portray Bond in the post-Daniel Craig era, for gamers it is the return of an IP that delivered absolute classics like GoldenEye and Nightfire but perhaps most importantly, this has been quite the moment for Britain, culturally.

I’m bilingual going on trilingual (всем привет, hola a todos) and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people from the ex-USSR or Latin America what their image of Britain is and had James Bond come up alongside Big Ben, the most bland tea blend on the planet (there goes my citizenship) and red telephone boxes as symbols of the UK. For those who don’t live in the UK, even the BBC: essentially British state media, was celebrating the launch of this game.

Since the last Bond film came out, her majesty the Queen passed away and we’ve gone through 4 different prime ministers, so I’m happy to see that at least one British institution is left standing, perhaps shaken but not stirred.

After a very long wait, it’s my pleasure to finally bring you this review of 007 First Light.

Agent Under Water

007 First Light opens aboard a helicopter in the night skies above Iceland where a certain trainee Aircrewman: James Bond is flying with the British SAS who are on a classified asset retrieval mission against unknown foes. Before the crew can land, multiple surface to air missiles are launched from the island, blowing the helicopters out of the sky. Bond, James Bond, almost drowns but manages to make it to shore, picking up his -previously only depicted in the novels- trademark cheek scar in the process.

The hypothermic, untrained, sole-survivor Bond is given a less than 1% chance of survival by the MI6 handler who guides him through the rest of the mission but the young Bond’s natural tenacity, courage and cool head under pressure allow him to pull off the impossible and MI6 recruit Bond on the spot.

The helicopter crash and first 10 minutes or so of 007 First Light.

IO Interactive made it clear from the beginning that their James Bond origin story was going to be something different; the Bond of the novels was from a naval background and so was the Bond of the big screen, until Casino Royale made Craig’s Bond a former-SAS serviceman. As such, this was a point of worry for me coming into the game but I’m very happy to say that the basic building blocks of the character we all know and love are well and truly intact. Let’s face it, the Royal Navy doesn’t quite have the reputation it once did so the decision to link a modern Bond with the internationally respected SAS is one bit of retconning I have no objections to.

It helps that throughout this opening and the rest of the game, Patrick Gibson’s take on a younger, less experienced 21st century Bond is phenomenally acted and excellently written, of the many quips and conversations present I can think of very few that don’t land or weren’t handled well.

This isn’t Casino Royale. At the start of this game, Bond doesn’t even know how to fire a gun properly or how to fight but the prologue and again, the acting and writing do a superb job of separating Bond’s natural talents from those he’s taught; the entire first mission and tutorial is a motivating, playable training montage. James isn’t made to look stupid or incompetent in First Light, rather he is headstrong, impatient and raw, he has the heart of a hero, a natural charisma and an inexhaustible font of courage but lacks the skills and experience of his on-screen counterparts.

A long time ago, in my old wish list post for this game, I mentioned how every new actor playing Bond had the task of convincing you that they were 007, through their performance, their aura or the way the actor could sell action or wear a suit. Back then I was worried that Patrick Gibson Bond’s younger appearance, mannerisms and the difficulty in pulling this off inside the medium of video games meant that I’d never buy him as Bond, well…

This younger Bond hasn’t quite developed the cruel edge of the elite 007 yet but by the middle of the game, Patrick Gibson had fully won me over. If the plans to make this a trilogy come to fruition then I can’t wait to see this Bond become more seasoned over time.

I have heard a few grumbles online over Bond wearing distinctly un-Bondlike clothes like salmon shirts, shorts and having gadgets based on things as un-classy as wireless earbuds but to that I say…

And although I sort of get this point, I’d suggest that Bond has always been a mirror of the style and trends of the times, rather than a distinct look. We don’t associate Bond with smoking anymore but in the novels and with Sean Connery, he was often seen with a cigarette between his lips and Roger Moore’s Bond had a preference for digital watches.

Bond has also always been the height of British male fantasy, he takes the 3 great pillars of British male desire: adventure, fast cars and beautiful women and excels at all 3 of them. IO Interactive did a fantastic job of writing this fantasy for a Gen Z Bond; what most older people, especially in the UK don’t understand is that the life of the Gen Z male is largely an exercise in unmet potential and emptiness: we are the most educated, most healthy and most worldly generation but there are no jobs, Covid destroyed our upward mobility and the prizes we all work towards are worth much less and much harder to obtain than they were 30 years ago. The very idea of having the opportunity to be seen and to show off what we can really do and not to be filtered out by an algorithm, the way Bond does in the prologue, is what makes this a distinctly Gen Z male fantasy.

Getting back to the game, this prologue in Iceland has a very Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes feel to it that I really enjoyed. While First Light in general lacks the freedom of a modern Hitman game or of MGS5 it makes up for it in immersion; it’s difficult to cock this mission up and the environment doesn’t hold any real dangers but you feel cold, outnumbered and outgunned while playing, which is what matters.

After triggering an explosion so fierce it was probably seen from Norway, Bond escapes Iceland, rescued prisoners in-tow and First Light’s opening song -also called First Light- by Lana Del Rey plays.

I… don’t really know what to make of this song.

Let me get my praise out of the way first: I love both the visual element and the lyrics to First Light. The chess imagery and the shadowy female figures tie in wonderfully to some of the locations and characters you meet in this roughly 15-17 hour adventure, as do the lyrics; David Arnold: the musical alumni of 5 separate Bond films worked on this song too so the instrumental element is fantastic… but I think First Light has taught me that I don’t like Lana Del Rey very much. Sorry, Lana heads? Reys? Whatever you call yourselves.

Lana’s whispery-breathy vocals grate on me the more I listen to this song and explore the rest of her music and they have an unpleasant, overproduced feel to them, like someone pissed about with the audio track on Audacity before it was added to the video. I also find her black and white, sad girl image a bit cringeworthy but at this point I’m just being mean, put me in front of a microphone and the besht you’ll get out of me ish a middling Sean Connery impreshion.

Lana made it known publicly, on more than one occasion in the past that she really wanted a Bond theme under her belt so even if I prefer Nearly Civilized by Esthero, I’m genuinely glad she got the opportunity to do it, Bond themes are such perfect time capsules of the musical eras they come from and I have no doubt in future that First Light will sound tastefully of its time in the same way that Everything Or Nothing and You Know My Name do.

I'm Just Looking

007 First Light’s presentation and performance might be the one area where I seem to differ quite a bit from the general consensus; I’ve heard the game described as ‘beautiful’ or ‘stunning’ but to be honest? I think First Light looks up to triple-A standard but not especially ground-breaking graphically.

I’ll let you be the judge.

There are all sorts of fantastic, Bondian locations to explore in First Light but as this is a heavily narrative-driven experience, I’m going to try and stick to what was shown in the trailers before I write the spoilers section.

007 First Light runs on the Glacier Engine: the same as the newer Hitman games which contributes to it looking similar -but not playing like- the World of Assassination trilogy, furthermore I do think First Light is much better looking than those games; the WoA trilogy, especially the second game, was dogged by budget constraints so it is pleasing to see IO in a well-deserved stronger position financially. Getting back on topic, it’s the performance, character models and the finer details that bring the presentation down a notch for me.

My gaming rig has an RTX 5070 and an i7 12700KF with 16GB of RAM, this is a seriously beefy machine capable of running all games on High at 60FPS and even some -like the recent Resident Evil Requiem- on Ultra at 60 with Ray-Tracing turned off; I’m not saying this to boast, I’m just trying to convey the equipment I’m working with here. Despite this power, I found myself running First Light on High with certain options scaled back to account for the unstable framerate. Issues weren’t constant but during moments of high population density, say, an undercover visit to a corporate gala or a chess tournament, my FPS count would find itself in the lower 40’s. There were also a number of rooms I entered and models I saw that were lacking in detail and jagged shadows are not an uncommon sight in First Light.

Despite all this, I'm happy to report that in my first playthrough, during Tac-Sim missions and now into my second run of the campaign, not once have I experienced a crash while playing First Light.

I’d like to go into detail on First Light’s sound and music but unfortunately, a lot of it is gentle ambient like in Hitman and most of the big, bombastic action scenes’ music hasn’t been uploaded to YouTube yet but I will do my best with what I can find.

The first time you hear a version of the Bond theme in 007 First Light is when Bond does the classic move of commandeering a vehicle that looks utterly useless and somehow, he still manages to drive it like a maniac. This score punctuates one of the many moments of the campaign that brough a toothy grin to my face.

007 First Light’s best set-piece is accompanied by this epic version of the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme song. I don’t even like that film, even after its reappraisal by Bond fans but the music is iconic and it lends perfect gravitas to what is the most chaotic firefight of this whole adventure.

I can’t find this one anywhere yet without spoilers in the title but there’s a late game boat chase that features an awesome, instrumental rendition of First Light that reminded me of David Arnold’s work on The World Is Not Enough and the River Thames Chase in that Bond opening.

I’m not a big player of third person shooters but in my experience, they have a tendency to have rather limp/weak sounding weapons, I can confirm this is not the case with First Light.

Youth Is No Guarantee Of Innovation

My biggest fear with 007 First Light was that this was going to be a reskinned, 007-themed Hitman game; Hitman isn’t really my preferred subgenre of stealth but I have a lot of respect and fondness for that franchise, however, I also feel that the World Of Assassination trilogy lost a lot of the dark aesthetic and puzzle-like design that made the older games so great. As a result, I wasn’t entirely convinced by IO Interactive the same way everyone else seemed to be. The gaming community also seems to have forgotten that time they tried to fire Agent 47’s voice actor.

Happily, I am eating my words now, feasting on them in fact. 007 First Light doesn’t play like Hitman at all. There are comparisons to all sorts of franchises being espoused on the internet and what I would say is that First Light is somewhere between 007: Everything Or Nothing and Uncharted 4 with a dash of Hitman; from Everything Or Nothing it takes its well-developed hand to hand combat, its focus on a lengthy narrative and near-future technology, from Uncharted 4 it takes the feel of its shooting, that signature Sony climbing system and the feel of its driving and from Hitman it takes its engine and the chameleon-style stealth through exclusive events or crowded locales.

There are 5 pillars to the gameplay of 007 First Light: Hand to hand combat, shooting, stealth, gadgets and driving. Famously, it became so difficult to get Bond games out on shelves after 2012 because Eon Productions: former producers of the Bond franchise, weren’t entirely pleased with the legacy of Bond games as unsophisticated shooters and felt that the character hadn’t been portrayed as anything more than a gunslinger; as much as I love those classic Bond shooters, it’s hard to disagree with that second point but you have to wonder, do they watch their own films? Anyway, I mention this because 007 First Light was mostly produced under Eon’s tenure and it shows; a lot of the shooting in this game is back-loaded to the last 3/9 chapters, this gives the game a pleasing sense of escalation as you progress and it also means that the majority of the time, you do actual espionage and stealth.

The highlight of the experience for me was the hand to hand combat and the gadgets. Bond has so many different moves in this game, you can clinch people and start landing knees and uppercuts or throw them, barge into enemies, charge them into walls and over ledges, throw punches to the gut, kicks, parry enemy strikes, dodge and throw objects, including your gun: everything you could want to do, you can. Fights are frantic and fun with the right combination of moves able to make any brawl look choreographed. There were times when the Daniel Craig films seemed embarrassed to be associated with classic Bond and the silly gadgets were often the butt of jokes but IO interactive gave the people what they want and the gadgets returned and in greater number and quality than ever; I don’t want to spoil them all but I will say that classics like the laser watch are included, the different ways in which you can use each gadget are a treat to discover on each level and the pen in this doesn’t just explode… it fires missiles.

The stealth and driving are solid in First Light but the former does that modern gaming trope I really hate where a lot of the best routes are made abundantly obvious by chest-high, magical invisibility grass and the latter teases you for a reveal that never really comes; I hate to drop a mild spoiler here but this bugged me enough that I feel it justified: the Aston Martin Valhalla, teased in both trailers and throughout the game, is only given to you to drive for about 30 seconds in an enclosed arena. Lame.

Something I adore is that when Bond is caught you can actually bullshit your way to safety a lot of the time. Hit Q and Bond will ‘Bluff’ and convince the guard that he’s a health and safety man or an IT guy working late, this is of course pure Bond and many of these fake stories made me chuckle.

Shooting in 007 First Light feels great. Unlike a lot of games with 2 separate combat styles, you can switch between brawling and shooting with seamless elegance; nothing makes you feel more Bond than disarming a goon, throwing him over a ledge then tapping the slow-motion ‘Focus’ mode to headshot his mate before he can even get a shot off. Unfortunately, this pillar of gameplay is somewhat marred by the fact that there just aren’t any interesting weapons to use. You get to use the usual mix of non-descript European pistols, Western assault rifles, KRISS Vectors and a sniper rifle as with most action games but they really needed some wacky, Bondian weaponry; the laser gun from Moonraker is something of a Bond game classic so I was surprised not to see it show up at least once.

At a stretch, I could say that enemy variety isn’t high but the AI is smart enough and combat encounters so spread out and well-paced that this never proved to be an issue. The game is made up of 9, 90 minute chapters, you have gun fights in maybe 6 of them, usually lasting 10-15 minutes.

The highlight of 007 First Light for me is the chapter set in a Vietnamese resort, this mission just hits every important Bond note with perfection.

You get the classic Singeon Smythe Bond alias, a long section where you swan around a fancy resort undercover, bugging guests and collecting intelligence, Bond can’t help himself and decides to fornicate with a fellow guest and once night falls you don a classy white dinner jacket, Connery-style and get into some real action. I don’t want to spoil the entire level but there came a point where I was sat on an evening, beer in hand, stalking a platoon of enemies through the Vietnamese underbrush and in a fancy villa, setting traps, using distractions and picking them off one by one when all I could think was “Goodness me, this game is amazing.” Stealthing around this level made me feel like I was playing Metal Gear Solid 3 and I don’t think I can give any higher praise than that.

There wasn’t a single level I didn’t enjoy in First Light, though if I had to criticise I’d say the penultimate mission felt as if it went on a bit too long and had too much platforming for such simple mechanics.

There are challenges to complete for each mission and the Tac-Sim mode, which allows IO interactive to reuse maps for score-based challenges with leaderboards and the player can unlock suits and weapons with in-game currency here but as of now, the mode is quite barren with only the promise that long-term support will be upheld.

Not The Only Spy Out There

Before we get into the spoilers section, I wanted to highlight just how well-cast First Light is and how much I enjoyed spending time with the majority of these characters.

My favourite of the characters was Lennie James as John Greenway, which was a surprise to me because this character starts the game as your usual hard-ass, drill sergeant type; this is also an original character created by IO Interactive, not pulled from a film or novel. Even in the earlier stages, Greenway comes across as harsh and unfriendly but never as cruel or abusive of his rank and as the adventure progresses, watching him slowly learn to see Bond as more than a fluke (and seeing Bond grow to respect Greenway in earnest) provides some really great moments.

This may seem like overblown praise but I’m going to say it anyway: Alastair Mackenzie is the best Q since Desmond Llewelyn. John Cleese never had the time in the role to build much of a rapport with the audience and was too overtly comedic and Ben Whishaw always came off like a LinkedIn IT guy to me rather than an eccentric quartermaster but this Q, in my opinion, is as good as you’re going to get short of reviving Desmond, rest in peace, legend. Rather than copying the Desmond Llewelyn routine of getting annoyed by Bond, this Q acts as something of a father figure and a warmer figure of authority who actually cares about the agents, it’s very charming; there’s a sweet moment between Bond and Q where he teaches Bond how to tie a bowtie properly, it made me smile to see Bond’s youth and Q’s cool granddad-ish sensibilities highlighted so well.

I can’t really talk about the villains of this story because it’s a bit of a reveal so instead, I’ll mention some funny cameos.

The only members of this cast I wasn’t too keen on were Kiera Lester as Moneypenny and Priyanga Burford as M.

They give convincing performances and I never disliked any of their dialogue but neither actress was given much to do beyond playing very bland versions of these characters; this version of Moneypenny has none of the wit and charm of Naomie Harris on the big screen and Burford’s M doesn’t have the presence or the intimidation factor of Judi Dench’s M. It takes a special talent and presence as an actress to fill a role traditionally associated with an older, austere gentleman but Judi Dench is a British national treasure and has that ability in spades, Burford, in my opinion, does not.

Bad Intel

WARNING: This section contains heavy spoilers for the plot and ending of 007 First Light. If you’re planning to buy the game then please skip ahead.

There’s actually quite a lot to 007 First Light’s plot and the marketing for this game really lead us towards thinking it was going to be one kind of story when in-fact, it turned out to be something else entirely. I’ll try and be as concise as I can with my explanation and critique but honestly? A lot happens and this is easily the best story a 007 video game has gotten.

The gist of 007 First Light’s plot is that Bond -who’s handler on the Iceland mission turns out to be the MI6 supercomputer: Thea- and his 1% chance of survival aren’t the only statistical anomalies or mistaken assessments. Sir Nicholas Webb, big tech mogul who designed Thea knows the machine is faulty but the data it collects and the utility it provides to MI6 is making him disgustingly rich and politically powerful, so rather than admit the truth, his son Damian Webb -the soldier with the gold mask from the trailers- heads a PMC funded by daddy’s money to wipe out those who know the truth or don’t die when they’re supposed to.

009 Comes out of hiding to warn his old colleague Greenway that MI6 is compromised but the PMC attack the meeting, setting off the bomb in the Slovak hotel that kills Bond’s fellow agents in training.

Eventually, Greenway and Bond discover the truth which comes with 2 other unsettling revelations: Greenway, who eliminated the other, supposedly traitorous 00 agents years ago, did so under a false positive from Thea and a second supercomputer: Hyperion exists, giving Webb a backdoor into MI6, the intelligence gathered from this backdoor he intends to use to oust the current Prime Minister and to install his own puppet regime. Bond and Isolda, who is a rival spy and femme fatale who Bond meets throughout the game, go rogue to Webb’s Antarctica HQ to retrieve Hyperion. Once they find the computer, Isolda shoots and kills Webb against Bond’s wishes and tries to escape with the computer in order to sell it to her shadowy benefactors, who are heavily implied to be Spectre.

Before she can escape, Bond shoots Hyperion rendering the data irretrievable.

In the final mission, a previously thought to be dead Damian Webb attacks MI6 HQ to steal Thea so that he can blackmail MI6 with their data and sell the particularly juicy parts to hostile powers. Isolda escapes capture while Bond proves his loyalty to MI6 after his rogue Antarctica trip by wiping out the intruders and killing Webb once and for all.

For his actions, Bond earns the number and is crowned 007. I’ve skimmed over quite a lot but this is the essence of the game.

SPOILERS END HERE

I thoroughly enjoyed First Light’s story and I can’t wait to see what a sequel holds. The only parts I really take issue with are the fact that the series is going in that direction again in regards to the villains and for some reason, they had Bond quipping throughout the final boss fight. This removes all tension and ensures the audience won’t take it seriously. It’s also never explained just how this character seemingly comes back to life after Bond dispatches them a few missions earlier; it’s a bit of a shame too that a certain trainee character who is given lots of development gets dropped after the first act due to an injury.

Imagine how much worse the fight with Alec at the end of GoldenEye would have been with Bond making jokes every few moments.

Keeping The British End Up

Unless Halo: Campaign Evolved ends up being much better than it looks or Nintendo come out with something more ambitious than an N64 game with better graphics, First Light is almost certainly going to be my game of the year.

Resident Evil Requiem was amazing but Resident Evil is always good so I wasn’t particularly surprised and that game is mostly repackaged good ideas from previous entries rather than the wholly original 007 First Light.

I had a genuine -not figurative but literal- smile on my face while playing this game. The levels are fun, the gameplay is crisp and while the Tac-Sim mode and challenges won’t keep you playing for long after you finish the story, I’m perfectly satisfied with a 10/10, 25 hours of playtime rather than a 5/10, 100 hour game as seems to be trendy with gamers at the moment. As a gamer, it’s an absolute treat to see such a stealth-forward game with this amount of budget, care and attention and as a Bond fan, I could tell throughout that IO Interactive were big fans of the franchise and understood what fans of James Bond really want out of a game.

007 First Light is a must-play.

TL;DR: 007 First Light doesn’t have much staying power and the final showdown is marred by questionable writing choices but the gameplay is superb, the levels are enjoyable and you can tell IO Interactive are massive fans of the Bond IP. This is a must-play.

Join me next time when I will be listing… something I haven’t decided on yet.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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A consistent point of friction is the British public transport system: often delayed, always between 5-10 minutes late and never frequent enough.

When I went to Berlin back in 2015, the concept of public transport arriving every 5-10 minutes was shocking to me: like I’d stepped 50 years into the future; the best you can do here is every half an hour, unless of course, you’re living in London.

Anyway, for a while now I’ve been looking for a handheld that’ll fit nicely into a gym bag or a pair of jogging bottoms: something less bulky and expensive than the New 3DS XL or the Switch 2 and something less sexually repellent than the DS Lite. The solution I settled on was the humble PSP, which is a console I thoroughly enjoyed as a kid but had neglected to add to my adult collection until now. Those of you who grew up with this thing -and since the PSP is the 12th best selling console of all time, outselling the likes of the 3DS, Xbox One and sitting only about a million behind the GBA, I’m sure there are many of you- will know the delights this handheld hides but in case you’re unfamiliar? The PlayStation Portable hosts a vast array of top notch, portable versions of PS2 and PS3 games, a fan-favourite version of Tekken 5 among them, a sprawling hoard of acclaimed tactics games and JRPG’s as well as its own suite of exclusives that have rarely seen the light of day since including a mainline Metal Gear Solid game of dubious canonicity and a version of LittleBigPlanet with completely different levels.

More than all that, this is a console I have very distinct and sweet memories of: the PSP was my big gift for Christmas as a child in the year 2008, so while it’s got a grown up image and looks sleek as hell, I can never quite detach it from the experience of eating Oreos and drinking hot chocolate on the sofa, looking up from Ratchet And Clank: Size Matters and Daxter every now and then at the soaps’ Christmas omnibuses.

The PSP is also a ridiculously versatile device. Armed with removable onboard storage, Wi-Fi connectivity, a USB port, an internet browser and a proprietary disc medium: the UMD, that played host to films as well, Sony’s PSP was an MP3 player, video game console, computer, DVD player and infamously, a gateway for teenage boys to view pornography all in one! Thanks to this connectivity, the PSP was actually my first experience with online gaming, where I enjoyed a few online space battles in Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron.

