Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Switch Yes, fans have been clamouring for a remake for years, but Nintendo isn’t one to cave to demand (Mother 3, anyone?) and this makes for a curious choice of revival in many ways. Since TTYD, the Paper Mario games have consciously strayed from the traditional formula – partly to differentiate the series from the Mario & Luigi RPGs (that they’re not around any more might provide one hint as to why Nintendo has relented). Their return to the Mushroom Kingdom, meanwhile – as discussed by Intelligent Systems – was down to the parent company establishing new branding rules around its mascot. As such, it’s a surprise that Nintendo would opt to remind us what we’ve been missing, in an adventure that takes Mario to decidedly unfamiliar surroundings, where he’s not just treated as a hero but an object of desire. Visual upgrade aside, it’s largely faithful – Boggly Woods’ iridescent floors don’t quite do enough to distract from all the toing and froing in that chapter, and you will likely have forgotten just how many trivial encounters there are – but we see a few welcome adjustments. An embargo prevents us from talking about anything beyond Chapter 3, so let’s just say the treatment of a certain character is handled with pleasing sensitivity.
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Ereban: Shadow Legacy PC Light has long been the natural enemy of the stealth-game protagonist, at least as far back as Thief. Rarely, though, has that idea been taken quite so literally as it is in Baby Robot’s game. Ayana is the last survivor of an alien race that thrives in darkness; Helios is a solar-energy megacorp whose sunny exterior conceals – but of course – a dark secret. When the two collide, Ayana gains the power to dive into pools of shadow and swim through them: she may well be the last of her kind, but she’d fit in among Splatoon’s Inklings. What follows, indeed, feels like an attempt to hark back to the stealth games of ’00s Ubisoft with tools borrowed from modern Nintendo. But if Splatoon’s fluid movement appeals, pairing it with Breath Of The Wild’s stamina system proves Ereban’s undoing. Being kicked into the light after a few seconds in the shadows would seem to add welcome tension in a game where sneaking is otherwise straightforward. Alas, the camera and controls make it an exercise in frustration.