Take what you want, leave what you don't

It’s November 2025, and despite having been alive for a disgusting amount of time, I’m only just realising how to approach the hobby of playing video games; amazingly, I should play games that I enjoy, and, if I’m playing something that I’m not enjoying, I should stop playing it, rather than persisting with it to feel like I’m a part of a moment or convincing myself that my opinion is wrong just because everyone else seems to like it. I’m me, therefore my opinion is valid and legitimate for me specifically.

I owe the philosophy encapsulated in the title of this post, to regular cosy correspondent Dr. Margaret Downs PhD. (via yoga teachers of yore, she hastens to add). It’s a good reminder that, even as I play at being a games writer, forcing it with games that I, as the person who writes most of what you read on here, just can’t get enthusiastic about. I want this to be a positive project, and until I can attract people who can muster enthusiasm for particular genres, I’m going to narrow the scope of what it is I cover. Ms. Downs’ coverage of the cosy niche is excellent, but that’s also her niche. We cover what we like very well, and shouldn’t lower ourselves to covering what we don’t like.

So, this month: I take what I like and leave what I don’t from an Xbox exclusive compilation of most of a developer’s history, explore a game-within-a-game that might be better than an already fantastic game, get deranged-ly into a gorilla-them-up, manage to finish a Nintendo platformer, and review a cat game together with Capitalist Overlord Raccoons’ cozy correspondent Dr. Margaret Downs PhD.

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Rare Replay review (2015, Rare, XB)

Rare Replay is a publisher presenting its back catalogue (or what it has to its name that isn’t being sat on by the mother dragon Nintendo) with the care and reverence of the best mini consoles. It presents 30 games, from 1983 through to 2008, presented in a charming front-end styled after an old nickelodeon theatre. The bombastic menu music is fun, navigation is intuitive, and the company’s managed to make an entire meta-game out of its history by rewarding in-game achievements (both in the Xbox ecosystem sense and also the broadest sense) with stamps, which can then level up your profile and unlock concept art, unused music, and documentaries about the making of Rare games. In this way, although certain Xbox 360 titles are separate downloads in the dashboard, the compilation rewards and incentivises engagement with the whole package.

I’d say that I like Rare the company, although I don’t really have much to go on. I wrote last month that its rooty-shooty games, and the older computer titles like Atic Atac and Knight Lore, are too labyrinthine, obtuse, and easy to get lost in. I’d also say that Sea of Thieves, the main thing that it does now, locked in the live service mines, is just okay, and not always the smoothest. I tried the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tale with a friend and it was so buggy that we had to stop. I guess I want to like Rare, especially in the light of it turning 40, and Microsoft deeming fit to mark that with, um, a themed controller from a third-party manufacturer and cancelling the immersive-sim reboot of its well-regarded, but like I say, labyrinthine, Perfect Dark series of first person shooters. Before you write in, I do know that Rare wasn’t developing that game, but they did develop the first two, and so maybe Rare should have been developing that game.

I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is (dangerously close to my behind) and invest in an Xbox and a copy of Rare Replay to invest some time into and put together an appraisal of the company’s history, so that then I can say that I have put the time in and done my homework to put together a (we hope) coherent and reasoned opinion of some quote unquote classics.

There’s no Diddy Kong Racing (though I have played a not-insignificant amount of that and I do like it) because of licensing issues (which you can’t spell without ‘lice’), and though GoldenEye 007 is included in the digital version of Rare Replay, as a result of the greatest corporate truce of all time, it’s a separate download and not included in the frontend, so I can’t imagine there’s a neat unlockable GoldenEye 007 documentary. I have the vaguest recollection that they maybe filmed one and it might have ended up on YouTube? Anyway: it’s a compromised package, but I’m doing my best to engage with it and the 30 games within. Some of them are a bit outside of our remit if I’m writing about them, because I just can’t get on with them, so I’m not going to cover every one, but I’m going to highlight some of my favourites.