The Colour Of Desire

There are quite a few models of PSP, for the sake of brevity and not listing off minutia I’m going to divide them into 3 main variants.

Standard PSP (Models 1000, 2000 and 3000)

What we think of as the bog-standard PSP is actually comprised of 3 different models. The PSP 1000, which was the 2004 original came first, then the 2000 which was significantly lighter and thinner with upgrades to the RAM, USB charging and the ability to output video and finally the PSP 3000 which was ‘Slim and Lite’ just like the previous model but also features a more vibrant screen and an in-built microphone.

PSP Go

The PSP Go -sounding more like a command than a name- was Sony’s ambitious attempt at a digital-only system in 2009. The device contains no UMD drive, instead featuring expanded storage, an ultra-compact, flip phone-like design and coming with the promise that most PSP games would now be available on the PlayStation Store; many prefer the PSP Go screen to that of the 3000 but it is smaller.

PSP Street (Model E1000)

At last we come to the PSP Street: the last revision of the PSP ever released and if you’ve never heard of this model, that’s because it was a PAL and Europe-only variant. The Street was the poor man’s PSP with stripped back features such as the removal of Wi-Fi, worse speakers and a cheaper screen but the more grippy, less fingerprint-susceptible matte finish does give it an appeal of its own.

So which did I choose?

I was extremely tempted by the PSP Go and the idea of putting together an emulation and digital powerhouse but I love having actual games rather than files, plus the PSP Go’s unique form-factor and moving parts make it harder to get protective shells on the like. So my eventual choice…

…Was the 3000 Model: specifically the Radiant Red colour. I had wanted the 3000 in white or silver but those colours were anywhere from £20-40 more expensive so I bit the bullet and got red: which is my favourite colour anyway. I have to say I’ve been in love with this thing since it arrived, so glad I got this one instead.

I grew up with the 1000 model so that vibrant 3000 screen is really improving the experience and the colour really is radiant; condition-wise I think the analogue stick has picked up a little bit of grime over time and there are 2 tiny, hair-width scratches on the screen but 1 of them is practically invisible and the other I completely tune out during play, so in all? Very satisfied. You didn’t come here to read me listing off model numbers and tech jargon though, so let’s talk about the games.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

If ever there was a game for ‘guys named Kyle’ then this one is it; doused with drum & bass, hip-hop, rap and techno, loaded with classic sporty cars like the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Subaru Impreza and the Lancer Evo and fitted with 3 separate open world maps, free-roaming, an endless supply of street races and a deep customisation system, Midnight Club 3, even on the PSP, is an absolutely stacked racer and has been the game I’ve played most these past 2 weeks across all platforms.

What makes Midnight Club unique is the free-form, checkpoint-based racing. Rather than a set start and end point like on a traditional circuit, or the sectioned off roads you see in Forza Horizon, Midnight Club’s races are simply a set of points to reach on a path through the city; how you get there is entirely up to you and courses change all the time. This and the ever-present threat of traffic makes every race incredibly dynamic. You might be P1 the entire race only to get T-boned by a bus in the final moments of the final lap, the AI might take a shortcut you didn’t know about or get held up in traffic, eroding or solidifying your lead, the cars ahead of you might collide with a lamp post, losing speed and allowing an overtake, even in last place, it’s all to play for.

Different classes of vehicles have different abilities too. All vehicles can use nitro after tucking into the slipstream of another racer for a while (think of it like F1’s overtake buttons or DRS) and can tap into another, separate store of the stuff for a burst of straight-line speed, on top of that different classes of vehicles get other abilities like a time slow for weaving precisely between obstacles, the ability to clear all traffic at the push of a button or have those same cars work against other racers.

I was looking forward -owing to my memories with the game- to playing Renegade Squadron more than Midnight Club 3 but so far it has stolen the show.

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron

As I mentioned earlier, Renegade Squadron is a game I’m already very familiar with: my first online gaming experience was on Renegade Squadron, this was probably my most-played PSP game as a kid and for years I’ve always found it a bit of a shame that it’s been overshadowed by the rest of the series. Renegade Squadron is a fully-functional, zero compromise Battlefront experience: Instant Action, a full-length Campaign, Galactic Conquest and both eras are all here as well as extensive customisation and loadout building. Unit counts and render distance aren’t quite what they are on the PS2 entries but this version contains a lot of maps that aren’t found on consoles and handheld-friendly remakes of BF2 Geonosis and more.

Renegade Squadron follows the head of the titular unit: Col Serra as he recounts the finest hours of Renegade Squadron years after the Empire’s defeat at Endor and their subsequent disbanding and erasure from archived history. This campaign takes you from the unit’s formation through to their roles in battles like Hoth, Endor and frequent run-ins with popular bounty hunters and figures from the expanded universe like IG-88. The campaign is roughly the same length as Battlefront 2’s and while it isn’t quite as good, it tells a satisfying story and puts you into some interesting scenarios along the way.

The real star of the show is Galactic Conquest.

This version of the classic game-mode sacrifices scale for depth; you might only be battling over a handful of different sectors instead of the whole galaxy but you can recruit commanders, control how many troops are stationed on each planet and the upgrades feel a lot more impactful. This might be my favourite version of GC but I’ve never played Elite Squadron so don’t hold me to that just yet.

I’m The Upgrade

As happy as I was with my stock PSP 3000, this is a handheld that truly reaches its full potential once you get in there and ‘adjust’ its capabilities.

In terms of raw power, the PSP is a bit like a portable Dreamcast, this makes it incredible at running 8 and 16-Bit titles as well as games from the original PlayStation, so… I started to make a few changes.

As satisfied as I was with my PSP so far it was clear that the battery in mine had either degraded or wasn’t of particularly high capacity in the first place; this is a common problem with the console, to the point where most people recommend replacing the battery as soon as you buy one. You should be getting 4-6 hours of playtime out of your PSP but mine would run dry from full charge in 2 and a half, so step 1 was to replace the battery.

As it turned out, the battery in my PSP had already been replaced once but the model the previous owner chose was claiming to hold a capacity that was too good to be true. Replacement batteries of dubious quality with bullshit capacity are a problem across all fields of electronics, so if you do this yourself, to your own PSP, you generally don’t want to buy any batteries that claim to have more than about 2500mAh; I couldn’t find it on Amazon UK (and I couldn’t be bothered to set up Ali Express) but the Ostent and Cameron Sino brands are highly recommended.

Actually getting the battery in was a breeze, Sony built this thing in a very user-friendly fashion so while I have an ifixit kit I didn’t need to use it; just lift a tab and carefully pull.

Step 2 was to replace the onboard storage with a high capacity, modern Micro SD card. The PSP uses its own proprietary onboard storage called the Memory Stick PRO Duo: a card also used in Sony digital cameras at the time… apparently, I’ve never heard of or seen this thing outside the PSP. Thankfully, the card format means it’s easy to substitute this thing, I simply bought a £5 converter, an overpriced SanDisk, put one inside the other and the job was done.

With the battery upgraded, memory expanded and the device protected, what came next was jailbreaking the PSP.

I’m not going to get into massive detail on this step of the process, partly because I’m not sure if that’s a good idea and secondly because it’s not that fun reading about someone moving files around but the custom firmware I downloaded was ARK-4 and it took me about 5 minutes to do; the only part I struggled with was finding the damn Mini USB cable I had laying around to connect the PSP to my computer. The cable you need to connect the handheld to your PC/laptop is the same one you use to charge a PS3 controller and for some older digital camera models, I’m no photographer so the DualShock 3 charging cable was my best bet, I also rarely play my PS3 so hunting that down was a bit of a pain.

Horror On The Go

After ‘acquiring’ the .eboot files for a certain, beloved survival horror trilogy on the PlayStation 1 and installing ARK-4 onto my PSP, the only thing left to do was to test it.

It has now become my nightly routine to clock in an hour of PS1 Resident Evil before bed on the PSP and it is a thing of beauty, playing brilliantly, running perfectly and looking fantastic.

I also tested ARK-4’s overclocking capabilities and while exploring that particular feature wasn’t really a goal of my custom firmware installation, the results have been far beyond what I imagined. Midnight Club 3 generally runs at an FPS count between 20-25 on a stock PSP with a render distance that can sometimes get you into trouble but with an overclocked PSP, that increases to a stable 30 with less fuzzy visuals and a slightly better draw distance; it turned a game that I enjoy playing into a game that I love playing.

Of course, you can just straight up pirate most of the PSP library like this but I’m not a fan of piracy and I like to own those little UMD’s and boxes, I did this because the actual, legitimate way to get PS1 games onto your PSP these days is hilariously convoluted, or requires you owning the PS1 disc and converting it to a PSP-friendly format yourself; there is software that makes this easy but I own Resi 1 on Saturn and Resi 3 on Dreamcast so this path wasn’t that attractive to me. Sony and Nintendo, you two specifically, you make piracy worse by making your back catalogue as annoying as possible to access legitimately. If the PSP Store was still up or transferring PS1 games to this handheld legitimately wasn’t like theoretical physics, then I’d have happily paid money.

In conclusion, this was so quick, easy and relatively cheap to do that I cannot help but recommend that every PSP owner installs ARK-4. The CFW is non-permanent by default, can be easily deleted if you plan to sell the PSP on and takes about 5 minutes to install. With a £30 Micro SD you have enough space to install somewhere in the realm of 100 games onto your handheld; at that rate, most people would take years to fill up their console.

The Steam Deck and Switch 2 are only getting more expensive, the PlayStation Portal is a fundamentally anti-ownership device and the quality of those 3rd party handhelds is… unpredictable, to say the least. If you’re willing to watch a short video guide and hook up a USB to a laptop or PC then even the 22 year old PSP could be your dream handheld… and this one actually fits in your pocket.

Join me next time when I will be reviewing the new James Bond game: 007 First Light.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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My Fiction Substack

My GoldenEye review, while I stand by it, was written at a time when I had no real audience, no consistent format and no idea on my own voice in regards to games writing; in the year and 4 months since, all that has changed.

Let’s look back at GoldenEye. Again.

Year Of Release: 1997

Platforms: Nintendo 64 Exclusive

Developer: Rare

Publisher: Nintendo

Copies Sold: More than 8 million (#3 best-selling game on N64)

Remastered: XBLA Remaster cancelled but is available online, re-released on Xbox and Switch Online, reimagined on Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with GoldenEye 007 Reloaded.

Background And Development

By the mid-1990’s, Twycross-based Rare was already a titan of the industry.

Founded in 1982 as Ultimate Play The Game: a name so bad it’d prompt layoffs today, the fledgling developer found success making games for the many 8-Bit computers available in the pre-NES and Master System space, like the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64; remember, there was no crash in Europe, so the early PC gaming scene was still relatively healthy.

But by the late 1980’s, Ultimate Play The Game was renamed to Rare and the company pivoted to making games for Nintendo’s NES.

Rare’s NES games are mostly forgotten about today: overshadowed by their work on the SNES and particularly the Nintendo 64. Of these titles, you’ve most-likely heard of Battletoads: which is notorious for is humorous aesthetic, a 2010’s Gamestop prank call trend and for being one of the hardest games ever made and WWF Wrestlemania: which laid the foundations for wrestling games to become an institution later.

What Rare did next on the SNES hardly needs an introduction.

Given free-reign over the -then dormant- Donkey Kong IP, Rare created what is in my opinion the greatest 2D platformer ever made: Donkey Kong Country and its 2 sequels. Killer Instinct and its sequel were also developed by Rare for the SNES. Both the DKC Trilogy and KI sold millions upon millions of copies (in a time where gaming was still relatively niche mind you) and cemented Rare not only as Nintendo’s most valued third-party partner but as the standard bearer for the entire British video games industry.

By the time the second half of the 1990’s arrived and it was known that Rare were developing a First Person Shooter based upon the most beloved British IP of all: James Bond, you might imagine that excitement was off the charts… but you’d be wrong. GoldenEye the film came out in 1995; most of the team developing GoldenEye the game had little experience, add to that the ever-evolving understanding of what exactly the Nintendo 64 would be capable of and the difficulty in teaching a team of novice developers how to make a 3D title and you have the recipe for a game that launches 2 years late. The tie-in game stigma dogged GoldenEye throughout development, this and its delays made the game a subject of mockery in the gaming press before it had even come out; think Skull and Bones, except imagine if it came out, changed a genre forever, sold tens of millions and won Game of the Year.

Rather than DOOM, GoldenEye 64 actually took the most inspiration from the likes of Super Mario 64 and Sega’s Virtua Cop, with attention also paid to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, which came out earlier in the year and set a high bar for FPS games on the Nintendo 64. Part of this game’s charm is just how amateurish it is. Genre-evolving shooting mechanics and levels that look exactly like the scenes in GoldenEye -thanks in no small part to the team being allowed to take photos there- rub shoulders with framerates that hit the single-digits and level design so redundant and naturalistic that you’d never see it in a modern FPS game.

GoldenEye is a wonderful marriage of opposites: a team of rookies working on the most established IP in cinema, the cutting edge tech of the Nintendo 64 versus design that can get too ambitious and a genre that people didn’t believe could work outside the PC being made a console exclusive; Bond is martinis, girls and guns, Nintendo is mushrooms, family-fun and digital safety… somehow this unlikely union created a stone-cold classic.

What GoldenEye Gets Right

Sublime, High-Skill Shooting

Fundamentally, GoldenEye has endured all these years not because of its infamous development process or even the love for the film it is tied to -a film which this game went on to surpass in revenue- rather, GoldenEye is still frequented because it is an absolute joy to play.

GoldenEye is beautifully kinaesthetic: a trait shared, in my opinion, by all the best games ever made. Enemies react in different ways depending on where they’re hit and have a variety of over-the-top death animations, Bond can lean around corners and over the top of waist-high cover: a mechanic that wasn’t made mainstream in FPS games until decades later in tactical shooters and the environment is filled with destructible objects, doors to open and buttons to tap; in a genre where you can often feel like nothing more than a pair of floating arms, GoldenEye 007, with its primitive 3D graphics and dated controls, still makes you feel like Bond, James Bond.

Video games need to start remembering how to implement difficulty without tweaking a bunch of numbers and GoldenEye is the perfect blueprint.

GoldenEye’s gunplay: a mixture of auto-aim and a free cursor mode ensures that even a child can pick up the N64 trident and start racking up kills but those brave enough to attempt a 00 Agent difficulty playthrough (and believe me, it won’t be easy) will need to master cursor aim in order to get headshots or blast weapons from the enemies’ hands: vital if you want to survive more than a few moments. As you move up the difficulty ladder, objectives become more numerous and complicated, enemies develop faster reactions and Bond’s fragility is heightened. GoldenEye is a brutal test of skill on 00 Agent but otherwise, I feel the difficulty is perfect and your duties as an agent significantly expand rather than the enemies’ health bars.

A Timeless Soundtrack

GoldenEye’s soundtrack, composed by Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope (Robert Beanland is also credited but only worked on the music that plays in the lift) fits easily into my top 3; banger after banger. I listen to this OST frequently while writing or playing other FPS games with inferior music, pair it with any VR shooter and I guarantee you’ll be doing the Roger Moore eyebrow raise after each and every kill.

Eric Serra’s soundtrack for the film, while distinct, is famously divisive among Bond fans. On one hand, that pipe sound along with the darker instrumentation and synth-y tunes make it sound aggressively 1990’s and give the film a bit of a noir edge; on the other hand, some moments of distractingly poor music and the leaving behind of the signature Bond sound in favour of a new style left a poor taste in many mouths. Regardless of how you feel about the film’s score (I like it but I’m glad Serra only composed for GoldenEye as it adds to the film’s identity) I think we can all agree that N64 GoldenEye mixes the new and old together perfectly; the synths, the pipe sound and the noir-feel stay but the bombast and bravado of classic Bond return. I love it.

Rather Stocked

In the decades since GoldenEye 007 we’ve become accustomed to unambitious, short FPS campaigns. You know how it goes: a 5 hour, hand-holding romp through 8-11 levels, straight-forward level design and no reason to replay the campaign unless you’re keen on a certain level, need a story recap or want to hunt the platinum… GoldenEye is different.

GoldenEye features a robust suite of 20 levels each one containing 3 sets of objectives based on difficulty and even a time to beat in order to unlock cheats; like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye has a speed running scene that endures to this day. This alone will keep you occupied for quite a while but the amount of bang for your buck doesn’t stop there, plug in a few other controllers and you also get access to GoldenEye’s local versus multiplayer, where you and 3 other players can complain about the Klobb as you attempt to kill each other.

Something that isn’t discussed enough by retro people is that old games are generally lacking in content; they’re brutally difficult to extend a short runtime but GoldenEye has it all: quality, quantity and high challenge. Not only is this one of the cheapest N64 games but if you’re buying a console and can only afford GoldenEye to go with it, this game will more than tide you over.

What GoldenEye Gets Wrong

Performance And Scope

This video shows the framerate of GoldenEye 007 on original hardware during play.

It’s just a fact of every Nintendo 64 player’s life that the console and its games generally have a poor framerate. This is especially true for us in the PAL region where our games were capped at a lower FPS count… but our games also look slightly better, so I won’t complain too much. GoldenEye 007 is especially bad: bordering on unplayable in a lot of levels, actually.

I’m not whining about the FPS count dropping by 3-4 frames here, we’re talking plummets that hit the single-digits. When you’re dying because the performance makes it so you don’t have a clue what’s going on? That’s a big problem. Even when GoldenEye is running well, the smoothest you can expect to see it is around 17-18FPS; speed runners for GoldenEye stare at either the floor or the sky because the performance will grind you to a crawl otherwise.

What doesn’t help the framerate is the fact that many GoldenEye levels feel too large: almost maze-like in fact. The naturalistic environments and the exploration are highlights of this game but sometimes Rare go a bit too far, my least favourite mission: Archives might be the worst offender, even now after dozens of hours I always get lost on that level.

Quantity Over Quality

For every level like Dam or Silo (the latter becoming one of my favourite levels in any game since I started playing GoldenEye in 2024) there are two more like Archives or Depot; GoldenEye features 5-8 levels out of 20 that are absolute classics and a joy to replay, a couple that are mediocre and a lot more that are just a chore. Every level has its fans but in my opinion, there are more crap ones than great ones.

While I applauded GoldenEye earlier for the amount of content included, it also makes me appreciate the low-fat, lean FPS campaigns of today, where whole levels are regularly cut and length is sacrificed for the sake of consistent enjoyment.

Impotent Gadgets

One of the weakest aspects of GoldenEye is its arsenal. For the majority of the game you use either the PP7 (Walther PPK) which is probably the best gun in the game if you know how to aim, or the KF-7 Soviet (AKM) which shears through groups early on but eventually gets replaced by the higher damage US AR33 (M16A2) besides these mainstays, you are spoon-fed a few additional pistols and submachine guns, most of which are awful.

Some ‘highlights’ are the Klobb: a submachine gun so hideously weak and underpowered that it has lived on in gaming infamy, the Throwing Knives, which are a nightmare to aim without being shot first and the Sniper Rifle, which isn’t particularly useful outside of the few missions where you’re in large outdoor spaces and its zoom function is marred by the N64 controller’s awkward layout.

GoldenEye barely features any classic Bond gadgets, something the Bond FPS games of the EA era would have to remedy later.

GoldenEye’s Legacy And My Closing Thoughts

For me, GoldenEye was one of those special few games I’ve played so far in retro that truly lived up to expectations. I adore this shooter.

I’ve told this story many times here on the Journal but like a stuck record, I’ll play it again: I did grow up with the N64 despite it being a little bit before my time because I received one: the Pikachu N64 with Rogue Squadron, Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Snap, for my 9th birthday, I never did own GoldenEye… but I was an absolute TimeSplitters fanatic on PS2 as a kid… still am. Therefore, combined with my love for Bond, it was almost pre-ordained that I was going to love GoldenEye but I still don’t think it gets enough credit; all I hear online these days is whining about the controls and the difficulty but once you get used to piloting polygonal Pierce, it’s an absolute blast; I’ve always found the likes of Tomb Raider or early RTS games to be much more uncomfortable to control than GoldenEye.

It feels superfluous to celebrate the legacy of GoldenEye because we see it all around us, it has changed console gaming forever and veered the FPS genre on a new path. Halo: Combat Evolved, Half Life and especially Medal Of Honour all took inspiration from GoldenEye: Valve were stunned by AI behaviour in GoldenEye, Medal Of Honour came about from Spielberg seeing his son playing GoldenEye and Halo’s exploration-focused, open environments are a natural evolution of GoldenEye’s vision.

Whether you enjoy GoldenEye or not, its legacy demands that you remember it. If Rare are ever freed from Microsoft’s clutches (or from the Sea Of Thieves update mines) I hope they get a chance to make another ground-breaking FPS, one that isn’t an extraction shooter, a 5v5 PvP game or riddled with hideous skins.

Join me next time as I fill an unexpected gap in my 4 articles a month schedule with some new hardware.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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My Fiction Substack

Like I said 2 weeks ago, I actually played KOTOR II first but didn’t finish the game until a few years later once I’d polished off the original; I’d like to tell you that I got busy with other titles or that between the ages of 6-9 young Lawrence was off karting to be scooped up by Scuderia Ferrari for the Junior Formulae… but in reality, this game always creeped me out a bit. KOTOR II features such characters as a zombified Sith Lord who speaks in a Scottish accent and can raise himself from the dead and another who speaks in a demonic, mystery tongue and devours planets using the force, you can bet firing up Battlefront after school was more palatable when I was young.

Setting that aside, there are personal circumstances that contribute towards the KOTOR II mystique for me.

I grew up playing these games on the original Xbox, not on PC and Knights Of The Old Republic II was already unstable on the desktop but the limitations of the console brought it to a whole other level. KOTOR II, even with an immaculate disc, regularly fails to load new areas, comes packed with all the same bugs and glitches and regularly corrupts saves if you’re brave (read as: foolish) enough to only use 1 save file slot. This was a game that devoured my save files regularly, crashed when I needed it least and at one point had to be resurfaced at my local GAME; my current copy of the game doesn’t work properly either, this is becoming a cursed game for me. As such, I still feel a bit lucky when I play this game today on PC: lucky that it’s working and I get to play it.

