As part of this experiment, my intention is to write the introduction for each game before playing it. For a lot of these games, that will include my understanding of the game that I have acquired through cultural osmosis, as someone who follows videogames news for fun. I know, I'm that guy, but I promise you, I am not that guy. I will also dive into why I bought the game, and why I haven't touched it yet, provided that is an entertaining discussion to be had.
Not a great start! But hey, important as the last thing I would want is to learn that I'm susceptible to epileptic triggers from THIS of all things.
Good lord. Now, a common exaggeration amongst gamers is to state that a game with poor graphics "looks like a PS2 game", but this opening area, which serves as a hub world of sorts, would have even been criticized if it were on that console. Further, the animations for the main character feel like the would only make sense if it were from that generation, with an extremely poor run cycle and even worse jump animation.
Unlike Final Fantasy 3/6, where I went into it expecting to enjoy myself, Balan Wonderworld is very much something I go into expecting a Bad Time. Most other "bad games" in my collection I either acquired as part of a larger lot of games (hence Shrek 3) or because I genuinely thought I might find some enjoyment playing it. But not here. So this would prompt most people to ask the obvious question: "Connell, if this game is so famously bad, why on earth did you buy it". And that requires a short diversion into video game development history. Don't worry, it won't be too long I promise, and it has legal drama to spice it up.
Balan Wonderworld was the brainchild of Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima. If that former name is familiar to, he was previously with SEGA where he worked on a lot of the Sonic the Hedgehog games in various programming and leadership roles. A game series that both of them worked on at SEGA was the bizarre and beautiful Nights: Into Dreams, a series which garnered a lot of dedicated fans, but sadly never got anywhere near as much love as the blue hedgehog.
Eventually, Yuji Naka left SEGA in 2006, and formed his own studio, Prope Games. This studio mostly worked on small low budget Wii games, but eventually, created Rodeo: the Sky Soldier, game that was to be a spiritual successor to Nights. Development complications led to the Wii game not being released until 4 years after it was completed to coincide with DS and WiiU versions, and it received pretty middling reviews.
After leaving Prope, seemingly in no small part due to the frustrations caused by Rodeo's development, he started work at the famed developer and publisher, Square Enix. He quickly convinced them to give him a team to create a new series for them, that being Balan Wonderworld. Naoto Ohshima was to team up with him as producer. Square clearly initially believed in the project and put a lot of money into it, with lavish CG cutscenes, comic book tie-ins and a 280 page novel. Balan had the appearance of a game that would take the best of 3D Sonic games and Nights, and with Square's funding, it seemed like it was going to be a winner.
The game looked to be a winner! A 3D platformer with the aesthetic of Nights, with a promising costume system that was reminiscent of Mario Odyssey's captures.
However, when a demo was finally released in early 2021, it became very clear that things had not come together. The game ran poorly, and compared to what was shown in the trailer, the switch version was significantly downgraded. And while some games come together after a poor demo, Balan did not change at all, and it's safe to say that the demo had a huge negative impact on sales.
Not to be outdone, upon release, a post launch patch had to be issued to remove effects that could trigger epileptic fits, only months after cyberpunk had a high profile version of the same problem. Which SEGA themselves would repeat before the year is out with the atrocious port of Sonic Colours.
During all this Yuji Naka was quiet.
And then, in April 2022, things got interesting. Yuji Naka revealed that one year prior, he had been forcibly removed from the production, but had been unable to talk publicly about it until then. Further, Naoto Ohshima was in charge of completing the game. After being removed, he had taken Square to court, and as a result, Square had put a gag order on him, hence the silence leading up to the games release. He claims the conflict was due to requesting more time to complete the game due to the poor state it was in, and issues with music rights in a trailer. Square have yet to respond publicly, but there has been some speculation that boils down to: Yuji Naka is just kind of a dick.
And so, I had an interest in getting this game, not because I actually wanted to play it, but as a curio with an interesting development story. I even considered that there was a possibility that it was going to be removed from stores depending upon what legal decisions are made. And of course, and probably most importantly, it was selling for dirt cheap.
With all that justification out of the way, I dove into the game. Well, eventually. First I had to download a substantial patch.
Finally booting up the game, and after selecting a character and watching them dance in public and then be upset that people watched him dance, I was treated to an extravagant cutscene.
I sure wish I'd played the game that this should have been the opening for. Beautiful, bizarre, colourful, musical, and playful. But no, the game I played, after that cutscene, transitions to this...
The controls are also terrible, with a particularly slippery run that makes it seem like the character is running on ice. And so, with already several complaints under my belt, I began the first world. Things did not improve.
This world was split into two levels and a boss fight, where the first level is incredibly simplistic. Keys are required to access costumes, but in all instances are placed directly next to the costume. Buttons that operate doors, are similarly, directly next to them. It leads to the obvious question: why is there is unnecessary middle step? This barely changes in the second level, with only one button related puzzle requiring moving the character about ten steps to ensure the related door opens. Effectively this sets the bar incredibly low, and just consists mostly of tiresome busywork.
As you proceed through the levels, you see characters dancing. It's never made clear WHY they dance, and if you approach any of the characters, they dissolve away into nothing.
This feels like it should mean something, but Balan very much uses the philosophy of "Don't Show or Tell".
