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[randomboo256]

BotW and TotK, Revisited

So it's Tears of the Kingdom's anniversary already.

I ended up replaying the game a few months ago. I'm not sure if I've ever played a game so rife with good ideas and great potential that failed so hard to take advantage of any of it.

This will be long, please stay with me.

Before we talk about TotK, we need to talk about it's predecessor: Breath of the Wild.

I played this game when it came out, and for what it's worth I thought it was decently fun. However it lacks a lot of the design that made previous games work. Before you ask, no I'm not nostalgia blind. I played the entire Zelda series for the first time in 2016, and I played BotW just a year later. If anything, I'm just as nostalgic for old Zelda as I am for BotW itself. This is just an honest critique of the game's design.

BotW is a game that felt like a rough draft of what a modernized 3D Zelda game could be. The idea of making the world larger, more open, and more inspired by the 2D games is a brilliant one. The execution however felt less like 2D Zelda and more like every other open world game.

What BotW mainly suffered from was bloat. The world was too large and less rewarding. Your main reward for exploring a Zelda game are new items and heart pieces. When you relegate all of those to copy/paste shrines, you're removing the main incentive to actually engage with the world.

In old Zelda, you had no idea what you could find! Any random chest could have a heart piece or even a brand new item. Any sidequest could give you an awesome reward. That's what made it so much fun and so compelling to do everything you can! Old Zelda also loved to show you something you wanted, without telling you how to get it. Often you'd have to come back WAY later. It makes you remember that location, and when you can grab it it's so satisfying. Metroidvanias are like entirely built on this principle.

However, BotW's map is simply too large to be constantly engaging like this. The devs can't ensure you'll find the upgrades, important NPCs, and discoveries without just telling you. In old Zelda, the devs can naturally guide you to all of that with level design. To remedy this, BotW tries to give you items and upgrades constantly, but they do so in a way to make sure that it makes no difference if you missed them. That's how we get things like interchangeable swords that break instead a permanent sword upgrades (I'll get back to that).

It doesn't help that BotW pushed it's nonlinearity too hard. It wanted to make everything in the game accessible immediately as well as completely skippable, which ruins most sense of player progress as well as obliterating any form of a difficulty curve. BotW never has that "Oh, I can get that now!" moment. You know, I actually don't mind the weapon system in concept. I love resource management in games. The problem is that enemies are optional, and killing them is rarely ever worth the swords you broke. Other games with resource management don't allow to just effortlessly ignore every enemy. The worst part of BotW's over-nonlinearity is the dungeons. Dungeons have always been the heart of this series, even in the original game. In BotW, they were simplified down to "do these 5 points in any order" and it's just really boring and underwhelming.

On top of all of this, I haven't mentioned the stamina system, which quite literally just exists to waste your fucking time. By stripping out so much of Zelda's game design in favor of interchangeable everything, it just all adds up to a game that's very repetitive, often boring, and not as satisfying to play as the older titles. If BotW had a map half the size, it could let Nintendo actually pack it to the brim with something interesting and engaging to find in every step you take. Combine that with a return of the old item/heart piece system and a bit of linearity, and it could be great. The happy medium between old and new Zelda is basically just giving the game a more Metroidvania-esc game design logic, as I alluded to earlier. It's a simple fix, but I think it would make everyone happy.

However, TotK took a different route....

Finally, the topic of the today's post. I played Tears of the Kingdom right around launch, and again for what's worth I thought it too was decently fun. However while I could be a little forgiving of BotW for its various missteps, this game doubled down on all of BotW's worst issues.

Instead of removing bloat, TotK TRIPLED it. We have a mostly empty and boring sky and a mostly boring and empty depths. What's left is the shamelessly reused map from BotW. So now everything in the game is either something you've already seen or something you don't care about. This choice is baffling, to be frank. Of all Zelda games, BotW especially is all about exploring the map.

Like, it literally didn't have anything else!!! Why would I want to explore this map again?!!! I've seen it already!!! There wasn't that much there the first time!!!

cough cough

Getting back ahold of myself....

TotK's main excuse to explore the map is the introduction of caves (which somehow weren't in BotW). Caves certainly add a ton of life to the world design, but we still run into a problem of them too getting very stale by the end. On top of that, they removed any challenge in the physical effort of exploring the world. While the stamina system in BotW mostly sucks, it's main strength is that you can't just climb to the top of every mountain. You gotta look around and be a bit more clever. In TotK, towers alone shoot you up a million feet, so you can just glide everywhere. It's faster, I guess, but what's the point of having world map if it's smarter to just fly over it? It's like they knew that exploring again would be boring so they just let you skip over it.

Well exploration is mostly a bust, but what else changed?

Well to start out positive, I adore the weapon fusing system. I already enjoy resource management, so adding whole fusing layer on top of it is super fun. However, I still rarely have a reason to actually fight. By far the most fun part of TotK were the Proving Ground shrines. When I walk into one of these shrines, it's like the game comes to life with so much fun and energy. It's like I'm teleported to a world where the combat clicks and is insanely fun and in-depth. It's funny, because all those shrines did was limit my weapons, limit my healing, make enemies more punishing, and forced me to actually beat them.

WHY WASN'T THE WHOLE GAME DESIGNED LIKE THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Well we know why. By making the enemies unrelenting, the weapons and healing limited, and forcing you to fight, the game is limiting what you're capable of. Working around and with limitations are the core of what makes, not just video games, ALL games fun. However, the modern Zelda games are so allergic to the idea of limitations in general that they're sabotaging their own carefully designed combat system at pretty much all times. The only way to enjoy it is for the player to decide to place the limit themself, which is a lot to ask of us.

Outside the upgraded combat system, the main difference between BotW and TotK is a new move called Ultrahand, which strangely a reference to an old Nintendo toy. Ultrahand "functions" by letting you grab any physics object, twist it around, and then stick it to other physics objects. If you're thinking "that just sounds like the fucking Psychics Gun from Garry's Mod", then correct! The only difference is that the Physgun actually works properly. For what it's worth, it's pretty impressive technology, however that doesn't mean much when it's not actually fun to play. Moving an object around with Ultrahand feels extremely stiff and awkward. As for the glueing aspect, it's even worse. With the controls alone it's hard to make anything, but what's worse is that you can't detach one item at a time. If you glue one thing on wrong, shaking it loose will probably make it all fall apart. As you might imagine from a system where any two things can be glued in any way, it's all extremely fucking janky.

When the game's systems for Ultrahand are properly flowing and working properly, it can be pretty fun, but for every "pretty fun" Ultrahand moment, there's a thousand annoying moments.

In a way, Ultrahand is basically just an upgraded and reskinned Magnesis, a move from BotW. Magnesis also barely worked, but it wasn't used nearly as much. Ultrahand meanwhile is literally the entire game. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much every puzzle and a majority of side missions are about Ultrahand. Ultrahand is this game's gimmick. You know, like how Ocarina of Time's gimmick was time periods, Majora's Mask's was a time loop, Wind Waker's was the ocean, Twilight Princess was the wolf, Skyward Sword's was motion controls, and Breath of the Wild's was extreme nonlinearity. Tears of the Kingdom's gimmick is Ultrahand, and wow holy shit is it the worst 3D Zelda gimmick so far.

Honestly what sucks is that Ultrahand could've been a lot better. On occasion, they do have some really fun puzzles with it. However, because these modern Zelda games don't have difficulty curves, the Ultrahand puzzles won't get more challenging over time. The majority are just too easy, and I'm spending more time thinking about how awful the controls are at doing what I want.

As for the dungeons, well don't get your hopes up. They're identical to BotW, except now with Ultrahand gimmicks! Well, that's not totally true. They do have two big changes. Firstly, every dungeon has a long linear segment leading up to it. These sections are genuinely great, and they feel more like Zelda dungeons than the actual dungeons. However they are just short preludes to the lackluster main event. As for the other change, this game reintroduces companions.

Companions are classic aspect of Zelda that BotW sorely missed. They're usually small and out of the way. They exist for three important reasons: For one, player guidance. They'll occasionally chime in with hints on where to go and what to do. For two, they add worldbuilding. You can freely talk to them and sometimes you can learn some interesting details from them. For three, they give Link a voice. Link is barely a character, so having another character follow him around and speak for him in cutscenes is a great way to remedy that. Of course, they could just... let Link talk but HEY HEY let's not get too crazy.

Unfortunately TotK once again dropped the ball on this. This game has four companions that you unlock over the story, and they're not small. They're full human sized NPCs that constantly follow you around and get in your way. Now honestly, I could forgive that. I love Final Fantasy VII Remake, and those games have that issue. I don't really care that my party members get in my way in those games, because they're great characters and they're constantly chiming in with fun dialogue. However TotK somehow didn't think to do that. Your "party" never chimes in at any point. Neither in gameplay OR cutscenes. What a huge missed opportunity! They're just lifeless robots that follow you around.

You might be thinking, "I thought the whole point of Zelda companions was that they'd talk. If they don't talk in TotK, what do they do?" and that's a good question hypothetical-person-I-made-up. For one, they fight in combat with you. That sounds fun, but you can't control them at all. They're completely AI. For two, each one has a special move you can use by walking up to them and pressing A. This means they essentially act like a dungeon item. That's a huge improvement for the quality of the dungeons. But remember, they get in the way constantly. Combine that with the strange controls, and you will be constantly setting off your partners without wanting to. Did nobody playtest this???

Giving Link party members is a fucking amazing idea, but they botched the execution of this so hard that most people just turn the party members off. What a waste of an idea. I hope they revisit this concept. I'll be really sad if they don't.

So all in all, Tears of the Kingdom is a really upsetting video game to me. It didn't do the one thing I was hoping, and that was "make a version of Breath of the Wild that took more advantage of it's concept".

On top of that, it kept piling on new great ideas that they also fucked up. Like adding caves, sky islands, and depths to an open world Zelda. Yes! Great idea! However, they were really fucking boring and repetitive. They gave the game an amazing combat system, and then punished you for using it. They gave the game a complicated physics puzzle gimmick, but it was really fucking janky and overused. The added fun build ups to dungeons, but still skimped out on making the actual dungeon part. They gave Link party members, but they're boring and get in your way.

When I look at Tears of the Kingdom, all I can see is the insane amount of missed potential this game had. They could've done so much. They TRIED to do so much. But they didn't do any well at any of them! I can't help but think this all just comes down to a case of some extreme overambition. They tried to do so many things, on top of having an insanely large open world. BotW's map was way too big. TotK's map is insanely oversized. That's why my number one prayer for the next Zelda is that they SCALE THIS SHIT DOWN!!

Overall, Tears of the Kingdom isn't a bad game. When it works, it works very well. However it works so occasionally that I really wish Nintendo stops doing this new modern formula. It seems like Nintendo just doesn't know how to improve upon BotW. With TotK, they just figured "Well if we take BotW and just shove more shit into it, it'd be good right?". Well, it's not good. It's fucking mid.

As for what I want Nintendo to do instead? Well I hope that the next Zelda is just something that's radically new. You might not have expected me to say that, huh? Well honestly, I don't really care if old Zelda ever returns. If it ever did, I'd be happy for sure, but it's not like those old games are perfect either. The reason we're even in this mess is because Skyward Sword was so hated that Nintendo backpedalled so hard in the opposite direction that they fell off a cliff.

At this point, all I want is a new Zelda game that I can love again, and these modern ones just aren't it.

[randomboo256]

SEGA, we have to talk about these boss fights. Ok, look the Sonic series has always... struggled when it comes to having good fights in my opinion.

The momentum-based classic Sonic gameplay and physics have never felt very natural in a boss setting. In Classic Sonic, Sonic takes a good few seconds to build up any speed and if you jump without building up speed you'll barely move. It feels fine while platforming because the levels are designed around it. However, when fighting against a boss, Classic Sonic begins feeling pretty sluggish. It doesn't end there though. When you attack a boss in Classic Sonic, Sonic also gets bounced back in an at times unpredictable direction and speed. It's very easy to get punished for landing an attack. Not to mention the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog has an incredibly large head. And a stupidly large head = a pretty big hitbox. Additionally, it can be really unclear when it's even safe to attack some bosses. The games have no real indicator when it's safe to go for hit, so I often just keep throwing myself at them until I learn where and how they actually take damage. In total, it's just really unpleasant fighting a boss in a classic game. What makes it worse is that bosses are stapled onto acts, so if you want to replay a level you're forced to replay the boss it comes with.

Fortunately though, classic bosses usually aren't very long. Most can be beaten in under a minute, and they usually aren't too bad. They're not any fun, but they're over quickly and they aren't really hard at all. Only the final bosses of the Sonic's 1, 2, and 3K are any level of frustrating, and in 1 and 2's case that's solely from a lack of rings. I mean hell, there's a reason the Sonic series uses rings for health. It's because it's really tough to avoid taking damage all the time in these games. Between Sonic's speed while platforming and his clumsiness during bosses, Sonic needs to have a super forgiving health system.

As for the 3D games... well while there's a lot one can say about the 3D Sonic games in general about whether they're an improvement/downgrade from the classics, I will die on the hill that the 3D Sonic games have universally better boss fights. The 3D games are an inarguable improvement when it comes to the average boss fight, in my opinion.

Sonic's homing attack allows you to attack from a standstill, therefore fixing the issue with Sonic's controls. Using his homing attack without locking on also immediately gives Sonic midair speed and works as a fun dodge move.

When Sonic lands a hit on a boss in a 3D game, Sonic usually gets cinematically sent back to a safe position while the boss either acts stunned for a few seconds or gears up for the next phase. This means that landing an attack rarely punishes the player, and it also lets them relax and celebrate for a second before the fight continues.

Bosses have their own dedicated levels, and because of that they don't drag down the game's replayability, as well allowing them to be longer.

The 3D games have far more forgiving hitboxes in general.

That's not to say that the 3D games have perfect bosses though. Far from it actually.

The 3D games have famously poor cameras. While they're usually "good enough" during levels, they often crumble to pieces during boss fights. It can be damn near impossible to see anything during some 3D Sonic fights, to the extent where you wonder if the boss was even playtested at all.

The ring system just feels OP now. While classic Sonic was so clumsy during a boss that it needed it, the more precise 3D Sonic controls just make the rings redundant. I can't help but feel like a lot of these bosses would just be better if Sonic just had a normal health meter.

The issue of not knowing when it's safe it hit has gotten even worse. Mainly because most fights don't have the easy tell of "hit where you see Eggman" like a lot of the classics did.

The 3D games like being more cinematic, so so trying to attack the boss will hurt you anyway if you don't wait for their rigid patterns to conclude and for them to enter their "it's legally acceptable to attack me" state. The makes the bosses way more repetitive, and because they're longer that means death is even worse. They can also get pretty long too.

Some of the games have quick time events.

Finally, the final boss in 3D games are almost always playing as Super Sonic, which translates to "your completion of this game depends on this incredibly gimmicky boss section that's exclusively using half-baked gameplay mechanics that you have never touched in this game before this point". In other words, it's a pretty underwhelming way to end the game from a gameplay sense.

The 3D games are very diverse, so there's obviously exceptions to what I've just listed, but in general the 3D games share these strengths and issues. In general, the 3D bosses are better than the classics, but still not very good in my opinion. They're mostly just middling.

But this is all old news. Why do we have to talk about this now? Well, two days ago you released a little game called Sonic Superstars. Now, Sonic Superstars is a fun little game in general. Sure it's incredibly pitiful compared to the less expensive Super Mario Wonder, but Superstars is still a fun little game. The controls are pretty tight. Some of the chaos emerald powers are pretty neat. The level design... exists. The graphics... could've definitely been better but hey they also could've been worse...? Trip is pretty cute character design???

Yeah let's stop beating around the bush. These boss fights are awful Sega. And not just the normal Sonic boss fight where I'm "Oh well this is kinda unfun but I can tolerate it". No. The bosses in Superstars are ADVANCED UNFUN. The bosses in Superstars miraculously managed to take everything that wasn't fun about the classics and some of the worst parts of the 3D games then smashed them together into one unholy freak of nature.

