Cing when you’re winning.
“Is it product placement when it’s your own product being placed?”
asked Edge, or words to that effect.
New worlds and new wonder.
I miss the early 2000s.
Now, it’s back with us, to bustle the Switch off to its own personal Grey Havens.
I’ve been playing the new remake this week and it’s been a real journey.
Both games have been thoroughly reworked for the Switch.
This is mostly, I suspect, because Recollection essentially combines both games into one big game.
It doesn’t happen much, and it gave me pause.)
Two Memories sees Ashley turn up on Blood Edward Island to search for her missing father.
Lots of dragging things around and turning cranks with the stylus.
They reminded me of the process of turning the page as you read.
These puzzles are fine, I guess, but they aren’t the real point.
What is the point?
I think it’s the sense of place that both games have.
In 2024, it’s often glacial.
Dark hallways where you hear the sound of footsteps and can rattle the handles of locked doors.
Dirty afternoon sun strobing through the crystal gems of a chandelier.
Another Code is full of this stuff, and full of the joy of this stuff.
It’s like bunking off school and heading into the countryside for a day.
Actually, maybe the plot, oddball as it is, does matter then.
Because the plot animates the characters and gives them the heroes their yearnings and their openness.
And it gives the villains something surprisingly diabolical to animate them.
And it makes the island from the first game in particular feel like a place alive with mystery.
I’m enjoying my time with them - a few slow hours at the end of each day.
A melancholic and nostalgic way to unwind.
