Halo: The Master Chief Collection Review

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Publisher: Microsoft Developer: 343 Industries Platform: Xbox One Release: 2014 Players: 1-4 (Campaign), 2-16 (Multiplayer)*  Genre: First-Person Shooter Rating: 9.3 \ 10.0: Outstanding

*Player counts vary by each campaign and each multiplayer mode

A scene from the remastered version of the Halo 2 mission Regret.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The aspects of individual games in this compilation will not be thoroughly discussed in this review. Reviews of each game can be found here.

The Halo series has seen a dip in quality ever since 343 Industries became the developer responsible for it. Their original Halo content may not be at the same level of quality as Bungie's work on the franchise, but 343 has done a fantastic job at celebrating the series's history with Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

This compilation includes includes almost all of the content from Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 (which has been remastered), Halo 3, and Halo 4. Halo 3: ODST's campaign is available a piece of $5 DLC, meaning that Halo: Reach is unfortunately the only Halo FPS released as of 2014 not to receive representation in the collection. Each game now runs at 1080p 60 FPS, a framerate and resolution that none of the games had achieved on their original platforms. I have played MCC exclusively on the original model Xbox One, and the framerate remained mostly stable, but I did experience somewhat frequent drops to about 30 FPS when playing split screen or online. This instability never made the game unplayable, but I was noticeable. This issue is most likely not as prominent on the Xbox One S and X models.

The star of the show is Halo 2. This anthology was released on the game's tenth anniversary, and it received remastered graphics and music, CGI cutscenes done by Blur Studios, and new terminals. The upgraded visuals are absolutely stunning. Halo 2: Anniversary is one of the best-looking games I have ever played and undoubtedly the best-looking on the Xbox One. The incredibly well-detailed textures are an important factor in this, but the beautiful lighting and shading, and the vibrant color palette are what truly sell the look. The new cutscenes look so good that they verge on photorealism,. The human characters did have a slight uncanny valley effect, but to deny the fidelity of the cinematics would be unfair. Halo 2's score is a wonderful mix of epic orchestra and intense rock, and it is easily one of my favorite soundtracks to any piece of media. The remastered tracks are slight improvements in most cases, but choir is used to such an extent in several tracks that it sometimes detracts from the overall quality of the music. The new terminals did provide interesting additional context to the events of the game, but I was unable to view some of them because I would receive errors from the Halo Channel app which opens on your Xbox when you interact with them.

As I mentioned earlier, you can download the campaign of Halo 3: ODST for a mere $4.99. While it is quite short compared to the other Halo titles, but it is easily one of my favorites in the franchise and is well worth purchasing. It's a shame that the Firefight mode from ODST was is not available to purchase, as it is one of my favorite horde modes in any shooter and not seeing it represented in what is supposed to be the ultimate Halo experience feels wrong given the mode's popularity.

Several changes have been made which apply to all of the campaigns, but they do not modify gameplay; any mission can be played at any time regardless of whether you have completed the others, and any skulls can be activated even if you have not collected them in each game. As someone who had completed every Halo game prior to purchasing The Master Chief  Collection, I appreciated these features, as I was able to experience my favorite moments from the franchise without having to replay each game (which, being a huge Halo fan, I eventually did anyways). In fact, no changes whatsoever have been made to the actual gameplay, and I wish that they had been. The Flood missions in the first three games are infamous low points in the series, and shinier graphics don't make them any less tedious. It would have also been appreciated if tweaks had been made to Halo 2's brutal Legendary difficult which is well known for being outright unfair due to the high number of Jackal snipers who can instantly kill the player. All of the games are still incredibly fun without these changes, and these are simply nitpicks.

For those seeking an experience designed strictly for co-op, all 50 chapters of Halo 4's Spartan Ops mode can be played in any order you wish. This mode is worth experiencing, but its repetition of environments, unnecessarily lengthy chapters and sometimes absurd number of enemies make it weak compared to the collection's other PvE offerings. You can create loadouts that can be used both in this mode and Halo 4's PvP multiplayer, and every perk and weapon is available from the start. Given that some of the most powerful items were unlocked far too early in the progression cycle of the original version of Halo 4, it hardly makes a difference that nothing has to be unlocked here. The large number of armor sets from Halo 3 and 4 are also all immediately wearable, but you are unfortunately unable to swap out individual pieces (if, for example, you want to wear the Hayabusa armor in Halo 3, you must wear every single piece of it, you couldn't also have ODST shoulder pads or the MJOLNIR Mk VI chestplate).

When it comes to offline multiplayer, The Master Chief Collection has enough content to stay enjoyable for years. Every single map from the four games, including DLC, is playable (except for several maps exclusive to Gearbox Software's PC port of Combat Evolved which were ripped from the campaign and were mediocre as result). Additionally, the Forge modes for both Halo 3 and 4 are playable, and a new one has been added for Halo 2 Anniversary. Because of the incredible number of options that are available for creating custom maps and gamemodes, I wish that there was a file browser, something that was present in both Halo 3 and Reach, but the only way to share content is to upload it to your profile where friends can then download it.

When this game first launched, its matchmaking was near-unplayable due to terrible servers. This issue has since been resolved, and new playlists have been added. There are playlists for each of the staple gamemodes such as Slayer and Capture the Flag, and each game has its own ranked and unranked playlist with a variety of gamemodes. The game used to allow a vote between potential maps and modes before the match began, but this has strangely been removed and you are now instantly placed in a match without any choices which slightly disappointed me.

Whether you are a Halo veteran or newcomer, The Master Chief Collection is well worth owning and is easily the definitive way to experience each game it includes. The convenience of having a set of some of the greatest shooter campaigns, multiplayer maps, and content creation tools of all time in one package is well worth the price, and the enhanced visuals are the icing on the cake. Several aspects of the original games have been slightly downgraded, but almost all of my issues with this title are nitpicks that can easily be overlooked.

