Recent reviews by Washy

Moms are so awesome

Just a terrific racer that focuses on pure fundamentals above all else, but with a very delicious visual backdrop that enhances the whole package. Captures a little oven-baked-plasticine-toyetic car feel that I haven't seen anywhere else besides Choro Q. Borderline minimal (and I mean this positively), but it's been getting updates! Brings a real smile to my face and hits me in the gut with tension all the same when the cornering gets tight and scary. I really do think very highly of this game.

Petal Crash is honestly so refreshing and brings me back to the classic era of Japanese puzzle arcade games in a way not many developers aim for. It's a lovingly crafted system that takes the familiar visual vocabulary of the "clearing blocks" genre and arrives at what I consider to be a delightfully novel central mechanic that felt both immediately within grasp when I played my first game, and also exciting with just how high its skill ceiling can rise. Its a system that rewards thoughtful planning and consideration of your tiles (adorably adorned with a gummy flower theming), but also asks you to be able to play the cards you're dealt and improvise as new tiles begin to scatter across your board. It's a chaining combo game by design and the sheer terror I feel as I start losing grasp of the board, replaced by the sheer giddiness of taking it back with a 6x chain (my measly best I've achieved only a few times so far), brings me so much joy.

One of the things that most impresses me with its launch release is that it comes just loaded with game modes which I have found myself in and out of with equal measure. Out of the box you should be able to experience Petal Crash in any sensible format you might hope it has, and the different modes highlight just how malleable its rich systems can be with altered context. In my earliest beginnings with it, I often played the turn-based mode that gives you 150 turns (no timer) at your leisure to score as well as you can. I would take my time, observe the board, and play it like a chess correspondence match (woefully slow). This was in stark contrast to its Time Trial mode, which instead allows as many turns as you can fit into a few minutes, which I am way too stressed out about right now to be able to work with, but am excited to tackle in the future when I am much stronger.

It also features a really robust library of "Puzzle Mode" boards, which are pre-made boards that you are intended to solve using a specific, limited number of cardinal directions at your disposal. These puzzles are honestly terrific and while I have yet to finish any more than Lillibri's whole section (intended to be the simplest), I've dabbled in them all, and I'm really impressed that every set is properly themed after the cast and feels just like the kinds of puzzles that embody their character. To use this word again, "thoughtful" is all I can say about what a cute touch it is to theme them in such a way so well.

Oh, and yeah, Petal Crash has like, characters as hell. The entire cast is just gorgeously, lovingly animated with this flawlessly recreated Game Boy Color aesthetic, but the writing is just as delightful. It has so many genuinely hilarious scenes, or great one-liners. I do find that the text can be a little hard to read at times with how bold it is, but I am always looking forward to every new scene and would love to complete them all. My personal favorite character is Rosalia, whose bits all involve lapsing in and out of a cool, dire, knightly tone, then faulting with earnest awkwardness. God, Lilibri has just some absolutely killer theme music though and I certainly don't mind playing as her just to hear it. What a soundtrack!!!!

But that really comes to what I most admire about Petal Crash's package. As I mentioned above, it has a clear yearning to embody that golden era of Japanese arcades where companies like Sega, Taito, and more filled cabinets with really colorful, cute characters, bright music, and interesting competitive systems that asked players to not just master a game in solitary, but going head-to-head with other players. And like... Petal Crash honestly hits that. It might be Game Boy themed, but its heart is there in the candy cabs. While I personally don't play puzzle games to be competitive, I think that Petal Crash's tug-of-war system has an incredibly fun feel to it. I experienced it a lot in the story modes, where it's how you progress from event to event, and it has just enough leeway to feel like you can both annihilate a rival character, but be able to still turn things around when you are trying your hardest to get out of petal hell. The true final boss certainly gave me a run for my money and trying to topple their nightmare AI was such a thrill.

I can only imagine what incredible chaos a highly-skilled two player versus looks like. In my opinion, as the game itself is just as fun as Puyo, or Puzzle Fighters, it surely will lend itself really well to a scene of fans who just wanna crash the ♥♥♥♥ out of each other and I am so there for it.

I plan to keep playing it for a long time

I really do truly love this game and consider it pretty highly up there with a lot of the greats that I've fallen in love with in this genre. Petal Crash!

I walked into the jungle themed area from the starting position and, in no time, encounter a butt-stomp puzzle with no real lead-in or any clear reason as to why it was in the middle of a pathway. I completed it and was given the main currency of the game, a Pagey. I pressed B and Yooka vaguely tweened his head forward and spat his tongue out with no real force or fun applied to the animation. It looked like a non-tweaked motion that Unity's built-in animator seemed to have chucked out and nobody considered to make it look satisfying or add any cute flair to it. I looked around the zone to see where I might want to go next and had no real sense of priorities as nothing whatsoever helps guide my eye (except for the fact that some places are taller than others). I can't make out much because it's all the same browns and greens. I find none of it attractive.

A little ways away was a giant arcade cabinet just as thoughtlessly thrown into the zone as much as every other major setpiece. I consider that it would have been neat if a cave had led into it and separated it from the zone somewhat, but instead squint at how it's just out in the open too. I don't think the level was ever designed with it, or other major Pagey sources, in mind. I ignore it and climb a tower that I halfway glitch upwards in a poorly telegraphed segment that reminds me of Glover. An unlovable medieval pig is over there and he wants me to find his friends. For some reason. I think he's in every zone, as are probably all of the extremely gross looking NPCs that are arbitrarily assigned roles in what can only be a "design first, affix later" philosophy. They are just here. For some reason.

Everything is here, all at once, for some reason.

Yooka Laylee seems to go over a checklist of things that other Rare games had and hopes that you're very forgiving of it if it doesn't remember why it's doing what it does. The levels feel like they were just strung together one small chunk of land at a time and the grab bag of "necessities" was just sort of emptied out on to the landscape. If anything, it's actually even more reductive than the original Banjo Kazooie on that front. My complaints are not at all that Yooka Laylee is meant to be a pastiche or retread of old Rare platformers and that's bad, but that it fails to even be good at that so far. It's not a good standalone experience, it's not a good nostalgic experience. It's just.... nothing and I can't see this changing either. Maybe I'll get to the latter levels of the game and be shocked that they start appearing thought out. I genuinely wish it played more in the Shovel Knight vein of "this is what your childhood REMEMBERS these games being, not necessarily what they WERE" and not ..... whatever this is.

Back in jungle time, I walk up to a really gross looking cloud that looks like a Donkey Kong Country 3 render from 1996 and challenge him to a race. I groan as I remember that a fun mobility tool that makes the game more enjoyable to navigate actually costs energy to use, despite this move already "costing" an element of controllability as a fair tradeoff. I have to walk into butterflies to regain that stamina it uses. But if I hit B and do the really lazy tongue animation, I eat that same butterfly and regain health instead, actually.

What

Thwack! ... Thwack? Thwack! Thwack!! THWACK!! Thwackthwackthwackthwack!!..... .... Thwaaaaaack!????