I already made a review on Devil may cry 3 before, but it was a shit review so i deleted it and i wrote a new one.

The first devil may cry has plenty of issues but i enjoyed my time with it overall, and a good sequel could fix its issues!
Right after i beat dmc 1, i immediately jumped onto the next entry which is the one and only DEE EM CEE TWO! Dmc 2 somehow manages to be worse than the first game in literally almost every aspect.
Well after dmc 2 it was time to jump onto dmc 3.
Dmc 3 manages to improve from the previous games in pretty much every single way while also fixing many problems.

I wasn't expecting the story in this game to be so fricking awesome, mainly because the first 2 games had quite lame stories. Dante and Vergil's beef is the most intriguing part about the story, Dante is a more goofy and energetic person that cracks many jokes and Vergil is a way more serious person. Lady is a really great character that was introduced in this game, and Arkham was aight i guess, Jester is much better. The story of the game is also filled with so many memorable lines and cutscenes, a lot of the things that Dante and Vergil say are stuck in my head just like the many kewl ass cutscenes in the game.

Dmc 3 adds tons of improvements to the combat system. This time you can choose different styles that you can equip which will change Dante's moveset. The style that i used the most is swordmaster which gives Dante's melee weapons more attacks allowing you to pull off much cooler combos against enemies.

Royal guard is used for blocking enemies attacks, and blocking an enemy attack fills up a meter for a powerful attack. I only used this style for a little bit since it is very hard to learn.

Gunslinger is similar to swordmaster but instead of expanding the moveset of the melee weapons, it expands the moveset of Dante's guns.

Trickster style is used for evading enemy attacks and i think that's it? Idk i never used this style.

Quicksilver and doppelganger are 2 styles that you unlock later in the game.

Quicksilver basically slows down everything on your screen except for Dante allowing you to deal a lot of free damage to enemies, but to make it less overpowered they made it cost devil trigger energy.

Doppelganger spawns a clone of Dante that can perform attacks, and similar to quicksilver it will consume devil trigger energy.

Another thing that makes dmc 3's combat so great are obviously Dante's weapons which unlike in the previous 2 games, all of the weapons are actually unique.
Rebellion, agni & rudra and cerberus are the weapons that i found myself using the most mainly because all 3 of them are fast weapons that aren't very difficult to use.
Beowulf is a fairly slow weapon that can be a bit difficult to use, but i often equipped it right before boss fights because it can deal some really good damage.
Nevan is a very tricky weapon to use... I'll learn how to use it one day

Vergil is also a playable character which is pretty radical! Do you guys know that one meme where the boss fight is overpowered as fuck when you fight him, but when you unlock the boss as a playable character he becomes trash? Well Vergil is basically the opposite of that meme, Vergil is overpowered when you fight him, and Vergil is overpowered when you play as him.
You have access to 3 weapons which are the Yamato, Beowulf and force edge, and instead of guns Vergil only has summoned swords.

Dmc 3 has a larger variety of bosses and unlike in the 2nd game (god i hope i haven't been mentioning dmc 2 too much) they are actually good this time. Well 99% of them at least.
The worst boss of the game is easily Arkham, this boss fight had so much potential, but for some reason they made you fight this giant ass blob that spits out eels i think? But thankfully this is the only boss in the game that i would consider bad. The bosses that i enjoyed fighting the most are: agni & rudra, cerberus, jester and obviously all of the fantastic Vergil boss fights.

The music is pretty damn great!
My favorite tracks are: taste the blood, Vergil battle 1, Vergil battle 2, divine hate and devils never cry.

Personally i don't have many gripes with this game other than the terrible 18th mission with the stupid ass obligatory boss rush, and a few enemies being annoying as hell to fight.

Dmc 3 is a game that i will never get tired of no matter what, every single replay that i do is just as enjoyable as the last one thanks to its amazing combat system, and the cutscenes are way too entertaining for me to skip them on replays. Oh yeah this is kinda random but pls capcom REMAKE THE FIRST 2 DMC GAMES.
Dmc 3 gets a 10/10

Honey, they put RPG skill trees in our Sims game.

In an effort to bring a bit more of the thrill of The Sims 2 without the abrupt bluescreen crashes of The Sims 3, we have now come to the first of a handful of occult related expansion packs. Look, I am not the biggest occult stan.. never fully seen Twilight even as a joke, I will admit. Some fans would disagree and claim they’re like the air they need to breathe or else they shall perish if we don’t get them all as soon as possible. I am never going to sneer at a different playstyle, but I’ve also never quite seen the appeal at the same time. My Sim can no longer go outside in the sun, this is not revolutionary. That is just everyday life for the average Gamer.

That being said, we’re on that immortality grind mothafuckas!! Vampires do not need to sleep or PISS, so there is no other perfect time than now to force your Sim into maxing all those Skills you still have left over. All you have to do is locate the nearest vampire and simply ask for them to change you. Although I recommend avoiding Vladislaus Straud as much as you possibly can. He has what I would call ugly disease and therefore he was killed almost immediately in my save file. Since Vampires can’t die of old age, it was the only way to make sure his bloodline ended early. No thank you.

With that Skill tree though, you can unlock more powers to use that are actually quite interesting. The more powers you use/more blood you drink, the more XP you get and then those lead to levels like a normal video game. Basically anything that is annoying can be eventually rectified through this, such as becoming immune to sunlight. However, those abilities come at a cost; for every power-up you obtain it must be accompanied by a weakness in order to prevent you from being an unstoppable God. The weaknesses aren’t really that big of a deal though, it’s stuff like needing to drink more often or having to sleep in a coffin, etc. You can make it so your Sim gets super sad about having to drink blood. Shut up, you crybaby!! There’s one where you will take more damage in the sun though, I don’t know why on Earth anyone would ever take that one. Maybe for hard mode, pain and suffering I guess.

