This game came as a big surprise to me. I hadn't heard of it during its development and it dropped out of nowhere being published by a youtuber that I'm not fond of. Still, it looked interesting and the word of mouth was good. I decided to dive in.

Animal Well is polished to a gleaming sheen; it takes advantage of every feature of modern controllers, from the colored lighting to the touchpad of a Dualsense and a high level of attention to detail with the rumble giving the game a tactile feeling. Despite lacking a musical score for all but a few moments, the sound design is immaculate and makes the world feel alive; I never felt the urge to put on music, and indeed the game often provides audio cues that serve as hints. Every pixel is placed with care, and everything that looks like a cryptic puzzle really is one.

After about a week and close to 20 hours of gameplay I finally finished collecting all the eggs, the main collectable in the game; it took only about 8 hours for me to hit credits playing at a leisurely pace, but I knew I had only scratched the surface at that point and I wanted to get closer to its core before writing about it. I knew early on in my experience that this was going to be an all timer, and my intuition proved correct; this is easily a GotY contender, and one of the best puzzle platformers I've ever played. In a year where we already saw Balatro as a solo developer's debut and GotY contender, I wasn't expecting to see another one so soon. Hats off to Billy Basso; the love that went into this shines through every pixel.

I'd also be remiss not to mention how much of a technical achievement this game is; clocking in at a bit over 30MB, it runs on a custom engine. The old school DIY approach adds to its charm, and reminds me of the projects that inspired me to want to get into independent development back in the pre-Braid era of freeware. The only nitpicks I have with the game are that it can't be fully appreciated as a solo experience - playing concurrently with, or talking to a friend who has already played the game is definitely the way to go - and that, by quite late into the game (the second or third 'layer' of puzzles), traversal goes from being wonderful to somewhat tedious; but this only happens after you've exhausted many of the wonderful puzzles this world has to offer, and going this deep down the rabbit hole Animal Well is absolutely not necessary to experience this gem.

A must-play for puzzle platformer fans, those intrigued by solo development, or anyone who loves exploration.

I played this as a kid and all I remember is a very weird experience. Playing it today and it's not very weird. Kinda wish it measured up to my memories of it, but what ever really does?

You collect items that you can use through out the stage and you also shoot balls at monsters. One of the items is a ladder, which is pretty self-explanatory (you climb it to reach higher spots); another lets you jump higher; there's a bomb which might be for blowing up enemies, I don't know. You also collect "K" blocks which are basically Mario coins. Not sure what they do, but I'm amazed they made all sorts of configurations out of them but still managed to never put three Ks in a row... ahem.

(I take that back)

It plays perfectly fine, you can get pretty powerful pretty fast if you collect three balls to shooty with. I think the weirdest aspect of this is that they brought this guy back as a boss in Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja and made him the last boss in Fighter's Destiny: Karnov's Revenge. For whatever reason y'know. Now I want to go play that and see if he still be shoot the balls.

I miss the days when wish fulfillment also included weird bald shirtless Russian dudes with handlebar mustaches.

“We can forget happy things. We can probably forget sad things too. People have the power to forget.” 

I haven't stopped thinking about Mother 3 since i finished it a week ago, and i can confidently say that this is one of my favorite games of all time.
I love everything about it, the characters are awesome and fit perfectly in the world (Duster and Flint are the best ones imo), the music sets a perfect tone for each setting, the gameplay was fun but grindy at times, and the story is probably the most amazing part, with each chapter being interesting in its own way. (The ones i liked the most were chapters 4 and 6).
This was an incredible game and I think that everyone should experience Mother 3 at least once in their lives.