Ups
Phenomenal replay value
All games looks amazing and mostly run at 60 FPS
Halo 2's remastered soundtrack is mostly improved
All missions, skulls, and armor can be accessed from the start
Controls can be changed for each game
New Forge mode added for Halo 2

Downs
No content from Halo: Reach is included
Occasional framerate drops
Halo Channel app rarely works
Gameplay issues left unchanged
Veto system removed from multiplayer
No file browser for Forge creations

ESRB: M Content: Blood & Gore, Language, and Violence Price: $29.99 (Retail / Digital)

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Review

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

Publisher: Bluehole, Inc. Developer: PUBG Studios Release: 2017 Platform: PC Players: 100 (Up to 4 per squad) Genre: Tactical First-or-Third Person Shooter Rating: 8.4 \ 10.0: Great

Above is a player delivering the final blow to a downed opponent.

Conceptually, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a simple game. Up to 100 players are put on a plane and dropped onto an island in order to gather weapons and equipment and fight until one person or team remains while a shrinking field of deadly energy continuously forces the survivors closer together.

This is far from an original concept -- it was heavily inspired by the movie Battle Royale and also borrows heavily from the Arma 3 Battle Royale mod and H1Z1: King of the Kill. The former was developed by Brendan Greene (PlayerUnknown himself) and he was involved in the early development phase of the latter. Battlegrounds adds some new features to this formula that have since been adapted by other battle royale games that were released at a later date. These include a plane from which players drop.

One of the game's strengths is its great weapon variety and gunplay. The weapons each have distinct stats and recoil patterns. There is a wide variety attachments that can found on the ground and equipped modify a weapon's handling including foregrips, quickdraw and extended magazines, and suppresors, and no weapon is able to equip every attachment. Some powerful guns and attachments can only be found in supply crates that occasionally are occasionally dropped by a plane onto the battlefield, and this creates interesting risk-reward scenarios in which you must weigh the potential quality of the crate's contents against the possibility that the red smoke cloud emitted from the box will attract opponents. Because the weapons not found only in crates are so well balanced (I am not implying that the crate weapons are unbalanced, but they are designed to be superior to the weapons found on the ground), I felt that the game's random loot system greatly raised what would have otherwise been a much lower skill ceiling by encouraging players to be able to make the best of the equipment they find. However, I will occasionally play matches in which I will land at an area that I have previously found great equipment at only to find that there were nothing but a few near-useless pistols and weak attachments, which can feel quite unfair.

While most of the weapons feel great to use, shotguns feel terrible. Even if your crosshair is perfectly overlapping with an enemy when you pull the trigger, they will often sidestep the shotgun pellets even at a range of only a few meters because of how slow they travel. The damage that these weapons deal is very inconsistent as well thanks to the ridiculous number of varying damage zones that players have. There are several different levels of damage that each gun can deal to just to a player's torso, and when facing players in the late stages in the game, you must also consider that they are very likely to have acquired body armor. This isn't very noticeable with most weapons, but with guns that shoot ten projectiles at once, it definitely is. Having different amounts of damage be dealt to the head, limbs, and torso would have been sufficiently realistic while also making the damage more consistent and making kills less random.

Where PUBG truly excels is in the late stages of a match. When the play area is incredibly small and only several players remain, I experience an sense of tension that I have not felt playing any other game. Other tactical shooters that I frequently play such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Rainbow Six: Siege frequently place me in nerve-wracking situations, but because rounds in those games are far shorter than PUBG games, the stakes are far lower. Once the force field shrinks the play area down to a small enough size, the possibility that an enemy is hiding in a nearby building or behind a rock becomes incredibly high, and situations in which an enemy and I knew each others' locations and waited to act made me especially paranoid. The final moments of a match usually occur 25 to 30 minutes after it began, and this buildup leads to high stakes final battles that rarely disappoint. There were several times that I was killed anticlimactically by the constricting force field or that  I won when the same happened to my opponent, but very few of the games that I have either won or come close to winning were not entertaining.

PUBG's most significant weakness is its lack of content. With a mere three maps, it somehow has triple the number of play areas as every other battle royale game I've played. Formulating strategies to suit every possible situation can take many hours, but after awhile the game begins to feel repetitive. Perhaps I would be more enticed to play if there was something to achieve other than victory (which you must accept will come infrequently if you hope to enjoy the game), but aside from collecting a handful of achievements, there isn't. You can use the Battle Points that you earn from playing to purchase crates that contain customization items for your character, but the chances of receiving duplicates that can be exchanged for a pitifully small amount of BP increases dramatically after acquiring several items. I eventually gave up opening crates knowing that I would get either a duplicate or a very common item and instead sold the boxes on the Steam market for pocket change. The combination of a lack of progression and the slight lack of control over my success in the game began to kill my desire to play. Even very fun games begin to get old when luck is involved.

Of the three aforementioned maps, two of them are quite fun to play, and one is certainly not. The original map, Erengel, has a wide variety of locations including apartment complexes, small cities, a prison, a military base, a quarry, ancient ruins, a power plant, and most notably a school that a ridiculous number of players land at as when the plane flies within two kilometers of it. Despite the map being a whopping 64 square kilometers, it has a great ratio of buildings to empty space. The island map, Sanhok also strikes this balance well, but lacks the variety of Erengel, as almost all of the loot-heavy areas are either groups of wooden huts or military boot camps; the primary exception is a resort located at the center of the map. This map is one quarter the size of Erengel and was meant to have much quicker matches than the other maps, but that is usually not the case. The matches are nearly the same length and the primary difference in how the map is played is that using vehicles is mostly pointless because running a safe distance away from the energy field is fairly easy and is far less likely to reveal your position to enemies, but this is only a nitpick. The desert map, Mirimar, however, is absolutely awful. The cities on the map are massive and are filled with five-story office complexes with countless windows that provide a ridiculous amount of cover and positioning opportunities for players occupying them. This makes crossing the street a  potentially fatal decision as you could be shot dead by someone peaking through a window on the top floor of a building from an angle that the they were invisible to you from. The empty areas in between cities are almost completely devoid of cover, meaning that anyone unlucky enough not to have found a car is an easy target for snipers lying prone at the top of distant hills. Positioning is far more important than your ability to aim in Mirimar, and if the energy field forms a circle which forces you to move up a hill late in the game, you're as good as dead if a player has already situated themselves at the top of it.

