Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:34 am
Honestly I meant to get this started even before the recent GoDaddy silliness, but for whatever reason life got in the way.
Higurashi When They Cry (AKA Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, 2002-2004)
(I'm using the PS2 cover here but really I'm going through the Steam releases.)
I've mentioned before that I was a fan of the anime adaptation of Higurashi before, but I've never been able to make it through the original visual novels it was adapted from before when I tried playing them before 10+ years ago. Well with a sequel anime currently airing ("Higurashi When They Cry Gou", which I will talk about eventually in my 2021 movie thread after its done airing), nostalgia hit me hard enough to want to go back to the source material for something I was big into as a teenager.
There are eight primary "Chapters" to the main story of Higurashi, with these first four typically being grouped together with a label such as the "Question Arcs" (With Chapters 5 through 8 forming the "Answer Arcs". These are also called Higurashi Kai). As that title implies, these arcs are about setting up the story and the various mysterious goings on that populate it.
The first three stories also follow a similar formula (With the fourth deviating quite a bit): It is June 1983. Keiichi Maebara is the new kid in the village of Hinamizawa. He befriends several girls in his school and joins their Club, which involves board games, general competitions etc. The members include the leader Mion (A tomboyish girl), Rena (A girl who loves everything "kyute".), Satoko (A younger girl who loves traps like she's the kid from Home Alone or something), and Rika (A local shrine maiden girl that is beloved by the village).
One way or another, Keiichi usually learns about a series of unsolved murders that have taken place in Hinamizawa over the last several years. These crimes all have a number of similarities- they take place on the night of the local Watanagashi Festival (Which is dedicated to a local deity called "Oyashiso-sama"), involve one person being murdered, involve a second person completely disappearing, and the crimes end up being attributed to the Curse of Oyashiro-sama in some fashion. As the Chapters themselves go on, some kind of murder and disappearance happens (And the murders are usually brutal too. People are burned alive, have their heads violently bashed in, their stomachs cut open while their organs violently ripped out, etc.), and there's a question of whether this means the Curse is real or if some kind of human culprit is afoot. Also generally more batshit seemingly Lost-style shenanigans start happening.
As you go through the Chapters you also unlock TIPS (Which usually feature either some kind of side-scene featuring characters outside of the main action, or like relevant newspaper articles or journal entries or whatever), and at the end of each Chapter there's an "All Star Cast Review Session" (Which are non-canon bits where the cast of the game talk about the Chapter you just, as if they were just actors playing parts). That's really the extent of the gameplay here, just clicking, reading, and thinking about the mystery on your own, as there are no real choices to make like in typical visual novels (Save for a single choice during a TIP for Himatsubushi, and the joke behind that is that choices in games are meaningless anyways which perhaps puts Higurashi into conversation with games like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and BioShock more than I really expected).
To get into more specifics about individual Chapters...
Ch.1: Onikakushi (2002) - This mostly matches the general explanation given above (And man the Club game segments here are super tedious), though here Ooishi rolls into town and tries to convince Keiichi that his new friends may in fact be involved with committing the murders behind "the curse of Oyashiro-sama" in some fashion. The general story here then focuses on whether Keiichi trusts in his new friends or if his paranoia is in fact justified and his new "friends" may in fact be trying to take his life.
I think once the actual story gets going this is pretty decent still, but I knowing the answers from having seen the anime over a hundred years ago I do have some questions about some character motivations (Namely What Mion and Rena think they're actually doing at any given time).
Ch. 2: Watanagashi (2002) - This is honestly covers a lot of the same ground that the first Chapter/arc covers, though the wrinkle this introduces is Mion having a twin sister named Shion. Shion seems to disappear at once point, and it seems Mion might be the one behind it.
This chapter is kind of blah, as the Club scenes are still a bit much, and it still feels like it retreads a lot of territory from Onikakushi. I do like how this chapter delves more into the politics and history of Hinamizawa though, since that's actually relevant to what's going on at any given time.
Ch. 3: Tatarigoroshi (2003) - It is June 1983. We once again see Keiichi bonding with his friends, seemingly for the first time, though here he bonds the most with Satoko, becoming a sort of older brother figure to her. While this is going on, Satoko's abusive uncle moves back into town, taking custody of Satoko and then generally abusing the shit out of her. Keiichi and his friends try to get Child Protective Services to help with the situation, and fail. Keiichi then decides to take measures into his own hands...through plotting out and executing the murder of the uncle.
