Historical value aside as one of the first games to introduce cutscenes and point-and-click prompts instead of syntax guessing, "Maniac Mansion" still holds up pretty well. It's impressive how such an old graphic adventure could already offer the possibility of switching between characters with unique skills and finding different ways to clear the game by passing inventory items from one character to another and coordinating their actions. In addition, the wacky, tongue-in-cheek humor and cheap B-movie references that would become a trademark of LucasArts graphic adventures are already at their best here.

The only problem is that the game won't let you know when your run has become unwinnable. Not only do most puzzles have absurd solutions, but it's also incredibly easy to waste an essential item and get stuck at a dead end without even knowing. It's true that once you know what to do and what not to do, it should take about one hour to complete the game, yet it can get really frustrating as you can easily spend hours wandering around the mansion without even knowing that you have already locked yourself out of victory.

I haven't played this since I was around 6 years old. I had so many vivid memories of this silly monkey game. Playing it today, over 20 years later revealed to me that 6 year old me retained the most important part about Ape Escape; the silly monkeys. I love collectathon platforming games and I think that having the collectibles be these little apes wandering around levels is what sets Ape Escape apart. It's instantly charming, and the soundtrack certainly helps with that too. Just a bunch of bops throughout.

Now one thing I didn't remember was just how gimmicky this game was. Ape Escape has a very unconventional control scheme that attempts to use the dualshock in a lot of different ways. Mostly, this means using the analog sticks in wacky ways. This only kind of works. Some stuff is really fun with the analogue stick like catching monkeys with your net but other stuff like using the tank, slingshot or rowboat is downright painful.

Ape Escape works best when it's just this vibe that you want to exist in. When it comes to the actual platforming, it's also subpar with lots of weird camera angles and a double jump that only works when it wants to. Because of this, I found the game to get worse at it goes. The later levels are especially a pain in the ass as the game environments get more and more generic.

What's here is honestly really impressive ESPECIALLY for 1999. It's so inventive and charming, I couldn't help but have a grin on my face while playing. This game would be a certified banger then, but today it's pretty average. Which, to be honest is pretty impressive considering my issues with it. Ape Escape is a decent game that I had a good time replaying. I'm absolutely torn between 3 and 3.5 but I think I'll stick with 3.5 and give it that nostalgia bump.

In 2004, I saw this game in so many ads in Nintendo Power, it's been burned into my brain. Even though I hadn't actually touched it until last week, it likely would have been the first thing that came to mind if you had ever asked me to name a non-first-party GBA game. I miss Nintendo Power!

It's Mr. Pants is a unique enough puzzle game. You are given Tetrimino-esque blocks in 4 different colors (but varying sizes, sometimes as small as 1 block) with the goal being to clear existing blocks off the board. Blocks are erased by creating rectangles at least 2x3 in size, and blocks can be placed on others of a different color to replace them. What makes the main mode both appealing and tricky is that, unlike Tetris, you're not getting randomized pieces. Rather, each puzzle has a predetermined order and amount of pieces which you have to use to end up with a completely empty board. It takes a while to learn the game's internal logic, but after a little bit of "How on Earth am I ever going to figure this mess out", every puzzle's solution did become apparent without resorting to looking up the solution. If you need it, there is a solid in-game hint system if you've failed a puzzle three times in a row which will correct your first incorrect block placement.

It was engaging and intuitive enough that I played through the 25 Easy and 50 Medium puzzles, but pushing through all 75 Hard puzzles is too much. (EDIT: I have now learned that there is a FOURTH difficulty setting with 100 puzzles in it. Very glad I stopped!!) It's a very clever game, but as the difficulty increases, it becomes more about guessing the dev's intent rather than puzzling out the solution yourself.

As a Rare game, it of course has a great soundtrack by the Beanland/Wise/Fischer combo, and features vocals by Mr. Pants himself, which add a lot of character. I'd recommend giving this a shot if you're looking for a unique brain-teaser, but I wouldn't call it a must-play by any means.

As a kid, I grew up with the original Spyro trilogy on PS1 and to this day, those games remain as some of my favorite games of all time. Later down the line, my family got a PS2 and I was so excited when I learned that a brand new, next-gen Spyro game was on the way. Just think of it: bigger levels, better graphics, more silly-looking Muppet-y characters, more potential for a story, more challenges, more minigames, more mystical and magical worlds to explore, so on and so forth. What kind of grand adventure was Spyro capable of having now?

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was the game that personally slapped me across the face and taught me that video games can be bad sometimes.