Jetpac mini review (1983, Rare, ZX Spectrum)

You’re a little guy trying his best to build a rocket and put fuel in it. I do think that the ZX Spectrum’s graphics are basically disgusting, but this isn’t so bad to look at. It’s also not as obtuse and of its time as some of the others in Rare Replay, which especially surprises me, with it being the oldest one in the collection, and I actually have fun playing it? To the point where Jetpac might be the ZX Spectrum game that I’d recommend if you haven’t touched one before and you’re wanting to get into emulating old games - games that are this old. Forty-two years of age, I mean, I ask you. But unlike Atic Atac, or the later Knight Lore, this is pretty straightforward stuff. I glanced at the controls and I was off.

As a side note, I enjoy Rare Replay’s ‘snapshot’ challenges, where you’re playing a modified version of the game and trying to pull off a specific feat, sometimes under time pressure. Jetpac, for example, has five of these and I rinsed them in under an hour. Most of my play of these games are in this format, though at some point I should actually play them as Our Lord and Saviours Stamper Brothers, The intended. I’m enjoying collecting the stamps that unlock the featurettes, though, with the Conker’s Bad Fur Day making-of one being a highlight so far and the snapshots themselves are good, isolated training grounds to get used to a game’s controls and just to get a sense of how one works.

Slalom mini review (1986, Rare, NES)

Rare’s first game for a system other than the ZX Spectrum, and the first game published by Nintendo not in Japanese. Apparently Slalom was meant to be not very good at the time, but I’m enjoying it. It’s an arcade skiing game, and although it’s occasionally frustrating with so many obstacles on the screen that can bring you to a flailing halt, I keep investing time into it. One thing I haven’t got the hang of yet is why I’ll occasionally brake for no reason. The main obstacle with old games for a relative amoeba like me is the lack of instructions, especially with emulation; I take it you’re supposed to have a strategy guide thick enough to kill someone, or a physical manual.

There’s an excitement to this one that still makes it worth looking at, especially if you’re like me and you like a sports game. Between this and Tape to Tape, I think I might be a winter sports game person. 

I’ve only beaten Slalom’s easy mountain and three of the five snapshots so far, but the goodies hidden in the compilation are a great motivator to play it more, as well as dabble in some of the games that I wouldn’t have thought to bother with, but have since come to appreciate. Here’s a review of one of them.

Viva Piñata review (2006, Rare, Xbox 360, PC)

You’re on an island and you start a farm that you attract Pokemon-tier creatures to so that you can inbreed them into oblivion. Also, everyone (bar a really cool guy in a tiki mask who will just give you seeds) is out to sell you something while joking about overcharging you or their non-existent refund policy, because what you really want in your cozy farming life sim is CAPITALISM.

It’s nothing new to suggest that the 56,000 independently-developed games of this type are indebted to this one; I pointed it out to a friend and they pointed out to me that they’d played it in 2006 and were well aware. I completely forgot there was a PC version of this - that would have made this a much cheaper adventure in gaming, fucking hell. Still, I plough on. It’s a fun project - I tell myself as my bank account gently weeps.

It’s very cutesy, and the opening is very tutorial-led, and there’s an initial, overriding sense that this is a game for children. Lots of characters that look like demonically possessed patchwork dolls come out of the woodwork to stop the action and explain game mechanics and controls. New unlocks, levels gained, piñatas appearing all have pop-ups and cutscenes that stop play, and they’re fun and novel for the first few times, but it got wearying. They are skippable, but I shouldn’t have to do that every time; I feel like auto-skips should be in the options menu.

What definitely needs an auto-skip is the ‘romancing’ (read: Pokemon Fucking) minigame, where you’re controlling a Piñata through a maze to get to the other one so that they can multiply (read: fuck). They do try and mix this up a bit with different layouts for each Piñata, but it’s just the one layout per Piñata, which is dull, and I get the sense that if Microsoft were to release this (or re-release, come to that, in a form that isn’t just Microsoft slotting it into their backwards compatibility solution), there’d be an auto-complete for this. There are coins in these mazes, so they’re not completely perfunctory, but I’m a good few hours into this now and I cannot be bothered.

It absolutely makes sense that this came out on PC as well - Rare did a good job at translating play to a controller, but you’re playing a basically top-down (not quite, but also not isometric either?) farm management sim. I do wonder if PC is actually where this plays best.

Other frustrating design decisions include having to buy and place one type of item at a time in a shop. You can sell things and call the doctor for your pinatas directly by clicking on them, but this opens the same, ahem, obtuse screen where you just put about your farm looking for the stuff that you want to deal with, one vendor at a time. You can’t sell a flower and heal a pinata in one menu, and that’s a pain.

