Video review - https://youtu.be/SGt0XlHGOW4

I'll be blunt - it could use some more polish, and the bosses aren't very good. I sincerely hope this gets a few patches to address the occasionally weird collision detection, inputs not registering, sound effect desync in cutscenes, and other things, but at its core, this is an incredibly solid momentum-based platformer.

Chaining together dashes, swings and rolling across these wavy, sloped levels is a blast. I think this is the first game I've truly wanted to try and time attack an entire game since Sonic Generations. It took me a little bit to truly "get" the movement, but once I did, I was loving every second of it. I think I'll be aiming for all the achievements in this one too. Why not?

Of course, the music is fantastic as always from Tee Lopes. Presentation is a little lacking in the visual department, especially in cutscenes, but I feel like the developers are probably even more frustrated than I am at some of these shortcomings, so I don't think it's worthwhile to point them all out.

I highly recommend this, but maybe wait a little wait for some patches if you're on the fence. Evening Star have proven their ability to make great stuff on their own, and I hope this game is enough of a success for them to continue their vision across new projects. Well done to the entire team!

Honestly the hate for this game is a bit overblown, but it's not anything too amazing either. It's just a really safe and standard 2D Sonic game with some fun ideas and levels. The big thing that disrupts the main campaign from being up there with the other 2D Sonics are the boss fights. These type of bosses do not work in the context of a 2D sonic game, the phases take 10 years just to be able to hit the boss once and then get killed by some random bullshit.

Though, I think the biggest thing for me is that this game could have been a lot better if it was shorter and at a lower price tag. The abomination of game design known as Trip's story could have been avoided entirely if Arzest didn't feel pressured to pad the game out and make it even harder for the sake of justifying it's insane $60 price tag. Also in traditional Sonic fashion, this game is littered with bugs lmao, but it's not anything too game breaking (at least in my experience).

If you are a fan of classic Sonic games I would still recommend playing it. The main campaign is solid and worth your time despite some of it's flaws, just make sure to buy it at a heavy discount. Do not play Trip's story.

Sonic Superstars is absolutely not worth its $60 price tag. I think the models are good, the game is bright and colorful. The zones are fun to run through for the most part, and I like some of the new powers from the chaos emeralds. I like that the main 4 are playable. However, the game has a very big problem with consistency. The boss fights are so slow and boring that they sometimes take longer to beat than the acts themselves. Some zones are 2 acts and some are 1. The soundtrack feels like every act you enter has a different composer for its songs. You'll be listening to a more modern sounding song and then get whiplash when you hear those Genesis drums and snares. The main story's level design is fine, while the second story's level design is laughable with way too many spikes, bottomless pits, and other instant kill obstacles. In addition, the second story gives all the bosses more health, which means more waiting in boring boss fights. The final boss almost comes out of nowhere and is a bit jank to fight (you can die in the winning cutscene). The battle mode is inoffensive at best, nothing to devote time to. The special stages, while interesting, can be frustrating with its homing attack reticle just not working sometimes. The medals you collect mean virtually nothing as battle mode isn't good incentive to want to collect more. Zones are completely original, but most of the gimmicks aren't (there are two pinball zones in this game). Sonic Superstars is worth $30 at MOST, and should absolutely not be purchased at full price. Buy Mania or base Origins instead if you NEED classic Sonic in your life.

this game is kind of a clusterfuck, and not in the fun, artsy way i'd hoped it'd be when they announced that Naoto Ohshima, the director of CD, probably better known for designing the character and his studio would be working on this game, but because almost every aspect of it feels so sloppily thrown together... deeply upsets me to see a classic sonic, no - a sonic game so ridiculously stricken of anything even resembling style and art direction, from the sight - a cacophony of extremely tired level themes, genuine google images results for searching "industrial" or "desert", trying its best to fit itself into the confines of a game that, fidelity wise, looks like it could have been sold on the ps3 store for $10, to the sound - an abhorrent mix of sfx ripped from different games, and a soundtrack that is so incohesive to the point where it feels like it was made by a dozen different people (because it was, lol.).

and the level design ... what do i even say? they did a passable job, but evidently, sonic team nor arzest don't have the chops for this, hard to dish out any genuine praise when these levels are so indistinguishable from each other, like they found a formula that they thought was "good enough" and applied it to every single zone ... the result is something that's mildly enjoyable, if not brought down severely by a plethora of awful, just awful boss fights and poorly integrated gimmicks that tend to vary severely in quality, but of course this leads to a pretty tasteless experience throughout. the only real attempt to push classic sonic forward here is with the emerald powers, which are sadly useless for the most part - only found use from the screen nuke and fireball, the rest were either too situational or obsoleted by the fireball... if there's one thing i can really hammer in, it's that, despite being the most advertised feature in this game, playing this game with four or probably even three players is truly miserable - to boot classic sonic gameplay is fundamentally not built for this , but the way they constantly switch from speed sections where everyone else puts the controller down to extremely slowed down gimmick / platforming setpieces so that everyone can reasonably exist in the same space had our heads throbbing by the end, doesn't help that you aren't given time to recover from being offscreen like say, a nsmb game, because that wouldn't be frustrating enough, no - instead you despawn virtually the instant you're offscreen, down to the millisecond i'm willing to bet.

did have a lot of fun tag teaming the special stages with my friends. couldn't tell you how disappointed we were that going super counted as an emerald power - meaning only one of us could use it at a time, and we'd lose it when we go offscreen, and that unlocking the true final boss required playing through the game again with a specific character with no co-op support. oh well

I absolutely did not enjoy my time playing Cult of the Lamb.

