Sunny Side Up

 

(image from Inspired Pencil)

I’m not one to look on the bright side, and it’s gotten that much harder for me to be optimistic in the face of everything that’s currently happening in America. However, out of the ninety-nine problems I’m currently juggling, video games ain’t one. There’s a ton of great stuff available on all the major consoles, and thanks to recent spring sales on Steam and Nintendo’s eShop, it’s never been cheaper to enjoy it.

Let me give you a couple examples. Despite all the critical acclaim it’s received, I couldn’t bring myself to pay sixty dollars for a copy of Super Mario Wonder. However, at forty-two dollars, it was a lot easier to take that plunge. Same goes for Robocop: Rogue City, which piqued my curiousity when it was first released, but became a more palatable purchase when it dropped to fifteen dollars during an Xbox Live sale. After all, the original Robocop movie was brilliant, but that was nearly forty years ago, and nothing else in the franchise has been worth a damn. I needed some added incentive to take a chance on this game, which seemed to come out of nowhere.

I’m happy to say that while I wouldn’t have touched Robocop: Rogue City at its launch price, it’s been well worth what I actually paid for it... an earnestly designed first-person shooter that feels more authentic than practically everything else bearing the Robocop name. With rare exceptions, everything I’ve played lately has been worth my time and money, which is something I couldn’t say in those days before steep Steam sales and the last year of the Nintendo Switch, a game system with an impossibly comprehensive library. So let the world burn and the walls fall... you’ll find my corpse buried in the rubble, with a game controller clutched tightly in my hands and a smile on my face.

That wasn’t as optimistic as I hoped it would be. Anyway, here’s a handful of the games I’ve played over the last few months, ranging in quality from “surprisingly good” to “augh, why can’t I stop playing this?!” (Of course I’m describing Balatro, and of course I’m playing it right now, even as I blog. You’d probably need to pull me away from it with the jaws of life to make me stop.) 

BALATRO
Local Thunk
Xbox

One nifty touch is that if you beat the stage
quota with a single hand, your score is set
ablaze, audibly crackling as the points
pile up. It's the little things, man.
(image from Steam)

Calling this poker would be like calling chess checkers. Fundamentally, they’re similar, but Balatro is more strategically rich than poker thanks to the introduction of Jokers. These special cards change the rules of the game to your advantage... for instance, Odd Todd makes all odd-numbered cards boost your multiplier, earning you more chips for every hand. Smart players can combine the effects of two or more Jokers, creating “synergies” which lead to huge point bonuses. Pair a Swashbuckler (the price of all Jokers is added to your multiplier) with an Egg (which increases its value after every round) and you’ll be swimming in chips after a few antes. Likewise, combine Midas Mask (all played face cards turn gold) with Pareidolia (all cards are counted as face cards) and you’ll quickly have a deck of gold cards, helpful for earning the currency you’ll use after every round to buy more Jokers.

Adding to the depth are planetary cards, which boost the value of specific poker hands, tarot cards, which alter the cards in your deck, and spectral cards; monkey’s paws which offer significant advantages to the player at an uncomfortable price. There’s a lot to consider when you’re playing Balatro, but it’s rarely overwhelming because it’s built on such a familiar and intuitive foundation. It’s poker, on a higher plane of existence. (Adorned with charming pixel art.)

FREEDOM PLANET 2
Galaxy Trail
Nintendo Switch

Genesis may have done what Nintendon’t thirty-five years ago, but Freedom Planet does what Sonic the Hedgehog hasn’t for years, propelling players through two dozen speed-focused stages while keeping them eager to witness what’s next. Freedom Planet 2 isn’t an exact replica of the first three Sonic games, with melee combat replacing the blue blur’s trademark spin jump. However, in some respects, Galaxy Trail’s tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog feels like a refinement of Sega’s formula, with levels that encourage exploration, clever gimmicks that take advantage of the game’s emphasis on physics, and more substantial boss battles.

Like the original, you'll swear the awkward
Chinese girl from Turning Red made it.
(image from Pressed Sake)
(uh, I mean, Press a Key)

Freedom Planet 2 also shows marked improvements over the previous game, with a more agreeably silly storyline and accessibility options that give less skilled players an edge in the often brutal boss fights. Instead of being dragged to a checkpoint after losing a life, you can opt to revive yourself immediately, with almost no health. It’s risky, but oh so satisfying when that second wind lets you sneak in one last blow and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The game’s not perfect. Minor enemies are annoyingly damage resistant, and the set pieces aren’t as fun as they were in the first Freedom Planet. It’s also an unapologetically girly game, which may not be to taste for some players. (Suck it up, men! You lived through the My Little Pony fad of 2010, and you’ll get through this.) Having said all that, Freedom Planet 2 is one of the rare Sonic-like video games that can keep pace with its speedy inspiration, and even overtake it.

ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY
Tayon
Xbox Series S

When not contemplating what it means
to be human in a chrome-plated future, Alex
Murphy blows away criminals and law
enforcement mechs with a pistol that
thinks it's a Gatling gun.
(image from MP1st)

What is the future of law enforcement? For officer Alex Murphy, it’s eternal confinement in the terrifying margin between life and death, man and machine, as the property of a sinister, all-consuming corporation. (Presumably one with free two day shipping.) When not blasting thugs into hamburger with his Auto 9, Murphy searches for his humanity in a society which has happily abandoned its own for the sake of convenience and comfort. It’s a science-fiction tragedy that has crept from “what if?” to “what is” in recent years... we still don’t have steel-plated police cyborgs, but the crass commercialism and frightening corporate overreach in the first Robocop movie isn’t far removed from life in the actual 21^st century.

