BlazingWaters
5619 Reviews liked by BlazingWaters
Tales of Arise
2021
i dont know a shit about tales games but this has women and i like women so its good
Tales of Arise
2021
my buddy killbutt (he's the biggest tales fan in the world) told me it's the best game he's ever played. normally I wouldn't believe him (he's the biggest tales fan in the world), but he's friends with kanye west, and I really liked his work in the sopranos. so I'm inclined to agree; tales of arise is the greatest game in the
In a perfect world, Tales of would have died with Symphonia and Star Ocean would have been the franchise to survive and prosper.
No, I will NOT take my medication.
In a perfect world, Tales of would have died with Symphonia and Star Ocean would have been the franchise to survive and prosper.
No, I will NOT take my medication.
Tales of Arise
2021
Well, we've found it. It's taken scientists and game developers decades and thousands of games of toil, but here it is. The exact middle of the road.
Arise is the perfect game for namco to release in the landscape of 2021. Extremely conventional, easy to digest storytelling which is just trope after trope, put together with a level of polish that other games haven't been able to achieve(COUGH deathloop COUGH), and has enough good elements and good enough marketing to catfish the local RPG fan into thinking they're getting next final fantasy or at least the next xenobalde.
Ok maybe that's a little rude. It's a competent game. Most notably, the combat is pretty good. It's well animated, has a great flow, and making long combos with various arts and boost break moves is good fun, though its very easy to fall into the same combo patterns (Especially since launchers are so ridiculously good on the MC), and any enemies that arent bosses are particularly unchallenging. But particularly with the different party members on offer it's pretty good. It's about on the same level as the modern Ys games albeit with less in the way of challenge and variety.
It's also a very pretty game. Character models in particular are fantastic and so are effects, and adapt an anime style into very high fidelity quite well. There's particularly nice details on little things, notably character eyes and clothing that just looks really nice.
And right there, i've ran out of remarkable things to say about Tales of Arise. The story and setting are so... bland and have nothing to them, particularly in the early hours that I just glaze over. Your amnesiac protagonist works with your pink-haired tsundere waifu who has a fancy fire sword to kill some lads, each of which resides in these tiny lands with no character or theme beyond "fire world, ice world".
The only real curveball Arise throws towards being the most boring thing ever is its slavery and racism (?) angle, which could have been and maybe does turn into a complete trainwreck down the line but by the time i was tuning out mostly boiled down to mistrust and some very tame stuff so its mostly just uninteresting and conventional. Count the times someone doesn't trust someone because they're renan of dahnan or whatever and then never proceed to poke the concept any further than that.
This is excepting the one thing, which is that the slaves in the first chapter, who are ostensibly mining for materials, are actually getting legitimately harvested for their will/life essence/magic by being beaten down... or something. It's some pretty damn charged imagery I feel they go with and I'm not sure if the devs recognise this. You eventually go and kill the bad dude and the sucked up will turns into a dragon or something and tattacks both of you and then you stop the dragon made from the power of the will of the oppressed by sucking up the energy into your waifu's fire sword.
Now that could be really fucking wild (though not neccessarily good or nuanced), but the emphasis in the game is never on it and it doesnt even seem to make those connections. So when i say "you suck up the manifestation of the life energy of an opressed people into your waifu sword,", whilst that's legitimately just connecting plot points, the game seems thorougly disinterested in it and you're immedietly onto the next bad dude woo!
And that's Arise in a nutshell. Making suggestions at being something more interesting every now and then but far more interested in being palatable, tropey, and digestible. It has absolutely no rough edges, nothing actually interesting to hook onto. And hey, I get that comfy, conventional JRPG plots like this can be nice to chill out to, but this game makes Atelier Ryza look daring.
The combat is good and it is pretty and it's consistently competent. But that's kind of all it is.
Arise is the perfect game for namco to release in the landscape of 2021. Extremely conventional, easy to digest storytelling which is just trope after trope, put together with a level of polish that other games haven't been able to achieve(COUGH deathloop COUGH), and has enough good elements and good enough marketing to catfish the local RPG fan into thinking they're getting next final fantasy or at least the next xenobalde.
Ok maybe that's a little rude. It's a competent game. Most notably, the combat is pretty good. It's well animated, has a great flow, and making long combos with various arts and boost break moves is good fun, though its very easy to fall into the same combo patterns (Especially since launchers are so ridiculously good on the MC), and any enemies that arent bosses are particularly unchallenging. But particularly with the different party members on offer it's pretty good. It's about on the same level as the modern Ys games albeit with less in the way of challenge and variety.
It's also a very pretty game. Character models in particular are fantastic and so are effects, and adapt an anime style into very high fidelity quite well. There's particularly nice details on little things, notably character eyes and clothing that just looks really nice.
And right there, i've ran out of remarkable things to say about Tales of Arise. The story and setting are so... bland and have nothing to them, particularly in the early hours that I just glaze over. Your amnesiac protagonist works with your pink-haired tsundere waifu who has a fancy fire sword to kill some lads, each of which resides in these tiny lands with no character or theme beyond "fire world, ice world".
The only real curveball Arise throws towards being the most boring thing ever is its slavery and racism (?) angle, which could have been and maybe does turn into a complete trainwreck down the line but by the time i was tuning out mostly boiled down to mistrust and some very tame stuff so its mostly just uninteresting and conventional. Count the times someone doesn't trust someone because they're renan of dahnan or whatever and then never proceed to poke the concept any further than that.
This is excepting the one thing, which is that the slaves in the first chapter, who are ostensibly mining for materials, are actually getting legitimately harvested for their will/life essence/magic by being beaten down... or something. It's some pretty damn charged imagery I feel they go with and I'm not sure if the devs recognise this. You eventually go and kill the bad dude and the sucked up will turns into a dragon or something and tattacks both of you and then you stop the dragon made from the power of the will of the oppressed by sucking up the energy into your waifu's fire sword.
Now that could be really fucking wild (though not neccessarily good or nuanced), but the emphasis in the game is never on it and it doesnt even seem to make those connections. So when i say "you suck up the manifestation of the life energy of an opressed people into your waifu sword,", whilst that's legitimately just connecting plot points, the game seems thorougly disinterested in it and you're immedietly onto the next bad dude woo!
And that's Arise in a nutshell. Making suggestions at being something more interesting every now and then but far more interested in being palatable, tropey, and digestible. It has absolutely no rough edges, nothing actually interesting to hook onto. And hey, I get that comfy, conventional JRPG plots like this can be nice to chill out to, but this game makes Atelier Ryza look daring.
The combat is good and it is pretty and it's consistently competent. But that's kind of all it is.
Kao the Kangaroo
2022
Alright, let’s try this one more time.
Kao the Kangaroo is a reboot of the original mascot 3D platformer series that started in 2000 with its original trilogy. It never sold that well to my knowledge (and having played the original, I think I can more or less make out why), which is why in the wake of the era of the 3D platformer revival, I actually was quite surprised that this got greenlit and announced for release this year. I basically bought the reboot day 1 on Steam back in May, and gave it my best go, but the game was a buggy mess upon release; there were a ton of reports of some users (not all, but enough to where the outcry took up almost all of the Steam Community Forums for the game) suffering from save corruption, where after entering the second world, the game would refuse to save any further progress, meaning that those players would have to beat the game all in one day without any crashes. I called it quits at that time, and wasn’t sure when I’d pick it back up (no chance for a refund, having played more than 2 hours)… well, until today, when my crippling brain disease of wanting to 100% as many games as possible on Steam kicked in. So I ran through the whole thing in a single day, and how does it hold up now?
Honestly, you could take my description of the original game (“an aggressively mediocre mascot 3D platformer”) and put it in the context of the indie 3D platformers of new, and that’s basically this game. You play as the Kao the Kangaroo, hopping around to defeat this evil immortal spirit that has possessed once venerable martial arts masters and turned them into pawns of commercialization and resource exploitation, and find his sister who’s run away from home to find their father who disappeared and since everyone’s kind of incompetent, you’re the only hope that’s left. I’m not going into any further detail than that, as the story’s world building is rather banal and I don’t really think there’s anything memorable of note about any of the characters whatsoever; all you need to know is that you are a kangaroo that can punch things really hard and the big bad are possessing everyone so they can be rich and famous and take over the world and stuff.
You travel around four worlds of mostly linear levels, with a boss in each world as well that you have to beat up so they too can have their own moment where they hold their head in their hands sitting down slumped while going “what have I done????!!!?!!111?!” The original Kao was more or less described by some as a Crash Bandicoot clone, and that’s fortunately not really the case here; there are some divergent paths that will lead to the “KAO” letters as collectibles as well as Eternal Wells that are basically the Time Rifts from A Hat in Time but bad. That's because they’re all really dark and cramped and serve no purpose other than to get a few coins and some diamonds. It’s pretty by the books 3D platforming otherwise; you run down corridors, jump over some gaps and up some cliffs, punch a lot of enemies, run down more hallways, break a lot of crates and barrels for that sweet sweet coin, you get the idea. The two main wrinkles here are that you’ll eventually get elemental powerups for your gloves for environmental interactions (i.e. use the Fire powerup to melt ice and burn spiderwebs) and there are spirit crystals that you can punch to temporarily activate dark crystal platforms.
Now, onto the bad:
-Despite having fixed the save corruption glitch, the game is still very, very bugged and has some pretty poor programming at times; it’s hard to tell which is which. There are the silly glitches of course, like boxes and crates not breaking into pieces when you punch them and then suddenly disappearing, or audio glitches such as when the background music will just stop playing or when no sound effect plays upon picking up a KAO letter. But those are small potatoes compared to the more damaging glitches; for example, there’s still a notable bug in Frosty Canyon where if you use the trampolines at any time (whether to collect coins or to quickly travel to a previous area from a hidden path) the ground slam attack stops working, as in you can input the action and it won’t come out. This softlocks the level because you need the ground slam to freeze water to push blocks along the ice, so as a result this was a level reset for me and cost me about half an hour or so. Similarly, there’s a glitch in the second to last level where a platform was already activated via the fire powerup slam but was stuck in place for some reason, so I couldn’t progress further down the level and had to again reset. And of course, there were multiple instances where I got stuck between several unbreakable objects (or in one case, near the end of the second to last level, phased through the wall of an unbreakable crate in the last room and couldn’t get out) and had to again, reset my level progress. Looks like there’s still a lot of debugging to be done!
