I was born too late for the SEGA Dreamcast, but I was born just in time for the Nintendo GameCube, and one of my favorite games growing up was Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut. I loved this game immensely growing up, and I played and replayed it over and over again, to the point where the disc wore out and stopped working. As the years went by, and I got older and came to play a wider variety of games, I eventually stopped enjoying Sonic games as much as I used to when I was little, to the point where nowadays I view the franchise with nostalgic indifference. It’s something that I definitely used to love and I might check in on occasionally, but it rarely occupies a space in my brain these days. Recently, those feelings of nostalgia took hold of me when I learned about how the DX version of Sonic Adventure was apparently a lot worse in comparison to the original. I read that it introduced new bugs and glitches, and it changed the game’s overall visual style for the worse. So, out of curiosity, and because I wanted to be reminded of old times, I decided to emulate the original Sonic Adventure to see how much better it actually was in comparison to the allegedly maligned DX version, and in all honesty, I don’t really think that DX is as much of a downgrade as I was led to believe. The game itself wasn’t as much of a fun nostalgia ride as I’d hoped it’d be, either.

Dr. Eggman has returned with a new plan for world domination, and this time he’s in command of a creature known as Chaos, a liquid monster who grows more powerful and changes shape after being fed the legendary Chaos Emeralds. Sonic and company all get involved with Eggman’s plot in some fashion, as they attempt to stop him from feeding Chaos all seven emeralds and wrecking untold havoc upon the world. You play as Sonic and five other characters, each with their own style of gameplay and personal narratives that occasionally crossover with one another.

I have to admit, reviewing this game is rather difficult for me. I played DX growing up so much that I know the game like the back of my hand. I’m used to the physics, I’m used to the boss fights, I know where I’m supposed to go and when, I can quote so many voice lines… basically I can play this game almost without thinking. There may be aspects of the game that I find easy that other people might struggle with. Sonic Adventure is a bit of a finicky game, and getting acclimated to how the game feels and controls may not come as naturally to others as it comes to me. Once you get used to it though, the whole game is very much a walk in the park. Each character shares the same core controls, but they also have their own abilities which make them unique.

Sonic’s campaign is by far the most fun in the game, and clearly where the most attention was given. His stages simply take the speed focused platforming approach of the 2D games and apply it to levels made in 3D. Sonic’s stages are often long and made up of multiple sections with a variety of different environments and music tracks for each section. Sonic for the most part feels pretty good to control, especially when you manage to get him going at higher speeds. The biggest problem that I have both with Sonic’s stages and with the game in general is easily the awful camera. The camera often acts like it has a mind of its own, and when Sonic or other characters go at high speeds, it often can’t keep up with them, or it’ll get stuck on level geometry, freak out, and prevent you from seeing where you’re going. The only times I ever died during my replay of this game was when these camera issues happened, and they happen most frequently when you’re going at high speeds through tunnels like in Sky Chase or Speed Highway. Sometimes to get the camera under control, you just gotta slow down and give it a second to catch up, which can be annoying, but it’s not the worst.

As mentioned, the rest of the cast all have their unique styles of gameplay, but for the most part, they all reuse various sections of Sonic’s stages. Some characters have sections of stages unique to them, and there is one stage (Hot Shelter) that Sonic doesn’t have that other characters do, but 95% of the other characters’ stages are reused or slightly edited sections of Sonic’s stages, and their gameplay for the most part isn’t different or interesting enough to really feel substantial. Playing as the other characters can feel rather repetitive and boring as a result.

Tails is easily the best example of this. His stages involve racing an AI-controlled Sonic through chopped up sections of Sonic’s stages. Tails can’t run as fast as Sonic, but he can fly, and there are these booster rings he can fly through that allow him to take shortcuts that Sonic can’t utilize himself. It’s never a challenge to outpace Sonic, and Sonic can sometimes get stuck on level geometry and not even advance forward at all until he rubber bands and teleports right next to you in order to catch up.

Knuckles’ stages have him searching for broken pieces of the Master Emerald. His ability to glide and climb walls allows him to explore stages in a way Sonic can’t, making the stages themselves a lot more open and exploration focused. His gameplay is different enough from Sonic’s that replaying stages isn’t really that big of a deal. His stages are my next favorite after Sonic’s.

Amy’s campaign is surprisingly fun. Amy has to flee from an invincible robot called Zero, which chases her across all of her stages. Amy’s on the slower side, but she has her own special movement abilities and attacks she can perform with her Piko Piko Hammer to make up for it. She also has the most unique content compared to the other playable characters that aren’t Sonic, as she has sections of Sonic’s stages that he doesn’t get to experience himself, such as the fun house in Twinkle Park. My only complaint is that she has the least amount of stages in the game (three in total).

Then there’s Big’s campaign… Big has always been rather infamous when it comes to discussions surrounding this game. As opposed to every other character’s gameplay, which is generally focused on exciting action, or high speed setpieces, Big the Cat’s gameplay involves fishing for his pet frog named Froggy. There are pools of water in stages that are occupied by Froggy as well as other fish, and you have to catch Froggy in order to clear Big’s stages. I think it’s pretty understandable why people don’t care for Big’s campaign. His gameplay is so different from everyone else’s, and if you want to complete the story, you have no choice but to do them. The fishing itself isn’t especially fun either, and it can be confusing because the game itself doesn’t really explain how fishing works. I remember being so frustrated and angry with Big’s levels as a kid because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and didn’t realize that you needed to flick the control stick down whenever Froggy bites onto the lure in order to actually hook him onto it so that you can start reeling him in. To the game’s credit, fishing is explained in the game’s instruction booklet (both this version and DX’s), so it’s a bit hard to blame it for not telling you what you’re supposed to do. That doesn’t change the fact that the fishing itself is still not particularly engaging. At the very least, it’s not difficult at all once you figure out how it works.

Finally, there’s E-102 Gamma’s campaign. Gamma is a robot built to serve Dr. Eggman. His stages involve running and gunning, blasting enemies and obstacles and defeating a boss at the end of each stage. I don’t really know how else to describe Gamma’s stages other than braindead. That might sound a bit harsh, but I genuinely can’t think of any other way to put it. You hold down the action button to target obstacles, wait to target as many as you can, and then Gamma will fire auto-homing shots to destroy targets. It’s also hilariously easy to just stun lock all of the bosses at the end of Gamma’s stages and keep them from fighting back at all.

The story, much like the gameplay, is ambitious, and I do actually think it’s executed well enough. However, the horrible dialogue and the stilted 90’s voice acting can really knock the wind out of its sails. It’s charming enough to find it funny, but very much in a “so bad it’s good” kinda way. Eggman’s voice actor is an exception though. Deem Reginald Bristow actually kills it with his performance. It’s really lively compared to every other character in the game, and he sounds like he’s honestly having a lot of fun with the role, as opposed to everyone else, who just sounds like they’re phoning it in.

By far the best part about this game is its soundtrack. God, to this day nothing really hits me like this game’s soundtrack. It’s honestly pretty damn close to perfect. Each track just adds so much to the immersion of each stage, while also being immensely groovy or electrifying songs on their own. Some of my favorite tracks include Run Through the Speed Highway, Red Hot Skull, and Pleasure Castle, but in all honesty, pretty much every single song is a banger, and aside from maybe some of the vocal tracks, it’s really difficult to find a song that isn’t great in this game.

