"Jesus my hand hurts. I feel like a goddamn melee player after finishing one Fox vs Falco match." - Man who has shot over 4000 rounds into one boss.

I promise I'll get to playing .hack again. Just needed to scratch that old arcade itch again until I remembered this game.

Let me set the stage really quick for you.

The year is 1998, and The House of the Dead just came out with it's sequel that same year and it's hogging players left and right with how tight the controls were and how fun it was despite quarters being eaten left and right.

But... in that same arcade was a little cabinet that happened to release on Halloween day of all days.Holy geez did it look different compared to the competition at the time.

Before actually reviewing this game, I think anyone interested in this game at all should take a look at the development of this title when they have the chance.
Just seeing this game even be released was a miracle with the way things were headed for Jack Haeger's team during the beginning of the end for Midway games at the time. Only a couple of years before their impending bankruptcy in 2006.

I mean, they had good reason to think that as well. Hell, this is the same small development team that made Narc (Yes, that helmet blowing up hobos with rockets Narc.) after all.

Sadly the reviews on this game back then were not so kind. Going as far as to call it a "Crappy House of the Dead clone."

But enough of the past. We're in 2023 and I want to do some light gun shooting before MAME gives me a fucking headache upon setup. How does it play?

Like a faster paced House of the Dead. You're zooming left and right, jumping hoops and going through different rides in every level with the head camera changing every moment. The different perspectives you get while shooting down clowns, bats and whatnot is so different from any lightgun shooter that I've played. The music and the art-style is fitting for its Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas influence and the blood and gore taken from the Mortal Kombat arcade games.

This game is fucking cool as hell, but it's also short as hell too. If you're really good, you could probably beat this game in just under an hour, and with something like MAME with mom giving you infinite quarters at your disposal, you can just smash on through each hit.

Funny that the last boss is called Tokkentaker, because you'll be dying so many times throughout fighting him and the entire game really.

If you have 30 or so minutes to burn, give this a go. If you're new to using MAME like I was, check out this guide for setting up controls.

"Thank god it's all over. I may be extremely pissed, but I can go back to my PCSX2 hideyhole in peace."

Wait, there were people excited to play this game? Was it because of the graphics?
Was the concept of "Bioshock but in russia" that
compelling? I'd really love to know what got those people excited about this title.

Or maybe we just haven't had enough of crispy critters just yet.

Let's talk about the good things about this trash heap before I get to the rest of the game.

The soundtrack was "Fine" with a hyper emphasis on fine. As @petapd has said in their review, it seems that many were believed that Mick Gordon was going to create the soundtrack for this game with all of the hubub floating around this title. Turns out that the tracks were handled by a person called Geoffplaysguitar, a youtuber who mostly does Mick Gordon style songs in the cover of his style, and it does seem like he's trying when the game needs it. Looking at the discography, it looks like Mick has only done two tracks and called it there.

And that's it. That's the only "good" thing the game has got it going for. And it doesn't even do it that well sometimes. Hell, even when there's no fighting, the most you'll hear is environmental noises around you when you're finally out in the open world.

Alright. It looks like I'm gonna start with the shit. And it begins with just the mechanics and the whole core loop of gameplay that you'll be slogging through while you're playing.

First, some notable mentions.

1. Why can't I zoom in and out of the map. It's an "Open world" game.

2. Why is the inventory menu for the game when using the vendor so fucking terrible. Any time I want to move an item the list on where I'm moving the item from and to keep resetting to the top of the screen, so I have to move my mouse down again and scroll where I want to place my next thing for EVERY ITEM.

3. If you're playing on the hardest difficulty like I did, more than often you'll get groups of enemies that will group up on you and stunlock you while you're in a getup animation, and you can't do JACK SHIT but accept that you're probably going to die just because you got knocked down once.

4. I don't think I've had an issue where a quest has just straight up broken. Whether that be from just a key item not spawning, or a marker not being there in the first place. This game does the cardinal sin of fucking up both of those things while in my playthrough. Take for example, there's a mission in the game called "Bug in the System" where you have to find a key disk to unlock a door. I couldn't find the thing, so I was looking around and checking around with my map to see if I could find it, and when I ran out of options, I went onto the internet and looked for a solution. Turns out this quest is bugged to not spawn the item even if you pick it up and it shows in your inventory. Worst of all is that map marker just decides to disappear at times when finishing an objective or moving to a next objective, and I've had to reload the game a couple of times to fix and see where I needed to go next. This last problem was just annoying, but it kept occurring during my playthrough, so it was worth mentioning.