In the past decade or so, the appreciation and the analysis of this game has grown so much that it almost blots out the love for the original… but is it warranted? Let’s find out.

The Echoes Of War

Knights Of The Old Republic II kicks off about 5 years after the first game, not in an era of peace or of newfound freedom but an era of silence.

The Galactic Republic lumbers on, battered, struggling to exert power and spread dangerously thin after 3 huge wars in quick succession: the Great Sith War, the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War have bled its fleet white. The Jedi Order as a centralised, galaxy-wide organisation has ceased to exist with its members slain or in exile, dozens of worlds remain dead: scoured clean by Sith bombardments and the likes of Czerka Corporation or the criminal minds of The Exchange are only too willing to aid the reconstruction efforts in return for political clout.

KOTOR II is a dark game. This isn’t a story full of horrendous fates and horrible deaths like The Last Of Us, or of relentless grimdark like Warhammer, instead, this vision of the Star Wars universe is one without a moral compass or hope for the future; the Sith and the Jedi are nothing more than a handful of traumatised force wielders and without the guidance of the Jedi, the Republic feels akin to a civilisation on its last legs, in a state of frozen collapse. The galaxy is at peace but spiritually? The people are broken.

KOTOR II opens with your character: seemingly the last of the Jedi, drifting through space on a ravaged Ebon Hawk, critically wounded, at the mercy of fate… and a little astromech droid named T3M4.

The contrast between KOTOR I and II’s opening minutes best demonstrates the gulf in sensibilities between these 2 titles. While the original game opens with a space battle, a lightsabre duel and 2 interstellar armies doing battle: classic Star Wars, KOTOR II opens with the player at death’s door and should you skip the prologue, coming back to consciousness in an infirmary filled with corpses suspended in kolto.

This is not a game about Empire vs Republic or a war between rebels and oppressors, instead this is a spiritual conflict; the politicking and the war-waging of the previous generations are gone, instead, the last of the Jedi and Sith fight a duel in the dark over the nature of the force and philosophy. KOTOR II isn’t at its best when you’re facing down Sith lords or dealing with planetary politics, its most effective moments instead come when discussing a lifetime of war with a tired old soldier, when dissecting the nature of the force with an elderly Jedi or when the player is made to imagine how they would process the agony of the Exile’s life.

The main quest ostensibly sees the player tracking down the last surviving Jedi Masters in order to form some kind of resistance against Darth Sion and Nihilus: two Sith Lords who seek to destroy you and to plunge the galaxy in darkness but the real quest is of a personal nature.

Knights Of The Old Republic II was not developed by Bioware, instead, in a story strikingly similar to that of Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian were drafted in to work on the sequel and had to get the game off the ground in a blisteringly fast 14-month development cycle. As a result, KOTOR II had to find other means of differentiating itself from the original; gameplay changes are minor, graphical fidelity is only the slightest touch improved and the writing takes on a philosophical, ponderous tone that many love but some hate. It’s always been curious to me that KOTOR II has come to carry this immaculate reputation in recent years since when it came out, despite being loved by critics, it was quite common to hear the game being described as a disappointment, or as much inferior to the first. I get the impression that the events of Order 66: the Jedi slaughter that took place during Episode III and continued until A New Hope, are the most popular Star Wars stories among Gen Z and since my generation now sits in the cockpit of internet culture, it makes a lot of sense that KOTOR II was so favourably reassessed; the timeline is different but this is essentially the same story: the story of the Jedi being wiped out with just a few true believers left to pick up the pieces.

Chris Avellone is one of those video game industry figures that attracts a bit of a para-social, irritating following but whether you count yourself among one of his fans or not, given how many critically acclaimed games he has contributed too, KOTOR II is worth seeking out to see the origins of what would come later.

One Right Answer

I’d like to offer some nuance in regards to the different versions of KOTOR II but truthfully? I don’t see why you would play this game anywhere other than on the PC.

As I mentioned earlier, KOTOR II is unstable on Xbox and anecdotally, finding good condition discs for the original Xbox is a struggle too. You can get this game on Switch, Android and all those other platforms I mentioned in part 1 but I don’t imagine that mods are as easy to install as they are in PC, which is a deal breaker since KOTOR II had such huge amounts of cut-content due to its rapid turn-around that the developers endorsed a fan made mod that adds much of it back into the game; you’ll want those community fixes as well.

Furthermore, unlike the original, KOTOR II on Steam has actually been patched to run at modern resolutions right out of the box, this does give the game a look that’s more smooth and sharp, which doesn’t always compliment those old 3D models but it is more convenient for modern players.

If you mod your original Xbox I believe there are ways to get it going modded on there but I don’t like messing around with historical hardware too much, it feels a bit like painting an Egyptian sarcophagus pink.

KOTOR II comes with a few new planets along with the return of Korriban and Dantooine, both of which are in a derelict state after the events of the first game and the past 5 years since. I don’t have much to say about this game’s presentation: it’s the first game with a wider variety of attack animations and slightly different UI, so I’ll be moving on to the main locations.

In my opinion, KOTOR II’s locations are one of the game’s biggest weaknesses.

Dantooine and Korriban are not only less interesting than their equivalents in the prior game (Korriban being my favourite location in KOTOR I) but the latter can also be finished in about 10 minutes if you know where to go. Nar Shaddaa is the third floating/space station-type location in the game and by then, I’m always tired of the same metallic backdrop; I love Dxun, it’s wonderfully atmospheric but Onderon feels like a second Taris, it even has a similar colour palette.

I think the purpose of every sequel, however small the refinements are, should be to improve upon its predecessors and a key factor in why I prefer the first game to this one is that KOTOR II takes the original game’s biggest issues: the pacing and glacial opening hours… and makes them worse. Peragus, on a first playthrough, is a wonderfully eerie and oppressive ghost station filled with corpses and rampant mining droids, learning the fate of the miners and uncovering the different plots members of staff had to cash in your unconscious body for a hefty bounty and unravelling the mystery behind why everyone died is great fun but it has no replay value and the 2-3 hours it takes to get through feels like a tedious drag when you come to replay the game.

Telos: the next location you’re locked into, is even worse. This is my least favourite location in the whole The Old Republic era of Star Wars games and that’s including the MMO.

Taris in KOTOR I wasn’t the best planet but it was filled with intriguing characters, fun side-quests like the arena and the Upper, Lower and Undercities each gave you a different impression of life under Sith occupation and their neglect of the planet; the three levels were aesthetically distinct and it served to show the player how this society was a thinly veiled hellhole masquerading as a predominantly human, rich city. Telos’ Citadel Station on the other hand sees you running back and forth between 4, samey looking areas with a boring space skybox outside and a bland ambient track that doesn’t change, except for when you enter the Cantina: the most interesting place on Citadel Station that gets completely underutilised.

Now, I’ve criticised KOTOR II a lot so far in regards to its unambitious environments and lack of presentational improvements but there is one area where I think the sequel is superior: the soundtrack. This game wasn’t actually composed by Jeremy Soule and instead by Mark Griskey who later composed both The Force Unleashed and The Old Republic MMO as well.

In KOTOR II, rather than a hub of prospective Sith and fallen Jedi, Korriban is a dead world infested with supernatural beasts that feed on the Dark Side and charred corpses. The planet’s eerie theme captures this perfectly and when I was younger, this music always made me hesitant to enter the ruins of the academy; I’m not sure what the instrument is called but there’s a sound in here that’s reminiscent of Tatooine in A New Hope too which gives the piece a distinctly Star Wars flavour.

In the original KOTOR, the Ebon Hawk shared its theme song with Tatooine’s Anchorhead settlement; reused music was an issue with that first game that KOTOR II does manage to iron out. This can be quite an intense game at times with horror-themed planets and themes of trauma and war, so it’s nice to come back an to an Ebon Hawk that feels distinctly homely and lived-in this time around. I dare say it but the relaxing music makes this place feel… c-c-cosy. Blegh!

The ruins of the Jedi Enclave, to my ear, have the most Original Trilogy-sounding ambient music in the game. Both the Exile and assuming you’ve played the first game, the player underwent their Jedi training on this planet so the emotions in this piece’s more sombre moments feel like a unification of both the player and the character’s feelings. There is something else here too: a tinge of resentment and the minute seed of hope.

My favourite combat theme in KOTOR II plays on the jungle moon of Dxun. A lot of the combat you’ll be doing on this planet is against local wild beasts and the enemies of the Mandalorian compound; that’s what this piece sounds like to me with the drums and all that: man clashing against nature.

An Ostrine Edge

KOTOR II’s rapid development cycle meant that there wasn’t enough time to introduce the sweeping gameplay changes that, in my opinion, were needed after the first game’s not particularly enjoyable combat system but the refinements made by Obsidian are welcome and do improve the experience while offering more strategic depth.

As an exiled Jedi, slowly regaining their connection to the force through another character’s presence and tutelage, you actually begin the game with the ability to use the force and unlock powers from the get go; no obsolete starting class and no waiting 5+ hours to unlock the incredibly useful Stun/Kill Droid power or Stasis. Though later on, more specialised class options do come, they are tied more to fine-tuning your build and bound to your alignment. Like I said before, the pacing is worse in this one but early access to force powers means that while your patience suffers, your build does not. The restriction on force powers while using heavier types of armour is removed as well.

Feats: those moves like Flurry or Power Attack you can use in combat had the same animation regardless of level or weapon in the first game but in KOTOR II a wider variety can be seen. This is a purely visual improvement but it helps fights appear more like a real combat encounter than 2 parties having a fight to the death using a cup of dice and a D&D handbook.

My favourite addition to KOTOR II’s combat are the lightsaber forms. Any Star Wars dweeb deep into the lore will know that there are 7 lightsaber forms: 7 different schools of thought regarding lightsaber combat that each have their own strengths and weaknesses, in KOTOR II you can learn these forms and swap between them on the fly depending on the situation. Not only is this an incredibly lore-friendly way to introduce more strategy into the game but it further differentiates the lightsabers from standard melee weapons, which was needed because they felt identical to use in KOTOR I. There are also 4 force forms for the player to swap between.

KOTOR II also adds the ability to swap between 2 separate loadouts in combat and different behaviour settings for your companions in combat but truthfully? I’ve never used these too much; I said it in part 1 and I’ll say it again: I tend to stick the combat on Easy because it’s my least-favourite part of the game and I want to get through the encounters quick and painlessly.

I would rank the planets like I did for the first game in this section but truthfully? I only like Dxun, Nar Shaddaa and Korriban, the rest are either forgettable, a chore on a second playthrough or outright unenjoyable. Sorry KOTOR II fans, I have a strong preference for the first game.

I Can Feel Your Anger

Ladies, gentlemen and everyone in-between adjacent or interdimensional, we now come to the section where I will make a million KOTOR II fans cry out in terror: I think KOTOR II’s companions are heavily carried by Kreia, not only that but I feel this cast is less interesting overall and were she to be removed from the game, not only would these characters be unanimously labelled inferior but KOTOR II fans would also see thsi game for what it is a bit more clearly.

I get that the central theme of KOTOR II is trauma and the motif of dark secrets serves to illustrate the psychological wounding of these characters but did absolutely everyone have to have a superhero origin story and an outrageously dark past that, in one way or another, always loops back to the Mandalorian Wars or the Jedi? Whenever you talk to a new companion I almost wish there was a dialogue option to tell them to spit it out already.

Ebon Hawk background music

“Yes, General?”

1. What do you know about this place?

2. Do you have any shields for me?

3. I know you have some kind of dark secret or tragic backstory, why don’t you just spit it out before I cut off your stupid, prickly Zabrak head and mount it to the front of the Ebon Hawk?

Dark Side Points Gained

Look, I’m not trying to mock KOTOR II, truly, I enjoy this game but I’m also tired of the near-mythic status it’s acquired in the past 15 years or so and the constant claims that it’s a masterpiece and is the ‘best written’ video game ever, I’ve been playing this thing most of my life and have seen its reputation do a 180 degree turn so I think I’ve earned the right to wail on it a bit. KOTOR II’s themes and writing have all the subtlety of Darth Malak’s metal jaw and your companions feel like the occupants of a therapist’s waiting room; not only is the influence system that allows you to steer them towards your moral alignment flawed but I actually prefer it not being in the game at all. In KOTOR II it’s as if everyone’s lives revolve around you and they exist to be bent to your will, you can train several of them to be Jedi all by yourself: something that, although cool, shouldn’t really be possible based on everything we know about the force and the fact that they can all be shaped and moulded into Jedi or Sith in your image makes this cast of characters feel less autonomous to me. Considering that miserable old crone Kreia loves to prattle on about choices mattering and autonomy (we’ll get to that later) it’s ironic that we erode the free will of others with every turn.

In KOTOR I, some of those characters would literally rather die than turn to the Dark Side with you. Nonetheless, it is awesome to see both Canderous and HK-47 come back in the sequel.

Let me lay off the punches a second though and offer some praise: Kreia, as impossible to please, witchy and persistently in disagreement to you as she is, by far is KOTOR II’s most compelling companion and the subject of at least 100, multi-hour long video essays, she provides insight into the nature of the force on a level that no other character in the Star Wars universe has before or since. Under Kreia’s tutelage you will come to see Jedi and Sith not as a binary moral choice but as two flawed, diametrically opposed philosophies, each with a complete set of hypocrisies, contradictions and deep-seated, dogmatic beliefs. With every conversation you will acquire a more complete view of the force and come to see this binary view as juvenile and either philosophy as incomplete… which ends up being a moot point because the game will still drive you towards picking one of them but I digress.

Kreia also reveals some fascinating details that tie back to the original game, particularly in regards to one of her former students but I will leave you to discover that for yourself.

Atton Rand (played by actor Nicky Katt who passed away just over a year ago RIP) is a highlight among your companions, coming across as another Han Solo rip-off until you dig deeper and it’s enjoyable to learn more about your character’s past in the Mandalorian Wars via Bao-Dur; there is a wonderful interaction with HK 47 too where he explain, in detail, how one goes about hunting and killing Jedi but he is a recurring character so I’m hesitant to give KOTOR II all the credit for this one.

I’d love to rank all the companions in this section like I did last time but some are mutually exclusive: locked depending on your character’s gender or alignment and let’s be honest, even the most ardent KOTOR II fan remembers Kreia, Atton, HK and maybe Bao Dur but not much of the rest. Kreia does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Duel Of The Fates

WARNING: This section contains massive spoilers for the main story and companions of KOTOR II, if you’ve never played KOTOR II and want to do so, please skip this section.

KOTOR II’s greatest flaw is that its third act is abrupt, unfinished and reliant on the player having paid close attention to Kreia’s many lessons on the force… this also makes it somewhat difficult to explain and confusing. I have finished KOTOR II many times and I still had to look up some of the more abstract concepts while writing this; Avellone and company were so impressed with their moralising and pondering through Kreia that they forgot to make elements of this story comprehensible.

The Exile: you, are a walking wound in the force, this is why Nihilus and Sion hunt you, because you are a rival to their own power; Nihilus, himself a wound in the force, became an all consuming entity that needs to feed on life itself to survive after his wounding and even lacks a physical body, so what could the Exile become? After gathering the Jedi masters on Dantooine they too fear the Exile and Kreia kills them for their arrogance, revealing herself to be a Sith Lady… a reveal that falls flat because we already have learned that Sion, Nihilus and even Revan were former pupils of hers.

You eventually slay Nihilus aboard his flagship: the Ravager in one of the most anticlimactic boss fights ever when he launches an assault on Telos, once the deed is done you must return to Malachor V: the planet where the Exile ended the Mandalorian Wars with a devastating superweapon and the site of Kreia: Darth Traya’s Academy in order to confront her. It’s on Malachor V that you convince Darth Sion: a Sith Lord literally too angry to die, to finally accept death and discover Traya’s ultimate plan: to use the Exile to create a galaxy-sized wound in the force, to cut all life off from it… because she hates the force.

The difficulty I’ve faced in recounting Act 3 of this insane plot and the fact that it’s taken me 3 paragraphs, a lifetime of playing the game and multiple lore posts/videos to explain in relatively simple terms what actually occurs in this game is why I will never follow the ‘KOTOR II is better’ crowd: if you remove the flowery language, the moralising and the pseudo-philosophy, what you have is a difficult to grasp plot with a villainous goal that ends up being this universe’s equivalent to detesting something as ubiquitous as microscopic life or bacteria.

I have to be honest… I love the force. You can shoot lightning out of your finger tips, brainwash people, put them in stasis… Nihilus even consumes whole planets with the stuff, how cool is that?

A Long And Crooked Road

It’s time to wrap this up… ad muddy the waters even further.

I actually love-hate-love KOTOR II… I think? Sure, I’ve ripped it apart a bit in this review, the constant parroted opinions about it being ‘peak Star Wars’ get on my nerves and I think the voice talent of Kreia’s actress: Laurence Olivier Award winner Sara Kastelman, who delivers one of gaming’s greatest performances, is enough to impress people so much that they lap up what they’re being fed but this is also a title that means a lot to me personally. I grew up with KOTOR II, I remember the days where this was seen as the crappy sequel to an all-time classic so on some level it is gratifying to see the redemption of a game I have always liked; some of you may be convinced I hate this thing by now but you don’t play a game for 20 years if you don’t like it. On a more personal level, events in my own life had led me too to feel like someone returning to the world after a long time away, just like the Exile, so I relate to that.

There’s something about KOTOR II… something mysterious, unnerving and seductive. Its music is bleak and foreboding, the Sith Lords in it are genuinely scary and that feeling of being constantly hunted is executed better than in the original, where every now and then 3 low-level Dark Jedi show up to chat utter wet and get killed. This is the Majora’s Mask to KOTOR I’s Ocarina Of Time: it’s not a better video game, neither does it improve enough to be an unambiguously great sequel but the ideas are fresh enough and the atmosphere so intoxicating that everybody should play it.

Do I love KOTOR II? Probably. Do I hate it? Definitely. Should you play it? Absolutely yes. Is it better than the first? No.

TL;DR: Love it or hate it, there’s nothing quite like KOTOR II. An unfinished third act, glacial pacing, unenjoyable planets and ponderous moralising are carried by enjoyable gameplay changes, rich atmosphere and some of the coolest Sith lords in Star Wars.

Join me next time as I return to the Every Nintendo 64 FPS series.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

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My Fiction Substack

After putting together last month’s list, I realised that I played an absurd number of Star Wars games growing up; in the days of the PS2. Xbox and GameCube you had a Star Wars title for every genre.

I’m going to be focusing primarily on the late-1990’s to about the year 2010 with this list: what I would call the golden age of Star Wars games, which ended when The Force Unleashed 2 came out and was about 3 hours long and with its only innovation being a second lightsaber (I’m still annoyed about that game.) This isn’t an exhaustive list of every Star Wars game released in that period because some (Jedi Power Battles for one) I’ve never played and the modern EA games fall out of this timeline.

KOTOR - Top 3

Let’s get the easiest one out the way first: KOTOR is the best Star Wars game ever made.

KOTOR has the greatest plot-twist in video game history, a cast of fantastic characters, unforgettable locations an the alignment system paired with 2 distinct endings gives KOTOR heaps of replay value too; I’ve been playing and replaying this game for about 20 years: since I was a kid. I just reviewed this game so I won’t talk too much on it here.

KOTOR II - Top 3

I’ll be reviewing KOTOR II next week so I don’t want to betray my thoughts on this game just yet. What I will say for now is that KOTOR II has a few small but welcome gameplay improvements, I love the atmosphere and Kreia is an amazing character but I have a preference for the first game overall. KOTOR II fans can be pretty annoying, this is one of those sequels the internet is obsessed with.

Ideally, you should play these games one after the other for a combined 40-50 hour runtime and the full story but they are disconnected enough to work alone.

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast - Great

Other than KOTOR, Jedi Knight II: Outcast and Academy are in my opinion, the best Star Wars games.

Jedi Outcast features some maze-like level design and some seriously cheap sections but also a more coherent story and a darker atmosphere than its sequel; both titles have the best lightsaber combat ever designed. I played an ungodly amount of this on my Xbox as a kid and recently just started replaying it there but this is a title that’s best on PC. It’s a shame Disney has wiped Kyle Katarn off the face of the galaxy, if you weren’t aware then he was the character who retrieved the Death Star plans before the EU was made non-canon.

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy - Top 3

The topic of Jedi Outcast vs Jedi Academy is still debated today but this is where I fall on the debate: I grew up with Outcast but I prefer Academy.

I really love that game structure where there are many short missions as opposed to around 8-12 longer ones; Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is like this and so is Jedi Academy. The addition of double-bladed and dual wielding lightsabers perfects the fantastic combat introduced in Outcast and you can even choose to join the Sith in your campaign (which features a fully customisable character) for 2 different endings. Jedi Academy’s multiplayer is amazing, life and time zones got in the way but I have fond memories of playing with this small group in 2021, costume mods are commonplace so it’s not unusual to see Darth Vader fighting Darth Revan.

Rogue Squadron: Good

I grew up with the GameCube port of Ocarina Of Time so Rogue Squadron was actually the first N64 game I ever played; I was gifted the console for my 9th birthday, that was awesome, I miss when retro gaming was dirt cheap.

Rogue Squadron, in my opinion, is a better arcade-style flying game than Ace Combats 1 and 2 on the PlayStation, the missions are fun and varied, your starfighter choices have more defined niches and the graphics, particularly if you use the Expansion Pak, are high-end by N64 standards. Squadron is only this low because its GameCube sequels took things to the next level.

Rebel Strike And Rogue Leader: Great

Rebel Strike and Rogue Leader blew me away on the GameCube growing up. Like I’ve said before, even to idiot kids like me, it was obvious that the original Xbox was the most powerful machine of its day, so seeing the GameCube manage graphics that looked this good was spectacular.

It’s been a very long time since I last played these 2 so I’m putting them together on the list and counting them as equals. The graphics are superb, the spacecraft selection is wider, missions are varied and challenging. Somehow, they managed to squeeze the entirety of Rogue Leader onto Rebel Strike’s disc as a CO-OP experience. I remember the ground missions being ineffectual but the speeder bike one on Endor seems to be a favourite online.

Star Wars Bounty Hunter - Average

Star Wars Bounty Hunter might be one of the most mixed reputation games released under the Star Wars IP; both me and friends I’ve had in the past were able to converse fondly about this game while all of us simultaneously remembering the bullshit difficulty.

