I hate to join in on the "oh god the cover arts are so bad" debacle that seems to spring up once every two weeks, but I'd really like to shake the hand of the guy who photoshopped this for a whole night and still decided to leave just enough empty space as to constantly set off my "that's shit" artist sense.

2/28 Update for Context: They changed this to something more acceptable, even if I hate the offscreen Magna Centipede tail, but originally it was artwork for this Nintendo Power poster I assume because the person didn't feel like trying to make the actual cover fit here. It looked stupid as shit.

I don't know why but this game right here i love unconditionally, more than i should.

The story while simplistic (We are only stopping the bad guy) is loaded with fun, charm and wit throughout the cutscenes and character interactions and is also surprisingly deep for a game like this, touching on themes such as Slavery, communism, Human Trafficking, Death, slavery, fascists and racism all without no dialogue. I'm not even joking, all of these themes are shown to us in the game which i respect as it shows that Kids Games and Platformers can cover all sorts of topics.

Gameplay wise, De Blob is very Simple, you paint! That's the game. It's probably it's biggest strength and weakness to be honest, it's simplicity. It's a game that can be enjoyed due to it's simplistic nature of painting things but i can see why it doesn't stick for everyone due to being a bit too simple and not really having much variety outside of a few new enemies and invincibility power-ups. However, in my opinion De Blob manages to be very fun throughout due to it's fun missions, level design and presentation. You're given 4 mission types by the 4 main characters, Prof wants you to destroy a landmark, Arty (Your most frequent mission bringer) wants you to paint certain landscapes with certain colours, Zip wants you to collect a few orbs in a small time limit and Bif focuses on Simplistic yet fun combat with the many Inky enemies that the game throws at you. All of these combined with some of the most simple yet fun levels I've played in a platformer due to feeling like you're taking back the radiant City of Chroma City one "step" (i don't know what to call Blob's movement lol, i guess roll would work, anyway) at a time using powers such as your own Blobness, the helpers in the Colour Underground and the Transformers, while initially i wasn't a fan of the same level themes, it slightly grew on me due to feeling like you're taking back a City that feels lived in, you're going through places such as a Hotel, Dam, A Docklands, A National Garden and more which in my opinion while i would rather have a bigger variety of stages each unique, having this amount of worldbuilding is an admirable and great effort that i haven't seen much in mainstream Platformers in the 2000's other than Super Mario Sunshine. You also have a variety of things to do in the game such as earning either a Bronze, Silver and Gold Medal in each stage, painting everything including billboards, Blimps and Trees, Opening Each Gate to progress, playing each mission, liberating every single Raydian in an stage and completing the bonus levels, which are unlocked by the rank you have obtained. The Shorter and more focused bonus levels can be fun but some of them can feel like the other acts from Sonic Colours and can be a bit troublesome due to Blob's heavy movement, though i did complete every single one of them because i want more De Blob lol, but doing all of these will give you some extra content including concept art, bonus videos, awards etc. Final thing i want to note for the Gameplay that i played the Wii version of De Blob which has Motion Controls, while i normally like motion controls these ones do feel a bit tacked one, either you having to shake to defeat enemies or to reestablish a landmark i don't mind these but one i can't stand jumping with the with the Wiimote, it's some unresponsive and gets tiring fast due to the Long Levels, speaking of the long levels, while i don't mind them being longer, i do wish there was saving available after each mission or at least after opening each gate or

Finally, the presentation of this game is Steller, the music is amazing each track is memorable, unique and are overall bops to listen too, highlights being Blissful, Unstoppable and Defiant, and the graphics are pretty good for the Wii being at a crispy smooth 60fps with a unique and stylised look for everything not really seen in many platformers before.

Overall, De Blob is simple, fun and unique and while it has many shortcomings, it does the 3 things i mentioned so well that it's a game i recommend to anyone at all ages.

I don't hate Gone Home. The "eh" score I have for this doesn't have anything to do with politics or the infamous history the gaming community and journalists have with it, even though at this point it's incredibly difficult to separate the two. I was a dumb kid back at the time this game was the cool hip thing to dump on, but didn't really have a say on any of it back then because I didn't play it which I get the feeling is still the case for a lot of the weirdos who still take the time out of their day to complain about this game.