*This last point could be moot later on, but this was happening during time of review, so same point as the marker.

Alright. Now that that's out of the way.

This game fucking blows. The game's mechanics blow, the gunplay blows, the powers blow, and even the protagonist with the really predictable story blows.

Whose really fucked up idea was it to make an enemy that won't take enough damage to kill with a gun, but also still take just as long to kill with a melee weapon?

Even more fucked up is why did they make the bosses the same way minus for one boss that happened to have some weak points to him? I don't think I saw a single way to speed up the bosses in this game minus the one I remember.

I'm very glad I ended up getting the blueprint for the launcher early, because it felt like the only weapon that was capable of doing more that fuck-all when it came to damage to those "beefier normal enemies" and bosses. Hell, even the last boss was a pushover with how many rockets I had and how much splash damage it did.

Another big fucking issue I had with this piece of crap was regarding saves. See, this game decided to be cutesy and add saves all over the world and everywhere you went. Ok, that's great! But, you couldn't save from the menu, so the only way you could save is by using those booths.

Alright, you might think oh, "Maybe it's like resident evil where I've got to time my saves wherever I go to make sure I don't lose a lot of progress!"

But then the game autosaves anyway when you enter certain areas.

Why not just give me the ability to save from the menu instead? There are certain level sections where there are no booths, and just no way of getting to one either because you're closed off from going back, so if you manage to fuck up a dodge, or if you didn't heal enough, you'll just get fucked and lose so much progress.

Ok, so the gameplay sucks? Maybe story could be a good deal?

Yay it's Bioshock!!!!

It's Infinite but with even more ridiculous writing.

It wants to be a borderlands with the writing, but it also wants you to take its world very seriously too. The amount of people you talk to and the connections you make don't matter. None of it matters at all, and even worse when you have a protagonist who is being SPOONFED BY THE CHUNKS with how bad his employers might seem, he just shuts his ears and continues on business as usual. If you really want to endulge yourself it some grade-A stupidity, the ending might be more than enough to satisfy that insanity that the writers were cooking up.

You have more than TWO DECADES worth of games to look towards for your narrative, and you choose this shit? This makes David Cage look like a damn messiah, because at least he can make me laugh with his ridiculous writing. This is just insulting horseshit. The only reason I decided to keep going with this game was to try to find that sliver of hope, maybe that oomph that this game might give me, but it just gave me the gift of nothing but two middle fingers in my face.

You know, we've done this song and dance before with sexy girls in video games. Haydee, 2B, even fucking Widowmaker.

You don't even get to see these two girls until halfway through the game, and then at the end of the game. Maybe that scene where she's taking out that gold tube will be enough to satisfy the other types of gamers who were looking forward to this title.

This sucked.Thank god for gamepass.

I'm tired. Gotta go finish .hack//Mutation now.

No tagline for this review.

There isn't much to say about this game despite me willingly putting almost 30 hours into what is essentially a giant prologue.

The combat is very archaic and very straightforward. Beat somebody up by hitting the x button various times until you guard break them or until they're dead. Rinse and repeate for the entirety of the game until you get to the last boss, where I thought I was very under-prepared with the way my team was set up, only for me to steamroll through because I managed to find some good endgame weapons along the way.

So if the gameplay is very boring, what about the story? Is it worth your time playing this game (And watching the OVA) just to see what you're missing?

Eh, that's all really up to you. The only reason why I got into .Hack or started playing these earlier games was because I did think at the time that this series was sort of a niche type of deal. It's like playing Digimon for the first time when all you've known is Pokemon and the few other battlers around that time.

As I stated before, this is just a prologue to the next couple of games. And with the way this game ended off, it gave me at least a bit of a second wind to keep going despite all of the tediousness about the combat which made a bulk of the decent story the player manages to read with either emails, or even the message board within the game.

