I went for a bit of a deeper cut this time with my choice in game to look at, but I also knew that this was one of those that was generally appreciated by those that played it. In some ways I definitely can see why, with the game being quite a responsive action platformer with levels that have quite a few secrets and hidden areas that make each level take quite a while to get through if you so choose. With that said, I'm personally not too huge on this game, and a lot of it is to do with this dichotomy between how a completionist would approach this game compared to casually going through it.

In each level, the player is given a few optional tasks to take on, along with 5 hidden treasures being scattered throughout the level, which is what gives the game quite a bit of its appeal I image, as it's the cause of many of these stages opening up properly. With that said, one of my issues with this lie in the fact that players that don't care about these optional goals at all will be able to breeze through every stage effortlessly, since on their own, the linear portions of them offer very little in the way of challenge or even variation. This lack of variation continues to the weapons in the game, as despite the fact that many weapons are scattered throughout, most of them are functionally the same, with the main difference being whether or not they're ranged. This makes the additional variety feel quite pointless, especially since there seems to be very little theme between them in each level, just randomly assigned to provide the illusion of variety. This goes for the end fights of each stage boiling down to being a series of generic enemies that you fought throughout the level being thrown at you with often very little to no difference at all beyond the most basic of reskins.

As for the other side of the coin, those who want to stick with it and collect all of the optional stuff, you'll have your own slew of problems to deal with. The most notable of these are how it turns a lot of these stages from too quick to far too long and sprawling, especially since many of these sections feel just like the main part of the game, just out of the way and with a treasure at the end instead of the level's end. I also felt like the game sometimes got a bit too "smart" for its own good, with many of the little puzzle solutions being exercises in wasting the player's time, with having to move boxes back and forth repeatedly. While on its own this wouldn't really be problematic, it's the fact that this was often done without adding any new train of thought to go down that was problematic, feeling less like you're actually solving any sort of problem, and more just mindless padding. Furthermore, the aforementioned issues with lack of variety are felt to much stronger degrees when each level takes 3 times longer than it otherwise would have.

Overall, this game almost felt as if it was more like a game that was severely limited by its format rather than trying to design around the potential limitations. This ends up making the game feel incomplete and poorly executed in a lot of respects, rather than just feeling a bit simplistic. Even with that said, despite some issues with design, there are a lot of competent aspects of the game that end up elevating it a bit, notably some cool little bits of exploration that genuinely got me a bit interested. This along with the way the main character controlled being quite responsive and nice to use made it a more enjoyable game than it definitely could've been, even if it still was something I couldn't really get into at all.