When I say they took "everything that wasn't fun", I mean it. I can just copy and paste the exact same problems. It's been 30 years and yet there were zero improvements. What makes Superstars so bad is when they combined all of these existing issues with the longer and more cinematic (repetitive) boss fights. So in total we have:

Controls that feel sluggish in this context.

A physics engine that will punish you even if you land the attack.

A large hitbox.

Some bosses are unclear when and how you're able to deal damage.

Some bosses that will just ignore your attacks sometimes (if they feel like it).

Bosses are stapled on the end of levels, forcing you to replay the boss every time you replay the level, or vice versa.

Bosses that are upwards of several minutes long (sometimes feeling longer than the level itself), all with no checkpoints.

Bosses that have long, tedious, and uninterruptable attack cycles that you have to repeat over and over if you die or replay the level.

A camera that sometimes won't show vital information.

And on top of everything else, they're buggy. Sometimes you or your rings clip through the ground. Sometimes bosses spawn right on top of you. Sometimes the emerald powers wig out or just refuse to work. Sometimes the performance on Switch gets so bad that you can barely even play it, let alone beat it. The only real saving grace with Superstars's bosses is that you can sometimes cheese them with emeralds.

In most Sonic games, the bosses are merely a brief low point. In Sonic Superstars, they're actively ruining the rest of the game. Because they're long, unfun, and unfair I just...

I just have no words.

[randomboo256]

Four Swords Rant

I've been playing the Four Swords games for the first time recently, and they're honestly not as good as people hype them up to be. Specifically, I'm referring to the games Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Four Swords Adventures. I was really excited to play them because they're some of the only Zelda games I never touched, so to say I was let down is an understatement. Let me go one at a time with these two, because they're surprisingly different.

Also they're pretty old and are a pain to play nowadays (hell, they were a pain to play even back then), so I imagine a lot of people haven't touched them seriously in forever, so let me recap you as well.

Warning: This post will be long. I am sorry.

Firstly, Four Swords. It's probably the most obscure official Zelda game made for one of Nintendo's main systems. Four Swords was a freebie with the GBA version of A Link to the Past, and it's remaster Four Swords Anniversary Edition was a downloadable freebie to all Nintendo DSI owners. Needless to say, but there's no reason to be too overly harsh on the game. Honestly, the main problem with Four Swords is less to do with the game and more do to Nintendo's refusal to act normal for five seconds. Four Swords Anniversary was delisted just a few months after release, and the GBA original has never been rereleased (despite the fact Nintendo charges us a $50 sub to play GBA games with online multiplayer as being its main selling point).

Anyway the game itself. It's a weird one. There's four main levels, but they're randomized. It's kinda like a roguelike game or something. The gameplay is basic, but it's fun enough for a freebie. The original GBA version was multiplayer only, but luckily the (delisted) remaster added a singleplayer which works fine enough. I wanted to play it multiplayer with a friend (and believe me I tried), but it was too much hassle. As a singleplayer game, I can see it working very well as a way to get your quick Zelda fix on the go.

"But where's the complaining?" you might be wondering. Well, I haven't gotten into the bonus levels yet. Anniversary added two extra worlds... which consist of three levels each... which themselves are batches of three levels each. So 18 levels, except unlike the base game, these aren't randomized. These were all handcrafted, and are identical on every playthrough. The first 9 levels aren't bad at all, actually. They're loving homages to ALTTP, LA, and TLOZ respectively and the level design and puzzle were pretty good imo.

Now the second batch of levels are what grind my gears. They're positioned as like the greatest challenge yet but they're more like greatest test of patience. These levels are LONG (admittedly I play slow), and they're the only time in the game where Rupees became a real annoyance to me. Basically, Rupees are your extra lives. If any Link dies, you lose 50, then 100, then like 200, etc until it caps at 500 Rupees per death. If a Link dies, they respawn on the spot. Now critically, if you can not afford the death fee it's GAME OVER. You have to go back —not to the start of the level— but to to the start of that batch of 3 levels. Just one of these levels can take me like 30 minutes because they're huge and I'm looking everywhere for all the rupees I can get. Add them all up and that's like 90 minutes of progress I can potentially lose from not having my damn tax money. Even that wouldn't be too bad if these levels didn't have some downright horrible game design in my opinion. For example, the second batch of levels are all filled with ice physics that make the game near unplayable. Yeah, it's hard I guess. But the developers didn't seem to understand that hard things should also have to be fun.

You may think this is a lot of pointless complaining considering it's about 1 bonus world in a free and delisted remaster of a relatively obscure game, and if you do think that you're completely correct. However I was so completely miserable playing it that I just had to rant to get it off my chest, ok? Despite my whining, I think Four Swords Anniversary Edition is a good game for what it is, at least from my singleplayer perspective.

Four Swords Adventures on the other hand... I am not so forgiving to. Disclaimer: I have not finished this game yet. At this point, we only have a couple worlds left. Multiplayer games like this need scheduling, and we haven't had the chance to end it yet. Firstly, Four Swords Adventures is the polar opposite of Four Swords in terms of price. While Four Swords was basically just a free giveaway, Four Swords Adventures is perhaps one of the most ridiculously expensive games to ever exist on a home console. Between the $50 price tag of the game itself, you also need four $100 GBAs, and four $10 GBA to GCN link cables. If you just want to play your Gamecube game with multiple people the couch, you had to spend over $500 (including tax) when it was new. Keep in mind, I was using the pricing of back then when it was new. Nowadays it's even worse. Just one of those GBA to GCN cables alone and used can run you like $40.

You might defend this with, "So what? The GBA Four Swords required a bunch of consoles and stuff. You didn't give it shit for it." But there's a huge difference there. It's not unreasonable for a GBA game to need more GBAs for multiplayer. In fact, for simultaneous multiplayer it simply needs to do that. There's no other way it could reasonably work. Not only that, but Four Swords—again—was a freebie to a normal Zelda game. It was more like a bonus if you had the extra hardware to play it.

Meanwhile, it's completely UNreasonable for a Gamecube game that's literally all about multiplayer to require four separate game consoles on top of the existing home console that you needed to buy. Spoiler alert, but the GBAs basically just act like Wii U Gamepads before the Wii U Gamepad, and they're about as useless. You can see your health, force gem count, and if you're in a house or underground you appear on the GBA screen. Is it neat? Kinda, but not $500 neat. This game should've just had split screen, like a normal game. The GBA stuff could've just been optional if you own the hardware already. It's completely and utterly ridiculous, and it's insane that Nintendo got away with it.

Well for a game this expensive, it must be worth it right? God I wish it was...

Firstly, the good. I really love the combat. It feels like 3D Zelda combat adapted right into the second dimension. It took me a bit to get used to, but it feels great. I can't remember if any other 2D played like this, but I like it. Secondly and despite my upcoming issues, I do think the game is decently fun most of the time.

Ok I'm out of good. Now for the bad.

Firstly, WHY IS EVERYTHING RECYCLED FROM OTHER GAMES?! Graphics, music, enemies, everything! Everything is taken from either A Link to the Past, Wind Waker, or the OG Four Swords. Even some of the characters are just lifted from Ocarina of Time like come on Nintendo! Give this game some identity! The original GBA game felt like it had more of its own identity, and it was literally a pack in! It makes me feel like I'm playing some weird mod or fangame or something. It doesn't help that some of the graphics just look bad. Some of the bosses reused from Wind Waker, for example, just have some really cheap looking sprites. Combine that with the constant mismatch of assets from random Zelda games on top of this game's tacky UI elements and it ends up looking like a Newgrounds fan game.

Secondly, the multiplayer experience is seriously flawed. There's no way around it. So, it's a co-op right? After all, the goal is to work together to finish the dungeon. Well the co-op experience is frankly lacking. All the co-op amounts to is "Push thing together" or "Grab thing together" or whatever. There's rarely any creativity in it. Most of this game could be completed with a single Link, which ends up meaning that there's rarely any feeling of actually working together to get through it. Often, one person will just end up doing everything while the others are just following them around with nothing to contribute.

As for the puzzles? What puzzles? So far, there's hardly been anything at all. That's baffling to me, because four player Zelda is literally perfect for tons of super fun puzzles, but so far it's like they aren't even in the game really. It's such a damn shame, because that was the part I was really looking forward to. Elaborate co-op puzzle solving?? Like sign me up! But alas. The game is basically just exploration and combat. The combat is fun, but the exploration? Well, I'll get back to that.

So the co-op is already wounded as is, but what kills it the fact this game feels deeply confused on what kind of multiplayer game it wants to be. On one hand, it seems like it's a co-op. On the other hand, it adds a bunch of annoying shit to try to make it competitive. I don't mean the side modes or Tingle's tower or whatever. I mean the core level to level gameplay. The fact that things like heart containers and bracelets are only given to one person is terrible because it undercuts the fact we're working together here. When I get an upgrade like that I just feel bad about it. A lot of the intended competitiveness revolves around the Rupee replacements, being Force Gems. The game really wants us to be aggressively fighting each other over these damn gems that none of us give a shit about. So much so that the game has freaking friendly fire on at all times. Not only that, but we also have hitboxes and can bump each other around and get in each other's way. This means that this a co-op game where the other players are more likely to get in the way of each other (whether they like it or not) than they are to actually work together. Even from a purely competitive perspective, what's the appeal? Being a dick to your friends just ends up costing both of you in the end, so like???

Plus like, there's practically no punishment for death at all. The only punishment as far as I can tell is ranking lower on the end level tally, which again is just an unwanted competitive element.

Finally, the exploration has problems too. It's generally fun, but there's a constant sense of being tethered too heavily to your teammates. Despite the fact that the game forces every player to have a glorified Gamepad, there's still very little freedom in walking around. Sure, another player might walk into a cave, but you're all stuck on the same overall screen. That means that if one player has to backtrack, everyone has to backtrack with them. It also means that the four players can't multitask. Unless there's a bunch to do on one screen, and there usually isn't, it just leaves someone waiting for the other players to get finished.

It doesn't help that every player only gets 1 item each. It's so lame. They totally could've added an inventory menu and had you unlock items for at least the rest of the level, rather than temporarily putting them in the hands of one Link. Any excitement I feel finding a cool item is completely ruined knowing that I'll likely be forced to toss it aside for like, a shovel or something. Plus, it's the main source of obnoxious back tracking. God, it really feels good for the whole group to backtrack multiple screens because one of us needs to grab a certain item that we need to progress. Feels great. Definitely not wasting our time.

I know I've been really negative, but I don't hate this game. When I can ignore the issues, it's pretty fun. But man this game can really get on all of our nerves at times, and not in an enjoyable way. Four Swords Adventures just reeks of missed potential. Multiplayer Zelda??! That sounds awesome! But nah this was super underwhelming. My gameplay issues combined with the insane hardware requirements just makes this a huge no go nowadays. It's frankly not worth it, in any capacity. If you have to play it, just play it on PC if you can. It's too much money for a game that feels this uncreative.

What a let down.

[randomboo256]

Psychonauts Review

Psychonauts is one of the best 3D platformers ever made. I know, bold statement right out the bat, but let me explain.

Firstly, I'm a massive fan of platformers, both 2D and 3D. It was the main genre that made me interested in video games to begin with. Over the years, I've played a lot of them. From the simple pleasure of Mario, to the fast paced and inconsistent roller-coaster of Sonic, to the smashing and bashing of Crash Bandicoot, I've seen all of the biggest stars of this genre. Psychonauts, meanwhile, is a game that easily deserves to stand among them.

In fact, I'd go so far to say that this game alone is better than most of them.

Firstly, the story and writing is fantastic. The care and effort put into it is obvious at all times. If you're somehow unaware of the plot, I won't spoil it. It's a rather simple story honestly, but the characters are what make it great. The core premise of the game revolves around a young psychic kid named Razputin who has to use his powers to enter the minds of other characters. As such, every level is themed around that character's mind. Themed around their past. Themed around their trauma. Psychonauts is not a game to shy away from dark subject matter. Many of the minds you enter in this game belong to deeply troubled individuals suffering from mental illness, and your goal is to help them work through their trauma and help them forge better lives for themselves. It's all handled with such care and attention to detail. Every collectable you find has meaning beyond its gameplay value. From figments of ideas that compliment their surroundings, to literal emotional baggage, to mental cobwebs formed by an individual neglecting part of their psyche, and to living vaults that contain the individuals brightest (and darkest) memories. Everything in this game is working to tell the story and flesh out it's characters.

However, despite it's very serious subject matter, Psychonauts is a delightfully funny game. The game is constantly hitting you with jokes, and not in an overbearing way either. Psychonauts knows exactly when to be funny and exactly when to be serious. It's not mocking it's subject matter. The humor serves to constantly lighten the mood and never allow the game to feel overly drab or moody. As for the type of humor in Psychonauts, it's usually dark humor, but portrayed in a very cartoony over-the-top way. It's pretty similar to something like Invader Zim or The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, which seems appropriate considering the game's voice talent. It's very 2000s feeling, but in the best possible way. Thankfully, the writing actually aged pretty damn well in my opinion, which I unfortunately can't say for a lot of other 2000s comedy media.

But enough about story, what about the gameplay? Well, it's fantastic too. Some people call the game a collectathon which it kinda is but also kinda isn't. Every non-inventory item serves to boost your Psi-Cadet Rank. Collect enough of the right things, and you rank up. The maximum rank is 101, and that's essentially 101% completion. You only need to hit rank 30 (which is not at all hard to do) to beat the game. After you hit 30, you simply get helpful but unneeded upgrades. I got 101% which was (mostly) a pretty fun task. Most of the collectables are a blast to get, although figments can be pretty annoying. However it's still not accurate to call it a collectathon, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather, Psychonauts is a level by level platformer with combat and old-school adventure game elements. Some levels lean hard on platforming, some lean hard on combat, and some lean hard on adventure-style puzzle solving. So let's break all three down one by one.

Platforming: Razputin was born in the circus, so he's a very skilled acrobat. The game is filled with various circus-themed obstacles, alongside usual platforming obstacles. The controls are pretty smooth and it's pretty fun to just jump and fling yourself around. Raz is also a psychic, so he learns various psychic powers throughout the plot. Most of them don't have platforming use, aside from one notable exception: Levitation. Raz can summon a rolling ball and bounce high in the air then glide freely to the ground. It's kinda broken but it's super fun. There's not much more to say about platforming. It's pretty fun and it does it's job.

Combat: The combat is alright. Raz has a three hit combo as well as various psychic moves you can pull out. It's pretty easy to exploit, especially if you have a pretty high rank, but again it's fun enough to keep the gameplay interesting. Enemies were pretty repetitive but it's not a big deal. Combat isn't really a big deal.

Adventure: The game involves a lot of talking to characters, figuring out what they want you to do, and often what item you need to find so you can do what they want. The puzzles never get that complicated but it keeps the levels interesting. The game naturally also has lots and lots of exploration, especially if you want to go for 101%.

While none of these three styles are super deep on their own, the game is truly greater than the sum of its parts. It all adds together into an incredibly enjoyable gameplay loop, and when you add that with the constant deliberate storytelling, it all combines to a very complete feeling experience. The game is truly firing on all fronts, and even if it didn't hit the mark perfectly on all of them, it hit close enough that it doesn't really matter to me. Psychonauts is a cult classic for a reason, and I think everyone owes it to themselves to play it at least once. For the cheap price this game is constantly at, recommending this game is a no-brainer….

TV?

[randomboo256]

CTR: Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (2019) Review

[This review is a continuation of my Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy review. Please read that (and by extension my whole Crash Bandicoot review saga) first.]

In 2019, Activision Blizzard released Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, a from-the-ground-up remake of Crash’s racing title. I have mixed feelings about this remake. On one hand, I think it’s great and it’s an objective improvement over the original. On the other hand, I have big issues with it. Both game design issues and moral issues. Let’s just jump into the comparison. 