I do love the tutorial this game provides though. It's like having a wiki for the game inside of your game without having to ever go online if you're looking for that rare item.

I'll check back again with mutation to see if I still have that spark to keep going.

You've got a killer track! But every song's gotta end!

Holy 180 turn for Tango Gameworks here. After viewing Microsoft's developer direct that they hosted a couple of days ago, this game was dropped that very same day by the same guys who have done nothing but survival horror games like the Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo. The director John Johanas really hit it out of the park with this title of what he quotes, " His dream game." that he had in the back of his mind going all the way back in 2017 when he was still directing the Evil Within 2.

But that's all good and well to have a dream, but how does this dream game play?

Well, Really damn good honestly. Like rhythm heaven meets DMC for a mashup of kicking ass to getting that S rank in the corner while you jam out to the beat in each level.

The soundtrack has to take center stage with this game, and there are very huge hitters with this package. The prodigy, Nine inch Nails, and even Number Girl? Glad to see we get to listen to some Fukuoka jams as well.

Most of the game's tracks are by the composer Shuichi Kobori, who is usually doing the tracks for tango with their Evil Within games, but has also done most of the tracks for Metal Gear Solid 3. He really killed it in setting the tone for each section of a level the player is put in, with the music becoming dynamic as the player moves on from point to point, getting progressively louder and faster.

As always, even the most fun games have to have their faults, and not even this game is without em either. Luckly, they're mostly nitpicks than actual complaints for me.

The platforming sections can feel a bit wonky at times, and I feel a bit slow when airdashing while platforming also. Didn't really mind it that much since most platforming sections were very small distance, but was a little weird for me.

Getting money is also rough in the beginning as you're unlocking all of your moves, but this problem goes away at around the third area with the amount of challenges you end up doing subconsciously.

The story isn't going to be hitting any greatest of all time lists anytime soon, but I'm a sucker for "Sonic Adventure 2" likes where we just team up to defeat the big bad to save the day.

I think that's about it. This game surely was a surprise as of writing this review, it's been only 3 days since the game dropped, and I'm almost finished with a new game plus playthrough. After beating the game, I thought I wouldn't feel the same way going back through it after experiencing all of what it had to offer, but I just beat the first boss again and holy shit I'm in love. I can't stop tapping my foot after each section playing through this.

Wait, this game is only 30$? That's insane. Not to mention it's on day 1 gamepass too? Goddamn.

January hasn't even ended yet and this might be my GOTY. There's still a full year to go, but I'm feeling confident about this pick.

“We are not whole. No matter what you do, she will never dance with us again.”

Holy geez, this game was topsy turvey at every moment when I was playing this. From just crawling in between enemies to just outright getting pissed with the hit detection or getting cucked going through a door when the prompt doesn't show up, only to get hit by a monster really made it slightly annoying, but fun package to play. I've never played a resident evil or a metal gear like, or any of the two for that matter. But I'm glad I got to try signalis and test the waters if I would enjoy the game or not.

As with most of the reviews on this site, my problem with the game was moreso just the little small tidbits here and there, with the occasional loss of ammo during the second chapter which made for a fun but also stressful time running through mobs of monsters. Really don't like that the inventory was limited to six items, as it felt like I had to keep two open for anything that I saw, and if I did happen to pick up something like some ammo and there was a key item in front of me, I had to either force myself to backtrack to a storage box, or just destroy whatever I had on hand just to grab the item. Maybe if the inventory was 7 or 8 slots instead of the six, the amount of backtracking from box to objective wouldn't be so bad, as it would just cut the amount of time going back and forth between your stuff.

As for the gun play, it was fun! When I was forced to fight and not burn my ammo. I've got that tendency where even if I've got 30 bullets in the storage, I'm not planning on burning any of em unless I see a hallway that's inevitable for me to go through without blasting my way through enemies ahead. At least if I did run out of ammo, there was the shove option that worked on occasion, but I would end up getting hit more often than not going for one. Also, aren't enemies supposed to stagger after getting shot in these types of games? When one is already locked on to you and charging you, you're probably thinking, "Oh, this gunshot oughta do the trick. Wait, he still hit me?". Not much of a deal breaker, but a definite pet peeve that I kept having while playing through the game.