I really only dabbled in the whole Vampirism bit for my challenge, so I purchased the perks that mainly revolved around survivability and convenience. There are some diabolical powers at play here though, like randomly decreasing a Sim’s needs? I love the idea of watching a Sim eat a sandwich, then instantly dropping their hunger meter back to starving. Just keeping them in a constant state of joyless waste. Of course, there’s also turning into a frickin’ bat and converting other Sims into Vampires. I went for the Good Vampire Aspiration first, then the Vampire Family one after. Oh, the fall from grace she had when it turned out that transforming others is not actually consensual, and her new siblings were in fact very unhappy with their new lifestyle. Sorry!!

There’s also the addition of Forgotten Hollow, but I’ve never personally lived there. It seems rather quaint and gothic of course, but I’ve never enjoyed that it’s always nighttime there. Perfect for a vampire connoisseur though. Overall, it’s a good bit of fun for a while but I have no intention of staying a Vampire forever as they do not, in fact, sparkle. Yes, I turned a bunch of my friends into them and then cured myself LOL. Sorry again!!

Oh hey, bat sex.

My goodness. I had saved Triple Trouble for the end of my Game Gear marathon because I had heard it was probably the best entry on there, and of course to jump straight into the 16-Bit fan game afterwards (that I knew next to nothing about), which I thought would be a nice reward to give myself for the mediocrity that was sure to come. I was absolutely not prepared for how much this was going to blow me away. Maybe I should have expected it knowing the reputation some would give sonic fan games of “being better than actual games”. Whether that’s a notion overblown out of enthusiasm to crap on Sonic games or not, there is no denying that we have some super passionate fans, but even still I could never have predicted how much I would enjoy this. Sonic 3 and Sonic Mania are fundamental Wollom-core games, and I would struggle to tell you that Triple Trouble 16-Bit doesn’t match these experiences, or even top them in some aspects.

The original Triple Trouble was indeed a decent game in my opinion. It didn’t quite take the cake for best Game Gear game though, that would go to Sonic 1, because that feels like a game that somewhat knows what hardware it’s on, and builds a fun platforming experience that isn’t necessarily trying too hard to be Sonic (this was very early days so it didn’t have too much to go off of anyway). Triple Trouble on the other hand, absolutely understood what gave Sonic 2 and 3 their identity and success, and rolls with it; It’s got original level theme ideas, plenty of gimmicks exclusive to each zone, a good balance of sections designed around both speed and platforming, it even has some ambitious set pieces and tells a more than one-note story involving a few characters. What is unfortunate is that this simply could not have its potential fully realised on a 4:3 screen with (I’m sorry GG fans) very botched Sonic physics, it’s just the nature of how these games turned out. But it absolutely gets tremendous points for effort and I respect how much this rose above the attempts of Sonic 2 8-Bit, Sonic Chaos, and Sonic Blast.

With all of that said, the idea to remake the game as if it was on the Mega Drive / Genesis makes complete sense doesn’t it? Touch it up a little and bob’s your uncle you’ve turned it into the better game it had the right to be. NonononoNO my sweetie pie, Noah Copeland had a VISION and he wasn’t going to let it just run away. Triple Trouble was Triply Transformed.

The first thing I noticed when I loaded up this game (apart from the super stylish main menu <3) was that we now play as both Sonic and Tails at the same time, whereas in the original you chose one or the other, and you can press a button to seamlessly switch between the controlling of either character on the fly! As long as they’re both on the screen you’re good to go! This change was awesome not only because it fits the original story better, but because the Japanese release of this game was actually titled Sonic & Tails 2. Straight away this feels like a true Sonic & Tails adventure :D . It’s really fun being able to switch to Tails for flight and Sonic for speed moves and elemental shields, rather than being locked to one for the whole playthrough.

The next lovely thing to grace your eyes is of course the massive glow up in the zones, there is not much else to say other than they’re all gorgeous. Foreground, sprites, tiny little visual effects, they all look damn good. But huge shout out to the backgrounds of these levels in particular, they are beautiful and often change dynamically throughout the zones, adding to the storytelling! These graphics alongside the new remixes of music tracks (which all sound GREAT by the way) marvellously replicate the feeling of classic Sonic and enhance it to a similar degree that Sonic Mania did.

Adding to that notion, to say that the levels themselves were mania-fied is an apt comparison for the most part. Well made sections from the original levels are retained and polished, while completely new ones with new gimmicks and sights are thrown into the mix. None of these gimmicks feel unwelcome. Snowballs and seels in Robotnik Winter Zone, leaf trampolines and snake basket platforms in Meta Junglira Zone, the list does go on.

The reason I say “for the most part” is because it’s where this game deviates from its inspiration significantly that truly impressed me. Along with reworked special stages, reworked and additional bosses, there are so many cool new setpieces, cutscenes and story elements within the zones themselves. My absolute favourite thing is how above and beyond the effort to seamlessly transition between zones is. No loading screens or teleportation, just an incredibly smooth and fun journey from start to end. I’m deliberately not explaining these things in detail because this game really is best experienced with the original fresh in your mind, with little idea as to how it will be translated.

There’s also a fricking competition mode. You might think what I initially thought, “oh, like in Sonic 3, that must not amount to much.”, but you’d be dead wrong!! This feels like a fangame in itself!! There are multiple types of minigames and 4 campaigns for Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Fang, each telling their own story, with cutscenes, like, with dialogue and shit!! WTF? Why are you so magnificent Noah?

