Never played the original, so this is like a brand new game to me.
This game oozes personality. The stages are beautifully done, letting you feel like you're actually racing in these unique themed areas, rather than just a generic racetrack with a themed backdrop. The roster is varied and full of life.
The customisation stuff really adds life to everything, I especially love that the legendary skins give new podium animations (another little addition that adds to the games charm).
This game is well known for its pretty big skill gap compared to other kart racers. While I can respect that, I found that it clashed too much with the mechanics that still make this game, well, a kart racer. The constant item spam is still a thing, so the idea of thinking of this as competitive flies in your face (literally) when you get hit by 10 items in a row.
The drifting mechanic never felt good to me even after I got used to it. The amount on focus needed on it all race makes it feel less fun and more stressful to get the perfect timing constantly, forcing me to ignore the gorgeous levels. The drifting itself felt off to me, with the little jump needed to be done before drifting, so the timing was often off, I'd drift too late, turn too early throwing my angle off, or I'd turn too late after I landed and not end up drifting at all. There were certain times I wasn't even sure if I had managed to hit the drift, because the feedback for doing so is pretty subtle.
Single player mode is fine despite its simple plot, it's got some cutscenes that are fun. It's super short though, so they pad this out by making you do every track 4 times for 100% (6 times if the track is a boss race track!).
Online is bare bones as all heck. There's no kind of ranking or rating system, so every race is basically just a one-off and you move to the next one, never feeling like you're earning anything. The race also ends 20 seconds after first place crosses the finish line, and thanks to the immense skill gap this game has, a player in first can easily finish 30+ seconds ahead of everyone else, especially since the items in this game aren't great for catching up to anyone too far ahead. But if you're in the back with the others then the items will only make sure the person in first just gets a bigger and bigger lead.
An overall fun kart racer, but once you've done the short story, unless you really want to master this game via the time trial ghosts and relics, and are content playing single races online, there's not much to keep you drawn in.
This game oozes personality. The stages are beautifully done, letting you feel like you're actually racing in these unique themed areas, rather than just a generic racetrack with a themed backdrop. The roster is varied and full of life.
The customisation stuff really adds life to everything, I especially love that the legendary skins give new podium animations (another little addition that adds to the games charm).
This game is well known for its pretty big skill gap compared to other kart racers. While I can respect that, I found that it clashed too much with the mechanics that still make this game, well, a kart racer. The constant item spam is still a thing, so the idea of thinking of this as competitive flies in your face (literally) when you get hit by 10 items in a row.
The drifting mechanic never felt good to me even after I got used to it. The amount on focus needed on it all race makes it feel less fun and more stressful to get the perfect timing constantly, forcing me to ignore the gorgeous levels. The drifting itself felt off to me, with the little jump needed to be done before drifting, so the timing was often off, I'd drift too late, turn too early throwing my angle off, or I'd turn too late after I landed and not end up drifting at all. There were certain times I wasn't even sure if I had managed to hit the drift, because the feedback for doing so is pretty subtle.
Single player mode is fine despite its simple plot, it's got some cutscenes that are fun. It's super short though, so they pad this out by making you do every track 4 times for 100% (6 times if the track is a boss race track!).
Online is bare bones as all heck. There's no kind of ranking or rating system, so every race is basically just a one-off and you move to the next one, never feeling like you're earning anything. The race also ends 20 seconds after first place crosses the finish line, and thanks to the immense skill gap this game has, a player in first can easily finish 30+ seconds ahead of everyone else, especially since the items in this game aren't great for catching up to anyone too far ahead. But if you're in the back with the others then the items will only make sure the person in first just gets a bigger and bigger lead.
An overall fun kart racer, but once you've done the short story, unless you really want to master this game via the time trial ghosts and relics, and are content playing single races online, there's not much to keep you drawn in.
A truly beautiful looking game. The world is such a great sight, which is lucky since you'll be riding through the same spots over and over. The soundtrack also surprised me with just how good it can get. It's packed full of content, and the world seems to react and evolve to your actions seamlessly.
But the game just feels so slow. I don't mean the pacing, I mean every little thing. Every small action will require you to do something that would otherwise be automatic for user experience purposes in other games. And then there's the amount of times the game forces you to go at its pace rather than your own. Sooooo many missions start out with "Follow X character to X location" where you have to go at a snails pace while listening to the dialogue. It's like the game is full of hidden cutscenes that disguise themselves as gameplay.
The game practically needs to be carried by its story. Luckily the story IS great, with equally well written characters, and if it wasn’t for the heavy flaws dragging it down, the game could have been amazing. But as it is it just kind of annoyed me how often Rockstar seemed to think “This story is so unbelievably amazing that the player won’t mind hundreds of hours of slow progress to hear it all!”
This disguised gameplay can go way too far sometimes. Like it's one thing to make you personally travel to each location while listening to dialogue instead of just achieving the exact same purpose in a full cutscene, but there's a couple of times when you're watching an actual cutscene then all of a sudden you get a prompt to push the analogue stick to move forward. I just don't get it, the game desperately tries to force interaction into it in order to hide the fact there's so much story to get through.
The game also suffers from a lot of Rockstar's typical problems. Clunky controls, glitchy interactions (have fun trying to reposition yourself a few inchs constantly to get a certain prompt to light up). A couple of times I tried to run up to my horse and jump on top of it, only to accidentally tackle a poor bystander to the ground because it's attached to the exact same button. Speaking of which, it is way too easy to lose honor in this game. Randomly bumping into someone, which will happen a lot due to the horrible controls, can cause them to get angry and attack you, but if you dare defend yourself you lose honor and get a bounty on you.
It takes realism too far and suffers from it. For example, when you get sick health restoring items just stop working. That might not be too bad if it was a balancing effect from another thing (like maybe an alcoholic drink that raises your stats), but getting sick is a story forced plot point.
Want to loot a bunch of dead victims after a huge shoot out? Be prepared for your mission allies to coooonstantly scream at you to hurry up.
The world is full of stuff to do at least. I think that sometimes it's a bit too much of a chore though. Early on I did a mission that involved getting perfect carcasses of certain animals. You'd think that the sections on the map that have those animals drawn on them would spawn a lot of them, but it could take me 30 minutes to find a rabbit in a rabbit-marked area. Trying to catch a legendary fish could take 10 minutes of constantly rotating the analogue stick. Treasure maps are so vague they're unreadable most of the time. It's weird because when you're in a mission the game gives you plenty of info and direction, but anything outside of a mission and you're on your own with little to no hints, like if a camp friend wants an item. You have no idea where it is, the game doesn't tell you where it is. I guess the point is that, if you're not looking it up online, you're supposed to just be happy exploring and finding what you find free roam, but after I did a lot of them early-game, I found I was wasting so much time that by chapter 3 of the game I was just travelling from mission to mission, the idea of wasting time exploring every nook and cranny in such a huge world, with stiff controls, was daunting.
It's definitely not a bad game. Not at all. It has the story, it has the music, it has the characters, it has the level of depth, it has the gun mechanics (although I wouldn't mind those being a bit better due to the sheer amount of endless shoot outs you're forced in to). It just lacks a bit of polish and smoothing down, and to realise when realism becomes a chore.
But the game just feels so slow. I don't mean the pacing, I mean every little thing. Every small action will require you to do something that would otherwise be automatic for user experience purposes in other games. And then there's the amount of times the game forces you to go at its pace rather than your own. Sooooo many missions start out with "Follow X character to X location" where you have to go at a snails pace while listening to the dialogue. It's like the game is full of hidden cutscenes that disguise themselves as gameplay.