Last gripe I had was the lack of a soundtrack when you were out and about doing things. The same track kept playing for what felt like the entire game, and the only time the sountrack decides to change is if you enter certain rooms with particular themes, or the safe room with it's melancholy piano. Those were great! ....Up until I kept hearing the music that plays when a monster spots you for the umpteenth time.

Alright enough about the pet peeves I had. Because this game is kick ass out the gate with its presentation and storytelling within the first few seconds.

Each time you go through a section of the game, you get to see these very detailed shots of your character just overlooking whatever they're looking at the time and it's just so cool. The way the game switches from a 2d topdown to a 3d section during critical story moments was always a treat, and threw me off the first time I experienced it. So many flashes forwards and backwards with the title cards made me feel as If I was watching a monogatari episode, but it never felt uninteresting. I won't be talking about the story much, but to quote another reviewer on here, "Signalis is a story about love." And man, what a story it is! Really left me feeling empty about what I was doing, and if my goal was something even achievable.

Damn it was really good.

Here comes Ryan Cooper! The comeback kid!

I have never played a Need for Speed game before in my life. Wait, scratch that. I have only played one, but that was just Need for Speed Carbon on the GBA, so I'm not sure if that counts or not, but I'll count it out as I'm just talking about the mainline console titles for this review.

I wish I could talk about this game more in depth, but my journey begins with getting the damn thing to work in the first place.

First, I had to "Google the game's zip file" I mean look for a copy of the game that wasn't broken or still would be supported. That means either asking origin support for a copy of the game that I wanted to purchase, or take my chances with the internet and see what I could find. I did end up finding a copy, but christ did it feel like I was back in 2010 and just taking a chance on finding a game like this would be a gamble if it worked. Not to mention people in the comments would also be posting about their problems with the game, so that really didn't help me out one bit either.

But anyway, game acquired. Now time to play.

But wait guy, I see you're trying to do a race or two.

Let the game just stop working at every win screen and prevent the player from moving forward by hitting the key or button to move on to the next screen. This happens throughout my entire time playing the game, and I have to take a gamble at which race I'm going to do to keep playing this, or just have fun beating myself with a rock instead, as I would probably get more done than just repeating the same races hoping for a different result.

The race days in the game can be finished with getting enough points per match (If the game decides to let you move forward), so there wasn't that much of a problem for me. I got to play a bit of everything, and my progress was moving along as it should.

Until I got to a damn showdown king race event.

If you don't know, the game's whole shtick is around you doing certain types of races with each showdown king that holds the title "King" for each type of race. So there's a drift king, a drag king, a grip king, and two other ones I forgot as I was just getting frustrated writing this review.

But anyway, the way these events are made is that they go in a certain order. So if you're facing a drag king showdown event, you're going to do a 1/4 mile drag race, a 1/2 mile drag race, and finally a wheelie drag race. Sounds pretty simple, and I could knock em out.

But the game does this thing where the options are not spread out like they should be as it is with every racing event that you compete in. You're supposed to win one, and then go back to the main menu, and then do the next event, and so on and so forth.

I retried to do the first event 7 times until I just called it quits as the game just didn't want to budge.

This is not a review of the full game, but an review as to what I played for myself up to a point.I do see the fun in this game while others felt bitterness for this, due it being Blackbox's last title for the Need for Speed series until Criterion took over. I don't think this game is going to win any awards for best racer, because while this does feel empty with the races at times, it's so goddamn stylish with its presentation and soundtrack banging while you're finishing a race AND full customization of cars just makes it feel Grand Turismo esque while still maintaining its arcadey roots.

This game is a reminder that titles that are not available to play anymore should at the very least be preserved well for anyone else to try. Hell, if something like Syndicate can have a better time being available, why can't this title as well?

"So even all of these struggles, why did you play this game in the first place?"

I saw this video on my recommended yt feed, and it gave me an itch to finally try the game out.

Hell of a way to start off 2023.

But the japanese loved this game! Hell, there was even a reference to it in Popteamepic! What gives?

I played the Japanese copy 怒Ikari on famicom for this review.

