Me when visual novel: 😐

Me when visual novel but it has Sonic attached to it: 😁😁😁

jokes aside, not really much of a visual novel person at all but this was really really charming. Great characterization, fantastic artwork, a fun sense of humor, there’s just so much love and passion for the series pouring out of this game. Despite being a (I think non canon?) April Fools joke the Social Media team put on Steam for free, this somehow managed to be both incredibly entertaining and endearing. I actually wouldn’t mind Sonic expanding and branching out to try different types of game genres like this, would be very fun to see.

…though I now have the sudden urge to sift through whatever trash cans I come across. I swear there’s gotta be something in them…

Idk how I managed to miss this, I completed this way back a few years ago when I finished all 3 of the Mario games on this collection. I guess I just forgot to log it during that time which…I suppose speaks perfectly for the quality of this collection as whole.

So here’s what you get with this collection: you get all 3 games in HD, Mario 64 with some amount of visual improvements, Sunshine in widescreen, Galaxy with (frankly unintuitive) joycon pointer controls, the soundtrack of each game…and that’s it. All games are locked to their original framerates, none of them are native ports, the presentation is shockingly barebones, Galaxy 2 isn’t on this collection for really no discernible reason, there’s no customization options to speak of nor are there any extras to browse like concept art or…ANYTHING really outside of the soundtracks. The features on this collection are so desolate it’s insane, even Sonic Origins has way more to offer than this. On top of that, Nintendo had the absolute GALL to not only charge $60 for 3 old roms that have barley been improved in any meaningful way, but on top of that they decided it would be a fantastic idea to make this a limited time release, because artificial scarcity is what gamers truly desire. At the time of this writing it’s basically impossible to buy this collection on the Nintendo eshop, the only way to experience this collection is to get it physically, which isn’t too much of a hassle as I still see a boatload of copies of these games on store shelves, or…yknow…Vimm’s lair, because honestly that’s a way better option and is far more morally correct than giving Nintendo any of your money for this sorry excuse for a collection.

Maybe some day collections can reach the absolute peak of Sonic Mega Collection. Some day. But not today.

In an optional, visually stunning level in the early Jungle world of the game, players can peek through the leaves and foliage to see pirate ships, docked by the beach in the distance. That same beach and those same pirate ships make up the scenery for the game’s second world, and as you progress further through it you notice more and more how the ships are showing up torn and mangled to pieces. By the end of the world, the weather grows stormier and a huge octopus appears from below the surface, gruesomely tearing ships apart in the background of the stage before challenging the big ape himself.

Donkey Kong Country as a series has never placed any real focus on its storytelling, yet as all its fans will tell you it is shockingly good at being atmospheric and moody. And while Returns specifically often gets buried inbetween the praise for the original trilogy and Tropical Freeze, I find it excels at this in a sort of unique way - by having the entire island truly feel like one big, cohesive entity. The scenario I described earlier is never called attention to, yet takes place over the course of about 10 levels, with each step being a very gradual shift from one environment to the next whilst still adhering to their worlds’ visual themes. While many other platformers strive to impress you with their creativity and variety, I find there’s a beauty in trying to make each level feel like a natural progression of the world - that it’s not simply a collection of fun video game environments, but the natural extension of a living, breathing world.

The “Returns” subtitle doesn’t feel like its simply there to denote the franchise coming out of hiatus, but to quite literally describe the game as the first since the series’ inception to truly place the focus on Donkey Kong Island itself. There’s no kidnapping, no journeying, no drastic environmental change - this game, even more so than the original 1995 game, is about showing you the ecosystem and inhabitants of Donkey Kongs home. This is part of why I find the Tiki Tak Tribe to be such a good antagonistic force for the game: rather than turning the conflict into just a brawl against an invading faction, their brainwashing powers mean that now every part of the island is hostile and out of balance to serve someone else’s agenda. Whilst the Tikis take control of an inhabitant of each of the island's areas to serve as the game’s bosses, each area in the game is also befitted with one or more natural rulers outside of this - the Squeekly bats of Crowded Cavern are left completely undisturbed by the mole miners of the cave area, the horde of Muncher spiders in the forest devour anyone who gets close, and a large eyeball-robot observes your every move in the Factory level, seemingly manipulating your progress forward. Throughout this involuntary tour of the island, it feels as DK is constantly intruding on the’ territory of these rulers, disrupting the natural ecosystem and flow of life, to quell a conflict they barely seem aware of. The harmony between rulers and the natural state of the island has been disrupted by the Tikis, all for the sake of them believing their own king is the one who deserves to rule the island as a whole.

So then, with all that said - who’s the ruler of the Jungle?

That’s right - Donkey Kong.

What makes the grueling difficulty of this adventure in particular feel so rewarding to overcome is that, similar to Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, it truly feels as if the great ape is asserting his absolute dominance with every world he conquers. Frail as he may seem with only being able to take two hits, he moves with such a visceral weight, slamming onto the heads of enemies with both fists and hitting the ground with a slight thud every time he lands. It’s theorized that a big part of why Donkey Kong himself was sidelined in the Country series in favor of his extended Kong family was due to the difficulty in nailing both the weight and size of this character – play the original Donkey Kong Country, and you’ll notice DK’s silhouette drastically changes when he’s standing still, running, and jumping, which leads to a somewhat inconsistent feel moving the character around. To have this grand return of the character not only emphasize his weight and power, but also seemingly theme the entire story around reasserting his rightful place as ruler of the island, just feels absolutely perfectly befitting. Yet he defeats the king of the Tikis atop DK Island’s volcano, not to claim any sort of dominance or rule of his home, but to return things to the way they were before, and reform that balance of nature. Indeed, in both narrative and design this Return is not here to say that the new should rule and the old has no place, but that all kings have their place in the world.

