QCF: Big Hops

he legacy of Super Mario Sunshine is such a polarizing 3D Mario game to look back it, and it isn’t an entry that’s often romanticized for its jumping physics either. At its core, Sunshine does have an admittedly solid foundation behind its snappier controls, which give the title a distinctive ebb and flow to its respective platforming mechanics, setting it apart from the other entries in the series. However, when that same series has some heavy hitters like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario 3D World, it starts to make sense why Super Mario Sunshine is widely considered to be at the bottom of that class too.

And yet—the entry still has its fans—one of whom felt inspired to recreate many of those quirky fundamentals from the Gamecube exclusive into a new 3D platforming adventure that would take influences from other contemporary titles, and blend them together with modern sensibilities to their design to create something that’s new yet familiar.

This game is Big Hops, and it comes from the mind of Chris Wade and his studio, Luckshot Games. After breaking onto the scene with their debut, Gang Beasts-inspired party game in 2018, Wade and his team hustled onto their next project and spent six years working on their sophomore release, Big Hops.

The end result is a charming, yet flawed, outing into an expansive open-world adventure that presents an interesting take on the theme of questioning what exactly makes an adventure so magical to experience—the destination or the journey. The message is poignant in its delivery and makes for a fun time, even if it occasionally stands at odds with the gameplay from time to time, as the game is more of a jaunt than a crusade.

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QCF: Yooka-Replaylee

n an age where we can still get sequels or remakes for IPs that have been dormant for decades, like Pocky & Rocky, Joe & Mac, Snow Bros., or the anomaly that keeps coming back, Bubsy, there’s a certain Bear and Bird duo that hasn’t been active since their weird build-a-car stint that was exclusive to the Xbox 360. The furry pair have left a near-indomitable mark on the 3D Platformer genre, so much so that a big chunk of the development team that worked on the property went on to pitch a spiritual successor through the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, and were able to successfully release an entirely new property, Yooka-Laylee.

Despite getting enough traction to release an arguably more beloved side-scrolling sequel that paid homage to another classic from their old stomping grounds, Donkey Kong Country, the response to the original Yooka-Laylee was a bit more polarized than anticipated. I, for one, enjoyed it for what it was, but also felt like it didn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, especially when the core idea seemed to revolve around the idea that “bigger means better.” As time went on, though, every attempt to revisit the game after my first run of it gradually soured me more and more with each return to it—the juice it promised just didn’t have the shelf-life I thought it would.

Yooka-Replaylee, swings back hard on this oversight by unfolding the dense origami-like world design of the original into a more fleshed-out version that unlocks all of the expansive nooks and crannies into a more seamless, open-world experience, and that’s just one of many upgrades and improvements to be found in this revamped take of the 3D platformer throwback.

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QCF: Balan WonderWorld

here are developers out there who hold some of the highest prestige in the industry from their work on a few, or even just iconic game—some of these developers have gone on to do great things in the current day scene, and then there are some who are just stuck in the past.

Yuji Naka’s Balan WonderWorld is an indictment of the latter because the new release from Arzest and the Balan Company is seemingly engineered to compete with platformer games released back in 2003 more than anything else. At its core, Balan Wonderworld plays like a pale imitation of the Super Mario Odyssey formula dressed up in a bad NiGHTs into Dreams aesthetic…

I know I started marching my steps strong and heavy with the Poo Poo Parade real early into this review but I honestly can’t help it; for every neat idea the game seems to have, it comes back with three more flaws or design choices that put a big sour on any fun to be found.

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Late to the Party: Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

ow that the character is over 24 years old, Crash Bandicoot has amassed a generation of fans that look at him with the same reverence as Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog—he’s a household name among Generation Z. On that token though, beyond the remastered releases and cameos, just how relevant is the property today’s gaming climate? Ironically enough, one of the biggest attractions the marsupial had over its competition was its sense of exclusivity, both in terms of gameplay difficulty and the platform brand the property wore heartily on its sleeve.

Interestingly, the Crash Bandicoot property made its bread and butter on appealing to the public as the coolest outlier on the market with the PlayStation, but as the years have passed, the marsupial mascot has evolved into a far more accessible franchise. That sentiment couldn’t be more apparent than the latest entry from developer Toys for BoB, and publisher Activision, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

With the success of the remastered trilogy, the developer was tasked with releasing a new sequel that would invoke the initial spirit of Bandicoot’s PlayStation outings, and thankfully, Toys For BoB answered that call with a game that successfully caters to everyone like no other entry before it, and is easily the best Crash game to date.

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