Why in gods name did they decide to give you a limited amount of ammo in a game about shooting everything in front of you in an arcade setting. I get that this type of game is supposed to eat all of your quarters when you go to the arcade, but the home version should've at least thrown me a bone to chew on.

Also, why does your gun fire from the side instead of the middle of your character like every other game did at the time? I get that contra doesn't come out for another two years, but getting killed by an enemy that goes in a diagonal angle while I try to full spin to turn around (I get that it's trying to be innovative with giving the player full diagonal control like using the whip in castlevania IV, but it just feels like shit in this game) gets so frustrating after a while. I tried playing this without save states at first, and even with savestates it felt like I was grinding my balls on a sander trying to get through the first level.

I ended up looking at a walkthrough and noticed that all four levels take roughly around 20 MINUTES. That's such a long time for a shooter like this, but hey if it pads out time and little kotaro keeps trying to get past the levels back in 1986, he probably enjoyed the hell out of this game too.

I'll probably watch Arino and see if he's done an episode on this game and watch how he suffers through it.

"Can you please choose a new destination for us? Whether it's Neucom, or some other unknown country is fine."


"Hey, answer me... you can hear me, right?"

Goddamnit. This game is so damn close to actually being a story that would be one for the books. I don't think it completely fumbles the story itself, but holy hell the actual routes and finding out each faction's side of the whole story was fantastic. It's just that the ending was so goddamn abrupt and so left field that the rest of the game's ambition was almost for naught.

But even so, I do think this game is worth your time. The different perspectives and the various endings that the game provides (Including animation from Production I.G at their prime? Wew, that's sick.) just kept me glued to my seat for the entire time. 4, 5, and zero heads be careful because this ace combat does not play around with the way your plane maneuvers in the air, as it's like AC7 with the way the wind moves your plane around, and even pulling up from a sharp turn has made me crash a few amount of times.

And even if you're not a huge ace combat fan, I do think a game that has this much ambition on the Ps1 deserves a playthrough by everyone. The missions can end within minutes or even seconds at times which is a little annoying, but then you get right back into it with whichever story you're sucked in.

Of course I played the JP english patch! The US version stinks!!!!

Sonic was never good! No, maybe this is where he peaked, and everything thing else fell apart!



So many opinions about this game that are just widely talked about whether they enjoy this game, or just consider it the most mediocre thing since sliced bread. Hell, even I'm at fault at thinking that this is where the series peaked, and I haven't played this game since 2005. So, here we are nearly 20 years later, how does this game still hold up?

Pretty alright when compared to the rest of the sonic games to be completely honest. I wanna get my gripes out of the way so I can talk about the stuff that made me enjoy this very much.

We can't talk about the game without bringing up the very boring gameplay of the emerald hunt stages for both knuckles and rouge. I completed them in roughly around 6-7 ish minutes per level (Including mad space, where I thought I was gonna struggle a bit, ended up just taking me 4 minutes overall.) and moved on. I didn't feel much for these levels as I just wanted to get back into the action of the running and mech sections, since there's at least something to do there than just run around until my beeper starts beeping around an area. Didn't care much about these levels back then, and I still don't care about em now really.

This opinion is slightly mixed as I really enjoyed some parts of the eggman and tails stages at times. But some of these levels were total stinkers to deal with, such the beginning levels for the both of them when you have no upgrades, so you are just going through each section of the level holding up until you get to the goal. But I did have a grin on my face playing through cosmic wall and eternal engine. Man those levels rocked.

Another huge gripe is with the bosses in the game just being punch thing and wait for it to finish it's move without it deviating too much on how to tackle a boss. The only times where that changes is during the second to last boss and the final boss, where they just go all out in stopping you, (Even if the second boss gives you no way to get any rings, pretty much stopping you from getting any from below while in the air. ) but that's about it. No changes and just all punch punch till the thing is dead. The bosses are pushovers, but it wasn't a deal breaker for me continuing the game.

I'll get to the stuff that I did like now.

I'm surprised I didn't have that many complaints about this game like I did with frontiers! The movement still feels fine enough for all characters, with some occasional slippage, but all of it manageable. Sonic and shadow really do shine in their levels when playing through them as jumping to a platform with a spindash jump or even cutting through some levels like in Final Chase still feel like second nature to me after all of this time. I can't describe it, but the movement for these characters just feel pretty damn good.