-The hitboxes and hurtboxes of objects and enemies are rather wonky; there are a ton of instances where I was standing right in front of a checkpoint pole and punching it for coins/health, where my first two hits would contact the checkpoint pole but the third hit would often completely miss for no apparent reason. This also happens a lot while using the aerial tail spin attack, which would often phase right through enemies despite seemingly contacting their models, or how while mashing the attack button, attacks would randomly miss to the left or right of the models while hits inbetween would land. Also, sometimes enemies fail to disappear on time when their health is fully depleted and will still hit you with lingering attacks/hitboxes despite being downed.
-Combat generally still feels good enough, even with the aforementioned bugs/poor programming, but it’s a bit too mindless. You can just mash the attack button to punch spam your way through, and then hit the slow-mo slam button (not to be confused with the manual aerial ground slam) when your meter has built up enough thanks to enough consecutive hits. Even while taking some hits, there are enough I-frames to where this mindless strategy will beat everything in your path, since the slow-mo slam will take out most enemies near you or stun them long enough to where they’re basically helpless to be punched until they disappear, and you’ll often get hearts from defeating enemies anyways to recover health.
-On that note, this game is pretty damn easy, and not in a good way; you’re incentivized to collect permanent health powerups (collect 4 and gain the ability to take another hit), and the game is constantly throwing extra life collectibles and heart drops in all the levels. You can also punch the checkpoint poles every time you get to a new one to get a heart drop. As a result, I was often at or near full health, and had over 24 extra lives by the end of the game, with maybe only 3 actual in game deaths and I didn’t even need to purchase any extra lives for 500 coins.
-Gems are supposedly the rarer collectible when compared to coins, given how you often need to throw yourself into more danger (i.e. over pits of lava, spike traps, etc) to collect them. But they don’t even do anything! I was never able to find any way to redeem them for rewards (whereas you can at least buy costumes/permanent health upgrades/extra lives with coins), so while there’s a counter tracking how many gems you’ve found per level, they just sit there and exist.
-The grappling hook momentum physics are the absolute worst. When holding onto a grappling hook, you’ll swing back and forth as expected, but sometimes when you let go of the grappling hook at the end of a swing, Kao turns 90 degrees to the left/right and launches in that direction or at times will even launch away from the apex of the swing. So I often had to grab onto the grappling hook again to correct my drift, and that isn’t a surefire solution either because Kao inconsistently turns or will not turn around on a regrab (you can’t rotate the way you’re facing or your direction of swing while hanging onto a grappling hook either) and sometimes may have been propelled far away enough to where a regrab is out of range. This is the only part of the game that I would consider “difficult” because I could not find a consistent way to get off of grappling hooks as I’d like, and would constantly propel into walls or depths; even when I’d say it was doable, I’d often have to correct against the inconsistent drift by tilting the joystick in the other direction, and would barely land on the platform.
-I’ve made fun of the story/worldbuilding/characters already, but the voice acting as part of this package is atrocious. I get not having the budget to hire a localization team to get dedicated voice actors for English or other languages, but the current voice actors sound very inexperienced at best and extremely forced/stilted at worst and will quip a generic NPC dialogue line every minute or so as you progress further through a level. The bland dialogue lines unfortunately made me care even less about what was going on to drive the plot forward.
-There are a bunch of other bugs that I haven’t even addressed which have been found by other users; I’m not sure if these have been fixed since then, but considering that the latest post hasn’t been addressed by the developers, I would suggest you err on the side of caution.
I dunno, I think the reboot is at least a better product and more fun to play than the original Kao the Kangaroo from 2000 (a very low bar, I’m aware), but after 100%ing it myself, I can’t actually think of any reason to recommend this over A Hat in Time or Psychonauts 2. The characters are all boring, the story feels rather inconsequential, the NPCs don’t even change their dialogue after beating the boss in each area or the final boss so your actions feel like they have no impact, I barely felt challenged or engaged despite being the target demographic, there are bugs galore yet not a single danger noodle to be found in the land down under… I could go on and on, but ultimately I think this is one of the 3D platformers of all time, and that is unfortunately the nicest thing I can say about it.
Kao the Kangaroo is a reboot of the original mascot 3D platformer series that started in 2000 with its original trilogy. It never sold that well to my knowledge (and having played the original, I think I can more or less make out why), which is why in the wake of the era of the 3D platformer revival, I actually was quite surprised that this got greenlit and announced for release this year. I basically bought the reboot day 1 on Steam back in May, and gave it my best go, but the game was a buggy mess upon release; there were a ton of reports of some users (not all, but enough to where the outcry took up almost all of the Steam Community Forums for the game) suffering from save corruption, where after entering the second world, the game would refuse to save any further progress, meaning that those players would have to beat the game all in one day without any crashes. I called it quits at that time, and wasn’t sure when I’d pick it back up (no chance for a refund, having played more than 2 hours)… well, until today, when my crippling brain disease of wanting to 100% as many games as possible on Steam kicked in. So I ran through the whole thing in a single day, and how does it hold up now?
Honestly, you could take my description of the original game (“an aggressively mediocre mascot 3D platformer”) and put it in the context of the indie 3D platformers of new, and that’s basically this game. You play as the Kao the Kangaroo, hopping around to defeat this evil immortal spirit that has possessed once venerable martial arts masters and turned them into pawns of commercialization and resource exploitation, and find his sister who’s run away from home to find their father who disappeared and since everyone’s kind of incompetent, you’re the only hope that’s left. I’m not going into any further detail than that, as the story’s world building is rather banal and I don’t really think there’s anything memorable of note about any of the characters whatsoever; all you need to know is that you are a kangaroo that can punch things really hard and the big bad are possessing everyone so they can be rich and famous and take over the world and stuff.
You travel around four worlds of mostly linear levels, with a boss in each world as well that you have to beat up so they too can have their own moment where they hold their head in their hands sitting down slumped while going “what have I done????!!!?!!111?!” The original Kao was more or less described by some as a Crash Bandicoot clone, and that’s fortunately not really the case here; there are some divergent paths that will lead to the “KAO” letters as collectibles as well as Eternal Wells that are basically the Time Rifts from A Hat in Time but bad. That's because they’re all really dark and cramped and serve no purpose other than to get a few coins and some diamonds. It’s pretty by the books 3D platforming otherwise; you run down corridors, jump over some gaps and up some cliffs, punch a lot of enemies, run down more hallways, break a lot of crates and barrels for that sweet sweet coin, you get the idea. The two main wrinkles here are that you’ll eventually get elemental powerups for your gloves for environmental interactions (i.e. use the Fire powerup to melt ice and burn spiderwebs) and there are spirit crystals that you can punch to temporarily activate dark crystal platforms.
Now, onto the bad:
-Despite having fixed the save corruption glitch, the game is still very, very bugged and has some pretty poor programming at times; it’s hard to tell which is which. There are the silly glitches of course, like boxes and crates not breaking into pieces when you punch them and then suddenly disappearing, or audio glitches such as when the background music will just stop playing or when no sound effect plays upon picking up a KAO letter. But those are small potatoes compared to the more damaging glitches; for example, there’s still a notable bug in Frosty Canyon where if you use the trampolines at any time (whether to collect coins or to quickly travel to a previous area from a hidden path) the ground slam attack stops working, as in you can input the action and it won’t come out. This softlocks the level because you need the ground slam to freeze water to push blocks along the ice, so as a result this was a level reset for me and cost me about half an hour or so. Similarly, there’s a glitch in the second to last level where a platform was already activated via the fire powerup slam but was stuck in place for some reason, so I couldn’t progress further down the level and had to again reset. And of course, there were multiple instances where I got stuck between several unbreakable objects (or in one case, near the end of the second to last level, phased through the wall of an unbreakable crate in the last room and couldn’t get out) and had to again, reset my level progress. Looks like there’s still a lot of debugging to be done!
-The hitboxes and hurtboxes of objects and enemies are rather wonky; there are a ton of instances where I was standing right in front of a checkpoint pole and punching it for coins/health, where my first two hits would contact the checkpoint pole but the third hit would often completely miss for no apparent reason. This also happens a lot while using the aerial tail spin attack, which would often phase right through enemies despite seemingly contacting their models, or how while mashing the attack button, attacks would randomly miss to the left or right of the models while hits inbetween would land. Also, sometimes enemies fail to disappear on time when their health is fully depleted and will still hit you with lingering attacks/hitboxes despite being downed.
-Combat generally still feels good enough, even with the aforementioned bugs/poor programming, but it’s a bit too mindless. You can just mash the attack button to punch spam your way through, and then hit the slow-mo slam button (not to be confused with the manual aerial ground slam) when your meter has built up enough thanks to enough consecutive hits. Even while taking some hits, there are enough I-frames to where this mindless strategy will beat everything in your path, since the slow-mo slam will take out most enemies near you or stun them long enough to where they’re basically helpless to be punched until they disappear, and you’ll often get hearts from defeating enemies anyways to recover health.
-On that note, this game is pretty damn easy, and not in a good way; you’re incentivized to collect permanent health powerups (collect 4 and gain the ability to take another hit), and the game is constantly throwing extra life collectibles and heart drops in all the levels. You can also punch the checkpoint poles every time you get to a new one to get a heart drop. As a result, I was often at or near full health, and had over 24 extra lives by the end of the game, with maybe only 3 actual in game deaths and I didn’t even need to purchase any extra lives for 500 coins.
-Gems are supposedly the rarer collectible when compared to coins, given how you often need to throw yourself into more danger (i.e. over pits of lava, spike traps, etc) to collect them. But they don’t even do anything! I was never able to find any way to redeem them for rewards (whereas you can at least buy costumes/permanent health upgrades/extra lives with coins), so while there’s a counter tracking how many gems you’ve found per level, they just sit there and exist.
-The grappling hook momentum physics are the absolute worst. When holding onto a grappling hook, you’ll swing back and forth as expected, but sometimes when you let go of the grappling hook at the end of a swing, Kao turns 90 degrees to the left/right and launches in that direction or at times will even launch away from the apex of the swing. So I often had to grab onto the grappling hook again to correct my drift, and that isn’t a surefire solution either because Kao inconsistently turns or will not turn around on a regrab (you can’t rotate the way you’re facing or your direction of swing while hanging onto a grappling hook either) and sometimes may have been propelled far away enough to where a regrab is out of range. This is the only part of the game that I would consider “difficult” because I could not find a consistent way to get off of grappling hooks as I’d like, and would constantly propel into walls or depths; even when I’d say it was doable, I’d often have to correct against the inconsistent drift by tilting the joystick in the other direction, and would barely land on the platform.
