Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Review - The Rivalry Lives On

Reviewed on: Switch
Platform: Switch

A developer can take many different approaches when remaking a game, but its primary goal always remains the same: to create a new experience that honors the spirit of the original. With Mario vs Donkey Kong, a remake of the 2004 Game Boy Advance title of the same name, Nintendo succeeds in this goal. By combining new worlds and modern quality-of-life features with the game's classic, delightful puzzle design, Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a strong start to Nintendo's 2024.

In the game's opening, Donkey Kong raids a toy factory where they make Mini Marios, the hottest new product on the market. To get them back, Mario must chase him down through eight worlds, each with two distinct halves. In the first chunk, he has to carry a key to a locked door, and in the second, he has to reach the Mini Mario located somewhere in the level. On paper, it runs the risk of becoming repetitive, but in practice, there's so much variety from level to level that I was never bored. With only six standard levels in each world, there's a lot of room to play with mechanics and level design, and I was constantly impressed with how the game kept me engaged. It's nothing revolutionary – these are still puzzles from 20 years ago – but they hold up better than many games from the same year.

The element of the game that I enjoyed the most was Mario's versatility of movement. Between handstands, pivot jumps, and triple jumps, it's a blast to move from one side of the stage to another. They're necessary techniques in later levels, but early on, you can become the master of the space and skip entire sections if you know what you're doing. Combining this with its intuitive puzzle design, Mario vs. Donkey Kong makes players feel smart and skilled even when the puzzles are relatively straightforward. Triple jumping out of a handstand over an enemy through the final collectible present and into the end of the level is thrilling every time you pull it off.

The game makes up for its age with a number of new features, my favorite of which is a "casual mode." When activated, Mario no longer resets the level when he dies. Instead, he has a limited number of bubbles that he can use to respawn at nearby checkpoints upon taking damage.  It opens the game to younger players or anyone who might get stuck more easily. The puzzles don't get any less challenging, but the platforming becomes more forgiving, which makes the game less frustrating, especially in some tough-as-nails postgame levels.

This remake also adds two new worlds: Merry Mini-Land and Slippery Summit. While I found them to be a tad easier than the existing levels, they fit the style of the other stages well, and they're welcome additions that slightly extend what was previously a short game. After beating the game, you also unlock a Time Attack mode for every completed level, adding a new challenge for willing players. Add on the + worlds (harder versions of all eight base worlds) and a series of expert stages, and the game has a healthy amount of content if you're willing to dive in. Completing the plus worlds was enough of a challenge for me, but I was glad to know there was more to play if the mood struck.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a simple game, but as is the case with Mario's best titles, there's an elegance to that simplicity. Nintendo has done a stellar job adding features to make it more palatable to a modern audience, but it only comes together because of how well the classic levels hold up. Mario and Donkey Kong have been rivals for over 40 years, and this game admirably carries that legacy forward.

Score: 8

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Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Review - Noise And Confusion

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Rating: Mature

Years ago, when I first heard about the provocative title for Rocksteady’s follow-up to the Arkham games, I recall wondering what mental gymnastics were in store to not actually murder the well-liked central characters of the DC mythos, including the version of Batman the studio had so expertly developed over prior titles. Credit where it’s due: Rocksteady followed through, and Kill the Justice League does just that. Unfortunately, it also killed my interest or enthusiasm through a story that feels juvenile and callous alongside repetitive and confusing gameplay. While many technical features work as intended, I walked away from every session feeling angry and out of sorts, which aren’t sensations that will keep me returning for endless hours of future adventures. 

Suicide Squad is a high-octane action shooter where rapid urban traversal and uproarious gun combat are your non-stop companions. A ragtag crew of criminals, including Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark, must fight through the devastated city of Metropolis, gradually offing the heroes of Earth after they’ve been brainwashed by the villain, Brainiac. Each of the four characters has their variation in how they fling themselves across the city and an upgrade path that allows for some specialization. Still, the core idea is pulling triggers, throwing grenades, and bashing into alien invaders. Each acrobatic navigation style takes some time to master, but I ultimately enjoyed the sense of speed and mobility. In combat, however, the constant vertical up-and-down effect is the first of many issues that make it hard to track what’s happening. 

By default, an incredibly crowded HUD is almost nonsensically busy; the biggest challenge of important fights wasn’t the battle itself but simply seeing what was happening and where certain enemies or objectives were. The HUD may be customized and minimized, but you’re left with the opposite problem and too little information to complete tasks. Enemies have some functional variety but lack visual distinctiveness, adding to a pervasive sense of monotony where all the mission types bleed together into one chaotic smashfest. Everything is loud and obnoxious but rarely exciting.

 

Frequent cutscenes exhibit excellent animation and artwork on characters, especially showcasing some emotive facial expressions. Even with that advantage, the storytelling fails on numerous levels. It’s hard to enjoy a story where I don’t like anybody, and even the anti-heroes and bad guys are endlessly spouting bad one-liners, trash-talking, and shouting at each other. Beyond that tonal disconnect, the narrative is weirdly inconsistent and hard to parse, often with the leads feeling almost like side characters in their own story, with little volition of their own. 

