Just a quick little thing I decided to do since today is the one-year anniversary of my monthly self-hatred. So I thought it’d be nice to step back and give special awards to the games I reviewed this year. I only ended up reviewing a total of 10 games since this time last year, but that’s mostly because of how long these take, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep doing this (eventually, I choose to pursue this). So first, the ten games that qualify for these awards (in order of review) are:
MindJack
Sonic Adventure DX
Pocket Bike Racer
Sneak King
Big Bumpin’
Shadow the Hedgehog
ZombiU
Paper Mario: The Origami King
Gone Home
LEGO Indiana Jones 2 (Just BARELY made the deadline)
Now what’s an award ceremony without awards? A even bigger waste of money, that’s what! So to waste money responsibly, here are this years awards:
The Actual Worst: This is given out to the worst game covered in the year. I try to not recommend the buying nor skipping of a game in these reviews and leave the review to speak for itself, but if there’s one game to skip this year, it’s this one.
The Literal Best: On the other end of the spectrum, this goes out to the game that was the overall best this year, or the game I most strongly recommend you play.
The Best Test Of Squid’s Blood Pressure: This goes to the game I hated the most this year. This doesn’t have to be the worst game I covered this year, but the one that I personally hated playing the most.
The Best Test Of Squid’s Blood Sugar: The game that I simply had the most fun playing, even if I had a lot of problems with it.
The Mystery Box: Everyone loves a good surprise every now and then, and this award goes to the most pleasant of this year’s surprises; the “color me impressed” award.
The Jim Sterling: The most disappointing game covered this year; the one where I found myself going “you could have been great” the most.
The Pretty Face: Awarded to the game I found to overall be the most visually pleasing.
The Ugly Mug: The game I literally don’t ever want to look at again.
So then, Shall we begin?
The Actual Worst
It came down to a battle between Shadow the Hedgehog and Burger King’s Big Bumpin, and if I’m being honest, Big Bumpin is ever so slightly worse. However, Big Bumpin is only 2 hours max to unlock everything, and there’s only two unlockable cosmetics to begin with. Shadow The Hedgehog effectively kill Shadow as a character and the overall Sonic continuity, has the worst combination of controls and level design this franchise has ever seen, gun play that just does not compliment it’s movement and barely works to begin with, a soundtrack that sounds like a single song was given twenty different covers, throw into a game that takes a minimum of 10 playthroughs to see the final ending, and you have a game that is just a bitter slog to get through.
The Literal Best
Just like the last one, this was a neck-and-neck race between the two candidates: ZombiU and Sonic Adventure DX. At the end of the day, I leaned a little more towards ZombiU for a few reasons. The first of which is that ZombiU and it’s 2015 ports ultimate achieve their goals a bit better than Sonic Adventure and it’s ports do. You can re-read the two archives to get an idea of what I mean in detail, but Sonic Adventure comes crossed as more confused in terms of execution. To be fair, it was Sonic’s 3D transition – something that killed most franchises, but between the game’s hit-and-miss story beats, the mere existence of Big and sheer unstableness of the game in all forms, ZombiU comes across as the game that has a better idea of what to do. It’s story is minimalistic and mostly lore and with character driven elements, it’s combat is a non-stop serious of risks versus reward, and it’s level design is surprisingly varied for it’s grounded approach. Top that off with one of the smarter ways to handle permadeath and you have my top recommendation for the year.
The Best Test Of Squid’s Blood Pressure
In regards to the game that I personally hated the most, this was no contest. Origami King was never going to be a contender for the worst game I reviewed thanks to it’s music, visuals, the writing when someone annoying wasn’t speaking, and the few cleaver moments in the game. But between the forced minigames, the worthless combat, to the worthless collectables, to the worthless economy, to Olivia stopping every 5 minutes to explain what I saw with my own two eyes, this game was a test of patience. And that’s before the second playthrough, where things I enjoyed the first time through became the worst parts of the games. On repeat, Olivia’s quips became 10 hours of unskippable cutscenes. It became apparently how actually limited your options are in boss battles (many bosses just forcing you to take damage so you can “enjoy” that bosses gimmick – looking at you, Hole Puncher), and bosses themselves have no challenge when you figure the “puzzle” to them. Combine all of that with a nothing plot and the worst spin-off villain in Mario’s history, and there’s a reason this is the only awful game I was done with it.
The Best Test Of Squid’s Blood Sugar
I might have had to think a bit harder about it if ZombiU was the only version of that game that existed. But to be honest with myself, this was the game I had the overall best time with. But between these two, I can just go back to Sonic Adventure more often. I do wish the story did more, that Big wasn’t there (or at least that his fishing worked properly), and that the game was more stable. Even with all of that said, a Playthrough of Sonic Adventure is almost always a good time for me; for every part that’s aged like milk, there’s parts of the game that are timeless and no glorified Let’s Player to date has managed to convince me otherwise.
The Mystery Box
Pocket Bike Racer is the best $3 game I’ve ever played that wasn’t bought on sale. It’s also a decent little Mario kart clone with some genuinely good ideas in it, especially with the item system and some of it’s secondary modes. It is held back by how abusable the item system is, and that the construction site track is just not fun to race on (meaning 20% of the tracks aren’t good), but considering what I was expecting and how bad the other two games came out, Pocket Biker Racer is a game I’m not ashamed to sometimes play with friends (or at least show them so they can step back and stare in confusion).