-I’ve made fun of the story/worldbuilding/characters already, but the voice acting as part of this package is atrocious. I get not having the budget to hire a localization team to get dedicated voice actors for English or other languages, but the current voice actors sound very inexperienced at best and extremely forced/stilted at worst and will quip a generic NPC dialogue line every minute or so as you progress further through a level. The bland dialogue lines unfortunately made me care even less about what was going on to drive the plot forward.
-There are a bunch of other bugs that I haven’t even addressed which have been found by other users; I’m not sure if these have been fixed since then, but considering that the latest post hasn’t been addressed by the developers, I would suggest you err on the side of caution.
I dunno, I think the reboot is at least a better product and more fun to play than the original Kao the Kangaroo from 2000 (a very low bar, I’m aware), but after 100%ing it myself, I can’t actually think of any reason to recommend this over A Hat in Time or Psychonauts 2. The characters are all boring, the story feels rather inconsequential, the NPCs don’t even change their dialogue after beating the boss in each area or the final boss so your actions feel like they have no impact, I barely felt challenged or engaged despite being the target demographic, there are bugs galore yet not a single danger noodle to be found in the land down under… I could go on and on, but ultimately I think this is one of the 3D platformers of all time, and that is unfortunately the nicest thing I can say about it.
im marathoning kirby because i have no fucking life goals to fulfill and this series is the only ray of light i can still grab onto before i lose my sanity
that being said this game fucks in a way triple deluxe can only dream of and (popular opinion) this is possibly one of the most enjoyable and remarkable kirby game in the entire series and im saying this even if i go for and will always go for kirby return to dreamland over everything and possibly prefer forgotten land but this was a damn good time
this plays as every damn kirby game since the dawn of time BUT with everything good introduced in triple deluxe plus 300% and it works beautifully . 3d environments and mechanics look amazing and make for some top notch platforming . every copy abilities ever is basically here (even tho water was switched for Poison™ but i just imagine its because the whole point of the game is technology polluting popstar so even copy abilities and therefore enemies arent exempt from all this) and the MECHA OOOOOOOOOF THE FUCKING MECHA
im not a mecha enthusiast but i was damn close to become one after playing this because its so fucking good to use it and experiment with its new copy abilities and what not and since the game is basically centered around this new mechanic you better like it
anyway i enjoyed the characters quite a bit and also meta knight ʕ♡ᴥ♡ʔ is here so its absolutely required for me to love this game and the final fucking boss fight oh god ive never played starfox but thats probably the closest i will ever get to playing that series i mean its not magolor or fecto elfilis but its a fine ass boss fight nonetheless and the music is a banger in this one too but basically its impossible for a kirby game to have ugly OSTs like its a universal law or something
anyway i said everything i already said in every other kirby review so i will just go back to watch my cute little pink son play around with his mecha toy a little bit more because he deserves everything good in this world
omg mobile suit kirby
that being said this game fucks in a way triple deluxe can only dream of and (popular opinion) this is possibly one of the most enjoyable and remarkable kirby game in the entire series and im saying this even if i go for and will always go for kirby return to dreamland over everything and possibly prefer forgotten land but this was a damn good time
this plays as every damn kirby game since the dawn of time BUT with everything good introduced in triple deluxe plus 300% and it works beautifully . 3d environments and mechanics look amazing and make for some top notch platforming . every copy abilities ever is basically here (even tho water was switched for Poison™ but i just imagine its because the whole point of the game is technology polluting popstar so even copy abilities and therefore enemies arent exempt from all this) and the MECHA OOOOOOOOOF THE FUCKING MECHA
im not a mecha enthusiast but i was damn close to become one after playing this because its so fucking good to use it and experiment with its new copy abilities and what not and since the game is basically centered around this new mechanic you better like it
anyway i enjoyed the characters quite a bit and also meta knight ʕ♡ᴥ♡ʔ is here so its absolutely required for me to love this game and the final fucking boss fight oh god ive never played starfox but thats probably the closest i will ever get to playing that series i mean its not magolor or fecto elfilis but its a fine ass boss fight nonetheless and the music is a banger in this one too but basically its impossible for a kirby game to have ugly OSTs like its a universal law or something
anyway i said everything i already said in every other kirby review so i will just go back to watch my cute little pink son play around with his mecha toy a little bit more because he deserves everything good in this world
omg mobile suit kirby
Scramble
1981
My experience with Scramble revolves around numbers for better or worse. Firstly this game coming out in 1981 making it one of the few titles I've played actually older than me. It's one of Konami's earlier games when transfering from their former business of making jukeboxes.
Secondly is the time I spent playing it. This game is immensely short, essentially 1 level split into 6 sections. Each section has a distinct theme or enemies detailed in bright pinks, reds and greens of that early era, it's what the chips could put out colour wise. The entire game takes maybe 15 minutes to beat once you understand to keep track of your fuel and how to weave through the buildings in the final area. I however, trophy hunter that I am needed to beat it around 7 times as two trophies associated with it on the Konami Arcade Classics Collection involve getting 100,000 and 150,000 points. Each time you beat the game though you only get 20,000+ then start again with your score.
So most of my time playing this was just point counting whilst thinking about numbers playing on automatic. As for the game itself, I actually kind of like it. It's incredibly simple, extremely short but still kinda fun. Nothing frustrating but nothing that stand out either.
One thing that was hilarious to me is in an interview with Kengo Nakamura the designer of Gradius/Nemesis he talks about how the idea of that was to make a game following on from Scramble. When he tried Scramble in the Konami office he thought: "Man what's with this difficult game!"
Then proceeded to make Gradius, which is infinitely harder. If you can't beat them, join them I guess?
Secondly is the time I spent playing it. This game is immensely short, essentially 1 level split into 6 sections. Each section has a distinct theme or enemies detailed in bright pinks, reds and greens of that early era, it's what the chips could put out colour wise. The entire game takes maybe 15 minutes to beat once you understand to keep track of your fuel and how to weave through the buildings in the final area. I however, trophy hunter that I am needed to beat it around 7 times as two trophies associated with it on the Konami Arcade Classics Collection involve getting 100,000 and 150,000 points. Each time you beat the game though you only get 20,000+ then start again with your score.
So most of my time playing this was just point counting whilst thinking about numbers playing on automatic. As for the game itself, I actually kind of like it. It's incredibly simple, extremely short but still kinda fun. Nothing frustrating but nothing that stand out either.
One thing that was hilarious to me is in an interview with Kengo Nakamura the designer of Gradius/Nemesis he talks about how the idea of that was to make a game following on from Scramble. When he tried Scramble in the Konami office he thought: "Man what's with this difficult game!"
Then proceeded to make Gradius, which is infinitely harder. If you can't beat them, join them I guess?
When you're in a dungeon in Skyward Sword, you're probably having a great time! This game's dungeons are some of the best in the series. Consistently well-designed with unique puzzles and really intriguing theming, there's very few hiccups along the way.
When you're not in a dungeon in Skyward Sword, you probably want to stick your head in a fucking beehive.
The novelty of motion control combat in this game wears off REAL quick. If it's even responding then it does feel cool to be in somewhat real-feeling swordfights with enemies, but eventually every Bokoblin being an at least 30 second encounter gets as tired as your arms will. Every basic enemy in this game is more trouble than it needs to be because of the amount of waiting you have to do with your arms outstretched for them to lower their guard or change their position so that you can actually hit them. Every. Single. Enemy. In this game is so much more tedious and time-consuming to fight than they need to be because of the way that the game is designed around its core gimmick of motion control combat.
There's a lot to like about Skyward Sword! Its environments are gorgeous and its characters perhaps more likeable and fleshed out than any other Zelda game. The music is unsurprisingly great and its locales - while often very "samey" when compared to other games in its series, are sometimes far more imaginative than its contemporaries as well. I'm thinking Skyloft, The Ancient Cistern, The Sandship etc.
There is also a lot to not like about Skyward Sword. Namely, almost all of the moment-to-moment gameplay. If motion control combat didn't pad the game out enough, how about dowsing?, which requires you to point your Wiimote at the screen and effectively use it like a metal detector, listening for beeps to tell you when you're close to something the plot demands you find in areas that are way too big for this to be remotely fun?
What about random fetch quests and minigames thrown at you in quick succession on the critical path in the game's latter half to ensure it doesn't end too soon? Minecart sections, stealth sections, swim underwater and collect a bunch of fucking musical notes because fuck my life sections, have you ever tried an underwater motion control collectathon before? Until this game, no, you probably haven't, because you're not a masochistic degenerate, but I'll spoil it for you - it's not fun!
On the subject of "not fun", how about that boss fight with The Imprisoned? Ha, yeah...Jeez. Glad that's over.
Sure would be a shame if the game...
MADE YOU DO IT THREE TIMES
AND MADE IT LONGER AND MUCH MORE AGGRAVATING WITH EACH REPEAT FIGHT
Of all the things Fi, the game's "helper" incessantly butts in to tell you, I really wish she'd given me a heads up about this so I could mentally prepare myself and find a nice beehive much sooner. If people think Navi from Ocarina of Time was "too much" then hoo baby, you ain't seen nothing yet. Fi is home invader levels of intrusive, Zelda has never come CLOSE to having a helper as annoying, overbearing and often outright insulting to your intelligence as this. A literal cutscene will play to show you a chest materialising in the room you are currently already standing in and before you can even move she pops up to tell you;
"MASTER. I DETECT A 95% PROBABILITY THAT A CHEST HAS APPEARED NEARBY!"
FUCK OFF.
This game would have been really cool were it not so irredeemably unfun. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably not that bad as a game on its own, but when you look at how consistently good the rest of the Zelda series is, it's kind of a black mark.
When you're not in a dungeon in Skyward Sword, you probably want to stick your head in a fucking beehive.
The novelty of motion control combat in this game wears off REAL quick. If it's even responding then it does feel cool to be in somewhat real-feeling swordfights with enemies, but eventually every Bokoblin being an at least 30 second encounter gets as tired as your arms will. Every basic enemy in this game is more trouble than it needs to be because of the amount of waiting you have to do with your arms outstretched for them to lower their guard or change their position so that you can actually hit them. Every. Single. Enemy. In this game is so much more tedious and time-consuming to fight than they need to be because of the way that the game is designed around its core gimmick of motion control combat.
There's a lot to like about Skyward Sword! Its environments are gorgeous and its characters perhaps more likeable and fleshed out than any other Zelda game. The music is unsurprisingly great and its locales - while often very "samey" when compared to other games in its series, are sometimes far more imaginative than its contemporaries as well. I'm thinking Skyloft, The Ancient Cistern, The Sandship etc.