The hardcore blackjack players at the 2600 launch must have had their ultimate marvel vs capcom 3 moment 33 years in advance because this is virtually the exact same game as blackjack except with more in it released likely less than a year later. The blackjack mode is still blackjack, the rules are the same as always and the jacks are just as black as they normally are. This game does add insurance to the table, where you can safely bail if the CPU shows the potential of getting a blackjack. There's also card splitting in Blackjack where you can branch one hand into two for even higher stakes fake gambling. Instead of Blackjack having a 200 credit starting pool that resets at 1000 this game has a pool of 1000 credits that resets at 10000, though considering the fact that you can only bet in increments of tens it's really more like you start at 100 and it resets at 1000. You still play this with the paddles too, so the four-player support is still intact. This games blackjack mode renders regular Blackjack completely obsolete at this point.

And that's not even all that this game has to offer! New entirely are the gamemodes of stud poker and poker solitaire. Stud Poker goes up to four players and everyones credit pools can carry over between it and blackjack in this atari casino. Basically you watch your hand and the houses hand and place bets as it grows to see who has the winning hand. The only strange thing about it is you can still add one final bet after both hands are already fully shown which like if you already know you have a winning hand you can spike your bet right at the very end to get easy extra credits, or if you know you are screwed you can pull out and take less punishment. I'm not gambling or poker expert and haven't really stepped foot in an actual casino (outside of going to arcades that happen to be inside casinos) but I don't think actual stud poker probably plays that way. Most of the poker hands won't even show up in stud poker due to the RNG nature of it all; 95% of the time if anyone makes one singular pair they will win. I don't think I saw very many straights or flushes at all honestly. Through initially betting really small and only going all in when I knew I already won I was very easily able to break the bank and hit that 10k credit threshold. Honestly a way safer way to gamble than playing blackjack ngl. The last game is Poker Solitaire where you have a giant 5x5 grid and you place cards to try and see how many perpendicular hands you can make going horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. I'm sure that there's some solved-puzzle perfect pattern to put the cards in to get the highest score, but considering the fact that it's a singleplayer mode that doesn't factor credits anywhere I only really saw that mode as a little distraction from the main gambling action. It would have been cool if you had to go to solitaire mode to earn extra tokens in the event of like going bankrupt or whatever, but it was not to be I guess. If you want to experience having a gambling addiction in the comfort of your own home, this is as good a pick as any.

*Played as part of the Master Chief Collection

So the original Combat Evolved was one of the two Halo games I played, as it was the only one I knew of that was on PC at the time. I was just never an Xbox kid, so I completely skipped this series back during its heyday. Thankfully most of the series is on PC via the Collection (which I have definitely taken way too long to get around to as well), so are now more easily accessible (Halo 5 PC port though? When is that happening? I would like to eventually complete the series).

As a game, this is a pretty fun FPS experience, but it definitely feels dated now. The lack of accessibility options such as sprinting and weapon iron sights makes it feel like more of a slog to get through than it actually is, especially when redoing checkpoints. The level design is interesting though, with many large sections and maps that you circle around completely. This is something that I don't think I've really seen before in a linear game such as this. The vehicles are also fun to play with, although I hated driving the Warthog. For some reason, the Banshee handles like a dream, but the Warthog is this unwieldy thing that flips over every time you hit even a slight pothole or elevation change.

Overall, the story is enjoyable enough, but is still pretty bland and by-the-numbers. You also don't get much lore at all during the course of the game, with a lot of questions just left up in the air - I suppose for the later games to answer. Who are the Covenant? Why are we at war with them? Why is Master Chief such a unique badass? Why is Cortana so sassy? Who the fuck are the Forerunners and the Monitor? Anyway, I'm sure I'll get more answers as I go through the series, so I'm not too worried about these questions.
We continue onwards to Halo 2, which will be the first completely new game in the franchise I'll have played, so I'm looking forward to that.

Great art direction. Interesting character design, a nice cel shading style and overall beautiful aesthetics.
The gameplay is a little formulaic, basically fighting until the rage bar fills up, pressing R2 and watching something cool. But it's something really REALLY cool, very exaggerated and over the top, I played the whole time with a smile on my face. The music is really cool and really highlights the emotion of the moment.
It has a lot of QTE but I haven't found one that gives instant death when missed. Either you take a little damage or you get a slightly lower ranking at the end of the mission.