Firstly, the obvious: graphics. While I had my issues with the artstyle in N. Sane Trilogy, I don’t have them here. CTR barely has you look at your character so your attention is fully focused on the environments you’re racing through, and I think they look incredible. This game can look stunning across the board. Lots of very pretty levels. Coco Park is probably my favorite in terms of visuals. However, there’s a major issue with the graphics, and that’s the performance. As I've mentioned earlier, this game only runs 30 FPS on all consoles, even the PS4 Pro and the PS5 with no next gen update on the horizon. The resolution is decent at least, on PS5 anyway. On Nintendo Switch, the game is locked to an ugly 720p, even docked. Honestly, this is unacceptable. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe looks just as pretty as this game and it runs a crystal clear 1080p and a buttery smooth 60fps on Switch. The fact Crash can’t even manage 60 on PS5 is pathetic. What makes it worse is that Nitro Fueled never got a PC release. So that means that not only is there no official way to play the game on PC, but there’s also no official way to play the game with a decent frame rate. However, that’s not to say there’s no way to play the game at 60fps. Since this game is on Switch, it can be emulated with Yuzu, and it runs flawlessly. On Yuzu, you can upscale the game to 1440p and beyond and you can also apply a simple 60fps patch. Now you can play the game with some decent visuals. You are held back by the Switch’s inherent visual drawbacks, but it’s worth it for the frame rate. If a fan can get this game running at 60fps, then they have no excuse.

Well graphics aside, how well does the gameplay hold up? The gameplay on the whole is mostly unchanged. There are subtle downgrades though, mainly to jumps. It’s simultaneously harder to land high jumps due to awkward collisions and easier to overshoot jumps due to their new momentum physics. There are other changes too, but they’re more subtle. Of course, none of the tracks were redesigned with the new physics changes in mind, so it simply plays worse, much like the N. Sane Trilogy. However, I don’t think it’s a game ruiner here like it was in Crash 1. These changes are, like I said, subtle. They’re only really noticeable if you compare the games back to back. So while Nitro Fueled does have worse gameplay, it’s barely noticeable so it's not a deal breaker. 

Besides, unlike N. Sane Trilogy, Nitro Fueled is far more than just the same game again with prettier graphics and worse gameplay. The N. Sane Trilogy only had one original thing in the whole game, being a post launch level. Nitro Fueled is jam packed with an insane amount of new content. We have an absolutely massive roster with 56 playable characters, all of which having plenty of unique skins. We also have an insane number of kart parts. Between bodies, tires, paint jobs, and stickers the amount of unique kart combinations is limitless. We have 40 tracks, all of which having their own time trials with different time crate placements and the new ring challenge mode with various ring placements. We also have battle mode, which itself has a good handful of maps with a bunch of different battle modes. They even remade all of the content from Crash Nitro Kart and just included it with this game. Combine that with the remade Adventure mode and a ton of stuff I didn’t mention, and this game is fucking insane with how much content it has. Even if the gameplay changes were bad enough to be really noticeable, the amount of content this game has alone would justify playing it. 

This is a great remake! So how did they fuck it up?

When I was just boasting about all this game’s content like its character count and customization options, I left out one crucial detail: how to unlock that content. The vast majority of this game’s content is locked behind the Pit Stop Shop. The Pit Stop Shop is a Fortnite-style store where a small collection of random items will be available for purchase for that day only. The next day everything will refresh. This store is online only, so if you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t buy anything. That means that most of the content on the disc/cartridge can’t be accessed without an internet connection and presumably once the Pit Stop Shop servers go down, so will most of the game. It gets worse though. How do you buy these items? You buy them with Wumpa Coins. How do you get Wumpa Coins? Well, either by grinding by playing online matches to get pitifully small amounts of coinage or by, you guessed it, spending money on microtransactions. Good ol’ Activision Blizzard. We all saw this coming, right? Let’s not forget that the whole reason this company even exists in the way it does today is because Activision wanted to jump on the live service bandwagon. 

However, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this game wouldn’t have this bullshit considering that, quite literally, one month before launch the developers told us that this game wouldn’t have microtransactions at all. Then the game came out, and no microtransactions in sight. Everyone praised the game for not doing that in their reviews. Then a month after launch, after the positive reviews had gone out and after a lot of people already bought the game and got deeply invested in it, Activision announced they were adding microtransactions to the game. Not only that, but the in game shop “coincidentally” started upping the prices of everything within the shop. They made unlocking basic cosmetics a hell of a lot grindier all for the sake of pushing people into wasting their money on this crap. How utterly despicable, especially in a game aimed towards children. 

On the bright side, at least the online was good, right? Crash Team Racing is a game I’d love to have an online mode so I can play with other people. Adding an online mode to a CTR remake sounds like an incredible idea, and it is! Well, in concept at least. The online in Nitro Fueled was dead on arrival. Not even a few months after launch passed before people stopped playing. Gee, I wonder what happened to this game within a few months of launch that would turn off a lot of players. HMM. Anyway, it would take ages to find a full match, and when you did it wasn’t worth it. The most dedicated players were too advanced and the game had no matchmaking, so casual players will get destroyed and just stop playing. The characters were unbalanced. Every character was assigned an arbitrary class, and some classes were simply better than others. If you were a big Coco fan but you wanted a speed focused character, you were shit out of luck. Large portions of the roster weren’t even worth playing. The online didn’t even have servers! It was all peer to peer, which just made lag and disconnections even more of an issue. It also didn’t help the wait times either. That was all within a few months of launch. Nowadays, the game is completely dead. The only places to find a good race is in private servers with friends. Even worse is that their “live service” gave up not even a year after launch. The game was released in June 2019 and the last update was March 2020. What a joke. 

Keep in mind that these past few paragraphs were based not on my own personal experience. I wasn't there at launch and I based this review off of an offline-only Yuzu version of the game. It's possible that people were exaggerating or maybe some things are fixed now. Feel free to take some of that with a grain of salt, but honestly nothing that I've heard from others then repeated here sounded remotely far fetched to me and a lot of it was backed up by a lot of other people's personal accounts. So while it's possible some of this might not be true, I believe all of it and I would never intentionally lie to people.

In conclusion, Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled was a great remake that was ruined by unbelievable greed. I’d expect nothing less from Activision Blizzard, one of the worst companies making video games today between their anti-consumer practices, their anti-employee practices, and just their general discrimination against marginalized groups. Truly they’re just anti-everyone (except their top dogs). Look, if all you care about is the gameplay and the amount of content that’s technically on display, it’s not an awful game. It is fun and the content is still there, but I just can’t recommend this game on either a product level nor on a moral level to anyone. If you want to experience Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, the best way to is simply emulate the game with 60fps and all the Pit Stop Shop content unlocked from the get go. That will mean that you won’t be able to play the game online, but no one was using the online anyway from what I've heard. Unless you were planning on joining an online private community for this game or were planning on playing it online with your friends, there’s no reason to play this game via the official means. I’m aware that I’m suggesting piracy, but Activision Blizzard is awful so fuck them. Piracy is fine, at least in their case. It’s always moral to pirate games that were being sold by awful corporations.

Now with all that said, I’m done talking about Crash Bandicoot for now. I could go into more detail into the era of games in-between after Naughty Dog left and before the modern day revival began, but I'm honestly tired of this orange marsupial. But still, 6 essay reviews (8 if you count the multiple parts) over the course of 5 days. That's definitely a new record to me. I haven't posted anything on Tumblr here in a while, so consider this an apology I guess.

Oh who am I kidding? No one reads these things.

Well regardless, that's all folks.

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017) Review [Part Two]

[This review is the second part of a larger Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy review. Please read Part One first]

Crash Bandicoot (N. Sane Version)

In my opinion, this version of Crash Bandicoot sucks. The trilogy gave Crash a much heavier jump and changed his hitboxes to make his jumping way less reliable. Levels that were fairly easy in the original such as Road to Nowhere became way harder when basic jumping and landing on platforms became far less consistent. Essentially, Crash has a pill shaped hitbox that’ll make him slip off platforms if you’re too close to the edge of it. This effectively made every platform in the game slightly smaller and made every jump have slightly less room for error. When combined with the heavier jumps and a game that's designed as deliberately as this one, the remaster just makes the game much less enjoyable to play in my opinion. That’s not to say the remaster has NO benefits, as it fixed the save system, made Stormy Ascent easier to access, and it made 100% easier by letting you see box totals and saving broken boxes with checkpoints, allowing you to die but still get the gem. So there are reasons to play the remaster instead, and if you own the remaster and haven’t played it yet, it’s still a decent way to play this game. However in my opinion, the pros don’t outweigh the cons. On a final note for the remaster, I’ll add that if you’re someone who played the remastered version of this game and didn’t like it, try the original. I hated the remaster when I first played it and I ended up loving the original.

Speaking of Stormy Ascent, that was a level that was cut from the original for being too hard. You could still play it with a Gameshark code however. I’ve played it. It was long and hard with some spaced out checkpoints, but it wasn’t too bad. I enjoyed the challenge. On the ORIGINAL, that is. On the remake I spent like an hour and 70 lives dying over and over, while I only died like 10 times in the original game. The remake had more checkpoints in that level too, and it was still way harder! Even Vicarious Visions knows that they made the jumping a lot harder because they acknowledged that in a blog post. Remember when this remaster came out and the Gamers™ called everyone “fake gamers” who complained about the difficulty? Remember how they were like “Oh, back in my day these games were even harder!” Well guess what? They weren’t. They were a lot easier, in fact. 

Anyway on to Crash 2.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (N. Sane Version) 

Crash 2 has a lot of the same changes as Crash 1. It has the bad hitboxes and it has the inaccurate jumping, however this time around it’s different. You see, all three games in the trilogy are based off of Crash 3. In case you forgot, Crash 1 had a light jump, Crash 2 had a heavy jump, and Crash 3 had something in between. Crash 2’s jump was too heavy, so switching to Crash 3 was an improvement. Also, Crash 2 and 3’s jumps were both balanced around the slide jump, a high and floaty jump that basically replaces the normal jump button in a lot of places. The slide jump is basically a souped-up version of Crash 1’s normal jump, but for Crash 2 and 3. With the precise slide jump, getting around the garbage hitboxes is a ton easier. It also ends up making Crash 1 feel like the heaviest game in the trilogy, when it was originally the opposite. 

That begs the question: Why didn’t they add the slide to Crash 1? If they would’ve done that, the game would’ve been sooo much better. I understand that it would be less accurate to some extent, but how about this: Only give Coco the slide in Crash 1. In this remaster, you can choose to unlock Coco in any of the games. Like, literally choose. They give you an option. However Coco plays no differently, despite being canonically from the future (it’s not explained). Specifically Crash 3. So wouldn't it make sense for her to have moves from future games? Hell, while you’re at it: Give Coco the double jump and crash dash from the start in all three games. Coco would essentially be an easier option either for people struggling or just people who want to mix things up with moves from later Crash games in Crash 2 and 3. I think that would’ve been brilliant.

Oh anyway, yeah Crash 2 remake was ok. Overall I’d say between the better gravity and worse hitboxes it balances out to being equal with the original. They also improved the jetpack controls somewhat, but not by a lot. Anyway now for Crash 3.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

Still refusing to just call it Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Anyway Crash 3 wasn’t half bad. Firstly, the enhanced moveset completely corrects the bad hitboxes. The hitboxes are still bad, but you won’t be able to casually notice. Also the core jumping gameplay was designed around 3 from the get go, so the platforming levels in this game are basically identical. As for the vehicle levels, well let’s go down the list.

Scuba levels: They’re the same. They still suck.

Jet Ski levels: They control a bit worse. They’re a lot less precise and feel more like a real jet ski. Honestly though, I think they’re better. The original jet ski levels were way too easy and became boring. The less precise and more realistic controls actually end up improving these levels.

Motorcycle levels: They control a lot worse, and this time that’s a bad thing. The motorcycle has awful handling and now requires you to break and come to a complete stop at times just to make certain turns. This certainly isn’t CTR I’ll say that much.

Airplane levels: These levels were a pain in the ass in the originals, but now they’re just fine. Your plane no longer snaps back to center position which makes aiming soo much easier. It’s honestly too easy now. These levels are effortless for late game stages.

Things like airplane levels are also enhanced by the new analog stick support. The original Playstation controller didn’t have dual sticks, so a lot of PS1 games didn’t have analog input, including the Crash trilogy. Or at least, THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT!! Turns out Crash 2, 3, and CTR all natively support full analog input on the original Playstation. I found this out after I beat the games already. I guess I just never tried hitting the analog button in Crash 2 or 3. I feel like such a dumbass. Oh, and if you’re wondering Crash 3 PS1’s airplane levels do play nicer on analog sticks. They still aren’t good, but you can aim a lot easier with the more precise analog inputs.

Crash 3 also introduced a brand new level: Future Tense. Originally, Crash N. Sane Trilogy was a PS4 exclusive. However a year later it was released on all platforms. To celebrate that release, they added a new level to the game. Future Tense is designed to be the hardest Crash 3 level and is supposed to be that game’s version of Stormy Ascent. However, it wasn’t very hard for me. It was a bit more difficult than the average level I suppose, but not by much honestly. It was a very fun level though. Probably the best level in the N. Sane Trilogy, and that’s probably because it was actually designed with the N. Sane Trilogy in mind.

In conclusion, Crash 3 N. Sane was an improvement overall. The only real downgrade was the motorcycle levels. As for the N. Sane Trilogy in general, it was ok I guess. Other than Crash 1, the trilogy versions of these games are pretty interchangeable with the original versions to me. However, the original trilogy wasn’t the only thing that got remade...

[To be continued...]

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017) Review [Part One]

The past days I've been slowly going through the world of Crash Bandicoot as I reviewed Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot 3, and Crash Team Racing. All of which was based on their original Playstation releases. I highly recommend reading those reviews first for context. However, only focusing on the Playstation versions of these games isn't really being all that helpful due to a pair of releases that came out comparatively recently. But first, let's take a step back and see how we even got here.

Crash Bandicoot was a game published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and the titular character later became a mascot of sorts for the console it was on: the Playstation. The original Crash games were developed by a studio called Naughty Dog, however they eventually quit making Crash games. Despite that, the series kept going. On all platforms too.. what? Why are Crash Bandicoot games coming out on Nintendo consoles, Xbox consoles, and even PC? What’s happening? Did Sony do this? Well, no. You see, despite Naughty Dog creating the games and the characters and Sony publishing them, Universal Interactive (yes that Universal) owned the series. Ok, so a long time ago Naughty Dog made a weird fighting game called Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. Despite it's obscurity, this game is shockingly important because after finishing it, Naughty Dog displayed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in search of a publisher. After a bidding war, Universal Interactive won the rights to it. Universal liked it so much that they contracted Naughty Dog to make three more games for them. Those three games ended up being, of course, the Crash Bandicoot trilogy. Before that though, Naughty Dog needed to pick a console to develop the next game on. They thought the Playstation looked “sexy” so they started development for that. After a demonstration from Naughty Dog, Sony agreed to publish and partially fund the game. But Naughty Dog made 4 Crash games right? If they already made an extra one, they could just make more, right? Well in theory, but Naughty Dog thought that Universal was too difficult to communicate with. They had a great relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment though. They were so close in fact that only two years after CTR, Sony outright purchased Naughty Dog, firmly establishing their place as part of the Playstation family. 

After Naughty Dog quit, Sony published one more Crash Bandicoot game: Crash Bash. I haven’t really played Crash Bash personally, but from what I’ve heard it’s just a sub-par party game. After that, Universal decided to stop letting Sony publish Crash in favor of publishing the series on all platforms, with the first one being Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. People didn’t like that game, and I didn’t either. I’m not going to talk too much about this game mostly because it's already been mocked to death and also because it’d be kinda redundant. That’s because Wrath of Cortex is literally just a one to one ripoff of Crash Bandicoot 3, even down to the hub world. Except it’s like they saw my review of Crash 3 and said “Hey, what if we took every problem Crash 3 had and made them even worse?”. The platforming is worse because the camera is awful and they messed up the slide somehow. You have to like release the slide button and THEN jump, which is just awkward. Other than that the platforming is playable, but you rarely get to do it. Even more of the game is random bullshit now. Well over half of your playtime will be spent in those vehicle segments. While I didn’t care for the vehicles in Crash 3 because they distracted from the platforming, they were mostly just tolerable filler. In Wrath of Cortex, they all suck soo much ass. They all fucking suck and they're damn near unplayable. I kinda like the ball rolling, but that’s it. They also brought back Crash 2’s awful jetpack. They not only brought back Crash 3’s abysmal underwater stages, but 1. There’s even more of them. and 2. They’re even worse! You get this submarine which is so slow you can’t dodge the obstacles! Anyway, enough ranting. Wrath of Cortex sucks, but that’s no hot take. Everyone knows that, and it’s not just this game. Most Crash games after Naughty Dog left were less than stellar. Even the best one, Twinsanity, was so incredibly rushed that the final result was unpolished and had a lot of cut content. Needless to say, Crash fans weren’t happy, and after a disastrous reboot, they just wanted a simple return to the classics. 

