Original Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Where We Played It: Nintendo Switch, SNES library, Switch Online.

Verdict: 90s kids were a heck of a lot more patient than me.

Super Mario World is legendary.

Perhaps the most legendary Mario title. Odds are, if you ask someone to draw Mario, the version they come up with looks an awful lot like the 16-bit hero of this game: bright blue and red, slightly paunchy, that famous pixel moustache.

Super Mario World is the best-selling Super Nintendo game of all time. It sold 20,610,000 units, a number which cannot be explained solely by the fact SMW came packed in with the console at release in 1991. For a time, it seemed like everyone owned SMW, and if you didn’t, you’d begged, borrowed, stolen a copy in order to fit in. So yes, sure, I’d dabbled in SMW in the past, at birthday parties and sleepovers and at arcade bars like Toronto’s ZED*80. What I had not done, until now, was actually sit down and play the dang thing from beginning to end.

No taking turns with a cousin, no abandoning my progress mid-World-3 because Dad came to pick me up. Booting it up recently, I felt like I was travelling through time: finally sitting down to my own copy of SMW, finally in with the cool kids. Even if they’d all long since grown up, had kids, and dusted off those very same cartridges to introduce a whole new generation to this legendary experience.

My name is Steven Lantier, and I am here to tell you Super Mario World is not as good as you remember.

This realization shocked me, and it took a while to reconcile myself to it. (This was one of the harder entries to write in the burgeoning Late to the Game series.)

But before we get to my concerns (and your opprobrium), I think it’s fair to start with the good stuff.

First and foremost, Super Mario World is a walking, running, jumping blueprint. The urtext for the side-scrolling platformer, SMW is inherently fun to play, if only to spot all the ideas which set the standard for decades to come.

Without Super Mario World, we simply wouldn’t have Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, and Super Meat Boy. No Celeste, Rayman, or Braid either, not to mention the thousands of other games that owe a debt of gratitude, one way or another, to this 1990 classic directed by Takashi Tezuka and produced by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Obviously, there’s a lot that works here.

The level design is fun and interesting, with a bevy of powerups – a feather which grants a flying cape, a flower that lets you shoot fireballs – which keep level progression interesting. Enemy types are well-designed, albeit rather repetitive (there’s something like twelve different Koopa Troopas). The miniboss fights at the end of each world against the various Koopalings – Lemmy, Wendy, and other characters I’d only ever encountered in Mario Kart – are enjoyable and fair.

SMW also sees the introduction of the Yoshis – this game clarifying Yoshis are a species, not just one individual – with many of the game’s best moments happening when you’re astride a green, blue, or yellow giant dinosaur, hoovering up enemies. This is, in all honesty, peak Yoshi, the perfect combination of novel gameplay mechanics married to rewarding level design. No other game – not Yoshi’s Island with its annoying Baby Mario, not Super Mario Galaxy 2 with its decent-but-less-imaginative Yoshi levels – comes close.

Super Mario World is also beautiful, albeit not as beautiful as my beloved Donkey Kong Country, which arrived late in the SNES lifespan and which clearly shows it. As you’re undoubtedly already aware, SMW’s soundtrack is also memorably and dangerously earwormy.

But – and here we go now – SMW is also tricky, and annoying, in ways that become increasingly unpleasant as you make your way across its nine worlds (ninety-six levels total, if you track down all the secret ones, which I most assuredly did not).

The controls are floaty – Mario moves like he’s on ice – and the levels are ripe with devious challenges purpose-built to trip you up. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, SMW is very much a game of trial and error, with traps that surprise and enemies that confound the first, fifth, or tenth time you encounter them. I demand an apology from anyone who ever mocked my adoration of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. Super Mario World – and Super Mario himself – is just far too finicky, far too likely to go careening off a ledge despite my best efforts.

These problems are also more or less absent from future Mario entries, further reinforcing the notion that what people think they love about SMW is really what the series became, later on.

Often when I start a new platformer, I’ll try something I call the “Emmitt Smith test”.

It works like this.

In a perfectly designed platformer, it should theoretically be possible to complete a full run-through of a stage, vaulting platforms and dodging enemies, without stopping or slowing even once. If a level hasn’t been optimized – if there are platforms you’re forced to wait for, or syncopated enemy attacks which interrupt game flow – the game fails the test. Sonic the Hedgehog is a case study for Emmitt Smith’ing: even on your first attempt, it’s possible to thrillingly blast your way through a level in one shot, provided you’re paying close enough attention and trusting your reflexes.

SMW, on the other hand, regularly grinds to a halt as you’re forced to stand around and wait: for a platform to move to just the right spot, for an enemy to complete its attack loop, for one or another thing to trigger so Mario can move forward. Valley of Bowser 2 is a prime example of this: half the level is spent idly waiting for screen-filling sand to raise or lower until the operative path becomes available. It’s slow, it’s not particularly challenging, and the only real risk of dying is from boredom.

Probably SMW’s worst sin, however, is its habit of making you jump through an extremely convoluted series of hoops in order to escape one of its endlessly repeating level loops.