Bounty Hunter is a less a bounty hunting game and more like an action platformer/third person shooter starring Jango Fett, there are a lot of fun levels and it’s impressive looking for the day but I remember the difficulty being a bad joke and the controls get a lot of stick. Worth trying but don’t expect an amazing game.

Jedi Starfighter - Average

Jedi Starfighter is a game that reviewed well and yet nobody talks about it today, the online discourse I can find isn’t particularly positive either.

I can’t remember much of this game other than not liking it very much. The implementation of force powers is a bit odd -Jedi don’t use force lightning because it draws on emotions that are against the Jedi philosophy- and I remember the game being more focused on a plot I didn’t care about (when the Rogue Squadron games before it knew what you were really there for) I might get some stick for this but compared to the original trilogy I don’t think the prequels’ ship and fighter designs have aged as well either; the Clone Venator-class is awesome but let’s be honest: it’s awesome because it looks like the Star Destroyer.

Super Bombad Racing - Bad

Super Bombad Racing has become a bit of a meme in the past decade because of its appalling soundtrack but I’m one of the poor sods who played this growing up and it wasn’t just the soundtrack that was crap.

Super Bombad Racing was one of the many kart racing games that came out in the late-PS1/early-PS2 era who wanted to sponge off Mario Kart’s popularity and offer a similar experience for players on other consoles but Crash Team Racing this is not, Super Bombad Racing features a hideous chibi art-style, insipid music and garbage tracks. Don’t play this one. Racer Revenge isn’t an amazing game either but it’s a better option than this.

Racer Revenge - Average

Star Wars Racer Revenge is a racing game based off the pod racing sport seen in The Phantom Menace; whereas in the films this was only seen on Tatooine, Racer Revenge has courses across multiple different planets.

Racer Revenge isn’t a fantastic racing game but it looks, feels and sounds like the pod racing from the films and considering that sequence is one of the better parts of The Phantom Menace there is an appeal there. Furthermore it has an interesting perma-death mechanic where racers who crash and blow up are out for the rest of the race and you can collect additional prize money by taking out other racers.

The Force Unleashed - Good

Like I said earlier, there used to be a Star Wars-themed foot in every genre’s door; The Force Unleashed is Star Wars’ God Of War equivalent. The hack and slash, button prompt heavy combat of those first 3 titles is brought across and given a huge splash of Sith goodness.

The Force Unleashed has a couple of different versions but the one I remember best is the PS2 version. This game may have pilfered its formula from God Of War for the most part but it told a great story, its non-canonicity allowed for a fantastic power fantasy and it’s not that often you get to play as the villain in Star Wars outside of actively choosing to do so in KOTOR or as Imperial cannon fodder. If you played the 360 and PS3 version of this game back in the day then I recommend trying it on the previous generation and the Wii.

The Clone Wars - Bad

The Clone Wars was Pandemic’s pre-Star Wars Battlefront attempt at the licence: a clunky, boring and ugly looking vehicle combat game that begins on Geonosis and then takes you across the galaxy fighting the CIS.

This was one of those games I got as a kid where I played 1-2 levels and barely ever picked it up again. I’ve heard the multiplayer (which you can now access again via Insignia on the original Xbox) was quite fun but that wasn’t my experience of the game, my experience was trying to pilot vehicles through ugly missions on the PS2 and feeling a bit annoyed that only the first mission had anything to do with Attack Of The Clones.

Lego Star Wars I & II - Good

Before TT’s Lego games completely oversaturated the market there was only Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy, I had both of these growing up and while not the best games ever made they were an easy pick for CO-OP and had plenty to unlock.

Later on, these 2 games were bundled together and re-released in full HD on the Xbox 360 as The Complete Saga, which was actually one of the first 360 games I ever played. Since The Skywalker Saga essentially reimagines these titles, I recommend grabbing TCS if you want to relive these today.

The Force Unleashed 2 - Bad

Even as a 10 year old I found The Force Unleashed 2 incredibly disappointing; this game’s special edition was bought for me as a treat since I was soon to finish primary school and the day it came out I was unlucky enough to be booked in to get some shots at the doctor (no, not the fun kind.)

I finished it twice the day after it came out and for a whole weekend I tried completing it as fast as possible, with as little damage as possible, every difficulty etc. etc. and I just couldn’t believe the game was really that short and that the rest of the game was hidden behind some kind of performance barrier… but it really was just that short. TFU II’s story paled in comparison to the original and the gameplay didn’t really innovate either; by the time its DLC was released, I’d already sold the game.

The Old Republic - Great

The Old Republic falls slightly outside this article’s timeline as it released in 2011 but I wanted to include it; if you can look past the fact that SWTOR is an MMO then it’s almost like a third KOTOR game.

SWTOR is focused on solo or cooperative questing rather than PVP or grinding for loot; there are over 700 hours of quests if you want to complete the storyline for every class in this MMO and all of them are voiced with some big names like David Hayter and Cam Clarke in here too. As well as that, there are years worth of expansions which you gain permanent access too just for signing up for one month of their very affordable subscription model, as a result, this is the only MMO I’ve ever become a paid member in. If you can stomach the tab-targeting combat and repetitive MMO gameplay then there is a lot to love here and you never feel compelled into multiplayer if you don’t want to.

Before I get complaints, Star Wars Galaxies was gone by the time I was online gaming regularly.

Obi Wan - Average

The original Xbox exclusive Obi Wan game isn’t generally looked back on too fondly but I enjoyed the lightsaber combat, the graphics are impressive and the boss fights were quite fun so I’m putting it in average.

Obi Wan suffers from some huge difficulty spikes, the use of the right stick for the lightsaber instead of the camera makes things awkward and Obi Wan’s voice actor isn’t very convincing but for the sake of cheapness and the historical curiosity that is this forgotten Xbox exclusive, I recommend giving Obi Wan a try.

Republic Commando - Good

Republic Commando is like an entry-level Tom Clancy game for Star Wars fans, you have squad commands, a breaching system and a tone that strays closer to that techno-thriller feel of his novels and the games based upon them.

Republic Commando has a fantastic soundtrack, a likeable cast of characters and takes place across 3 highly memorable locations but I replayed it recently and unfortunately, the game is let down by a small enemy roster and repetitive gunplay; you get 4 basic weapons to use from the beginning and all the others bar 1 LMG are terrible. It’s a shame the sequel never came to pass.

The Revenge Of The Sith Tie-In - Good

Revenge Of The Sith is probably Gen Z’s favourite Star Wars film. From my own perspective, this was the firs tone I watched -on a VHS in 2005- before I dived into the rest of the series. It’s no wonder than that many of us grew up with the tie-in game.

Revenge Of The Sith isn’t a masterpiece or anything but it has a serviceable, combo-based lightsaber combat system, the graphics were quite good for the time, bosses are fought from a 3D fighting game perspective and the local CO-OP where you can duel your buddy on controller 2 was great fun. There was even an alternate ending where Anakin kills Obi Wan and Palpatine seizing the galaxy for himself.

The Classic Battlefronts - Great

Let’s end on a high note: the classic Battlefront games, of which I played 1, 2 and Renegade Squadron for PSP, are fantastic. Renegade Squadron for PSP was even the first game I ever played in online multiplayer.

As I said last month, I think Battlefront 1 has the sequel topped in infantry combat and map quality but general game balance, the vehicles and extra features make Battlefront 2 the most popular today, there are countless mods out there. Renegade Squadron was like a slimmed down Battlefront 2 with higher levels of customisation and smaller maps: a perfect handheld conversion and one I have fond memories of being surprised with after school one day.

There are a couple of games I didn’t include in this ranking, like Star Wars Lethal Alliance and the original Starfighter which I’m convinced I played but have next to no recollection of.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication. I’d love to chat as well, so be sure to comment.

Subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below. I also run a science fiction publication where I publish stories roughly every week, I encourage you to give it a read.

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My Fiction Substack

I vowed not to celebrate too often early in my Substack journey because these are insignificant numbers compared to the big fish on this platform and a drop of rain in a swimming pool compared to the followings you see on places like YouTube but 500 is one of those milestones I wanted to commemorate. Last June I hit 100 and mused that I expected to see 150 subscribers by December that year. The actual number was 300. Periodically, I try to look up what 500 people looks like in a room or imagine several university auditoriums filled with my readers but the number does not compute, it’s almost too large to imagine.

I’ve endeavoured to make this publication about the games that I cover and not about Scanlines the person but I want you to know that this has changed my life for the better. For the first time in years, I’m moving forward again and I feel like I can succeed at things.

From 2021 to 2023 I saw myself reduced from the best shape of my life, a student at a top UK Uni, a daily writer, someone with friends and connections, a man on the cusp of being baptised after a year of catechisms and a driven, motivated, hardworking person to a pathetic mess. By the time I began this Substack, I hadn’t been outside for anything longer than a shop run for more than a year, my muscle had disintegrated, I’d never been heavier and a diet of junk food, 3-4 energy drinks a day and a vampiric lifestyle had me wheezing, coughing and chafing where I once ran and walked and laughed. I must have had about 200 ignored or rejected job applications in my inbox.

Obviously, I was depressed. Not the romantic kind of depression where a few stickers on your bathroom mirror, positive affirmations and a walk in nature can fix it either, I mean the kind that eats you up inside, the kind where you relive those painful moments again and again, the kind where you hope it’s over soon… but this isn’t a sob story.

As the months rolled by, writing for this Substack re-engendered a sense of discipline in me; I have too much to pride to post Notes apologising for delays every week, so I made the posts happen, day in and day out no matter what. After not having written for a couple of years I didn’t just begin to get back into the flow but actually started to enjoy writing for the first time in a long time. The subscribers and the reads did eventually come and I have to say, for anyone that reads but doesn’t write or is in the early stages of gathering an audience… it changes you. I can’t see a long article, a huge video or any kind of media now without feeling a lot of compassion for the man hours it takes to put something like that together.

This is getting embarrassing, I hate writing about myself. I can’t stand anime, there, the rage-bait should throw some people down to the comments and away from my inner-most thoughts.

Writing Scanlines’ Journal has given me back part of my soul. Writing again has put me back in touch with me: the real me, the discipline my wonderful audience encouraged has translated into me not just building this platform but returning to the gym and getting my health back on track as well; knowing what I’ve built here has given me the confidence that I can succeed at things again when I assumed I was going to suffer some kind of medical catastrophe someday and be forgotten. Now I feel that I might still be of use after all. I’ve never been more talkative, social and open then I am now and people notice too, I have so many random conversations in public that I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only one in this city that won’t admit I’m Scanlines from Substack; my strength is returning and I can run long distances like I haven’t done for years. Stronger mind, stronger body, more uplifted spirit.

I have you to thank for all this: my audience. If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be writing this publication. If it wasn’t for you, nothing would have changed and thanks to you, I’m in a position where I can not only tolerate being in my own skin but I’m beginning to like the guy I am, so thank you all, I hope you get as much out of this blog as I do.

A New Frontier

It’s been my dream ever since I was a kid to have my own novel and/or fiction published in-print and with Scanlines’ Journal in a thriving position right now I feel it’s time to get to work on another project; you’ll still be seeing articles in your inbox every Saturday but now, I will be running a second publication.

As of now I’m launching Blood Cosmos: the final culmination of set of science fictions stories I’ve been writing on and off since the age of about 11 and the best bit? Part 1/4 of my first story is available to read right now. I’m not expecting you to hop over and subscribe to the second publication just because I’ve written it and I’m thinking of it as an entirely new start rather than an addition to what I’ve built here but if you want a taste of my storytelling (after I’ve spent more than a year ripping into others’ in video games) and enjoy a spot of science fiction then I encourage you to check it out; I aim to release a new episode every Sunday with a strict 3000 word limit, so these won’t be gargantuan like some of my reviews.

Blood Cosmos by Lawrence Lichfield

Blood Cosmos: Flight of the Midnight Blue I

Twenty days in space creates nothing but good memories. Twenty years in it is a wasted life…

Read more

3 months ago · Scanlines

During last month’s poll it was made clear that people were more interested in buying something like a book rather than paying for posts so I’d like to make clear my intention to release these stories as actual, physical books once they’re done. I don’t know how this is done or what that entails but it’s about time I stopped dreaming about publishing and actually do it.

I’ve chosen ‘Lawrence Lichfield’ as my pen name so if you like, you can call me Lawrence instead of the name for lines of pixels from an electron beam on an old CRT display.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

Be sure to subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below.

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Growing up and into my teens, before the dark times, before Disney, I was a humongous Star Wars fan as was my childhood best friend and it just so happened that he was the only other person I knew with an original Xbox. I was a generation behind in gaming until 2009 so as a kid, it made more financial sense for me to get a couple of second hand games each month rather than toys which I never really bothered with, I remember my mum telling me she’d ordered a couple of Xbox games from somebody on Ebay; I don’t remember the others apart from the fact that the discs didn’t work but one of these games was KOTOR II and it blew my mind. To cut a long story short, my best friend had KOTOR unplayed in his own Xbox library and immediately dropped what he was playing at the time to check it out once I started gushing at lunchtime and given the rock bottom prices of original Xbox games and my 8 year old self pointing out that KOTOR II was a sequel my mum generously grabbed me a copy of the first game as well.

For a very long time after, me and my buddy would play KOTOR every night and the lunch table became the place to discuss the party members and our favourite planets and moments.

To cut a long story short KOTOR I and II, ever since long before my age hit double digits, have never left my top 10, they are in my mind the greatest non-film media to have come out of the Star Wars universe and it’s a pleasure to finally put aside the time to write about these games which I have such a profound fondness for.

Ancient History

You might expect a Star Wars game to begin either during the prequel or the original trilogy era; Star Wars has such a distinct visual language, timeless designs for things like weapons and vehicles and the look and tone of the original trilogy and of Revenge Of The Sith are so beloved that you’d be hard-pressed not to use them and yet… Bioware did exactly that. KOTOR takes place not 10, not 100, not 1000 years before the films but roughly 4000 years in the past during the Old Republic era; that’s back to the time when the pyramids were first built if we were to rewind 4000 years backwards on our own world. For those who have spent their time better than reading the deeper recesses of Star Wars lore, what this means for the Star Wars universe is that the Hutts: those big, slug-like aliens are still a powerful force in the galaxy, the True Sith species is not yet extinct (though are in hiding at this point) and the Sith Rule of Two does not exist yet meaning the Sith Empire fields its own legion of Dark Jedi.

After the Mandalorian Wars: a devastating interstellar conflict that saw the people lose faith in the Republic and the Jedi Order split between Revanchists and those loyal to the Jedi Council, there was a brief calm. Revan and Malak, two war heroes and famed revanchist generals, who disobeyed the Jedi Council and went to war against the Mandalorians to defend the Republic, returned from the wars with a mysterious new fleet, legions of loyal followers and hearts twisted and corrupted to the Dark Side by the horrors they witnessed.

Darth Revan was betrayed and killed by Darth Malak some time into the war and now Malak rules over their Sith Empire with an iron fist. It’s amidst these dealings that the game begins, with a small Republic warship by the name of the Endar Spire battered by Sith forces above the planet of Taris.

KOTOR begins with the player awakening in their room aboard the Endar Spire. The ship is adrift, Sith soldiers have come aboard and with the commanding Jedi Officer Bastila Shan likely no longer around, it’s time for you and the other Republic grunts to escape. Mechanically, the tutorial aboard the Endar Spire isn’t particularly interesting but it does some heavy lifting to set up the version of Star Wars we experience in KOTOR; this isn’t the manufactured war of the prequel trilogy neither will it see the guerrilla miracles of the originals, the Republic is losing and while nobody acknowledges it during this sequence, Bioware does a great job conveying it visually and with dialogue.

The Republic’s soldiers look underequipped and exposed compared to the troops of the Sith who are clad head-to-toe in shiny metal armour, every engagement you come across in the halls seems to result in a victory for the Sith and as the player nears the escape pods, future party member Carth Onasi makes it clear that everyone else is dead. Think about it: apart from the end of Empire Strikes Back, when do you see the good guys lose in Star Wars? Even RotS concludes with Obi Wan and Yoda sewing the seeds of the Empire’s future destruction; in KOTOR the Jedi and the Republic are constantly outgunned, outnumbered and on the back foot which already does a lot to make Bioware’s vision of Star Wars feel unique.

Pushing the timeline so far back granted Bioware an unparalleled level of creative freedom with Star Wars.

Not only are the designs, characters and central conflict distant enough as to not mess around with established canon but I imagine the simple act of naming the game after the era in which it is set was advantageous in order to sidestep the licensed game stigma; generally speaking, Star Wars has produced the best video games of any licensed IP but as ever, the ones named for actual films are quite poor. Additionally, this decision allowed Bioware to imbue KOTOR with a distinctly darker tone; the second game is more recognised for this, as certain locations border on horror but KOTOR I does this too and handles some mature themes as well. To insert my own feelings into this piece a little, I think KOTOR II is overrepresented on the internet compared to the original, which was considered superior by pretty much everyone until about a decade later but we can save that discussion for part 2.

Most Star Wars games try their best to make the player feel as if they are in the Star Wars universe: they try to immerse you in the power fantasy of being a Jedi or the grim reality of say, being a commando during the Clone Wars but KOTOR does not do this. Knights Of The Old Republic isn’t about the power fantasy or lightsaber fights, Bioware instead chose to present Star Wars in a more grounded and in my opinion, realistic fashion; the Jedi are not worshipped, rather they are slandered and mocked everywhere they go, Republic soldiers blame the Jedi for not helping them sooner with the Mandalorians, the Dark Side tempts even your most loyal companions and the average citizen on the street doesn’t care about the Dark Side or wars between Sith and Jedi, they stress about Republic overreach or if the war will come to their doorstep next.

Seeing Visions

One of the fantastic things about the original Xbox is that its power, HDD and stripped back version of Windows meant that it received PC ports of games that not only could never have run on other consoles but also looked on-par with their desktop equivalents. KOTOR is one of these titles and as a kid, I thought this game and its sequel looked unbelievably good and to be honest? They still do for their time.

Thankfully, Knights Of The Old Republic 1 and 2 are both quite accessible today: Xbox backwards compatibility can be very buggy but it does work with some perseverance and of course if you have an old original Xbox still then you can play it on there; games for that console are dirt cheap but you will experience some longer load times and in my experience the console struggles with scratched discs more than the PS2 does.

If you’re more inclined towards console gaming but don’t own an Xbox either new or old then you’re in luck because both KOTOR games are available for the Switch, they can be bought either alone or as part of the Star Wars Heritage Pack which includes 4 other contenders for the best Star Wars game ever made… and Star Wars Racer. KOTOR II is notoriously buggy and unstable but from what I’ve heard, both games run well here.

KOTOR can also be played on Android and IOS. Growing up in a time when these games required a full, ‘Darth Vader’ original Xbox to run it still astounds me to see them running on the little black mirror we all carry around in our pockets. It seems KOTOR isn’t a hard game to port because like with the Switch verison, I have also heard this is a fine way to play.

KOTOR is of course available on Steam but I’m inclined to say that this might be the worst version of the game. Yes, you can mod in cut-content and community made quests and equipment but getting this thing to run at a modern resolution is a serious pain. I did choose to play this version for the ease of capturing screenshots but to be completely honest, the poorly fitting resolution for my modern monitor made it look worse than on my Xbox and CRT. Fixes do exist for this issue but I’ve never managed to get any of them to work… but I’m also the sort of troglodyte who struggles to install mods for anything without a manager so perhaps you’ll have more luck. Computer Use: 0.

No matter which platform you opt for, you’re playing KOTOR so it’s going to be a good time. This is a title I’m deeply nostalgic for and my copy still works so if I wasn’t writing for this Substack then I’d have played on the Xbox and if you’ve still got one knocking around, I recommend you play it there too.

Now, let’s get back to the game itself.

KOTOR’s art-style is fascinating to pick apart because you can see exactly where Bioware have picked out designs and elements of the films’ visual language and just made it that little bit more ornate or sometimes clunky.

Compared to R2 D2, KOTOR’s T3 M4 is more noisy, slow moving and clunky, his bulbous head is not flush with his body and 4 legs are required to stabilise him instead of 3. It’s a long running joke that Star Wars technology doesn’t move forward but T3 M4 at least looks much older than R2; comparing these designs reminds me of looking at 8-Bit home computers compared to now: more blocky, more imposing… more personality.

The Sith Army is where Bioware’s unique touch is felt the most. This is not the Empire with its glossy white stormtroopers or TIE series of fighters but an entirely different fighting force with its equipment manufactured by something altogether inhuman. Their armour looks sleek and elegant, as if to be worn on parade rather than in combat and the ships don’t resemble anything else in the known galaxy.

Of course, no space-based RPG is complete without great looking and unique planets. KOTOR goes for a quantity over quality approach (and I don’t mean that pejoratively, compared to Mass Effect later, KOTOR has more planets but most are quite short) there are a lot of planets each with a distinct look or focal point like a main settlement or dock.

KOTOR’s depiction of Korriban is still my favourite in Star Wars, outside of the The Old Republic which is an MMO and has the advantage of being under constant development and a more modern engine; it’s extraordinarily impressive how Kashyyyk -which hadn’t yet appeared in any Star Wars film in 2003- still looks like the planet we know and love despite being pulled directly out of lore and extended media by Bioware.

Aesthetically, the weakest planet has to be Manaan in my opinion. Part of that is my general dislike of the planet’s questline seeping off but also I don’t enjoy the Star Wars metallic city/future city type of atmosphere. The water fountains, oceans stretching off into the distance and Manaan’s enchanting theme song soften the blow blow, however, conceptually, I feel the idea of a floating city created by the Selkath for the benefit of land-dwelling species to come and trade with them wasn’t dully realised; Ahto City looks like any other city in Star Wars.

This is another Jeremy Soule composed video game (Soule was responsible for the soundtracks behind the trilogy of 3D Elder Scrolls games among others, if you’re unfamiliar) so of course, I have high praise.

Manaan’s Ahto City soundtrack never fails to chill me out. When you play through some of the quests on this planet and see the rigidity of Selkath laws and their love for the death penalty it almost adds another layer to the storytelling you will obey the relaxation laws here on Manaan, Human.

Darth Malak’s theme song sounds like Soule’s attempt at creating his own brand of the Imperial March, of course, Malak’s theme isn’t and never will be as iconic as John Williams’ masterpiece but this is great too; Malak’s theme fits the pomp and pageantry of the Old Republic era Sith and you get a sense of his own inflated opinion of himself through the composition.