Meanwhile, Universal was eventually merged with Vivendi, who owned a bunch of studios including Blizzard Entertainment. The combined new studio became known as "Vivendi Games". Fast forward to the late 2000s, Activision was foaming at the mouth over the idea of microtransactions and other recurring fees to the gaming consumer, and therefore were dying to get their hands on World of Warcraft, a Blizzard game. Vivendi Games was struggling at that time, so the two companies merged, forming into the public menace we now know as Activision Blizzard. But what about our favorite orange marsupial? Well he had games throughout the 2000s, but after the merger he slowly grew silent. In 2011, Activision Blizzard released a game called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. Poor Spyro, but that’s a story for another day isn’t it? Skylanders was made by Toys for Bob alongside other companies, most notably Vicarious Visions. In 2016, the final Skylanders game was released, and it had the long awaited yet melancholic return of Crash Bandicoot. His portion of the game was developed by Vicarious Visions. Announced alongside his inclusion however was a full from the ground up remake of the entire classic Crash trilogy. Months later we got a trailer and a name: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy.

Most people these days play this games in the N. Sane Trilogy, rather than their original Playstation releases so I feel I have to cover it. I'm not going to go super in depth with each game, because I already have done that with my reviews of the originals. Instead, I'm just going to focus on what makes the N. Sane Trilogy different.

Let’s start with the obvious: the graphics. Obviously they’re higher fidelity and they can certainly look quite nice at times, however they're far from perfect. Firstly, I simply don’t think that this realistic artstyle fits Crash Bandicoot. These characters were designed with a low poly, low resolution PS1 game with a far off camera in mind. Crash has big eyes, big eyebrows, and a big mouth so that he can be expressive in a way that still reads when looking at the game from a crappy CRT television. When you put this character in HD with realistic graphics where you can make out every hair on his little bandicock he just looks awful. He looks far better when he's very stylized, ala Crash 4. Even the rest of the graphics just look wrong to me. Something about how some of these levels look just feels off. It doesn't help that the game is also locked to 30fps on every console. For a modern day release, that's not acceptable. Especially considering that neither N. Sane Trilogy nor Nitro Fueled (which trust me I'll get back to) got PS5/Series X upgrades. Considering that even a modest computer like mine can hit 60fps on the PC port of N. Sane, there's absolutely no reason why next gen consoles couldn't also hit that same benchmark. Overall the N. Sane Trilogy only came out like 6 years ago and it already looks really dated to me. I honestly prefer the more timeless look of the originals. Well graphics aside, let’s go through each game one by one:

[Continued in Part Two]

[randomboo256]

CTR: Crash Team Racing (1999) Review

For a few days in a row now, I've been slowly reviewing the classic Playstation series Crash Bandicoot. Crash Bandicoot, for someone somehow unaware, is a game series that began on the PS1 and had 3 main series titles focusing on the titular character as he platforms (and gimmick levels) his way through to the final boss: Neo Cortex, his arch-nemesis and his creator. However, none of that is really necessary to know going into this review, although I of course still recommend reading those first for the sake of context.

While working on Crash Bandicoot 2, Naughty Dog (the original developers behind Crash Bandicoot) was quietly working on a prototype demo of a racing game with placeholder shapes as characters. They pitched the idea to Sony Computer Entertainment (the original publisher behind Crash), and thus a Crash Bandicoot racing game was born. Development went into full work after Crash 2 was finished so Crash 3 and this racing game were developed side by side. Considering the time trials and the vehicle stages in that game, perhaps the racing game put Naughty Dog in such a racing mood that it bled over into Crash 3? Who knows how it happened. Well regardless of why, at this point in his life Crash Bandicoot has now fully established himself as a glorified speedster. Truly living up to that “Sonic’s Ass Game” prototype name, eh?

However before we discuss Naughty Dog’s racing game, we need to discuss the game it’s emulating. Released in 1996, Mario Kart 64 arrived on store shelves for the Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 64 was the Playstation’s main (and let’s be real, only) console competitor. This was back in the days before Nintendo gave up on all this console war stuff and went sailing off into the great blue ocean, but that’s a story for another day. Mario Kart 64 was the sequel to Super Mario Kart, a Super Nintendo game where Mario and friends all hopped in Go-Karts and raced to the finish line all while attempting to murder each other using cartoon weaponry. Family fun for all! While Super Mario Kart did not invent the idea of a kart racing video game, it vastly popularized it and it was one of the first to integrate combat elements as well as a multiplayer focus. While “Kart Racing” may be considered its own genre by definition, the vast majority of the games within said "genre" are known generally as “Mario Kart and the Mario Kart wannabes”.

As for Mario Kart 64 specifically, it was seen as an improvement to the original in all aspects. While it is technically the sequel, a lot of people consider it the true first game in the franchise from just how much better it was by comparison. The original had small flat tracks and most tracks felt indistinguishable apart from the color palette. 64 had larger tracks with more detail and varied track design. The courses all felt unique and creative. The improvement is night and day. Not to mention multiplayer. The original had 2 player multiplayer while 64 upped it to 4, which went along with the N64’s 4 built in controller plugs. Mario Kart 64, despite being on a less popular console than its predecessor and despite being on a console with much fiercer competition, managed to outsell the original at nearly 10 million units sold. Roughly 30% of all N64 owners had Mario Kart 64 and it was seen as one of the N64’s biggest selling points over the Playstation. So how do we fix that?

Released in 1999, Sony Computer Entertainment released Naughty Dog’s final Crash Bandicoot game “CTR: Crash Team Racing”. While I can’t say for sure that this game was released as a direct response to Mario Kart 64, I mean come on. Look at it. It’s pretty damn obvious where they got their inspiration from. While it would be easy to write this game off as a worthless clone, we should give the game a fair chance regardless. Whether it’s good or bad, let's see how it compares. The basics are all here. A roster of characters from the Crash series all in Go-Karts breaking item boxes to get random cartoon weaponry they can use to attempt to murder their fellow racers. Crash that is your sister! Do NOT send that ballistic missile at her! CRASH!?

Other core mechanics, such as drifting and drift boosts, return as well, however they’re different. In Mario Kart 64 and other Mario Kart games, you can hold a drift button to slow down slightly as you turn corners. To compensate for the slowdown, you can get a boost. In early Mario Kart games, you get a boost by smacking the stick back and forth while you drift. This felt like shit and was insanely awkward to do, so from Mario Kart Wii and on they switched to simply holding down the button for long enough. Some people hated this change. I personally enjoy not having to break my analog sticks when trying to make a simple turn. As for CTR, it was changed entirely. The drifting works more or less the same, but the boosting is completely different. Now the trick is to watch for your exhaust pipe smoke to turn black then press the L1 button while drifting to get a small boost. You can boost 3 times back to back, with your final one being massive. This change is brilliant. Firstly, it’s simple and easy to do, while also still requiring timing and paying attention, unlike both of Mario Kart’s drift boosts. Secondly, in Mario Kart, especially later ones, you can often get a large drift boost that ends up sending you into a wall or off the course. Because CTR splits up the boost into 3 smaller ones, you have more control over your karts. I love it! It's the perfect system!

On the topic of controls, that was something Mario Kart 64 struggled with. The controls were awful and slippery. They felt like you were constantly on ice, even while drifting. CTR meanwhile is super tight and precise. The controls feel super accurate by comparison. In fact, while I’m just listing off changes I like, let’s just go down the list:

Unlike Mario Kart, this game has a story mode. The story isn’t much to write home about. Basically, an alien named Nitrous Oxide came to Crash’s planet and challenged it to a race. If he wins, he turns the planet into a parking lot. If someone from Crash’s planet wins, he goes away. You can play as anyone from the base roster, so whoever you choose wins the race and that’s about it. It’s a simple story, and you can tell they didn’t care too much about it because the opening cutscene only plays if you sit around on the title screen. Regardless, it’s awesome it’s here at all. It even has a large hub world! Unfortunately, you can’t switch your character mid adventure mode, which was pretty disappointing. Oh well. Mario Kart has never had any kind of adventure mode and only sold itself on the multiplayer aspect. CTR actually has a reason for someone to get hours out of the game from singleplayer alone. It’s really great and… did they give the lady bandicoot on the victory screen jiggle physics? It's kinda hard to tell and uh... moving on.

This game can feel like a platformer at times. In CTR, you get a boost from falling. The higher you jump/the longer you fall, the larger the boost when you land. This encourages you to press that jump button to get as much height as possible as much as possible. Not only that, but pressing jump while going up slopes with momentum can launch you high, which can not only give you that boost but also get extra crates and even take shortcuts. On top of all that, you have a good amount of midair control, so jumping can help you make sharp turns. Mario Kart games have a jump too, but it’s a lot less useful. It has some shortcuts here and there (mostly unintentional ones) and later games add a trick system which is somewhat similar to CTR’s falling boost, but ultimately it feels a lot less utilized.

CTR’s brake slide. In CTR, holding the brake while moving gives you a slower but more accurate drift for a few seconds. Keep holding it and you’ll turn completely around. Not only is this satisfying to use, but it allows for some clever level design. Mario Kart games, despite having a brake button, never really require you to use it unless you’re playing 200cc in Mario Kart 8.

Between the brake slide, the emphasized jumping, and the falling boosts CTR feels like it added a whole extra layer of gameplay on top of the basic Mario Kart 64 gameplay all while having a proper Adventure mode. But what about the multiplayer? CTR supports up to 4 people, but the PS1 only has 2 input slots. You have to purchase the PS1 Multitap to get 4 player multiplayer. As for the multiplayer itself, I haven’t played it. The game has a battle mode, but I don’t know what it looks like because they don’t have an option to use CPUs. They do have some tiny maps in the singleplayer that you collect crystals in because they’re too small to race. I assume those were taken from the battle mode.

Overall, Crash Team Racing, despite being a clone, was an incredible game that managed to be better than what it was copying. I had more fun playing through CTR than I’ve ever had playing through a Mario Kart game. Naughty Dog even included a little scrapbook video showing off concept art of their Crash Bandicoot games as a reward. That’s a cute way to finish their time on Crash Bandicoot off, because Naughty Dog would never develop a Crash Bandicoot game again. What a great run it was though right? 4 great games back to back. They weren’t perfect, obviously, but I quite loved my time playing through this series. But I’m not quite done yet with this series, am I?

Well, that's a story for another day I suppose. In the end, I can happily recommend CTR, at least the PS1 version anyway. This game is worth finding a copy of, whether you want it for singleplayer or multiplayer. Although of course, nowadays all of these Crash games can be emulated for free on PC with little hassle. From that perspective, all of these games are very much worth playing, despite the issues they may have. I played all of these on emulator (Duckstation specifically) so take that for what it's worth.

That's all for now.

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (1998) Review [Part Two]

[This post is the second half of a larger review. I was forced to split it due to character limits. Please read the first half before reading this one.]

The game structure is the same as Crash 2, where 5 levels of roughly the same difficulty open at once and you beat them in any order. In both of these games, I always just beat them from left to right. What’s honestly the point of this structure? You have to beat all five anyway before you move on to the next world. I suppose it can add replayability if you swap up the order each time. I don’t know the reason, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. The core gameplay is about the same as Crash 2. All the moves from that game return, but now with a twist. After every boss fight, you unlock a brand new ability. The first one is a belly flop. I'm already confused. We already have a belly flop we never use. Now we have a slightly different belly flop that we also never use. The others are more useful. Up next is a double jump. The double jump in this game is weird and took time getting used to. Basically while you can jump twice, you can only jump the second time if you haven’t started falling down after your first jump. So the second Crash starts falling after a jump, you lose the ability to double jump. It sounds awkward and it is awkward. I suppose that’s the tradeoff for being able to have a double jump in the first place. After that we got the “Death Tornado Spin” which allows you to mash the spin button to continuously spin. You can also use it in midair to glide. The gliding is a bit inconsistent at first but it wasn’t too hard to get the hang of. I like this move. Next we get a fucking gun. Dear god Crash Bandicoot has firepower. The Fruit Bazooka is slow to pull out and aim, but it also lets you completely break some challenging sections by just killing the enemies or shooting the nitros from a distance. It’s ok, but you barely get to use it. The final world only has 3 platforming levels and 1 of them is about going fast constantly, so stopping to aim isn’t helpful. Once you beat the final boss you get the Crash Dash. It’s a run button. That’s Crash’s moveset, and overall I quite like it in concept, but in execution a lot of power ups felt either awkward to get the hang of or were completely underutilized. That’s in no small part because of just how little of this game is actually spent doing normal platforming, being only about half of the game’s levels.

This game was around the start of an era. A very dark and evil era. It didn’t really start in full force until Playstation’s next console came out, but the seeds of that time were planted right around here. This was the start of the “variety era”, as I like to call it. It was a point in time where every fucking studio, especially ones working on platformers, were OBSESSED with shoving random nonsense all over their games all for the sake of “variety”. We’ll have whole levels and sections dedicated to half baked and unfun gameplay styles that completely distract from the gameplay you’re actually playing the game for. NO Mr. Sly Cooper, I don’t want to play a shitty racing game or an equally shitty turret section. I just want to rob a bank! I understand that developers likely get worried that too much of the game will play too similarly and thus it will all blend together, but this is not how you add variety to a game! Variety should all stem from the core gameplay genre. If I’m playing a platformer, give me interesting platforming challenges. Crash Bandicoot 1 did that well with those hog riding and ball rolling sections. They didn’t have to shove a fucking fishing simulator in the middle of my Sonic the Hedgehog game.

As for Crash Bandicoot 3 in particular, we have four types of vehicle stages: jet ski, scuba, motorcycle, and plane. The jet ski is ok, but it doesn’t add much. It’s pretty boring and easy. The scuba levels are like the jet ski: really boring and easy, except scuba is even more boring because it’s an awful underwater level. The motorcycle is a racing minigame, and it’s pretty challenging. They expect you to actually get pretty good at controlling that thing. For what it is it’s ok, but I dislike that they force you to get pretty good at a totally unrelated game style. The plane is a dogfight and it’s awful. The problem is that the controls are fighting you. The D-Pad both steers and aims your gun and your gunfire automatically snaps back to a directly in front of you when you aren't currently steering up or down, so you’re constantly struggling to get your bullets to go where you want. It’s not even that hard. It’s just really unfun. It is possible to use the analog sticks instead of the D-Pad, but I didn't realize that until after beating the game. The sticks make the controls a little better, but not by much. Honestly, most of these vehicle stages aren’t that bad. They can be decently fun, but I still object to them for not being what I came here for. I want platforming. This isn’t platforming. Man, I’d hate to go for 100% with this game. You’d have to break every crate in every level, including these ones. Not to mention the time trials. OH YEAH. The time trials.