The costumes themselves swap out the jump for either a different jump or an action, which immediately makes some costumes far less useful than others. For no reason I can understand in a platform game, under some circumstances there IS NO JUMP BUTTON. And yet there are plenty of hovering platforms, fences and blocks that require a jump to get over. This is both frustrating and completely unnecessary, as I see no reason why the game could not have two buttons, one for jump and one for the costume specific action. Regarding the costumes themselves, the designs were relatively boring, but I want to call out two specifically. Firstly, the stretchy plant:
This costume is almost an exact monologue of the stretchy plant enemy you can play as in Mario Odyssey (Uproot), and this s pretty damning in how stark the difference is. In Odyssey, after the plant enemy stretches while a button is held, with the height then adjustable. Upon release, the Uproot does a little hop, flipping forward allowing the player to easily hop onto a tall platform. In Balan, the character only stretches to a fixed height, and while it does hop after in a way that appears like it should allow the character to jump on to a higher platform, it does not. It isn't even the only costume that in use appears to increase in height mid-jump, but actually does not. Secondly, the (sigh) Pounding Pig:
Why does this costume shake it's booty when first put on? Who is this for? Why?
Throughout the levels are multiple collectables in addition to the end goal: gems of 3 different colours, golden statues, and a golden top hat. And all three caused me problems, although only the hat was baffling immediately upon collection.
Upon collecting the top hat, Balan himself appears. If you then touch him (once again, a completely unnecessary intermediate step), you are taken to minigame. Initially, this appears to be a flight based mini game, which would make sense based on the inspiration being drawn from Nights, given the titular character of which shares aesthetic similarities with the one in this game. But, uh....
With both levels completed (or so I thought), the boss level began. And it is about as generic as a 3D boss can get. Stop me if you've heard this, but you face off in a large arena. The boss jumps into the air and tries to land on you. When it lands, you can attack it. Rinse and repeat, of course, twice more. Honestly, if you were making a parody of D platformers, this would be this first boss.
It's nothing but a quick-time event where you press the button when the shadow crosses over Balan. Not only that, but the second level in the first world has THE EXACT SAME series of events. Quick time events are already a problem in better games, as the player character is stripped of most control and is shown doing things far more fun than the game usually allows (literally the one thing that makes Resident Evil 4 not perfect, don't "at" me), but in this game, you do not get to control Balan in any other circumstances. And of course, there's no context as to WHY he needs to punch these floating rocks
And finally, with the boss complete, I was rewarded with.....
MORE DANCING?
After the dance, I was treated to a lavish cutscene that provided the context that had been missing all along for the level, that the farmer was despairing because a storm had wipe out his crops. But, no explanation as to why this had then resulted in this weird fever dream, and why defeating the boss made him no longer despair. AND AGAIN, NO EXPLANATION FOR THE DANCING.
With this complete, I expected a second world to appear. I walked around the hub several times, thinking I was just missing something obvious. And it didn't. A prompt on the screen requested I feed the Tim's 30 gems. Doing so is an incredibly frustrating and slow process, involving the second of three collectables I mentioned earlier. To feed a "Tim", you walk to a patch of flowers of one of three colours, where you can spread gems you collected. Eventually Tims will come to the patch, and begin to eat them (this is by no means instant). Then, the Tim will slowly crawl over to a small hill, where it will jump off onto a trampoline, which launches it into a water wheel. Then inside the water wheel, the Tim will, VERY SLOWLY, rotate around until it finally drops the gem at the bottom of the wheel, adding the gem to the running total. Can you, the player, deposit the gem into the wheel directly? Of course not! Well can you throw out all your gems in one go? Heck no, throw out more than ten and the first 5 you threw out will disappear! And watch out you don't accidentally pick the gem back up yourself, because for some reason you can do that.
Also I should mention these aren't a whole bunch of dudes named Tim. A Tim is a small fluffy limbless creature. I understand that maybe you might be picturing a low polygon field filled with a bunch of these guys:
All slowly walking around to eat gems, jumping into a water wheel, and then... uh, lets hope regurgitating said gems into a hole. Because the only other way they're purging those gems is not something I want to consider.
And so, I undertook the excruciating processes of waiting for the Tims to deposit 30 gems, presuming that this would unlock the second level. And.... it instead started the "TOWER OF TIMS", a structure I have no interest in ever seeing completed, but would clearly take a very long time of tedious waiting.
Eventually, I recalled something that I had been told 30 minutes prior in a single splash screen, that I needed to get 8 Balan statues to advance. This key information was not repeated, crucially, not after completing the first boss where it is most likely that information is needed. Returning to the levels I had already played, I eventually found two more, but not without significant frustration due to having the wrong costumes.
After completing this task, once again a lavish cutscene involving a train begins. My character boards, the train takes off into the sky and..... returns BACK to the same hub world, where only NOW the second and third level appear. The train platforms my character boarded and alighted from nowhere to be seen.
This game makes absolutely no effort to explain what it is actually about. And while there's nothing wrong with mystery, I am convinced this is just poor storytelling and rushed development. A significant amount of time is completely wasted by unnecessary steps in the middle of almost any process. Numerous decisions are made that are in stark contrast to what is expected of games made in the last 20 years. Clearly the game initially had far larger scope, to which the CG house was working, only to be dialled back significantly and released unfinished. The only thing interesting about this entire endeavour is behind the scenes, which can all be had for free by following the story as it develops.
Sadly, I doubt this is the low point of my "backlogged" project. After all, at some point I have to play Tails' Skypatrol. Fortunately, that is NOT next time, which will be my first ever play of Super Paper Mario.
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