My final issue with this game is one, or more accurately several, is one that it has become infamous for: its technical issues. The game once had many small glitches that, even after the game was no longer labeled as Early Access, were common, but many of them have been fixed. The game's optimization, however, has consistently been unsatisfactory. Battleground's graphics are far from stellar -- I've seen PC games nearly from the late 2000s that at the very least look as impressive, but that doesn't detract from the game's quality. What is bothersome are the frequent framerate drops I experienced. For seemingly no reason the game's framerate would be reduced by half for several seconds which should not be possible with such mediocre visuals. I also have continued to experience more minor annoyances such as having healing animations interrupted when I was a car passenger even when the terrain was smooth.

Of all the battle royale games currently on the market, PUBG is my favorite, but it's not without its flaws. The gunplay is solid and the game can be loads of fun when played casually with friends, but the lack of map selection and a proper progression system as well as other issues prevent the game from being as excellent as it could be.

Ups
Fantastic gunplay
Maps (that aren't Mirimar) allow for a variety of strategies
Erengel has a great variety of locations
Randomization leads to interesting scenarios
Fantastic and tense endgame

Downs
Cannot search exclusively for Erengel matches
Mirimar is a terrible map
Kills can feel random due to damage zones
Shotguns are mostly useless
Occasional performance issues

Also available on Xbox One

The System Difference: Despite its numerous bugs and lack of content, PUBG is considered a complete game on PC. The Xbox One version, however, is still in its early access phase. The PC version's performance is already unsatisfactory, but this port will runs shockingly bad. The framerate is meant to stay locked at 30 FPS, but major drops are so frequent that it probably averages somewhere around 15 FPS. It is straight unplayable due to the framerate at times, and making matters worse is that buildings will sometimes lack collision and be rendered at the lowest level of detail for the first 90 seconds of a match. Even if this version didn't run horrendously (even on the powerful Xbox One X), I still would not recommend it, as this game has far too many inputs for a controller to properly handle which lead to actions that would take me less than ten seconds using a mouse, such a removing the attachments from one gun and transferring them to another, taking an annoyingly long time. Avoid this version of the game at all costs.

ESRB: T Content: Blood and Violence Price: $29.99 (Download)

Super Mario Odyssey Review

Super Mario Odyssey

Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Platform: Switch Release: 2017 Genre: 3D Platformer Rating: 9.7 \ 10.0: Masterful

Above is Mario sprinting towards the town of Tostarena in the partially frozen Sand Kingdom.

Whether they're 2D or 3D, Mario platformers have been regarded for decades as some of the best in the genre. While the series may be better known for its linear titles, fans had been yearning for a return to the exploration present in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine for 15 years until Super Mario Odyssey arrived, thus marking a return to Mario's 3D roots, and I doubt that a better collectathon platformer will be released for a long time.

The game begins in an unexpected manner -- Peach has already been kidnapped, and Mario is onboard Bowser's airship and is about to battle him. Bowser is dressed in a white tuxedo and top hat, and Peach is in a wedding gown -- his plans have been made clear.  However, the battle is swiftly ended when Bowser knocks Mario off the ship, and his hat floats into the ship's propeller and is torn to shreds. Mario is followed by a top-hat shaped ghost as he descends. He then lands in a strange black and white area, and is awoken by the ghost who reveals himself to be Cappy. He explains that his sister Tiara has been kidnapped by Bowser to use in the wedding. Cappy then takes the form of Mario's hat, and fits himself onto our hero's head.

After walking through Cappy's hometown which has recently been just by Bowser, you are introduced to the capture mechanic. Mario throws Cappy at a frog, and then possesses the agile animal. Odyssey’s primary new feature is Cappy’s possession ability. Throughout your travels you will encounter several dozen creatures and objects that can be controlled. Soon after taking control of the frog, Mario encounters the Brudals, a group of wedding-planning rabbits hired by Bowser, who he chases into the Cascade Kingdom, the first truly open area in the game.

This is also where you'll truly be able to put Mario's massive moveset to the test. In addition to the usual long jump, triple jump, side-flip and backflip, a new roll move has been added that can be used to travel at high speed , and a whole host of new moves are possible with Cappy, as you can hold the Y button to keep him in place after throwing him and bounce off him. My favorite way to gain distance is to long jump, throw Cappy, bounce off him, and then dive with LR+Y (Cappy can only be bounced off of once while you're in the air, but this still covers tons of distance). The ways in which Mario can traverse the environment easily outshine every other game in the franchise, and once you master the controls, you can reach practically any visible spot in the game. There are stashes of invisible coins hidden on top of countless surfaces that the vast majority of players will never even attempt to reach, which shows that developers either fully understood the potential of Mario's moveset or simply placed coins in every hard to reach area without knowing it they would ever be collected. It doesn't matter whether this was intentional, as it serves to reward the player for experimenting with their abilities. These great new moves come with a slight catch -- some actions are much easier to perform when holding one Joy-Con in each hand. For example, swiping a Joy-Con horizontally will throw Cappy in a circle that can clear groups of enemies, shaking after throwing Cappy will cause him to automatically strike a nearby enemy, shaking while rolling further increases speed, and shaking while controlling various creatures enhances their abilities or performs a special move. Some of these can be done with button combinations and some can by performed by shaking the Switch (when it is being used in handheld mode) or the Pro Controller but shaking with these control modes is much slower and some actions cannot be performed at all without the Joy-Cons. While these moves are never necessary, I was disappointed that they were harder or impossible to use for those who primarily use their Switch in handheld such as myself.

Odyssey's equivalent to SM64's Power Stars and Sunshine's Shine Sprites are green Power Moons. This time around, there aren't 120 of them to collect -- there are 999. Fully completing this game is a massive undertaking, and one that will require exploring every corner of the game's 15 kingdoms. Because there is such a large number of Power Moons, you no longer are forced to exit a level after collecting one like you would be in this game's predecessors, eliminating potential backtracking that could be caused by moons being near each other. Some of them are hidden in plain sight or in secret rooms, or acquired from advancing the story. Many of the moons must be collected by completing small challenges such as herding sheep into a pen, racing Koopas, repeatedly hopping over a jumprope, or throwing golden vegetables into a pot of stew. Each kingdom has a unique set of these challenges, and many of them involve using Cappy's possession powers. As mentioned previously there are several dozen enemies and objects to possess and all of them are used at some point to collect moons. You can control a handful of classic Mario foes including Goombas, Chain Chomps, and Cheep Cheeps, as well as some new creatures like the Uproot, a plant with extendable legs; the Pokio, a bird with a long beak that can be thrust into walls to stick to them; and a realistic-looking (but scientifically inaccurate) T-rex. These were all fun to play as, but many of the creatures unfortunately have moves that can only be performed using motion controls.