There are audio cues for things like Piñatas falling ill, but without visual indicators, ill Piñatas are harder to spot on the busy farm that you’ll have after a few hours.

I had a look at the achievements - since the stamps for the 360 games in Rare Replay are awarded for attaining various amounts of gamerscore - and balked at some of the economy specific ones for attaining a certain amount of money or having a farm worth a specific amount. Despite the cute aesthetic, I can tell that I’m going to have to look up a strategy guide or something to figure out how to optimize what I’m doing. I’ve never had more than 2000 chocolate coins (the game’s currency, which is fun) at any one time, so even though I’m making good levelling progress and the game keeps telling me well done, I feel like I’m doing badly.

There’s no failure state in this, as far as I can tell, which is nice. It probably does make it a dead cert at being aimed at children, but I like that it’s a low-pressure experience, and who knew that Stardew Valley with Pokemon is just what I needed to fritter away an afternoon?

And I’m not just being glib; The designs of the creatures are very Pokemon, with the same formula of nominative-determinist-compound names and memorable designs. Didn’t they just announce a Pokemon farming game in the last direct? (They did, I was there, and it was underwhelming). Strangely, playing Viva Piñata has made me that much more interested in whatever that turns out to be. I’ve already forgotten what it’s called, and when it’s out, but clearly it’s a workable idea.

And it is a kid’s game, but Rare has form for putting subversive bits in its games (see the review of Grabbed by the Ghoulies in last month's Halloween issue). The farm shopkeeper will ask you if you want to buy anything ‘seedy’, but ‘not like that’. The pet shop owner is full of disaffection. The Pinatas can get into fights with each other and die. 

Some of Rare’s English charm is dulled a bit in this; the building workman will call you ‘guv’ and offer you a ‘bacon butty’, but in the beigest American accent possible. The first character you meet is either an American woman told to do an Irish accent or an Irish accent woman told to do an American accent; you get hints of both, it’s tonally jarring, and I get the sense that Rare’s English sensibility is coming up against being a part of an American conglomerate.

I like it, and I want to keep going - although some of the requirements for romance and residency for some of the Piñatas are starting to get a bit beyond me, like asking for items that I just don’t have access to in the shop. A lot of my Piñatas are fighting, and I know that there’s a happiness metric for them but I don’t really know how to make them happier or if them being happier will make them fight less. The tutorials have mostly trailed off now. I like that it’s as hand-holdy as it is in the beginning, because it sets you up and makes the fundamentals absolutely clear; but now I’m mostly being left to my own devices and struggling to get my head around the depth of some of the mechanics. I’m going to see how far I can get, but I suspect I’m going to remain lost with it. 

Superhot’s TREE DUDE TREE DUDE DUDE mini review (2016, NS, PC, PS, XB)

Superhot, the time-moves-only-when-you-move first-person shooter, is great. I redownloaded it recently and rinsed the story mode in a couple of hours, and the challenge and endless modes still give it life for me; it’s the kind of short, worse experience I advocate for everyone to be making.

However, have you gone into the ‘GAMES’ folder in the option menu and launched ‘treedude.exe’? No? You should, because you’ll find an addictive, two button (several plusses from Accessibility Corner here) ASCII art clone of the online web game Timberman; in both, you tap directions to chop down a tree while avoiding branches. That’s literally it, but I’m playing it an awful lot, and if I boot up Superhot now, it’s usually because I want a quick dose of this, and it turns into quite a sustained dose. It’s got that moreish, Tetris quality to it, though mechanically is much simpler, and for that it’s a game for everyone, ages 2-200. TREE DUDE etc. almost feels like it could be a Warioware microgame, but I love that it’s just what it is.

That’s really it. Oh no; one catchy chiptune on a loop, forever, while you play, that I can’t stop chopping to the beat of even though that’s absolutely not the point of the game. I love taking what I want - the basic but addictive minigame, and leaving what I don’t - grinding for clears of each additional challenge level in the main game.