The Jim Sterling
To make a long story short, I’m not crazy for the direction LEGO games have taken these days, and revisiting this game made me realize they had great ideas that would have excellent ways to expand upon the LEGO formula, and that this was so stupidly executed (or just that badly rushed) that this structure was both born and killed with this game. Gone Home was also a contender for being the biggest letdown, but honestly that let down just came from me realizing what the game could have been if it was made by someone who wanted to make a video game, instead of making someone’s low-rent comic book to worthless not even Marvel would waste money publishing it. Gone Home was never going to be that good, LEGO Indiana Jones 2 could have been great.
The Pretty Face
This is the only “modern” game I covered this year so this might be unfair, but honestly I’m willing to throw it the bone; the last two entries in the series went way overboard with the paper gimmick, to the point where everything got distracting and made the visual humor very, very repetitive after only a few hours. Origami King instead plays it back just a bit, only heavily referencing everything being made out of paper in terms of bosses and a few gags. What seals the deal, however, is the lighting AKA Squid’s Holy Grail of Visuals™️. This game’s lighting achieves more of it’s emotional moments than it’s dialogue and story could ever hope to. And honestly, if the visuals are good enough to get me to care about Olivia, they are probably doing something right.
The Ugly Mug
Shadow The Hedgehog might have taken this award as well if it didn’t have the good animations and the FMV cutscenes. But Big Bumpin achieves it’s revenge from having it’s spot as the Actual Worst stolen from it. As to why this game is so ugly… ya know what? This game just recycles it’s only not crap models from Pocket Bike Racer, so I’m just going to recycle what I said about it’s visuals.
Visually speaking, this is the ugliest by a mile. On top of the poor model quality, this game is one of those games that use bloom poorly. Bloom is that blur effect strong sources of light give off; games that use it lazily are often games that program in bloom to happen automatically rather than manually light the area, effectively having the engine do the job on its own. Games that do this tend to look really ugly, and this game is no exception, but it’s the combination of this bloom with the Shadow The Hedgehog lack of color saturation that makes this game an exceptional eyesore to look at in motion, let alone play.
-Squid Dude, Awful Archives: The Burger King Trilogy
Thank You For Attending
From my friends on Discord (especially my friend Sand, who both helps me find images and has been helping my proof-read these when he has the time) to the Randos who manage to find these, thank you so much for reading these. I’m hoping to someday actually make something out of this little series, but if it remains nothing more than a hobby, so be it.
As for a special little bonus for reading this glorified fluff piece, I’m going to actually let you know some of the games I plan to cover this year:
This time, it’s personal. For starters, I’m personally a huge fan of the LEGO games, or more accurately, the TT LEGO Collectathon games. They’re nice, relaxing games (a rarity among collectathons) with a unique sense of humor (provided it’s not a LEGO Marvel game). But it’s more than just it being part of a franchise I enjoy: this was one the first Lego game [and one of the first games in general] I heard about and was hyped to finally play. Getting the original three movies, with new levels based on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (I’m one of the few people who liked that movie) had child-me ready to declare it the bestest game evar.
And then I played the game.
This game became my first real disappointment, as it’s changes to the formula were not something I enjoyed, and the split screen feature was actually sickening. It also was how I was introduced to Knightwing Entertainment, as his review was the only one at the time that didn’t praise the game for being different, but instead mentioned how many of the changes were not great for the game. But above all else, I felt bad for asking my dad to pay $40 for this game, and would be the start of me being very picky on what I spend my money on (especially with games).
So yeah, it’s personal, but it’s not because of Awful Archives that I gave this game another shot. First, I have a rule against using Awful Archives to cover games I don’t like; I loathe Resident Evil 2 Remake more than most games I’ve covered thus far, but it’s lack of a negative reputation online means I am not to cover it in this series. I just figured spending seven bucks to revisit this, uh, iconic part of my childhood was a fair price, and some online research showed that criticism for this game was nowhere as scarce as I remember it being. The fact that a highschool friend of mine was able to join me for most of the adventure was a nice benefit.
So, let’s see how this game holds up.
LEGO games of this style are parodies of the source material through pantomiming and this game doesn’t change that. What has changed is the style of parody. The previous LEGO games followed the Mel Brooks style of parody: recreate the original scenes and then have something silly happen instead. So instead of just handing over the temple idol, Indy tries to trick them with a C-3PO head, then offers them a rubber duck first, before finally surrendering the idol. This game, especially with the first three films, feels more like a parody of the parody. It’s not just being a funny recap of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it’s also a “funny” recap of LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. Many sequences from Crystal Skull are stretched out so that half the game can be about that film, whereas entire set pieces in the older films are consolidated into cutscenes (Like the Chinatown scene from Temple of Doom). So while the fourth film gets the bulk of the best jokes, it’s a poorly paced version of an already bloated film while the original trilogy is stuck with a glorified abridged series hyped up on caffeine without dialogue.
Furthermore, Crystal Skull takes up roughly half of the proper game. This is because of the playset feature; The game features a total of eight LEGO box sets. Six of these are the proper game, each features a hub world, fifteen levels, about twenty or so characters, and a dozen or so vehicles. The first three sets are for the fourth movie, and the last three are for the original trilogy; the other two sets are for bonus content (extra levels you get for 100% completing each box set) and for creating your own characters/levels (I’ll get to this towards the end). In the game’s defense, it makes sense why it would want to devote most of its core content to Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull with the previous game having already covered the first three movies fairly well. If anything, the game devotes too much time to the original films; the game would be better served just picking the three best sections of each movie and having those sections with the characters involved as bonuses.
