DeltaWDunn
This review contains spoilers
Castlevania is one of my favorite game series. Not only do I love the linear stage-based game style, but I love the castleroid style as well. However, there is a third game style that Castlevania never seemed to really get right. No, not a fighting game with art by the creator of Death Note. No, the 3D style of game.
Adapting to 3D can be hard. I started taking Calculus III recently and have had a bit of trouble adapting to the third dimension. However, I think Lament of Innocence just barely gets a thumbs up from me. It's a faithful adaptation of the castleroid style of the series, but it definitely stumbles a bit. I'd honestly sell the game as Harmony of Dissonance in 3D. I'm not a huge fan of that game, but I think this game does enough to improve upon that one.
For example, my biggest gripe with Harmony of Dissonance is that to actually play optimally, you have to enter the menu a lot. Let's say I wanted to use a spellbook once in that game. I go into the menu, activate the book, go out of the menu, use it, go back into the menu, turn it off, then leave the menu. It's dumb, and despite being a GBA game they could've easily done better. Ironically, you still have to menu a lot in Lament of Innocence, but it's all in real time. Want to use a potion? Real time menu. Want to turn a relic on or off? Real time menu. Want to use a ticket to get out when your health is low? You better be quick in that menu! It makes fights tense, and it's something that even the most critically acclaimed game this year got wrong, so I have to give Lament of Innocence credit.
The combat isn't particularly great aside from that though. It's usually pretty button mashy. If you've played PS2 God of War, you have a good idea of how this game is with its combat. However, a few elements elevate it. First is the subweapons. They're all well-balanced, and using orbs changes their utility. There's also relics, which upgrade you for the cost of MP. To get MP back, you have to time blocks well. Dodging is less risky, but also less rewarding. It's a very simple but effective system.
However, I think a lot of the other series staples weren't adapted very well. It's extremely apparent that Igarashi had a comically small amount of resources to work with when it came to this game. This was probably true of the handheld games, but those are obviously gonna be cheaper than this kind of game. One way this shows is the exploration. Most areas do have unique theming visually, but the areas themselves are pretty repetitive when it comes to layout. Most rooms are flat arenas, and the ones that aren't are dedicated platforming areas. There's no blend of action and platforming, or at the very least interesting level design for battle arenas. Thankfully, the enemies themselves are pretty varied though.
This issue also extends to the actual exploration. I like that you can choose the order in which you play each stage, but actual exploration in each stage is super dull. You go somewhere, do a thing that opens a door far away, go to that door, repeat. There are some optional areas, which is neat, but an actual sense of exploration between levels just isn't there because the room visuals and layouts are just so repetitive.
Another issue is that the game doesn't really have much you can actually buy in the shop. Unlike many of the Castlevania games at the time, you can only use the whip here, so no buying alternate weapons. Subweapons are obtained in-stage. Orbs are obtained by defeating bosses. You can buy a few relics, but only a few. The rest is consumables, but most of those will be potions to heal and tickets to teleport. There should've been much more to obtain here, because after a point I had tons of money and little to spend it on.
Another area where the lack of resources is apparent is the visuals. Not just the environments, but the character models and animations. Our protagonist looks like a dope. Walter looks dumb too. The main villain looks kinda like Takumi from the Shoujo classic Nana. Spoilers from her on (For Nana as well). Honestly, I could see Takumi becoming an evil vampire. It seems he's characteristically two-timing Hachiko with some girl named Elizabetha, which is the dumbest name I've ever heard. Elizabetha dies though, and Takumi is so pissed that he becomes a vampire to get revenge on God. Actually, this is nothing like Takumi, he would just shrug if his wife died.
Uh... Anyway, Our hero Leon Belmont has to save his wife Maria from a vampire named Walter. He does so, but Walter bit Maria, so Maria is becoming a vampire. Apparently though, killing a willing vampire with a whip makes it a super whip. It like imbues the vampire's soul into the whip. So, Maria offers herself to upgrade Leon's whip because it's the only way to defeat Walter. This is like a step above the wife arm from Bionic Commando. Anyway, Leon defeats Walter, but then Takumi comes in and takes Walter's soul to power himself up or something. Apparently, he planned all of this. So, he planned for Walter to kidnap Maria, bite her so that she would start to become a vampire, then Leon would come and save her without dying, she is becoming a vampire but isn't one quite yet, she consents to becoming a powerful whip, then Leon would defeat Walter so that he could take his soul. Wait, Leon only knew about the whip thing because his buddy Rinaldo told him, and Rinaldo was only around because Walter killed his family and vampirized his daughter. Did Takumi plan that? Was Walter working with him? It doesn't seem like it. What if Walter killed Rinaldo? How would Leon know about the whip thing? What if Leon died, or took too long to rescue Maria? I dunno, whatever. Weirdly enough though, the final encounter here is Death, not Takumi. I mean, it's fine, but it was a bit surprising. Such ends one of like, three Castlevania origin stories.
Anyway, while the visuals aren't great, just look at that box art. Even among Castlevania box art it stands out. The same goes for the music. It's really, really good.
So, the game is good overall, but just barely. I'm definitely gonna try Curse of Darkness soon. 6/10.
Adapting to 3D can be hard. I started taking Calculus III recently and have had a bit of trouble adapting to the third dimension. However, I think Lament of Innocence just barely gets a thumbs up from me. It's a faithful adaptation of the castleroid style of the series, but it definitely stumbles a bit. I'd honestly sell the game as Harmony of Dissonance in 3D. I'm not a huge fan of that game, but I think this game does enough to improve upon that one.
For example, my biggest gripe with Harmony of Dissonance is that to actually play optimally, you have to enter the menu a lot. Let's say I wanted to use a spellbook once in that game. I go into the menu, activate the book, go out of the menu, use it, go back into the menu, turn it off, then leave the menu. It's dumb, and despite being a GBA game they could've easily done better. Ironically, you still have to menu a lot in Lament of Innocence, but it's all in real time. Want to use a potion? Real time menu. Want to turn a relic on or off? Real time menu. Want to use a ticket to get out when your health is low? You better be quick in that menu! It makes fights tense, and it's something that even the most critically acclaimed game this year got wrong, so I have to give Lament of Innocence credit.
The combat isn't particularly great aside from that though. It's usually pretty button mashy. If you've played PS2 God of War, you have a good idea of how this game is with its combat. However, a few elements elevate it. First is the subweapons. They're all well-balanced, and using orbs changes their utility. There's also relics, which upgrade you for the cost of MP. To get MP back, you have to time blocks well. Dodging is less risky, but also less rewarding. It's a very simple but effective system.
However, I think a lot of the other series staples weren't adapted very well. It's extremely apparent that Igarashi had a comically small amount of resources to work with when it came to this game. This was probably true of the handheld games, but those are obviously gonna be cheaper than this kind of game. One way this shows is the exploration. Most areas do have unique theming visually, but the areas themselves are pretty repetitive when it comes to layout. Most rooms are flat arenas, and the ones that aren't are dedicated platforming areas. There's no blend of action and platforming, or at the very least interesting level design for battle arenas. Thankfully, the enemies themselves are pretty varied though.
This issue also extends to the actual exploration. I like that you can choose the order in which you play each stage, but actual exploration in each stage is super dull. You go somewhere, do a thing that opens a door far away, go to that door, repeat. There are some optional areas, which is neat, but an actual sense of exploration between levels just isn't there because the room visuals and layouts are just so repetitive.
Another issue is that the game doesn't really have much you can actually buy in the shop. Unlike many of the Castlevania games at the time, you can only use the whip here, so no buying alternate weapons. Subweapons are obtained in-stage. Orbs are obtained by defeating bosses. You can buy a few relics, but only a few. The rest is consumables, but most of those will be potions to heal and tickets to teleport. There should've been much more to obtain here, because after a point I had tons of money and little to spend it on.
Another area where the lack of resources is apparent is the visuals. Not just the environments, but the character models and animations. Our protagonist looks like a dope. Walter looks dumb too. The main villain looks kinda like Takumi from the Shoujo classic Nana. Spoilers from her on (For Nana as well). Honestly, I could see Takumi becoming an evil vampire. It seems he's characteristically two-timing Hachiko with some girl named Elizabetha, which is the dumbest name I've ever heard. Elizabetha dies though, and Takumi is so pissed that he becomes a vampire to get revenge on God. Actually, this is nothing like Takumi, he would just shrug if his wife died.
Uh... Anyway, Our hero Leon Belmont has to save his wife Maria from a vampire named Walter. He does so, but Walter bit Maria, so Maria is becoming a vampire. Apparently though, killing a willing vampire with a whip makes it a super whip. It like imbues the vampire's soul into the whip. So, Maria offers herself to upgrade Leon's whip because it's the only way to defeat Walter. This is like a step above the wife arm from Bionic Commando. Anyway, Leon defeats Walter, but then Takumi comes in and takes Walter's soul to power himself up or something. Apparently, he planned all of this. So, he planned for Walter to kidnap Maria, bite her so that she would start to become a vampire, then Leon would come and save her without dying, she is becoming a vampire but isn't one quite yet, she consents to becoming a powerful whip, then Leon would defeat Walter so that he could take his soul. Wait, Leon only knew about the whip thing because his buddy Rinaldo told him, and Rinaldo was only around because Walter killed his family and vampirized his daughter. Did Takumi plan that? Was Walter working with him? It doesn't seem like it. What if Walter killed Rinaldo? How would Leon know about the whip thing? What if Leon died, or took too long to rescue Maria? I dunno, whatever. Weirdly enough though, the final encounter here is Death, not Takumi. I mean, it's fine, but it was a bit surprising. Such ends one of like, three Castlevania origin stories.
Anyway, while the visuals aren't great, just look at that box art. Even among Castlevania box art it stands out. The same goes for the music. It's really, really good.
So, the game is good overall, but just barely. I'm definitely gonna try Curse of Darkness soon. 6/10.
2021
It seems the surprise popularity of Pizza Tower brought a bit of attention to the Wario Land series, and by extension another upcoming Wario Land inspired game, Antonblast. However, did you know that this won’t be Anton’s first adventure? Indeed, he first showed up in Sonic Spinball for the Sega Genesis! Just kidding, he showed up in Antonball Deluxe. There’s no normal Antonball, by the by, just this deluxe version and the beautifully titled free version, Antonball Deluxe Lite.
Antonball Deluxe is basically the arcade age of Mario meets Breakout. That’s an interesting idea, but I must admit that I was deliberate in my reference to Sonic Spinball earlier. That’s another game that combines 2D platforming with ball-based arcade outings, and I think most would agree that it’s not good. Sometimes unique ideas just don’t pay off. However, Antonball Deluxe does succeed for the most part.
You have a very basic platforming moveset: A dash, jump, and high jump. You need to use these to maneuver Anton so he can knock the ball into the bricks. You can also change the direction of the ball by pressing up and down. It’s fairly simple, but as in most arcade style games, the devil is in the details. Generally, I think the level design is very good. The game starts very simple. The out zone for the ball is narrow, the platform layout is very simple, and there’s no enemies or pits. Once these new ideas are introduced, they’re done in such a way that it’s easy to immediately understand, usually being isolated in a simpler stage. Coins that give you extra points are critically placed in locations that are risky to go to. Likewise, dashing is a way to go faster, but dashing into the ball will make it go flying. If you want to finish the stage quickly for the time bonus this is good, but it can also make the ball harder to keep track of. There’s some pretty fun powerups thrown in for good measure too, most of which really do a good job at making the game more complex. The gun is the best example, as you may try to shoot a brick that will spawn a ball. The caveat is that hitting the brick with the ball makes it spawn two balls instead, so you may want to abstain from shooting the multiball brick in most cases. There’s a lot of little things here that really make the moment-to-moment decision making really fun. My biggest issue with the campaign is that sometimes the ball is just bouncing around in the brick area and you kinda just have to wait for it to come back to start playing again. Thanfully, as the game introduces more enemies and hazards, this becomes less of a problem.
Anyway, let’s look at the other stuff in the game. There’s another mode called Punchball. I admittedly didn’t finish this, but it’s basically the Mario Bros arcade game but you throw a ball to get rid of enemies instead of bonking them from below. Not as intriguing of a concept as the main game in my opinion. This is a fun enough game with its own cool ideas, but I’d rather play the normal game. This mode has just as many levels as the main game too, which I thought was odd. Why not just have 50 levels of the main draw instead of 30 for 2 individual games?
I’d talk about Vs Mode here, but I currently don’t have anyone to play with. I’ll leave a comment if that changes, but let’s go on to the characters in the meantime. Yeah, you can play as 23 different characters. I was kinda hoping that this game would do something similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer where each character is basically a really unique game mode that adds replayability and all, but they all play the same unfortunately. Some of these characters are pretty funny though. You can play as the aptly named ‘Ant on Ball’, or maybe you want to play as Anton’s dog for some reason. Among the goofy cast are a few guests, including Peppino himself. Yeah, I liked playing as him. Most of his animations are made to look like those in Pizza Tower too. There’s also Clive from Clive n’ Wrench, which is a game. I was kinda expecting Voodoo Vince to show up too, but unfortunately he didn’t. I thought all of the characters were neat, but some way to differentiate them from each other could’ve been nice.
Overall, this was a really good game I could see myself coming back to a lot. My biggest fear with Antonblast is that it will be too derivative of Wario Land, but if there’s as much creativity on display in that game as there is in this one, I don’t think that’ll be an issue. 7/10, close to an 8.