As for how this compares to the DX version, I think that visually, environments look a lot more appealing in comparison. The textures in the Dreamcast version are a lot more colorful, and places like the Mystic Ruins look far more lush and appealing. Other than that though, I’ll be honest: I don’t think that this version has much else that makes it worth playing over DX. For the sake of making a good faith comparison, I did play through a chunk of Sonic’s levels really quickly in DX to see if I could run into any obvious bugs or glitches, but I didn’t encounter anything, and I don’t ever recall running into any particularly notable glitches in the DX version during the several playthroughs of it when I was a kid. If anything, I feel like I still prefer DX a bit more because it has a free camera option you can turn on during stages, which is a huge blessing since the auto camera is so terrible. You can also skip cutscenes in DX which is super convenient. I feel like the glitches and bugs of DX are overblown, it seems like you really gotta go out of your way to experience them. You could argue that since I didn’t play DX from beginning to end that I’m not making a fair comparison, and y’know what, I won’t argue with you. I just really don’t have it in me to play this game from front to back a second time.

It’s clear that there was a lot of passion and ambition that went into Sonic Adventure and I have nothing but respect for that. I feel like this is one of the most experimental games I’ve ever played, especially for its time. It’s just that not all of its ideas pan out very well, and it causes the game to feel bloated and boring at times. Sonic Adventure, no matter which version I play, is always going to be a big source of nostalgia for me, and I’ll definitely treasure those memories I had of playing the game as a kid. But it’s impossible to deny how rough and flawed the game truly is.

I’ve always wanted to get into the series since I was younger, but never really found a good way to start until World caught my attention. After one hundred and thirty hours of playing through the game by myself and with an incredibly important friend of mine, my thoughts on the game are as vast and in-depth as the game itself. For this particular review, I’m actually going to be splitting it in half by reviewing both the base game, and its DLC: Iceborne since I find the two different enough to warrant discussions on, as well as my thoughts being long enough to also justify doing two reviews. This will be the first part of the review, Iceborne’s will be soon after. With that out of the way, let’s jump into the world of Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter World creates a strong impression right away with the beautiful graphics, the presentation, and the first few cutscenes. While graphical fidelity isn’t necessarily Monster Hunter’s selling point, I must admit this game looked rather gorgeous, though the colors are a bit muted which seems to be a departure from other Monster Hunter games, but Rise seems to have gone back to the original artstyle. You create your character, you create your loyal Palico comrade, and are treated to some cutscenes. This is where we run into our first problem with this game, is the unskippable cutscenes. While I don’t skip cutscenes for my first playthrough, if I were to play Monster Hunter World again, I’d also have to sit through these cutscenes again as well, and they’re not necessarily short ones either. This normally wouldn’t be a big issue for me if the story was good, which we’ll get to, but the fact you cannot skip cutscenes is a minor blemish all things considered, but still odd.

The story of Monster Hunter World has some promise at the beginning, but never really does much with it really. A lot of the “story” is just to give you a reason to be fighting a specific monster, which works, but since these cutscenes are unskippable and typically uninteresting and long, they certainly don’t do much to hook or captivate the player as far as the plot goes. With that said, the cutscenes do a phenomenal job at introducing us to a new monster, as well as tease some of their capabilities when you actually fight them, which I really liked. Had Monster Hunter World focused entirely on the monsters themselves, and not the reason why you’re fighting them, I think it'd have benefited greatly from it, because any cutscene not involving a Monster introduction I found little to no reason to fully pay attention to since all it’s really doing is stringing things together for another encounter. I suppose that’s the point, but characters and dialogue in general are just bland to me, I’d rather just skip them to play the game instead. Except for the Huntsman, the Huntsman was alright.

Monster Hunter World’s gameplay is incredibly complicated with tons of moving parts, I find it both great and bad in a lot of cases, let’s get into it. I’m going to address my positives with the gameplay first, and then the negatives.

Monster Hunter World has a fantastic selection of weapons that each have their own playstyle, strengths, weaknesses, and builds with tons of customization and flexibility that allow you to tailor yourself for a specific monster, or to compensate for a weak aspect of your weapon or playstyle. I found myself very drawn to the Long Sword for its design alongside its good range, great damage, and decent mobility. It’s by all means a universally good weapon with very few drawbacks, however it’s a very difficult weapon to master. I also dabbled in Dual Blades, and the Greatsword, but ended up using Long Sword exclusively for my whole playthrough. While I can’t comment much on other weapons, they each have unique purposes and quirks that give them just as much reason to use than any other weapon, they all feel viable and useful. Dual Blades for example have a lot of hits and DPS, so it’s good for applying status ailments, Insect Glaive is great for mounting, Great Sword is great at shattering monster parts, and bow is a ranged weapon that can keep you out of harm’s way with plenty of options to deal good damage. Learning your weapon however can be quite the endeavor, as you’ll have to put in time to become efficient with them and understand their limitations. Since this was my first Monster Hunter, I ended up spending a lot of time in the training area for the first twenty hours or so just trying to understand my weapon and everything about it, which can definitely be a difficult hurdle to get across, but it’s worth it in the long run. Not every weapon is complicated, Dual Blades are incredibly simple, as well as the Sword and Shield, both are also very solid weapons that don’t fall behind the others, which is important to stress, simply pick the weapon you like the most.

Most weapons have sharpness you will have to manage while hunting monsters as well. Sharpness is incredibly important because the sharper your weapon is, the better damage it will do, and the less likely it’ll bounce off a monster's tough hide or skin. There’s many different “levels” of sharpness, purple being the best, and red being the worst. You’ll always need to check your sharpness meter often to make sure it’s not getting too dull, usually yellow sharpness is around the best time to find a moment to sharpen, though I personally always sharpened after a monster ran away to ensure maximum damage and wouldn’t need to worry about my weapon becoming dull in the middle of a scrap. I think the game does a great job overall giving you plenty of opportunities and big openings to sharpen your weapon, even during encounters, but sharpness is a very committal action that’ll get you punished since it can take awhile to do, but there are ways around this issue, such as special sharpening tools and a skill called “speed sharpening” which is pretty self-explanatory. I liked the sharpness mechanic quite a bit because by being diligent with it, you’re rewarded with more damage and less risk overall of being in a tight spot, of course if you really needed to sharpen in the middle of a fight, despite how long it is to do, you can always roll out of the animation, which is nice, there’s also some special sharpening tools that make it much faster as well.