My issues with Gone Home, playing it for the first time now in 2021 and trying to separate it from everything surrounding it and just playing it for what it is, is more just that I'm playing it in 2021. Gone Home probably isn't the first walking simulator game ever made, but I'd call it notable for being the one that made the genre well known and more approachable for other developers to create. The house is a character all on its own and I think the game re-creates that feeling of just wandering your own home at night with the lights off. It feels alien and unknown despite being your own home where nothing is going to hurt you. The place feels believable despite the clear small indie game budget that was responsible for making it, mostly thanks to just how you can mentally build the image of this family and their dynamic through each room and the little details inside of them.

I think the problem I have with Gone Home is just that the actual main plot thread, the one that's told through the audio journals, is just okay. It's nice LGBTQ+ rep, especially when considering this released during what was still like the peak dude-bro 360 era days, but it's also written almost as if the reveal is a "twist" which is something that so many other games of the genre these days have done far better with handling.

There's not very many other mechanics to the game besides just exploring the house which could be fine on one hand, but also again by 2021, so many other games in this genre have figured out other ways to let the player interact with the story and environment. Even just a few small puzzles to ponder and solve would've added so much more to Gone Home and let the player connect even closer to this setting and characters.

Gone Home also just kind of ends after (kind of unsuccessfully) throwing the player for a loop in the main story. You discover the secret and that's it, the game's done. It feels anti-climactic and that not a whole lot was really accomplished. It's not that I find Gone Home bad per se, I just think it's very okay. It's underwhelming compared to the likes of something like What Remains of Edith Finch which I consider my gold standard these days for these kinds of games. I'm happy that Gone Home set the groundwork, but I don't have a reason to ever give it another look after playing it.

As a prelude, Chrono Cross is my favorite game of all time and I think that it's functionally a perfectly-realized work of art. You can read an abstraction of my thoughts on the game proper here.

As for the remaster itself, looking at it purely as a repackaged and enhanced version of my favorite game... I've got some mixed feelings about it! As a rule of thumb I think that there's never anything wrong with an underappreciated work of art getting more accessibility and reaching a wider audience, but at the same time I kind of wish that this port was undertaken with more care, love and tact than it actually was. The big elephant in the room is the framerate: as beautiful as Chrono Cross is the game simply does not run well, often bottoming out at around 10 FPS during more cinematic and graphically intensive visuals. I'm used to this and so nominally it doesn't bother me, except that it's much, much worse when playing with the remastered graphics enabled. During summon animations or late-game element animations the game would crawl to less than 5 FPS, and some of the final dungeons were only barely playable because of how clunky and slow the maneuverability of the characters were.

I don't really think I like the new art, either - a lot of the original art has lost some of its trademark ambiguity (for example Serge's somewhat uncertain, hesitant expression and empty eyes are gone in favor of a more all-loving smile, complete with direct eye contact) and there are a few design revisions I'm not fond of like color schemes or detail work... but the one that really bothers me is that there's a criminal case of whitewashing going on for a lot of the characters. Chrono Cross's setting of El Nido is based on a mish-mash of different Central American and Southeast Asian countries (which one might be able to describe as a bit questionable in and of itself, admittedly) and so it makes sense that a large portion of the characters have darker skin tones, including major characters (Serge himself is even a bit on the tanner side, in spite of being a Square Enix protagonist)... and so naturally it makes sense that they're pretty much all made bone-white in the remaster's sprites, often and even at the expense of color schemes or what actually looks good. Furthermore a lot of the new sprites just look bad, and the horror of a certain character's appearance in the original is now just comedic as if they were deliberately trying to sanitize the game's undercurrent of darkness. In general there's something to say about valuing a unique and cohesive visual direction over what just looks "good," with regards to the original pixel-art portraits and low-polygon models...

...whose HD replacements do look quite good, I'll admit. Serge's model having an ever-present scowl is a particularly nice touch that I think befits his character, for example. I also think that the upscale-filtered backgrounds look remarkably good on a Switch's handheld screen, even if they don't look nearly as nice on a TV.