Antonball Deluxe is basically the arcade age of Mario meets Breakout. That’s an interesting idea, but I must admit that I was deliberate in my reference to Sonic Spinball earlier. That’s another game that combines 2D platforming with ball-based arcade outings, and I think most would agree that it’s not good. Sometimes unique ideas just don’t pay off. However, Antonball Deluxe does succeed for the most part.
You have a very basic platforming moveset: A dash, jump, and high jump. You need to use these to maneuver Anton so he can knock the ball into the bricks. You can also change the direction of the ball by pressing up and down. It’s fairly simple, but as in most arcade style games, the devil is in the details. Generally, I think the level design is very good. The game starts very simple. The out zone for the ball is narrow, the platform layout is very simple, and there’s no enemies or pits. Once these new ideas are introduced, they’re done in such a way that it’s easy to immediately understand, usually being isolated in a simpler stage. Coins that give you extra points are critically placed in locations that are risky to go to. Likewise, dashing is a way to go faster, but dashing into the ball will make it go flying. If you want to finish the stage quickly for the time bonus this is good, but it can also make the ball harder to keep track of. There’s some pretty fun powerups thrown in for good measure too, most of which really do a good job at making the game more complex. The gun is the best example, as you may try to shoot a brick that will spawn a ball. The caveat is that hitting the brick with the ball makes it spawn two balls instead, so you may want to abstain from shooting the multiball brick in most cases. There’s a lot of little things here that really make the moment-to-moment decision making really fun. My biggest issue with the campaign is that sometimes the ball is just bouncing around in the brick area and you kinda just have to wait for it to come back to start playing again. Thanfully, as the game introduces more enemies and hazards, this becomes less of a problem.
Anyway, let’s look at the other stuff in the game. There’s another mode called Punchball. I admittedly didn’t finish this, but it’s basically the Mario Bros arcade game but you throw a ball to get rid of enemies instead of bonking them from below. Not as intriguing of a concept as the main game in my opinion. This is a fun enough game with its own cool ideas, but I’d rather play the normal game. This mode has just as many levels as the main game too, which I thought was odd. Why not just have 50 levels of the main draw instead of 30 for 2 individual games?
I’d talk about Vs Mode here, but I currently don’t have anyone to play with. I’ll leave a comment if that changes, but let’s go on to the characters in the meantime. Yeah, you can play as 23 different characters. I was kinda hoping that this game would do something similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer where each character is basically a really unique game mode that adds replayability and all, but they all play the same unfortunately. Some of these characters are pretty funny though. You can play as the aptly named ‘Ant on Ball’, or maybe you want to play as Anton’s dog for some reason. Among the goofy cast are a few guests, including Peppino himself. Yeah, I liked playing as him. Most of his animations are made to look like those in Pizza Tower too. There’s also Clive from Clive n’ Wrench, which is a game. I was kinda expecting Voodoo Vince to show up too, but unfortunately he didn’t. I thought all of the characters were neat, but some way to differentiate them from each other could’ve been nice.
Overall, this was a really good game I could see myself coming back to a lot. My biggest fear with Antonblast is that it will be too derivative of Wario Land, but if there’s as much creativity on display in that game as there is in this one, I don’t think that’ll be an issue. 7/10, close to an 8.
2020
Alright, I'll start with the good stuff. Obviously, the audiovisuals are great. In particular, the way that chunks of meat fall off of demons as you hurt them is genius. The controls are good, all the guns are fun and varied too.
Okay, now I get to talk about why this game doesn't really work for me. First is that there is an excess of moves, weapons, and progression systems. By the end of the game, you have seven normal weapons. Each of these weapons also has two mods, which can in themselves be upgraded and switched between mid-battle, and many of these mods completely change the function of the gun. You also have glory kills, the chainsaw, and the flame belch. Each of these can be used against enemies to gain health, ammo, and shield respectively. Next is the grenade. There's a normal one and an ice one. Next is the dash, which gives you a quick burst of speed. Don't forget the two superweapons. One is obviously the BFG, a massive damaging attack. The next is a sword which has tamer animations than the glory kill despite being built up massively throughout the story. There's also the blood punch, which is built up through glorykills. Aside from your moves and weapons there's also multiple progression systems, each of which uses a different currency. There's one for your guns, one for your suit, one for new abilities, and one for stats. Look, I get wanting to add new stuff, but isn't this a little too much?
Of course, excess isn't always a killer. In fact, it often feels like Doom is trying to be a Spectacle Action game similar to Devil May Cry. However, one thing that separates Devil May Cry and DOOM Eternal is that DMC often gives the player much more freedom in what it lets the player use. However, DOOM Eternal feels so deadset on forcing the player to play the way the developer intended. The cacodemons is a good example. You could fight it the normal way, or you could just throw a grenade at it and glory kill. The latter is extremely easy and efficient, so obviously it's what you want to do. A lot of enemies have similar weaknesses, some of which I do think work. The pinkies are vulnerable on the tail, so freezing them with the ice bomb is the logical course of action. Hitting a group of enemies with the flame belch is also very intuitive and logical. Honestly, looking at some of these weaknesses separately, it all seems good. However, when you put them all together, the entire game is just "Use the specific weapon or hit the specific part". It's also annoying that the game points all of these weaknesses out, so there's really never a need to experiment using different weapons or anything. As such, there's a clear lack of expression in using your weapons.
All of this is brought to a head with the marauder. With these guys, you have to stand at a specific range, wait for them to lower their guard, hit them with a burst weapon, and repeat until it dies. And my gosh, the discussion around this enemy is so stupid. I've seen so many people be like, "This enemy isn't that hard to beat." This is true. As long as it's one-on-one, these encounters aren't that difficult. However, they just aren't fun to fight.
As such, gameplay wise, DOOM Eternal is less than the sum of its parts. Many ideas seem good, but when put together, they just don't fit, even if the weapons are cool and satisfying to use.
Alright, now the story. I've made it known that with these kinds of games, I don't expect much storywise. DOOM Eternal mostly does the job. It contextualizes everything well enough, and I'm glad that most of it is kept to datalogs that I don't have to read. Still I do have complaints. First, the game really wants you to know how cool the Doomslayer is. This is strange, because Doomslayer/Doomguy is usually just... well, a guy in most games, including the game preceding Eternal. Aside from this tonal shift, it just annoys me in general. I probably would've enjoyed this angle more if the infamy of the Slayer grew as you played, but it seems all of that took place in between 2016 and Eternal. The other thing is that the cultists' dialogue, which appears occasionally all throughout the game, is really dumb and not funny. Once again, none of this is a big deal and it doesn't change my opinion that much at all, but I thought I might as well discuss it.
Overall, DOOM Eternal is fine. It's occasionally fun, but too many systems simultaneously overwhelm and restrict the player. It could change to a 6 later, but I'm giving it a 5/10 for now.
Okay, now I get to talk about why this game doesn't really work for me. First is that there is an excess of moves, weapons, and progression systems. By the end of the game, you have seven normal weapons. Each of these weapons also has two mods, which can in themselves be upgraded and switched between mid-battle, and many of these mods completely change the function of the gun. You also have glory kills, the chainsaw, and the flame belch. Each of these can be used against enemies to gain health, ammo, and shield respectively. Next is the grenade. There's a normal one and an ice one. Next is the dash, which gives you a quick burst of speed. Don't forget the two superweapons. One is obviously the BFG, a massive damaging attack. The next is a sword which has tamer animations than the glory kill despite being built up massively throughout the story. There's also the blood punch, which is built up through glorykills. Aside from your moves and weapons there's also multiple progression systems, each of which uses a different currency. There's one for your guns, one for your suit, one for new abilities, and one for stats. Look, I get wanting to add new stuff, but isn't this a little too much?
Of course, excess isn't always a killer. In fact, it often feels like Doom is trying to be a Spectacle Action game similar to Devil May Cry. However, one thing that separates Devil May Cry and DOOM Eternal is that DMC often gives the player much more freedom in what it lets the player use. However, DOOM Eternal feels so deadset on forcing the player to play the way the developer intended. The cacodemons is a good example. You could fight it the normal way, or you could just throw a grenade at it and glory kill. The latter is extremely easy and efficient, so obviously it's what you want to do. A lot of enemies have similar weaknesses, some of which I do think work. The pinkies are vulnerable on the tail, so freezing them with the ice bomb is the logical course of action. Hitting a group of enemies with the flame belch is also very intuitive and logical. Honestly, looking at some of these weaknesses separately, it all seems good. However, when you put them all together, the entire game is just "Use the specific weapon or hit the specific part". It's also annoying that the game points all of these weaknesses out, so there's really never a need to experiment using different weapons or anything. As such, there's a clear lack of expression in using your weapons.
All of this is brought to a head with the marauder. With these guys, you have to stand at a specific range, wait for them to lower their guard, hit them with a burst weapon, and repeat until it dies. And my gosh, the discussion around this enemy is so stupid. I've seen so many people be like, "This enemy isn't that hard to beat." This is true. As long as it's one-on-one, these encounters aren't that difficult. However, they just aren't fun to fight.
As such, gameplay wise, DOOM Eternal is less than the sum of its parts. Many ideas seem good, but when put together, they just don't fit, even if the weapons are cool and satisfying to use.
Alright, now the story. I've made it known that with these kinds of games, I don't expect much storywise. DOOM Eternal mostly does the job. It contextualizes everything well enough, and I'm glad that most of it is kept to datalogs that I don't have to read. Still I do have complaints. First, the game really wants you to know how cool the Doomslayer is. This is strange, because Doomslayer/Doomguy is usually just... well, a guy in most games, including the game preceding Eternal. Aside from this tonal shift, it just annoys me in general. I probably would've enjoyed this angle more if the infamy of the Slayer grew as you played, but it seems all of that took place in between 2016 and Eternal. The other thing is that the cultists' dialogue, which appears occasionally all throughout the game, is really dumb and not funny. Once again, none of this is a big deal and it doesn't change my opinion that much at all, but I thought I might as well discuss it.
Overall, DOOM Eternal is fine. It's occasionally fun, but too many systems simultaneously overwhelm and restrict the player. It could change to a 6 later, but I'm giving it a 5/10 for now.
Usually, I have a really hard time putting into words why I love games I rate 10/10 so much, but I think I can finally, at the very least, explain the genius of Majora's Mask.
You've probably played a really hard game, right? Whether it's cryptic or just unforgiving, a hard game can be really fun- when you get good at it. Sometimes, that takes a while. Sometimes hours. Sometimes you have to play through the game all over again to 'truly enjoy it'. A bit of hyperbole, but point is, many games are better on replay as a result. There's an argument to whether or not the first or subsequent playthroughs are more important when rating a game. Personally, I feel the best games are great on a first play and even better on replay. And what's so genius about Majora's Mask is that it emulates this experience in a single playthrough.
Let's say you're playing the game. You're at the Great Bay Temple. You get near the end, and now the moon is about to kill everyone. You get annoyed, and you play the song of time. Ok, now you gotta restart. You know what to do this time though, and you have a limited amount of time to do it. And you DESTROY the dungeon. And you probably feel really good. Your mileage may vary, of course. AVGN played the game in 2020 and the 3 Day mechanic annoyed him thoroughly. But to me, what should be a tedious mechanic combines with what is a really steep learning curve and creates an extremely satisfying experience!
All of this ignores some great stories, an interesting world, excellent music, NPCs that run on schedules, excellent side content, incredible atmosphere, and some of the best and most creative dungeon design in gaming, and so many other positives. Point being, it's an extremely unique yet still well-made game that I'm happy has recieved the acclaim it deserves.
You've probably played a really hard game, right? Whether it's cryptic or just unforgiving, a hard game can be really fun- when you get good at it. Sometimes, that takes a while. Sometimes hours. Sometimes you have to play through the game all over again to 'truly enjoy it'. A bit of hyperbole, but point is, many games are better on replay as a result. There's an argument to whether or not the first or subsequent playthroughs are more important when rating a game. Personally, I feel the best games are great on a first play and even better on replay. And what's so genius about Majora's Mask is that it emulates this experience in a single playthrough.
Let's say you're playing the game. You're at the Great Bay Temple. You get near the end, and now the moon is about to kill everyone. You get annoyed, and you play the song of time. Ok, now you gotta restart. You know what to do this time though, and you have a limited amount of time to do it. And you DESTROY the dungeon. And you probably feel really good. Your mileage may vary, of course. AVGN played the game in 2020 and the 3 Day mechanic annoyed him thoroughly. But to me, what should be a tedious mechanic combines with what is a really steep learning curve and creates an extremely satisfying experience!
All of this ignores some great stories, an interesting world, excellent music, NPCs that run on schedules, excellent side content, incredible atmosphere, and some of the best and most creative dungeon design in gaming, and so many other positives. Point being, it's an extremely unique yet still well-made game that I'm happy has recieved the acclaim it deserves.
2001
Devil May Cry is considered the grandfather of the... 'character action' genre (If anyone has a better genre name, please tell me), but it's certainly different from many of the other games in the genre. There is some over-the-top action, but the game is also permeated with atmosphere on many occasions. Oftentimes, you have to collect items and solve puzzles in a medieval castle. There's also fixed camera angles. In case you didn't know, Devil May Cry was originally going to be a game from the Star Fox series. Just kidding, it was actually going to be a Resident Evil game, and you can certainly tell. Even the menus are reminiscent of Resident Evil.