Just the way this game performs is a dead giveaway that it needed more time in the oven. The framerate is wildly inconsistent and you can probably count the amount of areas where it manages to reach 30 on one hand. The loading times are so bad that you’ll want to keep a book nearby to keep you entertained while you wait. There are so many glitches that I’m actually kind of surprised that Enter the Dragonfly even managed to get released. You can charge and clip right through the gates holding you back from progressing to the next areas. If you're underwater and you surface quickly enough against a wall, you can swim in the air to anywhere you want and beat the game in like 2 minutes. Sometimes enemies will just break, stand there, and do nothing as you approach them. Plus, there many questionable design choices that lead you to conclude that this game is just simply not finished; like as annoying as Moneybags is in the previous games, he only shows up once. Hunter shows up maybe 2 or 3 times. There are hardly any cutscenes outside of the intro and ending, so there's barely any story or interactions involving the main villain. Some of the NPC dialogue is awkward and non-nonsensical. There's absolutely zero indication as to when the final boss is available; you just go to the middle of the hub sometimes and maybe you'll see the gate open. I could go on, but mainly what I'm getting at is that it's so obvious the developers were not given the support this game truly needed.

Obviously no one wants to make a bad game. I really wanted to know what went wrong with this one. To my findings, this game was apparently Hellish to work on. It mainly consists of problems you could easily expect from this kind of mess. The deadlines were tight and were supposed to be on-track for a holiday release. Supposedly there were a few instances of higher-ups throwing out ideas and replacing them with their own without the lead designers being consulted. The developers often spoke with Insomniac – the developers of the original trilogy – to gain insight as to what makes a Spyro game a Spyro game. Once they came up with something, they would pitch it to the publishers only to be told “No, that’s not a Spyro game. Make it feel like a Spyro game” and they would not articulate any further. There’s even a hidden credits menu displaying all the developers who left during production for better gigs. To top it all off, this game was supposed to have about 2-3 times the amount of content it ended up with. If you’re genuinely curious about all this, you can check more out here.

It would've been so cool to see this game at its full potential. Instead, you're left with a half-baked disappointment. The publisher ought to be embarrassed that they let something in this state get released. It's certainly a bad look for your company, the series, and even the console to take a well-received PS1 series and make it worse in every conceivable way. Even with the lukewarm handheld titles, I think this is easily Spyro’s worst game. Though honestly, I would love to see a "remake" of this game where they make it into what it was supposed to be.

To me, the words Pokemon Picross sound like a tiny, adorable puzzle game, a concept that would be an easy win for developers. And the core gameplay is pretty much that, a standard Picross experience where you unlock different Pokemon along the way. Unfortunately, there are so many things here that drag the gameplay down:

The main mechanic everyone will hate is a mobile-game-like bar that lets you fill in only so many sections until the bar has run out and you're prevented from playing the game for an annoyingly long amount of time. When the eShop was still up, you were able to purchase "Picrite" to fill up the bar instantly or unlock new stages among other things.

Every Pokemon you find has an ability that helps you solve puzzles. This sounds like a nice idea in concept, but in reality I never want to use the abilities because I'd just rather solve puzzles without the help.

You can also get Picrite from completing missions and achievements.
The missions are mostly pretty boring objectives without much substance, can't be completed until you've solved the next few stages or force you to use abilities.
The achievements would be an okay addition to the game if it weren't for the fact that you have to claim your rewards by finding the new achievements in a long list that is annoying to navigate.

The only fun addition to the core gameplay are daily challenges where you have to solve multiple puzzles in a row on a timer.

All in all, I can't believe how much they were able to butcher a concept as simple as "Pokemon Picross" and the only remaining positive here is the fact that it's a Picross game.

Interesting game that has a ton of charm. The mechanics of the world are surprisingly complex, like how having mountains surrounding a village will prevent tornadoes from spawning but can also risk the potential volcano eruption. There's definitely a lot that goes on under the hood. I know of a few things I hadn't experienced in my single playthrough, and there are probably many more I have no knowledge of.

I love the design of the world and its inhabitants. The story is nice too, the ending sequence had me feeling some sort of way. You really feel like part of the world because of the involvement and interactions you cast upon the world. I feel guilty for accidentally scaring (and killing lol) the villagers, enjoy seeing them thrive, and get frustrated when they don’t do what I want them to. Even just walking around and seeing the fish flail around on land adds so much character. The OST and official album have some bangers and they do a great job at representing the game, too.

I haven't played a god game in the longest time, the last one I probably played was some flash game 15 years ago or something, but I felt like Doshin embodied the genre quite well with how creative you could be. The game allows for multiple avenues of play, giving it as abstract of an experience as blatant as its presentation.

Unfortunately, there is some jank to it that affects gameplay. The villagers’ directions aren’t very helpful but can inadvertently lead to easy heart farming. Picking up desired object gets difficult because of the controls. I couldn’t figure out how to spawn flowers on my own either, but I bet that might’ve- Oh. It says how in the handbook that comes with the game; I probably should have checked that lol. Oh, they even have the Y+X thing I learned of after I finished the game lol.

But yeah, I would consider the game a 4.5/5 for what it tries to be, and I knock it down half a star because of the issues that trouble the playing experience.

YIIK is an RPG that likes a lot of things from better RPGs but doesn't seem to understand why they like them. As such, this game incorporates lots of RPG elements, sometimes cheating off another game's work.

