Snowboard Kids 2 (N64) Retro Review

Let's pause from modern releases for a brief moment and take some time to look back at a Nintendo 64 racing game that trades in your typical ride with wheels with one that is flat and stiff as a board. Because it literally is a board--a snowboard! Let's carve through the snow with this retro review of Snowboard Kids 2.

A Nintendo 64 racer that seamlessly shreds the slopes at first but ends up wiping out in the end.

Fresh off the release of Snowboard Kids the year prior, the sequel, Snowboard Kids 2, took to shred the slopes with the familiar cast of the previous game for more snowboarding in a variety of fantastical locations. Atlus certainly was chasing after that Mario Kart money with the Snowboard Kids series, and taking the character racing genre and putting it on snowboards was an incredibly creative concept. While the execution oftentimes stumbles, it's creative nevertheless. That said, I unfortunately found that my experience with the sequel mostly went all downhill from there, both figuratively and literally. 

Right away when sliding downhill for the first time on the first course of Snowboard Kids 2, I noticed how slow the gameplay felt. You definitely don't move with great speed, and it's absolutely agonizing when you get hit with an item or stumble into a fall, because getting up is even slower. Having to jump repeatedly to pick up any semblance of speed is also--you guessed it--slow, too. 

Snow time like the present to carve a path to the finish line.

Pulling off tricks off of jumps is a risk versus reward proposition in action, as it sees you holding a direction on the analog stick as you leap. This is simple enough to pull off--perhaps TOO simple, as I often found myself mistakenly flipping when trying to make small jumps. Of course, this resulted in my character crashing and burning, meaning yep, more slow jumping to gain what Snowboard Kids 2 calls "speed". 

Successful tricks earn you gold, which is used outside of races to purchase new boards, but also used in races to pick up items. There are two types of items in Snowboard Kids 2, red and blue items. Each uses a different button on the Nintendo 64 controller to use. Red items generally come in the form of projectiles, such as ice shards that freeze players in place, parachutes that send players flying into the air and slowly falling to the ground, and snowmen that when a player is hit by one, their turning ability is impaired considerably. Meanwhile, blue items are usually for support, whether summoning a jet for your board to speed past opponents more easily, a pan item that falls on top of all opponents to crush them--immediately stopping them in their place--and a small rock which can trip up an opponent that passes over it.

One lovely touch in Snowboard Kids 2 is depending on the course, characters will change their outfits appropriately.

I found the counter system in Snowboard Kids 2 to be less than ideal. To avoid or evade an item that is homing in on you, you have to jump at the right time. A trick will send it flying back at your opponent, but this is understandably much more difficult to do correctly. Most of the time, you'll have to just surrender and take a hit like a champ, resulting in the agonizing wait for your character to get up and build up speed once again.  

There are two primary modes within Snowboard Kids 2: Story and Battle, the latter of which allows up to four friends to play any race against one another whenever and however they choose. Meanwhile, Story takes your character of choice through a series of races, one after the other, with intermissions in between each race to explore the small arctic town hub to purchase new snowboards with money earned through races, as well as take on different challenges. Serving as basically bookends before and after races are short and cute vignette cutscenes that see a certain troublemaker causing problems for the Snowboard Kids crew. 

Jungle boogie your way into the lead, but good luck keeping it with this AI!

Story mode features nine race courses, and most of these aren't limited to snow-themed excursions. Instead, you also have a tropical beach that leads into an undersea voyage, a royal castle, a haunted house, and even a trek through outer space. Each race is three laps, and upon reaching the bottom of the course, you ride a ski lift that takes you back up to the top of the race for the next lap. With such a small gate to enter the ski lift, you can bet that there is a lot of jockeying for position and pushing other players out of the way. This can be a bit frustrating for the player pushed out of the way, but it adds to the chaos all the same.

The end of lap one is ahead, so a ride up the mountain on the ski lift awaits as well.