Anyway, this game is much simpler than other... '''character action''' games, which is understandable. You can switch between weapons, but it takes time and doesn't allow for cool combos like in later DMC games. Either way, it's still really fun learning all of the moves and using them to demolish your enemies. However, one thing I noticed is that even when I was steamrolling enemies, that didn't necessarily mean I was getting a good ranking. And when I did get a good ranking, I often wasn't sure what I did differently this time than other times. I have to guess it's based mostly on just getting in a bunch of hits instead of a variety, but I'm not sure. Combine this with bosses and many enemies where using the guns is the best option, and it seems to me that the developers weren't aware of what makes games in this genre fun. Honestly, I'm really disappointed that Kamiya didn't have a firm grasp on what people liked in the genre he was pretty much creating. Jokes aside, this is the only part that I'd say the 'this game hasn't aged well' argument fits at all, unless someone's really gonna argue that underwater levels and repeating boss fights three times were beloved in 2001.
Also, I know I was making a joke with the whole Starfox thing approximately 11 sentences ago, but the last two levels do have on-rails shooter sections. I just played Rayman 3, and it did the same thing. Apparently the new Sonic game did something similar. Why do games feel the need to completely change their genre in the last minute? Once again, was this something people liked in 2001? I don't think it is.
That aside, onto the story. Spoilers, I guess. Uh... Some girl named Trish tries to kill main character Dante and subsequently asks him to help her kill an evil demon guy, and Dante's like, 'yeah sure'. Then they don't interact for like two thirds of the game. Then it turns out Trish is evil, but then she saves Dante, and now she and Dante and buddies so they beat up the bad guy and leave the island. The biggest problem is that Trish just disappears midway through, so we don't see her and Dante grow close. They're still basically strangers by the end of the game, but they act like best friends. Also, the main villain, Mundus, is just some guy. He's boring. I'm not asking for much from these games' stories, I just want the cutscenes to be entertaining and motivating, and Devil May Cry's story was only entertaining sometimes, mainly when it was Dante just swinging weapons around and making fun of bosses.
Visually, the game is an early PS2 game. It looks fine. I like many of the enemy designs, but the castle is pretty basic in terms of visuals. The audio seemed pretty unmemorable to me to be honest.
I was considering giving this game a 7/10, but there were a few too many flaws, so 6/10 it is. Either way, I'd definitely recommend this to fans of the... '''''Character Action''''' genre.
Anyway, this game is much simpler than other... '''character action''' games, which is understandable. You can switch between weapons, but it takes time and doesn't allow for cool combos like in later DMC games. Either way, it's still really fun learning all of the moves and using them to demolish your enemies. However, one thing I noticed is that even when I was steamrolling enemies, that didn't necessarily mean I was getting a good ranking. And when I did get a good ranking, I often wasn't sure what I did differently this time than other times. I have to guess it's based mostly on just getting in a bunch of hits instead of a variety, but I'm not sure. Combine this with bosses and many enemies where using the guns is the best option, and it seems to me that the developers weren't aware of what makes games in this genre fun. Honestly, I'm really disappointed that Kamiya didn't have a firm grasp on what people liked in the genre he was pretty much creating. Jokes aside, this is the only part that I'd say the 'this game hasn't aged well' argument fits at all, unless someone's really gonna argue that underwater levels and repeating boss fights three times were beloved in 2001.
Also, I know I was making a joke with the whole Starfox thing approximately 11 sentences ago, but the last two levels do have on-rails shooter sections. I just played Rayman 3, and it did the same thing. Apparently the new Sonic game did something similar. Why do games feel the need to completely change their genre in the last minute? Once again, was this something people liked in 2001? I don't think it is.
That aside, onto the story. Spoilers, I guess. Uh... Some girl named Trish tries to kill main character Dante and subsequently asks him to help her kill an evil demon guy, and Dante's like, 'yeah sure'. Then they don't interact for like two thirds of the game. Then it turns out Trish is evil, but then she saves Dante, and now she and Dante and buddies so they beat up the bad guy and leave the island. The biggest problem is that Trish just disappears midway through, so we don't see her and Dante grow close. They're still basically strangers by the end of the game, but they act like best friends. Also, the main villain, Mundus, is just some guy. He's boring. I'm not asking for much from these games' stories, I just want the cutscenes to be entertaining and motivating, and Devil May Cry's story was only entertaining sometimes, mainly when it was Dante just swinging weapons around and making fun of bosses.
Visually, the game is an early PS2 game. It looks fine. I like many of the enemy designs, but the castle is pretty basic in terms of visuals. The audio seemed pretty unmemorable to me to be honest.
I was considering giving this game a 7/10, but there were a few too many flaws, so 6/10 it is. Either way, I'd definitely recommend this to fans of the... '''''Character Action''''' genre.
My endless hunt for good 3D Platformers continues with Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2, yet another game Nitro Rad talked about. However, even he was pretty lukewarm on this one, so my expectations were tempered here.
Firstly, let me say that this is yet another case of IGDB having the clearly inferior box art. The US version's has not only far better use of foreshortening and color contrast, but also a great metacontextual commentary on the game itself. Oh well.
Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 is by far the most popular game in the series, and you still may not have heard about it. I picked it up at a retro game store near my home despite how cheap the game is on steam sometimes (Once even being free).
I can't really say that this game is all that great. It's a pretty serviceable platformer, but it's not really unique in any way. As inconsistent as a game like Glover can be, I really appreciated the uniqueness of the movement, level themes, and music. Wait, no, Glover is a masterpiece, I meant Demon Turf. Anyway, Kao Round 2 doesn't really do anything unique at all. In fact, it's extremely derivative of Rayman 2. You start in prison, the second level is called 'The Great Escape', you gain a hover ability, etc etc... However, this game also lacks a lot of what I liked about Rayman 2: The great, cohesive variety and the good use of mechanics focused around a simple moveset. In these regards, this game is extremely simple with few interesting mechanics. Like, I can't think of anything interesting right now. The movement is also very barebones, although I liked the infinite roll you can earn near the end of the game. Despite how simple it is, this game holds your hands pretty much throughout the entire game. I guess it is a baby game, and you can skip any dialogue, but this was still somewhat odd to me. I did appreciate a lot of the more obscure collectible hiding places though, even if the gems are pretty much useless.
Despite that, this game does have better combat than Rayman 2. That's not because this game's combat is great or anything, and moreso because the combat of Rayman 2 is so mediocre. We have a 3 hit combo, aerial attack, roll, ground pound, and boomerangs. It's fine as far as 3D platformer combat goes, but the hit detection can occasionally be wonky. It also has boss fights, which was something Rayman 2 lacked. They're fine.
The story of this game is interesting. You have to get 3000 dabloons to go fight the boss, which may make you think this is a collectathon where you're given freedom in your stage choices, but nah. 2000 of these have to be gained through the levels you play through in a completely linear fashion. At that point, I don't get why they didn't just use a different macguffin or something. Also, I don't get why Kao didn't just beat up the guy demanding money like he did with every other guy. He had no problem stealing a guy's money and beating him up, so it's not a moral issue, and the guy doesn't look particularly tough. I dunno.
I know I've been pretty negative here, and honestly the only thing holding me back from giving this a 4/10 is how charming this game can be on occasion. Kao sounds pretty cute and his neck stretches out in water. So, 5/10 I guess. Maybe I'll lower it to a 4/10 later.
You know, I should really play the first one, especially since I have a Dreamcast. Let me go pick up a copy on eba-
O_O
Firstly, let me say that this is yet another case of IGDB having the clearly inferior box art. The US version's has not only far better use of foreshortening and color contrast, but also a great metacontextual commentary on the game itself. Oh well.
Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 is by far the most popular game in the series, and you still may not have heard about it. I picked it up at a retro game store near my home despite how cheap the game is on steam sometimes (Once even being free).
I can't really say that this game is all that great. It's a pretty serviceable platformer, but it's not really unique in any way. As inconsistent as a game like Glover can be, I really appreciated the uniqueness of the movement, level themes, and music. Wait, no, Glover is a masterpiece, I meant Demon Turf. Anyway, Kao Round 2 doesn't really do anything unique at all. In fact, it's extremely derivative of Rayman 2. You start in prison, the second level is called 'The Great Escape', you gain a hover ability, etc etc... However, this game also lacks a lot of what I liked about Rayman 2: The great, cohesive variety and the good use of mechanics focused around a simple moveset. In these regards, this game is extremely simple with few interesting mechanics. Like, I can't think of anything interesting right now. The movement is also very barebones, although I liked the infinite roll you can earn near the end of the game. Despite how simple it is, this game holds your hands pretty much throughout the entire game. I guess it is a baby game, and you can skip any dialogue, but this was still somewhat odd to me. I did appreciate a lot of the more obscure collectible hiding places though, even if the gems are pretty much useless.
Despite that, this game does have better combat than Rayman 2. That's not because this game's combat is great or anything, and moreso because the combat of Rayman 2 is so mediocre. We have a 3 hit combo, aerial attack, roll, ground pound, and boomerangs. It's fine as far as 3D platformer combat goes, but the hit detection can occasionally be wonky. It also has boss fights, which was something Rayman 2 lacked. They're fine.
The story of this game is interesting. You have to get 3000 dabloons to go fight the boss, which may make you think this is a collectathon where you're given freedom in your stage choices, but nah. 2000 of these have to be gained through the levels you play through in a completely linear fashion. At that point, I don't get why they didn't just use a different macguffin or something. Also, I don't get why Kao didn't just beat up the guy demanding money like he did with every other guy. He had no problem stealing a guy's money and beating him up, so it's not a moral issue, and the guy doesn't look particularly tough. I dunno.
I know I've been pretty negative here, and honestly the only thing holding me back from giving this a 4/10 is how charming this game can be on occasion. Kao sounds pretty cute and his neck stretches out in water. So, 5/10 I guess. Maybe I'll lower it to a 4/10 later.
You know, I should really play the first one, especially since I have a Dreamcast. Let me go pick up a copy on eba-
O_O
2021
If one was to ask me my favorite genre of games, I'd likely say the 3D Platformer. As such, I watch Nitro Rad a lot, and generally respect his opinions. I've certainly disagreed with him, but he's introduced me to games like Hypnospace Outlaw, Anodyne 2, and of course, Glover, the magnum opus of humanity. Anyway, when he made a video about Super Sam Raimi Roll, I decided to wishlist and eventually stimulate the economy by purchasing it.
And uh... This game is surprisingly great. Most indie 3D Platformers are fairly underwhelming, but this one nails almost everything gameplay wise. Your core moveset is fairly simple: You can roll around, jump, do a ground pound bounce akin to SA2's, and the tongue whip that Sam Raimi can be seen doing on the game icon thingy. You have to use these moves to run through some sixty odd linear stages. Be quick though, because each stage has a time limit, and oftentimes these can be pretty strict. Or not if you play easy mode. I actually played the hard mode, which had no checkpoints, so the game was fairly difficult for me overall, but you can change difficulty at any time with no penalty, which I'm sure many will appreciate.
There's two main collectibles: These yellow gems that give you a bit more time to complete the stage and one raspberry in each stage. They can be difficult to get on occasion, but if you collect it and die you'll retain it. Both of these can be used to unlock some new looks, modes, items, and stage secrets. Anyway, I really like the way they health, or rather, the lack of it. Getting hit by an enemy/obstacle will just send you flying up a little for around two seconds. That may not seem like a big deal, but two seconds could be the difference between completing the stage and not. It also puts you at risk to fall off the stage, the only other way to die besides a timeout. It's just a cool simplification of the idea of health in a 3D Platformer.
In general, everything is pretty streamlined. There's no boring combat sections, a very simple level select screen, and a classically phoned in story. Way too many 3D Platformers are insecure and shove in a lot of annoying minigames, so I gotta appreciate that. However, there are bosses, and they're pretty underwhelming. For the most part, it's the same 3-Hit system Platformers have been using for decades, and they don't really use the moveset in any interesting ways. This is probably the only notable gameplay stumble aside from a few level design nitpicks I have.
The other thing holding this game back is a lack of theme or unity. I said the story was 'classically phoned in', and yeah, it is. An ape kidnaps Sam Raimi's friend, so he goes after him. The presentation switches between 8-Bit still image cutscenes/level selects and the 3D levels. The worlds are kind of themed, but aside from said themes being very basic, sometimes the backgrounds and level assets clash. The gameplay is really the only cohesive element. A game like Streets of Rage 4 also has a pretty basic and miminalized story, but its presentation really sells the idea of it being a 90s revival with its comic book artstyle. Considering this game seems to be a spiritual successor to the obscure N64 series Chamelion Twist, they could've attempted something involving that? At the very least, better presentation would've helped, although I'm sure the team did the best they could.
But yeah, this is actually one of the best 3D platformers I've played. 8/10.
And uh... This game is surprisingly great. Most indie 3D Platformers are fairly underwhelming, but this one nails almost everything gameplay wise. Your core moveset is fairly simple: You can roll around, jump, do a ground pound bounce akin to SA2's, and the tongue whip that Sam Raimi can be seen doing on the game icon thingy. You have to use these moves to run through some sixty odd linear stages. Be quick though, because each stage has a time limit, and oftentimes these can be pretty strict. Or not if you play easy mode. I actually played the hard mode, which had no checkpoints, so the game was fairly difficult for me overall, but you can change difficulty at any time with no penalty, which I'm sure many will appreciate.
There's two main collectibles: These yellow gems that give you a bit more time to complete the stage and one raspberry in each stage. They can be difficult to get on occasion, but if you collect it and die you'll retain it. Both of these can be used to unlock some new looks, modes, items, and stage secrets. Anyway, I really like the way they health, or rather, the lack of it. Getting hit by an enemy/obstacle will just send you flying up a little for around two seconds. That may not seem like a big deal, but two seconds could be the difference between completing the stage and not. It also puts you at risk to fall off the stage, the only other way to die besides a timeout. It's just a cool simplification of the idea of health in a 3D Platformer.