Picture this: you’ve completed every level in a given world (Forest of Illusion, Chocolate Island, etc.), only to find there’s no escape route: all roads lead back to levels you’ve already completed. With no other option, you wander aimlessly, hoping, through sheer stroke of luck, to figure out which power-up, in which level, you must find and then carry onward to a different level, where a hidden warp pipe may or may not be waiting for you. Bearing in mind that, if you take any damage, you instantly lose the power-up and have to start the process all over again.

None of this is signposted or even hinted at: you’re expected to find it through guesswork or, as I did, GameFAQs. (I guess in SMW’s heyday, I would’ve asked somebody at school.) This is, frankly, bad game design, and would be unacceptable in 2026: even notoriously vicious games like Elden Ring are suffused with hints and gentle prods to get you going in the right direction.

Other aspects of SMW just beg for the kinds of quality-of-life improvements which became common in later Mario installments:

The lack of overworld checkpoints (it became awfully tempting to use the Switch Online’s “save state” function to protect my progress between levels). The lack of checkpoints within levels, an annoyance which is especially pronounced in the miniboss castles, which must be repeated several times until you emerge triumphant. Then there’s Mario’s default weakened state, where one blow guarantees instant death until you grab a red mushroom and embiggen your hero. Then, too, there’s the anxiety-inducing timer, which grants a maximum of around 204 seconds (three-and-a-half minutes) to complete a level, and which adds needless stress to an already challenging game. (Confusingly, the on-screen timer is a lie: though it appears to display “300” seconds, it actually runs faster than a standard second.)

At times, SMW reminded me of, of all things, Trap Adventure, the notoriously difficult “joke game” in which everything – the level elements, the timer, even the pop-up notifications – is out to kill you in cruelly unpredictable ways. (Incidentally, I have actually beaten Trap Adventure 2, which is perhaps my sole claim to hardcore gaming fame.)

One thing I swore to myself while playing SMW was that, despite the many temptations to do so, I would not exploit the Switch’s “save state” system to drop manual checkpoints for myself. If I were going to defeat SMW, I was going to defeat it by the game’s own rules, saving only when the game prompted me to do so (which isn’t nearly often enough).

In the end, SMW took me about six hours to complete its core campaign, an honest run from World 1-1 to the final battle at Bowser’s Castle.

I dabbled in, but did not bother much with, the “Star Road” secret world, which contains five optional – and uniformly challenging – levels, nor did I bother with the yet more difficult “Special Zone”, which contains such delightfully-named levels as “Tubular”, “Way Cool”, and “Funky”. (Yes, really.)

The Star Road and Special Zone challenges have long been a source of fascination for the global speedrunning community, representing as they do the more experimental (if borderline unplayable) strains of 16-bit design which, even in 2026, feel out of place in the bright, beautiful world of Super Mario World.

Did I enjoy my time with SMW? Well, yes. Insofar as I had fun platforming around the main levels, largely avoiding the optional (tough-as-nails) secret areas, and making recourse to GameFAQs whenever – and it was more often than I expected – I ran into a progression wall, whether trapped in a haunted house or wandering in circles around the overworld.

But I also found SMW frustrating, in ways that simply aren’t present in later or even earlier Mario entries. (I didn’t mention this at the top, but I’ve defeated the original NES Super Mario Bros. on several occasions, and that game is hardly a cakewalk either.)

SMW is, in other words, a flawed entry in the Nintendo canon, an opinion which I know will likely get me into hot water, to which I’d ask, have you even played Super Mario World recently?

I’d also ask, is it even possible to play SMW with fresh eyes, if it already resides so firmly in your rose-tinted memory? (Maybe one day I’ll start a series called #FF1D8D-Coloured Glasses, where I revisit beloved games from my own childhood… but that’s a project for another day.)

It’s a funny thing, really. After so many successful Late to the Games, I really didn’t think Super Mario World would be the game to force me to admit, yes, the classics aren’t always as welcoming or accessible as we’d like to think.

I still believe it’s worth trying Super Mario World if you’ve never played it – and it’s easy enough to find, in 2026 – but I wouldn’t recommend it with the same vigour as, say, Link to the Past or Final Fantasy VI, to pick two previous games I’ve covered here.

Super Mario 64, on the other hand? Required homework.

***
Final Score: 8 out of 10 Power Stars.

For more “Late to the Game” adventures, check out our archive.

The post Late to the Game: Super Mario World appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A (surprisingly violent!) stealth/horror title with a wonderful Burtonesque aesthetic.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s entertaining in its own morbid way.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Wednesday Addams.

THE HILLS ARE SILENT

Tarsier Studio’s macabre Reanimal, its first new horror title since the well-received pair of Little Nightmares of 2017/2021, is an engaging, well-told, if fairly disturbing adventure, where the emphasis is less on the truly frightening and more on maintaining a generally eerie vibe. As such, it’s not as scary as fans might hope, though it definitely has its standout moments, even as its story is interesting enough to pursue on its own.

THE EVIL IS RESIDENT

From its opening, contextless sequence – a stormy rescue at sea – Reanimal takes off and rarely lets up.

