i don't really want to give this game a star rating quite yet because I feel like there is genuinely an absurd amount of potential here.

unfortunately, this game just doesn't live up to that potential right now. i was so excited to see the trailer for this game, it had a lot of promise but man the issues show themselves instantly. the tutorial is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour long and it is an absolute overload of information. i think there's a ton wrong with this tutorial, it's way too long, throws way too many things at you, and it's all just presented in such an overwhelming and confusing way man. there's so many text boxes while you're in the process of racing/learning the mechanics and it's so hard to take in most of the information. even if the tutorial itself was better and conveyed the information clearly, unfortunately, I just think there is WAY too much for a kart racer. there are so many mechanics and they can feel so overwhelming. that combined with the fact that this game weirdly locks online and addons/mods behind single-player grinding for some reason. it makes for such a terrible and overwhelming first time experience, especially for newcomers to sonic robo kart or even just people that aren't such big nerds about sonic and kart racers. i play with a little consistent group of friends in srb2k and it was already a bit of a hassle getting that setup with everyone, pushing them to do an hour long tutorial + single player grand prix content just to get into a game with an infinitely higher skill ceiling that won't be as fun to play because of a larger skill gap is a pretty fuckin tough ask.

i don't know man, this game has so much potential like I said at the start of this and it's clear SO much love and effort went into it. i was really excited for the single player content at the very least but even that feels a bit stilted because of too many unnecessary and overwhelming mechanics. i really hope in a year this becomes this beautiful 5 star game that i boot up with my friends here and there and have a great time with but for now it just feels like it should be great, but it's a pretty huge let down.

So much of your enjoyment of this game is if you're willing to ignore how (to its credit, intentionally) disgusting it is. It's very Ren and Stimpy gross-out humor in, at least my opinion, a bad way. I was pretty willing to ignore it, even if it's very in your face at times but if you can't it will really weigh your experience down. Which is a shame, because everything else here is pretty great! Really fun movement, solid level design, and inoffensive combat that's pretty fun to demolish any enemy in your way. The movement is insanely freeing and gives you a TON of options, especially by the end of the game when you max out the skill tree. The little cherub you get "Nugget" lets you use him as a grapple hook and you can get up to 4 grapples + things like grappling straight up to gain height on top of various horns (think Hat in Time hats) that give you new abilities like gliding and sprinting. You can truly do almost anything you want if you think of it, and it's very fun to gain a ton of height or sequence break with well-timed grapples and such. The movement being as free as it is does kinda trivialize a lot of the platforming and level design though which can be seen as a negative, but it's really up to you how much you let that affect you. I found it pretty fun to create my own little objectives or limit myself to do things how they were intended to be done similar to like a Mario Odyssey. However, it's a lot more breakable and cheesable here and the intended solutions aren't quite as fun but that's also a pretty unfair standard to compare it to. I also wish there was some item that made collectables a bit more easier to find. Maybe after you beat the main game the horns that show you where teleporters and whatnot general locations are showed you the last few main collectables would have gone a long way. That or like a Spyro esque tracker where Nugget shows you the general direction of a main collectable. By the time I finished the game I was missing like less than 10 of each collectable but it just didn't feel worth following a guide to track down which exact ones I was missing.

I could see this being one of my all-time favorite Indie platformers if there were a bit more exciting and challenging platforming challenges. Even without skipping everything, it's just pretty simple (probably because they realized you can skip everything lol) and I would have loved some more interesting platforming gimmicks. There are murals you can eventually light up that give you small platforming challenge rooms, and these are pretty fun! There are just not a lot of them, and they're pretty quick. The biggest thing holding it back for me though is the general art style/humor. I think there's a select few people that this will connect with really heavily and more power to them, but for me I just actively disliked it most of the time. I never found it particularly funny and I just dreaded getting an ingredient and seeing the gross art for it. Still really fun, and I was generally having enough fun to be able to overlook that aspect but I'd be lying if it didn't hold it back for me a little bit.

sadly this is probably the best modern monkey ball game not that it's saying a lot. physics feel okay, but with the vita's smaller and more awkward control stick it's hard to get that pinpoint precision required in the harder levels. mandatory touch controls for menuing and shit is lame and intrusive. has the same look/vibe issues I have with most modern monkey ball. level design is okay sometimes but the difficult levels don't have that same excitement to them, they feel more frustrating and poorly designed to me. idk, newer monkey ball just kinda bums me out. i was so obsessed with the first 2 games as a kid and it's sad how often they've tried and just not even come a little close to those.

there's just not much to this game for me. it controls pretty weirdly, the missions are at their best okay and at their worst really tedious and unfun. it doesn't help that it's all we got from metroid after a pretty hefty hiatus but I don't agree with the "if it was a new IP/not metroid it would be regarded better!" sentiment I've seen because I think it's just a straight up boring and not very good fps game. not the worst thing in the world and most games are fine with friends but absolutely nothing to write home about.

i'm surprised how genuinely solid and well-made this was! it's very obviously heavily inspired by the donkey kong country returns series, and while it never quite reaches the level of innovation, level design quality, and exhilaration highs of especially tropical freeze it's a pretty good alternative! you might think tropical freeze is a bit of an unfair comparison considering it's like THE gold standard for 2d platformers (at least in my opinion) but the level of inspiration kinda demands that comparison in my opinion. I don't think any other donkey kong country inspired indie game really comes close to this one though. it looks pretty good, has some decent music, and movement feels really solid! i don't really have much negative to say, i wish the dojo levels weren't on the map since they just reuse the bonus stages from the real levels and while the controls are pretty great, it feels like the wall jump takes a second to activate and it caught me a couple times.

i'm mainly knocking off points because it's a little TOO DKCR inspired and it could benefit greatly from a few more worlds and a bit more of a ramp up in difficulty within those worlds. i had a pretty consistently good time but it never really had those big over the top and exhilarating moments i love in 2d platformers, especially tropical freeze to take it to the next level for me. considering you can get it for $20 max and often on sale for way less it's a super worthwhile pickup and i'd like to see more from this team, it was a lot of fun!

Very early impressions after beating a few runs so I will probably add more to this, but it's insanely addicting. There are so many synergies and you constantly are unlocking endless things to change how every run functions completely. My brain is designed in a way that I love having a definitive ending so being able to beat a run before I go full endless is incredibly satisfying and fun to me and it's surprising how many roguelites usually are only one or the other. I originally started playing this game by mooching off of a friends steam family share but I was so instantly hooked that the 2 hours they spent using their library which prevented me from playing was enough for me to go off and just buy the game for myself! even just the visuals and little animations are so snappy and fun and it never gets old building a solid run and watching the numbers get higher and higher. I feel like I've barely even scratched the surface of what this game has to offer and its intricacies and I'm very excited to figure them out!