first of all id like to wave a proud middle finger to dimps to altitude limit zone as a whole and to those fuckass rocket shits you gotta grab in a leap of faith superman mentality, and the latter special stages REGARDLESS if theyre cool or not. . .mk now i can talk on this with clear conscience

i almost dropped this game SEVERAL times and wanted to but my wife told me i needed to lock-in and i proceeded to be like this game is on that BULL shit though, but eventually... Eventually.. i Did lock-in and got good .. Eventually!

It's got one of the best soundtracks in the series(of the games ive played thus far), and i love the models i love how crunchy they look, i love the aesthetics of this game and the trick system is really cool and the boost mechanic is Probably my favorite of any sonic game ive played that even has one! And Blaze is awesome and I think her individual story ending was more satisfying than Sonic's on basis alone of her being a character that actually developed in this story

You got everyone from knuckles, cream, tails, amy and the eggmen...eggmans?...the eggmeese! But amy's still her weird boychaser self in this era that they loved leaning into for the sonic x and onward structure of the series until Maybe...Generations??????? idek, im still a relatively new fan LMAO thats just a guess i know it dies down eventually though but I love when Amy's like.. cool..
tails is sweet and cream is arguably second most important side character in all this
this really does feel more like the blaze and cream game than it does the sonic and tails show
which im happy about because from what ive been told this is blaze's best and first game appearance and i think thats just s a d but i do see what people meant
Burning Blaze fucking rules and she rapidly shot up in my faves even before I hopped on IDW Comics or anything like that :) !!
Sucks that Knuckles really is just kindof T h e r e for the game but it wouldnt be the first time Knuckles and Amy are just kinda T h e r e with nothin going on but some neat little interactions so im not pressed.

The zone variety is really cool in Sonic Rush as well as the actual enemies you face CARRYING OFF of enemies from sonic heroes and even adventure 2 badnik design, really caught me offguard. The special stages are also pretty awesome and tense, though i think leaning into touchscreen shit for them made me way more anxious about them than I shouldve been tbh. And thats just a Me thing, probably a lot easier for other people.

The bosses in a graphical standpoint look really cool and I dunno I think id take them anyday over 3/4ths of the bosses from the classic sonic era, fuckedup how they got some with instakills going on though
and thts smthin tht kept pissing me off with this game in particular! there's a lotta shit that you wouldnt know about unless you trial and error your ass off, i got A ranks on some of these fuckin zones and acts and that felt more like a sink or swim mentality thing rather than something i WILLINGLY wanted to do
I wound up doing that because of how crazy some difficulty spikes can be in this game and wariness over enemy placements and grabbing as many rings as i can to stack those fucking extra lives.
The final boss surprisingly enough isnt even the hardest boss in the game to me, thatd be the one before it because it has so many moves in rotation that it didnt wanna use in tandem with how to actually Damage the fuckin thing
but i still loved it,
i cant rank a sonic game that samples malcom X anything lower than a 3.5/5 honestly.
Though i do think its crazy how the true boss chapter will just pick up from however many lives you had left with sonic and blaze in their own stories respectively ... like thats kinda HARSH?? but atleast when you die itll pick up from the last check you were at from Sonic's perspective ATLEAAAAST
like the game's not That punishing

but all in all, this game invoked a lot of deep seeded anger within me which is really funny looking back because its got a lot of charm and some of the most fun 2d sonic gameplay ive tasted
It may even shoot up higher on a revisit, but i just cant meatsuckle a video game that makes me do some of the fuckshit this made me do im so salty
great time, higher end of the games ive played
but oh my god for a short game this had to have had kids in the early 00s BUUUUUUUUUUUSY

Im so mad I wasnt there for you when you were new...

I love this game, bitch.