My favourite combat theme in KOTOR comes from Dantooine where you fight ancient droids inside an eons old ‘burial mound.’ I can’t work out what instrument plays in the first few moments (or indeed, if it eve is an instrument and not some kind of synth) but I enjoy how it makes the beginning of fighting these droids seem low-pressure: like yet another Dantooine academy task before things get serious.

Whether you make a Scoundrel or a Soldier, play as a man or a woman or choose the side of Dark or the Side of the Light, every adventure begins in the character creator. KOTOR’s upbeat character creator music: The Old Republic theme never fails to have me looking forward to my next playthrough of this stone-cold classic.

In terms of its graphics and presentation I have zero complaints about KOTOR. Of course, it would be nice if the game didn’t look so rough on modern machines but you can’t blame Bioware for that… and they need to re-learn how to make good games before they go back and start messing around with masterpieces like this one. Some of the music tracks (particularly the Ebon Hawk theme) are reused in a few too many places or at times where they don’t fit the mood but in a 25+ hour game from 2003 developed with limited console hardware in mind this has to be expected.

KOTOR might not be the best looking game on the original Xbox but it is certainly in the top 5 for me.

Elegant Weapons For An Uncivilised Age

On to the gameplay now and unfortunately, this is where KOTOR’s greatest flaw lies; this game controls relatively well, has a wide variety of enemies and your companions have lots of unique abilities and fighting styles but there’s one glaring problem: KOTOR’s combat just isn’t fun.

KOTOR uses a bizarre mixture of turn-based and real-time combat based roughly on a contemporary (for 2003) version of Dungeons And Dragons. If you’ve played Dragon Age: Origins then KOTOR’s combat feels a bit like that, only more clunky. Feats and powers are doled out in turns by either side but if you select nothing, attacks will automatically be chosen for you; time can be paused to issue commands but proceeds as normal otherwise. Amidst all this the player can still control their movement which leads to the classic scenario of running away until your force bar recharges if you happen to get your ass kicked in a battle.

There is a lot of depth to this system: stats to balance, buffs, debuffs, equipment, character special abilities, the trade-offs of dual wielding, weapon upgrades etc. but to be completely honest, I usually stick the game on Easy and spam Stasis or Force Storm depending on my alignment. I’m not proud of it but this is a game you play for the story and characters, not the clunky combat.

It all comes to ahead in the final act; KOTOR’s final location and the ensuing final boss fight is nightmarishly tedious and infuriatingly frustrating with an end boss who constantly stun locks you and hordes of respawning, force-wielding foes.

Conceptually I have some major issues with the games class system and companion set-up. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here by telling you that the player receives Jedi training early in the game, well, from that point on your previous class gets completely abandoned. I think some form of middle ground or set of unique feats or abilities for each starting republic soldier class would have been better; if you remember the Moon base mission in Mass Effect 1 where you unlock a new, powerful special class from advanced training, that’s the type of thing I’m envisioning. I’m willing to bet if you’ve played KOTOR that you never used a blaster after leaving Taris; there are enemies where a conventional sword works better than a lightsaber but never a blaster. Perhaps if there were some specialised force abilities or Jedi-enhanced feats for ranged builds some of us would have considered playing the game that way? Bioware were already an experienced RPG developer by the time KOTOR came out so I don’t find it unfair to point out these flaws.

In the spirit of my previous complaints, why would I ever choose to take a blaster-wielding companion with me when Jolee, Juhani (if you choose to spare her) and Bastila are all Jedi with force powers and lightsaber proficiency? Part of me thinks Bioware wrote Canderous and HK-47 to be so damn likeable and spitting out funny dialogue on the regular precisely for this reason… it worked, I love having Canderous along on missions. But Carth? Who wants to put up with Carth? I don’t.

In an effort to avoid explicit spoilers and to cover everything quickly, I’m going to be putting together a ranking of all the major planets in this section; I don’t outright dislike any part of this game but it certainly has some locations I enjoy more than others.

#1 Korriban

Korriban has been my favourite planet in the game ever since I first started playing KOTOR as a kid. If you’re playing a Dark Side run then you can rack up a huge number of Dark points here by just committing comically evil atrocities, even to your fellow students; this is a short planet but super sweet. I love all the mini-quests inside each Sith Tomb like solving Ajunta Pall’s sword riddle and the Valley of the Sith is a truly striking location.

The main quest isn’t too special but the various ways in which you can end the final test and determine the fate of the Sith Academy are enjoyable and potentially, depending on when you visit, a gratifying late-game power fantasy.

#2 Kashyyyk

I mentioned many months ago in my Metal Gear Solid 3 review that I’m a sucker for forest and/or jungle settings, Kashyyyk scratches that itch for me. Of all the main planet quests, particularly if you invest in solving Zaalbar’s exile, I find Kashyyyk to be the most engaging; the Shadowlands are one of my favourite environments in the game and Jolee Bindo, as a Grey Jedi, is a unique companion and take on the wise old master archetype.

If you choose to facilitate a regime change on Kashyyyk then the ensuing bloodshed, while destabilising in the short term, does feel like one of the truly good, lasting changes you can make to the galaxy.

If the enemies were less annoying, Kashyyyk might have taken the top spot.

#3 Tatooine

Tatooine’s sweeping dunes and huge playable space are extremely impressive, particularly when running on an original Xbox but this planet suffers from some lengthy and annoying backtracking to and from the Sand People Enclave, especially if you do Bastila’s companion quest and the town of Anchorhead doesn’t feel very Old Republic, it just looks like Tatooine does in the films.

Ending on a higher note, I really love how you can learn about ancient Sand People history if you bring them a Krayt Dragon Pearl and HK-47, found on Tatooine, was so popular he returned in the sequel.

#4 Dantooine

Dantooine is something of a stop-gap planet: a short interlude where you receive your Jedi training and kick off the main quest but its relaxing atmosphere, the sheer excitement I felt as a kid at finally getting a lightsaber (and being off bloody Taris) has earned it a special place in my heart. Dantooine is helped by being home to some of the best side-quests in the game, a hidden cave where lightsaber upgrade crystals can be found early and the showdown with Juhani.

Dantooine can feel a little bit like the place you go for exposition on repeat playthroughs but I’ve always enjoyed traipsing around those fields… even if the Kath Hounds are the most annoying enemies in the game.

#5 Manaan

Manaan isn’t unenjoyable: I enjoy Jolee’s quest here and the concept of a neutral planet housing Republic and Sith personnel in close proximity is an interesting one but the whole thing is such a wasted opportunity. Despite being a city built by fish people for land dwellers to come and trade on, Ahto lacks any real creative design, the main quest ends just as it gets good and the location of a certain object seems random and I struggle to imagine how Revan and Malak would have found such a place in the past.

On a positive note, I really enjoy how the Selkath’s harsh laws and society are depicted, it reminds me of when I went to Singapore; everything is pristine and the streets are safe but nowhere will you find any culture that steps outside the norms and beneath it all there is a distinct atmosphere of stress and discomfort.

#6 Taris

Taris is a great experience on your first playthrough but a boring, tedious slog past that. The side quests are simplistic, the planet takes far too long, most of the companions you acquire on Taris you won’t feel compelled to ever take out with you again and you do it all with your weak starting class and everyone pretending you’re not force sensitive when the box art, the UI and your character’s dreams make it incredibly obvious that you will become a Jedi at some point.

Taris has some highlights: I love the Undercity and the Rakghoul plague subplot and experiencing the Sith occupation shows you exactly what awaits the galaxy if you lose but it drags on much too long.

Lastly, I want to get in another minor complaint which is the fact that some skills, even after having played this game more times than I can count, I have never found a good use for. The Demolitions skill helps the player recover and place landmines but I can’t imagine a scenario where someone would enjoy leading hapless goons around into these traps and the mines in KOTOR are so easy to avoid and do so little damage that I often walk right over them anyway; the Security skill -which is lockpicking- can be entirely side-stepped by bashing open containers but this problem was addressed in the sequel so I’m not going to natter on about it too much.

Other examples exist but I think you get the point by now: KOTOR’s gameplay is its weakest link.

The Droids You’re Looking For

Knights Of The Old Republic 1’s cast doesn’t reach the heights of Bioware’s later series: Mass Effect but these are still, broadly speaking, a timeless set of characters I thoroughly enjoy meeting again every few years when I revisit KOTOR; I’ve been playing this game so long it’s like seeing old friends.

Once again, for brevity and to make sure everyone is covered, I’ll ranking the companions from my favourite to least favourite.

#1 Canderous

Canderous is the villain of all his own stories, has committed countless barbaric acts and never fails to antagonise your more morally conscientious companions but his Mandalorian beliefs and his vigour for life make him my favourite companion.

The basis of the Mandalorian philosophy is that one should always seek out hard battles for the sake of having been up against the odds. Victory is sweet but loss is sometimes inevitable, it’s in the fighting and by being courageous and daring that one finds themself. Conversations with Canderous will have you listening to vivid recollections of battle and slowly realising that the hateful, barbaric Mandalorians… actually don’t hate anyone and Canderous is honoured to have fought the likes of Revan and Malak as Jedi. The Republic for them was the ultimate test: the natural logical conclusion to their hunt for the most prestigious battle.

As in real life, I’m drawn to characters like Canderous who live without apology and truly believe what they say.

#2 Bastila

Thanks to the gift of anonymity afforded by the internet, I can now publicly reveal that I’ve had a crush on Bastila since I was about 7.

Bastila’s demeanour is surprisingly prickly for a Jedi and at first meeting she belittles and looks down on Carth and the player but as the story goes on Bastila is the companion that goes on the biggest arc as a character. This is a Jedi that struggles to maintain composure, has been saddled with the burden of guiding the player towards the light and fears the vulnerability that the force bond between you creates. I don’t want to spoil anything but a certain late-game encounter where Bastila’s personal struggles and the main quest intertwine are a highlight of KOTOR to me.

#3 HK-47

HK-47 Is an assassin droid who is absolutely terrible at hiding both the fact he is an assassin droid and his barely stifled hatred for organics, the results are frequently hilarious.

Truth be told I’ve never delved too deep into HK-47’s dialogue or spoken to him much aboard the Ebon Hawk but suffice it to say he is the game’s comedic relief companion and most of his past is inaccessible without reaching a certain point in the main quest anyway. I do love HK but compared to other companions he is certainly quite one-note.

#4 Jolee Bindo

Jolee is the first character I can think of who embodied that Grey Jedi archetype (of course there is Qui Gon but you don’t get much of that in The Phantom Menace) Jolee is an old man and a veteran Jedi that became disillusioned with the Order and tired of listening to masters and councils and their hypocrisy.

Jolee Bindo is cranky, quick to scold and elusive but he is also the only Jedi we meet who seems completely indifferent to the temptations of the Dark Side and even knowing certain important information before you do, he chooses not to judge and to see where destiny takes you and your mission.

#5 Carth Onasi

Carth is a chronically paranoid, opinionated and distrustful character but he also happens to be the Republic’s finest soldier, truly dedicated to the fight and once you get through to him, Carth’s tragic backstory is enough to make you really feel for him.

Carth’s dialogue is quite repettive and annoying and I never take him with me out on missions after Taris but -especially if you do a Dark Side playthrough- you’ll realise throughout the game that this is a man with a strong moral compass and that his best friend is the Republic, not anybody else.

#6 Mission and Zaalbar

I’m lumping these 2 together because before Kashyyyk, everything you know about Zaalbar comes from mission and because you bring them aboard within minutes of each other on Taris.

To put it frankly, I’ve never really cared for Mission and Zaalbar is sort of a non-entity. Mission’s backstory is a little sad but not terribly interesting compared to someone like Carth and aside from taking Zaalbar to his homeworld I never field these 2 in my party ever again after Taris. The bond between them is cute but it’s clear to me that Bioware didn’t have too many ideas for these companions.

I Don’t Care About T3M4 or Juhani

Juhani has earned a spot in history by being not only the first gay Star Wars character to my knowledge but the first gay romance Bioware ever put into a game; it is buried under euphemism and delicate words as this was a 2003 video game for teens but it is there for those who play a female character. I play as a man -for obvious reasons- so I can’t comment on how well written this romance is, all I can say is that I’ve never found Juhani particularly interesting as a character, I do try to speak to her on the Ebon Hawk but compared to Canderous’ war stories it isn’t riveting stuff.

T3M4 is an emotionless droid that makes beepy-boopy sounds. I like how T3 returns in the sequel but I never take it out with me and there isn’t really a backstory there to discover.

Something I dearly miss about the days when Bioware knew how to write good games and from modern RPG’s (I’ve not played Baldur’s Gate because I’m not interested in the DnD IP) is that characters don’t argue with each other or the player anymore. Good dialogue needs conflict and a party of interesting heroes needs friction. In modern games it feels like every female design is given purple hair and tailored made to be as sexually palatable and ‘strong’ as possible for the Gen Z demographic’s sensibilities; similar things happen with male characters and the throughline is that they’re all likeable, affable merch sellers. In KOTOR, Carth is an annoying, paranoid jerk until you get through to him, Canderous is a genocidal asshole and Bastila is relentlessly judgy, these weren’t written and designed to be printed on T-shirts or sold as Funko Pops, these characters are flawed and emotional, they piss each other off, disagree with the player and threaten to leave… like real human beings.

All Is Not As It Seems

WARNING: This section contains massive spoilers for the main story and companions of KOTOR, if you’ve never played this game and have even the smallest kernel of interest in doing so, I urge you to skip forward.

I know this is has been a leviathan-sized article but we’re almost at the end now, I just couldn’t let you go without declaring that, in my eyes, Knights Of The Old Republic is home to the greatest plot twist in video game history.

That short cutscene that plays after the reveal: the one where Revan takes off his mask to reveal the player’s face sent my jaw to the floor as a kid, still, as an adult, I can’t help but smile when I reach that moment. In no other game since have I been so utterly blindsided by a plot twist. It’s such a masterstroke of storytelling because it recontextualises the entire game and everything you’ve heard up until this point. If you follow the canon ending where you are supposed to stay on the path of the light and romance Bastila then it makes her inner turmoil even more extreme; Bastila is doing the Jedi equivalent of falling in love with Hitler. Furthermore, the quest to take down Malak: largely a weak villain in the narrative so far, existing as a distant, moustache-twirling villain, is recontextualised as a personal quest for payback. All this time you’re led to believe that the Jedi are hypocrites for preaching redemption and mercy despite killing Lord Revan when in actuality, they saved his… your life.

I missed out as a kid by doing Korriban first (so I could LARP as a Sith Lord for the rest of the game) because if you return there after the reveal, you can tell everyone you’re Darth Revan and observe the different reactions you get; doing a Dark Side run, telling Uthar and Yuthura you’re Revan at the end of the final test and then killing them both is the ultimate power move.

Of course, this reveal and the Dark vs Light alignment sets up your big end-game choice of either redeeming Bastila to the Light after she is tortured by Malak (by reminding her of your love, if you follow the canon route) and using her battle meditation to defeat the Sith at the Battle of Rakata Prime or you can choose to embrace the dark: to re-emerge as Darth Revan, slaughter your other companions nad use Bastila’s abilities to both crush the Republic and to reclaim the Sith mantle from Revan at the same time. It’s not often a video game lets you be unabashedly evil but KOTOR is one of them.

As far as the main quest goes, tracking down the Star Maps isn’t particularly interesting and as an adult, I find the discovery of each one to be anticlimactic but it’s not about the destination but the journey; the characters, main planet quests and secrets you uncover make this game. The best of Star Wars captures the moral struggle of Dark vs Light and the fight for one’s self over temptation and the lust for power and here I feel it is captured perfectly. That final exchange with Malak, when all is said and done and the showdown is finished, when he drops the exaggerated laugh and he talks to his old friend for the first time in years is intimate and genuinely heartfelt, you wonder if he really could have been saved.

With Thunderous Applause

Knights Of The Old Republic’s gameplay could use a serious overhaul if that remake ever comes out (which I seriously doubt it ever will) and the amount of effort put into writing your companions and one or two of the planets is a bit uneven but these are minor blemishes on what is the greatest Star Wars game ever made.

Today, KOTOR is sometimes seen as a dry-run for the later Mass Effect by Bioware but it’s an all-timer in its own right and set up a version of Star Wars that’s still going strong today.

We’ll talk about the legacy of KOTOR more in part 2 but needless to say, this is one of the greatest video games ever created and you owe it to yourself to play it.

TL;DR: Knights Of The Old Republic isn’t just the greatest Star Wars game ever made but my favourite RPG too alongside its sequel and Morrowind. The gameplay is dated and you’ll need to fiddle round to get it to a comfortable resolution on a modern PC but there are many other avenues of play and I can guarantee you an unforgettable gaming experience.

This was a mammoth review to write so don’t expect to see a (shorter) part 2 until later in the month, next week will be a more digestible list-type post.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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I also got Shadows of the Empire mixed up with Dark Forces, what a scrub.

Year Of Release: 1995, 1996 & 1997

Platforms: PC (MS-DOS 1995, Win. 1997) Mac (1996) PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo 64 (1997)

Developer: Raven Software

Publisher: Id Software (PC) GT Interactive Software (USA and EU) GameBank (JP)

Copies Sold: Unknown, more than 250.000

Remastered: August 2025 (Heretic + Hexen Bundle) All Platforms

Background And Development

After the release of the original DOOM by Id Software in 1993, the First Person Shooter genre exploded in popularity and the market was filled with ‘Doom Clones’ a term pejoratively coined for all early FPS games but as the years have passed, the term came to refer to early FPS games with that same mix of 2D sprites in a 3D environment or those developed with Id’s DOOM Engine; Heretic and its sequel Hexen: the subject of this month’s instalment, fit into this latter category.

Id had kept their eye on Raven Software for a while and were impressed with the studio’s early works. After providing the DOOM Engine for Raven’s previous role-playing game: Shadowcaster and seeing them put it to good use it was decided that Raven and not Id themselves would be the ones to bring a medieval DOOM game to life. The idea had been floating around at Id since 1993 but between the release of DOOM 2 and the upcoming Quake, there were bigger priorities.

Heretic was the first FPS game that let you look up and down and featured an inventory system but with Hexen, Raven Software wanted to innovate even further.

Raven’s RPG inclinations seeped back in with Hexen in the form of 3 distinct playable classes: the Fighter, Cleric and Mage, functionally the choice between a ranged glass cannon, an up-close brawler or somewhere in between; one whole class revolving around melee, which was often the desperate backup weapon in early shooters, is quite novel. Raven also made massive structural deviations from the typical FPS formula of the day because Hexen, rather than following a linear set of levels and episodes like DOOM, Quake or Duke Nukem 3D, has a hub and world system similar to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, with lots of puzzles, hidden switches and non-linear exploration. Duke Nukem 3D gets all the credit for its environmental interactivity and destruction but Hexen already had breakable glass.

While Quake may have been the first multiplayer FPS phenomenon and DOOM brought the genre mainstream you could argue that Raven’s Heretic and Hexen were more indicative of the future of the genre; the biggest FPS games of the late 1990’s, especially on console: games like GoldenEye and Half Life resemble the open-ended exploration and switch hunting of Hexen more than they do the frantic fragging of Quake.

What Hexen Gets Right

Not Just A Clone But An Innovator

Hexen may look like DOOM and its sequel at a glance but when you hit Start and begin playing that’s where the similarities end.

As one of the first FPS games to move beyond MIDI soundtracks, its murky, Conan The Barbarian-like beats, while not as high tempo or catchy, go beyond what was present in those games. I tried each of the three classes for this episode and played up to the second hub area and felt that, especially with the two far ends of the spectrum: the Fighter and the Mage, Raven Software had distilled two distinct DOOM Engine FPS playstyles into whole game approaches; if you’re a player who liked to duck in and duck out, getting up close with the shotgun then backpedalling before you could get hit then you’ll love the Fighter but if you were better at the circle strafing and crowd control and preferred to use weapons like the Chaingun or Plasma Rifle then the Mage will be more to your liking. Personally, I enjoyed the Mage a bit more than the other classes because the Fighter’s inability to easily hit flying enemies is a harsh trade-off and I liked that my gameplan was more defined than that of the Cleric, who felt a bit like an easy mode, especially since he comes equipped with a shield.

Hexen’s hub and sub-world design certainly has some issues but you can’t deny that this design and the rich, dark fantasy atmosphere makes it unique. Heretic and Hexen don’t feel like a Medieval DOOM but their own distinct IP. While playing, I thought it looked and sounded more like Daggerfall than anything Id has ever produced and the lighting effects (which are replicated, albeit to limited success on the N64) reminded me of the areas in DOOM 64 where enemies ambush you in the pitch black and only light fixtures guide your way.

Accessibility And Commemoration (Modern Version)

I’m going to tell you something that every classic FPS fan knows but the rest of the industry hasn’t quite picked up on yet: Nightdive Studios, in regards to remasters and porting classic games to modern hardware, are the best developers in the business. There aren’t many studios these days that I keep a close eye on but Nightdive are one of them.

These Nightdive developed remasters aren’t just easier, cheaper ways to get classic games in your modern hardware’s library but often full-fledged celebrations of these titles with various tools and fixes included (but not mandatory) to ensure that newer players can enjoy them with as little friction as possible. Heretic + Hexen is no different. Included is a suite of accessibility options, a fully remastered soundtrack, an optional new typeface and a whole ‘Raven Vault’ filled with concept art and behind the scenes info on how the game was made. If you love Hexen then I have to imagine you’ll get a lot out of this.

While most remasters, remakes and ports, like the rather lacklustre modern version of Republic Commando I played recently, tend to strip out the multiplayer and any other bonus modes, with Nightdive’s Hexen it all remains intact. I didn’t test the multiplayer but I’ve been led to believe it’s incredibly fun and I’m grateful it even exists at all; if you were playing LAN parties back in the day, no doubt you’ll get more out of this than I ever could.

I do have a slight nit-pick: Hexen’s unique N64 soundtrack, which was rearranged to take advantage of higher quality instruments, isn’t available in Nightdive’s modern version. No doubt you could mod this in quite easily though and considering everything else on offer, this is a tiny blemish.

Balance And Difficulty

I go into basically every game from before the year 2000 with the assumption that it’s going to be tough as nails so I’ve made it a point in my reviews/writing to praise games that were fair with their challenge before such things were commonplace, Hexen is one of those games.

