My 3rd Favorite Game That I Played In 2023 Is...

my 3rd favorite game that i played in 2023 is...

Freedom Planet 2

i was originally planning to wait on this one until the console version came out in "summer 2023." after it was delayed to the end of the year, i decided to grab the game on pc so i didn't have to wait… and i'm glad i did, because the console versions have been delayed a second time??

(i do not envy their situation and i hope the console versions are better for taking their time. honestly, i'll probably double dip anyway!)

the original Freedom Planet was a formative game experience for me during college. there was something inspiring about the way it shot for the moon – full voice acting, a fun cast of characters, a lived-in world with political intrigue, a focus on adding fast-paced combat – all trying to prove that it's more than just a Sonic fangame in new clothes.

and it worked. it gripped me and never let go! i must've replayed the story half a dozen times, speedran the levels dozens of times each. that's the reason i decided not to wait on the sequel any longer after the first console delay; i grabbed the game on pc and hit the ground running.

one aspect of what makes Freedom Planet special is its level design, and the sequel delivers – every single level is massive, open-ended, and absolutely GORGEOUS. the unique gimmicks, secret collectibles, and speedrun strats are what encouraged me to endlessly replay the first game, and each of those categories has been expanded here into some of the beefiest and most explorable levels i've ever seen in a 2D platformer, hands down. i'm so glad the sequel took its time in the oven, the levels alone were worth the wait!

to me, though, what really makes Freedom Planet stand out from other Sonic-inspired games is its fast and fluid brawling. enemies in each stage take a few hits to defeat, and every stage ends with a grand, bombastic boss fight – you get a handful of moves to tackle these fights with, and each character has very different fighting playstyles! crucially, though, there is no contact damage, meaning you can run circles around enemies while whacking away at their health bars with momentum-based attacks.

it's an incredibly fun and well-thought-out combat system, and its complexity is right at that sweet spot where it feels deep but not overwhelming. honestly it reminds me a lot of kirby's combat, which is one of my favorite combat systems in any video game! (that RtDL remake very nearly made my Top 5 this year…)

Freedom Planet 2 augments the combat system of the original in two ways. one is the addition of a spot-dodge, which feels so perfectly at home that i'm shocked it wasn't in the first game to begin with?? every game with combat benefits from the addition of a dodge, of course, but in this game especially it allows you to keep your momentum while attacking in a way that just feels so natural. there's nothing else quite like learning a boss's attack pattern enough to spot-dodge directly into a powerful counterattack!

but there's also nothing quite so discouraging as getting the boss's health down to a sliver… and biting the dust. here, too, is a place where the sequel shines: if you lose a life, you can choose to restart from a checkpoint with all your health recovered, or you can get back up on the spot with just 1 HP. the push and pull on this system is incredible – you risk getting a game over and having to redo the whole stage… but you could clutch out a victory at the last second! it has the capacity to turn near misses into huge successes, and it saved my ass countless times over the course of the adventure.

tying this all together is a great story that isn't quite as Big and Grand as the first game, but instead serves to deepen the connection between this loveable cast of characters by exploring their history and personalities in more detail. i'm still floored by the fact that these games have full voice acting – it truly makes the characters feel more alive, their personalities shine! the style of VA isn't everyone's cup of tea, i'm well aware… but as someone with fond memories of saturday morning cartoons, i find that it's very genuine and full of heart in a way that most films and AAA games don't really hit me. it's obvious that everyone involved had a ton of fun!

my one regret is that i haven't returned to the game since my first playthrough – i'd really like to replay those levels and see how fast i can clear them! and try out the other characters, and see what the arcade mode is like, and go for the achievements, and…

dev commentary time! have you ever wondered what's beyond the edges of the game world…? leaping over a wall that it seems you could reach, or changing the events of a game's story by skipping an obvious trap, or looking for secret areas that the NPCs talk about. sometimes the game rewards you! and sometimes the game wasn't programmed for that. but i spent a LOT of time testing various theories like those as a kid, and this challenge was my way of capturing a little bit of that magic.

the "glitched" flagpole is, of course, very intended. it uses a metric ton of the game's custom event system under the hood, which means i could add a secret challenge to it without much fuss. but a player would not have the chance to try slipping past it on their first try – it's a purposeful trap, made to look exactly like the power lines that toggle the level's fading pathways. even the flag graphic itself is disabled, and the border that stops Mario's portal gun is removed (a feature exclusive to newer versions of Mari0!).

so i love the idea of a challenge that lets you get past that trap, and circumvent the climax of the adventure! what else lies beyond the flagpole? where does it take you? maybe there's some corrupted level data, or an alternate ending…??

…well, to be honest, i didn't have a lot of time to do anything fancy! by this point in development i was cramming as much as i could before my self-imposed birthday deadline. i had to settle for a simple challenge to tie together the secret coins and call it a day. it may not be cool in execution, but at least it's cool on paper, right?

the challenge itself is an alternate take on the ending of Raspberry Rainbow, the level's remix – once i laid out the jump for the last coin, i figured that a taller version that requires portals would be a neat way to remix the remix, if you will. like a third tier challenge! if anything, Raspberry Rainbow is the player's biggest hint that there's something beyond the glitched flagpole, even before getting to the mural… though i don't think anyone ever realized that was supposed to be a hint.

like all of the secret coins, this challenge requires the portal gun. with a mouse and keyboard, it's the perfect level of pressure for the average player! but sadly, it's a little too tight for players using a controller. the angles are just too precise, the time just too short. luckily, dying behind the flagpole here resets to the checkpoint without triggering the cutscene that goes to the final level, so the player can retry without any problems… as long as they don't touch the flagpole itself.