As for the quality-of-life changes, like the superpowers and encounter toggle... I don't know, they all seem a bit unnecessary to me. Chrono Cross isn't a particularly hard game save for the end stretch, and it's even less difficult if you sit down and learn how to use its unique deck-building battle system (and it's a good battle system! This game might have a strong anti-violence message and be unafraid of portraying the horrors that armed conflict brings unto innocent bystanders, but damn, brutality sure is fun when you card-gamify it!), and the game also already has so much quality-of-life features built into it that a lot of JRPGs still haven't caught up with! Being able to run away from any battle at any time to heal and switch up your equipment, enemies mostly being completely avoidable on the map, leveling being handled by leveling up your entire party when you beat a boss as opposed to anything resembling EXP or grinding, the Smith Spirit letting you forge weapons anywhere in the world as opposed to having to go to a store to do it... Chrono Cross really does everything it can to make you have as pleasant of an experience as possible, and adding even more on top of that just feels... unnecessary. (Especially because the power boost option seems to just max out your Elements charge? I don't know, I didn't mess around with it much). I also think the ability to disable encounters in a game about the inevitability of conflict is a bit puzzling, especially since encounters aren't hard to avoid if you want to, and sticking the time shifter in your inventory at the beginning not only feels lazy but de-incentivizes a New Game Plus replay.

Still though, this is Chrono Cross! It's my favorite game and I won't pretend like any of these issues kept me from being drawn into it even more intensely than my first playthrough, with every single allusion to the themes, ideas and messages I’d understood it to be about on my first playthrough further cementing the fact that this is indeed my single favorite game. I didn’t care about the poor FPS or questionable gameplay additions when I was standing up in front of my TV maneuvering my way through the game’s hardest boss, or getting chills when I found something I didn’t notice in a previous playthrough that further proved how tight-knit its storytelling and beliefs are. It certainly didn’t stop me from sniffling and wiping a few teardrops out of my eyes at the ending.

Do I think there are better ways to experience Chrono Cross? Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Preferable method is on a good, overclocked emulator running at native resolution with CRT Royale. But is it ever a bad thing to have my favorite game available to just pick-up-and-play if my endless rambling has gotten a friend into it who doesn’t care about any of that shit and just wants to see what all the fuss is about?

No, I don’t think it is. And even then, it made me so happy to see my favorite game get what felt like the recognition and love it deserved. Call me a sap but I teared up like a little baby booting this up for the first time and seeing the new art of all the party members set against Dreams of the Past, Memories of My Soul (a fantastic piece that perfectly captures the game’s feel and is a welcome late addition to its soundtrack).

It's a bit hard to go wrong with Radical Dreamers (the adventure game that acts as a sort-of-interquel-sort-of-prequel-sort-of-side-story to Chrono Cross), since it's an absolute miracle that it's available in any capacity, much less officially! I think I do prefer the original fan translation a bit more, but it's ultimately just a matter of taste... and how about that new ending, huh!?

The gamer intelligentsia have led me astray. Mass Effect 3’s ending is relatively alright (heavy emphasis on “relatively”) – it’s near enough everything else that’s the problem.

Enough time and post-release patches have passed now that its stronger aspects have started to overshadow its shortcomings, which to an extent isn’t without merit. Intergalactic supersoldier Shepard no longer struggles to breathe after jogging for three seconds and has learned how to dodge roll, making movement less restrictive in general. The game makes full use of his enhanced agility through a legitimately great enemy roster which sports all sorts of new dynamic behaviours, whether it be homing projectiles or lunging attacks or setting up turrets to create chokepoints on the fly. Feedback on attacks is probably the most cathartic it’s ever been, in no small part thanks to power combos, which also go some way toward making the RPG mechanics feel the most relevant they’ve been since the original.

You might notice that that’s all to do with combat, which is because it’s about the only respect in which ME3 isn’t an unequivocal step back from its predecessors. The already simplistic dialogue wheel’s stripped down even further, the player barely having any control over what Shepard says most of the time and the middle option often being axed in the few instances where you do. This kind of railroading wouldn’t be so egregious if Paragon and Renegade choices weren’t as polarised as they are; alternating between the two within the same conversation feels akin to a series of mood swings, with Shepard going from Aslan one moment to Judge Holden the next, now with no in-between. No part of the game better illustrates how poor a roleplaying avatar Shepard has become than the fact that you can choose to murder a longtime friend, doom his billions-strong race to extinction and proceed to lie about it in the most aloof tone possible, only to then have to sit through PTSD-induced nightmares over the implied off-screen death of some kid he’d only seen for the first time a few minutes prior.