There are a lot of very valid reasons as to why the game isn’t as fondly remembered as the rest of the series, mostly attributing to Retro Studios’ unfamiliarity in designing for the genre. A big one is the way collectibles are handled, an area the game falls completely flat on compared to how perfectly the trilogy handled it. The puzzle piece system may be a cute way to unlock concept art, but when these somewhat-short levels can have up to nine puzzle pieces on top of the KONG-letters, suddenly the pacing in stages come to a screeching halt. It’s cool that you’re consistently rewarded for pattern recognition, of seeing a stray banana just barely off-screen and following it to reveal a hidden path, but with up to 13 collectibles per stage you’re just bound to miss one lest you check quite literally every possible hiding place one could be in. That means moving left at the start of every level, scraping against every possible wall, collecting every single banana, blowing on every dandelion, and intentionally dying in every split-path just to give yourself the opportunity to double-check the other path. The KONG-letters are far stronger collectibles in terms of how the game is themed, as they’re consistently rewarded to you for actively platforming well and utilizing DK’s abilities to the fullest rather than for having the keen eye of an explorer. The fatigue that can set it from feverishly looking for these collectibles may only enhance the somewhat repetitive level progression: Imagine the feeling of mastering everything a level has to see, only to realize that the next feels virtually identical aside from having a focus on bouncy flowers now.

The game sticking to the standard visuals of its area relatively closely may again be a remnant of Retro’s work on Metroid Prime - rather than indulge in whatever crazy level concept the team could think up for a one-off level akin to Super Mario 3D World, each level is given a sort of purpose on the island, a significance that forms part of the whole. At first, I questioned the sudden appearance of a pirate ship level in the Ruins area, since I was already well past having beaten the Beach area. It was only after I played the level and later reached the world’s boss that the dots connected: The pirate ship level focused on firing explosive bombs, and the boss of the area is a great bird who hoards a collection of explosives all to itself. This not only lets the level serve as great preparation for the properties of these explosives, but can easily be pieced together to form worldbuilding theories, of the pirate crew bargaining with this greedy hoarder to gain access to this artillery. There’s even a great care placed on moving Donkey Kong from area to area, as the first level of most worlds opens with a brief moment of letting the player transition out of the old area into the new, showing for instance the overgrown edge of the caverns leading naturally into the Forest area.

Beyond all of this analysis and babble, the game remains a great platformer first and foremost. The game is still extremely successful at providing that rewarding escalation of challenge that DKC has historically done so perfectly, paired with controls with tons of speed potential. Even though the Wii version in particular has been derided for its Wii-isms, I can’t stress enough how often I feel it genuinely adds to the experience. From your own shaking matching the intense pummeling DK lets out onto the Tikis at the end of each world, to the Wii remote speaking giving you direct and gloriously satisfying sound feedback to each enemy you bop and collectible you get, to genuinely feeling the weight of the handslam attack…

Okay, so maybe the simple, primitive part of my brain took over just now, the part wanted to just call this game a fun, well paced, good platformer from the start without doing this silly literary analysis. And, well... who am I to challenge the king of the jungle?

[Playtime: 8 hours]
[Key word: Reclaim]

Erm…well THAT just happened!!!

Played and completed the demo so my experience will be based on that because I am NEVER spending $70 on this game lmao. Not least of which is because I don’t have a PS5 nor do I ever plan on getting one, but also because the game runs like crap on my PC (I cranked the resolution down to 720p and it still stuttered like crazy) and the game itself is very…blah. Combat is actually kiiiinda fun with the different spells you can mix together, but it’s also pretty easy to kill things and lacks any satisfying crunch + enemies barely react to your attacks at all nor do they really try to attack you. Parkour is kinda fun but it‘s mechanically shallow and the game performs most of it for you as you automatically vault over obstacles, there’s very little skill expression to be found outside of the context sensitive grapple pull. The world itself is pretty boring, the most lifeless and generic grass forest wasteland I have ever seen in a video game, barring like one or 2 setpieces, and the dialogue that comes out of Frey’s mouth makes me want to die. It’s not overly offensive like I thought it was gonna be but I’m also positive I’ve seen everything the game has to offer in one fell swoop.

It sucks because like, I loved the slick presentation and polish on display, and I was down for a Smash clone staring WB characters but this is a mess. It’s unfathomably grindy to unlock anything in this game because guess what, free to play baybeee!!! And on top of that the actual fighting mechanics feel so sluggish and disjointed. Characters have like 15 billion abilities to memorize that cause different effects that you ALSO have to memorize, a sort of fun easy to understand simplicity to the actual fighting mechanics that was completely lost compared to Smash bros. I put it down after a few hours and sadly I don’t think I’ll return to this any time soon

Also my homeboys Grizz Panda and Ice Bear are nowhere to be seen, make them playable you cowards!