Speaking of frustrations, Story mode's CPU opponents start off innocently enough, but by the mode's latter half, they become utter bullies. It feels incredibly cheap, really, as the CPU will know just when to use an item to screw you over, thus making you have to play catch up for an entire lap. Of course, as soon as you do that catching up, something else happens to make for an overly aggravating time. 

Seriously, I didn't understand what the point of some of the races was when every time I'd make some headway, I'd get screwed over in the race somehow. With races that can take upwards of five minutes to complete, this can just frustrate further, as it's pretty much not only a crap shoot if you win later races, but it also feels like a total waste of 5+ minutes each time to lose in a cheap manner at the last lap. It would be fine if this happened occasionally like in Mario Kart, but no, it happens more often than not within Snowboard Kids 2. Some might just say to "get good", but unless the RNG gods are in your favor, giving you proper items to evade attacks and having the CPU not use items at the absolute wrong times, it's more luck than skill-based in Story mode.

Borrowing a page from Diddy Kong Racing in a sense, there are a handful of bosses interspersed within Story mode. These are less races, though, and more battles, requiring you to whittle away at a retreating boss's health to zero with offensive items before they can cross the finish line. These battles are more annoying than fun, though, as obviously bosses shoot myriad items back at your character as well. Factor in how slow it is to recover, and you have another needlessly irritating time.

A boss battle. Oh, joy.

Really, Snowboard Kids 2 is a deceptive game. It has such a cute and charming presentation with its colorful cast of big-nosed characters, crisp and vivid courses, and an especially admirable amount of draw distance as well to see all of the graphical goodness that the game has to offer. But peeling off this cozy and cute layer and going deeper into the game out from a superficial level, inside, Snowboard Kids 2 is just a dang bully of a game. When a lot of it is encountering pure, opportunistic jerks of CPU opponents, contend with the RNG of the game in general, and facing frustrating gameplay--especially recovering from falls and from getting hit by items--it's simply not the best time.

Someone must have known we were coming because they baked a cake!

That's why I'm so disappointed with the game, overall. Snowboard Kids 2 is relentless in its cheapness masquerading as "challenge", and for a game I yearned to play for the longest time, I step away from the snowy slopes, as a player, left out in the cold. What started as a game that I was open to enjoying quickly turned into one that gave me quite the frosty reception. Tracking down a copy for the price the used market asks for now is in no way worth it unless you have a side of masochism to you and your wallet. I'm more than happy to give the cold shoulder to Snowboard Kids 2, because while it was not a broken racing game gameplay-wise, it felt that way from an AI point of view, making it all in all quite a disappointment.

[SPC Says: D+] 

Piece by Piece (PC) Review

No, no, not THAT Piece by Piece. The OTHER Piece by Piece. Funnily enough, TWO games with the same title released about two weeks ago on Steam, and the developers of each took notice and opted to make a Steam bundle with both games on sale in said bundle. They couldn't be further apart in what they are, what they offer gameplay-wise, or what they set out to do, but the names are similar indeed in a fun way. I'm opting to currently cover the jigsaw puzzle-related Piece by Piece with this, the SuperPhillip Central review.

A puzzle-platformer concept you might just love to pieces.

Puzzle games run the gamut of means and methods to bust a given player's brain. Piece by Piece is one game that will do just that, getting some platforming into the mix, all the while offering routinely fresh ideas, levels that will possibly positively stump even the most spatially aware mind out there, and an overall gameplay mechanic that works remarkably well throughout.

Piece by Piece takes a relatively simple but conceptually clever idea and runs with it quite quickly through its relatively short runtime. The game tasks you, the player, with organizing levels in the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces on the fly as you maneuver a character from the start of the level to the goal. This is performed by picking up and connecting pieces that can be properly assembled to make a connected bridge for the character to move through, also manually done by the player. It's a puzzle-platformer at its most essential essence.

That's no Jiggy on the other side of that wall, so call off Banjo and Kazooie, all!