I was getting a bit tired of collecting moons when I was approaching 100% completion as many of the challenges that reward you with them are repeated, but for the vast majority of my playtime I was eager to seek all of them out, and this game managed to keep me far more engaged on my road to completion than most other games in which I have finished every available task. One of the main reasons I remained so engaged is that the post-game content is phenomenal, as are the rewards you get for completing it. After Bowser is defeated and Peach is rescued (MAJOR spoiler alert, sorry), a new kingdom is unlocked that is easily -the best piece of fanservice the series has ever had. There is an also ultra-hard gauntlet that is eventually unlocked, which is to be expected as every 3D mario game since Super Mario Galaxy 2 has had one. This one isn't nearly as hard as Champion's Road from 3D World, but it is lengthier and served as a satisfying test of my knowledge of the game's mechanics. These aren't the only two pieces of post-game content, and I was able to have hours of fun even after the credits rolled.

In addition to the Power Moons, there are also either 50 or 100 purple coins to collect in each kingdom (the number depends on the size of the area). These can be used to purchase outfits for Mario that are themed after the kingdoms in which you shop for them as well as decorations for the Odyssey, the ship which Mario and Cappy use to travel across the globe. There are also outfits that can be purchased with normal coins. The live system that Mario platforms have used for decades is gone and you instead lose ten coins when you die. All lives have ever done in the series is inconvenience inexperienced players while being meaningless to those who can effortlessly breeze through levels, so I understand why this change was made.

When it comes to presentation, Odyssey is absolutely incredible. The majority of the game's kingdoms correspond to the level themes that have admittedly been overused in the Mario series (jungle, desert, ice, lava, beach, etc.), but there is a unique twist on all of them. The desert Sand Kingdom contains ice pillars and poison swamps, the jungle-like Lost Kingdom has multicolored vegetation, the lava-filled Luncheon Kingdom is full of sentient kitchen utensils and massive pieces of low-poly food, and there are even never before. On top of having a pleasant art style, the game seemingly pushes the Switch to its limits with incredibly detailed textures (Mario's overalls and mustache are no longer solid colors and have a realistic level of detail) and phenomenal lighting all while maintaining a flawless 60 FPS. Graphics are obviously not as important as gameplay, but Odyssey definitely deserves praise for rivaling the visuals of games  Xbox One and PS4 which have double the power of the Switch. The soundtrack is fantastic as well and combines various genres that the series has used; Cascade Falls' uplifting orchestral theme could have very well been from one of the Super Mario Galaxy games and New Donk City's big band style music is reminiscent of Super Mario 3D World. The score also includes the first two songs with fully voiced lyrics that the series has ever had, and they are both so catchy that I hope that more of them will be produced for the series in the future.

My only issue with Odyssey that I have not previously mentioned is that it is incredibly easy. This is true of most Mario games, but they had far more optional levels that were challenging. This game has a handful of secret areas that in that caused me numerous deaths and the gauntlet was quite difficult, but for a large portion of my playtime I was spent without struggling at all. The exploration is still quite enjoyable, but I wish that my skills had been further tested.

Super Mario Odyssey may not be a very challenging game, but it makes up for this in numerous ways. It is easily one of the best games I have ever played, and I am doubtful that anything I play on my Switch in the future will surpass it.

Ups
Incredible visuals and music
Numerous enjoyable to find secrets
Constant satisfying progression
Many hours of post-game content
Brilliant capture mechanic
Large and incredibly fun to use moveset
Rewards players for their curiosity

Downs
Several actions require motion controls
Lack of challenging platforming
Mild repetition

ESRB: E10+ Content: Cartoon Violence and Comic Mischief Price: $59.99 (Retail / Download)

Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion DLC Review

Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion

Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Platform: Switch Release: 2018 Genre: Third-Person Shooter / 3D Platformer Rating: 9.2 \ 10.0: Excellent

Above is one of the standard "Get to the goal" challenges

While many people that purchased Splatoon 2 did so primarily to play its multiplayer, I was excited to play its Octo Canyon campaign as well, and while it was great, the mode's short length left me wanting more. The Octo Expansion DLC delivers exactly that and manages to surpass the base game's single player in nearly every way. 

You assume the role of an Octoling, the octopus counterpart to the Inklings who, unlike the other Octarian enemies you face, are humanoid. This anonymous Octoling is found in an abandoned subway by Captain Cuttlefish from the original Splatoon, who gives them the code-name Agent 8. The Octoling lost their memory after encountering the first game's protagonist Agent 3 and now has no desire to fight the Inklings. The Captain and Agent 8 are told by a malfunctioning AI in the form of a phone that if they wish to reach the promised land and escape the subway, they must take acquire four "thangs" and assemble an object that will lead them to this paradise. In order to find these thangs, Cuttlefish and Agent 8 must board a train conducted by the mysterious C.Q. Cumber and complete various missions as you travel throughout the subway. 

Unlike Octo Canyon in which the objective of nearly every level was to get from point A to point B , the levels in this expansion tend to be shorter and while there are some levels in which you simply get to the goal, there are others in which you break targets while timed, guide an 8 ball to a goal, survive an onslaught of enemies, carve a pile of crates to match the appearance of a statue, and more. Additionally, you receive guidance from Pearl and Marina of Off the Hook rather than Marie from the Squid Sisters. There are 80 of these missions in total, but not all of them need to be completed in order to acquire the four thangs. Each stage requires a payment of CQ Credits, which are earned by completing levels, to play. If you lose all your lives while playing a stage, you will have to pay the admission fee again to restart from the last checkpoint. Many of the levels will give you a choice between multiple weapons before you begin, and they each reward you with a different number of credits for finishing the challenge while using them in accordance with how difficult they are to use in that situation. Some of these stages are disappointingly short, mildly frustrating or lack creativity (specifically the handful of levels that place you in an unmodified multiplayer map and have you complete a Ranked mode objective while fighting Octolings), the vast majority are incredibly fun. Octo Valley's levels were already creative, but this expansion easily surpasses them by placing you in situations in which you must use weapons and special abilities in unexpected ways that left me genuinely surprised. They are also far more challenging, but rarely frustrating.