In general, everything is pretty streamlined. There's no boring combat sections, a very simple level select screen, and a classically phoned in story. Way too many 3D Platformers are insecure and shove in a lot of annoying minigames, so I gotta appreciate that. However, there are bosses, and they're pretty underwhelming. For the most part, it's the same 3-Hit system Platformers have been using for decades, and they don't really use the moveset in any interesting ways. This is probably the only notable gameplay stumble aside from a few level design nitpicks I have.
The other thing holding this game back is a lack of theme or unity. I said the story was 'classically phoned in', and yeah, it is. An ape kidnaps Sam Raimi's friend, so he goes after him. The presentation switches between 8-Bit still image cutscenes/level selects and the 3D levels. The worlds are kind of themed, but aside from said themes being very basic, sometimes the backgrounds and level assets clash. The gameplay is really the only cohesive element. A game like Streets of Rage 4 also has a pretty basic and miminalized story, but its presentation really sells the idea of it being a 90s revival with its comic book artstyle. Considering this game seems to be a spiritual successor to the obscure N64 series Chamelion Twist, they could've attempted something involving that? At the very least, better presentation would've helped, although I'm sure the team did the best they could.
But yeah, this is actually one of the best 3D platformers I've played. 8/10.
A few months ago, I bought Pokemon Scarlet. I thought that maybe despite what I had heard about it, the game would bring me back to my childhood when I liked those games. I wasn't in the best place in my life when I bought it, and I was hoping this would make me feel better, even though I knew that it would only be a distraction. Even with that, it was a bad distraction, and I think the Armored Core series would've... helped (?) more.
This series has quickly become one of my favorite to the point where objectivity is hard, despite how aware I am of the flaws. One of the missions is a nigh innavigable maze (although you don't have to play the mission to beat the game). In terms of audio, while the music is great, the actual dialogue occasionally seems delivered unnaturally fast, as if to save on file space. Some of the enemy AI isn't super great, and while I did think the story was pretty good, combining the best of the previous two games' structures, your player characters' motivations aren't explored at all.
However, none of these things stopped me from loving Armored Core: Master of Arena. The customization is better than ever, and moreso than the previous games, I felt challenged to actually adapt my AC to each battle. There were tons of great weapons and parts that I used and loved, and all of them are well-balanced. I think the game was well paced and I liked the focus on the arena. I was afraid that the game would feel bad doing several arena matches in a row, but those matches are broken up by story-pertinent missions. I do wish that you could still do optional missions late-game, but it's not a huge deal and makes sense story-wise.
But the real reason I compared this to Pokemon is because of the ability to transfer the AC to each subsequent game. By the end of this one, my AC (Which I named Wyvearn for some reason) felt truly powerful, and it felt like it really was something I made. Just like in Pokemon, you can really make your own powerhouse through morally questionable means. Even more than something like Shin Megami Tensei, Armored Core: Master of Arena is the closest I've felt to playing Pokemon for adults.
There's also the EX arenas, which I haven't gotten into that much, but it's pretty neat. You can the ACs of the developers and winners of an AC tournament. You can even duel your own AC in it, and this mode really does justify the title 'Master of Arena'.
So yes, I loved this game, despite its flaws. It's the best of the PS1 trilogy and a great finale to it. 9/10
This series has quickly become one of my favorite to the point where objectivity is hard, despite how aware I am of the flaws. One of the missions is a nigh innavigable maze (although you don't have to play the mission to beat the game). In terms of audio, while the music is great, the actual dialogue occasionally seems delivered unnaturally fast, as if to save on file space. Some of the enemy AI isn't super great, and while I did think the story was pretty good, combining the best of the previous two games' structures, your player characters' motivations aren't explored at all.
However, none of these things stopped me from loving Armored Core: Master of Arena. The customization is better than ever, and moreso than the previous games, I felt challenged to actually adapt my AC to each battle. There were tons of great weapons and parts that I used and loved, and all of them are well-balanced. I think the game was well paced and I liked the focus on the arena. I was afraid that the game would feel bad doing several arena matches in a row, but those matches are broken up by story-pertinent missions. I do wish that you could still do optional missions late-game, but it's not a huge deal and makes sense story-wise.
But the real reason I compared this to Pokemon is because of the ability to transfer the AC to each subsequent game. By the end of this one, my AC (Which I named Wyvearn for some reason) felt truly powerful, and it felt like it really was something I made. Just like in Pokemon, you can really make your own powerhouse through morally questionable means. Even more than something like Shin Megami Tensei, Armored Core: Master of Arena is the closest I've felt to playing Pokemon for adults.
There's also the EX arenas, which I haven't gotten into that much, but it's pretty neat. You can the ACs of the developers and winners of an AC tournament. You can even duel your own AC in it, and this mode really does justify the title 'Master of Arena'.
So yes, I loved this game, despite its flaws. It's the best of the PS1 trilogy and a great finale to it. 9/10
This review contains spoilers
I recently played Sephonie, a 3D Platformer by Analgesic Productions. This was partially due to my familiarity with Analgesic’s previous games, including Anodyne 2. Familiarity is underplaying it though, because around 3 years ago, I would’ve called Anodyne 2 my favorite game. In fact, wanting to write a review of this game is part of why I joined this website in the first place. As time went on, my thoughts on the game slowly degraded for multiple reasons, but I still held it in high regard. When I started playing Sephonie, I inevitably began to think about Anodyne 2, and I felt a need to replay it. I couldn’t help but wonder how my perception of the game would change three years removed.
The game remains great, and even occasionally brilliant. It follows Nova, who shrinks down and cleans dangerous nanodust from the insides of people. This cleaning saves people from corruption, and Nova moves on to help other people in need. That’s how it starts at least; The plot soon becomes an allegory for faith, structure, and purpose, where Nova gains more perspective on nanodust and the greater world. Combine this with mix of 3D exploration and top-down dungeons, sprinkle in some quirkiness, and add a dash of progressive themes, and that’s basically Anodyne 2. Now, this may seem akin to many indie games: games that mean well but execute their concepts confusedly and amateurishly. Honestly, that’s how I’d describe some other Analgesic’s games. However, this game nails what matters most. I’d be lying if I called the 3D exploration incredible, as it’s mostly carried by atmospheric, alien locations. Optional collectibles and fun character interactions don’t make up for the lack of environmental interaction and compelling puzzles or platforming. Even as an overworld for the top-down dungeons, the 3D world feels far too sparse given the breadth of the environments. The car transformation and late-game fast travel somewhat rectify this issue, but only somewhat.
The excellent top-down Zelda-esque sections do the heavy lifting here. The Zelda comparison isn’t entirely apt, as you don’t get a bunch of new items throughout the games. No, Nova mainly just uses a vacuum cleaner, sucking up items and enemies a la Kirby’s Dream Land (Side note, going from a broom in the first game to a vacuum cleaner here is funny). The game gets a lot of mileage out of this, constructing really fun puzzles and combat scenarios. The efficiency with which this game establishes and expands on concepts surprises me; It does a lot with little, and the game respects the player’s ability to figure mechanics out for themselves. The initially simple dungeons with straightforward mechanics and stories eventually give way to more wacky and varied levels, with one being a parody of classic RPGs. This high-quality design is accompanied by a narrative justification for the shift from 2D -> 3D: Nova is “Shrinking” the resolution of the game while she shrinks in size. Tons of indie games mash two genres together, but few make sense of such a combination the way Anodyne 2 does.
I have a few benign complaints about the 2D gameplay. The lack of difficulty hurts my enjoyment a bit. I’ll assume the leisure with which I finished the game is due to it being a second playthrough (And also me being good at videogames). Regardless, the plentiful checkpoints mean I never felt much of a threat, even in the rare occasions when my health did diminish. The other issue I have is more of a missed opportunity related to the titular dust. Dust gates progression, but you can’t really hold that much, and depositing it requires backtracking. Again, this is usually merely benign (Unless you go for the ‘bad’ ending, where you need to collect tons of dust), but having that dust just sit there made me think about how it could’ve been used for other gameplay purposes. The concept of channeling dust is mentioned, but the gameplay implications of this were extremely minor. An extra use for dust could’ve been really interesting, especially considering how often it sits in the player’s tank.
The story makes no effort to hide its messages of seeking purpose and meaning, but I consider it a compelling story regardless. The narrative is supported by some good character progression and decent twists. Nora initially sees the benefits of structure and believing in an inherent purpose, but later realizes finding your own purpose can also be fulfilling. In the ‘good’ ending, Nova rejects her purpose given to her by the Center, a representation of Leaders\Religion. It’s a pretty solid story overall, although I admit that most of what I enjoy comes down to specific concepts and moments. One of the highlights comes midway through the game. Palisade, a mother figure of sorts to Nova, creates a playground for Nova and dies soon after. Eventually Nova finds this playground and assumes that it’s meant to train her. The concept of having fun is alien to her; everything has an inherent meaning, even random dice rolls. This moment does a great job of characterizing Nova and representing the game’s themes
One initially inconspicuous section compels me more than any other in the game. You meet a ‘bugged’ NPC, and upon shrinking down and entering this NPC, you see the story of Nora, who exists in what seems to be the real world. In this section, the game implies that the main story is simply Nora escaping the problems of her life by playing a videogame, only exercising freedom in fantasy. This compelling extra layer looks at the escapist nature of games, and the happy ending of the game now seems to almost be a red herring.
Unfortunately, the dialogue often undercuts what should just speak for itself. Nora starts talking about minimum wage at one point and I’m just sitting here thinking, “Ok, sure, but does this need to be here?” There’s one section of the story that’s conceptually excellent: Nova tries to help a rock guy who blindly commits to a purpose and pays the price. This sets up the idea that blindly following a purpose isn’t always a good idea, which the game later expands on. However, the dialogue hammers this idea in way too hard. Even worse, this dialogue can’t be skipped. The game literally puts up progression gates that only go down once you talk to all the people. This would be obnoxious for even the best writing. The game takes the ‘Tell don’t show’ approach far too often, and this approach often hurts otherwise impactful story beats. Excess aside, the dialogue can be hit-and-miss, regardless of if it aims for drama or comedy. Often it leans too far into self-indulgence and quirk, briefly becoming that indie game stereotype I described at the beginning. The best jokes and story beats are told visually. There’s some graffiti that reads “Environmental Storytelling” earlier on. In the aforementioned JRPG Parody, the game makes fun of the way staircases are presented in Dragon Quest games. There’s an announcer that’s a spider named ‘Announci’, a joke I only picked up on this playthrough. None of these gags are forced on the player, which means even the occasional annoying dialogue from an NPC is bearable. I suppose this strength of optional content and dialogue fits, since Anodyne 2 explores free will and finding your own purpose…
These themes of freedom and finding purpose are characterized on a gameplay level by Metacoins. Metacoins can be collected in the 3D Areas (And occasionally in 2D levels), and you can buy various items with them. However, what if you wanted to get all of them? There’s not much of a reason, but what if you just really wanted to? Well, you gotta look hard. In fact, you have to go beyond the bounds of reality. Many of these coins are hidden in walls and out of bounds. To get them, you have to glitch the game. For a game going against what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, this concept somehow balances being both logical and insane. This optional sidequest that appears halfway through the game remains the best part of the 3D gameplay. Make of that what you will. Despite my love for this game, I never ended up getting every single coin. I looked online too, but considering this game’s obscurity, I could find little. Honestly though, I love the sense of mystery in this game. Metacoins aside, there’s a lot of weird optional stuff here, much of which reveals itself in the post-game. Nowadays I try to avoid guides for games as much as possible, and I think this game’s sense of mystery may have contributed to this habit. In that spirit of mystery, I won’t spoil anything about what the post-game has to offer.
Analgesic spoiled us with the audiovisuals though. This game released around the time low-poly visuals were making a resurgence, and I do enjoy the visual style despite some issues. Some locations look great, but others are muddled and dull. Could this have been an intentional homage to the actual visuals of the time? Maybe, but if so, the game’s very selective in its faithfulness. It’s also worth noting that cutscenes, assuming they don’t play out with still images or in dialogue, lack pretty much any unique animations; Characters will stand in their idle animations and talk. Yes, this game was made by a small team, but the lack of animation distracted me nonetheless. The 2D sections generally look better on a surface level, and the visuals often nicely tie into a character’s psyche. However, 2D or 3D sections, the music always resonates with me. The audio balances style and substance beautifully; I can tell if a song is from this game, but the compositions have a great range regardless.
Replaying this game was fun. Not just because it’s a great game, but also because it makes me think about how I’ve changed. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if part of why I identified with this game’s story so much was the fact that I struggled with what my purpose should be as well. I played this game the same month I graduated from High School. I started college months later, not necessarily because I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but because that’s what people expected me to do. For the same reason, I considered going into a medical career. Having something present that dilemma of purpose probably vindicated me. Nowadays though, I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my life. I enjoy learning about Math in College, I’m more confident in myself, and I’ve even made friends and stuff. I’m not perfect of course, but who is…
I’ve never really bought into the notion that certain experiences with art are invalid. Even if a game was made with a specific audience in mind, people outside that audience deserve a voice. Good stories should at least be entertaining or compelling for people who don’t personally relate to the main character. Anodyne 2 certainly targets an audience, but it also houses good gameplay, an interesting story, and great music. This game isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece, and I’m hesitant to rate it 9/10 either. However, even three years later I had a great time, and that’s enough for me. My numerical rating doesn’t matter much at the end of the day; I can’t imagine this review would actually convince many people to play the game. It's being posted on a fairly obscure website by an even more obscure user. It’s basically a useless review. However, I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. Does this review really need a purpose? That question resonates even more for my review from three years ago. That poorly written, dated review doesn’t really serve a purpose, but it represents who I was back then. Shouldn’t that person, flaws and all, still be allowed to exist? I think so.