It kind of crushes my soul slightly to say that Triple Trouble Trumps some of my most beloved games, but I can’t deny that it at least stands alongside them, as a true classic Sonic game, and I think it will always feel this way to me.

If you are a classic Sonic fan, please check this game out, it thoroughly deserves it and will not disappoint.

There’s a part of this where you can only see the boss you’re fighting through a rearview mirror and have to damage him by judging which of the three trains you’re running along the top of to decouple behind you, which is immediately followed up by having to raise a series of platforms said boss’ baby is standing on to prevent him from dipping your co-protagonist into rising lava via crane, both while dodging hails of projectiles. These just about make the top fifteen or so wildest scenarios in the game, maybe.

If Successor of the Skies (PAL supremacy) sounds crazy, that’s because it is, though it’s crazy with a purpose. Its mechanics seem straightforward enough initially: either flying or grounded, the player’s tools are exclusively shooting, charging up a more powerful shot, melee attacks or a dodge, and these are never added to from start to finish beyond minor alterations during certain setpieces. Only when you’re thrust into a genuinely overwhelming slarry of obstacles littering the screen from every angle is it that you’re driven to discover these moves’ less obvious nuances. The level I’ve referenced in the first paragraph has a great example of this, with a sequence in which enemies who are resistant to gunfire but get OHKO’d by melee attacks charge at you in such a rhythm that doing the full melee combo’s liable to get you hit (thereby teaching you that doing just its first one or two hits is sometimes preferable), but this kind of thing’s present in other areas too. A favourite of mine is how it handles parrying bosses – instead of telegraphing which attacks can be countered with a lens flare or something, as you might expect from other action games, you’re trusted to put two and two together when a boss enters the foreground and the intrusive thought of “What if I try kicking this gigantic claw swipe out of the way?” takes hold. Be it these, gauging just how much charge a shot needs to stun a given enemy or reflecting explosive projectiles back via melee, every interaction’s connected by the philosophy of nudging the player in the right direction without explicitly telling them.

How consistently intuitive it manages to be’s pretty staggering when you consider not just this hands-off approach, but also the creativity bursting out of it at every turn. As impossible as it is not to involuntarily grin at sights like a gruff military general splitting into three giant dolphins made of ink or a supersized lion wrapping a vulture around itself to become a griffon, it runs deeper than just presentational or conceptual levels. When a nominal rail shooter switches dimensions to chuck you into scenarios like a swordfight against a flying samurai lady or a fistfight in which you’re tethered to a particular spot on the floor, it’s tempting to think of these as borderline genre switches until the initial wow factor wears off and you realise that the moveset you’re utilising hasn’t really changed throughout the whole ride. As aforementioned, it’s never added to, though it is occasionally diminished to spice things up; apart from those examples, the segment following my favourite line in the game is an especially strong instance of design by subtraction, forcing you to approach familiar enemies differently both via said alien donkey/bike’s inability to fly and restricting your ability to fire if you hit the railings at each side of the screen. What gets me isn't just the fact the few tools at your disposal are versatile enough to be twisted into situations like this while never once feeling disparate from standard gameplay, it’s also that this isn’t even the only time that the borders of your screen are weaponised against you.

When the fact that you can legitimately never guess what’s up next on a minute-per-minute basis combines with the sheer amount of nonsense you have to navigate through at any given time, it’d be reasonable to worry about visual clarity becoming an issue, but it remarkably never does. There are enough actors, other interactable assets and particle effects jumping around that I frequently find myself wondering how Treasure got it running so smoothly on the Wii, although the hardware’s probably due thanks in this regard. Character models and environments being only so detailed hits a sweet spot in the same way that the visuals of the previous console generation did, teasing at realism enough to be immediately understandable while still being abstract and stylised enough to stoke the player’s imagination as to what else is out there in this bizarre vision of the future. It’d be myopic to attribute it all to working around technical limitations, though; the relatively muted palettes of levels’ backgrounds are clearly an intentional decision given just how much they help all the vital information pop out, from the seas of mooks you can’t take your eyes off of to the brightly coloured timer/score multiplier lining your peripheral vision. It’s a wonderful translation of art to game, which I think this wallpaper I can’t find the source of exemplifies pretty well (you’re welcome).

Although I like to waffle on about how much I value a game feeling focused, I’m pretty used to reading the parts of games I enjoy the most and which I couldn’t imagine them without written off by others as “bloat” or something similar to a point that my brain sometimes autotranslates it to “the fun parts.” Successor of the Skies is different to many of my favourites in that I genuinely can’t think of anything extraneous in it. So much as the file select music you hear when booting up the game is pitch perfect in terms of how well it sets the tone for what you can expect over the course of the next few hours, with all its boisterousness and excitement and undercurrents of melancholy. Don’t let how over the top it is fool you – not many games understand themselves as well as this one.

Was this necessary?





























Bonus half a point because Sackboy is awesome.

Me and my sister used to play this, not knowing that it was a PETA game. It was fun, at least at the time.

I think this is worth a playthrough for it's sheer bizarreness alone. Yes, it's bad, but it's one of those funny kind of bad games. The controls suck, but the minigames are really short. The graphics are your typical PETA shit. Uhhhh... the ending was funny? IDK. It's not a very long game; it took about 5 minutes to play. As someone who's played some of the earliest Newgrounds shit though, I wasn't phased in the slightest. Sorry, PETA! Try harder next time.

Finally we are getting into the meat and potatoes. A divine course of DLC that’ll make even the most serious dollar sign min-maxxers shudder in fear.