Upon completion of a level, you will receive a mem cake, an tiny figure of a character or object from the Splatoon universe containing a small poem which representing Agent 8's memory of the person or thing. Collecting all of the an entire set of related mem cakes (of which there are 10 sets) will grant you a new clothing item upon speaking to the humorously named and sharply dressed Iso Padre. For every handful of levels you beat, you will also gain access to a chat session between Pearl, Marina, and Captain Cuttlefish. On top of being incredibly humorous, these provide interesting backstory for Pearl and Marina and provide context for some of the lore seen in Octo Valley's hidden Sunken Scrolls.

Octo Valley's presentation was one of its strongest aspects, and Octo Expansion meets that high bar of quality. The new music tracks, especially those by Off the Hook, are fantastic and as catchy as ever, with the music from the DLC's final level being especially outstanding. The visuals are also fantastic and varied. The subway and the various bizarre creatures that inhabit it create a delightfully shady and mysterious atmospheres and the levels contain wonderfully detailed skyboxes with odd details such as massive Nintendo consoles and household items floating throughout them.

The high point of Octo Expansion is its final level, which remains entertaining throughout the entirety of its significant length and is sure to greatly please people who have been fans of the series since its beginning. I was enjoying my time with the DLC greatly up to this point, and the finale is easily my favorite piece of single player content in the entire series.

My only gripe with the Octo Expansion other than its handful of less-than-stellar levels is that only the final level's tracks have challenges to complete in the Squid Beatz rythm minigame. It is a shining example of DLC done well, and it is an absolute must-have for anyone that enjoy's Splatoon's single-player content.

Ups

Numerous levels

Great variety in objectives

Fantastic new music and great visuals

An excellent finale

Humorous dialogue with interesting lore explanations

Downs

Several merely average levels

Only some of the new music is playable in Squid Beatz 

ESRB: E10+ Content: Cartoon Violence Price: $19.99 (Download)

Splatoon 2 Review

Splatoon 2

Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Platform: Switch Release: 2017 Players: 1 (Campaign), 4 (Salmon Run), 8 (Turf War, Ranked) Genre: Third-Person Shooter Rating: 8.7 \ 10.0: Fantastic

Above is a player claiming the tower in the Tower Control mode

Back in 2015, the original Splatoon became one of the few successes on the poor-selling Wii U. It was a wonderfully original game -- a family friendly third-person shooter in which players controlled kids that could transform into squids that could swim through ink fired by their weapons. However, it lacked content at launch, but become a better and better game over the next year. When it was first released, Splatoon 2 was in a better state than its predecessor, but played very similarly and suffered from many of the same issues. While this is still mostly true, I feel that Splatoon 2  has become a worthy sequel thanks to its content updates.

The game's story mode, Octo Canyon, picks up two years after the previous game. The Great Zapfish which provides power to Inkopolis has vanished once again, seemingly due to the Octarians. Marie, one of the Squid Sisters from the previous game, recruits your custom Inkling to help retrieve the Zapfish and track down Callie, the other squid sister, who has also gone missing.

Octo Canyon's gameplay has remained basically unchanged from its Wii U counterpart-- you traverse oddly constructed platforming gauntlets and fighting Octarians along the way in order to reach the mini Zapfish trapped at the end of the level, and you may encounter a hidden scroll or silver sardine. The scrolls contain beautiful artwork accompanied by a piece of the game's bizarre lore and the sardines can be used to upgrade your primary weapons, purchase new sub-weapons, and increase your ink tank's capacity. The primary change made between games is that you now are able to choose what weapon to use before entering a stage. The majority of the stages require you to use a certain weapon on the first playthrough and let you equip whatever you'd like on subsequent runs. Despite the fact that many levels are best designed to accommodate the use of certain weapons, most of them are fun to play regardless of what you choose to use, a select few (especially the boss of the fourth area) are absurdly frustrating to replay with equipment you were not forced to use the first time. This wouldn't be an issue for me, but as a pseudo-completionist, I made it my goal to complete every level in the game using the Splat Dualies in order to acquire the golden version of them to use in multiplayer.

One area in which this game is especially strong is its aesthetic. The bizarre but pleasant character designs and colorful environments are accompanied by what has become one my favorite video game soundtracks. Octo Canyon features music with a bizarre but catchy mix of various instruments and distorted vocal samples, while the multiplayer mode features tracks from various fictional bands including the electronic group the Chirpy Chips, the Celtic rock band Bottom Feeders, the rock group Wet Floor, the jazz band Ink Theory, and the pop idol duo Off the Hook which consists of the game's news anchors Pearl and Marina. All of the multiplayer songs (with the exception of those by Ink Theory) contain lyrics in the fictional Inkling language, but they all sound great despite not being comprehensible.

Splatoon 2's multiplayer gameplay hasn't changed much from the first game either. Like before, you can choose to either play Turf War or Ranked. In Turf War, matches last three minutes and the objective is to have covered the more ground with your team's color of ink than the enemies when time expires. In Ranked, there are four modes that can be played: Splat Zones, in which your team must capture and hold a single point (sometimes two) for a total of 100 seconds by covering it in their team's ink, but a time penalty will be given if the zone is reclaimed by the opposition; Tower Control, in which there is a tower that members of a team must stand on in order to move it towards the goal at the enemy spawn point; Rainmaker, in which the teams fight over the incredibly powerful weapon upon which the mode is named and have a minute to deliver it to the enemy spawn point (if this time expires, the player holding it will automatically be "splatted"); and the new Clam Blitz, in which a player must collect ten clams to acquire a projectile that, when thrown at the enemy team's goal, lowers their defenses and allows their allies to temporarily score points by tossing clams at the goal.