The actual gameplay itself follows the standard LEGO formula. You still solve puzzles with character abilities, collect studs to buy stuff, collect minikits for bonus levels, and collect power bricks for extras. However, the game does choose to expand upon some of the mechanics from the first LEGO Indy. First is the weapon system. Just as before, the player can find swords, shovels, torches, explosives, guns, books, and the occasional banana to barter with monkeys in the levels, allowing for puzzles to make use of more abilities than what the characters may naturally be equipped with. The sequel brings all of those back along with spears, staffs, and proper hunting rifles but more importantly allows the player to hold multiple weapons and tools at once (a button press is all it takes to cycle through them). Between spears being used for platforming puzzles and grenades being replaced with dynamite that explodes on its own once picked up, LEGO Indy 2 has some welcome originality to it.
Combat has also seen some upgrades. While the whip abilities from the first game sadly don’t return, the game is a bit smarter about where it places enemies and how the player would need to fight them. Enemies with black swords can only be defeated in sword combat as they will deflect projectiles, and most gun enemies are now out of range and [would] require a gun to be defeated.
Sadly, both of these are hampered by a returning problem from the first entry: Indy’s whip is a massive crutch. The game is overly reliant on using Indy’s whip to grab items out of place, or used to make a floor give out so a gunner can be at ground level and then beaten up. Part of the reason it’s so easy to fall back on is that Indy is present in every story level and therefore is a tool the player will always have without having to justify it’s placement on the map. it’s made all the worse by how often the game doesn’t make use of the features mentioned above, with weapons being required for story level completion being quite rare.
Okay, so the game features a lot of great character abilities and puzzles but rarely utilizes them, so surely Free Play mode picks up the slack, right? You would be right… if this game had Free Play mode.
Okay, let’s break down level design real quick: Levels in this game are very rarely longer than five minutes. As such, there is now one minikit per stage locked behind platforming that is not possible with the abilities of the characters in the story mode. So instead, the player can revisit the stage (these revisits are counted as separate stages, by the way) to collect studs for True Adventurer (the normal stage and the revisit version share carry this stat between each other) and collect the minikit. The game will spawn you in as the two required characters for it should you have them unlocked, or otherwise tell you what abilities you need.
Then there are the hub worlds, which are effectively levels in and of themselves. Instead of each level leading directly to the next, the player has to interact with the hub world to gain access to the next level, effectively replacing the sections of stages where players would move between set pieces and instead having each set piece be the entire chapter. This is what contributes to each level’s short run time. There are three power bricks hidden in each hub world (one for cosmetics, one for studs, and one for character upgrades), and finally there are five bonus stages made with the game’s level editor that follow the same rules as the revisit levels, with a bonus level for 100% completing the box set where the player must get the set amount of studs as fast as possible.
Got all of that? Good. Because this is where the problems start.
First, the lack of proper Free Play and treating what are essentially the Free Play versions of levels as separate levels entirely feels like a cheap way to extend the level count from what would be 60 to 90, while also ignoring how these levels are far shorter than anything in the previous games. But somehow, this isn’t even the worst nerf Free Play has gotten; characters can no longer be taken out of their respective films. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, it means that the game can design a little challenge room based around the set abilities the two required characters have. On the other hand, this limits what each puzzle can do to the abilities of that character, and only the bonus levels tend to leave weapons and tools lying around. And keep this in mind: there are only really ten levels per box set, and the twenty-ish characters per box have some overlap in abilities (In the first Crystal Skull box set, there are literally eight characters with the same set of abilities).
This also makes unlocking characters far less fulfilling than in previous games, since now there’s not only no point but literally no option to use characters besides the two the level was designed around. Back in LEGO Star Wars, the fun of unlocking Boba Fett wasn’t that you NEEDED him since there’s two story mode characters who already does what he does; it was that he was a convenient character to play as, having both a blaster and the hover ability reserved for R2 units into a character with Bounty Hunter access. If the game only allowed him to be used in the three levels designed with him in mind, then that would be great for those three levels, but what value is there in Boba Fett beyond those three? This applies to almost every character that isn’t Indy himself; enjoy getting to use each character at most five times before putting them away forever.
There is a “Quick Play” feature in the menu where you can play any level you’ve beaten while bringing in any two characters from that box set, but the levels don’t feature any extra puzzles beyond the two they’re designed for (the real problem here) so there’s no point to this feature beyond replaying a story mission or not having to navigate the hub world to revisit a stage.
That said, being able to skip the hub worlds is certainly a plus. These things are too big for their own good, making it take longer than it should to reach the next stage. Second, the perspective is actually kind of bad. The isometric angle every hub world has makes depth perception more akin to depth suggestion. This is bad enough with the platforming in the hub world (as it’s difficult to tell if you’re missing a jump because you’re not angling it correctly or if an invisible wall is blocking that angle because you’re meant to get up there a different way), but becomes miserable when you have to skydive out of a plane into a section of the level normally inaccessible. To top it all off, the puzzles tend to suck. They’re often just a single puzzle to open the door to the level (be it a story level or an optional one) but there can [and will] be times where you run around the level smashing everything to look for the one thing to open the door while playing a riveting game of “guess what the dev’s thought process was.” The icing on the cake is that there’s no character select for the hub worlds. Oh sure, the levels themselves turn you into who you need if ya got them, but if you need someone to open the level then you get to go run around the massive hub world and hope they didn’t wander too far from their spawn location.
The worst thing about the hub worlds, however, is not what they add but take away take away: travel. In the first LEGO Indy, several level sections actually took place between set pieces in relatively uninteresting locations. These sections were where the heaviest of the puzzle solving took place, with most set piece locations being more action heavy. The hub worlds represent the travel between said set pieces, and fittingly are where most of the game’s puzzles take place (especially in the Crystal Skull hub worlds, since that film was far more set piece heavy than the OG trilogy was). This also contributes to the levels being set in more static locations (and therefore being shorter) than before, with most levels now only taking place in a single room (I think only 10% of the levels in the game have any transitions to different rooms). This also contributes to what I said earlier about the game’s adaptation of the plot being more Epic Movie than Spaceballs: you don’t have that sense of adventure, just parodies of the most important scenes.