This was probably the best of these four chapters, though I feel like its also the most conflicted (For reasons I get into below). I will say it is nice to get a story where Keiichi takes a very proactive stance instead of a reactive one as in Onikakushi and Watanagashi. Honestly it feels kind of Hitchockian in a way to me to (Like Keiichi throwing the Uncle's motorbike into the Onigafuchi swamp gives me vibes of Norman Bates dumping Marion's car into the swamp in Psycho), though it ultimately transitions back into that vaguely Lost-esque storytelling I mentioned about the previous chapters. The slice of life and club stuff I mentioned before works a little better here too since it believably enough sells Keiichi growing attached to Satoko, but man that baseball scene was painful even if it introduces a relatively important character in Dr. Irie.
Ch. 4: Himatsubushi (2004) - It is June 1978. It is the height of the protest against the development of the Hinamizawa Dam, and the protesters are suspected by the national government of having kidnapped the grandson of a prominent politician. A young police officer from Tokyo named Mamoru Akasaka is sent in to investigate if the protesters were really involved with the kidnapping or not, but ends up finding some that affects him personally more than he anticipated.
This arc was a change of pace from the others. Akasaka is very different protagonist than Keiichi, and its nice to have a complete outsider to Hinamizawa instead of only a partial one. This is also easily the shortest chapter of the entire game, which allows it to be the most focused as well. they still do find a a way to insert a kind of pointless mahjong scene though- I already haven't had much patience for these kinds of things to begin with, but mahjong especially is incredibly difficult for me to make any kind of sense of.
Supposedly this arc wasn't even meant to exist at first too- the "All Star Cast Review Session" for Ch. 3 originally has the characters talking about Meakashi, which in the final release of the games is Ch. 5 instead of Ch. 4., and how we start the Answer Arcs. The thing, Himatsubushi ends up being fairly significant in the long run of the story, which makes me wonder just what the hell the ongoing plan for Higurashi was to begin with if Himatsubushi wasn't even supposed to exist originally.
General thoughts on Question Arcs as a Whole: Generally I dislike the Club scenes a lot (And have a lot to say about them below), but once you FINALLY get passed those in any given Chapter I tend to enjoy these Question Arcs a lot still for the most part. Really I think that's where writer Ryukishi07's talents really lie, in doing creepy mystery/thriller/suspense/horror material and not trying to do "plot-less" slice of life stuff or character building or focusing on theme (Where his weaknesses become more apparent. In a way its kind of similar to issues I have with Damon Lindelof's writing).
Beyond whatever feelings about the writing one has though, we have to talk about the actual presentation of the visual novel. The sprite work in the original version of the game is uh...
^I'm sorry but this is just terrible. Like, look at their hands. Like I get that its just a doujin game, but other games at the time like Tsukihime even didn't look THIS bad.
Luckily the Steam release allows you to switch to a newer set of sprites which uh...
^I can't quite put my finger on what it is about these that I don't like, but they still bother me. Not as much as Ryukishi07's original sprites, but they're not great.
Luckily there is 07th Mod, which allows you to not only mod newest sprite from PS2/PS3/Switch versions of Higurashi, they even patch in the option for voice acting, fix some issues with the music and sound effects, and even add in CG's (Which the original game had none of the during the Question Arcs if what I read online is correct.
^I generally find this set of sprites preferable to the default options.
^07th Mod allows a shocking amount of customization as well, which is nice.
The background music though still isn't great in the Question Arcs, but Ryukishi07 is generally decent about using making what trifling music and sound effects he does have from public domain sources here work. In particular he mines a lot out of just have humming cicadas spookily going off at times.
^Even if you murder all of your friends, the cicadas will know what you've done.
Club Scenes - Fun and Games: Yeah I've harped on these before but I really can't stress enough how much I didn't enjoy these bits. They just drag on and on and on and on...
^What could possibly go wrong with hanging out with these girls? They just want to play games with you.