There is also a lot to not like about Skyward Sword. Namely, almost all of the moment-to-moment gameplay. If motion control combat didn't pad the game out enough, how about dowsing?, which requires you to point your Wiimote at the screen and effectively use it like a metal detector, listening for beeps to tell you when you're close to something the plot demands you find in areas that are way too big for this to be remotely fun?
What about random fetch quests and minigames thrown at you in quick succession on the critical path in the game's latter half to ensure it doesn't end too soon? Minecart sections, stealth sections, swim underwater and collect a bunch of fucking musical notes because fuck my life sections, have you ever tried an underwater motion control collectathon before? Until this game, no, you probably haven't, because you're not a masochistic degenerate, but I'll spoil it for you - it's not fun!
On the subject of "not fun", how about that boss fight with The Imprisoned? Ha, yeah...Jeez. Glad that's over.
Sure would be a shame if the game...
MADE YOU DO IT THREE TIMES
AND MADE IT LONGER AND MUCH MORE AGGRAVATING WITH EACH REPEAT FIGHT
Of all the things Fi, the game's "helper" incessantly butts in to tell you, I really wish she'd given me a heads up about this so I could mentally prepare myself and find a nice beehive much sooner. If people think Navi from Ocarina of Time was "too much" then hoo baby, you ain't seen nothing yet. Fi is home invader levels of intrusive, Zelda has never come CLOSE to having a helper as annoying, overbearing and often outright insulting to your intelligence as this. A literal cutscene will play to show you a chest materialising in the room you are currently already standing in and before you can even move she pops up to tell you;
"MASTER. I DETECT A 95% PROBABILITY THAT A CHEST HAS APPEARED NEARBY!"
FUCK OFF.
This game would have been really cool were it not so irredeemably unfun. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably not that bad as a game on its own, but when you look at how consistently good the rest of the Zelda series is, it's kind of a black mark.
Definitely has its problems in the dungeon and world design departments but its charm is irresistible. Awesome soundtrack and art style, one of the best Zelda stories, and good characters. While Ocarina of Time was about growing up, Wind Waker is about being forced to grow up. You aren't "the chosen one", you aren't inhabiting some kind of magical fairytale world, and your call to action wasn't from a talking tree. Your sister was captured, the world is flooding, and your grandmother is spiraling. What's left of Hyrule has gone to absolute shit (and you didn't even need to set foot in a temple of time), and now it's your job to fix the colossal mess that the older generation created? You had to prove your worth as a hero not because it was your destiny, but because nobody else would step up. It's graphical style was seen as unpleasant when the original game released in 2002. And I think that reaction mirrors the way Wind Waker attempts to unlearn generational patterns of selfish inaction and mediocrity. We've come to appreciate this game's artstyle nowadays, and applaud Aonuma and co.'s progressiveness and willingness to bring change. And I believe those lessons can be applied to our own lives. The kids are alright - you don't need to be the "chosen one" to change the world.
Also, I'm gonna say it. The final scene in this game where link kills ganondorf is cooler than the one in twilight princess. Rawest moment in video games.
Also, I'm gonna say it. The final scene in this game where link kills ganondorf is cooler than the one in twilight princess. Rawest moment in video games.
im generally weary of the whole meta, self-aware, genre-riffing shtick these days but this is the absolute kindest, most gentle way someone could have the epiphany 'the series i have been working on is legitimately insane and has a target demographic of the most unwell people on the internet' and the MBTI/carrd.co/ao3/(insert niche subculture here) teens all interpreted it in bad faith. imagine going 'so no head?' to a work that fundamentally thinks well of you despite it all
if you hate the ending you're a coward
Mega Man 8
1996
"Hey, Bass! Why must I fight you?! We are not enemies!" - Megaman, speaking to the robot that was created for the sole purpose of defeating him
Megaman 8 is.. just okay, for the most part. I can definitely say there is a ton of charm in its art style and music. The spritework and animations are extremely fluid and so well done, and the toy-like art direction along with the more laid-back OST compared to its NES predecessors gives MM8 a really chill vibe that really sets it apart from its brothers.
..I wish all of that was done in a much better game, though. MM8 is filled with nothing level design that just makes it feel like you're going through the motions, sometimes interrupted by hit-or-miss gimmicks. It can get kinda fun in stages like Aqua Man and Search Man, but then other times I feel absolutely nothing going through these stages, unless MM8 flips a coin and decides instead of boredom it decides to make me suffer. I saw a glimpse of hell and it was called Wily Stage 1. I do like how the decision to split the game into two halves means the developers could take advantage of the Robot Master weapons you gained in the first half, though. Stages like Search Man makes neat use of it. Mini-bosses and regular bosses in this game also don't fare much better, with them being so easy to take down it's not even funny. You can absolutely wail on bosses like Frost Man and Sword Man and take them down in no time flat.
It's a shame, it really is. I desperately wanted to like this game as it caught my eye visually, but all I got was a game that just left me so, incredibly bored. Megaman 7's level design and boss roster feel so well done, that MM8 just feels like a total disappointment in comparison. Even moreso when I remember it came out the same year as Megaman X4.
Megaman 8 is.. just okay, for the most part. I can definitely say there is a ton of charm in its art style and music. The spritework and animations are extremely fluid and so well done, and the toy-like art direction along with the more laid-back OST compared to its NES predecessors gives MM8 a really chill vibe that really sets it apart from its brothers.
..I wish all of that was done in a much better game, though. MM8 is filled with nothing level design that just makes it feel like you're going through the motions, sometimes interrupted by hit-or-miss gimmicks. It can get kinda fun in stages like Aqua Man and Search Man, but then other times I feel absolutely nothing going through these stages, unless MM8 flips a coin and decides instead of boredom it decides to make me suffer. I saw a glimpse of hell and it was called Wily Stage 1. I do like how the decision to split the game into two halves means the developers could take advantage of the Robot Master weapons you gained in the first half, though. Stages like Search Man makes neat use of it. Mini-bosses and regular bosses in this game also don't fare much better, with them being so easy to take down it's not even funny. You can absolutely wail on bosses like Frost Man and Sword Man and take them down in no time flat.
It's a shame, it really is. I desperately wanted to like this game as it caught my eye visually, but all I got was a game that just left me so, incredibly bored. Megaman 7's level design and boss roster feel so well done, that MM8 just feels like a total disappointment in comparison. Even moreso when I remember it came out the same year as Megaman X4.
Kingdom Hearts III
2019
I've been dwelling on a review of this game for basically the whole year. It's a pretty similar case to my review for The World Ends With You for how I struggled to get all my thoughts out on text. The difference here is that, rather than having it be due to an effort to convey everything about the game and what it means to me that I can possibly fit into a 10+ page thesis, my struggles with reviewing Kingdom Hearts III came from the fact that I genuinely had no clue where to begin approaching this game from. Should I go over how brilliant so much of this game is? Well no, cause for all of its great elements, there's a bunch of other problems that get in the way. Should I start it from the angle of how rough the base game is? Well no, since the inverse is also true that there's so many brilliant elements to this game that I can't just discredit. Should I insert some way to say that attraction flows are a garbage mechanic and the game experience is improved by removing them through Pro Codes and Critical Converter? Okay, you get what I mean. So many thoughts about this game have been spiraling around in my head for so long, so I'm just going to write this as a series of scattered thoughts. I won't get to everything I can talk about, but I feel like going into everything would burn me out all over again. If there's any way I can start it, it's what separates this recent playthrough I did from the past times I've played it: critical mode.
Earlier this year I played KH2 Final Mix on Critical Mode for the first time, and it was mostly a fantastic experience. It really showed me the beautifully intricate elements of KH2's design and how well they come together for an excellent action game experience. The experience even elevated KH2 to my top 5 of all time. Did the same apply to KH3 for me?
No. Quite the opposite, actually.
KH3's early game on critical mode is an absolutely miserable experience. You aren't well equipped to handle a lot of what the game throws at you and you'll often get one-shot or two-shot if you're lucky by projectiles with poor visibility, made worse by how it limits your options by the way it shortens the MP bar. For most of the game, Critical Mode served to expose me to more of the game's faults than it did make me appreciate the game's design, the complete inverse of what KH2's did for me. The experience does improve more and more as the game goes on, and I do think it ends up being worth it for the tension they add to the boss fights in Re:Mind, but the early game experience is so bad that I have a much harder time recommending that someone play on Critical.
Alright, now that I got all of that system, I want to move on to talking about other aspects of the game's mechanics. To start off with, I think that KH3 has the best traversal and world design that the series has seen yet. It's like the perfect middle ground between how KH1 and 2 handle it. KH1's world design had a lot of freeing and open exploration, but traversing it was often dreadful. KH2's was the opposite, where your means of traversing it are far more enjoyable, but the feeling of exploration left a lot to be desired. KH3 gives us the best of both worlds in this regard. Movement and traversal options are the best they've ever been, especially due to the implementation of flowmotion into Sora's moveset, and the game's worlds are very intricately designed, offering a lot of immersive and distinctive environments while also providing incentives to explore all over the place. My favorite example of this is The Caribbean, where you get to go across a whole open sea filled with islands with all sorts of nooks and crannies to look through. Hell, Port Royal alone has more to look around and find than some worlds in 1 and 2. There's less worlds total to go through this time, but I think their approach of quality over quantity really paid off.
The worlds also narratively pay off really well for the game's themes. For a while I was struggling to find a distinctive theme that ties the worlds together, like the theme of identity present in all of the worlds for KH2. I was initially going to go for the angle of the game's themes of loss and acceptance was prevalent in most of, but not all of them. However, I came to realize that the KH3 worlds' thematic ties aren't about drawing ties to a broader theme, but rather Sora as a character. Many of the events in the Disney worlds he experiences mirror parts of his journey, like how the Tangled world mirrors his optimism and excitement for exploring worlds past Destiny Islands, or how the ending of the Caribbean mirrors the choice he has to make at the end of this game. It's woven pretty brilliantly into Sora's character arc of learning to find his own strength and resolve to move forward.
I think KH3 is a really brilliant game despite the many, MANY faults it has to its name. Pre-ReMind combat is really rough around the edges, but it makes up for it by the inclusion of great mechanics like airstepping and keyblade forms that could be expanded upon pretty well in later titles. The story is incredibly disjointed and messy as a conclusion to the Xehanort saga, but it gives Sora the most compelling arc he's had as a character. Despite everything going against it, I can't bring myself to not love this game to some degree.