The hub worlds would be my least favorite thing about the game, but that honor goes to vehicles.
So, my friend who joined me for this loved this game growing up, and was curious about how his thoughts held up. He was really taken aback by how bad the vehicles controlled. The single easiest way to describe the controls is that the vehicles are too fast and slippery while also being too heavy, resulting in the vehicles turning over when having to face changing elevation. So don’t worry, only every level requires you to perform jumps off of ramps to pop balloons to get the minikit for the level. Airborne vehicles and boats don’t have the issue in changing elevation, so they make up for that with even worse controls. While standard vehicles turn too sharply at fast speeds, these vehicles just barely turn at all. Special mention goes to the blimp and the UFO, which might be the worst two vehicles in any LEGO Game in terms of controls (Serious, R.O.B. on the NES required less pre planning to operate than these do).
But if I learned anything from playing Shadow The Hedgehog, it’s not the controls alone that make for bad gameplay but what the player is expected to do with those controls. The levels themselves, as stated, often have jumps for the player to do, but to be fair only a third of the levels actually require that the player make use of the vehicles to grab the balloons; the player(s) can often just drive to the general location and pop the balloon on foot (which we often did). However, because this game hates me apparently, the vehicles are also in the hub worlds. This is where I become irate over them, as this game is responsible for the worst thing in every LEGO Game after this one: vehicle races. These things suck in later games where vehicles have decent controls; here, they are the actual worst. Regardless if it’s the land, air, or sea, it is waaaaay too easy to overshoot a goalpost on the track, and the timer won’t give you enough time to make a u-turn and get back on track (not that it matters, given that 90% of vehicles can’t make u-turns). The timer does, however, give you just enough time to not need to go at the vehicle’s max speed. So every single “race” became just slowly driving between goalposts to make sure each one was hit.
Another thing my friend was let down by in the revisit was the co-op itself. LEGO Indiana Jones 2 features split screen co-op for the first time in the series, meaning that the two players don’t need to be right next to each other, and that puzzles can cover a longer range than in previous games. The problem is that it uses a “dynamic split screen.” If you’ve never heard of that, there’s a good reason; it means the actual line that splits the screen isn’t just vertical or horizontal, but instead is constantly moving as the two players traverse the stage. The intended effect is so the line can instantly tell you what direct the two players are from each other should they want to reunite. The actual effect is that it will make both players feel motion sick unless they actively try to ignore it, with the bonus effect of making air and sea vehicle races actually impossible since the lack of maneuverability means you need to make turns well before the split screen would allow you to see them; one of use would always have to drop out to get them done.
To move away from the terrible to the just lame: boss fights.
Every single boss fight is a giant enemy of some kind, like the one pictured above (I may hate Temple Of Doom, but it was never this stupid). Let’s quickly compare two bosses from a movie both games handle. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the immortal Holy Grail Knight was out to protect his name’s sake, but was not evil. The film’s real villain chose the first cup he found (which was easy to get) and he rapidly aged before he died – you could say he chose poorly. So Indy got the cup that was in the much more dangerous spot, which turned out to be the Grail – he chose wisely. The first game represents this by the Grail Knight being an invincible boss that you must knock out for a short time while you figure out which cup is the right one. Drinking the wrong cup instantly kills you, and you need to figure out it’s the golden cup behind the platforming challenge. Drinking that cup is how you actually beat the boss.
In this game, the Grail Knight is reduced to a post-story mode unlock and instead the boss fight is that the villain, when he drinks incorrectly, becomes a giant dust tornado that starts carrying boxes around everywhere that you then have to shoot with heat-seeking rocket launchers five times to kill him. In other words, it has nothing to do with what was going one. Oh, and this fight is just a reskin from the final boss of the Third set in Crystal Skull (which is strange since it’s the only case of this happening). Boss fights, much like the rest of the parody, no longer try to replicate the scene but are just throwing ideas out there to see what sticks despite having bonus levels devoted to that purpose. In fact, every boss fight just feels like it’s here out of obligation.
All of this is assuming the game functions properly, mind you. While this game never outright crashed on us, it is easily one of the buggiest experiences either of us have ever had with one of these LEGO games. From important items not spawn to getting stuck on objects to not being able to attack to controls locking up to vehicles exploding when we entered them to certain set pieces just not working properly, there was no shortage of level and hub world resets we had to go through just to get everything done. This lack of stability would often be when we went from being annoyed with the game to actually starting to resent it.
And yet, despite all of this, I don’t think I can say I hate this game. At least in terms of Awful Archives, this is one of the few games I was willing to 100%. Sure, it was so I wouldn’t ever have to play it again, but there are several games (like Sneak King or Big Bumpin’) that I didn’t even bother finishing. At its core, this is still a LEGO game, and therefore is still a chill collectathon. Having been playing LEGO DC Super Villains with my friend Case, we both agree the worst part of the game was the open world section; side quests are effectively a bunch of three-minute nothing burgers taking individual puzzle mechanics and/or combat sections from the campaign and calling it day. That’s a problem with modern LEGO Games: they’re trying baby’s first Skyrim when they’re more akin to casual Banjo-Kazooie. Despite literally everything I’ve said here (and even a few things I’ve omitted), LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues isn’t trying to be a massive open world game with 50 hours of filler. It tries to make all of its content based around being a collectathon… it fumbled at almost every point in its structure, but conceptually I could see this being the future of LEGO games if this version was better implemented. I definitely would rather drop the open world stuff outright in favor of more levels.