Rollerdrome is a 3d rollerskating 3rd person shooter and this is such a specific genre combination that i feel like coulda gone wrong so hard but they nailed it. I love the cel shaded style, there's pretty light story happening in the background of this yearly dystopian championship sport, and everything is so satisfying to pull off. If you're like me and you're familiar with Tony Hawk Pro Skater or THUG then youre gonna get a nice taste for whats cooking with this quick
It's refreshing playing a game centering on skating after playing one that had it more as a side activity/traversal option

Thoughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Rollerdrome is NOT really like Tony Hawk! You're up and shooting robot dudes that are practically always breathing down your neck if able, snipers and tanks and guys with mines will be constantly flung at youuuu and you better respect that shit especially when youre watching your health.
In a way I guess you could say this comes together more as a 'character action game' than it does somethin like a regular third person shooter game or a sport game. Pullin off stylish 900 degree Coffins, prowler grinds and mambas- they pretty much got you covered with every possible combination.

You have a nice arsenal of weapons to make use of too! I think my favorite will always be the grenade launcher because of how much distance you get with managing the arc, goes crazy
the dual pistols still have their uses but honestly apart from a couple moments beyond the starting levels, i found them dwindling fuuuurther and further out of the spotlight and the Z-11 and Shotgun were the most reliable ones to fallback on

the Z-11 itself never really felt like I MASTERED that shit though, it was fun but i feel like i still didnt really have it all on lock! yk! But thats one of the best parts about this game, progression is tied to you finishing the levels but u aint going no where if u cant also fulfill an objectives quota. Youll be circling back to earlier levels, and this SOUNDS tedious yea

but i actually liked this because this game already has a handful of similar Looks for each lvl anyways, and youre gonna wanna test your skills and read up on that Tricktionary and will some shit cause you cannot be mindless in this game.

Infact i think this game is one of the best ive ever seen in regards to seamlessly mixing complete chaos and also you doin tricks and dodges in the air and flips to keep that combo no matter what's hurdling at you. It also does that type of acceleration where its stacking n not something where you gotta hold forward to keep yourself skating forward. This rules but if you lose your mental rhythm on whats going on, you can absolutely spiral outta control and fly head first into complete nuclear arms shit popping off LMFAO

There's also a thing where if youre pressed to a wall you can bounce off of it but it feels so awkward like the wall is just dejecting your model in the mirrored shot you came at it from, but otherwise there wasnt much in the way for clunkiness
The super reflex time shit is really what brings it all together too oh my godddd, for repositioning or getting multiple shots off and watching 'em all fall, its sick. Every time you think youre done the loop gets you back in it again cause you Know you can do better you Know those highscores aint worth shit when you master shit, its HARD but very rewarding

some side notes

my heart sank when i saw how low the player rates for the xbox trophies were for this game </3 when i got halfway in the game it was basically saying less than half of all ppl tht played it on xbox even made it there
and a whole like 3% even actually finished the game fully
Aint that SAD? i know this game dropped on other consoles including PC but, jesus

on a lighter note i saw a really funny bug where i was going real fast up and when i was coming back down i was mid trick and going into the voidddd buuuuuuuuuuuuut... i didn really.. go out into the void and respawn.. i just glitched through the stage and the enemies were trying their hardest to kill me but couldnt do it LMFAO and they tried their asses off, the tanks even getting some cheap shots in on me. I was trying to do a highscore objective challenge too and I totally did it EVEN W I T H the par time penalty and losing time from that little hiccup which was pretty cool

but yeah its a game that has a structuring and cel shaded look that i just drool over, it kindof gives me graphic novel vibes if anything, and the story isnt rlly why you play this but just something neat to chew on a little in thought while youre doing these levels. It honestly FEELS like a game that didnt even come out in this console generation, like in thought process for somethin like this it seems like smthin thatd get executed in the ps3/xbox/wii era or late ps2/gamecube/xbox era of things. And i mean that in a compliment in the same way as me sayin that with Hi-Fi-Rush. though the two are incomparable in nearly every way

so yea thats all i got, play it on gamepass if you got it or hop on steam to do it(between you and me, i think the game is fine on controller when you crank the sensitivity up.. but its most def a lot easier to sink your head in with a mouse to look around with i bet. thats how ive always been with shooters though).