The game remains great, and even occasionally brilliant. It follows Nova, who shrinks down and cleans dangerous nanodust from the insides of people. This cleaning saves people from corruption, and Nova moves on to help other people in need. That’s how it starts at least; The plot soon becomes an allegory for faith, structure, and purpose, where Nova gains more perspective on nanodust and the greater world. Combine this with mix of 3D exploration and top-down dungeons, sprinkle in some quirkiness, and add a dash of progressive themes, and that’s basically Anodyne 2. Now, this may seem akin to many indie games: games that mean well but execute their concepts confusedly and amateurishly. Honestly, that’s how I’d describe some other Analgesic’s games. However, this game nails what matters most. I’d be lying if I called the 3D exploration incredible, as it’s mostly carried by atmospheric, alien locations. Optional collectibles and fun character interactions don’t make up for the lack of environmental interaction and compelling puzzles or platforming. Even as an overworld for the top-down dungeons, the 3D world feels far too sparse given the breadth of the environments. The car transformation and late-game fast travel somewhat rectify this issue, but only somewhat.
The excellent top-down Zelda-esque sections do the heavy lifting here. The Zelda comparison isn’t entirely apt, as you don’t get a bunch of new items throughout the games. No, Nova mainly just uses a vacuum cleaner, sucking up items and enemies a la Kirby’s Dream Land (Side note, going from a broom in the first game to a vacuum cleaner here is funny). The game gets a lot of mileage out of this, constructing really fun puzzles and combat scenarios. The efficiency with which this game establishes and expands on concepts surprises me; It does a lot with little, and the game respects the player’s ability to figure mechanics out for themselves. The initially simple dungeons with straightforward mechanics and stories eventually give way to more wacky and varied levels, with one being a parody of classic RPGs. This high-quality design is accompanied by a narrative justification for the shift from 2D -> 3D: Nova is “Shrinking” the resolution of the game while she shrinks in size. Tons of indie games mash two genres together, but few make sense of such a combination the way Anodyne 2 does.
I have a few benign complaints about the 2D gameplay. The lack of difficulty hurts my enjoyment a bit. I’ll assume the leisure with which I finished the game is due to it being a second playthrough (And also me being good at videogames). Regardless, the plentiful checkpoints mean I never felt much of a threat, even in the rare occasions when my health did diminish. The other issue I have is more of a missed opportunity related to the titular dust. Dust gates progression, but you can’t really hold that much, and depositing it requires backtracking. Again, this is usually merely benign (Unless you go for the ‘bad’ ending, where you need to collect tons of dust), but having that dust just sit there made me think about how it could’ve been used for other gameplay purposes. The concept of channeling dust is mentioned, but the gameplay implications of this were extremely minor. An extra use for dust could’ve been really interesting, especially considering how often it sits in the player’s tank.
The story makes no effort to hide its messages of seeking purpose and meaning, but I consider it a compelling story regardless. The narrative is supported by some good character progression and decent twists. Nora initially sees the benefits of structure and believing in an inherent purpose, but later realizes finding your own purpose can also be fulfilling. In the ‘good’ ending, Nova rejects her purpose given to her by the Center, a representation of Leaders\Religion. It’s a pretty solid story overall, although I admit that most of what I enjoy comes down to specific concepts and moments. One of the highlights comes midway through the game. Palisade, a mother figure of sorts to Nova, creates a playground for Nova and dies soon after. Eventually Nova finds this playground and assumes that it’s meant to train her. The concept of having fun is alien to her; everything has an inherent meaning, even random dice rolls. This moment does a great job of characterizing Nova and representing the game’s themes
One initially inconspicuous section compels me more than any other in the game. You meet a ‘bugged’ NPC, and upon shrinking down and entering this NPC, you see the story of Nora, who exists in what seems to be the real world. In this section, the game implies that the main story is simply Nora escaping the problems of her life by playing a videogame, only exercising freedom in fantasy. This compelling extra layer looks at the escapist nature of games, and the happy ending of the game now seems to almost be a red herring.
Unfortunately, the dialogue often undercuts what should just speak for itself. Nora starts talking about minimum wage at one point and I’m just sitting here thinking, “Ok, sure, but does this need to be here?” There’s one section of the story that’s conceptually excellent: Nova tries to help a rock guy who blindly commits to a purpose and pays the price. This sets up the idea that blindly following a purpose isn’t always a good idea, which the game later expands on. However, the dialogue hammers this idea in way too hard. Even worse, this dialogue can’t be skipped. The game literally puts up progression gates that only go down once you talk to all the people. This would be obnoxious for even the best writing. The game takes the ‘Tell don’t show’ approach far too often, and this approach often hurts otherwise impactful story beats. Excess aside, the dialogue can be hit-and-miss, regardless of if it aims for drama or comedy. Often it leans too far into self-indulgence and quirk, briefly becoming that indie game stereotype I described at the beginning. The best jokes and story beats are told visually. There’s some graffiti that reads “Environmental Storytelling” earlier on. In the aforementioned JRPG Parody, the game makes fun of the way staircases are presented in Dragon Quest games. There’s an announcer that’s a spider named ‘Announci’, a joke I only picked up on this playthrough. None of these gags are forced on the player, which means even the occasional annoying dialogue from an NPC is bearable. I suppose this strength of optional content and dialogue fits, since Anodyne 2 explores free will and finding your own purpose…
These themes of freedom and finding purpose are characterized on a gameplay level by Metacoins. Metacoins can be collected in the 3D Areas (And occasionally in 2D levels), and you can buy various items with them. However, what if you wanted to get all of them? There’s not much of a reason, but what if you just really wanted to? Well, you gotta look hard. In fact, you have to go beyond the bounds of reality. Many of these coins are hidden in walls and out of bounds. To get them, you have to glitch the game. For a game going against what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, this concept somehow balances being both logical and insane. This optional sidequest that appears halfway through the game remains the best part of the 3D gameplay. Make of that what you will. Despite my love for this game, I never ended up getting every single coin. I looked online too, but considering this game’s obscurity, I could find little. Honestly though, I love the sense of mystery in this game. Metacoins aside, there’s a lot of weird optional stuff here, much of which reveals itself in the post-game. Nowadays I try to avoid guides for games as much as possible, and I think this game’s sense of mystery may have contributed to this habit. In that spirit of mystery, I won’t spoil anything about what the post-game has to offer.
Analgesic spoiled us with the audiovisuals though. This game released around the time low-poly visuals were making a resurgence, and I do enjoy the visual style despite some issues. Some locations look great, but others are muddled and dull. Could this have been an intentional homage to the actual visuals of the time? Maybe, but if so, the game’s very selective in its faithfulness. It’s also worth noting that cutscenes, assuming they don’t play out with still images or in dialogue, lack pretty much any unique animations; Characters will stand in their idle animations and talk. Yes, this game was made by a small team, but the lack of animation distracted me nonetheless. The 2D sections generally look better on a surface level, and the visuals often nicely tie into a character’s psyche. However, 2D or 3D sections, the music always resonates with me. The audio balances style and substance beautifully; I can tell if a song is from this game, but the compositions have a great range regardless.
Replaying this game was fun. Not just because it’s a great game, but also because it makes me think about how I’ve changed. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if part of why I identified with this game’s story so much was the fact that I struggled with what my purpose should be as well. I played this game the same month I graduated from High School. I started college months later, not necessarily because I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but because that’s what people expected me to do. For the same reason, I considered going into a medical career. Having something present that dilemma of purpose probably vindicated me. Nowadays though, I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my life. I enjoy learning about Math in College, I’m more confident in myself, and I’ve even made friends and stuff. I’m not perfect of course, but who is…
I’ve never really bought into the notion that certain experiences with art are invalid. Even if a game was made with a specific audience in mind, people outside that audience deserve a voice. Good stories should at least be entertaining or compelling for people who don’t personally relate to the main character. Anodyne 2 certainly targets an audience, but it also houses good gameplay, an interesting story, and great music. This game isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece, and I’m hesitant to rate it 9/10 either. However, even three years later I had a great time, and that’s enough for me. My numerical rating doesn’t matter much at the end of the day; I can’t imagine this review would actually convince many people to play the game. It's being posted on a fairly obscure website by an even more obscure user. It’s basically a useless review. However, I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. Does this review really need a purpose? That question resonates even more for my review from three years ago. That poorly written, dated review doesn’t really serve a purpose, but it represents who I was back then. Shouldn’t that person, flaws and all, still be allowed to exist? I think so.
This review contains spoilers
Something I’ve been meaning to talk about on this website is that people seem to judge sequels differently than expansions. It makes sense, but it can kind of bring up a lot of semantical arguments. One could criticize a game like Tears of the Kingdom for a lot of stuff, but when people say ‘This is just an DLC/update of Breath of the Wild’, it raises a lot of questions. First, what does this exactly mean? Is it an expansion because it almost exclusively adds stuff instead of making fundamental changes? Maybe, but other sequels have done this without being scrutinized nearly as much. Is it because enough isn’t added/changed? Possibly, but I honestly think if this game was for some reason split into three or so parts and released as DLC of Breath of the Wild for the same price in the end, people would be fine with it. I mean, look at Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It costs $60 to buy 12 DLC fighters along with their stages. Clearly, this is less content than the base game at the exact same price. As such, it becomes clear that people simply hold sequels to a higher level of scrutiny. Saying a sequel is just an expansion is a criticism of a game.
With that, I have to ask: is Silent Line: Armored Core a sequel to or expansion of Armored Core 3? I would say that in many ways this is an expansion. You can transfer your save from Armored Core 3 over to this game. All of the parts in that game are present here. The general movement and UI are the same. There’s an arena with new opponents, but it’s ultimately not that different from the arena of the previous game. And of course, Silent Line: Armored Core still has that same dumb control scheme I feel obligated to mention in each review.
However, pretty much every mission is completely original. Not only that, but they’re consistently the best missions in the series. Even the more basic missions will have lots of little twists that make playing them more entertaining. For example, there was one mission where you initially just start with some target and evasion practice, but by the end you’re fighting a giant robot while hopping around on airplanes. Surprises like this are all throughout this game, and it makes a ton of missions really memorable. The missions can get pretty challenging too, so you really have to consider your loadout before going into battle. You can’t take parts like extension and inside parts for granted, you really must optimize. Even once you get past that, the opportunity to earn new parts is present in every mission, whether it be from finding one out in the wild or getting it as a gift for doing a good job. This makes missions much more replayable on a whole.
And wow, there’s a ton of new parts. Most previous expansions averaged around 20 to 30 new parts. This game offers 198. I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that many of these are simply upgrades to other parts, but these upgrade parts are usually the aforementioned mission rewards, so I think that’s honestly fine. A lot of these parts are new left-handed weapons. This game still differentiates between right and left-handed weapons, but there’s way more options for left-handed weapons that I don’t even really care. This adds so much more customization to the game, and it made way more builds viable. It’s the best feedback loop a game like this can have: Missions are hard enough that you really need to consider loadouts, and missions will reward you with new parts, meaning you always have something new to try out.
And maybe most importantly, this game’s story is a direct follow up to that of Armored Core 3. In fact, it’s the most direct of a follow-up that we’ve had in the series so far. You could argue that the story here is the same kind of stuff the series has been doing: A self-destructive cycle of corporations attacking each other where you are a self-destructive soldier for them. However, it feels a little more deliberate here. Even after everything that happened in the previous game, none of these superpower companies have learned anything. It seems the antagonist may be thinking the same, as it slowly becomes more active in pushing against the corporations’ war. The ending really caps it off well, with the final words of IBIS being, “The rest is up to you.” It makes you consider whether or not IBIS was meant to stop humanity or crown a new protector. I hope they expand on if IBIS’ defeat was a good or bad thing in later entries.
So, at the end of the day, is this a sequel or expansion? It’s all semantics. It’s the same as arguing if the AC I started Armored Core 3 with is the same as the one I have here. Here and there I’d replace parts to the point that it’s pretty much a completely different mech. But if it is different, when exactly did it definitively become a different AC? It’s an AC of Theseus, if you will. These kinds of semantics are worth discussing, but if there’s one thing Silent Line: Armored Core is, it’s great. Once again, it’s the best I’ve played in this series marathon so far. 9/10.
With that, I have to ask: is Silent Line: Armored Core a sequel to or expansion of Armored Core 3? I would say that in many ways this is an expansion. You can transfer your save from Armored Core 3 over to this game. All of the parts in that game are present here. The general movement and UI are the same. There’s an arena with new opponents, but it’s ultimately not that different from the arena of the previous game. And of course, Silent Line: Armored Core still has that same dumb control scheme I feel obligated to mention in each review.
However, pretty much every mission is completely original. Not only that, but they’re consistently the best missions in the series. Even the more basic missions will have lots of little twists that make playing them more entertaining. For example, there was one mission where you initially just start with some target and evasion practice, but by the end you’re fighting a giant robot while hopping around on airplanes. Surprises like this are all throughout this game, and it makes a ton of missions really memorable. The missions can get pretty challenging too, so you really have to consider your loadout before going into battle. You can’t take parts like extension and inside parts for granted, you really must optimize. Even once you get past that, the opportunity to earn new parts is present in every mission, whether it be from finding one out in the wild or getting it as a gift for doing a good job. This makes missions much more replayable on a whole.