Plus, there were things I enjoyed. Mostly some of the bonus levels. While most of these levels are only five minutes long (two minutes when you get a stud multiplayer), there were a few levels that took use a good twenty minutes to get through because we had to juggle the abilities around (Bonus stages actually make use of the ability to find and hold onto weapons), time our movements to not die, and overall just need to actually pay attention. Plus, being made with the level editor means there’s several gimmicks in these stages that main levels never make use of so they tend to have the best variety as well. Even with stud multipliers making stud collecting trivial, these stages housed the highlights.
Another surprisingly good element is the level editor these bonus stages are made from. You can actually make your own levels in this game (along with your own characters as before), and to be fair you can make some pretty complicated stuff if you’re willing to take the time and learn how it all works. The level editor is nowhere as easily accessible as something like Mario Maker, and the inability to share levels online along with fairly strict memory limitations both hamper the feature further. Even then, the two of us made a nice little level in about two hours and had a blast doing so.
In the end, I don’t hate this game so much as I’m just miserably let down to the point of negativity. Huh. I wonder if this is how Pokémon fans feel about the more recent games.
So, we got a proper Nintendo Direct. Overall, pretty decent. A little too RPG heavy for my liking, but unlike Dunkey I’m okay with the existence games that aren’t appealing to me. Pyra in Smash looks promising (especially with the return of the transformation mechanic on a character who better suits it), a new Splatoon is always a good time, seeing No More Heroes 3 is what I was there for, Miittopia looked way more interesting than it had any right too, and admitting they need more time to show off Breath of the Wild 2 is respectable. Also, Mario Golf Super Rush was announced.
Seriously, the game looks really good. The outfits are amazing, especially Wario dressing up like the Southern diabetic that he [spiritually] is. The courses and weather look on par with Mario Odyssey while still being visually distinct. The story mode doesn’t force you to play as Mario the entire time (so it’s already better than the story mode in Aces), and the reveal of Speed Golf gives off hope that the game will not be as content starved as Aces was at launch. The only thing about the announcement that disappointed me is that it wasn’t called “Mario Golf: Fore Glory”
So, naturally, it’s time to speculate about a game I know nothing about beyond not even 5 minutes of gameplay. Because that’s what one does with Nintendo Multiplayer games. Not that I’m complaining, mind you; this sort of speculation is a lot of fun. That, and being snowed in for a week straight has left me with nothing better to do. So though a combination of sheer boredom and a legitimate interest, here’s what I personally would love from the game.
Let’s start with the characters. I’m going to focus on characters I don’t think are a guarantee to be in the game, and King Bob-Omb has been confirmed as a launch character through the official website if you haven’t heard yet. Let’s start with the character I want the most.
Mario Golf has had a habit of having a second Mario be unlockable. First Metal Mario, then Shadow Mario, then Gold Mario as a Season Pass Bonus. But Luigi’s Mansion 3 introduced an equivalent to this for his brother in the form of Gooigi who was a surprisingly highlight in the game, both mechanically and comedically. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I chuckled this hard at someone doing nothing. That’s actually part of the reason I want him in: given the series is well known for how expressive it can make it’s characters, the most stoic character in the franchise’s history would be a really compelling choice. The physical humor of him jiggling in the wind would also be a bit humorous. Plus, Nintendo has brought up the idea of giving Gooigi his own game at some point, and using recent one-off characters in the golf games is almost a contractual obligation.
Gooigi is also a perfect counter to the flesh-and-blood Luigi characterization wise: Luigi overacts to everything, but Gooigi doesn’t react at all.
Now, I know that there’s the problem of these games having rain, and Gooigi taking to water about as well as a Canadian deals with 71 degrees Fahrenheit. My answer to this problem is to do what Mario Sunshine did with Shadow Mario’s water weakness when that got in the way of gameplay: ignore it. Seriously, this is not that big a deal and the idea the golf game doesn’t follow canon to Mario of all things shouldn’t be a big deal.
Speaking of Mario Sunshine, I miss Toadsworth. Dude hasn’t appeared since Dream team, if his spirit in Ultimate doesn’t count. But with that said, there’s not a whole lot to say on his inclusion: He’s a legacy character in the series yet has only been playable in the baseball games. So rather than spend any more time on why I would like to play as a geriatric fungus, I’d like to instead say why I think Toadsworth hasn’t been used as of late.
I don’t think there’s any explicit rule against this character being used – his spirit wouldn’t be in Smash Ultimate if Nintendo truly wanted to be rid of him (Star Fox Command has suffered this fate). I also don’t believe any of the interviews from the Paper Mario team apply to him, since there are no other Mario franchises held to the creative restrictions Tanabe claims Paper Mario is held too.
Personally, I think it’s that he has an issue with relevance. Given his role as Peach’s adviser, he’s only going to be useful in games where Mario either spends time directly in the castle, or when Peach accompanies Mario at the start of the game. He also had the role of updating Mario on Peach’s whereabouts in TTYD, but the series will just use a normal Toad for that now. So for those first two roles, he was basically limited to the RPGs in terms of use since Peach’s Castle is rarely actually visited in the mainline games these days, and Peach being Kidnapped is often what happens in the opening.
As for why he didn’t appear in Odyssey when Peach’s Castle was finally brought back (and with Peach also being an interactable NPC again no less), my answer is one of two. The shorter one is they forgot about him. Seems pretty likely – if Splatoon’s developers could forget about Mario Sunshine when they were initially designing the first Splatoon as a Mario game, it stands to reason that a character who hasn’t been used in over ten years (and who hasn’t appeared in a mainline game since his debut) could easily be forgotten.