The impressively lame Kai Leng and the inability to shove him into a locker would be enough to dock several points on its own, but many of the other side characters aren’t inspiringly handled either. I laughed when a certain somebody died in the main quest’s finale, not because I particularly disliked him, but because of the contrast between Shepard’s mournful head shake and my trying to remember what his name was. Tali’s Joss Whedon-isms feel similarly misplaced aboard a ship controlled and staffed by hostile AI in the midst of a battle for the fate of her species. Ashley and Liara continue to suffer from essentially becoming different characters in each game of the trilogy, though Javik is a saving grace and his deconstruction of the latter’s naive preconceptions about his people is about the only personality she’s afforded. James also exists, supposedly, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise given that you can’t actually speak to him or anyone else anymore once you’ve exhausted all the dialogue they’re generously granted for whichever point in the main quest you’re at.

I praised the combat earlier, but no amount of bolted on, marginal improvements can offset how woefully uninteresting the scenarios you fight through are. Prior to the release of Dragon Age II, someone at Bioware was infamously misquoted as saying they “want the Call of Duty audience,” but what's on offer here doesn't feel far removed from this hypothetical philosophy. Much more often than in either of the prior games, control’s wrestled away from you for such invigorating setpieces as sliding down a small pile of rubble, the stakes these are obviously trying to communicate rendered inert by how it’s impossible for you to be in danger during them. Just about every situation, from making your way down to the hideaway of ancient sub-aquatic alien giants to aiming missile batteries at the weak point of a starship, is solved through wave-based survival sequences in square arenas that wear out their welcome within the first hour. The return to Omega is the epitome of this sort of design, and a microcosm of ME3 in general, because for all intents and purposes it’s not actually Omega – it’s a series of linear shooting galleries that happens to look like Omega, with all the merchants, quest givers, decision-making and everything else resembling an RPG snuffed out.

It’s staggering how dreary the first few parts of this game manage to be considering it opens with a full scale invasion of Earth, but I caution against wanting it to be over with as soon as possible like I did. As a result, I skipped a certain sidequest, not initially knowing that they’re effectively just excuses to catch up the cast of ME2, and it led to one character making a reappearance as a standard, unaltered enemy who happens to share her name and reuse that one voice clip from ME1. It’s so shoddy I like to imagine it’s intentionally so, to really drive home what a punishment for lazy players it is, but even this rationalisation can’t shake the feeling that I would’ve preferred nothing at all.

I’ve written before about how I prefer to avoid negativity unless I can use it to highlight something else I care for, and I hold to that – cynically tearing down somebody else’s hard work is as effortless as it is exhausting, both to do and to read. But nothing’s made me appreciate what lightning in a bottle ME1 was quite like experiencing firsthand how hard its potential was fumbled. From the HUD, to the composition of your squad, to the ending’s attempt to bring back ME1’s focus on organic vs. synthetic life (for which I give it credit), ME3 is drenched in the feeling that it really wants to be ME1 again. I wish it wasn’t, because I’d rather just replay that instead, even knowing where it leads to.

I should go.

This review is about the collection as a package rather than the individual games. It's been nearly 10 years since I played this trilogy and it's been an absolute joy being able to relive them. I had forgotten many parts of them and not played all the DLC so having it all in one package? Couldn't be happier.

To start, all 3 games have been enhanced though to varying degrees. Each game plays extremely smoothly now with a near solid 60fps, increased resolution and textures for a really high level of performance and image quality all around. Mass Effect 1 especially had a complete overhaul needing it more than the others with completely new visuals in a lot of areas, improved lighting and the integration of later higher quality models from Mass Effect 3 brought into it. The changes here are frankly, huge. Mass Effect 2 and 3 haven't had quite the same attention though your Shepard character model is at least consistent for all three titles now. There have been other more subtle tweaks to user interface, controls etc. to enhance the overall experience and some slight moments of slow down I experienced in Mass Effect 1 in a couple of places aside they look and play better than they ever have.

The collection has all previously released DLC, mostly. It's missing one smaller piece of content for Mass Effect 1, Pinnacle Station as the source files for that were corrupted after initial release preventing it though it's not key content fortunately. All other DLC content has been included in the package big or small including armour packs, additional characters, weapons and quests supplying a huge amount of additional game.

