Another cinematic platformer in the vein of Flashback and Prince of Persia, this time starring a COOL DUDE and his COOL GUN!! For a while it's actually quite nice, but it's far too long in the tooth for what it is and doesn't have enough changes in scenery. Ultimately becomes a slog in the back half, though still pretty alright. The only thing I outright dislike is the gunplay mechanics, they're similar to the swordfighting in Prince of Persia in that they're both a huge pain in the ass and could benefit a ton from just being simpler. I think that's a good way to sum up Blackthorne, really - its full potential could've been realized if it was shorter and simpler. I really do like most of what's on display here, but it was starting to feel like it would go on forever.

Today we have some garbage specimen that was laying around in my playing tab for much too long. Apparently it did well critically and commercially though, which is a bit of a surprise considering somewhat of a lack of playability. Gambit's levels in particular are about on par with and reminiscent of Action 52 on Genesis.

It doesn't look too great, either. Feels like a bunch of random assets mashed together, not only in terms of like cohesion between levels but player sprites as well. Gambit has smoother animation than the others for some reason, while Storm has two completely different looking sets of sprites in two different sections where you play as her. Funnily enough, she's the only playable character who doesn't have a sheet on Spriters Resource, so here are images for reference. This in particular is fucking hysterical to me. How does something like this even happen?

But honestly, aside from the absurd difficulty and the ugliness, there's nothing really to say here. The Follins did the soundtrack, I guess? It didn't really stick out to me in any meaningful way, though, and it gets overshadowed by bad sfx. That's pretty much all there is to this one. Away it goes, into the corner of my subconscious with all the other dogshit video games I've made myself endure. I don't really know what the point of this whole schtick is sometimes. Not that it'll stop, though.

Kudos to Howard Phillips recognizing that what would eventually be known as The Lost Levels wasn't going to work well as a sequel in the US. Getting a reskinned Doki Doki Panic ended up being the best thing that could have happened to Mario because of how novel everything felt for the second time in a row.

The theme music here is just as memorable as in the original game as far as I'm concerned, and this game probably had the best controls out of any platformer to have come out at the time of its release. The visuals were colorful, had some great new enemies, nice animations, and little flourishes like stealing the magic carpet and being attacked by one of the bird doors towards the end of the game. I do think it overstays its welcome a bit, as the last third of the game starts feeling a bit repetitive, and I also wish they had done more with the Subcon world behind the magic doors. While this wasn't what they initially intended for the sequel, what they ended up with ended up working out far better.

I've seen several people complain that this is just a repackaging of the GBA game that's compromised in several ways. I don't really know about that because I haven't played a WarioWare game a day in my life, I'm as bare and pure as the day I was born, covered in fluids and screaming in the corner of the WarioWare elevator as the door keeps opening up to wacky minigames. I don't know how I got here and I'm scared.

The multiplayer component seems to be the big draw, but "come over and play WarioWare, Inc: Mega Party Games!" doesn't have the same magnetism today that it probably did in 2003, and for that reason I experienced the game solo. Which, again, is just the GBA game (or so I'm told), and since it's all new to me, I had a good time with it regardless.

I am currently playing through Mario Party 6 with Appreciations and TransWitchSammy, and while that's obviously a more complex game, I do think it's funny to compare how minigames are designed between the two. WarioWare fires its microgames at you rapidly, but they're so simple and intuitive that you're rarely left wondering what's expected of you, which allows the game to maintain its pacing. Mario Party requires a team of adults carefully study the instructions to each minigame, examining them like a technical manual several times over before jumping into a practice game to ensure everything is operating correctly. Saw a log, pick your nose, dodge falling debris... Easy. I do that every day of my life. Navigate the Gomba maze in Hotel Goomba by punching Goombas in the back of the skull to coral them into the correct positions? Yeah, hold up, gonna need to do a couple dry runs.

"But George, that's an unfair comparison. The connection between the two is predicated on the presence of minigames as a generalized concept and is tenuous at best!" Oh, well look at what we have here. A Mario Party defender! Well guess what, I called Dribble and Spitz and they said they're coming to your house tonight!

I think this part of Final Fantasy if not the best, but one of the best. Story is full of different events, from some fairy tale, to very depressive, yet one of them can be avoided. This game is a great example for shoving sometimes dark and depressind story with so simple graphics.

Combat is good due to all 14 playable characters. Some of them is unlockable if explore Narsche and location from second part of game. Each character have individual special command, Edgar have mechanical weapons, unbreakable and not consuming anything. Also has a secret with chainsaw in Zozo location. One character here can mimic literally every attack. For example if you want to use summon of some character and want mimic guy(or girl, its unknown) to repeat that attack, just choose character you want to mimic first. Sabin have strong martial arts and even can strike powerful unique atack with ~1/16 rate in critical situation. Shadow has powerful throw attacks, ye he complicated to recruit, but it worth it.

Some optional content also exists here, some magicite, some optional party members. Even some optional bosses.

I have been returning to this game periodically for 2 years, partially completing it. I own 2 steam versions(yes old with shitty graphics) and that pixel remaster. And this game won't maked me to abandon it or disappoint in some way.

So I gonna say that FF 6 is a my personal masterpiece, as a jrpg and just as game.