Armor, charms, and decorations are essential building blocks to a hunter’s survivability, there’s a lot to it, but a lot of it is quite good. You’ll start off with some rather meek armor, but once you overcome your first monster, you’ll be ready to upgrade your gear if you so choose. This decision-making of which monster to hunt for their gear is the majority of your monster hunting experience, and there’s plenty of options. I think the idea of both grinding a monster for drops, while also being able to re-fight your personal favorites makes for a very strong gameplay loop that keeps you engaged for a very long time, I very much enjoyed grinding Rathalos and Odagaron for my high rank gear that lasted me until I got to the DLC. On the flipside however, fighting a monster for a specific piece of gear you don’t enjoy fighting, or simply never getting the drop you need can be very unengaging and bloat game time quite a bit, but generally I think it’s a positive since fighting the monster a lot will let you gain mastery over it, letting you shave seconds each and every time, which is its own reward to many. Of course, if you don’t care about this and just wish to progress, most monsters only need to be fought once to progress the actual game, there’s also other methods to get more drops from monsters if you need. Charms is another piece of equipment crafted from monster parts that allow you to gain a specific skill you might want, or your armor might not provide, from attack boost, to critical eye, you name it. I opted to go for the Health Charm since it increases survivability a lot, which you’ll need if you don’t have stellar armor, but you can make anything work really. Decorations allow you to slot in even more skills if your armor has decoration slots, your weapons can also have some. Decorations really allow you to be flexible with your builds outside your armor, which lets you slot in what you want to have, which I really like because there’s so many skills to choose from, plus it helps make experimenting a bit easier without crafting an entire new set of armor. Overall, building your character up, the armor, and the grind for the materials are all fantastic and kept me playing Monster Hunter far longer than I would’ve normally, but that’s by no means a negative, I very much enjoyed the progression, it felt rewarding, significant, and not too slow to where it dragged much.

Mantles are another idea in Monster Hunter I really enjoyed because it gave even more customization, but also allowed you to handle certain fights and situations much easier. Mantles come in many forms, from the vitality mantle that gives you more health, temporal mantle that gives you invincibility for several attacks until it wears off, elemental mantles that lower specific elemental damage, like fire, and the rocksteady mantle which prevents your attacks from being interrupted by attacks while still taking reduced damage. While they’re not essential for hunts, they allow a lot more room for error, or simply make it easier, especially if you’re struggling with a monster, crafting a mantle can mean the difference between a win and a loss. I personally opted to use the Vitality and Temporal Mantle, and I couldn’t tell you the amount of times it saved me in a pinch, it does take a second to actually put on the mantle, so keep that in mind. The drawback of mantles is they’re on a timer, once you put it on, the mantle will slowly lose its energy until it blacks out entirely visually, this is when you need to take off the mantle to let it recharge. I like this idea of having to be diligent with the mantle, but in a tough battle, it’ll be hard to find a moment to take it off sometimes, even though it only takes a second to do so, but make sure to get everything you can out of them, because once they run out, they’ll be out of commission for a decent length of time. If you’re not particularly interested in using a mantle, there’s also “boosters” which create an area of effect that can increase your weapon affinity, heal you and your allies, and remove status ailments, I never personally used these since I found mantles infinitely more useful and versatile, but also because boosters have to be placed and have a small area of effect which can be difficult to utilize in fights where the monster is constantly repositioning, or you the hunter have to reposition due to the monster’s attacks.

The slinger and environmental hazards are two components of Monster Hunter World I very much enjoyed overall. The slinger is this arm mounted crossbow every hunter worth their salt uses and will utilize on hunts. In order to use the slinger, you need ammo, which can be stones, to moss, to any number of things really which can then be used to trip environmental hazards, as well as against monsters. Against monsters, there’s a few specific things you can do with it, like getting their attention, but most importantly it can allow you to stun or stagger a monster. Specific ammo types will allow you to interrupt a monster’s attack, granting you a big opening at your discretion which is pretty much an essential mechanic in later fights, but can be neglected early on. Not all ammo can stagger unfortunately, which is a small negative I think makes sense in theory, but would allow all ammo to be invaluable instead of only a select few. The slinger also allows you to shoot special crafted ammo you make yourself, such as flash pods to stun the enemy for a long period of time, as well as forcing flying monsters to crash back down to the Earth, providing a gigantic opening and is almost essential for monsters like Rathalos, to the more obscure screamer pods that create a high-pitched noise that’s particularly useful against the likes of Diablos. Flash pods are more universally useful though, and in base Monster Hunter World, they’re a tad overtuned, making certain fights an absolute joke, so I opted to not abuse them much but is something to be aware of. I think the slinger’s most important use however is triggering environmental hazards. There’s a few cutscenes in-game that showcase this idea which I really like, though they still give you a tutorial on it which is understandable, though I’d much prefer to have put two and two together. Environmental hazards are usually unstable formations above monsters you can hit to make them come crashing down, like rocks in the ancient forest, to giant crystals in later areas. Though not every environmental trap needs the slinger to activate, some of them work if you can attract the monster to where they are like vine traps, which entangle the monster for several seconds, allowing you to get a lot of damage in! It’s up to you to take advantage of these environmental traps however, and they’re not guaranteed as you need to get the monster in position and either stun them or knock them down to do it, or get very lucky where they just don’t happen to move. If you do successfully hit a monster with one of these hazards, they will take a large amount of damage and automatically topple, giving you an opening on top of the high damage, which is incredibly beneficial and can make hunts go way faster if utilized well. Traps can also help you break monster parts which we’ll get into in a bit, but overall environmental traps can turn the tide or snowball your advantage momentously, and I quite loved the interactive environmental aspects a lot, there’s other things you can trigger as well like swarms of flashbugs to flash a monster, water geysers and lava geyser that deal passive damage as the monster stands in them, and environmental destruction from rampaging monsters among other things, such as Rathalos attacking the rocks in his nest to cause the water behind it to rush out, potentially flinging him off the cliff along with you if you’re not careful. It’s truly an interactive world, which I really appreciate as it helps the immersion aspect a lot, and again just very helpful to gain an advantage if you’re paying attention.

My absolute favorite aspect of Monster Hunter World are the monsters themselves. If you actually decide to not attack them and watch them from a safe distance, you can observe them, how they interact with the environment, other monsters, and themselves. For example, you can watch a Rathian hunt for food, you can watch Barroth try to cool itself off in the mud, and you can see even more intimidating monsters like Nergigante ( my personal favorite monster) groom himself and just walk around peacefully. These dynamics make these monsters feel real in an actual environment, not just boss fights that net you rewards. I think they absolutely nailed this aspect, since while even fighting monsters, they’ll often retreat to their nests to rest and restore their health, and if you take too long you’ll be at a further disadvantage. Turf Wars help emphasize these monsters are territorial not only to you, but other invading monsters, and will fend them off best they can. Mechanically speaking, Turf Wars always end in a tie as both monsters deal a massive amount of damage to each other alongside a unique animation. After this is over, the monsters can still fight each other with their normal attacks, which can drag on sometimes depending on the monsters, but you can sling a dung pod to drive off any monsters you don’t want to deal with. Usually the monster who invaded the territory of another monster will leave, feeling threatened, which thematically makes a lot of sense in some cases. In other cases, it makes less sense depending on the match-up, but I think the idea that every monster has a chance to beat another monster that is stronger than it is definitely possible. All of these monsters have specific routes, nests, and interactions that give them consistency to feel very real, and I absolutely love it. It was always a highlight to watch, and undoubtedly my favorite part of the game besides actually fighting the monsters.