There are a few areas where the level design gets a bit DOOM 64-ish (I.E: random instant kill traps or gankings that you need clairvoyance to see coming) and the projectiles in the Nintendo 64 version seem to have wider hit box than in the Nightdive version but these are rare steep moments in a level of challenge that predictably and steadily climbs upwards. New enemies are introduced at a steady pace and each is more deadly than the last giving the player plenty of time to adapt without being destroyed right away.

What Hexen Gets Wrong

A Compromised Port (N64 Version)

All I can really say about Hexen’s Nintendo 64 port is that it’s good enough; the game is there in its entirety, it doesn’t run horribly, I paid an above average but not extortionate price for my copy (about £36) and it looks alright but the controls are poor and all of the FMV cutscenes are missing.

You see that trigger on the back of the Nintendo 64 controller: the Z button? That button that looks, feels and sounds like a trigger, that button that basically every other N64 shooter uses as a fire button? Well, in Hexen that activates strafe mode and doesn’t fire your weapon, instead you have to press A. The ability to look up and down is so awkward to access too that I just gave up trying to use it and decided to grin and bear firing at an enemy’s feet when engagements took to the stairs. On this version, enemy projectiles seem to have a wider hitbox too.

Hexen for Nintendo 64 is worth owning but unless you’re a serious fan of the console/looking to build a complete library like me or find it at a car boot sale or on Ebay for cheap, I don’t think the purchase is worth it for most people, not when it’s about £13 for Nightdive’s remaster.

Fickle Foes

While Hexen is fun to play, compared to DOOM and other FPS games of the era, I find its roster of enemies to be rather uninteresting, narrow and bland to fight.

According to the internet, you can trigger enemy infighting by encouraging blue on blue with the projectiles but I’ve made several attempts to have it happen to no avail, as well as that, enemies just don’t behave or move about the space in interesting ways like in DOOM, even the projectile-based monsters just seem to charge you and get as close as possible before attacking.

Enemy animations are par for the course for the time and the sprites all look up to scratch but while playing I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was fighting a generic set of fantasy monsters; senior employees at Raven noted that they were big fans of D&D at the time and while I respect how it informed Hexen’s aesthetic and some of its innovations, I wish they had come up with a more interesting enemy roster than the usual ogres and bat-like demons.

Obtuse Level Design

I don’t think it’s inaccurate of me to say that the game Hexen is a sequel to: Heretic tends to be remembered more fondly and there are many reasons for that: it introduced the bulk of Raven Software’s innovations first, it was an undiluted expression of that era of shooters and most importantly, Heretic didn’t have the obtuse and cryptic level design of its sequel.

Don’t get me wrong, you won’t get constantly lost in this game and I found divining the way forward to be easier than in the infamously opaque Turok 2 but it is constant friction with Hexen; not one sub area of each hub can be completed start to finish in one, unbroken dungeon crawl, within a couple of minutes of progress you will flip a switch that opens a door that could be on the other side of the map and then be forced to march back the way you came to check every dead end and locked gate. It reminded me of why I didn’t get on with Demon’s Souls, the game structure and level design get under the feet of the gameplay and having fun. My least favourite area of the game has been a level called the Guardian Of Steel, everything looks the same and you return there to complete what is essentially the same puzzle twice.

The best part of every shooter should be the shooting and getting stuck in to the combat, anything that gets in the way of that better be well-justified, otherwise? Just take it out of the game.

Hexen’s Legacy And My Closing Thoughts

Hexen is a fine shooter. I wouldn’t put it among the greats of the Nintendo 64 and I don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as DOOM or Quake but it’s a cut above the likes of Exhumed (Powerslave in the US) and Nightdive’s modern version is so cheap and accessible that I can’t help but recommend it for anyone interested in classic shooters. Since it comes with Heretic now, even if the level design (which is offset by an option for map waypoints now) proves too irritating for you that game at least provides a more traditional alternative.

But let’s talk about Raven Software, Hexen was one of their first 5 games -and their first FPS game- and what a legacy this studio went on to build.

The Hexen and Heretic series fizzled out not long after the mid-1990’s but the experience developing these games transformed Raven from an RPG studio into one of the premier FPS developers. They went on to develop the first 2 Soldier Of Fortune games which pioneered gore and limb-based damage in FPS games and were 2 early military FPS titles before the genre exploded in the 2000’s.

After Soldier Of Fortune Raven moved on to Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, young Scanlines spent many hours as a kid playing Outcast on the original Xbox and I got into Jedi Academy a few years ago which has a very small, close-knit and friendly multiplayer community to this day. For my money, they are the best 2 Star Wars games ever made outside of KOTOR I and II.

As of 2026, Raven Software has been stuck for years in the Call Of Duty mines. I have nothing against the CoD series: Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2 and World At War especially are classics and I even like some of the newer ones like Modern Warfare 2019 and Black Ops: Cold War but for an innovative, single-player focused developer like Raven to be stuck making mass-market, multiplayer-centric shooters feels like a massive waste.

My next piece will be released on the 4th of May, a few days later than usual. I’ve got a pair of hefty projects in the works at the moment which I’m excited for people to read, please bear with me.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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Voted America’s Worst Company in both 2012 and 2013 and infamous for having shut down scores of beloved studios, EA have certainly never stayed out of headlines for long. That being said, I’ll be the first to admit they’ve published more than a few stellar games: the Battlefield series, while past its prime, has provided multiplayer delights like none other; both Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (I haven’t played Survivor yet) and Star Wars Squadrons were solid too, as was EA’s time with the Bond licence.

The holy trinity of 007 Agent Under Fire, Nightfire and Everything Or Nothing were all published under EA’s tenure and that financial might afforded them production values and resources that Rare could never have matched with GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64.

Today, we’ll be looking at the latter: 007 Everything Or Nothing, a game infused with the finest graphics of the era and a star-studded cast.

Licence Revoked

In the United Kingdom, Bond films have a certain reputation: Sunday afternoon films. It’s tradition in the British Isles to have a roast dinner on a Sunday and once you’re all full up, the family waddles to the TV to watch a film and to rest and digest; 9 times out of 10, the film on TV will be a Bond film, even on Christmas Day it’s the same. Increasingly, the Broccoli Family, who exercised creative control over the Bond films from the 1960’s all the way until 2025, weren’t happy with this reputation and after the release of The Bourne Identity in 2002, they felt that Bond was beginning to look silly and antiquated in a post-9/11 world. So, like football and theatre before it, Bond was stolen from the British working class and repackaged as a product for international audiences and snooty critic types.

But why the preamble? Well, despite the incredibly strong financial performance of Die Another Day, confirming his upcoming 5th appearance as Bond and loving playing the part, Pierce Brosnan was unceremoniously fired from playing 007 over the phone. This makes Everything Or Nothing Brosnan’s final Bond adventure.

Everything Or Nothing was developed by EA Redwood Shores, a studio you might know better as Visceral Games: the people who went on to make the Dead Space games and like Dead Space, but unlike the majority of Bond games that came before it, Everything Or Nothing is played from a third-person perspective; this was the first (and last) time EA had permission to use not only Pierce Brosnan’s likeness but his voice too, so it was felt that the opportunity would be wasted if the game was entirely in first-person like Nightfire and Agent Under Fire before it.

Unlike 007 Nightfire, the choice of best version for 007 Everything or Nothing is a bit of a surprise.

As was typical of the era, the PlayStation 2, being the weaker of the big 3 consoles (despite selling enough units to dwarf the combined total sales of both the GameCube and the Xbox) meant its version of Everything Or Nothing, while not insufferable, doesn’t quite stack up to the opposition; it’s on the Xbox where Everything Or Nothing supposedly plays best.

I played on the GameCube which meant higher quality visuals and framerate than the PS2 but that tiny little disc Nintendo used gives a lot of GameCube games, EoN included, a bit of a compressed sound. There were dips here and there down from 30FPS to around 25 but generally things ran smoothly… but I must say, the unusual GameCube triggers can feel a bit odd for shooters, at least to me.

On the other hand, according to the web, the Xbox version runs more smoothly, I have to imagine that big HDD on-board likely gives it faster loading times, the lighting is improved and anyone who has used an original Xbox controller, either the Duke or the S knows how wonderful it feels to pull those triggers and unload a torrent of gunfire in Halo 2 or Star Wars Republic Commando, it could only be equally as good as Bond himself.

Ever the home of impressive action game ports, the GameBoy Advance received its own version of EoN with an isometric perspective reminiscent of the console’s version of Max Payne. Unlike the GBA version of Nightfire (which I’ve heard high praise for) I can’t seem to find much online regarding people’s opinions on this version so I will neither endorse nor steer you away from it; I need to grab a copy for myself.

In The Wrong Hands

007 Everything Or Nothing takes a leaf out of Tomorrow Never Dies’ book and opens with Bond causing absolute mayhem at a terrorist arms deal in Tajikistan involving a stolen nuclear device.

I don’t find this mission to be as engaging as Nightfire’s opening, however, it is a better primer for the rest of the game’s mechanics and it serves to introduce not only the authentic Pierce Brosnan Bond into the video game universe but also Judi Dench’s M; pretty much every cast member of note reprises their role in this game including one legacy Bond villain which I’ll get into later.

I said in my review of Nightfire that it was the first game to successfully replicate the same tone and feel as the films, well, Everything Or Nothing goes a step further: the returning cast, the strong set-pieces and the third person perspective give the impression that you are actually playing a Bond film, not a product emulating one… just at a max resolution of about 480i. I’m going to be upfront and say that I preferred Nightfire to this game and there are many elements to EoN that irritated me but the presentation and the veneer of authenticity kept me playing, not to mention the stunning presentation for a game of its age.

This prologue: Ground Zero, pleasantly surprised me. I came in to Everything Or Nothing expecting it to share almost zero similarities with the previous FPS greats of the Bond video game franchise but Redwood Shores successfully managed to graft GoldenEye’s free cursor aiming system onto a third person shooter targeting mechanic in a way that feels really good to use; there are some deep flaws in this game’s shooting mind you but none involve the aiming.

After seemingly destroying half of Tajikistan and recovering the stolen nuclear device, Bond departs the arms deal and we get this game’s title song: Everything Or Nothing by Mya.

Everything Or Nothing by Mya is as violently 2004 as a song could be… and I sort of love it. What a bop. Once again, I’m showing the limits of my music knowledge by not knowing about Mya or her work but I think Everything Or Nothing fits the late-Brosnan era very well, in fact, I think it’s better than Madonna’s Die Another Day… but that’s widely considered one of the bottom 3 Bond songs, so low-hanging fruit.

Yet again, Everything Or Nothing's Soviet-themed intro looks and feels like a real Bond film and say what you want about the song vs Nearly Civilized by Esthero but the opening for this game doesn’t spoil anywhere near the amount of plot that Nightfire’s did. This is one area where EoN surpasses its predecessors.

What Everything Or Nothing lacks in quality it makes up for in ingenuity. Willem Dafoe plays the villain here and EA even got the likeness of Richard Kiel so that Jaws could appear as a recurring boss fight; whereas Nightfire played it safe and resembles a best of album of 007 film and video game motifs, EoN’s gameplay reinvents the wheel, its plot (although absolutely bonkers) doesn’t really resemble any of the films up to that point and its set-pieces are entirely its own, that has to be respected.

Redwood Shores could have made Everything Or Nothing a Nightfire 2 but instead they went bigger: bigger set-pieces, bigger names, a bigger budget and a game that’s about twice as long as its predecessor.

Platinum Plated

007 Everything Or Nothing possesses hands down the most impressive graphics I’ve ever seen coming out of a GameCube and sits up there with Escape From Butcher Bay and Splinter Cell on the Xbox as the most impressive console graphics I’ve seen of this era. Compare this game with early 360 titles like Call Of Duty 3 and Perfect Dark Zero (maybe don’t play that one, just look at it) and I don’t think EoN look out of place at all.

007 Nightfire, which primarily takes place in Japan, has gone down in my own memory as a Japan-themed Bond game; Everything Or Nothing takes Bond all over, from Central Asia and Egypt to Peru, the USA and Russia but most of the game takes place in Peru, as such I’ve come to think of it as a South America-themed game. Of all these locations I found the missions set in the USA’s New Orleans to be the most graphically striking and visually compelling, unfortunately, I can’t seem to find an imagine online of these levels at a decent resolution and size but the way the city’s night time lights reflect off Bond’s car and and the damp tarmac is simply stunning.

Another couple of highlights were the driving and helicopter sections in Egypt where Bond must chase an armoured train and then a helicopter in order to destroy a prototype for deadly nanobots… Everything Or Nothing veers a bit more into science fiction than other Bond games, to mixed results. Ancient ruins topple around you as you dodge and weave out of the way of falling debris, wide valleys and desert vistas stretch before you without a hint of draw distance fog all while the humble GameCube maintains a steady 30FPS; if this were attempted on any hardware prior, you just know it would have been torturous to play.

Everything Or Nothing’s missions are more linear and less atmospheric than in Nightfire but on a purely visual level, they look better which in turn helps with immersion.

Unfortunately, compared to Nightfire’s fantastic soundtrack, just one piece of music stood out to me in EoN: the catchy, guitar-infused remix of the James Bond theme song that plays between missions as you sit lamenting your lack of a Gold medal.

It’s not all bad though because Everything Or Nothing’s gun sounds are a bit more punchy: the MP5K emits a pleasing, steady drum sound at full-auto and the heavier AK-74 roars with the heft and power you’d expect of a rifle like that; the Desert Eagle was a joy to use as well, as an often single shot killer its powerful blasts signal the end of any engagement where you choose to wield it.

I’m saddened and surprised to say that Pierce Brosnan’s performance adds very little to Everything Or Nothing. Look, Pierce is my favourite actor to ever pick up the Walther PPK and licence to kill, closely followed by the great Sean Connery but I don’t know whether it was poor direction, an unfamiliarity with the medium or plain resentment knowing that this would be his final appearance as Bond but his voice performance in this game is incredibly wooden; Bond has barely any lines in EoN as I imagine Brosnan was expensive to get onboard. I honestly would have preferred Maxwell Caulfield: Bond’s voice in Nightfire returning to voice the super spy if it meant more one-liners, charisma and energetic delivery. Willem Dafoe doesn’t get a lot to work with either though it is glorious to hear him hamming it up as a cheesy Russian villain and John Cleese is as brilliant as ever; Judi Dench is relegated to radio exposition and button prompts which is a real shame given her stature in the pantheon of British actors.

Losing Traction

Everything Or Nothing is a third-person shooter with a cover mechanic and a surprisingly enjoyable hand to hand fighting system; Bond can parry, throw enemies and strikes land with a pleasing amount of force. Vehicle missions make a return but I have to say, Everything Or Nothing botches 2/3 of its primary gameplay styles.

Let’s start with Everything Or Nothing’s shooting. The aiming system I’ve already praised and weapons feel good to use, however, it is utterly ruined by a lock-on system that genuinely feels worse than Ocarina Of Time on the Nintendo 64. Throughout my playthrough of EoN (where the tutorial is mandatory) I could not work out a way to switch targets quickly and effectively, often times getting riddled with ammunition and killed before I could properly respond because there is no Switch Target/Cycle to Next Enemy button, you break lock and re-establish it while hoping for the best. Making this issue even more grating is EoN’s archaic, pre-Gears Of War cover system which is fine for pressing Bond’s back flat against walls but useless in every other scenario; more than once I met my end crouching behind a waist high barrier until a round clapped me in the forehead. Everything Or Nothing is already a hard game: I would argue too hard in those initial levels, I died more than twice on the first proper mission and had to concentrate to finish certain engagements, so having to fight the lock-on system along with a poor cover mechanic soured my opinion of the game by the halfway point. I hope you like PS2-era checkpoints.

Somehow, the vehicle missions in Everything Or Nothing are a touch below what came before as well. From what I can gather, this game’s vehicle handling was roughly modelled on Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, I can imagine in that game where the player can shift gears up and down and can affect control over the car more precisely it works but in a third person shooter with streamlined driving controls? Not so much. Compared to Nightfire, vehicles are just a pain to drive in EoN which is tragic because from a purely objectives and gameplay perspective, these are better levels.

Rather than a traditional versus multiplayer mode, Everything Or Nothing comes with a set of exclusive CO-OP missions where you play as a pair of operatives in what look like Gym Shark leggings.

I only have 1 GameCube controller and nobody to play this mode with so unfortunately, I can’t review it, however… I’ve heard from multiple sources and other reviews that it is unreasonably difficult and a months-long project for those who attempted it as kids back in the day. It’s a shame that no friendly CPU was put together so you could play this mode alone but friendly forces don’t appear in Everything Or Nothing full-stop, so I have to imagine it wasn’t the most expedient use of resources.

Nightfire’s addictive medal system makes a return in this game but being honest, between the high difficulty, clunky gameplay and the game dragging on a bit longer than it probably should have, my motivation to try for Platinum medals was very low.

Wish I Could Make You Vanish

007 Everything Or Nothing was a disappointing experience for me, from start to finish I wanted so much to love this one like I did Nightfire but it consistently comes up short where it counts.

The plot: a bizarre chain of events that centres around steel-eating, platinum nanobots and a scheme to seize control of the Russian Federation is ridiculous on a level even Roger Moore’s James Bond films don’t often hit; Agent Under Fire was outlandish too but that game’s entire tone was tongue in cheek whereas EoN takes itself seriously. The gameplay both on-foot and in vehicles is consistently compromised and while it has its moments and isn’t an awful game, Everything Or Nothing isn’t a title I see myself rushing back to replay any time soon.

TL;DR: I didn’t get on very well with Everything Or Nothing. It has a veneer of authenticity and stunning presentation awarded by its budget but clunky gameplay, wooden performances and a ludicrous plot let it down. I recommend this game for Bond fans only, there are better options for a third person action fix.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

Be sure to subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my Ko-Fi page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below.

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Disclaimer: I was born in 2000 on the older end of Generation Z, lucked out into owning all 3 of the major consoles of the day and grew up in the UK, this list shouldn’t be taken as concrete fact and instead as an anecdotal list of games that were common among classmates and friends.

You won’t be seeing any Xbox or GameCube games on this list because the PS2 absolutely dominated, very few people I knew besides me owned those consoles.

Something I’ve noticed in my 14 months of Substack so far is that generally, my readers tend to be a lot older than I am; a lot of the games I’ve written about predate my time on Earth so it’s only natural. As such, I’ve heard mentioned a lot of games from the NES, SNES and other platforms that everybody owned… that wouldn’t necessarily pop-up in best of lists: games like Ikari Warriors, Winter Games and so on.

I’ve always been a retro gamer (if you could even call it that back then) and played my PS2, GameCube and Xbox all the way up until 2009 with those classic Sega compilations on each.

With this all in mind, I wanted to make a list of games that my generation grew up with. These aren’t necessarily the greatest games ever made (though a few stone cold classics appear) instead they are games I just remember floating around wherever I went; growing up in the 2000’s, these games are the kind you’d always see, without fail, laying atop your friend or cousin’s PS2 Slim.

Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2

I can count on one hand how many people I’ve met in my age range who didn’t grow up with Battlefront 1, 2 or both. As a kid I preferred Battlefront 2 but as an adult? I feel they’re about equal. Adore these games.

The 2000’s were a golden age for Star Wars video games. While the prequels are contentious to this day, gamers were feasting on classic after classic: Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Outcast, The Force Unleashed, Republic Commando, Rebel Strike on the GameCube, KOTOR I and II, I could sit here all day listing the amazing Star Wars games I grew up with that came out between 2000-2010 but the Battlefronts and LEGO Star Wars were easily the most ubiquitous.

The premise of Battlefront is that you relive famous battles from the films as a standard, rank-and-file soldier. Each match of Battlefront plays out a bit like Battlefield (in fact, EA’s Battlefront reboots in the 2010’s were essentially just Battlefield clones) where you capture points using infantry and vehicles in order to drain the enemy team’s ticket counter to 0 and win the game. Both games have their own merits and are worth playing. Battlefront 1 has the better maps, better infantry gameplay and the campaign features clips from the films but Battlefront 2 adds space battles, playable heroes, a much improved campaign and maps from Revenge of the Sith. If you play on Steam, both games had their multiplayer restored (mod free) a few years back and are very cheap, it was a dream come true playing these online with some people I knew who also had fond memories.

LEGO Games

Starting with LEGO Star Wars in 2005, TT Games began to flood the market with LEGO games based upon popular, family-friendly licences like Indiana Jones and Batman. Everyone I knew had at least one of these when I was growing up. I owned LEGO Star Wars 1 and 2 as well as Indiana Jones and Batman though by the time Batman rolled around even my single-digit aged self was getting tired of how samey these games all were.

I think most people have played a TT Games LEGO game but in case you haven’t, they’re essentially action platformers with some light puzzle elements and although short, they tend to have a huge roster of characters to unlock to keep you coming back.

Don’t quote me on this because it’s been somewhere in the region of 15 years since I last played one of the classic-style TT LEGO games but I remember LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy’s DS version being shockingly good, you could drag and drop parts and make your own character on the touchscreen.

Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets

The garbage PlayStation 1 Harry Potter game is much more well-known than Chamber of Secrets which is a damn shame because this game is actually good.

With a fantastic soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule of The Elder Scrolls, Chamber of Secrets had bright and whimsical graphics, took you to an impressively realised, fully-explorable Hogwarts and played well; it was a platformer with some light Metroidvania elements, before 9/10 indie games matched that description. As you progressed through the game you unlocked new spells which enabled access to new rooms in the castle. I have fond memories of this one. Chamber of Secrets won’t make any best of lists but it was an above average game with a really warm, charming atmosphere. I owned it on GameCube but my classmates tended to have it on PS2. Quidditch World Cup was also fairly popular but I’ve never played that one.

I was really hoping Hogwarts Legacy was going to be in the same vein as Chamber of Secrets, especially as the Harry Potter games that came after this one fell off a cliff in terms of quality but that game just looks devoid of any charm or colour to me: more of a product made for international audiences than the real Harry Potter, which was always weirdly relatable for school-aged British kids, I don’t know, tell me in the comments if I’m wrong.

Chamber of Secrets was my favourite Harry Potter book as a kid so I hope I’m not overselling this game.