The game has 18 missions, 6 for each arc. The last one has an extra scene when completing 5 missions with S-ranked or completing 50 missions on any difficulty. I had 2 when I finished the game, so I went back and did the first 3 missions again and got the requirements. I did the mission again and saw the scene, which ends with a fucking cliffhanger.

Capcom in its darkest period put the true ending through DLC. The arc is called Nirvana and has 4 missions, I would say "Nevermind" but it's the best part of the game. I couldn't put the game down until I saw the end and I'm satisfied.
Another DLC is a crossover with Street Fighter 4. One fight against Ryu and another against Akuma. One round like a tradicional fighting game and another like the rest. I defeated Akuma the first time Oni mid tier was no work, but against Ryu that came first gave me a lot of trouble.

The worst part for me was the performance, at times the frame rate dropped a lot and the input lag is so much that I had to advance the time in almost a second to get the perfect QTE. There is no way to calibrate this like in Guitar Hero.

Even with some problems, I really liked it. It's the best Berserk game to date. I imagine Guts rubbing Griffith's face against the walls of Falconia like that. Too bad we'll never see it.
I miss Kentaro Miura. =(

Cool game, the last title NDcube made before getting sent to the mediocre party game mines until the end of time. Despite being developed by a literal first-party nintendo studio this was published by NEC and was only released in north america. Weird.

It's a fun zero-G racer, leaning more towards Wipeout than F-Zero. The courses are all composed of the titular slidable tubes, and while it seems like a gimmick at first the courses are definitely designed around being able to ride on all sides. It makes cornering particularly unique, as turns can become bumps if you are on a certain part of the tube. Getting bumped into the air significantly hinders your speed, so the best way to go fast is to treat it more like a bobsled luge of sorts and keep your vehicle glued to the floor at all possible times. There are 3 different types of turns that you can make depending on which combination of joystick and trigger directions that are inputted, and the game doesn't really do a very good job explaining the best use case situations for each so there's a lot of trial and error when it comes to picking up the controls and mechanics. It's really hard to to drifts without spinning out, losing all the speed gained throughout the course, getting passed up by 3 different other racers while you watch helplessly. There's also a boost system that's designed around a meter that increases over time. There's a weird combat mechanic thrown in where tailing other racers from behind allows you to steal their meter, but I found that due to how the AI works there weren't many options for me to take advantage of that whereas the AI loved to just suck me dry every opportunity they could get. Apparently there's like a parry window where you can input to reverse card their succ attempts but nowhere in my entire playthrough could I successfully pull it off (but of course the AI can do it without breaking a sweat). You can also choose between like two different boost types where one accumulates up to three boost stocks that you can spend and another where it's a bar you can pull from any time. There aren't any items or such to speak of, so it's a rather straight-laced racer.

The game has vibes for days though. The menus look like they have been ripped directly out of some 2003 ass jetix/toonami cyber-futurecore ad bumpers and I'm totally here for it. The vehicle designs are rad, the soundtrack is some bumpin techno, and the levels actually have decent environmental variety despite all being enclosed in clear metal tubes. There's your typical cybery metal city landscapes, sure, but there's also stuff like a giant withered tree, a lush jungle, a shady neon-lit city block, and the classic underwater ocean tube. Every game with an underwater ocean tube is a good game, I don't make the rules here.

My only major problem with this game is in its pacing and difficulty. This shit is paced like a mfin SNK fighting game, where even though the game is short 75% of my time playing it was spent in the mfin final nayuta cup instead of having my playtime spread evenly across the games full breadth of content. The AI is such a blatantly cheating bastard in this game it's not even funny. It's not unusual to be running a decent race in like 4th place or so, look at the map, and see that first is halfway across the fucking course isolated from everyone else. Once the game spreads the AI out like its joever dude you might as well restart and save yourself the time. There's only 3 cups in the game split across two classes and while the first cup on the first class is piss easy to the point of being braindead, the second cup starts to take the gloves off and the third cup puts on the brass knuckles. And then you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN on a higher speed class with even more fiendish AI! I'd really chalk it up to being a case of the devs not really playtesting too well and tuning the game balance for themselves over the average player because the game spikes up the difficulty way before I could grasp the game enough to be ready. Maybe they expected players to grind out each course in the training free run mode or time trials before tackling the third cup? This game would easily be bumped up a star if the balance was toned down by like two notches, it's super demoralizing to watch an entire run go awry from the CPU just being utterly merciless.