This is an essential part of the Robocop experience, and one that often gets glossed over for that other Robocop trademark, extreme violence. Robocop: Rogue City has plenty of the latter... mohawk-topped gang members look like they’ve taken a ride in a high-speed blender after Murphy targets them with his firearm. However, Robocop’s search for humanity in an inhumane world also gets its proper due. Citizens in the urban wasteland of Detroit frequently need his help, and he can either do things by the book, upholding the law, or look the other way and let them make amends for past mistakes, serving the public trust while embracing the decency the scheming chairmen of OCP couldn’t quite snuff out.

As a game, Rogue City is adequate, a first person shooter with light adventure elements. You can scan for clues with computer-aided "Robocop vision," which earns experience points and eventually, stat-boosting skill points. As one might expect from his size and weight, Robocop is slower and stiffer than your average FPS hero, but as one might also expect, that inch thick metal armor makes him extremely damage resistant, letting him wade through hailstorms of bullets that would quickly bring down a human target.

There have been better games in this genre, and certainly ones with better graphics... the streets of Detroit are appropriately dreary and dimly lit, but the cast of characters dangle their toes over the edge of the Uncanny Valley, looking and moving like bug-eyed mannequins. However, thanks to the film-quality soundtrack and the voice work of Peter Weller, there’s rarely been better Robocop games. Heck, it’s better than nearly everything else bearing the Robocop name, and it’s all a fan can ask for after suffering through several lousy sequels and a wrongheaded 2014 reboot.

SUPER MARIO WONDER
Nintendo
Nintendo Switch

Good thing they labeled him as "Steve
Smith." I thought he was Cheech
Marin for a minute there.
(image from HG101)

Back in the early 1980s, there was an arcade game starring the rock band Journey, with two noteworthy features. The first is the introduction of digitized graphics, with each band member portrayed as a crude black and white photograph stuck on a tiny video game body. Inventor Ralph Baer originally wanted to use this early technology to let players take pictures of themselves for the high score screen, but since players in test locations wanted to take pictures of everything but their faces, he wisely decided to lose the built-in camera and just digitize some celebrities.

The second headlining feature of Journey is that each stage has a split personality. At first, the gameplay is fairly passive, with simple challenges that bring to mind games like Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, and Lunar Lander. However, when a member of Journey claims his stolen musical instrument, all hell breaks loose, and everything onscreen that was content to leave Steve Perry alone as he sailed past them on a rocket pack now wants him dead. (You know, like every other member of Journey.) The game instantly becomes more frantic, with players flailing on the fire button to clear a path through waves of neon gates, LP-firing cannons, and other musically themed hazards.

Super Mario Wonder. It's like Freaky Friday,
every day of the week!
(image from Nintendo Everything)

Super Mario Wonder takes this concept and runs a marathon with it. At first it’s Dr. Jeckyll, with Mario bouncing through a seemingly ordinary stage. When he finds the game’s MacGuffin de jour, a Wonder Seed, it becomes Mr. Hyde, with the prevailing theme of that stage taking an unexpected and often dangerous twist. Herds of grazing triceratops become a relentless stampede, rolling fossils come to life as flying serpents, and Mario turns into a squishy red blob, clinging to the walls of a cavern overflowing with gelatin. There’s a fun surprise waiting in every stage of Super Mario Wonder, and it’s exactly what the series needed after settling into a rut with the last handful of games on the 3DS and Wii U. This is the first Super Mario Bros. title developed without creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s direct involvement, and it suggests that the long-running series will be in good hands even after his retirement.

BERSERK BOY
Berserk Boy Games
Nintendo Switch

Go berserk? You probably should, if you like the fast, challenging action and futuristic sheen of the Mega Man X games. Thanks to its focus on multi-stage melee combat, it’s probably more accurate to compare Berserk Boy to the Gunvolt games by Inticreates... in his default form, Berserk Boy must first tag enemies with a charging dash, then finish them off with a blast of lightning.

Here's just the thing to top up your
testosterone after a few froofy games
of Freedom Planet 2.
(image from Instant Gaming)

Like Mega Man X, the title character can unlock more forms by beating bosses, but these feel less like optional weapons and more like entirely different characters. Soaring Wind is pitifully weak on offense, but spans wide chasms with ease. Meanwhile, Ice Kunai is the only form that can strike enemies from a safe distance, and moves more swiftly than the combat-focused Flame Drill. You’ll want (and sometimes need) to frequently switch forms to progress through each stage, which finds a comfortable middle ground between the linearity of Mega Man X and the more open level designs of a Metroidvania.

There could have been better balance between the five available forms... you’ll probably stick with lightning and Ice Kunai until you’re absolutely forced to switch to something else. Moreover, it’s a bit of a kludge to quickly switch to specific forms when the terrain demands it. The cast of characters aren’t especially interesting and the plot about “berserk orbs” makes even less sense than Mega Man X’s, but that’s the extent of the flaws in this top shelf platformer that should prove especially compelling for speedrunners. It looks great, sounds even better thanks to the Tee Lopes soundtrack, and encourages players to not only beat stages, but master them with repeated playthroughs.