Honestly these club scenes are a bigger turn-off to this franchise than I think fans of the VN give them credit for, to the point I think the anime adaptation was wise to cut down on them and that the criticisms against it for doing so are unfair. Like if you look at the Steam achievements for Ch 1.: Onikakushi for exmaple (Which I admit are a limited sample size since the Steam release is not the only way to acquire this game, but still), you'll notice a huge drop in how many people are actually bothering to progress through the game:
There's a huge drop off between the very first achievement and the second, and then another between the second and the third. The first achievement ("Farewell...") is through getting through shocking opening prologue that's a brutal murder scene, but then after that you get the slice of life bits and club scenes all the way through the achievement "A Fate Worse Than Death". After that the plot really picks up, and you can see that there's a much lower drop of percentage points as each achievement goes on (The After Party achievement for reading the "All Star Cast Review" session having the drop off it does is likely because its not even immediately obvious that once you unlock it that its additional hints and commentary about the main story and not just credits or something. Same with the TIPs achievement having a drop off, since to get it you have to read every single TIP and I'm sure some players missed reading one without realizing it or didn't realize they also contain story information). To me that suggests the club scenes and slice of life bits are legitimately a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. Like I spent about 9 hours playing Onikakushi, but like four of those were just trying to get through the slice of life/club game scenes. That's a lot for the opening Chapter of a series.
Its also worth noting that Onikakushi is currently free on Steam because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so maybe more people are picking up the game than usually would like a visual novel because of that. Still, if it was more engaging in the beginning I don't think you would see dropoffs THAT huge.
Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi*, and Himatsubushi don't seem to suffer quite as much from drop off, though by this point if you're in on Ryukishi07's writing style you're in on it I guess.
*There TIPS achievement for this one is noticeably glitched if you used the 07th Mod on this Chapter, which likely explains why there's such a huge dropoff for that particular achievement here.
Arguments in favor of the Club scenes seem to be that they develop the characters or something, but I'm not really convinced this is true. None of the Higurashi characters are particularly complicated (Even though I do have affection for them myself from having seen the anime), but if anything Club bits seems more like they function through engendering player to the characters simply through drawing out the runtime of the game. I'm not even against using Club scenes to explore or develop characters in theory, but that never seems to be what actually happens during them. They just...play games and cheat to win, and you get hours upon hours upon hours of this even in just the Question Arcs. Occasionally you get humorous "Punishment Game" for the loser but they're never super funny and don't really justify time needed for them. Really you could get gist of each character from like a single 20 minute scene of this, but there are way too many as it is.
I dunno, maybe they appeal more to the kind of people that enjoy stuff like Dungeons & Dragons. I don't understand those people either.
Mahjong: Seriously though, WTF are the rules to mahjong? That's the ultimate mystery of Higurashi.
Tatarigoroshi: Ryukishi07's Cognitive Dissonance?: A tension that really exists in the original visual novel (Moreso than what I remember of the anime adaptation) is the fact Ryukishi07 can't seem to reconcile the dude is into, uh, fethishized loli characters while also wanting to write a serious story about child abuse in Tatarigoroshi. Even if you take out sexual aspect out of it, that Satoko is unrealistically competent with Dennis the Menace/Home Alone/etc. trap shenanigans also makes it harder to buy this specific character being an abuse victim.
Like, I get that they're going for the idea that even people that seem to have it all together in public can be suffering terrible consequences in private. But Satoko the trap master and Satoko the abuse don't feel like two sides of the same person to me, they feel two completely different characters from two completely different stories. Like they throw in the excuse of Satoko tricking herself into believing that if she withstands the abuse that Satoshi will return to her, but why would she have needed Saotoshi needed to protect her to begin with just a year before if she was this unrealistically competent? Like it really does feel like Higurashi is trying to imply that Satoko brought on the abuse herself for no reason, which I'm not sure is the message that you should want to send with this kind of storyline. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.
Some guy on Steam raises a compelling but very spoiler-filled point that the Child Protect Services plotline might not actually make much sense at all either, beyond Ryukishi07's attempt to paint them in a bad light.
I dunno, even for an arc I think deals with the most compelling material there's a lot here that I also find very strange and at odds with itself.
Donkey Kong Country (1994) - Replayed this on a bit of a whim, and it mostly holds up. Still looks pretty decent, still has a solid soundtrack, but I do find the gameplay to not be quite as tight as like Mario games that were coming out at the same time.
^I still do really love this song though.
It also seems to hold better than the N64 games Rareware was putting out a few years later (GoldenEye, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64 etc.), though I suspect most 2D platformers that were praised when they came out generally hold up better than early forays into 3D.