Following the trials and tribulations of a pair of animal mask-wearing siblings as they seek to escape the clutches of a horrifying assortment of adult-coded foes, Reanimal offers a solid core of stealth gameplay, in service of a series of disturbing setpieces overflowing with dark shadows, slithering monstrosities, and quite a lot of blood and guts. The fact that these are children we’re playing as makes it all the more distressing.

Moment to moment, Reanimal plays a lot like a horror-inflected version of Ico, that classic of PS2 immersive adventuring. Whether playing in two-player co-op or solo (we honestly preferred solo, it contributed to the oppressive vibe), expect to spend a lot of time exploring expertly rendered environments – a coastal castle, a tumbledown cinema, a flooded city – in pursuit of doohickeys to unlock the next obstacle in your way, all while being stalked by a myriad of Burtonesque foes.

Although the aesthetic remains fairly consistent – grim, grey – throughout, this set-up does allow for quite a bit of diversity in terms of what you’re exposed to, each new area an opportunity for another new set-piece. One minute, you’ll be dropped into an extended homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, while in another you might be easing your rickety motorboat through a flooded building while underwater monsters bear down on you. It’s good stuff.

THE FRAME, FATAL

While technically a spiritual sequel to Little Nightmares, Reanimal perhaps has more in common with the horrifying creations of Playdead, the brains behind the critically-acclaimed Limbo and Inside. Like those games (and, to be fair, like Little Nightmares before it), Reanimal embraces an approach which might best be described as “horrifying stuff, plus kids!”

This both lends it a certain sense of urgency – you worry more for these oddball kids than you would for, say, a lonely explorer traipsing through an abandoned space station – but it also occasionally allows for Reanimal to veer into the unpleasant. Frankly, it feels borderline wrong to see these kids subjected to certain of these environments, these visuals. The fact they’re merely avatars for you, the player, makes it tolerable, but there’s an unshakeable “ick” factor, not present even in the previous Little Nightmareses, which were decidedly more tame.

Another fair comparator might be BioShock, in which you could – with a merciful fade to black – “harvest” the spirits of that game’s mutant Little Sisters, which at the time represented a rare dalliance with a relatively untouchable aspect of interactive storytelling. Reanimal, in which your youthful protagonists can die in fairly macabre ways, does not offer such a fade to black, though the stylized art at least blunts the trauma of it.

That said, my main criticism is, perhaps ironically, the opposite: Reanimal fails to make death consequential. Checkpoints are frequent, and there’s rarely any cost to failing a segment and restarting. Over time, this both encourages risk-taking (why bother trying your best when you can just instantly retry) and dulls the threat of foes or obstacles: the third or fourth time you begin the same chase sequence, it’s hard to get exercised about the giant snake dude slithering from up-screen.

Still, at a breezy five-hour campaign (with a handful of optional unlockables to pad out the extra time for those interested), Reanimal nevertheless earns a hearty Toronto Guardian recommendation for any horror fans. It looks great, it plays wonderfully, and it has enough spookiness – and more than enough entertaining set-pieces – to reward the interested horror gamer.

***
Final score: 8/10 Pugsleys.

Visit the official website for Reanimal here.

The post Reanimal (PS5) Review: Big Nightmares appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The latest – and, spoilers, fantastic – entry in the surprisingly long-running Scott Pilgrim series of comic books, video games, movies, and cartoons.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a delightful, if canonically ambiguous, entry in our beloved, Toronto-centric series.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Every Torontonian, most geeks, and definitely Michael Cera.

BREAD MAKES YOU FAT?

There’s never been a better time to be a Torontonian.

Between last month’s side-splittingly funny Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie – a film that begins and ends with a CN Tower “heist” of sorts – and this month’s release of Scott Pilgrim EX, sequel to the goofy movie with which Nirvanna shares no small amount of DNA, Toronto is proudly, entertainingly, back in the spotlight.

It’s been sixteen long years since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Movie blew our collective minds with its raucous, geekified take on Toronto, introducing a whole generation of dorks to the awesomeness that is our city. It’s been longer still since Scott Pilgrim debuted, in the pages of the cult classic graphic novel – the first entry of which arrived in 2004 – written and illustrated by Ontario’s own Bryan Lee O’Malley. (He grew up in London, Ontario, but moved to Toronto in the early ‘00s.)

For a long while, Scott Pilgrim had the feel of a precious, hidden gem: one you either knew about and lovingly embraced, or missed out on entirely. Despite landing director Edgar Wright – of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame – the film adaptation performed poorly at the box office before quickly disappearing into obscurity, the flame kept alive in only the most obscure (and not necessarily even Canadian) corners of the Internet.

Over time, though, something wonderful happened.

Acclaim for the film, not to mention the excellent, underrated comic book series, began to grow. Critical reappraisals followed, even as it became hard not to notice the film’s impeccable casting instincts – its bevy of future-famous faces includes Kieran Culkin (“Wallace”), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“Ramona Flowers”), and Aubrey Plaza (“Julie Powers”) – not to mention Brampton’s own Michael Cera in the title role. Amusingly, the movie also features a plethora of superhero actors, including ex-Superman Brandon Routh (“Todd Ingram”), ex-Human Torch/future-Captain America Chris Evans (“Lucas Lee”), and future-Captain Marvel Brie Larson (“Envy Adams”).