Fighting monsters is one of the biggest selling points of Monster Hunter, so is it any good? Yes, very much so. When you’re fighting a monster, they have specific weak points you can take advantage of to deal higher damage than normal, and not every monster has the same weak points, which not only makes a lot of sense, but ensures not every fight feels the same. Some monsters might have weak arms, some might have soft tails etc. It’s up to you to figure out where the weak points are, though there are resources in-game to figure this out as well without guess-work, which I appreciate not having to look up a wiki to do so. There are some universal weaknesses though, monsters with large legs can be attacked to stagger them, if you damage their leg enough though, they might just topple over, completely at your mercy. This allows for a consistent strategy against monsters, especially new monsters you haven’t fought yet, but it’s not always guaranteed or ideal, since some monsters have very strong legs. One of my favorite parts of the combat though is part breaking. If you attack a specific part of the monster long enough, it’ll eventually break, which not only severely lowers their defense in that specific area, but it can also drastically weaken the monster. Let’s take Rathian as an example, Rathian has a tail flip attack that deals severe damage and can poison you, so this incentivizes you going for her tail, since if you cut her tail off, it’ll make her arguably strongest move much weaker. Not only does this give you a huge advantage to sever her tail, but it’s so satisfying watching the tail get cut off and go flying, you even get an extra carve from it, which basically means you get another drop from the monster, which can net you really valuable materials. Tail cutting isn’t the only part you can go for though, as monsters all have specific body parts they rely on for attacking that breaking will cause their moves to become far less dangerous, and in some cases, slow them down, or cause them to have much larger windows of opportunity to attack them. On top of all of these advantages, part breaking can topple the monster as well, which gives you even more opportunities to break parts which will eventually snowball you to breaking multiple parts in a row, which is so much fun to do and really rewards you as well. Each broken part will also give you an extra material after the hunt is over, further emphasizing part breaks, you can also destroy highly resistant parts of a monster to make them take solid damage in that area for the remainder of the battle. Part breaking is an essential component of hunts, and a very fun mechanic as well, once you figure out what part of their body the monster uses the most to attack with, or what its most dangerous attacks utilize, it becomes a glaring target for you to go for, which I love a lot, and was just another aspect of this game that made me put in so much time playing it.

As far as the monster’s attacks themselves, well it’s a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, there’s a lot of attacks in this game that feel well telegraphed and fair, allowing you to anticipate what the monster will do, and react accordingly by dodging or moving out of the way. On other occasions, some moves have some wild hitboxes that felt very deceptive in their size and range. One thing I need to stress about Monster Hunter World is how a monster’s attack pattern is entirely random. A monster may just use their worst attack three or four times in a row, and there’s not much you can do about that besides using slinger to stun them, avoiding it, or just getting hit. I think this randomness factor works since these are monsters, and just like animals, their behavior will be unpredictable, so thematically it all checks out, but mechanically it can feel utterly unfair at times. If a monster decides to just not give you many openings, or keeps moving around and you have to chase them down a lot, it can become rather annoying and hurt the pacing of the battle. Let’s not forget every hunt outside expeditions have a time limit, so the less time you’re attacking, the more that clock is ticking down. I will say in base game, the clock usually never played a factor in victory or success for me, but it’s definitely something that became an issue later on. I didn’t really notice these issues until the endgame, since most of Monster Hunter world is actually rather easy once you get the hang of it, but in the endgame it starts getting a little ridiculous. Some moves have barely any start-up at all, so reacting to them is a nightmare, insta-kill moves, ridiculously sized attacks etc. This definitely bogged my experience down somewhat, though it wasn’t super consistent enough for me to feel like it was a pressing issue a lot of the time, but it’s definitely there. Some monsters are better than others in this regard, though like any game, some monsters are incredibly well designed, some are incredibly poorly designed. Some of my least favorite monsters were definitely Black Diablos, Uragaan, and Kirin for reference. My favorite fights include Nergigante, Teostra, and Odagaron. My biggest issue with the combat really just boils down to some moves either being too strong, too fast, or just having weird hitboxes, everything else is either fine or manageable, especially in a multiplayer environment, I’d even argue some of these criticisms disappear if you’re playing with one other person like I was, but when playing by myself, these flaws became much more apparent.

Monster hunter world was one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had. Even though I only played with one other person, being able to share this experience with them and fighting giant monsters together was always fun. Even in the more difficult fights, having someone to rely on is comforting, but always keeps the fight engaging since teamwork becomes essential in multiplayer. Monster’s gain much more HP the more people are in a hunt, so everyone needs to usually pull their weight for a hunt to be a success. Having an ally to split aggro can help ease pressure and give you a moment to heal or buff up if you need, but makes the monster a bit more chaotic to predict, which I honestly preferred, made things more interesting, plus the trade-off of being able to take a breather was very welcome. Allies can hit you out of stun and other nasty aliments as well, heavily rewarding teamwork as you’ll both be keeping an eye on each other if you’re ever in a bind, which is pretty much essential in the endgame. There’s plenty of multiplayer support skills like wide range that allow you to support your team further by allowing you to heal some of your allies’ hp by drinking a potion which also heals you, as well as buffing items like might and adamant seeds. Of course, multiplayer has drawbacks as well, hitting your allies with your weapon will flinch them, interrupting their action for a second, in which case they’ll need to do it again, though the flinch animation actually has some i-frames on it, so it can have incredibly niche use in that regard. You can run flinch free to prevent this, and if you’re with a LongSword player like myself, I’d recommend it, ‘cause LongSword is very well-known for flinching allies, which can be frustrating for sure. I have to admit though, I vastly preferred my Multiplayer experience compared to my Single Player experience, which we’ll get into, but I was thoroughly impressed with how thoughtful and fun the Multiplayer was speaking strictly mechanically, because Multiplayer has its own specific issues we’ll also get into in a bit. Overall though, a must-play with friends if you can get them together for it, because it’s incredibly fun. I'd argue half of my enjoyment was just from reacting and making callouts in call to my teammate. Truly a one-of-a-kind experience.

For singleplayer, you have your trusty Palico friend to help you against monsters. The Palico, much like another hunter, can split aggro for you, heal you, and help deal damage to the monster. I very much liked the Palico not only for this, but because they’re just a very loyal and charming companion that has a lot of cute dialogue and interactions with your hunter. They really made it feel like you were a team with quite a bit of history before the game began. You can also craft gear and weapons for your Palico, which helps them scale up with you as monsters get tougher, and honestly my Palico was absolutely invaluable, even in Multiplayer. I decided to give my Palico a paralysis weapon, which gave me so many openings to attack the monster with, even if it was uncommon, over the playthrough it saved me so many times, and helped me clutch victory. Unfortunately, the Palico isn’t all positives, as if you’re by yourself, you have to rely on the Palico to get you out of specific status ailments. Stun and sleep are the two big ones that you really need your Palico to get you out of. Stun and sleep leave you wide open to be killed, but you can ping your Palico to hit you out of these… unfortunately the Palico is not consistent with doing this. Sometimes they’ll be on top of it and hit you every single time, other times they’ll ignore your cry for help and watch as you die. Because of this, relying on your Palico for these situations is incredibly risky, and I personally ensured this never happened because I didn’t trust my luck. Otherwise, the Palico is incredibly useful, especially for a support role. I gave my Palico vigor wasp spray the entire playthrough alongside a status weapon, and they were an invaluable part of my team and strategy, so overall Palico was an awesome and welcome addition to the game, and my team.

Now that I’ve gone over most of the positives, let’s go into some of the negatives.