My only complaints about this collection are that despite the obvious effort put into remastering the games, (which is the important part I fully acknowledge) the overall package feels threadbare on additional content. I would have liked to have seen more museum type extras like other remasters and collections include like concept and character art, a music gallery, history of or interviews with developers. A little disappointing. Additionally Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has been cut from the collection and whilst in most cases I'd be happy about that I seriously loved the co-op mode and would have loved to play through it with friends again.

Small gripes aside, this is the best way to play these three games now visually, performance wise and content wise (mostly). A celebration of one of the best trilogies in gaming. as a collection it could be better but it's a small complaint in what was clearly a surprising amount of effort and the first Electronic Arts game I've bought in literally years.

+ Games look and play brilliantly.
+ Mass Effect 1 improvements especially notable.
+ Nearly all content for the trilogy included in one package.

- Lack of extras.
- No Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.

Let's ride into the sunset together.

The mere existence of this remains as a modern-day miracle in regard to the developmental resources it was given; at no more than a year and a half, Obsidian was designated the task to develop a 50 hour experience (later expanding to ~70 hours with its four main expansion packs) on an engine they had little familiarity with. The liberal axing of storylines and hiring of community modders that assisted in reverse engineering Gamebryo, among other workarounds, were required to barely reach its release date.

What follows then is a journey that, even with more than a decade of bug fixes (official and unofficial), still stands out as janky in ways that either negatively impact the experience or only stand as signs as to the short timespan Obsidian was given. The Strip, though cut down to three separate sections, continues to lead the Gamebryo engine to buckle and stutter. Mods and script extenders cannot fully prevent the crashes that occur and makes the presence of a quicksave hotkey almost critical to trudge through them. NPCs may not trigger key events that are required to finish quests (“You’ll Know It When It Happens”' acts as a textbook example of this issue). Pieces of unimplemented side quests, including NPC names and odd locations, can be found strewn across the Mojave.

Yet, the allure hasn't worn off for me, even if I don’t quite feel pulled by its core story. Post-apocalypse goes beyond the immediate and lands in an environment where its presence isn't an overwhelming menace, even as traditional power structures endure; New Vegas renews hopes for the average wanderer desiring to find prosperity beyond survival while the mythicism of Elvis and Sinatra is fanatically studied in an attempt to re-establish a middle ground between total domination and subjugation in the Mojave. The Mojave is not re-defined by the bomb, with its tumbleweeds still blowing across amber-yellow sand, but rather by what those seek out of America, whether it is the ecological maw of Vault 22 or the cross-species harmony of Jacobstown. Cowboy-mythicism and destiny remain encouraged, but the dreams of the Mojave take higher ground; normal life feels somehow close to being realized even in the harshness surrounding it. What’s left in order to achieve it isn’t to be completed by a heir to legends, but a stranger with no ultimate expectations other than the inevitability of the Mojave tugging their feet away into barren land again.

Unlike the earlier big Nintendo release of Legends Arceus this year (which left me somewhat disappointed), I could tell Kirby and the Forgotten Land has the sauce. 10 minutes in, Kirby was back, and still had all the charm of the old games while taking a grand step forward.

Kirby translating from the 2D/2.5D platformer to a straight 3D platformer seems almost effortless. It's still Kirby at its core; you go around sucking up things to gain copy abilities to become this super powered puff ball of destruction. To add on to this, in this strange forgotten land riddled with the vestiges of widespread commercialism and consumerism, Kirby can interact with foreign artifacts such as cars and traffic cones to essentially embody their structure in what is called "Mouthful Mode," and use these artifacts as analogous to vehicles in other 3D platformers. It's a really nice way of breaking up the pace of the standard gameplay to introduce some quirky and silly mechanisms inbetween. And of course, as par for the course, there are also a lot of collectibles you'll want to snag, namely your captured buddies the Waddle Dees, as they'll expand your home base and give you more things to mess around with. Some of those improvements are great (a fishing minigame? Sign me up no questions asked) but other improvements are more questionable (a golden statue for all the Waddle Dees? Really?). Most are hidden not so discreetly and you'll find them just by peeking around the screen, and that's fine, it's Kirby. The more annoying ones are hidden objectives such as "don't take damage during this fight" or "defeat this boss with this specific ability," and cost me a lot of time; I wish those objectives were just disclosed earlier so I wouldn't have to restart the entire level. Some parts of levels (particularly some Mouthful Mode sections) can be restarted with a blue warp star, and I appreciate that; just wish that was more present on some of the missable objectives.