Ring ring, who’s calling? Oh, that guy you met once and never again. He wants to know if you’ll go to GeekCon with him and dress up as Star Wars characters. A random townie just crashed the rocket ship there and literally exploded (didn’t die), so you bought the festival related SWAG to commemorate this fine afternoon. They’ve concocted the perfect sample of stupidity to coax my Sims out of their house. Apparently it’s karaoke bars and dumb little stupid events that happen every other week. There is nothing like getting a bunch of Sims together and watching them interact on their own, whether it’s bettering their lives or destroying them. This is why I play the stupid, haha funny gibberish game.

The bulk of this pack is stored within a new city, which you can travel to at any time. Living there will require you to foreclose your house and gulp.. become a renter instead. Unfortunately, you cannot edit the foundation of the pre-made apartments, but most of them are rather lavishly gigantic. We’re talking sitcom levels of large, despite being the cost of a pair of shoes per month. Video game escapism, my beloved. It does however come with the added addition of shitty annoying neighbors. Video game escapism, denied. I like the busyness of the city, but I still prefer to just travel there instead. With it having 4 districts of different things to do and an assortment of foods to eat from different cultures, I’m still slowly working my way through the Collectibles that it added. There’s just a lot to do in the city, baybee. I barely go to the other towns in this game, San Myshuno is where it’s at.

I haven't really talked about the furniture in these packs and that’s mainly because it's.. well, just chairs and couches and whatnot. I do not claim to be or even exist on the same level as Bob from Bob’s Furniture. I’m much more the type of person that just kinda throws things I like together. Orange walls with green couch cushions, ya know? One look into my Sim’s house will make even the most sane individual break. But, guess what you sicko Animal Crossing enjoyers, this pack includes a gigantic superstore’s worth of furniture, not to mention the added abilities to perform street art to scribble all over your walls and lawns with. And don’t even get me started on Lot Traits man, give your house a literal personality so that it’s easier for your Sims to learn certain skills or encourage certain behaviors while they’re there. There are now more than a million different ways to make money that aren't just going into a rabbit hole and disappearing for 8 in-game hours. I would consider this to be a pretty big root for the tree that is this game as each pack created after this one just adds more oomph to it.

The only thing that genuinely annoys me is that they added a Singing Skill. It’s not the skill that annoys me really, but my Sim just loves to whip out her best Ariana Grande impression whenever there’s nothing to do. It’s like she’ll die if she doesn’t do it once every two hours. But other than that, this is a beefy hamburger of an expansion pack that adds a ton of content from aesthetics to actual gameplay. I don’t think I go a single session without using it, so I would think this one is pretty bang for your buckaroos.

One of the rooms in this game has the shape of a heart and is full of capybaras, and if that doesn’t prove to you that this is the clear GOTY of the year of the decade of forever so far then I don’t know what will.

Despite being a highly anticipated game for me, probably one of this year’s releases that excited me the most this year… I had no fucking clue what Animal Well really was. By that I don’t mean that ‘’I didn’t know what to expect’’, there have been a ton of games I didn’t have expectations of what they would be prior to playing them, but at least I had a small idea what they were about, their mechanics, and overall ideas. But with Animal Well, I had no clue about how it could even play like.

It was supposed to be a Metroidvania? Is it Puzzle-Platformer? Or perhaps an immersive-atmospheric experience? Maybe a highly experimental take on open spaces and secret finding? I didn’t really know before I hit ‘’start game’’ to be honest, and yet, even before that point there was something that called me, that fascinated me. This world of blues and greens seen through the lenses of an old CRTV is an aesthetic I didn’t know I missed this much, or maybe is that it’s done so effectively here; the surround sound and flickering lights that accompany such abandoned yet beautiful looking structures and the nature that melds perfectly with it… I don’t know, it reminisces of feelings and memories I don’t think I can properly put into words, but still filled me with a desire to explore this rabbit hole.

Well, I finally played it, and I have finally found the answer to all of those questions that once plagued me:…

…Yes.

Animal Wells is an experience that feels like it takes inspiration from a million different places and ideas, and yet it molds them together to create something unlike any other game I can think of; is the idea that surrounds the ‘’Metroidvania’’ genre distilled in its purest form, yet it’s far from being simple.

The well is a place of few words; none of the areas have a proper name, there are no NPCs to chat with, and it’s not like the small slime-like creature we play as has a mouth to begin with. The only text present is one found in menus, small one-word prompts, and the name of the items, and that’s more than enough… because the rest speaks for itself. Each area and the animals that live in them chant a different song, each room a part of a puzzle of their own; I didn’t know for them to have a name for places to stand out vividly in my mind, like the Lake of the Cranes, or the Giant Bat’s Cave, or even smaller locations like the Peacock’s Palace or the Disc’s Shrine. The world of Animal Well may be quiet, but everything speaks volumes, like visting an abandoned virtual zoo: every encounter with a new-found critter, whether friendly or aggressive, every new interaction like distracting dogs using the disc, or every major tense moment like running away from the Ghost… Cat? Dog? I actually don’t know which of the two is supposed to be, nor do I need to know that the entire sequence and puzzle is an amazing highlight and super satisfying to overcome completely on your own… No wait, that’s also the rest of the game!

Managing to create a world that feels so well thought-out and designed so every puzzle feels intuitive, while at the same time offering such fun to use and multi-purpose items that can break open the game completely and taking ALL THAT into account is honestly worth getting up and applauding. The Bubble Wand is the clear star of the show for me; being able to create temporary platforms is already a game changer, especially when pairing it with fans and wind currents, but then you realize you can ‘bubble hop’, as I like to call it, by pressing the action and jump button both at the same time and completely bypassing many parts and sections that otherwise would have required other actions, and best thing is that even if it seems that it breaks the game at times, the dev clearly accounted for it since some rooms have passages too thin for you to maneuver or create bubbles or even animals like hummingbirds that immediately pop them once you make one. I normally wouldn’t like when a game makes a tool completely useless for the sake of a puzzle, but in here it makes total sense and balances out the moments were you make out your own path with pre-designed puzzles this amazing, and it’s not like that’s the only tool that lets you get creative anyway.