My largest negative with Monster hunter world is the single-player experience. Now don’t get me wrong here, you can absolutely play and enjoy this game by yourself, and I have tons of admiration and respect for those who can solo the hardest monsters in the game, but to me, this was the epitome of my bad experiences with this game. A lot of the mechanics and design of this game seemed very geared towards multiplayer in a lot of ways, one aspect of it to me that screams this more than any other is stun. Stun is an overly punishing mechanic that, when hit too many times in quick succession by a monster, you lose all control of your hunter as they stand there like a sitting duck to get killed. Now yes, your Palico can hit you out of it like I mentioned, but it’s inconsistent, and while you can run Stun Resist to completely remove the mechanic altogether, I found it incredibly unfair and not fun to deal with. The game tells you that you can get out of stun faster by wiggling the left stick, however this does not impact much as far as how long you’re in stun for. On top of this, monsters with no split aggro can kill you in a matter of seconds, all it takes is a few swipes, and you’re as good as gone. A game like this, positioning and finding openings is crucial for success, but in my experience a lot of this never mattered when I was by myself because the monster would always be on me and I couldn’t do much about it. Now you do have your Palico friend to split the aggro up for you a bit, but I found it to not be enough to feel comfortable or even confident to go in and fight the monster, most of the time I just ran away and hung around waiting for a move I felt I could punish before going in. This, on top of insane hitboxes, stun, and slow recoveries with items and get-ups, ruined any semblance of pacing during battles and often found myself running the clock out on these hunts. Just as well, I failed many quests where I was assured victory just so long as I had enough time to capture the monster because I played too safe since I deemed the risk too high. Again, this is just my personal experience, and I know a lot of people stand by this game as a single-player experience, but for me, I vastly prefer playing in Multiplayer. Single-Player was just incredibly frustrating and unfun and often soiled my enjoyment of the game in sessions where I had to play by myself. I will say, once I had a competent build with the quality of life skills I wanted, Single-Player was less arduous and annoying, but I still didn’t find it nearly as engaging or rewarding as sharing my victories with my friend, or with other randoms after defeating a powerful monster together.

The roll, or more specifically, the lack of i-frames on the roll. I come from a very Fromsoft background, so a lot of my experience with these kinds of games are the likes of Dark Souls. Bloodborne, and Sekiro. While those and Monster Hunter play very differently, they both share one thing in common, and that’s a roll. In Monster Hunter, the roll allows you to reposition and dodge attacks from the monster, however the amount of i-frames it has does not always allow this. Some attacks are so long or have such giant hitboxes, your roll simply cannot dodge it and you will get hit. Just like Stun Resist, you can use skills like Evade Window to increase the amount of i-frames the roll has, and jumping to increase how far it goes. With that said however, the base roll should be good enough to dodge most quick attacks, because if it did, it’d tremendously help with the pacing and flow of fights once again. Now there is a more committal roll option called a “dive” where you run away from the monster, run, then roll, and you will dive. The dive has plenty of i-frames to dodge pretty much any attack, and there’s specific attacks monsters use with the dive in mind I actually really like. Nergigante’s dive-bomb move being a good example of one of these moves. The issue with dive is it takes forever to recover from, and getting your hunter to dive is too finicky for me. If you have your weapon drawn, forget about diving, it will not happen, and I’ve suffered many deaths from not being able to sheathe fast enough to dive, which very much annoyed me. I understand both this and stun are things you can alleviate or outright remove with certain skills, however skills have their own issues.

Decorations being random drops is something I’ll never understand. I’ve recently learned from a good friend of mine, Lemonstrade whom I’ve been talking to about my experience with Monster Hunter World, that previous Monster Hunter games did not have random decorations, but were simply craftable from specific monster parts. Not only would this have helped make more monsters useful to hunt in my playthrough, because I had so many monster parts just collecting dust, but would also allow you to focus in on decorations you really needed. Decorations are what give you those skills I’ve been mentioning in this review a lot. In order to get these decorations, you get them as rewards from pretty much every activity in the game. The big issue is: what decorations you get are entirely random. This to me is flat-out padding and a really bad idea overall. If I was struggling with stun or my roll being a bit too hard to use effectively, I should in theory, be able to grind for the decorations to help with me, not random chance. So instead, I have to grind monsters for potentially hours, and maybe never get what I’m looking for, which will make these issues much more consistent and noticeable throughout my experience, and surprise, they were. It’s especially bad in endgame when you want to optimize builds, or go for a luxurious build that makes the game more forgiving to play, good luck getting the decorations you need in a reasonable amount of time, though you may get lucky. What’s worse is you don’t even need to fight especially hard monsters to get decent gems, you can fight a special event called Greatest Jagras that’s always available now to grind gems, so it’s not even a matter of skill, it’s a matter of time. Gem farming takes too long, less monsters become useful to get their materials for, makes certain issues way harder to solve, and overall doesn’t feel rewarding, it’s all luck. I was able to get all the gems I needed through dedicated work, but I’m hoping the upcoming Monster Hunter game: Wilds fixes this issue and reverts back to the old way Monster Hunter games did it, by allowing you to craft gems you want, not a slot machine.

Last complaint I really have with Monster Hunter World is how jank it felt to play at first. A lot of things in this game did not come very naturally for me, such as sheathing and unsheathing my weapon, which thankfully running auto-sheathes for you. A lot of the animations in Monster Hunter are long and very committal, so you can’t just mash attack and get away with it, or cancel out of it like roll, at least with LongSword this was the case. I often got too greedy and got hit a lot, which led to some frustration, but I began to understand Monster Hunter is a slower-paced game, so playing it slower helps, but that’s not the case with certain quests only giving you 30 minutes or so, which puts the pressure on. Odd hitboxes and strong attacks were the least of my issues when it came to traversing areas, specifically the Ancient forest. Visually, it gets across how nature-focused this game is, but on the other hand, what an absolutely terribly designed area overall, and a nightmare to traverse. This really shouldn’t have been the first area, since later areas don’t suffer this labyrinthian design like Ancient Forest does, but have their own fair share of issues. While the game is called “Monster Hunter” actually hunting The monsters felt like a chore a lot of the time. Having to find footprints and markings, collecting them, gaining research, and then the scout flies tell you where to go. Not only do the Scout Flies sometimes just don’t tell you the right way to go, but it feels very hand-holding at the same time, I’d much prefer finding the monsters on my own without all these extra steps. Of course, you obviously can ignore the Scout Flies and the track-hunting most of the time, but some missions require you do it, and it bogs the game down so much. Much later on, you’ll have to find tracks for some particularly special monsters by revisiting older regions, and only once you fulfill the research requirement can you locate them and fight them to progress the game. Once again this feels like padding, since no other Monster Hunter game does this, so it’s an odd choice World would decide to do it. Though I’ve been informed many times that World is an “outlier” when it comes to Monster Hunter, these criticisms will likely only apply to this entry. A lot of the actual controls for the game felt fine enough, but as I mentioned before, diving was sometimes inconsistent, odd hitboxes, bad roll, stun, the entirety of the Ancient Forest, sheathing, it all felt janky for a game made in 2018. Now I will concede a lot of this stuff I adapted to overtime and got used to it, but initially these things turned me off from the game, but I really wanted to get into this series, and my friend helped me a lot along the way, so I’m very thankful those first handful of hours were easier because of that. I wouldn’t say even World as accessible as it might be for the series, is still quite intimidating and very hard to get a grasp of, but once you do and it clicks, it becomes a very addicting and satisfying experience.