This is something minor, but I'm glad that most of the levels were fairly short for the most part. Hell, even the ark joint level was roughly around 7 minutes, and it moved on from there. I don't think I can do another 16 hour sonic game like I did with frontiers, so I'm just pretty happy that once a level is finished, we move on to the next part of the story.

There are various different opinions on how a sonic game should be told in it's story and even if some things get deus ex machina'd to hell, it's still a fun time playing through the perspectives of both dark and light side.

I'm not going to be rating the extra content as I wanted to mainly focus on the story mode for this review, but I did play a bit of the extra stuff including chao garden by accidentally grabbing a key, and it's a pretty cute timekiller for someone that wants to raise and put em in events that they have in the garden. I might go back to it and see how far I can get compared to back then when I played on my gamecube.

Did I have fun with this game? Yeah, I really did. I would even say that I still love this game now than I did back then, but I can still recognize the faults that it has. This game is not the end all be all of sonic. And If there is a title for that, then that title should be given to Frontiers for captivating a new wave of sonic fans to enjoy that game.

As for me, I don't play sonic games anymore. I just wanted to see if I had any rose tinted glasses about this game or if what I played back then just sucked. If I had to rate this on the game and nothing else, this would probably be a 3/5 at best, and a 2/5 at it's worst, but my time with the game was just fun overall hearing those tracks while I played through each level.

I'm glad I had fun with this short but sweet ride.

At last, our tale of the Spielberg Medal of Honor series comes to a conclusion.

Back in 99, the thought of playing as a girl would probably make some men feel a little weird, but now that we have our samus aran's, our Joanna Dark's or our Laura Crofts, I'm very happy to say that our friend Manon here has had quite the adventure.

I won't delve into the gameplay all to much as it plays exactly like the first game, with the inclusion of the autoaim setting that you can turn on, which helps tons when running and gunning. But of course, you can't have a sequel without the hard as fuck final that this game offers as well, infinitely spawning enemies and all. Even the funny joke level was a pretty funny thing to go through, but holy hell why was it so grueling to go through. I don't think I've played a hard joke level in my life.

Not much to say about this game as it was just more of the same game. But sometimes that alright, as it tried some new things like the companionship stuff and even the replacement for the ID where everyone thought was useless, the camera. Taking shots and seeing all of the different poses each character made was pretty amusing.

I'm very glad that I got to see what the Ps1 era of MoH games were like, and I hope my enjoyment doesn't change as I move onto the next generation of consoles.

Well how about that, the movie guy wrote a video game story!

You know, for someone just going off of his son playing goldeneye on n64, Spielberg didn't do so bad for his first try! Of course it's not without it's faults. The levels can be very short enough where you could probably beat this all in one sitting (whether that's a good or bad thing to you is subjective), and the AI can be a major pain to fight against when they can stand half a magazine of bullets halfway through the game. But other than that, I had a pretty good time playing this! Ah, and that Michael Giacchino ost will always be a treat to hear.

Can you believe the best song is through a small radio and in the credits if you check it out? Anyways, Is it going to be on a must play again for me? Probably not, but I am glad that I got to play through the franchise's first baby steps. Hell, even recommending something like this game can be rough with the control scheme and could be a huge barrier for gamers these days. I almost had blisters playing through this on an emulator, just because the dual stick option wasn't the best scheme for me. I did end up with scheme two, where it made me feel like I was playing doom with the way I was speed strafing all over the levels.

I played through this game recently from reading a review a friend of mine made on here thinking, surely this rhythm game can't that long and boring? Right?

Man I should really trust my gut sometimes. Although the first few levels were pretty fun! But holy hell 9 levels? It feels like it's overstaying it's welcome by the 5th one and I'm here wondering when it's going to end...

And you have to hear what feels like different flavors of the same track over and over again from these levels? I just don't know how some people do it man. If this is falls under a rhythm game, simon says may as well be a major contender against the IIDX series. The most rhythm it gets is when you go on the same left right left right curves and the bumps that you hit over and over again, where it just ends up being drowned out by the loud percussion anyways.

