Is that a nugget in yo pocket or a Poké balls in yo pocket????

In an interview on the Videogame History Foundation podcast in 2022, longtime Pokémon series English language translator Nob Ogasawara elucidated a bit of Pokémon lore that's been lost in translation: at the end of the Nugget Bridge, the player is awarded a "nugget," a seemingly innocuous gold chunk worth 5,000 Poké dollars in-game. In Japanese, however, it is Gōrudoōbu, a double entendre meaning gold nugget and, well, testicles.

This joke is in the Gen 3 remakes, too. It's right there alongside other retconned diegetic jank like "the salty tang of the sea," the great war, the "lightning American!!" (Lt. Surge), and practically all of Lavender Town — right down to its creepypasta inspiring music. This isn't even mentioning the gameplay jank, like an exploit that allows you to farm nuggets on that same Nugget Bridge, or how the game is also ripe for code injection, just like the first games, through its most broken Pokémon (in more ways than one), Mr. Mime.

There's a tongue-in-cheek vulnerability in the earlier iterations of Pokémon, when they couldn’t figure out what universe Pokémon was in, and when death and grief were more than mere Pokédex gestures. Now it feels like the Pokémon triad is a machine built to generate the Machine Zone, for serving perfect states of videogamic flow. TCG Pocket, Pokémon Go, Unite, and other games as a service (GaaS) products are engineered to perfection for both attention and profit. They are sanitized, sterile waiting rooms for series fans disguised as "neutral" evolutions of the series' core mechanic: that one must, at the end of the day, catch 'em all, even if now that often feels like spoon-feeding or an apparent Skinner box simulator than something worth the effort.

This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy the newer games, especially the Let’s Go games, Scarlet and Violet, and Arceus. I can feel corporate cynicism boiling up from each of those in their own special way, but my own cynicism hasn’t impeded my enjoyment of them. But what I am trying to say is that returning to FRLG has reminded me of the attention, focus, and boredom afforded me by an erstwhile Pokémon franchise, one defiant of flow, long before it thrust its foot down on the GaaS pedal. FRLG lets me be bored while blasting the ‘a’ button through grindy battles with mobs. It makes me skip through journal entries, do the Safari Zone 5 times, and walk through the whole dang Victory Road again. The games kick my multitasking, multiscreen ADHD tendencies bang on the nuggets, and I like it baby. In fact, I’m trying to get more of that sloggy tongue-in-cheek old Pokémon, with its gorgeous pointless item animations, its gorgeous pointless (although sometimes sorta useful) journal entries, and the god dang Teachy TV, man. I don’t even want a fast forward option! I am here for the grind in a way that the Noah of 2003 would not understand; he’d be begging me for Go, the little turd. But present Noah is in the mood to break the flow, and FRLG are perfect for that.

(4 stars/4)

I don't have too much to ultimatel;y say here, but this is more of the same of the 1st game, but just with harder level design. Truthfully, I don't mind the much harder direction here, I always enjoyed when sequels lean to be harder, acting as a carry over from the 1st games skill set, so it's not something I really knock lost levels for. Really, my main issues with this come with the same complaints I had with the 1st, where the wonky physics just don't do anything for me. There's also a new post game here in the letter worlds, but these suck to get to as they require you beating the game 8 times in order to unlock. I enjoy this game fine enough, but having to go through it so many times just leads to plain tedium for 100%. A fine game, one I've grown to dislike way less over the years, but still one I don't ever see myself returning too.

In my Double Exposure review I guessed at the possibility that a followup could help retroactively smooth out the rough edges in that narrative. Overall I don't think that happened here. I guess it's kind of part of the Life is Strange formula at this point for it to kind of fall apart in the last third, so in that sense it was true to the series. Besides glazing over a lot of the loose ends from DE, this one also added its own set of unsatisfying sub-plots that just kinda don't go anywhere. Of all the different new narrative threads this game added, it only really focuses on the least interesting one which is the fire. All the other good stuff gets kind of edged out and fades from view unsatisfactorily.

That said, it is an ending, and I'm very happy for that. I really don't think the original needed any sequels, but I'm glad that once they broke that seal they were at least able to hold it together long enough to give it a real ending. I'd love to see more from the Life is Strange anthology series (as unlikely as that seems) but I hope this is the last we see of Max and Chloe unless they show up as a cameo or something. I think back to series I've loved that got revived after being over for a long time, like Trailer Park Boys or Arrested Development, and I'm glad they didn't drag Life is Strange out to the point where it was embarrassingly bad. And the ending of DE would have been a bad note to end the series on.