Sieges, more specifically Zorah Magdaros. Every mission involving this oversized lava cake I did not enjoy whatsoever. The scale is quite amazing, and can be quite exhilarating when you first begin one of these giant monster sieges, but you quickly realize just how shallow it is. You use some special weapons like the cannon and the ballista to deal damage, you wait around for an eternity, you get a cutscene, then you do it again until the quest ends. It’s not engaging, it’s mechanically shallow, and it’s unnecessary. I love the idea on paper, but the execution is just so bad, I couldn’t wait for them to be over with, and I never went back to grind these missions either because they were so dull to me. Zorah Magdaros has an excellent introduction at the start of the game and presents tons of interesting questions and ideas about where the plot might go, which unfortunately is rather… mediocre. Gameplay wise? It’s just disappointing.

Last, but certainly not least, The Handler. Now The Handler has a notorious reputation for being annoying and constantly getting into trouble, and yeah I see where people are coming from. To be completely blunt, I did not care about her in the slightest, nor any character in this game. They all feel so shallow with little character besides a few quirks that helps them at least not meld into the same NPC’s, but there’s not enough there for me. With the Handler, she’s certainly annoying, but I don’t hate her as much as others. My issue is, with a character so paramount to you as a hunter, she should have far more caution and experience in the field, but she comes across aloof, and a liability, which is irksome. The game literally gives my hunter the background of being an A-list hunter from the Old world, a seasoned veteran, but then my Handler acts like a complete new blood? That doesn’t add up to me. Missions where you have to follow her are even worse, because her corny dialogue doesn't help her case I’m afraid, on top of gameplay slowing to a crawl so I’ll care about what she’s saying, or her well-being when the character isn’t well-written enough for that to be a possibility. Honestly, most story sequences I did not care for, all I really wanted to do was hunt monsters and become stronger, which is both good and bad. Good because the gameplay is good enough for me to want to get back to it, bad because the story is so boring and inconsequential to me it’s getting in the way of what I truly enjoy. Add unskippable cutscenes and friends not being able to join each other until everyone has seen the cutscene within a mission, and you have the recipe for disaster and a lot of annoyance. I digress, the handler, let me reiterate, I do not hate as much as others, but she is the golden example of one of my big issues this game has, emphasizing boring characters and a boring story I do not care about, I just want to hunt monsters.

Since we’re nearing the end of this review, I’ll quickly go over the music. Monster Hunter World has a surprisingly good soundtrack with plenty of memorable tracks, though it also balances it out with just allowing the nature of the World to speak for itself without music. There wasn’t too many songs that caught my ear while playing, but generally most songs were pretty good! My favorites were: Pride of a Nameless Hunter, Nergigante Theme, and Bazelgeuse Theme.

Monster Hunter World was a monumental, refreshing yet equally frustrating experience that I already look back on quite fondly. As a Multiplayer game? It’s top-notch, and one I’d highly recommend if you can find people to play with, there is nothing quite like that rush of taking down a new monster, or mastering the patterns of older foes. Satisfying gameplay loop with even more satisfying progression, great combat with a bit of jank in level design, mechanics, and hitboxes, a lackluster story with even more lackluster characters, and quite a bit of padding that you’ll either tolerate or dislike. Incredibly immersive monster designs and behaviors, excellent interactions, fantastic environmental interactivity, slow-paced yet fast, methodical and savage in tandem, it’s truly remarkable. I have to say, I loved Monster Hunter World, and cannot wait to dive into other games in the series, like 4U, Rise, and Wilds in the near future! Thank you all for reading this review, this is by far my longest review, and I’m still not done talking about this game! The Iceborne review will be out sometime soon, but I hope this review can tide you all over until then. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, I'm still going to wrap up FFIV soon, and start Va11-Halla very soon as well. I also just want to say thank you all for the exponential growth lately! You all only continue to inspire and drive me forward with writing these, so please look forward to more as I continue to put more and more into this. Truly, thank you all so much! I’ll see you all in the next review, until next time.

You have probably heard a gazillion times that this game is my favorite game. For those that know me, you should know that my most favorite game of all time is this one, Terarria. Developed by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks with Re-Logic in May 16th in 2011, Terarria I done hell of a unique sandbox game for it's time period, featuring  a lot of elements of exploration, combat, and even building! Every feature that the game provides us useful in every way, and I believe that this review will be the ultimate guide for those that have asked me, why is Terarria the game of all time.

Well  for starters, I do want to also get into a point that a good amount of players are familiar with: Terraria is just 2d Minecraft. Before you start ge/gathering the pitch forks, I'm an here to say that there's reason for everything, even if its a saying like this one. The reason for this? Terarria came out 2 years after Minecraft's 1.0 release, if I'm getting my information correct. And during both of their early stages, they lacked features that made the games unique. Yeah there were still bosses, NPCs and such within Terraria, but that wasn't enough to change people's comparisons of the game as a whole. BUT as time goes, more features for the two games have been added, and at the time of 1.2.4.1 (last 1.2 update for Terraria) it would've made sense for at least the veterans to stop making the comparisons because there's clearly a difference. Probably much earlier when 1.1 was done, but 1. 2 I believe would be a good solid point.

Another problem that I notice within this game is how new players tackle this game. From my experience, a lot of them would tend too mess around with the game, figuring out the absolute basics on what you can do in pre-hardmode, and using the wiki to guide them whether it comes from the in game guide, or the wiki.gg guide that's lore helpful. Anyway that you look at it, there's nothing wrong with looking up something in this age to figure out what you're supposed to do. For my first consecutive playthroughs on 1.1 mobile, I've done the daunting task of figuring them out myself too even find a flaw in the games system to make me create duplicated of my characters to cheat and such, and was sticking to the same method for a while until I've learned to get over it. Whichever way you learn, the result will be you learning more about the game though it's many ways. Normally, I would've said that cheating would make the experience bad and morally speaking it still applies, but cheating does have it's perks: it makes you feel what the game is going to become in the future, having later game stuff in the progress that you've had, and when it comes to figuring out how you've normally get it, its rather easy to find it out becsuse it'll become one of your most favorite weapons to use against enemies and bosses. I've done this primarily with modded Terarria (Which I  over in this review) due to the different nature's of the other mods.

Coming from a  veteran, there's no bad way to play this game. Using the wiki.gg wiki is your best bet in terms of playing the game as normal as you cam. Or using the Guide works! Whichever way you play it, it'll help with connecting you into the world of the game had to offer, and that's where I talk about it's gameplay. When I usually review games, the gameplay is one of my most important details rhat I discover about, and for Terraria? The gameplay is magnificent in every way. EVEN if pre-hardmode is boring. Wanna know why it's boring at least in my opinion? Because it's the initial test to see if you've done enough of what tbe game has to offer before you move onto hardnode. No matter what difficulty you're playing on, you're going to always see pre-hardmode as the most boring part because barely anything is happening. You don't know what to do. You need help with what to do. Now the Wiki has you covered in terms of figuring out what to do next, along with the in game guide! But yet despite this, a lot of people would never end up past even Skeletron because the game can't seem to have it's essnece be captured by its viewers. It's all of a matter of time and dedication. Becsuse the game can't play by itself. A good way to circumvent this is by playing the game with the person that introduced you to it and purposefully take long within that stages of the game so they can get used to the task of having to deal with said obstacles. They won't like it and they will usually say to hurry up to the better stage of hardnode but you need to make them learn about the importance of pre-hardmode and hard mode once you finally get into that point.

