Wondering what the Paste Games team has been playing lately? Don’t have time to read new game reviews, and prefer something quick and direct? Just looking for 1000 words to eat up a couple of minutes of your wait at the doctor’s office or airport lobby? Our new column Bytes ‘n’ Blurts offers a quick look at what games editor Garrett Martin and assistant games editor Elijah Gonzalez have been playing over the last couple of weeks—from the latest releases to whatever classic or forgotten obscurity is taking up our free time. This week we look at the latest Zelda game, a brand-new remake of one of the best horror games ever, a second chance for a promising but disappointing Disney game, and more.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Year: 2024
Platform: Switch
At this point in my life I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time in Hyrule than some of the towns I’ve actually lived in. Echoes of Wisdom isn’t exactly a Hyrule we’ve known before—these games have always treated their DNA as oral myths that consistently change and mutate as they drift through the air—but it has all the ingredients: the churning desert, the yawning plains, the Zoyas and Gorons and Gerudos. What it doesn’t have is the same lead character as every other one of these games over the last 40 years. Zelda, always the MacGuffin, becomes the hero, this time trying to save Link and the rest of the world from the corruption of Ganon and his Bible black rifts. Echoes is too formulaic in its structure—go meet and help these people, now go meet and help these people, and then do it a third time to end this act… and then do it all again with different people, etc. But its central echo mechanic, where you conjure dupes of defeated enemies or useful objects on the fly, is unlike anything else in the series; although it can create a worrisome distance between player and action at first, it eventually starts to tie in well with combat and puzzle-solving, at which point it becomes a deep, challenging new approach to classic Zelda business.—Garrett Martin
Silent Hill 2
Year: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC
There’s a lot to love [in the Silent Hill 2 remake]. The sound design is similarly creaky and gnashing, as inexplicable audio cues meld with diegetic gurgles, squelches, and the crackle of your radio. As these nightmare noises fill your ears, you’ll journey through a rust-colored hell realized with an uncomfortable degree of detail. These more expansive, in-depth backdrops set the stage for a brand of non-stop intensity that lands like blunt-force trauma.
And perhaps one of the most noticeable differences is that much of the voice acting is excellent. In particular, Luke Roberts’ performance as James is affecting and deeply human (perhaps to a fault, considering some of the story’s themes), which, when combined with the emotive facial animation, makes it clear that this version of the character is the saddest most pathetic man who’s ever lived. His scenes are bolstered by some sharp editing and cinematography, which help the game stand out compared to many other AAA titles with less defined aesthetic identities. And most importantly, the scares still land. Pyramid Head remains terrifying, and all is right with the world.
However, even though this remake largely succeeds in its aims, at least for me, I slowly began to feel something was a bit off, as if too many rough edges were sanded down. After all, the original stands out because of its many idiosyncrasies and weird details, some of which have been paved over in pursuit of “modernizing” the experience—the fixed-camera angles, the lo-fi pixelated graphics, tank controls, and numerous other old-school frictions that created unique textures. But of these discarded elements, there’s one that I particularly miss, a gaping hole at the center of this experience: the remake is missing camp. [Read the rest of this essay here.]—Elijah Gonzalez
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed
Year: 2024
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Disney doesn’t go all-in on remaking Epic Mickey the way Konami and Bloober Team did with Silent Hill 2, but the newly remastered platformer is a noticeable improvement on the often awkward original. Its Tim Burton-esque version of a dissolute Disneyland has always felt corny, like one of those compilations where punk bands do Disney covers, but Rebrushed is a lot less muddy and washed out than the original, and that improves the atmosphere tremendously. Most importantly is a new camera, which you won’t be wrestling with constantly like you did 14 years ago. And I don’t think anybody, anywhere, will miss the old Wii motion controls. There’s still some off-putting weirdness here—the Disneyland rides you have to clean up don’t resemble the real Disney attractions they’re based on all that closely—and a general case of “who is this for” (nostalgists? the goth tweens of today? Disney adults?), but Epic Mickey: Rebrushed legitimately improves on a game with a unique vision, which justifies its existence. Oh, and playing 2D platformer levels based on classic Mickey Mouse shorts remains awesome.—Garrett Martin
Klax
Year: 1990
Platforms: Played on the TurboGrafx-16; available on basically every other gaming system made before, like, 2005
Just a quick note that the ‘90s might’ve ended a quarter of a century ago, but there is still time for Klax. This tile-stacking puzzler is the best of the Tetris-chasing bunch because of how it ingeniously uses its restrictions to deepen its strategy. Between the tight space of its playfield, the depth of scoring options, the long lead time as tiles clack down the assembly line, and the Tapper-esque way you can exert some control over the order of tiles, Klax requires more thought and strategy than almost every other puzzle game from the ‘80s and ‘90s. It was also, in a sense, a proto-Doom—not because the two are anything alike in terms of style, substance, or play, but because Klax was ported to every conceivable gaming machine of the ‘80s and ‘90s. (I’ve always been partial to the TurboGrafx version, myself.) It’s unthinkable that you can’t really play it on any modern systems, but hey, nobody hates gaming history more than videogame companies.—Garrett Martin