The game starts off with a simple enough premise: you're a little lamb being sacrificed to four religious leaders because some really big scary dude will come back or something, but after the sacrifice the big dude brings you back to life and instructs you to build a cult in order to grow more powerful and kill the four religious leaders so that the big dude can come back. He gives you a crown. The crown can turn into a sword, a knife, claws, an axe, and various tools. You're given a home-base, and a level-select hub-world-type area to open the door to the first "world."

Then the gameplay loop begins.

God damn I hate the gameplay loop of this game.

I've read some takes from other reviewers on this site I respect saying things like "gameplay loops are inherently suspicious" and, while there are better more egregious examples of games with capital-O Obvious gameplay loops, I think Cult of the Lamb is an excellent example of a game with a fucking horrendously obvious gameplay loop.

In short, there are two core sections of the game:

1. Binding of Isaac-but-worse roguelike dungeon crawling.
2. People-farming.

You do these as far as you can, and when you get to the end you win!

In long, Massive Monster put these two core sections next to each other in the most annoying way possible. You go on a "Crusade" to "purge the heretics" and "convert" any new potential followers to your cult, collecting miscellaneous resources along the way. Then you go back to your cult, do your dailies (I detest this fucking term), run out of resources, and then go back on another crusade until some kind of emergency by no direct fault of your own (aside from deliberately playing the game, which I would argue is very much your own fault) forces you to go check on the cult. Maybe someone died? Bury the body or collect meat. Someone's starving? Gotta make food and farm more. Poop everywhere? Gotta clean. Faith level low? Fix it. Health level low? Fix it. Issue? Fix it. And the loop repeats itself ad nauseam.

Listen, I do chores in my own home already. I've played enough Animal Crossing and had enough "chore simulator" arguments for one lifetime. I have no problem with a game having chores in it, but there has to be some kind of tangible payoff if you're gonna put a checklist of chores in a video game. And by nature of it being a CULT, "Smiling Happy Faces" and undying loyalty from cult members you "rescued" is a fairly fucked up reward. It could be argued that this is the point, but it doesn't make for a fun video game to me. I play video games for fun.

I'm glad I brought up Animal Crossing just there, because the satisfaction I get from creating a "neat and tidy" "home" for my cult members is on-par with the enjoyment I got from molding the island to my every whim and desire with no real consequences in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Minimal.

And that's completely ignoring the combat half of the game.

The combat half is fine. Not great. Fine. It would be even better were it not constantly interrupted by the day-night cycle and the people farming gameplay loop. I get that this was probably a deliberate design decision, but it's a decision that actively interrupts progress for no reason other than to remind you that you've got "people at home."

In contrast, the lessons I'm picking up from the gameplay hints that this game is dropping via the pressure of time, aging cult members, and the sheer number of times it suggests doing mean things to your cult members, is to view my cult members as dispensable.

No matter how much you'd like it to be, this isn't a family. You're collecting pawns. You're repeatedly given choices that seem to imply otherwise, but just remember: this is the all-messed-up cute animal game.

Absolutely depthless.

There's very little actual direct involvement from your cult while you're fighting. You're just getting stronger through the farming gameplay loop giving you more points to get more resources to get more upgrades to get more point generators to get more points and you get the idea. They're separate, except that the game will remind you that the other exists and needs tending to, so they're forced to exist together. Actually separating it from the farming half completely, the enemies and bosses are unremarkable and, with some minor exceptions, there aren't all that many core differences between weapons and curse types.

The closest immediate comparison I have of a game integrating combat and farming together well that I actually enjoy is Pikmin. Literally any of them. There's an element of direct resource/people management in both Cult of the Lamb and Pikmin games, and, while they are completely different genres with the former being a farming-sim roguelite and the latter being an RTS game, I just think Cult of the Lamb is somehow way worse about both creating a consistent element of emotional attachment to your "underlings" (which could be argued is the point of the whole game, which is even worse) and the collecting element. It wants you to exploit them as much as you can, and there's no option not to. It doesn't even bother pretending like you're capable of making moral choices here, you know what you are and you know what you're doing.

It has about as much subtlety as, I don't know, what's a good example...

The Jonestown Massacre?

Yeah, that's a good example.

I don't mind a game portraying religious extremism and cult behavior, but if your gameplay is mid, at least have literally anything to say about your subject matter.

Whatever. Cute marketable lamb character doing weird things a cute marketable lamb character wouldn't normally be doing, very clever and never been done before. Twitch streamers delight. Money all around.

Anyway, just play Binding of Isaac again instead of getting this.

If I'm gonna play twitchcore bullshit, it should at least be good.

this game is shit because dunkey said it was and i have a seizure when i try to form my own opinions without the intervention of a popular youtube video game reviewer






this review is, if you haven’t figured it out already, a joke. full review once i’m discharged from the hospital and finally done with the game, so maybe… very late november? but yeah fuck you right lung for collapsing twice and forcing me to require surgery