The largest addition to the Splatoon series' multiplayer suite is the new Salmon Run mode. In this take on the coop horde mode, a team of four inklings are sent to various locations that are being attacked by anthropomorphic salmon known as Salmonids. You must survive three waves that each last 100 seconds, but must also gather and deposit enough golden eggs into a capsule to fulfill a quota you are given at the start of each round. Three of these eggs are dropped when you defeat a boss Salmonid, and the number of eggs you must gather raises after each round. Each player can only carry one egg at a time, and Salmonids will snatch up unclaimed eggs and escape.This encourages you to communicate with your team using messages that can be sent using the D-pad in order to grab the eggs before they can be taken by the enemies.

I find all of these multiplayer modes to be enjoyable, but how they are accessed is the source of most of my gripes with this game. Unlike most multiplayer games which allow you to select any game mode at any time and be placed in any of the maps that are compatible with that mode, Splatoon 2's 

maps and modes are scheduled. Every two hours, one ranked game mode will be available, there will be two maps available for that game mode, and two maps for Turf War. Salmon Run will be available for six to twelve hours at a time, and you read that right-- Salmon Run is occasionally unavailable for up to half a day! There have been several times when I've logged on hoping to play Salmon Run only for it to not be playable for several more hours. I could have avoided this by checking the Splatoon 2 calendar on the Switch mobile app but no video game should require me to pay attention to its own schedule when mine is already busy. This incentivized me to grind in order to acquire Salmon Run rewards or to increase my rank in a specific mode (each ranked mode now has an individual rank instead of one rank being shared between each mode like in this game's predecessor). This isn't a fatal flaw, but it can be very annoying to players with limited time to play the game.

Another good but flawed aspect is the customization. There are numerous weapons to use of which two types are new. These are Splat Brellas, which function as a shotgun when the trigger is tapped and deploy a umbrella which functions as a shield when the trigger is held, and Splat Dualies (which are absurdly fun to use, dual-wielded full auto weapons that allow you to dodge roll by pressing B while moving and shooting, then fire a more concentrated stream of ink while standing still after a roll. There are also countless clothing items to collect. They offer various perks such as increased enemy ink resistance, faster ink refill speed, and faster respawn time. When a clothing item is first purchased, you can view its primary perk and how many extra perk slots it has. You unlock extra perk slots by using the piece of gear during battle, and once the slots are unlocked, you are given a random extra perk. By using Super Sea Snails which can be acquired by participating in the monthly Splatfest events, you can increase the number of perk slots a piece of gear has up to four, re-randomize the perks of a fully upgraded piece of gear, or select specific perks. However, picking exactly which perk you want requires Ability Chunk corresponding to that perk. These Chunks are given to you when you re-randomize the perks on a piece of gear, and you receive one Chunk for each perk that was erased from the gear. Most of the perk selections require ten Ability Chunks, but the more powerful perks require 20. Because of this, it can take an absurdly long time that create a full outfit with exactly what perks you want -- I've played the game's multiplayer for several dozen hours and haven't been able to accomplish this myself.

Splatoon 2 is a fantastic game and a must-have for Switch owners who desire a solid multiplayer experience. Although its schedule can be obnoxious and creating your ideal loadout takes far too long, it is well worth playing for both its single- and multiplayer content.

Ups

Fantastic and highly replayable campaign

Great graphics and music
Wide variety of multiplayer modes
Addictive Squid Beatz mode
Decent customization

Downs

Some levels are not optimal to replay with certain weapons
In-game schedule sometimes prevents access to Salmon Run

Game prevents you from properly leaving matches, but sometimes disconnects
Choosing gear upgrades is very tedious

ESRB: E 10+ Content: Cartoon Violence Price: $59.99 (Retail / Download)

Nintendo Switch Console Review

Nintendo Switch

Creator: Nintendo Release: 2017 Classification Handheld MSRP: $299.99 Rating: 7.8 \ 10.0 (Satisfactory)

The Nintendo Switch is a flawed but fascinating console. Being a Nintendo system, its hardware is significantly weaker than its competition, as has been the case for the last two console generations. However, this is more than made up for by the Switch's immense flexibility. The Switch itself is a 6.2 inch 720p tablet with slots on the side for its removable controllers, Joy-Cons, and it comes packaged with a dock that can connect the console to a TV or monitor via HDMI. It can be played with the two Joy-Cons held in separate hands which gives them enhanced motion control capabilities, or with them attached to grip that is shaped much more like a controller. Some games even allow you to use each Joy-Con separately which offers great opportunities for local multiplayer on the go. I never imagined that it would be possible to have a handheld that I could use to play Mario Kart with friends during school lunch breaks, and it's possibilities such as this that make the Switch up to the task of competing with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

The more I've thought about, the more I realized that ever since the release of the Wii, Nintendo
has been the only publisher that has made me interested in buying their consoles with their features and not just with the exclusive games I can play on them. I bought an Xbox One to play Halo 5, but there wasn't much else to entice me. The social features are decent, but Steam on PC has a very similar set of features and much more, and I don't have to pay $60 a year to play online. However, even if the Switch didn't have Super Mario Odyssey (which would have been a valid reason for me to buy it), I would have still been very excited at the idea of having portable local multiplayer and being able to play on a larger screen if I wanted to.

Although this is not an issue that affects the functionality of the console, there is one area in which the Switch fails that previous Nintendo systems have excelled in: personality. The snap that plays whenever a Joy-Con is slid onto the Switch is a treat to the ears; however, it lacks any other music. The mid-2010s have enjoyed a surge of Wii-related memes and music mash-ups featuring music from the Wii's various channels (especially the Wii Shop Channel) as well as Wii Sports. The console's features have helped to fuel people's nostalgia, but I doubt that anyone will remember the experience of making a Mii on their Switch a decade from now because there was no memorable audio to go along with it.