I'm going to take this paragraph to talk about the goblin Invasion one of the many kinds of invasions are going to get into Terraria. pretty much what happened is that a bunch of goblins come from the west or the East at a random point in the game  to come take over your world. They're not that hard of a challenge because most of the enemies just have the usual fighter ai and can be a easily defeated the more they are. If you want to hear more about invasions, just stick to reading more of this thread (even if it's long) because pre hardnode in terms of invasions is honestly not interesting outside of the goblin tinkerer, an important character that is rigged helps you with modifications to your tools to give them upgrades to make them the worst or the best.

Speaking of Hardnode, why don't we get into that stage of the game? Hardnode is one of the well known parts of Terarria, and honestly makes things much more streamlined and linear to the path into defeating the god of this game, the moon lord. But, from just beating tbe Wall of Flesh to either beating your first mech or queen slime is going to be definitely rough. The game will introduce you to hardnode with keeping the gear hay you've have but the core elements of hardnode will make things difficult. Your job at this stage is to take a long gander at your evil biome, to break the altars that lie there in order to gain access to better ores with the molten pickaxe that you've crafted from hell stone. After that, it's a matter of going through another adventure throughout your world because hardnode doesn't being anything extremely new to the table in world generation outside of the hallow, a place that's supposed to be the purifier of both of the evils in the story. Idrk if I can really get more into the story in this review because I am a little fuzzy on what this game provides officially and the developers stating that some of the info are false and just a better way to mess up with some popular things fans theorize about the game. Back to what I was saying though.

While you have your ore collecting, enemies drop other items and materials to further expand the items you're able to craft and collect. Most of them are usually optimal into beating the hardnode bosses whole some of them can be shown as gimmicks just for fun, but it's always best to try them out against the bosses to make you know which item is for next. But primarily, the mech bosses are your main targets: Destroyer, Twins, and Skeletron Prime. If you're a master of the bosses they're based on (Eater of Worlds (no brain variant LOL), eye of however you're supposed to pronounce it, and Skeletron), most of these shouldn't really been an issue. Although It's still best to understand how the boss works by either playing the game or for more specifically finding out  using the wiki to find some tactics. It's much better fighting them and suffering the consequence yourself though be sure you're able to easily develop a strategy to fighting the bosses even if they appear officially in the wiki or as a strat other people say.

Now we are at post mech, and honestly, this part of the game is the mort confusing one of the bunch. This is before Plantera, and there's not much in stock. While you have the Pirate army (another invasion similar to the Goblin invasion talked about previously), you also have an upgraded goblin army, the frost legion, the solar eclipse, and the frost/pumpkin moon. All of these are great ways to becone stronger in Terraria, and it's up for you to figure that out because I'm probably reaching that hidden cap on this site. With that said, I should talk about post Plantera. There's a bunch of opportunities opportunities that you can do at this stage like fighting Golem,to then tackle the pillars and then eventually beating moon lord finishing the game. Or actually doing what this paragraph has originally talked about, fighting the invasions again! At post plantera, most would say that this is the most confusing part of the game because you're so strong that you're able to cheese through most of the bosses with the gear that you've have. With the difficulties it can make things a bit mroe challenging than just running into the bosses, but still if you know what you're doing, you're better off just finishing things off with Golem and the rest.

But after you finish the Moon Lord, what do you have else to do? All I know is that THAT IS NOT ENDING SHIT. you might believe that you have no reason to play this game anymore, but YOU'RE WRONG. you're always free to play this game by yourself again changing certain elements (the class system you can follow within those restrictions Melee, Ranged, Mage, and Summoner), you can play adventure maps (pre constructed maps made by fans that have their own little objectives and such), play the game with more people doing what I've already said, building, cleaning your entire world's evil, whatever you can possibly think of. If you ever wished to play with me, I am almost ALWAYS down to play it. Especially if you're new! But, this unfortunately concludes my ultimate Terarria Review. I will be editing this sometime to include a tldr and to remove this message because it'll be good for those that don't read through these long reviews and only learn information through small increments. I hope you had an AWESOME time reading this, and to reconsider your last playthrough if you didn't touch it much.

‘This game is fucking awezome’ - sincerely, the zombies
I barely replay games, idk why but whenever i try replaying something i just can't! Not even games that i love like Hollow Knight or Subnautica. There is one game that i replay often tho and that is plants vs zombies. Pvz is also a game that has a special place in my heart simply because it was the first game i ever played. As you can tell by the title, in Pvz you have to defend your house from zombies by using plants. You have a couple of rows where you can place your plants, and each plants costs a certain amount of suns which can be gained with plants that generate sun and if you're on a level with sunlight, sun will sometimes fall off the sky. The game has a total of 5 areas, each one containing 10 levels, one of them being unique, and on the last level the plants cost no sun but instead a conveyor belt gives you the plants. The day area is very generic but its whole purpose is pretty much being a tutorial, and it serves it really well. The unique level here is bowling BUTT with wall nuts, explosive wall nuts and zombies, pretty damn awesome if you ask me. The night area is similar to the day but there's a catch. Since it's night sun won't fall out of the sky and sunflowers generate sun slower, using the sunshroom is obviously the most effective way to gain sun in this area. There are also gravestones scattered around the yard which spawn zombies on the last horde and you can't place any plants on them unless you use a grave buster which is unlock on the 3rd level in the night area. On the unique level here you beat the shit out of zombies that spawn on a grave with a hammer and i personally found this to be the best unique level in the game.All the plants that you unlock in this area start sleeping when you try to use them on an level with daylight unless you use a coffee bean which is unlocked on the last area.
This area also has the dancing zombie which is one of the sickest enemies i've seen in any videogame.
The third area has a fricking pool! To place most plants on the pool you will have to place a lily pad . Unlike in the other areas you have six rows this time. The unique level here is a conveyor belt level except this time the zombies are really small and faster. Zombies will also emerge from the pool on the last horde of the level. The fog area is the same as the pool area except this time is at night and there's a fog. The fog keeps you from seeing on which row the zombie is coming from and obviously which zombie it is. You can remove the fog by using 2 planterns or the blover. The unique level has a bunch of vases that you have to break and in those vases you either have a plant or a zombie. Also the conveyor belt level here straight up makes your screen black and you can only see when a lightning strikes. The final area is the roof. On this area you have to place a vase to place a plant. The unique level here tho kinda stinks, its basically a conveyor belt but with only chompers (one of the worst plants), pumpkin, vases and cherry bombs. Some plants here like the peashooter are kinda useless. The final level has the only boss fight of the game and i would say that they nailed it, you basically fight this giant ass robot that can spit fireballs and ice balls, throw vehicles at you and spawn zombies.
These different areas and unique levels are also really great ways to keep the game from getting stale.With so many plants available there's a ton of different ways to beat levels which gives pvz a lot replayability (ok now i see why i replay this game so much lol). The game also has a dope enemy variety, there are zombies:that ride dolphins, miner zombies, zombies that fly using a baloon, a zombie on a pogo stick and much more.
Oh and how can i forget about crazy Dave! He is your only human friend in this whole game, you can also buy a bunch of stuff from him. Pvz also has a bunch of minigames such as the one where you place zombies instead of plants or the one where the zombies have the head of plants. Another thing that pvz brings to the table is a garden zen and that shit is just dope as fuck. One of the best parts about this game is the music, mowing down zombies with lame music would be lame.
I would get 54 different kind of strokes if i tried to make a ranked list of my favourite songs from this game since they're all so good! I find it funny how this game looks miles better than pvz3, a game that came out much later!
Do i have any complaints about this game tho? Well after a long time of thinking, my only complaint is the 5th level on the roof annnndddddd yep that's it. I've seen ppl complain about the game being too easy but for me it wasn't a problem.
Even with my nostalgia glasses off i still think that pvz is an amazing and charming game, who needs crack when you can watch a bunch of plants tear down hordes of zombies. Oh and the sequels must be good right? Right?
This game is not only great, its CRAAAAAAAAZY
10/10