Without going too deep into it, this game has time trials. Except unlike other games, these are required for the ending. I would say “the true ending”, but the normal “ending” has no actual end to the story. So the 100% ending is just the only ending. So if you want to see how the plot ends, you’re required to replay every level, including vehicle levels, at least once— without dying mind you— and have a good clear time on all of them. But just once is really unrealistic. You’ll probably end up replaying every level at least up to 3 times depending on your luck with the time trials. Not only can you not do a time trial at all on your first playthrough of a stage, you can’t even really beat most of them anyway until post game when you unlock the Crash Dash. This is padding to the most extreme degree, so no I didn’t bother doing it. It’s a shame really because doing things like breaking every box in a level can be fun, but unless you’re also willing to replay every level several times collecting that box gem will do nothing. I think this is ultimately the biggest problem this series has, and that’s that it’s all or nothing. Either you go for a minimalist run or you go for a 100% completion run. There’s no inbetween, and that really sucks. Same goes for breaking every box in a level. If you don’t break absolutely every box, you may well have broken none. There’s no leeway here. No room for human error and no room for you just not wanting to do a certain gem or the like. What they should’ve done was let you see the ending if you got half of the gems, or two thirds of the gems. The 100% reward could be like a fun joke ending, like how Crash 1’s 100% was a joke ending. That would be a great way to go about this. Anyway, let’s wrap this up.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, despite my bitching, was a decent game. The story sucked, but I don’t really care because the platforming, when you could do it, was really fun. The vehicle levels ranged from mildly fun to bad, but I dislike their inclusion on principle. Despite that, they didn’t really ruin the game for me. The main issue wasn’t with the levels themselves, as most were ok, but with the fact that I’m not platforming. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said they weren’t a little fun at times. The controls and physics for them were surprisingly tight and satisfying, especially for the motorcycle. It definitely wasn’t perfect, but if it were fleshed out more as its own game and not just some random game style, it could’ve been a lot better. Naughty Dog certainly seems to have the potential to make a good racing game at least.

Hey wait... didn't they...

You know what, that's a story for another time.

Overall, Crash Bandicoot 3 was a game with great elements that all came together into a mismatched whole. The core platforming, while tad easy with all the powerups, is super fun. However, I rarely get to USE that platforming. I could replay the handful of levels they did give me, but why couldn't they have just given me a single complete Crash Bandicoot game? Instead, we have half of one. The other half of the game was just mildly tolerable filler. Maybe Naughty Dog did run out of ideas, like I speculated way back at the start of this. Or maybe they were really just that paranoid that the game needed more "variety". Whatever the reason for it may be, this game felt really half baked.

Despite that, I like it a bit more than Crash 2. Something I forgot to mention is that they fixed the jumping physics. In Crash 1, they were light and floaty. In Crash 2, they were heavy and in my opinion awkward. In Crash 3, they found a happy middleground. It also helped that I didn't even bother with 100% here, whereas in Crash 2 I forced myself to get 100% and it kinda spoiled the experience for me. Despite the filler, I do think Crash 3 is at least on par with Crash 2, and perhaps a little bit more. So much like 2, I think it's a decent game, but it's not worth actively seeking out. At least when it comes to the PS1 version anyway.

The platforming gameplay could be a great groundwork for later games in the series, though. However the developers will have to be someone other than Naughty Dog, as this was their last Crash Bandicoot platformer. We did have Crash platformers after this despite that. Most of them were... less that stellar. However after many years of Crash bouncing between developers and rights holders, we eventually got a game called Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. I may go more into depth about this game some other day, but for now I'll summarize.

Crash 4 is a game that manages to take the best parts of all the classic Crash games while sprucing them up with modern flair. We got the linear game structure and tight precise platforming of Crash 1 alongside the expanded and fun movesets of Crash 2 and 3. We also had great visuals and a pretty well written and beautifully animated story that feels straight out of a saturday morning cartoon. The game has seen a lot of criticism for the experience of 100% it, doubling down on issues the originals had. However, 100% only gives you a Marvel style stinger and further going for 106% gives you a fun joke ending. The game's normal ending only requires beating the main levels, just like it should be. Overall, I highly recommend Crash 4. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

Just make sure you pirate the game because seriously FUCK Activision Blizzard. Do not support them.

That's all for now.

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (1998) Review [Part One]

Two days ago, I made a decently long post about my thoughts on the classic Playstation game Crash Bandicoot. Yesterday, I made an even longer follow up post about my thoughts on that game's sequel: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. I recommend reading those first. So to keep that streak going, today we're going to look at the game made to conclude the classic trilogy and this post got so long that Tumblr made me break it up into two parts. How could possibly be so much to say about an old Playstation game? Well, let's just get into things.

Once again a year after the previous game, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped released on store shelves. Well, in the UK anyway. Here in the US, it was titled simply Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I refuse to call it that because randomly dropping the number is dumb. Well whatever you call it, this game is a weird one. It’s starting to feel like Naughty Dog might be running out of ideas, because unlike the previous Crash games, this one is entirely themed around a single gimmick: time travel. Having your whole game tie around a single theme is normally done when your series has reached a certain point that you have to do it so that your new game feels distinct from all your other ones. For example, most 3D Mario games chose 1 single theme, be it summer islands, traveling across space, or exploring around the world and then have each level be different takes on that theme. That’s not a bad thing per say, but it is weird for Crash 3 to suddenly go for this approach when Crash 1 and 2 didn’t. Perhaps that’s why it’s not known as Crash 3 in some regions? Probably not. Anyway I digress, let’s just move on to the story.

This game picks up right where the true ending of the last game left off with the Cortex Vortex destroyed and falling from space. It crashes into… some kinda temple and someone or something was “freed at last”. We cut to Crash and Coco at home when Aku Aku realizes that it was the evil Uku Uku who was freed. Now I’m sure you’re wondering: "Who the heck is Aku Aku and what’s the deal with this Uku Uku guy?" Well Aku Aku is a character who was in the first and second Crash games who I’ve simply failed to mention until now, and that’s mainly because he wasn’t really a character at all. Aku Aku was just a powerup in levels. You find an Aku Aku and you get an extra hitpoint. Find three and you get invincibility. Pretty simple. Starting in Crash 3, he’s now a main character. Honestly in the first two it just felt like Aku Aku was just some weird inanimate mask that there are tons of, not one singular character. Why is he in boxes? Why can three of them stack? Well whatever the reason, in this game going forward he's now a parental figure of sorts to Crash and Coco. As for Uku Uku, we find that he was sealed away in an underground prison eons ago by his twin brother Aku Aku to protect the world from him. Meanwhile we find out that Cortex was somehow working for Uku Uku the whole time actually and Uku Uku was the real mastermind. Uku Uku is angry at Cortex for failing as Cortex begs for forgiveness as they scheme a new plan to collect the crystals. Aku Aku warps Crash and Coco to a time machine Cortex was going to use..somehow and Crash and company decide to collect all the crystals before Cortex does, except this time, they’re going to go through time and collect those crystals where they could be found throughout history and this is literally the plot of Avengers Endgame. Obviously there’s no way Endgame was inspired by this, although they did reference Ratchet and Clank in that movie… Nah moving on. Crash stops Cortex and Uku Uku by collecting everything in the game and after the pair’s defeat the time machine malfunctions and sends the two of them, plus N Tropy (the creator of the time machine), back to the prehistoric ages with them all stuck as babies. The end.

This plot sucks lmao. It’s full of retcons and moments that don’t make sense. Obviously it’s not a big deal because the storyline isn’t why you play these games, but the game is certainly still trying to tell a story. You know, if they weren’t trying to tell a story they wouldn’t have bothered to do anything, like the average Mario game. There’s a bizarre amount of lore and characters tied up in this series and I haven’t even mentioned a lot of them. It’s fucking weird. Perhaps it’s even.. insane? No? Ok. Well the point stands that if they didn’t want to tell a good plot they shouldn’t have told one. I suppose I can understand if the point was to give us an excuse to see these characters interact with one another, but none of the dialogue in this game is very entertaining. Crash is voiceless and he doesn’t really have a well defined personality, I’m not sure Coco had any speaking lines, Aku Aku is just kinda boring, and none of the villains were interesting. Well, except Cortex I suppose. He’s shown to be a lot more tired, reluctant, and pessimistic about his plan working in this game which directly contrasts with the confident and energetic Uku Uku. That was moderately interesting, but there was no real payoff to that. This whole plot just confuses me. What was Naughty Dog doing with this? Did they want a narrative or not? My best guess is that they wanted to do the Mario thing where we have a basic narrative that’s just an excuse for gameplay, while at the same time not? If you just want a gameplay excuse, what’s all this extra fluff? It makes no sense. Perhaps it’s even… insane- wait fuck I already used this joke.

But yeah, once again the plot doesn’t really matter in Crash. I just think it’s interesting to analyze. Naughty Dog is a company that later went on to be known for their groundbreaking storytelling (although whether or not their later stories truly are groundbreaking is a heated debate that I don't have time to address here). It's interesting how even as early as Crash 3 they're trying to do... something narratively. Something beyond what was necessary to include for a game of this type. In a way, it's part of a larger shifting trend moving into the Playstation 2 era where a lot of platformers started having progressively layered plots despite the fact those plots weren't particularly needed to prop up the gameplay per se. Games like Super Mario Sunshine, Sonic Adventure 2, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, and of course Naughty Dog's own Jak and Daxter. That's not to say Crash 3 was responsible for that trend (I'd argue that games like Sonic Adventure hold more of the blame) but it was an early adopter of that style. Not that there's anything wrong with having a story, as long as it's well written (which a lot of the games of this era sadly weren't).

In fact, this theme of Crash 3 being an early adopter of trends common in the Playstation 2 era is actually a bit of a running theme here, as we finally move on to what actually matters: the gameplay.

[Continued in Part Two]

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997) Review

Yesterday, I spent a good amount of time discussing the classic Playstation game Crash Bandicoot. I talked about my thoughts on the game, the Playstation brand as a whole, and what became of the Crash Bandicoot intellectual property after the game was released. Rather than fully repeat myself, I highly recommend reading that review before this one. However something I glossed over in all of that was perhaps the most important part: the fact that sequels were indeed made. Crash Bandicoot is a game that's just as much defined by itself as it is defined by the games that came after. So let's talk about those games, starting with the sequel. A year after Crash Bandicoot, Sony published Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. (Is that a Star Wars pun? Uh, anyway...) This game is generally regarded as better than the first. So what do I think? Well, I’m not sure honestly, but we’ll get to that.

First, the story. Beginning immediately after the normal ending of Crash 1, we see Dr. Neo Cortex fall into a cave with crystals. He gets an evil idea and we cut to Crash, alongside a new character: Coco. Coco is a strange character. She’s Crash’s sister. I know that doesn’t sound weird, but remember that Crash wasn’t born- he was MADE. He was a normal bandicoot who got experimented on. I guess that implies Cortex made her too? It was never explained. She’s just kinda here now. I like her design at least. On that note, that other bandicoot, Tawna, is missing in this game. It’s almost like Coco is intended to replace Tawna. Well actually, that’s exactly the case. Apparently, Sony Japan didn’t like Crash being accompanied by a “super sexy” character. When combined with the marketing director’s aforementioned complaints and Sony Japan’s desire for a more “girlish” (whatever that means) supporting character we end up with Tawna being cut and Coco inexplicably taking her place. As an aside, Coco is also just a better character in general. She’s not terribly interesting, but at least she has a personality beyond “love interest”. Overall, it’s a good change in my book, especially considering this story isn’t a damsel in distress plot like the first game. Oh yeah, I should probably finish explaining that plot huh? 

After we take control of Crash, we play a very short level as Cortex warps Crash to our hub area. Cortex tells Crash that he needs him to collect every crystal so that he can save the world or something. As such, it’s mandatory to collect every single crystal in the game. That may sound bad, but they’re basically impossible to miss in the majority of stages. Only like once or twice are they even a little tricky to find. Crash, or rather you, collects them all then shock and awe Cortex is lying and is still completely evil. He wants to use the crystals you just collected to use a mind control beam on the planet. (Isn't this the plot of Sonic Colors?) Crash stops Cortex and saves the day, but Cortex’s space laser, which is an improved Cortex Vortex, is still intact up in space. Is this a teaser for the next game? Nope! It’s actually the bad ending. Yep, we have good and bad endings in this game. How do you get the good ending? Well… let’s just move on.

The structure of the game is very different. In Crash 1, it was level by level and that’s it. Beat one and move to the next. In this game, five levels of roughly the same difficulty will all open at once and you can play them in any order. This is certainly a change that they made. I'm not sure what the point of that change was, but they certainly made it. Gameplay wise, it’s essentially the same but with a few big differences. Firstly, the game now supports analog sticks. However even though the game supports them, I don't really recommend them. I find that the dpad plays better with the fixed camera. Now the second immediate change hit me like a truck of cement: the new jump physics. They’re HEAVY, and in my opinion they're a lot worse. Crash now falls to the ground much faster than the first game. It’s jarring. I understand some gamers like heavy jumps, but I hate them. I like light, floaty, and nimble jumps. It allows for better control. I thought the original’s jump physics were perfect. Why feel the need to change it? 

On the topic of Crash’s moveset, they added a lot of moves. Firstly there’s the crawl. Hold down the circle button to crawl on the ground. You will almost never use this. Secondly, there’s a belly flop. It’s a ground pound that can break certain crates and open a single extra path on one of the levels. I never tried using it on enemies because of how slow it is. I rarely used it. Thirdly, we have a slide. The slide is used occasionally to slide under things, but it’s mostly good as an attack. In this game, a lot of enemies can only be killed efficiently by sliding, and it’s hard to tell which ones they are. I ended up using the slide as an attack far more often than the spin as an attack. The slide can also give you a little bit of hangtime if you slide off a platform, which is important for the final move: the slide jump. The slide jump is a much higher jump than your standard jump, and when combined with the hang time you can get, it’s no wonder that this move is iconic. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it though. Crash also has some contextual moves, such as hanging from metal grates or the awful jetpack from the final world. Can I talk about that real quick? Can I talk about how two levels and the entire final boss revolves around you piloting a jetpack using the most unfathomable controls imaginable? No? Ok, well let’s move on to the collectables.

We’ve already mentioned the main collectables, crystals. Like I said, they’re near impossible to miss. There’s honestly no real point in them actually being a collectible if I’m being honest. They may as well have just made the crystal the star at the end of the level, so to speak. It’d make a lot more sense honestly. They are the reason we’re exploring these levels to begin with. Anyway, we also have gems, just like Crash 1. Now if you remember from Crash 1, I didn’t collect the gems. They were an optional challenge that rewarded you with a joke ending. However with Crash 2, the gems are required to get the good ending. So I guess I should collect them then, huh? I suppose it only makes sense considering that Crash Bandicoot games are known for their 100% challenge. Break all the boxes and grab all the gems. How bad could it be?

Very bad.

I’m honestly not quite sure how people enjoy this. I was genuinely miserable as I played through this game. Honestly, the box breaking part wasn’t that bad. Break all the boxes in a level, and you get a gem. I can understand liking that, at least for most levels. Most weren’t too bad. Some levels are really annoying to break all the boxes, though. Sometimes they hide them in awful ways, like Cold Hard Crash. Sometimes you’ll find a split path in a level and you have to walk backwards to break them all as you pray that you don’t walk into any of the hazards that you can’t see. One time you had to stop in the middle of a boulder chase to slowly belly flop as you pray Crash gets his ass up in time. One time they made you jump into a fucking bottomless pit to find a secret area. Sometimes they even put crates on death routes, forcing you to do some real fuckery to get all the crates on the death or colored gem route as well as the crates on the main route. In the worst cases, they even have crates that are impossible to get unless you find a secret entrance into the level. 

Hey, wait let’s back up a second. Death routes? Secret entrances? Colored gems? Well for death routes, the thing about this game is that there are a bunch of gems hidden around that have nothing to do with box breaking. While it depends on the gem, the majority of the time they’re on death routes. If you get to a certain point in a level without dying, you get to go to a secret route that’s extra hard with a gem at the end. Honestly, I didn’t have much difficulty with the platforming in them. While there were some tough moments, for the most part they weren't really that difficult. They often weren’t even that much harder than the rest of the stage. The real challenge was the endurance test of having to reset the level if you died and didn’t find a checkpoint within the death route. Very fun stuff. 

As for secret level entrances, there are 5 secret warps in the game. They’re found in the main levels by doing.. something. It depends on the warp. They’re invisible. You only know you’ve found one when you get suddenly whisked away. There’s no way to know what levels they’re hidden in to my knowledge. I guess Naughty Dog expects you to stand literally everywhere you possibly can on the chance of finding one of these things. As for the secret levels themselves, three of the five are recycled. They simply act as an alternate way to enter the stage, except you have to enter this way or else you won’t be able to find all the boxes hidden in the secret route. You probably won’t even know the stage has an alternate entrance and you’ll pull your hair out trying to find those boxes. The first two recycled levels aren’t too bad because you have a good section of new content and only have to replay the ending of the level. The final one, Road to Ruin, is the worst offender because you only get like 3 seconds of new content before having to replay the entire level. This is just padding. The other two secret warps are actually new levels, so I don’t mind them.