The moment you get any item, about two seconds is all you need to realize the possibilities it can offer, yet, as in the rest of the caverns, nothing is ever spelled out; you yourself and your own imagination and problem-solving are the ones that need to overcome the challenges this wildlife imposes; I’ve never felt so rewarded in such a long time than when using the Yo-Yo effectively, learning the code to fast travel to the main hub with the animal faces —which remind me of a certain game, I think it starter with ‘’Super’’ and ended with ‘’2’’… can’t put a finger on it tho—, or skipping completely the Ostrich escape sequence and its puzzles, near the bowels of the map, by using the Spring, Yo-Yo and myself. It honestly comes really close to feeling like the levels in Mosa Lina, now that I think about: you have incredibly useful tools that serve a clear purpose, but ones you can also use whichever way you like to, only with the difference that Animal Well is an already built, profoundly engaging and interesting world, and using all this arsenal while interacting with the animal and the curse that seems to affect the well is amazing, and little things like fall or water damage aren’t taken into account to incentivize and reward experimentation even more than it would have otherwise.

If I had to point out a flaw, and one that may honestly be a ‘’only me’’ thing, is the inconsistency with how it handles some switches and shortcuts. While I get and really enjoy some gauntlets of puzzles, he fact some of them reset, like the ‘’On and Off’’ switches, reset every time you teleport or get out of a room, just makes things a tad more annoying, in contrast to how the yellow door switches stay activated even if you don’t press them all or die, which makes other rooms kind of a joke and strips them from the tension found in the boss encounters, for example. I understand that this won’t be that big of a deal for many people, but when the rest of the game is so impeccably designed and each room amounts to so much, these little annoyances are noticeable.

A game that otherwise… I still don’t think I can say I've come close to experiencing all of it. In a way, it’s kinda interesting to have played this so close after beating Fez for the first time, because while both of those games have a similar sense of wonder and are brimming with secrets, that game created its mysteries through the tools you can find within a same room and code-finding through a fragmented world , while Animal Well is an ecosystem on its own, with the complete freedom that entails. Even after finding out what dwelled at the bottom of the well, it's insane how much there’s for me to find, not only the Eggs, but I’m convinced there are things that I haven’t even seen yet, and I know for sure that there are far more items than it seemed at first.

At this point, it shouldn’t be a secret that one of the things I love the most in games, or in any form of art for that matter, is when they give so much food for thought, letting the imagination run wild and feel so massive and grand even if their locations are small; Animal Well is only a 30 MB game, and it’s the perfect representation of all this, the wild desire to explore, to have fun, and to fear the unknown, even when it's scary as all hell.

I’m obsessed with Animal Well, and its ambience, roars, and silence speak to me in a way few games do, and I’m happy to see that’s a sentiment already being shared by so many people.

Back to back on the PETA attack!

Hey, it beats Super Meat Boy Forever in terms of design! Aaaaand it's still one of the worst games I've ever played. Genuinely. It's not even funny bad. It's just BAD. McCardiarrac Arrest aside, this is absolutely abhorrent. Bad controls, abysmal graphics, terrible level design, I mean, shit! I could at least laugh at Cooking Mama Kills The Animals's graphics, but THIS is just blood and gore shat straight out of someone's ass. I rage quit eventually because the controls were simply THAT awful and unfun. Isn't this designed for kids???

What a joke.

Just meh. I can count the things I liked in this game on one hand - Water Palace, the return of a certain SA2 boss and Emerald Coast Act 1.

Generations 3DS is a strange game, the first three Act 1s all have the level design stolen 1:1 from their original counterparts, Classic Sonic has a homing attack and Modern Sonic isn't even 3D. That's right, no 3D levels on a 3DS. This leads to Classic Sonic just feeling like a worse Modern Sonic here, as the spindash is a worse boost and they both share the rest of their moveset anyways. It's genuinely such a baffling design choice to me, why even include two different characters if they play the same? The switching between Classic and Modern was a huge part of Generations' identity, and it's completely lost in this version.

If the level design atleast made up for it, it would have been fine, but it doesn't. Radical Highway and Tropical Resort are both some of the most unfun levels I've seen in a Sonic game (I've seriously considered dropping the game because of Tropical Resort), and those are already two out of eight levels total. The rest of the levels are fine, nothing particularly stood out to me except Water Palace, but I somewhat liked Act 1 of Emerald Coast too. The bosses are hit or miss, you have some interesting remade ones like Big Arms from Sonic 3 and a late boss from SA2, or boring 2D races against bosses like Silver, who is in Tropical Resort for some reason! There is nothing "special" about the Special Stages either, you run through the same glass pipe seven different times, similar to the ones in Sonic 2, would have been cool if they were atleast designed to fit the design of their respective levels.

In the end, there's not really a good reason to play the 3DS port of Sonic Generations, but I suppose it's a decent way to kill some time if you're looking to scratch that Sonic itch on a 3DS specifically.

In an interview with IGN in 2020 Senior Producer Fleur Marty commented about Gotham Knights, Warner Brother's newest Batman game that it's, and I quote:

"is very much not designed as a game-as-service."

Now I don't blame him for this comment, it's part of his job when doing PR rounds to help sell the product. I can only imagine with the negative outlook the title was receiving that the Eye of Sauron at Warner Brothers was watching intently. The thing is the reason I don't believe him is to give credit to the talented people that work on WB Montreal as I refuse to believe they would design such an awful system if it wasn't a live service game initially that was repurposed. Now I like the premise of it, playing as the sidekick's when Batman is gone and the launch trailer is superb at really emphasizing that feeling. I like the idea of having the game co-op and having upgradeable RPG mechanics but the way it's implemented is just dreadful.