Super Mario Odyssey bad mood review (2017, Nintendo, NS)

I’m pretty sure I got this thrown in a digital bundle many moons yon hence, and before that I tried playing it on cartridge when it came out and I bounced off it. I don’t really think games where you control a little guy (who is, on balance, just trying their best) in a 3D space are really for me. But, somehow, I felt possessed to finally play the 3D Mario game that everyone says is good. I’ve been feeling a little bit listless about games, or maybe just about life, and while I loathe Nintendo the company, their games themselves are usually the antidote to misery, full of colour and character and embodying the stereotype of video games that a nonagenarian U.S Senator still believes that they are. I thought that I couldn’t go wrong with it, if the goal for this month was that I wanted to feel something good.

Well, Odyssey succeeded in making me feel things, but they weren’t always good things. It is a vibrant game with pleasant music, and there were certain fanservice memberberries that I fell for, and certain moments in the gameplay where things really popped off, like the possession mechanic, and the different things that you can possess having different abilities, and levels usually being built around teaching you these different abilities and priming you to use them on the bosses. That all feels like it comes together. 

But - the bosses are too easy, may as well not even be there with too many reprisals of each battle, and Nintendo should stop trying to make Broodals happen, because they’re not going to happen. The Power Moon system is fine, but the required number of moons should really be along the direct route to the boss, as I felt like there was far too much backtracking. I’m not really a collectables person, nor am I a person who especially enjoys gated progress in games based on not completing enough side content (a review of Saints Row 2 is currently on hold because I cannot be arsed), so there were a couple of times when I decided to shut the game down for the night. It’s not unputdownable. I don’t think the power moon collection is novel enough to carry the entire game (though there are enough novel solutions to finding moons, like possessing a man to drive a remote-controlled car); it’s the game’s charm that does that.

All of this aside, it’s enjoyable! The worlds have variety to them! The cutscenes are fun! The story is characteristically bobbins for Nintendo! (Going all around the world in an airship looking for Bowser, just to arrive at ‘Bowser’s Kingdom’ is good actually.) I laughed out loud at the ending! I’m not one for motion controls, but they’re implemented well here - I enjoyed wildly throwing hammers as a possessed Hammer Brother by shaking the controller. The possessions are compelling - being a caterpillar (I don’t know what the caterpillars are called in-universe) are fun when you stretch across platforms. The actual platforming is spot-on, and I also have no notes for the retro-styled 2D sections. I really enjoyed the game’s final world; Nintendo establishes an internal logic and then breaks it. There’s an instance of the possession mechanic unique to this world, and it turns the game into a fast-paced ‘romp’ instead of a careful-ish platformer. It starts messing about with gravity, and it feels just that bit more adventurous than the rest of the game.

I played the game in handheld mode, and it’s a good game to second-screen while you’re also doing something else. Mario games have never had much of a plot to speak of, and I found it to be a good ‘turn-brain-off’ game. The idea of sitting in a room and directing all of my attention to Odyssey sounded desolate, and so I enjoyed the music and the sounds being punctured by Gary Oldman doing big lamb bhuna farts in Slow Horses. They should patch that in. 

This isn’t an authoritative review, although I do think the game will do more for you if you have more appreciation of 3D Mario games or less depression than I do. I’m writing about Odyssey to chart me crawling out of the gaping hole of catatonia - apologies to all readers who’s mum’s name is Catatonia. The takeaway is that I, someone allergic to finishing 3D platfformers, finished this one. Is it really that the game is so basically adorable that got me through? I’m the writer, so I should probably decide. Let’s say yes. It has a sometimes interminable gameplay loop, especially in the bigger levels like the Metro Kingdom, but those levels look amazing and are fun to play around in. This is me being enthusiastic, just not ecstatic! It’s fine! I reserve the right to alter my opinion if I play it again in a better mood!

The takeaway is that I exercised my right to take what I wanted from Super Mario Odyssey and leave what I didn’t. A friend told me that there is harder content after collecting a certain amount of moons, but that didn’t appeal to me; I was content to roll credits, run around the post-game kingdom (which looks fantastic, and makes me think that a Super Mario 64 remake would have legs), and to call it a complete, fun experience.

Accessibility Corner: I have no sense of direction and this is impacting my enjoyment of open world games and dungeon crawlers

I’m playing another Nintendo game at the moment, that I won’t name because then that’ll take the wind out of my sails and I won’t actually end up reviewing it, but it’s in 3D and big and open and I’m fighting against my inability to direct myself and my innate talent of getting overwhelmed by wide open spaces in games to give one in particular, that everyone says is good, enough time to at least say that I gave it a good go.