Atmosphere's always a big part of Kirby games, and that's captured pretty well here as well. You've got this abandoned, rustic world that Kirby and his friends have been marooned upon, and it's up to you and Bandanna Dee to navigate the horrors of shopping malls and Indy 500 racetracks to make it back to Pop Star! Forgotten Land manages to introduce nostalgia through a wild and once populated universe that's somehow even more lively yet more dangerous than before, but still has that classic Kirby cutesy charm thanks to the absolute joy of wandering around the vibrantly colored world around you with Kirby's various antics. I'm not expecting Nier Automata levels of devastation here, so I'm glad that Kirby knows when to hold back and still approaches everything while leaving a big dumb smile on your face.

I'm quite a fan of how the boss battles play out too. Introducing the 3rd dimension into Kirby gives you a lot more freedom on how to approach boss battles, and in particular, legitimizes and strengthens the classic bait and punish model, just with more directions on how to bait and punish. This is further emphasized because there's actually a nice dodge-roll mechanic; dodge-roll at the perfect time when your enemy is attacking, and time slows down temporarily for your foe, giving you a lot of time to reposition and inflict a ton of damage upon the boss. Sure, it's nothing ground-breaking in the realm of 3D action adventure, but it's a very welcome addition to Kirby games, and it definitely feels very satisfying and rewarding pulling it off.

Now having said all that, there are some very obvious areas for improvement. Firstly, I'm automatically taking off a star for being locked at 30 FPS over 60 FPS. Yes, I get it, people would prefer to play stable 30 FPS over unstable 60 FPS with dips, but this is 2022 goddamn it and we have the technology, I have to draw the line at some point. Game feel is really dependent upon how smoothly a game plays out, and frame rate is a huge part of that. Kirby's platforming (especially in 3D) would feel so much more satisfying at a higher frame rate, and it's even more important in boss fights, when perfect dodge rolling earns you so much leeway and you'll need all the frames you can get to react and exploit that defensive option. That's not even mentioning that the game will inevitably tank its frame rate when tons of foilage and background backdrop objects have to be rendered in frame or there's tons of action on screen, even though it's still locked at 30 FPS. I'd be perfectly okay taking a resolution downgrade option (or less intensive graphical fidelity) for a higher frame rate, similar to how a lot of PS4/PS5 games handle this.

And secondly, I agree with a lot of earlier reviews (particularly BeachEpisode's review) that as solid as the transition from 2D to 3D has been for Kirby, Forgotten Land feels a bit... rudimentary at times. Environmental puzzles aren't very complex, because you've only got 12 copy abilities to deal with (and that includes Sleep, the joke ability). I appreciate being able to upgrade their forms and power with Rare Stones, but it's still a noticeable downgrade from the complex movesets present in Kirby's Return to Dreamland, Planet Robobot, and other past Kirby games. Not that there's anything too horrible with spamming one or two of the same attacks from copy abilities, but more depth is always appreciated when it's just fun abusing all the options at your disposal. As a result, some of the levels in later worlds can drag on a little bit when you get a bit tired of using the same attacks and solving the same puzzles over and over. There's only so much they can do with what's available to them in the game, and it's not particularly difficult finding the hidden collectibles and devices needed to free your buddies and gain more scrolls.

At any rate, Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a chill time. I played this to forget about life for a while and play as the ever lovable big eyed big mouth puffball, and more or less got what I wanted; it's a very pretty and well animated game (I'm looking at you, Legends Arceus...) with a relaxing soundtrack and engaging boss battles. I'm looking forward to HAL innovating upon the tech demo that they've put down here; here's to a bright future for an old childhood franchise.

Pac-Man's limited run of platformers or "Pac-formers" as i like to call them has been very hit or miss, the only one that I'd say is up to par with other Platformers is possibly Pac Man World 2 without 100% the game, World 1 is decent albeit poorly aged and World 3 is a classic 2000 mess despite it's writing being surprisingly funny and the Ghostly Adventures games while serrviceable, feel generic and don't use Pac Man's character to his strengths and also have awful production values.

This is where Pac Man World: Repac comes in, a remake of the first world game now modernized for modern consoles, the game showed a lot of promise when first shown but i did have some reservations after the Klonoa remasters had some backlash along with other recent remakes.