it's not as fancy as i wanted it to be. there's no alternate ending hidden behind the flagpole or whatever. but as the last secret coin… it does lead directly to the secret ending in its own way! and that's what counts. maybe in another game, i can explore that out-of-bounds magic more thoroughly~

Secret Coin 4 (Vinegar Void) | Retrush

The final secret mural suggests that we can get past the glitchy flagpole that normally sends us to the final stage! But how do we get there, and what awaits us at the end…? Only one way to find out!

y'know people always ask what you're favorite game is

but nobody ever asks what your least favorite game is

truth be told, that's a much harder question to answer! i'm usually able to wring some enjoyment out of the worst games, if only to laugh at them, explore them in a historical context, or find lessons on what not to do when making a game. even the time i streamed "Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade" – the lowest rated game currently on Metacritic – i got some enjoyment out of laughing at the game with my friend, and i still think of it as one of my favorite early streams!

that means that, generally, my least favorite games sit somewhere in the middle; they're competent enough to not have laughable flaws, but boring enough that i have no desire to finish them. unsurprisingly, i remember very few of these, because they don't leave any impression on me!

so discarding that angle... in the vein of my favorite games of the year being ranked by my favorite memories, the most fun i had – i need to dig through my memories for something so horrifyingly bad that it left a lasting impression on me. and i might just know the answer. so without further ado, here's the story of:

My Least Favorite Game Ever

i like to brag that my first console was a sega dreamcast at any opportunity i can get – it's worth bragging about! that cute little console was way ahead of its time, and i was proud of the library i had built up. sonic adventure 1 and 2, daytona usa 2001, chu chu rocket, rayman 2…

every saturday my friends from the area would come over, and we would all take turns racing each other at sa2 or daytona. my parents would provide us with snacks and drinks – one time they even hosted a daytona tournament! those saturdays are why i love streaming so much, why i love playing mario kart with friends… they were essential to my growth as a kid, and i cherish the memories dearly.

one day, though, we had to move away from my friends in the area, because my dad was graduating and we could no longer live in the apartments on campus. it was a time of great change for many reasons: right before we left, mom found a big gaming deal – we could trade up my dreamcast for a gamecube with a memory card and a free game! so mom managed to drag me to e.b. games and jump on the deal, even though i didn't understand why… my dreamcast works perfectly fine, right?

but it was 2003, and nobody told me that the dreamcast had been dead for two years. few stores carried dreamcast games anymore, and frankly, it was a miracle that e.b. games was offering a trade-up deal this late.

i nervously brought my dreamcast and my precious library of games to the counter. they handed me a list to choose my free game from – just a simple printed list of names, with no covers or gameplay details, no way to look at the back of the box.

i did not recognize a single game on the list.

i nervously tried to back out of the deal, but we were already here, and mom was growing impatient. so i chose the one franchise i recognized – a game called Shrek: Extra Large – and took my new gamecube home.

i HATED it.

the game was dull, short, and crude; it had no life in it whatsoever. i remember 100%ing the game in just the short week between trading everything in and the time we moved. i hated the story, hated the gameplay, hated the music, hated the humor.

i wished i could play anything else… but i had no other games anymore. the dreamcast was my only console, and i sold it all. for this.

worse still, the game had no multiplayer. on my last saturday there, i had to tearfully explain to my friends that i no longer had my beloved dreamcast, so we could not play sonic adventure 2 anymore, and we couldn't even play the one game i did have together.

it stung all the harder when we moved, and i no longer had my dreamcast… or my friends.

as soon as we finished moving, the first thing i did was sell that accursed game. i got a couple bucks back, which was just enough to afford a used copy of Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly – a game that, these days, has a reputation for being glitchy and repetitive.

…and i had WAY more fun with it! the gamecube wasn't a total wash after all!!

before long, i gathered a library of new games i was actually happy with: sonic heroes, crash bandicoot: wrath of cortex… games that most people these days would call "mid." it didn't matter. i was too young to care, too broken myself to notice how broken the games were. i made do.

and then, one day, i finally found Sonic Adventure 2: Battle in the store – and i begged my parents to buy it for me. the void in my heart was finally filled, and the gamecube would go on to become my childhood favorite console.

was Shrek: Extra Large actually that bad? honestly, i don't remember enough about the game itself to speak from experience. wikipedia suggests that it was heavily panned by critics, so it probably was that bad. one day i want to revisit the game on stream and find out for myself…

but does it matter whether it was good or bad? the game is associated with some of my worst childhood memories – trading my familiar dreamcast away, moving away from my friends without getting to play one last game with them, losing everything i held dear as a kid. the game could be an underrated gem, and it would still be tarnished enough that i could never engage with it in good faith.

if that doesn't qualify for "least favorite game," i don't know what does.

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one last footnote… i've always been curious about which other games i passed up on when i traded in my dreamcast for a gamecube. what other games were on the list? a broken fragment of a memory says that Luigi's Mansion might've been on there… which makes sense, because i wouldn't have recognized it as a mario game from the name alone! but given that shrek was even on the list, it was probably just a bunch of other underselling tripe.

so if you know of any way to dig back through time for that info, let me know! it would've been in December 2003 at e.b. ɡames (or possibly gamestop?), and i imagine it was a nationwide deal rather than a local one. i would love to go dig through some old promo paper scans or press releases…

'tis the season for ogg nog jokes

*robotnik voice* I ATE THAT EGGNOG

broke: going to bed

woke: sending my ass to eepy deepy

new stream archive, in which we unwrap some surprise gifts from the Christmas SAGE Expo! we only had time to get to a handful of games, but they are all high quality and very fun 🎁