Earlier this year I played KH2 Final Mix on Critical Mode for the first time, and it was mostly a fantastic experience. It really showed me the beautifully intricate elements of KH2's design and how well they come together for an excellent action game experience. The experience even elevated KH2 to my top 5 of all time. Did the same apply to KH3 for me?
No. Quite the opposite, actually.
KH3's early game on critical mode is an absolutely miserable experience. You aren't well equipped to handle a lot of what the game throws at you and you'll often get one-shot or two-shot if you're lucky by projectiles with poor visibility, made worse by how it limits your options by the way it shortens the MP bar. For most of the game, Critical Mode served to expose me to more of the game's faults than it did make me appreciate the game's design, the complete inverse of what KH2's did for me. The experience does improve more and more as the game goes on, and I do think it ends up being worth it for the tension they add to the boss fights in Re:Mind, but the early game experience is so bad that I have a much harder time recommending that someone play on Critical.
Alright, now that I got all of that system, I want to move on to talking about other aspects of the game's mechanics. To start off with, I think that KH3 has the best traversal and world design that the series has seen yet. It's like the perfect middle ground between how KH1 and 2 handle it. KH1's world design had a lot of freeing and open exploration, but traversing it was often dreadful. KH2's was the opposite, where your means of traversing it are far more enjoyable, but the feeling of exploration left a lot to be desired. KH3 gives us the best of both worlds in this regard. Movement and traversal options are the best they've ever been, especially due to the implementation of flowmotion into Sora's moveset, and the game's worlds are very intricately designed, offering a lot of immersive and distinctive environments while also providing incentives to explore all over the place. My favorite example of this is The Caribbean, where you get to go across a whole open sea filled with islands with all sorts of nooks and crannies to look through. Hell, Port Royal alone has more to look around and find than some worlds in 1 and 2. There's less worlds total to go through this time, but I think their approach of quality over quantity really paid off.
The worlds also narratively pay off really well for the game's themes. For a while I was struggling to find a distinctive theme that ties the worlds together, like the theme of identity present in all of the worlds for KH2. I was initially going to go for the angle of the game's themes of loss and acceptance was prevalent in most of, but not all of them. However, I came to realize that the KH3 worlds' thematic ties aren't about drawing ties to a broader theme, but rather Sora as a character. Many of the events in the Disney worlds he experiences mirror parts of his journey, like how the Tangled world mirrors his optimism and excitement for exploring worlds past Destiny Islands, or how the ending of the Caribbean mirrors the choice he has to make at the end of this game. It's woven pretty brilliantly into Sora's character arc of learning to find his own strength and resolve to move forward.
I think KH3 is a really brilliant game despite the many, MANY faults it has to its name. Pre-ReMind combat is really rough around the edges, but it makes up for it by the inclusion of great mechanics like airstepping and keyblade forms that could be expanded upon pretty well in later titles. The story is incredibly disjointed and messy as a conclusion to the Xehanort saga, but it gives Sora the most compelling arc he's had as a character. Despite everything going against it, I can't bring myself to not love this game to some degree.
Ratchet and his buddy Clank are back, Locked and Loaded going on a new action packed adventure as they venture through the even weirder and more corrupt Bogon Galaxy. Ratchet 2 is a very weird game for me especially since I loved the first game so much, i don't hate it in fact there's a lot to love about this game but there's a few fatal flaws that kept it from being a perfect sequel, I don't know if this game deserves an 7 or 8/10 but i think I'll give it an 7 just due to those good moments really hitting but there's unfortunately many flaws that hurt this game.
Looking at the development of this game, Ratchet 2 was greenlit just months before the original game's release with Visual Production of the world and setting starting in August 2002, The team had one goal in mind: Make it Bigger. They wanted to add so much to the original game while also fine tuning those elements that needed a bit of work in the first game, adding things such as newer and more ambitious Gadgets and Weapons, RPG Elements, more variety, a better and more comedic story. The answer is did they succeed? The answer is Yes and no (but mostly Yes). With only 8 months to develop this game along with doubling up the team it's impressive how well this game managed to be however it does have a few trappings around the 2nd and especially the 3rd Act.
This can be seen in the Story, it perfectly follows up the first game though not as well as Sly 2. Taking place a few months after the first game, Ratchet and Clank are being interviewed by someone (which i headcanon is the same guy from Spyro 1), while Clank is somewhat content with not doing much, Ratchet seems physically and audible disappointed not doing much of worth, luckily he wish of doing something greater as they are quickly teleported to the Bogon Galaxy by a man by the name of Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the founder and CEO of Megacorp who informs the duo of a Thief who had stolen Megacorp's most valuable experiment, The Proto-Pet. The Plot starts really strong, giving "Commando Training" to Ratchet to iron out his character from the first game while giving us 2 Comedic Villains (The Thief and the Thugs of Less Leader) that know how to get shit done to face off, one thing that they wanted to avoid in this game is having the pitfalls of Ratchet's so much so that they decided to quickly recast, I don't get the criticism of Ratchet undergoing an Arc, they may have overdone it a tiny bit but the complaint at the time was aimed at Ratchet having the arc in the first place, which is like complaining about how the Chris Tucker dude from Rush Hour isn't likeable from the start, due to this the character arcs are gone till Deadlocked which is a shame in my opinion since i feel it would have given the characters a bit more edge, but in favour the comedy here is amped up, the first game was funny but this game is on another level, Satirical Humour, Slapstick, 4th Wall Breaking, References etc, It's more of a treat to see these one off characters since you never know what your gonna get, however while the comedy is top tier the story just stops? It's weird after the Desert Planet you find out the thief is a female Lombax (Angela) who I don't really like since after her unveiling she's kinda used as a clumsy plot device and clearly didn’t get enough time to be her own character, and that Fizzwidget is a bit sus after "accidentally" injecting them/crushing their ship and "accidentally" giving them the wrong password. The game also gives some cutscenes of what happened to Qwark after the events of the first game, look if it wasn't clear enough along with Fizzwidget saying "Qwarktastic'', Fizzwidget is Qwark, but you have to wait till the last few minutes to find that out, one of the main reasons why the first game's story worked so well is that it felt so tightly written, every planet had agency and there was a sense of urgency as you progressed. In 2 you have a few stages with little to no story apart from "lol Megacorp is fucked up" then all of sudden something like the duo getting arrested or Angela getting captured, or them confronting Angela and realising they helped the villains, or the Proto Pet meance finally getting released into the world, these are good story moments both comedically and character wise but it takes a while to get to, plus the last 3rd of the game has this dumbass fetch quest of a Gadget only used twice, it just feels like they had all these cool planets and characters they wanted to use but didn't make a compelling story or reason to have them be in the game, like of course the Plumber returns which is cool since he isn't used as the almighty Chekvo's Demigod but they also use the RYNO Vender again from the first game to give you the 2nd flying gadget of the game (oh by the way he's really big now i guess). I feel the Plot could have tighten itself through having the Proto Pet Menace be released way earlier, also there's no Infobots, which was a great way to bridge gaps between Planets organically, Instead the characters either find these Floating Flat Screen LCD TVS or magically pull them out, it feels messy and like they ran out of Plot throughout the game so much to the point where the finale feels rushed with Chekvo's Infobot coming in at the last second, like with this definitely not thought out twist they have the original Fizzwidget come in and says Thank You for releasing me!, now being more posh than Qwark's impersonation but they presented that Megacorp was a rotten company for some time even if we assume Qwark did all those heinous stuff in a matter of a few months (which it wasn't) like they left employees to die in a swamp, drove Gadgetron (the company from the first game) out of business but maybe you could say Fizzwidget had a hard look at himself while inside the closet and evaluated all the bad stuff he did in the past now so it’s okay i guess.
I feel some fixes i would have done would be either keep the Qwark Twist but have it happen either when the duo get stranded in the Desert or when they get arested or just ditch Qwark for the next game since i still think his multi game arc could still work since let's be really he isn't really that funny or even threatening as a villain here since he isn't given the time needed to thrive or maybe tease him at the end of this game like Deadlocked and instead make Fizzwidget the villain like was intended, have Fizzwidget personally tell them that he's the big bad guy before they're arrested and despite the hold he has on the Galaxy, he just wants more money with the Proto Pet and the people of the Bogon Galaxy to respect Megacorp as company even more, present Megacorp as a company that was rotten from the start of the game instead of slowly dripping it any of the NPCs you talk to so resentment to Megacorp but can't do anything due to Megacorp being that Big, make Ratchet fully realise that in his pursuit of wanting to live the glory days, he accidentally helps the Villain fulfil his goal and should have had more light shed on it, realising that he needs to make it right, have this realisation after they get arrested, also in the Desert Stage Ratchet is fulling trusting of Megacorp and Clank is a lot more less distrusting, a sort of role reversal of the first game, and instead of a confused old guy he's more akin to how Drek was in the first game and will do anything in order to get what he wants, including kidnapping Angela or releasing the Proto Pet Meance early. Then at the end of the game we see him through everything at Ratchet, then after the final boss, we have Fizzwidget pleading Ratchet that all he wanted for people to respect his company again as it's been passed from Fizzwidget to Fizzwidget and as his duty he needs to preserve it for future generations, Ratchet lets Fizzwidget go and the ending (set few months after) shows that Megacorp is slowly but surely recovering to its former glory. I think the scenes with the Thug 4 Less Leader with Fizzwidget could show that he's more sympathetic about his actions, making the ending feel a lot more earned. I think that would work better than "Megacorp is bad or is it?" like they kinda discard it at the end for a cheap twist but while i do think my rewrite fixes a lot of the issues of this story, i feel it doesn't really matter? Like you can tell the animators (Yes Animators wrote this and the previous game) wanted to focus on comedy above all else which while is disappointing i can't complain here since the story isn't take as seriously as say the 3 Future games or Sly 4 where critique is warranted but since the comedy is done so well, i feel it shortcomings are sorta made up for.