It took some time, but eventually Scott Pilgrim went from cult classic to cult canon, earning for itself a sequel animated series – 2023’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – and several beautifully remastered editions of the graphic novels, not to mention various action figures, Funko pops, and board games. (Surely, the truest sign of nerd success).

Now here we are, 2026, and Scott Pilgrim EX – the title is an amusingly geeky double-entendre – has arrived. A direct sequel to the 2010 Scott Pilgrim tie-in video game, as well as a pseudo-sequel to both the comic book and the recent Takes Off, with which it shares its canonically dubious continuity, EX is a fantastic (if flawed) retro-action title, and a must-play for gaming geeks and Canadians alike.

It’s also very, very funny.

I’M IN LESBIANS WITH YOU

Like its decade-and-a-half-old predecessor, Scott Pilgrim EX is a hardcore 2.5D side-scrolling beat-em-up, a genre which generally involves moving left to right, foreground to background, as you and, in optional multiplayer, your team of allies, take on a succession of missions. Here, the six-or-so-hour campaign is suitably silly, as you track down your band’s missing/stolen instruments, dispersed across space and time thanks to the machinations of “Metal Scott”. And yes, if you recognize that as a Sonic CD reference, you’re tuned right into this game’s wavelength.

Selecting from a roster of familiar faces – Scott, Ramona, a few of their famous “Evil Exes”, some spoilery characters – your team of one to four players (crossplay enabled; shout-out to my PS4-owning buddy Carl!) is set loose on a wonderfully realized 16-bit Toronto, here rendered as an interconnected set of screens which can be more-or-less freely explored. It’s a nice touch, having everything connected from the start (with hidden shortcuts connecting the farthest flung locations), instead of the more traditional structure of standalone levels, as in the recent Marvel Cosmic Invasion (also from Tribute Games) or the previous Scott Pilgrim game.

Gameplay is slightly more sophisticated than button-mashing, as you’ll need to learn the difference between regular and heavy attacks, expert use of the throw/pick-up function (for weapons), and of course your various super attacks. Most fun of all, EX has an abundance of unlockable summons, ranging from Sex Bob-omb’s #1 fan Young Neil (who summons a legion of groupies, it’s hilarious) to Ramona’s zippy housecat. We’ll refrain from spoiling more, but part of the fun of EX is unlocking each new summon and trying him/her/them out until you decide on your favourites.

Also, the soundtrack, by returning chiptune artists Anamanaguchi, is fantastic, demonstrating that the band, which scored both the original game and the recent Takes Off TV series, haven’t lost their touch.

THINK ABOUT DEATH AND GET SAD AND STUFF

Splitting the difference between nerd homage and Toronto love, EX is overflowing with fantastic references, from knowing character and level designs to tributes to iconic parts of Toronto.

On the nerd/gamer side, you’ll encounter an overwhelming amount of familiar-looking enemies and items, liberally “borrowed” from titles like Super Mario, Mortal Kombat, Devil May Cry, and a frankly absurd number of allusions to my favourite 16-bit series, Ghosts ‘n Goblins. (Clearly, someone at Tribute is as big of a Sir Arthur aficionado as I am.) There’s also an entire Ocarina of Time-like system for learning various “riffs” (bass, drums, etc.) which progress the story. It’s awesome.

When it comes to Canadiana, Montréal-based Tribute Games – founded by several veterans of the Ubisoft team that developed the original game – clearly knows their Toronto. There’s the obvious – the CN Tower, a brilliantly reimagined Casa Loma, plentiful TTC references – accompanied by the more specific, like lovingly parodic takes on Toronto stalwarts such as Honest Ed’s (rip), Second Cup, and Shopper’s Drug Mart. Heck, there’s even a whole shop which exclusively sells power-ups named after Neil Young albums.

CONSTANT COMMENT

Scott Pilgrim EX is not without its problems, at least some of which are inherited from its tough-as-nails predecessor.

To begin with, EX can be ruthlessly difficult, refusing to dole out a bare minimum of health power-ups even as it sends you through increasingly harsh challenges. The placement of checkpoints – often before a long gauntlet of enemies preceding a boss fight – can feel unfair, albeit accurate to the quarter-munching era to which this game also pays homage. EX also crashed several times during our playthrough, most notably at the height of a particularly tough boss fight. Not cool.

Indeed, EX is one of the few games to earn a rare Toronto Guardian “Easy Mode” Stamp of Approval: it’s frankly a better game on lower difficulties, since the combat, while still challenging, is offset by what feels like a fair allotment of health and other power-ups.

EX is also clearly designed with multiplayer in mind, so woe be to any solo gamers. Combat in general is more fun with allies, while boss fights are more tolerable with multiple players teaming up. In fact, there reached a point during my single-player playthrough that I began activating a second controller for every boss, leaving my idle ally to soak up enemy attacks as a distraction. Also, fair warning: some mechanics – like the ability to revive after being K.O.’d – are only available in multiplayer.