There’s an old saying that I think is perfectly apt to apply to this game: “bigger” does not always equal “better”

I did enjoy my time with the original Banjo Kazooie; nothing outstanding or amazing or anything, but as I said before, not all games NEED to be spectacular mindblowing experiences. Some games can just be simple pick up and play games that you can have fun and vibe with and nothing more, like a decent 7/10. I definitely had issues with it but for the most part I did have fun, though I was very curious about what the sequel held in store, whatever that might be. I didn’t really know what to expect going in

I will say though right off the bat the game is definitely funnier than the original. The writing is a bit snappier and more self aware than the previous game, there’s a lot of gags present throughout that honestly caught me off guard (the poor ice cube folk). The story picks up directly where the last game left off, and the opening act is surprisingly kind of dismal for a Banjo game, traversing through a now destroyed Spiral Mountain. After you entire the Isle o Hags, the game’s tone changes back to where it usually is.

The basic gist of Banjo Tooie is to…basically do exactly what the 1st game did, but expand and make literally EVERYTHING so unnecessarily bigger. The worlds you travel through are enormous compared to Banjo 1, and not just that, but they’re all interconnected via not only a train station, but also secret areas in specific worlds that lead into other worlds. And that’s not it either, all of the hubs worlds that hold these levels are ALSO super massive and interconnected and can be traversed through quickly by several different portals. If nothing else, I can commend Tooie on the sheer ambition alone, especially on a system as limited as the N64. Thankfully I don’t have to play this game on original hardware as I’ve heard the framerate issues were, quite frankly, abhorrent. I’ll also give credit for just giving all of the moves that Banjo & Kazooie learned in the first game right from the get go. There are very VERY subtle control improvements (specifically in regards to swimming and flying) but it’s not really noticeable at all, the game overall feels the same as 1, which leads into my main problem:

Simply put these worlds are far too expansive and empty and generally aren’t fun to traverse around. The first Banjo built these different worlds with Banjo’s limited speed and movement in mind and it worked. The worlds in Banjo 1 were full of stuff to do, but they were also tight and focused, they didn’t really feel like you were just sorta meandering around doing nothing of substance (the later levels got slightly worse with this I find but in general this wasn’t much of a problem). With Tooie, every single world feels tedious to traverse through with how big they all are, and a lot of the time spent in these worlds are spent wandering around figuring out what to do next. I guess to help alleviate this issue, every level comes packed with portal pads to warp to different parts of the map where other portals are at, which does help but I don’t feel it’s enough. There’s just so much back and forth across these portals and across the level itself, at one point you gain the ability to split Banjo & Kazooie to solve specific puzzles, access different areas and collect different Jiggies, but ultimately this compounds the back and forth issue even MORE. Needing to go to one area, do something with one character, and switching back to the other to either play catch up or to do something else, I’m sorry but this is just multiple extra steps that never needed to be added in the first place. On top of all of this you also gain new additional abilities to take advantage of courtesy of Jamjars. Rather than using notes to unlock other areas of the hub worlds, you use them primarily to obtain new moves and I’m…mixed on a lot of them. There are some neat additions, you get different eggs to solve puzzles and provide different combat options, a drill dive attack, and different powerups that have different perks. However I’d say a vast majority of moves you require are gimmicky and are too situational to be fun. Going back to the issues I have with splitting Banjo & Kazooie up, there are also brand new moves you can give to either Banjo or Kazooie individually, and a lot of these are pretty mundane and are purely contextual (Kazooie gets a move where she sits down and hatches eggs and nothing else, Banjo can put stuff inside his backpack where he can carry around and solve puzzles with, and he can go inside his backpack to enter specific areas and nothing else). Even worse, oftentimes when you discover a Jamjars bunker as Banjo & Kazooie together, the game goes “OOPS, too bad this move is only for Banjo, try again!” and you need to backtrack allllll the way to a separation pad, separate the 2, come back to that spot with the single required character, learn the move, and then leave that area. All of this further accentuates and adds onto the back and forth tedium that Tooie displays front and center. Some new abilities just flat out suck, there’s one that allows you to shoot eggs in first person mode, which sounds fine but the aiming on control sticks is so finicky and jittery that it’s actively unpleasant to use. The game will sometimes mimic a first person shooter where Banjo cocks Kazooie like a gun which is admittedly a very funny tribute visually but these sections just aren’t that fun to play because of this issue. Even the final boss requires aiming at specific areas in first person mode WHILE avoiding projectiles, it’s a mess, doubly so for the nauseating challenges and bosses involving shooting in first person mode while flying.

And I’m STILL not done here, you can once again gain help from Mumbo Jumbo but now it involves 2 different processes. The traditional transformation gimmick is back but this time you need the assistance of Humba Wumba, a completely different character often in a completely different location from Mumbo himself. By visiting Mumbo you gain the ability to temporarily play as him in the select stage in order to go to (once again) contextual Mumbo pads and make something happen within the level to help with puzzle solving. Mumbo himself isn’t very fun to play with seeing as how his attack halts him in place and he has no movement abilities at all. Both of these characters require 1 Glowbo each in order to access, yet another pair of collectables per stage in a game already filled to the brim with collectibles. Granted they aren’t hard to locate at all but again, it feels like pure filler in an already filler-filled game.