So it's an open world game similar to it's predecessors where Gotham City is the playground. When you are let loose to explore there are basic repetitive crimes on the map where you can scan to find them then interrogate criminals to find pre meditated crimes and it's utterly pointless. Simply finding them organically exploring would have been better and more interesting. When stopping crimes sometimes there are chests that have resources in them or blueprints for new gear you can make. The resources are just various shades of colours with huge numbers that are never explained. Playing with a friend to tell them I'd found "some green" which I already had 100,000 of just means nothing and is extremely unexciting. I had random unexplained resources coming out of my ears, blueprints for weapons and armour I'd never use equally spilling out of my bat belt pouch. To compound matters further creating one of these items you can do on the fly but you can't equip it until you return to the Belfry which the game makes you do constantly. It just seems to want to break it's own flow all the time with these "not designed as live service" mechanics.

The game generally is a bit of a rough state in various areas. The movement around the city will have you feel constantly stuck on objects like perches and lampposts that Batgirl seems to glue to with the worlds strongest adhesive like she'd made a lifelong commitment she refuses to break. Bless her. Additionally there are constant little things like the lack of a proper jump being only contextual leaving questions if it will actually work, running into other players or walls kills all momentum and you freeze for no reason, a choppy frame rate and playing online co-op auto stops my headset working in private chat forcing me to mute and unmute again in mid conversation for just no reason. All small things, nothing stopping the game being unplayable but they can get frustrating over time.

The thing is if you strip those mechanics out and look past the niggling technical issues there is actually the foundation of a good game here. When playing specific story missions and it's focused on the plot and unique locations it's really good. I like the characters and narrative, there are some touching scenes and funny moments. There is the framework of a great game here just held back by an obviously difficult development and initial design pivot regardless of what Fleur Marty may have been stating on his PR rounds. My friend and I did have fun playing it regardless and certainly don't regret it. Riding through Gotham on a bat-cycle launching into the air to land on an unsuspecting criminal and doing a finisher with a brutal kick to the jaw is really satisfying. I also loved playing as Batgirl and wanted more of that ever since the Arkham Knight - A Matter of Family DLC. Whilst it just doesn't reach that level of quality it was still fun, just extremely flawed.

Worth a try if you're curious as it's constantly on sale, hard one to recommend but it's not as bad as some people make out I feel.

+ Story premise is really good.
+ I like the characters and story beats.
+ I like the presentation though it's not as dense and gothic as it's predecessors.

- Upgrade and open world systems are just awful, clearly was designed as a live service game that pivoted in development but the damage is there.
- Combat and movement isn't smooth enough.
- Some minor bugs and frame rate issues.

I was so excited for Octopath Traveler when it came out. JRPGs are my favorite genre of games. I absolutely fell in love with the art style and thought the premise of 8 different stories was a cool concept. Unfortunately Octopath Traveler under delivered in every aspect for me outside of art. That is why I waited so long to really give Octopath Traveler 2 a try even though I bought it the week it came out. I’m very happy to report that Octopath Travler 2 succeeds in every aspect that failed in the original.

Let’s start with the story and characters. In the original I only like 3 of the 8 cast the other 5 I didn’t even care about. They felt soulless and I didn’t care about anything going on with them. In Octopath 2 I struggled on who to keep in my party as I loved all 8 characters very much. Each one had motives, struggles, and real emotions that made me care about them. But what really made this game so much better was the story. In the original the stories were so disconnected with chapter after chapter being a boring slog fest. Characters didn’t have any relevance at all unless the chapter was about them. No inner party connections and at times you wondered if they even knew each other were there together. It felt like there was no purpose, no over arching story. Now I’m not going to lie to you and say this is a great story and that the party was as connected as some of the greats in the genre. But I will say it was a Grand Canyon size difference from the original. The story’s were entertaining with no throw away chapters. As the stories unfolded you could see there was something connecting these stories that was drawing closer to being realized. The party grows together, have real conversations, and care about each other. These small things made a world of difference in the quality of the games.

The battle system is very similar to the original but with minor changes that make all the difference. For one the battles felt faster and more snappy. My second biggest problem with the original outside of story is it blatantly didn’t respect the players time. If you wanted to beat the original plan on running in circles for hours to grind out EXP from random encounters. With Octopath 2 you can change at will whether you are playing at day or night. When it is night you fight tougher enemies leading to more EXP thus killing the need for grinding as well as making you use more strategy than just hit X to kill the enemy but gain no EXP. My final major upgrade is the boss fights. In the original literally EVERY SINGLE BOSS FIGHT was a DPS race with each side one a timer. It wasn’t fun or satisfying. Octopath 2 is much more strategy based finding weak points and exploiting them to gain an advantage. Again simple things can make worlds of difference.

The art style is one thing that didn’t change and thank God for that. The game is a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful set pieces and great character designs. I love thier take on 2.5D and wish many more games made use of it. The music is equally sublime and many tracks stand out as greats in the medium.

All in all if you were turned off from Octopath 2 because of the extremely average Octopath Traveler please don’t be. Give this game a chance if you are a JRPG fan, it is worthy of your time.

My 2024 ranked. (It’s been a supberbyear in gaming for me so far)
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

I love you Tails, but you have disappointed me so. You might think silly of me to be let down by such a game. Even if a metroidvania with Tails using all his little gadgets and doohickeys is a really cool concept for a Sonic spinoff that gives my boy the spotlight he needs, this is still a Game Gear title after all, so naturally you’d expect something short of stellar.