The Switch's operating system also lacks the customization of its predecessors as well as some of the small features they had. For example, the home menu cannot be organized and rearranged as it could on the 3DS and Wii U, and the custom backgrounds and themes that were present on the 3DS are gone as well. The inability to place games and apps into folders is by no means a deal breaker, but it was a disappointing downgrade. Additionally, the eShop, the digital storefront that has appeared on Nintendo's last handful of systems, has been greatly simplified. Finding interesting games on the shop that you were not previously aware of is next to impossible if they aren't located in the Recently Released or Best Selling tabs, as the only way to search for games is by name.  The rating system that was present on the 3DS and Wii U has been removed entirely. On those consoles, you could a rate a game from one to five stars, classify it as casual or intense, and say whether it was better suited for gamers or for everyone. Without this system, I'm unable to tell whether the few games I come across on the shop that I haven't heard of are truly good, although they almost always tend to seem entertaining.

This brings me to another point, that, while unrelated to the console's hardware, may be the deciding factor in someone's decision to buy the Switch: Its third-party support. When you purchase a Nintendo system, you can always be almost certain that there will be a fantastic lineup of first-party titles; I'd argue that Wii U was worth owning solely to play the games Nintendo developed for it. However, major publishers including Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, and Capcom have been making much larger contributions to the Switch's library than they did with its predecessors. Ports of triple-A titles that are optimized for PS4, Xbox One, and PC unsurprisingly tend to run at a lower resolution and with worse graphics than with other consoles, but those lack the Switch's portability. The ability to play anywhere everywhere is especially beneficial to games such as Skyrim.

I have a few other gripes with the Switch, the largest being the design of the dock. The dock is designed in a manner that traps the device between two walls of plastic. This causes it to become very hot when it is being used in the dock for extended periods of time, and this has caused a slight noticeable bend near the middle of the tablet that looks like this:

This happened to my Switch even though I've spent around 80% of my time with the device using it undocked, but the warping was thankfully not as extreme. What makes this even more frustrating is that third parties have been selling alternate dock designs that solve this design issue. I would have tried using one of these custom docks, but they are sold as empty shells that require you to take apart the original dock and transfer its components, and making a mistake during this process would force me to buy a $90 replacement. The Switch also suffers due to its lack of storage. Its internal storage is a mere 32 GB, only 25 of which are available to use. While very of the games on the console come close to matching the file size of games on competing devices, some ports of games with massive file sizes require a MicroSD Card to download. This essentially forces users that prefer to purchase thier games digitally to invest in external storage, and I've used almost half of my storage despite the fact that not one game I've purchased via the eShop is larger than 1 GB. Making this even more inexcusable is the fact that the deluxe edition of the Wii U which, keep in mind, released in 2012, also had 32 GB of storage, and that could be consumed by a small number of games as well.

Much of this review may have discussed the Nintendo Switch's cons, but most of the issues mentioned are not deal-breaking, and the console's positive aspects are far more pronounced than the negative ones. It is difficult to overstate just how amazing it is to be able to play a massive game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or race a friend in Mario Kart anywhere, and this capability makes the Switch a worthy competitor to other contemporary consoles. It offers its users many unique ways to be entertained, but its several small shortcomings keep it from being truly great.

Contents of the Box
Nintendo Switch console
Nintendo Switch dock
2 Joy-Cons
2 Joy-Con straps
HDMI cable
AC adapter

Specifications
Screen: 6.2 in., 1280 x 720 (720p) resolution (Up to 1080p when docked)
Storage: 32 GB (Expandable by up to 2  TB via a MicroSD(HC/XC) card)
CPU / GPU: NVidia Tegra X1 processor

RAM: 4 GB

Ups

Multiple control options

Fantastic first- and third-party library

Can be used to play local multiplayer anywhere

Can be used as a home console or on the go

Downs

Poor customization

Lack of options in storefront

Poorly designed dock
Pitiful amount of storage

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo Switch Release: 2017 Genre: RPG / Sandbox Rating: 9.4 \ 10.0: Excellent

Above is Link raiding a Bokoblin camp.

For years, the Legend of Zelda series has remained one of the most celebrated and respected franchises in gaming. The 3D entries in the saga have all been nearly universally acclaimed by critics (although 2011's Skyward Sword had a mixed reception by fans), but these games have fallen into a predictable pattern over the years. The plots may be original, but the progression has always involved travelling from linear dungeon to linear dungeon to acquire items that are only useful in several specific areas. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild aims to break this cycle, and it has done so excellently.

Breath of the Wild presents an interesting new story that complicates the Zelda timeline further by having evidence to suggest that it could be part of any of any of the three post-Ocarina of Time timelines. It begins with Link being told to awaken by a disembodied voice. He arises from a chamber, unarmed and unarmored. He then retrieves a tablet that resembles a Switch console from a pedestal and exits the chamber. He spots an hooded man nearby. He leads Link to the top of a massive tower, then instructs him to visit the four shrines scattered throughout valley which happens to be located atop a massive wall. Each of these shrines introduces one of the four abilities that can be used by the Shiekah Slate, the aforementioned tablet. These are the ability to use manually detonated sphere or cube-shaped bombs; magnesis, which allows you to move metal objects with ease; stasis, which can be used to temporarily freeze objects in place and repeatedly hit them in order to build up potential energy that will become kinetic energy once the effect expires; and cryonis, which allows you to generate pillars of ice on the surface of bodies of water.

After doing this, the old man will grant you his paraglider and reveal that he is actually the ghost of the previous king of Hyrule. He explains that Link was gravely wounded when Calamity Ganon awoke and wreaked havoc upon Hyrule, and had to be revived by being frozen in time inside the Shrine of Resurrection, which wiped his memory completely, has been asleep for 100 years. He has been awoken to defeat Calamity Ganon, an evil force that has been contained inside the ruins of Hyrule Castle by Zelda ever since he took control of the many robotic Guardians that once defended Hyrule. Calamity Ganon's four elemental forms also possessed the four Divine Beasts,  massive mechanical animals that were created in preparation for Ganon's return, and trapped the spirits of their pilots within. Ganon has nearly broken free from the barrier surrounding the castle, and the consequences of his escape would be catastrophic. It's up to Link to free the Divine Beasts from Ganon's influence and recover his memories -- or you could just head straight to Hyrule Castle. Sure, you'll get killed in a single hit by every occupant of the castle and break a full inventory's worth of the weapons that you'll have at the time before even coming close to killing several of those enemies, but the game won't stop you. Every other activity is entirely optional and only serves to prepare you for your confrontation with Calamity Ganon. Liberating the Divine Beasts will allow their pilots to assist you in the final battle; completing shrines will earn you Spirit Orbs that can be exchanged for health and stamina upgrades; and collecting Korok seeds will allow you to increase your weapon, bow, and shield storage.

