I'm not gonna go ahead and say that Rift Apart is without issue or anything. Playing for too long in one session can cause weird visual glitches - hell, I ran into my fair share of collision glitches. Those are easy fixes. My main gripe is the reliance on enemy hordes in the middle of boss battles - it's either a great way to spice things up, or it makes certain segments more cumbersome than they should be.

For every part of Rift Apart I didn't enjoy, however, there's about 10 other parts that hit it right out of the park. The healthy weapon variety, and how fun they are to use, will have you switching for your life and improvising strategies on the fly. Your movement/combat options and the feel of the controls are spot-on - Phantom Dash is one of my new favorite moves in any game. Every planet is visually distinct and well-built in lore, and there's a myriad of cool setpieces.

I mean, what can I even say? This is peak action gaming. I'm floored by how every character has a complete arc - even the scrunkly little robot used for twin-stick shooter levels. I'm floored by what is now possible in video games. God.

The star rating is NOT for A.I.R as a project. For what it sets out to do, it does a stellar job - for widescreen alone, plus other neat tweaks, it's totally the definitive way to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Major kudos to the people who run that project.

I cannot, however, avoid the fact that I don't hold Sonic 3&K to the high regard that most others do. 3&K is an ambitious, remarkable feat for the Genesis, and is probably the best damn platformer on the system. It looks wonderful, sounds wonderful, each level is distinct and memorable and designed as if they were physical places as opposed to video game levels. I'll give Sonic 3&K all of that much.

It's a damn solid game at best. There are moments where I was really having a blast. Thing is, 3&K is more interested in testing the player's patience than anything. A lot of crushers. Super Emerald stages and the fact that Giant Rings are one-and-dones for a whole save file. Sending the player in circles. Careening Sonic into a hazard or enemy that you couldn't avoid in time (and this is something that the extra screen space can't fix, even if it's so much bigger of a help than you could ever imagine). Et cetera. Honestly, the fact that I spent a chunk of time cross-referencing Giant Ring locations and how to not get lost in Blue Sphere stages (the regular ones are fine, mind), only to notice that I'd end up not having much time with the reaps of my reward? [Cuz Hyper Sonic is fucking cool] It kinda stung. Especially with how painful Death Egg felt - especially when I went into a slot machine bonus stage with over 150 rings, and left with 0.

Sonic 3&K is good. It's fun. It's an exercise in frustration, but I liked it fine enough. Granted, it begs the question of "If I don't like to be challenged to this degree in a video game, and I am unable to find myself focusing on a video game for more than a certain period of time, then what do I look for a game?"

That's a good question. I don't really know the answer.

Gonna be real, I only really play this for the Williams licensed tables, which are always a good time. If you wait for the right sales, you get nice recreations of real-life tables that are dubiously optimized, have Sonic Pakistan McDonald's tier "remasters" (animated characters etc. pasted on), have comically unbalanced achievements that can take way too long or be nigh impossible due to some tables loving to always have the ball drain down an outlane (also, nudging does jack shit), and barely have the options that The Pinball Arcade had - the game itself barely has graphical options, even.

But, if you really have an urge to sign your soul aw- I mean, get into pinball, it's either this, attempting to pirate The Pinball Arcade (don't give Jay Obernolte money), the bullshit Fortnite-esque model they have going for the new Pinball FX, or [insert terrible 4th option here].

This game made me realize (again) that I'm a bit useless with point-and-clicks - this was no exception. I was glued to a guide almost the whole way, basically amounting to me cheating the entire "game" part of this game. Even with that in mind, I cannot deny that this is a fiendishly clever piece of work with some of the wittiest cutscenes and puzzle outcomes. It's also very careful not to overstay its welcome, in spite of some backtracking issues (the rowboat kinda sucks and you have to use it to go back and forth three times).

I'm just saying a lot of words to convey "it's funny and ridiculous I like it"

People who have followed my reviews for a while know that I'm not a big fan of the first two Mega Man games. 1 is some primordial form of a run-n-gun platformer, like trying to use a rusty typewriter without a shift key. 2 is mechanically solid, but has rather unmemorable level design at best, and relies on very prominently nasty tricks for its setpieces at worst.