And wow, there’s a ton of new parts. Most previous expansions averaged around 20 to 30 new parts. This game offers 198. I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that many of these are simply upgrades to other parts, but these upgrade parts are usually the aforementioned mission rewards, so I think that’s honestly fine. A lot of these parts are new left-handed weapons. This game still differentiates between right and left-handed weapons, but there’s way more options for left-handed weapons that I don’t even really care. This adds so much more customization to the game, and it made way more builds viable. It’s the best feedback loop a game like this can have: Missions are hard enough that you really need to consider loadouts, and missions will reward you with new parts, meaning you always have something new to try out.
And maybe most importantly, this game’s story is a direct follow up to that of Armored Core 3. In fact, it’s the most direct of a follow-up that we’ve had in the series so far. You could argue that the story here is the same kind of stuff the series has been doing: A self-destructive cycle of corporations attacking each other where you are a self-destructive soldier for them. However, it feels a little more deliberate here. Even after everything that happened in the previous game, none of these superpower companies have learned anything. It seems the antagonist may be thinking the same, as it slowly becomes more active in pushing against the corporations’ war. The ending really caps it off well, with the final words of IBIS being, “The rest is up to you.” It makes you consider whether or not IBIS was meant to stop humanity or crown a new protector. I hope they expand on if IBIS’ defeat was a good or bad thing in later entries.
So, at the end of the day, is this a sequel or expansion? It’s all semantics. It’s the same as arguing if the AC I started Armored Core 3 with is the same as the one I have here. Here and there I’d replace parts to the point that it’s pretty much a completely different mech. But if it is different, when exactly did it definitively become a different AC? It’s an AC of Theseus, if you will. These kinds of semantics are worth discussing, but if there’s one thing Silent Line: Armored Core is, it’s great. Once again, it’s the best I’ve played in this series marathon so far. 9/10.
2017
Suggested by @Drax for this list.
A while back I did a review of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I specifically pointed out that one level featured no jumping, which I said was ridiculous for a 3D Platformer. Removing jumping in a game focused on 3D movement is a bold choice. Jumping is the players main and usually only way to interact with the Z-Axis in a 3D Platformer. Removing that interaction is a decision that the developers of Ty made rather flippantly.
By comparison, Snake Pass feels much more deliberate. In a genre about moving around in 3D spaces, the simple act of moving forward can take some conscious effort. In the game, ground movement is fastest when you move in a zigzag pattern as opposed to simply moving forward. While not hard, it’s certainly more conscious to wiggle the control stick back and forth rather than just push forward. This mirrors real life, as many snakes themselves move in this zigzag pattern. This philosophy applies to the whole game, with the important note that it’s still a fantastical setting. Snakes can’t jump. They can do quick attacks that may look like jumps, but there’s nothing to attack in this game. The most vertical distance you can gain in this game is raising your head a small amount. As such, all platforming is done by climbing things. Wrapping around protruding surfaces and using them as foundation for more movement, extending from a platform to get a collectible or maybe take a slither of faith hoping you land on another nearby platform. Your other tools aside from slithering and lifting your head are a button to hold your grip and a bird friend that will lift your tail. That last one may sound a little overpowered, but the bird can lift only the tail, and it also results in no counterweight to the head when you’re dangling off of a pole or the like. It’s all fairly simple, but it allows for a decent amount of varied platforming and a little nuance. It’s almost puzzle-like in how it works, as often there’s multiple ways to tackle a challenge, but experimentation can find one particular way that works really well.
One interesting element of the level design is that the complexity of platforms actually decreased as the game went on. Earlier on, there were wooden structures with several protrusions one could use to pull themselves up with, but by the end, platforms had much less support. This isn’t to say the level design became lazy, it was consistently solid throughout. The game has a linear progression of levels, but the levels themselves are non-linear, and you can collect the three gems needed to proceed in any order. The first set of levels is pretty tame, which makes sense considering how unconventional this game is, but in due time you’re dealing with more and more moving platforms and diagonal structures. I was worried early on that the checkpoint system would create issues. It’s basic, with no lives and the simple system of respawning at the last checkpoint and losing all item progress. Generally I’m fine with this ’’’’outdated’’’’ system, but considering this game is all-or-nothing in terms of health and a movement system that could make excessive backtracking annoying, I was kinda worried. However, the game thankfully positions checkpoint near the most challenging segments, optional or not.
While I think the level design is good, it definitely feels a little monotonous to an extent. While the latter three worlds do feature at least one main mixup, the implementation of these is mixed. This game features some pretty solid sections in the water level, for example. However, the third world just introduces lava, which doesn’t really do anything the previous established threats of pits and spikes couldn’t. The last world’s gimmick is by far the most consistently present, being wind. It requires you to be very careful in many cases, but in others it allows for more speed and freedom than ever before. While we’re on problems, there’s these switches that you have to pull to activate platforms and the like. While pulling these switches with your snake body is initially novel, the utilization of these switches remain the same from start to end. More could’ve been done to add more unique environmental interaction here.
The problem of monotonous theming extends to the visuals as well. The game’s world are themed around grass, water, fire, and air. Already this is pretty underwhelming, but the individual worlds just look very similar. The most stark difference are just lighting and skybox changes. This comes with the tradeoff of very polished visuals. The wider game has a jungle ruins theme, and it’s all very bright and colorful. However I still feel the lack of visual variety is worth mentioning. We have some great music here though. That’s because the composer was David Wise, known for the first two Donkey Kong Country games, composed for this game too. I’m not sure if his soundtrack here is as strong as those two, but it’s great regardless. It fits the tone and theme of the game and is just generally very good.
This is probably one of the shorter reviews that I’ve done for this list, but Snake Pass is a pretty simple game. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bog itself down with unnecessary fluff. No combat, No pointless diversion, and little story. However, it’s also a very novel game throughout its short length. In that spirit of brevity, I’m gonna end it here. This was a very good game, and one of the better 3D Platformers I’ve played. 7/10, honestly close to an 8.
A while back I did a review of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I specifically pointed out that one level featured no jumping, which I said was ridiculous for a 3D Platformer. Removing jumping in a game focused on 3D movement is a bold choice. Jumping is the players main and usually only way to interact with the Z-Axis in a 3D Platformer. Removing that interaction is a decision that the developers of Ty made rather flippantly.
By comparison, Snake Pass feels much more deliberate. In a genre about moving around in 3D spaces, the simple act of moving forward can take some conscious effort. In the game, ground movement is fastest when you move in a zigzag pattern as opposed to simply moving forward. While not hard, it’s certainly more conscious to wiggle the control stick back and forth rather than just push forward. This mirrors real life, as many snakes themselves move in this zigzag pattern. This philosophy applies to the whole game, with the important note that it’s still a fantastical setting. Snakes can’t jump. They can do quick attacks that may look like jumps, but there’s nothing to attack in this game. The most vertical distance you can gain in this game is raising your head a small amount. As such, all platforming is done by climbing things. Wrapping around protruding surfaces and using them as foundation for more movement, extending from a platform to get a collectible or maybe take a slither of faith hoping you land on another nearby platform. Your other tools aside from slithering and lifting your head are a button to hold your grip and a bird friend that will lift your tail. That last one may sound a little overpowered, but the bird can lift only the tail, and it also results in no counterweight to the head when you’re dangling off of a pole or the like. It’s all fairly simple, but it allows for a decent amount of varied platforming and a little nuance. It’s almost puzzle-like in how it works, as often there’s multiple ways to tackle a challenge, but experimentation can find one particular way that works really well.
One interesting element of the level design is that the complexity of platforms actually decreased as the game went on. Earlier on, there were wooden structures with several protrusions one could use to pull themselves up with, but by the end, platforms had much less support. This isn’t to say the level design became lazy, it was consistently solid throughout. The game has a linear progression of levels, but the levels themselves are non-linear, and you can collect the three gems needed to proceed in any order. The first set of levels is pretty tame, which makes sense considering how unconventional this game is, but in due time you’re dealing with more and more moving platforms and diagonal structures. I was worried early on that the checkpoint system would create issues. It’s basic, with no lives and the simple system of respawning at the last checkpoint and losing all item progress. Generally I’m fine with this ’’’’outdated’’’’ system, but considering this game is all-or-nothing in terms of health and a movement system that could make excessive backtracking annoying, I was kinda worried. However, the game thankfully positions checkpoint near the most challenging segments, optional or not.
While I think the level design is good, it definitely feels a little monotonous to an extent. While the latter three worlds do feature at least one main mixup, the implementation of these is mixed. This game features some pretty solid sections in the water level, for example. However, the third world just introduces lava, which doesn’t really do anything the previous established threats of pits and spikes couldn’t. The last world’s gimmick is by far the most consistently present, being wind. It requires you to be very careful in many cases, but in others it allows for more speed and freedom than ever before. While we’re on problems, there’s these switches that you have to pull to activate platforms and the like. While pulling these switches with your snake body is initially novel, the utilization of these switches remain the same from start to end. More could’ve been done to add more unique environmental interaction here.
The problem of monotonous theming extends to the visuals as well. The game’s world are themed around grass, water, fire, and air. Already this is pretty underwhelming, but the individual worlds just look very similar. The most stark difference are just lighting and skybox changes. This comes with the tradeoff of very polished visuals. The wider game has a jungle ruins theme, and it’s all very bright and colorful. However I still feel the lack of visual variety is worth mentioning. We have some great music here though. That’s because the composer was David Wise, known for the first two Donkey Kong Country games, composed for this game too. I’m not sure if his soundtrack here is as strong as those two, but it’s great regardless. It fits the tone and theme of the game and is just generally very good.
This is probably one of the shorter reviews that I’ve done for this list, but Snake Pass is a pretty simple game. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bog itself down with unnecessary fluff. No combat, No pointless diversion, and little story. However, it’s also a very novel game throughout its short length. In that spirit of brevity, I’m gonna end it here. This was a very good game, and one of the better 3D Platformers I’ve played. 7/10, honestly close to an 8.
2004
This review contains spoilers
The focus of this game’s detractors, the overheating and ECM being nigh-omnipresent, is kind of misplaced. Fromsoft definitely went overboard with these two, but it is kind of refreshing to really consider radars and radiators when customizing. Customization has generally been expanded here with the great new addition of Tuning, which is basically min-maxing certain AC parts. Each part has different stats you can min-max, but there’s enough ways to negate overheating and the problems it causes your mech that it never feels restrictive. All that aside, the customization is generally great. The other big addition, hangar units, adds another factor to consider in picking a core. I didn’t engage with these that much, but I could see myself playing around with them if I ever come back to this.
Hey guys? Guess what? In the year 2004, Fromsoft finally added analogue aiming to this series. Now you can not only play the game with analogue controls, but also drop weapons and use extensions with the press of a button. There’s still one extra button though. They really should’ve used this for reloading. In this game, if you shoot a quickfire gun a certain amount of times, you can’t shoot the gun for a while while you ‘reload’, even though you don’t actually press a button and no reload animation occurs. It’s a fine balancing change but it feels very imprecise and odd, so why they didn’t just use a more conventional style is beyond me.
One change to customization that initially worried me was that parts now depreciate in value after being used. This seemed like a change that could really inhibit experimentation, but the parts don’t depreciate that much, and missions have much bigger payouts, a large part of which are often contained within advanced payments. I think they might’ve overcorrected a bit though. Oftentimes I would fail a mission pretty bad but still make a solid amount of money. I obviously would’ve made more money if I won, but making any profit just feels somewhat wrong when you fail. This may be due to the removal of Human+, but I feel like Human+ is a really good solution to this problem, so I’m not sure why they removed it. The arena, too, could’ve been a good way to counteract this problem, but it was heavily altered to become normal missions that are scarcely available. It’s kind of weird that the series already had two cool ways to alter difficulty and Nexus just ignored them.
Really though, I think what hurts this game is the mission design. There’s one infamous mission in this game where you shoot a single helicopter, which only takes ten seconds. A lot of missions suffer the same affliction this mission does, just to a much lesser degree. Missions are just very barebones for the most part. The map designs are simple, and the objectives are usually just to kill every enemy. A significant amount of missions here are just going into this plain training/test room and fighting robots for scientists to observe. These tests kinda foreshadow things in later missions, but this could’ve been done better. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good missions here, but when there are so many basic missions it just gets kinda tiring, especially after 3 and Silent Line had so many great missions. After some thought, I realized that all of this may be due to the story having ‘branching paths’. The story reacts to you, but this is almost exclusively contained within news reports and emails as opposed to any developments actually happening in missions, at least until the end of the game. Yes, the final mission is epic. Does this mean the entire story is super awesome? Eh, not really. It’s fine, and it follows up the previous games in a satisfying way, but there’s pretty much no reoccurring characters here and very little sense of worldbuilding. It does the job as an Armored Core story, but with each game that bar feels lower and lower.
As per tradition, this game’s visuals are an incremental improvement over the last game. People mention a blurry filter that I honestly didn't notice. It's probably there, I just have a PC that isn't super great. However, the soundtrack is very unique and overall really good. I think it’s a little overrated, but yeah, there are some cool songs here.
So yeah, if this game had better missions, I’d have no problem calling it great. However, as it is I’m a little hesitant to. It has many great elements and additions, but mission design is a massive weak link. I’ve heard the second disc has a lot of remakes of missions from old games along with a proper arena, but I kinda want to go to a new game instead of playing remakes of levels that I already played recently. Maybe I’ll come back to this, but 7/10 for now. It's pretty good, and if you like the series you'll probably like this.