But in terms of it's presentation, i feel Locked and Loaded keeps the same bar of the original while slightly dropping it, compared to the first game and let's be honest, apart from animation which is just as great as the first game if not more so is slacking compared to its other PS2 contemporaries, not bad by any means but i just find Sly 2 or even Jak 2 to look more aesthetically pleasing, the game looks good but i find more often that the colours look washed out, the game trades the rustic/cyberpunk aesthetics to a more clean and sterile aesthetic and this plus environments make it not as memorable as the first game, like for instance the game's take for Metropolis (Megapolis) is a great level with strong level design and an pretty cool and funny game mechanic of the robotic cleaners topped with some great callbacks, a decent boss and a nice Clank section but pales in comparison to Metropolis in terms of it Vibes and Level design, a lot of areas look great such as exploring an Illegal sky port, a large desert/tundra filled with crystals, the countless of unique factorys/test facilities that Megacorp owns, the beautiful greenary/forest areas, space vegas and even a not as cool "we reuse the first level but harder" thing from Ratchet 1 now with the airship from the beginning, however i feel a lot of the City's apart from Megapolis blend together into one Beige mess that while have great level design, don't do much to differentiate themselves from each other. I think this also goes for music, not bad, some great but mostly forgettable, again I don't have much to say about the Ost of most Ratchet games since they only really fit the mood/atmosphere of the stage and aren't my kind of thing anyway, but one thing that sorta stays same is the Voice acting, Mikey Kelly is replaced with James Arnold Taylor of Johnny Test fame and i think he does a mighty fine job doing his voice though i felt it was bit to far in order to make Ratchet have less of his edge, the voice acting is as good as the first game but there's some standouts like Steve Blum as the Thugs for Less leader, not only is he already a funny character but the delivery absolutely sells it for me, he manages to perfectly balance between threatening and insanely comedic, it's quite a shame he's barely used in the series again since he perfectly does what a Ratchet Villain is suppose to do.
But in terms of gameplay it's kinda like the story, while one core element really works, the rest feel a bit half-baked. When it comes to the moment to moment gameplay in terms of level design and gameplay mechanics Locked and Loaded hits it out of the park and manages to be as good as Ratchet 1 and even better sometimes, the game uses a lot of the same structure as the first game but fully merges both platforming and shooting into one little glorious mix of 3rd Person shooter goodness and some solid platforming, with Ratchet's new tighter movement and strafing it makes combat so much more frantic and controlled, the strategic feeling of the first game isn't lost however since new to this game is Weapon and Nanotech upgrades, While i welcome the Nanotech upgrades with wither fighting enemies or collecting them, i feel the Weapon Upgrades and the weapons themselves could have used a bit more work, I don't want to overwhelming negatives but the Weapons are handled a bit poorly, they only level up once and hell sometimes they completely change the function, like the Lava Gun which while still a decent level up feels way too different from the original use, also don't like how the Slim Cognito Mods you need to seek out and use Raritanium (which isn't very rare by the way). Most of the time however, the Weapon Upgrades come in handy mostly notably the Bouncer which becomes an absolute beast.
But i mean apart from that i don't have much to say about the weapons of Locked and Loaded, a lot use the same tropes from the first game, normal shooting weapons, crowd control, bots, remote control weapons, long shot beam weapons etc. The newer weapon ideas are pretty hit and miss unfortunately, having Gadgetron weapons is nice i suppose but it's obvious they were more for contextual reasons rather than any good feasible reason for gameplay, i found some weapons like the Chopper or Hoverbomb Gun feel like Weapons that were supposed to be in the first game since they feel more fit for that slower strategic gameplay instead since both trade off speed for stronger attacks making them feel insanely situational but other like the Bouncer, Blitz Gun, Zodiac, Pulse Rifle etc really work for this more action packed platformer while also keeping the strategy elements from the previous game intact, but i do have a few issues with the weapons and other RPG aspects of this game, for one i feel levelling them up takes a bit of time, not too much but just enough where there’s the feeling off “When can this level up?”, the other issues with levelling up is how they handled having Weapons, in the first game each weapon was useful throughout from the start right to end with maybe the exception of the Bomb Glove, In 2 first game Weapons are completely useless as the game progressed, while we're not there yet despite me feeling so luckwarm about Ratchet 3 I find how they handled weapons there to be better since they allow for 5 Levels while also balancing older weapons in the first act for other enemies in later stages, again not too huge of a fan of Up Your Arsenal but this is one aspect that UYA actually improves on previous games, but here not only are some Weapons are in danger of being completely outclassed but the encomny and enemy balance of this game is completely wack, sure you get more Bolts from enemies and Boxes since they are now Gold Bolts, this makes the original Gold Bolts to Titanium Bolts now which is neat I guess, but for some reason Bolt prices for Weapons and especially armour (another new RPG mechanic) are insanely expensive, unless you grind with the Maxi Games and Ship games good luck on getting all the Main Weapons in a first playthrough, speaking of Armour while I like the idea of Armour upgrades, again the economic issues really hold them back from being anything other than a neat little novelty, though they look really bad especially in the PS3 Version were the helmet isn't even on Ratchet's head and it's too big for him.
Also, it just feels like Locked and Loaded losses ideas and steam as it goes along, it gets better during the Hypnomatic quest since I find those levels to be a blast and the aforementioned Sky Port stage but Locked and Loaded 2nd Act levels never get bad per say but a bit boring, in 1 it felt each level was of a consistent quality expect maybe if it was a more obstacle like stage were some frustration could be had, each of them had interesting ideas with Gadgets while also balancing platforming and shooting but in Locked and Loaded 2nd Act levels just kinda don't do that? Again I can't stress enough they aren't badly designed levels but i just feel naturally blending the routes into 2 just makes them less memorable than the first game, this could also be attributed to the Gadgets but one thing that you can clearly show the devs losing steam are the bosses, The Maxigame bosses are inoffensive since they’re just suppose to be an sendoff to the challenge as well as the crystal hunting minibosses but as the game progresses each boss just get worse and worse, from the decent fights with the swamp monster and Helicopter to the great Uncharted esque chance with Angela or giant mech fight (if you’re using V2 Bouncer) to the unfair saucer fight, boring Thugs for Less leader Clank fight and the laughably anti-climatic final boss that you can snipe from a mile away which feels like a boss found in the Maxigames, it’s sucks because they have this great idea of using weapons/ammo from the game but you barely see it since it doesn't take long to beat him, i guess they wanted to make up from the final boss of Ratchet 1 huh?
The Gadgets and extra gizmos you get in this aren't as interesting as the first game unfortunately, first Clank gameplay has gotten a huge downgrade atmospherically, it seems that it felt like they wanted to get it over with since "Oh the first game had it so this one has to have it to" in the 2 scenarios (I.e Megapolis and the Prison Break) there's a lot less going on and your essentially just freeing Ratchet instead of soaking in the atmosphere of challenges that may seem easy for Ratchet but harrowing for Clank. Giant Clank however is the complete opposite, they introduced these Spherical world's which are neat little pace breaker that are unfortunately used once for normal Ratchet but they used like 2 or 3 times for Giant Clank, and it is awesome, they added strafing, a bunch of new moves and best of all, the frame rate doesnt shit itself! Now where I’m where I’m really baffled about Locked & Loaded is it’s Gadget line-up, of course you have a few returning ones like the Packs, Swingshot and Grind Boots when you save Clank and also a new version of the Gravity Boots which makes combat a lot better there but a lot of times the new Gadgets in 2 feel like there should be merged in some instances, like the Dynamo and Tracker Beam are 2 Beam gadgets but one is for Bots and Bombs and one is for platforms, could they not have been merged? Another example are 2 Flying Gadgets, The Levitator and Momentum Glider, while these work differently and are very fun i just found them weird since i feel the Momentum Glider is useless since the Levitator is just a better version of it, you also got 2 hacking minigames which while serviceable feel way too trial and error to be considered that fun or even puzzles for that matter. You also get the returning extra items from Ratchet 1 like the Mapper or Bolt Magnetic and even new ones like the Charge Boots which give you a long boost and the Box Breaker that breaks boxes upon slamming. Finally these 2 Gadgets have such cool ideas but aren’t executed the best, these being the Thermanotor and the Hyponomatic, the Thermantor allows you to freeze and refreeze water, this is such a cool idea but in the segments you have to use them in you have to be unfeasibly precise with when you time you shoot the Ice, and the Hypnomatic essentially allows you to be a twin stick shooter robot, while it’s fine and inoffensive it just feels like a waste due to how the 3rd Act is just dedicated to getting all the parts and especially since it’s used twice in the game, one being a tutorial and one being the final, not to mention there’s already a remote control robot in this game.
However despite how I’ve felt throughout this review, one thing that Locked & Loaded nails are the new Maxigames which are new side content ventures that allow you to obtain more bolts that may be mandatory once or twice they are introduced, everyone of these is great apart from Ship stuff which is just ranges kinda boring and really bad with the racing sections, all of these new additions are top-tier, the Hoverbike races are a lot more instance than the Hoverboard in Ratchet 1, you are always in your feet since you could flying through and then one crash could ruin everything, not to mention later on the Power-Ups you use in the stages can be used against you, and the Crystal Hunting stages, yes fuck the snowbeast but these are great, allowing you to explore these giant battlefields finding sellable, fighting enemies and bosses while also leveling up everything and oh the Arenas, fantastic addition, pure fighting bliss filled with non-stop action packed euphoria with each challenge being more unique and gruelling more than the last, this is how any platformer should do variety (mostly), keeping the core fundamentals and gameplay of the main game while also adding upon it and giving the player new and exciting challenges.
But overall looking at Locked & Loaded in a vacuum, yeah it’s pretty good but i feel it could have been better if they had more time to fully develop it’s ideas, when Locked & Loaded gets going with it’s core mechanics like the comedy, music, level ideas and action-packed gameplay, it’s a blast and even matches and surpasses to the first game but when it stumbles, it just kinda falls, it never gets awful which is why i may retract that 7/10 to an low 8/10 since that core is so strong but it’s flaws can’t be overlooked, yeah it’s funny but the story is a bit messy, yeah the music & level ideas slap sometimes but more times than not they mush together and feels a lot less unique that the first, yes that euphoric action-packed gameplay is redefined from the first game with better controls and bigger bolder action setpieces, but it feels like it’s just throwing ideas on a wall and seeing what sticks making for such an inconsistent experience when some stuff lands and some stuff don’t (like there’s Wrench Upgrades in this game why do you need Wrench upgrades???), in spite it all though, Locked & Loaded is still a good game with that core gameplay more than times that not being that fun and is also a solid entry in the series and this genre as a whole but the first game is better, Yeah i just found the first game’s presentation, levels and story to beat this one out due to how much more refined and unique they are, but hey, it’s better than Ratchet 2016 and Up Your Arsenal, so that’s something.
Looking at the development of this game, Ratchet 2 was greenlit just months before the original game's release with Visual Production of the world and setting starting in August 2002, The team had one goal in mind: Make it Bigger. They wanted to add so much to the original game while also fine tuning those elements that needed a bit of work in the first game, adding things such as newer and more ambitious Gadgets and Weapons, RPG Elements, more variety, a better and more comedic story. The answer is did they succeed? The answer is Yes and no (but mostly Yes). With only 8 months to develop this game along with doubling up the team it's impressive how well this game managed to be however it does have a few trappings around the 2nd and especially the 3rd Act.