This makes me a bad games writer, but I find games where you have to find your own way through a space exhausting. Atic Atac (1983, Rare, ZX Spectrum; found in Rare Replay) is absolutely this, and I must simply respect its right to exist without appealing to me directly. Super Mario Odyssey is this, yet although I did get befuddled and lost in some of the maps (the Luncheon and Metro Kingdoms, mostly), I did finish it and find things in it to enjoy.

The Hades games are the anti-dungeon crawler; you often get two paths at maximum, with no backtracking, and you’re on a linear course for each boss. This is good, and so Supergiant get more points in Accessibility Corner, but also what I struggle most with are the overworlds; the House of Hades in the first one is more manageable, but the encampment in the second one is too wide open, with too many crafting mechanics, and screens before you actually start a run again. The other day, I was trying to find the meditation spot to use the tarot card system ( which is like the Mirror of Darkness in 1, only you can’t have every ability on at once so it’s not as good), and I got lost for at least five minutes. I don’t mind hub worlds, generally, but when they’re these huge, sprawling things, I struggle to navigate them, and I get weary and stressed.

I have all these brain idiosyncrasies that big open spaces in games, and often just BIG games, play on, and so such games seem unmanageable. I struggle with “””””””””””””triple-A””””””””””””, and I struggle with open-worlds; especially if the traversal mechanics aren’t there. The Nintendo game I’m playing does try, but the only big open-world games that I’ve really gone with and beaten and enjoyed are the new Insomniac Spider-Man games - not every Spider-Man game has the movement and swinging mechanics down, but the fact that you can get around New York City so easily in the newer ones really helps me feel like the scale of the map is manageable. Viva Piñata is a good example of feeling like I can muster the energy to play it; okay, it gets to a point where there’s a lot happening, but it’s within a relatively small area, and the idea (at least so far) isn’t to manage a humungous farm. I’m pleasantly surprised, honestly, that a modern console release is so stripped down.

Ape Out has evaded my complete lack of direction, which surprised me; you’re in these mazes, that feel quite large when you die and it shows you how far you got, and you have no HUD, map, or anything, but beyond the occasional accidental backtrack, I found my way around each stage well enough. I looked up one level in the second campaign on YouTube to figure out where to go, but other than that, it felt intuitive. It doesn’t hold your hand or anything, but it’s still manageable to my overwhelmed brain, which feels like a strong feat of game design.

I mentioned that I got five hours out of Ape Out, which was enough, so maybe there’s a little bit of ‘adulting’ fatigue thrown in here as well in games that demand more time, attention, and cultivate more stress, anxiety and panic; I just might not have the patience for these absolute tens-of-hours-plus games at this point. Take me back to the time that I played Giga Wing and Blazing Star on emulators and had the time of my life. Say it with me now; ‘they’ (who are ‘they’?) should Make Bad [read, small] Games. In how it gets in and out, but also offers enough stuff for repeat play, Ape Out really might be the perfect game for me specifically.

Stray SPOILERED review (2019, BlueTwelve, NS, PC, PS, XB)

A new one for us: Capitalist Overlord Raccoons’ cosy correspondent Dr. Margaret Downs PhD and I have reviewed a game together: cat-dystopia exploration spook-them-up Stray. We include it in this issue as we feel it exemplifies the ‘take what you want’ philosophy, in that one of us finished the game and the other didn’t. We want to do more of these kinds of features; they’re fun!

Me (Chief Raccoon): I liked Stray a lot until I only liked it a bit. It’s a dystopian science fiction game, it’s not a cosy game, even if there are cosy touches - you play a cat, so there’s a meow button, and bits where you walk on keyboards, or put a paper bag over your head and invert the controls, which are very nice. 

Margaret Downs: I liked Stray a lot at first. It has a good mix of emotion and exploration, and seeing a cyberpunk world through the eyes of a cat makes me like the genre better. But it verges occasionally into bleak horror or just “ick” factor in a way I thought detracted from the main strengths of the game. I could deal with your cat friends meowing mournfully for you after you fell from the Outside, that you spend the entire game trying to get back to, but I'd like to have a word with whoever didn't think it was necessary to have them reunite at the end. 