The game practically needs to be carried by its story. Luckily the story IS great, with equally well written characters, and if it wasn’t for the heavy flaws dragging it down, the game could have been amazing. But as it is it just kind of annoyed me how often Rockstar seemed to think “This story is so unbelievably amazing that the player won’t mind hundreds of hours of slow progress to hear it all!”
This disguised gameplay can go way too far sometimes. Like it's one thing to make you personally travel to each location while listening to dialogue instead of just achieving the exact same purpose in a full cutscene, but there's a couple of times when you're watching an actual cutscene then all of a sudden you get a prompt to push the analogue stick to move forward. I just don't get it, the game desperately tries to force interaction into it in order to hide the fact there's so much story to get through.
The game also suffers from a lot of Rockstar's typical problems. Clunky controls, glitchy interactions (have fun trying to reposition yourself a few inchs constantly to get a certain prompt to light up). A couple of times I tried to run up to my horse and jump on top of it, only to accidentally tackle a poor bystander to the ground because it's attached to the exact same button. Speaking of which, it is way too easy to lose honor in this game. Randomly bumping into someone, which will happen a lot due to the horrible controls, can cause them to get angry and attack you, but if you dare defend yourself you lose honor and get a bounty on you.
It takes realism too far and suffers from it. For example, when you get sick health restoring items just stop working. That might not be too bad if it was a balancing effect from another thing (like maybe an alcoholic drink that raises your stats), but getting sick is a story forced plot point.
Want to loot a bunch of dead victims after a huge shoot out? Be prepared for your mission allies to coooonstantly scream at you to hurry up.
The world is full of stuff to do at least. I think that sometimes it's a bit too much of a chore though. Early on I did a mission that involved getting perfect carcasses of certain animals. You'd think that the sections on the map that have those animals drawn on them would spawn a lot of them, but it could take me 30 minutes to find a rabbit in a rabbit-marked area. Trying to catch a legendary fish could take 10 minutes of constantly rotating the analogue stick. Treasure maps are so vague they're unreadable most of the time. It's weird because when you're in a mission the game gives you plenty of info and direction, but anything outside of a mission and you're on your own with little to no hints, like if a camp friend wants an item. You have no idea where it is, the game doesn't tell you where it is. I guess the point is that, if you're not looking it up online, you're supposed to just be happy exploring and finding what you find free roam, but after I did a lot of them early-game, I found I was wasting so much time that by chapter 3 of the game I was just travelling from mission to mission, the idea of wasting time exploring every nook and cranny in such a huge world, with stiff controls, was daunting.
It's definitely not a bad game. Not at all. It has the story, it has the music, it has the characters, it has the level of depth, it has the gun mechanics (although I wouldn't mind those being a bit better due to the sheer amount of endless shoot outs you're forced in to). It just lacks a bit of polish and smoothing down, and to realise when realism becomes a chore.
It’s pretty weird that this is considered a Super Mario game – a direct sequel to Super Mario World no less. There’s a reason Yoshi got his own series after this, since this gameplay is so different from typical Mario gameplay. I can appreciate the style it’s got going for it, the slower paced, ammo-conscious gameplay can be fun, if a bit frustrating. And baby Mario can feel too much like a burden at times. Overall, even if I don’t like the gameplay as much as usual Mario, it’s a charming game and has a soundtrack to match.
My main problem with the game is the collectables/score system. In order to unlock the hidden levels you need to get a perfect score on all stages, and that's fair. But getting that score is too much of a burden for me, since it requires 25 different collectable items in each stage AND max health (the collectables don't save either, it all has to be done in one run). This isn't a problem, there's plenty of games that I don't feel like fully completing, but Yoshi's island gives you no reason to collect ANYTHING if you’re not going for full score. It's an all or nothing kind of game. Either you go for a full score, or you ignore everything and just blast through the level. The issue with that is many levels can feel empty as a result. Like maybe the exit is just a straight line, and the game expects you to check the different elevations and hidden passageways to get everything, but if you don’t intend to go for 100% there’s little to no reason to go anywhere but straight forward.
I do like the levels for the most part. The game has a ton of unique enemy types and platforming gimmicks. However I disliked almost all of the underground, and sometimes castle stages. The maze-like structure just didn’t do it for me, along with the lack of visual variety.
The game is fine, the visuals are bright and colourful, it controls very well and the boss fights are all creative, albeit very easy. But once I had made the decision to not bother with the effort to get full points, the game started to feel hollow.
My main problem with the game is the collectables/score system. In order to unlock the hidden levels you need to get a perfect score on all stages, and that's fair. But getting that score is too much of a burden for me, since it requires 25 different collectable items in each stage AND max health (the collectables don't save either, it all has to be done in one run). This isn't a problem, there's plenty of games that I don't feel like fully completing, but Yoshi's island gives you no reason to collect ANYTHING if you’re not going for full score. It's an all or nothing kind of game. Either you go for a full score, or you ignore everything and just blast through the level. The issue with that is many levels can feel empty as a result. Like maybe the exit is just a straight line, and the game expects you to check the different elevations and hidden passageways to get everything, but if you don’t intend to go for 100% there’s little to no reason to go anywhere but straight forward.
I do like the levels for the most part. The game has a ton of unique enemy types and platforming gimmicks. However I disliked almost all of the underground, and sometimes castle stages. The maze-like structure just didn’t do it for me, along with the lack of visual variety.
The game is fine, the visuals are bright and colourful, it controls very well and the boss fights are all creative, albeit very easy. But once I had made the decision to not bother with the effort to get full points, the game started to feel hollow.
2011
A great way to celebrate Sonic's history. While I do prefer the Adventure-style controls for 3D Sonic, the boost playstyle definitely leads itself to a ton of amazing set pieces. Unfortunately trying to do any kind of platforming as 3D Sonic feels clunky as hell. At least while the camera is behind him, the side-scrolling parts aren't too bad.
The 2D Sonic in this game may not quite feel as good as he has in the past, or in Sonic Mania, but it's pretty close, and I personally prefer the art style for his stages here over the more cartoony ones used in his solo games. The stages look so detailed and much more alive. 2D Sonic definitely benefits from using 3D Sonic's stage designs.
So while I can't say this is the "best of both worlds", I do find both of them to be incredibly fun.
Playing through classic stages as 3D Sonic, or newer stages as 2D Sonic was such a great mix of nostalgia and brand new experiences.
The game is unfortunately pretty short, with only 9 main levels. The themes also feel lacking, with 4 out of those 9 being city stages. Luckily they do all have their own unique personality, with the only two feeling too similar (at least aesthetically) are City Escape and Rooftop Run.
The game pads out a lot of extra content with optional challenges. These vary massively in terms of uniqueness and enjoyability, but overall I found them to be a very positive experience for the game, and allowed some mini games that wouldn't have fit in the main stages. It also allowed Sonic's friends to show off their own individual characteristics without getting too overbearing.
The story is overly simple, which isn't too much of a problem, but the cutscenes still manage to feel cheesy as all hell. I'd almost prefer them to just not be there if they're going to put so little effort into it.
I struggled to decide if I should give it a 7 or an 8, but I think a weak 8 is deserving as even with its lack of stages, it had enough extra content to keep me playing for a while, and most of the stages were so fun and had so many paths that I didn't mind replaying them so many times. Except Planet Wisp Act 1, which is both way too long and has a horrible gimmick.
The 2D Sonic in this game may not quite feel as good as he has in the past, or in Sonic Mania, but it's pretty close, and I personally prefer the art style for his stages here over the more cartoony ones used in his solo games. The stages look so detailed and much more alive. 2D Sonic definitely benefits from using 3D Sonic's stage designs.