Then there are the minor, but nevertheless irritating, problems. Puzzles and Shops which don’t save your progress when you die between checkpoints, forcing you to go back and repurchase/redo everything. Unskippable dialogue sequences. Unskippable dialogue sequences. In 2026. The (bizarre) inability to swap characters from anywhere but Ramona’s house, necessitating longish treks across the map whenever you want to change your hero. EX also suffers from some fairly mediocre platforming controls, which mostly don’t matter, but occasionally hinder the game’s optional challenges.

Perhaps the game’s single worst failing is its atrocious revive system. It took us forever to figure out that, once an ally is down and that ten-second counter appears above their head, you need to stand near – but not over – their prone body and manually throw hearts at them, hoping one lands in the correct spot. Even if it wasn’t so poorly explained, it’s still a baffling design choice, adding needless complexity to an essential mechanic which, in any other game, operates with the tap of a button.

Having said that, the weaknesses of Scott Pilgrim EX are only what reduce it from a pure 10/10 to a still impressive 9/10 vegan gelatos. The whole time we were around it, we had a fantastic time. It almost felt like we were on drugs. Not that we do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case we do them all the time. All of them.

***
Final score: 9/10 vegan gelatos.

Visit the official website for Scott Pilgrim EX here.

Check out Bryan Lee O’Malley’s official prequel comic, Scott Pilgrim: Dawn of Metal Scott, here.

The post Scott Pilgrim EX (PS4/5) Review: Oh, Canada appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The ninth mainline entry in the long-shambling zombie horror series.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s brainless fun, emphasis on the brainless.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Cereza, Dante. Kojima.

SEEING S.T.A.R.S

If I had to pick the moment Resident Evil Requiem ceases to be scary, it’s the moment when Leon Kennedy picks up a kill counter.

Up to that point, Requiem had been pretty stupid – like, not boulder-punching stupid, though still pretty dumb – but the addition of the counter, which awards points to be spent on upgrades and yet bigger guns, marks the moment in which I gave up all hope on Requiem living up to its prerelease promise.

Some context: prior to 2017’s brilliant Resident Evil 7: biohazard, the series had been trapped in a downward spiral, devolving into a self-parody of what it used to be. Taking all the wrong lessons from the era-defining RE4, Capcom doubled-down on action and braindead gunplay, with RE5 and then RE6 – a game featuring a zombified U.S. president – representing the absolute nadir of the series.

When, in 2017, the series soft rebooted with the first-person biohazard – not to mention its nauseatingly terrifying demo, easily one of the scariest games ever made – Capcom demonstrated it still had the magic (horror) touch.

The subsequent Resident Evil VIIIage (2021) returned to some of the stupidity of RE4 (whose influence it wears on its zombified, Euro-village sleeve), but still managed to deliver the frights, largely courtesy the memeworthy Lady Dimitrescu. When Capcom openly promised that Requiem – that’s Resident Evil 9, for those keeping track at home – would be a return to form, starring an inexperienced everyman protagonist akin to the terrified Claire Redfield or Ethan Winters of prior games, we RE diehards had every reason to be excited.

Then we learned that Grace Ashcroft, featured so heavily in the advance trailers, was only a co-star, alongside a gun-toting Uncle-Bro Leon Kennedy returning from RE2 and RE4.

A WHOLE LOT OF BSAA

Things start worryingly in Requiem (RE9 for short), with a plot hole-laden opening in which the FBI deploys a solo, inexperienced agent to investigate the site of a recent murder. Oh, and the crime scene also happens to be the site of a traumatizing episode from the agent’s childhood. But sure, let’s send Agent Grace Ashcroft on her own with no backup. Nothing could possibly go wrong…

Once things go wrong, Requiem quickly gives you a strong flavour of the competing interests at play in this game.

On the one hand, there’s the fairly scary, albeit haphazardly told, story of a young, frightened woman, ill-equipped to survive the mysterious medical centre to which she has been kidnapped.

On the other hand, there’s a big, explosive, action game featuring a dude with a propensity for roundhouse-kicking zombies to the face. When the game focuses on Grace, it can, at least, be scary. When it turns to Leon, as it increasingly does before effectively handing the game over to him in its latter half, it’s mostly stupid, albeit enjoyable in its own stupid way.

Sticking to Grace for a moment, credit to Capcom for walking back its tendency towards overpowered protagonists, here the young FBI agent mostly limited to a weak handgun, some defensive (and breakable) melee weapons, and a whole lot of patience. The best parts of the game involve Grace cowering in fear in one of the many shadowy corners of the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, as she tries (and fails) to avoid being spotted by monstrous foes. Capcom recommends playing as Grace in first-person, and we agree. It’s too bad, however, that Grace herself is so poorly written and poorly acted, with a distractingly fake-sounding nervous stutter which peppers her speech.

Leon, on the other hand, is the designated ass-kicker, an epithet which is not necessarily complimentary in this case. As I’ve noted before, it’s tough to make a scary game when the player carries an overwhelming assortment of explosive weaponry, and the backpack to carry it all in. (Side note: while Grace has to handle some delicate item management, adding some tension à la prior RE games, not once did I ever run out of space in Leon’s oversized equipment bag.)