Overall it's a cool racer with sizably thought-out mechanics and hella vibes made slightly sour by just how unbalanced the AI opponents are. I've seen videos of SPEEDRUNNERS getting second place in certain races due to the fucked up balancing!!! If I had a nickel for every brutally difficult zero-G racer that's exclusive to the gamecube I've played, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that there's two of them. They really should let NDcube run wild again sometime instead of having them make Everybody's 1-2 Wii Party the top 100, this game is probably their best work.

Is this an early 2010s Flash game? You guys remember Flash right, not like I'm a generation apart from the average BL user. As the first review for the game, I have a big responsibility as the game's salesman, even though I grabbed it for free. Special announcement for our colorblind friends: cease & desist!! This game is all about da colors, and as Hector Salamanca said: I need to see your balls! POC balls. I am also the game's only player as of writing this review, so nobody is gonna understand anything or verify my claims, but I'll behave. The first lie is no sign of human life in the game, clearly contrasting with the cover art shown here. You remember old arcade games doing that? Do people love humans or something. Maybe if I were one it'd click.

I feel like a hacker playing this, turning the wheels to the rhythm of my heartbeat trying to get into mainframe. Ayo tho the game has no theme at all, it quite frankly... looks like turd, and we ran out of lore 5 minutes ago. It's a gameplay comes first ahh typa deal, the basic system is good but short of great, great at being short. I'll stop teasing you, it's a collection of levels (visually the same) taking place inside the Super Mario Brothers pipes, Yoshi keeps producing eggs into the fucking pipes, I never liked that dino honestly and that gringo said that balls will go in any empty holes it comes across and you huh spin the thing and throw the balls where it belongs, which is another spinny thingy, well you get the gist of it, combine 4 of the same colors in one spin thingy spinny and it explodes 🤯🤯 of happiness. Pat yourself on the back.

While doing all this makes a nice dance, it doesn't make you feel like the belle of the balls. It works enough for how simple it is, but clearly more could have been done. It controls like a mobile game despite swearing off that platform, so who knows what's happening behind the curtains. I think a collab is needed to breathe new life into this. Fortnite did it, no excuses. Deadass I think this game barely afforded one restaurant meal to the dev 💀 he doesnt want to see any colors for the rest of his life I bet. Btw the colors are the traditional red, blue, green, but there is a kinda beige kinda brownish kinda yellowish one. I seldom see this one. A rare species sighting indeed this oughta be the game's true catch after all.

tw// racism/sexual assualt

met my former girlfriend on here (back when i was cis)
finally build up the courage after 2 and a half years to come out to her about who i really am (while playing hades my ablt fav). long story short she broke up with me while calling me slurs and leaked our esex convo (im the bottom) to the whole lobby.

needless to say i wont be playing this one anytime soon.

met kwab on here (my current sweetheart african king)
love supporting (bottoming hehe) while he plays lucian and senna adc - he insists on only playing african american champions. I did try speaking to him about how this is technically asian hate but he just beats his chest and threatens me?? idc the makeup sex is AMAZING.

but ye i absolutely adore playing this game rn and it really helps me relax after a long day of dealing with modernity.

[Average reading time: 10 minutes]

A challenging platformer wrapped in a very pretty package.

This isn't my first foray with Croc. I distinctly remember attempting to play through this game a number of years ago and then quitting in world 3 due to a crazy difficulty spike. Now, a few years later, my brain spiders command me to once again control the lovable green reptilian and try to beat this game for good. Of course, I knew what I was getting into, and decided to make one small, yet absurdly essential change to make this game more fun.