And as for colored gems, there’s five of them. They’re hidden around, sometimes in dumb places like on a stack of fake nitro crates. A colored gem unlocks a colored gem path in a different level, which are similar to death routes. Overall, they’re just another fucking thing to keep track of. I had to keep a walkthrough open constantly throughout my playthrough so I could know what level had what gem or what secret warp on top of already having to make sure I break every single box while also knowing which levels I can’t get the boxes from yet and all while being careful to never die and it’s all just TOO MUCH! 

This is overwhelming. There’s too much to keep track of at once. There’s never a moment of reprieve because I always had to be on guard for more wacky bullshit to get in my way. Not to mention that for a lot of these levels you have to replay them like three or four times in all. It took me forever to get through this game, and I was miserable. Which is a shame because the core platforming gameplay, despite some of my gripes, was still fun. But this was an awful experience. Going for 100% ruined this game for me, and I know I would have liked it a lot more if I would’ve played through the game ignoring the gems. But hey, it was all worth it for that ending, right?

After collecting your first gem, Dr. Nitrus Brio, Cortex’s former second in command, tells Crash to not obey Cortex and to grab the gems instead. After collecting all of them and after beating Cortex, we get to watch a short cutscene of Crash, Coco, and Brio using the gems to power a laser beam that destroys Cortex’s space station. Roll credits. That was worth it, right guys? I hope it was worth it anyway. At least I can say I’m done with this game. I’m not sure if I’m ever coming back. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed by this endeavor. I thought this experience would be fun and worth it based on how Crash fans describe how fun 100% is. I was looking forward to this and I left crushed. And apparently 100% for the later games is even worse? I heard games like the recent Crash 4 are apparently a complete fucking nightmare to 100%. God. Yeah, no thanks. I’m done trying to 100% these games. I beat Crash 2 100%, and you know what I had my fill. I’ll admit I get overwhelmed easily. It’s a general character flaw I have. But ultimately damn it this is a review going over my experience with a game, not anyone else's.

Now as for looking at the game from a casual non-100% perspective, I still don't really like Crash 2 as much as the original. I felt like the heavier jumps and overall easier platforming made the game feel shorter than the first game, despite the same amount of levels. The game's new structure also kinda spat in the face of a natural difficulty curve. Rather than every level getting incrementally harder than the last, levels get harder based solely based on what warp room you're on. There's also a good handful of gimmicky non-platforming levels where you're riding on an awkward jetboard or using the aforementioned annoying jetpack. Combine that with having to use a less convenient slide jump to get past the game's heavy feeling normal jump and the fact that many enemies require the less satisfying slide attack instead of the spin, and Crash 2 kinda just feels like a downgrade overall. At least they fixed the saving system. Now it's just a normal save and load screen, like it always should've been.

I'm sorry everyone, I really did want to like this game better. This may be a bit of a spoiler alert for my thoughts on the next game, but I personally find Crash 2 to be the most skippable one of the original PS1 trilogy. It's still a decent game, but it's not something I can recommend you go out of your way to play, at least when it comes to the PS1 version anyway. This is the kind of game I can only recommend if you already own it. It's not really worth hunting down it's old PS1 disc for.

That's all for now.

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot (1996) Review

Playstation as a brand has always been rather strange to me. Despite being so iconic and played by so many, the company as a whole doesn't seem to have much of a coherent identity. Most Nintendo games, by contrast, feels very interconnected into one larger brand. That's because Nintendo games all strike the same target audience, that being difficulty-light family friendly games with cartoonish graphics with generally downplayed storytelling in favor of a gameplay-first mentality. That's not to mention the frequent crossovers between them.

Playstation, meanwhile, prides itself on all of it's exclusives just like Nintendo does, and yet all of their exclusives feel so distant from one another. They publish games of various genres with wildly different tones and core focuses. While there are many people who are fans of Playstation as a whole, Playstation generally feels like it goes for a scattershot approach to gaining a market. Rather than hone in on one audience, they'd rather become a jack of all trades. While that decision was certainly successful, it kinda leaves Playstation without anything in particular to latch onto to represent their core brand. Look no further than Playstation All Stars for proof of that what I mean.

I think that's the main reason then that Playstation doesn't really have a definite mascot of any kind. While some might argue Kratos or Sony Cat or Astro Bot or fucking Knack, none of them really feel like mascots to me, and that's largely because Playstation hasn't really been pushing them as mascots. Playstation doesn't want a single smiling face to represent their brand like Nintendo does because a single smiling face simply does not represent the bulk of the games they publish. And I guess that's fine.

However...

There was one time they tried to use a single smiling face to represent them.

Released in 1996, one year after the North American release date of the original Playstation, Crash Bandicoot smashed onto store shelves. This surprised me somewhat. I didn’t grow up in that era, so I assumed that Crash Bandicoot was a launch title for the Playstation. The game was developed by a (at the time) small studio named Naughty Dog under the supervision of not Sony, but Universal Interactive. Y'know Universal? The movie studio Universal? Yeah, they had a games division apparently. Despite that, the game was published by Sony so Universal acted more as an obnoxious middle man. However, Universal owned the rights despite Naughty Dog creating the characters and Sony publishing and marketing them. However, that's a story for another time. What’s the game itself like?

Crash Bandicoot is a linear level by level platformer where you play as the titular Crash Bandicoot. The plot goes that after a mad scientist named Dr. Neo Cortex evolved Crash from a normal bandicoot, he was planning to use a mind control device on him called the Cortex Vortex so he could use Crash as the general of his army of other mutated animals in his quest to rule the world or something. The machine failed and Crash escaped. However, Crash’s girlfriend, who was also evolved by Cortex, is still in Cortex’s castle and we need to save her before Cortex uses his machine on her. That’s about it when it comes to the plot. It may sound like a lot the way I described it, but ultimately it’s a pretty simple damsel in distress plot. That damsel in question having a.. rather questionable character design, I’ll say that much. Apparently while developing the game the marketing director told the developers that Tawna was a sexist character design, but the developers refused to listen to her because Tawna was meant to appeal to the “same kind of guys we had been 5-10 years earlier”.

kids game btw

...

I have no comment. Let’s just move on to the gameplay.

The gameplay is a 3D platformer, one of the first of its kind. Immediately out the gate, you realize that the game has no analog controls. Back when Crash was released, the original Dualshock wasn’t. So we’re playing with the D-Pad only. That may sound bad, but the game was designed around the D-Pad, so it actually makes the jumps more reliable than if you remapped the controls to the stick. Immediately after you realize the controls, you also realize the camera. It’s fixed. I personally have issues with depth perception in 3D games, so fixed cameras are normally a bad sign for me. That said, I actually had no issues with the camera in this game outside of a small handful of moments.

As for how the game actually PLAYS like? Well, it’s a platformer. You have two buttons: jump and spin. The jumping feels really nice. It’s floaty, yet precise. I always felt pretty confident even when making scary jumps. It gives you a lot of midair control and it hangs in the air long enough to comfortably undo a jump if needed. That may make the game sound easy, but this game is anything but. This game is HARD. It has plenty of good challenges in its level design and only rarely does it feel unfair, at least when it comes to the platforming. As for the combat, it’s another story. Our other button, spin, is a simple attack where Crash will spin in place to damage enemies. It’s not very good. The attack is inconsistent in whether it’ll hit the enemies and it’s just generally not very effective. I mean, for the most part it works perfectly fine but there are certainly occasions where you’re like “Oh come on, that attack should’ve landed.” However, even if you die you don’t have to worry too much. The game has well spaced out checkpoints- not too little to make you have to repeat tons of progress but not too many as to ruin the challenge. The game does have a life system though. For a game this challenging, worrying about lives is dumb. Fortunately, they do seem to give you plenty though. I wouldn’t know however, because FULL DISCLOSURE: I had an infinite lives code on. Call me a pussy all you want, but I don’t like life systems. They stress me out too much, and I am not someone who needs MORE stress in her life.

Next, I suppose we need to talk about the boxes. Every level is filled with tons of breakable boxes that contain Wumpa Fruit (essentially coins). Sounds standard, however in this series they have secrets hidden behind breaking every box in every level, alongside the process of collecting every single optional gem. For the first game, I didn’t do that. Sorry, but that does not sound fun in the slightest. In the first game, you have to break every box without dying in every level, not to mention finding hidden keys and colored gems to access additional levels and secret paths in normal levels to find more boxes. It sounds like a headache, and it’s all just for a joke ending. I will give them this though: If I was a kid, I would love the extra replayability this would bring. However as a slightly larger kid, I don’t need that replayability. Honestly, I’d be happy just replaying the game while ignoring the gems, because I had plenty of fun just doing that. There is one big problem I haven’t mentioned yet though: the save system. In this game, the only way to save is by clearing these Tawna bonus rounds. That’s already annoying, but the game also seems to have some baffling system as for how that actually works? Like sometimes they won’t let you into these rounds? I don’t know. I avoided using this system by just using a save state to reload my game. Other than reloading my save file, I generally avoided using save states.

That’s about all I have to say about Crash Bandicoot. It’s a fairly simple game, but a fun and challenging one. I highly recommend it, at least the PS1 version. I’ll elaborate on that some other time, but for now I'd say the game is well worth playing. It's nothing mind blowing, but it's an enjoyable platformer all around.

Since Crash was one of the first 3D platformers, Sony decided to line up behind it as their primary mascot for this era and they ended up releasing 2 sequels, a kart racer, and a bizarre party game. Maybe I'll talk about them some other time. However, due to Universal's involvement, the partnership wasn't destined to last. What happened with that was complicated, but long story short Naughty Dog and Universal parted ways, Sony lost the publishing rights, and a bunch of complex merger stuff led to a company called Vivendi Games holding the rights, who then merged with Activision, and now the newly renamed Activision Blizzard made it their personal goal to sexually harass every woman on earth until Microsoft said "I want a bite of that" and is now attempting to buy them. There's currently some legal shit going on about whether the acquisition will actually go through due to some lameo "MoNopOly LaWs" or whatevs. It's kinda bizarre to think that were potentially looking at a future where Playstation's original mascot may now be owned by their current biggest competitor. Oh well. I'll always view Crash Bandicoot as a Playstation character, even if that's far from true nowadays.

Not sure how to end this review. That's all folks?

That's all for now at least.

[randomboo256]

She Hulk: Attorney at Law Review

I may generally stick to video games, but on occasion I do shuffle over into film/tv reviews. In this case, I've decided to take a good look at Marvel's most recent disaster endeavor: She Hulk: Attorney at Law. Over a long 9 weeks of steady episode releases, the newest Disney+ miniseries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally concluded it's first season of episodes, and oh god what a long ride it was to get here.

For those somehow unaware, the show is about Jennifer Walters, the cousin of Bruce Banner (who, needless to say, is the Hulk). When she was in need of a blood transfusion, Bruce was the only one compatible and.. oh wait that's the comic storyline. In the show, she was casually taking a car ride with Bruce when he crashed out of nowhere and, somehow, his blood got into the open cut on her arm. This just happens a few minutes into the show, and uh... were they strapped for time or something? I mean yeah, the comic origin didn't make the most sense, but it was better than this. Whatever I guess... So uh, anyway so after getting a splash of his blood in her system, she suddenly got milder version of his Hulk powers. However, she doesn't want to be a superhero. She wants to be a lawyer, and the rest of the show is chronicling those misadventures.

I wrote a decent thread about the first episode when it originally came out, and to summarize, I felt that the main girl herself, Jen, was a rather uninteresting lead. She didn't have a particularly strong personality other than "smug girl with hints of self esteem issues". But even then, they barely did anything with that but crack smug jokes while occasionally trying (and failing) to make you feel for her. She feels less like a character and more of a lazy writer self-insert, which isn't helped by the 4th wall jokes, which I'll get back to shortly. Other than that, I thought that the CGI looked awful (and it is) and that everything felt really stiff, especially the humor. This show is meant to be a comedy and spoiler alert I hardly laughly once. The only joke that I remember laughing at was the lowbrow "Captain America is a virgin" joke which was literally like the first joke of the first episode (from my memory. I ain't rewatching it to check.) Talk about going downhill fast. Overall, episode one was a pretty bad first impression, and unfortunately it doesn't go much up from here.

Now before we move on, about those 4th wall jokes. They weren't very good. Like, I get it. It's She Hulk. It's part of her thing. But like, these jokes were not executed well. They all felt forced and they mostly amounted to Jen just making some smug comment to the camera, although admittedly the joke where she said "do you even remember this guy?" and she makes the show do a "previously on" for a minor character was pretty good. I liked that one. The rest were lame. Also the massive 4th wall break in the finale is really funny in concept but in execution it was so painfully drawn out, and as per usual with Disney, felt too corporate self congratulatory. Anyhow I'm getting ahead of myself.

When it comes to our main girl, by far my biggest issue is that she just becomes a master of being a Hulk basically instantly. I know She Hulk works differently ok. While Bruce and He-Hulk are basically two different people in one body, Jen and She-Hulk are still the same person. I'm fine with that. The problem is that there's no difference at all. They could have easily made it so that Jen and She Hulk are one woman expressed in two different ways. Maybe Jen is more quiet and reserved while She-Hulk is more bombastic and open. They're still the same person, but they act differently.

One of the most controversial moments in the show happens in the first episode. When Bruce is trying to help Jen learn how to control her powers, she explains that she needs no help and that she's already an expert on controlling her anger because she's a woman and being a woman is bad or whatever. It's essentially an excuse for why the show can completely skip over the "learning how to control herself" aspect of the storyline. It's never mentioned again. The moment was controversial for two reasons. For one, a lot of "antisjws" were pissed that she mentioned feminist talking points. Whatever. Fuck those dumbfucks. For two, more importantly, it essentially brushes aside any potential character development solely on the basis that "I'm a woman, and therefore I am already good at this." which is an extremely lame cop-out under the guise of looking "progressive". Rather than actually being progressive by baking in progressive themes into the storytelling, we had our main character stare into the camera and yell "WE'RE PROGRESSIVE" in hopes for some quick twitter likes when someone clips her rant and reposts it with "Yass queen slay". I want to be totally clear, I'm entirely ok with, and in fact encourage, including progressive themes in your work. However, you have to actually put the effort in and properly include them. This right here was just flat out lazy writing.

What if they included these themes as a central emotional point in the series? The idea of what society expects from women and how they have to put up with it could work well as a backbone to a She-Hulk story. Maybe Jennifer is "what society expects", while She-Hulk represents "what society wants to lock away". She-Hulk is Jennifer's personality unaffected by both her own anxiety and society's inhibitions. Maybe Jennifer starts off ashamed of being She-Hulk before learning to embrace herself and fuck society or whatever. You get the jist. It's a concept that flows very naturally into the premise and it makes for a far more interesting lead character all while avoiding having to be a superhero show, as the show is adamant that it isn't. But alas, that is not the show we received.

So what did they do with the whole Hulk angle? If it's not tied into her character arc (spoiler alert: she doesn't have one), what is it for? Well, She-Hulk is super famous, and Jen Walters isn't. That is basically it. I'm sorry, but am I watching a Hulk show or fucking Hannah Montana? Like she's a nobody who has an alter ego who's a big celebrity which is just such an uncreative take on this concept. Look, I get it. It doesn't want to be a superhero show. Again, I'm fine with it. But, they really do nothing with the fact that she's a Hulk both thematically and plot wise. It just feels so underutilized and it really begs the question of "Why am I even watching this?". (The answer is that it's an MCU show and I want to keep up.)

Ok, so the fact she's a Hulk means nothing. So what the fuck do they actually do in this show? Not much. There's very little in the sense of a coherent plotline throughout the show. It reaches a point where She-Hulk has a very elongated 4th wall joke in the finale that basically just exists to lampshade the fact that the writers planned none of this out. It's basically just "Yeah, we know the show is shit. What are you gonna do about it?" Was this show written by the Rick and Morty people or some shit?