The alternative answer is further contribution to his lack of relevance: Toadette. Toadette debuted at roughly the same time, and has about as unique of a design but with the benefit of having no established role at the time. This means that she was a more flexible character in terms of when and where she is used, and I personally think resulted in her taking a lot of roles over the series that Toadsworth could have had – most notably in Mario Odyssey.
And for those who want a tinfoil hat conspiracy, Blue Toad is actually Young Toadsworth who traveled forward in time to stop this tomfoolery while he was in his prime but in doing so erased himself from the Timeline and now needs to get back to the past.
Regardless as to why he’s stopped appearing, if there ever was a time to bring him back, I’d say it’s for a round of Scotland’s boomer sport.
Also Charlie, but high quality images of him aren’t easy to come by.
These two characters are the least likely to be in, and that’s saying something after the thesis paper I just made you listen to, but Plum and Charlie are simply hurt by the Miis, as are all the human characters made for the sports games. Simply put, why make character models for human characters that vaguely represent the player like these two did, when you can use your Mii instead? It’s literally what they’re doing for the story mode.
Still, these two would be a nice nod to the first proper Mario Golf game, and for all I know they are the rewards for beating story mode. The only thing that would need to change is the stats. Back in Mario Golf on the N64, balancing was… funky. The characters as you unlocked them just became increasingly better versions of older ones instead of the risk vs reward balancing Toadstool Tour went with; Mario and Bowser were the only two characters you really should be using once you unlock them. And unfortunately, being starting characters, Plum and Charlie were very much characters that there was no point in using once any other character was unlocked.
So give them decent stats and you have a nice set of unlockable characters.
I used to really dislike King K Rool thanks to the non-stop complaints about him not being in Smash or in the new Donkey Kong Country games. But since those conversations have died down since the release of Ultimate, I’ve finally gotten a chance to look at him in a new light, and I’ve softened up quite a bit. He’s a comedic character unlike most in either the Mario or teh Donkey Kong series (thanks to the pre-rendered graphics in the old games giving him a lot of facial expression), and I bet that animations alone would make him a welcome addition.
Most people would probably prefer Dixie or Funky being in first. And to be fair, I wouldn’t really mind other DK characters being the next addition instead. Although instead of Dixie or Funky, I’d rather have Cranky playable. Not sure if Speed Golf would make his running animation too awkward or anything, but I will always approve of funny old people being playable in Mario games.
Honestly, it’s a surprise that E. Gadd didn’t make this list. But if the game got a new DK character, I’d like either Papa Gator or Grandpa Chimp
Well, already went over plausible Donkey Kong Characters, so why not Wario now? Even more so than the DK series, the Wario Characters are very distinct from the traditional Mario crew and would make for a nice addition.
First of all, I think the most logical character to add would be Captain Syrup. She’s effectively THE other Wario character, and the only character from the Wario Land to appear past her debut (appearing in 3 of the 5 Wario land games). Her most iconic appearance (and the one I’m assuming she’d be based on) would be the redesign in Wario Land Shake It (pictured above). She also has the legacy of being the first female main villain in the Mario Universe, predating any female RPG villains. She’s also one of the few non-RPG Pirates too, giving her a distinct design from the other four female leads. Her redesign from Shake It also makes her a redhead, and that’s only a good thing.
While Syrup is probably the most “deserving” character from Wario’s sub-series to add, the Warioware series is where the more popular characters resign. Most people would probably go for Ashley; some because they find her to be a fun character, and some out of salt for her not being playable in Smash Bros. I’m neither of them. Ashley’s cool and all, but not my choice. Ashley wouldn’t be a bad choice mind you, but that’s because there’s no bad choices for a Warioware character. Jimmy T, Mona, 9-Volt 18-Volt, 5-Volt, the criminally underrated Orbulon, Sam and Max, Dr. Cygor, I could go on. But I’ll just say my personal favorite character from the series as a whole is Penny and would be my personal choice.
Shame literally every boss introduced in Wario World is as dead as Wario World itself is, or I’d have a section trying to justify the Mean Emcee as a golfer. Oh well.
Does this count as a Yoshi character?
Eh, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a Magikoopa’s general design and animations far better compliment the likes of golf than it does tennis or baseball.
There’s also how Kamek is one of the few Mario villains who never really went into retirement. Unlike the Koopalings (who were shelved for the N64 era for Koopa Kid and GameCube era for Bowser Jr.) or the countless amount of one-off bosses in the 3D games, Kamek/Magikoopas as appeared in at least one major game on every Nintendo console (even the WiiU) as a major antagonist. The only exception is the GameCube, but Mario Baseball had them make their playable debut. Admittedly, this is also because the series can’t decide if “Kamek” is the name of a single Magikoopa or if it’s just slang for the species as a whole.
On an interesting note, this is the only character on the list that has been playable in a previous game, being DLC in World Tour.
Chargin’ Chuck has gone from a forgotten one-off character from Super Mario World to a mainstay minion. Technically speaking, the only time they’ve been playable is Mario Odyssey, but I consider that as more of a power-up so they’ve never been properly playable. So why not fix that here? Sure, they’re not dressed for a game of golf, but neither is Yoshi. In fact, Yoshi doesn’t dress for anything, so this would still be an improvement.
It would also be quite fitting for the character who is literally about charging through obstacles to make his playable debut in the golf game with a literal speedrun vs mode.
…Yeah, not much more to say about this one. Just would like to play as a football player in golf.
From one annoying enemy straight into another. We’ve seen Hammer Bro. as an NPC, but no word on Hammer Bro being playable so he qualifies for this wish list.
