I don't know why I waited so long to finally 100% Banjo-Tooie. I grew up playing this game here and there, but never made it very far. Banjo-Kazooie has always been one of my all-time favorites, but as an adult, I never took the plunge into tooie until recently. And wow, am I glad I did. <3

This game is just as charming as the first, and it will make you realize just how small the worlds of BK are. The interconnectedness of Banjo-Tooie is mind boggling. Some folks find this to be a tedious venture, but in my opinion, it's where the game truly shines. The jiggies and objectives get harder as the game progresses, and some of the challenges really make you work for a single jiggy. But that being said, the satisfaction I felt after finishing a tough section (lookin at you, Grunty Industries) made it well worth the effort. The cheato-pages definitely helped alleviate some of the pressure of the final boss as well, which improved the pacing at the end of the game significantly from BK.

I love how this game reignites that spark of wonder that you feel while playing a game for the first time as a child. Where is the secret Glowbo? What will it do? Will I ever find the alleged Ice Key from BK? What will the Stop n Swop eggs hatch into? There are just so many little mysteries in this game that keep the player returning to discover. Not many games can do that, and for that, this game deserves a perfect score.

I hope someday we see a true Banjo-Threeie, and I hope it feels a lot like this game. 5/5, I love this series so, so much. <3

Unfortunately I have given this game one more half star than I did before. The only thing that makes this game more tolerable is playing with friends which I have been doing lately. If you are a woman or someone with a femme voice you immediately get clocked as and get harassed. I'm giving it 3 and a half stars but at some point you really have to change your mindset in this game to "it is just a game, who cares" or it immediately gives you brain rot and makes you the most toxic human being known to man. I hate the way this game handles currency in every way, these skin bundles are not worth 80 real buckaroonies at all and you get no in game currency from the battlepass like every other godforsaken fps game in the world. This game sucks I love it. Also going back into the review and instead of giving it an extra half star it lost one. I still love playing with friends but the rest of it sucks. <3

This game rules. (I played the HD fan remastered version.)

The cutscenes are so ridiculous and fun, every time I ran into a new character I couldn't wait to see what stupid shit they would say. I loved exploring each new area, and the soundtrack has the best crunchy 90's feel to it. The combat leaves much to be desired, most bosses are taken out in like, a single hit with a specific item haha. But honestly I don't care about that, the experience is goofy enough to make up for the gameplay shortcomings. Just play it, you won't regret the 3 hours spent.

!!! MOVE OVER GAMERS, WE GOTTA GET THIS REVIEW OUT BEFORE CHRISTMAS !!!

You want to know the funniest thing about being a kid? It’s being ignorant to the fact that some things are just horseshit, and boy was kid me quite the ignoramus. Revisiting this game, it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but there was some sick part of me that wanted to relive a good moment of my life in the one Spyro game I have the most unblurry memories of.

Well it turns out, those memories end at the 2nd level and nothing beyond it. Even the borderline racist NPCs somehow scrubbed from my mind. There’s no shot I finished this as a kid, and my memories kept the better portion of the game in stasis forever. They’re not good levels per se, just functionally better. After that the game quickly hurtles closer towards dystopia the further you get into it. To put it quite bluntly, this game is just not finished and couldn’t be more of a beacon of developmental hell. Except this was from the PS2/Gamecube era back in 2002 and.. yeah folks, crunch and corporate shenanigans have been happening our entire lives. This shit was made in the same time it takes to grow a human fetus and still somehow ended up being more of a disappointment.