So while I can't say this is the "best of both worlds", I do find both of them to be incredibly fun.
Playing through classic stages as 3D Sonic, or newer stages as 2D Sonic was such a great mix of nostalgia and brand new experiences.
The game is unfortunately pretty short, with only 9 main levels. The themes also feel lacking, with 4 out of those 9 being city stages. Luckily they do all have their own unique personality, with the only two feeling too similar (at least aesthetically) are City Escape and Rooftop Run.
The game pads out a lot of extra content with optional challenges. These vary massively in terms of uniqueness and enjoyability, but overall I found them to be a very positive experience for the game, and allowed some mini games that wouldn't have fit in the main stages. It also allowed Sonic's friends to show off their own individual characteristics without getting too overbearing.
The story is overly simple, which isn't too much of a problem, but the cutscenes still manage to feel cheesy as all hell. I'd almost prefer them to just not be there if they're going to put so little effort into it.
I struggled to decide if I should give it a 7 or an 8, but I think a weak 8 is deserving as even with its lack of stages, it had enough extra content to keep me playing for a while, and most of the stages were so fun and had so many paths that I didn't mind replaying them so many times. Except Planet Wisp Act 1, which is both way too long and has a horrible gimmick.
Pretty much the ultimate love letter to any Dragon Ball fan. Featuring a massive cast of characters - even more than any game in the franchise up to this day (except maybe Xenoverse 2 with all its DLC), equally impressive amount of stages and more fanservice than you can shake a stick at.
Unlike a lot of Dragon Ball games this one doesn't just focus on Z and some movies. EVERYTHING from the series at the time is here. Even the original Dragon Ball gets a hefty amount of characters and stages. Even Arale is in this game.
It's not all balanced equally. If you wanted a competitive fighting game, this isn't that. This is a game where characters on the weaker end in the series are equally as weak here. Of course it's set up so you can technically win with anyone (except maybe Mr Satan...) but you'll be doing less damage and taking more playing as Chaozu, or making much slower and easier to counter moves as a giant character.
The lack of focus on any one series does show up in the story mode. In order to fit DB, Z, GT, Movies and even what if battles, stories jump around rapidly. For example we go from Majin Vegeta vs Fat Boo straight to Vegetto vs Boohan. It's a bit weird, and doesn't always make sense with the fights they chose, but the game seemed focused on showing off the sheer amount of scope it has, rather than trying to put the player through the same Raditz-Boo story as most DB games do.
The battles in story mode set themselves apart from regular battles greatly. The team system allows fights like everyone vs Nappa to happen in a single unbroken fight, with characters switching in and out on a button prompt after a certain time has passed, or you've dealt enough damage. Scripted events like beam struggles happen automatically. It's all just great.
Mission 100 provides, as you might expect, 100 event battles, with each enemy team focusing on a theme, like female fighters, Super Saiyans, sword users etc. The last few pages of these are basically boss fights with a single character with buffed up stats. The last of these, SSj4 Gogeta, is the hardest battle in the game and provides a fitting final boss.
Another great example of how much content this game has is the tournaments. The game has 5 different tournament modes, each with its own gimmick based off the series (the regular WT has ring outs, the Cell Games uses a stamina based system, like how Cell intended it to be, and the Yamcha tournament, fitting as it is the most random inclusion due to not being based on a real tournament, makes you use a random character).
My main complaint with the game would probably be the DB collecting. There's only two ways to get dragon balls - either luck out and get one as a prize for winning the tournament via RNG, or play a story mission and break buildings and hope to get one through RNG. So you won't be able to find them during the huge grind through mission 100, and considering you need to summon the dragon many times to get everything in the game, having to grind out getting them through the same story mission over and over is a chore.
Mostly though this game is just an amazing toy for DB fans. It's not balanced, but it has so much content and so many details for DB fans (Saiyan characters that can turn great ape cannot do so unless they are on a night stage, except those that can create an artificial moon like Vegeta), that it remains one of, if not my favourite DB game.
Unlike a lot of Dragon Ball games this one doesn't just focus on Z and some movies. EVERYTHING from the series at the time is here. Even the original Dragon Ball gets a hefty amount of characters and stages. Even Arale is in this game.
It's not all balanced equally. If you wanted a competitive fighting game, this isn't that. This is a game where characters on the weaker end in the series are equally as weak here. Of course it's set up so you can technically win with anyone (except maybe Mr Satan...) but you'll be doing less damage and taking more playing as Chaozu, or making much slower and easier to counter moves as a giant character.
The lack of focus on any one series does show up in the story mode. In order to fit DB, Z, GT, Movies and even what if battles, stories jump around rapidly. For example we go from Majin Vegeta vs Fat Boo straight to Vegetto vs Boohan. It's a bit weird, and doesn't always make sense with the fights they chose, but the game seemed focused on showing off the sheer amount of scope it has, rather than trying to put the player through the same Raditz-Boo story as most DB games do.
The battles in story mode set themselves apart from regular battles greatly. The team system allows fights like everyone vs Nappa to happen in a single unbroken fight, with characters switching in and out on a button prompt after a certain time has passed, or you've dealt enough damage. Scripted events like beam struggles happen automatically. It's all just great.
Mission 100 provides, as you might expect, 100 event battles, with each enemy team focusing on a theme, like female fighters, Super Saiyans, sword users etc. The last few pages of these are basically boss fights with a single character with buffed up stats. The last of these, SSj4 Gogeta, is the hardest battle in the game and provides a fitting final boss.
Another great example of how much content this game has is the tournaments. The game has 5 different tournament modes, each with its own gimmick based off the series (the regular WT has ring outs, the Cell Games uses a stamina based system, like how Cell intended it to be, and the Yamcha tournament, fitting as it is the most random inclusion due to not being based on a real tournament, makes you use a random character).
My main complaint with the game would probably be the DB collecting. There's only two ways to get dragon balls - either luck out and get one as a prize for winning the tournament via RNG, or play a story mission and break buildings and hope to get one through RNG. So you won't be able to find them during the huge grind through mission 100, and considering you need to summon the dragon many times to get everything in the game, having to grind out getting them through the same story mission over and over is a chore.
Mostly though this game is just an amazing toy for DB fans. It's not balanced, but it has so much content and so many details for DB fans (Saiyan characters that can turn great ape cannot do so unless they are on a night stage, except those that can create an artificial moon like Vegeta), that it remains one of, if not my favourite DB game.
Extremely good idea of what Pokémon can and should be. Solving issues from Diamond and Pearl, like lack of Pokémon variety and slow gameplay speeds, Platinum also offers a sweet spot of difficulty for a Pokémon game.
Sinnoh offers a great region to roam around, filled with all kinds of different areas and terrain. All kinds of things to find and unlock. It also has a really good soundtrack.
My main issue with the game is the sheer amount of HMs. You need about 5 of them just to get through Victory Road and Mount Coronet alone. I found myself having to carry a HM slave with me far too often, or giving crappy moves like Rock Smash to a main team member.
There's also a lot of backtracking involved every time you get a HM. The game gets credit for having so much to explore, but if you play like I do, then everytime new things open up you have to check them out, meaning for each new HM I tended to spend a lot of time putting the story on hold to revisit old areas.
Sinnoh offers a great region to roam around, filled with all kinds of different areas and terrain. All kinds of things to find and unlock. It also has a really good soundtrack.
My main issue with the game is the sheer amount of HMs. You need about 5 of them just to get through Victory Road and Mount Coronet alone. I found myself having to carry a HM slave with me far too often, or giving crappy moves like Rock Smash to a main team member.