Oh it was. Well, that explains a hell of a lot.

Anyway, so there's no real storyline throughout the show, despite the show somewhat pretending otherwise. The only real ongoing element through most of it was Jennifer Walter's Ultimate Quest for Cock (JWUQfC for short) as I like to call. JWUQfC, despite the name, was a pretty uninteresting dating storyline that was mostly just her thirsting for a date, failing to find a good one, repeat, repeat, and then she fucks Daredevil. That's basically it. Her whole dating storyline was mostly just "Omg it's like so hard being famous because guys don't wanna date the real me, yknow?" Ah yes, how relatable. I too am upset that my own immense fame is getting in the way of getting some quality dick. This storyline really demonstrates that this is a show made by upper class white women for upper class white woman. That is the best way I can describe how the writing feels. All of the situations she gets herself in are so detached from the ordinary human experience that it completely fails at getting me invested with her. It doesn't help that the characters in general act more like caricatures. Most of the dialogue is so bad at convincing me that any of these are real people.

But hey, despite my complaints suggesting otherwise, it's not a drama. It's a comedy. A really unfunny one with bad characters, bad CGI, mishandled messages, and a overwhelming lack of reasons to exist. This show was a colossal fuck up. Look, I didn't hate it. It wasn't like offensively awful, but it was really frustrating and generally just excruciatingly boring. It's mostly frustrating in the sense that it had so much missed potential, as I think I've shown already. It doesn't help that this show was LONG by MCU standards. 9 whole episodes of forgettable blandness. At least Wandavision was a pretty interesting watch despite the mediocre writing. She-Hulk just feels like a complete and utter waste of time.

3/10

[randomboo256]

Pac-Man World 3 Review

To say that the Pac-Man World series has been rocky so far is an understatement. Pac-Man World 1, while having some fun concepts, had generally poor level design and bad controls. Pac-Man World 2 meanwhile reinvented the formula to work as a proper 3D platformer, however it left some good things behind in its attempts to improve. Mainly, it left behind the feeling of exploration the original had. Not only that, but the whole last two worlds of the game were complete garbage, which in a game as short as this amounts to a sizable chunk of the overall experience.

This puts a Pac-Man World 3 in an odd position. It should optimally produce a game with all the good of World 2 removed from the bad as well as recapturing some of that lost exploration all while giving good reason TO explore. However, Pac-Man World 3 is not a game interested in giving us a more refined Pac-Man World 2. It, much like its predecessor, wants to completely reinvent the Pac-Man World formula, arguably making it the most different game in the whole series. It's the black sheep, apparently.

Of course as a kid I knew none of this when I played World 3 for the first time on my mom's duct-taped together PSP. World 3 was one of the first video games I ever remember playing, although I never got very far into it. Not sure I even really passed the first level honestly. I sure did love that box art though. Regardless, it was enough to get me to be a fan of Pac-Man from an early age. Him being in Smash For was actually what got me to buy that game, which lead to me becoming as big of a video game nerd as I currently am. So in a way, this game had a pretty big impact on my life, despite never truly playing it beyond the first level.

So anyway, how's the game itself? Well for starters, story. This game actually has one surprisingly. I won't spoil much bc this bizarre plot was actually part of what kept me playing. Overall the writing was decent. I'd say it's on par with a standard Cartoon Network show or such. They actually had some pretty decent jokes all throughout, but nothing must play by any means. The real highlight is Pac-Man himself. He's not silent anymore. He's now a fully voiced proper main character with frequent dialogue with other characters, even mid level. He's written perfectly. He's some a loveable upbeat guy with just a hint of sarcasm thrown in. The voice acting overall is pretty solid for a Gamecube platformer. Overall, this was one of my favorite aspects of the experience. Some people say that this approach to storytelling is too different from Pac-Man World 1 and 2, but is being different really that bad? They still have the same light hearted cartoon tone. It's just that one goes for minimal story and the other leans into it. I think it works honestly.

As for gameplay, it's also pretty different. Firstly, more moveset changes. The kickflip is gone, which is a shame. Yeah it was pointless but it was satisfying. Next, they further nerfed the butt bounce. In World 1, the butt bounce was so much higher than your normal jump that you're basically forced to use it as an awkward replacement. In World 2, your default jump was massively buffed, meaning using the now only slightly higher butt bounce was pretty pointless. In World 3, it now doesn't give you any height at all. However, it does create a shockwave on your third bounce, which helps with how imprecise it felt as an attack in the first two games. Speaking of attack, we now have a three hit combo. Considering he's been wearing boxing gloves this whole time, it's kinda weird he didn't have this yet tbh. Anyway, the combo is quick and snappy. I quite like the controls of it tbh. We also have brand new Wall Jump. It feels good enough I suppose, and they really get some use out of it here and there. Lastly, the best change was to the rev roll. It has momentum! You can now use it more or less the same way Sonic would use a spin dash. You can rev in place for a second, quickly jump, and go much farther. The rev roll in general gets a lot more well deserved use in this game. Overall, I think this moveset was an improvement. It kinda sucks that the bounce is only an attack/quick jump now, but it's not a big deal. Honestly after World 1, I was completely sick of the butt bounce anyway.

As for level design, it's also very different. While World 2 was a 3D game, it was pretty Crash Bandicoot. Running down linear hallways to the end. World 3 meanwhile is much more open. You're in wider areas with a fully controllable camera as you figure out the path forward. It's still a linear level by level game mind you, just not in the literal "nearly the entire game is an actual straight line" sense anymore. With collectables scattered everywhere, many of which being required to open doors or open Pac-Dot chains, World 3 really does a lot to recapture that lost feeling of exploration. The level design on the whole was honestly pretty solid. I thought it had a lot of fun platforming, even late into the game. The game also lacked a world map and rather decided to naturally segway into the next level at the end of the previous. All in all, this game out of all of them truly felt like an actual adventure rather than just a standard level by level platformer, which this game still technically is. That feeling is helped by the game's much longer run time, at least for me. I beat the others in just one or two sittings. I beat this game over the course of a week, although I was taking my time to explore.

Level design wasn't perfect though. One big issue was that because of the more open design, I sometimes had issues figuring out where to go or what exactly to do. I ended up wasting a lot of time just stumbling around. I think this is part of the reason I never got very far into this game as a kid. Although even then, with how challenging a few of this game's later moments were I doubt I would've finished it as a kid anyway. While I'm complaining, a big issue is that all of your non-key item collectables are now even more worthless than before. Everything that doesn't explicitly open a path forward now only gives you points, even including Pac-Dots which you don't even have a counter for anymore. World 2 gave you a free health wedge every 50 Pac-Dots. They could've at least kept that, but alas. However, despite these not doing anything I still went out of my way to grab the extra collectables because it was honestly still fun to do so. I managed to top most of the built in leaderboards as well, although I'm not sure how much of a brag that is.

But I think I should finally discuss the elephant in the room: combat. While the first two games had minimal combat, World 3 doubles down on it. In short doses, I think the combat in this game is honestly fun. When it's just two or three enemies along your platforming path, it's no big deal. However the game also has the tendency to drop you in a room full of enemies as you slowly have to just beat them all. The problem is that there is very little variety. Your combat moveset pool is small and there's only a few enemy types, making nearly every combat encounter of this type boring and repetitive. They do throw in a few power ups, but those also get repetitive. It gets worse though. We also have ghost attacks where you're forced to stand in an enclosed space as you wait for a power pellet to spawn, eat ghosts, run away, and repeat over and over until it ends. It's mind numbing.

Of all of this combat shit is what the game is most known for, and yeah it's bad. However, does it really ruin it? Honestly, I don't think so. Most of the game is spent platforming and exploring. While the combat sections are suffocating, it's only like 20% of the game. However, when combined with the additional maybe 10% of me running around aimlessly to figure out where to go, we end up with roughly 30% of the game that wasn't an enjoyable experience. 70% ain't bad, right?

Overall, I think this managed to be the best game in the series. It has the best story, the best moveset, and the best exploration, even if a large percentage of that time was spent in miserable combat. I'd say this game is a high 7/10, compared to the low 7/10 of World 2 and the 3/10 of World 1. If you can only play one of these games, play this one, although you won't be missing much if you don't play any.

[randomboo256]

Pac-Man World 2 Review

If you've been following my recent exploits, you'll know that I recently discussed in detail my thoughts on the classic PS1 Namco platformer Pac-Man World and how much it disappointed me. To recap, I thought the game had a fun basic premise, but the gameplay was simply tedious and unpolished. Pac-Man felt extremely heavy. His basic jump was too short for most jumps and the game essentially forced you to use his inconvenient butt bounce as a substitute 90% of the time. Combined with the difficult depth perception caused by playing as a 2D sprite in a 3D world and the frequent backtracking and awful boss fights, it ended up with a game that I can not recommend anyone play unless they're extremely curious.

But hey, what are sequels for? 3 years after the release of Pac-Man World for the PS1, Namco released Pac-Man World 2 for... EVERYTHING. PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, even Windows PC. Needless to say, but World 2 ended up being the first PMW game for the vast majority of players. When people think of this series, World 2 comes to mind, myself included. I owned all the PS2 titles as a kid and never touched the original until.. well until I wrote that review not too long ago. The general consensus seems to be that this one is the best, so how does the game fair?

Firstly, I'll quickly discuss graphics. They're very good. I'm on Gamecube. The game looks very good overall. There's no widescreen, but we do have a silky smooth 60fps alongside a set of graphics that honestly haven't aged much at all. I'd say Pac-Man World 2 looks about as good, if not better than the upcoming Pac-Man World Re-Pac. That's not to mention the fact that, as always, World 2 looks even better on Xbox with widescreen to boot. Overall, this is very much a good looking game for it's time. That's without mentioning the obvious, which is that Pac-Man is now full 3D model, which alone makes platforming so much easier. That's even ignoring the new camera which accompanies the game's new approach to level design. While World 1 was more so 2.5D, World 2 is a true 3D platformer. The camera can be fiesty, but overall it's solid. What an immediate step up.

Much like the first game, the story here is merely an excuse for gameplay. The ghosts steal some golden fruit then awaken an eviler ghost named Spooky who wants to destroy Pac-Land. So Pac-Man is tasked to defeat each ghost one by one as he collects every golden fruit and eventually defeats Spooky at the end of it all. Unlike the first game, you aren't rescuing your friends. There's no hidden keys or cages in sight here. In fact, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from just ignoring all collectables and exploration outright and just rushing to the goal. The first game encouraged you to explore constantly to find these necessary items, however most things just give you worthless points. In the sequel, the only reason to explore at all is points.

Ok, well that's not entirely true. If you collect absolutely everything in a level in one run, as in every Pac-Dot, Token, and Fruit (a task far easier said than done), you get an additional token. What do tokens do? Well, they unlock some classic arcade games. Collect every token (thus 100% the game) and you'll unlock Ms. Pac-Man. Cool I guess?? I'm sure that was nifty back in the day, but these days that is absolutely not worth the effort. I don't quite like that. The problem with Pac-Man World 1 wasn't that it forced you to explore. The problem was that exploration devolved to backtracking every 10 seconds and the rewards were mostly just extra points. World 2 goes too far in the opposite direction. They cover their levels with fun collectables and places to explore, but there's absolutely no reason to do that unless you commit to doing absolutely everything, and even then the reward is weak. Despite that, I do prefer the World 2 approach. If I can't have good exploration, I suppose I'll settle for optional exploration. So really, just focus on reaching the goal. Nothing else matters.

So how is that process? For most of the game, it's very good! Pac-Man's controls have been completely overhauled. His basic jump is now about as high as his bounce and the mid-air control is very precise. His neat Pac-Dot projectile move was cut though. I thought that move was kinda fun, even if imprecise. Oh well. We do get a move in its place, being a little mid-air kick. The kick isn't super helpful, but it has an amazing animation and combined with the tight controls I ended up trying to use it constantly anyway. His Rev-Roll though is somehow even less useful. Pac-Man doesn't have momentum, so jumping after a rev is no different from jumping from a standstill. Even ignoring that, the move is almost never used. In the original, it was almost exclusively used on rev platforms that got old fast, but at least it was used frequently. Here it just feels like they forgot about it. You do some jumps here and there, but overall it feels like missed potential. Oh well. Once again, despite my complaints, I still prefer the World 2 approach. I'd rather a mostly forgotten Rev-Roll than a Rev-Roll exclusively used for tedious stop-and-go puzzles.

As for level design, it's a mixed bag. Most levels are feel too short, like they ended 2/3 of the way through. Despite that, they're fun, mostly because the base gameplay is so fun. Some levels aren't though. There aren't that many bad ones, so I'll just list them all here:

One of the tree levels has a confusing map layout that makes it easy for you to run in circles.

Red Ghost* has an awful boss fight. The fight is simply chaotic with tons of places to get hurt and awkward as hell collision with both the platforms and the boss itself. The boss can reach a state by the end where you're supposed to be damaging him but for some reason it does nothing.

The entire water world (coincidentally right after the awful Red Ghost* fight) is complete dogshit. It's tedious on rails gameplay. The submarine level took like 15 minutes to beat and it was the same shit over and over again. It felt like the game was in an endless loop.

Most of the levels of the final world (coincidentally right after that dreadful water world) are bad. I like the first dock level, but the other two were awful. The second had me stuck running around a maze with a really up close camera desperately searching for some fruits to progress and the third had me spend the whole time wandering back and forth on narrow rock platforms with awkward collision.

*his name is Blinky but for some reason in this game they call him Clyde??

Yeah.. as you might've noticed, most of garbage in this game comes right at the end. I'll be honest, if you stop playing right before the "Clyde" fight, you'll miss almost nothing of value. Just about everything afterwards is not worth playing, adding up to about 2 worlds worth of content that's simply bad. That's a real shame honestly, but hey at least we have 4 worlds worth of good content, right? 4 out of 6 is two thirds. That's not bad.. I guess.

I'm mixed on Pac-Man World 2. It seemed to take a "throw the baby out with the bath water" approach when it came to the original's flaws. Although while that's disappointing, I'd rather have them gone even if it meant sacrifice. The core gameplay here is very good, but levels can feel short and the final 2 worlds are a trainwreck. However, I must commend them for improving the original as much as they did.

Overall, I give Pac-Man World 2 a 7/10. It's a pretty flawed game, especially by the end, however it's still pretty darn fun overall. I recommend this game to any platformer fan, however it shouldn't be high on your priority list.

[randomboo256]

Pac Man World Review

If there's one thing gamers are known for besides bigotry, impatience, lack of social skills, lack of hygiene, anger issues, elitism... actually fuck this let me start again.

If there's another thing gamers are known for, it's begging for old series to get a comeback. You see it everywhere, from people begging for old Nintendo series to come back, to Playstation classics, to Valve titles, to Rareware titles, etc. Among the everlasting demand for a comebacks, rests the old Pac-Man World franchise. Back in the PS1 days, arcade classic series like Space Invaders, Frogger, and Pac-Man were in a weird spot. Simply making a home version of the arcade cabinet isn't cutting it anymore. How do we innovate?

Space Invaders made an arcade style game for the N64 to try to push the original concept to the limits. This title was well beloved by those who played it, but it remains generally forgotten. So let's innovate further. Frogger made PS1-PS2 games that on the surface looked similar to the arcade, but actually changed the gameplay quite a lot to be full adventure games with storylines and characters and such. These games were a moderate success, but are still mostly lost to the sands of time. So let's innovate further. What about Pac-Man? For his 20th anniversary, Namco decided to completely ditch the gameplay of the original Pac-Man arcade, in favor of making something completely new that still harkens back to it's roots. Namco decided to create Pac-Man World, a 3D platformer for the PS1. So how well does it hold up?