CR: I can get past a fictional cat falling down holes and starting to limp, but there’s enough unsettling or outright scary elements to Stray that stop it from becoming a game I want to plough hours and hours into at a time. The main enemy in the story, at least in the part I played, is literal bacteria that for a lot of the game cannot be dealt with and for some of the game has creepy red eyes as it gunks up the walls. The robots are nice and friendly, but they look really eerie, my gosh. They’ll pet you if asked, and call you “little one” or “little fuzzball”, and I do like that Stray sets out to tell human stories with automatons that have CRT monitors for heads, but they’re spooky.  The game is going for a very specific tone that may be for readers, which is fine, but it’s not for me, which is also fine. 

I might not finish it - even though, at five hours in near enough, I’m quite close to the end. When I heard that the ending is what it is I was like WHAT ON EARTH I WAS CONSIDERING FINISHING IT FOR THAT MOMENT SPECIFICALLY. So actually maybe not.

MD: The overall visual and audio design is really well-done and I loved interacting with the various characters that I met, especially my little robot sidekick B12, but that's not at all to say it's immune to the things about the genre I find frustrating. It feels a lot like other platformers (I was reminded most of my experience with Portal 2), where things are placed deliberately for you to jump on or hide behind. This is true for both the earlier bacteria antagonists as well as the Sentinel robots you encounter later that can shoot you. But if you miss those hiding spots, or the box you're meant to jump onto to get onto a roof, as I'm prone to, you're kind of screwed. I took 8.5 hours to finish a game that's meant to be closer to five. Specifically, I spent way longer than I wanted to in a jail where I encountered literal dead robot bodies. The robots were unsettling at first, sure, but I came to really like them and seeing their decaying bodies made my skin prickle.

I had to do a fair amount of Googling, especially in the Midtown area, because it's pretty easy to miss the people you're meant to talk to. It's also hard to distinguish between the earlier collectibles, which weren't necessary, and these, which were needed to advance the plot. You continue to do cute cat things like jump into boxes to hide from robot guards or knock over bottles to wake up a character, which may be what kept me playing.

CR: Stray’s main strength is that it makes the case that there should be more 3D platformers where you’re a cat. I’ve looked things up twice so far. The platforming is really satisfying, and I think the game up to the point where the main narrative kicks in by meeting B12 (less than an hour for me, I’d say) is masterful environmental storytelling without dialogue, and I wish the whole game could be like that. Stray is a good game, but there’s the promise of a really good game squirrelled away in its design.  I’ll start to enjoy myself and then there’ll be a combat or stealth section that just not find very fun because I fail too many times and/or have to cheese it in some way (for example - popping bacteria eggs a few at a time, running away while the bacteria-egg-popper weapon that I have recharges, and running back to pop the bacteria that have sprung from them - rinse and repeat) and then I’ll be thrown out of any sort of immersion, become exhausted from it, and then need a break and maybe a lie down.

I also care less for collectibles at this point in my life, and I have even less time for those that you seem to be able to lock yourself out of getting thanks to a point of seemingly no return in the game’s storyline that takes you to a new location.

I’ve convinced myself - I’m done with it. I like the themes of family and found family in it, though, and it looks spectacular. Stray but minimalist and without enemy design that makes me feel visceral disgust - that’s what I want.

MD:  My patience was starting to wear thin, but I found the story and characters compelling enough to finish it. I do sincerely wish that the game ended with your character meeting back up with their cat friends from the beginning, as it would've taken the edge off some of the darkness.  I'm almost sure Stray is the first platformer-type game I've ever finished, so I liked it even as someone who scares fairly easily and isn't super experienced with platformers. If platformers are your thing, and you're looking for an interesting take on the cyberpunk genre, Stray may be for you.

Fortnite (Epic, 2017, every machine ever, forever) November Simpsons crossover review

Alright, cheers.

Thank you for reading this month’s Capitalist Overlord Raccoons!

We think that this month’s newsletter exemplifies more than ever that Capitalist Overlord Raccoons is a collaborative game enthusiasm and accessibility journalism project. We’ve loved getting deranged about the things that we love, and constructively critical about games that we like, but want to like more, and would like more but for X or Y.

We’re really happy with it. And now I’m going to play Ape Out. Bye!

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