Kaze and the Wild Masks (NSW)
Kaze and the Wild Masks is a 2D indie platformer by developer PixelHive. Inspired by the likes of 90's classics like Donkey Kong Country series on the SNES, the game pays homage to those while trying to find an identity of its own. It's also one of the years latest offering so I've had my eye on it for a while.
You play as rabbit Kaze as she must save her friend from a a curse that's taken over her world, all while fighting a bunch of vegetable-themed monsters making the way. The story's pretty shallow as you're not given any exposition regarding Kaze and her friend, with the ending leaving you confused. Still, Kaze can jump and attack enemies which is pretty basic until you come across wild masks in certain levels. These grant her neat abilities like swimming underwater with the Shark mask and dashing and climbing onto walls with the Tiger mask, to name a few. That said, I did hate the Bird mask with its floaty controls as it made some platforming segments more trouble than they were.
Each level has its own tricky platforming segments, enemies, and scenery to check out. Also, there are collectables hidden throughout levels like bonus stages where you must beat challenges under a time limit and letters that spell Kaze's name, which can make levels a bit harder since they're placed in tough spots. You'll notice the connection to the DKC games with its brutal difficulty at times as the boss fights will put your platforming and timing abilities to the test, but they were easily the most fun parts of the game.
Graphically, the game looks fantastic coming from such a small team. The sprite-work, animations, backgrounds were well-detailed and remind me a lot of the first Rayman game. The soundtrack was cheery and compliment the fun but also tense gameplay moments. Overall, Kaze and the Wild Masks was a pretty fun ride overall and while it could've benefited from more enemy variety and mask usage, it was a neat 5 hour adventure that genre fans should check out.
Resident Evil 0 HD (PS4)
The prequel to the iconic first Resident Evil game, Resident Evil 0 is my least favorite game in the series that I've played so far. Taking place just a day after the events of the mansion incident, we follow rookie S.T.A.R.S. member Rebecca Chambers and escaped convict Billy Coen as they must survive both zombies and a new threat with killer leeches in the forests of Raccoon City. When it came out, the game brought neat gameplay ideas to the already ageing gameplay with the partner "zapping" feature that easily lets you switch between Billy and Rebecca to solve puzzles and sort inventory alongside the ability to drop items you don't need and pick them up later as opposed to discarding them entirely in other games. Unfortunately, that's where the positives end for me.
The weakest aspects of the game for me had to be the drab and uninspired environments, which were a retread of the ones in previous games and the annoying new leeches enemies that come out of nowhere and are a pain to dodge with the classic tank controls. Also, the bosses like the giant bat and scorpion were equally un-amusing and felt like pushovers than actual threats compared to REmake. While Billy and Rebecca were cool characters, I found the new villain and his weird obsession with leeches stupid though.
Being a nearly 20 year-old game, RE0 holds up pretty well since it's using the same art-design and models of REmake. Details like the lighting effects and character reflections of mirrors are impressive even by today's standards. The HD remaster does a solid job of polishing up the backgrounds and bumping up the resolution to full-screen. My only gripe are that the cinematic cut-scenes haven't been touched and look washed-out as a result. The voicework is cheesy, as expected from a RE game, but the performances were decent and the soundtrack was good. My favorite track of the entire game has to be the save room theme.
Gran Turismo Sport (PS4)
The latest entry in the beloved racing sim series, Gran Turismo Sport is among my favorite racing games on the PS4. While it doesn't have the huge amount of cars compared to previous games in the series and other racing games in the market, GT Sport goes with a "Quality over quantity" approach, introducing new cars via updates. I've been tackling the game's campaign mode, winning various cups in my mostly 90s JDM car selection though I've come to like the new car selection too. What sucks about the game is the always-online nature of it, meaning you can't buy new cars or even save if you're playing offline, which is really stupid if you have a not-so stable connection. Still, I'm loving the photo-realistic visuals of the tracks and cars (which are among the best in the genre) and the smooth soundtrack, which fits well with the elegant nature of the series. Until Gran Turismo 7 hits, GT Sport is my go-to racing game of choice.
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