Was hit with the sudden realization that this was technically the first VN I ever read... I've gaslit myself for 8 fucking years...

Anyways, the music is so fucking good though hoooooooly shit I am mentally ill.

Why play Sonic Superstars when Super Mario Wonder. completely Curbstomps it. Spend your 60 bucks on something good friends.

The coach fucking sucks ass!

Never have I found a game so aggravating, so infuriating, and so addicting as NFL Blitz 2000. On a surface level there is a sports game but lying underneath all of that is an artificial intelligence designed to drive me completely insane.

Leading the game by a possession in the 4th quarter, the AI will 100% make a 4th Down Conversion Touch Down in the last 10 seconds to completely demolish any chance of success. Making a safe play in the first 15 seconds of play, the AI will intercept it because fuck you.

Even playing with friends leads to its own level of frustration as fumbles feel insanely random and you can't even trust the field goal kick to be fucking accurate when the meter says it's supposed to.

And yet somehow, I keep finding myself coming back for more, like a weeping housewife returning to her abusive drunken husband. Every loss another literal smack in my face as I start losing control of my sanity with how ridiculous it all feels.

I'm not writing this review to evaluate the game but rather to exorcise my fucking demons at this point because this game keeps putting me through one of the worst self-hate loops I've experienced in my fucking life, and has drained any desire for me to play other games. It's just NFL Blitz, all the time, and no matter how much I practice, no matter what I do I never get better, I'll never get better because the universe is against me.

I'm going fucking crazy.

Jesus Christ.

Look, I'm sure I'm one of the few people on this god forsaken planet who actually enjoys playing the additional characters in Sonic. Tails is my favorite character to play in the series because his moveset really prioritized exploration and speed. But fuck, I can't even make it to him because I just cannot stand how these characters control here. Knuckles is so fucking terrible to control it's like I took a timewarp to 2006, I had my controls invert, revert, and invert again the span of seconds while climbing a wall, it just feels so terrible. I just don't want to go any further with this, it feels so bad and once again I guess I shouldn't be surprised at Sonic Team dropping the god damn ball. Seriously, can we just dissolve that team and give this franchise to the Yakuza devs, please. I sincerely doubt they could make a worse Sonic experience than Sonic Team.

My record today from playing with 2 friends after like 2 weeks of practicing:
0 Wins
4 Losses
0 Capitalizing on Interceptions and Fumbles

Yeah I think I should quit while I'm ahead, call me laundry because I'm always getting washed, I am a hack fraud.

The Jaguars are cursed in everything.

The oft-forgotten middle child of the Budokai trilogy (or tetralogy if you count Infinite World) is actually the one I've played the most throughout my life. It was my childhood DBZ Game, and I've been enamored with it for almost as long as I've been alive. While I'd argue games like Budokai 3 and Tenkaichi 3 are either a linear upgrade or a much more exciting experience personally, there is just something about Budokai 2 that just clicks differently. From it being the first cell-shaded DBZ title, to the plagiarized soundtrack, there is just something oddly strange and specifically 2000s about it that I don't think the others can truly capture for me.

The real shining star is the story mode. I know for a good number of people the story mode is probably the weak link, given how it is... well completely incorrect all across the board and shares very few narrative ties to the original manga/anime, but honestly that's what makes it so appealing. You can play it however you want.

My last playthrough had me roleplaying as Yamcha, the strongest in the universe. Having Yamcha go around beating up Frieza, Vegeta, Perfect Cell, and even landing the finishing blow on Kid Buu has been some of the most satisfying experiences I've had in a video game. Being able to craft your own narrative around these colorful characters and not being limited by the standard structure of the DBZ story is just so fun that I kinda wish more games in the series did things like this rather than just being straight retellings. It's basically just this game and Tenkaichi 3 that encapsulate this vibe so well.

The combat may be about as shallow as a rain puddle, but honestly for what is there I think there is still some complex things to engage with, though obviously the best strat is just doing the basic combo into your energy blast attack.

All in all, Budokai 2 is just such a gem, something newer generations will never really get to experience given the HD Collection doesn't include it, and I doubt this or any of the other earlier games will ever get a rerelease.

Also you can fuse Goku and Mr. Satan, this game is one of the best to ever do it.

My original addendum got deleted because I made a rude comment about Arzest and Sonic Team, so I'll omit that and just cut straight to the point:

Trip Mode is an utter travesty that only magnifies this game's problems.

While compared to the character-specific levels that are in the main story, the levels do use far more of Trip's moveset, this is countered by the fact that these levels are so haphazardly designed in ways that are incredibly dickish with no other purpose. The levels in Trip mode actively relish in bullshit, like springs that send you straight into instant death or having you fly into an enemy you couldn't see, which results in these levels feeling more prolonged than they already are.

While using Trip and the increase in obstacles does result in more usage of powers like Slowdown or the Beanstalk, these are still made situational because if you got all the Chaos Emeralds in the main story (which you likely would have given the game gives you ample opportunity to do so), you will have access to Trip's Super Form, which allows you to fly infinitely, taking the piss out of everything.

If it were just this, I would likely have kept my rating the same as I did initially, but the bosses are where Trip's Story truly falls apart. They're more prolonged and still have all of the problems that made them miserable in the first place. In my previous review, I had a comment that said that me saying "waiting in a Sonic game" is terrible. Still, my argument here is when the bosses are designed in a way that actively disregards your time and forces you to have to take an inactive role in damaging the boss, what else am I supposed to think other than that it's a waste of my time? Some of these bosses have downtimes where you can't damage them that range from 5-15 seconds and sometimes upwards to 25 seconds. On the Carnival Zone Act 3 boss, I spent 20 seconds in Trip's super form on top of the boss, unable to damage it. That's not good boss design, especially not in a franchise like Sonic, where in previous Classic entries, it was a viable strategy to try and multi-hit the boss to end it as quickly as possible.