I'm glad to report this remake not only improves on an original game but is a pretty decent time like the first. There are some issues but i feel Repac shows an insane amount of promise if this is way that the world games can be ported.

Going on a tangent here, the original Pac Man World games with maybe the exeception of Pac Man World 2 can't be ported due to using Ms Pac Man which has some weird legal jargon, and now is replace with Pac-Mum which i gotta be honest, isn't a good design but is a small price to pay to have these games on modern consoles.

In terms of being a remake, this game looks and feels great! What surprised me is that the game actually has a performance mode on switch that runs at a lower resolution but runs at 60fps so that's nice, but the remake's artstyle is really good, I love a lot of the new designs except Pac-Mum, it's bright and colorful while also staying true to the original game, they did redesign Pac's Family and some Bosses along with changing cutscenes/level environments but a lot of them are for the better, like for example, if you don't save all his family members which are now optional to save, the original ending plays of Pac Man eating Orson which is now framed as the bad ending, the new ending follows the new cutscene where they celebrate the party but now the ghosts are there, wholesome.

Despite how good of a remake it is, there are some issues, they removed the fake bloopers as a 100% reward, they changed the power pellet ability so now Pac-Man grows big for some reason and the bonus mazes are still annoyning, however i think the good outweighs the bad such as the new hover power-up, new cutscenes with Toc-Man introducing the bosses, better and smoother controls, songs remain faithful to the original game while also improving on the sound design of the game as a whole and the best change, Bosses are now a lot more fair, gone is the one hit BS from Toc-Man'a final Boss and the annoying Anubis feels fun to fight due to the new platforms on ground, hell they even added some pinch modes to some other unremarkable Bosses in the game, making them more memorable, as far as remakes go this is good as it's gets.

The game however is decent enough, it follows Pac Man as he journeys through Ghost Island from an robotic imposter (Toc Man) as he saves his family after they're captured from his surpise Birthday. What makes Pac Man World great is Pac's movement, collecting items such as the fruits or PACMAN letters and level design, they use his design to it's fullest potential, though not to the extent of Pac Man World 2, Pac can butt bounce, roll and throw pellets he can collect. You also have Mazes which can be unlocked by collecting a certain fruit in a stage, the mazes aren't really that fun unfortunately, they rely way too heavily on gimmicks which hurst them heavily since they're pretty unprediactable most of the time.

Level design wise, this game is decent enough, it's not going to shake up the genre but is servicable enough and uses Pac-Man's abilities very well, it throws enough gimmicks such as racing, revving and using some of the power-ups in the game such the totally not stolen from Mario power-up the metal pellet, used for water sections.

This would be the part of the review where I'd listed some flaws but since the remake fixes most of them, i don't have many! In the original game some Bosses had some pretty unfair moments and the controls and camera (especially in the Racing sections) feeling off but a lot of these are thankfully fixed.

Overall, Pac Man World Repac is a great remake of an already solid game, it shows what a remake should do and does have some the pitfalls of some remakes such as unneeded fluff/changes but more than makes up for the fixes it does do and having a great artstyle, the Pac is actually back and I couldn't be happier.

I'm not here to tell you Drake of the 99 Dragons is "actually good" or anything dumb like that. I have no doubt that whatever nightmare got released on the Xbox was probably as bad as people said it was. But I have to admit, in regards to the version of this game currently on Steam, I can't say I really had that bad of a time! It starts out extremely rough and annoying, but once you unlock the slowing down time mechanic and the health recovery (yes, you have to unlock the ability to pick up health objects), this game becomes so much more manageable and actually kind of fun, sometimes intentionally, usually in how dumb it is. Watching Drake contort his body to point his guns at whatever is being shot while wallrunning on the side of a couch, it's a beautiful thing to witness. The plot is also just completely inane, pure 2000s sci-fi action slop, and the voice acting on Drake himself makes every cutscene worth watching.

I would say the sweet spot on this game is everything from getting the slow time power to right before the beginning of this game's version of Xen from Half-Life (yes, really). Everything before and after is mostly just miserable, and the bosses are also usually pretty bad, but overall this was a fun thing to experience. The game only really takes about four hours to beat. No checkpoints in levels can be rough, but thankfully levels tend to be short. Maybe pick it up when it's on sale if you're curious about these kinds of trainwrecks the way I am.