If these activities sound too plentiful for a traditional Zelda world, that's because they are; Breath of the Wild is the first fully open-world title in the series. Discovering every shrine will be the main goal of adventurous players as they explore the overworld. Each of them serves as a mini-dungeon with either a puzzle or combat trial. These ramp up in difficulty as you travel further from where you started, and although there is a intended manner in which each puzzle is meant to be completed, there are often multiple unintended solutions and shortcuts that brought a grin to my face when I discovered them (Tip: Metal weapons and yellow Chu Chu jelly can be used to complete circuits). There are 120 of these scattered throughout the world. Most can be found just by exploring thanks to a handy shrine detector on your HUD, but some appear after completing a riddle or side quest. A handful of the game's side quests are fantastic and tell small but memorable stories, but a large number are sadly generic fetch quests, and some even simply involve giving a character a certain number of an item that you are very likely to already have on hand.

One of the strongest aspects of Breath of the Wild is its combat. It still retains the targeting and dodging system that has been present in every mainline 3D Zelda title, but has tweaked it to emphasize proper timing when the action is intense and makes stealth a viable option for players who want to slowly and carefully raid camps and rewards thinking outside the box. There are two major additions to melee combat: Parrying is performed by pressing A while holding a shield, and doing this the moment an enemy attacks will cause them to stumble, leaving them open for a beating; dodging right before an enemy's melee attack hits you will cause time to slow down, and you'll be prompted to execute a flurried rush, an uninterruptible string of attacks that lasts several seconds; and if you silently approach an enemy from behind, you can deal a devastating blow that deals eight times the normal damage of the weapon you use, and careful players can wipe out an entire enemy camp one single-hit kill at a time without anyone knowing you were ever there. Mastering these moves is essential for taking down some of Link's tougher foes. BotW also boasts the most expansive arsenal of weapons in the Zelda series to date; there are boomerangs, bows, claymores, clubs, magic staffs, spears, swords, and more, and each weapon type has a unique charged attack. Link's archery abilities have been expanded as well; you're no longer restricted to standing still while taking aim, and he can even slow down time temporarily by drawing his bow in midair.

The swordplay itself is fantastic, but it is involved in one of the game's most controversial features: weapon durability. After landing a certain number of hits with a weapon, you will be notified that it is badly damaged, meaning that a handful of hits more will shatter it. I remember being excited as I discovered powerful new weapons early in my adventure only to realize that they would soon be gone. Because I exchanged most of the Korok seeds I discovered for weapon storage upgrades, I eventually ended up with so many Royal Claymores and elemental blades that they became expendable, but this took far too many hours to be worth the disappointment that breaking powerful weapons caused early on.

As you explore Hyrule you'll inevitably encounter Guardians, the aforementioned automatons that have been possessed by Ganon. These mechanical beasts can shoot an incredibly powerful laser from their one eye that can kill even the . They pose a massive threat a first, and new players will learn either to run from them or, without ruining the surprise of finding out, how to make great use of a pot lid. One of the most satisfying parts of my experience was gaining the courage to face a Guardian and severing the metal giant's legs one by then and finishing off its immobilized body.

In terms of presentation, Breath of the Wild is stellar in some areas but inconsistent overall. The game's art style is a massive positive; like Skyward Sword before it, it strikes a perfect balance between Wind Waker's cartoonishness and Twilight Princess's realism while having an incredible attention to detail that wasn't possible on the Wii. Blades or grass are pushed apart by Link's footsteps, clusters of fallen leaves shift around as Link swims through ponds, and wind pushes the sparks from fire; this comes at a cost however, as the framerate will often drop significantly, albeit briefly, when there are large amounts of fire onscreen, but experiences constant low framerates in certain areas such as deep in the Faron jungles and in the heart of the Lost Woods. Additionally, this is is the only first party Switch title thus far to run at a locked 30 FPS, although this is most likely due to the Switch being a quickly made port of a game that was originally made to be an exclusive for significantly weaker hardware. The soundtrack is incredible for the most part, but disappointing at times. The subtle piano tracks that play during exploration in combination with the ambient sounds sometimes alleviates the atmosphere to great heights, but these tracks simply cannot compete with the likes of Twilight Princess's Hyrule Field Theme and Wind Waker's sailing theme. Outside of exploration, however, the soundtracks shines. The themes for each town as well as the various combat themes elevate the soundtrack to the quality standard set by the rest of the series.

Aside form the fully open world structure, the most notable deviation from the Zelda series' traditions is the addition of voice acting. Text boxes with sound effects are still used during gameplay, but important cutscenes are now fully voiced. Some of the voice performances are good, but many are of questionable quality (most notably Princess Mipha). This is a step in the right direction for this series, but compared to past acting acting in Nintendo games such as Kid Icarus: Uprising and the Fire Emblem games, BotW is disappointing.

Overall, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an incredible game. It has a handful of insignificant flaws, but those do little to detract from its engaging exploration, interesting story, and stunning presentation. It's a must have for anyone seeking a fresh Zelda experience or exciting opne world antics and is a great reason to get your hands on a Switch.

Ups
Incredible art style and soundtrack
Subtle references to past Zelda games
Immersive exploration
Flexible puzzle solutions
Numerous secrets and easter eggs
Incredible sense of freedom

Downs
Weapon durability devalues loot
Some boring and uninteresting side quests
Some underwhelming voice acting performances
Occasional framerate drops

Also available on Wii U

The System Difference: In terms of gameplay and visuals, both versions of BotW are identical. The added portability of the Switch version made my wait to get the console well worth it.

ESRB: E10+ Content: Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Use of Alcohol Price: $59.99 (Retail / Download)