The worst offender of all is Fang the Sniper, who, through some miserable circumstances, has been given the worst boss fight I've seen in a Classic Sonic game. The first fight with him isn't good by any means and has active sections just centered on wasting your time, but the second fight with him in Trip's Story is just one of the dullest, obnoxiously designed fights I've seen in this series, and I am not ashamed to say I haven't beaten it.

It is nothing but instant kill attacks and time-wasting. It is so utterly dull that I wonder what the developers were thinking, making such an atrocious waste of time. Not to mention, it's two phases for no real discernable reason. This brings me to my complaint about unlimited lives: They don't help.

The fact that I get no downtime between boss attempts serves to be more infuriating than helpful, and to top it off; it's fucking redundant in a game that HAS A HUBWORLD WHERE YOU CAN JUST WALK AND START THE STAGE AGAIN. It gives the devs an excuse to keep plopping out these miserably designed stages and fights that serve nothing but to infuriate and agitate.

I'm not finishing Trip mode; I've decided that, ultimately, it isn't worth it. Super Mario Wonder comes out today, and while I got fucked by the shipping, so I'm not getting the game for an extra day, I know that it will be far more worth my time and effort to play.

I have always been a Sonic fan since I was a three-year-old boy playing Sonic 2 for the first time. But if this is how Classic Sonic will be treated from now on, with this level of hollowness and utterly unpleasant design choices, then I firmly believe it should have died after Mania.

If this is the road we're going down, I hope I never see another Classic Sonic game as long as I live.

In all the time building up to this game and Mario Wonder, I have constantly argued about what "soul" means for a video game. To have a "soul" means to have substance, a reason to exist in the first place, something of inherent value. There are many games I would argue that have a vast "soul," Fallout New Vegas, Lobotomy Corporation, hell, even something like Tsukihime has some value buried deep down inherently. So the question then becomes, what does a game with no "soul" look like?

Enter Sonic Superstars.

While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.

None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.

Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.

What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.

Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.

Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.

I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.

There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.

The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.

To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.

If I'm not winning, it's not a good game.

I think it’s safe to say this game is dead now with the news coming out about the developer grooming a minor (least surprising thing about this whole situation). All the voice actors are leaving even the lead actress, this whole project has been a disaster for over 10 years, like we all got to witness some bizarre awful stage play. And to top it off the “game” was never good to begin with. Just don’t bother playing this shit, not even for a joke.

My biggest problem with Dead Money stems from a gameplay perspective. New Vegas is already not the pinnacle regarding the first/third-person shooter mechanics it has; This is just something I can acknowledge. I can look past it most of the time, thanks to exploring the various locales or roleplaying with the different narrative pieces. I cannot do that in Dead Money.

This stems from two significant things: The enemies (and their design) and the setting. The Ghost People and, eventually, the Holograms are the only types of enemies you'll be facing for the 6~8 hours of playtime you'll experience in the DLC. Both enemies are not so terrifying as they are annoying to deal with, especially in the case of the Ghost People and their broken Perception stat. Both require extra work to kill entirely; in some issues with the holograms, killing isn't an option.

Now I understand that Dead Money was meant to be like a survival horror. In that respect, making enemies that can be virtually impossible to kill and difficult to deal with is a respectable concept; it falls flat on its face when you realize that if you get enough Sierra Madre Chips, you can just buy over 100 stimpacks and completely negate the entire challenge; This is what I did this playthrough. I found the Sierra Madre Snowglobe (which is very easy to obtain) and automatically got 2000 Chips on top of what I already had. Even then, chip collection can be as easy as talking to Christine and getting the perk to make your own using Fission Batteries and Scrap Metal or looking in every container.

So what? Ultimately, we're left with only two enemy types for an entire 6~8 hour duration, which visually and mechanically gets very stale relatively quickly.

Then there's the setting; by that, I mean I do not care for the Villa. Unlike the DLCs that came after (barring Lonesome Road, which is the worst one), Dead Money's Villa focuses on being a very narrow, linear experience through and through. Exploration, while encouraged for survival, is not nearly as satisfying as in the main game.

This isn't helped by the sameness of every location, having that Spanish architecture and dark red smokey color palette. And yes, I know that it is all intentional, but I still find it to get really mundane quickly, and eventually, areas start to blur. I prefer the far more varied environments you can find in the base game despite that mainly being desert.

Despite my complaints, Dead Money easily has the best narrative and thematic resonance of any DLC without being pretentious and preachy like Lonesome Road. Every character you encounter is incredibly well-developed, and the performances are stellar across the board.

However, some of it is undercut by the pacing. You spend so much time gathering the team, sending them to their specific places, and then activating the Gala event that it feels bizarre when you enter the Casino and everything starts ending.

To summarize, this is my second least favorite of the New Vegas DLC, but it still has charm.

However, the PC Version must be incredibly unstable because I have dealt with more crashes, specifically in this playthrough of Dead Money than I have with any other part of the game (and this is with the anti-crash files installed).

PS I snuck out with all the gold and trapped Elijah in the vault like a boss; now I shall break the Mojave Economy.

I couldn't trade a dead guy to get a burger for the life of me, oh well, another day in Detroit.

I didn't get the Red Mist's page, I'm not redoing that reception again so I'm done. Fuck this game, one of the worst loot systems I've experienced in my life.