Unfortunately Tooie quickly became a game I started playing out of curiosity, to a game I only finished out of pure obligation. I was exhausted by the end, while the first Banjo game took me around 12 hours or so to finish, Tooie took me over 27 HOURS to finish, not even 100% (though I did nearly get all of the achievements). I can tell you right now, most of that 27 hours wasn’t enjoyment. Tooie is an ambitious game overall that I can commend for what they tried to do, but it simply isn’t fun to play. A form of sincere simplicity from the first game is completely lost as the sequel is utterly bloated with all this empty space, backtracking, and extra “stuff” to do, most of which isn’t even fun. I would like to see another crack at the typical Banjo formula some day in the style of what Crash 4 did, but Tooie is frankly too expansive for its own good.

The first Overwatch remains one of my favorite online multiplayer games. Having heard a bunch of negative things about the second game, I uninterestedly decided to download the game a couple of weeks after its release. The main complaints were having to provide a valid phone number to login (fixed by the time I downloaded the game) and the fact that this game was more of the same and played almost exactly the same as the first one. This last complaint was actually one of my favorite things since it felt I picked up the first game where I left off (I stopped playing the first game in early 2017).

So all in all, I don't have any issues with this feeling a lot like the first game but I can see why people were upset. Also, the lack of the promised PVE modes was another complaint but I was able to play the Halloween event that was released and it was very fun.

I can see myself going back to Overwatch 2 sporadically throughout the year and that's all I can ask for a free to play game.

Man...what a journey this game has been, huh?

Going into the initial reveal from both the May 2021 Sonic Central to the official reveal at the 2021 Game Awards, I was very cautious about this game after being previously burnt out by Sonic Forces and how hollow and uninspired that game was.

...sorry, did I say cautious? I meant outright skeptical.

"The same director and team who made a game as narrow and as linear as Forces are gonna now attempt an open world esc Sonic game? Yeah, sure, THIS looks like it's gonna go well."

But in the end, I still hoped that this game would be good. I always want to hope that, I love this character and this franchise, and I want him to succeed after all. I never really want to wish doom and gloom upon a game before it's already come out, but man did things already start out ROUGH. The initial IGN reveal during the summer of 2022 absolutely crushed me. The gameplay didn't look AWFUL per say, but it looked very aimless and boring, not helping things were the rough framerate and atrocious pop in (They basically revealed an early alpha or beta without even telling us that it was an earlier build), and my heart sunk. After all that waiting, THIS was what they were gonna reveal to us? THIS??? My hopes were rock bottom at that point, but as time passed something peculiar happened: the more they showed off the game, the better it looked. The more they showcased, the more my interest grew and before long, I was actually getting excited for this game. Well, maybe not excited, cautiously optimistic at best. Again, Forces REALLY burnt me out here, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. There was some stuff that bummed me out before release regardless, like the technical aspects and Cyberspace (I’ll discuss both of these later on don’t worry), but when my copy arrived a couple of days after launch, I legit couldn’t wait to play it. I tried my best to go in blind, as I often have a bad habit of spoiling myself on things I haven’t seen before release (it’s how I basically knew most of the major surprises Sonic Movie 2 had to offer before I saw the movie myself), and with how much they were playing up the mystery element with this game, and the fact that they got none other than Ian Flynn HIMSELF to write the story? I knew we were in for something special at the very least. So, did it end up being good in the end?

Oh man, you’d better believe it.

It’s not perfect of course, no game is, it’s not without its fair share of blemishes and annoyances, but man, this is bar none the most fun I’ve had with 3D Sonic in a long LONG while.

Starting off with the story, I think this may just be single handedly the best story in a Sonic game to DATE. Keep in mind that I’m someone who hasn’t really considered a majority of the game’s stories to be good at all (I honestly only really think SA2’s story was pretty decent and even that had issues), but the fact that Ian Flynn just casually made a story leaps and bounds over anything I’d ever seen from the games is amazing. I already knew the comics had it good for a while, specifically IDW, but I was so surprised at how invested and how engaged I was with what was happening the whole way through. If there’s any takeaway from Sonic Frontiers, it’s that it should be mandatory that Ian Flynn must write for every mainline Sonic game from now on. The characterization of every character in this game is top notch, Sonic himself is FINALLY back to being legitimately cool again, Tails’ messy characterization since Unleashed finally gets addressed, even Eggman gets some surprising development to how he views his relationship with Sage, the semi-main antagonist (Though admittedly most of that was relegated to the optional Egg memos). At first, I wasn’t a big fan of Sage with how cold and sterile her mannerisms were, and how she only spoke cryptically and how she would only talk about nothing but data and percentages and whatnot, I’ve seen this stuff before when it comes to mysterious villain characters. However, the more you watch her develop her relationships with Eggman and how she views Sonic and his relationships with his friends throughout the course of the game, the more and more compelling she becomes. The plot and general writing overall can be a bit too fan-servicey at times and rely a bit TOO much on referencing past games and events for no reason, but I’m fine with it honestly, and it generally feels like there’s a lot of effort placed into making Sonic’s universe feel more connected for future titles. Some of the references definitely put me off guard and got me excited for what’s to come. And man, the dialogue too is top notch, not every line hit of course, but on the whole, it was just so well written. I was a bit put off by Roger Craig Smith’s deeper toned Sonic, but I warmed up to it quite a bit, he sounds super natural and most of the time he doesn’t sound SUPER deep I don’t think. The rest of the cast put in solid performances as well. Overall if these kinds of stories are what we have to look forward to in the future, sign me up immediately, I loved this.