What really makes it strange is that this character has a bit of a legacy. Often joked as being the true final boss of the original Super Mario Bros., this enemy has been appearing in the series for over three decades but has only been playable a total of 8 times. For comparison, Rosalina has only existed for less than half the time and has been playable 12 times if Smash Bros. doesn’t count and I’m willing to bet this game will mark a 13th proper appearance.
From a stat standpoint, I think it’s interesting that Hammer Bro is normally a unique case for a Power Character in that he doesn’t often go all in in terms of the spin-offs. While always on the more powerful end, Bowser, DK, and Wario are always “Stronger” characters per say but Hammer Bro has less compromised stats to compensate (the Mario Baseball games show this off the most). As to how this would translate to golf [Idunno] but I’d be interested to see.
Also, please don’t make the Fire, Boomerang, and Ice Bros. separate characters. That’s lame and cheating.
Yes, the doctor version specifically.
First of all, the concept of a Goomba being playable in any sport will be inherently funny. The idea that Goombas work better when literally stacked on top of each other is even funnier. And while I may not have passed Calculus, even I can tell the math says that a playable Goomba Tower would be the funniest Goomba idea yet.
There’s also the stereotype of doctors enjoying a long game of golf, but that’s secondary to why I want the doctor version of this character: Nintendo was so desperate for characters in the mobile Dr. Mario that they allowed this mistake of nature to come into existence, and I don’t ever want this to be forgotten. If I had it my way, this character would be playable in every single Mario spin-off period so that way Nintendo can be reminded time and again of what happened when they tried to play God out of greed.
This one’s gonna be really short – but when you get down to it, Dry Bones has yet to be playable in a Mario Golf game, making this the only sports series [that isn’t a glorified minigame collection] that a Dry Bones hasn’t been playable in.
Making separate versions of someone a completely separate character has been a problem for the spin-offs for some time. Mario Kart is by far the worst offender of this, with power-up versions of Mario and Peach being treated as separate characters rather than as variations like characters were in the Mario Baseball series. This is what makes Peachette an interesting case: this was the first time that fans actually seemed to like a power-up version of a character. Like, the first controversy in Mario Kart Tour was how Peachette was nigh-impossible to unlock if you didn’t get lucky enough for her to be your starting driver. Now some people have definitely enjoyed her for… interesting reasons, but I’m in the camp of Peachette honestly just being a better design than Peach’s default appearance.
For all I know, Toadette uses Peachette as her power-up in Speed Golf; wouldn’t be the worst compromise out there.
Team Fortress 2, eat your heart out.
Well, you can thank Olivia for his inclusion on the list. After playing through Paper Mario: The Origami King, I developed a new appreciation and respect for Cappy upon my revisit to his game. To keep it short, I find both characters to be equally simplistic given their amount of dialogue and screen time, but Cappy doesn’t stop the game every 3 minutes for Dora-The-Explore levels of stating what I can clearly see for myself. But as for Cappy himself, I think him being playable would be a nice compliment to Lumas being playable in Mario Tennis, with both being from Iconic 3D Mario games. His size is about the same as a Luma as well (although he can be made a bit bigger if needed), and his body is basically just a hat-shaped boo. Also, he could have alternate costumes that are just different hats.
Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the most mundane character suggestion ever: a snowman.
Honestly, I could just go on about the mental image of a snowman playing gold in a desert without melting and leave it there, but I actually think there’s value in the simplicity. Most from an animation standpoint, having a character that’s nothing more than a series of geometric shapes with a face could give way to some more squash and stretch in the victory animations. And if you don’t believe that, just look at Kirby.
As long as no one makes any Olaf jokes, this should work out just fine.
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Well, that covers my wish list of characters I’d personally like to see join while remaining in the realm of plausibility. But to make this the only article I need to make on the game (or at least until the next trailer comes out), I’d like to now go over some golf course settings. We know the game has a basic course, a desert themed course, and a forest with mist. I’m assuming that Bowser and Peach will get golf courses as they usually do, along with rain returning as a random mechanic. Also, images will be a bit more scarce moving forward.
First of all would actually be a snow course. I mean, not only are snow levels more common occurrences in Mario than 90% of the secondary characters are at this point, but Snow Golf is a very real sport. The fields are played on maintained patches of snow or ice, and the greens are referred to as whites. It would also allow for strategies that normal golf doesn’t allow for, since snow would slow the ball down faster whereas ice would allow for a lot of distance to be covered with the downside of wind continuing to affect the ball’s trajectory. You could even set the track on Rosalina’s Ice or Wario’s Summit if they want some Mario Kart crossover. The wind picking up would also reduce visibility, although the mechanics on Mario Golf that allow you to zoom in and view where the ball is going to land would render this less of a hazard and more of a cosmetic, not that any of my friends would complain.
Another idea for a course inspired by real-life alternatives to golf would be New Donk City, taking notes from both Park Golf and Urban Golf. Park Golf is just golf on a smaller scale to be played in a public park. Urban Golf is a bit more complicated. The general rules are the same, but it is played in a public area instead of on a golf course, and everyday objects are used for obstacles. The interesting part comes in scoring in that Urban Golf doesn’t always have standard holes, sometimes offering either much larger holes like an open manhole (by the way, that’s illegal) or simply aiming to make contact with a certain object, both of which are often to make up for the unpredictable city terrain. This usually results in either longer distances to travel or lower scores for parts. Either way, a track on New Donk City would serve as a nice change of pace.