Moreover, making that character a motorcycle-riding, one-liner-quipping “badass” unfortunately brings this game ever closer to the Re5/RE6 template, albeit without those games’ diversity of ideas. Indeed, another complaint I have about RE9 is how rarely it departs from standard zombie fare: it’s not until quite late in RE9 that you even get a glimpse of the kinds of alternative enemies – plants, rabid dogs, zombie sharks – which were ubiquitous in prior entries.

One tip for making the Leon sections scarier, at least? Play it in first-person, and ignore Capcom’s “recommended” third-person view.

RE9 also marks the Metal Gearification of this beloved series (and I say this as Canada’s biggest Metal Gear fan), beginning with its pair of cartoonish, over-the-top villains who feel completely out of place. And that’s even before RE9 awkwardly tries to retcon them into key aspects of RE lore.

Speaking of which, much like later Metal Gear entries, RE9 is much too in love with its own past, revisiting not only certain environments but even specific enemies, long thought dead. Sadly, however, unlike MGS4‘s triumphant return to Shadow Moses Island (surely a series highlight), RE9‘s return to Raccoon City (a spoiler already given away in the trailers) has little if anything interesting to say, offering a perfunctory revisit to a few familiar locales, now stripped of any fear factor.

Most egregiously, certain sequences in RE9 play like cheap rehashes of things done better before, including a nearly beat-for-beat retread of the nursery portion of the (far superior) Resident Evil 2 remake.

TRICELL HARDER

One day, Capcom will tell the story of the Umbrella Corporation architect and their love for wide-open atriums featuring curved double staircases.

That day, we’ll also learn why everything from metropolitan police stations to rural healthcare centres is locked behind a series of inscrutable, symbol- and gem-based puzzles. Maybe, we’ll also learn why nobody thought these might pose a safety hazard, particularly when, say, a bioweapon has been accidentally unleashed, and people just need to get through a closed door.

Until that day, we’re left with the often ludicrous, undeniably entertaining, and wildly varying Resident Evil games. Although it’s been some time since their peak, even this latest entry, likely destined to go down as a minor entry in the RE canon, is still a great deal of zombie-stomping fun. Don’t forget to pack a Green Herb.

***
Final score: 7/10 Zombified Great White Sharks.

Visit the official website for Resident Evil Requiem here.

The post Resident Evil Requiem (PS5) Review: Brain Dead appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Original Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Version We Played: SNES Online Library, Nintendo Switch

Verdict: An impressive urtext for action-adventure titles, undermined by some dated design choices.

I owe The Legend of Zelda a debt of gratitude.

If not for Zelda, it’s safe to say there’s no Ōkami, Ico, or Shadow of the Colossus. No Portal or Bloodborne or Beyond Good and Evil either. Heck, I don’t think something as oddball as NieR: Automata would exist, at least not in its heavily Zelda-influenced form.

Most of these aren’t Zelda-alikes, precisely, but they’re games which, in the decades since The Legend of Zelda debuted in 1986, have all adopted or iterated on its innovative gameplay, world design, and storytelling. Most of these games are strong contenders for Greatest of All Time. (Many of them appeared on my recent PS2 ranking, for that matter.)

I came to the Zelda series late.

Ocarina of Time was the first entry I played, some ten years after it debuted. (As I’ve mentioned before, ours was a Sony household, so I was late to the game with many N64 classics, Super Mario 64 included.) I adored Ocarina, though it would take still more time before I got my hands on Twilight Princess (liked it), Skyward Sword (was mostly confused and bored), Wind Waker (loved it), and eventually the twofer of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which I found enjoyable, compelling, and beautiful.

Zelda fans will have noticed the omissions. I’ve never touched the original Zelda or its bizarro-world side-scrolling sequel. I haven’t played any of the portable titles. I really want to play Majora’s Mask, but it’s just one of those things I’ve never gotten around to (and, to be honest, I’m kind of scared of it).

And then there’s Link to the Past.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was the first game to receive a 39/40 score from fabled Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. Entertainment Weekly named it the best game of all time in 2006. In 1997, both Electronic Gaming Monthly (rip) and Nintendo Power (rip) ranked it third in their respective best-ofs. More recently, the impressive – and rigorously assembled – GQ Magazine “Industry Poll” (think Sight and Sound, but for video games) – ranked Link to the Past 26th, based on the votes of 239 of the world’s greatest game developers, streamers, directors, writers.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is kind of a big deal. And I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to experience it.

I was several hours into Link to the Past before it dawned on me this wasn’t the “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!” game.

That quote, which forms such a core part of gamer identity, was among my very first encounters with Zelda. I’d seen it redone with kitties, and Samwise Gamgee (warning: may make you cry), and other, weirder memes. I always knew it was from Zelda; I just got the wrong Zelda.

But that quote is rather beautiful in its own way, distilling the entirety of not just Zelda but all gaming into two maximum-information sentences: This world can harm you. This weapon will help. Little surprise, then, that Zelda is the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto, who similarly found a way to distil the essentials in the famous World 1:1 Super Mario Bros. screen.