Higurashi When They Cry (AKA Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, 2002-2004)
(I'm using the PS2 cover here but really I'm going through the Steam releases.)
I've mentioned before that I was a fan of the anime adaptation of Higurashi before, but I've never been able to make it through the original visual novels it was adapted from before when I tried playing them before 10+ years ago. Well with a sequel anime currently airing ("Higurashi When They Cry Gou", which I will talk about eventually in my 2021 movie thread after its done airing), nostalgia hit me hard enough to want to go back to the source material for something I was big into as a teenager.
There are eight primary "Chapters" to the main story of Higurashi, with these first four typically being grouped together with a label such as the "Question Arcs" (With Chapters 5 through 8 forming the "Answer Arcs". These are also called Higurashi Kai). As that title implies, these arcs are about setting up the story and the various mysterious goings on that populate it.
The first three stories also follow a similar formula (With the fourth deviating quite a bit): It is June 1983. Keiichi Maebara is the new kid in the village of Hinamizawa. He befriends several girls in his school and joins their Club, which involves board games, general competitions etc. The members include the leader Mion (A tomboyish girl), Rena (A girl who loves everything "kyute".), Satoko (A younger girl who loves traps like she's the kid from Home Alone or something), and Rika (A local shrine maiden girl that is beloved by the village).
One way or another, Keiichi usually learns about a series of unsolved murders that have taken place in Hinamizawa over the last several years. These crimes all have a number of similarities- they take place on the night of the local Watanagashi Festival (Which is dedicated to a local deity called "Oyashiso-sama"), involve one person being murdered, involve a second person completely disappearing, and the crimes end up being attributed to the Curse of Oyashiro-sama in some fashion. As the Chapters themselves go on, some kind of murder and disappearance happens (And the murders are usually brutal too. People are burned alive, have their heads violently bashed in, their stomachs cut open while their organs violently ripped out, etc.), and there's a question of whether this means the Curse is real or if some kind of human culprit is afoot. Also generally more batshit seemingly Lost-style shenanigans start happening.
As you go through the Chapters you also unlock TIPS (Which usually feature either some kind of side-scene featuring characters outside of the main action, or like relevant newspaper articles or journal entries or whatever), and at the end of each Chapter there's an "All Star Cast Review Session" (Which are non-canon bits where the cast of the game talk about the Chapter you just, as if they were just actors playing parts). That's really the extent of the gameplay here, just clicking, reading, and thinking about the mystery on your own, as there are no real choices to make like in typical visual novels (Save for a single choice during a TIP for Himatsubushi, and the joke behind that is that choices in games are meaningless anyways which perhaps puts Higurashi into conversation with games like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and BioShock more than I really expected).
To get into more specifics about individual Chapters...
Ch.1: Onikakushi (2002) - This mostly matches the general explanation given above (And man the Club game segments here are super tedious), though here Ooishi rolls into town and tries to convince Keiichi that his new friends may in fact be involved with committing the murders behind "the curse of Oyashiro-sama" in some fashion. The general story here then focuses on whether Keiichi trusts in his new friends or if his paranoia is in fact justified and his new "friends" may in fact be trying to take his life.
I think once the actual story gets going this is pretty decent still, but I knowing the answers from having seen the anime over a hundred years ago I do have some questions about some character motivations (Namely What Mion and Rena think they're actually doing at any given time).
Ch. 2: Watanagashi (2002) - This is honestly covers a lot of the same ground that the first Chapter/arc covers, though the wrinkle this introduces is Mion having a twin sister named Shion. Shion seems to disappear at once point, and it seems Mion might be the one behind it.
This chapter is kind of blah, as the Club scenes are still a bit much, and it still feels like it retreads a lot of territory from Onikakushi. I do like how this chapter delves more into the politics and history of Hinamizawa though, since that's actually relevant to what's going on at any given time.
Ch. 3: Tatarigoroshi (2003) - It is June 1983. We once again see Keiichi bonding with his friends, seemingly for the first time, though here he bonds the most with Satoko, becoming a sort of older brother figure to her. While this is going on, Satoko's abusive uncle moves back into town, taking custody of Satoko and then generally abusing the shit out of her. Keiichi and his friends try to get Child Protective Services to help with the situation, and fail. Keiichi then decides to take measures into his own hands...through plotting out and executing the murder of the uncle.