The plot is nothing. Pac-Man's pac-friends got pac-kidnapped by Toc-Man, a Pac-Man wannabe. So go save your friends and beat Toc-Man up. It's just an excuse to for the gameplay to occur, so how is that gameplay? It's a 3D platformer, but also not? It's moreso 2.5D. You know those Crash Bandicoot levels that are 2D but you can still run towards and away from the camera? Think that but the whole game. It's kinda weird, and it plays kinda weird. You can't control the camera and Pac-Man is just a 2D-Sprite-Man with a 3D hitbox and some of the platforms are also flat sprites in a 3D space. It can cause a lot of issues with depth perception, which isn't helped by the game's frequently awkward collision and odd physics. It can make some levels really obnoxious at times, especially with the game's weird jump mechanics.

You see, Pac-Man's basic jump is terrible. It can't make many jumps, even small and simple ones. You'll have to rely on the game's inconsistent ledge grab constantly to bridge gaps with the basic jump. No, the real jump is the butt bounce. By pressing the jump button in midair, you'll plummet down and then bounce way up. The bounce is twice as high as the basic jump and much faster, making it far more effective. However, because of the inconvenient setup, it can be pretty annoying to get around. I get the idea is the same as Crash's slide jump. The slide jump is much better than the normal, but it's riskier. However, the slide jump is less annoying to set up, and they also don't require it for most jumps like PMW does.

The bounce does more than jump though. It's also used as an attack, however the wonky collision often makes that annoying as well. Bouncing right on an enemy can cause you to take damage anyway, so the real strat is to butt bounce right next to them so the tiny splash wave hits them. It doesn't work well, especially with the poor depth perception. You have one other means of attack though, which is throwing power pellets. However, Pac-Man spikes them into the ground and they can't be aimed, so using them grounded is worthless. Your main option is to jump near an enemy and throw in mid-air while facing them. This is awkward and misses 70% of the time, but it fun when it manages to land. However for some reason, a lot of enemies seem completely immune to that move, so yay. You also can't throw them after a bounce (aka your real jump) which makes them even more awkward to use.

You have one final "attack" though, which is the rev roll. You charge up a bit and you blast off. Ram into enemies to hurt them. That'd be fun if the whole game didn't take place on thin platforms. The move also lets you fly up ramps or climb steep slopes, but that's barely used overall. I almost forgot to mention it. The main function it has is rev pads. Rev in place to charge a pad. That can do a variety of things, but it normally just moves the platform you're on. Every rev platform challenge is identical and just ends up feeling like waiting on a platform as you wait for a flame to stop spewing. Stop and go. A lot of this game was spent waiting on or for platforms actually. Boring.

Levels are linear, however world order isn't... for some reason. You can play worlds 1-3 in any order. After that, you can play 4-5 in any order. Then you unlock 6. IDK who would switch up the orders. You have to beat every level anyway and you don't get anything from beating 2 before 1. It's just weird. Anyway, while the levels are all "Point A to Point B" obstacle courses, they try to throw collectathon into the mix by adding doors that can only be unlocked by collecting fruit. This mostly just means you see a Cherry door you can't open, then you proceed 30 seconds into the level, find a cherry, then you walk back and open the door. Most stuff you find are just Pac-Dots and extra lives, but you can also find PAC-MAN letters (DKC style). Find every letter in PAC-MAN in a level and you'll be taken to a bonus stage after you finish. Bonus stages just let you get more fruit, which will just give you more lives/score. Oh. So these letters are really just more extra lives, but in an elaborate and less convenient way. These letters are often hidden in hard to find or deadly places. You're far more likely to lose a bunch of lives trying to get these and you'll end up with a net loss. How pointless.

So at this point, we should just ignore all the collectables, right? Well no. There's still two more things I haven't talked about yet. Firstly, Galaxians. Galaxians unlock Galaxian doors which will teleport you to a classic Pac-Man style maze. These levels are hit and miss. They try to modernize the gameplay, but it seems like their only idea was to add obstacles that'll force you to constantly stop-and-go. Some of these levels can be fun but others are just annoying. There's 36 of these in total with 18 found in the main menu and the other 18 unlockable from finding them in stages. Unlock them all and you unlock a marathon mode of all of them. This stuff is ok overall, but it feels pretty detached from the main game. Other than unlocking the maze itself, you get nothing in the level for beating them. You get to keep the fruit you collected but that's about it.

As for that other thing, it's keys. You see, your friends are captured, and to unlock the final boss you need to beat every level and save all of your friends. You'll have to first find a hidden key in a level, then find a hidden friend in a level. One friend per world and most friends are hidden in different levels than where you find the keys. Fortunately, neither are usually hidden very hard. As long as you're exploring, you'll find them. That ends up meaning you'll end up collecting tons of the worthless collectables in the process of hunting for that darn key.

Finally, lets discuss what this game is infamous for: godawful boss fights. The first boss was unmemorable. The second boss was the hardest in the entire game, bafflingly. Anubis Rex's boss is so hectic it's hard to describe. Just know that to beat him, you have to stand still as you charge up Rev Pads while also somehow dodging lava bubbles, black tornados, lazer beams, and raining rocks. It's absurdly over the top, and for boss two it's fucking insane. It's considered the hardest boss in the series, and I get it. It feels like total fucking luck. The third boss was a shoot-em-up Galaga tribute. That would be cool if it wasn't for the complete lack of autofire. They expect you to mash your controller constantly for like 4 straight minutes all while dodging attacks and carefully aiming and shit. I said "fuck that" and just mapped an autofire button. With an autofire, it was decent. The forth boss was a bizarre bumper car race. The controls were bad and the rules confused me. All 14 of my competitors seemingly died while I was like halfway through the race. I don't know how that happens, but I'll take it. The fifth boss was another plain awful one. You hit every switch back to back quickly to deal a hit, but touching a switch hurts you so you need to grab a metal powerup that'll make you invincible, but there are magnets that'll grab you if you're metal so you have to wait until the powerup wears off so you can continue. As you might tell, the fight was hectic. It doesn't even seem possible to hit every switch in time without tanking a few hits, They reset quickly and your metal wears off before you hit all five, but you don't have time to grab more metal. Plus when you're grabbed, you're just stuck waiting. This boss sucked. The final boss was.. surprisingly ok? I didn't mind it honestly. It was kinda neat.

In conclusion, Pac-Man World was.. not very good honestly. I know I spent this whole time complaining, but I did have fun here and there. But the problems with the awkward gameplay, camera, and poor boss fights just made the whole experience not one worth recommending at all. Which is what makes it all so baffling why Namco recently decided to bring back the Pac-Man World series with remake of this game and... that's it. Just this one. Now to be fair, a remake could easily fix the flaws I have with the game, however ultimately the best case scenario would be that it's a decent 2.5D platformer. Most people know this series from it's sequel- Pac-Man World 2, so remaking the original, which felt like a prototype by comparison, is certainly an odd choice. Well, we'll see in time how that turns out.

I reluctantly give Pac-Man World a 3/10. Damn shame. I really wanted to like this one, and I did have some fun with it. Oh well.

[randomboo256]

Sunset Overdrive Review

After the past couple years, one studio I've definitely grown into a strong fan of is Insomniac Games. While I've yet to play through all their games, I have played through the Ratchet and Clank series and the modern Spider-Man titles. I think both are excellent all around. As such, I was interested in Sunset Overdrive the second I heard about it. Ok well maybe that's not entirely accurate...

I was first introduced to this game from commercials I saw on TV as a kid when it was coming out as an exclusive on the then new Xbox One, which already sounds like blasphemy doesn't it? Insomniac is so heavily associated with Playstation that it's easy to forget that the studio only recently became an official part of the Playstation family. Regardless, I didn't know this as a kid. I saw the spunky advertisements and was... not impressed. I was barely a gamer as a kid (only really being interested in my Wii, PS2, and DS and hardly at that). Not only was it's Xbox One status an automatic "can't play", but it also just didn't appeal to me. A loud M rated action game full of punk and swearing? I'd rather read my totally mature "young adult" (aka middle school girl) romance novels.

However, times have changed since then. I'm not in middle school, I haven't properly read in years, and I'm now fully invested in exactly this kind of video game malarky. However despite that, it still took me this long to actually play it. Why's that? Well for whatever reason, I had convinced myself that this was a multiplayer game, so I avoided it. However, this game is entirely singleplayer... well on Steam anyway. Apparently this game DOES have multiplayer on Xbox, which was removed from the PC port I played. That doesn't bother me because I was never going to play it anyway, but that could be a game killer for others. Anyhow, let's start with the story.

Sunset Overdrive's storyline is rather tongue-in-cheek. The game is about the titular Sunset City being overtaken by an apocalypse after evil soda corporation Fizzco rushing their newest product, OverCharge, to market. The soda included a deadly untested ingredient that caused people who drunk it to mutate into soda-obsessed zombie-like creatures called OD. The city was walled up on all sides as Fizzco lies to the public about what really transpired in Sunset City. So while the rest of the world is normal as always, Sunset City spirals into chaos as OD attack, violent gangs rise, and eventually Fizzco's very own robots are sent to clean up the mess in the most violent way possible. Here you come along. You're a custom avatar, however unlike traditional player insets, our main girl has a mind (and a mouth) of her own. She frequently makes sarcastic comments as she revels in the ensuing chaos of Sunset City, all while trying to find her way to break out of this city to expose Fizzco to the rest of the world. The game takes a very clear anti-capitalist theme as many dystopian stories do. However, unlike the self-serious novels I read as a kid, the plot is intentionally over the top and jokes are made constantly. I thought the game was pretty funny overall, but that depends on the person. The game has characters and character arcs as well, however both were fairly stereotypical. The characters are likeable enough, albeit not too memorable. They were entertaining at least, so I suppose that's all that matters. The game has meta humor at times, which was very "of its era". Most meta jokes landed and a couple flopped. They were restrained though. They only showed up on occasion, and most importantly for meta humor: The game was never expecting you to take it seriously. Meta humor fails the most when the same piece of media that tells a meta joke wants you to still be earnestly invested. The game's silly tone is helped by the game's artstyle, which blends realism with bright exaggerated colors and comic book style onomatopoeia. The game aged very well visually, especially on PC where you can increase the resolution and fps to modern standards, rather than the Xbox's 720p and 30fps.

Sunset Overdrive is a platformer with third person shooter elements, akin to Ratchet and Clank. On the surface, they play very similarly, however there are major differences. Firstly: you can't strafe like in Ratchet, and on top of that, your base movement speed is very slow making it very difficult to dodge attacks on foot. That's because secondly: You can grind on nearly anything. Grinding is much faster than basic movement, at the cost of making aiming more difficult. That's not your only special platforming move either. You can grind under rails, run on walls, bounce high off nearly anything, dash across and spring out of water, ground pound jump, even dash in midair, and more. Chaining together moves like this generates a combo which can power your attacks in various ways. The game wants you to play "the floor is lava" at all times by making you balance being in a constant state of platforming while also shooting up everything that gets in your way. In that sense, this game feels like even more of a platformer than some of the later Ratchet games, which at times can feel a lot more shooter than platformer. It's a really addicting core gameplay loop, and I honestly kinda prefer it over Ratchet tbh.

All of this is combined with the fact that thirdly: The game is open world. Normally, that's a big red flag to me, however this time around I'm not upset because this world is expertly designed. Just going from point A to point B in this game can be a lot of fun. This world is designed like it's a video game you can play in and have fun. There are rails and bouncy objects everywhere and the game's momentum let's you build up a real satisfying sense of speed. The game's overall platforming moveset is so immense that it's fun to just play around with. Combined with the whole world being designed like a huge interconnected platforming sandbox, and this game effortless shows us exactly how an open world game should be designed. By making the moment to moment gameplay of just moving around this world satisfying, engaging, and fun with a high skill ceiling to boot, you've created a game that truly earns it's open world status. Most open world games tend to throw you onto an empty map with all the interesting and fun bits spread apart between miles of nothing, with most of your gameplay amounting to you essentially waiting for the fun to begin as you trudge from point A to point B. In Sunset Overdrive, not only is the game designed like a massive playground, but, quite literally, everywhere you look you see a collectable you can platform over to grab on your way between locations.

Overall, Sunset Overdrive is brilliant game. It has an enjoyable story, good artstyle, and incredible gameplay. What's not to love?

Well...

What I've said in regards to gameplay is very true, for the first half of the game at least. By the end though, my opinions had changed. That's often caused in games where the core gameplay is solid, but by the end the challenge has increased to a point where the mechanics are falling in on themselves and showing their flaws. However in Sunset's case, it's the exact opposite. The game's biggest issue is summed up with simply:

"Ok... but when does the game start getting hard?"

The answer is never, at least from what I played, which was all the main and side missions (including what was originally dlc). Once you get to grips with the core gameplay, it never gets any more difficult. Platforming challenges don't get more complex, enemies don't get much harder, and the game on the whole tends to feel rather... mindless? Especially by the end of my playthrough. What was original exciting an invigorating gameplay mechanics eventually led to the slow painful realization that this game completely fails to properly challenge the player. We have this deep and addicting gameplay system with a high skill ceiling, yet the game feels like your playing on baby mode the whole time. I rarely died (and even if you do the game barely punishes you), I almost never ran out of ammo for any of my weapons, most enemies die in one hit and you don't take a lot of damage overall. I barely even used the amp and overdrive systems, which would've just made me even more overpowered. With how many enemies you slaughter with so little effort, it almost reminds me of a Warriors game, although it's never that bad. If I didn't know better, I'd assume I accidently chose the easiest difficulty option, however this game has no difficulty options. Coming off of Ratchet and Clank, a series that can get truly difficult on the highest settings, this just feels far too easy which is bizarre because Ratchet is the one rated E10+ and this is the one rated M. This game has gore, drinking, and constant hard swears. Why is the gameplay balanced around young children? I've felt more challenged on NORMAL mode of past Ratchets than anywhere in Sunset Overdrive.

Even beyond the difficulty, this game has some other bizarre step backs from Ratchet and Clank. Firstly, the weapon wheel is much worse. In later Ratchet games, you can access every one of your weapons from your weapon wheel, which really encouraged experimentation with your guns. When trying out your fancy new toy is as simple as pulling up a quick select and tabbing over to it, it really compels you to make the most out of your full arsenal. In Sunset, your weapon wheel has no tabs, like the classic Ratchets, so that means that only a fraction of your inventory that you personally selected can be accessed in a second. You'd think that's maybe for balancing, but no. You can switch out your weapons at any time in the pause menu, even mid combat. What's worse is that you can't even just manually select the gun from a menu like classic Ratchet. You HAVE to add it to your weapon wheel to use it, which just makes experimentation feel cumbersome. This encourages the player to just use a single selection of guns the whole game, making the whole game blend into itself more.

However, even if you did stick to a few favorite guns, they even made steps back from Ratchet in that regard too. In Ratchet games, your guns level up from use, and they brought that back here. However it's much better in Ratchet. Firstly, because Ratchet is simply more challenging and better weapons are more noticeable, but secondly because in Ratchet your guns evolve into a totally new form when maxed out at level 5. This makes it really satisfying to level up your guns, and that's ignoring the upgrade trees some games have. In Sunset, your max level is just another hard to notice enhancement like levels 2-4 in Ratchet. Oh, I got more ammo with this gun? Great, now it'll be even harder to run out. Not only that, but it requires a lot more to level up a gun in Sunset. In Ratchet, you can comfortable max out most of your main arsenal by the end of the main campaign. In Sunset, I only saw a single gun get maxed out, and I played this game for a lot longer than a typical Ratchet game. I clocked around 40 hours, meanwhile most Ratchets are around 10-20.

Overall, this is a game with such strong promise and strong core gameplay that ultimately under deliveries in a few key areas. However, despite my bitching, I still really like this game. While it may have been too easy, it was still pretty fun while it lasted, even if that fun started to drain around at the eleventh hour (or more accurately around the 30th hour). The biggest damn shame here are that these issues surely couldn't have been THAT difficult to address, right? They did all this stuff properly in their game right before this one, so why fail here? Would it have killed them to add difficulty options and keep the Ratchet quick select and upgrade systems? I doubt that. What I see in Sunset Overdrive is great, yet deeply flawed game with a ton of room for improvement. If they ever do make that fabled Sunset Overdrive 2, it could be a true masterpiece.

8.0/10