Now, anyone who's read my Billy Hatcher review knows my opinions about lives systems in games, and that opinion of mine isn't going away. Because of this, I implemented an unlimited lives cheat for this run. As I go further into detail about my time with Croc, it will become clearer as to why I did this, but I did want to state this early on, just for the sake of clarity regarding my experience this time around.

Now, Croc has a simple story. You witness Croc floating in a basket towards a group of Gobbos, who then adopt and raise him. Soon, Baron Dante makes his presence known, sending his troops to kidnap the Gobbos. The Gobbo King bangs a gong to have Croc sent away from the chaos, allowing Croc the chance to fight back and save his friends!

A simple plot for a simple game. However, the instruction manual gives way more detail about the Gobbo world. Reading it will teach you more about the Gobbos as a species, the Gobbo King, referred to as "King Rufus the Intolerant", Croc's experiences growing up with the Gobbos, and even information about Baron Dante's evil group, referred to as "The Dantinis". It's also a bizarrely funny read, with a lot of jokes that stick the landing very well. If you want to read something that will make you constantly double take, read the Croc instruction manual!

Once you take control of Croc, you'll immediately notice a point of contention regarding this game: it's a 3D platformer with tank controls. Needless to say, not the most comfortable platforming experience. Even using an analog controller does not fix this issue, sadly. You'll often find yourself stopping to turn yourself to line up a jump, and jumping feels very stiff. Whatever direction you plan on moving in the air is the only direction you're moving, with little room for adjustment. Over time, of course, you'll get used to the platforming mechanics, but you'll never find yourself saying "this feels great to play!"

Aside from running and jumping, Croc has a few extra moves at his disposal. One of the most vital moves he possesses is his ability to turn around! Using a dedicated button, Croc can do a 180 degree turn whenever he wants, which is a godsend for re-orienting yourself to line up another jump. If you do it while he's on the move, he'll do a really cool flip that made me react like this when I first saw it.

As for Croc's combat ability, he has two moves to use. First, he has a tail swipe move that's great for deleting enemies from existence. His other move is a ground pound, performed by hitting the jump button twice. Aside from dispatching enemies, this move will allow Croc to bust open crates and objects blocking tunnel passageways. Gonna be honest here, I don't like that you have to hit jump twice for this. I wish it was mapped to a different button, because I would often have scenarios where I was doing a precision platforming section that required me to jump as soon as I landed on a platform, and if my timing was off slightly it would result in Croc stopping in midair, asserting the ground-pound position, and plummeting to his death. Not fun.

It's also worth noting that when Croc performs his attacking moves, he has a number of onomatopoeia's he can blurt out, such as "yazoo!" or "kersplat!" You would think this would get annoying after a while, but honestly it never bothered me. I think it adds to Croc's character, being a young croco on a big adventure to save a tribe of people who have a tradition of shoving kitchen utensils down their pants (PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL I PROMISE I DIDN'T MAKE THAT UP)

Speaking of Croc as a character, oh man, would you take a look at these little guys! This game is filled to the brim with scrimblo-type characters, little dudes that you're gonna want plushies of as soon as you see them. They're EVERYWHERE! If you love little weirdos and want to catalogue them all, this is the perfect game for you. Absolutely loved seeing each new creature emerge on my screen as I played.

Okay, so we have cute characters in a fuzzy 32-bit world clearly made for kids. The controls take some getting used to but surely the main game doesn't get too taxing, right? Oh, how I wish I could say yes. For the first two worlds, it's honestly a pretty comfortable romp. Level design is highly forgiving, featuring non-intimidating level design unless you're going after collectibles. Once you hit world 3, though, you'll start seeing much more difficult stage layouts requiring you to perform more precise movements to get by. For me, this is where Croc begins to fall in terms of quality.