Link to the Past doesn’t have a “dangerous to go alone” moment. But it does, across its twenty or so hours, contain a multitude of iconic moments – and just as importantly, ideas – which would go on to inform and influence gaming all the way from its 1991 release to present. I have my qualms about it, which I’ll get to below, but I was continually impressed by, appropriately enough, its timelessness.

I must confess, I’ve never felt any particular affection for Zelda protagonist Link. He’s little more than a blank-slate character anyway; a bundle of pixels which serves as a conduit to doing cool things. Unlike, say, the colourful personalities of Final Fantasy, Link is just sort of there: a silent little dude who quietly does whatever you tell him to.

That said, Link’s personality (or lack thereof) allows gamers to immerse themselves in his world, projecting whatever they want onto Link – is he doing this all out of duty? a sense of adventure? love? – as he explores the incredibly realized world of Hyrule.

A world which you’re immediately thrown into, Link to the Past opening on the sleepy protagonist (you get to custom-name him, but let’s face it, he’ll always be Link) awoken in the middle of the night to rescue Princess Zelda from a nearby castle. Then, sooner than you might think, you’ll have found and seemingly rescued Zelda, acquired some fun new abilities, defeated your first major boss, only for the forces of evil to swoop in, sending you on an even larger journey than Link – or the player – could have imagined. (Even I was surprised by the scope of this thing.)

In particular, the revelation that Link will be travelling between two worlds – the Light and the Dark – dramatically shakes up the game, Nintendo swiftly demonstrating to players that there’s a lot more to see and do than first appearances suggest. It’s impressive enough today, but must have been genuinely mind-blowing back in 1991.

That opening also quickly establishes a pattern you’ll come to recognize: Link (and Link) always has something new and exciting to do, some new item or weapon to try out. It’s a “just one more thing” design philosophy which was surely the bane of 90s parents and babysitters everywhere.

Link to the Past also manages to avoid the kind of predictability that plagues modern AAA design: dungeons don’t necessarily resemble what you might associate with the word “dungeon”; characters do and say unexpected things; what appears at first to be a quick task may turn into a lengthy quest-line, unfurling in interesting, unexpected directions. The dichotomy between the Light and Dark worlds – a trope which Link to the Past basically invented – is impeccably handled, training you to recognize how something encountered in one world may be a clue to something that awaits in the other. (A delightful roster of NPCs, non-player-characters inhabiting both worlds, adds interesting twists on this set-up.)

Perhaps the best part is how much of Link to the Past unfolds organically, the story beats and gameplay developments rarely feeling forced or “gamey”. Courtesy the tag-team of producer Miyamoto and director Takashi Tezuka, who also co-directed the first several Super Mario games, the world feels lived in, with believable (if cliché) stakes. Link isn’t just going from Point A to Point B because that’s what video games do; he – and by extension you, the player – is reacting believably to the world around him.

Whether that’s because he’s stumbled across a clue pointing to a remote corner of the map, or because there’s a new item/upgrade which needs testing, you’re always given a legitimate, logical reason to keep moving, keep exploring.

Link to the Past is undoubtedly a masterpiece. But it’s a thirty-four-year-old masterpiece, with all the graphical and technological archaisms that implies. It’s engaging and propulsive, the gameplay is fantastic, the music is great (if repetitive), and it’s genuinely hard to put down, especially in its portable-friendly Switch version. It doesn’t quite surpass Ocarina of Time – still the standard-bearer Zelda for me, and they say your first Zelda is always your favourite Zelda – but it’s easy to understand its enduring popularity.

Which is why it’s now time to talk about save states.

Also known as “suspend points”, I’m referring to the built-in save functionality available on the Switch’s SNES Emulator, which lets you manually save progress any time, anywhere. Used wisely, save states can smooth over a game’s rougher patches, allowing players to quickly and painlessly drop checkpoints just before a tricky challenge. Used unwisely, this function can be abused in the form of “save scumming”, where players obsessively save every few seconds, even in the middle of a boss battle, reloading every time something goes awry.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was built for save states. In fact, I’d go even further: I cannot imagine playing this game without save states, and it’s a wonder my 90s classmates had the patience to deal with this game in its original form.

Let’s start with the backtracking.

The Zelda series has long had an annoying tendency to shepherd you all the way to a specific point, only to reveal you’ve missed something essential, elsewhere. In Link to the Past, it might be a missing item, or insufficient stock (like enough arrows or a full magic meter), or an overlooked clue. In Link, this is most pronounced when it comes to accessing the game’s dozen or so dungeons, which can rarely be accessed by walking up to the front door. Instead, Link to the Past forces you to trek all up and down the world map, swapping back and forth between the Light and Dark worlds, harvesting items and running into dead ends, until you figure out the correct combination of steps to gain entry. Some of this feels fair, and can precipitate interesting detours. Other times, it’s just a slog.

Then there’s Zelda’s ruthless, even cruel, dungeon design. Now, I’ll preface this by saying that, on the whole, there is much to admire about the way Zelda constructs its levels: the series generally does a great job of prodding you in the right direction, there are nice rewards for exploration, and the way everything threads together – typically, through the integration of Link’s newest power-up into the dungeon’s puzzles and boss fight – is quite impressive.

