QCF: Big Hops

The 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: Wanted:Dead (Playstation 5)

 

 have fond memories of not only playing but also selling what was referred to as a “B” game from my time as a game store employee during the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 era. This type of game, normally an action game would be from a smaller developer and publisher, with a limited budget but always offered entertainment and combat for a lower cost. It was an easy sell for someone looking to play something but didn’t want the larger scope and price of a triple A title. Just some fun games like Stranglehold, Shadows of the Damned and Wet, just to reference a few from the past. For better or worse, Wanted:Dead from Soleil and 110 Industries harkens back to this time in gaming, offering sword-clashing and gun-blazing combat with some corny voice acting and glaring issues in level design and difficulty that might need more than nostalgia to win over most players.

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QCF: Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge

Team Ninja’s release of Ninja Gaiden 3 earlier this year was met with a laundry list of criticisms on an abysmally large scale, and was poorly received by majority, myself included. Yosuke Hayashi and his team had their work cut for them when Tecmo made the decision to re-release the title on the WiiU with enhancements, some even calling the equivalent of the Sigma treatment that prior entries received from the same team on the PlayStation 3.

This is not the case, for you cannot enhance something that was originally broken, you can however fix it, and boy, did Hayashi sure follow through as they manage to not only do just that but labor to add more content in this surprisingly solid action launch title for the fledgling Nintendo console.

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PAX East 2012: Humble Hearts Studio Interview; Dust: An Elysian Tail

Walking down and about the show floor of PAX East 2012, The Microsoft booth is one of the first showcases to happen upon. While there were several different new Xbox Live Arcade and Kinect games being displayed, none of them were quite as eye catching as independent developer Humble Heart’s Dust: An Elysian Tail. Getting the opportunity to play the game, I immediately sought out the man behind the experience I just finished having and demanded to question what I played and what we should come to expect to the upcoming summer XBLA release.

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QCF: Ninja Gaiden 3

In the madness of the Shibuya skyline, a towering colossus wreaks havoc in the metropolis all around her, and one man dares to face her on a rooftop’s edge. Enter Team Ninja’s newest chapter to their action franchise, Ninja Gaiden 3. Team Ninja had quite a bit of pressure applied with the absence of Tomonobu Itagaki, the man who has helmed the director chair on every major game within the series, has left the dubious position with the mastermind behind the Sigma remakes, Yosuke Hayashi. So what we have here is a bigger departure in the design than one would expect, but has it done any harm to the franchise? Well…

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