YIIK has a large roster of party members you can choose from, though several characters aren't really good in combat, generally unimportant in the story, or just like, aren't developed beyond several shallow traits. Refer to anyone who isn't Alex, Vella, or kind of Rory. It has minigames in its combat like other better games, but some minigames take much too long to do, are boring to play, or just aren't worth using like, at all. It also has dungeons, as RPGs often do, however they can feel bloated at times with puzzles that are either too easy, pointlessly tedious, or completely stupid. There's also overworld items you can use to get rid of obstacles around you or traverse land, think Mother 3's wall staples, though it kind of forgets about these partway through after getting the first one or two and so it just gives you like three at once after a while which is pretty funny.

YIIK's story is kind of interesting on paper, but then kinda gets lost in itself halfway through the game. Though, the game seems to act like that's kind of the point because the world is falling apart. Once you get past Vella's dungeon the game's story just kinda goes completely south in my opinion.

I also really don't like Alex's characterization. I know he's supposed to be an unlikable asshole and that's his thing, but like he just kind of stays that way? Like there are scenes that show he questions his actions but he can just like, not care, it's admittedly pretty funny. I also don't know why anyone hangs out with him at any point since he's always like this but I digress, I can suspend my disbelief. What I don't like is how the game doubles back on this with like zero warning, where Alex becomes a bleeding heart who regrets all the horrible things he's said and done to everyone and takes it upon himself to be the hero after finally learning his lesson. And that would be fine, but he just like doesn't progress, like, at all. Like the writers want you to feel for this guy who's done nothing but be a self-centered prick to everyone and anyone, and obviously no one wants to feel bad for a dickhead like that, so the writers just kind of, pretend he's a changed man? Either he's an asshole for the rest of the game, or he has a believable arc. pick a lane.

There's lot's of controversial stuff in the game's story too (See Golden Alpaca, Semi Park's death, Michael, and more stuff I probably forgot) but I don't much feel like indulging it more than I have to.

If anything, I respect how dedicated the devs are to fixing this game more than anything, 1.4 footage that's been released seems genuinely enticing. In its current state though, I'd treat it more like a gruesome trainwreck. Stay away from it unless you're dying to see how bad it gets. Wait for a sale though.

Killer7 is a game I thought I was going to hate. Prior to playing this game I had sectioned it off in my brain as a game for pretentious assholes, one with an overly esoteric plot and with gameplay that is designed to be tedious, as a sort of meta-commentary at the expense of the player. Still, I decided I should take the plunge and got it for dirt cheap on sale. I went in expecting to dislike the game, but from the moment I killed that first Mother Smile with Dan's charge shot, I was completely hooked.

Every ounce of Killer7 oozes this deeply unique, unflinchingly bold charm. When Killer7 says something, it does so without stuttering. Someday, I'd like to write a longer piece on the greater details of Killer7's narrative. Instead, I'm just gonna gush about all the different things that I love about this game.

I love every single member of the titular Killer7. Each member has totally distinct designs and gameplay types, and I got pretty even use out of each character. Garcian, Coyote, and Dan were the standouts for me, but that doesn't make the other characters bad by any means. From what I've seen online, everyone comes out of Killer7 with differing favorites. I love the aesthetic of this game, from its beautiful cel-shaded graphics to its "futuristic" UI design. Every little bit of design in this game feels intentional, which in turn makes it very satisfying to dissect and consume. I shockingly loved the on-rails shooter gameplay of Killer7, and found it viscerally satisfying to play through. I even loved the filler text in this game. When Coyote uses his ability to jump, the text reads "The Eagle has landed on the roof", or when you use a ring it goes, "(Ring name) howls". It's just the extra effort to characterize even the most basic of actions that made me completely enamored with this game.

If there's anyone out there who may be on the fence about this game like I was, I implore you to give Killer7 a try. I will be thinking about this game for a very long time.

Cute little Game Boy platformer released in '92 featuring a cute and round protagonist? Yeah this is coincidentally quite a bit like Kirby, but Sunsoft made it and it has an extremely Sunsoft soundtrack that absolutely rips and could be in a game where everything isn't quite this adorable.

Your little round boy has a few transformations they can do whenever, letting you swim in one case and fly in the other, and there are also a handful of temporary transformations you can use by eating fruit powerups. None of this actually matters beyond looking charming. And they do, with loads of sprites and animation and just amazing charm for a GB title. But I beat the whole game before I knew the flying mode even existed, and the flower ability is an actual detriment most of the time it appears.

None of that matters. Trip World boldly asks us: why does a game need enemies? Why can it not simply have friends? A plurality of the enemies are either nonthreatening or close enough that I didn't notice, and this is good because your kick move has like zero range. You just hang out and enjoy how lovely everything is and then get roasted by the handful of actual challenges. One of them is the final boss, which is a huge difficulty spike! Also, there's no continues, but the level select code is both easy to pull off and very generous. In this way I think the game's reputation for being easy is a little overblown: it IS easy but you won't actually clear it in 20 minutes unless you use the cheat code.

I dunno that you should buy whatever clown car special edition that Limited Run is dreaming up but the game is very nice. Imagine if we got as many of these as we have Kirbys. God that would kick ass.