Unfortunately, Link to the Past – much like, say, Elden Ring – also has a nasty tendency of punishing players through that very same world design. Boss fights are often situated at the end of a brutal gauntlet of enemies and puzzles, with no checkpoints or health items to salve the player’s wounds. Some dungeons have annoying gimmicks – like a giant hand that drags Link back to the entrance – which serve as unfair impediments. This becomes a particular source of frustration towards the end of the game, with larger dungeons overrun with traps, dead ends, and other tricks that can easily set you back a not-insignificant amount. Purists may scoff, but I found “save states” to be an effective cure-all to these problems… so long as I avoided the temptation to save scum. (And believe me, it can be tempting.)

Link to the Past is also guilty of the sin of concealing or omitting information. This is not true of later Zeldas, and is probably the factor that will cause the most headaches for those attempting this game today. To take one example: two of the dungeons in Link to the Past are marked with distinct symbols which do not appear anywhere else in the game world. It turns out they’re associated with two secret medallions, unlocked by heading to completely arbitrary spots on the map, where you must fulfil certain, equally arbitrary, conditions. You either have to get lucky and stumble upon them (as I did for one medallion), or give up and consult a strategy guide (as I did for the other, thank you zeldadungeon.net).

To take another, far more egregious example: the final boss of the game cannot be defeated through conventional means. By which I mean, after having spent, conservative estimate, at least an hour-and-a-half attempting different strategies, repeatedly banging mine and Link’s head against a seemingly unpassable progression wall, I finally consulted a walkthrough… where I learned the boss quite literally could not be damaged until I acquired not one, but two secret weapons.

This rather important information is not communicated whatsoever by the game, not even through oblique hints. Back in the pre-Internet 90s, I’m guessing this resulted in a lot of toll calls to the 1-900 Nintendo Tip Line, and/or schoolyard conversations with friends whose uncles worked at Nintendo. Even in 2026, it simply feels unfair. (A cursory online search suggests I’m hardly alone in this.)

That said, a lot of my criticisms of Link to the Past are really just criticisms of the Zelda series as a whole. That tracks: Link to the Past basically set the template, so its weaknesses are also the weaknesses of Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker and even, to a lesser extent, Breath of the Wild – though those latter games are far more forgiving. If nothing else, Link to the Past is a reminder that the days of insta-death restarts, or labyrinthine dungeons with no checkpoints, are (mostly) behind us.

In the end, A Link to the Past’s age-related deficiencies do not undercut what is, in nearly every other respect, a remarkable achievement.

I like the subtle touches in Link to the Past, like the way environmental details are designed to catch your eye, encouraging exploration. (This is particularly true in the interplay between the Light and Dark worlds.) I like the way your sword automatically fires projectiles so long as you maintain full health – a feature which is never explicitly laid out, but which is present from the start. I especially appreciate the way Link’s abilities can be deployed to unexpected effect, like using the dash attack to clear a field of grass, or firing the hook-shot into a treasure chest to quickly bridge a gap.

There’s so much more to love. The thrill of entering each new dungeon, excited to see what challenges and new mechanics lie in store. Link’s diverse array of weapons, which are unsurprisingly excellent, ranging from standard fare like the bow-and-arrow or bombs, to more unique offerings like various magical canes. I’m a particular fan of the boomerang, which is vastly more effective at both defeating enemies and obtaining items than I was expecting. Sure, everyone loves the Master Sword, but I’d happily nominate the Link to the Past boomerang for entry in the Video Game Weapon Hall of Fame alongside it.

Mostly, I love the way Link to the Past’s many parts come together so effortlessly: the map which gently guides you to interesting places; the unlockable abilities which grant access to those places; the dungeons which subtly teach you how best to make use of those abilities. I love these dungeons, how meticulously plotted they all are, offering a steady stream of challenges and rewards for overcoming those challenges. What I said about Link to the Past playing out organically really holds true throughout: while it’s a meaty game, running a good twenty or so hours, it never feels overlong or overstuffed, since the game is always nudging you in the right direction for that next big thing.

It pains me, however, that Link to the Past is imperfect, even as a three-decade-old artefact, with certain archaic design elements which are borderline hostile.

I’d like to think that I write this with relative impunity: as someone who’s clawed and bled his way through three Fromsoftware titles, not to mention countless Ghosts ‘n Goblinses, I’m not immune to the charms of harsh checkpointing or inscrutable boss design. Still, I occasionally found myself struggling with – or rolling my eyes at – Link to the Past’s more player-unfriendly aspects, which, absent the rose-tinted glasses of someone who grew up with it, only underscore how much more important this is as a template, rather than a timeless classic which completely holds up today.

I’m thrilled that I finally got to experience Link to the Past (in its ideal, portable-friendly form, no less), but this is one time where I truly regret having been late to the game and missing out when this game was completely fresh.

***
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is available on SNES (expensive cartridges on eBay!) or via the SNES Online library with a Nintendo Switch online subscription.

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