But that’s just the story of course, how does the gameplay of Sonic Frontiers hold up?

In a major change for the franchise, Sonic Frontiers opts to put Sonic in a vast open area and uh…basically just do whatever he wants. It’s not fully open world, which I think was smart, it’s more akin to like, Mario Odyssey or Bowser’s Fury on a MUCH larger scale to accommodate for Sonic’s high speed. A vast open area consisting of small linear platforming challenges in order to nab collectables. In Frontiers’ case, these collectables are the memory tokens you use to save your friends and progress the story. These aren’t the only important collectables of course, you also get portal gears, red and blue seeds of attack and defense respectively, purple coins around the overworld, but for all intents and purposes the memory tokens are the main thing you’re going to be collecting. Frontiers has an almost Zen like flow to its gameplay, leaping from one obstacle course in the sky or ground, getting launched from it and trying to land on another without stopping, it’s great stuff. But in general, the game is designed for you to take it at your own pace, exploring at your leisure, fighting whatever enemies you want to fight, tackling cyberspace stages, etc. The puzzles are rather simplistic but I wouldn’t call them braindead or anything. If anything, they’re a step above the typical “pick up stone and put it into corresponding hole” which makes up like, 99% of the puzzles of previous Sonic games, and there are some legitimately interesting puzzles in this game (like the laser light puzzle) the more you go on. Even the starting puzzles you mess around with (walking on light panels, hitting balls into hoops, etc) do get expanded upon on later islands, albeit not by much, again the puzzles in this game are REALLY not brain taxing in the slightest. They’re just simple non-time-wasting tasks to do, so the fact that I willingly go out and seek these puzzles speaks a lot for just how much simple fun they offer. It also helps that whenever you complete a puzzle you not only get a reward with either one of the seeds, but it also expands the map in a grid-like fashion, helping you better see where to go but also potentially uncovering extra tokens to find, cyberspace portals, and even more puzzles to even further expand the map, there’s always a sense of genuine discovery and a sense of “oh nice I almost missed that” to it. Completing these puzzles also opens up ancient rails to spawn which acts as a semi fast travel system around the island, and this is a genuine brilliant feature but I’ll get into why that is later on.

However, the puzzles have never really been the selling point to Sonic Frontiers, it’s the feeling of tearing through vast open landscapes at incredibly high speeds. It certainly helps that this is by far one of the best controlling 3D Sonics I have ever played. In terms of sheer ground movement, it’s EASILY better than anything I’ve experienced from this franchise. Even with the default settings active Sonic’s speed is good when boosting and his turning is ultra-sharp and precise, it feels absolutely incredible. I haven’t felt 3D Sonic movement this good since the Adventure games, but even the Adventure games were very finnicky and unreliable at incredibly high speeds, in Frontiers even when power boosting (which makes you go even faster) you can do ultra-tight donuts repeatedly, there’s nothing like this handling at all (and considering the main mechanic of Frontiers is running literal circles around enemies, it’d have to be smooth). This makes weaving in and out of enemies and obstacles a non-issue, platforming becomes incredibly second nature, and just the feeling of blasting away through open deserts or grassy fields feels so gratifying, it’s great stuff all around. The jump however feels less good. It doesn’t keep your boost speed at all which feels slightly unnatural and a bit limiting, but the weirdest thing about it is that it has this, what I can only describe as a Mario 64 esc turning syndrome, where you can’t just instantly turn your jump around on a dime but Sonic instead needs to swing alllllll the way around to turn the other direction, it makes things like, say, trying to reverse directions in mid air near impossible without resorting to airboosting (which is noticeably gimped from previous games until you max out your speed stat), and it makes situations like trying to nab collectables on the very edge of tiny platforms very awkward to do because of this. Between this and the fact that your jump doesn’t keep your speed, I wouldn’t be against the short hop returning as a way to keep your speed and to clear small gaps that you otherwise wouldn’t need a full jump to do so. But overall besides the jump his movement is top notch. His reaction to the terrain is a bit weird. There are times where he just sticks like glue to his surroundings and it can be kinda useful to have Sonic scale certain near vertical hills with ease (though it’s inconsistent and I wish you could just run up any wall you wanted, recreate that one part of the Sonic X intro where he just zips across mountains and whatnot with ease), makes traversal that much more free form, but if you wanna launch off a cliff and get some big air oftentimes he just sticks to the floor and careens straight down and it can be pretty annoying. There are quirks but overall his movement is great.