3, designed with all the finality of a third entry in a prospective trilogy, is leaps and bounds better. It still pulls some unruly tricks on the player, but not nearly as often as 2. I wish I could go into more detail on how it's better than 2 than just "the levels are better and the difficulty feels more balanced", but... I can't? It's just more fun IMO. yeah

At least one star of this rating is bias. Time Lord is an esoteric, frustrating piece of work with an isometric perspective that will fuck you over. It's a game for insane people who are willing to use rewinds, turbo buttons, and the game's own flaws to conquer its absurd intracacies, from the orb hidden behind a building in the Wild West, to its corresponding stereotypical Mexican boss with eternally-regenerating health (Peruvians and/or Puerto Ricans do this, too), and the orb you have to ring a bell a few times for.

I had a brief moment in freshman year trying to pick this game apart, looking at video guides and trying out the weird-ass techniques for myself, much as I did for Rare's Battletoads. Unfortunately, that is one of many fond memories I can't separate from this game, dodgy as it is. If nothing else, I will be the only one awaiting Hasbro (yes, they own the rights - not Rare, hence its exclusion from Rare Replay) to suddenly do a revival of this property. include a buff cavewoman in there next time

I could be mean and just make the review "wow, an nes platformer that didn't make me wanna [insert horrible thing here]", but watching nearly a whole season of Captain N has softened and buttered me up enough to make me tolerate some NES. MESEN having a rewind function helps. Also, for all intents and purposes, Rescue Rangers is about as entry-level as an NES platformer gets.

It's still laden with minor annoyances, especially in the last level. However, it's far for brutally difficult at all - it's short, levels NEVER overstay their welcome, the level design is forgiving while still managing to be distinct, and even boss fights go down in a few hits. The controls and simple mechanics are also very solid, and there's a surprising amount of enemy variety here. There's even some very clever puzzle-lite elements - love what they do with switches here.

It's not some messiah of side-scrollers, but in the vast sea of NES shovelware, and even the best of the platformers being so teeth-gnawing, Rescue Rangers is a standout.

...Wait, people dislike this game? This feels like a predecessor to all the best platformers of the 2010s, even if it has a slew of its own issues.

Sure, it's thematically repetitive (a lot of the same graphics and music throughout). The bosses are dumb. I think the fact you need to get enough stars to unlock boss levels on Normal mode is unnecessary. But, like, the level design is just really good, and manages to pose a challenge without being TOO obnoxious till the end. Even then, there's not really too much shame in switching to Easy mode if Normal is giving you grief - you'll still get to see the ending and all.

It's quite the creative and fun indie effort. I'm peeved this never got a sequel. As fun as I'm sure the Destroy All Humans remake is, I do want Black Forest to return to this one day.

A less-than-2-hour romp through a range of mini-games that can be anywhere from creative to derivative to broken to excruciating, propped up by visual charm, a ska soundtrack, and a madcap story devised by the founder of Love-de-lic. Plus, so many Western pop culture references (of which many were NOT added in localization) that this game may as well be called "I Can't Believe It's Not A Shitty Fox Kids Cartoon from 1994 That No One Likes But Got 5 Seasons Anyway". Exactly the kind of game that deserves several more eyes on it, and a second shot on modern consoles with improved design choices. Frustrating, but a fun thing to whoosh through on a bored night or two, preferably with frequent save states and pausing to give your fingers a rest (a LOT of button mashing - the final mini-game requires you mash X and TRIANGLE, even).

zzzzzzzzzzzz

I got a digital code of this for Christmas in 2019 and just never got around to it until now. I was expecting a solid and fun mini-game collection, and in that regard, you could suppose it does its job with mini-games. They function well enough! However, the game hardly kept my positive attention throughout its slog of a story mode, with unskippable cutscenes and a thoroughly uninteresting two-tone storyline. Mini-games are either piss easy, frustrating, or just really boring.

About the nicest thing about this game I can say is that it's not broken and it looks pretty. If this was a $30 budget title, I'd probably be a bit kinder to it. It's full-price and was rushed to a deadline that was already months before the event that was supposed to happen, but didn't. The result is a high-effort yet ultimately dry-feeling collection of sports mini-games.