So, Croc behaves like Sonic the Hedgehog when it comes to taking damage, in that he'll drop this game's ring equivalent (gems) when getting hit. Get hit without them and you'll lose a life. It's around world 3 where you'll begin facing much more challenging platforming over damaging floors and bottomless pits. Because of this, it is incredibly easy to lose lives. Thankfully, you're given a checkpoint at every door/tunnel you exit, which means a death won't set you too far back. Getting a game over, however, sends you back to whichever stage you last saved at, which means starting a level over again from the beginning.

Now, on paper this doesn't seem like too bad of a punishment, but after getting game over's over and over again due to how easy it is for Croc to die I began to find it intolerable, hence why I opted for the unlimited lives cheat. I can accept dying and having to re-do a small section but having to re-do a stage over and over due to game overs, especially when you get close to the end of a stage, just feels intolerable in the modern era. If you want to tackle this game without such assists, then all the power to you. Just be prepared for a lot of level attempts in the back half of the game and lots of visits to specific stages to grind extra lives hidden away in secret spots.

When it comes to collectables in stages, you really only have two to worry about: Gobbos and colored gems. There are six Gobbos hidden in each stage, and collecting all of the Gobbos in the game allow you to access some secret levels that unlock even more secret stuff. Throughout the stage, you'll find five of these Gobbos hidden in boxes, cages, and on hard-to-reach platforms. "Wait hold on five? I thought you said there were six Gobbos in a stage!" So remember when I mentioned colored gems? You can find five of these in each stage either disguised as regular gems or hidden in boxes. Collecting all of these unlocks a door near the end of each stage, where you will either complete a platforming challenge or a minigame to rescue the last Gobbo.

The platforming challenges are straightforward enough. However, it's the minigames where I take issue with this system. While most minigames are perfectly fine, there's one that I dislike immensely. Basically, you have a cauldron that you control by jumping on two arrow buttons. Your goal is to catch the gems descending from the sky. Catch them all and you're awarded a Gobbo. The problems here are that this minigame goes on way too long, and if you miss even one, the mini game ends. You may think "Oh, if I die I can reset the mini game and try again." A smart idea, but sadly not the case. Losing any minigame without securing a Gobbo will require you to beat the entire stage again to retry it. This means re-collecting every Gobbo and colored gem along the way, which is a frustrating process if it happened in a more difficult level, even if you know what you're getting into.

With how difficult the stages can get, you would think the boss fights would also prove to be challenging. Surprisingly, the bosses in this game are absurdly easy. It's your typical "wait for them to attack and hit them when they're vulnerable" type of fights throughout the game, and dodging attacks is as simple as running in a circle around the boss while they do their thing. Also, almost every boss does this thing where they just stop animating and freeze after you deal the final blow, which is always funny to witness.

The more thing I want to touch on is the music. The soundtrack is pretty good! There's some leitmotif sprinkled throughout the stages, with overworld and underground areas sharing some melodies. The title screen is also pretty catchy and may or may not have had a chunk of its melody lifted from it to be a part of a main theme for a Nintendo game.

Speaking of Nintendo, it's worth noting that this game began life as a pitch for a 3D Yoshi game. After the pitch was turned down, it became Croc, and you can kinda see some of that Yoshi blood in here a little bit. You have a green reptile protagonist who can ground pound (a move Yoshi had in Yoshi's Island) as well as a bad guy who uses magic to make smaller creatures into tough boss enemies. Swap the characters for Yoshi's Island ones and add a tongue move and flutter jump to Croc's arsenal and you basically have a Yoshi game, which is fun to think about as you experience this game.

Overall, I didn't hate Croc. I love his design, and the Gobbo Archipelago is fun to explore. The enemies you encounter are all cute and charming, and hearing Croc exclaim things like "Wazoo" never gets old. However, the stage design, especially in the back half of this game, combined with the awkward controls make this a difficult game to clear. I recommend giving this game a shot, despite the difficulty.

The aesthetics of this game invoke an aura of childhood innocence and succeeds at taking you back to a time where things felt simpler, even if the game isn't the easiest around. For that reason alone, I feel that Croc is worth visiting today. Even with the rise of low-poly indie 3D platformers, there's none that I am aware of that really capture the welcoming aesthetics of Croc.