This was probably the best of these four chapters, though I feel like its also the most conflicted (For reasons I get into below). I will say it is nice to get a story where Keiichi takes a very proactive stance instead of a reactive one as in Onikakushi and Watanagashi. Honestly it feels kind of Hitchockian in a way to me to (Like Keiichi throwing the Uncle's motorbike into the Onigafuchi swamp gives me vibes of Norman Bates dumping Marion's car into the swamp in Psycho), though it ultimately transitions back into that vaguely Lost-esque storytelling I mentioned about the previous chapters. The slice of life and club stuff I mentioned before works a little better here too since it believably enough sells Keiichi growing attached to Satoko, but man that baseball scene was painful even if it introduces a relatively important character in Dr. Irie.
Ch. 4: Himatsubushi (2004) - It is June 1978. It is the height of the protest against the development of the Hinamizawa Dam, and the protesters are suspected by the national government of having kidnapped the grandson of a prominent politician. A young police officer from Tokyo named Mamoru Akasaka is sent in to investigate if the protesters were really involved with the kidnapping or not, but ends up finding some that affects him personally more than he anticipated.
This arc was a change of pace from the others. Akasaka is very different protagonist than Keiichi, and its nice to have a complete outsider to Hinamizawa instead of only a partial one. This is also easily the shortest chapter of the entire game, which allows it to be the most focused as well. they still do find a a way to insert a kind of pointless mahjong scene though- I already haven't had much patience for these kinds of things to begin with, but mahjong especially is incredibly difficult for me to make any kind of sense of.
Supposedly this arc wasn't even meant to exist at first too- the "All Star Cast Review Session" for Ch. 3 originally has the characters talking about Meakashi, which in the final release of the games is Ch. 5 instead of Ch. 4., and how we start the Answer Arcs. The thing, Himatsubushi ends up being fairly significant in the long run of the story, which makes me wonder just what the hell the ongoing plan for Higurashi was to begin with if Himatsubushi wasn't even supposed to exist originally.
General thoughts on Question Arcs as a Whole: Generally I dislike the Club scenes a lot (And have a lot to say about them below), but once you FINALLY get passed those in any given Chapter I tend to enjoy these Question Arcs a lot still for the most part. Really I think that's where writer Ryukishi07's talents really lie, in doing creepy mystery/thriller/suspense/horror material and not trying to do "plot-less" slice of life stuff or character building or focusing on theme (Where his weaknesses become more apparent. In a way its kind of similar to issues I have with Damon Lindelof's writing).
Beyond whatever feelings about the writing one has though, we have to talk about the actual presentation of the visual novel. The sprite work in the original version of the game is uh...
^I'm sorry but this is just terrible. Like, look at their hands. Like I get that its just a doujin game, but other games at the time like Tsukihime even didn't look THIS bad.
Luckily the Steam release allows you to switch to a newer set of sprites which uh...
^I can't quite put my finger on what it is about these that I don't like, but they still bother me. Not as much as Ryukishi07's original sprites, but they're not great.
Luckily there is 07th Mod, which allows you to not only mod newest sprite from PS2/PS3/Switch versions of Higurashi, they even patch in the option for voice acting, fix some issues with the music and sound effects, and even add in CG's (Which the original game had none of the during the Question Arcs if what I read online is correct.
^I generally find this set of sprites preferable to the default options.
^07th Mod allows a shocking amount of customization as well, which is nice.
The background music though still isn't great in the Question Arcs, but Ryukishi07 is generally decent about using making what trifling music and sound effects he does have from public domain sources here work. In particular he mines a lot out of just have humming cicadas spookily going off at times.
^Even if you murder all of your friends, the cicadas will know what you've done.
Club Scenes - Fun and Games: Yeah I've harped on these before but I really can't stress enough how much I didn't enjoy these bits. They just drag on and on and on and on...
^What could possibly go wrong with hanging out with these girls? They just want to play games with you.