The platforming challenges floating above the world are a bit simple and odd in structure but they’re also incredibly bite sized and short so they never overstay their welcome. And again, it can be quite fun maintaining a sense of flow launching from one platforming challenge and landing on another without touching the ground. You even get Lost World style wall running and parkour (while not fully realized due to many instances of automation, I do think it’s actually way more fun to pull off than in Lost World). A part of me wished that these challenges got way more difficult and complex as they went on and that they were more naturally ingrained into the world, and while they get…slightly more complex I don’t feel it’s enough. It’s still fun on like, a simple base level but it never goes beyond that I feel. Some portions of these challenges are also in 2D and I genuinely wish there were more clear indications of where these transitions were going to occur because it’s really painful how much your flow is broken when you’re trying to go somewhere and you get sprung or dash pad boosted into a 2D section that you need to actively FIGHT to get out of, it’s incredibly annoying and could’ve been handled way better (Chaos Island is especially guilty of this). These obstacle courses and item collecting admittedly can get a bit repetitive after a while, there were a couple of points where I felt burnt out and needed to take a break, which is why I personally feel Frontiers is best enjoyed in sessions and not by marathoning the entire game. Still, equally there were plenty of times where I just could not put the controller down and always wanted to keep playing so I guess it depends. There is also proper momentum usage you can use to fling yourself around the island in funny ways, particularly with the rails. Remember the ancient rails I mentioned earlier that allows for sort of a fast travel system? Well you can also boost and jump off the rail while holding boost to keep all the speed you have to shoot off into the sky (amplified even further with the Power Boost), it’s very satisfying to pull off and can even be used to reach higher areas for extra collectables or puzzles (like the canyon walls in Ares Island for instance). You can also do this with geometry too but it’s inconsistent, Sonic has the glue tendency like I mentioned earlier but other times you trip over a tiny pebble and launch into the sky. I would find it frustrating but I overall don’t to be honest, it’s both fun and admittedly pretty funny.

Combat is very simple but overall satisfying. It’s not DMC or Bayonetta level depth or anywhere close (I don’t think Sonic combat has ever been), it’s very segmented and has some nice quirks like dodge canceling and the ability to actually juggle enemies, but taken on its own it gets pretty repetitive if not supplemented with interesting enemy design, and thankfully I think Frontiers manages great variety. Stuff like the Ninja variants actually, yknow, fight back against you so they’re engaging at the start, and the rest of the guardians have very unique ways of defeating them extremely quickly and it’s actually quite fun to discover. Wall running up Tower variants and quick cylooping the top to instantly destroy the other stacks, attacking and quick cylooping the feet of Spider instead of waiting for him to attack and cyloop each individual one, quick cylooping Sumo to instantly rattle off a ton of hits, it reminds me a lot of Sonic Heroes combat in a way, a relatively simple combat flow but the joy comes from optimizing the fastest way to take enemies down, and thankfully Frontiers offers a good amount of enemy variety so things don’t get too stale too quickly. The sound design is extremely gratifying as well, attacks, parries, and special moves hit with so much crunch and oomph that it’s always extremely fun to just wail on something on a surface level. My main gripes come from the parry, there’s no timing involved whatsoever so it ends up being so unsatisfying to use, you just hold the button down and instantly counter any attack thrown your way. It would’ve made more sense to RELEASE the button to initiate the parry if you still wanted to keep the “hold the button down to parry” system. The normal soldier enemies became tiring and something I actively ignored as the game progressed as I didn’t get much joy taking these variants down at all. I also don’t really appreciate enemies that yoink camera control away from the player every time you pass by them (I’m looking at you, you homing attack bubble spawning jerk). Combat also kinda falls flat in terms of moves completely replacing actions you would normally do in the overworld. For example, if you wanted to airboost to get extra distance across a platform and immediately homing attack an enemy, OOPS, you’ll use the homing shot instead. Or say, if you wanted to airboost and jump or stomp to reposition, OOPS, you’ll cross slash or loop kick instead, idk why these actions couldn’t have just been simple button combinations instead of one button pressed after the other. I’m also extremely disappointed in the skill tree, it’s very small and it doesn’t take a long time to unlock everything at all. (shoot once you get the trick system upgrade you can pretty much max out the entire thing by the second island, it’s super deflating). It was one worry I had going in when I saw the skill tree and unfortunately, my fear turned out to be true.

The major boss encounters on each island are easily the best boss fights I have ever experienced in any Sonic game ever and I’m not even exaggerating. Yeah yeah, they’re more spectacle than substance but like…that’s literally how it’s been in every Super Sonic final boss, a gimmicky oftentimes terrible minigame esc control scheme that’s supposed to make you feel powerful but often never does. I genuinely can’t think of a single one I’ve played that left me satisfied or left me feeling anything other than pure apathy. With these boss fights, the main combat mechanics you use in the main game are carried over, just given a Super Sonic boost, and the sheer spectacle and over the top action are increased to degrees so monumentally high that I was absolutely blown away when I first experienced them. I’m gonna be honest, I have no clue how they’re ever gonna top the first 3 Titan fights in the future, they were just that amazing. Unfortunately, the final 2 boss fights were pretty lame, the final titan fight was just a reskinned Giganto but with worse spectacle and a confusing unintuitive strategy to fight him, and while I won’t spoil the true final boss it’s even MORE underwhelming than the final titan, especially compared to all the insane fights we’ve took part in throughout the course of the game.