There's also a lot of backtracking involved every time you get a HM. The game gets credit for having so much to explore, but if you play like I do, then everytime new things open up you have to check them out, meaning for each new HM I tended to spend a lot of time putting the story on hold to revisit old areas.
1992
One of my favourite franchises of all time, but I really don’t like its debut game.
Thanks to the flat tracks, and extreme lack of track variety (every single theme except Rainbow Road shows up multiple times) The levels have no identity. They all just kind of blend together into one big, boring track.
The lack of interesting tracks has gone on to pollute the newer games too thanks to retro tracks. Even Mario Kart 8 with its extra effort into updating retro tracks can’t save generic Mario Circuit track #50
The AI blatantly cheat too. I don't just mean typical rubber banding; I've seen AI just straight up drive through a wall of Whomps like they weren't even there. They will magically jump over any items in their path, almost as if using a feather, however they're definitely not using a feather, and I know that for two reasons: One is that I've seen them do it while holding another item at the time, but also because each AI can only use 1 item each.
Speaking of which, the item system is super wack in this game. AI don't need item boxes, they can just spawn items randomly, but as I said they are limited to one per character. Some of them have unique items, like Toad has poison mushrooms, Bowser has fire balls and Yoshi has a Yoshi Egg, but then some of them just get generic items, like Donkey Kong gets a banana. The inconsistency is just weird, but regardless, having the characters spam items at you, or get infinite star power is annoying.
A huge part of the screen is taken up by a map of the track, or a rear view mirror depending on your choice. It's like someone in Nintendo went back in time and thought they were working on a DS game. It makes the actual racing screen look squashed and it's just distracting.
Controls are too slippery. I found drifting is next to useless except on super wide turns with a lot of space thanks to how they handle.
The game sucks. Boring tracks, terrible physics, cheating AI, weird item balance... It looks kind of nice, but that's about it.
Thanks to the flat tracks, and extreme lack of track variety (every single theme except Rainbow Road shows up multiple times) The levels have no identity. They all just kind of blend together into one big, boring track.
The lack of interesting tracks has gone on to pollute the newer games too thanks to retro tracks. Even Mario Kart 8 with its extra effort into updating retro tracks can’t save generic Mario Circuit track #50
The AI blatantly cheat too. I don't just mean typical rubber banding; I've seen AI just straight up drive through a wall of Whomps like they weren't even there. They will magically jump over any items in their path, almost as if using a feather, however they're definitely not using a feather, and I know that for two reasons: One is that I've seen them do it while holding another item at the time, but also because each AI can only use 1 item each.
Speaking of which, the item system is super wack in this game. AI don't need item boxes, they can just spawn items randomly, but as I said they are limited to one per character. Some of them have unique items, like Toad has poison mushrooms, Bowser has fire balls and Yoshi has a Yoshi Egg, but then some of them just get generic items, like Donkey Kong gets a banana. The inconsistency is just weird, but regardless, having the characters spam items at you, or get infinite star power is annoying.
A huge part of the screen is taken up by a map of the track, or a rear view mirror depending on your choice. It's like someone in Nintendo went back in time and thought they were working on a DS game. It makes the actual racing screen look squashed and it's just distracting.
Controls are too slippery. I found drifting is next to useless except on super wide turns with a lot of space thanks to how they handle.
The game sucks. Boring tracks, terrible physics, cheating AI, weird item balance... It looks kind of nice, but that's about it.
2012
It has a few fun classics, but it's mostly bloated with random filler that you'll never want to touch. It also has horrible presentation.
Mario Kart's first portable title takes more inspiration from SMK than MK64, which if you've seen my review for Super Mario Kart you'll know I don't see as a great thing.
It has definitely improved on the formula the first game set however. The flat 2D stages still limit the amount of personality the tracks can convey, however the fact that every track has a different theme definitely helps make them more memorable. Except for 4 freaking Bowser’s castles that all look the same. I swear, Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit were the 2 MK games I never played growing up, so when retro tracks became a thing I was always confused why there were so many Bowser’s castles that all looked the same. Between this and SMK, there’s 7 of the damn things that all look and feel the exact same.
Also these different themes lay some great groundwork for future games to use them as retro courses. Especially Mario Kart 8, any of the tracks from this game that MK8 got its hands on turned it into something brand new. There's courses in this game I genuinely can't wait to see remade like that again.
AI are far less obvious cheats, although they'll still pull stars out of nowhere in first place when you catch up to them.
Drifting feels far better than it ever did in the original, even if it's still not quite perfect. What I don't like is the mini-turbo though. Not only is there no visual indication of when you've managed to get one, but for some reason the turbo boost only happens about 2 seconds after you stop drifting, it's very hard to plan for.
The game includes every single SNES track, however it removed almost all their stage hazards leaving them with even less personality than before. It's nice that they gave you the extra content to unlock, but I just don't see the point when the stages were barely that fun to begin with, and now they've made them even more bland. Especially when compared to the much more varied Super Circuit tracks, unlocking these old ones as a bonus feels like getting dollar after winning $1000. I mean, sure it's nice to have more, but compared to what I just got it's almost like it isn't even there.
Coins are back for their last appearance until MK7. I'm very neutral on coins in Mario Kart, I really couldn't care less if they're in or out, however this game manages to make them annoying by giving you a constant beeping sound whenever you have 0 or 1 coins. There's really no need for that at all, it's not like having 0 coins puts you in any danger, and even if you have 30 coins you'll still be wanting to collect more, so having an audio reminder that I'm at 0 coins makes absolutely zero difference to how I play.
The coins do have a rather unique function, in that they're how you unlock the retro SNES courses. You have to collect 100 of them in a cup to unlock the relative cup of SNES courses. This is fine, however this game makes you lose coins just from being bumped into by another player. It can be extremely frustrating to be trying to unlock these tracks only to lose 10 coins at once because some asshole AI decides to play bumper cars with you on a straight.
Overall I think the game was fine for the first portable Mario Kart. If you were on a car journey or something and this was the only option it scratches that MK itch, but in almost any other situation you'd probably rather play Mario Kart 64 which was out years before.
It has definitely improved on the formula the first game set however. The flat 2D stages still limit the amount of personality the tracks can convey, however the fact that every track has a different theme definitely helps make them more memorable. Except for 4 freaking Bowser’s castles that all look the same. I swear, Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit were the 2 MK games I never played growing up, so when retro tracks became a thing I was always confused why there were so many Bowser’s castles that all looked the same. Between this and SMK, there’s 7 of the damn things that all look and feel the exact same.
Also these different themes lay some great groundwork for future games to use them as retro courses. Especially Mario Kart 8, any of the tracks from this game that MK8 got its hands on turned it into something brand new. There's courses in this game I genuinely can't wait to see remade like that again.
AI are far less obvious cheats, although they'll still pull stars out of nowhere in first place when you catch up to them.
Drifting feels far better than it ever did in the original, even if it's still not quite perfect. What I don't like is the mini-turbo though. Not only is there no visual indication of when you've managed to get one, but for some reason the turbo boost only happens about 2 seconds after you stop drifting, it's very hard to plan for.
The game includes every single SNES track, however it removed almost all their stage hazards leaving them with even less personality than before. It's nice that they gave you the extra content to unlock, but I just don't see the point when the stages were barely that fun to begin with, and now they've made them even more bland. Especially when compared to the much more varied Super Circuit tracks, unlocking these old ones as a bonus feels like getting dollar after winning $1000. I mean, sure it's nice to have more, but compared to what I just got it's almost like it isn't even there.