But the thing is, this game starts off really good!! Apart from it taking me too long to figure out how to change abilities, the levels are fun to go through and Tails controls well. His movement physics aren’t bad and the flight option allows for some unique exploration challenges not typically seen in the genre to this day. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I was having!

It’s once you get a few levels deep do the cracks start to show. Eventually you are required to do a fair amount of backtracking, using your abilities to open the routes that you’ve missed. Of course, this should be fine in theory but I found two main issues:

Firstly, Tails can only carry 4 abilities at once, if you want to swap them out you need to leave the level you are in (by walking either all the way to the end or back to the start), then return to Tails’ House and swap them out. Obviously this kinda BLOWS because your time is wasted if you don’t happen to bring the right thing with you. It may have been a hardware limitation, or maybe it was intentional to pad out the play time, but if Tails simply had access to all his abilities at once, he would be able to spend less time faffing about for no reason.

Secondly, Alternate paths are often very camouflaged. You will certainly walk past a mostly regular looking wall without knowing that it could have been blown up with the 3rd or 4th bomb ability that you unlocked. In general, bad level design is more common as you get further into the game, so I resorted to a walkthrough and much more common save states for the second half.

Other than those fundamental problems, the rest of the experience was just alright, the item selection is half creative and fun (abilities based on Sonic, Knuckles and Fang are here!), but half useless or samey (which you probably won’t even entertain trying out because again, your slots are valuable). The story is simple and cyuuuuuute but nothing to shout about. Level theming is VERY underwhelming for a Sonic game (even if we do get to swim in a submarine), and the few boss fights are mostly mediocre with one or two cooler ones.

It may be because I spent more time in the levels but I thought the music was good and for sure one of the better game gear soundtracks! Some nice compositions here! I was a little disappointed to not find many covers / rearranges on youtube, rare sonic fanbase L, but this one I did find was indeed very nice.

So here I am disappointed purely because my hopes surprisingly shot up at the beginning, but it's okayyyyyyy... Tails Adventure may be very flawed, but it was a cool time and as a certified Two-Tailed Fox stan I am quite glad I played through it since it does carry my enthusiasm for his character very well. Safe to say we probably ain’t gonna get anything like this from SEGA again.

Donkey Kong Country 2 took everything that made its predacessor great and cranked it up to 11. I seriously mean everything. The visuals, the music, the gameplay, the levels, the story are all major upgrades from an already fantastic platformer.

While the story isn't great it is much better than the original. The original is legitamately Kaptain King K. Rool stole all of Donkey Kong's hoard of bananas. In DKC2 the stakes are raised from bananas to Donkey Kong’s life as he is kidnapped by King K. Rool. It's now up to Diddy Kong and newly introduced Dixie Kong to save the day. Dixie and Diddy are far and away my favorite two characters in the franchise so it was so much fun to have the entire game revolve around them. The gameplay is smooth and feels great even today. To be fair the original DKC also had smooth gameplay but I always found myself using the limber and quick Diddy over the lumbering DK. In DKC2 Diddy controls identically to the original DKC but now instead of a slower based powerful DK you get a second quick character in Dixie Kong. Plus Dixie comes with my favorite movement in the entire series with her hair spin which functions similarly to Peach's float mechanic in the Mario series. You will absolutely need that hairspin as this game is very difficult, especially the bonus stages. Every world out side of the first is sprinkled with a few very difficult levels which I appreciate.

The levels in DKC 2 put other platformers of this generation to shame. From a pirate ship, to a volcano, to a swamp, to a run down amusement park, to a giant castle this game takes you to many different locations that all feel fleshed out and keep the levels intersting and fresh. Not to mention they are gorgeous graphically. In my opinion it is some of the best graphics of the entire SNES library. The pirate, amusement park, and the bee hive levels absolutely pop with vibrant and beautiful color schemes. The swamp, castle, and volacono have a completely different tone with a much darker palette but equal in beauty just in a much different way. The animations on the enemies and the Kongs were top notch for the time. My favorite animation, which is also one of my favorites of all time, is when you complete a level and Diddy Kong breaks outs a boom box and starts rapping while Dixie pulls out a guitar and start slaying. It’s also very fitting that they celebrate their victory with music as this game with out a doubt has a top tier sound track of all time. As many great qualities that DKC boasts the star of the game is the abusrdly beautiful OST.

DKC2 is rightfully thought of as one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time and this is absolutely a game you should play.

My favorite 100 games of all time:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

This was actually the last mainline DKC game I played. My first was returns, as I said in my DKC1 review. I played 1 and 3 shortly after that and I played Tropical Freeze the day it released. I didn't play 2 until years later in 2018 where an Instagram account I was following was selling a CIB copy for $35. That sounded like a good deal back then, and considering it's almost $90 now it's even better now, so I bought it off them. I really enjoyed my time with it, but it wasn't until replaying it in 2022, where I truly saw it as a masterpiece. Do I still think that now? Look at my score to find out (that means yes).

Let's start with the gameplay changes. The thing you'll notice when you first start the game is you don't play as Donkey Kong anymore. You still play as Diddy Kong but replacing Donkey is newcomer Dixie Kong. The main plot this time is King K Rool is back, he has kidnapped Donkey Kong and you must team-up as Diddy and Dixie to defeat him and save DK. Pretty simple but it works. Anyways, Diddy plays pretty much the same but Dixie is a bit different. Her main gameplay change is the fact that she can glide by using her hair. This is incredibly helpful with certain segments throughout the game and because of this plus being more fun to control, I definitely prefer this duo over the first game's. I still think Diddy feels better to play as since he's still faster here and has a better roll (Dixie's roll sucks if you're trying to roll jump off a cliff) so he was my go to Kong when I had both but Dixie is still very fun to play as here due to her glide. This game did add another new big mechanic that plays a part in a bunch of levels. By pressing the A button, if you have both Kongs, you can perform a Team Up. This basically lets you throw the kong upwards in whatever direction you want, and it lets you get up to high places you normally couldn't get to or collect items up high. It's nice and quick to pull off and just adds that much more depth to the levels.