With vast levels that are emptier than corn fields and enemies with zero life put into them. There’s no variety to be seen, just small ranged dinosaur and big dinosaur who make this sound when you murder them. If this game has achieved anything, it’s that it is at the very least sometimes funny. But you won’t be laughing when the camera 360 no scopes itself into the wall of the level design, launching you off the platform that you’re currently standing on. On normal hardware this game runs like it’s being squeezed through a tube, but even while playing it through unscrupulous means there still feels like there’s some sort of wind resistance pushing against Spyro as he charges. He feels like he weighs a metric ton, which makes platforming a goddamn nightmare. If that’s not enough for you, throw in some magic floors that clip through your body, and mini-games made by Satan himself. The draw distance is abysmal. You want to go on your cozy little gem collectathon, but they removed Sparx’s little hint clues which means you’ll be scouring all of these gigantic levels for much longer than you want just for that one last gem to appear out of thin air because it glitched out the first time. It's actually a marvel of achievement that speedrunners were able to figure out how to beat this game in 1 minute, the amount of time it takes for the veil of nostalgia to be sucked from your eyes.

What’s it all for, you may ask? Well, some of the most weirdly named Dragonflies I could have ever imagined. They really just pulled from anywhere with these guys. “Hey, it’s Karen!!” Spyro says, but the subtitle says “Rhett.” I can’t believe my childhood hero Spyro just deadnamed that dragonfly. And like I said, these issues get more prevalent as the game keeps going. With each level, the more unfinished it feels. The worlds get emptier with more nonsensical tasks that barely function. Assets aren’t re-used, but still uninspiringly pulled from previous titles in an effort to save time. Unlockable powers that get used less and less, voice lines completely missing in some instances, etc., etc. It all culminates into a final boss fight that not even I could foresee. A baffling affront to God himself, just a gauntlet of atrocities deep fried through the Christmas deadline conveyor belt. Spyro died and we killed him.

Keep this game dead, do not “reignite” it. There is no redemption to be had. Lock this one in the vault and treat it like a lesson. One day you too could make your own Enter The Dragonfly, and you don’t want to be that guy. Sometimes things should be left as memories in our heads, never to be revisited. This is a ghost for a reason, so fear it.

Now for the end of this review, I feel like it’d be only fitting to just stop talking in the middle of my

I'll preface this by saying I've played a total of like three 2D sonic games. (more of a 3D sonic girly myself) HOWEVER this game was rad, and I genuinely think it improved quite a bit from the first Sonic. (I drowned far less, yay!) Some of the levels were a bit redundant, but the killer music and fun bosses made up for it.

The game isn't too hard until the final stages, and overall the pacing felt super reasonable. Looking forward to trying to find some of the hidden chaos emeralds in the future!

the beginning of this game is great! nostalgic, colorful as heck, straightforward, honestly no complaints.

HOWEVERrrrrrr after zone 5 this game falls off, and it falls off hard. it is clear to me that the devs really didn't want you to pick amy. there are several sections of the game designed to have spin dash, but amy doesn't have that. so you just kinda have to jank your way through it and hope for the best. the level design of zones 5 & 6 are abysmal, and they leave you asking "why am i even playing this?"

if you do decide to play this, and you pick amy, good luck warrior. i believe in you. o7

I was actually set up and ready to play Super Mario Sunshine for the first time, but it came to my realization that my Mario 3D All-Stars collection was missing out of its case. It turns out that the likely reason why it’s gone is because my nephew swiped it while he was here last, meaning that my LIMITED RELEASE 3D All-Stars copy was stolen. Look, he’s just a kid and I’ll probably see him again later so I may have a chance to get it back. I’m really not mad or anything, it’s just that the next time I see him I’ll probably be whipping Kung Lao’s hat at him instead of Mario’s. Until then though, I needed to find something else to play…

With Mario still on the brain, I had Odyssey basically screaming for me to finally let it out. It’s supposedly nothing like Mario Sunshine but I wouldn’t know anyways. The only 3D Mario I’ve played is Mario Galaxy, so I wagered it would play similarly in that direction instead. What I do know is that when I said I would be playing Mario Sunshine, it was met with tomatoes and thunderous BOOOOOOs. After changing plans to this, the mood instantly shifted to cute rainbows, hugs, and smiles. hotpoppah will remember this. Not sure what caused the hate in their hearts, but I guess I’ll take this situation as fate dealt to me by God himself.