Finally, and rather unceremoniously, we come to Cyberspace. Sonic Team’s answer to traditional Sonic levels. These are where you use portal gears on and where you primarily get vault keys from. This is easily the weakest area of the game, for multiple reasons. The first being control, Sonic’s handling in Cyberspace is so much worse than the Open Zone controls it’s not even funny. His steering is extremely stiff, he’s even slower than before ESPECIALLY in 2D, his momentum-killing awkward turning jump is still a problem, he just doesn’t feel good. I wouldn’t say it’s as bad as like, Forces, because his acceleration isn’t jank and the overall handling is better, but it’s still nowhere near as good as Generations or Colors. What’s even worse are the levels themselves. For one, there’s only 4 level aesthetics for Cyberspace: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and the new City theme (which I am hereby dubbing either “Cyber City”, or the “Information Superhighway” and nobody can tell me otherwise). Visually they look fine enough, but I think I can attest for many when I say that I am tired, absolutely EXHAUSTED of seeing Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and even Sky Sanctuary again. Did they just not learn anything from Forces and didn’t hear about the thousands of people complaining about them reusing Green Hill for the umpteenth time? The cyberspace aesthetics are really neat though, with how neon trails of light often zoom across the terrain, the terrain itself is broken and distorted and endlessly warping in the distance like a corrupt program. I think it hits the hardest with the Cyber City, I really love this stage aesthetic. The sprawling twisting highways with supposed traffic warping at incredible speeds up and down and all around, Skyscrapers turned upside down and sideways, abandoned cars as obstacles, tanks and helicopters (apparently from GUN) as enemies, and stop signs, road signs and lights displayed in a glitchy unnatural state throughout these twisting turning highways, I really enjoy this. The level design itself however is ripped unapologetically from other games in the franchise, mainly Sonic Generations, Unleashed, and even Adventure 2. Idk what makes the game think I would want to play through a Generations level but chopped up into bits and pieces and with worse controls but bold move I suppose. Some level design set pieces from these different games are also there but ring hollow, like you have the rocket section in Metal Harbor but without the impending timer ticking down or a rocket of any kind because it’s draped in the chemical plant skin, or the bridge in Gens Modern Green Hill where you can stomp down to a hidden passage way, in the original it was merely a shortcut, in Frontiers they could’ve provided an opportunity to place like, a red ring or something there but they just…didn’t. There’s a story reason for this as Cyberspace pulls from Sonic’s memories, and because he’s zoomed through these stages before that’s why he can easily get in and out. It makes sense I guess but like, for one he hasn’t been to places like Sky Rail before so where did he get that memory from? Second, why does he only remember these 3 level aesthetics and why is 1 brand new if these are all from his memories? Third, there’s brand new completely original level design towards the final part of the game’s Cyberspace levels, and while I genuinely think these levels are actually pretty well designed and are fun to play, it not only undermines the whole “these levels are from his memory” thing, but it also pulls into question that the developers were more than capable of making fun, original level design but just…chose not to for whatever reason? I blame time constraints. Still while being unremarkable, Cyberspace still at least has some quirks that make it kinda fun. It was fun to recognize what level was being referenced in a sorta mindless “I MEMBER DAT!!!” kind of way, you can homing attack after an airboost and use stomp to completely reset your actions which adds a fun flow to 3D platforming sections, especially in the Unleashed acts. I honestly think the Cyberspace version of that one Dragon road act is more fun to play than the Unleashed version. Homing attack cancel (where you airboost after using a homing attack but before it hits the target) sends Sonic flying and it’s great fun to break these stages with, especially seeing as how Cyberspace barely has any invisible walls of any kind, though much like Unleashed if I can only get some semblance of enjoyment from these stages by flat out breaking through them, I think that’s a problem. Regardless, I don’t think these levels were godawful, I didn’t DREAD going to a Cyberspace level, it’s just something I kinda tolerate at the end of the day.

Another type of Cyberspace portal is Big’s fishing hole. You only find like one or 2 of these around the islands, but when you find it you can use the purple coins you collected to go fishing with Big and get rewards. The fishing minigame itself is extremely simple but I feel like that’s to the game’s benefit, especially considering how atrocious Big’s gameplay was in SA1. It’s just super relaxing to catch fish, get rewarded for doing so, and filling up your fishpedia as you go along. You even get some funny easter eggs in the form of fishing classic badniks like choppers, or fishing classic Sonic items like a spring or goal post. It’s also a fantastic way to get stuff you need, if you truly didn’t want to play any cyberspace level, or interact with any combat, you can just earn rewards like portal gears, vault keys and skill points just by fishing. One could argue the economy system isn’t well balanced, but idk, towards end game when I’ve already 100% each island anyway it was nice to DRAMATICALLY speed up getting my stats to max without insane amounts of grinding. I appreciate that the game wants you to play the game however you want to play it. Big’s alright in my book 😊

Graphically Sonic Frontiers looks excellent all around. I’ll always prefer more fantasy oriented fantastical colorful aesthetics compared to realistic looking stuff, but Frontiers still manages to make these environments look really top quality, there’s even a full day and night cycle. The textures are surprisingly very high detail for the most part, models are on point (haha get it cos he’s a hedgehog), the lighting and bloom are very well done, it runs as smooth as butter (I played on Series X and the game actually runs at a pretty high resolution in 60fps mode so there’s like no benefits to the 4K 30fps mode at all), I think this is easily the best looking Sonic game on a technical level…but it does have some problems. The most glaring is the pop in, it’s SUPER distracting, borderline immersion breaking. I genuinely tried to get used to it, I really did, but it was still an extremely distracting problem. This unfortunately isn’t a new problem for Sonic, the 3D games have all suffered from pop in in one form or another (yes even the precious Sonic Unleashed has pretty atrocious very noticeable pop in, even with objects that are close to Sonic), but in an open world setting it’s even more noticeable than ever before. I can excuse pop in to SOME degree, especially with a character that goes really really fast across a vast open landscape, but stuff will literally pop into view when you’re right in front of it, it can often be hard to tell where to enter an obstacle course because the entrance hasn’t blipped into view yet. It never got me killed or anything, and there’s no pop in whatsoever in the cyberspace levels, but it’s something I’m really hoping can be ironed out in a patch if they ever decide to address it at all. But man the music, oh my god the MUSIC dude, this is easily one of the best Sonic soundtracks ever put out, it’s top 5 for me no question. There’s so much variety and it’s all so GOOD. The absolutely beautiful open zone themes (Kronos and Rhea being my personal favorites), the absolutely bangin Cyberspace music, the screamo metal tracks of the Super Sonic fights that make these crazy encounters even more bonkers insane, it’s all fantastic. Tomoya Othani really outdid himself, no question.