The levels themselves are better than ever here. The level design is improved, with each level feeling pretty distinct from each other. One moment you'll be riding air balloons over a pit of lava and the next you'll be racing enemies in a haunted amusement park. Levels have gimmicks but they never feel intrusive or annoying to me. The level themes are also way more interesting this time. The mains setting here is pirates and that first world makes great use of it. You had levels where you run on top of a ship, levels where you are swimming inside the ship itself and then levels where you're climbing up the top of a pirate ship. That's all the first world, and even tho it's all pirate themed, they all feel distinct. Besides that, you have typical lava stages tho they're visually appealing in this game, you have these beehive stages where honey stops you dead in your tracks, you have bayou stages..just all the level themes in this game are so much more unique compared to the 1st game. Honestly, the backgrounds used in these levels are better than the 1st game's as well, they made them really clean looking this time around.

As for the collectables, you still collect bananas..and KONG letters. Animal Friend tokens are gone which is nice because they could kinda be annoying at times. Instead of finding a bunch of random bonus rooms to 100% the game, this time you must collect Kremkoins and DK coins. Kremkoins are all found in bonus barrels, or sometimes secret walls. These both lead to the bonus area, which instead of being all lax and random like in DKC1, you have to play a bonus game whether it's collecting all the stars or defeating every enemy or just getting to the coin itself. This is more unified than how it was in DKC1 and I prefer it this way. The DK coins are always only in levels once, and they're usually just in the stages and not in the bonus rooms. Anyways, collecting every Kremcoin and every DK coin, and completing every level, gets you 102% in this game. I much prefer this over the bonus rooms in DKC1. They are much easier to find without a guide, tho I still had to look up some but that's better than almost all of them like in DKC1, and it's better for it.

Animal buddies are back and you have some returning ones plus some new ones. Winky and Expresso are gone but Rambi, Enguarde and Squawks are back. Rambi and Enguarde are exactly the same except they have a charge move you can perform to go super fast and kill any enemies in your path or to open up secret bonus rooms. You can now ride with Squawks and shoot nuts out of his mouth at enemies, so he's changed drastically. There's a new animal buddy called Quawks who is only used in one level and is purple, cannot fly upwards (only glide down) and cannot shoot nuts. He's not worth getting into since it's just a downgrade of Squawks, but the other two animal buddies are. Rattly the rattlesnake, is basically Winky but better. He can jump high, jump on normally dangerous enemies like Winky but you can also charge him up to perform a super jump. The other new animal buddy, Squitter the Spider is awesome and is my favorite buddy in the series. You cannot jump on enemies as him but you can shoot projectile webs out of his mouth and if you press the A button, you can shoot a different type of web and if you press A again..you can create a web platform to jump on. They use this a good amount in some of the stages and this mechanic just makes him super fun and interesting to use. Along with all this, there are also these animal buddy barrels that let you transform into just the animal buddy.

The bosses in this game are also a big improvement from 1. Gone are very easy bosses that feel like a big version of a normal enemy. Every boss in this game feels distinct (besides the zinger fight tho his fight was pretty fun) and aren't piss easy and also aren't super quick. They feel like actual bosses, with the K Rool fight being a standout. Definitely my favorite fight in the trilogy. While not too difficult, he's still really fun.

If you had gotten 15 Kremcoins per world, you could pay them to this fella named Klubba. Once you do, you can access a level from the Lost World, a secret super hard bonus world. These are definitely some of the hardest levels in the game, tho I must brag and say it only took me two tries to beat Animal Antics this time around. Going back to the difficulty, yeah this game can be quite tough. It's not like bullshit hard, just the levels themselves can have some very tough portions and honestly, I welcome it. I still died a bunch in this game but I think the difficulty curve is very nice. It doesn't start off hard at all, it gradually start's getting pretty tough by world 4.

The OST is a big upgrade from the first game I think and is honestly amazing. Some of my favorites were Mining Melancholy, In A Snow-Bound Land, LockJaw's Saga,Hot Head Bop, and Forest Interlude. That is not even mentioning the absolute fucking goated song that is Stickerbush Symphony which is honestly a top 5 song for me from any video game ever. It's that amazing and I've loved it before I even played this game. This is a top tier OST I think and may be the best SNES soundtrack of all time.

If I had any little nitpick about this game, it's the fact you have to use banana coins to save and move to other worlds freely. I forgot to mention this in the collectables section, but you also collect bananas throughout the stages, they're plentiful, but after saving once or using Funky's Flights in a world, you must pay each Kong coins to do either action again. Because coins are super easy to get, this wasn't an issue for me but if you reset the game, you lose all your coins (and lives) so I can see where it would be an annoying mechanic to some people.

This is peak Donkey Kong Country imo. Everything from 1 was perfected in this game and then some, and it easily has the best soundtrack in the entire series, which does play a big part in me loving this game. I have more nostalgia for Super Mario World but I cannot deny the fact that this is the better platformer on the Super Nintendo. Because of this, I do think this is the best SNES game I've played period. It's just a masterpiece through and through. Do yourself a favor and play it!

I'm going to get back to the Kirby marathon now but I do plan on replaying DKC3 in the near future so stay tuned for that whenever I decide to play it!