Progress through the game involves gear and character improvement by completing side missions; many tasks set overly specific requirements that rob the combat of variety, like only critical hits or certain types of melees to do damage. The more crafted main missions (especially the ones to take out League members) are more attractive, but are, without exception, weirdly anti-climactic and end with such bleak death scenes that any potential humor is blunted. 

Online cooperative play works well. Especially after the short campaign’s conclusion, four friends could have a good time leaping and swinging around the city, blowing up bad guys in repetitive but action-packed missions. Unfortunately, I never warmed to the player investment loop. Many character upgrades are invisible beyond changes to things like the percentage of damage dealt or how long a power might last. Gear is more compelling, with some unique effects on the best weapons, but it all starts to feel the same after several hours. Post-campaign rewards and activities make a fervent effort to keep players engaged, but I found most to be new window dressing on existing mission types I had already confronted many times.

Suicide Squad is technically sound, and the action can be fast, frantic, and occasionally fun. The game could be considered a deconstruction and satirizing of the superhero concept. But for me, the whole thing feels mean-spirited, pessimistic, and glib. In other media, I’ve generally liked the irreverence of the Suicide Squad tales, but everything in this game feels less about laughs and more just joyless. I suppose it can be fun to piss all over any sense of genuine heroism in a comic book-inspired tale, but it can’t come as a great shock when some fans like myself just aren’t interested in the bloody and smug results. 

 

Score: 6

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink Review - The Borders Of The Skies

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC
Publisher: Cygames
Developer: Cygames
Rating: Teen

The thrill of adventure in a boundless playground tickles the imagination, something intimately familiar to players of Granblue Fantasy, a mobile/browser-based title that has been a hit internationally for over a decade. The original title resembles 16-bit turn-based RPGs like the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games of old, leaving daydreams of grander scale and exploits a hopeful wish rather than an inevitable reality. With Granblue Fantasy: Relink, developer CyGames has an opportunity to explore a fantasy world of open skies and magic while pulling the game from a comparatively modest mobile title into a full-blown 3D action game. While not completely successful, Granblue Fantasy: Relink should be lauded for getting most of the way to being a memorable title, but it needed a little more ambition and unique content to reach that goal.

Relink guides players through a single-player campaign with the crew of the Grandcypher, a band of skyfarers that has combat-resolved adventures on every new island it comes across. For this title, a wholly original island and story was created, tasking the crew with rescuing one of their own by defeating giant monsters called Primal Beasts and defeating a sorceress controlling them.

Those unfamiliar with the story and characters of Granblue Fantasy will not find Relink particularly interested in catching the player up. Small vignettes of how the characters met and how they arrived at the latest pitstop island that sets up this game’s adventures are essentially all the player receives without the aid of fanmade wikis filling in the rest. It has a similar energy to picking up the anime One Piece halfway through or jumping into the middle of a Tales game, with no intention or desire to dwell on its past history the player is presumed to have seen.

Relink can also look beautiful, especially with its painterly environments, but it is difficult not to notice that the art style translates inconsistently among the characters. Arc System Works’ Granblue Fantasy Versus is a much more successful experiment using the same designs.

The single-player campaign, while short, presents interesting plights like climbing toward a wind god at the top of a blustery mountain or taking back a castle from an invading force. Players take control of an unlockable cast of 19 characters with different fighting styles and special moves to follow a somewhat basic storyline that does not take too many big or unpredictable swings.

These characters all share a similar template of using four special moves and movement options, but they vary significantly in special skills and meters. My favorite character bounced on top of enemies and specialized in parries on the ground, but a late unlock focused more on transformations and building up meter, making even just those two feel distinct.

Unfortunately, levels are largely linear pathways without much in the way of exploration. The endless skies and hovering islands are rarely used for anything but backgrounds and transference to the next fight, leaving little reason to poke your nose anywhere but the most linear path. A world where the characters talk about inexhaustible space for escapades and capers but spend much of their time in caves and on walkways is incongruent in a way that grates as time goes on.

 

After completing the single-player campaign, players can take combat quests that can be played co-op with friends or strangers. Difficulty rises alongside progressing ranks, and characters must power up through elective means like skill trees and weapons to keep up. By endgame, keeping a team powerful enough to solo these missions requires a lot of grinding, but focusing on one character discourages variety, especially when there is the option of 18 others to use. There is no real way to work around this grind, which wants you to redo missions over and over to get admittedly guaranteed materials and experience to upgrade, though the reversal from how smooth the early game’s progress felt can act as a frustrating brick wall.

Endgame bosses are monstrous with equally gargantuan HP bars, making battles tedious. Unlike a Monster Hunter, your quarry never escapes or requires different strategies, and the likelihood of powering through any knock-out state means the player is mainly in a race against ending the battle before getting bored.

The saving grace of these extended gameplay encounters is that the combat is reasonably engaging, and interactions between characters will likely delight existing Granblue Fantasy fans. Relink is unlikely to be any newcomer’s favorite game. Still, the basic gameplay is fun and keeps you moving along the treadmill, especially if you have a gathering of like-minded source material fans to help you slay its biggest figurative and literal dragons.

Score: 7

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