There are some other issues I have as well, some of the minigames can be pretty poorly made (I beat the pinball one on my first try with one ball but I still didn’t like it), the Starfall event clutters your screen with a giant slot machine that makes it hard to see where you’re going, I encountered a few weird bugs and even managed to clip through the world once, and the final 2 islands are a bit of a disappointment (the 4th is just a story related tower climb filled island and the 5th is very similar to Kronos), but what we have here is an EXTREMELY solid foundation for the future of Sonic games. If they take what works here and expand upon it, make the open zones more interesting with more places to explore and secrets to uncover, make the levels original traditional Sonic levels, expand combat and skill tree, heck even throw more playable characters if you’re able to make them fun too, we could have a true gem on our hands. Sonic Frontiers is merely the stepping stone to something truly amazing, but if I had this much fun playing what’s essentially a first draft of an idea, I have a good feeling about what’s in store. I just hope and pray that Sonic Team doesn’t ditch this idea and start from scratch again like they usually do.

This is why Kishimoto >>>> Yuji Naka. I don’t make the rules.

In truth, it would be very easy to slap a .5 star rating on this game, type "Blizzard bad" in the description and then call it a day, but that's not exactly how I feel here and I don't think it would be an adequate way about showcasing my full thoughts.

As someone who has played Overwatch for a good almost 2 full years now (or rather since Overwatch 1 was still Overwatch 1), I think I'm relatively experienced enough to better detail how I think 2 stacks up against the first game in many different areas.

I mean plain and simple, if we're talking gameplay then this is just a straight upgrade across the board full stop. The switch to a 5v5 format with only one tank did wonders for Overwatch 2: the game is so much faster paced now, there's less slowly sludging your way through chokepoints and having to deal with 17 barriers in the way, the stuns are pretty much only relegated to the tanks allowing them to have a huge impact on how fights are dictated, it genuinely feels like you are able to contribute more to a match and help out your team in Overwatch 2 as opposed to sitting there and let the tanks and support basically hard carry everyone. All of this also applies to the hero reworks (Orisa and Bastion goated), new heroes and new maps. Granted one could argue that this feels more like a huge glorified update than a true sequel and...truth be told it pretty much is lol. We're gonna have to wait for the PVE stuff in order for this claim to truly take hold.

As for the swap to Free to Play it's...a mixed bag. I mean for one the initial launch was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster but when is that factor ever not occurring for any live service game's launch nowadays. There's already been an approximate 25 million players joining which is kind of amazing compared to the dreary sea of 18+ minute long queue times and dozens upon dozens of alt accounts that the first game contained. However the monetization is...well to call it stingy would be underselling it a little bit. They got rid of loot boxes (good), replaced it with a battle pass system (subjective but I think this is a good battle pass overall for $10), and made basically everything infinitely more expensive and made getting coins to buy skins, highlight intros, emotes, etc an absolute grind only to get basically pocket change instead of anything substantial (BAAAAAD). Look I get it, it's a free game now, they can't give stuff away for free anymore, but this is just straight overkill. You literally can't get anything without a crap ton of grinding for weekly challenges, and even then at that point just save up to get the battle pass. Also I'm just gonna say it, heroes should absolutely NOT be locked behind the battle pass, at least not to THIS degree. I do like that at the very least there's not really a fomo element to heroes as you can obtain them in different ways after a season ends, but not only would I rather them be free, but 55 tiers in the battle pass is just way way WAY too much. I've been playing quite a bit since launch, roughly about a few days every week, and I can only manage to get to like tier 20 or so. I would hope these aspects gets addressed later on in the game's lifespan, but I was already burned by Halo Infinite's nonsense so I'm not particularly holding my breath.

I do think Overwatch 2 has the chance to crawl out of the grave dug specifically for Overwatch 1's rotten carcass but in the end, we just have to wait and see if it ends up being something truly amazing.

Wow this overhate is insane

It is a good game
+ most of the gameplay changes are great, gameplay feels amazing
+ bp is surprisingly good
+ upgraded engine graphics are really good
+ junker queen is great, kiriko is good, new maps are really fun to play
+ junker mommy

- people who picked prices for skins should be sent to hell
- ui is clearly unfinished
- sojourn is so underwhelming
- push mode is not fun to play, and it must be really annoying for level designers to make mirrored maps
- removal of level system is... not good

NOTE: I know you hate the ABK, but if you didn't play the game don't write a review to mislead people. If you played it and didn't like it, I respect it, write all your rage and your problems with the game and ABK. But posting "reviews" without playing the game, that's just despicable.