Onto something a little more traditional with a Mario Twist, Boo Woods would be my vote. This actual haunting ground has shockingly only ever been used in Luigi’s Mansion, Mario Kart DS, Mario Super Sluggers, and finally in Mario Kart 7 – and all of them just used it as a backdrop fir the Mansion that was never truly Luigi’s. Between the dark greens and the endless amount of dead trees, this forest is among the most distinct in the Mario series. If the stage needs a unique gimmick, I’d say making the wind a bigger deal than on most tracks would make do. Given all the trees are dead and there’s very little else out here, having stronger winds would make sense. There’s also the fact that a Boo would often represent the wind direction, and… well… Boo Woods. Duh.
One course idea I came up with some time ago was called “Daisy’s Flower Fields” – and the course is exactly what the name implies it would be. Each hole on the course would have a lot of flowers planted around the course. It would also be one of the hardest courses, featuring basically ever type of hazard (water hazards, elevation changes, sandtraps, snow, etc) on each of it’s holes. The course itself would take place at sunset to help give it unique visuals among the grass courses in the game.
As an alternative to a Daisy-themed course, why not make use of Daisy’s Cruiser? Not playing on the cruiser itself (the winds alone would be hell to play through), but instead that the golf tourney is a cruise to 18 different islands, with the cruise stationed just off shore (possibly placing a roatboat nearby to show how they got there). Each island could contain it’s own set of hazards based around the other courses, keeping with the idea from “Daisy’s Flower Fields” of being the most varied set of courses.
Just to spitball something creative to end off the course themes, have a select few courses belong to E. Gadd. These select few courses would be simulations with unnarutally colored grass. The first one is the Driving Simulator (this is the Driving Range from previous games). Any other simulator stages can be saved for special game modes that need unique courses (like Near-Pin, for example, should that mode return).
A perfect segway into the final set of ideas: game modes. After all, Mario Tennis Aces having a lack of game modes beyond competative tennis was it’s biggest undoing at launch.
For a change of pace, I actually want to open up with modes that should be dropped from the 3DS title. Star Coin mode is just Ring Master with only one ring, Score attack is just Get Character with a predetermined score to beat, and Coin Collector really feels like filler. The game would stand to benefit greatly from going back to having a handful of modes that are more fleshed out.
So with that, the first of them to actually return is Ring Master Mode. Using Toadstool Tour as a baseline, I think having four ring courses per cup with multiplayer variations for each of them would suffice. My big suggestions a quality of life improvement: pre-set wind speeds. It doesn’t have to be at zero wind speed, but the whole challenge of Ring Master is to test the player’s understanding of the course and mechanics by forcing them to make unconventional shots and then still achieve par. As such, Wind Speed plays a factor into that preformance and as such, should be as predetermined as the other factors. This way, some courses can have the challenge be playing into or against the wind to make certain shots.
The next mode to I’d bring back is the get character matches, but with an adjustment. Ya see, I don’t personally see the Star Character Mechanic returning since Mario Tennis Aces dropped the feature. So instead, the Get Character matches (actually, let’s change the name of this mode to “Showdown”) will have the player unlock alternate costumes for each of the characters. Characters with only one costume (Like Mario and Luigi unlocking their classic costmues) would feature the traditional 9-Hole, whereas characters with several color schemes (Yoshi, Toad, Koopa) would have shorter 3-hole challenges to stop things from getting too repetative.
One mode I’d like to see fleshed out a bit more is the minigolf mode from the original N64 game, especially with games like Fore Honor and Golf With Your Friends showing how fun virtual minigolf can be. These tracks would come in 3 sets. The first set of 9 holes takes inspiration from Yoshi’s Story (with everything being made from Cardboard). The second set would take place across Daisy’s Cruiser, and the final 9 holes would take place inside Bowser’s Castle. If only a single 18 hole course was added, I’d go with the Daisy Cruise idea. Also, this is the mode that really would be better for a post-launch update, since minigolf is going to be a “every now and then” mode rather than a main event.
Speaking of multiplayer, I’m assuming slots mode is returning, seeing how it hasn’t been dropped from any 3D golf game yet. But I also think there could be a nice alternative to it. The idea I had is that each player spins a slot, but not for clubs; each player spins for a status effect that affects everyone next hole. This can range from positive ones like adding one stroke to the par or auto shots always being perfect, so something as nasty as sand traps becoming out of bounds or forcing a surrender if you go above par. So naturally, the more players you have, the more hectic and wild games become.
On a minor multiplayer note, I think allowing for players in multiplayer to mix and match holes into custom cups would be greatly appreciated as a post launch update. I say this as an update so that way player have time to learn the courses launched into the game before being given the ability to cherry pick which holes they want to play. An exact breakdown for how these courses would be selected will be in the article version for those who care.
The final note on multiplayer would be for the ability to turn simultaneous play on or off for online multiplayer, allowing players to either immerse themselves through taking turns and playing every animation or decide to streamline things to keep everything moving.
The only other thing I’d request to bring back is the Birdie-Badge system from the N64 game. Instead of devoting an entire mode to it, the player collected a badge when they finally got a Birdie or better regardless of the mode. With there being 10 courses, there were 180 badges in total. Bringing this mechanic back (maybe recontextualized as Power Stars, Power Moons, or something) would be far superior to only caring if they hit par in a single dedicated mode.
The game could turn this into an achievement system, with a [let’s say] Power Moon being given out for certain achievements like getting a hole in one, getting birdies on every hole in a cup, to sillier achievements like getting the highest possible score in a game of golf without ever having to give up a hole. Ideally, earning enough of these would unlock some additional costumes (like Mario and Luigi’s NES Golf outfits).
Okay, I think that’s everything. I think that’s literally everything I could ask for in a Mario Golf game. That was a fun way to spend a week. If even one of these things happens, call me a happy camper I guess.
The Squid Chamber 