This can be seen in the Story, it perfectly follows up the first game though not as well as Sly 2. Taking place a few months after the first game, Ratchet and Clank are being interviewed by someone (which i headcanon is the same guy from Spyro 1), while Clank is somewhat content with not doing much, Ratchet seems physically and audible disappointed not doing much of worth, luckily he wish of doing something greater as they are quickly teleported to the Bogon Galaxy by a man by the name of Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the founder and CEO of Megacorp who informs the duo of a Thief who had stolen Megacorp's most valuable experiment, The Proto-Pet. The Plot starts really strong, giving "Commando Training" to Ratchet to iron out his character from the first game while giving us 2 Comedic Villains (The Thief and the Thugs of Less Leader) that know how to get shit done to face off, one thing that they wanted to avoid in this game is having the pitfalls of Ratchet's so much so that they decided to quickly recast, I don't get the criticism of Ratchet undergoing an Arc, they may have overdone it a tiny bit but the complaint at the time was aimed at Ratchet having the arc in the first place, which is like complaining about how the Chris Tucker dude from Rush Hour isn't likeable from the start, due to this the character arcs are gone till Deadlocked which is a shame in my opinion since i feel it would have given the characters a bit more edge, but in favour the comedy here is amped up, the first game was funny but this game is on another level, Satirical Humour, Slapstick, 4th Wall Breaking, References etc, It's more of a treat to see these one off characters since you never know what your gonna get, however while the comedy is top tier the story just stops? It's weird after the Desert Planet you find out the thief is a female Lombax (Angela) who I don't really like since after her unveiling she's kinda used as a clumsy plot device and clearly didn’t get enough time to be her own character, and that Fizzwidget is a bit sus after "accidentally" injecting them/crushing their ship and "accidentally" giving them the wrong password. The game also gives some cutscenes of what happened to Qwark after the events of the first game, look if it wasn't clear enough along with Fizzwidget saying "Qwarktastic'', Fizzwidget is Qwark, but you have to wait till the last few minutes to find that out, one of the main reasons why the first game's story worked so well is that it felt so tightly written, every planet had agency and there was a sense of urgency as you progressed. In 2 you have a few stages with little to no story apart from "lol Megacorp is fucked up" then all of sudden something like the duo getting arrested or Angela getting captured, or them confronting Angela and realising they helped the villains, or the Proto Pet meance finally getting released into the world, these are good story moments both comedically and character wise but it takes a while to get to, plus the last 3rd of the game has this dumbass fetch quest of a Gadget only used twice, it just feels like they had all these cool planets and characters they wanted to use but didn't make a compelling story or reason to have them be in the game, like of course the Plumber returns which is cool since he isn't used as the almighty Chekvo's Demigod but they also use the RYNO Vender again from the first game to give you the 2nd flying gadget of the game (oh by the way he's really big now i guess). I feel the Plot could have tighten itself through having the Proto Pet Menace be released way earlier, also there's no Infobots, which was a great way to bridge gaps between Planets organically, Instead the characters either find these Floating Flat Screen LCD TVS or magically pull them out, it feels messy and like they ran out of Plot throughout the game so much to the point where the finale feels rushed with Chekvo's Infobot coming in at the last second, like with this definitely not thought out twist they have the original Fizzwidget come in and says Thank You for releasing me!, now being more posh than Qwark's impersonation but they presented that Megacorp was a rotten company for some time even if we assume Qwark did all those heinous stuff in a matter of a few months (which it wasn't) like they left employees to die in a swamp, drove Gadgetron (the company from the first game) out of business but maybe you could say Fizzwidget had a hard look at himself while inside the closet and evaluated all the bad stuff he did in the past now so it’s okay i guess.
I feel some fixes i would have done would be either keep the Qwark Twist but have it happen either when the duo get stranded in the Desert or when they get arested or just ditch Qwark for the next game since i still think his multi game arc could still work since let's be really he isn't really that funny or even threatening as a villain here since he isn't given the time needed to thrive or maybe tease him at the end of this game like Deadlocked and instead make Fizzwidget the villain like was intended, have Fizzwidget personally tell them that he's the big bad guy before they're arrested and despite the hold he has on the Galaxy, he just wants more money with the Proto Pet and the people of the Bogon Galaxy to respect Megacorp as company even more, present Megacorp as a company that was rotten from the start of the game instead of slowly dripping it any of the NPCs you talk to so resentment to Megacorp but can't do anything due to Megacorp being that Big, make Ratchet fully realise that in his pursuit of wanting to live the glory days, he accidentally helps the Villain fulfil his goal and should have had more light shed on it, realising that he needs to make it right, have this realisation after they get arrested, also in the Desert Stage Ratchet is fulling trusting of Megacorp and Clank is a lot more less distrusting, a sort of role reversal of the first game, and instead of a confused old guy he's more akin to how Drek was in the first game and will do anything in order to get what he wants, including kidnapping Angela or releasing the Proto Pet Meance early. Then at the end of the game we see him through everything at Ratchet, then after the final boss, we have Fizzwidget pleading Ratchet that all he wanted for people to respect his company again as it's been passed from Fizzwidget to Fizzwidget and as his duty he needs to preserve it for future generations, Ratchet lets Fizzwidget go and the ending (set few months after) shows that Megacorp is slowly but surely recovering to its former glory. I think the scenes with the Thug 4 Less Leader with Fizzwidget could show that he's more sympathetic about his actions, making the ending feel a lot more earned. I think that would work better than "Megacorp is bad or is it?" like they kinda discard it at the end for a cheap twist but while i do think my rewrite fixes a lot of the issues of this story, i feel it doesn't really matter? Like you can tell the animators (Yes Animators wrote this and the previous game) wanted to focus on comedy above all else which while is disappointing i can't complain here since the story isn't take as seriously as say the 3 Future games or Sly 4 where critique is warranted but since the comedy is done so well, i feel it shortcomings are sorta made up for.
But in terms of it's presentation, i feel Locked and Loaded keeps the same bar of the original while slightly dropping it, compared to the first game and let's be honest, apart from animation which is just as great as the first game if not more so is slacking compared to its other PS2 contemporaries, not bad by any means but i just find Sly 2 or even Jak 2 to look more aesthetically pleasing, the game looks good but i find more often that the colours look washed out, the game trades the rustic/cyberpunk aesthetics to a more clean and sterile aesthetic and this plus environments make it not as memorable as the first game, like for instance the game's take for Metropolis (Megapolis) is a great level with strong level design and an pretty cool and funny game mechanic of the robotic cleaners topped with some great callbacks, a decent boss and a nice Clank section but pales in comparison to Metropolis in terms of it Vibes and Level design, a lot of areas look great such as exploring an Illegal sky port, a large desert/tundra filled with crystals, the countless of unique factorys/test facilities that Megacorp owns, the beautiful greenary/forest areas, space vegas and even a not as cool "we reuse the first level but harder" thing from Ratchet 1 now with the airship from the beginning, however i feel a lot of the City's apart from Megapolis blend together into one Beige mess that while have great level design, don't do much to differentiate themselves from each other. I think this also goes for music, not bad, some great but mostly forgettable, again I don't have much to say about the Ost of most Ratchet games since they only really fit the mood/atmosphere of the stage and aren't my kind of thing anyway, but one thing that sorta stays same is the Voice acting, Mikey Kelly is replaced with James Arnold Taylor of Johnny Test fame and i think he does a mighty fine job doing his voice though i felt it was bit to far in order to make Ratchet have less of his edge, the voice acting is as good as the first game but there's some standouts like Steve Blum as the Thugs for Less leader, not only is he already a funny character but the delivery absolutely sells it for me, he manages to perfectly balance between threatening and insanely comedic, it's quite a shame he's barely used in the series again since he perfectly does what a Ratchet Villain is suppose to do.
But in terms of gameplay it's kinda like the story, while one core element really works, the rest feel a bit half-baked. When it comes to the moment to moment gameplay in terms of level design and gameplay mechanics Locked and Loaded hits it out of the park and manages to be as good as Ratchet 1 and even better sometimes, the game uses a lot of the same structure as the first game but fully merges both platforming and shooting into one little glorious mix of 3rd Person shooter goodness and some solid platforming, with Ratchet's new tighter movement and strafing it makes combat so much more frantic and controlled, the strategic feeling of the first game isn't lost however since new to this game is Weapon and Nanotech upgrades, While i welcome the Nanotech upgrades with wither fighting enemies or collecting them, i feel the Weapon Upgrades and the weapons themselves could have used a bit more work, I don't want to overwhelming negatives but the Weapons are handled a bit poorly, they only level up once and hell sometimes they completely change the function, like the Lava Gun which while still a decent level up feels way too different from the original use, also don't like how the Slim Cognito Mods you need to seek out and use Raritanium (which isn't very rare by the way). Most of the time however, the Weapon Upgrades come in handy mostly notably the Bouncer which becomes an absolute beast.
But i mean apart from that i don't have much to say about the weapons of Locked and Loaded, a lot use the same tropes from the first game, normal shooting weapons, crowd control, bots, remote control weapons, long shot beam weapons etc. The newer weapon ideas are pretty hit and miss unfortunately, having Gadgetron weapons is nice i suppose but it's obvious they were more for contextual reasons rather than any good feasible reason for gameplay, i found some weapons like the Chopper or Hoverbomb Gun feel like Weapons that were supposed to be in the first game since they feel more fit for that slower strategic gameplay instead since both trade off speed for stronger attacks making them feel insanely situational but other like the Bouncer, Blitz Gun, Zodiac, Pulse Rifle etc really work for this more action packed platformer while also keeping the strategy elements from the previous game intact, but i do have a few issues with the weapons and other RPG aspects of this game, for one i feel levelling them up takes a bit of time, not too much but just enough where there’s the feeling off “When can this level up?”, the other issues with levelling up is how they handled having Weapons, in the first game each weapon was useful throughout from the start right to end with maybe the exception of the Bomb Glove, In 2 first game Weapons are completely useless as the game progressed, while we're not there yet despite me feeling so luckwarm about Ratchet 3 I find how they handled weapons there to be better since they allow for 5 Levels while also balancing older weapons in the first act for other enemies in later stages, again not too huge of a fan of Up Your Arsenal but this is one aspect that UYA actually improves on previous games, but here not only are some Weapons are in danger of being completely outclassed but the encomny and enemy balance of this game is completely wack, sure you get more Bolts from enemies and Boxes since they are now Gold Bolts, this makes the original Gold Bolts to Titanium Bolts now which is neat I guess, but for some reason Bolt prices for Weapons and especially armour (another new RPG mechanic) are insanely expensive, unless you grind with the Maxi Games and Ship games good luck on getting all the Main Weapons in a first playthrough, speaking of Armour while I like the idea of Armour upgrades, again the economic issues really hold them back from being anything other than a neat little novelty, though they look really bad especially in the PS3 Version were the helmet isn't even on Ratchet's head and it's too big for him.