I could be wrong, but this has got to be the most unhinged game in the entire series. Bowser has hit an all-time rock bottom, destroying civilizations in order to force a wedding onto a non-consenting Princess Peach. Mario’s whole gimmick is possessing the bodies of enemies, demolishing their bones in order to platform through natural disasters and discarding them into the ocean. This game has huge TikTok energy. It starts at a 100 right at the gate, then tosses you into the first world where the mechanics are kinda just thrown in your face. The camera’s whipping around like a CCTV monitor. The game’s just giving Moons out like it’s Halloween candy. Holy shit, is that a realistic DINOSAUR? I have so many questions and not enough answers, but it doesn’t matter baby, we’re cruising like it’s NASCAR. I don’t know what the fuck all the rush is, but boy is it cool as shit flicking your way around Metropolis.

New Donk City? This game made me feel like I could Donk anything. It was very easy. Sorry kiddies, I’m the better Super Mario Odyssey player. It really says something when you’re 3,654,844th place in Jump-Rope and yet there are still thousands of children behind you on the leaderboard. Maybe try a little harder next time! But real talk though, why are some levels like 4 seconds long? We can discuss and argue battle mechanics or bosses all damn day, but just the slightest diverging path will net you so many extra Moons for nothing that you can just straight up leave the level as soon as the boss is defeated. Sure, you don’t have to leave as soon as possible, but once you’re 3 worlds deep trying to absorb the area for what it is, you kinda realize that a lot of Moons are just the same puzzle or mini-game in every World. It slightly makes up for it in the post-game where you can re-fight the bosses and run around in Mario 64’s version of Disney Land, depending on who you are. I bet this was awesome for long-time fans, but for me it was like I was invited to the retirement party of some guy I barely knew.

I finished the game with 180 Moons though, 220 with some Mushroom Kingdom exploration. If you think I’m collecting 500 total just to unlock what I assume will just be a cock and ball torture level, you’ve been Donked one too many times. I’m sure it’s easier than it sounds with how the game just gives you Moons for breathing, but it’s the easiness of the collection that made the whole process sound so mind-numbing to me. It’s fantastic and amazing when the set pieces and bosses are all coming together, but boring as shit when you’re just buying Stars in bundles or looking for spots to ground pound. I don’t want to do that shit!!!

On another note, the music in this game slaps but it’s weird that there’s so many long stretches of levels where there is no music at all. Mario is half naked, nipples out on the beach but all you can hear is the sound of seagulls and waves hitting the coast line. It was a very surreal experience that I don’t ever want to feel again. Other than that, fine. It was fun. I finally have another Mario game under my belt, and it was mostly just as good as everyone says it is.

I gotta go though, someone just popped my balloon. When I fucking get you, Splatoon profile picture.

Finally got around to playing this. For some reason I played Portal 2 when it came out and just never got around to Portal Sr. Having prior knowledge of how to do the puzzles because of this made Portal 1 quite the breeze to get through and that’s really the only issue that I think it has.

It relies a lot more on environmental storytelling rather than any actual plot progression. It exists more just to set up the small world and act as a bit of a demo slice for its fun portally puzzle physics. The turrets are very silly and GLaDOS carries a lot of the runtime with sarcastic humor that kind of distracts you from how ominous the circumstances surrounding your character actually are.

It’s the kind of puzzle mechanics that itch your brain like giving scritches to your pet cat. Made me feel like I was both overthinking and also not thinking hard enough at the same time in some areas. There was one where I couldn’t figure it out immediately so I tried to loop myself between portals infinitely for fun, just to find out that that was the solution all along. So even while the rooms feel like you’re locked between padded walls, it really gives you just enough to play around with until you’re able to solve the problems. If anything I wished it was a bit longer or that the advanced puzzles were different levels. They’re really just the same maps just with harder obstacles like poop floors and more turrets.

Portal is Portal and Portal is very fun. I would say that Portal 2 is the better game, but that’s mainly because it’s just larger in scale, has co-op, and extends the universe created here. You have to start somewhere though and Portal 1 is the perfect sprout to a beautiful gigantic beanstalk.