I know people cream their jeans about the first Psychonauts game but that wasn’t really my experience with it. Big uppies to the visual style and really unique level-design, but the controls and platforming were uhhhh… POOP?? It was still a really fun game, but I just didn’t find it to be the game that everyone held up so high at the time. There were things I found odd with it like how some powers were only useful for short sections of the game and then never again, and generally just how annoying it was to platform and move around. The story though? That shit rules, dog. Psychonauts uses everything in its crayola box bussy to personify ideas and mental concepts into living designs, be it through the enemies or the overall builds of the levels as they shapeshift around you. The levels were just as much characters as the characters were, and the exploration was rewarded with interesting character writing that was shown instead of told without force feeding you a novel of it at the same time. It’s a game that I wish I liked more and I think I’m only babbling about it because I reviewed it when I was new to this site and didn’t really understand how to barf up how I felt in words yet.

Anyways, this is a review for Psychonauts 2 and the short of it is that it was by and large a tremendous upgrade from its predecessor. My main gripes revolving around the game’s controls and camera angles flew right out the window pretty much immediately. Movement and platforming was so buttery smooth and that dodge roll they gave Raz might as well have renamed him Rizz instead. I was so happy that they gave most of the essential powers in the first few minutes, allowing you to play around with them from the get go. With the added addition of the new enemies, now just about every power has a place on the table, allowing you to dish out pain in any way that you see fit in the moment. While there are particular enemies that require certain powers to be exterminated, the Pyrokinesis and PSI Blast abilities still carried most of the weight. The Time Bubble power is pretty much a must have moving forward, and the upgrades to all of the abilities makes them so much more useful than some of the abilities from the first game. My only minor gripe with the combat was having to assign powers mid-battle through the power wheel. For whatever reason I just would not budge from removing Levitation from LT and anytime I had to remove it during a wave of Panic Attacks and Enablers, I did audibly groan but that only happened a few times in the late-game. I definitely appreciate the challenge even if it meant swapping hotkeys like I was playing a speedrunner’s version of ball in a cup. However, hitting the objects that dropped health would send them into the fucking stratosphere sometimes, which made them pointless in my time of dire need. I would say that my least favorite boss fight was the plant one just because it was probably the most restrictive, but that’s one boss out of several who generally made for some really fun segments.

Aside from this game basically Kingdom Heartsing me by being a direct sequel of a 2nd game that I don’t own the console to, it was still a groovy time from start to finish. While none of the levels hold their own version of “Milla’s Secret” nearly at the same intensity, it was still a rather warming story about a group of friends working through their regrets with the help of Raz. It’s a story that still “went there”, just in different aspects. I don’t personally need the most fucked up thing to happen that lands this game into another 4,000 Top 10 Darkest Moments in video games lists until the end of time for it to be compelling. People still DIED, Susan. I found the deep dive into the other Psychonauts to be rather interesting as it helped build the world that exists outside of the levels to a higher detail, closer to the ones that represent the actual brains where all the showmanship is. Of course the actual brain levels are still the best part of the game too and a whole heaping of them really delivered. I found both the cooking and concert levels to be the stand outs, as they represented the chaotic unraveling, or re-raveling, of their mindscapes so well. Like honestly, is the character losing his damn mind through sensory overload or am I, because that was quite the adventure into horrible ASMR that I didn’t expect to fall into.

And that’s where this series really shines because who else is crafting level design in a way that really puts you in the shoes of it’s characters in the same way that Psychonauts does? Where it really asks you to maybe reflect on your own trauma by dousing you in colors and sometimes difficult climbing; where mental healing and overcoming your obstacles is truly the ultimate goal at the end of the day. As someone who has mental illness in my family, it’s such a tender way of showcasing forgiveness for not just someone else but also yourself. It’s exquisite art design that is packed in just about every crevice and corner with some sort of metaphorical punch to each character’s inner turmoil, whether they have an addiction, horrible regrets, or unimaginable shame. There was care in connecting the platforming mechanics to the overall visual storytelling that combines into this whirlwind of gameplay that tells its story, with narrative twists that really make ya go “ZOINKS”. Interactivity is so fucking cool, bro!!!!

With that too, the game still has its comedic beats of course. The comedy is still written in a way that isn’t competing with the more downer sides of the plot because it’s written in a way that understands when each tone has its place to shine and both lift the cutscenes up without overshadowing each other. That is an aspect of both games that still rings very true. Unrelated to this though, Raz is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz who also voices Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, which made his blood curdling screams that he makes upon falling off a ledge really funny to me for some reason. Dying really wasn’t an issue because I genuinely laughed every time he screamed, as horrible as that sounds. Related to Raz’s voice though, my real complaint of this game, that is still rather minor, is that Raz honestly talks way too much. I know that I’m 3 years late to this game, but I’ve been noticing a trend lately with any game involving a puzzle that if you don’t solve it in 2 seconds, the characters feel the need to just blurt out the answer for you as if you can’t figure it out for yourself. I am all for accessibility features for kids and everyone else but I really wish you could turn off tips without having to mute the voice audio in the menu. Sometimes I just want to examine what I’m working with before jumping into it and I don’t need Raz backseating the shit out of me- “I need to focus more with my Clairvoyance to-” at every chance- “I hear some emotional baggage around”- he could get- “I think I need to connect blank with blank in order to progress the level” Raz, please, I beg of you.

But all in all, this was a really good time and I felt like it would be. I really wanted to like Psychonauts 1 a lot more than I actually did and when I heard this sequel turned out great, I was more than excited to play it. Overall, I found the levels to be a lot more memorable here as well. I’m sorry Milkman fans, but I have made a solemn oath to never lie in a Backloggd review unless it was about how good I am at the games I’m criticizing. While this game does have things that irk me, they’re really not something that dings it in any grimy way. I guess they’re just more of a personal preference. But, having played this and Portal immediately after beating Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it was a huge breath of fresh air. Give me more games like this pretty please, please, please please.

Also, stop posting this fucking meme every November, you goddamn selective assholes. Whoever made this image and then dropped it into the piss ocean that is Xitter needs to answer for their crimes.

deleted my review of this by complete accident. gist of it was that you shouldn't buy into the common sentiment that tf classic is just "tf2 but worse" - it still has an active, if small, fanbase nowadays for a reason. the goldsource engine movement makes the game more chaotic and the map designs are super cozy. it's probably better than tf2, because there's no balance issues because this game wasn't updated to near death. plus medic is soooo much fun to play in this one.

edit: as of today i have decided that this will be replacing my team fortress intake. join me, my fellow conc jumpers, in the old school tfc discord.

Enjoyment - 9/10
Difficulty - 7/10

Holy moly. Why haven't I played these games sooner?! Nights I could be vibing to this series... wasted. Instead, I was probably playing Fantastic 4 for PS2.
🏆