Coins are back for their last appearance until MK7. I'm very neutral on coins in Mario Kart, I really couldn't care less if they're in or out, however this game manages to make them annoying by giving you a constant beeping sound whenever you have 0 or 1 coins. There's really no need for that at all, it's not like having 0 coins puts you in any danger, and even if you have 30 coins you'll still be wanting to collect more, so having an audio reminder that I'm at 0 coins makes absolutely zero difference to how I play.
The coins do have a rather unique function, in that they're how you unlock the retro SNES courses. You have to collect 100 of them in a cup to unlock the relative cup of SNES courses. This is fine, however this game makes you lose coins just from being bumped into by another player. It can be extremely frustrating to be trying to unlock these tracks only to lose 10 coins at once because some asshole AI decides to play bumper cars with you on a straight.
Overall I think the game was fine for the first portable Mario Kart. If you were on a car journey or something and this was the only option it scratches that MK itch, but in almost any other situation you'd probably rather play Mario Kart 64 which was out years before.
2019
Despite the huge controversy involving this game, I really enjoyed it. Obviously it's still Pokémon, if you've enjoyed Pokémon at its most basic level, I see no reason you wouldn't enjoy this.
I absolutely love what this game does with gym battles, turning it into a huge competition. Everyone starting at the same time means you get a true feeling of progression, and as you go on you hear of more and more challengers who had to drop out due to it being too tough. The way it starts out with you registering with everyone else, then going to sleep at a hotel before waking up to see a crowd of people gathered to cheer you on creates such a huge scale of excitement.
It does kind of die down near the end unfortunately. By the 5th or 6th gym the challenge is treated almost like any other game, until we get to the finals, which once again bring up the scale far above anything seen in past games.
So overall I really enjoyed the story, even if it was simple. Just you, the player, on a quest to become the greatest trainer of all time. It's what all the games have technically been about, but this is the first one that truly made me feel like the game took it seriously. I also liked the little sub plots it caused, like Bede being disqualified and then picked up as the fairy type gym leader.
The difficulty in this game is a somewhat weird one. While I do feel like the game is scaled to exp share, the Wild Area makes trying to predict player levels a mammoth task. A player could skip the Wild Area completely and maybe be under-leveled, especially if they don't catch or beat any wild Pokémon. On the other hand a player could spend hours and hours in there before even getting their first gym badge. By adding so much freedom to the player without dynamic scaling, finding the sweet spot is difficult. I had a really weird experience myself, for the first 3 gyms I was slightly ahead of the gym leaders, then the 4th gym had a big boost and caught up to me, but after that, despite me not changing my play-style, I skyrocketed ahead of the rest of the gym leaders.
This weird level curve is especially prevalent in the "champion cup" as its called. It's essentially a long stretch of story which, while technically possible to take a break from and grind, isn't encouraged at all by the way it pushes itself forward. But when I started this section I was about 10 levels ahead of the first opponents Pokémon, then by the time I got the champion I was actually slightly under-levelled. The game essentially makes it that you have to be over-levelled for most of the climax to stand a chance against the final boss; it's such weird game design.
As for the Exp scaling, the game uses the method of giving less exp the higher level you are compared to your opponent. This works pretty well for the most part, but there's one major flaw: Wild Pokémon. For some crazy reason the wild Pokémon in this game are far above even the trainers in their area. Hell I ran into a few wild Pokémon that were higher level than me! Since a huge part of Pokémon has always been to "catch 'em all", naturally I did try to catch a bunch of Pokémon on my journey, but because they were all buffed to crazy levels, the idea of getting less exp for beating/catching lower level Pokémon kind of became futile. If they just lowered the levels of the wild mons it would have done so much to improve game balance. Of course you could just ignore them to not get the exp, but if your idea of game design is to not play as much of the game as you can, there's a problem.
Presentation in this game is definitely a step above anything we've seen in the series so far. Gym battles alone are a great example of this, as now there's no transition between the pre-battle dialogue and the battle itself. Instead the opponent and your character with get into position and it flows into the start of battle seamlessly. Add in a bunch of Mid-battle dialogue and it really helps make these battles stand out from the rest, whereas in previous games the only real difference between a gym battle and a regular battle was the music and a slight difficulty increase. Unfortunately it's not all great, a lot of the animations and cutscenes still look cheap. It's a shame because the very early cutscene of the starters showed such great promise, but nothing like that ever really came up again.
Going on to the things that make this game unique over other Pokémon games, let's start with Dynamax. Personally I hated it. Mechanically it just feels like a mish-mash of Megas and Z-Moves, but both of them done far worse. And from a practical point of view, trying to imagine these Pokémon fighting each other at that size is just ridiculous. I would have much preferred to just have no gimmick at all over this.
The Wild Area is decent. It's not super deep or anything, and the weather effects changing from area to area look janky as all hell, but it does a pretty good job of showing off a bunch of Pokémon walking around, making it feel alive and active. Raid battles are also a fun addition, even though I don't think they have the staying power I think Gamefreak wants them to. But the amount of rewards you get every time you clear one is bound to set off those happy chemicals in your brain that make you want to keep playing.
The gym challenges before the gym battles themselves are very hit or miss. On one hand we have creative ideas, like trying to gain points by catching/defeating Pokémon while also having to deal with an NPC trying to sabotage you, we have things that give a unique gameplay mechanic that we've never seen before in Pokémon, like the spinning cup thing, or Wooloo herding. Then we have ideas that aren't necessarily bad, but aren't new, like the water maze feels very similar to past gyms with switches/levels to control water flow. But then the last 2 gyms just gave up completely and made the pre-leader challenges just a bunch of trainer fights. Even the fairy gym, which is done in the style of a quiz - not a new concept, but they try to make it feel fresh by adding stat boosts/debuffs depending on your answer - feels worse than old versions as the questions no longer test your knowledge of Pokémon and instead just ask dumb questions about the gym leader that feel like they're purposely set up to trick you. Overall it's a promising concept that just wasn't utilised very well outside of a couple of gyms.
I had fun with the game, and other than a certain lack of undeniable cheapness in certain scripted events, which give the impression this was a 3DS game, it does its job just fine. What's wrong with it is what it doesn't have, because there's so much damn potential in this game just begging to come out. This could have easily been the best game in the series if they just put in some extra effort.
I absolutely love what this game does with gym battles, turning it into a huge competition. Everyone starting at the same time means you get a true feeling of progression, and as you go on you hear of more and more challengers who had to drop out due to it being too tough. The way it starts out with you registering with everyone else, then going to sleep at a hotel before waking up to see a crowd of people gathered to cheer you on creates such a huge scale of excitement.
It does kind of die down near the end unfortunately. By the 5th or 6th gym the challenge is treated almost like any other game, until we get to the finals, which once again bring up the scale far above anything seen in past games.
So overall I really enjoyed the story, even if it was simple. Just you, the player, on a quest to become the greatest trainer of all time. It's what all the games have technically been about, but this is the first one that truly made me feel like the game took it seriously. I also liked the little sub plots it caused, like Bede being disqualified and then picked up as the fairy type gym leader.
The difficulty in this game is a somewhat weird one. While I do feel like the game is scaled to exp share, the Wild Area makes trying to predict player levels a mammoth task. A player could skip the Wild Area completely and maybe be under-leveled, especially if they don't catch or beat any wild Pokémon. On the other hand a player could spend hours and hours in there before even getting their first gym badge. By adding so much freedom to the player without dynamic scaling, finding the sweet spot is difficult. I had a really weird experience myself, for the first 3 gyms I was slightly ahead of the gym leaders, then the 4th gym had a big boost and caught up to me, but after that, despite me not changing my play-style, I skyrocketed ahead of the rest of the gym leaders.