Honestly these club scenes are a bigger turn-off to this franchise than I think fans of the VN give them credit for, to the point I think the anime adaptation was wise to cut down on them and that the criticisms against it for doing so are unfair. Like if you look at the Steam achievements for Ch 1.: Onikakushi for exmaple (Which I admit are a limited sample size since the Steam release is not the only way to acquire this game, but still), you'll notice a huge drop in how many people are actually bothering to progress through the game:
There's a huge drop off between the very first achievement and the second, and then another between the second and the third. The first achievement ("Farewell...") is through getting through shocking opening prologue that's a brutal murder scene, but then after that you get the slice of life bits and club scenes all the way through the achievement "A Fate Worse Than Death". After that the plot really picks up, and you can see that there's a much lower drop of percentage points as each achievement goes on (The After Party achievement for reading the "All Star Cast Review" session having the drop off it does is likely because its not even immediately obvious that once you unlock it that its additional hints and commentary about the main story and not just credits or something. Same with the TIPs achievement having a drop off, since to get it you have to read every single TIP and I'm sure some players missed reading one without realizing it or didn't realize they also contain story information). To me that suggests the club scenes and slice of life bits are legitimately a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. Like I spent about 9 hours playing Onikakushi, but like four of those were just trying to get through the slice of life/club game scenes. That's a lot for the opening Chapter of a series.
Its also worth noting that Onikakushi is currently free on Steam because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so maybe more people are picking up the game than usually would like a visual novel because of that. Still, if it was more engaging in the beginning I don't think you would see dropoffs THAT huge.
Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi*, and Himatsubushi don't seem to suffer quite as much from drop off, though by this point if you're in on Ryukishi07's writing style you're in on it I guess.
*There TIPS achievement for this one is noticeably glitched if you used the 07th Mod on this Chapter, which likely explains why there's such a huge dropoff for that particular achievement here.
Arguments in favor of the Club scenes seem to be that they develop the characters or something, but I'm not really convinced this is true. None of the Higurashi characters are particularly complicated (Even though I do have affection for them myself from having seen the anime), but if anything Club bits seems more like they function through engendering player to the characters simply through drawing out the runtime of the game. I'm not even against using Club scenes to explore or develop characters in theory, but that never seems to be what actually happens during them. They just...play games and cheat to win, and you get hours upon hours upon hours of this even in just the Question Arcs. Occasionally you get humorous "Punishment Game" for the loser but they're never super funny and don't really justify time needed for them. Really you could get gist of each character from like a single 20 minute scene of this, but there are way too many as it is.
I dunno, maybe they appeal more to the kind of people that enjoy stuff like Dungeons & Dragons. I don't understand those people either.
Mahjong: Seriously though, WTF are the rules to mahjong? That's the ultimate mystery of Higurashi.
Tatarigoroshi: Ryukishi07's Cognitive Dissonance?: A tension that really exists in the original visual novel (Moreso than what I remember of the anime adaptation) is the fact Ryukishi07 can't seem to reconcile the dude is into, uh, fethishized loli characters while also wanting to write a serious story about child abuse in Tatarigoroshi. Even if you take out sexual aspect out of it, that Satoko is unrealistically competent with Dennis the Menace/Home Alone/etc. trap shenanigans also makes it harder to buy this specific character being an abuse victim.
Like, I get that they're going for the idea that even people that seem to have it all together in public can be suffering terrible consequences in private. But Satoko the trap master and Satoko the abuse don't feel like two sides of the same person to me, they feel two completely different characters from two completely different stories. Like they throw in the excuse of Satoko tricking herself into believing that if she withstands the abuse that Satoshi will return to her, but why would she have needed Saotoshi needed to protect her to begin with just a year before if she was this unrealistically competent? Like it really does feel like Higurashi is trying to imply that Satoko brought on the abuse herself for no reason, which I'm not sure is the message that you should want to send with this kind of storyline. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.
Some guy on Steam raises a compelling but very spoiler-filled point that the Child Protect Services plotline might not actually make much sense at all either, beyond Ryukishi07's attempt to paint them in a bad light.
I dunno, even for an arc I think deals with the most compelling material there's a lot here that I also find very strange and at odds with itself.
Donkey Kong Country (1994) - Replayed this on a bit of a whim, and it mostly holds up. Still looks pretty decent, still has a solid soundtrack, but I do find the gameplay to not be quite as tight as like Mario games that were coming out at the same time.
^I still do really love this song though.
It also seems to hold better than the N64 games Rareware was putting out a few years later (GoldenEye, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64 etc.), though I suspect most 2D platformers that were praised when they came out generally hold up better than early forays into 3D.