This sucked, but by the time I was in the 6th level, I was just continuing to press on just to see what was in the end, and even that was pretty lackluster. I didn't even buy this and I want a refund.

Why don't I just boot up an old SA2 level? - Woodaba

So much for redemption. - Lastkeymusic

These are two quotes from some recent reviews that I've taken a look at right after beating the game, and they've resonated the problems that I've had with it throughout my entire run-through of Sonic Frontiers.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that I have not touched a sonic game in almost a decade, since beating sa2 as a kid. I've seen gameplay videos of the other sonic games as time went on, but I haven't went out of my way to play through them as I just wasn't interested. But with the hubbub of this game receiving praise from players both sonic lovers and not, I wanted to check it out for myself. I will link to both of these people's reviews if you'd like to check it out for yourselves for a deep in-depth look at what the game provides. For now, I will only relay my gripes on my playthrough here with various questions I hope someone in the comments can help me understand.

Why is there a delay with each person sonic homing attacks on? I understand enemies that don't fall with one hit, but the ones that do still have that "stand still" pose that sonic does every time he hits someone.

Why can't I do a small homing attack anymore to get onto a platform, and instead have to use my boost and pray to god that I didn't hit it hard enough to fall down 50 fucking stories?

Why are we retreading on stories that have already been explained and then just brushed these same small stories off to the side like nothing ever happened?

Why did the game not explain to me that I could light dash, and I accidentally did it by pressing my left thumbpad, and even worse WHY DO YOU COME TO A COMPLETE STOP WHEN BOOSTING WITHOUT MOVING THE STICK UP. You can even see it happen if you go on a speed rail thing on the ground and if you stop moving up, you'll come to a complete stop as if someone just hit the brakes hard.

What happened to the music that was very amped up and cheerful, and instead having to listen to the same track for every stage for at least 2 hours?

Why does turning with sonic during the flashback levels feel like I'm trying to turn an old steering wheel that never had some WD40 applied to it?

In these same flashback levels, if I am trying to collect the red rings, why aren't they placed at every shortcut like they were before? The game actively punishes you for either taking these shortcuts, or going to fast when trying to collect the damn things, and I've had to restart these levels a bit of times because of one ring that was either right below a platform or I was going to fast on a rail, and missed the rainbow ring just that was as the end of a grind loop.

WHY DOES SONIC FEEL SO SLOW IN A GAME WHERE HE'S SUPPOSED TO GO FAST. Yes, he can go faster if you upgrade his speed and max out on your rings, but that shouldn't be a reward when you're playing as Sonic the fucking hedgehog.



Why does sonic immediately lose all of his momentum the moment boosting wears off, then he has to slowly start up again?

Why is everyone praising the boss fights when they just boil down to just holding the counter button (Which you don't even have to time?) and just mashing the punch button and watching the same cutscene over and over again until the big bad is dead?

Why is ALL of the "sidecontent" absolutely forced to play and just boiling down to just shitty puzzles or just straight up fucking jump rope?

When trying to go back or even cut through some of the grind rails (Looking at you world 3), why can't I go back and try to go to the rails that I can clearly reach, but I can't because the camera decided to change the way I would land on the grind rail I was aiming to?

Speaking of the camera, for a game that Is supposed to be very open world, the camera sure does love to stay in the 2d format for more than half of the game, which makes me confused why they couldn't go the adventure route and keep the camera focused looking forward on sonic all of the time?

As of writing this, I just beat the last boss and wow, it felt like the people working on this last part of the game were just up playing something like ikaruga and saying, how about we end off the game with that? That'll kill time and we can end it off with a simple press x to win combo and call it a day!

Collecting everything towards the very end was so much of a pain in the ass, that I just resorted to using cheat engine to get the rest of the small medals that sage needed to progress in the last level, because I couldn't be assed to collect them around the world.

Overall, this game has so much of an identity crisis it's insane. On one hand it wants you to do as much as you want at your own leisure, and on the other hand, it wants to have a tight fucking grip on you with a leash to make sure you're not having too much fun, or the adventure will end just like that.

I don't think I'll ever play or think about this game again.