Just like with DE I really did enjoy seeing the characters in their new super high def models with much stronger dialog. Chloe is also a breath of fresh air in the stuffy academic environment of Caledon university. I really liked seeing her bounce off the Caledon crew that we met in the last game. I also think it's kind of cool that if you include Before the Storm, both Max and Chloe have a game in the series that doesn't include one of them. It's cool to see how the other main character acts without the influence of the other.

That said the main appeal here is just seeing them back together again. It's the first time since the original game and I think it does help bookend the broader narrative in a nice way. The acting is great and the high def models really bring the characters to life. I was also impressed by the asset reuse and how they were able to get a whole new game adding only a few new characters and locations.

Altogether it's not the strong landing I was hoping to see for the series, at least with the ending I got. At least two major conflicts that I spent the first half of the game thinking "man how are they ever going to resolve this?" just got handwaved away in the last minutes. I think there's also a strong argument to be made that the way they handled Chloe's reappearance undermines either choice you made at the end of the first game which is sort of incredible. But we got to spend some more quality time with the gals, we got a non-cliffhanger ending, and frankly I'm just really glad it wasn't so much worse.

The coverage of mental health in games is growing both in respect of the disease process and the way it affects everyday lives. This would have been laughed at 20 years ago (and still kind of is in a small sect of a specific gaming crowd), but seeing it take an art form is very interesting here. Hellblade was well known for depicting different forms of psychosis in a character and projecting that onto a game. Schizophrenia, visual and auditory hallucinations, multiple personality disorder, and many others. Hellblade takes Norse mythology and grounds it with real-world mental health issues. Senua is the main protagonist you play as. Her trauma manifests into these hallucinations, turning what you are seeing into visual symbols of her past. As you play along and solve puzzles, you can also find hidden faces and totems to learn about the Norse mythology by a man named Druth.

Hellblade is mostly a walking simulator mixed with some simple combat and geometry illusion puzzles. This sequence is the main gameplay loop. Solve puzzles, do some combat, walk a bunch, and listen to dialog. It's a fine loop that many games do right, and Hellblade is no exception, but it's the pacing of this loop that wears thin really fast. The combat is the weakest aspect of the game despite looking cool. Senua isn't a strong character, but she is fast. You can kick, run, and do heavy and light attacks. You can also block and parry. Sadly, these are attached to an almost quick-time event-feeling game with canned animations. This is a challenge of timing rather than pure skill. Enemies repeat often with just a few types. Heavy hitters with two-handed axes and spears, some with shields, and lighter enemies with a single sword or axe. They will spawn in on you until the fight is over. Sometimes this can be overbearing with 5-6 enemies on top of you. Thankfully, you have a focus mirror that stores energy with every successful parry and attack. This slows down time and allows you to whack away at enemies.

Sadly, the combat crescendos into much more whack-a-mole by the end. Some combat sequences throwing two dozen enemies at you. It gets tiring as there's no change to it. No leveling up, no new moves learned, no nothing. It would have been nice to spread these out more, but with the short play time, it wears things pretty fast. The puzzles are the only things breaking up that monotony of combat. You will get blocked by a door and have to find symbols hidden in the environment. This requires you to see highlighted objects at a certain angle and line them up by climbing or moving around to a new area. These are mostly fun but rarely offer any type of challenge. Some players may actually get bored with how simple the game can be, especially on easier difficulties. There's one caveat to the entire game, and that's the fact that Senua has a darkness climbing up her arm. Every time you do, it gets closer to her face. If you die too many times, it's game over, and you have to start the game over again. I don't quite understand why this is here. The game is already easy enough, and the game's not short enough for this to not be a problem. This is easily a 4-6 hour game. You have to repeat many scripted events and dialog, and anyone who does die will easily just throw the towel in and move on.

With that out of the way, the game's main attraction is the story and the visual effects. This was one of the best-looking games of the previous generation, and with new graphical enhancements that have been added over time, such as ray tracing, it looks fantastic. The production values are very high here, and you can see some of Ninja Theory's other projects influencing the game here. The animations are fantastic, and the voice acting is superb. Sadly, many gamers will mistake this game for a God of War-style game, not realizing it's mostly an adventure game with light combat and easy puzzles. Thankfully, the environments are varied and change all the time, with some great-looking vistas and monuments. I had this game installed on my PC for years and never got around to actually getting very far into the game. You need to be in the right mindset to play this game. It's very dark and heavy emotionally and can be a lot to take in but can be finished in a single sitting.

Hellblade's new graphical features are worth the price of entry on PS5 Pro and PC alone. This game is very unique, and there's nothing else quite like it. There may be other games that do what Helblade does better when it's broken down to its core, but don't let that steer you away from this game. Go in not expecting much outside of a good story and entertaining production values and you won't be disappointed.