This weird level curve is especially prevalent in the "champion cup" as its called. It's essentially a long stretch of story which, while technically possible to take a break from and grind, isn't encouraged at all by the way it pushes itself forward. But when I started this section I was about 10 levels ahead of the first opponents Pokémon, then by the time I got the champion I was actually slightly under-levelled. The game essentially makes it that you have to be over-levelled for most of the climax to stand a chance against the final boss; it's such weird game design.
As for the Exp scaling, the game uses the method of giving less exp the higher level you are compared to your opponent. This works pretty well for the most part, but there's one major flaw: Wild Pokémon. For some crazy reason the wild Pokémon in this game are far above even the trainers in their area. Hell I ran into a few wild Pokémon that were higher level than me! Since a huge part of Pokémon has always been to "catch 'em all", naturally I did try to catch a bunch of Pokémon on my journey, but because they were all buffed to crazy levels, the idea of getting less exp for beating/catching lower level Pokémon kind of became futile. If they just lowered the levels of the wild mons it would have done so much to improve game balance. Of course you could just ignore them to not get the exp, but if your idea of game design is to not play as much of the game as you can, there's a problem.
Presentation in this game is definitely a step above anything we've seen in the series so far. Gym battles alone are a great example of this, as now there's no transition between the pre-battle dialogue and the battle itself. Instead the opponent and your character with get into position and it flows into the start of battle seamlessly. Add in a bunch of Mid-battle dialogue and it really helps make these battles stand out from the rest, whereas in previous games the only real difference between a gym battle and a regular battle was the music and a slight difficulty increase. Unfortunately it's not all great, a lot of the animations and cutscenes still look cheap. It's a shame because the very early cutscene of the starters showed such great promise, but nothing like that ever really came up again.
Going on to the things that make this game unique over other Pokémon games, let's start with Dynamax. Personally I hated it. Mechanically it just feels like a mish-mash of Megas and Z-Moves, but both of them done far worse. And from a practical point of view, trying to imagine these Pokémon fighting each other at that size is just ridiculous. I would have much preferred to just have no gimmick at all over this.
The Wild Area is decent. It's not super deep or anything, and the weather effects changing from area to area look janky as all hell, but it does a pretty good job of showing off a bunch of Pokémon walking around, making it feel alive and active. Raid battles are also a fun addition, even though I don't think they have the staying power I think Gamefreak wants them to. But the amount of rewards you get every time you clear one is bound to set off those happy chemicals in your brain that make you want to keep playing.
The gym challenges before the gym battles themselves are very hit or miss. On one hand we have creative ideas, like trying to gain points by catching/defeating Pokémon while also having to deal with an NPC trying to sabotage you, we have things that give a unique gameplay mechanic that we've never seen before in Pokémon, like the spinning cup thing, or Wooloo herding. Then we have ideas that aren't necessarily bad, but aren't new, like the water maze feels very similar to past gyms with switches/levels to control water flow. But then the last 2 gyms just gave up completely and made the pre-leader challenges just a bunch of trainer fights. Even the fairy gym, which is done in the style of a quiz - not a new concept, but they try to make it feel fresh by adding stat boosts/debuffs depending on your answer - feels worse than old versions as the questions no longer test your knowledge of Pokémon and instead just ask dumb questions about the gym leader that feel like they're purposely set up to trick you. Overall it's a promising concept that just wasn't utilised very well outside of a couple of gyms.
I had fun with the game, and other than a certain lack of undeniable cheapness in certain scripted events, which give the impression this was a 3DS game, it does its job just fine. What's wrong with it is what it doesn't have, because there's so much damn potential in this game just begging to come out. This could have easily been the best game in the series if they just put in some extra effort.
1997
This is the perfect example of why I say on my profile that ratings given to games I haven't played in a long time are unreliable. I had originally rated this 3 stars based on my 20 year old memories.
To be fair to this game, it isn't just an outdated version of GTA as we know it, it has its own unique arcade-y style. The goal is to get a certain amount of points on any given level, you can get small amounts via causing damage and crimes, but the only real way to win is to do the missions. And for every mission you complete, your points multiplier goes up. You have a set number of lives, so death has more of a consequence than it does in later entries, and getting busted by cops will drop your multiplier.
One big issue I had with the game comes from the lack of an in-game map. The only guide you'll ever get for getting to and from locations is an arrow pointing you to the objective. Unfortunately this arrow is context-blind, so it constantly took me to the edge of water, only for me to have to spend 5 minutes finding the right bridge to cross so I could actually get on track. This combined with a timer for many missions made the game annoying. The birds-eye view camera doesn't help matters, as the speed the cars go leave you little to no time to react to the screen, causing multiple collisions to slow you down, and you'll occasionally get your view blocked by things hanging overhead. The amount of times I bumped into a pole I didn't even realise was there due to the camera angle.
The game feels unpolished as all heck. One of my favourite moments was when I got into a parked bus, and in this game getting into a parked vehicle starts a mission during the early stages, so I waited for the arrow to come up so I could know where to go, then the bus explodes and THEN I get the mission text at the bottom telling me to keep the bus above 50mph (it must have been a mission based off Speed).
The game takes the "Grand Theft Auto" title a lot more literally than later entries, as most of the game revolves around car missions. This is for the best as the shooting mechanics are pure shit. I swear I could just shoot directly at a guys head multiple times and none of them register. My best option was always just spray like a maniac with a machine gun and hope to kill. On the downside, the last stage has a ton of gun fight missions.
I suffered serious frame rate issues through the game, particularly in later stages.
On top of being unpolished, there's just a ton of glitches - or at least I hope they were glitches. Like one time at a x6 points multiplier, I completed a mission and my score went up by 3 million, easily putting me above the goal for that stage. Later on, with a x10 multiplier, I was barely getting a few hundred thousand per mission. Lots of other little bugs littered throughout too.
There's 3 maps in the game, but all feel more or less the same. The latter two do differ a bit more in terms of visual variety, and funnily enough they have less dead ends than the first map, making them easier to follow the arrows in, which seems like the opposite direction the difficulty should have been. But the first map has this really neat jump over a broken bridge, it's the only thing that really tries anything unique with the level design and it only happens in the very first map.
There are a few secrets in the maps, like a tank is hidden in each one, so it can be rewarding to find them (even though the amount of points they give isn't too great).
I feel like the game could have been more fun if it was just based on getting points by causing mayhem, evading police and the like. Instead all the flaws of the game just make trying to get through the missions a huge pain in the ass.
To be fair to this game, it isn't just an outdated version of GTA as we know it, it has its own unique arcade-y style. The goal is to get a certain amount of points on any given level, you can get small amounts via causing damage and crimes, but the only real way to win is to do the missions. And for every mission you complete, your points multiplier goes up. You have a set number of lives, so death has more of a consequence than it does in later entries, and getting busted by cops will drop your multiplier.
One big issue I had with the game comes from the lack of an in-game map. The only guide you'll ever get for getting to and from locations is an arrow pointing you to the objective. Unfortunately this arrow is context-blind, so it constantly took me to the edge of water, only for me to have to spend 5 minutes finding the right bridge to cross so I could actually get on track. This combined with a timer for many missions made the game annoying. The birds-eye view camera doesn't help matters, as the speed the cars go leave you little to no time to react to the screen, causing multiple collisions to slow you down, and you'll occasionally get your view blocked by things hanging overhead. The amount of times I bumped into a pole I didn't even realise was there due to the camera angle.