Along the way to the goal, each level houses a golden puzzle piece, and while some of these are optional to collect, you'll really want to go out of your way to aim for obtaining most of them. That's because these are gatekeepers for later collections of levels, and only upon having the required amount can you unlock and open the books containing these levels.

At the start of Piece by Piece, you're simply arranging puzzle pieces around, connecting, disconnecting, and shuffling the pieces around as needed, while moving your player character through the levels. Most early levels don't take but a handful, if that, of puzzle piece manipulation and movement to properly solve. 

However, Piece by Piece in its brisk runtime picks up the pace with relative speed. With 100 puzzles total, the game does a fantastic job of not lingering on one concept or mechanic too long, while also not overwhelming the player with too many new gameplay ideas in an overly fast fashion. You generally get a series of three books of levels per level selection page. The first two books each introduce a new gameplay mechanic, having you learn it, get accustomed to it enough through experimentation, and before you know it, that book is complete. The third book is where your mastery is pretty much required, as it combines both previous books' mechanics into each level. 

Get ready for a flippin' good time in these levels and Piece by Piece in general.

What mechanics and concepts does Piece by Piece introduce, you ask? Without spoiling too terribly much so prospective players can discover the majority for themselves, the game starts with simple puzzle piece shuffling and jostling around to connect, disconnect, and reconnect as required. Not before too long, you're able to rotate certain pieces, flip them over, and that's not even mentioning in-level mechanics, such as blocks your character can drill through, portals that teleport your character from one section of level to another, and gravity-based affairs as well. 

Each set of levels gives you a specific themed character to play as, too.

Each set of levels also features its own visual style alongside those previously mentioned mechanics. One of my favorites is set in the pages of a '90s era high school notebook, complete with sketches like those mysterious-in-origin "S' designs that my generation doodled in their books upon boredom. The art style in this particular book is so striking and appealing to me, and that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Each book also houses its own music, but no matter which book you enter to solve its oftentimes complex and sometimes convoluted puzzles (said with the utmost of positivity there), you're going to hear some incredibly chill tunes that do little to annoy or distract the player.

No time for doodling, I'm afraid, as there are levels to solve!

I played Piece by Piece with my preferred controller of choice, but I overall found the controller experience a bit clunky and clumsy. Selecting puzzle pieces is done by holding a trigger on the controller and using the analog stick. It's unfortunately the same stick used for character movement, so I'd often be stumbling and fumbling with moving my character when I wanted to move a puzzle piece or conversely moving a puzzle piece when I wanted to move my character. Frustrating to say the least. So, while the controller setup isn't ideal, it works overall. Though, players may find the keyboard and mouse controls easier to work with in tandem than that of a standard controller. 

As stated, Piece by Piece isn't a long game. It took me just under six hours to complete all of its puzzles with all of its achievements knocked out. I appreciated the game for its cheeky approach to achievements. Sure, there are ones for fully completing a given book of levels--standard fare and expected for an achievement checklist--but you also get achievements of the cheekier variety. Being in the same level for ten minutes is less of an achievement (but still a literal achievement to complete) and more of an expectation for how complex and complicated later levels can get. In fact, the last set of levels took me basically a third of my total playtime of the game to beat! And good luck getting the no-death run achievement, even though--well, your character literally can't die in Piece by Piece whatsoever--but maybe YOU can be the player that fails doing it! Take THAT, ironic achievement!

Kidding aside, Piece by Piece doesn't waste the player's time with filler or linger too long on a given gameplay idea. It's a clear, concise, and clever puzzle-platformer with a fabulous concept to it that is iterated on near-perfectly throughout its six hour length. Once you clear the game, you might not have too much of a reason to return to it, but what an experience it was during those six hours for me while the game lasted! And sometimes you don't need a reason to return to a game, either. It can simply be one and done and be appreciated for that. I definitely do appreciate Piece by Piece for being mostly all-killer and no filler. Additionally, I recommend you don't just aim to take a piece (by piece) of the game, but just go ahead and enjoy the whole thing instead!

[SPC Says: B-]