New Super Mario Bros Or Super Mario 64 DS

As the decade progressed, the GameBoy Advance was gradually replaced at school breaktime by the Nintendo DS and the DS Lite; I had the old, original version DS for a while but had upgraded to the Lite by 2007 at the time Pokémon Diamond and Pearl were spreading like wildfire.

But before Diamond and Pearl, the game everyone had was either Super Mario 64 DS or New Super Mario Bros, I for sure played both but I think NSMB was the one I actually owned myself.

Here is where I lose 400 subscribers… I never liked Mario as a kid, instead I was firmly in the Sonic camp and spent an ungodly amount of hours on the GameCube versions of Adventure 1 & 2 as well as the classics plus some weird Saturn inclusions in those old Sega compilations like Sonic R. I got a snide comment some time ago on my best retro games list saying that a lot of it was Nintendo fanboy stuff and I couldn’t help but laugh internally because I didn’t become a Nintendo fan really until the Switch came out; the GameCube was my first console, I’ve always loved Zelda and grew up with Metroid Prime, Luigi’s Mansion and Double Dash but didn’t care for Nintendo’s other franchises until much later.

3rd and 4th Generation Pokémon

As with every generation for the past few decades, Pokémon was extremely popular when I was growing up and usually the sole game people had for their DS/GBA besides some licensed crap; you had a PSP to play GTA without your parents knowing or you had Pokémon for your DS, that’s just the way it was. I had all of the Pokémon games because I lucked out, my older brother would dip in and out of gaming, losing interest then giving his consoles to me when he was done.

If we’re not counting home consoles then Pokémon Sapphire was the first game I ever played, as such, the juiced up Gen III Pokémon Emerald remains my favourite game in the series. Something about Hoenn’s Okinawa-inspired volcanic archipelago has always spoken to me and the seaside towns would always remind me of places I’d been on caravan holidays to here in the UK.

Like I said at the beginning, the GameCube and Xbox were quite uncommon when I was growing up so don’t expect to see many of their games here but I’ve genuinely never met another GameCube owner who didn’t have Pokémon Colosseum. If I had to make a list of GameCube games everyone had then that one would certainly end up on it.

Tie-In Disney And Pixar Games

Film tie-in games have pretty much gone extinct these days but in the 2000’s these things were everywhere: The Incredibles, Shark Tale, Shrek: if you could name the film, it had a (usually dreadful) game on the PS2, Xbox, GameCube and often an even worse GameBoy Advance version.

Among friends and family there always seemed to be a few of these floating around. Most tie-ins were complete crap but a few I remember being good were both The Incredibles and The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer, the Spongebob film tie-in game and once I got a bit older and moved on to the Xbox 360 I had quite a bit of fun with the tie-in game for The Simpsons Movie. Among my slightly younger Gen Z contemporaries and going into Gen Alpha I have heard that the Ratatouille and the Cars game were everywhere and that the former was abhorrent but the latter was okay.

I want to give a special shout out to the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith tie-in, that game was not only really fun but featured an alternate ending where Anakin kills Obi Wan and the 2-player mode pit you and your friend against each other in a 1v1 lightsaber duel. I have distinct memories of inviting a friend over in 2015-16 with the intention of playing some Xbox One, him getting curious about the game once I mentioned the alternate ending and then us spending hours on Revenge of the Sith fighting each other and pissing about. I still own my copy today, had it since I was a kid and the film was new.

FIFA, Pro Evo and FIFA Street

Growing up in the UK, you’ll generally be pulled in one of 4 directions in regards to sport: if you’re working class it will be towards your dad’s favourite football team or to the TV to watch F1 on a Sunday and if you’re posh (or Welsh) you might be directed towards rugby; I’ve never met a cricket fan in my life that wasn’t British Indian/Pakistani or privately schooled but there is that direction too.

I’ve never really cared for football so few footy games ever graced my shelves, I love watching international tournaments like the Euros or the World Cup but I just can’t get invested in the Premier League. I’m sorry but watching 11 people represent a city none of them are from against another 11 people who also weren’t raised in the city they’re playing for doesn’t interest me. Anyway, regardless of what I think, these games have always and will always be popular. These days EA FC (formerly known as FIFA) pretty much holds a monopoly on arcade-style football games but I’ve been told in the past that Pro Evolution Soccer had the better gameplay and that it was let down by the lack of licences forcing them to give teams and players silly off-brand names like ‘Man Red.’

I’ll take a moment here to show some appreciation for the Football Manager series of strategy and management games, I don’t really watch football outside of international tournaments but playing FM has given me a greater appreciation for the sport.

Need For Speed Underground 1 & 2 and Most Wanted

While the quality of racing games today is superb it certainly feels like we’re missing variety. 15-20 years ago you could find Dirt, Need For Speed, Burnout, Midnight Club, Test Drive and more on shelves whereas today it feels like you get Forza, Gran Turismo, an occasional legacy reboot or nothing. The racing genre in general was always pretty popular here but Need For Speed seemed to be the go-to for most.

A childhood spent on Jak II racing missions scared me off playing racing games at the time but as an adult, now that the PS2 and Xbox libraries are dirt cheap, I’ve had a great time rediscovering these titles and seeing exactly why they were more popular. This type of racing game isn’t exactly a perfect simulation but the ability to speed down the road with easy to grasp controls in the sorts of cars that got the boy racers of the UK drooling with tightly put together soundtracks is a power fantasy all of its own.

The popularity of Fast & Furious, the impressive graphics of racing games compared to others, the UK’s strong car heritage, the chav culture of the 2000’s and F1 arguably being at its peak from 1998-2012 certainly helped racing games like Need For Speed to find a strong audience in the UK; there was a time here where the Subaru Impreza was every young male’s dream car… for some of us, it still is.

Doritos Crash Course

Advancing beyond my early years into the later years of my childhood we have Doritos Crash Course: a free Xbox Live Arcade game from 2010 where you were tasked with steering your very own avatar through Wipeout-esque obstacle courses.

Those veterans of the golden age of Xbox Live will remember that the indie section (more on that soon) was full of what I can only call avatar slop: countless awful games where the only appeal was the ability to play as your own avatar. Doritos Crash Course stood out by being great fun to the point where me and other idiot 10 year olds were hopeful they would release paid DLC for the game; a sequel did come about in the final months of the Xbox 360 but I remember very little of it and you can no longer revisit the game since, according to Wikipedia, it was delisted all the way back in 2014.

Everyone I’ve met who owned a 360 back in the day has at least tried Crash Course and most enjoyed it… absolutely none of us have any idea what it had to do with Doritos.

Total Miner, Castleminer, Murder Miners and FortressCraft

There was a brief time: between 2010 and early 2012 when everyone was watching Minecraft explode in popularity but most of us lowly console players were unable to try it; I had an awful laptop at the time that ran the game at an N64-esque framerate but that’s all I could do. For us, Xbox Live Indie clones like Total Miner, Castleminer, Castleminer Z, FortressCraft, Murder Miners and many many more filled the gap.

Most of these like the original Castleminer and FortressCraft were pretty crap but once Minecraft finally arrived on the 360 in May 2012 these clones had to get creative if they hoped to survive and that’s when they really hit their stride.

Total Miner was the most popular and introduced RPG elements, a wider array of weapons than Minecraft and let the player explore some really gnarly cave systems, cave systems that were quite honestly better than most to be found in that era’s version of Minecraft. Castleminer Z introduced guns, zombies, dragons and aliens, tasking you and your friends with surviving the horde while making the pilgrimage across a set of unique biomes; Murder Miners was basically Halo with Minecraft-style building and Red Faction-like destruction, that game was awesome too. These games began as shameless knock-offs but developed a legacy all of their own. We all played them and we all remember the days before Minecraft arrived.

Halo 3 or Modern Warfare 2

Halo: CE and Halo 2 were accessible but a little before our time, so Halo 3 is where most of us cut our teeth… or Modern Warfare 2.

I do mean that ‘or’ word too, in my school, you were a Halo player or a CoD player and usually subject to slander from the opposite side; I did and will always prefer Halo. I can’t express to anyone how good prime Halo 3 was on Xbox Live, you just had to be there. Hopping on to see 90/100 on your 360 friend list all playing Halo 3, getting a party and game invite before you even knew what you were doing then putting on the worst headset possible to spit utter bile over a match of Slayer on Sandtrap is an experience I wish everyone had. It’s impossible to really put into words how much this game means to me, I made friends playing Halo 3 I would meet years later in real life. I’m not one to succumb to outrage and being butthurt on the internet but it still pisses me off what they did to this franchise.

Modern Warfare 2 is a great game as well but it’s one I got into more in my teens long past its heyday. I’m not a fan of CoD multiplayer but that campaign is absolutely stellar and I think the Call Of Duty franchise gets more hate than it deserves; CoD games were 60FPS before anyone cared about that on console, consistently deliver entertaining campaigns and maps like Rust, Nuketown and Shipment deliver a special kind of carnage nothing else can.

My favourite Call Of Duty is Black Ops 1 but MW2 is awesome.

This has been a by no means exhaustive list of games common among people my age growing up but for older gamers, I hope this gives you some insight into what the people who will soon be running this industry grew up playing; for my contemporaries in the 25-30 age bracket… I’d smash you in a 1v1 on Guardian.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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Starting with Diablo in 1998, some of the biggest Western RPG’s of the day began to make their way to consoles. One of these RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, had been closely intertwined with the Original Xbox since Bethesda first became aware of the machine’s existence and would become one of the most successful games for the console, releasing there exclusively just a month after the PC version in North America and selling over 1.3 million copies: the #16 best selling game in the entire Xbox library. If you grew up in the 2000’s like me and were a big console gamer then you know the rest of this story, JRPG’s began to look more and more antiquated with their turn-based combat, laughable voice-acting and traditional levelling systems while Morrowind and Oblivion gave us vast, handcrafted 3D worlds, dozens of factions to join and a truly life-consuming amount of content.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been ported so many times and has become so ubiquitous that we’ve had a horseshoe effect and I get the impression that the game is somewhat hated today, no doubt helped by Bethesda’s less than stellar run in the past decade. But I remember a time before Skyrim, I remember playing Oblivion for long hours into the night in the 2000’s, I remember the excitement leading up to 11.11.11: the November 11th 2011 release date for Skyrim, I remember rushing home from school and being absolutely ecstatic to tear open the cellophane on my copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360. This game was all me and my friends played for months and months afterwards.

RPG reviews have always intimidated me because these games take forever to beat and I don’t feel as well-versed in the genre as I do in strategy or shooters but I know that RPG articles do very well here on Substack and that there are 2 games in particular I’ve been requested to tackle (you know who you are) so before I hop off the deep end, I want to cover a few role-playing giants I know well already.

Sit back and join me on the chopping block at Helgen.

As The Scrolls Foretold

It is year 202 of the Fourth Era and Tamriel is in chaos.

In the two centuries since the Oblivion Crisis in The Elder Scrolls IV and the end of the Septim Dynasty the Empire has entered a prolonged period of decline.

In the East, Argonia, formerly the province of Black Marsh, has been independent since the Oblivion Crisis and rules free of Imperial influence, even going as far as to conquer much of south Morrowind. To their north, Morrowind, de jure a part of the Empire but de facto independent, has been ravaged by the Argonian invasion, the impact of the Baar Dau meteor at Vivec and another eruption of Red Mountain triggering an outpouring of Dunmer (known to men as Dark Elf) refugees across the continent.

In the West, the Breton homeland of High Rock remains a loyal province of the Empire in large part due to its decentralised and quarrelling nature but the vast land of Hammerfell: the province of the Redguards has ceded from the Empire. In the years since Oblivion, the Empire waged a long and savage war with the High Elf Aldmeri Dominion, the Dominion did not convincingly defeat the Empire but they were able to impose the White-Gold Concordat: a controversial peace treaty that Hammerfell rejected, forcing Cyrodiil to disavow the enormous desert province.

The Aldmeri Dominion spans the southernmost provinces of Tamriel: from the High Elf Summerset Isles to the Woof Elf Province of Valenwood and the Khajit province of Elsweyr, split between the Kingdoms of Anequina and Palletine. They bide their time, waiting to once more assault the Empire.

It’s within this wider geopolitical context that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes place and in this icy, rugged northern province that a vicious civil war is being fought, ostensibly about Nord identity and religion but really it is for the fate of the Empire. On one hand, Western Skyrim: loyal to the empire, cosmopolitan and revolving around the deeply Cyrodiilicised city of Solitude; on the other side is Eastern Skyrim and their so-called High King: Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak of Windhelm, a usurper yes but fiercely dedicated to his homeland, nationalistic, loved by his subjects and determined to uphold Talos worship: the worship of the deified first emperor of the Septim Dynasty, outlawed under the White-Gold Concordat.

To make matters worse, long-dead dragons are coming back to life and attacking towns and cities all across Skyrim and it’s the player’s job to discover why.

The Stormcloak Rebellion isn’t as in-depth or politically complex as the central conflict in, for example, Fallout: New Vegas but it’s one I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed and identified with. I am British, more than that, I am one of the first generations from one side of my family not to be born in Scotland and my hair not being red like some of my other close relatives was a point of gentle joking when I was a child, as young as 6 I was marched up the steps of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling; I can tell you my clan motto and which clan I belong to as well as where they lived historically. Scottish Independence, Brexit, Northern Ireland: these are sensitive political issues in the UK that still have a big question mark over them; just 3 years after Skyrim came out, Scotland held its independence referendum after all. Both in myself and in the context of Elder Scrolls lore I can understand that pull between the chilly, rugged north and the cosmopolitan south and this in-game conflict only mirrored real life more as the 2010’s in Britain dragged on.

The return of the dragons isn’t really discussed anymore by The Elder Scrolls lore enthusiasts but this conflict and the ramifications of it are still the subject of multi-hour video essays.

For The Masses

Skyrim, like Doom, Minecraft and Resident Evil 4 is one of those games that has become notorious for the sheer number of ports it has received and the plethora of platforms it is playable on; jokes like Skyrim: Smart Fridge Edition have been floating around for years.

I myself started with the original Xbox 360 version on 11.11.11 and still own that copy today, in 2016 I got the Skyrim Special Edition for Xbox One which introduced the Creation Club, mods on console and some graphical touch-ups, particularly in the lighting department. For this review I’ve been playing the new Anniversary Edition port on Switch 2 which has sufficed well now that the horrendous launch issues have been mostly patched out. This version has no mods and includes a lot of Creation Club content without the ability to opt out but the graphical improvements are very nice and I love the console and the potential for portable play so I’m not too bothered.

I’d have to write an Old Testament-sized article if we were to go over the minutia of every port, so rather than do that I’m just going to select what I think is the worst and then the best way to play.

Skyrim launched at the tail-end of the 7th console generation and pushed both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 to their limits with either version having some seriously choppy performance and muddy textures. The PlayStation 3 edges out the 360 as the worst because Bethesda’s games were given a greater amount of care and attention on Microsoft’s consoles (who they have always enjoyed a strong relationship with) as such, the PlayStation 3 retains Oblivion’s save-file bug and generally suffers from worse performance and lower levels of polish than its 360 counterpart. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, anyone who was gaming in this era will remember that the PS3 pretty much always had the worst versions of cross-platform titles, like the PS2 before it.

I also want to give a dishonourable mention to Skyrim’s disappointing VR port, that version shines when modded but fails to take full advantage of the technology in its vanilla state. It would have been nice to see Bethesda refine and perfect their VR versions over the years and port Starfield too but considering VR is looking dead outside of niche projects and sim-enthusiasts and has produced barely a handful of must-plays in the decade since the Oculus Rift I’m not holding my breath.

The PC has always been the home of Bethesda’s RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls began on the desktop, the fabled modding community is based on the PC and with the future of Xbox looking bleak it seems TES fans will coalesce once again around its traditional home. While the gap between PC and console couldn’t be more narrow today, the desktop still offers the highest potential fidelity and performance; a full keyboard and mouse setup makes menu navigation and quickly switching spells and equipment much less grating as well.

In side to side comparisons the PlayStation 5 version doesn’t look significantly better than the Switch 2 port, since the Switch 2 version is being actively updated as well I’d pick that over PS5 if you want to play on console, just bear in mind there are quite a few sound bugs still and that vegetation has a lower render distance. I went this way because modding doesn’t bother me and I have always been a console gamer predominantly, though I do own Skyrim on PC and play that version on occasion.

Finally Awake

The famous and endlessly memed Skyrim opening with the character creator included.

Skyrim opens seemingly at the end of the civil war with the player, a gagged Jarl Ulfric, a loyal Stormcloak rebel named Ralof and a cowardly horse thief all crammed into a rickety Imperial wagon on the way to the southern city of Helgen to be executed. Most players have seen this cutscene a million times and even if you’ve never played Skyrim there’s a strong chance you know the words “Hey you, you’re finally awake.” Uttered by Ralof but I’d like to point out how in just 5 minutes, Bethesda skilfully and simultaneously introduces new players to the world of Skyrim, updates returning players on the state of the Empire (who are the quasi-protagonists of the series besides your character) and establishes the motives behind the Stormcloaks while allowing both sides of the civil war to be seen in a sympathetic light.

Ralof points out the Thalmor agent presiding over the execution as a symbol of the Empire’s subservience and corruption, this lets the player know how dire things have gotten since Oblivion; on the contrary, Ralof also says soon after that the Imperial fortifications around Helgen made him feel safe as a boy, implying that the Empire has historically been good to Skyrim and its people.

Legate Rikke: the female legate and right-hand to General Tullius organising the chopping block has the horse-thief shot in the back by archers for attempting to flee despite there being no evidence of the man being a rebel, meanwhile Hadvar: the rank and file legionnaire who asks the player their name (prompting the character creator screen) is sympathetic to you no matter what race or gender you pick; the Empire is not made up of brainwashed, totalitarian forces, its rank and file consider the morality of their actions and they have the confidence to allow the citizenry to observe the entire affair at Helgen rather than having Ulfric dispatched behind closed doors.

The worldbuilding of The Elder Scrolls: its depth, scope and the richness of Tamriel’s history are the series’ defining traits and it’s moments like these, the fact that both sides offer you a path to safety in the Helgen dragon attack and the differences between Western Skyrim versus Eastern Skyrim that make Skyrim’s main conflict so compelling; the main character of Skyrim is the province of Skyrim itself and once the return of the dragons has been dealt with in the main quest it’s up to the player to decide which Skyrim they believe in most. Skyrim isn’t just a reactive world but a proactive world. The villain of the Dragonborn expansion tries to have you taken out before the player even sets foot on the island of Solstheim and apart from one recurring, fatal flaw in the guild quests which I will cover later, the factions of Skyrim treat you: the Dragonborn, as a powerful weapon to further their designs on Skyrim or as a useful idiot with a special talent, not as the centre of their world.

In The Legend of Zelda, most JRPG’s or The Witcher, people know and/or fear you as the chosen one with a legendary blade, a legendary reputation or a divine blessing. In The Elder Scrolls? The guards want you to shut up when you do your dragon shouts, most people are quick to insult you for coming close and in certain parts you’ll be called an n’wah and a s’wit casually in the street. They don’t care what you can do, they care what you can do for them.

All this talk of war, politics and the return of the dragons: something akin to the end times for the Nords, gives The Elder Scrolls V a darker tone than its predecessor. These are not the sunny woods, grassy meadows and flowery hills of Oblivion’s Cyrodiil, Skyrim’s roads are infested with wolves and sabre tooth tigers and every city has some kind of dark undercurrent or tension, whether it be Windhelm’s race-relations and mysterious murders or Whiterun’s neutrality being eroded by two feuding clans and its Jarl’s every move being scrutinised for signs of betrayal by both sides of the civil war.

It’s a shame then, in the midst of all this great worldbuilding that Bethesda forgot to add the actual war part of civil war; outside of the civil war quest line, you will see no battles, no signs of armed conflict nor signs of large-scale troop movements. No camp followers, no marching troops, no mass burials, nothing. You are told over and over about impacts of a war and battles that are not happening and that is an immersion-breaking issue.

Vistas Of Nirn

While Skyrim’s graphics have undergone a set of overhauls since 2011 to bring them up to modern standards one thing that has been consistently excellent in these 15 years is the game’s art-style.

Skyrim is often mischaracterised as a Viking game and while Nordic influences are apparent there is much more going on. The Reachmen with their horns, furs and animal teeth are of a distinctly Celtic flavour, the hold guards and a lot of the architecture has a more Anglo-Saxon flavour as well, in fact, every hold has its own unique flavour and generally speaking, the further West you go in Skyrim, the less Norse it gets. Markarth almost reminds me of Petra.

The world of Skyrim is one of exceptional natural beauty. Whether you’re crossing tundra, ice fields or alpine woodland I can guarantee a great view around every corner and a striking sky at night.

No amount of screenshots I take will ever be able to do the province of Skyrim justice but rest-assured, what it lacks in animations, texture details, character modelling and modernity it makes up for in sheer wallpaper potential. If you’re into the dreaded cosy games then I imagine you could get a lot out of Skyrim’s homebuilding and life-sim mechanics like marriage and adoption; turn the difficulty down to Novice and the game is trivial, you could even try to be a pacifist using spells that pacify wildlife and people.

Unfortunately, I do feel that most weapons and equipment are dull compared to their equivalents in previous games. Skyrim’s iron and leather armours look better but the Imperial Legion have gone from wearing these Hellenic-inspired suits of heavy armour in Oblivion and an awesome samurai and centurion mash-up in Morrowind to the most boring, knock-off Roman looking stuff possible; steel and elven are two other armour and equipment sets that suffer a downgrade too.

I will concede though that Skyrim has the best ebony armour in the series and the steel plate set is pretty awesome too.

The state of Western culture being what it is, Skyrim was the last major Bethesda game composed by Jeremy Soule, whose career was ended in 2019 by severe allegations, allegations that were so serious that he was never taken to court nor charged with any crime, still, he was certainly guilty of scamming people with a Kickstarter and that one-two punch was enough to unmake him as one of the premier video game composers. Soule has practically vanished since with Dragon Age and Fallout composer Inon Zur the likely replacement for the next game.

All of this does put a damper on what is (Oblivion and Morrowind included) a trilogy of video games with some of the greatest music ever. Playlist after playlist exists on YouTube of Skyrim ambience and soundtracks but here are some of my personal favourites.

Secunda always seems to find me when I’ve arrived late to the inn at Ivarstead or am walking below the glowing Northern Lights far in Northern Skyrim. This is my favourite piece of music from the game and like Kynareth’s Wings or Nerevar Rising from Oblivion and Morrowind, hearing takes me right back in time to all those hours I spent when the game was new.