The game feels unpolished as all heck. One of my favourite moments was when I got into a parked bus, and in this game getting into a parked vehicle starts a mission during the early stages, so I waited for the arrow to come up so I could know where to go, then the bus explodes and THEN I get the mission text at the bottom telling me to keep the bus above 50mph (it must have been a mission based off Speed).
The game takes the "Grand Theft Auto" title a lot more literally than later entries, as most of the game revolves around car missions. This is for the best as the shooting mechanics are pure shit. I swear I could just shoot directly at a guys head multiple times and none of them register. My best option was always just spray like a maniac with a machine gun and hope to kill. On the downside, the last stage has a ton of gun fight missions.
I suffered serious frame rate issues through the game, particularly in later stages.
On top of being unpolished, there's just a ton of glitches - or at least I hope they were glitches. Like one time at a x6 points multiplier, I completed a mission and my score went up by 3 million, easily putting me above the goal for that stage. Later on, with a x10 multiplier, I was barely getting a few hundred thousand per mission. Lots of other little bugs littered throughout too.
There's 3 maps in the game, but all feel more or less the same. The latter two do differ a bit more in terms of visual variety, and funnily enough they have less dead ends than the first map, making them easier to follow the arrows in, which seems like the opposite direction the difficulty should have been. But the first map has this really neat jump over a broken bridge, it's the only thing that really tries anything unique with the level design and it only happens in the very first map.
There are a few secrets in the maps, like a tank is hidden in each one, so it can be rewarding to find them (even though the amount of points they give isn't too great).
I feel like the game could have been more fun if it was just based on getting points by causing mayhem, evading police and the like. Instead all the flaws of the game just make trying to get through the missions a huge pain in the ass.
1999
A huge improvement over the first game. It solves so many of its issues, from fixing things like bugs, frame rate issues and adding quality of life changes.
The lack of a map is still a bit of a problem, but this time around the locations seem more forgiving as far as dead-ends and the like go. At least until the third map, that thing had so many boxed off areas, that you'd take ages finding a gap to get in, and then once you've navigated around the labyrinth inside, you gotta find your way back out. The sheer amount of these often means you'll be driving along a few miles across a fence while you look for a bit of access to keep following the arrow.
Gun combat was improved significantly. No longer did my bullets seem to just pass through the heads of NPCs, everything felt very on-target and much better overall to play, meaning the more combat-based missions in this game weren't a problem.
I did like the inclusion of each stage having 3 gangs that you can build up loyalty to, to unlock harder missions for that gang, or piss off one of them so that not only are you locked out of their missions, but they'll attack you on the street, with increasingly dangerous weapons. It really adds something to the player experience as you choose a group to partner with and an area of the map belonging to their rival gang becomes dangerous.
Although the missions themselves all seemed pretty similar regardless of the gang you chose, it does help add a bit of personality to them, instead of just being random phone calls as they were in the first game. Each gang even gives you their own nickname.
The game was a lot shorter this time around however. While it still has 3 maps, you only play each one once, as opposed to twice like the original game. In this game you only need a total of 8 million points to beat the game, while in GTA 1 you needed, I think, 15 million.
Getting points also feels a lot easier now for one reason: The tank. I easily racked up millions of points at a time when I got into a tank. I'm not saying this is a problem with the game, as its completely option if you wanna cheese it this way, but it's a thing in the game, and one that I used and found myself shocked by just how buffed it was.
However all that's not to say this game has less replay-ability though. While the minimum amount needed to beat the game is less (which admittedly, is all I did), I'm pretty sure there are more missions and kill frenzies per stage, so if you wanted to 100% it, it'd probably even out.
They also added bonus stages, I only tried out a couple of them - I was only in this to get a good feel of GTA's history, don't judge me - they were essentially just standalone missions you could do for fun.
So basically this is just taking the first game, fixing most of its issues, and adding a bunch of little extras. The only problem I have with this version is the lack of a map still, and the third map (which I guess is 1/3rd of the game, or technically more since it's the level that needs the most points, but still)
The lack of a map is still a bit of a problem, but this time around the locations seem more forgiving as far as dead-ends and the like go. At least until the third map, that thing had so many boxed off areas, that you'd take ages finding a gap to get in, and then once you've navigated around the labyrinth inside, you gotta find your way back out. The sheer amount of these often means you'll be driving along a few miles across a fence while you look for a bit of access to keep following the arrow.
Gun combat was improved significantly. No longer did my bullets seem to just pass through the heads of NPCs, everything felt very on-target and much better overall to play, meaning the more combat-based missions in this game weren't a problem.
I did like the inclusion of each stage having 3 gangs that you can build up loyalty to, to unlock harder missions for that gang, or piss off one of them so that not only are you locked out of their missions, but they'll attack you on the street, with increasingly dangerous weapons. It really adds something to the player experience as you choose a group to partner with and an area of the map belonging to their rival gang becomes dangerous.
Although the missions themselves all seemed pretty similar regardless of the gang you chose, it does help add a bit of personality to them, instead of just being random phone calls as they were in the first game. Each gang even gives you their own nickname.
The game was a lot shorter this time around however. While it still has 3 maps, you only play each one once, as opposed to twice like the original game. In this game you only need a total of 8 million points to beat the game, while in GTA 1 you needed, I think, 15 million.
Getting points also feels a lot easier now for one reason: The tank. I easily racked up millions of points at a time when I got into a tank. I'm not saying this is a problem with the game, as its completely option if you wanna cheese it this way, but it's a thing in the game, and one that I used and found myself shocked by just how buffed it was.
However all that's not to say this game has less replay-ability though. While the minimum amount needed to beat the game is less (which admittedly, is all I did), I'm pretty sure there are more missions and kill frenzies per stage, so if you wanted to 100% it, it'd probably even out.
They also added bonus stages, I only tried out a couple of them - I was only in this to get a good feel of GTA's history, don't judge me - they were essentially just standalone missions you could do for fun.
So basically this is just taking the first game, fixing most of its issues, and adding a bunch of little extras. The only problem I have with this version is the lack of a map still, and the third map (which I guess is 1/3rd of the game, or technically more since it's the level that needs the most points, but still)
My favourite non-karting Mario sports title. And I don't even like football/soccer.
It's just so fast paced, chaotic and feels good to play.
It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin.
My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward.
Luckily you can turn Super Strikes off, along with many other things like stage gimmicks, via "cheats" you can unlock by doing challenges, or winning awards for things like most goals in a cup. These only work in standard vs mode however, so the regular single player "story" will have to be beaten without any help. Speaking of which...
The last cup in single player mode is pure BS. The AI so blatantly cheats to disgusting degrees. All 4 of the enemies team will act like fully controlled characters, esentially turning the game into a 1v4, this results in things like the opponent ALWAYS covering your characters, so that you'll never find the chance to use a super strike or power shot, or when a stage has a gimmick that can knock characters off, the AI team will be able to control all their players to dodge it while the characters on your team you're not in control of with just run into the hazard like a blind chicken. This cup also has extreme amounts of input reading.
Basically this game is a fantastic multiplayer game, and the single player is great for the first 2 cups, but the last cup is pure and utter shit. The challenge mode adds an extra bit of single player content for those looking to master the game and unlock more cheats/gameplay variables.
It's just so fast paced, chaotic and feels good to play.
It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin.
My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward.
Luckily you can turn Super Strikes off, along with many other things like stage gimmicks, via "cheats" you can unlock by doing challenges, or winning awards for things like most goals in a cup. These only work in standard vs mode however, so the regular single player "story" will have to be beaten without any help. Speaking of which...