Hey guys? Guess what? In the year 2004, Fromsoft finally added analogue aiming to this series. Now you can not only play the game with analogue controls, but also drop weapons and use extensions with the press of a button. There’s still one extra button though. They really should’ve used this for reloading. In this game, if you shoot a quickfire gun a certain amount of times, you can’t shoot the gun for a while while you ‘reload’, even though you don’t actually press a button and no reload animation occurs. It’s a fine balancing change but it feels very imprecise and odd, so why they didn’t just use a more conventional style is beyond me.
One change to customization that initially worried me was that parts now depreciate in value after being used. This seemed like a change that could really inhibit experimentation, but the parts don’t depreciate that much, and missions have much bigger payouts, a large part of which are often contained within advanced payments. I think they might’ve overcorrected a bit though. Oftentimes I would fail a mission pretty bad but still make a solid amount of money. I obviously would’ve made more money if I won, but making any profit just feels somewhat wrong when you fail. This may be due to the removal of Human+, but I feel like Human+ is a really good solution to this problem, so I’m not sure why they removed it. The arena, too, could’ve been a good way to counteract this problem, but it was heavily altered to become normal missions that are scarcely available. It’s kind of weird that the series already had two cool ways to alter difficulty and Nexus just ignored them.
Really though, I think what hurts this game is the mission design. There’s one infamous mission in this game where you shoot a single helicopter, which only takes ten seconds. A lot of missions suffer the same affliction this mission does, just to a much lesser degree. Missions are just very barebones for the most part. The map designs are simple, and the objectives are usually just to kill every enemy. A significant amount of missions here are just going into this plain training/test room and fighting robots for scientists to observe. These tests kinda foreshadow things in later missions, but this could’ve been done better. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good missions here, but when there are so many basic missions it just gets kinda tiring, especially after 3 and Silent Line had so many great missions. After some thought, I realized that all of this may be due to the story having ‘branching paths’. The story reacts to you, but this is almost exclusively contained within news reports and emails as opposed to any developments actually happening in missions, at least until the end of the game. Yes, the final mission is epic. Does this mean the entire story is super awesome? Eh, not really. It’s fine, and it follows up the previous games in a satisfying way, but there’s pretty much no reoccurring characters here and very little sense of worldbuilding. It does the job as an Armored Core story, but with each game that bar feels lower and lower.
As per tradition, this game’s visuals are an incremental improvement over the last game. People mention a blurry filter that I honestly didn't notice. It's probably there, I just have a PC that isn't super great. However, the soundtrack is very unique and overall really good. I think it’s a little overrated, but yeah, there are some cool songs here.
So yeah, if this game had better missions, I’d have no problem calling it great. However, as it is I’m a little hesitant to. It has many great elements and additions, but mission design is a massive weak link. I’ve heard the second disc has a lot of remakes of missions from old games along with a proper arena, but I kinda want to go to a new game instead of playing remakes of levels that I already played recently. Maybe I’ll come back to this, but 7/10 for now. It's pretty good, and if you like the series you'll probably like this.
1998
This review contains spoilers
Hey, remember at the end of my review for the first Armored Core when I said I’d be reviewing Echo Night? This was mostly a cheeky joke referring to Dark Souls, but I did have the intention of playing this game eventually. Well, here I am, having completed Echo Night before not only Dark Souls, but also Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
I was visiting my brother the day after I bought this game and played it for a bit while visiting. He walked by and asked me, “Are you playing a knock-off Crash Bandicoot?” He was wrong with his assessment of this game, of course. At that point, I thought he was wrong because I was so early in the experience and didn’t have a grasp on the flaws of the game. In retrospect, He’s actually wrong because this is a Banjo Kazooie rip-off with a dash of Sonic Adventure.
My brother being wrong about stuff isn’t uncommon (He tried to tell me Newton’s Third Law of Motion made no sense one time), but I think that just demonstrates the significance of the fact that even he was able to tell this game was nothing special. Honestly though, I knew that going in. I had seen enough of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger to know it would probably be derivative of those two games. I knew it would be ludicrous to expect even a 7/10 experience from it. I just wanted to play a decent 3D Platformer. But the problem lies therein: This game is hardly a 3D Platformer.
I talked about this briefly in my Spyro 2 review, but there’s a lot of 3D Platformers where Platforming takes a backseat to other elements. Most of this seemingly started with Banjo-Kazooie, which is the game that cemented the ‘Collectathon’ genre: Platformers where you must collect a lot of things. Banjo itself de-emphasized platforming a lot, but it was still there. Every level had one or two focal points that the player has to climb to get a Jiggy. The moveset doesn’t have the flow of a Mario game or the sort, but it is a platforming moveset. While I’m not huge on the minigames, they’re inoffensive at the end of the day. A lot of games copied the core structure of Banjo-Kazooie but missed elements like the aforementioned that made it good, such as Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
How much platforming is actually in this game? Not much. Your moveset consists of a jump, glide, a homing attack, and throwing boomerangs. Level design doesn’t really enhance the platforming either; It’s all very basic platforms and obstacles, and the most interesting things get is hitting coconut trees with boomerangs to create platforms. That happens once in the game. There’s no sense of momentum either. The homing attack may sound cool, but all it amounts to is mashing a button in certain situations. The platforming is bare. I’m not exaggerating, God of War II has just as in-depth platforming as this game. I mean, it has a double jump and glide, so I don’t think what I’m saying is facetious. So what else is there in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Well, random busywork. Turret sections, killing random enemies, annoying escort missions, collecting random macguffins, etc.... The game does have the good idea of having race sections in every level, but even those are pretty dull overall.
One of the levels in this game has you riding this big bull thing. You can’t get off of it. You can’t jump while on the bull. Think about that. There’s an entire level in this game where you can’t jump. In a 3D Platformer. So… there’s like 72 Thunder Eggs in this game (Think Stars, Jiggys, Tickets, etc…). 8 of those are in this Outback level. Imagine you were playing Doom, with its 36 levels in total, and suddenly, midway through the game, you just can’t shoot any guns for four levels. Instead, you’re now engaging in sword combat for the next four levels. After these four levels, you never touch the sword again. That is the equivalent of this level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
The thing is, even though I understand why so many games were made like this, I’m still confused about one thing: Why do people like games like this, or at least are fine with them? Let me be clear: I am happy if you enjoy this game. Getting upset because someone else enjoys something that isn’t hurting anybody is probably the dumbest thing a person can do. But… WHY?!?! What about it is fun? I’m sure that if the hypothetical Doom situation I concocted actually happened, people would be pissed, so why is it acceptable here? You could argue that people don’t love this game anyway, but even in beloved games like Crash 3, Spyro 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, these kinds of diversions are abundant, so why do people love those games? Why?
Well, I have a theory. Imagine, for a moment, you wanted to make a First-Person Shooter. What would you need, at minimum? Well, you’d need some movement options such as running. You’d need at least one gun. You’d need enemies to shoot. You’d need levels for all of this to take place in. Code all of that up and you have a very barebones FPS.
Let’s do this with a 3D Platformer. You need movement options, with the bare minimum probably being running and jumping. You need a level to do it in. And… That’s it. That is all you need to make a 3D Platformer. It won’t be good, but it will be a 3D Platformer.
I think that when you realize this, why so many 3D Platformers deviate from platforming becomes clear. You can make a great, varied game purely about 3D Platforming. Super Mario 64, Marble Blast Ultra, and Super Sami Roll are good examples. You can add more moves. You can make the levels more interesting and add powerups. You can lean into aspects such as momentum. The thing is, you can also make a great 3D Platformer that focuses on driving vehicles, or shooting, or hack n’ slash combat, or situational stories. You could probably even make a good 3D Platformer with a bunch of minigames. How you fill in the blanks is just much less obvious with 3D Platformers than most other genres. As such, it actually makes sense that this kind of stuff is normalized in 3D Platformers, at least to some extent.
The diversions do need to be good though, which is where Ty the Tasmanian Tiger goes wrong. None of the diversions could make a good game in isolation, and they don't make a good game when spliced together into a platformer. But what about the other constant elements? Well, they’re not great. The combat is fine, but not enough to make up for everything else. Most of the time you can just mash buttons to dispatch common enemies. There are other kinds of boomerangs one can use, but they’re mostly for ‘puzzles’ and stuff. The bosses aren’t great either. Generally, I think the biggest issue is that the player is expected to do things that haven’t been taught in any way. For example, the final boss requires one to use an ice boomerang on turrets and then bite them to defeat them. The thing is, this was never established as a mechanic before this one fight. Usually, the best bosses in games take advantage of pre-established mechanics framed in new ways, so it’s a shame Ty went in the opposite direction.
Another big element that brings the game down is just the general level layouts. As an example of a great level, let’s look at Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie. Yes, I’m comparing it to Banjo again. Now, this level is actually pretty small. You have a house, a thorny hedge maze, a bog, and a church as the main points of interest. The house has a basement and main room. The Church has an inner area that has a few things to do in it. The bog is admittedly pretty basic with not that much of interest. The thorny hedge maze basically separates each point of interest. That sounds fairly typical of a game, but once you transform into a pumpkin, not only does it allow you touch the thorny hedges which changes how you interact with the level, but it also unlocks more areas in the house. Mad Monster Mansion is small, but it’s also layered. Compare this to pretty much every level of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Most of the levels are… pretty big. Usually you can’t fast travel either, so you just have to slowly walk between areas of interest. Sometimes backtracking is very difficult as well. There’s no real layers to anything either. What you see is what you get. As such, exploration and collecting is usually underwhelming.
The stages also have the issue of a lack of variety. A lot of stage themes are reused at some point. I know this is all based on Australia, but still. Super Mario Sunshine stuck entirely to a tropical island theme, but it still had tons of variety. Australia has cities, right? I’m sure there’s some cool caves there too. Why not use stuff like that if you’re gonna stay faithful to the theming?
Alright, let’s discuss the story. Uh… I dunno, it’s fine. It’s about as cliché as an early 2000s 3D Platformer can get. It even has the edgy counterpart character who contributes pretty much nothing to the game. However, I do think there’s a fun level of self-awareness here that makes me like it a little more. The titular character isn’t as ‘’’’’’cool’’’’’’ as you’d think. He’s just a normal guy. Other characters make jokes and do action story cliches and he’ll just act confused or brush it off. He’s honestly an alright character, and I gotta admit, his design is alright too. He definitely has that Sonic appeal, although he’s definitely not as well designed.
I do think most of the other characters are pretty boring though. There’s this bird who gives you exposition and this koala that invents stuff, and at some point I had to wonder why they weren’t just combined into one singular character, because they’re not that well defined. The same goes for all the other characters, really. I mentioned the edgy counterpart Sly earlier, but his redemption is poorly developed. Shocking, I know.
Overall, not a good game. I hear that Ty 2 is better, so I might try that. Regardless, 4/10.
Oh, also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIA_X1iqsY
My brother being wrong about stuff isn’t uncommon (He tried to tell me Newton’s Third Law of Motion made no sense one time), but I think that just demonstrates the significance of the fact that even he was able to tell this game was nothing special. Honestly though, I knew that going in. I had seen enough of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger to know it would probably be derivative of those two games. I knew it would be ludicrous to expect even a 7/10 experience from it. I just wanted to play a decent 3D Platformer. But the problem lies therein: This game is hardly a 3D Platformer.
I talked about this briefly in my Spyro 2 review, but there’s a lot of 3D Platformers where Platforming takes a backseat to other elements. Most of this seemingly started with Banjo-Kazooie, which is the game that cemented the ‘Collectathon’ genre: Platformers where you must collect a lot of things. Banjo itself de-emphasized platforming a lot, but it was still there. Every level had one or two focal points that the player has to climb to get a Jiggy. The moveset doesn’t have the flow of a Mario game or the sort, but it is a platforming moveset. While I’m not huge on the minigames, they’re inoffensive at the end of the day. A lot of games copied the core structure of Banjo-Kazooie but missed elements like the aforementioned that made it good, such as Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
How much platforming is actually in this game? Not much. Your moveset consists of a jump, glide, a homing attack, and throwing boomerangs. Level design doesn’t really enhance the platforming either; It’s all very basic platforms and obstacles, and the most interesting things get is hitting coconut trees with boomerangs to create platforms. That happens once in the game. There’s no sense of momentum either. The homing attack may sound cool, but all it amounts to is mashing a button in certain situations. The platforming is bare. I’m not exaggerating, God of War II has just as in-depth platforming as this game. I mean, it has a double jump and glide, so I don’t think what I’m saying is facetious. So what else is there in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Well, random busywork. Turret sections, killing random enemies, annoying escort missions, collecting random macguffins, etc.... The game does have the good idea of having race sections in every level, but even those are pretty dull overall.
One of the levels in this game has you riding this big bull thing. You can’t get off of it. You can’t jump while on the bull. Think about that. There’s an entire level in this game where you can’t jump. In a 3D Platformer. So… there’s like 72 Thunder Eggs in this game (Think Stars, Jiggys, Tickets, etc…). 8 of those are in this Outback level. Imagine you were playing Doom, with its 36 levels in total, and suddenly, midway through the game, you just can’t shoot any guns for four levels. Instead, you’re now engaging in sword combat for the next four levels. After these four levels, you never touch the sword again. That is the equivalent of this level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
The thing is, even though I understand why so many games were made like this, I’m still confused about one thing: Why do people like games like this, or at least are fine with them? Let me be clear: I am happy if you enjoy this game. Getting upset because someone else enjoys something that isn’t hurting anybody is probably the dumbest thing a person can do. But… WHY?!?! What about it is fun? I’m sure that if the hypothetical Doom situation I concocted actually happened, people would be pissed, so why is it acceptable here? You could argue that people don’t love this game anyway, but even in beloved games like Crash 3, Spyro 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, these kinds of diversions are abundant, so why do people love those games? Why?