Skyrim’s version of Nerevar Rising (which became the theme song of the entire franchise) is called Dragonborn and might be my favourite rendition of the song. Every time I hear Dragonborn I’m taken back to when that first trailer dropped and the internet lost its collective mind and to the thousands of times I’ve booted up the game and lingered a while on the menu to hear the chorus drop.

Dragons in The Elder Scrolls are not animals or monsters but sentient, smei-divine beings, as such Bethesda invented an entire conlang for the dragons in Skyrim, with a script that looks similar to cuneiform. It’s a thing of beauty when they let the choir go absolutely ham in dragon tongue. I’d like to explain the context behind this one but I’m trying to avoid spoilers.

A Dragonborn For All Seasons

Of the estimated over 90 million copies sold of The Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim makes up at least 60 million; statistically speaking, 2/3’s of the fanbase may have only played Skyrim.

One of the big reasons for this is that Skyrim, for better and for worse, smashes the traditional limitations of the RPG class system and allows you to play any build at any time and on any character while removing complex character building sheets and stats screens. 10 Hours in, if you decide you’re not enjoying your stealth archer build you can head to the nearest smithy, buy yourself a sword and either start playing that style of combat the hard way or pay trainer to get your skills up to scratch.

It’s hard to even put into words the amount of different ways you can choose to play Skyrim. There are characters I took through this game that I still look back on fondly: the Wood Elf archer with light armour and a two-handed sword, my Orc brute in full heavy armour, heavy weapons and using zero magic; my favourite character is one that has been committed to my memory simply as ‘The Dark Lord’ I played this Dragonborn from early 2012 to late-2013 when I finally put down Skyrim for a few years. This guy was somewhere in the region of level 90, I had done every evil ending for the DLC’s, was the master of every guild and woke up at 5am before school every week day to max out my schools of magic, I would fly a dragon from town to town wearing daedric armour with Miraak’s mask melting people with the Master level Destruction spells.

For this playthrough, I chose to mix it up a bit. I still used a mage-type character: my preferred way to play TES games but I turned on the survival mode and decided I would only use plain clothes and a dagger besides the usual magic; I took up alchemy for the first time as well when I usually avoid it. The survival mode was clearly grafted onto a game that isn’t quite built for it and the lack of fast-travel has burned the road between Whiterun and Ivarstead into my brain but I’ve had a lot of fun taking it slow, stopping to take in the sights… and filling up my Switch 2 SD card with screenshots. I usually pick a Breton for the extra magical ability or a Dark Elf so I’m not a filthy s’wit but this time I played as a Nord for roleplay reasons.

All of this freedom does have some major downsides. The attributes system from classic Elder Scrolls is completely removed to facilitate your constant build swapping; it wouldn’t have been possible to cast any worthwhile spell in the past if you had chosen Intelligence as your dump stat. This has the effect of making Skyrim characters feel like generalists rather than specialists and makes Skyrim an Action-RPG rather than a true Role-Playing Game in my opinion.

Speaking of magic… it’s absolutely garbage in Skyrim. An entire school of magic was removed along with spell-crafting and many of the wackier spell-types like those that work on touch, now every school of magic is a linear set of spells you buy your way through as your skill improves. Levitation? Gone. Water-walking? Restricted. Unlocking spells? Gone. In the space of 3 games magic went went from the ultimate mage power fantasy in Morrowind to being a glorified ranged weapon. To make matters worse, it’s generally agreed upon that of the 3 archetypes: a warrior, thief or mage, a pure mage build in Skyrim is the weakest. Give me my burn on touch spells back damn it.

Let me pull my punches for a minute because I like what Skyrim does with the levelling system.

In between Oblivion and Skyrim (2006-2011) both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas released; the latter was not developed by Bethesda but it is for all intents and purposes Fallout 3 with a different map and written by a different studio that understood the IP better. In Fallout, you unlock a perk at each level: a little bonus or ability that’s tied to your attributes and skills, for example, you might get 25 extra action points in V.A.T.S or the ability to eat corpses to restore your health; Skyrim has these perks too and they fit in well.

Alright, I’m back to laying in the punches. To give Bethesda credit, Fallout 4 and especially Starfield have enjoyable combat but prior to those games, it was a mixed bag and Skyrim is no different. The execution animations improve things but like in Oblivion, melee combat in Skyrim gives the sensation of swatting the air in front of an enemy rather than making any contact; there is no parry or dodge, you simply move, block, swing and hope for the best. The stealth archer build is widely considered the most powerful in the game so if the combat bores you and magic isn’t your thing then there is fun to be found in pulling off impressive shots from afar and dispatching enemies in silence… or you could choose to get by turning enemies on each other, or by summoning mythical creatures with Conjuration; in Skyrim, you can play in virtually any conceivable way.

As a Dragonborn, a couple of hours in, you will gain access to Dragon Shouts. You acquire Shouts by learning words of power from ancient ruins and then slaying dragons to unlock these abilities with their souls. Unfortunately, only Whirlwind Sprint, which is useful for cutting down travel time in Survival Mode and Unrelenting Force, which sends enemies flying with ragdoll physics, ever get much use for me but your mileage may vary.

Blacksmith, Tailor, Stormcloak, Spy

Warning: This section contains heavy quest spoilers

The biggest issue with Skyrim isn’t its stripped back RPG mechanics or bland combat but its poor writing and questlines; there are exceptions of course but in general Skyrim’s faction questlines don’t hold a candle to those found in Oblivion.

In Oblivion and especially Morrowind, each questline would have a certain amount of entry-level dirty work attached: a set of quests that were quick, gave you an early game boost in cash and taught you what the guild was all about and as you progressed through the mundane work your rank and reputation within the guild would grow and the player becomes more privy to the machinations of guild leadership. Being a member of the Fighters Guild or the Mages Guild was a career in the world of Tamriel. Not in Skyrim, the bar for entry is rock bottom and they’re desperate to hand you the keys.

In the College of Winterhold quest line you find a magical orb in a Nord ruin and instantly become the star pupil; the rest of the quest line sees you appointed a special emissary for the Psijic Order and tasked with stopping this artefact: the Eye of Magnus, from ending up in the wrong hands. This quest line is short and generally feels boring compared to the Oblivion Mages Guild where you had to stop the return of a powerful necromancer. Even if you only know a single spell, you and not the seasoned instructors of the college, end up as the Arch-Mage.

The civil war questline, no matter which side you pick, plays out much the same except you defend Whiterun and attack Windhelm as the Empire whereas you attack Whiterun and siege Solitude as the Stormcloaks. Likely due to hardware constraints, none of these feel like genuine, large-scale medieval battles and that disappointed me even as an 11 year old; the civil war is dripping with lore implications and long-term consequences but it’s hard to imagine someone with only a surface-level knowledge of TES lore caring when the conflict in-game is this bland.

I enjoyed the twist in the Companions questline and in The Dark Brotherhood where you become a werewolf in the former and can decide to betray the Brotherhood and wipe them out in the latter but once again it all leads to you easily taking charge after a short and contrived series of missions. In Skyrim, it is possible to be the leader of every major guild all at the same time and that is incredibly lazy; it makes no sense for the player to ascend to the peak of some of these organisations. At least in Oblivion you had to put in some serious grinding to reach the top, here these guild questlines feel shorter than ever. If TES VI doesn’t reintroduce the old class system and attributes back then I’d at least like to see guild ranks and level requirements return and to be restricted based on your prowess at a specific set of skills or perks; as Arch-Mage, the player should be required to have at least 1 school of magic at Master level. In Skyrim, you feel like the protagonist of the story rather than a member of an organisation working your way up.

The main quest has the same systemic rapid pace and immersion issues. While in Morrowind you were a newly released convicted recruited by the Blades to get to the bottom of the Corprus disease and to promote Imperial interests in the fringe territory and in Oblivion you worked to end the Oblivion Crisis and to secure the Septim Dynasty, in Skyrim, the main quest is a mad dash to slay Alduin where your Dragonborn training at the hands of the Greybeards lasts 5 minutes and this story isn’t half as long as in the previous 2 games.

Only you can recruit members for the Blades and rebuild their ranks… the Dragonborn is every faction’s saviour. The dissonance between the trademark Elder Scrolls hostile NPC’s and the factions worshipping you as Christ is jarring.

Sovngarde Awaits

Skyrim isn’t my favourite TES game. If you ask me on a Monday it might be Morrowind and it could be Oblivion on Tuesday; I can’t decide between those two but I know Skyrim isn’t on the same level. The RPG elements are too stripped back, the quality of the questlines takes a backseat to facilitate plots that fulfil the hero fantasy; I don’t find the ancient Nordic ruins as interesting to explore as those left by the Ayleids in Oblivion’s Cyrodiil and my favourite way to play the game: as a mage, has never been weaker than it is in Skyrim.

On the other hand, there’s no denying that the beauty of Skyrim’s world, the compelling nature of its central conflict, the freedom you have to play the way you want, 3 excellent expansions and the simple boyish joy of fighting dragons has given this game immense longevity and makes Skyrim supremely enjoyable even if it doesn’t quite measure up to past adventures.

It’s become fashionable to hate on Bethesda since the abysmal launch of Fallout 76 and the overhyped Starfield and many of the complaints aimed at Bethesda’s game design began in Skyrim, regardless, 76 is in my opinion the only truly bad game Bethesda has made and even Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls’ 3D era at its weakest is still a brilliant accomplishment. Skyrim gets ripped to shreds online on a regular basis now but it’s easy to criticise The Elder Scrolls V when it was the pioneer. When The Witcher was still a niche eurojank title on PC, Oblivion and Morrowind were already delivering immersive 3D worlds on a massive scale, collecting GOTY awards like postage stamps and for many people, The Witcher 3 was just filling the void the long wait between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls VI, presumably set in Hammerfell, has created.

The RPG landscape may have moved on from Bethesda and their style of game design but Skyrim, its vibrant modding community and still highly active player base remain to ensure this classic endures.

TL;DR: Skyrim is a step down from Oblivion and Morrowind but unparalleled freedom, a gorgeous world, rich lore and a near bottomless supply of quests to embark on and dungeons to pillage means it still deserves classic status. The writing could be better and the casualisation of the RPG mechanics leave a bad taste in the mouth but Skyrim surpasses its predecessors in other ways, particularly in its soundtrack and expansions.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

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Those of you who have been subscribed for a long time will be familiar with what I’m going to say next: I started this Substack to talk about the Nintendo 64’s first person shooters with perhaps a few other reviews and opinion pieces on the side; at 412 subscribers and counting and more articles published than I ever thought possible, it’s safe to say I exited that particular niche long ago.

For the foreseeable future, once a month, I’m going to be writing a retrospective of this console’s FPS library: every last game, in chronological order. These will be more digestible pieces and focus on celebrating the games in question rather than reviewing them, though my general thoughts will be included, especially if I have strong ones.

Let me take you on a journey back through time and through history as we explore the foundational years of console FPS games.

Year of Release: 1997

Platforms: Nintendo 64 and PC

Developer: Iguana Entertainment

Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment

Copies Sold: 1.5 million (5.8m N64 users in 1997)

Remastered: December 2015 (PC) Ported to Xbox One (2018) Nintendo Switch (2019) PlayStation 4 (2021) Updated for Series S/X and PlayStation 5 (2025)

Background

Acclaim Entertainment, Turok’s publisher, was founded by 3 former Activision employees as a joint-venture in the late 1980’s with a focus on localisation and porting games for the American market. While Acclaim’s subsidiary: LJN, which it purchased in 1990, has gained some notoriety for the poor games released under its label thanks to The Angry Video Game Nerd, the WWF licence, Acclaim’s solid job with the Mortal Kombat II port as well as Double Dragon II earned them enough capital and respect to be considered a reputable publisher. By the end of the 2D era, with the Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam and more console licences under their banner, Acclaim found themselves in a position to expand.

In 1994 the seeds of Turok were sewn. Acclaim acquired Valiant Comics (renaming it to Acclaim Comics) which came with the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter licence and announced in August of that year their intention to adapt the 1993 comic series of the same name into a video game.

At this time, Iguana Entertainment: Turok’s eventual developer, was known only for some obscure solo efforts like Aero the Acro-Bat for the Mega Drive and for being Acclaim’s most prolific porting partner, so the publisher deepened their relationship with Iguana by acquiring them in December of 1994.

The mid-1990’s were the era of early 3D in video games and Acclaim’s reluctance to transition to newer hardware was wrecking their finances and lead to lay-offs as well as tumbling stock prices; before long, it became clear that Turok was the company’s last and best hope of survival. This was a time when video games were still considered distractions for kids and teens so Acclaim betting it all on a gory, expensive and experimental title in the foetal console shooter space is a risk that should be applauded and one that most publishers wouldn’t have the courage to make today.

Development

Despite its announcement 2 years prior, development on Turok at Iguana only commenced in 1996. Turok was not only to be the first shooter developed for the Nintendo 64 but also the first major title by a third-party developer to be made for the platform making this game important to the history of the entire console.

Turok was developed by a 15-man team, most of them inexperienced and new to the industry, which is a trait it shares with a certain other best-selling, highly-regarded Nintendo 64 shooter. An inexperienced team dealing with new hardware and an ambitious new title sounds like a disaster on-paper, thankfully, Acclaim’s strong relationship with Nintendo and their commitment to console exclusivity afforded them much support and feedback from the Japanese giant. Throughout development there were suspicions that Nintendo would find the game’s gory and violent content (which went far beyond the level depicted in the comics) objectionable and push for changes but to Iguana’s surprise and to the delight of gamers, the fountains of blood and grotesque death animations made it into the final product unharmed.

Turok’s development was as chaotic as it was ambitious and Iguana were determined to create the best-looking, best playing game on the Nintendo 64 platform. Acclaim’s advanced motion capture facilities were used to animate all of the human enemies in the game and the team even planned to use the technology on emus and ostriches to animate the dinosaurs; more traditional methods were eventually used but the game’s Wikipedia page seems to imply that at least some data was gathered this way. Despite Turok’s ‘Boomer Shooter’ label: a label that used to mean shooters that followed in the footsteps of DOOM, Quake and Duke Nukem that has now been overused and encompasses virtually all FPS games more than 20 years old, Iguana actually cited Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 as their biggest inspirations which is why Turok has its hub and world structure as well as a healthy dose of platforming and item hunting.

Those platformer roots run deeper than you might think, this game was originally conceived as a side-scroller until it was decided that a first person perspective would allow Iguana and the Nintendo 64 to flex their graphical muscles more and that the perspective would heighten immersion.

The headache of having to compress a game as big and as impressive as Turok onto an 8MB Nintendo 64 cartridge as well as a plethora of needed bug fixes forced Acclaim to delay the game from its original Autumn 1996 release date to the final March 1997 release date Turok ended up launching on, thankfully, healthy marketing and significant hype did wonders for stock prices and kept interest high.

What Turok Gets Right

Art Direction, Premise And Atmosphere

The premise of Turok is that you are Native-American warrior Tal’Set and the current holder of the mantle of Turok which makes him the guardian of the Lost Land: a timeless other-world where dinosaurs still walk the land, the terrain is coated with prehistoric jungle… and aliens, robots and other extra-dimensional terrors wage-war with awesome sci-fi weaponry. Among these weapons is the Chronosceptre: a staff of supreme power which The Campaigner wishes to reconstruct and use to escape the Lost Land and conquer Earth; naturally, your goal as Tal’Set is to introduce him to a premature death. If you explore each level thoroughly enough and gether up the pieces then Tal’Set can acquire the weapon for himself to use in the final boss fight.

I don’t think I need to explain how great the premise is, the very idea of the Lost Land opens up a limitless roster of potential foes and weapons (which certainly is not lost on the developers) and the mountainous jungle setting helps to explain away some of the original version’s technical limitations; that’s not draw distance fog, it’s water vapour, you’re in a jungle canopy!

To this day, very few games can boast an art direction as fascinating as the one to be found in Turok. Through the course of the game your crusade against The Campaigner takes Tal’Set through misty clifftops, Endor-style treehouse towns and eventually through robot factories and more, the gradual shift to pure science fiction is utterly compelling, you really feel as if you’re journeying to the heart of hostile territory, level by level.

Gameplay and Guns

Turok’s game structure and level-design are where the Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 influences shine through the brightest.

There are 8 levels in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter but the first level: The Hub Ruins functions like a short tutorial before the player discovers the gateway chamber where you use keys to access the other stages, just like Peach’s Castle and Mario’s Power Stars. Akin to Tomb Raider, levels are vast and maze-like with things hidden throughout, they take quite a while to finish. Each level has keys to find, which unlock subsequent levels and there is also a hidden piece of the Chronosceptre in each of them. Because the levels are so lengthy it can be frustrating if you miss a key and have to go back but this is only an issue on original hardware; I imagine the overwhelming majority of you, should you choose to try Turok, will be playing the remaster, the draw distance fog is gone in the modern version so you’re only going to miss most of the keys if you really don’t pay attention and explore.

Levels are non-linear and feature a lot of climbing and swimming: much more vertical than the people who call Turok a ‘boomer shooter’ will let on. I can’t think of another shooter in this era that really made you feel like more than just a floating pair of hands in the same way that Turok did.

The enemy and weapon variety make Turok an absolute blast to play. You get to play with bows using futuristic exploding Tek Arrows, automatic shotguns with exploding rounds, big combat knives, an AK, a Plasma Rifle and more, better yet you’ll be fighting aliens, big mecha, velociraptors wielding their own guns and the cherry on top: a laser shooting T-Rex boss fight. If that doesn’t sell you on Turok then I don’t know what will, Tal’Set faces a mean foe with even meaner weapons.

A Technical Achievement

This might be lost on modern players picking up the remaster who are unfamiliar with the Nintendo 64 and its library but the goal of making Turok: Dinosaur Hunter the most impressive game around was met… and then some. While I used the remastered version for this article I beat Turok for the first time on original hardware not long before I started this Substack. I own quite a few Nintendo 64 games because it’s my favourite Nintendo console and even though Turok was released early in the platform’s life the only game I can think of that looks better is its sequel Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.

Turok is notoriously foggy on the ‘64 and its music was heavily compressed but that keeps the framerate at a tolerable level and it doesn’t mire the fantastic presentation; the remaster brightens things up a little bit too much for me, and adds rays of sunshine from above, it’s the most minor of nit-picks but I felt it worth mentioning.

What Turok Gets Wrong

Platforming (Original Version)

Platforming on the remastered version of Turok can be tricky but mostly feels enjoyable, however, on original hardware? It’s absolute torture.

You have to make incredibly precise jumps with a framerate around 20FPS (all PAL Nintendo 64 games run about 10 frames slower than their US and Japanese counterparts) the inability to see Turok’s legs, in dense draw-distance fog and while using a controller with only one analogue stick. I fell to my death and lost lives to bottomless pits again and again and again. The sound of Turok screaming on his way down will be stuck in your head forever.

This is the game’s biggest flaw and the one that prompted me to revisit the Lost Land on Switch 2 instead of the original hardware.

Sound And Compression

In this early stage of the Nintendo 64’s life Turok had to ship on an 8 megabyte cartridge necessitating some heavy sound compression to fit all the music and effects on the medium. You can hear this compression even more clearly than you might in other Nintendo 64 games but as well as that, many of the weapon sounds don’t lend the amount of impact and sense of damage that they should. It’s a shame when the arsenal on offer is this stellar.

There are a few stand outs in the soundtrack like the Underwater theme for those sections where you have to dive into deep lakes and submerged caves but in general I find a lot of Turok’s soundtrack blends together, it’s a trance inducing mix of tribal percussion and synth that provides a backing to the action and accents the jungle but not much else. Darren Mitchell is a talented composer with some excellent work under his belt but the full expertise didn’t shine through until the sequel. Mitchell’s work on Turok 2 is some of the best in the ‘64’s library.

Boss Fights

Turok doesn’t have many boss fights and of that scattered handful only the T-Rex is particularly fun or memorable.

You’d expect a boss at the end of each level but instead, Turok puts two of its five boss fights in the final level with the other three appearing sporadically. The boss fight with Longhunter: a camo-sporting, Humvee-driving military man was the game’s lowest point for me. To beat Longhunter you have to destroy his 2 Humvees while they drive at you wildly and fire projectiles; trying to dodge these while getting in your own hits, particularly on an N64 controller is a huge pain. Then you face him on foot and unless you keep up constant momentum or outgun him he will kill you again and again. I beat the other bosses on my first try and defeated The Campaigner on my second go but Longhunter took me about an hour to finally put in the ground.

Turok’s Legacy And My Closing Thoughts

If you haven’t picked up on my sentiment already then let me make this crystal clear: I think Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a fantastic game and if it wasn’t for my preference for Turok 2 I would happily name it my second favourite shooter on the Nintendo 64. From the moment you first find your pistol to the final shot with the Chronosceptre, Turok remains a superb adventure.

Turok hasn’t aged well on original hardware but the remaster is so readily available that this isn’t an issue. I first played this game in late-2024 and was in awe of both how good it looked and how, despite coming out before GoldenEye, it was the first to bring to the table some of the innovations that game popularised like the signature Nintendo 64 FPS control scheme and a focus on open-ended level design and exploration rather than the narrow corridors of DOOM and Quake; Turok even surpasses GoldenEye in some ways, particularly with Tal’Set’s agility and the verticality of most levels.

You don’t have to take my word for it, Turok’s lasting effect on console shooters and on the trajectory of the Nintendo 64 speaks for itself.

This game was a massive hit, boosting N64 sales and spawning a trilogy of games and a multiplayer focused spin-off, when Rare were designing GoldenEye, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the game they wanted to be: the title they looked to for inspiration and as a reminder of where the bar was set. Years later, the beloved Retro Studios: a developer founded around a seasoned corps of ex-Turok developers looked back at the Lost Land and at Turok 1’s game structure as an example of the same first-person and exploration-focused design they wanted to bring to the table once again.

In 2026, few speak the name Turok and the trilogy has largely faded into memory but its contributions are plain to see.

Thank you very much for reading to the end. The majority of my readers don’t leave a like on their way out so I’d really appreciate it if you did, it does wonders for the publication.

Be sure to subscribe for more articles just like this one and please consider a monthly subscription or one-time donation to my coffee page via the ‘Support Scanlines’ button below.

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