The last cup in single player mode is pure BS. The AI so blatantly cheats to disgusting degrees. All 4 of the enemies team will act like fully controlled characters, esentially turning the game into a 1v4, this results in things like the opponent ALWAYS covering your characters, so that you'll never find the chance to use a super strike or power shot, or when a stage has a gimmick that can knock characters off, the AI team will be able to control all their players to dodge it while the characters on your team you're not in control of with just run into the hazard like a blind chicken. This cup also has extreme amounts of input reading.
Basically this game is a fantastic multiplayer game, and the single player is great for the first 2 cups, but the last cup is pure and utter shit. The challenge mode adds an extra bit of single player content for those looking to master the game and unlock more cheats/gameplay variables.
1999
The purpose of this game is clear. Back when the only way to play Pokémon was on a tiny, black and white screen where the sprites barely resembled the Pokémon they were trying to portray, Pokémon Stadium came along and said “Bring your battles to full 3D on the TV". 3D wouldn't even be introduced in the mainline games until generation 6, way over 10 years later. Basically if you wanted to battle with friends back in the day, doing it via Pokémon Stadium was THE way to play.
Along with that, it helps boost the original games by having a built-in gameboy player, allowing you to play the actual games on the TV, complete with unlockable speed boosting options. And all those pesky Pokémon you needed to trade with friends to complete your Pokédex, like the multiple Eeveelutions, the fossils and starters? Well they're now rewards you can obtain in this game, meaning this was a great way to complete the dex without relying on finding people willing to give away their one-of-a-kind Pokémon in their own game.
While this game fixes some of the battle glitches from the OG games, the game is still let back somewhat by the fact it still has many of the antique game play mechanics that disappeared immediately after gen 1.
The games full potential was definitely tied to owning the original Red/Blue/Yellow games and having the transfer pack (which I believe came bundled with the game?), but it still offers something for brand newcomers who want to catch up on pieces of Pokémons history. The game has two separate single player modes. The first is Gym Leader Castle, which is essentially just fighting 3 random trainers, then a gym leader from the game. Do this 8 times for each leader, and then beat the elite 4.
The other mode is the stadium, which consists of 4 different rulesets. Unfortunately the idea sounds great, but they differ so little. The Poké Cup and Prime Cup literally only differ by one having level 50 Pokémon and one having level 100 Pokémon. There's a cup that only includes un-evolved Pokémon, which is a neat idea, and then the last cup sets all the Pokémon to level 15, which sounds like another variation of the first 2 cups, but this means you can't use Pokémon that evolve at a higher level. Although Pokémon that evolve via stones or trades can be used, since you could get them in-game at level 15. It's kind of like an in-between of the petite cup and the prime/Poké cup in that regard. Some lines can only use their first forms, while some let you use strong Pokémon like Alakazam. Unfortunately that does also make it the least balanced.
My main issue with the whole stadium thing is that the Poké and Prime cups have 4 levels of difficulty, and they can't be skipped. That means you have to go through a total of 8 rounds just to complete two of the cups, which is made worse by the fact that the easier difficulties are SO easy that getting through them is a mindless slog.
There are no 6v6 battles outside of free play mode. In fact the only time in “story mode” you can use all 6 team members is against Mewtwo in a 6v1. While 6v6 in every single battle may have caused the game to drag far more, it should have at least been a thing during the champion battle in Gym Leader tower to mimic the real game. And maybe make it one of the rulesets in the stadium, to help differ the Prime and Poké cups.
Lastly there's the minigames, which many would say are the best part of the Stadium games. I love the idea of using Pokémons unique characteristics in ways outside of battling. Like using Ekans and Diglet as a ring toss game, or using Lickitung in a sushi eating game. It's so rare to get to directly control Pokémon in games, so these minigames add a great way to do that.
Along with that, it helps boost the original games by having a built-in gameboy player, allowing you to play the actual games on the TV, complete with unlockable speed boosting options. And all those pesky Pokémon you needed to trade with friends to complete your Pokédex, like the multiple Eeveelutions, the fossils and starters? Well they're now rewards you can obtain in this game, meaning this was a great way to complete the dex without relying on finding people willing to give away their one-of-a-kind Pokémon in their own game.
While this game fixes some of the battle glitches from the OG games, the game is still let back somewhat by the fact it still has many of the antique game play mechanics that disappeared immediately after gen 1.
The games full potential was definitely tied to owning the original Red/Blue/Yellow games and having the transfer pack (which I believe came bundled with the game?), but it still offers something for brand newcomers who want to catch up on pieces of Pokémons history. The game has two separate single player modes. The first is Gym Leader Castle, which is essentially just fighting 3 random trainers, then a gym leader from the game. Do this 8 times for each leader, and then beat the elite 4.
The other mode is the stadium, which consists of 4 different rulesets. Unfortunately the idea sounds great, but they differ so little. The Poké Cup and Prime Cup literally only differ by one having level 50 Pokémon and one having level 100 Pokémon. There's a cup that only includes un-evolved Pokémon, which is a neat idea, and then the last cup sets all the Pokémon to level 15, which sounds like another variation of the first 2 cups, but this means you can't use Pokémon that evolve at a higher level. Although Pokémon that evolve via stones or trades can be used, since you could get them in-game at level 15. It's kind of like an in-between of the petite cup and the prime/Poké cup in that regard. Some lines can only use their first forms, while some let you use strong Pokémon like Alakazam. Unfortunately that does also make it the least balanced.
My main issue with the whole stadium thing is that the Poké and Prime cups have 4 levels of difficulty, and they can't be skipped. That means you have to go through a total of 8 rounds just to complete two of the cups, which is made worse by the fact that the easier difficulties are SO easy that getting through them is a mindless slog.
There are no 6v6 battles outside of free play mode. In fact the only time in “story mode” you can use all 6 team members is against Mewtwo in a 6v1. While 6v6 in every single battle may have caused the game to drag far more, it should have at least been a thing during the champion battle in Gym Leader tower to mimic the real game. And maybe make it one of the rulesets in the stadium, to help differ the Prime and Poké cups.
Lastly there's the minigames, which many would say are the best part of the Stadium games. I love the idea of using Pokémons unique characteristics in ways outside of battling. Like using Ekans and Diglet as a ring toss game, or using Lickitung in a sushi eating game. It's so rare to get to directly control Pokémon in games, so these minigames add a great way to do that.
2017
I had 50 gold Nintendo points that were about to expire, worth 50p. I decided to just spend them on the cheapest game on the E-shop, which was this.
For that price I can’t really knock it with regards to the amount of enjoyment I got out of it. It's nothing special, but it has that addicting runner gameplay. I just couldn't really recommend it to anyone except those obsessed with runner games, or anyone else who is going for the cheapest possible game, in which case you could do worse.
It's pretty short; There's 5 different themes, and each one has 3 towers to climb up and run back down. They do all offer a lot of variety in terms of hazards and visuals. The last world in particular looked pretty cool.
The game handles well and is responsive, although there's a distinct lack of feedback when changing lanes, and I often couldn't tell which lane I was in.
For that price I can’t really knock it with regards to the amount of enjoyment I got out of it. It's nothing special, but it has that addicting runner gameplay. I just couldn't really recommend it to anyone except those obsessed with runner games, or anyone else who is going for the cheapest possible game, in which case you could do worse.
It's pretty short; There's 5 different themes, and each one has 3 towers to climb up and run back down. They do all offer a lot of variety in terms of hazards and visuals. The last world in particular looked pretty cool.
The game handles well and is responsive, although there's a distinct lack of feedback when changing lanes, and I often couldn't tell which lane I was in.