Also, it just feels like Locked and Loaded losses ideas and steam as it goes along, it gets better during the Hypnomatic quest since I find those levels to be a blast and the aforementioned Sky Port stage but Locked and Loaded 2nd Act levels never get bad per say but a bit boring, in 1 it felt each level was of a consistent quality expect maybe if it was a more obstacle like stage were some frustration could be had, each of them had interesting ideas with Gadgets while also balancing platforming and shooting but in Locked and Loaded 2nd Act levels just kinda don't do that? Again I can't stress enough they aren't badly designed levels but i just feel naturally blending the routes into 2 just makes them less memorable than the first game, this could also be attributed to the Gadgets but one thing that you can clearly show the devs losing steam are the bosses, The Maxigame bosses are inoffensive since they’re just suppose to be an sendoff to the challenge as well as the crystal hunting minibosses but as the game progresses each boss just get worse and worse, from the decent fights with the swamp monster and Helicopter to the great Uncharted esque chance with Angela or giant mech fight (if you’re using V2 Bouncer) to the unfair saucer fight, boring Thugs for Less leader Clank fight and the laughably anti-climatic final boss that you can snipe from a mile away which feels like a boss found in the Maxigames, it’s sucks because they have this great idea of using weapons/ammo from the game but you barely see it since it doesn't take long to beat him, i guess they wanted to make up from the final boss of Ratchet 1 huh?
The Gadgets and extra gizmos you get in this aren't as interesting as the first game unfortunately, first Clank gameplay has gotten a huge downgrade atmospherically, it seems that it felt like they wanted to get it over with since "Oh the first game had it so this one has to have it to" in the 2 scenarios (I.e Megapolis and the Prison Break) there's a lot less going on and your essentially just freeing Ratchet instead of soaking in the atmosphere of challenges that may seem easy for Ratchet but harrowing for Clank. Giant Clank however is the complete opposite, they introduced these Spherical world's which are neat little pace breaker that are unfortunately used once for normal Ratchet but they used like 2 or 3 times for Giant Clank, and it is awesome, they added strafing, a bunch of new moves and best of all, the frame rate doesnt shit itself! Now where I’m where I’m really baffled about Locked & Loaded is it’s Gadget line-up, of course you have a few returning ones like the Packs, Swingshot and Grind Boots when you save Clank and also a new version of the Gravity Boots which makes combat a lot better there but a lot of times the new Gadgets in 2 feel like there should be merged in some instances, like the Dynamo and Tracker Beam are 2 Beam gadgets but one is for Bots and Bombs and one is for platforms, could they not have been merged? Another example are 2 Flying Gadgets, The Levitator and Momentum Glider, while these work differently and are very fun i just found them weird since i feel the Momentum Glider is useless since the Levitator is just a better version of it, you also got 2 hacking minigames which while serviceable feel way too trial and error to be considered that fun or even puzzles for that matter. You also get the returning extra items from Ratchet 1 like the Mapper or Bolt Magnetic and even new ones like the Charge Boots which give you a long boost and the Box Breaker that breaks boxes upon slamming. Finally these 2 Gadgets have such cool ideas but aren’t executed the best, these being the Thermanotor and the Hyponomatic, the Thermantor allows you to freeze and refreeze water, this is such a cool idea but in the segments you have to use them in you have to be unfeasibly precise with when you time you shoot the Ice, and the Hypnomatic essentially allows you to be a twin stick shooter robot, while it’s fine and inoffensive it just feels like a waste due to how the 3rd Act is just dedicated to getting all the parts and especially since it’s used twice in the game, one being a tutorial and one being the final, not to mention there’s already a remote control robot in this game.
However despite how I’ve felt throughout this review, one thing that Locked & Loaded nails are the new Maxigames which are new side content ventures that allow you to obtain more bolts that may be mandatory once or twice they are introduced, everyone of these is great apart from Ship stuff which is just ranges kinda boring and really bad with the racing sections, all of these new additions are top-tier, the Hoverbike races are a lot more instance than the Hoverboard in Ratchet 1, you are always in your feet since you could flying through and then one crash could ruin everything, not to mention later on the Power-Ups you use in the stages can be used against you, and the Crystal Hunting stages, yes fuck the snowbeast but these are great, allowing you to explore these giant battlefields finding sellable, fighting enemies and bosses while also leveling up everything and oh the Arenas, fantastic addition, pure fighting bliss filled with non-stop action packed euphoria with each challenge being more unique and gruelling more than the last, this is how any platformer should do variety (mostly), keeping the core fundamentals and gameplay of the main game while also adding upon it and giving the player new and exciting challenges.
But overall looking at Locked & Loaded in a vacuum, yeah it’s pretty good but i feel it could have been better if they had more time to fully develop it’s ideas, when Locked & Loaded gets going with it’s core mechanics like the comedy, music, level ideas and action-packed gameplay, it’s a blast and even matches and surpasses to the first game but when it stumbles, it just kinda falls, it never gets awful which is why i may retract that 7/10 to an low 8/10 since that core is so strong but it’s flaws can’t be overlooked, yeah it’s funny but the story is a bit messy, yeah the music & level ideas slap sometimes but more times than not they mush together and feels a lot less unique that the first, yes that euphoric action-packed gameplay is redefined from the first game with better controls and bigger bolder action setpieces, but it feels like it’s just throwing ideas on a wall and seeing what sticks making for such an inconsistent experience when some stuff lands and some stuff don’t (like there’s Wrench Upgrades in this game why do you need Wrench upgrades???), in spite it all though, Locked & Loaded is still a good game with that core gameplay more than times that not being that fun and is also a solid entry in the series and this genre as a whole but the first game is better, Yeah i just found the first game’s presentation, levels and story to beat this one out due to how much more refined and unique they are, but hey, it’s better than Ratchet 2016 and Up Your Arsenal, so that’s something.
Harvest Moon 64
1999
It was my first Harvest Moon, and will always be one of my favorites. It's also where I learned that if you follow a girl around while holding your dog and talk to her over and over for several real-world hours, she will think your dog is so cute that she'll fall madly in love with you overnight.
Haunted Castle
1987
If I made a game part of a series that was this bad, I'd give it a different name too to try and distance it from its original namesake. Realistically this should have been called "Castlevania Arcade" or something else equally generic. Instead it gets the somewhat awful Haunted Castle name and is the most "Castlevania at home" meme there could be, except Konami actually made this.
I'd never actually heard of this until I started playing through the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection. Interestingly it's also the only non shoot 'em up on there. I still can't decide if I'm happy they included it as a historical oddity for me to try or not.
So the game plays very much like a "classicvania", which shouldn't surprise coming out only a couple of years after the original game. Visually it's ok, technically the sprite work is good and yet it all feels wrong. Like uncanny valley Castlevania or a fan made project. I can't put it into words but the fleamen are too large, there are no medusa heads, the whole game feels off, too....chunky.
Gameplay wise it has everything I dislike about the classic games but amplified. The enemies come from awkward angles, there are cheap hits and occasional traps you can only get past by level memorisation, or save states. The boss designs are really awful both mechanically and artistically. One of them looks like a vector man enemy and jumps while fleamen run at you. It doesn't even look like it belongs in this game. There is a boss on stage 4 that you can barely hit unless you get the right subweapon as he moves off screen when you approach and is generally just poorly animated. Add to this each level is on a roughly 5 minute timer and it's pretty evident this was entirely designed to try and take your money, not for entertainment.
I stopped on stage 5. Near the start you get on an elevator that goes straight up. As it moves there are stone ledges that hit and damage you that your character (who walks at such a slow gait it's like he has rickets) cannot avoid even when you see them coming. Knowing the pattern is the only way. It's awful. It just isn't fun, which is the purpose of gaming to me.
Honestly there just isn't anything about this game I like, nothing stands out, nothing's unique, clever or interesting and nothing about this is fun. I got the point score I needed for the Konami Arcade Classics trophies and then stopped. Literally any other Castlevania (except arguably the Game Boy ones anyway) is better than this. An interesting historical novelty of an attempt by Konami that is best forgotten.
- Unfun gameplay.
- Bad bosses in both art and gameplay design.
- Weirdly ugly compared with it's main series counterparts.
I'd never actually heard of this until I started playing through the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection. Interestingly it's also the only non shoot 'em up on there. I still can't decide if I'm happy they included it as a historical oddity for me to try or not.
So the game plays very much like a "classicvania", which shouldn't surprise coming out only a couple of years after the original game. Visually it's ok, technically the sprite work is good and yet it all feels wrong. Like uncanny valley Castlevania or a fan made project. I can't put it into words but the fleamen are too large, there are no medusa heads, the whole game feels off, too....chunky.
Gameplay wise it has everything I dislike about the classic games but amplified. The enemies come from awkward angles, there are cheap hits and occasional traps you can only get past by level memorisation, or save states. The boss designs are really awful both mechanically and artistically. One of them looks like a vector man enemy and jumps while fleamen run at you. It doesn't even look like it belongs in this game. There is a boss on stage 4 that you can barely hit unless you get the right subweapon as he moves off screen when you approach and is generally just poorly animated. Add to this each level is on a roughly 5 minute timer and it's pretty evident this was entirely designed to try and take your money, not for entertainment.
I stopped on stage 5. Near the start you get on an elevator that goes straight up. As it moves there are stone ledges that hit and damage you that your character (who walks at such a slow gait it's like he has rickets) cannot avoid even when you see them coming. Knowing the pattern is the only way. It's awful. It just isn't fun, which is the purpose of gaming to me.
Honestly there just isn't anything about this game I like, nothing stands out, nothing's unique, clever or interesting and nothing about this is fun. I got the point score I needed for the Konami Arcade Classics trophies and then stopped. Literally any other Castlevania (except arguably the Game Boy ones anyway) is better than this. An interesting historical novelty of an attempt by Konami that is best forgotten.
- Unfun gameplay.
- Bad bosses in both art and gameplay design.
- Weirdly ugly compared with it's main series counterparts.