also there's like two bosses.. and i dont really think theyre show stealers here LMAO like not a selling point, liked them but really funny how theres only two and they kinda flow the same for the main campaign
Kara Hassan, youll always be famous to me <3...

shelved 2023: my gawd thats cool but fucking hard, like middle of the game and i feel like it takes me two hundred tries to do shit right, bashin my head against a wall until shit works
ill come back to this later aurgh

updated 2024 review coming:

Ive had to rewrite this shit like FOUR times because I keep trailing off, but I loved this game I think that it really did hit once I finally got through Assault

Ive known about Hotline Miami for so many fucking years that I think to me this was always a portrait example of an indie game that everybody fw
I never got around to it myself though until wayyyyyyyy later and I played a few levels and this gave me not just a fun arcadey feel but even reminded me of some of my favorite action flashgames id enjoy as a kid thatd be just really quick, violent and satisfying(for the time)

if its not the menagerie of all the visual sweetness that rests in your eyes with the colors, the commitment to realistic tinnitus pop, how quick it is to die and try again all working in simultaneous motion getting you to study the layout and at near-muscle memory press through

it's also the presentation of the story thats kinda cool too, ive been told things get recontextualized by the second game but to me this game was strange enough and vague enough about it to question what was going on while also havin it in the backseat and not say or do more than it needs to

Infact, i got pretty pissed when someone said "ur still playin that? its so short though!" bc ive died literally. L I I I I T ER A L LY over a thousand times at this point playing this game and I think its really just boiled down to feeling that short however much it clicks with you and you adapt

BECAUSE BY THE TIME I WAS PAST ASSAULT... honestly wasnt dying so much, i was getting into the rhythm of things again annnnnnd saw the credits. I was actually so floored by this it didnt even initially hit me that I beat this when it gave me so much trouble before and time to get use to... kindof like how when walking back out of each completed chapter you kinda see the brains splatteredddd

you see the broken glass everywhereee

you see the weapons, the shells, all of that

and you just Went through it maybe like.. in the span of a run a MINUTE.. maybe a couple more minutes in linear time not counting retries of shit with the adrenaline winding down
But it really does have that mouthfeel afterwards where youre like "oh. oh my god its over i gotta get out yes" and the dial getting turned down like that mentally and physically within the game is really well done to me

In a way it actually reminds me of when i played Postal 1 for the first time, COMPLETELY different gameplay and experience ofc ofc. But when playing Postal 1 id often be wandering the areas, the washed out landscapes of the towns or forests or caves and just kinda slightly grimacing at the thought
because when the music dies down and youre without someone to kill youre basically just sifting through the area hunting any survivors and the gravity of the situation is more felt like youre a truly desensitized guy doing all this.....clearin my throat hotline miami aint like this rlly, but the prospect of wading through seas of gore that you wrought (figuratively speakin) with the tone and tension sunk is something really palpable to me that i enjoyed

its disturbing and added to the high tension action, i mostly leaned towards using the cobra mask and the tiger one and didnt really bother with much of the rest but i could still appreciate having so many options to tackle and tough through the game with

Sometimes this game's AI is also so fucked too, like its cool how each reset they can behave diff but that also means youre gonna go up against ANYTHING happening or sometimes the doors fuck you up or sometimes the enemy can see you even when it feels like they shouldn be able to or they glitch out the rims and you cant progress
AND THIS WAS ALL RARE! dont get it twisted, i think the game is still cool but moments like this had me laughing or groaning in frustration and i felt like its worth noting that
but otherwise i rlly dont got much complaints whatsoever this game rules

I don't think ill hop at hotline miami 2 immediately
maybe give it like another week or so? im not too sure
But i did really love what was here