Well, I have a theory. Imagine, for a moment, you wanted to make a First-Person Shooter. What would you need, at minimum? Well, you’d need some movement options such as running. You’d need at least one gun. You’d need enemies to shoot. You’d need levels for all of this to take place in. Code all of that up and you have a very barebones FPS.
Let’s do this with a 3D Platformer. You need movement options, with the bare minimum probably being running and jumping. You need a level to do it in. And… That’s it. That is all you need to make a 3D Platformer. It won’t be good, but it will be a 3D Platformer.
I think that when you realize this, why so many 3D Platformers deviate from platforming becomes clear. You can make a great, varied game purely about 3D Platforming. Super Mario 64, Marble Blast Ultra, and Super Sami Roll are good examples. You can add more moves. You can make the levels more interesting and add powerups. You can lean into aspects such as momentum. The thing is, you can also make a great 3D Platformer that focuses on driving vehicles, or shooting, or hack n’ slash combat, or situational stories. You could probably even make a good 3D Platformer with a bunch of minigames. How you fill in the blanks is just much less obvious with 3D Platformers than most other genres. As such, it actually makes sense that this kind of stuff is normalized in 3D Platformers, at least to some extent.
The diversions do need to be good though, which is where Ty the Tasmanian Tiger goes wrong. None of the diversions could make a good game in isolation, and they don't make a good game when spliced together into a platformer. But what about the other constant elements? Well, they’re not great. The combat is fine, but not enough to make up for everything else. Most of the time you can just mash buttons to dispatch common enemies. There are other kinds of boomerangs one can use, but they’re mostly for ‘puzzles’ and stuff. The bosses aren’t great either. Generally, I think the biggest issue is that the player is expected to do things that haven’t been taught in any way. For example, the final boss requires one to use an ice boomerang on turrets and then bite them to defeat them. The thing is, this was never established as a mechanic before this one fight. Usually, the best bosses in games take advantage of pre-established mechanics framed in new ways, so it’s a shame Ty went in the opposite direction.
Another big element that brings the game down is just the general level layouts. As an example of a great level, let’s look at Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie. Yes, I’m comparing it to Banjo again. Now, this level is actually pretty small. You have a house, a thorny hedge maze, a bog, and a church as the main points of interest. The house has a basement and main room. The Church has an inner area that has a few things to do in it. The bog is admittedly pretty basic with not that much of interest. The thorny hedge maze basically separates each point of interest. That sounds fairly typical of a game, but once you transform into a pumpkin, not only does it allow you touch the thorny hedges which changes how you interact with the level, but it also unlocks more areas in the house. Mad Monster Mansion is small, but it’s also layered. Compare this to pretty much every level of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Most of the levels are… pretty big. Usually you can’t fast travel either, so you just have to slowly walk between areas of interest. Sometimes backtracking is very difficult as well. There’s no real layers to anything either. What you see is what you get. As such, exploration and collecting is usually underwhelming.
The stages also have the issue of a lack of variety. A lot of stage themes are reused at some point. I know this is all based on Australia, but still. Super Mario Sunshine stuck entirely to a tropical island theme, but it still had tons of variety. Australia has cities, right? I’m sure there’s some cool caves there too. Why not use stuff like that if you’re gonna stay faithful to the theming?
Alright, let’s discuss the story. Uh… I dunno, it’s fine. It’s about as cliché as an early 2000s 3D Platformer can get. It even has the edgy counterpart character who contributes pretty much nothing to the game. However, I do think there’s a fun level of self-awareness here that makes me like it a little more. The titular character isn’t as ‘’’’’’cool’’’’’’ as you’d think. He’s just a normal guy. Other characters make jokes and do action story cliches and he’ll just act confused or brush it off. He’s honestly an alright character, and I gotta admit, his design is alright too. He definitely has that Sonic appeal, although he’s definitely not as well designed.
I do think most of the other characters are pretty boring though. There’s this bird who gives you exposition and this koala that invents stuff, and at some point I had to wonder why they weren’t just combined into one singular character, because they’re not that well defined. The same goes for all the other characters, really. I mentioned the edgy counterpart Sly earlier, but his redemption is poorly developed. Shocking, I know.
Overall, not a good game. I hear that Ty 2 is better, so I might try that. Regardless, 4/10.
Oh, also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIA_X1iqsY
2000
It seems everyone's playing that shiny new Armored Core VI. I would be too, but my computer isn't all that great and can't really run it. You know what my PC can run though?
A PS2 Emulator.
So here we are. It may be called Armored Core 2, but it's really the fourth game in the series. With the '2' though, one may expect a little more than we got from Project Phantasma and Master of Arena. Did we get more?
Well, before we find out, I feel the need to disclose something. Anyone who has played the earlier Armored Core games know about Human+. Basically, getting deep in debt results in the player getting a permanent upgrade with the tradeoff that they restart the game. You can repeat this process several times to get more upgrades. It's a neat part of the game, and I decided to purposefully get all of the upgrades on purpose by grinding debt for an hour, simply to see what it's like. This probably made the game a decent amount easier for me than many others. The game wasn't really that hard, and while there are other reasons for that I'll get into later, it's almost certain that Human+ is part of what made the game easy.
With that out of the way, what's new to this game? The game definitely sticks close to the PS1 games, but there's a decent amount of new stuff and improvements. First, let's talk about the player's new moves and options. For me, the overboost is one of the best new improvements. Not only does it provide a quick movement option that makes duels really fun while also being another reason to carefully manage energy, but it also means that backtracking takes less time. You also activate it by pressing R3, which means you don't have to take your thumb off of the camera stick to activate it.
...Except the right stick isn't used for the camera. The left stick isn't used for movement either. The control scheme is the same as it was on the PS1. Look, I'm not against unconventional controls, but there's no logic behind the control scheme. Yeah, you can map the camera to the face buttons, but that doesn't compare to a stick. Ok, It was a PS2 launch title, I guess I can accept it. They better fix it with the next game though.
There are new part types here. For example, we have the radiator. Now, if you get hit a bunch by enemies, you begin to overheat, which drains your health. The radiator counteracts that. This is a fine mechanic, but it doesn't really add much. Not much is actually done with the radiator that a defense stat and defense optional part couldn't also accomplish from a design standpoint. This is unfortunate, because it became clear in the PS1 games each part type was unique and served a purpose, even ones you may not expect like the FCS.
There's also hover legs, which are very quick. They also hover on water, which helps for a few missions. The last big loadout additions are extensions and inside parts. These are anti-missile systems, light movement options, mines, anti-lockon systems, and other miscellaneous actions. These were neat, but I didn't use them that much because I was trying to keep my AC light. Still, there's some neat stuff here. For some reason, you have to access inside parts by pressing your 'change right weapon' button. Just a small thing, but I wish they had enough space to just have a button for it. Hmm, maybe if the camera control could be controlled with a stick or something...
So really, it's mostly the same old kind of stuff. This is fun, but I think there could've been a bit more done to improve on the customization.
Anyway, how are you going to afford these new parts? There's so much, and you don't have much disposable income when starting out. You could go do a mission, but you'll go in debt if you fail, so it might be a good idea to tackle the arena. In retrospect, while Master of Arena making the arena a focus was a good idea to differentiate it from the other PS1 games, Armored Core 2 cements the fact that it works best as a diversion that's mostly disconnected from the main game. Initially fought in the arena just to get more money without the risk of missions, but eventually I just got really engaged with it and got to Rank 1. The pacing of these missions is surprisingly good because many upcoming and defeated Ravens will taunt and encourage you respectively in mail, letting you know when a boss is coming up. Dare I say, the arena is better than the main missions here. It was really challenging and I had to consider all of my parts and the map I chose to fight on. It also led to me being super rich by the end of the game, so I could afford pretty much every part I wanted.
So what about the story missions? They're good. The level design is generally less confusing than that of the PS1 games, the missions feel varied, they're a good length, etc... Levels are overall more consistent, but I can't help but feel they're still basically the same kind of stuff as those of the PS1 games, especially since some of the missions are just remakes of missions from those games. Isn't it a bit early to be doing that guys? The game takes place on Mars, but they don't take advantage of that very often. Make a low-gravity or space mission, maybe have a big sandstorm or something, I dunno. There's a lot of missed potential.
Then there's the story. Once again, it's mostly the same kind of stuff. There is a bit more characterization when it comes to some side characters and the main villain, but it's the same main framework as previous games, except now all a lot of the more covert stuff isn't present. When I saw that the first mission in the original Armored Core tasked the player with attacking protesters, it conveyed the world of the game well. Many missions felt like they create mini-storylines too. However, that's not nearly as pronounced in this game. Apparently the Ravens are slaves or something, but this wasn't really explained well in any capacity. I was really hoping for a bit more here.
So overall, while Armored Core 2 is a pretty good game, it's just a little too similar to its predecessors for me to call it great. If you liked the PS1 games, you will probably like this, and vice versa. 7/10. I'm tackling these in order, so Another Age is next. See you then.
A PS2 Emulator.
So here we are. It may be called Armored Core 2, but it's really the fourth game in the series. With the '2' though, one may expect a little more than we got from Project Phantasma and Master of Arena. Did we get more?
Well, before we find out, I feel the need to disclose something. Anyone who has played the earlier Armored Core games know about Human+. Basically, getting deep in debt results in the player getting a permanent upgrade with the tradeoff that they restart the game. You can repeat this process several times to get more upgrades. It's a neat part of the game, and I decided to purposefully get all of the upgrades on purpose by grinding debt for an hour, simply to see what it's like. This probably made the game a decent amount easier for me than many others. The game wasn't really that hard, and while there are other reasons for that I'll get into later, it's almost certain that Human+ is part of what made the game easy.
With that out of the way, what's new to this game? The game definitely sticks close to the PS1 games, but there's a decent amount of new stuff and improvements. First, let's talk about the player's new moves and options. For me, the overboost is one of the best new improvements. Not only does it provide a quick movement option that makes duels really fun while also being another reason to carefully manage energy, but it also means that backtracking takes less time. You also activate it by pressing R3, which means you don't have to take your thumb off of the camera stick to activate it.
...Except the right stick isn't used for the camera. The left stick isn't used for movement either. The control scheme is the same as it was on the PS1. Look, I'm not against unconventional controls, but there's no logic behind the control scheme. Yeah, you can map the camera to the face buttons, but that doesn't compare to a stick. Ok, It was a PS2 launch title, I guess I can accept it. They better fix it with the next game though.
There are new part types here. For example, we have the radiator. Now, if you get hit a bunch by enemies, you begin to overheat, which drains your health. The radiator counteracts that. This is a fine mechanic, but it doesn't really add much. Not much is actually done with the radiator that a defense stat and defense optional part couldn't also accomplish from a design standpoint. This is unfortunate, because it became clear in the PS1 games each part type was unique and served a purpose, even ones you may not expect like the FCS.
There's also hover legs, which are very quick. They also hover on water, which helps for a few missions. The last big loadout additions are extensions and inside parts. These are anti-missile systems, light movement options, mines, anti-lockon systems, and other miscellaneous actions. These were neat, but I didn't use them that much because I was trying to keep my AC light. Still, there's some neat stuff here. For some reason, you have to access inside parts by pressing your 'change right weapon' button. Just a small thing, but I wish they had enough space to just have a button for it. Hmm, maybe if the camera control could be controlled with a stick or something...
So really, it's mostly the same old kind of stuff. This is fun, but I think there could've been a bit more done to improve on the customization.
Anyway, how are you going to afford these new parts? There's so much, and you don't have much disposable income when starting out. You could go do a mission, but you'll go in debt if you fail, so it might be a good idea to tackle the arena. In retrospect, while Master of Arena making the arena a focus was a good idea to differentiate it from the other PS1 games, Armored Core 2 cements the fact that it works best as a diversion that's mostly disconnected from the main game. Initially fought in the arena just to get more money without the risk of missions, but eventually I just got really engaged with it and got to Rank 1. The pacing of these missions is surprisingly good because many upcoming and defeated Ravens will taunt and encourage you respectively in mail, letting you know when a boss is coming up. Dare I say, the arena is better than the main missions here. It was really challenging and I had to consider all of my parts and the map I chose to fight on. It also led to me being super rich by the end of the game, so I could afford pretty much every part I wanted.
So what about the story missions? They're good. The level design is generally less confusing than that of the PS1 games, the missions feel varied, they're a good length, etc... Levels are overall more consistent, but I can't help but feel they're still basically the same kind of stuff as those of the PS1 games, especially since some of the missions are just remakes of missions from those games. Isn't it a bit early to be doing that guys? The game takes place on Mars, but they don't take advantage of that very often. Make a low-gravity or space mission, maybe have a big sandstorm or something, I dunno. There's a lot of missed potential.
Then there's the story. Once again, it's mostly the same kind of stuff. There is a bit more characterization when it comes to some side characters and the main villain, but it's the same main framework as previous games, except now all a lot of the more covert stuff isn't present. When I saw that the first mission in the original Armored Core tasked the player with attacking protesters, it conveyed the world of the game well. Many missions felt like they create mini-storylines too. However, that's not nearly as pronounced in this game. Apparently the Ravens are slaves or something, but this wasn't really explained well in any capacity. I was really hoping for a bit more here.
So overall, while Armored Core 2 is a pretty good game, it's just a little too similar to its predecessors for me to call it great. If you liked the PS1 games, you will probably like this, and vice versa. 7/10. I'm tackling these in order, so Another Age is next. See you then.